ON THIS DAY Febuary 18

1229 –
The Sixth Crusade: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor signs a ten-year truce with al-Kamil, regaining Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem with neither military engagements nor support from the papacy.Frederick II

The Sixth Crusade started in 1228 as an attempt to reconquer Jerusalem. It began only seven years after the failure of the Fifth Crusade.

At the time he was crowned Emperor, Frederick II promised to go on crusade; however, problems of stability within the empire delayed his departure and it was not until 1225, when, by proxy, Frederick married Yolande of Jerusalem, heiress to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, that his departure was assured. Frederick immediately saw to it that his new father-in-law John of Brienne, the current king of Jerusalem, was dispossessed and his rights transferred to the emperor. Despite his new capacity as King of Jerusalem, Frederick continued to take his time in setting off, and in 1227, Frederick was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for failing to honor his crusading pledge. In fact, Frederick had left for the Holy Land but was forced to return when he was struck down by an epidemic that broke out in his camp before departing. Even the master of the Teutonic Knights, Hermann of Salza, recommended that he return to the mainland to recuperate. Many contemporary chroniclers doubted the sincerity of Frederick’s illness, stating that he had deliberately delayed for selfish reasons, and this attitude can in part be explained by their pro-papal stance. Roger of Wendover, a chronicler of the time, wrote ‘he went to the Mediterranean sea, and embarked with a small retinue; but after pretending to make for the holy land for three days, he said that he was seized with a sudden illness…this conduct of the emperor redounded much to his disgrace, and to the injury of the whole business of the crusade.”

He eventually embarked on the crusade the following year (1228), which was looked on by the Pope as a provocation, since the church could not take any part in the honor of the crusade, resulting in a second excommunication. By this time the crusading army had dwindled to a meagre force.

Frederick hoped that a token show of force, a threatening march down the coast, would be enough to convince al-Kamil, the sultan of Egypt, to honor a proposed agreement that had been negotiated some years earlier, prior to the death of al-Muazzam, the governor of Damascus. The Egyptian sultan, occupied with the suppression of rebellious forces in Syria, agreed to cede Jerusalem to the Franks, along with a narrow corridor to the coast.

Frederick negotiates with Al-Kamil for control of Jerusalem

In addition, Frederick received Nazareth, Sidon, Jaffa and Bethlehem. Other lordships may have been returned to Christian control, but sources disagree. It was, however, a treaty of compromise. The Muslims retained control over the Temple Mount area of Jerusalem, the al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock. The Transjordan castles stayed in Ayyubid hands, and Arab sources suggest that Frederick was not permitted to restore Jerusalem’s fortifications. The treaty, completed on February 18, 1229, safeguarded a truce of ten years.

February 18,1332 Amda Seyon I, Emperor of Ethiopia begins his campaigns in the southern Muslim provinces. Amde Tseyon was one of the most outstanding Ethiopian kings of any age and a singular figure dominating the Horn of Africa in the fourteenth century.”His conquests of Muslim borderlands greatly expanded Ethiopian territory and power in the region, maintained for centuries after his death.
Amda Seyon asserted the strength of the newly (1270) installed Solomonic dynasty and therefore legitimized it. These expansions further provided for the spread of Christianity to frontier areas, sparking a long era of proselytization and Christianization of previously frontier areas.

February 18, 1969: Palestinian Muslims attacked an Israeli El Al airliner in Zurich, Switzerland as it was preparing to take off en route to Tel Aviv. The cockpit of the airliner was machine-gunned by the four Islamic terrorists who belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The terrorists fired 200 bullets and lobbed incendiary grenades from their car as the plane taxied down the runway. The Israeli pilot was killed. In the exchange of gunfire between the terrorists and an Israeli airline security guard, one Muslim was killed and three Israeli crewmembers and three passengers were wounded.

The three PFLP terrorists who surrendered were later tried and sentenced to 12 years in prison, a sentence Islamic states denounced as being unfair. The Israeli security guard was tried and acquitted after being accused of killing the Palestinian terrorist after he had surrendered.

February 18, 1977: Another bomb attack on a USIS building. This one was in Turkey, instead of Bangladesh, however. Maybe Muslims were beginning to show their displeasure towards the United States having intelligence offices in their countries.

February 19, 1979: In Turkey, a bomb, thrown from a passing car exploded outside the Pan Am office in Izmir.

February 18, 1980: Islamic terrorists in Turkey used gas-soaked rags to set two cars on fire belonging to soldiers stationed at the NATO headquarters in Izmir. Due to this terrorist incident, the National Security Council of Turkey extended the period and scope of the present condition of its militaristic and dictatorial imposition of martial law.

February 18, 1989: An Israeli youth was killed near Jerusalem by Palestinian terrorists.

January 18, 1991: Militant Muslims bombed the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Manila as well as the USIS library. The attacks were orchestrated by Saddam Hussein in an attempt to widen the scope of the war American had perpetrated against him.

Iraq would use the Philippines as a staging ground for reprisals against the United States for having forced them out of Kuwait. The bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building and the first World Trade Center truck bomb attacks were planned and facilitated here. They were similar in style because Ramzi Yousef orchestrated both attacks from the Philippines.

January 18, 1991: In Jakarta, Indonesia, a bomb was discovered in the U.S. Ambassador’s residence.

January 18, 1991: A bomb blasted the British Bank in Beirut, Lebanon.

January 18, 1991: A Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Mormon church in Barquisimeto, west of Caracas in Venezuela. The Internationalist Brigade claimed responsibility in protest of the Gulf War.

February 18, 1993: In Serbia, unidentified youths threw bricks through the windows of the US and German Cultural Centers in Belgrade. One of the bricks was wrapped in the message proclaiming: “Death to American Shit.” There were no injuries.

If those who tossed the projectiles were Orthodox Serbian Christians, they can be excused for expressing their justifiable rage. After having Fascist Croatian Catholics slaughter 800,000 of their people in cahoots with Bosnian Muslims in the 1940s, America and Europe had come to the aid of the perpetrators.

February 18, 1998: Thirty-six Muslim militants who were members of the Islamic Group GIA’s (al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya) wave of bombings in France. They were sentenced to as many as 10 years.

February 18, 2000: Spain has had a problem with Islam that goes back centuries. While no one knows who the forty masked terrorists were who firebombed a government office and police station in Viroria, the targets, wardrobe, and means fit Islam.

February 18, 2001: In Iraq, Kurdish Democratic Party leader Faranso Hariri was shot and killed on the street in Arbil by unidentified gunmen. It was the only lethal terrorist act in Iraq in more than a year.

February 18, 2001: Palestinian Muslims attacked an Egged bus near the Erez checkpoint. They fired shots at an Israeli car traveling in Neve Deqalim. Next, Muslims assaulted a bus in the Neve Deqalim industrial zone. And they fired from a passing car into the Halamish settlement.

On This Day Since 9/11

/18/2007	Somalia	Mogadishu	4	0	A car explosion at a soccer stadium kills four people.
2/18/2007	Somalia	Mogadishu	1	2	Islamic gunmen attack a car carrying Somalis, killing at least one.
2/18/2007	Afghanistan	Farah	4	2	Four policemen are killed in a suspected Taliban bomb attack.
2/18/2007	Pakistan	Turab Gholato	2	0	Two children are killed by a landmine planted by Taliban-backed militants.
2/18/2007	Iraq	Balad	6	0	The bodies of six victims of sectarian hatred are found around the country.
2/18/2007	Iraq	Baghdad	7	11	Seven people are murdered in at least two separate Jihad attacks.
2/18/2007	Iraq	Baghdad	60	131	Sixty Iraqis shopping at a market are blown to bits by Islamic Freedom Fighters. Over a hundred others are injured.

2/18/2007	Thailand	Pattani	3	0	Three Chinese Buddhists are gunned down in a brutal assault by Islamic radicals.
2/18/2007	Thailand	Yala	3	24	Three more people are killed in separate bombings.
2/18/2007	Thailand	Narathiwat	1	22	Islamists stage a series of bombings against karaoke bars, killing at least one person.
2/18/2007	Iraq	Fallujah	13	0	al-Qaeda lines up a family of thirteen, including an elderly woman and two boys, and shoots them to death.
2/18/2006	Afghanistan	Helmand	3	0	A late night attack by the Taliban on a police post leaves three officers dead.
2/18/2006	Philippines	Jolo	2	22	Abu Sayyaf bombs a karaoke bar, killing a janitor and injuring about two dozen others. Another civilian later dies of injuries.
2/18/2006	Iraq	Baghdad	7	4	Five people are killed in three separate roadside terror attacks as two more kidnap victims are discovered.
2/18/2006	Iraq	Baqubah	2	5	Two Jihad bombings kill two people and injure five.
2/18/2006	Nigeria	Maiduguri	21	112	Angry Muslim mobs burn churches and beat Christians to death. At least sixteen people are killed in the violence.

In the Muslim Paradise of Nigeria, in the garden of Eden city of Maiduguri, [capital of north-eastern Borno state], peace-loving Nigerian Muslims offended by egregiously insulting, provocative, nasty, feces-laden, and blasphemous caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad, Peace be upon Him, attacked violent Christians who directly supported and funded the Danish cartoonists. Churches where these cowardly blasphemers were hiding were burned down on Saturday, killing at least 15 Christian dogs.

The faithful swarmed through the city center with machetes, sticks and iron rods to protect themselves against the marauding Christian mobs of mostly children and a rather tall and vicious priest.

When it got too dark to be able to protect themselves, a group of the believers threw a tire around a man, poured gas on him and set him ablaze. And what a fine light that made, praise be to Allah!

Thousands of pacifist, defenseless Muslims in self-defense burned 15 churches in Maiduguri in a three-hour rampage before troops and police reinforcements restored order.

Chima Ezeoke, a lying Christian Maiduguri resident, said the peaceful rally attacked and looted shops owned by minority Christians, most of them with origins in the country’s south.

“Most of the dead were Christians beaten to death on the streets by the rioters,” Ezeoke said. Witnesses said three children and a priest were among those killed.”

What filthy lies! Every knows that Muslims are tolerant of other religions. Just read various Islamic papers and especially the Palestinian News.

Al “Dhimmi” Gore blames the Muslim/Christian tensions not only on the insulting, Jew-inspired Cartoons, but on local Christian police forces who indiscriminately rounded up alleged Muslim rapists and pillagers, which in Islam is typically considered minor charges equivalent to “overstaying a visa”

These innocent Muslims were then “held in conditions that were just unforgivable and had to live in places called jails”. It is these terrible abuses and under this climate of retribution and hate-mongering that pervades the Christian land in Nigeria.

President Clinton, still in Pakistan wiping off some brown shmutz on his nose, declared that the peaceful co-existence of Muslims and Christians has been seriously damaged by the printing of these cartoons in Denmark.

In addition, the ex-President said, as he removed his head from his own ass, these negative reports on Muslims rioting in Nigeria damage the chance for inter-cultural dialogue and said that it would be a good thing if The Organization of African States passed a continent-wide law prohibiting any news that insults Muslims, the Ummah (Muslim Community), and Islam. No one has the right to print news that insults the feeling of Muslims. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom to print insensitive news even if true.

ISLAM IS A RELIGION OF PEACE

2/18/2005	Chechnya	Kurchaloi	5	0	Three civilians are among five people murdered at point-blank range by Jihad gunmen.
2/18/2005	Lebanon	al-Shuwayfat	2	0	Islamists bomb a Christian-owned gas station, killing two people.
2/18/2005	Iraq	Baghdad	2	8	Two people in a religious procession are killed by a Fedayeen suicide bomber on a city street.
2/18/2005	Thailand	Sungai Kolok	6	44	Muslim separatists kill six people near a hotel hosting a wedding reception with a powerful car bomb.
2/18/2005	Iraq	Baghdad	10	20	Another suicide bomber blows himself to Allah outside a Shia mosque, taking at least ten others with him.
2/18/2005	Iraq	Baghdad	15	23	Suicide bomber kills fifteen Shia worshippers inside a mosque just as Friday prayers are beginning. Another two dozen are injured.
2/18/2004	Kosovo	Staro	2	0	Muslim terrorists shoot two civilians, a man and a woman, to death as they were sitting in their car.
2/18/2004	Iraq	Hilla	8	106	Eight Iraqis, including five children are killed and more than one-hundred others injured by twin Fedayeen suicide car bombers who were stopped by coalition forces.
2/18/2004	Thailand	Deage	1	0	A man is murdered by Islamists.
2/18/2003	Philippines	Matanog	7	11	Ambush by Muslim rebels on a convoy kills seven soldiers and leaves eleven more injured.
2/18/2002	Israel	Gush Katif	3	1	Three Israelis are killed in a Palestinian shooting attack.