The “Alleged Beheading” of Nicholas Berg
Michael Berg, father of Nick Berg, the young American who was decapitated on videotape by the “Iraqi resistance” last month, holds “the Bush administration” responsible for “callous behavior,” which he claims contributed to Nick’s death. The 1,300-some-odd rain-soaked war protesters who heard the senior Berg say as much on June 5–at a rally in Washington’s Lafayette Square Park across the street from the White House–appeared to agree.
Others in the war-protester community do not agree, however. Specifically, there’s at least one opponent of U.S. Mideast policy who doesn’t agree that Nicholas Berg is dead at all, necessarily. A fellow named Samir G. Jerez, a “cyber counselor” and “certified Islamic chaplain” active in South Florida, has posted an open letter on IslamOnline.net, the popular web clearinghouse, in which he complains about the great to-do over this “alleged beheading of an American Jew, Nick Berg.” Everybody’s “jumping to conclusions,” Jerez fumes, “without proof, with inadequate evidence.”
And certain “groups who claim to represent Muslims in America” are among the worst offenders. One such group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), is currently circulating a petition by which American Muslims can “repudiate and dissociate ourselves from . . . such brutal and un-Islamic acts.” But CAIR thereby “promotes a message of pacifism to Muslims in the U.S. and around the world” at a time when “Islam’s instructions to fight oppression and invasion” have never been more relevant, Jerez argues. Would a truly sincere Muslim advocacy organization “work to stifle assertive positions such as this,” he asks?
Which is a rather better question than it might at first appear, at least with respect to CAIR, the immediate target of Jerez’s ire. For CAIR has not always been so quick to “repudiate and dissociate ourselves from any Muslim group or individual who commits such brutal and un-Islamic acts.” In March 2002, for example, after federal terrorism investigators executed raids on a series of businesses and nonprofits associated with Abdurahman Alamoudi–founder of the American Muslim Council and past president of the American Muslim Federation–CAIR heatedly denounced the action: “The Muslim community is deeply concerned about what appears to be a fishing expedition by federal authorities using McCarthy-like tactics in a search for evidence of wrongdoing that does not exist.”
Alamoudi has since been indicted as a principal conspirator in a network said to have raised $54 million here in the States, more than $26 million of which has been shipped overseas to groups such as Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and al Qaeda. And just last week, the Washington Post and the New York Times reported that Alamoudi has admitted extensive, personal involvement in a plot by Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
No word yet from the good people at CAIR about this development.
Nostalgie de la Bush
From the June 9 edition of CNN’s Larry King Live:
G. BUSH: Well, I think there was some thought, and then we said, ‘Look, after a week of mourning, a week of great sadness, life goes on.’ And in this case, we’ve got five world leaders, former world leaders, coming here. We’ve got 5,000 people. We’ve got a lot of planning that went into it. And so I think in the final analysis, the [organizing] committee decided that it should go on. And I think that was the right decision. . . .
KING: And what’s [Reagan’s] legacy?
G. BUSH: I don’t know, Larry.
B. BUSH: Decency.
G. BUSH: Yes, all those personal attributes–
B. BUSH: Giving hope. He gave huge hope to this country.
G. BUSH: Yes, “morning in America,” “we’re the greatest,” “we’re the best”–without putting anyone else down.
KING: And that wasn’t PR, right?
B. BUSH: No.
KING: That’s what his–
G. BUSH: It’s in his heart, yes. It was in his heart, America the free–home of the free, [unintelligible] of the brave. I mean, he loved all that. And he conveyed it to the American people. . . .
KING: Always great seeing you.
G. BUSH: Excuse my left hand, I’ve got a sprained thumb. And this is the hand that pulls the parachute.
The Way We Die Now
Folks who pay attention to local news here in Washington, D.C., have been shaking their heads in disbelief over the May 30 murder of 18-year-old Michael Antonio Bassett, a “good student” and “a very nice kid” from a not-especially-nice part of suburban Prince George’s County, Maryland. The crime was gruesome: After a late Saturday night spent out with friends, Bassett stopped by a local 7-Eleven, where he apparently fell into conversation with–and offered to buy a Slurpee for–a girl he’d never met. The gesture offended a group of bystanders, who proceeded to chase Bassett down and beat him unconscious in the middle of Silver Hill Road. His body was then run over by at least two cars.
Senseless violence? Not to Deborah A. Franklin, who’d been Bassett’s assistant principal at Oxon Hill High School. “We’re very devastated by Michael’s death,” Franklin told the Washington Post, adding that she could “‘just imagine him trying to do something kind for the young lady,’ and then, in apologizing, trying to put into practice the peer mediation techniques taught at the school to defuse disputes. ‘Maybe someone else had not quite matured enough to learn that,’ she said.”
It’s a theory, anyway.
Mostly Sincere Apologies, Cont.
In last week’s episode, THE SCRAPBOOK was kinda-sorta pleased to make amends–at the request of Billy Kimball, the just-married executive producer of Air America’s O’Franken Factor–for having bollixed up a passing reference to his new father-in-law. This week, THE SCRAPBOOK is pleased to make further amends–without even being asked!–for having originally referred to Kimball as an “evidently hard-luck groom” with a “questionably dependable source of income.” For the record: Liberal talk-radio network Air America no doubt remains a questionably dependable source of income for many or most of its employees. But it seems the hardly hard-luck Billy Kimball needn’t worry about stuff like that.
“Some men who like custom-made suits gathered for dinner the other night in the Dunhill store on Fifth Avenue,” the New York Post reports. “Jay McInerney and Tim (Le Sportsac) Schifter hosted Bruno, their tailor.” Also present were “Jay’s editor Gary Fisketjon,” “best-dressed lawyer Ed Hayes,” “polo player Adam Lindeman,” “Vogue publisher Tom Florio,” “Four Seasons co-owner Julian Niccolini,” and . . . yep, that’s right: “Air America’s Billy Kimball (who just married the beautiful Alexandra Hamilton).” A 1995 Grande Dame Veuve Clicquot was served and cigars were smoked.
THE SCRAPBOOK ultra-sincerely regrets having previously failed to report that Mr. Kimball is a silly person.
