LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN

LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
August 23/12

Bible Quotation for today/Humbleness
Luke 14/7-11: "When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honour, he told them a parable. ‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honour, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, "Give this person your place", and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, "Friend, move up higher"; then you will be honoured in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’

Latest analysis, editorials, studies, reports, letters & Releases from miscellaneous sources
The pulpit and politics/By Ali Ibrahim/Asharq ALawsat/August 22/12
Tehran's Unlikely Assassins/By: Matthew Levitt /Washington Institute/August 22/12
Spillover from Syria Endangers Lebanon/By: David Schenker and Andrew J. Tabler/August 22/12

Vatican blames both sides in Syria conflict
August 22, 2012 / VATICAN CITY: The Vatican's envoy to Syria Mario Zenari blamed both sides for violations in the conflict raging in Syria and called for humanitarian law to be respected in an interview aired on Wednesday. "We have to demand that all sides in the conflict rigorously respect international humanitarian law which as we can see has fallen apart due to the fault of both warring sides," Zenari told Vatican radio. The priority "is to demand that the limits already determined under international humanitarian law be respected," he said. "We are speechless, it is difficult to comment. We are shocked and profoundly pained and worried for the future," he added. Zenari said that Christians in Syria should act as "bridge builders." Around 7.5 percent of Syria's 20 million inhabitants are Christian. Many Christians are concerned about an Iraq-style scenario in which they could come under threat if the regime of President Bashar al-Assad collapses.

Tehran's Unlikely Assassins
Matthew Levitt /Washington Institute
Weekly Standard
August 20, 2012
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/tehrans-unlikely-assassins
In addition to elite Iranian and Hizballah operatives, Tehran has a long history of employing unlikely surrogates to target dissidents abroad, including in the United States.
Over the past few months, Iran has demonstrated a renewed willingness to carry out attacks targeting its enemies. From India and Azerbaijan to Cyprus and Thailand, recent Iran directed plots have targeted diplomats and civilians, Israelis, Americans, Saudis, and more. To execute these attacks, Iran has sometimes dispatched its own agents, such as members of its elite IRGC Quds Force. Other times Iran has relied on trusted proxies like Hezbollah. In a number of cases Quds Force and Hezbollah operatives have worked together to execute attacks abroad.
Now, evidence has emerged indicating Tehran is employing another type of agent -- the unlikely surrogate assassin -- to target Iranian dissidents abroad, including here in the United States. Last October, dual U.S.-Iranian citizen Manssor Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri, a commander in Iran's Quds Force, the special-operations unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), were charged in New York for their roles in an alleged plot to murder the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir. According to the Department of Justice, Arbabsiar told a Drug Enforcement Administration confidential source posing as an associate of an international drug cartel that "his associates in Iran had discussed a number of violent missions" for the source and his associates to perform, including the murder of the ambassador. When the DEA source noted that others could be killed in the attack, including U.S. senators known to frequent the restaurant where they planned to target the ambassador, Arbabsiar allegedly dismissed these concerns as "no big deal." Later, after Arbabsiar was arrested and confessed to his role in the plots, he reportedly called Shakuri at the direction of law enforcement. Shakuri again confirmed that the plot should go forward and as soon as possible. "Just do it quickly. It's late," he said.
For many pundits, the plot was deemed too outlandish and unprofessional to be taken seriously. Surely Iran's vaunted Quds Force was too clever to tap a failed used car salesman to carry out an operation as sensitive as this? In fact, Iran has relied on fairly unskilled and simple operatives to carry out attacks in the past. For example, Iran and Hezbollah relied on Fouad Ali Saleh to run a cell of twenty operatives responsible for a series of bombings in Paris in 1985 and 1986. Saleh, a Tunisian-born Frenchman (a convert from Sunni to Shia Islam) who sold fruits, vegetables, and clothing in the Paris subway, was as unskilled and unlikely an operative as Arbabsiar, the Iranian-American car salesman arrested in the al-Jubeir assassination plot.
In fact, this is no new tactic, but a tried and true operational model Iran has used to target political opponents in the United States as early as 1980. Recently, ProPublica's Sebastian Rotella offered the most detailed account to date of the July 2009 arrest of Iranian-American house painter Mohammad Reza Sadeghnia. Arrested in California, Sadeghnia, a Michigan resident, had conducted surveillance of an Iranian dissident who hosted a Farsi language radio program. He hired an Iranian immigrant with a criminal record as an accomplice, and the two planned their assassination. But his accomplice got cold feet and alerted police to the plot. Sadeghnia suspected his accomplice wanted out, and threatened to have his family in Iran killed. "I have done other missions around the world," he warned.
Indeed, Sadeghnia had reportedly conducted surveillance of another Iranian dissident in London, Ali Reza Nourizadeh. He befriended Nourizadeh, a Voice of America radio personality, who soon grew suspicious and broke off contact. British authorities later warned Nourizadeh that Sadeghnia had been "working for the Iranian intelligence services."
While the Arbabsiar and Sadeghnia plots seem outlandish, unprofessional, and out of character with Iran's known intelligence capabilities, Tehran actually has a long history of employing unlikely surrogates to carry out assassinations abroad.
Within months of the revolution that led to the birth of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran had recruited a stable of violent extremist supporters it could call upon around the world to carry out acts of terrorism. In the United States, one group of concern was the Islamic Guerillas of America. In an interview for a documentary film, former State Department special agent Lou Mizell recalls that it "was sponsored by the Iranian intelligence service, operated out of Washington, D.C., and primarily recruited black African American Muslim converts to do their bidding for them."
In 1980, Dawud Salahuddin (aka David Belfield), an American convert to Islam and a reported Islamic Guerillas of America operative, was recruited by the Islamic Republic of Iran to assassinate Ali Akbar Tabatabai, a former press attache at the Iranian embassy in Washington. Tabatabai had become a vocal critic of Ayatollah Khomeini and founded the Iran Freedom Foundation, an organization opposed to the Islamic revolutionary regime.
A year earlier, the Iranian embassy's charge d'affaires Ali Agha had offered Salahuddin a post as a security guard. Salahuddin was moved to a head security post at the Iranian Interest Section at the Algerian embassy after the United States and Iran severed diplomatic relations in April 1980. While there, according to Salahuddin, he was contracted and paid $5,000 to kill for the Iranian government. Dressed as a U.S. Postal Service mail carrier, Salahuddin carried a parcel concealing a handgun to Tabatabai's front door on July 22, 1980. Salahuddin shot Tabatabai three times when the latter answered the door to his Bethesda, Maryland, home.
Following the killing, Salahuddin fled to Canada and purchased a ticket to Paris. Eventually, he arrived at the Iranian embassy in Geneva and received a visa to Iran, where he was accorded a private meeting with Ayatollah Khomeini. Charged with murder in the United States, Salahuddin was employed in Iran by the Iranian intelligence service, according to Mizell, the former State Department agent. He remains a fugitive of American justice to this day.
Another episode occurred three years later. In December 1983, U.S. authorities foiled an attempt by pro-Khomeini students to firebomb a Seattle, Washington, theater where a large number of pro-Shah theatergoers were attending a performance by an Iranian singing group. The FBI and local law enforcement agents learned, by interviewing pro-Khomeini students, that the group planned to bar the doors of the theater and set the building on fire. Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1988, Oliver ("Buck") Revell, then the FBI's executive assistant director of investigation, reported that the students "had in hand not only the plans, but also the explosives and the gasoline to carry out these fire bombings."
By 1985, the CIA would warn that "radicals in the Khomeini regime are committed to spreading their Islamic ideology, and many clerics view terrorism as a legitimate, effective tool of state policy, particularly against the U.S. position in the Middle East." But Iran could also turn to individual radicals worldwide to carry out acts of terrorism abroad, "including some in the U.S." The CIA noted that "Iran provides its surrogates with money, equipment, training, and intelligence," making them more capable than they would otherwise be operating on their own.
Such was the case with Mansour Ahani, described by Singaporean authorities as "an Iranian terrorist," who first arrived in Singapore on a seaman's passport in 1989 with the express purpose, according to Singapore's Internal Security Department (ISD), of establishing a new identity as cover for his mission to assassinate a known Iranian dissident in Italy. At the time, Iranians did not require a visa to travel to Singapore, making it an ideal place to stop and establish a cover story en route to Ahani's intended mission in Europe. In March 1991, after some time in Singapore, Mansour married a local woman six years his senior and applied for a "long-term social visit pass" on the basis of this relationship. This application was rejected, for reasons unknown, so after only five months of marriage Mansour left Singapore and abandoned his bride. Having failed to secure Singaporean travel documents and cover for future travel to Europe, he restarted his efforts. A few months later, he appeared in Canada, where the ISD reported that he "targeted" another Singaporean woman, a student in Toronto, and married her.
Soon after Ahani's arrival in Canada, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service suspected that he was a highly trained assassin sent by the Iranian government to plan an attack on author Salman Rushdie. After fathering a son with his new wife, he left Canada for Switzerland on a forged passport in 1992. Ahani met his handler in a wooded area of Zurich before the pair traveled to Italy on separate trains. Ahani's mission was ultimately thwarted by Italian police. Before police could apprehend him, though, he fled to Turkey on yet another forged passport. In Istanbul, he made his way to the Iranian consulate, where he provided reconnaissance photographs of specific buildings requested by his MOIS handler, Akbar Khoshkooshk. Lying low, he stayed in Turkey a month before returning to Canada to the cover life he had built for himself there.
In June 1994, Canadian authorities arrested Ahani and deemed him an "inadmissible person" under Canadian immigration laws. He was deported to Iran in June 2002 after Canadian courts determined he was a member of MOIS and after a lengthy appeals process. His wife and son returned home to Singapore.
Last month, when the State Department published its annual terrorist report for 2011, Daniel Benjamin, the department's counterterrorism coordinator, noted that Washington is "increasingly concerned about Iran's support for terrorism and Hezbollah's activities as they've both stepped up their level of terrorist plotting over the past year." Pointing in particular to the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador as he ate lunch at a popular Washington restaurant, Benjamin concluded that Iran and Hezbollah "are engaging in their most active and aggressive campaigns since the 1990s."
That campaign includes not only highly trained Quds Force or Hezbollah operatives, but -- in a return to history -- a motley crew of unlikely assassins as well.
**Matthew Levitt is director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute and author of the forthcoming book Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God (Georgetown University Press).

Spillover from Syria Endangers Lebanon
David Schenker and Andrew J. Tabler
August 21, 2012
Washington must act promptly to ensure that turmoil in Syria does not weaken U.S. allies in neighboring Lebanon.
On August 15, a Shiite faction in Lebanon kidnapped twenty Syrian expatriate laborers in retaliation for the earlier snatching of two dozen Shiite "pilgrims" by a Sunni opposition group in Syria. Less covered by the Western media, but perhaps equally consequential, was the August 9 arrest of former Lebanese labor minister Michel Samaha, charged with plotting to bomb a Sunni iftar dinner following the Ramadan fast. The allegation against Samaha -- a prominent Christian with close ties to both the Syrian regime and the Shiite militia Hizballah -- shocked a Lebanese government already reeling from the violence in Syria. The latest incidents highlight not only concerns about spillover from the bloody eighteen-month uprising against Bashar al-Assad, but also the need for an effective U.S. strategy to promote stability and foster a viable political alliance to displace the current Hizballah-based government in Lebanon.
THE SAMAHA PLOT
Samaha has been a public figure in Lebanon for decades. An elected member of parliament from the Christian nationalist Phalange Party, he served once as minister of tourism and information, and twice as information minister in governments led by the late Rafiq Hariri. After the civil war ended and Syria occupied Lebanon in 1991, Samaha developed increasingly close ties to Hafiz al-Assad's regime in Damascus. Later, following Hariri's 2005 assassination, the Cedar Revolution, and Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon, he aligned politically with the pro-Syria, Hizballah-led "March 8" coalition. In 2007, he was banned from traveling to the US for his role in "destabilizing Lebanon."
Earlier this month, Lebanon's Internal Security Forces detained and charged Samaha of plotting terrorist attacks (two Syrian military officers, including State Security chief Gen. Ali Mamlouk, were charged in absentia). Under interrogation, Samaha reportedly "confessed to smuggling explosives in his car from Syria to Lebanon" with the intention of carrying out "bombings in North Lebanon, particularly in the area of Akkar, with Syria's knowledge." Security sources told the Lebanese press that, among other incendiaries, he had transported explosives intended to be attached to vehicle undercarriages, similar to devices used previously against anti-Syrian personalities in Lebanon (e.g., LBC television anchor May Chidiac and an-Nahar editor Samir Kassir).
KIDNAPPINGS PROLIFERATE
In May, a previously unknown armed opposition group called the "Syrian Revolutionaries-Aleppo Province" kidnapped two dozen Lebanese Shiites in Syria. The Sunni group subsequently released the female hostages but continues to hold eleven men, five of whom it initially said were Hizballah members. To date, little progress has been made in securing their release, which the group has predicated on Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah issuing an apology to the Syrian people for supporting the Assad regime's brutal repression of the popular uprising. Nasrallah refuses to capitulate.
The kidnapping hit a nerve with Lebanese Shiites. Last week, frustrated by the lack of movement on the issue, the Meqdad clan -- one of whose relatives is among the captives -- snatched twenty Syrian laborers in Lebanon and has been adding to that total daily. The clan has also pledged to capture other innocents from states aligned with the anti-Assad rebels, prompting a mass exodus of Saudi and Qatari nationals from Lebanon; it has already announced the capture of a Turkish citizen.
SECTARIAN TENSIONS SPIKE
Although the exact relationship between Hizballah and the kidnapped Lebanese in Syria is unclear, the spate of kidnappings is unmistakably sectarian: Lebanese Shiites are abducting Syrian Sunnis as Syrian Sunnis are capturing Lebanese Shiites. To be sure, these tactics reflect the contours of the war in Syria, but they also reflect Lebanese political divisions, making the practice extremely precarious.
Unlike the abductions -- a tactic that appears to have evolved indigenously and without external encouragement -- the Samaha plot reflects the Assad regime's longstanding strategy of deflecting pressure by sowing sectarian chaos in Lebanon. Had Samaha's bombs reached their targets, the resulting carnage could have sparked the dry kindling of Sunni-Shiite tensions, reigniting longstanding sectarian hatreds and possibly returning Lebanon to civil war. At least for now, Beirut has dodged a bullet by interdicting Samaha. But persistent sectarianism in Lebanon -- as shown by today's Alawite-Sunni clashes in Tripoli -- and the polarizing fighting next door have made the country ripe for Syrian subversion. Although Samaha seems destined for prison, Damascus has no shortage of other supporters in Lebanon. And the Assad regime would no doubt view deterioration there as a useful distraction from its ongoing bloodletting at home, and as a reminder to Washington that military intervention in Syria would have a potentially significant regional cost.
THE COLD WAR IN LEBANON
In Syria, the uprising has morphed into a sectarian war, with Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey backing their respective co-religionists. In Beirut, meanwhile, Iranian-backed Hizballah is anxious about what Assad's fall would mean and has been pressing the remnants of the pro-Western, largely Sunni "March 14" coalition to legally legitimize the militia's large arsenal. The organization also seeks to change Lebanese electoral law in the hope of undermining its political opponents, who won parliamentary majorities in the past two elections and could repeat that performance in the 2013 contest.
Syria and Iran want to shore up Hizballah's weakening position, enabling the militia to provide strategic depth in Lebanon in the event that Assad quits Damascus and establishes a rump Alawite state along the coast. So far, however, March 14 has resisted such buttressing efforts despite facing significant pressure. In fact, Hizballah’s Lebanese opponents may soon be strengthened by the addition of influential Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and the critical swing votes he can muster. Once a key fixture in March 14, Jumblatt left the coalition in 2009 and helped bring the current March 8 government to power. He is now poised to rejoin a resurrected (or, more likely, reconfigured) March 14 -- a development that would improve the once-powerful bloc's political standing and deliver a further blow to Hizballah. Yet this prospect raises the specter of 2008, when the militia invaded Beirut and took over the government in order to preserve its political and military prerogatives. Although Hizballah appears reticent to turn its weapons on the Lebanese people once again, its response to Assad's potential ouster is difficult to predict.
WASHINGTON AND THE BATTLE AHEAD
From 2005 to 2008, support for the March 14 coalition was the central element of the Bush administration's Lebanon-Syria policy. And in 2009, Vice President Joe Biden visited Beirut on the eve of parliamentary elections in the hope of giving the coalition a boost. Since then, however, Washington has devoted little attention to Lebanon. Instead of helping to consolidate what was then the only pro-Western, democratically elected majority in the Arab world, Washington attempted to cultivate ties with the Syrian regime -- a policy that only ended with the advent of the Syrian uprising last year. Today, the sole remaining identifiable element of U.S. policy in Lebanon is the $100 million in annual military support for the Lebanese Armed Forces.
Military support, while helpful, is not enough to prevent Syria from destabilizing Lebanon. Given the latter's history of violent sectarianism, some spillover from Syria may be inevitable, but Washington can and should take steps to forestall the worst. At minimum, the United States should again lend concerted political backing to Lebanese opponents of Assad and Hizballah. In addition to encouraging moderate Sunnis affiliated with March 14 to fill the leadership vacuum currently being exploited by militant Sunni Islamists, Washington should press the coalition to embrace Lebanese Shiites who oppose Hizballah, thereby making the bloc a more inclusive national force capable of assuming power should it again win national elections in 2013.
At the same time, in the absence of international consensus on the slaughter in Syria, Washington should renew its efforts to spur UN implementation of Security Council Resolution 1701 -- specifically, the provisions on preventing weapons transfers to militias in Lebanon. Beirut is already intercepting weapons intended for Syrian rebels. By implementing the resolution's maritime provisions, Washington could help start the process of closing Hizballah's main weapons lifeline -- a line that cannot be definitively severed until the Assad regime collapses.
Although the fate of Lebanon ultimately resides with the Lebanese, Assad's efforts to ignite chaos next door mean that Washington cannot remain a disinterested observer. Of course, the best way to promote stability in Lebanon is to help the Syrian opposition topple Assad. Barring that more robust approach, however, Washington should work toward stability in Beirut by supporting its Lebanese allies, especially in their efforts to contend in the 2013 elections.
*David Schenker is director of the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute. Andrew J. Tabler is a senior fellow in the program.

Iranian leaders in Israel’s sights after calling for its destruction
DEBKAfile DEBKA Video August 21, 2012/President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu have bandied thousands of words in their dispute over an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites. For a time, their argument muffled the abiding ambition of the Islamic Republic to destroy Israel - come what may.
However, the message roared by Iranian leaders over last weekend - before and after Al Quds Day - was quite simply this: Israel must be destroyed, irrespective of whether or not it attacks the Islamic Republic. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was cheered by half a million demonstrators in Tehran shouting: Death to Israel! Death to America! when he declared Israel is a "cancerous tumor" that will soon be finished off in the new Middle East. He called “the Zionist regime’s existence an insult to all humanity.”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: “The fake Zionist (regime) will disappear from the landscape of geography,”
And although both were severely rebuked by world leaders for their violent invective, it continued to pour out of Tehran in a comment by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force Chief, Brig. Gen. Amir Hajizadeh who said an Israeli attack would be welcome “as a pretext to get rid of Israel for good."
Israel’s new Home Defense Minister Avi Dichter laid it out in plain language: While Syria, Lebanon and Gaza confront Israel with a strategic threat, Iran imperils our very existence.”
Certain Western intelligence sources were reminded of a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in 2006 when he quoted a Holocaust survivor as saying: “My main lesson from the Holocaust is that if someone tells you he is going to exterminate you, believe him. And I add to that. Believe him and stop him!”
Six years later, those sources now suggest, after America’s top soldier Gen. Martin Dempsey offered the opinion that Israel can no longer destroy Iran’s nuclear weapon capacity – only delay it , that Netanyahu may be willing to go further: Not only to stop them, but kill them. They are quietly using the term “decapitation.”
They point to the Israeli Mossad’s long record of targeted covert operations for dealing with past and would-be annihilators: In the fifties, the Mossad captured the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann in Operational Finale. In the seventies, Golda Meir ordered Operation Wrath of God to hunt down and pick off one by one the Palestinian Black September murderers of 11 Israeli sportsmen at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In February 2008, Iran’s senior terrorist operations commander, Hizballah’s Imad Mughniyeh, was liquidated in Damascus, so ending a bloody career of assassinations, terrorism and abductions against US and other Western targets as well as Israel. Hizballah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah knows the score: He has spent six years hunkered down in a fortified bunker, taking care never to broadcast his inflammatory speeches calling for Israel’s destruction live, only by video. It cannot be ruled out that this point, Israel may decide to disable Iran’s nuclear program by going for its leaders.

Hariri, Geagea, Jumblatt among those to be summoned by Syria
August 22, 2012/The Daily Star /BEIRUT: Former premier Saad Hariri, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, and Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt are among the politicians who Syria’s judicial authorities will summon on suspicion of supporting armed groups, Syrian sources told Al-Manar television.
Future Movement MPs Khaled Daher and Oqab Sakr are also on the list of Lebanese politicians targeted by the Syrian summonses, the sources said. Reports Monday said the list includes 30 Lebanese politicians. Syrian judicial authorities are in the process of issuing the summonses against the politicians for their alleged role in supporting armed groups in Syria with arms and money, and providing militants with shelter, Damascus Attorney General Judge Marwan al-Lawji told the station. He did not name the politicians in the summonses. “The accusations include supporting terrorist groups in Syria with arms, food, and money and facilitating the entry of militants from Lebanon to Syria,” he said. Commenting on the reports Tuesday, Geagea branded the issuing of the summonses as “irrelevant.”
“There needs to be a state in the first place in order to issue summonses. There is no state in Syria today,” he said, referring to the embattled regime of President Bashar Assad.
The summonses could be seen as a retaliatory move on the part of the Syrian regime after Lebanon pressed charges against Syrian Major General Ali Mamlouk for a terror plot aimed at destabilizing the country. The plot was uncovered by Lebanese security forces earlier this month, and led to the arrest of former minister Michel Samaha, a staunch supporter of the Syrian regime.
Investigations with Samaha revealed that Syrian officials, including Mamlouk, were linked to the plot. Samaha was also charged last week of being part of a terror plot intended to undermine Lebanon’s security. Samaha is alleged to have possessed several explosive devices. Sources claim that in his confession to the Internal Security Forces’ Information Branch shortly after his arrest on Aug. 10, Samaha said Assad wanted bomb attacks in Lebanon. President Michel Sleiman said he hoped Assad had no role in the plot, adding that he was waiting for the Syrian president to call him to explain the situation.

Lebanese Bank denies connection to Hezbollah
August 22, 2012/The Daily Star/BEIRUT: The defunct Lebanese Canadian Bank denied Tuesday U.S. claims that it had any connection to Hezbollah, which Washington labels a terrorist organization. The bank’s management said the $150 million in cash seized by the U.S. Treasury was actually a technical deposit for a banking merger. “The funds came from a U.S.-based account of Beirut-based Banque Libano Francaise SAL, which is holding money in escrow from the $580-million sale of the defunct Lebanese Canadian Bank to Societe Generale de Banque au Liban,” U.S. prosecutors said in a statement Monday. “In the framework of a campaign against the banking sector in general, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara issued a statement about the seizure of $150 million as part of civil suit filed in February 2011 on the issue of money laundering,” the management of the Lebanese Canadian Bank said in the statement.
The statement vehemently denied the allegations of the U.S authorities the bank was involved in money laundering or had any connection with Hezbollah.
“This news is utterly false and completely unfounded because the money seized has neither direct or indirect relations with Hezbollah nor any other organization,” the statement said.
It added that international auditing firms could not find any wrongdoing that would necessitate a lawsuit against the bank.
The bank’s management added that it had filed a lawsuit with the prosecuting office in Beirut so that a proper investigation is conducted as soon as possible.
The Lebanese Canadian Bank was accused by federal prosecutors in December of helping launder at least $329 million for Hezbollah, in a scheme that involved buying and selling used cars. Cash from the car sales as well as proceeds of narcotics trafficking were funneled to Lebanon through the scheme, the U.S. alleged.

President Michel Sleiman ’s call for arrest of kidnappers draws Meqdad ire
August 22, 2012/ By Van Meguerditchian /The Daily Star
BEIRUT: President Michel Sleiman called Tuesday for the arrest of the perpetrators of a recent spate of abductions, drawing the ire of the kidnappers, who argued that the state’s neglect had pushed them to take matters into their own hands. Responding to Sleiman’s call for the judiciary to issue arrest warrants for the kidnappers, the Meqdad clan’s spokesperson, Maher Meqdad, said authorities could not detain suspects without knowing their names. “Is Sleiman calling for arrest warrants for the entire Meqdad family?” asked Meqdad. “Before talking about arrests, let him [Sleiman] go build a state as he vowed he would when he was sworn in as president,” Meqdad told The Daily Star.
“I think the president can do better,” Meqdad said. “Had he won the freedom of the 11 Lebanese pilgrims in the past three months, we wouldn’t have reached this point.”
He also said the Meqdad family would meet Wednesday to decide on the future steps the clan would take in retaliation for the kidnapping of their relative, Hasan Meqdad, in Damascus.
Meqdad added that no Lebanese political party had so far offered the family assistance in freeing their relative in Syria. “Even Hezbollah has not been of any help ... There have been no contacts between us and Hezbollah over this issue,” Meqdad said.
“We agree with Hezbollah on many things but we also disagree with them,” he added.
A statement from Sleiman’s press office said the president had made several phone calls to judicial and security officials, stressing the need to free all the Syrian and Turkish hostages and issue “the necessary arrest warrants” for the perpetrators.
Meanwhile, the opposition Syrian National Council accused the Lebanese authorities of failing to act in response to the wave of kidnappings and said some political parties in the country were complicit in the abductions of Syrians in Lebanon. “Syrians in Lebanon have been abducted by political parties and subjected to arbitrary arrests by security agents, and the authorities have not lifted a finger,” the council told AFP. The SNC claimed that some 36 Syrians had been kidnapped in Lebanon over the past few days, adding that the Lebanese Army intelligence Monday had raided the home of a Syrian humanitarian activist and arrested two of his colleagues as well as a Syrian lawyer. The recent string of abductions has evoked memories of Lebanon’s Civil War, during which kidnappings were a daily affair. Hundreds of Lebanese and foreigners kidnapped during the Civil War remain missing to this day. Sleiman criticized the retaliatory abductions carried out by the Meqdad clan and “Al-Mukhtar al-Thaqafi Brigades” in response to the kidnappings of Lebanese in Syria. He said such retaliatory kidnappings would not contribute to the resolution of the case. Rather, he said, the actions would only complicate the issue further and obstruct diplomatic efforts aimed at releasing the hostages, as well as damage Lebanon’s reputation and image.
“Lebanese groups’ kidnappings of Syrians and Turks to make swaps won’t help solve the problem, but it will complicate it further,” said the statement quoting Sleiman.
Meanwhile, the president’s press office added that “Sleiman rejected the events witnessed by Lebanese in the last few days, saying they acted as a provocation, a challenge to the state and as harmful to Lebanon’s relationship with its sisterly and friendly states.” Many countries, including the United States, have called on their citizens to take extra precautionary measures while traveling in Lebanon, while some Gulf countries have issued travel advisories. Last Friday, Kuwait evacuated most of its nationals from Lebanon.
Sleiman also asked the National Audiovisual Council to carry out its duty in controlling what he described as the “media chaos” surrounding conflicting reports last week about the fate of the 11 Shiite pilgrims. Some reports indicated that four of the hostages had been killed in Syrian army airstrikes in Aleppo, where the 11 were being held. However, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius informed Speaker Nabih Berri Saturday that all 11 are alive and well.
Expressing regret that the Lebanese pilgrims kidnapped in Syria were not able to spend Eid al-Fitr with their relatives, Sleiman urged leaders of friendly countries to exert efforts to ensure the pilgrims’ safe release from Syria. Also Tuesday, Turkey’s Ambassador to Beirut Inan Ozyildiz met with Interior Minister Marwan Charbel to follow up on the case of the two Turkish nationals kidnapped in Lebanon last week. Turkish businessman Aydin Tufan was abducted by the Meqdad clan shortly after arriving in Beirut last week. Another Turkish citizen, Abdul-Basset Arslan, was kidnapped by an unknown group a day after Tufan’s abduction. Charbel also met with the Cabinet crisis committee formed to follow up on the case of the Lebanese kidnapped in Syria and briefed them on his ongoing talks with Turkish officials to reach a solution to the problem.

Berri appeals for unity under an ‘all-embracing’ state
August 22, 2012/The Daily Star /BEIRUT: Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said Tuesday that responsibility for Lebanon is in the state’s hands, and warned that the country is heading toward further division.
“The state is the only all-embracing [body] despite its shortcomings and negligence,” Berri said in a statement as armed clashes raged in the northern city of Tripoli.
A recent increase in tension has seen the closing of roads and a spate of kidnappings across the country. These developments have prompted many Gulf states to recommend their citizens leave Lebanon. Almost all Kuwaiti citizens were evacuated. Fighting in Tripoli between supporters and opponents of the Syrian regime also renewed Monday, leaving at least five dead and more than 40 injured.
“What kind of a national scene are we and the world looking at? Kidnappings, sniper fire, road blocking, [and] military councils for clans and sects? Who is providing the cover for these things to happen? Who would wish this evil upon Lebanon?” Berri asked in his statement.
The Meqdad family, which has kidnapped a Turkish national and an unknown number of Syrians as retaliation for the alleged abduction of a family member by the Free Syrian Army, says it has its own military wing. In his statement, Berri criticized the “absence of political responsibility,” and questioned the “role of authorities, parties and forces” in ending the crisis in the country.
“Has the country turned into a patchwork of intersecting denominations, sects, parties and groups? Do we not know that the kidnapping of our sons on their way back [to Lebanon] or in Damascus is but an abduction of Lebanon itself?” he said. “Each seeks Lebanon to be his own and so where is our shared arena as Lebanese? Or are we forming a ‘loya jirga’ similar to the Afghani experience?” A loya jirga or “grand council” is a unique Afghani system by which inter-tribal disputes are discussed. The Amal leader is seen as a skilled deal broker, and initiated the first National Dialogue session in 2005 after the assassination of ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. His absence earlier this month from a dialogue set to discuss the country’s defense strategy postponed the current session until September.

Tripoli clashes signal escalation of Syria spillover
August 22, 2012/By Stephen Dockery /The Daily Star
A man is carried on a stretcher in the Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood after he was wounded during clashes.
BEIRUT: The violence that seized the northern city of Tripoli this week is a worrying amplification of spillover from the Syrian conflict, according to political analysts.
The increased fighting is a clear sign that Lebanon has been pulled further into the orbit of violence from the Syrian crisis, and is a challenge for political leaders’ ability to preserve stability in the country, the experts said.
“It is hard not to connect the intensity and timing of the violence in Tripoli with the Syrian regime’s multidimensional strategy of survival,” said Bilal Saab, a Middle East analyst at the University of Maryland. He said the Syrian government is likely playing a hand in the increased tension in Tripoli and across the country.
“The specifics are unclear to me, but specifics today are almost irrelevant. There is always a risk that fighting in Tripoli could spill over to Beirut. It has happened before and could easily happen again.”
At least five people were killed and more than 40 people wounded in fighting between pro- and anti-Syrian regime forces in the north as The Daily Star went to press.
The number of casualties is a significant escalation compared to other clashes in recent months between the Alawite and pro-Assad neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen and the largely Sunni Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood and surrounding areas. More firepower was also used.
Lebanese Army presence in the city was heavy but the clashes between the two sides flared to such intensity that the Army was forced to withdraw from neighborhoods they were trying to bring under control.
Particularly troubling to Saab was the spike in the wounded among the Lebanese Army. Ten Lebanese soldiers were wounded, and some reports from Tripoli said the Army was the target of grenade and gunfire for being perceived as partisan in the conflict.
“The Lebanese Army is the last line of defense against greater sectarian violence in the north,” Saab said. “The less able the Army is to reduce or at least contain the violence in the north, the more likely tensions will move from one region to another and eventually reach the capital.”Fighting in Tripoli between the Sunni and Alawite neighborhoods dates back to 1976 and has taken place on and off for years. The root causes are local and relate to economic and class tensions, but the frequency of the breakouts of violence has spiked ever since the Syrian uprising began against President Bashar Assad’s government. The enmity in the northern city is perceived by many experts as a political platform for external or internal powers to exert their influence.
“This conflict definitely has root causes but the triggers for it to translate into violence and the means to translate the conflict into violence is definitely through external players,” said Randa Slim, a scholar at the Middle East Institute in the United States.
“Limited outbursts of violence are maybe the scenarios we are going to be seeing for some time.”
Lebanon is also being tested by a number of other political crises in the country with apparent ties to the Syria conflict. Former Minister Michel Samaha has been accused of being involved in a bomb plot allegedly under Assad’s orders; armed groups have taken dozens of Syrians hostage in the past week; and a number of politicians are said to have survived attempted assassinations.
“In each case you are seeing political parties from both sides interfering at the eleventh hour to bring it back from the brink,” Slim said.
But as the outbursts and crises deriving from problems in Syria increase, it may be impossible to alleviate their impact and stop a larger conflict from breaking out in Lebanon, Slim said.
Several political analysts said, however, that concerns of a civil war are likely overplayed given the resilience to instability that Lebanon has displayed since 2006.
Despite standoffish attitudes between March 8 and March 14, there are many indications and flat-out statements from both coalitions that they want to resist sectarian strife.
When the allegations against Samaha were made public, Hezbollah, Assad’s supporters, said little in the former minister’s defense. And when 11 Lebanese pilgrims were kidnapped in Syria, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri rushed to broker their release, although unsuccessfully.
Rex Brynen, a professor at Montreal’s McGill University, says increasing sectarian tension and violence are inevitable given the conflict in Syria, but civil war is not.
“I think these [conflicts] are likely to remain local and containable for now. No major actor in Lebanon wants a civil war,” Brynen said.
Nadim Shehadi, an associate fellow at London-based Chatham House, agreed. “Since Syria left [Lebanon] there have been many attempts to flare things up in Lebanon and it hasn’t worked,” he said.
But that’s no reason to ignore the problems as they take their toll. “Their potential for doing harm is huge,” Shehadi said.

President of the Chamber of Commerce, Agriculture and Industry Mohammad Choucair: Lebanon risks bankruptcies due to unrest
August 22, 2012/The Daily Star /BEIRUT: Lebanon’s economy has suffered a severe blow due to the unrest sweeping the country, president of the Chamber of Commerce, Agriculture and Industry Mohammad Choucair said Tuesday, warning of potential bankruptcies in the private sector. “A quick look at some numbers proves the severity of the blow that the economy has suffered,” Choucair said in a statement, noting that hotel bookings have declined by 90 percent compared to last year. He added that hotels in Beirut were only 20 percent full, with bookings in other areas at just 10 to 15 percent of capacity. Choucair said that financial activity at shopping malls was down by 50 percent, combined with a decline in foreign investment, particularly from Arab and Gulf investors. Hotels reported 30 percent cancelations last week after a spate of kidnappings and threats against Arab Gulf citizens. Further threats prompted the embassies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to advise their citizens to leave Lebanon, while Kuwait has evacuated most of its nationals. Choucair warned that some private companies were close to bankruptcy, particularly those in tourism and trade-related businesses, placing the fate of thousands of workers and institutions at stake. “Everyone was waiting for the summer season to reactivate the economy, which would have allowed some institutions to compensate for losses incurred following events earlier in the year,” he said. “The severity of this period requires everyone to speak the truth and to exert to pressure to distance Lebanon from everything around us and to place the interest of the country and its people above all other considerations.”

The uprising in Syria has led to violent clashes in the Lebanese port city of Tripoli.
Two people were reported killed and more than 16 people injured when violence broke out between Sunni Muslims who oppose Syrian President Bashar Assad and Alawites who support him.
The fighting in the city, which is about 25 kilometres from the Syrian border, began Monday. The Lebanese army intervened Monday evening to break up the fighting but it started up again on Tuesday morning. Syria crisis spreads to neighbouring Lebanon. The two sides are reported to have exchanged machine gun fire and rocket propelled grenades.
A spate of sectarian kidnappings in Lebanon in the past week has left many Syrians living in the country in fear, CBC's Derek Stoffel reported.
Last week, more then 20 people, some described as a members of the Syrian rebel forces, were kidnapped in Lebanon by members of a powerful Shia clan.
"The situation in Beirut has become more dangerous than we ever imagined," said Khalil Hassan, a long-time Syrian anti-government activist.
Beirut has been home to all kinds of people opposed to the Syrian regime for years now, but Hassan said that's changing.
Untill Hassan finds a country to offer him shelter, he says he's forced to remain in Lebanon and endure the threats that now confront him.

Christian Child Jailed for Blasphemy, a 'Crime' Punishable by Death in Pakistan
Homes Burned, Hundreds of Christians Flee Muslim Violence
http://www.persecution.org/2012/08/21/christian-child-jailed-for-blasphemy-a-crime-punishable-by-death-in-pakistan/
Washington, D.C. (August 21, 2012) – International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that a Christian child could be punished by death for blasphemy. She was allegedly found carrying burned pages of the Quran in a poor outlying district of Islamabad on Thursday. Muslim mobs called for the child’s execution and burned several Christian homes, forcing hundreds of Christians to flee the area. Under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Muhammad or defiling the Quran can face life in prison or even execution.
Rimsha Misrak was arrested for blaspheming Islam on August 16 after she was allegedly spotted by neighbors with a plastic bag containing burned pages of the Quran in the Mehrabad district of Islamabad. The girl, who relatives say is 12 years old, reportedly has Down syndrome, though ICC sources in Islamabad have not been able to verify the child’s mental state. Rimsha is being held in police custody in Rawalpindi on charges of blasphemy and is expected to appear in court before the end of the month.
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari took “serious note” of Rimsha’s arrest, saying, “Blasphemy by anyone cannot be condoned, but no one will be allowed to misuse the blasphemy law for settling personal scores,” according to a spokesman. The Interior Ministry was ordered to investigate the incident.
The day following Rimsha’s arrest, a Muslim mob, ranging from 600 – 1,000 people, set several Christian homes ablaze, assaulted Rimsha’s mother and sister, and called for the child to be burned to death as a blasphemer. Hundreds of Christians have since fled their homes in fear for their lives.
“More than 250 Christian families moved to safer places after the allegation,” Shalom Basharat, a human rights activist in Islamabad, told ICC. “The mob encompassed the Christians’ houses and demanded the ‘blasphemer’ to be hanged. The angry mob tortured Rimsha’s parents and other Christians. They blocked the main Kashmir Highway for hours and chanted slogans against Rimsha.” Basharat went on to say that homes were looted and damaged by Muslims after the Christians left.
Aidan Clay, ICC Regional Manager for the Middle East, said, “Pakistan’s blasphemy laws continue to crush religious freedom by emboldening Muslims to commit violent acts against Christians under the protection of Pakistan’s Penal Codes. More than 46 people charged for blasphemy between 1986 and 2011 were killed by mob violence while awaiting trial or after having been acquitted. Whether a Christian is officially convicted in a Pakistani court or merely accused of blasphemy by a neighbor, the offense may still merit the death sentence in one form or another. For this reason, ICC takes little assurance in the promise by Pakistan’s president that Rimsha’s case will be investigated. Even if Rimsha is acquitted, what home will she return to? She’ll be killed if she’s found on the streets of Islamabad. Justice will only be carried out when the hundreds of Muslims who went after Rimsha and attacked Christian homes in Islamabad are arrested and prosecuted. Pakistan’s Christians will never be secure until strong action is taken and the precedent is set that anti-Christian violence, under any circumstances, will not be tolerated. We call on President Asif Ali Zardari to arrest those responsible, to guarantee the safety of Rimsha and her family, and to repeal Pakistan’s oppressive blasphemy laws.”
Please call the Pakistani Embassy in your country to express your concerns:
United States: (202) 243-6500
Canada: (613) 238-7881
United Kingdom: 020 7664 9271
Australia: 61-2-62901676

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood raise prospect of Sharia law
By Mohamed Hassan Shaban
Cairo, Asharq Al-Awsat – Prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood organization have begun to speak openly about the right of Egypt’s majority to impose Sharia law in Egypt. This is the source of significant fears for Egypt’s Coptic community and political liberal forces, particularly as Islamists dominate the Constituent Committee, which is commissioned with drafting the country’s new constitution. However prominent liberal figures on the same committee, including former Egyptian presidential candidate Amr Musa, have attempted to reassure the Egyptian public regarding the prospect of Islamic Sharia law being implemented in the country, stressing that the committee is based on the principle of consensus.
Commenting on the Coptic and liberal fears regarding the implementation of Islamic Sharia law, senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood figure Essam al-Erian – who also serves as vice chairman of the affiliate Freedom and Justice Party – said “it is not right for a supporter of democracy to object to the right of the majority to implement Islamic Sharia law.”
Al-Erian, who is also a member of the Constituent Committee, stressed that religion is a vital part of Egyptian life and that no rational person could believe it possible to separate religion from daily life in Egypt. This is a stance that recalls a recent interview given by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated President Mohamed Mursi, during which he said that Islamic Sharia law governs all aspects of life.
Article II of Egypt’s old constitution, which had been in place for the past 30 years, stated that “Islam is the Religion of the State, Arabic is its official language, and the principle source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia).”
The Islamists within the Constituent Assembly announced their intention to exert pressure to ensure that the provisions of Sharia law are utilized as the basis for Egypt’s new constitution. This is something that Egypt’s approximate 8 million Copts reject, not to mention the majority of the country’s liberal and left-wing forces.
Earlier this month, Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi succeeded in strengthening his grip – and therefore the grip of the Muslim Brotherhood – on the Egyptian state after he retired a number of the country’s most senior generals and cancelled the Constitutional Declaration which had granted the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces [SCAF] broad powers at the expense of the presidency. Moreover, Mursi also granted himself the right to appoint a new constituent assembly “should future developments prevent the current assembly from carrying out its responsibilities.” This is something that is looking increasingly likely, particularly in light of the sharp divisions within the Constituent Assembly itself, whilst the Cairo Administrative Court is expected to issue a ruling on the legality of this assembly after a number of lawsuits were put forward complaining that it does not accurately reflect the diversity of Egyptian society.
Egypt’s liberals are increasingly concerned about the Muslim Brotherhood’s control of the state, not to mention the potential changes that may be enacted in the new constitution. However prominent liberal figures – many of whom are members of the Constituent Assembly – have attempted to reassure the public that work is on-going regarding the drafting of the new constitution.
In an exclusive interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, former Arab League Secretary-General Amr Musa asserted that the Constituent Assembly is based on the principle of consensus in the constitution drafting process. Commenting on the Islamists’ statement regarding the implementation of Sharia law, he stressed that “any materials relating to Islamic Sharia law must be very accurate” adding “Islamic Sharia law enjoys absolute reverence, but every situation has its particulars.”
The former Egyptian presidential candidate said that “the constitution is the document for today and tomorrow and the new constitution must express the diversity of Egypt’s society, particularly as we are guided by the al-Azhar Document [on basic freedoms].” He added “what is important is that this [new constitution] is based on opening new horizons of life, creativity and thought.”
Musa, who is also a member of the Constituent Assembly, told Asharq Al-Awsat that there are figures within the assembly who are seeking to impose their own ideas on the new constitution, adding this could affect the principle of the civil state.
He also warned against the constitutional-drafting process being based on voting, saying “relying on the mechanism of voting to approve the constitutional articles will have a dangerous result on the credibility of the constitution.”
He added “we are working on the basis that consensus on the constitutional articles serves as the foundation and rule.”
Egypt’s political forces had agreed that each constitutional article should be approved by consensus within the Constituent Assembly, however if this is not possible then by the approval of 67 members. If this proportion of votes cannot be obtained, then the vote will be delayed for 48 hours, after which the constitutional article can be passed by a 57-vote majority.
This represents the second Constituent Assembly in Egypt’s post-revolution period after the previous assembly was dissolved by court order after a number of liberals and moderates quit the body complaining that it was being dominated by Islamists. Following this, a new Constituent Assembly was formed however a number of liberal leaders refused to join citing concerns over the first assembly which has allowed the Islamists to secure a clear majority.

The pulpit and politics
By Ali Ibrahim/Asharq ALawsat
The phenomenon of Imams in mosques morphing into politicians – especially during Friday sermons and Eid – is not new in Egypt’s history. Likewise, the concept of politicians using the mosque pulpit as a platform is not new either, since politicians are aware of the importance of religion in people’s lives, and the ability of the pulpit to influence them and direct messages. Perhaps Gamal Abdul Nasser’s most famous speech came from the al-Azhar mosque pulpit in 1956, where he vowed to fight with sticks to confront the joint military offensive launched by Britain, France and Israel after the nationalization of the Suez Canal.
All regimes exert efforts to try and control the pulpits, whether through appointments, organizational measures, or through guiding Friday sermons towards the appropriate agenda that should be put forward. Yet this does not prevent the infiltration of undesirable characters, or the emergence of a religious discourse contrary to the discourse of the state and its direction. This happened during the eras of Sadat and Mubarak in Egypt, when some mosques were dominated by Salafi sheikhs or the emergence of opposition preachers.
Intellectuals have tried to explain this phenomenon, suggesting that in light of other political channels being blocked - such as political parties or groups or other traditional forms - the mosque pulpit has served as a substitute. This is especially true for political Islam trends in their quest for power, whilst facing political and security pressure. Meanwhile, other groups, especially the youth, have found the internet and social networking websites to serve as an alternative space to substitute for university rallies and general political work, in order to exchange ideas and organize themselves. We saw this clearly with the January 25th revolution in Egypt.
Eid-ul-Fitr was celebrated this week, the first such ceremony to take place after the Egyptian presidential elections won by President Mursi, who rose from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood. The mosque pulpits witnessed a great intensification in their political use by the two main factions of political Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi movement, in order to counter the calls recently issued to demonstrate against the Brotherhood on August 24th. It is not clear how serious these calls are, or whether they will be able to mobilize the streets, especially if they are associated with violence, but the volume of the Islamists’ reaction was puzzling.
Interestingly, the message conveyed through many pulpits during Eid-ul-Fitr this year was not greatly different to the messages of previous years. Many warned against straying from the principle of Wali al-Amr [showing absolute loyalty to the ruler], and called for obedience to the ruling system at this time. This is the same discourse that we witnessed in previous decades. However, others took advantage of the pulpit to attack political opponents through their religious discourse, and prior to that fatwas had already been issued to denounce opponents as infidels.
The truth is that no one can deny the importance of the pulpit and its role in society. However, given the magnitude of political exploitation it has suffered, the pulpit is now embroiled in controversial political issues that are supposed to be debated in the normal political channels, through political parties, conferences, the media and elected councils. Instead, the pulpit has been transformed into a political entity to confront parties, movements and other political groups, let alone religious ones.

German Rabbi faces criminal charges over circumcision
Ynet Latest Update: 08.22.12, / Israel Jewish Scene
Rabbi David Goldberg accused of committing 'bodily harm' in first case since German court ruling banning religious circumcisions in May; 'This send Germany back to its dark days, we'll have to circumcise in secret' he says in response . A German rabbi has been criminally charged for performing a circumcision, committing what the indictment calls "bodily harm," media outlets reported on Tuesday.
The lawsuit against David Goldberg, who is a mohel and the Rabbi of the city of Hof Saale in Bavaria, is the first known case following the anti-circumcision ruling issued by a German court in May.
According to media reports, the charges were filed by a physician from the city of Hessen, and was based on the court ruling which stated that performing a religious circumcision ritual can be considered a crime. A Bavarian radio station reported that the doctor was among the signatories of a letter sent to Angela Merkel, which claimed that "religion should not be allowed to permit harming of the helpless." 'Sends Germany back to dark days'. Rabbi Goldberg said in response that while he is not intimidated by the criminal charges, the indictment sends Germany back to its dark days.
"It constitutes anti-Semitis," he said in a conversation with Ynet, "It's already been said that this the first time since the Second World War that Jews are being targeted for performing circumcisions, and this definitely send us back to those days. "My colleagues and I will continue to circumcise, but we will probably have to do it in secret. Fortunately most circumcisions are held inside private residences and no one other than the parents needs to know what is going on," he said. Rabbi Goldberg noted that he has yet to receive the complaint filed against him, but said he does not personally know the plaintiff. "We don't know each other and don’t live in the same area, but he is known to battle against circumcisions. He probably decided to target me specifically because I am more familiar as a mohel and have an internet site." The rabbi noted that since the court ruling, "the topic has been discussed nonstop on the radio and television, which has reawakened anti-Semitic feelings.
"I get a lot of emails and phone calls from people I don’t know who protest the act of circumcision. On the other hand, there are a lot who support me – including catholic priests," he said.
Rabbi Goldberg was born in Israel and has lived in Germany since the early 90s. He has served as the chief rabbi of Hof Saale since 1997 and has circumcised some 3,000 babies. In May, a German court in the city of Cologne ruled that non-medical circumcision is a "serious and irreversible interference in the integrity of the human body." The ruling came after a Muslim doctor performed a circumcision on a four-year-old boy. Two days later the boy's mother brought the child to the emergency room because he was bleeding.
The ruling stirred a storm among Jewish leaders, who urged the German government to draw up a new law stating clearly that circumcising boys for religious reasons is legal.