If you ever meet someone named Skip, Chip or Kirk, chances are he’s an airline pilot. Tony, Sal, Vic, Jack or Dom might be a car mechanic or perhaps your barber. What about if you met someone named Mendel? You might assume he was either a tailor or perhaps a Biblical sage. You would probably never think that he was a world hero.
On March 12th, 99 years ago, a 14 year old boy was murdered in the city of Kiev. He was stabbed 47 times and drained of his blood. His corpse was dumped in a cave near the home of Mendel Beilis. Thus began a 3 year saga of torture and torment for a man who was to spare Russian Jewry from the most grievous pogrom in their 400 year history.
Russian archives have revealed that the Czar himself authorized the public trial of this innocent Jew to showcase the famous blood libel accusation that has been leveled against our nation for centuries. His hope was to cause a widespread pogrom against the 5 million Jews trapped in Mother Russia by the cruel edicts of a corrupt government. Even though local officials knew the identity of the actual murderers for months, Beilis was forced to spend over two years in a Russion prison; humiliated, starved, belittled and tormented. Had he succumbed to the mental anguish and committed suicide, he would have been judged guilty by the Russian masses and death and slaughter would have followed. Despite untold horror and hardship, he survived to stand trial.
Before the eyes of the world, Mendel Beilis declared “I am a Jew.” Through 34 days of testimony, his fate was in the hands of 12 backward, uneducated peasants. Testimony clearly led to the guilty parties, but this was not a typical murder trial. It was a trial of the Jewish people.
It was due to his strength of character, his impeccable reputation and his lifetime of kindness to his Russian neighbors that resulted in the unanimous vote, “Not Guilty.”
Our forefather Jacob fought with the angel and prevailed. His name was changed from Jacob to Israel. We are called by the name, Children of Israel, “Bnei Yisroel”. It was his strength of character that has enabled people like Mendel Beilis to triumph throughout the generations.
So whether you call yourself Mendel, Mordechai, Mark or Marvin, we are all Children of Israel.
Wear your names with pride.
Tom Segev and Haim Watzman in their book "One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate," tell an incredible story about the infamous Mufti Husseini of Jerusalem and his hotel.  |
'Palestinians' are to be banned from employment in 'settlements' in Judea and Samaria. The reason you haven't heard a massive outcry about this, complete with UN condemnations, is that Israel is not the one doing the banning. It's the 'Palestinian Authority' that is banning 'Palestinians' from working for the 'settlements.' The Palestinian Authority will move to prevent Palestinian workers from taking jobs in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the Palestinian economics minister said Sunday.
Palestinians vehemently oppose the settlements Israel has built on land they want for a future state, but an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Palestinians work in the settlements. Palestinian construction workers have been key to building homes for settlers, while others work in factories in settlements. Many say the West Bank's poor economy leaves them no choice.
The law, set to be signed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by the end of the month, would constitute the most determined Palestinian campaign yet against the settlement economy.
Economics Minister Hassan Abu Libdeh, who drafted the law, said it is important for the Palestinians to be consistent in their opposition. "My population, my society, is contributing to the lifeline of the settlements, so I am targeting this contribution," he said.
The Palestinian Authority will try to find alternatives for those currently working in settlements, but they will not be forced to leave, Abu Libdeh said. Palestinians working in settlements in the future would be breaking the law, he said, but he would not discuss penalties.
Police raided the Hemdat Yisrael synagogue in Istanbul on a recent Sabbath, demanding identification from worshipers, many of whom carried no identification because of the Sabbath restrictions. While those who did not have identification were able to present it at a police station after the Sabbath, it seems that this is not the only recent provocation against the Jewish community in Turkey. The Turkish Milliyet newspaper reported that the Muslim government in Turkey appears to be cracking down on non-Muslim minorities. The individual communities are not being permitted to have their own leaders; one person will be recognized by the government to represent all the minorities as one. As the Christian community outnumbers the Jewish one, it is expected that a Christian will serve as “Chief Rabbi.” This issue may have been resolved, however; see below.
In addition, Christian and Jewish children are being placed in separate non-Muslim public school classes. In Jewish schools, only Turkish citizens are allowed to be registered – preventing the son of a Jewish United States consul worker from studying in a Jewish school.
...
Leaders of several minority religious communities convened for an emergency meeting last month to discuss the worsening situation.
Rabbi Yitzchak Haleva, Chief Rabbi of Turkey, says it’s “much ado about nothing.” Speaking with Israeli media sources last week, Rabbi Haleva said that all misunderstandings had been resolved and that he himself will be running for re-election for the position of Chief Rabbi about two months from now. Regarding the mid-services Sabbath check of ID’s, Rabbi Haleva told Makor Rishon’s Yitzchak Hildesheimer that it was only a matter having to do with internal security.
A Turkish Jew quoted on Ynet did not sound confident, however: “Everyone here is apathetic, they are involved in their own business and their work - but we do feel that the situation has changed, even though it is being ignored. It is reminiscent of other periods in history…”
22 of the Twelfth Month 5770
You have probably all heard the joke about the first, Jewish President of the United States...
The first Jewish Presient of the United States invites his mother over to the White House for Thanksgiving. He meets with a lot of resistance, but eventually convinces his mother to come.
After the plans have been formalized, his mother receives a call from a friend who asks her what she is doing for Thanksgiving. The President's mother says that she will be going to her son's house. Her friend asks, “Oh! You're going to your son, the doctor's house?”
The President's mother replies, “No, I'm going to the other one.”
An elderly, Jewish lady who is frought with anxiety over a dilemma she is in, meets with her friend in the park to discuss it. You see, she is very upset after being informed that her grandson is gay.
Her friend asks her, “So, nu? What's the dilemma?”
The grandmother replies, “Well, he IS dating a doctor.”
“David went to experience the outdoors for a while. Don't worry. His therapist
says that he'll grow out of it.”
“Michael is just going through a phase. He'll be going to Harvard next year,...whether he wants to or not!”
“What's with my daughter Rachel? Oh, you know. She's just 'finding herself.' When she comes home to visit this summer, I have three young eligible bachelors in the wings to whisk her off her feet. Then she'll gladly turn in her shovel and rake for diamonds and choice of china patterns.”
The picture at the top of this post is one that was widely distributed around the world and is used to back the claim that the bulldozer driver who accidentally ran over Rachel Corrie must have seen her. Indeed, in the picture at the top of this post, the driver must have seen Corrie quite clearly. There's only one problem: The picture was taken five hours before Corrie was killed. David Bedein explains. Immediately after the accident, our news agency asked to peak with the spokesman of International Solidarity Movement Mike Shaik, who referred us to Lynn Clausen, a 24-year old resident of Washington from the Christians Peacemakers Team based in Hebron, which trains the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) volunteers.
Shaik and Clausen then sent our agency to speak with Corrie’s friends who were with her at the time she was crushed.
Corrie’s friend Joe Smith described how Corrie sat on a mound of dirt facing the IDF bulldozer making its way to the house it was about to demolish. “Rachel had two options”, Smith said. “When the bulldozer started to dig in the dirt pile, the pile started to move, and she could have rolled sideways quickly or fallen backwards to avoid being hit. But Rachel leaned forward to climb to the top of the dirt pile. The bulldozer’s digging drew her downward, and its driver could not see her anymore. So without lifting the scoop, he turned backward and she was already underneath the blade”
Smith’s description is very important, since the picture published by Reuters shows Corrie standing to the left of the bulldozer, in a location where the driver can see her very clearly, as she holds a megaphone in her hand. Beneath the picture’s caption was written: “Photographed before Rachel Corrie was run over by an IDF bulldozer.”
Everyone who looked at the picture and the text understood that the driver, who saw the American civilian standing in front of him, just continued crushing Corrie to death. But Joe Smith said that the picture was taken hours before she was run over, which happened at 5:00 p.m., and not a few minutes beforehand. Smith emphasized that at the time of the incident and during it, there were no photographers in the area.
'Palestinian' bombmaker Abdullah Barghouti, whose name comes up consistently on the short list of terrorists Israel will not release in exchange for kidnapped IDF corporal Gilad Shalit, accused Prime Minister Netanyahu on Sunday of holding up the 'terrorists for Gilad' exchange. Barghouti also vowed that he would continue to fight against Israel if released. Israel brought Barghouti to court to ask to extend the conditions of his solitary confinement.
Upon arrival, he confidently told reporters, “If there is a deal, I would be set free along with Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Sa’adat.” Marwan Barghouti and Sa’adat are other ‘high-value’ prisoners convicted of multiple counts of murder.
Barghouti also said, “After my release, I will continue to fight for Palestine, so long as the occupation continues.”
Asked whether Schalit was properly treated by his captors in the Gaza Strip, he said, “As far as I know he is fine. He eats, he drinks, he sleeps. We don't harm our prisoners.”
Responding to a question about Schalit's right to stand trial, Barghouti said, “When we have a state we will also be able to conduct proper trials.”
“The will to fight has nothing to do with Jews themselves, it is only because the Jews conquered our land,” Barghouti continued.
"Hamas and its leaders continue to behave cynically towards their people and they have still not given an answer to the Israeli proposal passed on to the German negotiator three months ago," the family said.
...
In response to Barghouti's remarks, the Shalit family said: "We are sorry that a Hamas prisoner gets the right to speak to the media when Gilad can't even see the light of day and has no connection to the outside world."
The family also said that Israel's blockade of Gaza, which it said was created by Hamas, hurt only the residents of the coastal territory who had nothing to do with their son or the prisoner swap.
"We are sorry that a Hamas prisoner gets the right to speak to the media when Gilad can't even see the light of day and has no connection to the outside world," the family added.
Barghouti is serving 67 life sentences after being convicted in 2003 of planning terror attacks in which 66 Israelis were murdered and hundreds hurt, including the attack on a Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem.
Now, how many of you read that quote and - without looking at the picture - thought it would be Mahmoud Abbas or Ismail Haniyeh or some other 'Palestinian' nobody. Nope. That quote came from Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday continued his assault on Israel, according to Saudi paper Al Wattan, which quoted him as saying that that al Aksa Mosque, the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb “were not and never will be Jewish sites, but Islamic sites.”
Speaking to Palestinian journalists, Erdogan reportedly said "Palestine [was] always at the top of Turkey’s priorities." He expressed his support for the renewal of indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Donning a cloak of pan-Islamic identity, Erdogan told Al Wattan that he “loves my brothers in Fatah and my brothers in Hamas to the same degree, because they are my Muslim brothers and I cannot distinguish between them.”
Erdogan’s sticking of his nose in the recent Palestinian rancor over Israel’s declaration that the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb will be part of a list of sites slated for preservation is the latest in a seemingly calculated series of moves based on Turkey’s reassessment of a power-shift occurring in the Middle East. It was not clear why he mentioned the mosque, as Israel never declared it part of the list.
The significance of Israel’s decision in itself is more symbolic than real, as it would mean little change on the ground.
Anyone want to take a shot? There are certainly enough American troops there.
A confidential foreign ministry report that 'somehow' was leaked to Haaretz (I'd bet on a Livni holdover in the foreign ministry) suggests that while the United States is not going to devote a lot of effort to the 'proximity talks,' which are scheduled to last for four months, the Obama administration is espousing views that are closer to the 'Palestinian' position on the issues. The U.S. administration will not put a lot of effort into the upcoming indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, opting instead to focus on the November Congressional elections, according to an internal Foreign Ministry report that was distributed to Israeli diplomatic missions abroad.
The classified report claims that in the preparatory discussions for the Israeli-Palestinian proximity talks the Obama administration adopted positions that are closer to Palestinian demands.
"The recent American statements point to the adoption of wording in line, even if partially and cautiously, with Palestinian demands in regard to the framework and structure of negotiations," the report stated. "Still, the [U.S.] administration is making sure to avoid commenting on its position on core issues."
...
The report released recently by the Foreign Ministry's center for political research, which focuses on strategic foreign policy, is less optimistic about the chances for progress in the next round of peace talks. The document was delivered to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and to Israeli diplomatic missions abroad several days ago.
According to the report Washington is aware of the domestic political problems faced separately by both Netanyahu and Abbas and has decided to concentrate on achieving the limited goal of restarting the negotiations. The peace talks will not be at the top of the Obama administration's agenda, the report claims.
...
According to the report, Washington can be expected to portray the resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian talks as a domestic and international achievement, in the hope of creating an atmosphere that is conducive to direct negotiations between the parties on the core issues.
The authors of the report also predict that the administration will avoid taking any position that suggests disagreement with Israel, because of the support that Israel enjoys among both parties in Congress.
What I witnessed in Gaza, amidst all the rubble and devastation still so evident from last year's conflict, was a population traumatized and reduced to poverty by an unjust and completely counterproductive blockade. All that is being achieved through the imposition of the blockade is to enrich Hamas and marginalize even further the voices of moderation.
I view the current conditions prevailing for the ordinary population as inhumane and utterly unacceptable, in terms of accepted international standards of human rights.
There's an Israeli movie that's up for an Oscar on Sunday night as Best International Film. The movie is called Ajami and it's about life in Jaffa, the mixed Arab - Jewish (but mostly Arab) part of Tel Aviv. It was co-directed by an 'Israeli Arab' and an Israeli Jew. To listen to the media here, we're all 'holding our fingers' (which is how they say 'keeping our fingers crossed' in Hebrew) hoping Ajami will win. Yes, those were the exact words they used on the 5:00 am news magazine Sunday morning.While many Israelis have pointed with pride to the nomination of Ajami, a movie about life in Jaffa, for an Academy Award as one of the year's best international films, the movie's co-director, Scandar Copti, says that he does not represent Israel. In an interview with Channel Two Saturday night Copti said that technically, the movie was Israeli, “because the money to pay for it came from Israel, but it is not an Israeli movie and does not represent Israel. I do not represent a country that does not represent me,” he said.
Speaking to Channel 2, Copti said, “I am not the Israeli national team and I do not represent Israel,” adding that the representation issue is a “technical thing, that’s how it works in the Oscars. It says ‘Israel’ because the funding comes from Israel. There’s a Palestinian director, an Israeli director, Palestinian actors and Israeli actors. The film technically represents Israel, but I don’t represent Israel.”
Copti’s co-director, Shani, did not agree.
“It’s an Israeli film, it represents Israel, it speaks ‘Israeli’ and deals with Israel-related problems. The question of representation deals with matters of perspective and political issues we need to resolve,” Shani, who was interviewed alongside Copti, said.
Copti and Shani were interviewed only a day after a demonstration took place in Jaffa, Ajami’s setting. Demonstrators took to the streets in protest of what they call police violence against the town’s residents.
Tony and Jiras Copti, brothers of the director, were arrested in Jaffa in February. After the arrest, they claimed police used excessive force against them.
Science Minister Daniel Hershkowitz on Sunday called on Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat to conduct an investigation into how the state ended up funding the movie Ajami, in the wake of comments made Saturday by Ajami co-producer Scandar Copti, who said that he does is not representing Israel at Sunday night's Academy Awards presentations, because “Israel does not represent me.” Ajami is up for the award as best foreign film.
Copti, he said, “produced a movie using Israeli money, but is likely to wrap himself in a Hamas flag if he wins. Ajami's winning of an Oscar is likely to be Pyrrhic victory for Israel,” Hershkowitz said.
Sports and Culture Minister Limor Livnat said, “It is because of Israeli funding, which Copti now tries to renounce, that the film Ajami was produced and is now nominated for an Oscar.”
“Without state support, Copti would not be walking the red carpet tonight. In the name of artistic license and pluralism, the movie was given a budget of more than NIS 2 million. It is sad that a director supported by the state ignores those who helped him create and express himself. Happily, the rest of the movie’s team see themselves as part of the State of Israel and are proud to represent it in the Oscars as ambassadors of liberated cultural expression,” Livnat added.
...
A furious National Union MK Michael Ben Ari suggested that Israel change the Cinema Law, which serves as the guidebook to fund Israeli films.
“Support for a film should not be granted unless the editors, producers, directors and actors sign a declaration of loyalty to the State of Israel, its symbols and its Jewish-democratic values,” he said.
This link is actually two articles, with the top one being a response to the bottom one. The top one is written by Youssef Ibrahim, an Arab American. The bottom one is written by Israeli Leftist Uri Avnery. For the most part, Ibrahim is spot-on. Speaking as an Arab-American and more important, as a taxpayer in these USA, I do not want any more of my money wasted playing peace maker in the Mideast. The USA accomplished peace between two Arab countries and Israel. To help keep that peace, the USA agreed to pay a ''bribe'' -- or financial aid to Israel, Egypt and Jordan which so far added up to more than $ 150 billion since 1979 : $ 3 billion (with a B) to Israel per year; $ 2 billion (with a B) to Egypt per year since 1979 ; and more than $ 200 million (with an m) per year to Jordan.
And what did the USA get in return? Read and watch the Arab media.
Everyday, Al Jazeera, Al Ahram, the Jordanian papers and the UAE Television daily, Moroccon news, Algerian news agencies , all , call the USA the ''enemy of Islam'' , the '' imperialist neo-colonial superpower'' , a ''nation of infidels’’.
Americans Christians and Jews are regularly referred to -- in every Muslim mosque every Friday-- as as ‘’sons of pigs and monkeys’’ .
Save for Israel the rest of the Middle East is of no strategic value today to the USA. This id 2010 not the 1950s. In fact, we can strategically state that if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not resolved for another 100 years, nothing at all will happen. Nothing at all expect a few more wars that do not affect US interests at all.
As for those Arabs -- and Europeans -- who so hate Jews and want Israeli wiped off the map, why don't they do it, if they can?
We will be glad to watch who wins the nexty wars as we watched in 1956 , in 1967 and in 1973 in which Arabs lost more and more lands. If some folks think Israel was beaten by Hizbollah in 2006 , why do they not fact check that the Lebanese who did not think they won anything and watch their country being destroyed.
And if the Palestinians of Gaza think they humiliated Israel in the last invasion, why does Hamas not attack Israel again with rockets? They have been rather quiet ever since. Arab people should stop fooling themselves.
Israel is here to stay. The West , even the Europeans, will not allow any combination of Arabs or Iranians to cross a red line.
The Palestinians will continue to try and drag more Arabs into loosing war after war as they did with Egypt and Jordan, but in the meanwhile the only piece of land they will have left to negotiate an independent state is shrinking by the week. In the end, when Palestinians are ready to say yes, maybe in a hundred years, they may only be negotiating on a small national park outside the mayor's home in Ramallah , the place where their current leader Abu Mazen lives. Uri, my friend, If the dispute has waited all that time -- 2000 year plus-- I do not see why we are in hurry. Your grandson can still write about it in 100 years. Relax.
Here's more evidence that even if 'crippling sanctions' against Iran are adopted (which appears unlikely), they won't be enforced by the United States, let alone by anyone else. The New York Times reports in Sunday's editions that over the past decade, the United States federal government has awarded over $107 billion in contracts to companies that do business in Iran. Two thirds of that amount went to companies in Iran's sensitive energy sector, and some $15 billion went to companies that were clearly in violation of existing US sanctions. Among other things, existing US sanctions are supposed to punish foreign companies that invest $20 million or more per year in developing Iran's oil and gas fields. It didn't happen under President Bush and it isn't happening under President Obama. More than two-thirds of the government money went to companies doing business in Iran’s energy industry — a huge source of revenue for the Iranian government and a stronghold of the increasingly powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a primary focus of the Obama administration’s proposed sanctions because it oversees Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.
Other companies are involved in auto manufacturing and distribution, another important sector of the Iranian economy with links to the Revolutionary Guards. One supplied container ship motors to IRISL, a government-owned shipping line that was subsequently blacklisted by the United States for concealing military cargo.
Beyond $102 billion in United States government contract payments since 2000 — to do everything from building military housing to providing platinum to the United States Mint — the companies and their subsidiaries have reaped a variety of benefits. They include nearly $4.5 billion in loans and loan guarantees from the Export-Import Bank, a federal agency that underwrites the export of American goods and services, and more than $500 million in grants for work that includes cancer research and the turning of agricultural byproducts into fuel.
In addition, oil and gas companies that have done business in Iran have over the years won lucrative drilling leases for close to 14 million acres of offshore and onshore federal land.
...
The government can, and does, bar American companies from most types of trade with Iran, under a broad embargo that has been in place since the 1990s. But as The Times’s analysis illustrates, multiple administrations have struggled diplomatically, politically and practically to exert American authority over companies outside the embargo’s reach — foreign companies and the foreign subsidiaries of American ones.
Indeed, of the 74 companies The Times identified as doing business with both the United States government and Iran, 49 continue to do business there with no announced plans to leave.
One of the government’s most powerful tools, at least on paper, to influence the behavior of companies beyond the jurisdiction of the embargo is the Iran Sanctions Act, devised to punish foreign companies that invest more than $20 million in a given year to develop Iran’s oil and gas fields. But in the 14 years since the law was passed, the government has never enforced it, in part for fear of angering America’s allies.
That has given rise to situations like the one involving the South Korean engineering giant Daelim Industrial, which in 2007 won a $700 million contract to upgrade an Iranian oil refinery.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the deal appeared to violate the Iran Sanctions Act, meaning Daelim could have faced a range of punishments, including denial of federal contracts. That is because the law covers not only direct investments, such as the purchase of shares and deals that yield royalties, but also contracts similar to Daelim’s to manage oil and gas development projects.
But in 2009 the United States Army awarded the company a $111 million contract to build housing in a military base in South Korea. Just months later, Daelim, which disputes that its contracts violated the letter of the law, announced a new $600 million deal to help develop the South Pars gas field in Iran.
When President Obama was in the Senate, he frequently voted 'present' to avoid establishing a record on controversial issues. His Vice President, Smilin' Joe Biden, was much more clever. In an earlier post, I noted that the supposedly pro-Israel Biden was actually one of the most pro-Iran members of the Senate. Two years ago, Shmuel Rosner gave a hint of how Biden manages to maintain his pro-Israel bona fides while being pro-Iran. Is he a dove? About.com seems to think so: "Biden's Middle East policy aligns closest to that of Jimmy Carter." Is he a hawk? The New Yorker called him the leader of "the most hawkish members in the Democratic Party." But the Los Angeles Times dubbed him "a liberal internationalist who generally hews close to his party's center." Is he a realist? Not on Darfur. Is he a liberal? Not on Iraq. Is he a neocon? Of course not, although at times he comes surprisingly close. As, for example, when he said, "I for one applaud President Bush's vision" of the need to democratize the Middle East.
Biden, you see, is a man of many tastes and positions. So, pinning down his approach to foreign affairs, presumably his future portfolio in an Obama administration - the Cheney comparison is inescapable - can be tricky. Especially for Middle East leaders.
The Wall Street Journal interviews Christian convert Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Hamas founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef. Here's a highlight. As a spy, Mr. Yousef wasn't fully activated until the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000. A few months before at Camp David, the late PLO chief Yasser Arafat had turned down the Israeli offer of statehood on 90% of the West Bank with East Jerusalem as the capital. According to Mr. Yousef, Arafat decided he needed another uprising to win back international attention. So he sought out Hamas's support through Sheikh Yousef, writes his son, who accompanied him to Arafat's compound. Those meetings took place before the Palestinian authorities found a pretext for the second Intifada. It came when future Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Mr. Yousef's account helps to set straight the historical record that the uprising was premeditated by Arafat.
Mr. Yousef tells me that he was horrified by the pointless violence unleashed by politicians willing to climb "on the shoulders of poor, religious people." He says Palestinians who heeded the call "were going like a cow to the slaughterhouse, and they thought they were going to heaven." So, as he writes in the book, "At the age of twenty-two, I became the Shin Bet's only Hamas insider who could infiltrate Hamas's military and political wings, as well as other Palestinian factions."
Mr. Yousef claims some significant intelligence coups for himself, and he says he isn't telling the world everything. Early on, he was first to discover that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a terrorist group born during the second Intifada, was made up of Arafat's guards, who were directly funded by international donors. He says he found the most lethal Palestinian bomb maker and foiled assassination plots against President Shimon Peres, then foreign minister, as well as a prominent rabbi. He says he broke up cells of suicide bombers about to attack Israel. And he helped convince his father to be the first prominent Hamas leader to offer a truce with Israel.
His handler—a "Captain Loai," now retired from the Shin Bet—corroborated many of these stories to Haaretz. The paper said the Shin Bet considered Mr. Yousef "the most reliable and most senior agent."
Mr. Yousef strains to justify himself, but ultimately "the question is whether I was a traitor or a hero in my own eyes."
So we're back to why?
The motivation, he says, was to save lives.
As the son of a Muslim cleric, he says he had reached the conclusion that terrorism can't be defeated without a new understanding of Islam. Here he echoes other defectors from Islam such as the former Dutch parliamentarian and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Do you consider your father a fanatic? "He's not a fanatic," says Mr. Yousef. "He's a very moderate, logical person. What matters is not whether my father is a fanatic or not, he's doing the will of a fanatic God. It doesn't matter if he's a terrorist or a traditional Muslim. At the end of the day a traditional Muslim is doing the will of a fanatic, fundamentalist, terrorist God. I know this is harsh to say. Most governments avoid this subject. They don't want to admit this is an ideological war.
"The problem is not in Muslims," he continues. "The problem is with their God. They need to be liberated from their God. He is their biggest enemy. It has been 1,400 years they have been lied to."
Translating Jihad translates an essay from the Jordanian online newspaper as-Sabeel, which makes clear that it's not just the 'Zionists' who are hated by Islam, but the Jews (Hat Tip: Jihad Watch).Dr. 'Ali al-'Atoum, writing for the online Jordanian newspaper on 2 March, excoriates the Jews for naming the Bilal ibn Rabah and al-Ibrahimi Mosques as part of their Jewish cultural heritage, and devotes several paragraphs of his essay to explaining how wicked and filthy the Jews have been and continue to be. Quite often we will hear Muslims claim to be anti-Zionist but not anti-Jewish. However, in this essay the author shows that Islam is intrinsically anti-semitic, regardless of what 'the Zionists' do.
The author also makes clear that these holy sites are "purely an Islamic inheritance, set apart by the Prophet...as an exclusive gift." This same claim has been made regarding Jerusalem, which was named an Islamic waqf, or endowment, by the caliph 'Umar ibn al-Khattab. Really, Muslims consider all of Palestine to be exclusively Muslim property, which is why regardless of what the Jews do or don't do, the Muslims will continue to fight them until they gain control of the whole of it. Link to the original Arabic.
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