FOR THE RECORD By Dr

FOR THE RECORD By Dr. Jerome Kaufman

The Koran - Something Lost in the Translation

Now that all the politically correct and agenda-motivated rhetoric has been completed, maybe we can take a less emotional view of exactly what happened following the Newsweek magazine story of American guards at the Guantanamo prison flushing a Koran down the toilet?

Shortly following publication, Newsweek admitted the story was a complete fabrication. After some investigation, the US military did conclude some isolated incidents of Koran abuse had occurred but determined that most of those were done by the prisoners themselves.

What was the reaction in the Muslim world? Reported were riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Sudan, Palestinian Arab territories, Iraq, wherever. About sixteen people were reportedly killed and hundreds injured. By some coincidence, many of these riots occurred immediately following Friday services in the mosques. Thus, this rioting of thousands of people did not occur spontaneously. These riots were, in the main, initiated by the inflammatory rhetoric of the mosques’ imams.
Why? Is not the transparent goal of the religious hierarchy, the imams, et al, to maintain their virtually absolute power over Muslim countries and their citizens?

Every ploy, especially using the United States and Israel as the whipping boys, is used to maintain the imam’s destructive power and delude the Muslim people that their societies remaining in abject poverty and ignorance for the last 800 years is somehow our fault. The West is also being subjected to a constant barrage of religious “information” on the Koran. We are told, “it glorifies Abraham, Moses and Jesus and teaches lessons of faith, family values, caring for orphans, feeding the poor, helping the suffering, removing racism and oppression from society and bringing the joy of justice and freedom to the people of God.” But something surely got lost in this translation. Rather than grant Christianity and Judaism the respect claimed, M. Kedar, Professor of Arabic Studies points out that Muhammad, with a stroke of his imagination, has simply “Islamized” their religious leaders. He made Abraham the first Moslem and Jesus and St. John prophets, along with Adam, Joseph, Seth and Aaron. According to Muhammad’s dream, he then takes them to the Seventh Heaven to meet Allah, who obligingly accepts Muhammad as their master. Thus a religion of triumphalism was created wherein Christians and Jews have been designated as “dhimmis”, a “protected class” of people, whose rights in Muslim countries is completely subservient to those of the Muslim.

As to the statement that the Koran “defends family values, cares for the poor, removes oppression,” that also has somehow been lost in the translation Mitchell Bard in Myths and Facts presents the real world of human rights in Arab Islamic countries.

He writes, “The popular press has chosen to virtually ignore violations of fundamental human rights that take place daily in almost every Arab country. According to annual reports by the American State Department, most of the Arab states are ruled by oppressive, dictatorial regimes, which deny their citizens basic freedoms of political expression, speech, press and due process.

The Arab Human Development Report published by a group of Arab researchers from the UN Development Program concluded that out of the seven regions of the world, Arab countries had the lowest freedom score. They also had the lowest ranking for "voice and accountability," a measure of various aspects of the political process, civil liberties, political rights and independence of the media. And what has been our own recent experience with religious desecration?

Mary Mostert, political commentator, reports that in Serbian Kosovo alone since 1999, 140 Christian Churches were blown up with 25 churches destroyed just this past year! When the Jordanians invaded Israel in 1948 and maintained Judea and Samaria (West Bank) as theirs for 19 years, 57 synagogues, in Jerusalem alone, were defaced and their Torah scrolls destroyed. The ancient Mount of Olives Jewish cemetery was decimated with 38,000 gravestones torn loose and used to pave roads and Jordanian army latrines.

These are just two examples of the hundreds of desecrations of Christian and Jewish holy sites that have occurred in Muslim countries over the centuries. How does that compare with the recent purported Koran book desecration? Certainly it is wrong to demean anyone else’s religion in this country. People are encouraged to believe whatever they want but please do not make us the fall guys for their own self-inflicted problems, in the process.

The story proved completely false and Newsweek offered an inadequate apology. But what happened in the Muslim world as a result? Reported were riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Sudan, Palestinian Arab territories, Iraq, wherever. About sixteen people were reportedly killed and hundreds injured. By some coincidence, many of these riots occurred immediately following Friday services in the mosques. Thus, this rioting of thousands of people did not, as usual, occur spontaneously. These riots were initiated by the inflammatory rhetoric of the mosques' imams. Then what about this Muslim sensitivity? The Muslims were rioting theoretically over a single episode of their holy book flushed down a toilet and, even that, proved to be false.

These are just two examples of the thousands of desecrations of Christian and Jewish holy sites that have occurred over the centuries

. How does that compare with the reporting of a Koran book desecration that in fact, never occurred? But, never mind the "spontaneous riots?" What is really at play here? Professor Robert A. Pape, associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, declares after an extensive study of suicide bombings that, "What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks actually have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in seeking aid from abroad, but is rarely the root cause." Cannot one easily apply the same conclusions to Islamic rioting? What is the common factor here? Is not the common factor the transparent goal of the religious hierarchy, the imams, et al, to maintain their virtually absolute power over Muslim countries and their citizens? Every ploy, especially using the United States and Israel as the whipping boys, is used to maintain their lethal power and delude the Muslim people that their societies remaining in abject poverty and ignorance for the last 800 years is somehow our fault. The imams are rightfully very frightened that President Bush's so-called War on Terror may actually result in bringing democracy to Islamic lands. In fact, it is already happening in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Palestinian Arab territories and the very thought itself, of Democracy, suddenly occurring to Islamic regimes in the rest of world. What might this do? Of course it would take a giant step toward removing the imams from their strangle hold of power, educate their people and hopefully help bring them into the 21st century. Our looking the other way will not work anymore and did not really work in the first place. If we are truly to have some remote chance of relative peace, than the root causes must be unequivocally addressed.

Who is owed the apology and much more?

Yesterday, (June 19, 2005) Israel apologized to the United States, via Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for agreeing to sell Harpy attack drones and other advanced technology to China. "It is impossible to hide the crisis between Israel and the United States with regard to the security industries. We are doing everything possible to put it behind us," Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said on Israel Radio "The United States is our biggest ally, and none of the things that were done were done with the intention of harming U.S. interests," he said.

Miss Rice had raised concerns about the deal on her way to the Middle East on Friday. "I believe that the Israelis now understand our concerns, and I'm certain that, as good partners can, that we can come to some resolution to allow us to proceed," she said yesterday It is absolutely impossible for me to understand why Israel has to constantly apologize to the United States for selling weaponry to China or India or anyone else. How dare the United States demand such an apology and such control over Israeli military exports to countries thousands of miles, fortunately from our borders, when the United States, at the very same time, has been supplying, in massive quantities, the most sophisticated weaponry to Israel’s mortal enemies - all of whom are either on her immediate borders or very short flying miles away?

Is Israel less needy of import funds than the gargantuan American Military Industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower so clairvoyantly warned us against 45 years ago According to the legally required Arms Sales Monitoring Project that keeps track of the administration's notifications to Congress of proposed government-negotiated Foreign Military Sales (FMS) agreements, export licenses for industry-negotiated Direct Commercial Sales (DCS), leases of equipment, and reduced price or free excess defense article (EDA) transfers, the following countries have impending military sales, not to mention the billions of dollars of sophisticated military hardware furnished to them in the previous 10 years Saudi Arabia – 370 million, Egypt 2.7 billion, Jordan 161 million, Kuwait 113 billion, United Arab Emirates 455 billion Would you not think that only when the US stops these sales to Israel’s mortal enemies (current cosmetic peace treaties not withstanding) can the US legitimately raise concerns as to Israel’s arms sales?

FOR THE RECORD By Dr. Jerome Kaufman

Response to the Wall Street Journal Editorial

By Dr. Jerome S. Kaufman, World Jewish News Agency Columnist, Zionism Organization of America National Secretary

Ms. Oz-Salzberger writes of Israel emerging as a "slimmer stronger more just" society as a result of the tragic expulsion of Israel's dedicated citizens from the Jewish communities of Gaza. The entire problem of Gaza is addressed as if Israel had been the perpetrator of some highly immoral turpitude and is now undergoing some long overdue moral catharsis by divesting itself from territory that was to have been part of the Jewish Homeland in the first place. Totally ignored is the fact that the Arabs have laid false claim to all of Israel while they have 21 infinitely larger, oil rich nations of their own.

In the eyes of Israel's misguided Left, the even greater turpitude of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) with the abandonment of another 250,000 of the bravest and most patriotic of Israel society is next. By this suicidal action, Israel will be completely absolved of the great moral sin of having re-claimed territory that should have been theirs by all historical, political and moral criteria. The greater part of the world has chosen to ignore the historical fact that the Jews were expelled from their land by the Roman Conquest of 70 AD - nearly 2000 years ago and have been forcibly kept from returning ever since. Oz-Salzberger deliberately ignores this irrefutable claim preferring the beautifully developed propaganda lie that the Israelis are "occupiers of Arab land."

Oz-Salzberger also has the temerity to demonize Israel's religious society and create a moral equivalency between the less than 50 innocent Arabs killed by a couple of deranged individually-acting Israelis quickly condemned by the Israeli government with the deliberate, 40 year old Palestinian Authority sponsored terror targeting innocent civilians on buses, in restaurants, in schools, markets, airplanes, wherever. In contrast, these killers are hailed as heroes and martyrs and promised all kinds of questionable benefits in Islamic nirvana. But, Oz-Salzberger is right about one thing - There are many Hamas leaders "uttering statements that Jerusalem will be next." And who is to say they are wrong? Do she and Ariel Sharon think that giving up more land to the Arabs will satiate the appetite of Hamas and the huge majority of the Arabs in Israel and in the rest of the world? Unfortunately, very next on Sharon's give-away drawing board are four small communities in the Northern Shomron of Israel. That does not sound like much but, in the small print, Sharon is also including relinquishing another 300 square miles of Israeli territory to the Arabs! Can you imagine in a country that is already the size of a postage stamp, giving up that much more of its land mass? That land is almost exactly the same amount of territory as if the United States were ceding away 1/2 of the State of Texas to Mexico!

Finally, where is the "more just" society of the Arabs? Unfortunately, any semblance of such an entity remains only in the dreamy imagination of the Oz-Salzbergers of the world.