With a petition for Palestinian statehood presented before the United Nations last week, the issue of the disputed right to the land of Israel seems to many to be on the verge of an historic, if unsatisfying and controversial, resolution. But Dr. Arieh Eldad, a Member of Knesset and chairman of the Jewish nationalist Hatikva party, insists that the root of the issue is not territorial, and thus any peace plan based on the concept of dividing the land is destined for failure.

In his pamphlet titled simply “Jordan is Palestine,” Eldad writes

Dividing the land of Israel west of the Jordan into two states – Israel and a Palestinian state – has become the only political plan accepted for international and domestic (Israeli) discourse. This, despite dozens of failures in trying to implement it during the past ninety years. Every failed attempt has been accompanied by bloody conflict and/or war.

Recently Eldad – also chief medical officer and senior commander of the Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps and a Brigadier-General in the IDF (Reserves) – expressed his iconoclastic opinions in a speech at Temple Ner Maarav in Encino, northwest of Los Angeles. Also entitled “Jordan is Palestine,” his presentation put forth what he calls the “simple truth” that the Jews, and not the Arabs, have an historic right to the land of Israel. “I’m all for ending the occupation,” he said. “We must end the occupation. Of course, I’m referring to the Muslim occupation of the land of Israel, starting in the seventh century.”

So yes, there is certainly a territorial component to the problem, Eldad acknowledges. But, he explained, falling back on a medical analogy that reflects his profession, “We have misdiagnosed the conflict. It is a religious war. It’s a clash of ideologies. It’s not a territorial conflict.”

It has never been easy for Israel—the understatement of the century—from the day of its establishment in 1948 when it was invaded by seven Arab armies to the present moment when it is facing multiple threats to its very survival. It suffers a history like no other nation in the world, surrounded by enemies, fighting wars on every front, infiltrated by terrorists, confronting the wetware dreams of genocidal regimes, in particular the prospect of a nuclear Iran sworn to the country’s annihilation, and subject to an international delegitimation campaign carried out via the United Nations, the World Council of Churches, spurious NGOs and “peace” organizations, labor unions, university campuses, a hostile European Union, and the efforts of an American president who wants to see the country reduced to indefensible borders.

As if this were not enough, there is yet another menace it has to face, deriving from the Cain and Abel paradigm, which has inwardly corroded the Jewish community since the thunderous instant it purportedly received the tablets from Mount Sinai: betrayal from within. The rebellion of Korah, Dathan and Abiram against Moses and his mission to create a unified and cohesive people set the tone for much of what followed in the history of the Jews. The record is inexhaustible: the backsliding tribes and their idolatrous rulers whom the Prophets railed against, the conflict between the brother states of Israel and Judea, the quarreling Jews Josephus tells us about who were in large measure responsible for the Roman victory and massacre in the first century A.D., the apostates, “wicked sons” and Court Jews who have proliferated through the ages, and those who contracted the wasting disease that Ruth Wisse in Jews and Power called “the veneration of political weakness.”

True, the quietist Jews who took refuge in ritual and scripture caused no material injury, but they, arguably, instilled an attitude of helplessness and defeatism into the plasm of the Jewish sensibility—precisely what the vigorous and determined Palmach fighters and the Zionist kibbutzniks who settled and farmed the land of Israel intended to counteract. They would no longer go “like sheep to the slaughter”; instead they put the debilitating syndrome to rest, struggled valiantly to survive and built a strong and proud country. However, the renegades and turncoats did, and continue to do, immeasurable harm. The motive for treachery seems to be immemorial. As Wisse writes, “For every Mordecai and Esther who risked their lives to protect fellow Jews, there were schemers who turned betrayal or conversion to profit.” Indeed, “the ubiquitous informer, or moser” is always with us. In the modern age they beget like rabbits on aphrodisiacs.

But it is not only a question of schemers and betrayers. There are many Jews who have turned against, or disembarrassed themselves of, their own compatriots for ostensibly “noble” reasons, like the Yevsektsiya or European and Russian Jews who joined the Bolsheviks and were instrumental in the formation of the Soviet Communist Party, until they were duly liquidated. Today, these are the Jews who embark on flotillas to abet a terrorist regime in Gaza, validate the Palestinian faux narrative, practice outreach and dialogue with Islamic murderers, vote “liberal,” pride themselves on their pacific and ecumenical ideology—a  “universalist worldview,” as Daniel Gordis writes in a poignant Commentary essay, that “does not have a place for enemies”—and celebrate their birthdays in Ramallah bars festooned with “PLO posters advocating the death of Jews.”

With most of my articles focusing on harsh aspects of life in Israel, and with Israel’s 63d birthday falling on Tuesday, it might be appropriate to mention some of why I love living here. This is a personal statement of an immigrant, though much of what I describe doesn’t necessarily pertain to immigrants.

1. Learning a new language. I moved here at 30, knowing very little Hebrew. There’s something hugely elating about gradually learning a different language in midlife; finding out how a language is a world, something I didn’t understand when I knew only one language. There are many beautiful Israeli songs, and getting to understand the words of one of them is always a delicate revelation. I became a translator here, an activity I greatly enjoy.

Although needing to learn a new language is hardly unique to immigrating to Israel, in this case it’s a recovery of a very old possession.

2. Being in the Land of Israel. Though a mostly nonobservant Jew, the Land of Israel archetype lies very deep in me. And now it’s not only an ideal, a vision, but a tangible reality all around me. It’s a varied, beautiful, and sacred land; it exudes sacredness. It’s fused with the Jewish calendar, the Jewish holidays, in a way that can only be experienced here. I even know the names of some of its birds and flowers.

3. Always having something to write about. It’s possible to write about Israel from abroad and there are people who do it well; but writing about Israel in Israel has special valence and immediacy.

4. The “we-ness.” It’s a small country, and the sense of collective experiences and feelings is intense. Yes, there are divisions as in any society; the more extreme Left is mainly outside of the “we” and inimical to it. Also, many of the collective experiences, and the feelings they instill, are harsh ones. Still, they’re undergone “together,” at a high level of social mutuality—whether manifested in the common watching of TV shows or in the looks and words that people exchange in the streets and shops.

And of course many of the collective experiences are not harsh ones but uplifting ones that stir great pride. A recent case in point was the Iron Dome air-defense system’s successful downing of Gaza-fired rockets. Others, since I moved here, have included Natan Sharansky’s arrival in the country, the second airlift of Ethiopian Jews, and the winning of Nobel Prizes by five Israeli academics since 2002. The young state is still on a rollercoaster ride with deep lows and dizzying highs.

On December 15, 2010 a ceremony was held in Gaza to commemorate the reconstruction of a building in Jabaliya that was destroyed during Operation Cast Lead—and thus the rebuilding was considered a symbolic victory of sorts for Hamas.

The keynote speech at the ceremony was delivered by Muhammad Kaya, a Turkish national. He brought the house down with the following remarks:

“We represent Turkey, and our interest and goal is not to feed the Palestinian people and bring them food, but to help them stand on their feet in face of the occupation’s oppression and support them in confronting their enemies. We are certain that if the force on this land submitted to imperialist dictates money would flow in from every side, but this force refused and stood firm in the face of challenges… the day will come when Palestinians will build their houses in Jaffa, Tel Aviv and Haifa.”

This was par for the course for speeches given under Hamas auspices, but the speaker in this case, Kaya, was actually a representative from the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights, Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief—better known as the IHH, the terrorist organization behind last year’s deadly “flotilla” that attempted to break the naval blockade of Gaza to help Hamas. The incident turned violent when the Israel Defense Forces boarded one ship, the Mavi Marmara, and were attacked by armed men.

And the IHH is behind a new flotilla, preparing to set sail for Gaza in May, in time for the one-year anniversary of the first.

“The Leader of the IHH is Bulent Yildirim, who said they are getting the flotilla ready and that there will be a ship from every country in Europe,” reported Voice of America. “Yildirim said the ‘Mavi Marmara’ from Turkey will be part of it, and until the blockade is lifted on Gaza, the intifada will continue by land, by sea and by air.”

The question, then, is this: If the IHH and its partners will behave exactly the same as last year, how will Israel respond?

“The Israelis will use different methods to bring the flotilla under control, or at least at minimum to prevent it from making it all the way to Gaza,” said James Colbert, policy director at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, in Washington, D.C.

Investigative journalist Patrick Poole has broken a blockbuster story about how the Obama Administration’s Justice Department blocked plans to prosecute a co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and others labeled “unindicted co-conspirators” in the Holy Land Foundation trial. Rep. Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has written a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and is requesting answers by April 25.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) were all designated by the federal government as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim Brotherhood front found guilty of covertly financing Hamas. A total of 246 organizations and individuals received the label but have yet to face prosecution. Now, a high-level Justice Department source has informed Patrick Poole that this is because of a decision by the Obama Administration, in what the source called “a political decision from the get-go.” A second Justice Department source substantiated the tip.

A March 31, 2010 report titled “Declination of Prosecution of Omar Ahmad,” referring to one of the co-founders of CAIR, was sent from Assistant Attorney General David Kris to Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler. The document claims that Ahmad would not be prosecuted because of fears that jury nullification would result. The source of the information rejects this and says it is just an excuse to not move forward.

Rep. Peter King has confirmed the story and is now putting Attorney General Eric Holder in the hot seat. King writes that he has been “reliably informed” that the decision to not prosecute the unindicted co-conspirators “was usurped by high-ranking officials at Department of Justice headquarters over the vehement and stated objections of special agents and supervisors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the prosecution at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, who had investigated and successfully prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation case.”

King requests a reply by April 25 but it is unclear what will follow if the response is unsatisfactory. David Rusin, the director of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, told FrontPage that “if Congress subpoenas Justice Department files on the organizations, incriminating details go public.” Such an investigation would be “a nightmare in the making for groups like CAIR and ISNA, whose very lifeblood has been the ability to camouflage their radicalism with the aid of gullible dupes in government and the press.”

However, Politico reports that the Bush Administration originally decided against prosecuting CAIR in 2004. Poole told the website that this is not necessarily a contradiction, as it just means that “They decided to get the bigger fish after they convicted the smaller fish.”

To understand the people of Gaza, who now lay claim to the passions of humanitarians-without-a-cause, one might begin by considering Gazans’ freely elected leadership: the Hamas terror network.  And to understand Hamas, one might begin by looking closely at the Hamas logo. The logo’s center features swords and a golden-domed structure, but the squiggle at the top-center of the logo is most descriptive. One squiggle is worth a thousand words. That squiggle is not an Arabic symbol but the map of Israel.

Look even more carefully: the squiggle – the map of Israel depicted on the Hamas logo – primarily is pre-1967 Israel.  It is Israel without the Gaza Strip.  Hamas has no designs on the Gaza Strip it controls.  Rather, leveraging Gaza as a springboard for its actual aspiration, Hamas illustratively has designs on the only Palestine it ever has coveted:  the Palestine that now is called “the State of Israel.”  As Jew-hating journalist Helen Thomas recently said about Israelis, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these [Arab] people are occupied, and it’s their land.”  The Jews, Thomas added, can go back where they come from – “Poland.  Germany. . . . And America and everywhere else.”  (Reflecting ignorance all too common among the White House press corps, Thomas is unaware that the majority of Israelis are children of the Middle East, descendants of the 850,000 Jews exiled by Northern African Arab dictatorships during the years Israel was being founded.)

The only “Palestine” that ever existed was always synonymous with the Jewish homeland that later was renamed “Israel” in 1948. Rent a copy of the 1960 movie “Exodus.”  Listen dispassionately to the dialogue. Don’t take sides.  Just listen for definitions. The British, fairly or unfairly, are depicted as the bad guys in the movie, trying to keep the Jews out of “Palestine.” Paul Newman is trying to get the Jews into “Palestine.” Everyone watching the movie perceives that “Palestine” is a name that refers synonymously with “Israel.” Thus, what we seem to have had here is a failure to communicate. It could not be simpler: For the past two thousand years, since the Romans renamed the land of Israel after they expelled and exiled the Jews, “Israel” always was synonymous with “Palestine,” and “Palestine” always was “Israel.”

There never ever was an Arab Palestine entity. Who, after all, ever was its leader? Try to name any leader who ever in history led a sovereign “Palestinian Arab” people of “Arab Palestine.” What year was that entity founded? What was the name of its capital city — any capital city? Where is the drawing or photograph of its seat of government, or the place where its governmental leader lived? What was the name of its currency? Whose face, what slogan was on that currency? When did it fall? In which Olympic Games did it compete? Which issue of Encyclopedia Britannica had an entry for its government?

Consider this way:  The American city of Palestine, Texas was founded in 1846.  It was so named in honor of an early settler there, Daniel Parker, who hailed from Palestine, Illinois.  That Palestine was chartered in 1811.  It drew its name in 1678 from the French explorer, Jean LaMotte, who looked at the land and named it “Palestine” because it reminded him of the Biblical Promised Land of the Jews, flowing with milk and honey.  No one associated “Palestine” with the Arab community, not even the French in the 1600s.  Rather, the name was associated with the Jews and their Biblical Promised Land. The same with Palestine, Arkansas (pop. 741) and East Palestine, Ohio.

Before the Jewish country was named “Israel” in 1948, even the most ardent Jews identified the Jewish homeland as “Palestine.” Today’s Jerusalem Post, the English-language daily newspaper of Israel, originally was called the Palestine Post.  The pre-government institution that laid Israel’s political foundation was the Jewish Agency for Palestine, headed by Dr. Chaim Weitzmann, who became Israel’s first head of state.

It is this “Palestine” – namely, the State of Israel – that Hamas forthrightly is determined to seize.  The squiggle tells all.  To attain the power to pursue its dream of eradicating Israel from the map, Hamas first engaged in more than a decade of bloody terror, killing some 500 people in the course of more than 350 terror attacks since 1993.  Hamas popularized suicide bombing.  Then, during the January 2006 general elections held freely and with minimal intimidation within the areas of Gaza and the segments of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) controlled by the Palestine Authority, the Palestinian Arab electorate voted Hamas into power.  Hamas won 74 seats, compared to 45 for runner-up Fatah. Former President Jimmy Carter monitored the vote and declared the election of Hamas “fair and square,” deeming them free, fair, just, and transparent.  That is, the Palestinian Arab voters freely chose to be led by a group of terrorists and suicide-bomb architects outlawed throughout the world.  After winning parliamentary elections, Hamas terrorists in Gaza proceeded to launch a bloody internecine war against their political competition, Fatah terrorists loyal to Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. More than 600 Arab terrorists killed each other during the next eighteen months.  Ultimately, Hamas won and seized the reins of power in Gaza.  By virtue of the freely expressed will of the people of Gaza, Hamas now enjoys popular support to lead Gazans with the Hamas vision.

On March 5, 1933, the German people cast their ballots, resulting in Adolf Hitler’s ascent to power as chancellor of Germany.  The voters knew Hitler’s agenda, and he prosecuted the agenda he promised them.  Mass terror followed, and the world was submerged into a war that brought death to tens of millions.  By the end, America and England gained an upper hand and had enough.  In one midnight hour, the Allies dropped more than 2,300 tons of aerial bombs on Hamburg. During the bombing of Dresden, the allies dropped more than 3,900 tons of bombs in two days, killing some 25,000 Germans.  As the debate raged over whether these aerial bombings had been overkill, an underlying justification always lay in the recognition that the German civilian population had elected the Nazis and, by the power of their ballots, willingly brought the war and destruction on others – and, by the end, onto themselves.

So it is with Gazans and the Hamas terror vision for which they voted “fair and square.”  In a world that has seen Iranian civilians rise up and, like Neda Soltani, give their very lives trying to liberate themselves from the yoke of an Islamofascist regime led by Ayatollahs and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the stark contrast from the people of Gaza is striking.  Gazans celebrate death.  They celebrate terror.  Given a free choice, they have opted for a vision of terror aimed at wiping out innocent Western lives and eradicating Israel off the face of the earth.  In the face of such contemporary persecutions as the Sudanese terror in Darfur and the Turkish oppression of the Kurd minority that now numbers more than two million refugees, can anyone truly make a “fair and square” argument that the people of Gaza are victims of anything other than their own tragically violent predilection to support terror over coexistence and war over peace?

Dov Fischer is a legal affairs consultant and adjunct professor of the law of civil procedure and advanced torts. He was formerly Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review and writes extensively on political, cultural, and religious issues.  He is author of General Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine and blogs at www.rabbidov.com

WASHINGTON - Israel envoy criticized Ankara's outreach to terrorist groups Friday, the same day that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying Hamas is not a terrorist organization.

"Turkey has embraced the leaders of Iran and Hamas, all of whom called for Israel's destruction," Ambassador Michael Oren declared.

"Our policy has not changed but Turkey's policy has changed, very much, over the last few years," he said. "Under a different government with an Islamic orientation, Turkey has turned away from the West."

But Oren, speaking on a conference call organized by The Israel Project, held out hope for reconciliation.

"We certainly do not have any desire in any further deterioration in our relations with the Turks," he said. "It's an important Middle Eastern power. It has been a friend in the past."

Erdogan on Friday declared at a rally that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, but a resistance movement, according to the Istanbul-based daily Hürriyet.

Erdogan said that Hamas, the legitimate winner of the Palestinian elections, was fighting for its land.

"You are always talking about democracy. You'll never let Hamas rule. What kind of democracy is this?" he said, apparently addressing the Israeli leadership.

"I do not think that Hamas is a terrorist organization," Erdogan was quoted as saying. "They are Palestinians in resistance, fighting for their own land."...

It is predominately understood that Israel was in the right in her actions during the latest operation against the Gaza flotilla. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on the mark when he unequivocally stated that Israel “will never apologize for defending itself.”  The problem is not always being right but also being strategic which is Israel’s biggest challenge.

Consequently, the world was “outraged” the UN was “shocked” and once again we can see how Israel is held to a double standard that no other country in the world is held to. Israel is expected to always behave morally and treat the Palestinians with silk gloves in order not to hurt or offend them in any shape or form. The Palestinians, meanwhile, can do no wrong even when they openly engage in acts of terrorism.

Moreover, it is the hyper-sensitive focus on Israel by the global media outlets that draws attention to every flaw Israel has. Israel by no means is perfect but it is the only democratic country in the region which actually abides by a rule of law. The same freedoms we hold dear as Americans can only be found in Israel. Yet it is Israel that brings the U.N. Security Council together for more commissions and inquires than any other nation and holds anti-Israel kangaroo courts on a regular basis.  The stark contrast relates of course to the real threat – a nuclear Iran, which just a few days ago announced that it now has enough uranium for two nuclear bombs. And yet, somehow it is much easier for the world to focus on the “peace activists” of the flotilla.

The halo effect generated by Israel’s actions against Palestinians spawns the sympathy Palestinians want and yearn for as it depicts them “helpless” and illustrates how Israel is the true obstacle for peace. In fact, this is why the Palestinians and the Arab world at large love to quote UN resolution 242 whenever they have an opportunity. 242 has become the foundation for the land for peace formula drafted after the Six Day War, and a superficial reading seemingly places Palestinian/Arab brokers of peace in a position of strength. For Arabs, this “legal” prerequisite emphasizes the give and take aspect: if Israel valued peace, it would return land; if Arabs wanted land, they would give peace.

The reason Arabs love to quote 242 is that it is a deceptively simple equation; on the one hand it talks about the exchange of land-for-peace with Israel, meaning that there is room to negotiate peace. On the other hand, although we naively believe that it also calls for recognition of Israel as the Jewish state, that is not the case.

In theory they can say they really want peace but in practice it is very far from the truth. The resolution calls for “Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” It deliberately does not call for withdrawal from “all” or “any” because the resolution’s authors knew that such demands were unreasonable. As far as “peace” goes the resolution lays on the bureaucratic boilerplate and calls for “Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”

The UN Resolution demands that Israel gives up some land in exchange for some, still unspecified, peace. Israel is still waiting. In the context of when the resolution was passed (November 1967) the Arab response was clear. 242 remains the best smokescreen for Palestinians and Arabs, since they say they want peace based on 242 but in the same breath, usually in Arabic, they reassure one another that they are committed to the “3 no’s of Khartum.” And indeed this position has not changed much over the past forty plus years: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel is still what motivates many Palestinians in their yearning for Israel’s death.

Today, under the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, “land-for-peace” automatically translates into “land-for-talk” because to most generous Americans and Europeans, talk – not peace – is all that Israel should expect, and possibly deserve, in exchange for territorial concessions. This is the motivation which drove Hizbullah to attack Israel in 2006 and Israel to act against Hamas in Gaza in 2009.

Talk is cheap. Land and lives are expensive. If the Palestinians really want to talk about Resolution 242 as the basis for anything, they should first get their own territories under control, stop firing rockets at Israeli towns, and start creating a decent civil society. Until then Israelis have learned a hard lesson that until the other side stops wanting to wipe Israel off the map, resolutions like 242 really aren’t worth the paper they’re written on and Israel will need to continue combating “peace activists” who work towards violence rather than true peace.

Asaf Romirowsky is a Senior Fellow at EMET and an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Evangelist and activist Tony Campolo, formerly spiritual counselor to Bill Clinton post-Monica, recently sojourned to Bethlehem Bible College in the West Bank for the school’s convocation of “Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Peace and Justice.”  This Palestinian evangelical school peddles a form of Palestinian liberationism that much of the Evangelical Left in the U.S., increasingly anxious to justify hostility to Israel and its U.S. allies, eagerly finds persuasive.

Besides Campolo, other speakers included British anti-Israel Anglican priest Stephen Sizer, author Lynne Hybels (wife of Willow Creek mega-church pastor Bill Hybels), Wheaton College professor Gary Burge, United Methodist missionary Alex Awad, and Naim Ateek of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre.

Campolo effusively rhapsodized about “Christ at the Checkpoint” in a column for Jim Wallis’ Sojourners.  The “horror stories” from “oppressed Palestinians” that Campolo heard at Bethlehem Bible College “sent chills” up his back and aroused his “indignation” and “compassion.”  Naturally, Campolo is angriest at pro-Israel evangelicals in the U.S. who are the real culprits for Palestinian suffering.

“Why don’t our Christian brothers and sisters in America care about what is happening to us?,” Campolo remembered one Palestinian imploring of him.  “Do they know that their tax dollars paid for the Israeli tanks that destroyed my house and the houses of my neighbors?”

Predictably, Campolo recited the usual narrative of Christian exodus from among the Palestinians, reporting that Bethlehem has declined from 70 percent to 15 percent Christian.  “Sometimes heartless and dehumanizing treatment that Bethlehem Christians have had to endure over the years has led most of them to emigrate to other countries,” he explained.  Supposedly Israel is exclusively to blame for Christians leaving the region.  But the overall Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza, which is 95-98 percent Muslim, continues to grow.  For the most part, Muslims are not leaving. Why would the one or two percent of Palestinians who are Christian most likely emigrate?  Could radical Islam’s influence be a factor? Could it also be that Christians have more contacts with the West that more easily facilitate emigration?

Campolo, like most of the Evangelical and Religious Left, does not try to answer these questions.  Nor does he express a lot of public interest in Palestinian and other Middle East Christians except as a cudgel against Israel and, ultimately, against conservative Christians in the U.S. — Campolo’s favorite bête noire. “The most serious threats to the well-being of the Palestinians in general, and to the Christian Palestinians in particular, come not from the Jews, but from Christian Zionists here in the United States,” he charged.

Of course, Campolo repeats the usual canard that U.S. evangelicals are uniformly bewitched by “Dispensationalism,” which originated with 19^th century English theologian Nelson Darby.  In the stereotype that Campolo rehashes, these Darbyite Dispensationalists blindly believe that Jesus Christ will not return “until all of this land is occupied by Jews, and all others are forced to leave.”  Trying to sound equitable, Campolo notes that “Jewish lobbies” are not the main villain behind the “30 percent of all U.S. foreign aid” going to Israel which enables the country to have the “fourth most powerful army in the world.”  No, it is the Christian Zionists who are the “primary sources of pressure on the U.S. Congress to financially back the Israeli military that has made the injustices I have described possible.”

In the Campolo/Evangelical Left narrative, pro-Israel Christians foolishly ignore how the “entire Islamic world views what is happening in the Holy Land,” U.S. evangelical support for Israel is “hindering evangelism among Muslims,” and “so many of the conflicts that exist between Muslims and Christians around the world are partially due to what is happening in the Holy Land.” The Muslim media is quick to link the “oppression of Palestinians to the justification of attacks on Americans, in particular, and the Western world, in general.”

For Campolo, the solution is simple:  “We should be calling for the demolition of the separation wall that is as offensive as the Berlin Wall was.” And “we should be demanding” a return to the 1967 borders.  He says he favors “safe and secure borders for the State of Israel and protection against terrorists.” But evidently, Israel should not be permitted to build walls against suicide bombers or to negotiate defensible borders. Presumably, good will and accommodation will create all the security that Israel needs.

Anti-Israel Anglican priest Stephen Sizer, who participated with Campolo at “Christ at the Checkpoint,” enthusiastically interviewed Campolo afterwards for his website. “The only talk of a resistance against the Israelis, that I heard, is non-violent resistance,” Campolo blithely assured an eagerly listening and believing Sizer about Palestinian intentions.  The evangelist apparently also likes the Israel-Apartheid comparison: “When you begin comparing this to Apartheid in South Africa, you immediately communicate to the American people…The phrase has power.”  And Campolo warned that “both sides,” i.e. Israel and Palestinians, are guilty of hateful portrayals of each other in educational curricula, but Israel is especially guilty. “Hate is allowed to reign free within the Israeli community,” he warned.  “And we incited the Hilltop situation in Hebron and the young men going in…” he continued, in an apparent reference to the 2008 incident when Israeli youth rampaged over Israeli court ordered evictions of Israeli settlers.  It’s not clear who the “we” is who provoked this violence, but presumably it is the dreaded pro-Israel Christians in the U.S.

According to a Pew poll, evangelicals, mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics in the U.S. all sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinian cause. But for the angry Evangelical Left, including Campolo, supposed Israeli oppression is due exclusively to Zionist evangelicals purportedly obsessed with biblical prophecies about the end-times.

Most American Christians sympathize with Israel because it is a pro-American democracy and not owing to 19th century Darbyite theology.  But Campolo and the Evangelical Left prefer not to discuss the merits of democracy versus its Islamist alternatives. Instead, they demonize pro-Israel evangelicals and hope cries of “apartheid” will persuade when sound argument will not.

Just days before the tenth anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah hosted hundreds of students at what it called 'The Land of Islamic Resistance'.

For many of the Muslim and Christian young people it was the first visit to southern Lebanon. "We want our students, whether they are Hezbollah members, supporters or rivals, to see the land that Israel occupied for 22 years," said group member Mohammad Taleb.

"We want young people to know of the achievements made by the resistance and show them how wrong Israeli occupation is. This land was liberated by thousands of resistance fighters who fought every day in order to return the land to their people."

Many of the students were wide-eyed at a meeting with Hezbollah's militants. "It was like being in a movie," said Grace, a Christian Lebanese student. "I respect these young men, who liberated my land. I don't see them as terrorists, as the West describes them."

And I don't see you as a Christian, but as a dhimmi Islamochristian.

The militants, on their side, showed their guests how to fire rockets and anti-aircraft missiles. "These young people give us strength," said one gunman after the demonstration....

"It's surreal," said a French student who took part in the tour. "It's like Disneyland. I never expected to see such things."...

The realization that political leaders have been unable to bring peace to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that involvement of the international community has only sharpened the division between Arab and Jew, has prompted the people of Eretz-Shalom (Land Peace) to seek peace from the bottom up.

The Israeli Left has made numerous attempts to make peace between Israeli-Jews and Palestinian-Arabs.  The Geneva document drafted by MK Yossi Beilin- and P.L.O spokesperson Abd –Rabbo in October 2003 failed as did the previous attempt, the Ayalon-Nusseibeh Peace Plan of July 27, 2002, both of which were supported and funded by the European Union and Western (mostly European) NGOs.  These two peace plans represented the views and expectations of the secular leftist-European-and liberal worldview to the exclusion of the traditional values of the people who are both physically and emotionally tied to their land. Both these peace plans have been relegated to the dustbin of history.   It is the people who work on the land and who have personally experienced closely the price of war and its cost in blood, who are, in the end, the best possible peace-makers.

In “settlement” communities such as Kedumim in Samaria, the people are determined to live in peace with their Arab neighbors.  There is no fence around Kedumim, and the residents travel to Arab villages, while Arab villagers come to be served in the settlement’s gas station. This is true for other communities as well. “We are open and ready to settle our differences with our Arab neighbors on the basis of live and let live with mutual respect for one another” says Raphaella Segal of Kedumim. Although Raphella is not yet an active member of Eretz-Shalom, she supports the idea behind the movement.

The Land Peace movement began with meetings between local Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the Etzion Bloc (Gush Etzion) and moved southward to the Mt. Hebron region and northward towards Samaria.  In an interview with the Israeli Hebrew daily Makor Rishon, Nachum Petznick, one of the founders of Land Peace explained that,

“Land Peace grew from the bottom by regular people both Palestinian-Arabs and Jewish settlers who understood that there is no time to wait while politicians who try time and again to present unsuccessful peace plans.  Reality is more complex, however, and while the politicians discuss peace agreements something entirely different is occurring on the ground.  Our aim is to impact on reality while understanding that both the Palestinians and we, the Jewish settlers, are here to stay.”

“We are now several hundred strong.” says Petznick, “The mere fact that we are meeting with scores of Palestinian-Arabs who are interested, and that we are getting to know each other is of immense importance, Petznick said.  The conversation in the political Left is about “recognizing” the Palestinians while at Land Peace we “get to know” real Palestinians as individual people,” Petznick added.  To recognize something is undefined, but to know somebody is real, according to Petznick. The people associated with Land Peace want to live side by side in peace with their neighbors, but as Petznick puts it, the word “peace” has been exploited and beaten up from all directions, “I prefer to talk about good neighborly relations and mutual respect – rather than use the word ‘peace.’”

S., a former Hamas activist who must hide his name for fear of retribution, found his way to Land Peace through an Israeli prison system. He tells the story of a young Palestinian named Tzudki Zaro in prison with him who told him without remorse that he murdered the Jewish baby Shalhevet Pas.  When S. asked him if he was proud of his deed, Zaro replied “of course, why not?” S. described the shock he felt knowing that this human monster was proud of murdering a baby who was just a few months old.  After that S. recounts, “I began to think differently.” As S. told a Makor Rishon reporter, “I reached the conclusion that I did not want to be with people like Zaro, and that both you (the Jews) and us (Palestinians) live on this land, and that we do not have another land, so what are we to do? You fire at us, we fire at you, you kill and we kill, and when will it end?”

S. described how he has been searching for ways to talk to Israelis and how he found the Land Peace movement.  According to S., the peace from above failed, and the leadership on both sides failed.  “I do not care about Abu Mazen or Netanyahu, but I do care about my neighbors, and I want the firing on each other to stop. I want my Jewish neighbor to give me a ride and I want to do the same for him, and we together will force our leaders to make peace.”

S. is clear about the way to peace: “The leaders failed to bring peace because the public was not prepared for it.  The leaders sat together and wrote agreements and then delivered the message through the press to the people.  But, the people have not seen a difference, and they are still suffering.” S. concluded, “Peace will come not when the leadership will cook and we will eat from it, but rather, when we shall cook for ourselves.”

Shai Ben Josef, another key figure in Land Peace observed that, “For seventy years people are trying to divide the land and have failed because it is a small land and because we live amongst each other, and share the same roads, breathe the same air, and drink the same water.  We must therefore find a way in which each nation (Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs) will be able to fulfill its self determination separately, but at the same time share in things that could be run together.”

The message of Land Peace to President Obama and the European Union is clear: let us “cook” peace for ourselves.

Avner S., 26, is a handsome young man with a smooth face that gives him the appearance of a teenager. He is, in spite of his soft exterior, a hardened ex-combat soldier who served in the top combat unit of the Israel Defense Forces – Sayeret Matkal. Both Avner and his colleagues are wearing helmet-like skullcaps and tzizits, which are flowing out of their T-shirts. The roofers, busy putting on red tiles, and the other two dozen workers, all of whom are veterans, are now on a new mission- to build up the land of Israel.

This group, led by Avner, and many others like them, have began a movement that is reminiscent of the early 20th century. An idealistic and pioneering movement of Jewish Labor, inspired by the philosophy of A.D. Gordon. Unlike many secular-leftist, post-military service young men who let themselves go and use drugs in Thailand or India’s Goa, Avner and his crew are being true to a paraphrased rendition of JFK’s famous words: “See what you can do for your country, for your ancestral heartland.”

While the kibbutz youth, who once symbolized Israeli idealism and self-sacrifice, have left the kibbutzim in droves moving either to Israel’s cities or abroad, the young men of the West Bank settlement communities stay where they were born and raised and raise large families. They are reviving today’s sagging idealism and bringing back the old values of self sacrifice that characterized Israel’s pre-state era and the early decades of its existence, in the 1950′s and 1960′s. And they are doing it in the face of cynicism and malice coming from the Israeli urban and leftist elites who control the media and academia.

Globalization and Americanization have left many of Israel’s secular and urban youth in an almost nihilistic state. Youthful Israelis living in the cities seem to have more in common with their rudderless peers in Western Europe and the U.S. than with their fellow Israelis in the settlements. When they are not occupied with drugs, sex, and other hedonistic pursuits, they seek lucrative jobs in high tech industries abroad that provide them with a luxurious lifestyle. Edna G., 21 is typical for her generation. Originally from Beersheba, in the Negev, she moved to Tel Aviv six months ago after completing her military service. She is now hoping to move to New York to study and, she hopes, to “make money and live the good life…”

In the leftist, post-Zionist, bastion of Shenkin Street in Tel Aviv, idealism is dead. The talk in the popular coffee-houses is about government corruption, but animus towards the settlements and settlers is ready to burst out at a moment’s notice. Young people here have more sympathy for the Palestinians in Gaza than for the settlers in the West Bank. Their Judaism has long ago turned into some form of universalism, and the Torah is simply meaningless to them. They are cynical about patriotism and believe in nothing else but living for today.

Sweating in the midday heat Avner comes down on a ladder from the rooftop to get his jug of water. What about Tel Aviv and its post-Zionism, I ask? He thinks for a moment and replies in a quiet and assured voice, “Our mission of rebuilding the country and bringing back its idealism will not end at Yitzhar, we plan to go to Tel Aviv and build there too – not only houses but souls as well.”

“And what about the Arab-Palestinians surrounding you,” I continue? “We respect them as people, and they respect us.” Unlike the Jewish developers in cities of central Israel who hire and exploit mostly non-Israeli labor, Avner and his ilk believe in Jewish Labor – to “Build and be built by it” as a well-known old Zionist pioneering song goes.

The Arabs from the surrounding villages are ambivalent about these hard working Jews who cultivate the land and build their own homes. In their hearts, the Arab villagers admire the fortitude these young Jews display. At the same time they resent the fact that the Jewish Labor movement is denying them construction jobs. Still, commercial activities between Jewish settlers and local Arabs in the West Bank benefit both communities. Tension and acts of terror arise primarily when the local Arabs are incited by visiting officials of the Palestinian Authority or by radical Islamist activists.

The land that Jewish settlers live and build on is government ownded, not taken from local Arabs. Although pioneers like the legendary Moshe Zar of Karnei Shomron, a community not far from Itzhar, would buy land for cash from Arab landlords occasionally, there are few, if any cases of Jewish settlements built on “stolen” Arab land as the anti-Israel movement abroad often charges.

The young men of Jewish Labor are not only reviving the idea of Jewish manual work, a long forgotten pursuit by ordinary Israelis, they are also creating a defensive and strategic shield for Israel by building a chain of hilltop settlements that control the passages from the Jordan Valley to Israel’s coastal communities and that surround Palestinian cities like Nablus, Jenin, Kalkilya, and Tulkarm. The Jewish settlements in the West Bank are the first line of defense for the State of Israel.

History seems to repeat itself. The kibbutzim of the pre-State era formed the front line of defense for the Yishuv – the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine, against Arab attackers. Nowadays, the Jewish settlers in the West Bank have taken up their roles. Similarly, the idealism of Jewish Labor once practiced by the Kibbutzim is now carried on by practical and idealistic young men like Avner and his friends.

Four men convicted in Dallas in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial have been transferred to special federal prisons where their communications and dealings with the outside world will be more closely monitored.

Prosecutors had advocated the transfer of Ghassan Elashi, Shukri Abu Baker, Mohammad El-Mezain and Mufid Abdulqader from the low-security Seagoville federal prison south of Dallas to one of the Bureau of Prisons' Communications Management Units....

That cleared the way for them to go to the special prisons, where their calls are limited and monitored, along with all their mail, and they are required to use English when dealing with outsiders....

Two television networks showcased Cecil B. DeMille’s epic 3 ½ hour The Ten Commandments this Easter: ABC and Canada’s CBC. The 1956 film had no need for our 21^st century Computer Generated Imagery to convince us that the Red Sea was indeed parting, and that the “bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed” (Exodus 3:2). I wondered if the networks made this choice because there is really no superlative modern narrative of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection? We have Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ, but its gore and blood is too hard to take at Easter. The Last Temptation of Christ by Martin Scorsese is too idiosyncratic, and would be something to watch and study at another time in the year. There are plenty of bland and insipid made-for-television versions of Christ’s story, many of which are programmed during Christmas, but for some reason they were not screened this Easter.

Perhaps these channels chose to commemorate Passover rather than Easter, which fell around similar dates this year. Or they’re simply following the ritual of politically correct inclusiveness. Even President Obama has made Passover Seder-at-the-White House a new tradition, hosting it for the second time as President. No other President before him has hosted the Seder at the White House. Obama’s Seder started on a whim, it seems. During his campaign trail, two young Jewish aides were celebrating their Seder in a basement of a Pittsburgh hotel, away from home and family, when Obama joined their festivities.

Obama’s interest in Jewish celebrations may indeed be a liberal’s outreach to cultural diversity – after all, the White House now hosts Ramadan dinners. But, it fits his narcissistic personality, conforming the Seder to any situation he may be experiencing at the time of the holiday. At the first, impromptu, Seder in Pennsylvania when his campaign was steeped in the Reverend Wright controversies and was “in the desert,” as another campaign aide put it, Obama proclaimed “Next year at the White House” as an addition to “Next Year in Jerusalem” commonly said at the end of the dinner. Perhaps, as suggests Judi Kantor from the New York Times, this year’s focus could have been one of the universalist themes that Obama is so fond of: to free Americans from the bondage of capitalist healthcare and to give them the abundance of Obamacare.

The Center for American Progress has another suggestion. In it’s article on Obama’s Seder celebration this year, CAP cleverly used the Bible’s New Revised Standard Version to quote from Exodus 22:21: “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” Almost all the other versions use “stranger”, “foreigner” or “sojourner” in lieu of “resident alien,” clearly portraying a temporary dweller and not the long-term inhabitant that “resident alien” implies. The CAP’s advice to President Obama is that he treat Mexican illegal aliens with the same compassion they interpret from the NRS, and pass comprehensive immigration reform. But when we parse the words, it is clear that illegal aliens are not the “resident aliens” implied by CAP, but emboldened Mexicans, foreigners and strangers, who wish to take advantage of the lax rules and borders that makes it possible for them to enter and reside in the country with impunity.

One has to marvel at the President’s Seder chutzpah after his dismal treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu during his recent visit to the United States. It is one thing to celebrate an ethnic festival, but another to respect the significance that the celebrants give their rituals. The Israelites that Obama commemorates in these Seders were freed from bondage in Egypt, and their descendants later received their Promised Land. Yet, Obama seems intent on removing this sacred land from the Jews, and forcing on them new enemies who are probably far more ruthless than the Egyptians.

Modern Christians are in as much danger as modern Jews. Our liberal neighbors, with their feel-good, made-up Christianity are destroying our religion and our communities. Liberal church leaders support issues ranging from comprehensive immigration reform to same sex marriage. Atheists, who have nonetheless constructed their own religion, now have their prophets. In the April 2010 publication of Vanity Fair, atheist Christopher Hitchens performs an iconoclastic dismantling of the Biblical Ten Commandments and then gives us his own petty ten. Like the Old Testament’s Jews, we have to trust that God will free us from our current tribulations.

In fact, End Time preachers use the exodus as an allegory for our liberation. Our ultimate release is entry into God’s heavenly land. But the Passover and Easter stories are also our personal stories. The journey from bondage to freedom reflects our own mundane ordeals. And we experience death and resurrection with each sin and atonement. Celebrating these holidays each year gives us the hope that we too will inherit our particular Israel.

The liberal, politically correct television stations were right after all. The story of Moses, recounting a people’s freedom from slavery, and culminating with the abiding Ten Commandments, was an apt choice for these holidays. Would that our leaders understand and practice its significance. Not just as at religious celebrations, but throughout the year.

Republican Senate candidate in California Tom Campbell is the frontrunner in the nomination fight and his ties to radical Muslims, specifically Sami al-Arian, have become an issue, but the story is bigger. Campbell has surrounded himself with people tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, who recruited him for their political agenda in a campaign that ultimately reached the Bush White House.

In November 2001, a Brotherhood document called “The Project” from 1982 was found by Swiss police raiding the home of Youssef Nada, a Brotherhood leader thought to be financing terrorism. It detailed a sophisticated plan to incrementally bring Sharia Law to the world, including deep political influence operations in the democratic institutions of the West. The Muslim Brotherhood has been diligently following this plan ever since.

The story of the infiltration of the Republican Party should start with Sami al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor now convicted of being a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and admitted Muslim Brotherhood member. In 1997, his brother-in-law, Mazen al-Najjar, was held without bail based on classified evidence connecting him to terrorism after he appealed his deportation. Al-Arian began using his political connections to try to free his brother-in-law, arguing that his civil liberties were being violated. This effort ultimately failed, and al-Najjar was deported in 2002.

One of al-Arian’s political allies was Suhail Khan, the Director of Policy and Press Secretary of Congressman Tom Campbell of California. Campbell introduced legislation to ban the use of secret evidence in immigration court, which would free al-Najjar. This was not merely a consequence of Campbell’s legislation, it was the intent. Campbell wrote a letter defending the man and visited him in jail in May 2000.

Khan’s father served as vice president of the Muslim Students Association and was in the leadership of the Islamic Society of North America, two Brotherhood-created groups. The mosque his father founded was later visited  after he moved by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh” involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, where he preached violent jihad. In 1983, his father founded the Muslim Community Association, which was used by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad to fundraise twice, including one appearance by Ayman al-Zawahiri. His mother served on the board of the mosque and was also on the board of the California branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose founders are now known to be secret members of the Brotherhood’s “Palestine Committee.”

Khan himself regularly speaks at events put together by Brotherhood-connected groups. Frank Gaffney, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense and current President of the Center for Security Policy, told me last week that an FBI Special Agent involved in counter-terrorism confirmed to him that Khan is a member of the Brotherhood. On November 6, 2009, Rachel Maddow interviewed Khan about the Fort Hood shootings and asked about the criticism of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. He responded by saying that it was “even more sad to see that there might be some who would use and exploit this strategy for their political partisan and worse, for their racist ends.”

Grover Norquist, a prominent conservative activist who had very close ties to the Bush campaign and White House, is central to this story. He founded the Islamic Free Market Institute in 1998 with tens of thousands of dollars from Abdulrahman Alamoudi, who later professed his support for Hamas and Hezbollah and was found to be a top Brotherhood leader in the U.S. involved in massive terrorism fundraising operations. Money also came from the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a Brotherhood front, and The Safa Trust, whose offices were raided in 2002 as part of a terrorism investigation.

Alamoudi’s top aide, Khalid Saffuri, became the executive-director of Norquist’s group. Saffuri later became the National Advisor on Arab and Muslim Affairs for Bush’s presidential campaign in 2000. He would go on to help build relations between the Bush team and Sami al-Arian and later oppose the shutting down of the Holy Land Foundation.

Norquist’s ties to the high-profile groups of the Muslim-American community, a prime target for the GOP’s social conservative message, made him a valuable asset in the eyes of the Bush campaign and White House. John Zogby described Norquist in November 2001 as being “central to the White House outreach” by acting as an “interlocutor.”

These ties become more understandable when it is understood that a devout Muslim married Norquist, something a follower of Islam would never do unless her spouse converted. When Paul Sperry asked him if he had converted to Islam, Norquist would only say that it was“personal.” In 2008, Norquist adopted a baby from the now-Palestinian city of Bethlehem. By no means does being a Muslim convert mean you are an extremist, but it is a factor in explaining what could cause Norquist to seek out relationships like these.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism provided me with several documents showing how Campbell and Khan were active in the political agenda of these groups. The October 1996 newsletter from the American Muslim Council included an interview with Campbell, where he expressed his anger at the “gross stereotyping and dehumanization of Muslims and Arabs” in movies like Executive Decision and Father of the Bride II. He said that he wrote letters to Kurt Russel, Steve Martin, and Eugene Levy asking them to be more responsible in the future.

In the interview, Campbell also boasted of his role in trying to get “inflammatory language” removed from a House resolution. The “inflammatory” language was “in several Islamic countries conversion to Christianity from Islam is a crime punishable by death” and “Sudan is waging a jihad (religious war) against the Christian southern part of the country.” Khan spoke at a Council on American-Islamic Relations conference in August 1997 where he again boasted of Campbell’s effort, saying that the resolution was offensive to Muslims and should instead condemn all religious persecution.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs’ issue from July/August 1999 reported on the American Muslim Council’s annual convention. It says that Khan and Campbell spoke for the group, with Khan focusing on the ban on the use of secret evidence in immigration court. Campbell, speaking alongside Rep. Janice Schakowsky who condemned Israel’s “ethnic cleansing,” said “We [Congress] have to recognize that there are people in Palestine who have the right to their own land.”

The event also included a talk from Mazen al-Najjar’s daughter, crying for her father’s freedom, and the presentation of an award to The Holy Land Foundation. The director of the group said, “Although the Holy Land Foundation is a non-profit organization, we profit the lives of many Palestinians.” Apparently those Palestinians they profited were members of Hamas, as the charity was later found guilty of financing the terrorist group.

When Campbell ran for Senate in 2000, Sami al-Arian and figures from other Brotherhood affiliates like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Islamic Society of North America donated to his campaign and spoke at his fundraisers as he courted Muslim votes.

Sami Al-Arian donated to his campaign, as did Abdulrahman Alamoudi. On May 24, 2000, Alamoudi was interviewed by an Islamic website that asked him how to “decrease the influence of the zionist (sic) lobby on presidential candidates.” He responded by calling on Muslims to help elect favorable candidates, specifically mentioning Campbell as a “tested friend.”

When Alamoudi publicly declared his support for Hamas and Hezbollah, Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush returned his donations. Campbell did not. He defended Alamoudi, saying he had not advocated violence. Also donating to his campaign was Nihad Awad, the current executive-director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group now labeled as an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism financing trial of The Holy Land Foundation.

Awad, a Brotherhood member, was recorded by the FBI participating in a secret meeting of Hamas and Brotherhood supporters in 1993 where he emphasized the need to moderate their language in order to advance their political agenda. The first executive-director of CAIR’s Michigan chapter, Muthanna al-Hanooti, donated $2,000 to Campbell. He was later found guilty of being a spy for Iraqi intelligence, who apparently appreciated Campbell’s criticism of U.S. sanctions on their country.

Another donor was Agha Saeed from the American Muslim Alliance, a group that later opposed the Bush Administration’s shutting down of The Holy Land Foundation for financing Hamas. Saeed spoke in support of the “armed resistance” of the Palestinians, prompting Hillary Clinton to return his donation. Like the case of Alamoudi, Campbell did not return his donation and was not turned off by his pro-jihad rhetoric. The votes and confidence of his Brotherhood friends were too important. Saeed’s group put together a conference in October 2001 where Campbell was given a “lifetime achievement” award. In 2000, Saeed’s group actually held a fundraiser for Campbell, bringing in $35,000 for him.

In September 2000, Campbell was on a panel at the Islamic Society of North America’s annual conference about how Muslims could mobilize to support the ban on using secret evidence in immigration court. Joining him on that panel was Agha Saeed; Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council; Nihad Awad; and Najir Khaja from Al-Amoudi’s American-Muslim Council. In other words, his Brotherhood political allies.

After Bush’s election victory, these various individuals saw their power increase. Suhail Khan began working in the Office of Public Liaison and then as Assistant to the Secretary for Policy at the Transportation Department. Norquist has said that he used his influence in the White House to get Khan the position. David L. Norquist, Grover’s brother, became the Bush Administration’s Chief Financial Officer at the Department of Homeland Security in 2006.

President of the Center for Security Policy Frank Gaffney writes that a memo prepared by Khan in early 2001 shows that Norquist’s Islamic Free Market Institute “provided the White House with a list of Muslim invitees, with the name, date of birth and Social Security number of each.” In 2003, Mary Jacoby of The St. Petersburg Times wrote that “For a time, the point person at the White House arranging the Muslim groups’ access was Suhail Khan, a former director of the Islamic Institute.”

The success of this effort to gain influence inside the White House was clearly seen following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Ironically, on that very day, these various Muslim leaders and groups who won White House access via Khan were set to meet with President Bush to discuss his pledged support of a ban on using secret evidence in immigration court, a position he likely came to because of the influence of the Brotherhood team. Sami Al-Arian was supposed to call into the meeting. When the attacks prevented the meeting, they met up in Norquist’s conference room, which he shared with Frank Gaffney.

On September 26, President Bush understandably wanted to make clear that the war on terror was not a war on Islam or all Muslims, so he appeared with 15 Muslim-American leaders who condemned the vague term of terrorism. Included were the leaders of the American-Muslim Council, Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Islamic Society of North America. Government agencies, officials and candidates built strong relations with groups such as these in the aftermath of the attacks, hoping to win the support of the Muslim communities through them. In reality, these groups used such connections to try to influence the government, gain prestige, and actually undermined support for the government’s counter-extremism efforts, such as by painting the war on terror as a war on Islam—the precise image the government was trying not to create by working with these groups.

Campbell continued to be a friend to these Brotherhood leaders after 9/11. In 2002, he wrote a letter defending Sami Al-Arian, who was under pressure from his school for reports tying him to extremism. Campbell now says that he was unaware of al-Arian’s terrorist activity, but by this time, al-Arian had publicly supported jihad and made anti-Semitic and anti-American statements. A report by The Investigative Project on Terrorism stated, “If he didn’t know it then, it wasn’t because the information wasn’t available. Campbell either never sought it out or simply ignored it.”

Campbell does have a record of supporting Israel as a congressman, but that hasn’t stopped him from endorsing virulently anti-Israel activists, such as Alison Weir of If Americans Knew. The organization’s website proudly shows off his endorsement of her. Campbell says that his praise came from one speech of hers, and the relationship did not continue. He did not say what that speech consisted of. According to Weir, it was a talk she gave in the spring of 2001 where she talked of the brutality and oppression of the Israeli military in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. “One of the first on his feet [to applaud her] was Tom Campbell,” she says.

The cast of characters and organizations who penetrated the White House and Bush campaign are the same ones who counted on Campbell as a close ally, supporting him politically and financially. Campbell is not a proponent of Sharia Law, but those involved with the Brotherhood saw him as an official they could influence and use. Eager to win Muslim support, politicians such as Campbell are tempted to follow the advice of advisors like those suggested by Norquist. Based on his record, it is disturbing to think who Campbell will surround himself with should he become the next Republican Senator from California.

Armed with knives, bricks, and sticks, a group of Muslims attacked Christian villagers in Bangladesh on March 20, injuring 50.

"They [the Muslims] said they will kill some of our people," said Father Leo Desai of the Diocese of Dinajpur. "We're in a panic and are afraid to go out."

The attacks took place after a court ruled in favor of a parish in a land dispute. "Most tribal people are illiterate and have no land documents for their ancestral lands," explained diocesan official Father Anthony Sen. "Local Muslims occupy their lands and land disputes arise."

Jihad in the Path of Allah, to raise the word of Allah, is fard kifayah [obligatory on the community] once a year, so that if some perform it, the obligation falls from the rest. It becomes fard `ayn [obligatory on every Muslim individually], like salah and fasting, if the legitimate Muslim Imam declares it so, or if there is an attack by the enemy on an area of people.

The Hanafi, Maliki, and Shafi'i schools of Sunni jurisprudence further declare that jihad, once it is fard 'ayn, is no different from prayer and fasting -- in other words, to engage in warfare with non-Muslims in that case is a religious devotion that cannot lawfully be evaded. Hashiyah Ibn `Abidin, an authoritative text of the Hanafi school, says that jihad is "fard 'ayn if the enemy has attacked part of the Islamic homeland. It thus becomes an obligation like salah [prayer] and fasting which cannot be abandoned."

"Would-be suicide bomber explains himself," by David Pugliese for Canwest News Service, March 20:

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Several months ago, Ghulam Rasol packed his bag and quietly slipped out of his village in northwest Pakistan.

He did not tell his parents, his brother or sister what he was doing or where he was going. They still don't know what happened to him.

Rasol decided to leave after being told by mullahs, who had come to his village outside Peshawar, that Afghanistan had been occupied by foreign troops. It was his duty as a good Muslim to kill those infidels, he was told.

The 20-year-old had never been out of Pakistan. He knows little about Afghanistan. Yet he decided it was his responsibility to his religion that he should wage jihad by becoming a suicide bomber.

Rasol acknowledges he has never met a foreigner. He can't tell the difference between a Canadian, U.S. or British soldier. Nor does it matter to him.

"I cannot distinguish between foreigners and we don't care from which country they are from," he explained through an interpreter. "Whoever is not Muslim are infidels for us." [...]

He decided to devote his life to jihad because the mullahs had told him it was his responsibility to do so. After that Rasol was taken to a nearby madrassa, or religious school, where he received his "education."

"They told us that in Afghanistan jihad is allowed, it is legal and they said: 'Go to Afghanistan and start jihad,' " he said. "They told us that we are Muslim and that in Afghanistan there are infidels, so it's our responsibility to go to Afghanistan and do jihad." [...]

He informed the mullahs at the madrassa he didn't want to kill fellow Muslims but he was willing to fight international troops. "I was ready to blow up myself among Westerns," he said. [...]

"It is not for a believer to kill a believer unless (it be) by mistake" -- Qur'an 4:92

In this article, David Pugliese does his best to portray Ghulam Rasol as an illiterate, manipulated naif, operating (no doubt) according to a twisted, hijacked version of Islam — a classic Misunderstander of the Religion of Peace™. In reality, however, what Ghulam Rasol did was entirely in accord with Islamic law. His going to Afghanistan to fight the Infidels was in line with the Islamic doctrine that jihad becomes obligatory upon all Muslims whenever a Muslim land is attacked. (Provocations by Muslims from that Muslim land don’t factor into this equation — if the non-Muslim enemy strikes back, that constitutes an invasion of Muslim land.) All the schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that when a non-Muslim force enters a Muslim land, jihad becomes the individual obligation of every Muslim (fard ‘ayn) rather than a collective obligation of the entire umma, from which one is released if others are taking it up (fard kifaya). Bulghah al-Salik li-Aqrab al-Masalik fi madhhab al-Imam Malik (“The Sufficiency of the Traveller on the Best Path in the School of Imam Malik,”) says this:

Jihad in the Path of Allah, to raise the word of Allah, is fard kifayah [obligatory on the community] once a year, so that if some perform it, the obligation falls from the rest. It becomes fard `ayn [obligatory on every Muslim individually], like salah and fasting, if the legitimate Muslim Imam declares it so, or if there is an attack by the enemy on an area of people.

The Hanafi, Maliki, and Shafi’i schools of Sunni jurisprudence further declare that jihad, once it is fard ‘ayn, is no different from prayer and fasting — in other words, to engage in warfare with non-Muslims in that case is a religious devotion that cannot lawfully be evaded. Hashiyah Ibn `Abidin, an authoritative text of the Hanafi school, says that jihad is “fard ‘ayn if the enemy has attacked part of the Islamic homeland. It thus becomes an obligation like salah [prayer] and fasting which cannot be abandoned.”

“Would-be suicide bomber explains himself,” by David Pugliese for Canwest News Service, March 20:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Several months ago, Ghulam Rasol packed his bag and quietly slipped out of his village in northwest Pakistan.He did not tell his parents, his brother or sister what he was doing or where he was going. They still don’t know what happened to him.

Rasol decided to leave after being told by mullahs, who had come to his village outside Peshawar, that Afghanistan had been occupied by foreign troops. It was his duty as a good Muslim to kill those infidels, he was told.

The 20-year-old had never been out of Pakistan. He knows little about Afghanistan. Yet he decided it was his responsibility to his religion that he should wage jihad by becoming a suicide bomber.

Rasol acknowledges he has never met a foreigner. He can’t tell the difference between a Canadian, U.S. or British soldier. Nor does it matter to him.

“I cannot distinguish between foreigners and we don’t care from which country they are from,” he explained through an interpreter. “Whoever is not Muslim are infidels for us.” [...]

He decided to devote his life to jihad because the mullahs had told him it was his responsibility to do so. After that Rasol was taken to a nearby madrassa, or religious school, where he received his “education.”

“They told us that in Afghanistan jihad is allowed, it is legal and they said: ‘Go to Afghanistan and start jihad,’ ” he said. “They told us that we are Muslim and that in Afghanistan there are infidels, so it’s our responsibility to go to Afghanistan and do jihad.” [...]

He informed the mullahs at the madrassa he didn’t want to kill fellow Muslims but he was willing to fight international troops. “I was ready to blow up myself among Westerns,” he said. [...]

“It is not for a believer to kill a believer unless (it be) by mistake” — Qur’an 4:92

Richard Cohen’s excellent article in the Washington Post on Wednesday March 2nd, offers several compelling reasons why Israel doesn’t deserve to be compared to South Africa under Apartheid, but I believe that it will be hard for many on the left who think of the State of Israel in that manner to ever understand this, unless they know the truth, that Israel isn’t and never has occupied any Palestinian Arab owned land.

In her excellent article “Palestine – The Big Lie”, Sharon Nader Sloan lays out the true history of Israel, going all the way back to ancient Israel, all of which clearly proves that:

1: There’s never existed a “Palestinian State”

2: Jerusalem was never the capital of any nation other than Israel.

In fact there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian. They’re just Arabs, like all the rest. They hate Jews because their religion tells them to, and because in a matter of a few short years after modern day Israel was created, the Jews took that barren and desolate land and turned it into a bountiful and beautiful Garden of Eden growing oranges the size of basketballs. Of course by doing this, right under the Arabs’ noses, and for all the world to see, they showed the Arabs up for what they are, a culture of backwards, bigoted and racist barbarians, whose only contribution to human civilization was the invention of Algebra. Thanks a lot for that BTW! (sarcasm mine)

Then, to add further insult to injury, when shortly after her founding, all of Israel’s close neighbors got together and attacked her, all of those brave and manly warriors were made to look like “girly-men” by the Israeli military, and it’s easy to imagine how that made them feel.

As Ms. Sloan points out, Palestine is a region, not a nation, in the same way that the Sahara is a region. Most of the Arabs who owned land there SOLD it to the Israelis. The Israelis paid what to them were enormous sums for their land, and they were happy to take it. Not one square inch was stolen from anyone.

And if the need for a “Palestinian State” were so great, why didn’t we hear anyone demanding a “Palestinian State” during the 19 years that Jordan occupied Jerusalem and the entire West Bank? Why did they ever reject the UN compromise of splitting the land controlled by the British up into a Jewish state and what would have been a Palestinian State” in the first place? Instead they decided to go to war to destroy Israel, after which that land legally became Israel’s by right of conquest!

So why should there be a Palestinian State”? The Arabs are free to live there, there are even Arab members of the Knesset. Are they saying that they’re entitled to their own state because they live there? If so, how would we feel if the huge number of Hispanics in California demanded their own state as well? And while we’re at it, how would the non-Hispanic Californians feel about the Hispanics, if they were constantly throwing rocks at them, and harassing them 24/7?

The idea that the Jews in Israel are occupying Arab lands is taken for granted by almost everyone, and like Global Warming, it’s just another BIG LIE!