Yemini man yells 'God is great', pounds on cockpit prior to landing

On Sunday, a man with a Yemeni passport ran towards the front of the plane 20 minutes before landing and began yelling and banging on the cockpit door. Passengers report the man, identified as Rageh Almurisi, 28, yelled "God is great" in Arabic. Almurisi was subsequently tackled to the ground by a flight attendant, with help from a former Secret Service agent and retired police officer who happened to be on-board American Airlines flight 1561 from Chicago to San Francisco.

Larry Wright, the ex-cop who took him down, said he was sure Almurisi intended to crash the plane. Still, others prefer to believe he mistook the cockpit for the bathroom.

Almurisi now faces one count of interfering with a flight crew, a charge that could lead to up to a maximum of 20 years in prison. On Friday the court will decide if he can be released on bail.

On Sunday there were two other incidents of flight security scares. A continental flight from Houston to Chicago was forced to land in St. Lois after an Illinois man tried to open a door near the front of the plane. And a Delta flight from Detroit to San Diego was diverted to Albuquerque because of a "security threat".

Meanwhile, in an similar vein, flights landing in or departing from Tel Aviv were diverted to Cyprus or Jordan after Israeli fuel supplies were found to be contaminated by bacteria.

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say that governments are trying to scare passengers and thereby reduce the frequency of air travel, as a result of rising oil prices worldwide, in the wake of Middle East unrest and the uncertainty regarding the future of Libya's oil. One way or another, these days, a safe flight is not to be taken for granted.

Of course these incidents could very well be the first wave of revenge after the killing of Osama bin Laden last week. It is yet to be told if global terror will surge or subside in the wake of bin Laden's takeout. According to Rav Moshe Wolfson of Yeshivat Torah V'Daas brought to us by Rabbi Lazer Brody, bin Laden's fall signals the immanent fall of Yishmael. And the fall of Yishmael signals the approaching redemption, hinted to by the fact that bin Laden died on the last day of what will be Pesach Moshiach--the seven days of rejoicing that will be added on to Passover to celebrate the miracles of our final redemption. 

Amen ken yehi ratzon

Explosions at bin Laden compound

Two explosions were reported late Sunday in the vicinity of bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Some say the house was demolished by Pakistani authorities to prevent the house from becoming a shrine (same explanation as the sea burial).

Nasrallah flees South Lebanon residence

The Kuwaiti daily El-Siyassa reports that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has changed his personal security arrangement and location in Southern Lebanon to avoid a potential US assassination, in the wake of the bin Laden raid in Pakistan on Sunday. According to the paper, Western intelligence officials have considered taking out Nasrallah to weaken global terrorist infrastructure and Iranian influence in the region. The elimination of Nasrallah would mean the end of Hezbollah, sources say.

 הנה אויביך ה' הנה אויביך יאבדו יתפרדו על פעלי און

Behold, Your enemies, o God, Your enemies shall perish, all evildoers shall be scattered 

--Psalm 92

Bin Laden, Afghanistan, and the new war on terror

US Dept. of Defense Central Command Responsibility Map

Prior to the bin Laden raid, Pakistani-U.S. relations were strained after an escalation in U.S. air strikes on Taliban strongholds along the Pakistani-Afghan border, in which Pakistani civilian casualties were not uncommon. In April, Pakistani Army Chief General Ashqaf Kayani ordered the U.S. to stop the use of drones and expel troops from the country. The U.S. was caught in a quagmire: On the one hand, the war Afghanistan could not be won without monitoring the Pakistani-Afghan border--as evidenced by the site of bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan. On the other hand, Pakistan is a sovereign country, whose goodwill and cooperation was essential to U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Pakistan proper.

According to the UK Daily Mail, the bin Laden raid was directly preceded by a string of visits of US officials and senior generals to Pakistan to discuss growing tensions. One week prior to the raid, U.S. General David Petraeus and his Pakistani counterpart met in a heavily guarded airbase in Pakistan. After the meeting, the US embassy lauded the generals' relationship. Some say Petraeus informed Kayani of the raid, explaining why despite the anger and emberassment of Pakistani politicians, no military response against the U.S. has surfaced.

What did the U.S. and Pakistan have to gain from a bin Laden kill (or, for the skeptics out there--a bin Laden kill story)? On Thursday, Pakistan's army decided to reduce US troops in the country to the essential minimum. On Friday, the Pentagon offered that it was up to Pakistan whether US troops would remain there or not.

With the backdrop of growing unrest in the Arab world, the U.S. military is now strained on three fronts, none of which appear to lead to victory: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. The war in Afghanistan was launched to capture bin Laden and destory al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Bin Laden's gone, and much of al-Qaeda's infrastructure in Afghanistan has been long gone. In fact, many say the effect of the Afghan war has been none other than to relocate Al-Qaeda to Yemen.

The U.S. needs to free up its military resources -- personnel, technology and funds -- to deal with the Arab front. Libya may not be in the current interest of the American public, but it will become increasingly that the Arab street cannot solve its problems on its own, and that unchecked unrest will open the gates of Yemen's Al Qaeda camps to surrounding countries--and no American wants another 9/11. Yesterday in Syria, 36 protesters were killed. Today, tanks entered one Syrian town and cut off phone and electricity as punishment to demonstrators. According to Hilal Khasha, professor of political Science at American University in Beirut, “A collapse of the Syrian regime is a doomsday scenario for the entire Middle East.’’ Civil war in Syria could spread to Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and worse--and the U.S. knows it needs to influence the outcome.

After Libya, Obama and his aides learned the hard way how reluctant the American public and Congress are to start a third front. Future interventions could only be successful if one of the lingering fronts bore some fruit -- and what better fruit than Enemy of the State par excellence? The problem is, the war in Afghanistan may be an insurmountable challenge for U.S. ground troops, but it cannot be so easily abandoned. Days after the bin Laden raid, the Taliban carried out a coordinated attack involving six suicide bombers who took over an Afghani governor's office. Not quite the environment for the U.S. to slip out the back door.

However, that may be just what the U.S. has to do. Afghanistan and Pakistan will need to be monitored, but the question is whether U.S. troops are the ones to do the job. In an ideal U.S. world, Pakistan will cooperate with U.S. officials in counter-terrorism efforts, and NATO will clean up the post-bin Laden damage Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the U.S. can claim a victory in the war on terror, instill in the minds of Americans that wars are successful and necessary, and move on to far greater threats.

The U.S. needs to find the right balance between respecting Arab sovereignty and not alienating the moderate Arab public on the one hand, and soliciting Arab support in the war on terror on the other. The backroom conversations leading up to the bin Laden raid represent what may have been the first success of this new strategy. Let's hope that the U.S. finds the levelheaded generals and politicians westward to empower regimes who share an interest in squelching Iran and al-Qaeda. The moderate Arab world may not be Israel's best friend, but right now, they are their worst enemy's enemy.

Gilui Eliyahu on 9/11

In honor of the (alleged) killing of Bin Laden, we bring here an amazing story about the way in which nine New York Jews were saved on the morning of 9/11. This story appeared on Belief.net and was reprinted from the book Small Miracles for the Jewish Heart by Yitta Halberstam & Judith Leventhal:

In a small, makeshift synagogue not far from the Twin Towers, Orthodox Jewish professionals regularly meet early each morning for daily prayer services. Usually there is no problem rounding up a minyan (quorum of ten men required to pray) and the cramped quarters often overflow with worshipers. But on the morning of September 11th, there was an uncommon dearth of available men. Perhaps they had decided to remain that morning at their resident shuls for the important selichos services that precede the High Holidays. Or, perhaps, they were participating in the shloshim (one month anniversary) memorial services for the Jews who had been killed in the Grand Canyon helicopter crash. Two hundred men who worked in the World Trade Center, were, in fact, late to work that morning because of their participation in the shloshim service. But whatever the reason, the congregants were faced with a problem: only nine men were present, and time was marching on. These were serious men, professionals, and all had to be at their desks at the World Trade Center well before 9:00 a.m.

“What should we do?” they asked each other, impatiently tapping their wrist watches, as they paced the floors. “This situation hasn’t happened in ages! Where is everybody?”

“I’m sure a tenth man will come along soon,” someone else soothed. “We have to be patient.”

The men waited, restless and tense. Some of them were already running late. Finally, when they had all but given up and were going to resort to individual prayer (instead of the preferred communal one), an old man whom nobody had ever seen before shuffled in the door.

“Did you daven (pray) yet?” he asked, looking at he group.

“No, sir!” one shouted jubilantly. “We’ve been waiting for you!”

“Wonderful,” the elderly man responded. “I have to say kaddish (a special prayer recited on the yahrzeit, the anniversary of a close family member’s death) for my father and I have to daven before the omed (lead the prayer services). I’m so glad that you didn’t start yet.”

Under normal circumstances, the men would have asked the gentleman polite questions: what was his name, where was he from, how did he come to their obscure shul? By now, however, they were frantic to start and decided to bypass protocol. They hastily handed the man a siddur (prayer book), hoping he would prove himself to be the Speedy Gonzales of daveners (prayers).

The old man proved to be anything but. He seemed to rifle the pages of the siddur in agonizingly slow motion. Indeed, every gesture and movement that the man made seemed deliberately unhurried, protracted, and prolonged. The worshipers were respectful but definitely on shpilkes (pins and needles) to get to work.

“Oy!” someone smacked his forehead in frustration. “Are we going to be late!”

That’s when they heard the first explosion: the horrible blast that would forever shake their souls.

They ran outside and saw the smoke, the chaos, the screaming crowds, the apocalypse that lay before them.

It should have been us. After the initial shock and horror, consciousness dawned on them quickly. They realized they had been rescued from the jaws of death. Each and every one of them worked in the Twin Towers. Each and every one of them was supposed to be there before nine. Had it not been for the elderly man and his slow-motion schacharis (morning services), they probably would have been killed.

They turned to thank him, this mystery man who had saved their lives. They wanted to hug him in effusive gratitude and find out his name and where he had come from on that fateful morning.

But they’ll never know the answers to these questions that nag at them to this day-when they turned around to embrace him, the man was gone, his identity forever a mystery.

במהרה יבוא אלינו עם משיח בן דוד

Something's fishy about Osama's deep-sea burial

After Osama bin Laden was reportedly killed in a raid by U.S. forces in Pakistan, U.S. officials supposedly rushed to bury the body within 24 hours, in accordance with Islamic law. According to one US official, finding a country willing to accept his remains would be "difficult", so the decision was made to bury him at sea. However, burial at sea, a common practice for fallen naval veterans, is not commonly allowed according to Islamic law, according to Al-Islam.org:

• It is obligatory to bury a dead body in the ground, so deep that its smell does not come out and the beasts of prey do not dig it out, and, if there is a danger of such beasts digging it out then the grave should be made solid with bricks, etc.

• If a person dies on a ship and if there is no fear of the decay of the dead body and if there is no problem in retaining it for sometime on the ship, it should be kept on it and buried in the ground after reaching the land. Otherwise, after giving Ghusl, Hunut, Kafan and Namaz-e-Mayyit it should be lowered into the sea in a vessel of clay or with a weight tied to its feet. And as far as possible it should not be lowered at a point where it is eaten up immediately by the sea predators.

• If it is feared that an enemy may dig up the grave and exhume the dead body and amputate its ears or nose or other limbs, it should be lowered into sea, if possible, as stated in the foregoing rule.

If the goal here is respecting Muslim burial law, which in itself is quite spurious, why rush to meet the 24-hour deadline, and yet break another considerably even more serious guideline, namely, to bury the dead in the ground? Falling back on an American public both glaringly ignorant on Islam and yet apologetically obsequious to Muslim sensitivities, this administration seems quite eager to bury something or other.