A moral person would find each one of those laws either morally repugnant or to be a clear violation of our Constitution. You say, “Williams, you’re wrong this time. In 1859, in Ableman v. Booth, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 constitutional.” That court decision, as well as some others in our past, makes my case. Moral people can’t rely solely on the courts to establish what’s right or wrong. Slavery is immoral; therefore, any laws that support slavery are also immoral. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions (is) a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”

Soon, the Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of Obamacare, euphemistically titled the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. There is absolutely no constitutional authority for Congress to force any American to enter into a contract to buy any good or service. But if the court rules that Obamacare is constitutional, what should we do?

State governors and legislators ought to summon up the courage of our Founding Fathers in response to the 5th Congress’ Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798.

The unwillingness of authorities to put a stop to their organized disruptions of other people’s lives, their trespassing, vandalism and violence is a de facto suspension, if not repeal, of the 14th Amendment’s requirement that the government provide “equal protection of the laws” to all its citizens.

How did the “Occupy” movement acquire such immunity from the laws that the rest of us are expected to obey? Simply by shouting politically correct slogans and calling themselves representatives of the 99 percent against the 1 percent.

But just when did the 99 percent elect them as their representatives? If in fact 99 percent of the people in the country were like these “Occupy” mobs, we would not have a country. We would have anarchy.

Democracy does not mean mob rule. It means majority rule. If the “Occupy” movement, or any other mob, actually represents a majority, then they already have the votes to accomplish legally whatever they are trying to accomplish by illegal means.

Mob rule means imposing what the mob wants, regardless of what the majority of voters want. It is the antithesis of democracy.

In San Francisco, when the mob smashed the plate-glass window of a small business shop, the owner put up some plywood to replace the glass, and the mob wrote graffiti on his plywood. The consequences? None for the mob, but a citation for the shop owner for not removing the graffiti.

When trespassers blocking other people at the University of California, Davis refused to disperse, and locked their arms with one another to prevent the police from being able to physically remove them, the police finally resorted to pepper spray to break up this human logjam.

The result? The police have been strongly criticized for enforcing the law. Apparently pepper spray is unpleasant, and people who break the law are not supposed to have unpleasant things done to them.

Which is to say, we need to take the “enforcement” out of “law enforcement.”

In the following pamphlet, former Justice Department attorney and whistleblower J. Christian Adams makes the case for the impeachment of Eric Holder. To order your copy, click here.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

This outrage is actually codified. Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code states that a rapist may be exonerated of his crime if he marries his victim. In Morocco, rape is punishable by five to ten years in prison, but the sentence doubles to ten to twenty years if the victim is a minor. The law is designed to protect the honor of the family, which is considered stained when a woman loses her virginity prior to getting married. Marrying one’s rapist simultaneously “restores” that honor and exonerates the rapist of his crime.

Incredibly, the 26-year-old attacker initially refused to marry his victim, and only relented when faced with prosecution. Perhaps his reluctance was bolstered by the reality that, in many cases of reported sexual misconduct, Moroccan law puts the burden of proof on the victim. If a woman can’t prove she was attacked, she risks being prosecuted for debauchery.

Apparently Amina Filali, raped a year earlier at the age of 15, couldn’t cope with such “reasonableness.” On March 10th, she swallowed rat poison to escape her court-mandated fate. According to local media reports, the girl had complained to her mother that her husband/rapist “beat her repeatedly” during the five months they were married. It was further reported that her own family disowned her as a result of those complaints. As for the girl’s husband, witnesses told the media he became so outraged upon discovering she drank poison, that he dragged her down the street by her hair. She died shortly afterward.

Thankfully, this travesty has sparked outrage. Activists in Morocco have set up a Facebook group called “We are all Amina Filali.” It has almost 2,200 members. A petition has garnered more than 1,000 signatures, and a Twitter account was established using the hashtag #RIPAmina. Twitter contributer and women’s rights activist Abadila Maaelaynine encapsulated the essence of the protest. “Amina, 16, was triply violated, by her rapist, by tradition, and by Article 475 of the Moroccan law,” she wrote.

Abdelaziz Nouaydi, who runs the Adala Assocation for legal reform, explained that a judge can recommend marriage only in the case of agreement by the victim and both families. “It is not something that happens a great deal–it is very rare,” he said. But he also offered a cultural reality check, noting that the victim and/or her family will acquiesce to such an arrangement out of fear a woman will never be able to find a husband if it becomes known that she was raped.

Fouzia Assouli, president of Democratic League for Women’s Rights, countered that such arrangements are “a recurring phenomenon,” which is why activists have demanded a repeal of Article 475, a law that “allows the rapist to escape justice.” She further notes the peculiar aspects of such laws. “In Morocco, the law protects public morality but not the individual,” she contended, adding that legislation outlawing all forms of violence against women, including rape within marriage, has been stuck in legal limbo since 2006.

Editor’s note: To get David Horowitz’s perspective on the OWS movement, see his recent lead feature, Communism Reborn. For the whole story behind Occupy Wall Street and how this movement marks a new phase in the rebirth of the communist Left, read the new broadside by David Horowitz and John Perazzo, Occupy Wall Street: The Communist Movement Reborn. This essential pamphlet exposes the roots, leaders and hidden agendas of the radical movement and its war on capitalism and free societies.

On Wednesday morning, the Indiana state Senate passed right-to-work legislation, making Indiana the first Rust Belt state to take such a turn. The 28-22 vote in the Republican-controlled chamber occurred after two hours of debate in the General Assembly session. The bill was sent to Governor Mitch Daniels, who signed the legislation later that afternoon. The bill prohibits employers from entering into any agreement that would force employees to join a union or require them to pay dues, fees, assessment or any other charges to a labor organization. Indiana becomes the 23rd right-to-work state in the nation and the first to pass right-to-work legislation in ten years. “The only change will be a positive one,” the governor said in a statement released today by his office. “Indiana will improve still further its recently earned reputation as one of America’s best places to do business, and we will see more jobs and opportunity for our young people and for all those looking for a better life.” Could a new epoch reining in the excesses of the failed union era be in the offing?

Union members and their supporters were furious. Approximately 3000 people gathered inside the Statehouse chanted “Shame on you!” and “See you at the Super Bowl!” as the vote was announced. 3000-4000 other protesters gathered outside the building on the Statehouse lawn for a rally that spilled into the streets of Indianapolis. Approximately half the protesters then marched to the Indiana Convention Center, carrying posters with slogans such as ”Hands off My Union,” “Stop the War on Workers” and “Ditch Mitch.”

The bill’s passage followed last Wednesday’s 55-44 vote in the Republican-controlled House in favor of the bill, days after an identically worded bill previously passed the Senate. It then moved to the Senate’s Pensions and Labor Committee on Monday, where it passed in a 6-1 vote, despite Democrats being absent from the chamber. Democratic senators, who contended they were protesting, not boycotting, Monday’s hearing, characterized the session as a “mockery.” Senator Karen Tallian (D-Portage) contended that Republicans were trying to get the bill passed before the Super Bowl. Other Democrats said they were protesting because Republicans would not allow them to bring up amendments to the bill on Monday.

This is far from the first time Democrats have employed such boycotting tactics. Almost a year ago, House Democrats literally fled the state in order to prevent a quorum from being achieved to allow a vote on the same right-to-work legislation. All but two of 40 Democrats hid out in Illinois, leaving only 58 legislators present to conduct business. 67 House members are the minimum number required by Indiana law. Two Democrats remained behind to make any necessary motions and block Republicans from moving the legislation through in the absence of a quorum. The rest of the House Democrats remained out of the state for five weeks.

They continued using a similar quorum-avoidance tactic for weeks during the bill’s debating sessions, walking out of the chamber to hold private caucuses. The walkouts once again prevented the House from holding a vote. State Rep. Clyde Kersey (D-Terre Haute), one of 35 Democrats who used the maneuver, claimed it was aimed at keeping Republicans from avoiding national media scrutiny, or debating the bill without public or opposition input. “This is all part of the democratic process that we’re going through here,” Kersey contended.

Such contentions are absurd. The democratic process is not served by preventing a vote from occurring, nor is it true that any kind of scrutiny or input was being avoided, unless one considers daily protests staged by union supporters at the Statehouse–including one in which their chants could be heard as Gov. Daniels delivered his State of the State address earlier this month–to be irrelevant.

On January 18th, the issue reached another level when Republicans voted to fine Democratic state representatives $1,000 per day if they continued to boycott sessions to purposefully delay action on the right-to-work legislation. Two days later, Marion County temporarily blocked the fines of those Democrats who challenged the House’s authority to impose them. This marks the second time such a fight occurred. House Democrats are still fighting fines imposed on them for their five week sojourn in Illinois. That case is headed to the Indiana Supreme Court.

Yet after two legislative sessions during which Democrats, in addition to the boycotts, offered amendments aimed at changing the bill, and sought to put it before voters in a referendum, the reality of a substantial Republican majority in the House became impossible to overcome. It was a reality for which Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. Prior to the 2010 election, Democrats held a 52-48 majority in the House, and while they were outnumbered 33-17 in the Senate, that number was high enough to prevent Senate Republicans from achieving the two-thirds vote necessary to maintain a quorum without a single Democrat. The mid-term election was a bloodbath for Democrats. They are now outnumbered 60-40 in the House, and Senate Republicans got their two-thirds majority, holding a 36-14 edge. Thus, the bill’s passage was only a matter of time.

On September 30, 2011, a U.S. drone air strike killed Anwar Al-Awlaki, an American citizen with ties to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula whom the U.S. government had specifically targeted for death or capture. Awlaki was cut down in Yemen where he had been hiding and reportedly had been helping plan terrorist plots against the American homeland.

Awlaki was considered to be the most dangerous terrorist threatening the lives of American civilians following the death of Osama bin Laden. He turned on his fellow American citizens by calling for violent jihad to kill them and leading efforts to carry out his threats. For example, he had reportedly provided instructions to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man accused of attempting to detonate a bomb aboard a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day 2009. He was also said to have had a connection to the effort in 2010 to use explosives-laden printer cartridges to blow up cargo planes bound for the United States.

Yet despite the U.S. government’s expressed concern regarding Awlaki’s expanding Al-Qaeda operational role and his ability to communicate widely with an English-speaking audience to recruit more jihadists, the government had not publicly charged Awlaki with any crime, much less issued any warrant for his arrest. Instead, he was reportedly the first U.S. citizen added to a list of suspected terrorists the CIA was authorized to kill, without charge, trial, or conviction.

Civil libertarians, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, are aghast that any American citizen, no matter how dangerous, could be targeted for execution by his government without due process of law pursuant to the U.S. Constitution and international law. The ACLU, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, had even gone to court on behalf of Awlaki’s father to challenge the government’s decision to authorize the targeted killing of his son. They had sought an injunction prohibiting the government from intentionally killing Anwar Al-Awlaki “unless he presents a concrete, specific, and imminent threat to life or physical safety, and there are no means other than lethal force that could reasonably be employed to neutralize the threat.” They argued that where there are means other than lethal force that could reasonably be employed to neutralize any threat that Awlaki may have posed, his targeting for execution violates (1) Awlaki’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures and (2) his Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of life without due process of law.

The federal district court dismissed the ACLU case on the grounds that the plaintiff, Awlaki’s father, did not have legal standing to challenge the targeting of his son, and that the case raised “political questions” not subject to court review.

Last Friday, U.S. drones had the last word in sealing Al-Awlaki’s fate.

Did the president of the United States have the legal authority to order Awlaki’s killing without any supervening judicial oversight and review? After all, the courts have placed some restrictions on presidential assertion of wartime powers as commander-in-chief. Judicial limitations on the circumstances and conditions of detention of suspected terrorists provide an obvious example.

Awlaki’s actions would seem to match the definition of treason in Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”

However, this same section also contains restrictions on the proof necessary to convict someone of treason, requiring “the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.”

But it is a mistake to regard the military action that resulted in Awlaki’s death as punishment for the criminal act of treason, or for any other crime for that matter. It was a military action to kill an enemy jihad warrior before he had an opportunity to plan and implement more acts of war against Americans. As General George Patton said about warfare, “our task is to kill the enemy before we are killed.”

There are at least two reasons that, when considered together, would appear to strongly justify the president’s decision to authorize the killing of Awlaki in Yemen and the carrying out of that decision.

Boston-area man Rezwan Ferdaus, 26, has been arrested and indicted on charges of plotting a terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol Building and the Pentagon. Ferdaus, an American citizen — born in America, no less — is alleged to have intended to fly remote control airplanes, purchased from hobby shops, into the targets. It was his apparent hope that the remote control toys — the poor man’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, in this case — would carry explosive devices into the targets, setting them ablaze. As the buildings were evacuated, Ferdaus allegedly hoped to fire into the crowds with assault rifles and grenades.

Should these charges be proven in court, it will be a major victory for U.S. counter-terrorism efforts. But those very same efforts are under attack by those who see closet Islamophobes behind every wiretap and sting operation. The arrest of Ferdaus could prove to be not only a win for the United States in the war on terror, but for America’s peaceful Muslims.

From what is known so far, the detection and arrest of Ferdaus is a major achievement for U.S. law enforcement. Prior to his arrest on terrorism charges, Ferdaus’s only brush with the law had been for a high-school prank where he and friends cemented doors to their school shut. When he radicalized is not yet known. But, apparently after Ferdaus began seeking fellow jihadists online, the FBI began to monitor him.

Indeed, it has been reported that over the last several months, Ferdaus had dealings with FBI agents that he believed were Islamists set on attacking America. Ferdaus, a physics graduate, designed detonators that he provided the agents, and was told these had been smuggled to Iraq and used to kill U.S. soldiers, much to Ferdaus’s delight. Ferdaus then began to request weapons and supplies from his FBI “allies.” He received six AK-47s, several grenades and 25 lbs. of what he believed was C4 plastic explosive. It was then that he was arrested.

This is classic police work. A suspect is identified, contacted, and allowed to incriminate himself before an arrest is made and without public safety being threatened. This is how child pornographers, drug smugglers and gun runners are identified and caught. It’s how stolen goods are traced. Don’t let the modern tools fool you — cellphones, Internet cafes and social media notwithstanding, any 19^th-century detective worth their salt would recognize and applaud the kind of work that the FBI put into this case.

Such methods are still controversial for some, but absolutely necessary. Not every terrorism case will benefit from a major break such as the one that benefited Canadian police in 2006. In that case, a home-grown cell of Canadian Islamists were planning a series of bomb and gun attacks on the financial centre of Toronto and the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. A patriotic Canadian Muslim, who became aware of the plan and was appalled, gave up the group. A police sting operation very similar to the one that captured Ferdaus was initiated after the plot came to light, and the attack was averted.

[Editor's note: The following is the second installment of FrontPage's new series, "Union Gangsters." In this profile, award-winning investigative reporter Matthew Vadum unmasks Big Labor kingpin Richard Trumka, whose dirty agitation tactics have earned him the moniker "thug-in-chief." To read about union consigliere Craig Becker, click here.]

Richard Trumka is a thug’s thug, and a crafty one at that.

The AFL-CIO boss believes the end justifies the means. Breaking the law is acceptable if it advances the cause. Unions should “forget about the law; this is about more than that,” he said at the “Future of Unions” roundtable in Detroit on April 7.

Like many union leaders, occasionally the slippery Trumka pretends to like capitalism. He supports vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, not because he actually believes in them, but because his members work in industries that depend on their enforcement. Turning a blind eye to the manufacture of counterfeit machine parts could put union members out of work.

But unlike most high-profile leftists, Trumka doesn’t even make an effort to conceal his radicalism. “Being called a socialist is a step up for me,” he told Bloomberg News in June. In 1994, Trumka proudly accepted the Eugene Debs Award named after the five-time presidential candidate and labor organizer who founded the Socialist Party of America.

As an AFL-CIO executive, Trumka helped to create “Union Summer,” a program for training young people as organizers and political activists. Participants were made to recite a pledge called “Working Class Commitment” that included the Marxist idea “that we [union workers] produce the world’s wealth … [and] will end all oppression.”

Trumka, a mine worker-cum-lawyer, admits he got involved in “the labor movement not because I wanted to negotiate wages,” but “because I saw it as a vehicle to do massive social change to include lots of people.” As he’s climbed the ranks of AFL-CIO leadership, Trumka has moved away from his modest roots. His 2011 compensation package at AFL-CIO totaled $293,750, according to LM-2 disclosure forms on file with the U.S. Department of Labor. Trumka apparently lives in a four-bathroom house assessed at $747,650 in Rockville, MD, a suburb of Washington, D.C.

He helped to turn the AFL-CIO away from boosting wages and improving working conditions. Now, the labor federation focuses on recruiting government workers who benefit from higher tax rates and bigger government, a growing constituency within the Democratic Party. The federation also blackmails employers by generating adverse publicity, harassing investors, and linking arms with the media and radical activists.

While at the helm of the AFL-CIO, Trumka helped repeal a longtime rule that banned Communists and fellow-travelers from leadership positions in the organization and its unions. The move to open the previously patriotic union to subversives delighted the Communist Party USA. “The radical shift in both leadership and policy is a very positive, even historic change,” CPUSA National Chairman Gus Hall said in 1996.

Obama has announced the appointment of Azizah al-Hibri to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Al-Hibri (full name, Azizah Yahia Muhammad Toufiq al-Hibri) is a Muslim professor and the granddaughter of a Sheikh, who claims that the Koran inspired Thomas Jefferson and the Founders and that the Saudi criminal justice system is more moral than the American one because it accepts blood money from murderers.

Appointing a Muslim scholar to a commission on international religious freedom is only justifiable if that scholar recognized that much of the injustice in the world originates from Islamic law. But Al-Hibri has made her career whitewashing Islamic law and even presenting it as superior to American law. While she has been called a reformer, her call in 2001 for a return to the fundamentals echoes Wahhabi rhetoric. Rather than examining the incompatibilities of Islamic law and the modern world, and urging the appropriate adjustments, as genuine reformers have done, Al-Hibri instead builds myths that uphold the Islamist agenda.

According to Al-Hibri, “Islamic fiqh is deeper and better than Western codes of law”. She favorably compares Saudi Arabia’s willingness to accept blood money bribes to excuse a murder, to the “impersonal and powerful” American justice system. Al-Hibri is often billed as a Muslim feminist, but she is equally hypocritical on women’s rights. Rather than conceding that Islamic law discriminates against women, she whitewashes its discriminatory treatment of women, arguing that guardianship is meant to protect “inexperienced women”.

Rather than trying to bring Islam in line with the modern world, Azizah Al-Hibri pushes for the modern world to be brought in line with Islam. Rather than reforming Islam, it is America that she would like to reform to Islamic standards. Placing a woman who believes that American law is inferior to that of the Koran on an American commission to promote international religious freedom perverts the purpose of the commission and promotes religious tyranny instead.

Given a forum to call for reform, Al-Hibri unerringly insists that there is nothing to reform. At the UN, Al-Hibri expressed outrage that the Koran, which “established acceptance of others, now needed to be defended” and insisted that Islam “guaranteed freedom of thought”. Listening to her defend Mohammed’s tyranny as an early form of democracy at the UN is a reminder of the era when Soviet representatives to the UN angrily defended their record on human rights and insisted that there is no freedom outside of Communism.

In Al-Hibri’s distorted history, the wave of genocides and conquests that turned the multicultural Middle-East into a desert of brutality governed by minor variations of Islamic ideology, was actually a wave of enlightenment. The massacres of the region’s Jews and the purge of all other religions from the area never occurred in Al-Habri’s history book. Revisionist history of this kind would be dangerous even if it were not coming from a woman in a position to influence opinion leaders.

The twin approaches of the Islamist narrative may be described as the Caliph Omar bridge. When the Muslim armies of the Caliph reached the great Library of Alexandria, he decreed that it should be burned, for if the library’s scrolls held the same ideas as the Koran they were redundant, and if they opposed the Koran, they were heretical.

While some Islamists attack the United States Constitution as a heretical document and Western Civilization as worthless– others more cleverly represent the Constitution as an inferior version of the Koran and Western Civilization as derivative of Islamic civilization. Either way they must burn along with the Library of Alexandria. But the second approach is more seductive. Rather than launching a direct attack, it seeks to construct a bridge that connects Islam and the West. But the structure of the bridge is only a more insidious form of attack.

These bridge builders don’t come bearing a torch, rather an argument that since American law is derived from Islam, it must ‘revert’ to the higher standards of Islamic law. By contrasting the reality of American law with an ideal version of Islamic law that does not exist anywhere in the world, they manage to make the system that protects human rights seem shabby, while the system that represses women and minorities appears noble and righteous. That is the kind of revisionist history that Al-Hibri traffics in, creating a noble Islamic creed contrasted with a flawed American system.

One of the shameful hallmarks of a dictatorship is the restriction of movement — telling citizens or groups they cannot travel or relocate freely.

We are now witnessing a shocking example of that dictatorial practice at the hands of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which is insisting that a major U.S. employer may not move some of its operations from one state to another because to do so might somehow violate workers’ rights.

The case in point involves famed aircraft manufacturer, Boeing, which is building a second assembly line for its new 787 jetliners in South Carolina. That’s a no-no, says the NLRB.

Huh? A federal government agency which is supposed to monitor relations between employers and their employees to insure fairness is taking into its hands the power to say which manufacturer may or may not relocate its facilities on what it sees as the basis of good business practice.

Boeing, whose aircraft have helped secure the liberty and safety of Americans in countless wars, wants to move some of its facilities from the state of Washington to South Carolina which happens to have a so-called right-to-work law, which permits employees of companies with facilities in the state to choose whether or not to join a union.

Big labor hates that kind of law. Big labor insists that employees, like slaves, must either be forced to join a union or have dues extracted from their paychecks, even if they are unwilling to part with a segment of their pay used to finance Union’s leftist political activities which they often oppose.

The NLRB has filed a complaint against Boeing, a firm headquartered in Chicago, for daring to choose where they may locate one of their plants. In this case, Boeing is being told it cannot make the move on the specious grounds that the move constitutes an unfair labor practice.

The unfair labor practice? South Carolina has a state right-to-work law, which ensures employees the right to either join a union or not to join a union as they see fit. Imagine that, a law that allows a worker to choose whether or not to join a union!

That NLRB decision has drawn fire from South Carolina’s gutsy Gov. Nikki Haley, who defiantly told the agency, “We absolutely will not allow them to bully our businesses or mess with our employees. As governor, I absolutely will not stand for it.”

As Teddy Roosevelt would have said, “Bully for her.”

Also angry is U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who rightly said the NLRB’s request for a court order that would force Boeing to build the assembly line in Washington shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Intra-Palestinian politics remain on a steady course.  Following a carefully-choreographed rapprochement with Hamas, the more “moderate” Fatah forces, still trained and funded by millions of U.S. tax dollars, will resume their ritualized terror attacks against Israel. More or less simultaneously, Hamas will do the same. In Lebanon, Shiite Hezbollah, steadily mentored by Iran, and, oddly allied with Sunni Hamas, has already begun active operational preparations, with Syrian collaboration, for the next war.

Ironically, however, Israel’s required efforts to defend its citizens will predictably be met with a sanctimonious barrage of assorted criticisms. Although international law allows any such imperiled state to use necessary force preemptively, Israel’s indispensable efforts to stave off existential harms will be harshly condemned throughout the “international community.”

Humanitarian international law, or the law of war,  requires that every use of force by an army or by an insurgent group meet the test of “proportionality.” Drawn from the core legal principle that “the means that can be used to injure an enemy are not unlimited,” proportionality stipulates, among other things, that every resort to armed force be limited to what is necessary for meeting military objectives. This  principle of both codified and customary international law applies to all judgments of military advantage, and also to all planned reprisals.

Proper determinations of proportionality need not be made in a geopolitical vacuum. Instead, these legal decisions may always take into consideration the extent to which an  adversary has committed prior or ongoing violations of the law of war. In the frequently interrelated examples of Hamas/Islamic Jihad/Fatah terrorists in Gaza, and the Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, there is ample evidence that all of these belligerents have been guilty of repeated “perfidy.”

In law, deception can be acceptable in armed conflict, but the Hague Regulations expressly disallow the placement of military assets or military personnel in any heavily populated civilian areas. Further prohibition of perfidy can be found at Protocol I of 1977, additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. These rules are also binding on the basis of an equally authoritative customary international law.

Perfidy represents a very serious violation of the law of war, one that is even identified as a “grave breach” at Article 147 of Geneva Convention No. IV. The legal effect of perfidy committed by Palestinian or Hezbollah terrorists, especially their recurrent resort to “human shields,” is to immunize Israel from legal responsibility for any inadvertent counter-terrorist harms done to Arab civilians. But even if Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Fatah and Hezbollah have not always engaged in altogether deliberate violations, any terrorist-created links between civilians and insurgent warfare still bestowed upon Israel a fully legal justification for military self-defense.

This is not to suggest that Israel should now have a jurisprudential carte blanche in its necessary applications of armed force, but only that the reasonableness of these applications always be appraised in the context of  identifiable enemy perfidy.

Viewed against the historical background of extensive and unapologetic terrorist perfidy in both Gaza and Lebanon, Israel has been innocent of any prior “disproportionality.”  All combatants, including all insurgents in Gaza and Lebanon, are bound to comply with the law of war of international law. This important requirement derives not only from what is known as the “Martens Clause,” a binding paragraph which makes its first appearance in the Preamble to the 1899 Hague Convention No. II on land warfare, but additionally from Article 3, common to the four Geneva Conventions of August 12,1949.   It is also found at the two Protocols to these Conventions.

The photographs of Osama bin Laden’s dead body should be released for public scrutiny. The President’s decision to withhold photographs of Bin Laden’s dead body is only the last in a series of terrible mistakes in the handling of the dead terrorist’s body.  Although there should be no doubt that Bin Laden is actually dead, there are grave doubts as to the circumstances surrounding his death.  Was he shot in cold blood?  Was he standing or lying down when he was shot?  Was he shot in the back or in the front?  Were his hands raised in surrender?  Was he actively resisting?

Many of these doubts could have been resolved if Bin Laden’s body had been subjected to the usual investigatory techniques routinely employed in homicide cases.  His body should have been subjected to an autopsy, to forensic testing by an experienced medical examiner, to extensive photographing of entrance and exit wounds, to paraffin testing for gun powder residue, and to other such forensic examination.

Burying his body at sea constituted the willful destruction of relevant evidence, which naturally gives rise to suspicions that there was something to hide.  I fully credit the administration’s explanation that the reason for the hasty burial at sea was the desire not to offend religious Muslims and not to create a shrine to a dead mass murderer.  I believe that the President acted properly in ordering the targeted assassination of the world’s most culpable and dangerous terrorist and that our armed forces complied with the law in killing Bin Laden.  But many reasonable people around the world will wonder whether the decision to destroy the best evidence may also have been based on a desire to suppress the whole truth.

In my nearly half century of representing defendants charged with homicide, I have come to know that the best evidence of how a person died comes from the body of the deceased.  Dead bodies often talk more loudly, clearly and unambiguously than live witnesses.  Bin Laden’s body should have been preserved as long as necessary to gather all relevant evidence, notwithstanding the requirements of Sharia Law.  When a Muslim or a Jew is the victim of a homicide in the United States, religious considerations do not trump civil requirements.  Their bodies are generally sent to the medical examiner for thorough examination.  Notwithstanding religious prohibitions, autopsies are performed and organs removed for testing.  No special exception should have been made for Bin Laden’s body.

Should an academic lecture on Sharia (Islamic law) become a platform for promoting fear of “Islamophobia”? This is exactly what occurred on April 14, 2011, when the University of California, Los Angeles, held the third and final lecture from Khaled Abou El Fadl—Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor in Islamic Law and chair of the Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program at UCLA—in the series, “Sharia Watch: AView from the Inside.” The lecture was cosponsored by UCLA’s School of Law, Center for Near Eastern Studies, Journal for Islamic and Near Eastern Law, and Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program.

The receptive audience of approximately 30 people consisted mostly of members of the local Muslim community and graduate students from UCLA’s Near Eastern Languages and Cultures Department.

In her introductory remarks, UCLA law professor Asli Bali explained that the aim of the series was, “to better understand Sharia, as there is a lot of misinformation on what it is in the West.” But, as in previous lectures, only 15 minutes of the hour-long lecture were actually devoted to Sharia; the bulk of the lecture focused on Islamophobia in America and the West.

Abou El Fadl claimed that the phenomenon of Islamophobia is due to racism and that it originated in medieval Europe where, as he put it, “Jews and Muslims were repeatedly constructed in European literature as ‘folkloric monsters.’” This is incorrect, for both race and ethnicity were alien ideas in medieval Europe. In fact, the terms “race” and “racism” appeared for the first time in European belle-letters in the eighteenth century.

Continuing the anti-Western diatribe, Abou El Fadl later added that, “the construction of the racial and ethnic alien stems from the West’s ethnocentrism.” Of Islamic supremacy, he had nothing to say.

He even blamed the West for the very concept he was espousing:

The term ‘Islamophobia’ is inadequate as it is limited. Discourse on Islam has a long history but the word itself, Islam, is problematic for it is constructed and reconstructed by the West.

Without citing a single piece of evidence—and in contradiction to FBI statistics on anti-religious hate crimes—Abou El Fadl alleged that in the U.S., “every single week there are new victims of Islamophobia.”

Employing a false correlation popular among those advocating the view of Muslims as victims, Abou El Fadl insisted that Islamophobia is similar to anti-Semitism:

Those crazy right wing nuts who keep on telling the public that Muslims want to impose Sharia on Americans have in common[sic] with anti-Semites who to this day propel the ideas of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Betraying the disingenuousness of this comparison, Abou El Fadl and Basli later circulated a December 2010 Huffington Post article by leftist journalist Max Blumenthal alleging an “Islamophobic crusade” on the part of, among others, “right wing ultra-Zionists” and the “pro-Israel lobby.” Such rhetoric, paradoxically, hearkens back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was, they asserted, “great literature.”

Reprinted from YnetNews.com.

The flurry of international reactions to the killing of Osama bin Laden by the American army provides Israel with a great opportunity to demonstrate the double standards applied against it by so many in the Western world and elsewhere. All one has to do is compare the reactions of major institutions and leaders with those after the death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. This leader of the Hamas terrorist organization was killed by Israel in 2004. He was directly responsible for many lethal attacks on Israeli civilians including suicide bombings.

On Monday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters that “the death of Osama bin Laden, announced by President (Barack) Obama last night, is a watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism.”

Yet after the killing of Sheikh Yassin, then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said “I do condemn the targeted assassination of Sheikh Yassin and the others who died with him. Such actions are not only contrary to international law, but they do not do anything to help the search for a peaceful solution.”

The now-defunct UN Commission on Human Rights condemned “the tragic death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in contravention of the Hague Convention IV of 1907.” At the Security Council, the US had to use its veto power to prevent condemnation of Israel.

After the bin Laden killing, the leaders of the European Council and European Commission stated that his death made the world a safer place and showed that terrorist attacks do not remain unpunished. Following the Yassin killing, then-EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana said, “This type of action does not contribute at all to create the conditions of peace. This is very, very bad news for the peace process. The policy of the European Union has been consistently condemnation of extra-judicial killing.”British Prime Minister David Cameron congratulated President Obama on the success of the bin Laden assassination. Cameron considered it a massive step forward in the fight against extremist terrorism. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair also welcomed bin Laden’s demise.

Reprinted from Ynetnews.com.

Only one nation on this planet is regarded as virtually having no civilians: Israel. Back in the 1970s already, international law expert Yoram Dinstein argued that according to UN definitions, terrorism and incitement against Israelis constitutes genocide.

David Ben-Gurion’s famous statement “Oom, Shmoom,” meaning “The UN – who cares?” summed up Israel’s indifference to world opinion in the past. It has been a failed policy as Israel’s enemies are now using all global means at their disposal to undermine the Jewish State.

In a few days, Israel will mark Holocaust Commemoration Day. There is no better time to support the historical battle just initiated by the Hebrew University-Hadassah Centre for Violence and Genocide Prevention and backed by former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.

The campaign takes aim at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Islamic religious leaders and the media for “inciting to commit genocide” and fomenting lethal anti-Jewishness reminiscent of the 1930s. The Jews are demonized using accusations of conspiracy and thirst for blood or power.

The Jews are described as sub-humans by expressions like “pig,” “cancer,” “filth”, “microbes” or “vermin”; hate material such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or school maps without Israel are being disseminated; the Jewish right to self-determination is denied, by claiming that Israel’s existence is “racist” and akin to “apartheid”; comparisons are drawn between Israeli policy and the Nazis; world Jewry is being held responsible, collectively for the actions of Israel.

The legal basis for this anti-genocide campaign is the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, ratified on January 12, 1951 by 138 states including Iran. At this time, Tehran calls for Israel’s destruction and dehumanization, denies the Holocaust denial and incites to commit mass murder.

An upcoming example of incitement is the UN’s “Durban III” conference in September 2011. Israel will be declared an “apartheid” and “criminal” state, and the Jews will be slammed as inveterate racists.

The first Durban conference was held in South Africa in 2001, where well-known NGOs such as Amnesty International and Save the Children attached their names to the racist parade. NGOs distributed leaflets with a portrait of Hitler and the inscription: “What if Hitler had won? There would be no Israel, and no Palestinian bloodshed.” Three months later the second Intifada broke out, with 1,500 Jewish civilians subsequently slaughtered in terror attacks.

Iran is not unique in inciting a new Jewish bloodbath. Another example of incitement is the fatwa issued by Muslim Brotherhood’s guru, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, permitting the killing of Jewish fetuses, on the logic that when Jews grow up they might join the Israeli army.

In a case that tests the limits of the First Amendment, controversial pastor Terry Jones, who runs the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, and fellow pastor Wayne Sapp, were arrested and jailed last Friday by Dearborn, Michigan police after refusing to post a one dollar “peace bond” ordered by District Judge Mark Somers. The judge’s order came after a six-person jury ruled that both men would “breach the peace” if they held a protest outside the Islamic Center of America. Jones vowed to file a lawsuit against prosecutors and promised to return for a rally in Dearborn next Friday at 5 p.m.

After three hours of deliberation, the jury sided with prosecutors who had sought a $25,000 bond from the preacher and his associate, claiming their protest outside the mosque would likely start a riot. Prosecutors also told both men they could be jailed for up to three years if they declined to pay the $1 peace bond in protest. “I strongly voice my disagreement with the ruling,” said Sapp, when asked by Somers if he had any comment. “The peace bond is to prohibit free speech.” Both men subsequently paid the bond and were released.

But Sapp has a point. The “peace bond” is the result of a law enacted in 1927 which “may require a person to give security to keep the peace.” Yet this particular application of it appears to be somewhat novel, as the law has been used primarily in domestic violence cases to protect spouses from violent partners. Charlie Langton, lawyer and WJBK Fox 2 legal analyst, was taken aback by the ruling. “Nobody expected this,” he said. “It is prior restraint, but the judge followed the letter of the law. It’s purely legal because it’s never been challenged. That is not right. It’s an old law that I don’t think applies to this case. I think they’ll have to appeal it.”

Yet this was not the most controversial part of Judge Somers’ ruling. In a move that reportedly roiled the courtroom, he also ordered both men to stay away from the Dearborn mosque property — and the area surrounding it — for three years. In a bizarre addendum, Somers said the order would remain in effect, unless mosque leaders asked him to rescind it in the future.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had unsuccessfully petitioned the state of Michigan to throw the case out, contending that Dearborn officials had violated Jones’s free speech protections, even as ACLU spokeswoman Rana Elmir was upset that the trial had given unwarranted publicity to a “divisive and fringe figure” by banning his demonstration. “We vehemently disagree with Mr. Jones and his cohorts. However, this is a complete abuse of the court process and all those involved should be ashamed,” she said. ”I believe that Rev. Jones came to Dearborn for his 15 minutes of fame and the judge and prosecutors have now effectively given him hours of that…In a free society no one should be thrown in jail for speech, even as distasteful and offensive as Mr. Jones is,” she added.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy disagreed: “These proceedings were solely about public safety,” she said in a statement.

“This was never about prohibiting free speech or fearing rioting, but about a situation that could potentially place the public in danger in Dearborn.”

The case arose from a request by Terry Jones for a permit to demonstrate on public property across the street from the Islamic Center on Good Friday. Dearborn police denied the request claiming that that particular area, where four churches and the mosque are located, would be crowded with thousands of worshippers on that day, and that protecting Jones and his followers from violence would cost $46,000. Dearborn Mayor John “Jack” O’Reilly Jr. contended that Jones’s demonstration would create traffic problems, and in an open letter to Jones published last Wednesday, ridiculed Jones’s contention that Sharia Law had any influence in Dearborn, and urged the preacher to stage his protest in one of the city’s ”free speech zones.”

Free speech zones are the result of a 1989 Dearborn ordinance requiring permits for demonstrations to be secured 30 days in advance. In 2003, the ACLU sued the city with regard to that limitation, when a protest against Israel was held in response to their soldiers entering the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin. In 2005, the federal Court of Appeals sided with the ACLU, and in 2008 the law was changed leading to the free speech zones. Former Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga contends that the law may give the city some leeway, but that it ”cannot pigeonhole someone into a free speech zone if they have a valid reason for wanting to conduct speech in a different public place.” The Mayor stood by the law. ”Nothing is static and the Constitution is not static either–it’s evolved,” he said.

In the new modern, moderate, secular, democratic Egypt of the Arab Spring, Muslims in Qena are enraged and protesting because a Christian governor has been appointed for them. It was yet another indication that the Egypt that will emerge from this season of revolution and upheaval is much more likely to be an Islamic state than a secular democracy, no matter how much the mainstream media fantasizes about the latter.

The protests have been vehement, if not violent. Reuters reported Sunday that “thousands rallied outside the governor’s office in Qena and prevented employees from entering, blocked highways leading to the town and sat on a railway line into the province demanding that the appointment of Emad Mikhail be reversed.” A local resident added: “They started out by camping at the local government’s office. Then they set up a tent on the railroad tracks. They also tried to block the road and stopped buses to separate men and women passengers.” And “tensions were so high that the local Christian residents had to stay inside and couldn’t go to church to celebrate Palm Sunday.”

Reuters suggested that the protesters were angry about government corruption, claiming  that the protesters were outraged because the last Christian governor in the area “left a negative impression of Christian officials,” but AP let the cat out of the bag on Monday when it noted that “many” of the protesters were “from the ultraconservative Salafi trend of Islam.”

For the mainstream media, one is “ultraconservative” for adhering to Islamic law and wanting to impose it on others, and likewise “ultraconservative” for resisting the imposition of that law. But anyway, why would “ultraconservative” Islamic supremacists be outraged over a Christian governor? Because Islamic law forbids non-Muslims to hold authority over Muslims. This is in accord with the Qur’anic command that Muslims fight the People of the Book – the Qur’an’s term for primarily Jews and Christians, until they “feel themselves subdued” (9:29).