Ihsan Alkhatib

Jihad has become known in the popular culture as holy war. The propaganda has been that modern and Western Israel is facing a Jihad from the religious fanatics of Hamas and other Islamists who are driven by religious zeal. It seems the Islamists have intellectual company in the Israeli army rabbis who are on a holy war against the Palestinians. Cliff Churgin writes in an article entitled "Israeli Soldier says fights was religious- Army was told Palestinian Lives less Important, he says" published in the Detroit Free Press of March 21, 2009: 'Rabbis affiliated with the Israeli army urged troops heading into Gaza to reclaim what they said was God-given land and "get rid of the gentiles"- effectively turning the 22-day Israeli intervention into a religious war, according to the testimony of a soldier who fought in Gaza.' 'Literature passed out to soldiers by the army's rabbinate "had a clear message- we are the people of Israel, we came to the lan...

So many voices have loudly protested the rudimentary Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza but very few voices are being heard condemning Israeli crimes in denying Gazan access to food and other necessities. In "US Complains of Blocked Gaza Aid" Chares Levinson writes in the Wall Street Journal of March 13, 2009: "The US has complained to Israel over the holdup of aid shipments to Gaza of items as basic as jam, toothpaste, and toilet paper, which US officials say are being frequently trapped amid an erratic decision-making process...On Thursday, Israel rejected a shipment of 960 boxes of tuna, canned meat, diapers, wet wipes, sterile gauze, blankets, and candles, along with 184 boxes of flashlights." It is wrong for the Gazan to fire rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians. Is it not a violation of international law to block the Palestinians from receiving humanitarian aid? Where is the outrage? Are Palestinian lives not equal to Israeli lives in international law...

In "Obama's Afghan Struggle," Fouad Ajami writes in The Wall Street Journal of March 20, 2009 that: "The [Iraqi region] Anbar turned only when the Sunni insurgents had grown convinced that the Americans were here to stay and that the alternative to accommodation with the Americans, and with the Baghdad government, is a sure and widespread Sunni defeat." Interesting. A political scientist who ignores political forces and focuses only on the military part of the equation. Ajami's analysis ignores three political factors: 1. The importance and success of Americans efforts for meaningful inclusion of the Sunnis in the Iraqi political process. 2. The American realization, despite efforts by the likes of Ajami to distract policy makers, that Shiite sectarian militias are just as dangerous to Iraq as the Al Qaeda terrorists. 3. The campaign to rid government ministries of Shiite fanatics who used the government's authority to persecute the Sunnis of Iraq. If on...

It is often stated that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Defenders of Israel point to "Arab Israelis" as evidence of the inclusiveness of Israel despite its having a Jewish identity. The US State department 2008 country report indicates that Israel discriminates against its Arab citizens, Palestinians who, for a number of reasons, stayed in what became in 1948 the State of Israel. Arab Education: Separate and Unequal There is a big gap in educational achievement between the Arab and the Jewish citizens of Israel. This is attributable to discrimination in educational opportunities. "Institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against Arabs" continued and the "government maintained unequal educational systems for Arab and Jewish students." The report adds "Academic institutions and advocacy groups have long charged that resources devoted to the education of Arab children were inferior to those devoted to Jewish children in the pu...

Kamikaze, Tamil Tigers then Hamas Suicide bombing is a vile tactic that has been used by myriad groups to advance their political agendas. The most famous users of this tactic were the Japanese pilots, the kamikazes "divine wind", who attacked allied ships and sank a number of them. More recently, the Tamil Tigers, neither Arab or Muslim, were the number one users of this tactic until the Palestinian group Hamas used it between 2001 and 2004 unleashing over 100 such attacks on Israeli civilians. This tactic was callously and misguidedly supported at the time by a number of influential voices in the Arab and Muslim world. In the absence of the needed blanket condemnation of this tactic, over time, this tactic was used by Muslims and Arabs against each other resulting in the carnage seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. How and Why Suicide Bombing Failed? Suicide bombing as a Palestinian tactic failed miserably. It nearly decimated the Israeli left and center. It entrenched the Israeli...

Strange is the logic of the radical/militant Islamists of the Hamas variety. They are too eager to embrace the inventions of the West- the West that they so despise and want to change with their own vision of an ideal society imposed on it. They are so quick to use the Internet and email- all inventions of the "corrupt West" that they want to reform. Now the militants of Hamas, who day and night promote the bogus clash of civilization thesis, and claim that the West in engaging in a Crusade against Islam, are none but too eager to get their hands on European and American money, that is mainly Christian, money. This duplicity and the gall is nauseating. After stealing UNRWA supplies at gunpoint in Gaza, thuggery that UNRWA never experienced before even though the Palestinians ran an alphabet soup of factions of all sorts of ideological persuasion. Now Hamas wants the West to hand it its funds to it to spend as it sees fit- that is to reward its supporters and punish its oppone...