Iranian group threatens to murder ex-Muslim Christian pastors

I first became aware of this article through Twitter.
It's an important report, and its sad that the media doesn't give the story any play.
Michael
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/025332.php

Greece: Iranian group threatens to murder ex-Muslim Christian pastors

"Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him" -- Muhammad
Threat to apostates and a larger threat also: "Very quickly all the Europe, America, Israel, and all other satanic authorities of the world will be destroyed with the hands of Islam, the only most holy religion would be increased and scattered throughout all the world and will lead the world.”
Not that this has anything to do with Islam!
"Iranian Extremists Threaten to Kill 3 Ex-Muslim Pastors," by Ethan Cole for the Christian Post, March 20 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):
An Iranian Muslim extremists group identifying themselves as “Hezbollah” sent a letter to three Iranian pastors with a Muslim background threatening them to return to Islam or else risk being murdered.
The radical group calls itself “The Hezbollah Party, Army of the World’s Imam” and accused the pastors of being spies for foreign powers, according to Farsi Christian News Network (FCNN). The extremists demanded the Iranian pastors denounce their faith in Christ and return to Islam.
In the letter delivered to the Iranian pastors on March 11, the group said they are “aware of all anti-Islamic activities” that the men were doing in the churches in Athens and other places.
“And we know that you with some other agents of espionage organizations in the disguise of European and American pastors are deceiving the Muslims, that unfortunately are escaping and going adrift from Iran and Afghanistan and other Arabic countries and changing their religion and their faith, converting them like this into the false Christianity,” the letter read, according to FCNN, which received a copy of the letter from the Farsi-speaking Christian Church in Athens and translated it to English.
Although the three Iranian pastors live and serve in Athens, the Iranian extremists threatened them and their families with death.

Camp David 1978 is back

Arutz Sheva Blog

Camp David 1978 is back in the news. With a new administration, everyone and his mother's uncle are advising President B. H. Obama what to do regarding Israel and especially, those "obstacles to peace", the Jewish communities located in areas of the Jewish national home that was to be reconstituted by international law and where revenant Jews reside legally.

One historian, Arthur Herman, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the subject of Camp David and attacks Jimmy Carter. Here's a portion of what he wrote:

Yet for all their bluster and intransigence in public, Begin and Sadat were more than ready for a deal once they understood that the U.S. would do whatever was necessary to stop the Soviet Union and its Arab allies, such as the PLO, from derailing a peace. An agreement was hammered out for an Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai, coupled with vague language about Palestinian "autonomy." The item Mr. Carter had really wanted on the agenda -- a Palestinian state -- was kept at arm's length.

Camp David worked because it avoided all of Mr. Carter's usual foreign policy mistakes, particularly his insistence on a comprehensive solution. Instead, Sadat and Begin pursued limited goals...

Above all and most significantly, Camp David sought peace instead of "justice." Liberals say there can be no peace without justice. But to many justice means the end of Israel or the creation of a separate Palestinian state. Sadat and Begin, in the teeth of Mr.Carter's own instincts both then and now, established at Camp David a sounder principle for negotiating peace. The chaos and violence in today's Gaza proves just how fatal trying to advance other formulations can be.

This is fine reading of what happened. But then he goes a bit further than the facts would support:

The true story of Camp David is one of two ironies...The second irony is that if any one man deserves credit for Camp David, it is not Jimmy Carter but Anwar Sadat. It was Sadat who managed to save Mr. Carter from himself and revealed the true secret about forging peace in the Middle East: The Palestinian issue is the doom, not the starting point, for lasting stability in the region.

And earlier in the article, Herman implies that Sadat, seeking peace, supposedly, after 1973, sought allies with Nixon and Kissinger. That, I would suggest is revisionism. Sadat? All by himself?

Should we not be asking what happened between 1973 and 1977? Why was there not peace? Could it have been that it was only with Menachem Begin coming upon the scene as Israel's Prime Minister in 1977, that the peace agreement became a possibility? Perhaps it was Sadat's fault there was no peace? Or, could it be that it was really Menachem Begin that deserves the major credit for the success of Camp David, to the extent it was a success?

That peace agreement was achieved by Israel surrendering physical things and Egypt awarding intangibles, easily withdrawn. Who gave up the Sinai despite the 1967 Egyptian aggression? Who gave up the oil fields developed by Israel? What did Sadat yield? Who agreed to an autonomy plan for the Arabs of the Land of Israel? Who only permitted a cold peace to develop?

Whether one agreed with that peace agreement, and I didn't, or not, history should not be permitted to be toyed with and rewritten.

To his credit, Begin managed to keep the Jerusalem issue out of the main body of the agreement, relegating it to an "exchange of letters" on "positions". Sadat, unlike what Herman writes, at least on this issue actually did pursue a "justice" path and, in doing so, almost sabotaged Camp David. Sadat sought to pursue an "Islamic comprehensive peace" but, it seems, Herman doesn't know his own material.

Another item on this subject is provided to us by Gershom Gorenberg, an almost rabid opponent of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. He has reviewed, naturally for the New York Times, Jimmy Carter's newly published book, We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work.

Here's my comment on what he wrote:

A beginning student of the Middle East should not learn diplomatic history from this text. In Carter’s telling, the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem at his prodding. More objective accounts portray Sadat as making an end run around Carter’s stubborn intent to reconvene the Geneva peace conference.

...The agreement with Egypt arguably improved Israel’s security as much as any other single event in its history. Yet a portion of American Jewry has never forgiven Carter for his success. This hints at a key lacuna in Carter’s agenda: though he got into the peacemaking business as a politician, he gives too little attention to the need for building political support for a diplomatic initiative — among voters at home as much as among Israelis and ­Palestinians.

Indirectly, Carter’s title also hints at a second lacuna. Looking for a neutral name for the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, he chooses “Holy Land,” a phrase from Christian tradition. Carter’s perspective is explicitly religious. Though that can irritate secular observers, it has served him well. His faith helped him build personal connections both to Sadat and to the Israeli ­leader Menachem Begin, despite Begin’s intransigence. Yet when he finally presents his outline of a peace agreement here, he makes no new, creative proposal for the future of the holy place claimed by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as Haram al-Sharif. Given Carter’s sensitivity to religious issues, this is surprising and disappointing.

My comments:

a) "arguably". That's an understatement. True, no war has broken out but there have been terror attacks and most of the Hamas arms are coming in through Egypt, stored there in Sinai and transported to Rafah. Terror agents and their Beduin supporters are quite active.

b) "a portion of American Jewry". That's a snide swipe at Jews who support the legitimate right of Jews to live in their homeland, who care for Israel's security and who campaign for US support for those policies as America, unlike Gorenberg it might seem, is democratic. The old "ost-juden"* complaint: it's them you should be angry at, implicate Gorenberg, not me who is grovelling to be accepted by liberal and progressive forces.

c) "'Holy Land', a phrase from Christian tradition". Of course, the Land of Israel is refered to in Jewish tradition as אדמת הקודש - the Holy Land. Since the Land of Israel is where the Divine Presence is, which must be treated with several unique mitzvot (מצוות התלויות בארץ), then Eretz-Yisrael became the Holy Land. As the Prophet Zechariah 2:16 wrote ונחל יה-ה את-יהודה חלקו, על אדמת הקודש; ובחר עוד, בירושלים (in English: And the LORD shall inherit Judah as His portion in the holy land, and shall choose Jerusalem again) and this verse in Isaiah 14:2, וְהִתְנַחֲלוּם בֵּית-יִשְׂרָאֵל עַל אַדְמַת יְה-ה (and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the LORD). The exact term Eretz-Yisrael is in I Samuel 13:19.

Yes, there is an element of religion in the term but it is Jewish primarily.

Of course, if Carter had used "Judea and Samaria" (it does appear in Acts 8:1), Gorenberg would have gone ballistic.

d) "the Temple Mount". Gershom, leave the Temple Mount to us. We know what to do.

And so, if Obama and Hillary and Mitchell take these two men's advice and opinion into consideration, they will fail.

But, will they?

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* a derogatory term of German Jews for their brethren from Poland and the East who were considered by them to be uncultured for acceptance into modern society and that they cast shame on these German Jews.

BackFrom the Precipice

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I am pretty sure everyone has read read enough about the issue of money being given to the Palestinians to be aware of safeguards and other issues regarding the 900 million dollars going to the PA.
I don't believe Obama wishes to destroy Israel.
There are leaders in Israel who have called for the creation of a Palestinian State.
I haven't heard anything from President Obama that I haven't heard, in an even more extreme view, from inside Israel.
Too many people on the left and the right solidify their opinion and reinforce it by only reading from a source that backs them up.
That may feel good, but it is not the same as being informed.
I don't know if we will ever have a President who has actions regarding Israel that will meet with my total satisfaction, we haven't yet.
I do know, however, that if we did have such a President, he would meet with LOTS of opposition within Israel.
I think the best option for Israel is annexation and a State of Israel from the sea to the river.
But I am not the most powerful man in the world with a host of competing factions with opinions as strong as likud's on the one hand and Peace Now on the other, and a world full of other issues to decide.
In short, I think Obama is doing the best he can under the circumstances, and like Bibi Netanyahu, I think the Secretary of State understands the issues and is a good friend of Israel.
I see the 20% or so of Americans who view Obama as, whatever they view him as, an "uppity nigger" or the reincarnation of Joseph Stalin, are not being helpful.
I do not believe that compassion is a bad thing.
I do not believe that it is a weakness.
I don't believe government action is always bad.
Like most Americans, according to a recent WSJ poll, I believe most of America's problems were inherited from Bush, and I believe that Obama is a decent. intelligent man, who is trying to stave off a severe depression.
I believe Americans should unite behind this President, and I believe they are doing so.
We've got to find common ground.
Not neutral ground.
Common ground.
During and before Cast lead, Jews united, they cast aside name calling and united around the idea of survival and self-defense.
FM Livni was the staunchest supporter for the Operation, she didn't want it to end when it did.
The Jews have found a way to unite for thousands of years, to survive.
The U.S. has been a country for over 200 years, but our existence is under attack as well.
I could go on, but everyday I see the strains at the fabric of our society, and something is going to give.
I see ignorance and hate, I see it up close.
At this time, for different reasons, more Americans are united than ever before, and see common threats and common goals,
I believe that this should be encouraged, and is necessary for our country to come back from the precipice.

There Must be a Better Way

You know, there was episode of the original Star Trek, where two aliens, who were virtually indistinguishable from one another fought and tried to kill each over the span of centuries because of their hate for one another.
Star Trek tried to teach us things, sometimes, in a symbolic way, that we could understand in a visceral way.

The scientific evidence I have seen states that Palestinians and Jews are genetically "virtually identical".
I haven't seen anything scientific that argues anything different, has anyone else?

Are the Jews and the Arabs doomed to be locked in mortal combat, killing each other until one side is wiped out completely?
Is that the best we can do?

You would not believe how many arguments I have had with people on these issues, from both wings, from all sides, the same arguments are advanced, and they all lead to the same conclusions.

Both sides do have legitimate issues.
The only thing permanent in life is CHANGE.
Daniel Pearl was murdered while trying to present a fair picture of the situation in this conflict that we discuss here.
Is that a cause for rejoicing?
Did that teach us that all Arabs are bad, and we shouldn't talk to them at all?

Dr Goldstien, OBM, was murdered while avenging the death of Jews, were the Jews who say, "We as Jews do not practice terrorism" wrong to say that?

Is the extent of our response to terrorism confined to killing them back?
I am not just being rhetorical.
I am looking for answers.
Does anyone here have any new ideas?
Does anyone realize that there are solutions more complex than the left's, "Stop Being Jews" or the right's "Nuke 'em"?

Before you answer, PLEASE listen to this video from a Jew and an Arab that are entered in the Eurovison song of the year program.
It features Achinoam Nini, a Yemini Jew, and Mira Awad, an Arab.
Listen to the song a couple of times, and tell me if there is not a better way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EElZvnM85kw