DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Bin Laden Tells U.S. to Convert to Islam - Alex Spillius (Telegraph-UK)
    Osama bin Laden has urged Americans to convert to Islam in the first video message from the al-Qaeda leader for three years.
    The 30-minute recording contains several references to recent political events, and is the clearest indication yet that bin Laden is still alive, despite being hunted by the U.S. military for nearly six years with a $25 million bounty on his head.
    The tape has a more philosophical approach than previous missives and contains no specific threat of terrorism in the West, though it does promise unremitting conflict in Iraq.
    See also The Resurrection of Al-Qaeda Central - Craig Whitlock (Washington Post)
    Al-Qaeda Central has moved quickly to overcome extensive leadership losses by promoting loyalists who had served alongside bin Laden for years. It restarted fundraising, recruiting and training, and it expanded its media arm.
    Today, al-Qaeda operates much the way it did before 2001. The network is governed by a leadership council that meets regularly and reports to bin Laden, who continues to approve some major decisions, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official.
    About 200 people belong to the core group and many receive regular salaries, another senior U.S. intelligence official said.
    See also Group with Ties to Al-Qaeda Behind Blasts in Algeria (AP/New York Times)
    Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, North Africa's most active terrorist group, on Sunday claimed responsibility for a car bombing that killed 28 coast guard officers in Algeria on Saturday as well as Thursday's blast which killed at least 22 people in eastern Algeria.

Archeologists Discover Segment of Jerusalem Storm Drain from Second Temple Period - Nadav Shragai (Ha'aretz)
    A 70-meter-long segment of Jerusalem's central drain dating from the Second Temple period was discovered Sunday by the Israel Antiquities Authority.
    The segment is located between the Temple Mount and the Pool of Siloam. It stretched underneath the Old City's main street and cleared rainwater from the areas it served.
    It is made of massive slabs of stone, and is about three meters high and one meter wide.

Egypt's Bedouin Protest Mistreatment - Ashraf Sweilam (AP)
    Thousands of Bedouins burned tires and blocked roads Friday across the Sinai Peninsula, protesting mistreatment by Egypt's government, said security and tribal officials.
    Some 5,000 Bedouins gathered in the village of el-Massoura demanding basic services and the release of the members of their community detained in security sweeps following terrorist attacks against tourism sites over the last few years.
    Bedouins with militant connections were blamed for attacks on tourist sites starting in October 2004 that killed 125 people, mostly foreigners. In ensuing sweeps, thousands were jailed.

EU Resumes Direct Financial Aid to PA (DPA/Ha'aretz)
    The EU has resumed direct financial aid to the Palestinian government of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, EU Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner confirmed Saturday.

Hamas Claims Mortar Attack on Border Crossing (Maan News-PA)
    Hamas' military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, claimed Saturday to have launched 20 mortar shells towards the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Israel and Egypt.

Palestinian Rocket Fire Continues (Jerusalem Post)
    Palestinians fired a Kassam rocket into Israel on Sunday morning.

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):

Observations:

The "Israel Lobby" Myth - George P. Shultz (U.S. News)

• Israel is a free, democratic, open, and relentlessly self-analytical place. To hear harsh criticism of Israel's policies and leaders, listen to the Israelis. So questioning Israel for its actions is legitimate, but lies are something else.
• The catalog of lies about Jews is long and astonishingly crude, matched only by the suffering that has followed their promulgation. Defaming the Jews by disputing their rightful place among the peoples of the world has been a long-running, well-documented, and disgraceful series of episodes across history. Again and again a time has come when legitimate criticism slips across an invisible line into what might be called the "badlands," a place where those who should be regarded as worthy adversaries in debate are turned into scapegoats, targets, all-purpose objects of blame.
• In America, thousands of groups vie for influence. Among these are Jewish groups that have come under renewed criticism for being part of an all-powerful "Israel lobby," most notably in a book published last week by Profs. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. Jewish groups also largely agree that the United States should support Israel. But the notion that they have anything like a uniform agenda and that U.S. policy in Israel and the Middle East is the result of this influence is simply wrong.
• Another tried and true method for damaging the well-being and security of the Jewish people and the State of Israel is a dangerously false analogy. Witness former President Jimmy Carter's book Palestine-Peace Not Apartheid. Here the association on the one hand is between Israel's existentially threatened position and the measures it has taken to protect its population from terrorist attacks, driven by an ideology bent on the complete eradication of the State of Israel, and, on the other, the racist oppression of South Africa's black population by the white Boer regime.
• The United States supports Israel not because of favoritism based on political pressure or influence but because the American people, and their leaders, say that supporting Israel is politically sound and morally just.
• Those who blame Israel and its Jewish supporters for U.S. policies they do not support are wrong. They are wrong because support for Israel is in our best interests. They are wrong because Israel and its supporters have the right to try to influence U.S. policy. And they are wrong because the U.S. government is responsible for the policies it adopts, not any other state or any of the myriad lobbies and groups that battle daily to win America's support.

  George Shultz was secretary of state from 1982 to 1989. This is excerpted from his introduction to The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control by Abraham Foxman.

      See also Unfair Charge vs. Israeli Lobby - Steve Huntley
  In 2003 John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago was one of nearly 1,000 American academics signing a letter suggesting Israel would exploit the U.S. invasion of Iraq to expel millions of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip - and maybe also Arab Israelis from Israel itself! It was a preposterous notion then and looks even more ridiculous today. The view embraced by Mearsheimer displayed a profound misunderstanding and ignorance not only of Israeli society but also of the moral culture of American Jews. The notion that 5 million Jews in Israel would carry out ethnic cleansing of more than 4 million Palestinians from the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, and that Americans Jews would sanction it staggers the imagination. To believe that requires a bias against Israel so deep seated that it defies reality. Whether it spills over into anti-Semitism, I'll leave for you to judge. (Chicago Sun-Times)

      See also Engel "Disappointed" by Ford Forum for Mearsheimer - Annie Karni
  The Ford Foundation, which came under congressional scrutiny in 2003 for supporting groups committed to destroying Israel, is again drawing censure, this time for funding a panel at Columbia University highlighting a professor who blames Israel and its American supporters for the Iraq War and for al-Qaeda terrorism against America. Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, is scheduled to speak at Columbia's Heyman Center for the Humanities next month on the issue of free speech in academia. The October 30 panel, titled "Freedom and the University," is funded with a $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation.
      "It's disappointing that the Ford Foundation would make Mearsheimer one of the highlights of what they're funding," said Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat of the Bronx. "If the Ford Foundation is going to say they've changed their attitudes, doing something like this only calls into question whether they've got the message and changed." The executive director of the NGO Monitor, Gerald Steinberg, said that by funding a panel where Mearsheimer is scheduled to speak, the Ford Foundation risks reneging on that promise by underwriting at Columbia the kind of falsehoods it was funding at Durban. "He [Mearsheimer] won't debate the assertions and the things they say," said Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. "They never engaged anyone from the 'lobby.' They hide behind the guise of academic freedom when they're the ones denying us free speech. It seems a little out of place for them to speak on academic freedom." (New York Sun)