Free Republic

Scientists in Israel have announced a breakthrough in HIV research, a development that will leave Israel boycotters with their latest ethical dilemma. The team from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev say their finding will result in a “revolutionary diagnosis and the key to the clinical solution that will prevent infection with HIV and will destroy the deadly virus.” i24News reports that Dr Ran Taube of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics at the southern Israeli university said his team has discovered similarities between HIV (the virus that leads to AIDS) and leukemia. Conducted in collaboration with Dr. Uri Rubio...

This is by far the most bizarre, repulsive observation, overview of the extent in which the Arab/Muslim culture defies the very concept of what it means to be human. I've taken to make the full transcript of the entire interview available here below as it appears on screen as translated by MEMRI-TV. MEMRI_TV is known to the West for their absolutely accurate transcription of the local Arab language into English. I do make an occasional comment of my own on specific statements that can not otherwise be described. I just want to state for the record that the content of...

Butting Out of Israel’s Business by Norma Zager “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride…” John Ray, 1670. Recently I had the unfortunate experience of meeting with a group of liberal Jews who believe Israel is some kind of evil occupying government and the poor Palestinian people (actually a figment of the Arab public relations propaganda machine) deserve to have Israel’s land. After being viciously attacked and being told I was full of crap for my opinions on Israel by a Nazi camp survivor, whose anger at Israel is palpable, I came to some hard and fast conclusions once my...

NYC Principal at Center of 'Intifada' T-Shirt Controversy Resigns Friday , August 10, 2007 NEW YORK — A New York City principal who came under fire for controversial comments about an "intifada" T-shirt that seemed to condone terrorism has resigned. On Friday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg accepted the resignation of Debbie Almontaser, principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, an English-Arabic school set to open next month in Brooklyn, N.Y. Almontaser had come under fire for comments she made to the New York Post about an "Intifada NYC" T-shirt that is sold by an activist group that shares an office with...

FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU 'Black spinster' label pinned on Condi Rice Palestinian media use racist terms including 'colored dark skin lady' Posted: July 31, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern   By Aaron Klein© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com   Condoleezza Rice depicted in Al Quds as pregnant with a monkey. The image's caption read, "Rice speaks about birth of new Middle East." JERUSALEM – While U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been in the Middle East meeting regional alongside Israel's military campaign in Lebanon, media outlets controlled by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party the past few days have been using racist rhetoric...

WHAT should Arabs do to meet the challenges they face in a world not made by, or for, them? Debated in Arab countries since the middle of the 19th century, the question has been posed with even greater urgency since the 9/11 tragedy persuaded many in the West to regard all Arabs as enemies. Remarkably, the answers given today are more or less the same as those of 150 years ago. One answer, long the one most popular with the elites, is that Arabs should Westernize as fast as they can. Abdul-Rahman al-Kawakibi, the father of modern reformism in the...

LONDON, November 30 (IranMania) - An Iranian convicted of armed robbery has had his left foot amputated in a prison in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, the ISNA news agency reported. The man, identified only as Adel A., had been sentenced by a Revolutionary Court to have his right hand and left foot amputated in public. However only his left foot was cut off on Sunday inside a prison. Amputations are rare in Iran and usually only handed out to repeat offenders. The last reported case was in October 2004, when a man convicted of a series of robberies had...

Heart of Darkness BY FOUAD AJAMI,  WSJ, 28 September 2005 From Zarqawi to the man on the street, Sunni Arabs fear Shiite emancipation. The remarkable thing about the terror in Iraq is the silence with which it is greeted in other Arab lands. Grant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi his due: […] The extremist is never just a man of the fringe: He always works at the outer edges of mainstream life, playing out the hidden yearnings and defects of the dominant culture. Zarqawi is a bigot and a killer, but he did not descend from the sky. He emerged out of the Arab world's sins of omission and commission;...

New Hampshire In the summer of 2002 I wrote in this space that the President had failed to seize the moment: ‘George W. Bush had a rare opportunity after September 11. He could have attempted to reverse the most poisonous tide in the Western world: the gloopy multiculturalism that insists all cultures are equally valid, even as they’re trying to kill us. He could have argued that Western self-loathing is a psychosis we can no longer afford.’ Oh, well. Three years on, it seems even clearer that this was Bush’s biggest immediate lapse in an otherwise clear-sighted understanding of what...

The author, a retired U.S. Army colonel, draws upon many years of firsthand observation of Arabs in training to reach conclusions about the ways in which they go into combat. His findings derive from personal experience with Arab military establishments in the capacity of U.S. military attache and security assistance officer, observer officer with the British-officered Trucial Oman Scouts (the security force in the emirates prior to the establishment of the UAE), as well as some thirty years of study of the Middle East.~ Ed. ARABIC-SPEAKING ARMIES have been generally ineffective in the modern era. Egyptian regular forces did poorly...

In the battle for Fallujah, terrorists used women and children as human shields against American soldiers. On April 27, 2004, in Jerusalem, Hamas used a Palestinian human bomb to kill two Palestinian alleged "collaborators." On April 28, 2004, even as UN envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, was busy characterizing Israeli policy as the "great poison in the region," Jordanian police arrested Al Qaeda operatives who were quite literally trying to launch a chemical poison attack that might have killed 80,000 Jordanians and Americans. And, on May 1, 2004, in Gaza, Palestinian gunmen shot and killed a Jewish woman who was eight-months pregnant...

Large women have long been appreciated in Africa, but nowhere has size been more sought after than in Mauritania. Affluent nomadic families living in this West African country have traditionally force fed their girls into obesity. Being fat was not only beautiful, it was a sign of wealth and social status. But force feeding and super-sized women are going out of style. Fatma Sidi Mohammed didn't eat western-style Big Macs and french fries when she was a little girl, living in a tiny village in southeastern Mauritania. But she did drink milk. Lots of it. At the age of nine,...

Shaking Up the Neighbors By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN AMMAN, Jordan — Shortly after the 25-member Governing Council was appointed in Iraq, the head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, questioned the U.S.-appointed Council's legitimacy. "If this Council was elected," complained Mr. Moussa, "it would have gained much power and credibility." I love that quote. I love it, first of all, for its bold, gutsy, shameless, world-class hypocrisy. Mr. Moussa presides over an Arab League in which not one of the 22 member states has a leader elected in a free and fair election. On top of it, before the war,...

When Will Iraq Go Pop? by Jason Gay They now have Americans troops patrolling their neighborhoods, American-supplied radio on their airwaves, and pretty soon they’ll have Tom Brokaw, too, stentorially rhapsodizing on their rabbit-eared televisions. But is Iraq ready for Seinfeld? The American media campaign in Iraq is well underway, of course, even without Jerry. It began with psychological-warfare radio messages urging Iraqi soldiers to lay down their weapons and surrender. After Baghdad fell, a specially outfitted military aircraft continued to fly over the region, broadcasting public-service announcements and reassuring, look-into-your-eyeballs addresses from President George W. Bush and British Prime...

A nationwide screening of newborn babies has brought to light high incidence of genetic disorders in the Kingdom compared to Western countries.This was disclosed to Arab News by Dr. Stephen R.Schroeder, executive director of Prince Salman Center for Disability Research (PSCDR). He said preliminary screening of 10,000-15,000 babies in Riyadh, Jeddah, Qassim and Abha has shown that these genetic disorders could have been the result of consanguineous marriages.According to the principal investigators, Dr. Colin Hodgkinson and Dr.Vandana Bharucha, the incidence of genetic disorders among children occurs at a rate that is between five and 40 times higher than in many...

(Captain's log): Aziz H. Poonawalla writes: Your essays are probably the most exhaustively argued, for the pro-attack camp. But, they are spread out all over the place. Is it possible to simply list in 4 or 5 numbered points the reasons why you favor attack in Iraq? as best as I can tell, they seem to be: 1. Iraq has WMD2. Iraq will get WMD3. Iraq will give WMD to terrorists4. Iraq has used WMD against his own people5. Iraq is not deterrable6. ??? are these accurate? oversimplified? And is your support of attacking Iraq contingent on all of these,...

ARABIC-SPEAKING ARMIES have been generally ineffective in the modern era. Egyptian regular forces did poorly against Yemeni irregulars in the 1960s. Syrians could only impose their will in Lebanon during the mid-1970s by the use of overwhelming weaponry and numbers. Iraqis showed ineptness against an Iranian military ripped apart by revolutionary turmoil in the 1980s and could not win a three-decades-long war against the Kurds. The Arab military performance on both sides of the 1990 Kuwait war was mediocre. And the Arabs have done poorly in nearly all the military confrontations with Israel. Why this unimpressive record? There are many...

Human Development in the Arab World: A Study by the United NationsBy: Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli* Under the joint auspices of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development a recently published report, Arab Human Development Report 2002 (Creating Opportunities for Future Generations), diagnosed human development in 22 Arab countries in a forthcoming and even blunt manner.[1]Methodology and Main FindingsThe UNDP has customarily measured the Human Development Index (HDI) in terms of four variables: life expectancy, adult literacy, education enrollment ratios and gross domestic product per capita.[2] This report transcends the UNDP's traditional criteria...

April 26, 2002, 12:55 p.m. Saudi Telethon Host Calls for Enslaving Jewish Women From the Saudi Information Service. (WASHINGTON DC) April 26, 2002 …The Saudi Information Agency has obtained a tape by prominent government official cleric Shaikh Saad Al-Buraik calling for enslaving Jewish women. The tape is called "a Monkey Desecrates Mosque," and was delivered in a Riyadh government mosque. The monkey refers to Jews. Al-Buraik, a Wahhabi cleric, is closely tied to Prince AbdulAziz Ben Fahd, the king's youngest son, and member of the Saudi delegation accompanying Crown Prince Abdullah on his current visit. Al-Buraik was the host of...