U.S. uninterested in human rights of Jewish protesters in Israel

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If you're an Egyptian abused by the regime, the State Department wants to know. If you're a Saudi beaten by the kingdom's police, the State Department is waiting for your call.
But if you're a Jewish protester thrown into solitary confinement in an Israeli prison, — even if you're an American — don't bother telling the State Department.

For the last three years, the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor has ignored alleged human rights abuses of thousands of Jews who oppose the destruction of Jewish communities in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. Jewish protesters against the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have been grabbed off the streets and thrown into jail, charged with such offenses as incitement, rebellion and attempted murder.

In January 2008, during the visit by President Bush to Israel, three American Jewish lobbyists who met American reporters outside a Jerusalem hotel were seized and thrown into jail. They were charged with incitment. It took threats from members of Congress to release the Jews, one of them a representative of the New York-based Zionist Organization of America.

Many of these incidents were reported in the Israeli media, although not in the state radio and television, controlled by Olmert. The State Department has ignored the hundreds of reported incidents, including in the latest U.S. human rights report, released last week. Indeed, the entire report concerns alleged Israeli human rights violations against Palestinians and non-Jews.

Why? The State Department isn't saying. But a senior congressional aide who has been following the issue has an explanation: "The State Department maintains a double standard when it comes to Israel. If it's about Palestinian rights, then the department reports it. If it's about Jews, it's simply not their business."

Constitutional showdown over Islam in Turkey: Political crisis looms

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Turkey is heading for a major political crisis that could destabilize a valuable U.S. ally.
Turkey's leading prosecutor has indicted the ruling Justice and Development Party, a pro-Islamic faction, and seeks a five-year ban on the leadership. In a 162-page indictment, Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya says the AKP wants to turn Turkey into an Islamic state.

"Political Islam in Turkey is not limited to the will to regulate relations between the individual and God," the indictment read. "It claims the right to regulate state and societal order. That is why political Islam and its constitution, Shariah, is not democratic, but totalitarian."

The indictment has been sent to Turkey's Constitutional Court, which could take years to decide. Meanwhile, the indictment will fuel growing tension between the Islamist government and the secular elite, which includes the military.

Turkey's military has forced the closure of previous parties that were fronts for Islamists. The suit said AKP learned the lessons from the past and designed a party that could not be accused of being anti-secular. Indeed, AKP argued that it was no different from the Christian Democrats in Germany.

"The AKP is founded by a group that drew lessons from the closure of earlier Islamic parties' and uses democracy to reach its goal, which is installing Shariah in Turkey," the indictment read.

Over the last five years, Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, a target of the ban, has transformed Turkey from a secular to a pro-Islamic state. Men and women sit separately at AKP meetings. Mayors from the ruling party serve as mosque preachers and refuse to shake the hands of women. Turkish embassies have been ordered to cooperate with Turkish Muslim schools abroad.

Politicians explain their decisions as in accordance with Islamic principles. Indeed, Erdogan has more often sounded as a Muslim preacher than head of government.

Destroying AKP will not be easy. The anti-U.S. party controls about 60 percent of parliament and has drafted amendments to the constitution that would change Turkey's secular society. One amendment would allow women students to wear Muslim headdress at universities.

"The Shariah system includes, without doubt, Jihad as its final point," the indictment read. "A democratic system may be eliminated by democratic means, like the Nazis did, or it may be removed by anti democratic means as well," the indictment read. "Preferring the option of Jihad, thus violence, is a possibility."

Al Qaida lies to lure young recruits to Iraq

How do you recruit a young man ready to kill himself for Islam? Well, the first step is to promise him everything — and deliver nothing.
Al Qaida foreign volunteers captured in Iraq have told the U.S. military of a web of lies weaved by the Islamic insurgency. The fighters were recruited in Algeria, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and other countries on the promise of money, combat and heaven.

Prisoners in Iraq alleged to be Al Qaida recruits.
Instead, the volunteers were taken to Iraq and often imprisoned for months at a time in a tiny room as they waited for their mission. Their mission, often not told to them, was to blow themselves up near Iraqi civilians. They had been told that they would fight the U.S. military.
"Again and again, we heard this reality bothered the recruits, this disconnect between the stories they were told as they were recruited and indoctrinated and the reality of a war against innocent civilians was deeply disturbing," U.S. military spokesman Rear Adm. Greg Smith said. "They had not come here to kill Iraqi civilians."

A Pentagon study collected evidence from 48 captured foreign Al Qaida fighters in Iraq. The stories were similar: exploitation by recruiters in their home countries, severe pressure to travel to Iraq and then trapped. In mid-2007, the flow of foreign volunteers in Iraq peaked at 120 per month.

One of the biggest lies told by Al Qaida was that Iraqis wanted jihad. Instead, many of the recruits learned that Al Qaida was considered nothing more than killers and extortionists. Most of the time, the recruits were forced to be on the run as Iraqis reported their presence to authorities.

The profile of the Al Qaida fighter was that of a poor single male around 22 and with few prospects in life. Sometimes, the recruit was deformed and shunned by society. The suicide volunteers wanted to go out with a bang, but did not want their parents to know they were in Iraq.

The treatment of the volunteers suggested that they were brainwashed. Still, when they learned the truth of Al Qaida in Iraq, many wanted to leave.

It was too late. Their passports and money were with Al Qaida. Their handlers told them to face their death.

"They were told, 'This is your duty. This is what you can do for the jihad. You will be a martyr. This is what we need you to do,'" Smith said.

"Ironically they were relieved having been captured by the very Americans their recruiters said they would kill in Iraq."

Captured documents reveal multiple links between Saddam, Al Qaida

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses reviewed 600,000 documents, known as the Harmony data base and captured in the Iraq war.
The report said Saddam's intelligence services began working with Al Qaida elements against the United States as early as 1993. The president ordered attacks on the U.S. military presence in Arab League states, particularly in Somalia, where Al Qaida was active.

Translator Amir Mohsen shows off a Saddam Hussein picture while searching through documents at the former Mukhabarat (Iraqi Intelligence Service) building in Baghdad.
A 1993 memorandum from the Iraqi Intelligence Service to Saddam discussed a plan to train operatives from Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Jihad, cited in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, was founded by Ayman Zawahiri, today the No. 2 figure in Al Qaida.
In 1999, Iraq began supporting an unidentified Islamic Kurdish group. Two years later, Iraqi intelligence was said to have recruited suicide bombers for attacks in Saudi Arabia.

But the documents also demonstrated Saddam's distrust of Al Qaida. An alleged architect of the 1993 bombing of New York City's World Trade Center, Abdul Rahman Yassin, was imprisoned in Iraq under orders from Saddam, who did not believe the Islamic insurgent.

The institute concluded that it could not find a "smoking gun" to link the Saddam regime to Al Qaida strikes. Iraq was not found to have directly cooperated with Al Qaida in attacks on Western or Arab targets. Instead, the Pentagon report found that Saddam agreed to train Al Qaida operatives in Iraq.

"The rise of Islamist fundamentalism in the region gave Saddam the opportunity to make terrorism, one of the few tools remaining in Saddam's 'coercion' tool box," the report, titled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents," said.

"Is there anything in the captured archives to indicate that Saddam had the will to use his terrorist capabilities directly against the United States?" the report asked. "Judging from Saddam's statements before the 1991 Gulf War with the United States, the answer is yes."

The institute concluded that Saddam's relationship with Al Qaida was similar to the workings of cocaine rings in Colombia during the 1990s. Those gangs remained rivals even as they cooperated to expand the market for cocaine.

"Recognizing Iraq as a second, or parallel, 'terror cartel' that was simultaneously threatened by and somewhat aligned with its rival helps to explain the evidence emerging from the detritus of Saddam's regime," the report said.

Most of Saddam's targets were said to have been Iraqi nationals. The report said Saddam sought to use Islamic and other insurgents against the United States and his enemies, but the plots failed because of what appeared to have been incompetence.

"Evidence that was uncovered and analyzed attests to the existence of a terrorist capability and a willingness to use it until the day Saddam was forced to flee Baghdad by coalition forces," the report said. "The answer to the question of Saddam's will in the final months in power remains elusive."

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Captured documents reveal multiple links between Saddam, Al Qaida

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses reviewed 600,000 documents, known as the Harmony data base and captured in the Iraq war. The report said Saddam's intelligence services began working with Al Qaida elements against the United States as early as 1993. The president ordered attacks on the U.S. military presence in Arab League states, particularly in Somalia, where Al Qaida was active.

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