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ISRAEL THE BEAUTIFUL: ENTRANCE TO MISHMAR CANYON
Posted by Yehoshua Halevi, May 31, 2011. |
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"Every photo I take is a piece of my life I will never get back,
but I will always be able to see again and again."
HOW I GOT THE SHOT: There are advantages to getting up at 3 a.m. and pointing your car toward the Judean Desert: no traffic in Jerusalem and the temperature is still bearable. The biggest reward for the effort, however, is arriving at sunrise to watch the light show on the rocky hills. It only lasts for about an hour, with the peak colors hanging on for just a few moments. Nature, like photography with human subjects, also has its decisive moments, and being ready to shoot through a small window of time is critical to success in the wilderness. This shot was taken at the entrance to Mishmar Canyon, on the Dead Sea highway between Ein Gedi and Masada, at 5:40:29 a.m., according to the file's metadata. Arriving in the pre-dawn darkness, I immediately searched the area for something prominent to anchor the composition and settled on this peak, the tallest in the area. The remainder of the image, the lower half, contains the view across the dry riverbed, the outlet for the canyon I was preparing to hike. Somehow, even in mid-September following several months without rain, the sparse vegetation had held on to its green color and seemed to be thriving in the harshest of settings. For the photographer, with plenty of water in my pack, there was nothing left to do once the sun had climbed high but enjoy the hike. Technical Date: Nikon D70, 28-105 zoom at 38mm, f18 at 1/15th sec., ISO 400.
Contact Yehoshua Halevi by email at smile@goldenlightimages.com
and visit his website: |
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SECRETS OF PALESTINIAN ARAB PROPAGANDA
Posted by Mechel Samberg, May 31, 2011. |
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Lately I've been wondering — given what we know about the nature of the 'Palestinian cause', why does it have so many supporters? What is the secret of the propaganda success of one of the ugliest, most vicious political movements around, one that explicitly calls for the violent destruction of another nation and displays its adherence to this principle by murdering vulnerable members of its civilian population on an almost daily basis? The answer is that like a successful prostitute, the Palestinian movement is whatever its 'clients' want it to be, with appropriate targeted messages aimed at various communities: A religious message for the Muslim world, in which Jewish Zionists have usurped Muslim control of a part of dar al Islam, which must be redeemed. This has been hugely successful with the world's 1.4 billion Muslims, even outside of the Middle East. For Arabs, there is the associated issue of Arab honor which must be regained. A postcolonialist message aimed primarily at Europe, troubled by guilt for its exploitation of indigenous peoples throughout the world. Palestinian Arabs are presented as an indigenous people oppressed by European colonialist invaders who have taken their land and dispossessed them. Although based on a false historical narrative, this resonates well in Europe and also in the halls of academe in the US, Canada and the UK. For academics, there is the added benefit that the popularity of post-modernist theories of truth make it impossible to refute any theory, no matter how nonsensical. An anti-racist message aimed primarily at the US, where the white population is obsessed with guilt for the institution of slavery followed by institutional discrimination against African-Americans. Palestinian Arabs are (nonsensically) presented as discriminated against because of their 'race', comparisons are made to apartheid South Africa, and violent terrorism is compared to the civil rights movement of the 1960's. This argument is epitomized by a recent article by Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch. A human-rights message aimed at the West generally, in which the conflict is presented as a powerful militarized state oppressing powerless victims for reasons of race, ethnicity or just to exploit them and take their land and resources. This message is designed to obscure the real nature of the conflict, which is that the Palestinian Arabs are pawns in is a concerted effort by the relatively powerful Arab states and Iran to destroy Israel. In order to make the objective of destroying the Jewish state more palatable in the West, organizations like the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and various Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) sponsoring groups often present themselves as nonviolent. But the ISM functions to provide human shields for violent Arab terrorists, and the international BDS leadership says that they will not be satisfied until Arab 'refugees' get their 'right to return', so at best they are using nonviolent tactics to support a violent and murderous movement. A message aimed at Christians, in which Israel is accused of driving Arab Christians out of Bethlehem and other places (in fact, Muslim fundamentalists are responsible), and of violating Christian principles in its treatment of Palestinian Arabs. It is also often combined with 'replacement theology', in which Judaism itself is attacked as illegitimate, as well as traditional Christian antisemitic concepts ("the Jews were responsible for the death of Christ"), etc. This message takes different forms, but has been effective with both liberal Protestants and some Evangelical Christians in the US. A message aimed at liberal US Jews, in which it is falsely suggested that Israel is becoming a racist, undemocratic Orthodox theocracy, incompatible with the universalist ethics of liberal Judaism — and that it is therefore not worthy of support. This is the position I call "Beinartism." Organizations such as J Street promulgate this view, and even claim to be "pro-Israel" while they work to undermine it. The movement has attracted a great number of 'useful idiots' (a phrase attributed to Lenin), people from Western societies who are misled about the historical realities and the true ideology of the Palestinian movement, but whose fantasies are titillated by some of the false messages above. A paradigm case is "Queers for Palestine," a group which somehow manages to ignore the fact that both the Muslim fundamentalist and Arab nationalist branches of the Palestinian movement would murder them as soon as look at them. Another example is that of female volunteers for ISM and other pro-Palestinian groups who have been systematically sexually abused by Arab men. Finally, last but not least: A message for Jew-haters, in which it is pointed out that the enemies of the Palestinian cause are mostly Jews. And you can't find a better argument than this one for a surprisingly large segment of the world's population. Contact Mechel Samberg at mechelsamberg2@yahoo.com |
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TIME TO ASSERT JERUSALEM'S JEWISH HERITAGE
Posted by Barbara Taverna, May 31, 2011. |
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This was written by Nathan Diament. director of public policy
at the Orthodox Union.
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WASHINGTON (JTA) — Among his many statements related to Israel in the last couple of weeks, President Obama got at least one thing right when he said at a London news conference that Jerusalem goes deep into how the Jewish people think about their identity. As we mark 44 years of a reunited Jerusalem this week, we should appreciate the centrality of Jerusalem to Jewish identity. This is why most Israelis and American Jews consistently reject the idea that Israel surrender swaths of the holy city as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians. Jerusalem has been a touchstone of our identity throughout our history, and our contemporary experience gives Jerusalem a central place in our faith today. From the religious perspective, when Jews pray, we face toward Jerusalem — and the Temple Mount in particular — no matter where we are in the world. We pray each day for the welfare of Jerusalem, and we conclude our most sacred services, the Passover seder and Neilah on Yom Kippur, with the pledge and prayer, "Next year in Jerusalem." Historically, we regularly read biblical accounts of our forefathers and mothers that take place in and around Jerusalem. King David made the city his capital 3,000 years ago, and it has been the national capital of the Jewish people — and no other nation — ever since. Only brute force has kept us out. Such was the case, we must still recall, from 1948 to 1967, when Jews were barred entry to the Old City and denied worship at the Western Wall during the time that the West Bank was controlled by Jordan. Since Jerusalem's reunification in 1967, the city has been open to all. As noted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his recent address to Congress, "Only a democratic Israel has protected freedom of worship for all faiths." Moreover, reunification has enabled Jerusalem to flourish economically and culturally. While it is a poorer city than Tel Aviv, Jerusalem has a vibrant tourist trade, entrepreneurial businesses and first-rate theater and museums. Some, in Israel and elsewhere, assert that Jerusalem can be easily divided with minimal impact upon the life of the city, let alone the sanctity and safety of its holy places. Indeed, there are neighborhoods, especially those to the east of the West Bank security barrier, where Jews seldom venture. But modern Jerusalem is far more an interwoven checkerboard of Jewish and Palestinian areas than starkly segregated enclaves. The Arab area of Beit Safafa lies between the Jewish neighborhoods of Talpiot and Gilo, while the Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah lies between the Old City and the Jewish neighborhood of French Hill. Moreover, an area like the City of David or Silwan may have more Palestinian than Jewish residents, but it is deeply connected to Jewish history. It is no more feasible to separate the Palestinian and Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem from one another than to ethnically divide the neighborhoods of Manhattan. Proponents of a "two-state solution" are wont to say that "everyone knows" what the details of a deal are. Those details often include the presumption that Jerusalem will again be divided and will serve as the capital of two states: Israel and Palestine. It is high time to repudiate this presumption. The international community would never expect the Muslims to cede sovereignty over Mecca, the cradle of their faith and history, any more than Americans would be asked to return Philadelphia to the queen of England. The Jewish people should be afforded no less respect. Jerusalem must remain united under Jewish sovereignty. Days after the 1967 Six-Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem, one of the great leaders of religious Zionism, Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neriah, wrote that the Jews were not worthy to hold onto Jerusalem in 1948 because they were divided into many factions. "In 1967," he wrote, "we entered the city through one gate, the Lions' Gate, with one army, the IDF, under one flag." Of course, we Jews find ourselves in many factions today. We must fight on many fronts to assert the Jewish heritage of Jerusalem. On this Jerusalem Day, or Yom Yerushalayim, we must commit ourselves to confronting those who would redivide our capital from without and to working to unify the Jewish people from within. We must do it for the sake of Jerusalem. Contact Barbara Taverna at bltaverna@yahoo.com |
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FROM ISRAEL: YOM YERUSHALAYIM
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 31, 2011. |
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Tonight begins the celebration of the reunification of our holy city in 1967. And I devote this brief posting to this alone. Time enough tomorrow for other news.
~~~~~~~~~~ From Aish, a short video celebrating the reunification of Israel's eternal city:
~~~~~~~~~~ Excerpts from "Why Jerusalem Matters" by Rabbi Shraga Simmons: "When the Jews were first exiled from Jerusalem, King David said, 'If I forget you Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its strength. Let my tongue cling to my palate if I fail to recall you, if I fail to elevate Jerusalem above my highest joy.' The memory of Jerusalem somehow is linked to our current vigor as a people. But how? What is the memory of Jerusalem, and what does it contribute to who we are? ~~~~~~~~~~ Another Aish video, this on an ancient water channel discovered in Jerusalem that links Jewish past and present:
~~~~~~~~~~ If you have never visited Jerusalem, please come. You will have the time of your life, and be changed forever. If you have been here before, please, come again. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info |
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RAPED AND RANSACKED IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
Posted by Raymond Ibrahim, May 31, 2011. |
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Huwaini: "When I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her" Plundering the possessions, lives, and dignity of Christians in the
Islamic world: is this a random affair, a product of the West's favorite
offenders — poverty, ignorance, grievance — or is it systematic, complete
with ideological backing?
Consider the very latest from the Muslim world:
None of this is surprising listening to popular Muslim preacher Abu Ishaq al-Huwaini: If only we can conduct a jihadist invasion at least once a year or if possible twice or three times, then many people on earth would become Muslims. And if anyone prevents our dawa or stands in our way, then we must kill them or take as hostage and confiscate their wealth, women and children. Such battles will fill the pockets of the Mujahid who can return home with 3 or 4 slaves, 3 or 4 women and 3 or 4 children. This can be a profitable business if you multiply each head by 300 or 400 dirham. This can be like financial shelter whereby a jihadist, in time of financial need, can always sell one of these heads (meaning slavery) [translated by Nonie Darwish; original Arabic recording here]. Huwaini actually made these scandalous assertions some eighteen years ago. But because they were only recently exposed, he was invited to "clarify" his position on Hikma TV last week. Amazingly, though he began by saying his words were "taken out of context," he nonetheless reasserted, in even more blunt language, that Islam justifies plundering, enslaving, and raping the infidel. (Al Youm 7 has the entire interview, excerpts of which I translate below.) According to Huwaini, after Muslims invade and conquer a non-Muslim nation — in the course of waging an offensive jihad — the properties and persons of those infidels who refuse to convert or pay jizya and live as subjugated dhimmis, are to be seized as ghanima or "spoils of war." Huwaini cited the Koran as his authority — boasting that it has an entire chapter named "spoils" — and the sunna of Muhammad, specifically as recorded in the famous Sahih Muslim hadith wherein the prophet ordered the Muslim armies to offer non-Muslims three choices: conversion, subjugation, or death/enslavement. Huwaini said that infidel captives, the "spoils of war," are to be distributed among the Muslim combatants (i.e., jihadists) and taken to "the slave market, where slave-girls and concubines are sold." He referred to these latter by their dehumanizing name in the Koran, ma malakat aymanukum — "what your right hands possess" — in this context, sex-slaves: "You go to the market and buy her, and she becomes like your legal mate — though without a contract, a guardian, or any of that stuff — and this is agreed upon by the ulema." "In other words," Huwaini concluded, "when I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her." Lest Muslims begin attacking all and sundry, however, Huwaini was careful to stress that Islam forbids Muslims from plundering and enslaving fellow Muslims — including "heretical" Shias. He used the Iran-Iraq war as an example, saying that a Sunni man is not permitted to enslave and abuse a Shia woman, "for she is still a Muslim and thus considered free." Unfortunately Huwaini's position is not "radical." One is reminded of when Sheikh Gamal Qutb was asked on live TV if Islam permits men to rape their female captives. The one-time grand mufti of Islam's most authoritative university, Al Azhar — the institution that once gave us the "adult breast-feeding" fatwa — refused to answer and, when pressed, became hostile and stormed off the set. Let us now return to the atrocities that opened this article and ask: In
light of the above, is it any wonder that Christians under Islam are
routinely raped and ransacked, even as the "humanitarian" West yawns?
Raymond Ibrahim is associate director of the Middle East Forum and author of The Al Qaeda Reader.
This appeared today in Front Page Magazine
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WHERE OBAMA IS LEADING ISRAEL
Posted by Dr. History, May 31, 2011. |
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This is the MUST READ article of the day. It was written by Caroline B. Glick. Make no mistake — Obama is ANTI-ISRAEL and will not do anything to prevent its demise in stages. |
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Since the president's policy speech, Obama has taken a series of steps that only reinforce the charge he's the most hostile US leader the Jewish state has ever faced In the aftermath of US President Barack Obama's May 19 speech on the Middle East, his supporters argued that the policy toward Israel and the Palestinians that Obama outlined in that speech was not anti-Israel. As they presented it, Obama's assertion that peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians must be based on the 1967 lines with agreed swaps does not mark a substantive departure from the positions adopted by his predecessors in the Oval Office. But this claim is exposed as a lie by previous administration statements. On November 25, 2009, in response to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's acceptance of Obama's demand for a 10-month moratorium on Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the State Department issued the following statement: "Today's announcement by the Government of Israel helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements." In his speech, Obama stated: "The United States believes... the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states." That is, he took "the Palestinian goal" and made it the US's goal. It is hard to imagine a more radically anti-Israel policy shift than that. And that wasn't Obama's only radically anti-Israel policy shift. Until his May 19 speech, the US agreed with Israel that the issue of borders is only one of many — including the Palestinians' rejection of Israel's right to exist, their demand to inundate Israel with millions of foreign Arab immigrants, their demand for control over Israel's water supply and Jerusalem — that have to be sorted out in negotiations. The joint US-Israeli position was that until all of these issues were resolved, none of them were resolved. The Palestinians, on the other hand, claim that before they will discuss any of these other issues, Israel has to first agree to accept the indefensible 1967 boundaries as its permanent borders. This position allows the Palestinians to essentially maintain their policy of demanding that Israel make unreciprocated concessions that then serve as the starting point for further unreciprocated concessions. It is a position that is antithetical to peace. And on May 19, by stipulating that Israel must accept the Palestinian position on borders as a precondition for negotiations, Obama adopted it as US policy.
SINCE THAT speech, Obama has taken a series of steps that only reinforce the sense that he is the most hostile US president Israel has ever faced. Indeed, when taken together, these steps raise concern that Obama may actually constitute a grave threat to Israel. Friday's Yediot Aharonot reported on the dimensions of the threat Obama may pose to the Jewish state. The paper's account was based on administration and Congressional sources. The story discussed Obama's plans to contend with the Palestinian plan to pass a resolution at the UN General Assembly in September endorsing Palestinian statehood in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza. According to Yediot, during his meeting with Obama on May 20, Netanyahu argued that in light of the Palestinians' automatic majority support at the General Assembly, there was no way to avoid the resolution. Netanyahu reportedly explained that the move would not be a disaster. The General Assembly overwhelmingly endorsed the PLO's declaration of independence in 1988. And the sky still hasn't fallen. Obama reportedly was unconvinced. For him, it is unacceptable to be in a position of standing alone with Israel voting against the Palestinian resolution. Obama's distaste for standing with Israel was demonstrated in February when a visibly frustrated US Ambassador Susan Rice was forced by Congressional pressure to veto the Palestinians' Security Council draft resolution condemning Israel for refusing to prohibit Jews from building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Yediot's report asserts that Obama refused to brief Netanyahu on the steps his administration is taking to avert such an unpalatable option. What the paper did report was how George Mitchell — Obama's Middle East envoy until his resignation last week — recommended Obama proceed on this issue. According to Yediot, Mitchell recommended that Obama work with the Europeans to draft a series of anti-Israel resolutions for the UN Security Council to pass. Among other things, these resolutions, which Mitchell said would be "painful for Israel," would include an assertion that Jewish building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is illegal. That is, Mitchell recommended that Obama adopt as US policy at the Security Council past Palestinian demands that Congress forced Obama to reject just months ago at the Security Council. The notion is that by doing so, Obama could convince the Palestinians to water down the even more radically anti-Israel positions they are advancing today at the UN General Assembly that Congressional pressure prevents him from supporting. Since General Assembly resolutions have no legal weight and Security Council resolutions do carry weight, Mitchell's policy represents the most anti-Israel policy ever raised by a senior US official. Unfortunately Obama's actions since last week suggest that he has adopted the gist of Mitchell's policy recommendations. First there was his speech before AIPAC. Among other things, Obama used the international campaign to delegitimize Israel's right to exist as a justification for his policies of demanding that Israel capitulate to the Palestinians' demands, which he has now officially adopted as US policy. As he put it, "there is a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing their interests at the United Nations. They recognize that there is an impatience with the peace process — or the absence of one. Not just in the Arab world, but in Latin America, in Europe, and in Asia. That impatience is growing, and is already manifesting itself in capitals around the world." From AIPAC, Obama moved on to Europe. There he joined forces with European governments in an attempt to gang up on Israel at the G8 meeting. Obama sought to turn his embrace of the Palestinian negotiating position into the consensus position of the G8. His move was scuttled by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who refused to accept any resolution that made mention of borders without mentioning the Palestinian demand to destroy Israel through Arab immigration, Israel's right to defensible borders, or the Palestinians' refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. If Harper had not stood by Israel, the G8's anti-Israel resolution endorsing the Palestinian negotiating position could have formed the basis of a US-sponsored anti-Israel Security Council resolution. Israelis planning their summer trips should put Canada at the top of their lists.
THE FINAL step Obama has taken to solidify the impression that he does not have Israel's best interests at heart, is actually something he has not done. Over the past week, Fatah leaders of the US-backed Palestinian Authority have made a series of statements that put paid any thought that they are interested in peace with Israel or differ substantively from their partners in Hamas. At the Arab League meeting in Qatar on Saturday, PA President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinian state "will be free of all Jews." Last week the US-supported Abbas denied the Jewish connection to the land of Israel and claimed absurdly that the Palestinians were 9,000 years old. Equally incriminating, in an interview last week with Aaron Lerner from the IMRA newsgathering website, Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said that now that Hamas was the co-leader of the PA with Fatah, responsibility for continuing to hold IDF St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit hostage devolved from Hamas to the PA. And the PA would continue to hold him hostage. Shaath's statement makes clear that rather than moderating Hamas, the Fatah-Hamas unity deal is transforming Fatah into Hamas. And yet, Obama has had nothing to say about any of this. Obama's now undeniable antipathy for Israel and his apparent willingness to use his power as American president to harm Israel at the UN and elsewhere guarantee that for the duration of his tenure in office, Israel will face unprecedented threats to its security. This disturbing reality ought to focus the attention of all Israelis and of the American Jewish community. With the leader of the free world now openly siding with forces bent on Israel's destruction, the need for unity has become acute.
MADDENINGLY, HOWEVER, at this time of unprecedented danger we see the Israeli media have joined ranks with Kadima in siding with Obama against Israel in a joint bid to bring down Netanyahu's government. Yediot Aharonot, Maariv, Haaretz, Channel 2, Channel 10, Army Radio and Israel Radio's coverage of Netanyahu's visit and its aftermath was dominated by condemnations of the prime minister, and praise for Obama and opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who called for Netanyahu to resign. The fact that polling data showed that only 12 percent of Jewish Israelis regard Obama as pro-Israeli and that the overwhelming majority of the public with an opinion believes Netanyahu's visit was a success made absolutely no impression on the media. The wall-to-wall condemnations of Netanyahu by the Israeli media lend the impression that Israel's leading reporters and commentators are committed to demoralizing the public into believing that Israel has no option other than surrender. Then there is the American Jewish leadership. And at this critical time in US-Israel relations, the American Jewish leadership is either silent or siding with Obama. Right after Obama's shocking speech on May 19, the Anti-Defamation League released a statement endorsing it. Stand With Us congratulated Obama for his AIPAC speech. With the notable exceptions of the Zionist Organization of America and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in America (CAMERA), leaders of American Jewish organizations have refused to condemn Obama's anti-Israel positions. Their silence becomes all the more enraging when placed against the massive support Israel receives from rank-and-file American Jews. In a survey of American Jews taken by CAMERA on May 16-17, between 75% and 95% of American Jews supported Israel's position on defensible borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian "refugees," Palestinian recognition of Israel's right to exist and the right of Jews to live in a Palestinian state. The refusal of most American Jewish leaders, the Israeli media and Kadima to condemn Obama today makes you wonder if there is anything the US president could do to convince them to break ranks and stand with Israel and with the vast majority of their fellow Jews. But it is more than a source of wonder. It is a reason to be frightened. Because Obama's actions over the past two weeks make clear to anyone willing to see that in the age of Obama, silence is dangerous. Contact Dr History at drhistory@cox.net |
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EQUATING ANTI-SEMITISM WITH 'ISLAMOPHOBIA'
Posted by Phyllis Chesler, May 31, 2011. |
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Did you know that Jews and Muslims have a shared history in Europe? That Muslims have "deep roots" on the European continent and that Muslims are as imperiled by "Islamophobia" as Jews are by anti-Semitism? Nothing could be further from the truth, and yet the first Gathering of European Muslim and Jewish Leaders issued a statement on May 9th and just held a meeting in Brussels on May 30, 2011. Oddly enough, the meeting was organized by two American Jewish groups, Rabbi Marc Schneier's Foundation For Ethnic Understanding and philanthropist Ronald Lauder's World Jewish Congress, as well as by the European Jewish Congress. No Muslim organization seems to have shared in organizing the meeting, although two organizations and more than a dozen Muslim leaders attended and signed the joint declaration. Can you believe this? It this some kind of exercise in dhimmitude and self-delusion? Why are the Jews doing the heavy lifting for the far wealthier Muslim world? More important: Why support such dangerously misguided concepts? At this moment in world history, why are Jews confusing "Islamophobia" with anti-Semitism? One understands that Muslims might want to assume whatever is left of Jewish victimhood and make it their own — but why are Jews enabling them to do so? If the Muslims are coming in great good faith, they would state some obviously truths, beginning with the Koranic roots of Jew- and infidel-hatred and the contemporary Islamist/genocidal intentions towards the Jewish State. Indeed, a new kind of statement from Muslims would include their understanding of — and desire to break from — the historical Muslim persecution of Jews and infidels in Muslim-majority countries. This is not that kind of statement or declaration. Anti-Semitism cannot, must not, be equated with Islamophobia. European Muslims have nothing to fear from European Jews. European Jews have everything to fear from European Muslims. As Clemens Heni, a scholar of German anti-Semitism, has pointed out: "There is no other prejudice or form of racism which you can compare to anti-Semitism. If you look at Islam today, there is a (reason for) Islamophobia because Jihadists say, 'We want to kill the unbelievers.' Jews never said that." Those who equate legitimate fears of Islamist extremism with anti-Semitism, he argues, clearly "didn't learn the lesson [of] the Holocaust. They are even downplaying the Holocaust itself." According to the declaration, "Jews and Muslims live side-by-side in every European country and our two communities are important components of Europe's religious, cultural and social tapestry." The document fails to mention that those Jews who live "side-by-side" with Muslims are in danger of being harassed, beaten, or even tortured to death, as was Ilan Halimi of France. The declaration commits an outrage against history by equating the Jewish experience in Europe with the Muslim experience in Europe, even though Jews have been living as a persecuted minority on the continent for more than a thousand years while most Muslims only arrived in large numbers after World War II. The declaration lumps together the Shoah (Holocaust), the slaughter of six million Jews, with the mass killings of some thousands of Muslims in Bosnia during the 1990s. It ignores the history of Muslim Spain in the Middle Ages, when both Christian and Muslim rulers persecuted Jews and Muslim mobs slaughtered them in pogroms. Needless to say, no Jewish outrages against Christian or Muslim communities have ever taken place on European soil. With mock solemnity, the document proclaims, "We must never allow anti-Semitism...to become respectable in today's Europe" — as if anti-Semitism, in its modern guise of anti-Zionism, weren't already perfectly respectable in every corner of Europe. Rabbis all over Europe have been telling their people to flee before it is too late. Many Jews have done so. Why is a group of Jews trying to help Muslims, however fine, by appealing to European governments not to "pander to right wing forces" which are, belatedly, beginning to gather in response to a Muslim population which is hostile to Western and European values, does not wish to assimilate, and is both separatist and violent? Had Muslims come in total peace these "right wing forces" may have, indeed, been a reflection of European racism towards Arabs and dark-skinned "Easterners." But the alleged "Islamophobia" is not based on bigoted considerations of color, faith, or ethnicity; it is, rather, based on the increasing danger that Muslims pose to the stability and character of Europe. Will these Muslim signatories agree to a declaration that critiques Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and in Gaza, and Palestinians in general, for their hatred of Israel, the Jewish state? If not, what is to be gained by standing in solidarity with such Muslims? According to Clemens Heni, the views of this declaration: "Definitely [do] not represent the Jewish community in Germany — neither the Central Council of Jews in Germany nor any important Jewish Community Center supports this (nonsense). Muslims did not at all live as long in Europe as Jews did. Muslims and Germans declared Jihad in November 1914, during the First World War. THIS is what the German — Muslim alliance in the 20th century is all about." In Heni's view, the Muslim "history" in Europe is about Muslim anti-Semitic alliances with German and Nazi anti-Semites. Who are the Jewish "leaders" who organized and attended this meeting? Who appointed them? Are they this desperate for headlines or so eager to be seen as "players"? Are they so genuinely frightened for their endangered European communities that they are willing to say and do anything, or are they simply dangerously misguided? It is the midnight hour. What kinds of private deals and illusions are these leaders conjuring up for themselves? Dr. Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's
Studies at City University of New York. She is an author and lecturer
and co-founder of the still ongoing Association for Women in
Psychology (1969). This article appeared in Front Page Magazine
(http://frontpagemag.com/2011/05/31/
equating-anti-semitism-with-islamophobia/)
and is archived at
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HUMPTY OBUMPTY AND THE ARAB SPRING
Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, May 31, 2011. |
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The only serious question is when will the war with Egypt start? Egypt has opened the border with Gaza and it is generally assumed that it is to help the Hamas move weapons and operatives. However crossings are bidirectional. It will now be possible for Egypt to move food and money from Gaza into Egypt. I have no doubt that Gaza looks like a big, juicy lamb to the tin soldiers in Egypt just waiting to be slaughtered for their enjoyment. So we can expect a major, if at first, undercover, Egyptian presence in Gaza. Once they finish looting Gaza, the real trouble will begin. That is when, in desperation, they will need a war to thin out their population and force the West to pay them tribute in return for cooling off the situation. This below was written by Spengler and it is archived at Asia Times
Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman. Comment on this article in Spengler's Expat Bar forum. |
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I've been warning for months that Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and other Arab oil-importing countries face a total economic meltdown (see Food and failed Arab states, Feb 2, and The hunger to come in Egypt, May 10). Now the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has confirmed my warnings. The leaders of the industrial nations waited until last weekend's Group of Eight (G-8) summit to respond, and at the initiative of United States President Barack Obama proposed what sounds like a massive aid program but probably consists mainly of refurbishing old programs. The egg has splattered, and all of Obumpty's horses and men can't mend it. Even the G-8's announcement was fumbled; Canada's Prime Minister John Harper refused to commit new money, a dissonant note that routine diplomatic preparation would have pre-empted. The numbers thrown out by the IMF are stupefying. "In the current baseline scenario," wrote the IMF on May 27, "the external financing needs of the region's oil importers is projected to exceed $160 billion during 2011-13." That's almost three years' worth of Egypt's total annual imports as of 2010. As of 2010, the combined current account deficit (that is, external financing needs) of Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Morocco and Tunisia was about $15 billion a year. What the IMF says, in effect, is that the oil-poor Arab economies — especially Egypt — are not only broke, but dysfunctional, incapable of earning more than a small fraction of their import bill. The disappearance of tourism is an important part of the problem, but shortages of fuel and other essentials have had cascading effects throughout these economies. "In the next 18 months," the IMF added, "a greater part of these financing needs will need to be met from the international community because of more cautious market sentiments during the uncertain transition." Translation: private investors aren't stupid enough to throw money down a Middle Eastern rat-hole, and now that the revolutionary government has decided to make a horrible example of deposed president Hosni Mubarak, anyone who made any money under his regime is cutting and running. At its May 29 auction of treasury bills, Egypt paid about 12% for short-term money, to its own captive banking system. Its budget deficit in the next fiscal year, the government says, will exceed $30 billion. And the IMF's $160 billion number is only "external financing"; that is, maintaining imports into a busted economy. It doesn't do a thing to repair busted economies that import half their caloric intake, as do the oil-poor Arab nations. Egypt's economy is in free fall. Its biggest foreign exchange earner was a tourist industry that won't come back for a decade, if ever. The IMF's $160 billion doesn't take into account the costs of teaching two-fifths of the Egyptian population to read, or raising crop yields to more than a fifth of American levels, or training university graduates to do more than stamp identity cards and shuffle papers. As the international organization made clear, this is what Egypt and its neighbors require merely to pay for essential imports. Of course, the IMF's admission that Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Yemen can't meet the majority of their import bill without foreign aid does not increase the probability that these countries will obtain financing on that scale. On May 30, the IMF announced that it would lend $3 billion to Egypt — a tenth of its budget deficit — sometime in June. The G-8 offered the grandiose pledge of $20 billion in their own money along with $20 billion from the IMF, World Bank, and so forth, to support the "Arab Spring", with the dissension of the Canadian prime minister. But it is unclear whether that represents new money, or a shuffling of existing aid commitments, or nothing whatever. Whatever the Group of Eight actually had in mind, the proposed aid package for the misnomered Arab Spring has already become a punching bag for opposition budget-cutters. "Should we be borrowing money from China to turn around and give it to the Muslim Brotherhood?" Sarah Palin asked on May 27. "Now, given that Egypt has a history of corruption when it comes to utilizing American aid, it is doubtful that the money will really help needy Egyptian people. Couple that with the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is organized to have a real shot at taking control of Egypt's government, and one has to ask why we would send money (that we don't have) into unknown Egyptian hands," the former Republican vice-presidential candidate added. Whether any amount of foreign aid will stabilize Egypt's economic position is questionable, even if the industrial nations and the Arab Gulf states opened their purses, which is doubtful. From Arab-language online media, it appears that Egypt's economic troubles have metastasized. Last month, rice disappeared from public storehouses amid press reports that official food distribution organizations were selling the grain by the container on the overseas market. Last week, diesel fuel was the scarce commodity, with 24-hour queues forming around gasoline stations. Foreign tankers were waiting at Port Said on the Suez Canal to pump diesel oil from storage facilities, as government officials sold the scarce commodity for cash. This is the sort of general breakdown I observed in 1992 in Russia, following the collapse of the communist government. As an adviser to finance minister Yegor Gaidar, I heard stories of Russian officials selling unregistered trainloads of raw materials on foreign markets and depositing the proceeds in Swiss banking accounts. Anything of value that could find a buyer overseas was sold. I didn't last long as an adviser; looting and pillaging wasn't my area of competence. Russia, it should be recalled, is largely self-sufficient in food and is among the world's largest oil producers, while Egypt imports half its food. Russia had enormous resources on which to draw. Egypt, Syria and Tunisia have nothing. For 60 years, the Egyptian army and associated crony capitalists ran the economy as a private preserve. Although the army remains in nominal charge, the public humiliation of Mubarak serves notice on the previous masters of Egypt's little universe that they are as vulnerable as their former patron. Everyone who can get out will and will take with them whatever they can. Syria is also vulnerable to hunger, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned May 23. "Continuing unrest in Syria will not only affect economic growth but could disrupt food distribution channels leading to severe localized shortages in main markets," according to the FAO. ''Syria hosts one of the largest urban refugee populations in the world, including nearly one million Iraqis who have become more vulnerable because of rising food and fuel prices." Nearly 700,000 Libyan refugees have reached Libya and Egypt, fleeing their country's civil war. At least 30,000 Tunisian refugees (and likely many more) have overwhelmed camps in Italy, and perhaps a tenth of that number have drowned in the attempt to reach Europe. A large but unknown number of Syrian refugees have fled to Lebanon and Turkey. Robert Fisk wrote in the London Independent on May 30 that Turkey fears a mass influx of Syrian Kurdish refugees, so that "Turkish generals have thus prepared an operation that would send several battalions of Turkish troops into Syria itself to carve out a 'safe area' for Syrian refugees inside Assad's caliphate." The borders of the affected nations have begun to dissolve along with their economies. It will get worse fast. Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. |
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CONTIGUOUS STATE DECEPTION!
Posted by Steven Shamrak, May 31, 2011. |
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In a recent major speech at the State Department, President Obama, addressing the 'democratic' revolution in the Middle East and North Africa and predictably Israel became the main point of attention again. Obama, like many of his predecessors (Carter, both presidents Bush, Clinton) has made another attempt to resurrect the peace process between Israel and so-called Palestinians. During his recent speech, addressing the Middle-East North African issues, President Obama stated: "The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps" Even before the speech, Obama knew that it is not an acceptable proposition to both sides, Israel and PA. Israel had much suffered from Arab aggression, before it was able to free some of Jewish land from Arab occupation in 1967. To return to 1967 borders would end the hope of the Jewish people to reunify Eretz-Israel and will put Israel in existential danger again. The PA has just been pretending that it is considering the idea of peace (a tactical deception to advance Israel's destruction), as it was clearly outlined in the "Stage plan"! A few days later Obama reverted to the guarantee President Bush gave Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2004, but humiliation and political damage to Israel had already been done. "Shoot first, clarify later" is a commonly used tactic of political assault on Israel! ''There was nothing particularly original in my proposal,'' Obama admitted later during his presentation to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The idea of land swaps were proposed several times before, including by President George W. Bush but more diplomatically, and was vigorously rejected by PA. Knowing that, Obama had still felt compelled to publicly humiliate Israel again by this unacceptable idea of swapping Jewish land for Jewish land in order to accommodate the creation of another Arab-terror state. During the years of fruitless negotiations the same idea was put on the table even by Israel several times. It was instantly squashed and rejected by PA leadership. The only reason why Obama has mentioned the "land swap" is to pretend that there is a ground for negotiation to make progress in the fake peace process. Fostering illusion of the peace process is the surest way to continue the conflict. This is the true aim of the multifaceted game! This is consistent with the history of US involvement in Arab-Israel conflict and all players have been playing this game quite well. (part2 below) Happy Jerusalem Day — Yom Yerushalayim! The Jewish holiest city must stay united forever! Food for Thought by Steven Shamrak There is a positive side to the opening border to Gaza residents by Egypt. It took only two days for half of Gaza population to cross border couple of years ago. It is time to move all this terror-infested population to Sinai permanently! Look Who is Talking — Another Arab 'Democrat' Egyptian presidential likely Amr Moussa said that the Israeli refusal to negotiate a peaceful settlement with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas is illegitimate. He said that the current Israeli leadership "is not serious" about negotiating with any Palestinian faction. (Hamas will not recognize Israel as a state !) UN Quietly Agreed with Israel Last week a UN investigation formally concluded that Syria was building a secret nuclear reactor in 2007 when the partially completed project was destroyed by Israel. The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency officially linked Syria to a clandestine nuclear program. Representatives of American People are not with Obama! In his address to the US Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu indicated Israel may act against a nuclear-armed Iran, ruled out return to the 1967 borders, stressed Israeli troops would stay on the Jordan River and agreed to negotiate the status of Jewish settlements, while retaining Israeli troops on the Jordan River. US senators and congressmen on both sides of the aisle rose thirty times to give him cheering ovations. (Giving up Jewish land to enemies will not bring peace to Israel, but it is nice to see that the US legislators, as most of Americans, support Israel. Who do their presidents serve?) Israel Could Face Isolation President Barack Obama says Israel will face growing isolation without a credible Middle East peace process. The US president told America's pro-Israel lobby that "we cannot afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades, to achieve peace." (Who are "We"? Enemies of Israel have been creating perception of Israel's isolation in order to blackmail Jewish state to surrender Jews land! Why aren't facilitators of international Islamic terror in Saudi Arabia facing isolation? "We", the US, does not face threat of annihilation, does it?) Second best Arab Product, after Oil! UAE national Daad Mohammed Al Balushi, 63, who first married at 19, fathered 90 children from 17 wives. He also has 50 grandchildren. Another marriage is on the cards in two weeks for the proud father. He says 100 children are within reach. It was Hard for IAEA to Admit The International Atomic Energy Agency revealed for the first time on Tuesday that it possesses evidence that Tehran has conducted work on a highly sophisticated nuclear triggering technology that experts said could be used for only one purpose: setting off a nuclear weapon. (I wonder how long the agency was hiding this vital information?) No Honor Among Islamic Friends Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has secretly ordered his government officials to dump Ankara's ties with Damascus with all speed and allowed Syrian opposition leaders to meet in Anatolia on May 31-June 2 on ways to topple Bashar Assad. He has also cancelled Turkish participation in the June flotilla for breaking the Gaza blockade. Infinite Madness On the ballot in San Francisco this fall will be a proposal to make it a crime to circumcise male children. If the measure passes, anyone convicted of circumcising a baby boy could be fined up to $1,000 and sentenced to a year in prison. Even for San Francisco, this is madness. Quote of the Week: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful." — Koran, Sura 9:5 — Kill all Infidels if they do not convert to Islam — this is the driving force of modern Islamism! Contiguous State Deception! (part2) by Steven Shamrak In his speech Obama said "The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state." What map had Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not a friend of Israel, shown to him? Where did he see 'contiguous' land — connection between Gaza and Judea/Samaria (West Bank)? Is he planning to cut Israel a half? Is it OK for Israel to be non-contiguous? Fatah, Hamas and their masters will never recognize Israel — so forget about Israel as the "Jewish state". They made it clear many times before. The PA blatantly ignores the major Oslo accords' requirements for — recognition of Israel, stopping terror attacks and anti-Israel incitement. A few years ago 8,500 Jews were forcefully removed from Gaza. There are almost 500,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria. The PA is planning to create another Islam dominate state without Jews! Why is transfer of Jews from their ancestral land, in order to accommodate bogus claims of the terror supporting population, is satisfactory to the international community and it is not considered as a violation of the 4th Geneva convention, but transfer of the fake Palestinians to Sinai, a vast contagious land with very low population and various resources is not an acceptable one? Why must the state of this fake nation, which was forged in order to destroy Israel, be created on Jewish land? The international anti-Semites have already displaced and committed numerous genocides and crimes against Jews in Britain, Spain and other places in Europe. Now they are assisting Arabs to finish their dirty job in the Jewish homeland! Obama has also suggested put aside for the future negotiations the future of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees. Recognition of Israel was 'put aside', end of terror attacks again on Israel was 'put aside', establishing a democratic governance in PA is not a priority! Have this 'genius' negotiating tactic brought peace to Israel? Why can't we talk about fake Palestinian refugees now? During the war of Independence, which Arabs had instigated, some 460,000 people, currently known as Palestinians, left the conflict zone following orders from their leaders. Their numbers had doubled immediately following that the UN announced the aid available to them. Several generations of professional refugees have been created as a result. Since then, close to 850,000 Jews have been forced to leave Muslims countries. Hypocrisy must be exposed! Facts are available if someone wants to find and learn them. Jew-haters and self-hating Jews do not want to know or just purposely disregard them! The Arab-Israel peace process is a deception! It is designed to prevent Israel from reclaiming Jewish land and establishing the sovereign Jewish state, Eretz-Israel. Western countries have been using instability in the Middle East in order to control oil supply from Islamic states. At the same time major Islamic ideological powers and organizations (Iran, Wahabi Saudi Arabia and Muslim brotherhood) are using the Arab-Israel conflict to divert attention from themselves and their true Islamic agenda — global world domination of Islam. That is why they created the fake Palestinian nation in 1964. Termination of Israel is just the first step in the Holly war against "infidels"! This is a peculiar symbiotic relationship between two enemies united by their hate for Jews and lust for power. Traditional anti-Semitism of the Western democracies and Russia have become the best ally of their own mortal enemies! Steven Shamrak was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and participated in the Moscow Zionist "refusenik" movement and currently lives in Melbourne, Australia. He publishes internet editorial letters on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He can be reached by email at StevenShamrak.e@gmail.com |
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FROM ISRAEL: UN PANIC
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 30, 2011. |
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There is considerable anxiety these days with regard to the threats of the Palestinian Authority (and now the Arab League) to ask the UN, in September, to officially declare "Palestine" to be a state. Accompanying — or fueling — this anxiety is a great deal of misinformation. And so — having consulted with legal experts here in Israel and done other research — I will make my best effort to clarify a muddled situation. ~~~~~~~~~~ What is referred to as "international law" is not nearly as clear or definitive as many people imagine it to be. There are certain written documents of international law. The Geneva Conventions (four treaties and three protocols pertaining to human rights during war) would be a prime example. But technically these apply only to those nations that have ratified the conventions — that is, that have agreed to abide by their stipulations. Similarly, there is the charter of the UN, the principles of which have theoretically been accepted by all member states. There is also "customary international law": When a practice is so common that there is a broad international consensus that it is obligatory, it becomes a rule of customary law considered binding upon all nations. Sometimes, even though a treaty (such as a Geneva Convention) is binding only on signatories, the principles stated within that treaty have been so widely accepted internationally that they can be said to be "customary international law." ~~~~~~~~~~ This is what we have, broadly, from the perspective of international law with regard to the establishment of a Palestinian state: The United Nations does not "recognize" or "declare" states into existence. All the UN can do is accept for membership states that are already in existence. (I'll come to this below.) A state applies to the Secretary-General. The Security Council must then make a recommendation on membership and send that recommendation to the General Assembly. But we can assume that the application by a Palestinian state would be vetoed in the Security Council by the US. This is close to a sure thing, because this is the principle on which Obama has advanced his policy and his public position: the state of Palestine must be established via negotiations. What is more, Obama is likely to be influenced by Congressional pressure and electoral considerations. There is considerable talk among the Arabs now about going to the General Assembly for a declaration of statehood, to avoid that Security Council veto, but quite frankly, I don't know what they're thinking. In any event, a declaration of statehood for the Palestinians by the General Assembly would be only a recommendation without weight in international law. This is important to keep in mind. ~~~~~~~~~~ Here I would like to stop for an aside: It is often said that Israel was voted into existence with the partition of Palestine recommended by the General Assembly on November 29, 1947. This is not the case. The GA, which only makes non-binding recommendations, did no more than suggest or advise that division of Palestine into states for the Jews and the Arabs would be prudent. Israel came into being with the declaration of independence made by Ben Gurion on May 14, 1948. The Jewish community in Palestine acted in compliance with the recommendation of the GA regarding division of Palestine. But it was the Jewish community and its leadership, acting, that established the state, not the UN. ~~~~~~~~~~ As to establishing a Palestinian state: The PA must declare the state into existence. This it can do, independent of all other issues. There are, however, criteria for the establishment of a state that have been established in customary international law (drawing from the Montevideo Convention): A state must have (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states. It is the issue of defined territory that is most problematic. Originally it was thought that a Fatah-controlled PA would make the declaration in Judea and Samaria. But now formation of a unity government with Hamas is in process. If that government is established, the "state," as it would be declared, would include Gaza. But beyond this is the question of the border between the PA in Judea and Samaria, and Israel. The talk, of course, is of a Palestinian state to the '67 line. That line was an armistice line between Israel and Jordan in 1949, a line that, according to the terms of the armistice treaty, would not prejudice future negotiations on a final border. The armistice was abrogated in 1967, when Jordan attacked Israel. It is a line without meaning today. Needless to say, the PA is not in control of all of the territory of Judea and Samaria, from the Jordan River to the '67 line. At most it controls area A, as defined by the Oslo Accords (encompassing the main Arab cities such as Nablus and Jenin — where the IDF still does operations against terrorists), and partially controls area B. I spoke yesterday with a lawyer from the Legal Forum of Israel who says the PA cannot declare a state on land it does not control. I have spoken with another legal expert who says they'll declare on all of Judea and Samaria, but will control less. In other words, they'll do as they please — undoubtedly, they will declare Jerusalem or part of it as their capital, as well — regardless of international law. ~~~~~~~~~~ What would follow next is the recognition of this state of Palestine by other states. The international status, the viability, of this state would be affected by how well recognized it was internationally. We've already seen recognition by some states — Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina — in Latin America, which is interesting, as this has come before the PA itself has declared a state. But in any event it is the recognition of Western democracies that would make a real difference for the new Palestinian state. What we are looking at is the possibility of recognition by European nations — and it is these nations that Netanyahu has been lobbying in this regard. The Europeans must be convinced that a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood would be detrimental to peace in the Middle East and should not be supported. ~~~~~~~~~~ It is the considered opinion of many, if not most, experts that nothing much will happen on the ground after that Palestinian state is declared. It is a certainty that no international force, UN or otherwise, is going to come in and push us back to the '67 line. And keep in mind that Israel is not going to recognize the state. Israel is highly unlikely to honor the inviolate integrity of this unilaterally declared sovereign state if it is necessary to pursue terrorists, and most certainly will not honor the unilaterally declared border. ~~~~~~~~~~ The overriding concern with regard to this matter is not with legalities, but with politics. If Israel is perceived as "occupying" part of a Palestinian state, then there may be an increased effort at isolating and delegitimizing the Jewish state — utilizing boycotts and sanctions. Thus, every possible effort is being made now to make Israel's case within the international community, and to bolster Israel's status. To that end, what Netanyahu just accomplished in the Congress is of enormous importance. It must be noted as well that whatever I've said about international law, there is a tendency to ignore that law today and take action as it suits various parties politically. ~~~~~~~~~~ In seeking to declare a state unilaterally, the Palestinian Arabs are hoping to circumvent the "end of conflict" that would come with a negotiated settlement. They are separating peace from statehood. This point cannot be over emphasized, and it is what the international community must understand. If there were a final peace accord, in theory, two states would stand side by side. As it is, they hope to declare their state and still go at Israel until she is no more. ~~~~~~~~~~ What is more, unilateral declaration of statehood by the Palestinian Arabs represents an abrogation of agreements under Oslo (which created the PA in the first place). It also flies in the face of UN resolutions — most particularly Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967 — which call for a negotiated settlement on final borders. ~~~~~~~~~~ A letter drafted jointly by lawyers of the Legal Forum for Israel and by Ambassador Alan Baker, Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and signed by jurists and international lawyers from around the world is being sent to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. It addresses the inherent illegality of the adoption of a resolution by the General Assembly recognizing a Palestinian state and its borders, and seems to be a move to block a worse case scenario in which the General Assembly ignores both its own rules and international law. You can see it in its entirety here: http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp? DRIT=1&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=442 &PID=0&IID=7267&TTL=A_UN_Resolution_to_ Recognize_a_Palestinian_State_within_the_%E2%80% 9C1967_Borders%E2%80%9D_Would_Be_Illegal I would like to share three of the points made in the letter: "[] While the Interim Agreement [of the Oslo Accords] was signed by Israel and the PLO, it was witnessed by the UN together with the EU, the Russian Federation, the US, Egypt, and Norway. It is thus inconceivable that such witnesses, including first and foremost the UN, would now give license to a measure in the UN aimed at violating this agreement and undermining major resolutions of the Security Council. "[] While the UN has maintained a persistent policy of non-recognition of Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem pending a negotiated solution, despite Israel's historic rights to the city, it is inconceivable that the UN would now recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state, the borders of which would include eastern Jerusalem. This would represent the ultimate in hypocrisy, double standards, and discrimination, as well as an utter disregard of the rights of Israel and the Jewish People. "[] Such unilateral action by the Palestinians could give rise to reciprocal initiatives in the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) which could include proposed legislation to declare Israel's sovereignty over extensive parts of Judea and Samaria, if and when the Palestinians carry out their unilateral action." Again, I point out that such a move by the General Assembly would carry no weight in international law, but might have negative political repercussions for Israel. As to the last of the points in the letter above: Israel, as the PA, is bound by the Oslo Accords to resolve via negotiations issues of borders and status of territory in Judea and Samaria. Unilateral action is precluded. If the PA were to take unilateral action, it would abrogate Oslo and free Israel to move on annexation of at least Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info |
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IN PRAYER, JEWS FACE JERUSALEM BUT MUSLIMS FACE MECCA
Posted by Victor Sharpe, May 30, 2011. |
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Only under Israeli administration has Jerusalem been open for free and unfettered worship to members of all faiths |
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Jerusalem Unification Day will again be celebrated in Israel and throughout the world with the exception of that 7th century alternate universe: the Muslim world. It marks 44 years since the amazing and miraculous event took place when the Jewish people's 3,000 year old capital city was restored to the Jewish state in the 1967 Six-Day War. For 19 long years, from 1948 to 1967, Jordan had occupied Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the eastern half of Jerusalem. Only Pakistan and Britain had ever recognized Jordan's illegal occupation. The British officered Jordanian Arab Legion had forced out at gunpoint the Jewish residents of the Old City and the neighboring Jewish villages: It was Apartheid and ethnic cleansing, Arab style. The Legion went on to desecrate the Jewish graves on the ancient Mount of Olives and use the headstones as latrines. They desecrated over 50 synagogues and forbade Jewish pilgrims to worship at their holy places. They had turned the Via Delarosa, the Way of the Cross, into a filthy, sewerage strewn alley through which Christian pilgrims were forced to walk. Jordan cut the Holy City in half with barbed wire and erected walls, complete with snipers along the dividing line who killed many Jews in the western half of the city. There is another city today divided by Muslims. It is called Nicosia in Cyprus, a country whose northern half is still occupied by Turkey. Strangely, no international calls are heard calling for Turkey to leave or for the city to be reunited. Another city that was divided against itself was Berlin and President Reagan called upon Soviet President Gorbachev to, "tear down this wall." The world applauded when the wall came down. Now President Obama and most of the same world in effect is calling upon Israel to re-divide Jerusalem. Obama is essentially calling upon Israeli Prime Minister to 'build up a wall.' Only when Israel was able to restore dignity and cleanliness in 1967 to all the holy places was the earlier Muslim discrimination against Jews and Christians finally brought to a long and overdue end. But this persecution of non-Muslims is par for the Islamic world and it continues today throughout the territory foolishly given to the Palestinian Arabs as a result of the grotesquely misnamed Oslo Peace Accords. Throughout the Middle East, Christians are fleeing from Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority itself. The only nation in the Middle East where the Christian population is growing is Israel. The Palestinian Arabs now live under the Palestinian Authority — a territory carved out of Judea and Samaria — the Jewish people's ancestral and biblical heartland, incorrectly called by its Jordanian name, the West Bank. The Obama regime is today backing the Palestinian Authority's spurious claim that the liberated areas from Arab Jordan must be forced back under the occupation and sovereignty of a future PA state. The PA is demanding that the eastern half of Jerusalem must be given to them in order to declare it the capital of a new Arab state called Palestine. Such an independent Arab state called Palestine has never existed in all of recorded history. Palestine has always been a geographical area just as Siberia or Patagonia is: never an independent state. Jerusalem has never been the capital city of any Arab or Muslim people. Jerusalem has been the eternal capital of only one people in all of that same recorded history: the Jewish people. A Kingdom of Jerusalem existed under the Christian Crusaders but this was created by a motley group of European knights who had no historical roots in the land. The Jewish Bible along with the Talmud and the Midrash tell us that the Torah, (the first five books of the Holy Bible) its light and its message, is to be broadcast to the entire world from one specific place: Jerusalem. Each time the Torah scroll is taken from the Ark to be read during synagogue services the following prayer is always sung. "For out of Zion shall go forth the Torah (Law) and the word of God from Jerusalem." (Isaiah 2:1 and Micah 4:2) In the complete Jewish Bible (the Tanach) the words Jerusalem and Zion appear 821 times with Jerusalem appearing 667 times and Zion appearing 154 times. Both Zion and Jerusalem are usually considered synonymous. In the Christian Bible, itself an account of Jewish personalities whose lives were formed within the Jewish Judean province of Rome, as well as the Galilee, the name Jerusalem appears 154 times and Zion seven. In the Koran, Jerusalem and Zion do not appear at all. Indeed, it was only after the Arabs, under their new banner of Islam, conquered Jerusalem in the year 638 that they invented Islamic history in and around Jerusalem. We are told that Mohammed flew on his magic horse to a place called Al Aksa, which means simply the farthest place. Much later, and for political reasons to do with historic, temporal and spiritual Jewish and Christian ties to Jerusalem, did Muslims name the Holy City as their Al Aqsa. After the Holy Temple was destroyed in the year 70 AD by Titus, Jerusalem lay stricken. But Jews still maintained a presence there and continued to suffer under Roman occupation. The heroic Bar-Kochba Revolt broke out in 135 AD but was crushed three years later by the Roman emperor, Hadrian, who razed Jewish Jerusalem, plowed the city under, and renamed it Aelia Capitolina in part after his own name, Hadrian Publius Aelius. He built a shrine to the Roman god, Jupiter, on the site where the Holy Jewish Temple's Holy of Holies had once stood. From the 10th century, the Muslim Arabs still called the city various names that echoed its original Jewish origins. For instance they called it Beit al-Makdis, the Arabic version of the Hebrew name, Beit HaMikdash — House of the Sanctuary. The Arabic name, Al-Kuds, is derived from the Hebrew, Ir Hakodesh — City of Holiness. The Christian king, Frederick II obtained Jerusalem, along with Bethlehem and Nazareth, in a treaty with the Egyptian Sultan al-Kamil. This was a lease agreement given by the Muslim ruler and meant to last some ten years. Frederick subsequently crowned himself King of Jerusalem. But in 1244 the Muslims retook Jerusalem and the city lapsed into a long, dilapidated slumber and the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount, which today are a focal point of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel activity, fell into disrepair and abandonment. Only when Israeli forces in June, 1967 liberated the Temple Mount and east Jerusalem, during their defensive war against Arab aggression, did the Arab and Muslim world suddenly wake up and demand control of the city, or at least the Temple Mount and Jerusalem's eastern half. It is instructive to note that when the Jordanian Arab Legion occupied east Jerusalem and the Old City in 1948, after driving out its Jewish population, the Arab world again lost interest in the city. Indeed, King Hussein, Jordan's ruler had little interest in Jerusalem compared to his desire to build up his capital, Amman, which he considered far more important. Between 1948 and 1967, during the illegal Jordanian Arab occupation of east Jerusalem and the West Bank, no Arab leader ever thought it important enough to visit Jerusalem except King Hussein, but he visited it rarely. Today, Mahmoud Abbas, the successor to arch terrorist Yasser Arafat and now head of the Palestinian Authority, demands that Jerusalem be divided again as it was from 1948 to 1967 and a new Arab capital — for the first time in history — established in Jerusalem. Not only the Muslim world, with its 57 member states, but the Europeans and President Obama pressure Israel into conceding parts of its holy capital to further placate the voracious Arab appetite and "further the peace process." Giving away even one inch of Jerusalem would be to spit in the face of the endless generations of Jews who have held Jerusalem as the central spiritual and physical place in Jewish history. It would be a cataclysmic and symbolic act of betrayal of Jewish history and faith if any part of Jerusalem is lost to the Jewish people by this generation of Israelis. For Jews, Jerusalem is the spiritual and temporal heart. It would also be a reverse for the Christian world. Only under Israeli administration has Jerusalem been open for free and unfettered worship to members of all faiths. The prayer uttered at Passover and Yom Kippur — "Next year in Jerusalem" — must not become an empty phrase made bitter in its very utterance by abandoning much of eternal Jerusalem to placate a fraudulent Arab people called Palestinians and appease a hostile world by succumbing to an equally fraudulent peace. It is instructive to note that in prayer, Jews in synagogues face Jerusalem while Muslims in mosques face Mecca. This Islamic practice, even on the Temple Mount, speaks volumes.
Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author of Volumes One &
Two of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.
This article appeared in Canada Free Press
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LAWYERS TO BAN: DECLARING A PALESTINIAN STATE IS ILLEGAL
Posted by Arutz-7, May 30, 2011. |
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This was written by Elad Benari, who writes for Arutz-7, where this article appeared today. |
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Israeli lawyers and international law experts have contacted UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, demanding that he prevent the Palestinian Authority's resolution asking for recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1949 armistice lines from being raised at the UN General Assembly in September. The lawyers say that UN recognition of such a state would be "in contrary to international law, UN resolutions and existing agreements." The signatories on the letter include Dr. Alan Baker, former legal adviser for the Foreign Ministry and Israeli Ambassador to Canada, as well as Dr. Meir Rosenne, former legal adviser for the Foreign Ministry, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. and one of the authors of the peace agreement with Egypt. Also signed are law Professors Talia Einhorn and Eliav Shochetman, as well as dozens of other experts in international law and lawyers. In the letter, the lawyers ask Secretary-General Ban to appeal to the General Assembly members to prevent the adoption of the Palestinian state resolution, since such a decision would stand in outright opposition to any agreements which were signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority as well as to Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973). The lawyers bring up the decision of The Council of the League of Nations dated July 24, 1922. The decision, which was adopted unanimously, calls for the establishment of a Jewish national home, including the right to increase Jewish settlement in all the historical territory of Israel, including Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem. This decision was approved by both houses of the U.S. Congress on June 30, 1922. Furthermore, state the lawyers, Article 80 of the UN Charter stipulates that the UN recognizes all decisions made by The Council of the League of Nations which preceded it and therefore, the 650,000 Jews currently living in Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem are living there legally. The lawyers further argue that the commonly used term '1967 borders' is invalid since it refers to the 1949 armistice lines and it was expressly stated in those agreements that the armistice lines would not be interpreted in any way as an international border. They note that according to Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, the parties are committed to conduct negotiations to bring about peace in the Middle East, within secure and recognized borders and with a just solution for all refugees, Jews and Arabs alike. They determine that a proposal by the PA for a unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state will be a fundamental breach of Article 31 of the Oslo Accords which were signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 1995, and in which it was determined that the PA would not initiate or take any steps that will change the status of Judea and Samaria until the end of negotiations, and that the issue of the borders will be determined only through negotiations. When the Palestinian Authority signed on these commitments, hundreds of thousands of Jews had already lived in Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem and the PA recognized that the status of these areas will not change until the negotiations end. "Although the Interim Agreement was signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority," write the lawyers, "the U.S., EU, Russia, Norway, Jordan, Egypt and the United Nations signed it as witnesses and will not be able to take part in the violation of the agreement by the Palestinians." The lawyers therefore end the letter by calling on Ban Ki-moon to stop the PA attempt to circumvent the negotiation process that was decided upon by the UN Security Council and the agreements signed between the parties. Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has constantly reiterated he would seek the unilateral declaration of a PA state by the United Nations if a peace deal is not reached with Israel come September. At the same time, he has flatly refused to come to the negotiating table and has manufactured preconditions when pressure has been brought to bear on the PA by the Quartet, especially the United States, for the PA to restart peace talks with Israel. Meanwhile, it was reported on Sunday that the IDF is purchasing non-lethal riot control gear to deal with large-scale Palestinian Authority violence expected in September, when PA Arabs are expected to attempt various violent provocations after the discussion in the United Nations. |
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MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD SHEIKH RUNS FOR PRESIDENT OF EGYPT
Posted by Dr. Richard Swier, May 30, 2011. |
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I have been writing since the uprising in Egypt that the Muslim Brotherhood and shariah Islamists are taking control. I have been and remain concerned that the Muslim Brotherhood is the best organized and funded political party in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is committed to the destruction of Israel, the United States and the imposition of shariah law across the globe. Now we learn from ALMASRIALYOUM.com that, "Muslim Brotherhood Sheikh Hazem Abu Ismail announced his intention to run in Egypt's upcoming presidential elections." President Obama appears to have embraced the Muslim Brotherhood. Key leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt attended his 2009 speech in Cairo and key leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in America attended his "1967 borders" speech at the U.S. State Department last week. According to ALMASRIALYOUM.com: "Abu Ismail said that his platform revolves around Islam, while 'Mohamed ElBaradei, Amr Moussa, and Hamdeen Sabahi, the liberal candidates, will be unable to present a clear vision' for the country. If I could apply sharia in Egypt, all people, including non-Muslims, would applaud me four years later,' said Abu Ismail." [My emphasis] Abu Ismail (pictured) will bring to Egypt a militant form of shariah Islam never seen in the Middle East since the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979. The difference is this coup will occur by fiat — an election to be held in September. My great fear is the upcoming election will bring the Muslim Brotherhood into power and result in greater turmoil in the region. Indications are that Iran is opening relations with Egypt in anticipation of a sharia Islamist government. Any political advance of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East will embolden Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the United States to demand more special rights and privileges. Groups like CAIR, ISNA, the Muslim Students Association and NAIT will push their agenda to de-legitimize any efforts by our law enforcement officials to fight our terrorist enemies and shariah Islam. I am already seeing this trend in Sarasota, FL, where CAIR has called for Sarasota County Sheriff Tom Knight to cease all anti-terrorist training by outside consultants like Sam Kharoba. What is even more frightening is Jewish groups have been co-opted into believing they too must stand with shariah Islamists. U.S. Jewish media is reporting that the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) are both part of a coalition that is fighting a proposed bank of Sharia law in Oklahoma. According to a report in the Jewish Chronicle: Muslims want to protect religious freedom" American Jewish groups are fighting a proposed ban of Sharia law in the state of Oklahoma. A coalition of organizations that include the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) are backing a legal appeal against a measure that would prevent Islamic law from being used in the state's courts. The AJC filed a brief last week with the US Court of Appeals arguing that the ban is an attack on religious freedom. The AJC said the provision — called the "Save our State law" by its supporters and adopted after a referendum which delivered a 70 per cent "yes" vote last November — is unconstitutional, violating a clause in the First Amendment which bars a state preference for one religion over another. "In a nation that treasures religious freedom and whose constitution forbids government to have favored or disfavored faiths, the Oklahoma provision cannot stand," wrote AJC Associate General counsel Marc Stern. The Anti-Defamation League and the Union of Reform Judaism supported the brief, as did the Centre for Islamic Pluralism and the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. A judge issued an injunction in November putting the law on hold while the challenge is being heard. Stephen Schwartz, who converted to Islam as an adult and is the executive director of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism, said both Jews and moderate Muslims are interested in protecting religious freedom. "This is not American, to pass a law in any state that's against the practicing of a religion," he said. He said American Jewish groups often work with mainstream Islamic organizations. "The AJC has organized three trips for moderate Muslims to visit Israel," Mr Schwartz said. In the original lawsuit against the Oklahoma measure, Muneer Awad of the Council on American Islamic Relations said the law would infringe the rights of Oklahomans to wear religious head scarves, choose Islamic marriage contracts or to be buried according to Islamic practices. He said the purpose of the law was made clear by Oklahoma Representative Rex Duncan, who said on television that "America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles". This move by the American Jewish Committee is akin to them joining with the German American Federation prior to WWII to impose National Socialism in the United States. What can they be thinking? Contact Richard Swier by email at drswier@gmail.com |
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1967 LINES
Posted by John R. Cohn, May 30, 2011. |
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Israel's 1948 armistice line served as the boundary with Jordan and Egypt for just 19 years, slicing in two Jerusalem, the only time in 3000 years that city has been divided. Between 1947 and 1967, over 9000 Israelis were killed in conflict with their Arab neighbors, including the Arab invasion that followed independence, in a nation that in 1948 had just over 600,000 Jewish citizens. America's conventional military is the most powerful on the planet, yet we struggle to control our border and with conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. As Hezbollah stockpiles over 50,000 rockets in Lebanon, and missiles are periodically fired from Gaza, Israelis have justified concerns about bringing unabashed enemies within a handful of miles of major population centers, able to cut a nine-mile wide country in half in minutes. Contact John Cohn at john.r.cohn@gmail.com |
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WHAT IF ISRAEL CHANGED DIRECTION?; THE TEN STATE SOLUTION: AN IDEA
WHOSE TIME HAS COME
Posted by GWY, May 29, 2011. |
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1. "What If Israel Changed Direction?"
By Yoel Meltzer
In the early years of Saturday Night Live there was a classic skit called "What if?" Posing as pseudo-intellectuals, Jane Curtain and company discussed such nonsensical topics as "What if Napoleon Bonaparte had B-52 bombers at the Battle of Waterloo?" or "What if Superman had landed in Germany instead of America?" As silly as those topics were, I have a feeling that in the future people will consider Israel's resurrection of Yasser Arafat and the PLO nearly twenty years ago as being far more outlandish. Kicked out of Jordan in the early 1970s and then out of Lebanon a decade later before finally being exiled to Tunisia, Arafat and his comrades were not only brought back to life by Israel but were even, in an act that defied all levels of pretzel logic, deposited on our own doorstep. Not surprisingly, such foolish acts of benevolence to someone who was arguably the godfather of international terrorism ended up costing us dearly throughout the past twenty years. In retrospect one can only wonder "What if Israel had not acted so imprudently?" In order to counterbalance such rash Israeli behavior and perhaps even to point the way for a fresh change of direction, I'd like to pose here a series of very real "What ifs?". Moreover, in light of President Obama's recent speech and the unrealistic demands he is placing on Israel, the time for a real change has never been more urgent. * What if Israel told the world that following years of repeatedly having its naïve willingness to divide the land and reconcile with the Arabs always greeted by an Arab refusal to settle the dispute, Israel finally understands that its intentions have been misguided and therefore it no longer intends to continue down the same path? What would be the ramifications of such an abrupt change by Israel? No one can say for sure although undoubtedly many will claim that if Israel were to make such a shift in direction it would only damage itself by bringing on more condemnations and boycotts, which in turn will lead to further de-legitimization. Perhaps this assumption is accurate, but then again perhaps it isn't. More importantly, since Israel is already being vilified and ostracized despite years of acquiescing to continue with a political process that has already weakened its image in the eyes of its enemies and has also cost it dearly in terms of lost lives, should we be overly concerned about the implications of making such a change in direction? Likewise, if more and more people are coming to understand that continuing down the current path might eventually lead to our destruction, should we just blindly carry on and ignore all the concerned voices? The truth is there's a good chance that such a shift in direction would actually garner a fair share of support. The average Israeli Jew is somewhat right-wing, nationalistic and traditional, as evidenced by both the last elections when the largest winning bloc by far was a right-wing/nationalist/religious bloc and by data from the Central Bureau of Statistics which finds that 60% of the Jews in Israel identify themselves as traditional or religious while even amongst the 40% that call themselves "secular" they still observe various aspects of the tradition. Together, these factors suggest that such a change of direction by Israel would be welcomed by a large percentage of its Jewish citizens. In America as well it's safe to assume that such a qualitative shift by Israel would resonate well with its many backers there, be it pro-Israel congressmen, conservative pro-Israel Christians or simply with the many average Americans that are naturally pro-Israel. Although no one knows for certain how the various world leaders would react, I think the silent majority of Jews and non-Jews throughout the world, those who see through the lies and international hypocrisy and understand the true worth of a strong, vibrant and confident Israel, would be very happy and most supportive. Moreover, this grass-roots support in turn might just influence the respective world leaders. Yoel Meltzer is a freelance writer living in Jerusalem. His personal blog
is at http://yoelmeltzer.com/).
2. The Ten State Solution: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
In the news, on the street, at international conferences, and in classrooms galore, everyone is talking about the "two state solution" as if it signified the Second Coming. People who have never been to Israel, or to Ramallah, who own no military maps of the region, and who do not know a single Palestinian, all, every last one, monotonously intones this phrase. President Obama, talked about the eternal, infernal two state solution or
about "two states for two peoples." Even Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood in
Gaza, now says it favors a two-state solution_
I loved how Prime Minister Netanyahu stood up to President Obama when he firmly and clearly declared that the time for illusions — the kind that is always written in Jewish blood — is now officially over. But why is everyone thinking so "small?" My colleague and friend, Dr.
Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar Ilan University
and a research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies,
has a far more realistic and creative _suggestion_
His suggestion is no joke. In fact, it has some serious support from both Israelis and Palestinians. Of course, things being what they are, no one will go on record supporting this idea, which is based on a sociological and historical analysis of Arab tribes and the consequent concept of Arab tribal city-states. Dr. Kedar proposes the creation of no less than eight or nine independent and separate Arab city-states within the West Bank, in addition to Gaza. Of course, Israel would comprise the ninth or tenth state. He writes: "There is no reason to assume that a Palestinian state will not become another failing Arab state, due to the fragmented society in the West Bank and Gaza, tribalism and lack of awareness of nationhood as demonstrated by the failing performance of the Palestinian authority since its establishment in 1994...Social stability is the key for political stability...the only successful model for an Arab state is the one which is based on a single consolidated traditional group such as each of the individual Arab Gulf Emirates." This actually makes sense. The Arab Gulf Emirates have been relatively successful because their inhabitants are, with some exceptions, largely homogeneous in terms of tribe, ethnicity, and religion. True, the oil wealth has also provided an incentive for unity. But in general, the Arab Middle East has always been composed of many tribes, religions, sects, and ethnic groups, all at war with each other and with the government. The colonial imposition of a central, western-style nation-state has not served the interests of the indigenous people but rather the interests of dictators and large corporations. Thus, according to Dr. Kedar, there is essentially one tribe that "governs" (the hearts and minds in) Ramallah, another tribe entirely which does so in Nablus, yet another which presides over Jenin, etc. A small city-state might be able to become productive and join a confederation of similar city-states. After all, size alone does not determine the success or failure of a state. For example, Monaco, Lichtenstein, and Luxembourg are small states with a high quality of life, while Algeria, Libya, and Sudan are large states with poor quality of life. According to Dr. Kedar: "The towns that will receive independence (from both the Palestinian Authority and Israel) are Hebron (the Arab part), Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Tul-karem and Qalqilya...Bethlehem will require further consideration." (In other writings, Dr. Kedar sometimes includes Bethlehem and questions Jericho). Sociologist Philip Carl Salzman has written a compelling work about
tribalism titled _Culture and Conflict in the Middle East_
Dr. Salzman notes that: "In fact, states and state institutions have existed in the Middle East for at least four thousand years. There have been governments, police, courts, tax collectors, armies, and so on, far back into the distant past of the Middle East. But they were never really there to serve people generally. The state institutions were put into place to serve the people controlling them. Any moment of disinterested leadership or wise attention to the needs of the populace were followed by centuries of self-serving...thuggery. The populace of these states was not made of citizens, but subjects....For their own security and comfort, the populace was left on its own to look after its own interests." And that's where one's family, clan, tribe, ethnicity and religion take over. If you are an Arab man in need of employment, your family/tribe will arrange it for you. What we call "nepotism" is viewed as an essential custom and way of life. If you are starving, your family/tribe is supposed to feed you. If you need a husband, that, too, is arranged for you, not by the government but by your family/tribe. There are other reasons that Dr. Kedar's proposal ought to be considered seriously. The reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas is unlikely to last. In March, 2007, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia negotiated a peace deal between Fatah and Hamas, but that peace was followed only three months later by a civil war in Gaza. In addition, most Gazans have never even been to the West Bank. Ironically, the same people who criticized President Bush for cramming Western-style democracy down the throats of the Iraqis and Afghans are now so often the very people who support cramming Western-style democracy down the throats of the Palestinians. Dr. Kedar's proposal is useful for another very important reason. Leaving aside the obvious and maddening fact that Jordan was supposed to be the Palestinian state — a face rarely admitted — Israel absolutely cannot survive if "Palestinian" Arabs enjoy "territorial contiguity." Prime Minister also said as much. Allow me to give him the final words: "While Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines — because these lines are indefensible....A peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle Eastern reality." And then Netanyahu stated what is chillingly obvious:
"We don't have a lot of margin for error."
3. Bow to the Muslim World, Round II
In September 1938 English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, explaining why he was flying to Germany a third time in order to make peace with Germany, recited the old nursery rhyme: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again." Cynical wags in the Foreign Office, who knew Chamberlain was in fact appeasing Hitler by surrendering Czechoslovakia to him, quickly began circulating another version of the saying: "If at first you don't concede, fly, fly, fly again." President Obama's new "outreach" to the Muslim world reminds me of Chamberlain's serial efforts to appease a Germany bent on aggression and conquest. First there was the Cairo speech in June 2009, which was supposed to be a "new beginning" for U.S. relations with Muslims, but in fact simply indulged the same old bad habits of Western self-doubt and historical guilt. Thus Obama attributed the "tension" between the West and Islam to a "colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold war in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations." Next came the videotaped New Year's greetings to Iran, and the multiple letters to the Iranian "Supreme Leader" Ali Khamenei requesting "co-operation in regional and bilateral relations." These outreaches were followed by Khameini's announcement that "the path of Iran's nuclear progress could not be blocked," and by the brutal crackdown that summer on the demonstrators protesting the tyranny of the mullahcracy. Meanwhile Iran continues its support of terrorists murdering our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama also extended the hand of friendship to Syria's Bashar al Assad, sending an ambassador back to Damascus despite that country's close ties to Iran and Hezbollah, its assassination of Lebanese former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, and its support given to terrorists by facilitating their travel into Iraq and Afghanistan. Assad reciprocated by hosting a confab with Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah and Iran's genocidal Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And like his Iranian buddies, Assad has responded to the current demonstrations against his regime by killing about a thousand protestors. Nor has Obama's abandonment of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak worked any magic in changing the Egyptians into liberal democrats or even making them like us more. The jihadist Muslim Brotherhood daily grows more powerful, attacks on Christian Copts, abetted at times by the military, are proliferating, the border with Gaza is open, and more and more Egyptians are calling for trashing the peace treaty with Israel. Unsurprisingly, according to a May Pew Research survey, only 20% of Egyptians view the United States favorably, and only 35% have "a lot" or "some confidence" in Obama's leadership. In short, every time Obama has offered his hand to Muslims in friendship, the less he and America are liked, and the less events trend in directions favorable to our national interests. Now comes another effort, the recent May 19 address to the Muslim world that attempted to take account of the demonstrations and protests roiling the Middle East, and to outline America's response. And like those previous efforts, this one will do little to change either perceptions or events, for it is predicated on the same dubious assumptions and misapprehensions that have compromised our reactions to the Muslim world. The main thrust of Obama's speech in the main reprises the same Bush Doctrine that the president and his party spent years attacking. The problems of the Muslim Middle East, in this view, result from a lack of political and economic "self-determination" and "universal rights" that prevents people from enjoying freedom and prosperity. Tyrannical rulers and jihadist outfits alike exploit this frustration and despair, attempting "to direct their people's grievances elsewhere," as Obama puts it, blaming the West, colonialism, and Israel for all that ails the Middle East. The solution, then, is for the United States "to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy" so that people can obtain "a set of universal rights" including "free speech; the freedom of peaceful assembly; freedom of religion; equality for men and women under the rule of law; and the right to choose your own leaders." In addition, economic reform will be supported through efforts "to build networks of entrepreneurs, and expand exchanges in education; to foster cooperation in science and technology, and combat disease." More practically, this means encouraging the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to provide funds, asking Congress to create Enterprise funds for investment, and forgiving $1 billion in Egyptian debt, with promises of access to $1 billion more. Lurking behind all this rhetoric, however, is a flawed assumption — that everybody in the world is just like us and wants the same things we want. This Western article of faith arose in the 19th Century, when increasing global trade, European colonial penetration and global dominance, and world-shrinking technologies like the telegraph and steamship seemingly were creating a global "harmony of interests" based on a universal rational human nature. Peace, freedom, and prosperity are the deepest desires of all humans, previously unrealized because of persisting religious or tribal superstitions, irrational ethnic and nationalist loyalties, oppressive governments, a lack of education, and poverty. Remove those impediments and the whole world would enter the paradise of peace and plenty. However, as the nightmare history of the 20th Century shows — with its some 200 million slaughtered by war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and political murder — human beings may want peace and prosperity, but they want other things as well, some of them dark and violent and not to be appeased with material bribes or concessions. Our struggle against Islamic jihad has been compromised by this same mistaken assumption. By locating the origins of jihadist terror in the material and political conditions of the Middle East, we have ignored the spiritual roots of jihadism in traditional Islamic theology, and its certainty of Muslim superiority and right to dominate others. This mistake has been obvious in the commentary on the so-called "Arab Spring" that Obama's speech basically recycles. Too many have celebrated the uprisings as efforts to achieve the freedom, prosperity, human rights, and other goods we possess. No doubt some Muslims do want these things. But as the behavior of the new regime in Egypt suggests, perhaps even more want something else in addition to less oppression and corruption and more economic opportunity — to create an Islamic government that institutes an illiberal shari'a law and battles more directly against the enemies of Islam such as Israel. These Western idealizers enthusing over the demand for "freedom" need to ask the most important question — freedom to do what? Be like us, or be good Muslims? But what if being good Muslims means rejecting foundational democratic principles such as political freedom and human rights? Chamberlain's mistake was to think that Germany just wanted to bring home its people who had been unjustly stranded outside of the motherland by the unjust Versailles Treaty. Heal that wound, and the Germans would get back to seeking prosperity and peace with its neighbors. Of course, the majority of Germans wanted something more sinister, a racial empire that dominated its neighbors, and were willing to kill and die and murder to achieve it. That mistaken assumption about German intentions led to the diplomatic disaster of Munich and the following inferno of global war. So too our serial efforts at "outreach," and our continuous offerings of material incentives and goods like the freedom that we prize, blind us to the spiritual imperatives motivating millions of people in the Muslim world. It's time we stopped reacting to a world we have created from our own
wish-fulfilling assumptions and delusions, and start heeding the wisdom of
scripture: By their fruits ye shall know them. We have rescued Muslims from
murderous thugs in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan; we have
transferred billions and billions to Muslim nations, including the terrorist
PLO; we have spent our blood and treasure to create for Muslims in Iraq and
Afghanistan the freedom and self-determination Obama's speech proclaims we
support and Muslims desire; we have done all this, yet outside Indonesia and
Lebanon, not even 1 in 5 Muslims like us. Maybe it's time to rethink our
assumptions.
Contact GWY at gwy123@aol.com |
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FROM ISRAEL: REPRISE
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 29, 2011. |
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Yours truly is back at the computer — a tired and very grateful savta: My grandson, my 12th grandchild, was born last Monday. (For those interested in a peek, you can see him at the end of this post.) 
It is with great gratitude to Hashem that I write that he is healthy, very alert, and beautiful, and that my daughter-in-law came through exceedingly well. ~~~~~~~~~~ While I was tending to other matters, a great deal was going on in the larger world. I do not wish to belabor the obvious, and yet, before turning to matters current, I would like to take a look at what has transpired in the last nine days — with a few commentaries added for good measure. I left off posting over a week ago by looking at the way in which Obama undercut Netanyahu by making a speech at the State Department that, in essence, called for resolution of the Palestinian Arab-Israeli conflict via return to the '67 lines, and suggested that Israel make "bold" moves for peace before the question of "refugees" or Jerusalem was even settled. I subsequently learned that Netanyahu knew what Obama was considering before he got on the plane to fly to the US. He had had a long conversation by phone with Hillary Clinton, imploring that the president not go this route. (No US president had ever come out with a statement on the "'67 lines" such as Obama was planning.) Obama ignored Netanyahu's urgent request. And when the prime minister got off the plane, he was furious. ~~~~~~~~~~ Observations made by Caroline Glick with regard to the Obama speech were enormously on the mark, and it is worth sharing highlights: In "Obama's diversionary tactics" she argues that the president deliberately picked a fight with Netanyahu: "And so it was a stinging rebuke when Obama declared...'The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.' According to the Washington Post, Obama wrote these lines of his speech himself and Netanyahu was informed of them just as he was scheduled to fly to the US on Thursday evening. Obama gave the speech while Netanyahu was in the air on his way to Washington to meet Obama the next morning. It is hard to think of a more stunning insult or a greater display of contempt for the leader of a US ally and fellow democracy than Obama's actions last week. And it is obvious that Netanyahu had no choice but to react forcefully to Obama's provocation. The question is why would Obama act as he did? What did he wish to accomplish by purposely starting such an ugly fight with Netanyahu? ...On May 4, two weeks before Obama gave his speech, Fatah and Hamas signed a unity agreement. "...The agreement between Fatah and Hamas makes Hamas a partner in the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. It also paves the way for Hamas to win the planned Palestinian legislative and presidential elections that are scheduled for September just after the UN General Assembly is scheduled to endorse Palestinian statehood. It also sets the conditions for Hamas to integrate its forces and eventually take over the US trained Palestinian army in Judea and Samaria and to join the PLO. The Hamas-Fatah unity deal constitutes a complete repudiation of the assumptions informing Obama's policies towards the Palestinians and Israel. Obama perceives the conflict as a direct consequence of two things: prior US administrations' refusal to 'put light' between the US and Israel, and Israel's unwillingness to surrender all of the territory it took during the course of the 1967 Six Day War. The Hamas-Fatah unity deal is indisputable proof that contrary to what Obama believes, the conflict has nothing to do with previous administrations' support for Israel or with Israel's size. It is instead entirely the consequence of the Palestinians' rejection of Israel's right to exist and their commitment to bringing about Israel's destruction. "Obama had two options for contending with the Palestinian unity deal. He could pay attention to it or he could create a distraction in order to ignore it. If he paid attention to it, he would have been forced to disavow his policy of blaming his predecessors in the White House and Israel for the absence of peace. By creating a distraction he would be able to change the subject in a manner that would enable him to maintain those policies. "And so he picked a fight with Netanyahu. And by picking the fight, he created a distraction that has, in fact, changed the subject and enabled Obama to maintain his policies that have been wholly repudiated by the reality of the Palestinian unity deal. "By inserting the citation of the 1949 armistice lines into his speech, Obama made Israel's size again the issue. "The Hamas-Fatah unity deal actually demonstrates that not only is Israel's size not the cause of the conflict, it is the main reason that Israelis and Palestinians live in relative peace..." http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/ Article.aspx?id=221899 ~~~~~~~~~~ In an earlier piece, Glick had written about "Obama's abandonment of America." Here she pointed out that: "Quite simply, Obama's speech represents the effective renunciation of the US's right to have and to pursue national interests. Consequently, his speech imperils the real interests that the US has in the region — first and foremost, the US's interest in securing its national security. Obama's renunciation of the US national interests unfolded as follows: Read the entire piece, if you have not already done so, please. It's difficult for me to imagine any American who confronts the realities Glick writes about not being very very worried. Of course, what she is describing is a continuation of the Obama pattern. ~~~~~~~~~~ Moving back to our scenario: A week ago Friday, Netanyahu and Obama met in the White House, after which they held a press conference. It was a stunning success for the Israeli prime minister, who sat facing the American president and coolly informed him that what he was proposing for Israel would never happen. You can see that press conference here:
~~~~~~~~~~ Last Sunday, just a week ago, Obama spoke to AIPAC. His position had not changed in any significant way. He still said: "The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states." He still spoke about a full phased IDF withdrawal from areas past the pre-'67 line. And he indicated that: "What I did on Thursday was to say publicly what has long been acknowledged privately." This is the old, fallacious "we all know where the lines are going to be, so let's stop pretending" routine. He also said: "No country can be expected to negotiate with a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction..." But he didn't follow the logic of this statement and declare that nothing should demanded of Israel until it is certain that the PA is a legitimate negotiating partner. Instead, he continued with: "And yet, no matter how hard it may be to start meaningful negotiations under the current circumstances, we must acknowledge that a failure to try is not an option. The status quo is unsustainable." This means Israel is supposed to make "hard choices for peace" in the face of the potential for a Hamas-controlled PA. Perhaps most outrageously, he said: "There is a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing their interests at the United Nations. They recognize that there is an impatience with the peace process — or the absence of one." And precisely whose fault is the absence of a peace process? Now Israel is supposed to move on it, no matter the sacrifice, to keep the PA from the UN. ~~~~~~~~~~ What Obama did this time was put a softer tone to his same old message. And then he flew to Europe. ~~~~~~~~~~ On Monday, Netanyahu gave his talk at AIPAC
But more significantly, on Tuesday he gave his historic speech at a joint session of Congress. It was a rousing success. I had longed for him to speak on Israel's behalf before the world. And he did so, eloquently (emphasis added): Israel has no better friend than America. And America has no better friend than Israel. We stand together to defend democracy. We stand together to advance peace. We stand together to fight terrorism. ~~~~~~~~~~ But then the prime minister spoke about the need to share our land with the Palestinians, and to make sacrifices, when the time is right, for a true peace. Did he say more in this regard than I would have preferred. He did. But he laid out red lines as well and spoke truth to the world: "...If the benefits of peace with the Palestinians are so clear, why has peace eluded us? Because all six Israeli Prime Ministers since the signing of Oslo accords agreed to establish a Palestinian state. Myself included. So why has peace not been achieved? Because so far, the Palestinians have been unwilling to accept a Palestinian state, if it meant accepting a Jewish state alongside it. You can find a video and transcript of the speech here:
~~~~~~~~~~ Netanyahu's reception by Congress was extraordinary. I understand that he was interrupted by applause more times than anyone who has ever addressed a joint session of Congress. A time for Israelis to hold their heads high. ~~~~~~~~~~ Had he adopted a tough nationalist ideological line (as some undoubtedly would have preferred) that reception would not have been what it was. He would have been attacked as anti-peace and a radical, obstructionist. And in the end, this would not have served Israel well. And so he spoke of compromises, and I accept that he had to. But such were the red lines he laid out — all fair and appropriate and in our national interest — that he knows, as surely as he expects to take his next breath, that it is not going to happen. Abbas is not going to recognize a Jewish state and renounce the right of return, and walk away from Hamas. This is the Netanyahu style: Let the world see the Arabs as obstructionist. We might quibble with some details of what he said, but essentially I believe he played it brilliantly. ~~~~~~~~~~ It is being said that Obama's speech promotes war. And this is so. That it inhibits "peace" is not the case, for there was going to be no peace in any event, and it's time this fact were more broadly acknowledged. What Obama has done is make it easier for the PA to be obstructionist — for they followed Obama's speech by demanding that Israel agree to the '67 line as a starting point if we want them to come to the table. And now we've moved beyond this: As of yesterday, according to Reuters, the "peace process follow-up committee" of the Arab League — following an address by Abbas — said it would request membership for the state of Palestine at the UN General Assembly's meeting in New York in September. "A Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with east Jerusalem as its capital." I hope to devote my next posting to the issue of the UN as venue for establishing a Palestinian state.
Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com
and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
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RECORD RISE IN IMMIGRATION
Posted by Nick Griffin, May 27, 2011. |
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Serial liar David Cameron's pledge to cut net immigration into Britain to "only" tens of thousands has been revealed as just the latest broken Tory promise. The ConDem regime has already presided over a record rise in immigration. Over the twelve months to September 2010, 586,000 people moved to Britain, while 344,000 emigrated, resulting in a 100,000 increase in net migration on the previous year, ONS figures revealed. The net migration total of 242,000 was the highest since immigrants from Eastern European poured into Britain when their countries joined the EU in 2004. Migration from Eastern Europe is back up again after falling in 2009.The numbers of Poles and other Eastern Europeans in the UK rose by 43,000. Immigration from Eastern Europe rose by some 50 per cent to 72,000 while the numbers of Eastern Europeans leaving to go home dropped by nearly half to 29,000. Immigration Minister Damian Green admitted migration rates were 'out of control'. The ONS' quarterly review of immigration statistics also revealed the number of people granted settlement in Britain has increased by four per cent and that asylum claims are up eleven per cent. Separate figures from the ONS showed one in five low-skilled jobs are now filled by migrants, fuelling concerns over jobs for British workers. In London, nearly 40 per cent of workers come from overseas — more than 1.4 million people working in the capital were foreign born — compared with just over 2.3 million who were born in the UK. The figures make a mockery of the lie that one of the supposed benefits of immigration is that immigrants "do the jobs we won't or don't want to do". Unless 40 per cent of the jobs in London are jobs Britons will not do, that is clearly a lie. Foreigners are now taking British jobs from us in record numbers. Patrick Harrington of the Nationalist, Solidarity Trade Union said: "British workers face competition in the home jobs market, loss of jobs as a result of off-shoring to cheap labour economies and a recession. It couldn't be bleaker." The LibLabCon parties are all the same on immigration. Only the British National Party will end the immigrant invasion and put British people first. Don't just moan about immigration over a pint. Join the only Party which is trying to do something about it. We must protect our jobs, our culture and our identity. If you don't do something today and join the British National Party it is your children and grandchildren who will pay the price tomorrow. Don't let them down — join the British National Party today. Yours sincerely,
Nick Griffin heads the British National Party (BNP). To receive their newsletters, write newsletter@bnp.org.uk |
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IDENTITY CRISIS AND IDENTITY ENLIGHTENMENT
Posted by Nurit Greenger, May 27, 2011. |
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I recently wrote an article I named, 'Jerusalem, Israel Is The Violin
For All Your Songs.
I was on my last leg of the Israeli military service when the Six Day War broke and the song was sang, literally, from morning to night over the radio waves of Israel. The melody and words are now embedded, with much pride of humongous and miraculous Jewish victory over the ongoing aggression of the Arab nations on the Jewish State. More so, the song has brought to Jerusalem the attention and eternal national and spiritual fame it needed. Until the day the song became known and Israel regaining the Old Part of City, though the Capital of Israel, Israelis were missing access to all the ancient Jewish spiritual sites. The song introduced Jerusalem to the world in an expression of the feelings the Jewish Nation has for their ancient city of gold and light.
The reason Jerusalem in on my mind is because it has become one of the Arab-"Palestinians' pawns in their ongoing war on Israel. For now, they have forgone the military attacks and are using political terrorism against the Jewish State. The Arab-"Palestinians'" are now demanding that Jerusalem be divided so they can have part of it to themselves. That part, the one that was in Jordanian's captivity for nineteen years, is to become their Palestinian state capital.
Jerusalem has never ever been any other nation's capital, so why now? Because the Arabs want to stab the Jewish nation in its heart, as part of their larger scheme to bring the Jewish state to its final demise.
In his recent visit to the United States, Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress and avowed that Jerusalem will not be divided. This is an important declaration to Jews and Christians alike because, if part of the city is to be controlled by Arab-"Palestinian" Moslems, seeking to make it their capital, Jews will no longer have access to it and that is unacceptable. As for Christians, visiting a Moslem controlled city will be at their peril. More so, as history attests, we can then expect that the Jewish and Christians holy sites be desecrated.
When it comes to Jerusalem, deep feelings for the city play part with Israel and the Jewish nation. But not only for Jews. The city is a significant center for the Christian religion. Just as every Muslim is commanded, at least once in his life time, to embark on a pilgrimage to Mecca, Christians will embark on pilgrimage to Jerusalem as often as they can.
Jerusalem is the Jewish nation Identity Card. When the Jews regained their sovereignty in the Land of Israel, many, but not all, have gone through identity enlightenment. Israelis may know the Hebrew, but not necessary identify themselves through religious prayers and their scriptures. In comparison, Diaspora Jews may know religious prayers, but in all likelihood do not fully understand the prayers, which is in Hebrew.
Jews live with both, identity crisis and identity enlightenment. One has to know whom they are, as HaShem says they are, to really understand the identity they are fighting for. Part of this identity, for both Jews and Christians, is indelibly tied with the Land of Israel. Regrettably, members of synagogues' in the world seem to be more interested in building great social programs but the idea of fighting for the Land of Israel is, in many cases, of no interest to them. That is bit foreign. For many Jews, their identity is there, only it is hidden and needs to brought out through identity enlightenment. This same concept applies to Christians as well.
For 2000 years Jews lived on the fringe and margin of societies, always wondering what the level of their acceptance in the host country was but were also accustomed to be badly treated and made to be scapegoats. Finally, against many odds, miraculously and with Godly intervention, the modern State of Israel was established and now Jews can defend themselves. Sadly, the world has not come to grip with the fact that Jews are no longer an easy target; the world's forever scapegoating victim has slipped away.
More irking is the fact that Israeli-Jews have not come to full comprehension of their sovereignty.
Jews make a problematic society and so is their land. The Land of Israel was designated and given to the Jewish Nation by their God. Yet, because there is a gap between secular Jews and religious Jews, the facts of the Devine's gift is not deeply embedded in the belief and sentiments of all Jews.
That is why, one Israeli prime minister after another, to include Benjamin Netanyahu, and many Israelis and Jews are so "ready" to offer up, on every turn, as appeasement tool to the enemy, Jewish territory, even parts of Jerusalem. It is a sign that there is still a lack of total belonging mentality, which goes back to the kind of People Jews were when they lived in the Diaspora.
Note that it was the secular Jews who created Zionism and moved to build the Jewish State. But, ultimately, the State of Israel, as a whole, should trust in G-d, not in chariots and horses! The Jewish People need to follow the promises He made to His People and know they were good. Perhaps Israel is in a greater trouble today because it has not grasped His promises. And one does not need to be religious to believe and know that.
For that reason I hold deep respect for Christians like Pastor John Hagee, media mogul Glenn Beck and millions of Christian parishioners so stanchly support the State of Israel. I admire their clarity about the Land of Israel position: "Israel is defined by His covenant, an unconditional promise," which way too many Israelis toss aside.
It has been very encouraging to see the growth of the pro-Israel Christian movement. In this movement the support for Israel is reaching beyond political, socioeconomic, and ethnic lines. The pro-Israel Christians are Asians, Blacks, Caucasians, and Hispanics; very young to seniors. They regularly participate in pro-Israel rallies, they advocate and petition for the Jewish state when necessary, they take their place in Holocaust commemorations and Israel's Independence Day celebrations, they donate to the cause of helping Israel grow and they travel to Jerusalem as often as their pocket book allows. They are cognizant how vital important it is for the world to recognize Israel's legal right to the Land as well as to have truly defensible borders.
Like Jews, many Christians have identity problems. I sincerely believe that these identity issues are caused because neither Jews or Christians have been taught how to embrace religion without being fanatic or overzealous about it. Many understand that if they cannot practice religion, at their pace, they simply walk away from it. It also has much to do with religious leaders, who, in many cases, do more harm than good to ingather the people around them, to include trust issues they project in negative light.
Israel is young and people there are still ridden with Ghetto and persecution mentality and the 'Sha, Shtil', state of mind, which is to stay away and not cause problem, a mentality of people who lived for way too long on the fringe of society and simply knew no other way of life.
A good question to ask is, "who is a Jew?" or, "who is a Christian?" At the end, it is that person who has a real heart for Israel, is cognizant that he or she is not just a fashionable friend of Israel but has deep rooted sentiments for and in Israel as grafted into His roots. These people know all well that their very identity has deep ties with Israel. Their support of Israel is stanch, though may attract increasingly greater opposition. They know and are aware it comes with the, support Israel territory.
Though, the past has been stained with Jewish bloody, when Christians killed millions of Jews, in the evolving world of today, real Jews and real Christians are now very much depending on one another to be and show who they really are, the people He designed them to be; His people!
Whether it is Jews or Christians, praying and advocating for Israel is a vital part of understanding the scriptures and the biblical mandate to pray for the Land and its People.
You think you may have an identity issue, travel to Israel. You wish to have deeper understanding of your identity, going to Israel will help shape your identity. When you come back you will know much more about your identity and how that is so well tied with the Land of Israel.
Israel is the grounds' keeper, the keeper of the LAND, all the land, simply because it belongs to the Jewish people. And Christians have the same vested interest there. For if there were no Jews, there was no Jesus. We, the Jewish People, gave the Christian world our humble Jewish rabbi, Yehoshua to lead them. Therefore, Judaism and Israel defines Christians too! You may go along by His definition that Jews have defined Christians.
Each time I hear the song Yerushalayim Shel Zahav, the tears flow.
When politicians speak, so haphazardly, about dividing Jerusalem and giving the Arabs part of it, as their capital — or giving them a "generous" part of the Land of Israel — they need to listen to the song, 'Yerushalayim Shel Zahav'-Jerusalem of Gold and then they will know it is simply mission impossible.
While the lines are blurring on who are Jews and who are Christians, the need to pray for, stand for, and advocate for Israel is important, now more than ever.
Writer's Note: Some of this article's insight was given to me by Wane Wong and daughter Elizabeth Wong, both belong to the Christians For Israel Movement
Contact Nurit Greenger by email at nurit.nuritg@gmail.com. Visit her blog:
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BECK: 'ARAB SPRING' SPAWNS NAZIS?
Posted by Barbara Taverna, May 27, 2011. |
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This is from FoxNew.com. It is a a rush transcript from "Glenn Beck," May 26, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. |
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GLENN BECK, HOST: If you've been watching this program for any length of time, you know that I have been, shall we say, nervous about this so-called Arab Spring. I believe people want to be free and they want liberty. And I believe the people of the Arab world aren't any different than you and I. But from the beginning, I have had my doubts that that's what we were watching because we are watching something that has been planned and orchestrated from the beginning. From the beginning, we have seen the seeds being sown of a deeper hatred for Jews. It began to sprout or we started to notice it really when al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, spoke to 2 million Egyptians about wanting to kill the Jews himself. It manifested itself on the Day of Liberty — so-called liberty — when the crowd of hundreds just around CBS's Lara Logan were chanting, "Jew, Jew, Jew" while they were raping her and, in her words "trying to rip her scalp off." The ugly harvest of anti-Semitism has been bountiful. Yesterday I showed you a clip from a children's show from Hamas. I want you to watch this — because we found more — I want you to watch this. This is what is being shown to children in the Arab world. Watch. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS) UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translation): Therefore, my dear children, every day the criminal Zionists scheme and ponder how to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Absolutely. Do you know why? In order to build their false temple in its place. UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translation): God inflicted His punishment upon them. That was the punishment they deserved. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thus, God transformed these sinners into apes. UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: A child must be raised on the love of Jihad and on the desire to be martyred for the sake of Allah. The tree of Islam is irrigated with blood, not with water. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Watch out. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why doesn't the stewardess (INAUDIBLE). Go on. I'm protecting (INAUDIBLE). Mr. bin Laden, there's a tower. Look, it's the next street. Fly to the middle of the tower. Wait a second. (END VIDEO CLIPS) BECK: America, how is there any Arab Spring? Why are you not seeing these images? In the next month — I told my staff today to scour for these images? I want to show you what no one else will show you. In the next month, I am going to show you good versus evil and you decide. This isn't about politics. This is about the end of the Western way of life. This is good versus evil. I urge you not to miss a single episode. What you will see on this program in the coming month, you will not see anywhere else. How does a child raised with a puppet show saying that or a cartoon showing that God turned Jews into monkeys? How — what chance do those children have? Searing hatred is being engrained in them from the very beginning — from the start. They have no chance to develop healthy, independence, let alone, loving attitude towards their neighbors. If you raise your children on a diet of those kinds of images, they will cross a border with their mothers as children and they will walk into gunfire so they can go to Allah and set the world on fire in the meantime. Mark my words, it is coming. The world must decide now before they see the images of what I going to be thrust upon Israel. Meanwhile, in news that nobody else seems to be reporting for some strange reason Egypt is now forming a new Nazi party. So Mr. President, is this what democracy looks like? Earlier this week, there were reports that a Nazi party is being formed in Egypt with a contemporary frame of reference. I don't know. Is it — was it the uniforms that were outdated that stopped that from growing here in America? An independent Egyptian news Web site said, they quoted founding members saying, "The party would bring together prominent figures from the Egyptian society. The party's founding deputy is a former military official." One of the party's leaders said that the membership has been going up at an unexpected rate. The party also has a one-year plan which is unlike — quote — "the marginalized liberal parties, which are like dead bodies." None of this should come as a big surprise. Next week, Wednesday, we will do a show on the roots of the hatred of the 20th Century of the Arab world for the Jews. We will show you the Muslim Brotherhood connection to the Nazis. Even according to "The Weekly Standard," they report the Muslim Brotherhood has a history, quote, "of campaign against the Jews that used not only Nazi-like tactics but also German funding," end quote. Now they're just making it official by calling it a Nazi party. Didn't we promise each other that we would never forget? And didn't we promise each other never again? How is the world ignoring what is being spoon fed to children in the Arab world? The article goes on to say that the party membership went from hundreds to hundreds of thousands in the late 1930s. During those years the Brotherhood conducted only one major campaign in Egypt and it was against Zionism and the Jews. Mr. President, was there no one in your administration that knew about the connections of the Muslim Brotherhood to the Nazi party? Is there no one in Washington that is watching the Arab world television as much as my staff is? Mr. President, you cheerlead the Arab Spring. Now that you know that there is a developing Nazi party and you've seen the cartoons yourself, will you still cheerlead? And if you didn't know, well, may I recommend Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard for the basic facts? http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/glenn-beck/ transcript/beck-arab-spring-spawns-nazis Contact Barbara Taverna at bltaverna@yahoo.com |
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"NAQBA" DAY, BUT WITH A JEWISH TWIST TO IT
Posted by Nurit Greenger, May 27, 2011. |
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In the total pot of lies the Arabs have cooked about Israel and Jews these past for 63 years and about how the Jews took their place among the world's nations as a sovereign Jewish State on their ancestral Land of Israel, they have come to believe that the Jews expelled Arabs who, at that time lived on the land. The Arabs see the founding of the Jewish State of Israel in 1948 as their "Naqba", in straight translation, their catastrophe. The "Naqba" day takes place on May 15, the day The Jewish leadership declared Israel as an Independent State. So, if anyone suggests that we need to look into and empathize the "Naqba" day of the Arab-"Palestinians" — they then need to visit the 20th Century history of East Prussia. In many ways World War II began in East Prussia, with Hitler's campaign for Danzig. Near the end of the war it was emptied out of its population, with hundreds of thousands of Germans fleeing the approaching Russian Red Army and the impending battles, and with hundreds of thousands more evicted after the Soviets pushed through East Prussia into Berlin. In all, 1.8 to 2.2 million East Prussians, men, women and children were driven out or fled their homeland. That number is 4 times the number of Arab-"Palestinian refugees" who fled Israel from 1948-49. Parts of East Prussia were later annexed by Russia, the rest was incorporated into Poland. And what about mourning for their "catastrophe" of losing everything on a personal lever and nationally? No one, not even the worst bleeding hearts in the West, has ever believed East Prussians deserve any sympathy, support or compensation for their "plight." Everyone accepted that they were part of the German monstrosity that had launched the war and they became refugees as a direct result of the crimes and aggressions of the German people, crimes they, most enthusiastically, endorsed and in which they participated. Therefore, the case of the East Prussians is exactly of the same circumstances under which Arab-"Palestinian" became refugees, which is the direct result of launching a genocidal war of aggression on the Jews and then losing that war. If one thinks the Arab-"Palestinians" deserve compassion, or the "Right of Return"? Sure, why not, but right after the East Prussians are granted their "Right of Return." 'LIFE' in Israel in 1948 Part 1, 2, 3:
Contact Nurit Greenger by email at nurit.nuritg@gmail.com. Visit her blog:
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WHITE HOUSE: JEWISH "REFUGEES" RIGHT OF RETURN SHOULD BE "ON THE TABLE"
Posted by Mechel Samberg, May 27, 2011. |
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All we ever hear is the non-stop WHINING of the "anti-Zionists", ad nauseum, about "right of return" for the poor poor poor, oh Lord how they are poor, Transjordanians. Despite the fact that they have Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon to call home, the Jews only have Israel. They also NEVER utter a word about right of return for Jews but of course, they don't hate Jews; they just don't give a damn about Jews, or care about justice for Jews. In fact, many legitimate "anti-Zionists" don't even know about the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab lands from 1947-1970s, since all they read is one sided "anti-Zionist" propaganda. The UN set up two refugee organizations. One for rest of the whole world and one for the Transjordanians. No other group has leeched off the rest of the world as shamelessly as the poor poor poor Transjordanians. Where is the outrage that none of the Arab countries would absorb their own people? The 600,000 Jews assimilated into their new countries, including Israel and are now productive citizens of those countries, instead of continuing to leech off the rest of the world for 63 years. This below is by Josh Rogin and it appeared May 24, 2011 at
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The right of Jews to return to the Arab and predominantly Muslim countries they fled from or were kicked out of over several decades could be "on the table" as part of the Middle East peace negotiations, according to a senior White House official. Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security advisor for communications and President Barack Obama's chief speechwriter on foreign policy, talked about what's known as the "Jewish right of return" during an off-the-record conference call with Jewish community leaders on May 20, only one day after Obama's major speech on the Middle East. A recording of the call was provided toThe Cable. In response to a question asking why there is a great deal of focus on the Palestinian refugee issue but almost no focus on the Jews who departed Arab lands, Rhodes declared that the Israelis and Palestinians should negotiate on the Jewish right of return to Arab and Muslim countries and that the United States could play in role in mediating that issue. Here's the full exchange: "While Palestinian refugees have concerns that are understandable and need to be dealt with in the peace process, there was no reference in the president's speech to the approximately one million Jewish refugees that emerged from the same Middle East conflict. I'm talking about Jews from Arab and Muslim countries who were forced out of their homelands where they had lived for centuries," said B'nai B'rith International Director of Legislative Affairs Eric Fusfield. "The international community has never acknowledged their rights and their grievances," Fusfield continued, "[C]an the U.S., as the peace process move forward, play a role in advancing the rights and concerns of these Jewish refugee groups and help ensure that as refugee issues are dealt with... that the focus will not just be on one refugee group but on all refugee groups emerging from the same conflict?" Rhodes responded: "Certainly the U.S., in our role, is attuned to all the concerns on both sides to include interests among Israel and others in Jewish refugees, so it is something that would come up in the context of negotiations. And certainly, we believe that ultimately the parties themselves should negotiate this. We can introduce ideas, we can introduce parameters for potential negotiation." "We believe those types of issues that you alluded to could certainly be a part of that discussion and put on the table and it's something that we would obviously be involved in." The issue of refugees can be a confusing one. GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain said onMay 21 that the Palestinian refugees' right of return was "something that should be negotiated." Cain later admitted that he didn't fully understand the issue. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the argument that Palestinian refugees have the right of return to Israel in his Tuesday speech before a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress. "[T]he Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside the borders of Israel," he said. "You know, everybody knows this. It's time to say it. It's important." But neither Obama nor Netanyahu mentioned the Jewish right of return in any of their speeches or remarks over the past few days. Noah Pollak, the executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, said that the Jewish right of return is actually not an issue that's part of the peace negotiations, largely due to the fact that a) there are no Jewish refugees, and b) they don't have any desire to claim lands in Arab states. "I would like to congratulate the administration for even-handedness, but in fact there are no Jewish refugees today. That's because the Jews who were expelled from Arab countries have been citizens of Israel for decades, where they live in freedom and prosperity," he said. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/
ProJewishProZionistGroup/?yguid=368134690
Contact Mechel Samberg at mechelsamberg2@yahoo.com |
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THE MISTAKE OF GLOBAL DEMOCRATIZATION
Posted by Frank Salvato, May 26, 2011. |
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We are hearing a great deal about a budding "Democracy movement" spreading throughout the Middle East. Many are calling it an "Arab Spring." The belief is that after centuries of totalitarian oppression, the Arab street is suddenly pining for more freedom; rebelling against the elitist ruling class of kings, emirs, despots and tyrants. This is most likely true for a great number of those filling the streets of Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Bahrain and myriad other Middle Eastern, predominantly Muslim nations. But there is a less than honorable component amongst the rebellion that simply waits for the "right" to a democratic vote. Contrary to how the idea of a move to Democracy presents, in the volatile Middle East there are elements in play that could make it a move in the wrong direction. Each and every day we hear the misnomer that the United States of America is a Democracy. We hear it from the average man on the street, the mainstream media and even from those we have elected to office. But the fact of the matter is this: we are not a Democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic. A thorough and convincing exhibit of the facts surrounding this reality is presented in Notes on Democracy: And the Republic for Which It Stands. The fact that this issue is even in need of address is a scathing commentary on the constitutional illiteracy of the American electorate and serves as a sobering reminder that, often times, what sounds good — what "feels good" — isn't always as it presents. The distinction — between the benefits of a Democracy and a Constitutional Republic — is incredibly important, and while some describe our nation as a Democracy in an error of ignorance, others — some with schemes of political opportunism — do so with a nefarious purpose and bad intentions. James Madison, recognized as the Father of the US Constitution, said this about factions and Democracy in Federalist No. 10: "Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people...From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions." Why is this important in the context of what is happening in the Middle East at this very moment? Simple; it is important because "factious tempers," and "local prejudices of sinister design" are prevalent throughout not only the ruling classes of the Arab-Muslim world, but exist — and on a tremendously popular level — throughout the Middle East, Arab culture and around the world in Islamic populations. In Lebanon, Democracy and the democratic election process brought legitimacy to the terrorist group Hezbollah, a group, created by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard after the Islamist Revolution of 1979, responsible for the greatest number of American and Western deaths until al Qaeda exploded onto the scene, no pun intended. Through a scheme of "providing" for enough people in Southern Lebanon to win elections, Hezbollah was transformed from a ruthless Shiite-Islamist terror organization (a moniker still bestowed upon it by the US State Department and freedom-loving governments around the world) into an officially elected entity in the Lebanese Parliament, its influence expanding year after year. In the Palestinian-held Israeli territories, the Palestinian Authority, born of the Palestinian Liberation Organization — recognized at its genesis as a terrorist organization before the United Nations bestowed legitimacy on it, has seen an accord between the Fatah faction of the West Bank and the Hamas faction of Gaza; Hamas, a Sunni-Islamist group, recognized as a terrorist organization by the US and other non-Arab nations around the world. Hamas, like Hezbollah, but after an armed coup against Fatah in Gaza, held "democratic elections" establishing itself — although questionably so — as the democratically elected government of Gaza. Like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas achieved legitimacy — albeit ever so suspect — through the process of Democracy. Another example of Democracy not serving freedom — or liberty — are the elections held in the former Soviet state of Russia. During the Soviet Era, Soviet Premiers had to at least subject themselves to the scrutiny of the elitist class Communist Party members who made up the Soviet politburo. Today we see a former KGB colonel, in Vladimir Putin, not only usurping the intent of the Russian constitution by installing a puppet president to "insert" a term into the mix before he runs, yet again, for the Russian presidency, but we see a system so corrupt that it has re-installed the same mindset of global power acquisition as seen before the fall of the Soviet Union. In fact, it is argued in many circles that not only is the Cold War not over, but the West is now playing defense. But perhaps the most alarming sign that democracy does not serve the purpose of freedom and/or liberty comes in the report that a faction of the Egyptian "awakening" has announced the formation of a "Nazi party with a contemporary frame of reference." Let me state that again...Egyptians benefiting from the "Arab Spring" want to form a Nazi Party in that country. Al-Masry Al-Youm, an Egyptian publication, reports: "A group of Egyptians have announced their intent to establish a Nazi party with 'a contemporary frame of reference,' an independent Egyptian news website said on Wednesday. With God as my witness, I never thought I would see the day when we would need to address the possibility of having to combat Nazism on the world stage once again. If, in fact, this newly formed Egyptian Nazi Party organizes in the style of Hamas or Hezbollah — or the American Progressive Movement, for that matter (it is a fact that American organized labor had boots on the ground in Egypt in the beginning days of this so-called "Arab Spring") — what is to keep them from using the democratic process to bring to power a 21st Century Nazi Party, complete with a 21st Century "Final Solution" for Israel and the Jews? We are a Constitutional Republic because our Founders and Framers understood the absolute danger of a pure Democracy. We use a democratic election process to determine the awarding of Electoral College votes by each state, but we do so to empower a constitutionally Republican form of government; a government of laws and not men; a government where the minority's rights are protected just as viciously as the majority's, or so it is supposed to be. A stunningly frank examination can be viewed here. Succinctly, we in the West — and especially in the United States — should be promoting a move toward liberty in the Middle East, not a move toward Democracy. Democracy leads to Democratic Socialism, which leads to Socialism, which history proves always fails, leading to totalitarian and despotic rule. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of world history understands this. Alas, we do not, today, place any importance on history in our schools. Perhaps that's because Progressives are too busy rewriting history. Perhaps that's why we are looking at a resurrection of the Nazi Party in Egypt. On May 24, 2011, the military government of Egypt announced it was permanently opening its border with the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. If the world screams, "Never again," again will the leaders of the free world hear us? Or are they to busy burying their heads in the sand to care? Frank Salvato is the Executive Director and Director of Terrorism Research for BasicsProject.org a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and education initiative Contact him by email at franksalvato@verizon.net |
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BEYOND WORDS
Posted by Barbara Ginsberg, May 26, 2011. |
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"Beyond Words" is a newly-published seven volume collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane's writings that originally appeared in The Jewish Press, other serial publications, and his privately-published works. "Beyond Words" also includes a number of extra features:
If interested in buying Rabbi Meir Kahane writings in this 7-volume collection, write to Levi Chazan at: Levi1@hotmail.com For people outside of Israel "Beyond Words" in soft cover is in the printing process and will shortly be sold at Amazon.com This below was written by Paul Eidelberg. Paul Eidelberg (Ph.D. University of Chicago), is a professor of political science at Bar Ilan University and the author of many books. It was published November 9, 1990 in The Jewish Press |
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Rabbi Meir Kahane z"l He told the truth, and he died for the truth. He told the truth about the implacable Arab-Islamic hatred of the Jews and of Israel. He told the truth about Israel's government, that this government is the greatest enemy of the Jewish people. He told the truth about the many Reform and Conservative and Moderdox rabbis who feared the truth and prevented him from appearing and speaking the truth at their temples and synagogues. It was because he told the truth about the Arabs, who now applaud Saddam Hussein and scream "Itbach al-Yahud" — "Slaughter the Jews" — that he was called a "facist." It was because he told the truth about the many rabbis who betrayed Torah Judaism for the baubles of popularity that he was called a "Khomeini." He told the truth, and he died for the truth. He told the truth about the countless Arabs, including Arab citizens of Israel, who keep not one of the Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality. He told the truth about Moslems who blaspheme against the G-d of Israel, who worship blood and glory in bloodshed, who murder and rape and mutilate each other, as well as Jews. He told the truth about a government that lacks the courage to protect its own people from the stones and firebombs and knives of Arabs. He told the truth about a government steeped in falsehood, a government that speaks peace, peace with a people that knows only war. He told the truth about a government that enacted a law making it illegal to tell the truth about that people. For this reason only was he barred from the Knesset — yea, with the help of a High Court of Injustice that allowed PLO spokesmen to remain in that miscreant assembly. He told the truth, and was vilified by liars. He spoke with courage, and was attacked by cowards. He was barred from universities that welcomed PLO propagandists. He defended Jews and justice, and was treated as a pariah. His voice in the Knesset was a voice in the wilderness, but his words reached beyond its walls and enlightened the minds of honest Jews. He worked tirelessly for Klal Yisrael. He helped countless Jews in Israel and abroad. He spoke words of Torah and brought Jewish souls back to Judaism. His gifted articles — alas, we shall have them no more — illuminated events obscured by official darkness. He articulated the hopes and sentiments of normal people. He lifted their hearts, he rallied them to a cause, and he died for that cause. He suffers no more. But we who mourn our loss, we who feel the emptiness created by his passing, we who were strengthened by his words, let us keep his faith and carry on the struggle for which he died — the struggle for Truth. Contact Barbara Ginsberg at barbaraandchaim@gmail.com |
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OBAMA'S MALIGNANT OBSESSION WITH JEWS AND ISRAEL
Posted by Victor Sharpe, May 26, 2011. |
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Joan Swirsky is an award winning author and journalist. Her work can
be found at joanswirsky.com. Contact her at joanswirsky@gmail.com.
This article was printed in the Canada Free Press
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Jew hatred comes in many forms, all of them irrational and unsupported by empirical fact, but all of them powerful and largely effective in deflecting personal and political failures onto a tiny people, which by their mere existence highlight the glaring deficiencies that exist in their adversaries. Like a deadly systemic infection, be it viral or bacterial, Jew hatred comes in many strains. STRAIN #1 — THE DUMB FACTOR This strain is based mostly on ignorance. In short, a dim-witted parent, family member, friend, teacher or coach — who was "schooled" by another dimwit — tells an innocent child that everything that is wrong with his or her life is because of "the Jew" who lives down the street or employs his or her parent or publishes the local newspaper whatever. But dumb anti-Semitism is still anti-Semitism, just like dumb stereotypes about tap-dancing blacks or whiskey-guzzling Irish people or can't-screw-in-a-light-bulb Poles or Mambo-obsessed Hispanics or kemo-sabe-spouting American Indians are still destructive to a decent and respectful social order. The only difference is that malevolently stereotyping Jews — and, today, Christians — has once again become acceptable, whereas defaming other groups is strictly taboo among the fetishists of political correctness and multiculturalism, selective as they are in what offends their very delicate sensibilities. Say something even mildly negative about women, gays, Muslim terrorists, or the above-mentioned ethnic groups and the leftists among us go into an orgy of frenzied outrage. But slander a Jew — or murder a Jew — no problem. Glaring examples emanate daily from the Middle East, where "Palestinian" jihadists not only slit the throats of Israeli babies, but vow to destroy the Jewish state, while the craven Western media scramble to rationalize their bestial acts or, predictably, blame the victims. But how to explain the Jew hatred that has come to our shores, in, for instance, the egregious non-action of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York City, which this month stopped a plot by two terrorists to bomb the largest synagogue in the Big Apple, but decided not to press charges — to let the jihadists go — because the incident was probably "mischief"? And that's only an infinitesimal part of the ongoing and deliberate attempt to marginalize not only Jews in general but the sovereign State of Israel, our most trusted and only democratic ally in the entire Middle East. STRAIN #2 — THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR There are legions of highly intelligent people — in terms of IQs, advanced college degrees, professional accomplishments, published books, and fancy titles — who are nonetheless driven almost exclusively by their feelings. Ironic that they've spent lifetimes honing their razor-sharp intellects, refining their debating skills, priding themselves on scrupulous research — but still, emotion prevails. This is no surprise because, simply, emotions are stronger than the intellect. On PET scans of the brain, anger and fear "light up" significantly more than the higher cognitive processes of reasoning and logic. The emotional anti-Semite is one into whose brain the thorn of Jew hatred gets stuck, and no amount of rationalizing or higher-center thought can excise it. Even the one who harbors the feelings may wonder about the dissonant "reasoning" that inspires this hatred. But like the Mark of Cain, it's there for life. In a very real way, Jew hatred is consoling to this species, analogous to the Xanax that so many people take to alleviate anxiety. Have a problem that is unbearably agitating? It's the Jews! Aahhh, I feel better. Feeling depressed? I don't need an anti-depressant like Celexa or Lexapro, it's the Jews! Aahhh, I feel better. This type of anti-Semitism is the default position of people who are "smart" enough to reinvent objective history and who purposefully invent events such as the Al Dura hoax or deny that the Holocaust ever existed in order to create an anti-Semitic "reality" out of whole cloth, one that invariably gibes with their intractable, all-consuming hatred of Jews. Think of a person with childhood-onset diabetes or a seizure disorder. No amount of hoping the condition away has any effect. It's simply there, deep within, with symptoms that must be treated constantly in order to stem the horrible symptoms that ensue if the condition is not attended to. Emotion-driven anti-Semitism is in this category, incurable but, unlike diabetes, unfortunately untreatable. STRAIN #3 — THE SELF-HATE FACTOR Okay, you may say, people of other religions may hate Jews, but how is it possible for Jews themselves to hate Jews? Surprisingly, the answer is rather simple: It's hard to be a Jew, and most people simply aren't up to it. Yes, they can be proud of their brains and talents, but when it comes to their backbones — that's another story. The most universal desire in the world is to be liked and accepted, starting with pre-verbal babies who know by the smiles of strangers that the world is a friendly and welcoming place, and extending to full-grown adults who continue to seek acceptance in intimate relationships as well as in groups, including in the workplace, in recreational activities, and in politics. For many Jews, being a member of the world's most historically vilified minority is just "too much" to cope with. In fact, to withstand the relentless onslaught would require them to have an accurate knowledge of Jewish history, a history that the spineless set has abandoned teaching their children. It would require a willingness to correct the constant blitz of misinformation that an anti-Semitic world never tires of perpetuating. It would require a willingness to stand on principle when the entire world is substituting propaganda and violence for righteousness. And it would require a belief that the land of Israel was indeed bequeathed to the Jews by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that their return to Zion after Hitler incinerated six million of their brethren during the Holocaust was the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, and that, perversely and for the first time in world history, they should return the lands won in the belligerent wars waged against them by anti-Semitic Arabs who remain intractably so to this day. Liberal Jews are not psychologically up to any of these challenges, hence their pathetic over-eagerness to "understand" the people who hate them, to accommodate themselves to the enemies of Israel (which means all Jews), to capitulate to the ever-escalating and invariably-one-sided demands for "compromise," to slavishly follow Jews like linguist Noam Chomsky and financier George Soros and playwright Tony Kushner who are so suffused with Jew hatred that their entire lives have been devoted to amputating any vestige of Jewish identity from their beings, to vote year after year after year for Israel-loathing leftists like Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, and to stand up and applaud Obama at an AIPAC conference not 48 hours after he announced his intention to plunge Israel back to what then-Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban referred to as "the Auschwitz borders" of 1967! As Boris Shusteff, a Russian immigrant to the United States and a research associate at the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies, writes: "The simple truth is that under the facade of their `progressiveness` there is always a subconsciously hidden attempt to escape from their Jewishness. They use beautiful words and convincing arguments to prove the necessity of fighting for somebody else's abstract rights instead of proudly defending their own. They say that they ennoble the world community by defending the interests of other nations, while disregarding the fate of their brethren. They rush to a cosmopolitan universe, where all the uniqueness of the nations disappears and where they can call themselves citizens of the universe." Aha, the famous "one world order" the progressives among us have embraced, while they demonize Jews like me — and there are millions of us — who prefer not to have their identities blended and bastardized into some amorphous tasteless valueless Godless gruel! STRAIN #4 — THE MOTHER'S MILK FACTOR This variant is infused into tabula rasa embryos by a loathing so systemic it suggests a DNA aberration. After delivery, infants literally imbibe a particularly toxic brew of anti-Semitism flowing either from their mothers' breast milk or worldview. And when they have been sufficiently intoxicated, they enter into a family and "culture" that makes the hatred of Jews their entire raison d'√™tre. This strain has been on vivid display in the Arab world for decades — actually centuries — where toddlers are taught to echo the Jew hatred drummed daily into their developing brains, instead of being taught how to play the piano or play ball or play with dolls, and where young children are taught by the time they're three-years-old how to strap suicide bombs onto their young bodies. It is in this "culture," which has not changed significantly since the seventh century, that "leaders" keep the abhorrence going by inflaming the masses they have purposefully kept poor and ignorant, the better to energize them not by jobs and creativity but by the adrenaline fueled by hatred. These palace-dwelling leaders generously pay the media to perpetuate the hate, and also endlessly "play" the United States of America like a Stradivarius by extorting billions every year to keep a so-called reasonable lid on their Jew hatred. No wonder Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974, said: "We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us." But it's not just Arabs and Muslims who make the hatred of Jews the virtual centerpiece of their lives. There is the full-blown return of anti-Semitism in Europe, as Guy Millière writes, where citizens have now been effectively Islamized and the entire region is on the way again to being Judenrein, or "cleansed of Jews." In fact, anti-Semitism has now reached pandemic proportions, right in time for an American "president" to help orchestrate the so-called spontaneous "pro-democracy" uprisings throughout the Arab world, from Tunisia to Yemen to Egypt to Lebanon to Jordan to Syria to Bahrain, on and on. Yes, orchestrate! And while he's at it, make a practice out of de facto condoning the butchery and hatred of America's and Israel's enemies Iran and Syria, while at the same time punishing America's longtime allies and Israel's longtime "cold peace" partners Egypt and Libya. To what end? Certainly not to encourage democracy, of which the entire world has seen not a hint since this smoke-and-mirrors travesty began, but rather to ferret in the real new world order, in which the virulently anti-Semitic, Nazi-inspired Muslim Brotherhood will reign, with its oft-stated intentions of obliterating Israel and every last Jew who breathes on its land. (During World War II, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt allied himself with Hitler and was active in recruiting Arabs for the Waffen SS).That's the same Muslim Brotherhood whose terrorist branch Hamas has launched over 12,000 missiles at Israeli civilians. The same Muslim Brotherhood — in Egypt — that condemned Bin Laden's death and wants to end the peace accord with Israel. The same Muslim Brotherhood that, according to Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, citing an AP report, is about to receive $1 billion from Obama! As Hoft says, "Obama wants to reward them." STRAIN #5 — THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER FACTOR According to author and columnist Dennis Prager, the reason that "for thousands of years there has been so much attention paid to Jews and why, today, to Israel, the one Jewish state is that Jews are God's Chosen People. Atheists are exempted from this theory, Prager says, because "they don't believe in a Chooser, so they cannot believe in a Chosen. But for most believing Jews and Christians (most particularly the Founders who saw America as a Second Israel, a second Chosen People), Jewish Chosen-ness has been a given." Prager says the proof of this "chosen-ness" is that "evil has consistently targeted the Jews," for instance:
This obsession, he says, "can be best explained only in transcendent terms, namely that God, for whatever reason, chose the Jews." But I think of an equally visceral kind of jealousy when I contemplate the Greatest Hatred Ever Known. I think of what it must be like for a huge population of well over 300-million Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East to watch as the straggling remnants of European Jewry — cadaverous, hungry, heartbroken, stupefied by the cruelty they had endured and witnessed — rose up to repel the savage Arab armies of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria (backed by Saudi Arabia and Yemen) — that tried to annihilate the nascent Jewish State in 1948 and then to defeat them again and again in the many wars the Arabs continued to initiate. And what must it be like for the immensely wealthy Arab potentates, as well as their serfs, to not only lose war after war to the Jews, but to see the people they call "pigs" literally make long-barren deserts bloom, to have the world's only thriving economy, to lead the world in technology and science, to create magnificent symphonies and athletic teams and life-saving medical remedies, et al, while the most the Arab world has ever accomplished in the last six decades is to "create" terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and of course those itty bitty suicide bombers. And further imagine what it must be like to live in these feudal swamps and to know that big bad America — which has sent trillions of dollars to the Arab countries over the years — continues to support the sole democracy in the Middle East, Israel. It must be eerily like what the black citizens of America and their leftist leaders think when they contemplate the wealth of our country and realize that every program — in education and job-equality and equitable healthcare that the liberals-cum-progressives have magnanimously funded and enacted for over half a century — has failed thunderously. What do these two things have in common? Again, the answer is so simple — rage and envy. The same things that the Arabs don't "get" about the roots of genuine success and empowerment are the same things that community organizers — and for that matter the Resident in the White House — don't "get," is that self-actualization, certainly for Americans, is not based on a mind-set of victimhood and lifelong entitlement but rather on the reality of plain old nose-to-the-grindstone hard work, resilience in the face of adversity, the strength of family ties, a devotion to the U.S. Constitution, and a belief in the overriding Judeo-Christian ethos that has blessed our country with benevolence and guidance for nearly 235 years. WHO IS BEHIND OBAMA'S OBSESSION? That is, his malignant obsession with Jews and with Israel! Untold numbers of words have been written about the woman and man Obama claims were his mother and father, the far-left Stanley Ann Dunham and the Kenyan-born Marxist, Barack Obama Sr. Then there is the couple he claims were his grandparents, the far-left Madelyn Dunham and Stanley Armour Dunham. I say "claims" because there is still no certifiable birth certificate that attests either to Obama's parentage or citizenship. But we do know that these people "raised" Obama and along with Frank Marshall Davis, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Rev. Louis Farrakhan, et al, profoundly influenced his hate-whitey, anti-American, and anti-Israel world view. Last year, to the month, I wrote Obama's Jewish Problem, in which I remarked that "to prepare for his meeting on May 18 with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama prepared a menu of poison pills — the kind given to people with the same Hobson's Choice that Mafia attorney Tom Hagen gave to the imprisoned and about-to-testify-before-Congress Frankie Pentangeli in `Godfather Two` — either commit suicide or we're going to kill you." Sound familiar?! In that article, I listed the people — more accurately, collaborators — who aid and abet what Mona Charen calls Obama's "genocidal hostility toward Israel." The following is the short list:
In addition, according to Ryan Mauro, founder of WorldThreats.com: "The 'most influential Muslim' in the White House is Dalia Mogahed. She is a close colleague of John Esposito, a staunch defender of the Muslim Brotherhood and a witness for the defense during the Holy Land Foundation trial. Officials from the Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration, have made a concerted effort to court these Brotherhood affiliates, including senior advisor Valerie Jarrett; chief counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan; Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano; Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough and many other lower-level government officials" And that is not to omit the aforementioned George Soros, the man who is running not only Barack Obama but just about the entire American media. According to Dan Gainor, Soros "spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004 [and today] has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets — including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC." I can't think of one of Obama's advisors, czars, even Court Jews who is not floridly anti-Israel, in both word and deed. The belief, indeed conviction, that all of these people have in common is that everything wrong with their lives and with the world would magically disappear if only those damned Jews and their damned country Israel were destroyed. Hence the salami tactics to whittle away territory until Israelis simply cannot defend themselves and so perish at the hands of neighbors who have been promising nothing less than annihilation for decades. This is Obama's malignant intention, as well. Hence the 1967 lines! THE BETRAYAL UNMASKED This is the title of an article by Paul Schnee, in which he says that the Obama speech "confirmed in the starkest terms why his long held prejudices, cloaked as a foreign policy, have made his Oval Office not only the graveyard for any peace and justice in the Middle East but also the incubator for the next great conflict there. "Obama's intentions towards Israel have never been good," Schnee adds, "but yesterday he proved just how hostile he is to the Jewish state of Israel. One of the most perverse forms of anti-Semitism is to expect Jews to die meekly His speech was a shameful act in a career of shameful acts" Victor Sharpe, author of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish State, agrees. "Obama parrots the Arab policy of `stages` whereby Israel is forced to commit national suicide through the diabolical euphemism called `land for peace.'Obama embraces the darkness of the Arab world and chooses — not from ignorance but from hatred — to enact under his watch the eventual annihilation of the Jewish state." Is there any light in this bleak picture? According to Professor Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, "Israel is not going to allow a president with no credibility, who clearly doesn't understand what's at stake, fails to support his Arab allies, is soft on his Iranian and Syrian enemies, doesn't learn from his past errors, is sacrificing U.S. interests in the region, and pays no attention to what's happening in Egypt, to determine its future." But the last word (at least of this article) has to go to writer and Army veteran J.D. Longstreet, who cites Amos and Jeremiah and Ezekiel in "America's Betrayal of Israel," in which he states: "Let me be very clear here: ISRAEL WILL NOT LOSE. Its enemies WILL lose...as a result of the Obama's announced policy demanding that Israel return to the pre-1967 war borders. What Obama, and Israel's other enemies, fail to understand (or understand it and choose to ignore it) is this: That of all the dry land on this planet earth, there is only one tiny little piece of geography that God, Himself, has designated as belonging to a single people — ISRAEL. What the evangelical Christian Americans rightly understand is this: When God brought the people of Israel, His people, home and gave them a "state," a nation, in May of 1948, God had already made it as plain as possible that Israel would never be moved from that land again — forever.
Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author of Volumes One &
Two of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.
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A NEW KIND OF BA'AL TESHUVA
Posted by Avodah, May 26, 2011. |
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Personally, I believe Mashiach has not arrived yet because Hashem is waiting for a new kind of ba'al teshuva. I have had these thoughts for some time now, mostly inspired by the Hebrew writings of Rabbi Yiztchak Ginsburg, specifically those written by his student Yisrael Ariel, such as Rucho Shel Mashiach, Muda'ut Tiv'it (Natural Consciousness), Tom Va'Daat (Innocence and Knowledge), and more. When I learned about Franz Rosenzweig in class last week, my thinking crystallized one step further. Franz Rosenzweig was born to an assimilated German family. He was on the verge of abandoning Judaism entirely, and had a conversation one evening with his Christian theologian friend in which he resolved to once and for all make the jump and convert to Christianity. Several members of his family and many German Jews had already chosen this route. He informed his mother of his decision, and although she in no way supported a traditional Jewish lifestyle, she was infuriated. On Yom Kippur Rosenzweig sought once more to attend synagogue in order to bid farewell to his born faith. However, his mother refused to let him set foot in their temple as a result of his recent decision. And so, Rosenzweig resolved to spend what he conceived of his last Yom Kippur as Jew in Berlin, alone. On Erev Yom Kippur, Rosenzweig found his way to a shteibl of Eastern European Jews (possibly Hasidim), and there experienced a profound transformation. The experience of prayer amidst a traditional community produced an experience for him which penetrated his soul deeper than any logical, rational theological discussion. After this Yom Kippur, Rosenzweig resolved to remain a Jew, and dedicated the rest of his life to contemplating Jewish texts and attempting to salvage Judaism from the misconceptions which plagued it as a result of its conflation with Christianity as a result of assimilation. Rosenzweig is the first modern ba'al teshuva. Prior to this, ba'al teshuva was a term for a person who grew up in a traditional lifestyle, who sinned or abandoned the path, and then returned. The experience however of growing up in a secular, scientific world foreign to authentic Judaism, and then discovering a kernel of truth on the background of a godless lifestyle, was a uniquely modern phenomenon. On the deepest level of reality (even though it is also because of our avonoteinu harabim), I believe Hashem orchestrated world history out of a desire for this discovery anew, and the uniting of opposites that it can produce. Judaism had become so tainted by millenia of exile, that in order to grasp its essence, one needed to come from something completely foreign and embrace it anew, from a place of choice. When asked if he donned tefillin, Rosenzweig would answer "not yet". He was not a Reform Jew, in the sense that he was not about to create an alternative lifestyle based on his inability to don tefillin, on the fact that at this particular point and time in his lifetime, as a result of his particular circumstances, he could not bring himself to fulfill this daily obligation. Halakhah was real; he was what needed to evolve, adapt and change. Rosenzweig gave the following metaphor: Halakhah is like a house in which he wants to dwell; for the time being, he is in a tent, which he is continuously re-pitching closer and closer to the house. However, he is not willing to leave the tent, and enter the house immediately. In the way I understand it, bringing the tent ever closer to the house, rather than abandoning one's tent and jumping into the house all at once, represents the path of a ba'al teshuva to authentically enter the world of Torah and mitzvot in a genuine way that does not deny the depth of one's own personality. As precious as a victory on this path can be, it also means living in an ever-precarious state of imperfection; if a person is truly honest with oneself along this path, he or she is one is almost but not quite living with the ultimate truth as he or she knows it deep inside. This can be an incredibly difficult stance to maintain psychologically. For this reason, many slide one way or the other: On the one hand, many decide to do away with the house, and reason that if it's so difficult to draw one's tent close to the house, it must mean that the house is not real, and that whatever I can do in my own tent must be ultimate. On the other hand, many flee their tent so rapidly that they enter the house with everything but their own inner voice. Every thought of teshuva is infinitely holy in Hashem's eyes, and no yearning for holiness should be disregarded, as it comes from the highest worlds, the world that preceded this world. At the same time, there is something if not equally compelling about a person like Rosenzweig's commitment to his own inner integrity, and the belief behind this commitment that his own inner integrity and halakhah are intimately connected, even if it might take a lifetime (or more) to discover. If every ba'al teshuva that is confronted with the undeniable, world-shattering experience of Hashem's reality and the call of Torah and mitzvot, if every such individual stayed exactly in the place that he or she is, and attempted to explain to others around them in the most human and genuine of terms what one is experiencing, what ripples could be made? Of course, Hashem is in charge, and anyone who feels called to dive into the furthest reaches of teshuva, Hashem will surely do His part in repaying this individual and inspiring others around him. We need not make plans for Hashem. However, looking at the state of the world today, and the eerie silence that stands between seas of baaley teshuva and seas of secular bubbles, I have to ask, are there not people who have the courage to have one foot in each world? Do others have experiences or insights relating to the question of how to do teshuva at such a pace that it remains authentic? Is remaining authentic to one's inner voice simply a modern concept, or is this a reasonable guideline from within Torah? I seek those who question, not only those who answer. Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com and visit his website:
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OBAMA DOESN'T GET THE ARITHMETIC OF THE ISRAEL-PALESTINE SITUATION
Posted by Ted Belman, May 26, 2011. |
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This was written by George Jonas. The article and cartoon both
appeared in Canada's National Post. The article is archived at
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About 10 years ago, when the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was still with us, he gave an interview to freelance photo-journalist Flore de Préneuf. Unlike the Palestinian Liberation Organization's cagey Yasser Arafat, whose shtick was his forked tongue, Yassin preferred speaking in plain language. "Hamas was established to resist and kick out the occupier," he told de Préneuf. "All of Israel, Tel Aviv included, is occupied Palestine." Ten years later, Yessin is dead, and so is Arafat. Many of my colleagues see a fundamental change in the Middle East. Maybe it's my glasses, but I see nothing. I'm squinting, trying to refocus, but far from seeing anything fundamental, I don't even see very much cosmetic. The Middle East continues to be the Middle East, and the West continues to be the West. The Middle East has no difficulty understanding that if (a) your war aim is not to have a Jewish state in your region, which has been the Arab/Muslim aim all along, then (b) making peace with a Jewish state next door, on whatever terms, means (c) defeat. Nor does the Middle East have any difficulty understanding that if (a) your war aim is to establish and defend a Jewish State, which has been the Israeli war aim from the beginning, then (b) achieving peace with neighbours who oppose it, on almost any terms, spells (c) victory. The formula, then, is A+B=C in both cases. The only exception is "peace" terms that would undermine the existence of the Jewish State. To repeat the same thing in different words: Peace amounts to an Israeli victory, except on terms that render the country geographically or demographically indefensible. This means that the Palestinians will insist on such terms, and Israel will not agree to them. Let the U.S. president who brokers the deal be Old Bush, Zipper Clinton, Young Bush, or Irish O'Bama (as America's Commander-in-Chief prefers to be called this week). A+B=C whether Israel is led by Netanyahu the Hawk, Barak the Dove, Livni the Pixie, or the poltergeist of Golda Meir. Two-state solution? By all means. 1967 borders? No can do. How come Obama doesn't see this? Maybe he does. We know what he says, not what he thinks. After all, the whole process has been a charade even before him. Just how much of a charade is illustrated by one-time Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky's anecdote about an earlier round of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations at Wye River in which he participated as an Israeli delegate. Apparently a moment came when Sharansky and his colleagues managed to extract a promise from Arafat to delete from the Palestinian Charter the sections calling for the destruction of Israel. "Upon leaving the conference room," Sharansky recalled in a nostalgia-piece he wrote for Ha'Aretz newspaper some years ago, "we saw one of the closest advisors of president Bill Clinton and proudly told him about our achievement. 'Are you out of your minds?' he shouted. '[Arafat] is going to be killed because of that. He is too weak for dramatic steps like that. First, he has to be strengthened!'" This sums up the sham peace initiatives of the last 20 years. Arafat probably had no intention of excising any section calling for Israel's destruction from the Palestinian Charter. He had made half-hearted promises to do so long before Wye River and nothing came of them. He knew that understanding souls in the U.S. State Department would exempt him from having to go out on any such limb until he was suitably "strengthened." But — and here's the point — in the unlikely event that Arafat had actually made an attempt to remove the clause, he might well have been killed, just like Egypt's Anwar Sadat. A con artist of some accomplishment, Arafat was prepared to accept down payments from Sharansky and colleagues on the Brooklyn Bridge: A package called "peace" that he had no intention of delivering, and that wasn't his to deliver anyway. Arafat had no title to peace — and Israel's current negotiating partner, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud "Abu Mazen" Abbas, has even less. A lot of water had flown down Wye River since the last round of negotiations, and things have changed "not necessarily to Israel's advantage" (to paraphrase the immortal words of the Japanese Emperor after Hiroshima and Nagasaki). At Wye River, Hamas was an outlaw; now it's Abbas' in-law. Then, the U.S. President was Israel's ally; now it's Barack Obama. The President's suggestion that the two-state solution be based on Israel's 1967 borders made Israel's Prime Minister lose his cool. Having turned "Bibi" Netanyahu into "Booboo" Netanyahu, Obama addressed AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) to suggest that he never suggested what he suggested. This caused AIPAC director Howard Kohr to suggest this week that "If Israel's foes come to believe that there is diplomatic daylight between the United States and Israel, they will have every incentive to try to exploit those differences and shun peace with the Jewish state." Right. And closing the barn door after the horse has bolted beats never closing it, I guess.
Ted Belman is a retired lawyer and the Editor of Israpundit. He
made aliya from Canada last year and now lives in Jerusalem, Israel.
Contact him at tedbel@rogers.com.
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OBAMA'S BETRAYAL OF ISRAEL EVEN WORSE THAT YOU THOUGHT
Posted by Barbara Sommer, May 25, 2011. |
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This was written by Aaron Klein, World Net Daily's senior staff reporter and Jerusalem bureau chief. He also hosts "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on New York's WABC Radio. His latest book is the N.Y. Times best-selling, "The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists." |
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JERUSALEM — While President Obama last week outlined an Israeli retreat as part of a deal with the Palestinian Authority, the U.S. in recent weeks also quietly has been leading talks aimed at an Israeli surrender of the strategic Golan Heights, WND has learned. Dennis Ross, Obama's Middle East envoy, has exchanged messages the past few weeks between Israel and the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to informed Israeli and Arab officials. The Israeli officials said that in the course of the discussions, the U.S. concluded Syria is in possession of a chemical weapons arsenal. The officials said the weapons were taken into consideration by the U.S. in its assessment of Assad's regime. "It was part of the equation that led the White House to conclude that Assad should stay in power," said one Israeli official. Informed Arab officials, meanwhile, told WND that Assad believes previous negotiations with Israel could form the basis of a future accord in which Israel would surrender the vast majority of the Golan Heights. Both Israeli and Arab officials said the Obama administration believes it is in U.S. interests for Assad to remain in power. The U.S. reasons that even though Assad is a partner of Iran and a sponsor of Hamas, the alternative to his regime would likely be Islamist radicals. Assad has been threatened with uprisings in recent weeks. He has been accused of ordering rampant human rights violations and mass killings in attempting to suppress the rebellions. The Israeli officials told WND that in recent discussions, the U.S. belittled White House sanctions passed targeting Assad and top Syrian officials, explaining the sanctions are more symbolic and that the measures will not harm Assad in reality. In a major address last week, Obama called for Israel to retreat to the 1967 borders, meaning a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem while allowing for some territorial swaps. In his address, Obama supported the Arab revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa and called for the ouster of dictators and transitions to democracy. On Sunday, Obama clarified that Israel could retain some of the West Bank, telling a pro-Israel group negotiations based on 1967 borders would include mutually agreed swaps. He clarified that he did not mean the exact borders that existed on June 4, 1967. Meanwhile, with Assad's regime faltering, the White House has been pushing Israel to surrender the Golan in an accord with Syria. Syria twice used the Golan, which looks down on Israeli population centers, to mount ground invasions into the Jewish state. Jewish Golan News media accounts routinely billed the Golan as "undisputed Syrian territory" until Israel "captured the region" in 1967. The Golan, however, has been out of Damascus' control for far longer than the 19 years it was within its rule, from 1948 to 1967. Even when Syria shortly held the Golan, some of it was stolen from Jews. Tens of thousands of acres of farmland on the Golan were purchased by Jews as far back as the late 19th century. The Turks of the Ottoman Empire kicked out some Jews around the turn of the century. But some of the Golan still was farmed by Jews until 1947, when Syria first became an independent state. Just before that, the territory was transferred back and forth between France, Britain and even Turkey, before it became a part of the French Mandate of Syria. When the French Mandate ended in 1944, the Golan Heights became part of the newly independent state of Syria, which quickly seized land that was being worked by the Palestine Colonization Association and the Jewish Colonization Association. A year later, in 1948, Syria, along with other Arab countries, used the Golan to attack Israel in a war to destroy the newly formed Jewish state. The Golan, steeped in Jewish history, is connected to the Torah and to the periods of the First and Second Jewish Temples. The Golan Heights was referred to in the Torah as "Bashan." The word "Golan" apparently was derived from the biblical city of "Golan in Bashan." The book of Joshua relates how the Golan was assigned to the tribe of Manasseh. Later, during the time of the First Temple, King Solomon appointed three ministers in the region, and the area became contested between the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel and the Aramean kingdom based in Damascus. The book of Kings relates how King Ahab of Israel defeated Ben-Hadad I of Damascus near the present-day site of Kibbutz Afik in the southern Golan, and the prophet Elisha foretold that King Jehoash of Israel would defeat Ben-Hadad III of Damascus, also near Kibbutz Afik. The online Jewish Virtual Library has an account of how in the late 6th and 5th centuries B.C., the Golan was settled by Jewish exiles returning from Babylonia, or modern day Iraq. In the mid-2nd century B.C., Judah Maccabee's grandnephew, the Hasmonean King Alexander Jannai, added the Golan Heights to his kingdom. The Golan hosted some of the most important houses of Torah study in the years following the Second Temple's destruction and subsequent Jewish exile; some of Judaism's most revered ancient rabbis are buried in the territory. The remains of some 25 synagogues from the period between the Jewish revolt and the Islamic conquest in 636 have been excavated. The Golan is also dotted with ancient Jewish villages.
Contact Barbara Sommer at lsommer_1_98@yahoo.com
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MOST ISRAELIS AGAINST OBAMA'S '67 BORDER LAND SWAP IDEA
Posted by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, May 25, 2011. |
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More than 60 percent of Israelis oppose Obama's plan for a Palestinian Authority state on borders along the 1949-1967 lines with land swaps, according to an independent poll. The survey by Geocartography, one of the leading polling organizations in the country, showed that only 27 percent support President Obama's idea, with 12 percent stating no opinion. The idea of land swaps never has been discussed in detail and it is unlikely that Israeli Arabs would agree to give up their freedom and economic privileges as citizens of Israel. The poll also verified another survey reported in Israel National News Wednesday that the Likud has opened a wide lead over other parties, and it showed that Kadima has suffered a severe drop in popularity. If elections were held today, Kadima, headed by Tzipi Livni, would receive only 22 seats in the Knesset, six fewer than it now has. Geocartography director Prof. Avi Dagni explained, "There is no doubt that Livni does not enthuse voters" and that dissension in the party has contributed to its weakness. The Yisrael Beiteinu party headed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman gained two seats in the poll and the other parties would remain the same. Another unusual result of the Geocartography poll is that Defense Minister Ehud Barak's new Atzama'ut (Independence) party would not win enough support to be represented in the Knesset.
Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu is a writer for Arutz-7, where this article
appeared today.
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PALIN TAKES OBAMA TO THE WOODSHED ON ISRAEL
Posted by Ted Belman, May 25, 2011. |
| This article was written by Sarah Palin. |
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As I noted on Judge Jeanine Pirro's show this weekend, I reject President Obama's idea that Israel must cede back its territories to the 1967 line. Will we now be in the habit of telling our allies what their borders should be? Should Prime Minister Netanyahu suggest we return to our 1845 borders before the annexation of the southwest of the United States during the Mexican-American War? Should we give back parts of Texas, New Mexico, and California? But the problem is even deeper. In both his State Department speech and his speech yesterday at AIPAC, President Obama made some seemingly specific comments about the Palestinian state that he wants to see created. He either misspoke or he has even more dangerous plans for our friends in Israel than he is publicly admitting. In the State Department speech, President Obama said that he wants the borders of Palestine and Israel to "be based on the 1967 lines" (in other words, with both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as part of the new Palestinian state) and that he wants a Palestine that is a "sovereign and contiguous state" (emphasis added). The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "contiguous" as "being in actual contact: touching along a boundary or at a point; of angles, adjacent; next or near in time or sequence; touching or connected throughout in an unbroken sequence," like the "contiguous United States" which obviously excludes Alaska and Hawaii. But the 1967 lines do not include a "contiguous" Palestine.
So what does he mean? The President proposes "mutually agreed [land] swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states." Is linking Gaza and the West Bank with a road the "secured border" he has in mind? Or is he suggesting something more? Is it not possible he's suggesting that the only way you can create a "contiguous" Palestinian state with "secured" borders is by carving Israel in half? Clarification on this point is of paramount importance, Mr. President. In fact, that leads me to another even bigger geographic problem with the President's remarks. As the British newspaper The Independent points out, there is further confusion because President Obama said, "The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine." As The Independent asks: "How does that square with the pre-1967 borders? Was the President implying that the new improved Israel will border neither Jordan nor Egypt, as it does now? Would Palestine's contiguous territory come at the expense of Israel's? Would Israel get the Gaza Strip and the Mediterranean and Palestine get the Negev and a Red Sea port?" Is that what you have in mind, Mr. President? Do you not want an Israeli border with Egypt? You need to clarify what you mean. Diplomacy requires precision and you are causing enormous anxiety for some and making commitments to others that you might not be able to keep. It has long been the dream of radicals like Noam Chomsky to create a "contiguous Palestine." True, President George W. Bush spoke ambiguously of a "contiguous" Palestinian state, but he never defined it geographically with borders the way President Obama has, and he had the security of our ally Israel in mind more than our current President. President Obama has in essence boxed Israel in without regard for the facts on the ground and without appreciating the fact that Israel looks across the negotiating table and sees the terrorist organization Hamas in alliance with Fatah. Israel has demonstrated in the past that it is willing to negotiate fairly with a genuine partner in peace. Just look at the treaty it maintains to this day with Egypt. All of this should have been considered and the President's words should have been carefully measured so as to help and not hinder the peace process. Unfortunately, his words have caused confusion and distressed our ally.
Ted Belman is a retired lawyer and the Editor of Israpundit. He
made aliya from Canada last year and now lives in Jerusalem, Israel.
Contact him at tedbel@rogers.com.
This article appeared yesterday in IsraPundit
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NETANYAHU'S RULES OF DEBATE
Posted by Paul Rotenberg, May 24, 2011. |
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This below was written by Hugh Hewitt, law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com. This article appeared today in the Washington Examiner (http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/05/ netanyahus-rules-debate#ixzz1N8E45WG7). |
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If it had been a fight, they would have stopped it. Friday's showdown between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn't close, and it wasn't pretty — though Netanyahu didn't want to leave any obvious marks. The end result was that our president is suddenly aware that Chicago rules don't work on tough-minded leaders of countries surrounded by terrorists. The battle between the warrior and the academic was bound to turn out this way. President Obama was a community organizer once. Netanyahu was commander of the Israeli Defense Forces' elite special forces unit, Sayeret Matkal. Faculty meetings can get rough, but not as rough as the hostage rescue mission to free Sabena Flight 571. So the president's absurd declaration about 1967 borders is off the table. In fact, the table is gone. Israel can wait out the 20 months left to Obama's presidency, or even 48 months if American voters insanely choose to experiment with epic incompetence at the top for another term. Israel isn't going back to the Auschwitz borders, and only a naive and inexperienced academic would think that Thursday's speech would do other than worsen prospects for a negotiated settlement. Netanyahu's take-down of the president should be on the TiVo of Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Jon Huntsman (and, yes, Rick Perry if what I have been hearing is true). One of those men will be standing opposite the president in the debates of September and October of 2012, and Netanyahu showed exactly how to respond to the prolixities and pauses of the teleprompter-dependent president. First, let the president talk, and talk, and talk. (And talk.) His frequent rhetorical cul-de-sacs numb the minds of listeners and set up the opportunity for sharp contrasts between the definitive and the ambiguous, the purposeful and the feckless. Second, look right at him when responding. This so unnerved President Obama that his anger and frustration was visible. Whether he brought the sense of superiority to the White House or whether it erupted there, the president does not care for people who challenge him directly, cannot seem to believe that anyone would have the temerity to do so. This is the sign of a deep insecurity, and Netanyahu used it. Next, speak from specifics, using facts and especially history. Netanyahu used history to spank the president on Friday. A GOP nominee armed with specific references — not just to Obama's many blunders but also to clear evidence of the American exceptionalism that Obama has clearly rejected — will put the wordy academic on his heels. Finally, express core truths bluntly — especially the harshest ones, such as the nature of Hamas. The president has been shrinking from clarity for more than two years, whether it is clarity on Iran, on the butcher Assad and the nutter Chavez, and most recently on the key Palestinian problem — that Hamas, like Hezbollah to the north, wants Israel destroyed. Netanyahu showed a worldwide audience that purposefulness can be as polite as it is pointed, and that Obama has a glass jaw. A clenched glass jaw, but a glass jaw nonetheless. Israel isn't going back to the 1967 borders. Hamas cannot be a partner in peace negotiations. And Israel is a friend and a valued ally, not a lap dog. The president would do well to figure out that our country prefers Netanyahu's approach to his. Even the president's own party does. Paul Rotenberg lives in Toronto, Canada. Contact him at pdr@rogers.com |
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PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU BEFORE THE U.S. CONGRESS
Posted by JINSA, May 24, 2011. |
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This is JINSA Report #1092. |
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He looked as if he belonged there. He spoke as if he was one of us. And in the ways that count, he was. Not because his English is impeccable, but because he spoke to the convergence of historical, religious, political, security, moral, and ethical views and values between the State of Israel and the United States. In the broadest and deepest sense, he came from where we come from. He came from the camp of deeply held core values that Americans understand. He came from the camp of compromise and political realism. He may not always have been in that camp, but he could not have been clearer about his membership now, and Americans relate to that. He came from the pro-American camp in which most of us reside. (Can you imagine Abu Mazen saying, "God bless America"?) On the merits, the speech turned the most important table, as Prime Minister Netanyahu said the conflict was not about forming a Palestinian state — which, he noted, Israel agreed to in 1947 and which the last six Israeli Prime Ministers have reiterated — but rather that the Palestinians are unwilling to accept a Jewish state. Congress applauded. He called for an end to Palestinians teaching their children that Israel would disappear and an end to the glorification of terrorists. Congress applauded. He said Palestinian refugees would not be resettled in Israel, but in their own country. Congress applauded. He said Jerusalem would not be re-divided because only under Israel has the city been accessible to adherents of all religions including Judaism. Congress applauded. He said Israel needs defensible borders, not arbitrary lines; the Jordan River Valley is one such line. Congress applauded and we think the King of Jordan did as well. He called on the Palestinian Authority to end its relationship with Hamas — "the Palestinian version of al Qaeda" — and negotiate with Israel. Congress applauded. Prime Minister Netanyahu invited the Palestinian Authority to join Israel in expanding and enhancing the economic improvements that have already come to the West Bank since Israel rooted out the terrorists who orchestrated the so-called "second intifada" and since the IDF works with the Palestinian Security Forces to maintain security there. It was a generous invitation and Congress applauded. Netanyahu spoke the thoughts of the Congress of the United States and the Congress stood and applauded twelve times (in case you were counting). Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives made clear their appreciation of the difficult conditions under which Israel lives, the determination of Israel to be strong and defend its people, and the desire of Israel to find a way to give the Palestinians what they have been unable to take since 1948 — a peaceful, prosperous state next to Israel, the national home of the Jewish people. The JINSA Reports are published by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (http://www.jinsa.org). To subscribe, email jinsareports-www@lists.jinsa.org |
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NGO MONITOR: NGO STRATEGY TO ATTACK ISRAELI JUDICIAL SYSTEM
Posted by Barbara Sommer, May 24, 2011. |
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NGO Monitor's latest report, "Rule of Law and Due Process: NGO Campaigns to Discredit the Israeli Justice System," is featured today in the Jerusalem Post (below), in an article written by Ron Friedman (http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/ Article.aspx?id=221926). The report details the NGO strategy to discredit the Israeli judicial system, to question the validity of Israeli investigations, and to falsely paint Israel as an undemocratic state. This strategy is used to bolster BDS (boycott, divestment and sanction campaigns) and lawfare initiatives, as well as to promote the Goldstone Report. The report also notes: The strategy has encompassed specifically targeting the Israeli Supreme Court. One NGO, Al Haq, proposes "flooding the Court with petitions in the hope of obstructing its functioning and resources." At a 2008 conference funded by the Swedish government, Hasseen Jabareen, General Director of the NIF- and EU-funded Adalah, encouraged NGO activists "to portray Israel as an inherent undemocratic state" and "use that as part of campaigning internationally." European-funded NGOs such as Al Haq, Palestinian Center for Human Rights, FIDH (France), Badil, and DCI-PS have pursued this strategy at the UN and the International Criminal Court to force "war crimes" investigations of Israeli officials. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have joined these efforts, with allegations — contrary to the opinions of international legal experts — that Israeli investigations, lack independence and transparency. NGO Monitor Research Stops Swiss Funding to NGO The Jerusalem Post this week also reported that Switzerland has stopped funding to the Palestinian NGO Badil, after NGO Monitor exposed the organization's anti-Semitic activities. Prof. Gerald Steinberg is quoted explaining that Badil is "a leader in the BDS movement, they published an antisemitic cartoon on their website and they reject multiple peace initiatives. These actions are clearly out of step with their European funders, and the funding has rightfully been frozen." We will update you on developments regarding both stories as they occur. Thank you,
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By Ron Friedman
A new NGO Monitor report published on Sunday accuses pro-Palestinian organizations of seeking to undermine the legitimacy of Israeli courts and investigatory bodies in an effort to internationally isolate Israel and paint it as an antidemocratic state. According to the report, titled "Rule of Law and Due Process: NGO Campaigns to Discredit the Israeli Justice System," groups such as Al Haq, Palestinian Center for Human Rights, FIDH (France), Badil, and DCI-PS, all of which receive funding from European governments, have been pursuing this strategy at the UN and the International Criminal Court to in hopes of charging Israeli officials of war crimes. "Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have joined these efforts, with allegations that Israeli investigations, in particular, the Turkel Commission on the May 2010 'Free Gaza' flotilla, lack independence and transparency," the report said. Central to the report was a quote by Hassan Jabareen, executive director of the Arab legal advocacy group Adalah, who in 2008 suggested at a conference in Sweden that activists "should try to portray Israel as an inherent undemocratic state" and "use that as part of campaigning internationally." Since then, NGOs have implemented inflammatory campaigns against Israel, especially its Supreme Court and military justice system. Some of these campaigns, the report claims, have gone so far as to advocate sabotaging the High Court by flooding it with petitions in the hope of obstructing its functioning and resources. The report states that Jabareen also filed an expert opinion on behalf of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) in a lawsuit filed by the group in Spain. That case sought the arrest and imprisonment of seven Israeli officials for alleged war crimes arising out of the killing of a senior Hamas terrorist, Salah Shehadeh. "Jabareen's opinion claimed that the High Court of Justice had engaged in misuse of the judicial process in reviewing the Shehadeh operation. It also alleged that, following Israel's 2005 disengagement from Gaza, there was a 'lack of impartiality of the Israeli legal system towards Palestinians and the lack of an effective remedy before Israeli courts for Palestinians in Gaza.'" It also highlighted NGO attacks on the credibility and independence of Israeli investigations. The report quotes officials from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as saying that "Israel's investigations have lacked independence, appropriate expertise and transparency" and "Israel's investigations have fallen far short of international standards for investigations." "It is important to note," the report said, "that just because Amnesty International and HRW do not agree with the results of Israeli investigations, does not mean that credible investigations have not occurred or that due process has been violated. Indeed, it is surprising that organizations which frequently demand strict adherence to the standards of due process, proclaim Israeli officials and soldiers guilty of 'war crimes' and other criminal conduct simply prior to any investigation or judicial process." The NGO Monitor report argues that, for the most part, claims made by these groups are rejected by courts around the world, which hold the Israeli justice system in high regard. It cites decisions by courts in Spain, the UK and the US, all rejecting petitions aimed at undermining the Israeli judiciary. Anne Herzberg, legal advisor for NGO Monitor, pointed to Judge Richard Goldstone's famous retraction op-ed in the Washington Post — where he expresses full trust in the Israeli courts — as an example of how the country's justice system is seen by legal experts, even those who are critical of Israel's policies and actions. The report ends by calling on the groups to cease attacking Israeli due process and adopt fair and balanced due process measures in their own activities. In response to the report, Adalah issued a statement saying its job was to "pass criticism on the authorities and identify the places where injustice or discrimination exists." "Under this mandate," the statement continued, "Adalah criticizes the state and sometimes also the justice system. That said, the very fact that the group operates to ensure minority rights by legal tools, means that it is interested in strengthening the courts and the rule of law in Israel. It is no coincidence that Adalah, together with other organizations, has come out against any body who has tried to infringe on the independent status of the High Court." The statement added that "It is worth reminding the authors of the [NGO Monitor] report that democracy cannot function without minority rights and without active human rights organizations and that it is those who attempt to portray civil society groups as enemies who harm democracy and the rule of law." Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International failed to respond to the report. Contact Barbara Sommer at lsommer_1_98@yahoo.com |
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SPEECH BY PM NETANYAHU TO A JOINT MEETING OF THE U.S. CONGRESS
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, May 24, 2011. |
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Speech by PM Netanyahu to a Joint Meeting of the U.S. Congress I am deeply honored by your warm welcome. And I am deeply honored that you have given me the opportunity to address Congress a second time. Mr. Vice President, do you remember the time we were the new kids in town? And I do see a lot of old friends here. And I do see a lot of new friends of Israel here. Democrats and Republicans alike. Israel has no better friend than America. And America has no better friend than Israel. We stand together to defend democracy. We stand together to advance peace. We stand together to fight terrorism. Congratulations America, Congratulations, Mr. President. You got bin Laden. Good riddance! In an unstable Middle East, Israel is the one anchor of stability. In a region of shifting alliances, Israel is America's unwavering ally. Israel has always been pro-American. Israel will always be pro-American. My friends, you don't need to do nation building in Israel. We're already built. You don't need to export democracy to Israel. We've already got it. You don't need to send American troops to defend Israel. We defend ourselves. You've been very generous in giving us tools to do the job of defending Israel on our own. Thank you all, and thank you President Obama, for your steadfast commitment to Israel's security. I know economic times are tough. I deeply appreciate this. Support for Israel's security is a wise investment in our common future. For an epic battle is now unfolding in the Middle East, between tyranny and freedom. A great convulsion is shaking the earth from the Khyber Pass to the Straits of Gibraltar. The tremors have shattered states and toppled governments. And we can all see that the ground is still shifting. Now this historic moment holds the promise of a new dawn of freedom and opportunity. Millions of young people are determined to change their future. We all look at them. They muster courage. They risk their lives. They demand dignity. They desire liberty. These extraordinary scenes in Tunis and Cairo, evoke those of Berlin and Prague in 1989. Yet as we share their hopes, but we also must also remember that those hopes could be snuffed out as they were in Tehran in 1979. You remember what happened then. The brief democratic spring in Iran was cut short by a ferocious and unforgiving tyranny. This same tyranny smothered Lebanon's democratic Cedar Revolution, and inflicted on that long-suffering country, the medieval rule of Hezbollah. So today, the Middle East stands at a fateful crossroads. Like all of you, I pray that the peoples of the region choose the path less travelled, the path of liberty. No one knows what this path consists of better than you. This path is not paved by elections alone. It is paved when governments permit protests in town squares, when limits are placed on the powers of rulers, when judges are beholden to laws and not men, and when human rights cannot be crushed by tribal loyalties or mob rule. Israel has always embraced this path, in the Middle East has long rejected it. In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out. It is different. As the great English writer George Eliot predicted over a century ago, that once established, the Jewish state will "shine like a bright star of freedom amid the despotisms of the East." Well, she was right. We have a free press, independent courts, an open economy, rambunctious parliamentary debates. You think you guys are tough on one another in Congress? Come spend a day in the Knesset. Be my guest. Courageous Arab protesters, are now struggling to secure these very same rights for their peoples, for their societies. We're proud that over one million Arab citizens of Israel have been enjoying these rights for decades. Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel's Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights. I want you to stop for a second and think about that. Of those 300 million Arabs, less than one-half of one-percent are truly free, and they're all citizens of Israel! This startling fact reveals a basic truth: Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the Middle East. Israel fully supports the desire of Arab peoples in our region to live freely. We long for the day when Israel will be one of many real democracies in the Middle East. Fifteen years ago, I stood at this very podium, and said that democracy must start to take root in the Arab World. Well, it's begun to take root. This beginning holds the promise of a brilliant future of peace and prosperity. For I believe that a Middle East that is genuinely democratic will be a Middle East truly at peace. But while we hope and work for the best, we must also recognize that powerful forces oppose this future. They oppose modernity. They oppose democracy. They oppose peace. Foremost among these forces is Iran. The tyranny in Tehran brutalizes its own people. It supports attacks against American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. It subjugates Lebanon and Gaza. It sponsors terror worldwide. When I last stood here, I spoke of the dire consequences of Iran developing nuclear weapons. Now time is running out, and the hinge of history may soon turn. For the greatest danger facing humanity could soon be upon us: A militant Islamic regime armed with nuclear weapons. Militant Islam threatens the world. It threatens Islam. I have no doubt that it will ultimately be defeated. It will eventually succumb to the forces of freedom and progress. But like other fanaticisms that were doomed to fail, militant Islam could exact a horrific price from all of us before its inevitable demise. A nuclear-armed Iran would ignite a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It would give terrorists a nuclear umbrella. It would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism a clear and present danger throughout the world. I want you to understand what this means. They could put the bomb anywhere. They could put it on a missile. It could be on a container ship in a port, or in a suitcase on a subway. Now the threat to my country cannot be overstated. Those who dismiss it are sticking their heads in the sand. Less than seven decades after six million Jews were murdered, Iran's leaders deny the Holocaust of the Jewish people, while calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state. Leaders who spew such venom, should be banned from every respectable forum on the planet. But there is something that makes the outrage even greater: The lack of outrage. In much of the international community, the calls for our destruction are met with utter silence. It is even worse because there are many who rush to condemn Israel for defending itself against Iran's terror proxies. But not you. Not America. You have acted differently. You've condemned the Iranian regime for its genocidal aims. You've passed tough sanctions against Iran. History will salute you America. President Obama has said that the United States is determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. He successfully led the Security Council to adopt sanctions against Iran. You in Congress passed even tougher sanctions. These words and deeds are vitally important. Yet the Ayatollah regime briefly suspended its nuclear program only once, in 2003, when it feared the possibility of military action. That same year, Muammar Qadaffi gave up his nuclear weapons program, and for the same reason. The more Iran believes that all options are on the table, the less the chance of confrontation. This is why I ask you to continue to send an unequivocal message: That America will never permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons. As for Israel, if history has taught the Jewish people anything, it is that we must take calls for our destruction seriously. We are a nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust. When we say never again, we mean never again. Israel always reserves the right to defend itself. My friends, while Israel will be ever vigilant in its defense, we will never give up on our quest for peace. I guess we'll give it up when we achieve it. Israel wants peace. Israel needs peace. We've achieved historic peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan that have held up for decades. I remember what it was like before we had peace. I was nearly killed in a firefight inside the Suez Canal. I mean that literally. I battled terrorists along both banks of the Jordan River. Too many Israelis have lost loved ones. I know their grief. I lost my brother. So no one in Israel wants a return to those terrible days. The peace with Egypt and Jordan has long served as an anchor of stability and peace in the heart of the Middle East. This peace should be bolstered by economic and political support to all those who remain committed to peace. The peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan are vital. But they're not enough. We must also find a way to forge a lasting peace with the Palestinians. Two years ago, I publicly committed to a solution of two states for two peoples: A Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state. I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace. As the leader of Israel, it is my responsibility to lead my people to peace. This is not easy for me. I recognize that in a genuine peace, we will be required to give up parts of the Jewish homeland. In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. We are not the British in India. We are not the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, the Land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one God, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw a vision of eternal peace. No distortion of history can deny the four thousand year old bond, between the Jewish people and the Jewish land. But there is another truth: The Palestinians share this small land with us. We seek a peace in which they will be neither Israel's subjects nor its citizens. They should enjoy a national life of dignity as a free, viable and independent people in their own state. They should enjoy a prosperous economy, where their creativity and initiative can flourish. We've already seen the beginnings of what is possible. In the last two years, the Palestinians have begun to build a better life for themselves. Prime Minister Fayad has led this effort. I wish him a speedy recovery from his recent operation. We've helped the Palestinian economy by removing hundreds of barriers and roadblocks to the free flow of goods and people. The results have been nothing short of remarkable. The Palestinian economy is booming. It's growing by more than 10% a year. Palestinian cities look very different today than they did just a few years ago. They have shopping malls, movie theaters, restaurants, banks. They even have e-businesses. This is all happening without peace. Imagine what could happen with peace. Peace would herald a new day for both peoples. It would make the dream of a broader Arab-Israeli peace a realistic possibility. So now here is the question. You have to ask it. If the benefits of peace with the Palestinians are so clear, why has peace eluded us? Because all six Israeli Prime Ministers since the signing of Oslo accords agreed to establish a Palestinian state. Myself included. So why has peace not been achieved? Because so far, the Palestinians have been unwilling to accept a Palestinian state, if it meant accepting a Jewish state alongside it. You see, our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about. In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews said yes. The Palestinians said no. In recent years, the Palestinians twice refused generous offers by Israeli Prime Ministers, to establish a Palestinian state on virtually all the territory won by Israel in the Six Day War. They were simply unwilling to end the conflict. And I regret to say this: They continue to educate their children to hate. They continue to name public squares after terrorists. And worst of all, they continue to perpetuate the fantasy that Israel will one day be flooded by the descendants of Palestinian refugees. My friends, this must come to an end. President Abbas must do what I have done. I stood before my people, and I told you it wasn't easy for me, and I said... "I will accept a Palestinian state." It is time for President Abbas to stand before his people and say... "I will accept a Jewish state." Those six words will change history. They will make clear to the Palestinians that this conflict must come to an end. That they are not building a state to continue the conflict with Israel, but to end it. They will convince the people of Israel that they have a true partner for peace. With such a partner, the people of Israel will be prepared to make a far reaching compromise. I will be prepared to make a far reaching compromise. This compromise must reflect the dramatic demographic changes that have occurred since 1967. The vast majority of the 650,000 Israelis who live beyond the 1967 lines, reside in neighborhoods and suburbs of Jerusalem and Greater Tel Aviv. These areas are densely populated but geographically quite small. Under any realistic peace agreement, these areas, as well as other places of critical strategic and national importance, will be incorporated into the final borders of Israel. The status of the settlements will be decided only in negotiations. But we must also be honest. So I am saying today something that should be said publicly by anyone serious about peace. In any peace agreement that ends the conflict, some settlements will end up beyond Israel's borders. The precise delineation of those borders must be negotiated. We will be very generous on the size of a future Palestinian state. But as President Obama said, the border will be different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967. Israel will not return to the indefensible lines of 1967. We recognize that a Palestinian state must be big enough to be viable, independent and prosperous. President Obama rightly referred to Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, just as he referred to the future Palestinian state as the homeland of the Palestinian people. Jews from around the world have a right to immigrate to the Jewish state. Palestinians from around the world should have a right to immigrate, if they so choose, to a Palestinian state. This means that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside the borders of Israel. As for Jerusalem, only a democratic Israel has protected freedom of worship for all faiths in the city. Jerusalem must never again be divided. Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel. I know that this is a difficult issue for Palestinians. But I believe with creativity and goodwill a solution can be found. This is the peace I plan to forge with a Palestinian partner committed to peace. But you know very well, that in the Middle East, the only peace that will hold is a peace you can defend. So peace must be anchored in security. In recent years, Israel withdrew from South Lebanon and Gaza. But we didn't get peace. Instead, we got 12,000 thousand rockets fired from those areas on our cities, on our children, by Hezbollah and Hamas. The UN peacekeepers in Lebanon failed to prevent the smuggling of this weaponry. The European observers in Gaza evaporated overnight. So if Israel simply walked out of the territories, the flow of weapons into a future Palestinian state would be unchecked. Missiles fired from it could reach virtually every home in Israel in less than a minute. I want you to think about that too. Imagine that right now we all had less than 60 seconds to find shelter from an incoming rocket. Would you live that way? Would anyone live that way? Well, we aren't going to live that way either. The truth is that Israel needs unique security arrangements because of its unique size. Israel is one of the smallest countries in the world. Mr. Vice President, I'll grant you this. It's bigger than Delaware. It's even bigger than Rhode Island. But that's about it. Israel on the 1967 lines would be half the width of the Washington Beltway. Now here's a bit of nostalgia. I first came to Washington thirty years ago as a young diplomat. It took me a while, but I finally figured it out: There is an America beyond the Beltway. But Israel on the 1967 lines would be only nine miles wide. So much for strategic depth. So it is therefore absolutely vital for Israel's security that a Palestinian state be fully demilitarized. And it is vital that Israel maintain a long-term military presence along the Jordan River. Solid security arrangements on the ground are necessary not only to protect the peace, they are necessary to protect Israel in case the peace unravels. For in our unstable region, no one can guarantee that our peace partners today will be there tomorrow. And when I say tomorrow, I don't mean some distant time in the future. I mean — tomorrow. Peace can be achieved only around the negotiating table. The Palestinian attempt to impose a settlement through the United Nations will not bring peace. It should be forcefully opposed by all those who want to see this conflict end. I appreciate the President's clear position on this issue. Peace cannot be imposed. It must be negotiated. But it can only be negotiated with partners committed to peace. And Hamas is not a partner for peace. Hamas remains committed to Israel's destruction and to terrorism. They have a charter. That charter not only calls for the obliteration of Israel, but says 'kill the Jews wherever you find them'. Hamas' leader condemned the killing of Osama bin Laden and praised him as a holy warrior. Now again I want to make this clear. Israel is prepared to sit down today and negotiate peace with the Palestinian Authority. I believe we can fashion a brilliant future of peace for our children. But Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government backed by the Palestinian version of Al Qaeda. So I say to President Abbas: Tear up your pact with Hamas! Sit down and negotiate! Make peace with the Jewish state! And if you do, I promise you this. Israel will not be the last country to welcome a Palestinian state as a new member of the United Nations. It will be the first to do so. My friends, the momentous trials of the last century, and the unfolding events of this century, attest to the decisive role of the United States in advancing peace and defending freedom. Providence entrusted the United States to be the guardian of liberty. All peoples who cherish freedom owe a profound debt of gratitude to your great nation. Among the most grateful nations is my nation, the people of Israel, who have fought for their liberty and survival against impossible odds, in ancient and modern times alike. I speak on behalf of the Jewish people and the Jewish state when I say to you, representatives of America, Thank you. Thank you for your unwavering support for Israel. Thank you for ensuring that the flame of freedom burns bright throughout the world. May God bless all of you. And may God forever bless the United States of America. Gabrielle Goldwater is a Member of "Funding for Peace Coalition"
[FPC] (http://eufunding.org.uk) |
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OBAMA IS THE MOST HOSTILE SITTING PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL
Posted by Anne Bayefsky, May 24, 2011. |
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There is some logic in the fact that President Obama has fled the country while Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu addresses Congress. With Obama's comments this past week on Israel, the president now appears to many as the most hostile sitting president in the history of the Jewish state. A key casualty of the assault Obama launched this past week on Israel and its Prime Minister, is the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. When Palestinians move to declare statehood unilaterally in the fall with U.N. support, it will be President Obama himself who will have laid the groundwork. Two years ago President Obama prompted Palestinians to withdraw from negotiations after he attempted to dictate to Israel the terms of a deal on the settlements issue. Now that the president has similarly projected what the territorial outcome "should be," Palestinians will abjure negotiations into the foreseeable future. The mere lip service that the president paid to negotiations was heard around the world, especially in Palestinian circles. "While the core issues of the conflict must be negotiated..." Obama began, followed by a series of "should be" pronouncements. The president's Sunday speech to the pro-Israel group AIPAC did not fundamentally change his earlier effort on Thursday as territorial fiat. According to the president, the baseline of a final settlement "should be" the 1967 lines and any different outcome would be subject to "mutually agreed swaps." But "mutually agreed" entails a Palestinian veto, and the potential for their insisting on the indefensible 1967 lines within the Obama formula. President Obama's 1967 baseline comment was no accident; it was a deliberate provocation. As he unabashedly told the AIPAC audience: "I know that stating these principles — on the issues of territory and security — generated some controversy...I wasn't surprised." Mr. Obama has also sabotaged negotiations by refusing to assign responsibility for the current absence of negotiations where it belongs. As far as Obama is concerned, the fact that Hamas"is unwilling to recognize Israel's right to exist" simply "raises questions." The President even professed ignorance about the path of Hamas, despite the group's Charter which calls for "Jihad" until Israel is "obliterated." In the president's words: "Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection." If! Those pushing a U.N.-backed unilateral declaration of statehood or independence (UDI), in lieu of negotiations, will also have taken sustenance from the President's remarks. He suggested such sentiments are eminently understandable: "There's a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing their interests at the United Nations. They recognize that there is an impatience with the peace process, or the absence of one...And that impatience is growing." President Obama neglected to mention that statehood would come a lot faster if Palestinians didn't support leaders who are bent on genocide or refuse to talk. Moreover, if Mr. Obama was in fact serious about stopping a U.N.-backed Palestinian UDI, he could do a lot more than simply chide them for making what he called a "symbolic" move. He could, for instance, lay out some unambiguous consequences for the day after, such as: terminating U.S. taxpayer dollars for UNRWA, the Palestinian "refugee" agency, since refugee status will be voided and all Palestinians rendered citizens of their declared state; moving the U.S. embassy to Israel's capital city Jerusalem, since delays awaiting a negotiated settlement will be groundless; stopping payment to the U.N.'s regular budget, since the UN will have gravely abrogated its legal obligations under the UN Charter, and pulling the U.S. out of the Middle East Quartet — the European Union's coveted entre into Arab-Israeli politics — since the Quartet's central "Roadmap" will have been negated. He said none of the above. Having made the U.N. a centerpiece of his foreign policy, including championing the obsessively anti-Israel Human Rights Council, his speechifying about sidelining the organization wasn't very convincing. The AIPAC speech was pure sophistry. The president promised "unshakeable opposition" to "efforts to chip away at Israel's legitimacy" and attempted to take credit for not attending one of the UN's racist "anti-racism" conferences back in 2009. But he only pulled out of so-called "Durban II" after intense public pressure, just 48 hours before the meeting, ruining the prospect of coalition-building. And he refused to tell AIPAC whether he plans to go to "Durban III" — the first-ever world summit to be held in New York this coming September and intended as a vehicle for charging Israel with racism. Canada and Israel pulled out long ago. Where is America's unshakeable opposition? President Obama's fawning remarks about Arab self-determination contrasted sharply with his treatment of Jewish self-determination. He taunted Israelis about not being able to protect themselves: "Technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself." "Delay will undermine Israel's security..." He threatened Israelis with the specter of isolation and demanded they answer to every busybody in sight: "The international community is tired of an endless process..." "Going forward, millions of Arab citizens have to see that peace is possible for that peace to be sustained...[T]he march to isolate Israel internationally...will continue to gain momentum...and it's already manifesting itself in capitals around the world." Negotiations require mutual recognition of legitimacy and therefore offer the only path to ensuring a Palestinian commitment to coexistence with a Jewish state. By bullying Israel, a negotiated peace agreement between Arabs and Israelis is now all but impossible during Obama's tenure. 2012 cannot come soon enough. Anne Bayefsky is editor of EYEontheUN. Contact the organization at info@EYEonthe UN.org. She is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and at Touro College. |
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THE PRESIDENT'S PEACE PROPOSAL IS A FORMULA FOR WAR
Posted by Natan Nestel, May 24, 2011. |
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This article is entitled "An Anti-Israel President' and was written
by Bret Stephens. Contact him by email at bstephensl@wsj.com.
This appeared in the Wall Street Journal and is archived at
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Say what you will about President Obama's approach to Israel — or of his relationship with American Jews — he sure has mastered the concept of chutzpah. On Thursday at the State Department, the president gave his big speech on the Middle East, in which he invoked the claims of friendship to tell Israelis "the truth," which to his mind was that "the status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace." On Friday in the Oval Office, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his version of the truth, which was that the 1967 border proposed by Mr. Obama as a basis for negotiating the outlines of a Palestinian state was a nonstarter. Administration reaction to this reciprocal act of friendly truth-telling? "That was Bibi over the top," the New York Times quoted one senior U.S. official, using the prime minister's nickname. "That's not how you address the president of the United States." Maybe so. Then again, it isn't often that this or any other U.S. president welcomes a foreign leader by sandbagging him with an adversarial policy speech a day before the visit. Remember when the Dalai Lama visited Mr. Obama last year? As a courtesy to Beijing, the president made sure to have the Tibetan spiritual leader exit by the door where the White House trash was piled up. And that was 11 months before Hu Jintao's state visit to the U.S. When this president wants to make a show of his exquisite diplomatic sensitivity — burgers with Medvedev, bows to Abdullah, New Year's greetings to the mullahs — he knows how. And when he wants to show his contempt, he knows how, too. The contempt was again on display Sunday, when Mr. Obama spoke to the Aipac policy conference in Washington. The speech was stocked with the perennial bromides about U.S.-Israeli friendship, which brought an anxious crowd to its feet a few times. As for the rest, it was a thin tissue of falsehoods, rhetorical legerdemain, telling omissions and self-contradictions. Let's count the ways. For starters, it would be nice if the president could come clean about whether his line about the 1967 line — "mutually agreed swaps" and all — was pathbreaking and controversial, or no big deal. On Sunday, Mr. Obama congratulated himself for choosing the hard road to Mideast peace as he prepares for re-election, only to offer a few minutes later that "there was nothing particularly original in my proposal." Yet assuming Mr. Obama knows what he's talking about, he knows that's untrue: No U.S. president has explicitly endorsed the '67 lines as the basis for negotiating a final border, which is why the University of Michigan's Juan Cole, not exactly a shill for the Israel lobby, called it "a major turning point." Mr. Obama would also know that in 2009 Hillary Clinton had described this formula as "the Palestinian goal." Now it's Mr. Obama's goal as well, even as he insists that "no peace can be imposed." Then there was Mr. Obama's use of his favorite professorial trope: "Let me repeat what I actually said." What followed was a rehearsal of what he supposedly said on Thursday. But Mr. Obama's problem isn't, as he supposes, that people aren't paying close enough attention to him. On the contrary, they've noticed that on Thursday Mr. Obama called for Israel to make territorial concessions to some approximation of the '67 lines before an agreement is reached on the existential issues of refugees and Jerusalem. "Moving forward now on the basis of territory and security," he said, "provides a foundation to resolve these two issues in a way that is just and fair, and that respects the rights and aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians." Mr. Obama neglected to mention these points on Sunday, hence the telling omission. But the essence of his proposal is that Israel should cede territory, put itself into a weaker position, and then hope for the best. This doesn't even amount to a land-for-peace formula. That's not all. Mr. Obama got some applause Sunday by calling for a "non-militarized" Palestinian state. But how does that square with his comment, presumably applicable to a future Palestine, that "every state has a right to self-defense"? Mr. Obama was also cheered for his references to Israel as a "Jewish state." But why then obfuscate on the question of Palestinian refugees, whose political purpose over 63 years has been to destroy Israel as a Jewish state? And then there was that line that "we will hold the Palestinians accountable for their actions and their rhetoric." Applause! But can Mr. Obama offer a single example of having done that as president, except perhaps at the level of a State Department press release? What, then, would a pro-Israel president do? He would tell Palestinians that there is no right of return. He would make the reform of the Arab mindset toward Israel the centerpiece of his peace efforts. He would outline hard and specific consequences should Hamas join the government. Such a vision could lay the groundwork for peace. What Mr. Obama offered is a formula for war, one that he will pursue in a second term. Assuming, of course, that he gets one. |
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PM NETANYAHU AIPAC SPEECH
Posted by Ari Goldberg, May 23, 2011. |
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When tragedy strikes America, Israel mourns.
To all our supporters in this great hall, and to the millions of our supporters across this great land, the people of Israel thank you. Thank you for your staunch commitment to Israel's security.
Your support for Israel flows from the heart.
Yesterday, they let me out.
I read Jefferson's timeless words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal." I read Lincoln's immortal address reaffirming "Government of the people, for the people, and by the people."
Because they are rooted in ideas first championed by our people, the Jewish people.
Israel is the cradle of our common civilization, crucible of our moral ideals.
This is why the only place in the Middle East where Christians are completely free to practice their faith is in the democratic State of Israel.
My Friends,
It unites the old and the young, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans — and yes, Joe Leiberman, it even unites Independents — This broad support for Israel is a source of great strength for my country. Since Harry Truman, Israel has looked to American Presidents to stand by its side to meet unfolding challenges of a changing world. President Obama has spoken about his ironclad commitment to Israel's security.
So I want to thank the President and Congress for providing Israel with vital assistance so that Israel can defend itself by itself.
In science, in technology, in trade, in investment.
In the last decade, Israeli companies have invested more than $50 billion in America.
Well it's not just food we're bringing to America.
A few months ago, one of those bandages was carried by a policeman in Tuscon, Arizona.
We've launched a ten-year program to seek a substitute for gasoline.
The millions who poured into the streets of Tehran, Tunis, Cairo, Sanna, Benghazi and Damascus, were not thinking about Israel.
It will not give women is some Arab countries in the Middle East the right to drive a car.
By democracy, I don't just mean elections.
What the people of the Middle East need is what you have in America, and what we have in Israel. Democracy. It's time to recognize this basic truth:
My Friends,
But tonight I wanted to express Israel's gratitude for all you are doing to help strengthen Israel and its great alliance with America.
That's another outrageous crime of Hamas. Keeping a young soldier locked in a dark dungeon for five years without even a visit from the Red Cross.
Now, as Prime Minister of Israel, I can walk down the street and see an exact replica of that bell in Jerusalem's Liberty Park. On both bells is the same inscription.
This is the essence of the great alliance between our two nations. Two peoples bonded in Liberty, and seeking freedom and peace for all. Ari Goldberg is Spokesperson and Director of Media Relations The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Contact him at 202.639.5273 or agoldberg@aipac.org |
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ARAB FLIGHT & ABBAS' FLIGHT OF FANCY; U.K. PRIME MINISTER'S THREAT TO ISRAEL PICKED APART
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 23, 2011. | |
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ABBAS' NARRATIVE OF ARAB FLIGHT UPSIDE DOWN For a genuine historian's documented refutation of Abbas' New York
Times
Op.-Ed., see: "Abbas's Fable" by Efraim Karsh in the
Jerusalem Post
May 20, 2011.
It is archived at
In my own rebuttal of the Op.-Ed., I noted that two earlier Arab narratives, one by Arafat and one by Prof. Edward Said, were false. They were false about being forcibly evicted or about being Palestinian Arabs. I insinuated that investigation probably would show something false about Abbas' narrative. Sure enough, Mr. Karsh shows that Abbas' family was not forced out of Safed, that the whole Arab population there and in other cities, who fled early on were not forcibly expelled. The Arabs admitted that their own leaders or gangs made them leave. Neither was Abbas' affluent family made penniless and forced to live in a tent, as he claims. The pater familias brought enough funds out to support his family in the accustomed manner for a year. The Arabs had committed aggression against the Jews. The Arab goal was some combination of genocide and expulsion of Israeli Jews. Afterwards, Abbas and his circle pretended to be the victims of Israel. It makes mighty propaganda but mendacious history. From these facts, one can see the value of knowing history. The facts reveal who are the villains and who are the victims. The truth is different from the propaganda Americans have been bathed in for so long. The jihadists are the villains. Israel is the victim. From those clear-cut conclusions, one can see that the generally proposed solutions — appeasing the Arabs at Israel's expense — would resolve nothing and would generate new injustices against the old victims. U.K. PRIME MINISTER'S THREAT TO ISRAEL PICKED APART Here is an article that picks apart the threat that British PM Cameron made against Israel. The unusual point point is made that the conflict is jihadist and not territorial, that Israel already sacrificed most of its homeland, and that Britain pretended to be the friend of Israel even while it undermined it. The same point should be made about President Obama. The article is well put except: (1) Instead of saying PM Cameron had "0 knowledge" about the Mideast, the author should have put it that Cameron had specialized in subjects other than the Mideast; (2) Before jumping on Britain for its past betrayal of the Jewish people in Europe and in Israel, the author should have mentioned that Cameron had no part on those events, and is not to blame for them. This below was written by Melanie Phillips, a British journalist and author. She is best known for her controversial column about political and social issues which currently appears in the Daily Mail. Awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996, she is the author of All Must Have Prizes, an acclaimed study of Britain's educational and moral crisis, which provoked the fury of educationists and the delight and relief of parents.
Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@gmail.com. |
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REWARDING WARMONGERS
Posted by David Hornik, May 23, 2011. |
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Because of time pressure, this article is only partially integrated with Obama's AIPAC address yesterday, which essentially, of course, was more of the same. |
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As I've discussed, in his speech on Thursday President Obama spoke words (not substantively retracted in his speech on Sunday to AIPAC) that convey a shocking indifference to Israel's security needs, namely: The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps....The full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces should be coordinated with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility in a sovereign, nonmilitarized state[.] Some commentators have claimed that the phrase "agreed swaps" is reassuring and — as Obama himself now claims — consistent with previous U.S. positions. But particularly in the context of calling for a "full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces," it is anything but. Clearly, with its army having totally withdrawn from the West Bank, the most Israel could feasibly retain are some communities just over the 1967 border. And "swaps" means that even for these, Israel would have to give up land within that border, i.e., from pre-1967 Israel. In other words, in Obama's dispensation, Israel has no real right to any of the land in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria — the historical cradle of the Jewish people, which Israel conquered in a defensive war of survival in June 1967. That position directly contradicts UN Security Council Resolution 242 from that year — which, as Dore Gold noted on Saturday in the Wall Street Journal, "became the only agreed basis of all Arab-Israeli peace agreements." 242 famously stipulated the "withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict," not "from the territories" or "from all territories." The omission of "the" or "all" reflected a hard-won victory by American and British diplomats over the Arab and Soviet bloc, which fought to include one of those words and thereby force the Jewish state back to indefensible borders. And that omission means, notwithstanding Obama's attempt to fudge the record in his AIPAC speech, that Israel would not owe the other side any swaps for retaining whatever parts of Judea and Samaria it would retain. In flying in the face of Resolution 242, then, Obama's demand of Israel in his initial, still unaltered speech on Thursday can reasonably be characterized as a violation of international law. And it violates it in another sense as well. As Steven M. Schwebel, the American international-law expert and former president of the International Court of Justice, wrote in the aftermath of the June 1967 or Six Day War: (a) a state [Israel] acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are necessary to its self-defense; It stands to reason as well: a norm of restoring all land to aggressors would remove any deterrent against aggression. Indeed, the historical practice has been to punish aggressors hard. For instance, the 1815 Congress of Vienna imposed harsh terms on France for its aggression in the Napoleonic Wars. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles dealt severely with Germany for its role in World War I. After World War II, Germany and Japan were occupied and demilitarized; millions of ethnic Germans were expelled by Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, and top Nazis were tried and executed at Nuremberg. The 1948 and 1967 Arab wars against Israel, then — to which can be added the Yom Kippur War of 1973 — form an exception in that the thrust of international diplomacy has been to restore land to the aggressors. This is true even though, unquestionably in the 1948 and 1967 cases and controversially in the 1973 case, the aim of the wars on the Arabs' part was Israel's annihilation. Israel itself, to be sure, at different times and to different degrees, has sought to or actually restored lands out of a hope for peace and/or an aversion to ruling Arab populations. But when Israel has balked, asked for time, or acted on its historical rights or security needs in some of the lands in question (particularly, and most relevantly at present, the West Bank and the Golan Heights), international bodies — particularly European ones and the United Nations — have uniformly reacted with accusations and pressure, as if the Arab aggressors' rights to the land are a foregone conclusion and any Israeli expansion beyond its death-trap 1967 borders is gravely immoral. The one international player that has accorded Israel somewhat more understanding for its security needs — while, lamentably, showing the same contempt for its religious and historical attachments — is the United States. The record is long and complex, but President George W. Bush's April 2004 letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is the most recent major, official example of this somewhat greater understanding. In its key passage Bush wrote: As part of a final [Israeli-Palestinian] peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949 [i.e., the 1967 borders], and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion[.] The difference from the previously quoted words by Obama — who, indeed, despite its overwhelming endorsement at the time by both houses of Congress, has consigned the Bush letter to oblivion — is stark. As noted, combining "1967 lines" with "agreed swaps" negates any Israeli right to any of the land, and the reference to a "full" Israeli military withdrawal should establish that point incontrovertibly for anyone who doubts it. The Bush formulation could lead to Israel retaining both settlement blocs and security zones; the Obama formulation allows Israel neither. Obama's stance, then, is the opposite of what both law and reason dictate: the aggressor gets back all that it lost, and the aggressed-against party finds itself right back in the nonviable borders that invited the aggression in the first place. The fact that Jordan, not the Palestinians as a corporate body, was the aggressor from the West Bank in 1967 does not change the fact that the Palestinians have continued to identify with Arab-Muslim annihilatory aggression against Israel, the recent Fatah-Hamas pact being only a further striking example. That Obama takes this stance does not, of course, mean Israel will comply with his vision. It does underline the fact that, at a time when Israel faces grave, unprecedented challenges — from ongoing nuclearization in Tehran to the Palestinians' upcoming statehood push in New York, and a great deal in between — there is a president in the White House whose instincts gravitate to Israel's enemies. And it means that all those who seek Israel's destruction through, among other things, distortions of justice and perversions of morality have gotten another big boost. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Beersheva.
He blogs at http://pdavidhornik.typepad.com/. He can be reached at pdavidh2001@yahoo.com.
This article appeared today in Front Page Magazine
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P.A. SUBSIDIZES JIHAD
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 22, 2011. |
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The Palestinian Authority (P.A.) passed a law for it to pay Arab terrorists in Israeli prisons. The law calls it a salary, eligible for those captured for fighting against Israel. Arabs in Israeli prisons for non-jihadist crimes are not eligible. The longer the prisoner was incarcerated [i.e., the worse the crime],
the higher the salary
The P.A. supports jihad. Therefore, U.S. and EU donations to the P.A. support jihad. How does that fact square with Obama's speeches about non-violence and about his interest in Israeli national security? How does he justify subsidizing jihad? Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@gmail.com. |
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WHY GEORGE MITCHELL FAILED
Posted by Bruce Tuchman, May 22, 2011. |
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This was written by Tawik Hamid, an Islamic thinker and reformer, and a one-time Islamic extremist from Egypt. He was a member of the terrorist organization JI with Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, who later became the second-in-command of al-Qaida. He is currently a senior fellow and chairman of the study of Islamic radicalism at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. Visit his website at www.tawfikhamid.com. This appeared in the May 15, 2011 Jerusalem Post. It is one of the best cogent succinct pieces I have ever read. If you agree please make sure everyone you know reads it, Thanks
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US envoys to the region must realize that the problem Palestinians have is Israel's existence, not its borders. Special US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell, the man charged with reconciling the Israelis and Palestinians, resigned this weekend. Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader in the US, failed to achieve peace between the two sides. There's no disgrace in that — the line of failed envoys is long and well-known. He successfully brokered peace in Northern Ireland, but couldn't even get things started in the Middle East. The question is, why? Obviously, it's impossible to solve a problem without addressing and treating its true cause. Approaching the Arab-Israeli conflict from the perspective that it is about land, so that giving more land to the Palestinians will solve the problem, is a failed endeavor. Israel has already given Egypt the whole of the Sinai, and got nothing in return except a cold peace and rising anti-Semitism in the country. Similarly the disengagement from Gaza did not magically lead to a decline in the wave of anti-Semitism in the Muslim world. Pro-Palestinian Muslim demonstrators across the world repeatedly use the chant "Khyber, Khyber Ya Yahood... Gaish Muhammad Sawfa Yaood,"! which reminds the Jews that the army of Muhammad is coming back for a repeat of what was done to the Jewish Khyber tribe. According to authentic Islamic history books, the Islamic army, led by Muhammad, annihilated the Jewish tribe of Khyber, raping its women and killing all its men. Such barbaric statements against the Jews have been used by many in the Muslim world, and even inside the US and Europe. Sadly the chant was also used on Friday by thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Cairo's Tahrir Square. The Hamas charter also calls for the destruction of Israel. This violent principle has its roots in the traditional Islamic teaching, based on Hadith books, that encourages the killing of all Jews before the end of days. Until US envoys to the Middle East realize that the problem in the eyes of the Palestinians and their supporters is not the borders of Israel but the very existence of the country, all future missions will similarly fail. Solving the Arab-Israeli conflict must be done initially at the theological rather than the political level, as the former is impeding the latter. It is unfair to ask Israel to trust those who shamefully advocate the killing of Jews, and claim that Islamic annihilation of the Jews by an Islamic army is a model that must be emulated today. The problem is not only in the existence of violent teachings in historical Islamic texts, but also in the dangerous desire of many Islamists and violent Islamic scholars to revive such violence in modern times. Violent texts exist in other religions as well, but we do not generally see such destructive desire to use the texts to justify killing others, and we rarely hear about modern scholars of other faiths who advocate using such texts literally. The problem is that this disastrous anti-Semitic religious dimension is not limited to verses in books, but is also propagated by a powerful media machine that utilizes vicious, Nazi-style propaganda across the Muslim world. Publishing dehumanizing cartoons in the mainstream media, and blaming Jews for nearly every problem in the world has become much too common in the leading Arab media over the past few decades. It is virtually impossible to promote any form of peaceful resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict without reducing such levels of anti-Semitism in the Muslim world. Until future envoys to the Middle East understand the religious dimension of the problem, and that the Arab-Israeli conflict is not about borders but about the existence of the state of Israel, all future attempts to make peace in the area will fail. Contact Bruce Tuchman by email at nycat06@gmail.com |
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OBAMA PRESENTED ISRAEL WITH A SUICIDAL PROPOSITION
Posted by Natan Nestel, May 22, 2011. |
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This was written by Ari Shavit, a respected commentator of the
'left wing' Haaretz newspaper. It is archived at
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Instead of presenting the 1967 borders as the end of the process, Obama made them its start. Instead of tying them to the end of demands and the end of the conflict, they were tied to greater demands and continued conflict. On a fundamental level, Obama's speech was good for Israel. He blocked the Palestinian initiative to unilaterally establish a Palestinian state. He condemned the Palestinian effort to delegitimize Israel. He came out against Hamas. He did not demand a total and immediate freeze on settlement construction. He did not embrace the Arab peace initiative. He showed that he has internalized Israel's security problems and defense concerns. Above all, he adopted the two main principles of Israel's peace doctrine: Israel as a Jewish state and Palestine as a demilitarized state. Benjamin Netanyahu should have been pleased and proud. Obama's speech at the State Department transformed his Bar-Ilan speech into an inalienable political asset. Thanks to Barack Obama, the Bar-Ilan principles are now a basic part of the international community's position on how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be resolved. But in one important respect, Obama's speech was very bad for Israel. And very bad for the United States. And very bad for peace. The U.S. president made an egregious error in the way he introduced the principle of 1967 into his vision of peace. Instead of presenting the 1967 borders as the end of the process, Obama made them its start. Instead of tying them to the end of demands and the end of the conflict, they were tied to greater demands and continued conflict. Without intending any harm, Obama presented Israel with a suicidal proposition: an interim agreement based on the 1967 borders. It's a proposal that runs along the same lines as the Hamas offer of a hudna — a long-term cease-fire. It's a proposal that will result in certain conflict in Jerusalem and in the inundation of Israel with refugees. It's a proposition that spells an end to peace, an end to stability and an end to the State of Israel. Obama did not mean anything bad by it. Justified opposition to the occupation and his built-in suspicions of Netanyahu caused him to make an honest mistake. Consequently, he mixed elements of the permanent settlement with those of the interim agreement. He put 1 and 1 together and got 11, making a dramatic political error that an American president cannot afford to make. He formulated a plan that Kadima, Labor and even Meretz voters cannot support. He gave a speech that provides a clear victory to the Israeli right and plays into the hands of the American right. He scored an own goal. The good news is that it is not too late. The mistake can be easily corrected, the day can be saved. Obama and Netanyahu need not confront each other before the cameras, as they did on Friday. They must show maturity and wisdom and face the crisis as if it were an opportunity. They must find a way of restoring the principle of 1967 to its correct place and enable Netanyahu to accept it. If they do this, the light in Obama's speech will once again shine brightly. And it will provide Israelis, Palestinians and Americans with a genuine ray of hope. Contact Natan Nestel by email at natannestel@gmail.com |
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SEE A SUICIDE BOMBER IN ACTION
Posted by Susana K-M, May 22, 2011. |
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This was written by Dr. Arieh Eldad
and is entitled "A Story of How Deep the Palestinians Have Sunk Into
the Moral Abyss."
It appeared in Front Page Magazine
Eldad is a professor and head of the plastic surgery and burns unit at the Hadassah Medical Center hospital in Jerusalem. He studied medicine at Tel Aviv University, where he earned his doctorate. He served as the chief medical officer and was the senior commander of the Israeli Defense Forces medical corps for 25 years, and reached a rank of Tat Aluf (Brigadier General). He is renowned worldwide for his treatment of burns and won the Evans Award from the American Burns Treatment Association. He also lives in Kfar Adumim a settlement on the West Bank. |
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I was instrumental in establishing the Israeli National Skin Bank, which is the largest in the world. The National Skin Bank stores skin for every day needs as well as for war time or mass casualty situations. This skin bank is hosted at the Hadassah Ein Kerem University hospital in Jerusalem where I was the Chairman of plastic surgery. This is how I was asked to supply skin for an Arab woman from Gaza, who was hospitalized in Soroka Hospital in Beersheva, after her family burned her. Usually, such atrocities happen among Arab families when the women are suspected of having an affair. We supplied all the needed Homografts for her treatment. She was successfully treated by my friend and colleague, Prof. Lior Rosenberg and discharged to return to Gaza. She was invited for regular follow-up visits to the outpatient clinic in Beer-Sheva. One day she was caught at a border crossing wearing a suicide belt. She meant to explode herself in the outpatient clinic of the hospital where they saved her life. It seems that her family promised her that if she did that, they would forgive her. This is only one example of the war between Jews and Muslims in the Land of Israel. It is not a territorial conflict. This is a civilizational conflict, or rather a war between civilization & barbarism. Bibi (Netanyahu) gets it, Obama does not. Her bomb was supplied by the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the terrorist Arm of the Palestinian Authority (PA) / Mahmoud Abbas, to whom, Obama, POTUS, wants to give a state in the backyard of Israel! Insane is the word! To see the video of the suicide bomber caught at Israeli checkpoint, click here. Contact Susana K-M by email at suanema@gmail.com |
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MODERATE-EXTREMIST RUSE WITHIN STATE DEPT.; APPLYING THE MODERATE-EXTREMIST PLOY TO ISRAELIS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 21, 2011. |
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MODERATE-EXTREMIST RUSE WITHIN STATE DEPT The old moderate-extremist ruse by media and State Dept. depicts Palestinian Arab factional rivalries as moderates versus extremists. One faction is made to seem worthy of U.S. and support, but neither is worthy. The result: National security, lives, and money are jeopardized. When the PLO epitomized modern jihadist terrorism, the State Dept. rejected relations with it. Then the State surreptitiously established relations, justifying this for the crumbs of military intelligence gleaned. PLO head, Yasir Arafat, had two U.S. diplomats murdered. Going further, State depicted Arafat as moderate and wanting peace. The major media, leftist anti-Zionists, and Nobel Prize judges took up the refrain that Arafat was a peace partner. But he didn't make peace. As he explained to fellow Muslim leaders, his strategy was to conquer Israel in phases by a combination of pacts and attacks. Accordingly he signed agreements whose concessions he accepted and whose conditions he violated. He instigated assaults on Israelis. How did Arafat get away with this deceit, a primary tactic of Islam? The State Dept. always appeased the Arabs by opposing Jewish statehood, regardless of the consequences for justice and U.S. national security. Israel's ruling clique veers increasingly against Zionism, despite the danger to Israeli survival. Westerners alert to short-term political advantage, are blind to long-term danger. Uninformed and misinformed, they do not think matters through. Loathe to make difficult decisions, they cringe from foreign criticism and overlook enemies' unregenerate evil. Most Westerners think the Arab-Israel conflict is a territorial dispute, amenable to compromise and negotiation. They do not know that Israel has made many compromises, the Arabs, none. If they realized that the conflict is part of global jihad, they would know that Islamist fanatics do not resolve disputes, do not compromise, and relentlessly seek control. Americans joke that a sucker is born every minute. Look in the mirror! Arafat's successor, Abbas, had been for decades Arafat's right-hand man in terrorism. Abbas paid the terrorists. He brought an illicit arms ship to the Israeli coast. Like the Nazis, Communists, and fellow jihadists, Abbas believed that his ends justified his means. Actually, hellish means do not justify hellish ends. His ends were the conquest of Israel and the annihilation of its Jews. His means are murder and deceit. Abbas honors terrorist murderers. He refuses to amend Fatah's charter authorizing terrorism and the destruction of Israel. He tells his people to defer major terrorist attacks until his diplomacy can reap Israeli surrenders. He approves of fire-bombing and rock-throwing meanwhile as "non-violent." Tell that to the dozen Israeli troops hospitalized by the recent border-violators whom Abbas praised! Abbas objects to premature major terrorist attacks as likely to arouse Israelis to strong counter-measures and to resist his diplomatic offensive. He further explains that if diplomacy does not meet his demands, demands that obviously would doom Israel, he would resort to war. Since his demands would doom Israel, his demands cannot be met. Therefore, he intends war. He has told foreign Arabs that if they made war on Israel now, he would join in. How do the State Dept., media, and leftist cabal describe Abbas? They describe him as a man of peace. Yes, as a man of peace! They keep urging Israel to make concessions to the P.A. in order to "strengthen" Abbas and other, unnamed "moderates." Strengthening him is a perpetual task. Thousands of terrorists have been released by Israel in the name of strengthening Abbas. So many return to Israel, that hundreds of Israelis have been murdered for those concessions supposed to garner good will. Why are Abbas' fellow moderates unnamed? If named, they would deny it because it is false or because otherwise they would get killed. In any case, it would be a ridiculously short list, indicating lack of influence. No influence, no effect, no peace. The notion of moderates versus extremists is misapplied to Abbas' Fatah faction versus Hamas. Their differences are opportunistic, stylistic, and religious strictness. Those differences are not pertinent to the Arab-Israel conflict. Pertinent are their similarities: Both (1) Establish Islam as the official religion and engage in holy war against non-Muslims, including Christians; (2) Believe in destroying Jewish sovereignty anywhere by any means, except that Fatah cleverly makes more use of diplomacy; (3) Commit terrorism; (4) Practice deception, including willingness to offer truces and make agreements they do not intend to keep. APPLYING THE MODERATE-EXTREMIST PLOY TO ISRAELIS The Left applies the moderate-extremist ploy to Israelis in two ways. First is a religious and ethnic application. Leftists call Jews who live in the Territories "Jewish extremists." What makes them extremist? Not explained. Name-calling isn't going to be explained. It cannot be justified when "extremist" is just a label for defaming opponents. Can't persuade people? Neutralize them by calling them "extremist." Such are the tricks of the trade. So who are Israeli "settlers?" Many were attracted by the lower land costs and mountain air in the sparser Territories. Others, usually with government approval, wanted to reside in the cradle of Jewish civilization, many to live there as observant Jews. Some believe that the area was promised to their people by God. Others know that Israel is the most entitled to the area as heir to the Mandate for a Jewish national home, the Mandate being based on the historical Jewish entitlement to the area. Many realize that their presence justifies a military presence which serves to keep invaders from penetrating into Israel. They serve as the outlier bulwark against invaders. After multiple wars by Arabs, these folks believe in self-defense. Nothing extremist about that. Jewish towns in the Territories are called "obstacles to peace." The false assumption here is that the Arabs might make peace. We have shown that to be untrue. The small amount of land that the main settlement blocs sit on would not block genuine peace. But the Muslim Arabs want all the land. That is because the issue is not territorial but religious. The Islamic religious imperative is to take control of all the land, including Israel. Can't do that peaceably, although the State Dept. is maneuvering Israel into a position of helplessness whereby self-defense no longer would be a viable option. Some secularists voice disapproval of both religious and nationalist Jewish entitlement to the land. One could take their disapproval seriously, if they also disapproved of both religious and nationalist Muslim-Arab entitlement to the land. Such inconsistency is hypocritical. It injures their own people and encourages their people's adversaries to pursue the path of bigoted imperialism. The Israeli left shades off into antisemitism. You should see the vile descriptions they make of religiously observant Jews. Or perhaps you shouldn't. The Israeli Left proposes land for peace, although territorial withdrawals led to Arab violence. Pursuing a policy that repeatedly fails is irrational. The Left also denounces most IDF methods of defense. It criticizes self-defense, as from Arab mobs. It distorts international law to favor the Arab view. It fails to recognize that the real problem is jihad. Increasingly it approves of terrorism. It condones slanderous and seditious Arab statements, but condemns criticism of those statements as interfering with free speech, yet inconsistently demands that patriotic Jews who criticize Muslim Arab terrorism and imperialism be punished for hate speech. If anyone is extremist, it is a far leftist. The other application of the moderate-extremist ploy is political but similar. Although the leaders of all three major political parties believe in appeasing the Arabs, the Likud Party and its leader, PM Netanyahu, are called right-wing extremists. The Far Left parties of Labor and Kadima are called "centrist." Again, epithets for political opponents, epaulets for political allies. Purely impure politics. Truth is, most Israelis hold a nationalist view, but not Likud prime ministers. They say they do. That assertion is enough for them to be labeled right-sing extremist. The label dupes many people. Unfortunately, those ostensibly nationalist leaders erode the security that they had promised. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@gmail.com. |
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THESE PEOPLE CALL THEMSELVES JEWS? THEY ARE A DISGRACE.
Posted by Mechel Samberg, May 21, 2011. |
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This was written by Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director of IMRA (Independent
Media Review & Analysis), The website is at
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It is times like this that offer an opportunity to see who is a friend of Israel and who apparently has another agenda. While friends of Israel express their concern that President Obama declines to say a word about the right of return as he side steps explicitly demanding compliance with the Quartet requirement for Hamas the IPF says nothing about any of this. Instead: "Israel Policy Forum is committed to galvanizing leaders in the American Jewish community and in Washington to provide President Obama with the kind of credible, mainstream address of support that he will need" Statement on President Obama's Speech
May 20, 2011 Peter Joseph, President of Israel Policy Forum (IPF), released the following statement: Israel Policy Forum applauds President Obama's speech reaffirming his strong support for a two-state solution that ensures Israel's security. Contact Mechel Samberg at mechelsamberg2@yahoo.com |
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PRESIDENT OBAMA'S VIRTUAL REALITY
Posted by Yoram Ettinger, May 21, 2011. |
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On November 2, 2010, the US electorate decided that President Obama was detached from domestic reality, and therefore dealt the Democratic Party a devastating defeat in federal and state legislatures, as well as in gubernatorial elections. In his May 19, 2011 speech on the Middle East, the President proved himself detached from Middle East reality as well. President Obama is determined to introduce democracy to Arab countries, in spite of their 1,400 year old systemic track record of tyranny, terror, political violence, uncertainty, volatility and treachery. He prefers the virtual reality of the "Arab Spring," rather than contend with the Middle Eastern reality of the "Stormy Arab Winter." Hence, he views the seismic events rocking the region as "a story of self-determination" and is convinced that "repression will not work anymore." Obama's virtual reality leads him to compare the violent Arab Street to "the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat." Are the two million Egyptians who assembled at Cairo's Tahrir Square, cheering Sheikh Kardawi, a top Moslem Brotherhood leader, following in the footsteps of Patrick Henry and Martin Luther King??? President Obama offers to relieve "a democratic Egypt" of up to $1BN in debt and to channel billions of dollars to Egypt and Tunisia, "the vanguard of this democratic wave..., (which) can set a strong example through free and fair elections, a vibrant civil society, accountable and effective democratic institutions and responsible regional leadership." He expects the flow of aid to generate trade, entrepreneurship and a free market economy. However, he downplays the absence of an appropriate infrastructure of values and education in the Arab Middle East, which is a prerequisite for democracy and a free market economy. Obama has chosen to ignore in his speech clear and present threats to US economic and national security interests — such as Iran's nuclearization and Islamic terrorism — while the "Arab Roller Coaster" runs uncontrollable and Russia and China deepen their penetration of the Middle East. Furthermore, the US is about to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, which could be leveraged by rogue regimes, exacerbating regional violence, instability and uncertainty. In February, 2010, President Obama appointed a new ambassador to Damascus — following four years of diplomatic absence — "because Assad could play a constructive role in the Middle East." So much for Middle East realism.... Persian Gulf leaders are traumatized by the Iranian threat, by domestic upheaval and by a potential Iraqi "earthquake" in the aftermath of the US departure, irrespective of the Palestinian issue. Other Arab leaders are shaky in the face of lethal domestic turbulence, which are totally unrelated to the Palestinian issue, to the Arab-Israeli conflict or to Israel's existence. But, Obama is convinced that "the conflict between Israelis and Arabs has cast a shadow over the region." Like a deer caught in a headlights-look, the American president is glued to the Palestinian "screen saver." He is convinced that the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue are a root cause of Middle East turbulence, the crown jewel of Arab policy-making and a core cause of anti-US Islamic terrorism. Therefore, he disregards the sweeping popularity of Bin-Laden and Saddam Hussein on the Palestinian Street, the presence of Palestinian terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, the track record of Abu Mazen in intra-Arab subversion and terrorism and the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-US hate-education and incitement in Abu Mazen-controlled education, the media and the clergy. He also disregards the unprecedented Palestinian terrorism triggered by the Oslo Accord, by the Israeli initiative to establish the Palestinian Authority and by Israel's withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip and from 40% of Judea and Samaria. Obama pressures the Jewish State to partition Jerusalem and to retreat to the 9-15 miles wide pre-1967 lines, in defiance of precedents which document that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has never been over the size — but over the existence — of the Jewish State. Thus, Obama radicalizes Palestinian expectations and demands, distances them from — and replacing them at — the negotiation table and signals to the Palestinians that terrorism is rewarded. Therefore, he forfeits the role of an honest broker. President Obama's position is at odds with the majority of the American people and most Democrats. It is out of step with most Senators and Representatives, who are empowered to initiate, bloc, suspend, amend and turn around policy. Therefore, Obama's plan will not be implemented unless the Jewish State wastes its substantial base of American support, submitting itself to the pressure of a relatively-weak president, who is rapidly losing the "Bin Laden bonus," and increasingly requires congressional cooperation in order to be reelected. In fact, it was the pressure by congressional Democrats, which forced Obama — against his worldview — to declare in his speech that "symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the UN in September won't create an independent state." In other words, the United States will not tolerate a Palestinian Tsunami in the UN in September. Ambassador Yoram Ettinger is a consultant on US-Israel relations as
well as the Chairman of Special Projects at the Ariel Center for
Policy Research. Formerly the Minister for Congressional Affairs to
Israel's Embassy in Washington, DC, Ettinger also served as Consul
General of Israel to the Southwestern US. He is a former editor of
Contemporary Mideast Backgrounder, and is the author of the Jerusalem
Cloakroom series of reports. Contact him at yoramtex@netvision.net.il
This article appeared in YnetNews, May 21, 2011
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SHOULD ABBAS BE INVITED TO WRITE AMERICAN OP-EDS?; THOMAS FRIEDMAN'S "BIBI AND BARACK"
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 20, 2011. |
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SHOULD ABBAS BE INVITED TO WRITE AMERICAN OP-EDS? First we examine Abbas' May 17 Op.-Ed.. I show [in ellipses] each point to be false and jihadist. Then we discuss whether Western media holds democratic discussion or abets jihadist propaganda and mention a Zionist counter-view. 1. Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority (P.A.), describes himself as a "Palestinian boy" "forced" to flee to Syria, wishing "for decades to return to their home and homeland," but "denied that most basic of human rights." [The two paramount leaders of the "Palestinian" cause were Arafat abroad and Prof. Edward Said in the U.S.. Both told similar tales, but both were Egyptian. Abbas' own veracity may be judged by his Holocaust-denying doctoral thesis, whose falsity he still upholds. Judge him also by the blood libels still hurled at Jews by his P.A., and of Syria, and Egypt, such as poisoning wells, like the slander by medieval Europeans.] [Homeland? Israel, the Territories, and Jordan are the Jewish people's homeland, as the League of Nations and UN Charter acknowledge. Arabs there in the first half of the 20th century had little concept of homeland or nationality. They identified by tribe and faith, perhaps also by village. They were an amalgam of immigrants and invaders. Refusing the label "Palestinian" until the 1960s, they had considered themselves southern Syrians, if anything. Their current claim to "Palestinian" nationality is false propaganda. No nationality, no reason for statehood.] [Any of Abbas' contemporaries more than 13 years his junior never lived in what now is Israel. They are not refugees.] [There is no human right of return. The American Revolution's peace treaty recognized the U.S. right to expel the defeated side, lest it help restore British rule and gallows for revolutionaries. That treaty indicates a prudent right of expulsion.] [The UN resolution suggesting a "return" of "refugees" stipulates that they would have to come in peace. Peace? For decades, the Arab world and UNRWA have kept the families of refugees from the usual solution, integrating where they fled, where they found the same language, religion, and culture. The families indoctrinated to think they have a right to conquer Israel, dispossess its Jews, and take revenge on them. Abbas omits that fact. That fact disproves his claim to seek justice and peace.] [Genocide motivated the Arabs to start the war from which they fled. Why let into Israel a mass of fanatics to homes mostly replaced, to a country most never lived in, so that they can murder millions?] 2. Abbas describes the Arab flight entirely as from expulsion, and claims that Israel did it to retain a Jewish majority. He insinuates that retaining a Jewish majority is wrong. [The flight primarily was from fear and Arab generals' orders. A small portion was expulsion, but that was for military necessity at strategic hills and borders. From the hills, Arabs used to fire down at vehicles driven by Jews. Abbas is lying. The New York Times is not much better, putting it as "expulsion and flight," as if expulsion were the primary reason for flight.] [Seeking a Jewish majority? Actually, foolish as it was, the Jewish Agency asked the Arabs to stay. The agency still, vainly hoped for peace. If it wanted the Arabs out, why did Israel leave 150,000 Arabs in, let thousands of others return, and in 1967 block thousands of others from leaving the Territories? The Times does not ask that question, which would render the Arab claim even more dubious.] [What would have been wrong with seeking a Jewish majority? Since the Arabs had tried to wipe out the Jews before, what sense did it make for Israel to let the 150,000 stay? It doesn't take a majority to resume jihad in possible collusion with outside Arab forces. If the Arabs succeed, they would exterminate most of the Jews. They would do so partly under the influence of Abbas and his media, schools, and mosques, which preach hatred, irredentism, and violence against Jews.] 3. Abbas asks for a state on the 1967 "border." [Israel had no 1967 border, just armistice lines. Armistice lines indicate where armies stood when battle wound down, not political boundaries. There is no rationale to his proposed boundaries.] 4. Abbas refers to "occupation." [His terminology is politically correct but factually incorrect and serves jihad. International law defines "occupation" as where one country's forces have a controlling presence in all or part of another. There never was an Arab state comprising the Territories. Never a Palestinian Arab country there, no occupation, no case for independence.] [Actually, since the UN partition plan was just a recommendation, one that the Arabs rejected by a war of aggression, the legal status of the Territories remains that of unallocated parts of the Palestine Mandate for the Jewish national home. Israel has the far better legal, historical, and ethical case for the Territories against the genocidal Arab aggressors!] 5. Referring to the November, 1947 partition plan, Abbas writes, "Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs ... and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued." [What an egregious libel! When the UN General Assembly considered the partition plan, the Jewish Agency urged peace but the Arabs threatened war. When the UN approved the plan, local Arabs attacked Jews. The Palestine Arab Higher Committee admitted responsibility for starting the war; the UN blamed it for starting the war.] [The real story is about Arab aggression: "Roads were mined, settlements isolated, convoys ambushed. By the end of the week, scores of Jews had been killed." Arabs bombed Jews' apartments and the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem. Hebrew University students and later 78 Jewish doctors and nurses were murdered on the roads. Abbas would have such people return to finish the job, the way many of them declare that Hitler should have finished the job of the Holocaust.] [Jewish forces initially were losing. By January 1948, foreign Arab militias invaded from Syria and Jordan. In May, when Israel became a state, six official foreign Arab armies invaded.] 5. Trying to justify Arabs for breaking through border fences from Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza, on May 15, 2011, Abbas calls them descendants of refugees merely exercising symbolically their right to return. [Many of those young people were refugees and many were not descended from refugees but were sent in by Syria. Refugees have no right to return. Abbas builds on his case on false premises.] [Breaking down border fences and throw stones at Israeli troops is not symbolic but violent. When Arab mobs advance on Israeli troops or throw stones at Jews, they become lynch mobs. The P.A. calls such riots non-violent. Would you? Israel self-defend was justified.] [Abbas and associates are jihadists who pretend they want peace. His Op.-Ed. denies past aggression and ignores his continued advocacy of war. Here he tries to give the impression of symbolic or peaceable demonstrations.] [The government of Israel is only half-heartedly Zionist. It overly restrains its forces out of fear of being criticized. Criticism it would get regardless, because the usual critics are enemies and fellow travelers.] 6. Statehood would give the P.A. standing to sue Israel at the International Court of Justice, the UN Human Rights Council, etc.. [Statehood would reward and empower the terrorist aggressors.] 7. The proposed state would comprise "22% of historic Palestine." [The Arabs never had a country there. The Palestine Mandate was drawn up to encompass the Jewish homeland, including Jordan, which constitutes about ¾ of it. Judea, Samaria, and Gaza comprise about 22% of only the portion west of the Jordan River. Abbas puts his demand as modest, but his maps reveal intent to take over Israel. Shall we help him?] 8. Twenty years of negotiations did not bring statehood nearer. [What can negotiations accomplish, when the Arab side does not want to keep the issue festering or exploding until they conquer Israel? The Arab motive is religious war. Religious bigotry does not end with gifts of land and with peace agreements, as the P.A. has shown. The Arabs demand what would destroy Israel or walk out of negotiations] 9. Israel denies Arabs access to most of their lands and religious places, including in Jerusalem. [No, Israel does not deny Arabs access to land they own, just land they usurp. Israel does not deny Arabs access to religious places except when they riot. On the other hand, Arabs block Jews from property and from religious places, and steal Israelis' and the public's land.] 10. The P.A. allegedly fulfills the requirements of statehood. [Not the requirement for living in peace rather than existing in order to destroy another people's statehood. P.A. self-sufficiency is dubious.] 11. "The State of Palestine intends to be a peace-loving nation, committed to human rights, democracy, the rule of law, and the principles of the UN Charter." One sovereign, the new state would negotiate the remaining issues with Israel, including a "just settlement" of the refugee problem (5/17/11). False! The P.A. conduct and covenants are imperialistic. Both P.A. governments repress Arabs' human rights and attack Jews' rights. Neither is democratic. Rule of law is mostly absent. A UN Charter principle is that one member state shall not attack another. Abbas threatened war with Israel if he did not get what he wants. His demand for statehood before resolving his conflict with Israel, and getting millions of Arabs into Israel, effectively destroying Jewish sovereignty, disproves his vows of peace. Abbas is proposing a one-state "Final Solution." Phase one, acquire Judea-Samaria and Gaza. Phase two, dissolve Israel into the P.A.. Phase three, taking over Jordan (the existing Palestinian Arab state.) How could the NY Times in good conscience allot space to a religious fascist who promotes war with sound bytes that feign peace? Is the newspaper a conduit for civilization's enemies? This isn't a difference in viewpoint, this is aiding and abetting wartime enemies, the enemies being jihadists, with some of whom the U.S. is at war. Were there a debate, readers might hear the other side, rarely and unfairly reported in the media that often airs the jihad side. Finally, the Times did have an Op.-Ed. that expressed the Jewish nationalist view, a day or two later. It was by Knesset Deputy Speaker Danny Ayalon. Unfortunately, it was too short to drive its points home. That is not debate. MK Ayalon suggested that Israel annex vacant land and all its towns in Judea-Samaria, the core of the Jewish homeland, leaving Arab cities outside of Israeli citizenship and preventing military dangers from Arab sovereignty. Israel then would stop paying a billion dollars a year of excise taxes to the dissolved P.A. regime. He implies that many Arabs would move away, thereby resolving much of the conflict. Letter To The New York Times One letter of 5/18/11 remarks that Abbas rewrites history. Another claims, "Historians will never agree on what really happened between 1947 and 1948." But genuine historians do agree. They have recorded genocidal Arab aggression. Communists and anti-Zionist "new historians," who deliberately distort history in order to fit their pre-existing ideology, may disagree, but so what. The second letter-writer contends that what happened does not matter, the issue is how the two sides "feel" about it Palestinian Arabs feel disenfranchised and oppressed. They feel that way because they are indoctrinated jihadists imbued with bigotry. Their feelings against Israel are unwarranted. They are the aggressors. If they deserve anything, it is punishment. They are oppressed, but by their own leaders, not by Israel.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN'S "BIBI AND BARACK" "Bibi and Barack" is Thomas Friedman's return to Israel-bashing. He writes that "we" have to avoid another war involving Israel. Why is everything the responsibility of the U.S. and its taxpayers? How does the string of U.S. failures of foreign and domestic policy give him confidence that the U.S. knows what to do? Rather, Friedman knows that Obama and the State Dept. know anti-Zionism. Mr. Friedman joins the chorus cheering the Arab uprising as democratic. The evidence indicates that democratic sentiments often are sullied with antisemitism and likely to be sidelined by Radical Islam. Westerners should stop getting taken in by totalitarian movements feigning aspirations for democracy and peace. He reiterates the other chorus ruing the disproved contention that Israel will be ruling an Arab majority west of the Jordan River. The demography turned in the other direction some years ago. Israel does not rule Arabs in the Territories, just tries to keep them from murdering Jews. Israel could, as Knesset Deputy Speaker Ayalon suggests, annex all the Jewish towns and vacant land in Judea-Samaria; then many Arabs probably would emigrate. Based on the false demography argument, Friedman suggests Israel figure out how to securely cede the Territories to a Palestinian Arab state. How can such cession leave Israel secure, when it would prevent Israel from having secure borders and would add the power of sovereignty to fanatical enemies' ability to make war on Israel? Nobody is fooled, Friedman asserts without evidence, by Netanyahu's avoidance of a deal. Friedman is fooled by Abbas' avoidance of a deal. Abbas and predecessor kept walking out of negotiations, refuse to enter them, or demanding crippling concessions. Netanyahu said he would meet anywhere, any time, without pre-conditions. After stating the growing alignment of Muslim countries against Israel, Friedman asserts that the U.S. is Israel's only friend. Obama's speech demonstrates for the nth time that the Executive branch is Israel's enemy. Alleging that much building by Jews in Judea-Samaria as illegal, he "overlooks" the many times as much clearly illegal building by Arabs there and in Israel. Removing the Jews' building would, Friedman claims, make the Arabs have to take negotiations seriously. In this, Friedman, a supposed expert on the Mideast, lets bias mislead him as if ignorant. The Muslims Arabs are serious about negotiations, but serious about having them serve jihad. Years of Israeli concessions got no thanks and no reciprocity from the P.A.. Jihadists do not react normally. Going further than the State Department, Friedman declares the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation in Israel's interest. The State Dept. disagrees because it pretends that Fatah is willing to make peace, so Israel should negotiate peace with it. As I see it, the reconciliation is to make it seem possible to negotiate an agreement that since both P.A. factions are united, will hold. However, jihadists do not keep agreements, such as Oslo. The fact that Fatah can unite with Hamas probably demonstrates further its acceptance of terrorism. New York Times Editorial In the same edition, the editorial affirmed Israel's right to defend itself from border crashers, but said the casualties might have been avoided if negotiations were under way. Nonsense! The P.A. often coordinates negotiations and Israeli concessions with violence. The North Vietnamese Communists taught Arafat that violence exerts pressure for more concessions. The New York Times urges President Obama to intervene. Does it not realize that by demanding a permanent building freeze as a pre-condition of negotiations, Obama made Abbas feel, for the first time, that he had to demand the same. That stymied negotiations. Notice that Obama's demands are one-sided, and are in favor of the jihadist side.
OBAMA'S MIDEAST SPEECH The Zionist Organization of America responded promptly to President Obama's speech on the Mideast. After itemizing support by the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) and its officials for bigotry and terrorism, including terrorism against the U.S., ZOA concluded that Obama's approach would establish an antisemitic terrorist state and war. The speech conflicts with U.S. and Israeli security. ZOA anticipates Hamas taking over the P.A. that Fatah now rules for evil. The speech ignores Palestinian Arab hatred and provocation. It ignores the ominous P.A. pressure for Christians to flee. It rewards Arab refusal to make peace. Considering that most of the Palestinian Arabs approve of suicide bombing and, as does Abbas, refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, Obama's approach has nothing to do with peace. Indeed, Abbas' Op.-Ed. in the New York Times admitted that statehood would enable the P.A. to expand the struggle against Israel into international and judicial arenas. Obama put much of the onus for the conflict on Israeli building in 5% of the Territories, although the conflict started before modern Israel acquired the Territories. [The Arab emphasis on eliminating such building is part of their jihadist negotiation and program.] Judea-Samaria never formed an Arab country. The Arab claim to it, based on serendipitous armistice lines, has no legal, historical, or ethical standing. But Obama treats Judea-Samaria as belonging to the Arabs. He then demands that if Israel retains any of those territories, it "compensate" Palestinian Arabs who did not have a country by give them part of Israel. How unjust! ZOA recommends that AIPAC rescind its invitation to Obama (2/19/11 press release). Much else was wrong with the speech. It offers to throw more billions of taxpayer revenue to Arab regimes whose character remains to be seen, and which may well fall to the Moslem Brotherhood. How does that serve U.S. national security? Obama compounds this mistake of supposing that if those countries become democratic, they would be peaceful. If the P.A. became democratic, would the 68% of P.A. Arabs who refuse to recognize a Jewish state and approve of suicide bombing against Israel make peace? Democracy and peace? The P.A. is fascistic and belligerent. Nevertheless, Obama get the U.S. to donate large sums to it, to Egypt, and to the Lebanese Armed Forces allies of Hizbullah. He tells us good things, but does bad things. Some people suggest that Obama pressure Israel. The U.S. never has pressured the Palestinian Arabs. It doesn't ask the P.A. to demilitarize, it trains the P.A. military. It calls Israeli security control over Judea-Samaria undemocratic, but it doesn't call P.A. repression of the media and of dissenters undemocratic. It doesn't demand that P.A. schools stop advocating war, it donates funds to the P.A.. Obama has sharply and unfairly criticized Israel and made demands of it. Obama and Clinton mildly suggest that the Arabs do more against terrorism. That inconsistency demonstrates Obama administration bias against Israel. At almost every turn, Obama's foreign and domestic policies undermine the U.S. national and economic security. Obama's speech is like what a clever jihadist agent would make. Further ZOA Commentary On Obama Next day, ZOA commented further on Obama's speech. By demanding that Israel withdraw behind the 1949 armistice lines, he contradicted prior policy which followed UN Security Council Resolution 242 that Israel would retain part of the Territories and need not relinquish any of its own territory. He also contradicted President Bush's letter acknowledging Israel's right and prudence to retain its major municipal blocs in Judea-Samaria. Obama and Clinton had endorsed that letter when issued. Obama advocated a Jew-free, Arab state [but not an Arab-free Jewish state. That is not fair]. He also failed to reiterate prior statements against sending millions of Arabs into Israel. Now the Arabs will redouble their diplomatic efforts to destroy Israel by that means. [Mass immigration of vengeful Arabs into Israel would be sure to destroy it. Obama really is advocating a one-state, "Final Solution"]. Claiming that he was not imposing a deal and that he supports Israeli security, he nevertheless strenuously proposed a deal. Then what is there to negotiate? He adopts the Arab line against Israeli security. He opposes any Israeli civilian or military presence in areas he wants Israel to concede. [So Israel should go from being deceived, hated and attacked by Arabs because Israelis mostly are not Muslims, to trusting them without safeguards?] Although Obama said that the P.A. should not try to get a unilateral UN declaration of statehood, he did not back up his statement with a vow to veto such a declaration. [This shows Obama's sound bytes to be dissembling.] What a mild reaction, Obama had, to Fatah forming a joint government with Hamas, which advocates killing Americans! The most important Mideast problem for the U.S., Iran's nuclear program, was ignored by Obama (Press release, 2/20/11). Obama seems more intent on advancing Islam and even jihad than in U.S. national security. He also shifts his stances with what seems like a sociopath's lack of understanding of how people feel about things and about his constant self-contradictions. He blows with the wind. Israel's PM Netanyahu is not much better than Obama. He seemed to forego civilian retention of the Jordan Valley, a key part of the Jewish homeland and vital for a secure border. He mentions a military presence there, but once the P.A. were to get sovereignty, it could demand the departure of Israeli troops. Neither Netanyahu nor Obama do more than pass lightly over the need for the P.A. to become democratic and non-violent. Neither discuss how to implement those features, agreed to at Oslo but violated by the P.A. all these years. When Netanyahu talks about a demilitarized Arab state, even while the U.S. helps militarize it, he is deceiving people. The whole proposal for another unneeded, undeserved, undemocratic, uncivilized Arab state is one big deception. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@gmail.com. |
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LAWSUIT: IRAN KNEW ABOUT 9/11 ATTACK
Posted by Ken Timmerman, May 20, 2011. |
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Families of 9/11 victims and their attorneys have filed a lawsuit asserting that the Islamic Republic of Iran provided critical support for the hijackers, without which the plot might not have succeeded. "We simply want to make sure that those who are responsible for assisting the Sept. 11 terrorists in their attack on the United States are found accountable for the harm they caused," said Fiona Havlish whose husband, Donald, perished on the 101st floor of the North Tower. In an affidavit filed in the case today, former 9/11 Commission staff member Dr. Daniel Byman states that Iran's assistance to al-Qaida "predated the 9/11 attack and continued after it, and it had profound implications for the 9/11 attack itself." Indeed, without Iran's assistance in facilitating the travel of the 9/11 hijackers to and from Afghanistan, the attack might never have taken place, the lawsuit asserts. Janice Kephart, another 9/11 Commission staff member who wrote a monograph on the movements of the 9/11 hijackers before the attack, concludes in a separate affidavit that Iran's assistance to the hijackers "constituted ... direct support for al-Qaida's 9/11 attacks." While these conclusions were already presented in less dramatic form by the 9/11 Commission in its final report, the commission realized it had only scratched the surface when it came to Iran's involvement in the attacks. This is because they only discovered key evidence just one week before the commission sent its final report to the printer in July 2004, when alert staff members discovered a six-page classified analysis summarizing what the U.S. intelligence community had learned about Iran's assistance to the 9/11 hijackers. When I first reported on this find in my 2005 book, "Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran," I wrote that the document was literally "buried at the bottom of a huge stack of highly classified documents on other subjects that had been delivered to a special high-security reading room in an undisclosed location in Washington, D.C." It referenced 75 distinct source documents, including electronic intercepts — the crown jewels of U.S. intelligence gathering at the time. Staff Director Philip D. Zelikow phoned the head of the intelligence agency that had generated the report, and asked him to dig out all 75 documents so staff could come read them the following morning at 7:30. "He didn't care that it was a Sunday. They had to see the documents immediately," I wrote in "Countdown to Crisis." The result of that last-minute investigation can be found on pages 240-241 of the 9/11 Commission report, and was considered conclusive enough that it caused President George W. Bush to demand that Iran sever its ties to al-Qaida. "They're harboring al-Qaida leadership there, and we've asked that they be turned over to their respective countries," the president said once the report was released. But he reiterated the careful denial of acting CIA director John McLaughlin. "There was no direct connection between Iran and the attacks of Sept. 11," Bush said. The secret intelligence reports detailed the travels of about 10 of the hijackers into Iran and back and forth into Afghanistan from October 2000 through February 2001, where they were whisked through border controls without ever getting their passports stamped. Commission staff members gained access to the travel manifests of the commercial flights the future hijackers used, and compared passenger lists to a secret registry of terrorist identities. And what they discovered was stunning. In the word of the 9/11 Commission report, "a senior operative of Hezbollah" was on the flights that convoyed the future hijackers from Saudi Arabia to Tehran. It was none other than Imad Mugniyah, Iran's top terror operative. In the legal papers filed today in New York, lawyers representing the 9/11 victims weighed the true measure of that revelation for the first time. For Janice Kephart, the revelation that Mugniyah was convoying the future hijackers to Tehran "compels the conclusion that Iran had actual foreknowledge of a major terrorist strike against the United States that was, in fact, the 9/11 attacks." "This conclusion flows from the fact that Mugniyah was a known terrorist agent of Iran, and, moreover, was a top-level Hezbollah terrorist commander who had attacked, kidnapped, and killed more Americans than any other terrorist in multiple terrorist attacks over the past three decades, at least some of which were at the direction of Iran," Kephart states. Mugniyah was assassinated when a bomb was placed in the headrest of his Mitsubishi Pajero in Damascus, Syria on Feb. 14, 2008, apparently by Israeli intelligence. The lawsuit, known as Fiona Havlish et al., v. Sheik Usamah bin-Muhammad bin-Laden et al., appears to have been languishing in the federal court system since 2002. Successive judges have stricken claims of Iraqi involvement in the plot, claims against the government of Saudi Arabia, and even claims against Saudi banks and specific Saudi princes. "Today, nearly a decade after the attacks that took so many of our loved ones away, we believe the 9/11 families and the American people deserve to know the full truth about Iran's complicity," said Thomas E. Mellon, Jr. of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, law firm of Mellon Webster & Shelly, the lead attorney in the lawsuit against Iran. The attorneys said they had spent seven years and thousands of hours investigating Iran's connection to the 9/11 attacks. "Our experts, including three former 9/11 Commission staff members, have stated that the evidence is 'clear and convincing' that the Islamic Republic of Iran was involved in the 9/11 attacks," said Timothy B. Fleming, the lead investigative attorney in the case, of the D.C. office of the firm Wiggins Childs Quinn & Pantazis. In its brief presentation of the evidence of Iran's involvement in the plot, the 9/11 Commission stated tongue-in-cheek that the presence of so many Iranian agents on board flights carrying the future hijackers to Iran could have been nothing more than a "remarkable coincidence." But the report concluded that Iran's involvement in the plot "requires further investigation by the U.S. government." "Until now there's been no indication that any government agency has taken any action to pursue this matter," said Mellon. "Through interviews with former U.S. government and intelligence officials, members of the 9s/11 Commission staff, former Iranian intelligence officers, and a wide variety of non-governmental experts and fact witnesses, we have undertaken this 'further investigation,'" Mellon added. The Havlish investigation also debriefed and obtained sworn testimony from three former Iranian intelligence officers, who had direct personal knowledge of Iran's involvement in the planning and logistics of the 9/11 operation. I took part in those debriefings as a consultant to the Havlish team. None of these witnesses was ever interviewed by the 9/11 Commission or, with one notable exception, by any element of the United States government. The Havlish team also presented their evidence to Europe's top counter-terrorism expert, former French investigative magistrate Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, who provided a sworn statement detailing information he had discovered in his own investigations of Iran's long-standing operational ties to al-Qaida. Among the revelations now entered as evidence in U.S. district court:
"When Tim Fleming and I joined this coalition of attorneys representing the 9/11 families, our immediate and ultimate goal was to provide the families with a full accounting of what happened, how it happened, and who was responsible for that terrible day in September 2001," said Dennis Pantazis, of the Birmingham, Alabama law firm of Wiggins Childs Quinn & Pantazis. "These families have waited nearly 10 years to hear the truth. Now, under the scrutiny of a federal Judge, hopefully this will be accomplished," he added. "The Sept. 11 attacks were an attack on the American way of life and on the American belief in a civil society where we respect others and resolve our differences in an orderly and peaceful way," said Ellen Saracini, the widow of Victor Saracini, Captain of United Flight 175, the second aircraft to hit the World Trade Center. "It is only appropriate that those who are attacking our way of life are found accountable in our American system," she said. Kenneth R. Timmerman is President, Middle East Data Project, Inc. He authored "Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran" and is a contributing editor to Newsmax.com His recent non-fiction books are a thriller called 'Honor Killing', (available at www.kentimmerman.com), "Peter's Bones" (a novel of the Persecuted Church in Iraq) and "Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran." Contact him by email at timmerman.road@verizon.net. This article is archived at
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OBAMA IS IGNORING INTERNATIONAL LAW
Posted by Eli E. Hertz, May 20, 2011. |
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No legal right shall spring from a wrong and Palestinian Arabs illegal aggression against the territorial integrity and political independence of Israel, cannot and should not be rewarded. International law make it clear: All of Israel's wars with its Arab neighbors were in self-defense. Professor, Judge Schwebel, former president of the International Court of Justice in the Hague writing in What Weight to Conquest [1994]: "(a) a state [Israel] acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are necessary to its self-defense; "As between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand, and her Arab neighbors, acting aggressively, in 1948 and 1967, on the other, Israel has the better title in the territory of what was Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem." Eli E. Hertz is president of Myths and Facts, Inc. The organization's objective is to provide policymakers, national leadership, the media and the public-at-large with information and viewpoints that are founded on factual and reliable content. Contact him at today@mythsandfacts.org This article is archived at
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JUST HOW DUMB AND DAMAGING?
Posted by Nurit Greenger, May 20, 2011. |
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This was written by Robert M. Goldberg
and it appeared in the American Spectator
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How dumb and damaging was President's Obama speech on the Middle East? 1. Just when everyone was focusing on how Arab states could get their internal politics in order, Obama shifts the attention back to Israel. 2. Just when everyone was focusing concern about the role of Hamas and Iran in shaping the future of Palestinians, Obama shifts the attention back to what Israel has to do. 3. Just when the addition of Hamas was undermining the case for the UN "approving" of a Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, Obama legitimizes the effort to go to the UN by unilaterally supporting the 1949 borders, which happen not to include East Jerusalem. 4. By defining Israel's position about borders (like its position on settlements) as a sign of obstructionism, Obama shifts more responsibility and pressure on Israel, giving the Palestinians another in a series of Obama-manufactured free passes. 5. By coming out in favor of pre-'67 borders Obama has undermined Israel's ability to resolve Jerusalem. And by talking about "the fate of Palestinian refugees" as if this were something that took place today as opposed to 64 years ago as a result of an Arab rejection of the pre-'67 border, Obama has given this grievance more leverage and new life. 6. By making his speech all about Israel (with promises to finance shopping malls and graduate school education in Arab countries), Obama ceded diplomatic control over the Middle East to countries that would be happier if Israel disappeared. (That's called leading from behind.) 7. By telling — the day before his speech — Eli Wiesel and others that America's commitment to Israel is unshakeable and sending his Deputy Secretary of State Jamie Steinberg to tell Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister that Israel shouldn't worry about Obama's speech, the President has once again demonstrated his rare talent for mendacity and his belief that this signal characteristic of his presidency can be forgiven because of how "transformational" he is. 8. By all these actions and pretensions, Obama has, as Chamberlain and Europe with Czechoslovakia, delivered a nation it called a friend and ally into the hands of its enemies. Contact Nurit Greenger by email at nurit.nuritg@gmail.com. Visit her blog:
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NETANYAHU REJECTS ANY ISRAELI RETURN TO THE 1967 LINES
Posted by Barbara Taverna, May 20, 2011. |
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Obama and Netanyahu meet, discuss range of issues in Middle East; both leaders acknowledge differences in their positions concerning Palestinian issue; Obama says Hamas not a partner for negotiations. This was written by Hilary Leila Krieger, Jerusalem Post correspondent.
and it appeared today in the Jerusalem Post
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WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu acknowledged the differences that divide them even as they emphasized areas of agreement over the peace process, Iran and democratic changes in the Middle East after their White House meeting Friday. Netanyahu flatly rejected any return to the 1967 borders, the basis — along with agreed land swaps — for a deal with the Palestinians as laid out in a speech by Obama the day before. "While Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines," Netanyahu said, sitting alongside Obama in the Oval Office. "These lines are indefensible, because they don't take into account certain changes that have taken place on the ground, demographic changes." Netanyahu also ruled out any return of Palestinian refugees to Israel proper or that Israel would negotiate with Hamas, branded a terrorist organization by both US and Israel. Obama echoed Netanyahu's last point, using stronger language to reject the prospect of Israel talking to Hamas than even a day earlier in his own Middle East address. "It is not a partner for a significant, realistic peace process," Obama stated Friday. "The Palestinians are going to have to explain how they can credibly engage in serious peace negotiations." But Obama did not accede publicly to Netanyahu's demand, made in a statement following Thursday's speech, that he endorse a letter written by George W. Bush that included an American rejection of Palestinian refugees settling in the Jewish state and acknowledged more clearly that Israel's final borders would include settlements, the demographic changes on the ground alluded to by the prime minister. Netanyahu seemed to push Obama to speak out on the refugee issue after the president in his speech the day before underscored the need to "tell the truth." "It's not going to happen. Everybody knows it's not going to happen," Netanyahu said of Palestinian refugees being absorbed by Israel. "And I think it's time to tell the Palestinians forthrightly that it's not going to happen." Both leaders acknowledged that they didn't see eye-to-eye on every issue, referring to "differences" on details as they sought to emphasize their larger shared interest in pursuing peace. "We have may have differences here and there, but I think there's an overall direction that we wish to work together to pursue a real, genuine peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors, and peace that is defensible," Netanyahu said. Obama, for his part, said that, "Obviously there are some differences between us in the precise formulations and language, and that's going to happen between friends." In a nod to Netanyahu's focus on Israel's strategic concerns, the president added, "What we are in complete accord about is that a true peace can only occur if the ultimate resolution allows Israel to defend itself against threats." Following a meeting that ran more than an hour later than planned, and comes ahead of Obama's own address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Sunday, the American president stressed that "the extraordinarily close relationship between the United States and Israel is sound and will continue." Contact Barbara Taverna at bltaverna@yahoo.com |
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FROM ISRAEL: SHARING AS POSSIBLE
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 19, 2011. |
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Once this goes out, there will not be another posting from me for several days, as I shift my focus from the wider world to my private world, and the advent (please G-d may all go well in the next couple of days) of a new grandchild. The greatest of blessings, and the reason for everything I do: those dearly, deeply loved of the next generation. And yet, as I write, we are in the midst of several things happening. It is only very briefly that I will be able to address them. ~~~~~~~~~~ What can I say? Obama is from another planet, delusional. Dangerous. And let us not forget devious. Today Prime Minister Netanyahu is meeting with him in the White House. But BEFORE they had a chance to talk, BEFORE Netanyahu had a chance to give his talk, the president of the United States, a man never to be trusted, had his say. And undercut Israel's position. In his speech from the State Department last night, he said peace between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel is "more urgent than ever." And, while saying he cannot impose a settlement, proposed what it should look like: The core, the key, is that he went on record saying that Israel should return to the '67 armistice lines. This in spite of multiple understandings with American administrations that Israel would not be asked to do this. He suggested that there should be a "full and phased withdrawal" of the IDF to be coordinated with the Palestinians during a transition period with a clear duration and demonstrated security effectiveness. He would put us on the block, and yet he then has the unmitigated gall to talk about devotion to Israel's security. A transition period? The '67 lines will never be acceptable, can never be secure, but he would have us move in that direction even before other matters are clear. He sees us making that move to entice the Arabs back to the table. He would have us do this BEFORE Jerusalem and refugees are even discussed. Gone is the principle of "everything is decided or nothing is decided." What particularly galled me is that he admitted that the unity government raises "profound and legitimate questions for Israel" and said, in an other-worldly approach, that the Arabs will have to "provide answers." Right. But in face of these "profound questions" he acknowledges Israel has, he is calling for her to take bold steps towards peace. ~~~~~~~~~~ He did warn the PA that their projected gambit at the UN won't work. But I wonder if he's going to hold something over Netanyahu's head today — saying that if he is to veto action in the Security Council, he wants to see concessions from Israel that will bring the PA back to the table to negotiate. He lamented that talks have stalemated: "Israeli settlement activity continues. Palestinians have walked away from talks." Notice the order here, the implication being that Israel ought stop building in communities in Judea and Samaria so the PA can return to the table. And he chastised the PA in other ways, speaking of the need to stop terrorism and weapons smuggling. But NO WHERE does he suggest that Israel cannot move with safety until these safeguards are in place. And NO WHERE does he specifically call on Hamas to demonstrate its peaceful intentions via the Quartet criteria. At bottom, the Arabs won't be happy with this either, however. Because he will not have been sufficiently one-sided for them. And there lies a saving grace. Because they're not coming back to the table. ~~~~~~~~~~ Were that I had time for more. What's most important is the response of our prime minister. On coming into the US, Netanyahu responded that: "Israel believes that for peace to endure between Israelis and Palestinians, the viability of a Palestinian state cannot come at the expense of the viability of the one and only Jewish state. Obviously, he'll have a great deal more to say soon. ~~~~~~~~~~ JINSA points out, by the way, that we should not ignore the fact that Obama, in his speech, pledged assistance to Egypt even before knowing what will transpire there. For JINSA this is the most dangerous element of Obama's talk. ~~~~~~~~~~ When next I write, may it be for good things. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info |
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THAT WAS INTERESTING, AND CHALLENGING
Posted by Fred Reifenberg, May 19, 2011. |
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Contact Fred Reifenberg by email at freify@netvision.net.il |
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TURKEY'S CHRISTIANS UNDER SIEGE
Posted by Dave Nathan, May 19, 2011. |
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This was written by John Eibner and it appeared in the Spring
2011, pp.41-52, Middle East Quarterly
John Eibner, chief executive officer of Christian Solidarity International-USA, focuses on religious and ethnic conflict, mainly in the Middle East, North-East Africa and Eastern Europe. He has visited these regions on numerous human rights fact-finding and humanitarian aid missions. |
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The brutal murder on June 3, 2010, of the head of Turkey's Catholic church, Bishop Luigi Padovese, seen here in 2006 leading the funeral procession of another slain priest, Andrea Santoro, was met by denials and obfuscation — not only by the Turkish authorities but also by Western governments and even the Vatican. The brutal murder of the head of Turkey's Catholic Church, Bishop Luigi Padovese, on June 3, 2010, has rattled the country's small, diverse, and hard-pressed Christian community.[1] The 62-year-old bishop, who spearheaded the Vatican's efforts to improve Muslim-Christian relations in Turkey, was stabbed repeatedly at his Iskenderun home by his driver and bodyguard Murat Altun, who concluded the slaughter by decapitating Padovese and shouting, "I killed the Great Satan. Allahu Akhbar!" He then told the police that he had acted in obedience to a "command from God."[2] The brutal murder on June 3, 2010, of the head of Turkey's Catholic church, Bishop Luigi Padovese, seen here in 2006 leading the funeral procession of another slain priest, Andrea Santoro, was met by denials and obfuscation — not only by the Turkish authorities but also by Western governments and even the Vatican. Though bearing all the hallmarks of a jihadist execution, the murder was met by denials and obfuscation — not only by the Turkish authorities but also by Western governments and the Vatican. This is not wholly surprising. In the post-9/11 era, it has become commonplace to deny connections between Islam and acts of violence despite much evidence to the contrary.[3] But while this denial has undoubtedly sought to win the hearts and minds of Muslims, as opposed to Christians, Jews, or any other religious group, it has served to encourage Islamist terrorism and to exacerbate the persecution of non-Muslim minorities even in the most secularized Muslim states. For all President Barack Obama's high praise for its "strong, vibrant, secular democracy,"[4] and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's "Alliance of Civilizations" rhetoric, Turkey is very much entrenched in the clash of civilizations paradigm. Unless Ankara is prepared to combat the widespread "Christophobia" that fuels violence and other forms of repression, the country's Christians are doomed to remain an oppressed and discriminated against minority, and Turkey's aspirations of democratic transformation and full integration with Europe will remain stillborn. The Victim and His Mission Consecrated bishop in November 2004, half a year following Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's elevation to the papacy, Padovese belonged to the body of intellectually sharp, proactive clerics who share Benedict XVI's ecumenical understanding of the church and its global mission of evangelization, especially in the Islamic Middle East where a century of intensive de-Christianization now threatens the faith's regional existence. Padovese's mission in Turkey was to help save the country's Christian community from extinction and to create conditions for its religious and cultural renaissance. Rejecting the church's historic dhimmi status as a protected religious minority under Islam — which reduced it to little more than a submissive worshipping agency with no other legitimate activity — he viewed Turkey's European Union candidacy as a golden opportunity for winning significant concessions from Ankara and pinned high hopes on the Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops, which took place in Rome in October 2010.[5] However, the synod ended on a sour note. While confirming the Second Vatican Council's positive shift in attitude toward Judaism and unequivocal rejection of anti-Semitism, the Middle Eastern bishops sought to enhance the security of their flocks by playing an anti-Israel card and criticizing Israel — the one country of the region with a growing Christian population — with a directness that was not employed in relation to any Islamic state, no matter how repressive. Had it not been for his murder, the bishop would have traveled to meet the pope in Cyprus on the very next day for the launch of the synod's Instrumentum laboris, the Vatican's strategic plan for reviving Christianity in its Middle Eastern cradle, to which Padovese was a substantial contributor. Though written in low-key Vatican jargon, the Instrumentum laboris is full of radical implications for Turkey and the broader Middle East.[6] In contrast to the common post-9/11 predilection to downplay Islamism's less savory aspects, the document does not gloss over the disadvantaged position of Christians in the Islamic world and identifies the issue of human rights, including religious freedom, as central to the well-being of the whole of society: Oftentimes, relations between Christians and Muslims are difficult, principally because Muslims make no distinction between religion and politics, thereby relegating Christians to the precarious position of being considered non-citizens, despite the fact that they were citizens of their countries long before the rise of Islam. The key to harmonious living between Christians and Muslims is to recognize religious freedom and human rights.[7] This harmonious living was to be achieved through a policy of dialogue — defined by Benedict XVI at the beginning of his papacy as "a vital necessity, on which in large measure our future depends"[8] — that would identify the common ground between the two religions: service to society, respect for common moral values, the avoidance of syncretism, joint opposition to the atheism, materialism, and relativism emanating from the Western world, and a collective rejection of religious-based violence, that is — killing in the name of God. The Instrumentum laboris also encouraged a search — together with Muslim reformers — for a new system of church-state relations, which it referred to as "positive laicity." But the Vatican does not uphold Turkey's secularism — which the George W. Bush and Obama administrations have praised as a model for the Islamic world — as the answer. "In Turkey," the Instrumentum laboris notes — undoubtedly on account of the influence of Bishop Padovese — "the idea of 'laicity' is currently posing more problems for full religious freedom in the country." The working document did not elaborate but simply stated that the aim of this "positive," as opposed to "Turkish laicity," would be to help eliminate the theocratic character of government and allow for greater equality among citizens of different religions, thereby fostering the promotion of a sound democracy, positively secular in nature, which also fully acknowledges the role of religion in public life while completely respecting the distinction between the religious and civic orders.[9] These were the principles that guided Padovese's Turkish mission. He worked in the clear knowledge that "faithfully witnessing to Christ" — as the synod's preparatory document acknowledges — "can lead to persecution."[10] And so it did. Conspiracy of Silence Within hours of Padovese's death, the provincial governor preempted the results of police investigations with the announcement that the murder was not politically motivated but rather committed by a lone lunatic.[11] Moreover, in an attempt to eliminate any Islamic motive, NTV Turkey announced that the murderer was not actually a Muslim but a convert to Catholicism.[12] Then the police leaked word — allegedly from the assassin — that he had been "forced to suffer abuse" in a homosexual relationship with the bishop and that the killing had been an act of "legitimate defense."[13] It is true that Turkey's minister for culture and tourism, Ertuğrul Günay, issued a short message of condolences on behalf of the government[14] and that the foreign ministry expressed regret to the international media. But neither President Abdullah Gül nor Prime Minister Erdoğan expressed their own condolences or publicly addressed the murder of the head of their country's Catholic Church, and even the foreign ministry's statement took care to highlight the murderer's alleged "psychological problems."[15] Erdoğan's silence in response to this national tragedy was particularly striking. Together with Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodrigues Zapatero, the Turkish prime minister and leader of the ruling Islamist Peace and Justice Party (AKP) has been a principal architect and cosponsor of the U.N.'s flagship program to promote a global "Alliance of Civilizations." Diversity, cross-cultural dialogue, and opposition to isolation of "the other" were among the principles articulated by Erdoğan in his attempts to present Turkey as "the best panacea against 'clash of civilizations' theories."[16] The beheading of a senior Christian cleric by a Muslim zealot could not but send an unmistakable message that this very clash was in full swing on Erdoğan's home turf. Moreover, at the time of the murder, Erdoğan was both sending thinly veiled threats of Turkey's growing impatience with the slow progress of its EU application and seeking to enhance his stature throughout the Islamic world with menacing anti-Israel diplomacy in response to its interception of the Turkey-originated Gaza flotilla.[17] He thus had nothing to gain and much to lose by generating headlines about Padovese's execution. So did Washington and its European allies. If Western diplomats spoke at all about the bishop's murder, it was in the same hushed tones that are used when referring to Turkey's Armenian genocide of World War I, its subsequent use of terror against remnant Christian communities and Kurdish villages, its 1974 invasion of Cyprus and subsequent ethnic cleansing of the occupied Christian population, and its blockade of neighboring Armenia. Well aware of the absence of backing from Western powers, the Vatican acted swiftly to avoid confrontation with Turkey. Notwithstanding an early observation by Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi that the murder highlighted the "difficult conditions" of the church in the region,[18] the official explanation was swiftly harmonized with that of Ankara. In a statement broadcast on Vatican Radio on the same day, Lombardi negated his previous comment by stating that "political motivations for the attack or other motivations linked to socio-political tensions are to be excluded." He also stressed the killer's "mental imbalance"[19] as if solo psychopaths might be a primary source of the church's difficult conditions in the Islamic world. The day after the murder, while en route to one of Europe's hot spots of Muslim-Christian communal tension — the divided island of Cyprus — Pope Benedict XVI himself sought to quash speculation about its motivation. He admitted that he still had "very little information" about the killing, yet endorsed — much to the bewilderment of Christians in Turkey — the Turkish government's reflexive denial of a religious-political motive when he declared, "We must not attribute the fact [of Bishop Padovese's murder] to Turkey ... What is certain is that it was not a religious or political assassination."[20] The Lessons of Regensburg Why did the pope so swiftly deny political or religious motives for Padovese's murder when so much about the crime was still shrouded in mystery? Benedict XVI provided a motive when he explained, "We do not want this tragic situation to become mixed up with dialogue with Islam or with all the problems of our journey [to Cyprus]."[21] A quarrel with Ankara at this particular juncture could certainly have had damaging repercussions for the church, but behind the pontiff's timidity, lay his keen awareness of how easy it was to trigger the destructive rage of the Islamic powers and the temporal weakness of his church. Indeed, a few months before his ascendancy in May 2005, the pope-to-be caused consternation in Turkey by declaring his opposition to its application for EU membership because "historically and culturally, Turkey has little in common with Europe."[22] Upon Ratzinger's election to the papacy, Erdoğan opined that his "rhetoric may change from now on ... because this post, this responsibility, requires it."[23] Benedict XVI did lower his tone but not before the mass demonstrations, violence, and threats that followed his now famous Regensburg University lecture of September 2006 — just two months before he was scheduled to travel to Istanbul for his first papal foray into the world of Islam. At Regensburg, the pope broached one of the key issues obstructing harmonious relations between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds: the sensitive question of violent jihad as a legitimate means of advancing the Islamic faith.[24] In his address, the pope overstepped a red line drawn by Muslim political elites throughout the world. Erdoğan joined angry Muslim clerics and statesmen, demanding that the pope apologize for his "wrong, ugly, and unfortunate statements" and calling into question whether the planned papal visit to Istanbul would take place.[25] He was followed by Director for Religious Affairs Ali Bardakoğlu — the overseer of the Turkish state's massive financial support for Islamic institutions, including those in Europe, especially Germany[26] — who condemned the pope's message as reflecting "anger, hostility, and hatred" in addition to a "Crusader and holy-war mentality."[27] The deputy chairman of Erdoğan's AKP Party, Salih Kapusuz, announced that the Regensburg speech would place Benedict XVI in the "same category as Hitler and Mussolini."[28] Left isolated and exposed by Washington and Europe, the pope quickly succumbed to pressure. To be sure, he did not retract a single word uttered at Regensburg, and his apology was more of a regretful explanation than an admission of error, but his humble and appeasing demeanor was conciliatory enough to salvage his church's dialogue with Islam and keep the door open to Istanbul. Since then, he has taken extraordinary pains to temper his language and make flattering gestures to avoid frenzied Muslim responses. Consider Benedict XVI's November 2006 visit to Turkey — his first as pope to a Muslim-majority country. While reiterating the Vatican's customary plea for religious liberty, his remarks were overshadowed by his gestures of goodwill aimed at underscoring his esteem for Islam and Turkey's Islamist government, notably his prayer facing Mecca in Istanbul's Blue Mosque and his praise for Erdoğan's role in launching the Alliance of Civilizations.[29] The biggest plum for Erdoğan was the indication that the pope would now welcome Turkey's membership in the EU.[30] Although the Vatican made no mention of it, the Turkish press announced that Benedict XVI had endorsed Erdoğan's plan to establish a bureau of Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs in Brussels to "counter efforts to inflame Islamophobia."[31] The Regensburg speech led to the harmonization of the Vatican's diplomatic language with that of Turkey and the Alliance of Civilizations, on which the Padovese murder had no apparent effect. Anti-Christian violence remains a powerful factor in influencing the language of the church as it struggles to balance its fundamental, unwavering advocacy of religious freedom and opposition to killing in the name of God with the pursuit of dialogue with Turkey and other Muslim majority states. The Plot Thickens Not all Christians in Turkey accepted the denials and obfuscation of Ankara and the Vatican about the circumstances surrounding the murder. Foremost among them was the archbishop of Smyrna, Ruggero Franceschini — Padovese's successor as head of the country's Catholic Church — who rejected the official explanation of his colleague's murder and maintained that the pope had received "bad counsel" prior to his denial of the murder's political or religious motives.[32] The archbishop had lived in Iskenderun, where the murder took place, and had known the assassin and his family personally. In the hope of ascertaining the true facts, he immediately visited the scene of the crime, subsequently telling the press that he could not accept the "usual hastily concocted, pious lie" about the murderer's insanity. He also dismissed the claim that the assassin was a Catholic convert, confirming that he was a non-practicing Muslim.[33] The archbishop did not doubt the murder's religious and political motivation. "I believe that with this murder, which has an explicitly religious element, we are faced with something that goes beyond government," he said. "It points towards nostalgic, perhaps anarchist groups who want to destabilize the government. The very modalities of the murder aim to manipulate public opinion."[34] What the archbishop suspected was a crime stage-managed by Turkey's "deep state" — an opaque underworld where powerful elements within the state, especially the military and security services, act in conjunction with violent extremist groups, such as the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves and the Islamist Hezbollah, as well as the apolitical criminal underworld, to undertake special, illegal operations in the political interest of the country's ruling elite.[35] Until recently, the deep state was imbued with the secularist ideology of the republic's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. But since coming to power in 2003, Erdoğan's AKP has vigorously endeavored to lay hands on all levers of power including the deep state with a view to promoting its Islamist, "neo-Ottoman" vision for the country.[36] This has in turn produced a schizophrenic deep state with older elements loyal to the Kemalist opposition and newer elements loyal to the AKP's Islamist agenda. Since 2007, the Turkish media has feasted on a steady stream of revelations about an extensive deep state network called "Ergenekon." Government prosecutors have secured the arrest and indictment of scores of retired and still-serving military and security officials for allegedly plotting to destabilize the AKP-dominated government. Show trials are already underway. Deep state documents released by the prosecution, if taken at face value, point to Ergenekon as a source of anti-church activity, including the torture and Islamic-style ritual murder of three evangelical Christian book publishers in the town of Malatya in April 2006.[37] The Ergenekon conspiracy has been similarly linked with the murder of the 61-year-old Catholic priest, Fr. Andrea Santoro — shot and killed in his Trabzon church in February 2006. Witnesses report that the convicted killer, a 16-year-old, shouted "Allahu Akbar" immediately before firing his pistol.[38] Bishop Padovese said at the time that the assassination "did not seem incidental" as it occurred while passions were aroused by the Danish cartoon affair.[39] The former papal nuncio to Turkey, Msgr. Antonio Lucibello, had similarly argued that there was a mastermind behind Santoro's murder.[40] Prosecutors also ascribed the January 2007 murder of the Armenian Christian journalist, Hrant Dink, by a 17-year-old, to the Ergenekon.[41]A vigorous and well-known campaigner against Turkey's denial of the Armenian genocide, Dink had been convicted of having violated article 302 of the penal code banning "insults to Turkishness." The hanged body of Dink's Turkish lawyer, Hakan Karadağ, was found in suspicious circumstances the day after the Padovese murder.[42] It is far from certain whether the alleged anti-AKP Ergenekon conspiracy is a reality, or whether it is largely an AKP fabrication, designed to cover the efforts of Erdoğan's Islamists to turn the deep state into an instrument for promoting their own agenda.[43] But whoever may be pulling the strings, Kemalists or Islamists, the deep state is no friend of Turkey's Christians. A Turkish Anti-Christian Agenda Persecution, however, is by no means limited to the deep state. Like their counterparts in most of the Islamic Middle East, Turkey's Christians are effective hostages to the arbitrary actions of powerful elites, made up of Islamic state and non-state actors who collectively monopolize violence. The oldest Christians retain living memory of the state-sponsored mass deportations and massacres that culminated in the World War I Armenian genocide. During the twentieth century, Turkey's Christian population has dropped to the verge of extinction.[44] The last anti-Christian mass violence was the 1955 deep state-sparked, anti-Greek pogrom in Istanbul, which also took a heavy toll on the city's Jewish and Armenian populations.[45] Such memories are reinforced in the younger generation of Christians by continuing acts of smaller scale and more discriminative violence. In February 2006, for example, a Slovenian priest was attacked by a gang of teenagers in the parish compound in Izmir (Smyrna), and five months later a 74-year-old clergyman was stabbed by young Turks on a street in Trabzon, following which Padovese told the media, "The climate has changed ... it is the Catholic priests that are being attacked."[46] In December 2007, another priest was knifed by a teenager as he left his church following Sunday mass.[47] A leader of the Turkish Protestant community, Rev. Behnan Konutgan, recently recorded cases of violence against church property and the physical harassment of church members while a noted Turkish sociologist of religion, Ali Carkoğlu, has argued that no non-Muslim religious gathering in Turkey is completely risk free.[48] What little protective law there is, whether national or international, does not have the strength to provide adequate defense. Plain-speaking about persecution invites hostile reactions, sometimes deadly. The church's language of dialogue is powerfully influenced by this reality. But there are some voices in Turkey that do not always cower to the violence-backed taboos of official Christian-Muslim dialogue or of the Alliance of Civilizations. At the end of 2009, Bartholomew I, the normally subservient Ecumenical Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, appeared on CBS's 60 Minutes and shocked Turkey's political establishment. Speaking to Bob Simon, the patriarch reported no significant improvement in conditions for the church. Instead, he argued that Turkey's Christians were second class citizens and that he personally felt "crucified" by a state that wanted to see his church die out. Asked whether Erdoğan had responded to the petitions submitted to him in the course of many meetings, Bartholomew answered, "Never."[49] Turkey's rulers lashed out angrily. "We consider the crucifixion metaphor an extremely unfortunate metaphor," argued Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. "In our history, there have never been crucifixions, and there never will be. I couldn't really reconcile this metaphor with his mature personality."[50] President Gül endorsed the foreign minister's assessment while the head of the ruling AKP's international relations section, Kürsat Tüzmen, menacingly retorted, "If there is someone who is being crucified, it is the politician, security officials, and others. If he [the patriarch] is a religious and spiritual leader, he should be much more cautious when making a statement. Someone who really loves his country has to be more responsible."[51] Bartholomew seems to have touched a raw nerve. For all its Alliance of Civilizations rhetoric, Erdoğan's Islamist government has maintained a tight stranglehold on the country's Christian institutions and blocked reforms that could lead to the growth of Christianity. True, the government has made some minor concessions to Christian institutions, including legislation that creates new but very limited possibilities for Christian foundations to recover some confiscated property, [52] but this was little more than a ploy to please the European Union and Washington and pales into insignificance by such hostile measures as the refusal to reopen the Halki Theological Seminary — the only institution in Turkey where Orthodox clergy could be trained — before Greece and Bulgaria improved the conditions of their Muslim minorities.[53] In other words, Ankara does not recognize the right of the Orthodox Church, or any other church for that matter, to run a theological seminary as a religious liberty but merely as an instrument of deal-making with Western powers for the purposes of enhancing the position of Islam. Indeed, while Turkey's churches have long enjoyed freedom of worship, they have remained without legal status to this very day. Most of their work takes place in the legal framework of foundations that operate under the strict supervision of the General Directorate for Foundations[54] and other state institutions — including a secret national security department whose mandate is to control non-Muslim minorities.[55] They have, moreover, been entangled in labyrinthine negotiations and lengthy and expensive court cases for the return of confiscated property as well as permission to expand their engagement with society through the provision of education and other charitable activity. Churches have experienced grave setbacks in addition to the above mentioned murders, notably: The state conducted a four-year prosecution of two Turkish, evangelical Protestant converts from Islam on charges of "insulting Turkishness." Although these charges were dropped for lack of evidence in October 2010, the converts were forced to pay fines of $3,170 each or go to prison for seven months for "collecting information on citizens."[56] Ankara is taking legal action to confiscate lands that historically belonged to the Syriac Orthodox Monastery of Mor Gabriel (founded in 379 CE), whose bishop has encouraged persecuted Christian refugees to return to the area and rebuild their villages.[57] Less than a year before his death, Padovese was especially disappointed by the rejection of his appeal for the status of the Church of St. Paul in Tarsus to be changed from a museum to a functioning place of regular worship. Not only had the pope made a personal appeal in this respect, but the archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Meisner, had asked Erdoğan for the return of the church "as a gesture of European cooperation." The Turkish media reported that Ankara turned down these requests from the pope, Cardinal Meisner, and Bishop Padovese, notwithstanding the Catholic leaders' pledge to support the building of a mosque in Germany on condition that the Turkish government hand over the holy site to the church, together with permission for the construction of a center for pilgrims.[58] The Islamist Erdoğan maintains continuity with his ultranationalist predecessors by refusing to respect the historic, ecumenical character of the Patriarchate of Constantinople — i.e., its titular ascendancy over the other patriarchates of the 300 million-strong Orthodox communion worldwide — and by requiring that the patriarch be a Turkish citizen by birth. Last October, the Turkish authorities allowed the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party to conduct Islamic prayers at the ancient Armenian Cathedral of the Holy Virgin at Ani.[59] Raging Christophobia Padovese believed that there would be no end to the war against the church in Turkey until the public as a whole rejected the widely-accepted negative stereotypes of Christians as dangerous, subversive aliens within society, and he especially blamed the popular Turkish media for perpetuating a climate of hate. He highlighted as an example two cases involving the late Fr. Santoro. In the first, he was run out of a village near Trabzon by a group of children while local adults incited the youth with applause. The local newspaper reported the incident with the headline "Priest Sighted on the Coast Road," as if his presence there justified the mob action against him.[60] The second case followed Santoro's murder when the daily Vatan alleged that the assassinated priest had been guilty of distributing money to young people to entice them to visit his church.[61] Turkey's Christians were especially alarmed by the mass popular hysteria whipped up by the 2006 blockbuster Valley of the Wolves, an action-packed adventure film set in post-Saddam Iraq. Reviewing the movie in Spiegel, Cem Özdemir — a member of the European Parliament of Turkish descent — decried its pandering to "racist sentiments" and its making "Christians and Jews appear as repugnant, conspiratorial holy warriors hoping to use blood-drenched swords to expand or reclaim the empire of their God."[62] Far from distancing themselves from the movie, ultra-nationalists and those at high levels in the Islamist camp praised it. "The film is absolutely magnificent ... It is completely true to life," exclaimed the parliament speaker (and later deputy prime minister) Bülent Arınç. Unconcerned about the damaging implications of the film's negative images of Christians and Jews, Turkey's President Gül refused to condemn it, saying it was no worse than many Hollywood films.[63] Erdoğan's pious wife is reportedly a fan of the racist film.[64] The Christophobia of the boulevard press and "Istanbulywood" can also be found in state documents. A national intelligence report, exposed by the Cumhuriyet newspaper in June 2005, revealed similar dangerous sentiments that are at odds with the principles espoused by Erdoğan at showcase Alliance of Civilizations events. Titled "Reactionary Elements and Risks," the report put Islamist terrorist groups on a par with Christian missionaries, who, it claimed, cover Turkey "like a spider's web" and promote divisions in sensitive areas such as the Black Sea and eastern Anatolia. According to the report, the Christian evangelizers included Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants, as well as other Christian and non-Christian groups such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Baha'is, with the latter concentrating on government officials, liberal businessmen, and performing and other artists.[65] Echoing the tenor of the intelligence report, Turkish state minister Mehmet Aydın, who oversees the state's Directorate for Religious Affairs and who has served as an advisor to the National Security Council on religious issues, argued that the goal of Christian missionaries was to "break up the historical, religious, national, and cultural unity of the people of Turkey," adding that much evangelizing was "done in secret."[66] This claim was echoed by Erdoğan's interior minister Abdülkadir Asku, who told the Turkish parliament that Christian missionaries exploited religious and ethnic differences and natural disasters to win the hearts of poor people. Having highlighted the secret and subversive nature of this allegedly devious effort, he noted an embarrassingly small success rate: 338 converts to Christianity (and six converts to Judaism) out of 70 million Turks during the previous seven years.[67] Deep Prejudice When Erdoğan, as an Islamist opposition politician, announced in 1997 that "the minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks and the faithful our army" — lines from a poem of by Ziya Gökalp, a nineteenth-century architect of Turkish nationalism based on a synthesis of Islam and Turkish ethnicity — he was not only making a statement about the role of Islam in promoting the interests of the Turkish state but also indicating the unity of religion and nationalism in Turkish perception. As historian Bernard Lewis explained, "One may speak of Christian Arabs — but a Christian Turk is an absurdity and a contradiction in terms. Even today, after thirty-five years of the secular republic, a non-Muslim in Turkey may be called a Turkish citizen, but never a Turk."[68] Much has changed in Turkey over the past half century but not the fundamental character of Turkish nationalism. The Turkish nation still thinks of itself in terms of Islam and Turkish ethnicity, leaving little scope for the full integration of non-Muslims into the life of the nation. Most Christians in Turkey belong to ethnic minorities. In the case of the Greeks and Armenians, they are identified in the public mind with historically hostile states. Roman Catholics and Protestants are linked with the Western powers that imposed humiliating conditions on the Ottoman Empire, notably the capitulations for the protection of non-Muslims and the sponsorship of Christian missionary activity. Four academics of Turkish background have highlighted this Islamo-Turkish supremacism in a 2008 EU-commissioned report. They argued: Despite laicism, the Turkish state has not been able to overcome the segregation of non-Muslim minorities and to integrate them into the nation as citizens with equal rights. While the Muslim Turks have been the "we," the non-Muslim minorities have been categorized as "the other"... they have been rather perceived as "domestic foreigners." The authors make further observations about the prevailing concept of nationality in the context of the need for the state to end religious-based discrimination: republic, the notion of Turkish citizenship was shaped according to the legal context that prevailed before the Tanzimat reforms of 1839. Although the new republic defined itself as a secular state, Sunni Islam has been functional in the nation-building process as a uniting, common cultural factor of the majority of Turkey's inhabitants. A person who is not a Muslim is usually referred to as a minority person or a Turkish citizen, but not a Turk. Turk designates an ethno-religious characteristic of a political community.[69] The extent to which this cultural phenomenon still influences Turkish society at the grassroots level is evident from the findings of an EU-financed public opinion survey conducted in 2008 by two Turkish scholars as a part of the International Social Survey Program. It discovered that
The road from such views to outright discrimination and a heightened threat of violence is very short indeed. Conclusion All available evidence points to the presence of important religious and political elements in the assassination of Bishop Padovese. If truth is to prevail over "pious lies" — as the archbishop of Smyrna desires — Ankara and the Vatican will have to cooperate to ensure a full and transparent enquiry into the bishop's death. The credibility of an enquiry will depend on open examination of the details of the murderous act itself as well as on the broader circumstances surrounding it, including other violent acts of Christophobia and the encouragement of xenophobic attitudes by the media, the entertainment industry, and the educational system. This means penetrating the netherworld of connections between the Turkish government, the deep state, and radical political groups, and examining the institutional sources of Turkish Christophobia. Such a joint investigation, perhaps with the assistance of the deceased bishop's homeland, Italy, or with the United States as Turkey's most important ally, would be an expression of Christian-Muslim dialogue in practice. A government-sponsored campaign to combat Christophobia in Turkish society would demonstrate Turkey's commitment to bring to an end its own historic clash of civilizations and replace it with a strong, equitable alliance of civilizations. In the months that have passed since Padovese's beheading, Erdoğan and his Islamist government have not taken such steps. This failure is a sign of a lack of political will to break from Turkey's historic tradition of Islamic and Turkish supremacism. Unless determination is publicly demonstrated, Turkey will entrench itself still deeper in an Ottoman-oriented Islam that is increasingly at odds with its Christian minorities, its former non-Muslim ally Israel, and the West. The soft power of the modern papacy, with its appeals for religious liberty, can exercise a positive influence on Turkey and the rest of the Islamic world. But Islamic powers can see, as did Stalin, an absence of papal military divisions in the current clash of civilizations. Unless the thoroughly secularized nations of what was once Christendom provide firmer backbone, the Vatican will have little choice but to bend with the breeze. Footnotes [1] According to the International Religious Freedom Report 2009, U.S. Department of State, Washington D.C., there are approximately 90,000 Christians in Turkey. Vatican sources claim a total of 30,000 Catholics. Catholic News Agency (Rome), Nov. 27, 2006.
Contact Dave Nathan at DaveNathan@aol.com
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A REVANCHIST CAUSE CALLED NAKBA
Posted by Hands Fiasco, May 19, 2011. |
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This was written by Sarah Honig and it is archived on her
website
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Another Nakba Day has come and gone with its not-unexpected bloody consequences. The Nakba must be the single most successful revanchist propaganda ploy ever — one which dementedly ultra-tolerant Israel has allowed to gain momentum and become a fixed feature of our surreal existence. Never has a revanchist cause been marketed as effectively. It wasn't so even in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 when France lost Alsace-Lorraine and seethed with patriotic retributionist ardor to reverse its wartime losses. This furious groundswell was then dubbed revanchism (from revanche, French for revenge). Revanchism is inextricably tied to irredentism — the often unsavory nationalist agitation whereby one country claims stretches of another's territory as property belonging to it. World War II resulted from precisely such a lethal combination of revanchism and irredentism. Hitler strove to avenge Germany's World War I defeat and (so he claimed initially) take control of territories populated by German-speakers. He insisted that Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland was Germania Irredenta (unredeemed Germany) — his "last demand in Europe." That border region's German inhabitants, Hitler persuaded a world all-too-eager to be duped, deserve self-determination. Germans cannot live as a minority anywhere. (Just as Arabs can't.) Hitler's next move was to portray Sudeten Germans as oppressed. He staged a circus of provocation charging the "perfidious Czechs" with terrorizing Sudeten women and children and murdering innocent villagers. Sounds familiar? Just substitute Israelis for Czechs and Palestinians for Sudetens. Six months after appeasing democracies let Germany have the Sudetenland, Hitler took all of Czechoslovakia. His "last demand" wasn't final after all. "I saw our enemies in Munich," he later recalled his 1938 powwow with Neville Chamberlain. "They are little worms." Israel's original sin is refusing to surrender without a shot like Czechoslovakia. Its subsequent most cardinal sin was having dared spoil Arab plans for its annihilation. Because Israel impudently remained alive (and kicking), its survival is denigrated as a Nakba — catastrophe. The very term "nakba" bristles with revanchism, and nobody knows better than the volatile, incited Arab masses how to collectively fly off the handle in an orchestrated display of premeditated pseudo-righteous indignation. This is what we face each year — to a lesser or greater extent — on the day they designate to lament the fact that we at all live. Let there be no mistake: The bottom line of their grievance is that not all our forebears perished in the Holocaust, that some had reached this land pre-WWII and that others endured and came here post-WWII. The very assertion that the Nakba resulted wantonly out of the blue from Israel's birth in 1948 is in itself a gross distortion. The conflict didn't begin in 1948 — it reached its culmination then. The Arabs violently opposed the Jewish community which existed in this country pre-WWII and was ripe for statehood before the Holocaust. The "Great Arab Revolt" of 1936-39 — fomented by the still-revered Haj Amin al-Husseini and financed by Nazi Germany — delayed Jewish independence. The Arabs denied asylum here to desperate Jewish escapees from Hitler's hell. Thereby they doomed these refugees to death. The blood of these exterminated Jews indelibly stains Arab hands. But that's not all. Husseini, in the role of pan-Arab prime minister, spent the war years in Berlin, where he hobnobbed with Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann, et al. He broadcast Nazi propaganda, recruited Muslims to the SS and actively foiled the rescue of any Jews, even children, during the Holocaust. The Arabs of this country were avidly pro-Nazi, saluted each other with Heil Hitler, flaunted the swastika, hoarded arms, harbored German spies and planned to heartily welcome Rommel's invading Afrika Korps. The war that the entire Arab world launched against newborn Israel, three years post-Holocaust, was explicitly geared to complete Hitler's unfinished mission. Not only was there no attempt to camouflage this genocidal goal, but it was broadcast boastfully for all to hear and be intimidated. Two weeks pre-attack, on May 1, 1948, Arab League Secretary-General Abdul-Rahman Azzam Pasha declared: "If the Zionists dare establish a state, the massacres we would unleash would dwarf anything which Genghis Khan and Hitler perpetrated." Lest any doubt linger, Azzam reiterated his message the day seven Arab armies attacked: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." But things, alas, didn't turn out as per Azzam's bravado. Ever since, consequently, frustrated Arabs fume with ferocious wrath about being unfairly denied their state under the UN partition plan that they deliberately sabotaged. Murderous Arab rampages already greeted the November 29, 1947 UN General Assembly decision to divide this tiny land into a Palestinian Arab state and a pitifully puny, terrifyingly vulnerable Jewish counterpart (wedged mainly along the coastal highway between Tel Aviv and Netanya). Jerusalem was consigned to international administration, and the entire unlikely shebang was to form one economic unit in the abiding spirit of brotherly love. The pipe dream's single outstanding shortcoming was the palpable paucity of brotherly love. The Arabs set out to thwart the implementation of the UN decision. Now they pose as the hapless victims of the war they instigated. They lost their own war and, ever since, are consumed by the twin rages of irredentism and revanchism. What they call "occupation" doesn't only relate to the territories that came under Israeli control in 1967. Occupation also — and principally — refers to the territories that constitute Israel since 1948. In other words, all of Israel is illegitimate. Israel's very existence is unacceptable. No Jews should be here. It is somehow unfair that by dint of our ancestors' good fortune, they escaped the Holocaust — either before or during its perpetration. That is the historical injustice which Husseini's and Azzam's spiritual heirs and torchbearers lament under the Nakba moniker. Like Hitler and his mouthpiece Goebbels, Arabs honed the skill of disguising their aggressive revanchism and irredentism as wretched victimhood. Exceedingly more than in Czechoslovakia's case, the world is all-too-eager to be duped. Defeat-spawned Arab revanchism is as unjustified as would have been German revanchism after the Third Reich's fall. Essentially our War of Independence was an Arab-plotted epilogue to WWII. Hence the Nakba isn't about the undeserved displacement of innocents, who in all innocence merely yearn for their parents' and grandparents' erstwhile homes. That's why back in 1949, after the first outcry to turn back the clock's hands and repatriate hostile Arabs inside minuscule Israel, David Ben-Gurion determined that "just as it is impossible to resurrect 6,000 of our finest sons and daughters who fell in the War of Independence which the Arabs forced upon us; or heal the thousands maimed in that same Arab onslaught; or bring back the millions who could have been saved from the Holocaust had the Arabs not barred their entry to Eretz Yisrael; or breathe life into all those they massacred before 1948 — so it is impossible for those called Arab refugees to demand the right to return as if nothing had happened."
Contact Hands Fiasco at handsfiasco@webtv.net
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SURVIVOR OF TOTAL HORROR
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, May 19, 2011. |
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Born in Australia, the rapists had been raised to see non-Muslim women as sexual prey. One Skaf supporter reportedly screamed in court, in Arabic: "It's not a crime to f*** a white slut". This was written by Miranda Devine,
a columnist with The Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun.
It was published May 15, 2011 in the Daily Telegraph
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SOMETIMES the most shocking adversity can lead a person to a bright new beginning. That is the case for Anna C, one of the victims of a spate of racist gang rapes that shocked Australia 11 years ago. The gang rapists, Australian-born Lebanese Muslims roamed Sydney hunting for non-Muslim teenage girls they regarded as "Aussie sluts". Ms C was 18 when she was raped 25 times by as many as 14 men, including the notorious Skaf brothers Bilal, then 18 and Mohammed, 17 — in August, 2000. She had been sitting on a train, dressed for a job interview in her best suit, reading The Great Gatsby, when she was approached by the youths. They stole her mobile phone and lured her off the train, raped her in a toilet block and then drove her to a secluded park in Sydney's southwestern suburbs. There she was "passed from group to group to be abused, insulted and defiled," as Justice Michael Finnane described it. "It is hard to believe that young men brought up in modern Australia could behave so much like wild animals." Carloads of youths were summoned by mobile phone: "There's a slut at Bankstown Trotting Club". During her six-hour ordeal, they called her an "Aussie pig", asked if she liked "Leb c**k" and boasted: "I'm going to f*** you Leb style." She suffered every indignity, had a gun held to her head and, at the end, was hosed down like an animal. "I looked in his eyes. I had never seen such indifference," she told the court. Ringleader Bilal Skaf was sentenced to 55 years jail, later reduced to 28 years. It was the harshest sentence ever handed out for rape, reflecting the racist nature of the hate-crimes and Ms C's extraordinary courage and credibility as a witness. Now 29, she suffered depression, had trouble trusting men and had to abandon nursing training because she couldn't bear touching people. But she is now engaged to a "lovely man" and is pregnant with her first child, a son due in July. She has a job she loves, in retail, which has helped her deal with her fear of strangers, and the support of a loving family. "I'm very lucky." At last she has put her ordeal behind her. She met her boyfriend, a specialist mechanic, at a party two years ago, and "I just trusted him straight away. He's quite open and honest — that won me over." Her friends had told him, "something had happened to me. But he's very practically minded. His personality made it very easy for me to trust him. He's incredibly lovely and really protective." As for the rapes: "Generally I try not to think about it. "At the moment I'm so distracted by being pregnant." For the first seven years after the attacks, she locked herself in her mother's house. "I was mistrustful and I figured the easiest way to stay out of trouble was not to go out. I didn't want to deal with strangers. It was very hard. I was trying desperately to get over what had happened. I was trying to find a focus and a path." Highly intelligent, virtually self-educated, books have been her solace and distraction. During the trials she was reading Harry Potter, and currently is reading Sherlock Holmes. The past three years have "been quite good ... it was going back to work that got me out of the funk and back into the real world." The ordeal did change her for the better. "It made me a different person. It changed me to try to be a bit more of a thoughtful person and a bit more cautious. I used to be a little careless. Testifying in court was "the hardest thing I've ever had to do. But I got through it because of my family, who were incredibly supportive". Through the trials and retrials, the rapists laughed at her in court, and at one low point, when she described screaming during the attacks, defence barrister Richard Jankowski told her, "No, you were moaning in pleasure, weren't you". "There were times I just wanted to pull the plug and walk away because it was so gut-wrenching," she says. "But I didn't want them to get away with it. I wanted some measure of justice." Afterwards, she thought about becoming a police officer because "after what I'd gone through I wanted to help other people, but after a while, I didn't think it was such a good idea". Nursing didn't work either. "Nursing was a bit too intimate with people so I shied away from that. The theory part was easy, but then when it got to the practical part and you had to handle people, I couldn't do it." After the false starts, she lucked into the retail job she has today. It brought her in contact with people, but not too close. "There is some sort of barrier, sort of like a veneer between me and them and it got me back into socialising." At the time of the rapes, the problems of Muslim integration in western societies wasn't well understood, but a year later came the September 11 terrorist attacks. She sees her ordeal as, "almost like a precursor to all the stuff that's happened since". Born in Australia, the rapists had been raised to see non-Muslim women as sexual prey. One Skaf supporter reportedly screamed in court, in Arabic: "It's not a crime to f*** a white slut". Ms C helped bring this twisted world view into the light. The courtroom ordeal nearly broke her, but she draws strength from the fact she prevented more rapes. "It got them off the streets," she says. As the Skaf brothers rot in jail, her best revenge is her happy new life. Gabrielle Goldwater is a Member of "Funding for Peace Coalition"
[FPC] (http://eufunding.org.uk) |
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ISRAEL THE BEAUTIFUL: THE RED SEA
Posted by Yehoshua Halevi, May 19, 2011. |
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"When your mouth drops open, click the shutter."
HOW I GOT THE SHOT: There are several possible derivations for the name given the sea which separates Africa from the Arabian Peninsula at the southern tip of the Negev Desert, but none derive from the color of the water itself. For most of the year, the Red Sea is a vibrant blue-green, with darker and lighter hues appearing where the depth of the water changes. Captivated by the rich turquoise and indigo of the deeper waters, I noticed additional colors along the shoreline which nearly complete the full color spectrum or a rainbow, from red to deep violet. This shot was taken in the early afternoon, a time of day I normally shun for the high contrast light, but my greatest obstacle here was finding a path to the middle of the sea that steered clear of the sporting activity on the water. Kiteboarders, swimmers, snorkelers, windsurfers and jetskiers all ran amuck along Eilat's southern coast, but with a little patience, I managed to secure a shot devoid of human life. I debated whether or not to include the strip of white surf and shot images where the sea is both placid and foaming. After reviewing the entire shoot, I decided this added feature gave a small burst of life to the photo without distracting from the beautiful progression of color from red to deep blue. Technical Date: Nikon D700, 28-105 zoom at 46mm, f8 at 1/1000th sec., ISO 400.
Contact Yehoshua Halevi by email at smile@goldenlightimages.com
and visit his website: |
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GOD HELP US ALL
Posted by Norma Zager, May 18, 2011. |
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"Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's life." — Phil Ochs In his speech today Barack Obama said he wants to return Israel to its pre 1967 borders. He then immediately insisted the United States give the Indians back Manhattan Island in return for the $24.00 worth of crap paid by Peter Minuit. The Hispanic community has already called to tell Obama they insist on the return of California to pre Spanish-American war borders while a slew of lawsuits were filed against the US by Apache, Hopi and numerous other Native American tribes. President Obama said the idea that countries should keep conquered lands is Un-American and against national values. Despite the fact Israel was attacked by the entire Arab world repeatedly, but beat them down with their army until they had to be pulled off, Obama said the poor Arabs are entitled to their land back. He then called Israel an uncooperative and aggressor nation and also noted that many Jews had the audacity to even fight back when led into the camps to be killed during World War II. The American President also suggested the US forgive the debts of their Middle Eastern friends, because he bragged, "Americans don't need the money." He said he has also called for a meeting with Donald Trump to discuss donating Trump Towers and Trump Plaza to the Indians for a casino on Fifth Avenue. Obama said that going to war with other nations and interfering with their inner government workings is wrong and he cannot sanction such behavior. He was interrupted by a call from Hillary Clinton to secure his permission to increase the use of drones in Afghanistan and send troops into Libya to oust Gaddafi. He pointed out that his interference in Egypt to overthrow Mubarak and install the Muslim Brotherhood in power had nothing to do with the fact Egypt was Israel's only friend in the Middle East. He reiterated how much he loved the Jewish people and would protect Israel, then announced he was appointing Louis Farrakhan Under-Secretary of State for Middle East affairs. American Jewish leaders were quick to applaud Obama's appointment saying, "We love him and we know he is looking out for our best interests." The American Nazi Party announced they will hold a celebration in Obama's honor Tuesday and issued the following statement. "We are certain the President is in line with our ideals as an organization. His stance on the Middle East has brought happiness and a new sense of hope to our cause. The Fuehrer would be so proud." Obama is expected to enter discussions next month with British Prime Minister Cameron about the return of the Thirteen Colonies and war reparations to Britain. The British government said in the spirit of friendship it is returning its conquered lands including the Falkland Islands to their rightful owners. Legal experts from Harvard University said these land returns could start a new wave of cooperation throughout the world, and then placed armed guards at Harvard's entrance to protect students from the rioting British outside. 
Queen Elizabeth II has filed suit in the name of King George III, her 3rd great grandfather, in the international court in The Hague, alleging he was of unsound mind when he allowed the colonists to take British land. "My ancestor was not of his right mind and thus a terrible mistake occurred during his reign. We intend to actively seek reparations from the United States and are hopeful our case will prevail. I have had my eye on an estate in Kennebunkport, Maine, for quite a while, but the Royal Wedding was expensive so once the US is returned I can move right in." Upon hearing the Queen's message Obama quipped. "I will play her three games of one on one for the entire east coast." Reporters in the room broke into uncontrollable fits of laughter and noted the President's quick wit and great sense of humor. French President Sarkozy has planned a trip to New Orleans this summer where he intends to investigate legal records of the Louisiana Purchase to ensure the US "didn't pull a fast one there." Meanwhile in California, lawmakers are checking out rumors Arnold signed San Diego over to his mistress and baby mama while in office. Gloria Allred, representing the mistress, sobbed openly as she held the baby mama's hand. "This poor woman was only making fifty thousand a year and living a secret. One city in her name is the least Arnold can do to make up for the horrible way she was treated." Responding to Obama's newest plan for Israel, Netanyahu told reporters: "We are looking forward to the next visit by our good friend Barack Obama. We have a special welcome planned for him that is being co-hosted by Mubarak. We can hardly wait until he gets here to show him all the love."
Contact Ari Bussel and Norma Zager at busselari@gmail.com
Note: The cartoon by Sean Delonas was not part of the original
article. It was published May 25, 2011 by the New York Post.
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FROM ISRAEL; A CLOSER LOOK
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 18, 2011. |
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I start today by recommending an article, "Can Obama recognize the 'Nakba' nakba," by Gil Troy: "President Barack Obama came to town riding on a series of assumptions about the Middle East. But the region's harsh realities have contradicted his fanciful notions...This week's Nakba Day violence revealed that Israel's existence since 1948, not its occupation since 1948, remains the Palestinians' target. Obama must recognize that this "Nakba" nakba — the Palestinians' catastrophic reading of Israel's founding as a catastrophe — damages peace prospects. Yet again, Palestinians seem more committed to destroying Israel than building their own state. "...Yet the Palestinians have snookered the world, seeking a free pass for violence, incitement, delegitimization, extermination and intransigence. World leaders function as the great enables of Palestinian dysfunction, rationalizing Palestinians' political culture of negation and hatred while according them special treatment...(emphasis added) ~~~~~~~~~~ I have shared this article because I consider that it is insightful and offers a helpful perspective on many levels. Having said this, however, I find I must take issue with one point: There is the implication, particularly as Obama is cited, that threatening Jews with destruction evokes in us a negative response that makes us resistant to working towards peace. Thus, if the Palestinians want peace, they should stop using this language, because otherwise we won't trust them. This perspective reduces the issue to one of semantics: the Jews are sensitive (perhaps exceedingly so because of their history), so watch your language and how it might affect them. But no! If we Jews are "sensitive," it's because we know the depths to which mankind is capable of sinking. And if we respond forcefully to talk by Palestinians of destroying us, it is because we know this is more than talk — but rather a reflection of an intention. Especially is this so as the Palestinian Arabs have an immediate historical link to the Nazis. It's not a question of the Palestinian Arabs working to clean up their language. Only when the Palestinian Arabs eradicate from their thinking any intent to destroy us — which will automatically eliminate their need to talk of destroying us — will we be able to trust them and truly discuss peace. ~~~~~~~~~~ According to Gil Hoffman, who is a political analyst for the JPost, the "right flank" of the Likud party — which was initially upset with suggestions in Netanyahu's speech that we might give up parts of Judea and Samaria outside of the main settlement blocs — was mollified once he explained. He was merely stating what he saw as the consensus in Israel, he told them, not stating his own opinion. Even Minister of Security Affairs, Moshe Ya'alon, said this at a conference: "The prime minister tried in his speech to outline the views of the Israeli consensus." Just call me dubious. I'm not buying it. Would he talk about making hard sacrifices if he didn't mean it himself? And I'm not alone here. For Hoffman writes that "a minister in the Inner Security Cabinet, and multiple advisers to Netanyahu, confirmed that when he spoke about keeping the settlements in the blocs, the prime minister did intend to infer that settlements outside the blocs were open for negotiations." The question here is why members of the Likud on the right are so ready to allow themselves to be pacified. ~~~~~~~~~~ There was Netanyahu, suggesting that under the right circumstances we might give up areas — and communities — in Judea and Samaria that are not part of major settlement blocs. This would have to be seen as a "conciliatory" move on his part — whether we like his having made this move or not. Did this make Obama happy? Don't know. But from the PA we should not have expected anything other than a slap in the face in response. And a slap in the face is what we got. The Palestinian news agency WAFA today cited Abbas as saying: "The Israeli government's refusal to stop settlement building and to determine clear references [i.e., a "framework"] for the peace process were the reason that talks have stopped." ~~~~~~~~~~ Meanwhile Hamas spokesman Mahmoud al-Zahar, cited by Al-Quds, has made it clear that the movement's official stance is one of "resistance" and not negotiations. In fact, he indicated that the Hamas government in Gaza had not given Abbas permission to negotiate with Israel once the unity government is formed. "We do not agree to such negotiations and do not encourage them — just the opposite." ~~~~~~~~~~ Meetings designed to advance that unity government were held in Cairo yesterday and Monday. The Fatah delegation was headed by Central Committee member Azzam al-Ahmed and the Hamas delegation by vice politburo chief Mousa Abu Marzouk. According to a statement released by both sides, they discussed how to form the new government, the date for the meeting of the Palestinian Liberation Organization's executive committee and how to address the repercussions of division between the factions. (This last being most interesting and enlightening, I think.) Additional meetings are to be held in Gaza, Ramallah and then again in Cairo during the coming weeks. in order to select the officials for that unity government. This is where the possibility of "division between the factions" is likely to become most evident: Fatah is advancing Salam Fayyad for another term as prime minister, while Hamas has put forth another name. Fatah members are arguing that Fayyad will give the new unity government credibility in Europe, and they're not wrong. The Europeans are that prepared to be duped. ~~~~~~~~~~ The PA, largely out of fear of local unrest in the absence of democratic process, had, some weeks ago, announced that municipal elections would be held on July 9; although it was understood at that time that Hamas would not permit those elections in Gaza. Now the elections have been postponed until October 22, "to provide the proper atmosphere to hold the elections in the entire Palestinian territories" — that is, in the hopes that a unity government would make it possible for voting to proceed in Gaza too. ~~~~~~~~~~ The Mavi Marmara, the ship that tried with disastrous results to breach Israel's maritime blockade of Gaza last year, was damaged in its confrontation with Israeli military. The Turkish Islamist organization IHH, identified by Israel as terrorist, was an organizing force in that flotilla fiasco, and is now planning a second go-round at the end of June. IHH has announced that the Mavi Marmara, which sits in port in Istanbul, has been repaired and is ready to sail. It is being claimed that 10,000 people are seeking to participate in the flotilla. IHH President Bulent Yildirim declared recently, "Even if we sacrifice shahids (martyrs) for this cause, we will be on the side of justice...We are not afraid, and want to convey the message to Israel that we are coming." And with this we see the difficulty of what confronts Israel: We are dealing with an enemy that has no regard for life, and is willing to sacrifice life — via provocation that invites response — in order to make Israel look bad. The organizers say that they intend to send $100 million in aid on the flotilla. But this is a PR ruse, for so much is going through the land crossings to Gaza these days that some goods have been shipped out of Gaza via tunnels to the Sinai, where the need is greater. Israel is always happy to unload material aid at the port in Ashdod, and, after checking it for weaponry and materials that could be used to manufacture weapons, to send it via land to Gaza. No ship, however, will be permitted to directly approach the coast of Gaza, and this is precisely what will be attempted. The blockade Israel maintains, which is totally legal within international law, is neither idle nor arbitrary — it is, rather, an attempt to prevent a sworn enemy of Israel from increasing its armaments. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info |
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92-YEAR-OLD ARAB GLOATS OVER 1929 RAPE-MASSACRE, WANTS ENCORE
Posted by Julia Gorin, May 18, 2011. |
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Muslim family values. Check out this sweet 92-year-old Palestinian granny gloating about how her family and friends slaughtered the Jews in Hebron who had been their neighbors for 20 years before the big "catastrophe" of Israeli statehood ever happened. Helen Thomas hasn't aged a day! Here's my video response to Granny. I actually made it in 2002: click here for video. Israel National News/Arutz Sheva provides some "Photos of the victims of the massacre, which eventually led to the evacuation of all Jews from Hevron, until their return in 1967": The massacre eventually led to the evacuation of all Jews from Hevron, until their return in 1967: This below was written by Gil Ronen, a writer for Arutz-7. This essay appeared today in Arutz-7 (www.IsraelNationNews.com). |
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As the world is subjected to a hail of propaganda from Arabs regarding the 1948 "disaster" inflicted upon them by the creation of the state of Israel, Arab press watchdog MEMRI has released a video that places the Arab claims in perspective. In the video, a 92-year-old Arab woman, originally from Hevron, glowingly recalls on Hamas-Gaza TV how the Arabs of Hevron, including her father, without provocation, massacred the peaceful Jewish neighbors they had lived beside for years in 1929 — almost 20 years before the 1948 War of Independence. Needless to say, there was no State of Israel then, no IDF, no "occupation" etc. To watch the video click HERE. In an orgy of sadistic violence on August 24, 1929, 67 of Hevron's Jews were murdered. The Arabs murdered children in front of their parents, severed limbs, raped and burned people alive. The British High Commissioner in the Land of Israel, Sir John Chancellor, published a statement following the massacre, saying, I have learned with horror of the atrocious acts committed by bodies of ruthless and bloodthirsty evil-doers, of savage murders perpetrated upon defenseless members of the Jewish population regardless of age or sex, accompanied as at Hebron, by acts of unspeakable savagery, of the burning of farms and houses in town and country and of the looting and destruction of property. |
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SELF-DESTRUCTIVE JEWISH GUILT
Posted by Barbara Ginsberg, May 18, 2011. |
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This below was written by Rabbi Meir Kahane in January 1988. If you did not receive this article personally and would like to, contact me at: BarbaraAndChaim@gmail.com To view previoulsy sent Rabbi Kahane articles go to:
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There is a specter haunting Israel and its American Jewish supporters. It is called guilt. Guilt over the "repression of Palestinian human rights". Guilt over the refusal to remove "the main obstacle to peace in the Middle East — the occupation of the Arab land seized in 1967". Guilt over the unwillingness to give the "Palestinians" their own state in the "occupied lands". And now, guilt over the killing of "Palestinians" and innocent civilians in the "Occupied territories". It is a powerful weapon, this guilt; Jews have a difficult time coping with it. A people that has been the most debased of losers for 2,000 years finds it difficult to cope with victory. It finds it extraordinary difficult to remain normal. It inherits insecurities, complexes, guilt. It begins to believe its enemies' slanders. It loses its self-respect and longs for the love of a hating world. That is especially true for the Jewish liberal! It is important that those who have retained their self-esteem and sense of Jewish survival speak out against the disease of guilt and moral insecurity. No guilt. Are the lands of 1967, "occupied" by the Jews, the main obstacle to peace? Is the year 1967 the origin of the conflict? How peaceful it must have been in 1966 when Sinai and Gaza were in Egyptian hands and the Golan was possessed by the Syrians to shell, for 19 years, the Jewish settlements below, and when Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem were in the hands of the "moderate" King Hussein. Why did they go to war? What did they want then? When they had all the "occupied lands" before they were "occupied"? When one has East Jerusalem and attacks Israel, can it be that he desires West Jerusalem? And Tel Aviv? And can it be that that is what they really want again? Now? And why did the "innocent Palestinian women and children" take to the streets then, in 1967, when Jordan and Egypt ruled them to call for "Israel in the sea"? What "occupied lands" did they want back then? And could it be that that is what they want now? And what did they wish in 1947 when they rejected the "Palestine" state offered them by the United Nations and went to war, killing fully 1 % of the Jewish population? And what did they wish in the riots of 1936-38 when there was no country called Israel and they murdered more than 500 Jews? And in 1929 when no "Zionist occupation troops" were in Hebron, why did the "Palestinians" rise up to murder 67 Jews in one day? And why the pogroms in Jerusalem and Jaffa in 1920 and 1921? What troubles the Arabs is the very presence of large numbers of Jews in the land, and Israel of any size. Zionism. That is what troubles the Arabs. That is the obstacle to peace. Let us inscribe that on our hearts lest we open the doors to a repetition-on a grand scale-of that which the Arabs have done to Jews since 1920. A horror of slaughter by knives and axes. And the bearers of guilt would do just that. No guilt. There is one sublime reason why we should not give up a centimeter of land...it belongs to us. If we have no right to Judea and Samaria and Gaza, then we indeed have no right to Tel Aviv. Abraham did not walk on Dizengoff Street nor did our ancestors live in Israeli cities that were built in the 20th century. But Abraham, who lived in Hebron, and Jacob who lived in Shechem, now Nablus, and David in Bethlehem are the sole legitimate reasons that Jews can lay claim to a Tel Aviv and the kibbutzim of the guilt-ridden Left. The land belongs to us because the G-d of Israel, creator and Titleholder of all lands, gave it to us. No guilt. There is no such thing as a "Palestinian people". They are Arabs, part of the Arab nation, possessor of 21 lands. Let them live in peace in any or all of them. But there are no "Palestinians". It was the Roman emperor Hadrian who, after the Jewish revolt against the Romans, angrily erased the name of the state, Judea, and invented the name "Palestine" after the Philistines. In every normal case, an existing people gives its name to a land. The Franks named it France and the Angles, England, and the Germanics, Germany. Only in this ludicrous case does a Roman invent a name, give it to a land, and the arriving Arab trespassers become "Palestinians". One presumes that had Hadrian not changed the name, Israel today would be fighting Yasir Arafat and the Judean terrorists. There are no "Palestinians" and there is no "Palestine" in the land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael. No guilt. The "Palestinian" civilians in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Lebanon cheered and supported every P.L.O murder and terror of Jews. They are united in hatred of Israel. It would be nicer if they did not stone our soldiers and try to kill Jews. It would be nicer if they did not rise up in revolt in order to force us out of Judea, Samaria and Gaza as the first step to the elimination of the State of Israel. But since they do, let Jews not allow themselves to be destroyed by "Palestinian" women and children. And if the only way to survive is to take the lives of people who attack us we have no choice. I wonder how many Americans and British and French mourned and protested the killing of German civilians during World War II bombings of Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden? There is nothing ethical about dying or anything moral about another holocaust. There is nothing immoral about winning and nothing necessarily noble in a loser. Let us cast off the chains of guilt and reject the accusations of its bearers. The greatness of Judaism is its spirit, but no spirit can survive without a living body. If we do not want to kill Arabs — and we don't; and if we want to put an end to the nightly television pictures of violence; and if we do not want to see those pictures tomorrow inside Israel itself, with Israeli Arabs fighting soldiers; and if we do not want to see the threat of Arab demography destroying the Jewish State — then let us have the courage to take the one difficult but immutable step that will free us of all this and guarantee a Jewish State: Remove the Arabs from the land and let them live with their brothers and sisters in any of the 22 Arab states. Anything short of that will see the horrors of today escalated a hundred-fold tomorrow. And let us not fear the world. Those who stood by during the Holocaust and when Israel faced destruction in 1948 and 1967 have nothing to tell us. Faith in the G-d of Israel and a powerful Jewish army are the only guarantors of Jewish survival. Let us not fear the world. Far better a Jewish State that survives and is hated by the world, than an Auschwitz that brings us its love and sympathy. No guilt Rather faith in G-d and a return to authentic Torah laws; rather pride and strength, and the love of our people rather than the enemy that would destroy us. That is sanity; that is Judaism.
Contact Barbara Ginsberg at barbaraandchaim@gmail.com |
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BIBI, BARACK AND TOM FRIEDMAN
Posted by Israel Behind the News, May 18, 2011. |
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This was written by Dr. Michael Widlanski. He has studied and worked in several Arab countries, teaches Arab politics and communication at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is a former reporter, correspondent and editor, respectively, at The New York Times, The Cox Newspapers-Atlanta Constitution, and The Jerusalem Post, serving as a special advisor to Israeli delegations to peace talks in 1991-1992 and as Strategic Affairs Advisor to the Ministry of Public Security, editing secret PLO Archives captured in Jerusalem. He is currently completing a book on Arab-Islamic terror. |
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Reading a Tom Friedman column on Bibi and Barack is to take a step into a virtual reality show, where the director, Tom Friedman, says there will be no connection to any real facts or any real history. Rather the director, Tom Friedman, will superimpose a virtual reality of wishful thinking and pet prejudices that will serve as a new substitute reality. In the new Tom-Friedman-directed reality, the Arabs are surging towards peace and democracy in a Barack-Obama-driven world. Arab oil prices are stable and low out of gratitude to Sheriff Barack, who drilled Osama Bin-Laden, and is about to drill for oil off-shore, perhaps in one Gulf (Mexican) or the other (Persian). And, yes, he is also about to "drill" Bibi Netanyahu, the villain who has come to town. Tom the Director has the tough and decisive sheriff read a few lines to the world's new outlaw — Bibi Netanyahu: "Yo, Bibi, you better get out of them thar West Bank settlements by sunset, or you're gonna be pushing up daisies, pilgrim." According to Tom the Director's script: Bibi, the black-hatted villain surrenders and leaves or gets shot down at high noon on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Arabs in the audience cheer and everyone rolls in oil and a surging economy. Yup. You-betcha. That's Tom's World — flat and wishful. Barack Obama is John Wayne as the Sheriff. Tom Friedman is director John Ford, and Benjamin Netanyahu is the evil and villainous rancher-rustler-"dirty Injun" who gets "run off the reservation." As a virtual reality show this only nets a small audience, because most of us recall where this kind of script has gone before. But Director-Screen Writer Tom Friedman has apparently not learned or perhaps forgotten the plot line from the real world. In the real world, Sheriff Barack Obama's attempt in 2009-2010 to impose terms on Israel caused the worst setback in 20 years of Arab-Israeli negotiations. Obama demanded and got an Israeli settlement freeze that goaded the "moderate" PLO "leadership" of Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Marshal Abu-Mazen in some scripts) to refuse even to talk to Israel about anything. This was quite an achievement for Sheriff Barack and Director Tom. Let's remember that other sheriffs have also had their own virtual scripts, too. Deputy Sheriff Condoleezza Rice demanded that Israel allow Hamas to take over Gaza in the 2006 "elections," and this led to a new terror state in Gaza. But Deputy Condi cannot equal Sheriff Barack. Sheriff Barack also tried to talk sweet to the Islamist government of Turkey, the ayatollahs of Iran and what Deputy Hillary called the "reformers" of Syria. We have all seen the success of that virtual reality script. Sheriff Barack made his first foreign speech in Turkey that was once the hope of a truly modernized Muslim community. Now, it has returned to the dark side of Islamism. Sheriff Barack even sent an ambassador to Syria where they tried to build a nuclear reactor with the help of Iran and North Korea. Iran is continuing its own nuclear weapons program. Most of us who have seriously studied and lived in Arab countries know that Israel is a familiar excuse — but not a real cause — for any of the problems or turmoil inside the Arab countries. There is widespread Arab yearning for better government and for an end tofasaad (corruption, in Arabic). There is also a tremendous yearning for better jobs and opportunities for real careers, especially among the educated youth, and there is a search for a more normal role for women. None of this has anything to do with Israel, and it has nothing to do with Israeli "settlements," which (sorry about this, Tom) are completely legal (take a look at the League of Nations resolutions, San Remo documents, etc). The only way to bring a chance for more peace and development in the Middle East is "to get real," not to be surreal. This seat-of-the-pants analysis is not real analysis. Israel is real. It is also a successful democratic state, though not a perfect one. In some respects, it is much more successful and democratic even than Britain, France, and the United States. For example, it has a lower unemployment rate, and it successfully absorbed more immigrants than any other country in the world. Tom Friedman and the other surreal pundits should stop trying to bully Israel or to re-draw Israel in the image of its neighbors. Rather they should encourage Israel's neighbors to face their own problems the way Israel has faced its problems. Israeli prime ministers are not villains. Whenever a classroom had to be built or a water carrier or sewer needed fixing in Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, Golda Meir or David Ben-Gurion did not ride into the United Nations or the White House and claim that all the problems were caused by the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Iranians etc. Rather, they tried to fix the problem. So, the first step for the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Iranians and Tom Friedman is: get real. As Israel's prime minister comes to town, Tom Friedman and his ilk should not be organizing an Obama-Osama greeting card. David Bedein is Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency. (http://Israelbehindthenews.com). He is president of Center for Near East Policy Research. Contact him by email at media@actcom.co.il This article is archived at
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JUDAISM GOT HIJACKED
Posted by Barbara Sommer, May 17, 2011. |
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This was written by Stella Paul and it appeared in American Thinker Contact her at stellapundit@aol.com |
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Forget all the caterwauling about radical Muslims hijacking a great religion. The real story of our time is the hijacking of Judaism, the five-thousand-year-old bedrock of the West, by a clique of far-left cranks intent on bringing down the twin towers of Judeo-Christian civilization. These deadly dangerous malcontents would have you believe that Judaism is whatever Marxist codswallop they all agreed to twitter about today. Not so. Judaism is an eternal and unyielding moral code, enforced by a strict but loving God who demands justice. And at its beating heart lies Israel. Don't believe the phony act of "more in sorrow than anger" that these "Jewish leaders" put on as they throw Israel to the wolves. The tiny Jewish State is an infuriating hindrance to their dreams of a Universalist utopia, in which they dance around maypoles with adoring throngs of free-range, organic, transgendered Muslims. Israel is the very opposite of Universalist; it's the specific land that God assigned to His chosen people, as told in the Torah. Unforgivably, embarrassingly, Israel is just so...Jewish. And so these malicious nutjobs infiltrated the cockpit, grabbed the controls, and are now flying Judaism headlong into disaster. They pay for Jewish students from the University of California to go to Israel and secretly meet with Hamas. Astoundingly, they turned New York's artsy Bard College into an official terrorist training ground, where students can learn how to "safely" insert their bodies into Israel Defense Force operations, thereby helping terrorists get away. They use their considerable talents to pen poisonous books, plays, movies, and articles, besmirching the Jewish State with lies — and then they use the Jewish community's dwindling supply of cash to disseminate the lies. They lobby Congress on behalf of Iran and Palestinians and tirelessly work to undermine Israel's economy through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. And, of course, these loyal comrades ruthlessly seek to destroy anyone brave enough to speak the truth or question their navigational system. But in the back of the plane, the stunned passengers are unbuckling their seatbelts. While the mad progressives in the cockpit chortle in anticipatory triumph, the resistance is forming. Take, for instance, the recent descent into anti-Israel insanity by the Reform movement, America's largest Jewish denomination. For its new leader, it chose a board member of J Street, yet another Soros front group. J Street, which repeatedly lied about taking money from Soros, gets the rest of its funds from a mysterious lady in Hong Kong named Consolacion Esdicul, who's linked to major gambling interests, and from wealthy Arabs in the Middle East. Supposedly, Reform Jews will rush to frolic under multicultural rainbows with Rabbi Richard Jacobs and his J Street agenda. What "peace lover" could possibly object to J Street's supporting sanctions against Israel, but opposing sanctions against Iran? Shouldn't we all be happy that J Street endorsed the blood libels of the Goldstone Report and applauds U.N. resolutions condemning Israel? Why should any Jew worry that after the depraved murder of the Fogel family, J Street furiously tried to squash a congressional letter decrying Palestinian incitement? But an ad hoc group called Jews Against Divisive Leadership does object, loudly and strenuously, with an ad in Jewish papers stating that Jacobs "does not represent the pro-Israel policies cherished by Reform Jews" and will "drive mainstream Zionist Jews out of the Reform movement." Rest assured, the Reform Stalinists in the cockpit responded with their customary "constructive engagement." A board member wrote a letter to the ad's sponsors, threatening that "your names will not be forgotten [...] and will be remembered when you [...] look for a position on a committee or employment." (Sources say that the letter was signed "Tony Sopranostein.") Fortunately, the ad's sponsors refuse to be intimidated, and another ad may soon be on its way. Now let's turn to New York, where the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (yes, the poison apple does not fall far from the tree) nominated Israel-bashing Jewish playwright Tony Kushner for an honorary degree from the City University of New York. (This is on top of Kushner's Pulitzer Prize for Best Dramatic Metaphor comparing Israel to Nazis.) A brave and principled CUNY Trustee by the name of Jeffrey Wiesenfeld objected to the award, noting that Kushner had accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing." Wiesenfeld prevailed for a moment, but the likelihood of him actually stopping Kushner's award was about as big as Hadassah holding a successful fund drive in Mecca. After an enjoyable few days of wallowing in his martyrdom, Kushner got his award back. Yet the story may not be over. Distinguished alumni and faculty wrote a letter to CUNY's Board of Trustees defending the much maligned Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, demanding that the Board investigate "the assault on Jews at the City University, disguised as anti-Israelism," and promising that "we will not sit by idly and allow this cancer to grow." Note to investigation committee: start by finding out why the Palestinian flag will fly at CUNY's graduation. All over the country, the Jewish rank and file is waking up, and raucous rebellion is building. The list of feisty grassroots organizations seems to grow by the day, from Stand With Us to Z Street, Jewish Action Alliance, JCC Watch, Americans for a Safe Israel, Fuel for Truth, the Jewish American Affairs Committee of Indiana, Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, and many, many more. The suicidal pretend Jews who hijacked our great religion may be at the controls, but someone is knocking on the cockpit door. Are you ready? Let's roll. Contact Stella Paul at Stellapundit@aol.com. |
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NADIA'S OLIVE TREE
Posted by Nurit Greenger, May 17, 2011. |
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The Jewish tradition ascribes special importance to the seven species or fruit that glory the land of Israel and they are seven kinds of tumors mentioned in the verse in Deuteronomy that describes the fertile agricultural land Israel: "For the Lord your God brings you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, springs, and groundwater coming out in the valley and mountain, country of wheat and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey." Honey is mentioned in the verse means the palm tree fruit, the Date from which one produces Date's honey Nadia Matar heads Women in Green, an organization that has the state of Israel interest at heart. One of Nadia's passions is to make sure that the Arabs do not continue stealing land from Israel, which the Government of Israel does not see fit to do. As far as the Israeli Government is concerned, the phenomenon of Arabs encroachment on state land goes on with impunity. Nadia's method to stop, as much as possible, Arabs' Arab encroachment on Jewish land is simple; she goes with as many volunteers as possible and they plant olive trees, one of the seven kinds the land of Israel is blessed with. They plant the olive trees on state-owned land the Arabs have already put their a foot on and then will claim it is theirs. So, in reality, Nadia, in her zealous love for Israel, is protecting the deed to the land, a job the Government of Israel declines to perform. The story below
(Activists Arrested After Being Attacked By Arabs',
1. The Arabs, roaming on Jewish land are thugs, vandals and lawless. Their handlers, whoever they are, egg them on to steal Jewish Land, as part of a larger scheme of getting as much Jewish land as possible under their control. The Government of Israel of the other hand, does not prevent the Arabs' actions and does not take measures against them. 2. The Israeli bodies, whether the Civil Administration officials, the police or army either lack judgment or they are scared of the Arabs. State owned land is state owned land, so why were Nadia Matar and Yehudit Katzover arrested before it was concluded to whom the land, on which they planted olive trees, belong? Why did all those whom Nadia called to come help her to push the Arabs away took the Arabs' word that she was the aggressor and took her into custody? After all, they knew Nadia and her people planted trees on state land, they just pretended they did not? Or, they could have taken the survey maps Nadia was going by and decide if she was in the wrong or not. Something smells very bad here. 3. The Government of Israel's bodies appear to be anti-Jews and pro Arabs. This is a policy Defense Minister Ehud Barak implemented and has since penetrated all the entities that are paid by Jewish tax payers to defend Israel and its citizens, not the Arabs. This is an upside down behavior the least to say. Why do Israeli citizens have to create a confrontation with the Israeli government, thus force the authorities to stand up for the Jewish People, for the State rights? 4. We are seeing here a Lefty behavior that is an obstruction of Jewish justice. This kind of behavior is permeating though the Israeli academia, its courts and media. Such behavior is subverting the State of Israel, by Israelis. I live in the United State and I am a staunch supporter and defender of the State of Israel. When I read about such incident I wonder, if Israelis cannot defend their own state land, who am I to be able to defend the Jewish State from aboard? When I read that the Government of Israel's authorities work against the Interest of the state, whereby, instead of supporting the brave actions of staunch Zionists, like Nadia Matar and Yehudit Katzover, then why fight Israel's fight? I am aghast and sickened and demand an immediate change in favor of Jews; I hope many of you think and feel the very same. Contact Nurit Greenger by email at nurit.nuritg@gmail.com. Visit her blog:
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FROM ISRAEL: THE PRIME MINISTER'S TALK
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 17, 2011. |
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Prime Minister Netanyahu gave a talk in the Knesset last night, in recognition of the 107th anniversary of the death of Theodore Herzl, father of the Jewish State. This talk is widely considered to have set the tone for what we can expect when Netanyahu addresses Congress in a few days. He said much that was good, as he addressed issues of national unity, but made one very serious misstep. A misstep that had been much worried about and anticipated. ~~~~~~~~~~ Portions of that speech (with all emphases added): "...two days ago at the demonstration in Bil'in [an Arab village that demonstrates ostensibly because of the security fence], the cat was let out of the bag — more precisely, the key was let out of the bag. At the procession in Bil'in, a young girl was walking along holding a large symbolic key. Every Palestinian knows what that key symbolizes. This is not a key to their homes in Bil'in, Ramallah or Nablus. It is the key to our homes in Jaffa, Acre, Haifa and Ramle. My friends, the root of this conflict never was a Palestinian state, or lack thereof. The root of the conflict is, and always has been, their refusal to recognize the Jewish state. It is not a conflict over 1967, but over 1948, over the very existence of the State of Israel. You must have noticed that yesterday's events did not occur on June 5, the anniversary of the Six Day War. They occurred on May 15, the day the State of Israel was established. The Palestinians regard this day, the foundation of the State of Israel, their nakba, their catastrophe. But their catastrophe was that they did not have a leadership that was willing to reach a true historic compromise between the Palestinian people and the Jewish people. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info |
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EUROPE REDISCOVERS ITS BORDERS
Posted by Seth J. Frantzman, May 17, 2011. |
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The mass of people making their way to EU countries as a result of the Arab Spring has tested the wisdom of the EU's Schengen Agreement. Every once in a while, people rediscover something they previously knew. The greatest symbol of this phenomenon was Raphael's fresco The School of Athens, completed in 1511, which showcased how Renaissance Europe was breathing new life into Greek philosophy. But one might also look to Columbus's "discovery" of America. Not only had it obviously already been discovered by people crossing a land-bridge from Asia, but there is compelling evidence that the Vikings even had a colony at Newfoundland in the 11th century. Now it seems Europe is rediscovering its borders after 25 years. In 1985, on the Moselle riverboat Princess Marie-Astrid, five European countries signed the Schengen Agreement. Under its conditions, West Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and The Netherlands would abolish passport checks in favor of visual surveillance at border crossings. The Schengen Area was incorporated into the main body of European Union laws, known as the acquis communautaire, in 1997. This meant that all EU member states would be bound by these conventions, which basically abolished many functions associated with borders. New EU member states must implement the convention, that calls for free movement of goods and people. There are several exceptions. Norway and Iceland are not part of the EU, but are signatories to the Schengen agreement. England and Ireland, both of which are part of the EU, have an opt-out right under the Schengen agreement, which means they maintain the right to determine who enters their countries from other EU states. By 2008, 25 states had eliminated their internal borders. Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the EU in 2007, are still in the process of implementing the Schengen agreement. All countries have the right, under Article 2.2 of the treaty, to temporarily suspend the agreement, usually for less than 30 days, if they feel their national security is threatened. France re-imposed some restrictions in the wake of the 2005 bombing attacks in London. Several countries have imposed border checks due to large sporting events like the World Cup, apparently to interdict soccer hooligans. Problems with Schengen have begun to wear on those states that have embraced it. The UK and Ireland have complained that workers from Eastern European EU countries have exploited the agreement to move in, take over jobs and get benefits. In one comment on a travel website named vegabondjourney.com in 2010, a man wrote: "come in to uk thay [sic] let every polish person in even if thay carnt [sic] speak english, any one can claim benifits [sic] so why not everyone." The problem with Schengen is that it applies to all members of the EU, but each country still has the ability to grant residency, citizenship and refugee/asylum status to individuals without consulting the other countries. This means that a person obtaining asylum in one country may end up as a burden on another. Many of those wishing to immigrate or work in Europe come from Africa and the Middle East, and usually attempt to cross into Europe via Greece or Italy. Their intention is to get through the border controls that these "front line" states have in place and, once in Europe, exploit the open borders to move where they want. This means that all the internal European countries must rely on the efficiency and zealousness of Italians and Greeks — qualities for which neither country is particularly known — to safeguard their immigration laws. The flood of refugees from North Africa in the aftermath of the revolution in Tunisia and the rebellion in Libya has put huge strains on the agreement. In February, the Hungarian president of the EU summoned the interior ministers of several member countries to "look at ways of preventing Arab refugees from flooding Europe. They acknowledged that this is not only a problem for member states in Southern Europe, but also for the entire EU," according to a report on europa-nu.nl. In April, Italy granted around 20,000 Tunisians temporary residency permits. Prior to this, the 20,000, almost all men, had been the responsibility of Italy's border police, who were forced to house them on Italian islands to which they had fled. But the day after the men received EU permits, they began moving to Tunisia's former colonial ruler, France, where some had family ties. In response, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's office declared that "the governance of Schengen is failing. It seems there is a need to reflect on a mechanism that will allow a temporary suspension of the agreement, in case of a systemic failure of an external (EU) border..., to intervene through a provisional suspension, until such time as the weakness is corrected." France saw itself being invaded by unemployed men, some of whom began living in parks in Paris and elsewhere. Sarkozy initially attempted to close the Italian border to the Tunisians, but under pressure from human rights groups and warnings from the EU, he opened it again. Now Denmark has gone further than France, re-imposing checkpoints and customs at its land border with Germany and the bridge that links it to Sweden. Fifteen other EU member states support curtailing the most liberal policies of Schengen. Andrei Fedyashin of the newspaper RIA Novosti commented that "it appears that Europe has succumbed to good old xenophobia." A May 14 headline at the Independent screamed, "Europe is in danger of eroding one of its greatest achievements," and the editorial claimed that "making it easier for EU member states to close their borders is the worst possible response." Yet the Schengen agreement itself was, in a sense, xenophobic. It was initially signed by countries with a common history (Rome, Charlemagne), political system (democracy), economic status (wealthy) and religion (Christianity) — before the advent of mass African and Middle Eastern immigration. Right-wing and Euroskeptic parties such as Finland's True Finns and the Freedom Party in The Netherlands are demanding that illegal immigrants and legal asylum-seekers not be allowed to overrun their countries. They are right; large numbers of immigrants place a disproportionate burden on small countries, eroding their cultural norms. Europe is rediscovering its borders, and in doing so, it is realizing that common sense demands that a country not rely on its neighbors to guarantee its security or culture.
Seth J Frantzman has a PhD from Hebrew University, and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.
Contact him at sfrantzman@hotmail.com and visit
his website: |
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EGYPT'S OTHER EXTREMISTS
Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman, May 16, 2011. |
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This below has been redacted from an article written by Paul Marshall that appeared today in the Daily Standard. Marshall is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom and co-author, with Nina Shea, of the forthcoming Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide. While the Muslim Brotherhood gets all the ink, the Salafists go on a rampage |
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Judging the likely trajectory of post-Mubarak Egypt requires assessing the depth of public support for Islamism, and usually, this has meant assessing the strength and intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood. While the Brotherhood remains central, however, the country is also facing a frequently violent upsurge of Salafist versions of Islam. The groups can overlap, but the Brotherhood tends to stress an Islamic State and political organization, and its members have no prescribed mode of dress, apart from modesty. In this sense they are a modern movement. The Salafists are often distinguishable by full beards for men and full face covering for women, and they stress emulating the piety and practice of the first three generations of Muslims (Salaf means 'predecessor' or 'forefather'). Strongly influenced by Wahhabi teachings, the Salafists have tended to follow local sheikhs rather than have a countrywide organization, and under Mubarak they were usually quiescent or else inclined to a violent extremism that led to rapid and severe repression by the regime's efficient security apparatus. But many Salafists are now trying to take advantage of the widespread chaos in Egypt in order to impose their repressive version of Islam on their neighbors and ultimately on the country. One Salafist target is Egypt's Christians, the Copts, the largest non-Muslim minority in the Middle East On March 20, in Qena, Salafists, including an off-duty policeman, accused a Copt named Ayman Mitri of renting an apartment to a prostitute, cut off one of his ears, mutilated his other ear, and slashed his neck. The attackers then informed the police that they had carried out the punishment required by Islamic law. As was usual under Mubarak, the police refrained from pressing charges and called for a 'reconciliation' meeting between the religious communities. Also as under Mubarak, the authorities' refusal to punish attacks on Christians has led to more attacks. On March 23, Salafists surrounded St. George's church in Beni Ahmad and successfully demanded that a church expansion approved by the government be stopped. On March 27, they blockaded St. Mary's church in Giza, saying it did not have a permit. After yet another 'reconciliation' meeting between Copts and Muslims, services at the church were forbidden until it acquired a new permit. On March 28, Salafists attacked a liquor store in Kasr El-Bassil owned by a Copt, destroyed other stores, and demanded that coffee shops be closed. One villager was killed and eight others injured. On April 5, hundreds occupied St. John the Beloved church in Kamadeer, stopping repairs after heavy rain, and told Copts that they were not allowed to pray there any more. After yet another 'reconciliation,' Copts were told to build a church 200 meters away, one without a dome, cross, bell, or any other external feature marking it as a church. Beginning on April 15, over 10,000 demonstrators, mostly Salafists, protested in the southern province of Qena against the appointment of a new governor, Emad Mikhail, who is a Christian (the previous governor, Magdy Ayoub, was also Christian). Protesters blocked main roads, stopped buses to separate men and women passengers, and disrupted the main rail route in Upper Egypt for eight days. There were threats to bar Mikhail from the province and even to kill him. Perhaps thinking that these more extreme Islamist currents make it appear relatively moderate, the Brotherhood condemned the killing of Osama bin Laden. Already before that, it had become more outspoken about its own desire for an Islamic state. These newer statements about Islam and law by senior leaders of the Brotherhood have alarmed democracy activists and many others. In response, the Coptic Orthodox Church suspended its dialogue with the Brotherhood and dropped its plans to invite the group's leaders to attend Easter celebrations. Severe religious freedom violations engaged in or tolerated by the government of Egypt have increased dramatically since the release of last year's report, with violence, including murder, escalating against Coptic Christians and other religious minorities. Since President Mubarak's resignation from office in February, such violence continues unabated without the government's bringing the perpetrators to justice. Jerome S. Kaufman is National Secretary of the Zionist Organization of America and hosts the Israel Commentary website (http://www.israel-commentary.org). |
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FROM ISRAEL: SOMBER PROSPECTS
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 16, 2011. |
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The worst is over for now, with regard to Nakba Day, but there is considerable concern about a re-run of this on a more significant scale, perhaps in September if the PA goes the route of the UN. Mordecai Kedar, a research associate at the BESA Center for Strategic Studies, is a savvy guy. He has just written a piece, "The writing was on the wall," that takes a look at how the situation has shifted with regard to Palestinian refugees marching en masse on Israel: There has been the development, he says, of a "Yes, we can" sentiment within the Arab world — "the belief that unarmed masses can overcome and defeat dictators." This is a new "nonconventional weapon of frustrated, unemployed young people, a weapon against which the regime is expected to be helpless." This technique has been employed in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Syria, and "the Palestinians have adopted it for use against Israel." The utilization of social media — Facebook and Twitter — is being employed for mobilizing rebellions and "was indeed the way Sunday's events were organized." Add to this the change in "the involvement of the Syrian and Lebanese regimes in events, since bus upon bus of disgruntled Palestinians could not have reached the border with Israel on Sunday without those governments' knowledge and consent. The regimes' cooperation stems from their efforts to export their internal problems to Israel, and turn TV cameras away from what happens in Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip to Israel and its actions against the Arabs." "The fourth fresh element is the link between Syria, Lebanon and Gaza — the Iranian link. These three arenas are all under the influence of the ayatollahs..." ~~~~~~~~~~ Kedar then continues with what I find most unsettling of all: "But we must not overlook the Israeli factor, which has an important role: In past years, Arab players have seen and heard that Israel concedes whenever it is subject to external pressure...(emphasis added) ~~~~~~~~~~ Two comments here will suffice. One, is the obvious lesson that Israel's concessions — whether done to be "nice" or in response to international pressure — are counterproductive and serve us ill. Strength is critical. But there is something else just as important. I believe that the Arab assumption that we are weak and will cave is wrong. In the final analysis — in spite of the concessions of our various governments — as a people, the harder we are pushed, the tougher we get. The Israeli spirit is resolute. I suggest that they don't know who they're fooling with. ~~~~~~~~~~ As a result of actions at our northern border yesterday, Israel intends to submit a complaint to the UN Security Council against Syria and Lebanon for breach of council resolutions and violation of international law. We are dealing here with issues of challenges to our sovereignty. That this is the case was made crystal clear in a message released by Hezbollah's Nasrallah today: "We must bow before the courage, the bravery, of those who protested yesterday at Lebanon and Syria's borders with occupied Palestine, who faced the tyranny of the enemy with bare chests and their heads held high. 
Unfortunately, there is scant reason to trust that there will be any significant measure of objectivity on the part of the Security Council in its response this complaint. A statement by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon focuses on his concern about deaths and not breaching of borders: Lebanon has filed its own complaint with regard to Lebanese killed. ~~~~~~~~~~ When the unity arrangements between Hamas and Fatah were announced, Israel made the decision to suspend the transfer of millions in tax and customs funds collected on behalf of the PA, out of a very legitimate concern that the money might end up in Hamas's hands and thus support terrorism. Now Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz has ordered the transfer of $100 million to the PA "after Israel received several assurances and clarifications that the money would not find its way to terrorists' hands and that none of the procedures applied so far would change." You know what this reminds me of? Of terrorists released from prison after they sign a piece of paper promising not to engage in terrorism again. Has Steinitz not noticed that money is fungible? Surely this makes it more possible for Fatah to share funds with/release funds to Hamas if it is so inclined. According to PA Prime Minister Fayyad, holding back this money meant a shortfall in paying salaries. When the original Israeli decision was announced, he appealed to the international community to pressure Israel to release the money. That Israel was pressured is obvious, for Tony Blair and Hillary Clinton were the ones who informed Fayyad that the money would be released. And now PA spokesman Qhassan Khatib has said that Israel's new decision was proof of "the success of the Palestinian campaign on an international level, which pressured Israel to transfer these funds." While yours truly had to exert considerable self-discipline to keep from running her head into the wall. Were it not a certainty that it was appropriate to put that freeze in place, and that we could maintain it, it would have been far better had we not instituted it in the first place. Perhaps our government had better start reading what Moti Kedar has to say.
Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com
and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
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IDF WORRIED BORDER PROTESTS JUST BEGINNING
Posted by Daily Alert, May 16, 2011. |
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This was written by Yaakov Katz and it appeared in the
Jerusalem Post and is archived at
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Demonstrations and violence in North likely just the promo for what can be expected in September ahead of Palestinian statehood declaration. On Sunday, it was 1,000 Syrians who marched on the border with Israel. Next week, it could be 10,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip who will march toward the Negev, or Palestinian refugees in Jordan who march toward the Jordan Valley. The successful infiltration on Sunday by a group of just under 100 Syrians into the Druse village of Majdal Shams on the Golan is being viewed by the IDF as just the beginning. As demonstrations like these gain momentum ahead of the planned declaration of statehood by the Palestinians in September, this type of protest could become a common occurrence along Israel's various borders. On Sunday, the IDF dealt with four simultaneous fronts — Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. While all expectations were for extreme violence in the West Bank — units that were training on the Golan Heights were transferred as reinforcements to the West Bank last week — it turned out to be the quietest of the four. The surprise was Syria. While the IDF was aware of the demonstrations that were scheduled for the border area opposite Majdal Shams — known as the "Shouting Hill" since relatives shout to each other across the border — it did not expect it to be any different than in past years. This was a mistake, since the Northern Command did not take into account the current instability in Syria and embattled President Bashar Assad's possible interest in turning the spotlight away from his violent crackdown on his own people to Israel. According to senior IDF officers, Assad's regime quietly encouraged the demonstrators to infiltrate Israel, possibly with the hope that the IDF would shoot indiscriminately, kill dozens of people and shift the world's and the Syrian people's focus from his ruthlessness to Israel. "Thankfully, this did not happen, thanks to responsible action by commanders on the ground," one senior IDF officer said. There is also concern in the IDF that global Jihad groups which operate in Syria will take advantage of the lawlessness on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights — made clear by the demonstrators' ability to cross into Israel without being stopped by the Syrian military — to attack Israel. Some of these groups are believed to have an arsenal of short-range Katyusha rockets that could be used to fire into Israel. The protesters who rammed the border appeared to have mostly been Palestinian refugees who live in camps near Damascus. It is difficult to imagine that they could have traveled to the border in such numbers without the regime either approving the demonstration or at the very least turning a blind eye to it. In the short term, the IDF will need to launch a probe to discover where it went wrong, not just in its assessments but mostly operationally to determine how 100 or so foreign nationals succeeded in breaching a border and entering sovereign Israeli territory. In the long term, the concern within the IDF is that these types of civil disturbances and so-called border protests will become routine. 
In Lebanon, for example, they could be used as cover and a way for Hezbollah to reestablish borderline positions, which it has not maintained since the end of the Second Lebanon War almost five years ago. On Sunday afternoon, Hezbollah operatives openly appeared near the border and evacuated some of the protesters wounded by the Lebanese Armed Forces. If this happens also in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, it will place a massive burden on the IDF, which is already spread thin along Israel's various fronts. This could, however, become something of the norm as the September declaration continues to loom on the horizon; the violence along the Syrian border is likely just the promo for what can be expected later this year. The IDF's hands, though, will be tied in its options on how to counter such tactics. It will first need to invest more money in crowd dispersion equipment and technology, and invest time in training troops — not used to such missions — on how to use them. The primary mission will be to ensure that the number of casualties
stays minimal. If it doesn't and the body count starts to rise, it
will be easier for Israel's detractors to make a case that the
ongoing upheaval in the Middle East is really about Israel's conflict
with the Arabs and the Palestinians, and that the real problem is not
the leadership in the Arab world but the Jewish state's continued
existence.
The Daily Alert is sponsored by Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and prepared by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). To subscribe to their free
daily alerts, send an email to daily@www.dailyalert.jcpa.org
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COME SEPTEMBER ... HANG TOUGH, ISRAEL
Posted by Paul Lademain, May 16, 2011. |
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qhe Britz are sleazy from top to bottom. Witness the chicanery of the British Foreign Office and their history of bald-faced lies. What is it the Britz are trying so desperately to conceal? Answer: That International law established the boundaries for the Jewish Homeland last century, and that these boundaries encompass the very land the Britz so desperately hope to hand over to the arab terrorists occupying Judea and Samaria. Every since the San Remo Resolution — which, by the way, binds European states and the UK — the Britz, with their eye on eliminating US influence throughout the Middle East, has lied like a sack in order to conceal the significance of international law. They lie to the uneducated Jews, especially the older Jews who are still clinging to power in Israel (Rabin, Barak, Olmert and Peres — and their respective relatives — come to mind) and they lie to the faux-journalists beavering for CNN and Jew-hater Jimmy Carter and the terrified but beholden Jews at the New York Times. We are the Secular Christians for Zion and we say: Shame on each and every one of you who crumbled at the feet of the Britz and their poodle, Jimmy Carter. Shame on each and every Jew who secretly schemed with Yasser Arafat and Jimmy Carter to divest Israel of its land in order to skim the cream from that region of the Jewish Homeland now known as "the Gaza." People say that the British Foreign Office is little more than an elitist claquel of scheming beggars with their hands and their souls jammed deep in the pockets of the oily arab dictators. Anything for money, these Britz. And blood on their hands doesn't trouble them at bit. We are not deceived by the affectations and schemes of the Britz, even if the US State Dept. plays the patsy to the underhanded ambitions of our supposed ally. The Britz have schemed for decades to find a way to supplant US influence in the Middle East and to do so without being held accountable. They believe they can achieve this long held objective by destroying Israel, the only ally the US has in that region. As for Saudi Arabia, it is nobody's "ally". At best, it's a vendor. Nothing more. Viva to the Patriots of Israel from the SC4Z (Secular Christians for Zion) Paul Lademain is a Secular Christian for Zion (SC4Z). Contact him by email at lademain@verizon.net |
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ALLAHU AKBAR!
Posted by Dr. History, May 16, 2011. |
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This was written by Daniel Greenfield and it appeared May 14,
2011 on the Sultan Knish website and is archived at
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No sooner does a Yemeni Muslim begin hammering on the cockpit door shouting "Allahu Akbar", then the media speculates that he must have gotten confused looking for the bathroom. And on September 11, four groups of Muslim men with boxcutters got confused looking for the nearest post office. The lead is invariably buried. Paragraphs fly by until it's mentioned that the confused fellow may have been a Muslim. If it's mentioned at all. And his cry of Allahu Akbar is translated as God is Great to render it more acceptable to readers. But like so many Islamic translations, it's right enough to be wrong. Allahu Akbar doesn't mean Allah is Great, in a "Isn't 'Allah and the Virgins of Paradise' a great band". It's more like Allah is Greatest or Superior. And if you're on the right side of the cockpit door, the one doing the shouting 'Allahu Akbar' means that Allah is superior to your country and to you. And one of his followers is about to do his best to show you why. News stories, which like fruit punch, carry 70 percent propaganda to 30 percent juice, are always eager to explain to their readers, that "Allahu Akbar" is just one of those things that Muslims shout at random occasions. Feel happy, shout, "Allahu Akbar", feel sad, shout, "Allahu Akbar" till you feel better, feel a touch of homicidal rage against the infidels coming on, shout "Allahu Akbar" and open fire. If you believe them, then "Allahu Akbar" is the Swiss Army Knife of Arabic ejaculations. Whether you're at a soccer game or a beheading, it's the verbal black dress that fits any occasion. The message of Allahu Akbar is the message of the Koran 61:9. "He it is who has sent his Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth to make it victorious over all religions even though the infidels may resist." His messenger is Mohammed, the religion is Islam and the infidels who resist get beheaded or have planes rammed into their buildings. Allahu Akbar represents the tribal pride of the Muslim, who in submitting to Allah, becomes greater than all the infidels who haven't gotten around to falling on their knees and paying tribute to the ghost of a long dead pedophile. By asserting the exceptionalism of Allah and of Mohammed as his prophet, they assert the exceptionalism of all Muslims. The Slaves of Allah become the masters of the entire world. Not as individuals, but collectively. George Orwell described a very similar phenomenon in 1984; You know the Party slogan: "Freedom is Slavery". Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone — free — the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. Islam is that utter submission. A frustrated act of individual suicide that in the case of a suicide bomber involves actual death. But by dying, he proves himself immortal in the collective. When Muslims boast that they don't fear death, and even demonstrate it by committing suicide, what they are really doing is embracing a collective existence, by rejecting individualism they shout their omnipotence. The individual killing himself to become immortal is one of the perverse paradoxes of tyranny. And it lies at the heart of Islam. The Takbir emphasizes Allah's superiority, not to praise the superiority of their creator, but to assure themselves of their own superiority. In a slave culture, willing slavery becomes a badge of honor. The willing slave is superior to the unwilling slave. In a slave culture there are no free people. Only ones higher up on the ladder. The house slave and the field hand. The eunuch bureaucrat and the stable boy, the Janissary and the street sweeper, the harem dweller and the woman lying moaning in a field after the armies of the Jihad have passed. Muslim freedom is relative, not absolute. It is relative to the more comprehensive slavery of the non-Muslims under their dominion. And so for them in their own lands, slavery is indeed freedom. An illusory freedom that comes from the difference between their status and that of the non-Muslim. That's why the American model translates poorly to the Muslim world. Democracy to Muslims means the rule of majority. And they like that fine, so long as they are in the majority. And if they aren't, they use the sword, the gun and the suicide bomb until they are. But notions of freedom or equality don't translate. Muslims will tolerate Jewish or Christian populations at an inferior level — so long as they know their place. And their place is at the back of the bus. They are the slaves or the slaves of Allah. Allahu Akbar is an assertion of individual superiority through collective superiority. "I am better than you because Muslims are better than you, and Muslims are better than you, because Allah is better than you." It's a longwinded way of getting to the point in English, but it's concisely implicit in the Arabic. The Libyan national anthem, 'Allahu Akbar', begins with a cry of "Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest" and neatly segues into "Allah is the Greatest Above the Conspiracies of the Enemies" and off to the usual killing and dying business. Allah's superiority renders all others inferior. That's the message of Allahu Akbar. And it's shouted much more often as a battle cry, than by people looking for the bathroom in the cockpit part of the plane. For the same reason it flies on the national flags of Iran, Iraq and the new Afghanistan (the Saudi Wahhabis go the extra mile by writing out the whole Shahada, but that is an elaboration which means much the same thing. Conveniently this makes the national flags into sacred symbols, as hapless soccer ball manufacturers and one German brothel found out when they tried to promote international brotherhood and sales with the friendly use of Muslim flags. The brothel had meant to promote peace and love by including Saudi and Iranian flags among all the others in the World Cup, and the hooded Muslims who came bearing knives and sticks showed their own version of peace and love. For a religion that rewards mass murderers by fornicating with virgin demons in paradise, it was not so much a show of prurience as exclusivity. Only Islam holds the key to the eternal demon brothel of paradise. And to wave the Shahada or the Takbir above a mortal German brothel cheapens the value of a divine commodity, and blasphemously cuts into Allah's monopoly. The tactic of Islamic propagandists and their Western enablers has been to mainstream and normalize. In their translations, "Allahu Akbar" becomes "God is Great". Not Allah, but God. And not Greater, but Great. The differences are significant. Every news story takes great care to explain that AA, (Allahu Akbar not Alcoholics Anonymous), is a common Arabic phrase shouted at various occasions. Which is true. Muslims don't just shout Allahu Akbar when they're killing people. The problem is that they do shout Allahu Akbar when they are killing people. And that shout reveals motive. No one shouts Allahu Akbar when trying to get into a bathroom, but they do shout it when they think have a shot of getting into a cockpit. An invocation of omnipotence and a battle cry. "Know your place infidels, Allah is on our side." The normalizers insist that Islam is no different than Judaism or Christianity, but what they can't explain is the global body count, except by twisting the signposts around until it's all the Hindus, Jews, Christians, Animists and Zoroastrians who are to blame for being murdered. And the body count like the "Allahu Akbar" pilots shows up as an anomaly on the normalizers' radar. A blip that says something is wrong. The normalizers and their diligent pupils pay no attention to it, but everyone else does. The normalizers say that all religions kill, but which religion hasn't stopped killing. They say that all have made war in the name of religion — but who starts war in the name of religion today? They say that members of all religions have raped — but which religion's founder openly kept sex slaves? They say that all religions have their bad seeds, but Islam began with a bad seed who used his religious authority to rob, rape and kill. To perpetrate ethnic cleansing and genocide. And over a thousand years later, that same religious authority is being used to rob, rape and kill in Africa and the Middle East. That authority is best summed up with a single cry, "Allahu Akbar." The Janjaweed militias who carried out much of the Sudanese genocide rode shouting joyfully, "Hail the name of Allah". That much is recorded in the docket of the International Criminal Court. The hundreds of thousands murdered, countless more raped and mutilated, in the name of Allah. Indonesia's 1950's and 60's massacres which claimed over a million lives began with shouts of "Allahu Akbar" and moved on to parading their heads around, disemboweling their bodies, burying them alive and even cannibalism. Obama's beloved stepdaddy, Colonel Lolo Soetoro, likely played a role in directing these atrocities. And these are only two drops in an ocean of blood still flowing to Mecca. A red tide that threatens to sweep humanity away. If Islam is no different than every other religion, and their deity is no different than every other deity, why are so many members of those religions and worshipers of those deities being murdered by the followers of a single religion. Not once or twice, but constantly. Year after year. A bloody faucet whose left handle reads 'Allah" and whose right handle reads "Akbar" that never turns off. That bloody faucet is the best evidence that Islam is different and that its deity is different. Why else can't the faucet be turned off? Contact Dr History at drhistory@cox.net |
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HAD THERE BEEN NO WAR, THERE WOULD BE NO NAKBA
Posted by Eli E. Hertz, May 15, 2011. |
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Starting a civil war in 1947 after the Arabs rejected the United Nations Partition Plan, Palestinian Arabs became belligerents in the conflict. Rather than accept a Jewish state after five-and-a-half months of warfare, Palestinian Arabs called upon their brethren from seven surrounding countries to invade and crush the nascent Jewish state. The Arab League's April 10, 1948 decision to invade on May 14 to "save Palestine,"as the British Mandate ended, marked a watershed event, for it changed the rules of the conflict. Accordingly, Israel bears no moral responsibility for deliberately banishing Palestinian Arabs in order to "consolidate defense arrangements" in strategic areas, as the Jewish people organized to battle seven well-equipped and well-trained aggressor armies. With the pending invasion following Israel's declaration of independence, it is no exaggeration to say the new Jewish state's very existence hung in the balance. The new Jewish state found it imperative to eliminate all potential pockets of Arab resistance in key areas if it was to survive. Dislodging all Arab inhabitants from sensitive areas in proximity to Jewish settlements, establishing territorial continuity between blocs under Jewish control, and ensuring control of key transportation arteries were a military necessity. As May 14 approached, Israel could not afford to risk a Fifth Column at its rear to add to all other aspects of its militarily inferior situation. The cost of defeat was hammered home by a stream of dire warnings from Arab capitals, with perhaps the most chilling for Israel coming from Jamal Al-Husayni as vice-chairman of the Arab Higher Committee [AHC], who publicly declared: "The Arabs have taken into their own hands, the Final Solution of the Jewish problem. The problem will be solved only in blood and fire. The Jews will be driven out." Three years after world Jewry had lost a third of its people in the Holocaust, Israelis were not about to test whether Al-Husayni's words were merely rhetoric or a real threat, and so they prepared for the worst. The cost to Israel to halt the Arab onslaught and gain the upper hand was horrendous. During the first four weeks following the Arab invasion, 1,600 Israelis were killed — a quarter of all the war's casualties. It was as if on a per capita basis the U.S. military lost 80,000 soldiers in Iraq in one month. Objectively, the claim that Palestinian Arabs were innocent bystanders ignores the facts: The sides in the conflict were not two rival empires — outsiders, or rival caliphs. It was a conflict between two national or ethnic groups. Palestinian Arabs represented one side in the conflict — and in fact the side responsible for starting the war. The Palestinians were responsible for escalating the war — a move that cost the Jews thousands of lives and Palestinians their homes. By their own behavior, Palestinians assumed the role of belligerents in the conflict, invalidating any claim to be hapless victims. Explains scholar Benny Morris: "One of the characteristics of the Palestinian national movement has been the Palestinians' view of themselves as perpetual victims of others: Ottoman Turks, British officials, Zionists, Americans — and never to appreciate that they are, at least in large part, victims of their own mistakes and iniquities." The United Nations Charter, international law, humanitarian law, and conventions such as the 1949 Geneva Convention for the Protection of Victims of War make no mention of a "Right of Return." The claim of innocent refugee status does not apply. To view this article on the web, please click here. See also: Resolution 194: The Aftermath of the 1948 Arab Invasion at www.mythsandfacts.org Eli E. Hertz is president of Myths and Facts, Inc. The organization's objective is to provide policymakers, national leadership, the media and the public-at-large with information and viewpoints that are founded on factual and reliable content. Contact him at today@mythsandfacts.org |
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FATHERS OF THE TANACH: AND TODAY: A STORY FOR FATHERS DAY
Posted by Ted Roberts, May 15, 2011. |
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Father's Day inspires us to consider the Tanach and the colorful parade of fathers and sons that march through its pages. I must be as honest as the Torah is honest and report that this is not a totally uplifting experience. Fathers and sons — a complex duality, especially in our book. And in bible times nobody's camel had a sign on its rear end asking if you hugged your kids that morning. There is not much affection in the biblical male world — including fathers and sons — though that grand reunion of Joseph and Jacob is a touching scene. "Joseph wept on his neck a long while." But first we have Abraham and Isaac. Yes, it's good to obey the Lord when he demands the almost ultimate sacrifice. But Isaac must have been mildly depressed until he saw the ram caught in the thicket and realized he was off the hook. I would guess that after this misadventure, their father-son relationship wasn't what it used to be. I don't think they attended the wrestling matches in the meadow like they did in the old days. The Humash is silent on their later relationship. Isaac grows up and begets Jacob. Shepherding must be a full time occupation, like managing Microsoft, because Isaac, like his father before him, does not dedicate a lot of attention to Young Jacob. In fact, who can forget that great historical deception wherein Jacob, with the help of Mama and a bowl of savory stew, steals the blessing. (Emeril would have used a generous handful of chopped garlic and a spoonful of cumin. The Humash doesn't even mention salt and pepper!) Another father-son inter-generational failure!! It gets worse. Jacob, the spiceless goat-stew chef, suffers a commensurate punishment with his own unruly boys who, in turn, deceive their father about Joseph, his favorite son. Thinking him dead, there's no communication for a couple of decades between the two — not a single letter. Finally, they have that enthusiastic reunion in Egypt. All's well — in this relationship — that ends well. The next significant father and son drama features David and his boys. It almost cannot be told in a family publication like the Chumash. David must have used an early version of Dr. Spock's childrearing manual to raise his brood. David's permissiveness results in a son who — ahem — forces himself upon a half sister; and much worse, a son, Absolom, who tries to steal his father's throne. David — ever the loving father — cries at his death. And let's not forget Jonathan, Son of Saul. Crazy King Saul, who was as green as the meadows of Sharon — with Jealousy of David. So, who was David's best pal? Every Sunday School child knows the answer. Saul's own son, Jonathan! whose loyalty to his friend exceeds his love for father Saul. Another flawed relationship. Fathers and sons — as dysfunctional in the Tanach as in real life. But is that not the test of truth, in our Holy Book? In real life still, as in the Humash, it's a rare grown-up child who looking back on father doesn't shed a few hidden tears of regret over youthful inattention — to the imperfect man who, along with mother, gave him life. Sins of omission. What adult son has not thought: I wish I had said this, done that. Given some signal of love and appreciation; especially to the departed father. Gifts no longer work. We can only give him his dream — we can be what he wanted us to be. Mothers, on the other hand, are easy to love. Their job, like a heart pumps oxygen, is giving and receiving love. But a father's love is not so visible. And not near as easy to return. The Tanach understands this.. Ted Roberts' essays appear in the Jewish press, web sites,
and magazines. He is author of The Scribbler On The Roof, a
book of short stories and commentary. Visit his websites at
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FROM ISRAEL: FIRST THINGS FIRST
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 15, 2011. |
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I want to share this information first, to be certain that everyone sees it: Within days, my daughter-in-law is due to deliver her ninth child. As we say, "B'sha'a tova" — in a good hour, may all go well. I am on call to care for the other eight children while she is in the hospital, and will remain some short time after she comes home. When I get the call to come, I'm out of here! And I will return when it is time for me to return. Thus, there is going to be a hiatus in my postings, starting in a few days. As it happens, this is likely to occur while Netanyahu is in the US. But, as I said, first things first. My priorities are clear. I'll keep posting now until I'm called, and then share and analyze on my return. ~~~~~~~~~~ It is with gratitude that I realize that many reading this wish me and my family well. But I will ask that you hold your messages for now. In fact, I also ask something else of you: Please, please, remove me from your lists and refrain from sending me much in the way of information from now until I've come back. I'm on what can only be described as overload. Thank you for understanding. ~~~~~~~~~~ Now to business. Word I'm getting is that Netanyahu is holding tight as he prepares to go to the States. But the pressure on him at this point has to be unbearable. There are reports from sources as solid as the Wall Street Journal saying that Obama's Middle East speech will not focus on Palestinian Arab-Israeli negotiations, but rather on the implications of bin Laden's death, uprisings in Arab lands, etc. But today I heard it from a quite reliable source, who has connections in Washington DC, that leaks are coming from the White House indicating that Obama does intend to deal with "negotiations," and will be leaning on Israel, as he believes it falls to us to make sufficient concessions to bring the PA back to the table. My information is that Netanyahu sees the situation without illusions. ~~~~~~~~~~ In response to this, please: Contact Prime Minister Netanyahu. This goes especially for those who are Israeli. Do not lecture him, do not give him history lessons, do not belabor points he already understands. Just deliver a clear, strong, supportive message: Tell him that you know that his position is very difficult and that pressures on him are enormous as he prepares to go to the US, to meet with President Obama and then address Congress. Let him know that he is not alone and you are with him. Tell him that the world will be listening to him when he speaks to Congress. This is his opportunity to make Israel's case — with regard to Jewish heritage in the land, legal precedents for the right to the land, and security requirements for retaining the land. Many have never heard such messages before. He will earn his place in history if he stands strong for Israel at this moment. Implore him, as he makes Israel's case, to refrain from further concessions. Ask him to avoid doing anything that weakens Israel — even if done in the name of garnering good will internationally. There is no end to the concessions that are expected of Israel, and more than sufficient concessions have already been made. ~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~ For those of you, whether in Israel or elsewhere, who have Israeli contacts who are not on my list but who would be understanding and responsive, please copy the material immediately above, in lighter blue (the rest does not pertain to them), and paste it into a new message to those contacts. Explain that this came from a posting by Arlene Kushner and ask that they contact the prime minister to give him strength, and that they share the message with still others. Thank you. ~~~~~~~~~~ Inside the United States, there is a different job to be done. Obama must know that he is being watched, with regard to putting additional pressure on Israel. Let him know that he is going to lose considerable support come election time, if he fails now to be supportive of Israel — the only democracy in the Middle East and a valuable and loyal ally. Tell him Israel's supporters have a long memory and how he acts now — as he meets with Prime Minister Netanyahu and delivers his Middle East speech — will not be forgotten in November 2012. Say that it is time he held the Palestinians accountable, and that he must acknowledge the impossibility and impropriety of trying to foster negotiations with Hamas in the picture. ~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~ This said, I want to turn this over to activists in the US. The presidential campaign provides the opportunity for leverage with regard to how Obama treats Netanyahu and pushes on Israel. This leverage must be utilized to the maximum, and it falls to those in the States to pursue this. Contact members of the Democratic National Committee, key Democrats in Congress, and whomever else may have influence on the president's stand on Israel. Let them know clearly that what the president does now will affect Democratic electoral chances in November 2012. Do not relent in publicizing this message. Run with the ball, please. ~~~~~~~~~~ Nakba Day. It could have been worse. There is no "third intifada." At least not yet. But it also could have been better. Palestinian arabs demonstrate on Nakba Day. 
What was probably the most difficult situation occurred in the north. Unrest from inside Israel is one thing, infiltration of Israel's borders is something else. Palestinians crossed the border from Syria and moved into the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Golan, where they rioted against the IDF: It is now estimated that nearly 1,000 Syrians approached the fence, and that some 300 protesters rushed the fences and crossed over onto Israeli soil. Roughly 100 people entered Majdal Shams and clashed with Israeli forces, causing some injuries. They have now been pushed back. (And there was consultation with Druze leaders in the village, in the process.) Additionally, rioters tried to breach the Lebanese border and enter Israel. But they were prevented from doing so by Lebanese forces. In Judea and Samaria, there were several places were Arabs rioted — for the most part coming out of Arab villages and burning tires, throwing rocks and firebombs. The worst was in Kalandia, where some 600 rioted. On the IDF YouTube channel — http://www.youtube.com/IDFNADesk — you can see rioters in Kalandia trying to hide behind an ambulance. Inside Jerusalem I heard reports of crowds and unrest on the Mt. of Olives and behind Hadassah Hospital, Ein Kerem. In the neighborhood of Isawiyah, in eastern Jerusalem, youngsters hid behind dumpsters as they threw rocks at police. At one point, a Molotov cocktail aimed at police missed and set an apartment on fire. A young mother came out hysterical, and police went in and rescued her two young children. In the South, riots took place in Gaza, near the Erez Crossing, where damage was caused to the crossing and rocks were thrown at IDF soldiers. One individual was seen planting an explosive device near the fence. ~~~~~~~~~~ Inevitably, there were casualties, as the IDF and border police sought to contain the riots. With regard to those coming down from Syria, depending on the report, from one to four were killed and dozens injured. Of the 100 or more reportedly injured or some ten killed in attempts to cross the border from Lebanon, it is believed that the Lebanese forces did the shooting. Reports are that one person was killed in Gaza, and several injured. The IDF is being credited with enormous restraint, which prevented the shooting of far larger numbers, in particular as they rushed across the border. ~~~~~~~~~~ But, as we had to expect, Israel is being accused of wanton aggression. Undoubtedly there will be an investigation, or several investigations. In a televised speech, PA President Abbas said the blood of those killed will not be in vain. From Hezbollah came threats of repercussions. ~~~~~~~~~~ Israel is holding Syria responsible for the infiltration from its territory into Israel: The Syrian military is in control of the northern border crossings, and those who rushed the border would not have been able to approach the border — let alone infiltrate into Israel — without the Syrian military's knowledge and consent. In fact, one of the possibilities being considered is that Syrian authorities (or Assad himself) sanctioned or fostered the breaching of Israel's border. A handful of the Syrian infiltrators have been held for questioning. "This appears to be a cynical and transparent act by the Syrian leadership to deliberately create a crisis on the border so as to distract attention from the very real problems that regime is facing at home," stated one unnamed top Israeli official. While IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai said that the protests bore Iran's "fingerprints... "We are seeing here an Iranian provocation, on both the Syrian and the Lebanese frontiers, to try to exploit the Nakba day commemorations." ~~~~~~~~~~ In this context, it's important to note that people in Jordan seeking to approach towards Israel were prevented from doing so by Jordanian police. ~~~~~~~~~~ In a statement late today, Prime Minister Netanyahu said:
Matters have quieted down, but it not yet all over. And there is speculation as to what will follow.
Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com
and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
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ISRAEL'S PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: IT'S THE MORAL HIGH GROUND, PAL!
Posted by Yoram Ettinger, May 15, 2011. |
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Secretaries of State, Schultz and Baker did not agree with Prime Minister Shamir's worldview, but they respected his principle-driven tenacity. Upon concluding a meeting with then Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, George Mitchell and Bob Dole, the latter told Shamir: "Irrespective of our disagreement with your policy, we respect you, because you're tough." The international arena does not respect Israeli prime ministers who seek popularity rather than respect, transforming Red Lines to Pink Lines, in order to avoid confrontation. The world does not appreciate prime ministers who subordinate long-term vision and conviction to short-term diplomatic and political convenience. In contrast to the legacy of Prime Ministers Ben Gurion, Eshkol, Golda Meir, Begin and Shamir, Israel's current public diplomacy reflects frail conviction, while expressing empathy for claims made by Israel's enemies. It tolerates simplistic Western assumptions about the Arab-Israeli conflict and downplays Israel's contribution to the national security of the USA. Israel has hardly leveraged the current Arab turmoil that underscores the tenuous/violent nature of Israel's enemies and the inherent obstacles to intra-Arab peace (let alone to Israel-Arab peace). Israel has failed to emphasize the uniquely high threshold of security requirements of the Jewish State in the most dangerous neighborhood in the world and the special role played by Israel as an outpost of Western democracies and a sole beacon of democracy. In contrast with the Arabs who highlight their "rights," Israel highlights security-requirements, while minimizing well-documented and unique ancient roots. While Israeli leaders pride themselves on their "pragmatism" and willingness to distance themselves from historical roots, they, in fact, undermine Israel's global legitimacy. The Jewish State ignores the lesson of King Solomon's Trial: He who agrees "to split the difference" forfeits his rights to everything. Since 1993, the Jewish State has downplayed its moral high ground, embracing moral-equivalence. Therefore, it has legitimized the Palestinian Authority as a supposed partner for peace negotiations, despite Abu Mazen's track record: establishing Palestinian hate-education, Holocaust denial, coordinating PLO relations with ruthless Communist regimes, co-planning of the Munich Massacre, perpetrating subversion in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon and collaborating with Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. Moreover, Israel has adopted the "Land-for-Peace" state of mind, in spite of the fact that the conflict has always been over the existence — and not the size — of the Jewish State. Since 1993, land conceded to the Palestinian Authority has been transformed into a platform of hate education and terrorism, fueling the conflict. The current seismic events in the Arab World beg for an Israeli public diplomacy offensive. Such events should remove the "Middle East Screen Saver," exposing the region as the role model of instability, ethnic-religious-tribal-geographic fragmentation, terrorism, violence as a norm of settling political disputes, hate culture, one-man one-revolution regimes, tenuous regimes-accords-alliances, treachery, volatility, unpredictability and uncertainty. The deeper the uncertainty and the violence, the higher the Israeli security requirements, the more critical become the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights of Jerusalem and of the 15 miles wide pre-1967 Israel. Israel stands out as the only stable, reliable, capable, democratic and unconditional ally of the USA. The intra-Arab upheaval also removes the "Palestinian Screen Saver," revealing the Middle East order of priorities. Hence, the Palestinian issue is not the root cause of regional turbulence, not the crown-jewel of Arab policy-making, not the core cause of anti-Western Islamic terrorism and not the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Regardless, Israel persists in subordinating its vision, policy, security requirements and public diplomacy to simplistic misperceptions, which are resoundingly refuted on the Arab Street in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Syria, etc. But, like a deer caught in a headlights-look, Israel is glued to the "Palestinian Screen Saver." On the other hand, Arab leaders shower Palestinians with rhetoric but not with resources. They do not shed blood on behalf of the Palestinian issue. Furthermore, they consider the Palestinians a subversive element, based on PLO violence in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait. What do Arabs know about the PLO that Israel refuses to share with the world?! Israel has refrained from presenting the threat posed — to vital American and Western interests — by the proposed Palestinian state: death sentence to the pro-US Hashemite regime; a tailwind to anti-US terrorism in Iraq and throughout the region; enhanced access by Russia, China, North Korea, and possibly Iran, to the eastern flank of the Mediterranean; rewarding a regime which drives Christians out of Bethlehem; an additional anti-US vote at the UN, and an added fuel to the Middle East inferno. The late General Alexander Haig, who was the Supreme Commander of NATO and US Secretary of State defined Israel as "the largest American aircraft carrier, which does not require a single US soldier, cannot be sunk, most cost-effective and battle-tested, deployed in a critical area for vital US economic and national security interests, sparing the US $20BN annually, which would be required to deploy real aircraft carriers." Will Israel's public diplomacy leverage the aforementioned significant data, shifting to a determined, lucid, defiant, politically-incorrect and principle-driven tactic, or will it persist in its hesitant, ambiguous, popularity-driven and apologetic tactic, which intensifies pressure and threats, undermines security, distances itself from peace and brings war closer? Ambassador Yoram Ettinger is a consultant on US-Israel relations as well as the Chairman of Special Projects at the Ariel Center for Policy Research. Formerly the Minister for Congressional Affairs to Israel's Embassy in Washington, DC, Ettinger also served as Consul General of Israel to the Southwestern US. He is a former editor of Contemporary Mideast Backgrounder, and is the author of the Jerusalem Cloakroom series of reports. Contact him at yoramtex@netvision.net.il This article appeared May 12, 2011 in YNet News and is
archived at
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A SHARP LESSON IN HYPOCRISY
Posted by Albert Wendroff, May 15, 2011. |
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This comes from BIG, Zionists from Great Britain and Ireland. Contact them at norlo@013.net. It's called "A Tale Of Two Terrorists". |
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Here are some contrasting opinions by leaders of the UN, EU, Britain, France, Norway, the Vatican, Japan and elsewhere, following Israel's killing of blind Ahmed Yassin, the leader of the Hamas terrorist organization in 2004 and the killing of Osama bin Laden Yassin, of course, was proportionately responsible for far more deaths of Israelis than bin Laden was of Americans, particularly the deaths of Israeli children. Yassin had ordered the bombing of school buses, children's birthday parties and so on, and was continuing to order more attacks at the time of his death. Soon after Yassin and his deputy Abdel Aziz Rantissi were killed, there was a sharp decrease in the number of suicide bombings against Israel. (Among past dispatches on this, please see: "A minute's silence by
British MPs for Sheikh Yassin" (April 19, 2004)
SO COMPARE THE WORLD REACTION Israel's killing of Ahmed Yassin: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan: "I condemn the targeted assassination of Ahmed Yassin. Such actions are not only contrary to international law but they do not help the search for a peaceful solution." Killing Bin Laden: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hailed Osama bin Laden's death as a key turning point in the struggle against terrorism. *** Israel's killing of Ahmed Yassin: EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, described the assassination as "very, very bad news". Killing Bin Laden: EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said: "I would like to congratulate the U.S., pay tribute to its determination and efficiency in reducing the threat posed by terrorists and underline the close cooperation between the EU and U.S. in the fight against terrorism." *** Israel's killing of Ahmed Yassin: British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: "Israel is not entitled to go in for this kind of unlawful killing and we condemn it. It is unacceptable, it is unjustified and it is very unlikely to achieve its objectives." Killing Bin Laden: Prime Minister David Cameron said that bin Laden's death would "bring great relief" around the world. *** Israel's killing of Ahmed Yassin: French President Jacques Chirac "unreservedly condemned" Israel's assassination of Hamas terror leader Yassin. French Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous also said: "France condemns the action taken against Sheikh Yassin, just as it has always condemned the principle of any extra-judicial execution as contrary to international law." Killing Bin Laden: French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé said on that bin Laden's death is a "victory for all democracies fighting the abominable scourge of terrorism. France, the United States and European states work closely together to fight terrorism, so I'm overjoyed at the news." *** Israel's killing of Ahmed Yassin: Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Petersen: "This act will contribute to increased tensions in the area and will make it more difficult to implement an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza." Killing Bin Laden: Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre called the death of bin Laden "a break-through in the fight against terror". *** Israel's killing of Ahmed Yassin: "The Holy See unites with the international community in deploring this act of violence that cannot be justified in any state of law. Lasting peace cannot come from a show of force." Killing Bin Laden: Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi said that while Christians "do not rejoice" over a death, bin Laden's death serves to remind them of "each person's responsibility before God and men" and "bin Laden must answer to God for having killed an innumerable number of people and exploiting religion". *** Israel's killing of Ahmed Yassin: Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said Israel's actions were "thoughtless and reckless, and cannot be justified." Killing Bin Laden: Japan's Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto said today that the country welcomed the death of Osama bin Laden as "significant progress of counter-terrorism measures. I pay respect to the US officials concerned." *** Israel's killing of Ahmed Yassin: The Brazilian government said it "deplored the murder of Sheik Ahmed Yassin." Killing Bin Laden: Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota said the death of Al Qaeda's leader Osama bin Laden is "important and positive". *** Israel's killing of Ahmed Yassin: Malaysia strongly condemned the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin: saying the action was a manifestation of terrorism. Killing Bin Laden: Malaysian Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said he hopes that the death of bin Laden would help bring universal peace and harmony. *** This list could go on and on... Contact Albert Wendroff by email at wendroff39@yahoo.com |
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THE MYSTERIOUS MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD; ISLAMIC STUDIES AT AMERICAN
UNIVERSITIES; POLLARD, AMERICAN POLITICAL HOSTAGE
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 15, 2011. |
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THE MYSTERIOUS MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD; Introduction: The Muslim Brotherhood mystifies most Westerners. Uninformed, most Westerners accept claims by Brotherhood spokesmen or media accounts. These accounts follow skillful but deceptive Brotherhood self-description as moderate. They advocate some democracy — not enough to build democratic societies, but enough to hold elections they are positioned to win. Then they dismantle any democratic institutions, such as a free press. Don't put much store in any democracy an Arab country might attain. The will of the people there may be for jihad. Actually, democracy means not only majority rule but minority protection. Islam does not believe in minority rights except when Muslims are the minority. Now for Darwish's frank and harsh view of reality. News:
The Muslim Brotherhood in its traditional societies and among self-segregated Muslims in Western societies is perceived as a defender of Islam from modernization. Criticizing it appears to most Muslims as criticizing Islam.
Following Muslims into the West, come Brotherhood infiltrators.
Nonie Darwish believes that Egyptian-born, White House advisor Dalia
Mogahed, who wears Islamic head covering, sympathizes with Sharia
imposition, with the Brotherhood, and with its affiliate, Hamas. Her
contribution to Obama's Cairo speech was geared [not just, as believed,
to overcome Muslim hostility, but also] to appease and legitimize the
Brotherhood. It legitimized but did not appease.
The U.S. media worries that the Brotherhood will take over Egypt [even while the media claims the uprising there is pro-democracy]. The media is oblivious to Brotherhood influence in the U.S.. By operating front groups and mouthing the right words, Radical Muslims give our media and top leaders a false impression of moderation. Worse, our media criticizes Americans who try to pre-empt attempts to impose Sharia, by banning it in advance. Those Americans are striving to preserve democracy, tolerance, and the American way of life. In hoping that Egypt will not become a virulent theocracy, Americans nurture illusions about secularism, the hoped for Muslim alternative. Darwish finds two types of Muslim governments: (1) Acknowledged theocracies; and (2) Feigned secularism. The Brotherhood probably would sidle into increasing but unstated religious rule. And so in Egypt, the Brotherhood placed its sympathizer, Al Baradei, who feigns moderation, as presidential candidate. He would let it fasten Sharia and especially jihad upon Egypt. That would be Obama's legacy. Obama supported the Ground Zero mosque against the people's wishes. His Administration hires Islamists in homeland security. Another Obama speech both denied we are a Christian country and falsely alleged a Muslim foundation (Jewish Political Chronicle, Sprint 2011, p.19 from Frontpage, 2/8/11). Discussion: President Obama goes further than President Bush, but both shared an FBI Director who spoke at dinners of an Islamist organization, CAIR. Under both, Radicals became prison chaplains who recruited terrorists. Legally, the U.S. is not a Christian country, but its cultural heritage is Christian, and much of its political foundation is European and even somewhat Hebraic. Americans realize that most of us were deceived by the financial crisis makers. Shouldn't they also develop skepticism of the political elite and the media? They favor diversity, but ignorantly patronize other cultures by assuming they share our views and ways of thinking. How many wars will we lose or prolong for lack of knowledge of the enemy? Our naivete is so dangerous that we shoveled funds to Pakistan for defeating the Russians in Afghanistan, without realizing that the Afghans helped were Islamists. We had to take the Russians' place there. We continue to give billions to American's enemies, including Pakistan, Egypt, Palestinian Authority, and Lebanese Armed Forces. Obama helped push Mubarak out, with what result? More News About Egypt: Barry Rubin, director of Global Research in International Affairs Center, shares Darwish's opinion that Egypt is ripe for Islamist takeover. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a most charismatic Radical evangelist, returned to Egypt and eclipsed the people's uprising by addressing a gigantic audience with a well-received proposition for Islamist rule. When al-Qaradawi demanded that the "hypocrites" must be removed, he meant Egyptian rulers who do not impose strict Sharia. Some Westerners like to call him moderate, but he opposes the West, internal integration [of Muslims with others], and globalization [external, economic integration and contact]. He would exterminate Israel, and would stone homosexuals. Al-Qaradawi urges Muslims to migrate into the West, so as to counteract what he calls Jewish influence there. His great influence makes him more dangerous than bin Laden was (Jewish Political Chronicle, Sprint 2011, p.26 from Jerusalem Post, 2/20/11). When will we treat him like bin Laden? Should the West allow a migration intended to take it down — down in freedom, down in humanitarianism, and down into backward centuries? ISLAMIC STUDIES AT AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES: Islamist organizations offer to donate well-endowed Islamist Studies programs at universities. They seek to colonize the university and whitewash Radical Islam. University officials think they are fostering "understanding" of Islam. So it was that the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) and the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) offered Huron U. College of the U. of Western Ontario (UWO) $2 million for a Chair in Islamic Studies. An alumni and faculty protest noted the donors' implication in jihad. Although MAC and IIIT claim to be moderate and pro-democracy, the MAC website identifies Imam Hassan Al-Banna as its mentor. IIIT follows him, too. Al-Banna founded the Moslem Brotherhood, parent of Radical Islam. The Brotherhood's strategic plan for Canada and the U.S. defines its work as a jihad that will destroy Western civilization from within. "In 2003, Shaykh Taha Jabir al-Alwani, a co-founder and former president of the IIIT, was cited as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the trial of Sami al-Arian, an Islamist activist who served a 57-month prison sentence in the United States for conspiring to channel funds to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a designated terrorist group in the United States and Canada. In pleading guilty, al-Arian admitted that he knew that the PIJ engaged in suicide bombings and other 'horrific and deadly acts of violence' against the people of Israel." "In a sworn affidavit filed in 2003, a senior special agent with the United States Customs Service testified: "I believe that Barzinji [another founding member and Vice-President of IIIT) is not only closely associated with PIJ as evidenced by ties to Al-Arian...but also with HAMAS." The protest letter cited Temple University. Temple refused an IIIT offer of $1.5 million until federal investigations of IIIT ended. The letter also cited the oldest Islamic Studies program in America, at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. Several faculty members promote Islamist views, including a former President of the Islamic Society of North America. An IIIT gift of $1 million for expansion set off significant criticism from another graduate, Andrew Bieszad. He found the program far from mainstream. During interfaith dialogue, there, states Mr. Bieszad, he mentioned being a Catholic who does not believe in Islam. He was followed by a Muslim, who asserted, "You are an infidel because you do not accept Islam." "According to Islam you do not deserve to live." A second Muslim student reiterated and added, 'in Islam, the Koran and the tradition of the prophet are very clear about this.' "You deserve to die." Other Muslims classmates made similar threats and insults. None defended Bieszad's right to freedom of expression, not even non-Muslim students. Worse, non-Muslim students and professors apologized for asking questions of Muslims, refused to criticize Islam, and expressed disproportionate respect for Muslim students. For their part, Muslim students freely spoke condescendingly about Christianity without objection made. Literature proselytizing for Islam was offered students. Bieszad inquired about doing likewise with Christian literature; he was told not to, lest it offend Muslims. When he sent a friend a private email mentioning his Professor Ingrid Mattson, then president of the Islamic Society of North America and its indictment for terrorism, Bieszad was ostracized. Islamic studies often are characterized by Islamic principles of scholarship that are devoid of intellectual freedom. Replying to the letter of protest, Trish Fulton, interim principal of the college claimed that her Board exercised due diligence, as by reviewing court decisions about IIIT. In an interview, she declared the beliefs and principles of MAC and IIT compatible with her values. But she said her Board reviewed only the activities of the donor organizations, not their values (nor their ethics). By contrast, one may be sure that the ethics of white supremacist donors would be reviewed. Who was on that review Board? Faisal Joseph, a Canadian Muslim leader and participant in Gaddafi's World Islamic Call Society, whose Canadian charity tax status was revoked over suspected financial links to a 2007 JFK bomb plot. There are other examples. Sheikh Zayed bin sultan al Nahyan, the anti-American and Holocaust-denying ruler of the UAE and condemned for slavery and other abuses, endowed Harvard Divinity School with $2.5 million for a chair in Islamic Studies. A graduate of that School wrote a 72-page paper on the Sheikh, organized an NGO and a website, and went public with her opposition. Eventually Harvard suspended the funds and the Sheikh withdrew them. The problem here is that universities are hungry for money, and faculty, students, and the public rarely criticize Islamic Studies programs' abuses. Most mainstream media ignore protestors or denounce them as "Islamophobes." Universities blunder in associating themselves with the enemy donors: the donors' reputation gains from the linkage, while the universities' reputations suffer. (Barbara Kay, Campus Watch, 5/11/11
There is a war on — international jihad — and every university campus is a frontline Islamic Studies at N. American Universities Islamist organizations offer to donate well-endowed Islamist Studies programs at universities. They seek to colonize the university and whitewash Radical Islam. University officials think they are fostering "understanding" of Islam. So it was that the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) and the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) offered Huron U. College of the U. of Western Ontario (UWO) $2 million for a Chair in Islamic Studies. An alumni and faculty protest noted the donors' implication in jihad. Although MAC and IIIT claim to be moderate and pro-democracy, the MAC website identifies Imam Hassan Al-Banna as its mentor. IIIT follows him, too. Al-Banna founded the Moslem Brotherhood, parent of Radical Islam. The Brotherhood's strategic plan for Canada and the U.S. defines its work as a jihad that will destroy Western civilization from within. "In 2003, Shaykh Taha Jabir al-Alwani, a co-founder and former president of the IIIT, was cited as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the trial of Sami al-Arian, an Islamist activist who served a 57-month prison sentence in the United States for conspiring to channel funds to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a designated terrorist group in the United States and Canada. In pleading guilty, al-Arian admitted that he knew that the PIJ engaged in suicide bombings and other 'horrific and deadly acts of violence' against the people of Israel." The protest letter cited Temple University. Temple refused an IIIT offer of $1.5 million until federal investigations of IIIT ended. The letter also cited the oldest Islamic Studies program in America, at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. Several faculty members promote Islamist views, including a former President of the Islamic Society of North America. An IIIT gift of $1 million for expansion set off significant criticism from another graduate, Andrew Bieszad. He found the program far from mainstream. During interfaith dialogue, there, states Mr. Bieszad, he mentioned being a Catholic who does not believe in Islam. He was followed by a Muslim, who asserted, "You are an infidel because you do not accept Islam." "According to Islam you do not deserve to live." A second Muslim student reiterated and added, 'in Islam, the Koran and the tradition of the prophet are very clear about this.' "You deserve to die." Other Muslims classmates made similar threats and insults. None defended Bieszad's right to freedom of expression, not even non-Muslim students. Worse, non-Muslim students and professors apologized for asking questions of Muslims, refused to criticize Islam, and expressed disproportionate respect for Muslim students. For their part, Muslim students freely spoke condescendingly about Christianity without objection made. Literature proselytizing for Islam was offered students. Bieszad inquired about doing likewise with Christian literature; he was told not to, lest it offend Muslims. When he sent a friend a private email mentioning his Professor Ingrid Mattson, then president of the Islamic Society of North America and its indictment for terrorism, Bieszad was ostracized. Islamic studies often are characterized by Islamic principles of scholarship that are devoid of intellectual freedom. Replying to the letter of protest, Trish Fulton, interim principal of the college claimed that her Board exercised due diligence, as by reviewing court decisions about IIIT. In an interview, she declared the beliefs and principles of MAC and IIT compatible with her values. But she said her Board reviewed only the activities of the donor organizations, not their values (nor their ethics). By contrast, one may be sure that the ethics of white supremacist donors would be reviewed. Who was on that review Board? Faisal Joseph, a Canadian Muslim leader and participant in Gaddafi's World Islamic Call Society, whose Canadian charity tax status was revoked over suspected financial links to a 2007 JFK bomb plot. There are other examples. Sheikh Zayed bin sultan al Nahyan, the anti-American and Holocaust-denying ruler of the UAE and condemned for slavery and other abuses, endowed Harvard Divinity School with $2.5 million for a chair in Islamic Studies. A graduate of that School wrote a 72-page paper on the Sheikh, organized an NGO and a website, and went public with her opposition. Eventually Harvard suspended the funds and the Sheikh withdrew them. The problem here is that universities are hungry for money, and faculty, students, and the public rarely criticize Islamic Studies programs' abuses. Most mainstream media ignore protestors or denounce them as "Islamophobes." Universities blunder in associating themselves with the enemy donors: the donors' reputation gains from the linkage, while the universities' reputations suffer (Barbara Kay, Campus Watch, 5/11/11
There is a war on — international jihad — and every university campus is on the front lines. POLLARD, AMERICAN POLITICAL HOSTAGE Almost all high-ranking U.S. officials familiar with the Pollard case agree that his 26 years of imprisonment is unjust and that he should be released now and unconditionally. This year, PM Netanyahu apologized for Pollard's Israeli sponsorship and asked for commutation of sentence. So did President Peres. Pollard expressed remorse and pleaded ill health. President Obama made no known response. High U.S. officials have admitted that Pollard is being held as a bargaining chip for Israeli concessions to the Arabs. Actually, Israel already made such concessions in return for Pollard's promised release, but the U.S. reneged. This is not U.S. diplomacy, but blackmail. This is not the behavior of an ally but an embarrassment to U.S. credibility. Where is Obama's vaunted compassion? (Dr. Aaron Lerner, IMRA, 5/12/11 www.imra.org.il) Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@gmail.com. |
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OBAMA'S NEWEST AMBUSH
Posted by Paul Lademain, May 15, 2011. |
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Nettie better hold his tongue, which is ordinarily too prone to waggle and haggle. Why? You might ask? Because any promise Nettie makes, he will be compelled to keep, whilst any promise BHO makes can and most likely will be broken at will. BHO has already broken his trust with the American people, and we know better than to trust him again. The sooner Nettie understands BHO's game, the more he should smile in silence. And if Nettie feels threatened or pressured, he should only go so far as to tell BHO that "he'll think about it" without promising anything to anybody. You see, Nettie's jaw is stronger than his spine. And people know it. We hope Nettie will screw up the courage to make straightforward demands, and be manly enough to gently remind BHO (as well as that silly tool, Hillary) that Israel knows it can make just as much trouble as any jihadist. You see, we Americans know we need Israel, not Pakistan. And we don't need or want yet another Islamic dictatorship and certainly not one carved out of Israel's diminished lands. We grieve for the people of Israel for having let such immorals as Peres and Barak to encumber Israel's sovereignty. But what these fools did can indeed be undone. Have courage. Viva to the Patriots of Israel from the SC4Z Below is an article by Caroline B. Glick. |
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Netanyahu doesn't have to give in. He can stick to his guns and defend the country. It is hard to believe, but it appears that in the wake of the Palestinian unity deal that brings Hamas, the genocidal, al-Qaida-aligned, local franchise of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, into a partnership with Fatah, US President Barack Obama has decided to open a new round of pressure on Israel to give away its land and national rights to the Palestinians. It is hard to believe that this is the case. But apparently it is. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that while Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is in Washington next week, and before the premier has a chance to give his scheduled address to a joint session of Congress, Obama will give a new speech to the Arab world. In that speech, Obama will praise the populist movements that have risen up against Arab tyrannies and embrace them as the model for the future. As for Israel, the report claimed that the Obama administration is still trying to decide whether the time is right to put the screws on Israel once more. On the one hand, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told the Journal that Arab leaders are clamoring for a new US initiative to force Israel to make new concessions. Joining this supposed clamor are the administration-allied pro-Palestinian lobby J Street, and the administration-allied New York Times. On the other hand, the Netanyahu government and Congress are calling for a US aid cutoff to the Palestinian Authority. With Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization, now partnering with Fatah in governing the PA, it is illegal for the US government to continue to have anything to do with the PA. Both the Netanyahu government and senior members of the House and Senate are arguing forcefully that there is no way for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians now, and that the US must abandon its efforts to force the sides to sign an agreement. The Israeli and congressional arguments are certainly compelling. But
the signals emanating from the White House and its allied media
indicate that Obama is ready to plough forward in spite of them. With
the new international security credibility he earned by overseeing the
successful assassination of Osama bin Laden, Obama apparently believes
that he can withstand congressional pressure and make the case for
demanding that Israel surrender Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to Hamas
and its partners in Fatah.
THE SIGNALS that Obama is setting his sights on coercing Israel into agreeing to surrender its capital and heartland to Hamas and its partners in Fatah came in three forms this week. First, administration officials are trying to lower the bar that Hamas needs to pass in order to be considered a legitimate political force. After Fatah and Hamas signed their first unity deal in March 2007, the US and its colleagues in the so-called Middle East Quartet — Russia, the EU and the UN — set three conditions that Hamas needed to meet to be accepted by them as legitimate. It needed to recognize Israel's right to exist, agree to respect existing agreements with Israel, and renounce terrorism. These are not difficult conditions. Fatah is perceived as having met them even though it is still a terrorist organization and its leaders refuse to accept Israel's right to exist and refuse to abide by any of the major commitments they took upon themselves in precious agreements with Israel. Hamas could easily follow Fatah's lead. But Hamas refuses. So, speaking to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius two weeks ago, administration officials lowered the bar. They said Hamas had made major concessions to Fatah in their agreement because it agreed to accept provisions of the 2009 unity deal drafted by the Mubarak government that it rejected two year ago and because Hamas agreed that the unity government will be manned by "technocrats" rather than terrorists. Even if these contentions are true, they are completely ridiculous. In point of fact, all the 2009 agreement says is that Hamas will refrain from demanding to join the US-trained and funded Fatah army in Judea and Samaria. As for the "technocratic" government, who does the Obama administration think will control these "technocrats"? And as to the truth of these contentions, in an interview last week with the New York Times, Hamas terror-master Khaled Mashal denied that he had agreed to the terms of the 2009 agreement. Indeed, he said that Fatah agreed to add annexes to the agreement reflecting Hamas's positions. The second pitch the administration and its friends have adopted ahead of Obama's address next week is that Hamas has become more moderate or may become more moderate. Robert Malley, who in the past advised Obama's presidential campaign, made this argument last week in an op-ed in the Washington Post. Malley claimed that by joining the government, Hamas will be more moved by US pressure. A New York Times editorial last Saturday argued that Hamas may have moderated, and even if it hasn't, "Washington needs to press Mr. Netanyahu back to the peace table." Adding their voices to the din, Middle Eastern leaders like Amr Moussa, the frontrunner to serve as Egypt's next president, and Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan, have given interviews to the US media this week in which they denied that Hamas is even a terrorist organization. Here it is important to note that none of the administration's statements about the Hamas-Fatah deal and none of the media coverage related to it have included any mention of the fact that Hamas deliberately murders entire families and targets children specifically. No one mentions last month's Hamas guided rocket attack which deliberately targeted an Israeli school bus. Hamas murdered 16-year-old Daniel Viflic in that attack. No one has mentioned the café massacres, the bus bombings, the university campus massacres, the breaking into homes massacres, the Passover Seder massacres Hamas has carried out and bragged about in recent years. No one has mentioned that when seen as a portion of the population, Hamas has killed far more Israelis than al-Qaida has killed Americans. The final pitch the administration and its surrogates are making is that the deal needs to be seen as part of the overall regional shift towards popular rule. This pitch too is difficult to make. After all, the first casualty of the Arab world's shift towards popular rule is the 30-year-old Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Now that Egypt's citizens have gotten rid of US-ally Hosni Mubarak, they have committed themselves to getting rid of the peace he upheld with Israel throughout his long reign. Again, despite the difficulties, the Obama administration is clearly willing to make the case. Regarding Egypt, they argue that the Muslim Brotherhood's rise to power is a good. This was the point of Obama's Passover and Israel Independence Day messages. As for the regional shift, the fact that Obama reportedly intends to place the so-called Palestinian-Israeli peace process into the regional context signals that he sees potential for an agreement between Israel and Syria as well. His advisers telegraphed this view to Ignatius. Obama's advisers made the unlikely argument that if Syrian leader Bashar Assad survives the popular demonstrations calling for his overthrow, he will feel compelled to distance his regime from Iran because his Sunni-majority population has been critical of his alliance with the Shi'ite mullocracy. This argument is unlikely given that the same officials recognize that
if Assad survives, he will owe his regime's survival to Iran. As they
reminded Ignatius, US intelligence officials reported last month that
Iran has "secretly supplied Assad with tear gas, anti-riot gear and
other tools of suppression."
WHAT IS perhaps most remarkable about Obama's apparent plan to use the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as an excuse for a new round of diplomatic warfare against Israel is how poorly coordinated his steps have been with the PLO-Fatah. Mahmoud Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat always viewed the US obsession with getting the Arabs and Israel to sign peace treaties as a strategic asset. Anytime they wanted to weaken Israel, they just needed to sound the fake peace drum loudly enough to get the White House's attention. US presidents looking for the opportunity to "make history" were always ready to take their bait. Unlike his predecessors, Obama's interest in the Palestinians is not opportunistic. He is a true believer. And because of his deep-seated commitment to the Palestinians, his policies are even more radically anti-Israel than the PLO-Fatah's. It was Obama, not Abbas, who demanded that Jews be barred from building anything in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. It is the Obama administration, not the PLO-Fatah, that is leading the charge to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood. Like his belated move to demand a permanent abrogation of Jewish
property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, Abbas arguably
embraced Hamas because Obama left him no choice. He has no interest in
making peace with Israel, so the only thing he can do under the
circumstances Obama has created is embrace Hamas. He can't be less
pro-Islamic than the US president.
ALL OF this brings us to Netanyahu and his trip to Washington next week. Obviously Obama's decision to upstage the premier with his new outreach-to-the-Arab-world speech will make Netanyahu's visit more challenging than it was already going to be. Obama is clearly betting that by moving first, he will be able to coerce Netanyahu to make still more concessions of land and principles. Certainly, Netanyahu's earlier decisions to cave in to Obama's pressure with his acceptance of Palestinian statehood and his subsequent acceptance of a Jewish building freeze give Obama good reason to believe he can back Netanyahu into a corner. Defense Minister Ehud Barak's hysterical warnings about a diplomatic "tsunami" at the UN in September if Israel fails to capitulate to Obama today no doubt add to Obama's sense that he can expect Netanyahu to dance to his drums, no matter how hostile the beat. But Netanyahu doesn't have to give in. He can stick to his guns and defend the country. He can continue on the correct path he has forged of repeating the truth about Hamas. He can warn about the growing threat of Egypt. He can describe the Iranian-supported butchery Assad is carrying out against his own people and note that a regime that murders its own will not make peace with the Jewish state. And he can point out the fact that as a capitalist, liberal democracy which protects the lives and property of its citizens, Israel is the only stable country in the region and the US's only reliable regional ally. True, if Netanyahu does these things, he will not win himself any friends in the White House. But he never had a chance of winning Obama and his advisers over anyway. He will empower Israel's allies in Congress, though. And more importantly, whether he is loved or hated in Washington, if Netanyahu does these things, he will be able to return home to Jerusalem with the sure knowledge that he earned his salary this month. Paul Lademain is a Secular Christian for Zion (SC4Z). Contact him by email at lademain@verizon.net |
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FROM ISRAEL: THE SPECIAL STRENGTH OF ISRAEL
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 14, 2011. |
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Motzei Shabbat (After Shabbat) I write often about Israel's strength, and the astounding and unique courage of her people. But it's one thing to write about it, and another to provide a demonstration of this courage by one extraordinary individual: in this case, Miriam Peretz. And so, this motzei Shabbat I am simply going to offer a link to a video. It was taken at the 2008 Friends of the IDF dinner, I believe in NYC, and was just recently put up on YouTube. (I thank Margy P. for calling it to my attention.) This, my friends, is why Israel will prevail. The world understands us very little indeed.
Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info |
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DENMARK STIFLES DEFENSE OF ISLAM'S VICTIMS; UNRESTRICTED IMMIGRATION, BAILOUTS, WELFARE, AND CENSORSHIP
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 14, 2011. |
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FEMALE ARAB ROLE MODELS The Arab world, including by Palestinian Authority (P.A.), broadcast a film Sponsored by the Arab League, portraying female Arab role models. Almost all the role models were jihadists. One was Dalal Mughrabi, who murdered a few dozen Israeli civilians. [P.A. head Abbas recently dedicated a memorial to her.] At the end, the presentation suggested that such women also could serve as a model for female "farmers, the teachers, the doctors, the engineers, the scientists, the lawyers, the activists in all fields whether social or political..." (IMRA, 5/12/11 from Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
The evidence constantly refutes American diplomats and commentators who keep declaring P.A. head Abbas a moderate and suggesting that various Arab countries are moderate. Jihad remains their ideal. Some Muslims pursue Jihad at great sacrifice; others follow in slow motion. What must they think of our easily snookered, suckered, ensnared leaders? American leaders take several billion dollars a year from us citizens to lavish upon jihadist societies, some with jihadist forces, including Pakistan, Egypt, P.A., Lebanese Armed Forces, and unknown Libyan rebels. Then for some balance, the U.S. gives a smaller amount to Israel. But the New York Times will accuse belt-tightening Americans who favor smaller government and greater fiscal prudence stingy and foolish. The film gave a nod to gender equality. Let the Arabs free their men from an ethos of bigotry and violence in its behalf before they free the women to join the men in savaging civilization. DENMARK STIFLES DEFENSE OF ISLAM'S VICTIMS For all their talk of democracy and humanitarianism, Europe [and Canada] are stifling. The latest example is Denmark's repression of those working to defend Islam's victims. A Danish author Lars Hedegaard was convicted of hate speech for publishing Muhammed's Girls: Violence, Murder and Rape in the House of Islam. In Denmark, alone, thousands of females are victimized by Islamic mores. Sounding the alarm and shouting for reform is banned. Not allowed to identify the problem. The women and girls must suffer in silence. (Incidentally, some are not Muslim.) Mr. Hedegaard won acquittal, but prosecutors tried him again and won.
He is appealing. Incidentally, the U.S. bars such double jeopardy Would the government have prosecuted Wilberforce, the great British critic of slavery, if he were trying to abolish that abomination in Denmark, now? Perhaps Denmark would have prosecuted socialist Upton Sinclair for exposing unhealthful meat packing in Copenhagen now instead of in Chicago in the past. Wilberforce and Sinclair hurt the reputations of the poor slavers and meat adulterers, and should have been punished for it, so slavery and maggots in meat could continue? Isn't hatred actually manifested by the Islamic misogynists in Denmark, not by the muckrakers and reformers? It is ironic to hear American liberals praise the now non-liberal Europeans and denigrate American liberty. The liberals' influence gradually is binding our country by similar anti-hate laws or police action that actually protect hate and its resultant sedition and violence against objective and subjective dispute. The jihadsist boa constrictor is opening its jaws, but those who would raise a sword or just a shield in defense, are accused of slandering the poor boa. Thomas Jefferson had faith in an informed public to cull the truth from disputing sides. All praise to the original American ideal of free debate! UNRESTRICTED IMMIGRATION, BAILOUTS, WELFARE, AND CENSORSHIP Here are some news reports from today's New York Times Thought cute when only about 1,500 exotic rose-tinged parakeets were in Britain, now tens of thousands descend upon gardens and bird-feeders like a blight. Pet owners had released them. Some flocks migrated to other European cities and suburbs. If they move to the countryside, they could threaten agriculture, as they do in their native India. South Asian and African people, but now also about a thousand a day from Libya, sail to the Italian island of Lampedusa, as refugees. From there they fan out into the rest of the EU, which has eliminated internal border controls. Most seek work [but many end up on welfare]. Many are Muslims. The flood has caused France to erect levees. [France and Britain try to keep illegal aliens from taking the Chunnel from France to England.] Now Denmark is erecting border inspection, ostensibly against smugglers of drugs and weapons. Immigration control, however, appears to be a motive. The EU denounced Denmark's plan, without knowing its details, as contrary to the EU treaty for open, internal borders. The nationalistic True Finn party also seeks to restrict immigration. The Party gained strong representation in the parliament. Dismayed, many Finns sailed for the U.S.. Finland suffers from increasing unemployment. The True Finn party tried to block government approval of the EU bailout of Portugal, following bailouts of Greece, which did not solve the problem, and of Ireland. The Party's growth reflects a growing concern by northern Europeans that they work hard only to have to turn their wealth over to countries that spend hard. Finns are discovering the negative aspects of national welfare systems, after long having criticized the U.S. as not compassionate for less wealthy people. The same day's edition of the Wall St. Journal reported about the Secure Community program's deportations of illegal aliens. The program is a federal one, aiming at criminal aliens. State Police are told to apply the federal law to people brought before them. Illegal aliens are deported. President Bush initiated the program, and President Obama touts it as evidence of his doing something about illegal immigration. Not all illegal aliens have committed other crimes, however. As a result, critics say, illegal aliens now are afraid to report crimes to police, lest they be deported. Critics assert that the program needlessly breaks up families. Several states have announced their withdrawal from the program. Recent articles of mine have documented efforts in Europe and in the U.S. and Canada to repress critical but objective discussion of the Islamic danger to Western civilization and to the lives and health of Muslim women. How liberal is political censorship? Commentary: Americans are compassionate. But we found that welfare systems are not. They induce dependency and motivate people to sponge off others. It doesn't occur to liberals that people "game" the system. Don't they mind becoming, in effect, slaves to lazy people? It takes time for the results of profligacy to be felt in wealthier countries, but eventually people realize they have been made fools of. When the U.S. drastically reduced welfare eligibility, most former welfare recipients of working age found jobs. The great migration into Europe not only boosts welfare rolls, but boosts the Islamist intent to take over Europe, destroy its freedom, and impose Islamic law there. The attitude of governors withdrawing from the deportation program may stem from political pressure. Their rationale is feeling sorry for certain lawbreakers reaping the consequences of their violations. They knew the consequences when they broke in. Those who refuse to cooperate with law enforcement are irresponsible. I think people should be responsible for their own actions. It isn't fair for liberals to hold us taxpayers responsible for people who could take care of themselves but do not. By the same token, the government-financial complex gives bankers and mortgage financiers an incentive to take needless risks when they agree to bail them out of burst bubbles that the same complex had inflated. Greece's debt is to German and French banks. Is the EU bailout of weaker EU member economies really another bank bailout? This article does not to judge immigration policy as a whole. This subject is complicated and usually discussed with more assertion than fact. This article does judge the encouragement of fiscal profligacy, disincentives to work, and immigration opportunities for potential Islamic seditionists. These policies have brought Western countries to the brink of economic collapse, internal conquest, and loss of free speech. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@gmail.com. |
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EUROPE SIDES WITH HAMAS
Posted by Sanford Aranoff, May 14, 2011. | ||
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This is from IsraPundit and was posted by Ted Belman. It is archived at
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Europe threatens Israel that either it negotiates with hamas or Europe will recognize a terror state of "palestine". So essentially the EU is demanding Israel surrender territory to hamas' voluntarily. Europe is irredeemably anti-Semitic. It has chosen to side with the barbarians over the civilized, industrious Jews and the Jewish state. How's that working out for you Europe? Maybe Europe will benefit from all the scientific, technological and medical advances coming out of the muslim world and will undoubtedly be coming from the newly created sharia terror state of "palestine". Soeren Kern of Hudson NY sums it up: Several European countries are threatening to recognize an independent Palestinian state — on the basis of the pre-1967 boundaries to include the West Bank, Gaza, and with East Jerusalem as its capital — if Israel refuses to return to the negotiating table with the Palestinian Authority by September. These are some responses that have been proposed:
Sanford Aranoff is author of "Rational Thinking, Government Policies, Science, and Living Teaching" and "Helping Students Think and Do Better." Contact him by email at aranoff@analysis-knowledge.com Contact him by email at aranoff@analysis-knowledge.com |
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THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD
Posted by Ari Bussel, May 14, 2011. |
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"Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations and ages it is the rule." Friedrich Nietzsche What a visual. Little old women being led onto trucks headed for extermination camps. One says, "I'm not sure this is such a good idea. They may kill us." The other answers, "Sha, Still. Do you want to make them mad?" Make them mad? As if madness were incumbent on the behavior of its victim. Were Ted Bundy's victims the root cause of his madness? Was Oklahoma responsible for Timothy McVeigh's evil act? Yet, if one believes the corrupt and biased British media, madness is the result of a victim's acts, not the evil of the perpetrator. Failing to lead the world in any viable manner any longer, Great Britain has selected enabling evil as its cause. England's press has judged and sentenced the Jewish State, and the punishment is to sign, seal and deliver the body of Israel to the nearest morgue. Once the festivities and pageantry of a royal wedding are gone, what is there in Great Britain to speak of? Big Ben? Been there done that. Parliament? Congress is a far greater dog and pony show nowadays. Sir Richard Branson? Come on people, really? America has The Donald. Since the Royal Navy hasn't produced any true heroes since Lord Nelson, England is a wash out in the over-achiever department. I imagine that is why the British Media has selected spreading propaganda as its new great achievement in world affairs. They have once again taken themselves way too seriously and decided they are now entitled to be judge, jury and the consciousness of mankind. Seems like quite a pompous facade from the very people that victimized the Irish. Still today many Irish cannot speak of Britain without spitting venom with very word. A country that continually colonized and bullied the world with its navy is calling the Israeli kettle black? My, oh my, how we all do forget our own foibles and crimes; do we not? I say bring back James Bond. At least he could tell the good guys from the bad. Britain has never been Jew friendly, so it should be no surprise to learn that in 1948 after the formation of the Arab league they called a meeting in Geneva and invited the leaders of the Arab nations, who had chosen as their first order of business to eliminate the new state of Israel. Brothers in arms, all. Since the Swiss retained a policy of neutrality, this bunch cleverly set a meeting in a large Swiss conglomerate. It was there that England offered 250 million dollars to its Arab allies to purchase a cache of guns and weapons from Ethiopia for use against Israel. When the Israeli secret service uncovered the plan, the Swiss government was reminded of its neutrality and intervened to thwart the sale. The guns remained in Ethiopia, but England's hatred of the Jewish State was only a tiny festering boil on their consciousness. After World War II the Brits continued to systematically assist their Arab friends in their agenda to destroy Israel. As if the escaped Nazis weren't enough help in that regard. When, in 1967, it became apparent to the world Israel could not be destroyed by firepower, a new public relations front was opened. The pen is after all mightier than the sword. Taking a page from the Goebbels' propaganda playbook, it was decided Israel would be more easily eliminated through merely shifting world opinion and spreading anti-Semitism. This is never terribly difficult to do, especially when there has always been such an eager army to enable hatred toward the Jewish people. What the Arab world and their British allies hadn't counted on was the startling amount of help they would receive from the Jewish State itself. Through its silence, Israel became a willing partner in its own destruction. Even today when the Arabs have so clearly won the public relations war, Israel refuses to fight back. "Sha still, you will make them mad." "Don't bring it up and maybe they'll forget." Once again the refusal to fight back at the risk of angering the enemy will cause the annihilation of the Jewish people. Things were a bit different immediately following World War II. Although, anti-Semitism did exist and thrive in the United States in a more covert and elegant manner through a "gentleman's agreement." Still, The decision of the American government to foster Israel's statehood superseded the individual, and having the most powerful country in the world as an ally was a source of strength for the small fledgling nation. Ah, but now the tables have turned and a whole new set of spices have been added into the recipe. U.S. dependence on Arab oil has tied our hands. We have an administration that threatens to pull the plug on funding unless Israel plays ball. Obviously, Israel has decided to go along with this program. Is U.S. money really worth dying for? While the Arabs murder and kill, the world blames Israel. What does Israel do to counter these successful attacks on her veracity? Nothing. "Sha still, you will make them mad" remains the policy of choice. The world media, with England leading the charge, has twisted the victim into the aggressor and created a level of worldwide anti-Semitism never before seen. Not even Hitler could have dreamed he and Great Britain would be successful allies in his madness. Yet, England outshines Hitler's hate campaign in every way. The pen is mightier than the sword. And once again Israel just marches onto the trucks, silent and afraid to speak. Babies are murdered in their beds and the British media blames Israel. Hamas teaches young children to hate and destroy Jews and remains adamant in its refusal to recognize and ultimately destroy the Jewish State. The world agrees Israel should be destroyed. With the British media and the United Nations leading the charge, come September Israel will soon be only a faint memory. However, it is not the acts of these people who must be investigated. Madness needs no rationale for its evil agenda. The real danger is the silence of Israel who depends on its friends and allies to defend its existence. Earth to Israel! You have no friends. The United States no longer has your back and the American Jews have turned to the dark side. In September, Israel will be forced into an untenable situation when the United Nations declares Gaza an independent nation with Jerusalem as its capital. Great end-run around the peace process. Worthy of Red Grange I'd say. Israel will need a serious "Hail Mary" play after that one. When the tanks roll into Gaza, driven by American soldiers as part of the UN peacekeeping (I know I laugh at that one too) force, a few eyes may finally roll open in the Knesset. Sadly, it will be too little too late, and the only defense left may be a military one. Hamas and Hezbollah now surround Israel with an abundance of missiles donated to the cause by those charming Mullahs in Iran, so Israel may be forced to defend itself or be destroyed. There may be no choice but to use the unthinkable, thereby villainizing Israel for all time as the "aggressor du jour." Yet, there is no doubt in my mind Israel has played an enormous part in its own demise. Enabling the British and all world media in their quest to paint Israel as a victimizer instead of what they truly are, a victim, cannot end well. Still Israel remains still. It is that scene in a movie where everyone walks away from someone, and they never even notice they are suddenly standing alone. Keeping silent and letting evil define you is the height of folly. Unfortunately, the good people of the world have watched as once more evil overtakes mankind. "But sha still, we don't want to make them mad." As if their madness has anything at all to do with us. Contact Ari Bussel and Norma Zager at busselari@gmail.com |
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CNN HOST, FAREED ZAKARIA, ADMITS HE ADVISES OBAMA
Posted by Barbara Sommer, May 13, 2011. |
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CNN's Fareed Zakaria revealed in an interview to fellow CNN host Eliot Spitzer that he frequently advises the President on foreign policy. A host doing a 'news' show while advising the President of the United States and not telling the audience seems like a credibility issue. But so does hiring a disgraced prostitute-loving-dirtbag to be a host...and no one seems to care. Contact Barbara Sommer at lsommer_1_98@yahoo.com |
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MANAGING PAKISTAN AFTER BIN LADEN; JIHAD AND MUSLIM "SENSIBILITIES"
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 13, 2011. |
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MANAGING PAKISTAN AFTER BIN LADEN John Bolton, America's wise yet maligned diplomat, chose an ironic title, "Managing Pakistan After bin Laden," (op-ed, May 11). Pakistan manages the U.S.. Jihadists deceive us by feigning moderation, toleration, and devotion to democracy. Pakistan secures from us $3 billion a year while promoting jihad. The U.S. subsidizes Islamist-allied militaries such as in the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Lebanon, and probably Libya. Jihadists are entrenched in Pakistan. They murder or expel masses of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslim sectarians in Pakistan. Education? Madrassas. I doubt that "the basic reason Islamabad has acquiesced in terrorism" is "its continuing clash with India over Kashmir." That is like attributing the Arab-Israel conflict to the Territories, not jihad. Jihadists always cite pretexts. Actually, Pakistan was born in religious murder. So while trying to lever out the rock of jihad from it, don't expect much. JIHAD AND MUSLIM "SENSIBILITIES" As countries go, the United States is among the more tolerant, religiously. Unfortunately, our way of life is under religious-military attack by jihadists. How shall we reconcile our being tolerant with defending against the intolerant? What about Muslim "sensibilities?" The U.S. cannot understand nor win the broad war against it, unless it identifies the enemy and understands his motives. The paramount motive is religious — Islamic imperialism. Other motives for the war are less important. Loot is a motive that some Islamic commanders, as I documented recently about the conquest of India, used as incentive. Muslim rulers do dream of expanding their realms. Suspicion or hatred of foreigners is another motive, but perhaps related to religious differences. Neither Israel nor the U.S. quite has recognized this war and that terrorism is just one of its methods. Particularly about the Arab-Israel conflict, the West pretends that the war is territorial. That mistaken or misleading assumption keeps Israel from winning and religious aggressors from losing. False assumptions that one can make peace by ceding territory actually encourage the enemy. When total conquest is the goal, as it usually is for ideological fanatics, whether Communists, Nazis, or Radical Muslims, giving them land and money bolsters their struggle and undermines ours. Ideological fanatics are not reasonable. They do not have limited goals that we can satisfy. Only our surrender would satisfy them. They say surrender or die, but if we surrender, we will die. This Islamic jihad war of aggression is occurring in many countries, in various stages, and in different ways. Outright military action against us commands our attention. Terrorism, however, draws notice only when extensive. Even more hidden, sometimes hidden with media collusion, are intimidation of critics and politicians, demands for special privileges, accusations that criticism is hate-talk, infiltration of university centers of Middle East studies, chaplain infiltration of prisons, setting up of radical Islamic mosques, and propaganda that both denies the war and denigrates our culture. The crucial question is whether the current jihad is joined by the whole Muslim world in general, or only by the Radical Muslims. If the whole Muslim world is involved, our salvation is precarious. If only the Radical Muslims, moderate Muslims could be our allies. I do not know the answer. I think the answer is sometimes the one, and sometimes the other, depending on circumstances. Let's explore this. We have to start with the basics of Islamic teaching. My discussion of this just the military and political aspects, not the religious aspects of Islam. Islamic theology of the nature of the divinity, afterlife, and worship, for examples, are not relevant to addressing jihad. For non-believers to include in discussion of jihad those irrelevant, strictly theological issues can seem to Muslims as an attack on their faith. It can arouse moderate Muslims to join jihadists in defense of their religion. Nor would addressing those issues square with our tolerance. The place for Westerners to address those issues is in objective courses on comparative religion, not in the context of war. Although Islam is a religion, Westerners do not realize that while it really is a way of life. It has military and political facets. What are they? Islamic military and political principles have been interpreted somewhat variously over the centuries. These are the main ones affecting our safety and freedom: (1) Islam is superior, the rest are ignoble; (2) Islam must dominate the rest, subordinating and humiliating Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, and exterminating the rest; (3) To advance Islamic hegemony, at least these means may be used: war, truce to regain strength, and deception. Those hostile principles permeate the prevailing Sunni and Shia sects. The Sufi version of Islam is more peaceable, but is being persecuted by the others. We emphasize that jihad is a principle of Islam, whether members are radical or moderate. It is the common base, militarily and politically. Having a common base, and not having a central Islamic authority to define the faith, Radical Muslims usually are considered authentic Muslims. Knowing that that common base rests on hostility toward other religions, we can understand the "sudden Islamist syndrome," whereby a Radical Muslim turns a moderate Muslim into a terrorist. Radical prompting falls on fertile soil. One hears claims that Radical Islam has "hijacked" Islam. Has it? Yes and no. Radical Islam retains the common base of Islam. What differentiates Radicals from most other Muslims? For one thing, the Radicals are more activist, rousing the others to action. How innocent is a rabble so easily roused? For another thing, the Radicals have dropped many Islamic traditions and religious rulings. The Radicals have no scruples about the means they use. Radicals contend that what they do is not terrorism. The claim that the innocent civilians they murder are not innocent or are not civilians. Radicals stress a need to murder Jews rather than to subordinate them. Radicals emphasize belief that Jews are inherently evil, which is a racist concept. Radicals also wage jihad against non-Radical Muslims. Radicals strive for a single, world-wide caliphate. The Palestinian Authority has adopted much of the Radical view. It holds the racist view of Jews, whom it stresses murdering. It denies that murdered Jews might be innocent civilians. It denies supporting terrorism even while it preaches bigotry, glorifies conquest, and honors terrorists. Rather, it calls Israeli self-defense aggression and terrorism. Why do Muslims call Israeli self-defense aggression and terrorism? Since Muslims believe that non-believers are evil, it considers their self-defense against Islamic attack "aggression." Besides, deceit against non-believers is Islamic policy. Inconsistently, when Israel attacks enemy military forces, and nearby civilians get killed, the Arabs call those attacks "state terrorism." This terminology is part of Islamic deception, never admitting to wrongdoing. Much of the West goes along with the concept that Israeli self-defense is wrongful. In this, the West is making trouble for the Jews, but unwittingly sowing trouble for itself. After all, it, too, is a victim of Jihad, although its countries are not as much in the front lines as is Israel. Give it time and Muslim immigration! Since most Westerners are uneducated about jihad, and their media keeps them that way, they often do not detect Islamic dissimulation. They swallow Radical Islamic claims. Thus many Americans believed the assertions by Imam Rauf of the World Trade Center mega-mosque that he is moderate and seeks reconciliation. The major media did not cite the imam's various radical statements, associations, and record. Likewise, when Muslims, Radical or otherwise, characterize their religion as one of peace, justice, mercy, and love, they are distorting the record of frequent wars, murders on the basis of rumor, no mercy for men and rape of women during Arab slave raids, and no love for whole categories of people the imams teach their masses to hate. There have been elements of the characterized virtues, over the ages, but they are not the predominant strain now.
RADICAL MUSLIMS PARTICIPATE in religious dialogue, to gain respectability. They do not exchange views, however. They seek to publicize their own. Jews of all people, who suffered from religious dialogue in the Middle Ages, should be skeptical of religious dialogue now. In the Middle Ages, the purpose of dialogue was to convert them or, if the Jewish representatives did not make an excellent case, punish them. Nevertheless, some Jewish representatives naively participate in religious dialogue. How can religious dialogue be genuine, when the Muslims are convinced of their own superiority? The do not care about the religious sensibilities of others, even as they demand that others care about theirs. When non-believers' military forces bomb a mosque used as a firing platform, Muslims claim to be insulted. If a mosque is a holy place, and should not be attacked, is it fair to use the mosque as staging ground for attack? When Radical Muslims fight against dissident Muslim sects, they bomb their mosques. Being fanatical, the radicals deem the other sects' mosques heretical and therefore fair game. Freedom of religion is not an Islamic concept. Violent repression of other religions or of slight deviation is. If a non-believer cites historical facts about Islam that are negative, Muslims feel entitled to slay him. If non-believers or even believers reach a negative conclusion about the Muslim prophet, whom Islam considers a paragon, believers do not debate the matter, they decapitate. They murder people for innocent discussion not intended to cast aspersion. Whatever non-believers say, in discussion, Muslims are likely to declare it offensive. Declaring it offensive serves to put the non-Muslims on the defensive. Some web site once used a symbol that had nothing to do with Islam, but Muslims protested that it looked like the Arabic word for Allah. It offended their Islamic sensibilities, they claimed. Then Muslims turn around and call Jews "sons of apes and pigs," America "decadent," non-believing women who are unescorted "whores," and so on. They have little regard for other people's sensibilities. Why should they? Aren't they superior to everyone else?
MUSLIM TERRORISTS CONSIDER LEGITIMATE WHAT THE GENEVA CONVENTION calls war crimes, when perpetrated by Muslims. But they place civilians in harm's way. When, in a legitimate battle, some of their civilians get killed, they accuse their enemies of having committed war crimes. Their values are upside down of ours. International law would maintain that our values are civilized, theirs barbaric. Radical Islam exploits Western democracy and tolerance to advance its agenda of autocracy and intolerance. For example, they plan a mega-mosque at the site of their side's destruction of the World Trade Center, in disregard of American sensibilities. When Americans ask them not to, they claim the Americans are interfering with their freedom of religion and are disregarding Muslim sensibilities. When Christian missionaries preach outside of mosques, affirmatively and not negatively, Muslims there complain it is Islamophobia. No, it is attempted persuasion. Unfortunately, so appeasement-minded have some of us become, that some police arrest the Christians. By contrast, inside many mosques, as we have documented, especially in the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, the imams preach negatively about non-Muslims. The hate-speech is obvious. When jihadists kidnap or capture non-believers, they deny them visitors and Red Cross inspection or withhold their murdered bodies for ransom. When jihadists are captured, they expect visitors; when killed, they expect the bodies to be returned. U.S. forces attempt to follow the Geneva Convention principles of burying enemy combatants "with respect." In Iraq, the U.S. buried enemy troops according to Islamic ritual, exigencies of war permitting. (www.slate.com/id/2081324/). Since jihadists do not follow the rules of war but deliberately commit war crimes, they are not entitled to POW status when captured. Do they deserve to be buried "with respect?" Some say no. They point out that jihadists, as common enemies of mankind, who murder people for having different religious views, are not entitled to Islamic burial. Going further, some suggest burying jihadists with pork. Since Islam considers pork unclean, such burial probably would disqualify slain jihadists from ascending to heaven. The promise of heaven motivates many youths to join jihadist ranks and murder innocent people. Opposing that suggestion, the Establishment argues that the suggestion is intolerant and would offend Muslim sensibilities. How can a suggestion not to thwart the motivation for intolerant jihadists be wrongful? As for Muslim sensibilities, we have seen that the West's notion of those alleged sensibilities is getting its society overrun in the name of multi-culturalism. We also have seen that jihadists take unfair advantage of our sensitivity to their sensibilities. My counter-arguments are not definitive. What do you think? Consider this: Jihadists' carry their demands for one-way consideration of Muslim "sensibilities" to an extreme. They insist that we not discuss the historical record, that we not analyze their demands on us, that they be granted special privileges. Everything we do according to our way of life they claim insults theirs. And they do this in the West, as if they are our rulers. Their strategy is to herd us into gradual subservience to them. It is time for Westerners to stop deferring to them. We should resume practicing our freedom of thought. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@gmail.com. |
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THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE
Posted by Susana K-M, May 13, 2011. |
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This was posted May 6, 2011 on the Iran180 website:
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The power struggle that has emerged in the last fortnight between Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Khamenei has taken a, shall we say, metaphysical turn. Reports The Guardian: Close allies of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The view in Tehran is that Ahmadinejad is grooming Mashaei as his successor. According to David Ignatius in the Washington Post, Ahmadinejad has tasked Mashaei with diplomatic outreach: The political ferment in Tehran is one more sign of the Arab Spring, an earthquake that is shaking the entire Middle East. In this environment, both Ahmadinejad and Khamenei understand that the legitimacy of their increasingly isolated regime is in danger. Ahmadinejad's circle seems to favor outreach; Khamenei and the clerics want deeper retrenchment. Deep and bitter internal splits have been a staple of the Iranian regime since the revolution in 1979. And today's enemy can be tomorrow's ally; let's not forget that Ahmadinejad's theft of the 2009 election was made much easier by the support he received from the very same "Supreme Leader" he's now feuding with.
Contact Susana K-M by email at suanema@gmail.com
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JORDAN COZIES UP TO ASSAD
Posted by Arutz-7, May 13, 2011. |
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This was written by Gavriel Queenann and appeared today in Arutz-7. |
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Jordanian Prime Minister Marouf Al Bakhit on Wednesday telephoned his Syrian counterpart Adel Safar to discussed boosting relations between Jordan and Syria, the Jordan Times reports. During the conversation, Bakhit stressed Jordan's concern for Syria's stability, expressing hope that calm will be restored in the Kingdom's northern neighbor. He also underscored Jordan's confidence in the ability of the Syrian leadership to handle ongoing protests in the country in the best interest of Syria and its people. Safar expressed appreciation of Jordan's concern about the security and the stability of Syria, commending efforts to develop bilateral relations. Safar said Assad's government is committed to implementing economic and political reforms President Bashar Asaad announced recently. Bakhit's call comes as the United States and other western nations seek to isolate the regime of Bashar Assad, which has brutally sought to quell demonstrations calling for his ouster. Syria has been sharply censured by the International community for its repressive tactics vis-a-vis demonstrators. Sanctions have been imposed on some senior Syrian leaders. On Wednesday, Syria was also forced to withdraw its candidacy for the United Nations Human Rights Council. Also Wednesday, Assad's forces shelled residential neighborhoods in Homs, killing eighteen. Some 750 people have been killed in the violent protests that have rocked the Alawite-run, Sunni-majority nation. Jordan's motives for seeking to improve relations with Assad's regime as he brutally supresses his people remain an enigma. Gavriel Queenann is a writer for Arutz-7. This essay appeared today in Arutz-7 (www.IsraelNationNews.com). |
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FROM ISRAEL: REDUNDANT
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 12, 2011. |
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I strive mightily to produce material that won't be redundant, that will cover new ground and provide fresh insights. But, alas, the state of affairs in this world sometimes makes that impossible. So much that passes as "news" has a "been-there, done-that" quality to it. That's because many of those who pass for leaders these days have latched on to certain ideas — which have become obsessions, and which they will not surrender. "Peace process." "Two state solution." One would have thought that the current situation had made it crystal clear that aspiring to these things any longer would be the very height of foolishness and that a new approach was required. But it's not the case. We keep hearing about "negotiations" and "peace" as if they were goals that might realistically be achieved with a bit of good will. One would have thought that a "merger" between Fatah and Hamas would have opened eyes. Nahh... Thus, on occasion, do I still have the inclination — which I resist! — to bang my head against the wall. Although you might find me scratching my head in bewilderment from time to time, or yelling to no one in particular, "What the hell is he talking about?!" Consider: ~~~~~~~~~~ Shimon Peres, holding the office of President of Israel, has a position that is largely ceremonial. But apparently no one has told him this. Or, he just doesn't care. For Yom Ha'Atzmaut the other day, he gave an interview to the JPost, that featured on the paper's front page, top of the fold. He said, among other things, that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is "absolutely" still a partner for peace, "because he wants to hold negotiations for peace with Israel...He opposes violence and he wants peace." Heaven help us. Are we talking about the same Abbas? Is it necessary here to describe, once again, various Abbas behaviors and statements that make it obvious that he promotes violence and not peace? What concerns me is that in certain quarters people think that Peres speaks for the government (and I'm betting he very well knows this). He does not, most assuredly. ~~~~~~~~~~ But sometimes what Peres says comes closer to the Israeli government position than I would like to imagine. And that's in large part because of the idiocy emanating from various quarters to which members of our government, unfortunately, believe they must respond. Peres, just possibly, believes Abbas wants to negotiate peace. Prime Minister Netanyahu knows better, as does Foreign Minister Lieberman. Lieberman, for example, said the other day that the alignment of Fatah with Hamas, "tells us more about Fatah than it does about Hamas." He is without illusions in this regard. And yet, in the same statement he felt the need to assert our "peace credentials": "The State of Israel has always said, and I repeat, we are willing to come to the negotiating table immediately to start direct talks with our neighbors (...but will not sacrifice our vital security interests.)." Netanyahu had, for his part, reflected a similar theme, observing that he didn't understand how the PA could be "for peace with Israel and peace with Hamas, which calls for our destruction." What Netanyahu did was call upon Abbas to reject unity with Hamas, but he did it after Abbas's choice had already been made. Surely he didn't imagine that Abbas was about to reverse himself in response to this call to make a choice. What Netanyahu was broadcasting, it seems to me, is a theoretical willingness to still come to the table if only Fatah would choose Israel. ~~~~~~~~~~ While the government of Israel has been decisive in saying that it will not negotiate with a joint Fatah-Hamas government unless Hamas accepts the Quartet criteria, no one has the courage to state the full, unvarnished truth. To whit: We have long had reason to believe that Fatah is not really committed to peace. But now Fatah has exposed itself boldly in its readiness to ally with an overt terror organization. The mask is off, and there is no more room for pretense. Even if Fatah did walk away from Hamas now, we would not accept it as a partner for peace. Unless there were genuine reform in several areas, we would not be willing to sit at the table with Fatah. The time for playing games that weaken Israel is past. The political climate works solidly against such a position. ~~~~~~~~~~ Then we have this, which provides a context: For Israeli Independence Day, President Obama issued a statement. Better if he had stayed at home, for that statement included this: "This is a period of profound change in the Middle East and North Africa, as people across the region courageously pursue the path of dignity and self-governance. Just as I know that Israel will always be one of our closest allies, I believe that the region can be more peaceful and prosperous when its people are able to fulfill their legitimate aspirations. "Legitimate aspirations." "Comprehensive peace." "Two state solution." Sigh... ~~~~~~~~~~ The rationale commonly provided for this position is that there must be a push towards negotiations if that threatened Palestinian Arab move to establish a state via the UN in September is to be countered. We'll come back to this in another posting shortly. ~~~~~~~~~~ Last Sunday, Abbas said he would postpone going to the UN if he saw diplomatic progress with Israel was being made. He made this statement in the presence of media, in response to a question put to him by a member of a J Street entourage that had gone into Ramallah for meetings with the PA president. This, of course, is designed to put pressure on Israel to be "forthcoming" enough to allow Abbas to return to the table. ~~~~~~~~~~ What concerns me at the moment — and I've alluded to this before, probably several times — is the level of pretense that will now transpire with regard to that unity government, which is scheduled to be put in place in a matter of days. It's dangerous game playing, with the likelihood that benign technocrats will front for terrorists. Yesterday, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, who serves as foreign minister in Gaza, declared that Hamas would find it impossible to recognize Israel, but would accept a Palestinian state along the '67 lines temporarily. Temporarily. His position is that he would be content to accept a Palestinian state "on any part of Palestine," as long as the ultimate goal would be a state of "Palestine in its entirety." Formal recognition of Israel would "cancel the right of the next generation to liberate the lands." ~~~~~~~~~~ The day before, Hamas politburo chief Khaled Masha'al had said that Israel would have one year to recognize a Palestinian state established within lands outside the '67 lines. Sounds like a threat if I ever heard one, but Masha'al says that this would not necessarily mean armed conflict, rather, "[Hamas] would add new cards to the resistance." According to the PA news agency Ma'an, Hamas and Fatah have discussed at length the appropriate manner for conducting resistance against Israel, including armed conflict. ~~~~~~~~~~ It should come as no surprise that Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of the Arab League and a candidate for the Egyptian presidency, told the Washington Post in an interview just two days ago that: "The view that Hamas is a terrorist organization is a view that pertains to a minority of countries, not a majority. Being a terrorist is not a stigma forever." Terrorism in the eye of the beholder, and all that. ~~~~~~~~~~ Prime Minister Netanyahu is due to go to the States in a matter of days. He will be meeting with President Obama next Friday, May 20th; will address AIPAC on the 23rd; and then address a joint session of Congress on the 24th. There continues to be concern inside of Israel that Netanyahu will set policy at that address to Congress, without having sufficiently cleared it with government and Knesset leaders here. He has been called upon to establish principles in concert with our own decision-makers first, before making a presentation to Congress. The world will be listening when he speaks on the 24th. It is time for our head of state to say, quite simply, look, look what compromises we've made, look what good will we've expressed, in return for what? For a continual embrace of terrorism. The fear is that his message will be that. no, Israel cannot negotiate with a terrorist Hamas, but the world should know how eager we remain to achieve peace. Then to demonstrate the sincerity of that desire for peace, he might offer certain concessions to be fulfilled under the right conditions. He might even advance some vision of peace for the future, lest anyone (horrors!) might think Israel is not working constantly for peace. (It should be noted that Foreign Minister Barak has just advanced a "peace plan" that closely resembles what he advanced in 2000, when he was prime minister.) ~~~~~~~~~~ This is, I must note, just a fear. There is no concrete evidence that this is the direction in which Netanyahu is headed. He is, as I understand it, actually still in process of formulating that speech. And so far he has projected a good modicum of strength. Had Fatah not joined with Hamas, that speech offering potential concessions for peace is likely what we would have heard. But the dynamic has shifted, and there has been some necessary stiffening of the premier's spine in response to the new situation. How much stiffening, remains to be seen. ~~~~~~~~~~ It was being said, prior to the unity announcement, that President Obama would be advancing his own vision of a peace plan soon. But with the shifting situation, there was considerable opinion that this would not happen. Now there has been a report, coming from inside the US administration, that the president is likely to give a "major address on the Middle East," before his departure to Europe on May 22 — indeed, very possibly in the coming week. It would look at the Middle East more broadly; there is no clarity at this point regarding how specifically he would address the Palestinian Arab-Israeli conflict or whether he would have a new proposal (if such a thing even exists). ~~~~~~~~~~ According to a Wall Street Journal article, Obama is interested in courting the Muslim world in the wake of the assassination of bin Laden. This focus might be the thrust of his anticipated address. The article says Obama has not decided whether to attempt an aggressive new push to re-start peace talks. The question Obama is said to be pondering is whether such a push could be productive. Is he kidding? He failed last time and the situation is much more problematic now. Allow me to reiterate: many of those who pass for leaders these days have latched on to certain ideas — which have become obsessions and which they will not surrender. Obama seems the exemplar of this mindset. ~~~~~~~~~~ On this same subject, you might like to see an article by Lee Smith in Tablet (all emphasis added): "I think it [the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation] is the only way to expose the hypocrisy and moral rot that has been at the core of Western thinking about the Arab-Israeli conflict for more than 30 years... ~~~~~~~~~~ If Obama does deliver this address, he would be preempting Netanyahu's talk to Congress. ~~~~~~~~~~ Sunday, May 15, is "Nakba Day," the day on which Arabs commemorate the "catastrophe" of the founding of Israel. According to YNet, Fatah and Hamas have set up a joint committee to manage events for the day in Gaza, and Judea and Samaria. The JPost says Fatah's "revolutionary council" has urged escalation of "popular resistance," especially in neighborhoods of Jerusalem such as Silwan, Issawiya, Sheikh Jarrah and the Old City. Local Arab committees are said to be urging people to surge forward, in confrontations at roadblocks and Jewish communities. Abbas Zaki, a senior member of the Fatah Central Committee predicts that the PA will not be able to contain street demonstrations. There is even talk about this escalating into a third intifada (read, war). But it is difficult to make an accurate prediction of what sort of violence will really ensue; the talk may be highly inflated. There is one school of thought that anticipates that the PA will do its best to keep things quiet so as to look responsible, while saving the big push for September. At any rate, the IDF is currently preparing for all eventualities — with troop reinforcements and deployment in potential trouble spots to serve as a deterrent. One of the goals of the army, in quelling unrest if and as it occurs, is to avoid casualties — as this would generate considerably more violence. Thus, in certain settings soldiers will be utilizing crowd control equipment rather than lethal weapons. (But if there are gunmen in the midst of a crowd, they will be dealt with swiftly.) ~~~~~~~~~~ Two days after Yom Ha'Atzmaut, let me share here a video that was released for the holiday, but which is worth seeing, and sharing, any time of year. It includes historical footage, starting with Ben Gurion's declaration of the State, and takes us forward on a journey, through Jewish sacrifice and Jewish building, to stunning successes in the present.
Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info |
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JONATHAN POLLARD IS A HOSTAGE
Posted by Justice for Jonathan Pollard, May 11, 2011. |
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This was written by Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director of IMRA (Independent
Media Review & Analysis), The website is at
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Jonathan Pollard is a hostage. Yes. Those are strong words. But let's consider the situation today: We have virtually a wall-to-wall consensus of top American officials who have intimate knowledge of the operation stating now for the record that after serving 26 years in prison, justice requires the immediate and unconditional release of Jonathan Pollard.. On 4 January 2011 Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu publicly and formally apologized for the operation on behalf of the Jewish State and requested that President Obama free Pollard. There was no response. On 5 April 2011 President Shimon Peres met with President Obama at the White House and again requested, in the name of the State of Israel that President Obama free Pollard — hand delivering a letter from Pollard in which he expresses remorse for his actions and pleaded on compelling humanitarian grounds to be released. There was no response. Senior American officials have confirmed in the past that Pollard IS being held by the United States as a "chip" that could be given to Israel in compensation for Palestinian-Israeli final status concessions. In point of fact, Prime Minister Netanyahu already "paid" for Pollard's release at the 1998 Wye Summit. Then — president Clinton received the payment — the release of Palestinian terrorists — but reneged on his end of the deal, freedom for Pollard. So here we are. Justice requires the immediate unilateral release of Pollard, with no quid pro quo. Pleas from both the Prime Minister and President of Israel to free Pollard have been ignored by President Obama. And while there is an apparent expectation that in spite of the justice in releasing Pollard after 26 years in prison, America is continuing to hold Pollard until Israel pays some exorbitant, yet-to-be-stated "price". If this is the case, clearly this isn't diplomacy. It is blackmail. This isn't the behavior of a trusted ally. It is an embarrassment which undermines the credibility of the US — Israel special relationship. It is humiliating for the State of Israel as President Obama appears to show such contempt for the Jewish State, while the rest of the world looks on. It is the antithesis of all that the United States of America claims to stand for. President Obama seems to have turned a blind eye to justice, and to humanitarian compassion, in what appears to be a bid to blackmail an ally. It is not too late to rectify the situation. Nor is it too late to set the record straight, and allow justice to finally prevail. With literally the stroke of a pen, President Obama can put an end to this travesty of justice and to the apparent blackmail of an ally. All it will take is stroke of the President's pen on Pollard's clemency papers so that both countries may be reassured that Prime Minister Netanyahu is meeting with President Obama the statesman, and not Mr. Obama the blackmailer. Jonathan Pollard must go free. Now. Reach Justice for Jonathan Pollard by sending an email to
justice4jp@gmail.com and visit their website:
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THE NEW 'D'S' OF EUROPEAN ANTI-SEMITISM
Posted by Barbara Taverna, May 11, 2011. |
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This was written by Denis MacShane, MP for Rotherham and one-time Minister of Europe. His book Globalising Hatred: The new Antisemitism is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. |
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Recent events in Europe suggest that the time has come to add de-tabooization of anti-Semitic discourse. Natan Sharansky famously described the three "D's" of hostility to Israel and Jews — Demonization, Double standards and Delegitimization. Recent events in Europe suggest that the time has come to add some more, as observers grapple with the rise of a new anti-Semitism and deepening hatred of Israel. What we are witnessing in European politics today is the accelerating erosion of the taboo against anti-Semitic discourse which has been in place since 1945. This detabooization — a ugly neologism for an ugly politics — is part of a broader global ideological drive against Jewishness. John Galliano may have been fired by Dior, but only after Natalie Portman said she would quit as the French firm's public face. Before that threat, the fashion house looked as if it wanted to ride out the storm. Wikileaks boss Julian Assange has accused critics on The Guardian of being part of a "Jewish" media conspiracy against him, even if none of the journalists he named, including the paper's editor, Alan Rusbridger, is Jewish. Or how do we deal with Laurent Wauquiez, secretary of state for European affairs in President Nicolas Sarkozy's government, who announced that Dominique Strauss-Kahn does not have "roots" in France? Strauss-Kahn, who is currently head of the IMF in Washington, is likely to be the French Socialist Party's candidate against Sarkozy next April. Another right-wing minister in Paris said the socialist did not represent "the soil of France." French rightists have yet to call Strauss-Kahn "cosmopolitan" or make direct reference to the fact that he is a Jew, but the noise they are making is a lot louder than a dog whistle, and no one in France has any doubt about the insinuation. And there is the German social democrat, Thilo Sarazzin, until recently a member of the board of Germany's central bank. He told the paper, Welt am Sonntag last year that "all Jews share a certain gene... that makes them different from other people." This flashback to pre-war pseudo-genetics was echoed by Karel de Gucht, the powerful European Union Trade Commissioner who said last year: "Don't underestimate the power of the Jewish lobby" and "it is not easy even with a moderate Jew to have a conversation" about Israel. Germany's Social Democratic Party says there is no reason for Mr. Sarazzin to give up his party card. Brussels has not sanctioned Mr. de Gucht in any way.
IN SHORT, as with Galliano, Assange, or the questionable anti-Jewish outbursts of actor Mel Gibson, we are seeing the slow re-entry of anti-Semitism into public discourse. The British Member of the European Parliament, Nick Griffin, is a notorious Holocaust denier. In a by-election for the Commons held in March, Griffin's British National Party won more votes than the mainstream Liberal Democrats who are in coalition with David Cameron. As with the openly anti-Jewish Jobbik Party in Hungary, voters no longer feel nervous about voting for anti-Semitic policies. The second "D" is the Devaluation of the Holocaust, or the "Double-genocide" thesis now advanced across Eastern and Baltic Europe. This does not deny the Holocaust, but argues that Hitler was no different from Stalin in his murderous intent. According to this argument, the mass starvations under communism — especially in the Ukraine in the 1930s — or the murders and deportations of Baltic peoples amounted to crimes against humanity on a par with the Shoah. Stalin's crimes and Soviet cruelties deserve a high place in European school-teaching, but they were not the same as the Holocaust — the high-tech, industrial and logistical transportation of Jews from all over Europe to death camps because of an anti-Jewish ideology. As Professor Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, writes: "the Germans deliberately killed about 11 million non-combatants" (including 5.4 million Jews shot or gassed) and "the Soviets approximately six million." This Double-genocide revisionism, while not the same as out-and-out Holocaust denial, seeks to relativize the death of Jews, and is widely supported by anti-Semites. In Latvia there is an annual commemoration of the Waffen SS Latvian division which took part in many anti-Jewish atrocities. A court in Lithuania has declared the swastika to be a national symbol. Jewish partisans who fought German Nazis and their collaborators in Lithuania have found themselves on trial as war criminals. Of course, there are many decent politicians in Baltic states who want to condemn Soviet crimes without condoning anti-Jewish acts. But when eight EU ambassadors were moved recently to write a letter to the Lithuanian government about attacks on Jewishness in the country, then the EU has a problem with one of its member states. Richard Beeston, foreign editor of The London Times, who knows both the Arab world, France and, like all distinguished editors at The Times, knows the dinner parties of London, told the BBC World Service this month that while criticism of Israel is legitimate, some of it — especially in Arab countries — is little better than "anti-Semitism by the back door." It is the intellectual denial of this backdoor anti-Semitism underlying hatred of Israel that is final new "D." Contact Barbara Taverna at bltaverna@yahoo.com |
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A JEWISH GHOST STORY
Posted by Ted Roberts, May 11, 2011. |
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My Bubbe told me this one.
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Well, no, we Jews don't put a lot of emphasis on spooks. But back in the misty past we did believe in Dybbuks — evil spirits that seized the human body like you moved into your new condo. I know my Bubbe was a believer. She believed in dybbuks like Newton believed in gravity. "They are real," and she arched her eyebrows and enlarged her eyes for emphasis. An old trick that rarely failed with us kids. I think it worked on my grandfather, also. "Dybbuks?" I said with surprise. "Dybbuks, the evil spirit? Bubbe — you don't believe that?" "It's best to believe in them." she said quietly, "because if you don't, they'll pull their nasty tricks on you. If you believe in them, they'll leave you alone." But logical or not, it turned out that she was a recognized neighborhood authority on dybbuks. Bubbes are blessed with various talents. Some make tzimmes. Others cure a chill with one artful application of chicken fat spread on the victim's frosty chest. Some, today, are great shoppers. But my grandmother specialized in dybbuks. Especially those from Northwest Estonia — her home. Most of them stayed in the old country, she told me. At least the powerful ones. What kind of fun could a big time dybbuk have in a 2-room coldwater flat in Brooklyn? So when the boats full of Jewish immigrants left Hamburg and Bremerhaven, hundreds of out-of-work dybbuks had to find new hosts — new spirits to torment. According to my grandmother, so many Jews fled Europe around the turn of the century that the evil spirits flew to the gentile world. That's what caused World War I, said Bubbe. A tragedy staged by the dybbuks who jumped into the skins of the Sarajevo assassins and the Balkan rulers. "Just like I told you before," she crowed, "if you don't believe, you're in trouble." And she went on to explain that no way could a couple of goyishke emperors and a murderous crew of Serbian assassins believe in a Jewish spook. So look what happened — a World War. "But some stayed," she continued, "with their Jewish hosts and took a ticket to the New Jerusalem, America. They pranced on the humble stage of soap opera as well as grand historical drama. In fact, they had infected our own family. That's what Bubbe told me. "You remember the time your Uncle Dan had to leave Memphis — suddenly? Remember we woke you up in the middle of the night to kiss him goodbye." Sure I did, but I never knew why. And his loving sister, my mother, never wanted to discuss it. But there and then my Bubbe solved that mystery as simply as she dealt with the origins of World War I. "Dybbuks," she whispered. "A dybbuk got in him — a dybbuk jumped into Uncle Dan." He was my grandmother's favorite. Her first born. Sure, he could have talked his way to the head of the line of O'Neils and O'Reillys waiting to smooch the Blarney Stone. A Blumenfield in front of all those Cork County lads. Uncle Dan was as melodious as a nightingale. He could talk Long Island ducklings out of the sky and onto his dinner table. And they'd be glazed with orange sauce when they landed on his plate. And if playing gin rummy instead of steady work was his talent — well that was OK, too. At least with his mother and sisters. But his career collapsed when a dybbuk made him write checks for three days on a bank account that only existed in Uncle Dan's pompadoured head. It was a busy three days. Goaded by the evil spirit, he wrote many checks. And soon his creditors came by to discuss these checks. A check without a bank account, they explained to Dan, is like a body without a head. Useless. "Get it?" Dan listened with total comprehension. Then, with his ghostly alter ego, hitchhiked to the bus station. "Where to?" said the ticket agent. "Anyplace — that's got some action and is at least 500 miles away," said one of them, either Dan or the dybbuk, who knows. So Uncle Dan ended up in Chicago. That was the only time a dybbuk showed up in the bosom of our family. And that long bus ride from Savannah to Chicago must have bored him to death — the devil, I mean — because shortly afterward he departed Uncle Dan. Maybe into the heart of a cute little fat man in Chicago named Al Capone, who loved a sub-machine gun like Dan loved a deck of cards. Even though you can't detect a dybbuk by peering down a man's throat, we know he left Uncle Dan because Dan never wrote another bad check. Ted Roberts' essays appear in the Jewish press, web sites,
and magazines. He is author of The Scribbler On The Roof, a
book of short stories and commentary. Visit his websites at
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THE MEME OF THE 'DISAFFECTED JEW' HAS BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED
Posted by Barbara Taverna, May 11, 2011. |
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This was written by Ted Lapkin. a Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Affairs. He worked as a ministerial advisor to the federal Coalition and as communications director to a senior member of the Republican leadership in the US Congress. The article is archived at
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Like Mark Twain's famous quip about reports of his death being "greatly exaggerated", assertions of a weakening in Jewish affection for Israel are grossly overstated. In fact, they're patently false. But that hasn't stopped American Jewish writer Peter Beinart from making a minor career out of advancing that thesis. A year ago he generated worldwide headlines with an essay in the New York Review of Books entitled "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment". And since then Beinart has trotted the globe, peddling his argument at such venues as the Melbourne Writers Festival. Beinart believes that traditional Zionism is in a moral "downward spiral" that alienates Israel from liberal-minded American Jews. And he claims this phenomenon is particularly acute amongst the young, who increasingly see Israel as victimiser rather than victim. The 'disaffected Jew' meme also popped up last year in the pages of the Leftwing NewMatilda magazine. "The Jewish Disaspora is Turning on Israel", proclaimed the headline of an article by Antony Loewenstein, John Docker and Ned Curthoys. But the recent publication of two academic research surveys has cast the theory of Jewish detachment from Israel into serious intellectual disrepute. The American Jewish Committee's (AJC) 2010 Annual Survey of Jewish Opinion found that 74 per cent of American Jews felt "fairly close" or "very close" to Israel. This figure is entirely consistent with the findings of previous surveys done over the past decade. The AJC survey also found that a whopping 94 per cent thought that any formal peace treaty with the Palestinians must include formal recognition of Israel's Jewish character. A solid majority of 62 per cent also expressed support for the idea of Israeli military action to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. These results were largely reaffirmed by an August 2010 Brandeis University survey entitled Still Connected: American Jewish Attitudes Towards Israel. The study found that 75 per cent of those polled felt affection for Israel is an important part of their Jewish identity. Brandeis pollsters also focused in the May-June 2010 Gaza flotilla incident as microcosm of larger Jewish patterns of sentiment and affiliation. They found 70 per cent of Jews endorsed Israeli's actions during last year's Gaza flotilla incident, versus only 9 per cent who supported the pro-Palestinian cause. Even more surprising was the finding that younger American Jews were more hawkish in their support for Israel than their older ethnic kin. Fully 58 per cent of the 18-to-29 age bracket opposed Israeli territorial concessions in Jerusalem, compared to only 43 per cent of 45 to 59 year-old Jews. More remarkable still was the lack of impact political ideology had on affinity for Zionism. Fully 82 per cent of Left-leaning American Jews thought that current levels of US support for Israel should be maintained or increased, with a mere 18 per cent wanting them cut. And it's not just Jews in the United States. In their 2004 study of Australian Jewish political sentiment, Professors Geoffrey Brahm Levey and Phillip Mendes found extremely high levels of affection for Israel. They wrote: "on almost every available measure — visitation, resident relatives, emotional attachment and philanthropy — Israel figures centrally in Australian Jewish identity." The more extreme version of the Jewish disaffection thesis peddled by Loewenstein, Docker and Curthoys is relatively easy to dismiss. After all, these are self-avowed enemies of Zionism who oppose a Jewish state both in concept and reality. And as we have observed, their argument flies in the face of objective polling reality. But Peter Beinart comes at this issue from a much more nuanced direction. Far from being a foe of Israel, he claims to be its truest friend. In the political equivalent of an addiction intervention, Beinart wants to save "liberal Zionism in Israel." This, he declares, "is the great American Jewish challenge of our age". Never mind that even dovish-minded Israelis tend to be annoyed by such cloyingly sententious pronouncements from afar. After all, if the world according to Beinart doesn't work out as expected, he'll be watching events from his New York living room on his flat screen TV. He won't be the one putting on his uniform and reporting for army reserve duty. Beinart's self-appointed mission to civilise Zionism is just a modern manifestation of the Left man's burden. In a Kipling-esque exercise of patronising paternalism, he's saying that he knows better than the Israelis what's good for Israel. If the ultimate object of Beinart's exercise is to influence Israeli policy, he won't get there by alienating his potential allies through such remote-control pontification. Since the 1967 war, it is undeniable that Left-of-centre opinion has moved away from support for Israel towards empathy with mortal enemies of the Jewish state. This is most pronounced amongst radical academics and rent-a-mob protestors who march arm and arm with Hezbollah supporters in street demonstrations. But these currents have also taken their toll within the more moderate currents of the centre-Left. And as a result, support for Israel is far less pronounced these days amongst progressives than it is amongst conservatives. Beinart attributes that erosion to Israel's abandonment of its original sublime ideals. He claims that it isn't he who left Zionism, but that Zionism left him. But the true act of defection has been on the part of Western progressives who have cast by the wayside the only full-fledged democracy in the otherwise benighted Middle East. The tragedy of Jewish progressives like Peter Beinart is that their people and their principles have never truly been in conflict. The only real contradiction is between Zionism and a Left-wing worldview gone mad, and on that question Beinart chose wrongly. Contact Barbara Taverna at bltaverna@yahoo.com |
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WHY EGYPTIANS WANT WAR WITH ISRAEL: IT'S IN THE KORAN
Posted by Dr History, May 11, 2011. |
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This was written by Robert Spencer, a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law. He is author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad, Stealth Jihad and The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran (all from Regnery). The article is archived at
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Fifty-four per cent of Egyptians want to scrap the Camp David accords that have kept an uneasy peace with Israel since 1979 — in yet another blow to the credibility of the many analysts and commentators who assured the American people that the Egyptian uprising heralded the dawn of a new, secular democracy there. A new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center reveals that a significant number of Egyptians manifest a deeply ingrained Islamic antisemitism that leads them to hate Israel — and the Camp David accords — for religious, not political, reasons. "Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews ..." 5:82. The Koran contains a great deal of material that forms the foundation for a hatred of Jews that has persisted throughout Islamic history. It portrays the Jews as the craftiest, most persistent, and most implacable enemies of the Muslims — and there is no Islamic authority that has moved to mitigate the most destructive interpretations of all this. The Koran's material on the Jews remains the prism through which far too many Muslims see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Camp David accords, and Jews in general to this day. A vivid illustration of this came several years ago from Islam Online, a website founded by, among others, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual leader, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, in 1997. Al-Qaradawi has justified suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, and in 2004 Islam Online posted an article titled "Jews as Depicted in the Koran." In it, Sheikh 'Atiyyah Saqr, the former head of the Fatwa Committee at the most respected institution in Sunni Islam, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, depicts Jews in a chillingly negative light, illustrated with abundant quotations from the Koran. Among other charges he levels at the Jews, Saqr says that they "used to fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah," they "love to listen to lies," they disobey Allah and ignore his commands, they wish "evil for people" and try to "mislead them," and they "feel pain to see others in happiness and are gleeful when others are afflicted with a calamity." He adds that "it is easy for them to slay people and kill innocents," for "they are merciless and heartless." And each charge he follows with citations from the Koran (including, among others, 3:75, 5:64, 3:181, 5:41, 5:13, 2:109, 3:120, 2:61, 2:74, 2:100, 59:13-14, 2:96, and 2:79). Though he offers many examples of the alleged evil traits of the Jews supported by the Koran, Saqr doesn't mention the notorious Koran passages that depict an angry Allah transforming Jews into apes and pigs: 2:63-66, 5:59-60, and 7:166. The first of those passages depicts Allah telling the Jews who "profaned the Sabbath": "Be as apes despicable!" It goes on to say that these accursed ones serve "as a warning example for their time and for all times to come." The second has Allah directing Muhammad to remind the "People of the Book" about "those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshiped evil." The third essentially repeats this, saying of the Sabbath-breaking Jews that when "in their insolence they transgressed (all) prohibitions," Allah said to them, "Be ye apes, despised and rejected." And in recent years, Saudi Sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Sudayyis, imam of the principal mosque in the holiest city in Islam, Mecca, said in a sermon that Jews are "the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs." Another Saudi sheikh, Ba'd bin Abdallah al-Ajameh al-Ghamidi, said: "The current behavior of the brothers of apes and pigs, their treachery, violation of agreements, and defiling of holy places ... is connected with the deeds of their forefathers during the early period of Islam — which proves the great similarity between all the Jews living today and the Jews who lived at the dawn of Islam." All this shows that leading Muslim authorities approach the Koran not as a document rooted in history, but as a blueprint for understanding the world today. Is it any wonder, then, that a majority of Egyptians favor scrapping the Camp David accords? The surprise is only that so many supported keeping the peace with Israel. Contact Dr History at drhistory@cox.net |
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AMERICA'S IRRESPONSIBLE SILENCE ON SYRIA
Posted by Matthew RJ Brodsky, May 11, 2011. |
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When it comes to the "Arab Spring" in Syria, the silence and lack of leadership in Washington is stunning. Two months into the uprising, unconfirmed reports suggest that as many as 800 people have been killed with as many as 10,000 arrested. The countrywide crackdown is massive, with the Assad regime using tanks and sniper fire to crush the opposition movement. Whereas the case for intervention in Libya was made based on humanitarian needs, the situation in Syria cries out for American leadership and not merely on humanitarian grounds. In Egypt, America cast an ally aside and stood with the people even though a strong case could be made that toppling the Mubarak regime was not in America's interest. After all, there was near universal agreement that what would come next in Egypt would be less amenable to U.S. interests in the region. Yet in Syria, the case for intervention on humanitarian grounds is already manifest and toppling the Assad regime, which remains an enemy of the U.S. in both word and deed, is strongly in America's interest. What then explains Team Obama's trepidation? For many years America has had a bizarre love affair with Syria — one of the world's leading state sponsors of terrorism. It began before the 1991 Madrid conference that set the path for a fruitless decade in which the U.S. engaged with Syria and Israel in order to make peace. Hafez al-Assad played the Clinton administration like a finely tuned cello, talking about peace while arming Hezbollah and undermining the Palestinian Authority. Nevertheless, Syria was seen as the key to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, a state that could grant Israel its seal of approval. But when Bashar al-Assad inherited his rule from his father in 2000, he set his country on a collision course with the Bush administration. The belief in Washington is that Bashar al-Assad is a closet reformer surrounded by a clique that prevents him from carrying out his democratic and liberal vision for Syria. This wishful prognosis has never been true and has never been as crystal clear as the recent weeks of violence demonstrate. Yet simple facts do not get in the way of former presidential hopeful, current Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and longtime Syria aficionado, Senator John Kerry. Asked recently about whether the U.S. would benefit from the downfall of the Assad regime, Kerry replied, it "depends on which Assad you are talking about." But there is only one Bashar al-Assad and he has actively worked to undermine the United States at every turn. Many in Washington — Kerry included — question what would come after Assad. The scare tactic of Syria turning into a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold in a post-Assad era is overblown despite Assad's attempt to harness this canard like all the region's dictators before him. Furthermore, Syria is a charter member of the U.S. list of state-sponsors of terrorism and the regime is in league with Iran. It served as the key transit point for jihadists crossing into Iraq to kill American troops and continues to pursue a nuclear program with the help of North Korea and Iran. It hosts the headquarters for Hamas and many other Palestinian rejectionist groups and supports Hezbollah with the transfer of advance missile systems, all the while destabilizing Lebanon and assassinating political rivals both at home and abroad. The Assad regime is committed to Muqawama, which means "resistance," and in practice that means terrorism. So it is difficult to believe that what comes next would be worse. Moreover, Syria's population is roughly 80% Sunni and they are currently ruled by the Alawite minority that makes up some 12% of the population. Whatever would come next in Syria would likely be naturally opposed to Iran's Shiite encroachment in the Middle East. The most mystifying aspect of Barack Obama's approach to Syria is that he came to office preaching diplomatic engagement with America's enemies. That strategy has been a resounding failure. Nevertheless, in the case of Syria, Obama made wooing Syria away from Iran's orbit a strategic priority — this was the overall goal of U.S. policy vis-à-vis Syria, and Israel was supposed to pay the price by trading away the Golan Heights. The U.S. even returned its ambassador to Syria in a December 2010 recess appointment while the region was undergoing the first spasms of what would become the "Arab Spring." Still the White House has yet to learn that no amount of diplomatic engagement or enticements to Syria will bring about this change in Assad's behavior. If President Obama believes he can weaken Iran by removing Syria from its orbit, then hastening the fall of the Assad regime represents the only possibility of success. In Syria, U.S. policy should be regime change, not behavior change. This is a historic opportunity to stand with the people of Syria and Lebanon and work for the downfall of the Assad regime. Unlike Egypt, Tunisia, or Libya, the effect of a new spring in Damascus would have the greatest positive impact on U.S. interests in the Middle East. The clock is ticking. Matthew RJ Brodsky is Director of Policy, Jewish Policy Center and Editor, inFocus Quarterly. Contact him at mbrodsky@jewishpolicycenter.org and visit the website: www.JewishPolicyCenter.org This article appeared today in the American Spectator |
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FROM ISRAEL: SPECIAL WORDS
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 10, 2011. |
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Last night I attended services for Yom Ha'Atzmaut at my synagogue in Jerusalem. And what a service it was: with a joyous musical Hallel — a selection of psalms of praise — complete with guitars, tambourines, and even shofarot. For many the celebration evoked a grateful recognition of what it means to be in the Land — and in Jerusalem, the Holy City — to mark the founding of the modern Jewish State. To be part of our people's historic and holy journey here is a matter of profound significance. ~~~~~~~~~~ My synagogue uses the Koren Siddur (prayerbook). In the special section for Yom Ha'Atzmaut I found commentary that was particularly insightful. I have decided to share selections ~~~~~~~~~~ "Yom Ha'Atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day, marks the moment when the Jewish people recovered their independence and sovereignty after a lapse of some two thousand years. The longest exile ever endured by a people was at end... Jews had once against returned to the arena of history as a self-determining nation in the land to which Abraham journeyed in his day, and Moses and the Israelites in theirs. "The significance of Israel to Judaism is more than geographical, historical and political. It is spiritual. Israel was and is the Holy Land to which Abraham and his descendants were summoned to create a new kind of society, based on the sanctity of human life and the equal dignity of all, where they would be subject to the sovereignty of God alone, constantly conscious of the Divine Presence while striving to be true to the covenant that charged them with being 'a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' "...Though Jews, in the long centuries of their dispersion, were scatted over the face of the earth, only in Israel have they formed a majority and been able to rule and defend themselves. Only in Israel can a Jew speak a Jewish language, see a Jewish landscape, walk where our ancestors walked and continue the story they began. Only in Israel have Jews been able to live as a nation shaping its own destiny... "Jews were the first to see God in history, to see the unfolding of events as a meaningful narrative, the ongoing story of the covenant between God and His people. The celebration of Yom Ha'Atzmaut as a religious festival is part of this faith. Never before had a people survived so long an exile, its identity intact. Never before had a nation that had not known sovereignty for two millennia recovered it again. Ravaged [as the Jewish people had been] by the Holocaust a mere three years earlier, the declaration of Israel's independence was a remarkable act of faith, an everlasting symbol of the victory of life over death, hope over despair. "Some thirty-three centuries ago, Moses prophesied: 'Even if you have been dispersed to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back.' (Deut. 30:4) and so it happened. If, as we believe, there are events that bear the signature of Heaven, this surely was one. Therefore we give thanks to God for bringing the land back to the people, and the people back to the land — the land where our people was born in ancient times, and reborn in ours." ~~~~~~~~~~ I want to share a special video, "The Volunteers: Answering the Call of History," a most appropriate film for Yom Ha'Atzmaut (with appreciation to Michael P. for calling it to my attention):
The film records the personal stories of people who went to Israel to help the beleaguered and struggling new state in 1948. It is remarkable for its recounting of the courage, and in some cases ingenuity, of these volunteers; it is a piece of the history of Israel's founding. I invite you to view this, and then tell me that — given the odds Israel faced in the beginning, articulated in this film — her survival and success are not miraculous. ~~~~~~~~~~ This video and others are part of an "Eyewitness 1948" series produced by Toldot Israel and the History Channel in the US. According to its website, Toldot Israel is a Jerusalem based nonprofit dedicated to recording and sharing the firsthand testimonies of the men and women who helped found the State of Israel. Over 500 video interviews have been conducted with those who were involved during the pre-State struggle and the momentous events of 1948. There are plans to do hundreds more interviews and to utilize them for a website, educational material and films.
Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info |
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THE ASSOCIATION HAS EXPOSED...
Posted by Steven Shamrak, May 10, 2011. |
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1. That target-killing of terrorists is an effective and acceptable way to deal with terrorists and state enemies. (Despite of the fact that Israel was constantly vilified by international bigots, even for the assassination of sheik Yasin, founder of Hamas?) "The authority here was to kill bin Laden" — CIA Director Leon Panetta 2. That covert military operations on a sovereign country can produce desired results and be met with overwhelming international support and cheers. (As long as it is not Israel targeting the Iraqi nuclear reactor.) 3. That it is OK not to inform an ally, Pakistan, of every step that is taken to punish enemies even if the operation is conducted on its sovereign soil. (Israel has almost mandatory requirement to inform the US of any step it makes to defend itself.) 4. That harsh interrogation techniques used by CIA at a secret prison in early 2004 provided a clue to finding Osama bin Laden. (The CIA had used sleep deprivation, slapping, nudity, water dousing and other coercive techniques) "The debate about whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches, I think, is always going to be an open question" — Leon Panetta, director of the CIA. 5. That it is permitted to make a decision to conduct a serious military operation on a gut feeling, even if there was no 100% guarantee that the target, Osama bin Laden, resided in the compound. Concern for 'collateral' damage was also brushed aside. (Israel must do everything right, triple-checking all data and aborting operations if civilians could be hurt!) "Well, the problem was we were never really certain about whether or not bin Laden was there... we just did not know whether in fact he was there." — Leon Panetta, director of the CIA. 6. That it is acceptable to lie or manipulate information presented to the international community about details of the operation without any shame or fear of international rebuke. (This is definitely a big "No" for Israel, as international anti-Semites in media and politics love tormenting Israel endlessly.) They had lied that: a) Osama bin Ladin offered armed resistance 7. That it is OK to give 3 billion dollars a year of foreign 'aid' to the enemy, Pakistan, pretending it is a friend, without any scrutiny and having no disproportional 'public' outrage. (In contrast, Israel must work hard paying back — by purchasing the US arms, providing strategic and intelligence services in a hostile region, developing new weapon technology and being the best political ally the US ever had — for the aid it is receiving!) Steven Shamrak was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and participated in the Moscow Zionist "refusenik" movement and currently lives in Melbourne, Australia. He publishes internet editorial letters on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He can be reached by email at StevenShamrak.e@gmail.com |
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WHY I AM A ZIONIST
Posted by Mechel Samberg, May 10, 2011. |
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This was written by Gil Troy,
Professor of History at McGill University. He is the author of "Why I
Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. This
is an updated version of an essay he first wrote for Yom Ha'atzmaut
2001. This was published in the Jerusalem Post
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Today, too many friends and foes define Israel, and Zionism, by the Arab world's hostility. Doing so misses Israel's everyday miracles, the millions who live and learn, laugh and play, in the Middle East's only functional democracy. Doing so ignores the achievements of Zionism, a gutsy, visionary movement which rescued a shattered people by reuniting a scattered people. Doing so neglects the transformative potential of Zionism, which could inspire new generations of Israeli and Diaspora Jews to find personal redemption by redeeming their old-new communal homeland. Tragically, Zionism is embattled. Arabs have demonized Zionism as the modern bogeyman, and many have clumped Zionists, along with Americans and most Westerners, as the Great Satans. In Israel, trendy post-Zionists denigrate the state which showers them with privilege, while in the Diaspora a few Jewish anti-Zionists loudly curry favor with the Jewish state's enemies. Jews should reaffirm their faith in Zionism; the world should appreciate its many accomplishments. Zionists must not allow their enemies to define and slander the movement.
No nationalism is pure, no movement is perfect, no state ideal. But today Zionism remains legitimate, inspiring, and relevant, to me and most Jews. Zionism offers an identity anchor in a world of dizzying choices — and a road map toward national renewal. A century ago, Zionism revived pride in the label "Jew"; today, Jews must revive pride in the label "Zionist."
I AM a Zionist because I am a Jew — and without recognizing Judaism's national component, I cannot explain its unique character. Judaism is a world religion bound to one homeland, shaping a people whose holy days revolve around the Israeli agricultural calendar, ritualize theological concepts, and relive historic events. Only in Israel can a Jew fully live in Jewish space and by Jewish time. I am a Zionist because I share the past, present, and future of my people, the Jewish people. Our nerve endings are uniquely intertwined. When one of us suffers, we share the pain; when many of us advance communal ideals together, we — and the world — benefit. I am a Zionist because I know my history — and after being exiled from their homeland more than 1900 years ago, the defenseless, wandering Jews endured repeated persecutions from both Christians and Muslims — centuries before this anti-Semitism culminated in the Holocaust. I am a Zionist because Jews never forgot their ties to their homeland, their love for Jerusalem. Even when they established autonomous self-governing structures in Babylonia, in Europe, in North Africa, these governments in exile yearned to return home. I am a Zionist because those ideological ties nourished and were nurtured by the plucky minority of Jews who remained in the land of Israel, sustaining continued Jewish settlement throughout the exile. I am a Zionist because in modern times the promise of Emancipation and Enlightenment was a double-edged sword, often only offering acceptance for Jews in Europe after they assimilated, yet never fully respecting them if they did assimilate. I am a Zionist because in establishing the sovereign state of Israel in 1948, the Jews reconstituted in modern Western terms a relationship with a land they had been attached to for millennia, since Biblical times — just as Japan or India established modern states from ancient civilizations. I am a Zionist because in building that state, the Jews returned to history and embraced normalcy, a condition which gave them power, with all its benefits, responsibilities, and dilemmas. I am a Zionist because I celebrate Israel's existence. Like any thoughtful patriot, though I might criticize particular government policies I dislike — I do not delegitimize the state itself. I am a Zionist because I live in the real world of nation-states. I see that Zionism is no more or less "racist" than any other nationalism, be it American, Armenian, Canadian, or Czech. All express the eternal human need for some internal cohesion, some tribalism, some solidarity among some historic grouping of individuals, and not others. I am a Zionist because we have learned from North American multiculturalism that pride in one's heritage as a Jew, an Italian, a Greek, can provide essential, time-tested anchors in our me-me-me, my-my-my, more-more-more, now-now-now world. I am a Zionist because in Israel we have learned that a country without a vision is like a person without a soul; a big-tent Zionism can inculcate values, fight corruption, reaffirm national unity, and restore a sense of mission. I AM a Zionist because in our world of post-modern multi-dimensional identities, we don't have to be "either-ors", we can be "ands and buts" — a Zionist AND an American patriot; a secular Jew BUT also a Zionist. Just as some people living in Israel reject Zionism, meaning Jewish nationalism, Jews in the Diaspora can embrace it. To those who ask "How can you be a Zionist if you don't make aliya," I reply, "How will anyone make aliya without first being a Zionist?" I am a Zionist because I am a democrat. The marriage of democracy and nationalism has produced great liberal democracies, including Israel, despite its democracy being tested under severe conditions. I am a Zionist because I am an idealist. Just as a century ago, the notion of a viable, independent, sovereign Jewish state was an impossible dream — yet worth fighting for — so, too, today, the notion of a thriving, independent, sovereign Jewish state living in true peace with its neighbors appears to be an impossible dream — yet worth seeking. I am a Zionist because I am a romantic. The story of the Jews rebuilding their homeland, reclaiming the desert, renewing themselves, was one of the 20th century's greatest epics, just as the narrative of the Jews maintaining their homeland, reconciling with the Arab world, renewing themselves, and serving as a light to others, a model nation state, could be one of this century's marvels. Yes, it sometimes sounds far-fetched. But, as Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, said in an idle boast that has become a cliche: "If you will it, it is no dream." Contact Mechel Samberg at mechelsamberg2@yahoo.com |
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ISRAELI FILM FESTIVAL
Posted by Richard H. Feldman, May 10, 2011. |
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The Israeli Film Festival this spring was introduced to the audience as a major way of sharing Israelis' viewpoint with the world. So the filmmakers wish to believe. Israeli films once could be counted on to excel, but now Israel filmmakers have a leftist, somewhat subversive viewpoint that most Israelis do not share. I try to attend showings that I do not expect to portray Jews as considering it ethical to bare their necks to the Saracen blade. Accordingly, I went to see Gei Oni, where in the late 1800s, heroic Jewish pioneers struggled against resistant land, human predators, and their own lack of experience and funding. Aided by excellent acting, the story was moving as well as realistic. I am grateful for living in my time and place. Only one bit of leftist propaganda appeared. Encountering Arab neighbors in the Galilee, the heroine stated resentfully that she had been advised that there were no other people in the province. That statement is misleading. Travelers had reported widespread desolation there. They did not mean 100% so. They meant that by far, most of the population had died out or emigrated, industry was almost absent, and most of the land was desert, swamp, jungle, or rocky ledges. Jews survived primarily on foreign charity, until modern Zionism. The Zionist enterprise reclaimed the soil. Israel now supports 10 or more times as many people. The heroine's statement makes pro-Arab propaganda by insinuating that the country abounded in Arabs, being crowded by incoming Jews. (Zionism resulted in more Arabs coming in than Jews.) Most of the land was unused public land. Omitted was mention that the land sold to pioneers usually was the worst land. Zionism did not displace people. In a non-responsive answer to a question of mine, the producer made a leftist statement that I found shockingly naïve. He found in the film a message that it does not matter for Jews who owns the land, so long as they can till it. Therefore, he said, it wouldn't matter if that area became part of an Arab state. (Note he is talking about land within the State of Israel, not even within the Territories.) Surely the producer knows that Israel is filled with a Jewish nationality that came not only because Jews shared the human need for a country of their own nationality, but also the desperate need to find a haven from persecution by governments that they did not control! Perhaps a third of Israelis come from Arab states and from parts of the Land of Israel outside the State of Israel, where they were expelled or persecuted. Does the producer not know that Palestinian Arabs, aided by foreign funds, are usurping public land, seizing private land, trying to drive Jews off their land by violence or fraudulent court cases, and building strategically in order to block Jews from buying other land? Is he unaware of the death penalty exacted by the Palestinian Authority against Arabs who sell land to Jews? It sure does matter who owns the land and how many residents belong to a religion engaged in what it considers a holy war! Being oblivious to that situation, as the Far Left is, has set Israelis up for being murdered by the thousands. An ideology that leads to mass-murder, however idealistically the Left phrases it, is cruel and unjust. An ideology that favors mass-murderers and backward cultures, as the leftist ideology does, is not liberal but reactionary, not decent but evil. Are leftists cannibals, who devour their own people? Ashamed of having an ideology that would help their own Jewish people, they favor the campaign of another religion that, feeling itself so superior and others so inferior, that they they want to conquer the others. Put more simply, the Left denounces Jewish nationality and religion, but favors the Arabs who fight in the name of their religion and nationality. How transparent is the Left's hypocrisy. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@gmail.com. |
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ISRAEL THE BEAUTIFUL: TORN FLAG
Posted by Yehoshua Halevi, May 10, 2011. |
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"In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles." — David Ben-Gurion HOW I GOT THE SHOT: A few years ago I borrowed an American flag from a former Navy SEAL who gently cautioned me to return the flag in the same pristine condition in which I was receiving it. The shoot also required an Israeli flag and I couldn't help but notice the difference in quality between the two flags. Made in China, the Israeli flag was thinner and duller in color, and, for what it represented, a lot less distinguished. During my years living in the United States, I don't recall ever seeing a flag displayed that wasn't in perfect or near-perfect condition. It may even be illegal to display an American flag that is damaged, I don't know. Here in Israel, for the past decade, I have been collecting pictures of torn and tattered flags, battered by wind, rain, and sun, some barely recognizable. I am myself torn about what to do with these pictures. I don't like to think that they symbolize the state of the nation as we celebrate our 63rd year of modern statehood. Rather, I prefer the "glass is half full" view, as depicted by this photo, where the flag's main elements are still vibrant and intact. Although Israel's history has been fraught with tragedy and challenge, and we remain an imperfect nation, still, we are a nation of laudable character and integrity, a bright-burning light unto the world. Chag Sameach — Happy Independence Day. Click here to view a gallery of Israeli flags in all manner of beauty and decay. Technical Data: Nikon F3, 135mm lens, f8 @ 1/125 sec., ISO 100.
Contact Yehoshua Halevi by email at smile@goldenlightimages.com
and visit his website: |
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CRUCIAL QUESTION ON INDEPENDENCE DAY: WHY THE SILENCE?
Posted by Albert Wendroff, May 10, 2011. |
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This was written by Professor Paul Eidelberg. an internationally known political scientist, author and lecturer. He is President of the Foundation For Constitutional Democracy, a Jerusalem-based think tank for improving Israel's system of governance. Contact him at list-owner@foundation1.org |
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No less than Shimon Peres saw in a Palestinian state a dire threat to Israel's existence. In Tomorrow is Now, a book published in 1978 (Jerusalem: Keter), Peres warned: The establishment of such a state means the inflow of combat-ready Palestinian forces (more than 25,800 men under arms) into Judea and Samaria; this force, together with the local youth, will double itself in a short time. It will not be short of weapons or other [military] equipment, and in a short space of time, an infrastructure for waging war will be set up in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. Israel will have problems in preserving day-to-day security, which may drive the country into war, or undermine the morale of its citizens. In time of war, the frontiers of the Palestinian state will constitute an excellent staging point for mobile forces to mount attacks on infrastructure installations vital for Israel's existence, to impede the freedom of action of the Israeli air force in the skies over Israel, and to cause bloodshed among the population in areas adjacent to the frontier-line. The question is this: Assuming Prime Minister Netanyahu is and has been aware of this assessment by Mr. Peres. why has he failed to make this known to the people of Israel during the past one or two or thee decades? Contact Albert Wendroff by email at wendroff39@yahoo.com |
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REMEMBERING THE JEWISH NAKBA
Posted by Mechel Samberg, May 9, 2011. |
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This article was written by Michelle Huberman,
Creative Director of Harif, Association of Jews from the Middle East and
North Africa. She currently lives in London.
Contact her at michellehuberman@mac.com
It appeared in the Jerusalem Post
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As the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign gathers pace for the 15th of May, with demonstrations worldwide timed to coincide with Israel's 63rd anniversary, here in London we will be commemorating the 'Jewish Nakba' — the 'Disaster,' that saw nearly a million Jews forced to flee their homes in Arab countries. 
Jews were persecuted, interned and even executed. Some 100,000 square kilometers of Jewish-owned land was seized or abandoned, four times the size of Israel, hundreds of communities destroyed. Billions of dollars of assets were lost. Of course, the 'Jewish Nakba' had a happy ending. Most of the refugees were absorbed into Israel where today they are full and free citizens. Jews from Arab and Muslim countries are now the face of Israel. Virtually none would choose to return to an Arab country. But many families struggled long and hard to rebuild their lives from nothing in Israel and the West. It would be nice to believe the myths that they left their homes in pursuit of the Zionist dream, but 95% of my encounters have been with elderly people who have told me the horrors of escaping raging mobs with nothing but a single suitcase in their hand. On May 15th their testimonies will be heard. Matti Haron will be telling us how his grandfather lived as a Muslim in Iran and even went on pilgrimage to Mecca to hide his Jewish identity. For centuries, Jews were dhimmis, a subjugated minority who could only achieve true equality if they converted to Islam. Many of my North African Muslim friends have told me about having Jewish grandparents. One wonders what percentage of Muslims had Jewish ancestors who chose or were forced to convert to Islam to have an easier life? Why don't we know any of these stories? We are told that Jews and Muslims coexisted happily together through the ages. Here in London trying to tell the truth through film showings and testimonies at Jewish events is an uphill struggle. A blogger friend was told by one of our Israel advocacy organizations — "Jews from Arab countries are not sexy news." She was stunned. "By 'sexy' I suppose he meant topical" she told me, "yet hardly a day goes by without some Palestinian, somewhere, telling how his land was 'stolen by the Zionists', as recently as... 63 years ago. Hardly topical, and yet the news media lap it up." It is too late to save the Jewish communities of the Arab world. Hardly any Jews are left. But the turmoil in the Arab world gives us a golden opportunity to press for the rights of all non-Muslim minorities, and to insist on the legitimacy of Israel, which gave safe haven to the beleaguered Jews of the region. As far as the Israel-Arab conflict is concerned, acknowledging that there was suffering on both sides is the key to reconciliation. The current Israeli government is now making efforts to put Jewish refugees on the peace agenda. Israeli deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon, whose father was a refugee from Algeria, has personally tried to raise awareness of the Jewish refugee issue in speeches and articles. But the knock-on effects are not felt yet in the mainstream European or US media, despite the valiant efforts of organizations like Harif and JIMENA. An Israel advocacy event in London this month will boast a diverse selection of workshops, and many sessions are duplicated so that you can have a second or third chance to see the same event. The speakers' list is very impressive, but one wonders why there is nothing on the agenda about the Mizrahi and Sephardi communities that make up nearly 50% of Israel's population? The best advocacy tool I know is Michael Grynszpan's film: The Forgotten Refugees which I showed to a hostile crowd at SOAS. In 20 minutes you can change a pro-Palestinian crowd to one that is sympathetic to the diversity of Israel; they demand why they were never told these facts before. Should this film not be on the event's agenda? Pro-Israel advocacy is simply not bringing Jews from Arab countries into the argument. Whilst this is the case, the Palestinians will continue to dominate the moral high ground and Israel will continue to be delegitimized. Until the international community addresses Jewish losses in Arab Lands as well as Palestinian losses, I can't believe that the Middle East peace process can ever progress. Press and guests who come to the 'Jewish Nakba' event in London on May
15th will have the opportunity to make up their own minds. They will
meet and listen to Jewish refugees from Arab countries and the first 50
guests to register will receive a free copy of the film: The Forgotten
Refugees. Please contact the author for more information:
michellehuberman@mac.com
Contact Mechel Samberg at mechelsamberg2@yahoo.com
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THE TRUTHFUL TRUTH, WHEN?
Posted by Nurit Greenger, May 9, 2011. |
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Independence Day Eve is the Memorial Day for Israel Defense Forces-IDF fallen and other Jewish victims who lost their lives in defense of the Jewish State. It is also a day of reflection. If everyone is lying to one another, why does the truth not come to light about these lies? The truth is lodged inside Israel, in Sderot and Ashkelon and the northern Negev, all are bombarded, day and night, with rockets and mortars coming at them from Gaza. And all that after the State of Israel already gave up, without any agreement — no agreement because the Arabs never adhere to any agreement — all of the Jewish villages of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip. The Government of Israel, uprooted families from their land, and broke human beings' life, in the hope that maybe, just maybe, with such extreme act, she will finally make the world understand that peace is the only will of the State of Israel; that is the truth. But this truth without the proper Hasbarah, propaganda — public diplomacy — falls on deaf ears and then it appears as if the world understands that Israelis are motivated by materialistic and financial interest only, but certainly not the need for peace. The Arabs did not win and will not win their wars against the Israelis, but they already achieved victory against the state of Israel with their public diplomacy and the media. And what more, it is very painful truth that till today, the Prime Minister of Israel and the Israeli government have not learned this lesson! In Europe, 65 years ago, there were 6 million loyal and good citizens living in their countries, they were academics, scientists, intellectuals, creative writers and artists, economists, doctors and prolific merchants. Human being material so capable, it could manage empires. But their guilt was, they were Jews. What did the Europeans do? They burned and murdered and strangled them, and as punishment the Europeans have received 20 million inhabitants, of which only a few can be called citizens, living on unemployment benefits and welfare, corrupt, terrorist and fundamentalists who believe in jihad — the murder of apostates — those who do not believe in Islam. This is the truth! And that is the punishment of those who do not acknowledge the revival of the Jewish Home, in the Jewish Homeland — the Land of Israel. This Jewish Homeland is the Land of Israel, it is the State of Israel. And the State of Israel is a fact, a reality. The Capital of Israel — Jerusalem, is a word that appears in the Bible hundreds of times. The Koran it is not listed even once. Jerusalem does not exist in the holy book of the Islamic religion. This is one more truth and no other. The Land of Israel is the home of the Jewish people and only of the Jewish people. In it the Jews had established the kingdom of David over 2,000 years before Mohammed decided to invent the religion of Islam, a religion of bigotry, evil and murder, and this is the truth on Islam's ideology of warfare. So when will the Nation of Israel finally, begin to recite the truth, and nothing but the truth? When? Contact Nurit Greenger by email at nurit.nuritg@gmail.com. Visit her blog:
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JETSONS AND FLINTSTONES
Posted by Susana K-M, May 9, 2011. |
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This was written by Mark Steyn. |
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As my old friends at The Spectator in London pointed out Monday morning, I scooped the entire planet in breaking the news of Osama bin Laden's death: "Osama bin Laden is dead, says Mark Steyn." This was in The Spectator's edition of June 29, 2002, which turned out to be a wee bit premature. I jumped the gun, much like Osama's missus in Abbottabad, but by nine years. Nor, to be honest, was a teensy-weensy near-decade discrepancy in the date the only problem with my scoop. Much of that Spectator piece was preoccupied with the usual assumptions about Public Enemy Number One — caves, dialysis, remote wild Pakistani tribal lands where Western intelligence hasn't a hope of penetrating unless you turn a cousin of the village headman, etc. All these assumptions prevailed until a few days ago, when it emerged that Osama, three wives and 13 children had been living in town in a purpose-built pad round the corner from the Pakistani Military Academy for over half a decade. Brunch every Sunday with a couple of generals at his usual corner table at the Abbottabad Hilton? Eggs Benedict, hold the ham? The belated dispatch of Osama testifies to what the United States does well — elite warriors, superbly trained, equipped to a level of technological sophistication no other nation can match. Everything else surrounding the event (including White House news management so club-footed that one starts to wonder darkly whether its incompetence is somehow intentional) embodies what the United States does badly. Pakistan, our "ally," hides and protects not only Osama but also Mullah Omar and Zawahiri, and does so secure in the knowledge that it will pay no price for its treachery — indeed, confident that its duplicitous military will continue to be funded by U.S. taxpayers. If this were a movie, the crowds cheering "USA! USA!" outside the White House would be right: The bad guy is dead! We win! The End. But the big picture is bigger than Hollywood convention. In the great sweeping narrative, the death of Osama bin Laden is barely a ripple, while the courtesies afforded to him by the Pakistani establishment tell us something profound about the superpower's weakness and inability to shift the storyline. Bin Laden famously said that when people see a strong horse and a weak horse they naturally prefer the strong horse. Putting a bullet through his eye is a good way of letting him know which role he's consigned to. But the strong horse/weak horse routine is a matter of perception as much as anything else. On Sept. 12, 2001, Gen. Musharraf was in a meeting "when my military secretary told me that the U.S. secretary of state, Gen. Colin Powell, was on the phone. I said I would call back later." The milquetoasts of the State Department were in no mood for Musharraf's I'm-washing-my-hair routine, and, when he'd been dragged to the phone, he was informed that the Bush administration would bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" if they didn't get everything they wanted. Musharraf concluded that America meant it. A decade later, we're back to Sept. 10. Were Washington to call Islamabad as it did a decade ago, the Pakistanis would thank them politely and say they'd think it over and get back in six weeks, give or take. They think they've got the superpower all figured out — that America is happy to spend bazillions of dollars on technologically advanced systems that can reach across the planet but it doesn't really have the stomach for changing the facts of the ground. That means that once in a while your big-time jihadist will be having a quiet night in watching "Dancing With The Stars" when all of a sudden Robocop descends from the heavens, kicks the door open, and it's time to get ready for your virgins. But other than that, in the bigger picture, day by day, all but unnoticed, things will go their way. In the fall of 2001, discussing the collapse of the Taliban, Thomas Friedman, the in-house thinker at The New York Times, offered this bit of cartoon analysis: "For all the talk about the vaunted Afghan fighters, this was a war between the Jetsons and the Flintstones — and the Jetsons won and the Flintstones know it." But they didn't, did they? The Flintstones retreated to their caves, bided their time, and a decade later the Jetsons are desperate to negotiate their way out. When it comes to instructive analogies, I prefer Khartoum to cartoons. If it took America a decade to avenge the dead of 9/11, it took Britain 13 years to avenge their defeat in Sudan in 1884. But, after Kitchener slaughtered the jihadists of the day at the Battle of Omdurman in 1897, he made a point of digging up their leader the Mahdi, chopping off his head and keeping it as a souvenir. The Sudanese got the message. The British had nary a peep out of the joint until they gave it independence six decades later — and, indeed, the locals fought for King and (distant imperial) country as brave British troops during World War Two. Even more amazingly, generations of English schoolchildren were taught about the Mahdi's skull winding up as Lord Kitchener's novelty paperweight as an inspiring tale of national greatness. Not a lot of that today. It's hard to imagine Osama's noggin as an attractive centerpiece at next year's White House Community Organizer of the Year banquet, and entirely impossible to imagine America's "educators" teaching the tale approvingly. So instead, even as we explain that our difficulties with this bin Laden fellow are nothing to do with Islam, no sir, perish the thought, we simultaneously rush to assure the Muslim world that, not to worry, we accorded him a 45-minute Islamic funeral as befits an observant Muslim. That's why Pakistani big shots harbored America's mortal enemy and knew they could do so with impunity. Bin Laden was a Saudi with money, and there are a lot of those about funding this and that from South Asia to the Balkans to Dearborn, Mich. They've walked their petrodollars round the Western world buying up everything they need to, from minor mosques to major university "Middle Eastern Studies" departments. By comparison with his compatriots, Osama squandered his dough. In that long-ago Spectator piece, I wrote, "Junior's just a peculiarly advanced model of the useless idiot son — a criticism routinely made of Bush but actually far more applicable to Osama, who took his dad's fortune and literally threw it down a hole in the ground." A lot of American policy followed it. A decade on, our troops are running around Afghanistan "winning hearts and minds" and getting gunned down by the very policemen and soldiers they've spent years training. Back on the home front, every small-town airport has at least a dozen crack TSA operatives sniffing round the panties of grade-schoolers. Meanwhile, at the UN, the EU, at the Organization of the Islamic Conference, in the "Facebook revolutions" of "the Arab spring," the Islamization of the world proceeds: Millions of Muslims support bin Laden's goal — the submission of the Western world to Islam — but, unlike him, understand that flying planes into buildings is entirely unnecessary to achieving it. Will being high-flying Jetsons with state-of-the-art gizmos prove sufficient in a Flintstonizing world? The Pakistanis are pretty sure they know the answer to that. Contact Susana K-M by email at suanema@gmail.com |
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FROM ISRAEL: CELEBRATING AT 63
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 9, 2011. |
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Tonight begins Yom Ha'Atzmaut — Israeli Independence Day. There are those who have the impulse to remain subdued this year, even as celebration is called for, because of the many troubles we face. But consider... The return of the Jews to our homeland after 2,000 years was a miracle, and our ability over the years to survive and thrive beyond everyone's wildest imagination has been a miracle. With the help of the Almighty we shall prevail, and we shall grow. Our role is to be strong, and to trust that we can do it. ~~~~~~~~~~ Aish's musical video — "Wave Your Flag" — sings, "When I get older, I will be stronger, they'll call me freedom, just like a waving flag." ~~~~~~~~~~ Nefesh B'Nefesh is a marvelous organization that has helped thousands of people from English-speaking countries, mostly Americans, to make aliyah. This year, the group held a special celebration honoring the 45 sabra babies born to families that have come over the last year: How's that for having faith in Israel's future? ~~~~~~~~~~ JPost editor David Horovitz ran a piece last Friday that I've been saving to share for Yom Ha'Atzmaut. It's called, "Out of the ashes, to the height of self-sufficiency." Horovitz writes about Benny Gantz, the new IDF Chief of Staff (who came to this position almost by political fluke, but, it seems, was meant to be where he is now). "The IDF is strong, ready and a deterrent to our enemies," Gantz said during Yom HaShoah ceremonies last week. It is capable of thwarting any enemy that rises up to kill us." (emphasis added) Elaborates Horovitz: "Born in Israel to a mother who was barely alive when she was liberated from Bergen-Belsen, Gantz emblemizes the near-miraculous revival of the Jewish people after the Holocaust: The survivor's child is now chief protector of the insistently surviving nation. (emphasis added) ~~~~~~~~~~ Some Interesting Facts about Israel (with thanks to Rebecca M.) Geography Israel is only 1/6 of 1% of the land mass of the Middle East The Kinneret, at 695 feet below sea level, is the lowest freshwater lake in the world. Israel is the only nation in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees. The Mount of Olives in Jerusalem is the oldest continually used cemetery in the world. Demographics Israel has only 2% of the population of the Middle East. Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees per capita in the world. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation in the world — by a large margin. Israel has the highest number of PhD's per capita in the world. Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation in the world, per capita. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population has grown over the last 50 years. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians, Muslims and Jews are all free to vote. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where women enjoy full political rights. Economics and Hi-Tech Israel has the largest number of startup companies per capita in the world. Israel is the world's largest wholesale diamond center. Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies outside of the US and Canada. The cell phone was developed in Israel at Motorola's largest development center. Voice Mail technology was developed in Israel. The first anti-virus software for computers was developed in Israel in 1979. Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed in Israel by Microsoft. Both the Pentium-4 and Centrino processors were entirely designed, developed and produced in Israel. Culture Hebrew is the only case of a dead national language being revived in all of world history. Israel has more museums per capita than any other nation in the world. Israel has more orchestras per capita than any other nation in the world. Israel publishes more books per capita than any other nation in the world. And how about this: The most independent and free Arabic press in the Middle East is in Israel. Stand tall, my friends, hold up your heads and be proud! ~~~~~~~~~~ A short video featuring Hatikva:
~~~~~~~~~~~ Before closing, I want to look back to what I had written yesterday: The number of fallen that I cited yesterday — 22,867 — referred only to soldiers. Another 4,500 have died of terror attacks. A reader has asked me if the number provided of those who fell defending Israel referred only to members of the IDF since the founding of the State. The answer is yes. But the point raised by this question is valid. If not for those who fought for Jewish rights before May 1948, we would not have seen the founding of the State. It certainly did not come about in a vacuum, and those who made the ultimate sacrifice prior to Israeli independence must also be recognized. I am not at all certain, however, that there would be a way to now tally the number who died in this era: there were separate groups, some clandestine, each following its own vision. ~~~~~~~~~~ After I wrote yesterday's posting I watched the proceedings for Yom HaZikaron at the Kotel. Select family members of soldiers who have died were present and the camera from time to time focused on their faces. They wrenched the heart. And so I would like to add this: We owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to all those who have fallen defending the State. But we also owe a debt to those who have lost sons and husbands, fathers and brothers. Theirs is an on-going sacrifice. ~~~~~~~~~~ Yesterday, when I mentioned various members of Congress who are opposed to providing additional financial support to the PA, I neglected to include Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, she is one of our very best friends. The fact that I've alluded to her many times in the past does not excuse her exclusion here. (Thanks, Stephanie.)
Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com
and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
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RELEASE THE IRANIAN HOSTAGES
Posted by Kenneth Timmerman, May 9, 2011. |
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Dear friends, I have visited the camps in northern Iraq of the Free Life Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PJAK) twice in recent years, and have interviewed the Party Secretary General, Rahman Haj Ahmadi, many times. PJAK has been and continues to be a major force within the pro-freedom movement inside Iran. PJAK sympathizers have been arrested, tortured, and put to death because of their involvement in peaceful protests. President Obama put PJAK on the Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Nationals as a "terrorist" organizations in Feb. 2009 as part of his "outreach" to the Iranian regime. Clearly, that policy has failed. As I argue in the oped piece below, it's time to "release the Iranian Hostages." All best,
Kenneth R. Timmerman is President, Middle East Data Project, Inc. He authored "Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran" and is a contributing editor to Newsmax.com His recent non-fiction books are a thriller called 'Honor Killing', (available at www.kentimmerman.com), "Peter's Bones" (a novel of the Persecuted Church in Iraq) and "Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran." Contact him by email at timmerman.road@verizon.net |
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EGYPT: SITUATION DETERIORATING BADLY AND RAPIDLY
Posted by Barry Rubin, May 9, 2011. |
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In the wake of bloody Muslim attacks on Egyptian Christians the New York Times informs us: "By lifting the heavy hand of the Mubarak police state, the revolution unleashed long-suppressed sectarian animosities that have burst out with increasing ferocity...." No kidding! Did you think a single Egyptian Christian didn't know this in February? Why didn't the media report or the U.S. government understand that this was absolutely inevitable and predictabe. But the only mentions of Christians were to claim that they were really enthusiastic about the revolution. The remaining Christians in most of the Arabic-speaking world may be on the edge of flight or extinction. All of the Christians have left the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip which is, in effect, an Islamist republic. They are leaving the West Bank. Half have departed from an increasingly Islamist-oriented Iraq where they are under terrorist attack. Within a few years they might all be gone. In Lebanon while the Christians are holding their own there is a steady emigration. As for Syria, the community has generally supported the Asad regime fearing a revolutionary Islamist replacement. One dissident recalled that as he was being beaten in a Syrian prison a few years ago the police yelled at him, "Why are you doing this? You're a Christian!" Egypt has more Christians than Israel's entire population. There have been numerous attacks, with the latest in Cairo leaving 12 dead, 220 wounded, and two churches burned. The Western media generally attributes this to inter-religious battles. Yet Egypt's Christians, so totally outnumbered and not having any access to the power of the state, have generally kept a low profile. It is hard to believe that gangs of Christians go out and attack Muslims, especially when the fighting revolves around mobs attacking churches. "How can they say we started it when we are defending our church?" asked one Christian. That makes sense. The Christians cannot depend on any support from Western churches or governments. Will there be a massive flight of tens or even hundreds of thousands of Christians from Egypt in the next few years? The U.S. government has just announced that it will forgive about $1 billion of Egyptian debt at a time when the American economy isn't doing so well. You can just bet that there are no political strings attacked: no pressure over Egyptian backing of Hamas, growing anti-Israel policy, cutting off natural gas supplies, the increasingly difficult situation of Christians, opposing Iran's ambitions and nuclear weapons' drive, or anything else. What will happen if and when an Islamist-dominated regime is in power in Egypt — which could happen as early as September? Will U.S. aid and support continue? Up until now, the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood has been badly underestimated in the West. But increasingly it is also apparent that the strength of anti-Islamist forces has been overestimated. I have noted that even Amr Moussa, likely to be Egypt's next president and a radical nationalist, has predicted an Islamist majority in parliament. That should be a huge story yet has been largely ignored. He is not creating his own party, meaning that a President Moussa will be dependent on the Muslim Brotherhood in parliament. Rather than the radical nationalists battling the Islamists these two forces might well work together. And who will they be working against? Just guess. This was written by Barry Rubin, who is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and co-author of "Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography" and "Hating America: A History" (Oxford University Press). His latest book is The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). Prof. Rubin's columns can now be read online athttp://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/column.html. Contact him at profbarryrubin@yahoo.com The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com. This article was published on the PajamasMedia website. |
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INMATES WILL RETAIN CONTROL OF TEHRAN'S INSANE ASYLUM
Posted by Family Security Matters (FSM), May 9, 2011. |
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This was written by Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (ret), a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam War, the US invasion of Panama and the first Gulf war. He is the author of Bare Feet, Iron Will — Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam's Battlefields" and frequently writes on foreign policy and defense issues. |
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To date, Iran's non-cleric presidents have shared a common fate. The political stars in Tehran appear to be falling into an alignment again that suggests a similar fate awaits the country's current non-cleric president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In 1979, a popular revolution against the Shah of Iran by a population thirsting for democracy was hijacked by religious zealots hellbent on creating an Islamic Republic denying all freedoms upon which democracies are built. Iran's new constitution called for the creation of a theocratic nation, over which a senior cleric — the Supreme Leader — held ultimate authority as head of state, leaving the affairs of state to be handled by the president as head of the government. The president was elected for a four year term and limited to serving two. Supposedly, he represented the presidential candidate receiving the highest popular vote during an election. Under the constitution, the Supreme Leader always retains the authority to dismiss the president. The absolute authority wielded by the Supreme Leader is clearly apparent through his relationship with the Council of Guardians. This 12-member Council consists of six experts in Islamic law — all selected by the Supreme Leader — and six jurists, nominated by a head judge — appointed by the Supreme Leader — and then elected by the Iranian Parliament. The Council basically controls a presidential election from the outset, culling the herd of candidates allowed to run. For example, in the 1997 election, of 238 candidates, the Council approved only four. Those rejected included clerics deemed insufficiently dedicated to Islamic values. Six presidents have so far run the Council's "gauntlet" of approval and then gone on to win a popular election. The first two were non-clerics, followed by three clerics. President Ahmadinejad, the third non-cleric to hold the office, is now in his second term after he — with the help of current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — stole the 2009 election. But, interestingly, while each cleric serving as president completed two four-year terms, no non-cleric serving as president has managed to fully complete an elected term in office. Abulhassan Banisadr became Iran's first president in 1980. As president, Banisadr served at the pleasure of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — the country's first Supreme Leader. But sixteen months into his term, Banisadr fell out of favor with the Supreme Leader as he began challenging other clerics in power. As a result, Banisadr was impeached by Iran's Parliament on June 22, 1981 (most likely at Khomeini's urging.) The military organization established to protect Iran's theocracy — the Revolutionary Guard — immediately seized the presidential offices, arresting newspaper journalists supportive of Banisadr and executing several of his closest friends in government. Banisadr went into hiding, eventually escaping to France. Banisadr's replacement, Mohammad-Ali Rajai, became Iran's second president. Also a non-cleric, he took office on August 2, 1981 after winning 91% of the vote. However, less than a month later Rajai was assassinated in a bombing attack that killed dozens, also wounding future president/future Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. After winning the presidency with 95% of the vote in 1981, Khamenei became the first of three clerics to fully complete two terms in office. He was followed by Akbar Rafsanjani in 1989 and Mohammad Khatami in 1997. When Supreme Leader Khomeini died in 1989, Khamenei became his replacement — a position he still holds today. In 2005, non-cleric Ahmadinejad won the presidency with 62% of the vote. In his re-election bid of 2009, despite polls indicating he was losing, he "won" — again with 62% of the vote — an expected result as Khamenei had announced in 2008 he saw Ahmadinejad as president for the next five years. But, signs are now visible in Tehran suggesting Khamenei may be making preparations for non-cleric Ahmadinejad to go the way of Iran's first president, non-cleric Banisadr. Why, after sanctioning the fraudulent 2009 election would Khamenei want to toss his "fair-haired boy" under the bus? Even if Ahmadinejad is on his way out, little comfort should be taken that madman Mahmoud is being booted — for the outlandishly nutty rationale for ousting him gives us cause to ponder whether any sane person holds the reigns of power in Tehran. Iran's clerics are concerned Ahmadinejad, like Banisadr before him, arrogantly challenges their authority. The challenge seems to have started last month when Ahmadinejad dismissed his intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, personally selected for that position by Khamenei. The Supreme Leader reinstated Moslehi. In protest, Ahmadinejad refused to attend Cabinet meetings, only returning after an eleven day hiatus. He still has yet to support the Supreme Leader's reinstatement — disobedience causing members of the Iranian Parliament to demand Ahmadinejad's impeachment. Ahmadinejad's chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, whom Khamenei supporters identify as the real power behind the president and who allegedly is being groomed to replace him, was recently arrested, along with two dozen other Ahmadinejad supporters. Mashaei — the father-in-law of Ahmadinejad's son — had generated criticism among clerics for promoting Iranian nationalism (vice Islamism) and cavorting with a movie star. But it is the nature of the crime of which Mashaei and friends stand accused that is most telling. They are charged with sorcery — i.e., magicians who have invoked the spirits to act against Khamenei and his followers, one of those arrested even being described as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds." Such outlandish claims by Tehran's clerics raises the question whether the patients are truly in control of the insane asylum. The effort to de-throne Ahmadinejad seems to have started after the release of a film authorized by the president on the return of the 12th Imam or "Mahdi." The president is an ardent believer that the Mahdi, who disappeared as a child in the 8th century, will return in the 21st to lead Islam to greatness. The Islamic superhero's return has to be triggered by world chaos, which Ahmadinejad seeks to create, knowing it will lead to war with the West. Ahmadinejad sees himself as the spiritual executioner of the Mahdi's game plan. While the film suggests the Mahdi's return is imminent, friction with the clerics arose as they believe Mahdi's return cannot be predicted — and that trying to predict it is indicative of a "deviant current" among the president's supporters. Undoubtedly, the clerics also oppose the film's role promoted for Ahmadinejad who, as a non-cleric, is portrayed as being more religiously fanatical than are they in triggering the Mahdi's return. By promoting himself as a non-cleric spiritual hero among a mass of less spiritual clerics in the film, Ahmadinejad may well have over-stepped the bounds of conduct to be tolerated by the clerics. If he proves unwilling to accept a lesser role for himself, demonstrating contriteness to Khamenei, he may well continue the tradition in Iran of non-cleric presidents failing to complete an elected term. But, unfortunately, regardless of the outcome, the patients still will be in control of Tehran's insane asylum.
Contact Family Security Matters (FSM) at info@ familysecuritymatters.org
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THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT WINNING
Posted by Hands Fiasco, May 8, 2011. |
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This was written by David Suissa, a branding consultant and the founder of OLAM magazine. For speaking engagements and other inquiries, he can be reached at suissa@olam.org or www.davidsuissa.com. |
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I'll never forget sitting with a group of intellectuals several years ago, at the height of the messy war in Iraq, and discussing why President Bush and America had fallen so low in the esteem of the world. One great mind after another offered sophisticated analyses. My head was spinning. Finally, someone piped up: "Everything would be different if Bush were winning the war." At which point a distinguished professor from Israel said: "This is brilliant! Bush's real problem is that he's not winning!" I sat there, slightly stunned, thinking: How can something so complicated lend itself to such an easy insight? I reflected on that insight the other night when President Obama announced the killing of Osama bin Laden after a nearly 10-year pursuit. Here was a president who had suffered relentless criticism for his handling of foreign affairs. And now, as Jeffrey Goldberg wrote on his blog: "Our President, in the blink of an eye, has gone from a hyper-criticized, seemingly-swamped possibly-one-term leader to an American hero, a commander-in-chief who calmly oversaw the killing of the greatest mass murderer in American history." And why did he become a hero? Not because he made one of his inspiring speeches or announced a brilliant new policy. He became a hero because he got a win. It's as simple — and as complicated — as that. We love to teach our kids that life is not about winning and losing but "how you play the game." That may be true when you're dealing with people of good faith. But when you're dealing with people who are out for blood, it's a good idea to know how to win. Naturally, Jews and Israel have always been juicy targets for people out for blood. So, how should one deal with such aggression? I found a wonderful answer last week in a shoe store, of all places, on trendy St. Denis Street in downtown Montreal. The French Canadian owner of the store, who has been there for 25 years, decided last year to carry a woman's shoe line from Israel called Beautifeel. Well, wouldn't you know it, within a few months, a vicious boycott campaign was under way against the store, led by a popular local politician, Amir Khadir. To give you an idea of the tone of their campaign, one of the boycotters' leaflets had an oversize image of a woman's shoe stomping on a pile of buried naked bodies — reminiscent of those horror shots of emaciated bodies you see in Holocaust documentaries. Written on the shoe was "Beautifeel. Made in Apartheid Israel." On top was the headline, in French, "Boycottons la boutique Le Marcheur" ("Let's boycott the boutique Le Marcheur"). Week after week, the boycotters recruited large and noisy crowds to hand out the leaflets and implore people not to enter Le Marcheur. Their mission was to pressure the owner, Yves Archambault, to stop carrying the Israeli shoe line so that the neighborhood would be "apartheid free." But Archambault refused, out of principle. It didn't seem right to him that he should be told how to run his business. His business suffered, but he held firm. The story hardly ends there. The Jewish community in Montreal got wind of the boycott and went nuts. A "buycott" campaign was launched, and Jews from all over the city came to buy shoes at Le Marcheur. A woman bought a hundred pairs. Archambault became a local hero. Meanwhile, creative minds went to work producing counter leaflets mocking the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement as "Boycott Derangement Syndrome," explaining the discrimination and hypocrisy inherent in the movement. These leaflets gave people the Israeli side of the story. Archambault did his own research and found out that the Israeli shoe company (besides making great shoes!) hired women, minorities and Palestinians and treated their employees very well. The Quebec General Assembly drafted a unanimous resolution condemning the boycott and supporting the store. And what happened to the initiator of the boycott, Amir Khadir? He went low-key and stopped coming to the demonstrations. Apparently, he concluded that the backlash might not be good for his political future. I tell you this story not to remind you of the insidious global movement to demonize the Jewish state. That's old hat by now. I'm telling you this story because it's a tribute to the noble virtues of fighting back and winning. Too often, we recoil at the idea of fighting. It leaves a bad taste in our mouth. We dread the thought of "lowering ourselves to the level of mudslinging." We prefer notions like "engagement" and "bridge building." But the nasty boycotters of St. Denis Street who used Nazi imagery to malign an Israeli shoe company were not looking for engagement or bridge building. They were looking for blood — and a victory. Faced with such aggression, how else to respond but to fight back? Yes, in such cases, life is a zero sum game. One side wins, and the other side loses. The Jewish community of Montreal, with the support of a brave French Canadian shoe merchant, fought back ferociously and smartly against what it perceived as a grave injustice to the State of Israel. And, guess what — they won. It's not as dramatic as taking down bin Laden, but we'll take it. Contact HandsFiasco at handsfiasco@webtv.net |
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THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT RETURNS TO ITS JEW HATING WAYS
Posted by Walid Shoebat, May 8, 2011. |
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Melanie Philips who is a British Journalist who has a full command of the history and politics of the Middle East. She exposes the current British Government. Here is an open letter from her to Prime Minister Cameron which is right on target. If Britain continues its duplicity they will be on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of G-d. |
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Dear Prime Minister, I was interested to read that, when you met Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, you said: 'Britain is a good friend of Israel and our support for Israel and Israel's security is something I have described in the past, and will do so again, as unshakeable.' I wonder, therefore, if you make a habit of threatening your friends? For you also said that unless Israel 'engages seriously in a meaningful peace process' with the Palestinian Authority, the more likely it is that Britain will endorse the 'State of Palestine' for which the PA is expected to seek recognition at the UN in September. This is not the behaviour of a friend so much as the kind of intimidation that is more reminiscent of a Mafia protection racket. First of all, you have incomprehensibly decided to pressure the victim in this conflict to make peace with her aggressor, even though the victim is the one party that constantly tries to make peace while the aggressor does not. It is the PA which has refused to negotiate with Israel, not the other way round, on the spurious grounds that Israeli expansion of Jewish homes beyond the 'Green Line' is a bar to negotiations. I wonder whether you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you do not insist that Mr Abbas 'engages seriously in a meaningful peace process' by unambiguously renouncing — in both English and Arabic — his repeated assertions that his people will never accept Israel as a Jewish state, the casus belli of the entire conflict? I wonder also if you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you implicitly endorse the racist ethnic cleansing inherent in the putative 'State of Palestine' which the PA says it will declare — a state in which Mr Abbas has repeatedly declared that not one Jew will be allowed to live — but which you have now threatened to support? I'm sure the British people in particular would be interested to know when you decided that racism and ethnic cleansing were part of your modernizing program for the Conservative Party. Next, I wonder if you might clarify for us exactly why the British government has welcomed the alliance entered into between Hamas and Mr Abbas's Fatah, and why you believe that this will advance the cause of peace. As you know, your government still regards Hamas as a terrorist organisation. More than that, Hamas is explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jews, a platform from which is has explicitly stated this week that it will not resile. And as you know, following the killing of Osama bin Laden the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, condemned the 'assassination of a Muslim holy warrior' — while for their part the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the terrorist department of the Fatah organization that you do not appear to think is an obstacle to peace, called bin Laden's death 'a catastrophe' and vowed to step up the jihad to establish the dominance of Islam in the world. I'm sure we are all agog to learn why you, a Conservative Prime Minister and the supposed ally of America in the defense of the free world, have chosen not only to applaud and promote a coalition which includes genocidal fanatics who are in bed with both al Qaeda and Iran, but why you are also threatening their victim, Israel, that Britain will endorse a state run by this genocidal coalition unless Israel itself enters into negotiations with it. To carry on with the Mafia analogy, this is akin to threatening someone that if they do not put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger you will set the Mob on them to achieve the same result. I'd be grateful if you could explain to us why you support the killing of the leader of al Qaeda, as well as sanctions against Iran on the grounds that both represent an unconscionable threat to the free world, and yet at the same time demand of Israel that it makes concessions to a coalition made up of the allies of Iran and al Qaeda. I'm sure we'd all like to know, if this is how you treat your 'friends', how you would treat your enemies. I realize, Prime Minister, that before you achieved high office your knowledge of and interest in foreign affairs was hovering around the zero mark. As a result, it is likely that your only knowledge of the Middle East comes from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which has a history of virulent antagonism towards the Jewish people. I would also expect, however, that you have an eye to your own place in history, and that you would probably like to be viewed by future generations as the British Prime Minister who stood shoulder to shoulder with the victims of genocidal aggression against their destroyers, rather than the other way round. If you are to get this the right way round and thus avoid such posthumous infamy, it is vital that you come to realize the key point about the Middle East impasse. To arrive at a solution, it is imperative first of all correctly to identify the problem. The problem in the Middle East is not the absence of a state of Palestine. Were that the case, the problem would have been resolved when such a state was first mooted long before World War Two. The problem is instead that the Arabs wish to destroy the State of Israel. The solution, therefore, is to stop them from continuing to try to do so. And to achieve that, it is essential that the west stop rewarding them for their attempts. For the single most important reason for the never-ending nature of the Middle East impasse is that, uniquely, for more than nine decades the west has rewarded the Arab aggressors and punished their Jewish victims. And from the start, the western leader of this infernal process, I'm afraid to say, was Britain. It was the British who, out of sheer breathtaking malice against the Jewish people, first incited the (hitherto mainly benignly disposed) Arabs against the Jews returning to their ancestral homeland in Palestine in the early years of the 20th century. It was the British who set out to undermine and reverse their own government's policy to re-establish the Jewish national home in the land of Israel. It was the British who reneged on their internationally binding treaty obligation to settle the Jews throughout Palestine — including the areas currently known as the 'West Bank' and Gaza — with the result that they kept out desperate Jews trying to flee Nazi Europe, causing thousands to be murdered in the Holocaust. At the same time, they encouraged Arab immigration from neighboring countries and turned a blind eye to the pogroms carried out by these Arab newcomers against the Jews whose land it was supposed to be — thus laying the groundwork for the false claim that the Arabs were the rightful inheritors of the land. And all the time, the British cloaked this vicious treachery in the honeyed fiction that they were the true friends of the Jewish people and had their interests at heart. The history of the British in this terrible conflict between Jew and Arab is not merely a chronicle of the utmost perfidy and malevolent Judeophobic bigotry. It is also directly responsible for the continuation of the conflict to this day. For Arab aggression against the Jews has been rewarded and encouraged from the start, by robbing the Jews of their rightful inheritance and giving great chunks of it to their aggressors. But if aggressors are rewarded, the inevitable result is more aggression until they achieve their final terrible aim. And that very same process is in evidence today, with Britain's grotesque endorsement this week of the coalition for genocide and your government's unconscionable pressure upon Israel to negotiate its own destruction with its mortal enemies. Prime Minister, the virus of Judeophobia is now rampant once again throughout Europe — let alone in the Arab and Muslim world. And the fuel for this fire is the set of genocidal falsehoods about the Arab and Muslim war of extermination against Israel, a Big lie which has turned victim into aggressor and vice versa. Appallingly, the British government is helping stoke this vile inferno by endorsing many of these falsehoods — and now, worse still, by actually promoting the coalition of genocide and turning the screw on its victim. The similarities with the 1930s and 1940s are uncanny and horrifying — similarities not just with what was allowed to develop in Europe, but also what happened in Palestine itself, the source of today' s terrible impasse. Prime Minister, if you are not very careful indeed history will judge that you re-established a direct line back to the malevolence of the British in Palestine; back to that terrible time when Britain so foully betrayed the Jewish people and became a party to genocide; back to the approach which gave genocidal fanatics hope that victory was within their grasp. To stand up against all this — the defining madness of our times — would demand of you, I know full well, the utmost statesmanship and moral courage. But the alternative is to earn the contempt of decent people everywhere and the scorn of posterity. The choice, Prime Minister, is yours. Sincerely,
Contact Walid Shoebat at http://www.shoebat.com |
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FROM ISRAEL: YOM HAZIKARON
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 8, 2011. |
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The day of remembering all who have fallen for Israel — both soldiers and victims of terror — begins at sundown tonight. A solemn day that touches all Israel as a family. The number fallen is now 22,867. 
Last year, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi, who was then Chief of Staff, opened ceremonies for the soldiers, as is traditional, by placing a flag on the grave of the one most recently fallen. Then he said: ''Here, between the thousands of gravestones and silent tombs, testimony to 62 years of struggle for our freedom as a nation and a State.'' Now it is 63 years. Those soldiers who have died have given their lives with purpose; our debt to them is beyond measure. May the Almighty help us find the way to the day when our people will have achieved that freedom and need to sacrifice lives for it no more. ~~~~~~~~~~ As to the victims of terror (the picture below is from the Fogel family funeral), may the memory of each be for a special blessing. As we recount these immeasurable losses, may we find our way, through strength and perseverance, so that here too we can finally say, "Never Again!" 
~~~~~~~~~~ A siren for the fallen will sound tonight at 8 PM. The main ceremony of the evening will then be conducted at the Kotel, with bereaved families present and the Prime Minister, the President and the Chief of Staff participating. At 9 PM, there will be a program of songs at the Knesset, dedicated to the fallen. Tomorrow at 11 AM, a second siren will sound, marking the beginning of the ceremony for soldiers at Har Herzl (Israel's main military cemetery — pictured above). Following this will be a ceremony for terror victims. ~~~~~~~~~~ Please see and share my new report on the folly of US support for PA "security forces." This is actually an update of a report done two years ago. The thrust of the message in 2009 was that it was foolish for the US to support development of PA troops. So much more so is this the case today. It was American naivete, or pie-in-the-sky dreaming, that promoted this project, which was actually hailed as a great idea in many quarters: Hamas had taken Gaza in a coup, actually demolishing a larger, better equipped Fatah (PA) force there. Reasoned the strategic (?) thinkers in the US, if the PA forces are better trained and equipped by the American military, they will be able to prevent a Hamas takeover of Judea and Samaria, and will fight terrorism. Then, by golly, they'll be on their way to establishing a state. ~~~~~~~~~~ There were only a couple of problems with this, which were blithely ignored: [] Fatah will never "take out" or adequately defend against Hamas. The impression until recently was that Fatah and Hamas were separate; however, regardless of their real animosities, there always has been considerable linkage between the groups. The possibility that there would be unity gov't always existed. Not to mention that the loyalty of Palestinian Arabs is first to the clan (hamula) and not to some abstract concept of a nation; within one clan there might be Fatah and Hamas people. In Gaza, at the time of the coup, there were some Fatah troops that joined Hamas, and some that ran away. ~~~~~~~~~~ As if all of the above were not enough, we now have a signed Fatah-Hamas unity agreement, which may, or may not, last. Where does that leave the US program to develop PA security forces? One would think this was a no-brainer: That it's obvious that a halt must be called immediately. Even if the unity agreement falls apart, we now have irrefutable evidence that Fatah is willing to cooperate with an openly terrorist organization. That should disqualify Fatah forces with regard to receiving further American training and arming. Ah, but the Secretary of State thinks otherwise. So far, says Hillary, there is no cooperation between the security forces of Fatah (the PA) and of Hamas, and so for the time being, at least, the US can continue to provide support to the PA forces. This thinking doesn't acknowledge even the minimal reality of a shift in PA policy that is likely to occur, however discreetly, to accord with Hamas policies. ~~~~~~~~~~ A good many members of Congress appear to see it differently, although their stated position is just a tad qualified. Twenty-nine Senators who are from the Democratic party, supported by Republican Senators, sent a letter to President Obama on Friday urging him to end US aid to the PA if Hamas joins the PA government. It was initiated by Senators Robert Menendez (NJ) and Bob Casey (PA), and has been signed by senior Senators, including Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, and Daniel Inouye, who chairs the Senate's Appropriations Committee. At this I want to say, wait a second, you have it almost right, and that's great, but... The unity plan at this stage, prior to elections a year from now, calls for a transitional government to be formed that consists of technocrats. That's a fig leaf, a gimmick to keep everyone happy. It's not good enough to give the PA a pass. Not in my book. Originally it was said that Fayyad would be out of this transitional government, at the insistence of Hamas leaders, who despise him. But recent news reports indicate that Abbas is pushing to keep Fayyad as prime minister because this would enhance unity credibility and keep people happy. How readily will people be taken in by this, in spite of the willingness of Abbas to sign an agreement with terrorists? Rhetorical question. ~~~~~~~~~~ Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), it should be noted, is leading the fight to utilize existing US legislation to end financial aid to the PA.
Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com
and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
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OF SILENCE, SOLDIERS AND SWITCHING GEARS
Posted by Barbara Taverna, May 8, 2011. |
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This was written by Stewart Weiss,
director of the Jewish Outreach Center of Ra'anana and father of Staff
Sgt. Ari Weiss z"l.
It appeared in the Jerusalem Post
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Israelis have to be adept at moving quickly from sorrow to celebration, from despair to iron resolve. Shortly after our eldest son, Ari, fell in battle in Nablus almost nine years ago, I went shopping for a car. The salesman was quite surprised when I told him I wanted a manual shift rather than an automatic. He told me that while in generations past, virtually every car in Israel had a standard transmission, those days were long gone. "What you're looking for is the 'old Israel,'" he told me, sure that I was making some kind of mistake. "No," I corrected him, "this car exactly represents the character and condition of Israel — then and now — and that's why I insist on it." This is a country where, if we are to survive, we must be adept at switching gears — emotional gears. We are constantly, continually confronted by highs and lows, ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies, and must be prepared to ride out those extremes of daily life. One day we are trumpeting the discovery of one of the largest natural-gas fields on the planet; the next day we "tank" as our petrol prices rise to their highest level in history. One moment we are in mourning for the massacred members of the Fogel family; the next moment we rejoice that arch-terrorist Osama bin Laden has been sent to a well-deserved watery grave. The front page of our newspaper buoys our spirits by reporting that Israel's "satisfaction level" is the 7th highest in the world, while the same page records that our Palestinian "partners" have once again stabbed peace in the back by cutting a deal with the bin Laden-loving terrorists of Hamas. How do we do it? How do we jump so effortlessly between the poles and live in two radically different worlds at the same time?
THE QUESTION is most acute this week, when we make the transition between the somber sirens of Yom Hazikaron and the flag-waving festivities of Yom Ha'atzmaut. In just a breath, a heartbeat, we are asked to dry the tears and shelve the painful memories of wars fought and loved ones lost, and celebrate the dream of Israel renewed and resurgent. The stick shift grinds, the gear box smokes, but somehow we make the switch and Israel rumbles along. For the bereaved families, every day is Memorial Day. We never blow out the candle or blot out of our mind that frozen picture of our soldier-son illuminated on Yad Labanim's wall. We live and limp with that loss, as if with a limb blown away or a sense of sight impaired, and it is never more than a familiar song or deficient family picture away. And yet we want to live, too. We don't want to curl up and die, or wallow in our grief. We still want to enjoy this wonderful world and country in which we live; we deserve to enjoy it. And so we grit our teeth, gather our courage and resolve to switch those gears, no matter how tough it may be. We dry the tears, embrace our kids and reach for the future, while never letting go of the past. We compartmentalize, creating a sacred space for silence and sadness but reserving another corner for laughter and lightheartedness. And we try to stay positive, our eyes on the road ahead. We try to bring some good out of the catastrophe by building synagogues and schools and day-care centers. We channel all that furious energy into social causes, fighting for justice by screaming our opposition to the freeing of sadistic Palestinian prisoners or the wholesale ceding of Israeli land to the very monsters who murdered our kids. We, whom God has seen fit to enter into the club that no one wants to join, try to prevent anyone else from becoming a member. And we try to put the best face on our situation, taking pride in the service and sacrifice of our sons. Sometimes silence says it all. When Aaron the High Priest lost his two precious sons, the Torah records that he stood in silence. Not, as most people think, because he was paralyzed with grief. But because he was torn between two opposite emotions. On the one hand, he was a bereaved father who had just lost his two eldest boys, each an exemplary tzadik. But at the same time, he had a majestic vision that these two righteous souls were being ushered into the highest halls of Heaven. And so, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, he remained silent. Soon after I came to Israel, my sabra cousin picked me up early one March morning and said, "Today, you will learn all you need to know about this country." We drove to the Hermon Mountain, where we went sledding on a thin layer of snow. Then we caught a plane in Rosh Pina and flew to Eilat, where we went snorkeling off the sunny Coral Beach. "Israel is a land of colors and contrasts," he told me, "a place where in the morning you can be shivering but in the afternoon you are sweating. It is a tiny country in kilometers but a huge nation in experiences." But if you want to get from one end to the other, you had better learn to switch those gears. Contact Barbara Taverna at bltaverna@yahoo.com |
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REALISTS AND THE DELUSIONAL
Posted by John Cohn, May 8, 2011. |
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While the Exponent[1] contends "skeptics and optimists in Israel are squaring off" over how to respond to rapprochement between Hamas and Fatah, that debate is more accurately characterized as between realists and the delusional. So-called moderates in Fatah, including Mahmoud Abbas, refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, insist that no Jews remain in any future Palestine, and demand that under a peace agreement Arabs claiming to be descended from those who left Israel be allowed to move not to Palestine but to Israel. Iranian proxy Hamas turned Gaza into a violent base for waging war after their own brutal takeover that included pushing hands-bound Fatah supporters to their deaths from rooftops. Both consider all of Israel "occupied territory" and demand Israel withdraw to the indefensible 1948 armistice lines — to start. Israel's realists know that like the infamous 1939 non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin, the goal of the Fatah-Hamas agreement is not to foster peace but to facilitate Israel's destruction. Only the willfully delusional could believe that after more than six decades of spurned "serious peace offers" from Israeli governments across the political spectrum, the Egyptian brokered Fatah-Hamas agreement means a viable solution is closer not further away. Footnote: [1] "Parsing the Deal between Palestinian Faction" by Leslie Susser of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency appeared May 4, 2011 in the Jewish Exponent http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/23442/Parsing_the_Deal_Between/ Contact John Cohn at john.r.cohn@gmail.com |
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ISRAEL'S MAJOR WARS
Posted by Eli E. Hertz, May 8, 2011. |
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International law makes a clear distinction between defensive wars and wars of aggression. All of Israel's wars with its Arab neighbors were in self-defense. About six months before the War of Independence in 1948, Palestinian Arabs launched a series of riots, pillaging, and bloodletting, then came the invasion of seven Arab armies from neighboring states attempting to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in accordance with the UN's 1947 recommendation to Partition Palestine, a plan the Arabs rejected. Israel's citizens understood that defeat meant the end of their Jewish state before it could even get off the ground. In the first critical weeks of battle, and against all odds, Israel prevailed on several fronts. The metaphor of Israel having her back to the sea reflected the image crafted by Arab political and religious leaders' rhetoric and incitement. Already in 1948 several car bombs had killed Jews, and massacres of Jewish civilians underscored Arab determination to wipe out the Jews and their state. There were over 6,000 Israelis killed and over 15,000 wounded as a result of that war, in a population of 600,000. One percent of the Jewish population was gone. In American terms, the equivalent is 3 million American civilians and soldiers killed over an 18-month period. The Jewish state not only survived, it came into possession of territories — land from which its adversaries launched their first attempt to destroy the newly created State of Israel. For the entire article in PDF format please Eli E. Hertz is president of Myths and Facts, Inc. The organization's objective is to provide policymakers, national leadership, the media and the public-at-large with information and viewpoints that are founded on factual and reliable content. Contact him at today@mythsandfacts.org |
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A DOSE OF REALITY
Posted by Mechel Samberg, May 7, 2011. |
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Tiny Tiny Israel being BULLIED by all those surrounding nations. I got news for you "anti-Zionists"; Israel is the UNDERDOG, not those pathetic professional emotional beggars which the UN, the US and the world have supported for over 63 years. Yep, this TINY TINY piece of land is what you are WHINING about. I guess you don't think Jews are allowed any land at all. Whats the matter, the Moslems and Arabs aren't happy with 99 99/100 % of the land in the ME? They are greedy interlopers. Yeah, we know that you don't hate Jooz. (giggle, giggle) Israel should not be fearing world opinion. Israel should be making the world fear (respect) her!!! And remember, it is the rich oil cartels who rule the world, NOT the Zionists!! Mech'el B. Samberg Contact Mechel Samberg at mechelsamberg2@yahoo.com |
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COMMUNIST UNIVERSITY OF NY (CUNY) DENIES HONOR TO ISRAEL-BASHING PLAYWRIGHT TONY KUSHNER
Posted by Phyllis Chesler, May 7, 2011. |
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Incredibly, miraculously, my old university, where once I labored for nearly thirty years, has just snatched back an honor from one of the Left's most beloved sons. This is really quite a Big Deal. I am talking about the City University of New York (CUNY) aka the Communist University of New York, which has just decided to rescind its promised honorary degree to none other than playwright Tony Kushner. The Communist University of New York — alright, I exaggerate a bit, there are many exceptions, but my description is essentially true. Here's the thing I hate most about "hate speech." It is this: When those who engage in it view themselves — and are also viewed — as glamorized victims, brave non-conformists, public sacrifices of the "Zionist Lobby" or the "Military Industrial Complex." Once, I moved in circles in which Kushner was, as yet, unknown; circles that swiftly grew to adore him as his star rose. These were the kind of leftists (there are no other kind) who love Broadway and Hollywood celebrities. They especially love all the Jewish theatre people who stand against Israel on nothing other than their own naked ignorance. If a playwright is not known to be properly anti-Israel, his or her work will not be produced. It is as simple as that. To be sure: mourning all the dead Jews murdered in the European Holocaust remains a theatrical favorite but only as long as the somber themes include happy little touches (think about the misuse of Anne Frank) or when the destruction of the Jews is universalized by bringing in every other genocide to prove that there was nothing unique about the Shoah, and that Jews will not mourn other Jews only, that Jews will mourn all victims equally. However, when one of these anointed Broadway and Hollywood darlings, like Kushner, is actually called on his brand of anti-Semitism, something which happens very rarely, the celebrity who is used to naught but praise, is shocked — shocked! — and righteously, mightily, offended. Indeed, Kushner was so shocked that he wrote a three page letter to the CUNY Trustees accusing them of "defaming" him by deciding not to award him an honorary degree. In the letter, Kushner insists that his view that Israel engaged in the "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians in order to create a Jewish state is not an anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic view. He also claims that the "brunt" of the "ongoing horror in the Middle East" has been "borne by the Palestinian people." And then Kushner trots out his credentials, which include his proud board membership in Jewish Voice for Peace, a radically left anti-Zionist organization which supports the effort to boycott, divest from, and isolate Israel (BDS). He also notes that he "has a long and happy affiliation with such organizations as the 92nd St Y, The Jewish Museum and the Upper West Side JCC." I remember when Kushner's anti-Zionist anthology, which he co-edited with Alisa Solomon, first came out in 2003. I knew many of his contributors. They include profoundly anti-Zionist Jews such as Henry Siegman, Chris Hedges (about Siegman), Naomi Klein (about Rachel Corrie), Blanche Wiesen Cook (who was or still is associated with John Jay College/the CUNY Graduate Center — the college which nominated Kushner for the honorary degree), Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Daniel Boyarin, Ella Habiba Shohat, Judith Butler, Marge Piercy, Susan Sontag, etc. I was not invited to contribute anything to this volume (there is a God after all!), which came out in 2003, the same year I published my book about the new anti-Semitism. I may have been the first to write that anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism and that the alliance of the leftist politically correct western intelligentsia, including feminists and gay liberationists, with Jew-hating Islamists was upon us and that a second Shoah was indeed possible. However, Kushner and Solomon were semi-clever. They reprinted historical documents and articles by Judah Magnes, Ahad Ha'am, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, and I.F. Stone, which questioned the nature of a Jewish state or of a religiously affiliated state. The editors also printed a handful of articles that were slightly friendlier to the Jewish state which, as I recall, was at the time under the most profound siege. I remember underlining a good deal. I was going to review it but chose not to do so. Frankly, the volume sickened me. I was heartbroken that so many educated and influential Jews were so happy, felt so righteous about attacking the Jewish state, and in the name of Jewish ethics. If Kushner prefers a separation of religion and state as more conducive to democracy, as he claims, I might agree with him; however, I would start with criticizing Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Iran, and Afghanistan before tackling Israel with single-minded scapegoating fury. I once labored at the City University of New York (CUNY). I am amazed but thrilled that enough (five) members on their twelve member Board of Trustees actually viewed Kushner's views on Israel as "racist." I once taught a graduate course at the very branch of CUNY which proposed Kushner. Once, I was friendly with some of the professorial union thugs who literally occupy positions to the left of Stalin. Yes, many are gay, many are feminists. Some are also homophobic and sexist. Life is complicated over there at Communist U because I am describing the same people as well as their opponents. God bless CUNY Trustee Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, who was the first to speak against Kushner. He said that Kushner had tied the founding of the state of Israel to a policy of "ethnic cleansing." He was surprised that he got the votes necessary to knock Kushner's honorary degree off the table. In his defense, Kushner claimed that his views were shared by many Jews. That's like saying that many American Jews did not effectively concern themselves with what was happening to Europe's Jews during the Holocaust. That's like saying that many German Jews preferred Germany to Judaism. Today, naturally, the New York Times published their second article on this brouhaha. This time, they tried to challenge Wiesenfeld's political past, especially the fact that he had been appointed by a Republican Governor (George Pataki). Wiesenfeld is described as a "political fixer" and as at "the center of a scandal (having to do with paroles and for which) he was never charged." Why don't they deal with the issues rather than attempt to tarnish the reputation of the heroic Jeffrey Wiesenfeld? I guess they can't since their views of Israel are the same as Tony Kushner's. Still, I wonder: Has the Gray Lady ever described Rahm Emanuel, the new mayor of Chicago, as a "political fixer?" Or Ted Kennedy as the "drunken and cowardly murderer" of Mary Jo Kopechne? Just asking. Trust me. We have not heard the last of this. While Kushner has now vowed never to accept this award, his supporters, admirers, those for whom "he died on the cross of celebrity," will never quit trying to resurrect his reputation and to destroy those who opposed his candidacy. Kushner may be persuaded to launch a lawsuit in order to further dignify and legalize his brand of anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism. Hamas and Fatah, arch-fiend murderers of their own people, have just joined forces to demand the "right of return" which will, essentially, destroy the Jewish nature of the state and, shortly thereafter (God forbid!), the living Jews of Israel as well. Their hope will be to make Israel as "judenrein" as the rest of the Arab Muslim Middle East. Hamas-Fatah-the-Egyptian-Muslim-Brotherhood also want Jerusalem as their capital. Hamas is busy veiling their women and looking the other way when women are beaten and honor-murdered. They themselves are torturing and murdering Palestinian homosexuals. Kushner and his supporters are cheering them on. C'mon Tony: Consider writing a play about the Palestinians who are suffering because of their radically Islamic leaders. Do it because it's true and right, do it as a form of atonement. My brother: You do not know what you are doing. Dr. Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at City University of New York. She is an author and lecturer and co-founder of the still ongoing Association for Women in Psychology (1969). Visit her website at http://pajamasmedia.com/xpress/phyllischesler/ This article is archived at
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PLO NEGOTIATIONS ON 'REFUGEES'
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 7, 2011. |
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PLO NEGOTIATIONS ON 'REFUGEES' Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East has reviewed the documents on Palestinian Authority (P.A.) refugee negotiations with Israel, released by Al Jazeera. Privately, the P.A. will not give in at all on that crucial issue, but publicly the P.A. expresses willingness to compromise. Therefore, Christians for Fair Witness recommends that people review the documents and not just accept media emphasis on P.A. willingness to compromise. Chief P.A. negotiator Erekat indicated that although the P.A. might agree upon a certain number of "refugees" to be let into Israel, they later would try to negotiate for a larger number. They estimate the total number of refugees as 7,000,000. However, they count as refugees descendants of the original refugees. For all other ethnic refugees, descendants and people born abroad are not considered refugees (IMRA, 5/3/11
It is one thing for a Muslim negotiator to offer a low initial bid. It is another thing to deceive us about P.A. willingness to compromise, when it won't. The plan to reopen supposedly settled issues after Israel will have made concessions is a standard jihadist tactic. It shows that jihadists do not want to resolve issues; they want to gain the advantage in order to overcome the non-Muslims. This demonstrates once again the futility of negotiating with jihadists. Just as the State Dept. asks Israel for small concessions and then to expand the concessions, so, too, the jihadists ask Israel to make a concession on "refugee" entry in principle, then they demand more and more entrants. Remember that those refugee descendants have been raised on hatred of Israel and a desire to overthrow the Jewish state. Any who enter would bolster the already subversive elements among Israeli Arabs. They could imperil Israel, in concert with their counterparts in the Territories and especially in behalf of foreign Muslim invaders. Therefore, Israel should reject the principle and take in none. Prudence for Israel would involve finding ways to discourage Muslims from remaining in Israel and in the Territories. The fewer who stay, the less subversive they can be. The main assumption among the Western elite is that it is up to Israel to make peace and up to Israel to make concessions. Israel, however, is not the offending party. The conflict is religious and the Muslims are the aggressors. It is up to them to make concession. This is especially true since they are the defeated side and their aggression was in behalf of dispossession of Jews from their own homeland or genocide. Israel owes them nothing. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@gmail.com. |
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COURT JEWS IN THE JEWISH STATE
Posted by Hands Fiasco, May 6, 2011. |
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This was written by Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post
columnist. Contact her at her website www.sarahhonig.com
It appeared today in the Jerusalem Post
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With fiendish delight they know precisely how to offend, how to grate on our raw nerves, how to skew our symbols, how to demoralize, how to demean what means most to us. By all formal criteria, Israel is an independent state, a nation among the nations, born of Herzlian aspirations for the normalcy of a people residing on its own sovereign soil, relieved of the complexes of two millennia of statelessness and incomparable sustained defamation-cum-persecution. But alive within us is the restless anomaly of the Diaspora's Court Jew, the one who strove to ingratiate himself with the powers-that-be, to become their useful pet, to claim extraordinary influence while basking in the limelight of his people's tormenters, seeing their point of view, currying their favor, setting himself apart from the Jewish masses and posturing as the possessor of greater wisdom. The conceit of latter-day Court Jews extends to denying the very existence of the Court Jew syndrome and Diaspora deformities. Contemporary Court Jews, who suck up to world opinion — especially when that opinion unjustly excoriates the Jewish state — definitively prove the frustrated adage that you can take the Jew out of the Diaspora but you cannot always take the Diaspora out of the Jew.
OUR HOMEGROWN Court Jews are active of late. They paid several compassionate visits to the family of the alleged Itamar butchers, and they staged a provocative pro-Palestinian independence rally on Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard, directly outside the building where Israel's Declaration of Independence was recited 63 years ago. With fiendish delight, they know precisely how to offend, how to grate on our raw nerves, how to skew our symbols, how to demoralize, how to demean what means most to us. They make it look like a brilliant, innovative stroke when they demonstrate solidarity with supposedly downtrodden Arab villagers, supposedly targeted at random by Israel's ogre security forces. The foreign media lap it up when apologetic "better Jews" dissociate themselves from the maligned Jewish collective and deplore crimes they zealously ascribe to purportedly benighted compatriots. Judeophobes the world over gloat. And so a delegation of self-professed "better Jews" mounted multiple pilgrimages to Arab Awarta, adjacent to Itamar. It was in Itamar that Udi and Ruth Fogel were slaughtered along with three of their children — 11-year-old Yoav, three-year-old Elad and three-month-old Hadas. Investigators focused on Awarta, the perpetrators' assumed home, where guns stolen next door to the Fogels immediately before the bloodbath were offered for sale. Only outright idiots might lack even niggling suspicion about where the murderers, who slit the throat of an infant, were holed up. Our Court Jews, feigning moral superiority, knew exactly who the objects of their commiseration were. They certainly weren't the surviving Fogel children or their assiduously vilified Itamar neighbors. The insolent identification with Awarta presumably made the provocation all the more provocative. Members of miscellaneous Left-fringe groupings — from Gush Shalom to Machsom (Roadblock) Watch, invariably darlings of global thought-molders and beneficiaries of EU largesse — trekked to Awarta to righteously condemn the hot pursuit. Machsom Watch spokeswoman Raya Yaron was photographed embracing Sham'a Awad, whose sons Amjad and Hakim confessed and were subsequently charged with the Itamar massacre. Yaron may claim to have been unaware that her high-minded affections were oozed directly inside the viper's nest. Nonetheless, she was given cogent reason for suspicion, much as Machsom Watch women are given ample reason to deduce that IDF checkpoints hinder terror. That doesn't prevent Yaron's colleagues from pretending that only Mother Teresa clones are ever stopped and searched.
ANOTHER AWARTA-SYMPATHIZER, Ya'acov Manor, published a report on "the horror at the home of Muhammad Awad" (father of the confessed murderers). Manor decries what he dubs "a pogrom. This is primitive and brutal vengeance calculated to instill fear in the hearts of the inhabitants." He describes furniture being overturned, the family awakened early and taken outdoors without warm clothing and six-year-old Ala crying because rude soldiers grabbed her blanket. Manor expands no such emotion on the slain Fogel youngsters who'll never recover. Odds are that Ala will overcome the discourtesy of her brothers' arrest (Manor mentions her siblings as mere "students"). So on whose side are Yaron, Manor and assorted sanctimonious friends? Probably on the same side as the hodgepodge of left-wing celebs who turned out to boost projected Palestinian independence, cynically equating it with the Jewish independence proclaimed at that very setting. Different sorts of players posed before the cameras — some slyly sophisticated, and others who functioned as dupes in a propaganda ploy. The cunning stage-managers of the perverse performance knew precisely how spurious their comparison was. Meretz's erstwhile leader Shulamit Aloni is a past master at none-too-naïve machinations. When she served as education minister, she accompanied a delegation of Israeli teens to the Majdanek death camp. There, after overhearing a schoolgirl express pride in the fact that the Jewish people now have a state and flag of their own, Aloni harshly chided her for eliciting "the wrong, narrowminded, nationalistic conclusions from the Holocaust." But to be fair, Aloni doesn't only pick on commoners. In a 1997 radio interview, she likened Binyamin Netanyahu to Aristotle's generic tyrant "for seeking to get rid of the country's intellectual elite, spying on the populace, fomenting discord between rich and poor, endorsing religious ritual and going to war occasionally." Lest her point be lost, she reminded her interviewers that, like Netanyahu, "Hitler, too, was elected democratically." Neither were her tongue-lashings only reserved for those on the opposing end of the political divide. In her book I Couldn't Do It Differently, Aloni described fellow-Meretznik Yossi Sarid as a sinister snake, "whose venom glands are full to overflowing, shooting out great jets of poison." Hence extra vigilance is recommended when Aloni draws historical analogies. We need to ask whether she truly forgot that the Palestinians, for whose independence she yearns, never recognized the Jewish state's legitimacy. Indeed, they hotly refuse to do so to this day. They went to war to enforce that refusal. THE UN's 1947 Partition Resolution envisioned the creation of twin Jewish and Arab states in this ultra-tiny land. The Arabs violently rejected that resolution and, to thwart Jewish independence, they invaded Israel on the day of its birth. All that thereafter ensued derives from that still-ongoing original rejection. We also need to wonder whether Aloni conveniently overlooks the fact that the conflict isn't about territories, occupation or demarcation lines. It isn't even about a Palestinian state (which the Arabs could have established unhindered between 1948-67, within the borders they now claim to crave). It's about the existence of the Jewish state, the one for which Aloni and crew manage so little empathy. If Aloni requires any further verification, she need only pay heed to Ramallah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas, who just reiterated, for the umpteenth time, that the Right of Return constitutes "a nonnegotiable" precondition. Abbas insists on overrunning the Jewish state with hostile Arabs — in other words, on destroying it. This is the Palestinian/Arab sine qua non. No compromise is doable on this core contention. Plainly it's us or them — Jews or Arabs. No rhetorical artifice should enable the Court Jews to obscure that.
Contact HandsFiasco at handsfiasco@webtv.net
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MOHAMMED, A REAL MUSLIM?
Posted by Bill Warner, May 6, 2011. |
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The judgment of our leaders about Bin Laden: "Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader..." Barack Obama When the President and an imam declare that Bin Laden was not really a Muslim, it must be true. According to the establishment, we are to swallow their declarations as the full truth and go on about our business living in a world where all Islam is good. Those "bad" actions are done by I-know-they-are-practicing-jihad-but-they-are-not-really-Muslims Muslims. Or more succinctly: a jihadist is not really a Muslim. Really? A jihadist is not really a Muslim? This news is going to be such a disappointment to Mohammed, the original Mohammed, the jihadist Mohammed. And let us not leave out the jihadist Allah. Should we declare that all of the first caliphs who were personal companions of Mohammed were not really Muslims as well? After all, all four of the Rightly Guided Caliphs (the first four leaders of Islam after Mohammed's death) started where Mohammed left off and waged jihad for their entire lives. They created the first stage of the Islamic empire. Why did they practice jihad? Because they were taught by example by Mohammed. Mohammed's example was crystal clear. According to the Sira, the sacred biography of Mohammed, he was involved in over 65 acts of jihad, or as we say today, 65 acts of terror. And that was in a 9 year period. Bin Laden was small fry, in comparison to Mohammed. Why are we being told that Bin Laden was not a real Muslim? The propaganda is that violence has nothing to do with Islam. But Islam is based on Mohammed and he was violent in every way. He assassinated those who opposed him, enslaved thousands and sold them for money to wage jihad, he tortured men to death for money, tortured slaves to get information from them, created a policy of rape of Kafir women and on and on. The only reason to call Bin Laden a non-Muslim is that he did not do enough jihad. Oops, pardon me, terror. But wait! Maybe the reason that Bin Laden was not a Muslim was because it is true that violent behavior is not Islamic. And since Mohammed was much more violent than Bin Laden, we are left with the conclusion that Mohammed was not a Muslim. He was too violent to be a Muslim. Of course, there is the argument that Mohammed had just the right amount of violence against the Kafirs (non-Muslims) and that he defines what is right about everything Islamic. In that case the imam and Barack Obama were wrong about Bin Laden. Now we have ourselves in a bind. Was Mohammed wrong or were Obama and the imam wrong? Hmmm. I am betting that Obama and the imam are wrong. Bin Laden was a fine Muslim in the sense of being a fine jihadist, just like Mohammed, only not as violent. But Bin Laden was the student and Mohammed was the master. Bill Warner is Director of the Center for the Study of Political
Islam. Contact him at bw@politicalislam.com and
visit their website at http://www.politicalislam.com/
This article is archived at
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AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, AND BIN LADEN; HAVE CHRISTIANS FREE SPEECH IN AMERICA?
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 6, 2011. |
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AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, AND BIN LADEN While the major media is calling the slaying of Bin Laden a major victory, the minor media of experts considers the victory limited. Radical Muslim leaders have been slain before, without stalling the growth of their movement. Eliminating the heads of fanatical organizations does not defeat the ideology that created them. Why do the major and minor media differ so? Does the major media rely mostly upon less informed reporters and editorial bias? They want a big victory, so they declare one. Radical Islam is an ideology that spawned many organizations. Bin Laden originated a certain type of terrorist activity, but now his admirers know what to do. Removing him as the symbol of Radical Islam is an achievement for us, but Muslims will take it in stride. He now is a martyr, because he was buried according to Muslim ritual. Although Islamists object to his slaying, they feel he will be rewarded in heaven. They do not take death as seriously as do most other people. The U.S. claims it is investigating how Bin Laden was able to operate from Pakistan, a declared ally of the U.S.. The real question is whether the U.S. will stop deceiving itself about that alliance and others. We often deceive ourselves. However, Islam promotes such deception. Americans need to learn that deception is one of the pillars of jihad. Radical Muslims pretend to be moderate and even allies. The result is that the U.S. is a major supporter of terrorism even while it is a major opponent of terrorism. The three major fonts of terrorism are Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, the latter two considered by the State Dept. as U.S. allies. The former Soviet Union was another font, sponsoring the PLO and destabilization. Examples of Islamic deception: 1. Fatah called the slaying of Bin Laden a "catastrophe," in a long article on 5/3/11. The next day, Fatah denied the authenticity of the article. (Palestinian Media Watch, 5/4/11 The problem with U.S. aid is its being more bribery than necessary aid. Thus the U.S. has donated billions of dollars to Pakistan and Egypt for building conventional military forces capable to committing aggression. It should have restricted subsidies to anti-terrorism and anti-sedition forces and possibly to schools offering an alternative to madrassas. HAVE CHRISTIANS FREE SPEECH IN AMERICA? Four Christian missionaries were charged with "breach of peace," last June, for discussing religion with Muslims at the Arab International Festival in Dearborn, Michigan. Their video won acquittal by jury. Another three Christians, including one from Repent America, began singing a hymn and reading from the Gospels on the public sidewalk outside a mosque in West Philadelphia near the University of Pennsylvania, last July 3. At least a dozen boisterous Muslims gathered and argued with the Christians. A University security guard told the Christians to move off. They refused. He called University police. Police ordered the Christians to step back, lower their voices, and demanded that they stop videotaping the incident. Police arrested two Christians for creating a hazardous conditions and or obstructing a mosque door. Their defense attorney called this a free-speech case — Federal and Pennsylvanian courts protect the right to controversial speech in public spaces. If other people get angry, and make a problem, that is not the fault of the speakers. Witnesses contradicted each other. The video showed that the preachers were near the curb, not the door. [The judge said the video could not be used as evidence, because the prosecution hadn't had time to review it.] Why would they block the door, thereby keeping Muslims from hearing them? Charge withdrawn. No witness testified that the preachers were fighting, threatening, or making noise. An antagonistic police officer admitted that the Christians had been detained partly for their own safety. As for traffic, Muslims running over, not the preachers, had blocked some cars. Remaining charges dismissed. The defense attorney observed that if the preachers had been discussing something else, they would not have been arrested. He believes that the police were deferring to "Islamic sensibilities." The Philadelphia branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations persuaded a local TV station that this incident exemplifies "Islamophobia." The station repeated the disproved notion that protestors tried to block the door of the mosque. There was no protest demonstration. The acquittals were appropriate, but the charges were not legitimate in the first place. Missionaries should not have the burden of defending their actions. Police should uphold the law and not Muslims hypersensitivities (David J. Rusin, American Thinker, May 1, 2011
Free speech is in jeopardy. HAMAS-FATAH RECONCILIATION: REPORTING VS. REALITY NEWS 1: The New York Times states that Hamas-Fatah reconciliation confuses people. COMMENT: It confuses NY Times reporters. Their problem is how to maintain an anti-Israel slant while the common jihadist enemies of Israel and of the U.S. reveal their hypocrisy and menace. NEWS 2: Sec. of State Clinton refused to rule out negotiations with the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) that include Hamas. The U.S. did not want to preclude a genuine shift by Hamas. She did say that the U.S. would not accept a P.A. regime that included Hamas unless Hamas renounced violence and recognized Israel. COMMENT: Refusing to rule out negotiations may be interpreted as diplomatic caution. I don't think it is. To imagine some chance that Hamas genuinely shifted from an arrogant and fanatical imperialism to peace is hopelessly foolish. Realizing in WWII that the chief enemy leaders were fanatics, would not become civilized, the U.S. demanded unconditional surrender. Hamas and Fatah are barbaric fanatics, too. Another State Dept. motive is to give itself room to reverse course and recognize a Hamas regime. If it can't get Israel to surrender to Fatah, under the pretense that Fatah is moderate, then it may demand that Israel surrender to Hamas. NEWS 3: Hamas' leader Meshal says he is committed to a "two-state solution." He also refused to foreswear violence and to let the "two-state solution" solve the conflict, wants all the land Israel gained in self-defense, and wants millions of Arabs to move into Israel. COMMENT: In denying that the two-state plan would solve the conflict, he confirms what the Jewish nationalists have warned. Meshal was frank. Sometimes Islamists dissemble, and sometimes they stick frankly to a triumphal, no-compromise line. Being more diplomatic, Fatah hints at compromise but is recalcitrant. Their hints always take in the Western Establishment, which wants to believe them and not the Israelis. Not only would Hamas continue its violence, but its other demands are geared to destroy Israel. Taking all that territory from Israeli control would deprive Israel of secure borders, subjecting it to conquest by external forces. Letting millions of Arabs enter Israel would enable them to take over. Holocaust II. Under Arab control, Israel would merge with the P.A.. Ending up with a single state and genocide is neither a "two-state" outcome nor any more of a "solution" than was Holocaust I. NEWS 4: Meshal answered criticism of his demands by claiming that when Israel made treaties with Egypt and Jordan, nobody conditioned it on what Israel would think. All his people know, he said, was that 60 years ago, they were living in "historic Palestine from river to sea." COMMENT: The Arab side always has false analogies, false excuses, and false accounts of history. There is no "historic Palestine." The name was applied by Rome for a while, revived by Christians as a concept but not as a country, and used again by the British but not for a country. The Palestine Mandate, modeled after ancient Judea, included both sides of the Jordan River. Meshal's people were not "Palestinian," for there was no such concept then and it was fabricated later for P.R.. They were Arabs, just like the people in the countries they immigrated from or like the Arab imperial armies that conquered the area. Any rights they had were forfeited by their past and current attempts at genocide. NEWS 5: "Where there is occupation and settlement, there is a right to resistance. Israel is the aggressor. But resistance is a means and not an end." Meshal added that Hamas and Israel had ceasefires before, it has one now, and he is willing for another (Ethan Bronner, Steven Lee Myers, 5/6/11, A4). COMMENT: The Arabs were the aggressors, starting the 1967 war that led to Israelis entering Judea and Samaria again. Since those provinces are not part of another country, Israelis are not occupying another country. They are there by right of: (1) Annexation in eastern Jerusalem; (2) Gaining security against the Arab aggressors; and (3) Inheritance from the Palestine Mandate recognizing the area as the Jewish homeland. Such withdrawals as Israel made were met by increased Arab violence, so further withdrawal would be folly. The Arabs have only themselves to blame. Since their jihad is allied to jihad against the whole world, nobody owes them anything. By "resistance," Meshal means by force, and in using force, he approves of attacking civilians. There is no right to oppose Israelis by force, for Israelis are there legally. It is criminal to attack civilians. Does it make sense to give such war-loving criminals as he and Abbas a country to run? Yes, Hamas has made ceasefires with Israel. But it violated all of them. It is violating the current one, by attack Israelis. Trust it to make another? When the enemy is fanatical and intransigent, as are the P.A. Arabs, ceasefires with them make no sense. Islam uses ceasefires to rebuild damaged forces for stronger combat when the Muslim forces are ready. Ceasefire helps the jihadists. Jihadists must be opposed until destroyed, not given a surcease. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@gmail.com. |
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DETAILS OF THE RECONCILIATION OF HAMAS AND FATAH
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, May 6, 2011. |
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This was written by Mahmoud Khallouf and is called
"Details of the reconciliation agreement and understandings contained
therein". It was published
today in
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The following is the text of the paper: In the name of God the Merciful Egyptian vision To end the Palestinian division Introduction 1. The Palestinian national dialogue began in Cairo on 02/26/2009 to address all the issues that arose on the status of the Palestinian division, through a comprehensive dialogue in which all factions participated, organizations and independent forces in the period from 10 to 03/19/2009, where was formed five main committees (reconciliation government security key elections), in addition to the High Steering Committee, which was formed of the following general secretaries of the organizations or their deputies, and has worked these committees intensively and continuously during this period with the participation of Egyptian actors and discussed all key issues and its details, then the meetings were held bilateral dialogue in Cairo between Hamas and Fatah movements necessitated by the circumstances and nature of the situation then (the 6 rounds of bilateral dialogue during the period from April to July 2009). 2 Egypt has moved through dialogue in the framework of the determinants of the most significant was that the interest of the Palestinian people should be the main objective for the completion of any agreement, and the preservation of the Palestinian national unity so that the body Palestinian away from any interactions or partisan interests and regulatory, as well as careful not to prejudice Palestinian achievements over the past years, particularly the preservation of the PLO the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. 3 To connect the Palestinian dialogue with all the seriousness required, and made by Egypt unremitting efforts, bearing in mind that there is no room in front of everyone only to end the division, and has played a compromise significantly in all the meetings, which led to a deal a final and consensual for many of the issues raised, while left over some of the differences that we see it all fall under the framework of these differences (insoluble). 4 In the light of the persistence of these differences, and the inability of the parties to reach solutions, although the dialogue sessions lengthy devoted to this issue and despite the claim Egypt parties to convey the national interest above all else, Egypt continued its efforts by shuttling between Ramallah and Damascus to overcome the obstacles and keep the momentum that resulted from the dialogue, then decided to link Egypt to the above include a vision of compromises and realistic and practical in order to end these differences, paving the way for a comprehensive Palestinian dialogue in Cairo to sign a reconciliation agreement after the Eid al-Fitr. 5 Do not doubt that Egypt, which put this vision, is convinced that all parties suffer from the disadvantages of division and seek to terminate, and the responsibility borne by these parties will make dealing with the Egyptian vision of full objectivity and approval for the sake of the Palestinian people. FIRST: THE ISSUES THAT HAVE BEEN AGREED UPON 6 Have already been achieved through the work of the committees and five rounds of bilateral dialogue to agree on many of the principles and issues to be the basis on which it will be built close to the Cairo accord and reconciliation for the year 2009, and can determine what has been reached in the following: A committee of the Organization: (1) Agreement on the development and activation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in accordance with principles to be agreed upon to include all Palestinian forces and factions in accordance with the Cairo Agreement, March 2005. B Election Commission: (1) conduct presidential and legislative elections in all Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem. C A committee of government: (1) agreement on the nature of the new transitional government (government of national consensus, a temporary transitional mandate expires the end of the mandate of the current Legislative Council elections and the formation of the new government). D Security Committee: (1) Agreement on the number of security agencies (National Security Forces, Internal Security Forces, General Intelligence), and that any force or other forces, either exist or are being developed within the three forces. E Reconciliation Commission: Coincided Reconciliation Commission fully to all tasks assigned to them and that by agreeing to the following: (1) the composition and structure of the Standing Committee of internal reconciliation. SECOND: THE CONTENTIOUS ISSUES (7) The remaining differences are as follows: - Detainees: Fatah's position: The release of most of the detainees who do not have security issues after the signing of the agreement, and can not release the reasons for this are identified. The position of Hamas: Demand for the release of all detainees before the signing of the agreement, and can not be released to clarify the causes and identify early date (two months after the signing of the Agreement) for their release. Joint Committee (to oversee the implementation of the Agreement): Fatah's position: Approval of the proposed joint committee with the rejection of any formulations in the functions of the Commission refers to entrench the divide or the presence of two entities, with the continued adoption of the formation of a national consensus government is committed to the obligations of the organization. The position of Hamas: Approval of the proposed Joint Committee, taking into account dealing with the status quo existing in the sector. Security: Fatah's position: A return of all separated from the security services in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to begin the return process to absorb (3000) element in the police and national security and civil defense immediately after the signing of the agreement. B The restructuring of the security services will include both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. C formation of a committee approved by the supreme security issued by a president and a presidential decree to promote the implementation of the security agreement signed in Cairo, and operates support and participation of Egyptian and Arab to be President in his capacity as Supreme Commander of its authority. The position of Hamas: A. Accommodate a (3000) element in the police and national security and civil defense during the transitional period. B rebuilding and restructuring the security services in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. C to form a security committee Graduate begin its work immediately after the start of implementation of the agreement under the auspices of Egyptian and Arab. Elections: Fatah's position:: A legislative elections, according to the law mixed (80% lists 20% circles), with an average resolution of 1.5% and reducing the circuit to be the seven circles, and if no agreement is reached is the direction directly to the election (of the preferred agreement with Hamas on the mechanism of elections). The position of Hamas: Conduct the elections according to a mixed system (60% lists 40% circles)
with the rate of resolution of 3% with the survival of the current number of
electoral districts (16 cycle) with a refusal to hold elections only,
without a reconciliation agreement that includes all issues as a package.
THIRD: THE EGYPTIAN VISION TO RESOLVE CONTENTIOUS ISSUES 8 in the light of the differences between Fatah and Hamas, and with full conviction that these differences can be overcome if the political will of the parties, Egypt offer a vision to resolve contentious issues in order to end the Palestinian division and the signing of a reconciliation agreement, as follows: The issue of elections: A Place a legislative and presidential elections and the Palestinian National Council in the timings agreed upon in the first half of 2010 and is committed to all this (it was agreed to hold elections within a year from the date of signing the agreement'. B Elections to the Palestinian National Council on the basis of proportional representation at home and abroad, wherever possible, while legislative elections are held on the basis of the mixed system. C mixed election system as follows: (1) 75% (lists). D elections are held under the auspices of Arab and international. The issue of security A The formation of a high security committee issued a decree by the Palestinian President, is composed of professional officers in line, and operates under the auspices of Egyptian, Arab, and follow up the implementation to be agreed upon in Cairo. B To be rebuilding the Palestinian security services with the assistance of Egyptian and Arab The theme of restructuring both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. C reaffirm the right of job security for all workers the security services (refer to accommodate the retirement of the transfer to civilian jobs ...). D begin the process to accommodate a number (three thousand) element in the police and national security and civil defense in the Gaza Strip after the signing of the Agreement on Reconciliation directly to this number will increase gradually until the legislative elections in accordance with a mechanism to be agreed upon. E is guaranteed to provide all the requirements to absorb these elements through Egyptian and Arab support. Joint Committee to oversee the implementation of the Agreement: - Functions of the Committee A joint committee shall assist in the implementation of the Cairo Agreement of harmony and reconciliation for the year 2009 (or coordinating tasks related to the implementation of the agreement) to be applied at home by dealing with various stakeholders, including the following: (1) prepare for a presidential and legislative elections and the National Council. The issue of detainees A. Each of Fatah and Hamas select lists of detainees according to the latest position, and is hand over to Egypt and human rights organization (agreed) a copy of them after verification (install numbers and names) as of the date (to be agreed upon). B. To each party for the release of detainees who are to have (on principle) before the implementation of the reconciliation agreement. C in the wake of the release of detainees, each Party shall hand over Egypt a list containing the names of those impossible to release them, and not the merits of their release, and report the position of the leaderships of Fatah and Hamas. D after the signing of the Agreement on Reconciliation Efforts continue with the participation of Egypt to close the file once and arrests. M. X / m. B Gabrielle Goldwater is a Member of "Funding for Peace Coalition"
[FPC] (http://eufunding.org.uk) |
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THOUGHTS FOR ISRAEL'S INDEPENDENCE DAY
Posted by Hillel Fendel, May 6, 2011. |
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Rabbi Marc D. Angel, New York: ...Yes, Israel. This tiny country — surrounded by enemies, threatened constantly by terrorism and war, subject to an Arab economic boycott, frequently maligned by the media, torn within by ethnic and religious strife — is [tied for 8th place] among the world's happiest countries [according to a Gallup World Poll]! Rabbi Avraham Yisrael Sylvetsky, Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav Kook: ...But we are still in the midst of the process. He "Who gathers Israel from the four corners of the world" has not yet restored our "judges as of yore", and the [resulting] "sadness and sorrow" have not yet been removed [quotes based on the 11th and 12th blessings of the Amidah prayer — ed.]. The legal establishment, our shame, is still a patchwork of British law and Turkish law, while the true justice of Torah law is abandoned by the wayside... Corruption, too, has spread in various parts of the government, where there is no Torah and the heart is not directed heavenward. Rabbi Shmuel Yaniv, Givat Shmuel: The State of Israel was established in the year 5708 to the Creation of the World — and the 5,708th verse in the Torah reads, "And G-d will bring you to the Land inherited by your forefathers, and you will take possession of it, and He will do good to you..." (Deut. 30,5) Rabbi Beryl Wein, Jerusalem: The Prophet Ezekiel warned the Jewish people 2,500 years ago not to think that they are like other nations. Independence Day of the State of Israel is not like Bastille Day in France, Canada Day, or the 4th of July. If our Independence Day takes on the same status as other Independence Days around the world, it loses its spiritual and emotional significance. Hillel Fendel is Senior News Editor for Arutz-Sheva (www.Israel National News.com). |
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IS VENGEANCE OUR STRATEGY?
Posted by Dr. Richard Swier, May 6, 2011. |
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Something insidious is happening across the world and even in America. Those who speak out against Shariah Islam are being persecuted. I know persecuted is a strong word but that is exactly what it is. |
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Millions in the free world and even some in the Middle East are openly and joyously celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden. Bret Stephens in his May 3rd opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal opines that both President Obama and G.W. Bush got it wrong when they said the United States was seeking justice against those who were involved in 9/11. Bret states "As for bin Laden, what was meted out to him was vengeance. Vengeance pure and simple, sweet and sound. Vengeance cathartic, uplifting, necessary and right. Got a problem with that?" So is vengeance our strategy to deal with Shariah Islamists who want to destroy Israel and America? I believe this is not a strategy that will succeed. In fact I believe it is one that can and will fail. A person commenting on my recent column "Osama is dead but the Axis of Jihad lives on" said: "If your dog has fleas would you start picking out the fleas one by one? Of course not! The fleas would reproduce a hundred times faster than you can pick them off your dog. The more expedient method is to apply a flea control product which eliminates the fleas in minutes and keeps them away for weeks." Well the current approach to resolving the existential threat of Shariah Islam is the same as picking fleas one at a time. Instead of applying a flea control product we are targeting select individuals while the movement grows in both military and political strength. The only meaningful flea control product is the freedom to openly criticize Shariah Islam. While taking out bin Laden in the short term feels good it does not address the ideology that he and millions of other fully Shariah compliant individuals, organizations and nation states hold near and dear. The big flea nest is Iran. The other big flea nest is the Muslim Brotherhood. The free world must apply the long term flea control product known as freedom of speech to deal with all these flea nests. Sadly, what is happening across the world is people who speak out against the flea nests are ridiculed, called Islamaphobic, brought to trial for speaking the truth about Shariah Islam or worse killed. In Europe we find Dutch Member of Parliament (MP) Geert Wilders being tried for making the documentary Fitna. During final remarks at his trial in Amsterdam on May 3rd Geert said, "For almost seven years now, I have not been a free man. I lost my freedom in 2004 [when he released Fitna]. I live as a prisoner with guards without you having convicted me. Without protection I am even less certain of my life than I am now." What MP Wilders is lamenting is he is not a free man if he cannot speak freely. Europe does not have freedom of speech as we understand it under our U.S. Constitution. An unalienable right given to all man kind. In America we have witnessed the burning of just three Qur'ans. The first by New Jersey transit worker Derek Fenton at a protest in front of the proposed Ground Zero mosque. Derek was fired for this act of free speech. He has since been vindicated, rehired, with all back pay and allowances restored. He was awarded additional compensation and all legal fees by the court. The second burning was by Florida pastor Terry Jones. His action was condemned by everyone from the President, to the Secretary of Defense, to the media and the general public. He went to Dearborn, MI and was denied the right to hold a peaceful protest outside a mosque on Good Friday 2011. The rejection by Dearborn has led to a lawsuit filed by the Ann Arbor based Thomas Moore Law Center. The third Qur'an burning was done by Ann Barnhart, a young Colorado woman, rancher and mother, who took exception to Senator Lindsey Graham saying on CBS's Face the Nation, "I wish we could find a way to hold people accountable [speaking about Pastor Jones burning of the Qur'an]. Free speech is a great idea, but we're in a war." Yes, the free world is in a war! We are all at war with an ideology that is totalitarian and demands all other systems of government and beliefs submit to it, and it alone. It's name is Sharia Islam and it badly needs a very long lasting flea control product called the truth. Killing one flea is not a global strategy to defeat Shariah Islam. The only effective weapon we have is the freedom of speech. Contact Richard Swier by email at drswier@gmail.com |
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ACADEMIC FREEDOM IS NOT ACADEMIC LICENSE
Posted by Israel Academia Monitor, May 6, 2011. |
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This was written by Geoffrey Alderman, Professor of Politics & Contemporary History and Sub-Dean of the School of Humanities at the University of Buckingham (United Kingdom) and Patron of the UK Council on Academic Freedom. It appeared in the Jerusalem Post. No academic is above the law. An academic who — shall we say — incites violence can expect both criminal and institutional penalties. |
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In The Jerusalem Post of April, 17 my colleague Professor David Newman, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Ben-Gurion University, sought — in a personal capacity — to exploit the celebration of the Pessah festival in order to draw attention to what he claimed are dark forces seeking to trample on academic freedom — and more generally upon freedom of expression — in the State of Israel. At his own university he claimed that "right-wing activists," unhappy with the political views of some faculty members, had been conducting "concerted and well-planned attacks" with a view, ultimately, to curtailing the academic freedom of certain BGU faculty, and even of having them dismissed. "Were it not [Professor Newman declared] for the employment laws of the state relating to tenure, there is a growing feeling among the faculty that some could have been dismissed for expressing their views." On March 28 last, it was my great privilege to deliver a public lecture at BGU on "Intellectual Freedom and Academic Obligation." In a manner of speaking, I had in fact invited myself. Last year I contacted Dr. Neve Gordon, who teaches in Professor Newman's faculty, and offered to debate him, at BGU, on issues related to the BDS campaign (of which Dr. Gordon appears to be a leading exponent) and academic freedom. To my great sorrow, Dr. Gordon declined my invitation, claiming he was "not interested." That rebuff notwithstanding, I contacted the president of BGU, Dr. Rivka Carmi, and it was through her good offices that my lecture was arranged. Unfortunately, the pressure of official business meant that Professor Newman was not able to hear in person the remarks I made to that packed seminar room in March. Had he been present he would have heard me draw a sharp distinction between academic freedom and academic license. Devotees of academic license (I am not one of them) believe that an academic should be free to say more or less anything on more or less any subject. The concept seems to me to be deeply flawed.
TO BEGIN with, no academic is above the law. An academic who — shall we say — incites violence can expect both criminal and institutional penalties — criminal because of the law of the land and institutional because an academic who incites violence brings her or his institution into disrepute. Even for those with tenure, the charge of bringing the employing institution into disrepute can customarily result in dismissal. And quite apart from this, there is the issue of defamation. Can an academic legitimately claim that he should be able to — say — libel or slander a colleague without hindrance? Of course not! So academic freedom is not academic license. In 1988, the British Parliament defined academic freedom as the freedom for academics "to question and test received wisdom, and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs." To those of us who took part in the discussions that resulted in this statutory formulation, the wording was not ideal, but I think most agreed that the formulation could only be applied to a peacetime situation. In peacetime, an academic should indeed be free to criticize, castigate, chastise and/or condemn not just the government of the country in which he lives and works, but the country itself. This freedom cannot be claimed when the country is at war and its very survival is at issue. In my March 28 lecture I deliberately spent some time considering freedom in general and academic freedom in particular with reference to the United Kingdom during the Second World War. I explained that between 1939 and 1945, habeas corpus had been suspended — people were imprisoned without trial (including one sitting member of Parliament). Civil liberties were heavily circumscribed. The "Home Guard" — a sort of militarized police force — could and did shoot people dead on sight. There was comprehensive censorship of the media. And academics most certainly could not say what they liked, if for no other reason than that the law of the land prescribed draconian penalties (including hanging) for offenses deemed by the courts to fall within the definition of treason. This definition included consorting with the enemy, inciting, aiding and abetting the enemy, and engaging in any act likely to give comfort to the enemy.
ISRAEL IS at war. Muslim states, both Arab and non-Arab, have made it crystal clear that they wish to destroy the Jewish state. Even as I flew out to Israel from London, dozens of rockets were slamming into Israel from Gaza — to say nothing of the Jerusalem bus station bombing. In this deplorable situation I would have thought it the duty of every Israeli academic — no matter his/her party-political outlook — to think very seriously about whether anything they say or do is likely to give comfort to the many enemies of Israel. I must also point out that the BDS movement is itself at odds with the very concept of academic freedom, since it seeks to make the espousal of a particular set of political principles the price for entry into that academic dialogue which is at the very heart of what we mean by a university. "Agree with my views" — it says — "or I will boycott you and freeze you out of the academy." In this sense I believe that the movement is essentially totalitarian, and indeed fascist in nature. It has no place — none at all — in a true university environment. Argue by all means. But boycott and betray at your peril. Contact IAM by email at e-mail@israel-academia-monitor.com and visit their website: http://www.Israel-Academia-Monitor.com |
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RETHINKING JERUSALEM, OR...STAKING A CLAIM TO MEDINA AS A JEWISH CITY
Posted by Gerald Honigman, May 6, 2011. |
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A story in Jewish World Review on May 5th told of a pending confrontation between the United States Congress and the State Department when the Supreme Court takes up the case of a couple whose child was born in Jerusalem. This is set to occur after its next session begins in October 2011. The State Department refuses to add Israel, after Jerusalem, on such official birth documents, despite a law passed by Congress almost ten years ago directing it to do so. Ah yes — evenhandedness and neutrality. You know... How dare Jews declare a city, which they've inhabited constantly for over three millennia, as their capital. All other peoples and nations may declare such things, but not Jews...it's that special treatment thingy again. I mean, after all, no other lands have ever been contested between various peoples where national capitals were later proclaimed... Right...and if you believe that, then you probably also believe that Libya's Qaddafi should have been targeted instead of the light years' worse butchers of Damascus. Moving on... Arabs claim Jerusalem as theirs — and theirs alone. They do this because, as with numerous other non-Arab cities north, south, east, and west of the Arabian Peninsula, Jerusalem also was conquered and settled by Arabian invaders in the 7th century C.E. Afterwards, despite the presence of scores of millions of non-Arab peoples who predated the Arabs and their new religion by millennia, the entire region was proclaimed to be solely the domain of the Dar ul-Islam, and later, in the age of nationalism, purely Arab patrimony. Arabs had tried that latter routine much earlier too — but this backfired and led to the overthrow of the Arabist Umayyad Caliphate based in Damascus. The coup occurred largely because of the revolt of numerous disgruntled Iranian converts to Islam, moving the seat of power much further eastward with Baghdad as the new Abbasid capital. Modern times... With all the turmoil going on right now in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and the rest of the region, if you think those potatoes are hot, just wait... Indeed, not long ago we got a glimpse of what to expect. The Obama Administration teamed with the State Department to take Israel to task for not making at least parts of Jerusalem off limits to Jews. That's what the building freeze issue was/is largely all about...the one that both the President and his Secretary of State continue to excoriate Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders who do not prostrate themselves low enough over. So, while it kept getting shoved onto the back burner for fear of the intense heat that it will undoubtedly generate, Jerusalem will be one of the most difficult issues to resolve in any so-called "peace process." Years ago I wrote an earlier version of this analysis, but given the attention the building freeze and settlement issues have been receiving, the time is ripe for an encore — despite the even friendly feathers that it might ruffle. Let's begin... While it's true that Christians, Muslims, and Jews all have ties to Jerusalem, these ties are not "equal." In religious Jewish sources, for instance, Jerusalem is mentioned over 600 times. It is never mentioned even once in the Qur'an. It is alluded to in the latter in passages about the Hebrew Kings, David and Solomon, and the destruction of the Temples of the Jews. The Hamasniks, Arafatians, & Co. deny that a Jewish Temple ever existed there. They call the Temple Mount "Buraq's Mount," after Muhammad's supposedly winged horse which, after Muhammad was given refuge in the Jewish oasis town of Medina during his flight from enemies in Mecca, took him on a flight to the Temple of the Jews before his ascent to Heaven. But a mention of Jerusalem itself is nowhere to be found in the Muslim holy book...interesting, since it was recorded in many other places besides the writings of the Jews themselves for over 1,500 years before the rise of Islam. The reality, of course, is that religious claims of both Christians and Muslims to Jerusalem exist first and foremost due to both of these religions' links to the Jews. Political claims — based upon facts on the ground — are, admittedly, more complicated. Even so, throughout over three millennia, no other people — none, zilch, nada — except the Jews has ever made Jerusalem their capital, despite its conquest by many imperial powers, including that of the Arab caliphal successors to Muhammad. The latter ruled for a few centuries until they too were replaced by others, notably Turks during most of the centuries leading up to World War I. Damascus and Baghdad were the seats of Arab caliphal imperial power, and Mecca and Medina the holy cities. While Jerusalem was not ignored by its Arab Muslim conquerors (the Umayyads built the Dome of the Rock and the Mosque of 'Umar on the Temple Mount, making it Islam's allegedly third holiest city), Jerusalem became in no way the focus for Islam that it is for Jews and Judaism. Since David made Jerusalem his capital and it became the site of his son Solomon's Temple, Zion became the heart and soul of Jewish national and religious existence. Jews from all over the early diaspora made their pilgrimages and sent offerings to its Temple. "By the Rivers of Babylon we wept..." and "If I forget thee O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning..." were just a few of the many ancient Biblical expressions of the Jews for Zion. Such yearning persisted throughout subsequent millennia in the Great Diaspora as well. Next Year in Jerusalem sustained the Jew throughout countless degradations and humiliations (in both the Muslim East as well as the Christian West) culminating in the Holocaust and is recited at the end of the Passover Seder each year. I wonder if President Obama got to hear this at the ones that he has attended... There is no Arab Muslim parallel to these claims, despite efforts to portray Palestinian Arabs (many if not most of whom were new arrivals — settlers — in the land themselves), as the "new Jews." Coming from a hundred different lands (including those native to Israel itself), Jews didn't have almost two dozen other states to potentially choose from and suffered dearly for this statelessness. Most Arabs want sole political rights over Jerusalem for the same reason that they want sole rights over Tel Aviv. Once, again, in their eyes, only they have legitimate political rights anywhere in what they regard as simply purely Arab patrimony and the Dar ul-Islam. Now, substitute Kirkuk in Kurdistan, the Atlas Mountains in the "Berber" lands of North Africa, Darfur in the west and the south of largely black African Sudan, and countless other examples, and you can see how the problems Arabs have with Jews are not so unique after all. The same subjugating Arab mindset victimizes any non-Arabs who dare to assert their own share of justice in the region. Half of Israel's Jews fled from "Arab" lands. Moving into the realm of religion, regardless of whatever theology one clings to, Jesus' actual historical experiences in Roman-occupied Judea and Jerusalem were those of a Judean Jew living under extremely precarious conditions. Thousands of his countrymen had already been hunted down, killed, crucified, and so forth in the subjugation/pacification process. After Jerusalem fell, numerous Judea (not Palestina) Capta coins were minted in honor of the Roman victory. They can be found in museums and elsewhere all over the world, and a picture of one graces the cover of my own new book on the subject (http://q4j-middle-east.com). As I repeatedly like to remind readers, the contemporary Roman and Roman-sponsored historians themselves — such as Tacitus, Josephus, and Dio Cassius — had much to say about all of this. Consider, for example, just this one telling quote from Tacitus: Vespasian succeeded to the throne...it infuriated his resentment that the Jews were the only nation who had not yet submitted. These oppressive conditions led to both open revolts and guerilla warfare to rid the land of its mighty pagan conqueror...wars which would eventually lead the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, to rename the land itself from Judea to Syria Palaestina in 135 C.E. in an attempt to stamp out any remaining hopes for Jewish independence. Judea was thus renamed after the Jews' historic enemies, the Philistines — a non-Semitic (thus non-Arab) sea people from the Aegean region to drive home the point. For a modern analogy, imagine Lithuania as it was engulfed by the Soviet Union in the latter's heyday of power. Or, a Hungarian freedom fighter or Greek partisan taking on the Soviets or the Nazis...or, even more recently, Tunisians, Libyans, Egyptians, Syrians, and others taking on their own home grown Arab tyrants. Think of the sympathy, support, and admiration often given to such peoples and situations... and next consider the treatment Jews have received over the ages for longing for this same worldly freedom and dignity over the millennia themselves. Whatever Jesus did or did not mean in his alleged and very debatable statement, "render unto Caesar...," this passage and others in the New Testament have been used to belittle this same desire for freedom among the Jews. Only they have been expected to think solely along higher, other worldly lines. In addition to Judea Capta coins, the towering Arch of Titus was erected after the first major revolt in 70 C.E. and shows, among other things, the Romans carrying away the giant Menorah, Jewish captives, and other objects from the Jewish Temple that most Arabs and other Muslims claim never existed. As with the coins, it stands in Rome to this very day to commemorate Rome's victory over the Jews and Jewish Jerusalem.
Next... When Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, fled Mecca to Medina in 622 C.E. (the Hijrah), the inhabitants welcomed him. Medina had been developed centuries earlier as a thriving date palm oasis by Jews, with great agricultural knowledge, fleeing the Roman assault (the banu-Qurayzah and banu-al-Nadir tribes, etc.), and its mixed population of Jews and pagan Arabs who later joined them had thus become conditioned for a native prophet speaking the word of G_d. There is no doubt among objective scholars that Muhammad learned much from the Jews, including ideas crucial to what later would be known as Islam. In just one of numerous examples, while the actual timing of his decision on the direction of prayer (the qibla) may never be known, during his long sojourn with the Jews of Medina, his followers were instructed to copy the Jews and pray towards Jerusalem. Early prominent Arab historians such as Jalaluddin came right out and stated that this was done primarily as an attempt to win support among the influential Jewish tribes (the "People of the Book") for Muhammad's religio-politcal claims. As we've already seen, it is from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem that Muslims believe Muhammad ascended to Heaven on his winged horse. A shrine, the Dome of the Rock, would later be erected on this Jewish holy site after the Arab imperial conquest of the land in the 7th century C.E. There is no doubt that Jews had an enormous impact on both Muhammad and the religion that he founded. The holy sites for Muslims in Jerusalem (i.e. the shrine and mosque erected on the Temple Mount of the Jews) are now deemed "holy" precisely because of the critical years Muhammad spent after the Hijrah with the Jews. Simply put, the Temple Mount had no prior meaning to pagan Arabs. While there was some early Christian influence as well, intense scholarship has shown that the Holy Law (Halakha) and Holy Scriptures of the Jews had a tremendous influence on the Qur'an, Islamic Holy Law (Shari'a), and so forth. Muslim religious beliefs regarding such things as Muhammad's alleged conversations with the Angel Gabriel (introduced to the whole world via the Hebrew Bible) notwithstanding, events and ideas such as Muhammad's "Jerusalem connection" were most likely not established until after his extended stay with his Jewish hosts in Medina. This was no mere coincidence... And when the Jews refused to recognize Muhammad as the "Seal of the Prophets," he turned on them with a vengeance. Before long, with the exception of Yemen, there were virtually no Jews left on the Arabian Peninsula. The men were all slaughtered (largely beheaded — sound familiar?), and the women and children were taken as slaves. The direction of prayer was next changed away from Jerusalem and towards the Kaaba in Mecca instead... To state that Jerusalem has the same meaning for Muslims that it has for Jews is to simply tell a lie. Indeed, if Arabs can stake a claim to Jerusalem, then why should Jews not have a claim to Medina — the place which solid scholarship has shown that they indeed founded? In modern times, Jews constituted the majority of Jerusalem's population from 1840 onwards. When Jordanian Arabs — whose nation itself was formed in 1922 from almost 80% of the original Mandate of Palestine issued to Britain on April 25, 1920 — seized East Jerusalem after their invasion of reborn Israel in 1948, they destroyed dozens of synagogues and thousands of Jewish graves, using tombstones to pave roads, build latrines, and such. When Jews were denied access to their holy sites for almost two decades, the whole world acted deaf, dumb, and blind. The United Nations, European Union, and American State Department — now so upset about the return of Jews to their former homes in East Jerusalem — simply stood by and watched. After Israel was forced to fight a defensive war in 1967 due to its being blockaded by Egypt's Nasser at the Straits of Tiran (a casus belli) and other hostile acts, Jerusalem became reunited. Access to all peoples and faiths subsequently became unhindered. It was at this moment that much of the world then chose to rediscover Jerusalem...demanding its re-division, internationalization, de-Judaization, and so forth. Over numerous centuries, Jews have been forcibly converted and/or expelled, massacred, humiliated, demonized, inquisitioned, ghettoized, subjected to genocide, and so forth. They have been labeled the "deicide people," children of the devil, sons of apes and pigs, and kilab yahud (Jew dogs) throughout much of the world...constantly unwanted strangers in other peoples' lands. Keep all of this in mind, when the next round of Israel-bashing occurs (has it ever stopped?) and understand that Jews will largely remain determined — despite the enormous opposition that they will face — that their rights in the sole capital of the sole, microscopic, resurrected state that they possess will not be sacrificed on behalf of any 22nd state created for Arabs...especially since the latter show, in poll after poll, that regardless of how much Jews will continue to bare their necks for peace, Arabs will not accept the legitimacy of a viable Jewish Israel anyway, regardless of its size. Gerald A. Honigman, a Florida educator, has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in both the print media and on websites. Contact him at honigman6@msn.com or go to his website: http://geraldahonigman.com/blog.php |
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THE ENTIRE "PEACE PROCESS" IS BASED ON GENOCIDAL LIE
Posted by Nurit Greenger, May 5, 2011. |
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One Israel government after another cultivated and propagated this lie, endangering the lives of 5Million Israelis and with it, the lives of the entire world Jewry. Because, if there is no state of Israel, the rest of the Jews, living in four corners of the world will lose their freedom they gained on Friday, May 14, 1948 — 5 Iyar 5708 — upon Israel's Declaration of Independence; ENOUGH of the sham, the bluff. Islam murderous hatred of Jews and others, as crystallized in the Qur'an, is preached in thousands of mosques throughout the civilized world, where democracies, steeped in materialism, are again infected by the Munich syndrome. The Munich Syndrome is the thought that aggression appeased becomes aggression repeated. Basically, if someone knows they can push you around, they will push you until you stand up to them. Have we even asked, how the Arabs, who assumed the name "Palestinians" and now believe that they are a nation, like all other nations, with history that goes back to biblical times have managed to live and even thrive? After all, they do not run a business or a country! Well my friends, they have been living on the dole since the day they have declared themselves as the Palestinian People and since Israel has acceded to allow them to have a "Palestine". Whose charity the Arabs have been receiving? The Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas have been living on funding from the United States, the European Union (EU), all sort of NGOs, wishing to subvert Israel, private funding from Iran and the Arab world as a whole. After Hamas seized Gaza, Israel, the US and the EU have been lining up to support Abbas and they have doubled or tripled the financial aid they endow on the PA. Had the West made it a condition that giving money to these people much depends that it ensures their welfare it will be great, but they did and do not. They pour money unto them as if it is their obsessive compulsion. Let us not for one moment forget that Yasser Arafat merely stole over $6Billion from the money these Arabs have received over the years and I am sure Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies, posing as the Palestinian Authority (PA) are not too far behind Arafat's crimes. What I think is happening here, the West is petrified to ask of the Arabs to open their books as what will be found will be detrimental to many of Western politicians' seats. More so, when the facts are assessed and exposed, there will be public outrage how frivolously and carelessly the government spends tax payer's money and for what and on whom. So the US government and the EU simply let this issue ride, and ride, and ride and the Arabs are laughing. In light of the Hamas-Fatah truce and reconciliation all aid to them should be completely cut off. Since long ago the US should have been telling the UN to cut off all of Hamas' aid and if not, all US funds to UNRWA that get into the hands of the Hamasniks must be cut off. After all they are nothing more than genocidal; from morning to night Hamas members are occupied in hating Israel and Jews and with their plans to destroy the state of Israel. Long ago all US funds to the Palestinian Authority (PA) should have also been cut off, because of the PA vile incitement. The entire Hamas-PA enterprise is nothing but genocidal. In my opinion, all good Americans need to demand that Congress demands the PA opens the books for a thorough investigation and so does UNRWA! And until then, like Israel has done recently, stop all funding. More so, it is Israel's government only that can force the rest of the world to recognize that Mahmoud Abbas, now in bed with Hamas, is not an ally, never was. Israel is facing, in real time, existential threats and also political terrorism that is coming at her from all directions. What Israel is almost totally lacking is the political leadership to is prepared to finally let go of the lies and expose the truth about its enemy, which for way too long Israel has been treating mistakenly; a leadership that can counteract and eliminate all the perils Israel is facing and come out a winner. And to this end I have this to say: The Nation of Israel and the State of Israel is most fortunate having the gallant and brilliant Caroline Glick as its premier political analyst. Israel is lacking real leadership. I have said it long ago, and have repeated it so many times, Caroline Glick must be advanced to become Israel's next Prime Minister. Forgive me Ms. Glick, but in time of need Moses did not have a choice but to take the mast and come to the rescue of his People; our prophets did not have a choice but to speak up the truth, no matter how painful it was. So you may not have an option but to come to the rescue of the Jewish State Israel and take the post of its Prime Minister. You will then turn the tide, as it must be turned. Hope did not make a feather grow and become a chicken. Action speak louder than words. I strongly suggest to read: 'Character Flaws and Systemic Flaws' (http://www.jewishindy.com/modules.php?name= News&file=print&sid=15178). Is your head spinning already!? There is a saying, 'liar liar, your pants are on fire'. The Israeli, the US and the EU misleadership, your pants are on fire just as the Arabs' pants are. Contact Nurit Greenger by email at nurit.nuritg@gmail.com. Visit her blog:
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A PALESTINIAN STATE: THE U.N. GAMBIT
Posted by Barbara Sommer, May 5, 2011. |
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This was written by Jerrold L. Sobel
It was published in the May 3, 2011 edition of "The American Thinker."
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As most people following the Middle East conflict know by now, in abrogation of the Oslo II Accords, the Palestinians will be going to the U.N. in September, 2011 seeking unilateral state recognition either from the Security Council or if need be, by circumvention of that body in favor of the General Assembly. With the same contempt for agreements Muhammad had at Hudaibiya, matched by Hitler at Munich in 1938, Abbas senses the pendulum of history swinging in his favor. In lieu of direct negotiations with Israel, the nominal leader of the PLO has sat back, let the Obama Administration do his bidding, and has become accustomed to garnering concessions less reciprocation with any of his own. Why should his U.N. gambit be any different? Let's examine this question a bit later. Frustrated by continuous Soviet vetoes in the Security Council throughout the
early 50's the United States played a leading role in adopting resolution 377 A
(V), known as "Uniting for Peace." Simply put, the resolution states that in
lack of Security Council unanimity the General Assembly (GA) can be called into
session, consider a matter, and make recommendations to the membership on
collective action. Having had a distinct majority in the GA prior to the
de-colonization of Asia and Africa, Uniting for Peace made sense to the U.S.,
particularly during the Korean conflict. In recent years res. 377 has played
into the hands of Arab foreign policy to the detriment of both Israel and the
United States. Fortunately, from a legal standpoint, in of itself, the
resolution is not binding. It clearly states, "the General Assembly shall
consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate
recommendations." (my emphasis).
If push comes to shove, and the GA votes on Palestinian statehood, in terms of international relations, it admittedly would not be a good thing for either the U.S. or Israel. For starters, it is antithetical to the foreign policy of the Obama administration which reluctantly will be forced to use its power of veto against Palestinian statehood in the Security Council. A move the President wishes to avoid so as not to rankle the feathers of the world community, a community of nations for reasons not short of anti-Semitism continuously turns a blind eye to historical Arab/Palestinian incitement and provocation, yet has no problem castigating the Jewish state for responding in her own defense. Getting back to the question of why un-reciprocated Israeli concessions will
stop at this point is quite straight forward. If the Palestinians opt for a
unilateral declaration of statehood, Israel will be released from all
obligations, including those signed at Oslo II with the deceased terrorist,
Yasser Arafat. Such a declaration would also free Israel of any responsibility
in the Gaza Strip. The dispute would now morph into a conflict between two
states rather than an occupier (my emphasis) and an occupied entity. Israel
would no longer be required to allow passage of personnel and material over what
would become an international border. Since under any circumstances, Hamas,
sworn to the destruction of Israel will continue its hostility, Israel under the
U.N. Charter would have legal cover to silence the incessant aggression she has
suffered for so long since mistakenly turning Gaza over to the Palestinians.
Even Haaretz, the left leaning Israeli newspaper, on Sunday featured an article
by Shlomo Avineri stating the obvious. Even if direct negotiations miraculously
began again, "the prospects for peace are nil." A prophetic statement indeed,
since the following day it was learned that Fatah and Hamas have now formed a
unity government. The author correctly asserts that blame can not be affixed to
the Netanyahu government. After two years of negotiating and offering a great
many concessions, the Olmert and Livni government could never reach an agreement
with Abbas either. If a state of their own and peace with Israel is really what
the Palestinians wanted, Abba Eban's famous quote, "The Arabs never miss an
opportunity to miss an opportunity," is right on the money.
So what are the ramifications of a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood? Continued isolation of the Jewish State, increased efforts delegitimizing her, more calls for divestiture, cancellation of cultural events. What else is new? In terms of the status quo, this end run around direct negotiations with Israel changes nothing. Recalcitrant as ever, the Palestinians refuse to budge or even negotiate on the core, secular foundational issues which underline this conflict:
Outside of what many pundits, including this writer, consider to be the least common denominator of this conflict, Islam itself, the above five issues are ostensibly the main topics of contention. Let's examine them: Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state: Once again tipping his hand, Mahmoud
Abbas, as reported on Israeli radio, April 18, reiterated his refusal to
recognize Israel as a Jewish state. By the following speech he gave on April 30,
2009 the Palestinian President proves, if nothing else, he's consistent:
For his part, in a speech given this week on April 19, Prime Minister Netanyahu
unequivocally stated, that "Jerusalem won't budge on demand for recognition."
Some may ask why is Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state so
important? Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon succinctly states that
such a proclamation is of no importance to the Jews of Israel. The founding
fathers and generations of Israeli citizens subsequent, recognize themselves as
a Jewish state. Ayalon correctly asserts, for two nations to live side by side
in peace, it's Palestinian society that must come to grips with Israel as a
sovereign, Jewish entity:
Israel's Vital Security Needs: Emboldened by recent events and more confident than ever, Abed Rabbo gave the following quote during an interview with Al-Hayat newspaper: "The Palestinian leadership won't back down unless real and serious peace negotiations are launched on the basis of the 1967 borders." In other words he's telling Israel, either acquiesce to indefensible borders and other demands or the U.N. will impose it upon them. In a unique expectation of the victors suing for peace, one almost forgets Israel actually controls the territory in question. Likewise, as the Jackals in the U.N. curry favor with the Arab world, one has to wonder if any them understand why no Israeli government will succumb to their false sense of urgency and retreat to borders which had placed her in peril during two previous wars. Only 44 miles separate the Jordan Valley from the Mediterranean Sea.
Following the Six Day War, United Nations Resolution 242 stated Israel
was entitled to defensible borders, defensible borders unlike the ones
she is being cajoled to return to. Running along Israel's eastern border
is the Jordan Rift Valley whose hills rise from 1200 feet below sea
level to a height of 3000 feet, serving as an effective 4200 foot
defensive abutment against a potential attack coming from terrorist
groups, Iran, Iraq, or Jordan. The last time Israel abandoned such a
strategic position was in 2005 when the Sharon government unilaterally
pulled out of Gaza, allowing the Philadelphia Corridor to become a
conduit for weapons and terrorists; a move unlikely to be repeated in
the Jordan Valley. Likewise, the 3000 foot mountain range surrounds an
area of Israel containing 70% of her population, as well as her air and
seaports. Undoubtably, there could not be a greater vulnerability to the
Jewish state than the relinquishment of this high ground overlooking
Jerusalem and the heart of Israel. As the likely preponderance of
nations in the GA prepare to impose a Palestinian state based upon the
pre-1967 Armistice lines, don't take bet these considerations will ever
come to mind.
Jerusalem as Israel's Capital: Kind of a no brainer. If under all circumstances, the supposed good guy, Abbas, refuses to even consider Israel as a Jewish state, what chance is there for the Palestinians; particularly their new unity government, of recognizing Jerusalem as the Jewish capital? As the following presentation by Dore Gold bares witness, the Arabs are perplexed at any Jewish connection to this land. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enT0-OnpPHM). Could, or should Israel, now, after a 2000 year diaspora, be in control of her ancient capital, only to abnegate her rights to a Palestinian people sworn to her destruction? This may have made sense when the western world dissected Czechoslovakia in 1938 but it should not hold water today. Palestinian Refugees: Unlike the 800,000-1,000,000 Jewish refugees expelled from Arab lands between 1949 to 1960 which were made citizens of Israel. Today you have the progeny of a people uprooted by war, still living in, UNRWA refugee camps, never repatriated by an Arab world with greater concern for geo-politics than their wretched plight. Yet today, those countries so fast to bestow nationhood upon a hostile Palestinian state either do not consider or care less the ramifications of Israel absorbing what today would be 7.2 million hostile Arabs. An end to Palestinian Incitement: It all starts and ends here. If this could be accomplished, all else could fall in line. Dealing with a cooperative, true partner for peace, turning their attention away from war towards nation building would be a godsend to both to Israel and the Palestinians. Unfortunately, all roads lead back to the endemic, theocratic hatred of the Palestinian people toward the Jews of Israel. This indoctrinate angst is so great, even if begun today, it would take many generations before it could be eradicated. The gap is too great, it's doubtful it will ever happen. The scope of this essay relates to the secular issues of this dispute. In reality the core of this conflict is religion; uncompromising Islam. That's the rub, that's its irreconcilably, regardless of what comes out of the United Nations in September. Contact Barbara Sommer at lsommer_1_98@yahoo.com |
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THE MOSAB YOUSEF SAGA: DID HAMAS 'DEFECTOR' DUPE ALL OF US?
Posted by Mechel Samberg, May 5, 2011. |
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Walid Shoebat is the author of God's War on Terror: Islam, Prophecy and the Bible. This article was published on Pajamas Media May 5th 2011
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While a prisoner of Israel in 1996, Mosab Hassan Yousef — the son of Sheik Hassan Yousef, a founding member of Hamas — was approached by Shin Bet agents who looked to recruit him to spy within Hamas. He agreed. Mosab's information soon had Shin Bet calling him "the most reliable source in the Hamas leadership," and Israeli lives were undoubtedly saved as a result of Mosab's collaboration. Despite this success, Yousef has since revealed himself to be more double agent than turncoat. During the initial contact within Israel's Maskubia (Jerusalem's central prison), Mosab agreed to collaborate in exchange for Israel not targeting his father. After years of providing valuable intelligence, in 2007 Mosab declared his conversion to Christianity, moved to California, and went public with his story. His tale was a sensation, drawing attention and praise from U.S. pro-Israel organizations. But his tale has since been revealed to be a "long con," the evidence coming from when he speaks publicly in Arabic. Mosab did not convert to what the West would recognize as Christianity, but to a fiery, Palestinian brand of the faith that is vehemently anti-Israel. According to Mosab, his main goal in coming to the U.S. is to infiltrate the main source of international support for Israel: the American church. From an interview with Al-Arabiya: During my tours in universities and even churches, [I found] the real support for Israel stems from the church in the West. ... We need to understand the difference between "revenge" and "resistance" and once the Palestinians do, we will have our victory against Israel. Activists like Mosab know very well that Western media rarely translate their doublespeak. He continue: Israel is the problem and as an occupation it needs to end. ... There are many ways to do this besides the coward explosive operations. Mosab's formula? Infiltrate the West with his book: This will be the first time in history that a Palestinian book will find success so that the Western reader can see for himself the reality of what goes on over there. People in the West do not know what happens over there. On the Arabic-language show Daring Question, Mosab wore the symbol of pro-Palestine advocates, the kaffiyeh: With a balanced approach I discuss the life of the Palestinian child under the Israeli occupation, of course my life suffered under all the problems of murder and the criminal operations that were carried out by the Israeli occupation against my people, my family, myself, and against humanity. To Mosab, the Palestinian struggle was lacking: while he praises Hamas leaders as "heroes and glorious defenders," he instructs them to enlist more educated political defenders like himself: With regret, our great leaders and mighty heroes and glorious defenders over there did not realize that instead of spending their wealth and monies on silly issues, they needed to enlist in their ranks writers and educated individuals in order to reverse the image of the Palestinian struggle. Mosab stated that he is only against Hamas methodology, but not their agenda: It appeared at first that my desire was to seek revenge against Hamas. ... How could I do such a thing ... revenge [against] my own father? He is one of the leaders of Hamas. Perhaps the most shocking revelation: Mosab asks Arabs not to report terrorist activity. The host of Daring Question asked a caller: If you were in Mosab's position and have two choices: either someone from Hamas will be killed, or school children in a bus will be killed, will you report it? The Arab Christian caller vacillated, then Mosab spoke: If I was in your shoes, you should not report it to Israel. I do not encourage anyone to give information to Israel or collaborate with Israel. If anyone hears me right now and they are in relation to Israeli security I advise them to work for the interest of their own people — number one — and do not work with the [Israeli] enemy against the interest of our people. They should collaborate with the Palestinian Authority only. Most in the West do not understand the Arab "Christian" position when it comes to Israel. Witness the Daring Question host Rasheed, a Christian convert from Islam himself, pardoning Mosab from any wrongdoing: the pardon is not for Mosab's connection to Hamas, but for his collaboration with Israel. To Rasheed, Mosab's collaboration was during his Muslim life, while he was still unforgiven: He [Mosab] did not become Christian then collaborate with Israel. He used to collaborate with Israel, then became Christian. Mosab's book Son of Hamas — published in English — does not express Mosab's views as openly as his Arabic statements do, and the book is additionally littered with factual errors and exaggerations. For example: Mosab portrays the Jerusalem prison as a center for torture and persecution of Palestinians. The reality is much kinder; each inmate has his own bed and an in-the-cell shower as well. I know this — I was a prisoner there myself. We ate three full meals a day, and drank tea or sweet punch. And Mosab fails to mention that the Maskubia had Jewish inmates as well, who received the same treatment as the Palestinians and ate out of the same menu. Yes, you were beaten by security when lives were at stake: I witnessed first-hand Israeli soldiers in the corridor beating an inmate who attempted to kill his cellmate (I was selected to clean the mess afterward). What was so shocking to me at the time? The attempted murderer was a Jew. I have never heard of Israelis killing Palestinians in prison. Yet Palestinian prisoners do kill each other, as Mosab himself describes. Palestinian inmates killed my landlord Muneer Abu-Sayb'a from Bethlehem, yet his death was blamed on Israel. My friend Basem Hanuneh was brutally murdered — his privates removed and stuffed in his mouth — which was also blamed on Israel. Mosab is now touring churches to end Israel's lifeline. Many Jews and Christians in the West are unable to determine friend from foe in the Mideast; they are not able to read what is said in Arabic. They must seek translations, and must be aware of double agents like Mosab.
Contact Mechel Samberg at mechelsamberg2@yahoo.com
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WOULD IRAN DROP NUCLEAR BOMBS ON ISRAEL?; BRITAIN'S POLITICAL ASYLUM
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 5, 2011. |
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Would Iran Drop Nuclear Bombs On Israel?; At first in his interview, Israel's Defense Minister Barak assured Haaretz that if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, it would not use them against Israel. The newspaper made that its headline. Later in the interview, Min. Barak admitted in some length that the world could not rely upon Iran to restrain its nuclear weapons, and that he does not know what it would do. Proper criteria for assessing the risk from Iran would judge in the basis of the beliefs of Iran's leaders, not on the basis of Israelis' values. After all, Iran's government would decide on the basis of its own values. Those values are to force an Armageddon, in order to save the world for Radical Islam (Dr. Aaron Lerner, IMRA, 5/5/11 http://www.imra.org.il/). Britain's Political Asylum Dr. Hani al-Siba'i,head of the Almaqreezi Center for Historical Studies, lives in London as a "political refugee". He was a leader of the Egyptian Jihad organization. Egypt has sentenced him to prison. Dr. al-Siba'i "praised the London terror attacks of 7 July 2005, in which Islam succeeded in "rubbing the nose of western culture in the dirt". On Monday morning, one hour after the execution of bin Laden was publicized, BBC Arabic Radio interviewed al-Sibai, who gave a eulogy for bin Laden as a martyr. Why does Britain give political asylum to someone who seeks to
overthrow British civilization, including by force? (IMRA, 5/5/11
Even if that Radical Muslim did not intend to use force to overthrow British civilization, he poses a danger to British society. It is foolish to let him live in Britain, where he can be active in subversion. It perverts the notion of political asylum to take in fanatical totalitarians, merely because they have a falling out with their governments. It would be like giving rattlesnakes asylum from pursuing wolves. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@gmail.com. |
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FROM ISRAEL: STAYING CALM IS HARD TO DO
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 5, 2011. |
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It's quite a challenge to read the news with equanimity, is it not? Today it's British Prime Minister David Cameron. Prime Minister Netanyahu has just been to see him in order to discourage support for that Fatah-Hamas unity government. And, according to The Guardian, what did Cameron say? "Britain would consider supporting a unilateral declaration of statehood by the Palestinians if Israel fails to join substantive peace talks to create a two-state solution." "If Israel fails to join"... If we don't sit with the terrorists who are dedicated to our destruction and don't recognize our right to exist... What "two-state solution"? A diplomat cited by the Guardian elaborated: "The more Israel engages seriously in a meaningful peace process... " I used the word "insane" yesterday, did I not? But then, this is Britain we're speaking about, so what could I expect? ~~~~~~~~~~ Apparently President Sarkozy of France is not far behind in this thinking. But here we have an interesting insight provided, perhaps inadvertently, by L'Express: Sarkozy commented, "Europe will not remain a political dwarf in this matter." Sarkozy, having seen Obama's failure, is moving in for what he envisions to be a piece of the political pie (however that may be construed). Sometimes, however, when heads of state vie for influence, the opportunity to wield power becomes more significant than the issues at stake. What I see is a Europe — totally lost, totally sold out — that is at bottom prepared to accept this new "unity" as legitimate, and push it as a negotiating partner for Israel. They should all live so long! ~~~~~~~~~~ At least Tony Blair, the Quartet envoy, is making some demands of the planned new unity government: It must recognize Israel's right to exist and renounce violence. He's waiting to see who the new Palestinian prime minister will be, he told AP, but Hamas must have a "change of heart." A step in the right direction, but I have one observation. If they're smart, they'll put up a non-controversial figure as prime minister, a front, and sustain their positions. ~~~~~~~~~~ This is what Prime Minister Netanyahu said to Cameron: Israel will not negotiate with a "Palestinian version of al-Qaeda...Declaring statehood in September is a dictate — and you don't achieve peace through dictates. It's a very bad idea. "When Abu Mazen [Abbas] embraces Hamas — an organization committed to our destruction — it is a tremendous setback for peace and an advance for terror. We are talking about a Palestinian government in which half the members call for destruction of Israel and fire rockets on our cities." The real issue, he explained, is not the question of a Palestinian state, but rather of a Jewish state. "The refusal of the Palestinian Arabs to accept our country is at the root of the conflict." ~~~~~~~~~~ So, my friends, please respond to this by contacting Prime Minister Netanyahu. He may be on the road, but his staff will note messages. Tell him, very briefly, that you're with him, that he is absolutely on the right track in refusing to deal with the new unity government and that it is essential he stay very strong. As always, I ask that you avoid speeches and long explanations. Getting a brief message to him is better. Fax: 02-670-5369 (From the US: 011-972-2-670-5369)
~~~~~~~~~ I am, I must add, considerably uneasy about the announcement that Netanyahu will be meeting with Obama a couple of days before he addresses Congress, later this month. ~~~~~~~~~~ There are some thoughts about Obama and his approval of the operation to take out Bin Laden that are worth sharing here. Many people made the same point, but I think Daniel Greenfield, writing as Sultan Knish, says it best: "The man who came into office promising multilateral engagement, no more torture and a civilian justice system for terrorists, now has only accomplishment to his name. A unilateral invasion and assassination based on intelligence gained through enhanced interrogation, carried out by men whom his supporters had once condemned as a secret assassination squad. What a failure Obama is that even the one success to his name is a testament to the failure of his own ideas. ~~~~~~~~~~ The questions to be drawn from this, most directly, are whether this will bring about any permanent change in Obama policy, and whether it will affect how the world sees Israel's self-defense. ~~~~~~~~~~ Well, the more things change, the more... as we know. And here it's the Palestinian Arabs we're looking at. They just signed a unity agreement (which you can see here:
And they're bickering. Hamas says the PA is arresting their supporters in Judea and Samaria. And the PA says Hamas has prevented some of their people from leaving the Gaza Strip. Anyone taking bets on how long this deal will last? Let me just state this now: If this agreement does fall apart, it does not mean that the PA is "OK," kosher, and can be dealt with as if nothing had happened. The motivation of a group willing to conspire with Hamas is suspect no matter what transpires. The lack of PA commitment — to peace, to accepting Israel, etc. etc. — (which many of us were already aware of) has been exposed, and that would best not be forgotten. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info |
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I CAN'T MAKE PEACE WITH ONE WHO DENIES MY RIGHT TO EXIST
Posted by Barbara Taverna, May 5, 2011. |
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This was written by Lahav Harkov
and it appeared in the Jerusalem Post
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UK Chief Rabbi Sacks tells the UK House of Lords "there may be a process but there will not be peace" if Hamas doesn't recognize Israel. UK Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks slammed the notion of making peace with Hamas in a speech he gave to the House of Lords on Wednesday. The chief rabbi said that unless Hamas changes its ways, "there may be a process but there will not be peace." "Peace is more than a resting place on the road to war. I cannot make peace with one who denies my right to exist." The speech came shortly after Fatah and Hamas signed a reconciliation accord in Cairo, with Hamas officials saying they will not recognize Israel. "We, who pray for peace, understand by that word, a state in which I recognize your right to exist, and you recognize mine," Sacks said. "That is what peace minimally means." He continued: "How then can we be speaking about peace when Hamas remains committed as a matter of principle to the elimination of the State of Israel, when it engages in missile attacks against innocent civilians, and uses its own innocent civilians as human shields; when it propagates some of the most vicious anti-Semitic myths ever to have inflamed the hatred and anesthetized the conscience of human beings, and two days ago praised Osama bin Laden as a holy warrior; and when it refuses to agree to the fundamental principles laid down by the Quartet not least of which is the recognition of Israel's right to exist?" Sacks added that Jews around the world "long for peace" and to live "without fear, without hate, without being treated as a pariah." He said that the Jewish people "long for the ability to live ... without being blamed for the troubles of the world, without being denied the right to exist." "That is why I urge the government to be resolute in its insistence that the path to peace in the Middle East must begin with the unequivocal recognition of the State of Israel's right to be," he concluded. Contact Barbara Taverna at bltaverna@yahoo.com |
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ISRAEL THE BEAUTIFUL: GOLAN HEIGHTS ROCKS
Posted by Yehoshua Halevi, May 5, 2011. |
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"One of the reasons I love to take photographs is that people don't have to speak
any particular language to understand what I want to say."
HOW I GOT THE SHOT:
I asked myself an intriguing question this week: Can a nature photographer also be considered a photojournalist if his pictures are made to document the natural world? I think the answer is yes, as I often find myself recording images for no other reason than that they define the locations where they are shot.
So to some, this week's image may appear to be just a pile of rocks. To me, it is representative of the vast undeveloped stretches of the Golan Heights where it was taken, an area that, although relatively small, still maintains an aura of being untamed and wild.
Although this rock wall is clearly manmade, there is an artistic randomness to the arrangement of the stones. I like the way the lichen patches complement the splotches of clouds in the sky. I chose a low camera angle to make the wall appear a bit more imposing. The sun was at my back, and if you look closely, you'll see my shadow in the grass. After all, art is always a reflection of the inner artist. Or maybe it is nothing more than a pile of rocks.
Technical Data: Nikon D700, 135mm lens, f11 @ 1/400 sec., ISO 400.
Contact Yehoshua Halevi by email at smile@goldenlightimages.com
and visit his website: |
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POLL: PLURALITY OF PALESTINIANS PREFER ISLAMIC CALIPHATE, ONLY 21% IDENTIFIED THEMSELVES AS PALESTINIANS FIRST
Posted by Barbara Sommer, May 5, 2011. |
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This is from IMRA. Dr. Aaron Lerner is Director of IMRA, Independent Media Review and Analysis, an Israel-based news organization which provides an extensive digest of media, polls and significant interviews and events relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Its website address is http://www.imra.org.il Write him at imra@netvision.net.il |
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Ramallah, May 4, 2011 (WAFA) A new survey by Near East Consulting (NEC) published Wednesday revealed that 72% of Palestinians surveyed believe that the Palestinians do not have a partner for peace in Israel. According to the survey, a majority of 70% think that the Palestinian Authority will be able to apply for declaration of a Palestinian state in the Security Council in September 2011. In addition, 89% think that it is necessary to end the internal dispute before the declaration. The survey, conducted during the last week of April, said 70% of the Palestinians were aware of the local elections that will be held in July, and the same percentage said that they will participate. Regarding the truce with Israel, half of the Palestinians think that Hamas will not be able to enforce the truce and prevent other factions from firing rockets against Israel, noting that only 27% support the firing of rockets from Gaza against Israel. Also 71% of the Palestinians believe that Hamas should change its position on the elimination of the state of Israel. As for factional trust, the popularity of Fatah has reached 40% compared to 6% trust for Hamas. A total of 6% said they trust other factions, while about half (48%) do not trust any faction. About 48% of the respondents expressed their trust towards Abbas, and 10% for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, while 42% said neither. A total of 57% give legitimacy to the Fayyad government, and 12% to the Haniyeh government, but 30% believe neither is legitimate. In response to the question as to which strategy respondents think is better for maximizing Palestinian national interest, 49% preferred the Fatah strategy while 9% favored Hamas. About 42% gave no preference to either strategy. About how the respondents identify themselves, the majority, 57%, identified themselves as Muslims, 21% identified themselves as Palestinians first, 19% as human beings first and 5% as Arabs first. The increase in adherence to religious identity is also reflected in the system preferred by the Palestinian people. About 40% of the respondents said that they believe that the Islamic caliphate is the best system for Palestinians, 24% chose a system like one of the Arab countries, and 12 % prefer a system like one of the European countries. As for the economic situation, the results showed that 50% of the Palestinians live below the poverty level, (58% in the Gaza Strip and 43% in the West Bank). The survey was conducted on a random sample of 844 Palestinians over the age of 18 in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, including East Jerusalem. The margin of error was +/-3.4% and the confidence level was 95%. Contact Barbara Sommer at lsommer_1_98@yahoo.com |
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MIDEAST COMMUNICATIONS CHAOS
Posted by Barbara Sommer, May 4, 2011. |
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This was written by Tony Blankley,
executive vice president of Edelman public relations in Washington. D.C.
It appeared in Jewish World Review
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The president's speech last week, which was described by the White House in advance as a speech intended to reach out to the Muslim world, will probably go down as one of the least well-understood major presidential speeches in modern memory. Confusion concerning the president's words and intent cut across the lines of Jews, Christians and Muslims, Democrats and Republicans, neocons and paleocons, friends and foes of Israel, and friends and foes of the president. For many serious commentators, the confusion lies on what the president meant by his statement that "We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states." Was this a shift of policy, no shift or a critical increase in U.S. presidential pressure on Israel in future peace negotiations? A few days before the speech, the president's press secretary said reference to the 1967 borders would not be in the speech. A day before the speech, the Israeli prime minster was privately informed by the administration that it would be in the speech. He privately informed Secretary of State Clinton — before the presidential speech — of his profound opposition to that statement — and publicly condemned it after the speech and as he was getting on his plane to fly to Washington. The remarks stayed in the speech, but were placed just a few paragraphs from the end of a speech that was mostly about the "Arab Spring" and President Obama's current view of it. At the White House photo op after the two-hour meeting between the prime minister and the president, Netanyahu severely chastised the President for his reference to 1967 borders. Many supporters of Israel both in the U.S. and abroad (including the Canadian government) echoed Netanyahu's grave concern about the 1967 borders statement. Even George Mitchell, the president's Mideast peace envoy (and not considered pro-Israel) said that the 1967 border emphasis by the president was wrong. However, seeing — or claiming to see — vindication of their efforts, former foreign policy aides to President Bush (and conservative commentators who supported Bush's "freedom initiative" in the Middle East) rushed out to congratulate Obama for switching from his "realist" policy of befriending Muslim dictatorial regimes such as Iran's to what they claimed was Obama's endorsement of the Bush Middle East policy. Yet other supporters of Israel were indifferent to the 1967 borders statement but gravely concerned about the central part of the speech concerning Muslim "outreach." Distinguished scholar Barry Rubin's statement is most noteworthy: "President Barack Obama's speech on Middle East policy did more damage to U.S.-Israel relations than anything said by any previous president during the almost forty-year alliance between the two countries. Yet, ironically, the speech wasn't intended to be on Israel at all; Obama apparently thought he was being friendly toward Israel; and the point that created the biggest controversy (1967 borders) was something that the president didn't even say. "The crisis, then, was caused by three factors: The ignorance of the Obama Administration over the issues involved; Obama's chronic lack of friendliness toward Israel; and his refusal to recognize the threat from revolutionary Islamism. Harsh criticism of a yet different perception came from The Washington Post — a vehement endorser of Obama for President 2012. The Post editorial after the speech identified Obama's intention as "to persuade Mr. Abbas to give up his U.N. bid and return to negotiations with Israel. To do so, he endorsed one of the conditions Palestinians have tried to set for talks: that they be based on Israel's 1967 border lines, with swaps of land to accommodate large Jewish settlements in the West Bank. This is not a big change in U.S. policy. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, along with previous Israeli governments, have supported the approach. "But Mr. Netanyahu has not yet signed on, and so Mr. Obama's decision to confront him with a formal U.S. embrace of the idea, with only a few hours' warning, ensured a blowup. Israeli bad feeling was exacerbated by Mr. Obama's failure to repeat past U.S. positions — in particular, an explicit stance against the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel. In the president's Sunday speech to AIPAC, the major media generally characterized it as shifting tone, more conciliatory, clarifying, more explicitly supportive of Israel, etc, than the president's main speech last week. The questions that remain unanswered for many is whether the president understood the diplomatic and political impact of his words (in which case, his tonal backpedaling at the AIPAC speech was anticipated and all part of a shrewd master narrative) or whether the impact of his words was inadvertent and based on inexperience or poor judgment. Fascinatingly, both the president's friends and foes are on both sides of those questions.
Contact Barbara Sommer at lsommer_1_98@yahoo.com |
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FROM ISRAEL: INSANE
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 4, 2011. |
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Actually, I should say, "more insane than normal." This will be a short posting. I've been working non-stop on a report concerning US funding for PA "security forces" — an exceedingly pertinent subject, and a report that I'll be referring to now and again. If it weren't for the signing today of the unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas, I would have waited another day. But hey... ~~~~~~~~~~ So...PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas head of the politburo Khaled Masha'al went to Cairo for the signing...and promptly got into a fight about who would sit where (reportedly Abbas did not want Masha'al next to him). Delayed that signing by a couple of hours, although it ultimately did take place. The tensions between the parties are likely a window on what's really going on. Yuval Diskin, who leaves his post as head of Shin Bet next week, sees this "unity" agreement as: "...mostly for the sake of appearances, in an attempt to show unity. From here on, there are many things both sides don't know how to apply in theory, let alone on the ground. I sure wouldn't argue, and we're going to have to watch and see how this plays out over the next weeks, and months, and if it lasts that long, the next year or two. ~~~~~~~~~~ But the key issue from where I sit is the management of "security forces." And it's on this issue that Diskin loses me. He says Israel should continue security arrangements with the PA. It's not just that I disagree, it's that I genuinely cannot imagine what's in his head. Yes, as of today there is no joint Fatah-Hamas management of security forces. The PA is still in charge of its own forces in Judea and Samaria (just as Hamas has forces in Gaza). But the security arrangements between Israel and Fatah have had to do with combating terrorism — notably Hamas. And now Fatah is officially in bed with Hamas. What sort of security arrangements would these be?? Says Diskin: "As long as the [PA] security forces do not change their policies and action on the ground there is no reason for us to change our policy." Not change their policies of cooperating with Israel in seeking out Hamas terrorists? In his Cairo speech today, Abbas said, "we will not accept pluralism of the security forces, only one authority, one weapon and one political authority." As for action, just today I picked up from a highly reliable source information that, "Things are beginning to heat up now" — there have been reports in the Tulkarem area of PA forces taking shots at Israeli troops. There may not be Fatah-Hamas cooperation in managing security forces, but the message from Hamas to Fatah is almost certain to be one that severely discourages cooperation with the IDF. That report I alluded above is designed to try to convince Congress that there should be no more US support for PA security forces. ~~~~~~~~~~ Three Arab MKs attending the signing: Talab El-Sana (Ra'am-Ta'al), Ahmad Tibi (Ra'am Ta'al), and Mohammed Barakeh (Hadash) — declaring the event "historic." I hate to remind them that this is not the first Fatah-Hamas unity government. There was one briefly before the Hamas coup in Gaza. As to historic, I'd like to see history made as they are tossed out of the Knesset for attending the event of a sworn enemy of Israel. ~~~~~~~~~~ It seems to me that there is a way in which Hamas is doing our work for us. They have consented to play the game with regard to "unity" with Fatah, but they won't deign to play the game with regard to being conciliatory on the issue of Israel. Nope, they've been very proudly, defiantly up front with regard to their intentions. There are some parties who might have gone along with the unity arrangement who will find it more difficult to do, in light of Hamas's positions. Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar, for example, said today that Palestine is "hallowed ground" and that Hamas will never recognize Israel — or as he put it, the rule of "Poles and Ethiopians." Nice guy. But, no surprise, Fatah is itself sounding more like Hamas, with Nabil Sha'ath saying that the Quartet principles are irrelevant: "Stop asking Hamas to recognize Israel." ~~~~~~~~~~ Then there's Jimmy Carter. He thinks this unity arrangement will lead to peace and stability. Good old Jimmy is always on top of these matters. ~~~~~~~~~~ Prime Minister Netanyahu is in London, first stop of several in which he will be lobbying against support for the new unity government. That unity deal, he says, is a blow to peace, and a victory for terrorism. Abbas, he points out, in signing with Hamas, has "embraced" an organization that lamented the death of bin Laden, calling him a "martyr." A careful choice of words, I think. This very fact — which thoroughly infuriated Obama — is going to make it harder (though not impossible) for the president and certain others to approach the unity government with anything resembling good will. For the time being, at least, we can safely assume that there will be no more "peace initiatives" with pressure applied to Israel to make more concessions for "peace." Netanyahu has made it clear we will not negotiate with this unity government. Although Secretary of State Clinton has still been making unsettling noises about the continuing US relationship with the PA. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info |
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WAS OSAMA A TYPICAL HUSBAND AND FATHER?
Posted by Phyllis Chesler, May 4, 2011. |
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Announcing the successful assassination of Osama Bin Laden on May 1, 2011, President Obama declared that the United States is "not — and never will be — at war with Islam....our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader, he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, Al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own." In that same speech, Obama stated that "Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader" because, according to Obama, by definition, a (good) Muslim cannot be a "mass murderer of Muslims." But this is simply not true. Muslims specialize in murdering other Muslims all the livelong day. Think of Iran's record. Think of Lebanon. Think of the way Muslim leader Moammar Qaddafi has been shooting down his own Muslim citizens at point blank range. Think of Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabian and Bahraini leaders shooting down Shia Muslim Bahrainis. When the president of the United States singled out Muslims as victims Sunday night, why did he not pause to briefly mention, even in passing, the fact that Muslims and Islamists have also slaughtered non-Muslim victims: infidels, Jews, Christians, Hindus, etc.? Prick us, will we not bleed? Do our deaths count for nothing? In his opening remarks on 5/1, Obama noted that bin Laden was responsible for the murder of thousands of "innocent men, women, and children." This was Obama's only mention of women. However, Americans were reviled at the many early media accounts and statements from officials following the assassination which reported that, when confronted by the Navy Seals, bin Laden used a woman, one of his wives, as a "human shield." Updated reports suggest that this particular wife was not used as a shield, but that she herself rushed the U.S. assaulter and was shot in the leg, but not killed. Whatever the case, this woman was acting, directly or indirectly, as a human shield for Osama. And this heinous behavior, to have a woman die before or instead of you, is not only typical of bin Laden, but typical of many Muslim Islamist and jihadic men. Muslim men often give Muslim women who were otherwise slated to be honor murdered one last chance to go out in glory — as long as they blow up Israelis, Jews, Americans, infidels with them. These mass murderers — these serial killers by proxy — have trained veiled Muslim women to blow themselves up in public squares and mosques, where other veiled Muslim women and babies are shopping. Their handlers, who are not always men, are, in a sense, hiding behind them too. Such women, especially the wives of jihadists, are trained to be very aggressive in the service of protecting their Man. I do not know whether Osama "forced" his wife to rush at the American soldiers or whether the nature of their relationship simply consisted of such one-sided female devotion-unto-death. In Growing Up Bin Laden, Osama's first wife/first cousin, Najwa bin Laden, and his fourth son, Omar bin Laden, (Najwa's son too), reveal Osama's monstrous but rather typical behavior vis-a-vis women and children, including his own. Bin Laden, the holy warrior, had four-five wives (Najwa Ghanem, Khadijah Sharif, Khairiah Sabar, Siham Sabar, and Amal Al-Sadah who replaced his annulled fifth marriage and/or his divorced wife, Khadijah Sharif). Osama fathered eleven sons and eight daughters (nineteen children), ten with Najwa alone. According to Najwa and Omar, Osama was not physically cruel to his wives. He never beat them or raised his voice to them. They were chosen for their submissiveness, passivity, and religiosity. Typically, like many Arab and Muslim men, Osama loved his mother; he may even have identified with her as a kindred outcast. His first wife, Najwa, was his mother's niece. He and Najwa lived with Osama's mother, Allia, for a long time. To Osama, women were important as breeders and domestic servants but otherwise they did not really matter, they were not important. He spent most of his time with other men, warriors, or businessmen. His first wife was fifteen years old. Osama expected a wife to "know her place." He expected his four wives to live in purdah (to observe the strictest Saudi or Afghan style face and body coverings). Despite his enormous wealth, Osama condemned his wives to very primitive living conditions, and essentially expected them to work as domestic beasts of burden. He never concerned himself with their comfort and forced them to live in austere settings with little furniture. However, his relationship to Najwa was one of mutual understanding and tenderness. Still, according to her son and co-author, Omar, even when Najwa was suffering from a difficult pregnancy, "she lived without air-conditioning in the hottest weather, without proper heating in the coldest weather, without modern appliances to store or book food or wash her family's clothes, without proper food for her children, without medical care for anyone and without a way of communicating with her mother and siblings." Najwa never complained and maintained the "sweetest composure." Osama the mighty warrior could or would not live for long without his women and children with him. He took them along into danger and privation. He dragged all his wives and children along with him, first to Saudi Arabia, then into exile, in Sudan, and Afghanistan where he literally demanded that they live in a cave. Najwa left Afghanistan two days before 9/11. At least one wife, probably his fifth wife Amal, stayed with him and accompanied him to Pakistan. She is the one who may have functioned as his "human shield" in his final confrontation with American Navy Seals. What I am about to say will probably be minimized if not dismissed by serious foreign policy wonks but here goes: according to his son, Osama's final straw in deciding to wage war on America was not his ongoing feud with the Saudi royal family, but rather the presence of infidel female soldiers on Saudi and Muslim soil, brought there to protect Saudi men. Omar writes: At the first sight of a capable-looking female soldier, my father became the most outspoken opponent of the royal decision to allow Western armies into the Kingdom, ranting, "Women! Defending Saudi men!" No insult could be worse. My father became frustrated to the point of declaring that he could not longer accept the pollution he claimed hung in the air above any non-Muslim. So much for the Muslim, Islamist leader's view of infidels and infidel women. (Think Lara Logan). And, if President Obama thinks that Osama rides alone, listen to how Muslim leaders are handling bin Laden's assassination. According to Reuters, "Palestinian" Muslim-Islamist Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said: "We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood." According to counter-terrorism guru Steven Emerson, the Muslim Brotherhood's Arabic website refers to bin Laden as a "shahid" (martyr); a popular jihadi website, the Network of World Jihad, states: "The lion Osama has died...I ask Allah to grant him the upper paradise and the company of the Prophet Mohammed and his honored companions the mujahideen." Have Ahmadinejad (Iran's Muslim leader), Hamid Karzai (Afghanistan's Muslim leader) or Asif Ali Zardari (Pakistan's Muslim leader) praised the Americans for bringing this mass murderer to justice? Have any of the many non-state terrorist Islamists praised the Americans and condemned Osama in Arabic, Persian, Pushto, and Dari? Back to the women: I understood that bin Laden, his father's seventeenth son, was starved for his father's attention and affection; he received neither. But, according to his son Omar and wife Najwa, Osama was a sadist towards his own wives and sons. He had driven fast and fancy cars and had flown in private planes but he did not allow his wives to have modern kitchen appliances or air conditioning ("modernization is corrupt"), not even in sweltering heat; he deprived his son Omar of his asthma medication; and he force-marched his sons in the desert for many hours without allowing them to drink any water. He routinely beat his sons, "caning" them for the "slightest infraction." His sons were not allowed to look him in the eye, disagree with him about anything, laugh, or "show their teeth." He sacrificed his sons to cruel, tyrannical religious teachers and to bullies. Omar writes: "It is a miracle that none of us were beaten to death." Like many Muslim fathers, he treated his sons as his personal but favorite servants and expected them to wash his feet and serve him tea. Such behavior is not that unusual for many Muslim fathers. Such paternal cruelty and coldness shames young sons and, paradoxically, leads them to long for their fathers' affection and approval even more and to minimize paternal cruelty. In fact, President Obama himself may have been a victim of this phenomenon. Obama had a Muslim African father who was known for his woman-beating, polygamy, womanizing, and for his cruelty to children; this certainly includes his abandonment of his son Barack. Obama writes about this himself. Recently, Peter Firstbrook published a book about Obama's African family: The Obamas: The Untold Story of an African Family. Paradoxically, but also typically, Osama loved and trusted one woman only: his mother Allia. His son Omar described their mother-son relationship in this way: "He had enjoyed the most pure and loving mother-son rapport from the time he was born...Everyone in our close family circle knew that he loved his mother more than he loved his wives, his siblings, or his children...Anytime he spoke of or to his mother, a sort of glow came to his expression." This, too, is typical of Arab and Muslim patriarchal psychology. As noted, Omar and Najwa chose to leave Afghanistan before 9/11 and Osama allowed them to do so. Najwa sought no divorce and although his son Omar was "pained" he could no longer deny that "my father hated his enemies more than he loved his sons. That's the moment that I felt myself the fool for wasting my life one moment longer." As others have noted, Osama bin Laden is history, but jihad is still upon us. Likewise, while bin Laden himself can no longer practice Islamic gender apartheid, the cultural system that shaped and empowered his barbarism towards women and children lives on. We must not forget that the war against Islamic extremism is one which has many forgotten faces and many underestimated fronts. Dr. Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at City University of New York. She is an author and lecturer and co-founder of the still ongoing Association for Women in Psychology (1969). Visit her website at http://pajamasmedia.com/xpress/phyllischesler/ This article is archived at
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'ARAB SPRING' OR THE GATHERING OF ARAB DARK STORM
Posted by Nurit Greenger, May 4, 2011. |
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Western society newspapers' pages were filled with the stories about the 'Arab Spring'. The headlines were screaming at us: "People in the Middle East and North Africa are standing up to reject autocracy, corruption and the extremist narrative and are seeking freedom and democracy." Is this really the story line that dominates and moves the bloody protests and the movements of the people in the Middle East? Or is it perhaps a line put out by the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremists groups who appear to be cooperating in subverting the weakened tyrants, currently in control of these artificial nation states, in a bid to be the new 'masters' of those states? The West's hope, thus claim, that the 'Arab Spring' represents a mass movement towards democratic reform of Middle East and North African government is patently false. More so this is very troubling. With the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) establishing themselves in a leadership position to be part of rewriting Egypt's Constitution, it is becoming rather crystal clear just how much influence they have on Egyptian society and what will the future of the Government of Egypt be like. So, why this false slogan and the Narrative that follows has been put out across the Main Stream Media (MSM) and where is it truly coming from? More important, who benefits from this false slogan and the narrative behind it? Seemingly, to date, the major beneficiary has been the Islamic Republic of Iran. While the MSM are busy obscuring the truth about the power struggle that is ongoing in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and the like, Iran and its henchmen are picking up the pieces and are constructing a new world order out of it. While the MSM's headlines and Narrative are clearly deceiving and false, we are finding the situation in the countries of unrest increasingly hostile to the USA and the West strategic interests. At best, with hope and pray, we may see a formation of democracy that permits one time democratic vote, but then, as I see it, the totalitarian MB will assume full control. In January 2006, the Islamic resistance of the existence of Israel — the militant group movement Hamas has taken control of Gaza Strip after it won a huge victory in the local polls. What Hamas did, they simply prevented their opposition from voting. Then Hmas ousted all Fatah officials, killed many of the Fatah members, as part of the Battle of Gaza of 2007 and ever since has been ruling Gaze with iron fist and much terror. Note: the Moslem brotherhood gave birth to Hamas, its satellite in Gaza. A repeat of the Gaza elections scenario is more likely to be the rule, not the exception in all the countries of unrest. A tribal, sectarian moslem society is not one where democracy and liberty can be formed and thrive. The 'Arab Spring' may turn to be the gathering storm. So the hopeful for democracy in the Middle East and North Africa, knock it off already.
Contact Nurit Greenger by email at nurit.nuritg@gmail.com. Visit her blog:
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WHO OVERSEES FOREIGN AID TO THE PALESTINIANS?
Posted by Mechel Samberg, May 4, 2011. |
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This was written by Alexander Joffe,
and it is archived at
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In Palestinian economics, where all the money goes is unclear — but where does all the money come from? Which U.S. programs give how much and who has legislative oversight? Now that Palestinian Authority (PA) prime minister Salaam Fayyad has announced a plan for September for unilateral Palestinian statehood, which includes a request for $5 billion over three years — and presumes that the newly announced Fatah-Hamas rapprochement does not scuttle all American aid — the problem of oversight is all the more pressing. The fundamental tension between Congress's power of the purse and the president's obligation to make foreign policy has always been clear. But so too is the extent to which certifications and waivers by the Executive blatantly circumvent the express will of Congress and defy its obligations to advise and obtain consent. The will of Congress and the empirical reality regarding the difficulties of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian society count for little when successive U.S. presidents waive requirements and certify compliance regardless of Palestinian performance. And presidential ability to "reprogram" funds removes Congress even farther from the equation. A recent Congressional Research Service study notes that since 2007 the U.S. has contributed $650 million to the Palestinian Authority for "direct budgetary assistance" and almost $400 million for "security forces and criminal justice systems" in the West Bank. Almost another $1 billion was directed through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to be "implemented by nongovernmental organizations in humanitarian assistance, economic development, democratic reform, improving water access and other infrastructure, health care, education, and vocational training." Finally, the U.S. is the largest single contributor to UNRWA and having provided over $230 million in 2010. USAID is an independent agency whose appropriations requests are made by the Department of State and submitted to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and House Committee on Foreign Affairs have oversight responsibility. The Senate exercises relevant oversight through two subcommittees called "International Development and Foreign Assistance, Economic Affairs, and International Environmental Protection," and "Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs." The House exercises oversight through the full committee and various subcommittees on "Oversight and Investigations," "Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights," Middle East and South Asia," and "Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade." Economic Support Funds provided by USAID can not go directly to the Palestinian Authority without a waiver to the Appropriations Committee from the U.S. president saying that it is in the interest of U.S. national security to provide them, and and a certification from the Secretary of State regarding the PA's treasury, payroll and civil service — all according to section 2106 of chapter 2 of title II of Public Law 109-13, a 2005 emergency supplemental defense and relief bill (and Public Law 108-199 of 2004 before it). Public Law 109-13, for example, requires, among other things, that the President certify that Palestinian security services have purged their ranks of terrorists, that the Palestinian Authority stop incitement against Israel, and that it cooperate with the US. in investigations of Yassir Arafat's finances. These waivers have been provided annually despite the fact that Palestinian incitement continues, Palestinian security forces are still laden with terrorists, and Yassir Arafat's money is still missing. Another $100 million for Palestinian security aid and institution building is allocated through a program called International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement. This is a Foreign Military Assistance program but it is also directed by the Department of State under Section 1206(f) of the 2006 National Defense Authorization Act. Much of the International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement funding for the Palestinian Authority had been "reprogrammed" by President George W. Bush, using a Presidential Determination under Chapter 8 of Part I (Section 481) of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act which states "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the President is authorized to furnish assistance to any country or international organization, on such terms and conditions as he may determine, for the control of narcotic and psychotropic drugs and other controlled substances, or for other anticrime purposes." Other presidential wavers provided additional money from the Economic Support Fund account to the Palestinian Authority. These were done under the authority of the Foreign Assistance Act which states "None of the funds made available by this Act may be obligated under an appropriation account to which they were not appropriated, except for transfers specifically provided for in this Act, unless the President, prior to the exercise of any authority contained in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to transfer funds, consults with and provides a written policy justification to the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate." In fact, the legislative system of appropriations and oversight matters very little when it comes to U.S. aid to the Palestinians: the system of foreign aid permits the president to independently "certify" or "waive" requirements introduced by Congress. It demonstrates the extent to which U.S. aid to the Palestinians is an instrument of Executive policy rather than an altruistic enterprise authorized by the Legislative branch. Of course, such methods are not unique to the Palestinian case. Congress permits presidential waivers on everything from Azerbaijan's blockage of Nagorno-Karabagh to the use of child soldiers by Chad, Congo, Sudan and Yemen. But the extent to which foreign aid to the Palestinians is a political tool of the Executive may be in a class by itself: Western and Palestinian supporters of continued aid routinely offer at least two scenarios that would unfold should aid be withdrawn or reduced: "radicalization" and "humanitarian crises." In effect the Executive branch is blackmailed. Legislation proposed in Congress to limit or condition funds to the Palestinian Authority or UNRWA are largely meaningless in this light. The "UNRWA Humanitarian Accountability Act," for example, offered by Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in 2010, demanded that UNRWA not be used by or support Palestinian terrorists. But like the appropriations bills described above, it offers the Executive branch an out by requiring only "a written determination by the Secretary of State, based on all information available after diligent inquiry, and transmitted to the appropriate congressional committees along with a detailed description of the factual basis therefore." Such a statement is a foregone conclusion. The mechanisms for Congress to review results independently, hearings, reports from Congressional staff, the Congressional Research Service, and the Government Accountability Office, have no weight except in the politics of the next appropriations cycle. Aid the Palestinians is a microcosm of the larger question of how U.S. foreign aid works. Now that Hamas will evidently join Fatah in a Palestinian Authority poised to declare statehood and request vast additional support, creating genuine Congressional oversight — with teeth — should be addressed once again. Contact Mechel Samberg at mechelsamberg2@yahoo.com |
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OSAMA'S LAST WORDS
Posted by Steven Plaut, May 4, 2011. |
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1. Osama's last words: "Oy vey, I need those Navy Seals running around my home just like I need two more holes in my head!" 2. Thought of the day: Five cheers for waterboarding! 3. "Bin Laden versus Yassin"
Op-ed: Hypocritical world that slammed killing of Hamas' Yassin now lauds bin Laden hit The flurry of international reactions to the killing of Osama bin Laden by the American army provides Israel with a great opportunity to demonstrate the double standards applied against it by so many in the Western world and elsewhere. All one has to do is compare the reactions of major institutions and leaders with those after the death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. This leader of the Hamas terrorist organization was killed by Israel in 2004. He was directly responsible for many lethal attacks on Israeli civilians including suicide bombings. On Monday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters that "the death of Osama bin Laden, announced by President (Barack) Obama last night, is a watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism." Yet after the killing of Sheikh Yassin, then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said "I do condemn the targeted assassination of Sheikh Yassin and the others who died with him. Such actions are not only contrary to international law, but they do not do anything to help the search for a peaceful solution." The now-defunct UN Commission on Human Rights condemned "the tragic death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in contravention of the Hague Convention IV of 1907." At the Security Council, the US had to use its veto power to prevent condemnation of Israel. After the bin Laden killing, the leaders of the European Council and European Commission stated that his death made the world a safer place and showed that terrorist attacks do not remain unpunished. Following the Yassin killing, then-EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana said, "This type of action does not contribute at all to create the conditions of peace. This is very, very bad news for the peace process. The policy of the European Union has been consistently condemnation of extra-judicial killing." British Prime Minister David Cameron congratulated President Obama on the success of the bin Laden assassination. Cameron considered it a massive step forward in the fight against extremist terrorism. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair also welcomed bin Laden's demise. However, the killing of Sheikh Yassin was called by the then-British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw "unacceptable" and "unjustified." The official spokesman of then-Prime Minister Blair condemned the "unlawful attack" and observed: "We have repeatedly made clear our opposition to Israel's use of targeted killings and assassinations." A case of anti-Semitism? France's President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed Bin Laden's killing as a coup in the fight against terrorism. He called President Obama, praised his determination and courage and all others who had pursued the head of al-Qaeda for 10 years. Sarkozy added that the two heads of state had agreed to continue the just and necessary fight against terrorist barbarity and those who support it. Yet after Sheikh Yassin's death, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman, Herve Ladsous, said, "France condemns the action taken against Sheikh Yassin, just as it has always condemned the principle of any extra-judicial execution as contrary to international law." Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin declared that "such acts can only feed the spiral of violence." German Chancellor Angel Merkel said at a recent press conference, "I'm glad that killing bin Laden was successful." She also called it "good news." Then Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer had stated after the killing of Sheikh Yassin that "the German government is deeply concerned about the development." Russia released a statement regarding bin Laden which the Voice of America quoted as saying that retribution inevitably reaches all terrorists and that Russia is ready to "step up" its coordination in the international fight against global terrorism." After the Yassin assassination, a foreign ministry spokesman said that Moscow was deeply concerned about the situation. President Abdullah Gul of Turkey declared that the killing of bin Laden was a message for terrorist organizations all around the world. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had called the killing of Yassin "a terrorist act" and said that "the assassination was not humane." This comparison gets even more meaningful when seen in the context of the definition of anti-Semitism as regularly used in the European Union. It was prepared by one of the EU agencies. It gives examples of the ways in which anti-Semitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel, including the following: "Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation." Israel could considerably improve its public diplomacy by using the comparison of the two killings and other comparisons of events which occur with great frequency to stress such double standards. This is one of the many ways that Israel can fend off at least part of the unjust criticism against it. Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld has published 19 books, several of these deal with anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism 4. Send a condolence card to a leftist for Bin Laden's death:
10 Leftists Who Need Condolences on the Death of their Hero Osama bin Laden Posted By Megan Fox On May 4, 2011 The Feminist Hawks' Nest Inevitably, following the general pleasure at the news the Osama bin Laden is finally residing in Hell, it will come to light that certain members of the Left are quietly miserable over his passing. They are the ones for whom evil is not really definable, terror is in the eye of the beholder and America is always wrong. In other words, most of the hard Left and virtually the entire media elite. That's a pretty big list, so I thought I should narrow it down to the ones who will be the most despondent over this delightful news for America. In accordance with the new tone of civility, NRB suggests you send a personal sympathy card to each grieving individual on the list. You can click here and email this highly appropriate condolence with just the right touch of maudlin snark. (Contact information will be provided.) 10. Patty Murray Dubbed the "dumbest woman in congress" (although I think Cynthia McKinney is suing for the rights to that title), Patty Murray once lauded bin Laden's kindness and generosity in comparison to the callous and brutal America. No, really. Trying to explain why Osama bin Laden might be popular in the Arab world while Americans were not, she said he was "building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health-care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We have not done that." Nah, America hasn't built any schools or roads or infrastructure, unless you count the 133 health clinics built by Americans at a cost of $345 million or the water treatment plants now serving almost 2 million people that cost the American taxpayers $1.6 billion or the new sewer system benefiting over 5 million people to the tune of $254 million. Nope, according to Murray we just bomb stuff and bin Laden is the real hero. To send Senator Murray a condolence card, post on her Twitter page (@PattyMurray) or her Facebook page and show her you care. After all, one man's brutal dictator is another man's fuzzy-wuzzy love-muffin who builds schools. 9. Medea Benjamin and the staff of Code Pink Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink and famed champion of the Muslim Brotherhood and bloody die-ins, is searching for meaning in the death of Bin Laden. Let us give meaning to the death of Osama Bin Laden by putting an end to the violence. Sign the petition to President Obama: Enough — Let the Peace Begin. Yes, let's search deep within ourselves to find meaning in the death of a madman who seriously had it coming. That sounds like a ginormous waste of time. While the Left is doing that, I'm going to clip more coupons to help offset the skyrocketing inflation. I can feel the peace already. What confounds me about Benjamin is for all we know she might have been working for bin Laden! But since the word "traitor" has absolutely no meaning anymore she's free to traipse about the globe stabbing her country in the back. She has hand delivered a letter from Hamas to Obama. She has hand delivered $600,000 to militant Muslim insurgents responsible for killing American soldiers. She's a courier for terror! Despite her machinations to appear glad that bin Laden is dead, I would bet it's just the opposite. You can send your deepest sympathies to Benjamin on her Twitter account (@medeabenjamin) or email info@codepinkalert.org. 8. Cynthia McKinney Former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, most famous for socking a Capitol Hill police officer in the face for asking her for ID, has a long history of embarrassing herself and her nation. But while her "Jerry Springer Show" antics were kind of funny at home, it got ugly when she took the show on the road. While trying for the second time to get through an Israeli blockade to deliver "humanitarian" supplies to Hamas (which usually amounts to large amounts of cash that gets used to buy more rockets to shoot at Israeli children) McKinney was arrested. From an Israeli prison, she penned this laugh-riot. Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else's children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza's children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state. I agree that Israel is a failed state; they failed to rid us of McKinney. I was hoping for a life sentence. Considering McKinney's hatred of Israel, she has lost a kindred spirit in bin Laden in the fight against the evil Zionists. Send your e-greeting of sympathy to McKinney via Twitter or Facebook. 7. Michael Moore Michael Moore famously stated emphatically after the towers fell that there is no terrorist threat. And since Moore doesn't believe in terrorists, it's not surprising he finds himself very concerned over Bin Laden's burial at sea. He tweeted his disapproval. OBL buried at sea according 2 Muslim tradition. Yes most Muslim funerals I've attended, we got in a chopper & tossed the deceased in L. Erie Personally I think he should be glad the special forces bullets weren't dipped in bacon fat. But more sensitivity is called for in this situation because as unhinged as Moore is, there's no telling what will push him over the edge. Moore is torn up over his favorite non-terrorist biting the dust and he deserves some sincere understanding. Send him your warmest wishes and salutations at mike@michaelmoore.com. 6. Roseanne Barr I know you've probably gone out of your way not to see or hear from Roseanne Barr since she butchered the national anthem. Me too. But if there was ever a woman crying out for help, she's it. Christian charity simply means nothing if you can't reach out to the hideously lost and so with that in mind, someone should try. Roseanne has gotten more and more bizarre over the years. Recently, she claimed the Israelis were shooting rockets at themselves. I think rockets are being fired by your own sources, since less than ten israelis have been killed by them. You are bullshitting the world as you pocket money made from arms sales, along with bibi and your agents in Hamas. step down all men in power! These kind of theories could have been written by Bin Laden himself. For all we know, that's where she got them! Maybe she was a big YouTube fan of his. I guess we'll never know. Her recent tweets suggests she's glad he's dead, but I don't think she really understood him. If she had, she would realize he supported all the same things she does like the destruction of Israel, lying about Israel and ginning up hate stories about Israel. And I heard he liked to dress up like Hitler and bake little replicas of Jews in his oven too. Send cards to Roseanne on Twitter (@TheRealRoseanne). 5. Helen Thomas Jobless and now losing a fellow anti-Semite, Helen Thomas must be in the depths of despair. Thomas has never made any secret of her hatred for Israel and support of Hamas and can always be counted on to give the Hezbollah point of view, as the late, great Tony Snow so wonderfully pointed out. The final straw that sent Thomas to the unemployment line was her caught-on-video statement regarding the Jews and her view they should return to Germany and Poland. Lovely. Unfortunately for us, Thomas couldn't be persuaded to return to Lebanon from where her parents immigrated. With the depth of feeling Thomas has in her shriveled little heart for members of terrorist organizations, bin Laden's death is sure to hit her hard. Send your sympathy greetings to helent@hearstdc.com. 4. Jane Fonda Considering how much Jane Fonda hates America and Americans at war, as evidenced by her traitorous activity in Vietnam including but not limited to posing with anti-aircraft guns that killed Americans and lying about the conditions in which our prisoners of war were kept, we're fairly certain Fonda is a sad sack upon hearing a fellow America-hater is dead. People who hate America tend to stick together. Not only does Fonda love the commies, but she's BFFs with Code Pink's Jodie Evans who personally traveled to Afghanistan and met with leaders of the Taliban! Good gracious! It makes one dizzy just thinking about the audacity of these dopes. Fonda is also a Palestinian sympathizer who once scheduled a meeting with Yassir Arafat. And even worse: [J]ust days after terrorists had killed some 3,000 people on 9/11, Fonda said that instead of retaliation, the U.S. should try to understand the "underlying reasons" behind the murderous attacks. The retaliation must be tearing her up inside. To comfort Fonda in her time of sorrow, send your e-sympathy greeting to her on Twitter (@JaneFonda). 3. Noam Chomsky It's time to play "Guess Who Said It!" Your choices are Noam Chomsky or Osama bin Laden. We should not forget that the U.S. itself is a leading terrorist state. If you guessed bin Laden, you would be wrong. Chomsky, a self-described anarchist and general America-hater is probably working furiously on a manifesto indicting the United States for breaking international law by killing bin Laden right now. Chomsky has been highly critical of the American response to Islamic terrorism and frequently downplays the 9/11 attacks: Chomsky dismisses the atrocity of 9/11 as one that was dwarfed in magnitude by Bill Clinton's 1998 missile attack on a factory in the Sudan following the bombings of two U.S. embassies by al Qaeda, in which no one was injured. Telling an MIT audience of 2,000 that the U.S. military response against the terrorists in Afghanistan was a calculated "genocide" that would cause the deaths of 3 to 4 million Afghanis, Chomsky denounced America as "the world's greatest terrorist state." He also traveled to the Muslim world to repeat the charges of U.S. genocide and terror to millions in Islamabad and New Delhi. Not surprising. It's likely that Chomsky has a pretty big soft spot for bin Laden after the murderous terrorist praised him as "one of the most capable" citizens of the United States. He could definitely use an e-card and probably some tissues. Send sympathetic musings to chomsky@mit.edu. 2. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn Pentagon bomber and attempted cop-killer Bill Ayers joined Code Pink in their protest in Gaza against the Israeli blockade when Hamas was lobbing mortars into Israel. It's pretty interesting how connected everyone on this list is. I bet they've all been to the same cocktail party a time or two where they tell Bush jokes and plot to subvert the Constitution. Ayers and his terrorist wife Bernardine Dohrn must be singing the bin Laden blues. He did what they had plotted unsuccessfully to do. You can't tell me they weren't pleased as pie to watch the Pentagon go up in smoke. These are the same people who thought Charles Manson, who randomly and brutally killed a pregnant Sharon Tate, her husband and their friends for no reason other than he is a complete psycho, was a freedom fighter. "First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into the victim's stomach! Wild!" In greeting each other, delegates to the war council often spread their fingers to signify the fork. Ayers is famous for equally alarming statements. Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents. Osama bin Laden is clearly a kindred spirit with these two American terrorists and I assume, much like their unwavering love for communist dictators, bin Laden won't be left out of their list of "greats." To send your regards, contact Ayers and Dohrn at bayers@uic.edu. 1. Louis Farrakhan Often called the craziest bastard on earth (okay, maybe just by me), Louis Farrakhan tops the list of those who are mourning the death of the last craziest bastard on earth. (It is also important to note that Farrakhan and Bill Ayers live in Obama's Chicago neighborhood. Coincidence? Or have we at last located the doorway to Hell right in the heart of Hyde Park? Somebody alert George Noory!) Now that bin Laden is dead, Farrakhan can take his place in the outrageous Jew-hating category. Some of you think that I'm just somebody who's got something out for the Jewish people. You're stupid. Do you think I would waste my time if I did not think it was important for you to know Satan? My job is to pull the cover off of Satan so that he will never deceive you and the people of the world again. Losing a soul-brother like bin Laden is going to leave a serious hole in Farrakhan's pool of resources for new material against Jews. Luckily, he still has his alien friends. You can reach out to him via Twitter (@TheOfficialHMLF). Leave your suggestions in the comment section for other leftists who could use our comfort and sympathy as they mourn the death of their terrorist hero, Osama bin Laden. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments — both seriously and
satirically — on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. Write him at splaut@gmail.com His website address is
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ALMOST-IDF CHIEF OF STAFF GALANT SHARES HIS DEFENSE PHILOSOPHY
Posted by Arutz-7, May 4, 2011. |
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This was written by David Lev. |
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In his first public comments since he was removed as a candidate for IDF Chief of Staff at the last minute, Yoav Galant on Tuesday said that the revolutions in the Arab world were not positive developments for Israel. "In the best case, these countries will emerge with the same kinds of leaders that were deposed, but in the less positive cases, Islamic elements will join the governments in these countries. "There is no liberal Arab leader waiting in the wings in the U.S., Canada or Iran to institute Western reforms for these countries. For Israel, I do not foresee a better future with these new rulers than we had with the old ones," he said. Galant was speaking at Bar-Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies on the occasion of the publishing of his new book, "Israel versus Iran." Galant dedicated a good portion of his speech to Iran, saying that "Iran is constantly attacking us in various ways. They recruit agents and attempt to incite division and strife between us and the Arab nations. Part of this strategy has to do with the struggle between Iran and Iraq — better that the Arabs fight us than they fight Iran, Tehran says." Galant said that Israel needed to develop a defense strategy that would appropriate for the various fronts it faces — and not all fronts are the same. For example, he said, "Hamas is our most aggressive enemy, but also our weakest enemy. This is a good place for the IDF to conduct exercises and drills so we can apply the lessons learned there to other fronts." He added that Hamas' weapons and rockets were improving, but that Israel was ready for them. The speech was a sampling of what Israel could have expected from its IDF Chief of Staff if things had gone differently. Galant was the leading candidate for the post and actually was appointed Chief of Staff — until two weeks before he was to take the job, when he was essentially fired by Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu over allegations that he had taken over state property at his home in Amikam.
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THE PALIN DOCTRINE ON THE USE OF FORCE
Posted by Ted Belman, May 4, 2011. |
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On Sunday, Sarah Palin was the Keynote Speaker in Denver at an event to honour America's military families. Here's a transcript of the Palin Doctrine which she articulated there. A lesson here then for effective use of force, as opposed to sending our troops on missions that are ill-defined. And it can be argued that our involvement elsewhere, say, in Libya, is an example of a lack of clarity. If she becomes President, I hope whe will allow the IDF to "fight to win with overwhelming force with the objective to defeat the enemy as quickly as possible". What a welcome change that would be. POLITICO reported today Palin splits with neocon advisers Sarah Palin has parted ways with the neoconservative foreign policy advisers who had been writing speeches and advising her on policy since she joined the McCain campaign. Ted Belman is a retired lawyer and the Editor of Israpundit. He made aliya from Canada last year and now lives in Jerusalem, Israel. Contact him at tedbel@rogers.com |
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FATAH: SAN REMO IS SOURCE OF PALESTINIAN DILEMMA
Posted by IMRA, May 4, 2011. |
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This is a news item from Wafa
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RAMALLAH, April 25, 2011 (WAFA) — Fatah movement considered San Remo Conference in 1920 the root of all Palestinian catastrophes and sufferings, in its statement for the Mobilization and Organization Commission published on Monday marking the 25th anniversary of the conference. In San Remo conference, the principal allied powers of World War I agreed to entrust the administration of Palestine to the British Mandatory which will be responsible for putting into effect the Belford Declaration of the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. "It's not strange that Zionist gangs considered San Remo Conference as the 'Magna Carta' of the Jews; reference to the famous British charter by which most monarchy authority were omitted, which was supported by Britain, France, Italy and Japan, the statement said. It added that the increase in number of countries recognizing the Palestinian state indicates the righteousness of our cause, and out right in self-determination. Fatah called on US, Israel's main ally, Britain, the international community and the world's human rights to end Israeli aggression against Palestinians and to recognize the Palestinian state within 1967 boarders before September entitlement. R.Q./F.R.
Dr. Aaron Lerner is Director of IMRA, Independent Media Review and Analysis, an Israel-based news organization which provides an extensive digest of media, polls and significant interviews and events relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Its website address is http://www.imra.org.il Write him at imra@netvision.net.il |
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B'AHAVAT ZION
Posted by Yehudit Tayar, May 4, 2011. | ||
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B"H These poems were written during the time during the Yom Kippur War and after when I struggled between despair and hope and prayer following the IDF reporting to me that my husband was MIA.
I was alone with a new baby when Ami left on Yom Kippur and was informed of his being MIA a week and a half before what was to be our first anniversary — trying to be a Mommy to our new daughter I kept holding her and promising — praying that she would see her Daddy again.
I only recently told my husband and family about the
book and what I wrote and I dedicate these words and prayers to our
MIA's and their families. I who lived through this nightmare can never
forget and daily pray for each of our missing and their families. And
for our brother Yonatan Pollard to finally be released and brought
home.
Contact Yehudit Tayar by email at tayarf@bezeqint.net
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WILL THERE BE HOPE IN TRUTH ?? THIS IS GAINING TRACTION, ULSTER MAN IS A VIABLE SOURCE.
Posted by Peggy Gilliam, May 3, 2011. |
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This is called "Mainstream Media And "Insider" Report Differ" and it was written by Sharon Rondeau. |
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(May 3, 2011) — A report which is quickly gaining traction on the web suggests that Obama did not want to take out Osama bin Laden but was overridden by senior military commanders who ordered Navy Seals to carry out the successful operation. Several reports lead back to Ulsterman, a writer claiming to have direct contact with a White House insider who has been revealing the machinations of the Obama regime and discord among senior executive branch officials. Ulsterman's report of May 2, 2011 indicated that Obama and his adviser, Valerie Jarrett, did not want the military to kill Osama bin Laden and that Obama did not issue the order to do so. Before Obama revealed an image purported to be a certified copy of his original birth certificate from Hawaii on April 27, Ulsterman had covered the eligibility question and other issues such as Obama's Marxist background. Media sources concede that those who doubted Obama's eligibility might still not be convinced because of questions surrounding his possible Indonesian citizenship and the need for authentication of the image released last Wednesday. Mainstream editorials masquerading as news reports say that Obama "had ordered a successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden" that "was a political coup that will yield him benefits for months, perhaps years, to come." They state that Obama gave the order which resulted in bin Laden's death. A third report stated that "According to administration officials, the president took an increasingly hands-on role during the past two months — chairing nearly a half dozen national security meetings — as U.S. forces inched closer to launching the mission. Obama said that he authorized the operation last week, and gave the final orders Sunday." One report states that Obama was golfing but cut short his usual 18-hole session to return to the White House for a final meeting. Was he summoned by senior military members, or did he head the meeting? Why did he walk into the Oval Office in golf shoes? The military members who killed bin Laden are reportedly "an elite special forces group unofficially called Seal Team 6." Blogger Nobarack has published a long-form birth certificate from Hawaii which contains a section at the bottom not found in Obama's release. The official statement issued by the White House said that "in the earliest days of the administration, the President formally instructed the intelligence community and his counterterrorism advisors to make the pursuit of Osama bin Laden, as the leader of al Qaeda, as a top priority." The leader of Hamas condemned bin Laden's assassination, labeling bin Laden "a Holy Warrior." If the military acted on its own, without an order from Obama, what, if anything, does that mean in regard to Obama's continued presence in the White House? Does the military regard Obama as legitimate? Obama refused to answer Lt. Col. Terry Lakin's questions and military officers sent Lakin to Ft. Leavenworth rather than allow him discovery. Last week, Obama released an image of an alleged birth certificate, the authenticity of which was questioned immediately. The Post & Email contacted LCDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III regarding the recent Ulsterman story. 
Does Obama resemble the leader of the free world or a childish narcissist whose golf game was interrupted by top military advisors? LCDR FITZPATRICK: I read the report, and it is completely consistent with what I would expect to have happen. MRS. RONDEAU: It is? LCDR FITZPATRICK: Yes, and the significance of this is enormous. You might not remember this, but I do, about the Somali pirates that took the Maersk Alabama. They boarded the ship and took hostages, and they got into the lifeboat. Then the U.S.S. Bainbridge came onto the scene, a U.S. Navy ship, and eventually a couple of Navy Seals picked these clowns off in the lifeboat. The Somali pirates were shot dead after having kidnapped the captain of the ship. The pirates reported themselves as being from Somalia, and they went out and captured the merchantman named Maersk Alabama. It ended up that they were in the lifeboat. The crew of the Alabama fought back, and these guys got away with the captain of the ship. The Navy came onto the scene, and the ship had Navy Seals on board. There were Navy Seals who took the shots and killed the men in the lifeboat who had held the captain captive. Obama hadn't wanted those guys shot; he didn't want the Seals to take the shot. But they did, and Obama was furious. Then soon after that, there were three Navy Seals who were brought up on charges from a separate incident. They were going to court-martial these guys. I had it all over The Jaghunter that they were going to court-martial them. They backed away from it, but Obama had the Seals and himself at cross-purposes, and they have been for a long time. Then you get this information last night, and it's consistent. If the Seals had an opportunity to go after bin Laden and they were told not to from the White House, and they said, "No, we're going in anyway," that's a very big deal. I do not believe that the Seals would have their name tied to this unless they were really the unit that took out Osama bin Laden. You don't just cavalierly assign or name the Seals in an operation like that. I believe they were involved, and the person whose name I gave you is directly tied into this warfare community in a way that I'm not and would be able to tell you more about what he is hearing. But it came in last night; I'm looking at it...I've told you before that there are people in the military and there are people in every other federal organization that we've talked about who know that Mr. Obama is an outlaw. There are people in the military who are really ticked-off about that, and this is completely in keeping with the kind of attitude that is invested in military men and women who believe that Obama is an unconstitutional commander-in-chief and, at the same time, have had enough of this political game. They had a chance to take out Osama bin Laden, and they're not going to take any nonsense from the White House; they're just going to go in and do it. Now as this story unfolds, and it will, that notion is going to build and build and build. It will be interesting to see who the personalities are who are involved in this. I believe that Mr. Obama is in descent. I believe that he is on his way out the door. Another aspect to this which is consistent with what I think is going on is that I believe that people in the military know that he's not going to last very much longer and that he's not the commander-in-chief. He's a fake. If they had a shot to take Osama bin Laden and they went to the White House to get permission to do that and the answer came back, "No," then it was "Excuse me, but you aren't the head of the ship anymore." I put it up at The Jaghunter, and I haven't had this kind of traffic for a long, long time. It's going viral. The story has been picked up by a lot of people. It's making the rounds. Mr. Obama was born in Mombasa, Kenya. He's not lawfully holding office in the White House, and there are military people who know that and they do not recognize his authority. They also recognize that Mr. Obama is committing acts of treason against this country, and what you saw within the last week was, "We've had enough of you and your decisions and the people who are in the White House." In other words, the military knows enough, and the Seals community would be just that group of people. They don't take prisoners; these guys mean what they say and say what they mean. From what I understand, there was increased intelligence coming out of interrogations at Guantanamo Bay; that's run by the Navy. And you know there are Seals down at Gitmo. So this makes complete sense to me. This is the United States Armed Forces standing up to Mr. Obama and saying to him, "You're not my commander-in-chief." MRS. RONDEAU: I had to read your story twice. After the second time, I realized there was a larger ramification if the military acted on its own to take out bin Laden. LCDR FITZPATRICK: These are people in the military who are standing up and saying, "You're not my commander-in-chief." They're ticked off about Terry Lakin being locked up; they're ticked off about how our government has been running; they're ticked off about all of the things that you and I are ticked off about. And this is one segment of the military that doesn't take nonsense from anyone. If I felt bad about anything that was in the narrative, I wouldn't have published it, but I read it and had it up instantly. It laid it all out, and this is the way that the military works. MRS. RONDEAU: Would you say that you have expected this as things have been building up? LCDR FITZPATRICK: I expected something as a flashback. I expected that at some point, somewhere, someone in the military was going to stand up and say, "Mr. Obama, you can go to Hades. We've had enough." And this opportunity was just too big a deal to follow his orders. Because they went to the White House to get permission and didn't receive it — it wasn't that they expected to receive it; they knew what the answer was going to be, and they were going to act on what they knew — going after OBL was a really big deal. He really was a threat to the national security, and there are military people who recognize that and were willing to risk their careers to take out Osama bin Laden because they realize that that is more important than their careers, and they probably realize also that if Obama tried to take them out at this point, that it would just accelerate his decline. I'll tell you something else: I think it's being leaked because people in the military want Obama gone. This is completely in keeping with everything that you would expect to have happen. It makes sense to me. This was just one order that they could not accept. They knew they had the guy; they had the intel; they acted on it; they said, "We don't care what Obama says; we're going to take this guy out." And then they did, and they don't care what happens to them now. And I don't think anything is going to happen. By the time I got this, Obama has already taken credit for this. "Oh, yeah, we meant to do this all the time." So Obama is not going to go after any military commander, and then the information was leaked. So they know they have Obama cross-wired. Obama is stuck right now and the military knows that. It's been leaked out. These are the kinds of conversations that would go on in the environment we have today. MRS. RONDEAU: What do you think will happen from here? LCDR FITZPATRICK: I think it will build from here. I think that the information has been leaked so that it will build from here. I think that there are military men and women who are really ticked off about Obama having gone into Libya. MRS. RONDEAU: Does that mean that some of them still read or understand the U.S. Constitution? LCDR FITZPATRICK: Yes, there are military commanders whom I know, and this was an opportunity for them to step in and say, "We're going to take the shot." This is something that Obama can't stop. And this is a message for Mr. Obama, which is that he's not in control of his armed forces anymore, and that is a very, very, very significant detail. That's huge. If they don't recognize Mr. Obama as the commander-in-chief, then all that can happen for Mr. Obama is bad. There are going to have to be other military people to make the same observation,and they're going to have to make this publicly. It is also consistent with what you've been writing and what I've been picking up on. Mr. Obama is found out. The military knows that Mr. Obama is an outlaw. They know that he is not commander-in-chief. That document that he put out on the internet the other day is a fake. Now imagine that you're in the United States Armed Forces today, and you see this, and you're a military commander, a senior officer, and you know what's been going out there and what's been said about this, and you know that it's been an issue building and building and building...See, Mr. Obama cannot get away from the fact that he has now tried to pull the wool over our eyes again. The military has been challenged, as you know, with Operation American Freedom. Every single military man and woman, whatever their rank, if they took the oath to the Constitution of the United States, they have an obligation to do something about finding out whether Mr. Obama is legit. That was written two years ago. Now, don't you think that their obligation is multiplied by a very large number? You have people in the military who are intelligence experts who are going to their boss and saying, "Excuse me, but that 'document' that was put out on the internet is a fraud." The military commanders are now forced into a situation where they either have to act as they have acted or risk going along with this Mr. Obama for a while longer. I don't think anybody in the military who's in a position to know better is going to go along with this man anymore. He's just crossed a line that he can't back over. Now, any military commander can stand up and say, "We know that he is a fake." MRS. RONDEAU: The American people saw hints of this when General McChrystal tried to meet with Obama and had to take a plane to catch up to Obama, who had gone to Denmark. He needed approval for something, and Obama would not give McChrystal the time of day. Editor's Note: McChrystal has since retired after having been "dismissed" by Obama for making alleged disparaging remarks about Obama and his National Security team. LCDR FITZPATRICK: Again, you have people on both sides of the fence in the military. People have asked me, "What does the force structure look like on either side?" and I've told them, "I don't know what I don't know." It's been a year now since that citizen's arrest warrant went out, and I had named military commanders then. Mike Mullen was one of the people whom I named, because Mullen knows better. At some point, the military has to speak out. We know what the pressure looks like that's coming from the veterans. I think this has been a culmination of a lot of different kinds of things. Military folk have been looking for the opportunity to out Obama, and now they have it. And they had it in a way that it's a win-win situation for the country; it's a win-win situation for the Navy Seals; it's a win-win situation for the United States Armed Forces. There are very smart people in our military, and those smart people on the good side, the guys with the white hats, said, "This is our chance." And now they're leaking it, and it's just going to blow up from here. This is in the hands of two sitting grand juries; what they're going to do with it remains to be seen. The U.S. Attorney in Knoxville knows what's going on, and he knows that Obama is at the point where he cannot recover. He is out the door. And Trump is going after Obama. Obama made a very big deal of trying to play this off on The View, where he was making fun of it, and then that night he was at the White House Correspondents' Dinner gathering, and he took a swipe at Trump. Well, Trump is one angry guy right now. Dr. Jerome Corsi is plugged in to people in the military. It is consistent with what you see in the beginning of the decline of the rich and famous. Obama has been found out. You know that the vets are just pounding the door at the Pentagon, asking, "How can you now remain silent?" Well, they're not remaining silent. He's committing treason, and people in the military know that, and they've had enough. He really is committing the act of treason, and they can't go along with him anymore. The majority of people in this country believe that Mr. Obama is an outlaw, and that's what it took. It took for us to get to this point after 2+ years for Obama to do enough things so that the country is largely against him. People in the military know that. They knew that their actions would be backed by the American people completely, and they took the shot. MRS. RONDEAU: In Honduras, the president tried to override the country's constitution to stay in office indefinitely, and the Supreme Court and military ousted him, saying, "No, you're not." That had the support of the people. LCDR FITZPATRICK: Those people who were in a position to take action and wanted to take action knew that they needed the permission of the American people before they would stand up in the way that they just stood up. There is no place for this man to run. He is blatantly an outlaw. Watch how this thing unfolds. MRS. RONDEAU: There's no reason for someone to release a forgery if he has the real thing. LCDR FITZPATRICK: Obama feels pressure coming from everywhere. He tried to put the genie back in the bottle and in doing what he did, has only hurt himself more. The military knows that they have been put on notice. Operation American Freedom has been out there for two years. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that that is the notice. What I am saying is that it is but one notice out there where we've know that the military had an obligation to vet this guy. The vetting process to get a top-secret clearance, which I've held, is extraordinary, and they would have gone into this man's background and found out...and they probably did! The military, in the day, did not believe that they had the backing of the people. Barack Obama is not black; he's a mulatto; but he is being played off as the "first black president." The military wasn't going to go after him and give up what they know about this guy until they had the support of the people. They're looking at the poll numbers, which no longer show that Obama enjoys the favor of the majority of the country. MRS. RONDEAU: No, not now. LCDR FITZPATRICK: The military knows what the real numbers look like. So they knew that in taking out Osama in Laden, Obama would try to take credit. They set him up. Now they're releasing information about how this really went down, just as they released information about how they got the Somali pirates and what happened to the Navy Seals that they were going to court-martial but didn't. They played this thing beautifully. I put this thing up at The Jaghunter and sent it to the SEAL whose name I gave you, and he said, "Wow, this is really big." And it really is.
Contact Peggy Gilliam by email to pgilliam08@yahoo.com
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TERRORISM: U.S. GAVE $BILLIONS TO TRAIN, EQUIP FOREIGN POLICE FORCES
Posted by Jim Kouri, May 3, 2011. |
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This week, the Government Accountability Office submitted a report to the U.S. Congress addressing the foreign aid earmarked for police agencies in nations such as Pakistan that deal with terrorism, narcotics trafficking and other criminal activities. The rationale for such aid is that these terrorists, narco-terrorists and criminal enterprises have an impact on U.S. national security. Over the past few years, the United States has increased its emphasis on training and equipping foreign police as a means of supporting a wide range of U.S. foreign-policy goals, including countering terrorists overseas and stopping the flow of narcotics to the United States. Funding for these activities has increased significantly since the GAO last reported on these issues in 1992. In response to congressional request, GAO analysts estimated the amount of the funding the U.S. government provided for activities to train and equip foreign police, referred to as "police assistance," during fiscal year 2009. Also, the GAO defined "police" as all law-enforcement units or personnel with arrest, investigative, or interdiction authorities. During fiscal year 2009, seven U.S. federal agencies and 24 components within them funded or implemented police-assistance activities to support their counter-narcotics, counterterrorism, and anti-crime missions. Five of these agencies provided an estimated $3.5 billion for police assistance to 107 countries in fiscal year 2009. This amount compares to about $180 million in inflation adjusted dollars provided for these efforts in 1990, when the GAO last compiled a similar inventory. The U.S. Departments of Defense and State provided an estimated 97 percent of all U.S. government funds ($3.4 billion) for police assistance; DOD provided about 55 percent of the total and State about 42 percent. Department of Energy and the Department of Justice provided the remaining 3 percent of U.S. funds for activities such as procuring nuclear detection devices and training law-enforcement officers on their use, establishing community-based police training programs, and developing terrorist crime-scene investigation capabilities. Jim Kouri, CPP, is Fifth Vice-President of the National Association of Chiefs of Police (copmagazine@aol.com). |
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COMPETING VISIONS OF 'NEVER AGAIN'
Posted by Laura, May 3, 2011. |
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In the end, the Holocaust raged until the Allied powers won the war. It didn't have to be that way. |
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In the end, the Holocaust raged until the Allied powers won the war. It didn't have to be that way. In the end, the Holocaust raged until the Allied powers won the war. It didn't have to be that way. If the Jews had been permitted to leave Europe, the Holocaust could have been averted. But the only place that wanted us wasn't allowed to take us. The nations of the world closed their gates. Only the Jews in the Land of Israel wanted the Jews of Europe. But the British barred their arrival. Britain was required by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine to facilitate Jewish immigration to the Jewish national homeland in order to advance the cause of Jewish sovereignty. But legal obligations couldn't compete with Britain's belief that its national interests lay with the Arabs. So from 1939 on, the British closed the doors of the Land of Israel to the Jewish people. In so doing, they effectively sealed the fate of six million Jews. Both the US and Britain were aware of what the Nazis were up to almost from the beginning, but refused to take any effective action to save the Jews. They refused to bomb the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz, or the crematoria at the death camp. They refused to bomb Auschwitz even though Allied pilots were sent on bombing missions five miles away. Likewise, they refused to bomb any of the scores of death camps dotting the landscape of Nazi-occupied Europe. There were two main reasons that the Allies behaved as they did. First, they were none too fond of Jews. It is not that the Americans or British supported their annihilation, but they weren't bothered by it sufficiently to do anything to stop it. Anti-Semitism is not the main reason the Allies did nothing. The main reason was because, love us or hate us, the allies couldn't figure out why they should care. Dead or alive, Jews weren't a part of their war plans. For Britain, the goal of the war was to survive. For the Americans it was to defend the cause of freedom and pave the way for America's emergence as leader of the free world. Jewish survival was not considered relevant to achieving these goals, so the Allies stood by as the ghettos were liquidated and the gas chambers began operating at full capacity.
AFTER THE war, world Jewry adopted "Never Again," as our rallying cry. But "Never Again," is just a slogan. It fell to the leaders of the Jewish people to conceive the means to prevent a recurrence of the Holocaust. These leaders came up with two very different strategies for protecting Jews from genocide, and their followers formed separate camps. Whereas in the early years, the separate positions appeared to complement each other, since the 1970s the gulf between them has grown ever wider. Indeed, many of the divisions in world Jewry today originate in this post-Holocaust policy divide. The first strategy was based on international law and human rights. Its champions argued that the reason the Allies didn't save the Jews was because the laws enjoining the Allies to rescue us on the one hand, and prohibiting the Nazis from killing us on the other were insufficiently strong. If they could promulgate a new global regime of international humanitarian law, they believed they could force governments to rise above their hatreds and the shackles of their narrow-minded national interests to save innocents from slaughter. Not only would their vision protect the Jews, it would protect everyone. The Jews who subscribed to the human-rights strategy for preventing another Holocaust were the architects of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention. They were the founders of the international human rights regime that now dominates so much of Western discourse on war and peace. Unfortunately, the institutions these idealistic Jews designed have been corrupted by political forces they had hoped to defeat. Consequently, the international human-rights regime they created has failed completely to accomplish what they hoped it would accomplish. Instead, the regime they created to protect the Jews is now a key weapon in the political war being waged against them. Jews are not the only casualty of the human-rights policy paradigm's failure. Cambodians, Rwandans, Darfuris and others can also attest to its collapse. There are two reasons that the human-rights paradigm has broken down. The first is because it failed to recognize the adaptability of Jew hatred. Anti-Semitism is one of the hardest hatreds to pin down because it is constantly updating itself to suit the political and social trends of the day. Since Nazi-style anti-Semitism went out of fashion with the defeat of Germany, the human-rights visionaries believed that people would be embarrassed into putting the hatred aside. Instead, guided by the Soviets, Jew-haters worldwide simply updated their language. They stopped talking about Jewish control over world affairs and began talking about Zionist control over world affairs. Unlike the Europeans, Arab Jew-haters feel no social obligation to hide their antipathy for the Jews from their own societies. But recognizing where the West stands on the issue, they have added the post-war, socially acceptable form of anti-Semitism — anti-Zionism — to their repertoire. For instance, alongside its allegations about Jewish and Freemason conspiracies to take over the world, and its citations of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Hamas charter also includes a paragraph devoted to Zionist apartheid, genocide, imperialism, and human-rights abuses. When the Palestinians' Western sympathizers in the media, foreign service, academia, etc. report on Palestinian accusations against Israel, they eagerly credit as fact demonstrably false allegations by Palestinian spokesmen of Israeli human-rights abuses, genocide and apartheid. Tellingly though, those Westerners are silent when the same Palestinian officials they treat as respectable for alleging Zionist criminal conspiracies also engage in politically incorrect anti-Semitic attacks. Their claims that Israelis poison their wells and infect their children with AIDS are left unremarked. This Western cherry picking of Jewish conspiracy theories by politically savvy Western Jew-haters demonstrates the absurdity of the claim that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. Like old-fashioned Jew-hatred, anti-Zionism inverts the reality of Jewish vulnerability and victimization in order to justify irrational hatred of Jews and deny basic rights of self-defense to Jewish victims. The anti-Semites' corruption of the human-rights paradigm in the service of their Jew-hating agendas is certainly a major reason the human rights model for genocide prevention has failed. But it is not the only cause of the failure. The other reason the model has failed is because it is premised on a naïve and incorrect understanding of statecraft. Champions of human rights and humanitarian law believed that if laws were placed on the books, if international conventions were ratified by democracies, then the world would abide by them. But this is not the case. Just as the British ignored their international legal obligations to facilitate Jewish settlement of the Land of Israel when they felt it served their interests to favor the Arabs, so today governments routinely ignore their international legal obligations if abiding by them runs contrary to their perception of their interests. This truth was laid bare last December, with the Nixon Library's release of a taped March 1973 conversation between then-president Richard Nixon and then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger regarding the prospect of a Soviet genocide of Soviet Jews. Kissinger opined: "If they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern." Nixon responded, "I know. We can't blow up the world because of it." Their views were not merely testament to the two men's indifference toward the fate of Soviet Jews. They are instructive because they show how leaders prioritize their policies. Nixon and Kissinger probably opposed the genocide of Soviet Jewry, but it was more important to avoid a policy that could "blow up the world." By the same token, the US opted to do nothing in the face of the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and Darfur, among others. US and European treatment of Jews specifically, and of the incidents of genocide generally since the Holocaust make clear that the twin presumptions of the human-rights paradigm were wrong. Anti-Semitism is not a curable disease. Israel is the target of an anti-Semitic, genocidal political campaign that employs the language of human rights to justify itself. And otherwise moral men and women simply ignore evil when they believe their interests are best served by not standing up to it. A secondary casualty of the failure of the human rights paradigm has been intra-Jewish relations. Faced with their preferred paradigm's failure and corruption at the hands of anti-Semites, many Jewish human-rights activists have opted to abandon their fellow Jews and Israel in order to maintain their allegiance to the corrupt, anti-Semitic human-rights model.
PARTICULARLY ANNOYING to these human-rights followers is the stunning success of the other post-Holocaust Jewish strategy for giving meaning to the slogan "Never Again." That policy is Zionism. Zionism doesn't concern itself with how people ought to behave, but with what they are capable of doing. Zionists understand that people are an amalgamation of passions and interests. The Holocaust was able to occur because the only people with a permanent passion and interest in defending the Jews are the Jews. And when the Nazis rose to power, the Jews were homeless and powerless. Jews who embrace the human-rights approach criticize Zionism's vision as lonely and militaristic. What they fail to recognize is that every successful nation depends on itself, and lives by the sword. Only those who deter aggressors are capable of attracting allies. No one will stand with a nation that will not stand up for itself. Holocaust Remembrance Day, which we marked on Monday, is nestled between Pessah and Independence Day for a reason. In both ancient and modern times, the only way for Jews — or anyone else — to protect their freedom and their lives is by being capable of defending them, in their own land. The pseudo human-rights campaign against Israel being carried out in the name of fashionable anti-Zionist anti-Semitism represents a complete vindication of the Zionist model. Zionism is the only way to ensure Jewish survival. It is the only way to ensure that in the face of growing threats, "Never Again" will mean never again.
Contact Laura at LEL817@yahoo.com
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SACRIFICIAL LAMB
Posted by Ari Bussel, May 3, 2011. |
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I read a detailed account of the immensely detailed work that went into locating Osama Bin Laden and serving him with a message from the United States of America, a business card that read: Final Justice Served. Something, though, cannot escape my mind: the thought that Bin Laden successfully avoided the most sophisticated tracing system in the world for ten long years. Time after time he re-emerged from his "cave" with communiqués to the Western World, and despite repeated attempts, was never foiled. Not until today. The setting in the first quarter of 2011 is nothing short of historical. Country after country throughout the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab Peninsula is changing and evolving. It was not easy to get rid of Mubarak. He refused to leave and showed loyalty to his country, but the foreign elements undermining his reign were simply too powerful. His inability to play their games led to his demise. Gaddafi however still survives, despite NATO's full-scale war against him, including attempts at targeted assassinations that are yet to achieve anything but to anger him and the Arab World. Try as they might, they only kill others, while Gaddafi manages to escape time after time. Anyone believing such attempts will remain unreciprocated is at best naïve. Assad, having learned the lesson from his predecessors in the Middle East upheaval, has stopped at nothing, cutting off electricity and water to rebelling cities, using tanks, artillery and sharp shooters to send messages and overcome the rebels. He is determined to remain in power, as his father before him. What if the information that eventually led to the visit to Osama's mansion were leaked and solidified by sources that decided to sacrifice Bin Laden for the greater good? For Radical Muslims, people are the cheapest commodity and the first to be used. Hezbollah brave warriors use civilians as a shield, Hamas "liberators" grab children to avoid hits, Palestinians use holy places, like the Church of the Nativity, as a refuge (desecrating it during use) and Ahmadinejad has stated that fifty million dead Iranians are a small price to pay if Israel attacks, in the fight against the Zionist regime. Thus, a calculated move of disclosing Bin Laden's hideout would be more than probable — it is both practical and also may bear the desired results. For some odd reason, the Spring or Youth Revolution failed at inciting the masses against Israel, its normal unifying and distracting force. Regime after regime seems to fail, and nothing is able to stop this domino effect. The Arab rulers are afraid and will use every means at their disposal to protect their reigns. Bin Laden is a small price to pay; he has caused too much trouble already. It is not that they do not subscribe to his methods or support Al Qaeda monetarily and otherwise. On the contrary, supporting any action against the West is holy work. They cheered as the Twin Towers collapsed within a short time on Tuesday morning, September 11th, 2001. Their wives and numerous children celebrated and glowed for days over this victory. But now their own survival is on the line, and it is easier to sacrifice someone else. In fact, it is his duty to die for their cause. Americans cheering in the streets, pictures from Washington, D.C., in the middle of the night abound. America is proud, her President is floating on cloud nine — it happened on his watch, and he is harvesting the acclaim. Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) "welcomed the elimination of Osama Bin Laden." He was quick to issue a press release saying, "As we have stated repeatedly since the 9/11 terror attacks, bin Laden never represented Muslims or Islam. In fact, in addition to the killing of thousands of Americans, he and Al Qaeda caused the deaths of countless Muslims worldwide." Hooper did not miss an opportunity to highlight his organization's stealth objective and added: "We also reiterate President Obama's clear statement tonight that the United States is not at war with Islam." No one said it better than Hamas. The Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya denounced the assassination of Sheikh Bin Laden, a "spiritual leader and an Arab holy worrier," by US special forces in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, saying: "If these news are true, then this means that its part of the American policy based on the oppression and bloodshed in the Muslim and Arab world." Without doubt, there will be repercussions. The Islamists do not need excuses to murder, but Bin Laden's assassination provides a galvanizing force to attack the large Satan (and his Zionist helper). The real question now is will the attention of the Arab World be directed toward retaliation. Is Bin Laden a sufficient sacrifice? Will the troops rally behind their generation-old leaders (dictators) or will the demand for "Change" and "Hope" continue to fester and spoil the status quo? Possibly the question is a different one: Does Iran feel this is the moment to go on the offensive, not because of Bin Laden, but given its own timeline of advancing to conquer the world and usher in a global Islamic caliphate? I do not know, but I am confident we will soon know the answer. Iran has not stopped its advances, its determination is nothing short of admirable and its abilities are frightening. A day will come when history will judge a particular moment as pivotal. Our responsibility is to look beyond the news and see the greater picture. At the moment, we stand with great humility in light of the astonishing success and are thankful for the bravery of the men and women who always remain nameless. Contact Ari Bussel and Norma Zager at busselari@gmail.com |
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ISLAM'S CHRISTIAN SCAPEGOATS; AMERICAN FRIENDS OF PEACE NOW ON HAMAS-FATAH PACT
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 2, 2011. |
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ISLAM'S CHRISTIAN SCAPEGOATS The government of Pakistan ostracizes and impoverishes the Christian minority, Muslim youths abuse Christians in public, and blasphemy laws are enforced against Christians who mean no harm. Add anti-Americanism to the motives behind Islamic persecution of Christians there. For example, when the U.S. launches UAVs to bomb terrorists along the Afghanistan border, Pakistani Muslims blame local Christians, because the U.S. is a country largely Christian. Muslim tradition considers, "All infidels are one religion." As a result, Muslims revenge themselves upon the helpless Christians in their midst. When Pope Benedict quoted history unfavorable to Islam, Muslims burned churches and murdered a nun abroad. When an American pastor burned a Koran, Muslims in Afghanistan murdered UN aid workers. Muslims in Baghdad made ridiculous accusations against the Coptic Church, al-Qaeda threatened all Christians everywhere they can be caught. Muslims in Baghdad murdered a few dozen Christians. After a Christian was accused of dating a Muslim woman in Egypt, a Muslim mob set fire to 22 houses of Christian in that town. In a more recent case, about a dozen Copts were attacked and their property was looted and burned. The tradition of responding to some grievance against certain Christians by attacking other Christians arose from the Pact of Omar, governing non-Muslims in areas controlled by Islam. The pact makes it a capital punishment for all non-Muslims under the pact for the alleged religious transgressions of some. Collective punishment!
(Raymond Ibrahim, FrontPageMagazine.com, April 29, 2011
The Islamic notion of justice seems unjust and barbaric to Westerners. Murder and arson in exchange for rumored possible indiscretions and disapproved personal choices is not the Western way. Nor do Westerners feel that Western retaliation against Islamist aggression should be avenged by Islamists. Neither do we attack innocent people; we believe that guilt is earned by individuals' actions; Islam believes that guilt is earned by members of a group, some of whose individuals conflicted with Muslims. Sometimes the conflict merely is assertion of freedom of religion. That affronts Islam, which deems itself superior. How different Islamic culture is from the Western one! Since Muslims attack non-believers wherever they be, wouldn't it make sense to keep them out of Western countries, so they cannot attack Westerners from within their own countries? Problem is, Westerners have not thought the matter through. They imagine that Muslims have the same tolerance that Westerners do. They imagine that all religions are benign. But Islam is not tolerant and not benign, especially its Radical form. Islam has more or less declared war on the rest of the world. Radical Islam certainly has declared jihad wherever it can. To properly defend ourselves, we must enact certain wartime regulations. Having failed to enact wartime regulation, Western countries are becoming more and more subject to Islamic regulation. As prior articles have shown, Western publishers and writers have been intimidated. Polygamy is condoned. Police cannot enter certain areas. Native citizens are attacked. In France, Muslim students refuse to let teachers proceed with the national Western curriculum. When one reads the oddly translated statements by Islamic groups, one is tempted to ignore them. Big mistake! Their wording is a form of code that reveals their views and goals. When they accuse a Christian of blasphemy, we might suppose they mean some kind of insult. It usually means failure to show subservience. We would be wise to study the language and not suppose that extravagant claims are just hot air. Those claims may be what they mean. AMERICAN FRIENDS OF PEACE NOW ON HAMAS-FATAH PACT American Friends of Peace Now approves the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation in principle and without knowing what it involves. This reconciliation seems designed to impress the world that with unity, a Palestinian Authority (P.A.) government would be empowered to act for its populace and therefore could make a pact with Israel. Favoring an agreement it does not understand is not wise. The Peace Now auxiliary fails to set conditions under which the
Hamas-Fatah pact would be acceptable. (IMRA, 4/30/11
Suppose real peace were not made. The Arabs have been signaling that they wish to conquer Israel, not make peace. Prior withdrawals by Israel increased rather than ended Arab hostility. That is because the conflict is not over particular land or over actual grievances. It is over religion. Muslims feels theirs is superior and entitles them to lord it over others even if they have to kill off other people simply for not following Islam. Based on precedent and improvements in rocketry, and on Egypt's indicating it will open its border with Gaza, the P.A. Arabs would become able to fire rockets into almost every corner of Israel. Some peace! What does American Friends of Peace Now expect of a Hamas-Fatah unity government? The new regime would comprise two jihadist groups, both believing in murder and deception in a fanatical cause. The resulting terrorism and war would cost many lives. American Friends of Peace Now would be partly responsible for the resulting and foreseeable tragedy. I think that the reconciliation would be temporary. It would last long enough to serve as cover for world approval of sovereignty for the P.A.. Then Hamas would topple its coalition partners. American arms would fall into Hamas' hands, as Hamas had predicted. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@gmail.com. |
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EXPOSING PALESTINIAN IDEOLOGY AND ENDING US FUNDING OF PALESTINIAN INCITEMENT AND TERROR
Posted by Shirley Lewis, May 2, 2011. |
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We CAN expos e Palestinian ideology and end US funding of PA/PLO/Fatah/Abbas and Hamas/UNRWA IF everyone of us e mails a version of communcations below to his/her Senators and Representative, as well as to the House Foreign Relations Committee (Committee link below) AND encourages all US based friends and family to do the same. Congress controls the purse strings and will take action if it hears from us. Considering that Team PA/Abbas should rightly be on the US State Dept. list of terrorist organizations along with Hamas, defunding it along with Hamas/UNRWA is the least Congress can do. See web site Palestinian Media Watch if you need further "evidence" to discuss in your e mail, or to hard copy, in addition to what is described in sample communications below. (PMW is also the cure all web site for any of our friends and family that still think Team PA/Abbas is "moderate".) Not certain who your Congressmembers are? Go here to input your address and find out: http://www.house.gov/ http://www.senate.gov/ Link to US House Committee on Foreign Affairs mail site:
U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs Republicans B360 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 (202) 226-8467 ... www.internationalrelations.house.gov/contact.asp Below: Two sample communications and the policy of The Five No's Re: Ending funding for PA/PLO/Fatah/Abbas because of its incorrigible incitement of hate and violence. PA/PLO/Fatah/Abbas "work" can be broken down to: 1) encouragement and justification for murdering Jews; 2) terror worship and adulation of terrorists 3)promise of endless war, not peace, with Israel 4)delegitimization of Israel by lying about the regions' history and any and all Jewish connection to ANY part of the land — even Tel Aviv is taught to be rightly "Palestinian"! See web site Palestinian Media Watch for details. The only way to end this incitement to hate and violence is for the US to: 1) End all funding for both Team PA/Abbas and Hamas (which we shamefully fund via the UNRWA) 2)Table all negotiations until all Palestinian factions abandon their genocidal ideology, embrace ecumenism, recognize Israel as the Jewish State and release Corp. Galid Shalit unconditionally. Both PA/PLO/Fatah/Abbas and Hamas/UNRWA teach and preach an ideology only Al Qaeda could love. American funding of Palestinian violence and a genocidal-loving curriculum and political/media rhetoric is contrary to US best interests. We need not be concerned about "humanitarian" issues. As soon as the Palestinians get genocide off the brain, they will do as Americans and Israelis do: learn, earn, work, create, innovate, etc. and all self created humanitarian issues will come to an end. Senders name and complete address, including zip code so the Senator or Representative can see that you are a constituent. or: Subject: Hamas and PA incitement and violence continue unabated For two years Pres. Obama has attempted outreach to the Muslim world. This has included funding both Hamas/UNRWA and PA/Abbas while beseeching Hamas to cease its violence and PA to cease its incitement. The violence and incitement continue unabated and has no chance of ending unless US demonstrates its seriousness by cutting off Hamas/UNRWA and PA/Abbas funding. We Americans are financing jihad, both violent and stealth, by supporting these two entities whose ideology of Islamic supremacy is identical to Al Qaeda, Al Shabab, Lashkar e Taiba, etc., etc . I look forward to receiving a copy of your letter to Pres. Obama and the Foreign Affairs Committees urging that all US financial support for Hamas/UNRWA and PA/PLO/Fatah/Abbas be withdrawn until both factions change in both word and deed. Name, complete address including zip code and a phone number so Congressmenber can see that you are a constituent.
The Five No's NO more negotiations until every Palestinian faction abandons its supremist ideology in word and deed, recognizes Israel as the Jewish State and makes a 180 degree change in its curriculum and politcal/media rhetoric — and releases Corp. Galid Shalit unconditionally. Contact Shirley Lewis by email at slewis46@all.net |
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MEMORIAL DAY CEREMONY. EVERY HAND HAS A NAME AND THEIR MEMORY IS OUR NATION'S STRENGTH
Posted by Nurit Greenger, May 2, 2011. |
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Each year I attend the Community Holocaust Remembrance Day Ceremony at Pan Pacific Park in Los Angeles. Up the hill, behind the stage, stand tall six black marble columns, of the Los Angeles Holocaust Monument, representing the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. The somber ceremony took place under the auspices of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, the Jewish Federation and the Consulate General of Israel, USA West Coast. Each year, the mayor of Los Angeles, city dignitaries, many diplomatic consuls, representing their nations, and hundreds of people pay homage to the 6Million Jews, 3Million of them were children, who perished the Holocaust. How do you fathom the death of 6 Million people? It is like killing all the inhabitants of the City of Los Angeles and Chicago. No museum in the world can convey the atrocities, only a small glimpse into the horrors. I believe that Jews are abused People. I believe that the State of
Israel is an abused State: 'When Enough Means Enough!'
For 2000 years Jews were victims, acted as if they had no other option, and truthfully, to a point, they did not have an option but to be Dhimmis in all sort of nations that came and gone and to act along the Shush-Shtil, keep quiet and stay out of the way mentality in the host, but not that hospitable country where they lived. If the Allies, had made a real effort during WWII, to end the slaughter of Jews and to save Jews lives, Britain would have never issued the despicable and shameful White Paper, the Allies would have bombed the railroad to Auschwitz, and would have allowed Jews to find refuge in all their countries, which they did not, and these are just few points that come to mind of what they could have done and did not do. If the Allies acted right, which they did not, rather they worried about their interests, there would have never been such Holocaust, nor will Jews have to have a Yad Vashem museum that tears one's heart apart, and other Holocaust memorials venues, throughout the world, to remind and remember that 6Million Jews' lives — 3Million of them were children — were wiped out by the Satanic Nazis in a conveyer belt speed. And today, the Islamonazis want to continue the Nazis' Satanic Final Solution goal and they follow their grotesque behavior and the world, again, is either standing idle, but worse, is giving them a hand to achieve their vile goal! In his last night speech at Yad Vashem Benjamin Netanyahu stated: "When the Israeli Nation and the Israeli Defense Force-IDF say 'Never Again' they mean EVERY WORD." Thank God and our thanks to Ze'ev Herzl and Ze'ev Zabotinsky and modern Zionism, Jews now have a sovereign state, thus have changed the course of their history. So now Jews do have options, first one they can and will defend themselves from all those who want to annihilate them, but as important is to rise to be lions, be like King David or Judah Ha'Maccabee. With all this, also END the Ghetto mentality, many Jews still possess and stop acting as if they are still victims, as, unfortunately, to a certain degree, Israel still acts. Remembering requires action. It requires to never underestimate the action of evil and to remember that indifference and neutrality is unacceptable. Evil begins with one small step at the time until it amasses and takes control. Therefore, we have to constantly remind the world what evil is all about. Our hearts are still torn, our hearts are sill broken but their memory is also our strength! Atrocities of man against man cannot be tolerated. It is time to speak up, loud and clear. It is time to open the archives, brush off the dust and take a long look at the pictures that tell the horrifying stories of horrific atrocities against Jews ever known to mankind. We must bring to light that Islamofascists were the Nazis right hand. The Moslem Brotherhood provided the Hitler regime intelligence as well as they were part of the Nazi machine elements and actively killed Jew. But more so, remember they were the ones who attacked Israeli in 1948 to prevent the Jewish State from happening. Joseph Stalin once said, "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic." Time to remind the world about the repulsive crimes against the Jews. Time to tell the story of many dark clouds, but, also of resilience, determination, fate, hope, renewal and freedom, all symbolize the character of the Jewish Nation. If, on Friday, April 20th 1945, the 5th day of Bergen Belsen
Concentration Camp liberation, by the British 2nd Army, a group of
surviving Jews, close to skeleton in look, could stand up tall and
participate in a Friday evening Service, lead by the British 2nd Army
Jewish chaplain, rabbi L.H. Hartman and welcomed the Sabbath by
singing the Jewish Nation's Anthem of Hope, 'Hatikvah', then there is
plenty Hope:
Our duty is to pass the torch from generation to generation, our special Jewish Olympic Torch of Survival. Our obligation, commitment and responsibility is to make sure that each generation carries on the torch. Each Jew must understand that he or she is a link of our past and our infinite future. The nations of the free world must bear witness and stand up strong against evil and prevent other Hitler like and Ahmadinejad from causing another Holocaust. Make sure that such crimes never happen again to the Nation of Israel or any other nation. If we do not tell the truth, the lies and deception will continue hindering us as well as fail us over and over again. Never Again, Means Never Again NOW! If we, Jews, don't stand up for other Jews and the Jewish State of Israel, who will?
Contact Nurit Greenger by email at nurit.nuritg@gmail.com. Visit her blog:
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RESPONDING TO STERN STATEMENT ON CAMPUS ANTI-SEMITISM AT CA UNIVERSITIES
Posted by Barbara Sommer, May 2, 2011. |
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This was written by Tammi Rossman-Banjamin. Lecturer, University of California Santa Cruz. |
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Dear Mr. Stern, I am a lecturer at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC),
one of the three universities you mention in your recent statement
Since your statement assails the reactions of "some" to the incidents on these
three campuses, reactions which you claim "are making the situation worse by
distorting the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and what
has been called the 'working definition of anti-Semitism'," and since, to the
best of my knowledge, mine is the only Title VI complaint that has been filed in
reaction to anti-Jewish harassment at any of these three campuses, it is clear
that your statement is directed at my Title VI complaint. I would like to make
the following points in response to your charges. I do so because I believe
these charges are both inaccurate and unfounded.
1) Without offering a shred of evidence — not even one example — you imply
that the
"working definition
" of anti-Semitism in the Title VI complaint is distorted. However, the
complaint contains dozens of examples of rhetoric that fit squarely within the
EUMC working definition of anti-Semitism. Here are two:
* In the Summer of 2007, a UCSC Community Studies class designed to train
social activists was taught by a professor, who described herself in her on-line
syllabus as an active participant in the "campaign against the Apartheid Wall
being built in Palestine," and whose course readings, all biased against Israel,
included such unreferenced and anti-Semitic statements as the following:
pregnant women as a symbolic way of uprooting the children from the mother, or
the Palestinian from the land."
"We define Zionism as a settler-colonial political movement that seeks to
ethnically cleanse historical Palestine of the indigenous population and
populate it as a Jewish-only state."
"Not only does the Zionist project use the experience of the Holocaust to
legitimate the creation of an exclusionary state at the expense of the displaced
indigenous Arab population, it also attempts to foreclose the possibility of
other peoples...from calling attention to genocidal practices which in many ways
mirror the atrocities that took place in World War II."
Both of these examples, and almost all of the others included in the complaint,
involve language that clearly meets the EUMC working definition of
anti-Semitism, including rhetoric that denies the Jewish people their right to
self-determination (such as by claiming that Zionism is racism); that makes
mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as
such or the power of the Jewish collective; that applies a double standard to
Israel's behavior not applied to any other democratic nation; that uses the
symbols associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. blood libel); that compares
Israeli policy to that of the Nazis; and that accuses the Jewish people and the
state of Israel of exaggerating the Holocaust.
Where is the distortion, Mr. Stern? If these are not anti-Semitic expressions,
then what are they? Moreover, if the EUMC working definition, which you helped
to draft, can not be used to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel
and expressions of anti-Jewish animus on college campuses, then what good is the
definition?
2) As you well know, the existence of anti-Semitic incidents per se does not
constitute a violation of Title VI. Although the complaint provides many
examples of anti-Semitic rhetoric, nowhere are these incidents, in and of
themselves, claimed to be violations of federal anti-discrimination law.
Rather, it is argued that the long-standing and pervasive nature of such
anti-Semitic expression has contributed to creating a hostile environment for
Jewish students, and it is this hostile environment that has violated the
provisions of Title VI. The complaint contains numerous student testimonies
corroborating this claim. Here are a few:
* A Jewish student in a senior seminar class in Politics wrote: "My final topic
and presentation involved a discussion of Zionism, and was followed by a
question and answer session. This session didn't actually involve any questions,
but was rather a blunt attack on me by my fellow students. Several students kept
asking hurtful and very personal questions, while the professor sat quietly in
his seat. I felt as if I was under attack...one student contemptuously responded
that Zionism was Nazism and that I as a Zionist am nothing less than a Nazi. I
was numb. It was silent in the class; the professor said nothing. Can you even
begin to imagine how painful it is to hear such a thing? I, as the granddaughter
of holocaust survivors, am now being called the name of the very same people
responsible for the murder of my granduncles and aunts. I still cannot believe
the events of that day. I cannot believe I was called a Nazi. And above all, I
cannot believe my professor didn't even react. I must admit that I spent the
ten-minute break in the bathroom stall crying my eyes out. I was heart-broken."
* In response to an anti-Zionist panel discussion sponsored by one of UCSC's 10
residential colleges, a student wrote: "I am so perplexed and distressed when
intelligent academics fail to recognize Israel's legitimate right to exist as a
Jewish state in the Middle East. This anti-Zionism is tossed around without any
compassion to the Jewish people. As a Jew, Israel is central to my
identity — to
my culture, to my religion, to my ethnicity. To claim so misguidedly that Israel
is illegitimate, and furthermore, should be revoked — is so hurtful and so
offensive beyond words. [My college's] sponsorship of this event is more than
hurtful, it's absolutely unsettling. My trust in UCSC as a non-discriminatory
academic environment has been damaged."
* 90 Jewish students signed a petition to the administrators of one of the
residential college, requesting that the college rescind its sponsorship of an
event that the students believed would be a hateful, one-sided attack on Zionism
and Israel, that is "politically biased and discriminates against the Jewish
student population."
Despite the substantial evidence brought to demonstrate a hostile environment
for Jewish students at UCSC, you have wrongly insinuated that the complaint was
filed to silence all criticism of Israel. Rather, the intention has always and
only been to protect Jewish students, as Title VI provides. And this is
undoubtedly what motivated 13 Jewish organizations
Again, where is the distortion? How have the provisions of Title VI been
abused? If, as you suggest, the provisions of Title VI should not be used to
protect Jewish students in this way, were the efforts of 13 Jewish organizations
and 38 senators in vain? Now that Jewish students have won equal protection
under federal law, why would you want to take that protection away?
Thankfully, the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights does not see
things as you do. The OCR does not believe the complaint distorts the
provisions of Title VI. In fact, after a thorough evaluation of the complaint,
they concluded that the charges raised were serious enough to warrant a federal
investigation.
3) Like you, I believe there are many things a university could and should do to
combat anti-Semitic bigotry, and that "Title VI is a remedy when university
leadership neglects its job to stop bigoted harassment of students." Indeed,
that is precisely why the Title VI was filed: After years of documenting
examples of faculty and college-sponsored anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and its
effects on Jewish students, and using this evidence to encourage faculty and
administrators to address the problem with the means available to them, no
university leader was willing to address — or even acknowledge — this
longstanding and pervasive problem.
UCSC is not unusual in this regard. University leaders on many UC campuses have
been unwilling to adequately acknowledge and address the problem of anti-Semitic
bigotry. Outraged by this refusal to protect Jewish students, 12 major Jewish
organizations, including the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the
Orthodox Union, signed a letter to UC President Mark Yudof, urging him to
address the harassment and intimidation directed against Jewish students on UC
campuses. The American Jewish Committee was also requested to sign the letter
to President Yudof, but your organization refused.
4) Ironically, although you refused to stand together with other Jewish
organizations in order to demand the safety of Jewish students at the University
of California, you have made common cause with the American Association of
University Professors (AAUP), an organization that has not only been wholly
unsympathetic to the plight of Jewish students, but has vilified and sought to
silence those who have struggled to stand up on their behalf.
Since its founding in 1915, the AAUP has been looked to as the authority on
academic freedom. In recent years, however, the AAUP has been responsible for a
tragic distortion of those same principles. That organization has rushed to the
defense of professors — often their own members and leaders — whose
unscholarly, politically motivated, anti-Semitic attacks on the Jewish state and
its supporters have been identified as egregious abuses of academic freedom by
many in the Jewish community, and AAUP leaders have assailed all those who would
raise legitimate concerns about these abuses.
Consider the following facts about the organization with which you have
partnered:
* In 2007, the AAUP published "Freedom in the Classroom," a statement drafted
by the AAUP's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, as a response to
perceived challenges from groups outside of the University who "have sought to
regulate classroom instruction." The authors of the report acknowledge that
professors have been accused of indoctrinating rather than educating students
and of failing to provide balanced perspectives on controversial issues, but
they belittle these accusations and instead call those outside groups who would
raise them — a thinly-veiled allusion to Jewish organizations combating
anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students — "a modern menace."
* On the heels of the publication of the 2007 AAUP report, five prominent
academics calling themselves The Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University,
including the AAUP's Joan Scott, issued a public statement condemning outside
groups that have "defamed scholars, pressured administrators, and tried to
bypass or subvert established procedures of academic governance" in order to
achieve their political ends. The Ad Hoc Committee's harshest condemnation was
directed at "groups portraying themselves as defenders of Israel...[that] have
targeted scholars who have expressed perspectives on Israeli policies and the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict with which they disagree."
* Two current members of the AAUP's elite Committee on Academic Freedom and
Tenure have endorsed the anti-Semitic U.S. Campaign for the Academic and
Cultural Boycott of Israel.
5) Mr. Stern, you have exploited your credentials as the American Jewish
Committee's director on anti-Semitism and the lead drafter of the EUMC "working
definition" of anti-Semitism to add credibility and legitimacy to this spurious
statement. In so doing, you have also undermined the efforts of a great many in
the Jewish community and done enormous harm to the cause of combating campus
anti-Semitism. It is unclear to me why you would do such a thing. What is
clear is that your co-authorship of this statement is an egregious and shameful
failure of Jewish leadership, and I urge you to publicly retract it.
The following individuals have been copied and blind-copied on this email: the
leaders of the Jewish organizations that signed a letter to U.S. Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan, asking him to ensure that Jewish students are protected
under the provisions of Title VI; the leaders of other Jewish organizations that
have been at the forefront of fighting campus anti-Semitism; and several hundred
individuals who are deeply concerned for the safety of Jewish students on
campuses across the country. I encourage all of them to write to you and AJC
Executive Director David Harris, adding their voices to mine in condemning your
statement and urging its retraction.
Contact Barbara Sommer at lsommer_1_98@yahoo.com |
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YOM HA-SHOAH
Posted by Steven Plaut, May 2, 2011. |
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1. After Israel was created, there was intense debate as to what would be the appropriate date for Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. The decision to hold it several days after Passover, near the end of the Jewish month of Nissan, struck many as inappropriate. Nissan is the month of Passover, of liberation, of rejoicing. Even minor expressions of grief, such as some of the prayers containing emotions of sadness, are not recited in Nissan. So holding Holocaust Remembrance Day was flying in the face of millennia of Jewish tradition. Some suggested that the 10th day of Teveth was a more appropriate day. It is the traditional day in which Jews mourn those whose date of death or circumstances of death are unknown. And holding it then would avoid the ambiguity of a date in Nissan. On the other hand, the second half of Nissan already holds some emotional ambiguity. Aside from the joy of Passover liberation, there is the period of the counting of the Omer, beginning the evening after the Seder, which begins in Nissan and also is a period of sadness and commemoration. So more ambiguity. Being Jewish is so complicated! And this year that ambiguity is taking place in exaggerated measures. It is Yom Hashoah in Israel. When the sirens went off at 10 AM I was in a minibus with other riders. The Christian Arab driver of the minibus pulled over and politely invited all passengers to get out for the two minute siren and stand at attention in silence, the unique expression of commemoration of the Holocaust that has been Israel's since it was created. But of course today was also the day of celebration of the elimination of Osama bin Laden. I feel as much elation about that as any of the people in the crowds of celebration across the US. More emotional ambiguity!! Perhaps it is the true Zeitgeist, the
inevitable experience of all Jews in the 21st century.
2. There are so many stories and documentaries related to the Holocaust that fill the Israeli media this week, so I will not bore you with any retelling. There was one story that I found intriguing, and I doubt you have heard of it. It appears today in Haaretz, of all places. It is not exactly a story of great heroism or partisan battle or horror or suffering. Actually it is a story of a simple fellow, a quiet guy. It is just a strange story, one that illustrates how bizarre and multifaceted the modern Jewish experience is. I will summarize the story, because it is a bit too long to translate the entire Haaretz report. It is the Holocaust story of Yisrael Tzubri, a Jew in Yemen. He lived in the capital city of Yemen, Sana'a. He became a small merchant back before World War I, where he sold eggs to Turkish soldiers stationed in Yemen. Later he opened a clothing store and after that opened a hotel, the only one at the time operating in Sana'a. Being the only hotel, European merchants, diplomats and spies frequented it. Tzubri spoke about 10 languages fluently, including Middle Eastern and European ones. The ruler of Yemen at the time, the Imam, shopped in Tzubri's store and had close personal connections with him. Tzubri was a frequent guest in the palace and sometimes served as an informal advisor. A Hungarian historian who visited Yemen at the time described him as the only person in the country who did not try to cheat the historian. Prof. Yosef Tubi (from the University of Haifa — literature, who has written about Yemenite Jewish poetry) wrote a book about Tzubri (in Hebrew) titled "A Jew in the Service of the Imam." In the mid-1930s, the ruler, the Imam, decided to expand and liaison and representative to Germany, which was already under Nazi control. Based in Hamburg, Tzubri purchased weapons and other products on behalf of Yemen and arranged for their shipment. He kept careful documents, today preserved in Yad Vashem, the main Israeli museum of the Holocaust. As World War II approached, Germany was unsafe for him, and so was Yemen, where cronies of the ruler were whispering in the Imam's ears against Tzubri. While most foreign Jewish merchants who were still in Hamburg for one reason or another were seeking ways to escape to the US, Tzubri and his daughter chose to go to Israel. He arrived in 1939, just as the war was breaking out. He ran a small hotel in Tel Aviv, had a house in Jerusalem. He worked
as a small merchant. Other family members from Yemen rejoined him in
Jerusalem. He died in 1967.
3. From the current (summer 2011) Middle East Quarterly:
Reviewed by Steven Plaut, University of Haifa
My guess is that the only reason that the folks over at Indiana
University Press even published this book is that they were so excited
by the novelty of any book about Israeli Arabs written in English by a
tenured Israeli academic claiming to be an Arab. The author, Amal
Jamal, is in fact an Israeli Druse, although one of the minority of
Druse intellectuals who claim that the Druse are themselves Arab
Palestinians.
The problems with this book begin with the title: "The Arab Public
Sphere in Israel." The book is not at all about the Arab public
sphere. It is a superficial review of the differences between the
Hebrew and Arabic media operating in Israel and of those consumers who
make use of them.
Jamal is essentially a young groupie of the fringe ideas of
Leninist Michel Foucault and the German Jurgen Habermas, the latter
someone who thinks that nice talking can solve all the world's
conflicts. Habermas refers to such nice talking as "communicative
action," a term showing up obsessively throughout Jamal's book.
A Druse from the Galilee village of Yarka, Jamal is today a radical
anti-Israel ideologue. He studied at the Hebrew University and
later got a PhD from the "Free University of Berlin." He is today a
tenured member of the political science department at Tel Aviv
University and is serving as department chairman. Many of his
publications appear in the "Journal of Palestine Studies" and similar
ideological magazines and venues, including the radical Mada al-Karmel
Center. He is involved with some leftist groups like the "New
Israel Fund," on whose board he sits.
The main part of the book, the only part even remotely "academic,"
is the middle section, in which the results of two surveys about the
use of media venues by Arabs are presented. Neither of the two
surveys was particularly scientific, neither scientifically
representative of the population. The first consisted of interviewing
594 Arab "participants." The second consisted of interviewing 229
Arab politicians, professors and public figures, whom Jamal decided
speak for the Israeli Arab population. One would have expected the
survey methodology to be regarded as an embarrassment even if it were
to form the basis of an undergraduate seminar paper at Tel Aviv
University.
The results of the surveys essentially show that Arabs read and
listen to the Hebrew media less than do Jews, who in turn listen to
and follow the Arabic media less than do Arabs. This conclusion is
not only trivial but teaches nothing at all useful about Israeli
society. No doubt few Canadian English speakers read and listen to
the French media in Canada, and fewer Anglos in Florida read the
Spanish press.
But Jamal is not content with printing a few tables and statistics
taken from his surveys. His real aim throughout the book is to twist
things obsessively to conform to his conspiracist take on Israeli
society, according to which Israel is plotting to control the minds of
its Arab citizens (referred to throughout the book by Jamal as
"Israeli Palestinians") and to subjugate them by means of media
control. Pity the poor reader who does not realize that Israel does
not control any of the country's Arabic media.
Jamal's agenda is apparent everywhere in the book in his choices
of rhetoric. The secondary title of the book is "Media Space and
Cultural Resistance." The book overflows with bias and anti-Israel
bile. With no sense of his own self-contradiction, Jamal insists that
Israel is obsessed with control of the Arab media, with surveillance
over it, and also with ignoring Arab opinion and the Arabic media
altogether. He sees the media in general not as institutions that
reflect public opinion, but rather as those that control thinking and
opinion. He uses the term "hegemonial" with obsessive regularity.
Israel has a "ferocious military government" (p.47), engaged in
"cultural imperialism" (p. 96) via its "media policy" against its
"Palestinian" minority.
Now the book is most notable for what it is attempting to hide.
As it turns out, Israel is the only place in the Middle East where
Arabs enjoy a free press, so free it is often openly seditious. The
Israeli media, except for a TV station and some radio stations, is all
private sector. There IS no "media policy" in Israel at all, and the
private-sector Israeli Hebrew media are predominantly leftist. And if
the free Arabic press in Israel is not free enough for Jamal's tastes,
the explosion of internet technology and countless Arab blogs make his
conspiracist pseudo-academic nonsense about "control of the media" and
"mind control through the media" simply laughable.
Jamal's book is an ideological assault against Israel disguised as
an academic exploration of the Arabic media inside Israel. By hiding
from his readers that Israel's Arabic media are the only Arabic media
in the Middle East that are NOT controlled by the regime, he does his
readers an injustice and makes a mockery of his academic pretensions.
Nowhere in his book can one find references to the fact that
Arabs and Druse inside Israel are themselves beneficiaries of numerous
affirmative action preferences. One can only see possible evidence of
affirmative action in the decision by Indiana University Press to
publish this book in the first place and in the decision of Tel Aviv
University to grant Jamal tenure.
.
Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments — both seriously and
satirically — on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. Write him at splaut@gmail.com His website address is
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SLOUCHING TOWARD "PALESTINE": ANTI-ISRAEL TERRORISM, AGGRESSION AND THE LAW OF WAR
Posted by Louis Rene Beres, May 2, 2011. |
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Intra-Palestinian politics remain on a steady course. Following a carefully-choreographed rapprochement with Hamas, the more "moderate" Fatah forces, still trained and funded by millions of U.S. tax dollars, will quickly resume their ritualized terror attacks against Israel. More or less simultaneously, Hamas will do the same. In Lebanon, Shiite Hezbollah, steadily mentored by Iran, and, oddly allied with Sunni Hamas, has already begun active operational preparations, with Syrian collaboration, for the next war. Ironically, however, Israel's required efforts to defend its citizens will predictably be met with a sanctimonious barrage of assorted criticisms. Although international law allows any such imperiled state to use necessary force preemptively, Israel's indispensable efforts to stave off existential harms will be harshly condemned throughout the "international community." Humanitarian international law, or the law of war, requires that every use of force by an army or by an insurgent group meet the test of proportionality. Drawn from the core legal principle that "the means that can be used to injure an enemy are not unlimited," proportionality stipulates, among other things, that every resort to armed force be limited to what is necessary for meeting military objectives. This principle of both codified and customary international law applies to all judgments of military advantage, and also to all planned reprisals. Proper determinations of proportionality need not be made in a geopolitical vacuum. Instead, these legal decisions may always take into consideration the extent to which an adversary has committed prior or ongoing violations of the law of war. In the frequently interrelated examples of Hamas/Islamic Jihad/Fatah terrorists in Gaza, and the Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, there is ample evidence that all of these belligerents have been guilty of repeated perfidy. In law, deception can be acceptable in armed conflict, but the Hague Regulations expressly disallow the placement of military assets or military personnel in any heavily populated civilian areas. Further prohibition of perfidy can be found at Protocol I of 1977, additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. These rules are also binding on the basis of an equally authoritative customary international law. Perfidy represents a very serious violation of the law of war, one that is even identified as a "grave breach" at Article 147 of the IV Geneva Convention. The legal effect of perfidy committed by Palestinian or Hezbollah terrorists, especially their recurrent resort to "human shields," is to immunize Israel from legal responsibility for any inadvertent counter-terrorist harms done to Arab civilians. But even if Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Fatah and Hezbollah have not always engaged in altogether deliberate violations, any terrorist-created links between civilians and insurgent warfare still bestowed upon Israel a fully legal justification for military self-defense. This is not to suggest that Israel should now have a jurisprudential carte blanche in its necessary applications of armed force, but only that the reasonableness of these applications always be appraised in the context of identifiable enemy perfidy. Viewed against the historical background of extensive and unapologetic terrorist perfidy in both Gaza and Lebanon, Israel has been innocent of any prior "disproportionality." All combatants, including all insurgents in Gaza and Lebanon, are bound to comply with the law of war of international law. This important requirement derives not only from what is known as the Martens Clause, a binding paragraph which makes its first appearance in the Preamble to the 1899 Hague Convention No. II on land warfare, but additionally from Article 3, common to the four Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949. It is also found at the two Protocols to these Conventions. It is easy to condemn Israel with rhythmic chants of "disproportionality." Yet, competent legal scholars will always acknowledge the vital evaluative significance of context. It should be clear, until now, that any seemingly disproportionate use of force by the Israel Defense Forces had actually been the permissible outcome of antecedent and perfidious crimes committed by its enemies. What about charges, from one war to the next, that Israel had committed "aggression" in Lebanon? At Lebanon's insistence, certainly not Israel's, a formal state of war has existed between the two tiny countries since the Jewish State came into existence in May 1948. Only an armistice agreement obtains between Israel and Lebanon. Signed on March 23, 1949, this was not a war-terminating agreement, but merely a pledge to "cease fire." Legally, it is not possible for Israel to commit aggression against Lebanon. This is because the latter already considers itself in a formal condition of belligerency with the Jewish State. Israel cannot commit aggression against another state with which it is already at war. Faced with multiple and sometimes cooperating enemies on several fronts who often make no secret of their genocidal intentions, Israel has nonetheless adhered to the law of war. Indeed, in starkly marked contrast to the conscious indiscriminacy of its terrorist foes in Gaza, Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Lebanon, Jerusalem has struggled mightily to respect this law. The authentic legal issue in recurrent Middle East conflict is not Israeli "disproportionality" or "aggression," but rather a persistent enemy resort to terrorism and perfidy. Notwithstanding foreseeable U.S. and Israeli objections to any Fatah/Hamas merger, neither Palestinian party has any effective reason to refrain from further terrorism against Israel. Already engaged in a far-reaching diplomatic end-run around Jerusalem, neither Fatah nor Hamas will require Prime Minister Netanyahu's negotiated approval to proceed toward complete Palestinian sovereignty. In September, probably with very little prodding, the UN General Assembly will take up the issue of membership for "Palestine." Almost certainly, although any such consideration would likely not meet the more stringent requirements of statehood that were formally established at the 1934 Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (Montevideo Convention), a generally-recognized and totally militarized Palestinian state would then become a fait accompli. Should this UN conferral of sovereignty be implemented, Israel's starkly limited future will be discoverable in Article 12 of the PA (Fatah) Charter, which calls for "the liberation of Palestine completely ..." and in Article 19: "The struggle will not end until the elimination of the Zionist entity and the liberation of Palestine." As for the less-moderate Hamas Covenant (Charter of the Islamic Resistance Movement), it begins with Israel's annihilation: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it ..." Significantly, especially in view of what is still happening in Egypt, the Covenant refers to Hamas as "one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine." In the Middle East, wishful thinking is always perilous. Israel's enemies plainly have no regard for compliance with the law of war. Once granted a new state carved out of Israel's still-living body, "Palestine" would enthusiastically seize new opportunities not "only" for war and terrorism, but also (in the literal jurisprudential sense of pertinent international treaties) for genocide. In the final analysis, Fatah and Hamas seek not to enlarge a secular power over life, but rather a supremely religious power over death. Is there any power in world politics or diplomacy that can conceivably compete with such a sacred promise of immortality? Louis René Beres is Professor of Political Science and International Law at Purdue University. He is the author of ten books and several hundred published articles dealing with Israeli security matters, including Security Or Armageddon: Israel's Nuclear Strategy (Lexington Books, 1986). Professor Beres served as Chair of "Project Daniel," a private small-group effort to counsel former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on existential nuclear threats to Israel. This article appeared in in the Myths and Facts website (today@mythsandfacts.org), published by Eli E. Hertz.. |
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FROM ISRAEL: YOM HASHOAH
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 2, 2011. |
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In Israel, it's Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day — because we must remember those Jews who fought back against their Nazi torturers, as well as those whom the Nazis destroyed. At 10:00 AM this morning, the siren sounded and the nation stood still. Remembering, thinking... ~~~~~~~~~~ Inevitably, Yom HaShoah becomes — both literally and figuratively — more distant with time, as the number of direct witnesses who are still alive diminishes. But we must never forget. With the remembering comes our cry, "Never again!" With the remembering comes the understanding that there is such a thing as consummate, unmitigated evil in this world, and that it must be recognized and fought without respite. Unfortunately, the world does not remotely understand this. (Yet?) ~~~~~~~~~~ A Holocaust memorial video. Unbearable, and yet we must remember. The song, rendered quite beautifully, is "Ani Ma'amin" — I believe with perfect faith... A miracle, that we are still here.
~~~~~~~~~~ I rather like the three statements regarding the Shoah that Liat Collins shared in her JPost column yesterday:
1) "Elie Wiesel: 'The Shoah wasn't a crime against humanity, but a crime against the Jews.'" Today the terms and images specific to the Shoah are borrowed freely by many protesting violent offenses of one sort or another. But when everything becomes like everything else, then the historical realities are blurred or misunderstood or forgotten. 2) "Writer Haim Guri: 'Israel was created not because of the Shoah but in spite of it.'" This is an extremely important point. The mythology in many quarters — fostered by the Arabs — is that Israel exists only because after the Shoah Jews had no other place to go. The Arab version has it that they are now suffering at Jewish hands because of the Holocaust; many Europeans, in particular, have bought this. This is, as well as being a libel, a denial of our intrinsic rights. The reality is that our claim to this land is more than 3,000 years old, and our modern legal rights were established decades before the Shoah. 3) Unattributed: "Had there been a Jewish state in the 1930s, the Holocaust might not have happened at all, or would have been on a much-reduced scale." A stark reminder, in particular, to those Jewish members of the younger generation who imagine it's OK to dissociate themselves from Israel because they're doing just fine where they are. The younger generation is without memory. If they are doing just fine they had best look to the role that Israel has played in their lives by conveying messages of Jewish power. Every Yom HaShoah, we hear from the IDF that it considers itself responsible for Jews everywhere. ~~~~~~~~~~ See this video of a Yad V'Shem (Israeli Holocaust Memorial) ceremony at Auschwitz that includes the fly-over of Israeli Air Force planes. It makes the point regarding the need for Israel's power stunningly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfv3jsLGzL0 ~~~~~~~~~~ Please, also see this article of mine that went up on American Thinker a couple of days ago: It shares basic facts — truths that must be known and of which too few are aware:
After you have seen it, please then share the URL with others, including your elected representatives in Congress. It's a certainty that there are many Congresspersons and Senators who are unaware of the events described in the article. And right now, that's not a situation that we can ignore. In a pinch, their understanding will make a difference: For your Congresspersons:
For your Senators:
~~~~~~~~~~ The US got bin Laden at last. This is good, although it hardly signals the demise of radical Islam in that part of the world, as some would have it. His capture and murder should have considerable psychological impact, but the battle against al-Qaeda and its ilk will go on. The palace in Pakistan where he was located puts the lie to the notion that terrorists are enraged because they are poverty stricken. This terrorist was anything but... ~~~~~~~~~~ Hamas is mourning the killing of this "Arab holy warrior," and condemns the US action. Think the world will take notice? Nah... Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info |
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IRANIUM, A DOCUMENTARY BY ALEX TRAIMAN
Posted by Marion DS Dreyfus, May 2, 2011. |
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Narration: Shohreh Aghdashloo At "Iranium," the film screening about 100 of us screened on Sunday night at Aish in Manhattan, the packed audience was privileged to hear two former Iranian students/escapees from the Iranian mullah-cratic gulag. Sunday, 1 May, was also Holocaust Remembrance Day, so the screening was especially poignant in its frequent invocation of further threats to annihilation of Israel by what I fashion as the 'twerpy grocer,' the genocidal Achmadinejad, Iranian president under the mullahs. A male representative, Amir, and a female, Rizka, are part of an 8,000-strong former Iranian students' group that girds the continent telling what the underground revolutionary activist-students who resist the mullahs, Khameini and the mullahs, think and do to unseat the current prime world terror supporters and tell us how to effect their ouster. This especially timely doc lays out the historic terror attacks and still-dangerous scenarios posed to the free nations of the world by a nuclearizing Iranian state. Through interviews with top past and present security officials inside the Beltway and Pentagon, State Department and think tanks such as the Center for Security Policy and chilling news clips in Arabic, translated, the film paints an inescapable canvas of the lethal ideology guiding the current rulers of Iran's remorseless regime, as well as the devastation wrought over the past 30 years both inside and beyond the borders of this arch-terror sponsor. Accumulating as the film progresses are the ravages of the murdered soldiers in our Lebanon barracks in 1983, the sabotage of the USS Cole, the murders in Kenya and Tanzania, our hostage paralysis for 444 days under the vacillating stylings of weak President Carter until their rescue under the aegis of a resolute President Reagan, the shock of 9/11 attacks, and events prior and subsequent to these ugly milestones in the topography of Iran's heedless Islamism. Former Iranian Amir, incarcerated and tortured in Teheran for 5 years before he escaped to the US, reported that before the social media, and particularly Zuckerberg's ("He is...a Jew?" smiles Amir, with a hiked eyebrow indicating he is aware of Jewish achievements in technology) Facebook, as well as the associated Twitter and other social media, they "were brainwashed" to think Israel and Jews were pigs and monkeys in human flesh. (We know that, yes, but in somewhat amusingly broken English, he told us his personal experience in the streets of Iran, and in its schools.) He said that after the social media came into the country, the overpoweringly young population (80% under 40) realized they had been lied to, and that Jews and Israelis had a beautiful culture, amazing society and goodness to experience. He said that though they are still oppressed under a sham government that permits no elections that are real, the vast army of the young there "admire Israel," and "like the US." They travel from city to city with the showing of this film, and their Q and A sessions afterward are honest and straightforward, not hiding or back-pedaling on the many evils of their former country. They are delighted and continually invigorated by their fortune at living and working here in the United States. Bringing the danger up to this very day, Amir reported that his 19-year-old brother, living in Paris, had this week been abducted by Iranian forces, forced into a truck and taken to Iran. "Iranium" warns of the infiltration into South America of Iranian forces and insurgent islamists, of joined forces under such Communists and thug leaders as Hugo Chavez and his ilk in Venezuela and surrounding countries, as well as current mass infiltration into the US of potential killers and islamists via our porous Mexican border. A huge fear that is unanswered and unthwarted is the compact suitcase bomb or pulse (EMP) bomb that could disable in one second all communications in the country for years, and cause death to ''9 out of 10 citizens" from starvation, disease and contamination, threats that suspend us in the aspic of no viable answer, alternative contingency or preparedness. Although the film itself has received many documentary awards, it has received only limited wide-screen exposures since it came out in the past year. It is available for purchase as DVD and in stores, Netflix and the like. It features top-tier military, diplomatic, think-tank and anti-terror figures, and is an engrossing 90 minutes, even if one is all-too-sadly familiar with the issues and concerns discussed.
Marion Dreyfus is a writer and travelor; she has taught English in China on the university level. She can be contacted at dreyfusmarion@hotmail.com |
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A MIDDLE EASTERN LESSON
Posted by Women in Green May 2, 2011. |
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This was written by Guy Bechor. |
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Here's one of Aesop's fables: One day, the wolves sent a delegation to the sheep and asked to make eternal peace with them. "The dogs are at fault for the conflict between us," the wolves told the sheep. "They are the source of dispute. They bark at us, threaten us, and provoke us. Banish the dogs and there will be nothing to prevent eternal friendship and peace between us." The foolish sheep believed this and banished the dogs. And so, without the protection the dogs used to offer, the sheep became easy prey for the wolves. Now that the world is horrified by the brutality of the Syrian regime of terror, which mercilessly butchers its own citizens, we can see what would have happened to Jews in the Middle East without their own protective force, the IDF. In this era, lies, hypocrisy and illusions reign supreme. Many people among us and in the world believe in eternal Mideastern peace, democracy and wonderful friendship among nations, and in the repeated propaganda whereby Israel is Goliath and the Arabs are David. Yet then came reality and proved them wrong. As we recall, Tom Friedman already reprimanded Israel for failing to understand the new "era of freedom" in the Middle East; the same sentiments were uttered by other naïve Jews, a species that did not show great survival instincts over the history of European Jewry. When one observes the fate of the Christians in the Middle East, one realizes what would have happened to the Jews had they been defeated, heaven forbid, or remained without protection. Christians are being butchered in states that experienced "democratic change" such as Iraq, Egypt and Tunisia; their churches are being burned, they're prompted to escape, and their property is looted. The Christians were misfortunate enough not to establish a state with a clear Christian identity, unlike the Jews. Naively, the Christians believed in partnership with other ethnicities, and now they're paying the price — in Lebanon, where they're becoming extinct, in the Palestinian Authority, and very soon in Syria as well. This is the oh-so-transparent reason why hostile elements wish to undermine Israel's national Jewish identity. Their desire to establish "a state of all its citizens" — a bi-national or multi-national state — aims to expunge the state's Jewish identity, thus slowly eliminating the Jewish presence around here. Now, the great significance of Jewish nationalism, that is, Zionism, also becomes clear, after so many already slammed it or argued that its time has passed. It's a pity that some Jews still believe these dangerous notions. This is also the reason why outside elements — and to my regret domestic elements as well — try to weaken the IDF via needless commissions of inquiry, incitement and criticism, propaganda, and an effort to taint the army's moral prestige. This is the reason while arrest warrants for IDF officers are issued worldwide. The main aim here is to weaken and destroy the only defensive force that protects Jews in the Middle East. Yet when we see the real Middle East rising up and butchering its own people in Syria, it serves as a live history lesson for all of us. Truth does not shy away and it proves who the menace in this region is, and who is being threatened with extermination; who the murderer is, and who the victims are. Suddenly, the Arab propaganda that the world has been hearing for dozens of years is fading away. It has no power in the face of truth and history. In the face of the massacre in the Syrian town of Deraa on Monday, a continuation of the glorious tradition of the Assad family, always keep in mind the fable about the sheep, which became an easy pretty because of their lethal naiveté. There is nothing new about the brutality and foolishness of nations; Aesop wrote about it in the Sixth Century already. It is us, Jews, who particularly need to remind ourselves of this. Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org |
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OSAMA IS DEAD BUT THE JIHADI MOVEMENT LIVES!
Posted by Richard Swier, May 2, 2011. |
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The free world is rejoicing the death of Osama bin Laden. The man behind the 9/11 attacks has gone to, as Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch calls it, "the great bordello in the sky". I was in Tampa yesterday to watch the documentary "The Ground Zero Mosque: Second wave of the 91/11 Attacks". Hosting the event was the Pinellas Patriots. Robert Spencer, founder of Jihad Watch, and Pamela Geller, Publisher of Atlas Shrugs were there to remind us all that the fight against Shariah Islam goes on. Both said we are all soldiers in this fight. Pamela said that those who died on 9/11 were not civilians but rather soldiers of freedom and we must continue to fight until the day comes when all forms of Shariah Islamic oppression are defeated around the world. Robert Spencer on Jihad Watch states, "Osama bin Laden has gone to claim his virgins, and while that is fine news, it really won't change anything. The role of al-Qaeda in the global jihad, and the role of Osama bin Laden in al-Qaeda, have both been wildly overstated. Al-Qaeda is not the only Islamic jihad group or Islamic supremacist group operating today, and Osama bin Laden was not some charismatic leader whose movement will collapse without him." [My emphasis] My and Robert's greatest fear is the death of Osama to many means the end to the global war against Shariah Islam. That cannot be farther from the truth. While the movement now has yet another martyr the real fight goes on. I firmly believe the radical Shariah Islamist movement is growing and gaining political ground across the Middle East. We are seeing this with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Iran's support of violence in Bahrain and support for Assad in Syria. Iran remains the existential threat to Israel, the United States, Europe and the Middle East. A nuclear armed Iran is a death knell to those Muslim and non-Muslim allies fighting to stop Shariah Islamist groups like al Qaeda, Hezbollah and HAMAS. The Muslim Brotherhood is the growing long term threat. Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood joining together would be catastrophic. We are seeing signs of this happening already as Iran has re-established diplomatic ties with Egypt. Joshua Mitnick, Matt Bradley, and Jay Solomon in the Wall Street Journal article "New Tension Roils Israel" report, "Yet the Egyptian political drift toward greater domestic tolerance of Islamist groups [the Muslim Brotherhood] and support for the Palestinians, including a new willingness to work with Hamas, has Israel most worried. The trends could come to a head in September, when Egypt is planning its first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections and the Palestinians are expected to press for state recognition at the U.N." Matt Bradley reports in the Wall Street Journal that the Muslim Brotherhood is increasing the number of candidates for seats in the new government up to 50%. This is much more dangerous for our interests in the region. If the Muslim Brotherhood takes a majority of seats in September then this terrorist organization will control the second largest U.S. equipped military in the Middle East, second only to the Israeli military. While this is a time to rejoice it is also a time to get serious about the real dangers facing us. Clare Lopez, Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy, refers to al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran as the "Axis of Jihad". This axis is stronger, poised to achieve major positions of power in key Middle Eastern states and more dangerous to our very survival. Expect the Axis of Jihad to strike the free world again and again and again.
Contact Richard Swier by email at drswier@gmail.com |
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THE CASE FOR REFORMING UNRWA
Posted by Phyllis Chesler, May 1, 2011. |
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I just watched Lara Logan on CBS's Sixty Minutes. She was blonde, beautiful, brave, tearful, soft-spoken, strong, clear, eloquent, still obviously traumatized (who wouldn't be?) — and yet, although she has been praised for "breaking the silence" about the sexual violence that afflicts female or foreign journalists in the field, Logan was still careful not to use the words "Muslim" or "Islam." She still refused to characterize what happened to her as "barbaric." In her own words: She said that two to three hundred pairs of hands, one after the other, grabbed at her breasts, crotch and behind, and kept raping her non-stop from the back and the front. The mob had torn off all her clothing and the more she screamed the more excited they became. When someone yelled that she was an "Israeli, a Jew," the frenzied mob turned murderous. They continued to beat her with flagpoles and sticks. They tried to tear her apart, limb from limb. They were tearing her muscles in every direction. They tried to tear her scalp off her skull. They were inside her everywhere. She believed that not only was she going to die but that she would die a long, slow, torturous death. This went on for 25 minutes. I would call this "barbaric," "monstrous," a lynching-in-the-making. Logan did not. She reminded me of so many Western mainstream media talking heads who kept showing the bloody and barbaric footage of the lynching of two Israeli reservists in the police station (!) of Ramallah — but who failed to draw back in horror, refused to call what they were showing by its rightful name: Abhorrent. A lynching. A human rights atrocity. A war crime. Logan at least wept a little. Then, like so many female rape victims, she tried to blame herself or imagine that she had the power to save herself. Logan said "I can't believe I (would) just let them kill me. How could (she) do this?" She had to fight — not for her own sake, women are still not trained to do that — but for the sake of her two young children. She said: "I came so close to actually abandoning them." Logan's "fight" consisted of understanding that all she had to do was "survive." On camera, Logan still does not really blame the mob of men, the mob of Egyptian Muslim men to be specific. But, as in so many female war-zone encounters, luck saved her. The Muslim male mob stumbled past a camp of completely veiled Egyptian women (only their eyes showed). One woman put her arms around Logan and the other women closed ranks around her. Now, the shameless, cowardly male mob would have had to physically or sexually assault "one of their own." It was no longer just about Logan. Meanwhile, Logan's all-male television team had persuaded the Egyptian police to try to rescue her and they did so at the last moment. The police had to beat the mob back, get her into a tank, fly her back to the United States where her sore muscles, cuts, and internal wounds and bruises required four days of hospitalization. With all due respect both for Logan's terrible ordeal and for her choice to "break the silence," how naive can she have been? How frightened is she still now? Does Logan fear she will lose her mainstream media credentials if she analyzes what happened to her in feminist and political terms? I think she does. While she has told the truth about what happened to her, her careful, cautious, exceedingly politically correct presentation suggests that many hands were, once again, behind what she said and how she said it. Logan was born in South Africa where the sexual violence against girls and women is extreme. She was born in Africa where gang-rape and rape have been employed not as a spoil of war but as a systematic weapon of war (think Rwanda, Darfur, Congo, Liberia). She is a reporter at a time in history when both infidel and Muslim women are routinely raped — then arrested for it, raped again by their jailers, then flogged, hung, or stoned for the crime of having been raped. Think Iran. Think Pakistan. And finally, it is a well known fact that the male sexual harassment of women on the streets of Egypt is pandemic. One survey documented that 98% of infidel or foreign women and 88% of Egyptian women have been harassed on these mean streets. Thus, should women reporters not cover Muslim countries? Guess what? Muslim men also rape Muslim and infidel boys as well as foreign male journalists whom they also torture and behead. (Think Daniel Pearl.) There is a long history of Muslim men kidnapping, enslaving, selling, branding, and castrating infidel men as well as selling infidel women as sex slaves. This is the history of Islamic imperialism and racism and the contemporary face and nature of jihad. What are they teaching journalists in our universities? Does the mainstream media only view rape as a Western, American, and white male crime? The answer is: It sure does. I once lived and traveled in the Muslim world and have long loved many things about the people, architecture, landscapes, food, and conversation, but I would hesitate long and hard before crossing their borders today without a full military escort replete with overhead bomber pilots, drones, tanks, and infantry. What will it take to convince Westerners that war has really, truly, honestly been declared both against infidels and against Muslims by Muslims and that we cannot pretend otherwise? Note by Editor of Front Page Magazine: See Jamie Glazov's recent speech before the San Fernando Valley ACT! for America chapter on March 16, 2011, in which he dealt with why the Left forbids our culture from labeling the Islamic persecutors of the likes of Lara Logan by their real name:
Lara Logan Video
Dr. Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's
Studies at City University of New York. She is an author and lecturer
and co-founder of the still ongoing Association for Women in
Psychology (1969). Visit her website at
http://pajamasmedia.com/xpress/phyllischesler/
This article is archived at
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THE CASE FOR REFORMING UNRWA
Posted by Arlene Kushner, May 1, 2011. |
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CHANGING TACTICS UNRWA — the UN Relief and Works Agency — appears to be adopting a new face and new policies. These changes can be seen as part of a bold PR campaign to insure, first, that the UN will renew its mandate on June 30. Allusions to "administrative reform" promote an image of an agency that has its house in order.[1] Additionally, UNRWA wants to secure maximum funds for its operation. Whereas the vast majority of operational funds in the past came from donations provided by individual nations, UNRWA now seeks financial resources from the United Nations regular budget.[2] The changes, however, are tactical, and do not begin to represent the sort of reform that is urgently advocated by the Center. UNRWa operations, at their core, have not changed, and the problems they generate remain as critical as ever. In fact, not only do the tactical changes mask underlying problems, they also generate additional problems. Washington Office UNRWA is in the process of setting up a Representative Office in Washington DC, the mandate of which will be "to represent the interests of UNRWA vis-à-vis Washington, DC-based US government and non-governmental entities, with particular reference to the US Congress and the US State Department [and the National Security Council]."[3] Key staff members in this office will lobby "relevant members of Congress and their staffers to advance understanding of UNRWA's role in the context of the regional issues of the Middle East [and] the Agency's operations..."[4] The Office additionally will "monitor on a daily basis relevant developments in the US Congressional agenda, with a view to formulating and leading the implementation of an outreach and advocacy strategy dedicated to optimizing UNRWA's relations with Congress and other Washington, DC-based governmental and non-governmental agencies..."[5] Lastly, it will formulate and institute "a media and communications strategy dedicated to addressing the US audience, including disseminating information to media as well as civil society and non-governmental entities and timely responses to queries from media and other entities..."[6] Talks by John Ging Since February 2011, John Ging has been going out to speak within American communities, primarily on US college campuses, often via Hillel chapters. His subject, broadly, has been Gaza. What is notable about this is that Ging has been promoted directly by J Street and J Street U. [7] (J Street co-founder, Daniel Levy, serves on the Board of Directors of American Friends of UNRWA.) When Ging began this speaking tour he was still serving as Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza. The Center has documented numerous highly politicized, inciteful and tendentious statements he made over time in that capacity. [8] In February he moved over to OCHA, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, where he is Director of Operations. And yet, on April 27, 2011, John Ging will be speaking at the Hillel Chapter on the Brown University campus, having been promoted yet again by J Street.[9] He is now billed as the former Director of UNRWA's Gaza operations. THE UNRWA OPERATION In the course of years of investigating and documenting the work of UNRWA, the Center has consistently concluded that UNRWA operations and policy constitute a major precipitating factor with regard to unrest and radicalism in Palestinian Arab areas. In fact, a report on UNRWA produced by the Center in 2003 indicated that: "...a continuation of the status quo of UNRWA operations is neither desirable nor acceptable. That status quo is detrimental both to the long term well being of the refugees and to the possibilities for peace in the Middle East."[10] In light of the increasing radicalism in Gaza, this conclusion is more relevant than ever. Unique rules for Palestinian refugees[11] UNRWA is the only international organization dedicated exclusively to one group of refugees. This is in contradistinction to the UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), which is charged with working on behalf of all the world's refugees, other than those who fall under the UNRWA mandate. Furthermore, the High Commission is mandated to promote solutions to refugee problems. But UNRWA provides only humanitarian aid (education, health care, welfare assistance, social services) and has by policy absented itself from involvement in any creative resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem. This arrangement, which has been in place for over 60 years, has generated a highly problematic and inequitable situation:
When it is possible to repatriate refugees, this is done, but when it is not possible, refugees are provided with permanency either in the country to which they fled, or a third country. Once they achieve citizenship, they are no longer counted as refugees.
No other settlement option is considered permanent — the status of refugee continues to pertain even if a Palestinian has full citizenship in another country. What is more, the children of refugees (patrilineal line), now to the fourth generation, continue to be conferred with the status of refugee. Problem generated by these unique rules
Promotion of the "Right of Return"[12] In point of fact, there is legally no "right of return." Resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem is defined within the UNRWA mandate as being based on UN General Assembly Resolution 194, paragraph 11, which states in its lead sentence that "the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date." However, General Assembly resolutions are only recommendations and carry no weight in international law. What is more, the UNRWA mandate utilizes one phrase from a larger paragraph that in fact alludes to various solutions to the refugee problem including resettlement. Lastly, there remains the question of whether refugees would truly live in peace with their Israeli neighbors. Evidence that this might be the case is close to non-existent. Nonetheless, UNRWA for more than six decades has made the notion of "return" the focal point of its operation. Refugees are consistently taught about the villages in Israel they or their families had come from — this is reinforced in multiple ways, from the registration code on their ID cards to names on streets in the UNRWA camps to special programs. The message delivered to refugees is that they have an inalienable right to return, and that Israel is blocking their exercise of that right. The official UNRWA website currently runs a series of quotes from refugees. These quotes reflect precisely what has been communicated to them by UNRWA: "We were born here, and live here, but we are strangers." (a refugee in Jordan) "All Palestinian children want to enjoy their rights. We want to live like everyone else." (a refugee in Gaza) Problems generated by the policy on return
As far back as June 1957, the Chairman of the Near Eastern Sub-Committee of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee reported at the end of a survey: "The fact is that the Arab States have for ten years used the Palestine refugees as political hostages in their struggle with Israel. While Arab delegates in the United Nations have condemned the plight of their brothers in the refugee camps nothing has been done to assist them in a practical way lest political leverage against Israel be lost."[13] That situation has not only persisted, it has been exacerbated over the years. In 1984, former Minister Mordecai Ben Porat wrote, "Preservation of the image of miserable, homeless, and penniless refugees has ruled out any possibility of dealing with the issues...the funds initially intended to erase the refugee problem have become a powerful instrument intent on preserving this very problem."[14] (Emphasis added.) In line with an Israeli government decision on the matter, Ben Porat had been asked by then Prime Minister Begin to address ways to ameliorate the situation of the refugees but found his efforts were consistently blocked. Most notably, in 195, when Israel attempted to move refugees into permanent housing that had been constructed with funding from the Catholic Relief Agency, the UN officially intervened. A General Assembly resolution[15] was passed that forbade Israel from moving refugees out of their temporary shelters, since this would violate their "inalienable right of return" to the homes that they left in 1948."
UNRWA CONNECTION TO HAMAS It has been irrevocably and inevitably the case that the situation of the refugees has rendered them receptive to membership in and support of the terrorist organization Hamas. What has further been the case, however, is that UNRWA has, at best, turned a blind eye to refugee association with Hamas, and more frequently, has implicitly sanctioned refugee terrorist involvement and utilization of UNRWA facilities for terrorist activities. UNRWA Employees Involved with Hamas The association of UNRWA employees with Hamas follows from the fact that some 99% of those employees (top managerial staff excluded) are themselves Palestinian refugees — subject to the same frustrations and angers as other refugees. This connection had become apparent by 2002, in good part because the IDF moved into UNRWA camps in Judea and Samaria as part of Operation Defensive Shield. In interview, IDF Colonel (ret.) Yoni Fighel, a former military governor in the territories, observed that, "As long as UNRWA employees are members of Fatah, Hamas, or PFLP, they are going to pursue the interests of their party within the framework of their job... Who's going to check up on them to see that they don't? UNRWA? They are UNRWA."[16] The situation still pertains. (See following.) Hamas Presence in the UNRWA Schools Teachers Union The UNRWA teachers' union in the Gaza Strip — by far the largest union sector — has close to 7,000 members; elections are held once every three years to select representatives to its executive council. For over 15 years, Hamas (via its affiliate Islamic Bloc)[17] has dominated the UNRWA's teachers' union in the Gaza Strip. In 2006, the Hamas victory was decisive: for the first time, its candidates won all 11 seats for the teachers' section, meaning that Hamas representatives would control the executive council of this union sector. In the 2009 elections, once again, Hamas-affiliated candidates won all 11 seats in the teachers' section guaranteeing Hamas control of UNRWA schools in Gaza.[18] Islamic Bloc Operating in the Schools The Hamas-affiliated Islamic Bloc (known in Arabic as Al-Kutla Al-Islamiah) maintains broad programs in UNRWA schools; these begin as early as junior high school, and promote incitement for jihad and opposition to Israel. Representatives of the Kutla operate in the schools, with each group of representatives supervised by a counsellor (amir) assigned by Hamas. The goal is winning the hearts and minds of students so they can be recruited into the Hamas military wing during high school or after graduation. This is done via supplemental programming, special events, and offers of assistance, including: clean-up projects; visitation of sick students; vacations; soccer tournaments; planting trees at the schools; assistance in preparing for exams; quiz contests with prizes; bringing and bands and singers associated with Hamas; and so on. Teachers are also given gifts by Kutla at holiday times.[19] One example of many, regarding Kutla involvement in the schools: Iz-A-Din Adel Al-Farah, a 15 year old student in eighth grade in UNRWA's Al-Qarara junior high, had joined the Kutla and was head of the Daawa committee. After he was killed in an IDF operation in January 2009, Kutla activists in the school hung up posters that included a picture of Al-Fara in uniform and carrying a gun.[20] Terrorist Activities in the UNRWA Camps and Facilities Operation Defensive Shield also shed a light on the use of UNRWA camps for terrorist activity. Speaking of the UNRWA Jenin refugee camp, in 2002, then Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky, said: "Dozens of suicide bombers were sent from that relatively small place. It had more explosive materials, this small area of the Jenin refugee camp, than most of the big cities of Judea and Samaria. Definitely, it had the highest concentration of explosive materials in this area, if not in the world."[21] Over the course of the years since:
In recent years this situation has been most problematic in Gaza, where terrorism emanates from inside the UNRWA camps and camps are used as launching sites for rockets, as well as the storage of rockets. The UNRWA Jabalyia camp in northern Gaza is most notable in this connection. During Operation Cast Lead, in Gaza, in December 2008/January 2009, tensions between the IDF and UNRWA were heightened when UNRWA leveled accusations that Israel had hit UNRWA facilities inappropriately. The IDF provided evidence for the presence of terrorists inside or on the grounds of those facilities.[23] POLITICIZED AND INCITEFUL STATEMENTS BY UNRWA STAFF UNRWA is, according to its mandate, a purely humanitarian organization. Politicized statements made by its staff would be inappropriate in any event. However, what the Center has tracked over the years are politicized statements that are tendentious, inciteful, and overtly anti-Israel. A few examples will suffice here:
"But let me also say that the root of the rockets — and people in Gaza tell you this all the time-and, by the way, I also spend a lot of time in Gaza. They will tell you that the occupation is being resisted. That's the reason for the rockets... "And from the UN's point of view, there is one occupied territory. So if there's one Israeli soldier occupying the West Bank, then Gaza is also occupied. I'm afraid that is how international law works. Gaza has continued to be occupied. And until the underlying cause of this, the occupation, is addressed and the strangulation, which is part of that occupation, is addressed, I fear for the people of Sderot." Gunness, who sounds like spokesman for Hamas here, is also totally wrong in what he says about "one occupation."
"The saddest thing, is that all of the private sector — every single factory and workshop — was destroyed. Anybody who was working has to start all over."[25] In point of fact, Israeli attacks were pinpoint — done to hit specific identified targets. One might also ask how AbuZayd determined such a thing: how could she know that there was not a single workshop left standing? This is not a case of empathy for the residents of Gaza that would lead to a tendency to exaggerate. In this instance, one is led to the possibility that AbuZayd willfully and maliciously misrepresented information for political purposes.
Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner18@gmail.com and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info |
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UNRWA: TEACHING TOLERANCE OR HATRED?; JSTREET VERSUS ZIONISM
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 1, 2011. |
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UNRWA: TEACHING TOLERANCE OR HATRED? UNRWA revised its curriculum for Gaza to include Holocaust study. The UNRWA Workers Union refuses to follow that part of the curriculum. The only reason it gives is that such studies would "confuse" the pupils. The Union states its preferences for teaching about alleged Israeli
massacres of Arabs, under which category it includes the Gaza war
(IMRA, 4/27/11
Instead of treating the original Palestinian Arab refugees as it does the millions of other refugees, the UN set up a second refugee organization, UNRWA, just for them. It was set up with the result, if not also the intent, of perpetuating their refugee status. The Arab League wants that status kept smoldering as a spearhead against Israel or as a distraction from its own problems. The general Arab uprising and Arabs' comments about it show that the Arab people are catching on to this strategy and note that their uprising has nothing to do with Israel. Israel is a lesser problem for them than their own rulers' oppression of them. In recent news, Arabs have been commenting that their own rulers are crueler to them than is Israel. How does UNRWA perpetuate the refugee and war problem? Unlike the regular UN refugee agency, it does not help refugees find jobs or relocate. It maintains them in refugee camps or towns on a welfare system. This welfare system is abused as a racket. Dead people's I.D. cards are passed on to live people, who collect multiple allowances. To maintain their allowances, some people who could move away nevertheless stay in the refugee areas or visit. UNRWA also defines "refugees" differently for Palestinian Arabs. UNRWA includes descendants of the refugees, although the descendants are not themselves refugees. It includes Arabs who had been in the Israeli part of Palestine for a brief period, as if that were their homeland. UNRWA also includes people who left their homes but remained in the new country or (and therefore are not stateless) or in other parts of the Palestine Mandate. It hardly verifies applicants' eligibility. Some applications cheat. Thus the estimated number of Arab refugees grows and inflates, absorbing ever growing amounts of U.S. aid without solving the problem. The obvious solution is to terminate UNRWA. Most UNRWA employees are Palestinian Arabs. The agency is a major employer there. These employees are indoctrinated in the same jihadist mentality as their non-employee neighbors. Is their loyalty to UNRWA or to jihad? The Union indicates loyalty to jihad. The jihadists have an excuse for everything. The excuse that the children would be confused is both valid and invalid. Sure it is a poor excuse, on its face. Holocaust education usually is enlightening, not confusing. But in that society, where Holocaust denial is part of the general public indoctrination. They deny it, because it might engender sympathy for the Jewish people and therefore their need for their restored homeland that the Muslim Arabs would like to deprive them of. Palestinian Authority leader, Abbas, wrote his thesis advocating a form of Holocaust denial. His thesis is being disseminated to his people. (Do not expect the Western media and governments and other appeasers of the jihad against Israel to confront him as not being the moderate they pretend in order to prop up someone to whom Israel could make suicidal concessions.) But the excuse is true, considering that the whole society denies the Holocaust, and then UNRWA would come in teaching that there was a Holocaust against the Jewish people. It might even teach that the Palestinian Arab leader of the time was intimately involved in getting Jewish children murdered. It might get into the general sympathy for Nazism across the Arab world. As the antisocial effects of unionization of government workers become manifest, the effect on UNRWA workers merits evaluation. It is one thing for workers to organize against exploitation. It is another thing when they get so powerful as to thwart government policy, to promote false propaganda leading to war, efficient utilization of public funds, and fiscal stability. Note that misguided as UNRWA is, it had intended to tell the truth about the Holocaust. Likewise, it hosts normal summer camps for Arab children. The children engage in wholesome activities. Hamas camps, by contrast, indoctrinate in bigotry and preparation for aggressive war. Under Hamas rule, gunmen attack the camp facilities and guards, off-season. The lesson here is that even when outside charities are well intended, they cannot make progress when the whole society they try to rehabilitate is totalitarian and bigoted. JSTREET VERSUS ZIONISM J Street representatives set up meeting on Holocaust Memorial Day with the Holocaust-denying Palestinian Authority (P.A.) and on IDF Memorial Day with radical Israeli leftists who condemn IDF defense of Israelis. J Street proposes that Israel make peace by meeting the Arabs' initial demands. Among these demands: place Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem under P.A. sovereignty and ban Jewish housing construction in the rest of eastern Jerusalem. Israel's President Peres has scheduled a meeting with the J Street representatives. In doing so, he is breaching the government boycott of that organization. Officers in Reserves, among hundreds of others, asked Peres to cancel his meeting. The Officers explain that the NGOs with which J Street meets in solidarity, such as Yesh Din and B'Tselem, try to make defense of Israel seem illegitimate, although the IDF is known for its considerateness of civilians. The Officers condemn those NGOs as not legitimate. My Israel NGO states, "J-Street was involved in condemning Israel
during Operation Cast Lead, asking the US Administration to cancel
sanctions on Iran, and demanding that Obama not veto a UN condemnation
of Israel — and now they arrive for a Holocaust Day meeting with PA
leaders in Ramallah and a meeting with bodies that blacken IDF
soldiers on the eve of IDF Memorial Day. Is there any limit to the
cynicism and self-hatred...?" (Arutz-7, 4/29,
Earlier news reported that J Street accepted large donations by Iranians. If J Street is as pro-Israel as it claims, then what is anti-Israel? What is Pres. Peres? I'll be posting Holocaust research findings that de-humanizing Jews has been a way to neutralize the consciences of people urged to murder Jews. Thus the radical Israeli NGOs facilitate another Holocaust. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@gmail.com. |
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STOCKHOLM, OSLO
Posted by Marc Prowisor, May 1, 2011. |
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The distance between Stockholm and Oslo is a little over 500 kilometers. In Israel however they seem to converge together. According to Wikipedia: In psychology, Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness. What more accurate description can be used to describe the "Peace Process" and its activists today in Israel? For that matter, the world also in its unique relationship with radical Islam? Is it not PC to wear a "Kafiyeh" (Arab Head covering) and support your local extremist calling for the end of Israel, while the same extremists are against every basic human right and principle that most "enlightened" people stand for? In Israel we watch as demands are presented by those whose only true wish is to bring about the death [demise] of the Jewish State, and we are berated both from outside and within when we protest the danger to our people. In the world of "I told ya so", we are also champs. Our neighbors spiral out of control, wending their ways into the hands of various "Brotherhoods" who share a cry and demand to rise against Israel. We gave up Sinai, our buffer, only to read — too late, now-that Egypt is opening the border to Gaza. Our Syrian buddy to the north (Assad) is called a coward for not fighting Israel over the Golan as he murders countless numbers of his own people. Jordan's "Palestinian" majority growls in wait of taking their rightful place at the helm on our eastern border. The "wise ones" at State have finally decided and furthermore even stated publicly that they feel that Syria is no longer a viable "Partner for Peace", and are surprised at the Abbas/Haniyeh embrace of love handles. They get the big "Duh" award! Yes, this coming from many of the same people who decided to fund and equip Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the Extreme Islamists in Libya and, let us not forget, our own little PLO/Hamas Army in Israel. I might have over-stepped myself in putting the PLO and Hamas together...they haven't signed their little paper yet. Euphoria is in the air... the possibility of attacking and defeating Israel seems closer than it's been since way back when, in 1973. Even the locals are entranced and caught up in the melee, celebrating even as we mourned the senseless and evil slaughter of two parents and three children, guilty of being Jewish...the 4 month old baby's crime: crying, deserving of being stabbed through the heart. Let us not forget open season on Jews making their own way to Joseph's Grave in Shechem (Nablus). As the truth of our neighbors' intentions rear their ugly head, a small phalanx of Israeli "intellectual illuminati" call for the gallows from Tel Aviv in their support of a "Palestinian State".... hmmm, intellectuals? Wait! Hold your breath! Bibi has yet to speak! So that's where we stand right now...not a pretty picture I know, but that's how it is. We should be thankful that at least we (at least those of us that have the ability to see and hear) are able to see what others have in mind for us. This may enable us to act, wisely, hopefully, Gd willing. If we are smart enough, maybe we can prevent the "bad" from happening. Some have even called these events a Blessing in Disguise. The problem is, sometimes the disguise is too good. So Stockholm syndrome is alive and well and living in Israel...for now, but not for much longer. Contact Marc Prowisor by email at marc@friendsofyesha.com. And visit http://yeshaviews.blogspot.com and www.friendsofyesha.com This article is archived at
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A NEW SHOAH
Posted by Hillel Weiss, May 1, 2011. |
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On the eve of Holocaust and Resistance Remembrance Day, I would like to call to the attention of the Jewish public in Israel a unique and special book written by Giulio Meotti, A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism, Encounter Books, New York-London [2010]. Half a year ago a book was published in English under the title A New Shoah; The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism by a young Italian journalist, Giulio Meotti, a righteous Gentile, who of late has been publishing articles in Arutz Sheva in English and in many other forums. No book of this kind has been written in Hebrew as yet, nor has any book of its kind been written by a Jew. This is a personal campaign, the product of a sense of moral mission, a cult book which is trying as best it can to establish a memorial and a name for each and every one of the slain. The author feels intuitively that every name in Israel is connected to the name of God, and he is faithful to the Jewish concept al Kiddush Hashem [the sanctification of God's name through martyrdom]. Meotti has put up a compelling and soul-wrenching memorial to the victims of Arab terror in the Land of Israel and outside of it, particularly since the beginning of the "peace process" and for the most part during the last decade, when Meotti clearly identifies the straight line from Hitler's Holocaust to the holocaust that is bubbling and brewing and about to burst forth like a tsunami and take its toll of victims every day. From the articles which he publishes in various venues, one can see that he is not a naïve Christian who is involved with the victimhood of the Jewish people. He recognizes the crimes of the nations of the world and of Islam against the Jewish people and is not ashamed to castigate whoever deserves it. Meotti is fighting a losing yet heroic battle against the daily grind of forgetfulness, forgetting the victims of a week ago and certainly those of ten years ago, which is also deliberate forgetfulness driven by the horror. He tries to piece together the names of each and every victim of each terror attack and to tell their story. It is only right that the reader pause here and navigate through the search engines seeking names such as Samir Quntar and the Haran family 1979 and make what sense he will of later terrorist exchange deals like the Jibril deal, the story of Ron Arad, up to the current handling of the case of Gilad Shalit, the Second Lebanon War, and 'Operation Cast Lead'. Let the reader refresh his memory about names such as the Schijveschuurder family killed in the Sbarrao restaurant, Dr. David Appelbaum and his daughter Noa who were murdered in Café Hillel in 2001 and let him understand how this has evolved into the massacre of the Fogel Family and Ben-Yosef Livnat HY"D. Now that a decade has passed since the Second Intifada, infamously known as by its Arabic name 'the al-Aqsa Intifada', it is only right that Meotti's book be translated into Hebrew so that the open wound, the suffering and tragedy will not heal and will not allow anyone to continue to use the Holocaust as an excuse for being reconciled with Jewish victimhood nor to revel in Zionist heroism which has proved itself empty and which was revealed in its full disgrace. Do the names of those murdered youth at the Dolphinarium and in150 other terror attacks where over one thousand and five hundred Jews were murdered, Jews who were termed 'Israelis' by the spin doctors, just as local Arabs are mainly called 'Palestinians' still come to memory? Indeed what is the purpose of memory if not in order to fulfill the obligation 'to wipe out Amalek'. Public enterprises such as reading out the name of every Holocaust victim ["Every person had a name"] would have a great value of their own if we are not content to use them merely as a kind of conscience-purifying ritual. Though not the author's intent, Meotti's book casts guilt and responsibility both for forgetting and trying to make others forget and for making do with commemoration as a substitute for war, although he himself takes no political stance apart from unconstrained admiration for the Jewish people and the State of Israel. One of the most prominent and well-remembered figures in the endless list of names and the circumstances of their murder is that of the Jewish-American journalist, Daniel Pearl, writer for the Wall Street Journal, who was decapitated in what amounted to a live broadcast, and the video clip was circulated around the world by al-Qaeda, where the last words he spoke were "I am a Jew". Daniel Pearl was commemorated — rightly — by the people of his community on the wall of remembrance for Holocaust victims, and he apparently is the only Jew who has been added to this list of the murdered. There is nothing more important than the knowledge that the Holocaust continues to this very moment and there is no freedom from it. Perhaps this knowledge will help our judgment capabilities in the struggle between the Jewish people and its oppressors. The motif that stirs Meotti is the Jewish people's choice of life in every situation. To continue at all costs. As one conspicuous example out of many, he brings David Hatuel whose wife and four daughters were murdered on their way to a demonstration against the expulsion from Gaza, the place that he and his family lived. Meotti is astounded by the Holocaust survivors who lost their entire families and went on to build new families if they could; others who found different ways to continue Jewish life at all costs and in all circumstances even if they personally had no one remaining live and they would leave no biological survivor. The carpet of blood woven by history in the state of Israel is too closely woven. At times there were several terror attacks on one day. This carpet could obliterate any attempt to give presence to the personalities who were caught up in the wholesale death, but Meotti, using a special technique in his book, proves that it is certainly possible to restore the names and the life stories of these people to the consciousness of the reader. The book contains several chapters devoted to the history of the city of Hebron, as well as the city of Sderot which for ten years was subject to shell fire; this threat still hovers over the city. He dedicates two chapters to the story of the expulsion from Gaza without taking a judgmental position, but using it as evidence that the State of Israel was prepared to do everything for peace, while the other side was not willing to yield its main objective, the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of every Jew it could find. Regarding the massacre in Hebron of1929, Meotti asks this question: In those days there were no territories "occupied" by Israel; indeed, there was no state of Israel. "How many Jews did your mother murder?" is a question that was asked on a Hamas-sponsored television program of the five-year old son of Rim Riashi who blew herself up next to soldiers at the Erez checkpoint. The child spread out the fingers of his hand and said proudly, "Five". Meotti notes that for years after the Oslo Accords, Israel presented itself as a peace-loving nation, thoroughly normal and involved in post-modern society. The dream of peace seemed so close, so accessible but then fell apart so terribly under the bestial, racist warfare of Islam. Thus a temporary episode in the history of the Jewish people came to an end. At the period where Meotti ends his book he gives a comparative account of Israel's 'Ground Zero', Israel, being the first country that suffered suicide terrorists coming in masses. There were more than 150 terror attacks and another 500 which were aborted. "This was a black hole in the last 15 years which swallowed 1557 murder victims and 17 thousand wounded. For America, it would be as there were 53,573 dead and 664,331 wounded." The acts of murder were initiated by the Arabs, who were willing to destroy themselves just in order to murder as many Jews as possible. This is a mental state expressed in the past by the "father of peace" Anwar Sadaat, president of Egypt before the Yom Kippur War who said, that the price of one million dead Egyptian soldiers for a victory over Israel was a reasonable price to pay; Ahmedinijad, too, has concurred that for him, dealing a mighty blow to Israel is worth any cost, even the cost of destroying Iran. "Let me die together with the Jews" has become the norm. The intensity of unbounded hatred with no calculation of cost stands in diametric opposition to the Jewish ethos which is most regrettably guilt-ridden — either mistakenly or deliberately misled — by the idea that the Jewish people have conquered a foreign land. Thus they are acting more Christian than the Christians, also in the sense of auto-Semitism. Meotti investigated the nature, personality, and biography of each of the terror victims in Israel as well as their social background, and the circumstances of their murder. Meotti's study reveals family, social, and national contexts which show fabrics defined by Roger Scruton, who wrote a foreword to the book, as "a metaphysical family". The connection of the slain to their families, some of them Holocaust survivors, refugees of previous pogroms such as the Hebron massacre of 1929. Some of the stories present people whose family members gave up their lives as martyrs [kiddush Hashem] or in defense of the country over the generations or were attracted to the unique character of the Jewish people, converted, and paid the greatest price a person can pay, while others were not Jewish but rather Righteous Gentiles. In Guilio Meotti's way of looking from the most recent past to the most remote circles, he confers significance and reflected glory also upon the victims of the Holocaust and the bloody history of the Jewish people. "For because of You we are killed relentlessly" and he anchors them also in family and local contexts which give them a firm context. The reader is astounded at the self-sacrificing dedication of the victims and of their families, when they accept their fate and realize the profound significance of their mission; this was their response in the face of the unrestrained, hate and envy-driven bestiality of local primitive pseudo-intellectual Arabs, which apart from the ideology of murder and the mendacious myth of occupation, nothing gives meaning to their lives. Only the appeal of murder itself. Self-fulfillment in shahidism based on murder and suicide. The more the descriptions of the nobility of the victims, the greater grows one's sense of the hopelessness of seeking peace where it cannot be found. Meotti reminds us that the Israelis are not the reason for the hatred but are its object. There can be no solution in the Middle East that does not assign blame to those who are inspired by hatred and live in it. These are people who have nothing to offer but destruction. Epilogue/ On Remembering and Forgetting The days between the month of Nissan and Sivan include some major memorial days in the world of the Jewish state, such as the 27th of Nissan, commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and its suppression, noted as Holocaust and Heroism Day; Memorial Day for fallen IDF Soldiers which the day is leading to Israel Independence Day. There is also one that has been forgotten: 20th of Nissan, a memorial day for communities which were massacred as martyrs al Kiddush Hashem. It began with the martyrdom of the Jews of Blois in France in 1171 during the Crusades and peaked especially in the pogrom of Chmielnitzky [l648-9] when according to various estimates, the lowest number of Jews massacred was 100 thousand while some put the number at 600 thousand. Approximately one quarter of the Jewish population in the world at that time. The surviving remnant of Hungarian Jewry, 800,000 of whom were murdered in the Holocaust, preferred to commemorate the 20th of Sivan as a memorial day but could not deal with the Zionist pride which focused on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as though it represented a typical mode of behavior for the Jewish people. What survived of that Zionist pride is conspicuous today principally in the official policy which resembles not the partisans and dissenters but rather the management of the Judenrats and decision-makers, and what has survived from the slogan "Never again" is only "Ever again, and again". It is hard to know what will happen until Islam and the 70 nations are eventually vanquished directly by God's mighty sword. "I, and not an angel, I and not a messenger". Contact Hillel Weiss at HillelWeiss1@gmail.com |
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EXCEPT IN ISRAEL, CHRISTIANS ARE BEING KICKED OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST
Posted by Dr History, May 1, 2011. |
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This was written by Clifford D. May, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies |
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THE WAR AGAINST THE CHRISTIANS: Italian author Giulio Meotti writes: This is the saddest Easter in the long epic of Arab Christianity: The cross is near extinction in the lands of its origin. The much-vaunted diversity of the Middle East is going to be reduced to the flat monotony of a single religion, Islam, and to a handful of languages. In 1919, the Egyptian revolution adopted a green flag with the crescent and the cross. Both Muslims and Christians participated in the nationalist revolution against British colonialism. Now, according to the Egyptian Federation for Human Rights, more than 70 Christians a week are asking to leave the country due to Islamist threats. The numbers are telling. Today there is only one Middle Eastern country where the number of Christians has grown: Israel. As documented in the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, the Christian community that numbered 34,000 people in 1949 is now 163,000-strong, and will reach 187,000 in 2020. In the rest of the Middle East, the drive for Islamic purity is going to banish all traces of pre-Islamic pasts. This has affected not only Christians, but other non-Islamic communities too, such as the Zoroastrians and Baha'is in Iran (the late also found refuge in Israel, in Haifa.) The silence of the global forums, the flawed conscience of human rights groups, the self-denial of the media and the Vatican's appeasement is helping facilitate this Islamist campaign. According to a report on religious freedom compiled by the US Department of State, the number of Christians in Turkey declined from two million to 85,000; in Lebanon they have gone from 55% to 35% of the population; in Syria, from half the population they have been reduced to 4%; in Jordan, from 18% to 2%. In Iraq, they will be exterminated. Should the exodus of Christians from Bethlehem continue in the next two or three decades, there may be no clergy left to conduct religious services in Jesus' birthplace. In Iran, Christians have become virtually non-existent since 1979, when Khomeini ordered the immediate closure of all Christian schools. In Gaza, the 3,000 who remain are subjected to persecution. ... In Lebanon, the Maronites, the only Christians to have held political power in the modern Arab world, have been reduced to a minority because of Muslim violence and Hezbollah's rise. ... In 1948, the Middle East was cleansed of its ancient Jews. Today is the Christians' turn. Contact Dr History at drhistory@cox.net |
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READER-SELECTED VIDEOS
Posted by Various Readers, August, 2011. |
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Important speech against destroying the identity of European states From David Pisanti British politician and the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) Nigel Farage slams EU bosses over European crisis. EU is killing democracy. Nigel Farage speaking on European debt 'Who the Hell You Think You Are?: Come fly with me, come fly, come fly away. over Jerusalem, Samaria and Judea From Fred Reifenberg (31may11) Entebbe Rescue -- 35 years after From Dr. History (31may11) Will you send your kids to an Arab school? From Gabrielle Goldwater (31may11) Not Natural Born -- TRUTH MATTERS From Billy Mills (31may11) Obama's not a Natural-Born American. Porcelain Unicorn -- set in Nazi Germany From Truth Provider (31may11) why NATO attacked Libya From David Pisanti 13 yr old bilingual Songwriter-singer Luisa Hank sings From Donald Hank Hatikvah From Samuel Levinson Please send this around the Net. Send it to your friends. You really can help Israel. The World Turned Upside Down From Susana K-M Barry Rubin wrote: " I cannot possibly praise Melanie Phillips highly enough. She presents the basic problems of the Western debate and its rampant insanity with brilliance and clarity. I urge you to watch this brief lecture of hers and promise that you will learn a great deal and understand a great deal better." Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes reacts to Obama's new peace plan From UCI How Obama got it wrong -- yet again. Palestine does NOT deserve a STATE From UCI Palestine does NOT deserve a STATE From UCI (may11) Bureaucracy--the way it really is From LS This is a Spanish short film about Bureaucracy........ Subtitles included Same all around the world..... Israel You're Not Alone From Mike Gropper (may11) This news conference it is worth listening to and getting it around to average people who may just not understand Israel's concerns. A very serious smoking problem From Fred Reifenberg Funny! An amazing performance regardless whether one is a smoker or not. The YouTube the Palestinian Authority Does Not Want You to See From David Nathan The video documents the Temple Mount's Jewish history and shows Jews facing the Western Wall and Arabs with their backsides to the holy site while facing Mecca. The YouTube clip also quotes an a Palestinian Authority professor stating the attachment of Jews to the Temple Mount, a statement that PA officials and Muslim clerics in the Arab World have tried to refute in recent years. Deal with environmental hazards in the Jenin area From Gabrielle Goldwater the Civil Administration's efforts to deal with environmental hazards in the Jenin area and to assist the residents in resolving the issue. For further details, please contact Civil Administration Spokesman Capt. Amir Koren at 050-6234081. Jenin Holy Stuff From David Pisanti Dennis Miller Defends Israel's Right To Keep Its Existing Borders And To Defend Itself From Mechel Samberg GOOD NEWS! Islam declares that necrophilia is halal (kosher) From Mechal Samberg Islam has a fatwa for everything. Imam Zamzami AbdelBari has given the thumbs up on doing the nasty with your dead wife. Or your dead goat. ENJOY! H/T blazingcatfur Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 because they were ordered to by Arab leaders (who promised to run all the Jews out of Israel) are still living in filthy Arab refugee camps. Hezbollah cartoon teaches kids to throw stones at Israelis and to try to die as martyrs. May Israel fulfill all of their death wishes. A rabbinical court in Mea Shearim did not sentence a dog to death Inventing a story about a dog condemned to be stoned Klavan's One-State Solution: video Give the Middle East to the Jews From LS Radio Talk Show host Epitomizes American Naivety on Islamic Deceit From Walid Shoebat I try to explain to Bill Carroll Talk show host of KFI the second largest station in Los Angeles the issue concerning women in Islam and the potential problems having someone who has close associations with the Muslim brotherhood advising our Secretary of State as well as having access to sensitive information. A women who marries a non Muslim based on the fundamental principles of Islam should be killed. Since Huma Abedin is a "practizing Muslim" and her family are Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim Sisterhood operatives and players then why has she not been killed or ostracized for marrying a Jew. There are only two possible reasons that she has not been killed: 1. Her husband, Anthony Weiner, may have officially converted to being a Muslim; there is strong circumstantial evidence that this could be the case. 2. That she is just using Al Taqiyah and her marriage to Weiner to give her more cover to do the bidding of the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate the highest levels of our government. Zorba the Greek From David Pisanti Vital History: Jerusalem, Stolen Arab Land? Really! From Laura Kafir Civilization From Bill Warren On May 12 Bill Warner was the opening speaker for Geert Wilders in Nashville, TN. His 14 minute speech about our civilization and Islam is found here: Abbas and Palestinian Authority leaders attend Fatah performance From Barbara Sommer Palestinian Authority officials sitting in the audience:
one photo is worth a thousand words... From LS Netanyahu and Obama in their twenties.... 
Jewish DNA From Hal Rosenthal _This Is One Of The Most Interesting Videos I Have Ever Received!!!_ Who do the territories belong to? From Sergio (Hadar) Tezza 4000 years of Jerusalem history in 5 minutes From JCPA Newspaper Coverage of the Six-Day War From JCPA Tennessee Football Coach fired for singing Obama song From Dr. History debunk this for dummies From David Pisanti from the New Sanhedrin research department. The UN has done it again. From Susana K-M 2 clips regardig the heart of Eretz-Yissra'el: (1) the San remo Mandate (2)Israel's Defense Needs From Gadi Eshel
San Remo Defensible borders 28 year old Benjamin Netanyahu Defends the Jewish State From One Jerusalem Netanyahu addresses American Congress President Obama At AIPAC From One Jerusalem CONFRONTING "THE CRAZIES!" - at AIPAC From Susana K-M Tom Trento confronts radical left Long Live Israel -what a difference three years and a different president makes! From Dr. History Let's blame the Jews From Susanu K-M Obama's royal gaffes From Sergio The guy just can't stop putting his feet (both) in his mouth! Ignorant, unprepared, impolite, dangerous... PA will hold Gilad Shalit after unification From Gabrielle Goldwater Senior Palestinian Official Nabil Sha'ath Brad_Zimmerman From Fred Reifenberg PRESIDENT OBAMA : MOST ANTI-ISRAEL PRESIDENT EVER From Barbara Sommer Gathering at Israeli Consulate in NYC May 20, 2011. Glenn Beck: Standing With Israel is What God Has Called Us to Do From Barbara Sommer A Jewish response to Obama From Sergio Tezza The message is what matters, not the messenger nor his party choice, which, after 11 years of fruitless work, has shown itself to be as delusional and/or deceptive as an attempt to kosher a pig. Songs about Jonathan Pollard and Israel From Robin Ticker The creator/producer/singer of the song, David Kerner, has written many excellent songs about Israel, including Sderot Town, Aishet Chayil, Dear Everybody (about Gilad Shalit). Please check out Davd's website, at: www.kernersongs.com. "Palestianians" now claim to be Canaanites From Tsila The so called "Palestianians" or more precise, the Arabs are piling up upon their lies.... They have no conscious. They build on their hatred and jealousies Abbas speech delivered by advisor - Israel is incidental in history KISS From Susana K-M Bleeped cursing aside, his truth counldn't be stated more precisely. Answer to Obamah From Dov Report to the US Congress on Dangers and Illegality of US Aid to the PA Armed Forces From David Bedein Peace Agreement between Fatah and Hamas From Uriel Ben Avraham House Majority Leader Eric Cantor Speaking at Policy Conference 2011 From Truth Provider Photos of the Lag Ba'Omer Parade and Celebration and a Fire Juggling Video From Jacob Richman Danger to Israel of Return to 1967 Lines From Susana K-M ] Glenn Beck's 'Restoring Courage' event in Israel From Barbara Taverna a must watch- this is the real truth From Fred Reifenberg A Definitive Video Tool for US-Israel Alliance From UCI
From Susana K-M Hamas Minister of Women's Affairs Jamila Al-Shanti: "Palestinian society is, by nature, a society of resistance. Resistance does not mean only the bearing of arms. The people who aid those who bear arms are sometimes even stronger than them. The [Palestinian] woman is the wife of a resistance fighter, or the mother of resistance fighters, or else she herself is on the frontline, or she opens her home to resistance fighters. She is capable of doing everything. During the incursions [into Gaza], the women fought in every way possible. They confronted the tanks, they confronted the Zionist enemy." Obama did it again From Truth Provider President Obama did it again. He dealt Israel a major blow below the belt which can potentially bring about the total destruction of Israel, the only close ally America has in the Middle East. Obama goes back on US promises to Israel. Islam's 'final solution' From Kati Cohen Mark Levin's commentary on Obama From Dr. History Developing A Good Heart From Tsila Comments on Israel (Nakba 2011) From Fred Reifenberg Love him or hate him, right now Glenn Beck is the most vocal supporter of Israel (even more so than our own politicians). What Islamic TV shows about Jews From Barney Wainer Watch the video and ask yourself how we are to counter such ignorance, self righteousness and hate "Norwegian blondes dye their hair dark to avoid Muslim harassment' Norwegian MP --- Tybring-Gjedde: Revolutionaries in Times of Universal Deceit: Session 5 - The Right Against Arbitrary Arrest - Part 4 From UN Watch Norwegian MP Has Had Enough of Labour´s Mad Demographic Experiments From Gabrielle Goldwater
Jerusalem was always ONE: the media myth of two cities From Barbara Sommer Glenn Beck Announces "Restoring Courage" Event in Israel From Susana K-M Announcing a major international rally in Jerusalem AT FRIENDS OF IDF DINNER, AN ISRAELI MOTHER BRINGS AUDIENCE TO TEARS -- From YoriRUs Beck on United Jerusalem From Albert Wendroff Breach of Syrian border From Alex Grobman Takes him a minute to get going but... From YogiRUs Qalandiya Rioters Use Ambulance for Cover While Hurling Rocks From Gabrielle Goldwater Palestinian rioters in Qalandiya use an ambulance for cover as they hurl rocks during a violent riot as part of the "Nakba" protests. This is the future of school in the West if we don't stop being afraid of being rude From Gabrielle Goldwater Norwegian Muslims want beheading for failing to observe the fast in Islamic schools In honor of Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmaut. THe IDF our Pride and Our Shame From Robin Ticker Prayer for our Soldiers in the IDF
From Eretz Israel Shelanue The Zionist Revolution goes on Shariamerica: Islam, Obama, and the Establishment Clause From Eretz Israel Shelanu Muslims hold protest rally AGAINST peace! From Mechel Samberg Latest Innovation at airports From Susana K-M Not one country can match this! From Victor Sharpe Drug trafficking, kidnapping fund al Qaeda From Gabrielle Goldwater UnJews Everywhere From Nurit Greenger Clashes between police and protesters "Phalestinian Arab" are against humanity From Dov A Torah-True and Zionist Way to Memorialize the Fogel Family From Arutz Sheva The Itamar Yeshiva is building and expanding in memory of the Fogel family murdered by terrorists. Arutz Sheva presents the emotionally stirring video. You've not seen this one before! From Fred Reifenberg Poor Osama From Truth Provider Here is a little fun poked at the reactions of some to the demise of that murderer Osama and the shelter he likely received from the Pakistanis. Why Palestinians want this video removed From Gabrielle Goldwater "Lights of Hope", 720- meter-long flag on the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem From Jacob Richman Memorial Day in Hebron 2011 From Hebron Jewish Community Different HAARP facilities around the world From David Pisanti Jewish National Pride - Re: Israel - be proud!! From Dr. Ewald Metzler N.J.B.S.P. -- The National Jewish BRAZEN SEA PROJECT San Remo's Mandate: Israel's 'Magna Carta' From Barbara Sommer What else do you need to wake up? From Susana K-M Here is a video clip which will make clear to you the nature of Hamas as a terrorist organization bent on Israel's destruction. Caroline Glick From Paul Rotenberg The volunteers answering the call of history From LS The double standard about gas prices From Dr. History Israel Independence Day From Paul Rotenberg Is He Or Isn't He? Watch This And Then You Decide! From Peggy Gilliam Watch this QUICKLY--before it gets Pulled -- if your stomach allows it Yom Ha'atzmau From Paul Rotenberg In anticipation of Yom Ha'atzmaut Why Palestinians Want This Video Removed From Ralph Robinek a video to never forget our 6 million deaths during the Holocaus From Blue Truthe Your Standard Islamic Religious Instruction in Germany: From Walid Shoebat German Muslim religious class taught by a Muslim teacher Al-Aqsa Mosque Preacher Eulogizes Bin Laden, Warns Obama From Gabrielle Goldwater Rabbi Rick Jacob: We are for Israel We are for Israel New Learn Hebrew Video for Israel Independence Day From Jacob Richman A video to never forget our 6 million deaths during the Holocaust From E Sharon Video to share, that no one will forget in these times of ignorance and anti-Semitic hatred what our people lived 70 years ago... Give Me Osama, I'll Give you the Jews From Mechel Samberg Illiterate Children Reciting the Koran on Film: The Left Gives a Standing Ovation From Maarcia Leal Illiterate Children Reciting the Koran Dr. Wafa Sultan is back - more outspoken than ever From Aryeh Zelasko Many years ago, I went to discuss the Koran with an Arab professor of Middle Eastern studies. I had read what was supposed to be the best translation of the Koran into English and was very confused. It was full of contradictions and out right lies about historical events. He told me that since I am a religious Jew, he can express his opinions freely to me. He said that Islam is a curse on the Arab people and has kept them as primitives for a thousand years. [...]He answered that in the Arab world there were not really many alternatives to Islam that would not quickly get you killed. So his way of fighting Islam was to join the Communists. [...] It would seem that today there are more alternatives. I wish all those fighting this evil the best of success. Middle East Screen-Savers Remove From Yoram Ettinger The accord between Abu Mazen and Hamas removes a screen-saver, which distorted Western perceptions of the Palestinian Authority. Recent developments in Syria remove another screen-saver, which depicted Bashar Assad as, supposedly, a constructive force in the Middle East. US national security would be well-served by enhanced cooperation with its only stable, reliable, capable, democratic and non-conditional Middle Eastern ally, Israel. radio interview, on Frank Gaffney's Class on Islam in Germany From Dov Palestinian Authority DEMANDS, DEMANDS, DEMANDS From One Jerusalem PA defines Palestine to include all of Israel |
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