Frequent contributor and honorary Hedgehog Ralph Kostant (we can't quite persuade him to take the oath) offers some thoughts on current Middle East-related issues:
The Koran Desecration Scam
The Pentagon recently reported that practically the only acts of deliberate (as opposed to accidental) Koran desecration at Gitmo that it could verify were committed by the prisoners themselves, sometimes apparently in an planned effort to fabricate false accusations of intentional Koran desecration by U.S. soldiers and prison personnel. Subsequently, Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons, noting how the Main Stream Media and the “Moslem Street” had fallen for the scam at Gitmo, began their own campaign of Koran desecration stories. This news bulletin from JTA again proves that Islamic terrorists are not above themselves desecrating their holy books if it will score political points against the infidel.
Dialogue of the Deaf
This column from the
Jerusalem Post was written by Judea Pearl, a resident of
Encino, California, and the father of the late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was decapitated on video tape by Al Qaeda in
Pakistan in 2002. It demonstrates why, despite the earnest efforts of the Bush Administration,
U.S. pressure on
Israel to implement the Middle East Road Map will not win the hearts of the Islamic world. As Pearl discovered, the phrases “progress in the peace process” and “resolution of the Palestinian issue,” as used in the Islamic world, even by so-called moderates, does not mean a two-state solution, but rather the end of Israel as a Jewish State. As was the case with the Oslo Accords, the maximum possible concessions that the
U.S. might persuade a prudent and responsible Israeli government to make fall far short of the minimum that the Palestinians, and the rest of the Islamic world, other than
Turkey, are willing to accept in a final peace settlement. Even if Israel were to surrender all of the territories captured in 1967, including the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and the Western Wall, forswear any claim to the Temple Mount (Judaism’s holiest site), and permit formation of a “contiguous” Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza (which, as a glance at a map will demonstrate, could only be achieved by Israel surrendering additional territory within its pre-1967 borders to form a corridor connecting the West Bank and Gaza, splitting Israel into two non-contiguous parts), the Palestinians would merely consider those concessions as a milestone toward their ultimate goal of eradicating the State of Israel.
Ralph B. Kostant
2 Comments:
I would like to register, for the record, my objection to the cutesy abbreviation "Gitmo".
One also should not refer to Bergen-Belsen as "Bergie", nor to Lubyanka as "the Loob".
Posted by John M. Burt
Well, John, I guess the point is that Gitmo is not Bergen-Belsen and it is not Lubyanka. It is not full of people whose only offense is being Jewish, or Gypsy, or gay. It is not full of people who peacefully expressed dissent against their government. It is full of terrorists and their supporting militia members taken prisoner by our armed forces during the Afghan campaign.
Moreover, the name "Gitmo" predates the existence of the prison located there. It stems from the Navy's abbrieivation for the U.S. Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which is NAVSTA GTMO. Guantanamo Bay is the United States' oldest overseas naval base, founded in 1903. I suspect that the sailors and marines stationed there began calling it Gitmo from the getgo.
Posted by Ralph B. Kostant
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