Author: Alyssa A. Lappen

Alyssa A. Lappen is a retired U.S. investigative journalist. She is the former Managing Editor at the Leeb Group (2012-2017); a former Senior Fellow of the American Center for Democracy (2005-2008); and a former Senior Editor of Institutional Investor (1993-1999), Working Woman (1991-1993) and Corporate Finance (1991). She served six of her 12 years at Forbes (1978-1990) as an Associate Editor. Ms. Lappen was also a staff reporter at The New Haven Register (1975-1977). During a decade as a freelance, her work appeared in Big Peace, Pajamas Media, Front Page Magazine, American Thinker, Right Side News, Family Security Matters, the Washington Times and many other Internet and print journals. Ms. Lappen also contributed to the Terror Finance Blog, among others. She supports the right of journalists worldwide to write without fear or restriction on politics, governments, international affairs, terrorism, terror financing and religious support for terrorism, among other subjects. Ms. Lappen is also an accomplished poet. Her first full-length collection, The Minstrel's Song, was published by Cross-Cultural Communications in April 2015. Her poems have been published in the 2nd 2007 edition of Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust and many issues of Wales' award-winning Seventh Quarry: Swansea Poetry Magazine. Dozens of her poems have appeared in print and online literary journals and books. She won the 2000 annual Ruah: A Journal of Spiritual Poetry chapbook award and has received a Harvard Summer Poetry Prize and several honorable mentions.

And Dhimmitude For All

By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 11, 2005

Review: The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats non-Muslims, Edited by Robert Spencer, Prometheus Books (2005)

“A thing without a name escapes understanding,” warns preeminent Islamic scholar Bat Ye’or of jihad and dhimmitude—the Islamic institutions of, respectively, war and perpetual servitude imposed on conquered non-Muslim peoples. Both, Ye’or notes in an essay entitled “Historical Amnesia,” are in the process of globalization.

This is not the benign economic globalization that most Westerners laud. Islamic jihad and dhimmitude trade in every available means—military, political, technological and intellectual. And if the towering collection of 63 essays (including Ye’or’s) contained in the new book The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims is to be believed, these specific Islamic processes are globalizing at a disturbingly rapid pace. The book, courageously assembled by JihadWatch director and FrontPage columnist Robert Spencer, provides historical and contemporary profiles of jihad and dhimmitude.

In six sections, the book delineates how Islamic ideology has affected non-Muslims both historically and in the contemporary world. The first three sections cover the myth vs. historical realities and Islamic law and practice regarding non-Muslims. The last three sections cover how the myth of Islamic tolerance has affected contemporary geopolitics, power politics at the United Nations and, finally, academic and public discourse. It is Ibn Warraq’s forward and the latter 400 pages in which this book really shines. He explains:

Islam is a totalitarian ideology that aims to control the religious, social and political life of mankind in all its aspects; the life of its followers without qualification; and the life of those who follow the so-called tolerated religions to a degree that prevents their activities from getting in the way of Islam in any way. And I mean Islam, I do not accept some spurious distinction between Islam and ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ or Islamic terrorism’. Continue reading “And Dhimmitude For All” →

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Triple-pronged Jihad — Military, Economic and Cultural

By Alyssa A. Lappen
AmericanThinker.com | April 5, 2005
[In a wide ranging interview with Islamic scholar Bat Ye’or comes a frank discussion of Eurabia: what it is, and what it means for Americans. — Interview by Alyssa A. Lappen]

In her new book, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, Bat Ye’or takes a sweeping view of history, not the one that most of us consider, just past the ends of our noses. The world’s preeminent historian of two unique Islamic institutions, jihad and dhimmitude—the latter, the humiliated, precarious state of non-Muslim peoples living under Islamic rule—Bat Ye’or has masterfully portrayed the means by which the Euro-Arab Dialogue unfolded over the past 30-plus years. ‘There are three forms of jihad,’ she says today, ‘the military jihad, the economic jihad and the cultural jihad.’ The EAD between the European Community and the Arab League has been a means of spreading [the] economic and cultural jihad from the Middle East to Europe.

In November 1967, Charles De Gaulle announced at a press conference that henceforward, France would assume a pro-Arab policy. His goals were to prevent a return to intra-European wars and to help France resume its leading role in European politics and history. Little could he have imagined the far-reaching results. De Gaulle died in November 1970, but in October 1973, following Egypt and Syria’s war against Israel, Georges Pompidou picked up his policy reigns and led Europe into the Euro-Arab Dialogue—(EAD), a process that took hold and changed the face of Europe for the worse.

On French initiative, the European Community sought to open a Euro-Arab Dialogue, but the Arab League for their part made any dialogue dependent on the establishment of an anti-Israel policy in Europe.

Outraged that Israel had won the war against all odds, with help from the U.S., the oil-producing members of the Arab League unilaterally quadrupled the price of oil and cut production by 5 percent a month. Additionally, they imposed an oil embargo on the nations considered friendly to Israel—the U.S., Denmark and Holland. France and Germany panicked. On November 6, 1973, the nine countries of the European Economic Community met in Brussels and issued a joint resolution that reversed the intent and meaning of United Nations Resolution 242, and declared illegal all territory Israel had gained in its defensive 1967 war. Furthermore, the EEC demanded that henceforward ‘the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people’ be included in any definition of peace. Continue reading “Triple-pronged Jihad — Military, Economic and Cultural” →

Dense poets society

By Thomas Lifson
American Thinker | March 21, 2005

Poetry is a window on the human soul.

Sad to say, American poetry has fallen on hard times. At least that branch of it represented by the dozen or so poets recently outraged by an article we published which dared to criticize anti-Israel poet Ammiel Alcalay. Judging by the communications we have received, and by the ‘guerilla’ tactics employed against us, these poets, many of whom teach at respectable universities and colleges, are a pathetic lot. Incapable of reasoned argument, spewing epithets, pretentious, paranoid, and stupid enough to conspire and provide cause for legal action right in public, they embody, in James Taranto‘s phrase, a ‘toxic mix of self-pity and thuggery… characteristic of an alienated political minority.’

We were happy to publish immediately the first two letters of complaint which we received on the article. The first one came from Lisa Jarnot, ‘assistant professor, Brooklyn College, Dept of Creative Writing,’ whose only approximation of substantive criticism was ‘you are totally out to lunch.’ The second letter came from someone claiming to be ‘M. Arnone,’ and employed sarcasm, as well as the adjectival form of a vulgar word for sexual intercourse which we duly censored in publishing it. Our contributor Herb Meyer even wrote us a letter about Professor Jarnot’s communication, which we also published. Continue reading “Dense poets society” →

Another U.N. Scandal

By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 16, 2005

Given the oil-for-food and peace-keepers-for-sex scandals in the United Nations of late, one might expect the press corps covering that international body to conduct their own business in the most scrupulous manner. But recent reports and complaints suggest that even the United Nations Correspondents Association is not whistle-clean.

From the outside, the UNCA and the doings of its officers may seem insignificant. The group has no more than 180 members, and its annual dues — after a 30 percent increase to $65 — will generate little more than $11,000 in 2005, according to several members. Donations from outside organizations bring the total annual budget to some $30,000, they say. In short, the UNCA hardly compares — in size or import — to, say, the National Press Club.

The UNCA is a not-for-profit membership organization, insiders say, whose associates represent most major U.S. and international newspapers and, of course, broadcast networks. Journalists centered at the United Nations are presumably assigned to cover the General Assembly, Security Council and all ancillary U.N. departments and organizations with an impartial eye.

“Journalists lynch every public official caught in any impropriety, so we should hold ourselves to the highest of standards,” says one UNCA member, explaining his benchmark for professional conduct. “At our paper, if you accept work or free trips [from sources], you’re fired.”

The UNCA leadership and some of its members, on the other hand, seem mired in such conflicts of interest. The group fails to censure members who work for the United Nations or member states. Its members go on all-expense-paid junkets. The group takes funding from from political activists and outside organizations that could also affect UN coverage. And in perhaps the biggest blunder of all, the UNCA hired as its “office administrator” one member who just happened to lack appropriate U.S. working papers. Continue reading “Another U.N. Scandal” →

Poetry, terror and political narcissism

By Alyssa A. Lappen

AmericanThinker.com | March 4, 2005

Poetry is a window on the human soul. But the politics of American poetry, in recent years have veered into more and more radical territory, as an increasing number of poets openly declare their allegiance with ‘Palestine,’ and implicitly, with terror. Academics with one foot in Middle Eastern Studies and another in literature and poetry are the prime conduits of this degrading development. A few names that come to mind are Tom Paulin[1], a literature lecturer at Oxford University, former New Jersey poet laureate Amiri Baraka[2], Marylin Hacker[3], and Alicia Ostriker[4] at Rutgers University.

A prime example is Ammiel Alcalay, a tenured professor and former chair of Classical, Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures at City University of New York’s Queens College[5]. The author, editor or translator of at least nine literary, essay and poetry volumes[6], Alcalay has established himself as a fixture on the college speaking and poetry circuits, both realms that he vigorously exploits to disseminate sharply antiâ€”American, anti-Israel and pro-Palestine views[7].

Born and raised in Boston, Alcalay, 48, is the son of Sephardic Jews from Bosnia[8]. But his family background seems to have taught Alcalay nothing about the deficiencies of previous eras or the evils of communism. Not only does Alcalay seek a return to pre-democratic times[9], he wishes for a revolution such as outlined by French Marxist and anti-colonialist Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), author of Wretched of the Earth.[10]

Nominally literary in discipline, Alcalay is, like his idol Edward Said, better described as a political narcissist, preoccupied with his own role as arbiter of radical politics and the arts[11]. As such, he is the true interpreter and defender of ‘memory.’ ”Terrorists’ hijack planes but ‘ideologues,’ in the form of states and other acceptably licensed power structures, hijack a people’s collective memory, or at least make the attempt,’ Alcalay writes in a review of Said’s After the Last Sky, in his own vainglorious attempt to nullify Israel’s independence and statehood[12].

But the converse is actually true: intellectual hijacking is Alcalay’s specialty. In November 2002, for example, he discussed political poetry and the ‘politicization of studies’ at Cornell University–within the context of a shameless diatribe against ‘the normative narrative of Israel and Zionism,…remarkable, remarkable…[American] ignorance’ and ‘lack of any sense of empathy, solidarity, sympathy’ with the Arab Middle East[13]. For Alcalay, as it was for Said, the intellectual’s true role is opposing all forms of power and every status quo, unless those have to do with the favored ‘Other.’ Continue reading “Poetry, terror and political narcissism” →

Witless for Peace

By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 3, 2005

Did you know that the U.S. (not Castro) has impoverished Cuba through its 40-year embargo, has waged war with Colombia, and has perpetuated an “epidemic” of unfair trade practices via the North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (which put the Western Hemisphere up “for sale“)? Thanks to the Witness for Peace program, students at Ohio’s Miami University do.

Miami University — a public state-funded college located in Oxford, Ohio, near Cincinnati — doesn’t have a “Peace Studies” program, but it compensates for that by giving students academic credit to take anti-American trips sponsored by WFP. Think of WFP as a university version of Global Exchange, taking college students to see the “horrors” of American foreign policy and the supposed glories of socialism firsthand. From Wellesley College, to the University of Minnesota, to Harvard University, student groups nationwide send dozens of WFP “delegations” to South America and the Caribbean annually. Regional WFP chapters and campus-based programs draw hundreds of students who travel for $600 to $1,200 a head on programs where they are indoctrinated in Hate America rhetoric.
Last March, Miami University senior Ross Meyer won widespread acclaim for leading 13 students to Mexico as part of Witness for Peace (WFP), a national group that claims to support “peace, justice and sustainable economies in the Americas — through publications, work-and-travel “opportunities” and “action tools.” A WFP brochure explains that the group was founded in 1983 “by people of faith and conscience [in] response to U.S. funding of the Contra War.” But neither WFP nor Meyer are simple peace-loving activists or students; they indoctrinate students that America is an international aggressor, systematically impoverishing other nations for political and economic advantage. Continue reading “Witless for Peace” →