Pakistani Rangers arrest LeJ leader involved in Daniel Pearl murder.

Pakistani Rangers arrest LeJ leader involved in Daniel Pearl murder.(TE).KARACHI: Rangers arrested the former president of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi’s (LeJ) Sindh chapter during a raid in Karachi on Sunday, reported Express News.

Qari Abdul Hayee, alias Asadullah, was allegedly involved in the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl. He was arrested in 2003 from Multan over his suspected involvement in planning and carrying out the kidnapping and murder of Pearl.

Hayee is also wanted in several other criminal cases, including helping his accomplice, Riaz Basra, in escaping from the Lahore sessions court in 1994.

Rangers shifted him to an undisclosed location for interrogation.

Targeted operations were initiated in sensitive areas of Karachi after two bomb blasts –in Quetta and Karachi – targeted the minority Shia community killing more than 190 people.

The LeJ had claimed responsibility for the Quetta blast and had threatened to exterminate all Shias.

Following the attack, LeJ leader Malik Ishaq and his son Malik Muhammad Usman were detained for a month. Several other members of the banned outfit were also arrested during separate raids.

A black warrant had been issued in January, 1994 against Hayee for his involvement in the Shehr Sultan killings. Police investigations showed that Hayee had thrown grenades on a Shia mosque in Sher Sultan and resorted to indiscriminate fire along with his two accomplices in the attack. About half a dozen people died and Sher Sultan police registered a case against the accused.

At one point, his capture carried a bounty amounting to Rs2 million.

Hayee was arrested and had been awarded the death sentence by the Dera Ghazi Khan anti-terrorism court on six counts for killing six people in the Shehr Sultan attack.

Hayee was also a close aide of Riaz Basra, the founder of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and had reportedly met Taliban chief Mullah Omar once in Afghanistan during his years-long stay there.

The accused had helped LeJ in militant training in Afghanistan and allegedly trained hundreds of terrorists. He is considered a specialist in bomb manufacturing and had shifted from Afghanistan to Karachi after the fall of the Afghan Taliban in 2002.Read the full story here.

Judea Pearl: Anti-Zionism “the worst form of racism.”

Judea Pearl: Anti-Zionism is Racism.(Forward)HT: IsraelMatzav.Those who came to hear Judea Pearl speak last night at an event sponsored by the Simon Wiesenthal Center‘s Museum of Tolerance might have expected to be offered an array of numbers, shown detailed charts or even be given a sense of whether anti-Semitism was getting better or worse. Instead, he handed them something else entirely.
Pearl, father of slain reporter Daniel Pearl, used the annual lecture on the “state of anti-Semitism” to upend conventional thinking, and argue that anti-Zionism is a strain of hate that is far more dangerous to Jews than anti-Semitism.
He called anti-Zionism, which he defined as the denial of Israel’s right to exist in the family of nations, as “the worst form of racism.” Unlike anti-Semitism, he said, it carries a measure of social acceptance, and it “hides itself in the cloak of political debate.”
Those who think anti-Semitism, especially as it colors debate about Israel in the United States, is the greater danger are mistaken, Pearl told the crowd in his opening address on Monday night. Jews, he said, have become experts at fighting anti-Semitism, likening it to a disease in which “the antibodies are known.”
“Anti-Zionism is worse. It is harder to fight. It comes in a camouflage that allows it to penetrate vital tissue undetected,” he said. Then he paused briefly and added, “Like at our universities.”
The elder Pearl said he believes his son “was murdered by anti-Zionists, not anti-Semitists.” While acknowledging he had not watched the videos taken by his son’s captors, Pearl said the photos hanging in the background had been described to him, and all were anti-Israel and anti-American.
Pearl, who was born in Tel Aviv, speaks with an Israeli accent that sometimes makes it hard to understand his exact words. But there is no mistaking his passionate defense of Israel and his belief in the Jews’ historical connection to the land. Asked about those who criticized Israeli government’s policies, he answered that he thought anti-Zionism often was lurking beneath their words.
In his speech, Pearl called anti-Zionism “morally appalling and strategically harder to fight.
“Anti-Zionism targets the most vulnerable part of the Jewish people, the 6 million people of Israel. It condemns them to eternal statelessness in a very bad neighborhood,” he said.
He encouraged the use of the r-word, to call out as “racists” those who deny Israel’s right to exist.
“First, they are stunned. Then the debate shifts … into our core issue,” which is that they are denying the Jewish people that which is granted to other nations.
In a question handed up from the audience, Pearl was asked what he thought about Jews who say they are anti-Zionists. “That’s easy,” he responded. “It’s a ticket for social acceptance.”Hmmmm......Anti Zionism the ' political waiver' to practice Anti - Semitism.Read the full story here.