Monthly Archives: August 2010

New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s remarks on the proposed mosque and community center in Lower Manhattan

On Tuesday August 3 2010, Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined NYC City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and religious leaders from across New York City at an event on Governor’s Island. He spoke about the importance of religious freedom and the great tradition of tolerance and diversity that has characterized New York City since its founding.

“We have come here to Governors Island to stand where the earliest settlers first set foot in New Amsterdam, and where the seeds of religious tolerance were first planted. We’ve come here to see the inspiring symbol of liberty that, more than 250 years later, would greet millions of immigrants in the harbor, and we come here to state as strongly as ever – this is the freest City in the world. That’s what makes New York special and different and strong.

“Our doors are open to everyone – everyone with a dream and a willingness to work hard and play by the rules. New York City was built by immigrants, and it is sustained by immigrants – by people from more than a hundred different countries speaking more than two hundred different languages and professing every faith. And whether your parents were born here, or you came yesterday, you are a New Yorker.

“We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That’s life and it’s part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11.

“On that day, 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn’t want us to enjoy the freedom to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams and to live our own lives.

“Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that, even here in a City that is rooted in Dutch tolerance, was hard-won over many years. In the mid-1650s, the small Jewish community living in Lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue – and they were turned down.

“In 1657, when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings, a group of non-Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance, a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion. It was perhaps the first formal, political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies – and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam.

“In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion – and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780’s – St. Peter’s on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center.

“This morning, the City’s Landmark Preservation Commission unanimously voted not to extend landmark status to the building on Park Place where the mosque and community center are planned. The decision was based solely on the fact that there was little architectural significance to the building. But with or without landmark designation, there is nothing in the law that would prevent the owners from opening a mosque within the existing building. The simple fact is this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship.

“The government has no right whatsoever to deny that right – and if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question – should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here. This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions, or favor one over another.

“The World Trade Center Site will forever hold a special place in our City, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves – and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans – if we said ‘no’ to a mosque in Lower Manhattan.

“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values – and play into our enemies’ hands – if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists – and we should not stand for that.

“For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetime – as important a test – and it is critically important that we get it right.

“On September 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked ‘What God do you pray to?’ ‘What beliefs do you hold?’

“The attack was an act of war – and our first responders defended not only our City but also our country and our Constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very Constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights – and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.

“Of course, it is fair to ask the organizers of the mosque to show some special sensitivity to the situation – and in fact, their plan envisions reaching beyond their walls and building an interfaith community. By doing so, it is my hope that the mosque will help to bring our City even closer together and help repudiate the false and repugnant idea that the attacks of 9/11 were in any way consistent with Islam. Muslims are as much a part of our City and our country as the people of any faith and they are as welcome to worship in Lower Manhattan as any other group. In fact, they have been worshipping at the site for the better part of a year, as is their right.

“The local community board in Lower Manhattan voted overwhelming to support the proposal and if it moves forward, I expect the community center and mosque will add to the life and vitality of the neighborhood and the entire City.

“Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure – and there is no neighborhood in this City that is off limits to God’s love and mercy, as the religious leaders here with us today can attest.”

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Shimon Peres — king of bombast

“You write history — I have to make history,” Shimon Peres says at the end of an interview with the Israeli historian Benny Morris.

At times in the interview the Israeli president almost sounds deranged.

The main reason for war was that people earned their livelihood from land. People wanted either to defend their land or conquer more land. From the moment people live from science, force can’t do [anything]. An army can’t overcome science. All these borders will be blurred. The main reason for classic wars has disappeared. What will remain are fanatical religious groups, irrational groups, dangerous to the whole world. They will be destroyed in the end, out of self-defense. There won’t be wars. There will be great rivalry. Football will be more important than war, and science more important than football. There will be a contest to develop nature’s riches. What importance is there today to land?

So I guess Israel, with its fuzzy borders and expanding settlements, is not as it appears to many of us on the outside, a state engaged in old-fashioned colonization, but rather it heralds a future in which land is no longer of any importance.

And what’s Peres’ transcendental perspective on the most contested piece of territory, Jerusalem?

Original Jerusalem, the Sacred Basin, is all told one square kilometer — the Old City, the Temple Mount, that’s the whole story. It’s small, but it’s not territory; it’s a flame, and it is difficult to divide fire, to fence in flames. What can be done? Let’s set aside [the idea of] national sovereignty and let’s look at religious sovereignty. Give each religion responsibility for its own holy sites.

So Israel’s ready to relinquish its claim of national sovereignty with an undivided Jerusalem as its capital and return to the UN’s original proposal for the holy city, internationalization?

All that will do is perpetuate the conflict, but with the involvement of more parties.

Leaving Jerusalem aflame, let’s turn to what for me was the most entertaining part of the interview — where Peres vents some good old Anglophobia (at least there’s one thing Israelis and Iranians see eye-to-eye on) and then reveals that he only watches TV broadcast from Mars.

How do you explain the rise in the delegitimization of Israel in the world in recent years? Do you agree that this is happening?

Let me give you a contrary picture: Israel is the most popular country in the world. [Peres’s media aide giggles. “Benny, you won’t leave here depressed,” she says.] For 2,000 years there was friction between the Vatican and the Jews. There are, what is it, 1.3 billion Christians? Now we have excellent relations with the Vatican. This is no small thing. And we have good relations with India, also hit by Muslim terrorists. And that’s together 3 billion. And [we now have] excellent relations with China.

Right. But why the delegitimization, especially in the West?

Firstly, there is a problem in the Scandinavian countries. They always want to appear like yefei nefesh [the Hebraism roughly translates as “bleeding hearts,” with an undertone of hypocrisy]. And I don’t expect them to understand us. Sweden doesn’t understand why we are at war. For 150 years they have not had a war. There were even Hitler and Stalin, but they kept out of the picture. As did Switzerland. So, they don’t understand why we are “for war,” as if we really like wars. It’s like Marie Antoinette didn’t understand why the people didn’t bake cakes. The same logic.

But it goes a bit beyond [Sweden and Switzerland]?

Our next big problem is England. There are several million Muslim voters. And for many members of parliament, that’s the difference between getting elected and not getting elected. And in England there has always been something deeply pro-Arab, of course, not among all Englishmen, and anti-Israeli, in the establishment. They abstained in the [pro-Zionist] 1947 U.N. Partition Resolution, despite [issuing the pro-Zionist] Balfour Declaration [in 1917]. They maintained an arms embargo against us [in the 1950s]; they had a defense treaty with Jordan; they always worked against us.

But England changed after the 1940s and 1950s. They supported us in 1967, there was Harold Brown [sic — presumably Harold Wilson or Harold Macmillan, both of whom secretly and illegally assisted Israel’s nuclear program] and Mrs. Thatcher [who were pro-Israeli].

There is also support for Israel today [on the British right].

But in Labor there was always a deep pro-Israeli current.

But [the late 1940s prime minister and Labor leader Clement] Attlee was [anti-Israel].

Anyway, this [pro-Israeli current] vanished because they think the Palestinians are the underdog. In their eyes the Arabs are the underdog. Even though this is irrational. Take the Gaza Strip. We unilaterally evacuated the Gaza Strip [in 2005]. We evacuated 8,000 settlers and it was very difficult, after mobilizing 47,000 policemen [and soldiers]. It cost us $2.5 billion in compensation. We left the Gaza Strip completely. Why did they fire rockets at us, for years they fired rockets at us. Why?

Maybe because they don’t like us?

You fire rockets at everyone you don’t like? For eight years they fired and we refrained from retaliating. When they fired at us, the British didn’t say a word.

Maybe it is anti-Semitism?

Yes, there is also anti-Semitism. There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary. But with Germany relations are pretty good, as with Italy and France.

But there is erosion of public pro-Israel sentiment — at the universities, in the press. I’m not talking about the governments.

I’ll tell you why. On television there is an asymmetry that can’t be corrected. What the terrorists do is never broadcast.

So there you have it, from the man who believes Israel is the most popular country in the world and claims that acts of terrorism directed at Israel never appear on TV. What can one say?

As an Englishman, I naturally take an interest in expressions of suspicion or hostility directed towards the British, but there is one point Peres makes that cannot pass without comment: his reference to Muslim voters in Britain. This is where Peres’ racism seeps out since he cannot bring himself to refer to this political constituency as British Muslims. They are for Peres, Muslims with the power to vote — not Britons who practice Islam.

As for the general tone of the interview as it deals with the British current, I’m reminded of similar, if somewhat more forcefully expressed sentiments coming from an American writer who sees Peter Beinart as a victim of the malevolent British influence.

After Beinart wrote his widely acclaimed piece in the New York Review of Books, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” Jim Sleeper was sure he knew how Beinart’s mind had been corrupted:

Political decay, impotence and bitterness slither out of people in peculiar ways, and, for too many Brits, who have so much more to regret and apologize for and so much bottomless hypocrisy to plumb than Israel ever will, the anguish of decline slithers out against the Jews in eerily disembodied, oddly passionless ways:

“How odd of God to Choose the Jews,” runs a characteristically disdainful verse by the 20th Century British journalist William Norman Ewer. (To which my own riposte is, “Moses, Jesus, Spinoza; Marx, Einstein, and Freud; no wonder the gentiles are annoyed.”)

Well, there are lots of annoying people and things in the world, but British Jews who swallowed Ewer’s hook on some playground or classroom in their early years seem condemned to writhe with it, much as American blacks who’ve internalized a standard of idealized whiteness turn it against blacks who are darker-skinned than themselves, and much as German Jews who’d internalized an idealized German kultur loathed the embarrassing Ostjuden from… Russia and Eastern Europe. Here — and let us not mince words — we are talking about self-hatred, a cold, fine-spun, exacting usurper of sound judgment.

Beinart’s ancestors came from Lithuania, but before World War I they migrated, with a sizable contingent of other Litvaks, to South Africa. In the interwar years of Wilsonian nationalist awakening In Lithuania and all over Europe, many more Lithuanian Jews saw what was rising around them in their home of 500 years and opted for Zionism, transforming their ancestral, liturgical Hebrew into an old/new language and migrating to Palestine in the 1920s and 30s. Still others opted for the more universal promise of Communism in Europe and Russia, and others for capitalist opportunity in America. Those who stayed put were slaughtered — more than 135,000 of them in the woods and fields around their towns and were buried in mass trenches by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen and their Lithuanian recruits in the summer of 1941.

Some Lithuanian-Jewish Communists had fled not to the USSR but to South Africa as well as to America, among them Joseph Slovo, a founder of the African National Congress. A few of the next generation of South African Jews were ANC sympathizers, like the young Ian Shapiro, now a political scientist at Yale. And some of these leftists later became neo-conservatives or bureaucratic apparatchiks in the manner I’ve mentioned, grafting an old mental morphology onto Established Power rather than onto a revolutionary pursuit of Power.

Beinart’s family and most other South African Jews weren’t leftists. They came seeking freedom from persecution and bourgeois. But in South Africa they internalized the idealized British standards I’ve mentioned, and few were immune to internalizing the “odd” but unrelenting British discomfort and pretended bemusement about Jews.

All this prompts many a British Jew’s own efforts at expiation and projection. Even young Beinart, although he grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts and attended the Buckingham Brown and Nichols School and then Yale, where he was influenced by the Jewish nationalist political theorist Steven Smith, eventually spent a year at Oxford reckoning with whatever aspirations and insecurities the Brits of South Africa had implanted in his parents and, through them, in him.

This is a recipe for the unsavory mix of aspirations and fears we encountered in his writings and his trajectory as I sketch them briefly in bookforum. Although I don’t share their positions, Chait and Goldberg have a point: Beinart, like the estimable Tony Judt, himself a British Jew, is right in principle about Israel’s worst apologists, but he overstates his case for reasons having more to do with swift, dark currents in history and himself than with the complicated realities in Israel and Palestine.

Maybe I need to place a prominent warning on this site, alerting readers about the dangerous influence of the evil country where I grew up.

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Iran targeted in cyber attack

Last September, Reuters reported: “Israel has been developing “cyber-war” capabilities that could disrupt Iranian industrial and military control systems. Few doubt that covert action, by Mossad agents on the ground, also features in tactics against Iran. An advantage of sabotage over an air strike may be deniability.”

Now it seems, such an attack may have occurred in recent months.

“Looks like this malware was made for espionage,” was the assessment of industry analyst Frank Boldewin when describing the recently discovered computer worm, known has Stuxnet. It targets Siemens SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) management systems that control energy utilities, transportation, and other vital systems. Elias Levy, senior technical director with Symantec Security Response, said: “The most we can say is whoever developed these particular threats was targeting companies in those geographic areas,” when explaining why this particular trojan has had its greatest impact in Iran.

It is just two months since the newly-created United States Cyber Command based at Fort Meade, Maryland, became operational. The creation of CYBERCOM is ostensibly a response to the United States’ vulnerability to cyber attacks. “Given our increasing dependency on cyberspace, this new command will bring together the resources of the department to address vulnerabilities and meet the ever-growing array of cyberthreats to our military systems,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a statement.

But as Robert Fry, a former Deputy Commanding General of coalition forces in Iraq, notes, “the speed of cyber operations places a premium on first strike and so inverts the Clausewitzian principle of the inherent advantage of defense.” Thus, as Federal Computer Week points out: “CYBERCOM also oversees offensive cyber capabilities, and that involves developing weapons and the doctrine that governs when and how those weapons can be used.”

Did we just witness one of the opening shots in a cyber war against Iran? Stuxnet is, according to Andy Greenberg, “the first publicly-known threat, aside from occasional unattributed reports, to target the long-vulnerable infrastructure systems.” As such, the most likely instigator of such an attack would be a hostile government.

The question is: which government? Israel and/or the United States have to be the prime suspects.

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U.S. military cyberwar: What’s off-limits?

CNET reports:

The United States should decide on rules for attacking other nations’ networks in advance of an actual cyberwar, which could include an international agreement not to disable banks and electrical grids, the former head of the CIA and National Security Agency said Thursday.

Michael Hayden, who was the principal deputy director of national intelligence and retired last year, said the rules of engagement for electronic battlefields are still too murky, even after the Defense Department created the U.S. Cyber Command last spring. The new organization is charged with allowing the U.S. armed forces to conduct “full-spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains,” which includes destroying electronic infrastructure as thoroughly as a B-2 bomber would level a power plant.

Even a formal cyberwar may have rules different from those applying to traditional warfare, Hayden suggested. One option would be for the larger G8 or G20 nations to declare that “cyberpenetration of any (financial) grid is so harmful to the international financial system that this is like chemical weapons: none of us should use them,” he said at the Black Hat computer security conference here.

Another option would be for those nations to declare that “outside of actual physical attacks in declared conflicts, denial of service attacks are never allowed and are absolutely forbidden and never excused,” and a consensus would “stigmatize their use,” said Hayden, who’s now a principal at the Chertoff Group. Nations “do not do it and they do not allow it to happen from their sovereign space.”

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Looking back at torture

President Obama has so far refused to look back at the previous administration’s use of torture, but David Cole says: “on this issue, we cannot move forward without looking back. Unless we acknowledge that what the United States did was not just a bad idea, but illegal, we risk treating torture as simply another policy option.”

Cole presents some of the reasons the administration is unwilling to grasp the issue and argues that Britain’s new prime minister, David Cameron, has taken a lead worth following.

The Justice Department is investigating allegations of torture at the CIA’s secret prisons — but is considering only the actions of interrogators who are reported to have exceeded the brutality authorized by the Justice Department and Bush’s Cabinet. Why are the underlings being investigated, but not those who set the illegal scheme in motion?

The answer is politics. A torture investigation that could implicate the former president and vice president would be too divisive, some say. It would consume the nation’s attention and divert us from addressing other urgent problems, such as health care, the economy, global warming and immigration.

But there is an even larger political obstacle: fear. The Democratic administration is afraid of appearing more concerned about the rights of terrorism suspects than about the security of the nation. Cheney and his supporters have already accused the administration of not being tough enough on terrorists; Democrats fear that a torture inquiry might play into critics’ hands.

There is another element at work here which is the moral relativism that underpins American views on violence.

Why would a society that widely supports the death penalty regard torture as unacceptable? From the American perspective, it’s OK to poison someone, electrocute them, hang them, shoot them (though not decapitate them), with the sole condition that a reasonably sound legal process is followed.

Torture might be illegal, but it’s not clear that it conflicts with the values that Americans live by, especially those applied to people who, in the popular imagination, deserve to suffer.

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Tree that sparked deadly border clash on Israeli side, says UN

My reference yesterday to an Israeli soldier having been on the Lebanese side of the Israel-Lebanon border turns out to have been incorrect.

The Guardian reports:

The tree that sparked a deadly confrontation between Israeli and Lebanese troops along the tense border between the two countries was on Israeli territory, the UN has said.

Five people died in the most serious clash between the two countries since the war of 2006.

Unifil, the UN force that has monitored the border since the ceasefire that ended that conflict, said that investigations had established that the tree, which Israeli troops were cutting down when Lebanese forces fired on them, was south of the “blue line” which marks the border.

“Following the exchange of fire between the Lebanese army and the Israeli army across the blue line in El Adeisse, the Unifil investigators were on the ground and commenced investigations,” it said. “The investigations are still ongoing and the findings will be intimated on [their] conclusion.

“Unifil established, however, that the trees being cut by the Israeli army are located south of the blue line on the Israeli side.”

Unifil confirmed that Israel had notified it of its intention to carry out routine maintenance work on trees along the border, and that Unifil passed the information on to the Lebanese army.

The Lebanese army admitted that its soldiers opened fire on troops from the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in the confrontation.

In a statement issued to the news agency AFP, a spokesman said: “The Lebanese army opened fire first at Israeli soldiers who entered Lebanese territory… This constituted defence of our sovereignty and is an absolute right.”

An Israeli battalion commander was shot dead and another officer seriously wounded. In Israeli shelling that followed, three Lebanese soldiers and a Lebanese journalist were killed.

The IDF claimed that its forces were the subject of a planned ambush, citing the presence of Lebanese media close to the border. “We have reason to believe this was planned in advance,” an IDF spokeswoman, Avital Leibovich, said. She added that the initiative could have come from Lebanese army units under the influence of the Islamist militant organisation Hezbollah.

Most analysts agreed that the incident was likely to be contained rather than flaring into an ongoing conflict along the tense border.

The dead Israeli soldier, Lieutenant Colonel Dov Harari, a 45-year-old father of four, was to be buried in the coastal city of Netanya later today.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian militant was killed in an air strike in Gaza early today. Sharif Abdel Hadi Abbey, 22, died and two others were injured in the strike close to Khan Younis, according to Palestinian souces. The IDF said aircraft had fired at Palestinians approaching the Gaza border fence.

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Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s speech delivered in Lebanon today

The following speech by the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah was delivered today via video feed in front of a large crowd in Beirut. The translation provided below came in tweets (hence the format below) from Roqayah at iRevolt who did instant translating and tweeting while watching the broadcast.

We are celebrating our victory over the biggest terrorist army in the Middle East (i.e. Israeli Army).

I was going to begin my words with the words covering the July War but what happened today on the Land of Heroes (South Lebanon)

On the border with the Palestinians and the fight with our heroic Lebanese army;

[The Sayyed is now dividing his speech; 1st he will speak about the war, 2nd the tribunal and lastly what shall happen after.]

Since the war stopped there have 14,000 incidents wherein the Israeli’s have broken resolution 1701

The Israeli’s are always accusing Hezb’Allah of breaking the rules but we are telling the UN that the Israeli’s should respect 1701

What we saw today is another example of the Israeli’s breaking resolution 1701 (i.e. Lebanese Army border incident)

One of the Lebanese Press Personnel was killed today but this is not new to the Israeli’s as they have been killing people from the media

Since the start of this incident today, all of Hezb’Allah’s personnel have been put on high alert.

We put all Hezb’Allah personnel and fighters under the order of the Lebanese Army; Whatever you need,we are next to you & where you want us

Anything the Army Command needs from us, everything is under their disposal. We have also called Nebih Berri,Hariri and Sleiman

After we watched how the Lebanese army is suffering, we just stood by because anything done must use wisdom.

All of Lebanon will not forgive or forget any invasion or rule-breaking. We are not afraid of you (talking to Israelis) or your threats

The Lebanese Army fought with dignity & high spirits (in regards to the incident today).The Israeli’s accused the Leb. Gov’t of instigation

The Resistance is next to the army, ready at any time; staying in our country and our cities.

All the Lebanese citizens in the South are not afraid, unlike the people in Northern Israel who began to flee.

Today,we salute the Lebanese Army. We salute the Army Commander, especially after it was recently Army Day (3eid el Jesh)

Today we are watching; There are martyrs from the Lebanese Army and civilian martyrs.

Hezb’Allah is very patient today but we are ready. This is because we must be ready in case the Army needs our help.

If the Army,the Resistance and the people face the Israeli’s then we will be able to stop them.

Thank God that the issue finished right away (in regards to the incident today).

Sayyed Hassan said that if Hezb’Allah intervened they would accuse the Resistance of stepping in because of the STL [the United Nations’ Special Tribunal for Lebanon].

I will say this before all the politicians, all the Arabs and all the world – we cannot get away from our tradition, morals .

Any place which the Israeli enemy hits the army from now on the Resistance will not stand

We might be patient now but I will be straight forward; Any hand which will extend to the Lebanese army to harm it,we will cut!

Every good person will take this decision. The Resistance has the honor to protect the country the same way.

What happened today occurred before all of the world. This has been transpiring for four years; 316 Lebanese injured in 4 years.

The Resistance has destroyed 4M cluster-bombs. Until now we have millions of cluster-bombs still in the ground (planted by Israel)

We need to have the Lebanese Gov’t pressure the UN in order to get the maps from Israel as to where they’ve planted cluster-bombs

Israel has been working to get into all facets and workings of Lebanese via spy’s. The most dangerous being that of our communication system

This is much bigger than what people know as of now (spy cells).

What this means is that we have found more than 100 spy’s, many of whom have high positions. Who have worked long w/ Israel

Many of these individuals are well respected in our society. By finding these 100+ spies it is a big hit ag. the Israeli’s

The Resistance will stay under the control of the Leb.Army,those of whom found these spies.We’ll continue to find out more ab. the spies

We should not stop or remain silent if we find a spy. We should not cover anyone because of his status. We should not wait to execute them

This is another war; Many of these spies helped Israel during the 2006 – they slaughtered the Lebanese people by aiding Israel.

Whomever wants to stop another war in Lebanon must not allow Israel to recruit spies.

We have to work on a strategy to free the Kfar Sheba and all other lands occupied by Israel.

We must face the Israeli’s in order to free our last occupied land (Kfar Sheba/Shebaa Farms)

The Army, the Resistance and the people create the victory. Everyday Lebanon faces Israel in dif. ways

For the last week we have been hearing Askenazi stating that Hezb’Allah assassinated Hezb’Allah. As you know and I know, he is no journalist

Ashkenazi is the Commander of the Israeli Army; We hear the Israel media, how they are talking about the Int’l Court and Lebanon

The Israeli media were speaking happily in terms of how Hezb’Allah will be indicted; They spoke about how the Lebanese will fight together

We spoke,weeks ago,and told everyone – including friends of Lebanon – about the dangerous plan Israel is preparing for Lebanon.

[iRevolt: Damn it. My feed is out. Bear with me folks, I apologize for the inconvenience!
Back up]

We have clear accusations that Israel assassinated Rafik Hariri

Now because some may consider talking about the STL and the indicted – some may consider this increases tension.

For this reason I will delay this part; For now we will focus on our accusations ag. Israel.

During the last few months we did our utmost to do the following: 1st, it is clear where we are headed.

We have appointed a team/committee which will study and look at all details. On Monday I will present to you clear evidence

I will prove that Israel,via its spies,since 1993 has been using the political situations in Lebanon to its advantage.

Today,on the anniversary of your victory in the 2006 war,we have a right to accuse Israel of assassinating Rafik Hariri.

My accusations will be based on evidence. I say to you today – We accuse the Israeli enemy of assassinating Rafik Hariri in 2005.

On Monday I will provide evidence. I will answer all those people who say ‘you are accusing Israel,why don’t you provide evidence?’

After this press conference the Lebanese Gov’t cannot say ‘ I do not want to know the truth’.

We are ready to cooperate with the Lebanese Gov’t. If we cooperate with one another then we will save Lebanon from a division

We in Lebanon, have called for putting together a governmental committee or any committee and find out who created false witnesses.

What is the problem in forming a committee to question the false witnesses? Don’t we have a right to call on a committee?

I would like to tell you that Hezb’Allah will stand ready and committed to contribute

Regarding the issue of war and the current situation,we all realize the aims of the 2006 war were. The main aim to crush the Resistance

Crushing the Resistance is part of many steps to be taken to “draw a new Middle East” – All related to Palestine,Iran and Syria etc

We were part of the scheme to create a “new Middle East”.

A journalist had told Sayyed Hassan that there is a plan to “crush Hezb’Allah”, a simple decision.

One of the Arab officials,I will not mention names,who was part of the Arab Delegation which traveled to NY

This Arab figure told me that when they arrived to NY they were welcomed by John Bolton. He asked the Arab figure “what are you here for?”

Bolton stated “This war will only stop once Hezb’Allah is crushed or once Hezb’Allah announces it will surrender” – This is a quote

This war was about crushing the Resistance. So,here comes the miscalculations – I would like to speak to the Israeli Enemy

You will continue to make miscalculations and mistakes. You,the enemy,are a mistake.

Noam Chomsky stated that all Israeli wars on Lebanon were Israeli decisions with American approval, all but he 2006 war.

The 2006 war was an American decision with Israeli implementation.

In the 2006 war they waited for the Resistance to collapse or run away but they found that the fighters were like high mountains.

They waited to see the Lebanese Army dismantled but the witnessed them uphold honor, dignity and sacrifice.

They wanted to the Lebanese to surrender but they found out that you are honorable and shall stay like this.

They thought ghat other religious sects besides those in the South or East may abandon the Resistance. However they were also proven wrong

The Mosques, Churches and Synagogues opened their doors for the Lebanese.

Yes,we stood and we confronted and we all achieved victory. I will now continue with the story between Bolton.

After 10 days, 13 days, 14 days passed – the situation changed in South Lebanon. The rockets continued to be launched ag. Israel

The humans fought; this is to see how small the Israeli minds are. They waged battle in Bint Jbeil for what?

In 2000 we celebrated the victory in Bint Jbeil so Israel waged an attack on Bint Jbeil because I said:

The Israeli enemy is easier to penetrate than a spiders web.

Back to the story – The Arab member of the delegation exited the meeting held in NY and was approached by Bolton.

Bolton told the official that they wish to end the war. Bolton stated that The Israeli’s said they are incapable of continuing the war

The official said “No one can say that the security council stopped the war.The Israeli’s were crushed,they wanted the war to end.”

On the 25th of May,2000 – people in Syria and Iran helped us, but no one can say that they ended the war for us.

We achieved our territory. God only helped us, God only. No one else helped us. Our people, our martyrs, our solidarity.

When the whole world was against you, you were the ones who imposed on Israel to end the war so it will not end in a catastrophe for Israel

We used a new equation which protect our country; The possibility of war always exists because Israel is hostile in nature.

Normally, those who have experience have a right to be cautious and be afraid for Lebanon. But,does this mean a war is knocking on the door?

This is not clear yet.The Israeli enemy does not need an excuse when they want to wage war.Our responsibility for our country is to be ready

Today the Israeli’s initiated the confrontation yet THEY file a complaint.If no one vetoes then we may witness a res. which condemns Lebanon

When Israel commits massacres they are not condemned.

I want to end by saying that we must raise a new equation which protects the country. The Israeli’s believe what I say

For many reasons the Israeli’s have the information and they believe what I say.

I will not say anything new; land for land, navy for navy (the same equation). We will not reveal our capabilities in terms of the air force

We will use “constructive ambiguity” for the sake of protecting the country. We may put Lebanon in danger if we reveal certain issues.

I want to say that you will send the message to the Israeli’s. We found that the Israeli’s are focusing on the people of Lebanon

The Israeli’s are responding to our targeting of the Israeli front – we were able, based on facts and truth.

The Israeli’s wanted to wage a psychological war on the Lebanese front, to create an atmosphere of fear.

When the Israeli’s targeting the Imam Hassan (AS) compound,did it contain ammunition or weapons? or a civilian apt. building?

More than 100 Lebanese,Palestinian and Syrian labor workers were targeted. The Israeli’s do not need an excuse. They target civilians

After the 2006 war the Israeli’s will abandon the Resistance,that they are sick. Does any person become sick of preserving his dignity?

August 14th, the Lebanese returned to their destroyed homes. Our message to the enemy tonight and to those who make miscalculations:

The most honorable people cannot abandon the path of the Resistance!

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Israeli provocation on Lebanese border could trigger new war

An Israeli soldier being dangled like bait on the Lebanese side of the Israel-Lebanon border today.

Update below

Border clashes between Israeli and Lebanese troops have left three Lebanese soldiers and a journalist dead. Lebanon’s Hezbollah TV, Al Manar, reports one high-ranking Israeli officer has been killed but this has not been confirmed by the Lebanese army or UN troops stationed in southern Lebanon.

As the photo above makes clear, this was a blatant act of provocation by Israeli forces — no one accidentally strayed over the border. This is more like kids tossing matches to find out whether a brush fire will start.

Tony Karon writes:

Should a new war break out, Israel is determined to strike a more devastating blow more quickly than it did during the last conflict, in which it failed in its objective of destroying Hizballah. It has publicly warned that it would destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, and that Syria, as Hizballah’s armorer, would not be off-limits. But Hizballah believes its capacity to fire missiles into Tel Aviv is key to restraining Israel from returning to finish off the Shi’ite militia. And, of course, amid regional tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, members of the self-styled “axis of resistance” — Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizballah — have deepened their alliance, raising the possibility of any one of those groups joining the fray should any of the others come under attack from Israel or the U.S.

Although all of the main players have good reason to avoid initiating another war right now, the Crisis Group warns that “tensions are mounting with no obvious safety valve.” At some point, Hizballah’s growing deterrent could cross Israel’s red line. And the Western diplomatic boycott of the resistance camp is cause for alarm because there are no effective channels through which the various antagonists can be made to understand how their actions could produce unintended consequences — in the tragic tradition of Middle Eastern wars that erupted in part because the adversaries failed to understand one another’s intentions. Indeed, after proclaiming his movement’s “divine victory” in standing up to Israel’s 2006 offensive, a feat that made him a hero on the streets of the Arab world, Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah did admit that had he known Israel would respond with a full-blown invasion, he would have avoided the provocation of snatching the Israeli troops that started the showdown.

The danger posed by the lack of communication channels between the resistance camp and the Israelis explains why British Prime Minister David Cameron, a recent guest at the White House, last week went to Ankara to urge Turkey to maintain its ties with Israel and use its ties to the likes of Syria to facilitate communication that could mitigate an outbreak. Turkey has been pilloried in some quarters in the West — and certainly in Israel — for its diplomatic rapprochement with the likes of Syria, Iran and Hamas, but Cameron’s appeal was a tacit admission that the continuing Bush-era policy of refusing to engage with the region’s designated “radicals” has sharply diminished the ability of the U.S. and the European Union to influence events in the Middle East. Peace talks between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Israelis are all very well, but Abbas is not at war with Israel, nor would he be even if a new round of fighting broke out in Gaza.

While it is widely assumed that Hezbollah would have a critical role to play in the event that Israel launches or instigates an attack on Iran, it likewise follows that the IDF will be tempted to decisively neutralize this threat preemptively. The problem, for Israel, is this: what happens if a preemptive attack fails, meaning, Israel comes under even heavier rocket attack than it did in 2006 and that Hezbollah survives an even more brutal onslaught than it suffered in that war? In such an outcome, the idea of subsequent military action against Iran becomes even more implausible than it already is.

Update: Ynet reports:

IDF Lieutenant Colonel Dov Harari, 45, was killed in the border skirmish with the Lebanese army Tuesday.

Harari was an IDF reservist who served as a battalion commander in the sector where the clash took place. Another Israeli commander sustained serious wounds in the skirmish, the army said.

The fact that Al Manar reported this fatality hours before it was confirmed by the IDF, suggests that Hezbollah continues to effectively monitor Israeli communications.

Haaretz provides the quaint explanation that the violence was triggered “over a move by Israeli soldiers to trim some hedges along the border,” though the Jerusalem Post said: “Other reports said the Israeli soldiers were attempting to plant cameras.”

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Drums of war: Israel and the “axis of resistance”

In a new report, the International Crisis Group warns that the situation in the Levant, four years after the last war between Israel and Hezbollah, is exceptionally quiet and uniquely dangerous.

Of all the explanations why calm has prevailed in the Israeli-Lebanese arena since the end of the 2006 war, the principal one also should be cause for greatest concern: fear among the parties that the next confrontation would be far more devastating and broader in scope. None of the most directly relevant actors — Israel, Hizbollah, Syria and Iran — relishes this prospect, so all, for now, are intent on keeping their powder dry. But the political roots of the crisis remain unaddressed, the underlying dynamics are still explosive, and miscalculations cannot be ruled out. The only truly effective approach is one that would seek to resume — and conclude — meaningful Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese peace talks. There is no other answer to the Hizbollah dilemma and, for now, few better ways to affect Tehran’s calculations. Short of such an initiative, deeper political involvement by the international community is needed to enhance communications between the parties, defuse tensions and avoid costly missteps.

Four years after the last war, the situation in the Levant is paradoxical. It is exceptionally quiet and uniquely dangerous, both for the same reason. The build-up in military forces and threats of an all-out war that would spare neither civilians nor civilian infrastructure, together with the worrisome prospect of its regionalisation, are effectively deterring all sides. Today, none of the parties can soberly contemplate the prospect of a conflict that would be uncontrolled, unprecedented and unscripted.

Should hostilities break out, Israel will want to hit hard and fast to avoid duplicating the 2006 scenario. It will be less likely than in the past to distinguish between Hizbollah and a Lebanese government of which the Shiite movement is an integral part and more likely to take aim at Syria — both because it is the more vulnerable target and because it is Hizbollah’s principal supplier of military and logistical support. Meanwhile, as tensions have risen, the so-called “axis of resistance” — Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizbollah — has been busy intensifying security ties. Involvement by one in the event of attack against another no longer can be dismissed as idle speculation.

Reporting from Beirut, Borzou Daragahi adds:

a clandestine intelligence war between the Jewish state and the Iranian-backed militant group continues unabated, officials and security experts say.

Now, a strengthening Lebanese government is helping Hezbollah bust alleged spy cells, sometimes using tools and tradecraft acquired from Western nations eager to build up Lebanon’s security forces as a counterweight to the Shiite group, which since a 2008 power-sharing agreement has been a member of the governing coalition.

Although security officials here say they’re using newfound tools to ferret out spies watching Hezbollah, just like they would against anyone attempting to infiltrate the country, Western observers express concern.

“There are deep Israeli worries that anything the West gives the Lebanese armed forces and the Internal Security Forces could be used against them,” said Mara Karlin, a former Lebanon specialist at the U.S. Defense Department, now a researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

The United States and its Western allies play a delicate balancing game in Lebanon. Since 2006, Washington has given nearly $500 million in military aid to Lebanese security forces and has allocated $100 million for 2011, making Lebanon the second-largest recipient of American military aid per capita after Israel.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow met officials in Lebanon on Monday, emphasizing that continuing U.S. aid and training would allow the army to “prevent militias and other nongovernment organizations” from undermining the government.

Patrick Seale describes an initiative by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah:

King Abdallah bin Abdulaziz’s four-nation tour this week must be seen as a bold attempt to defuse a dangerous regional situation and assert the autonomy of Arab decision-making free from external interference.

According to Arab and Western diplomatic sources, the Saudi monarch’s visits to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan have had several ambitious aims: to head off the threat of renewed civil war in Lebanon; to consolidate Syrian-Lebanese relations; to encourage Fatah-Hamas reconciliation at a decisive moment in Palestinian fortunes; and to signal to Washington the Arabs’ disillusion with President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, still grossly biased towards Israel.

The volatile Lebanese situation seems to have been the immediate trigger for the King’s wide-ranging diplomatic initiative. Hezbollah and its local opponents, notably diehard Christians and hard-line Sunni members of Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Forward Movement, have engaged in a war of words — which seemed in imminent danger of degenerating into violence. At issue were their different attitudes towards the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).

According to some alarmist reports, the STL is preparing to indict a number of Hezbollah members for the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on 14 February 2005. Pointing to the recent uncovering of several Israeli spy rings in Lebanon — notably in the sensitive communications sector — Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, denounced the STL as an Israeli plot and vowed pugnaciously never to surrender any of his members to its jurisdiction. Hezbollah’s opponents, on the other hand, claim that unless the STL brings Rafik Hariri’s murderers to justice — whoever they may be — there can be no internal peace.

The issue extends far beyond Lebanon because Hezbollah clearly sees the reports as a sinister bid to blacken the resistance movement, spark internal fighting, and provide Israel with an opportunity to attack Lebanon, as it did in 2006, in a further attempt to destroy Hezbollah.

A tripartite summit in Beirut of King Abdallah, Syria’s President Bashar al-Asad and Lebanon’s President Michel Suleiman — together with numerous side meetings — has somewhat reduced tensions and calmed fears of war. Among the implicit consequences of these contacts are Saudi Arabia’s recognition of the legitimacy of Syria’s involvement in Lebanon, as well as a warning to Israel that any further aggression would face a united Arab front.

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Is Payoneer under US investigation for role in Dubai murder?

The Wall Street Journal reports:

American investigators, cooperating in a probe of the January assassination of a top Palestinian leader in Dubai, have identified a handful of U.S.-based companies believed to have been used to transfer money to suspects in the case, a finding that brings international authorities closer to identifying who funded the operation.

The findings show American authorities playing a bigger role in the investigation than previously revealed. The case is especially delicate for the U.S., because Dubai police have said their prime suspect in the case is Mossad, the intelligence service of Israel, a key U.S. ally.

International investigators see money transfers made through the U.S. companies as key clues in a globe-spanning manhunt aimed at identifying more than two dozen suspects in the case, according to officials familiar with the matter.

The U.S. companies identified by investigators include Internet-based businesses that match freelance job-seekers with employers and process payments between the two sides. Authorities have identified financial transfers from several of these intermediary businesses into prepaid, cash-card accounts used by suspects in the Dubai killing, according to international investigators.

U.S. authorities say they don’t believe the intermediary companies had any way of knowing the money would be used in the plot, according to a U.S. official familiar with the investigation.

Instead, U.S. investigators believe, suspects might have posed as freelancers in order to get money in a way that obscured their funding source, and used the money for operational expenses, such as buying plane tickets.

The next step in the investigation would be to determine who the employers were in the transactions.

Representatives of several companies identified in the probe said they hadn’t been contacted by U.S. authorities and weren’t aware of any investigation.

Note that the report says “several companies” — it does not say “all the companies” — which leaves open the possibility that Payoneer, the New York-based company run by the former IDF special ops commando, Yuval Tal, is indeed under investigation.

In March Al Jazeera reported: “The UAE central bank is investigating how 24 suspects obtained credit cards from US company, Payoneer. Although registered in the US, Payoneer’s employees are mostly in Israel, this creating a stir on the internet about possible Mossad connections.”

In March, Gulf News reported:

The Payoneer connection unveils a network of links to Israel, specifically its intelligence community.

Its CEO is Yuval Tal, an Israeli citizen who, according to media reports, described himself as a former Israeli special forces commando in a 2006 Fox News interview.

Clips of the interview on video sharing websites have been removed.

However, a person who said he met Tal a couple of times but did not want to be named told Gulf News that “there is no question in my mind that Yuval has contacts with [Israel’s spy agency] Mossad”.
He recalled a conversation Tal had with attendees of a Jewish charity event in New York, where he spoke of his connections with Mossad.

“Yuval was entertaining a small group of people with tales of his IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] exploits… Specifically, he was commending Israeli intelligence and how Mossad and [Israel’s internal security agency] Shin Bet always gave him great information on his commando raids. He said his ‘colleagues’ are tracking [Hamas leaders Khaled] Mesha’al and [Esmail] Haniyeh’s movements almost every day,” he said.

Payoneer is held by three venture capital firms: Greylock Partners, Carmel Ventures, and Crossbar Capital.
Greylock, which has offices in the US, India and Herzliya, Israel, was established by Moshe Mor, a former military intelligence captain in the Israeli army.

Carmel Ventures is an Israeli venture capital fund based in Herzliya. Crossbar Partners is run by Charlie Federman, who is also managing director of the BRM Group, a venture capital fund also in Herzliya that was founded by Nir and Eli Barkat, the former of whom is the mayor of occupied Jerusalem.

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Wikileaks editor interrogated by US border police

The Independent reports:

A senior volunteer for Wikileaks in the US has been detained, questioned and had his phones seized when he returned to the country from Europe, as the FBI steps up its investigation into the leak of thousands of Afghanistan war secrets to the whistleblower website.

Jacob Appelbaum, who has stood in for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange since he was advised not to travel to the US, spent three hours at a New York airport while customs officers photocopied receipts and searched his laptop, and he was again approached and questioned by FBI officers at a computer hackers conference in Las Vegas on Saturday.

Two officers approached Mr Appelbaum after he had given a talk on how to subvert Chinese government internet surveillance at the annual DefCon conference. He declined to talk to them.

The internet security researcher had returned to the US for the conference from the Netherlands on Thursday when he was detained. Border officials quizzed him on the whereabouts of Mr Assange, on his attitudes to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and on the philosophy behind Wikileaks.

Mr Assange has not been to the US since Wikileaks published a secret video showing US military personnel in Iraq celebrating a helicopter attack in which 12 civilians were killed, including Reuters journalists. The controversy has escalated further since the site additionally published 90,000 field reports and other military documents from the war in Afghanistan, including some that contained the names of Afghan informants.

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The Goldilocks view of war against Iran

Steven Simon and Ray Takeyh present a Goldilocks approach to war against Iran: not too much, not too little but war cooked just right. Who knew war could be modulated so carefully?

As it contemplated the use of force, the administration’s decision-making would be further complicated by the need for a plan to unwind military hostilities and make sure a confrontation did not escalate out of control. The White House would have to signal to Tehran that the U.S. military objective was not to overthrow the clerical regime but to enforce the will of the international community by disabling Iran’s nuclear program. The message would need to make clear that for the United States, hostilities would end with the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities, but that if Iran retaliated, Washington would press its attacks until Tehran could no longer respond. A sobering thought not just for the mullahs, but also for a U.S. administration that would have to carry out the threat.

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Daniel Ellsberg: Obama tougher on leaks than any other US president

The Economist interviewed Daniel Ellsberg who pointed out President Obama’s hypocrisy:

Do you think the government is actively working against Wikileaks?

Ellsberg: I’m sure they are, in the sense of trying to discover the sources of truth-telling from within. This administration has shown more eagerness to prosecute leaks than any other administration in our history. As a matter of fact, Barack Obama has now, with the prosecution of Bradley Manning, indicted as many people for whistleblowing or leaks as all previous presidents put together. Did you realise that?

Economist: I did not.

Ellsberg: Well it’s a small number. It’s three. It’s that small because we don’t have an official secrets act the way that the British and most countries do. And therefore we’ve only had three such prosecutions in the past. I was the first, with Tony Russo, under Richard Nixon. And two other presidents each brought one case. Obama has now prosecuted three people. Two of whom are being prosecuted for acts carried out under George Bush and for which Bush chose not to prosecute — Thomas Drake, who is under indictment, and Shamai Leibowitz, who pleaded guilty (a mistake in my mind). So Obama’s famous position of not looking backward seems to apply only to crimes like torture or illegal warrantless surveillance. He’s given absolute amnesty to the officials of the Bush administration. But in the case of Thomas Drake, who told a reporter about a billion-and-half-dollar waste at the NSA, and in the case of Shamai Leibowitz, who says he exposed acts to a blogger that he regarded as illegal, Obama was willing to look backward and prosecute. With Manning he has shown more eagerness to do that. I think we can assume that those who don’t use Wikileaks’s technology to get the information out can be assured of prosecution. I have to assume that if I had now put out the Pentagon Papers as I did, using that now outmoded technology of Xerox, Obama would prosecute me to the full extent of the law. [Emphasis mine.]

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America’s sense of the sacred

Hiroshima: the original Ground Zero

The New York Times reports:

An influential Jewish organization on Friday announced its opposition to a proposed Islamic center and mosque two blocks north of ground zero in Lower Manhattan, intensifying a fierce national debate about the limits of religious freedom and the meaning of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The decision by the group, the Anti-Defamation League, touched off angry reactions from a range of religious groups, which argued that the country would show its tolerance and values by welcoming the center near the site where radical Muslims killed about 2,750 people.

But the unexpected move by the ADL, a mainstream group that has denounced what it saw as bigoted attacks on plans for the Muslim center, could well be a turning point in the battle over the project.

In New York, where ground zero has slowly blended back into the fabric of the city, government officials appear poised to approve plans for the sprawling complex, which would have as many as 15 stories and would house a prayer space, a performing arts center, a pool and a restaurant.

But around the country opposition is mounting, fueled in part by Republican leaders and conservative pundits. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, has urged “peace-seeking Muslims” to reject the center, branding it an “unnecessary provocation.” A Republican political action committee has produced a television commercial assailing the proposal. And former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has decried it in speeches.

The complex’s rapid evolution from a local zoning dispute into a national referendum highlights the intense and unsettled emotions that still surround the World Trade Center site nine years after the attacks.

To many New Yorkers, especially in Manhattan, it is a construction zone, passed during the daily commute or glimpsed through office windows. To some outside of the city, though, it stands as a hallowed battlefield that must be shielded and memorialized.

Those who are fighting the project argue that building a house of Muslim worship so close to ground zero is at best an affront to the families of those who died there and at worst an act of aggression that would, they say, mark the place where radical Islam achieved a blow against the United States.

“The World Trade Center is the largest loss of American life on our soil since the Civil War,” Mr. Gingrich said. “And we have not rebuilt it, which drives people crazy. And in that setting, we are told, why don’t we have a 13-story mosque and community center?”

He added: “The average American just thinks this is a political statement. It’s not about religion, and is clearly an aggressive act that is offensive.”

Several family members of victims at the World Trade Center have weighed in against the plan, saying it would desecrate what amounts to a graveyard. “When I look over there and see a mosque, it’s going to hurt,” C. Lee Hanson, whose son, Peter, was killed in the attacks, said at a recent public hearing. “Build it someplace else.”

Those who support it seem mystified and flustered by the heated opposition. They contend that the project, with an estimated cost of $100 million, is intended to span the divide between Muslim and non-Muslim, not widen it.

Oz Sultan, the programming director for the center, said the complex was based on Jewish community centers and Y.M.C.A.’s in Manhattan. It is to have a board composed of Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders and is intended to create a national model of moderate Islam.

“We are looking to build bridges between faiths,” Mr. Sultan said in an interview.

City officials, particularly Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, have forcefully defended the project on the grounds of religious freedom, saying that government has no place dictating where a house of worship is located. The local community board has given overwhelming backing to the project, and the city’s landmarks commission is expected to do the same on Tuesday.

“What is great about America, and particularly New York, is we welcome everybody, and if we are so afraid of something like this, what does that say about us?” Mr. Bloomberg asked recently.

“Democracy is stronger than this,” he added. “And for us to just say no is just, I think — not appropriate is a nice way to phrase it.”

Still, the arguments against the Muslim center appear to be resonating. Polling shows that a majority of Americans oppose building it near ground zero.

It’s not surprising that the destructive force of two massive collapsing buildings — sinking like atomic mushroom clouds in reverse — would at that time have evoked comparisons with nuclear destruction. Even so, the fact that the name “ground zero” stuck shows how little effort was ever made to view the horror of that day with a sense of proportion.

On August 6, 1945, beneath the original ground zero where at 8.15 that summer morning the “Little Boy” nuclear weapon exploded, two-thirds of Hiroshima was instantly destroyed and a third of the inhabitants perished.

If survivors of America’s nuclear attack on Japan, from which over 200,000 people died, feel that it is inappropriate to associate that level of destruction with the way America suffered on 9/11, I can understand why. It is as if to say, nothing more devastating the 9/11 could be imagined — when of course it can, and to do so we need not look far back in history or to the deeds of some horrific foreign foe.

That the sanctity of the World Trade Centers site is said to be threatened by the construction of a mosque a few blocks away says more about the way the site remains a potent vehicle of American nationalism than it does about anyone’s insensitivity towards the memory of those who died there.

Want to know what gross insensitivity looks like? Then look at another construction site 5,000 miles further east, to Jerusalem where the inaptly named Museum of Tolerance is being built on top of an historic Muslim cemetery. A round-the-clock excavation has proceeded with haste under high security as skeletons are stuffed in boxes and carted off the site — apart from those that get trampled under foot. A senior archaeologist told Haaretz: “They wanted to create a done deed, after which people could yell all they wanted to, but there wouldn’t be any graves left anymore.”

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Israeli youth being raised on racism

Max Blumenthal reports:

On July 26, Israeli police demolished 45 buildings in the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib, razing the entire village to the ground to make way for a Jewish National Fund forest. The destruction was part of a larger project to force the Bedouin community of the Negev away from their ancestral lands and into seven Indian reservation-style communities the Israeli government has constructed for them. The land will then be open for Jewish settlers, including young couples in the army and those who may someday be evacuated from the West Bank after a peace treaty is signed. For now, the Israeli government intends to uproot as many villages as possible and erase them from the map by establishing “facts on the ground” in the form of JNF forests. (See video of of al-Arakib’s demolition here).

One of the most troubling aspects of the destruction of al-Arakib was a report by CNN that the hundreds of Israeli riot police who stormed the village were accompanied by “busloads of cheering civilians.” Who were these civilians and why didn’t CNN or any outlet investigate further?

I traveled to al-Arakib yesterday with a delegation from Ta’ayush, an Israeli group that promotes a joint Arab-Jewish struggle against the occupation. The activists spent the day preparing games and activities for the village’s traumatized children, helping the villagers replace their uprooted olive groves, and assisting in the reconstruction of their demolished homes. In a massive makeshift tent where many of al-Arakib’s residents now sleep, I interviewed village leaders about the identity of the cheering civilians. Each one confirmed the presence of the civilians, describing how they celebrated the demolitions. As I compiled details, the story grew increasingly horrific. After interviewing more than a half dozen elders of the village, I was able to finally identify the civilians in question. What I discovered was more disturbing than I had imagined.

Arab Negev News publisher Ata Abu Madyam supplied me with a series of photos he took of the civilians in action. They depicted Israeli high school students who appeared to have volunteered as members of the Israeli police civilian guard (I am working on identifying some participants by name). Prior to the demolitions, the student volunteers were sent into the villagers’ homes to extract their furniture and belongings. A number of villagers including Madyam told me the volunteers smashed windows and mirrors in their homes and defaced family photographs with crude drawings. Then they lounged around on the furniture of al-Arakib residents in plain site of the owners. Finally, according to Matyam, the volunteers celebrated while bulldozers destroyed the homes.

“What we learned from the summer camp of destruction,” Madyam remarked, “is that Israeli youth are not being educated on democracy, they are being raised on racism.” [Read Max’s full report which includes photos.]

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