Certainly the humanitarian crisis in Gaza evokes sympathy. But the full and complete responsibility for that crisis lies at the feet of Hamas. The Palestinian daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (published on the West Bank) reported on the Abd Rabbo family. The Abd Rabbos had the misfortune to own a farm that overlooked the Israeli town of Sderot. This, the newspaper reports, turned it into an ideal military position for the Palestinian fighters, from which they have launched hundreds of rockets into southern Israel during the last few years. “The Abd Rabbo family members emphasize that they are not (Hamas) activists and that they are still loyal to the Fatah movement, but that they were unable to prevent the armed squads from entering their neighborhood at night. One family member, Hadi (age 22) said: ‘You can’t say anything to the resistance (fighters), or they will accuse you of collaborating (with Israel) and shoot you in the legs.’”

As in Jenin, Israel took extraordinary measures to limit civilian casualties in Gaza. Reporting in the Weekly Standard, Max Boot notes that the IDF made hundreds of thousands of phone calls and dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets warning civilians to vacate sites of impending attacks. “When the Israeli Air Force detected Palestinian civilians atop buildings,” Boot writes, “it dropped tiny bombs designed to cause little damage. Only when the civilians had cleared off did the air force drop larger munitions that flattened the structure.”

Unlike the Israelis, Hamas was keen to increase Palestinian casualties of violence. Gaza is full of munitions, smuggling tunnels, and incitement videos exhorting the faithful to kill Jews, but it’s nearly impossible to find a bomb shelter in the Strip. By contrast, the Israeli town of Sderot, where my 12-year-old son visited last week, is covered with them. He sat in the living room of an 80-year-old woman whose son had urged her to take cover in the newly built bomb shelter in her basement. Five minutes after she reluctantly rose from her sofa and left the room, a Kassam rocket crashed through the ceiling.

Sderot is home to 23,000 long-suffering people. Boot reports that at no time during the past eight years has Sderot enjoyed more than four consecutive days without a missile attack. I cannot imagine how they bear the anxiety. I felt a tiny shred of what they must go through when I worried about my son’s recent visit. National Review

— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.

Simultaneously dangerous and decrepit By Clifford D. May

Today, the 30-year-old Iranian Revolution appears simultaneously dangerous and decrepit. Iran has made Syria its client, created Hezbollah as its proxy, and adopted Hamas. A new report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies says Iran is likely to produce enough low-enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb before the end of this year. Long-range ballistic missiles are under development as well.

But, at the same time, Iran’s attempt to export its revolution to Iraq has failed for now. When Israel retaliated against Hamas for years of missile attacks, Iran’s support was only rhetorical. Iran’s economy has been crumbling and falling oil prices have hit Iran hard in recent months. Further, while Iran has spent a fortune on its nuclear programs, it has built few oil refineries. So, despite being one of the world’s major oil producers, Iran must import much of its gasoline.

Research by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (the think tank I head), led by FDD senior fellow Orde Kittrie, a former State Department official, reveals that Iran gets most of its imported fuel from just a few companies—Vitol, Trafigura, British Petroleum, and Total—all of which have financial interests in the U.S.

That presents an opportunity: President Obama could pressure these gasoline suppliers to turn off the flow. Indeed, recent Congressional action reportedly persuaded the Indian company, Reliance, to end gasoline sales to Iran.

Obama could make clear to average Iranians that their rulers are to blame—they are the ones isolating and impoverishing them. And for what? So they can wave a big gun on the world stage? So they can attempt genocide and provoke a nuclear exchange with Israel? There is every reason to believe most Iranians don’t want that.

President Obama has said that the world “cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. . . . And I will do everything that’s required to prevent it.” He also has said: “If we can prevent [Iran’s rulers] from importing the gasoline that they need, that starts changing their cost-benefit analysis. That starts putting the squeeze on them.”

Exactly. The Iranian Revolution is 30 years old. The new administration still has time to limit its final death toll. National Review

— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies , a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

Gelen says that he thinks a "campaign of intimidation" is underway against the religious of the monastery. "Bishop, monks, and nuns," Gelen continues, "are always threatened in the most direct way possible by the inhabitants of the village, and they do not dare present themselves at trial or defend themselves in some way. So for some time, the monks and nuns have not had the courage to leave the confines of the property." "In Turkey," Gelen explains, "freedom of religious expression is guaranteed by the constitution; but those who are not recognized as a minority do not exist, in practical terms. Now the Syriacs, unlike the Greeks and Armenians, are not recognized as a religious minority, although they have been living there for millennia. The purpose of the threats and the lawsuit seems to be to repress this minority and expel it from Turkey, as if it were a foreign object."

The Syriac community has high hopes in the European Union, which on February 11 is supposed to address together with the Turkish government the question of religious freedom and human rights for the non-Muslim minorities present in the country. "We hope not only that our rights will be recognized," David Gelen says, "but we are convinced that for the Turkish state, the time has come to recognize, accept, and protect the cultural multiplicity of the country, instead of fighting it. Turkey must decide whether it wants to preserve a 1,600-year-old culture, or annihilate the last remains of a non-Muslim tradition. What is at stake is the multiculturalism that has always characterized this nation, since the time of the Ottoman Empire."

Since 1923, when the Turkish state was created, the Syriac Orthodox have been dispersed in four countries: Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran. Yasar Ravi, president of the Syriac Orthodox community of Antioch, notes that the Treaty of Lausanne guaranteed certain essential freedoms for this minority, but "things have gone differently."

Since that time, there has been a constant exodus of the community toward central and northern Europe, especially Germany (where there are 20,000 Syriacs) and Sweden (70-80,000). In the middle of the 1960's, there were still about 130,000 of them in Tur Abdin; today there are just 3,000. "We have no territory, we are scattered throughout the world, but we are very united thanks to our linguistic, social, and cultural identity," Yasar Ravi continues. "As history teaches us, religion has always had a dominant role in civilization. Ours is without doubt a very religious people, and we are proud of speaking the language of Jesus: the language that, in terms of its diffusion, was essentially the English of the Middle East." Asia News

There are those who will believe him. But if Israel has succeeded in destroying most Hamas weapons caches and factories, as well as most of the tunnels through which Hamas imported thousands of missiles—even as it claimed Israel was blocking supplies of food, fuel, and medicines through its “siege”—Israel achieved important, if short-term military goals.

Hamas spokesmen are saying they lost fewer soldiers than did the Israelis, and that they destroyed 47 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles. The carcasses of those machines have yet to be displayed for the cameras. And, by most accounts, Hamas fighters were short on both skills and fervor, despite Iranian and Hezbollah training. Many Hamas military commanders removed their uniforms and hid among women and children. “They turned houses and mosques into battlegrounds so that the people would protect them and those who trusted them now regret it,” wrote Abd al-Fattah Shehadeh in the online Arabic newspaper ELAPH.

The European Union has warned that while humanitarian aid will be forthcoming, Gazans should not expect reconstruction assistance if Hamas continues to provoke new battles. “We don’t want to go on to reconstruct Gaza every I-don’t-know-how-many-years,” said EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. “We have been at the side of the Palestinian population always and we will be at their side, but at the same time it’s also for the Palestinian population on both sides to say, ‘We want this peace.’ ”

That’s a taller order than she probably understands. Prior to this battle, it was not clear that most Palestinians wanted peace more than they wanted Israel’s extinction. It’s too soon to say whether their minds have been changed by the suffering they have endured. Even if that is the case, it would be unsafe for Gazans to say out loud that they’d prefer compromise in pursuit of coexistence to martyrdom in pursuit of victory.

There are those who will argue that Hamas wins merely by having survived. But Israel would have lost had it not fought—had it continued to passively accept an endless rain of Hamas missiles on its citizens. Israelis knew that President Bush, during his final weeks in office, would not object if they tried to stop that rain. They don’t yet know what President Obama will do in a similar circumstance.

Over the days ahead, Hamas may resume its attacks on Israel, or dig new tunnels to smuggle in new missiles to prepare for future attacks. If so, Israel may feel the need to respond strongly—to re-establish deterrence and demonstrate that it can withstand pressure from those in the “international community” all too eager to try to appease radical Islam.

Iran will continue its drive to acquire nuclear weapons, a potential game-changer. But this is no game. It’s a series of battles in a war that is likely to be as consequential as any in history. National Review

— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies , a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

Yet there are proliferating signs that in too many places, and too many ways, the world is tacitly coming to accept not only persecution of the Jews, but the possibility of a second genocide--not necessarily by way of active complicity, but under labels familiar from the last century: It was not our fault. There was nothing we could do.

Compared with the world's population today of 6.7 billion, the entire Jewish population worldwide is infinitesimal, estimated at roughly 14 million. Some 40% of those Jews live in the U.S. Some 40% live in the world's only Jewish state, Israel.

The rest are scattered from France to Canada, the United Kingdom, Russia, Argentina, Australia and beyond. Collectively, they account for no more than about 0.2% of humanity.

That's also miniscule compared with a worldwide Muslim population very roughly estimated at some 1.5 billion. And Israel, for all its U.S. support, walks a lonely and beleaguered path compared to the 57-member strong Saudi-headquartered Organization of the Islamic Conference--one of the core lobbying blocs in the UN General Assembly.

Many Muslims may well desire simply to live in peace. Unfortunately, some of the most vocal, politically active and militarily aggressive among them--ruling Iran and Gaza, and harbored in places such as Syria and Lebanon--are explicitly dedicated to destroying Israel.

Through Internet and television propaganda, through pronouncements from the UN stage, through everything from subsidies to anti-Semitic lobbying associations to money and arms for terrorist groups, they spend considerable resources fueling movements to boycott, denigrate and attack Jews.

There are many spokes in the anti-Semitic web now being re-woven around the globe, from Saudi Arabia to the Palestinian schools and media that feature maps without Israel, and role models such as a martyred version of Mickey Mouse.

But as Obama takes office, two hubs stand out. One is Iran, supporter of terrorists, source of genocidal proclamations against Israel and seeker of nuclear bombs.

Whatever the doubts about that bomb program raised by the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate of late 2007, Obama's pick for cabinet-rank ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, clearly sees a problem. In her written testimony for her confirmation hearing Jan. 15, she noted that "Iran continues its illicit nuclear program unabated."

The other hub is the United Nations, which, despite its own sanctions on Iran and its own 1945 charter which aims to avert such horrors as another holocaust, continues to dignify Tehran and some of its fellow anti-Semitic despotic states with a slew of important UN posts, while treating Israel as a pariah state.

Though a democracy, Israel has never been allowed to hold one of the 10 rotating seats on a Security Council that in recent years has welcomed such tyrannies as Syria and Libya.

Currently, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is fueling the problem--publicly condemning Israel's battle to stop the terrorist attacks by Hamas, touring Gaza and demanding a probe of Israeli actions, while offering no viable protection to Israelis.

Don't hold your breath for a UN inquiry into weapons and training supplied to Hamas by the same Iranian regime whose nuclear bomb program the UN’s leaky sanctions have failed to stop.

In this, Ban is carrying on a deep-seated UN tradition of bias against Jews and Israel. That is broadly obvious from the UN's torrent of anti-Israel statements, resolutions and so forth, including plans to hold a repeat in Geneva this April of the UN's anti-Israel 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa, ostensibly convened to discuss racism. But if anyone wants more detail, an illuminating account of the UN's anti-Semitic inner circles can be found in the memoir of a former senior UN official, Pedro Sanjuan, The UN Gang, published in 2005.

Sanjuan, who served at the UN in the 1980s and early 1990s, but kept in touch with it well after that, devotes an entire chapter, rich in anecdote, to "The Anti-Semitic UN Culture." Sanjuan writes that though he himself is not a Jew, what bothered him most during his years at the UN was "this unrelenting bigotry" against them.

During Israel's recent battle with Hamas in Gaza, attacks both verbal and physical against Jews have risen worldwide. To cite just a small sample, there have been reports of a double shooting in Denmark, Molotov cocktails hurled at synagogues in France, a Jewish burial chapel fire-bombed in Sweden, graffiti scrawled across British buildings saying "Jihad 4 Israel" and "Kill Jews," schools and synagogues desecrated on the North Side of Chicago, and--in an echo of Germany's 1938 Kristallnacht--rocks shattering the 50-year-old stained glass windows of a Jewish temple in Knoxville, Tenn.

At risk of being written off as hysterics--which the rising stack of evidence suggests they are not--a handful of journalists have tackled the story. These include syndicated columnist Mark Steyn, who in an article last week on "The Oldest Hatred, Resurgent," reeled off a staggering list of epithets, threats and physical attacks targeting Jews, including a crowd in Amsterdam chanting "Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the gas!," and Palestinian demonstrators in Florida sneering, "You need a big oven, that's what you need."

From Britain, writing in The Wall Street Journal Europe, social critic Melanie Phillips describes a demonstration at which Hamas supporters showed up dressed as "hook-nosed Jews pretending to drink the blood of Palestinian babies."

The message British authorities gave to pro-Israeli demonstrators who turned up at the same scene was to put away their Israeli flags because these were deemed "inflammatory."

But whatever surge of anti-Semitism might have accompanied Israel's battle to stop terrorist attacks by Hamas out of Gaza, the rising prejudice and malice dates back well before that.

Last year, a State Department report to Congress on "Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism" noted that "Over the last decade, U.S. embassies and consulates have reported an upsurge in anti-Semitism." That would be the decade in which Israel pulled out of Lebanon (2000), accepted the "roadmap" that sought to establish a democratic Palestinian state (2003) and withdrew from Gaza (2005).

Government-affiliated studies in recent years in both Europe and Britain have reported that, in the words of a 2006 UK all-party parliamentary inquiry: "It is clear that violence, desecration of property and intimidation directed toward Jews is on the rise."

A report leaked in 2003 from the former Vienna-based European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, an independent body of the European Union, observed an outbreak of anti-Semitic acts in Europe following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S.

These included conspiracy theories that Jews were behind those attacks, denial of the holocaust and "desecration of synagogues, cemeteries, swastika graffiti, threatening and insulting mail." There were "physical attacks" on Jews and Jewish temples, "often committed by young Muslim perpetrators."

The study also described some of the anti-Jewish acts to young people who reportedly had no "specific anti-Semitic prejudices," but joined the Jew-baiting "just for fun."

Nor are Jews in the U.S. entirely spared. In the hate-crime statistics released each year by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, attacks on Jews routinely outnumber religiously based attacks against any other group.

For 2007, FBI figures show that among 1,477 religiously motivated hate crimes reported by U.S. law enforcement authorities, 9% were anti-Islamic, 9.5% were "anti-other religion," 4.4% were anti-Catholic and, by far outstripping any other category, "68.4% were anti-Jewish."

While much of the world may live today in the shadow of terrorist threats, actual attacks over many years have zeroed in repeatedly and specifically on Jews. That's why one now sees Jewish centers in places such as Manhattan surrounded by security barriers. From the bombings in Argentina of the Israeli embassy in 1992 (killing 32) and Jewish community center in 1993 (killing 87), to attacks on synagogues and other Jewish watering holes in places such as Tunisia, Turkey, France and, just two months ago, the terrorist slaughter in Mumbai, which specifically included a Jewish chabad, actual attacks have zeroed in again and again on the Jews.

This scene is also part of a world in which President Obama has become a symbol of what freedom, hope and virtue can do to deliver better days to a long embattled minority. What will he do about the Jews? Forbes.

Claudia Rosett, a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for Forbes

Rather, the question is whether the amount of damage the IDF did was useful, given that Israel's leaders were unwilling to go all the way. Had the bloodthirsty Hamas bosses been killed, every bit of collateral damage would have been justified. Will murkier results justify the physical destruction and loss of civilian lives - however exaggerated by terrorist sympathizers? Or did Israel, by stopping short, hand Hamas a propaganda gift of picturesque ruins, dead kids and grinning terrorists?

Had Israel been willing to go all the way, every loss on either side would have been justified. But Israel's government chickened out again. The IDF performed superbly, redeeming its reputation after the 2006 Lebanon debacle. But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government, after an encouraging start, reverted to its past spinelessness - a failure of nerve that served Israelis and Palestinians badly.

After the basic issue of whether a war is just comes the question of whether the war's results justify the costs. Had Israel continued to focus on smashing Hamas and killing its leaders, this would have qualified, readily, as a just war from start to finish. But now we just don't know if this truncated conflict will produce desirable long-term consequences, or if a convalescent Hamas will continue ruling Gaza with the gun and eventually resume its terror-rocket campaign.

Hamas has suffered a painful setback, physically, politically and psychologically. But it may not have been hurt enough. Hardcore terrorists take a lot of killing. Israel showed what it can do. But strategic exhibitionism goes only so far.

Two possible scenarios lie ahead. First, Hamas may have lost so much credibility that it can't maintain its grip on the population, allowing less-radical Palestinians (if only there were an alternative to the corrupt, discredited Fatah) to play a greater role in Gaza's future. If Gaza's people manage to reject terror, this war will have been worthwhile.

Alternatively, if Hamas retains the power to press ahead with its program to further radicalize Gaza and provide a second Iranian bridgehead on Israel's border, this war will have been an ugly, costly failure. When will Israel (or the United States) learn that you can't make war halfway? If we have to fight, we must aim for a no-nonsense victory, no matter the cost. And yes, victory remains possible, despite the intelligentsia's nonsense to the contrary.

Whether we look at the Bush administration's willingness to march to Baghdad, only to shy from the costs of mastering Baghdad, or Israel's recent foray into Gaza, the strategic imperatives are obvious: Formulate clear war aims, pile on with everything you've got - and don't quit until you've achieved decisive results.

That's Military Basics 101. But few politicians take that course these days.

Israel's government does have plenty of excuses for halting its offensive. It didn't want to be on the blame-line for President Obama's first foreign-policy crisis. A war prosecuted to the finish would have cost much higher casualties. And Israel faces elections in a few weeks. But the bottom line is that, if Israel wasn't ready to go all the way, it shouldn't have gone in at all. For a rule-of-law democracy to embark on a war about which it isn't completely serious is a crime.

Perhaps the end result of all this will be positive. International donors are lining up to offer the Palestinians billions to rebuild, but refusing (for now) to channel the money through Hamas. Perhaps aid will do what Israel left undone.

But I wouldn't bet on it. New York Post

Why are Jews so powerful?

Stanley Mezor invented the first micro-processing chip. Leo Szilard developed the first nuclear chain reactor. Peter Schultz, optical fibre cable; Charles Adler, traffic lights; Benno Strauss, Stainless steel; Isador Kisee sound movies; Emile Berliner, telephone microphone and Charles Ginsburg, videotape recorder.

Famous financiers in the business world who belong to Jewish faith include Ralph Lauren (Polo), Levis Strauss (Levi's Jeans), HowardSchultz (Starbuck's), Sergey Brin (Google), Michael Dell (Dell Computers), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Donna Karan (DKNY), Irv Robbins (Baskin & Robbins) and Bill Rosenberg (Dunkin Donuts).

Richard Levin, President of Yale University, is a Jew. So are Henry Kissinger (American secretary of state), Alan Greenspan (fed chairman under Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush), Joseph Lieberman, Madeleine Albright (American secretary of state), Maxim Litvinov (USSR foreign Minister), David Marshal (Singapore's first chief minister), Isaac Isaacs (governor-general of Australia), Benjamin Disraeli (British statesman and author), Yevgeny Primakov (Russian PM), Jorge Sampaio (president of Portugal), Herb Gray (Canadian deputy PM), Pierre Mendes (French PM), Michael Howard (British home secretary), Bruno Kreisky (chancellor of Austria) and Robert Rubin (former American secretary of treasury).

In the media, famous Jews include Wolf Blitzer (CNN), Barbara Walters (ABC News), Eugene Meyer (Washington Post), Henry Grunwald (editor-in-chief Time), Katherine Graham (publisher of The Washington Post), Joseph Lelyyeld (Executive editor, The New York Times), and MaxFrankel (New York Times).

Can you name the most beneficent philanthropist in the history of the world? The name is George Soros, a Jew, who has so far donated a colossal $4 billion most of which has gone as aid to scientists and universities around the world. Second to George Soros is Walter Annenberg, another Jew, who has built a hundred libraries by donating an estimated $2 billion.

At the Olympics, Mark Spitz set a record of sorts by winning seven gold medals. Lenny Krayzelburg is a three- time Olympic gold medallist. Spitz, Krayzelburg and Boris Becker are all Jewish.

Did you know that Harrison Ford, George Burns, Tony Curtis, Charles Bronson, Sandra Bullock, Billy Crystal, Woody Allen, Paul Newman, Peter Sellers, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Douglas, Ben Kingsley, Kirk Douglas, William Shatner, Jerry Lewis and Peter Falk are all Jewish?

As a matter of fact, Hollywood itself was founded by a Jew. Among directors and producers, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Oliver Stone, Aaron Spelling ( Beverly Hills 90210), Neil Simon (The Odd Couple), Andrew Vaina (Rambo 1/2/3), Michael Man (Starsky and Hutch), Milos Forman (One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest), Douglas Fairbanks (The thief of Baghdad ) and Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) are all Jewish.

To be certain, Washington is the capital that matters and in Washington the lobby that matters is The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. Washington knows that if PM Ehud Olmert were to discover that the earth is flat, AIPAC will make the 109th Congress pass a resolution congratulating Olmert on his discovery.

William James Sidis, with an IQ of 250-300, is the brightest human who ever existed. Guess what faith did he belong to?

So, why are Jews so powerful?

Answer: Education.

Why are Muslims so powerless?

There are an estimated 1,476,233,470 Muslims on the face of the planet: one billion in Asia, 400 million in Africa, 44 million in Europe and six million in the Americas .Every fifth human being is a Muslim; for every single Hindu there are two Muslims, for every Buddhist there are two Muslims and for every Jew there are one hundred Muslims. Ever wondered why Muslims are so powerless?

Here is why:

There are 57 member-countries of theOrganisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), and all of them put togetherhave around 500 universities; one university for every three million Muslims. The United States has 5,758 universities and India has 8,407. In 2004, Shanghai Jiao Tong University compiled an 'Academic Ranking of World Universities', and intriguingly, not one university from Muslim-majority states was in the top-500.

As per data collected by the UNDP, literacy in the Christian world stands at nearly 90 per cent and 15 Christian- majority states have a literacy rate of 100 per cent. A Muslim-majority state, as a sharp contrast, has an average literacy rate of around 40 per cent and there is no Muslim-majority state with a literacy rate of 100 per cent. Some 98 per cent of the 'literates' in the Christian world had completed primary school, while less than 50 per cent of the 'literates' in the Muslim world did the same. Around 40 per cent of the 'literates' in the Christian world attended university while no more than two per cent of the 'literate s' in the Muslim world did the same.

Muslim-majority countries have 230 scientists per one million Muslims. The US has 4,000 scientists per million and Japan has 5,000 per million. In the entire Arab world, the total number of full-time researchers is 35,000 and there are only 50 technicians per one million Arabs (in the Christian world there are up to 1,000 technicians per one million). Furthermore, the Muslim world spends 0.2 per cent of its GDP on research and development, while the Christian world spends around five per cent of its GDP.

Conclusion:

The Muslim world lacks the capacity to produce knowledge.

Daily newspapers per 1,000 people and number of book titles per million are two indicators of whether knowledge is being diffused in a society. In Pakistan , there are 23 daily newspapers per 1,000 Pakistanis while the same ratio in Singapore is 36. In the UK , the number of book titles per million stands at 2,000 while the same in Egypt is 20.

Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to diffuse knowledge.

Exports of high technology products as a percentage of total exports are an important indicator of knowledge application. Pakistan 's exports of high technology products as a percentage of total exports stands at one per cent. The same for Saudi Arabia is 0.3 per cent; Kuwait , Morocco , and Algeria are all at 0.3 per cent while Singapore is at 58 percent.

Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to apply knowledge.

Why are Muslims powerless?
Because we aren't producing knowledge.

Why are Muslims powerless?
Because we aren't diffusing knowledge.

Why are Muslims powerless?
Because we aren't applying knowledge.

And, the future belongs to knowledge-based societies.

Interestingly, the combined annual GDP of 57 OIC-countries is under $2 trillion. America , just by herself, produces goods and services worth $12 trillion; China $8 trillion, Japan $3.8 trillion and Germany $2.4 trillion (purchasing power parity basis).

Oil rich Saudi Arabia , UAE, Kuwait and Qatar collectively produce goods and services (mostly oil) worth $500 billion; Spain alone produces goods and services worth over $1 trillion, Catholic Poland $489 billion and Buddhist Thailand $545 billion.. (Muslim GDP as a percentage of world GDP is fast declining).

So, why are Muslims so powerless?
Answer: Lack of education!

All we do is shout to Allah the whole day and blame everyone else for our multiple failures..!....

In a country where it is illegal to yell "Fire" in a movie theater, it is shocking to hear "Reopen the Ovens" on the streets of New York, Los Angeles, Washington, and Fort Lauderdale. When Americans are seen screaming out to their fellow Americans, "Go back to the ovens; you need a big oven," we all need to take notice. Jews across the globe, and in particular, American Jews who feel safe and far from harm's way, need to snap out of their comfort zone.

The hate is not simply being hurled by Muslim protesters. Rosanne Barr described Israel as a "Nazi state." Annie Lennox spoke out calling for the end of the "slaughter and systematic murder" of Arabs by Israel. And a New York Times terrorist expert considers Israel "an untreated and spreading cancer."

What is most distressing about all of this is the fact that the "citizens of the world" to whom Obama so eloquently spoke this summer are comfortable putting their offensive, racist views out there. But where has Obama been since the inception of this conflict? The President-elect, who is very comfortable discussing the state of the economy, has been remarkably silent regarding the State of Israel. And that silence is deafening.

Yet Obama's silence is being drowned out by the drumming of hate and violence by many of the people who elected him to lead. It has become acceptable to be an antisemite and take to the streets with vitriol and rage. And the media has become the cheerleader du jour in this regard.

I watched FoxNews last week with utter dismay as Alan Combs had the audacity to accuse Israel of prohibiting humanitarian aid from entering Gaza based on UN allegations. The irony of the fair and balanced news organization using the unfair and unbalanced bastion of human rights known as the United Nations as a source would have been amusing if it wasn't so offensive.

On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece entitled "Israel Is Committing War Crimes." I had always held the editorial board of the Journal to a higher ethical standard than say, the membership of the United Nations Security Council. So when I read about the conviction of Israel in the opinion of an unknown professor from a little-known college of law in the pages of The Wall Street Journal, I was offended.

It is not surprising that the reporting of the conflict between Israel and Hamas is biased in the foreign press. One even expects pro-Palestinian reporting from The New York Times. However, when FoxNews and the Journal cover this story repeating lies and distortions, I begin to worry that the propaganda is starting to have its intended effect of altering public opinion in favor of the ideology that wants to see Israel annihilated.

I opened up an email this morning which purportedly contained an image of the front page of the New York Times dated May 10, 1943. The banner headline read "Warsaw Ghetto Uprising An Over Reaction: European Leaders Blame Jews for Disproportionate Response". I actually thought this was real until I saw the header describing the page as what the paper would have looked like had today's NYT editors been in charge in 1943.

Where has the media been in reporting the anti-Israel, violent demonstrations and hate rallies? We know that they were too busy to count the number of missiles dropped on Israel leading up to this war. But since they seem to have found the time to count the number of dead Palestinians shouldn't they also take the time to report the stories of desecrated synagogues and threats of death to Jews.

And if the media have jumped on the pro-Palestinian bandwagon, fueling the hate and helping to encourage the violence with dishonest reporting, we have even more reason to expect that our elected representatives should step in with rational thought and leadership.

With this in mind, I examined the picture of the former Presidents and President-elect taken in the Oval Office last week. I took some comfort in my analysis that Jimmy Carter appeared to be standing apart from the others. But I read that Obama spoke with Carter and I wonder what words of "wisdom" our most anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, ex-President passed along.

Did the former President, author of the book, Palestine:Peace Not Apartheid, praise Obama for his concern expressed during the campaign that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people"? Did Obama ask Carter how to deal with this "constant wound," "constant sore" that is infecting "all of our foreign policy?"

A day or two after the White House photo op, it was reported that Obama is ready to open up a dialogue with Hamas. I am not surprised. American Thinker has extensively reported on Obama's pro-Palestinian friends and advisors. One in particular, Samantha Powers, is now working in his State Department. This is the woman who suggested that a military invasion of Israel might be necessary in order to prevent genocide of the Palestinian people.

Protesters, newspapers and television reporters across the country and the world are screaming and yelling that Israel is in fact the terrorist, a state of murderers committing genocide. I am deeply concerned that all too many Americans actually believe that. But what I'd like to know is whether Barack Obama believes that as well.

Will Obama develop foreign policy based on the opinions of his anti-Semitic advisors? Will he be influenced by the very vocal, aggressive portion of his supporters that hates Jews and wants to "Nuke Israel"? What type of dialogue does he envision with a terrorist entity whose sole raison d'etre is the destruction of Israel?

Only time will tell. But I for one am comforted by the fact that the leaders of the State of Israel understand that they must defeat the growth of the real cancer in this world known as anti-Semitism. And I am happy that they were smart enough to begin that eradication prior to Obama taking the oath of office. American Thinker.

Lauri B. Regan is an attorney at a global law firm based in New York City.

The timing of Mr Miliband's comments, which amounted to a public condemnation of the outgoing Bush administration's approach to tackling the modern menace of Islamist-inspired terrorism, was aimed at currying favour with the new US foreign policy team, led by Hillary Clinton, that is preparing to take office following President-Elect Barack Obama's inauguration next week.

Mrs Clinton made an alarming intervention of her own this week, when she pledged to pursue a policy of "smart power", in stark contrast to the "hard power" approach of the Bush White House. Mrs Clinton showed a disturbing lack of understanding about the threat America faces, when she ruled out having any dialogue with the militant Palestinian group Hamas, so long as it continued to deny Israel's right to exist, while at the same time suggesting she wanted to open talks with Iran over its controversial nuclear programme. Iran is one of Hamas's staunchest allies, providing it with many of the missiles that are now being fired at Israel, which means that Iran and Hamas share similar objectives.

Likewise, while Mr Miliband's comments will no doubt help to win him brownie points in Washington, they suggest a worrying misconception about the nature of the conflict Britain and its allies are engaged in fighting.

Talk to any of the young Pashtun tribesmen volunteering to risk their lives fighting for the Taliban against the British and other coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, and they will tell you they are joining the jihad, the holy war, against the West and all it stands for. The same goes for the young Shia recruits joining the many Iranian-backed militias that have been engaged in fierce combat with coalition forces in Iraq.

Again, counter to Mr Miliband's view, the Islamists bring together terror tactics and ideology. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the fanatics leading the respective insurgencies are fighting to overthrow pro-western, democratically elected governments. Their intention is to replace them with administrations that would impose hard-line Islamic regimes, such as the barbaric dictatorship the Taliban established in Kabul, under which adulterers were stoned to death and women beaten if they dared to show their faces in public.

The Israelis face a similar challenge in Gaza, where Hamas wants to establish an Islamic government. Hamas may have come to power through the ballot box, but since taking office it has done everything in its power to destroy the democratic principles underpinning the fledgling Palestinian state, from murdering its secular-minded Fatah opponents to forcing Palestinian women to wear the veil.

The Gaza crisis also belies Mr Miliband's claim that these Islamist groups act independently of each other. Long before Israel launched its invasion, Iran's Revolutionary Guards were smuggling missiles and combat equipment through a well-established smuggling route that begins in Sudan and makes its way to the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing point, by way of Port Said.

Osama bin Laden has made a rare broadcast from his Hindu Kush lair, urging Muslims to join the worldwide jihad against Israel, the West and any Muslim government that is deemed to be pro-western. Hamas, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Iran: they all share the same goal – to inflict maximum carnage against the West and its interests. And if that's not war, then I don't know what is. The Telegraph.

Hamas, to its perverse credit, does not lie, at least not on fundamental issues. It has never accepted the Oslo Accords. It is sworn to Israel's destruction. Its charter is nakedly and aggressively anti-Semitic; no fig leaf of "anti-Zionism" there. The closest it has ever come to terms with the Jewish state is the offer of a long-term hudna, on the model of the Prophet's 10-year truce with the tribes of seventh century Arabia. "Anyone who thinks Hamas will change is wrong," said supreme leader Khaled Mashal in 2006. Could he be any clearer?

Of course, Hamas enjoys "democratic legitimacy" by virtue of its parliamentary victory in January 2006. And with the quiet expiration last week of Mahmoud Abbas's presidential term, it is the only Palestinian party that enjoys such legitimacy. But this turns out to be no legitimacy at all, since Hamas refuses to recognize the legal basis of the Authority it purports to represent. And this is to say nothing of the putsch through which Hamas came to power in Gaza.

Still, it isn't merely Israel's right to exist, or the Palestinian Authority's, that Hamas denies. It denies Palestine's as well.The Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is merely an affiliate, has never been keen on the concept of the nation-state. Hamas's charter describes the land of Palestine as an "Islamic Waqf," or trust, "consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day." Hamas's charming slogan -- "God is [Hamas's] target, the Prophet is its model, the Quran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of God is the loftiest of its wishes" -- is tellingly silent on the subject of Palestine.

This isn't so different from the old Soviet model, which disdained nationalism in theory even if it made use of it in practice (and sometimes vice versa). It is nearly identical in its totalitarian aspirations. Above all, Hamas is a revolutionary movement, similar in spirit, if not theology, to Khomeini's revolution in Iran, or Lenin's in Russia.

It's easy to understand why so many Palestinians would be keen to join the movement: What comparable form of moral and political transcendence can a little Palestinian state offer? But in choosing Hamas and the fantasy of pan-Islamism over secular Palestinian alternatives, they are also choosing to abandon Palestine itself. Good luck to them with their corner of the caliphate.

Western pundits and policy experts are now in full-throat about the threat that Israel's war in Gaza poses to the possibility of a two-state solution. It's a shopworn lament. That solution always depended on the willingness of Israelis and Palestinians to treat their conflict as a territorial one, amenable to the drawing of borders, rather than a religious one. Israel made its preferences clear with its Gaza withdrawal. As for the Palestinians, the people who never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity have missed one, again. WSJ

Regarding the plight of Gaza, remember this: Between 1948, when Israel was created, and 1967, when Israel captured Gaza in a defensive war, the Gaza Strip was administered by Egypt. During those 19 years, the Egyptians never offered citizenship to the Palestinians living in Gaza, nor did they permit them free transit from the Strip into Egypt proper. They did nothing to encourage the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. In fact, in 1958, Egypt’s President Nasser formally annulled the “All Palestine Government”—a remnant of the Palestinian state the Arabs had rejected in 1948. Egypt, like all of the other Arab states and, importantly, the U.N., chose to keep the Palestinians bereft and stateless—a permanent and growing dagger aimed at Israel.

Even more instructive is this: When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Gaza’s residents had a golden opportunity to begin to build the sort of state they had claimed to desire. The Israelis even left behind the infrastructure to give the Palestinians a start: roads, houses, swimming pools, fish farms, nurseries, orchards, and factories. The Palestinians chose to kill one another (see Jonathan Schanzer’s new book, Hamas vs. Fatah) and to fire missiles across the border at Israel instead. Apologists like Columbia’s Rashid Khalidi protest that Israel continued to control sea lanes, borders, and air space around Gaza and cut off aid after the Palestinians elected Hamas. Well, Hamas didn’t seem to have any trouble importing longer- and longer-range Iranian missiles despite Israel’s blockade. And in any case, despite the advice of some hardliners in Israel, the Israeli government continued to permit humanitarian supplies to come through.

Since the start of 2007, 16,000 civilians have been killed in fighting. Not in Gaza, so you may have missed it. It was in Somalia, where an Islamist movement is fighting Ethiopian troops. This is the 18th year of civil strife in that country.

In Sri Lanka, some 70,000 people have perished in a civil war that has flared on and off since 1983. The regime in Burma has killed thousands and forced an estimated 800,000 into involuntary servitude.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), 45,000 people are dying every month. Nearly 5.5 million have died since 1998 in a conflict that grew out of the violence in Rwanda and spread. Half of those deaths were of children under the age of five, according to the International Rescue Committee. The violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has caused more human devastation than any conflict since World War II.

In Darfur, Sudan, more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million made homeless by violence.

To cite these sad data is not to suggest that suffering is tolerable in any particular case—but merely to observe that the world is strangely blinkered in choosing the tragedies to which it responds. National Review

— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.

too, there are those whose views may surprise you. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak told a visiting delegation of European foreign ministers that Hamas “must not be allowed to emerge from the fighting with the upper hand.” Karam Jaber, editor of the Egyptian weekly Roz Al-Youssef, blamed Hamas for inflicting “death and destruction on the Palestinians. . . . We hope the Hamas leaders will realize that they are fighting a destructive war on behalf of the Iranians and Syrians.”

And Muhammad Dahlan, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and of Fatah's Revolutionary Council, told the Arabic language newspaper al-Hayat that Hamas has sacrificed “the Palestinian cause for the illusion of an Islamic emirate in Gaza.”

By stark contrast, an army of American and European commentators have been treating Hamas with kid gloves while bitterly criticizing Israel. Reuters, the international wire service, relentlessly editorializes—in what are ostensibly news stories—against what it terms “Israeli aggression against Palestinians.” Reuters characterizes pretty much anyone who is against Israel—no matter how extreme their views—as “in support of the people of Gaza.”

Others make the case for moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel, or charge that Israel’s response to Hamas’s attacks has been “disproportionate.” On CNN the other day, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg offered an apt analogy: If you call the police to report an intruder in your home, do you want only a single officer dispatched—because that would be “proportionate?” Or would you rather enough cops arrive to ensure your safety?

By that measure, Israel’s response has been not disproportionate but inadequate—as demonstrated by the fact that the missiles keep on coming.

Time magazine’s most recent cover story argues that no matter what Israel does militarily it “can’t win.” Time proposes that Israelis stop fighting and return to the borders they had in 1967—when they were attacked by their Arab neighbors in a war meant to wipe the Jewish state off the map. “Only then will the Palestinians and the other Arab states agree to a durable peace,” Time advises. “It’s as simple as that.”

But if it were as simple as that, wouldn’t Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 have brought something other than a 500 percent increase in missile salvos? What’s more, from the West Bank, even the smallest missiles could hit Israel’s largest cities and international airport. Can you imagine the death toll should those come under daily assault?

Evidently, many pundits and solons cannot. More than a few ordinary Iranians could probably explain it to them. National Review

— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies , a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

Inventions that changed History
o Micro- Processing Chip. Stanley Mezor Jewish
o Nuclear Chain Reactor Leo Sziland Jewish
o Optical Fibre Cable Peter Schultz Jewish
o Traffic Lights Charles Adler Jewish
o Stainless Steel Benno Strauss Jewish
o Sound Movies Isador Kisee Jewish
o Telephone Microphone Emile Berliner Jewish
o Video Tape Recorder Charles Ginsburg Jewish

Influential Global Business
o Polo Ralph Lauren Jewish
o Coca Cola Jewish
o Levi's Jeans Levi Strauss Jewish
o Sawbuck's Howard Schultz Jewish
o Google Sergey Brin Jewish
o Dell Computers Michael Dell Jewish
o Oracle Larry Ellison Jewish
o DKNY Donna Karan Jewish
o Baskin & Robbins Irv Irv Robbins Jewish
o Dunkin Donuts Bill Rosenberg Jewish

Influential Intellectuals/ Politicians
o Henry Kissinger , US Sec of State Jewish
o Richard Levin, PresidentYaleUniver sity Jewish
o Alan Greenspan , US Federal Reserve Jewish
o Joseph Lieberman Jewish
o Madeleine Albright , US Sec of State Jewish
o CasperWeinberger , US Sec of Defence Jewish
o Maxim Litvinov , USSR Foreign Minister Jewish
o DavidMarshal , Singapore Chief Minister Jewish
o Isaacs Isaacs, Gov-GenAustralia Jewish
o Benjamin Disraeli, British Statesman Jewish
o Yevgeny Primakov, Russian PM Jewish
o Barry Goldwater , US Politician Jewish
o Jorge Sampaio, President Portugal Jewish
o Herb Gray, Canadian Deputy - PM Jewish
o Pierre Mendes, French PM Jewish
o Michael Howard, British Home Sec. Jewish
o Bruno Kriesky, Austrian Chancellor Jewish
o Robert Rubin , US Sec of Treasury Jewish

Global Media Influential
o Wolf Blitzer, CNN Jewish
o Barbara Walters ABC News Jewish
o EugeneMeyer , Washington Post Jewish
o Henry Grunwald, Time Magazine Jewish
o Katherine Graham , Washington Post Jewish
o Joseph Lelyeld, New York Times Jewish
o Max Frankel, New York Times Jewish
Global Philanthropists
o George Soros Jewish
o Walter Annenberg Jewish

Why are they powerful? why are Muslims powerless? Here's another reason. We have lost the capacity to produce knowledge.
o In the entire Muslim World (57 Muslim Countries) there are only 500 universities.
o In USA alone, 5,758 universities
o In India alone, 8,407 universities
o Not one university in the entire Islamic World features in the Top 500 Ranking Universities of the World
o Literacy in the Christian World 90%
o Literacy in the Muslim World 40%
o 15 Christian majority-countries, literacy rate 100%
o Muslim majority - countries , None
o 98% in Christian countries completed primary
o Only 50% in Muslim countries completed primary.
o 40% in Christian countries attended university
o In Muslim countries a dismal 2% attended.
o Muslim majority countries have 230 scientists per one million Muslims
o The USA has 5000 per million
o The Christian world 1000 technicians per million.
o Entire Arab World only 50 technicians per million.
o Muslim World spends on research/developmen t 0.2% of GDP
o Christian World spends 5 % of GDP

Conclusion.
o The Muslim World lacks the capacity to produce knowledge.
Another way of testing the degree of knowledge is the degree of diffusing knowledge.
o Pakistan 23 daily newspapers per 1000 citizens
o Singapore 460 per 1000 citizens.
o In UK book titles per million is 2000
o In Egypt book titles per million is only 17

Conclusion.
o Muslim World is failing to diffuse knowledge. Applying Knowledge is another such test.
o Exports of high tech products from Pakistan is 0.9% of its exports.
o In Saudi Arabia is 0.2%
o Kuwait , Morocco and Algeria 0.3%
o Singapore alone is 68%

Conclusion.
o Muslim World is failing to apply knowledge.

What do you conclude? No need to tell the figures are speaking themselves very loudly we are unable to listen. Advice: Please educate yourself and your children. Always promote education, don't compromise on it, don't ignore your children's slightest misguidance from education (and please, for God's Sake, don't use your personal contacts or sources to promote your children in their education; if they fail, let them and make them learn to pass; b/c if they can't do it now, they can't ever). We are World's biggest and strongest nation, all we need is to identify and explore our ownselves. Our victory is with our knowledge, our creativity, our literacy...And nothing else. ....Wake up...

In contrast, Hamas really represented the aspiration of the people. As soon as Mahmood Abbas' term as president is over and he had to stand for re-election, he would surely lose. In contrast, Hamas really won the municipal elections in 2005 and the Parliamentary election in 2006. The elections were supervised by international observers, many from Europe, and US.

Palestinians were fed-up with the corrupt regime of Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah. They wanted to clean house. But as soon as Hamas took over, the US and the Europeans put an embargo on Hamas, calling it a terrorist organisation and not a peace partner. Israel closed the borders and refused to let anything into Gaza. Egypt also did the same.

What is not mentioned much in the media is that this was done with the complete approval of the Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. After all, Egypt could have opened its border for transfer of food and fuel. The reasons behind this hostility were and are that Hamas is a truly electedgovernment and worst of all, Hamas is a branch or an off-shoot of Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt.

Muslim Brotherhood has a branch or related organisation in Jordan as well. Egypt and Jordan are worried that should Hamas survive and show its resistance, their people may get the idea that they can also resist the tyrannical rule of these despots. One must not forget that Muslim Brotherhood represents the only serious challenge to the Mubarak's rule in Egypt.

Egypt

The 81 year old Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has been "president" since 1981 (28 years). He has won every election with a comfortable majority. He is much loved by his secret services. Prior to every election he arrests and imprisons all the opposition, ensuring a "clean" election. Torture is so widely used and accepted in Egypt that US outsources torturing of some its prisoners to Egypt. This alone should tell you volumes about the nature of Mubarak's rule. He is now trying hard to crown his playboy son as his successor. But the Americans are not so sure if the son is capable of keeping the 80 million Egyptians in line and are therefore looking for alternative candidates. The head of the feared main secret service is one of the prime candidates along with some of the top generals.

Challenging him is the Muslim Brotherhood organisation, enjoying grass root support from all sections of the Egyptian society including Lawyers, doctors, judges and student associations. Not surprisingly, US and Israel call Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation. By all accounts, the Muslim Brotherhood be it in Jordan, Egypt or the occupied territories such as Gaza runs a clean operation, running many charity organisations and providing services to the poor and the needy. As such wherever they are, they pose a threat to the corrupt regimes, since they provide an
alternative to the people of that area.

Jordan

King Abdullah II of Jordan, born of a British mother, educated in the West, including the Jesuit Center of Georgetown University, was brought to power by the CIA. His Uncle was a long time crown price, yet after his father died in a US hospital, Madeline Albright, Clinton's Secretary of Estate flew to Jordan to inform the Jordanians that the King on his death bed had changed his will and named his son Abdullah as his successor. The new king Abdullah II is married to the Queen Rania, a Palestinian.

The majority of this Kingdom of 5 million people are Palestinians who are not very friendly to this King. In 1967 there was a Palestinian uprising (led by the PLO) against King Hussein (ruled: 1952-1999, the father of the current king), which resulted in heavy casualties among Palestinians. In addition, the Kingdom is currently full of Iraqi refugees who resent the King's help to the Americans in invasion of their country. On top of all this, we have the Muslim Brotherhood which tries hard to abolish the monarchy. King Abdullah relies heavily on the US support and backing for staying in power. King Abdullah also sees a natural ally in Israel, a country that can come to its aid in case of another uprising.

Saudi Arabia (House of Saud)

I don't have to tell you much about Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom is run by the 84 year old, ailing Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud. His personal wealth is estimated at $21 billion USD. He rules a clan of 8000 princes who in turn rule the country. Saudi Arabia is the centre of corruption in the Arab world. The Saudi rulers corrupt everything with their money. Lacking the necessary mental power or physical courage, they try to stay in power by subterfuge, lies, and deception. They fund the real extremists on the one hand while portraying themselves as the protectors of the Western interest on the other. They preach intolerance and xenophobia to their people decrying the Western decadence, while spending a lot of time enjoying the life in the West. They pay the West for protection against their own people and they pay the extremists to do their fighting elsewhere. Saudi rulers are indeed the worst of them all.

House of Saud is also the financier of the so called Arab Moderates and the extremism that they cause. House of Saud financed the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. They later financed the Taliban. They also paid Saddam Hussein to fight Iran. Then they paid the Americans and Egyptians to fight Saddam Hussein. They are the financiers of death and misery. They finance anything, anywhere, as long as this reduces the threat to their illegitimate rule. They are currently financing the civil war in Somalia, bandits in Baluchistan (Pakistan and Iran) and god knows what else. They are detested by their own people and neighbours yet loved by Bush, Cheney and the oil companies. As long as they provide the money and oil the US is willing to tolerate them. And guess what? The Muslim Brotherhood hates the House of Saud too. This makes them a threat and hence they have to be dealt with.

The Collaboration

As can be seen, each country has a selfish reason to eliminate Hamas, but each is restrained by its population. Israel has no such a restraint imposed on it. She not only can wage a terrible war, but she also gets assistance from Arab countries. Indeed it is the second time (the first was the invasion of Lebanon in 2006) that Israel is getting open and solid support from these Arab countries. The invasion of Gaza was discussed in Egypt before its implementation. Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are Israel's active partners.

Egypt is actively involved in stopping all aids from getting to Palestinians in Gaza save a token few trucks. These few trucks are allowed to go through so they can be filmed and shown to Egyptian people. All demonstrations are banned, and all Egyptian volunteers for Gaza are either arrested or sent back.

There are hundreds of thousands of volunteers across the Muslim world that are willing to go to the aid of the Palestinians, but the Egyptian authorities don't allow them passage. Egyptians even stop medical aid from passing through their territory. This is part of a report from Associated Press:

RAFAH, Egypt: Frustration is mounting at Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip, where many local and foreign doctors are stuck after Egyptian authorities denied them entry into the coastal area now under an Israeli ground invasion. Anesthesiologist Dimitrios Mognie from Greece idles his time at a cafe near the border, drinking tea and chatting with other doctors, aid workers and curious Egyptians.

"This is a shame," said Mognie, who decided to use his vacation time to try help Gazans. He thought entering through Egypt, which has a narrow border with the Hamas-ruled strip, was his best bet. "That in 2009 they have people in need of help from a doctor and we can go to help and they won't let us. This is crazy," he added.5

In addition there are many Iranian cargo planes full of food and medicine which have been sitting on the tarmacs in Egypt for days waiting for permission to deliver their cargo. Egyptians even denied the medical aid sent by the son of the Libyan President Qaddafi to land in Egypt.6 One thing is clear: these three countries do not want the Israelis to fail in their mission of totally destroying Gaza. Hosni Mubarak said so himself. The daily Haaretz reported that Hosni Mubarak had told European ministers on a peace mission that Hamas must not be allowed to win the ongoing war in Gaza.

As Egypt physically aids the Israeli military by denying food, fuel and medicine to the civilians, the House of Saud helps Israel by giving her time and diplomatic cover. When Israel started its invasion there was an immediate call for an Arab summit. Saudi Arabia and Jordan (along with Egypt of course) delayed the summit. The Saudis along with the UAE said that they had another meeting to attend to and therefore Palestinian issue had to wait. After a few days when the summit was eventually held, they issued the same old statements. Yet this time same as the Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 2006, they blamed the victims. In a statement, Saudi Arabia blamed Hamas for Israel's continuing offensive in the Gaza Strip. Saudi Arabia, after blaming Hamas, declared that it will not even consider an oil embargo on Israel's supporters. She then again blamed Hamas.

By this time, the three Arab countries along with Kuwait and UAE began singing the old song: international community is not doing anything about the catastrophe that is taking place in Gaza. It seems that these Arab tyrants have no shame at all. This reminds me of a quote from Marquis De Sade (1740-1814): "One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush."

These Arab leaders (many are indeed too old to blush) are complicit in the murder of so many civilians, especially young children. According to Agence France-Presse, quoting the medics on the ground, fully one third of all people killed have been children.7 How can these Arab leaders justify this to their people?

The answer is that they cannot. Israel knows this and for the second time can show the Arab street that their leaders are nothing but a bunch of old hypocrites. These Arab leaders are now exposed and can do nothing but to cooperate fully with Israel and US. What stand between them and their people's rage is their army and secret services; which in turn are supported by US.

Israel has cleverly exposed these leaders for what they are: collaborators of the worst kind. These Arab leaders have brought an unimaginable shame to their people. To quote Lucien Bouchard: I have never known a more vulgar expression of betrayal and deceit. Our hope is now with the people of these countries to clean this stain from their honour.

1. ABC News Norway. "Røde Kors sjokkert over Israel," (Red Cross Shocked by Israel), 8 January 2009.

2. Aljazeera.net. "UN: No fighters in targeted school," 8 January 2009.

3. Aljazeera.net. "Israel fires on UN Gaza convoy," 8 January 2009.

4. nytimes.com. "For Israel, 2006 Lessons but Old Pitfalls," 7 January 2009.

5. The Associated Press. "Doctors stuck at bottleneck on Egypt-Gaza border," 6 January 2009.

6. google.com: hosted news. "Egypt denies Kadhafi's son permission to land at airport," 6January 2009.

7. Agence France-Presse. "Children make up third of Gaza dead," 7 January 2009.

Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar lives in Norway. He is a management consultant and acontributing writer for many online journals. He's a former associateprofessor of Nordland University, Norway and can be contacted at:Bakhtiarspace-articles@yahoo.no.

Perhaps you have heard about the 6,500 rockets and mortars deliberately aimed at Israeli civilian targets since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005? No? Well, again, that's because the suffering population is in southern Israel, not among the Palestinians. Incidentally, the Israelis left behind a thriving agricultural infrastructure for the Arabs to embrace and for them to prove that they were genuinely interested in living side by side in peace with Israel. But the mainstream media soon forgot that fact.

But consider this. As soon as Israel could no longer bear the Palestinian provocations and finally retaliated, the world strangely woke up and ended its deafening silence.

Predictably the United Nations, orchestrated by the 50 or more members of the Islamic Bloc and, as always, supported by the enfeebled and hypocritical European Union, now fast sliding down into the vile pit called Eurabia, became stridently vocal with condemnations not of Hamas, with its bloodthirsty calls for Israel's destruction, but of the long suffering Israelis for daring to defend themeselves.

How odd that there were no official condemnations of the Hamas regime in Gaza by the U.N. while thousands of Palestinian rockets and mortars were raining down on Israel for years in a gigantic act of premeditated and murderous terror. Sadly, it is symptomatic of much of the world's hypocrisy, pro-Palestinian bias, and dislike of the Jewish state. The world hated the stateless Jews and now hates the State of the Jews.

Israeli civilians can die and be maimed for as long as it takes; but not Palestinians, even if Hamas uses the hapless civilians in Gaza as human shields - an indefensible war crime.

Blatant hypocrisy? You bet. American Thinker

Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.

Olmert added that, "We must not miss at the last moment what has been achieved in an unprecedented national effort. The Israeli public has willingness and patience for this, as does the government.

The prime minister said Israel had rejected a United Nations resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza on the grounds that "sharply rules out continued attacks directed against civilians and does not forbid urgent action against them."

He also said Israel's military had already made great sacrifices in the Gaza fighting, in which 10 soldiers have so far died.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak also addressed the cabinet, telling them that the IDF was continuing to operate in order to prevent smuggling through the Philadelphi route along the Gaza-Egypt border.

"The IDF is operating in the Gaza Strip and in parallel, the diplomatic channel is being examined. There is no contradiction between these things," Barak said.

Livni: Gaza battle isn`t one-time conflict, won't end in accord
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Sunday that Israel's war with Hamas is not a one-time conflict that will end with an agreement.

Speaking during a joint press conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Jerusalem, Livni said that, "Hamas regrets the day they decided to intensify the rocket fire on Israel under the assumption that we would show restraint."

"We need to understand that on the day after [Operation Cast Lead] we must prevent Hamas from rearming, because we cannot allow a scenario in which Hamas understands that it cannot fire, but allows itself to stock up on weapons," she added.

"We are in midst of a struggle against terrorism, and it is not a one-time conflict," she said.

This is not a conflict that will end with an agreement. We embarked on this campaign with the intent of achieving military goals and in order to clarify that we will not put up with this situation any longer. We set out to change the equation. Israel is responding with force, and considerable force at that," Livni added.

"I would like to thank the [German] minister for displaying understanding for our situation and for his willingness to help in preventing smuggling in the future."

On Friday, the security cabinet decided to continue Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, but not expand it at this stage. In the coming days Israel will focus its military and diplomatic efforts on pressuring Egypt to work toward the Israeli and international demand to deploy an international force to combat smuggling from Egypt to Gaza.

Palestinian sources told Haaretz that Cairo demanded Saturday morning that the militant group respond to its cease-fire proposal within 48 hours. Egypt warned that if Hamas rejects its offer, Egypt would be unable to stop Israel from continuing its ground offensive.

Senior officers in the Israel Defense Forces told Haaretz that for further achievements, the army will have to expand the operation by at least 20 days and include reserve units in the fighting. A senior officer in Gaza said Hamas' capabilities were gradually eroding and that the group had lost more than 300 militants from its armed wing since the ground operation began.

Amos Gilad, the head of the Defense Ministry's political-security branch, will travel this week, most likely on Monday, for talks in Cairo with the head of the Egyptian security services. A Hamas delegation Saturday arrived in the Egyptian capital for similar talks.

Source: Amos Gilad to only discuss smuggling with Egyptians

A political source in Jerusalem said Gilad was instructed to address only smuggling into Gaza, and not other issues related to renewing a cease-fire with Hamas.

In Friday's cabinet meeting, Gilad told ministers that Egypt understands the need to stop smuggling, but that a program for doing so had not yet been formulated. "They are willing to sign on to deal with the issue, and we will continue talking with them until we reach a practical solution," he said.

Still, Gilad reportedly remarked recently that "the Egyptians are great at making efforts, but not at achieving results."

A high-level Israeli political source said Friday that without a solution to the smuggling including an effective supervisory system on the Egyptian border, the Gaza operation will not be brought to an end.

Israel made clear in talks with officials representing the United States, France, Germany and other countries that only a solution including an international presence on the Egyptian side of the Philadelphi route will satisfy Israel and allow it to end the offensive.

Defense officials have noticed heightened Iranian involvement in Hamas' activity in the Strip. It appears the group's leadership has received promises from Tehran to "fill up the warehouses," possibly even with longer-range rockets, if it continues hostilities with Israel.

Meanwhile, Damascus-based politburo chief Khaled Meshal Saturday rejected outright the option of allowing an international force at the Egyptian border, whether representing an Arab or any other foreign country.

Israel has "finished off the last chance and breath for settlement and negotiations," he said in a televised speech from the Syrian capital.

Also Saturday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas, saying the Palestinian people did not want to engage in "resistance" that will destroy them. He called for an international force to be deployed to Gaza immediately to protect its residents. Haaretz

Just how divided the radical Palestinian group is has become clear during the cease-fire negotiations currently taking place in Cairo. Khaled Meshaal, the head of the militant wing of Hamas who lives in Damascus, sent a number of prominent functionaries to Egypt on Tuesday to look into the possibility of Cairo playing the role of intermediary. The so-called Cairo Initiative, aimed at putting a stop to the ongoing bloodbath and addressing the roots of the problem, has now grown into a promising attempt to quickly put an end to the violence.

Yet even within the Hamas delegation, there are conflicting views as to the negotiating path the group should follow. Given the disagreement, it is hardly a surprise that the signals sent by Hamas on Thursday were unclear.

Muhammad Nasr, a native of Hebron who has long been a prominent political advisor to Meshaal and belongs to the Hamas politburo, spoke for several hours with Omar Suleiman, head of Egyptian intelligence and potential successor to President Hosni Mubarak. The discussion focused on the conditions Hamas would have to fulfil before the Egyptian plan could be successful.

But hardliner Nasr refused to budge. Hamas, he insisted, has to be allowed control over the Palestinian-Egyptian border and cannot be forced to recognize Israel, not even indirectly.

With those positions, though, he stands in direct contradiction to central pillars foreseen by the Cairo Initiative. In addition to an immediate cease-fire and withdrawal of the Israeli army, Hamas would be required to permanently cease firing rockets across the border from the Gaza Strip into Israel. In addition, responsibility for monitoring the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt would be returned to the Palestinian Authority, the internationally recognized Palestinian leadership which controls the West Bank. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, headed up by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, have been at odds since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007.

Even the demand -- already discussed in detail -- foreseeing Arab and European observers stationed along the Gaza Strip border has proven difficult for Hamas politicians to accept. Should such a border observer mission be granted a robust mandate, it would almost certainly mean that the tunnels under the border -- which, in addition to foodstuffs and medicine, also transport smuggled weapons -- would be closed.

Other Hamas negotiators, though, like Imad al-Alami, who accompanied Nasr to Cairo, have proven more conciliatory. Al-Alami, known as "the philosopher," didn't reject outright the Egyptian proposals. Instead, he promised that he would return to the negotiating table with counter-proposals.

Patience is wearing thin at Hamas headquarters in Damascus. But at the same time, numerous Hamas activists who came to Cairo from the Gaza Strip have long become convinced of the necessity of Egyptian mediation. A single Hamas position, though, has yet to materialize.

Given this lack of unity, Thursday's rejection of the Egypt-led peace plan by the coalition of radical Palestinian groups based in Damascus -- to which Hamas also belongs -- is not seen as its final word. The coalition's rejection, say observers, is likely due to pressure exerted by Syria, which was not thrilled about the decision of the Hamas politicians to visit Cairo without the blessing of Damascus.

On Thursday, it was difficult to forecast which of the camps would ultimately win out. But dragging out the talks would likely play into the hands of the moderates. The hardliners, it would seem, have overplayed their hand. It has become increasingly clear to them that no Arab state is willing to go to war for the Gaza Strip -- and furthermore, that no Arab country is willing to withdraw the Arab peace plan -- originally conceived in 2002 and approved by Arab states in 2007 -- which calls for a formal recognition of Israel.

Hamas, it would seem, isn't the only group that has misjudged the situation. The Hezbollah-sponsored television station al-Manar, based in Beirut, has called on the demoralized citizens of the Gaza Strip to fight "till the end" and not give up. Likewise, the channel has broadcasted interviews with well-chosen guests warning about "traitors in our ranks" and threatening "Arab partisans of Israel." The public response, though, is not what the station had hoped for.

Radicals had also envisioned Katyusha rockets being fired from southern Lebanon into Israel as the trigger for a broad alliance between Palestinian Sunnis and Lebanese Shiites. So far, though, such a coalition has yet to materialize.

Behind the scenes, there has been some movement. A number of old Palestinian hands have begun a broad campaign in support of the Cairo Initiative -- a plan not unlike that suggested by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Said Kamal is one of those. Kamal spent many years in Cairo as the representative of legendary Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and was formerly deputy secretary-general of the Arab League. On Tuesday, Kamal was invited onto a talk show broadcast by the Lebanese television channel al-Quds, where he encouraged the Palestinians to take advantage of the Egyptian plan. "There is nothing better for us in sight and, in any case, everything is open to negotiation," he said. "There is no way around negotiating." Al-Quds, it should be noted, is sometimes called "Hamas TV" in Lebanon.

Given these developments, it seems that Hamas leadership will ultimately be left with little room to maneuver. Egypt, after all, is the only Arab country bordering the Gaza Strip. It should be clear to even the hardliners and the die-hard opponents of the Cairo Initiative that, in the end, all roads lead to Cairo. Spiegel

We stay alert at all times: If Avi takes a shower, I'm nearby listening for the alert, ready to grab him if need be (and vice versa). If we drive somewhere, we tune our radio to channel 104, the army channel - ready to jump out and run for cover. We drive with seat belts off, and windows open, just in case.

Where do we run? Bomb shelters of every shape and size are everywhere you look in Sderot - almost every 30 feet in some areas. Yet some residential streets have none, so you have to run into the nearest house. And not all homes have shelters. Several of my friends usually crouch under a stairwell, hoping everything will be OK.

Ironically, Sderot is probably the safest place in southern Israel just now, because now the entire South is being hit: Ashkelon, Ashdod, Be'er Sheva, Netivot . . . The fact that much of the country is living as we have for so long - running for shelter and fearing for their lives - creates a whole new sad reality. When I first came to Sderot, I didn't run to the shelter. The fear takes a while to grow on you - till the stories add up. One friend went to a shelter, then a Qassam landed right in the bed he'd just been sleeping in; another miraculously survived a Qassam hit on her house - she's OK after massive rehab, despite the shrapnel still in her brain. Other friends have seen people killed by Qassams right before their eyes.

I understand why the world press makes light of the rockets. When you come to Sderot for just a day, the attacks seem random and you feel immune from harm. The words "amateur, homemade rockets," used in most major publications, make the threat seem less serious.

But these rockets are nothing other than bombs falling from the sky, designed to kill civilians. And they do. If Qassams are really dangerous, you ask, why haven't more people died? The warning system and shelters have saved thousands of lives - more than 10,000 rockets and mortar shells have landed in this area in the last eight years.

Still, this is no way to live. Can you imagine this happening in any city in America or Europe?

A Qassam is about 15 pounds of explosives attached to a metal tube with fins. Last night, we heard that Hamas will start shooting Grads into Sderot - rockets twice the size that Hamas uses to bomb the further cities. Some people have headed out of town. But the international media have descended in droves. Being a mile away from Gaza, we can hear everything: the sound of bombs being dropped from airplanes, F-16s, helicopters, guns, mortars, tank shells . . . our lives have a new soundtrack.

All around, you just feel war. People stay in their houses, schools are closed. The war is all people talk about. It's hard to keep from watching the news all day. The weirdest thing is when you realize that you're the news. Two nights ago, we sat in Coffee To Go for dinner. Suddenly, Tzeva Adom. We ran inside, away from the glass storefront. The Qassam exploded just across the street - the café rocked with the blast. Journalists who had been on a coffee break raced out to try and get their shots. Five minutes later, a large-screen TV above our heads was broadcasting what we had just felt and heard.

It's depressing for us to hear the loud explosions in Gaza and to know that there is no way for innocent civilians not to be killed in this war. But most of us also feel that finally the government is doing what it needs to do to defend us. People who call Israel's actions "disproportionate" upset me - they just don't have a clue. What would be a proportionate response? For us to shoot unmanned missiles targeted at civilians every day?

Instead, we're doing something more effective and humane - we're taking away their weapons and bombing their stockpiles, tunnels and terror infrastructure. Plus, we're sending SMSs and leaflets warning civilians to leave areas that will be bombed.

We're doing what we need to do to stay alive. I invite anyone who has any doubts about that to come live with me here in Sderot. I guarantee they'll change their mind after a few days in my living room. New York Post

Laura Bialis, a documentary filmmaker who moved to Israel from Los Angeles in 2007, blogs at sderotmovie.com/blog.

According to the statement by Ajmal, Khan told Babar and Nasir that even if the others failed in their operation, they both could not afford to. "The Nariman House operation has to be a success," the officer said, quoting from Ajmal's statement.

"Khan also said that as far as Nariman House was concerned, there should not be even a minimal glitch in finding it and capturing it," the officer quoted Ajmal as saying.

After the dinghy carrying the 10 terrorists reached Mumbai at the Macchimar colony opposite Badhwar Park in Cuffe Parade, it was decided that no bombs would be planted in the taxi to be used to reach Nariman House.

"The idea," according to the police officer, "was that if Babar and Nasir got delayed in locating and entering Nariman House, the bomb in the taxi may explode even before they entered their target."

The officer further quoted Ajmal's confession as indicating the Nariman House killers may have either lost their way or took their time entering the building to avoid failure. The dinghy reached Cuffe Parade around 8.30pm, but Babar and Nasir entered Nariman House at around 10pm. This means they took around one- and-a-half hour to locate and enter Nariman House," the officer said. Anyone who knows Colaba would have got there in 15-20 minutes.

Another aspect which indicates that the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) did not want the Nariman House operation to fail was Fahim Ansari's revelation to the crime branch. Ansari, who was arrested for his alleged involvement in the bomb blasts at a CRPF camp in Lucknow in January last year, told the police that Nariman House was also surveyed by him last year. Interestingly, Ansari did not reveal this detail when he was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police in February last year.

"Ansari told us that he did not divulge this information earlier because it would have jeopardised the most important operation of the LeT. He had also been warned by the LeT that Nariman House was their most secret operation and must not be compromised at any cost," the officer said. The source....

Since then, Hamas has been running Gaza as a territory reduced to basically two industries: aid and terrorism. Pivotal to this arrangement is one of the UN's oldest and most oddly configured agencies: the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA. Set up in 1949 with a temporary, three-year mandate to provide aid and jobs for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA has survived for almost 60 years, expanding its scope, budget and influence by extending refugee status to descendants of its beneficiaries.

Normal refugee aid tends to focus on finding ways to resettle displaced people and integrate them back into normal, productive lives. UNRWA, by contrast, provides the main framework for ensuring that the official population of Palestinian refugees remains a swelling source of misery and mayhem--both for their neighbors and for the Palestinians themselves.From an original refugee population listed by UNRWA as some 900,000 in 1950, UNRWA now provides for a Palestinian "refugee" clientele of more than 4.6 million.

They are spread throughout camps--which physically look more like squalid towns--in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. Into this system flows an annual UNRWA budget now well above $400 million per year, doled out variously in the form of cash, goods, medical care, schooling, job-training programs and so forth.

To handle these operations, UNRWA employs more than 24,000 staffers. That's more than any other UN agency, including the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, which with some 6,300 staffers--about one-quarter the manpower of UNRWA--is responsible for all other refugees worldwide, totaling more than 11 million.

At UNRWA, more than 99% of the staff are local Palestinians. They sit at the many local levers of the UNRWA distribution machinery, which under UNRWA policy takes on the coloration of and yields to the policies of host governments--as UNRWA officials explained to U.S. lawmakers who some years ago challenged the use of anti-Israeli textbooks in UNRWA schools.

In today's terrorist-run Gaza, such an approach carries exactly the kind of deadly implications now playing out--while UNRWA and other UN officials call for an end to the violence. Originally headquartered in Beirut, UNRWA moved its main offices to Vienna after the Lebanese Civil War, then moved again in 1996 to its current headquarters in Gaza. There, it serves as a core fundraiser and rallying point for donations from around the globe, many from sovereign states.

While not all charity to Gaza flows through UNRWA, it is UNRWA that enjoys pride of place, with its UN stamp of legitimacy and direct, easy access to the UN's world stage. Since late December, when Israel began its campaign to end the thousands of rocket and mortar attacks launched by Hamas from Gaza, UNRWA officials have given a parade of briefings via UN headquarters in New York.

Teleconferencing in, they have ignored what UNRWA Commissioner General Karen Koning Abuzayd has described as their "nonpolitical" mandate. With Abuzayd in the lead, they have detailed their outrage on behalf of the Palestinians, excoriated Israel and stepped further into the political arena to demand an immediate ceasefire--something these same UNRWA officials did not do when the attacks were one-way out of Gaza into Israel.

Given the structure and location of UNRWA, such bias comes as no big surprise. Headquartered inside a terrorist enclave, sharing with terrorist authorities such basic interests as keeping the local lights on and the water running, UNRWA officials have plenty of incentives to slam Israel as the culprit--not themselves, or their Hamas cohabiters.

And while blaming Israel, UNRWA officials also have plenty of incentive to present the worst possible picture. The greater the perceived distress, the better the prospects not only for immediate relief, but for future fundraising. UNRWA's interests in Gaza are by now so entwined and, in many ways, so aligned with Hamas' interests that it is often hard to tell them apart.

And, as UNRWA officials have aired their views and demands from the UN stage, handouts for Gaza have been rolling in from all sides--some via UNRWA, some through other channels. This goes way beyond Israel allowing hundreds of aid trucks into Gaza, even as the Israeli military is battling to shut down the rocket launchers and destroy the arms-smuggling tunnels and weapons caches of Hamas.

Support in cash and kind, in dollars and tons, has been pledged by donors ranging from Iran to Japan to the European Union to the Arab Gulf States to the U.S. (already the top donor to UNRWA, with $148 million in contributions last year, and now promising an immediate $5 million in response to UNRWA's latest flash appeal for Gaza, plus another $80 million for the agency to spread around in places including Gaza). Plane-loads of relief, both in goods and services, have been announced by donors ranging from Russia to Libya to Sudan.

When this largesse eventually arrives in Gaza, how exactly will it be spent, distributed and supervised? UNRWA and the surrounding constellations of aid operations in Gaza are by and large areas of deep murk. In a 2006 U.S. congressional briefing, Abuzayd said it was too difficult for UNRWA to run checks against terrorist watch lists because "Arab last names sound so familiar."

This was a strange comment coming from Abuzayd, a woman who is married to a Sudanese professor, holds a degree in Islamic studies and has worked for UNRWA in Gaza since 2000, first as deputy commissioner of UNRWA and since 2005 as the top boss. These days, UNRWA officially runs periodic reviews that are supposed to winnow out terror connections. But donors must by and large rely on UNRWA's word that this is a serious process.

The history of terror out of Gaza in recent years suggests that, at best, a lot falls between the cracks. In response to e-mailed queries this week, a UNRWA spokesman said the agency now runs periodic name checks for relief recipients against a UN watch list named for counter-terrorism resolution number 1267 and has found no matches. That's no big surprise; the 1267 watch list is for major players among al-Qaeda and the Taliban, not Iranian-backed Hamas.

For years, various U.S. lawmakers, including the late Congressman Tom Lantos, have tried introducing bills asking for genuine transparency and accountability from UNRWA--which has never been subject to a genuinely independent external audit.

Such efforts have gained no traction, opposed by a UN that even under the most benign circumstances is hostile to opening its books, plus a U.S. State Department that prefers to close its eyes and shovel millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars into terrorist-controlled infrastructure.

This past September, Democratic Rep. Steve Rothman, with a bipartisan group of five co-sponsors, submitted a concurrent resolution noting that "UNRWA has employed staffers affiliated with terrorism."

The resolution cited specific examples of UNRWA ambulance and schools having been used to abet terrorism and mentioned a number of figures, including Awad al-Qiq, headmaster of an UNRWA school in Gaza, "who also led Islamic Jihad's engineering unit that built bombs and Qassam rockets."

However humane the intent of UNRWA officials, they have become de facto enablers of Hamas' terrorist fiefdom in Gaza.

In pushing for an ever-bigger dole and in using the UN stage as a megaphone to help elicit sympathy, drum up funds, denounce Israel and drape in UN baby blue the interests and demands of the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hamas, they do a terrible disservice not only to the cause of world peace, but to the prospects of the Palestinians themselves for forsaking terror and building better lives.

Claudia Rosett, a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for Forbes.com. Forbes