Israellycool

Times Online has the story of a British woman who married one of the sons of Osama bin Laden. Reading it, you would be excused for thinking you were reading The Onion.

A British woman has married a son of Osama bin Laden after a holiday romance and is to apply for a visa so that he can visit Britain, The Times has learnt.

Jane Felix-Browne, a 51-year-old grandmother and parish councillor from Cheshire, has until now kept her marriage to Omar Ossama bin Laden, 27, secret from everyone apart from her immediate family and close friends. But she has now agreed to speak about her relationship with bin Laden’s fourth eldest son.

“It would be nice if, like any other married woman, I could stand up and say this is my husband and this is his name, but I have to be realistic about things,” she told The Times. “I hope people don’t judge me too harshly. I married the son, not the father.”

Mrs Felix-Browne says she is aware that some people will be hostile to her marriage. Among the numerous terrorist plots linked to her new father-in-law are the London suicide bombings on July 7, 2005, the July 21 plot, and the recent attempted attacks in London and Glasgow. “I just married the man I met and fell in love with, to me he is just Omar,” she said. “I hope that people will take a step back and think what it was like when they fell in love. He is the most beautiful person I have ever met. His heart is pure, he is pious, quiet, a true gentleman, and he is my best friend.”

Mrs Felix-Browne, who has been married five times previously, met Mr bin Laden in Egypt in September while undergoing treatment for multiple sclerosis. She says that their fairytale romance began when her future husband saw her riding a horse near the Great Pyramid. They were married in Islamic ceremonies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and are awaiting permission from the authorities in Riyadh to make their marriage official.

Mrs Felix-Browne is still coming to terms with the practical difficulties of being the daughter-in-law of a man with a $25 million (¬£12.5 million) bounty on his head. “Omar is wary of everyone. He is constantly watching people who he feels might be following him. Not without reason he is fearful of cameras. He is the son of Osama,” she said. “But when we are together he forgets his life.”

Mrs Felix-Browne already knew some members of the bin Laden family through her Islamic marriage to a Saudi man in London when she was 16. She believes that she actually met Osama bin Laden at a party in London in the 1970s.

Omar bin Laden left Saudi Arabia as a child when his father was expelled for his extremist beliefs, his wife said. Living in exile in Sudan and then Afghanistan, he saw at first hand the creation of al-Qaeda and its techniques. Mrs Felix-Browne said: “I never had any problem with his past. Omar did not do anything wrong. He was a child when he was in Afghanistan.”

She said that her husband left Afghanistan before the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. However, some reports claim that he split from his father only after the attack on New York and an argument about tactics.

Mrs Felix-Browne insisted: “He last saw his father in 2000 when they were both in Afghanistan. He left his father because he did not feel it was right to fight or to be in an army. Omar was training to be a soldier and he was only 19. He told me he has had no contact with his father since the day he left him. He misses his father. Omar doesn’t know if it was his father who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I don’t think we will ever know.

So let’s get this straight. Omar is just a pure-hearted, pious, quiet pacifist. Oh, and he doesn’t really think his father was behind 9-11.

Apart from their religion the couple appear to have little in common. She has three sons and five grandchildren and is a respected parish councillor in the village of Moulton. She has had various jobs, including restoring houses and aircraft, and is a keen rider and scuba diver.

He works as a scrap metal dealer in Jedda and is one of at least 17 children fathered by bin Laden. His father’s reputation means that he has been ostracised by the wealthy and powerful bin Laden family and is under surveillance by the security services in Saudi Arabia.

Mrs Felix-Browne, who now uses the Islamic name Zaina Mohamad, says that she speaks to her husband for several hours every day over the internet or by telephone. During their conversations she refers to him repeatedly as “Habibi, “the Arabic for “my love.” She said: “I find it very difficult to live without him and I know he does too. But really we have the most normal life possible.”

And how normal is that?

She was aware before her marriage that her husband already had another wife and a two-year-old child. “I haven’t seen her but I have spoken to her for about an hour on the telephone,” she said. “She is fine about it.”

Moving right along..

Mrs Felix-Browne was initially reluctant to discuss her new husband but news of their relationship inevitably began to leak out in Britain and the Middle East. “I don’t want any of my family distressed or upset by my actions,” she said. “I know that for everybody who likes me there will probably be a million enemies.”

Now she hopes that Mr bin Laden will come to Britain. “He would like to spend quite a bit of time here,” she said. “There is no reason why he should not come to live, but I don’t think he would like the weather.”

Actually, I could think of plenty other reasons why he should not come to live in Britain. And the weather is not one of them.

Then again, he could always get a job as a policeman.

Ha’aretz reports on the latest British boycott call.

Britain’s Transport and General Workers’ Union on Sunday called upon its 800,000 members to boycott Israeli-made products based on what they term Israel’s “criminal policies in Palestinian territories.”

Funny, because after last week’s attempted Islamic terror attacks, you would think that the only boycott being discussed would be that of Muslim doctors.

And if the close proximity to last week’s attempted terrorist attacks does not render preposterous the timing of this call, the fact that it has been made by the British Transport Union barely a day after the second anniversary of the London Transport Bombings should.

Update: Still on the topic of last week’s attempted bombings by the hypocritic oafs..

(hat tip: LindaSoG)

One of the Islamic terrorists who tried to murder people at Glasgow airport had an interesting cover story.

A car bomb

plot suspect allegedly asked his family to pray for him just hours

before crashing a burning Jeep into the front of Glasgow airport.

Engineer

Kafeel Ahmed, 28, told relatives he was working on a top-secret project

in the UK “linked to global warming” and would complete his mission.

Well I wouldn’t say global..

Having just spent the last 25 hours observing the Jewish Sabbath, I have only now learned of the events that have occurred in Britain over the past day - namely the discovery of two car bombs in London yesterday, and the terror attack at Glasgow airport.

While thankfully no innocent people were hurt in these attempted and actual attacks, I hope it serves as a warning to my British friends - and indeed everyone in the West - that we are all engaged in a war against Islamic terror. And while the Islamic terrorists know this, not everyone in our camp does.

Look at events in Britain over the past month or so. Whether it be Britain’s University and College Union vote to promote a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, the vote by Britain’s largest labor union to impose sanctions on Israel, or the decision by British schools to drop the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim sensibilities, the British could be forgiven for thinking that the Islamic fundamentalists actually appreciate their efforts.

But the fact remains that the Islamic terrorists will not be satisfied until the establishment of a worldwide caliphate founded on Shari’a law. Which kind of leaves us with two choices -  either appease the Islamic terrorists and be willing to convert to Islam, or fight them with all your might.

Israel Insider brings us this email exchange between a BBC listener and news executive on the use of the word inshallah (Arabic for “God willing”)  by Hugh Sykes, BBC Mideast reporter on the station’s Radio Four’s PM program.

Dear BBC,

Please find below copies of the e-mails I have exchanged with Roger Sawyer of the PM programme regarding Hugh Sykes’s casual use of inshallah in a report to his British audience on March 23, 2007.

I find it extraordinary that a reporter for the BBC can so casually use inshallah as an equivalent for ‘God willing’ or ‘with any luck’ when addressing a British audience. Why should he do this? As a special effort at empathy? You must remember that many of those hoping to kill British and American soldiers, as well as innocent Iraqis, will be using the same expression regularly, and with religious intent. I have heard such fanatics do the same when interviewed by the BBC.

Using inshallah to show empathy to Muslim Iraqis is something, I suspect, that is quite lost on Sykes’s British audience, who will not hear it as a simple bonjour or ‘goodbye’ as Mr Sawyer asserts, but rather as a devout wish by a believer in Islam.

Sykes’s inshallah is an example of cultural cringe, or sycophancy, or simply adopting the psychology of the adversary - a mental strategy well-known in times of stress - but to be avoided, especially when, for example, a young student at Clare College, Cambridge, remains in hiding for fear of his life because he dared crack a joke about Islam in his college paper…

His head will still be on his neck in the months to come, inshallah!

Yours Sincerely
Brian Gilbert

The correspondence follows:

Dear PM,

Did I hear correctly - did Hugh Sykes in his report from Baghdad on Friday 23.3.07 say inshallah, personally, and not as a quotation? Has he converted to Islam? I think we should know. Or is he using inshallah casually as one might the English phrase ‘God willing’ which in contemporary usage has little religious content? Can inshallah be so used - drained of religious content? Or does Sykes intend it piously?

It is shocking to hear BBC reporters, who have a duty of impartiality, using religious phrases as their own from faiths they do not in fact share. Is it to become the fashion for non-Muslim reporters (many of whom may be atheists), to say ‘The Prophet, Peace be upon him’? The BBC should be clear to its listeners about this. If there is to be a mouthing of religious phrases in an effort at cultural ingratiation this should be a declared policy, and you should inform your listeners about it.

Yours sincerely
Brian Gilbert

Dear Mr Gilbert,

Thank you for your email. I don’t agree that Hugh’s use of inshallah was shocking. As I am sure you are aware, the phrase is used constantly, very often fatalistically, as an expression of hope that a certain course of events comes to pass and is not necessarily religiously loaded. It was not inappropriate for Hugh to use it.

If you wish to take your complaint further, details of how to do so can be found at: www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

Yours sincerely,
Roger Sawyer

Dear Roger,

When I hear reporters on Al Jazeera using ‘For Jesus Christ’s sake’ or Deo volente or Shalom I might begin to regard inshallah as value neutral. Until then, you’re kidding yourself and your listeners - and poor old sentimental, lugubrious Hugh Sykes has, in the old unfortunate phrase, ‘gone native’ …

Sincerely
Brian Gilbert

Dear Mr Gilbert,

I’ve heard Hugh say Shalom to someone during an interview. It’s about empathy and has no more significance than his using bonjour in a piece from France. Or indeed, a foreign reporter saying ‘goodbye’ in English, meaning as it does ‘God be with you’.

As I mentioned in my first email, there is a mechanism for you to escalate your complaint.

Yours sincerely,
Roger Sawyer

Dear Roger,

Thanks for your reply. Empathy is good, although in this case Hugh was not speaking to his Iraqi but to his Radio 4 audience. Let’s hope Al Jazeera’s reporters show similar cultural empathy in their dealings….

Best wishes
Brian Gilbert

As Israel Insider notes:

It might be uncontroversial for a BBC journalist to say inshallah to his Arab friends when having a chat, though BBC reporters in Israel don’t tend to say baruch hashem, the Hebrew equivalent, to Israeli Jews.

It is completely different, however, when a BBC reporter uses inshallah as part of an English language broadcast to BBC listeners broadcast throughout England. BBC journalists would never say baruch hashem on the BBC in England.

G-d save the Queen Britain.

“You urinated into a sink in your surgery following which you did not wash your hands and then proceeded to treat a patient. This behaviour was clearly inappropriate and is completely unacceptable.”

These are real words coming from a medical tribunal in England, directed towards a dentist with a bad habit of pissing in his surgery sink. That is, when he wasn’t using his dental tools to clean his ears and nails.

Here’s the story:

A dentist was found guilty on Thursday of urinating in his surgery sink and using dental tools meant for patients to clean his fingernails and ears.A medical tribunal said it was satisfied the evidence showed 51-year-old Alan Hutchinson, who routinely did not wear gloves or wash his hands, had risked the health of “himself, staff and patients” for more than 28 years.

A dental nurse who worked for Hutchinson for 16 years said she had caught him urinating in the sink more than once.

“He was tucking something into his trousers before zipping them up hastily. I walked over and I was behind him. He moved to the left and I could smell urine,” the nurse told the tribunal.

The tribunal determined that the dentist’s poor hygiene habits made him unfit to practice and struck him off the dental register, banning him from work.

Just the kind of story the British dental profession needs.

I breezed through airport security in a veil that left just my eyes on view.

 

It beggars belief no one checked my face.

 

No one tried to properly identify me at Leeds-Bradford airport.

 

It was only in France that I was asked to lift the veil and have my face checked against my passport photo.

 

What if I wasn’t who I said I was?

 

Home Office rules say the eyes, nose and mouth must be clearly visible in passports and that ALL travellers will be asked to lift their veils — if they wish in a private room in front of a female official.

 

But that wasn’t the case on my trip.

 

I wore a niqab — with just a slit for my eyes — to test security when I flew from Britain to Paris.

 

I used to wear a scarf covering my hair but I’d never worn the niqab.

 

I trooped to the local Islamic shop and bought one.

 

They are meant to be a symbol of modesty but the only one I could find bore a designer logo — oh well!

 

At the airport I held open my passport and the man looked at the picture (no veil in sight and I was lipsticked with hair tied back) and handed it back to me smiling.

 

I joined the line dreading my turn at the security check. My ten-year-old son went first and I followed.

 

A female security official patted me. I asked her if I needed to take my veil off but she said it was fine.

 

I was free to board a plane to Paris.

 

The final hurdle was the gate before boarding the BMI flight to Charles de Gaulle airport. I was still not asked to lift the veil.

 

At first I felt pleased airport officials had been so considerate. They’d obviously had their diversity training. But then I thought: “What if someone had stolen my passport?”

 

Paris was a different story. After a night in the romantic capital, I returned to the airport. I approached the BMI desk and a very courteous woman told me she would have to check my face against my passport.

 

She asked if I minded going to a more private place with her, the toilets — and I agreed.

 

At the next set of security checks another policewoman asked me to again quickly lift my veil. I did not feel threatened — only vastly reassured.

 

I had no objections to being checked in Paris and I would feel much happier if Bradford did the same.

 

Last night aviation expert David Learmount said: “This is an area that can be exploited and has been in the past. In 1994 two Chechen women wearing full Muslim dress were able to board planes out of Moscow with bombs strapped under their clothing. I am sure airport staff in the UK don’t want to wait until two planes are blown out of the sky to get over their embarrassment.”

 

Tory MP Mike Penning said: “I hope this is an oversight rather than political correctness.”

Question: What do you do with a radical Islamic school teacher, who hates the West, and castigates children for singing Christmas carols?
Answer: Make him a Government schools inspector.

A hardline Muslim teacher who caused a furore by denouncing pupils for celebrating Christmas has been made a Government schools inspector.

Israr Khan’s Ofsted appointment was described by a former colleague as ‘absolutely astonishing’.

Mr Khan, now headmaster of an Islamic school, launched into his tirade during a concert rehearsal at Washwood Heath Secondary School in Birmingham in 1996 after the choir including around 40 Muslim youngsters, had sung a number of popular Christmas songs, including carols.

He leapt from his seat, yelling: “Who is your God? Why are you saying Jesus and Jesus Christ? God is not your God - it is Allah.”

As children in the audience began booing and clapping, a number of choir members - both white and Asian - walked out, some in tears.

Mr Khan, a maths teacher, was asked to work from home pending an investigation but there was no disciplinary action.

It has been claimed that Washwood Heath school was then a ‘hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism’. Rashid Rauf - the airline terror bomb suspect whose extradition is currently being sought from Pakistan - was a pupil there at that time.

Mr Khan left Washwood Heath a year later to found the independent Islamic Hamd House Preparatory School in Small Heath, Birmingham, where he is headmaster.

Earlier this year, he was appointed as a governor of Anderton Park Primary School, in Sparkbrook, Birmingham.

A former Washwood Heath colleague laughed openly when told of Mr Khan’s role as an Ofsted inspector where he has the responsibility for passing or failing schools.

He said: “Given the man’s history, it’s absolutely astonishing. It’s just the cheek of the man that he’s been able to reach that position. He always was an extremely clever man.

“He gave me many insights into the Islamic cause and their hatred of the US and the Western World. He had a big support base among some of the Muslim parents.

“But there were some very influential, radical elements at Washwood Heath at that time and Israr Khan was very close to all that.”

Earlier this year, Anderton Park, where 99.5 per cent of the pupils are Asian, received a dismal Ofsted report which branded its teaching and its achievements as inadequate.

One Muslim father, who asked to be known only as Mohammed, said: “As a governor, Mr Khan will be able to exert a great deal of influence over the school and its policies.

“By his previous actions, he seems to represent what I would call a hardcore attitude to Islam.”

Mr Khan declined to comment about his appointment, waving questions away at his large home in Moseley, Birmingham.

An Ofsted spokesman said: “Israr Khan was appointed as an additional inspector via a highly competitive recruitment and selection process. He has undergone all the relevant security checks.”

Oh, England, are you going to wake up from your slumber before its too late?

The home secretary, John Reid, was today heckled by protesters as he made a speech in east London urging Muslim parents to monitor their children.

 

The first interruption came from Abu Izadeen, who shouted that Muslims were being subjected to “state terrorism by the British police”.

 

His intervention came as Mr Reid asked Muslim parents to keep a close watch on their children to prevent them from being radicalised by Islamist extremists.

 

Mr Izadeen, who accused the home secretary of being an “enemy” of Islam, is said to be a former member of the banned Islamist group al-Ghurabaa, a successor organization to Omar Bakri Mohammed’s al-Muhajiroun group. He denies membership of the group. He was led from the building by police and stewards.

Also known as Omar Brooks, Mr Izadeen is a Muslim convert from east London. He told the meeting he was “absolutely furious” and asked how Mr Reid could “dare” come to a Muslim area after so many Muslims - “over a thousand” - had been arrested.

 

“John Reid, Tony Blair and George Bush’s crusade can all go to hell,” he shouted. “You are an enemy of Islam and Muslims. Shame on all of us for sitting down and listening to him.

 

“They are going to come in the morning to your house … they are going to kick your door down when you’re in bed with your wife, then drag you from your own bed.”

 

In response, Mr Reid said: “I was making the very simple point that however sensitive these issues are, we must never allow ourselves to be intimidated or shouted down.”

—-

Mr Reid continued his speech, saying terrorists were waging a “violent and indiscriminate war”. He warned that communities needed to be more aware of signs of terrorist activity.

 

A second protester interrupted the home secretary a few minutes later. He held up placards saying “John Reid Go To Hell” and shouted: “Enemy of Islam and the Muslims.”

 

The man was ejected a few minutes later and emerged from the venue holding several signs, one of which said: “John Reid, you will pay!”

 

Mr Reid told the audience in Leytonstone to be vigilant in looking for the “telltale signs” of brainwashing in their children.

 

The home secretary denied that efforts to tackle Islamist terrorism amounted to a war against Islam.

 

He said the battle against extremism was not a conflict of religion but one between terrorists and most modern civilised societies, adding that many Muslims had been victims of terrorism.

 

Mr Reid told the audience that terrorist fanatics were on the hunt for vulnerable young people to recruit to their cause.

 

“There is no nice way of saying this,” he said. “These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombings. Grooming them to kill themselves in order to murder others.

 

“Look for the telltale signs now and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them forever. In protecting our families, we are protecting our community.”

On Monday the Ontario division of Canada’s largest union voted to support an international campaign to boycott Israel over its treatment of Palestinians, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported on its website this weekend.

 

The decision to join the campaign, until Israel recognizes the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, was supported by an overwhelming majority of the delegates to the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) at the Ontario convention in Ottawa this Saturday. The Ontario body represents more than 200,000 workers.

 

The global anti-Israel campaign, which started last July, has received support from many North American churches and some 20 Quebec organizations, the CBC reported.

 

According to the report, CUPE also condemned what they called Israel’s “apartheid wall,” saying it is illegal under international law.

 

“Boycott, divestment and sanction worked to end apartheid in South Africa,” Katherine Nastovski, chairwoman of the CUPE Ontario international solidarity committee, said.

 

“We believe the same strategy will work to enforce the rights of Palestinian people, including the right of refugees to return to their homes and properties,” she added.

This is the epitomy of too much information:

London mayor Ken Livingstone has lifted the lid on his toilet habits, revealing he has not flushed the loo in 15 months.

Livingstone said there was “no earthly reason” to bother if there was just urine in the bowl, he said Tuesday.

He said people were misguided about what urine actually is — and said bluebottles steer well clear of his.

The mayor flushed out any misconceptions and tried to spark a chain reaction as he urged Londoners to waste less water when getting rid of their own waste.

“Red Ken” said it was all based on the old adage “if it’s yellow, let it mellow” and advised gardeners to fill up a bucket and hurl it on the plants as the region around London suffers its worst drought for a century.

“If we continue to waste the amount of water that we do, London will run out of water,” Livingstone, 61, told The Independent newspaper.

“A third of all the water you use you flush down the loo, and actually there is no earthly reason that you need to flush the loo if you have merely urinated. That’s a huge saving of water.

“The experiment in my home, which is now into its second year, has been a success. We continues with it right through the summer and never once did a great bluebottle come into the bathroom.

“After all, why would a bluebottle with to slurp up a little bit of nitrogenous waste? It has no nutritional value at all. It’s just that people have a perception that their urine is some sort of liquid form of their excreta.

“A lot of gardeners put their urine in a bucket and actually use it. Plant roots love it.”

So there you have it, folks. An a**hole interested in bodily functions.

Something Jewish reports how Londoners fed up with the anti-Semitic bovine excrement secreting from “Red” Ken Livingstone’s mouth are hitting back - with bumper stickers.

The “Say Lo to Ken” stickers are a play on words, since Lo is Hebrew for No, and Ken is Hebrew for yes.

So far, 200 stickers from an initial print run of 1000 have been sold. 10% of the revenue goes to an Israeli charity that helps disabled people take part in sport.

For the record, I think the stickers are a great idea. Then again, I think tying Livingstone to a tree and tarring and feathering him* would also be a great idea.

* preferably with George Galloway - why not kill two turds with one stone?