Inside a Taliban camp in Pakistan

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Jewish Chabad’s Genocidal Morality The Fanatical US-based Organization Exposed

Khalid Amayreh

June 19, 2009 “The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way. Destroy their holy sites; kill their men, women, children, and even cattle. “These are not the words of a loony Jewish terrorist, marauding through the hills of the West Bank in search for an elderly Arab peasant or shepherd to kill. In fact, these words were uttered last week by Manis Friedman, a prominent and highly-respected Chabad-lubavitch rabbi who is widely admired among many Orthodox Jews, especially in the United States. Writing in response to a question posed by Moment Magazine for its “Ask the Rabbis” feature, the Minnesota-based rabbi argued that “if we followed this wisdom (killing innocent Arab men, women and children), there would be no civilian casualties, no children in the line of fire, no false sense of righteousness, in fact, no war.” He went on, “I do not believe in Western morality. Living by the Torah values will make us the light to the nations who suffer defeat because of a disastrous morality of human invention.” Friedman’s views are not marginal or unrepresentative within the Chabad movement — a supremacist worldwide Jewish sect with huge financial and political influence in Israel and North America. Moreover, Friedman himself is not a fringe rabbi within the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. For many years, he was the English translator for the Lubavitcher Rebb (M. M. Schneurssohn), and at his urging, he founded Beis Chana; a network of campus and schools for Jewish women. Defending his views, Friedman argued that he was only quoting from the Torah. He further argued that he was not actually urging Israel to kill en mass Palestinian men, women, and children, saying that he only believed that Israel should publicly say that it is willing to “do these things in order to scare Palestinians”. However, a Jewish neighbor by the name of Shmarya Rosenberg, was quoted as saying that “the comment in Moment is not an aberration from his experiences with Friedman and many other Chabad rabbis.” “What he is saying is the standard normal view of Chabadniks. They just do not say it in public,” Rosenberg continued. Nazi-like Movement If a Jewish sect or movement can be described as “Nazi or Nazi-like”, it is the Chabad (or Habad) group, which openly advocates the annihilation of non-Jews in Palestine according to the Biblical model of the Book of Joshua. Chabad is not a marginal movement within Orthodox Judaism. In both Israel and North America, it has been able to amass tremendous wealth and acquire considerable political influence. The movement, with which thousands of Israeli soldiers and high-ranking officers are affiliated, views non-Jews as sub-humans or animals in human shape whose lives have no sanctity. According to the group’s manifesto, known as ha’Tanya, as quoted by the late Israeli author and philosopher Yisrael Shahak in his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, all non-Jews are totally satanic creatures in whom there is absolutely nothing good. “Even a non-Jewish embryo is qualitatively different from a Jewish one.” According to Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the founder of Chabad, the very existence of a non-Jew is inessential whereas all creation was made solely for the sake of Jews. In ha’Tanya, he claims that “all Jews are good by nature; all non-Jews are evil by nature. The Jews are creation’s crowning glory, the non-Jews are the scum of the earth,”(as quoted in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 3, 1994, page 14) Chabad’s genocidal racism is not really confined to a small group of religious fanatics as public relations-savvy Zionist spokesmen would claim, especially when talking to the Western media. In Israel, the murderous hatred toward Palestinians found expression in Israel’s recent blitz in Gaza, which killed and maimed thousands of Palestinian civilians, and utterly destroyed thousands of homes, schools, mosques, and other civilian buildings. According to the Israeli press, some military rabbis regularly encouraged and instigated combat soldiers to “show no mercy to Palestinians”. Avi Rontzki, the Israeli army Chief Rabbi distributed a booklet to soldiers called Go Fight My Fight: A Daily Study of Table for the Soldiers and Commanders in a Time of War, prepared specifically for the Israeli onslaught on Gaza. In the booklet, Rontzki urged the troops to show no mercy to Palestinians, including civilians. “When you show mercy to cruelty, you are being cruel to the pure and honest soldiers. These are not games at the amusement park where sportsmanship teaches one to make concessions. This is a war on murderers,” he said. “There is a biblical ban on surrendering a single millimeter of it to gentiles, though all sorts of impure distortions and foolishness of autonomy, enclaves, and other national weakness. We will not abandon it to the hands of another nation, not a finger, not a nail of it,” he continued. Two years ago, Israel’s former Chief Rabbi, Mordechai Elyahu, urged the Israeli army and government to employ the Nazi choice against the Palestinians. He petitioned the Israeli government to carry out a series of carpet bombing of Palestinian population centers in Gaza, arguing that a ground invasion of the world’s most crowded spot would endanger the safety of Israeli soldiers. “If they do not stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And, if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still do not stop we must kill 100,000, even a million; whatever it takes to make them stop.” This was not the first time Elyahu, who is considered one of the most knowledgeable Talmudic sages in Israel, had issued a religious edict urging the Israeli army not to refrain from killing Palestinian children and civilians if that meant saving Jewish lives. On several occasions, he had urged the army to indiscriminately bomb Palestinian population centers, and pay no attention to possible objections by international public opinion. Elyahu was a student of Rabbi Abraham Kook who is widely considered the main mentor of modern religious Zionism as well as the settlement movement known as Gush Emunim (the Bloc of Faithful). Yair Sheleg, a noted Israeli writer, quoted Kook as writing that “the difference between the Jewish soul and the souls of all non-Jews, no matter what their rank and level of understanding, is bigger and deeper than the difference between the human soul and the animal soul.” Again, these venomous teachings are often translated into ugly acts of murder of innocent Palestinians both by Israeli soldiers and fanatical Jewish settlers. More than two years ago, a Jewish immigrant from France murdered in cold blood an Arab taxi driver from East Jerusalem after beguiling the unsuspecting victim to take him to Netanya. The murderer, named Julian Soufir, had apparently been subjected to heavy doses of religious indoctrination at a synagogue near his home. He told police interrogators that “I just wanted to kill an Arab. There is no difference between killing an Arab and killing an animal. When I killed him, I felt I was slaughtering a sheep.” Soufir has been transferred to a mental hospital and his lawyer is demanding that he be let free!! Dishonest Approach Indeed, apart from a minority of courageous Israeli writers and intellectuals, people such as Shahak and the vast majority of the Israeli intelligentsia — religious and secular alike — have carefully refrained from dealing seriously with this issue of Jewish racism toward non-Jews. The classical reaction of Jewish leaders to virulent remarks by rabbis such as Manis Friedman usually takes the form of claiming that these views only represent a small minority, and in no way reflect or represent the teachings of Judaism. Of course, this is true — in a certain sense. After all, God never taught Moses, May peace be upon him, that “to kill the best of gentiles…Kill them all,” as Shimon Hatsodek taught, nor did the Almighty taught that Jews or even Israelites were biologically superior to other human beings. But this does not mean that racist Jewish ideas, including Chabad’s Nazi-like genocidal system of thinking, are not rife among hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel and abroad. Today, the Israeli coalition government headed by Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu includes religious parties such as ha’Bayt ha’Yahudi (the Jewish House), which openly calls for the expulsion, enslavement, or extermination of Palestinians. Leaders of another party represented in the Israeli Knesset, ha’Ichud ha Leumi (the National Union) declare openly that non-Jews are not real human beings. For example, National Union leader Aryeh Eldad on several occasions urged the Israeli army not to “treat ‘real human beings’ (the settlers) as it did Arabs.” Finally, one cannot leave this important subject without making an earnest call upon all honest and well-meaning Jews to openly and sincerely condemn the manifestly criminal discourse of Chabad. Jews cannot really raise their voices aloud against anti-Semitism while keeping silent — or even finding excuses for — virulent racism coming from Jews themselves. In the final analysis, racism does not become kosher when practiced by Jews.

Wazirs Demand Army Protect Pakistan

Tribesmen take to streets against drone attacks

TANK: Hundreds of Wazir tribesmen took to the streets to condemn Thursday’s drone attack in Wana that killed 12 people. After Friday prayers, Wazir tribesmen and elders staged a protest rally in Wana Bazaar and marched through various roads and streets. They called the attacks “an assault on the country’s sovereignty”. The protesters shouted anti-US slogans and demanded that the government play its role in stopping the attacks. Tribal elders said the people had rendered matchless sacrifices during the war against terror, adding that the tribesmen would continue to give more sacrifices to protect the country. They said most of the people killed in the drone attacks were innocent civilians. Markets and shopping malls remained closed to mourn Thursday’s killings.

Wahabbis and Neocons, the Unholy Alliance

The Kingdom in Pakistan

—Saleem H Ali

During my last visit to Lahore when I interviewed various progressive scholars, they also expressed the strongest concern about America’s unflinching support for Saudi Arabia’s policies, which made them more suspicious of the West’s resolve in tackling extremism

The assassination of Dr Sarfraz Naeemi at a prominent madrassa in Lahore marks a turning point in Pakistan’s civil strife. The Taliban profess to be “pure” Sunni Muslims, and have targeted Shia mosques and seminaries many times before. However, Maulana Naeemi is the first notable Sunni scholar to be murdered by the Taliban.

The growing rift within Sunni Islam that has spread across Pakistan and fuelled the Taliban with foot soldiers from some radical centres of learning has clear connections to Wahhabi doctrines. The culpability of Saudi Arabia, both officially and privately, in perpetuating intolerance across the Muslim world must be duly acknowledged. No longer can we afford to believe cultural excuses from the Saudis for spreading ossified worldviews in other Muslim countries as a means of shielding their own state.

Pakistanis have also been made acutely aware of the arcane interpretations of sharia law in Saudi Arabia this week with the arrests of some poor pilgrims who were duped into drug trafficking by a Karachi agent.

While returning from Hajj three years ago, I had my first encounter with the pernicious evangelism of the Saudi brand of Wahhabi Islam. Before boarding the flight from Jeddah to Islamabad, each passenger was handed a book in Urdu, free of charge, by the Saudi boarding agent in which allegations of heresy were made against any Muslims who did not adhere to the “pure” Saudi brand of Islam. If each Haji returning to Pakistan is to be gifted such vitriol against pluralism, imagine what is going on in madrassas that receive funds from Saudi sources.

Let us not forget also that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were initially the only two countries to recognise the Taliban regime in Afghanistan before 9/11 (the UAE also briefly recognised the regime).

Saudi financing of radical doctrines was acknowledged by the 9/11 Commission report, which points out that “awash in sudden oil wealth, Saudi Arabia competed with Shi’a Iran to promote its Sunni [sic!] fundamentalist version of Islam, Wahabbism.”

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Looming Tower, veteran journalist Lawrence Wright described how the rate of Saudi investment would impact the Muslim world: “…eventually, Saudi Arabia, which constitutes only a little over 1 percent of the world Muslim population would support 90 percent of the expenses of the entire faith, overriding other traditions in Islam.”

The Saudi influence in Pakistan is palpable everywhere. They bail us out when we run out of wheat; they provide political asylum in palaces to former prime ministers; they broker peace deals and provide funds for our weapons programmes.

No doubt some aspects of Saudi assistance to Pakistan and other Muslim countries are to be appreciated. However, what they want in return is an insidious evangelism of their exclusionary version of Islam, which must be resolutely rejected. They feel vindicated in destroying several mosques in their own country (such as the destruction of the Sabah Masajid in Medina) for fear of bidda’, or innovation, and we see the same callous destruction by the Taliban now of shrines and places of worship that deviate from their definition of “pure”.

While the world worries about Iran’s return to radicalism in the aftermath of the election, let us not forget the other radical Islamist country across the Gulf. In terms of human rights and treatment of minorities and women, Saudi Arabia is far more retrogressive than Iran and has played a more consequential role in the radicalisation of strategically important countries like Pakistan.

The Saudi government and Wahhabi sympathisers have recently attempted to differentiate Wahhabi Doctrine from “Qutbist” doctrine, named after the Egyptian Muslim Brother Syed Qutb, who travelled extensively in Western countries as well. They have argued that Al Qaeda leaders follow Qutbist views rather than Wahhabi views. However, this argument is not as compelling if one reads some of the writings of Syed Qutb, in books with misleading titles such as Islam and Universal Peace (1977). Much of this book follows a supremacist ideology that can be found in the Wahhabi tradition as well.

The Saudi government would claim that it has been a victim of terrorism by Al Qaeda as well. Indeed, Osama bin Laden has repeatedly declared war on the Saudi royal family. However, the Saudi government has realised that there is tacit support for many of Al Qaeda’s ideas within the Saudi people, and so they have co-opted many of the radical clerics by allowing them to evangelise in other Muslim countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Even from a theological perspective, the Saudi view of Islam is highly hypocritical. For example, there is no concept of a monarchy in the Islamic tradition and yet Saudi Arabia is a kingdom. Strict Wahhabi doctrine also forbids photography yet the Saudi monarch insists on his portrait being displayed in every office in the country!

The Saudi establishment has thus kept an uneasy and unprincipled balance of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Such an approach is unsustainable from the perspective of regional conflict resolution as well as for Saudi Arabia’s own viability as a state.

Maulana Naeemi had repeatedly warned against the influence of absolutist Saudi doctrines in Pakistan. He recognised that the Taliban ideology was most closely associated with the Salafi/Wahhabi brand of Islam. Many of the draconian capital punishments that the Taliban practised in the Swat valley were emulating judicially prescribed practices in Saudi Arabia. However, this source of Taliban doctrines is still not being fully recognised by Pakistanis or the West.

During my last visit to Lahore when I interviewed various progressive scholars, they also expressed the strongest concern about America’s unflinching support for Saudi Arabia’s policies, which made them more suspicious of the West’s resolve in tackling extremism. Perhaps such matters were on President Obama’s mind as he visited Saudi Arabia last month. The lack of transparency in any communications during that visit has once again left an unsettling impression.

The unholy alliance between the United States and the Saudis is going to be mutually destructive unless it is predicated on international principles and norms. As a member of the new G-20 group of world powers, the Saudis must be pressured by the other members to reform internally and stop exporting intolerance. The Great Kingdom of the Khaadim-ul Harmain risks becoming an unpleasant anachronism if it continues to resist positive change.

Dr Saleem H Ali is associate professor of environmental planning and Asian studies at the University of Vermont and the author of Islam and Education: Conflict and Conformity in Pakistan’s Madrassas (Oxford University Press, 2009) http://www.saleemali.net

The Taliban Diaries

—Shaukat Qadir

These diaries contain instructions, in exquisite detail, on how to make explosive devices, many with the most innocuous components like sugar, cooking oil (ghee), aluminium, Vaseline, coffee, charcoal, salt and even black seed

A not very well known fact is that during the Swat operations, security forces captured the diaries of some Taliban leaders, including Muslim Khan, the spokesman for the warlord Fazlullah. I managed to lay my hands on some of them, including a diary of someone who styles himself as ‘Khalid bin Al Walid’, an obvious pseudonym.

While most of the diaries read like normal diaries, relating events of the day, recording deaths with names (some names have been kept secret by the security personnel who gave me the diaries), but a portion of each diary is a training manual. This is the fascinating portion.

These portions are restricted to detailed instructions on the conduct of urban and rural guerrilla warfare. These include instructions on carrying out ambushes, evading one if possible, and how to fight through an ambush. They list combatants under loose command structures for certain operations, and even analyses of successes and failures of operations under each, casualties inflicted and suffered; the latter with a list of names. They record why a commander has been changed, occasionally for inefficiency, but more frequently so as to find the most appropriate individual for each task.

The details of each operation, instructions on how to regroup and reorganise after success, partial success, and even failure provide a fascinating insight into the extent of their training and understanding of guerrilla operations. Occasional glimpses of Sun Tzu’s and Che Guevara’s teachings come through. What these diaries resemble most are the ‘training manuals’ captured from the rebel Contras that Nicaragua took before the International Court of Justice to present its case against the United States for involvement in training the Contra rebels. However, quite obviously, these are contained in the diaries of the leaders, those in positions of authority.

While fascinating, they are not any cause for surprise, except for how they received such detailed instructions on guerrilla warfare. However, the remaining instructions contained in the diaries of leaders as well as ‘soldiers’ are certainly cause for concern and alarm.

These instructions, in exquisite detail, are on how to make explosive devices, many with the most innocuous components like sugar, cooking oil (ghee), aluminium, Vaseline, coffee, charcoal, salt and even black seed! Other explosive components include potassium chlorate, the most frequently used, whose chemical composition, KClO3, is invariably stated. In each case, all quantities are spelt out in milligrams, and frequently with diagrams.

Instructions on the use of TNT, RDX and Plastique are also included. The ratio of each component is included in detail, and instructions include information on which composition will result in a fire-bomb, which will explode, which can be charged with ball bearings for additional effect, which should not, and why.

They also include how improvised explosive devices, IEDs, can be triggered. Methods range from conventional fuses to improvised ones from rope soaked in fuel, to ones made from a hand-wound wrist watch, an alarm clock, even a mobile phone. Instructions also include which devices can be used for which IED. In addition, they state how charges can be shaped to maximise effect in a given direction and even have instructions on biological precautions to be taken if there is prolonged exposure to certain chemicals: when to drink a glass of milk or have a quart of yoghurt if exposed to a certain chemical!

Needless to say, instructions also include details on the sensitivity of each kind of IED, what might trigger each prematurely and the life span of each. Everything necessary has been covered in minute detail. Most of this was unknown to me until I read these diaries.

While all his information is available on the Internet, it needs a specialist to even search for it. This information necessitates knowledge of chemistry, physics and biology, and the combination of such knowledge can only be found for specific purposes, such as training people to operate behind enemy lines and make do with whatever is available, mostly special operatives of intelligence agencies who might find it necessary to build and deploy an IED. Such information could also be gathered by a scientist in the pay of an organisation like Al Qaeda.

The obvious question that comes to mind is from where they obtained this information. Even a chemist would need to be pointed in the right direction to collect the relevant data and schematics. This information has to come from an intelligence agency. Mossad, CIA, RAW or ISI: take your pick.

Now we are talking about people who are not only programmed to kill through distortions of religion, but combine that religious conviction with the knowledge of highly trained operatives capable of constructing their weapons individually. Just think of them as a few thousand Rambos with a distorted version of religion to justify the havoc they can wreak.

So far they are used to operating as individuals or in a group, under the instructions of what would be called ‘a control’, in intelligence parlance. However, if the Pakistani military operations are fully successful and eliminate the leadership, the command and control, and even the training structure of all chapters of the Taliban, which they must, even if only to stop them from churning out more of these ‘killing machines’, those already trained no longer need ‘controls’ or further instructions. If only ten thousand are left, and fifty percent decide in favour of peace, five thousand suicide attackers will still be left for us to face. With one suicide attack a day, their attacks can span almost fifteen years.

As far as Pakistan’s future is concerned, the question of who trained them pales in insignificance when compared to the implication: it lends credence to a conclusion I arrived at in an earlier article, that we are not destined to see the end of murder, mayhem, and suicide attacks in Pakistan for the foreseeable future.

This article is a modified version of one originally written for the daily National. He is also former vice president and founder of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI)