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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
WND: Fox News reporters freed for $2 million
2006-11-15
Supporting links at link above

Man, oh man. This is not going to be good however it turns out. I do not understand why Fox didn't come down on these guys like a ton of bricks after this. The terrorists played them for chumps right to the last card, and they're still doing so. Why? The least they could have done would be to run this story! So much for fair and balanced.
JERUSALEM – Palestinian terror groups and security organizations in the Gaza Strip received $2 million from a United States source in exchange for the release of Fox News employees Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, who were kidnapped here last summer, a senior leader of one of the groups suspected of the abductions told WND.

The terror leader, from the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees, said his organization's share of the money was used to purchase weapons, which he said would be utilized "to hit the Zionists." He said he expects the payments for Centanni and Wiig's freedom will encourage Palestinian groups to carry out further kidnappings.

Officials associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party and its security organization, the Preventative Security Services, confirmed to WND money was paid for the release of the Fox News reporters. A senior leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, the declared "military wing" of Fatah, said the group received a small percentage of the $2 million, which all parties interviewed said was transferred in cash.
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Home Front: WoT
Why abduct us? We cede our values for free
2006-09-03
By Mark Steyn

Did you see that video of the two Fox journalists announcing they'd converted to Islam? The larger problem, it seems to me, is that much of the rest of the Western media have also converted to Islam, and there seems to be no way to get them to convert back to journalism.

Consider, for example, the bizarre behavior of Reuters, the once globally respected news agency now reduced to putting out laughably inept terrorist propaganda. A few days ago, it made a big hoo-ha about the Israelis intentionally firing a missile at its press vehicle and wounding its cameraman Fadel Shana. Shana was posed in an artful sprawl in a blood-spattered shirt. But it had ridden up and underneath his undershirt was spotlessly white, like a summer-stock Julius Caesar revealing the boxers under his toga. What's stunning is not that almost all Western media organizations reporting from the Middle East are reliant on local staff overwhelmingly sympathetic to one side in the conflict -- that's been known for some time -- but the amateurish level of fakery that head office is willing to go along with.

Down at the other end of the news business, meanwhile, one finds items like this snippet from the Sydney Morning Herald:

"A 16-year-old girl was tailed by a car full of men before being dragged inside and assaulted in Sydney's west last night, police say . . .

"The three men involved in the attack were described to police as having dark 'mullet-style' haircuts."

Three men with "mullet-style" hair, huh? Not much to go on there. Bit of a head scratcher. But, as it turned out, the indefatigable Sydney Morning Herald typist had faithfully copied out every salient detail of the police report except one. Here's the statement the coppers themselves issued:

"Police are seeking three men described as being of Middle Eastern/Mediterranean appearance, with dark 'mullet-style' hair cuts."

That additional detail narrows it down a bit, wouldn't you say? The only reason I know that is because the Aussie Internet maestro Tim Blair grew curious about the epidemic of incidents committed by men of no known appearance and decided to look into it. One can understand the agonies the politically correct multicultural journalist must go through, distressed at the thought that an infelicitous phrasing might perpetuate unfortunate stereotypes of young Muslim males. But, even so, it's quite a leap to omit the most pertinent fact and leave the impression the Sydney constabulary are combing the city for mullets. The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby wrote the other day about how American children's books are "sacrificing truth on the altar of political correctness." But there seems to be quite a lot of that in the grown-up comics, too. And, as I've said before, it's never a good idea to put reality up for grabs. There may come a time when you need it.

It's striking how, for all this alleged multiculti sensitivity, we're mostly entirely insensitive to other cultures: We find it all but impossible to imagine how differently they view the world. Go back to that video in which Fox's Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig announced their conversion to Islam. The moment the men were released, the Western media and their colleagues wrote off the scene as a stunt, a cunning ruse, of no more consequence than yelling "Behind you! He's got a gun!" and then kicking your distracted kidnapper in the teeth. Indeed, a few Web sites seemed to see the Islamic conversion routine as a useful get-out-of-jail-free card.

Don't bet on it. In my forthcoming book, I devote a few pages to a thriller I read as a boy -- an old potboiler by Sherlock Holmes' creator, Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1895 Sir Arthur had taken his sick wife to Egypt for her health, and, not wishing to waste the local color, produced a slim novel called The Tragedy of the Korosko, about a party of Anglo-American-French tourists taken hostage by the Mahdists, the jihadi of the day. Much of the story finds the characters in the same predicament as Centanni and Wiig: The kidnappers are offering them a choice between Islam or death. Conan Doyle's Britons and Americans and Europeans were men and women of the modern world even then:

"None of them, except perhaps Miss Adams and Mrs. Belmont, had any deep religious convictions. All of them were children of this world, and some of them disagreed with everything which that symbol upon the earth represented."

"That symbol" is the cross. Yet in the end, even as men with no religious convictions, they cannot bring themselves to submit to Islam, for they understand it to be not just a denial of Christ but in some sense a denial of themselves, too. So they stall and delay and bog down the imam in a lot of technical questions until eventually he wises up and they're condemned to death.

One hundred ten years later, for the Fox journalists and the Western media who reported their release, what's the big deal? Wear robes, change your name to Khaled, go on camera and drop Allah's name hither and yon: If that's your ticket out, seize it. Everyone'll know it's just a sham.

But that's not how the al-Jazeera audience sees it. If you're a Muslim, the video is anything but meaningless. Not even the dumbest jihadist believes these infidels are suddenly true believers. Rather, it confirms the central truth Osama and the mullahs have been peddling -- that the West is weak, that there's nothing -- no core, no bedrock -- nothing it's not willing to trade. In his new book The Conservative Soul, attempting to reconcile his sexual temperament and his alleged political one, Time magazine's gay Tory Andrew Sullivan enthuses, "By letting go, we become. By giving up, we gain. And we learn how to live -- now, which is the only time that matters." That's almost a literal restatement of Faust's bargain with the devil:

"When to the moment I shall say

'Linger awhile! so fair thou art!'

Then mayst thou fetter me straightway

Then to the abyss will I depart!"

In other words, if Faust becomes so enthralled by "the moment" that he wants to live in it forever, the devil will have him for all eternity. In the Muslim world, they watch the Centanni/Wiig video and see men so in love with the present, the now, that they will do or say anything to live in the moment. And they draw their own conclusions -- that these men are easier to force into the car than that 16-year-old girl in Sydney was. It doesn't matter how "understandable" Centanni and Wiig's actions are to us, what the target audience understands is quite different: that there is nothing we're willing to die for. And, to the Islamist mind, a society with nothing to die for is already dead.
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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Holy Jihad Brigade Vow to Target Non-Muslims
2006-09-02
Palestinian militants who held two Fox News journalists hostage for nearly two weeks threatened in a statement posted online Saturday to abduct non-Muslims visiting the Palestinian territories and kill them unless their demands were met. The statement, posted in the name of the Holy Jihad Brigades on a Web site frequently used by militants, said the group would kill any hostages it takes unless they converted to Islam, paid a ransom or Muslim prisoners were exchanged for their release. "Any infidel blood will have no sanctity," the group said in the statement.

It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the statement, which was dated August 27 _ the day militants released American journalist Steve Centanni, 60, and New Zealand cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36. They were seized Aug. 14 in Gaza City. Palestinian security officials said the name of the group was a front for local militants. They said they had tracked down the kidnappers _ whom they would not identify _ through third parties, but did not say whether the journalists' were freed under a deal.

Several Muslim clerics have issued edicts in the past stating that a visa issued by an Islamic country to a non-Muslim person carries an implicit guarantee of the holder's safety. One of the most recent fatwas, issued in August by an Egyptian cleric, asserted that the guarantee applies to visiting Israelis in spite of popular anger over Israeli military action in Gaza and Lebanon.
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Home Front: Culture Wars
Kafir-phobia: Americans as Violent Anti-Muslim Bigots
2006-08-31
The story that developed in July was just too good to pass up: a Jordanian-born restaurant owner in Xenia, Ohio had been the apparent victim of repeated attempts to burn down his store. The day after the third attack, when a Molotov cocktail had been thrown through the front window of his business, yet another explosion rocked the store – the second attack in 24 hours – sending the owner and his son to the hospital with burns over 80-90 percent of their bodies. An employee in an adjoining store was also taken to the hospital for injuries.

Just hours before the blast, the store owner had been interviewed by a local TV station vowing that he would never give in to pressure to close the store (video of the interview can be seen here).

Into this situation jumped the Cincinnati-area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) – the self-proclaimed Muslim “civil rights” organization suggesting that anti-Muslim hatred was at work. An item posted on July 14th on the national CAIR website screamed the headline, “Blast at Arab-American Restaurant ‘Suspicious’ .”

Karen Dabdoub, the local CAIR spokeswoman, was quoted in the local media saying,

“Anytime an attack like this happens, the perception in the Arab and Muslim community is that it is ethnically or religiously motivated. Especially in the absence of perpetrators being caught by law enforcement, that’s the fear. Until that (motivation) is discovered, people speculate, rightly or wrongly.”

The problem with CAIR’s narrative of anti-Muslim hatred in small-town America was that it wasn’t true. Arson investigators have determined that the final blast that severely injured the store owner, Musa Shteiwi, and his son, Essa, was set by the pair themselves. In a performance worthy of a Darwin Award, the Shteiwis were standing in a pool of gasoline that they intended to use as an accelerant in setting their store ablaze later that night when Musa Shteiwi took a break and lit up a cigarette, igniting the gasoline prematurely and causing the blast that inflicted their injuries.

But there’s more: prosecutors claim that Shteiwi had hired a former employee, Joshua Hunter, to commit the previous attacks against his store that CAIR had insisted were hate crimes committed by non-Muslim members of the Xenia community. Hunter has been jailed and charged with arson, and similar charges against Musa and Essa Shteiwi are pending until after they have recovered from their injuries.

This incident is a textbook example of CAIR’s incitement of kafir (lit. infidel, non-Muslim)-phobia. On July 14th, when CAIR began making public statements and posting notices on their website about the incident, it had already been widely reported in the Cincinnati Enquirer and local TV news stations that the Shteiwis were either accidentally or intentionally responsible for the explosion. It is clear now that it was both.

That notwithstanding, CAIR officials were quick to use the incident to indulge in their kafir-phobia by portraying the local non-Muslim community as simmering with anti-Muslim hatred, just waiting for the slightest provocation to lash out in acts of violence. But the facts they relied on weren’t true and the date of the item regarding this incident posted on CAIR’s website was almost a week after it was known and reported numerous times in the local press that the pair were implicated, directly or indirectly, for the blast.

Since the arrest of Shteiwi’s associate, CAIR has refused further comment and has offered no apology for its shameless kafir-phobic behavior to the community they falsely impugned.

This recent incident is hardly the first time that CAIR has used faked hate crimes to flame the fires of kafir-phobia. As Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha discussed in an article last year, “CAIR’s Hate Crime Nonsense,” a report issued in May 2005 by CAIR, “Unequal Protection: The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2005” – a report allegedly identifying a rapid rise of anti-Muslim violence in America – cited several hate crime hoaxes where incidents had been staged or invented whole-cloth by Muslims themselves to make it appear that they were religiously or ethnically motivated. Perhaps CAIR might have rationalized the inclusion of these debunked hate crimes in their report as “fake, but accurate” representations of supposed anti-Muslim bias in America.

One of the hate crime hoaxes identified by Pipes and Chadha in the 2005 CAIR report involved a July 2004 act of arson at an Everett, Washington grocery that CAIR claimed as an anti-Muslim hate crime. But it had been announced more than eight months prior to CAIR’s May 2005 report that the grocery owner, Mirza Akram, was the accused culprit in the arson at his establishment – as an August 2004 article in the Seattle Times makes clear. The article even noted a CAIR spokeswoman’s request that the FBI investigate the incident as a hate crime.

In a separate blog post, Daniel Pipes cites additional instances of CAIR rushing to get in front of reporters and TV news crews when the incidents they decry as hate crimes later turn out to be false reports or self-inflicted by the Muslim “victims” themselves.

To date, so far as I can tell, not only has CAIR not apologized for falsely accusing non-Muslims of hatred and bias in the respective communities where these hate crime hoaxes occurred, but the press releases on CAIR’s website go uncorrected even after the truth is revealed. For instance, a press release related to a staged hate crime in McAllen, Texas still appears today without any correction or update whatsoever, even though multiple media outlets, including even the New York Times, had debunked the incident as a hate crime hoax perpetrated by the “victim” almost two years ago.

Admittedly, CAIR’s ubiquitous appearance in stories related to staged hate crimes denouncing supposed Islamophobia makes for great press releases and news stories, but does little too actually improve American-Islamic relations (CAIR’s self-stated goal). Such feeds the very prejudices that distances Muslims from their non-Muslim neighbors.

Instead of building cultural bridges to achieve their social and political agenda, CAIR regularly burns those bridges by inciting kafir-phobia and carelessly making charges against non-Muslims. As Robert Spencer of JihadWatch pointed out in commenting on this latest incident,

“Hate crimes are a big business: they enable the targeted group to claim victim status, which entitles that group to full-hearted Leftist support, and a free pass for all its own enormities.”

Meanwhile, CAIR’s website makes no reference at all to one of the most arresting incidents Islamic relations with America: the videotaped forced conversion at gunpoint of Fox News correspondent Steve Centanni and his New Zealander cameraman Olaf Wiig. Does CAIR condemn such actions in Islam’s name, and call on all Muslims to recognize the illegitimacy of compulsion in conversions to Islam? Or does it now regard these two men as irrevocably Muslims? Surely, that is an important issue in “American-Islamic Relations” isn’t it?

Kafir-phobia seems to be CAIR’s go-to propaganda weapon of choice whenever they want to make their constituency appear legitimately aggrieved or victimized by falsely portraying the non-Muslims in these communities as seething with pent-up anti-Muslim hatred – regardless of whether it is true or not – as the inclusion of previously debunked hate crimes in the May 2005 CAIR report demonstrates.

The consequences of CAIR’s kafirphobia and the manufacturing hate crimes are far-reaching. American media and officials rush to dismiss incidents such as-StartFragment—> Omeed Aziz Popal’s intentional SUV attacks on pedestrians in San Francisco and Naveed Haq’s shootings at a Seattle Jewish center as isolated incidents of madmen, not terrorism, even when the former was quoted as announcing “I am a terrorist” and the latter announced that he was an angry Muslim. The media and officials are behaving as good dhimmis, absorbing and regurgitating the kafir-phobia.

Hypocrisy is part and parcel of kafir-phobia, as CAIR is quick to identify supposed anti-Muslim bias amongst the American public at large on a fairly regular basis, while reluctant to look at its own ready negative presumptions about Americans at large.

If CAIR is truly interested in improving American-Islamic relations, perhaps it might spend more time dealing with the kafir-phobia among Muslims instead of investing its time and energy into diagnosing the supposed Islamophobia of its critics.

Patrick Poole is an author and researcher. He maintains a blog, Existential Space.
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Olde Tyme Religion
Steyn: Achilles' Heel
2006-08-28
Our Thought For The Day comes from Steve Centanni, the Fox News reporter freed over the weekend by his captors in Gaza:

"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it."

Before their release, Mr Centanni and his cameraman, Olaf Wiig, had appeared on camera in Islamic robes, sitting cross-legged, and had read from scripts announcing that they had become observant Muslims and asking Bush and Blair to do likewise. "Islam is not just meant for some people. It is the true religion for all people at all times," said Mr Centanni. "I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah."

Earlier, his captors released a statement saying the two men had been offered a choice between a) conversion to Islam; b) the jizya (the tax paid by non-Muslims to their Muslim masters); or c) war. There was no none-of-the-above box. "They chose Islam," said the spokesperson for the group," and that is a gift God gives whom He chooses" — even if circumstances occasionally oblige Him to give it to you down the barrel of a gun.

Just as there are rapists who tell themselves their victims are genuinely in love with them, so no doubt there are those who believe that faith can be enforced at the point of a sword. In one of the most indestructible examples of Islamostockholm Syndrome, the British journalist Yvonne Ridley was kidnapped in Afghanistan, converted to Islam, and has stayed converted: she was on Britain's Islam Channel the other day pitching softball questions to the former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammed about his plans to destroy the United States.

But Centanni and Wiig's brief interlude as practicing Muslims is revealing in a larger sense. Ever since 9/11, the western multicultural mindset has been desperately trying to swaddle Islam within the fluffy quilt of diversity. It's "just" another religion, like the Congregationalists and Episcopalians. To be sure, it's got a few hotheads, but haven't we all? Sticking with this line requires an awful lot of brushing under the carpet and there's so much under there by now it looks like a broadloomed Himalayas. For a start, you can't help noticing the traffic is mostly one-way: In Dr. Mahathir's country, where a long English Common Law tradition is under sustained pressure from sharia, a lady called Lina Joy is currently enduring death threats and a long legal battle because she committed the "crime" of converting from Islam to Catholicism.

Well, that's Malaysia for you. But how about Michigan? Nazra Quraishi, a kindergarten teacher at a local Muslim school, wrote to The Lansing State Journal last month as follows:

"Islam is a guide for humanity, for all times, until the day of judgment. It is forbidden in Islam to convert to any other religion. The penalty is death.There is no disagreement about it. Islam is being embraced by people of other faiths all the time. They should know they can embrace Islam, but cannot get out. This rule is not made by Muslims; it is the supreme law of God."

That seems clear enough, doesn't it? In 1951, Eric Hoffer, America's great longshoreman philosopher, wrote:

"The manner in which a mass movement starts out can also have an effect on the duration and mode of termination of the active phase of the movement."

Christians and Muslims are both "people of the book." But there's a difference: Christianity started out as a religion of the weak, held by the lowliest in society and advanced by conversion and example, independent of the state. A distinction between religion and temporal power is embedded in its founding narratives. Compare the final words of Jesus to his disciples, on the day of his ascension …

"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."

… with the final words of Mohammed to his disciples:

"I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.'"

That's quite a difference. Christ is saying go to the remotest parts of the world and persuade others of what you know to be the truth. Mohammed is saying fight all men until they submit to your truth: It's not a plan for converting an existing empire (as Christianity did) but for establishing a new empire. Islam was born and spread as a warrior's creed and, while that can be sedated, the intensity of anger of today's western Muslims suggests that the Mohammedan fighter endures at the heart of their faith, albeit significantly augmented by greater firepower. Oh, come on, you say, what about the Spanish Inquisition? Well, for one thing, the Inquisition killed fewer people in a century and a half than the jihad does in an average year. But, in the larger sense, it's easy to argue that, numbers aside, it was always an aberration and distortion of Christianity's roots. It's less clear that the jihad in its most violent form is a distortion of Mohammed's message. With Islam, it's the moderate variants of the Balkans, the Central Asian Stans and South Asia that are the aberration. And they're all now fading.

So, if you're pinning your hopes on Islamic reform, the difficulty is that most prominent Islamists are doing no more than Mohammedan karaoke. Here's Osama bin Laden during the post-9/11 Afghan campaign:

"I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Mohammed."

It's hard to argue direct quotation is a "distortion" of the "religion of peace." The respective statements of Jesus and Mohammed are, to say the least, indicative of disposition. The embrace of Christianity by the state power in Europe was the final stage in a process of pacific conversion. Whereas, at the height of its power in the eighth century, when the "Islamic world" stretched from Spain to India, its population was only minority Muslim, and it suited the Caliphate to keep it that way: fiscally speaking, a subordinate infidel population paying the jizya (the special tax for non-Muslims) was a critical component. Islam was less a proselytizing faith than a rationale for political authority. And today's jihad has far more in common with a conventional imperial regime than with any religious evangelizing.

Which means there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that Islam will soon be able to enforce submission-conversion at the point of a nuke. The good news is that any religion that needs to do that is, by definition, a weak one. More than that, the fierce faith of the 8th century Muslim warrior has been mostly replaced by a lot of hastily cobbled-together flimflam bought wholesale from clapped out European totalitarian pathologies. It would have struck almost any other ruler of Persia as absurd and unworthy to be as pitifully obsessed with Holocaust denial as President Ahmadinejad is: talk about a bad case of Europhile cultural cringe. But in today's mosques and madrassahs there is almost as little contemplation of the divine as there is in the typical Anglican sermon. The great Canadian columnist David Warren argues that Islam is desperately weak, that it has been "idiotized" by these obsolescent imports of mid-20th century Fascism. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but, if Washington had half the psy-ops spooks the movies like to think we have, the spiritual neglect in latter-day Islam is a big Achilles' heel just ripe for exploiting.
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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Hostages freed after 'conversion'
2006-08-27
MILITANTS in the Gaza Strip released two kidnapped journalists from the American Fox News Channel today after the men appeared on a videotape saying they had converted to Islam, Fox said.

Fox said correspondent Steve Centanni, a 60-year-old American, and New Zealand-born cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, were in a hotel in the Palestinian coastal strip. They hugged colleagues inside the hotel lobby before running up the stairs to a higher floor, Fox News footage showed. "Our heroes are home," Fox anchorman Shepard Smith said in a live broadcast from New York.

The two reporters were seized on August 14 by a previously unknown group called the Gaza Peoples Front Holy Jihad Brigades.

In a videotape released earlier, Centanni and Wiig were shown separately sitting cross-legged, reading statements announcing that they had converted to Islam. At times in the video they were wearing long Muslim robes. "I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah," Centanni said.

Wiig called on leaders of the West to stop "hiding behind the 'I don't negotiate with terrorists' myth".

The Holy Jihad Brigades claimed responsibility on Wednesday for the kidnapping and had warned the United States to free Muslim prisoners to prevent the two captives facing unspecified consequences. That deadline expired on Saturday. The United States had said it would not make "concessions to terrorists".

Palestinian officials had earlier expressed optimism the men would be freed soon.

A separate statement from the captors had said the two journalists had to choose either Islam, a tax imposed on non-Muslims to be paid to a Muslim ruler, or war. "They chose Islam and that is a gift God gives those whom he chooses," the statement said.
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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Kidnapped Fox journalists convert to Islam on video
2006-08-27
GAZA (Reuters) - Two kidnapped Fox journalists appeared on a new videotape released by their captors on Sunday in the Gaza Strip, in which the reporters said they had converted to Islam, the Fox News Channel said.

Palestinian Interior Minister Saeed Seyam said efforts were under way to secure within hours the release of Fox correspondent Steve Centanni, a 60-year-old American, and New Zealand-born cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36.

Both journalists appeared to be in good health in the new video. They were seized on August 14. They were shown separately sitting cross-legged, reading a statement which Fox said was an announcement that they had converted to Islam. At times in the video they were wearing long Muslim robes.

Wiig called on leaders of the West to stop "hiding behind the 'I don't negotiate with terrorists' myth". He then read some words in Arabic.

"The issue of the two kidnapped journalists is on the way to being resolved," Seyam told Reuters. "Efforts are under way with several parties to secure their release within the coming hours."

The previously unknown Holy Jihad Brigades claimed responsibility on Wednesday for the kidnapping and had warned the United States to free Muslim prisoners or the captives would face unspecified consequences. The deadline expired on Saturday. The United States has said it would not make "concessions to terrorists".

A videotape released on Wednesday showed the two men, dressed in tracksuits, sitting on a blanket in front of a black background. They appeared fairly relaxed and in good health. Both said that they were fine and being treated well.

The kidnapping is the longest-lasting abduction of foreigners in the Palestinian coastal strip in more than a year.
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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Case of kidnapped Fox journalists could be resolved in 'the coming hours.'
2006-08-26
Fingers crossed, but would he be putting himself in this position, if he doesn't know something?
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip // With a deadline looming over the fate of two Fox News journalists kidnapped in Gaza City, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Saturday that he hoped the crisis would be resolved "in the coming hours." The journalists, correspondent Steve Centanni, 60, of Washington, D.C., and cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, of New Zealand, were seized in Gaza City on Aug. 14. Their captors demanded the release of all Muslims imprisoned by the U.S. by midnight Saturday, in exchange for freeing the Fox journalists.
"Okay! Listen up! Tyrone, Homer, and Manuel, youse guys are being freed and sent to Gaza!"
"Hey screw, why us?"
"The government is releasing all the Muslims."
"But none of us is Muslim!"
"You are now! Now pack your shit and git moving!"
The kidnappers, a previously unknown group calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigades, did not say what it would do to the men if the deadline passed with their demands unanswered. It is not clear whether the kidnappers were local militants, either with ties to Hamas or the rival Fatah movement, or sneaked into Gaza from outside.

"We hope that this issue is going to be over in the coming hours," Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, said in a statement. "There are promises that the journalists will not be harmed. I hope that this case is going to be ended and solved in a way that reflects that the Palestinians respect their guests." Haniyeh did not elaborate.

Interior Ministry spokesman Khaled Abu Hilal said authorities were exerting efforts to release the journalists, but were not negotiating with the kidnappers.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called on Saturday for the journalists' release. "Palestinian authorities must continue their efforts to secure the safe release of these two professionals, who were unjustly taken while trying to report the news from Gaza. These journalists should be freed immediately and unconditionally," said Joel Simon, executive director of the committee.
There, that should do it.
Wiig's wife, Anita McNaught, traveled to Gaza soon after the kidnapping to appealing for the men's safe release. Centanni's brother, Ken, has made a similar plea.
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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Hamas plots progress to free Fox reporters
2006-08-25
Go figure -- Hamas want to take credit for getting hostages released from Hamas

GAZA CITY, Gaza -- Palestinian interior minister Siad Siam said Friday that efforts to win the release of two Western journalists snatched in Gaza were "encouraging," 24 hours before a deadline from their captors expires.

"Contacts are underway with Palestinian groups who are trying to secure the release of the two journalists. Things are at an early stage but they are encouraging," the minister told reporters in Gaza City.

He was speaking one day before an ultimatum for the United States to release all Muslim prisoners in its custody, set by their kidnappers is to expire.

The hostages were working for the US Fox News television network when they were snatched from a Gaza City street August 14 and bundled into a car.

Olaf Wiig, a freelance cameraman, comes from New Zealand and his producer colleague, Steve Centanni, from the United States.

There had been no news about their fate until Wednesday when the pair - looking healthy and relaxed - appeared in a videotape released in conjunction with a statement from the previously unknown group holding them.

The so-called Holy Jihad Brigades demanded that all Muslim prisoners in the United States be released within 72 hours, or Saturday at noon (0900 GMT), but did not say what would happen if the demands were not met.

The US State Department rejected the demands, insisting that the pair be released unconditionally, although US officials in the region have said that they were working with Palestinian authorities to try to secure the men's release.

Asked whether Palestinian security services had located the kidnappers, Siam said that it was too "early" to say.

"That should remain secret in order to support the efforts and I hope that they will be released. There is reason to be encouraged," added the minister.

The Hamas-led government, boycotted by the West, has repeatedly called for the two men to be released.
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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Wife of Fox journalist: Captives are friends of Palestinians
2006-08-25
The wife of one of the Fox News journalists kidnapped in Gaza City last week issued an emotional plea to the kidnappers Thursday, saying her husband, Olaf Wiig, and Steve Centanni merely wanted to tell the Palestinians' story.

The full text of Anita McNaught's statement, which came the day after a video of the pair aired on Palestinian television, is as follows:

"It was a source of great relief and comfort to me, and to Olaf and Steve's family and friends to see that our men are being well looked after by you, and we trust that you will continue to care for them until their release. (Watch the captive journalists ask for help -- 1:33)

"Over 10 days, you have come to know these men. So you must know that they are merely innocent journalists who have no ability to bring about the kind of changes you ask for.

"Olaf, my husband, and Steve, his colleague, are not powerful men. They have only one strength here in Gaza and that is to take the voices of the Palestinian people to the outside world. They can only do this if they are free.

"Olaf and Steve have always worked for the interests of the Palestinian people. They came here to support you by telling your stories. I do not question that you who are holding them have suffered greatly -- as everyone in Gaza, in the Palestinian territories is suffering -- but these two men are not responsible for the injustices you speak of, and should not be punished for them.

"I would like to send a message to my husband Olaf and to Steve. Olaf -- you are right: We are doing everything we can -- I am doing everything I can here in Gaza -- to secure your release. Stay strong, and know that the Palestinian people around me have been very kind. You both know how much you are loved.

"To the kidnappers, I say: You also have families and wives. People should not be kept from their families. In the name of the Muslim values and traditions you so strongly uphold, these two men are your guests. We all desire a peaceful resolution of this matter -- for us and for you. We want our men to come home safe."
Link


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Transcript: Kidnappers' Statement
2006-08-23
A group claiming to have kidnapped two FOX News journalists released a video Wednesday showing both Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig. The Holy Jihad Brigades released the following statement with the video.

"This is a statement directed to the infidels in general, without discrimination of their georgraphical location. This is an invitation to enter into the religion of God before a day comes when being an infidel will not do you any good. The victory of God's soldiers can only be achieved by God's help. Nobody can frighten us about our enemy and what it possesses. In the name of God and taught Adam the names. If they throw us in fire it would be cool and safe on us. And if they throw us in water then the whale would pick us up and take us to land. If they want to cut us up, God will save us by sending a sacrifice and deliver us to safety.

No nation can be defeated without the will of God. Quoting Mohammed: 'Do not be sad for God is with us.'

Therefore lords of infidelity and masters of darkness and injustice believe in God and you will be safe or else wait for your turn because we come to slaughter. And every soul will reap what it has done.

You have angered us and we are not the kind that is angered. We are subdued, but rather the fountains of Islam and faith spring up in us.

We now tell you this is the chance we give you. God knows how often this kind of chance can be repeated.

In exchange for the release of the Muslim prisoners, males and females in the prisons of America, with our prisoners.

Release our prisoners and we will do the same. This applies to all without exception. And every Muslim is more cherished and more generous that a 1,000 Bushes. But this is a tradeoff of equals.

We will grant you 72 hours, that starts as of noon today during which you can look into this and if you carry out our condition we will carry out our promise, or else wait and we will wait with you and it will be in God's hands. And God's order is higher than any other and most people do not know. 'Those who have been injust will find out the consequences.'

The time you have starts as of noon Wednesday the 29th of Rajab (the Islamic month) of the year 1447 (Muslim year) which is the 23rd of August 2006.

Our thanks to God, the most gracious.

Signed

The Holy Jihad Brigades"
Not one word about zionists or occupied Palestine. This reads like a al-Qaeda or Iranian written statement. Note the "This is an invitation to enter into the religion of God" line. That sounds like Ahmadinejad's letter to President Bush.
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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Group claims abduction of Fox News journalists
2006-08-23
Scare quotes added for balance.
JERUSALEM (CNN) -- The previously unknown Holy Jihad Brigades claimed responsibility Wednesday for the abduction of two journalists working for Fox News in Gaza, and called for the release of Arabs from U.S. jails. Ramattan News Agency in Gaza aired a video in which the men, reporter Steve Centanni, 60, and cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, say they're being well-treated and plead for their release. They were kidnapped by "gunmen" in Gaza City on August 14.

In a written statement accompanying the video, the group demands the release of Arab prisoners from U.S.-run jails, citing the military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Centanni is an American and Wiig is from New Zealand.

Centanni speaks first on the video. "We have been taken captive in Gaza and are being held prisoner here," he says, sitting cross-legged next to Wiig. "We're in fairly good condition, we're alive and well and in fairly good health. We get lots of clean water, food every day, access to the bathroom, shower, clean clothes and our captors are treating us well.

"Just want to let you know I'm here and alive and give my love to my family and friends and ask you to do anything you can to try to help us get out of here."

Wiig then speaks: "If you could apply any political pressure on the local government here in Gaza and the West Bank that would be much appreciated by Steve and myself...

"To my family: I love you all. Please don't worry, I'll do all the worrying for us."

The video then shows what appear to be the journalists' ID cards, including one that identifies Wiig as a CNN free-lancer.

Gaza's main Palestinian "militant" groups have denied any involvement in the abductions. Palestinian "security" forces have been involved in the search, a top priority for the Hamas-led Palestinian "government", Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Sunday.
Paleo sock puppets, they spring up daily.
Centanni's family has appealed for any information about his condition in a videotaped statement that aired Sunday on the Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera. "I would like his captors to know that Steve is an honorable man who always tries to do what is right," said Steve's brother Ken Centanni, who was flanked by his two sisters. "Steve has strong respect for the Palestinian people and their culture," Ken Centanni said. "Steve was in Gaza with Olaf Wiig to report the truth. He is far more valuable to the "Palestinian people" free as a journalist than as a captive.

"We love Steve very much and now his health, his safety and his life is your responsibility. Please contact our family, let us know that he is alive and unharmed."

Wiig's wife, Anita McNaught, issued an emotional statement in a recent video statement. "If somebody knows any information, can they please tell us because I want him home so much," she said. "He and his colleague, Steve, don't deserve this. They are good men. They are good men and should be allowed to come home."

According to witnesses, two vehicles blocked the journalists' television van in central Gaza. A masked man put a gun to the journalists' bodyguard and forced him to the ground before the kidnappers nabbed the men and sped away, the witnesses said.

In the past two years, Palestinian "militants" in Gaza have seized at least 26 foreigners, including nine members of the media. Hostages are usually released within hours. Generally, the "militant" groups use hostages for publicity purposes or to pressure Palestinian authorities for money, jobs or the release of prisoners.
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