THINK-ISRAEL features essays and commentaries that provide context for current events in Israel. The war Islam is waging against Israel and the West is top priority. We report on global anti-Semitism, Islamism and creeping Sharia.We aim to make sense of what's going on.
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What we are talking about in the July-August 2012 Issue
This issue is mostly about revelations, the common ordinary kind, the kind that result from being forced to look at things in new ways because of new happenings. Judging from recent news items, more of the general public seem to have become aware that we have a new enemy we should take seriously.
It isn't really a new enemy. Resurgent Islam has long been using its enormous wealth and its expanding population to try to dominate the world. The Muslim Brotherhood started organizing and planning for a dominant Islam with the entire world adhering to Sharia law over eighty years ago. Muslim theologians, scholars, academics, political leaders, sheikhs and heads of prominent families are passionately dedicated to reestablishing the Caliphate, imposing Sharia law, and in the process, giving every Muslim the feeling of superiority over non-Muslims. But the implications have been ignored by us, the targeted victims.
ISLAMISTS HAVE BEEN BUSILY TAKING OVER EUROPE by rapidly increasing their already large population. They back up their increasing demands by riots, mayhem, terrorism, brutal physical attacks on those they claim have insulted their prophet Mohammad and by inhuman slaughter of civilians, particularly Jewish babies and young children. In Europe, they support their troops -- the huge number of humble Muslims with their multiple wives and many children -- by sopping up the host State's disposable income in welfare payments. In their own countries the long stable relationship of a Muslim majority and dhimmi minorities is in flux, with Islam stepping up the pace of terrorizing minorities and making it more and more difficult for them to maintain their religious practices. The killing, torturing and burning of their resident Christians and other minorities is on the increase. In America, their quiet infiltration of our infrastructure has been occasionally punctuated by isolated acts of war. Though they began attacking us earlier, 9/11 was a seemingly unavoidable declaration that they meant us harm. Yet we continued to act as if we can make the unpleasantness go away if we ignore it.
We defeated Nazism and Communism. Yet we've been botching the war Islam declared. Aside from sending our soldiers to fight interminable and deliberately limited wars, we've not made a total commitment to fight back. But current events are forcing a change in attitudes. The violent overthrow of dictatorial governments in the Middle East hasn't -- as we had been led to believe it would -- brought about democracy and freedom. Any more than deposing Saddam Hussein and his entire regime led to a fundamental change in Iraq. All that's happened is that political dictatorships have been exchanged for Islamic dictatorships. The cast of characters participating in the civil war in Syria suggests Syria will be no exception.
In America, despite the reassurances coming from much of the media that the only problem is that the poor Muslims are suffering from Western Islamophobia, our attitudes are changing. The sensational disclosure that American security and administrative agencies have been infiltrated by Islamists is beginning to force us to rethink what we think we know about the Religion of Peace.
Admittedly there's still the bogeyman fear of being called a racist -- may it soon join the fear of being called a communist on history's dusty pile of conditioning and control words that have lost their power. But one indicator of the change in attitude is that talking about Islam is no longer totally taboo, even in the face of the well-funded campaign to make any criticism of Islam a crime and to label anyone who objects to Islamicist tactics as islamophobic. We are beginning finally to explore implications. We are starting to connect the dots.
One example has been our shock and amazement when security vetting issues are discussed, voiced as: how the devil did Huma Abedin ever get security clearance?
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The government does an exhaustive security examination on people working in sensitive security positions in the government. The inquiry is particularly stringent in wartime, and whether we acknowledge it or not, Islamists, seeking to impose Sharia law globally, have declared war on us. The recent revelations about Huma Abedin's affiliations to the Muslim Brotherhood would seem to disqualify her from her State Department job. A query from Congressmen asking for proof that she -- as well as some other political appointees to jobs in sensitive positions -- does not adhere to an ideology at odds with our Constitution has been treated as a laughing matter and the legalities are ignored. But it is a gateway inquiry. The situation inspired an examination into the vetting process. Trivializing its importance jeopardizes our way of life, as would giving Sharia law legal standing in American law courts, the topic of the second essay in this section.
Return to ArchiveBernice Lipkin examines two cases that explore the American security vetting system as it applies to high level jobs in the government: (1) confirming that the legal requirements for being the President are met and (2) doing background checks and examining affiliations of people applying for positions that provide them access to and/or control of classified information and/or security sites. The first case highlights problems that arise because there apparently is no official system in place to confirm that the Constitutional requirements for the Presidency are met. In the second case, the vetting system is in place and is routinely used to check out security issues. In this instance it failed to prevent questionable Islamic infiltration.
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Laura L. wrote this about Eric Allen Bell's article on how the political parties are handling the growing problem of court decisions being based on Sharia law in American courts rather than on American Constitutional law: "It is the goal of the Muslim Brotherhood front groups to implement sharia law in America and in fact it has been applied in American courts. I’m sick of politicians in both parties treating islam as though it’s just another benign religious faith when it is in fact a lethal, totalitarian, imperialistic political ideology. I’m sick of being told we must tolerate and respect an ideology masquerading as a religion, which seeks to forcibly convert, subjugate or kill unbelievers. I’m also sick of alleged conservatives proclaiming their patriotism, adherence to the constitution and their deep commitment to the nation’s national security and the preservation of American ideals of liberty and so forth [when their] silence on the civilizational or stealth jihad taking place in America reveals that they are more concerned with advancing their careers than in defending America and preserving our future." Because our law makers are allowing Sharia infiltration into our court system, as Bell points out, Muslim women and children are deprived of equal protection under the law. What is of more general concern is that by allowing sharia law to get its nose into the American courts system, we are opening the way for sharia to override American Constitutional law and determine court decisions in an ever widening sphere -- to where it could become de facto law for all of us.
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These essays are on prominent examples of three sorts of girls of the Brotherhood: a mother and daughter from a family that holds high positions in the Muslim Brotherhood; an American patsy who died believing in a cause she didn't understand, while her savvy Arab and Marxist comrades have found she is more useful dead than alive; and a member of a terror group that springs from the Muslim Brotherhood. In her Arab community, she is glorified as a heroine because she killed and maimed Jews. She couldn't be more honored if she'd received the Nobel prize. But, then again, killing and maiming seem the only things Palestinian Arabs do well.
Perforce, much of the attention is on Huma Abedin of the Abedin family of Muslim stalwarts, who are large-sized cogs in the wheel trying to flatten the West. Huma earned this attention when people became aware that she wasn't just the wife of Anthony Weiner, the sextextist, but was the Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It was soon discovered that she was part of a family that have all -- including Huma -- been actively involved in an organization promulgating Brotherhood supremacist ideology. The Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA) was established by Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef, a major donor to Al-Qaeda. IMMA proclaims itself "the only scholarly institution dedicated to the systematic study of Muslim communities in non-Muslim societies around the world." How scholarly IMMA is is arguable. What is not assailable is that the Abedins and IMMA have been actively connected to men in Al-Qaeda leadership positions.
Return to ArchiveJamie Glazov interviews Walid Shoebat on Huma Abedin's ties with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), an organization whose mission is to give Islam global control. Her mother is in the leadership of the Muslim Sisterhood. Her brother and her father, now dead, have been prominent in MB operations. Shoebat points out that it is also peculiar that her family would allow her to marry a non-Muslim, particularly a Jew, "unless Huma has a 'higher calling' and a unique exception was made for her, since she is an ear into top U.S. sensitive information, or Anthony Weiner has converted to Islam or even both." He suggests the U.S. current policy of gaining "what they deem a 'moderate Muslim Brotherhood' ... is like saying that in order to win the Cold War with Russia, that we needed to promote 'Capitalistic-Communism' or during WWII we should have promoted 'pro-Jew Nazism' in Germany." He makes the case that the Islamists understand us better than we understand them.
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Walid Shoebat interprets for us projects whose names suggest innocuous pursuits carried out by the Abedin family: mother Saleha, head of the Muslim Brotherhood's (MB) Sisterhood branch and editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA); father Sayed Zaynul, an author and a launcher of a plan called "Muslim Minorities in the West"; son Hassan, who is also on the board of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS); and daughter Huma, once assistant editor of JMMA and currently Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. There's nothing picayune about the Abedin family's organizational talents. Mama's Sisterhood spans some 16 countries. Papa's publication speaks of recruiting Muslims living in the West to make Islam dominant. We don't have to wait years in the future to determine whether this is true - - we have already seen Islamic Students of North America (ISNA) and Muslim Students of America (MSA) in destructive action on American campuses. Son Hassan's OCIS can boast of having Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the man who can create a full-blown riot with the flick of his finger, as a OCIS Trustee. And Daughter Huma has both an unparalleled view of American policy and the clout to influence it. In this essay, Shoebat emphasizes that while the Abedins are leading figures in the Muslim Brotherhood, they also has a strong connection to the Saudis. In fact, "The House of Saud had used Huma's father Sayed Zaynul Abedin's Muslim Minorities in the West published in 1998 as part of 29 works to construct a plan to conquer the world with Islam."
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Discover The Networks provides us with a biography and an informative resumé of the achievements of Saleha Mahmood Abedin, a woman who's led a fulfilling life expanding the reach of sharia law around the world. She is a founder of several large organizations and a joiner of others. One, the Muslim Sisterhood, encourages prominent Arab women to promote Muslim Brotherhood ideology in the West by stealth. She's a member in good standing in interfaith and peace groups. A firm believer in Sharia, she promotes the complete subservience of women, child marriage and female genital mutilation. She has translated into English Fatima Umar Naseef's book on how to be a devout Muslim woman. [See Andrew Bostom's article below.] The book, whose views presumably are acceptable to her, views Sharia as saving women from the slavery of man-made laws, from having to decide on her own what type of clothes to wear, what tasks to undertake and what to do with her life. Sharia is her guide. Abedin is also editor-in-chief of JMMA, the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, published by the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA). Before becoming Deputy Chief of Staff and aide to the Secretary of State, her daughter Huma worked with her as an editor of JMMA. Another daughter Heba is currently an assistant editor. IMMA was launched and has been supported by Abdullah Omar Naseef, a known financial mainstay of al Qaeda.
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Andrew Bostom provides us with a well-researched description of the extent of Saleha Abedin's promulgation of the views and practices of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), a "modern traditionalist Islamic jihad movement." Dr. Abedin is Professor of Sociology in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA). She chairs the International Islamic Committee for Women and Child (IICWC) in Amman, Jordan. She is a prominent member of the Muslim Sisterhood, the woman's division of the Muslim Brotherhood. She is a strong proponent of child marriage and clitoridectomy. She midwifed the translation into English of Fatima Umar Naseef's book Women in Islam: A Discourse in Rights and Obligations. The book advocates feminine modesty, where immodesty apparently is whatever might tempt a man. It asserts that a woman's role is primarily that of wife and mother, the one who gives birth to the men who fight in Jihad. The book is anchored in the writings of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian writer and a leading member of MB, whose ideology was an extension of the writings of the founder of MB. Both advocated world-wide violent revolution to bring true Islam to all. Bostom makes clear that the views held today "by the entire global Muslim umma's pre-eminent Muslim theologians and scholars" on Jihad and Islamic Jew-hatred are the same as those held by Qutb, and Qutb's views, in turn, "are in full accord with classical Muslim jurists." Considering Dr. Abedin's promulgation of "liberty-crushing Sharia supremacism," "[t]he extent of Dr. Abedin's influence on her daughter Huma Abedin's views and efforts — the latter still a close aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — should long ago have been investigated, clarified, and discussed in the public domain."
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As Frimet and Arnold Roth write, "Our daughter Malki, murdered at the age of 15 in a restaurant massacre in Jerusalem, was a victim of jihadist hatred and barbarism." Their way of coping was to establish Keren Malki, to take care of Israeli children with special needs, no matter whether they are Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Druze or unaffiliated. In sharp contrast, the entire Arab culture that produced the woman terrorist responsible for Malki's death considers her a heroine, not a monster. She brought death to some and misery to many. She had no positive impact on her own people or changed anything for the better. But actual accomplishments aren't the goal, are they? It's all about feeling superior. The goals of a blood-lust people are seldom ennobling. They destroy what they are incapable of creating. We can ask why do these people play these games that are so grotesque? Perhaps it is because they model themselves on a primitive pedophile who enjoyed destruction. His followers were better at looting than planting, better at demolishing than building. Even today his spiritual descendants don't show the ability to behave in a civilized manner, the way the Roths did. That would take compassion and generosity and disciplined bravery. Not their strong points.
[Note: See the January-February 2012 issue of Think-Israel here for a story on Wafa Al-Biss, another murderous terrorist.]
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In this essay, Bernice Lipkin brings the information on the sensational death of Rachel Corrie up to date. The emphasis here is on the organizations that, in the name of humanitarianism and peace, recruit patsies such as Corrie, idealistic young exploitables, and use them to further a very different agenda -- the delegitimization of Israel, the infiltration of sharia into the West.
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This set of essays look at the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that has recently taken power in Egypt as well as other extreme Sunni Islamist groups. In the course of discussing the long list of players now battling in Syria, one of the essays examines Brotherhood participation in the ongoing Syrian civil war.
Return to ArchiveWhen Syrians rebelled against the rule of President Bashar Assad, it was assumed the well-supplied rebels would soon unseat him. The rebellion has turned into a civil war that threatens to destabilize the region, not just the country. This is in part due to the ideologies of the major players and their plans for the future of the region. Bernice Lipkin provides a summary of the players on the opposing teams and their complex interactions.
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Barry Rubin begins this essay this way: "No, it sure isn't the age of Aquarius or of Multicultural, Politically Correct love-ins. It's the age of revolutionary Islamism, especially Sunni Islamism. And you better learn to understand what this is all about real fast. Focusing on the Sunni revolutionary Islamist tidal wave, the foundation of knowledge is that there are three types and they are all bad, very bad. A lot of people are going to be misinforming you about this and getting others — never themselves, of course — killed. Rubin is talking about the al-Qaeda style groups, the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is information you need to have.
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May Ibrahim records an interview with Ibrahim Al-Zafarani, a former Muslim Brotherhood (MB) leader in Alexandria. The interview is noteworthy in that Al-Zafarani acknowledges that MB's rival, the Salafist movement, is growing. But he attributes it to the MB involvement in politics rather than religious advocacy -- as if that hasn't always been true. In the face of slaughter and church-burnings, he claims that "Christian fears are not justified." Al-Zafarani does, however, reveal tantalizing tidbits about the structure of the Egyptian MB and the interrelationships of the various cliques and cadres in the MB. I especially liked that major control is in the hands of a group called the Guidance Bureau. As good as George Orwell was, he didn't come up with anything that Orwellian.
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The major struggle for dominance in the Middle East is between Saudi Arabia and Iran. After that allegiances and interests become murky; traditional linkages can no longer be relied on. In Egypt, the new President, Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has eliminated potential challengers at least in the short term and has placed the MB in a position to make binding decisions for Egypt. Will the MB ally itself with the Sauds or with Iran? After presenting the arguments on both sides, David Goldman predicts that Egypt will do neither but will, essentially, tread water, while attempting to keep good relations with everyone. Goldman believes that in the long run, "[t]he most probable outcome is that Egypt's military will assert control with Saudi financial backing and suppress the Muslim Brotherhood."
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Encouraged by anti-Israel NGOs and Israeli marxists, the Arabs in Israel have laid claim to both public and private lands. The illegal spreading out of the Bedouins throughout the Negev has become a serious problem. The Bedouins had moved their herds back and forth across what is now Israel and its neighboring countries for hundreds of years, never establishing permanent habitation. Thanks to their goats, their contribution to agriculture was to render the land barren and unproductive. Now, after the many years it took the Israeli government to persuade them to settle in permanent quarters, they've begun to take over land, ignoring legality and good environmental practices. Similarly, the Palestinian Arabs continue to claim everything in sight as well as denying that Jews had any connection to the land. Their partisans have made similar wild claims, false or exaggerated or misleading, about Arab discoveries in science. And by ignoring facts and suggesting connections that didn't exist, President Obama has given the interaction between President Jefferson and the Muslims a misleading interpretation.
Return to ArchiveGiven the timidity of the Government at protesting illegal building by Arabs, it isn't surprising that the illegal grabbing of land by the Bedouins in the Negev has received little official or media attention. The image of the Bedouins as wandering nomads -- at least in Israel -- has been changing for half a century and has been replaced by the reality of the Bedouins settling down, willy nilly, over the entire Negev. Concomitantly, the Bedouins have been radicalized and as Atara Beck writes, "Those aiming to conquer Jewish land have resorted to destructive behaviour, including 'agricultural crime and theft, extortion through violence and threats, hooliganism in the streets, malls and entertainment centres and environmental pollution.'" They are backed by Peace Now and other radical pro-Palestinian groups, which can be counted on to raise a ruckus whenever the Israeli government tries to stop Arab illegal building or allow Jewish legal building.
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David Bedein gathers some facts countering the "facts" Arab use to bolster their claim to the town of Susya. What is puzzling is, given that it so easy to determine that the Arab claims are false, why do so many "reputable" academics and journalists go along with the lie? Is it, as one reader commented, that "[w]hat the Arabs and their supporters love to do is use 'creative license' as they come up with their fairy tales, creative license that the anti-Semites of the world love to embrace." What is worse is that so many supporters of the Arab claims are Jews, who would never dream of defending the homes of Jews that live in the Territories and have legitimate claims.
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The White House's report on President Obama's iftar dinner at the White House breaking bread after Ramadan would indicate that Obama's speech was a model of misdirection, misinformation and missing information. The Press Release said that Obama suggested Jefferson entertaining the Tunisian ambassador might be seen as the first Iftar dinner at the White House. Jefferson did invite the ambassador to dinner but the slant given by the White House is all wrong. Perhaps the speech writers fired the fact checkers in the interests of saving a few kopeks -- it would the first austerity measure at the White House in these dismal economic times. In this essay, Lee Cary corrects the misleading implication that relations with the Barbary Pirates were friendly or that the Muslims have contributed much to American history. As one reader, Twoiron, commented, "The two major 'gifts' of Islam to America: 1) the Barbary Pirates, and 2) 9/11/2001." Of further interest: it is amazing to read the difference between 2008 when people tiptoed around the possibility that Obama was Muslim, and a committed Muslim to boot, and today's openly-expressed hostility to this now acknowledged fact -- for he [Obama] himself has said it.
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This is a companion piece to Lee Cary's piece above. Why are we devoting so much space to a single event? Because it is emblematic. Because it is uncomplicated and the features that are lies show up clearly. No judgment is needed. Its lesson needs to be absorbed -- and applied to more difficult subjects: the national debt, which is of tsunami height; the economy, which is tanking; the myriad falsifications, such as crediting GM with recovery when the Gov't, which now owns the company, boosted their sales by buying a fleet of cars from them using our money; the printing of money we can't back, so inflation increases. Think of this essay as Understanding. 101.
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There are many Muslim groupies, employees and devout believers in underdoggery posting a prodigious amount of misinformation on how the Muslims have helped the progress of the human race, inventing everything from the concept of zero in mathematics to windmills. There's only one problem. While these claims would make good material for Scheherazade's tall tales, fact-wise -- as this article from WikiIslam makes clear -- they just aren't true.
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This is a morality play of sorts. It chronicles what it takes to make a media person stop ignoring evil. It is the story of Ola Abbas, who saw the brutality of the Syrian government as it sought to stop the hemorrhaging of its authority as the Syrian rebels gained ground. She saw the secret police in action. She saw censorship of anything not promoting the Syrian president. She finally defected -- the first. In her defense, she was right to be afraid. Maybe next someone will write why our esteemed Western media had for these many years cooed over Assad and his well-dressed wife. Who pulled their chain?
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Yarden Frankl describes how a photographer turned the scene of a poorly-attended demonstration against Israel into a compelling shot of Gaza children behind bars. He scrupulously captioned it as coming from an industrial area during a rally. The Independent (UK) newspaper used it with no caption to illustrate an inflammatory article on the treatment of Palestinian Arab minors detained for criminal activities in the Territories. There is an Editor's Addendum on the subject of the newspaper article: "a Report on Palestinian youngsters in the Territories detained in custody". In its own way, the Report is almost as misleading as the faked photo.
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Jack Engelhard suggests that "[t]he colossus that was called mainstream news media, as in America-hating/Israel-bashing journalism, is being cut down to size. People are catching on to the deceptions that characterize most of our traditional news organizations..." He notes that CNN is way down and many other networks in America, England and Israel are being ridiculed for poor journalism. Things are better but there's still a long way to go: "...truthful journalism can succeed only if we demand nothing less."
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Many anti-Israel boycotts, sanctions and divestiture (BSD) campaigns are carried out with the financial and advocacy support of mainline churches in the U.S. and Canada, which have for a decade openly involved themselves in a sustained effort to demonize Israel. What is most shocking is that "a number of European governments, plus the United States and Canada, provide funds for these church-based efforts to delegitimize Israel. These tax-payer funds are disbursed as grants to church-based humanitarian NGOs, which then transfer these funds to highly politicized pro-Palestinian NGOs." This article is an excellent summation of the support funneled to the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center and the Holy Land Trust (HLT). The World Council of Churches is a major supporter of the Sabeel Center, organizing activist groups and donating money. The Sabeel Center carries out a rage attack against Israel, using imagery in which the death of Jesus is emotionally manipulated to inflame the target audience against the Jews.
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Ben Cohen writes of the material prosperity and impoverished souls of a bunch of Jewish bloggers and think-tankers who insist they have the proper view of the Middle East. In their two-dimensional imagery, Israel is ballooned out as mightier than the combined power of all the poor, put-upon Arabs, who are thus justified in whatever they do in their monomaniacal desire to destroy Israel. Many of these Jews have a novel way of inserting themselves into the picture. They see themselves as this generation's samizdat, dissidents willing to sacrifice themselves, intellectual suiciders, so to speak, verbal shields for non-Jews who otherwise might fear being labeled as antisemites. They see themselves as courageously battling a shadowy but persistent menace, the Israel lobby, that, of course, continues to invent dastardly plots to muzzle them. In reality, they have open and generous support from Zionist-hating organizations directly or from pass-through groups aligned with such organizations. They publish what they want with no fear and with wide distribution. They are derivatives of earlier generations but not from the one they claim. They are, instead, the full blooming of the negativity of early anti-Zionists, the Reform rabbis of the 1800s, and the nineteenth-century American Council for Judaism. Some of the present generation of Jewish Jew-Haters can hide their hate better than others, but in general, this generation of anti-Zionists use their Jewish intelligence to say polysyllablically what klutzy neo-nazi skin heads say more bluntly but with just as much fervor and hate.
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Martin Sherman makes the cogent point that the pursuit of the 2-state solution was an abysmal mistake that has given rise to almost intractable problems, has put Israeli citizens in easy range of Arab missiles, has jeopardized Israel's existence, and has put the possibility of peace at a distance further than ever before. It has also bewildered the two-staters because of the "refusal of reality to conform to their political prescription." He writes about two prominent two-staters: Simon Peres and Gershon Baskin. President Shimon Peres of course will be remembered as the Israeli version of Joe Biden. His inane utterances are the envy of many a comedian. Baskin's crowning achievement was participating in the negotiations that swapped a thousand terrorists, many of whom are recidivists, for the return of Gilad Schalit. He remains Optimist-in-Chief that peace is possible if only Israel ... He is currently begging Prez Obama to stop Israel from striking Iran lest it cause Iran to start a nuclear weapons program. Sherman suggests the two-staters do the honorable thing and retire from political life. I myself would prefer they took the Japanese way of atoning for their dreadful error.
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The enormous Ottoman Empire collapsed when the Ottomans picked the wrong side in World War 1. Initially, there were to be two states, one region for the Jews which included the Gaza, Golan, Judea, Samaria, today's State of Israel and present-day Jordan. The other 99% of the enormous Ottoman holdings were to become a single Arab state. That soon went by the boards and the Arab area was carved into a group of states, some like Egypt with a long history and coherence, others created by drawing lines on the map of the Middle East. Daniel Mandel recounts some of the history of the British Mandate for Palestine, when Britain was granted the supervisory right by the League of Nations to help the Jews develop their homeland. The goal was a Jewish State, where everyone had civil and religious rights but only the Jews had political rights. The British failed miserably. They had much to contend with, including a recalcitrant group of Arabs that were accustomed to lording over docility-conditioned Christians and Jews. The British handled the situation badly, rewarding the Arabs for bad behavior and punishing the Jews for being cooperative. As Mandel writes, "The land once earmarked for the Jewish National Home, in which Jews were to reside by right, not on sufferance, and to which Britain, in the words of the Balfour Declaration, had pledged 'its best endeavors to facilitate,' had become a country in which Jews could neither freely settle, nor (after February 1940) freely purchase land," ensuring that the Jews remained a minority. When the Jews asserted themselves sufficiently, the British gave up control. The Jews then had only to win approval for Statehood from the U.N. countries and fight off an invasion by its Arab neighbors, and there it was: a sovereign state.
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The Library of Congress has a collection of pictures taken by photographers who lived in the "American Colony" in Jerusalem between 1881 and the 1940s. Lenny Ben-David presents some of the photographs on the massacre of Jewish families living in Hebron by their Arab neighbors in August 1929. Over the years, we have presented accounts of the Massacre (google hebron massacre under the banner on the home page). Aside from the similarity to current Arab attacks, this was an early example of how authorities react to Arab uprising. When the Arabs slaughtered Jews, the response of the then authorities, the British, was to remove the Jews from Hebron, not punish the Arabs. Why are Westerners so quick to cave to bald barbarism?
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We started with an examination of some legal requirements. An important issue but a mundane one. The intent was to throw cold water in the face of our complacency. Confronted with the fact that Resurgent Islam is actively engaged in establishing Sharia Law in the West, we have done everything except acknowledge that we must deal with Islamic aggression in a resolute, forthright and aggressive fashion. When told that someone on a high level in the Administration has family in leadership position in the Muslim Brotherhood, our congressmen and media respond that she's a nice person and pooh-pooh security considerations. How inane can one get! We end with a wonderful essay on godliness by Spengler, better known for hardheaded essays on economics and politics. Ponder this as you start preparations for reliving the agony of the destruction of the Temple and approaching the rejuvenation of the New Year.
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