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Jamada al-Thani 25, 1428/ July 10, 2007 #53
Our America:
MICHAEL MOORE trashes CNN, Wolf Blitzer and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
On July 9 and 10, 2007 Michael Moore, famous for his
documentaries on the Iraq war and the American health system,
trashed CNN's coverage of both issues. He said very clearly
that CNN has been misleading the American people on both issues.
He called Wolf Blitzer's and Sanjay Gupta's reporting "crap."
CNN is on the defensive and trying to answer Moore. [Muslims
should note CNN's bigotry that the only doctor it could find
to report on health issues is a Hindu although Muslim doctors
are among the best doctors in America.]
News of Jamia Hafsa-Lal Masjid Tragedy
New Trend Special Report.
Poorly Armed Islamic Teachers, Students, Faced Pakistan's
U.S. Trained Commandos. 100 explosions.
15 Hour Resistance Ruined Musharraf's Plan for a Quick Victory:
Women Fought Back.
July 10, 2007. From dawn to dusk, General Musharraf's elite
Special Forces, trained and armed by the U.S., destroyed the
Islamic University for women, Jamia Hafsa, and the Red Mosque
[Lal Masjid] which stood in defense of the women. By the end
of the day, the scholar who led the resistance, Abdur Rashid
Ghazi, his mother and 150 students had been killed. Another
300 were wounded [70 of the wounded were "captured" by
Musharraf's men]. [Statistics are very preliminary. Dr.
Anwarul Haque suggests that the slaughter of innocents in the
100 explosions is probably much, much higher. All hospitals in
the city are now under government security cordon to conceal
the death toll.]
Hospital sources in Islamabad indicate that at least 12
Pakistani storm troopers were killed and 29 wounded by the
resisting students.
The Principal of the Islamic university, Umm Hasan, along with
scores of other female students were "captured" by the
military and moved to a military base. Umm Hasan was the moving
spirit behind the resistance to the Pakistani juggernaut.
The Pakistani military, under direct command of General
Musharraf, expected easy victory because artillery, mortars
and explosive charges were used by the attacking force to
shock and stun the students. It appears that Abdur Rashid
Ghazi, and the young men and women, took good cover in the
mosque and university basements while the bombardment was
going on. The thick walls of the mosque compound were breached
and then Musharraf's commandos poured in, shooting at will.
At this point the scholar, Abdur Rashid Ghazi, and the men and
women with him, emerged and routed Pakistan's best
American-trained force.
General Musharraf was enraged and ordered an all out attack.
Private TV coverage showed Pakistani tanks converging on the
university. Pakistani commandos desecrated the mosque and
hunted the students from room to room. Blood and bodies
littered the mosque as the Commandos brought fire power to
bear on the prayer areas and adjoining rooms used for night
prayers [tahajjud].
Abdur Rashid Ghazi then retreated from the mosque into the
University, Jamia Hafsa. Here, he and the students, were
pursued by Musharraf's elite forces. Musharraf's men smashed
through the class rooms and living quarters of the female
students. Scores of women of women, in various conditions of
injury, were later taken by ambulances to area hospitals.
Finally, overwhelmed by Musharraf's sheer firepower, Abdur
Rashid Ghazi lay wounded, with a bullets in his leg. The
Commandos demanded his surrender. He refused and went down in
a hail of bullets.
Islamabad Dazed by scale and Brutality of Musharraf's Attack
All day the attack on the beautiful mosque known as Lal Masjid
and the sedate women's university, Jamia Hafsa went on. From
miles away, smoke was visible, as Musharraf used mortars,
tanks and artillery on the sacred centers of Islam. Huge
explosions rocked the Jamia-Hafsa-Lal-Masjid complex and could
be heard miles away. [New Trend's eye witness could see the
smoke from three miles away.] Media people counted at least
100 explosions as Musharraf pressed for the total destruction
of the interior of the complex, room by room.
Large sections of the population of Islamabad sympathize with
the Islamic movement. Some of them helped bring out the inside
story of the tragedy being enacted by Musharraf by giving [or
uploading] the cell phones to some of the students inside the
complex. As a result, the students were able to call the media
and give specific details of the carnage being carried out by
General Musharraf's America trained Special Forces.
SIXTY Islamabad citizens who helped the Islamic students with
cell phones [known as mobiles in Pakistan] have been arrested
by Pakistani police.
How Musharraf's top Gun was Killed: Broke into Women's
University
Special to New Trend
On the night of July 6-7, 2007, there were 24 explosions at
Jamia Hafsa as a crack Pakistani commando unit prepared to
break in. The commandos apparently considered that the
powerful explosions, which tore big chunks out of the thick
walls of the university compound, would have terrified the
women inside.
After the explosions, Musharraf's top Commando officer, Lt.
Col. Haroon Islam, entered the university along with some of
his best officers. Unfortunately for him, the women were not
hiding. His group ran into precise rifle fire which brought
him down, fatally, and seriously injured his second in command.
[Observers say that this incident was typical of Musharraf's
cowardly military forces. Islam strictly forbids entry into
homes by the back door and especially condemns entry without
permission into women's quarters. Here we had one of
Musharraf's heroes smashing his way into an Islamic women's
school and getting killed. On July 8, Musharraf participated
in Haroon's funeral and hailed him as a hero and a "martyr"].
Abdul Rashid Ghazi was a Man of Peace but would not Bow
before Humans.
New Trend Special Report
"Do you think that you shall enter the Garden [of Bliss]
without such trials as came to those who passed away before
you? They encountered suffering and adversity and were so
shaken in spirit that even the messenger and those of faith
who were with him cried: 'When will come the help of Allah.'
Surely the help of Allah is near!" [The Qur'an 2:214]
He was a man of peace. The martyr of Lal Masjid, Abdul Rashid
Ghazi, had a difficult choice to make. He wanted his community
to survive and prosper. His entire family was with him. He
wanted them to live and have a future. He was a highly
educated man, a distinguished scholar of Islam, fluent in
four languages [including English].
His faith taught him that acceptance of oppression is worse
than death. [The Qur'an 2:217]. A man of peace cannot bow
before the power of the oppressor. Peace does not mean that
one should become a slave. His enemy General Musharraf
betrayed Pakistan, Islam and the Muslim world and is strongly
linked to the U.S., U.K., Israel, India and Arab dictators.
Acceptance of Musharraf by an Islamic scholar would undermine
Islam's reality in Pakistan.
During his last days, the martyr tried many tactics to reach a
peaceful conclusion.
He expressed willingness to meet scholars to explain the
situation in Jamia Hafsa, even if these scholars were opposed
to him.
When Musharraf claimed that terrorists were hiding in the
mosque, he invited the media to enter the mosque and check who
was there. [Musharraf panicked at this and would not allow it.]
He urged the young women and men in the mosque-university
complex to leave and go home. They would not go. He insisted
that they go because being unarmed and untrained in firearms,
they would be helpless. Finally, in dribs and drabs, many of
them left.
He was willing to leave the complex and go back to his village
to take care of his mother, if that would avoid the military
attack on the mosque.
Musharraf insisted that Abdul Rashid Ghazi surrender and be
subjected to trial as if he was a criminal and a terrorist.
He has never committed a crime in his life. Finally it was
clear to Ghazi that the choice was: Martyrdom or humiliation
as a criminal and a terrorist at the hands of a corrupt regime
which has committed crimes against humanity including torture
and "disappearance" of hundreds of people seen as opponents
of the USA.
LETTERS from American activists
Ready For the Revolution
Thanks for the excellent expose of the Save Darfur Rally April
30. I am a producer host of "Freedom Now" at KPFK radio and
that information will be put on the air and in the numerous
efforts that a number of us are waging to stop the US invasion
of the Sudan led by the "Out of Iraq Into Darfur" liberals. We
thank you.
Kenneth Carr [Washington, DC]
New Trend Magazine is on the money; it has good reporting and
analysis. I would like you to post directly to URCDiscuss
Unite_and_Resist_Campaign@yahoogroups.com, where it will reach
a wider audience. Thank you.
Iskandar Langalibalele [Philadelphia]
ARCHIVAL INFORMATION
When New Trend last year reported on the Jewish hand behind
the drug trade in America, some thought we were moved by
prejudice. Now a reader has brought to our attention that the
U.S. government's own documents and Israeli media contain proof
of the Jewish/Israeli role. Read and enjoy!
According to a report issued in 2003 by the U.S. State
Department, Israel is at the center of international
trafficking in Ecstasy.
Sat., November 13, 2004
The agony of the Ecstasy
By Nathan Guttman
The most commonly heard estimate is that Israeli criminals
control no less than 75 percent of the Ecstasy market in the
U.S. How did Israel become a central player in this dubious
game?
Washington -- Oded Tuito died on June 20 [2004] at
Lutheran Hospital in New York, a few days after suffering a
heart attack in his cell in the Metropolitan Detention Center
in Brooklyn, New York. Tuito, 44, was thought to be one of the
major drug dealers in the United States -- although he was
never convicted -- and to be the person responsible for
smuggling millions of Ecstasy (MDMA) tablets into that country
in the late 1990s.
He was the first Israeli to be included on the White House
list of "drug kingpins," which consists of 30 foreigners whom
the U.S. administration views as bearing central responsibility
for distributing drugs originating abroad in the U.S. The
"kingpin" category is reserved for drug traffickers whose scope
of activity makes them a threat to the national security
of the U.S., so that a special effort is required to apprehend
them, freeze their assets and stop their activity.
Oded Tuito died innocent, at least according to American law.
He was facing legal proceedings in Brooklyn, Pittsburgh and
Los Angeles, but none of them had been completed. Still, Tuito
in large measure personifies the Israelis who are increasingly
being targeted by the U.S. law enforcement authorities as the
dominant figures in the transfer of Ecstasy from European labs,
where it is manufactured, to U.S. clubs.
Israelis involved in the Ecstasy trade in the U.S. are
scattered around the country, and according to the authorities
are not necessarily organized in large groups, and certainly
not under one criminal umbrella organization. There is no
Israeli mafia that deals in Ecstasy, but wherever the drug is
trafficked on a significant scale, there are sure to be
Israelis in the vicinity. Israelis figure prominently in cases
currently under investigation in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New
York and Miami -- cities that constitute the primary source of
drug consumption at parties in the U.S.
According to a report issued in 2003 by the U.S. State
Department, Israel is at the center of international
trafficking in Ecstasy and Israeli crime organizations, some
of them linked to similar organizations from Russia, achieved
a dominant status in the Ecstasy market in Europe, and went on
to control the drug's distribution in the States.
"Israeli drug-trafficking organizations are the main source of
distribution of the drug to groups in the U.S, using express
mail services, commercial airlines, and recently also using
air cargo services," the report states. The authorities do not
provide official data on the scope of the Israeli trade in
Ecstasy, but the most commonly heard estimate is that Israeli
criminals control no less than 75 percent of the Ecstasy
market in the U.S.
How did Israel become a central player in this dubious game?
The explanation is apparently historical in character. A report
of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) explains, in
understated language, that
"Israeli drug traffickers, perhaps thanks to their
long-standing ties in Antwerp, continue to be the major
elements in the transfer of large shipments of Ecstasy from
Belgium [to the United States]."
Underlying this cautious formulation is the assumption that
Israeli mobsters have been operating for years in Belgium,
mainly in diamond smuggling, and that when the country became
a source of Ecstasy production in Europe and Antwerp became
the drug's major export hub to the U.S., Israeli criminals
naturally became involved. After all, they were already there.
The Israeliness of the Ecstasy smugglers is a relative matter.
Law-enforcement sources in the States and Israel emphasized
that few Israelis are involved, and often they can be described
as "former Israelis." Frequently they are young people who
left the country of their own volition and hooked up with the
underworld and the drug trade overseas. Some of them were, in
fact, already connected with Israeli criminal organizations
back at home, while others operate without any connections
there. In some cases the struggle over control of the Israeli
crime families has been exported to the drug market in the
U.S., though the Israeli players in the Ecstasy market in
America are only loosely connected to the major criminal
organizations back home.
Las Vegas connection
Israel as a country is not a problem in the Ecstasy sphere in
the U.S., but Israelis as individuals definitely are. The
relatively new arena of the Israeli Ecstasy distributors in
the U.S. is Las Vegas. In the past, the city's casinos and
tumultuous nightlife have attracted many groups of criminals,
from pimps to Mafia bosses, but the Israeli presence was not
felt. True, the city still remembers the period more than 50
years ago when the Jewish bosses of the Mafia, Bugsy Siegel
and Meyer Lansky, were in control, but until this year,
the Jewish or Israeli presence in the Las Vegas crime scene was
not considered significant.
The change began with the exposure of an Israeli crime
syndicate, which the American media dubbed the "Jerusalem
Network" and which, according to the police, seized control of
the Ecstasy market in the city. At the beginning of this month,
Gabriel Ben-Harosh, 39, who is suspected of being the
head of the Jerusalem Network, was extradited from Canada to
the U.S.
Ben-Harosh, along with four other Israelis, is accused of
committing a series of crimes involving extortion and money
laundering. However, the indictment, filed in April, does not
cite drug offenses. Law-enforcement officials in Las Vegas
believe that the major source of the network's income derives
from the distribution of Ecstasy to clubs in the city.
According to Sergeant Blake Quackenbush, from the Las
Vegas Metropolitan Police: "A lot of the Ecstasy we see in Las
Vegas comes from Israeli dealers." Apart from the current gang,
he notes, a good many Israelis have been arrested in the city
in recent years, most of them in connection with attempts to
smuggle Ecstasy and distribute it to local clubs.
The investigation against the Israeli gang in Las Vegas lasted
14 months, and when the indictment was issued last April, it
turned out that the tracks led from Las Vegas via drug and
other criminal activity throughout the U.S., to drug suppliers
in Europe and to the group that is considered one of the
largest organized crime gangs in Israel: the Abergil family.
Quite possibly the term "Jerusalem Network" stems from a
misunderstanding, as in Israel the nickname of "Jerusalem
Gang" is actually applied to a different crime family, and the
major activity of the Abergils has not taken place in
Jerusalem.
Police and DEA officials in the States believe that Ben-Harosh
is the representative of Yitzhak Abergil in the Las
Vegas underworld. Abergil, who, by order of the Israel Police
has lived outside Israel since his release from prison, is
considered the major rival of Ze'ev Rosenstein (right,
wetting his pants, arrested) and a key figure in the Israeli
crime scene. The police maintain that Ben-Harosh was
responsible for setting up the network in Las Vegas and for
creating a monopoly in that city's Ecstasy market.
Abergil's man
In addition to keeping Ben-Harosh under surveillance, Las
Vegas detectives spent considerable time tracking another
suspect, Hai Waknine, 32, who is believed to be
Ben-Harosh's deputy and is also wanted in the city. The
investigation found that Waknine, who resides in Los Angeles
most of the time, went on high-rolling trips to Las Vegas,
dropping thousands of dollars at casinos. Wiretapping of
Waknine's phones turned up the fact that he spoke constantly
with Ben-Harosh, who was in Spain at the time, and that he
laundered drug money for him. The other aspects cited in the
Las Vegas indictment are Assaf Waknine (Hai's brother),
Yoram El-Al and Sasson Barashy.
According to reports in the Las Vegas media, the Israeli
mobsters in the city succeeded in forging ties with a number
of owners of local clubs where large quantities of Ecstasy are
consumed, and in ensuring an Israeli monopoly on local
distribution of the drug. The Israeli network indeed controls
the Ecstasy market, say the police and the DEA, but it also
engages in other activity -- notably extortion and the
protection racket.
The local descriptions of the Israeli group are hardly
flattering. Its members are said to be flashy, not especially
careful (during the lengthy surveillance of the group, police
discovered that most of the suspects attended a lavish Passover
Seder at one of the most expensive hotels in the city), and not
deterred by the use of violence or threats of violence to get
what they want.
GABRIEL Ben-Harosh was arrested in Canada at the request of the
U.S. authorities and held in custody for several months in
Toronto before being extradited -- with his full consent,
according to his lawyer -- to Las Vegas. The lawyer, David
Chesnoff, says his client requested to go to the U.S. to
prove his innocence. "He is looking forward to his day in
court," Chesnoff says, adding that Ben-Harosh "does not know
anything about any `Jerusalem Network' and about any
allegations [against him]."
Chesnoff, a prominent lawyer who was part of the team that
defended Martha Stewart, adds: "I met with him in Canada
and he told me he is 100 percent innocent. I believe he will be
acquitted."
At this stage it's not clear what the probe into "an Israeli
organized crime syndicate," as it is called in the indictment,
will turn up. The charges, as stated, don't yet include
drug-related clauses. Meanwhile, the prestigious lawyers
involved promise a lengthy judicial process. A source in the
Las Vegas police said one of the results could be a decision
by the Israeli mob to leave town, if they feel that the police
are hot on their heels. On the other hand, the large profits
and the Israelis' absolute control of the Las Vegas Ecstasy
market make this unlikely.
Be that as it may, the information uncovered by the
law-enforcement authorities about the activities of Israeli
criminals in Las Vegas sheds light on the scope of the
phenomenon today -- ties with organized crime in Israel,
various centers in Europe and across the U.S., and criminal
activity that combines classic Mafia deeds with niche
operations involving trafficking in Ecstasy.
The indictments in Las Vegas are perhaps the most recent and
most detailed, but they are certainly not the only ones
concerning Israeli involvement in the distribution of Ecstasy
in the U.S. The list is long and extends from coast to coast:
two Israelis in their twenties who were arrested with a million
Ecstasy tablets in their possession in New York in the summer
of 2001; two others who were picked up when they received a
Fed Ex package containing 200 kilos of Ecstasy tablets; three
residents of the city of Givatayim, adjacent to Tel Aviv, who
were extradited to the U.S. last year after a shipment
containing 500,000 tablets that they sent to Brooklyn was
seized by the authorities, a few years after they were
extradited to south Florida after a scheme to smuggle drugs
into Miami was exposed; and many others.
Along with the small fry, some Israelis in the top ranks of the
Ecstasy business have also been arrested -- notably Jacob
"Cookie" Orgad, who controlled the market in Los Angeles,
and Ilan Zarger, who was the Ecstasy supplier to the
well-known Mafia figure Salvatore (Sammy the Bull)
Gravano, from the Gambino crime family.
Mistakenly released
Two classes of players can be distinguished among Israelis
involved in the Ecstasy scene: the directors of the networks,
who usually also have connections to crime organizations in
Israel and come from the underworld, and the couriers, who are
responsible for getting the drugs from Europe to the States.
The couriers are recruited in Europe or the U.S. in return for
the promise of big profits and for the most part carry out
similar missions many times.
The numerous charges against the late Oded Tuito cast some
light on how the Israeli networks operate. Tuito was suspected
of having ties with Ecstasy suppliers in Europe and of being a
major recruiter of couriers in the U.S., who were carrying
millions of tablets into the country from Europe. The
prosecution alleged that Tuito developed a fondness for strip
joints in New York during his visits to the U.S. and hired
strippers to fly to Europe in return for a payment of $10,000
to bring back suitcases filled with tens of thousands of
tablets. The luggage the women took with them to Europe
contained tens of thousands of dollars in cash -- Tuito's
earnings from previous drug deals.
In addition to the strippers, Tuito also made use of young
ultra-Orthodox Jews, whom he recruited by word of mouth in New
York yeshivas. He believed -- and rightly so, as it turned out
-- that the U.S. authorities would not suspect yeshiva students
dressed in the traditional black garb and therefore would not
check their luggage at the airport in New York.
Hundreds of thousands of Ecstasy pills reached the U.S. this
way. Later he also started to recruit elderly ultra-Orthodox,
again in return for thousands of dollars per delivery.
Tuito was initially detained in France, but was released by
mistake and got to Spain, from where he was extradited to the
U.S. after a years-long legal battle. In testimony to the U.S.
House of Representatives Appropriations Committee last March,
DEA administrator Karen Tandy stated that Tuito "was
known as the world's largest trafficker of MDMA [Ecstasy]."
Tuito, she added, was responsible for the importation of over
7 million tablets of MDMA into the U.S. during his period of
activity. The investigation against him completely "dismantled
Tuito's MDMA trafficking organization and seriously impacted
the ability of Israeli organized crime groups to distribute
MDMA into domestic consumer markets," she stated in her
testimony.
Alexi Schacht, Tuito's lawyer, believes that the
description of his client's exploits in the Ecstasy market was
greatly exaggerated.
"The government behaved as if Ecstasy is the same as cocaine
and heroin, as if he is one CEO that runs the operation, but it
doesn't work that way. With Ecstasy, people buy and sell to
everyone."
The new Israelis who are active in the Ecstasy market in the
States are different from Tuito, not only in the scale of
their trafficking but also in their methods of operation. When
Ecstasy came onto the drug market it was a new phenomenon. It
was manufactured in the underground and penetration of it in
the U.S. required mainly thought, boldness and a great deal
of money.
2007-07-10 Tue 20:38:28 cdt
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