By Debbie Schlussel

When The New York Times, “Nightline,” and CNN nominate a young blonde for sainthood ahead of the Pope, it’s time for a reality check.

Especially when that blonde, Marla Ruzicka’s sole purpose is to legitimize our enemies, cause problems for U.S. troops already in harms way, and morally equivocate dead terrorists with victims of 9/11.

Jane Fonda lite—but unfortunately without having been spat upon by right-thinking veterans.

The recent death of Ruzicka, an American “activist” in Iraq, elicited an orgy of gush—everywhere from Time Magazine to The Guardian of London to Al-Jazeera.

A 28-year-old San Franciscan, Ruzicka was in Iraq “to help the Iraqi people,” proclaim the multi-orgasmic mainstream media memorials to her.  Even the Wall Street Journal’s normally excellent Robert Pollock mourned “Ambassador Marla” for being a less gnarly America-hater than the others.

Et tu, Robert?

With her cascading blonde hair and youthful looks, Ruzicka didn’t look like your average greasy-haired, pot-smoking, hackey-sack-playing, crunchy radical.  And the media swooned over her, the newly-anointed Vanity Fair pin-up in Birkenstocks.

But looks are deceiving.  Marla Ruzicka was nothing more than a traitor cross-dressing as a peace activist.

She formed the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), the goal of which was anything but CIVIC during the War on Terror or ever.  Ruzicka’s aim was to force the U.S. government to get an “accurate” count of “innocent civilian” deaths by U.S. troops and blackmail America into paying monetary settlements for each death.

But many of those dead included assorted terrorists, jihadists, and other collaborators and uprisers against Americans.  Ruzicka had the gall to insist that these Afghani and Iraqi dead, terrorists or not, get recognition and sympathy equal to victims of the 9/11 attacks.

More outrageous, Ruzicka got taxpayer money to fund her aiding-and-abetting pursuits.  Where was Marla Ruzicka on 9/11?  Hint:  Not asking Al-Qaeda for money to count and compensate U.S. victims of terror.

Ruzicka began as a professional protester for left-wing groups in her native San Francisco.  First, she was active with the anti-capitalist, anti-business Rainforest Action Network activist.  Then, she was an AIDS activist, interrupting an AIDS-related speech by Colin Powell.  As an anti-Bush protester, she wore a sarong with a protest-statement visible after she ripped it off her body in front of the then-Texas Governor.

Eventually, Ruzicka joined far-left Human Rights Watch and Global Exchange, falling  down another rung in bad fashion taste and dumping the sarong for a hijab, as she traveled first to Afghanistan and then to Iraq.  She didn’t wear the hijab out of any new-found sense of Pan-Arabia modesty, but rather to be down with her new Islamist homies.

Ruzicka went to Iraq as an activist for Code Pink, which is more aptly titled “Code Pinko” by FrontPageMag.com writer Jean Pearce.  Code Pink is an assortment of neo-Commie America-haters who love Fidel Castro (and Cuba under him) and Marxist Sandinista thugs (thankfully, long ago deposed) and have ties to environmental terrorist groups (Animal Liberation Front and Environmental Liberation Front).

That’s bad enough.

But in Iraq, where Ruzicka traveled with the group, Code Pink functioned as a Pro-Saddam—and now pro-Insurgent—group of traitorous Americans.  Code Pink was in Iraq in October 2002, months before U.S. troops went in to the country, the following March.  The darlings of Al-Jazeera (and our own media, unfortunately) Code Pinkos acted as human shields and anti-American protesters in the Iraqi streets, much to Saddam Hussein’s delight.

But it gets worse.

Remember the Americans burnt to a crisp and hung from a bridge in the Fallujah uprising?  Code Pink donated over $650,000 to those Fallujah terrorists (Code Pinkos call them “refugees.”)

Back on U.S. soil, Code Pink harasses badly wounded American soldiers, protesting them outside the Walter Reed medical facility in Washington, DC.  Code Pinkos disrupted last week’s Congressional confirmation hearings on UN Ambassador nominee John Bolton, shouting and unfurling banners against him.  They are also shadowing military recruiters to foil recruiting efforts.  The upside: there won’t be enough soldiers to protect Code Pinkos’ rights and freedoms.

This is Marla Ruzicka’s beloved Code Pink.  It’s time to stop worshipping at the alter of this false heroine.

There are plenty of young American men and women Ruzicka’s age and younger who’ve been brutalized or killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  But none of them got the wall-to-wall fawning coverage that Ruzicka got—unless they were anally raped or formerly played pro football.

That should tell you something about the media’s outlook on whose life is more worthy and whose death is more important:  American soldiers fighting for freedom—bad;  vociferous activist bimbette hampering those American soldiers and helping their terrorist killers—very, very good.

While it’s a sad day when any American gets killed by Islamic terrorists, it’s measurably less sad when that American aided and abetted them—and belittled our troops.

For Marla Ruzicka, a/k/a Treasonatrix Barbie, some might call it, poetic justice.

By Debbie Schlussel

The strange new equality of the Islamic jihad has arrived on our shores.

Yet, feminist Martha Burk is complaining about women wearing pink.

Thursday, The New York Times reported that two 16-year-old girls from New York City were arrested in March because they planned homicide bombings.

Saying they are “from New York City” is kind of a stretch.  The girls were actually from Bangladesh and Guinea and are in the U.S. illegally, as are their families.  Both families have overstayed their visas—and welcomes—by more than a decade.

The strange new jihadist feminism—where women are equal nowhere except when  blowing themselves up—is nothing new to the Islamic Middle East.

Female homicide bombers, like Wafa Idris, Abu Asiyah (who has a man’s nom de guerre, but isn’t one), and Dalal El Mughrabi, are honored as “role models” and “heroines” by Muslim societies.  They are honored with statues, posters, and as clues in Islamic newspaper crossword puzzles.

Palestinian Authority TV ran M-TV style music videos, in which a female singer becomes a warrior for the jihad encouraging violence and singing of her desire to die as a homicide bombing martyr.  Islamic newspaper, Al Hayat Al Jadida honors female homicide bombings as the new (if deadly) Islamic feminism:  “These actions . . . . attest to the Palestinian woman’s capability to perform successful actions.”  Raviha Diyav of the Palestinian Women Union called female homicide bombings an illustration of “the determination and resolve of the Palestinian women to participate as full partners in the national struggle.”

Full partners?

While they are second-class citizens in Islam, these women are, literally, exploding the glass ceiling.  The only problem is that there’s no room for career advancement—except as one of 72 virgins—at the next level.

But that’s half way around the world.  Or so we thought.

Now, this new “equality” is on our shores.  How many illegal jihadist femme-literally-fatales are here on our soil?

And what is the feminist response?  Are feminist leaders publicly lamenting the radical Islamist teachings that give women no equality, but encourage them to kill themselves and others in our society which has that equality Islamists hate?

No.  Instead, feminist leaders, like Martha Burk, have resurfaced in yet another fine whine against corporate America and . . . fashion?

That’s right.  She’s baaaack!  Martha Burk—the woman who in 2003 failed to bully Augusta National Golf Club into allowing female members—is now decrying women’s clothing.

Not the hijabs, nikabs, chadors, abayas, and burkas that symbolize the degradation of women in Islamist life.  Nope.  Not the patterned kefiyeh scarves adorning Islamic female homicide bombers.

No, Martha Burk is decrying the color pink.  Not just for her own harsh visage, which could badly use some pastels.  But for all American women.    Pink is “retro in the worst sense of the word,” Burk told The New York Times Sunday Magazine.  “We are back in the 50’s.”

Yes, it’s not the hijab-encrusted would-be homicidal jihadists on our shores that Martha Burk-a is worried about.  It’s the pretty blonde girls wearing pink mini-skirts and polo shirts we should be scared of.  Right?

Actually, in Islamist Iran, there is a “pink revolution” going on.  Women who cover themselves in the hijab—by force, not choice—are wearing bright pink to symbolize their rebellion against the fundamentalist Islamic theocracy.

But Burk doesn’t encourage that kind of rebellion, and it’s not surprising.  Her hypocrisy on women’s rights, when it comes to Islam, is legion.

Burk says President Bush is not helpful to women.  “He talked about nothing besides liberating the women of Afghanistan and Iraq,” she complained.  That’s one more country than Burk complained about.

While Burk was fighting for the rights of a few billionatrixes to invade a private golf club, she said nothing about women fighting for their rights in dozens of Islamic countries around the world.  She said something about Afghani women, well after our largely MALE troops liberated them.

What Burk does stand for are groups like Equality Now and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), two of many misnamed, wacko members of Burk’s National Council of Women’s Organizations.  Both have ties to Islamic terrorists.

Equality Now serves as the U.S. mouthpiece for an organization that boycotts Israeli products and helps raise money to rebuild homes and buildings used for Palestinian terrorism.  The homes on the border of Gaza and Egypt hide tunnels for smuggling homicide belts and other weaponry to Palestinian terrorists.  The rebuilding campaign lists Rania Masri, who enthusiastically appeared with indicted Islamic Jihad terrorist leader Sami Al-Arian, countless times.

WILPF’s website called Palestinian terrorism, “legitimate resistance” and promoted a class-action lawsuit by HAMAS attorney Stanley Cohen on behalf of “Palestinian-Americans” against President Bush, Israel, Ariel Sharon, churches and synagogues, for assorted conspiracies.  Cohen represented HAMAS political director Moussa Abu Marzook and other HAMAS operatives.  He proudly displays a photo of himself and late HAMAS leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in his office and was a law partner of convicted lawyer Lynne Stewart who enabled her client, convicted terrorist Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, to send terrorist messages.

No, instead of feminists like Martha Burk decrying American Islamic girls’ high ambitions of homicide bombing and jihad, they have their priorities straight:

Male golf clubs, pink clothes for White chicks?  Bad.

Terror by HAMAS, Islamic Jihad? Good.

Islamic terrorism on our own soil?  Thank Heaven for little (Islamist) girls.

By Debbie Schlussel

Being an unwed teen mother is “a badge of honor,” right?

That was the scheduled message of this week’s “American Idol,” courtesy of Fantasia Barrino.

Barrino—the young unwed, single mother who won last season’s “AI”— was set to showcase her biggest song, “Baby Mama,” according to weeks of press reports.

Fortunately, at the last minute, she performed another song.

“Baby Mama” couldn’t send a worse message to young American girls—and boys—that watch the show in droves.

Barrino sings that being a “Baby Mama”— an unwed, single mother—is a good thing, “Cuz now-a-days, it [sic] like a badge of honor to be a baby mama.”

Oh, really?  Maybe Fantasia won’t be singing that tune when her daughter, Zion, becomes a teen “Baby Mama” herself.

American teenage girls show a strong tendency to engage in early sex and get pregnant, if they grew up from infancy without a father present, according to a long-term study detailed in scientific journal Child Development Magazine.

Psychologists studied 242 American girls in three U.S. cities for 13 years—from age 5 to age 18.  They found that girls who grew up without a father not only experienced precocious sexuality and pregnancy, but also were more likely to experience poverty and—surprise, surprise—a lack of parental guidance from their mothers.  Fatherless girls were also more likely to have other behavioral, emotional, and academic problems, including school fights and high delinquency rates.

Barrino’s album is entitled “Free Yourself.”  But there is nothing “freeing” about being a single mother.

Teen pregnancy was highest among girls who lived without a father the longest.

They were not only primed for early sexual exploration and reproduction, but they showed an inability to have long-term relationships, preferring multiple, brief sexual relationships.

Attention, Fantasia:  That’s a nice way of saying your daughter has a good chance of becoming a slut.  And you have a good chance of becoming a “Baby Grand Mama”–real soon.

For boys, the impact is not much different.  Boys without a father are more likely to engage in early sex, cause pregnancies, and are twice as likely to use drugs and/or end up in jail, according to the several studies and the National Fatherhood Initiative.

Barrino has the gall to praise a sad basic fact of America’s killing fields.  She sings that she admires unwed, single mothers, “Cuz we the [sic] backbone (of the hood).”  Yes, unfortunately, 2000 Census statistics show that, in impoverished areas and inner cities—a/k/a “the hood(s)”—the majority of births, by a whopping 70% and higher in many such areas, are to unwed, single mothers.

But rather than backbone, they are society’s withering spine.

These facts merit grief—NOT celebration on a show watched by a large cross-section of America’s young demographic.

Fantasia’s nerve goes far.  “I think it should be a holiday for single mothers” she sings.  A holiday?  Perhaps we should have a Lacto-Ovo Differently Digestive Day (for fat vegetarians), too.  But somehow, neither of these seems in need of establishment—on the calendar, on an amateurish televised singing contest, or anywhere else.  Except, maybe, on the Oxygen Channel, where no-one, save a lesbian “Baby Mama,” is watching.

More than 25 million children—over 36%–in America live without their father, according to the National Fatherhood Initiative.    On average, the percentage of births to unmarried women in any state of the Union is a third of all births, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, with Mississippi’s rate topping 45% of all births.  The 2000 Census showed the number of women raising children without fathers at home, grew to 25% nationally between 1990 and 2000.

“AI” shouldn’t be promoting this.  But promote it, they did—through weeks of press fanfare.  “AI” is capitalism at its worst—making a buck, regardless of the damage caused by the defective product they are pimping.

“Baby Mama” is already one of Barrino’s biggest hits.  According to Nielsen Soundscan and USA Today, she sold over 1,000,000 albums and 64,000 downloads of her songs.

That’s bad enough.

Then, “AI’s” new owner, gazillionaire Robert F.X. Sillerman, planned to give Barrino’s harmful anthem glorifying unwed, single motherhood the prime-time spotlight into 29 million homes.

Fortunately, the decision was reversed, and the song was pulled—but only from the show, not her “AI”-produced and promoted  CD.

Sillerman’s also marketing “American Idol” trading cards, clothing, and a Barbie doll.  Will “American Idol” Barbie be a “Baby Mama” Barbie—complete with fatherless, screaming baby in tow?

Barrino blames her status as a “Baby Mama” on an abusive boyfriend, but no-one told her to have a baby with him.  Her message to young, female fans is, it’s not your fault.  “This sh*t ain’t fair,” she sings.

No, the only thing that isn’t fair is the message she is sending about the tragedy of being a “Baby Mama.”

Where is outspoken AI judge and part owner Simon Cowell when he’s most needed?

By Debbie Schlussel

Do overbearing, shoe-removing searches at the airport make you feel safe?  How about the crisp black and white uniforms of screeners since Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) took over?

Sadeq Naji Ahmed is Exhibit A that you are not safer, that the TSA isn’t screening the screeners.  He’s also proof positive that radical Muslims in the military can get away with saying anything, while other soldiers cannot.

For almost two years, Ahmed was a baggage screener at Detroit’s Metro Airport, despite his frightening background.

Ahmed, a Yemeni Muslim since indicted in federal court in Detroit, was honorably discharged from the U.S. Air Force.  That might seem well and good, but the circumstances behind the discharge aren’t so honorable.

Between 1999 and the 9/11 attacks, Ahmed—then an airman stationed at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida—made statements in support of Osama Bin Laden, said he was not against the 9/11 attacks, that the U.S. deserved to be attacked, that he wouldn’t fight if the U.S. took action in Iraq, and that U.S. aircraft over Iraq should crash.

Ahmed was an information systems analyst with security clearances—not a position optimally occupied by an America-hating, Bin Laden booster.

Because of Ahmed’s statements, his security clearance to classified information and restricted areas of the base was suspended on September 17, 2001, and he was assigned administrative duty.  On September 28, 2001—even though he had two months to go on his tour of duty—Ahmed was given an expedited honorable discharge, in order to effect Ahmed’s “removal from the U.S. military as quickly as possible,” according to his indictment.  Rather than do the right thing and court-martial him, the Air Force made his life easier.

Unfortunately, the TSA quickly picked up this hot potato and kept him.

In December 2001, Ahmed became a baggage screener at Metro Airport, when it was handled by a private contractor.  That’s bad enough.

Remember how the TSA was supposed to improve screening security and background checks for screeners, when it took over?  In October 2002, BEFORE doing a background check on him, the TSA hired Ahmed.  He lied on his application regarding the circumstances of his discharge and security clearance loss.

But the lies—for which he’s now being tried by a member of the U.S. Attorney’s Terrorism Task Force—weren’t discovered until August 2003, when Ahmed was terminated.

Almost a full year to do a background check before discovering lies on an application?  Allowing the lying employee on the job for a year before he was screened?  Isn’t the background check supposed to take place BEFORE the employee is hired?

Don’t you feel safer, now that TSA security is in place?

Incredibly, TSA spokeswoman Amy von Walter feels Ahmed’s case demonstrates the diligence of her agency’s background checks.  “This incident highlights the importance of the in-depth background checks performed by the agency,” she told a Detroit newspaper.

No, the incident highlights the incompetence of the agency’s background checks and the absurdity that a pro-Bin Laden, anti-American employee could be on the job for nearly a year before that check is thoroughly conducted.

In the year before he was terminated, the disloyal Ahmed could have easily endangered American travelers’ lives—something to be expected given his pro-Bin Laden, anti-American statements.  He could have easily allowed baggage containing explosives to pass undetected onto aircraft.

But the TSA isn’t the only government agency to blame for Ahmed’s almost two-year reign of possible danger to Americans.  The Air Force deserves its fair share of blame.

Rather than court-martial and dishonorably discharge Ahmed, the Air Force took the meek course and set the stage for possible danger against civilian Americans flying the now not-so-friendly skies.

Had Ahmed been a non-Muslim, the government would have gotten tough.

Soldiers don’t have unfettered free speech rights.  Article 134, known as the “Disloyal Statements” provision of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice provides for penalties by court-martial for “disloyal statements” made “with the intent to promote disloyalty or disaffection toward the United States by any member of the armed forces or to interfere with or impair the loyalty to the United States.”

Ahmed’s treasonous statements fit the U.S. government’s “Manual for Courts Martial‘s” definition of punishable disloyal statements, like a glove:

“Examples include praising the enemy, attacking the war aims of the United States . . . .  A declaration of personal belief can amount to a disloyal statement if it disavows allegiance owed to the United States by the declarant.”

Unlike Ahmed, soldiers have been court-martialed and brought up on Article 134 “disloyal statement” charges for:

• A letter to the editor questioning the war in Iraq;
• Comments to a reporter questioning the war in Iraq, but saying he’d do his part and fight; and
• Telling other soldiers he would not fight in Vietnam if ordered to.

But those soldiers had one thing in common:  Unlike Ahmed, they’re not Muslim.  They didn’t get handled with politically correct kid gloves.  And unlike Ahmed, not one of them praised the enemy and wished for America’s failure.

Yet, Ahmed was rewarded with an honorable discharge and evading his required duty, allowing him to get screening jobs at airports.

And courtesy of weak-kneed U.S. Air Force and incompetent TSA officials, Sadeq Naji Ahmed had almost a year to endanger American passengers lives.

We’re just lucky he didn’t.

By Debbie Schlussel

Normally, it would be unfair to attack Roger Ebert for his addiction to food.

Normally, it would be in poor taste to hold the calorically-gifted film-critic’s insatiable taste-buds against him.

Normally.

But now, Roger Ebert’s irresistible yen for a sandwich is literally his excuse to defend an Islamic terrorist, Ibrahim Parlak.

Parlak, who is under deportation orders, owns a restaurant in Harbert, Michigan—a restaurant Ebert frequents, with apparently great appetite.

In a letter to the U.S. government opposing Parlak’s deportation, Ebert wrote, “[H]e offered to come to my home and prepare special foods for me.”

But haute cuisine for liberal movie critics is no justification for Ibrahim Parlak to remain in the United States.

Parlak is a terrorist and a murderer—facts that celluloid simp Ebert conveniently ignores.  While he might make a mean tossed salad (just like Hillary Clinton), Parlak also makes a mean tossed hand grenade.

Parlak admits he was a member of the PKK, the Kurdish Islamic terrorist group on the State Department’s terrorist list.  But he deliberately hid that he was found responsible for the murder of two Turkish border police, a fact he lied about at least five times— in applications for 1) political asylum, 2) Lawful Permanent Status, 3) citizenship, 4) his restaurant, and 5) a Michigan liquor license.  Had he been truthful from the beginning, Parlak would never have been allowed to stay in the United States in the first place.

Ebert and others want us to reward the lies of a murderous terrorist alien—hardly sound immigration policy.

Carrying an AK-47 and pistol, Parlak threw a grenade and shot at the guards who were murdered.  He claims he accidentally “lost” the grenade but it didn’t detonate, and that he “never used my gun.”  Would that line work for John Dillinger?

The murders took place upon Parlak’s return from a Syrian-run terrorist camp in Lebanon, where he spent eight months and was trained in rifle fire.  Training at those camps then and now are members of terrorist groups Hezbollah, HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, and a host others that tell a lot about the company Roger Ebert’s friend kept before he lied to obtain the benefits of U.S. citizenship.

Yet this murderer and terrorist is “not in any way a threat to the security of the United States,” according to newly-minted terrorism expert Roger Ebert.  “On the contrary, he is precisely the sort of citizen we should make welcome.”  Review a couple of terrorism movies, and suddenly you are a scholar on the topic.

Where was Roger Ebert when Parlak directed Turkish police to a cache of buried PKK munitions?

Parlak raised funds for Islamic terrorist group PKK while living in West Germany in the 1980s.  A Marxist-Leninist insurgent group of Kurds, PKK is responsible for the death of more than 30,000 innocent people, including over 5,000 civilians.  Some of these civilian victims’ “transgressions” were teaching Turkish in school or being moderate Kurdish landlords.

The PKK isn’t just any old terrorist group.  According to the Sunday Times of London, no bastion of right-wing Bush (or even Blair) Administration propaganda, PKK trained with Al-Qaeda.

Abu Mohammed, an Iraqi defector to Turkey, told the Times that he saw Bin Laden’s fighters in Iraqi training camps in 1997. At the time, he was a colonel in Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen. He described an encounter at Salman Pak, the training facility southeast of Baghdad run by Iraqi intelligence, where terrorists-in-training learned to hijack planes with knives on a Boeing 707. “We were met by Colonel Jamil Kamil, the camp manager, and Major Ali Hawas. I noticed that a lot of people were queuing for food. (The major) said to me: ‘You’ll have nothing to do with these people. They are Osama bin Laden’s group and the PKK.'”

This is the group of which Ibrahim Parlak admits he was a member.  But media portrayals, and letters by activist movie critics and liberal academics, make him out to be a hero.

A Sunday New York Times Magazine cover sob-story on Parlak by regular contributor Alex Kotlowitz wasn’t just full of sympathetic drawings, it was replete with false statements and untruths.  Among others, Kotlowitz wrote that Turkey, which wants Parlak for questioning on terrorism, “long ago revoked Parlak’s citizenship,” implying he can’t be deported there.  Actually, Turkey NEVER revoked Parlak’s citizenship, and he should be shipped there at once.  So much for the Times’ fact-checking post-Jayson Blair.

Worse, elected officials like Senator Carl Levin and Rep. Fred Upton are equally fawning.  Attacking the Parlak deportation ruling as “unjust,” Levin called this murderer and terrorist “a peaceful citizen” and is rumored to be considering a “Private Bill” to give Parlak instant U.S. citizenship, a rare honor bestowed on heroes, like the Iraqi lawyer who led troops to Jessica Lynch.  Upton, one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress, says he’s now helping Parlak’s family.

Then, there are Parlak’s lawyers:

• Noel Saleh—An admitted financial supporter of Hezbollah, the thrice-disciplined attorney is suing to overturn the Patriot Act.  He represented “former” PFLP terrorist Imad Hamad and Rabbih Haddad, deported for funding Al Qaeda. Saleh is President and attorney of ACCESS (Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services), which was raided for Medicaid fraud for pregnant Muslim foreigners, and which funded commercial driving lessons for alleged Al-Qaeda members.

• Jay Marhoefer—A member of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff’s former law firm, sources say Marhoefer is on Chertoff’s schedule to lobby him for Parlak’s release from prison and obtaining citizenship.  Connections help terrorists.

It’s time for terrorists—including those loved by ignorant cinematic suck-ups and politicians—to be exported from our country.

Parlak’s restaurant, Café Gulistan—where Roger Ebert likes to eat—is named for the Kurdish word for “land of roses” or paradise.  But America is neither paradise nor rose garden with men like Parlak roaming our shores.

For Ebert and all of America, it’s time the balcony was closed on Ibrahim Parlak’s stay in the U.S.

Normally, it would be unfair to attack Roger Ebert for his addiction to food.

Normally, it would be in poor taste to hold the calorically-gifted film-critic’s insatiable taste-buds against him.

Normally.

But now, Roger Ebert’s irresistible yen for a sandwich is literally his excuse to defend an Islamic terrorist, Ibrahim Parlak.

Parlak, who is under deportation orders, owns a restaurant in Harbert, Michigan—a restaurant Ebert frequents, with apparently great appetite.

In a letter to the U.S. government opposing Parlak’s deportation, Ebert wrote, “[H]e offered to come to my home and prepare special foods for me.”

But haute cuisine for liberal movie critics is no justification for Ibrahim Parlak to remain in the United States.

Parlak is a terrorist and a murderer—facts that celluloid simp Ebert conveniently ignores.  While he might make a mean tossed salad (just like Hillary Clinton), Parlak also makes a mean tossed hand grenade.

Parlak admits he was a member of the PKK, the Kurdish Islamic terrorist group on the State Department’s terrorist list.  But he deliberately hid that he was found responsible for the murder of two Turkish border police, a fact he lied about at least five times— in applications for 1) political asylum, 2) Lawful Permanent Status, 3) citizenship, 4) his restaurant, and 5) a Michigan liquor license.  Had he been truthful from the beginning, Parlak would never have been allowed to stay in the United States in the first place.

Ebert and others want us to reward the lies of a murderous terrorist alien—hardly sound immigration policy.

Carrying an AK-47 and pistol, Parlak threw a grenade and shot at the guards who were murdered.  He claims he accidentally “lost” the grenade but it didn’t detonate, and that he “never used my gun.”  Would that line work for John Dillinger?

The murders took place upon Parlak’s return from a Syrian-run terrorist camp in Lebanon, where he spent eight months and was trained in rifle fire.  Training at those camps then and now are members of terrorist groups Hezbollah, HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, and a host others that tell a lot about the company Roger Ebert’s friend kept before he lied to obtain the benefits of U.S. citizenship.

Yet this murderer and terrorist is “not in any way a threat to the security of the United States,” according to newly-minted terrorism expert Roger Ebert.  “On the contrary, he is precisely the sort of citizen we should make welcome.”  Review a couple of terrorism movies, and suddenly you are a scholar on the topic.

Where was Roger Ebert when Parlak directed Turkish police to a cache of buried PKK munitions?

Parlak raised funds for Islamic terrorist group PKK while living in West Germany in the 1980s.  A Marxist-Leninist insurgent group of Kurds, PKK is responsible for the death of more than 30,000 innocent people, including over 5,000 civilians.  Some of these civilian victims’ “transgressions” were teaching Turkish in school or being moderate Kurdish landlords.

The PKK isn’t just any old terrorist group.  According to the Sunday Times of London, no bastion of right-wing Bush (or even Blair) Administration propaganda, PKK trained with Al-Qaeda.

Abu Mohammed, an Iraqi defector to Turkey, told the Times that he saw Bin Laden’s fighters in Iraqi training camps in 1997. At the time, he was a colonel in Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen. He described an encounter at Salman Pak, the training facility southeast of Baghdad run by Iraqi intelligence, where terrorists-in-training learned to hijack planes with knives on a Boeing 707. “We were met by Colonel Jamil Kamil, the camp manager, and Major Ali Hawas. I noticed that a lot of people were queuing for food. (The major) said to me: ‘You’ll have nothing to do with these people. They are Osama bin Laden’s group and the PKK.'”

This is the group of which Ibrahim Parlak admits he was a member.  But media portrayals, and letters by activist movie critics and liberal academics, make him out to be a hero.

A Sunday New York Times Magazine cover sob-story on Parlak by regular contributor Alex Kotlowitz wasn’t just full of sympathetic drawings, it was replete with false statements and untruths.  Among others, Kotlowitz wrote that Turkey, which wants Parlak for questioning on terrorism, “long ago revoked Parlak’s citizenship,” implying he can’t be deported there.  Actually, Turkey NEVER revoked Parlak’s citizenship, and he should be shipped there at once.  So much for the Times’ fact-checking post-Jayson Blair.

Worse, elected officials like Senator Carl Levin and Rep. Fred Upton are equally fawning.  Attacking the Parlak deportation ruling as “unjust,” Levin called this murderer and terrorist “a peaceful citizen” and is rumored to be considering a “Private Bill” to give Parlak instant U.S. citizenship, a rare honor bestowed on heroes, like the Iraqi lawyer who led troops to Jessica Lynch.  Upton, one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress, says he’s now helping Parlak’s family.

Then, there are Parlak’s lawyers:

• Noel Saleh—An admitted financial supporter of Hezbollah, the thrice-disciplined attorney is suing to overturn the Patriot Act.  He represented “former” PFLP terrorist Imad Hamad and Rabbih Haddad, deported for funding Al Qaeda. Saleh is President and attorney of ACCESS (Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services), which was raided for Medicaid fraud for pregnant Muslim foreigners, and which funded commercial driving lessons for alleged Al-Qaeda members.

• Jay Marhoefer—A member of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff’s former law firm, sources say Marhoefer is on Chertoff’s schedule to lobby him for Parlak’s release from prison and obtaining citizenship.  Connections help terrorists.

It’s time for terrorists—including those loved by ignorant cinematic suck-ups and politicians—to be exported from our country.

Parlak’s restaurant, Café Gulistan—where Roger Ebert likes to eat—is named for the Kurdish word for “land of roses” or paradise.  But America is neither paradise nor rose garden with men like Parlak roaming our shores.

For Ebert and all of America, it’s time the balcony was closed on Ibrahim Parlak’s stay in the U.S.

By Debbie Schlussel

Oops.  Lawrence Summers isn’t from Hollywood, and he’s not a sexy starlet from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or “Sex and the City.”

If only he underwent an “Extreme Makeover” to fit these characteristics, Summers might get away with his comments about lack of women in the sciences in academia.

After all, the Harvard President–who continues to be under fire for attributing gender differences to a lack of women in the sciences–recently suffered a vote of no confidence by Harvard professors.

Yet, this past weekend’s Disney movie, “Ice Princess,” said the same thing as Summers, without the whines and shrieks of condemnation.

In fact, there’s hardly a peep about “Ice Princess” from the normally boisterous female Harvard professors who’ve been so harsh on Summers.  And hardly a peep from the cornucopia of others who quickly got on the bandwagon to label Summers a male chauvinist.

Starring “Buffy’s” Michelle Trachtenberg, “Ice Princess” is the story every Harvard chick prof and assorted other feminists would despise.  Casey Carlyle, a high-school geek genius, is on the fast track to Harvard and a prestigious scholarship and career in physics.  Other girls are spending their summers going to the beach, seeing movies, and doing other things normal teen-age girls do, but not Casey.  She’s doing a summer project on the physics of ice-skating moves.

But like any normal red-blooded, teen-aged American girl—not the abnormal kind about which Harvard chick profs fantasize—Casey soon becomes enchanted by the girlish ice-skating moves, costumes, and make-up.  More enchanted with those than the unsexy, unfeminine boredom of studying physics—at Harvard or elsewhere.

While Casey’s unglamorous, hardened feminist single mother rants against the form-fitting, short-skirted ice-skating outfits that “set us women back fifty years,” Casey is secretly wearing one of those outfits and loving it and the boy Zamboni driver a whole lot more than physics.

Spoiler alert:  In the end Casey, the now-babe, chucks Harvard, a science scholarship, and a future as a physicist for the world of ice bunnies and competitive skating.  Lawrence Summers—and the laws of human nature—couldn’t have written it better—or differently.

“Ice Princess” was the weekend’s fourth place box office finisher overall, but it was the number one movie for pre-teen and early teen girls, the ultimate end-users in the Summers vs. militant chick profs debate.

Woe is the Harvard female academic set.  They may be able to attack Lawrence Summers with their butch angst.  But they and their holy science can’t compete with Mother Nature and the natural appeal of girlish things, like ice-skating, short skirts, make-up, and boys.  The appeal of this movie proves that.  If Casey Carlyle remained a geeky, awkward science nerd and went to Harvard, there would be no movie – except maybe at Young Lesbians of America vegan potluck meetings (tofu dessert).

While there’s nothing wrong with women pursuing careers in science, there’s a reason most of them don’t:  their natural tendencies are toward other things.  Most women in America don’t want to grow up being bitter, ugly feminist biddies, like Casey’s pushy Harvard-loving mother (played by Joan Cusack).  They’d rather grow up to be like Casey’s attractive skating coach (minus the deceit), played by “Sex & the City’s” Kim Catrall (minus the sex).  They want to be glamorous and feminine, be mothers and wear make-up.

(No, it’s not about sex.  The most risqué shot in this movie is a cameo of Michelle Kwan in a low-cut shirt displaying a silicone valley of deep cleavage.)

For those who think this is a movie that promotes women in sports, fuhgedaboutit.  There would never be a “Hardcourt Princess” about the WNBA.  Ice-skating is the only women’s sport that’s actually feminine, that could actually be legitimately juxtaposed against physics to make its point about women’s natural tendencies in life-choices and career decisions.

About the only thing feminist profs at Harvard would like about “Ice Princess” is its only bad message.  The movie’s absolute lack of men and fathers sends the wrong message to young girls and makes it a bizarre “Twilight Zone.”   Both the sexy coach and pushy, feminist mother are single mothers.  The only father in the movie is pushy and loses out.  He works two jobs to pay for his daughter’s skating career, but in Hollywood—where men are worthless losers—his gamble is worthless. His daughter fails.

I knew there was a reason feminists won’t attack Hollywood over “Ice Princess,” but spare no knives for Lawrence Summers.

Science or not, they want Harvard’s father figure and man-in-chief to be a loser or disappear.  Just like Hollywood.

By Debbie Schlussel

Amidst the Second Coming of Martha Stewart, the Domestic Diva told another big lie.

But not a single member of the pandering media has taken note.

Remember the empathetic Martha’s exhortations from prison about poor treatment of convicts when they’re released from prison?  Stewart decried the lack of employment for convicts.  No-one will hire them, she complained.

No-one, including Martha.

Even before she was released from Camp Cupcake in Alderson, West Virginia, Stewart’s production partner, reality TV king Mark Burnett, was holding auditions for Martha’s version of “The Apprentice.”

A look at the lengthy application on NBC’s website makes it clear:  No ex-cons need apply.

Sure, it doesn’t say that in the fine print.  But you get the message.  Questions like, “Tell us something embarrassing about yourself” (“I shared a metal toilet with Large Marge.”), and “How would your co-workers describe you?” (“Looks good in stripes.”) are on the basic application.

But, as the application specifies, the real weeding out is done with a complete, extensive  background check and a much longer application where criminal history is scrupulously explored.

Burnett, Martha’s reality show partner, has been burned before.  In initial episodes of his first reality hit, “Survivor,” stories abounded regarding show contestants’ rap sheets.

And Burnett has learned his lesson.  That’s why you’ve never seen or heard about so much as a minor misdemeanor in the background of a single contestant in three seasons of “The Apprentice,” the Donald Trump version.

It’s also why you won’t see any ex-cons or even any misdemeanants as contestant’s to become Martha Stewart’s “Apprentice.”

Martha’s compassion for convicts was nice while she was in the Big House.  But now that she’s back at her New York estate and whining about having to exercise while wearing her security “ankle bracelet,” it’s a different story.

That’s the thing about liberals—especially limousine liberals like Martha Stewart.

They always want the rest of us to open our hearts to the world.

To convicted criminals.   To deviants.  To everyone else that would normally not be deserving.

Often, the liberals are wealthy, like Martha, and can afford to be so mindlessly open-hearted.  And often, like Martha, they hypocritically don’t follow their own advice, but expect the rest of us, who can’t afford it, to do so.

A look at Martha’s fellow prison-mates, including several who claim she’s promised them employment, makes it understandable why employers generally wouldn’t hire them.  Here are some the Wall Street Journal named:

• Mona Lisa Gaffney – She was convicted of bribery, witness tampering, and conspiring to smuggle heroin into a prison for her incarcerated brother, and is serving a 17-year, 5-month sentence.  She lost both custody and track of her twin 15-year-old sons.

• Meg Scott Phipps—The daughter and grand-daughter of former North Carolina Governors, she was North Carolina’s Agriculture Commissioner, until she was convicted of accepting bribes.  Serving a 46-month sentence, she left her two teen-aged children without a mother.

• An unnamed psychologist who committed Medicaid fraud.

• A nun who sabotaged a Colorado missile site.

• Audrey Dean McGirt – She’s serving a 15-year, 8-month sentence for money laundering and conspiracy to distribute marijuana and cocaine.

Would you trust any of these people enough to hire them as your “Apprentice” and risk experiencing their high recidivism rate at your multi-billion dollar company?  Would you regularly feature one of these ex-cons on your syndicated TV show (as the winner of Martha’s “Apprentice” will be)?  Neither will Martha, Burnett, or Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia shareholders—who already lost their shirts once because she lied to the FBI.

While in prison, Martha described these fellow convicts as “perfectly, nice ‘neighbors next door.’”  But now that she’s out of the slammer, Martha doesn’t live anywhere near such a “neighborhood.” She’s staying as far away from these “perfectly nice” criminals as she possibly can.

Despite what Hollywood and Martha would have you believe, life is not a bowl of “Shawshank Redemptions.”  Most ex-cons are not innocent Andy Dufresne types.  On the contrary, those who’ve come out of prison are more likely than the rest of us to go right back in.  They’re a whole lot less likely to be making home-made candles and tortes from scratch a la the Domestic Diva.

Martha Stewart can set the whole domestic world on fire with new prison-chic knitted ponchos.  But one craze she’s definitely not starting is employment for ex-cons.

Martha’s Christmas letter from prison sobbing over employment for ex-cons was cheap and phony.  Just like the blue-blood accoutrements she sells at K-Mart.

By Debbie Schlussel

What’s the most significant event in U.S. history?  The Declaration of Independence or  victory over the Nazis, you might answer.

What’s the greatest event in pop culture?  The 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey victory over the Soviets in the Lake Placid Semi-finals, you might say.

Well, you would be wrong.  At least, according to “8 Mile” and “24” producer Brian Grazer and his co-horts in the production of “Inside ‘Deep Throat’”.

To them, “Deep Throat,” the notorious porno flick about oral sex, is the greatest moment in U.S. history.  At least, you’d think so, if you saw this absurd “documentary” about the making of DT and the “impact” it had on America.

Maybe that’s no surprise, since the other makers of this “documentary” also made a pro-Monica Lewinsky documentary for HBO.  How nice that they’ve come full circle in their documentary repertoire on oral sex.  Only in America.

The “film” parades a coterie of sagging, mostly-now-irrelevant lefties (Gore Vidal, anyone?) from the ‘70s, throughout its fawning celluloid troll down “Deep Throat” memory lane.

Author Erica Jong, lecturing us about oral sex, hardly comes off as a worldly feminist, when you can’t pay attention to a single annoying pronouncement she utters.  How could you, with a giant painting of a naked fat chick sitting spread-eagle, looming obtrusively behind on her office wall?  This is feminism?  You’ve regressed a long way baby.

Norman Mailer, Dr. Ruth, Jong, Vidal, and the always annoying self-promoter Alan Dershowitz—all of them lecture us about the great free speech service “Deep Throat”  performed by showing a giant, in your face Monica-&-Bill-esque servicing scene.

Puh-leeze.  You don’t have to be a Constitutional scholar to know this is not what the Founding Fathers were concerned with when they authored the First Amendment.

Uncoincidentally, on the same day this documentary was released, “civil rights” attorney Lynne Stewart was convicted of helping her convicted terrorist client, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (a conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing).  While Stewart is not known for representing pornographers, many of her fellow self-anointed “civil rights” bar colleagues, are.  Several of those, who in the age of “Deep Throat” were representing the “civil rights” of porn kings, now represent the “civil rights” of Islamic terrorists.

If terrorism and depraved, stupid porn flicks about oral sex are the best examples of free speech worth fighting for, let’s just give up now.

You don’t have to be a prude or moral crusader to get creeped out by this documentary lauding this low-life porn film.  The makers of “Deep Throat” were creepy, then.  But in old age, they’re not just creepy.  They’re sad.  They are old and decrepit, without a penny to their names from this porno flick that made $600 million and was distributed by mobsters.  The aged producers can barely walk, let alone keep their Sansabelt pants up (for no reason having anything to do with sex).

The endings of all those associated with “Deep Throat” are depressing, fitting rewards for their “contribution” to society.

There’s “filmmaker” Gerard Damiano.  He was a sleazy hairdresser with a bad goatee and a bouffant hairdo, when he made “Deep Throat” in 1972.  Today, his thinning hair is not so bouffant-ish, and his uneven goatee?  The beatnik-era called, and it wants its badly done facial hair back.  This pathetic old man can do nothing more than lament that he’s basically broke (the mob made the money on his “investment,” not him).  And bitch and moan about how bummed he is that hard-core porn never became a regular basic of general family movie viewing coming out of Hollywood.  Gee, whatta tragedy.

“Inside ‘Deep Throat’” footage of Damiano and the other old farts who made the porn “film” gets cheap laughs by showing them swearing.  Old men swearing . . . .  that might be funny once when they’re comedic actors in a Touchstone film, not real-life, washed-up porn-makers.  Here, it’s just a lame crutch for guys whose depressing lives are now spent in G-d’s waiting room and they don’t have much to show for it, except being sleaze bags.  Damiano’s granddaughter is a silly fire-dancer, the kind who’d be on Letterman’s “Stupid Human Tricks.”

Nice epitaph:  Made a graphic oral sex porno, died penniless (while the film made $600 mill), progeny dances with fire in spandex outfit.

The only man associated with “Deep Throat” who is happy, successful, and alive, today, is Harry Reems, the movie’s co-star.  That’s because he’s now Herb Streicher, a born-again Christian in Utah who is selling a positive product in America—real estate.

Linda Lovelace, the film’s star, is dead.  She died broke and shriveled in 2002 in a car accident.  After first making a “film” in which she has sex with dogs, then starring in “Deep Throat” and assorted other porn flicks, she claimed she’d been forced to make “Deep Throat” at gunpoint—hardly believable.  A failed single mother, she got fired from every job, and could barely raise her two kids.  Her surviving daughter was offered the starring role in “Deep Throat 7.”  A proud legacy.

A Miami theater operator’s wife fears for him during his on-screen interview, believing that 33 years later the flick’s mafia distributors will put a hit out on them.

The rest of “Deep Throat’s” “alumni” met equal misfortune and destitution as a result of  their production of this cinematic piece of dung.

But does “Inside ‘Deep Throat’” ask, Gee, why are all of  the people associated with this film, broke, depressed, dead, or all three (except the one who found religion)?

No.

Does “Inside ‘Deep Throat’” show us the advent of AIDS and other deadly diseases and cancers brought on by the rampant, joyless behavior spawned by the industry “Deep Throat” helped unleash?  Does it mention all the porn stars who’ve been diagnosed with AIDS, some of whom died?  The addicts porn created and the families it destroyed?

No.

Instead, the message is:  How sad that porn never became part of our mainstream Academy Award-style movies.  How sad that porn doesn’t have “clever” plots like the “clever” plot of “Deep Throat” (because that’s why porn patrons watch porn, for the “plot,” right?).

The message is:  How sad that at the annual porn industry convention in Vegas, today’s porn stars don’t know who Linda Lovelace is.  We’re supposed to be outraged by this, as if it’s the same as a tenth grader not being able to name a Founding Father.

The real sadness is that some tenth graders can’t name a Founding Father of this country, but most know the name Ron Jeremy, a founding father and big name in the world of pornography.

The real sadness is that with such a shortage of good things coming out of Hollywood, they choose make a servile documentary about “Deep Throat.”

And that it’s so “mainstream,” it’s not just for dirty old men in raincoats anymore.

By Debbie Schlussel

It was too good to be true.

FOX’s “24” is the most exciting show on TV, this season.  Action.  Adventure.  And it actually tells the truth about Islamic terrorists.

They are here on our shores, pretending to be loyal Americans, and they are plotting to take over our country.  With the help of plenty of complicit Muslim-Americans, working for the government and government contractors.

Unfortunately, 9/11 wasn’t enough to prove that to many Americans.  Way too many Americans—especially the ones deciding what we see on the big and small screens.

Take Suhail Khan, who was the Bush White House’s director of Muslim Outreach.  His father, Mahboob Khan, brought Al-Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri into the United States and into his mosque, twice in the mid-to-late ‘90s, to raise money for Al-Qaeda.  Suhail Khan invited anti-American terrorists, like indicted Islamic Jihad chief Sami Al-Arian, into the White House to meet with the President.

But a “West Wing” episode written about Khan was laudatory of his loyalty to America.

(Incredibly, Khan remains in the Bush Administration as General Counsel to the Federal Highway Administration, where he’s informed of all transports of military and nuclear weapons and hazardous material on federal highways.)

I’ve written about Hollywood’s worship at the politically correct alter of radical Islam.  Despite the reality that all contemporary terrorists are Muslim, Hollywood operates in another universe where all terrorists are Hispanic drug-dealers and neo-Nazis – anybody but Muslims.  Because, as we all know, Hispanic drug-dealers and neo-Nazis blew up New York buildings, hijacked planes, murdered their New Jersey Coptic neighbors, and beheaded Americans in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.

With “24,” FOX violated this taboo.  Therefore, FOX must now repent for committing the heinous sin of actually portraying the truth about the most serious problem of our time.

In the middle of Monday’s episode of “24,” viewers were treated to the following mea culpa, courtesy of Kiefer Sutherland, “24”’s star:

“Hi. My name is Kiefer Sutherland. And I play counter-terrorist agent Jack Bauer on Fox’s ‘24’. I would like to take a moment to talk to you about something that I think is very important. Now while terrorism is obviously one of the most critical challenges facing our nation and the world, it is important to recognize that the American Muslim community stands firmly beside their fellow Americans in denouncing and resisting all forms of terrorism. So in watching 24, please, bear that in mind.”

Poor Kiefer.  Until “24,” his most famous role was as one of Julia Robert’s jilted bridegrooms on his wedding day.  And that wasn’t a role.  It was real life.  Now the only role he apparently aspires to is lover to 72 dark-eyed virgins, or at least repenter to those martyrs who aim for that role.

Any salivating Pavlov’s dog or monkey seeking a banana for lunch would read that statement, too.  Apparently, Kiefer is no better.  At mid-life, he doesn’t want to lose his only successful acting gig.  So, he’ll do as he’s told by the FOX network execs, who can’t take the heat from whining Islamic terror apologists.  He’s ignorant of the Lackawanna Six and assorted other Muslim-American terrorists caught in this country on a daily basis.

Ironically, the two groups behind this apology for the existence of “24” are the groups that demonstrate how the American Muslim community actually does NOT stand firmly beside their fellow Americans in denouncing and resisting terrorism in every form.

In fact, the groups—Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)—have ties to HAMAS and Al-Qaeda, and expressly support  Al-Qaeda network terrorists.

MPAC is headed by Salam Al-Marayati.   Al-Marayati, a close friend of pro-Hezbollah Congressman Darrell Issa, is himself a Hezbollah fan.  He defended Hezbollah’s murder of over 300 U.S. Marines and civilians while they slept and claimed that Hezbollah, a major component of the Al-Qaeda network, is not a terrorist group.  Al-Marayati equated “jihad” with the statements of Patrick Henry.

Al-Marayati’s concern for the portrayal of Muslims as terrorist is outdone by his passion for the vilification of Jews and Israelis as terrorists.  Hours after the 9/11 attacks, he accused Israel of perpetrating them.  In an e-mail, this “moderate” Muslim approvingly quoted Hitler:  “As Hitler said, the more intelligent the Jew is, the more he lies.”  No Kiefer Sutherland-esque apologies.

Al-Marayati’s wife, Dr. Laila Al-Marayati, could be the real life version of the mother in “24”’s terror cell.  The charity she heads, KinderUSA, recently shut down and is under investigation for funding HAMAS.  Its executive director and a board member were held in Israel for aiding terrorists.  KinderUSA is tied to the Holy Land Foundation, whose employees have been indicted for funding and ties to HAMAS and Al-Qaeda.  Dr. Al-Marayati told the Los Angeles Times that KinderUSA avoided charges of knowingly helping suicide bombers’ families by not asking how an orphan’s father died.

Then, there’s CAIR.  Oliver “Buck” Revell and Steve Pomerantz, former FBI Directors of Counterterrorism, call CAIR, a HAMAS front-group.  Saudi-funded CAIR got its original seed money and executive director, Nihad Awad, from another group (Islamic Association for Palestine) that was started with $490,000 from the personal bank account of indicted HAMAS political director Moussa Abu Marzook.  Awad, like MPAC’s Al-Marayati, is an avowed supporter of HAMAS and Hezbollah.  CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper refuses to denounce Bin Laden.

Several CAIR officials and associates have been convicted of terrorism, money-laundering, and fraud charges, including CAIR “communications specialist and civil rights coordinator” Ismail Royer, who pled guilty to helping Al-Qaeda’s terror network.  CAIR disseminated assassination fatwas against moderate Muslim Americans.  A recent CAIR Michigan confab featured more of the same.

Shohreh Aghdashloo, who plays the mother in “24”’s terror cell, and Jonathan Ahdout, who plays her son, also played Islamic mother and son in the Oprah-promoted 2003 movie, “House of Sand and Fog.” There was no Keifer-esque disclaimer in that movie, in which the Muslims were hard-working, sympathetic, fatal victims of Americans, and the Americans were a loser, alcoholic, psycho maid, and an evil, philandering, murderous cop.

But in the case of “24,” even Aghdashloo, an Iranian Muslim, dismisses CAIR and MPAC.  “They think after what happened on 9/11 that we’re going to forget it?” she told USA Today.

Apparently, we’ve already forgotten.  That’s what they’re banking on.

By Debbie Schlussel
It was too good to be true.

FOX’s “24” is the most exciting show on TV, this season.  Action.  Adventure.  And it actually tells the truth about Islamic terrorists.

They are here on our shores, pretending to be loyal Americans, and they are plotting to take over our country.  With the help of plenty of complicit Muslim-Americans, working for the government and government contractors.

Unfortunately, 9/11 wasn’t enough to prove that to many Americans.  Way too many Americans—especially the ones deciding what we see on the big and small screens.

Take Suhail Khan, who was the Bush White House’s director of Muslim Outreach.  His father, Mahboob Khan, brought Al-Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri into the United States and into his mosque, twice in the mid-to-late ‘90s, to raise money for Al-Qaeda.  Suhail Khan invited anti-American terrorists, like indicted Islamic Jihad chief Sami Al-Arian, into the White House to meet with the President.

But a “West Wing” episode written about Khan was laudatory of his loyalty to America.

(Incredibly, Khan remains in the Bush Administration as General Counsel to the Federal Highway Administration, where he’s informed of all transports of military and nuclear weapons and hazardous material on federal highways.)

I’ve written about Hollywood’s worship at the politically correct alter of radical Islam.  Despite the reality that all contemporary terrorists are Muslim, Hollywood operates in another universe where all terrorists are Hispanic drug-dealers and neo-Nazis – anybody but Muslims.  Because, as we all know, Hispanic drug-dealers and neo-Nazis blew up New York buildings, hijacked planes, murdered their New Jersey Coptic neighbors, and beheaded Americans in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.

With “24,” FOX violated this taboo.  Therefore, FOX must now repent for committing the heinous sin of actually portraying the truth about the most serious problem of our time.

In the middle of Monday’s episode of “24,” viewers were treated to the following mea culpa, courtesy of Kiefer Sutherland, “24”’s star:

“Hi. My name is Kiefer Sutherland. And I play counter-terrorist agent Jack Bauer on Fox’s ‘24’. I would like to take a moment to talk to you about something that I think is very important. Now while terrorism is obviously one of the most critical challenges facing our nation and the world, it is important to recognize that the American Muslim community stands firmly beside their fellow Americans in denouncing and resisting all forms of terrorism. So in watching 24, please, bear that in mind.”

Poor Kiefer.  Until “24,” his most famous role was as one of Julia Robert’s jilted bridegrooms on his wedding day.  And that wasn’t a role.  It was real life.  Now the only role he apparently aspires to is lover to 72 dark-eyed virgins, or at least repenter to those martyrs who aim for that role.

Any salivating Pavlov’s dog or monkey seeking a banana for lunch would read that statement, too.  Apparently, Kiefer is no better.  At mid-life, he doesn’t want to lose his only successful acting gig.  So, he’ll do as he’s told by the FOX network execs, who can’t take the heat from whining Islamic terror apologists.  He’s ignorant of the Lackawanna Six and assorted other Muslim-American terrorists caught in this country on a daily basis.

Ironically, the two groups behind this apology for the existence of “24” are the groups that demonstrate how the American Muslim community actually does NOT stand firmly beside their fellow Americans in denouncing and resisting terrorism in every form.

In fact, the groups—Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)—have ties to HAMAS and Al-Qaeda, and expressly support  Al-Qaeda network terrorists.

MPAC is headed by Salam Al-Marayati.   Al-Marayati, a close friend of pro-Hezbollah Congressman Darrell Issa, is himself a Hezbollah fan.  He defended Hezbollah’s murder of over 300 U.S. Marines and civilians while they slept and claimed that Hezbollah, a major component of the Al-Qaeda network, is not a terrorist group.  Al-Marayati equated “jihad” with the statements of Patrick Henry.

Al-Marayati’s concern for the portrayal of Muslims as terrorist is outdone by his passion for the vilification of Jews and Israelis as terrorists.  Hours after the 9/11 attacks, he accused Israel of perpetrating them.  In an e-mail, this “moderate” Muslim approvingly quoted Hitler:  “As Hitler said, the more intelligent the Jew is, the more he lies.”  No Kiefer Sutherland-esque apologies.

Al-Marayati’s wife, Dr. Laila Al-Marayati, could be the real life version of the mother in “24”’s terror cell.  The charity she heads, KinderUSA, recently shut down and is under investigation for funding HAMAS.  Its executive director and a board member were held in Israel for aiding terrorists.  KinderUSA is tied to the Holy Land Foundation, whose employees have been indicted for funding and ties to HAMAS and Al-Qaeda.  Dr. Al-Marayati told the Los Angeles Times that KinderUSA avoided charges of knowingly helping suicide bombers’ families by not asking how an orphan’s father died.

Then, there’s CAIR.  Oliver “Buck” Revell and Steve Pomerantz, former FBI Directors of Counterterrorism, call CAIR, a HAMAS front-group.  Saudi-funded CAIR got its original seed money and executive director, Nihad Awad, from another group (Islamic Association for Palestine) that was started with $490,000 from the personal bank account of indicted HAMAS political director Moussa Abu Marzook.  Awad, like MPAC’s Al-Marayati, is an avowed supporter of HAMAS and Hezbollah.  CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper refuses to denounce Bin Laden.

Several CAIR officials and associates have been convicted of terrorism, money-laundering, and fraud charges, including CAIR “communications specialist and civil rights coordinator” Ismail Royer, who pled guilty to helping Al-Qaeda’s terror network.  CAIR disseminated assassination fatwas against moderate Muslim Americans.  A recent CAIR Michigan confab featured more of the same.

Shohreh Aghdashloo, who plays the mother in “24”’s terror cell, and Jonathan Ahdout, who plays her son, also played Islamic mother and son in the Oprah-promoted 2003 movie, “House of Sand and Fog.” There was no Keifer-esque disclaimer in that movie, in which the Muslims were hard-working, sympathetic, fatal victims of Americans, and the Americans were a loser, alcoholic, psycho maid, and an evil, philandering, murderous cop.

But in the case of “24,” even Aghdashloo, an Iranian Muslim, dismisses CAIR and MPAC.  “They think after what happened on 9/11 that we’re going to forget it?” she told USA Today.

Apparently, we’ve already forgotten.  That’s what they’re banking on.