by Mobius · Monday, July 31st, 2006
Ari Berman writes in The Nation:
AIPAC is the leading player in what is sometimes referred to as “The Israel Lobby” — a coalition that includes major Jewish groups, neoconservative intellectuals and Christian Zionists. With its impressive contacts among Hill staffers, influential grassroots supporters and deep connections to wealthy donors, AIPAC is the lobby’s key emissary to Congress. But in many ways, AIPAC has become greater than just another lobby; its work has made unconditional support for Israel an accepted cost of doing business inside the halls of Congress. AIPAC’s interest, Israel’s interest and America’s interest are today perceived by most elected leaders to be one and the same. Christian conservatives increasingly aligned with AIPAC demand unwavering support for Israel from their Republican leaders. (In mid-July, 3,000-plus evangelicals came to town for the first annual “Christian United for Israel” summit.) And Democrats are equally concerned about alienating Jewish voters and Jewish donors — long a cornerstone of their party. Some in Congress are deeply uncomfortable with AIPAC’s militant worldview and heavyhanded tactics, but most dare not say so publicly.
“The Bush Administration is bad enough in tolerating measures they would not accept anywhere else but Israel,” says Henry Siegman, the former head of the American Jewish Congress and a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But the Congress, if anything, is urging the Administration on and criticizing them even at their most accommodating. When it comes to the Israeli-Arab conflict, the terms of debate are so influenced by organized Jewish groups, like AIPAC, that to be critical of Israel is to deny oneself the ability to succeed in American politics.”
Full story.
[Update] Oh, I also meant to post this WaPo article about AIPAC and the America-Israel relationship two weeks ago…
by Mobius · Monday, July 31st, 2006
The NY Times reports,
After her family moved to this small town 30 years ago, Mona Dobrich grew up as the only Jew in school. Mrs. Dobrich, 39, married a local man, bought the house behind her parents’ home and brought up her two children as Jews.
For years, she and her daughter, Samantha, listened to Christian prayers at public school potlucks, award dinners and parent-teacher group meetings, she said. But at Samantha’s high school graduation in June 2004, a minister’s prayer proclaiming Jesus as the only way to the truth nudged Mrs. Dobrich to act.
“It was as if no matter how much hard work, no matter how good a person you are, the only way you’ll ever be anything is through Jesus Christ,” Mrs. Dobrich said. “He said those words, and I saw Sam’s head snap and her start looking around, like, ‘Where’s my mom? Where’s my mom?’ And all I wanted to do was run up and take her in my arms.”
[...]
“Because Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, I will speak out for him,” said the Rev. Jerry Fike of Mount Olivet Brethren Church, who gave the prayer at Samantha’s graduation. “The Bible encourages that.” Mr. Fike continued: “Ultimately, he is the one I have to please. If doing that places me at odds with the law of the land, I still have to follow him.”
Mrs. Dobrich, who is Orthodox, said that when she was a girl, Christians here had treated her faith with respectful interest. Now, she said, her son was ridiculed in school for wearing his yarmulke. She described a classmate of his drawing a picture of a pathway to heaven for everyone except “Alex the Jew.”
Full story.
I sued my high school for similar reasons in 1997 and won.
by Mobius · Monday, July 31st, 2006
The NY Times Magazine reports,
Like most pastors who lead thriving evangelical megachurches, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd was asked frequently to give his blessing — and the church’s — to conservative political candidates and causes.
The requests came from church members and visitors alike: Would he please announce a rally against gay marriage during services? Would he introduce a politician from the pulpit? Could members set up a table in the lobby promoting their anti-abortion work? Would the church distribute “voters’ guides” that all but endorsed Republican candidates? And with the country at war, please couldn’t the church hang an American flag in the sanctuary?
After refusing each time, Mr. Boyd finally became fed up, he said. Before the last presidential election, he preached six sermons called “The Cross and the Sword” in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a “Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns.
“When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses,” Mr. Boyd preached. “When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.”
Full story.
by Mobius · Monday, July 31st, 2006
by Mobius · Monday, July 31st, 2006
Re: Qana — I don’t even know what to say anymore.
The EU and the UN both slammed Israel for it’s “wholly unjustified” attack. The Left is screaming, “Israel is guilty of war crimes.”* And Israelis are grieving.
But, but, but… “It’s also a violation of humanitarian law to blend in among the civilian population.” Yet everyone’s ignoring this inconvenient fact except, well, the civilians whose houses Hezbollah is firing from.
The NY Times:
“Hezbollah came to Ain Ebel to shoot its rockets,” said Fayad Hanna Amar, a young Christian man, referring to his village. “They are shooting from between our houses.”
“Please,” he added, “write that in your newspaper.”
The Herald Sun:
Images, obtained exclusively by the Sunday Herald Sun, show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-calibre weapons.
Dressed in civilian clothing so they can quickly disappear, the militants carrying automatic assault rifles and ride in on trucks mounted with cannon.
[...]
The Melbourne man who smuggled the shots out of Beirut and did not wish to be named said he was less than 400m from the block when it was obliterated.
“Hezbollah came in to launch their rockets, then within minutes the area was blasted by Israeli jets,” he said.
“Until the Hezbollah fighters arrived, it had not been touched by the Israelis. Then it was totally devastated.
Newsbusters:
On Monday’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” CNN’s Anderson Cooper related his visit to a Hezbollah-controlled section of Beirut where he was supposed to photograph certain damaged buildings, part of the terrorist group’s strategy of generating news stories about Lebanese civilian casualities caused by Israeli bombs.
But instead of merely transmitting Hezbollah’s unverified and unverifiable claims to the outside world, Cooper — to his credit — exposed the efforts by Hezbollah to manipulate CNN and other Western reporters.
[...]
Cooper was explicit about how Hezbollah’s operatives had set all of the rules: “Young men on motor scooters followed our every movement. They only allowed us to videotape certain streets, certain buildings,” he explained. He countered Hezbollah claims that Israel targets civilians by pointing out that the group based itself in civilian areas and that Israel’s air force drops leaflets warning of attacks.
Salon featured a much-touted article last week called “The ‘hiding among civilians’ myth,” which advances, in no uncertain terms, the argument that “Hezbollah fighters [...] avoid civilians like the plague.” However, the article, in fact, proves precisely the opposite, openly stating — repeatedly — that Hezbollah located itself within civilian areas.
But nah — y’all are getting played like a fiddle by a fuckin’ martyrdom cult that places civilians in the crossfire to advance its media strategy. So Israel is portrayed as a nation of terrorist war criminals, while actual terrorists are likened to Che Guevara and Saladin.
Out of curiosity, has anyone even noticed that there are presently 1,000,000 refugees from northern Israel filling hotels and the homes of hospitable Israelis everywhere south of Hezbollah’s rocket range? Has anyone noticed that Israel, too, is burying its dead? That there have been numerous building collapses in Israel as well, trapping and killing innocent civilians? That everywhere from Seattle to Syndney, Jews and Jewish institutions are being attacked? Have you seen a single photo of Jewish suffering anywhere? This double-standard is fucked, my friends.
Instead of laying blame squarely on the shoulders of Israel for Qana (and it is most certainly accountable, in no small part), how about a little more equal distribution, and the assignment of some accountability to Hezbollah, which intentionally endangered the lives of Qana’s residents?
But then that’s the rub of it, eh? Israel and its supporters know full well that every strike Israel makes against Hezbollah within civilian areas is the equivalent of a strike against Israel itself, as it turns international opinion against Israel and breeds more extremism.
“What happened in Kana plays into the hands of Hizbullah and Muslim fundamentalists throughout the Arab world,” said one [Arab] diplomat. “We were praying to Allah that such an incident would not happen.”
Another diplomat said that his government would now find it “extremely difficult” to sit on the side and watch as Lebanese women and children were being pulled out from the rubble.
“My government has been under attack for criticizing Hizbullah, which triggered this war by kidnapping the two Israeli soldiers,” he said. “Now we are being attacked as traitors and many Arabs are accusing us of supporting Israel in its war against Hizbullah. But the incident at Kana has changed everything and we are now forced to take a tough stance against Israel.”
If an aggressive military strategy can only backfire, why pursue it? I thought Jews were supposed to be smarter than that. Three full weeks into the fighting, the only solution to this conflict is now obviously, more than ever, a diplomatic one. Sadly, one can never underestimate the monumental stupidity of sureheaded Zionists.
And the war rages on…
*Daniel Taub, legal advisor to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, refuted the charge of war crimes in today’s Jerusalem Post.
by Ben Baruch · Monday, July 31st, 2006
by Y-Love · Monday, July 31st, 2006
After all of the apologies and after all of the regrets expressed by Israeli Prime Ministers past and present, Yediot Aharonot, inter alia, reports:
An IDF investigation has found that the building in Qana struck by the Air Force fell around eight hours after being hit by the IDF.
[...]
Eshel and the head of the IDF’s Operational Branch, Major General Gadi Eisnkot said the structure was not being attacked when it collapsed, at around 8:00 in the morning.
The IDF believes that Hizbullah explosives in the building were behind the explosion that caused the collapse.
Another possible explanation is that the IDF-compromised building fell hours later as a result of volatile materials which were left in the building. So, perhaps Amir Paster didn’t have to desert the IDF in protest of the civilian killings?
by EV · Monday, July 31st, 2006
According to The New York Times:
The French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, held talks with Prime Minister Fouad Siniora in Beirut today and with other officials, and later spoke of what he said was the important role Iran could play in resolving the crisis.
While the United States has criticized Iran for what it calls its support for Hezbollah, Mr. Douste-Blazy said Iran was an important actor in the Middle East and that the country played a “stabilizing role” in the region.
“It is clear that we could never accept the destabilization of Lebanon, which could lead to destabilization of the region,” Mr. Douste-Blazy told reporters in Beirut.
“In the region there is of course a country such as Iran — a great country, a great people and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region,” he said.
Indeed, Iran plays a superb “stabilizing role in the region.” For those of you who don’t understand French, “stabilizing role” means “Genocidal, fascist regime determined to perpetrate a Holocaust more efficiently than that which occurred in countries such as France.”
Now don’t hate me, I’m progressive. Really, I am.
Full shonda.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, July 31st, 2006
Come on, haven’t you always wanted to play a video game based on a rabbinic murder mystery? That has rabbinical conversation methods? A unique method of fighting (I prefer capoeira myself, but I suppose that’s too much to ask)
Thankfully, someone is watching out for you…
From the description of “The Shivah”
“Russell Stone works as a Jewish Rabbi at a poor synagogue in New York City. He is a devout man with a problem. Membership is way down and he lacks the funds to keep his synagogue open. Things are looking very bleak, and he has grown progressively more cynical and bitter with the passage of time.
“Just as he is on the verge of packing it all in, he receives some interesting news. A former member of his congregation has died and left the Rabbi a significant amount of money.
“A blessing? Or the start of something far more sinister? Can Rabbi Stone just accept the money and move on? His conscience says no. Step into his shoes as he travels all over Manhattan in his attempt to uncover the truth.
“Features rabbinical conversation methods, a unique method of fighting, an original score, and three different endings!”
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, July 31st, 2006
Well, it’ s not exactly good news; that would be that it was all a hoax and no one died, but this is the real world. It’s nice to know that our fellow Americans stand by us and are willing to say so publicly.
MPAC UNEQUIVOCALLY CONDEMNS SEATTLE MURDER
Los Angeles, 7/29/06 — The Muslim Public Affairs Council unequivocally condemns the murder of one person and the wounding of five others at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle yesterday afternoon. In addition, MPAC expresses its deep condolences to the Jewish Federation and the families of the victims and prays for the speedy recovery of
those injured by this crime motivated by hate. According to the Seattle Times, Naveed Afzal Haq, 30, of Everett, WA, burst into the offices of the Jewish Federation shortly after 4pm PST and opened fire with a handgun. Haq reportedly has a history of mental illness and court records show a charge of lewd conduct pending against him in Benton County, WA.
Responding to the concern that Haq may not have been acting alone, FBI officials stated it was unlikely he had links to any group. [There is] “nothing to indicate he is part of a larger organization” said David Gomez, assistant special agent in charge of counterterrorism for the FBI’s Seattle office.
More »
by Lilit · Monday, July 31st, 2006
If you’re anything like me, you’ve been sitting in front of the TV or computer screen and wondering what you can possibly do. If you’re anything like my friend Zachary Thacher, who runs the Kol HaKfar downtown minyan, you’re actually doing something about it. He’s organizing an event this Thursdayto conclude Tisha B’Av and raise money for Israeli charities. Here’s the information:
Please join me Thursday evening August 3rd at the M&R Bar to raise funds for Israel, to party and to demonstrate our solidarity. The night before many of us will listen to the Book of Lamentations as we mourn the loss of the Temple and our sovereignty. On Thursday night we will say l’chaim to friends and open our pocketbooks to celebrate our inevitable triumph.
M&R Bar — 8pm
356 Bowery, basement, east side, b/w W 4th and Great Jones.
Suggested donation to the ” UJA-Israel Solidarity Fund”: 95% of your dollars will go to Israel.
Bring checks — those are the paper things before online banking — or cash and I’ll donate it for you. Yes, you’ll have to trust me.
Sugar daddy/mama: $54
Gainfully employed: $36
Student, artist, not-so-gainfully employed: $18
Hoping to meet Sugar Daddy/Mama: $6
For those of you who are fasting, it ends at 8:47pm. Come at 8:48pm.
by Mobius · Monday, July 31st, 2006
I added a few new writers to the Jewschool crew. Expect to see a few new names appearing over the next couple of weeks.
Yesterday, spurred on by the ‘dispossesion’ of the Jahfilte Fish community, I put together an arguably long-overdue forum, located at forum.jewschool.com. Member applications must be pre-approved (only for the sake of preventing spam), so if you sign-up and you aren’t immediately accepted, don’t freak out. I’ll be checking every few hours for new applicants.
I’ll also be redesigning the site sometime soon (within the next few weeks, I hope) and hopefully incorporating some much needed functionality that will help the site become a more valuable community resource.
I’m also looking for a few good interns. Matzat, the parent organization overseeing Jewschool, Radical Torah, Jew It Yourself, and other various projects, is in need of three interns:
Editorial Intern (Remote Position)
- Learn to manage an Internet publication.
- Be a point-person, interacting with contributing authors and other editors.
- Have your work featured on a website with 50,000 monthly readers.
- Develop your HTML and editorial skills.
- Help make Jewschool and Radical Torah better publications.
- Work from home (or from school) at your own pace.
- Fringe benefits, including free CDs, books, DVDs, concert tickets and film screenings.
Research Intern (Jerusalem)
- Intern during your semester abroad.
- Official title of Research Editor for Radical Torah.
- Help organize and make sense of a vast library of resource materials.
- Help build an invaluable resource of social justice oriented scripture for Jewish educators and independent learners.
- Must have decent Hebrew and Aramaic comprehension and translation ability.
- Must have your own computer.
Administrative Intern (Jerusalem)
- Intern during your semester abroad.
- Help run Matzat’s day-to-day business affairs.
- Schedule appointments, answer emails, issue invoices — you know, the fun stuff!
- Learn the basics of grantwriting — not that you’ll have to write grants yourself.
- Fringe benefits, including free CDs, books, DVDs, concert tickets and film screenings.
- Must have your own laptop.
- All business-related expenses fully covered.
Please note, these are presently unpaid positions. If you or anyone you know are interested in applying, please e-mail info at matzat.org.il.
by Monk Eastman · Monday, July 31st, 2006
It’s nice to know that in a world as reasonable and rational as ours, no one believes in collective blame or displaced anger over any of the world’s situations.
Like, say, attacking Jews for the actions of Israel, for instance.
I’m waiting for this to happen here, in The Bronx. As is, we’ve had these lovely stickers plastered all over the neighborhood, a little too close to Young Israel Kingsbridge to my liking. Matter of time, I suppose.
by Eli · Monday, July 31st, 2006
While elite leaders in the Jewish Diaspora are trying to understand how the new war will affect the security of those who will remain dispersed, few if any citizen-leaders are acknowledging the precarious situation of diaspora Jewish youth of all class backgrounds. There is no one reporting from the strip malls, street corners and movie theaters in Detroit, Northern Virginia, Munich or Belgrade where our secular, assimilated youths poise for delicate and prickly conversations with their friends about the situation in the Middle East.
I grew up in a New England town home to some Lebanese Christians, many of whom I used to joke kinda looked Jewish as they sipped their vodka and waxed the curb for our skateboards. Now, in retrospect, I’m forced to think about how I would have approached such a horrible Lebanese/Israeli war in our parking lots; ones that would have drawn me in as a high school Jew: blunt smoke, skateboard and conventional piss-off-the-mom Jewfro floating above my gawky semitic stubble. I’d imagine I would have been reconcialitory, passing the spliff and talking about how my grandparents came to this country with a piece of Russian crystal and a few silver spoons and my people were as troubled as they thought of theirs. Some of my other friends might have started taping their fists, ready to defend their names. We all didn’t go to synagogue. We had no Zionist knowledge let alone fervor. We knew we were Jewish because we weren’t Italian, Irish, Puerto Rican and although our hair didn’t fall over our ears Kurt Cobain’s, we knew we weren’t black. That Jewishness was amorphous but unshakeable. Jewish meant difference, even though difference was as American as Dunkin Donuts.
…and the Jewish youth in places like Paris may be dealing with some similar situations. While members of Betar have been swinging belligerent, vengeful fists for years, the recent inflammations in the Middle East are beginning to finally articulate the relationship that France, in particular, has to the citizens its persecuted. A few weeks after Kemi Seba’s Afro-French nationalist group Tribu Ka marched through Paris’ historically Jewish Marais, terrorizing Jewish shopkeepers and searching for members of their rivals - Betar and the Jewish Defense League, France’s interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy has decided to legally ban Tribu Ka. While our elites will inevitably begin to approach this as a matter of Jewish defense in a hostile Muslim environment, few if any of our Jewish leaders will approach the issue of Jewish/Muslim tension as the preventable aftershocks of France’s tumultuous and unjust treatment of its subjects, be them Sephardi, Ashkenazi, Senegalese or Algerian. The youth need courageous leaders from their communities to present them with a united extra-curricular alternative: one that focuses on cultural dialogue and economic partnership in their geto-burbs, and a sense of postcolonial and post World-War II pride that fights the chauvinism we’re all able to adopt.
Our elites kvetch. They spit heavy rhetoric.
“We must eradicate these movements (Tribu Ka) which are supporting the same unacceptable racist thesis of Farrakhan,” he said, Roger Cukierman, CRIF’s (French-Jewish organization) president
“We are Tribu Ka and we will continue; we are honoured that the Council of ministers spoke about us. This proves that we are annoying the system. This drives us to continue,” the group’s leader said. He stressed that the group targeted the “Jewish militias” and not all Jews on rue des Rosiers.
So mighty Jewschool readers! Will the ban on Tribu Ka work? Should they ban Betar as well? Should they ban anyone from assembling, even if they advocate violence? What should French leaders do? What are some ways that Jewish and Afro/Arab French youth can subvert the belligerence and build a more productive relationship? How can we translate these discussions to the American context? I would prefer if comments provided alternatives to the blame-throwing going on.
by Monk Eastman · Sunday, July 30th, 2006
Browsing the Internets, I stumbled onto this article about Iran’s Jewish population, written by an Associated Press ‘Religion Writer’, Brian Murphy with contributions from AP reporter, Ali Aknar Darieni. What struck me was…
Iranian Jews face no restrictions on their religious practices, but they must follow Islamic codes such as head scarves for women in public. The same rules apply to the larger Christian and Zoroastrian communities.
Anti-Semitic acts are rare, but Jews often are the target of degrading caricatures in the Iranian press. Tensions rose considerably in 2000 when 10 Iranian Jews were convicted of spying for Israel. An appealscourt later reduced their sentences under international pressure andeventually freed them.
“For Iranians, there is a distinction in their mind between Zionism and Judaism,” said Motamed. “This is a very important distinction for us.”
So, despite President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s claims that the Holocaust never happened, that the world’s only Jewish nation - and presumeably all the Jews in it - be wiped off the map; Jews apparently lead a relatively happy life there.
So I went to the site for Tehran’s Jewish Community, which is presented in English and Arabic, yet interestingly enough, not in Hebrew. It’s a pretty sparse site, but towards the bottom of the page, I found this little tidbit which kind of screwed me up a little bit: a Gathering Tribute to to martyrs.
Now…. which martyrs are they talking about?
Could it be these?
What in our culture endorses martyrdom? And if nothing, then why are Jews endorsing them? Acknowledging we are a diverse diasporic group, and our nationalistic slants may bias behavior from country to country… why would Jews advertise this voluntarily? It doesn’t add up to me. We’re not a culture that celebrates death and afterlife enough to actively participate in something like this.
Talk to me. Iranian Jews: Weimar Republic fodder? Or caught in a limbo of public relations?
by Cole Krawitz · Sunday, July 30th, 2006
In between trips, I am quickly posting this call to Jewschool:
Join Daniel Boyarin, Debra Chasnoff, Ronnie Gilbert, Rabbi Lynn Gottleib, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Rela Mazali, Adrienne Rich, Avi Shlaim, Howard Zinn, Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman and over 2,000 others. Let the world know that Jews and our non-Jewish allies understand that Israel will never find peace by bombing their neighbors into submission.
With the post, and with limited time, I am also calling to question the claim of this blog that it is the leading progressive Jewish voice after reading David Kelsey’s now feel even more compelled after reading David Kelsey’s post about immigration. I have had conversations with Mobius and with other contributors off the blog that alternative views doesn’t mean opening up space for people to be xenophobic, sexist and racist in order to say all views are respected. I do not support calling this blog a leading voice in progressive Jewish perspectives if we allow our contributors to post blatant calls for hate and xenophobia in such blatant disregard for our own history as people who have been barred and locked out from this country and many others because of our religion, our ethnicity and our culture. There are some of us on this blog that are progressive, and some of us that are absolutely not, and David’s call is a slap in the face of everything that I know I hold sacred in calling myself a progessive and radical Jew.
So I wonder, what is this blog for if we have contributors who go against the very claim and call of what it was supposedly about, if we give and allow space to people who air views and perspectives without any accountability when they are not just being subtly, but are overtly racist and oppressive. If we have categories like “Arab World”–if we have no categories for occupation or Palestine.
So this is a call, a challenge to Jewschool and to the readership–what is this about for you because in my eyes, the very idea that we are allowing people to post viewpoints like the one’s I have seen from David (and other contributors–I am in no ways confining this to David) over and over again is just another liberal ideology that we should “allow” all voices equal space and equal share in time, that we should call them all valid when some are flat out oppressive and Right wing–and if this is so, then the call, the “about us” of Jewschool should be renamed and rewritten for people to take stock of who and what this project is really all about–can we really call a number of the contributors disfranchised Jews? Monikers can’t hide the fact that a number of the contributors are straight white men–disfranchised my a**. Allowing Right wing voices and perspectives is in no way an open revolt–while the project has many elements to it that make it progressive, this last post just makes me have to call into question and honestly say at this moment, progressive it’s not.
There’s a lot of work and honest reflection and conversation that needs to happen to make it so and I hope I am not alone as a contributor, as a reader and as a radical Jew in thinking that many of the contributors also will find this call necessary for our work to be true and accountable to the very vision and community we claim we are trying to build.
by John Brown · Sunday, July 30th, 2006
Found buried at the end of an article in the Jerusalem Post: “Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the United States that the US would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria.”
CNN reports: Eyewitness: Mass burial in Lebanon
Uri Avnery writes: “In the Gunsight: Syria! or: A Nice Little War” - IT IS the old story about the losing gambler: he cannot stop. He continues to play, in order to win his losses back. He continues to lose and continues to gamble, until he has lost everything: his ranch, his wife, his shirt.
Avnery also advises: “THE REAL aim is to change the regime in Lebanon and to install a puppet government.”
The New York Times, in an essay entitled “Israel Is Powerful, Yes. But Not So Invincible” calculates: “The very clear winner, for the moment at least, was Hezbollah and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.”
Gideon Levy writes in Ha’aretz “Days of Darkness” - one of the best essays I’ve read about the current Lebanon/Israel conflict
by Mobius · Sunday, July 30th, 2006
Yehudit Barsky of the American Jewish Committee writes,
With the international community focused on Iran’s quest to develop nuclear weapons, little attention has been paid to Tehran’s preparations for a possible showdown with America and its allies. For more than a year, Iran has been preparing, together with terror organizations it controls and finances, for a confrontation code-named “Al-Qiyamah,” which is Arabic for “Judgment Day.” Hezbollah’s unprovoked war against Israel may well be the first step in this Iranian-inspired conflict.
Leading this war effort is Brigadier General, Qassam Sulaymani, who heads the Al-Quds “Jerusalem” Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Based in Tehran, the Al-Quds Force is considered responsible for having trained thousands of operatives from Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. Now Sulaymani has been tasked with coordinating and providing logistical support to the terror organizations that will execute Iran’s plans for a confrontation.The plan reportedly includes suicide bombing attacks on America and British targets in the Middle East as well as on Arab and Muslim countries allied with the West.
Participants in Iran’s “Judgment Day” plans include Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hezbollah cells in Europe, North America, the Persian Gulf region, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the leaders of Iraq’s insurgency, and the Mahdi Army of Iraq’s Muqtada Al-Sadr. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards also have reportedly invited operatives from the Mahdi Army to be trained in Iran and have increased its funding to Al-Sadr to over $20 million.
