Right Truth

Right of Return--Not

 

By Janet Tassel

On Sunday evening, April 14, Boston University hosted a forum titled "What 'Right' of Return?" Triggering this impromptu gathering was a conference held at B.U. the previous week, trumpeting "The Right of Return," headlined by the infamous Professor Joseph Massad of Columbia University. Not surprisingly, that conference "failed to create an open forum for peaceful dialogue, and excluded key historical facts, speakers, and information," according to the organizers of Sunday's rebuttal--"faculty, staff and friends of Boston University."

 

Those who showed up Sunday, besides the usual handful of Israel huggers and bloggers, probably came because of the rare opportunity to hear and see Professor Benny Morris of Ben-Gurion University, the highly controversial historian who is currently (and conveniently), a visiting professor across the river at Harvard.

 

Morris was joined by Israeli journalist, lawyer, and government advisor on immigration Ben-Dror Yemini; and by Asaf Romirowsky, adjunct scholar at the Middle East Forum. Each had important things to say about the omissions, propaganda, and lies being fed to vulnerable students at colleges across the world; lies, as Yemini said, that are couched in the seductive language of human rights and social justice, terms every student wants to believe.  These are stratagems, of course,  poisonous fabrications with one goal: the ultimate destruction of the Jewish state. Of these revisionist falsehoods, the so-called right of return is among the most sinister--destruction by demography.

To Hell With Christians

By Janet Tassel

It's a bad time to be a Christian in the Middle East. Even worse to be a Christian pastor. Now consider this: An American Christian pastor in Iran who converted from Islam. You're right; a scary scenario.

 

Such is the plight of  33-year-old Pastor Saeed Abedini of Boise, Idaho. He has been locked up in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison since September. On January 27, he was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges "of undermining national security through his Christian evangelical activities."

 

Abedini, married with two young children, is an Iranian Muslim by birth, who converted to Christianity in 2000. Muslim converts to Christianity are of course apostates and heretics, and are condemned to hell--to which Evin Prison is by all accounts the first step.

 

Because Christians are forbidden to worship openly, many underground or "house" churches were established in Iran, and it was in this underground movement that Abedini and his wife Naghmeh, (an American visiting Iran, whom he married in 2002) were active. Indeed, Abedini established some 100 house churches in thirty cities in Iran. But after the election of Ahmedinejad  in 2005, the movement was subjected to a brutal crackdown, and the Abedinis moved to the United States, where Saeed later became an ordained minister and an American citizen.

 

Abedini has made several trips back to Iran to visit family. On one of these trips, in 2009, he was detained by the police, interrogated, and threatened with death for apostasy. He was released only after signing an agreement pledging to cease all house-church activities in Iran.

The Near-Martyrdom of Lars Hedegaard

By Janet Tassel

Last week was a busy week for Boston's rabbis.  Since it was almost Passover, there were the same-sex and outreach seders to arrange, as well as the blast e-mails damning guns and blessing Obama's trip to Israel.

 

However, in a suburb of Boston there was one rabbi, Jonathan Hausman, known to his groupies as "the warrior-rabbi," who last week did something different: He opened his synagogue, Ahavath Torah, to a large crowd, for a rare opportunity to meet and listen to Danish free-speech activist Lars Hedegaard.  Hedegaard,  as you probably know, is the latest in a line of prominent people targeted for death. Their crime? "Islamophobia."

 

 If you don't know the details of the attempt on Hedegaard's life, here is how he tells it. It was morning in Copenhagen:

 

when the door-phone buzzed.  The phone doesn't work properly--I can hear that I have visitors but not communicate with them. Nor can I buzz them in.

 

I opened a window in my apartment to see who was down below at the front door.  A man dressed in a red jacket with the logo of the Danish postal service was waiting at the door. He said he had a package for me. I answered that I couldn't buzz open the door and would instead come downstairs to get the package.

 

I went down and opened the front door.  The man repeated that he had a package, which he handed to me. As I held the package (which the police later determined was empty) he immediately pulled out a gun and fired at my head....The distance between us must have been less than a yard. Nevertheless, he missed. He then proceeded to fumble with the gun in order to cock it for a second shot. I swung my right fist at his head, and my action confused him sufficiently for him to drop the gun.  After a scuffle, he recovered the gun but couldn't make it fire. He then fled. (WSJ, Feb. 20)

 

Now Hedegaard is 70, his would-be assailant in his twenties, which will tell you something about the gutsiness of this gentle man, as well as the lousy aim of his attacker. Thus far, the wannabe killer has not been found.

 

And how was his near-murder reported? In this country, scarcely at all, though the New York Times did weigh in, predictably calling Hedegaard's opinions "a stew of anti-Muslim bile and conspiracy-laden forecasts of a coming civil war." (At the synagogue event, too, as far as could be ascertained, except for the moderator, columnist Michael Graham, nobody from the local press showed up.) In Sweden's national news agency, TT, it was reported thus:

 

Lars Hedegaard, once convicted for racism, has been subject to an assassination attempt. An unknown man reportedly shot at Hedegaard outside his Copenhagen home.

 

The author Hedegaard is one of the few Danes who is a certified racist, as he some years ago was fined by a High Court for having stated in a blog interview that Muslim fathers rape their children. He was later acquitted by the supreme court.

 

As Mark Steyn (himself a survivor of a "hate crime" trial) writes, "That last sentence negates the ones above.  There is no conviction for 'racism': Both it and the fine were quashed, reversed, overturned, kicked into the garbage can by the supreme court. The prosecution was outrageous, and some sense of what Denmark's most eminent jurists made of it can be deduced from their decision to revoke his conviction 7-0."

 

No one seems to know what a "certified racist" is, but perhaps we'll know when Sweden starts handing out certificates of racism.

 

In Denmark, Hedegaard reports, "The reaction to the failed murder has mainly been one of horror. Nearly all leading politicians and media have condemned it. To be sure, some newspapers have availed themselves of this opportunity to emphasize what a despicable racist I am, but at least they express their satisfaction that I'm not dead."

 

What exactly was Hedegaard's crime?

 

For years I have been a campaigner for free speech--since 2004 as president of Denmark's Free Press Society. I have been an outspoken critic of Islamic supremacism and of attempts to impose Islamic Shariah law in Denmark and the West.  Together with my Swedish colleague Ingrid Carlqvest, I have recently launched a Swedish-language weekly newspaper called Dispatch International--to the great dissatisfaction of the Swedish mainstream media, which are probably the most politically correct in the Western world....

 

Dispatch International is critical of mass immigration to Sweden and Denmark from third-world countries and takes a dim view of Islam.  As a consequence, we have been reviled as "racist." We are not. We simply insist on our right to defend freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and individual and sexual equality.  We also insist on our right to criticize religious fanatics of every stripe who try to impose theocratic laws and customs on free societies.

 

At the event at the synagogue, Hedegaard was accompanied by three important American free-speech activists and experts in Islam: Andrew Bostom, Robert Spencer, and Tiffany Gabbay, each of whom had vitally important things to say.  But when it was Hedegaard's turn to talk, the audience stood up in homage.

 

He lived up to his reputation as the most charming of men, nattily dressed and disarming of speech, his perfect English nasalized with a hint of Scandinavian dill. He apologized, " I needed a haircut before I left Denmark, but unfortunately I cannot walk the streets of Copenhagen." (N.B. His white hair and beard were professorially perfect.) He also mentioned that were it not for his lawyer, the best in Denmark, who offered his services pro bono, he would have been standing there without any clothes or teeth, maybe with just a tie. Then he paused, and mused, "I had about three points  to talk to you about, but I've forgotten most of them."

 

With the audience completely in his pocket, he began:

 

I wanted to say how precious free speech is. Have you thought of that ever? If you have not free speech, you are in chains, you and your kids. You cannot even identify the problem, much less discuss the problem.  Society will come to a standstill.  My friends here understand about Islam.  It stops everything. It freezes things over unto eternity. But every single thought in human history that has brought us forward has been deemed blasphemous.

 

He mentioned Galileo, of course, and others who struggled for the right to proclaim the truth, and he mentioned the laws that forbade the freedom to speak one's mind:

 

Laws themselves aren't worth anything unless people are willing to stand up and defend their rights.  In Denmark, we have two articles in our penal codes. Number 140 is against blasphemy. A ridiculous concept, as if God needs men's support to sustain his power.

 

Then we have 66B, introduced in 1971, under which I was indicted for hate speech and racism. By the way, this law was introduced under the influence of the Soviet Union.

 

About Islam itself, the members of the panel all had significant things to say--about the erosion of the First Amendment in this country, about the paradoxical alliance between the radical Left and Islam and the reasons for this odd coupling, about quoting from the Koran being as punishable as misquoting it, or even reporting it. Hedegaard may have had the last word:

 

The truth is that in all likelihood, Muhammad never existed. This cannot be debated.  Eminent scholars at the University of Copenhagen claim that King David never existed.  But we've found archeological evidence that he did indeed exist. But within Islam,  you are not allowed to say Muhammad never existed, and so it must be in the press and the university.  This, my friends, is the total demolition of scholarship.

 

But, he concluded, "I can only urge you to stand by this brave rabbi, and carry on the flame." 

 

One hopes he isn't referring to an auto-da-fe, but it does look like an uphill battle. After all, it was Hedegaard himself who wrote:

 

I'm aware that some of my friends think that Islam can be reformed, domesticated, and civilized.  I welcome that day, but must relate to the fact that it hasn't happened yet--though Muslims have had 1,400 years to complete the project.

 

######

Janet Tassel

 

The Latest from Massa-choose-sex

By Janet Tassel

Man and woman created He them.  Oh yeah? Well, here in Massachusetts that biblical stuff is long gone, trashed for representing patriarchal imperialism, binarism, gender apartheid, cissexism, and other detestable things.   

 

Accordingly, we have recently been sternly reminded that we must get with the program and "cleanse" our schools and ourselves of  all "gender distinctions."  The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has released a lengthy directive updating the "transgender rights and hate crimes" law that went into effect in July 2012.  But last year's law apparently didn't go far enough. According to the intrepid (and much-maligned) pro-family activists at MassResistance, this latest directive is "the most thorough, invasive, and radical transgender initiative ever seen on a statewide level."

 

So let's take a look at the DESE decree, a bloated and repetitive huff-and-puffer, like all such bureaucratic fiats. (www.doe.mass.edu/) First come the definitions, guidelines to "terminology." Here is one:

 

Gender expression: the manner in which a person represents or expresses gender to others, often through behavior, clothing, hairstyles, activities, voice, or mannerisms.

 

Another:

 

Gender nonconforming: a term used to describe people whose gender expression differs from stereotypic expectations. The terms "gender variant" or "gender atypical" are also used.

 

Yet another:

 

Gender identity: ...a person's gender-related identity, appearance, or behavior, whether or not that gender-related identity, appearance or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person's physiology or assigned sex at birth....

 

Students of "queer theory" will recognize these constructs, which of course originated in that discipline.

 

Then, the gender identity law is explained, repetitiously, with a suggested model paragraph for school administrators:

 

The [ ]Public Schools strives [sic] to provide a safe, respectful, and supportive learning environment in which all students can thrive and succeed in its schools.  The [ ]Public Schools prohibits [sic] discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, gender identity, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation and ensures that all students have equal rights of access and equal enjoyment of the opportunities, advantages, privileges, and courses of study.

 

It goes on to say that the law was influenced by a survey of transgender students conducted by GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network). You may remember GLSEN as the notorious sponsor of "Fistgate," a state-approved "Teach Out" at Tufts University, where students as young as 12 were offered lessons in "fisting" and given "fisting kits" along with other sex toys and paraphernalia.  (For a graphic description of fisting, go to www.massresistance.org.)

MassResistance has also uncovered a document from November 2012 published by the Mass. Transgender Political Coalition, from which DESE seems to have appropriated entire sections verbatim. Another major influence on the document is BAGLY (Boston Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Youth).  Thus, when the DESE, introducing the directive, says, "In preparing this guidance, the Department reviewed policies and guidance from several sites, organizations, and athletic associations and consulted with the field (my italics)," one begins to understand which field  they are playing on.

 

But we digress. To understand "gender identity":

 

Gender-related identity may be shown by providing evidence including but not limited to, medical history, care or treatment of the gender-related identity, consistent and uniform assertion of the gender-related identity or any other evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held as part of a person's core identity; provided, however, that gender-related identity shall not be asserted for any improper purpose.

 

This is an example of the stultifying prose emanating from the bowels of the Department of Education, and it also leaves hanging that provocative question: What would the DESE consider an "improper purpose?"

 

Moving on, "The responsibility for determining a student's gender identity rests with the student or, in the case of young students not yet able to advocate for themselves, with the parent."  The footnotes to this section refer us to material which declares the "young student" to be younger than five. So beyond kindergarten at the very least, the parent may be left out of the discussion. Continuing:

 

One's gender identity is an innate, largely inflexible characteristic of each individual's personality that is generally established by age four [my italics], although the age at which individuals come to understand and express their gender identity may vary based on each person's social and familial social development.  As a result, the person best situated to determine a student's gender identity is that student himself or herself.

 

What? "Himself or herself?" Binarism at the DESE?  Indeed, a particularly longwinded section is dedicated to the thorny problem of pronouns. For example,

 

The issue of the name and pronoun to use in referring to a transgender student is one of the first that schools must resolve to create an environment in which that student feels safe and supported....The best course is to engage the student...with respect to name and pronoun use, and agree on a plan to initiate that name and pronoun use within the school.

 

This is a very serious matter, but the DESE might consider the gender-free pronoun found in The Official Politically Correct Handbook: h'orsh'it.

 

Somehow I doubt it. To the DESE, the question of pronouns does not permit the slightest levity or even laxity:

 

Continued, repeated, and intentional misuse of names and pronouns may erode the educational environment for Jane.  It should not be tolerated and can be grounds for student discipline.

 

This obsession with the correct name and pronoun must continue beyond the classroom, in reports, school records, medical and counseling records--all documents concerning the student.  Moreover, "the birth name is considered private information and may be disclosed only with authorization under the Massachusetts Student Records Regulations." And further, the student may request that the birth name on his school record be changed. In addition, "Transgender students who transition after having completed high school, may ask their previous schools to amend school records or a diploma or transcript that include the student's birth name and gender."

 

Then comes the major change from the previous law, the decree that had been dropped because of public outrage. Now, apparently, the DESE senses a change in the air, for:

 

All students are entitled to have access to restrooms, locker rooms and changing facilities that are sanitary, safe and adequate, so they can comfortably and fully engage in their school program and activities....Transgender students who are uncomfortable using a sex-segregated restroom should be provided with a safe and adequate alternative, such as a single "unisex" restroom or the nurse's restroom.

 

And finally (though there are pages and pages more, all larded with glutinous bureauspeak, as can be read on the website) we look at the question of "gender transition."  Most "transgender youth will undergo gender transition through a process commonly referred to as 'social transition,' whereby they begin to live and identify as the gender consistent with their gender-related identity." However,

 

Some transgender youth who are close to reaching puberty, or after commencing puberty, may complement social transition with medical intervention that may included hormone suppressants, cross-gender hormone therapy, and for a small number of young people, a range of gender-confirming surgeries.

 

Here we must return to the prominent Toronto psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Berger, who has written, "The medical treatment of delusions, psychosis or emotional [un]happiness is not surgery....Cosmetic surgery will not change the chromosomes of a human being in that it will not make a man become a woman, capable of menstruating, ovulating, and having children, nor will it make a woman into a man, capable of generating sperm that can unite with an egg or ovum from a woman and fertilize that egg to produce a human child."

 

Or again, we turn to Dr. Paul McHugh, distinguished professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University
School or Medicine and psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital:

 

We psychiatrists, I thought, would do better to concentrate on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia; to provide a surgical alteration to the body of these unfortunate people was to collaborate with a mental disorder rather than to treat it.

 

And further, "I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment":

 

The children transformed from their male constitution into female roles suffered prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes.  Their parents usually lived with guilt over their decisions--second-guessing themselves and somewhat ashamed of the fabrication, both surgical and social, they had imposed on their sons. As for the adults who came to us claiming to have discovered their "true" sexual identity and to have heard about sex-change operations, we psychiatrists have been distracted from studying the causes and natures of their mental misdirections by preparing them for surgery and for a life in the other sex.  We have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it.

 

Perhaps Dr. McHugh and Dr. Berger are too stodgy, too patriarchal?  They seem unaware of the joys of a gender-free society. Writes Martine Rothblatt in her book, "The blending of gender and marking of skin are revolutionary onramps to the transcendence of fleshism....We all have way too much gender to be forced into male or female pigeonholes. It is a multi-gender, multi-sexual society awaiting us in the future.  One that is fun and full of creative choices."

 

The name of her book? Transgender to Transhuman.

 

 

#####

  

Janet Tassel

Major Hasan's Beard, and Other Farces

By Janet Tassel

You will recall that one day in November 2009, at Fort Hood, Texas, Major Nidal Hasan, an American-born Muslim army psychiatrist, forgot his professional training (as well perhaps as his medications) and went on a rampage. Screaming "Allahu Akbar!" he took out a semi-automatic pistol and murdered 12 soldiers and one civilian, and wounded 32 others.

 

Absurdly, almost three years later, Hasan remains comfortably in prison, awaiting court martial. The latest impediment seems to be that Hasan has decided to hide from the court behind a beard.  The army says no shave, no trial.   This week Hasan once again showed up in court still bearded, and still protesting the rape of his locks.  "In the name of almighty Allah the merciful," he intoned, then added (for the fifth time) that his religion requires him to wear the beard. According to reports, U. S. Army Colonel Gregory Gross, the presiding judge, fined him $1000 and found him in contempt, also for the fifth time. The Army will not try him in his beard.

 

Perhaps Hasan will eventually be tried for the bloodbath he perpetrated, but the beard seems to be causing the government to hesitate.  This would not be surprising, considering that the Department of Defense went on harebrained record that the massacre was a case of  "workplace violence."  Not to speak of the Orwellian fact that now-retired Army Chief of Staff General George Casey said after the Fort Hood slaughter that indeed it was a tragedy, but "it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here."  Yet another reminder that in a multicultural insane asylum you can't tell the lunatics from their keepers.

Communiqués from Hell

By Janet Tassel

As Mitt Romney heads to Israel this week, he could do himself and us a real favor were he to take along Deception: Betraying the Peace Process, the book published by the invaluable Palestinian Media Watch. Deception, co-authored by PMW's Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, is a collection of their regular reports. So Governor Romney can just dip in and out and still be abreast of the plot. These are in-house translations of the everyday fare transmitted to Palestinians and Israeli Arabs by the PA-controlled media--TV, radio, and newspapers. It is an understatement to call these reports scary. The reader might be excused for asking, "Betraying what?"

 

The book is divided into three main categories: Non-recognition of Israel, which includes denying Israel's history and erasing it from all maps; second is incitement of hatred, the demonization of Israel, indeed of all Jews; and the third category is the promotion of violence and glorification of terror against Jews. A fourth section is devoted to a look at a PA-funded youth magazine, Zayzafuna. Featured among the exhortations for children to keep clean and study hard are poems submitted by the kids themselves. A typical example, this one from a high-school student:

The One State Conference at Harvard: March Madness

By Janet Tassel, American Thinker

"I'm looking for Rick Santorum.  I guess he preferred to go to AIPAC." Thus lamely, Stephen M. Walt broke the ice in the opening panel of Harvard's One State Conference Saturday. With these lines, Walt, the co-author of The Israel Lobby and professor of international affairs at the Kennedy School, delivered one of the very few light-hearted remarks at the deadly serious two-day conference.

In the packed auditorium, Walt was unique, too, in saying nice things about the two-state solution, which is apparently now known as "partition," and which in any event was pronounced dead by every other speaker.  "At first glance," he said, "the two-state solution still looks good: the Green Line separating two states for two peoples." Forcing these two people together in one state would be a "mess." But why have we failed at two states? He blamed, on the Palestinian side, "the Palestinians' lack of unity, personal corruption, and a series of tactical errors following the Oslo Peace Process," including poor public relations.  All of which naturally necessitated "reliance on suicide bombers." Of course, "the real culprit is Israel. Their leaders have never been interested."

At this, one grew dizzy recalling names from all over the Road Map, from Madrid to Oslo to Camp David to Wye River, from Taba to Annapolis to Gaza, this last, by the way, still considered "an occupied prison."  But none of these destinations was mentioned.  Meanwhile, Walt went on to harpoon Netanyahu and also to castigate the United States, calling it "Israel's lawyer," defending as usual the stronger party,  thanks again to "domestic politics," aka the Israel Lobby. Even Obama came in for criticism -- for "raising hopes at Cairo, and later retreating by working to prevent Palestinian membership in the UN." Strange as it may seem, Obama was frequently chided at this conference -- while simultaneously being lionized at AIPAC.

Taqiyya for Kids

By Janet Tassel

It was the first week in October in Newton, an upscale suburb of Boston, and Tony Pagliuso's daughter, a sophomore at Newton South High School, was visibly disturbed. When Tony asked her the problem, she showed him a passage from the chapter she was assigned in her World History Class. It was a chapter called "Women, an Essay," from a supplemental text called The Arab World Notebook. In a paragraph devoted to women "in the struggle for independence from colonial powers," we find:

Over the past four decades, women have been active in the Palestinian resistance movement. Several hundred have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed by Israeli occupation forces since the latest uprising, "intifada," in the Israeli occupied territories.

Pagliuso assured his daughter that this was "total propaganda," and took the matter up with the young teacher, a Miss Jessica Engel, who couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. The material had been "vetted" and was deemed "appropriate," she said, "and would stay in the curriculum. After all, she continued, the head of the history department had gotten this material at an outreach workshop of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard!

Thence to the principal,  Joel Stembridge, who glared at Pagliuso and asked, "How do you pronounce 'Pagliuso'?" and dismissing him brusquely with a refusal to apologize, added: "If you're unhappy with this, you should know that next year we're planning to teach material that will be even more inflammatory to your sensibilities." (Where is Ferris Bueller when you need him?) Since Miss Jessica Engel had devoted one day each to Judaism and Christianity while spending 2 ½ weeks on Islam, Tony wasn't sure how much more inflammatory things could get.

Stoning AIDS Patients-- And Other Wisdom from the Arab World

By Janet Tassel

December 1 was World AIDS Day, and the UN has proclaimed December World AIDS month. The theme of this year’s observance is “Getting to Zero.” Activists have welcomed the many greetings and pledges and speeches, like President Obama’s promising antiretroviral treatment to six million people globally by 2013.

Our invaluable friends at MEMRI, The Middle East Media Research Institute, marked the event by taking a look at some theories about AIDS emanating from the Middle East in recent years. For example, Syrian Deputy Minister of Religious Endowments Muhammad Abd Al-Sattar Al-Sayyid feels that AIDS patients should be stoned before they spread their disease. Indeed, he says, “The entire world, from the US to the most distant country, acknowledges that if they had stoned the fornicators, and prevented abomination, things would have been much better.”

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/846.htm

But there are less drastic ways of treating the disease. Not long after the aforementioned stoning cure was discussed, Iranian Nuclear Chief Mohammad Sa’idi explained why Iran produces heavy water [deuterium oxide, used in certain reactors]: Drinking it, he claims, helps fight not only AIDS, but cancer as well. Now, he’s not talking about one glass of the stuff: “We are talking about a certain period of time.  In many countries that deal with these diseases, patients use this kind of water instead of regular water, and consume it daily in order to heal their diseases.”

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1251.htm.

Perhaps heavy water was the reason for the exciting, but cryptic, announcement by Hosein Entezami, the spokesman for the Iranian Supreme Council for National Security:  “I would like to deliver the good news that two years ago [that would be about 2003], the cure for AIDS was discovered in Iran.  It has been tested on volunteers and the results were positive ones.”

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/993.htm.

Actually, says Hamas “TV Scientist” Dr. Ahmad Al-Muzain, it was none other than the Prophet Muhammad himself, according to one of  the hadith, who discovered the cure for AIDS; indeed, perhaps unknown to most, the pharmaceutical company Bayer learned about this study and “derived great benefit from it.”  With the Prophet’s formula, Bayer devised a course of five pills, and “believe it or not, my brothers,” made AIDS history. And here, all along, was the answer:  “If a fly falls into your drink, you should dip it in the drink, and then dispose of the fly, because one of its wings bears a disease, and the other wing bears the cure.”

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1889.htm.

At least the “TV Scientist” was generous enough to share The Prophet’s cure with the audience.  Not so Yemenite Sheik Abd Al-Majid Al-Zindani, who claims he has the cure and knows the hadith, but his lips are sealed. The reason?  Because “if we disclose it, one company or another might grab it from us.” In an interview on Al-Jazeera, he is asked if he would share his invention with the Americans if they removed his name from the terrorism list. “All we care about,” the interviewer says, “is to benefit those who are sick…” To which the cunning Sheik replies, “This is a humanitarian matter….We know the value of our drug…and we did not tell them what sum they should offer.  Instead, we say to them: ‘Make your bids.’”

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1357.htm.

Then, of course, there is the matter of Israel.  There will be no end to scourges like AIDS and cancer as long as Israel is permitted to unload their poisons on the unsuspecting.  According to Hizbullah MP Ismail Sukariyya, 200,000 cases of kidney failure in Upper Egypt, 200,000 patients on dialysis, because of “the Israeli agricultural carcinogenic medicine” imported into Egypt, along with the Israeli food products and fruits “drowning in chemicals.” And worst of all, “Let’s not even mention the AIDS girls that they are sending there.”

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2750.htm.

But the cause, says Egyptian cleric Hazem Abu Ismail, is of course promiscuity.  “In America, in Europe, in countries where promiscuity prevails, and even in Africa—you’ve seen how AIDS has spread….The only exception is the Islamic region…the only safe haven, Allah be praised.”  In order to forestall such behavior in the Muslim countries, it is necessary to turn to Islamic law: “Islamic law has instated a punishment for thieves—whoever steals has his hand chopped off…[d]uring the first 100 years of Islam, there were only four cases of theft.”  Curing AIDS, he implies, will require something along the same lines.

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1865.htm.

The site continues with a fulsome array of theories. One intriguing approach is taken by a Lebanese TV host, Maria Ma’louf, who discusses AIDS in the context of the ten plagues brought upon Egypt by the Hebrew God in the book of Exodus. After all—and this is an interesting concept—if the God of the Jews could deliver frogs, lice, a blood-filled Nile, and so on to the death of the first-born, why not AIDS? And Sars, and Mad Cow disease and Avian flu, for that matter? Unfortunately, Maria gets diverted from this provocative train of thought into a flailing attack on Donald Rumsfeld and neo-cons. Pity.

Also featured is a clip from way back when Libyan children were being injected with the AIDS virus, as well as a discomfitingly frank lecture on anal sex and feminine hygiene from a Bahraini “family matters expert” in full niqab.

And of course no discussion of AIDS and other diseases in the Muslim world would be complete without the obligatory Friday sermon.  This well-known clip, by the mellifluous Palestinian Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris, includes the expected:

With the establishment of the state of Israel, the entire Islamic nation was lost, because Israel is a cancer spreading through the body of the Islamic nation, and because the Jews are a virus resembling AIDS, from which the entire world suffers.

 

And the inscrutable:

Ask Britain what it did to the Jews in the early sixth century. What did they do to the Jews? They expelled them, tortured them, and prevented them from entering Britain for more than 300 years.

 

or

 He who made Russia disappear overnight is capable of making America [and Israel] disappear and fall, Allah willing.

 

Altogether riproaring.  Once again, we are deeply indebted to the peerless MEMRI for illuminating the mystifying, and problematic, landscape of Islam and the Middle East.

 

Janet Tassel

Riddle: Is Jordan Palestine?

By Janet Tassel

Remember that Oslo Accords handshake between a gloomy Yitzak Rabin and the repulsive Yassir Arafat--  the archetypal Odd Couple—enfolded by the smarmy Bill Clinton?  Daniel Pipes, calling that moment “embarrassing,” put paid to the fiasco a couple of years ago: “Palestinians and Israelis agree on little, but with a near universality they concur that the Oslo accords failed.” As he explained,

Rabin’s mistake was simple and profound: One cannot “make peace with one’s enemy,” as he imagined.  Rather, one makes peace with one’s former enemy.  Peace nearly always requires one side in a conflict to be defeated and thus give up one’s goals.

This was written in 2009.  By now, it is probably safe to say, everyone whose eyes are open to facts rather than illusory hopes, must sadly agree.  The peace process is dead, a stake through its miserable heart; likewise the Alice-in-Wonderland “two-state” solution. This despite Leon Panetta’s recent insulting command that Israel “get back to the damned table.”

So what is left? It looks as though we are back at a discussion of the original “two-state solution”: Is Jordan, in fact, the real Palestine?

Yes, according to a number of prominent politicians and writers. Here, for example, is the Dutch political leader Geert Wilders: