Stewart Bell, author of Cold Terror, in the National Post;

Yusuf Islam, the British singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, was the guest of honour at a Toronto fundraising dinner hosted by an organization that has since been identified by the Canadian government as a “front” for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
In a videotape of the 1998 event obtained by the National Post, Mr. Islam describes Israel as a “so-called new society” created by a “so-called religion” and urges the audience to donate to the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services to “lessen the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Palestine and the Holy Land.”
The Jerusalem Fund is one of four “fronts” named in a secret Privy Council Office memo that was sent to Jean Chretien, then prime minister, on May 23, 2000, discussing what it called groups that “have unsavoury links with terrorism.

Via Norm Spector.

Continue reading →

Reluctantly, the American prisoners did as they were told, all 150 of them, crawling single file into the dark, poorly ventilated pits. Everyone but Stidham, whose stretcher was conveniently placed beside one of the trench entrances. If the planes came, his buddies would gather his limp form and tuck him into the shelter with everyone else.
They waited and waited but heard not a single American plane, let alone a hundred. They huddled in the stifling dankness of their collective body heat, sweat coursing down their bare chests. The air-raid bell continued to peal. A Navy signalman named C.C. Smith refused to go into his pit. Suddenly the Buzzard set upon him. He raised his saber high so that it gleamed in the midday sun, and with all his strength he brought it blade side down. Smith’s head was cleaved in two, the sword finally stopping midway down the neck.
Then, peeking out the ends of the trenches, the men saw several soldiers bursting into the compound. They were carrying five-gallon buckets filled with a liquid. The buckets sloshed messily as the soldiers walked. With a quick jerk of the hands, they flung the contents into the openings of the trenches. By the smell of it on their skin, the Americans instantly recognized what it was — high-octane aviation fuel from the airstrip. Before they could apprehend the full significance of it, other soldiers tossed in lighted bamboo torches. Within seconds the trenches exploded in flames, The men squirmed over each other and clawed at the dirt as they tried desperately to shirnk from the intense heat. They choked back the smoke and the fumes, their nostrils assailed by the smell of singed hair and roasting flesh. They were trapped like termites in their own sealed nest.
Only a few managed to free themselves. Dr.Carl Mango, from Pennsylvania, sprang from his hole, his clothes smoldering. His arms were outstretched as he peaded — “Show some reason, please God show reason” — but a machine gunner mowed him down.
Another prisoner crawled from his trench, wrested a rifle from the hands of a soldier, and shot him before receiving a mortal stab in the back. A number of men dashed toward the fence and tried to press through it but were quickly riddled with lead, leaving a row of corpses hung from the barbed stands like dried cuttlefish. A few men managed to slip through the razor ribbon and leap from the high cliff, but more soldiers were waiting on the beach to finish them off. Recognizing the futility of escape but wanting to wreak a parting vengeance, one burning prisoner emerged from his trench, wrapped his arms tightly around the first soldier he saw, and didn’t let go — a death embrace that succeeded in setting the surprised executioner on fire.
All the while, Lieutenant Sato scurried from trench to trench with saber drawn, loudly exhorting his men and occasionally punctuating his commands with a high, nervous laugh. At his order, another wave of troops approached the air-raid shelters, throwing grenades into the flaming entrances and raking them with gunfire. Some of the troops poked their rifle barrels through the entrances of the trenches and fired point-blank at the huddled forms within. James Stidham, the paralytic who had been watching all of this from his stretcher, quietly moaned in terror. A soldier stepped over to him and with a perfunctory glance fired two slugs into his face.

From Ghost Soldiers– an account of the atrocity at Palawan, Dec.14, 1944.
Today, as we witness acts of what seems unprecedented barbarism, we must remind ourselves that others have been down this road before.
But, unlike today’s helpless individuals whose names flash around the globe as they plead for mercy, their murders recorded single file — the American and Filipino prisoners of war who suffered years of unspeakable cruelty, who died of torture, starvation, disembowling, decapitation at the hands of the Japanese, were dumped in nameless thousands in mass graves, or simply left to rot.
Yet, those who survived were witness to the transformation of that society into a peaceful, prosperous democracy in their lifetime. It must still seem miraculous to them.
I’m nearly finished reading Ghost Soldiers. It’s a difficult book. As I turn the pages, another contrast becomes evident – that of the steady and courageous resolve of leaders of that time, and a would-be-President of today, whose reaction to the ugly reality of defeating and reforming inhuman ideologies is to publicly proclaim the effort a “mess”, and announce that “We need a summit.”
The ghosts of Bataan would despair.

Mundir Badr Haloum, for Al-Safir (Lebanon), September 13;

“Twelve Nepalese citizens are slaughtered – Islam. A metro station is bombed – Islam. Civilian aircraft crash – Islam. A school is taken and the souls of 50 children [are lost] for the soul of [each] terrorist – Islam. A bus is bombed here, a railway train there, and before that there were hospitals and theaters, etc – all of them Islamic acts. [Behind] the color green are exposed rivers red with blood, flowing in the streets and public squares. And Muslims everywhere.
[…]
“Self-examination – would result in favor of abandoning Islam – yet what gets passed on from one generation to the next is – the latest version of Islam – Algeria, Afghanistan, Moscow, and New York, the version of the planes and the buses, the metro stations, the theaters and the residential complexes. What gets passed on from one generation to the next is the faith of Jihad that takes lightly the spilling of others’ blood. How easy it is to shove someone into the category of the enemy. What gets passed on from generation to generation is the belief in legal rulings that forbid thought and permit killing. Religious Muslims prepare an offering to heaven – a fresh bit of human flesh, meant to be evidence of the truth and the proof of Jihad for the absolute truth.
“Indeed, we as Muslims produce terrorism, succor it, and praise it. We condemn it only when forced to. Motivated by considerations of power, interests, and diplomacy, we wear a pained expression on our faces but in our hearts we rejoice at the brilliant success – a large number of casualties. Unfortunately, in this black reality it does not matter if it is an American, Israeli, or Russian mind who is responsible for certain terrorist operations or whether those who kill themselves are poor, ignorant, or destitute.”
[…]
“Islam is in need of true reform. Islam’s need [for reform] – or, to be precise, our need for Islam’s reform – is not less than the need for reform in the Arab political regimes. This is the need for people who are capable of fearlessly acknowledging that terrorism nests within us as Muslims and that we must exorcise it. Unfortunately, the meaning of delay is more death. The reform will take a long time and the price will be high, but it is the only path to our return to history as Muslims and not as terrorists.”