My Visit to Egypt

By Jesse Petrilla

I have recently returned to the United States from Egypt where I was on a fact-finding mission to see what life is like for non-Muslims who live under Islam. What I saw was a dire situation of oppression and discrimination that many in America and the West have all but ignored.

I went to Egypt because I wanted to learn what life would be like if our enemies and their allies succeeded in getting their way. What I saw was an example of the harsh life in store for future American generations in Islamic-dominated regions of the U.S. if we do not work to bring attention to Islamic oppression now at this critical time in history.

My journey began on an EgyptAir flight out of JFK. I was a bit surprised, to say the least, when the in-flight video came on prior to departure and instead of the usual safety video, a picture of a mosque flickered on and a deep-toned recorded voice came on reciting Islamic prayers out of the Koran. I've flown on Israeli airline El Al a number of times as well as hundreds of other global and U.S. airline companies, and I have never experienced a Christian prayer or a Jewish prayer on a flight, and could only imagine the reaction of Americans if an airline carrier were to try. Regardless of the policies and logic of other airlines, apparently a Muslim-owned airline feels it fit to assume that all its passengers desire to hear a Muslim prayer, regardless of their faith. The safety video followed and my journey had begun. I was on my way to Cairo and Alexandria to get a feeling of what life was like there for non-Muslims.

The first day, I visited old Cairo. Walking through the alleyways, I visited the many ancient churches there. As I rounded a corner I came upon an old synagogue. Excited to find and learn the experiences of Jews who live there, I entered only to be greatly disappointed and utterly disgusted when I saw the synagogue was filled with hijab-clad Muslim women selling trinkets and postcards inside. It's a museum that I can only assume the government uses to show its "tolerance." I overheard the tour guides speaking of how there "were once Jews here," and I was told that there is only one other synagogue in the city. It makes you wonder if someday there will be regions of America with a museum of the last or second to last synagogue or church. Irritatingly, the Egyptian police refuse to allow anyone to take any photos or video at all of the synagogue either inside or out, and they threatened to take my camera if I questioned their rule.

As I continued through the streets, the afternoon call to prayer began to broadcast from a local mosque, then another mosque, then a third, until the deafening sound of thousands of loudspeakers from mosques all over the city pierced through the air with the call of "Allah akbar" followed by Koranic verses.

I recalled how in several American cities including Dearborn, Michigan, sound ordinances have begun to be overturned to allow this to occur in America. I made my way to meet with a friend who is an activist for human rights in Egypt. He showed me the Egyptian constitution which in article II states that Sharia (Islamic) law shall be "the principal source of legislation.". This clause goes for everyone in the nation regardless of faith. My friend told me the stories and showed me photos of young Christian girls who had been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam, and threatened with death, and their families threatened if they ever convert back. After several days in Cairo, my journey continued to Alexandria where I would visit several churches which had been attacked in recent years.

On the train to Alexandria, we passed through rural villages where I noticed vast amounts of hay on the roofs of many village homes. Our guide told us that the livestock sleep in the house with the people at night. Jokingly I asked if the women sleep out in the stable, but I didn't receive a definitive answer on that one. It was about this time that I realized the majority of the men everywhere I went had a small round bruise on their forehead reminiscent of something out of the book of Revelation. My guide told me that it was from hitting their head on the floor when praying. He also told me that in Egypt specifically, and perhaps elsewhere, some men heat up a metal spoon in a fire and stick it on their forehead to accentuate the bruise. It seems you aren't cool unless you have the mark.

As we stepped off the train in Alexandria, a police officer approached and told my Egyptian Coptic friend that he did not have a license to be my guide, desiring a bribe before he would leave us alone. This had not been the first time in the trip that a cop came up looking for money. It seemed every time I took out my camera, a police officer would show up to tell me I couldn't take any pictures and I would have to pay him a nominal fine. Usually the officer would not be looking for a bribe of more than ten or twenty dollars, and thankfully our guide was able to talk officers out of it the majority of the time.

We went to a local hotel where I turned on the television to see the Statue of Liberty in flames. I changed the channel only to see a video clip of a small child crying with her arms in the air, spliced in with images of U.S. soldiers. The video cut to a bleeding boy lying on the ground -- an obvious piece of anti-American propaganda. Interestingly enough, to the right of the boy in the video you could see a U.S. medic helping the injured child, no doubt hurt by Jihadist terrorists, but you certainly wouldn't know that from the theme of the video.

Our first stop in Alexandria was the Church of St. George, the site of a brutal attack in 2005 where a Muslim in his early 20s entered as a prayer service was finishing. He shouted "Allah akbar" and stabbed a nun in the chest with a knife. Several days after the stabbing, an angry Muslim mob also attacked the church, brandishing sticks and throwing rocks at the Christians. Numerous cars and Christian-owned businesses in the area were torched, and in the end, three people were dead from the violence, all of it being sparked by unsubstantiated reports about a theatrical production that occurred at the church which was rumored to have offended Islam.

I attended a prayer service there, and every 15 seconds over loudspeakers aimed at the church from the mosque next door, the Muslims were yelling at the Christians. "Allah akbar! Allah akbar!" they would yell among other things in an attempt to disrupt the prayer. This was entirely outside of the five daily calls to prayer which come over the same loudspeaker. It was intimidation designed entirely to disrupt Christian prayer, and stopped as soon as everyone left after the service was over. I took a short video of the incident, and posted it on YouTube.

My next stop was the Church of All Saints. When I arrived, I saw a large mosque directly across the street and another on the other block. This was the same case with the previous church I had visited, and my guide explained that as soon as they built the church, mosques went up all around it. Yet today it has become nearly impossible to get a permit in the country to construct a new church anywhere. The Church of All Saints was another site of an attack which occurred in 2006 where a Jihadist entered and began stabbing church-goers while yelling the familiar phrase "Allah akbar". In all, he attacked three churches that day, critically wounding many and killing a 78-year-old man. Yet the government dismissed him as only an isolated mentally ill madman.

I met with many people during my trip, and I learned a great deal about what it is like to live as a minority under Islam. I spoke with a priest who told me how he can see the younger generation of Christians there becoming more and more Islamized. I spoke with a man who told me how his young Christian children are taught in public schools there that they are going to hell if they do not become Muslims. I saw brutal intimidation and oppression, and a life dictated by Islamic law that many Americans don't realize but are slowly beginning to see. Before we left, our guide showed us his ID card which had a glaring number 2 in the corner. He told me that Christians are required to have that number on their IDs. I asked if Muslims were required to have a number as well. "Yes," he responded. "Number 1."

In my visit to Egypt I saw a place rampant with police brutality and corruption, where non-Muslims are second-class citizens at best, who are brutally victimized on a daily basis. All this in a nation which is a popular U.S. tourist spot, and has been the recipient of American aid in excess of $28 billion in the last three decades.

Jesse Petrilla

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Jesse Petrilla is the founder of The United American Committee (UAC), a federation of concerned Americans promoting awareness of threats to Homeland Security, primarily focusing on Islamic extremism in America.

A note on crowded places

By Joseph M. Hochstein

The canard that Gaza is the most crowded place on earth continues to circulate.

The UK politician George Galloway wrote in The Glasgow Record last month that the Gaza Strip is "the most densely populated piece of earth on the planet." Galloway wrote that 1.5 million Palestinians live there.

Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist currently teaching at Princeton, wrote March 26 that Gaza is "one of the most densely populated places on earth, with 3,823 people per square kilometre." Kuttab's figure is in line with recent Gaza population estimates of 1.4 million.

If Galloway's estimate of 1.5 million Gaza population is correct, this is almost 4,200 people per square kilometer. The Central Intelligence Agency projects that the Gaza population will reach 1,537,269 in July. This would bring the density to 4,270 people per square kilometer.

Both Singapore and Hong Kong have more than 6,000 people per square kilometer. Tel Aviv has more than 7,000 people per square kilometer. If you count the suburbs of Tel Aviv, the metropolitan area with its population of 2.3 million has a density of more than 5,000 people per square kilometer, which is considerably more crowded than the Gaza Strip as reckoned by Galloway or Kuttab or the CIA.

Selected estimates of population density:

Mumbai
27,209 people/sq km
http://www.mcgm.gov.in/

Kolkata
24,000 people/sq km
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkata

Tel Aviv
7,445 people/sq km
(385,000 people, 51.8 sq km)

Hong Kong
6,352 people/sq km

http://www.gov.hk/en/bout/abouthk/factsheets/docs/population.pdf

Singapore
6,252 people/sq km

http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/keyind.html

London
5,100 people/sq km

Tel Aviv metro area including suburbs
5,050 people/sq km
(2.3 million people, 453 sq km)

Moscow
4,900 people/sq km

Tokyo/Yokahama
4,750 people/sq km

Warsaw
4,300 people/sq km

Gaza Strip per CIA projection
4,270 people/sq km
(1,537,269 population July 2008, 360 sq km)

Gaza Strip per George Galloway

4,167 people/sq km
(1.5 million people, 360 sq km)

Gaza Strip per Daoud Kuttab

The numbers for London, Tel Aviv metro area, Moscow, Tokyo/Yokohama and Warsaw are from the City Mayors site

http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html

Joseph M. Hochstein

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Seeds of Hate.

by Carlos

April 18, 2008 - Everybody wants peace in the Middle East. But little attention is being given to whether a cultural foundation exists that can sustain peace. A peace on paper alone is worse than worthless. It will be destined to explode into an even worse conflagration - unless the seeds of hate that undermine peace are recognized and addressed now.

One of the greatest obstacles to peace, which has not received sufficient attention in the world press, is the Palestinian program of institutionalized, government-supported incitement whose purpose is to dehumanize Jews and make the hatred of Jews and the desire to kill them a virtue. We have already seen this in Palestinian TV programming for children: Farfur Mouse and Nahoul Bee. Questionable actions on either side can be discontinued and changed, but when a child's mind is poisoned practically since the day it is born, changing that is next to impossible.

While Israeli society has its problems, it has nothing remotely comparable to the officially sanctioned ethnic and religious hatred that pervades every level of Palestinian culture. The mainstream media have largely ignored this, but Steven Erlanger of the New York Times has recently issued a groundbreaking report.

Erlanger states that in the Katib Wilayat mosque in Gaza, in his Friday sermon, the imam said this:

Jews are a people who cannot be trusted. They have been traitors to all agreements - go back to history. Their fate is their vanishing. Look what they are doing to us.

At another Gaza mosque, the Al Omari mosque, the imam calls Jews "the brothers of apes and pigs."

The Hamas television station, al-Aksa, is another active channel for Jew hatred. It praises suicide bombing and encourages a jihad until Palestine (whose maps contain Israel) is liberated from the Jews.

Palestinian television showers praise on terrorists who launch rockets into Israeli cities. Even children's programs encourage "martyrdom" and teach the "perfidy of the Jews" as well as the need to reclaim all of Palestine, Israel included, from the hated Jews. And Friday sermons from mosques proclaim how Jews have been the enemies of Muslims since the time of Muhammad.

Radwan Abu Ayyash, deputy minister of culture in Ramallah, ran the Palestinian Broadcasting Company until 2005 when Hamas was elected. He is free in his criticism of those who followed him. He accuses Hamas of "us[ing] religious language to motivate simple people for political as well as religious goals" and he calls much of what Hamas TV broadcasts "disgusting and unprofessional." He added that "what is not fine is to build up children with a culture of hatred, of closed minds, a culture of sickness."

The comments of Radwan Abu Ayyash are clearly self-serving and politically motivated, because his own record is no better than what he criticizes. Here are some comments from a sermon broadcast on Palestinian Authority Television on March 2004, before the change in the Palestinian administration and while he was still the boss:

The Jews today - there is no doubt - are avenging their ancient forefathers, the sons of apes and pigs. Some of the extremist Jews are demanding today their property in Al-Madina. There are even those who have requested to be buried at the southern edge of Palestine. When the one-eyed Dayan was on his deathbed, he instructed that he be buried at the southern edge of Palestine. When asked why, he said, "So that I will be close to Al-Madina." This is the extremist tendency of the Jews. They are the extremists, they are the terrorists. They deserve death, and we deserve life, because we are the people of Truth.… We will fight them with Allah's help.

This example is far from unique, and others like this and worse are easy to find. So where was Radwan Abu Ayyash while this was being broadcast under his direction? Was a "culture of hatred" OK as long as he was the one in charge? It is a mistake to think that this incitement began with Hamas. It is many years old, and has born fruit in a hardened anti-Jewish religious attitude that threatens to destroy any chance for peace.

Much Palestinian anti-Jewish ranting draws from classical Christian anti-Semitism. Note, for example, the phrase from Erlanger's report, "perfidy of the Jews." Recognizing this connection sheds much light on the meaning of Muslim hatred for the state of Israel and the double standard by which Israel is usually judged.

In his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid Jimmy Carter relates an odd incident that he appears to tell with pride, but for which he should really feel embarrassed. On his first visit to Israel in the early 1970's Carter had an audience with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. She asked him for his impressions of her country. Carter writes:

With some hesitation I said that I had long taught lessons from the Hebrew Scriptures and that a common historical pattern was that Israel was punished whenever the leaders turned away from devout worship of God. I asked if she was concerned about the secular nature of her Labor government.

This brief comment speaks volumes. The "secular" Israeli government has turned away from God, and is being punished. All more evidence that attitudes ingrained in childhood die hard. Jews have suffered for centuries from the belief that they have "turned away from God" and are being punished for it. History has become self-fulfilling prophecy: if the lives of Jews were made miserable by the actions of people who held this belief, it is just the "common historical pattern" that proves the "perfidy" of the Jew.

What other explanation can there be for why every flaw in Israeli society is held to a microscope, while gross human rights abuses in the Muslim world evoke hardly a squeak? Most of the world's religious people are either Christian or Muslim, and both of those traditions have long been obsessed with the Jew as "fossil" who survives long after he should have been replaced.

Both the Qur'an and the New Testament contain passages accusing the Jews of faithlessness towards God, of killing their prophets, of incurring divine wrath. Those passages have resounded through the ages and their effects are still felt. It is important to recognize that there has been much reform within Christianity, and even though this attitude condemning the "faithless" Jew still survives in the Christian world, many Christian voices have spoken out against it. Islam has not yet caught up.

This is a serious problem that cries out for attention, because a mind trained in hate since birth has the power to destroy any peace produced by rational agreement. The incitement still practiced in Palestinian society today was banned by the Oslo agreement 15 years ago. The Israeli government is at fault for not having emphatically demanded compliance ever since that time. It is almost too late now - unless people recognize how serious this problem is and how potent a weapon is the mind of a child.

We can focus on things that each side could do to improve its peace position and to comply with its Roadmap obligations - and we should. Israeli society is not perfect. There are things about it that I would change if I could. I have no incentive to mention any of them, because I know that Israel's enemies will take anything critical said about Israel as evidence justifying Israel's destruction.

And that is exactly the point. Israel is the only country judged by such a radical standard. Israel's record certainly shines in comparison to its neighbors - Syria, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, where Jews cannot even legally be citizens. Even the Western democracies suffer from serious social inequalities. Yet only Israel is judged by a standard that magnifies every blemish and that deems any serious flaw reason to dismantle the state or replace it with a "binational" (read: Arab) state. Only Israel is judged according to the wrath of God. The most sensible explanation for this irrational double standard is the attitude of replacement theology - originally Christian, now Muslim - that haunts the deepest corners of the minds of those who hate Israel the most and who refuse to tolerate its existence. And this is how Palestinian children are still being raised today.

No matter how many peace conferences we hold, or how many peace missions we send, no peace can last if planted on soil polluted by seeds of hate.

Sources:

Erlanger, Steven. "In Gaza, Hamas's Insults to Jews Complicate Peace." New York Times, April 1, 2008.

Goldberg, Jeffrey. "What Would Jimmy Do?: A Former President Puts the Onus for Resolving the Mideast Conflict on the Israelis." Washington Post, December 10, 2006.

"Last Week's Friday Sermon on PA Television." Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch Series No. 683, March 19, 2004.

Carlos

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

_

Gazan Arabs Support More Terrorism Against Israel

by Baruch Gordon

Over sixty-five percent of Arabs in Gaza support continued suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, according to a report released Monday by the Arab Jerusalem Media and Communication Center. Sixty-nine percent are "pessimistic" or "very pessimistic" about reaching any peaceful settlement with Israel.

The poll also found that half of the Arabs who live in Gaza have positive feelings about PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, whose Hamas party won significantly in the most recent elections. This, even though 81 percent of them believe economic conditions have deteriorated under his leadership.

Nearly 50 percent of Gaza's civilians feel that launching rockets at Israeli civilians is a "useful" means of terrorism. Only 31.4 percent believe that firing rockets on Israel is "futile."

The above results are based on interviews with a representative sampling of 439 Arabs from Gaza.

Meanwhile, Israel is allowing the transfer of hundreds of truckloads of food and supplies per week into Gaza via the crossings that have been attacked five times in the last tens days alone.

Baruch Gordon

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Crusader Carter meets Basher Bashar

By Ami Isseroff

Remember Jimmy Carter, the crusading human rights warrior who got a Nobel prize for his efforts, and who initiated an international boycott of the Olympic games in Moscow because of Soviet rights violations? Sure you do. Around the world, Carter tried to pressure US supported regimes into respecting human rights, sometimes taking extreme measures. When Iranian generals wanted to suppress the Khomeini uprising, Carter administration officials were sent to warn them to respect human rights.

Jimmy's quest for human rights and justice have brought him to meet with a certain Middle East leader whose name comes up very often when human rights are mentioned.

Recognize the people in the photo? On the left - Jimmy Carter, the human rights advocate. On the right, Bashar Assad, the "leader" of Syria. In the Middle East, an area known for sand, camel dung, Hashish, petroleum and human rights violations, Bashar Assad's regime is an egregious leader in the human rights field, competing with world-class champs like Muammar Ghaddafi. Assad the second and Assad the first organized the occupation of Lebanon, murdering anyone who disagreed with them. Syrian opposition leaders are routinely jailed - if they are lucky. Syria's Kurdish minority is brutally suppressed. Sure Syria has elections. Assad is very popular - he got 99% of the vote because nobody else was really running against him.

Carter isn't meeting only with Assad, but with Khaled Meshal, the real head of the genocidal religious fanatic group, Hamas. Hamas's idea of democracy and human rights is slicing up opposition leaders into steaks and sending the pieces to their families, or throwing them off of tall buildings after breaking their kneecaps.

That is the distinguished record in human rights advocacy of the two leaders that Carter has been meeting with in Damascus. Both leaders are boycotted by the US state department, but Carter doesn't believe in boycotts any more.

Seasoned and honest Middle East observers understand that nothing can come of these meetings except legitimation of Assad and Meshal. Michael Young notes in the Daily Star that there is no point in negotiating with Hamas. He calls Carter A fool on a fool's errand. Tariq Alhomayed writes in as Sharq al Awsat:

Carter's meeting with Khaled Meshaal could harm the Palestinian cause and inter-Palestinian reconciliation more than benefitting it. One should recall House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's meeting with Bashar Assad in Damascus following the Democratic victory in US Congress.

Following that meeting, the entire region was suddenly deflated after Damascus received the wrong message and acted based upon it, along with Iran, in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. New disasters broke out in the entire region after the Syrian-Iranian alliance and their followers, Hezbollah and Hamas, assumed that President Bush had become a lame duck and that they were capable of implementing their agendas.

Jimmy Carter has given Bashar Assad and Khaled Meshal a great gift - legitimation from a "supporter of human rights." It seems that fake elections, murder of opponents and suppression of minorities now have the "Halal" or "Kosher" stamp from a chief Rabbi/Imam of human rights. But in doing so, Carter has effectively destroyed his own reputation as a champion of freedom and decency.

Ami Isseroff

Original content is Copyright by the author 2008.

Legitimizing Hamas

Carter's visit sends the wrong message.

by Matthew Levitt

IMAGINE THE ALICE IN Wonderland scene that will take place later this week, when U.S. Secret Service agents entrusted with protecting former president Jimmy Carter stand guard over a meeting with the head of a designated terrorist group responsible for near daily attacks targeting civilians, including numerous attacks in which American citizens have been injured and killed. The former president may have altruistic motives, but his meeting with Hamas leader Khaled Mishal is both imprudent and dangerous.

Last week, Hamas confirmed press reports that Mishal will host Carter in Damascus for a meeting on April 18. Hamas must have taken special pleasure announcing the presidential meeting the same week the State Department issued the latest version of its annual Foreign Terrorist Organizations list. Fifth from the top is Hamas, a charter member of this select group, reinstated every year since the list's inception in 1995. Carter's visit sends the message that Hamas need not fret over the designation--he is willing to accept the group as it is, terrorism notwithstanding, and others may well follow.

The former president is not alone in his call for engaging Hamas; his former national security adviser is among the prominent voices advocating the idea. Since Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, the theory goes, it must be brought into the political process, not isolated, or else there is no hope for peace. But Hamas is dead set against a two-state solution, as its refusal to disavow the use of violence makes clear. Whenever negotiators have come close to some type of Israeli-Palestinian agreement Hamas has carried out attacks specifically aimed at derailing progress toward peace. According to declassified U.S. intelligence, cells under Mishal's supervision "have been implicated in efforts by Hamas to plan large attacks that would undermine the road map peace plan." Engaging Hamas will not help the peace process; it will legitimize the group most violently opposed to such progress.

Because of its commitment to violence targeting civilians, engaging Hamas in overt diplomacy when the group remains dedicated to the use of violence is unwise, even if well-intentioned. Hamas rains rockets and mortars on Israeli civilians living near the border with Gaza on a daily basis, the group recently carried out a suicide bombing in the Israeli city of Dimona, it continues to hold an Israeli soldier captive and recently threatened to kill him, and it lauds the attacks other groups carry out from the Gaza Strip it controls. According to an Israeli report released this week, Hamas is engaged in its most significant arms buildup to date, including some 80 tons of explosives, roadside bombs, and longer range rockets capable of targeting Israeli communities deeper in Israel. Hamas stockpiles most of its weapons in the Gaza Strip, but maintains weapons caches in the West Bank as well, such as the stockpile of 200 kilograms of fertilizer and gunpowder seized in Qalqilya this week.

Indeed, directly engaging Hamas would not only empower a terrorist group designated by the United States and the European Union, it would pull the carpet out from under Palestinian moderates who are truly interested in pursuing peace and are trying to contest support for Hamas through non-violent means. American and European officials alike have shunned Hamas over the group's continued use of terrorism and political violence, despite the group's electoral victory in January 2006, united in their shared position that politics and terrorism cannot go hand in hand--elections notwithstanding.

The theory that Hamas is not going to go away and must therefore be directly engaged is similarly flawed. Engaging Hamas without the group having to first commit to non-violence would signal Hamas and likeminded groups from Lebanon to Iraq that they need not moderate their tactics to be recognized by the international community. Last June, Hamas militants aimed their weapons not at Israel but at fellow Palestinians and took over the Gaza Strip by force. The message Carter's visit sends to violent Islamist groups throughout the region is clear: Terrorism and politics truly go hand in hand; there is no need to forfeit the former to engage in the latter.

Mishal, himself a U.S. designated terrorist, embodies this message, publicly playing the role of Hamas political leader while privately playing a hands-on role in Hamas terrorism. Announcing the August 2003 designation, the Treasury Department noted that some cells in the Hamas military wing based in the West Bank are under Mishal's control. Mishal, Treasury found, "has been responsible for supervising assassination operations, bombings and the killing of Israeli settlers." He "maintains a direct link" to Hamas in the Gaza Strip "to execute Hamas military activities."

This is not to say we can close our eyes and imagine Hamas away. The fact is that communication is not the same as engagement. There are plenty of ways for the United States to communicate with Hamas without openly engaging the group as a legitimate actor. Whether through Egyptian, Palestinian, or other interlocutors, there are multiple ways the U.S. could--and surely does--communicate with Hamas. Bestowing on Hamas in general, and Khaled Mishal in particular, the legitimacy of an audience with a former president of the United States suggests something much more than just a desire to communicate or even engage with Hamas--it suggests a level of acceptance for the organization and its tactic of targeting civilians. No good will come of it.

Matthew Levitt directs the Stein program on counterterrorism and intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. He is the author of Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (Yale 2006) and the forthcoming Negotiating Under Fire: Preserving Peace Talks in the Face of Terror Attacks (Rowman & Littlefield, August 2008).

© Copyright 2008, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved

 

Iran’s Deceptive Commercial Practices.

By Emanuele Ottolenghi

Iran's Human Rights Violations

In the seven weeks since the UN called for an international moratorium of executions, in late December 2007, Iran hung more than 60 people, frequently in public. Recent pictures, which the Iranian regime has now ordered off the internet to avoid international embarrassment, show convicts hanging from cranes made by such Japanese companies as TADANO, KATO, and UNIC. Many European companies sell similar equipment to Iran. Nor do they necessarily sell these products knowing Iran will turn construction equipment into death machines. Accusing them of complicity is like accusing, say, Volkswagen, of complicity with bank robbers if they happen to drive a VW Golf while escaping the scene of the crime.

Of course, there is nothing illegal about selling cranes and thousands of other products to Iran. But when it comes to Iran, Western companies should know better: they are dealing with masters of deception. Iran has been executing tens of thousands of people, since its 1979 Islamic Revolution, by using cranes. Deal with Tehran and sooner or later your company's logo will experience an embarrassing moment of exposure.

Iran's Systematic Diversion of Technology

Even if deals do not violate either UN sanctions or export controls over dual use technology, Iran is sure to divert perfectly legitimate products for sinister purposes. Legally, there is no complicity with Iran's behavior. But the legality of such transactions only highlights the inefficacy of the current sanctions' regime against Iran and the consequent lightness of the moral burden affecting western companies and their economic self-interest.

Examples abound. Wirth – a German producer of tunnel boring machinery – proudly boasts on its website that "When Barcelona receives a new metro system, a bridge is built over the Orinoco in Venezuela or a new water supply system is created in the Iranian mountains of Isfahan, Wirth machines are used." Indeed they are. The problem is that one of Wirth's project clients in Iran is Sahel Consulting Engineers – a company owned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Wirth has so far declined to comment on the matter. BAFA, the German export controls' agency, has confirmed that the machines sold to Sahel are not subject to embargo – a perfectly transparent deal, with all the seals of approval, to be used in a harmless civilian project.

Seli – an Italian company in the same line of business – also provided machinery and technicians for the previous phase of the same tunnel project – which was done through a consortium of which Wirth was a partner. The deal, worth 8.5 million Euro, was completed in 2005. The client was Ghaem, another IRGC subsidiary. The deal was similarly not subject to any restrictions or embargoes. Seli is involved in other important projects in Iran.

Another, much bigger contract is the Kerman Water Tunnel Project, a five-year deal worth 134.6 million Euro signed in 2004 with the active involvement, again, of Sahel Consulting Engineers. Italian and German tunneling equipment was thus sold to the IRGC and made available, once the water tunnel was completed, for other projects the IRGC may wish to undertake. Intelligence reports have repeatedly suggested that much of Iran's clandestine nuclear program is being built deep underground, in bunkers that are accessible through tunnels – tunnels which only technology such as the one provided by Wirth and Seli can build. What guarantee did Western governments have that Wirth and Seli's IRGC clients would not later use their machinery to advance Iran's military ambitions?

Legitimate Business Projects – Illegitimate Business Partners

In other cases, European companies sell advanced technology to IRGC companies for huge infrastructure projects in a no-bid context: Austrian Andritz VA Tech Hydro, Finnish Poÿrÿ, and German KTI-Plersch are all involved in different technical aspects of dam building in Iran – and all list IRGC companies as their clients. Not all deals involve dual use technology – but by dealing with the IRGC, European companies help them flourish economically. Such examples are not confined to the civilian sector. IRGC units carrying RPG launchers for hit-and-run action routinely ride Japanese Honda and Austrian KTM motorbikes; Iran's military employs Italian-made IVECO trucks as missile launchers; the IRGC uses Mercedes trucks for its transports and mounts machine guns on Toyota Land Cruisers. Not the best flattery, for Western products.

Selling Weapons to Iran – At Our Own Peril

Even when military equipment is supplied to Iran under tight controls, things go wrong. In 2003, Great Britain and Italy supplied night-imaging equipment to Iran's anti-drug units to fight drug smugglers in Iran's eastern provinces, under a United Nations Drug Control Office approved scheme. Israeli troops later found similar equipment inside Hizballah's headquarters in south Lebanon.

In 2005, Austria's arms manufacturer, Steyr-Mannlicher sold Iran 800 .50 caliber sniper rifles to be used by Iran's police drug fighting units in their war against drug smugglers. At the time, the US protested the deal and put sanctions on Steyr-Mannlicher – but the Austrian Minister of Defense called the deal "unimpeachable" and confirmed it. When 108 such guns were found in insurgents' safe houses in Baghdad by American troops, a small media storm ensued, but the Austrians – both company and diplomats – successfully challenged the initial media reports demanding evidence that those were the same weapons.

What eventually transpired was that the media were wrong – the weapons were perfect copies, made in Iran and China. Soon after the delivery, Iran's defense industries engaged in reverse engineering for the sniper rifles and quickly managed to produce its own version – which the IRGC is now busy distributing to insurgents across the Middle East. Once more, Western technology, sold under license and for ostensibly legitimate purposes, abetted Iran's sinister activities, given Iran's systematically fraudulent behavior.

"I Sold Boats, Not Weapons!"

The same happened with the IRGC speedboats involved in the recent naval incident in the Straits of Hormuz – according to diplomatic sources the boats are made in Iran, but frame and design come from Italy's FB Design, a famous producer of racing boats that sold Iran its patrol boat "Levriero" along with frames and blueprints under a now revoked government license. The owner recently protested his innocence in an interview: "I sold boats, not weapons!"

With Iran, unfortunately, there is no such distinction. European and other Western companies sell Iran a variety of sophisticated technological tools which apparently fulfill harmless but profitable deals outside the purview of the UN sanctions' regime. Soon after the merchandise reaches Iran, the regime systematically diverts it from legitimate activities to illegitimate ones. A recent Financial Action Task Force statement encourages its financial institutions to apply "enhanced due diligence" in dealing with Iran, due to its deceptive financial practices. This is because Western credit lines, which may well finance apparently legitimate operations, in fact involve money laundering and the financing of terrorism and Iran's ballistic and nuclear programs.

What the above examples prove is that the principle of enhanced due diligence must now be expanded by Europeans to apply to all trade with Iran. This is true even when Iranian interlocutors appear innocuous and well intentioned, and even when legally speaking there are no impediments to exporting certain products to Iran. The current reality is that for a healthy profit and without moral compunctions, Western companies are legally selling Iran tools to repress its own citizens, to bully its neighbors, and to destabilize the entire region.

Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi is the Director of the Transatlantic Institute. This article is based on Dr. Ottolenghi's lecture at BESA as part of the Annual Leonard Wolinsky Lecture series.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

THE BBC GOES NATIVE: AN ANALYSIS OF BBC ARABIC Part I

By Trevor Asserson and Deena Pinson (bbcwatch)

1^st part of 2
(Trevor Asserson is a British solicitor and was a senior partner in one of the world's largest law firms. Deena Pinson is an academic and a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.)

I: INTRODUCTION

The BBC has been broadcasting for some years in Arabic on radio. In March 2008 it will commence broadcasting in Arabic on television. This is likely to increase the impact of the BBC in the Arabic speaking world.

Our study of BBC Arabic radio broadcasts shows what a baleful influence that has been, providing the Arab speaking world with a 'respectable' platform for terrorist organizations, rogue states and those who hate the USA and Israel. We believe that BBC Arabic Television will follow the same pattern.


II: METHODOLOGY

We decided to conduct a study of BBC Arabic during the 2006 War between Israel and the Hizbullah in Southern Lebanon because the war presented a sizeable body of material about a single unfolding story.

We recorded, translated and transcribed the BBC's principal news analysis program, Hadeeth Al-Sa'a, for a period of four weeks from 19 July to 20 August 2006. We analyzed views expressed by the invited program guests whose selection we believe is the weather vane of BBC attitudes.

We categorized all program guests, based on what they said, as either neutral or likely to encourage support or antipathy for one of the warring parties. In order to lend depth to the categorization, we graded their attitude as mild (1) or forceful (2). We also graded the likely impact of an individual guest based both on his status, the institution he represented and the nature of his argument and the manner of its conveyance. The aggregate words spoken multiplied by the attitude and impact grades provided a 'weighted word' count.

Our detailed findings are set out in the attached table at Schedule I.1 We set out in Schedule II a summary of views expressed by individual program guests together with selected quotations which we think indicate principal views held by the person quoted.

We have not considered the time given to individuals. What they say, rather than the speed at which they say it, appears to us to be a more sensible measure.


III: BBC OBLIGATIONS

The BBC has an obligation to be fair and impartial. It fails time and time again, as our earlier reports have shown. The Independent Panel, set up by the BBC to analyze its Middle East broadcasts, recognized the systemic problem within the BBC and recommended that it set up a 'guiding hand' to monitor its programs to ensure that it achieves its obligation of due impartiality.2 The BBC refused and instead set Jeremy Bowen in charge of its Middle East broadcasts, despite there having been questions raised as to his impartiality.

The BBC guidelines explain that:

".due impartiality does not require absolute neutrality on every issue or detachment from fundamental democratic principles".3

The BBC has always ignored our calls for it to explain how it interprets those words. In fact the BBC appears to ignore them. Thus it refuses for example to use the word 'terrorist' to describe the blowing up of a school bus full of children, because it wishes to remain "neutral".4 This refusal was maintained notwithstanding a call from the Independent Panel to use the word terrorist more widely.5

Hizbullah is listed by the UK government, amongst many others, as a "terrorist organisation." This is the same UK government through whose laws the BBC was born and is sustained. Hizbullah is armed and trained by Iran, a country whose President has called for the total destruction of Israel.6 This is a public call for genocide. Israel has a free press; an independent judiciary; and representative forms of Government. Iran and the Hizbullah do not. If the BBC had remained attached to democratic principles it should be more ready to give air time to the dilemmas of a democratic Israel than to its undemocratic enemies.

In fact we identified 17 spokespeople for Hizbullah and Iran amongst program guests and only 5 for Israel.7

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the BBC has in fact become detached from democratic principles and has become a proactive participant in the war of ideas, reflecting back to the Arabic speaking world some if its nastiest views.


IV: OVERVIEW OF FINDINGS

We found that, excluding 'neutral' guests, some 82% of program guests were pro Hizbullah and some 18% pro Israel.8 Our analysis of weighted words produced identical results - 82% weighted words pro Hizbullah and 18% pro Israel.

In terms of attitudes to the 2006 War, our findings are alarming, but given our previous reports, unsurprising. The airtime given by BBC Arabic to the pro Hizbullah position outweighed that given to the pro Israel position by a ratio of some 4.5 to 1.

What was more surprising was the very marked anti American sentiment which we detected. Many program guests expressed blatantly and viciously anti American positions, examples of which are set out below. While this unto itself may be acceptable and even desirable in a free press, the latitude afforded to these guests in sharing their sentiments, the highly evident disproportion in the representation of such views and the relative absence of challenge of these views in a manner which would conform with journalistic principles of impartiality and balance prompt serious concern.

In addition we came across a number of quite extreme statements. For example we were told that the bombing of an electricity station was a "crime" which is "unprecedented historically"9 and we learn that it is US policy "to crush the Palestinians completely and to take all of their lands."10 When comments as extreme as this go uncorrected and unchallenged, the BBC appears to have tossed its moral compass into the waves and completely to have lost its bearings.

What emerges is a BBC which is providing a solid and respectable platform for anti Western ideologues. Many of these people have respectable sounding titles and doubtless - on television - will be smartly turned out. However their words will support people seeking to undermine the social values of those who built the BBC and who continue to pay for it.


V: ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE USA

The following is a selection of some of the statements made by various program guests, indicating their attitudes towards the USA. The identity of the speaker and date of the interview are in the endnotes, together with a reference to the page in Schedule II where the full quotation can be found.

When reading these words it should be remembered that they were broadcast by the BBC, the incumbent national UK broadcaster, during a period when the UK had soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting shoulder to shoulder with the USA against a threat of Islamist terrorism which had brought bloody death and destruction to the streets of both London and New York.

While some of the statements are by themselves innocuous, taken together they amount to a campaign to delegitimise and demonize the USA in the eyes of the Arabic speaking world.

".[we] are doubting their [America's] sincerity and respect"11

"America has to change its politics and speak honestly"12

"That [Bush] government wanted to have complete control over the world"13

".the world, which is controlled by the US"14

".the main side of this conflict is the US"15

"As we all know on the Arab street, if your enemy is Israel or America, you are on the right side"16

".the problem is not with Israel; it is with the American Government.American politics is a failure that has no logic"17

"This talk about the war being that of Iran and Syria is nonsense. However, it is true that this is an American war; that was stated clearly by Condoleezza Rice"18

"Hizbullah has been leading this fight with dignity and justice. the positions of Europe and America center on their own obsessions . their war on terror. and they have considered Hizbullah a terrorist group, which is, of course, wrong"19

".there is a kind of vision in the American government.to crush the Palestinians completely and to take all of their lands"20

".the Americans constantly talk about breaking the hearts and minds of the Arabs and Muslims"21

"This new [American] strategy.is totally contrary to the principles of human rights"22

Trevor Asserson and Deena Pinson

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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THE BBC GOES NATIVE: AN ANALYSIS OF BBC ARABIC Part II

By Trevor Asserson and Deena Pinson (bbcwatch)

2nd part of 2

VI: ISRAEL DEMONISED

The 2006 War started when Hizbullah invaded Israeli territory, attacked an army convoy killing some Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two others. Israel responded with a massive bombardment of Hizbullah positions and economic targets in South Lebanon, being the area controlled by Hizbullah. This was followed by an invasion in the last days of the war. Hizbullah rained thousands of medium range missiles on Israeli civilian areas.

There were civilian and military deaths and destruction on both sides, although all agree that the Lebanese suffered more deaths and greater destruction. There were massive population evacuations in both Israel and Lebanon from the affected areas. Israel was criticized internationally for overreacting to the initial aggression. After the war Amnesty International accused both sides of carrying out indiscriminate attacks against civilians.23

The BBC Arabic gives little indication of the destruction, the evacuations and the deaths (often of Israeli Arabs), caused by the thousands of Hizbullah rockets fired into Israel. By contrast some of the language used to describe Israel is hysterical in tone and the translated transcript reads like an Islamist extremist tract. Here are some examples:

Facing the "Israeli aggression"24

Israel is said to have "evil objectives. this way of twisting things and the aggressive attitude"25

".the Israeli military machine.works to a great extent based on hatred"26

"Israelis, who are violating all international law"27

".breaching all of the international laws"28

"The crimes that they are committing.a real crime, which contradicts all of the laws"29

".barbaric Israeli attack"30

".the barbaric Israeli army"31

Lebanon is facing "a barbaric war"32

They are "destroying villages completely"; they are "racist barbaric"33

"We are facing a monster who does not care about the law or about morals.a killer monster"34

".Israel is the deadly monster.a destructive monster"35

"They are committing massacres"36

". the atrocities in Lebanon that we have seen so far from Israel, including all of their massacres"37

There is a need for an "assurance against further [Israeli] massacres"38

They refer to "a month of killing our children"39

There is reference to "this ugly crime against the Lebanese and the Palestinian people"40 (notwithstanding that Israelis including Israeli Arabs were in fact being killed by Hizbullah rockets at the time.)

".this is collective punishment, Nazi punishment"41


VII: ANALYSIS OF THE CAUSES OF THE WAR

Almost all commentators at the time agree that the initial Hizbullah incursion and kidnap of two Israeli soldiers caused the war. Without it there would have been no war. One obtains a very different view from listening to BBC Arabic:

".the kidnapping of the two soldiers was just an excuse"42

"I believe that the reason for this attack is not the two soldiers"43

".we all know that this attack over the last three weeks has nothing to do with the release of the Israeli detainees.Israel wanted to destroy the infrastructure of Lebanon and this is part of historical revenge against the Lebanese people"44

"Olmert took.the kidnap of the Israeli soldiers as an excuse to invade, destroy and kill innocent people"45

".I don't see any relationship between Israel's attacks on Lebanon and the existence of Hizbullah"46


VIII: ABSURD COMMENTS

There are some comments made by program guests which are so shrill and absurd that they should disqualify these guests from being given air time by any serious broadcaster. The BBC Arabic brings us the following gems:

"Israel is a country that wants to expand and they have a plan to force on to the regions of Palestine, Lebanon or even Egypt".47 (In fact, Israel has voluntarily withdrawn from territory in Gaza (Palestine), Lebanon and Egypt.)

".barbaric Israeli attack, which kills everybody everywhere"48

"We faced Israel in 1967 and won militarily".49 Israel would doubtless be happy to suffer a repeat of its military defeat of 1967.

"These are crimes unprecedented historically"50 (referring to the Israeli bombing of electricity stations).

"Israel is extensively targeting every part of Lebanon".51 In fact, Israel was targeting Hizbullah controlled South Lebanon. In Beirut people were sunbathing on the beach.

".it became apparent that Israel is targeting the entire Lebanon, its people, and infrastructure"52

".all the massacres committed by Israel, like no one in history has seen something similar. It is even worse than what Germany committed"53


IX: DANGEROUS COMMENTS

UK and indeed Western foreign policy is presently pre-occupied with a belligerent Iran which is issuing blood curdling threats against the West, supporting terrorists who threaten the West - including Hizbullah - and is building a nuclear capability.

One would like to imagine that the BBC would be supportive of the intellectual battle which the West is fighting. At the very least, one would hope that the BBC would be balanced in its coverage of the issue. In fact the BBC appears to be lending support and providing a platform to those who legitimize Iranian aims and deprecate those of the West.

"I hope that Iran has something to scare Israel, as an Arab citizen from the Middle East. I wish that all Arab countries would have nuclear weapons"54

"Iran's opinion is rooted in morals and rules, legal and logical"55

".claims of Iranian instigation are untrue"56

Europe and America "have considered Hizbullah a terrorist group, which is of course wrong"57

The Hizbullah soldiers are referred to as "martyrs.the honor resistance which does the utmost that any group can do.to defend their country".58

Calling the Lebanese who died in the conflict "martyrs [whose] blood is still fresh".59

"Hizbullah was clear that their operation.targeted military objectives, not civilians, as did Israel"60

"I will ask Iran, and every Arab country who can, to have nuclear weapons"61


X: CONCLUSION

The BBC Arabic radio appears to be out of control. It is providing a platform for a wide range of anti Western and in particular anti American ideologues to express their nasty, at times absurd and sometimes dangerous views in a forum that is almost invisible to most Westerners. The often unchallenged broadcast of such views by the BBC gives those views a veneer of legitimacy and truthfulness.

Overall, in the 25 programs analyzed, there emerges an unmistakable identification with parties with whom Israel is in conflict. While most programs provided a forum for the _expression of a variety of positions, the blatant disproportion, both quantitatively and qualitatively, in the voice afforded to the respective views points to an unequivocally biased program to the detriment of the Israeli position. Frequently, program hosts make no pretence at objectivity, and even when the questions posed by the host were relatively neutral, they were often tainted by clear animosity toward Israel and the West, while generally no attempts were made to challenge the virulently anti-Israel and anti-West views expressed.

The relative lack of Arabic speakers amongst those who pay for the BBC means that the BBC does not benefit from the criticisms of the general listening public as it does for its English speaking programs. The corrective influence which those complainants normally provide is necessarily absent.

Having rejected the Independent Panel's recommendation to appoint a "guiding hand" to monitor its Middle East output, the BBC has no systems in place to know what its own journalists think. We are not aware of any systematic method it has for monitoring program content. It seems that the BBC has less control of its Arabic programs than of any others, because it appears that relatively few of its senior staff speak Arabic.

We are left with the disturbing fear that the most powerful media organization in the world has left the fox guarding the hen house.

Trevor Asserson and Deena Pinson

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

***

The footnotes and schedules to this report, referred to above, are available in the pdf version of the report which can be downloaded here (sixth report): www.bbcwatch.co.uk/reports.html.