Why Don't the Israel Haters Boycott Syria?

By Arsen Ostrovsky

This week begins an annual part of the global campaign to delegitimize and vilify the Jewish state, as anti-Israel activists and student groups on campuses around the world, including United States and Canada, mark the eighth annual Israel Apartheid Week [IAW].

According to organizers of the IAW, the purpose of the movement is to "to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns."

First, let's make one thing crystal clear -- attempts to brand Israel as an "apartheid" state or compare it to white South Africa are at best uninformed; and at worst, maliciously dishonest and anti-Semitic. It also does a great injustice to the real victims, who had to endure institutionalized segregation and apartheid in South Africa.

The irony is that, despite problems in Israel (as in any democracy), Arab citizens still enjoy more rights, freedoms, and liberties than do their neighbors in any number of Middle East countries currently fighting and dying for these very same privileges.

As the Muslim Arab Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh says: "Israel is not an apartheid state...[it] is a free and open democratic country. The law of Israel does not distinguish between a Jew and an Arab... I would rather live as a second class citizen in Israel, even though I'm not, than a first class citizen in any Arab country."

Notably, those using the IAW to demonize Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, and which respects the rights of women, minorities, homosexuals, and people of other faiths, are holding no such events for Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad has already butchered some 7,500 pro-democracy protestors.

Nor are they holding similar events against Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is a crime, in Egypt, where the Copts continue to be persecuted both pre- and post-Mubarak, or Iran, where women and the Baha'i are repeatedly tortured and executed.

Of course, other great bastions of human rights and democracy, like Russia and China, which recently vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for the ousting of al-Assad, get a free pass too.

So why is Israel the only country singled out for special opprobrium?

During the IAW, you will hear all sorts of lofty humanitarian labels like "justice," "equal rights," and "peace." But don't be fooled. It is all a charade. They have no such interest. The sole purpose of the BDS movement is the vilification, delegitimization, and destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.
Just listen to what their leaders say.

Omar Barghouti, one the founders of the BDS Movement (and ironically, also a PhD student of ethics at Tel Aviv University), has said that the Palestinian refugees "Right of Return" is the "litmus test of morality for anyone suggesting a just and enduring solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."

To put it a little more bluntly, he added: "I clearly do not buy into the two-state solution...[I]f the refugees were to return, you would not have a two-state solution, you would have a Palestine next to Palestine, rather than a Palestine next to Israel."

Other BDS leaders are equally forthright.

Ali Abunimah is the executive director of the anti-Zionist website, Electronic Intifada, and one of the leading proponents of the one-state solution as a supposedly "just" and "non-violent" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He sees the BDS as key to achieving this. But only last month, he tweeted: "Isn't it the time for a popular Palestinian revolution in the form of a third intifada?" Is that because the first and second intifadas were so "non-violent" also?

And then only two week ago, in what came as a major blow to the legions of Israel haters, anti-Zionist poster-boy Norman Finkelstein said the BDS Movement's call for the "Right of Return" was just "a cover for its desire to see the destruction of Israel," calling the movement "disingenuous" and a "cult."

Granted, Finkelstein made these comments not out of a new found Zionism or desire to advance peace in the Middle East, but rather he believes there are other "more efficient" means for anti-Israel activists to achieve the goals.

But undoubtedly the most illuminating of all the statements by BDS leaders came from Ahmed Koor (another proponent of the Palestinian "Right of Return'", who wrote in April 2010: "Ending the occupation doesn't mean anything if it doesn't mean upending the Jewish state itself...BDS is not another step on the way to the final showdown; BDS is The Final Showdown."

The similarity between Koor's "Final Showdown" and Hitler's "Final Solution" is as unmistakable as it is chillingly revealing about the BDS Movement's true motives.

Whereas Hitler's "Final Solution" sought to bring about the end of the Jewish people, the BDS Movement's "Final Showdown" seeks to bring about the end of Israel as the Jewish state, by endorsing a one-state solution and flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians.

The BDS movement is nothing short of racist, insidious, and anti-Semitic. Its goal is not to advance Palestinian rights, but to deny and strip Israel of its rights, with the ultimate objective being the destruction of the Jewish state.

The most unfortunate thing is that supporters of IAW and BDS do nothing to advance the cause of peace or well-being of Palestinians or Israeli Arabs. But then again, that has never been their goal in the first place. They only breed further hate and extremism at a time when peace and cooperation is needed most.



Huffington Post

The Dark World of the Arab Child Slave Trade

by Stephen Brown

In a story last week in the British newspaper The Sun, a private investigator stated that Madeleine McCann, the subject of probably the world’s most famous unsolved kidnapping case, is in the United States. The British girl was three years old when she went missing five years ago from a seaside resort in Portugal, where her parents were vacationing. The Portuguese police, in what has been termed a “bungled investigation,” at first accused the parents of the abduction but later cleared them. Portuguese security officials halted their investigation to find the missing child in 2008 after stating she had probably been “stolen to order.”

Since her disappearance, numerous alleged sightings have been made of the little girl across Europe, Africa, in North America and in Australia. The investigator making the latest claim concerning McCann’s whereabouts is an amateur sleuth originally from Angola. He told The Sun that a Portuguese pedophile ring, also responsible for other child abductions, took the McCann girl and has handed his findings over to authorities. The claim that a pedophile ring is responsible for McCann’s disappearance has been made before, especially concerning one in Belgium. And while Madeleine McCann girl may have very well been snatched by such evil hands, it is surprising that an equally depraved institution — one of gigantic size — has never even been considered by investigators or the media as McCann’s possible kidnapper: namely, the Arab child slave trade.

While tens of thousands of adults are also victims of Arab slavers, many people only first took notice of the Arab slave trade in children when reports of enslaved child camel jockeys emerged from Persian Gulf countries. A 2004 HBO documentary on the subject was especially responsible for making Americans aware of this modern-day barbarism. These boys, who were sold by poor parents hoping their offspring would some day experience a better life, were primarily from South Asia. But instead of a life of dignity and meaningful work, they wound up in the Middle East where they were made to race camels for their Arab masters. Beaten and often sexually abused, they were all kept undernourished, so that the camels would have less weight to carry.

“As many as 6,000 child camel jockeys…languished in hidden slavery on ozbah farms, where their masters beat them and starved them to keep their weight down,” wrote E. Benjamin Skinner in his book, A Crime So Monstrous.

When investigating in the 1990s the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of black Africans in Mauritania by Arab-Berber masters, African-American author Samuel Cotton was stunned to discover that African children were still being kidnapped by Arabs traveling with camels carrying big baskets. The child, usually playing alone, would suddenly be snatched from its play and placed in one such basket, after which its new owners hurried away. The children, he was told, are sometimes found later “hundreds of miles away as slaves.”

Also during his investigation, which was summarized in his highly informative book Silent Terror: A Journey Into Contemporary African Slavery, Cotton was told there was “still a huge trafficking in slaves going on between Mauritania and the United Arab Emirates.”

Black African children are also not always stolen so surreptitiously. Until recently in the southern Sudan, the old-fashioned slave raid witnessed villages being burned down, the men killed and the women and children captured. This was the Arab slavers’ main harvesting tool of humans. Thousands of children were captured by this murderous method and forcibly taken as agricultural, domestic and sex slaves to Arab northern Sudan — where many still languish today. Darfur has also seen many children disappear from both refugee camps and towns subjected to central government attack. They are suspected victims of Arab slave hunters.

But it is not only non-Arab children who are Arab child slave trade victims. An Egyptian newspaper, referring to a 2008 UNICEF report, stated Egyptian children are being bought and sold for about $3,000 for “domestic work and farming, among other things.” This trade in children is so extensive in Egypt, organizations are “employing brokers, and even operating their own web sites.

“Many are also sent to the Gulf States, with orphanages being a major supplier,” the story further reports.

Even from a country as far way as the Philippines children are trafficked to the Middle East. In 2008, for example, 34 minors between the ages of 14 and 16 were rescued at Manila airport by social workers as they were about to depart on fake passports for unnamed Middle Eastern countries. Again, war and poverty played a role in these young people’s desperation. They were from refugees camps in the war-torn southern island of Mindanao where an insurgency is raging between government forces and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

While most civilized people nowadays recoil in horror from the idea of slavery, especially when it involves children, many fundamentalist Middle Eastern Muslims do not. In fact, they view the psychological death and destruction of innocent lives as their legal right. Under sharia law, which rules the Sudan and the Gulf States, Muslims are legally allowed to own slaves. Bernard Lewis, the eminent scholar of Islam, writes “…the institution of slavery is not only recognized but is elaborately regulated by Sharia law.” Another reason for this inhuman sense of entitlement is the prophet Muhammad was also a slave owner, setting the example for the fundamentalists.

Besides a codified religious supremacy, there is also the element of racial superiority behind the hideous practice of Arab slavery, especially when it concerns black Africans. Arab racism is at the roots of Islamic slavery that has seen 14 million black Africans enslaved and sold around the Islamic world from the seventh to the twentieth century.

Unfortunately for its victims, the abolition of Arab slavery will be difficult to even initiate — especially when the international community remains deafeningly silent about it. The case of Dr. Abu Zayd, a Cairo University professor and Islamic theologian, amply illustrates the problem. When Zayd contended that “keeping slave girls and taxing non-Muslims” was contrary to Islam, an Egyptian sharia court forcibly divorced him from his wife and declared him an apostate. He later had to flee to Europe to escape Islamic extremists who wanted to kill him because of his apostate status.

Slavery was only abolished in Saudi Arabia and other states of the Arabian Peninsula in the early 1960s, so one cannot expect an institution that has existed for centuries to being away any time soon. For example, the widow of the emir of Abu Dhabi and her four daughters were caught living in Brussels in 2008 with 20 slaves who they were mistreating. And Dubai is the center for the region’s sex industry that Skinner calls “a place of slavery for women.” Promised jobs, thousands of women full of hope arrive there from Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia annually only to have their passports taken away immediately upon arrival and to be forced into prostitution.

One Gulf State Arab woman, a former candidate for Kuwait’s parliament, does not even hide the fact there should be sex slaves for Arab men and claims sheikhs and muftis she spoke with in Mecca sanctioned this. As a result, Salwa al-Mutairi wants non-Muslim women captured in war made available to Muslim men, so that the men can be “protected from adultery.” She affirmed: “For example, in the Chechnya war, surely there are female Russian captives. So go and buy those and sell them here in Kuwait…I don’t see any problem in this.”

Al-Mutairi’s despicable utterances came only a week after a Muslim preacher announced that, since Islam allows Muslims to buy and sell conquered infidel women, “When I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her.”

It is not the purpose or intent of this article to engage in sensationalist or unfounded finger-pointing. But what a crime it would be to neglect finding and freeing a child slave because the hunt for his or her captors would be deemed politically incorrect. Indeed, in light of the widespread phenomenon discussed above, why is the possibility of Madeleine McCann being a child slave somewhere in the Middle East not even remotely considered in the investigation of her disappearance? Yes, it is only conjecture, but so is looking into all the other possibilities. Why, for instance, is publicly hypothesizing that she is probably somewhere in the U.S. considered legitimate, but even breathing a word about the possibility of her being somewhere in the Middle East considered illegitimate — when it is a fact that an international Arab human-slave trafficking business is in full effect?

The fact that the McCanns were at a Portuguese seaside resort when Madeleine was taken made the kidnappers’ task easier. Since the child-snatchers may have very well made their escape by sea, there would be no borders to cross until they reached their destination — potentially a Middle Eastern one. The Islamic world, after all, is very close to Portugal.

The British government has recently assigned 30 detectives in a major effort to locate the missing girl. Of course, myriad evils could be behind this tragic crime. And they must all be looked into. But in light of what is known about the Arab child slave trade, will investigators spend even at least a modicum of time considering the distinct possibility of Middle Eastern sex-slave traffickers’ involvement? The empirical reality would justify it — as it would justify the international community starting to be even slightly interested in, and outraged about, this dark and evil phenomenon in general.



Front Page Magazine

Saudi Arabia Unblocks Facebook

Social networking site briefly blocked because it doesn't conform to kingdom's values.

Saudi Arabia's communications authority unblocked Facebook on Saturday after shutting down the popular social networking website for a few hours.

An official with Saudi's Communications and Information Technology Commission said the kingdom blocked the site briefly Saturday because the content had "crossed a line" with the country's conservative values.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media, later said the communications authority lifted the ban. The reason the commission reversed its decision hours later was not immediately clear.

Earlier this week, a blogger who set off an uproar in the Arab world by claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad was arrested through a sting that used Facebook to track him down.

Walid Husayin, 26, a barber from the West Bank town of Qalqilya, now faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for "insulting the divine essence." Many in this conservative Muslim town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam, and even family members say he should remain behind bars for life.



Associated Press

Shameful Double Standard

Abuses of non-Western regimes excused, democracies' sins magnified

by Frayda Leibtag

Human Rights Watch (HRW), one of the world's largest non-government organizations, is failing in its mandate to protect universal human rights. In closed societies where the organization's work is most needed, and where its work is most difficult to pursue, HRW repeatedly falls far short of fulfilling its mission.

The organization’s recent reports on migrant workers demonstrate these severe shortcomings. One report ('Walls at Every Turn') examined Kuwait, where migrant workers face serious abuse such as extortion and sexual exploitation. The other report ('Slow Reform' ) addressed the worldwide problem of violations against migrant workers, with an emphasis on Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and United Arab Emirates. So far, so good.

But when HRW's researcher Bill Van Esveld chose to publish an op-ed on this important topic, his focus was on migrant workers in Israel. Instead of drawing attention to the problem of closed societies, which lack basic democratic mechanisms to address the mistreatment of migrants, and where international outcry may be the only publicity allotted to the victims, Van Esveld chose to highlight the one open country in the region that, in fact, has its own very public, vibrant debate on the most appropriate policies to implement regarding migrant workers.

This op-ed is indicative of how HRW's Middle East and North Africa (MENA) division downplays the systematic abuses of human rights taking place in closed, totalitarian regimes, while targeting open, democratic societies. This ideological double standard violates the universality of human rights and highlights the moral decomposition within HRW.

Other reports by HRW further demonstrate this troubling trend. A 35-page HRW report on a decade of human rights in Syria describes the state of Syrian human rights as 'bleak,' a categorization that does not do justice to the egregious violations committed at the highest institutional levels. The equally feeble 'recommendations' section adopts a bureaucratic approach, directed exclusively to President Bashar al-Assad. He is enjoined to enact, amend, introduce and remove a variety of laws; and to set up commissions. To alleviate restrictions on freedom of expression, HRW urges: 'stop blocking websites for their content.'

Similarly, in a recent report on Saudi Arabia, MENA overlooked the extent to which King Abdullah and the rest of the Saudi leadership are responsible for the very repressive practices that they are asked to counteract. The regime’s totalitarian grip on its citizens is minimized, with HRW naively turning to King Abdullah to enforce equal rights and freedoms.

Post-colonial ideology
This failure to properly address closed societies, and to focus primarily on democracies, led HRW founder Robert Bernstein to denounce the organization that he began. He explained in a New York Times op-ed (Oct. 2009) that HRW has 'cast aside its important distinction between open and closed societies' and has abandoned its 'original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters.' Van Esveld's article is another example.

There are a number of factors driving HRW's moral decline. First, HRW's leaders reflect a post-colonial ideology that patronizingly excuses the abuses of non-Western regimes and magnifies the alleged sins of democracies. HRW's lack of access to reliable information in closed societies also contributes to the agenda bias. But, instead of criticizing the potential harassment, or worse, for individuals who speak out against the regime, HRW echoes their silence.

In contrast, the open nature of democracies enables an obsessive, often aggressive stance regarding accusations of abuse in these nations. For instance, NGO Monitor's research has shown that HRW's ability to access every aspect of Israeli society feeds a hyper-critical approach to Israel and a loss of perspective and context.

The number and intensity of NGO reports and critiques of open societies should not be confused with the advancement of a universal human rights agenda. Saudi Arabia executes homosexuals, Iran stones adulterers, and Qatar discriminates against women, but HRW's MENA division persistently downplays these human rights violations. Now add to this list Kuwait's treatment of migrant workers. Without major reform of the MENA division, and a renewed commitment to seriously addressing the human rights abuses in closed societies, HRW will continue to lose credibility.




Ynew News

UN's Dream Became a Nightmare

Israel and the joke that called UN’s human rights body, composed of world’s worst human right violators

By Omer Gertel

Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s worst human rights violators. It is not an electoral democracy and political opposition is forbidden. Freedom of speech is heavily restricted. The government maintains control of the media and responds harshly to criticism or deviation from its strict Islamic dogma.

Moreover, freedom of religion is nonexistent: All Saudis are required by law to be Muslim, while public practice of other religions is prohibited. Religious practices of Shiite and Sufi Muslims are also restricted. Arbitrary arrests and torture are not uncommon.

Discrimination against women is appalling: They may not drive cars, travel within or outside of the country without a male relative, or use public facilities freely in the presence of men. Employment rates of women are extremely low and their ability to take part in political life is minimal. The testimony of one man is equal to that of two women at the country's Sharia courts.

One might expect a body that calls itself "Human Rights Council" to devote a significant portion of its activity to criticism and condemnation of Saudi Arabia. But this is not the case. Not only has Saudi Arabia never been condemned by the UN Human Rights Council - it is a dignified member of this very body.

How can a country with virtually not connection to human rights be a member of a formal body dedicated to the promotion and protection of human rights around the world? Is that not similar to putting a wife-beater in charge of a women's shelter? Welcome to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the most hypocritical and shameful body of an institution that knows a thing or two about hypocrisy and shame; a body that makes the UN more meaningless than ever.

Regrettably, Saudi Arabia is not an exception. The UNHRC is dominated by third world countries, in most of which democracy and human rights are nothing more than theoretical concepts. More than half of the Council's members are not free democracies; on top of Saudi Arabia, it includes some of the world’s most oppressive dictatorships, such as Libya, Qatar and China.

Naturally, a body with such composition does very little to promote or protect human rights, as this would damage its members' aspirations. What does it do then? Precisely what can be expected of a body with a significant proportion of Arab and Muslim countries – demonize Israel.

The Sri Lanka case
Incredibly, about 80%, 34 out of 40 of the Council's censures were devoted to Israel. This is an unbelievable figure: Meanwhile, tyrannies such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, China and others were never condemned by the UNHRC. North Korea, one of the darkest regimes of the 21st century, was condemned once. Sudan, where genocide has been committed for years, was addressed in two UNHRC resolutions, none of which held the Sudanese government accountable (one actually praised it for its "progress" on human rights.)

On the other hand, Israel, a democracy that grants freedom, civil rights and human rights to all of its citizens, including minorities that belong to a people with whom Israel is involved in bitter conflict – is supposedly the worst human rights violator on earth, and in fact one of the only human rights violators altogether. This according to the UN sponsored wife-beater's best judgment.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, recounts a story that demonstrates the typical hypocrisy of the UNHRC regarding Israel: During the first half of 2009, two countries, Israel and Sri Lanka, fought terrorist groups that target civilians and use them as human shields – Israel faced Hamas in Operation Cast Lead while Sri Lanka struggled with the Tamil Tigers. There were several differences between these similar cases: While Israel undertook extensive measures to prevent the harming of civilians, described by British Colonel Richard Kemp as unique in military history, Sri Lanka did no such thing. While Israel made humanitarian pauses every day, Sri Lanka failed to do so.

The civilian death toll in Gaza was approximately 1,000 according to Palestinian sources (and much lower according to Israeli sources), while the number of civilian casualties in Sri Lanka was no less than 6,500, and as high as 20,000 according to some estimates.

We all know what became of Israel in the UN Human Rights Council. A fact-finding mission, quickly established with the stated goal of investigating Israel's "war crimes" and "violations," confirmed all predetermined conclusions depicting Israel as the devil. Israel was severely condemned, as always.

But what of Sri Lanka? Did the UNHRC completely ignore the killing of thousands of civilians? Not at all. It shamelessly adopted a resolution written by Sri Lanka itself, praising Sri Lanka for promoting and protecting human rights. True story.

Help the world wake up
What is the conclusion of all this? First of all, reports by the UNHRC, like the Goldstone report or the Flotilla report, are entirely political and lack credibility or any factual, juridical or moral value. In fact, considering the council's well known politics, an intelligent person would need no evidence or knowledge whatsoever in order to perfectly predict the conclusions and verdict of a Council's report. The investigation's subject would be sufficient.

But this is hardly a secret in Israel. Israel refused to cooperate with the UNHRC "fact-finding" mission regarding the Gaza flotilla, and the formal Israeli response to its report concluded that it was "as biased and as one-sided as the body that has produced it." That is correct, but not enough.

While some of us might be familiar with the absurdity of the UNHRC's composition and resolutions, many view any UN body as neutral, making its resolutions and reports fair and meaningful. Hence, Israel should do everything in its power to delegitimize the UNHRC and expose it for what is truly is.

Official responses, which are usually published in the media worldwide, should be used for this purpose. Any Israeli response should not only justifiably accuse the UNHRC of political bias, but also refer to the tyrannies and human rights violators composing it, and mention the fact that the Council systematically and deliberately ignores human rights violations by the most repressive dictatorships, using Israel to divert focus from them.

It should be known everywhere, for the sake of Israel as well as of human rights, that the Human Rights Council is a sham.

Speaking at the UNHRC, Hillel Neuer described how “Eleanor Roosevelt's dream", which created the commission on human rights following World War II, turned into a nightmare. Israel must do everything it can in order to help the world wake up.

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The Broken UN Dream

Ynet News

The Broken UN Dream

UN committees where human right violators reign supreme have become a joke

By Yoaz Hendel

The new report by the UN Human Rights Council should be framed and posted in every political science class in the world: It would be an advanced lesson on diplomatic cynicism and the broken UN dream.

This time too, in line with the fine tradition of this Council, the probe against Israel was managed with predetermined conclusions and a mandate to find the Jewish state guilty at any price.

The documented evidence of Turkish violence, the serious injuries suffered by Navy commandoes, and the proof of preplanned provocation evaporated in the face of the “dozens of testimonies and inquiries” undertaken by the Council.

There are days where you wake up in the morning and tell yourself that we’ve had enough of the typical Jewish suspicion. The world has progressed, and it is more enlightened, open, media-covered, and critical towards itself; a world where every act of injustice is exposed and where it is no longer possible to rewrite history or conceal reality behind words and interests.

Yet then we see the progressive committees of the UN – an organization established in 1945 in order to make humanity’s future better. Every time, they again reveal to us that despite all we’re still stuck in the darkness of the Middle Ages: Justice on behalf of the wealthy, acts of injustice carried out behind the backs of self-righteous figures, and an organization that not only fails to bring any benefit, but often causes damage.

Paradox and parody
There are millions of people worldwide who need someone to speak out on their behalf and an organization that will guarantee their rights. However, when it comes to the UN, even if we ignore the fact that some of its committees grant Israel exclusive treatment, paradox (and parody) is the face of everything.

Here is a partial list of the dignified members of the UN Human Rights Council:

China
Nigeria
Madagascar
Algeria
Egypt
Malaysia
Libya
Qatar
Jordan
Indonesia
Pakistan
Malaysia
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Burkina Faso
Saudi Arabia
IRAN

As we know, these states show genuine concern for human rights in their own countries on a daily basis, so it’s hard not to be impressed by their concern for a single flotilla headed to the tranquil shores of Gaza.

By the way, a partial list of members in the UN committee on the status of women includes:

Saudi Arabia
Algeria
Egypt
Malaysia
Libya
Qatar

and the crown jewel –
IRAN

Where sinning women are stoned to death by law.

And these are the critics who issue verdicts against the democratic Israel, while the rest quietly ignore the distortions by the joke which they subsidize, in the process ignoring the poor souls of this world as well.

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UN's Dream Became a Nightmare



Ynet News

Iranian Woman on Death Row Gets 99 Lashes for 'Immodesty'

Iranian sentenced to death by stoning to be flogged for immodesty after Times publishes her picture without headscarf – but photo is of another woman

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani (43), the Iranian woman condemned to death by stoning after being found guilty of adultery is now facing a different excruciating punishment: 99 lashes. The reason is that she ostensibly published her picture in the UK's Times of London without a hijab (head covering), though she is not even the woman in the picture.

According to her son Sajjad Qaderzadeh, she was condemned to be flogged for "spreading corruption and immodesty."

Qaderzadeh claimed he heard about the latest punishment from prisoners who were recently released from the prison in which his mother is held, in Tabriz in northwest Iran. If the reports are confirmed, it appears the authorities have responded to the international campaign to free Ashtiani with a warning: The one who'll suffer the consequences is Ashtiani herself.

The accusations are even more unusual because the picture published in the Times under her name is not even hers. The photo is in fact that of human rights activist Susan Hajarat, an Iranian exile living in Sweden. It seems her picture was published on a website next to an article about stoning, which caused the confusion.

Susan Hajarat:

The British newspaper apologized and claimed that Ashtiani's lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei had provided the photo which he received from Ashtiani's son, though Qaderzadeh denies this claim.

Excuse to abuse

In a notice released during the weekend, Qaderzadeh said the Iranian authorities are exploiting the mistake as an excuse to abuse his mother.

"As far as we know, the punishment has not yet been carried out," he said. "As soon as we received the newspaper's apology, we informed the lawyer and we intend to appeal."

He added that his mother has not been permitted visitors for the last two weeks – not even her family or lawyer – and she is forbidden to telephone.

Last month the Iranian authorities compelled Ashtiani to appear on television and "confess" to her crimes. During the broadcast she also denounced her lawyer for taking advantage of her case for his own ends. Sources close to Ashtiani said she had undergone daily torture before the television appearance, and had read her "confession" from text dictated to her.

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Iran: Children Appeal for Help in Saving Mother from Execution

Ynet News

Shariah Law

You be the judge:
An 8 year old child caught stealing bread in a market of Iran is punished in a public place, in the name of Islam!!!

His arm will be crushed and will lose its use permanently. A religion of peace and love, they say?

Cutting off Hands and Feet is a cruel insane Islamic punishment giving to people who steal. This punishment was ordered by the "merciful" Allah and practiced by the "Holy Prophet".

Koran 5:38-
As to the thief, male or female, cut off his or her hands: A punishment by way of example, from Allah, for their crime: and Allah is exalted in power.

In this verse Allah stresses that with his glory, the punishment of cutting hands is legalized. The punishment is not intended to accuse or incriminate.

a 13-year-old Somali girl was buried up to her waist, with her hands tied, and stoned to death by a crowd of Muslim men while she cried and begged them to stop. Her parents were forced to watch. She had committed the Islamic crime of adultery.

Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow had been gang raped by three men. After reporting the attack to the authorities, the Islamist militia in charge of Kismaayo, Aisha was then convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning.

In the punishment of stoning to death, the stones should not be too large so that the person dies on being hit by one or two of them. They should not be too small either, that they could not be defined as stones.

In this verse Allah stresses that with his glory, the punishment of cutting hands is legalized. The punishment is not intended to accuse or incriminate.

On the night of 18 June 1983 the Islamic revolutionary authorities in Shíráz hanged ten Bahá'í women and teenage girls who had refused to recant their Faith and convert to Islám. Three days earlier the same authorities had hanged six men, including the husbands, fathers, and sons of four of the women."

Koran: 38:44 And take in your hand a green branch and beat her with It and do not break your oath;

Koran: 4:34-
As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and I'll conduct admonish
them, refuse to share their beds, (and last) beat them: but if they to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance): for Allah is most high, great.

Honor Killing-
An honor killing (customary killing) is the murder of a family or clan member by one or more fellow family members, where the murderers believe the victim to have brought dishonor and shame upon the family, clan, or community. Her male relatives are bound by duty and culture to murder her.

More historical references exist in Bukhari Volume 8, Book 81: Number 774, 779, 780, 791 and Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 38, Number 4356, 4357, 4367.

An Open Letter To Amnesty International

I have just completed reading your report about the way Israel treats Palestinians in the West bank and it angers me to read how unfair and slanted this report is...

Even before the 1967 war, Palestinians were kept in refugee camps by their host
countries and how they were not only restricted but also massacred by the thousands! YOU NEVER SAID A WORD ABOUT IT!

They are still being restricted and by their own and still YOU SAY NOTHING ABOUT IT!!! IN LEBANON THEY ARE BEING KILLED!

Syria killed thousands of them and still wont let them in, Jordan has weekly quotas as to how many may enter, a bride missed her wedding because after standing in line for hours the bus was filled and she couldn't get to her wedding! Egypt refused to take back the Gaza strip when the peace treaty was signed with Israel land, so did Jordan.

If there were less attack on Israelis and the past few years its not because the Palestiniens have all of a sudden decided to live in peace with Israel, it's because the separating wall has made it harder for them to infiltrate suicide
bombers.

As to the check points.. How else can Israel defend its citizens from those attacks. Israel has offered the Palestiniens an olive branch many times, the Gaza Strip was handed over to them instead of rebuilding it with the billions of dollars that have been given to them Araffat became a billionaire and I have no doubt that so have Heniya and Abu-Maazan.

Its not Israel that have been abusing them its their own leaders and you say nothing about that in your report.

People, children, the aged are being bombed daily in Sderot, you think that is OK, not one word against that. Settlement in the north of Israel were bombed daily till last summer, WHERE WERE YOU!!

It was the Hisbullah that started the war in Lebanon by kidnapping three soldiers last summer! Does Israel not have the right to defend her citizens?

If those are the conclusions and your opinions about the situation in the Middle East than you are nothing but a group of bigotry people who can't see beyond your noses! You do not care about the rights of all people,
only about the rights of some. that makes your organization absolute useless!!!









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Some Questions To Palestinians And Their Supporters!

It is so ironic that a Japanese person, from a country we and our allies defeated when they were allies with Germany, wrote so brilliantly about the fatal problems that have been facing Israel since the end of the war in which they were allied with those who wanted to annihilate Jews!
By Yashiko Sagamori

If you are so sure that Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history, I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine:

1. When was it founded and by whom?
2. What were its borders?
3. What was its capital?
4. What were its major cities?
5. What constituted the basis of its economy?
6. What was its form of government?
7. Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?
8. Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?

9. What was the language of the country of **Palestine**?
10. What was the prevalent religion of the country of **Palestine**?
11. What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date.

12. And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?

You are lamenting the 'low sinking' of a 'once proud' nation. Please tell me when exactly was that 'nation' proud and what was it so proud of?

And here is the least sarcastic question of all:

If the people you mistakenly call 'Palestinians' are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over -- or thrown out of -- the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs
suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War?

I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day 'Palestinians' to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won't work here.

The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it. Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying **Israel**; they still cherish it today. Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal with military means, they decided to fight **Israel** by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it 'the Palestinian people' and installed it in **Gaza**, **Judea** and **Samaria**. How else can you explain the refusal by **Jordan** and **Egypt** to unconditionally accept back the '**West Bank**' and **Gaza**, respectively?

The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea and Samaria have much less claim to nationhood than that Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so-called 'Palestinians' have only one motivation: the destruction of **Israel**, and in my book that is not sufficient to consider them a nation' – or anything else except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.

In fact, there is only one way to achieve peace in the **Middle East**. Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side should, pay **Israel** reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited on it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and accepting Israel's ancient sovereignty over Gaza, Judea and Samaria.

That will mark the end of the Palestinian people.
What are you saying again was its beginning ?