Europe’s Last Chance

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 16, 2006
The ongoing violence following the publication of 12 caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in then obscure Danish newspaper.

Jyllands Posten in September 2005, should have surprised no one; the seeds of Islamic attacks against Denmark, as a stepping-stone to the Islamist takeover of Europe were planted long before the cartoons were even published.

In April 15, 2005, five months before the cartoons ran, Palestinian preacher and Hizb Ut Tahrir leader Sheikh Issam Amayra called from al Aqasa Mosque in Jerusalem, upon Muslims in Denmark to begin a holy war. His sermon translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, director of Orient research Group in Toronto, Canada.

Amayra’s sermon warned that:

“… the three percent of the Muslims in Denmark constitute a threat to the future of the kingdom of Denmark. And that should not be a surprise. After all, the Muslims in Yathrib [the city of Medina, before Mohammed moved there from Mecca] constituted less than three percent of the population there. Yet they managed to change Yathrib into Medina. Thus, it should not be a surprise that our Danish brothers manage to bring Islam to all the homes of the Danes. Allah will grant them the victory in their country in order to raise the Caliphate in Denmark.”

Continue reading “Europe’s Last Chance” →

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Youngsters and jihad

By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
Washington Times | February 14, 2006

What would you like to be when you growup?A Hamas children’s magazine has a clear answer: a terrorist. A children’s story it published calls upon small children and encourages them to commit terrorist acts and sacrifice their souls for Allah.

Western politicians who delude themselves in the belief that Hamas will change have only to consider what Hamas leaders say. On Feb. 3, Hamas chief Khaled Mash’al declared in Damascus: “Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded,” according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Hamas gives this message to the present generation. But they also ensure that the next generation of Palestinians, now growing up, receives this message as early as possible. Hamas TV shows impart children with the jihad message when they are toddlers. And for kids who have learned to read, there are magazine comics.

The children’s magazine named Fatah — Arabic for the Muslim who conquers the Kufir States — in its last two issues carried an illustrated story about the heroism of a very young but courageous Palestinian child, who is determined to be a jihad fighter like his older brothers. Continue reading “Youngsters and jihad” →

Funding Hamas

By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 1, 2006

An influential foreign policy advisory group recommends that the U.S. and European Union continue to fund the Palestinian Authority despite the terrorist group’s landslide victory in the January 25 Palestinian elections.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) in a press release announcing its January 18 study entitled “Enter Hamas: The Challenges of Political Integration” bemoan the fact that both the U.S. and E.U. bar contacts with Hamas, deny funding to projects with Hamas-run municipalities, and have threatened to halt assistance to the PA if Hamas joins it. This attitude has had several, essentially negative, results: estranging Palestinians from Western donors; losing touch with an increasingly large segment of the population; jeopardising projects; and reducing accountability. Meanwhile, Hamas participates in elections without having to fulfil [sic] any prior conditions.” The ICG changed neither its report nor press release after the Wednesday poll.

Rather, the group recommends that the West adopt a policy of gradual, conditional engagement to encourage Hamas to choose politics over violence. Incorporation into local and national governance may cause it to move away from the military path by giving it a stake in stability and emphasising the political costs of a breakdown.” Of course, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar declared that the group will not change a single word of its charter,” which calls for Israel’s complete “obliteration”, using that precise term. But never mind. Continue reading “Funding Hamas” →

International and comparative perspectives on defamation, free speech and privacy

by Russell L. Weaver* and David F. Partlett**
New York Law School Law Review | 2005/2006

* Professor of Law and Distinguished University Scholar, University of Louisville, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law.

** Vice President, Dean, and Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law.

Text: 3,772 words
SUMMARY:
… More than four decades have elapsed since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan and time has given way to deeper reflection. … Sullivan involved the free speech rights of activists in the civil rights movement and the Alabama defamation law challenged in Sullivan had little salience in the vortex of that struggle. … ” Professor Eugenie Brouillet in Free Speech, Reputation, and the Canadian Balance also focuses on the Canadian approach to reputation and speech and agrees that Canada has struck a different balance than the United States. … In our article Defamation, Free Speech, and Democratic Governance, we discuss how Australia and England rejected Sullivan in favor of a speech-enhancing doctrine based on extensions of common law qualified privilege. … ” The article examines how the Australian and English extensions of common law qualified privilege affect media reporting and contrasts their impact with that of the Sullivan decision. … Professor Clive Walker in Reforming the Crime of Libel focuses on criminal libel rather than civil libel. … Today, however, they are of greater importance as we see that ideas about reputation, privacy, and free speech are fluid and subject to much practical contention. …
Citation:
n48. Ehrenfeld v. Mahfouz, 2005 WL 696769 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 23, 2005) (granting a motion to effect service of process). See also Sara Ivry, Seeking U.S. Turf for a Free-Speech Flight, N.Y. Times, Apr. 4, 2005, at C8; Dominic Kennedy, Libel and Money – Why British Courts are Choice of the World, Times (UK), May 19, 2005, at 6; Dominic Kennedy, Judge Attacks Author Over Libel Tourism Allegation, Times (UK), June 16, 2005, at 24; Alyssa A. Lappen, Libel Wars, FrontPage Mag., July 18, 2005; Jeffrey Toobin, Let’s Go: Libel, The New Yorker, Aug. 8, 2005, at 36.

Buying Fox News

By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 13, 2005

Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal boasted in Dubai earlier this week about his ability to change the news content that viewers around the world see on television.

In early September 2005, Bin Talal bought 5.46% of voting shares in News Corp. This made the Fifth richest man on the Forbes World’s Richest People, the fourth largest voting shareholder in News Corp., the parent of Fox News. News Corp. is the world’s leading newspaper publisher in English. It operates more than 175 newspapers, in the UK, Australia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the US, and distributes more than 40 million papers per week. In addition, News Corp. owns and operates an international collection of TV outlets, radio stations, magazines, book publishers and film studios.

After bin Talal purchased his voting shares in News Corp., on September 23, 2005, he stated in an advertising supplement to the New York Times, “When I invest in a group like CITIGROUP, the Four Seasons, the News Corp. or Time Warner, my objective is not to manage those companies.”

But this is not quite accurate, considering the Prince’s December 5, 2005 statement given to Middle East Online regarding his ability to change what viewers see on Fox News. Covering the riots in Paris last November, Fox ran a banner saying: “Muslim riots.” Bin Talal was not happy. “I picked up the phone and called Murdoch… (and told him) these are not Muslim riots, these are riots out of poverty,” he said. “Within 30 minutes, the title was changed from Muslim riots to civil riots.”

News Corp did not comment, but referred us to FOX NEWS, which responded with the following statement: “Over the course of our extensive coverage, it became clear that the Paris riots were caused by a number of different factors which we characterized in various ways as we continued to report the story and discover new information. In fact, one of our contributors, Father Morris, who was in Paris covering this story, was prominently on our air saying this was a cultural assimilation issue, not a religious one.” Continue reading “Buying Fox News” →

Incitement in the mosques:

Incitement in the Mosques:
Testing the limits of free speech and religious liberty

By Kenneth Lasson*
Whittier Law Review | Fall, 2005

* Professor of Law, University of Baltimore School of Law [with diligent research assistance on this article from Martin Cohen].

Text: 28,778 words

SUMMARY:
… Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country.

… In April of 2004, for example, a Muslim preacher at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem referred to Jews as “sons of monkeys and pigs,” and as “murderers of prophets.”

… In an Al-Aqsa Mosque sermon, the United States-sponsored road map was called by Sheikh Yousef Abu Sneina one of the plots fabricated against the Palestinian people like the Oslo accords and the Camp David summit.

… Some clerics now openly preach incitement, urging fellow Muslims to follow the path of the jihad by destroying Jews, who continue to be vilified as “pigs and monkeys.”

… Official PA television offers a children’s program that glorifies massacres of civilians and suicide bombings, and broadcasts sermons that “continue to encourage terrorist jihad against all Jews.”

… It is not difficult to draw an analogy between the symbolic speech in Virginia v. Black and sermons promoting terror between the recent history of violence in Muslim society and the sermons related to jihad.

… It should go without saying that there are many similarities between the symbolic speech (cross burning) in Black and sermons promoting terror between the recent history of violence in Muslim society and the sermons related to jihad. …

Citation:
n20. See Alyssa A. Lappen, “Ford Has A Better Idea: One Nation Under Allah,” FrontPageMagazine.com (Dec. 30, 2003), http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=11513.