Chechnya

Final Solution

Mirza Tahir Hussain's Story

Mirza Tahir Hussain's Interview on Asian Network

Beware of this Woman!!

Mrs Miri Eisen, 40, says that "It has been warned that if the international community does not take tough action to stop Iran's nuclear program, we Israelis might act on our own. Source

“There’s a myth that terrorism is something that poor people do because they are under occupation and they wake up in the morning and go out and miraculously find weapons in the backyard and then, just as miraculously they suddenly walk onto the third floor of a pool club in Rishon Lezion and explode.”
Source

What about when they are under brutal occupation for decades, not even recognised by their occupiers, killed with impunity, shall i continue....


Q - why Israel bulldozed the homes in the refugee camps in Jenin?
“When I say booby traps, I am talking about explosives within the structures, surrounding the structures,” she said into the face of the camera. “We found them inside refrigerators, along the road. That’s the reason the structures were knocked down.”
Source
What all of them??

Q - why did Israeli troops prevent ambulances from heading into Jenin to evacuate the wounded?
“We were stopping ambulances along the way, and checking them, not [barring] them into the camp…. It was because of this we found within those ambulances terrorists’ explosives, a very cynical use of ambulances.”
Source
What checking them for hours at a time?! Knowing that unarmed people where inside (including women and children) bleeding to death?
My knowledge on international humanitarian law isn't that good, but are we allowed to bleed combatants to death after they have been wounded and pose no threat?!

Worst performance:
Sitting with Olmert while he makes the admits to possessing WMDs and then trying to deny that the statement constitutes an admission.
Source: Haaretz

Arsenal misfiring

Club statement - National flags

Some of our fans have been upset with the flying of certain flags denoting particular regions of the world

Arsenal as a club prides itself on being inclusive with respect to all nationalities, cultural and ethnic groups.

We have therefore decided that in order for all of our fans to enjoy their experience at Emirates Stadium, we are asking that only flags in support of Arsenal Football Club, without any national emblems, are displayed within the stadium.

We will be implementing this policy with immediate effect. Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

Source Arsenal.com

Okaaaaay. We have a problem with the Israeli flag which will be flown so proudly for 2 years for a measly £200k at the Emirates.

Edelman & Dein should be sacked just for selling Arsenal for so cheap, let alone associating one of the worlds best footballing sides with a racist apartheid state.

Doesn't make sense as Henry is the face of kick racism out of football!

heres an IHRC action alert. Pls keep up the pressure.

Gaza's Reality

Posted By:Occupation 101

Get this video and more at MySpace.com

Prodi the plonker

Olmert filmed 'Coaching' Prodi

Channel 10 showed footage of Olmert apparently leading Prodi into endorsing Israel's view

An Israeli television station has broadcast footage that appears to show Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, coaching Romano Prodi on what to say during a joint press conference.

The footage, broadcast on Israel's Channel 10 television station, was taken from Olmert's first offical trip to Rome where he met the Italian prime minister.

"It is important that you emphasise the three principles of the Quartet - that they are not negotiated [sic]. They are the basis for everything," Olmert says, referring to Western demands that Hamas, which runs the Palestinian government, recognise the state of Israel before peace talks can begin.

"Please say this?" Olmert asks his nodding counterpart in English.

Prodi then delivered words to that effect. He also endorsed Israel's vision of remaining a Jewish state, which rules out an influx of Palestinian refugees.

Channel 10 television suggested that Prodi's statement on the continued Jewish identity of Israel was also at Olmert's prodding.

"You said something about a Jewish state [in the past]. I know that," Olmert is shown telling Prodi.

Olmert and Prodi aides had no immediate comment on the Channel 10 footage.

Source: Aljazeera

Make Dua, inshallah

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind fundamentalist Muslim cleric imprisoned for conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks, was rushed to a hospital last week, prompting an FBI warning that his death could lead to attacks on the United States, law enforcement officials said on Thursday.

They said the FBI's week-old bulletin had been sent to state and local law enforcement officials out of an abundance of caution and that there was no specific intelligence about any impending attack.

The officials said the medical condition of the 68-year-old Rahman had subsequently improved, that he had been released from the hospital, that he now is in stable condition and back in a federal prison medical facility.

According to the bulletin, Rahman began to spit up blood on December 6 and was taken from the prison to the emergency room at a hospital in Springfield, Missouri, where doctors discovered a tumor on his liver, the officials said.

The Egyptian sheikh, who was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to life in prison, is currently at a medical center for federal prisoners in Springfield. He has long suffered from a number of medical problems, including diabetes and heart ailments.

The bulletin noted that in the past Rahman has called upon his supporters to commit acts of violence against the United States if he died in a U.S. prison, the officials said.

In New York, Paul Browne, the police deputy commissioner for public information, said, "The FBI shared its assessment with the New York City Police Department. New York City remains on the same heightened alert status, as it has since 9/11."

Reuters

Make Dua, inshallah

Beware of this man!

Mark Regev
Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman

Best bits:
"Israel is ready for a truly independent enquiry. We are not ready for a kangaroo court."
Source

Also read Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) soldier gets two weeks jail sentence for shooting foreigner

"Palestinian spokespeople have spoken about thousands of people murdered in the so-called "Jenin Massacre". The more moderate spoke of hundreds of people murdered. Those same organizations you mentioned in your question, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have both published reports in which they say there is no evidence whatsoever of a massacre. It was all simply atrocity propaganda of the crudest sort. I think we should all learn from this that the words of Palestinian spokesmen should be treated with the same caution that one treats the words of the spokespersons of other despotic regimes with a similar credibility problem."

errm...what can i say. Damn those who deny the holocaust?!


Worst performance:

TONY JONES: How does an Israeli jet using laser-guided bombs manage to wipe out a UN post whose coordinates were very well-known to the Israeli military?

MARK REGEV: I think that's an excellent question and I wish I had a good answer for you today but, I'll be honest, I don't. The Prime Minister has ordered the military to conduct a comprehensive investigation.

....

TONY JONES: We understand it was a bombing from the air. Do you understand - do you know whether in fact it was a laser-guided bomb?

MARK REGEV: No, I don't have that information and I apologise but, once again, there will be nothing to hide here.

....

TONY JONES: Here are some facts we can talk about. The actual UN post is known as Control Base Khiam. It was painted white, had a big UN sign on the roof and other UN signs around it. It had been there in fact for decades. How could it have been conceivably accidentally targeted?

MARK REGEV: Well, once again it is not for me to say.

....

TONY JONES: OK. How can you explain the attack on Sunday night reportedly by an Apache helicopter on that ambulance heading for Tyre in a convoy where an Israeli missile went straight through the centre of the Red Cross on the roof of the ambulance?

MARK REGEV: I'm sorry, but I haven't been briefed on that particular event and so I don't have a good answer for you.

TONY JONES: It's on front page of the newspapers here in Australia and it's received coverage all round the world because I've read it on the Internet.

MARK REGEV: I'm just not familiar with that event and I apologise and I can say the following: we do not deliberately target civilian targets, whether they are Lebanese civilians or anyone's civilians.

Source

If you find any more pearls of wisdom from Mr Regev, feel free to contribute.

their lies unravel

UK 'plot' terror charge dropped

The alleged plot prompted a massive security clampdown

A Pakistani judge has ruled there is not enough evidence to try a key suspect in an alleged airline bomb plot on terrorism charges.

He has moved the case of Rashid Rauf, a Briton, from an anti-terrorism court to a regular court, where he faces lesser charges such as forgery.

Pakistan has presented Mr Rauf as one of the ringleaders behind the alleged plan to blow up flights out of London.

The British authorities say they foiled it with Pakistan's help in August.

'Explosives'

The arrest of Rashid Rauf in Pakistan triggered arrests in the UK of a number of suspects allegedly plotting to blow up transatlantic flights.

The Pakistani authorities described him as a key figure.

But an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi found no evidence that he had been involved in terrorist activities or that he belonged to a terrorist organisation.

As well as forgery charges, Mr Rauf has also been charged with carrying explosives.

But his lawyer says police evidence amounts only to bottles of hydrogen peroxide found in his possession.

Hydrogen peroxide is a disinfectant that can be used for bomb-making if other chemicals are added.

'Suspected conspiracy'

In August, the British government requested the extradition of Mr Rauf, a Briton of Pakistani origin, in connection with a murder committed in 2002.

Scotland Yard declined to discuss which murder case the request related to.

The government in Pakistan, which has no extradition treaty with the UK, said it was considering the request.

Rashid Rauf was arrested in Pakistan earlier that month over the alleged plot to blow up US-bound aircraft, Pakistan's foreign ministry said.

He has been described by Pakistan's government as a "key person" in the "suspected conspiracy"

Interesting...very interesting. Also notice how, just as was the case with Mhd Abdul Kahar (Forest gate) and the late Mr Menezes (Stockwell), they follow up their blunders with slanderoous and/or fallacious statements. They want to question Mr Rauf in connection with a murder in 2002....yeah right.

Elsewhere the oppressive police in the UK were given a bloody nose by the House of Lords for violating the right of freedom of expression and lawful assembly

Source: BBC (again)

Martyr or Murtid?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2496507,00.html

The Sunday Times December 10, 2006


Join the British Army and become a martyr, say Muslims
Abul Taher


A GOVERNMENT-BACKED Islamic organisation is teaching young Muslims that dying while fighting for the British armed forces is an act of martyrdom.
The British Muslim Forum (BMF) explains to young people that even if a Muslim soldier dies in combat while fighting in an Islamic country such as Afghanistan, he will still be regarded as a martyr and a hero for this country.

The BMF is holding talks across Britain to persuade young people not to follow the teachings of Muslim extremists who instruct their followers that joining the British military is a “traitorous act”.

Its aim is to counter radicals’ misuse of the term “martyr”, which has become associated with terrorist suicide operations. The BMF was a leading member in a taskforce set up by Tony Blair after the July 7 bombings to combat extremism among Muslims.

In its forums its case workers and imams cite Lance-Corporal Jabron Hashmi, 24, a British Pakistani from Birmingham who was killed in combat in July in Afghanistan.

Islamic extremists have called him a “salaried traitor” as he died fighting Taliban Muslims at the command of non-Muslim generals. They argue he should not have received an Islamic burial as he died an “infidel”.

However, BMF case workers counter that he died a martyr. “We are calling him a martyr because he died fighting for his country. Islam teaches us to be loyal and abide by the laws of the land. We believe fighting for Britain is not being a traitor. And young people are getting the message,” said Khurshid Ahmed, the BMF’s chairman.

The BMF, a body representing 600 mosques, is one of Britain’s largest Muslim organisations. It is the government’s main working partner in the Muslim community.

Brown Sahibs: Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You

More useless government initiatives to deradicalize Muslims

Sacranie and Sadiq Khan are mentioned as being part of this - may explain why Sadiq didnt turn up to vote against the extradition treaty. May Allah give them what they deserve.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/10/nislam10.xml

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "The idea is to promote British Muslims overseas, to try to get rid of the myth that British Muslims are oppressed, and to give Muslims in the UK the experience of how Muslims in other parts of the world live.

Propaganda

Taleban death toll 'inaccurate'

Claims of casualties in have been almost impossible to verify

The Nato force in Afghanistan has said claims it killed up to 80 Taleban fighters in a battle earlier this month were inaccurate.

A statement released on Sunday said the true figure was seven or eight.

It is understood that figures for the total number of fighters and the number of casualties were confused, but the mistake was not immediately corrected.

The clash near Musa Qala in Helmand province involved Danish forces who were fighting alongside British troops.

Despite the battle, Nato's International Security Assistance Force claims a peace deal with local elders, which saw British troops pull out of Musa Qala, is still holding.

The BBC's Alastair Leithead in Kabul says this year has seen a huge upsurge in violence and there have been many claims of casualties by the Taleban and the international forces - but they have been almost impossible to verify.

Thousands of people are thought to have been killed by both sides, many of them civilians in suicide bombings, and others in air strikes and heavy fighting, our correspondent says.


I remember a similar thing happened with the American Soldier (I think his name was Tillman) he was shot several times by his own men on the Tora Bora mountains. Th US gov knew this soon after it occurred, but did not correct the mistake. The media went crazy and used the death of this former professional American football player to whip up patriotism and support for the ill conceived wars.

I guess the UK aren't that far behind their deceitful masters

We can all see why they do it
Deflate casualties + inflate enemy kills = Higher morale + fend off public support against war + Can argue victory (or partial victory)

I am sure theres more to it...

Something to hide?

Israel 'blocks Tutu Gaza mission'

Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984

Israel has blocked a UN fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip that was to be led by South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu, the UN says.

Mr Tutu's team would have investigated last month's killings of 19 civilians in an Israeli artillery barrage in the northern town of Beit Hanoun.

But Israel had not granted the former Archbishop of Cape Town the necessary travel clearance, a UN official said.

The Israeli government said it had not formally denied visas to the UN team.

Mr Tutu's team was supposed to report its findings to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council by Friday.

Spokeswoman Sonia Bakar said Mr Tutu had other engagements and could not wait any longer for Israeli permission to travel.

"It has been cancelled. We were supposed to go yesterday (Sunday)," she said.

An Israeli government spokesman said it had not made a final decision on whether to grant visas for Mr Tutu's team.

He said the government did "not have a problem not with the personalities, we had a problem with the institution. We saw a situation whereby the human rights mechanism of the UN was being cynically exploited to advance an anti-Israel agenda".

Shelling 'an accident'

The 47-nation Human Rights Council authorised the mission last month after condemning the killings.

It asked Mr Tutu to assess the situation of victims, address the needs of survivors and make recommendations on ways to protect Palestinian civilians against further Israeli attacks.

The shelling, which Israel said was unintended, came after its troops wound up a week-long incursion designed to curb Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel from the town.

The Israeli army claimed Beit Hanoun was a rocket-launching stronghold.

Mr Tutu - the winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for his fight against apartheid in South Africa - chaired the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the end of white minority rule.

Just like you!

Today they’ve decided to extradite me
To a place known as ‘The land of the free’
This title to me sounds absurd
Considering the harrowing stories I have heard
Why are they doing this? What did I do wrong?
Content and happy with my life I was going along

Early one morning my house did the police raid
A particularly nasty visit to me they paid
I felt their fists and boots lay into me during this riot
In the midst of this onslaught I vowed not to remain quiet
Is it because my rights I chose to defend
That as my punishment, to an unjust land I must be sent

As I await my fate a million thoughts run through my mind
Of all those I will leave behind
First of all, my beloved wife
With whom I’d promised to spend my life
Then there’s my devoted mother
Who’s cared for and loved me like no other
Of course there’s my father in his old age
Destined to see his son in a cage

When my mind lapses into such depressing thinking
It causes an increase in my suffering
The physical abuse I may just be able to bear
But it’s the mental torture that causes most wear
Somehow I prevent myself from becoming irate
Instead I seek solace in my faith

I am reminded that I’m a stranger holding onto hot coal
This is my path to achieving the ultimate goal
My verdict has now been announced
I was one of the first on whom they pounced
After hearing my news and carrying on doing whatever you do
Remember, at one time I was just like you!

Anonymous

SOURCE: Cageprisoners

'Radical Muslims Must Integrate'

Radical Muslims must integrate, says Blair

"This is a struggle that will last a generation and more. But this I believe passionately: we will not win until we shake ourselves free of the wretched capitulation to the propaganda of the enemy, that somehow we are the ones responsible.

This terrorism isn't our fault. We didn't cause it.

It's not the consequence of foreign policy.

It's an attack on our way of life.

It's global.

It has an ideology.

It killed nearly 3,000 people including over 60 British on the streets of New York before war in Afghanistan or Iraq was even thought of.

It has been decades growing.

Its victims are in Egypt, Algeria, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Turkey.

Over 30 nations in the world.

It preys on every conflict.

It exploits every grievance.

And its victims are mainly Muslim.

This is not our war against Islam."

-Tony Blair

Blaming the Victim

I remember having a discussion about Palestinian resistance with a kaffir classmate a few years ago and his argument to me was that if the Palestinains refrained from martyrdom operations (or suicide bombs as he put it), they would gain the moral high ground and the world's sympathy. "Look at Gandhi" he kept saying. I of course argued profusely that the first martyrdom operation took place in the mid-90s after the Palestinians had endured almost 50 years of the world's brutal sympathy, which had resulted in their virtual ethnic cleansing.

I would like to meet this classmate today and ask him what he makes of the new tactic adopted today by the Palestinians - that of voluntary human shields. Would he agree that such Gandhi-like tactics are still laudable or would he take the Human Rights Watch line that they must be condemned wholeheartedly.

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/11/22/isrlpa14652.htm

Whether the Palestinians use violence or peaceful protest as a methodology, it seems that they will be condemned by the world. Now, it seems even human rights organisations have jumped on the bandwagon of hypocracy.

Two Jewish writers have written superb pieces on why HRW and others need to stop producing such vomit-inducing statements and recognise the reality of what is happening on the ground - genocide.

Palestinians are being denied the righ of Non-Violence Resistance

Jonathan Cook
http://www.jkcook.net/Articles2/0290.htm#Top

Human Rights Watch must retract its shameful press release

Norman Finkelstein
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=705

And just so we remember the sacrifices made by these larger than life women, please have a look at this footage (nice quran at end)

Sisters, Mothers, Martyrs

Excellent article on the role of Palestinian women, such as Jamila Shanti Hamas MP pictured above, in the struggle for freedom. With women like her, a whole generation of courageous God-fearing warriors will be born and raised insha'Allah, the likes of which will cause the yahood to hide behind the rocks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,1964050,00.html

On the television screen a woman is reading slowly from a sheet of paper held close to her face. The moment is awkward. Her hands shake, she avoids the camera and a large, black M-16 assault rifle hangs from her shoulders. Her head and neck are wrapped tightly in a white scarf.
This is the final message in the life of Fatma al-Najar, widow, great-grandmother, matriarch of her large family and, a few hours after this brief video was shot, the oldest Palestinian to become a suicide bomber. "I am the living martyr Fatma al-Najar," she says, and praises the armed wing of her beloved Hamas movement, its political rulers and its violent struggle.

She says a few words to her family. "I ask my sons to go to the mosque and keep up their prayers and my daughters to survive and not to cry, and to give out sweets." The film stops and restarts and now she is standing without the paper, looking into the camera, behind her still the green flags and insignia of Hamas. An unseen figure prompts her to speak. "I don't know what else to say," she says, smiling nervously. The film is cut.

A few hours later, the 70-year-old arrived at the Jabaliya refugee camp, not far from her home in the northern Gaza strip, in the final days of a major Israeli military incursion. She walked towards a group of soldiers. They called her to stop a little way off. One soldier, thinking she looked suspicious, threw a stun grenade. She detonated the belt of explosives around her waist, tearing her body to pieces and slightly injuring three soldiers.

There have been a handful of women among the 120 Palestinian suicide bombers of recent years, and their names are recited on the streets of Gaza in the folklore of Palestinian martyrdom. But the past few weeks have seen a remarkable injection of women's activism into the fight. In this conservative and patriarchal society the militancy has previously been almost entirely dominated by men. Now that is changing.

Three weeks before the al-Najar bombing, hundreds of women, mostly Hamas supporters and all clad in long cloaks and headscarves, marched into the town of Beit Hanoun in the middle of an Israeli incursion to free a group of armed male fighters who were holed up inside a mosque. Two of the women were killed, but the crowd succeeded in freeing the fighters and now boast proudly of their bravery.

A few days later, another woman from Gaza, Mirvat Masoud, an 18-year-old university student, blew herself up near a group of Israeli soldiers, again in Beit Hanoun. In the following days, crowds of men and women staged sit-ins at the homes of several militants whose houses, the Israeli military had warned, were about to be destroyed. The Israelis had to call off their air strikes.

As with the men, the women's actions are seen publicly as statements of defiance. And among the first guests at the three days of mourning at the al-Najar household, held under a green woven tent in a courtyard by their bare concrete houses, was Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, and others from his government. The movement paid the funeral costs and Khaled Meshaal, the all-powerful, exiled head of the movement's political bureau, telephoned the family to tell of the great blow their mother had struck for Hamas.

But the family she has left behind feels less proud than shattered. They struggle to explain what has happened. Al-Najar had seven sons and two daughters. All had children, some had grandchildren. There were around 80 in the family, all living within a few narrow streets of each other, all deferring to her as the head of the household. Several of the sons were jailed, one for nine years, during the first intifada, the Palestinian uprising that began in 1987. The family house, in Jabaliya town, was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike and rebuilt. Then, in the middle of the second intifada, in 2002, her grandson, Adil, aged 18, was killed battling Israeli troops in Gaza. The household is still politically divided. Some of the sons are Fatah supporters and at least one works for Force 17, the Fatah security service. Others, like al-Najar herself, are Hamas activists.

Fathiya, 52, the eldest daughter, last saw her mother mid-morning on the day of the bombing. She came to the house and found her mother making bread. They sat and talked for 20 minutes. Fathiya made as if to leave, but her mother asked her to stay for lunch. Her mother showered and changed and walked to the local market, where she bought clothes for her grandchildren and boxes of sweets. She returned home and a few minutes later, left again. None of the family, it appears, suspected what was on her mind. "When she left she said goodbye, but she asked us to wait for her," says Fathiya. Her mother did not return. Later, at sunset, the mosques began announcing there had been a suicide bombing. Soon they broadcast her mother's name. Later, an ambulance crew collected the remains of her body and buried it under a mound of soft sand in the local graveyard.

"Some people say she must have been depressed," says Fathiya. "But it wasn't true, she was a religious woman. She did this to fight the Israelis and get them out of our land. She blew herself up because she loved her home, she loved paradise and she loved the mujahideen."

Her brother, Samir, 36, the Force 17 soldier, seems less attached to the rhetoric. "Now we are missing a space in our lives. We have only our memories, every moment, every second." He knew his mother had become increasingly politicised, but is surprised at her radicalism. She had, he thinks, been affected by the fighting of recent years, the growing poverty in Gaza, the failures of the long-stalled peace process. "She was changing. She watched the news all the time," he says. "It began to affect her. She started going to marches and funerals." She also started to help support the armed wing of Hamas, though she did not tell her family.

In the middle of November, al-Najar and Fathiya took part in the women's march into Beit Hanoun, one last radical act before the bombing. The sons were worried and spent the day at home waiting for her to return. Fathiya saw no reason for their anxiety. "It was something normal. We went to protect our mujahideen. We have to be shields to protect our men."

One of the organisers of the march was Jamila Shanti, 50, a leading woman within the Hamas movement, a member of the Palestinian parliament and a professor of philosophy at the Islamic University in Gaza. She headed the list of Hamas women candidates in the January elections, when women were crucial in getting out the vote for the movement and propelling it into a position of power for the first time. A single, educated women committed to the most radical of Hamas political positions advocating the destruction of Israel, she is a powerful force in the movement.

When Israeli forces occupied Beit Hanoun, Shanti encouraged her women supporters to play an active role in the fight by marching into the city, past Israeli tanks. Some of the women reached the Nasr mosque, where the fighters were sheltering, and helped them leave despite the Israeli military presence all around.

"It was a great success because we freed so many fighters," she says. "We did something our authorities couldn't do. We sent a message to the world." Then Shanti helped organise the sit-ins to defend Hamas houses against Israeli air strikes. It was another role for women in the fight. "As Palestinian women, we feel strong enough to do anything, strong enough to play a great part in our conflict," she says.

The battle of Beit Hanoun was one incursion in a five-month Israeli operation in Gaza that followed the capture of an Israeli corporal in June. The soldier has still not been freed, although a tentative ceasefire began last week that might yet bring his release. The five months of fighting left more than 375 Palestinians and five Israelis dead and left many feeling that a return to serious peace negotiations was further away than ever.

Among the dead was Shanti's sister-in-law, who was killed near her home in an Israeli strike that also killed a Hamas fighter. Days later, Israeli troops rolled up in a tank outside Shanti's house and stormed the building, apparently intent on arresting her. She was away at the time.

Others who went on the Beit Hanoun march came away, despite the risks they faced, with the same sense of assertion. "It was a way of encouraging women to do something. We did something that the Arab leaders couldn't do," says Um Ahmed Kafarna, 40, a Hamas activist and the wife of Beit Hanoun's Hamas mayor. "I think more women will be encouraged to be suicide bombers and leaders and politicians."

Academics point out that Palestinian women have been involved in fighting for many decades, even during the British mandate before the creation of Israel. For a long time the leading Islamist groups, Hamas in particular, refused to send off women as suicide bombers, saying it was a role reserved for men, says Islah Jad, assistant professor of gender studies at Birzeit University, in the West Bank. That began to change about three years ago. What is most striking now are events like the Beit Hanoun march, says Jad.

"To use this collective power of the people is something very new in the political scene here," she says. "Before, the women were glorifying martyrs and martyrdom; now, they speak about their power themselves as women." It was the women within Hamas, partly by design, partly by trial and error, who have begun to push beyond the group's vague assertions of its support for women to seize a much bigger, more practical role.

But although the voice of militancy is often the most powerful in Palestinian society, it is by no means the future everybody sees. There are many who consider the past six years of fighting as a great setback and who argue for negotiations, not war. Others are caught in the middle.

In the town of Beit Lahiya, only a few minutes' drive from Beit Hanoun, is a small, private kindergarten. On Monday November 6, at around 7am, the school minibus was collecting the children for class. It stopped in the Sheikh Zayed neighbourhood to wait for one boy. At that moment an Israeli shell struck nearby and a splinter of shrapnel flew into the minibus and into the neck of Najwa Khalif, 24, a teacher who was sitting in a middle row with her two children, Manar, five, and Wasim, three. She died several days later in hospital. The Israeli military said it had been targeting militants nearby who had launched rockets into Israel the previous night. The teachers say they saw no fighters on the school run that morning.

The children on the bus have been deeply traumatised. The head teacher, Indira Gandhi Hamuda (her father was an admirer of the late Indian prime minister), has had them draw sketches of the attack to help them recover. The crayon pictures show images of the bus, hospital stretchers, a rocket, an Israeli tank and, on almost every one, scribbles of red blood stretching over the page. "This is the occupation. They make no difference between children and fighters," says Hamuda, who, like most women in Gaza, dresses in a conservative headscarf and long cloak.

She is bitterly angry about what has happened, but says she is opposed to women taking up suicide bombing. "I don't support this at all. It is also a jihad to care about your children and to bring them up well," she says. And, after all, she adds, the bombing had hardly achieved a major military objective. "What did it do? It was just a suicide. If I'm facing a tank, there isn't anything I can do," she says. "Women can do something else, like teach their sons and daughters to become doctors and engineers. We don't all need to be martyrs."

While she is watching over a class, two of her younger teaching assistants are in the school office, staring attentively at a computer. They call up the news footage from al-Jazeera about the death of the teacher, gasping when they see her body carried away on a stretcher. Then one calls up a video recorded by another female suicide bomber, Mirvat Masoud, the 18-year-old university student who blew herself up in Beit Hanoun on the same day as the bus attack.

"She's not just anyone. She's a martyr," says Iman, 22, one of the assistants, as they watch the film. "We all want to be like her. I would like to be a bomber, but my family won't allow me."

"I want to go instead of her," says the other assistant, Randa, 23, who was on the bus the day their fellow teacher was hit.

If Fatma al-Najar was the oldest suicide bomber, Mirvat Masoud was one of the youngest. She was in her first year at the Islamic University, studying science. She was the eldest child and already the most religious in the family. When she was growing up, the politics in the household was Fatah, the more moderate of the Palestinian factions. When she went to the Islamic University, one of the best in the Gaza strip, there was no Fatah student movement and she fell in with a group from Islamic Jihad, one of the radical movements.

"When she told me that she had joined, I thought it was just politics," says her father, Amin Masoud, 40. He was protective, refusing to let his daughter join the Beit Hanoun women's march. He shows off her school report cards - most years she was top of the class.

The family live in a UN refugee house, provided because the grandparents fled Israel in 1948. Mirvat woke early on the morning of the bombing, ate a little breakfast with her mother, and went off to university. That afternoon, the family saw on the television news that there had been a suicide bombing in Beit Hanoun. One Israeli soldier had been slightly injured. Soon a man from Islamic Jihad arrived to tell them their daughter was dead.

"We don't expect to send our sons and daughters to die. But when they watch the television news, the killing and the destruction, they are affected by it," says Mirvat's father, Amin. "It creates a deep hatred inside them."

In the video that she made before her death, there are slight, dark rings under the teenager's eyes but she is confident and stares intently into the camera. She is dressed in a headscarf and black baseball cap marked with religious script and a conservative but fashionable patterned cloak. She holds a rifle upright in her right hand and addresses her family. "This multi-coloured life comes to an end," she says to camera. "My mother, please live on and pray God to forgive me. We willmeet in paradise. My father, please forgive me if I did anything wrong to you. My uncles and aunts, this is very hard for me, I miss you." She praises other Islamic fighters across the world, "from Iraq to Chechnya, from Palestine to the Philippines". She asks her family to pray, and notes that they should distribute sweets but not coffee at her funeral. Then she says: "I am the living martyr, God willing, Mirvat Masoud".

Fighters, leaders and thinkers

Prominent Palestinian women

Although the Palestinian history of the conflict with Israel has long been dominated by men, there have been several high-profile women figures, often fighters and activists, and occasionally politicians and leaders.

The woman regarded as the first female Palestinian guerrilla fighter is Fatima Barnawi, who in October 1967 planted a bomb in a Jerusalem cinema that left dozens of Israelis injured. She was 28 and a member of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

Perhaps the most iconic Palestinian woman was the hijacker Leila Khaled. In 1969, she took part in the hijacking of a TWA plane, flying it to Damascus before blowing it up. She had cosmetic surgery to disguise her looks and the next year made a failed attempt to hijack another plane as part of a wave of hijacks planned by the leftwing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Nearly a decade later, Dalal Mughrabi landed with a group of other Palestinian fighters on an Israeli beach, killed an American photographer and seized a bus filled with passengers. After a gunbattle with Israeli soldiers, she blew up the bus, killing 36 people on board. Mughrabi and her fighters were also killed.

Other women became prominent without violence. Hanan Ashrawi, an academic and a Christian, emerged as one of the most articulate voices for the Palestinians. She became a government minister and today holds a seat in the Palestinian parliament. The most high-profile Palestinian woman today is probably Queen Rania of Jordan, who was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents and has become an important supporter of charities.

Today, a new generation of women are taking part. Wafa Idris, a divorced paramedic, became the first Palestinian female suicide bomber in January 2002 when she detonated a bomb in Jerusalem, killing an elderly Israeli man. Female militants and politicians are now emerging from the Islamist groups, notably Maryam Farhat, known as Umm Nidal, who was elected a Hamas MP this year after three of her sons became suicide bombers.

Litvinenko

'I want to be buried according to Muslim tradition'

-Alexander Litvinenko

The full article

There has to be Equality

Everyone is requested to read the article and comment on it. The pro-Zionist lobby has already flooded the web-site and a balanced response is needed.

There has to be equality

If Britons can join the Israeli army, those who fight for Palestine can't be treated as terrorists

Ismail Patel

Tuesday December 5, 2006

The Guardian

The Arab-Israeli conflict is unlike any other regional conflict. As the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, put it: "No other conflict carries such a powerful symbolic and emotional charge among people far removed from the battlefield." Not surprisingly, this has had its impact on multicultural Britain, with different communities aligning themselves to varying degrees with the Israeli and Palestinian causes.

Everyone in a democracy has the right to argue for their views and engage in public debate. But there is no equality when it comes to how the British government treats those who want to give physical support to Israel and those who want to do the same for the Palestinians. Such double standards feed resentment in Britain's Muslim community at the government's failure to recognise its legitimate grievances, as highlighted in yesterday's report by the thinktank Demos.
In recent months the media have reported on the recruitment of British Jews to fight in the Israeli army, now in its 40th year of occupation of Palestinian territory in defiance of international law and UN resolutions. Some are intending to emigrate; others to return to Britain after serving in the Israeli army. But we have not had a word of concern from the British government.

In the Muslim community, however, the question is widely raised as to how British citizens can travel to another country and fight in its army of illegal occupation without any repercussions. Would that be the case if, say, a young Muslim or Briton of Palestinian origin travelled to the occupied Palestinian territories - let alone occupied Iraq - to protect his or her homeland or co-religionists? Of course not: such volunteers could expect to be arrested under this government's anti-terrorism legislation as soon as they returned.

These Britons who go to fight for Israel are volunteering to serve in the frontline of Israel's war in the illegally occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Some have acknowledged that they have been or will be engaged in the killing of Palestinians. Under international law they and those who facilitate their enlistment are committing war crimes.

Presumably the politicians' silence can be explained by Britain's support for the Israeli government, both diplomatic and military. But how does that sit with the government's regular homilies to the Muslim community about citizenship and loyalty to the flag? It might be argued that as Israel is a state - unlike the Palestinian Authority or Palestinian political organisations - and Britons are entitled to dual citizenship, with any military-service obligations that entails, there can be no objection. But the fact that the Palestinian people have no state is of course at the heart of this uniquely internationally inflammatory conflict. And those fighting against the illegal occupation of their land are entitled to do so under international law.

The British government's indifference to this recruitment is feeding the alienation and radicalisation of young Muslims, who can be labelled terrorists for even voicing support for the Palestinians.

Perhaps British citizens should not serve in foreign armies full stop. But the essential point is that there must be equality. If Britons are allowed to join the Israeli army, the same right should be accorded to those - particularly of Palestinian origin - who wish to volunteer to defend lands Israel occupies. Alternatively, both should be barred.

We need a shift in approach at the top. Tony Blair has expressed his desire to bring peace to the Middle East, but his actions - most recently his refusal to condemn Israel's Beit Hanoun massacre at the UN - scarcely suggest an honest broker. At home and in the Middle East, it is time the British government showed some real even-handedness.

· Ismail Patel is chair of the Leicester-based campaign Friends of Al-Aqsa iap_foa@yahoo.co.uk

Resistance gets older

Old women step forward as 'martyrs'

A 70-year-old blew herself up in a Hamas attack. She may be just the first of many elderly recruits

Sandra Jordan in Beit Hanoun, Gaza

Sunday December 3, 2006

The Observer

In the centre of Beit Hanoun, there is nothing left of the 800-year-old mosque but the minaret. It looks like a lighthouse stranded in a sea of rubble. People whose homes were demolished during the latest Israeli army incursion sit on plastic chairs around bonfires. At night they bunk down with the neighbours. One of them is Watfa Kafarna.

'I saw the Israeli soldiers eye-to-eye,' she said. 'They took my four-year-old grandson, Mahadi, who has Down's syndrome. They shook him and yelled: "Where are the guns?" Now he is traumatised and wets the bed every night.'

Not his own bed - the Kafarna family is homeless, living off the charity of friends. Tears run from Watfa's eyes as she looks at her son, daughter-in-law and grandchild huddled around a brazier. Her husband, Diab, shuffles across the ruins towards his wife. 'Bossa!' he says, 'A kiss!' In a highly unconventional move, Diab kisses his wife on the mouth. 'She is my heart, my eyes, my light. We have lost our house but not each other.'

During the incursion, Israeli soldiers detained all men aged 16-40, including Watfa and Diab's sons and grandsons. The army targeted the mosque, attempting to arrest militants hiding there.
The women put up their own resistance, gathering as human shields around the mosque to help the militants escape. 'I am 72, says Watfa, 'but by doing this I felt 20, young and useful and ready to act.' She pulls off her long veil and holds it high in her right hand. 'I waved my hijab as a white flag and prayed with the other women in front of the holy mosque. But the Israelis continued to destroy it.'

Two women were killed by the Israeli Defence Force that day. Watfa was bruised, as was 70-year-old Fatma Najar, hit by a bulldozer. Three weeks later, Najar blew herself up near Israeli soldiers, wounding two. In Gaza she is seen as a heroine. 'If the Israelis came to my house to gun down my children and I had a belt, I would do the same,' says Watfa.

'The woman is the biggest loser here,' says Khola, a neighbour, standing on the remains of a kitchen where flour is mixed with pulverised masonry. Two hundred homes were destroyed in Beit Hanoun. 'Fatma Najar, an old woman, did what many people don't have the guts to do. If you go back and research Fatma,' says Khola, 'you will see her home was destroyed on top of her head, her sons jailed, her grandson killed.'

'We want to believe in peace, but how can we when the warplanes still fly over our heads every night,' asks Watfa, 'making our grandchildren cry and wet themselves? When there are still tank movements on the border? I can't believe there will be peace.'

Najar's family heard of her attack on the radio. 'We thought it must be another Fatma Najar,' said her son, Jihad, 35. 'It never occurred to us it could have been my mother. Then the crowds started to arrive and we knew it was true. We had mixed feelings, sadness at her irreplaceable loss. But pride too.'

There is a huge shaheed - 'martyr' - poster of Najar on her house. It is shocking to see an old woman carrying an M16. Some of her 70 grandchildren and great-grandchildren play beneath the picture. Israa, six, wears a pink top with 'Happy Childhood' embroidered on it. 'My grandmother's gone to heaven. Because she shot the Israelis,' she says.

The funeral tent is empty now, the three days of official mourning over. On the first evening, men from the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, arrived. Her son Inam said: 'They told us: "Your mother has been asking to do this for two years. We said no. Finally she said, if you don't give me a belt I will go anyway and get killed and my blood will be on your hands. We gave in".'

Other old women now want to become suicide bombers. The family talks of why she did it. Perhaps it was her grandson's death. 'My son, Adil, was 18 when he was killed,' says Fathiya, 52, Najar's eldest daughter. 'He was throwing stones at the Israelis.' Then there was Fathiya's other son, Sha'aban. He attacked an Israeli soldier with a knife. He was shot 72 times, lost a leg and is paralysed. The family show a photo of Fatma, a sweet-faced woman in a white cotton scarf. Neighbours crowd in with stories of her generosity, how she gave sweets to local children, told stories, played.

Najar was a religious woman, involved with mosque committees and close to memorising the Koran. It was only after her death, her family discovered she had been working for Hamas: 'They told us she had carried food, water, ammunition to the resistance at the front line. We had no idea.'

The night before her suicide operation, Najar went to visit all of her children and grandchildren. She brought clothes and sweets. 'But she was always so good to us,' says Inam. 'As she left me for the last time, she looked back in a way that made me wonder, but then she was gone.'
'On the day she acted like it was a normal day. She baked the bread in the clay oven. She took a shower, put on a new dress and went out,' said Jihad.

'I think the final straw was the Beit Hanoun massacre [a family of 17 killed at dawn when Israeli shells hit their house]. Mother went to the family's home and asked the women: "Why leave it to your sons to die? If Allah allows, I will become a martyr." They said: "You think they will take an old lady like you?"'

A fortnight later she was a suicide bomber, injuring two Israelis, decapitating herself. This weekend Hamas held a ceremony in Beit Hanoun, in memory of the 140 Palestinians killed in November. Thousands attended, waving Hamas flags. The mayor, Dr Nazek el-Kafarna, made a speech in honour of Najar: 'This old lady looked at the houses destroyed and the trees uprooted. She looked at how our people had been humiliated. She took her soul in her hand and rushed to her martyrdom.'

Huda Haim, a Hamas PLC member, believes Najar's act begins a new culture. 'We know behind the Israeli leaders there are decision-makers studying the behaviour of the Palestinians. Fatma told them they can't end the Palestinian issue with violence.'

The audience was thronged with women, many elderly, many clinging to photographs of their dead. 'We all want to be like Fatma,' they shouted.
'I am happy about the ceasefire,' says Zaifa. 'But if the Israelis come back, they will see what we will do, we will be like Fatma Najar.'

'I know at least 20 of us who want to put on the belt,' said Fatma Naouk, 65. 'Now is the time of the women. Now the old women have found a use for themselves.'

Racist Newspapers Pay for their Lies

Allahu Akbar!!

Finally, someone brought these smelly journalists to court and hit them where it hurts them. One of the reasons they get away with slandering us all the time is nobody sues because basically, nobody got the cash to bring an action. Maybe Amjad could set up a trust fund with the money to assist Muslims who have been slandered in the press.

Papers compensate man wrongly implicated in alleged bomb plot

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1959126,00.html

A group of national newspapers have paid £170,000 to a man they falsely accused of involvement in the "liquid bomb" plot to blow up planes at Heathrow airport.
Lawyers for Carter Ruck, representing Amjad Sarwar, said he had been paid £170,000 by the publishers of the Guardian, the Observer, the News of the World, the Mirror, the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday, the Evening Standard, the Independent, the Times, the Daily Express and the Daily Star.

Each newspaper has already published a full apology to Mr Sarwar, who lives in High Wycombe, after falsely suggesting that he was suspected of being involved in the alleged plots to blow up a number of British aircraft using "liquid bombs" in August.

"Mr Sarwar has never been arrested, nor questioned, nor detained by the police on suspicion of involvement in the 'liquid bombs' plot or for that matter any other alleged terrorist plots or activities, and there are no grounds for suspecting any such involvement," Mr Sarwar's solicitor, Adam Tudor, said in the high court today before Mr Justice Eady.

"The articles caused Mr Sarwar great distress and embarrassment at a time of particularly heightened sensitivity in relations with the Muslim community, and indeed led Mr Sarwar to fear for his own and his family's safety in light of possible reprisal attacks."

The newspapers apologised to Mr Sarwar and paid his legal costs.

The Veil and Integration

Lots of discussion STILL going on about the niqaab. Its amazing - for years we are hearing we can't tell a woman what to wear and now it seems the entire world is telling Muslim women to strip off.

Another great testimonial in the TES today by a teacher discussing his veiled students

http://www.tes.co.uk/2313838

And an excellent insight into where this whole debate is going by Ridwan Sheikh on http://islamicawakening.com/viewarticle.php?articleID=1288&

APPEAL: Write to Babar with words of encouragement

Following the decision by the High Court in London yesterday, the Free Babar Ahmad Campaign is requesting all supporters to write to Babar with words of encouragement. When a similar appeal was launched in August 2004, after Babar's arrest, he received over 1000 pieces of mail within a short space of time. The appeal was so successful to the extent that the prison guards at Woodhill commented that he was the most popular prisoner! This will only take a few minutes of your time but can be a source of reward for remembering a prisoner in his time of need, especially following yesterday's decision.

PLEASE NOTE: Babar was moved to HMP Belmarsh yesterday in the afternoon. Indications from his legal team is that the move is not related to the decision by the High Court yesterday. As people may be aware, the regime in Belmarsh is not like the regime in Woodhill, and therefore all the more reason for people to write to Babar.

There is a famous saying of the Prophet Muhammad (saw) where he said: "Whoever relieves a believer's distress of the distressful aspects of this world, Allah will rescue him from a difficulty of the difficulties of the hereafter… Allah is helping the servant as long as the servant is helping his brother." (Muslim)

Benefits of writing to a prisoner include easing their distress, helping to shoulder their difficulties, boosting their morale, and giving them determination to remain positive. We all love to receive letters or emails from friends or family, even if it is a simple hello. At a time when you are away from family and friends, it is appreciated even more.

The address to write to Babar is below:

Babar Ahmad MX 5383
HMP Belmarsh
Western Way
Thamesmead
London
SE28 0EB

You can send in a letter or card up to the size of an A4 (nothing in Jiffy envelopes please as they will be treated as parcels and take longer to reach him). Please do not send in spare paper, a spare envelope or stamps as he will not be allowed them.

(Due to the extent of the mail that he received during our last appeal in August 2004, Babar was unable to write back to everyone. This could be the same problem this time around so please do not be disappointed.)