The Jews in the Basement

by Stella Paul

The coming week marks five years since the murder of Pamela Waechter. Who? If the name doesn't ring a bell, here's a brief reminder: She was shot in the head by Naveed Afzal Haq, as she tried to crawl down a flight of stairs and escape, after Haq shot her in the chest.

Still not jogging your memory? How about this: Waechter was the 58-year-old director of the annual campaign of the Jewish Federation of Seattle. Sometime around 4 PM, on July 28, 2006, Naveed Afzal Haq grabbed a 14-year-old girl and thrust a gun in her back. He used her to gain entry to the Federation, and then rampaged through the building, shooting six women - Layla Bush, Christina Rexroad, Cheryl Stumbo, Dayna Klein (who was five months pregnant), Carol Goldman, and, fatally, Pamela Waechter. Tammy Kaiser jumped from a second-story window to escape, and was hospitalized with injuries.

What was Haq's motive? Well, here's an interesting clue: As he stormed through the halls, shooting and killing, he shouted, "I'm a Muslim-American! I'm angry at Israel!"

Quite a dramatic story, no? And yet it's not a story anybody wants to tell. Grab the average leftist on the street -- or, certainly, on campus -- and ask him about Rachel Corrie, the anti-Israel activist accidentally run over by an IDF tank. I bet he knows Corrie's story by heart; after all, our cultural grandees never stop pushing it as a "teaching moment" about Israeli brutality.

Likewise, gay activists turned the murder of Matthew Shepard into a universal "teaching moment" about America's homophobia and crimes against gays, and the urgent need for sensitivity training in schools.

But American Jews have found no "teaching moment" in the murder of Pamela Waechter, and the shooting of six women at work, performing the administrative tasks of the Jewish community… (Why is Jewish blood is always cheap? Why is Jewish leadership still gutless about exposing the true nature and motivation of Islamic and traditional Jew-haters toward Israel?)

Food for Thought by Steven Shamrak

Wearing burkas in the West is an Islamic assault on our way of life! It is not a Koranic requirement and most Muslim women do not wear them. Even during the Haj to Mecca female faces must not be covered. But those Islamic hypocrites who insist on wearing burkas on the streets of Europe, America and Australia are enjoying driving a car or leaving their homes without male supervision, life improvements for which they would be imprisoned in Saudi Arabia!

Leftists’ Idealism for Hire

Are Israel's leftists pure ideologues or guns for hire? Yotam Feldman, who was born into the leftist camp - says that in his life, he has witnessed how Israel's "human rights movement" became a source of income for its activists. He relates how his father's old Subaru "gradually turned" into a BMW, and how the family moved from a rented apartment in Yafo to a spacious Tel Aviv apartment. This is probably why leftist groups are so concerned about proposed committees of inquiry into the sources of their NGOs' funding, he adds. (Left used to be a driving force of Zionism! Who did they sell their soul to?)

Facebook: No Problem With Holocaust Denial Pages

Holocaust denial 'fan pages' abound on Facebook - and that's OK with the social networking site's administrators. Facebook “fan pages” espousing Holocaust denial abound and appear in many languages – English, Arabic, German, and others. And, to add insult to injury, the term “Holocaust” has been appropriated for a number of other uses. Survivor groups and Jewish organizations have long urged Facebook to do something about these offensive pages – so far to no avail.

Left Has No Self-Respect and Sabotage Israel’s Foreign Policy

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel was "willing to consider apologizing" for problems that occurred during last year's raid of the Turkish flotilla ship the Mavi Marmara. (Just a few days before the Israeli Foreign minister categorically had stated that Israel will apologize for justifiable action. Turkey has no intention to say sorry for actively supporting the anti-Israel ‘flotilla’.)

Trouble with Islamic Government in Turkey?

Turkey’s entire top military command resigned in a row with the government over generals jailed for an alleged coup plot. There are 42 generals and dozens of officers are in jail in a probe of alleged plots to overthrow the Islamic government.

Jewish Wedding Stays

An attempt to legalise civil marriage flopped by a lopsided margin in the Knesset as a new poll shows that most Israelis prefer Jewish tradition in marriages. This is despite concerted efforts in the mainstream media to give the opposite impression and claim that the laws for orthodox marriages are opposed by most secular Jews. Most Israelis do not define themselves as ”orthodox” but nearly two-thirds – 66 percent – of randomly chosen respondents said they probably would not marry in a civil ceremony. Even among those classifying themselves as secular, only half of those surveyed said they would opt for a civil marriage. (This has only become an issue after, in violation of the law of Return, non-Jewish families mainly from former Soviet Union and Ethiopia were allowed into Israel. No one has a political will to correct the mistake.)

Media Bias and Double Standards

Big media has no qualms about boldly and repeatedly labeling the Norwegian shooter as a “Christian”, even describing him as a Christian Zionist, despite no evidence that he was any kind of devout Christian whatsoever. Yet to this day the same vile liberal media will not refer to the Fort Hood Jihadist as Muslim or emphasize his Islamic motivation behind the shooting. Neither do governments report on the Jihad attacks. Yet there was ample evidence that Hasan was a devout Muslim who massacred our soldiers in the name of Islam. He shouted “Allahu akbar” during the shooting spree and wrote “soldier of allah” on his business cards and he gave a lecture to other doctors that non-Muslims should be beheaded, set on fire and have boiling oil poured down their throats. The same dynamic was at work with the Times Square bomber.

Quote of the Week:

“Seize them (unbelievers) and slay them wherever you find them: and in any case take no friends or helpers from their ranks.” - Sura 4:89 - Specifically in relation to Jews, as it is mentioned in Hadith, the body of traditions relating to Mohammed and now supplemental to the Koran: He (Abu Hurayah) reported the messenger of Allah as saying “The last hour will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, so that Jews will hide behind stones and trees and the Stone and the tree will say, O Muslim, O servant of God! There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him…” - Unless Israel prepared to win the conflict decisively, there will be no peace with the Muslim neighbours. Making peace with infidels contradicts the essence of Islam!

‘Oslo Generation’ Joins Army

by Gil Ronen

When the “Oslo babies” were three years old, savage Hamas terrorists began blowing up buses full of civilian men, women and children inside Israel. When they were seven years old, Arafat launched the terror war dubbed by many as “the Oslo War,” which killed over 1,000 Israelis, most of them civilians, and injured many thousands more. The carnage peaked in 2002 and 2003, and did not ebb until 2005. The PLO sought to break Israel’s spirit by making civilians feel they were not safe anywhere.

Now at 18, they are highly motivated to fight the enemy on land and sea and in the air. According to the IDF, their motivation is identical to that of last year: 73.3% of the enlistees eligible for combat in field units asked to serve as combat soldiers, the same percentage as in August 2010.

Ninety-five percent of the soldiers placed in combat had asked to serve in combat. This is a slight rise from last August, in which that percentage was 94%. (After experiencing ‘peace’ young Israelis are ready to fight as their grandparents did, for the future of Israel and Jewish people. Do they have decent political leadership to match their aspirations?)