According to this report, Sheik Tantawi of Al Azhar University, has said high level Israeli diplomats would be welcome to come to Al Azhar. He is coming under fire for this and also for an incident in which he shook the hand of Israeli President Shimon Peres. (h/t: GMBDR):

BEIRUT, December 10, 2008 (MENASSAT) — Mohamed Sayed Tantawy, Grand Sheikh of the Islamic Al Azhar University in Egypt, has sparked controversy by suggesting that Israeli officials would be welcome at Sunni Islam's leading religious authority.

Speaking to Al Arab newspaper last week, Tantawy said that Al Azhar would be open to visits by high-level Israeli political representatives if it could help strengthen the peace process. The Sheikh has come under heavy criticism from various sides for his remarks, including from the Muslim Brotherhood  which has demanded that the Grand Sheikh be questioned. 

It is the second time in less than a month that the Muslim Brotherhood has issued such a call. After pictures showing Sheikh Tantawy shaking hands with Israeli President Shimon Peres at a UN-sponsored interfaith conference in New York last Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarian Hamdy Hassan demanded that the Sheikh be questioned.

"He acts like a government employee, according to their policies. He does not represent the institute, nor Muslims as a whole," Hassan was quoted as saying by Daily News Egypt.

Sheikh Tantawy later played down the hand-shake. "It was a passing hand-shake and I didn't recognize him. What did they want me to do, refuse to shake hands with a president of a country we are at peace with?" Tantawy told Al Arab. 

The Israeli media offered its own versions of the story with one newspaper, Maarif, claiming it was in fact Sheikh Tantawy who initiated the hand-shake.

In Egypt, a number of newspapers, including the independent Al-Dustour, have called for Tantawy's dismissal. Tantawy has lashed out at the media that published the New York photos, calling them "a group of lunatics."

Tantawy also stirred controversy with some comments deemed "insulting to the Palestinian cause" on TV.  Asked about the Israeli-imposed embargo of Gaza, Sheikh Tantay said he was not aware of a blockade taking place.

Here is what Andrew Bostom said in his speech in Fairfield, CT last Sunday, Dec. 7th:

Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi wrote these words in his 700 page treatise rationalizing Muslim Jew hatred, Banu Isra’il fi al-Qur’an wa al-Sunna [Jews in the Koran and the Traditions], originally published in 1968/69, and then re-issued in 1986:

I have seen, in real life as opposed to film, a number of dead people, but have yet to see anyone die. That, I imagine, will come in due course. Matthew Parris reckons it's no big deal. Or is it? From The Times:

I don't recognise the descriptions of death intoned by solemn media voices discussing last night's broadcast suicide of Craig Ewert. All seem to agree that these moments of death are amazingly powerful: striking to witness. “Hugely moving,” goes the language: “one of the most primal things we'll ever see.”

I've seen a few - and, no, in no way striking. An anticlimax, just a gentle closing-down: gradual, not instantaneous, there's often no “moment” at all. The emotional charge comes from nothing inherent in the event, but from the feelings of the witness. We humans are capable of cheerfully wringing a chicken's neck, then reeling at the last minutes of a favourite pet.

The most moving moment of death I ever experienced was that of a mouse. All at once - bang - scores of tiny black dots emerged from its fur and scattered. For these mites - vermin to the vermin - the cessation of the heartbeat was like a fire alarm, giving parasites only minutes to find new life-support. Like watching colleagues flee a sinking politician.

Hmm.

IPT reports:

It is an equation becoming all too familiar. A new book released in Europe contains essays critical of Islam and illustrations of the Prophet Mohammed. In response, some are calling for blood.

Danish journalist Lars Hedegaard's book Groft Sagt (Rough Talk), was released in Denmark Monday. It is a collection of about 100 of his favorite newspaper columns from a Copenhagen daily. Many of the columns are critical of Islam. In addition, the book features 26 new illustrations from Kurt Westergaard, whose drawings of the Prophet Mohammed in the newspaper Jyllands Posten in 2005 sparked a wave of violent protests.

An Israeli security center is sounding the alarm about calls for a violent backlash after noticing a series of incendiary posts on jihadist web sites. According to an International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) release, someone identifying himself as Abu Salem posted comments about Hedegaard's book on a website called Hanein, "a mouthpiece for Al-Qaeda and other jihad organizations":

"Abu Salem requests that all who love the Prophet Muhammad help spread the news of the upcoming publication and notify religious leaders of what ‘these pigs' are attempting to do. One forum visitor responded to the post, suggesting that Bin Laden attack Copenhagen, repeating the call: ‘Bin Laden, Copenhagen!' several times. Another forum visitor wrote: ‘Our blood... our souls... our children... our money... all that we have... the entire world… anything so that a single hair of your distinguished head [i.e. Muhammad] is not harmed.'"

In a separate post on another site, the ICT reports an internet user identified as Saqr Al-Islam Al-Maqdasi said a boycott of Danish goods would be an insufficient response. Instead:

"[…] by attacking Denmark everywhere so that it be known we are a nation sacrificing itself for Islam and its Prophet […] this cattle doesn't understand anything but the language of rage, and we will decapitate the heads and set fire to the ground underneath their feet. They do not understand anything but the language of blood and scattering of body parts. I ask that Allah make successful the way of the loyal Jihad warriors, in order to blow up and set fire to Denmark."

In an interview with the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Hedegaard said he has been in communication with Danish law enforcement but isn't letting the threatening response curtail his activities. His book is being used by jihadists looking for an excuse to justify their violence. "It is quite obvious that they think it is the right moment to strike a new offensive against Denmark and against free speech. It could be anything. This is planned. This is orchestrated."...

"He has authored more than 28 books and 213 articles" 

"The book was authored by Kimberly Lake with the assistance of Josh Rubin of International Creative Management." 

"She found time to author a book on being a new parent even as she was becoming one." 

"Shakespeare authored more than three dozen plays." 

"Dr. Davis has authored three books on coping with stress." 

"Tolstoy authored "War and Peace." He then authored the equally celebrated "Anna Karenina." But when he turned against literature, he authored "What Is Art?" 

Okay. That's enough. That's more than enough. Those examples were just made up, but they are exactly what you can find, any minute of any day, everywhere you look.

Cut it out. Stop it. We can't go on like this. It's so simple:

He has written, the book was written, she found time to write, Shakespeare wrote, Dr. Davis has written, Tolstoy wrote, and wrote, and wrote.

I'm Hugh Fitzgerald, and I approve this message.

At the samaritan website www.MEMRI.org, you can, by logging-in, view avideo, shown on both Al-Aqsa and Al-Manar TV in early December, of speeches by Arab Islamic leaders expressing solidarity with Hamas in Gaza.

Excerpts from the written transcript (lifted from Jihad Watch, and keeping its emboldments) follow: 

The Telegraph:

In Spain, 11 protesters were arrested and several police officers injured when clashes took place in Madrid and Barcelona.

In Copenhagen, 32 people were arrested when their protest in support of the Greek protests turned violent.

In neighbouring Turkey, about a dozen left-wing protesters daubed red paint over the front of the Greek consulate in Istanbul.

Around 150 people belonging to a Danish underground movement took to the streets, throwing bottles and paint bombs at buildings, police cars and officers. In Moscow and Rome, protesters threw petrol bombs at Greece's embassies.

Journalists came under attack for the first time in the riots, with a Russian news crew assaulted by a mob of about 50 youths, some of them reportedly drunk.

A correspondent and a cameraman for Russian television channel NTV were injured in the confrontation, which happened while they filmed clashes in Exarchia, a crucible of student radicalism.

In Athens, around 40 youths threw stones at riot police near university buildings in the volatile Exarchia district where 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos was shot dead on Saturday.

They were met with volleys of tear gas and three arrests were made, police said. Overnight, students hurling petrol bombs and stones again battled riot police in Athens, in a continuation of the worst riots to have hit Greece in more than 30 years.

There were similar clashes in the northern city of Thessaloniki, where more than 80 shops and 14 banks were damaged, with students continuing to occupy university campuses.

The war against Israel waged by Muslim Arabs and other Muslims who follow the Arab lead is, and has always been, a thinly disguised classic Jihad. It has no end. It cannot be stopped by the shrinking of Israel still further. It cannot be stopped by Israel, having given up all of the Sinai (for nothing), and withdrawn from all of Gaza (for nothing but rockets in return), deciding to shrink still further, back to the 1949 Armistice Lines, by giving up the “West Bank” as all the noisy olmerts, the livnis, the avi shavits, the nahum-barneas all insist it must, and insist that Israel must not because it is “morally” necessary – they’ve given up on that – but because, you see, it would be an act of “realism.” Yes, their “realism” consists in entirely ignoring, in never discussing, in deciding never to notice or allow others to do so, the texts, tenets, attitudes, of Islam. And they do not want anyone consulting any of the scholarly texts, written by non-Muslims or Muslims, on Muslim understanding of what treaties made by Muslims with Infidels may or must mean. From their perches in a world of their own imagining, they hurl charges against members of Likud for being “out of touch with reality.”

GMBDR:

Pakistani media have reported on a 3-day Islamic conference held in late October in Lahore that brought together leaders of the Pakistani Islamist group Jamaat–e-Islami (JEI) with leaders in the global Muslim Brotherhood, closely allied to JEI. According to various reports, the following persons of interest were in attendance:

• Qazi Hussain Ahmad (head of JEI)

• Khurshid Ahmad (JEI leader, head of the U.K Islamic Foundation)

• Nusrat Ali (Head of JEI India)

• Syed Salahuddin (Supreme Commander Hizbul Mujahideen, a Kashmiri terrorist group associated with JEI )

• Hameed Gul (former Pakistani intelligence chief)

• Saidul Qatatni (envoy of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood)

• Faisal Mawlawi (head of Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood, Deputy Head of European Council for Fatwa and Research)

• Hammam Saeed (head of Muslim Brotherhood Jordan)

• Rachid Al-Ghannoushi (well-known Tunisian Islamist living in London)

• Abdul Hadi Awang (President of Malaysian PAS Islamic party)

• Mohamed Ali Taskhiri (Iranian Shia scholar, member of International Union of Muslim Scholars headed by Youssef Qaradawi)

• Yvonne Ridley (British journalist and Islamic convert)

Dr A.Q. Khan, the infamous Pakistani nuclear scientist and key figure in a clandestine international network of nuclear weapons technology proliferation, was reported to have said in a special message, said that he wanted to attend the confrerence in person but the government did not allow him to do so.

The following are reported comments by some of the above speakers reflecting common Muslim Brotherhood anti-American and anti-Semitic themes but also reflecting unusual public statements establishing Islamic rule over the world:

• Qazi Husain Ahmed has alleged that the army is on way to disintegrate the country to accomplish “the US agenda” in the region. …. the army operation in the tribal areas was being carried out to pave a way for disintegration of the country through a separatist movement there. “The operation was launched in the name of nabbing a few terrorists,” the JI leader said. “But not a single terrorist has so far been arrested or presented before the media while hundreds of ordinary citizens are being killed daily there to create animosity among the tribesmen against the country.”

• Hameed Gul said the key to Kashmir’s freedom lied in Afghanistan. The US was retreating from Afghanistan and Iraq, and once they pulled out of Afghanistan, Kashmiris’ freedom struggle would meet its logical end while Pakistan would also be liberated from the American yoke, he said. He claimed “the US war on terror was aimed at disintegrating Pakistan”

• Hammam Saeed, said: “The freedom of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem is the dream of every Muslim. To materialize this dream, it is essential for everyone to play his role to foil international conspiracies…: “I have arrived here from Jordan to tell you that right now Jews are using all their energies for constructing the King Solomon`s temple at the place of Al-Aqsa Mosque by hook or by crook.” … “The liberation of Al-Aqsa Mosque from Israeli occupation is only possible when Pakistanis will play their role in this regard. The Muslim leadership will have to come forward to get rid of the dominance of Israel, including other oppressors.”

• Saidul Qatatni said that it was a welcome move on the part of the JI that it was conducting congregation at the time when Islam was besieged from all directions. He said that it was the land from where Islam will dominate all over the world. However, to accomplish this task of inviting others to join the religion requires much struggle and drive.

• Mohamed Ali Taskhiri, envoy of Iranian President Ahmadinezhad, said: “The economic crisis is adding to the difficulties of the West, which is a proof of its failed policies. This arrogance of the West in leading the world is quite erroneous. Their assertion of providing solution to the world`s problems is quite mistaken. Only Islam can lead the world. We should create unity among our ranks by offering prayers and patience, which will lead us to success.”

• Rashid Al-Ghanushi of Tunisia said: “Islam has a complete code of life applicable for all times, in which jihad has been made obligatory, following its establishment in the world to eradicate preexisting repression. As Muslims, it is our responsibility to struggle for the establishment of an Islamic system. The Muslim umma is facing problems due to the follies committed by our rulers. However, it has never been our policy to resort to violence and repression to find a solution.”

In 2001, as part of his "response" to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush started the practice of having an Iftar dinner at the White House. One hopes this false and even idiotic innovation-- based, like the folly in Iraq, on a miscomprehension of Islam -- will not outlive his Presidency, but be quietly put to rest, as his own personal, and not a presidential, commitment. Because if the practice is continued, then it will be necessary to demand that what should have remained limited to the private, and natural (not forced, and not political) religious observances of the current inhabitant of the White House, if it now extends to Iftar Dinners, must also include White House Passover seders and White House celebrations of Diwali and White House observances of this and that and the other, lest a First Amendment challenge be brought. It makes sense for the President to light a White House Christmas tree --for Christmas has acquired the status of a national holiday -- and to celebrate those days, holy or celebratory, that correspond to his own beliefs, or at least to those beliefs that he claims to possess, may have to pretend to possess.

But, at the very least, Muslims now sit with non-Muslims at a White House Iftar dinner, and some are also careful to invite non-Muslims to Iftar dinners as part of their ongoing and carefully-planned Islam Outreach Campaigns. And as so many non-Muslims find nothing wrong -- why should they, if they know nothing about Islam? - in attending, or in the White House itself offering, an Iftar Dinner. They should invite Muslims -- real Muslims and not the Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only Muslims, to attend Christian and Jewish religious observances or celebrations. Christmas Tree Lightings, Christmas -- not Holiday, but Christmas -- Parties, carol-singing, Passover dinners -- let the invitations begin. Let all the excuses given for not showing up be duly noted, and the inculcated contempt for non-Muslim religious practices, and the admonitiion that Muslims not even recognize those practices in simple greetings to non-Muslims, come to be understood.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KXIzE6bUvEQ

From The Telegraph
Belgian police say they have thwarted an imminent al-Qaeda suicide bomb attack as Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other European Union leaders arrived for a summit in Brussels.
The arrival of EU leaders and intelligence that a terror attack was on the way triggered a massive police operation, involving 242 officers, in overnight house raids in Brussels and Liege.
Police have arrested 14 suspects, three of whom, including the suspected suicide bomber, had just returned from Afghanistan, where it is thought they had received orders from al-Qaeda commanders.
Police have been closely watching the suspected suicide bomber, one of four Belgian citizens in the group.
He returned from Afghanistan on Dec 4 and three days later police received information he was planning to send a video message to close relations.
Johan Delmulle, Belgium's Federal Prosecutor, revealed that police had swooped because he had "received the green light to carry out an operation from which he was not expected to come back".
"He had said goodbye to his loved ones, because he wanted to enter paradise with a clear conscience," he said.
"This information, related to the fact that a European summit is proceeding at this time in Brussels obviously did not leave us any other choice than to intervene today."
Mr Delmulle described the raids as "the most important" anti-terrorism operation in Belgium following a one year investigation of a Belgian Islamist group involved in training as well as fighting on the Pakistan-Afghan border.

As Mark Steyn points out, this assumes Iran (and possibly some other Arab states) will acquire nuclear weapons and that no one has the political will to stop them. We'll just promise to retaliate after the bomb explodes in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

JERUSALEM, (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama plans to offer Israel a strategic pact designed to fend off any nuclear attack on the Jewish state by Iran, an Israeli newspaper reported on Thursday.

Quoting an unnamed American source close to Obama's administration, the Haaretz daily said Washington would pledge under the proposed "nuclear umbrella" to respond to any Iranian nuclear strike against Israel with a U.S. retaliation in kind.

Iran denies its nuclear programme has military designs. But virulent anti-Israel rhetoric from Tehran has spread fears that the Israelis, who are believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, could attack their arch-foe pre-emptively.

The latitude for unilateral Israeli action might be limited by a U.S. nuclear umbrella. Similar Cold War treaties -- NATO in Europe, the nuclear umbrella over Japan -- defended U.S. allies while obliging them to get Washington's nod for military moves.

Asked about the Haaretz report, an official in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government said only: "We do not engage in speculation whose source is unclear."

An aide to rightist opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads a race to replace Olmert in a Feb. 10 election and who has said he believes Obama is serious about preventing Iran from attaining nuclear weapons, declined to comment on the report.

Speculation on the possibility of a U.S.-Israeli strategic pact was stirred two years ago, when President George W. Bush said in an interview with Reuters that his country would "rise to Israel's defence" in the face of Iranian threats.

Obama succeeds Bush in January. A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv said he could make no statement "on what a future administration's policy might or might not be".

Israel was founded partly as a haven for survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, on the promise that Jews would now look to their own defence. Formally submitting to foreign protection could spell a major credibility crisis for the Israeli government.

Mary's Boy Child by Harry Belafonte from 1957. Said to be the prototype of the "Christmas single".  Of which  in the years since, which cover most of my life, there have been some good examples, some favourite examples, some songs so bad they are good (I refer here to Grandma got run over by a Reindeer),  and some true dross. 
This is in the categories good and favourite.  Even the Boney M cover version could not ruin the song itself.

Israel is uniquely threatened, not only by Iran but by all of the Arab and many Muslim states. For the American government to offer what is essentially the guarantee already given to members of NATO (many of them countries that have done far less than Israel to defend themselves, now and in the past) -- that is, to treat a nuclear attack on Israel as an attack on the United States itself, and to respond with massive retaliation, is a policy declaration that, while welcome, is only necessary, but is not sufficient.

It is not sufficient because every day offers evidence that Muslims conducting Jihad are perfectly willing to die, and that some of them are perfectly willing to see other Muslims, even a good many Muslims, die if an affront to Islam can be effaced. And Israel, a tiny Infidel nation-state, one furthermore ruled by traditionally despised Jews, yahudin, who have a special place in the Islamic pantheon of hate -- sits on land once possessed by Muslims and therefore Muslim for all time, and along with other similar areas (see Spain, see Kashmir, see the Balkans), are at the very top of the Jihad To-Do List. Israel's continued existence makes Muslims who take their Islam deeply to heart permanently upset. In their view, this must be corrected, coute que coute.

No Israeli government can afford to bet the kibbutz and, indeed, the whole kit and caboodle, that is the continued existence of the State, and of the Jews, of Israel, on those who rule Iran today behaving in a manner that accords with what rational, advanced, Western man thinks makes sense. And consider the mental makeup of those who live in Israel. The Jews of Israel are the descendants, in large part, of people from Western and Eastern Europe and from the Arab and Muslim lands. The first are made up, in the oldest generation, of the survivors, and latterly more and more of the descendants, of those who survived either the Nazi death camps or other sorts of diabolical persecution that other antisemites, all over Europe, could offer, or they are the descendants of Jews from Arab lands, where they lived subject to every sort of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity. It took 2000 years, and every kind of effort, for a Jewish commonwealth to be rebuilt in the Land of Israel. If this Israel goes under, there will no second chance.

It is monstrous of anyone to ask the Israelis to entrust their security to anyone else, even the Americans -- who have not, always and everywhere, been steady allies of the Israel. In the 1948-49 war, the American government took part in, did not attempt to end, the embargo on arms for the embattled and imperilled Jews of Palestine, while the British government kept training, and kept supplying with arms, the regular armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq. Some Americans helped to smuggle arms to Israel. A few Messerschmitts arrived from Czechoslovakia. But that was about it. In the Sinai Campaign, Eisenhower forced the Israelis to give up their gains for what turned out to be -- what could have been predicted would certainly be -- promises from Nasser, made not to Israel directly but to the Americans, that turned out to be worthless in mid-May 1967.  And in mid-May 1967, and for several agonizing weeks, even the pro-Israel administration of Lyndon Johnson could not find the document by which it had agreed to ensure that the Straits of Tiran would remain open, and Israel was completely on its own, to deal with the stranglehold that Nasser appeared to have, and that every day, to the enthusiastic and hysterical applause of Cairene crowds and the entire Arab world, he was tightening, until Israel managed to undo that seemingly mortal hold.

And since the Saudis have managed to buy up so many people in official Washington -- starting with Fred Dutton, a Kennedy apparatchik who first took on the official PR program for Saudi Arabia (for decades that had been handled, unofficially, by the men of ARAMCO) -- and including many diplomats (James Akins), intelligence agents (Raymond Close), and others who, even before they left office, did the Saudi bidding, and then were rewarded, later, as "consultants" on "international" or "Middle East" business, and right up to now, with the James Bakers and the Brent Scowcrofts of this world, following in the footsteps of Kissinger Associates, selling "contacts" and "influence." Why, even rectitudinous Colin Powell, tennis and racquetball partner of Prince Bandar (now wanted for questioning by the British authorities for that little matter of a two billion dollar payment to him by BAE), who a few days out of office, found Prince Bandar at his door, jangling the keys to a Jaguar that he offered to Powell's wife. Of course she accepted.

With that kind of display of venality, and with a long history of being betrayed by everyone, and with the stark understanding that the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran are not the kind of rational actors that the Soviet rulers could be counted on to be, why in god's name should Israel entrust its life to anyone else? 

Would the American government, for one minute, allow say the members of NATO to keep it from doing what it thought it had to do to protect the lives of its own citizens? If in some not-distant future, as islamization proceeds in the countries of Western Europe, it is not hard to imagine many of those now in NATO changing their views, and urging the Americans not to strike back, at Muslim targets, after some massive terrorist attack, for fear that this "will only make things worse." The American government and people would not stand for this, not for one minute. But that is exactly what the poisoned chalice of an offer to "retaliate" against the Islamic Republic of Iran, should it launch a nuclear strike on Israel, represents. It represents a fear that if Israel, having waited and waited and waited for years, for all the folly of those negotiations and those IAEA inspections or non-inspections or false inspections, to finish, finally decides to do what almost all of Israel's military says it must, that the American  military  will not only not do the job that it should, and that it can do better than Israel, given its might and reach, but will not even extend the aid that would make Israel's task, already hellishly difficult, not even more so. And still worse, the notion that Israel should be dissuaded from damaging, and setting back for a decade or more, Iran's nuclear project, thus buying time in which both Iranians, and the Western world, can come to their senses about that project, is under the circumstances, psychological and practical, monstrous. If the offer of a "nuclear umbrella" -- an umbrella that opens only after the skies have opened, and rained down not rain but nuclear death and nuclear destruction, as a substitute, a substitute for an attack by the American military, or for an attack by the American and Israeli military together, or for an attack by Israel alone, if necessary (it was Israel alone that destroyed Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor, and was severely criticized for its pains, when now it can be seen that Israel did the civilized world's work, and deserved admiration and applause), then at the very least offering every assistance to help make Israel's lonely and brave task, if neither America nor any members of NATO will help, at least less onerous, and less dangerous for the Israeli airmen who will be risking their lives for the sake of the entire Infidel world. If meant only to show Iran that there will be consequences, even if Israel's second-strike capacity is destroyed or damaged, this can be accepted. If it is meant to be a way of dissuading Israel from doing what almost all Israelis are convinced must be done, and certainly are horrified at how they have been left on their own to do it, that is another matter, one that appalls, one that disgusts. The Americans have shown in Iraq that they have little idea of what Islam is all about, and little idea about how to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam, and when force is necessary, and when it isn't. Here force is necessary. End of story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S7ytkHgn7U

From New Scientist: