Burning It All Down & Bob meets Fidel

Palestinians Set Fire to Empty Synagogues

NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip (AP)

Flames shot skyward from four abandoned synagogues in the Gaza Strip on Monday, as thousands of celebrating Palestinians thronged through former Jewish settlements and headed straight for the only buildings left standing. At Neve Dekalim, gunman from several militant factions stormed through after Israeli soldiers left Monday morning, completing the Gaza pullout. Some Palestinians planted a flag from the ruling Fatah movement on the roof of a rabbinical college for Jewish settlers, as others set a fire inside.

The synagogue in the isolated settlement of Morag in southern Gaza was set ablaze minutes after hundreds of Palestinians stormed in. “They (Israelis) destroyed our homes and our mosques,” said a man who gave his name only as Abu Ahmed. “Today it is our turn to destroy theirs.” The synagogues were a focus of Palestinian anger after 38 years of Israeli occupation, primarily because they were among the only buildings left standing. Shortly after removing the last of the settlers two weeks ago, Israel sent in bulldozers to level the houses, leaving only a few public buildings and the synagogues.

In Netzarim, the synagogue was on fire before dawn, with bright orange flames leaping through the roof and the walls. Helpless Palestinian police stood by and watched, admitting they were outnumbered by the crowds and had little motivation to stop them. An officer who refused to give his name said: “The people have the right to do what they are doing.” Israel TV said crowds of Palestinians entered Kfar Darom in central Gaza and set several fires, including in the synagogue.

As they left their homes last month, the settlers took the sacred Torah scrolls from their synagogues, as well as prayer books and other holy items—symbolizing the end of the use of the buildings as houses of prayer. Last year Israel’s Cabinet ruled the buildings would be torn down. Since the evacuation of the settlers, however, rabbis mounted a high-profile campaign to save the buildings, demanding the government see to it that they would be protected by the Palestinians or by international organizations. On Sunday, the Israeli Cabinet reversed itself, voting not to destroy the synagogue buildings.

The Palestinians refused to protect them, saying they wanted nothing that symbolized the occupation to remain. Early Monday, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said the structures would be dismantled like all the others. “They left empty buildings that used to be temples, but they removed all the religious symbols, and they are no longer religious places,” he said. The United States issued a statement criticizing the Israeli change of policy, complaining that it put the Palestinians in a position “where it may be criticized for whatever it does."

Masked militants belonging to the Islamic Jihad pray in front of a burning synagogue in the former Israeli settlement of Neve Dekalim in the southern Gaza Strip. Thousands of Palestinians flooded into the former Israeli settlements after the last Israeli troops withdrew from the area after 38 years of occupation(AFP/Roberto Schmidt)

Meeting of the Looneys:

ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe landed in Havana overnight for an official three-day visit with President Fidel Castro.

Mugabe arrived with his wife, Grace Mugabe, Foreign Minister Simbarashe Mumbengengwi and other government officials and was received by Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque.

Mugabe and his entourage will meet with Castro and other officials and will visit places of "historical and scientific interest," according to official sources.

The weekend visit to the island will be the African leader's sixth, the most recent having been in 2002.

Castro visited Zimbabwe in 1986, for a meeting of non-aligned nations.

Cuba has educated 3,034 Zimbabwean students, according to Havana's foreign ministry. Four Zimbabwean students are attending Cuba's International School of Physical Education and Sports, and 10 others are studying science at the University of Havana.

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Mugabe was received with military honours at Jose Marti airport.

He immediately fulfilled a promise, made by his spokesman in Harare, to use the trip to commiserate with his Cuban colleague about US influence over the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, saying that Zimbabwe would never be a friend of the IMF because it worked on behalf of the powerful and did not give real assistance to the needy.

Mugabe said he and Castro would share ideas on dealing with what he called imperialist policies.

The IMF on Friday postponed for six months the expulsion of Zimbabwe for non-payment of its debt, after the African country paid $US120 million.

Both Zimbabwe and Cuba have been dubbed "outposts of tyranny" by US President George W. Bush's administration.

** Does make me wonder what they will show Bob on his state visit? A poorly ran sugar cane plantation? or maybe the old missle silos left by the Russians?

Finally some good news, the home of the mad liberals Canada has finally seen some sense: Ontario's premier, Dalton McGuinty, said on Sunday that Ontario would not be the first jurisdiction in the West to allow Muslim Sharia law to settle family disputes. He said that his government would also move quickly to disallow the use of existing religious tribunals allowed under Ontario's arbitration act. The act permits civil disputes to be resolved through an independent arbiter if both parties agree. ...

Novelist Margaret Atwood and well-known social activists Maude Barlow, June Callwood and Shirley Douglas have joined a group called the No Religious Arbitration Coalition that opposes any move to allow Sharia law to be used in Ontario. In an open letter to Premier McGuinty, the group said that religion should be kept separate from the business of state. "Religion should simply remain an important part of the lives of citizens but not of public law," said the letter.

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