The Sad History of Lebanon

Lebanon used to be considered the most beautiful country in the Middle East. And its capital Beirut was a most popular vacation and commerce site. But in 1967 after the Six Day War, the murderer Arafat (may his name be blotted out forever) moved his murderous crew to southern Lebanon. Rather than insisting that the terrorists disarm and behave (or throw them out like Jordan) the Lebanese government appeased their new terrorist residents leading their country down the road to their destructive take over by Syria and Hezbollah. Mario Loyola, a former Pentagon consultant, and a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has a must read analysis of how Lebanon was destroyed from with-in and what must be done to bring it back to the beauty it once was.

Land of Cedars and Sorrow

National Review
April 16, 2007

The caverns of St. Maron overlook a river that moves barely enough water to break the intense stillness of the northern Bekaa Valley. Soon after the start of the Muslim Arab conquest some 13 centuries ago, the caverns were a refuge for the patron saint of the Maronite Christians. They must have been a good hiding place; you have to be standing right in front of them to see them at all. My guide was the mayor of Kaa, a nearby Christian community just miles from the desolate Syrian frontier. As he scampered up the rocks toward the opening of the caves, I had trouble keeping up with him. He led me to the central chamber of the caverns, and to a small alcove which had been carved out of the sheer rock. At the alcove's center was a large dark cross etched on the cave wall like a prehistoric cave-drawing. Candles, recently extinguished, were collected beneath it. Just a few feet away, in both directions, meter-long vertical slits in the cave wall offered a variety of firing positions from which archers could cover every possible approach. The defenses proved their worth: The Christians are still here. But today, the hopes of Lebanon's recent Cedar Revolution have given way to weariness and fear as the country confronts yet another existential crisis. Once again, the state is simply too weak to overcome the challenges facing it. The danger is mounting for all of Lebanon — but for the Christians most of all. Having lost majority status decades ago, the Christians of Lebanon have had to accept Lebanon's new "Arab face," and also that Lebanon can be sacrificed for Arab causes. Now the rising tide of Islamism endangers their very way of life. To the many millions of Lebanese Christians in the diaspora there may soon be added a million more. The region recalls popular images of the Wild West. The near-total absence of the state is punctuated only by the occasional lonely army outpost with a flag or two inside its perimeter. The one I saw up close was apparently garrisoned by a single feckless soldier. Such are the resources that Lebanon can muster to control the Syrian frontier. Hezbollah, on the other hand, is everywhere. In its public-works projects — as in the dizzying number of yellow posters portraying its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and Ayatollah Khomeini — Hezbollah's presence vastly outmatches that of the government. In many ways, in this part of Lebanon, Hezbollah is the government. Relations between Christians and Shiites here are distant but cordial. But if Hezbollah's presence in the northern Bekaa Valley is not confrontational, its behavior in Beirut is rather different. Today, an area of downtown that includes the financial district and the government palace — called the "Serail" by the Turks who built it in the 19th century — is ringed by barricades and Hezbollah checkpoints. Within the barricades, elite commandos of the Lebanese army sit at firing positions looking over the Hezbollah tent camp. The spectacle of Hezbollah's tents, collected like a besieging army at the doorstep of the central government, is eerily ancient. But its demands are modern enough: After pulling its ministers out of the government, the Hezbollah-dominated opposition claims that the government is illegitimate without its participation, and is insisting on a "blocking third" veto right over all government actions. The government continues to operate, albeit within outlandish restraints. Four of the remaining ministers, including Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, cannot be effectively protected outside the government compound and have taken up semi-permanent residence there. Hezbollah ally Nabih Berri, the Shiite speaker of parliament, is blocking most legislative initiatives, including the electoral law and the bill to establish a special tribunal concerning the murder of onetime prime minister Rafik Hariri. The financial district has been turned into a ghost town. Hundreds of shops and restaurants have had to close, with job losses in the thousands. And the economy has been crippled — since January, it has lost more than 3 percent of GDP. The Cedar Revolution was an outpouring of national sentiment after the assassination of Hariri, just two years ago; it brought an end to 15 years of Syrian control. But today, many Lebanese are complaining that the revolution's leaders have botched it — allowing the Syrian-backed president, Emil Lahoud, to stay in office illegally; allowing Hezbollah ministers into the government; and not moving quickly enough to fill the vacuum left by the Syrians, or to capitalize on the support of the U.N. Security Council. STRANGE TENT-FELLOWS

But whatever the tactical mistakes, the Cedar Revolution had an uphill struggle from the start. As is almost always the case with political alliances in Lebanon, its forces have more enemies in common than they do principles. Formerly the bitter opponents in Lebanon's civil war, the Christian, Druze, and Sunni blocs that make up the governing majority of the Cedar Revolution have no common program for addressing Lebanon's long-term problems — or even a common understanding of what those problems are. Meanwhile, the opposition has maintained a united front. This is odd, because it is itself among the most bizarre and unlikely coalitions in Lebanon's bizarre and unlikely history. Hezbollah has aligned itself on a platform with a collection of Syrian-backed parties — but also with the Free Patriotic Movement of the Christian general Michel Aoun, who in a former life (during the late 1980s) was head of the Lebanese army, then prime minister of Lebanon, and leader of the anti-Syrian resistance. A significant fraction of the Christian community is still loyal to Aoun — and, with good reason, detests the fascistic rival Christian leader, Samir Jaja. Aoun's decision to support Hezbollah has fatally split the Christian community. Michel Aoun has a gentle and even grandfatherly demeanor. I sat with him at his compound in an affluent neighborhood in the hills above Christian East Beirut. "Our strategy is to 'Lebanonize' Hezbollah," he explained. Like the many Lebanese who are willing to tolerate Hezbollah for the time being, Aoun thinks that Hezbollah will willingly give up its weapons after Lebanon's grievances against Israel — disputes over the Shebaa Farms and certain frontier villages, and a handful of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails — have been dealt with. But critics say that Aoun is foolish to think Hezbollah will disarm after the resolution of these grievances. It became clear to me, however, that Aoun is not as friendly to Hezbollah as is commonly supposed by supporters of the Cedar Revolution. Aoun has correctly understood that the salvation of Lebanon depends upon developing strong institutions of national democratic governance. His strategy is to transcend "confessional democracy" through political coalitions based on common interests rather than confessional identity. "It will take a long time," he told me, "and because it will take a long time, it is urgent to start now." Unfortunately, if Aoun is gravely mistaken in trusting Hezbollah, he is almost certainly right in his mistrust of the Sunni "Hariri bloc": After 9/11, the United States asked the government of Lebanon to freeze Hezbollah's bank accounts — and Rafik Hariri, then prime minister, refused. Even now Sunni politicians in Lebanon never question Hezbollah's heroism as a resistance movement, or its right to fight Israel autonomously. In my conversation with him, the polished and charismatic Ahmed Fatfat, a Sunni and one of the most powerful ministers of the Cedar Revolution cabinet, was adamant in his enmity toward Israel, and even called the occupation of Palestinian territories the "greatest injustice in human history." He also told me that majority rule would destroy Lebanon, and argued that the weakness of the state was the very strength of Lebanon's political system. Even in the Christian bloc within the Cedar Revolution, most remain committed to the idea of "consensual" or "confessional" democracy, according to which power centers of the state are specifically reserved for the various communities. According to tradition, the president of Lebanon and the head of the army are Christian; the prime minister is Sunni; the speaker of the parliament is Shiite; the foreign minister is Orthodox Christian; and the defense minister is Druze. Few Lebanese have any faith in majority rule. It is almost a defining premise of Lebanon's constitution that constitutions cannot be trusted — and therein lies its fatal weakness. In Lebanon, majority rule has been compromised out of a desire to defend confessional minorities, but the effect has been to create a state that is incapable of defending itself. A BROADER CONFLICT

As a result of the Six Day War of 1967, several hundred thousand Palestinian refugees — with thousands of Yasser Arafat's heavily armed fedayeen among them — took refuge in South Lebanon. Israel demanded that Lebanon disarm the Palestinian militia. The Lebanese government proved incapable of complying, and fatally agreed to allow the PLO to keep its arms and carry on the war. Thus Lebanon became an unwilling enemy of Israel, and has remained so ever since. It was at this point that Lebanon ceded its sovereignty to armed militias — and never got it back. The presence of an armed Palestinian militia led other groups in Lebanon to arm their own. Militias proliferated, and Lebanon became a powder keg for civil war. Evidence of last summer's war is rare in Lebanon: Bridges destroyed in targeted strikes are the only indication outside Hezbollah-dominated areas that there was any conflict at all. But throughout Beirut, evidence of the civil war of the 1970s and 1980s is commonplace. I saw scores of abandoned buildings scarred by shelling and heavy-machine-gun fire — and this despite decades of steady reconstruction. The Israelis expelled the PLO from Lebanon in 1982, but the militias remained — and so did Syria. After James Baker apparently gave Syria a free hand in Lebanon to gain its support for the 1991 Gulf War coalition, the Syrians became masters of Lebanon. It was during the years of Syrian occupation that Hezbollah rose to the fore as the principal force resisting the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. In 2000, Israel finally withdrew, amidst victory celebrations in which Hezbollah lionized itself for heroic national resistance. The celebrations were hardly over when Hezbollah turned its attention to the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms. This new grievance was hard to justify: The tiny Shebaa Farms had been under Syrian occupation for years before Israel seized the land from Syria. An editorial in the French-language daily L'Orient Le Jour attacked the new Hezbollah goals as a pretext to serve Iranian and Syrian interests at the expense of Lebanon. "Why," asked the editors, "has nobody mentioned the Shebaa Farms before this?" In response to a reporter's question during a visit to London, then–prime minister Hariri implied that there was no longer any reason for Hezbollah to keep its weapons — the goals of the resistance had been achieved. Hezbollah protested loudly, and Hariri was quickly forced to back off his position. But once out of power, Hariri was to prove an increasingly nettlesome problem for the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis; he was assassinated in February 2005, and many attribute the current political crisis to the Lebanese government's decision to cooperate with the international investigation into his death. A project to establish a tribunal is currently paralyzed by the speaker of parliament, the Hezbollah ally Nabih Berri. In any case, the impasse over the current government's legitimacy must come to a head by November, when the pro-Syrian president Lahoud must hand over power to the prime minister in expectation of fresh elections. But Lahoud says that as there is no legitimate government, he will have to remain in power until there is a government that he considers legitimate. Many Lebanese have taken this as a coup foretold. By November, there could be civil war — again. Another time-bomb is the mounting tension over Hezbollah's missiles. I was told that after last year's war, Gen. Michel Sleiman, the Christian head of the Lebanese army, called Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to deliver a frank warning: "The situation with the missiles has to be resolved. This can't continue." But as Hezbollah digs in on the north bank of the Litani River, boasting of 30,000 missiles, the strategic situation is worsening dramatically. As Iran races toward a full nuclear breakout, Hezbollah's missile threat against Israel is being showcased as a prominent counter-deterrent to any American or Israeli strikes. On the ground, the strategic significance of the 28,000 U.N. and Lebanese army troops deployed in South Lebanon is difficult to gauge. On one hand, Hezbollah can barely move around in South Lebanon without running straight into a UNIFIL or Lebanese army patrol. The patrols are not aggressive, but they are everywhere, and their very presence dramatically limits Hezbollah's freedom of action — south of the Litani. But north of the Litani, where Hezbollah is digging in unimpeded, its medium-range missiles can still unleash missile terrorism over the northern third of Israel. Hezbollah is clearly arranging its capabilities so as to use the UNIFIL and Lebanese army troops as a military shield in any conflict with Israel. Many leading Lebanese wave away the tolerance of Hezbollah's weapons as nothing more than a concession to reality, citing the example of Ireland and the IRA. But Ireland never publicly and legally ceded its claim to a monopoly of force. LESS THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS

The most essential weakness of the state in Lebanon lies in the fact that the loyalties of so many Lebanese lie elsewhere. Just as the confessions have sapped the strength of majority rule, the fatal compromise of permitting armed militias to exist and operate freely is motivated chiefly by the tragic ideology of Arab nationalism, which legitimized the PLO's weapons a generation ago, and legitimizes Hezbollah's today. In one important sense, Arab nationalism is merely a secular variant of Wahhabism and Khomeinism. The Koran divides the world into two parts: the House of Islam (that part of the world controlled by Muslims) and the House of War (that part not yet controlled by Muslims). The community of Muslims is called the umma, a concept at once religious and political. It is commonly said that "Arabism is a body whose soul is Islam." Even if secular Arab nationalists don't seek a restoration of the Koranic caliphate, their political "community" is an unmistakable analogue of the Koranic umma. It can hardly be anything else. As former Aoun adviser Roger Azzam pointed out to me, there is no such thing as an Arab "nation." The Arab world consists of a multitude of ethnicities that were "Arabized" by the Muslim conquest. What they have in common is a religious text — the Koran — and the language in which it is written. As for spoken Arabic, one Lebanese friend of mine remembers speaking English to his Moroccan friends when he lived in London, because it was "easier." It is Hezbollah that most clearly reveals the Koran behind the veil of Arab nationalism. Hezbollah fights for all the pan-Arab causes, but it formally recognizes the religious leader of a non-Arab nation — Iran — as the ultimate political authority. In recent years, Iran's Ali Khamenei has issued edicts to Lebanese Shiites instructing them on which way to vote in parliamentary elections. These edicts are communicated by Hezbollah leaders — and the Shiites obey. In this light, Hezbollah's provision of social and other quasi-governmental services takes on a more ominous aspect. Hezbollah is trying to eliminate the relationship between Lebanese Shiites and the state, and create in its stead a political community that depends upon — and attends upon — Tehran. The identification of religious and political authority within Shiite doctrine is the essence of Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution. But it does not command unanimity of support among Shiite clerics. Shiite religious doctrine is currently dominated by two schools of thought — the Qum madrassa in Iran, and the Najaf madrassa in Iraq. As exemplified by the Ayatollah al-Sistani, the Najaf madrassa is a quietist school that believes in the separation of religion and politics. A leading Lebanese exponent of the Najaf madrassa is Mohammad Hajj Hassan, leader of the Free Shiite Union, the most important anti-Hezbollah Shiite political party. HEZBOLLAH 'SECURITY OPERATIONS'

I visited the soft-spoken Hajj Hassan at his modest apartment in a poor Christian suburb of East Beirut. His bodyguards were downstairs, but impossible to detect. He lives alone. After he, his wife, and his daughter were beaten by dozens of Hezbollah thugs in his house in Beirut's Shiite suburb (the assailants told would-be visitors that they were conducting a "Hezbollah security operation"), he sent the two of them to the U.S. for safety, and moved to a Christian area for the same reason. "I know that Muslims are not persecuted in America, as Hezbollah propaganda claims, because my wife and daughter feel safe there." I asked Hajj Hassan whether confessional democracy was the best way for Lebanon — whether majority rule was not essential to the success of democracy in any state. His response was arresting: "Democracy is an integral political idea. You must either accept it totally or reject it totally." I asked him whether he thought that a political accommodation with Hezbollah was possible. He shook his head. "Hassan Nasrallah is the same as Osama bin Laden," he said ruefully. Calm and philosophical, Hajj Hassan was the most impressive of the Lebanese leaders I spoke with. He is much less sanguine about the intentions of Hezbollah than is Michel Aoun. "Iran has invested billions in Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a central part of Iran's 'Arab strategy' for regional domination." And he explained that Iran's nuclear-weapons program is the centerpiece of that strategy. "They will never agree in good faith to limit that program," he said. As a political party, Hezbollah has been astonishingly effective in becoming the dominant political force among Shiites — and excluding all other contenders. As an embryonic state, its activities run the gamut of social services and public works — from water projects to property licensing to the adjudication of commercial disputes. And as a militia, Hezbollah's power is unassailable by any combination of forces in Lebanon. In the words of one Christian MP, "Hezbollah has all the weapons it needs, and better weapons than the Lebanese army." An important part of Hezbollah's strength comes from the decision, taken in 1990 soon after the organization was formally structured, to publicly forsake terrorism against civilians in favor of guerrilla warfare and political action. Americans have not forgotten the bombings that killed hundreds of our diplomats and soldiers; or the plane hijacking in which a young Navy diver was brutally murdered and tossed out on the tarmac; or the journalists and humanitarian workers kidnapped and held for ransom. Nor do we ignore that Hezbollah denies responsibility for these crimes while continuing to embrace them as acts of heroism — as it does the terrorist acts, including 9/11, carried out by other jihadist groups. Hezbollah has been implicated in a number of terrorist acts even since its supposed conversion in 1990 — the Khobar Towers attack, the bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, and others. More important, Hezbollah trains and equips terrorists — both Sunni and Shiite — all over the Middle East, from Hamas and Islamic Jihad to the terror groups fighting on both sides in Iraq. Its intelligence services rival those of many states, and are deeply networked with Iranian and Syrian intelligence operations, as well as a host of terrorist organizations. But the most important danger Hezbollah poses is its political program. Even many Lebanese who do not think Hezbollah is a terrorist organization are nonetheless terrified of it. SOLVING THE UNMANAGEABLE

With the exception of the Iraq War, U.S. policy has tended to manage problems in the Middle East rather than try to solve them. In Lebanon, this will almost certainly prove to be a mistake. The economy continues to slide. Beirut remains a bustling city — but rumors are starting to circulate that if Hezbollah is not disarmed soon, rival communities will begin to form militias again. As the mere possibility of renewed civil war comes into prospect, the climate of political risk will start to create the conditions for a currency crisis. Lebanon is already among the world's most heavily indebted emerging market economies; a currency crisis could push the entire society through the ice from one day to the next. The crucial enemy in Lebanon, as in the broader Middle East, is now the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis. The Bush administration needs to shrug off its Iraq War fatigue and tackle this enemy head-on. It should start with Hezbollah, and the fractures in its base. Hezbollah seeks to appeal to four disparate constituencies: the religious Shiite base, which is ideologically committed to the Khomeini revolution, but which remains a minority of Hezbollah's support; the nonreligious Shiites who think little of Hezbollah's social doctrines (it is common to see Shiite women in tight jeans and T-shirts) but who increasingly depend upon Hezbollah for social services; the non-Shiite Muslim (and Christian) opinion that tolerates it as an anti-Israeli resistance force; and the worldwide collectivist alliance of Islamist and left-leaning anti-American forces. The U.S. should take advantage of these fissures. First, it should support liberal Shiites: Hajj Hassan told me that the opening of a liberal, Najaf-style madrassa in Lebanon, which could be operated for a few hundred thousand dollars a year, would make a big difference — by graduating liberal clerics willing and able to tackle the Khomeinist religious leadership of Hezbollah. Second, it should work to strengthen the scope and capacity of the Lebanese state in its security presence and in the provision of services. Third, it should bring greater diplomatic pressure to bear against the legitimacy that Hezbollah enjoys as a resistance movement. Finally, it should stress that to the extent that Islamist and socialist worldviews are compatible with each other, they are fundamentally obnoxious to liberalism as understood in America. Beyond Hezbollah lies the problem of Syria. Its regime is pernicious precisely because it is so weak. Like Saddam's tyranny in Iraq, the power of the Assad dynasty rests upon an ethnic minority that has no legitimate claim to rule the country. Its borders are meaningless — and terrorism flows past them unimpeded. More than one leading Lebanese politician told me that hastening the demise of the regime in Damascus was the single most helpful thing the U.S. could do. Above all, the U.S. must cast away the diplomatic fiction that it takes no position on issues of internal Lebanese politics. Without a strong state capable of establishing central authority, Lebanon is likely to fail — and with it, America's hopes in the Middle East. The Lebanese army must be strengthened if it is to defend the authority of the state. And those leaders who support democracy must be able to count on our help. I was aghast when Hajj Hassan told me that I was only the third American he had ever talked to. As the world's oldest democracy, America must share what it has learned — that majority rule is not a danger to democracy, but is essential to it; that minorities must be protected by the constitution, and not at its expense; that while government should always be limited in its powers, its authority must be supreme; and that the rule of law is the one thing on which a free society most vitally depends. Early one evening I was driving through an outlying part of East Beirut when I heard, from a nearby Muslim enclave, the call to evening prayers. Broadcast from the minaret of the enclave's mosque, that enchanting voice reminded me that I was in the Muslim world. Then — the strangest thing — I heard church bells; first in ones and twos, and then from all directions, calling worshipers to the evening Mass — church bells everywhere. For a moment, all the problems of Lebanon seemed fleeting. I pondered how much older was the sound of church bells here than the Muslim call to prayers — how much more ancient. Still, I could only wonder: Centuries hence, will this land still be graced by the sound of church bells? To pray for that is to pray for Lebanon — and all its people.

Mario Loyola, a former Pentagon consultant, is a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Another Democratic Foreign Policy SCREW-UP: Majority Leader Hoyer

Nancy Pelosi is not the only Democrat seeking to make their own foreign policy, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. (seen here with a key political adviser) spent some of his time last week with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a world-wide Islamist movement dedicated to the credo: "G-d is our objective, the Quran is our Constitution, the Prophet is our leader, struggle is our way, and death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations." As stated on its charter and its website, the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to install a just Islamic empire and a Caliphate across the Muslim world, through stages designed to "Islamicize" targeted Muslim majority nations by all lawful means available."

This movement was founded in Egypt almost 80 years ago, this movement has been a thorn in the side of Egyptian Government, and since the Sadat came to Jerusalem tension have been rising. Recently things have gotten even worse. Long a peaceful movement, the brotherhood has been accused of forming a militia and threatening the security of Egypt. I would imagine that President Mubarak is real pleased with this Democratic Foreign Policy Snafu.

Top Democrat meets Hamas-supporting group

Muslim organization seeks to impose worldwide Islamic theocracy

JERUSALEM – It was revealed yesterday a top U.S. Democratic congressman last week met a leader of Egypt's main opposition group, which has strong ties to Hamas and seeks to impose an Islamic theocracy throughout the Middle East and eventually around the world.

The meeting took place just one day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Syria last Wednesday against the recommendations of the White House drew widespread domestic criticism and also sharp praise from some Palestinian terror groups.

Visiting House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer met twice on Thursday with the head of the Muslim Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc, Mohammed Saad el-Katatni. One meeting took place at the Egyptian parliament and the second at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, Brotherhood spokesman Hamdi Hassan said.

The U.S. Embassy in Cairo confirmed the meeting, but would not disclose what was discussed.

The Brotherhood's Hassan said Hoyer discussed with the group developments in the Middle East, the "Brotherhood's vision" and the status of opposition movements in Egypt.

The Brotherhood seeks the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's regime and the creation of a region-wide Islamic caliph that would eventually spread around the world. The Hamas terror group, responsible for dozens of suicide bombings in Israel, was founded in 1987 as a military offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

Although there are some tactical differences between the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas – the Brotherhood says it is committed to a non-violent, reformist approach to Islamic takeover – experts say they are concerned by the current level of cooperation between the two organizations.

Reuven Erlich, director of the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at Israel's Center for Special Studies, highlighted recently captured Hamas posters and material from the West Bank and Gaza which list Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna as one of the most important figures to Hamas.

"We found al-Banna's face all over Hamas material. He is an important part of Hamas culture and ideology and is held by them in the highest regard," Erlich told WND.

Palestinian security sources close to Hamas told WND Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Mahdi Akif has been serving as a replacement Hamas spiritual leader ever since Israel assassinated former spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin in March 2004.

"Whenever there is an organizational spiritual issue, Hamas takes it to Akif," said the Palestinian source. "He gave them the blessing to run in the elections and was instrumental in using Islamic tradition to deduce it was OK to join the government. The Brotherhood in essence is helping run Hamas. And Akif is the most important religious personality in the Hamas leadership right now."

Once notorious for assassinations and militant activity, the Brotherhood said it renounced violence in the 1970s and has instead been trying to gain influence in Egypt through running for office and leading social welfare programs.

Analysts say Mubarak considers the Brotherhood a major challenge to his government. It scored very well in the latest Egyptian elections, winning an unprecedented 20 percent of the Parliament and trouncing all other opposition parties in spite of widespread reports of massive election tampering on the part of Mubarak's National Democratic Party.

In previous visits to Egypt, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused to meet with the Muslim Brotherhood members, although U.S. policy doesn't bar such meetings.

The Hoyer meeting took place a day after Pelosi became the most senior U.S. official to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad since Syria was widely blamed for assassinating former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005. Until then, the U.S. has largely enforced an isolation of Assad's regime.

Pelosi last week announced at a press conference she "determined that the road to Damascus is the road to peace."

"We came in friendship, hope," she said.

Syria, which signed a military alliance with Iran, openly hosts Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders. Israel says Syria has been allowing large quantities of weapons to be transported from its borders to the Lebanese-based Hezbollah militia, which last summer engaged in a war with the Jewish state. Syria has been accused of supporting the insurgency against U.S. troops in Iraq; and generating unrest in Lebanon.

Pelosi's and Hoyer's visits are the latest reports of Democrats meeting with terror supporting groups.

In December, WND reported a key Hamas official claimed the terror group held meetings in Europe with "important Democrats." He claimed the Democrats applauded Hamas' willingness to accept a long-term cease-fire with the Jewish state in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal to what is known as the pre-1967 borders – meaning an evacuation of the Gaza Strip, West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem.

British Political Correctness Will Lead to More Hatred

As you may already know, A report by the U.K. Department for Education and Skills says that schools in England are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils. The headline story on the right is a good example of what happens with a lack of Holocaust education.

This "political correctness" gone wild will result in nothing but much more hatred. In today's New York Post, Barry Rubin director of the Global Research in International Affairs writes an op-ed piece telling us about the dangers of the silliness taking place in UK schools.

New York Post

U.K. SCHOOLS' SICKENING SILENCE
By BARRY RUBIN

April 8, 2007 -- AS a Middle East specialist, I daily see material from Arab and Islamic sources containing hair-raising threats against America, Israel and the West. But an item in a British newspaper may be the scariest sentence I ever read: A report by the U.K. Department for Education and Skills says that schools in England are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils.

And it's not just that the institution most entrusted with preserving democratic society and Western civilization - the school system - is betraying that trust.

The really scary sentence is this: "Some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial."

Get it? These kids are told at home or by Muslim preachers that the Holocaust never happened - teachers aren't challenging that misinformation, they're shutting up so as not to disturb a world view based on lies.

By the same token, schools are dropping lessons on the Crusades. And not even for the poor excuse that such teaching might stir social conflict, but rather because "lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques." Another worry cited in press reports: "Fears [that] Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class."

It's not just Britain; in France, the rot has gone even further.

Thus, British and French educators are ready to abandon 500 years of progress owing to open intellectual inquiry through the use of logic. The schools won't confront or challenge students but rather will leave them safe in their prejudices.

Aside from the broader implications, such behavior constitutes a reinforcement of racism, intolerance and hatred in the name of a philosophy - political correctness - that is supposed to combat these things.

Note, also, that there have been no riots or mass protests to demand this rush to preserve ignorance. This is not only surrender but a preemptive one - offered before it's even demanded.

Up until now, democratic, modern societies have successfully absorbed large numbers of immigrants because of the process of assimilation (or, in milder form, acculturation). The idea, so successful in the United States, has been that immigrants must accept the society's rules. And why not, since it has been so successful? The West's stability, freedom and material benefits are why people come. Immigrants were and are free to keep most of their own culture and all of their religion.

But now the successful, free society feels compelled to adapt to less successful, unfree ones. Where does it end? Can schools teach democracy to those told this is heresy, because laws can only be made by God? Can evolution, if it contradicts what is said in mosques, or might provoke complaints in class?

Can we even teach the value of tolerance itself? That, too, might upset those who have been taught intolerance.

This new approach also condemns Muslims to be slaves of the radical Islamists among them. Rather than challenge extremism, the schools would reinforce it. They would tell students hungry for knowledge and freedom to shut up and believe what their mullahs say.

Any Muslim female student who does not want to wear concealing clothes or wanted personal freedom can't depend on help or validation from French or British society - which instead sentence her to imprisonment in a behavioral and intellectual ghetto.

I'll note one final horrifying element of all this - perhaps the worst of all: the passivity with which Europeans are excusing or ignoring this revolution against their most basic and precious freedoms.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center. His next book, "The Truth about Syria," hits stores in May.

Mideast Quartet Refuses to Listen to the Truth

Every time the EU or US talks about Palestinian President Abbas, it is done with such reverence. Almost like they are Kvelling at how good a person he is . "Oy Such a Moderate you never know from" The fact is that the entire quartet has closed their ears to the truth about Abbas, the Fatah movement he leads and their new political partner Hamas.

You probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Hamas charter still calls for the violent liberation of all of "Palestine" which they consider everything east of the Mediterranean, but the Charter of the moderate Abbas-led Fatah, is just as bad as Hamas'.

Morton Klien of the ZOA writes about the Charter's of the component groups that make up the P.U.T.Z. government in today's Arutzsheva.com (below):

Compare and Contrast: Hamas and Fatah Charters

by Morton A. Klein

Why the deafening silence on their charters?

When Yasser Arafat and the PLO signed the Oslo Agreement with Israel in 1993, Israel, the US, other nations and newspaper editorials insisted that it was necessary for the PLO to revoke its Charter with its many clauses calling for Israel's destruction and the use of terrorism. Until it did this, it was not held to have met a necessary condition for peace. Why, then, is the world not demanding the same charter revocation from Ismail Haniyeh's Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah, which make up the new Palestinian Authority (PA) government?

The Hamas and Fatah charters are worse than that of the PLO.

One could even argue that the Hamas and Fatah charters are worse than that of the PLO. In its Charter, Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel (Article 15) and the murder of Jews (Article 7). It claims to be fighting a world-wide anti-Muslim conspiracy led by Jews and cites in support of its ideology the classic anti-Semitic forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Article 32). It says that it is at war with the non-Muslim world as part of a global campaign of jihad (Introduction), and that Hamas respects and appreciates other jihad movements waging war on non-Muslims (Article 23). In short, it is a totalitarian movement bent on domination and, when it comes to Jews, extermination.

Fatah's Constitution, like that of Hamas, calls to this very day for the destruction of Israel and the eradication of Jewish national existence (Article 12), and for the use of terrorism as an indispensable part of the struggle for that goal (Article 19). In short, its goals are largely similar to those of Hamas and virtually identical to those of the PLO.

Hamas and Fatah have backed their words with deeds. Since the start of the Palestinian Arab terrorist wave in September 2000, each group has deliberately murdered nearly 500 Israelis each and maimed thousands more in scores of suicide bombings and hundreds of other terrorist attacks. The numbers would be even larger if not for Israel's extraordinarily effective police and counter-terrorism efforts.

President Bill Clinton himself deemed the PLO Charter cancellation so important a step that, in 1998, he flew to Gaza to attend the meeting at which the Charter was supposedly revoked. That revocation was ambiguous and did not occur in the manner specified by the PLO's own rules. Nevertheless, the world loudly proclaimed that this crucial step had been achieved.

So, why now the deafening silence on the Hamas and Fatah charters from the world today? Because it does not believe that they would ever revoke them and because it does not want a further stumbling block to more Israeli concessions.

If that is the case, genuine peace is not possible and therefore Israel should not be pressured into making any new concessions to encourage and strengthen a Hamas-Fatah regime bent on destruction and terrorism, not peace. It also exposes the fact that the world is mindlessly hurtling toward a Palestinian state without considering the consequences of it likely becoming a sovereign terrorist state. In fact, a recent poll shows that Americans believe by an overwhelming majority that such a state would be just such a terrorist state.

The requirements that have been asked of Hamas leaders - that they simply verbally declare that they recognize Israel, renounce terrorism and accept past agreements - are insufficient. At a minimum, some concrete action is needed by Hamas and Fatah to give some credence to such words.

Indeed, Hamas and Fatah must amend their charters and replace them with new charters, which make it clear that they have completely reformed themselves. As the former
At a minimum, some concrete action is needed....
Canadian Minister for Justice, renowned human rights activist and Member of Parliament Irwin Cotler, has recently and correctly stated, "The first thing that is required of Hamas and Fatah is that both their charters must be changed."

It is time for the US and the world to demand that before there are any further negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas or anyone else in the PA, and before any concessions are considered by Israel, the movements to which PA leaders belong formally renounce and legally abrogate their charters, substituting new ones. The new charters must clearly and publicly accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, proclaim a commitment to fight terrorism and end incitement to hatred and murder. If they can't do that, there's really nothing to talk about.