Paradise Lost:
The Decline and Fall of the Arab World
Mark Silverberg
For a millennium, the Arab
world has been in a steady tailspin that has led to a culture of
victimhood and death fueled by religious hatred, sectarian violence,
massive poverty, repressive governments, vast illiteracy, medieval
laws, centuries of isolation from Western enlightenment, and an
overwhelming almost mystical desire to restore past glories from its
lost Andalusian empire in Moorish Spain. An oft-quoted statistic from
the UN’s Arab Human Development Reports is that the amount of
literature translated into Spanish in a single year exceeds the entire
corpus of what has been translated into Arabic in 1,000 years and
according to another recent UN study, fully one-third of the Arab
world (or 99.5 million Arabs) is illiterate.
These failings have been
used by the Arab world to scapegoat Israel since its birth in 1948.
But the truth lies much closer to home. It begins and ends with the
need for an Islamic Reformation and Renaissance. However, to
reinterpret the Qur`an to accommodate 21st century
globalization will be a profoundly difficult task, for much of Islamic
history is rooted in tribalism and an historical evolution totally
different from that of the Western experience. Islam supports
authoritarianism by rulers and submission by followers. Islamic
political culture permits no independent public sphere, and no
separation between the spiritual and the temporal. Its emphasis on
divine sovereignty rather than popular sovereignty (with
the former being expressed through the shari`ah and interpreted
by religious scholars) puts many of the most important issues of
public policy outside the realm of public decision-making. Subject to
all this, the religion of Islam must somehow find a way to live in the
modern world. That is its challenge for the future. It cannot compel
religious obedience through murder and expect to emerge from the Dark
Ages.
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Peace or
Jihad? Abrogation in Islam
David Bukay
The Qur`an is unique
among sacred scriptures in accepting a doctrine of abrogation in which
later pronouncements of Muhammad declare null and void his earlier
ones. This is based on four verses in the Qu`ran, which justify
abrogation.
Why it is so important? The
Qur`an is not organized chronologically, but according to the
length of the chapters; divided between Meccan and Medinan chapters.
There is no agreement as to which were the first and the last chapters
revealed, and even worse, many Meccan chapters include verses from the
Medinan period.
Classical Muslim scholars
argued that anyone who studied the Qur`an without having
mastered the doctrine of abrogation is “deficient”. Understanding
abrogation is crucially important to understand the correct
application of Allah’s laws and is among the most important
preconditions for interpretation of the Qur`an. It is also
critical to understanding both Jihad (the holy war) and
Da`wah (the propagation of Islam).
These scholars also
examined the pattern in which Muhammad engaged in abrogation during
the revelation, because Qur`anic laws were brief and
insufficient for the needs of the Muslim community. He changed his
rules according to the circumstances and the demands of the people. It
was quite common that when a verse was revealed, Muhammad would change
it according to the reaction of his surroundings. Sometimes the
revelation used to descend on the Prophet during the night, and then
he forgot it during the day. This ability to add or delete verses
according to questions or contemporary issues demonstrates a
perplexing side of the religion.
All in all, there are four
categories of abrogation: 43 chapters unaffected by abrogation (no
abrogating and no abrogated); six chapters that augmented the concept
of abrogation but were themselves not abrogated; 40 chapters with
abrogated wording but without abrogating; and 25 chapters with both
their wording and authority abrogated.
During the lifetime of
Muhammad, the Islamic community passed through three different stages.
In the beginning, from 610 until 622, Allah commanded restraint. As
the Muslims relocated and established themselves in Medina (623-626),
Allah permitted Muslims to fight in a defensive war. However, in the
last six years of Muhammad’s life (626-632), Allah permitted Muslims
to fight an aggressive war against polytheists and monotheists.
Statements that there is no
compulsion in religion and that jihad is primarily about
internal struggle and not about holy war may receive applause in
university lecture halls, diplomatic board rooms and the media, but
they misunderstand the importance of abrogation in Islamic theology.
It is important to acknowledge that what university scholars believe,
and what most Muslims believe are totally different things. Once
Muhammad was given permission to kill in the name of Allah, the sword
of Islam never stopped shedding blood, internally and externally.
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Fundamentalist Islam – Violence and
Terrorism (2)
Raphael Israeli
Muslim fundamentalism is
not
a new phenomenon, for its roots have been part and parcel of
Islamic renewal since its early days. Several movements of reform,
which have attempted to pull
Islam and modernity together, far from making that
breakthrough, have generated
reactionary movements, like the Muslim Brothers, who produced a
backlash against
the reformers, the Arab secular regimes and especially the West
who inspired and
supported them.
The helplessness of the
West in comprehending and then countering this new Muslim activism,
has had
far-reaching repercussions not only against Europe itself, the
heartland of
Western culture, but especially against
the Jews and Israel who are viewed as the extension of the West
in the Middle
East. Israeli “peace groups”, who deluded themselves that by
further concessions
they could placate the rage of the fundamentalists, have only
produced more wars and driven Israel into a political and security
impasse.
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Still Facing Existential
Threats:
Nuclear War and Genocide in the Middle East
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Professor Louis
René Beres, Chair of Project Daniel (final report published as ACPR
Policy Paper No. 155) begins with the essential understanding that
Iranian nuclearization remains an existential threat to Israel.
Notwithstanding the recent and plainly inaccurate US National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concerning Iran, this threat also remains
authentically genocidal in the legal sense. It follows that Israel’s
reliance upon its own nuclear strategy and nuclear deterrent will now
necessarily expand. To express this reliance successfully, Professor
Beres explains,
Israel
shall soon have to make a long-postponed decision on preemption
(anticipatory self-defense) against pertinent Iranian hard targets.
If this decision should continue to be postponed, Israel will likely
lose the chance to defend itself conventionally.
With these facts
in mind, this article offers a timely and informed strategic dialectic
for Israel. It recommends, inter alia, that Israel prepare for
-
The improbable but still conceivable prospect
of an irrational nuclear enemy in the region, and
-
An enemy that could act rationally, but still
decide to strike first with nuclear weapons.
In either case,
we learn from Professor Beres that a stable nuclear balance of
power/balance of terror in the region would be out of the question
(nuclear proliferation in the Middle East could never create the same
sort of stable equilibrium that was once obtained between the US and
USSR) and that Israel must remain the region’s only nuclear power.
Finally, this
nuanced article by Professor Beres explores sensitive issues of
nuclear targeting for Israel (countervalue vs. counterforce);
escalation dominance (which Israel might lose altogether should Iran
be permitted to become nuclear); diverse circumstances that would
likely produce a nuclear outcome; strategic conditions that could
yield an Israeli nuclear preemption (highly unlikely); and the
imperative avoidance of nuclear warfighting.
This article is
offered here by Professor Beres in the sincere hope that it will
quickly lead to ongoing and further refinements in Israeli strategic
thought and doctrine.
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US Rewarding Arab Terrorism
Rachel Ehrenfeld
and
Alyssa A. Lappen
The Bush Administration’s
search for partners to promote “peace” and “democracy” within the
Palestinian Authority (PA) resembles Lord Charles Bowen’s “blind man
in a dark room looking for a black hat – which isn’t there”.
For the first
time, the Bush Administration plans to give $150 million in cash
directly to the Palestinian Authority (PA) Treasury, as part of a
$496.5 million “aid” package, including $410 million for development
programs. This added to the $86.5 million for CIA “security training”,
which Congress authorized in April 2007.
The CIA has
apparently assumed the Palestinian terrorist-training role previously
held by the former Soviet Union. Since 1994, the CIA armed and trained
thousands of Palestinian “security forces”, who subsequently joined
every Palestinian terrorist organization.
CIA Palestinian
training success is best described by a member of the PA’s Chairman
own security unit – Force 17, officer Abu Yusef: “The operations of
the Palestinian resistance would [not] have been so successful and
“would not have killed more than 1,000 Israelis since 2000, and
defeated the Israelis in Gaza without [American military] trainings,”
he boasted in August 2007.
Since the Oslo
Accords, the PA received some $14 billion to $20 billion in
international aid, according to a 2007 Funding for Peace Coalition (FPC)
report to the British Parliament. Each Palestinian received $4,000 to
$8,000 per year. In comparison, the US Agency for International
Development (USAID), provided $1 billion in humanitarian aid
for 2.5 million Darfur refugees from 2003 to 2006 – only $100
per person annually. Moreover, of the $7 billion pledged international
aid, only $5 billion were spent to assist more than 5 million Tsunami
victims in more than 15 countries on two continents.
The PA received
“the highest per capita aid transfer in the history of foreign aid
anywhere”, according to former World Bank country director for Gaza
and the West Bank, Nigel Roberts. Not surprisingly, hundreds of
thousands of Gazans spent more than $300 million in less than two week
shopping spree, after Hamas blew up the border with Egypt. Yet, the
Palestinian economy is in ruins, Why?
In March 2007, PA
Prime Minister and former World Bank official Salam Fayyad, told
London’s Daily Telegraph: “No one can give donors that
assurance” that funds reach their designated destinations. “Where is
all of the transparency in all of this? It’s gone.” Controlling
Palestinian finances, Fayyad concluded, is “virtually impossible”.
Palestinian
violence has escalated since the 1994 PA establishment and PA
officials have produced an unbroken record of unfulfilled promises and
outright deception. Yet President George W. Bush in his January 28
State of the Union Address, reassured the Palestinians that “America
will do, and I will do, everything we can to help them achieve...a
Palestinian state by the end of this year.”
Nevertheless,
US-favored PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who in 1957 with Yasser Arafat
co-founded the al Fatah terrorist group, assumed the role of his
predecessor. Like Muslim Brotherhood, Marxist–trained Jihadist
Arafat, neither does Abbas “recognize that confronting terror is
essential to achieving a state where his people can live in dignity
and at peace with Israel,” as President Bush declared.
Abbas remains
committed to the organization’s raison d’etre – destroying
Israel and expelling the Jewish people from the region. Despite public
Fatah-Hamas leadership disagreements, branding one another “murderers
and thieves”, Abbas arranged on Jan. 30 to give Hamas $3.1 billion of
$7.7 billion that international donor community pledged last December
in Paris.
Abbas’ support
for Hamas is not new. In Feb. 2007, He announced, “We must unite the
Hamas and Fatah blood in the struggle against Israel as we did at the
beginning of the intifada.” He stated this en route to Mecca to meet
with the Saudi King, and Hamas terror chiefs Khaled Mashaal and Ismail
Haniyeh. The Saudis pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in
“humanitarian aid” – which, like previous pledges, they failed to
deliver.
Rather than $660
million in annual aid the Saudis promised in 2002, the kingdom donated
only $84 million since then, according to World Bank reports. Other
Arab League members, who in 2002 promised $55 million monthly to
foster PA economic development, gave even less.
Meanwhile,
however, the Saudis and the Gulf states funneled hundreds of millions
of petrodollars – some raised in government-sponsored telethons
– to reward Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Hamas and Palestinian Jihad
suicide bombers and fuel the anti-Israel Jihad. Indeed, “Saudi
Arabia remains a source of recruits and finances for...Levant-based
militants,” said National Intelligence Director J. Michael McConnell,
before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on February 5,
2008.
McConnell should
have included USAID on his terror-funding list. A Dec. 2007 USAID
audit reported that the mission administering its funds gave money to
groups and institutions affiliated with US designated terrorist
organizations, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It warned:
“Without additional controls, the mission could inadvertently provide
support to entities or individuals associated with terrorism.”
USAID “failure”
to prevent funds from reaching Palestinian terrorist is not surprising
given US previous Administrations support for Arafat, and now for
Abbas, who repeatedly claims: “We have a legitimate right to direct
our guns against Israeli occupation,” while reiterating his desire for
“a political partnership with Hamas”.
It is time for
President Bush to remove his blinders and stop donating US-taxpayer
funds to this murderous partnership. It is also time for Congress to
demand a proper monitoring program to oversee the legitimate use of US
aid to the Palestinians.
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Land Theft in
the Galilee
Irresponsibility Becoming Tradition or
Tradition Becoming Irresponsible?
Zev Wolfson
This article is not
scientific research, but rather an analysis of a dozen scientific
publications and official and semi-official reports regarding land use
in the Galilee over the last decade. The results of this analysis have
been “translated” into maps and satellite photos of the Galilee which
visualize some basic facts that remained vague – intentionally or not
– even in statistical reports.
There are masses of
illegally constructed buildings – entire neighborhoods – spread over
dozens of square kilometers of agricultural lands as well as on state-
and public-owned lands which are not fit for settlements. Most of
these neighborhoods/buildings lack basic physical and social
infrastructure and endanger the ecological and social stability on a
regional and country-wide scale.
The density of the Muslim
population in these areas is less than in city-like settlements and
the structure of the society helps perpetuate this space-consuming
process.
The following contributing
factors were also analyzed:
A comparative analysis of
recent Israeli-Arab settlement activities and the development of Arab
settlements in Samaria (as well as in some regions of the Gaza Strip)
shows similarity in the land-use based on hamula-owned
principles, and accordingly, lead to similar spreading chaos as a
result.
Special attention was paid
to carrying capacity (an ecological factor), which plays a critical
role in the destabilization of the situation in the region.
Comparative analysis of policies in land use in Israel and other
countries leads to a proposal to implement the “econet” concept.
According to this concept, ecologically stable areas must remain as a
net amongst metropolises and conglomerates of expansive Arabs
settlements, otherwise ecological and social destabilization will
bring it to collapse. Ecological management in the state of New York
(where up to 80% of the total land, including private real estate, is
under various ecological restrictions) is provided as a possible model
for emulation.
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The Theological Background of Christian
Zionism
Mikael Knighton
Christians Standing with Israel
Over the years, Christian
support of the State of Israel has been looked upon with a suspicious
and vigilant eye. In fact, history will clearly show that the essence
of pure evil, operating under the guise of “Christianity”, has
facilitated a complete and justifiable collapse in Judeo-Christian
relations. Only recently has the relationship between the Jewish
people and Christians become fruitful, and the “mending” process,
albeit positive, continues to evolve. Even so, the question remains:
“Why do Christians support the State of Israel?” Christian Zionism, a
theological belief that identifies the restoration of the Jewish
people to their biblical homeland as the literal fulfillment of
biblical prophecies foretold thousands of years ago, may arguably
exist as the most oft-misunderstood “form” of Christianity, today.
Moreover, Christian Zionist dogma has been the recipient of much
indignation from those who would inaccurately and misguidedly opine
and define it as “unbiblical” and/or “extreme”. However, an objective
and comprehensive examination of the theological background of
Christian Zionism will reveal several, relevant misconceptions.
Moreover, after reading this analysis, one may likely discern that
Christian Zionism is not a “fundamentalist movement”, as it were, but
a manifestation and implementation of a sound, theological doctrine
predicated upon Scriptural truth. In so doing, one may likely and
accurately generalize that the Christian support of the State of
Israel should not be looked upon as a biblical doctrine “exclusive” to
Christian Zionism, but to all of Christianity.
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Organized
Crime Organizations
as a Threat to the Sovereign State
Tal Tovy
This article deals with the
threat stemming from organized crime organizations to both national
and individual security and how the damage to personal security, for
all intents and purposes, undermines the sovereignty of the nation
state. Displays of weakness on the part of the state in providing
protection for its citizens, can, ultimately, undermine the trust
relationship between the citizen and the state. Through an analysis of
the global, border-transcending nature of organized crime, the article
will demonstrate how the sovereign state along with the traditional
institutions of the international community could lose control of the
instruments for implementation of violence within its borders.
An additional objective of
the article will be to attempt to demonstrate that the organized crime
organizations have long ago transcended “classic” criminal parameters
and that they can be characterized as terrorist organizations, even
though a precise, agreed-upon, definition of what constitutes a
terrorist organization does not yet exist. In other words, if we
analyze the variety of definitions attempting to establish what
constitutes terrorism, while at the same time we analyze the actions
of organized crime, it is possible to establish that the border has
been completely obfuscated. Today, we can find terrorist organizations
employing organized crime tactics in order to finance their activities
and especially how to launder drug money. Conversely, organized crime
organizations have learned how to more effectively secure the
hierarchical structure of their organization and they adopted combat
tactics learned from terrorist organizations with the objective of
more effectively battling the police forces and other law enforcement
authorities pursuing them.
At the article’s conclusion
I will test that contention by discussing Russian organized crime
organization.
By analyzing the Russian
case, I will point out the great danger embodied in the actions of
organized crime and that they can be categorized as terrorist
organizations. Similarly, the article will attempt to point out the
connection between the organized crime organization and terrorist
organization and how that connection, for all intents and purposes,
exacerbates the threat to world security in the post-Cold War era.
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