Friday, February 18, 2011

Jimmy Carter sued for deception and fraud

From a Press Release, February 2, 2011, by David Schoen and Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, co counsel for the Plaintiffs:

An historic class action suit has been filed against former President Jimmy Carter and the Simon & Schuster publishing company alleging that Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, contained numerous false and knowingly misleading statements intended to promote the author’s agenda of anti-Israel propaganda and to deceive the reading public instead of presenting accurate information as advertised...

... The lawsuit contends that Carter, who holds himself out as a Middle-East expert, and his publisher, intentionally presented untrue and inaccurate information and sought to capitalize on the author’s status as a former President to mislead unsuspecting members of the public.

...The complaint notes that after the book’s publication some of Carter’s closest aides, including distinguished public officials and scholars personally involved in the events described, condemned the book as untruthful.

Despite being presented with irrefutable proof that many of representations in the book are false, the defendants have refused to make any corrections.

Attorney Darshan-Leitner stated that:
“The lawsuit will expose all the falsehoods and misrepresentations in Carter's book and prove that his hatred of Israel has led him to commit this fraud on the public. He is entitled to his opinions but deceptions and lies have no place in works of history.”

Attorney Schoen stated that:
"It is, indeed, a sad day for all of us as Americans, when a former President demeans the dignity of his office by intentionally misstating critically important facts concerning events of great historic significance and public interest, simply to advance a personal anti-Israel animus and to foster the agenda of the enemies of Israel who pump so much money into the Center which bears his name."

A copy of the complaint is available here.

Qaradawi: Egypt's Khomeini?

From the Rubin Report, Friday, February 18, 2011, by Barry Rubin:

Friday, February 18 may be a turning point in Egyptian history. On this day Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the best-known Muslim Brotherhood cleric in the world and one of the most famous Islamist thinkers, will address a mass rally in Cairo.

It was 32 years ago almost to the day when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned in triumph to Tehran to take the leadership of that country. Qaradawi has a tougher job but he's up to the challenge if his health holds up.

.... Long resident in the Gulf, he is returning to his homeland in triumph. Through internet, radio, his 100 books, and his weekly satellite television program, Qaradawi has been an articulate voice for revolutionary Islamism. He is literally a living legend.

Under the old regime, Qaradawi was banned from the country. He is now 84 years old--two years older than the fallen President Husni Mubarak...

It was Qaradawi who, in critiquing Usama bin Ladin and al-Qaida, argued that Islamists should always participate in elections because they would, he claims, invariably win them. Hamas and Hizballah have shown that he was right on that point.

Symbollically, he will give the Friday prayer sermon to be held in Tahrir Square, the center of the revolutionary movement. The massing of hundreds of thousands of people in the square to hear Islamic services and a sermon by a radical Islamist is not the kind of thing that's been going on under the 60-year-old military regime that was recently overthrown.

The context is also the thanking of Qaradawi for his support of the revolution, an implication that he is somehow its spiritual father.

Qaradawi, though some in the West view him as a moderate, supports the straight Islamist line: anti-American, anti-Western, wipe Israel off the map, foment Jihad, stone homosexuals, in short the works.

One of Qaradawi's initiatives has been urging Muslims to settle in the West, of which he said, “that powerful West, which has come to rule the world, should not be left to the influence of the Jews alone.” He contends that the three major threats Muslims face are Zionism, internal integration, and globalization. To survive, he argues, Muslims must fight the Zionists, Crusaders, idolators, and Communists.

Make no mistake, Qaradawi is not some fossilized Islamic ideologue. ...He is subtle enough to sell himself as a moderate to those who don't understand the implications of his words or look beneath the surface of his presentation.

...It is Qaradawi, not bin Ladin, who is the most dangerous revolutionary Islamist in the world and he is about to unleash the full force of his power [of] persuasion on Egypt...

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: ...to be, or not to be?

But when exactly should the country hold fresh elections? That’s where things get trickier.
...Without adequate institutional and cultural underpinnings, democracy can rapidly deteriorate into soft (or rigid) authoritarianism. We should not be idealistically dismissive of the profound challenges of moving from dictatorship to representative government. Holding a free election tomorrow would not transform Egypt into New Zealand. The process of liberalization will unfold over many years, with plenty of setbacks along the way.
Had Hosni Mubarak been a different sort of autocrat — one who allowed for greater political and socioeconomic development — Egypt would be better positioned to make the leap toward democratic rule. Alas, the octogenarian despot chose to brutalize and imprison secular human-rights activists rather than let them foster civil society. This repression, along with a bevy of social and religious factors, helped the outlawed Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (EMB) — a Sunni Islamist group founded in 1928 — become the country’s biggest opposition movement.
Now we are confronting the same fears that Cairo shrewdly manipulated for decades. What if the Egyptian uprising triggers a chaotic chain reaction? What if the EMB seizes control? Won’t it turn Egypt into an Islamic theocracy and launch hostile actions against Israel? Won’t it disrupt trade flows — including oil traffic — through the strategically vital Suez Canal? ...These are the concerns that traditionally insulated Mubarak from serious U.S. pressure to reform.

...Here’s the discomfiting but inescapable reality: EMB members represent a sizable constituency, and they will exert substantial influence during the post-Mubarak transition. Neither the 83-year-old organization nor its grassroots followers can be airbrushed from the Egyptian political landscape.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is an important player in Egypt, and it is going to remain an important player,” says Marina Ottaway, a Middle East specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP). Yet Ottaway is quick to add that the EMB lacks both the popularity and the charismatic leadership necessary to establish an Iranian-style religious state. As anthropologist and regional expert Scott Atran has emphasized, the group does not command anything close to “mass support.” Its current prominence is largely a result of persistent government efforts to bludgeon the secular and liberal opposition.

CEIP vice president Thomas Carothers believes there is ample reason to hope that Egypt might follow the path, not of Iran, but of Indonesia — the most populous Muslim country on earth — which began its successful democratic transition in 1998. Writing in the online version of The New Republic, Carothers argues that “Egypt is not ripe for a radical Islamist revolution.” Islam scholar Reuel Marc Gerecht — a former CIA officer and author of an upcoming book on Middle East democracy — agrees: “What we are likely to see in Egypt,” he predicts in the New York Times, “is not a repeat of Iran, where fundamentalists took undisputed power, but a repeat of Iraq, where Sunni religious parties did well initially but started to fade, divide and evolve as the powerful Sunni preference for laymen of no particular religious distinction comes to the foreground.

Indeed, the differences between Sunni and Shia Islam will militate against the imposition of a clerical regime in Cairo. Egyptian society has not produced a Khomeini-like figure, nor should we expect it to, given the nature of Sunni doctrine and tradition. Despite being “the mother ship of Sunni fundamentalism,” Gerecht notes, the EMB “has always had a tense relationship with Al Azhar, the great Sunni seminary of Cairo.” When Americans imagine the “Egyptian Muslim Brothers,” they may picture a bunch of bearded clergymen delivering fanatical sermons. Yet as Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul observes, the group boasts “an overwhelmingly lay leadership of professionals with modern educations — engineers, doctors, lawyers, academics and teachers.”

What is the Muslim Brotherhood?

Walid Shoebat, who was once a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, has authored many books about Islam and the Middle East, including his most recent, God's War on Terror: Islam, Prophecy, and the Bible.
Shoebat was born in Bethlehem to a Palestinian family and was once a PLO terrorist. Now, as a Christian, he works tireless to educate people about the realities of the radical Islamic agenda.
Shoebat appeared on The 700 Club, Monday, Feb. 14, to talk about the Muslim Brotherhood, recent events in Egypt, and how the upheaval will affect Christians living in the region. Click play to watch.


Many foreign policy experts believe that the radical organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood will gain great influence with a change of government in Egypt.
This secretive group has had many Western observers uneasy for years. The Brotherhood was founded in 1928 in Egypt, with the goal of spreading Islamic sharia law worldwide and uniting all Muslim nations into one Islamic super-state.
Before Osama bin Laden formed al Qaeda, he belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood. So did his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The terror group Hamas also identifies itself as the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestinian branch.
Why is there such a draw to the Brotherhood? the group's official motto may tell the story. It reads:
Allah is our objective.
The prophet is our leader.
Qur'an is our law.
Jihad is our way.
Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.
The Brotherhood was eventually banned in Egypt, but for the past several decades has worked behind the scenes to the point where it's now considered the most influential Islamist organization in the world, with chapters in more than 100 countries.
The group's immediate goal is an Islamic state in Egypt and an end to that country's peace treaty with Israel.
What is the danger if the United States and other nations do not understand what the Muslim Brotherhood is all about?

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

UK’s Foreign Secretary Hague joins the ignorant Israel bashers

From JPost, 9 Feb 2011, by JONNY PAUL:

LONDON – British Foreign Secretary William Hague warned on Wednesday  ...that the public protests which have swept the Arab world could put the Middle East peace process in jeopardy.

...“This should not be a time for belligerent language,” Hague argued when asked about Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu call to prepare for “any outcome” and comments that he would “reinforce the might of the State of Israel” should it prove necessary. “It is a time to inject greater urgency into the Middle East peace process,” the foreign secretary told the Times.

...In an analysis, Michael Weiss, executive director of Just Journalism, a London-based independent research and media monitor organization focused on how Israel and the Middle East are reported in the media, said that a sense of “urgency” has always been integral to the peace process.

“I’m not quite sure what the foreign secretary meant by “inject greater urgency” into the peace process,” Weiss said. “A sense of ‘urgency’ has run through 40 years of international diplomacy and has yet to produce any real results.”

If Israel had to increase defense spending, in the event that its peace treaty with Egypt was annulled, would the British consider this a “belligerent” act? Weiss asked.

“Hague doesn’t seem to understand the context of Netanyahu’s remark. After Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt was signed, Israel’s defense budget dropped from 30 percent of its gross national product to 7%. If that treaty is dissolved – as the Muslim Brotherhood have already made clear they’d like to see happen – then clearly Israel will have to re-up its defense spending. Now that might be interpreted as belligerence by a British government that can now afford to share its aircraft carriers with France. But for the Middle East’s only democracy, it’s called sanity,” Weiss said.

Shoah survivors seek reparations from French railways

From JPost 15 Feb 2011, by JORDANA HORN:

NEW YORK – A new website ... is the latest line of attack in a longstanding quest of a group of Holocaust survivors to get reparations from the French national railway company that transported people to concentration and death camps during World War II.

SNCF transported over 75,000 people to such camps.

...SNCF has acknowledged its role in the Holocaust and has posted information relating to its WWII history on its own website, issuing its first formal apology for its role in the Holocaust in January, but has made no effort to pay reparations.

...“SNCF’s recent decision to issue its first ‘apology’ for its role in the Holocaust was a calculated gesture to ensure the company’s ability to compete for billions of American taxpayer dollars,” the website reads. ...
Thus far, however, SNCF has not been found liable for reparations in US courts due to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which sets limits on whether a foreign state can be sued in a US court.

As SNCF, a French national entity, has recently begun to bid for highspeed rail contracts in American states including California, Maryland and Florida, survivors have tried to pursue redress through legislative channels instead.

Recent developments include a bill introduced last week by Maryland state lawmakers, which would require companies bidding on mass transit rail contracts to disclose whether or not they were involved in transporting victims to German concentration camps.


...Federal legislation that would give US courts jurisdiction to hear civil claims against SNCF over its role in the Holocaust will be reintroduced soon, according to New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, whose first attempt to pass such a law never reached a vote.

“The legislation would simply preclude SNCF from raising the defense of foreign sovereign immunity and allow the survivors’ suit... to go forward,” Prober said. “This is not what the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act was intended to cover.”

Collective suicide of the West?

From: The Australian February 15, 2011, by Melanie Phillips*:

THE future of Egypt following the departure of president Hosni Mubarak remains opaque.
No one can currently predict whether it will end up as a democracy with free elections, a military dictatorship, or an Islamic theocratic tyranny.

... the most frightening thing of all  ...[is] the way in which the West has sanitised the Muslim Brothers and even, in the case of the Obama administration, actually tried to push them into power.

When it wasn't flip-flopping over whether Mubarak should stay or go, the White House first said it wouldn't mind if the Muslim Brothers became part of the Egyptian government.

Then it urged the inclusion of "important non-secular actors" - code for the Muslim Brothers - in a "more democratic" Egypt. And then it was revealed that its proposal for the immediate transfer of power called for the transitional government to include the brotherhood.

What madness was this? The Muslim Brothers' goal is to Islamise the world. They are religious fascists. While certainly there are millions of Muslims around the world who do want to live under democracy, the Brothers are totally against any secular rule at all and stand for an extinction of human rights. They are fanatical Jew-haters. In the 1930s they were effectively created as a political force by the Nazi Party, with which they formulated a final solution for Palestine by ridding it of its Jews, an agenda continued today by their offshoot, Hamas.

Today, they are no less the mortal enemies of the free world. Their leaders have declared war on America, gloating that the US is "experiencing the beginning of its end and is heading towards its demise", and that "resistance is the only solution".

They support al-Qa'ida terrorism "against the Americans and the Zionists". They declared that after Mubarak they would dissolve the peace treaty with Israel.

They support Hezbollah, make overtures to Iran, and openly employ a strategy of simulating moderation to gain power though democratic means in order to destroy democracy.

If Egypt is eventually taken over by the brotherhood, Jordan will be next, and both will turn into Iran/Gaza in a matter of a few years. Oh, and the Brothers are also busy Islamising Britain and America. Yet on both sides of the pond, significant elements of the political and defence establishment have decided that the Muslim Brothers are basically peace-loving, sensible, pragmatic chaps who are useful allies against the men of violence.

...Has there ever been a civilisation more bent on collective suicide than the contemporary West?

*Melanie Phillips is the author of The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power, published by Encounter

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

War crimes charges against Sandor Kepiro

From WJC, 15 February 2011:

In Budapest, a 97-year-old man was charged ...for allegedly committing war crimes during World War II. According to the charge sheet, Sandor Kepiro was complicit in the execution of four innocent civilians in Novi Sad, Serbia, between 21 and 23 January 1942, as the commander of a patrol... An estimated 1,200 civilians suspected of aiding local resistance fighters – many of them Jews and Roma – were rounded up and taken to the bank of the Danube to be killed. The victims, some still alive, had their bodies thrown under the ice of the frozen river. The Hungarian forces then shot into the ice to break it up. Most of the victims drowned. Kepiro's patrol was allegedly also responsible for the deportation in a truck of 30 people who were later executed, and for the killing of two brothers who tried to escape, bringing the number of victims to 36.

"The prosecutor's office is not investigating the Novi Sad Massacre in its entirety but only the actions of the suspect," the spokeswoman told AFP, noting that some 200 patrols, each made up of 10 to 12 people, had taken part in the mass killings, with only one under Kepiro's command...

Kepiro was convicted in 1944 and 1946 by a Hungarian court, but was never jailed and denied all the allegations against him. In 1996, he returned to Hungary after decades in hiding in Argentina. The case was reopened after a researcher of the Simon Wiesenthal Center discovered his whereabouts in 2006.  ...In 2008, Serbia's war crimes prosecutor called for a formal investigation into Kepiro's actions, estimating that he had "consciously and willingly taken part... in the murder of at least 2,000 Jews and Serbs" in Novi Sad...