DOMESTIC INCITEMENT: FOUNDATION FOR TERROR

Domestic Incitement: Foundation For Terror

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 assault on the bastion of Western Civilization in the name of Jihadist Islam, historical terror sponsors such as Iran, Syria, Libya, the Palestine Liberation Organization qua the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah have all condemned the carnage, and have all expressed their full solidarity with the United States.

However, it is more likely that these faux expressions of sympathy represent an attempt to run for cover rather than an authentic epiphany concerning the evils of Islamo-fascism.

Recent public statements by certain American Muslim and American Arab organizations should be seen in the same light. For instance, on September 13, 2001, in an article by Riad Abdelkarim, Communications Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, entitled "American Muslims Join The Call For Justice", this American Muslim organization forcefully condemned the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, saying, inter alia,

"... American Muslims are united in declaring that no political cause could ever be advanced by such immoral, unconscionable acts."

Yet, in 1998, the American Muslim Council, the American Muslim Alliance and the Council on American-Islamic Relations sponsored a rally at Brooklyn College in New York City, New York where militant speakers urged upon the audience the path of Jihad and described Jews as

"pigs and monkeys".

The following year these same groups, together with the Muslim Public Affairs Council, sponsored a rally in Santa Clara, California where one speaker called for the murder of Jews.

Similarly, on September 14, 2001, Imad Hamad of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee declared that:

"This attack was on Civilization ...We are all humans and we should all be outraged ... We see no justification for it under any circumstances".

Yet, in 1994, at a joint fundraiser for the Islamic Association for Palestine and the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee held in Annandale, Virginia, the featured speaker was Muhammed Siam, a leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, who urged American Arabs and American Muslims to financially support Jihad against Israel. Moreover, in 1993, at an Islamic Association for Palestine conference held in New Jersey, Hamas supporters chanted:

"We solve our problems with the Kalishnikov [automatic rifle]. We buy Paradise with the blood of the Jews."

It is the zenith of hypocrisy for these domestic organizations to support terrorism against Jews and Israel, only to feign horror when their continuous and unrelenting incitement to violence predictably results in terrorism against Israel's main ally and their host -- the United States of America.

Note: While, in the aftermath of the Assault, the U.S. government has made numerous overtures to American Arab and American Muslim organizations in an effort to prove to the Arab and larger Muslim worlds that the United States is not at war with Islam, the government has encountered a major problem. While, from time to time, spokespersons from these domestic organizations appear in the American media to officially denounce terrorism against the United States (but, at the same time, to justify it against Israel), none of these organizations have participated in -- let alone sponsored -- any public protests against Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda cadres and/or against those Arab and (non-Arab) Muslim nations which, on a daily basis, use their government-controlled media to incite the very terrorism which these organizations so piously claim to abhor. On the contrary, by expending such a large portion of their resources to publicly demonize Israel, these organization seek to deflect American governmental and media attention away from those despotic nations and their inculcated hatred of America. As a result, any American Arab or American Muslim organization, with which the U.S. President chooses to consult, will inevitably turn out to be a supporter, rather than an opponent, of those Arab and (non-Arab) Muslim nations which sponsor terrorism. And, almost 18 months after the Assault, these organizations have still managed to disguise themselves with a veneer of respectability, especially since the U.S. government remains so reluctant to confront the Truth. Please read on:

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US Conservatives split on policy toward radical Islamists

By CAROLINE B. GLICK

(Jerusalem Post, February 11, 2003) A controversy has erupted in Washington between two prominent Republican conservatives with close ties to the Bush administration. The spat centers around the Administration's outreach to Islamic fundamentalist organizations and, according to Washington insiders, could have implications on proposed measures to enhance US homeland security in the fight against global terrorism.

The two warring parties are Grover Norquist, a prominent political organizer who is closely allied with President George W. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, and Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy think tank in Washington.

Gaffney, an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, is closely allied with Pentagon and National Security Council officials.

Norquist, president of the conservative political action committee Americans for Tax Reform, is also the founder and first president of the Islamic Institute in Washington.

In a letter made public last Wednesday, Norquist accused Gaffney of "bigotry and racism" for questioning the reliability of White House staffer Ali Tulbah for inviting representatives of two radical Islamic organizations, the American Muslim Council (AMC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), to a White House briefing on January 16 [, 2003].

. . .

Both AMC and CAIR, which purport to represent the interests of American Muslims, have been widely criticized since September 11, 2001 for supporting terrorist organizations, like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and al-Qaida. According to US Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes, both represent the "extremist Saudi, Wahhabi brand of Islam" that views jihad against Western civilization as a primary end of Islam.

Both groups have received numerous audiences in the White House since September 11 [, 2001]. Neither has softened its pro-Islamist agenda as a result of these meetings. On January 29 [, 2003], AMC director Eric Vickers put out a press release saying, "In invoking God to be with American soldiers in our apparently imminent war with Iraq, what the President did not say is that he is calling on God to kill innocent Iraqi children."

The next day, Vickers issued instructions to mosque leaders in the US to oppose the new FBI policy of counting and locating all mosques as part of its actions to prevent terrorism.

For its part, CAIR as late as December 2001 was publicly claiming that Israel had carried out the September 11 attacks. On February 8 [, 2003], CAIR national chairman Omar Ahmad told The Houston Chronicle: "Israel is a strategic liability to American political and economic interests. Uncritical support for that nation's brutal policies makes a mockery of our stated commitments to promote freedom and justice in the Muslim world."

As the founder of the Islamic Institute, Norquist has been directly involved in providing radical Muslims with access to the White House and influential Republicans in Congress.

For his efforts, Norquist was given an award shortly before the September 11 attacks from the National Committee to Protect Political Freedom.

The organization's president, Sami al-Arian, has long been under investigation by the FBI for his alleged leadership position in Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

While Norquist founded the Islamic Institute in 1998 in an attempt to bring Muslims into the Republican Party, it is unclear how successful he was. In the 2000 presidential election, Democratic candidate Al Gore won Michigan, a state with one of the largest Muslim populations in the US.

Pipes believes the public controversy inspired by Norquist's attacks on Gaffney is important.

The question of access to the White House raised by Norquist's attack on Gaffney is a crucial one. On the one hand, bringing these groups into the White House confers prestige and legitimacy on them, both among Muslims and in the wider community.

These radical groups then use this legitimacy to gain more power over the Muslim community in the US. On the other hand, these groups' access to key figures in the administration and Congress has consequences for the Republican Party's approach to radical Islam," he said.

The White House has remained publicly mum on the issue. White House sources explain that Norquist's attacks on Gaffney have received scant attention and have not been discussed.

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Note: While the recent arrest of University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian demonstrates that the U.S. government has finally begun to unmask some of the terrorist front-organizations established in the U.S. by American Arab and American Muslim intellectuals under the guise of academic freedom, the activities of these terrorist masterminds and fundraisers are still being justified by large swaths of the Left, of the Right and of Academia. Please read on:

COLUMN ONE

Politically correct terrorists

By Caroline Glick

(Jerusalem Post, February 28, 2003) The indictment and arrest of University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian by the FBI last week was a watershed event in the US war on terrorism.

This was so not because Arian was the CEO of the Islamic Jihad, although that he was. Nor was it a watershed because by arresting Arian, the US has shown that it will apply the full weight of its laws against terrorists, whether their targets are Israeli or American.

Nor still was it a watershed because it brought to bear the new anti-terror law enforcement powers granted to police and intelligence arms of the US government by the 2002 Patriot Act.

Rather, Arian's arrest was a watershed because of the political will that stood behind the decision to move forward in the case.

Arian was arrested on charges of conspiracy to murder and maim people outside the US, conspiracy to provide material support and resources to Islamic Jihad, extortion, obstruction of justice and immigration fraud -- charges that carry a sentence of life in prison.

Since journalist and terror expert Steven Emerson produced the [U.S.] Public Broadcasting System documentary "Jihad In America" in 1994, the fact that Arian was the head of the Islamic Jihad in America was the worst kept secret in the world.

In that documentary, Emerson showed that the Islamic Jihad's headquarters in the US has the same address as the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, (WISE), a USF [University of South Florida] think-tank run by Arian.

One of WISE's research fellows was Ramadan Abdullah Shallah. Shallah left the Institute in 1995 and moved to Damascus to take over the Islamic Jihad after the group's leader Fathi Shikaki was killed in Malta by the Mossad [which is Israel's intelligence agency].

In the same 1994 documentary, Emerson showed Arian in action, making speeches in praise of jihad against Israel and suicide bombers.

And yet the result of the documentary was that the liberal establishment of the US branded Emerson a bigoted, Islam-bashing racist while Arian was feted as a civil rights trailblazer for Muslims in America.

Emerson was banned from National Public Radio and Arian was invited to the White House on four separate occasions -- three times by President Bill Clinton and once by President George W. Bush.

In spite of Emerson's reams of evidence, which proved conclusively that Arian was an arch-terrorist, Arian received accolades from both the Left and the Right.

Middle East studies professors, influential journalists and political organizers spanning the ideological spectrum attacked Arian's accusers as racist right up until the week before his arrest.

After years of fighting a lone battle against Arian and the Islamic Jihad cells he funded and organized in the US, Emerson's cause was given a push on September 26, 2001 when Arian was interviewed by popular Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly.

O'Reilly, who questioned Arian about past statements in favor of jihad and suicide bombings in Israel concluded the interview by commenting that if he were in the CIA he would trail Arian "24 hours a day." In the aftermath of the interview, USF suspended Arian.

This move was met by howls of indignation from Arian's friends on the political Left and in academia. The powerful and respected Middle East Studies Association wrote a letter to USF President Judy Genshaft in February 2002, decrying the suspension as an attack on academic freedom.

Calling on USF to reinstate Arian, MESA's board of directors wrote, "The Arian case IS about academic freedom. It is also about the basic first amendment right to freedom of speech." Here then, the most respected Middle East academic organization in the US went on record defending a suspected terrorist and decrying those who would view the issue as one of law enforcement rather than one of civil rights.

On the political Right, Arian's greatest friend and supporter is the Republican political organizer Grover Norquist. Since the late 1990s, Norquist, who is closely allied with President Bush's senior political advisor Karl Rove, has cultivated close relations with radical elements within the US Muslim community.

Spurning those who question the wisdom of his feting of Islamic extremists, Norquist was quick to claim after the 2000 elections that "George W. Bush owes his election to the Muslim vote." This, in spite of the fact that Bush lost the State of Michigan, which is home to the largest concentration of Muslims in the US to Al Gore.

Norquist, who succeeded in getting candidate Bush to support the banning of secret evidence from criminal trials (a position Bush abandoned after September 11), was given an award for his efforts in April 2001 by an organization called the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedoms -- or NCPPF. The president of this organization is Arian. Among the coalition members are front organizations for Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah, Hamas, the IRA, the Peruvian Shining Path and the Basque separatists.

Just one week before Arian's arrest, Norquist launched a defamatory attack against fellow Washington Republican Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration official who now heads the Center for Security Policy, a Washington-based neoconservative think tank. In an open letter to Gaffney, Norquist attacked him for raising questions about a current and a former White House official for having invited heads of radical Islamic organizations with ties to terror groups to the White House.

. . .

Ignoring the security implications of inviting known Islamic terror sympathizers to the White House, Norquist claimed that raising criticism amounted to "racial prejudice, religious bigotry or ethnic hatred."

Here too, then, Norquist on the Right -- like MESA on the Left -- refused to acknowledge that support for terrorism and, in the case of Arian and his associates, actual action in support of a terrorist organization, bear criminal implications.

Instead, terror apologists and perpetrators are viewed as simply another legitimate voice in a free society's marketplace of ideas. Thus US academics like Columbia University professor Joseph Massad, who just last week published an article in [Egypt's government-controlled] Al-Ahram [newspaper] calling for progressive circles to force the Palestinian leadership to again overtly embrace the destruction of Israel and terrorism as official policy, are allowed to act with impunity.

The Bush Administration's decision to press forward with charges against Arian, in spite of his prominence, now puts these people on notice. It also has several important implications for Israel in our fight against Islamic terrorism -- not least, to stop giving voice to those who use the public stage to make apologies for terrorism and incite against Israel.

In enabling [Israeli Arab] MKs Ahmed Tibi and Azmi Bishara, whose overt support for terrorist organizations is well documented, to run for Knesset in the last election, our Supreme Court justices showed that they are unable to make the distinction between protected and criminal speech. As Justice Minister, Tommy Lapid will preside over the selection of the next generation of Supreme Court justices. His choices will largely determine whether our justice system will finally accept the necessity of ending the practice of providing legal protections to those who seek common cause with the enemies of the State of Israel.

Today the US Congress is debating the second Patriot Act. This act provides for the revocation of citizenship of those who support terrorist organizations. During his term in office, outgoing [Israeli] Interior Minister Eli Yishai revoked the citizenship of two Israeli Arabs who are members of Hizbullah. Will incoming Interior Minister Avraham Poraz have the political will to continue and widen the practice thus enforcing the State's regulation that stipulates that support for terrorist activities and Israeli citizenship are incompatible? In arresting Arian and his Islamic Jihad cronies, the US has shown that its war on terrorism is being consistently and unapologetically fought by all levels of the US government. It will be a central challenge of our new government, and particularly of our Shinui [political party] ministers, to show that Israel fights our war against terrorism with at least the same seriousness and intensity as the Bush administration.

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