Thai plainclothes forensic officers examine a classroom where a suspected Muslim insurgent shot to death a primary school teacher in Narathiwat province, southern Thailand, Monday, July 24, 2006. The gunman disguised himself in a student uniform, entered the fourth grade classroom and killed Prasarn Martchu, a 46-year-old Buddhist teacher while he was teaching, before fleeing the scene on a motorcycle with a getaway driver. Narathiwat is one of three Muslim-majority provinces in southern Thailand that have been gripped by sectarian violence since 2004. More than 1,500 people have died in the violence, blame on separatist insurgents. (AP Photo/Sumeth Parnpetch)

Permanent Link posted by J @ 12:12 pm 8 comments

Invoking a scene from the film Schindler's List, one of Norway's largest newspapers recently published a political cartoon comparing Prime Minster Ehud Olmert to the infamous commander of a Nazi death camp who indiscriminately murdered Jews by firing at them at random from his balcony.

The caricature by political cartoonist Finn Graff appeared on July 10 in the Oslo daily Dagbladet. It has prompted outrage among the country's small Jewish community and led the Simon Weisenthal Center to submit a protest to the Norwegian government.

In the cartoon, Olmert is likened to SS Major Amon Goeth, the infamous commandant of the Plaszow death camp outside of Krakow, Poland, who was convicted of mass murder in 1946 and hanged for his crimes.

While in charge of Plaszow, Goeth would go out to the balcony on his villa, and engage in target practice by aiming his telescopic rifle and firing at random at Jews imprisoned there, often killing them.

The scene was famously depicted by director Steven Spielberg in his 1993 film, Schindler's List..

In response, the Norwegian Israel Center against Anti-Semitism, an Oslo-based organization comprising Jews and Christians, has appealed to the government to speak out against hatred of Jews.

"We have launched a campaign to get Norwegians to send letters to the minister of justice to make Norway a safer place for Jews," said center founder Erez Urieli by phone from Oslo.

"We should not go underground. We have to take care of anti-Semitism before it becomes dangerous," he said.

Urieli noted that Norwegian society is extremely tolerant and broad-minded, and that many non-Jews had joined in protesting against manifestations of anti-Semitism. "Many Christians support us, and have written to the government to complain about how Jews are treated in Norway. Today, we are standing together, and we can bring about change with the help of our Christian friends," he said.

In a related move, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles sent a letter last week to Norwegian Ambassador to Washington Knut Vollebaek to express "collective outrage" over the publication of the cartoon for "depicting Israel's Prime Minister Olmert as a Nazi mass murderer."

"We would expect the leadership of your government," wrote the center's Associate Dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper, "to publicly denounce this outrageous verbal anti-Semitic attack that manages simultaneously to denigrate the victims of the Nazi Holocaust and incite hatred against Israel and her supporters in your country."
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Permanent Link posted by J @ 6:00 pm 3 comments

Muslims display the victory symbol as they hold a picture of Osama bin Laden during an anti-Israel and anti-U.S. protest demonstration after Friday prayers in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Friday, July 21, 2006. The protestors heavily criticized Israel's attack on Palestine and also blamed the U.S. for supporting Israel. F.F.P, seen in picture, stands for friends for Palestine. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das

Permanent Link posted by J @ 6:09 pm 3 comments

What makes a Jew stand up and be counted amongst the enemies of Israel? Is it some psychological self-hating personality? A deep yearning to tell non-Jews that 'I'm one of you, not like them'?

Standing up for Israel has never been easy, and these last few weeks have been some of the hardest in recent times. But to have a friend is to be a friend, and friends don't desert each other when the going gets tough. Even when we criticise our friends, the Torah cautions us on how to do it fairly.

All this, of course, escaped the signatories to last week's advert in the Times.

Three hundred Jews shelled out £10,000 to tell the world that Israel alone was wrong and offered advice to us all; demand action from the international community, write to your MP and write to the Israeli embassy.

There then followed a list of the usual suspects, whose advertisement failed to criticise the firing of even one single kassam rocket into Israel or one human bomber. Susie Orbach, Lynne Reid Banks, Ivor Dembina, Miriam Margolyes, Harold Pinter, Mike Rosen, Gillian Slovo and so on - they should hang their heads in shame. What interested us this time is the way the story was reported. When the Neturei Karta movement - that shameful minority of Hasidic rabbonim and their followers - demonstrate and burn flags, the opprobrium is almost tangible. Rabbis supporting Palestinians and rubbing shoulders with suicide bombers with blood on their hands. Outrageous! Disgusting! Appalling!

But, when a largely left-wing rag bag of anti-Zionists calling themselves 'Jews in Britain' castigates Israel and Israelis for activities in Gaza in the national non-Jewish press, failing to mention its context or put any sort of Israeli side, it's merely reported as another story.

When we see the Jews for Justice for Palestinians on the one side, lined up with the Neturei Karta on the other, we, the proud majority of British Jews know we're doing the right thing - standing up for Israel when it counts.
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Permanent Link posted by J @ 12:48 pm 3 comments

LONDON (AFP) - The government has moved to ban for the first time two Islamist militant groups based in Britain under new laws prohibiting the glorification of terrorism, officials said.

Home Secretary John Reid named the outlawed groups as Al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect, Home Office officials said, adding the groups are to be banned under new glorification criteria introduced in the Terrorism Act 2006.

The Home Office also said it intends to use existing anti-terror laws to ban two international groups, the Baluchistan Liberation Army and Teyrebaz Azadiye Kurdistan.

Reid laid an order in parliament which will make it a criminal offense for a person to belong to or encouragbe support for Al-Gurabaa and the Saved Sect, to arrange meetings in their support or to wear clothes or carry articles in public indicating support or membership.

Permanent Link posted by J @ 5:34 pm 0 comments

SOME of the main fundraisers for the terror group suspected of masterminding the Bombay train bombings are operating from Britain, according to Indian intelligence officials.

The officials accuse Britain of failing to act against a number of wealthy businessmen, who they claim are using bogus charities to funnel up to £8 million a year to Kashmiri militants groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which remains the main suspect for orchestrating the synchronised bombings that killed 182 people.

Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, raised the terror link with Tony Blair at the G8 summit in St Petersburg yesterday, reminding him that India handed over a detailed dossier three years ago identifying 14 men living in Britain and was assured the suspects would be investigated.

"Since then nothing has been done, and the money still coming from Britain helps to pay for the terrorist camps where we believe the bombers were trained and this atrocity was planned," a senior Indian security official said last night.

Gordon Brown pledged that the Treasury would use new laws to shut down terrorist fundraising and ordered that the bank accounts of 54 organisations be frozen, although records show that last year Whitehall only recovered £9,318.

"Britain talks about the need for all nations to get tough together, but more money comes from the UK to Kashmiri terror groups than any other country," the official added.

One of those identified in the dossier is reported to be a Pakistan-born multimillionaire businessman who owns at least two luxury homes in London.

Professor Paul Wilkinson, of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews, said: "It is very sad the figure for the money still flowing to the likes of Lashkar has not been substantially reduced by now. It is difficult to track the money trail, but we should put more resources to doing so."

The funding from overseas has helped terror groups to set up a string of new training camps in Bangladesh, close to the border with India.

Al-Qaeda-trained militants are reportedly running up to 13 camps, and MI6 and other Western intelligence agencies have been monitoring the traffic of young recruits to these centres including a number of volunteers based in Britain.

British security agencies had been warning that groups closely linked to al-Qaeda were planning to stage bomb attacks in India, using local sym- pathisers to carry out their operation.

Scores of Indian-based militants are alleged to have attended the al-Qaeda run camps near Bandarban and Chittagong. Security chiefs believe that the mastermind behind the bombing on seven commuter trains used one of these camps in Bangladesh to finalise plans for the attack.

Anti-terrorist officers involved in the hunt for the Bombay bombers travelled to the border town of Tripura yesterday to question 11 men from the port city who were said to have been caught trying to cross back into Bangladesh. The men are believed to be militant members of the outlawed (Student Islamic Movement of India), which police allege helped in the bomb plot.

Teams of armed officers continued with their mass round-ups yesterday, with further raids on a number of shanty towns around Bombay. So far they have detained more than 1,300 men, but the police face mounting public criticism at their failure to arrest anyone involved in the terror network that is believed to have been living in India's financial capital for at least three months.

D. K. Shankaran, the chief secretary of Maharashtra state, of which Bombay is the capital, said last night: "We believe police will be able to zero in on the culprits within a week."

As he left for St Petersburg Mr Singh, said: "We will impress upon the leaders gathered at the G8 summit that the international community must adopt an approach of zero tolerance toward terrorism anywhere."

He also made a thinly veiled attack on Pakistan, which he has blamed for sheltering terrorists, adding: "The international community must isolate and condemn terrorists wherever they attack, whatever their cause and whichever country or group provides them sustenance and support."

Talks planned for Thursday between the countries' foreign ministers were postponed yesterday, with India's Foreign Minister giving warning: "As a result of these terrorist attacks, it is becoming very difficult to take forward the peace process."

Millions are expected to take part in a two-minute silence to be staged in Bombay tomorrow at the time of the first explosion. Bollywood stars who live in the city will join politicians, police and survivors of the attack in a public show of defiance against the terrorists.
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Permanent Link posted by J @ 9:22 am 0 comments

A package of incentives offered to Iran if it agrees to suspend uranium enrichment has been released for the first time and revealed that world powers are prepared to provide Tehran with advanced technology and possibly even nuclear research reactors.

The package - which was put together by the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany - was given to the Iranians on June 6 and some details were leaked at the time, but the full proposal showed a broader range of economic, political and energy incentives. It was released late Thursday.
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Permanent Link posted by J @ 9:18 am 0 comments