And vice-versa, with a vengeance. The determination of those who do not know, and do not want to find out, about the ideology of Islam -- headed at this point by the in-over-her-head Condoleezza Rice -- and wish to push Israel into yet one more deal leading to an impossible "solution" that consists of Israeli concessions, not the least of which is, yet one more time, the farce of conceding what should never be conceded, which is that there exists a discrete (and what's more, practically ancient) "Palestinian people," that this "Palestinian people" somehow existed in what is now Israel since time immemorial, though all the Western visitors in the nineteenth century, prior to the Zionist return and the economic revival in the land, saw only ruin and desolation and depopulation, and that, furthermore, the very notion of "defensible borders" (a key proviso Resolution 242, and one whose meaning may change given the greater military resources now available to the Arab side -- not that Israel remains under any obligation to stick to that resolution, given that the Arabs have let forty years pass without indicating a willigness to adhere to it themselves), and mainly, that any concessions to the Arab and Muslim side could conceivably lead to a permanent peace.

Not only can it never lead to such a peace, but it will do worse: such concessions, in such an American-brokered agreement, where Islam is never discussed, or recognized as central to the Arab siege of Israel, a siege that will never let up but can be contained, as long as Israel is seen to be overwhelmingly more powerful. But at the first sign of weakness, Arabs will demand of their governments that they attack, and some of those governments will need no urging from the street to do so.

The refusal of Rice and the rest of those busily deciding Israel's fate, in order to come up with some "success" -- a "success" that could conceivably cost Israel its very life -- to make up for all the mess, the mess of Iraq, and the mess of Afghanistan, and the mess of Pakistan, the total mess of failing to identify the ideology of Islam as the menace, and all that has naturally followed from that initial and massive failure -- to find out about Islam, to find out about the basis for all Muslim treaty-making with Infidels (hint: look up "Hudaibiyya"), to find out just what the duty of Jihad is, what goals it is to attain, and how central or tangential the duty of Jihad is to Believers in Islam, and further, the various instruments by which Jihad may be conducted, other than the obvious conventional and unconventional (terrorism) means of making war.

Without this steady focus on Islam, everything else, all plans, whether in Iraq or Pakistan or Afghanistan or in, yet one more time, an attempt to have some kind of phony "peace process" and get a "solution" (there is no "solution") to the Arab war on Israel, with that impossibly sure-of-herself, and impossibly ignorant Rice, presuming so very much, at such great cost to others, who have done nothing to deserve being sacrificed on the alter of her own rigidity, stupidity, timidity -- but at least not, in her case though possibly in that of others who have made Middle Eastern policy, cupidity. Three of the four elements of the Esdrujula Explanation isn't bad, which is to say, in an unpretty epanorthosis, isn't good.

Pressure on Israel, concessions forced out of Israel -- and even meeting with the "Palestinians" and "recognizing" their "rights" is a terrific concession that the Arabs and Muslims use, pocketing every occasion to legitimize their careful fiction -- will have consequences for the Infidels inside and outside the MIddle East. Any weakening of Israel will weaken the position of Maronites and Copts, and Assyrians, even if many of those Arabic-speaking Christians are loath to publicly recognize that (as Bishop Moubarac of Beirut, back in 1947, was not at all shy about recognizing). And outside the Middle East, especially in Europe, the position of Infidels will be weakened if for no other reason, than any victory, including a malevolent diplomatic one, will be seen as a triumph by Muslims, as one step further in pushing Israel back to a position of impossible vulnerability, and what's more, getting the Americans to do it -- that is, using one Infidel power to constrain or weaken another. What, from the Muslim point of view, could be better? And since Muslims everywheree are keenly aware of Muslim victories and defeats everywhere, any further surrenders by Israel -- and any "solution" and especially a two-state "solution" is a surrender beyond belief -- will fill Muslims with a sense that they are on the march, that they are unstoppable, and their next conquest, which is already underway through what appears to them to be inexorable demographic trends -- trends that are by no means inexorable if the states of Western Europe decide to halt all Muslim immigration, to eject all Muslim non-citizens, to prevent the Saudis and other rich Arabs from building and maintaining mosques and madrasas, and then making the conduct of Muslim life more rather than less difficult, and finally, if necessary, emulating what Benes and Masaryk, two men who embodied the hopes of what was universally recognized as one of the most tolerant and advanced states in Europe, Czechoslovakia, but which felt compelled, for its own security, to expel the Sudeten Germans -- an expulsion that did not lead to the slightest outcry from any Czech then or since, or from any Western leader, then or since. Nor do we regard, nor should we regard, the Czechs with the slightest disdain for doing what, with the Benes Decree of 1946, they did do.

There are ways to protect the legacy of Western civilization. But they will only be accepted if the unique nature of that legacy is recognized, and if there is further recognition of the threat that Islam poses to that legacy, to that art, that science, that free and skeptical inquiry, that everything that Islam menaces -- menaces in the Balkans, menaces in England and France and Germany and the Netherlands and Denmark and Norway and Sweden and everywhere. Even if the inheritors of that legacy are themselves unworthy of it, and feel they are unworthy, they have a duty to protect it, and to pass it on, for perhaps others, having been chastened by a close call with the forces of organized Islam, will cling more respectfully and gratefully to that heritage than, at this point, many seem to be capable of doing.

Posted by: Hugh at November 8, 2007 12:34 AM

Now it is. During the 1999 bombing of Serb Christians because of a non-existent genocide of albanian islamists, independent Kosovo was not admitted to be bad for anyone. The naive hope that islamic world would ever be grateful for any help, proved to be exactly that - naive. No one is going to forget their prophets' orders to kill us just because we killed our own to protect muslims. No gratitude, but contempt for the stupid Christians, who killed each other to appease islam. Appeasement never works.

Posted by: Excommie at November 8, 2007 12:57 AM

Milosevic was a deplorable tryant and it does seem he and his henchmen were guilty of "ethnic cleansing." However, one question remains, which has not been explored by historians. To what extend were these atrocities "provoked?" I don't mean that this justifies what happens, but if, as some evidence suggests, foreign (non-Balkan Islamist) activities were involved in destabilizing the region and fomenting religious and ethnic distrust and discord, that would add another layer of complexity to the situation.

Just because one group acts heinously does not mean that its "enemy" was not also acting heinously and perhaps under the influence of a global jihad movement that would benefit from a bait-and-run strategy. This all happened in the interlude between Afghanistan and 9/11, when "Afghani Arab" Islamists were looking for new opportunities.

The role that Arab and other non-Balkan Muslims played in the entire post-Yugoslavia horror has not been adequately explored.

We are still falling into the guilt-trap with regard to the Balkans, even though we were the only ones who did anything there to stop the insanity. Non-Balkan Muslims may have been trying to make the situation a crisis at the expense of their Balkan Muslim "brethren" in order to create a new victim group to win over soft humanitarian Westerners. They may have even hoped for Western intervention to weaken already weak non-Muslim governments in the Balkans, which they got from the Clinton administration.

Just imagine, though, if to some extent, our involvement even ostensibly on the side of the persecuted Balkan Muslims was the result of our falling into a kind of trap set by non-Balkan Islamists working in the region. In this case, the non-Balkan Muslims would have been used in the way that Palestinians have been used by Arabs, as geopolitical pawns. Unlike the Palestinians, though, who thought of themselves as South Syrians and did not have a distinct identity before Arafat and who developed their own strong self-propelling death cult ideology, Balkan Muslims had in fact learned to co-exist with non-Muslims over hundreds of years.

Balkan Muslims, in fact, represented an alternative path for Islam: one of relative peacefulness and coexistence. This must have made them seem like non-Muslim apostates to the Wahhabis, who came in with lots of money and manpower as soon as the fall of Communism and the ensuing instability allowed them.

Even now, Saudi Arabia is providing funds for building mosques and "rebuilding" the Muslim community in the Balkans. Of course, they are explicitly not allowing the rebuilding of historical Byzantine-style mosques (which reek too much of Christian influence and assimilation and co-existence). They are funding the building of new mosques that distribute the hate literature they are so well-known for. Saudi Arabia is thus working to radicalize Balkan Muslims. This process started well before and involved jihadi elements, including "Afghan Arabs," working to bring jihad to the region.

Historians should look into these things.

Posted by: Wimbledon Womble at November 8, 2007 12:57 AM

Milosevic, as bad as he may have been, could absolutely be controlled by diplomacy. Given one has a top diplomat a little better than not-at-all-bright, and willing to do their job instead of asking "why do you need the best military on the world if you will not use it?" In any normal administration, the top negotiator surrendering their functions to the military will be thus signing their resignation. If V. Chernomyrdin was capable to force Miloshevic to accept KFOR in Kosovo, he sure could be force him to cease any action there without a war.Not-at-all-bright did not even bother to ask the right people.

Posted by: Excommie at November 8, 2007 1:06 AM

It is time now for President Bush and his administration to make some policy changes regarding Kosovo.

When war in Bosnia ended, terrorist infrastructures remained in the Balkans and served as a basis for their intervention in the confrontation that developed in the Balkans in the late-1990s, most especially in Kosovo and Macedonia.

Under the Clinton administration, the U.S. and NATO bombed Serbia for approx 2 1/2 months to support the ethnic Albanian majority of Kosovo. While viewing war coverage from the western press, it appeared as if Americans were standing up for the underdog, the poor helpless Muslim Albanians.

But there was a story that was ommitted from the western press. Kosovo belongs to the Serbs and is considered to be the heartland of Serbia. Kosovo is the cultural and spiritual home of Christian Serbia. Conversely, the Albanians, who were fighting for Kosovo's independence, belonged to the KLA, a group with ties to Osama Bin Laden, and a group recognized by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist group.

Sadly, the Serbian army was fighting its own war against Islamic terrorism, and the United States supported the terrorists and defeated the Serbian military campaign.

Today, Serbs are approximately 10% of the population. They are poor and are unable to leave their neighborhoods without feeling threatened.

The misinformed international community, instead of challenging the malicious Albanians that invaded Kosovo, is asking that the few Serbs left in Kosovo should vacate their own country.

They want to make Kosovo and "independent" country that will no doubt become a Muslim state which will be used as a launching pad for more jihad intervention in Europe.

The United States should reverse its current policy towards Kosovo by halting its support for independence from Serbia.

It is true that an overt motivation of US policy on Kosovo is to curry favor in the Islamic world. But is is naive for President Bush and his policymakers to believe that the U.S. will gain a public opinion makeover from the Muslim world for advancing Kosovo's independence cause.

Posted by: Johnathan at November 8, 2007 2:44 AM

This entire Kosovo saga has been a result of fools in authority in the USA, the EC and their stupid ignorance, wishful thinking, cowardly appeasement.
Give Kosovo independence, like Bosnia, partition India to form that sewer Pakistan, pressure Israel to give up the "Occupied Territories" (illegally occupied by arab moslems).
Pressurise Thailand & Phillipines to negotiate with islamist terrorists, pressure India over Kashmir, appease pakistan, ignore the plight of the Christians/non moslems in dar al islam.

Until one day they will want Luton, Bradford, Manchester, NY, NJ, Netherlands, Sweden.
Then what will monkey boy bush, his cronies and the EC do then ??

Makes me sick !!!!

Posted by: apostate_islam at November 8, 2007 7:00 AM

Too late on Israel-the pressure has been on it for years to hand over more and more land to the palestinians-now Olmert says its OK to hand over half of Jerusalem. No wonder the Serbs and Israelis see themselves in the same leaking boat. Both are the favorite whipping boys of the West.

Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS at November 8, 2007 7:56 AM

Whether or not the US Kosovo policy is bad for Israel, is of little interest to US citizens. The US policy in Kosovo of creating an independent Kosovo in Europe is bad for Europe and the US.

Posted by: Jerry M at November 8, 2007 8:29 AM

Kosovo is a mirror image of Palestine. Just like Bethlehem, Ramallah, East Jerusalem, Nazareth and many other cities of the "West Bank" and the Galil, Kosovo was populated by indigenous Christians descended from the original ancient population. In both there was a Muslim minority but the Christians built a peaceful and prosperous society. In Palestine, the Christians welcomed the returning Jews and lived in peace with them. In Kosovo the Christians also lived peacefully with the small Kosovor Jewish community.

Then came the Muslim squatters with their astronomical birthrates: Arabs to Palestine and Albanians to Kosovo swamping the indigenous populations. In Palestine they even imposed the Arabic language on the Christian population. Then, in both cases, these Muslims allied with the Nazis and revelled in killing Jews. Afterward they turned their violence on the Christians and today we see the results.

Posted by: Provoslavni at November 8, 2007 10:49 AM

Jerry wrote: " Whether or not the US Kosovo policy is bad for Israel, is of little interest to US citizens."

Sadly, this is true. Americans are more interested in what Brittney Spears does to her car or what Jacko is selling his ranch rather than learning about the plight of Serbian Christians in Kosovo. If the event is ever covered in the news, the misinformed liberal western media will present the story as sympathetic to the Albanian Muslims.

Posted by: Johnathan at November 8, 2007 11:00 AM

Johnathan,

"the misinformed liberal western media will present the story as sympathetic to the Albanian Muslims."

I have to disagree with that. To say the media is misinformed would mean they are reporting in good faith. If we with as little resources know the truth, the media should with their vast wealth of information. They arent misinformed, they have an agenda.

Posted by: Elric66 at November 8, 2007 11:04 AM

I sincerely HOPE Jim, et al sent this to the State Department????

That way, at least you can loudly say "I told you so, ya dummy" when they make the mistake anyway!

Posted by: Miss_Anthrope at November 8, 2007 11:14 AM

I wonder if US-Russian relations would improve if the Bush administration backed away from this nonsense of an independent Kosovo. Perhaps the Russians would be more willing to help us prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon.

Posted by: irish_infidel at November 8, 2007 11:15 AM

Czechoslovakia, but which felt compelled, for its own security, to expel the Sudeten Germans -- an expulsion that did not lead to the slightest outcry from any Czech then or since, or from any Western leader, then or since.

Are you still making those claims, even after having been shown to be mistaken? Or are you relying on some hyper-technical definition, under which neither President Havel's comment nor his letter to President Weisäcker would qualify as "the slightest outcry"?

Posted by: Seamus at November 8, 2007 11:17 AM

Milosevic was a deplorable tryant and it does seem he and his henchmen were guilty of "ethnic cleansing."

Whatever Milosevic did (and there is good reason to question whether anything he did constituted ethnic cleansing before the bombs started falling in 1999) was peanuts compared to the decisive ethnic cleansing of Serbs that the Albanians have carried out in and since 1999.

Posted by: Seamus at November 8, 2007 11:22 AM

Nothing's good for Israel!

The only Jews (in Israel) reproducing fast enough to counter the muslim demographic dawa are the Haredim (super orthodox), but they are pacifists and antagonistic to Zionism. They don't and won't serve in the army!

Meanwhile, the Zionists are "just like Americans." They have 1-2 kids per family, don't give a rat's ass about abortion, but they will defend the land.

So the Zionists want to hold on to Jerusalem to protect its Jewish character, a Jewish character that is dependent on the thousands and thousands of "dhimmi" orthodox Jews (Chassidim, Lubavitch, Nturie Karta and their ilk)who are massively settling in Jerusalem, but who wouldn't lift a finger to fight the jihadists.

What good can come out of this? Nothing!

Go ahead and share Jerusalem with the Muslims. If "el-Quds" is so terribly important to the muslim mindset, then let them show it by stewarding Jerusalem properly. Sharing Jerusalem will show if co-existence is in fact possible.

And the downside? That the treacherous mohammedans renege on their promises? Then the much more powerful Israelis will have to re-grab it and we're back to where we started.

Moral: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Posted by: Ynkedoodl2 at November 8, 2007 11:26 AM

Of course, it's a little ironic that Jatras and Trifkovic should advance, as a "pro-Israel" argument against the imposition of Kosovar independence, that "[i]t would set the precedent that a solution to an intractable political and territorial quarrel can and should be imposed by outside countries, even if one of the parties rejects the proposed solution as contrary to its vital national interests," when exactly that precedent was set by General Assembly 181(II), which called for the partition of Palestine, against the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants.

Posted by: Seamus at November 8, 2007 11:29 AM

I just realized my 11:29 post should have referred to "General Assembly *Resolution* 181(II)." Sorry if omission of the word "resolution" caused any confusion.

Posted by: Seamus at November 8, 2007 12:03 PM

...the US has a Kosovo policy???.....

Posted by: exsgtbrown at November 8, 2007 1:25 PM

Whatever the propaganda,U.S's desire to appease
their Muslim buddies like the Saudis etc-tell me please exactly by what right or moral judgment
did America authorise NATO [controlled by America]
to bomb Serbia for 78 days with uranium depleted
bombs destroying Serbia's infrastructure, polluting and poisoning its rivers and forests for
decades to come? Serbia was your ally in two world
wars losing millions, it had never attacked the U.S or any NATO Country.
At the same time America's ALLY Turkey was butchering 30,000 of its own Kurds with nary a whisper of
Human Rights Abuses from Clinton,Blair, Albright &
Co...
Do you think Serbia INVENTED Ethnic Cleansing which was recently claimed by an ignorant lawyer
at The Hague?? Serbia has been and still is ethnically cleansed so many times that in Kosovo
WHERE THEY WERE A MAJORITY a hundred years ago-
a few thousand remain in ghettos...
During the 90's War-we were told by Media including BBC that 200,000 people had perished in
this 'genocide.' A Muslim Researcher has only been
able to come up with 100,000-so to make that BIG
a mistake shows how unreliable biased witnesses are.
It's okay for America TO DECIDE TO GIVE AWAY
ANOTHER COUNTRY'S LAND-WHY DON'T YOU GIVE THE ALBANIANS TEXAS THEN BUSH CAN HEAR THEIR PHONY CHEERS EVERY DAY??[He'll need a supply of Rollexes
of course.]

Posted by: Morgane at November 8, 2007 3:28 PM

...the US has a Kosovo policy???.....

Posted by: exsgtbrown
________________________

There's you gd policy

"Bush insists Kosovo must be independent and receives hero's welcome in Albania"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2099981,00.html

excuse me now while I go loose my lunch.

Posted by: TheRegulator at November 8, 2007 3:28 PM

"Whether or not the US Kosovo policy is bad for Israel, is of little interest to US citizens."
-- from posting above

Really? There are plenty of American, and other citizens of the Western world, who understand perfectly what damage -- permanent, deep, irremediable damage -- would be done to the morale of the West, to the very idea and the very existence of the West, if Israel were to go under, were to be allowed to go under.

The hidden, slowly-being-understood civilizational costs of what went on when the Western world abandoned the Jews, or some in that world eagerly supported Hitler, are a great part of the reason that the Western world now lacks the self-confidence to preserve itself and its own legacy, and embarrassed by a bad conscience, made all the worse by those who refuse to own up to what was done, helps cause that lack of morale now being exploited by Muslims and others who envy and hate the West, and do not wish it well.

Posted by: Hugh at November 8, 2007 3:43 PM

The only Jews (in Israel) reproducing fast enough to counter the muslim demographic dawa are the Haredim (super orthodox), but they are pacifists and antagonistic to Zionism. They don't and won't serve in the army!

Ynkedoodl2,

I'm sorry but you are badly misinformed. First of all, out of the “Chassidim, Lubavitch, Nturie Karta” you quote, only the Neturei Karta, who are a slightly mad fringe group within the Hareidim, are "antagonistic to Zionism". They are marginal, both politically - and in numbers - despite siring many children. However the absolute majority of the Hareidim - or othodox Jews - is Zionist. I assume that by "Zionist" you mean believing in the moral right of the Jews to have their own Jewish State and call it Israel.

While it is true that until some years ago the number the orthodox in the armed forces was small the picture has changed dramatically.
There is a new and growing trend that while more and more secular Israelis - especially on the Left - are questioning and revising Zionism, advocating division of Jerusalem, more territorial concession and even opening borders to "Palestinian" refugees and some more of the idiocy which here passes under the name of multiculturalism there is a quickly increasing number of hareidim joining the army. It can hardly be due to their dhimmi mentality and pacifism you ascribe them.

I just read of a hareidi F-16 pilot. Now how that squares with your strange and completely false picture you are painting?

The shift I am talking about is quite discernible, widely acknowledged and commented in Israeli media. So I am quite astonished reading your post and I wonder what are your information sources…
I personally don’t follow the Israeli media on the daily basis, but many of my Israeli friends (none of them hareidi)do, so I am relatively well informed. Also, I am quite sure that the nearest Israeli consulate can provide you with info about that matter. It would be good if you would contact them before sending in such an incredibly untrue description of the situation.

Posted by: thomas. h at November 8, 2007 4:11 PM

Whatever else the Orthodox in Israel do (save for the bizarre Neturie Karta) with or in or for Israel's military, they should keep on reproducing at a rate the non-Orthodox do not. About 12 kids per family would do nicely. Keep up the good work.

Posted by: Hugh at November 8, 2007 4:48 PM

I am surprised the Trfkovic and Jatras did not point out that Albanian Kosovars were harassing local Serbs especially from the time that Marshal Tito gave the ethnic Albanians autonomy in Kosovo from the Serbian Yugoslav republic back in the 1970s. The Serbs were supposed to have been about 20% of the Kosovo population at that time. Many left even before the 1999 assault on Serbia and the Serbs in Kosovo. Do you see that changes in the demographic makeup of a place can be effected by various sorts of terrorism, including bureaucratic-administrative?
This was an important point that the authors seem not to have made. Another point is that the Serbian population there was oppressed during the Ottoman period not only by the Ottoman state but by Albanian Muslims.
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2007/02/what-they-dont-want-you-to-know-about.html

Pravoslavni is partially right about the native Christian population in the Land of Israel. However, according to the early Christian historian, Eusebius [in Church History, IV: 6], the area in and around Jerusalem was formed into the Aelia Capitolina polis or colonia after the Roman defeat of the Jews in the Bar Kokhba revolt [132-135 CE].
This was after, Eusebius writes, the Jews were killed or "exiled" from that zone and the area was resettled by "colonists" of alien race. Hence, it is unlikely that the Christians of Ramallah [founded in the 16th or 17th centuries] or Bethlehem are descended from people who always lived in those places.
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2005/05/exile-of-jews-from-jerusalem-polis.html
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2005/08/rome-colonized-jerusalem-region-with.html

Posted by: Eliyahu at November 8, 2007 4:49 PM

@thomas. h

I have family in Israel. I lived in Israel for years. ani midaber ivrit v'ani kore et ha-iton yom yom.

So much for my being uninformed. Heck, I only know what I see, what I read, and what people close to me tell me. I don't need to talk to anybody at the consulate to make myself aware of the obvious.

Sorry, but the haredim (except in small numbers) do not participate in the IDF.

They also speak Yiddish, as they believe that the holy language of Hebrew should not be polluted by being used for secular purposes.
==========
You say things are changing? That's not what my relatives and friends in Israel tell me.

One haredi F-16 pilot, does not a squadron make.
===================
you say:

"there is a quickly increasing number of hareidim joining the army."

What are the statistics?? Give me real numbers.

Posted by: Ynkedoodl2 at November 8, 2007 5:42 PM

Oops,

should have added: the haredim do not participate in the IDF except in certain circumstances that do not require the use of weaponry.

We all know that the "Chevrat Kadisha" will assist the army in terrorism-related circumstances, to give one example.

Posted by: Ynkedoodl2 at November 8, 2007 5:44 PM

@Hugh

Twelve kids?

They'll make little headway with only 12. More like 20 per family if they want to hold the muslim demographic dawa back.

Posted by: Ynkedoodl2 at November 8, 2007 5:47 PM

"However the absolute majority of the Hareidim - or othodox Jews - is Zionist."
--posted by Thomas H

You're talking about Orthodox Jews, not Hareidim.

When you talk about Hareidim, don't confuse them with the "kipa s'ruga" crowd. The hip, young orthodox in their little knitted skull-caps. Those aren't the bulk of Jerusalem's expanding Jewish population.

Hareidim are the black suited, black-hatted, bearded, super orthodox who speak Yiddish, cover their women and they are, overwhelmingly, not Zionist. They won't speak Hebrew, so what does that say?

Posted by: Ynkedoodl2 at November 8, 2007 5:51 PM

People - every Gentile here, especially those of a 'Christian' or semi-Christian background - just to back up, and elaborate upon, what Hugh said above, about Israel, and the Jews, I recommend that you read the following.

First, the book of Psalms. As you do, imagine a Jewish woman, a survivor of the seven hells of Ravensbruck, sitting in the dust in the floor of one of the ruined gas chambers. She has returned there, years after the Liberation - with her Siddur, her prayer book. And she is reading the Psalms, aloud, all the way from 1 to 150. Yes, someone actually DID this. In your imagination: sit down beside her. Remember what happened, right there. Open the book, and read with her, and for her.

Second: go online - google 'Joshua Berman' and 'God's Alliance With Man'. Read the article. Reflect. Know that Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence probably would never have been written, without the Sinai Revolution.

Third: read Tom Cahill's "The Gifts of the Jews". Same point as Berman, plus a few more.

Fourth: if you don't boggle at hard words, read David Bentley Hart, "The Beauty of the infinite", especially the chapters "The Will to Power" (which discusses Nietzsche's rejection of the Biblical worldview, and much more besides), "The Covenant of Light", "A Gift Exceeding Every Debt" and "The Consolations of Tragedy, the Terrors of Easter'. Hart never mentions Islam - but the first half of his book, which mostly deconstructs the postmodern French nihilists, reveals, I believe, precisely why so many French intellectuals embraced Islam - they were "primed" for it by their philosophy. Hart is, by the way, writing as one trained in Eastern Orthodoxy. I would set his book alongside Spencer's "Religion of Peace?" as a much more detailed analysis of exactly why it is that one can say that Christianity is a religion of peace - which is also true of Judaism.

Here is Hart's great discourse contrasting the 'tragic' and the Biblical understandings of the world (pages 386-87)

Tragedy "turns attention not toward the one who suffers, but to the sublime backdrop against which the drama is played out; it assures the spectator that this is how things are, this is the constitution of the universe, and that justice is strife; tragic wisdom is the wisdom of resignation and consent; a wisdom that is too prudent to rebel against what is fixed in the very fabric of being, and that refuses to suffer, inordinately, enraged by death or resentful of civic order. Tragedy legitimates a particular regime of law, violence and war; it teaches that moira places and displaces us, and so leads us to a serene and chastened acceptance of where we are placed, and how we are displaced; tragedy resists every motion outward, beyond the sentineled frontier, and reinforces the stable foundations of the totality."

"Christianity, however, feeds upon a different wisdom, a defiant, Jewish wisdom that insists upon an act of affirmation far removed from the resigned serenity of tragic consciousness: insanely, perhaps, it enjoins a love of creation that WILL not be reconciled to the loss of what is created, but enacts a double motion, an affirmation of the goodness of what is and an expectation of action by God to rescue this wholly good creation from the violences that enslave it.

"A RECOGNITON OF THE TRUE UNIVERSALITY OF SUFFERING, OF ITS ENDLESS PARTICULARITY AND THE INFINITE GRAVITY OF ITS EVERY INSTANCE (no matter how base the sufferer) IS A JEWISH, NOT AN ATTIC, ACCOMPLISHMENT, and it leads inevitably to a prophetic outcry a call for a reconciliation that is also redemption, a demand for divine justice:

"Israel is always - and always ever more - in rebellion against the wisdom of totality. The wisdom of Israel - expressed in the added ending to the book of Job, or Ezekiel's vision in the valley of dry bones - lies in its growing awareness that God is the God of justice and election, and that his goodness and the goodness of creation can be affirmed only through faith in a future that overcomes all endings...

"It is from Israel that Christianity learns the grammar of charity, its passionate commitment to creation and its revulsion before injustice, rather than resignation before the magnitude of evil."

Finally: if you can, find Jacques Lasry's "Cantique de Cantiques: Cantate Hebraique", sung by Sarah Gorby.

We owe the Hebrews, the Jews; to the House of Israel we of 'Christendom', at least, owe our deepest understanding of freedom and hope, justice and love, truth and troth, and the value of the particular, of every person. If we betray and destroy Israel we betray and destroy our inmost self in the same instant.

"O mother Zion!"

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at November 8, 2007 6:12 PM

I have family in Israel. I lived in Israel for years.
So?...
ani midaber ivrit v'ani kore et ha-iton yom yom.
hmmm, LeChaim – whatever..

You say things are changing? That's not what my relatives and friends in Israel tell me.

That is exactly why I said you should consult with established, official Israeli sources.

One haredi F-16 pilot, does not a squadron make.

Not really a squadron. But enough to devastate completely your extremely generalized and unsubstantiated claims.

What are the statistics?? Give me real numbers.

Go and get them yourself if you are really interested. Beside the information section in you Israeli consulate you may also do a search in the Jerusalem Post, Haarets or Israel National News. And please, note again that it is not about numbers that we disagree, but about the absoluteness of the claims that you have made.
BTW if the orthodox are as you claim so eager to give Israeli land to the Arabs how do you explain the fact that the majority of the so called “settlers” and the Jewish population of, for example, Hebron are the Orthodox Jews? And why it took such a brutal action of the “Zionist” government of Israel to uproot tens of thousands of them from Gaza?
Can’t you see how difficult is to take your claim (of their yielding to the Arabs) seriously?
Anyway, good night now. It is long past 1 am here.

Posted by: thomas. h at November 8, 2007 7:20 PM

You're talking about Orthodox Jews, not Hareidim.

I just noticed your post. Yes, I think there is a chance I confuse these groups. The former being much bigger than the latter. But the vast majority of the Orthodox are also overwhelmingly Zionist - much more than the phoneys like Olmert, Peres and Yossy Beilin and other fools whom I may not mention, who pushed Israel into the catastrophy of the Peace Process.

Otherwise, which of the "hareidim", except the Naturei Karta, explicitly rejects Zionist Israel and wants to give Arabs half Jerusalem?
Let's get specific...

Posted by: thomas. h at November 8, 2007 7:36 PM

You're talking about Orthodox Jews, not Hareidim.

I just noticed your post. Yes, I think there is a chance I confuse these groups. The former being much bigger than the latter. But the vast majority of the Orthodox are also overwhelmingly Zionist - much more than the phoneys like Olmert, Peres and Yossy Beilin and other fools whom I may not mention, who pushed Israel into the catastrophy of the Peace Process.

Otherwise, which of the "hareidim", except the Naturei Karta, explicitly rejects Zionist Israel and wants to give Arabs half Jerusalem?
Let's get specific...

Posted by: thomas. h at November 8, 2007 7:37 PM

Eliyahu,

Jerusalem is an unusual situation as shown in the account of Eusebius. However Eusebius was often given to overgeneralization. Between 70CE and the Bar Kockva revolt, most of the Ebionites were living in Pella. However some returned to Jerusalem/Aelia only to be expelled again by Bar Kockva. That a small group remained even to the time of Constantine is shown by the meeting of the blood relatives of Jesus (the Desposyni) with Pope Sylvester in 318 CE to insist on their sole right to govern the Jerusalem Church. At this time Jerusalem was virtually unpopulated but during Byzantine times many Jewish-Christians from the Galil, Pella, and Nabatea supplemented this population. It is their descendants who are there today.

Don't forget that at the time of the Bar Kochva revolt, Christianity was still mostly a sect of Judaism, and several historians believe that it was the messianic claims in favor of Bar Kokhva that alienated the Jewish-Christians who believed that the true messiah was Jesus. Since the Jewish-Christians could not support Bar Kochva's aspirations, many avoided deportation by the Romans who were, at that time, too busy fighting the Jews to persecute Christians.

With the subsequent forced depopulation of Judea, most simply joined their brothers in Pella and other parts of Nabatea only to return and rebuild towns like Bethlehem after the war ended. Around this time many of the Jewish-Christians residing at Pella joined them in renouncing commtment to Torah in order to be received into the mainstream Gentile-dominated Christian church. Needless to say, the Christians of Jewish origin in Nazareth were never expelled and at that time a number of thier brethren from Judea and Samaria joined them in the Galil.

The Christians who founded Ramallah five hundred years ago held on to their Ebionite culture much longer by relocating to Arabia. Today's Ramallahis are from the six clans of the Haddadeen tribe and have maintained careful documentation of their generations. Unlike most of their co-religionists who simply went to Nabatea, this group joined the large Jewish community in Yemen. However, because they were Christian they were not accepted and eventually settled at the Oasis of Najran.

Whem Muhammed's deathbed decree expelled all the Jews and Christians from Arabia they tried to return to the Jerusalem of their ancestors, in which direction they prayed. However, Abu Bakr would not let them enter so they settled at Shobak across the Jordan. Three hundred years later they asked the Crusader King Baldwin to build a castle there and by that time they had long been regularized into Orthodox Christianity.

Five centuries ago, a war broke out between the Haddadeens and the Muslim Emir Ibn Kaysoom when they refused his demands for a Haddadeen girl as a wife for his son. They then crossed the Jordan and founded Ramallah. Even to this day, many of these Pali-Christians maintain archaic Jewish customs such as dedicating a son for a period of time and not cutting his hair (the Nazirite vow). There are many others but space and time don't permit.

Posted by: Provoslavni at November 8, 2007 8:41 PM

We were trying to tell everybody much the same thing over eight years ago, but few people were listening back then. I'm thankful Robert Spencer is staying on this issue and making people take another look at where it is going.

Posted by: 1389 at November 8, 2007 9:57 PM

"Are you still making those claims, even after having been shown to be mistaken?"
-- from a posting above about my comments on the Benes Decree of 1946 [the one dealing with the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia]

Yes. I don't think you have shown me to have been mistaken. I repeat what I said then. No Western statesmen of note at the time, or since, has denounced the action of Benes and Masaryk, supported by the people. A few revanchist German websites, of course, beg to differ, and I have seen those websites. They do not impress. None of the great war or postwar leaders, not Churchill, not De Gaulle, not De Gasperi, not Truman, and not any others, saw fit to denounce the Benes Decree. And not Ludovik Svoboda, the general later famous during the Prague Spring, nor the poet Jaroslav Seifert, nor any other Czech of note, denounced the Benes Decree. You make much of Vaclav Havel, when he was on a visit to Austria, expressing dismay, to the Austrians, not over the Benes Decree itself, but of how it was executed: in haste, and too broadly (some of those ethnic Germans were, obviously, not people who had been collaborators, but the Czechs were i no mood to sort things out, and furthermore, they simply wanted to remove a group from Czech territory, not to destroy it but merely to repatriate it across a border, so that they would never have to worry about such an internal security threat as that ethnic German population had proved to be, starting with Henlein and the organized riots (organized from Berlin) in 1938, riots that led to suppression by the Czech police, and then to outrage in the press of London and Paris, and then to the ill-fated and dangerous Runciman Mission (Sir Basil Runciman, prating about obtaining a "comprehensive and lasting settlement" in a phrase that sounds as if it came from the Peace-Processors and One-State-Solution-Offerors just today).

Yes, I remember our controversy. And I maintain again: no major poltical leader, in or out of Czechoslovakia, in the Western world, has ever denounced the Benes Decree. I do not think Vaclav Havel denounced the Benes Decree when he apologized,on an official state visit, as President of Czechoslovakia, to Austria, for how that Decree had been executed. That is a very different thing from an "outcry," a cri de coeur, a cry of anguish and outrage at the whole thing. There was no such cri de coeur coming from Vaclav Havel, and you can wade through all of his works, including his Letters, and find no anguish over the Benes Decree at all. Not an "outcry" but a realpolitik decision, by Havel (and he was criticized even for that) to criticize what there was (and is) to criticize, about the Benes Decree. Execution, not the principle of the thing.

And no doubt there has been the odd self-appointed moral authority, not a political leader, who has expressed dismay at the Benes Decree. These aree the kind of people who wanted everyone on the winning side to be extra nice, extra careful, not to indulge in any of the perfectly natural human desires to get revenge. They were dealt with, quite nicely I think, by Noel Coward in his famous song "Don't Let's Be Beastly To The Germans." You can find it on YouTube.

Posted by: Hugh at November 8, 2007 10:41 PM

Dubledorfs army,

Truth be told while Hart does a fair job on the French Nihilists, he is actually trained as a Latin Thomist who converted from the Episcopal church to Orthodoxy, probably because he couldn't swallow the modern ugly Catholic liturgy or the papacy or both, but he is far from representative of Orthodox theology.

Posted by: American_Palamite at November 8, 2007 10:54 PM

"he is actually trained as a Latin Thomist who converted from the Episcopal church to Orthodoxy..."
-- from a posting just above

Until this year the head of the R.O.C. in San Francisco had formerly borne the name "Fitzgerald." I never met him, but once spent Christmas day alone with Archbishop Ioann Shahovskoy, the descendant of a famous Russian family; his sister, a writer ("Otrazheniya" and "V poiskakh Nabokova" -- the latter book not to be recommended) was for many years the editor of La Pensee Russe (Russkaya Mysl') in Paris.

Posted by: Hugh at November 8, 2007 11:02 PM

Pigs have wings, Hell has frozen over, and now...

US Balkans Policy Finally Comes Up For Debate

I linked to this blog post from the above article.

This is what I've been saying since 1999, and it's taken this long for people to start paying attention. Many thanks to Jihad Watch/Dhimmi Watch for fighting the good fight!

Posted by: 1389 at November 8, 2007 11:47 PM

One of the reasons I mentioned Hart - apart from the fact that I think his writing is interesting and, at times, beautiful - is that he does seem to bring together materials and themes from all three of the major Christian traditions - Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism. (I have also read Timothy Ware's book, 'Orthodoxy': just going by that, Hart's strong focus on the implications of the Resurrection has, to me, a very Orthodox flavour). The second, longer half of the book is structured upon the clauses of the Nicene Creed (Orthodox version). Of course one could argue that converts to Orthodoxy like Ware and Hart are 'misunderstanders' of Orthodoxy...

As the citations I gave make clear, Hart is very strong on the debt of the church to Israel.

This kind of positive 'summa', laying a groundwork for mutual illumination and gratitude (from the church toward the Jews; from western to eastern christians and back again) is badly needed.

In our present predicament, on the northwest and western 'front' of the Jihad stand Israel - the Jews - and the societies of (former) Christendom, east and west, say, the Americas esp the USA, Europe and 'Russia'.

In the past Islam has profited from consciously (and I think, also, reflexively) playing on enmities and confusions within and between those whom it targets - and from actively creating enmities and confusion if such do not already exist. It is busy doing the same today.

The betrayal of Israel and the Jews which proceeds at present, along with the betrayal of Assyrian Christians in Mesopotamia; the way in which all christian-majority countries appear to have abandoned Sudanese, Ethiopian and Coptic Christians, together with the betrayal of Serbs [as seen in Kosovo] or of Lebanese Christians, and the way in which, a century ago, western 'christian' countries failed to assist the Armenians, Greeks and Bulgarians, exemplify this horrible process whereby those who should have helped, or could have rescued, appear to have been deluded, or even bribed or bullied, into sacrificing their own brethren to the jihad.

Bat Yeor's books on dhimmitude are full of painful examples of dar al harb and dhimmi communities tricked, frightened or bribed into handing each other over to be destroyed rather than making common cause as they should have done; worse, of religious and political leaders turning traitor and opening the gates from within.

I have no doubt that the Iranians and the House of Saud and all the other jihad plotters are doing everything they can to divide Israel and the Jews from the Christians, and then also to profit from, and to increase (by lies, tale-bearing and through janissary infiltrators) suspicions and enmities between the different Christian groups.

(A propaganda campaign to divide the diaspora from Israel, and also to cause splits among Jews within Israel, is identified and examined by Ellul in his book 'Un Chretien Pour Israel': possibly some fruits of that campaign may be seen in arguments within this thread!)

In a way, the quarrels within Israel itself - among the Christians, among the Jews, between Jews and Christians - are a microcosm of the wider problem.

The betrayal of Orthodox believers by their brethren in the west (returned in spades, at times, by such things as Orthodox suspicion and indeed persecution of Catholics and Protestants in countries such as Russia or Greece), is tragic. We see it acted out in the story of the Kosovo Serbs; and now the 'west' is blindly preparing to sacrifice Israel, also, to the jihad crocodile.

So: writers like Hart are important for they do, I think, challenge the process of division by positive acts of clarification and affirmation.

The jihadis are experts at 'dividing the camp' of dar al harb. Somehow, we have got to stop letting ourselves be suckered.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at November 9, 2007 2:01 AM

Israel is always - and always ever more - in rebellion against the wisdom of totality. The wisdom of Israel - expressed in the added ending to the book of Job, or Ezekiel's vision in the valley of dry bones - lies in its growing awareness that God is the God of justice and election, and that his goodness and the goodness of creation can be affirmed only through faith in a future that overcomes all endings...
by dumbledoresarmy

And just to add, beside eternal Job and mystical Ezekiel, good old Isaiah with his vision of mankind where lamb will lay down with a wolf, lion eat grass like ox, and child will play with snake. Unpreceddented outcry in world literature for better world, for more just place to live.

Posted by: svemirko at November 9, 2007 2:37 AM

Israel is always - and always ever more - in rebellion against the wisdom of totality. The wisdom of Israel - expressed in the added ending to the book of Job, or Ezekiel's vision in the valley of dry bones - lies in its growing awareness that God is the God of justice and election, and that his goodness and the goodness of creation can be affirmed only through faith in a future that overcomes all endings...
by dumbledoresarmy

And just to add, beside eternal Job and mystical Ezekiel, good old Isaiah with his vision of mankind where lamb will lay down with a wolf, lion eat grass like ox, and child will play with snake. Unpreceddented outcry in world literature for better world, for more just place to live.

Posted by: svemirko at November 9, 2007 2:39 AM

I do not think Vaclav Havel denounced the Benes Decree when he apologized,on an official state visit, as President of Czechoslovakia, to Austria, for how that Decree had been executed. That is a very different thing from an "outcry," a cri de coeur, a cry of anguish and outrage at the whole thing.

So I was right, and you *are* relying on a hyper-technical definition of "outcry" that somehow excludes President Havel's description of the expulsion of the ethnic Germans as "a deeply immoral act," one which "respond[ed] to evil by committing another evil."

Yes. I don't think you have shown me to have been mistaken. I repeat what I said then. No Western statesmen of note at the time, or since, has denounced the action of Benes and Masaryk, supported by the people.

Actually, that's not what you said then. What you said then was that "no one at the time, and no one since, has thought what the Czechs then did was immoral -- save for a handful of German revanchists and those who have a particular soft-spot, one that deserves to be examined, for the treatment of Germans after the war." After I pointed to the example of Victor Gollancz, who was neither a German revanchist nor one with a soft-spot deserving of examination, you modified your "no one" to mean "no major political figure." Afterwards, I pointed out that Vaclav Havel, who was indeed a major political figure, had done exactly what you claimed no such figure had ever done, which was to have "thought that what the Czechs then did was immoral."

You make much of Vaclav Havel, when he was on a visit to Austria, expressing dismay, to the Austrians, not over the Benes Decree itself, but of how it was executed

No, I "make much" of a letter that Vaclav Havel wrote to Richard von Weisäcker. I've seen nothing indicating that, when Havel spoke of the expulsions in that letter as "a deeply immoral act," he was meant to limit his condemnation to the way the expulsion was implemented. Besides which, your original claim was not simply about "the Benes Decree itself," but about the "expulsion" itself, which necessarily means how the Decree was executed.

These aree the kind of people who wanted everyone on the winning side to be extra nice, extra careful, not to indulge in any of the perfectly natural human desires to get revenge. They were dealt with, quite nicely I think, by Noel Coward in his famous song "Don't Let's Be Beastly To The Germans."

You mean like Vaclav Havel, when he said that "To respond to evil by committing another evil does not eliminate evil but allows it to go on forever"?

(Finally, I'm puzzled by your citation of Ludvik Svoboda as if he were some kind of moral authority. His mild contributions to the Prague Spring were the least he could do to atone for his role in helping the Communists pull off their coup d'etat in 1948.)

Posted by: Seamus at November 9, 2007 12:07 PM

A much under reported aspect of the Kosovo debacle was the ethnic cleansing of the Pristina Jews.

Pretty heart wrenching stuff. Many of those who were torched out of their homes had many relatives who'd perished in the death camps in WW2.

For example, Aca Singer had survived Aushcwitz, almost all of Bea Mandil's family were slaughtered in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, blah di blah di blah

Bea Mandil's son, Mr. Prlincevic, did a long interview about the events shortly after the Serbs left in 99. This interview has become very much of a classic, being reprinted in many other publications. It can be found here.

http://www.kelebekler.com/kosovo-gb.htm

Some more articles on the progrom.

http://www.israpundit.com/2006/?page_id=3619&stats_author=bishopdon&jal_no_js=true&poll_id=40

http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/990702/prist.shtml

http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg22382.html

"Aca Singer, a 76-year-old Auschwitz survivor who is president of the Federation
of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia, is pessimistic about the chances for
survival of the Kosovo Jewish community. He is disappointed that the Pristina
Jews were forced to leave "at a time of peace, with international troops
present"

Well done lads.

Even UNMIK's webpage acknowledges the crime.

http://www.unmikonline.org/press/2003/mon/Aug/lmm230803.htm

Jews expelled from Kosovo for ever, says Aca Singer (Danas/ Junge Welt)

"The President of the Association of Jewish Communities of SaM Aca Singer doubted very much that any of the Jews that had been driven out of Kosovo and Metohija would ever return there due to the bad economic and security situation in the province. "Soon after the withdrawal of the Serbian security forces a mass exodus began because the everyday life had become dangerous. Almost all of the members of the small Jewish community in the provincial capital, Pristina have found refuge in Belgrade," said Singer in an interview with the Berlin based daily Junge Welt.

Well done lads.

Judenfrei time in Kosovo.

Posted by: ewha1 at November 12, 2007 7:13 AM

There's a lot of irony here. The KLA has a large number of

a) Maoists - Maoism/Stalinism has been a huge part of Kosovo Albanian seperatist policy for decades going back to the 60's and 70's

b)Islamists -hence Bin Laden and Al Qaeda's number two's brother, Muhammad al-Zawahiri- visiting the area

and also

c)Nazis. The Skenderbeg division recruited almost exclusively amongst the Kosovo Albanian community. The KLA's stronghold is the central area of Kosovo, Drenica, and this division guarded the trains that took the Jews, Rom, Serbs, etc to Bergen-Belsen camp to be liquidated. Bea Mandil's extended family for example.

Correction: Aca Singer is from Belgrade not from Pristina.

Many schools have since been renamed after these WW2 collaborators. In turn, many monuments that enshrined the bravery of the WW2 partisans have been destroyed.

How about that for irony on Remembrance Day.

Well done lads.

Posted by: ewha1 at November 12, 2007 7:32 AM

A much under reported aspect of the Kosovo debacle was the ethnic cleansing of the Pristina Jews.

I don't have a link, but I recall reading back in 1999 that the Albanians were also doing a pretty effective job of ethnically cleansing Kosovo of its gypsies.

Yet another triumph of the once and future Clinton administration.

Posted by: Seamus at November 12, 2007 10:48 AM

From Seamus:"I recall reading back in 1999 that the Albanians were also doing a pretty effective job of ethnically cleansing Kosovo of its gypsies."

That's right, Seamus. They allied themselves with the Serbs. Numbers are difficult to come by as to how many lived in Kosovo prior to NATO/KLA take over -so many were forced to declare themselves as being ethnic Albanian- but 200,000 seems to be the accepted number. Now we're talking a tenth of that. They're finished.

The ethnic Egyptians too.

The Ashkali too. Blah di blah di blah

The Rom, Ashkali, Egyptians, could be educated in their own language under Belgrade rule. They had their own TV and radio programmes even though their numbers were fairly small. Even at the Rambouillet conference in 99 the Serbs had them as part of their delegation, which speaks volumes as to how well they were respected by the Serbs. Of course the ethnic Albanian delgation only had ethnic Albanians.

Which is sweet too I guess.

Amongst the 10 or so conference delegates on the Serb side were one Romany delgate Mr Koka, an ethnic Egyptian Mr Abazi, a Serb Muslim "Bosniak" Mr Senadovic, an ethnic Turk Mr Kurejs, a Gorani Mr Vait and a couple of ethnic Albanians Mr Jasari and Mr Cuse.

Even the laughably Serbophobic IWPR has highlighted the plight of these downtrodden people.

http://www.turkishweekly.net/comments.php?id=806

From a multi ethnic land to a ethnically cleansed Judenfrei shithole, and all in less than a decade.

That takes some doing.

Well done lads.

P.S Many thanks, Seamus, to you and Hugh for a very educational discussion - as I know precious little about the subject - about the Sudentan Germans. Great stuff

Posted by: ewha1 at November 13, 2007 1:53 AM

And of course - silly me - Mr Jatras also testified for Slobo's defence at the ICTY.

http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/040908IT.htm

His testimony begins on page 32587 and continues onto the next day.

http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/040909IT.htm

He's cross examined on page 32654

I know that these transcripts are not exactly everyones cup ot tea, but this is good stuff. Mr Jatras scores some telling blows.

Worth wading through the boring legalistic gumpf for the juicy Islamist tit bits.

Slobo at the time wasn't allowed to conduct his own defence - he'd been a naughty boy and was being punished by the court - so he contented himself with blowing a few raspberries at the proceedings. Mr Kay asked the questions. Mr Nice was on hand for the cross examination.

For those who'd like a nice summary or Mr Jatras' testimony there's

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg090804.htm

Mr Jatras' testiomny is analysed half way down and continues here

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg090904.htm

Posted by: ewha1 at November 13, 2007 6:25 AM

One of the articles ewha1 linked to contained this interesting statement: Jatras claimed that Madeline Albright, when speaking after the Rambouillet "negotiations" told a reporter, off the record that "We intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply. They need some bombing and that's what they're going to get."

If true, this means that the U.S. government did exactly what the Austrian government did in response to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and for which it has been roundly denounced ever since--i.e., give Serbia an ultimatum with the intention that it be rejected, in order to provide a pretext for war. (Except that in 1914 Austria was not meddling in the internal affairs of a faraway country that offered no threat to its national interests.)

Posted by: Seamus at November 13, 2007 11:13 AM