UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Susan Sarandon calls Pope Benedict a Nazi

The Pope enables Palestine. The Pope is economically socialist and a globalist (he wants a global financial oversight police). Take Abortion, Condoms and the right to Sodomy out of the equation and you have the Pope and Susan at about the same place.

LOS ANGELES (Eye on Reuters) Actress and social activist Susan Sarandon was reported to have called Pope Benedict a Nazi during a public discussion at a U.S. film festival in New York. ....The movie star,... said she had sent a copy of the book on which the movie is based to the pope. "The last one. Not this Nazi one we have now," she was reported as saying by New York newspaper Newsday. (More)(LATimes) Sarandon's resume also includes a turn in "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,"

More Silly business at Occupy Wall Street

Yes I know we've already seen this protester's hate, but there is a point I'm trying to make here... wow... we control the East Cost and the West Coast judges.... damn... we really need to work harder in Chicago. This guy says the Jewish population in the US is only 2.2%; yet, we are blamed for taking over Wall Street, etc. The ”Jewish Conspiracy” theme is becoming more popular in the Occupy Wall Street protests.... blah blah blah... now that point...

..,After you watch the video on the left, Youtube pushes you to another video (an interview from RT) and the girl says she is at OWS because she is a domestic violence victim. So this is how it works... Wall Street is now responsible for domestic violence. the Left just blankets all their buzz words that get their core vaginas all bunched up... and then they ignore the Anti-Semitism. It's like as if issues don't even matter. it's a rage at men... and what is more patriarchal then the Jews?

I think that the Zionist Jews, who are running these big banks and our Federal Reserve, which is not run by the federal government... they need to be run out of this country,

(h/tMoney Runner)

How nice that our tax dollar are paying her to brainwash kids against us. isn't it wonderful that I can't get my own cousins to friend me because I'm offensive... because I point things like this out. These are your liberals. These are your libertarians. These are the people pushing gay marriage. These are the people who can not respect difference. They demand government see equivalences in all things and anything that is unique is racist or hateful.

Released for Gilad Shalit: the Butcher of Ramallah, and other "heroes" of the "Palestine"

Nurzhitz and Avrahami were lost and were stopped and arrested by Palestinian police. who ripped these Israelis apart limb by limb with a Palestinian mob, then showed their bloody hands through the window to the ecstatic Palestinians outside. Abdel-Aziz Saleh AKA Abed El-Aziz Salha AKA Aziz Salha AKA Abed Alaziz Salaha known as the “Butcher of Ramallah,” are part of the terrorist exchange for Gilad Shalit.

The lynchings of Vadim Norzich and Yosef Avrahami constituted one of the most shocking terrorist acts of the so-called "Aqsa intifada." (Even if it was underplayed in the media.) Shortly after the lynching, Norzich's uncle and family made aliyah. Upon his return home, Salaha, who proudly displayed his victims' blood, will be greeted as a hero. One society seeks to rebuild that which is destroyed; the other celebrates the destruction. One can rail about "settlements" and lack of contiguity, but until Palestinian society is more concerned with being productive than destructive, there won't be peace.

Soccer Dad's
Middle East Media Sampler
for Monday, October 17.

1) She keeps the home fires burning

The LA Times has a touching story about Raeda Omjamal, who awaits the return of her husband Rawhi Mushtaha, one of the 1027 prisoners whom Israel plans to release in the deal to gain the release of hostage, Gilad Shalit.

Omjamal was 23 years old, a freshly transplanted Palestinian refugee from Jordan who only met her husband two months before their wedding. The had another six months after the marriage. Now, at 47, Omjamal is preparing to welcome her husband back home after seeing him only once during 24 years of incarceration. Though they exchanged occasional messages and letters through attorneys, personal visits were mostly prohibited. Today, the young, bearded fighter she married in 1988 is a gray-haired, wrinkled stranger. Asked how it will feel to live in the same house again, she laughed and turned red, noticeable even though a pale green veil covering most of her face.

Worst of all was this sentence:

Israel called him a murderer for his role in helping to run Hamas' military operations.

He was involved in an organization that murdered (Palestinians) and was convicted. The New York Times in Israel Releases Names of 477 Prisoners to Be Freed in Trade is a little less sentimental and doesn't spend time on Omjamal's sentimental regrets:

The list includes Rawhi Mushtaha and Yehya Sinwar, two founders of Al Majd, a forerunner of Hamas’s military wing. Al Majd killed Palestinian collaborators, cracked down on behavior regarded as immoral and gathered weapons. Both were arrested in early 1988, less than two months after the outbreak of the first Palestinian uprising and the formal creation of Hamas by Sheik Ahmed Yassin. Mr. Mushtaha, 52, was serving four life sentences for murder through an act of terror, military exercises, manslaughter and incitement. His wife, Raeda, wearing a full face niqab veil, confirmed Sunday that her husband was a founder of Al Majd. Asked if he regretted his actions she said, “No.” Speaking from her Gaza City home, she continued: “Rawhi is with Hamas until we restore all our Islamic holy places and the return of refugees. Our method and path is resistance. We will not lay down weapons, because resistance is a legitimate right for any people fighting for their freedom.”

Interesting statement about that lack of regret. I couldn't find this elsewhere, so I have to (regretably) use Al Jazeera as a source. What is one of the terms of release?

"They will have to sign a declaration that he or she will not be involved in terrorist activities any more, but after that, there is no monitoring," Emi Talmor, director of the Israeli justice ministry's pardons department, told Al Jazeera.

That quote - if it accurately conveys Mushtaha's feelings - would be a repudiation of that declaration wouldn't it? (I've been informed that the declaration is a formality; with no legal significance. The Al Jazeera article is interesting in that it says that the released terrorists will be monitored. Will Israel take any action if they travel to a prohibited area?) The New York Times associates Mushtaha with Al Majd, effectively acknowledging his guilt and not just attributing it to an Israeli declaration. For a description of what Mushtaha did, here's a 1993 op-ed from the New York Times, The Hamas way of death. Israel found a training tape of Hamas, and the New York Times thought it was newsworthy enough to publish.

At first, every collaborator denies his crimes. So we start off by showing the collaborator the testimony against him. We tell him that he still has a chance to serve his people, even in the last moment of his life, by confessing and giving us the information we need. We say that we know his repentance is sincere and that he has been a victim. That kind of talk is convincing. Most of them confess after that. Others hold out; in those cases, we apply pressure, both psychological and physical. Then the holdouts confess as well. Only one collaborator has ever been executed without an interrogation. In that case, the collaborator had been seen working for the Border Guard since before the intifada, and he himself confessed his involvement to a friend, who disclosed the information to us. In addition, three members of his network of collaborators told us that he had caused their isqat. With this much evidence, there was no need to interrogate him. But we are very careful to avoid wrongful executions. In every case, our principle is the same: the accused should be interrogated until he himself confesses his crimes.

So anyone who became "inconvenient" could be denounced for helping Israel and then judged and executed.
2) Blood on his hands
There was an expression that Israel would not release terrorists with "blood on their hands." It was a figure of speech, meaning that at one point Israel would never free any terrorists who had actually killed Israelis. That line has long ago been crossed, and given that the sentences Israel is ending early add up to thousands of years, quite a few murderers are being freed in order to free Gilad Shalit. But according to Ynet, Israel will be releasing the terrorist who literally had blood on his hands. (h/t Baltimore Jewish Life)

"On the one hand, the bereaved brother says, the family is happy for the parents and siblings who will see their son Gilad Shalit come home. "On the other hand, our family is angry that nobody cared about our sensitivity. No one (in the government) experienced our pain," he said. The painful monologue above belongs to Michael Norzich, brother of Vadim, who was murdered by a mob in Ramallah in the year 2000. Michael said that no one called to tell him that one of the murderers of his brother is included in the list of 477 prisoners who will be released as part of the first phase of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal. Abed Alaziz Salaha, who was photographed in the horrific photo with his hands covered with blood in what has become the symbol of the second intifada, was sentenced to life in prison but is expected to be released on Tuesday.

Bereaved families: State dancing in our blood

Sigal Yunesi
(survived attack)

Kochava Polanski
(killed in Azor attack)

	Terrorist Khalil Mohammed Abu Ulbah (now set to be released)

Terrorist
Khalil Mohammed Abu Ulbah
(now set to be released)

"What they did to us is like a slap in the face. We need to hear about the terrorist who killed our daughter being released from the media? Everyone is happy and dancing in our blood and with all due respect to Gilad's smiling mother, there are hundreds of parents whose heart is bleeding today."

Helena Rapp
stabbed to death

Yasmin Karisi - killed in attack

Harsh words from Haim Karisi who lost his daughter Yasmin in the Azor Junction terror attack 11 years ago. On Sunday he was finding it hard to bear the insult as he discovered that Khalil Mohammed Abu Ulbah, the murderer who cost him his daughter, was one of the 477 prisoners set to be released in the first phase of the Shalit deal.

Delicious: EAT THE RICH at Occupy Wall Street

(EYE) on some Shit!

Soylent Green? Cannibalism?

Railing against Reality: Lisa Goldman tries to defend Journalists who Use Pallywood

(Richard Landes h/t DOCS TALK and Augean Stables)

Recently a number of articles by photojournalists who turned their cameras on their fellow photojournalists have reinforced an argument I first made in 2005 with my first documentary short, Pallywood. They revealed the extent to which journalists, with their pack mentality and their eagerness to get pictures of the victimization of the Palestinian David by the Israeli Goliath, may influence, even make the “news” they record about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Ritual from Andrew Lampard on Vimeo.

Photojournalism Behind the Scenes [ITA-ENG subs] from Ruben Salvadori on Vimeo.
Obviously such charges runs the risk of undermining the narrative that the MSNM so relentlessly record for their audiences, a narrative that has had an enormous impact on images of Israel in the West. In response Lisa Goldman, a blogger at 972, has come to the defense of this kind of news. Her piece illustrates from many angles just what’s wrong with people who think they’re “journalists” when they’re really advocates.

The questions people don’t ask about ’staged photojournalism’
A few years ago, a far-right commentator on Israel-Palestine coined the term “Pallywood” to describe video clips and photographs which were allegedly staged or manipulated to score public relations points against Israel.

Lisa defines what she means by “far-right” later in this essay: those who call the occupied territories the ‘administered territories’ and insist that Israel must keep its settlements in the West Bank. There are two major points to be made here.
1) This is a pretty weak definition of “far-right.” I would have imagined something more along the lines of forceful transfer of population from both Israel and the territories for the sake of an Arab-free greater Israel. That would, after all, be a fairly neat parallel to an apartheid position that has its mirror opposite among so many Palestinians. But what Goldman’s trying to do here is to label anything that isn’t close to her position “far-right.” Presumably, she’d have no problem labeling “far-right” anyone who referred to them as “disputed territories” or felt that some of the settlements should, indeed remain part of Israel.
2) Nowhere can Lisa, who knows me personally because I invited her to participate in a conference at the IDC in 2006, find in my fairly copious writings, anything resembling these positions. I personally find even the “right-wing” label inaccurate, much less “far-right,” but that’s probably because I don’t skew the political spectrum heavily to the left in order to define anything that disagrees with me “right-wing.” On the contrary, I think that, when speaking of the Arab-Israeli conflict we need to have a spectrum that can accommodate both Palestinian and Israeli politics. That way we can avoid such foolish generalizations as, on the one hand, calling Abbas a “moderate” when, by my definition, he and his fellow PA officials are “far-right,” in favor of ethnic cleansing of a Palestinian state and keeping the refugees in camps, and on the other, avoid calling Netanyahu a “hardliner” when, in comparison, he’s far more accommodating than Abbas.
So we learn from Lisa Goldman’s first sentence of her post that: a) she is a poor journalist who doesn’t even care to research her claims, b) she’s into smearing people who get in the way of her narrative, and c) she defines matters with a heavy skew to the PCP (2) as normative, rather than one-sided.
All three of these observations will continue to hold true throughout an examination of her piece.

The term is now quite widely used by those who take an uncritical Israel-advocacy position. People who subscribe to the Pallywood theory believe that Israel is the true victim in its conflict with the Palestinians. Israel’s only real wrongdoing, they claim, is in its failure to combat effectively what they perceive as a relentless media battle waged by Palestinians and their advocates. What Israel needs, they say, is better hasbara.

This analysis reveals still more about Goldman’s world. I would have thought that people who “subscribe” to the Pallywood theory are people who have looked at the evidence – quite copious – and have come to the conclusion that it’s true, regardless of where they stand politically. Has Lisa even seen the movie or the rushes upon which the movie is based? I won’t deny that it’s water to the mill of those who defend Israel, but it’s empirically sound evidence that should, in principle, trouble those who think Israel is in the wrong.
Apparently, however, it does trouble people with a particular agenda. I remember a colleague of mine told me that he proposed I present al Durah and Pallywood to the journalism department at a major California university, and someone objected that I was trying to destroy the peace process. On the contrary, I tried to argue, no peace process will succeed when all the Palestinians need to do is fake an incident and break all their promises.
Lisa prefers to label anyone who takes this evidence seriously as an ideologue who takes an uncritical stance towards Israel. In other words, apparently, Lisa thinks that any criticism of the Palestinians and their narrative is a position that considers any criticism of Israel illegitimate, what so many on the “left” call the “Israel right or wrong crowd.” The idea that people can at once consider evidence for and against both sides seems alien to her. If you defend Israel and criticize the Palestinians, you’re “Israel right or wrong.” In her mind, people like me think Israel’s only fault is its poor hasbarah. If only it were so simple. But I guess that works for the simple-minded.

But the far-right – those who call the occupied territories the ‘administered territories’ and insist that Israel must keep its settlements in the West Bank – are not the only ones who claim that images of clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli security forces are staged. Sometimes, people who do not have a personal stake in the conflict make the same claim. These are intelligent, sensible people who visit Israel-Palestine, observe the situation for a short time – but do not study it or investigate it – and then draw their conclusions.

Oh dear. Innocent bystanders have been poisoned by far-right ideologues. Goldman to the rescue. We must look deeper to understand.

Recently, two young journalists – one Italian and one from the United States, created video reports about what they saw at clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces. In these video reports,  news photographs and video clips are juxtaposed alongside images that show the same scenes from a wider angle, so that they include a scrum of photojournalists madly clicking their shutters in the direction of a single teenage boy with a keffiyeh wrapped around his face and a chunk of rock clutched in his hand, while a tyre burns in the background. The implication is that these images are, if not exactly staged, then manipulated. If the photographers and videographers were not present, they suggest, these clashes would not happen. This claim leads, of course, to the next one – ie, that if these scenes are staged, then they must be inauthentic.

I personally would not jump to that conclusion. Are there scenes that are inauthentic? Yes. Are they all? Not necessarily. I’m certainly not going to take the position that all Palestinian claims to mistreatment and injury by the IDF are false. I have no doubt the Palestinians, even innocent ones, suffer at the hands of a military that must deal with terrorism from the seemingly innocent. But given the widespread propensity of Palestinians to stage scenes, the idea that they should be granted authentic status a priori seems like a foolish epistemological move… one typical of many journalists up till now.

But there are a few questions that are not asked by these journalists – or by those who have enthusiastically posted and re-posted their videos. Questions like, Why are these Palestinians out demonstrating in the first place? Why do they come out, week after week, to face Israeli security forces who choke them with tear gas, beat them and arrest them? What are their grievances?
Well, for starters, how about checkpoints, land confiscations, arbitrary arrests, military trials that are effectively kangaroo courts, arbitrary beatings at the hands of Israeli security forces and settlers, a life without civil rights or legal recourse, night raids by the army, destruction of water cisterns, destruction of homes, no freedom of movement and… Oh, come on. If you know anything about the occupation, then you know all this. If you are an intelligent person who is interested in Israel-Palestine issues and you don’t know all this, then you don’t want to know.

I don’t have the time to go into this list one by one, but I do think it worth mentioning that a) the checkpoints (and the separation fence/wall) are a direct response to Palestinian terror directed specifically against civilians; b) most of the arrests are hardly “arbitrary” by any but an ideologue’s standards; c) Palestinians have extensive protection before Israeli law (including the Supreme Court), indeed far more than they do before Palestinian “law.”
In short, this list is advocacy driven, has no sense of balance or perspective, no depth or complexity. It merely parrots the most one-dimensional Palestinian narrative, and then, in a classic move, accuses anyone of not agreeing, of acting in bad faith.

Do teenage boys wearing jeans and muscle shirts swagger and act all macho when a bunch of photojournalists point big lenses in their direction? Yup, they do. Do they sometimes make a mockery out of stressful, frightening situations in order to preserve their dignity, their cool and their street cred? Sure.

Let’s take it a bit farther. Do they fake scenes in order to produce “sight-bytes” for the Western news to run? Yup. Does their macho get in the way? You bet. Look at this fellow, who’s been made up with blood on his forehead, run along, hand off a Molotov cocktail, and enter a crowd that carries him to an ambulance that’s directly in front of the Israeli position where (presumably) the soldiers are shooting wildly at him and everyone else. He can’t even pretend he’s been injured. Note how he holds up his “wounded” head as he’s carried to the ambulance.
molotov_kid

Does that mean they have no reason or purpose in demonstrating? Of course not. Would the same people demonstrate if there was no media presence? Yes. I know, because I have attended many demonstrations from which the media was completely absent,

Except, of course, you Lisa. And how many others? Can you give us some examples?

and events unfolded in pretty much the same way as they do when the photographers are there.

Excuse my skepticism here. This contradicts what you just said about how they mug for the camera. I don’t believe for a minute that they behave differently when the camera isn’t there. Indeed, the key moment for me in “discovering” Pallywood was watching a big fat guy in Netzarim Junction, filmed by Talal abu Rahmah, who faked a leg injury and when he realized he wasn’t going to get the media “treatment” – carried to an ambulance in front of the cameras – he walked away without a limp. (NB: France2 cut this clip from the video they showed the court.)

Neither of the two video reports, which are embedded below, include any background or explanation.  They also don’t really touch on the fact that very few of the photos and videos shot at these demos are ever published.

This may actually reflect a welcome trend in current journalism. Certainly, during the first and second Intifadas, these images were eagerly snatched up by journalists (I made Bob Simon the butt of my movie, but there were plenty of examples to draw from, that continued throughout Operation Cast Lead). Now, perhaps because having once had the faking pointed out, and having been stung by bloggers for their gross incompetence, reporters are less likely to do so.
Or maybe, just maybe Lisa, the world has awakened to the fact that their obsession with the Arab-Israeli conflict has blinded them to far more important conflicts and far greater suffering than what the Palestinians suffer at the hands of the evil Israelis – like what’s happening next door in Syria, where the paragraph above that outlines what they have to protest would be ten times as harsh (including what they do to Palestinian refugees) and a thousand times more accurate.

Editors are not interested anymore. Their readers have turned away; Israel-Palestine is regarded as a story that is stuck in Groundhog Day, doomed to repeat itself in perpetuity.

There’s only so long a boy can cry wolf, even if people so desperately want to believe it. I’m under the impression that even though the media does its best to blame Israel for the failure of negotiations, their audience has begun to realize that the Palestinians have played a major role in their own failure to have a country.

But once in awhile there is an egregious incident that is deemed newsworthy. And if a persistent photojournalist or videographer who has been attending these demos every week for years happens to be there, s/he could have the shot that will make the front page or win a prize.

You mean, like Talal abu Rahmah and the Muhammad al Durah affair. He got lots of prizes for his staged blood libel. By the way, Lisa, as one of your commentators (RichardNYC) also asked, what is your position on Al Durah? Have you looked at the evidence? Are you aware of how the piece was used as a “icon of hatred” by the Palestinians, the Muslims, the radical “left”? Do you have a position on egregious propaganda, or does the “victim status” of the Palestinians forgive anything, and answer to a higher truth?
Except for the fact that you don’t seem interested in going anywhere else, it would not be hard to photograph egregious incidents that are noteworthy every day, many times a day in Syria right now. Anyone getting them into papers? Anyone getting prizes?

But rarely – almost never – will you see a print or television journalist at these demos. Because they are not reported. Because hardly anyone cares anymore.

I’m sorry. What are you talking about? Wasn’t the footage you’re complaining about showing a – in your own words – a “scrum of photojournalists madly clicking their shutters in the direction of a single teenage boy with a keffiyeh wrapped around his face and a chunk of rock clutched in his hand, while a tyre burns in the background“? Try reading Stephanie Gutman, The Other War.

Lisa, let me suggest something that I doubt you’ll consider, but think you should. Maybe your uncritical embrace of the Palestinian narrative of suffering that you defend so poorly is part of the Palestinian problem. Maybe if Palestinians had real friends, who gave them valuable advice, rather than merely reaffirmed their sense of victimhood, maybe if you helped them address the degree to which their own leaders (Palestinian and Arabs and Muslims) have victimized them, then maybe this wouldn’t be groundhog day. But of course, that would take what you call “study and investigation” and what I would call complexity and depth.
It may well be that the real problem is not Israeli failure of hasbarah, but the unmerited success of Palestinian hasbarah. And to that, you and your friends in the center of the far left contribute way too much.

American Nazi Party Declares Full Support For Occupy Wall Street

(Jewish Internet Defense Force) Oddly, despite the following, a small fringe group extreme left wing anti-Israel Jews are still vowing their support for the same movement.  They are even trying to have Jewish Holidays at the protest! (Insanely, Chabad, the Conservative Movement, Jewish Theological Seminary and some others in the Jewish establishment have even lent a helping hand to them!) (MORE PAIN)

It is time for the Jewish community to end their demonization of grass root Conservative movements. Such ideas as opposition to "Gay Marriage" for example are not necessarily about hatred. Hate I have found usually comes from people who fear or disapprove of a unique institution (that includes Judaism), but also includes such unique institutional conventions as Heterosexual marriage. It is time for the Left (and those Conservative movements that have been co-opted by the left) to have a hard look at themselves and ask if they are truly interested in furthering dignity or if they are only interested in destroying that which is unique and stands out. Equivalences do not further Equality. To deny that which is special is a hateful act.

Nobel Peace Prize to Member of Terror-linked Group, No Questions Asked

anti-government rally outside Sanaa University. Photograph: Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

(by Ryan Mauro October 17, 2011 at 3:30 AM via HUDSON NY / image via Left Hand of Feminism)

On October 7, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to three women's rights activists, including the first Arab woman winner. Her name is Tawakul Karman; she is a member of a Muslim Brotherhood party with an Al-Qaeda-linked official as one of its senior leaders. The committee chairman acknowledged her membership and said the West's opinion of the Muslim Brotherhood is wrong. To the committee, the Islamist ideology -- complete with leaders who recommend suicide bombings and provide material support to terrorists -- and peace are not mutually exclusive.
Karman is a 32-year old journalist with three children. She leads an organization called, Women Journalists Without Chains. To her credit, she has fought for women's rights and has been imprisoned for challenging Yemeni President Saleh. She was instrumental in the Arab Spring's manifestation in Yemen, and is an adversary of the Salafists. She wants legislation passed against child marriage. She boldly stopped wearing the niqab in 2004 and appeared on television without it.
Although these are admirable causes, the fact remains that Karman chooses to sit on the Shura Council of Islah, the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Islah was founded in 1990 and has three pillars of support: Tribes, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists. The Islamist party has been extremely critical of Yemen's relationship with the U.S. and wants a religious police to "promote virtue and curb vice." It has been revealed that Anwar al-Awlaki hid in three homes owned by Islah members before he was killed by an American drone. One home belonged to Amin al-Okaimi, the chairman of Islah. The second safehouse was owned by al-Awlaki's driver, whose brother is a high-level Islah official. The third house was Sheikh Abdul Majid al-Zindani's, a co-founder of Islah that can be referred to as Yemen's version of Shiekh Yousef al-Qaradawi.
Zindani's leadership role in Islah proves that the party is not moderate by any standard. In 2004, the U.S. Treasury Department labeled him a "specially designated terrorist" for arming, recruiting and funding for Al-Qaeda. He also has links to Ansar al-Islam, an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq. A U.S. federal court said that he coordinated the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and a lawsuit accuses him of having personally chosen the two suicide bombers for the attack.
The university he founded in Sanaa has been indoctrinating students since its founding in 1993. John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" who was captured while fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan, went to school here. Anwar al-Awlaki did as well, and even was a lecturer from 2004 to 2005. The terrorist who tried to set off a bomb in his underwear onboard a flight to Detroit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was also in Sanaa during this time for "education." It has not been proven, but there is a reasonable suspicion that Abdulmutallab and al-Awlaki met at Zindani's school.
Zindani is very close to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. He is an official with the Union of Good, a network of charities overseen by Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, the top Muslim Brotherhood theologian. This network is used by Hamas for fundraising. In April 2006, Zindani met with Khaled Mashall, the leader of Hamas, at a fundraiser in Yemen. Zindani urged the crowd to donate to Hamas.
Islah claims that Zindani has no connection to Al-Qaeda or terrorism at all. Even if that were true, his extremist preaching should be enough for Yemeni democratic activists to condemn him: He speaks in favor of Hamas' suicide bombings and preaches that "an Islamic state is coming." He is fervently anti-American, telling his followers that the "so-called war on terror is in fact a war against Islam." It logically follows that Muslims who fight the U.S. military engaged in the war on terror are defending Islam.
Tawakul Karman's fight for women's rights and free elections has drawn the ire of some of her Islah colleagues. Zindani is in favor of allowing underage girls to get married to full-grown men. Some clerics in the opposition have spoken out against her. This is positive, but as Michael Rubin writes, "Karman may be honorable, but certainly it is worth asking her how she can affiliate with a party whose co-founder embraces such positions."
She may argue that Islah is the most viable alternative to Saleh, but the opposition umbrella group to which Islah belongs is diverse. Why stick with Islah? If she feels that the other parties are no better, then why not create her own? She is a rock star in the Arab world and certainly has the following to start her own party.
The Nobel Peace Prize committee did not even begin asking these questions. In fact, the chairman even upheld the Muslim Brotherhood as a positive force. Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said that the group knew about her Muslim Brotherhood ties, acknowledging that "in the West [it] is perceived as a threat to democracy." To him, her Brotherhood affiliation was far from a disqualifier. He said the West is wrong to fear the group. "I don't believe that [the West's view]. There are many signals that, that kind of movement can be an important part of the solution."
The Nobel Peace Prize committee is supposed to recognize those who fight for human rights, justice, peace and good-will. Instead, it has honored a prominent member of a Muslim Brotherhood party that has an Al-Qaeda-linked preacher of hate among its leadership. The Nobel Peace Prize committee has lost whatever credibility it had left.

She shows no sign of reform beyond her twat, which is fine... but hardly worthy of praise.