Tenants don't see imam as 'healer'

 

by Peter J. Sampson and Jean Rimbach

 

The Muslim cleric at the center of the proposed mosque and community center near ground zero is also a New Jersey landlord who got more than $2 million in public financing to renovate low-income apartments and has been beset for years by tenant complaints and financial problems.

Imam Feisal A. Rauf won support for his Hudson County projects from powerful politicians, among them Robert C. Janiszewski, the disgraced former county executive. He also was awarded grants from Union City when U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was mayor.

The proposed $100 million development two blocks north of ground zero has sparked a firestorm of emotions. Menendez recently added his name to the list of prominent supporters, which includes New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Rauf forged ties with Fred Daibes, the prominent waterfront developer and bank chairman. Additionally, Rauf is a one-time business ally of a Daibes associate who sued the imam for alleged mortgage fraud. The 2008 suit was quietly settled in June.

The revelations about Rauf, who lives in North Bergen, add another dimension to the public profile of a man lauded as a builder of bridges between diverse religions and cultures and vilified as being insensitive to the survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack by proposing a mosque near the World Trade Center site.

Best known as the religious face of the controversial proposal, called Park51, Rauf, the revelations show, has had some success navigating the realm of secular power — in this case the rough-and-tumble world of Hudson County government.

In conjunction with others, Rauf is now taking on the largest project of his life with a track record showing that, despite government subsidies, he has had trouble maintaining small apartment buildings in North Bergen, Palisades Park and Union City.

Page after page of municipal health records examined by The Record show repeated complaints ranging from failure to pick up garbage, to rat and bedbug infestations and no heat and hot water.

Cynthia Balko, 48, of Union City — a longtime tenant of Rauf's — said she's had to live with rats, leaks and no heat: "I don't have anything nice to say about the man."

She finds it hard to believe Rauf's going to build a world-class Islamic community center, with fitness facilities, auditorium, restaurant, library, culinary school and art studios, as well as a Sept. 11 memorial and space for Muslim prayer services.

"He can't even repair the bells in the hallway. He doesn't take care of his properties. But he's going to take care of a mosque?"

Rauf is traveling in the Middle East on a tour funded by the State Department and could not be reached for comment; he was in Bahrain last week.

His wife, Daisy Khan, who has been the public face of the project while her husband is overseas, commented for this story, first in interviews and in an e-mail.

She maintained Rauf's business dealings in New Jersey have "no relevance to the Park51 project.

"The Imam does not get paid for his spiritual work or work as an Imam," she wrote in the e-mail late Friday. "He invests in real estate, much as someone would invest in stocks, bonds or other assets to secure one's future and provide an income stream. He has dedicated his life to helping others working as an Imam."

The 61-year-old Rauf studied physics at Columbia University during the late 1960s, then earned a master's degree in plasma physics in 1972 at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. Kuwaiti-born, Rauf followed his father's path, however, and became a Muslim cleric.

For years, he was also a popular leader of a mosque on West Broadway in lower Manhattan. After the 9/11 attacks, he was widely depicted as a moderate voice among American Muslims. In recent years, Rauf conducted cultural-awareness training for FBI agents in New York and has been dispatched several times by the State Department to Arab nations to speak about religious tolerance in America.

In response to the tenant complaints, Khan said: "All of these complaints are being addressed as they come up. Bedbugs: We fixed it. Every violation that comes up, we have addressed."

Records show that in general the problems were resolved after complaints were lodged with officials; often, the problems reoccurred.

Khan blamed tenants for some of the problems at the Central Avenue building, where Balko lives.

"The tenancy is the kind of tenancy where there is vandalism," Khan said, adding that they have had to repeat repairs.

"Unfortunately, people make mistakes — including those who are hired to fix and maintain the apartments and have to come back, and from time to time some people just cannot be made happy," she wrote. "Even in those instances, however, the Imam instructs the people responsible for maintaining the apartment to continue to try to make all of the people satisfied. This is very important to the Imam."

From the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, Rauf acquired five apartment buildings in Union City and one each in North Bergen and Palisades Park.

Union City's Community Development Agency awarded three grants, totaling $384,000, to renovate three of his properties in 1989 on the condition that he retain the properties for seven years, records show.

Menendez, mayor at the time, could not be reached for comment, according to a spokesman.

Three years later, two of those buildings on Bergenline Avenue also received nearly $1.3 million in construction loans from Hudson County's affordable-housing trust fund and $630,900 from the state with the proviso that the units be rented at "affordable" rates through 2017.

Rauf met with Menendez in late 1991 before applying for the state funds, and months later made a pitch to the mayor for $80,000 in city funds to help carry him until the loans came through, documents show.

Forced to halt construction on one project due to the unavailability of city rehab funds, Rauf wrote to Menendez in March 1992 that he was tapped due to "heavy and unforeseen additional carrying costs," estimated at $87,000. "Having incurred total losses of over $266,000 over the last four years in losses and carrying costs while vacating the properties in order to rehab them, plus substantial construction costs to date, I find myself unable to come up with any more money right now."

It could not be determined if Rauf got the requested city assistance, but two weeks later he received a letter from Janiszewski informing him that county officials had approved his application for $1,295,000.

"I thank you for your commitment to providing affordable housing to the residents of Hudson County," wrote Janiszewski. A decade later, Janiszewski would go to prison after admitting he pocketed over $100,000 in bribes from county vendors. Those charges were not related to his dealings with Rauf.

Rauf's financial troubles intensified. One lender initiated a foreclosure action in July 1992 on a $400,000 mortgage on the Bergenline Avenue properties. Another sued in 1995 to foreclose on three loans, totaling $1.65 million, on the Central Avenue and Monastery Place buildings in Union City and the Lincoln Street property in Palisades Park. All were resolved without foreclosure.

Financial woes still beset the cleric. In October 2008, Rauf and his wife were sued by one-time Edgewater business associate James Cockinos, who claimed they misrepresented their ownership of the 32-unit apartment building at Central Avenue and 22nd Street when he gave them a $250,000 mortgage in 1997.

Without telling Cockinos, the suit alleged, Rauf and Khan transferred ownership to another company they owned and then obtained a $650,000 mortgage on the same building from a bank. After the building was damaged by fire in February 2008, Rauf and Khan stopped making mortgage payments to Cockinos, a former key executive at Daibes' Mariner's Bank. When Cockinos tried to foreclose, he discovered Rauf and Khan had switched ownership and filed suit alleging "fraud."

The case was settled shortly before a June 28 trial, with Rauf and Khan agreeing to pay off the mortgage to Cockinos within the next few years, said the couple's lawyer, Richard Rosa of Hackensack.

Rosa said that while there were two mortgages, there was no fraud. He attributed the problem to an "honest mistake."

Complaints at Rauf's Palisades Park building in the late 1980s and mid-1990s paint a picture similar to the one in Hudson County, with piles of garbage, weeds and overgrown grass among the concerns. Heat, roaches and "filthy halls" are cited in local records.

"He wasn't a good landlord," said Jad Mihalinec, the health officer in Palisades Park.

Daibes, a developer of luxury towers along the Hudson, was the construction contractor on the publicly financed Bergenline Avenue rehabilitation project and said he was recommended to Rauf by Hudson County officials.

Later, another Daibes company managed Rauf's buildings; Daibes said the relationship began because Rauf was traveling out of the country. Daibes said his DBR Management Inc. oversaw Rauf's assets for perhaps two or three years. DBR's name appears on some of the violation notices, warning letters and health department complaint logs.

"We collected rents and paid the bills," said Daibes, noting that Rauf had a building superintendent.

"Mr. Daibes managed the buildings from 1992 to 1997," Daisy Khan wrote. "He was responsible for the daily upkeep of the properties, handling finances including rent collection and bill payments."

Daibes did not return a call for comment on Khan's recollection of his duties.

Daibes said he is surprised by all the publicity Rauf is getting today, recalling him as a "simple guy that owned a couple of buildings in Union City — not a man of wealth or substance. He wasn't an imam back then, but he was religious."

He said they got friendly — Rauf felt comfortable with him because he spoke Arabic — but didn't socialize.

"What we talked about is basically how he was looking to find investors so he could get into the development business," said Daibes, who described himself as a Lebanese Christian.

But Daibes said he "was not impressed" with Rauf as a businessman.

"The truth of the matter, and now it makes sense, in hindsight, he was more focused on religion than business."

 

 

Peter J. Sampson and Jean Rimbach

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

 

The long history of anti-Semitism in Muslim lands

by Robert Fulford

One of the 2002 Bali bombers, Amrozi bin Nurhasin, on trial in an Indonesian courtroom and headed toward execution, shouted out the message he wanted his crime to convey: “Jews: Remember Khaibar. The army of Muhammad is coming back to defeat you.”

This was his explanation of the murder of 202 people eight years ago. Of those who died, 88 were Australians, 38 Indonesians, 24 British. None were Jews. So what was Amrozi, a Java-born Indonesian, raving about? It’s a question worth considering as we assess the recent arrests for terrorist conspiracy in Ottawa. Islamic terrorists can finds motives in ancient struggles the rest of the world long ago forgot.

Martin Gilbert, the author of some 80 books, including the official biography of Winston Churchill, explains Amrozi’s meaning at the start of his alarming chronicle, In Ishmael’s House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands, published this week.

Amrozi was remembering an event 1,375 years in the past, when Muhammad attacked Jewish farmers living in the oasis community of Khaibar, in what is now Saudi Arabia. More than 600 Jews were killed and the survivors lost all their property and had to pledge half of their future crops to Muhammad.

Today, few Jews know the word Khaibar. But among certain Muslims it has permanent resonance. Khaibar set a precedent, endorsed by the actions of the Prophet. After Khaibar, non-Muslims who were conquered had to give up their property and pay heavy permanent tribute to their Muslim overseers. That form of discrimination lasted for centuries. It was this incident and its aftermath that nourished Amrozi’s homicidal ambition.

Muslims love to recall that Jews once lived in peace among them. Of course, Jews were always second-class citizens, their rights sharply limited. Still, it was sometimes better than settling among Christians. Bernard Lewis, a major authority on Islam, says that Jewish lives under Islam were never as bad as in Christendom at its worst, or as good as in Christendom at its best.

In the 20th century, Arab hostility to Jews took an ugly turn. Some claim that the new state of Israel “caused” the trouble. But well before Israel’s creation in 1948, Arabs were identifying Jews as enemies.

In 1910, in the now-Iranian city of Shiraz, mobs robbed and destroyed 5,000 Jewish homes, with the encouragement of soldiers. In 1922, in Yemen, an old decree permitting the forcible conversion of Jewish orphans to Islam was reintroduced. The government searched towns and villages for children without fathers, so that they could be given Muslim instruction. The children were chained and imprisoned till they agreed to convert. In 1936 in Iraq, under Nazi influence, Jews were limited by quota in the public schools, Hebrew teaching was banned in Jewish schools and Jewish newspapers were shut down.

Anti-Semitism intensified when Israel was created, and grew still worse after Israel won the Six-Day War of 1967. By the 1970s, about 800,000 Jews, perhaps more, had been forcibly exiled from Arab countries, their property seized. According to the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC), they lost property now valued at well over $100-billion.

A majority of these exiles settled in Israel. In the 1950s, the UN recognized them as refugees and compensation was discussed. Later, the Arab states turned the UN against Israel and, by association, against Jewish refugees. In 1975, the General Assembly condemned Zionism as “racism and racial discrimination.” Various political leaders in the West (notably Irwin Cotler, the former justice minister of Canada) have continued to argue for compensation. But after the 1975 resolution, as Gilbert notes, that idea was unlikely to receive any UN support.

The number of Jews displaced by the Arabs in the 20th century roughly equals the number of Palestinians displaced by Israel. But the plight of the Palestinians has received several hundred times as much publicity. One reason is the constant propaganda from Muslim states and their admirers in the West. Another is that many Jews, unlike Palestinians, don’t want to be called refugees.

Gilbert quotes an Iraqi Jew, Eli Timan, living in London: “The difference is that we got on with our life, worked hard and progressed so that today there is not a single Jewish refugee from Arab lands.” Those who suggest that this model be copied elsewhere will of course be condemned as heartless bigots.


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

We are Partners - How About You?

by Itamar Eichner

"We are partners - and what's with you"? asks the organizers of the Geneva Initiative of the People of Israel in a new (advertising) campaign that will open this morning, and it turns out that the Americans are also joining.

Today's Yediot Ahronot, p.7:

Big picture across the top of the page (l to r):

Sufian Abu Zeideh, Yasser Abu Rabo, Saeeb Erekat, Abu Mazen, Salam Fayyad, Riad Al-Malki, Jabril Rajoub

Caption OVER the picture: "We Are Partners. And You?"

Headline: Campaign Funded by the White House

Subhead: The Geneva Initiative Organization Produces, the Americans Are Paying, the Heads of the Palestinian Authority Star in a Political Campaign That Will be Open This Morning and Will Try to Convince Israelis That Peace is Possible

Saeeb Erekat, Jabril Rajoub, Yasser Abd Rabo and the Palestinian foreign minister (sic) Riad Malki will appear from this morning on billboards throughout Israel, in newspaper advertisements and in network spots - and will try to convince you that there is with whom to speak on the other side.

At first glance it appears just like any other initiative of a movement in favor of a 2-state solution, but when you check who gave the main funding for this campaign it turns out to be none other than Washington, D.C. One million shekel (~ $260,000: TW) has been invested in financing the campaign, whose goal is to encourage Israelis to support a Palestinian state, and most of which came from the American assistance agency, USAID - a federal agency that usually funds humanitarian activities in the world, e.g. assistance for victims of the earthquake in Haiti, food supplies for flood victims in Pakistan, and for the hungry and starving in Africa. The organization is active in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but never - until today - did it ever finance a project that is connected to political organizations and to the peace process in the Middle East. Moreover - this will be the first time that the American Government supports financially, even if indirectly, in an initiative of this kind.

The Geneva Initiative is an organization that promotes a permanent Israeli-Palestinian solution on the basis of the Clinton Parameters of December 2000. "Yediot Ahronot" became aware that it is the organization that turned to Washington with a request to receive financial support for producing the campaign, and it was agreed upon there to respond positively. "We are showing the partners as they are", said yesterday Geneva Initiative CEO Gadi Baltiansky. "I am happy that those who support a solution of two states are also assisting in passing on the message".

Sources in the Israeli Foreign Ministry said last night that the decision of the American Government to fund this campaign is in their eyes extremely odd. "This this is [sic] fact a campaign of the Palestinian Authority with funding from the US Government", said the source.

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

Is the US training Israel’s enemies?

by D. Bedein and A. Kushner

There are strong reservations about the wisdom of the US training a Palestinian security force.

Israel recently approved the delivery of Russian armored personnel carriers for the Palestinian Authority, while it continues to laud American assistance to PA security forces.

The program in question began in March 2005, with the establishment of a US security coordinator team, headed by Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, who is due to step down from that post in the fall.

Plans then called for selected PA national security force troops to be trained and equipped by the US. The idea was to transform the old PLO terror militia into a professional force that would build a nation.

Five years later, with millions of dollars expended on this ongoing program, cogent reasons for doubting its wisdom present themselves.

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Ya’acov Amidror, former head of the IDF’s Research and Assessment Division, suggested last year that the Americans may be acting with “a certain naivete.” Concurring, an Arab journalist with connections to the PA has stated that “to expect political fruits from this is a mistake – an illusion.”

One of the more serious questions that has surfaced concerns the loyalty of the troops being trained. Dayton says they are loyal to “the Palestinian flag and the Palestinian people.”

Palestinian society, however, is founded on traditional Arab culture, whose first allegiance is to the clan (hamula), and not the nation.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar, research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, observes that “when (not if) there will be domestic problems in the PA/Palestinian state, these people will be loyal primarily to their clan rather than to the state, since they will never shoot their brothers or cousins.”

THE ROLE Hamas might play vis-à-vis these forces is another cause for alarm. PA troops are expected to stand against Hamas so that it cannot take over in Judea and Samaria.

Yet a proposal for a “unity government” that would forge a Fatah- Hamas coalition remains on the table. The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs in Washington has voiced strong reservations about the wisdom of US training of a Palestinian security force without a clear understanding of the authority to which that force would ultimately answer. It is possible that the very PA troops expected to contain Hamas might come to be commanded by Hamas. After all, that is precisely what occurred in Gaza, where we witness Hamas forces brandishing American weapons.

Meanwhile, the fear that Palestinian troops may turn their weapons on the IDF stems from the precedent of what occurred with the outbreak of the second intifada 10 years ago, when Palestinian troops nurtured and trained by the US and even by the IDF engaged in a fullscale armed action against Israel.

Indeed, the PA issued an official report, funded by the American government and the European Union, which indicates that the PA security forces had risen to a “pre-army” level. That report, published by the Palestine Center for Policy and Social Research, mentions that the PA forces have been significantly professionalized thanks to US military aid, which, over the past 18 months, has trained five battalions in a four-month course held in Jordan.

In other words, were PA troops, in frustration and anger, to turn on Israel, they would do so with a newfound competence, thanks to the training being provided by the US.

Perhaps the time has come to recall that a major stipulation of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s plan for a Palestinian state, which he presented at Bar- Ilan University on June 14, 2009, was that “in any peace agreement, the territory under Palestinian control must be disarmed, with solid security guarantees for Israel.”

David Bedein works as director of the Israel Resource News Agency and the Center for Near East Policy Research and the Middle East Correspondent for the Philadelphia Bulletin.

Arlene Kushner is the senior research analyst for the Center for Near East Policy Research.
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The F-35 and the Israel-Obama Relationship

by Evelyn Gordon


Commenting on Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s decision last week to buy 20 American-made F-35 fighter jets, Elliot Jager of Jewish Ideas Daily said it “illuminates Israel’s continuing, vital, and enduring — albeit dependent — relationship with the United States.” That is undoubtedly true: Washington has been Israel’s principal arms supplier for over four decades, and those arms are crucial for the country’s defense.

Ironically, however, the purchase also illuminates the nadir to which the relationship has fallen under the current administration. Barack Obama’s aides have tried to divert attention from their boss’s efforts to put “daylight” between America and Israel by insisting that on the all-important issue of security, “President Obama has taken what was already a strong U.S.-Israel defense relationship, and broadened and deepened it across the board,” as Dan Shapiro of the National Security Council told the Anti-Defamation League in May.

But in reality, Washington has attached unprecedented restrictions to the F-35 sale — restrictions so severe that Israel’s defense establishment agonized for months over whether to sign the deal, and ultimately opted to buy only 20 planes instead of the 75 the Israel Air Force originally sought.

First, as Haaretz reported last month, the U.S. refused to supply a test aircraft as part of the deal for the first time in 40 years. From the Phantom in 1969 through the F-16I six years ago, every previous American sale of fighters to Israel has included an experimental aircraft that Israel can use to test new systems or weapons it is considering installing in order to upgrade the planes or adapt them to particular missions. Effectively, the paper said, this refusal means “upgrades will not be implemented during the plane’s service in the IAF.”

Second, Washington initially refused to let any Israeli systems be installed in the plane, and finally reluctantly agreed to what various Israeli reports described as “minor changes” or “a few” systems (though holding out the carrot that more might be allowed if Israel ultimately commissions more planes). This, too, is unprecedented. Previous deals have given Israel great latitude to have its own systems installed on American-made aircraft, and have also allowed other countries to install Israeli systems — with the result that “between 10 percent and 15 percent of every new F-16 made in America, for instance, consists of Israeli systems.”

The restrictions so incensed Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz that he has appealed the purchase to the cabinet. His ministry says they would deal “a major blow to Israel’s defense industry” and particularly “hurt development of new Israeli missile systems.” On an issue as militarily important as purchasing new fighters, Steinitz has no chance of prevailing against Barak. But for a senior minister to publicly challenge such a deal is itself unusual.

It’s a testament to the depth of Israel’s support both in Congress and among the American people that even a hostile president only dares impair the security relationship at the margins, where he can hope it won’t be noticed. But precisely because the F-35 restrictions will fly below most Americans’ radars, they’re a telling indication of where Obama’s heart really lies.



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

The Truth About 'The Occupation' and 'The Settlements'

by Ted Belman


The pro-Palestinian propaganda machine has succeeded in stigmatizing the Israeli occupation and the settlements. Time and again we hear about the "brutal occupation" and the "illegal settlements." We rarely hear the truth in opposition to these lies.

Occupation

Israel is accused of occupying the West Bank and Gaza. In fact, these territories are described as "the occupied Palestinian territories." Not only are they not occupied in a legal sense, but also, they are not "Palestinian" lands in a sovereign sense.

The Forth Geneva Convention (FGC) is a treaty among signatory states that are called High Contracting Parties (HCP). It regulates the obligations of one HCP, who occupies the land of another HCP. It defines the terms "Occupying Power" and "Occupied State." Thus, this convention does not apply to the territories because they were not the land of any HCP. They have never been the land of an HCP. Prior to 1967, Jordan was in occupation of these territories, just as Israel is currently in occupation. Jordanian sovereignty over these lands was never recognized, and ultimately, Jordan relinquished any claims over them. The FGC was never applied when Jordan occupied the land, and it shouldn't be applied now that Israel does.

Yet the International Court of Justice, when it gave an advisory opinion on the Israeli security fence, "identified Jordan as the occupied power of the West Bank." According to David Matas, an international lawyer of considerable repute, in his well-argued book Aftershock,"The judgment moves on from this legal reasoning to labeling the West Bank as Palestinian occupied territory. But this labeling is based on the ethnic composition of the West Bank, not on its legal status. [...] This assertion by the ICJ that the West Bank is occupied territory is a contortion the Court imposed on the law to get to its desired results of slapping the label "occupier" on Israel. ... [This] shows that the primary concern of the court was to connect to pro-Palestinian rhetoric." As a result, the Palestinians consider themselves the "occupied power."

Matas notes that "the Geneva Conventions on the Laws of War do not recognize the legal possibility of the occupation of a people, only the occupation of the territory of a state." A Protocol to these conventions does recognize such a possibility, but Israel is not a signatory to it and is thus not bound by it.

It must be clearly understood that Israel's occupation is not illegal, and the U.N. has never claimed it to be. In fact, Resolution 242 permits Israel to remain in occupation until they have an agreement on "secure and recognized borders."

The Palestinians have no greater claim to a state than any minority group in any other state that wants a state of its own. The Basques and the Kurds come to mind. No one is demanding that they be given statehood.

When Israel's counsel acknowledged to Israel's High Court, when it was deliberating on the fence, that Israel held the land in "belligerent occupation," he did so to enable the Court to use the law of occupation in its deliberations. It was not an admission that the lands were Palestinian land or that the FGC applied.

Matas also takes issue with Dore Gold and others for calling the land "disputed land," because others argue that all of Israel is disputed land.

Settlements

The anti-Zionists argue the settlements are illegal and rely solely on the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which provides that the occupying power is prohibited from transferring civilian populations to occupied territories. They say that the prohibition against transfer includes a prohibition against encouragement to settle. The matter has never been put to a court for interpretation or determination. But the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) advises "that this provision was intended to prevent a practice adopted during the Second World War in which certain powers transferred portions of their populations to occupied territories for political and racial reasons or in order, as they claimed to colonize those territories."

Nazi Germany enforced two kinds of transfers, but in both cases, they were forced transfers. The victims were the persons being forced. Transferring populations is not a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. However, a Protocol to the GC makes it so, but Israel is not a party to the protocol and is not bound by it.

The anti-Zionists reject the notion that the proscription is against only forced transfers and argue that the FGC proscribes inducement to move as well. But how can there be a crime of inducement when the person committing the act, the settler, has done nothing wrong? How can you be guilty of a crime by inducing someone to do something which is not a crime? Furthermore, this inducement would be a war crime on an equal footing with genocide. The equation is ludicrous. And if the settlers settle of their own volition and not due to inducements, what then? Also, it is impossible to prosecute an occupying power. So what individuals would be held responsible?

Even if someone in Israel were convicted of offering inducements to settle, the settlers would not be affected and could remain in the settlements if they wished.

Matas opines, "The interpretation defies the ordinary understanding of criminal responsibility where the person committing the act is the primary wrongdoer and the person inducing the act is only an accessory."

Matas concludes, "There is all the difference in the world between forcible transfer, the offence of the Geneva Convention, and voluntary settlement, even where the settlement is encouraged" (by are merely providing inducements). [...] "Transfer is something that is done to people. Settlement is something people do."

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court made it an offense to "directly or indirectly" transfer populations. The ICRC has attempted to interpret "indirect transfers" as "inducements," thereby making them a crime. But the GC certainly does not, and that currently is the prevailing opinion.

But that didn't prevent the ICJ, in its advisory opinion above noted, from finding that the settlements violated international law. No reasons were given and no authority cited. But elsewhere, it expressed the opinion that the combination of the settlements and the fence amounted to de facto annexation. It ignored the fact that Israel took the position that the fence was not intended to be the border but was merely a security measure. While actual annexation may be a violation of the FGC, the settlements and the fence certainly were not an annexation or a violation of the FGC. What a legal stretch! And what about the settlements on the west side of the fence? Are they an annexation, too?

Thus, the ICJ did not conclude that someone in Israel was guilty of inducing settlements or in any other way of transferring populations.

Matas expands on his dim view of the advisory opinion. He considers it an attempt to discredit Israel. In the end it, discredited the ICJ. He prays that the ICC will be more judicious. The ICJ, after all, is an organ of the U.N., who requested it to provide the opinion. Similarly the U.N. requested Goldstone to investigate Operation Cast Lead and produce a report. This report, like the advisory opinion, was just what the U.N. "ordered."

But keep in mind that the opinion of the ICJ was just that -- an opinion -- and is not legally binding on anyone.

The U.S. has traditionally, with the Carter administration being the only exception, refrained from describing the settlements as illegal and instead called them obstacles to peace. In September 2009, Obama went before the United Nations and declared, "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements." This is closer to Carter's position but falls short of declaring them illegal. Nevertheless, it prompted John Bolton to say, "This is the most radical anti-Israel speech I can recall any president making."

All this ignores the fact that the Palestine Mandate encouraged close settlement of the land by Jews. This right has never been rescinded, and the U.N. has no right to rescind it. So Jews from anywhere have the right to settle on the West Bank and the PA, and the U.N. has no right to say otherwise.

To demand that the future Palestinian state be judenrein -- free of Jews -- is reprehensible and discriminatory. The West should not condone it, but it does.


Ted Belman is a retired lawyer and the editor of Israpundit. He made aliya last year from Toronto and currently lives in Jerusalem.
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Building Mosques on Sacred Sites of Defeated Enemies a Symbol of Conquest

by Gabriel Scheinmann

The real issue behind the controversy that has erupted over plans to build a 15-story cultural center, mosque and madrassa a few yards from Ground Zero is not only about the mysterious funding behind the Cordoba Center initiative, or whether or not its founders and backers have malign intentions. It is primarily about understanding how Muslims across the world, in particular Islamists, would view the conversion of the site of the greatest Muslim attack on U.S. soil into a Muslim house of worship. Given the long history of mosque-building following Muslim military victories, the building of the Cordoba House on Ground Zero will be seen in the same light as the Muslim conquests of Mecca, Jerusalem, and Constantinople. Whereas Americans hope that the attacks on New York City and Washington are seen as the clarion's call for aggressive American action to counter Islamist ideology, the construction of the Ground Zero Mosque will be seen by the same Islamists as its first step towards the decline of America.

Bin Laden and his Islamists would love nothing better to plant the flag of Islam in the cultural capital of the West. This would not be read in the Muslim world as a sign of the West's tolerance, but of its weakness. In its long history of conquest, Islam has habitually converted the sacred shrines of its enemies into mosques and madrasas. A cursory look at the world's most famous mosques lays bare the fact that many were former houses of worships of defeated enemies.

Islam's most sacred site, al-Kaaba, in Mecca was a pagan shrine that predated Islam by hundreds of years. Mohammed himself, after his army's conquest of Mecca in 630, destroyed hundreds of idols, proclaiming the truth of his new religion, and, since, it has become the hub of the annual Muslim pilgrimage, hajj, and a core pillar of Islam. Following the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, the Ummayad Caliphate proceeded to build the Dome of the Rock, the Masjid Qubat al-Sakhra, on top of the Jewish Temple Mount in 689. Inscribed on the inner walls of the shrine are clear warnings to Christianity, professing Islamic supremacy. Sprawled on the inner octagonal arcade, flowing counterclockwise, the dedication warns Christians and Jews to "not exaggerate in your religion nor utter aught concerning God save the truth" and threatens the Christian Trinity by insisting that "The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a Messenger of God, and His Word which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in God and His messengers, and say not 'Three' - Cease! (it is) better for you! - God is only One God."Whoever believes that God had a son, "whoso disbelieveth the revelations of God (will find that) lo! God is swift at reckoning!"Having defeated their Christian enemies, the Umayyads built a grand mosque on top of Judaism's most sacred site that contained a clear declaration of Muslim supremacy over their brother Abrahamic religions.

Similar conversions were ordered as the Muslim conquests expanded across Africa and Europe. The Grand Mosque of Damascus, also known as the Umayyad Mosque, was converted from a church dedicated to John the Baptist in 705. The world-renown Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was a thousand year-old Christian church before being transformed into a mosque following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. It was only converted into a museum in 1935 by ultra-secularist and Turkish founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Over the long history of Muslim territorial advance, thousands of mosques, from Spain to India, were built on sites of important religious or political value to their defeated foes.

Supporters of the project might argue that the actions of invading Muslim armies over a millennia ago are irrelevant to the issue at hand in lower Manhattan. However, it is impossible to separate the recent decline of such a trend with the parallel decline and territorial recession of Muslim lands in the second half of the second millennium. Moreover, recent territories that have returned to Muslim rule following decolonization have seen the return of the conversions of religious sites into mosques. Muammar Qaddafi, the ruler of Libya, converted 78 synagogues into mosques in the 1970s.In 1975, the Great Synagogue of Oran was confiscated by the Algerian government and similarly transformed.

Proponents like to cite the namesake of the Cordoba House complex as evidence of its goal of tolerance and pluralism, referring to the relative tolerant attitude of Muslim Spain to its Jewish and Christian minorities. Those proponents, however, should recall that the Great Mosque, or Mezquita, of Cordoba was itself a Visigoth Church that was converted and rebuilt as a mosque following Muslim conquest in 784, lasting nearly 500 years before it was recaptured and converted back into a Catholic cathedral.

Both survivors and the families of the victims of the September 11 attacks, as well as most prideful New Yorkers, have strongly objected to what they see at best as an insensitive project to, at worst, a malicious broadside against those who suffered tremendously on that day and since.

It has even divided the organized Jewish community, pitting a vehemently supportive J Street against a nuancedly opposed Anti-Defamation League. The mosque, run by the Cordoba House, claims to be promoting the project not only for functional reasons, but also for civilizational ones. Its supporters say that its aim is to use the 9/11 tragedy and the location of the Ground Zero Mosque as a message of tolerance and compromise in America. By hoping that Americans would never buy into the "Us against Them" rhetoric espoused by Islamists, supporters are seeking to demonstrate the superiority of Western culture and liberalism. The fact that this is even a debate in America demonstrates American tolerance; it is illegal to build a church or synagogue anywhere in Saudi Arabia.

American government officials have been divided over the plan, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Governor Deval Patrick, and, most recently, President Obama himself in support and many local and national politicians, including Senators John McCain, Joseph Lieberman, and Olympia Snowe, Congressman Peter King, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and former Governors Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, in opposition.

But the symbolism could not be clearer: If the Cordoba's House supporters seek to emulate the tolerance of al-Andalus, the Arabic term for Muslim Spain, they are unwittingly declaring their possible acceptance of Muslim rule.


Gabriel Scheinmann
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From an Actual Moderate Muslim, a Memo to the MSM on Imam Rauf

by Abdur-Rahman Muhammad

As I write, nearly two thousand protesters are gathered outside the location of the future mosque — some having stood in the rain for hours — providing a clear indication that the campaign to stop this project is intensifying. The pollsters tell us that nearly 70 percent of all Americans oppose the structure, yet its sponsors say the edifice will somehow promote "interfaith dialogue" and "mutual understanding." They must certainly realize at this stage in the process that the mosque will do no such thing, but will instead act as a permanent provocation to a huge segment of Americans who deem it completely inappropriate — if not outright sacrilege.

Let us remember that the project organizers themselves created this controversy by announcing that the groundbreaking would take place on the ten-year anniversary of the attack, and that the exact site was selected because of its proximity to Ground Zero. Given that fact, the current media meme that this is not a "Ground Zero mosque" is dishonest spin.

Even more dishonest — and dangerous to this country — is the outrageously biased work in Time, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Newsweek, and on NPR, PBS, MSNBC and CNN that has consistently portrayed popular opposition to this mosque and several other mosques around the country as evidence of bigotry and so-called "Islamophobia." This is mass libel by these media institutions.

The mainstream media has deliberately ignored the fact that there is legitimate basis for fear of mosques — as it is a demonstrable fact that mosques and Muslims have been disproportionately connected to terrorism in this country and around the world, a fact that the media won't report. Moreover, in the examples of opposition to specific mosques chosen by the media as evidence of popular "bigotry," the media has selectively ignored the openly available evidence showing unambiguously that these mosques or their officials are connected to or supportive of the radical Muslim Brotherhood (the parent of al-Qaeda), Hamas, and other radical Islamic fundamentalist organizations.

Why have these media institutions not investigated these ties? Why does the media investigate American charities that support settlements in the West Bank, but refuse to investigate the militant and terrorist ties to mosques and Islamic groups here at home?

The imam heading up this $100 million project, Faisal Abdul Rauf, enjoys the full support of the sympathizing left-leaning media, and together they have attempted to frame this fight as a First Amendment issue. They've worked to cast the opponents of the project — including the 9/11 families — as bigots bent on denying "peaceful Muslims" the "right" to build a facility on their own property. All of this is sheer nonsense, because as many commentators already noted this week, the right to build the mosque was never in question — only the appropriateness of putting it near Ground Zero. It is simply not possible, and indeed quite dishonest, to characterize 70 percent of the population as bigots and "Islamophobes," despite what the media would have us believe.

As an American Muslim, I can say with confidence that most folks have no desire to trample our First Amendment rights, and have said so repeatedly. It is not even entirely clear to me that, were the Muslim developers of the mosque genuinely moderate, it would be so bitterly opposed. But then again, they probably would never have proposed such a thing in the first place.

But how can anyone believe that Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf and his followers are moderates when they very deliberately refuse to condemn Hamas, a sworn enemy of this country and a major center of terror in the world? When asked directly to repudiate the group, all he could say was: "I am not a politician."

This is typical of the double-speak and evasive tactics employed by the prominent Muslim groups in America, an unmistakable red flag that something is wrong here.

He's also called this country an "accessory" to the 9/11 attacks, and has written that America is shariah (Muslim law) compliant. Forget all the rubbish about "interfaith dialogue" and "mutual understanding." The ongoing battle over this site has already belied that charade. Abdul Rauf and his Islamic supporters — most of whom are affiliated with Muslim Brotherhood front groups — will never give this project up because there is too much at stake for him. If he manages to get the thing built, he will be one of the most powerful personalities in the Muslim world — radical, moderate, or otherwise. More importantly, the mosque will come to symbolize in the radical Muslim world the triumph of Bin Laden's attack, and provide a kind of heavenly validation for his approach to spreading radical ideology. For what other reason could the tenth anniversary have been chosen for the groundbreaking?.

It is not hard to see that this will only inspire more attacks. The logic will be: "If Allah gave us one miracle, maybe He'll give us more."

If some Americans are suspicious and fearful of Muslims, it's not without good reason, and nothing their self-appointed leadership has done or said in the nine years following 9/11 has allayed those fears. Non-Muslim Americans have yet to see any clean line of demarcation between radical and moderate Muslims. Everywhere around the globe Muslims are the cause of so much bloodshed and turmoil, making life on this planet a living hell.

What are people to think when they see a group of World Cup fans blown up in Uganda by Somali Muslim psychopaths? Closer to home, a U.S. Army Major shoots his fellow soldiers! What are they to make of a Pakistani national given U.S. citizenship just last year attempting to set off a car bomb in Times Square? And the self-taught "American" sheikh, Anwar al-Awlaki, who from his cave somewhere in Yemen calls on Muslims to murder Americans, and they listen?

The underlying problem in this bitter controversy is that Muslims in America suffer a deserved trust deficit, wherein they are seen as a foreign and dangerous element. Perhaps if the $100 million being spent on this mosque were used to build, say, a hospital, this perception would begin to change.


Abdur-Rahman Muhammad is a Washington, D.C.-based writer who was once the Imam of a mosque where he taught radical Muslim ideology. He has since renounced those views and works to combat Islamic extremism in the American Muslim community. He is a senior writer for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) and his work has appeared in numerous publications such as the Washington Afro American, the Philadelphia New Observer, and others. His work can be read at his popular blog A Singular Voice. He holds a BA degree in Philosophy from Howard University.

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Lebanon's Hezbollah Threat

by Mark Silverberg


It is becoming increasingly difficult to determine where Hezbollah control of Lebanon ends and where Lebanese government control begins. The terrorist organization now dictates Iranian decrees to Lebanese officials and institutions, manipulates their activities, and greatly influences the country's decision-making processes through infiltration, intimidation, and terrorism. No decision can be made by the Lebanese government or any of its institutions -- including its military forces -- without Hezbollah's approval.

The U.S. had hoped that bolstering the capabilities of the Lebanese Armes Forces [LAF] would lead to tightened Lebanese control of its border with Syria to prevent arms smuggling; stabilize the region; improve the LAF's counter-terrorism capabilities in dealing with Hezbollah; and generally strengthen the Lebanese state at Hezbollah's expense. But it ignored the fact that the members and commanders of the LAF share the terrorists' dedication to Israel's destruction. Caroline Glick reminds us that "during the 2006 war, the LAF provided Hezbollah commanders with targeting data for their missiles and rockets……..and announced on its official Web site that it would award pensions to families of Hezbollah fighters killed in the war."

Hezbollah's influence has gradually seeped into state institutions, especially the Lebanese army. The LAF's profound weaknesses -- and the level of penetration by Hezbollah -- is one of the main reasons why the LAF seeks to avoid a confrontation. There is a very real danger that, in such an eventuality, the LAF's Shiite contingent (numbering approximately a third of the Lebanese army) would desert and join the Hizbollah terrorist group, leading to another Lebanese civil war.

Of concern to members of the US Congress is the knowledge that the LAF not only provides Hezbollah with intelligence gathered through the use of U.S. and French high-tech signals equipment (as noted below), but contains high-ranking LAF officers closely associated with Hezbollah. According to STRATFOR analyst Reva Bhalla, this is by design. Hezbollah discharges a portion of its recruits after they serve two years in its military wing, then enlists them in the LAF. This has allowed Hezbollah both to control the composition of the LAF's ranking officers and influence specific operations. Given Hezbollah's increasing numbers in the 58,000-strong Lebanese army, a natural bond has developed between Shiites in the LAF and their co-religionists in Hezbollah. Debka reports that shortly after the attack, a group of Iranian intelligence and commando officers toured the border area with LAF escorts which included heads of the 9th battalion, the same LAF military unit that was responsible for the August confrontation along the Lebanon-Israel border . This deadly clash left a senior IDF officer dead and another seriously wounded, highlighting the problem and raising questions about future U.S. government funding of advanced weaponry and equipment for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) -- a policy which, until now, has represented the cornerstone of U.S. efforts to stabilize that country. Evidence indicates that the LAF sniper (a Shiite) was closely associated with Hezbollah (a Shiite terrorist organization); many in Congress fear that such associations between the LAF and Hezbollah go far deeper than meets the eye.

In 2006, the U.S. launched what has now become a $720M military assistance program for the LAF. It was introduced at a time when Lebanon was deeply divided between a Western-backed government and the Hezbollah-led parliamentary opposition. The aid included the provision for a wide variety of weapons and weapons systems; specialized training, using cutting-edge technology through the use of marksmanship simulators; and sophisticated signal-detection equipment that was to have allowed the LAF to identify, decipher and trace Hezbollah's encrypted communications.

This equipment, however, and the intelligence information gathered through its use are being directed against Israel -- not Hezbollah. In April 2009, according to the Los Angeles Times, the chief of Lebanon's U.S.-backed Internal Security Forces warned Hezbollah security chief Wafiq Safa that two trusted, mid-ranking Hezbollah commanders were working as informants for Israeli military intelligence. They were never heard from again. This sharing of supposedly top-secret military intelligence information with Hezbollah eventually decimated Israel's intelligence network in Lebanon. Further, according to STRATFOR, Safa has significantly increased his authority over all Shiite officers in the LAF, maintains close contact with the LAF command; has a say in all appointments, promotions and deployments of Shiite officers; and has arranged to be regularly informed of army movements and plans by LAF commanders.

For U.S. military strategists, it was not meant to be that way. When a pro-American coalition won Lebanon's parliamentary elections in June 2009, conventional wisdom had it that Hezbollah, having been defeated at the polls, would lose its appeal, given that a U.S.-backed government would rule Lebanon. The opposite occurred. In November 2009, the U.S.-backed Sunni leader Saad Hariri was chosen as prime minister only after he agreed to share power with Hezbollah and its allies. The deal resulted in Hariri's government having no influence over Hezbollah's militia and its weapons buildup along the Israeli or Syrian borders. Hezbollah has now become the country's dominant military and political force holding the key to both Lebanese domestic and external stability.

What was overlooked in the decision to provide this multi-million dollar military aid package to the LAF was that the Lebanese and U.S. have differing perceptions on the nature of the threats confronting Lebanon. While both are hostile to al Qaeda-sponsored groups, Lebanon maintains that its primary enemy is Israel. In its annual report on worldwide terrorism, the State Department confirms that the Lebanese government "continues to recognize Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, as a legitimate resistance group and political party." The U.S., however, sees Hezbollah and the influence of Iran and neighboring Syria over Lebanese affairs as the biggest obstacles to a pro-Western and stable Lebanon.

It is this difference in perception of "the enemy" that concerns members of Congress, who have oversight on the allocation of funds to the Lebanese Army, and who have grown increasingly unhappy with the military assistance program to Lebanon. What the U.S. did not contemplate was that the divisions that once defined Lebanese politics four years ago are no longer valid today. Former political enemies now work in close association with each other, and this association has enhanced the power, influence and prestige of Hezbollah and its master, Iran, throughout Lebanon – at the expense of U.S. and Israeli interests.

The international community cannot plead ignorance in the face of incontrovertible evidence of Lebanon's growing status as a Syrian and Iranian vassal state. Both the U.S. and France need to reassess their military aid to what has become an arm of the Iranian-Syrian axis. Hezbollah continues to serve as the dominant military power in Lebanon, and, as such, determines whether peace or war will prevail on the Israeli border.

In the Second Lebanon War, Israel only fought Hezbollah and directed its attention to Hezbollah military infrastructures. Lebanese military infrastructure was consciously avoided. As a result, while Haifa residents lived in bomb shelters, Beirut residents went to the beach. Should these provocations continue, they will lead to a much more destructive war – one that will be very different from previous wars in one major respect: It will be a war between Israel and Lebanon, and the Lebanese targets that Israel consciously avoided will become legitimate enemy targets subject to destruction.


Mark Silverberg is a foreign policy analyst for the Ariel Center for Policy Research (Israel), a Contributing Editor for Family Security Matters, Arutz Sheva (Israel National News) and the New Media Journal and is a member of Hadassah's National Academic Advisory Board.

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The Palestinian Authority: Silencing the Opposition

by Khaled Abu Toameh


As the Palestinian Authority is about to launch direct talks with Israel in Washington, its Western-trained security forces are preparing to silence the voices of political opponents and critics.

The crackdown is seen as a blow to all those who were hoping that the Palestinian Authority, whose survival is dependent on American and European taxpayers' money, would be different from the rest of the Arab world's repressive and autocratic regimes.

While it's true that the Palestinian Authority has been successful over the past few years in improving the economy in the territories under its control in the West Bank - largely thanks to generous donations from the West and an easing of Israeli security measures - the Palestinians are nevertheless far from achieving democracy and a free media.

What happened in Ramallah this week should serve as an alarm bell to those who are pouring billions of dollars on this authority without insisting on real political and financial reforms, democracy and transparency.

Dozens of undercover Palestinian policemen and intelligence officers stormed a hall where political activists were preparing to hold a press conference to denounce the Palestinian Authority's decision to negotiate with Israel unconditionally.

Just as the press conference was about to begin, the intruders started shouting slogans in support of Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction. Then they started beating and threatening participants, forcing the organizers to call off the conference.

When the organizers tried to launch an impromptu street march to protest against the assault and the US-sponsored peace talks, they were dispersed by force by another group of policemen under the pretext that they were part of an "illegal gathering."

Two cameramen working for the Ramallah-based private Al-Watan TV station were beaten by Palestinian intelligence officers who also confiscated their tapes.

Prominent Palestinian activists have strongly condemned the behavior of their security forces as a "black day for Palestinian freedom of expression" and "one of the worst political scandals."

Political analyst Abdel Majiud Swailem said that the incident showed that the Palestinians were still not prepared for democracy and pluralism. "When will we become mature and learn the ABC's of democratic life? How much time is needed before we feel comfortable that democracy has become a norm in our political life?"

By silencing its political opponents and critics, the Palestinian Authority is trying to create the false impression that it has the backing of a majority of its people to negotiate with Israel.

A government that sends policemen in plain clothes to disrupt a press conference and beat political activists and journalists is displaying signs of weakness, and not strength.

In the West Bank, the Palestinian government has fired thousands of civil servants because of their political affiliations. Local journalists and editors are under daily pressure and threats to "toe the line" and refrain from reporting on matters that might reflect negatively on the leaders in Ramallah.

In this regard, the Palestinian Authority is behaving exactly like the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. Both governments spend a lot of their time and energy in silencing the opposition and the "hostile" media.

Many Palestinians who had once been exposed to something of Israel's democracy and free media were hoping that the Palestinian Authority would create a regime similar to the one in Israel. The last thing they were yearning for was that they would end up with two autocratic regimes - one in the West Bank and the other in the Gaza Strip - like the ones in the Arab world.


Khaled Abu Toameh, an Arab Muslim, is a veteran award-winning journalist who has been covering Palestinian affairs for nearly three decades.
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