Protests and Threats

The protests continue in Iran, Yemen, and even Bahrain, along with Egypt and Algeria. Two people were killed in the Bahrain protests, and members of the Parliament have walked out.

Two protesters have died in clashes with Bahraini police, sparking angry calls from young cyber-activists for regime change and a walkout of parliament by Bahrain's main Shiite opposition bloc.

The events prompted King Hamad to express sorrow for the deaths, announce a ministerial probe and pledge to press ahead with reforms, in an address to the tiny Gulf state facing Iran across the Gulf that is ruled by his Sunni family.

The Islamic National Accord Association which has 18 seats in the 40-member house earlier announced it had "suspended its membership" in parliament over the killings of the Shiite demonstrators.

The decision came because of "the deterioration in security and the negative and brutal way in which (authorities) dealt with the protesters, killing two of them," bloc member MP Khalil al-Marzooq said.

Fadel Salman Matrouk was shot dead in front of a hospital on Tuesday where mourners gathered for the funeral of Ali Msheymah who died of his wounds after police dispersed a protest in a village east of Manama on Monday, he said.

In Iran, the regime is calling for the heads of opposition leaders - they want them executed.



The members of Parliament calling for the blood of members of the opposition, including former President Rafsanjani aren't doing so unless they have the blessings of the mullahs and IRGC, and that's on top of the fact several political prisoners are presumed to have been executed by the regime:

Members of the Iranian parliament issued fiery chants against opposition leaders and former presidential candidates Mehdi Karrubi and Mir Hossein Moussavi.

Press TV aired video Tuesday of lawmakers chanting "Moussavi, Karrubi ... execute them."

Lawmakers also named former President Mohammad Khatami in some of the death chants.

The calls for the leaders' executions come after a particularly deadly month in Iran. At least 66 people were executed in January, according to Iranian media reports. Most of the executions were reportedly carried out for drug offenses, although at least three involved political prisoners, a U.N. statement said.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is planning a political party, which is sure to raise eyebrows over their ultimate intentions, but forming a political party is preferable to a hostile takeover and imposing their theocratic will over that of the population. Protests there continue, because of the ongoing economic concerns that helped spark the revolution/coup d'etat.

The Algerian PM thinks that the protesters are a small minority that is expressing discontent. I think he's deluding himself if he thinks that a small percentage of his countrymen are satisfied with conditions and he's likely to fall into the same trap that Mubarak did just days ago.

UPDATE:
Video from the Bahraini protests:

Algerian Security Putting Down Protests

Algerian protesters were met with riot police and a very strong police presence:

The demonstrators gathered in May 1 Square, chanting “Bouteflika out!” in reference to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has ruled Algeria since 1999. Organizers said thousands had taken part, but news agencies gave vastly differing figures, from a few dozen to thousands.

The protesters were hemmed in by thousands of riot police and blocked from embarking on a planned march through the capital. Many were arrested, although there were also conflicting numbers for those detained.

By Saturday afternoon, the square was lined by riot police and armored vehicles and a police helicopter circled overhead. Principal roads into the center of town also remained blocked and far fewer people were on the streets than would be typical on a Saturday.

The Interior Ministry posted a statement on its Web site saying that 250 people had taken part in the protests and that 14 people had been detained and later released, according to Reuters.

Human rights groups however said the number of arrests had been far higher.

The media spokesman for the coordinating committee seeking democratic change in Algeria said that 70 people had been arrested and that about 30 remained in detention. Those detained included the group’s main organizers, as well as human rights activists, union organizers, members of women’s associations and groups formed to track the missing and killed during the civil war in the 1990s.

Bombing Spree

Jihadis have been very busy today. Afghanistan was the scene of two separate incidents. The first involved Taliban elements attacking French paratroopers, killing 10 of the French soldiers.

The soldiers were on a reconnaissance mission in the Surobi district, an area known as a militant redoubt about 30 miles east of the Afghan capital.

Qazi Suliman, the district chief in Surobi, said the ambush sparked a three-hour gunbattle. Sarkozy confirmed that 10 soldiers from the 8th infantry parachute regiment were killed and 21 wounded.

An Afghan official said four of the soldiers were kidnapped by insurgents and killed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to release the information.

Suliman said he had a report that 13 militants were killed. NATO said it sent reinforcements and a "large number" of the 100 attackers died.

France has 2,600 troops in Afghanistan and the French Prime Minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, had wanted to increase the number by 700.

At about the same time, group of suicide bombers attempted to storm a US base, but were unsuccessful at penetrating the base defenses. The attackers were killed or detonated their suicide vests.

Both attacks were claimed by the Taliban. You can bet that the events in next door Pakistan have something to do with the attacks in Afghanistan since the terrorists in Afghanistan can regroup and rearm from over the border. Pakistan also witnessed a terrorist attack, this time at a hospital in northwestern Pakistan, which killed 20 people.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber killed 43 people in Algeria when the attacker rammed a car laden with explosives into a crowd of people outside a police academy. Watch for an al Qaeda aligned group to take credit there.

Note also that the majority of the victims were civilians - Muslims in fact. These jihadis, who claim to attack the West and the infidels, often end up murdering fellow Muslims (albeit those who are insufficiently Muslim for the jihadis).

To that end, Pakistan's NWFP parliament passed a resolution mandating Islamic law as a way to end the violence. Never mind that Islamic law is violent, misogynistic and harms the rights of non Muslims.

Algeria: Freed Terrorists Caused Algiers Bombing

Freed terrorists responsible for UN bombing.

Two convicted terrorists who had been freed in an amnesty carried out the suicide bombings at U.N. and government buildings that killed 37 people, an Algerian security official has said.


Rescuers and bomb experts search for survivors in the rubble of a destroyed building.

Rescuers in the shaken city Thursday were still extracting the living and the dead from the crumpled remains of U.N. offices in Algiers that were bombed by al-Qaeda's self-styled North African affiliate.

Victims caught in Tuesday's twin truck bombings, which happened 10 minutes apart, included U.N. staff from around the world, police officers and law students.

One of the bombers was a 64-year-old man in the advanced stages of cancer, while the other was a 32-year-old from a poor suburb that has produced many Islamic militants, the security official said Thursday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The government has offered amnesties to try to end a 15-year Islamic insurgency, resulting in thousands of militants turning themselves in, but sparking fierce criticism from the families of victims.

Revolving door justice is injustice, and where jihadis are concerned amnesty and open door policies are a threat to humanity. How many have to die for people to realize the folly of letting jihadis loose once caught?

This is an attack that is likely not to have occurred had the Algerian government not let these men free as part of an amnesty. It's the prime reason I'm opposed to letting the Palestinian thugs out of Israeli jails because they are likely to strike again, and it's the reason I'm opposed to letting the jihadis run free after being held in places like GitMo.

Al Qaeda Take Credit For Algerian Bombings

Al-Qa'ida has claimed responsibility for a double car bomb strike in Algiers that killed dozens of people, including 11 UN workers, the deadliest attack on the world body since 2003.

The Algerian Government said 30 people were killed and 177 others injured by the twin bombings, which were claimed by the extremist network al-Qa'ida's Branch in the Islamic Maghreb.

But hospital sources in Algiers gave a toll of 62 dead and about 100 injured.

The destruction raised the spectre of a return to the civil war that ravaged the North African country in the 1990s.

Commentators said the targets appeared to confirm al-Qa'ida's plan to subsume Algeria's internal conflict into its war on the West. The date - December 11 - also pointed to Osama bin Laden's signature, they said.

The date caught the interest of international intelligence specialists. The 2001 attacks in the US were on September 11, the Madrid bombings on March 11, 2004.

I don't think the date is nearly as important as the method of bombing utilized - simultaneous car bombings, which is a hallmark of al Qaeda. They look to engage in multiple synchronous attacks on targets, such as 9/11, Operation Bojinka, African embassy bombings, or any number of suicide bombings in Iraq.

Bombs Rock Algerian Capital; Dozens Dead and Injured

Two car bombs went off in the heart of Algiers, the Algerian capital, killing at least 45 people. At least 10 of those killed were working for the United Nations as one of the blasts occurred outside the UN refugee agency:

Two car bomb attacks, one of which targeted offices of the U.N. refugee agency, killed at least 45 people, including 10 U.N. staff members, in the Algerian capital Tuesday, authorities said.

The civil protection agency said one attack killed 30 people and that a second blast left another 15 people dead.

Jean Fabre of the U.N. Development Program said it was still unknown who died or which U.N. agencies they represented. Fabre said he received the information from Marc Destanne De Bernis, the agency's top official in the Algerian capital.

From the sound of it, it may be an al Qaeda or al Qaeda inspired attack, since al Qaeda's favorite tactic is to use multiple bombs in mass casualty attacks and Islamists are busy trying to wage jihad against the West from Algeria.

UPDATE:
The death toll is now 62 and climbing.

UPDATE:
Gateway Pundit has video and photos of the carnage.

Short Memories

The Washington Post/MSNBC article on the recent Algerian bombings linked to al Qaeda suggests that al Qaeda has a long reach and that it has infiltrated North Africa.

Al-Qaeda has rapidly extended its influence across North Africa by aiding and organizing local groups that are demonstrating a renewed ability to launch terrorist attacks in the region, such as the triple suicide bombings that killed 33 people here last month, according to counterterrorism officials and analysts.

The bombers who struck the Government Palace and a police station in Algiers, the capital, are believed to have been local residents. But Algerian authorities are examining evidence that the bombers were siphoned from recruiting pipelines that have sent hundreds of North African fighters to Iraq and perhaps were trained by veterans of the Iraqi insurgency, U.S. and European intelligence officials said.

I think the article misses out on what has happened over the past 20 years.

Al Qaeda got its start in Africa. The USS Cole was hit in Yemen and the dual bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania showed that al Qaeda had a potent capability in Africa. Porous borders and failed states on the continent enable al Qaeda to spread without being detected. The jihadi ideology further enables al Qaeda to spread its message.

The Iraq conflict, combined with the Afghanistan campaign put al Qaeda on the defensive. They had to respond to both campaigns. Infidels in the heart of the Islamic world could not be tolerated, and yet al Qaeda has been decimated there. They need to take the pressure off their remaining al Qaeda thugs, so have attempted to do so by launching attacks elsewhere in the world. Algeria is a good launching point from which to go after Europe and other parts of Africa because of its central location and proximity to unstable failed states in Africa from which al Qaeda can grow its manpower relatively undetected.

And with the porous European borders, the concern is that once inside Algeria, it is a quick hop into Europe to launch attacks.

The article makes the leap that the Iraq campaign has spread the jihadi war to Africa and into Europe, and ignores the recent past to do so. Al Qaeda has had a presence in Africa for more than a decade.

Massive Child Porn Ring Busted

Austrian authorities said Wednesday they have uncovered a major international child pornography ring involving more than 2,360 suspects from 77 countries, including hundreds in the United States, who paid to view videos of young children being sexually abused.

The children were under the age of 14 and screams could be heard, said Harald Gremel, an Austrian police expert on Internet crime who headed the investigation.

Interior Minister Guenther Platter said the FBI was investigating about 600 of the suspects in the United States. German authorities were following leads on another 400 people, France was looking into about 100 others, and at least 23 suspects were Austrians, he said.

The porn ring was apparently using a Russian-based website to view photos and videos. Users had to pay $89 to gain access to the website. A diligent ISP in Austria noticed something amiss and began tracking IP information which was given to the Austrian authorities.

The investigation began in July when a man working for a Vienna-based Internet file hosting service approached authorities at the Interior Ministry to say he noticed the pornographic material during a routine check, Gremel said.

The man blocked access to the videos while recording the I.P. addresses of people who continued to try to download the material, and gave the details to authorities. Neither the man nor the Vienna company were identified, and police said neither was implicated in the case.

Within a 24-hour period, investigators recorded more than 8,000 hits from 2,361 computer I.P. addresses in 77 countries ranging from Algeria to South Africa, Gremel told reporters.

The videos were posted on a Russian Web site, and users had to pay $89 to access the material, Gremel said.

He said investigators believe the videos, which included images of girls and boys up to age 14, were made in Eastern Europe and uploaded to the site from somewhere in Britain.

What is a War Crime?

Lawhawk posted an interesting article below:

Human rights groups are taking aim at Israel, preparing charges of war crimes against Israel. As an afterthought, they're also calling out Hizbullah for their actions. Sorry, but these human rights groups have their law all in a bunch. Hizbullah, a terrorist group that by its very existence violates human rights laws including the Geneva Conventions, and whose actions routinely and purposefully put civilians in the middle of a combat zone, not only started the conflict in Lebanon, but deserve to be prosecuted out of existence by military force. Somewhere Nasrallah is laughing over this. Israel's acts were those of defense, and to destroy Hizbullah's capabilities in a densely populated urban area. That civilians were killed was unavoidable and wholly the fault of Hizbullah, which put their forces precisely in this situation.

And it got me thinking, what is a war crime?

The Nuremberg Principles were a set of guidelines for determining what constitutes a war crime. The document was created by necessity during the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi party members following World War II.The guidelines are as follows:

Principle I Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is
responsible therefore and liable to punishment.

Principle II The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.

Principle III The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

Principle IV The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

Principle V Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.

Principle VI The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
(a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
(b) War Crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
(c) Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

Principle VII Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.

So, now what crime did Israel commit? Please tell me, because I don't know.

Also, in response to Amnesty International's charges of war crimes, Harvard Law School Professor, Alan Dershowitz, wrote:

The two principal "human rights" organizations are in a race to the bottom to see which group can demonize Israel with the most absurd legal arguments and most blatant factual mis-statements. Until last week, Human Rights Watch enjoyed a prodigious lead, having "found" - contrary to what every newspaper in the world had reported and what everyone saw with their own eyes on television - "no cases in which Hizbullah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack."

Those of us familiar with Amnesty International's nefarious anti-Israel agenda and notoriously "suggestible" investigative methodology wondered how it could possibly match such a breathtaking lie.

But we didn't have to wait long for AI to announce that Israel was guilty of a slew of war crimes for "widespread attacks against public civilian infrastructure, including power plants, bridges, main roads, seaports, and Beirut's international airport."

There are two problems with the Amnesty report and conclusion. First, Amnesty is wrong about the law. Israel committed no war crimes by attacking parts of the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon.

In fact, through restraint, Israel was able to minimize the number of civilian casualties in Lebanon, despite Hizbullah's best efforts to embed itself in population centers and to use civilians as human shields. The total number of innocent Muslim civilians killed by Israeli weapons during a month of ferocious defensive warfare was a fraction of the number of innocent Muslims killed by other Muslims during that same period in Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Algeria, and other areas of Muslim-on-Muslim civil strife. Yet the deaths caused by Muslims received a fraction of the attention devoted to alleged Israeli "crimes."

This lack of concern for Muslims by other Muslims - and the lack of focus by so-called human rights organizations on these deaths - is bigotry, pure and simple.

AMNESTY'S EVIDENCE that Israel's attacks on infrastructure constitute war crimes comes from its own idiosyncratic interpretation of the already-vague word "disproportionate." Unfortunately for Amnesty, no other country in any sort of armed conflict has ever adopted such a narrow definition of the term. Indeed, among the very first military objectives of most modern wars is precisely what Israel did: to disable portions of the opponent's electrical grid and communication network, to destroy bridges and roads, and to do whatever else is necessary to interfere with those parts of the civilian infrastructure that supports the military capability of the enemy.

That's how the American and Britain militaries fought World War II. (In fact, Israel shows far more restraint than Britain did during World War II. Prime Minister Winston Churchill directed the Royal Air Force to bomb the center of towns with the express purpose of killing as many civilians as possible.) Had the Allies been required to fight World War II under the rules of engagement selectively applied to Amnesty International to Israel, our "greatest generation" might have lost that war.

The strategy of destroying some infrastructure was particular imperative against Hizbullah. Israel first had to ensure that its kidnapped soldiers would not be smuggled out of the country (as other soldiers had been and were never returned), then it had to prevent Hizbullah from being re-armed, especially given that Hizbullah damaged a ship using advanced radar technology provided by the Lebanese army and rockets provided by Iran.

Hizbullah was being armed by Syria and Iran - as those countries themselves admitted - and the president, government, and population of Lebanon overwhelmingly supported the militia's indiscriminate rocket attacks against Israeli civilian population centers. The Lebanese army actively supported Hizbullah's military actions. Israel was, in a very real sense, at war with Lebanon itself, and not simply with a renegade faction of militants.

HERE'S HOW law professor David Bernstein answered Amnesty's charge:

The idea that a country at war can't attack the enemy's resupply routes (at least until it has direct evidence that there is a particular military shipment arriving) has nothing to do with human rights or war crimes, and a lot to do with a pacifist attitude that seeks to make war, regardless of the justification for it or the restraint in prosecuting it [at least if it's a Western country doing it], an international "crime."

In other words, if attacking the civilian infrastructure is a war crime, then modern warfare is entirely impermissible, and terrorists have a free hand in attacking democracies and hiding from retaliation among civilians. Terrorists become de facto immune from any consequences for their atrocities.

THE MORE troubling aspect of Amnesty's report is their inattention to Hizbullah. If Israel is guilty of war crimes for targeting civilian infrastructure, imagine how much greater is Hizbullah's moral responsibility for targeting civilians! But Amnesty shows little interest in condemning the terrorist organization that started the conflict, indiscriminately killed both Israeli civilians (directly) and Lebanese civilians (by using them as human shields), and has announced its intention to kill Jews worldwide (already having started by blowing up the Jewish Community Center in Argentina.) Apparently Amnesty has no qualms about Hizbullah six-year war of attrition against Israel following Israel's complete withdrawal from Southern Lebanon.

As has been widely reported, even al-Jazeera expressed surprise at the imbalance in the Amnesty report:

During the four week war Hizbullah fired 3,900 rockets at Israeli towns and cities with the aim of inflicting maximum civilian casualties.

The Israeli government says that 44 Israeli civilians were killed in the bombardments and 1,400 wounded.

AI has not issued a report accusing Hizbullah of war crimes.
Amnesty does not even seem to understand the charges it is making. Take, for example, this paragraph from its report:

Israeli government spokespeople have insisted that they were targeting Hizbullah positions and support facilities, and that damage to civilian infrastructure was incidental or resulted from Hizbullah using the civilian population as a "human shield". However, the pattern and scope of the attacks, as well as the number of civilian casualties and the amount of damage sustained, makes the justification ring hollow.

But the issue of human shields and infrastructure are different. The first relates to civilian casualties; the second concerns property damage. Of course Israel intentionally targeted bridges and roads. It would have been militarily negligent not to have done so under the circumstances. But it did not target innocent civilians. It would have given them no military benefit to do so.

The allegations become even more tenuous, as when Amnesty writes, "a road that can be used for military transport is still primarily civilian in nature." By this reasoning, terrorists could commandeer any structure or road initially constructed for civilian use, and Israel could not touch those bridges or buildings because they were once, and still could be, used by civilians. This is not, and should not be, the law.

Consider another example: "While the use of civilians to shield a combatant from attack is a war crime, under international humanitarian law such use does not release the opposing party from its obligations towards the protection of the civilian population."

Well that's certainly nice sounding. But what does it mean? What would Amnesty suggest a country do in the face of daily rocket attacks launched from civilian populations? Nothing, apparently. The clear implication of Amnesty's arguments is that the only way Israel could have avoided committing "war crimes" would have been if it had taken only such military action that carried with it no risk to civilian shields - that is, to do absolutely nothing.

For Amnesty, "Israeli war crimes" are synonymous with "any military action whatsoever."

The real problem with Amnesty's paper is that its blanket condemnations do not consider the consequences of its arguments. (It doesn't have to; it would never advance these arguments against any country but Israel.)

Amnesty International's conclusions are not based on sound legal arguments. They're certainly not based on compelling moral arguments. They're simply anti-Israel arguments. Amnesty reached a predetermined conclusion - that Israel committed war crimes - and it is marshalling whatever sound-bites it could to support that conclusion.

Amnesty International is not only sacrificing its own credibility when it misstates the law and omits relevant facts in its obsession over Israel. It also harms progressive causes that AI should be championing.

Just last year, for example, Amnesty blamed Palestinian rapes and "honor killings" on - you guessed it - the Israeli occupation. When I pointed out that there was absolutely no statistical evidence to show that domestic violence increased during the occupation, and that Amnesty's report relied exclusively on the conclusory and anecdotal reports of Palestinian NGOs, Amnesty stubbornly repeated that "Israel is implicated in this violence by Palestinian men against Palestinian women."

This episode only underscored AI's predisposition to blame everything on Israel. Even when presented with an ideal opportunity to promote gender equality and feminism in the Arab world, it preferred to take wholly unrelated and absurd shots at Israel.

Amnesty International just can't seem to help itself when it comes to blaming Israel for the evils of the world, but rational observers must not credit the pre-determined conclusions of a once-reputable organization that has destroyed its own credibility by repeatedly applying a double standard to Israel.

Professor, I could not have said it better myself!

Sounds of Silence

There's still no word on Gilad Shalit's condition and the Palestinian terrorists continue to hold him hostage while Hamas and Fatah both try to extort even more concessions from Israel. Israel continues to pound sand and fire into empty buildings and kassam launch sites, as if that is going to somehow convince the terrorists that they must release Shalit.

However, the Israeli security cabinet approved a deeper strike by the IDF into Gaza. That will slowly drop the gauntlet on the Palestinians and further limit the area from which they can attack Israel or operate out in the open.

Palestinian terrorists continue to attempt to make good on their promises to strike at Israeli schools and hospitals. They fired a kassam rocket into Israel, and hit a school in Ashkelon. There were no injuries as the school was empty, but this again shows the fallacy of trying to negotiate with the terrorists.

A Palestinian suicide bomber was killed in the West Bank before he could attack Israelis. A six kilogram bomb was discovered and destroyed near Jenin. And a work accident" killed two other Palestinians. That's what happens when you mess with TATP and or cross wires when building bombs.

A Palestinian woman was arrested for planning to carry out a terrorist attack against Israel.

All the while, Syria looks on with its fingers firmly in the cookie jar. Israel continues to warn Syria of trying to affect the outcome of the situation in Gaza - as Syria is providing a safe haven for Hamas, Hizbullah, and other Islamic terrorist groups that are plotting Israel's destruction.

And for those that aren't keeping track, Israel isn't occupying Gaza anymore. It's under the full control of the terrorist groups Fatah and Hamas.

You know how Israel says that no matter how far beyond their legal or moral obligations they go (say, by giving food, water, and supplies to people who want to kill them) they still get attacked diplomatically? This is that.
Israel is not collectively punishing an occupied population. It is preparing to launch an attack against an enemy entity whose government committed acts of war and terrorism after being elected on a platform of warmaking and terrorism.

At some point, the international sophisticates who make a career out of demonizing Israel are going to have to come to grips that the Palestinians in Gaza are not under Israeli occupation any more. Not to worry - we're confident that the international press will soon form a consensus on what new Israeli policy they can use to excuse Palestinian terrorism.

UPDATE:
Palestinians claim that a child was badly injured in the ongoing fighting between Israel and the terrorists groups. As has been repeatedly noted, the Palestinian terrorists purposefully operate in areas where civilian casualties, and particularly children, are extremely likely. It is their modus operandi such that when the inevitable casualties occur, the Palestinian apologists can cry crocidile tears before the international media and denounce Israel despite the fact that it was the Palestinians themselves who put those children in the situation in the first place.

UPDATE:
Ed Morrissey notes the Israeli approval of raiding deeper into Gaza to deal with the ongoing terrorist threats. I think carving out a security belt from northern Gaza will not eliminate the threat posed by the ongoing kassam rocket launches. Only eliminating the terrorists themselves will deal with the problem, and the Israelis are reluctant to deal the fatal blow to Hamas, al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Fatah, PRCs and PIJ.

Israellycool has running updates, as does Carl in Jerusalem. In both cases, keep scrolling.

Meryl Yourish points out the AP whitewashing of reports about Hamas engaging in mass casualty attack planning that were thwarted by Israeli forces over the past 24 hours. The participants clearly identified themselves as members of Hamas, and yet the reports deemphasize that basic fact. Why?

UPDATE:
Also per Meryl, the high school where the Kassam was fired was not empty as some media reports were indicating. There were quite a few people in the vicinity when the kassam landed.

Every Israeli news agency reported that there were many people in the school, and one said that some of the students were playing soccer outside and were thrown around by the force of the explosion.

Apparently, the AP doesn’t rely on Israeli sources for information on events within Israel. I’m sure the palestinian spokesliars, or their UN/EU/ISM enablers, were happy to oblige them in this case.

UPDATE:
Via Carl in Jerusalem, Justice Minister Haim Ramon has confirmed that Shalit is still alive and is still being held by Hamas.

UPDATE:
The UN Envoy says that the Gaza siege violates human rights law.

Israel's military action, launched after an Israeli soldier was kidnapped by Palestinian militants, was a "disproportionate use of force against civilians," said John Dugard, U.N. Special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Big deal. You know what precipitated this current crisis? The invasion of Israel by Palestinian terrorists who killed two Israeli soldiers and resulted in the capture of Gilad Shalit but I don't hear condemnations of that action. Not only was that a violation of international law, but casus belli for going to war. Nor do I hear the condemnations of the incessant shelling of Israel by Palestinian terrorists. No, the only complaint is when Israel takes action to defend itself.

UPDATE:
Israel's warnings to Assad may be paying dividends. Assad and Maashal are having a falling out, if reports can be believed.

Independent Palestinian website PNN reported Wednesday evening of a stormy meeting held recently between Syrian President Basher Assad and senior Hamas leaders in Damascus.

According to the report, Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal was ordered by Assad to release kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.

The report, which so far does not have confirmation in other sources, says that Mashaal and other Hamas top figures rejected Assad's demand, and left Damascus for Algeria.

Assad doesn't want to be sucked into the mess created by Hamas any more than he already is. And Hamas is making that quite difficult.

UPDATE:
Vital Perspective has more on the kassam rockets fired into Ashkelon today. There were two, and one apparently caused several injuries. I'm sure that the Palestinians will fret about the infliction of injuries on Israeli civilians, but for the simple fact that the Palestinian terrorists do not consider any Israelis to be civilians. All are enemies worthy of being murdered. Vital Perspective also points to two op-eds, one by Tom Friedman and the other by Charles Krauthammer that are succinct and to the point. Israel withdrew from Gaza last year, and all the Palestinians have done is turn Gaza into a shooting gallery from which to assault Israel.

The Arab League continues to fund the Palestinian terror operations by transferring $50 million to the Palestinians. No doubt some portion of that money will go towards weapons procurement that will be directed at Israel's destruction.

UPDATE:
There's a few new developments this evening (8PM EDT). Israel is considering a security zone in Gaza. I'm not particularly optimistic about that as that worked out so well for Israel in Lebanon. No, what needs to happen is continued operations against the terrorists themselves. MSNBC is reporting that the Israelis fired on a car filled with reporters near Beit Lahiya. However, others are reporting that the circumstances of the explosion are undetermined.

Carl in Jerusalem reports that Israeli forces went into the Erez industrial park, and the Palestinians quickly followed - to strip the place bare.

Technorati: terrorism, fatah, Gilad, Shalit, Olmert, Eliyahu, Asheri, Ashri, Abbas, Rains, Summer, cavaliers, wrath, PRC, Hamas, Gaza, palestinian, Israel

The Motives Behind a SUV Rampage

Mohammed Taheriazar has repeatedly stated that he intended to cause harm because of all the Muslim blood shed around the world. Amir Taheri's op-ed in the New York Post should disabuse Taheriazar of the notion that the US is behind much of the bloodshed.

In fact, it is often the jihadists themselves who have shed more Muslim blood than any other group, including the US. Witness the death tolls in Kashmir, Algeria, Thailand, and Chechnya for starters. In Algeria alone, more than 150,000 Muslims were killed to "shed blood to irrigate the tree of martyrdom."

Algeria: In 1991, Algeria was divided over whether an election that an Islamist coalition was slated to win should go ahead. This, too, was a political conflict that could have been resolved through political means. In fact, some leaders of the Islamist group, including the late Abdel-Qader Hachani, were engaged in secret talks with the Algerian army leaders to find a compromise.

But then the professional jihadists intervened, starting with series of brutal killings of civilians that had nothing to do with the immediate conflict. In the words of one leader, Jamal Zeituni, they wanted to "shed blood to irrigate the tree of martyrdom."

The jihadists have been defeated in Algeria as they have been, and will be, everywhere else. But over a decade of terrorism they provoked the death of more than 150,000 people, halted Algeria's economic development and slowed down its democratization - and drove more than 3 million Algerians into exile.

Jihadists have exploited secular disputes and turned them into killing fields for their own agendas. This isn't the only time that jihadists have sought to exploit nominally secular incidents for their own purposes; simply recall the French riots from November 2005. More than 10,000 cars were torched in the span of a couple of weeks, hundreds of businesses damaged, thousands of arrests, and several fatalities. Militant Islamists took advantage of the situation to press for more autonomy in their communities and the French authorities largely conceded.

So what does this have to do with Mohammed Taheriazar? Was it the will of Allah?

Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, the 22-year-old UNC Chapel Hill graduate charged with injuring nine people when he drove a Jeep Cherokee down a crowded campus walkway, politely told a judge Monday he's "thankful you're here to give me this trial and to learn more about the will of Allah."

There's a debate now about whether this was an act of terrorism. It certainly was an act of vengeance based on a religious grievance and directed at innocent bystanders. But he apparently acted alone, had no known ties to terrorists and was denounced by the local Muslim Students Association, of which he had not been a member. Call it what you will, he certainly had murder in mind. That's enough.

Perhaps there is a lesson about the will of Allah to be learned from this situation. But contrary to Mr. Taheri-azar's assumption, the lesson seems to be for him. Consider the facts.

Mr. Taheri-azar, formerly of Charlotte, distorted the teachings of Islam, invited scorn for his religion by suggesting it sanctions the slaughter of innocents and gave credence to critics who equate Islam with terrorism.

Then, there's the fact that he's been planning this kind of act for more than two years. I'd call that premediation. He's been stewing in his hatred for at least two years before taking action that could have resulted in multiple murders.

Life on campus is slowly returning to normal, but some are still jittery when they hear loud noises around the Pit. Students are also taking comfort from the fact that Taheriazar apparently acted alone.

I guess you have to take your comfort from whatever sources you can find.

Meanwhile, a Washington Post/ABC News Poll shows that Americans are taking an increasingly negative view of Islam. Can't imagine why. Rampant terrorism perpetrated in the name of Islam all while Muslim leaders talk out of both sides of their mouths.

As the war in Iraq grinds into its fourth year, a growing proportion of Americans are expressing unfavorable views of Islam, and a majority now say that Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The poll found that nearly half of Americans -- 46 percent -- have a negative view of Islam, seven percentage points higher than in the tense months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when Muslims were often targeted for violence.

Is this a win for bin Laden as Juan Cole and Think Progress thinks? It's taken four years for people to realize that Muslims are killing in the name of religion and will use absolutely any affront (real or perceived) to go on killing ramages (see the cartoon jihad). How many thousands of Muslims have killed each other because of the jihad that Osama and his minions have engaged in? They're the ones trying to start a civil war in Iraq, but that's the US fault? The militant Islamists are trying to use secular conflicts to engage in jihad and the US poll reflect the fact that Americans are recognizing the true nature of our enemy.

The problem is that people are conflating the true enemy - the militant Islamists with the moderate and secular Muslims who want to peacefully coexist with their neighbors. That's one of the struggles the Administration has had since 9/11 - trying to separate the war on terror from a war on Islam. Does this poll suggest that his efforts are failing? Possibly. But considering that Muslims themselves have done little to defend personal freedom and have attacked our constitutional right of free speech and expression overseas (riots, arson, and murders because of the cartoons), along with calls for blasphemy laws, which are antithetical to US free speech interests, those polled may be picking up on the silence of the moderate Muslim.

It isn't enough for Bush to state that there are moderate Muslims. The Muslim community has to do a far better job. And hearing stories like this surely does little to aid the cause of moderate Islam.

UPDATE:
Confederate Yankee looks at the polling and reaches a similar conclusion:

Could it possibly be that the perception of Muslim violence comes from the fact that Muslims act violently, again and again and again?

He also notes that the US invasion of Iraq took place in 2003, which means that we're coming upon the third anniversary of the invasion, not the fourth. It has been just over four years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks when Islamic terrorists killed nearly 3,000 Americans, caused billions in damages, and damaged or destroyed major landmarks.

Others blogging the study: Ace of Spades, Outside the Beltway wonders how 43% of Americans can still hold a positive view of Islam considering the evidence and yet this article is meant to find Americans bigoted. AJ Strata looks at the poll and the DPW deal.

UPDATE:
Reading through the Counterterrorism Blog, one learns that North Carolina does not have an applicable terrorism-related statute that Taheriazar can be charged under. Thus far, Taheriazar is being charged under state law, and no federal charges are pending.

Taheri-azar is being prosecuted in state court. But North Carolina does not have an applicable terrorism offense that can be brought to bear against him. There is a terrorism offense for weapons of mass destruction (not applicable here) and a terrorism sentencing enhancement for murder -- but Taheri-azar did not succeed in murdering anybody.

The federal sentencing guidelines do contain a sentencing enhancement in Guideline 3A1.4 for offenses designed to promote terrorism. (In turn, 18 U.S.C. 2232b(g)(5) sensibly defines a federal crime of terrorism as occurring when the act "is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.") The problem is that there appears to be no federal crime in this case to provide the federal courts with jurisdiction. The prosecution could argue that there is a federal civil rights violation because this was carried out on the basis of religion. The problem with that argument, though, is that Taheri-azar didn't target his victims on the basis of their religion. Taheri-azar may have been motivated by religion, but the civil rights laws only really come into play when the victim is targeted because of his religion.

Dumb Luck

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thinks that barring Iran from dealing with any of the European countries that permitted the Danish cartoons to be published will somehow actually force those countries to clamp down on the free speech rights of the newspapers to actually print the cartoons.

Silly Ahmadinejad. He's played this right into the favor of all those who want to make sure that Iran never gets its hands on nuclear weapons. He's inflicting the damage on Iran, not on Europe. Iran needs Europe to continue functioning, not the other way around. Boycotts will only mean that Iran's public will have less stuff than they already have.

The list, which already included Denmark, where the 12 caricatures first appeared last year, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain, expanded Saturday to take in New Zealand and Poland.

All this comes as Iran is facing Security Council action (as far as harshly worded resolutions will go), and the US and Europeans are wondering just how far along Iran's nuclear program truly is.

The IAEA had referred Iran to the UN Security Council. Iran's bosum buddies were against even that action:

The resolution, which passed by a vote of 27 to 3 with five abstentions, reflects increasing suspicion around the world that Iran is determined to develop nuclear weapons.

Cuba, Syria and Venezuela voted against the resolution, which would also delay any concrete Security Council action against Iran for at least a month. Algeria, Belarus, Indonesia, Libya and South Africa abstained.

So what did Iran do? They said that their deal with Russia was dead. Big deal. It should never have even been a consideration in the first place. Iran also said that they'd resume enrichment at Natanz. That's not surprising either - especially since it was suspected that they were doing this in secret. We now know that they're working on it, and it's only a matter of time before they have sufficient weapons grade materials.

Text of the IAEA resolution can be found here.

Moderate Compared to Whom?

Michael Totten, a blogger who actually does real investigative journalism, interviewed one of the mouthpieces of the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Listen, Mr. Michael,” he said. “Iran is not Egypt. Egypt is not Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not Sudan. Sudan is not Algeria. There are different models of Islamic life. We have a very long civilization here, it is ancient. We have common values here between Muslims and Christians and even Jews.”

Was he acknowledging in his own way that the Islamists in Iran and Afghanistan are whacked? Perhaps. On the Muslim Brotherhood’s Web site (www.islamonline.org) they advertise themselves as moderate Islamists. I wouldn’t say they are moderate in the way that, say, the Iraqi Kurds are moderate. Still, there are plenty of more extreme Islamist groups than these guys. The Brothers say they want to ban music videos, not massacre Shias or stone rape victims to death.

While there is an ideological overlap between them and Al Qaeda, the Brothers don’t have guns, they don’t hijack planes, and they don’t blow up hotels. They are moderate, I suppose, depending on who they’re compared with. Next to Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, they’re terrific. Compared with the student revolutionaries in Iran, the Brothers are nuts.

Lest we forget, the Muslim Brotherhood was responsible for assassinating Anwar Sadat, and more than 25,000 people were killed by Syria's Hafez Assad in 1982 in a crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood activities at Hama.

Where you rank this group depends on where you sit. And from where I sit, the Muslim Brotherhood is still a terrorist group whose views are not only extreme, but antithetical to Western democracy.

US Foreign Policy Day

President Bush gave a major speech on the war on terror. It summarizes all the major points that the Administration should have been trumpeting on a regular basis. In fact, these particular talking points should be routinely and regularly used and expanded by the Administration to counter the BS regurtitated by the media elites who think they know more (and better) than the Administration.

Amazingly, he actually uttered the phrase evil Islamic radicalism (as well as militant jihadism and Islamo-fascism.

Some call this evil Islamic radicalism. Others militant jihadism.

Still, others Islamo-fascism.

Whatever it's called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam. This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.

These extremists distort the idea of jihad into a call for terrorist murder against Christians and Jews and Hindus and also against Muslims from other traditions that they regard as heretics. Many militants are part of global borderless terrorist organizations like Al Qaida, which spreads propaganda and provides financing and technical assistance to local extremists and conducts dramatic and brutal operations like September 11th.

Other militants are found in regional groups often associated with Al Qaida; paramilitary insurgencies and separatist movements in places like Somalia and the Philippines and Pakistan and Chechnya and Kashmir and Algeria.

Still others spring up in local cells inspired by Islamic radicalism but not centrally directed. Islamic radicalism is more like a loose network with many branches than an army under a single command. Yet these operatives fighting on scattered battlefields share a similar ideology and vision for our world.

We know the vision of the radicals because they've openly stated it in videos and audiotapes and letters and declarations and Web sites.

First, these extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace and stand in the way of their ambitions.

Al Qaida's leader, Osama bin Laden, has called on Muslims to dedicate, quote, their resources sons and money to driving infidels out of their lands. Their tactic to meet this goal has been consistent for a quarter century: They hit us and expect us to run.

They want us to repeat the sad history of Beirut in 1983 and Mogadishu in 1993, only this time on a larger scale with greater consequences.

Second, the militant network wants to use the vacuum created by an American retreat to gain control of a country, a base from which to launch attacks and conduct their war against non-radical Muslim governments.

He mentioned the murders of Daniel Pearl and Theo Van Gogh. And, he maintains that people need to separate the militant Islamists from those Muslims who are peaceful - in other words, don't piss off a billion people by painting everyone with a broad brush.

The terrorists' goal is to overthrow a rising democracy, claim a strategic country as a haven for terror, destabilize the Middle East and strike America and other free nations with ever-increasing violence.

Our goal is to defeat the terrorists and their allies at the heart of their power. And so we will defeat the enemy in Iraq.

We should read into this the following: that our troops will not come home until we have won the fight, and that may take time, despite the nonsensical ravings of the lunatic fringe at the DNC.

Meanwhile,John Bolton tells the UN to rethink its peacekeeping mission.

"Unlike death and taxes, peacekeeping missions should not be permanent," Mr. Bolton told his colleagues, according to several diplomats who were present at the closed-door session. The demand to stop helicopter flights, he said, should be used as "a pivot point" from which the council should contemplate ending the Eritrean-Ethiopian border dispute rather than keep an indefinite peacekeeping force there, he said.

Secretary-General Annan called an emergency Security Council session Tuesday night to address the situation in Eritrea, but Mr. Bolton spoke to the larger issue. His remarks carry a lot of weight: America, which is the largest contributor to the U.N. budget, with 22%, covers an even more substantial percentage of the $5 billion peacekeeping budget - 26.5%, or $1.2 billion a year. In some peacekeeping missions it contributes almost half of the annual budget.

For example, America pays $190 million a year toward the $400 million mission in Congo.

Certain peacekeeping missions' reason for being has diminished over the years. The oldest existing U.N. peacekeeping post has been stationed in Jerusalem since 1948 to keep a ceasefire line that was defunct in 1967. A force now down to 45 troops has been patrolling the Indian-Pakistani border since 1949. Critics say that the modest force plays an insignificant role in maintaining peace between the two regional powerhouses, now equipped with nuclear weapons.

U.N. diplomats, however, are reluctant to consider scrapping such missions. "There were lots of violations along the border" with India along the years, Pakistan's ambassador, Munir Akram, told The New York Sun. Noting that a new cease-fire has been agreed to recently, and that either side might violate its terms, he added, "If there's no objective presence there to say who started it, I think there is possibility for mischief."

And this doesn't even address the situation of peacekeepers simply standing idly by as groups murder and rampage - see Rwanda, Congo, and Sudan. Bolton's idea seems to be that too many countries rely on the UN to be a scapegoat for continued problems, rather than trying to work the differences out.

Technorati: UN, Bush, Kofi Annan, terrorism, terrorist.