Jerusalem News-865
16 Tammuz 5768, 8 July 2008
Contents:
1. Iraqi Commentators: Saudi Arabia Is Behind Terror in Iraq ? And Will Never Accept Shi'ite Rule There
2. Iran is still supporting Attacks on US and allies
3. Jeffrey A. Tucker: Free Bernie Madoff
4. Those Mighty Gharqad Trees!
5. Al-Qaeda Leader in Afghanistan Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid Talks About Using Pakistani Nuclear Weapons Against U.S., Offers Americans 'Peace Plan': Convert to Islam, or Else Be Ruled by Islam and Pay Poll Tax to the Muslims

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1. Iraqi Commentators: Saudi Arabia Is Behind Terror in Iraq ? And Will Never Accept Shi'ite Rule There
By: D. Hazan *
http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=IA53109
Extracts:
Currently, Iraqi-Saudi relations are at a nadir. While Iraq has time and again officially reiterated its desire to strengthen relations and resolve disagreements with Saudi Arabia, the Saudi response has been less than enthusiastic. The Saudis have repeatedly rejected Iraq's proposal that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki visit Saudi Arabia or meet with Saudi King 'Abdallah bin 'Abd Al-'Aziz, and have procrastinated over opening a Saudi embassy in Iraq, even though Iraq has already sent an ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
Saudi King 'Abdallah refused to meet with Al-Maliki on the periphery of the March 30, 2009 Doha summit, on the grounds that Saudi Arabia was "not sure that true conciliation has indeed been achieved in Iraq" and that "Al-Maliki has not kept his promise to appease all political forces in Iraq and to involve them [in the political process].(1) This statement is a manifestation of the conflict between the Saudis and the Shi'ite Iraqi government, with the Saudis having set themselves up as protectors of Iraq's Sunni minority.
The Saudis assume that Iran is influencing the Al-Maliki government and fear the spread of the Iranian/Shi'ite influence in Iraq. Thus, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to the U.S. and Britain, has called "to bring Iraq back to the Arab world at any cost, so that it can play its natural role in the Arab nation and serve as a defensive wall against [outside] interference in its own affairs and in the affairs of the [Arab] nation."(2) In response, Iraqis have recently been attacking Saudi Arabia, depicting it as the main force the destabilization of Iraq. The first to attack Saudi Arabia were Iraqi press commentators, who accused the Saudis of helping terrorists infiltrate Iraq and of being behind suicide attacks carried out on Iraqi soil, especially in light of recent fatwas issued in Saudi Arabia permitting suicide attacks in Iraq as "jihad against the occupiers." Other commentators accused Saudi Arabia of looking down on Iraq and of refusing to accept its Shi'ite government, and called on Al-Maliki to desist from further attempts to visit Saudi Arabia or to meet with its king, and called these attempts humiliating to Al-Maliki, the Iraqi people, and the government. However, one commentator called on Iraq to seek conciliation with its neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, and to try to allay their fears, even if those countries were indeed interfering in Iraq's domestic affairs.

Hadi Al-Ameri, chairman of Iraq's parliamentary Security and Defense Committee, accused Saudi Arabia of heading a group of countries in the region opposed to the withdrawal. He said that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the recent bombings in Iraq, and must take a stand against them. He added that the bombings had been financed from outside the country, and that the perpetrators were members of Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi Ba'th Party. Al-Ameri demanded that a firm position be taken against the countries supporting terrorism, indicating that fatwas declaring Shi'ites as apostates issued recently by Saudi clerics had made them targets for violence.(4)

Saudi Arabia, for its part, accused pro-Iranian forces and elements in Iraq of attempting to dissociate Iraq from its Arab dimension and to subjugate it to Iran, and claiming that the statistics showing that Saudis constitute a high proportion of terrorists in Iraq were distorted.

...in an April 4, 2009 article posted at www.abdulkhaliqhussein.com,
Iraqi reformist and liberal writer Dr. 'Abd Al-Khaliq Hussein, who resides in London, criticized the Saudi regime for religious and ethnic discrimination against all non-Wahhabis, and for aiding terrorism. He stated that the Saudi regime abhorred Iraq's democracy and that only the restoration of the Sunni Ba'th rule in the country would satisfy it.

"Relations between Iraq and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia have never been good? The only time they improved at all was during the dark era of Saddam's Ba'th party, which caused the Iraqi people great suffering."

Dr. Hussein further stated: "The true reason for the Saudi king's refusal to meet with Al-Maliki is his disgraceful ethnic [bias] and his abhorrence of Iraqi democracy. The Saudi regime will never be satisfied with a government in Iraq that comprises all elements of the Iraqi people? Has a Shi'ite Iraqi no right to be president in his country, if he has attained the post via fair elections.... The Saudi regime can envision conciliation [with Iraq] only if the fascist Ba'th regains power"

2. Iran is still supporting Attacks on US and allies
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026792.php
Extracts
July 1, 2009
BAGHDAD (AP) - The top U.S. military commander in Iraq on Tuesday accused Iran of continuing to support and train militants who are carrying out attacks, including most of the ones in Baghdad.
Gen. Ray Odierno said the attacks have fallen in number but are still a problem. He made the comments just after the U.S. relinquished security for Baghdad and other urban areas to Iraqi forces, part of a security agreement that will see all American soldiers out of the country by the end of 2011.
"Iran is still supporting, funding and training surrogates who operate inside of Iraq. They have not stopped and I don't think they will stop," Odierno told reporters at the U.S. military headquarters outside Baghdad. "I think many of the attacks in Baghdad are from individuals that have been in fact funded or trained by the Iranians."...

3. Free Bernie Madoff
Jeffrey A. Tucker
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?
sid=98387828350&h=-A23n&u=qf3y_&ref=nf
Extract:
Bernie Madoff stole billions from the customers of his phony investment funds, running a racket rather than a financial service. People who aren't even his victims are furious, and nearly everyone enjoyed a 10-minute sense of vengeance when the judge threw him behind bars for 150 years.

Let me weigh in with a contrary view. Free Bernie Madoff, I say.

His life is already ruined. He is a pauper. He will never again do business. From the innovative genius whose information technology in the 1960s became the basis of NASDAQ, he rose to the heights and fell to the depths where he will stay this way until death. He won't be able to be seen in public for the rest of his life without encountering scorn and derision from everyone around him.

Maybe the idea of jail is punishment. I don't see how it can be a worse punishment than he would face on the outside.

Maybe the idea is to impose on him a feeling of remorse. But does he not already feel regret, even deep sorrow? This man who was widely considered to be a historic phenom is now disgraced, forever. We all have one life to live, and his is now a complete wreck, going down in history as the worst financial criminal of all time.

What, then, precisely, is the point of jailing him? He is no direct threat to anyone. Society would not be safer because he is in the slammer. He is not going to rob people or beat people up. He might write a book and donate the funds to charity or make some restitution to his victims. I, for one, would like to read that book.

Will jail "rehabilitate" him? It's ridiculous. His rehabilitation, if there can be one, is probably already complete. Consider the dilemma in which he found himself. It began small, a simple scheme that anyone can play. His problem was that it worked better than most.

Once his scam began, he probably hoped the markets would turn around and he would become honest again. It didn't turn out that way. Then he couldn't dig his way out of it, no matter how much he hated his life. That it lasted decades instead of days is a testament to his marketing savvy, but that's not to say that he loved his life. Spending the rest of his life in the pokey won't rehabilitate him any more intensely than life on the outside.

The problem with prisoners is not that you are treated like an animal. Would that they had it so good! At the zoo, the animals are fed and groomed and cared for. They have value because they elicit affection from paying customers. Even slaves are in a better position, for at least they are valued to some small degree by their masters.

Prisoners, on the other hand, face a kind of metaphysical transformation. They go from being valued members of society to being treated like blobs of flesh taking up space. Their wardens see them as objects. They are abused by fellow inmates and live in a state of incredible degradation everyday.

All prisoners are therefore living amidst a kind of torture. It isn't modern. It isn't even medieval. It is contrary to all principles of civilization. Perhaps we should allow it for the most violent members of society, pending some other solution. But that doesn't apply to Madoff, and it doesn't apply to some ? of all the prison population.

But still, we are all supposed to feel some kind of joy at his captivity. For decades we've been told by sociologists that the real criminals in society are not muggers and murderers and rapists but rather "white-collars criminals" who are capitalists sneakily stealing money using fancy finance. They are the ones who should be in jail.

And so now, those educated by the sociologists, forever soft on real crime but oddly tough on financial crime, have their way, as the bourgeoisie cries out for vengeance against a guy whose sole victims were the rich people who were his own customers.

4. Those Mighty Gharqad Trees!
http://www.ummah.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1493
Sahih Muslim Book 041, Number 6985:
Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying:

The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.

The Gharqad tree is more commonly known as the boxthorn tree.

Put Gharqad tree in a Search Engine and you will find several Sermons by Prominent Muslim Clerics in Arab Lands and in the USA repeating the above quotation about killing Jews. They also report that in Tel Aviv and other parts of Israel visitors have noticed a lot of Gharqad trees being planted by Jews in anticipation of the Day of Arab hatred.

Selected Extracts Concerning the All-Powerful Gharqad (Boxthorn) Tree
http://www.bu.edu/mille/people/steinbergoliver.html
Clenching their argument on the necessity of war, the authors close the section with an eschatological prophecy attributed to Muhammad by the renowned collectors of ahadith, Bukhari and Muslim:
...Hamas strives for the fulfillment of God's promise as the time grows long and the Prophet, God Bless Him and Grant Him Salvation, said, "The Hour will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews (and the Muslims will kill them), until the Jews hide behind the trees and rocks and the trees and rocks will say, "O Muslim, 0 Servant of God, Here are the Jews, Come and kill them!" except the Gharqad Tree because it is a tree of the Jews."

Some members of the Islamic Movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip aver that the esoteric tree currently surrounds Israeli settlements as a protective hedge of natural magic. Others claim that it grows outside the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem's Old City, the site where Jesus, according to some hadith, will one day kill the Anti-Christ. Still others ascribe a more symbolic meaning to the tree. According to one reading popular during the intifada, the Gharqad Tree represents collaborators, those Palestinians accused of cooperating with the Israeli military authorities, indeed, all the forces of the world which conspire with the Jews against the Muslims.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxthorn
Boxthorn (Lycium) is a genus of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), containing about 90 species of plants native throughout much of the temperate and subtropical zones of the world. They are mostly found in dry, semi-saline environments.

Other common names include desert-thorn, Christmas berry, wolfberry, Matrimony vine, and Duke of Argyll's tea tree. Goji is a common English name made popular by several American-made juices and dried berries sometimes branded as "Tibetan" or "Himalayan" goji berries, although these terms do not geographically represent where the berries actually originate.

5. Al-Qaeda Leader in Afghanistan Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid Talks About Using Pakistani Nuclear Weapons Against U.S., Offers Americans 'Peace Plan': Convert to Islam, or Else Be Ruled by Islam and Pay Poll Tax to the Muslims
http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD241709

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