We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land

dear mohammad gill...thank you for reviewing carter's book for chowk readers. i have listened to his interview on CNN with larry king. he is successful in opening up a dialogue about middle east crisis. it is sad that those leaders, anwar sadat in egypt and yitzak rabin in israel, who shook hands with the enemy were assassinated. let us hope the peace process starts again because peace in the middle east is essential for the world peace. it is tragic how children of abraham are fighting a tribal war for centuries. let us hope obama can inspire both sides to review their positions and start a genuine peaceful dialogue.
sincerely sohail

http://www.traveladventures.org/continents/asia/images/israeli-wall14.jpg

In face the big WALL is a shining example of how Islamists should be physically ostracized from the civilized world.......

Hey, every non-muslim must support Israel........

Israel is a shining example of non-muslim resistence against the Islamist menace.....

That does not mean I support occupation of land , but I support the right to defend against Islamic violence against Jews and non-muslims.....and Israel has shown how to kick these Islamist arse......

Hampshire College cuts ties with firms invested in Israel



February 12, 2009 04:23 PM By Peter Schworm, Globe Staff

Student activists at Hampshire College are hailing a divestment decision by the board of trustees that they say makes the college the first in the country to break financial ties with companies specifically because they do business with Israel. But the college strenuously denies the move was politically motivated.

The campus group at the Amherst school, Students for Justice in Palestine, said it had pressured the board to divest from six companies because of human rights concerns in the Palestinian territories. The group said it urged trustees over the past year to sell off holdings in a mutual fund run by State Street Global Advisors that invests in companies that "provide the Israeli military with equipment and services in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza."

"The university has taken a critical first step in ending its complicity with and profiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory," Jay Cassano, a spokesman for the group, said today. Cassano said more than 800 students, professors, and alumni signed a petition calling for the divestment, which was presented to trustees.

"This was a direct result of student pressure," he said.

But in a statement released today, university officials said the decision to divest from the fund was made "without reference to any country or political movement."
Instead, trustees concluded that the fund held stocks in more than 200 companies

engaged in business practices that violated the college’s policy on "socially responsible investments." These violations included unfair labor practices, environmental abuse, military weapons manufacturing, and unsafe workplace settings, trustees said.

University officials acknowledged they reviewed the fund at students' request, but said the divestment decision "expressly did not pertain to a political movement or single out businesses active in a specific region or country."

The six companies that formed the basis of the student group's complaints were: Caterpillar, United Technologies, General Electric, ITT Corporation, Motorola, and Terex.

Sigmund Roos, chairman of the board of trustees, said in a phone interview that while the board reviewed the fund's investments it never reviewed the group's petition, which accuses Israel of implementing "apartheid policies" against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"We never took it up," he said. "Students know that."
Roos said he was disappointed that students had portrayed the board's decision as a protest of Israeli policy. The fund represented about one-quarter of the college's investments.

In 1977, the left-leaning Hampshire became the first college in the nation to divest its South African holdings.

With their recent efforts, the students join a broad movement on college campuses protesting Israeli policy toward Palestinians and calling for divestment. Colleges have strongly resisted the idea, and activists' equation of Israeli policy with apartheid has drawn sharp criticism.

Re: # 3

bj mian,

..... all i am saying is that barack husssein is right in recognizing that it was wrong to lump popularly elected officials of hamas with hizbollah's members of the lebanese parliament, 'non-state' bollywood actors from pakistan, freedom fighters in kashmir, independent shoe bombers from london, islam crazed terrorists in swat, afghan taliban, deobandis from hyderabad, copy cat taliban in fata, deobandis from muridke and armchair warriors like urstruly ........... i agree that all these people have been infected by the resurgent islamic virus, but the strains have mutated and require different treatment ......... some require drones and daisy cutters while others need psychotherapy ..... for example, the people of kashmir need their freedom ......

.... barack hussein is a smart man .... he recognizes that the wot label, while dramatic, was misleading and counter productive and that different folks need different strokes ..... hopefully, doctors holbrooke and mitchell will prescribe the right medication ........

5...
UN SC deservs some kudos for confining violence to that low level...

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Re: # 3

Hamidm2 miaN, because of reasons that I don't understand (probably cultural), my Pakistani bhai/behens are big on nomenclature. I wish I could say the same of their actions but then -- I have only a finite lifetime to wait!

The point is, whether you call it WOT or "phooljhadee", the devastating effects of those drones remain the same.

There may not be a "WOT" ongoing but the "gala-milaap" does not feel much different.

bj,

... whatever ... but have you noticed that barack hussein has not once used the term 'war on terror'?....... does this mean that the war is over ?

I used to like and respect Jimmy Carter at one time. I do not do so any more.

He was a lousy president, he was a lousy politician and he has a lousy understanding of the Middle East issues. He should stick to his church activities.

The following is excerpted from an Op-Ed article (published on February 3, 2009) written Mr. Judea Pearl, the father of (late) Wall Street Journal reporter, Danny Pearl.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123362422088941893.html?mod=djemEditor ialPage

---------------------------------

Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil
When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror?

By JUDEA PEARL

This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of our son, former Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. My wife Ruth and I wonder: Would Danny have believed that today's world emerged after his tragedy?

The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let idealism bend the harshness of facts.

Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of "the resistance." Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers deserve international recognition.

No. Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny's murder would be a turning point in the history of man's inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism -- the ideological license to elevate one's grievances above the norms of civilized society -- was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable "tactical" considerations.

This mentality of surrender then worked its way through politicians like the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In July 2005 he told Sky News that suicide bombing is almost man's second nature. "In an unfair balance, that's what people use," explained Mr. Livingstone.

But the clearest endorsement of terror as a legitimate instrument of political bargaining came from former President Jimmy Carter. In his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Mr. Carter appeals to the sponsors of suicide bombing. "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel." Acts of terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools for terrorists to address perceived injustices.

Mr. Carter's logic has become the dominant paradigm in rationalizing terror. When asked what Israel should do to stop Hamas's rockets aimed at innocent civilians, the Syrian first lady, Asma Al-Assad, did not hesitate for a moment in her response: "They should end the occupation." In other words, terror must earn a dividend before it is stopped.

The media have played a major role in handing terrorism this victory of acceptability. Qatari-based Al Jazeera television, for example, is still providing Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi hours of free air time each week to spew his hateful interpretation of the Koran, authorize suicide bombing, and call for jihad against Jews and Americans.

Then came the August 2008 birthday of Samir Kuntar, the unrepentant killer who, in 1979, smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl with his rifle after killing her father before her eyes. Al Jazeera elevated Kuntar to heroic heights with orchestras, fireworks and sword dances, presenting him to 50 million viewers as Arab society's role model. No mainstream Western media outlet dared to expose Al Jazeera efforts to warp its young viewers into the likes of Kuntar. Al Jazeera's management continues to receive royal treatment in all major press clubs.

Some American pundits and TV anchors didn't seem much different from Al Jazeera in their analysis of the recent war in Gaza. Bill Moyers was quick to lend Hamas legitimacy as a "resistance" movement, together with honorary membership in PBS's imaginary "cycle of violence." In his Jan. 9 TV show, Mr. Moyers explained to his viewers that "each [side] greases the cycle of violence, as one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to oppression." He then stated -- without blushing -- that for readers of the Hebrew Bible "God-soaked violence became genetically coded." The "cycle of violence" platitude allows analysts to empower terror with the guise of reciprocity, and, amazingly, indict terror's victims for violence as immutable as DNA.

When we ask ourselves what it is about the American psyche that enables genocidal organizations like Hamas -- the charter of which would offend every neuron in our brains -- to become tolerated in public discourse, we should take a hard look at our universities and the way they are currently being manipulated by terrorist sympathizers.

At my own university, UCLA, a symposium last week on human rights turned into a Hamas recruitment rally by a clever academic gimmick. The director of the Center for Near East Studies carefully selected only Israel bashers for the panel, each of whom concluded that the Jewish state is the greatest criminal in human history.

The primary purpose of the event was evident the morning after, when unsuspecting, uninvolved students read an article in the campus newspaper titled, "Scholars say: Israel is in violation of human rights in Gaza," to which the good name of the University of California was attached. This is where Hamas scored its main triumph -- another inch of academic respectability, another inroad into Western minds.

Danny's picture is hanging just in front of me, his warm smile as reassuring as ever. But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You did not die in vain.

Mr. Pearl, a professor of computer science at UCLA, is president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, founded in memory of his son to promote cross-cultural understanding.

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