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DON'T LET TERRORISTS CREATE A THIRD FRONT
Posted by Susie Dym, August 31, 2006. |
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Here are 5 Israeli organizations which are working toward increasing Jewish presence in, and sympathy for, Judea and Samaria. One-seventh of the population of Judea and Samaria is already Jewish. These organizations, with alot of help, are going to have to persuade another million Israelis to move to Judea and Samaria. Why? Because Judea and Samaria are just a bike-ride away from all of Israel's population centers - from Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem and Ben-Gurion airport. If Judea and Samaria are settled by Jews, they will not be taken over by terrorists -- it's as simple as that. Israel just barely survived a two-front war launched by terrorists in the South and in the North. Israel might not survive a three-front war in which the war on the third front, Judea and Samaria, is being waged minutes away from 70% of Israel's population. Please prevent war on Israel's third front BY HELPING THE JEWISH PEOPLE SETTLE JUDEA & SAMARIA. The organizations we wish to bring to your attention: Viyrashtem Ota: Israeli organization for settling empty, "up-for-grabs" land in Judea and Samaria -- founded by the late, fantastically popular Arutz Sheva broadcaster, Adir Zik, who was a stalwart friend of Judea and Samaria. Honenu and Zchuyot Adam beYesha: These two Israeli organizations are chipping away at the mountain of legal obstacles ("criminal", constitutional, etc.) that the pro-Palestinian left have piled up over the years to harrass Jews in Judea & Samaria. Women in Green: pro-Zionist Israeli organization with a women's orientation. Professors for a Strong Israel: pro-Zionist Israeli organization with an academic orientation. More details -- including how to make a gift to the organization/s of your choice: Vyrashtem Otah: Organization for settling empty, "up-for-grabs" land in Judea and Samaria -- founded by Adir Zik z"l, famous Arutz Sheva broadcaster. No website -- most activists in this organization are very young farmers and shepherds who build the farming "outposts" you may have read about in Judea and Samaria. As one of them once told the undersigned, "We know how to use hoes -- not keyboards". Write your cheque out to Amutat Vyrashtem Otah and mail to POB 1588 Rehovot, ISRAEL. US tax payers contributing $100 dollars or more (in US dollars): For US tax deductibility, write out your US $ cheque (one hundred dollars and up) to Central Fund For Israel. Earmark for "Amutat Vyrashtem Otah" by filling in the "memo" field of the cheque accordingly. Mail to POB 1588Rehovot. For questions, contact sddym@bezeqint.net. Zchuyot Adam beYesha Human rights for Yesha (the Jews of Judea & Samaria), www.zechuyot.org including abolishment of police brutality, equalizing the Jewish right to build homes with the Palestinian right to build homes, etc. To donate money or video cameras kindly contact Orit Struck (orit@hebron.com 972-524-295558). Honenu: http://www.honenu.org.il/english1.htm Tel: 972-(0)2-9605558 or 972-(0)58-693999 (Shmuel) Legal defense fund for Judea & Samaria families, activists and soldiers undergoing legal harrassment usually instigated by radical left groups (imprisonment - sometimes without trial, fines, confiscation of arms for self-defense against local terrorists, false arrests, etc.). For US tax deductibility, send your US$ cheque to: Honenu, 8204 Lefferts Blvd, Suite 381, Kew Gardens, NY 11415 USA. Contributions are recognized by the US Tax Authorities (Tax ID: 30-0198003) Women in Green: Pro-Israel activism with a women's orientation. www.womeningreen.org michaele@netvision.net.il Tel: 972-2-624-9887 Fax: 972-2-624-5380 For US tax deductibility on donations of US$100 and up: Make out a US dollar cheque ($100 and up) to "Central Fund for Israel". Mail to POB 7352, Jerusalem, Israel US tax-deductible contribution ($100 and over) directly through your computer: https://host5.apollohosting.com/womeningreen/donation.html Israelis and other Non-US citizens: Make out your cheque to "Women In Green" and mail to: Women In Green, P.O. Box 7352, Jerusalem, Israel Professors For A Strong Israel: www.professors.org.il Pro-Israel activism with an academic orientation. Small donations don't require tax deductibility.
Simply mail your cheque to:
or donate by telephone by simply calling our secretary, Mr. Naor Ashkenazi, at +972-8-946 0834 (have your credit card handy). For US text deductibility: Write a US$ cheque for one hundred dollars or more, made out to the PEF Israel Endowment Funds Inc. Add a note: "Enclosed is my contribution of xxx US$. I recommend to your Trustees that it be sent to Professors for a Strong Israel in Jerusalem." Mail to
If you do make a generous gift as a result of this simple email, you
are saving the hard-working Israeli organizations above, a huge amount
of money. This is because, when these organizations raise money by
phone and by mail, hundreds of thousands of shekels get spent just on
making all those phonecalls and sending all those letters. This email,
on the other hand, costs the Israeli organizations nothing. So THANKS
IN ADVANCE for taking heed of this email.
Susie Dym is spokesperson for for Mattot Arim a network of Israeli
activists working toward peace-for-peace since 1992. Contact her at
sddym@bezeqint.net
If you live outside of Israel, join our foreign list by contacting
mattot.arim@gmail.com
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SUGGESTIONS TO THE CRUCIFIED
Posted by Zack Lieberberg, August 31, 2006. |
by Zack Lieberberg
The other was written by Mr. Walter Murray from Palo Alto:
The reason I chose these two comments, out of many, is because I found depth in them that may be overlooked at first reading. Yulia, for example, despite (or because of?) her self-proclaimed intellectual inferiority, expresses an interesting belief. She thinks that Jews have an obligation to be more humane than the rest of the species. On the other hand, Mr. Murray's attempt to analyze Jewish emotions and stir them into a proper direction implies a perception of superiority, both moral and intellectual, which he chose not to express explicitly, whether out of modesty or, probably, due to the common aversion among the members of Mensa to stating the obvious. Let us first talk about humanism. You have probably noticed that in the unfolding Iranian nuclear crisis, Russia and China are doing everything they can to impede American attempts to curb the danger coming from the rabid mullahs. This is not surprising, since the obvious American inability to handle this crisis efficiently erodes whatever little is left of our superpower status and, therefore, serves the interests of our adversaries. But isn't nuclear Iran as dangerous for Russia and China as it is for the United States? No, it is not, and here is why. The ayatollahs know perfectly well that the moment Russia or China feels really threatened by Iran, they will survive exactly as long as it takes for the first salvo of Russian or, respectively, Chinese nuclear missiles to reach Iranian territory, which is somewhere between 12 and 37 minutes, depending on where the rockets would be launched from. After that, the land we call Iran today, will be forever known as the Great Persian Desert and populated exclusively by mutant cockroaches. The United States, on the other hand, will do everything in its power to avoid any such extremes by adhering to the letter and spirit of international law. It will, most probably, once again bring the problem of an imminent Iranian threat to the UN Security Council, which is not really famous for the efficiency of either producing or implementing solutions to international crises. Considering that the United Nations are mostly united in their hatred of Israel and the United States, there is no reason to be optimistic about the probable outcome of such measure, which means that sooner or later an Iranian nuclear device will be successfully tested on our soil. It's bad enough that the US government will never have the courage to strike Iran before it has a chance to kill a few hundred thousand Americans. Judging from our 9/11 experience, the United States will not respond adequately after the attack either. The best we can expect from the most hawkish administration imaginable is an attempt to liberate the proud Iranian people from the tyranny of the ayatollahs -- provided the United Nations endorses such a drastic step. If we are lucky, we will manage to eventually plunge Iran into a civil war, like we did with Iraq. If not, we will just suffer yet another unmitigated embarrassment, which isn't really such a big deal, because even a superpower can only lose face once, and we are about to mark the fifth anniversary of that event. In either case, we will give the Muslims proof, once again, that they can attack the United States and get away with it. Thus, utterly inhumane regimes like Russia and China brilliantly succeed in achieving virtually impenetrable security for themselves without wasting a single life on either side of their border. This proves beyond any doubt that readiness to reduce the enemy to radioactive ashes at the slightest provocation guarantees peace much better than successful efforts of seventy-seven generations of pacifists. Such is the price of our misguided humanism. If Peace Now had really wanted to achieve sustainable peace in the foreseeable future, they would have achieved more by infiltrating and militarizing the Kach movement. Let us now address the concerns of Mr. Walter Murray of Palo Alto. He certainly deserves a carefully considered answer. However, I am reluctant to dive into the murky depths of a Jewish emotional response to the murder of children, Jewish or otherwise. Instead, I would like to point out the following: First, Mr. Murray, has failed to tell us why he expects the Jews to relate to dead children in a different way than, let's say, Ukrainians, Arabs, or, for the sake of argument, Irish Americans. To me, such an assumption of inherent distinctions between Jews and normal people, just like Yulia's assertion of the superiority of Jewish intellect, reeks of anti-Semitism. Obviously, Mr. Murray has nothing against kikes -- as long as they behave according to his expectations. Mr. Murray's granddaddy, most probably, had nothing against niggers -- as long as they kept their proper place. Please, Mr. Murray, don't protest; don't tell us that some of your closest friends are Jewish. If you don't trust my diagnosis, ask some of your closest friends who are black (I'm sure you have some) if they have ever run into a white racist who didn't even suspect he was a racist. Second, I strongly advise you, Mr. Murray, not to mourn dead children indiscriminately. You will most probably find what I am about to say monstrously cynical, but I am nevertheless going to say it. You see, the probability that an Arab child will grow up and becomes an Albert Einstein, or Sigmund Freud, or even Alan Greenspan, is equal to the twelfth digit after the decimal point, to the probability that a Jewish child will grow up to become a jihad fighter. Of course, not every Jewish child becomes an Einstein, and not every Arab child chooses a brief but spectacular career of a shahid. However, Jewish children, if you don't kill them before it's too late, form Jewish communities, and Jewish communities, in addition to producing Einsteins from time to time, are known throughout the entire history of the Diaspora for bringing prosperity to every society that allows them to prosper. "I will bless those who bless you." Unlike Jews, Arabs do not form communities; instead, they form the "Arab street". The "Arab street" has never produced an Einstein and, I am sure never will. Instead, it is producing an abundance of mass murderers. The way I see it, the problem does not arise because of the way Jews discriminate between dead children. The problem arises because of the way you discriminate between them. More specifically, had you mourned dead Jewish children the way you would (God forbid!) mourn your own children, there would have been no problem whatsoever. But you don't, and this creates an enormous problem, to which you are oblivious, because, in your mind, that problem exists only for the Jews. Let me outline the problem for you. Seventy years ago, the world idly watched Hitler preparing the Holocaust. When it was well under way; when thousands of European Jews, including children, were dying in the gas chambers of German camps every hour, people like you feigned ignorance and pretended that it had nothing to do with them. Like good Christians, you were busy loving your enemies while your enemies were exterminating us at the full power of their industrial capacity. You are doing exactly the same thing today. Your enemy is openly declaring its intentions to exterminate the Jews. Your enemy has been openly waging a war of annihilation against Israel since the day Israel was reinstated on a small portion of its historic homeland. Your enemy kills Jews every year -- dozens of them during a lull; hundreds during an intifada. Most of those Jews are civilians. Many of them are the elderly. Many are children. All of them are targeted deliberately. What do you do in response? Do you invoke Geneva conventions? Do you express moral outrage? No. You berate Israel for a disproportionate response; for needlessly killing innocent civilians; for the ongoing occupation; and label Israel, as a result, as the main enemy of the humankind. And, of course, every Jew in the world automatically becomes complicit in the Israeli crimes against humanity. What innocent civilians? After 9/11, even you should understand that no one is innocent any longer -- not you, not me, and, definitely, not those who are trying to destroy us. Look at yourself in the mirror -- you are not innocent; you are defenseless. In this war of civilizations, you are a perfectly legitimate target, no matter what the Geneva Conventions tell you, because your enemies do not concern themselves with infidel laws. What crimes? Since when has it been a crime to defend oneself against aggression? What international law demands that the victim of aggression stop the war when the enemy body exceeds the level at which you still feel comfortable? What occupation? What "Palestinian people"? Learn some real history. The "Palestinian people" is a blood libel, next to which the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion look almost inoffensive. I challenge you to produce a single pre-1967 reference to the "Palestinian people". I challenge you to name at least one document that gives the terrorist organization you call the "Palestinian people" the legal right to one square inch of territory in Israel or anywhere else in the world. If you believe -- like I do -- that innocent people should have a right to live where they have always lived without UN approval, I will have to ask you why you have never protested against the eviction of almost a million Jews from their homes in Arab countries where they had lived for centuries before those lands fell to Arab occupation. I will also ask you what happens to the right of an innocent person to live in the place of his choice after that innocent person blows up a school bus with neighbor's children. Where was your concern for dead children when Arabs, year after year, decade after decade, kept deliberately murdering Jewish children? Where was your concern for Jewish children when Hezbollah attacked Israel? Seventy years ago, you were killing us at the hands of the Germans. Today, you are killing us at the hands of the Arabs. Today, like on the eve of World War II, you feel comfortably safe and superior to both the aggressors and their victims. You shouldn't. After all, you must know that the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany constituted less that 10% of all casualties of that war. But Germans were across the ocean, while today your enemies -- uncounted millions of them -- have already landed on your shores. How far is your comfortable home from the nearest mosque? And yet, you continue to confuse non-resistance to aggression with peace. You and your kind, Mr. Murray, are the reason World War II and the world war that officially came to the United States on September 11, 2001, became possible. You are a stupid, immoral, cowardly monster. How dare you tell Jews how they should feel about their murdered
children?
Contact Zack Lieberberg at yashiko.sagamori@gmail.com. More of his
articles can be read at This article was translated by Yashiko Sagamori August 29, 2006
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THE PRICE OF TERROR - PROPORTIONALITY RE-CONSIDERED.
Posted by Tom Carew, August 31, 2006. |
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The Nazi "Doodlebug" campaign against London and Antwerp was not at all as intensive as what [a] Northern Israel suffered in the Hezb-ALLAH 34-day aggression from 12 July to 14 Aug, 2006, or [b] what Kiryat Shmona alone has suffered from 31 Dec, 1968. Northern Israel saw 3,970 rockets fired against her Arab and Jewish civilian population by Hezb-ALLAH, which averages 117 daily, but Hitler hit Antwerp with only 1,610 weapons, and another 1,358 V-2 against London, preceded by 2,419 V-1 on the UK capital. That combined London figure is thus 3,777, which is not only smaller than the barrage on Israel, but was also spread over a 9-month period from 12 June, 1944 to 27 March, 1945, and so averaged 13.35 daily over those 283 days, while Hezb-ALLAH averaged 117 daily over 34 days, or 8.76 times worse. Kiryat Shmona had seen 4,321 rockets fired at it since Hezb-ALLAH first began these attacks on 31 Dec, 1968, with 1,012 in the recent latest phase of the unending Hezb-ALLAH war on the people of Israel. This small area in Israel, with 24,000 people, has suffered much more than London in 1944-45. The 4 worst-hit London districts, Croydon with 145, Wandsworth with 128, Lewisham with 126 hits, and Woolwich with 110, suffered a total of 509 attacks, which is only half of what Kiryat Shmons suffered recently. An estimated 1.5m to 2m Londoners were forced to flee during this Nazi onslaught, which also resembles the many Israelis forced to seek safety in the South from Hezb-ALLAH rockets. The UK estimated that the total cost to them of the Nazi V-1 and V-2 bombardment was 3.8 times the cost to the Nazi regime of the production and launch of these weapons of mass terror. Since Israel estimates the Hezb-ALLAH War costs as $5.2bn, the ratio of economic loss must be similar, or probably much greater. It has thus been possible for Iran, in supplying these weapons to its South Lebanese proxy, to cause massive loss and terror in Israel at very little cost, in either human or financial terms, to their own resources or population. It seems impossible to envisage any reasons why Iran would abandon such a cheap and effective terror trategy - unless and until compelled to do so, such as by experiencing, or at least facing the certainty of, similar or greater negative costs itself. The Allies in WW II were able to halt this Nazi onslaught on 4 occasions. Firstly, they delayed its start by heavy Royal Air Force bombing of the Peenemunds site in Aug, 1943, long before a single weapon had been fired against any Allied city. Secondly, their RAF 617 Squadron attacked stores in France on 4 July, 1944, which again interrupoted the attacks. Thirdly, the very costly airborne operations at Arnhem from 17-26 Sept, 1944 also disrupted the attacks. These operations, the largest airborne ones in history, involved 34,876 Allied airborne forces, along with 3 British Divisions on the ground in XXX Corps, who had 5,534 killed, and also cost the 10,600-strong UK 1 Airborne Div 1,130 dead, along with 3,542 US 82nd and 101st Airborne dead, and 102 Ist Polish Ind Para Bde dead. A further 851 British were missing, and 6,450 captured. The heavy Allied casualty rate was partly due to failing to deploy RAF/US Close Air Support against the Nazi forces. Fourthly, the attacks finally ended when the Allied Land Forces had overrun the remaining Nazi launch-sites. The last victim was Mrs. Ivy Millichamp, 34, in Orpington, on 27 March, 1945. You do not need to be an advanced graduate of any military Command and Staff College to infer certain rather obvious lessons.
Tom Carew lives in Ranelagh, Dublin, Ireland. Contact him at tmcarew@yahoo.com |
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YOU'RE INVITED TO ROSH HASHANA SERVICES
Posted by No Membership Required, August 31, 2006. |
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AN ANALYSIS OF THE WAR IN LEBANON FROM THE PALESTINIAN PERSPECTIVE
Posted by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, August 31, 2006. |
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"The Zionists are in horror, fear, confusion... [hiding] like mice and rabbits" - Palestinian Authority TV - Palestinian Authority TV Introduction During the Israel -Hezbollah war in Lebanon, Palestinian society expressed three recurring reactions to the war: A. Profound identification with Hezbollah
This in-depth report documents this phenomenon, and includes a representative sample of the statements of Palestinian officials and the Palestinian media that reflect the atmosphere in the Palestinian society regarding Israel's war with Hezbollah. Abstract: A. Nasrallah Superman: Profound identification with Hezbollah From the beginning of the war, the Palestinians expressed complete identification, not only with the Lebanese people but with Hezbollah in particular. Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, was seen as a hero who restored the honor to the Arab nation and the Islamic religion. A cartoon in the Palestinian Authority daily newspaper Al Ayyam showed Nasrallah taking off his religious cloak, in Clark Kent fashion, revealing his "Superman" costume underneath. Another striking item indicated the degree of Palestinians' veneration of Hezbollah: 66.3% of the Palestinians wanted "Hezbollah alone to handle the negotiations over the [three Israeli] soldiers," even though one was kidnapped by Palestinians and is being held in Gaza. The Palestinians put more trust in Nasrallah to succeed in negotiations on their behalf than their own leaders. B. Celebration of perceived Hezbollah victory and humiliation of Israel From the Palestinian perspective, the war was a glorious victory for Hezbollah, and a humiliating defeat for Israel. "I am telling you that the Zionists are in horror, fear, confusion, and that their political and military leaders are in disagreement... They are living in shelters in fear. They are living like mice and rabbits [in shelters], unable to go out. Their people screamed and yelled, by the thousands, [they are] interested in leaving, interested in going to America, to Europe and Britain..." celebrated a religious leader on official Palestinian TV [August 4, 2006]. Palestinians see the war as a turning point in which the "resistance" to Israel -- their term for terror organizations such as Hezbollah -- proved its ability to defeat Israel, from which the Palestinians will now learn. C. Hezbollah tactics as a role model for the Palestinians There has been much detailed discussion in the Palestinian media about tactics and strategies that the Palestinians must implement as a result of the Hezbollah successes, including analyses of Hezbollah's fighting methods. In Depth Report: A. Nasrallah Superman: Profound identification with Hezbollah
A. Identification with Hezbollah All segments of Palestinian society, from senior officials to children in street demonstrations, expressed empathy and unqualified admiration for Hezbollah during the war, viewing them as brothers-in-arms in their war against Israel. Though the Palestinians themselves are experiencing a severe economic crisis, they organized a "National campaign for support for the Lebanese People," under the patronage of President Mahmud Abbas, to raise money for Lebanon [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 31, 2006]. Opinion polls showed that 96% of the Palestinians had a "good appreciation" for Hezbollah, and 91% supported Hezbollah's demand for a prisoner exchange deal. A striking 66.3% of Palestinians preferred "that Hezbollah alone will handle the negotiation over the fate of the [three kidnapped Israeli] soldiers," which shows that the Palestinians trust Nasrallah to succeed more than their own leaders. [Al-Najah poll http://www.najah.edu/arabic/news/show.asp?key=709, Al-Ayyam, July 27, 2006]. During the war, the official Palestinian media repeated and reinforced this support for Hezbollah. Palestinian TV aired hours of video clips that declared the unity between the fates of the Palestinians and the Lebanese. These included special broadcasts of support and fundraising appeals for the Lebanese, and a clip called "Your wound is our wound," which aired repeatedly -- including three times during a period of less than two hours -- on August 2, 2006. The PA media were actively raising awareness and support for Hezbollah through continuous declarations of solidarity and publicity of rallies for the Lebanese and Hezbollah. A cartoon in the PA daily Al Ayyam showed Nasrallah taking off his religious cloak, in Clark Kent fashion, revealing his "Superman" costume underneath. This reflects an accurate appraisal of the total admiration that PA society had for Nasrallah -- to the point of seeing him as a super hero -- during and immediately after the war. The following are representative examples from the media. Note that throughout these texts the PA uses the same term "resistance" to refer to the Hezbollah attacks on civilians and soldiers, as they use it to define Palestinian Authority terror against civilians and soldiers. "Yesterday dozens of residents participated in a procession in the streets of Ramallah, in order to show solidarity with the Lebanese people" The participants praised the heroism of the Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, who took two Israeli soldiers captive, and expressed their joy over the continuing falling of resistance missiles on the Israeli cities and settlements." [Al-Ayyam, July 17, 2006] "Imad Abu-Hamad, commander of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades: ...'Regarding our ties with Hezbollah, we are proud and boastful of our good relationship with them... Whether the victory will be achieved here or there, it is a victory of both peoples against the common enemy... To Mr. Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the resistance we say... And you, Oh master of the resistance! Oh Abu-Hadi [Nasrallah nickname], we tell you that we in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are all your brothers and your sons, we are all soldiers in the same battle you direct..." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 14, 2006] "Poet and journalist Ahmad Dahbor said: 'Palestine shows solidarity with itself, while showing solidarity with Lebanon, since the Lebanese resistance stands tall to protect the Arab Nation. [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 11, 2006] "During a Gaza convention organized by the Ministry of Culture under the name 'No to Israeli terror in Lebanon and in Palestine,' Abbas Zaki, member of the Fatah movement Central Committee and Palestinian Ambassador in Lebanon, said: "...It is an honor for the Palestinians that sister Lebanon will win, because she [Lebanon] always supports Palestine..." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 11, 2006] "The National and Islamic Forces organized a mass rally yesterday in the Jenin district to condemn Israeli aggression against the Gaza strip and Lebanon and in support of Palestinian and Lebanese resistance... the children carried many placards with slogans written on them, such as: 'Yes to resistance, no to submission'. Shiek Mahmmod Al-Saa'di, the political leader of the Islamic Jihad movement in the Jenin district, said that the resistance is a legitimate right of the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples. He called all the military wings of the resistance factions to announce a general mobilization..." [Al-Ayyam, July 17, 2006] On July 10, 2006, Palestinian TV aired a new clip called "From the land of Palestine to Lebanon," portraying solidarity between the two regions that "suffer from the Israeli cruelty" and a message of the unity of blood. The clip included pictures from demonstrations in the Palestinian Authority in support of Lebanon. During the same week a clip expressing solidarity with the Lebanese, called "One Wound," was aired many times. In its beginning, the clip tells a "story" about Israel bombing little children in Lebanon and Palestine. The clip also included a photo hinting that Israeli children wrote messages to children on shells destined to kill Palestinian and Lebanese children who wanted only to celebrate a birthday and be happy. The song has English subtitles. Hamas demonstrations in Gaza and Nablus for solidarity with Hezbollah, received wide coverage. The Al-Manar TV broadcasts from August 13, 2006, aired demonstrations by Palestinian children. A boy, about eight years old, was seen talking about the children of Palestine identifying with the children of Lebanon. Afterwards pictures were included of many people in Gaza flying flags of Hamas and Hezbollah, and Palestinian children stomping on burning flags of Israel, the United States and Britain. Afterwards, the Al-Manar reporter in "Occupied Palestine" reported from a summer-camp in Ramallah. A girl who was interviewed advised the children of Lebanon to hold strong, as did the Palestinian children who endured the same actions. Another youth said [to the children of Lebanon]: "We are all with you, and if we have to give our blood, our kids, our families, and our homes for your sake -- we are ready to do so." B. Victory of Hezbollah in contrast to humiliation of Israel For the Palestinian society, the war was a complete and admirable victory of Hezbollah, and a crushing and humiliating defeat for Israel. The following are a few examples from the media: Nasser Al-Laham, chairman of the independent news agency Ma'an: "Hezbollah has killed 120 Israelis, while during the Intifada the Palestinians killed over one-thousand Israelis, but what makes the difference is that against Hezbollah, Israel felt the defeat." [Palestinian TV open-wave broadcasts "Good Morning Palestine", August 17, 2006] "Secretary General of the [Palestinian Liberation] Front" demanded from the masses of our people... to strengthen national unity... following the complete failure and the disgraceful defeat which the occupation army took at the hands of the resistance in Lebanon..." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 22, 2006] "The Ministry for Prisoner Affairs... said that the abduction [by Israel of Nasser Al-Din Al-Sha'er, Palestinian deputy Prime-Minister] is a failed attempt on behalf of the occupation government... to improve its image in local public opinion, after the Lebanese resistance humiliated them... and caused them a very sound defeat..." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 20, 2006] "If Israel succeeded during the cursed Six-Day War to defeat three Arab armies... and to end the war within six days, well now starts the fourth week [of the war in Lebanon], and they are not capable of finishing the war... The Jews have experienced five wars. We have never seen such disgrace, shame, and fear among their ranks, as in this war." [From a religious sermon by Shiek Dr. Ahmad Bahar, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council -- Palestinian TV, August 4, 2006] "Head of the 'Palestinian Religious Teachers Society' in the Gaza strip said in a press release: 'Following a whole month of wild and barbaric aggression against our people in sister Lebanon, Israel walks out defeated in the face of relentless Jihad fighters, which shattered the myth of 'the unbeatable army' and taught the leaders of the occupation lessons in the arts of warfare and conflict..." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 20, 2006] "Yesterday in the town of Salfit, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine held its third party convention... The participants congratulated the heroes of resistance in Lebanon and Palestine, and sent messages of solidarity and support for the resistance and the Lebanese people for their great victory and the strong stance of Hezbollah fighters against the Israeli military demolition machine..." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 20, 2006] "Israel is capable of destroying everything, but she will not be able to get a victory and defeat the resistance... because the resistance... is a cultural, mental, and ideological stat among the peoples of the region... and here we witness, after more than a month, the defeat of the Israeli occupation army..." [Dr. Hasan Abu-Hashish, aid to the deputy of the information minister, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 20, 2006]. During the Palestinian TV news broadcast on August 10, 2006, a false Hezbollah report was quoted according to which "today the 'resistance' destroyed over eight tanks." Israeli soldiers were shown wounded and taking cover. Nasrallah was quoted regarding the shelling of Israeli "colonies" such as Nahariya. "Oh dear brothers, we are under a vicious attack by the enemies of humanity and religion, by the Zionist criminals... We emphasize that the Zionist military structure has been defeated! They are not able to win the military battle, not in Palestine, nor in Lebanon. They are however interested in justifying their defeat by killing children, wrecking homes, cutting off electricity, wrecking hospitals and institutions, but this is indeed a defeat in itself... They are the defeated, they are the ones who lost, and we -- in God's will -- are winning because the flag of Islam will continue to fly in Palestine and in Lebanon despite their anger and wrath..." [Friday sermon Palestinian TV, August 4, 2006, Shiek Dr. Ahmad Bahar, Hamas member of Palestinian Legislative Council] C. Hezbollah tactics as a role model for the Palestinians The Palestinian media are actively reviewing the lessons of the Hezbollah war in Lebanon, and the ways in which the Palestinians should learn from Hezbollah. This message is repeated often in the words of official and unofficial spokespeople, and columnists increasingly analyze the successes of Hezbollah. Additionally, there are some who view the victory as a precedent that proves that if only they persist, Israel will be defeated and eventually disappear. "I call the Palestinians to make maximum use of the Lebanese model for handling a crisis and for the united and non-compromising stand ... I warn against the policy of weakening the aims that any move towards normalization... is attempting to spread." [Dr. Hasan Abu-Hashish, aid to the deputy of the information minister, AL-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 20, 2006]. "Imad Abu-Hamad, commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Gaza: "...We increased the shelling of the colonies surrounding the Gaza Strip, and we also escalated the military activity in the [West] Bank, in coordination with Hezbollah's brave resistance, so that the enemy will be between two jaws of resistance in the south and the north. Yesterday the occupation retreated from southern Lebanon and afterwards from the Gaza Strip. And tomorrow, by Allah's will, they will retreat from the [West] bank and hence become prisoners of their own racist fence..." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 14, 2006] "Dr. Attallah Abu-Al-Soboh, Minister of Culture, said: 'The Lebanese and Palestinian experience should be studied and benefited from. This proved that the Israeli army is defeated in the face of desire and good planning. Especially note the Israeli [civilian] evacuation and flight from the North [of Israel due to Hezbollah shelling of cities] proves that these are Palestinian cities and not Israeli ...' " [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 11, 2006] "Marwan Abu-Al-Ras, head of the Palestinian Religious Teachers Society in the Gaza Strip... saw the heavy defeat of the occupation army [in Lebanon]... as the first step towards the disappearance of the thieving occupation from our occupied land... he emphasized that the path of resistance should be continued until the Israeli occupation will be driven out of the entire Palestinian territory..." [Note: "thieving occupation" is a term the PA uses to refer to all of Israel.] [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 20, 2006] PA analyst Hani Al-Masri took pride on PA TV in Hezbollah's achievements, and specified: "Brave battles of Hezbollah against the elite [Israeli] unit 51 of Golani... Breaking Israel's war conception of quick resolution, talking initiative ... A small organization [Hezbollah] succeeded in beating Israel... If Hezbollah was a state, their achievements regarding Israel would have been great... Because they [Hezbollah] are like a lightweight boxer competing against a heavyweight boxer, and managing to reach the 15th round..." Palestinian TV on August 2, 2006] TV program "Religion and Society" -- Sheik Hian Idrisi: "The Zionist project is currently in retreat due to the reality in which we live. They hoped for a completely Jewish state, but now, we are a thorn in their throats. They hoped, following their unilateral retreat from Gaza, that the [PA] missile [attacks] would cease and that the attacks against them would stop, and they would be satisfied with the West Bank. But the brothers in Gaza, who were under siege after this withdrawal, finding themselves in an enclave, did not stand arms folded, but continued [to fight]. Host Sheik Jamal Bawatna says that if this is about Jihad and resistance, one should note the origins. He mentions an episode from Muslim tradition, when Fatima was attacked and Mohammad was patient and didn't react with Jihad, until gathering a large army... 'This proves that the resistance against the enemies must be done with wisdom. Before we open a front, we must study the situation carefully...' Sheik Idrisi: "The fighting creates many worries for the enemy. Many regions [in Israel] which are near Lebanon and Gaza have been paralyzed, and the people disappeared. We pray to Allah that they will not return ... Eventually Allah, may he be praised and glorified, will bring the Muslims the victory, and bring defeat to the infidels... The enemy stole our land, stole the historic land of Palestine." Palestinian TV, July 23, 2006: Sermon of Sheik Dr. Ahmad Bahar, Hamas member of Palestinian Legislative Council: "The fighting brothers" we tell the monster entity state that by Allah's will, they will not be able to accomplish their goals... I tell you that the Zionist people are in horror, fear, confusion, their political and military leaders are in disagreement. I tell you that they are horrified. More than two million Zionists are not able to leave their shelters. They live in fear inside the shelters. They live like mice and rabbits, they can not leave. Their people screamed and yelled, by the thousands. They are interested in leaving [Israel]. One is interested in going over there, to America, to Europe and Britain. Negative migration has started... We have not witnessed the destruction of Jaffa, Haifa, and in Allah's will [soon], Tel-Aviv -- except during this fifth war, this war, in which the noble, the believers, and the loyal fight in Palestine and in Lebanon." Palestinian TV on August 4, 2006: "Parliament member Bassam Al-Salhi, general secretary of Al-Shaa'b ['the people's] party... called to carry on the struggle and the resistance. He [also] called the people in power to [show] unity and learn from the Hezbollah experience in Lebanon in order to face the challenges..." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 13, 2006] "Parliament member Dr. Marwan Abu-Al-Ras, head of the Palestinian Religious Teachers Society in the Gaza strip, emphasized that the way of resistance should be continued until the expulsion of the Israeli occupation from the entire Palestinian territory. He also said: 'Despite the military arsenal that the forces of occupation hold, and despite the USA support and the international silence, they did not mange to achieve their goals and their aspirations, due to the strong-standing of our people in sister Lebanon, and due to the brave Islamic resistance'. He called to learn from the lessons of the confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel, in a way that will strengthen the Palestinian capability to inflict casualties among the forces of the occupation." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 20, 2006] Itamar Marcus is director of PMW - Palestinian Media Watch - (http://www.pmw.org.il). PMW is based in Jerusalem. Barbara Crook, a writer and university lecturer based in Ottawa, Canada, is PMW's North American representative. |
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SEMANTIC ENGINEERING - FROM COMMUNOIDS TO EEEKOLOGY TO QUONDAM FI
Posted by Family Security Matters Organization, August 31, 2006. |
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Because the English language is always adapting to changing circumstances, Jim Guirard of the TrueSpeak Institute argues, in the first of a two-part series, that it is time for some of those changes to reflect the political realities that affect American life, security, and prosperity. A Washington DC-area writer, public speaker and anti-Terrorism strategist, Jim Guirard was longtime Chief of Staff to former US Senators Allen Ellender and Russell Long. His new TrueSpeak Institute is devoted to truth-in-language and truth-in-history in public discourse. Justcauses@aol.com 703-768-0957 |
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Each year at about this time, several major dictionaries and assorted lexicographers and word-smiths identify and define new words and phrases which have achieved -- or may soon be achieving -- "dictionary status." Looking forward to next year's list of such new semantic tools which "make it" into Merriam-Webster's, the Oxford English Dictionary and others, here are a number of candidates from the TrueSpeak Institute -- a center-right initiative devoted to truth-in-language and truth-in-history in public discourse, founded and led by the author of this article. This first article of a two-part series presents fifteen useful new English language terms -- some geo-political, some socio-political, some environmental, some economic -- which do not currently appear in any major dictionary. Its sequel will be focused on the War on al Qaeda-style Terrorism and will present a similar number of Arabic and Islamic terms which usually do appear (albeit often mis-defined) in various Arab language dictionaries and glossaries and which should now be entered into and correctly defined for anti-Terrorism purposes, as well. Here is the first assortment -- several of which will help to pull down some of the ancient Cold War euphemisms and semantic masks behind which many supposedly "progressive" (codeword for steadily moving toward socialism) people and political movements have long hidden their real nature: communiods - so-called "former" communists who have never formally and convincingly denounced Marxism-Leninism and who may still be communists at heart, but are no longer called that. Clearly, Russia's increasingly autocratic Vladimir Putin (who as late as four years ago was still toasting "the memory of Zhugashvili," a.k.a. Josep Stalin!) is a prime case in point. Cubazuela - a short-hand new name for modern-day Venezuela, a former South American democracy which is now "another Cuba" -- led by another Comandante-for-life tyrant, Hugo Chavez. In the same vein, "Cubaragua" might be another new label in Central America if the oil-rich Castro-Chavez conspiracy is able to wedge the "Sandinistas" - President Reagan called them "Stalinistas," instead - back into power in Managua. diplunacy - UN-style diplomacy which is so "loony" as to have concocted at various times (a) the infamous "Oil For Food" conspiracy in Iraq, (b) the selection of Fidel Castro's Cuba as Chair of the so-called "Non-aligned Movement," (c) the selection of Muammar Qaddafi's Libya as Chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights and (d) the selection of Saddam Hussein's Iraq as Chair of the UN Commission on Disarmament. eeekology - scare-tactics environmentalism of the Greenpeace and Al Gore variety, with an emphasis on environmental bad news and a deliberate, pseudo-scientific black-out of all environmental good news and of any serious challenge to the "global warming" scam. eeekonomics -- scare-tactics socio-economics, as in the left-wing Democrats' and the media's practice of deliberately and repeatedly frightening the elderly about Social Security, the poor about food stamps or school lunches, the general public about jobs and about the steadily growing but always "headed in the wrong direction" economy as a whole. fascist-left - the single-party, police-state socialist Left -- namely, individuals or regimes of Marxist, Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist, Castroite and "Islamo-fascist" persuasions. (Although the "fascist" label is always regarded as right-wing, both Mussolini and Hitler were socialists and, therefore, leftists to the core.) This is actually a logical extension of reactionary-Left and ultra-"progressive" tendencies of most Big Government liberals. outforcing - a corollary to the current "outsourcing" of jobs to foreign lower priced labor, with "outforcing" being traceable to many of the high-taxation, over-regulation, anti-profits, anti-corporate, anti-drilling, not-in-my-backyard policies and practices which tend to cause outsourcing. properganda -- proactively disseminated information which, although selectively pro-America and pro-Democracy in total content, meets the basic standards of truthfulness and accuracy, as contrasted to "propaganda's" implications of deliberate untruth, spin, deceit and disinformation. Theology of Liberty - a civil-libertarian, Judeo-Christian alternative to the Marxist-inspired, pseudo-religious scam of so-called Liberation Theology, eventually condemned by the late, great John Paul II as a communoid heresy. This new freedom-for-all "theology" consists of twenty-two (22) very specific human rights and civil liberties, all of which are either ignored or suppressed by the communists, the communoids, the fascist-left progressives and the Islamo-fascists alike. AWOL - a new acronym meaning Always Weak On Liberty, rather than the traditional "away without leave." (Examples: AWOL in Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia, Tibet, Angola, Mozambique, Yemen, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Grenada, Chile, Panama, Kuwait, the Reagan-induced collapse of the Soviet Empire, the ongoing liberation and democratization of Iraq, etc.). "ACE" Agitators - Aid and Comfort to the Enemy politicians, journalists, academics and assorted Hollywood personalities who even in wartime have said far more vicious things about President Bush, VP Cheney and SecDef Rumsfeld than about the "Death to America" likes of Hussein, bin Laden, Castro or Chavez -- in ways which do, indeed, give great aid and comfort to the enemy. Quondam Fi - the Latin language antithesis of the US Marine Corps' slogan of "Semper Fi" (Semper Fidelis or Always Faithful) and meaning "Formerly" or "No Longer" Faithful to the Corps, as is clearly the case with Pennsylvania's "ACE" Congressman John Murtha. Zellocrats - lifelong Democrats who are no longer loyal to the Party but have not become either Independents or Republicans, and who now share many of the center-right sentiments expressed in the 2004 Presidential campaign by former Democratic US Senator Zell Miller of Georgia. (And might there now be found in a center-left subset of "Liebercrats" or Lieberublicans as well?) As Mark Twain once said about the importance of selecting just the right word, "The difference between exactly the right word and one which slightly misses the mark is akin to the difference between lightning and a lightning bug" -- or words very much to that effect. Hopefully, all of these proposed new words and labels will serve in due course as lightning strikes against the misguided policies and practices of those leftist ideologues which they are designed to unmask and to set right. In the FSM sequel to follow, there will be a similar number of Arabic and Islamic words -- most of them religious in nature -- which we should take time to define correctly, to learn and to use in ways which belatedly begin to demonize Osama bin Laden and his kind as effectively as they are currently demonizing us. Contact the Family Security Matters Org at their website
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ISRAELI VETS DEMAND GOVT QUIT; IDF FACILITATES HIZBULLAH TACTICS; KFRAR QANA
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 31, 2006. |
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IDF FACILITATES HIZBULLAH TACTICS The IDF had said that if it knew that civilians had remained in a Kfar Qana building in which Hizbullah stocked arms, it would not have bombed it. IMRA asked that if civilians ring a Hizbullah rocket launcher being used, would IDF refrain from striking the launcher. Yes, replied the IDF officially, the IDF does not target civilians (IMRA, 8/3). That would not be targeting civilians. The IDF is crippling its war capability, encouraging Hizbullah to employ human shields, and enabling Hizbullah to target Israeli civilians. I think that IDF reply is one of the most stupid and immoral boasts of being ethical that I have every heard. OTHER EVIDENCE ON KFAR QANA Israel had bombed near the building hours before it collapsed. Why would residents have stayed there? Residents seem to have died in their sleep, despite there having been bombing nearby. Lebanese rescue efforts did not begin until camera crews arrived. There was little blood. Crews kept cameras away but when they showed the bodies, the grey faces looked to have been dead for days. Different rescue workers were shown in distributed photographs carrying the same corpse, probably over different days, as if posed. This seems to be another case of the Arabs staging a massacre (Arutz-7, 8/3). KFAR QANA PROOF The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows videos of Hizbullah firing missiles from the village and from behind civilian buildings and using human shields (IMRA, 8/22). HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH (HRW) REPORTS ON KFAR QANA HRW ignored Israel's photographic evidence of Hizbullah military activity in KFAR Qana. It relied on local testimony of people under Hizbullah control. Residents and rescue workers claimed not to have seen any Hizbullah military activity. HRW failed to condemn Hizbullah use of human shields. This fits a pattern of HRW bias (Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor, IMRA, 8/3). The Arabs are engaged in a holy war without scruples. They cannot be relied upon. HIZBULLAH TACTIC? Hizbullah rockets have struck two Israeli hospitals. There is a pattern of rockets falling around one of the hospitals, which is not near any military facilities. A doctor wonders whether Hizbullah is aiming for hospitals (IMRA, 8/2). OLMERT FOR SEPARATION FROM THE PALESTINIAN ARABS He said a withdrawal would mean separation (Arutz-7, 8/3). He expelled fellow Jews from Gaza, but it didn't separate the Gaza Arabs from Israel. Rather, it enabled them to come close to the border and fire rockets at Israel. The rockets landed in Israel. It separated some Israelis' souls from their bodies. KING OF JORDAN RECOMMENDS ISRAELI WITHDRAWAL He said there must be Israeli withdrawals and a peaceful solution, or there would be terrorism. He said the moderates are losing face (IMRA, 8/3). He condemned Israel solely and vehemently for massacres. He did not sound moderate, himself. Arab terrorism preceded the establishment of Israel. The Arabs are waging jihad all over. It has little to do with what Israel does but with intolerance of other religions and of Western civilization. As if he didn't know that! HOW DEMOCRACY WORKS IN ISRAEL A Jewish holiday centering on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel, brought petitioners to the Supreme Court of Israel, to get permission to visit the Mount. The Supreme Court granted it for normal hours and if not turned into a demonstration. Muslim leaders denied Supreme Court jurisdiction and sovereignty. One called on Muslims to flock to the Mount to confront the Jews. Israeli police then barred all non-Muslims and young Muslims from the Mount (sorry, forgot which source). Thus judges and laws do not decide the issue in Israel, Muslim extremists impose their demands. The government is more sympathetic to the enemies of the State than it is to the patriots. It punishes the innocent instead of enforcing the laws against the guilty. WHEN IS A CIVILIAN NOT A CIVILIAN? The videos of the air attacks show how Hamas makes use of the Gaza youth; they are sent to collect Qassam rocket launchers, after they have been used, and the IDF holds back from targeting them." "With intelligence that Hamas is planning to dig tunnels and carry out at least two major attacks, similar to the one at Kerem Shalem, IDF officers are curious about the failure to include known tunnelers on the hit lists. This is going to change in the near future." (IMRA, 8/4.) The irony is that while the Arabs complain that Israel is brutal towards their civilians, and much of the media reflexively accepts the complaint as valid, the Palestinian Arabs cynically exploit Israeli decency towards their civilians to brutally fire rockets at Israeli civilians. In my understanding of international law and equity, however, the youth have forfeited civilian status. They are participating in Hamas' military effort. I think that the IDF has a duty to its own people and to the international defense against jihad to consider the youth part of the rocket crews and to destroy those crews and the rocket launchers. LESSONS FROM THE WAR The war in Lebanon has demonstrated that the IDF still can improvise brilliantly. Unfortunately, the government of Israel makes every decision that turns victory into stalemate or defeat. PM Olmert started by stating Israel's purpose and resolve. Then the US announced a 48-hour Israeli ceasefire and that in a few days it must halt its offensive. Olmert declared victory and lied that he never promised that Israel would not have to suffer Hizbullah rocketry again. He claimed to have destroyed Hizbullah's infrastructure, changed the balance of power, and regained deterrence, this said just before Hizbullah's heaviest day of bombardment of Israel -- 231 rockets. He was lying. By seeming to halt the war, and by rededicating himself to abandonment of Judea-Samaria, that most Israelis saw was discredited by the two wars, Israel lost more deterrence. Thus the US turned on Israel, and Olmert reverted to phony appeasement. His statements also were demoralizing to the troops. Almost half of them are religious and many live in Judea-Samaria. Olmert was telling them in effect that their heroism in Lebanon convinced him to throw them out of their homes in Judea-Samaria. "He tells (i.e., hints) the US that it doesn't have to take us seriously as a client. Since we're willing to pretend that we've already won, we tell America that we will accede to any settlement the State Dept. carves out with the French and the Russians - even if it involves a total Israeli capitulation replete with land giveaways to Hizbullah and the surrender of Israel's right to defend itself to some UN mandated multinational force made up of French dhimmis and Indonesian jihadists." "Olmert tells our enemies that they do not have to be concerned that Israel will defeat them because the prime minister of Israel is not planning on doing anything that would involve their actual defeat. This of course emboldens them to widen their attacks." Syria is acting bolder, because Israel refrains from bombing Hizbullah supply lines in Syria. Israel asked the EU anti-Israel point man, Moratinos, to negotiate with Syria. He ended Syria's diplomatic isolation with praise as being constructive. Syria may get rewarded for aggression. Olmert is letting the lazy US see the war as a local matter and a territorial problem, rather than Hizbullah as an extension of the Iranian army of jihad (Caroline Glick, IMRA, 8/4). SYRIA STILL SUPPLYING HIZBULLAH Israel finds that Syria still is supplying rockets to Hizbullah. Israel strikes many of them in Lebanon, but won't strike them while they still are in Syria (IMRA, 8/3). Syria, which enabled Hizbullah to start the war, talks about Israeli aggression. The Turkish leader praised Syria as a force for stability (IMRA, 8/4). Force or farce for stability? RETURNING ISRAELI TROOPS DEMAND OFFICIALS RESIGN The IDF sent troops into Lebanon with obsolete vests and rifles for the first day or days and without night-vision equipment, sniper-rifles, and anti-tank weapons (IMRA, 8/2). Imagine what good fighters they were, to have mostly won, despite inferior arms! They were sent out in the sweltering summer without water and food. They had to take the canteens of slain Hizbullah men and scrounge for food in Lebanese towns. Reservists released under the ceasefire are demanding that military and political officials resign over two types of incompetence. Those troops were eager to tackle any mission. They found that the government had no strategy and their commanders were so indecisive that every mission was retracted. Imagine a long stay in hostile territory without a plan! The Olmert regime offers an excuse. It was not in power for long (NY Sun, 8/22, p.7 from Tim Butcher of the Daily Telegraph and Eli Lake). Olmert's excuse is specious. He and the other officials all were in power before and for years. They kept cutting military spending. First thing on taking power, an Israeli regime should inspect military readiness. If not ready, prepare. Then strike when ready to sweep through. I would suggest military deception in the interim, appearing indecisive, so the enemy does not look to its defenses. The regime is losing popularity over its diplomatic incompetence (or is it treason), over launching a war without a strategy or without sticking to a strategy, and over its reaffirmation of its policy of withdrawal that the war demonstrates is dangerous. It was the withdrawal from Lebanon and Gaza that has led to the two current wars launched against Israel from there. ANOTHER FALSE HIZBULLAH CLAIM Hizbullah claims that a part of northern Israel was seized from Lebanon. Actually, that area and its villages were in that part of Mandatory Palestine that later became Israel. The villages were largely Shiite, one was half Christian, and there were Jews there, too. One of the villages was known for its Taggart fort, build by the British Mandatory government. Lebanon was a French Mandate (IMRA, 8/5 from Danny Rubenstein). WHAT'S THE TRUTH? "At least 16 Lebanese were killed in the raid on what authorities in the Bekaa Valley city said was in (sic) Iranian-built hospital. Israel said the building was a Hizbullah hospital." (Eli Lake, NY Sun, 8/22, p.7.) Not being there, reporters are left to recite what they are told. This report at least recited both sides. Many state primarily the Arab side. How can we gauge what is true? I think we should judge by general reliability and any relevant specific circumstances. Israel generally reports accurately, though it accepts guilt for certain civilian casualties before investigating and finding that it did not commit them. The Muslims generally report falsely, to make propaganda. The Arabs are in a total war. Their ideology and culture elevate deceit against the enemy as if a virtue. They often have staged events and lied about battles. The Muslim method of warfare largely is by war crime. One such war crime is to build an arms storage depot below ground, and erect a hospital or school above it. The hospital may disguise the military facility, deter attack because Israelis dislike killing civilians, or enable the media to criticize Israel if it does strike the depot and kill civilians incidentally, even though such a strike is ethical as explained under international law. The media criticism amounts to collaboration with war criminals to injure the victims of Islamic aggression. Often the media reports Israeli strikes on buildings, trucks, roads, and bridges, and Lebanese criticism of them, without stating or including the IDF daily report of its suspicion (as its 8/5 report via IMRA) that the truck was carrying arms to the building. An 8/5 report stated that IDF squad found terrorists in a Tyre apartment, who opened fire upon them; more gunmen attacked them on the way out. The Israelis got wounded, not from civilians! Here is an 8/5 summary of IDF activity in Lebanon overnight: "The IDF carried out over 70 aerial attacks in Lebanon overnight, among the targets, two missile launchers and a number of Hezbollah targets in the Dahiya area of Beirut: A Hezbollah operations base
"In addition, during the night the IDF demolished a Hezbollah post opposite of the 'Tziporen\ IDF post. Forces uncovered weapons stores (including anti-tank missiles) in Yaroun, and in Rajamin soldiers identified armed gunmen, fired at them and identified hitting them." "In order to avoid unintentional harm to civilians during the operations, the IDF has called upon the Lebanese population in the areas close to the targets mentioned above to vacate their houses, via media announcements and leaflets dropped from the air" (IMRA). The warnings show good faith but may have compromised the missions. How successful the missions were, was not stated. "PROPORTIONALITY" A military attack is legal if its anticipated civilian casualties are not great in proportion to the military objective. In other words, killing a lot of civilians in order to attain a minor military gain would be a war crime. Israel is fighting against foes who strive to annihilate it. Its military gain is major. On proportionality, contrast Israel with Russia, a critic of Israel and a supporter of Hizbullah. Hizbullah seeks to murder civilians without discernable military gain, just genocide. Russia has killed a fifth of the Chechens, who do not threaten Russian survival. NATO bombed largely civilian facilities in Serbia, to force Serbia to stop fighting in Kosovo. If anything were a war crime and disproportionate, NATO's action was (Prof. Kittrie of Arizona U., IMRA, 8/5). ISRAEL'S MUSLIM ALLY Azerbaijan and Israel share intelligence, trade, and regional alliances. At war with Armenia over territory, Azerbaijan had been losing. It requested Israeli military aid. Israel sold it weapons, helps guard it, and improved its economy. Dozens of Israeli companies started providing goods and services, when the country privatized. Israel has used its influence to keep pipelines secure and available to the West. The Israel lobby enabled the country to receive US economic aid. Having gained US involvement, Azerbaijan is less eager for Israeli help and more sensitive to Islamic states' criticism of it. The US focus on democracy may destabilize the country, which is corrupt. Azerbaijan is a country of the Azeris, but Iran has twice as many Azeris. Iran has tried to destabilize Azerbaijan, as does Russia. (Same old Russia.) Thousands of Islamist terrorists are in the area. The government had to take control of mosques, ban extremist imams and literature, and make arrests. Israel has tried to gain friendships with Muslim states just beyond the Arab areas. It hopes to enable the 20,000 Jews of Azerbaijan to return to the Jewish homeland. It has in Azerbaijan posts for monitoring Iran. It does not have an Azeri ambassador in Israel (MEFnews, 8/6). For Azerbaijan, it is a begrudging alliance, not friendship. I sympathize with Armenia in its dispute, but not with Russian exploitation of it. MEANWHILE, THE GAZA WAR GOES ON Every week, Israeli soldiers eliminate a few dozen terrorists in Gaza, some attempting to launch rockets at Israel (IMRA, 8/6). HOW THE NY TIMES STACKS P.R. AGAINST ISRAEL The Times editorialized: "No Place for Cluster Bombs" in the Lebanon War. Since cluster bombs cause casualties, and since Hizbullah fights in civilian areas, Israel's use of such bombs produces civilian casualties. Therefore, the US should insist that Israel not use the US-made ones, in this war (8/26). The article seems innocuous. It has a self-contained logic and ostensibly a humanitarian motive. Sometimes a Times editorial presents as its motive concern for Israel. Concern for Israel? Were the Times a judge, it would recuse itself for anti-Zionist bias. It hides that bias and feigns lofty motives. It proceeds by deception and rationalization. If it were so humanitarian, where are its editorials against the Arabs' constant inhumane practices against both their own and other civilian populations. The Times' feature articles on Islam give the impression of prevailing decency by it and its followers. Its editorial is self-contained, because it criticizes Israel without presenting Israel's reasons for using the controversial weapon. It fails to note Israel's right to use the weapon because the terrorists fight amongst civilians, a war crime, and the civilians do not object. The only protection those supposed civilians have under international law is that Israel try not to kill too many, in proportion to the military objective. Israel does try. Israel has made many sacrifices in behalf of enemy civilians. Nevertheless, the Times makes Israel out to seem the brutal side, although the Muslim side fights largely by war crimes. It cites principle, but its real impetus is its century-old anti-Zionism. In its subtle propaganda against Israel, it fails to rally Americans against the common Islamist enemy. It lets America down, by trying to down Israel. Like its comrades in the State Dept., the Times seems to have a policy of "Saturday's people first, then Friday's people." (First Jews, then Muslim jihadists.) That is foolish, because the Muslims have a saying, "First Saturday's people, then Sunday's people." (First conquer the Jews, then the Christians.) Were the Times rational, it would encourage Israel to destroy as many Islamists as possible, leaving fewer against our own troops. P.A. WEDDINGS: BRING EARPLUGS & ARMOR At a wedding celebration in Jenin, several men were firing automatic rifles into the air. Losing control of his weapon, one man shot three children to death. This is a common problem that concerns the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (IMRA, 8/6). Does it concern the NY Times? Among the various human rights stories about the Arabs featured by the NY Times, I have never seen any showing their barbarism. Does the Times reserve its criticism over the deaths of Palestinian Arab children for Israel, as about cluster bombs, or does it lament Arab callousness in those editions that I miss? 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@aol.com. |
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U.S. FREEZES ASSETS OF HEZBOLLAH
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 31, 2006. |
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Friends, Go the Bush administration Go! Finally taking effective measures with Hezballah. With evidence that Hezballah has fundraising network that extends from Detroit to Buenos Aires (has large Arab community) and no doubt beyond, the Administration has ordered a freeze on its assets. The picture (if ever there was any doubt) of the Islamists eternal commitment and struggle to destroy Israel, all modeled after the life of Mohammad, is clear. Do not for one moment forget that getting rid of Israel would be but the Islamic world's first step to their world domination goal. Nurit |
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This article was written by Glenn Kessler,
Washington Post Staff Writer,
and it appeared yesterday in the Washington Post.
Donations to Militant Group Banned The Bush administration moved yesterday against a key fundraising arm of Hezbollah, the militant Shiite Muslim movement that is part of Lebanon's government, ordering a freeze on its assets in the United States and making it illegal for Americans to contribute to the organization. Hezbollah seized two Israeli solders last month, sparking a war between Israel and the organization that left large parts of southern Lebanon devastated. The United States regards Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, but the European Union has refused to join in that designation, in part because of the group's vast array of social services. Yesterday's action against the Islamic Resistance Support Organization was intended in part to demonstrate the link between Hezbollah and terrorist activities. The Treasury Department released copies of a receipt issued by the group to a donor, which on the back listed projects such as "collection box project for the children and homes," "contribution to the cost of a rocket " and "contribution to the cost of bullets." The donor, whose name was redacted, used ink to signal his interest in helping fund a rocket. During the conflict with Israel, Hezbollah launched about 4,000 rockets, killing more than three dozen civilians. "Hezbollah projects an image as a humanitarian organization," said Stuart Levey, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. "This puts the lie to that image. This shows there is no separation, and they raise money for social services and also raise money for terrorism." The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, an Israeli Web site that tracks militant groups, last week posted brochures from the group, also known as the Islamic Resistance Support Association. The materials were obtained during the conflict in Lebanon. One brochure depicted coins going into a mosque, similar to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and emerging as rockets aimed at a battered Star of David. The Web site said that the group primarily raises money from Shiite communities in the Persian Gulf but has also raised money in the Detroit area. Congressional testimony last year cited an unclassified Israeli intelligence report that said the group raised funds in Detroit. Levey said the group also solicits funds through Hezbollah's al-Manar television station. Since the war in Lebanon began, U.S. officials have tried to fashion ways to cut off Hezbollah's financing, which is central to its ability to build up its stockpile of weapons. Under a U.N. Security Council resolution passed this month that called for a halt to the conflict, Hezbollah is required to give up its weapons. But Levey acknowledged that a financial crackdown on Hezbollah is more difficult than the Treasury's successful efforts to thwart North Korean counterfeiting and preventing financial aid for the Hamas-led Palestinian government. In part, that is because Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government, not the government itself. The European refusal to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization has also been a problem. "We believe that Hezbollah meets the definition of a terrorism organization, and we have long advocated that to our colleagues in Europe," Levey said. Iran--which Levey called the "central banker of terrorism"--is regarded as the biggest financial backer of Hezbollah, providing an estimated $100 million a year. The Treasury Department has been coordinating an effort to find ways to cut off Iran's support for a host of militant groups, including Hezbollah and the Islamic Resistance Movement, as Hamas is formally known. Jews angry at Argentine Hizbollah funding claims
Allegations that Argentina's Arab community is sending money to Hizbollah have incensed Jewish groups, in a country where memories are still raw of two deadly bomb attacks on Jewish targets in the 1990s blamed on the Lebanese militia. "There is a bank account, opened by the Lebanese embassy, and anyone who can is collaborating, with both cash and humanitarian aid," Yaoudat Brahim, president of the Federation of Argentine Arabic Groups in Buenos Aires, told the Financial Times. (http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/ article_1195976.php/Analysis_Hezbollah`s_indoctrination) TEL AVIV, Israel (UPI) -- Israeli soldiers who searched Hezbollah homes and bunkers in the south Lebanese village of Maroun el-Ras found a booklet that provided a glimpse into that movement`s religious indoctrination. It extolled holy war and martyrdom and provided examples from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards` experience. Soldiers found four copies of that booklet in Maroun el-Ras that has seen some heavy fighting with Hezbollah. Israeli intelligence experts reckoned that since several copies were found in Hezbollah`s front lines, the 60-page booklet must be an authorized Islamic guidance manual. It is written like a Muslim-Shiite ideological treatise with quotes from the Koran and Shiite traditions. It presents the Jihad, or Holy War, as a way in which a Muslim may sacrifice his life for Allah and reach heaven. The Shahada, or martyrdom on the battlefield, is a prize for a Muslim warrior, the document says. There are several gates to Heaven and the most prestigious of all is the one for those involved in a Jihad. That is why every Muslim should strive to take part in a holy war. Victory in a Jihad, or martyrdom, are tops. Israel`s Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, which the intelligence community uses to release declassified materials, analyzed Hezbollah`s booklet. Its deputy director, Yoram Kahati, noted that Hezbollah considers its fighters as being not only Lebanese but, 'Mainly Muslim-Shiite Jihad fighters who fulfill a most important religious commitment.' That sense increases their motivation to fight Israel, he maintained. No Arab state has made Jihad its strategy, Kahati noted. Only radical Sunni-Muslims, such as al-Qaida, give Jihad that much importance. However Iran, which is Muslim-Shiite, has been trying to export its ideas to the Shiites in Lebanon and set an example to the other, Muslim-Sunni world, Kahati wrote. The booklet says that preserving military hierarchy is a religious matter and the report noted that Hezbollah is, indeed, a disciplined organization. War zones should be turned into sites of religious worship, and fighters must be imbued with a 'revolutionary spirit' that does not accept surrender, the booklet notes. Such indoctrination explains Hezbollah`s good fighting capabilities, said intelligence Col. in the reserves Reuven Ehrlich, who is the center`s director and Head of the Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism Studies Program at the Interdisciplinary Institute in Herzliya. Bearing arms and fighting a holy war is not just a military profession for them but part of a religious belief, he told United Press International. These principles are taught at a very young age, he added. Israeli troops are holding on to some 30 Lebanese arrested during the war and an authoritative military source told UPI he believed some 20 to 24 of them are Hezbollah members. One of them is Hussein Ali Sliman, 20, who told an interrogator his training included courses on Mohammad`s life, Islam`s main principles and rules. The Israeli officer said that copies of the Koran and religious slogans were found on the bodies of dead Hezbollah guerrillas and with prisoners. The Hezbollah men are not as extreme as the Palestinian suicide bombers 'and no one came up to an armored personnel carrier and blew himself up. They fought like guerrillas,' the source officer noted. To keep it up they must be highly motivated, he noted. Guerrillas` lines of communications are not that good and fighters are often on their own. That is why they need a strong spirit to continue fighting, he said. Some Hezbollah men fought to the bitter end and some kept returning to Bint Jbail, for example, even though the Israelis controlled that area with fire, the officer noted. Fighters must have advanced weapons the book said citing a verse in the Koran that requires Muslim fighters to be ready with full force to instill fear in the enemy. That is why disarmament and cease-fire with Israel are not long-term options, the document indicates. Such moves would seem to break religious principles. Hence Hezbollah in both northern and southern Lebanon will persistently refuse to disarm, and Iran is going to back it, the report said. Kahati told UPI Israel can expect, at the most, a 'kind of a hudna,' a cease fire that is permitted for a maximum of 10 years in case the Muslim side feels it is militarily inferior. Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon have agreed to maintain a low profile and not display their arms, but they will not surrender those arms to the authorities. 'They are going to rebuild and strengthen themselves and if they feel they can carry out (operations)... they have a right to abrogate the hudna...That is why this is a temporary situation and you cannot know what will happen,' Kahati cautioned.
Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com
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PATIENCE CAN KILL
Posted by Louis Rene Beres, August 31, 2006. |
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From the start, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been perfectly clear about one thing: He has absolutely no plans to comply with international law and stop the rush to arm his country with nuclear weapons. The UN Security Council has given Iran until Thursday - tomorrow - to suspend uranium enrichment. Completely ignoring this mandate at every turn, Ahmadinejad's latest response has been to call for a debate with President Bush on world affairs. The silliness of that offer is trumped only by the weakness, to date, of the United Nations' reaction. The toughest proposal before the UN is to force serious sanctions upon Iran. But anyone who understands the Iranian regime knows that sanctions will have no real effect on the pace of Iranian nuclearization. Sanctions won't work on this oil-rich nation that obviously has no need for peaceful nuclear energy and that still displays an all-consuming drive to acquire nuclear weapons. This leads to an unavoidable conclusion: if Iran stalls instead of dealing - and all indications are that this is exactly what they are going to do - the world is wasting time with anything short of a military strike aimed at Iran's growing nuclear infrastructure. Otherwise, we will be complicit in welcoming Ahmadinejad's regime into the nuclear club. Exactly how soon that will happen, no one knows - but no one who cares about the region's security should be content to wait and find out. Why? Because a nuclear Iran would pose a genuinely apocalyptic hazard to the world. In Washington today, it is fashionable to pay this notion lip service - but few people seem to genuinely believe it. Deterrence worked during the Cold War because both the United States and the Soviet Union were governed by common assumptions of rationality. Iran, to the contrary, flatly calls for "wiping Israel off the map" - a call that itself is a violation of the Genocide Convention of 1948. Given Iran's recent actions - arming Hezbollah and fomenting sectarian murder in Iraq - we can only imagine how they would throw their weight around the region with a nuclear weapon in their arsenal. Let's stop kidding ourselves. Iran must be stopped immediately from acquiring atomic arms, and this can only be accomplished through what international law calls "anticipatory self-defense." Yes, it's true that, given the terrible mess in Iraq, many are queasy about such terms. But we must not shy away from tomorrow's threat because of mistakes we may have made yesterday. I acknowledge that even the most successful act of military preemption against Iran would result in large numbers of civilian casualties (because of the deliberate Iranian policy of placing military assets in the midst of civilian populations). But further postponements will only multiply the number of casualties from any future preemption, or - in the worst-case scenario - even permit Iran to become fully nuclear. In that eventuality, a vast region could then face the prospect of literally millions of fatalities. In the best-of-all-possible worlds, diplomacy could be taken seriously, and discussions of military solutions would be premature. But we don't live in such a world. All available options are going to be costly. Putting our heads in the sand will only make us blind as well as dead. Louis Rene Beres is professor of political science at Purdue
University and is chair of Project Daniel, a group advising Israel's
prime minister on nuclear matters.
This article appeared today in New York Daily News
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MEDIA, MEDIA, MEDIA
Posted by Boris Celser, August 30, 2006. |
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To: Editor, Jerusalem Post David, I watch with incomprehension how a chief editor can combine "Horror" and "Wit"z in order to publish such an absurd article -- "Make Damascus an Offer" (see below), while ignoring the other -- "Uzi Landau Blames Media" -- which attacks the very business he represents. I'm not so far gone to pretend that I don't understand that the system of government in Israel leads to anomalies beyond itself, such as cozy and long term relationships between the "democracy" and the press. Given the perpetuity in power enjoyed by Israeli politicians, it is a great mutually beneficial relationship. But is the brainwashing of the population, including the military, worth it, over the long term? What if the press had called a spade a spade, demanded real changes in government, and spent as much time and effort on it as it does pushing for Israel's capitulation, disguised as convergence, disengagement, prisoners' letter, Pereism, whatever? I think Landau forgot to say that if not for the media more Israelis would be alive today. And the standard of living would be higher, not only among the naive general population, but among the media, too. So, if a powerful Israel is not what the media wants, a Jewish Israel is not what the media wants, a safe Israel is not what the media wants, a less corrupt country is not what the media wants, competent people in power is not what the media wants, and even a higher standard of living is not what the media wants for itself, then what does the media want? Maybe you can tell me. Boris P.S. Not to mention that the shock of reading the Israeli media makes me feel more normal and well balanced than I really am. On the one hand it is a good feeling, but on the other hand it prevents me from improving. |
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"Make Damascus an offer"
Powerful countries know that it is dangerous to be seen to flinch, because enemies take heart and allies' knees begin to knock. A great power also knows that if it sets out on a military adventure without setting achievable goals, it can get into bad trouble. What's true for great powers is doubly true for beleaguered Israel, which failed to dismantle Hizbullah's power over Lebanon. But the Lebanon war's failure may yet provide an opening to peace if Israel is bold enough to seize it. The world has two chief aims in the area between Cairo and Teheran: to maintain peace in the wider Middle East so that oil flows freely through the Persian Gulf; to steer the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians toward a settlement that guarantees the safety of Israel in its internationally recognized borders, while meeting the Palestinian people's legitimate national aspirations for their own state. The two issues have long been connected, but the main link is now President Bashar Assad's Syria. Isolated, desperate for allies, Syria has been helping Iran in its quest for regional hegemony. Since Lebanon's Cedar Revolution evicted Syria last year, the Syrians have sought to haul Lebanon back within their sphere of influence. They back Hizbollah - and help Iran send it weapons - because Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah's shock troops keep the government in Beirut weak. The Syrians also like to present themselves as the last real Arab defenders of the Palestinian cause. In short, Syria, with its geographical position, its Iranian links and weapons, and its brutal Ba'athist regime, has become the linchpin of developments between the Mediterranean and the Gulf. To secure Lebanon, and to bring Hamas to the bargaining table with Israel, it is Syria that Israel and the United States must deal with, one way or another. SYRIA'S POSITION and interests should make it amenable to a deal. Of course, Syria still believes in a "Greater Syria" and never fully accepted Lebanon's sovereignty. Syrian intelligence and troops - present in Lebanon since 1976 - were forced out in 2005 only under enormous international pressure and $1 billion were lost in smuggling revenue last year much of which previously flowed to the Syrian military. Many of the Hizbullah rockets that rained on Israel bore the markings of Syria's Defense Ministry. Yet Syria has one redeeming feature: it is a secular country that traditionally recoils from Islamic fundamentalism. Indeed, President Hafez Assad, Bashar's father, massacred up to 38,000 mainly Sunni fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood insurgents in Hama in 1982. Today, parts of the ruling Ba'ath elite worry about Syria's deepening alliance with theocratic Iran and Islamist Hizbullah. That alliance reflects fear, not commitment. The moderate Sunni Gulf Arab emirates, suspicious of growing Shi'ite ascendancy and of Iranian irredentism in the region, have stopped propping up Syria's economy due to its alliance with the ayatollahs of Iran. Labelled by the US as part of the "axis of evil," Syria has also seen Saudi financial aid dry up and fears that the trade benefits that would come with ratification of its Association Agreement with the EU will never materialize. Both Syria's reluctant alliance with Iran, and its economic desperation, provide openings that Israel and the West should test. But what might Syria want? Like most Arabs, Bashar Assad views Israel from the perspective of pan-Arab anguish at Palestinian dispossession, but also sees a chance to use the Palestinians to strengthen his regime's power by putting his own imprint on any settlement. Like his father, Assad is cautious. So long as Egypt remains neutral, he is unlikely to risk another war with Israel, let alone a war with America or with America and Israel combined. The big puzzle is what Assad wants with Lebanon. If his aim is a government in Beirut that takes into account Syria's genuine security concerns, Israel can live with that. Besides, widespread revulsion against Syria for its alleged role in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, particularly among Lebanon's Maronites, Sunnis, and Druse, means that Lebanon is unlikely to ever become totally subservient again - that is, unless Hizbollah gets to call the shots. ISRAEL NOW faces three options. It can flinch while pretending not to; it can carry on more or less as before, hoping for some positive new development; or it can try to decouple Syria from Iran and Hizbollah. The latter option is the only scenario that could stop the Islamist drift in the Middle East. But prying Syria from Iran's embrace means, eventually, reopening the Golan Heights question. A deal with Syria is not impossible, given the ambiguities in Assad's position. On the Israeli/American side, it would include recognition that Syria has security interests in Lebanon. If Syria in turn accepts Lebanon's sovereignty, and if it helps force Hizbullah into becoming a political force shorn of its military power, Israel and America ought to persuade Lebanon's government to accept that Syria and Lebanon need to consult each other in security matters. For Syria, a peace deal would also include an understanding that Israel's occupation of the Golan Heights is to be settled by serious negotiation, not war. Such a diplomatic opening may be hard for Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, to accept, let alone to sell to Israelis. So America and Europe must help him reach this conclusion. America and Israel must drop their refusal to talk to Syria. Indeed, the time is ripe to offer assurances to the isolated Syrian regime that blocking Hizbullah's rearmament, stopping Islamist fighters' passage into Iraq, and improving the country's appalling human rights record would bring valuable diplomatic and economic benefits, including a strengthened association agreement with the EU. Israel would gain much by talking to its enemy. Conscious of its vulnerability to rocket attacks, Israel knows that needs a defensible state, safe from external aggression. Removing Syria as a threat is a key element in achieving this strategic objective. Brok is Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament. Hybaskova is Chairman of the Delegation for Relations with Israel of the European Parliament. And Tannock is Vice-Chairman of the Human Rights Subcommittee of the European Parliament. - www.project-syndicate.org [Editor's Note: One TalkBack comment suggested Israel's offer to Syria be: "behave or face annihilation." Another pointed out that "With some people, decency, negotiation and discussion is wasted; you can shake a fascist dictator's hand as many times as you want, the result is always another Munich. Still another said that far from "recoiling" from radical Islam, Syria "hosts one of the most dangerous radical terrorists in the world, Imad Mugniyeh."] "Dr. Uzi Landau Blames the Media, Calls For Inquiry"
Amid calls for a commission of inquiry into the actions of the government in recent weeks -- Dr. Uzi Landau says it is the media who are culpable for the current situation and should be investigated. "Who will investigate the media"? former Likud MK Landau asked, speaking with Israel National Radio's Yishai Fleisher and Alex Traimain Wednesday. "They shaped the perceptions and brainwashed the minds of the people of Israel. And these same people continue to write in the papers and appear on TV and invite to their programs the very same people who for the past ten or fifteen years have been responsible for dragging Israel into the swamp we find ourselves in." "The leaders of the country -- Kadima and [Labor Party Chairman Amir] Peretz and the like -- they have come to their positions because of the media. The media did everything they could to promote the [Sharon] government and Disengagement and conducted a purposeful delegitimization campaign toward everyone who was against it -- the settlers, the religious and the entire national camp." Landau says that more than the government, most journalists in Israel's media betrayed their profession, allowing their affinity for the political philosophy of concessions to interfere with the presentation of an informed discussion of the pros and cons of that policy. "We all knew and said loudly that this unilateral withdrawal under terror will bring much more terror in the north and in the south -- that more weapons would be smuggled and that Hamas and the Hizbullah would politically gain tremendously. This was not brought to the attention of the people. Instead of presenting the debate to Tel Aviv, Haifa and Afula -- to the entire State of Israel - they shaped the debate as between 8,000 settlers, who will pay a price but be compensated, and the rest of the six or seven million Israelis, who will enjoy peace and prosperity because of the Disengagement. "They mocked people warning of rockets on Ashkelon. They downplayed all the alerts from military intelligence." Asked whether the media have not always leaned to the left, dismissing the dangers of the Oslo accords, Landau said that whereas the liberal bent of Israel's media is deeply entrenched, the willingness to disregard blatant corruption to advance their causes personified the hypocrisy that led him to issue his call for an inquiry among Israel's journalists and editors. "They not only promoted the Disengagement agenda, but kept Ariel Sharon and his regime from any possible investigation. Israel in the past two years has surpassed all the norms of conduct with its corruption, but the media downplayed that in order not to interfere with the Disengagement process." Touching upon the subject of the lack of coverage during Hizbullah's six years of open preparation for battle against Israel, Landau said the focus was shifted to a new enemy: the settlers. "During the withdrawals of the past two years, the attention was diverted by the media toward the subject of how the national camp is the enemy of the people instead of covering how the terrorists are making military preparations to attack. They focused on combating the settlers instead of defending the State of Israel." Concluding his indictment, Landau summed up his charges: "Israel's media behaved toward the national camp in the same manner that the anti-Semitic world media behave toward Israel in general." Landau is not the first public figure to blame Israel's media for
recent events. Just after Israel re-entered Gaza, former Chief of
Staff Moshe Yaalon accused Israel's media of blinding and drugging the
public. "The Israeli public backed the Disengagement because it was
blinded and drugged," Yaalon said in a July interview. "The
Disengagement was mainly a media spin. Those who initiated it and led
it lacked the strategic, security, political and historical
background. They were image counselors and spin doctors. These people
put Israel into a virtual spin, disconnected from reality, using a
media spin campaign which is imploding before our eyes."
Contact Boris Celser at celser@telusplanet.net
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TERRORISM IN AMERICA
Posted by Yoni Tidi, August 30, 2006. |
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Yesterday a Muslim named Omeed A. Popal aged 29 used his SUV as a weapon to kill one man and injure 14 more people in an incident that spanned more than an hour in time and covered many miles. His attack started in the East Bay area, he then drove into what is identified as a Jewish neighborhood and ran over 14 more people. I spent some time this morning in an attempt to find the identity of the man that was murdered and I can find no mention of his name or anything identifying him. But we do know that the suspect targeted two people in front of the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco located on California Street. We also know that Popal had just returned from a trip to Afghanistan, where he had met his bride to be as part of an arranged marriage. We also know that Popal was born in America according to what I have read. Popal at the time of his arrest declared himself to be a terrorist. This is the second major terror attack against targets identified as Jewish in America in about a month's time. Both attacks were carried out by Muslims. But both the authorities and the Jewish community want to deny the truth of what these attacks are terrorism. Terrorism against Jews for the crime of being Jewish. I have the sad duty to inform my fellow Jews that you as a whole, have learned nothing from our history and that we are following in the same pattern of the Jews of Europe 70 years ago. We want to pretend that everything is normal and the only problem is that a few people have had some incidents of mental instability that has caused them to engage in criminal behavior. Or as one of the victim's of the Seattle attacks has identified the real root of the Seattle attack it was the lack of gun control. She is just one more stupid liberal that wants to ignore the past history of the Jewish people. Jews without guns die like sheep led to the slaughter. This is not a Jewish value; it is 100% against the Torah. But what can one really want from self hating Jews that have cast away the finest gift ever given to man, the Torah and exchange it for a value system that will make these idiots feel good as they watch more incidents of Jews being murdered. The Jewish leadership in America is letting both the press and elected officials white wash these attacks and it goes back even beyond these two attacks. The El Al attack in LA a few years ago, and before that a former member of Israel's Knesset was murdered in the USA and of course you guessed it the attacker had mental problems. Wake Up, and tell it like it is. Demand from the press and the authorities the truth that any attack on Jew or Jewish institutions is not the act of a mad man but the act of an Anti Semitic Jew hating terrorist. These attacks are no different in their motive, than Kristallnacht was. Plan and simple hatred of Jews. There are a number of things in this world that I hate. First is terrorism. Second is Jews being murdered and I hate even more when Jews dying stupid. The time has come to grow up and first thank G-D that you were born in America a country that is free and has a Second Amendment which allows you to own guns. Yes I said it, own guns. I know that for many of you owning a gun ranks up there with the idea of eating pork. But if you were on island and the only source of food were wild swine the Torah demands of you to hold your nose and survive by eating. The same holds true today with owning a firearm. Hold your nose and go buy a gun and then go to a gun range and learn to use it. If not for you, then for your children. Contact Yoni Tidi at his website:
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LIVING CAMOUFLAGE
Posted by Isaac Judah, August 30, 2006. |
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To: National Post Dear Editor:
Your newspaper has done a yeoman service to the
readership by publishing the article by Alan W.
Dershowitz 'Arbour must go' (July 21).
The language of the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative
to the Protection Of Civilian Persons in Time of War
has significant relevance to Mr. Dershowitz's report.
Those fighting the war are not considered protected
persons. Civilians are protected persons.
Part III, Section 1, Article 28 of the Fourth Geneva
Convention reads: "The presence of a protected person
may not be used to render certain points or areas
immune from military operations."
The State of Israel is at war with Hezbollah and
Hamas.
Hezbollah and Hamas are at war with Israel. Instead of
separating themselves from the general population and
wearing uniforms as required by international law,
Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists use civilians i.e. the
'protected person' mentioned in III:1:28 as human
shields. Read III:1:28 again.
There were plenty of protected persons around the home
of the Hezbollah leader Nasrallah. He wanted it that
way so that thay could serve as living camouflage and
because he did that, he is responsible for what
happens to them.
The next sentence, Article 29, of the Fourth Geneva
Convention reads: "The party to the conflict (read
Hezbollah) in whose hands protected persons may be, is
responsible for the treatment accorded to them by its
agents, irrespective of any individual responsibility
which may be incurred."
And because Nasrallah and Hezbollah chose to live in a
civilian environment, the 'protected persons' are
deemed to be in his/their hands and therefore, he/they
is/are responsible for the treatment accorded to them.
Terrorism, by definition in the present context, is
collective punishment! Random and indiscriminate
firing of rockets and missiles by Hezbollah and Hamas
on civilan populations of Israel is collective
punishment. It has been going on for a many years.
Israel has made strong efforts to inform the civilian
population of Lebanon by leaflets and radio to move
out of specific areas that would be targeted by the
Israel Air Force.
Louise Arbour should, especially having been a judge
in the Supreme Court of Canada, have taken greater
pains to interpret the Fourth Geneva Convention
correctly. She needs to direct her energies on the
very dictatorships that form part of the UN Human
Rights Commission. I understand that Iran is also one
of them. That is where the problems originate. It is
now time to 'bell the cat'!
Contact Isaac Judah at isaacjudah@yahoo.com |
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JUST A REMINDER ABOUT WHO AND WHY WE ARE FIGHTING
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 30, 2006. |
Don Morris appeal to his friends and family,
This article is by Dennis Prager. It appeared on www.TownHall.com yesterday. |
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August 29, 2006 -- Last year at UCLA, I debated a professor who argued that Israel and the Palestinians were moral equivalents. He is not alone (especially on college campuses) in his lack of understanding of the immoral nature of the Islamic enemies of America and Israel. Thus it is important to remind people once again about the moral world inhabited by the people we are fighting, whom President George W. Bush calls the Islamic Fascists. Societal examples: The Islamic Republic of Sudan, in its attempt to force Arab/Muslim rule on the largely non-Arab and non-Muslim population of southern Sudan, has led to the killing of well above 1 million Christians and animists and black (i.e., non-Arab) Muslims, in addition to the widespread enslavement, rape and torture of those people. No major international Arab or Muslim organization has condemned the Sudanese government's mass murders that border on genocide. The leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and repeatedly called for the annihilation of Israel. As the 6 million Jews of Israel do not plan a mass exodus from their ancient and modern homeland, such annihilation would in fact mean another Holocaust. The holy center of Islam, the Muslim country where the holiest Muslim sites are situated, is Saudi Arabia. That country bans the practice of any religion other than Islam, amputates hands of thieves, does not allow women to drive a car, mandates what women wear outside of their homes and is the only country in the world to feature a weapon on its national flag. Women were treated considerably better and had more civil rights in ancient Rome, not to mention ancient Israel, than women living in the holiest cities of Islam today. Virtually every Islam-based country decrees the death penalty for any Muslim who converts to another religion. In other words, every country that calls itself "Islamic" is morally inferior to just about every country in North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, almost every Asian country and many African countries. No Muslim country treats non-Muslims and their religions anywhere nearly as decently as any Western non-Muslim country (including Israel) treats Muslims. That is why tens of millions of Muslims immigrate to non-Muslim societies and virtually no non-Muslim immigrates to any Muslim society. In every Muslim country, non-Muslims are either systematically persecuted at worst or treated as inferiors at best. Individual examples (in just the last five months): "A German court sentenced a Turkish man to more than nine years in jail yesterday for the 'honour killing' of his sister. The murder of Hatun Surucu, 23, who was shot several times at a bus stop in a Berlin suburb last year, shocked Germany. Forced to marry a cousin in Turkey as a young girl, Ms. Surucu later broke with her Turkish-Kurdish family in Berlin and was living independently with her 5-year-old son, to the intense disapproval of her relatives. Public outrage at the murder was exacerbated when some teenage boys at a school with many pupils from immigrant families ... reportedly openly applauded the killing, condemning the victim for having lived 'like a German.'" (The Guardian, UK, April 14, 2006) "Men using machetes attacked worshipers in three Coptic [Christian] churches in the port city of Alexandria [Egypt] on Friday morning, killing an 80-year-old man and wounding at least six other people, the police there said." (International Herald Tribune, April 15, 2006) "An Egyptian state-controlled newspaper praised Monday's suicide attack in Tel Aviv, which killed nine people and wounded dozens, calling it an act of sacrifice and martyrdom." (Jerusalem Post, April 18, 2006) In Britain, Abdula Ahmed Ali, 25, and his wife Cossor, 23, were arrested in connection with the plot to blow up airplanes flying across the Atlantic. According to Scotland Yard, the Muslim couple planned to take their 6-month-old baby on the suicide mission, using their baby's bottle to hide a liquid bomb. (Daily Telegraph, UK, Aug. 14, 2006) "We've got Hezbollah fighters running around in our positions, taking our positions here and then using us for shields and then engaging the [Israelis]." -- Words of a Canadian UN observer written days before he was killed by Israeli bombs (Ottawa Citizen, July 27, 2006) "Canadian authorities rounded up a group of 17 Muslim men and boys suspected of plotting to bomb major buildings in the Toronto area..." (CNN, June 5, 2006) In Australia, "[Islamist] propaganda has convinced many residents their suburbs are being overrun by Islamic extremists. The Saturday Daily Telegraph revealed an escalation of anti-Semitic behaviour. Jewish university students were targeted and forced to hide their traditional skullcaps beneath baseball caps to avoid abuse, while attacks on synagogues have increased." (Daily Telegraph, Australia, Aug. 26, 2006) "A third suspect detained in a failed attempt to blow up two German trains is a Syrian national ... German and Lebanese authorities are each holding one of two young Lebanese men accused of carrying the suitcase bombs onto trains in Cologne station on July 31. Officials say they could have caused many casualties and set the trains on fire." (Newsday, Aug. 26, 2006) Does all this suggest that we are fighting a billion Muslims? Of course not! Does all this suggest that all or even most Muslims are bad people? Of course not! It does suggest, however, that the dominant forces within Islam are bad at this time; that Muslims who see this evil in their midst have not mobilized any counterforce either out of fear for their lives or for some other reason; and that decent men and women around the world -- Hindu, Christian, Jewish, atheist, Buddhist and Muslim -- are threatened by this powerful, death-loving force. Muslims who do not acknowledge the threat to civilization from within the Muslim world at least have two excuses -- fear for their lives or group solidarity. What excuses do non-Muslims have who deny this threat? Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nurit@gmail.com |
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LEBANESE MINISTER/HEZBOLLAH LEADER: HEZBOLLAH WON'T DISARM
Posted by Jared Israel, August 30, 2006. |
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This is the BBC translation of interview published in Corriere della Sera Comments by Jared Israel Comment: "Latest from the Insulting-Our-Intelligence Department: Hezbollah promises Lebanon will prevent Syrian and Iranian weapons from reaching...Hezbollah." Source: Lexis-Nexis. "Lebanese minister says Hezbollah 'has no intention' of disarming, BBC Monitoring Middle East - Political Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, August 28, 2006 Monday, 642 words The following interview, published by the prominent Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on 27 August, and translated by BBC Monitoring, which distributes to every major media outlet in the world, was picked up by no media archived by Lexis-Nexis, whether in English, French, Italian, German, Dutch or Spanish, except Emperor's Clothes. Other than Corriere della Sera's unsupported and false assertion that Lebanese Minister of Labor Trad Hamadah is part of some "moderate" wing of Hezbollah - will we soon learn of moderate leaders of Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the Egyptian group that cut ears and noses off foreign tourists in 1997? - the interview is straight forward. --
Jared Israel |
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Lebanese Minister/Hezbollah Leader: Hezbollah Won't Disarm, Prefers Italy to Run International Force but France is Fine Too Note from BBC: Text of interview with Lebanese Trade [sic! should be Labor - JI] Minister Tarad Hamadah, a member of Hezbollah, by Lorenzo Cremonesi in Beirut; date not given: "Hezbollah minister: 'We will not lay down our weapons, but we will hide them well", published by Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on 27 August Beirut - He said that he would prefer Italian command [of UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) troops] to French. He repeated that Hezbollah "has no intention of disarming for the time being, not even in the areas of south Lebanon that will be subject to the new UNIFIL force's control". But he promised that no soldier in the international contingent "will ever see our weapons; we will hide them well." All in all, [Lebanese] Labour Minister Tarad Kanj Hamadah [commonly called Trad Hamadah - JI], who controls two ministries - his own, and the Energy Ministry - but who is known above all for being the moderate face of "God's Party [Hezbollah]", is satisfied. In his view, the meeting in Brussels two days ago achieved "an excellent result". And he expects to meet UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan tomorrow, to reiterate "the hope that the UNIFIL troops will arrive soon; they will help to prevent Israeli aggression". [Cremonesi] Is the expansion of the UNIFIL force not designed also to prevent your strikes against Israel? [Hamadah] For us, they will facilitate the liberation of our lands in the Shab'a [Farms] area, and our prisoners' release. [Cremonesi] What do you think of the formula involving alternate command of the UNIFIL contingent between Italy and France? [Hamadah] I have to confess that we have a slight preference for Italy. We do not like France's traditional policy of interfering in Lebanon's domestic affairs. In addition, Italy does not have a colonial past in this region. But the situation is fine like this: Italy and France are two friendly countries today. There will be no difficulties. [Cremonesi] Do you think that the UNIFIL force will be able to deploy also on the border with Syria? [Hamadah] We are opposed to that. It would be a serious attempt on our country's sovereignty. [Cremonesi] Israel argues that it would prevent weapons from reaching Hezbollah. [Hamadah] Our army will take care of patrolling that border. [Comment: "Latest from the Insulting-Our-Intelligence Department" starts here] So, a Lebanese government spokesman, who just happens to be a leader of Hezbollah, promises that his (that's the Lebanese government's) army will prevent Syria from shipping heavy weapons to his (that's Hezbollah's) terrorist army. Got that, children? It is noteworthy that while the so-called ceasefire agreement: "15. Decides further that all states shall take the necessary measures to prevent, by their nationals or from their territories or using their flag vessels or aircraft; * a. the sale or supply to any entity or individual in Lebanon of arms and related materiel of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned, whether or not originating in their territories, and; -- the agreement says exactly nothing about how arms importation is to be prevented if the Lebanese government does not want to stop arms from being imported. And Kofi Annan has stated that a) the proposed multinational force will not deploy at the Syrian-Lebanese border and b) Israel must lift its embargo, aimed at preventing the influx of weapons. But not to worry: Hezbollah (I mean, Lebanon) is on the job. [Comment: "Latest from the Insulting-Our-Intelligence Department" ends here] [Cremonesi] What would happen if UNIFIL troops were to open fire in order to stop a blitz against Israel on your part, or to confiscate one of your arms depots? [Hamadah] That will not happen. The UNIFIL force has an observer mission. It can report any fact to our army. But it cannot intervene militarily; that is not its task. Our military alone has a monopoly on the use of force in Lebanon. [Cremonesi] It has not had that for the past 30 years. What has changed? [Hamadah] What has changed is that a political accord has now been reached within our government. Hezbollah agrees to cede its place to the regular army. The long-term prospect is that, once Israel has withdrawn from the Shab'a area and released our prisoners, our armed militiamen can be integrated into the army. [Cremonesi] [UN Security Council] Resolution 1701 provides for your disarmament in the south. [Hamadah] That is not accurate: It only says that the army alone may bear arms. That is a very subtle distinction. Our arms will not be seen, but that does not mean that they will not be there. Hezbollah remains, in any case, a defence force at its country's service. [Cremonesi] If Israel were to withdraw from Shab'a and to exchange prisoners, do you think that peace is possible? [Hamadah] Absolutely not. I have always been opposed also to the Oslo accord between the PLO and Israel. First and foremost, it is necessary for the Palestinian question to be resolved once and for all. And in any case, I am against the separate existence of Israel. The best formula would be a single state for Muslims, Jews and Christians. Footnotes [1] Every day there is more evidence of the correctness of our argument, first published on 22 July, that "A Multinational Force is Deadly for Israel" http://emperors-clothes.com/06war/lebanon.htm Contact Jared Israel at his website: www.emperors-clothes.com
or at www.tenc.net
This interview is archived at
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CURRENT CRISIS FACED BY ISRAEL RESULT OF CRUMBLING JEWISH IDENTITY
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 30, 2006. |
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1.One of the best columns around:
Many years ago, residents of Mishmar HaEmek held a meeting to discuss why the sons who left the kibbutz were not returning. The elderly Yaakov Hazan rejected the argument that the community's physical state needed improvement and summed his views with one sentence: "We failed in the effort to establish a secular Jewish society." I recall Hazan when Israelis start asking what happened to us and how did we reach a situation where even minor war objectives are not achieved. The leadership failure by the statesmen who directed the army is a result of a public consciousness rupture we should be discussing. The process of returning to Zion marks the reversing of history and cannot be driven by bio-economic processes we're familiar with. The only thing those who returned to Zion from all across the world shared was their Jewish identity. Jews who come to the Land of Israel through free choice did so and are still doing so in order to fulfill a mission that has no material advantage. The West offers much more. Common mission The mission was and remains the establishment of a state where the people of Israel can realize its identity by maintaining a modern society according to its values in the most complete way. Therefore, the basic conditions for the maintenances of the Zionist enterprise are the maintenance of Jewish identity. This common mission allowed for solidarity and the ability to engage in a joint struggle to realize the mission despite the existence of deep ideological rivalries. In his well-known book "Man's search for ultimate meaning," Viennese psychiatrist Victor Frankel addressed the question regarding the difference between those who collapsed after two or three weeks in Auschwitz and those who under the same conditions survived to see liberation. His answer can be summed up in one word: Mission. Those who direct their lives according to a mission that is not part of the bio-economic needs find the mental strength to overcome terrible difficulties. Without the mission, every difficulty turns into an obstacle that cannot be overcome. 2. Nomination for stupidest politician in Israel:
Basic theme: the Left was right all along. The only way Israel can "win" is to surrender to all Palestinian demands. That will disarm all the other Arab and Moslem fascist states. No matter how many times these people are proven wrong, they come back and insist that the only problem is that their "approach" was not "tried" far enough. 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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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CITIZENRY RIGHT TO WANT A NEW P.M., BUT IT'S A DANGEROUS CALL
Posted by Richard Z. Chesnoff, August 27, 2006. |
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Tel Aviv: The fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is holding - more or less. But full-scale political war has broken out in Israel. Before it's over, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, an able politician with little military background but a well-earned reputation for arrogance, his inexperienced defense minister, Am ir Peretz, and his army chief of staff, Dan Halutz, could find themselves out of their jobs. A recent poll in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper shows 63% want Olmert to go. Peretz appears even more vulnerable, with 74% calling for his resignation, while 54% want Halutz to resign. While Olmert deserves to be run out of office, it is a dangerous time for internal jousting in the Knesset. There are also few viable or worthy candidates to succeed Olmert. His chief rival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was hardly a major success in the job. Even graffiti on an air raid shelter in northern Israel shouts the citizenry's discontent: "ARIK WAKE UP, OLMERT'S IN A COMA!" "Arik," of course, is Israel's stroke-stricken ex-premier, Ariel Sharon - the once-decisive military genius. His successor, Olmert, is accused by many Israelis of having hesitated and mismanaged the recent war in Lebanon. There's no doubt the Israel Defense Forces dealt a heavy blow to Iran's Lebanese-based stooge army, Hezbollah. Israelis are right when they say air and sea bombardments weren't enough to rout the terrorists, and Olmert's hesitation before sending in massive Israeli ground forces could have proved disastrous. Angered and confused, a growing number of Israelis now demand an official state investigation into the way the war was waged. Some Israelis charge Israel's legendary army - especially its reserve forces, which provided a full 50% of the troops who fought in Lebanon and suffered a high percentage of the casualti es - was often badly led and poorly supplied. "It was a catastrophe," says reserve officer Jack Silverman, part of a small group of reservists who have set up a protest camp outside the Knesset, Israel's parliament, demanding the resignation of Olmert & Co. Other reservists say they were sent into battle missing pieces of equipment and with so little food and water that "we had to break into grocery stores." The postwar debate coincides with a flurry of nasty political scandals. Labor Party luminary Haim Ramon has been forced to resign his post as justice minister over charges he forced his attentions on a young female soldier. And Israel's President Moshe Katzav is facing charges he not only sexually harassed two women on his office staff, but also sold pardons - charges he vehemently denies. Richard Z. Chesnoff is op-ed columnist for the NY Daily News. Contact him at rzc@att.net This article appeared as a New York Daily News Opinion Page August 27, 2006 |
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DO ISRAEL'S MEDIA KNOW THEIR PLACE?
Posted by Yisrael Medad, August 30, 2006. |
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News is what people want to keep hidden; everything else is publicity. - Bill Moyers For four weeks this summer during the second Lebanon War, Israel's media provided consumers with more publicity and spin than hard news. True electronic media consumers did not lack for breaking news. The three main television stations - Channels 1, 2 and 10 - all provided live continuous coverage of the war. Studios were filled with commentators, politicians and reports from the field. Reporters, many of them women, went north to face the missiles. And who can forget Yoav Limor dodging an incoming Katyusha in Safed? Reporters Itai Engel, Mukki Hadar and Amir Bar-Chen all accompanied front-line troops into battle and returned with outstanding reports and footage. Israel Radio (Reshet Bet) and Army Radio provided a wealth of news, opinions and updates, even as broadcasts were often interrupted by announcements from the Home Command urging citizens in the North to enter their bomb shelters, WITH THE war over, however, recriminations are being openly voiced about media partisanship and recklessness. Letters to the editor columns are full of complaints about how the media handled itself. Oversight authorities have received hundreds of complaints from consumers about television coverage particularly. People are mostly angry that television stations seemingly provided information that could have been helpful to the enemy, and that too much time was spent airing personal opinions cloaked as news. I share many of these concerns. There have even been suggestions from within the media that true soul-searching demanded the appointment of a media-specific commission of inquiry. IN TIME of war the media is not only an objective information provider; it must also not assume the role of cheerleader. The media's role is to seek the story behind the story and try to explain the "why" behind the "what." The media is an instrument of democracy and civil society. While some in the media correctly refused to take on the role of mobilizing society for the war effort, many more took advantage of the opportunity to advance personal agendas. It's indisputable that, both prior to and during the four weeks of battle, there was a lack of investigative reporting on the central political, diplomatic and security failures that only came out afterwards. Why should we, ex post facto, be demanding a commission of inquiry? Where was the press for the past six years while events were allowed to deteriorate? Could it be that they were smitten by the mirage of a quiet northern border? Did they adopt Amnon Abramovitz's "etrog" paradigm of swathing favored politicians with fawning protection? Or did the press sound the alarm only to be ignored by politicos and the public? Why did IDF Spokeswoman Miri Regev take advice from Reuven Adler, Eyal Arad and Leor Chorev, the triumvirate spinmasters who guided Ariel Sharon and Kadima? Was there a partisan agenda afoot? Did the IDF allow itself to become the agency of a political party? JUST A week before the war Haaretz reporter Aluf Benn wrote that Hassan Nasrallah had been behaving responsibly, and that a balance of deterrence had been created on both sides of the Lebanon border. "Hizbullah is preserving quiet in the Galilee better than did the pro-Israeli South Lebanese Army," he had written. Only on July 20 did Benn admit that "the mistake in my assessment stemmed, as always, from the idee fixe that what was is what will be." There certainly was a recurring theme, but it was rooted in the ideological mind-set of Israel's liberal/progressive media elite. It hadn't stopped applauding Ehud Barak's run-in-the-night withdrawal from Lebanon, and was not about to admit the error in his move - certainly not in advance of Sharon's trade of land-for-nothing. Asked, in a Ynet interview, if he felt frustrated that his prewar calls about the rocket threat facing Israel had been ignored, former Likud MK Uzi Landau responded, "I was made to look delusional, because part and parcel of the [media's] campaign against the disengagement opposition was a nonsensical discourse. They said I was a warmonger." WHEN THE war began, elements in the media spent the first fortnight warning the government and the IDF not to send ground troops into Lebanon. The media also let Hizbullah know, in real time, exactly where the rockets were falling, and even the unit numbers of the battalions and divisions crossing the northern border. Many in the media also covered up for the lapses of Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz, whose declarations during the fighting were mostly bluster. There were exceptions, such as Haaretz's Ari Shavit, who was devastating: "Political correctness and the illusion-of-normalcy spread first and foremost among the Israeli elites... the media... have blinded Israel and deprived it of its spirit... Instead of being constructive elites [they] have become dismantling elites." Yediot columnist Yair Lapid admitted the media was irresponsible, unrestrained, unfair and confused opinions with fact. In a Globes op-ed, Prof. Gabriel Ben-Simchon of Tel Aviv University's Cinema Department accused Haaretz of being a "newspaper in Hizbullah's service." Israel's media has much to make up for. One step that should be taken is editors and media stars distancing themselves from relationships with the politicians and generals they cover. One of the many lessons of the war is that the public needs a "free press," in every sense. Contact Yisrael Medad at ymedad@begincenter.org.il This article appeared Aug. 28, 2006 in the Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid= 3D1154525961849&pagename=3DJPo=st%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull). |
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A TERRIBLE TRAGEDY
Posted by Gary Fitleberg, August 30, 2006. |
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While it is a terrible tragedy that the war in Lebanon and Israel caused the loss of civilian casualties, on both sides of the border, the blame and responsibility rests fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the terrorist Hezbollah organization as well as its two state-sponsors, suppliers and supporters of terrorism: Iran and Syria -- both the root cause of the conflict. Hezbollah, an Iranian, Syrian and Lebanese state-supported terror organization does its dirty work through its proxy army and militia in an attempt to annihilate, destroy and eliminate Israel and the Jewish people. Not just in the Middle East but also throughout the world internationally. The Medieval, or Mid-EVIL Middle East is a very bad neighborhood consisting of ONLY ONE democracy and freedom and loving Jewish State of Israel amongst 22 Arab/Islamist corrupt dictatorships, evil extremists, fanatical fundamentalists, hate-mongerers, human rights violators, ruthless repressive regimes, state supporters of terrorism, and tyrannies. These terrorist nations, collectively as well as individually, are all bent on the intent of carnage, destruction and evil. Not only against Israel and the Jewish people but against the entire Western civilization. It is a battle and war of good vs. evil Hezbollah, under the state-sponsored tutelage of these two terror states, Iran and Syria, have amassed an annihilation arsenal known to include some 15,000 missiles including, but not limited to Katyushas, Fahr, Raad, Shihab and Zilzal weapons of mass destruction. There are undoubtedly many more than those originally known prior to the war according to intelligence sources. Many can carry warheads. Hezbollah has launched an average of between 100-200 rockets landing on Israel daily, including the third largest city of Haifa; a city where Arabs and Jews normally live together in co-existence, peace, and prosperity. Let's put things in perspective now. Imagine the "disproportionate" response by the U.S. if this happened on America's third largest city Chicago. Imagine what would happen if Al Qaeda launched a barrage of missiles from Canada and Mexico on northern and southern cities in the country. No nation would stand for this type of terrorism. Every sovereign state has a right to safety, security and stability. All have a duty to protect citizens from daily attack. Hezbollah is no independent "orphan of terror" acting alone in this conflict. Hezbollah receives financial, logistical, operational and political support from all three countries, Iran, Syria, and last but not least also Lebanon. Lebanon is an alleged and self-proclaimed "victim" in the catastrophe. Yet all segments of the Arab population seem to support Hezbollah. Shiites, Sunnis and even some Christians such as the Lebanese Prime Minister have expressed feelings against Israel and its defensive incursion prompted by an attack on its sovereign borders and soldiers. Lebanon and its entire population has expressed feelings of animosity towards Israel and support of the terrorists Hezbollah. Openly. Publicly. The President is a proxy of the Syrian President. The Prime Minister is a sympathizer. The cabinet and legislature, a democratically elected institution, is infiltrated with members of Hezbollah's so-called political wing. Members of the Hezbollah, who prey on the defenseless and weak Lebanese population have cleverly, through its so-called "charitable' institutions managed to infiltrate the Lebanese culture and society to such an extent that it even managed to gain a substantial political influence in the Lebanese government. They sway public opinion to their side and terror tactics each and every day. In other word, Iran, Syria, and Lebanon are one. A U.N. resolution caused Israel to leave Lebanon and end its so-called "occupation " while another U.N. resolution to end a real occupation of Lebanon and the disarming of Hezbollah has basically been ignored by the international community. Syria remains entrenched in every aspect of Lebanon. Economically. Militarily. Politically. Strategic ally. Make no mistake about it. It did no end with the assassination of former Lebanese leader Hariri. Lebanon, whether intentionally or unintentionally, allowed Iran and Syria to "occupy" a once sovereign state. Now Lebanon is the slave and staging ground for Iran and Syria's goals. Both civilian and soldier alike are under their dominance and influence in all aspects. Iran's agenda is crystal clear. It wants to dominate and spread it's influence in the region with fear. Iran wants to create a Shiite arc of civil unrest, extremism, fundamentalism, and hatred not only against Israel and the Jewish people, Western civilization, but ultimately democracy and freedom. Anyone truly for democracy and freedom must support Israel in it's war on terrorism because if not this will spread eventually throughout the world to all apologists and sympathizers. One must clearly heed and listen to the broadcast message of so-called "moderate " Iranian President Mamoud Ahmadinejad to "Wipe Israel off the face of the Map. " This is Iran's ultimate aim and goal. A prophecy which shall never ever be allowed to become a reality. No different from Adolph Hitler whose aim was the same to wipe Jews off the face of the earth. Last December, in an address to a Mecca summit comprised of nearly 50 Muslim heads of state, the Iranian mouthpiece actually denied the existence of the Holocaust. Mahmoud falsely proclaimed "Some European countries insist on saying Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces. We don't accept the claim." Just two months earlier, in a speech to a Tehran conference aptly named "A World Without Zionism" he declared Israel should be <91>wiped off the map." With moderates like these we do not need extremist fanatical fundamentalists. Should we take him seriously? Absolutely. Yes. Although actions speak louder than words, both the actions and words of Iran and its President are crystal clear in intent. Let us not take any chance. His wish and words come directly from his heart and mind. Iran is a cancer of terrorism. One that needs to be surgically removed. Forever and ever. Iran as the CEO/CFO in the "Axis of Evil" is the international community's Public Enemy No. 1. Make no mistake about it. Iran acts like and behaves like a mad animal frothing at the mouth or an attack dog without a leash. There is an absolute clear and present danger in dealing with Iran diplomatically while it prepares itself for an all out conflagration with all those who oppose it. There is clearly danger in allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon armed with an arsenal of long-range missiles capable of carrying warheads that can already reach several towns in northern and southern Israel, neighboring Arab nations, European cities and countries, as well as America's east coast. Iran is working around the clock 24-7 towards the capability that will prove deadly eventually for the international community. Iran remains defiant. Iran makes an "Axis of Evil" Iraq, led formerly by the defiant dictator and insane Saddam Hussein, look lame and tame by comparison. Diplomacy with a defiant Iran will only forestall the inevitable. Hopefully not with a much more dangerous and technologically advanced and capable Iran. One who is control led by an army of Ayatollahs and their moderate "mouthpiece" Mahmoud. Do the math. Iran armed with nuclear power and long-range missiles and warheads. You need not be a rocket scientist to figure this one out. Syria should also be taken seriously. Dead seriously. Its Syrian manufactured Raad missile rockets also fell on Israeli cities. Despite the evidence and facts on the ground, Syria's Ambassador to the U.S. lied openly and publicly regarding Syria's sponsorship of Hezbollah and illegal occupation of Lebanon. With a straight face and three piece suit he stated Syria did not support Hezbollah. He flatly denied any involvement with Hezbollah on Meet the Press. Israel's Ambassador to the U.S. Daniel Ayalon countered that Israel has planty of evidence and proof of Syria's connection and involvement, including but not limited to manufacturers of missiles and serial numbers. Nasrallah also made a special guest appearance and visit to Bashar Assad during the conflict for assistance and guidance with strategy during the conflict. Syria's role is no secret. It is clearly the conduit between Iran and Lebanon for Hezbollah. Syria also seeks to be a regional power broker. It's leaders and advisors, especially its former marginalized "moderate" President Basher Assad thought he could neg otiate a peace agreement. Assad proposed he could do a deal to get the captives kidnapped by the terrorist Hezbollah group in exchange for the strategically important Golan Heights. This was lost by Syria to Israel during the June 1967 "Six Day War" in which five Arab armies aggressively attacked with the intent to annihilate Israel. Seriously. Syria believes it can negotiate and hold Israel hostage for Hezbollah's Israeli hostages. Syria, the very same Syria who sent its soldiers to stop a civil war in Lebanon between the Christian and Muslim populations, overstayed their welcome, illegally occupied the sovereign state, integrated itself into the infrastructure in all aspects, and now uses it as a staging ground for its state supported terrorism. Syria still gives safe haven and sanctuary to terrorist training camps for the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad amongst many others. "Axis of Evil" Wannabe Syria is responsible for the onslaught of so-called "suicide bombers" (actually homicide bombers who do not only want to self-destruct but cause as much murder and mayhem as inhumanly possible) in Israel and its disputed territories as well as in the Syrian still-occupied former "sovereign state" and strategic base of terror of Lebanon. Syria, despite the exaggerated false claims it provides intelligence to the U.S. valua ble to the war on terror, actually allows a porous border for its Arab brethren for an influx of insurgents and weapons to be used against America in its war on terrorism in Iraq. "Axis of Evil" Wannabe Syria relishes its self-proclaimed role in the conflict and region as well its partnership with Iran for regional dominance to promote instabilit y and power through a Shiite arc of evil extremists and fanatical fundamentalists bent on the intent of chaos and destruction. The U.S. could and should take Syria seriously. A bi-partisan Congress, in both houses, overwhelmingly and unanimously passed legislation to hold Syria accountable. Yet U.S. President George W. Bush, has used his discretion each and every year since the legislation's passing supposedly in the interest and name and of "national security" to waive all sanction terms of the Syria Accountability Act. It is now time to enforce and utilize this terrorism tool and all its terms to its full extent to hold this state- supporter of terrorism accountable for all its actions. A terrorist is a terrorist. All those who harbor terrorists and give them safe haven and sanctuary will be held accountable as well. The war on terrorism is one that should be supported by all who truly believe in democracy and freedom. A war in which the win ner must be Western civilization. Gary Fitleberg is a Political Analyst specialzing in International Relations with emphasis on Middle East Affairs. Contact him at jewsinthenews10@yahoo.com> |
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THE MOVIE SPIELBERG SHOULD HAVE MADE
Posted by Arlene Peck, August 30, 2006. |
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I am not a movie reviewer although for some reason film studios seem to think I am. They must really value my opinion, because they keep sending me trailers of their upcoming movies. If I thought they were listening at all, a few careers would be in jeopardy! Starting with Mel Gibson! However, I just returned from seeing, "The World Trade Center" and in my opinion, this is the one that Spielberg should have made. Instead of taking a shocking human tragedy, such as the murders of Israeli athletes at Munich and the total barbarism the Palestinians brought to the usual sanguinity of the Olympics, Spielberg felt the compulsion to be politically correct. Spielberg's spin on history doesn't bother with truth. No apology from Oliver Stone! Instead of humanizing and glorifying the terrorists, by showing their "human side", as Spielberg did, "Trade Center" director Stone centered on the result of the destruction, the pain and suffering these animals caused the victims of their cruelty. Maybe it's because Stone, unlike Spielberg, didn't feel the need to hire an avowed self-hater like Tony Kushner to write the script. The man has obviously never known what is best in the American spirit and just as obvious, is a terrorist supporter. There is no "other side" or any such thing as disproportionate response when it comes to killing the "bad guys". Recently, it seemed like every time I'd turn on the news, I'd see or read something about how the "poor downtrodden Lebanese" were being killed at a far greater rate than the Israelis. Good! When it comes to a cancer, all of it has to come out. The Lebanese may be nice people but the inescapable reality is that they allowed a hostile, war-like entity to grow within their country and even voted them into the government. They must be held accountable for their government and its actions of aggression. The people in Dresden, Germany may have been hospitable and nice as well, but it took the destruction of that city by the USA and British to get the point across in the last world war! In fact, even though the Japanese never bombed cities in the United States, the horrors of Pearl Harbour were enough for Truman to go after them. He didn't let up until the atom bomb levelled Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Only when faced with the ultimate deterrent did Japan sue for peace and begin to behave like a civilized nation. The Japanese were an advanced culture. I have no hope that the seventh century mentality we are dealing will ever comprehend the difference between right and wrong.. good and evil. All they understand is POWER! What's all this about "disproportionate" anyway? You have a bully on the school yard terrorizing children for their lunch money; you don't give it to him. You don't negotiate how much of your allowance you will turn over each week or give them a hug. You get together with some of your friends and beat the hell out of him the next time he goes after one of the weaker kids. Hezbollah, Hamas and the vipers' nest of global Islamic fundamentalists, who are waging dozens of wars around the world now, are the world's bullies. They understand power! Power! War against savage bullies who have pushed us into a defensive position is not nice. Doesn't matter...nice doesn't come into it, doing what is necessary does! Frankly, folks, faced with so much sympathy for the Islamists and having to appease them at every turn, I have often felt like throwing my hands up in the air and giving up. The good news is that, unlike a couple of years ago, when all I heard on radio and television talk shows was empathy for the plight of the "poor Arab and Palestinian people", America and much of the civilized world now seems to have had enough! The Lebanese fiasco seems to have been the last straw for a lot of us. The airwaves have been filled with anger and disgust for the Muslim culture. At last, the people flooding the airwaves seem to have seen through the lies and deceit. We must come to this understanding: We, who live in the 21st century, are simply incapable of comprehending the mindset of the Muslim world. Our modern way of life and culture, whether in the US, Canada, Australia or Europe, DOES NOT prepare us to think like people with a seventh century outlook where be-headings are the norm. We cannot afford to overlook "Ccontemporary education" in places like Palestine. MEMRI (http://www.memri.org/) offers many videos where you can see how they are "training their children". Americans, by and large, cannot comprehend this. There is no dialogue possible with this mentality. These people, and there are 1.6 BILLION of them, are out to destroy the rest of us because the Koran tells them to. It's really that simple. Ironically, though, columns that I wrote four or five years ago about the need for "transfer" are now being received as a new 'solution' and revelation. I remember having many long talks about this very topic years ago with Rabbi Meir Kahane. When he wrote of this mperative in the mid-70s and was called a radical for his honest perspective. I, too, was called a radical (and worse), by some, and many of my left-leaning self-hater friends and readers wrote to tell me how wrong I was about this peaceful culture. Now? Letters are coming in thick and fast wanting to read more about this idea of removing the evil from the midst of the Jewish state. New thought? Naw...Maybe people are finally coming to the realization that, just as Hezbollah should not survive as a country within a country, so too Israel cannot bear the consequences of Arabs living in their midst bent on the destruction of that very state. Damn! The entire country is the size of a peanut. When the Jews left Gaza, they allowed a terrorist state to be established. Once the terrorist HAMAS government was elected, the obvious was going to happen. Now, the question is what to do about it. And now, not years down the road. Arlene Peck is an internationally syndicated columnist and television talk show hostess. She can be reached at: bestredhead@earthlink.net and www.arlenepeck.com |
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A RESPONSE TO AN ISRAEL-BASHER
Posted by Mort Reichek, August 30, 2006. |
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I am impelled to respond to a comment from blog reader Tony Flaig, who severely criticizes Israel's defense against Hezbollah. Mr. Flaig, who lives in Great Britain, charges that Israel is a "keen abuser of innocents" in Lebanon. He appears to see a moral equivalency between Israel's attacks on Hezbollah, which uses civilians as human shields while deliberately firing rockets at Israeli civilians, with Israel's effort to specifically attack Hezbollah military targets. Because of Hezbollah's tactics, innocent Lebanese civilians sadly die. But while Israelis agonize and weep in grief over the tragic loss of Lebanese children and other civilians, Hezbollah and its supporters celebrate the loss of Israeli lives. As Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz writes: "When it comes to Israel, a lot of usually smart people stop thinking with their heads and start thinking with their guts. Most smart people know that when an armed criminal takes a hostage and fires from behind him, it is the criminal, not the policeman, who is guilty of murder, if the policeman, in a reasonable effort to stop the criminal from firing, accidentally kills the innocent hostage. The same should be true during wartime. But you wouldn't know it if you listened only to the singular condemnations of Israel by so many in the international community." Mr. Flaig complains that Israel "bullies and controls its neighbors." That is an extraordinary claim for a tiny country like Israel with a population less than half the city of Cairo's, outnumbered and surrounded by more than a billion Muslims in 22 Arab countries and other Islamic states--most of whom would like to see Israel destroyed. In a perverse role reversal, Israel has become Goliath to the Islamic world's David. I don't mean to bestow such prominence to Mr. Flaig's personal views. But his criticism reflects the increasing level of Israel-bashing in the world at large. It has been aggravated by Israel's fierce defense--regarded as "disproportionate" by Israel's kneejerk critics--against terrorism from both Hezbollah, supported by Syria and Iran, and the Palestinian Hamas militia. On the surface, it's puzzling that Hezbollah and Iran are so obsessed with wiping out Israel. Until the current war began, Israel did not occupy any territory in Lebanon, and Iran has no territorial claims against distant Israel. At the risk of sounding jocular about a very serious matter, perhaps the Iranians resent the fact that Israel's president and its former defense minister and armed forces chief of staff, who is now the transportation minister, are both Jewish natives of Iran. The major focus of Israel-bashing is Israel's so-called occupation of Arab territory. Mr. Flaig makes a peculiar reference to "Israel farming land that does not belong to them." Actually, virtually all the land that constituted the state of Israel when it gained independence in 1948 had been purchased from Arab feudal landowners or had belonged to the former Ottoman Turkish empire. (I remember as a boy in New York during the 1930s soliciting pennies, dimes and quarters for the Jewish National Fund to buy land for Jews in Palestine; I was proud to be awarded the Ussishkin medal--named for a Zionist pioneer leader--for collecting the most money in my Sunday school class.) Israel acquired additional territory after becoming an independent nation only by successfully defending itself against invasion by neighboring Arab states intent on its destruction. And unlike other countries which acquired and absorbed territory in defensive wars (Russia, e.g., retaining East Prussia and converting it into a Russianized Kaliningrad), Israel has unsuccessfully offered to negotiate the return of land to the Palestinians. In Gaza, from which Israel unilaterally withdrew last year, the Palestinians demonstrated how meaningless it could be to return land in the hopeful belief that the result might be peace. Instead of devoting themselves to job creation by bolstering their economy and rebuilding their infrastructure, the Palestinians quickly destroyed state-of-the art greenhouses, vandalized synagogues and other structures, and started launching rockets at neighboring Israeli communities. I often think that the Arab world's primary grievance against Israel derives from sheer envy of Israeli economic achievements during its brief existence as a Jewish state. It introduced modernity in a region where much of the local society was still living in the dark ages. The Israelis drained malarial swamps, tamed the desert with advanced agricultural methods, and created a high-tech, Westernized democracy that was alien to the culture of its neighbors. These accomplishments may have been hard for the Arabs to tolerate because traces of the philosophy of "dhimmitude" still persist in parts of the Islamic world. Until very recently, Jews--and in some cases Christians--in many Arab lands were treated as "dhimmis." They were identified as infidels who, while called "protected people," were actually treated as second-class citizens. They were subject to special taxes, barred from certain occupations, often required to wear special clothing, and exposed to other humiliating social restrictions. In Yemen, e.g., Jews were not allowed to sit on donkeys so that they would not tower over walking Arabs. The Israel/Palestine conflict, which is at the heart of the prolonged Middle East crisis, boils down to this: If the Palestinians and their activist allies would abandon their goal of destroying Israel and would lay down their arms, there would be peace. If the Israelis, however, laid down their arms, an independent and secure Jewish state would be wiped out. Mort Reichek is a former Washington correspondent and senior editor,
Business Week; former Washington correspondent, Newhouse Newspapers;
former associate editor, Forbes. Contributed to New York Times
Magazine, New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, The New
Leader, Columbia Journalism Review, Midstream, etc.
Contact him at iankev@att.net or go to his website
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SUICIDE: AMERICAN STYLE: IMMIGRATION IS SLITTING OUR WRISTS
Posted by Resa LaRu Kirkland, August 30, 2006. |
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This was written last year. and it is archived at |
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My dad was a Federal Parole and Probation officer in El Paso, Texas, 30 years ago. Because he dealt with Federal cases, it was his responsibility to handle illegal immigrants. I was only about 8 years old when I overheard him saying that 10,000 Mexicans a day crossed the border between America and Mexico. Of course, they didn't all stay... much of it was just daily traffic back and forth. But many of them did stay, and I knew why. We would often go into Juarez for fun--gorgeous pottery, inexpensive trinkets, another world to peruse and study. I grew to despise those trips, however, because I couldn't bear the suffering I saw. Old people, children, crippled lying on the sidewalks begging for change, half-starved creatures barely resembling human beings, stripped of clothing, flesh, and dignity. Children sleeping under blankets on dusty sidewalks, an old woman with no legs or teeth, smiling sweetly at the offer of a quarter--such images plague me to this day, and eventually caused me to abandon our regular trips. I had taken to changing the money my parents would give me for the trip into quarters, and giving it to those who lined the sidewalks. It was never enough, and my helplessness in the face of such overwhelming need left me disheartened. I mentioned this to my dad one day, and to my utter surprise, this man--whose job it was to stop illegal immigration--looked at me and said, "It breaks my heart too. If I lived there under those conditions, I would do anything, break any law to get my family to America." This display of understanding touched me then, and still does. But my father would also caution that America could simply not take in the entire world, and that those who obeyed the laws could not and should not be made to pay for those who broke them. He taught me what illegal immigration was costing this nation, and what it would end up costing me and my children someday if it was allowed to go on, unchecked, unfettered, unregulated. The picture he painted was even more repugnant than the streets of Juarez, and I knew then and there that illegal immigration was wrong--evil, in fact, because it would destroy the life of the land it was seeking. Let's face it, our borders are swiss cheese. Our futile attempts to pretend we're doing something about it are pointless. We need a new form of attack--offense, not defense. But the attack needs to be full force--that is, we need to watch the airports too, because America's greatest threat is coming from within these everyday locations in our heartland. Illegal Mexican immigrants have caused our taxes to get out of control, this is for sure. But let's analyze them as opposed to some others I will mention in a minute. Those who come to America from Mexico come here not to destroy us, but to better themselves. These aren't people being embedded into America to bring her down from the inside, but those who see our beauty, and want to be part of it. They come here and work hard for a piece of the American dream, and the warrior in me can't help but respect that. But now for the rest of the story... Recently I was approached by a man who sent me something far more alarming. People, there are groups of Middle Eastern men in this country who are determined to bring us down, alright, but not by toppling buildings. These men are members of groups of organized criminals, and they are running companies in this country--companies that are not just defrauding customers, but are making millions of dollars for men who aren't citizens, and who are using the funds to support terrorism and destroy our land and those of our allies. I have hard evidence: names, places, Social Security numbers, bank accounts, addresses, phone numbers, etc., all sent to me by one man who infiltrated one of their businesses. He has seen their arrogance, their dismissal of "Stupid Americans" and our inability--or lack of ambition--to stop them from their entrenched havoc and menace. These people refuse to claim the true dollars involved, leaving the rest of us to pick up the tax slack. They believe that anything they can do in business, in the courts, in the community to divide and conquer is the right thing to do. My "mole" friend has done all of this, on his own, at great personal risk, for one reason and one reason only: he loves this land, and loathes those who would destroy it. He has seen their wretchedness first hand, lived within a large nest of the monsters, and documented how wide-spread they are... all across the nation. These aren't people desperate for a better way of life, working at any job, anywhere, just to have enough to eat, nor are they angry young militants taking flying lessons. No, these are young men in Mercedes and expensive clothes, who take our money and laugh at our gullibility. They plan this carefully, recruiting illegals in the Middle East and exploiting "dual nationals" with hellish contemplation, and choose warily those they can use to abuse us here in America. Companies range from "Home improvement", "Moving" (very notorious), "Real Estate", "Air Conditioning", "Toys", "Cosmetics", various Kiosks in major shopping malls across the United States. If caught, they close up shop, go back to the Middle East, and in a few months open up the same business under a different name. Their actions are deliberate, their motive is evil, and their success is horrifying. Their works include marriage scams and workers who don't dare squeal for fear of being deported. It is madness, it is mind-boggling, and it is happening. It is obvious that our government agencies have failed miserably. This fact is what motivated my "mole" to do this on his own--that magnificent American method of finding a way to accomplish something, and if you can't find it, then by God, you forge it. People are allowed to fly into our airports and simply disappear from the radar, only to torment and eat away at the fabric of America, and to get rich while doing it. Riches which, by the way, go to support terrorism's more obvious face of violence. Someone has to stop this. So I'm taking up the standard of my "mole," and I'm going to do this myself. I call upon all of you who say "Enough" to join me. I am rallying those who will help me put together a documentary, articles, and a book about this shadowy enemy in our midst. Everything is ready, in hard format, even those on the inside who will be interviewed. People, these are not men who love America so much they'll do anything to be a part of it, who work away their youth and health to make a better life for their families. No, this is the vile face of the enemy, and he's already here. Our worst "border" is the airport, where these men arrive from first class, and marvel at the "Stupid Americans" while they plan, execute, and evade. This is real, it is deadly, and it is now. Join me, fellow Americans... if we fail this, there is no future. I think my dad would have approved. Keep the faith, bros, and in all things courage. Contact Resa LaRu Kirkland at her website http://www.warchick.com or write her at resalaru@warchick.com |
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AN OPEN LETTER TO PAT BUCHANAN
Posted by Burt Prelutsky, August 30, 2006. |
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Pat Buchanan, not satisfied merely looking like a Herblock depiction of a bigot, a man who never allows an opportunity to slam Israel slip through his fingers, has been on a rampage because Israel has finally gone after the murderous thugs and sadists of Hezbollah. The fact that the terrorists don't wear uniforms means that every time the Israelis kill one of them, Buchanan and his ilk get to insist that Israel is targeting civilians. Buchanan's concern for civilians isn't nearly so evident when it's Jews who are targeted by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PLO's suicide bombers. One of the sillier things Israel has done in recent years was to fall for the land for peace con game. They surrendered territory and any number of settlements as a gesture of good will. Good will gestures made to terrorists and tyrants are the height of folly and cowardice, and it doesn't matter whether it's the Arabs or Adolf Hitler. Offer your hand to the tiger and don't expect him to stop nibbling when he gets to your wrist. Because Israel plays such a prominent role in the news and because it's managed, against all odds, to survive for 58 years, one can easily over-estimate its actual place in the world. The fact of the matter is that unless you were at the top of your geography class, you'd be hard-pressed to find it on your globe. To give you a clear idea of what Israel is up against, keep in mind that there are 22 countries in the Arab League. The League encompasses 5,200,000 square miles; Israel was 8,000 square miles before giving up the aforementioned turf. What's more, there are 312 million people living in those 22 countries. Israel's population is six million, more than a million of whom are Arabs. So far as Buchanan and his friends are concerned, it would seem that the only thing that's required to make Israel the jewel of the Middle East is for those five million Jews to disappear. You have to wonder what it is about those 8,000 square miles that the Arabs covet. It's not as if Israel sits on huge oil deposits. Why aren't five million square miles enough? I mean, if you had five million dollars, would you cry yourself to sleep every night because you didn't have $5,008,000? Let's face it -- before the Jews built universities, hospitals and concert halls, and planted trees and crops, the place was nothing but 8,000 square miles of kitty litter. So many people are happy to trumpet "No blood for oil." How is it that we never hear them, or Mr. Buchanan, telling the Arabs, "No blood for sand"? Burt Prelutsky is author of "Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco (A Hollywood Right-Winger Comes Out of the Closet)." He has been a humor columnist (L.A. Times), a movie reviewer (Los Angeles magazine), a freelancer (NY Times, TV Guide, Modern Maturity, Sports Illustrated, Washington Times, etc.) and written for TV (several movies, plus episodes of MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, McMillan & Wife, Dragnet, Diagnosis Murder, etc., etc.) Contact him by email at burtprelutsky@aol.com |
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FOX NEWS AND FORCED CONVERSIONS
Posted by American 1627, August 30, 2006. |
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This article was written by Robert Spencer. It appeared today on Front Page Magazine (www.frontpagemag.com). Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of six books, seven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith and the New York Times Bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). His latest book, The Truth About Muhammad, is coming October 9 from Regnery Publishing. |
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The most bizarre element of the two weeks of captivity suffered by Fox News reporter Steve Centanni and photographer Olaf Wiig at the hands of Gaza's Holy Jihad Brigade was the video that surfaced depicting their conversion to Islam. Even before the journalists revealed that their conversions had been coerced, there were disturbing indications that they were not acting freely. While reading a statement he himself had ostensibly written, Centanni stumbled over words, appeared to puzzle over the handwriting, and seemed to grimace after pronouncing the words "peace be upon him" after the name of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Their messages as new converts to Islam were predictable denunciations of the United States and Israel, combined with emphasis on Islam's universal call as the solution to the world's problems. But most jarring was the video editor's invocation of the favorite Qur'an verse of Western analysts of Islam and terrorism, "There is no compulsion in religion" (2:256). The irony of featuring this verse in a video depicting two forced conversions has been widely noted. In fact, however, the juxtaposition of this verse with the video of Centanni and Wiig was probably not simply transparent deception, as strange as that may seem, and has far-reaching implications. Islamic law forbids forced conversion, but as Andrew Bostom documented in a FrontPage article yesterday, this is a law that throughout Islamic history has all too often been honored in the breach. Nor is this yet another case of a "twisting" or "hijacking" of Islam; in fact, Islamic law regarding the presentation of Islam to non-Muslims manifests a quite different understanding of what constitutes freedom from coercion and freedom of conscience from that which prevails among non-Muslims. Muhammad instructed his followers to call people to Islam before waging war against them -- the warfare would follow from their refusal to accept Islam or to enter the Islamic social order as inferiors, required to pay a special tax: Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war... When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them...If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya [the tax on non-Muslims specified in Qur'an 9:29]. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them. (Sahih Muslim 4294) There is therefore an inescapable threat in this "invitation" to accept Islam. Would one who converted to Islam under the threat of war be considered to have converted under duress? By non-Muslim standards, yes, but not according to the view of this Islamic tradition. From the standpoint of the traditional schools of Islamic jurisprudence such a conversion would have resulted from "no compulsion." Muhammad reinforced these instructions on many occasions during his prophetic career. Late in his career, he wrote to Heraclius, the Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople: Now then, I invite you to Islam (i.e., surrender to Allah), embrace Islam and you will be safe; embrace Islam and Allah will bestow on you a double reward. But if you reject this invitation of Islam, you shall be responsible for misguiding the peasants (i.e., your nation). (Bukhari, 4.52.191). Heraclius did not accept Islam, and soon the Byzantines would know well that the warriors of jihad indeed granted no safety to those who rejected their "invitation." Muhammad did not get a satisfactory answer either from Chosroes, ruler of the Persians. After reading the letter of the Prophet of Islam, Chosroes contemptuously tore it to pieces. When news of this reached Muhammad, he called upon Allah to tear the Persian emperor and his followers to pieces (Bukhari, 5.59.708). He told the Muslims that they would conquer both empires: "When Khosrau [Chosroes] perishes, there will be no (more) Khosrau after him, and when Caesar perishes, there will be no more Caesar after him. By Him in Whose hands Muhammad's life is, you will spend the treasures of both of them in Allah's Cause" (Bukhari 4.53.349). Muhammad did not limit his veiled threat only to rulers. Another hadith records that on one occasion he emerged from a mosque and told his men, "Let us go to the Jews." Upon arriving at a nearby Arabian Jewish community, Muhammad told them: "If you embrace Islam, you will be safe. You should know that the earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle, and I want to expel you from this land. So, if anyone amongst you owns some property, he is permitted to sell it, otherwise you should know that the Earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle" (Bukhari, 4.53.392). In other words, if you accept Islam, you may keep your land and property, but if not, Muhammad and the Muslims would confiscate it. Bostom notes: "Orders for conversion were decreed under all the early Islamic dynasties -- Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, and Mamluks. Additional extensive examples of forced conversion were recorded under both Seljuk and Ottoman Turkish rule (the latter until its collapse in the 20th century), the Shi'ite Safavid and Qajar dynasties of Persia/Iran, and during the jihad ravages on the Indian subcontinent, beginning with the early 11th century campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni, and recurring under the Delhi Sultanate, and Moghul dynasty until the collapse of Muslim suzerainty in the 18th century following the British conquest of India." Since these Muslim rulers and armies all revered Muhammad as an "excellent example of conduct" (Qur'an 33:21), this is not surprising. After being freed, Centanni said: "We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn't know what ... was going on." Indeed, few in the West know what's going on regarding the example of Muhammad and the stance of traditional Islam on conversion. The human rights should have the courage to recognize and denounce this conversion-or-else directive, and to recognize the plight of those who even today suffer from its scourge. Moreover, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad operating according to Muhammad's instructions, this now has geopolitical implications. In his letter to President Bush, Ahmadinejad invited him to accept Islam, and then echoed the Prophet of Islam in delivering a threat to Bush through Mike Wallace: "We are all free to choose. But please give him this message, sir: Those who refuse to accept an invitation will not have a good ending or fate." Ahmadinejad's threat, as well as the ordeal of Centanni and Wiig, epitomizes the threat that the global jihad represents to the freedom of conscience. Analysts are increasingly beginning to note that the conflict has ideological dimensions, but these dimensions are still imperfectly understood in the public sphere. Were Western leaders courageous enough to speak forthrightly about the threat we face as an Islamic jihad, they could use the "conversions" of Centanni and Wiig to illustrate one of the elements of Western civilization that is being challenged and that we are resolved to defend. Unfortunately, mired as they are in denial about the nature of the "terror" threat itself, they have made as yet no such resolution. Contact American 1627 at american1627@yahoo.com |
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THE RED CROSS AMBULANCE FRAUD
Posted by Naomi Ragen, August 30, 2006. |
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This was written by Tom Gross. [Editor's note: Click here for descriptions and photos of the Red Cross ambulance hoax and the rescue worker who was photographed in a "Jesus after the crucifixion" pose. The first caption said he was a civilian killed by guess who and then, when bloggers yelled "hoax", the caption was revised to say he was just unconscious.] |
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While politicians in most countries, particularly in Europe, continue to swallow the frauds and fabrications of the mainstream western media about Israel, at least one leading politician elsewhere, Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer, has spoken out. Addressing the conference of Australian newspaper publishers in Brisbane earlier this week, Downer criticized the media for the now numerous documented instances of misreporting of the recent conflict between Israel and Hizbullah. These included the claim that Israeli aircraft intentionally fired missiles that hit two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances performing rescue operations. Respected news outlets giving widespread credence to this piece of Hizbullah propaganda included The New York Times, Time Magazine, NBC News, the BBC, ITV News, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Age (Australia), Le Monde, and newspapers and TV stations throughout Europe and Asia. For extra measure, Britain's ITV news added in its report on the fabricated incident that Israel had "committed war crimes." The New York Times ran a shot of a supposedly dead Lebanese civilian, only for later pictures to show him back on his feet. Kofi Annan was among those that condemned Israel based on these misguided press reports. AUSTRALIAN FM ON THE "DISHONESTY IN THE REPORTING OUT OF LEBANON" Australian foreign minister Downer told the conference: "What concerns me greatly is the evidence of dishonesty in the reporting out of Lebanon. For example, a Reuters photographer was forced to resign after doctoring images to exaggerate the impact of Israeli air attacks. There were the widely-reported claims that Israel had bombed deliberately a Red Cross ambulance." For more on Downer, see this article from today's
"Herald-Sun," Australia's biggest-selling daily newspaper:
It seems that Hizbullah have learned much from Palestinian terror groups, who have a long successful track record of taking in sympathetic or gullible western journalists. See, for example, www.tomgrossmedia.com/Jeningrad.html. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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THE LOS ANGELES TIMES IS NOT A CREDIBLE SOURCE OF NEWS ON ISRAEL
Posted by Join the Boycott, August 30, 2006. |
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This article discusses some of the techniques of bias as exhibited by the Los Angeles Times' anti-Israel campaign. Don't get mad - get even Join the Boycott of the LA Times today
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1) Agenda Bias The principal form of bias is the editorial choice of subject matter which, when viewed over time, reflects the agenda of the editors. For sixteen years the LA Times has controlled the agenda in favor of the PLO. This bias is achieved by: (a) Focusing On Issues That Aid The PLO/Arab Cause The LA Times focuses public attention on those issues that aid the PLO cause, the key one being constant criticism of the conduct of the IDF and Israeli defensive measures in general. An example of this was the allegations stemming from the battle of Jenin. Public attention was riveted on the conduct of Israeli soldiers, and a torrent of criticism was unleashed against Israel, while the more obvious criminal actions of the PLO terrorists, using civilians as human shields, were ignored. Recently public attention has been obsessively focused on Israel's construction of a Security Fence to keep out suicide bombers. The ongoing terrorist activities of the PLO, planning and preparing more inhuman acts of violence, are largely ignored. Even in times when the coverage of Israel has lessened there has been a constant flow of articles criticizing Israel's methods of self-defense such as house demolitions, deportations, curfews, even the killing of terrorists who are armed combatants at war with Israel, etc., and articles portraying the Palestinians as the victims exaggerating their suffering out of all proportions while ignoring Israeli suffering. The subject of so-called "Palestinian refugees" living in Arab countries is another item on the PLO agenda the LA Times likes to promote. Agenda bias is magnified by the constancy, and the often saturation volume of coverage. (b) Ignoring Issues That Harm The PLO/Arab Cause Ignoring i.e. censoring and/or failing to undertake any significant investigative reporting into subjects which may cast a negative light on the PLO such as the documentary proof of their terror activities, the intimidation of journalists, the personal involvement of Arafat in terrorist activities, the misuse of funds to buy weapons, the contrary statements in Arabic which call for violence against Israel, the concealment of the PLO plan to destroy Israel, the desecration of Jewish and Christian holy sites, the indoctrination of Palestinian children with hatred of Israel, the misuse of ambulances to aid terrorist activities, the cooperation of Arab States in terrorist activities and their financial support of suicide bombers, the Lebanese provocations, etc. The effect of this biased reporting is to increase the pressure on Israel not to retaliate and to make concessions, while little or no pressure is applied to Arafat and the PLO to stop the terrorism and compromise their demands. 2) Using Quotes as Accusations A reporter may choose any quote that supports his or her political position making this practice ripe for abuse - the PLO propagandists of the LA Times use this method extensively. By repeating the PLO's unsubstantiated allegations over and over again, the LA Times gives credence to them and is able to say about Israel what it cannot state as fact. This technique was used to its fullest regarding the battle of Jenin, but is an ongoing and pervasive form of abuse. 3) Blaming Israel Consistently placing the blame on Israel. For example, when Israel retaliates against a terrorist act it is blamed for dealing a blow to the "peace process" or for overreacting or most recently, for complicating America's potential war with Iraq. This is contrary to the truth for if the world would leave Israel alone to defeat the terrorists there would be peace. On the other hand, the PLO is not held to blame. Their atrocities are excused as the acts of "militants" or "activists" belonging to other groups even though the terror reaches right into Arafat's own Fatah faction. The LA Times' failure to hold Arafat and the PLO responsible, despite extensive Israeli evidence of their being so, works contrary to the interests of peace. 4) The Immoral Equation Referring to a "cycle of violence" or a "round of violence" - a device to equate the PLO terrorists who intentionally kill innocent civilians with the Israelis who are forced to battle armed terrorist combatants in self-defense to prevent their horrendous acts of murder. The comparison is morally wrong. Every civilized country in the world recognizes the right to kill in self-defense he or she who comes to kill you. 5) Biased Terminology Use of biased terminology - constant use of terms of Arab propaganda such as "the occupation", "the occupied territories", "assassination", and terms carrying an opinion such as "ferocious response", "hardliners", and misnomers such as "militants", "gunmen", and "activists" - one gets the sense the LA Times justifies every atrocity of the PLO because of "the occupation". The term "occupation" as used by the Arabs is short for "occupied Arab lands" and anyone who uses it has already labeled themselves a supporter of Arab claims and is therefore biased. There is little recognition of, or respect for, the Jewish claim to what is, our 3,700 year old heritage. 6) Biased Headlines Slanted headlines - when Israel retaliates it is "Israel kills" or "Israel invades" or "Israel defies" - when the PLO does something it is "Bomb kills" or "Gunmen kill" or "Israelis killed by bomb". The LA Times cannot bring itself to blame the PLO terrorists. This is a tacit form of justification of PLO violence. 7) Biased Photographs Suggestively anti-Israel photographs - such as showing the Israelis as persecutors or "invaders" or generally as the guilty party. 8) Biased "Human" Stories Long, often multiple-paged articles on the lives of suicide bombers - stories and vignettes of their lives meant to "humanize" them and explain their actions, create sympathy for them, even glamorize their "martyrdom" - while the victims of their bloody massacres are largely ignored. 9) Quantitative and Qualitative Bias Sometimes the anti-Israel bias is seen in the positioning of a story, or the amount of column inches devoted to it, or an imbalance in the number of quotes favoring the PLO side, etc. Media watchdog groups such as CAMERA do a good job in monitoring this more subtle form of bias. 10) Tokenism There are occasional interest stories which superficially seem to be supportive of Jewish issues - an example was an article on the controversy surrounding Egypt's decision to screen a series of programs which contained material based on the anti-semitic work "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (10/30/02) though these stories often reveal anti-Jewish flaws. We call this tokenism - a once in a while article that gives the LA Times a certain "plausible deniability" of bias - it is reminiscent of a practice occurring in country clubs across the US. Ongoing examples of these different forms of bias can be seen by
following the Anti-Israel Propaganda Watch
www.geocities.com/truthmasters/jointheboycott.htm |
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ENOUGH HUMILIATION!
Posted by Fern Sidman, August 30, 2006. |
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In the aftermath of Israel's worst military defeat since the beginning of the creation of the modern Jewish state, we stand humiliated and denigrated in the eyes of the world. On the home front, their are calls for commissions of inquiry into the mismanagement of the war. The media, reservists, the left wing and right wing are demanding the resignation of the Olmert government. The defense ministry is under attack as is the foreign ministry. There is no question that Israel gained nothing and lost much in this recent military conflict in Lebanon. Hezbollah and its Syrian and Iranian sponsors are basking in glory as is the entire Arab world. As they celebrate their victory and the defeat of the "invincible" Israeli army, the global criticism and condemnations of Israel's actions in Lebanon keep mounting at a furious pace. The threats of a nuclear attack on Israel from Iranian President Ahmadinejad are very real, as he defies world pressure and vows to continue developing the country's uranium enrichment program. If this kind of humiliation were not enough, we have just learned that Rev. Jesse Jackson is engaged in shuttle diplomacy to seek the release of the three Israeli soldiers still held hostage by Hamas and Hizbollah. According to Arutz Sheva news service, (8/29/06) "Jackson met with the Damascus-based leader of the Hamas terror organization (Khaled Meshaal) as well as with Syrian President Bashar Assad before leaving for Lebanon, the second stop in his regional diplomacy tour. The American cleric is expected to meet with Lebanon's President Emile Lahoud, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Jackson said he is also hoping to meet with Hizbullah chief terrorist Hassan Nasrallah to discuss a prisoner exchange deal to free Goldwasser and Regev. Jackson is slated to visit Israel after talks in Lebanon." Rev. Jackson's track record is far from stellar when it comes to negotiating on behalf of Jews. Jackson's record of embracing terrorists of all stripes is legendary. He embraced Yassir Arafat, praised him as "urbane, educated and reasonable" and was a vocal supporter of his philosophies and actions. In 1984, Jackson ran for the presidency of the United States, garnering 3.5 million votes, enough to make him a kingmaker, a power broker in the Democratic party. His candidacy was riddled with viciously anti-semitic statements, as he referred to Jews as "Hymies" and New York City as "Hymietown". Jesse Jackson was known as an anti-Semite long before Hymietown. He had a record of making disgusting and vicious remarks about Jews, including calling Zionism the poisoned weed of Judaism and saying that he's sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust. It is also noteworthy to mention that Rev. Jackson may be flagrantly violating United States laws by negotiating with organizations and leaders that are currently on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations. These organizations include Hamas and Hezbollah. It is clear that Israel should have demanded the release of the three soldiers as a pre-condition to any agreement of a cease fire, however due to the ineptitude of the leadership of the government of Israel, this was not included in the deal. And so, we now have Jesse Jackson brokering a prisoner exchange deal that will surely require Israel to release thousands of Arab terrorists, thereby ensuring future kidnappings of Israeli soldiers, and even more pronounced acts of terrorism directed at Israel. According to an article entitled, "View from Haifa: The September 10th Syndrome" by Steven Plaut (Jewish Press, 7/19/06), he gives a concise chronology of the effects of Israeli prisoner exchanges. It is as follows: In 1985, the Likud-led government of Yitzhak Shamir carried out a prisoner exchange with the "Jibril" terrorists. Israel agreed to release more than a thousand Arabs incarcerated for terrorist activities in exchange for three Israeli soldiers. Just three days after the trade, one of those released Arabs was brought into an Israeli hospital. He had accidentally blown himself up while preparing a bomb intended for Israeli shoppers. Others among the released terrorists would, in the months and years to come, participate in a number of attacks and murders. On October 16, 1986, while on a mission over southern Lebanon, Israeli air force navigator Lieutenant Colonel Ron Arad and his pilot were forced by a technical problem to parachute out of their plane. The pilot was rescued by an Israeli chopper, but Arad fell captive to terrorists belonging to the Lebanese Shi'ite Amal militia. All trace of Arad was lost. Since 1986, Israel has engaged in feeble and pointless attempts at "quiet diplomacy" in order to win the release of Arad or at least learn of his fate. The efforts have produced nothing. In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin launched his "peace plan" of legitimizing and recognizing the PLO and at the same time ordered the expulsion of 400 Hamas terrorists from the West Bank and Gaza to Lebanon. The expulsion had near-universal support in Israel. Shortly thereafter, however, Israel permitted almost all the expelled terrorists return to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where they resumed their leadership roles in terror organizations. It was yet another goodwill gesture for which Israel got nothing in exchange. Not even information on Ron Arad. In 1994, in the middle of Rabin's "peace initiative," Palestinian terrorists kidnapped Israeli soldier Nachshon Wachsman. The kidnappers held him hostage in the West Bank village of Bir Naballah, which had long been a hotbed of terror. On October 7, 1994, villagers violently attacked Israeli soldiers who were trying to storm the Bir Naballah home in which Wachsman was being held. The terrorists had enough time to murder Wachsman before his would-be rescuers got into the house. Israel did not bulldoze the village in retaliation, just as it has not bulldozed other West Bank villages in which soldiers and civilians have been murdered. These days, Israeli leftists are busy assisting the residents of Bir Naballah in sabotaging the security wall Israel is constructing, because it offends the sensitivities of the Arab villagers. In July 2003 the Israeli cabinet decided in a 14-9 vote to buy Ariel Sharon a Kodak moment in Washington by releasing more than 500 Palestinian prisoners, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah terrorists, again as a "goodwill gesture." Few of the released terrorists took up quilting. In January 2004, Israel agreed to an exchange with Hizbullah. More than 400 Arab prisoners, many accused of killing civilians, were released in return for a single Israeli civilian hostage and the bodies of the three soldiers who had been murdered in cold blood by Hizbullah. The prisoner exchange was widely opposed in Israel, and passed the Israeli cabinet by a single vote. Afterward, Israel never avenged the three soldiers murdered by Hizbullah. A suicide bombing that killed 10 Israelis took place the very day of the prisoners' release, but Israel went ahead with it anyway. Two of those set free had been high-ranking Lebanese terrorists, directly involved in the kidnapping, torture, and reported "sale" of Ron Arad to Iran. Israel did not even demand information on the whereabouts of Arad in exchange, just an empty promise of some information in the future, which, needless to say, has never materialized. At the time, the Arab media crowed in smug satisfaction at Israel's humiliation in the prisoner release. Al-Ahram called it a "new notch in Hizbullah's belt!" In Israel it was seen as a debacle. Even Yoel Marcus at Israel's far-left daily Haaretz called it a "License to Kidnap." It is clear that Jackson's motive is to curry favor in Arab world. It is also clear the the Israeli public has a right to demand that the government of Israel secure the release of the three Israeli soldiers. We cannot, however, allow a Jew hater of the likes of Jesse Jackson to pressure Israel into a prisoner exchange agreement that would endanger future Jewish lives. The nation of Israel must loudly proclaim, "Enough Humiliation". It is not realistic to believe that the government of Israel will not entertain the notion of a prisoner exchanqge. It has already indicated that it would consider such a plan. If the government of Israel wishes to be a pawn in Jackson's nefarious scheme, and to facilitate a scenario that would elevate him to a hero status around the world, then it is incumbent on Jews worldwide to express their outrage and indignation at a government that seeks to invite even further humiliation to a country that has endured more than its share. At this precarious time, we must seek Divine help and assistance. We must appeal to the Almighty G-d of Israel through the power of prayer. We must storm the gates of Heaven with our supplications. Let us remember the words of King David (Psalm 70) - "Shamed and disgraced be those who seek my soul. Repulsed and humiliated be those who desire my harm. Let them be turned back in consequence of their shaming me, those who say, Aha!, Aha!. Let rejoice and be glad in You all who seek You, and let them say always, 'may G-d be exalted, those who love Your salvation'". Contact Fern Sidman at AriellaH@aol.com |
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CALL FOR INDEPENDENT INQUIRY INTO AMERICAN JEWISH "LEADERS'" DEADLY SILENCE
Posted by Buddy Macy, August 30, 2006. |
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To our American Jewish "leaders," and to the rest of us who must hold them accountable: It is an extremely sad reality that the UJC, AJC, ADL and all but two or three of the other 52 groups that comprise the Conference of Presidents of Majo American Jewish Organizations are "powerless" to save the Jewish People, because they are afraid to criticize or contradict the Israeli Government -- a government whose leader had announced his refusal last night to appoint an independent state commission of inquiry into the management of the war with Hezbollah. (Instead, Prime Minister Olmert said the government would appoint two investigative committees. In other words, the people to be investigated by the committees are also those who will have appointed them.) I implore you to support Israel and the Jewish People by calling publicly and loudly for the immediate resignations of Olmert, Peretz, Peres, Livni and Halutz. The Jewish State finds itself in a perilous situation, while Israelis from across the political spectrum continue to speak out against the current government's handling of the war:
The American Jewish leadership's silence in the aftermath of the Olmert-led Government's pitiful, life-jeopardizing performance during the war, at a time when the threat to Israel's very survival has never been more real, is beyond abhorrent -- it is criminal. If, G-d forbid, Israel were to suffer a devastating attack while Mr. Olmert were still in office, I would hold the American Jewish organizations and their representatives responsible to a significant degree for the death and injuries of our fellow Jews in Israel, and destruction of Jewish land and property. Ten days ago, in New York City, a memorial service was held for Ze'ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, the heroic Jew who tried desperately to save the lives of Poland's Jews before it was too late. In the 1930's, Mr. Jabotinsky traveled to Poland on numerous occasions, imploring the Jewish organization heads to lead a mass exodus from the country. He saw the signs of impending devastation quite clearly; yet, his impassioned pleas were ignored time and time again. The signs today are SO MUCH CLEARER than they were when 3,000,000 Polish Jews could have been saved from their unthinkable suffering and ultimate death. Israel's enemies have consistently and blatantly called for her destruction. Iran has imported huge caches of sophisticated weaponry and is rapidly approaching nuclear capability. Moshe Yaalon, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces from 2002 to 2005, says that we are IN World War III. The Israel haters of the Middle East are now empowered more than ever by Hezbollah's perceived victory in Lebanon over the once mighty Israeli military And, it is SO CLEAR that Mr. Olmert, Mr. Peres, Mr. Peretz, Ms. Livni and Lt. Gen. Halutz are incapable of preventing, even slowing down, the driving force of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah (not forgetting, Hamas) from achieving their ultimate goal. In this most serious of times, the Jewish leadership must break from its timeless policy of not speaking out against the Government of Israel. Is there not one executive director, chairman or president of a major Federation or one of the more influential members of the Conference of Presidents who will have the courage and sense to speak out and help save the Jewish People? The major American Jewish leader who would call publicly and loudly for the resignation of Olmert, Peres, Peretz, Livni and Halutz would be viewed as a Jew hero, for time immemorial -- the rest of the lot, as cowards and appeasers. This is the opportunity of our generation -- perhaps the final opportunity for the Jewish People. We need at least one of you to be a true leader; we need a Ze'ev Jabotinsky. This time, we will all listen...and act accordingly! |
The following is the text of a petition signed by IDF reservists who served in the Spearhead Brigade in Lebanon, in protest of the handling of the war by the government and senior military officials: We, fighters and commanders at the Spearhead [Hod Hachanit] Brigade, were called up to enlist under an emergency mobilization order [Tzav 8] on July 30, 2006. Our attendance was complete in all battalions. As we were signing on the battle equipment and weapons, we knew that we were signing for much more. We left behind wives and children, girlfriends and families. We put aside our jobs and livelihoods; we were prepared to carry out our mission under the most difficult of conditions, in heat, thirst or hunger. At the back of his mind, each and every one of us knew, that for the just cause of protecting the citizens of Israel, we would even put our lives on the line. But there was one thing we were not and would not be willing to accept: We were unwilling to accept indecisiveness. The war's aim, which was not defined clearly, was even changed in the course of the fighting. The indecisiveness manifested itself in inaction, in not carrying out operational plans, and in canceling all the missions we were given during the fighting. This led to prolonged stays in hostile territory, without an operational purpose and out of unprofessional considerations, without seeking to engage in combat with the enemy. The "cold feet" of the decision-makers were evident everywhere. To us the indecisiveness expressed deep disrespect for our willingness to join the ranks and fight and made us feel as though we had been spat on, since it contradicts the principles and values of warfare upon which we were trained at the Israel Defense Forces. The heavy feeling that in the echelons above us there is nothing but under-preparation, insincerity, lack of foresight and inability to make rational decisions, leads to the question - were we called up for nothing? We are now on the day after, and it seems that the immorality and the absence of any shame are the fig-leaves to be used in order to cover up for the blunders. The blunders of the past six years and the under-preparation of the army have been carried on our backs - the backs of the fighters. In order to face the next battle prepared - and this may happen soon - a thorough and fundamental change must take place. The crisis of confidence between us as fighters and the higher echelons will not be resolved without a thorough and worthy investigative commission under the auspices of the state. When the commission completes its task, conclusions must be drawn both on the level of strategic planning and national security, and on the personal level of the parties involved. We paid a heavy price in order to fight and come out of the battle victorious, and we feel this has been denied of us. We will all attend calls to enlist in the future for any mission we will be required to complete, but we would like to know that these missions will be part of a clear objective and will be carried out by striving to engage in combat. As soldiers and citizens we expect a response at your earliest convenience, We the undersigned
Contact Buddy Macy at vegibud@aol.com.
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ARABS' "FRIENDLY FIRE"; MIN. RAMON THINKS THE WAR UPHOLDS WITHDRAWALS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 30, 2006. |
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BUFFETED BY BIG BUSINESS Sometimes I'm in town but out of operation. It's the computer industry. Ironically, I used to be a computer systems analyst, but that was with mainframe computers. There were rules and conventions, now the systems are dispersed and disorganized. I designed menus that left no doubt about what were the users' choices and what they meant. Now the menus are confused. On the other hand, I am not adept at this, since I put my time into writing rather than playing with the computer. If there were manuals, users might know what to do. The ones I wrote were clear, but most others were dense. Nevertheless, they offered some guide. Now they are skimpy and disappearing. The vendors suppose that their help screens provide enough information. There are two problems with help screens. They: (1) Often don't satisfactorily explain what you want to know, if you can even find it; and (2) Are of no use, when your computer is not working. Recently I attempted to install DSL on my own. Verizon's CD-Rom was clear, until half-way through. It's instructions about disabling the firewall described a screen unlike the one in my operating system. Instructions for computers are like those for assembling things they sometimes use different terms in the diagram from those in the text. I got through that, only to falter on the next one. Couldn't open Windows Explorer. Verizon Tech Support was nice, but couldn't solve it, after a couple of calls. They offered to transfer me to the manufacturer, HP. Reached the HP message machine, and it switched me back to Verizon. My frustration was rising and the night was fleeting. HP, like many big corporations, takes a long time welcoming callers but wasted my time with computer-voice inquiries that almost never fit my situation. Here I was, seething with frustration, while the computer voice was telling: me how concerned the company was with providing good customer service that I was not getting. HP Tech Support tried to be helpful. They (it takes more than one call) had me try different things, to no avail. They changed the mode in which the computer operates. Before I hung up, I asked how to restore the computer to normal operation, including the disabled firewall. The technician assured me that when I turn the computer on, his suggestions for temporary changes would be reversed. He said I should consult AOL about how to fix Windows Explorer. Next morning, not only were his changes still there, Microsoft Word had slowed so much, it was not usable. HP Tech Support told me to back up the computer and he would tell me how to restore it to its shipped condition. How does one back it up? I didn't know. The store didn't know. HP Tech Support told me that for that advice, I would have to pay another department. I wanted to tell that other department that I ought to get this advice free, because it was for overcoming a problem that its company had imposed upon me. However, I couldn't speak with anyone, unless I had a PIN, which I didn't. I could have had the store send someone over to fix my problems. I chose not to, because the folks there seemed to have a compartmentalized notion of the computer and therefore higher fees. I hired my own consultant. This consultant had programmed computer software. He laughed at my story of each vendor creating a problem and passing responsibility on to the next. He said that in his experience, a high proportion of problems are caused by incompatibility between the main anti-virus packages, such as Norton and McAfee, and other systems. In less than half an hour, he resolved the problems. My consultant explained that the Tech Support departments hire a mass of people who do not know much about computer software. They read a text about what to do, and recite it to consumers. They often fail to solve the problem, but get one off the phone to find that out, later. I asked him to show me how to do two other tasks. One was to use the scanner. That worked as he said it would. The other was to back up my data files. That did not work. The error message was that there was no disk in the Cd-Rom reader. But there was. He claims that stores sometimes sell CD-Rom disks that are not compatible with the operating system. The store exchanged the disks for another type. We'll see if they work. ARABS' "FRIENDLY FIRE" A Hizbullah Katyusha landed on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights (IMRA, 8/4). Did the journalists and Europeans denounce this as Israeli brutality towards the Arabs? Probably not. They would recognize it as the fortunes of war. They do not recognize any Israeli killings of Arab civilians as misfiring or as misinformation about targets. Every week, Arabs assassinate or blow themselves up in Gaza. MIN. RAMON THINKS THE WAR UPHOLDS WITHDRAWALS PM Olmert and Justice Min. Ramon assert that the war reinforces the policy of withdrawal. He says Israel has sent the world a message that if Hezbollah made war from an area it left, Israel would hit back hard. One of the saving graces was that the current range of enemy rockets left the center of the country as a haven for those from the north. If Israel withdrew from Judea-Samaria, and if the enemy keeps lengthening the rockets' range, there would be no such haven and millions of Israelis would be subject to close-range firing. MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) disputes the government. "Just yesterday," Eldad said, "Olmert admitted that Israel is unable to uproot Hizbullah from Lebanon and remove the threat of Katyushas -- and then without reaching the logical conclusion, he now says he wants to turn Judea and Samaria into an Iranian base as well." The government's remarks encourage Hizbullah to fight on, in anticipation of further Israeli withdrawals, which they attribute to intimidation by the terrorists (IMRA, 8/2 & Arutz-7, 8/2). If it weren't for the withdrawals, the terrorists would not have been able to build up their rocket and other forces, and make war. The Arabs don't care much what happens to their proxies. All they care about is how many casualties they can inflict upon their enemies. So long as they aren't harshly put down, they keep fighting. By withdrawing again without having fulfilled its mission, Israel failed to put Hamas down. It was doing so, but tepidly. Remember that the government sent in small forces and initially not far, and fought with more concern to minimize enemy civilian casualties than its own casualties, civilian and military. Israel thinks it sends one message, but it sends another, one of weakness. The IDF already is withdrawing from Lebanon and largely is not present in Gaza. The rockets keep coming. The Left keeps concluding contrary to experience and logic that its failed policies are effective. Why withdraw? Leftist appeasement, leaders' treason, US antipathy, EU and Vatican grasping. 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@aol.com. |
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THE WAR
Posted by Bruce Brill, August 29, 2006. |
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A large segment of Israeli society has believed that the "root cause" of the Middle East conflict derives from Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and that Jewish settlements there are "illegal obstacles to peace." This is also the position both of the US State Department and the White House. In New Republic one week into the present war in Lebanon Moshe Yaalon, IDF Chief of Staff until 2005, writes that this root cause, "never has it looked quite so naive and simplistic as it does this week." Ask a Hizbullah fighter what impels him to fight Israel with such passion. His answer would be that Israel caused hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs to become homeless in 1949. 1949, long before there was one Jewish village in Judea, Samaria or Gaza. Not one Palestinian Arab family was made homeless in order for a Jewish family to build their home in Judea, Samaria or Gaza. The war Hizbullah is waging against Israel is not against Jews living in Judea, Samaria or Gaza, but against "Israel Proper." To the Arab mind, the Israel that ousted hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs is, in fact, "Israel Improper." The Jewish settlers of Judea and Samaria are not the main target of Hizbullah; Hizbullah is gunning for "Israel Improper": wherever their missiles have been landing over the past several weeks and the Tel-Aviv-Gush-Dan area of Israel that they've been threatening to hit. Last week Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced that victory in Lebanon will strengthen his determination to execute his party's "Convergence Plan" to expel many tens of thousands of Jewish residents from their homes in Judea and Samaria. A natural question such a resident may ask himself is: "Why should I risk my life to achieve victory in Lebanon which will result in making me, my family and my neighbors homeless?" The IDF will revert from the 'Israel Defense Forces,' to the 'Israel Deportation Forces.' Subsequently, he apologized for the timing of the pronouncement. Many were baffled by the untimely nature of Olmert's remarks. Why lower the morale of settler-soldiers by politicizing the war effort? So now the childish subterfuge is to keep your plan to evict settlers from their homes quiet until AFTER they've sent their husbands, fathers and sons to fight Hizbullah. After the victory they've risked their lives to attain, only then spring your deportation scheme on them. Of course, this approach is disingenuous to say the least. TV viewers saw Shoshi Greenfeld, sister of settler-soldier Yehudah Greenfeld, who was killed with a dozen other reserve soldiers at Kfar Giladi. She shouted a plea to other uniformed settlers to refuse to serve and to "return home before you're returned home in a casket." There would be no such plea were there no Convergence Plan in the offing. Most settlers, including Yehudah Greenfeld, serve with enthusiasm when called in spite of eviction from their homes, past or pending. Gadi Yodvata, the head of security of Kfar Eldad, commented: "Of course Yehudah served. Refusing to serve is not something the Right does. That's what the Left does." Yet, there are biblical grounds for not serving. In Deuteronomy Chapter 20, reasons are given for a soldier not to serve. These are not "excuses" not to serve, but commandments. Verses 5, 6 and 7 cite the soldier's own personal benefit as the reason for the soldier returning home; verse 8, by contrast offers war-effort rationale. Verse 8 notes that the "tender hearted," often translated "fainthearted," should return home. In present-day terminology, this could easily be understood to mean "demoralized." The war effort demands that this soldier's demoralization should not infect the other soldiers, lest they, too, become demoralized. In spite of the near-universal willingness of settler-soldiers to fight, there has to be some measure of demoralization inside the settler after Olmert's Convergence pronouncement. Tekoa's Rabbi Menachem Fruman disagrees. In his opinion "tender hearted"means "cowardly," not "demoralized." The present war falls under the category of "Milchemet Mitsvah," an obligatory war, in which, according to rabbinic understanding, there are no exemptions, including those listed in Deuteronomy 20:5-8. Yet, the present draft is not close to a 100% callup of reserves. Olmert has succeeded in demoralizing some of the most zealous and patriotic of the IDF's fighters, the settler-soldiers. The logic of this thread leads to an ironic question: For the sake of the success of the war effort, should not settler-soldiers be sent home? It also leads to an absurd observation: No Israeli has ever succeeded in uniting the Jews of Israel like Nasrallah has; whereas, the Israeli Prime Minister is doing the opposite. Bruce Brill is a Middle East security analyst. Contact him at brucebr@zahav.net.il |
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A CHILD OF THE REVOLUTION TAKES OVER
Posted by IMRA, August 29, 2006. |
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This is a very disturbing article and difficult to read. This was written by Matthias Kuntzel and appeared in The New Republic on Iran's suicide indoctrination. Matthias Kuntzel is a political scientist in Hamburg, Germany, and author of Djihad und Judenhass (or Jihad and Jew-Hatred). |
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During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. The trinkets were meant to be inspirational. After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran's forces were no match for Saddam Hussein's professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child's neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them. At one point, however, the earthly gore became a matter of concern. "In the past," wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat as the war raged on, "we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone." Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, Ettelaat assured its readers. "Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves." These children who rolled to their deaths were part of the Basiji, a mass movement created by Khomeini in 1979 and militarized after the war started in order to supplement his beleaguered army.The Basij Mostazafan--or "mobilization of the oppressed"--was essentially a volunteer militia, most of whose members were not yet 18. They went enthusiastically, and by the thousands, to their own destruction. "The young men cleared the mines with their own bodies," one veteran of the Iran-Iraq War recalled in 2002 to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine. "It was sometimes like a race. Even without the commander's orders, everyone wanted to be first." The sacrifice of the Basiji was ghastly. And yet, today, it is a source not of national shame, but of growing pride. Since the end of hostilities against Iraq in 1988, the Basiji have grown both in numbers and influence. They have been deployed, above all, as a vice squad to enforce religious law in Iran, and their elite "special units" have been used as shock troops against anti-government forces. In both 1999 and 2003, for instance, the Basiji were used to suppress student unrest. And, last year, they formed the potent core of the political base that propelled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--a man who reportedly served as a Basij instructor during the Iran-Iraq War--to the presidency. Ahmadinejad revels in his alliance with the Basiji. He regularly appears in public wearing a black-and-white Basij scarf, and, in his speeches, he routinely praises "Basij culture" and "Basij power," with which he says "Iran today makes its presence felt on the international and diplomatic stage." Ahmadinejad's ascendance on the shoulders of the Basiji means that the Iranian Revolution, launched almost three decades ago, has entered a new and disturbing phase. A younger generation of Iranians, whose worldviews were forged in the atrocities of the Iran-Iraq War, have come to power, wielding a more fervently ideological approach to politics than their predecessors. The children of the Revolution are now its leaders. In 1980, the Ayatollah Khomeini called the Iraqi invasion of Iran a "divine blessing," because the war provided him the perfect opportunity to Islamize both Iranian society and the institutions of the Iranian state. As Saddam's troops pushed into Iran, Khomeini's fanatically devoted Revolutionary Guard moved rapidly to mobilize and prepare their air and sea forces. At the same time, the regime hastened to develop the Basiji as a popular militia. Whereas the Revolutionary Guard consisted of professionally trained adult soldiers, the Basiji was essentially composed of boys between twelve and 17 and men over 45. They received only a few weeks of training--less in weapons and tactics than in theology. Most Basiji came from the countryside and were often illiterate. When their training was done, each Basiji received a blood-red headband that designated him a volunteer for martyrdom. According to Sepehr Zabih's The Iranian Military in Revolution and War, such volunteers made up nearly one-third of the Iranian army--and the majority of its infantry. The chief combat tactic employed by the Basiji was the human wave attack, whereby barely armed children and teenagers would move continuously toward the enemy in perfectly straight rows. It did not matter whether they fell to enemy fire or detonated the mines with their bodies: The important thing was that the Basiji continue to move forward over the torn and mutilated remains of their fallen comrades, going to their deaths in wave after wave. Once a path to the Iraqi forces had been opened up, Iranian commanders would send in their more valuable and skilled Revolutionary Guard troops. This approach produced some undeniable successes. "They come toward our positions in huge hordes with their fists swinging," one Iraqi officer complained in the summer of 1982. "You can shoot down the first wave and then the second. But at some point the corpses are piling up in front of you, and all you want to do is scream and throw away your weapon. Those are human beings, after all!" By the spring of 1983, some 450,000 Basiji had been sent to the front. After three months, those who survived deployment were sent back to their schools or workplaces. But three months was a long time on the front lines. In 1982, during the retaking of the city of Khorramshahr, 10,000 Iranians died. Following "Operation Kheiber," in February 1984, the corpses of some 20,000 fallen Iranians were left on the battlefield. The "Karbala Four" offensive in 1986 cost the lives of more than 10,000 Iranians. All told, some 100,000 men and boys are said to have been killed during Basiji operations. Why did the Basiji volunteer for such duty? Most of them were recruited by members of the Revolutionary Guards, which commanded the Basiji. These "special educators" would visit schools and handpick their martyrs from the paramilitary exercises in which all Iranian youth were required to participate. Propaganda films -- like the 1986 TV film A Contribution to the War -- praised this alliance between students and the regime and undermined those parents who tried to save their children's lives. (At the time, Iranian law allowed children to serve even if their families objected.) Some parents, however, were lured by incentives. In a campaign called "Sacrifice a Child for the Imam," every family that lost a child on the battlefield was offered interest-free credit and other generous benefits. Moreover, enrollment in the Basiji gave the poorest of the poor a chance for social advancement. Still others were coerced into "volunteering." In 1982, the German weekly Der Spiegel documented the story of a twelve-year-old boy named Hossein, who enlisted with the Basiji despite having polio: One day, some unknown imams turned up in the village. They called the whole population to the plaza in front of the police station, and they announced that they came with good news from Imam Khomeini: The Islamic Army of Iran had been chosen to liberate the holy city Al Quds--Jerusalem--from the infidels. ... The local mullah had decided that every family with children would have to furnish one soldier of God. Because Hossein was the most easily expendable for his family, and because, in light of his illness, he could in any case not expect much happiness in this life, he was chosen by his father to represent the family in the struggle against the infidel devils. Of the 20 children that went into battle with Hossein, only he and two others survived. But, if such methods explained some of why they volunteered, it did not explain the fervor with which they rushed to their destruction. That can only be elucidated by the Iranian Revolution's peculiar brand of Islam. At the beginning of the war, Iran's ruling mullahs did not send human beings into the minefields, but rather animals: donkeys, horses, and dogs. But the tactic proved useless: "After a few donkeys had been blown up, the rest ran off in terror," Mostafa Arki reports in his book Eight Years of War in the Middle East. The donkeys reacted normally--fear of death is natural. The Basiji, on the other hand, marched fearlessly and without complaint to their deaths. The curious slogans that they chanted while entering the battlefields are of note: "Against the Yazid of our time!"; "Hussein's caravan is moving on!"; "A new Karbala awaits us!" Yazid, Hussein, Karbala--these are all references to the founding myth of Shia Islam. In the late seventh century, Islam was split between those loyal to the Caliph Yazid--the predecessors of Sunni Islam--and the founders of Shia Islam, who thought that the Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, should govern the Muslims. In 680, Hussein led an uprising against the "illegitimate" caliph, but he was betrayed. On the plain of Karbala, on the tenth day of the month of Muharram, Yazid's forces attacked Hussein and his entourage and killed them. Hussein's corpse bore the marks of 33 lance punctures and 34 blows of the sword. His head was cut off and his body was trampled by horses. Ever since, the martyrdom of Hussein has formed the core of Shia theology, and the Ashura Festival that commemorates his death is Shiism's holiest day. On that day, men beat themselves with their fists or flagellate themselves with iron chains to approximate Hussein's sufferings. At times throughout the centuries, the ritual has grown obscenely violent. In his study Crowds and Power, Elias Canetti recounts a firsthand report of the Ashura Festival as it occurred in mid-nineteenth-century Tehran: 500,000 people, in the grip of delirium, cover their heads with ashes and beat their foreheads against the ground. They want to subject themselves voluntarily to torments: to commit suicide en masse, to mutilate themselves with refinement. ... Hundreds of men in white shirts come by, their faces ecstatically raised toward the sky. Of these, several will be dead this evening, many will be maimed and mutilated, and the white shirts, dyed red, will be burial shrouds. ... There is no more beautiful destiny than to die on the Festival of Ashura. The gates of the eight Paradises are wide open for the holy and everyone tries to get through them. Bloody excesses of this sort are prohibited in contemporary Iran, but, during the Iran-Iraq War, Khomeini appropriated the essence of the ritual as asymbolic act and politicized it. He took the inward-directed fervor and channeled it toward the external enemy. He transformed the passive lamentation into active protest. He made the Battle of Karbala the prototype of any fight against tyranny. Indeed, this technique had been used during political demonstrations in 1978, when many Iranian protestors wore funeral shrouds in order to tie the battle of 680 to the contemporary struggle against the shah. In the war against Iraq, the allusions to Karbala were given still greater significance: On the one hand, the scoundrel Yazid, now in the form of Saddam Hussein; on the other, the Prophet's grandson, Hussein, for whose suffering the time of Shia revenge had finally come. The power of this story was further reinforced by a theological twist that Khomeini gave it. According to Khomeini, life is worthless and death is the beginning of genuine existence. "The natural world," he explained in October 1980, "is the lowest element, the scum of creation. "What is decisive is the beyond: The "divine world, that is eternal." This latter world is accessible to martyrs. Their death is no death, but merely the transition from this world to the world beyond, where they will live on eternally and in splendor. Whether the warrior wins the battle or loses it and dies a Martyr--in both cases, his victory is assured: either a mundane or a spiritual one. This attitude had a fatal implication for the Basiji: Whether they survived or not was irrelevant. Not even the tactical utility of their sacrifice mattered. Military victories are secondary, Khomeini explained in September 1980.The Basiji must "understand that he is a 'soldier of God' for whom it is not so much the outcome of the conflict as the mere participation in it that provides fulfillment and gratification." Could Khomeini's antipathy for life have had as much effect in the war against Iraq without the Karbala myth? Probably not. With the word "Karbala" on their lips, the Basiji went elatedly into battle. For those whose courage still waned in the face of death, the regime put on a show. A mysterious horseman on a magnificent steed would suddenly appear on the front lines. His face--covered in phosphorous--would shine. His costume was that of a medieval prince. A child soldier, Reza Behrouzi, whose story was documented in 1985 by French writer Freidoune Sehabjam, reported that the soldiers reacted with a mixture of panic and rapture. Everyone wanted to run toward the horseman. But he drove them away. "Don't come to me!" he shouted, "Charge into battle against the infidels! ... Revenge the death of our Imam Hussein and strike down the progeny of Yazid!" As the figure disappears, the soldiers cry: "Oh, Imam Zaman, where are you?" They throw themselves on their knees, and pray and wail. When the figure appears again, they get to their feet as a single man. Those whose forces are not yet exhausted charge the enemy lines. The mysterious apparition who was able to trigger such emotions is the "hidden imam," a mythical figure who influences the thought and action of Ahmadinejad to this day. The Shia call all the male descendants of the Prophet Muhammad "imams" and ascribe to them a quasidivine status. Hussein, who was killed at Karbala by Yazid, was the third Imam. His son and grandson were the fourth and fifth. At the end of this line, there is the "Twelfth Imam,"who is named Muhammad. Some call him the Mahdi (the "divinely guided one"), though others say imam Zaman (from sahib-e zaman: "the ruler of time"). He was born in 869, the only son of the eleventh Imam. In 874, he disappeared without a trace, thereby bringing Muhammad's lineage to a close. In Shia mythology, however, the Twelfth Imam survived. The Shia believe that he merely withdrew from public view when he was five and that he will sooner or later emerge from his "occultation" in order to liberate the world from evil. Writing in the early '80s, V. S. Naipaul showed how deeply rooted the belief in the coming of the Shia messiah is among the Iranian population. In Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey, he described seeing posters in post-Revolutionary Tehran bearing motifs similar to those of Maoist China: crowds, for instance, with rifles and machine guns raised in the air as if in greeting. The posters always bore the same phrase: twelfth imam, we are waiting for you. Naipaul writes that he could grasp intellectually the veneration for Khomeini. "But the idea of the revolution as something more, as an offering to the Twelfth Imam, the man who had vanished ... and remained 'in occultation,' was harder to seize." According to Shia tradition, legitimate Islamic rule can only be established following the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam. Until that time, the Shia have only to wait, to keep their peace with illegitimate rule, and to remember the Prophet's grandson, Hussein, insorrow. Khomeini, however, had no intention of waiting. He vested the myth with an entirely new sense: The Twelfth Imam will only emerge when the believers have vanquished evil. To speed up the Mahdi's return, Muslims had to shake off their torpor and fight. This activism had more in common with the revolutionary ideas of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood than with Shia traditions. Khomeini had been familiar with the texts of the Muslim Brothers since the 1930s, and he agreed with the Brothers' conception of what had to be considered "evil": namely, all the achievements of modernity that replaced divine providence with individual self-determination, blind faith with doubt, and the stern morality of sharia with sensual pleasures. According to legend, Yazid was the embodiment of everything that was forbidden: He drank wine, enjoyed music and song, and played with dogs and monkeys. And was not Saddam just the same? In the war against Iraq, "evil" was clearly defined, and vanquishing evil was the precondition for hastening the return of the beloved Twelfth Imam. When he let himself be seen for a few minutes riding his white steed, the readiness to die a martyr's death increased considerably. It was this culture that nurtured Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's worldview. Born outside Tehran in 1956, the son of blacksmith, he trained as a civil engineer, and, during the Iran-Iraq War, he joined the Revolutionary Guards. His biography remains strangely elliptical. Did he play a role in the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy, as some charge? What exactly did he do during the war? These are questions for which we have no definite answers. His presidential website says simply that he was "on active service as a Basij volunteer up to the end of the holy defense [the war against Iraq] and served as a combat engineer in different spheres of duty." We do know that, after the war's end, he served as the governor of Ardebil Province and as an organizer of Ansar-e Hezbollah, a radical gang of violent Islamic vigilantes. After becoming mayor of Tehran in April 2003, Ahmadinejad used his position to build up a strong network of radical Islamic fundamentalists known as Abadgaran-e Iran-e Islami, or Developers of an Islamic Iran. It was in that role that he won his reputation--and popularity--as a hardliner devoted to rolling back the liberal reforms of then-President Muhammad Khatami. Ahmadinejad positioned himself as the leader of a "second revolution" to eradicate corruption and Western influences from Iranian society. And the Basiji, whose numbers had grown dramatically since the end of the Iran-Iraq War, embraced him. Recruited from the more conservative and impoverished parts of the population, the Basiji fall under the direction of--and swear absolute loyalty to--the Supreme Leader Ali Khameini, Khomeini's successor. During Ahmadinejad's run for the presidency in 2005, the millions of Basiji--in every Iranian town, neighborhood, and mosque--became his unofficial campaign workers. Since Ahmadinejad became president, the influence of the Basiji has grown. In November, the new Iranian president opened the annual "Basiji Week," which commemorates the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq War. According to a report in Kayan, a publication loyal to Khameini, some nine million Basiji--12 percent of the Iranian population--turned out to demonstrate in favor of Ahmadinejad's anti-liberal platform. The article claimed that the demonstrators "form[ed] a human chain some 8,700 kilometers long. ... In Tehran alone, some 1,250,000 people turned out." Barely noticed by the Western media, this mobilization attests to Ahmadinejad's determination to impose his "second revolution" and to extinguish the few sparks of freedom in Iran. At the end of July 2005, the Basij movement announced plans to increase its membership from ten million to 15 million by 2010. The elite special units are supposed to comprise some 150,000 people by then. Accordingly, the Basiji have received new powers in their function as an unofficial division of the police. What this means in practice became clear in February 2006, when the Basiji attacked the leader of the bus-drivers' union, Massoud Osanlou. They held Osanlou prisoner in his apartment, and they cut off the tip of his tongue in order to convince him to keep quiet. No Basiji needs to fear prosecution for such terrorists tactics before a court of law. As Basij ideology and influence enjoy a renaissance under Ahmadinejad, the movement's belief in the virtues of violent self-sacrifice remains intact. There is no "truth commission" in Iran to investigate the state-planned collective suicide that took place from 1980 to 1988. Instead, every Iranian is taught the virtues of martyrdom from childhood. Obviously, many of them reject the Basij teachings. Still, everyone knows the name of Hossein Fahmideh, who, as a 13-year-old boy during the war, blew himself up in front of an Iraqi tank. His image follows Iranians throughout their day: whether on postage stamps or the currency. If you hold up a 500 Rial bill to the light, it is his face you will see in the watermark. The self-destruction of Fahmideh is depicted as a model of profound faith by the Iranian press. It has been the subject of both an animated film and an episode of the TV series "Children of Paradise." As a symbol of their readiness to die for the Revolution, Basij groups wear white funeral shrouds over their uniforms during public appearances. During this year's Ashura Festival, school classes were taken on excursions to a "Martyrs' Cemetery." "They wear headbands painted with the name Hussein," The New York Times reported, "and march beneath banners that read: 'Remembering the Martyrs today is as important as becoming a Martyr' and 'The Nation for whom Martyrdom means happiness, will always be Victorious.' " Since 2004, the mobilization of Iranians for suicide brigades has intensified, with recruits being trained for foreign missions. Thus, a special military unit has been created bearing the name "Commando of Voluntary Martyrs. "According to its own statistics, this force has so far recruited some 52,000 Iranians to the suicidal cause. It aims to form a "martyrdom unit" in every Iranian province. The Basiji's cult of self-destruction would be chilling in any country. In the context of the Iranian nuclear program, however, its obsession with martyrdom amounts to a lit fuse. Nowadays, Basiji are sent not into the desert, but rather into the laboratory. Basij students are encouraged to enroll in technical and scientific disciplines. According to a spokesperson for the Revolutionary Guard, the aim is to use the "technical factor" in order to augment "national security." What exactly does that mean? Consider that, in December 2001, former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani explained that "the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything." On the other hand, if Israel responded with its own nuclear weapons, it "will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality." Rafsanjani thus spelled out a macabre cost-benefit analysis. It might not be possible to destroy Israel without suffering retaliation. But, for Islam, the level of damage Israel could inflict is bearable--only 100,000 or so additional martyrs for Islam. And Rafsanjani is a member of the moderate, pragmatic wing of the Iranian Revolution; he believes that any conflict ought to have a "worthwhile" outcome. Ahmadinejad, by contrast, is predisposed toward apocalyptic thinking. In one of his first TV interviews after being elected president, he enthused: "Is there an art that is more beautiful, more divine, more eternal than the art of the martyr's death?" In September 2005, he concluded his first speech before the United Nations by imploring God to bring about the return of the Twelfth Imam. He finances a research institute in Tehran whose sole purpose is to study, and, if possible, accelerate the coming of the imam. And, at a theology conference in November 2005, he stressed, "The most important task of our Revolution is to prepare the way for the return of the Twelfth Imam." A politics pursued in alliance with a supernatural force is necessarily unpredictable.Why should an Iranian president engage in pragmatic politics when his assumption is that, in three or four years, the savior will appear? If the messiah is coming, why compromise? That is why, up to now, Ahmadinejad has pursued confrontational policies with evident pleasure. The history of the Basiji shows that we must expect monstrosities from the current Iranian regime. Already, what began in the early '80s with the clearing of minefields by human detonators has spread throughout the Middle East, as suicide bombing has become the terrorist tactic of choice. The motivational shows in the desert--with hired actors in the role of the hidden imam--have evolved into a showdown between a zealous Iranian president and the Western world. And the Basiji who once upon a time wandered the desert armed only with a walking stick is today working as a chemist in a uranium enrichment facility. Contact IMRA at imra@netvision.net.il |
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THE 5TH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11
Posted by Rachel Kapen, August 29, 2006. |
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When referring to the date of Dec. 7, 19041, when the Japanese attacked the American Navy in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, a sudden and unprovoked attack, President Roosevelt said that this day will live in infamy and the same goes for Sept. 11, 2001, when the unprecedented terror attack on the United States occurred. Both proved to be watershed events in the history of the United States, for as the Pearl Harbor attack catapulted the United States into joining World War II, so the attack of 9/11 caused a rude awakening in the United States who hitherto was under the notion that terror effects other countries, such as Israel, for instance, and not the greatest power on earth which is the United States of America. Thus, the war against the scourge of terror began in earnest which turned out to be the most excruciatingly daunting war the United States had to fight, indeed a never ending war. The shocking events of 9/11 changed us all, but, personally, I don't need this grim anniversary to relive it. Each and every time I enter our family room I do so. Among the many family pictures there is the one taking me back to the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, a picture of my husband and myself seated at a table in the company of our sons and their lovely significant others, as we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary two years before the 9/11 catastrophe. So what does this happy scene have to do with reminding me of the still shocking and incredible events of 9/11? plenty. The restaurant where this happy photograph was taken was called: Windows on the World" which was situated up high in one of the twin towers. It was a unique and very beautiful place whence you perhaps couldn't see the world as its name connotes, but you could see the entirety of the Island of Manhattan with its stunning skyline. I saw the twin towers again a mere two weeks before 9/11 as we came to New York again to celebrate the 40th Birthday of our son, Alon. It was a surprise party given him on the roof of a friend's apartment across from the U.N. building. I remember feasting my eues again on the New York fascinating skyline with the twin towers powerfully yet gracefully towering over it, and if anybody would have told me then that in less than 2 weeks these powerful structures will turn into ruins with the thousands of innocent people buried under them I would have told him that he is mad and should see a shrink. In his autobiographical recent book: A Tale of Love and Darkness renowned Israeli author Amos Oz recounts how he as a child growing up in Jerusalem used to like to replay famous Jewish wars while changing their outcome as he pleased, obviously to favor the Jews. Similarly, each time I look at that happy picture again and again I imagine that somehow this beautiful picture is frozen in time and everything is still there and the chilling date of 9/11 would never arrive. And although intellectually I know that it isn't possible, I still play this comforting game every time I look at the picture. Contact Rachel Kapen at skapen285466MI@comcast.com |
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THIS SUNDAY PAST "THINK ISRAEL" WAS THE THEME OF MY SERMON
Posted by Bill Simpson, August 29, 2006. |
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How interesting that you should send me this Announcement email! I do not often have opportunity to preach anymore -- perhaps two or three times per year -- but I did on this Sunday past. "Think Israel" was the theme of my sermon. I am ordinarily a quiet person, teaching much more than preaching, but on Sunday, I burned with the anger of God as expressed in Joel 3:1-3, and for forty-five minutes I shouted and banged on the pulpit, a thing I've never done before in all my years of preaching and teaching. I spelled out clearly how the United States, which claims to be Israel's greatest friend in the world, has joined with the other nations of the world in partitioning the Holy Land and giving Israel only a tiny sliver of land on the Mediterranean coast. We are indeed her greatest friend, and we coerce her to give up more land for a peace with a hateful people, which peace cannot work. Israel has no friends but God; but God is sufficient for Israel, and will yet prove Himself to be more than sufficient. I was shocked by my delivery of that sermon, as was the entire church, which knows me to be quiet-spoken and non-assertive. Bill Simpson is Editor of Christian Chronicles (cc@christianchronicles.org). |
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LET'S GET RID OF THE MYTHS
Posted by David Meir-Levi, August 29, 2006. |
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We would be a lot safer, and be doing a much better job of making both the USA and Israel more secure, if we could rid our political vocabulary of some pernicious, and potentially lethal, mytho-mendacious fantasies. Fantasy #1) Islam is a religion of peace which respects other religions and does not force conversions. Fantasy #2) The "Occupation" is the Problem (Toameh re Gaza chaos, and Karsh re the world-wide "big lie" that all middle east problems can be solved by solving the Palestinian Israeli conflict) Fantasy #3) The FBI does not need to tape phone conversations of terrorists and track their emails because our government (aka George Bush) has exagerated the threat posed to us by our local Moslem-American citizens. Fantasy #4) The American (and Canadian and UK) Moslem PACs are lobbying for the civil rights and well being of Moslem citizens The articles below address each of these fantasies. My comments are in italics. |
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1. Islam is a religion of peace which respects other religions and does not force conversions. No one except Andrew Bostom seems to have noticed the irony in the forced conversions of the two kidnapped Fox news journalists in Gaza. Some will argue that "true Islam" is indeed a religion of peace and does not force conversions. This may be true. But it is completely irrelevant for us in the West who are engaged in world war 4 against Islamofascist Terroirst Jihadists. What counts is how THESE Moslem terrorists behave, and how THEY interpret their religion. As Bostom shows, not only have the Gazan terrorist kidnappers interpreted Islam as a religion that requires conversion at the point of the sword, but so have just about every major ruling Islamic power since Mohammed. http://americancongressfortruth.com/
Fox News journalists Steve Centanni and his accompanying cameraman
Olaf Wiig were released on Sunday, August 27, 2006, following almost
two weeks of captivity. While both men appeared to be in good
physical health, the prognosis for their psychological state, and
future journalistic contributions, is less sanguine. As depicted in
this disturbing video --
http://hotair.com/archives/2006/08/27/centanni-wiig-freed -- Centanni
and Wiig were forced to convert to Islam, and recite an anti-Western
diatribe, complemented by treacly Islamic apologetics.
During the brief press conference held almost immediately after their
release
But he felt compelled to add this bizarre disclaimer, "Don't get
me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a
lot of good things about it", before concluding candidly ".it was
something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we
didn't know what the hell was going on." Centanni expressed his
primary concern to the reporters gathered at the Gaza City Beach
Hotel press conference
Within moments of making these effusively conciliatory
statements-despite having been held captive and forcibly converted to
Islam-the freed kidnapping victims were whisked off to Israel.
Notwithstanding their pious ecumenical pronouncements, Centanni and the
Wiigs failed to linger and socialize with the "very beautiful and kind
hearted" local Muslim residents of Gaza, even those Gazan women who had
shown them such "solidarity."
Forced conversions in Islamic history are not exceptional-they
have been the norm, across three continents-Asia, Africa, and
Europe-for over 13 centuries Orders for conversion were decreed under all the early Islamic
dynasties-Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, and Mamluks. Additional
extensive examples of forced conversion were recorded under both
Seljuk and Ottoman Turkish rule (the latter until its collapse in the
20th century), the Shi'ite Safavid and Qajar dynasties of
Persia/Iran, and during the jihad ravages on the Indian subcontinent,
beginning with the early 11th century campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni,
and recurring under the Delhi Sultanate, and Moghul dynasty until the
collapse of Muslim suzerainty in the 18th century following the
British conquest of India.
Moreover, during jihad-even the jihad campaigns of the 20th
century [i.e., the jihad genocide of the Armenians during World War
I, the Moplah jihad in Southern India [1921], the jihad against the
Assyrians of Iraq [early 1930s], the jihads against the Chinese of
Indonesia and the Christian Ibo of southern Nigeria in the 1960s, and
the jihad against the Christians and Animists of the southern Sudan
from 1983 to 2001], the (dubious) concept of "no compulsion" (Koran
2:256; which was cited with tragic irony during the Fox reporters
"confessional"! A consistent practice was to enslave populations taken from
outside the boundaries of the "Dar al Islam", where Islamic rule (and
Law) prevailed. Inevitably fresh non-Muslim slaves, including
children, were Islamized within a generation, their ethnic and
linguistic origins erased.
Given this enduring (and ignoble) historical legacy, it remains to
be seen whether contemporary Muslim religious
authorities-particularly those within Palestinian society, and
affiliated with Hamas or Fatah-will condemn publicly the forced
conversions of the kidnapped Fox reporters. Moreover, will they be
joined by a chorus of authoritative voices representing the entire
Muslim clerical hierarchy-Sunni and Shi'ite alike-from Mecca and
Cairo, Qom and Najaf, to the Muslim advocacy groups in the West (such
as CAIR in the United States, and the Muslim Council of Britain in
England)-unanimous in their condemnation of this hideous practice,
and formalized by a fatwa stating as much?
Will such Muslim authorities at least recognize the acute predicament
of Centanni and Wiig by issuing a fatwa stating that their
"conversion", being under duress, was not bona fide, condemning in
advance any Muslim who might now attack these journalists for what
should be gleaned from this harrowing Gazan spectacle of non-Muslim
journalists being kidnapped, imprisoned for nearly two weeks, and
coerced at gunpoint into converting to Islam, while condemning their
own societies?
We must avoid indulging fantasies (such as those already expressed
by the kidnapped Fox reporters upon their release
2.) The "Occupation" is the problem.
Not according to a leading Palestinian government official -- stop
blaming Israel for all of our problems. face the fact that we are
destroying ourselves.
A.) JP and NY Times, Khaled abu Toameh.
"When you walk in the streets of Gaza City, you cannot but close your
eyes because of what you see there: unimaginable chaos, careless
policemen, young men carrying guns and strutting with pride and
families receiving condolences for their dead in the middle of the
street."
This is how Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-controlled
Palestinian Authority government and a former newspaper editor,
described the situation in the Gaza Strip in an article he published
on Sunday on some Palestinian news Web sites.
The article, the first of its kind by a senior Hamas official, also
questioned the effectiveness of the Kassam rocket attacks and noted that
since Israel evacuated the Gaza Strip, the situation there has deteriorated
on all levels. It holds the armed groups responsible for the crisis and
calls on them to reconsider their tactics and to stop blaming Israel for
their mistakes.
"Gaza is suffering under the yoke of anarchy and the swords of
thugs," Hamad wrote. "I remember the day when Israel withdrew from
the Gaza Strip and wrote. "I remember the day when Israel withdrew
from the Gaza Strip and closed the gates behind. Then, Palestinians
across the political spectrum took to the streets to celebrate what
many of us regarded as the Israeli defeat or retreat. We heard a lot
about a promising future in the Gaza Strip and about turning the area
into a trade and industrial zone."
Hamad said the "culture of life" that prevailed in the Strip has
since been replaced with a nightmare. "Life became a nightmare and an
intolerable burden," he said. "Today I ask myself a daring and
frightening question: 'Why did the occupation return to Gaza?' The
normal reply: 'The occupation is the reason.'"
Dismissing Israel's responsibility for the growing state of
anarchy and lawlessness in the Gaza Strip, Hamad said it was time for
the Palestinians to embark on a soul-searching process to see where
they erred. "We're always afraid to talk about our mistakes," he
added. "We're used to blaming our mistakes on others. What is the
relationship between the chaos, anarchy, lawlessness, indiscriminate
murders, theft of land, family rivalries, transgression on public
lands and unorganized traffic and the occupation? We are still
trapped by the mentality of conspiracy theories - one that has
limited our capability to think."
Hamad admitted that the Palestinians have failed in developing the
Gaza Strip following the Israeli withdrawal and in imposing law and
order. He said about 500 Palestinians have been killed and 3,000
wounded since the Israeli pullout, in addition to the destruction of
much of the infrastructure in the area.
By comparison, he said, only three or four Israelis have been
killed by the rockets fired from the Gaza Strip over the same period.
"Some will argue that it's not a matter of profit or loss, but that
this has an accumulating effect" he said. "This may be true. But
isn't there a possibility of decreasing the number of casualties and
increasing our gains by using our brains and making the proper
calculations away from demagogic statements?"
The Hamas official said that while his government was unable to
change the situation, the opposition was sitting on the side and
watching and PA President Mahmoud Abbas was as weak as ever. "We have
all been attacked by the bacteria of stupidity," he remarked. "We
have lost our sense of direction and we don't know where we're
headed." Addressing the various armed groups in the Gaza Strip, Hamad
concluded: "Please have mercy on Gaza. Have mercy on us from your
demagogy, chaos, guns, thugs, infighting. Let Gaza breathe a bit. Let
it live."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~```
.....and not according to an even very short survey of the history
of modern Arab/Moslem violence in the middle east.
B) Efraim Karsh
Professor Karsh is head of Mediterranean Studies at King's
College, University of London, and author most recently of "Islamic
Imperialism: A History," available from Yale University Press.
In discussions of the contemporary Middle East, few arguments have
resonated more widely, or among a more diverse set of observers, than
the claim that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict constitutes the
source of all evil and that its resolution will lead to regional
peace and stability. No sooner had the guns fallen silent on the
Israel-Lebanon border than Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain,
fresh from his summer vacation in the Caribbean island of Barbados,
announced his intention to embark on a mission to the Middle East
next month in an attempt to both stabilize the situation in Lebanon
and to resuscitate the stalled peace process between Israel and the
Palestinians.
This sense of urgency was echoed by the American former national
security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who claimed that "Today, it's
becoming increasingly difficult to separate the Israeli-Palestinian
problem, the Iraq problem and Iran from each other." And the
Jordanian commentator Rami Khouri put it in even stronger terms:
"Every major tough issue in the Middle East is somehow linked to the
consequences of the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict... Its
bitterness kept seeping out from its Palestine-Israel core to corrode
many other dimensions of the region."
While there is no denying the argument's widespread appeal, there
is also no way around the fact that, in almost every particular, it
is demonstratively, even invidiously, wrong. For one thing, violence
was an integral part of Middle Eastern political culture long before
the advent of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and physical force remains
today the main if not the sole instrument of regional political
discourse. At the domestic level, these circumstances have resulted
in the world's most illiberal polities. Political dissent is dealt
with by repression, and ethnic and religious differences are settled
by internecine strife and murder.
One need only mention, among many instances, Syria's massacre of
20,000 of its Muslim activists in the early 1980s, or the brutal
treatment of Iraq's Shiite and Kurdish communities until the 2003
war, or the genocidal campaign now being conducted in Darfur by the
government of Sudan and its allied militias, not to mention the
ongoing bloodbath in Iraq. As for foreign policy in the Middle East,
it too has been pursued by means of crude force, ranging from
terrorism and subversion to outright aggression. In the Yemenite,
Lebanese, and Algerian civil wars, hundreds of thousands of innocent
civilians perished; the Iran-Iraq war claimed nearly a million lives.
Nor have the Arab states have ever had any real stake in the
"liberation of Palestine." Though anti-Zionism has been the core
principle of pan-Arab solidarity since the mid-1930s -- it is
easier, after all, to unite people through a common hatred than
through a shared loyalty -- pan-Arabism has almost always served as
an instrument for achieving the self-interested ends of those who
proclaim it. Consider, for example, the pan-Arab invasion of the
newly proclaimed state of Israel in 1948.This, on its face, was a
shining demonstration of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
But the invasion had far less to do with winning independence for
the indigenous population than with the desire of the Arab regimes
for territorial aggrandizement. Transjordan's King Abdullah wanted to
incorporate substantial parts of mandatory Palestine into the greater
Syrian empire he coveted; Egypt wanted to prevent that eventuality by
laying its hands on southern Palestine. Syria and Lebanon sought to
annex the Galilee, while Iraq viewed the 1948 war as a stepping stone
in its long-standing ambition to bring the entire Fertile Crescent
under its rule. Had the Jewish state lost the war, its territory
would not have fallen to the Palestinians but would have been divided
among the invading Arab forces.
During the decades following the 1948 war, the Arab states
manipulated the Palestinian national cause to their own ends. Neither
Egypt nor Jordan allowed Palestinian self-determination in the parts
of Palestine they had occupied during the 1948 war (respectively, the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip). Palestinian refugees were kept in
squalid camps for decades as a means of whipping Israel and stirring
pan-Arab sentiments. "The Palestinians are useful to the Arab states
as they are," Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser candidly
responded to an inquiring Western reporter in 1956. "We will always
see that they do not become too powerful." As late as 1974, Syria's
Hafez al-Assad referred to Palestine as being "not only a part of the
Arab homeland but a basic part of southern Syria."
If the Arab states have shown little empathy for the plight of
ordinary Palestinians, the Islamic connection to the Palestinian
problem is even more tenuous. It is not out of concern for a
Palestinian right to national self-determination but as part of a
holy war to prevent the loss of a part of the "House of Islam" that
Islamists inveigh against the Jewish state of Israel. In the words of
the covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known by its
Arabic acronym Hamas: "The land of Palestine has been an Islamic
trust (waqf) throughout the generations and until the day of
resurrection.... When our enemies usurp some Islamic lands, jihad
becomes a duty binding on all Muslims."
In this respect, there is no difference between Palestine and
other parts of the world conquered by the forces of Islam throughout
history. To this very day, for example, Arabs and many Muslims
unabashedly pine for the restoration of Spain, and look upon their
expulsion from that country in 1492 as a grave historical injustice,
as if they were Spain's rightful owners and not former colonial
occupiers of a remote foreign land, thousands of miles from their
ancestral homeland. Edward Said applauded Andalusia's colonialist
legacy as "the ideal that should be moving our efforts now," while
Osama bin Laden noted "the tragedy of Andalusia" after the 9/11
attacks, and the perpetrators of the March 2004 Madrid bombings, in
which hundreds of people were murdered, mentioned revenge for the
loss of Spain as one of the atrocity's "root causes." Within this
grand scheme, the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians is but
a single element, and one whose supposed centrality looms far greater
in Western than in Islamic eyes.
This is not to deny that resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict is a pressing issue. But the regional ramifications of any
settlement will be far narrower than is widely assumed. Quite to the
contrary, the best hope of peace between Arabs and Israelis lies in
the rejection of the spurious "link" between this dispute and other
regional and global problems.
The pretense of pan-Arab or pan-Islamic solidarity has long served
as a dangerous elixir in Palestinian political circles, stirring
unrealistic hopes and expectations and, at key junctures, inciting
widespread and horrifically destructive violence. Self-serving
interventionism under these false pretenses had the effect of
transforming the bilateral Palestinian-Israeli dispute into a
multilateral Arab-Israeli conflict, thereby prolonging its duration,
increasing its intensity, and making its resolution far more complex
and tortuous. Only when the local political elites reconcile
themselves to the reality of state nationalism and forswear the false
notions of pan-Arab and pan-Muslim solidarity, let alone the
imperialist chimera of a unified "Arab nation" or a worldwide Islamic
umma, will the long overdue regional stability will be finally
attained and the Arab-Israeli conflict resolved. Not the other way
round.
How do you think they caught the UK terrorists who were going
to blow up 12 USA planes leaving Heathrow? How do you thin they
caught these guys who were going to blow up Sears Tower.?
Aug 24, 2006 10:00 pm US/Central
(CBS) MIAMI Undercover video acquired by CBS 2's Miami sister station,
WFOR-TV CBS 4, reveals an inside look at a suspected terror group leader
accused in a plot to target U.S. landmarks, including the Sears Tower.
The suspected group was based in Miami and was allegedly led by a former
Chicagoan.
As CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports, that Chicago suspect was
apparently trying to recruit help with his mission when he was busted.
The "Liberty City 7", as they have been dubbed, face
terrorism charges after government agents uncovered an alleged plot
to blow up buildings, including the Sears Tower, the Miami Federal
Courthouse, and the Miami FBI offices, as well as other structures.
The undercover video shows Narseal Batiste, and others taking, what
prosecutors claim, is an oath to the al Qaeda terrorist organization, as
well as conversations in which Batiste tells and FBI undercover agent his
plans for blowing up buildings.
It was a classic FBI sting, with hidden cameras rolling in a hotel room. The
key players are the government informant, whose face is obscured, and the
alleged ringleader of the terrorist plot.
FBI surveillance photos show Batiste, the former Chicago FedEx delivery
driver, allegedly checking out Miami's federal courthouse as a possible
target.
The videotape of the front and side doors of that courthouse was
to be given to the man they thought represented al Qaeda, a man
Batiste first met when he entered a Miami hotel room hoping to make
his dream of Islamic jihad a reality.
"My name is Brother Mohammed ali Hussein," the informant
said on tape.
"Ali Hussein," Batiste asked.
"Yes," said the informant. "My job is to determine if its worth it or not.
My job is to say if these people are serious or not."
Batiste tries to convince him that he and seven other members of his
so-called Moorish Science Temple, their mosque housed in a rundown warehouse
in Miami, are very serious.
"What's the plan?" asked the informant.
"To build this army," Batiste replied.
"Army? To build an army?" the informant asked.
"An Islamic army for Islamic jihad," Batiste said.
"Jihad? To wage jihad?" the informant said.
"Yes," confirmed Batiste.
Eventually, the others are introduced to the informant. On the
tape, one by one, each pledges his allegiance. In another taped
meeting, Batiste asks for money for boots and uniforms and more.
"Hand pistol machine guns," Batiste said.
"Pistols? Machine guns. Pistol or machine guns? Two different," the
informant said.
"They make them in hand pistols. They make pistol machine guns. They're like
pistols but they're also machine guns," Batiste said.
At another meeting, also taped by the government, Batiste got down to
specifics.
"We got to make a plan of attack," Batiste said.
They talk about waging war with an army of street gang members and two
specific targets.
93>I'm gonna tell you there's two major buildings that you gotta
blow up. The Empire State Building and ... the uh, and the uh, Sears
Tower. With those two buildings down, all radio communication is
out," Batiste said.
The video has been the subject of reports by WFOR-TV reporter
Brian Andrews, and its broadcast has apparently upset some of the
attorneys involved in the case.
The material shown on television and on the Internet was provided
by prosecutors as part of the discovery process, and is part of the
public record of the case. It includes hundreds of hours of CDs and
DVDs, which CBS 4 has been examining for the material which was
broadcast.
A federal judge denied a request for a temporary injunction that
would have prevented CBS 2 sister station WFOR-TV CBS 4 in Miami and
their Web site, CBS4.com, from showing undercover surveillance video
of seven men implicated in a terrorism scheme that involved a plot to
blow up the Sears Tower.
Attorney Ana Jhones had filed the request with Federal Court Judge
Joan Lenard at the U.S. Courthouse in Miami, asking that CBS, and any
other media outlet, be prevented from showing the undercover video
showing her client, Narseal Batiste, the alleged ringleader of what
prosecutors claim was a terrorist cell based in Liberty City.
The request was denied following a teleconference between Jhones,
the judge, and attorneys for CBS.
Jhones argued in her motion that the audio and video tapes have
not yet been published in the court file and are not available to the
general public. She asked that the media be prevented from showing
the material "in all media" until it could be determined if a "local
rule" was violated in the sharing of the material with WFOR.
WFOR-TV has reported that the material was legally obtained from a
source involved with the case, but has not disclosed the source.
WFOR-TV News has attempted to contact Jhones regarding the court
action, but she has not returned repeated telephone calls.
Video Library
Related Stories
Well, not according to Daniel Pipes and his analysis of the
behaviors of the US (CAIR) and Canadian (CCAIR) and UK most powerful
and vocal Moslem PACs....which are all trying to exploit the acts of
terror (successful or unsuccessful) as a way to blackmail their
governments in to enacting legislation that supports Arab -Moslem
Middle East and Jihad agendas.
www.danielpipes.org/article/3914
Two days after British authorities broke up an alleged plot to blow up
multiple aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean, the "moderate" Muslim
establishment in Britain published an aggressive open letter to Prime
Minister Tony Blair.
It suggested that Mr. Blair could better fight terrorism if he
recognized that the current British government policy, especially on
"the debacle of Iraq," provides "ammunition to extremists." The
letter writers demanded that the prime minister change his foreign
policy to "make us all safer." One prominent signatory, the Labour
member of Parliament Sadiq Khan, added that Mr. Blair's reluctance to
criticize Israel increased the pool of people whom terrorists can
recruit.
In other words, Islamists working within the system exploited the
thwarted Islamist terror plot to pressure the British government to
implement their joint wishes and reverse British policy in the Middle
East. Lawful Islamists shamelessly leveraged the near death of
thousands to forward their agenda.
Despite its reported fears of Muslim street unrest, the Blair
government heatedly rejected the letter. Foreign Secretary Margaret
Beckett called it "the gravest possible error." The Foreign Office
minister Kim Howells dismissed it as "facile." Home Secretary John
Reid deemed it a "dreadful misjudgment" to think that the "foreign
policy of this country should be shaped in part, or in whole, under
the threat of terrorism activity." Transport Secretary Douglas
Alexander rejected the letter as "dangerous andfoolish."
Undaunted, the "moderate" Muslim establishment pushed even harder on
the domestic front. In an August 14 meeting with high government
representatives, including the deputy prime minister, it made two
further demands: that a pair of Islamic religious festivals become
official holidays and that Islamic laws pertaining to marriage and
family life be applied in Britain. A Muslim present at the meeting
later warned the government against any plans to profile airport
passengers, lest this step radicalize Muslim youths further.
Why these ultimata and why at this time? According to the Daily Mail,
the leader of the August 14 Muslim delegation, Syed Aziz Pasha,
explained his group's logic: "if you give us religious rights, we
will be in a better position to convince young people that they are
being treated equally along with other citizens." More ominously, Mr.
Pasha threatened the government leaders. "We are willing to
cooperate, but there should be a partnership. They should understand
our problems. Then we will understand their problems."
The press reacted furiously to these demands. The Guardian's Polly
Toynbee condemned the open letter as "perilously close to suggesting
the government had it coming." The Daily Mirror's Sue Carroll
portrayed Mr. Pasha's position as "perilously close to blackmail."
This was not the first such attempt by "moderate" British Muslim
leaders at political jujitsu, to translate Islamist violence into
political clout. The same happened, if less aggressively, in the
aftermath of the July 2005 London bombings, when they piggybacked on
the death of 52 innocents to demand that British forces leave Iraq.
That pressure did succeed, and in two major ways. First, the Home
Office subsequently issued a report produced by "moderate" Muslims,
"Preventing Extremism Together," that formally accepted this
appeasing approach. As Dean Godson of Policy Exchange summarizes the
document, Islamist terror "provided a wonderful, unexpected
opportunity for these moderates to demand more power and money from
the State."
Second, 72% of British subjects now accept the Islamist view that Mr.
Blair's "backing for action in Iraq and Afghanistan" has made Britain
more of a target for terrorists, while a negligible 1% say the
policies have improved the country's safety, according to a recent
poll. The public solidly backs the Islamists, not the prime minister.
I have argued that terrorism generally obstructs the progress of
radical Islam in the West by stimulating hostility to Muslims and
bringing Islamic organizations under unwanted scrutiny. I must admit,
however, that the evidence from Britain -- where the July 7
terrorism inspired more can also strengthen lawful Islamism.
And here's another reconsideration: While I maintain that the future
of Europe -- whether continuing in its historic Christian identity
or becoming an adjunct of Muslim North Africa -- is still an open
question, the behavior of the British public, that weakest link in
the Western chain, suggests that it, at least, may be too confused to
resist its Londonistan destiny.
David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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RUSSIA'S TERRORIST ROAD MAP
Posted by JINSA, August 29, 2006. |
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Westerners, Americans in particular, often ask what we did to engender the violent hatred of Islamic terrorists. [Not us, by the way. Well aware of Western shortcomings and always interested in national self-improvement, we nevertheless believe nothing we have done or are likely to do justifies 9-11, the Sbarro pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem, or the perversion of Muslim children to believe that their lives are best spent preparing for a violent death.] Others wonder why, even though the USSR invaded and decimated Afghanistan, the particular fury of Islamists is directed at the U.S. and Israel. Regnar Rasmussen, a former military interpreter and interrogation specialist trained at the Danish Armed Forces' Specialist School, worked as a Farsi translator in the immigration department of Danish Central Police. In the mid-1980s, he interviewed Iranians fleeing the Islamic Revolution and discovered that many had been communists in the time of the Shah and received guerrilla/explosives/terrorism training in the USSR. In an interview with Insight Magazine, Rasmussen described them: "After I had been face to face with a number of these, it dawned upon me that the step from being a glowing red communist to becoming a bloodthirsty Muslim fundamentalist is actually a distance equal to zero." Since then, I have seen these two categories as the two sides of the same coin. Communism and Islamic fundamentalism have more in common than what meets the eye. They share the same fundamental hatred against individualism and against individuals who wish to be happy and just enjoy life. Romanian Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking intelligence officer to have defected from the Soviet bloc, provided details in a recent article in the National Review. "In 1972, the Kremlin decided to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the U.S". ... Andropov told me ..."The Islamic world was a waiting petri dish in which we could nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought." Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep... Terrorism and violence against Israel and her master, American Zionism, would flow naturally from the Muslims' religious fervor," Andropov sermonized. "We had only to keep repeating our themes - that the United States and Israel were "fascist, imperial-Zionist countries bankrolled by rich Jews. Islam was obsessed with preventing the infidels' occupation of its territory." What to do with the information? Ramussen notes: "The Soviet system had a solid tradition of registering everything. We saw all the details meticulously noted down in every STASI report that came out after the fall of communism in 1989. I know that all the files of each and every single foreign student ever trained in the Soviet Union are still intact... If the new Russia wants to show her good intentions in the war against terror she should brush the dust off these old archives. If you trace down each and every single graduate you will also be able to see who in turn became his students or followers. The entire network that was set up by that generation in those days would become clearly visible. It is crucial for the West to sever the relationship between terrorists and the states that harbor and support them. A road map provided by the Russian government would make it a lot easier. 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 This is JINSA Report #598. To view this JINSA Report online, go to http://www.jinsa.org/JINSAReports/3522 |
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JEWS ARE FROM ISRAEL; SO-CALLED "PALESTIANS" FROM SAUDI ARABIA
Posted by Palestinian Facts Org, August 29, 2006. |
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Arabs claim that today's Jews aren't really descendants of ancient Israelites and are really converts WITHOUT EVER SHOWING ANY PROOF. Here's GENETIC PROOF that not only are Jews descendants of the Jews who were exiled from Israel by Romans, but Jews of today have more Israelite genes than Arabs have genes of ancient Arabs. Furthermore, SO-CALLED "palestinians" are originally from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Go back wherever the hell you came from! |
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University of Baltimore Study: Jews are originally from northern Middle East (where Israel is located), while SO-CALLED "palestinians" are originally from Saudi Arabia. The study also says that while Jews are partially the product of mixed-marriages and converts, Jews have about 70% to 80% blood of ancient Israelites, while Arabs have only 50% blood of ancient Arabs. (www.ubalt.edu/kulanu/jewishdna.html), National Academy of Sciences: Several lines of evidence support the hypothesis that Diaspora Jews from Europe, Northwest Africa, and the Near East resemble each other more closely than they resemble their non-Jewish neighbors. Second, despite their high degree of geographic dispersion, Jewish populations from Europe, North Africa, and the Near East were less diverged genetically from each other than any other group of populations in this study (meaning that Jews have more Israelite genes than Arabs have genes of ancient Arabs). Our results indicated a relatively minor contribution of European Y chromosomes to the Ashkenazim. If we assume 80 generations since the founding of the Ashkenazi population, then the rate of admixture would be <0.5% per generation. Stanford University: If you made a genetic map of Europe and the
Middle East and you put Ashkenazi Jews on it, they would not end up
in Turkey or in the middle of Europe, but in the Mediterranean.
University of Arizona: We saw such a strong signal of a
Middle-Eastern origin in Jews. Jews really are a single ethnic group
coming from the Middle East. Even if you look like another European
with blue eyes and light skin, your genes are telling that you're
from the Middle East.
NY Times: The analysis provides genetic witness that these
communities have, to a remarkable extent, retained their biological
identity separate from their host populations, evidence of relatively
little intermarriage or conversion into Judaism over the centuries.
Reuters (on Yahoo web site): A study shows that Jews suffer from
the same illnesses. If Jews were mere French, Polish, etc.
converts, they would not share the same genetic makeup with
each other.
ABC News: "Jews have preserved their Middle Eastern genetic roots over
4,000 years. Very few non-Jewish European genes have gotten into the
Ashkenazi (European and American) Jewish populations. The comparison,
published Monday, of groups of Semites also shows that Jews have
successfully resisted having their gene pool diluted, despite having
lived among non-Jews for thousands of years in what is commonly known
as the Diaspora
Hebrew University: Jews are from Middle East.
BBC on another genetic study proving that Jews descended from Israel. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_742000/742430.stm |
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DESTRUCTION OF P.A. ARABS' HOUSES; BRITAIN'S ISLAMIC MENACE; HIZBULLAH'S TALL TALE
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 29, 2006. |
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MORE FRENCH IRRATIONALITY France's Foreign Min. Douste-Blazy urged Israel to halt its blockade of Lebanon. On what grounds? He said the ceasefire was holding (NY Sun, 8/17, p.6). Hizbullah agreed to a ceasefire because it was losing and Israel was capturing its ammunition. It would try to rearm when Israel is not firing= at it, so it can resume its war of Islamic aggression. A UNO blockade could prevent most of that rearming. The UNO is not blockading arms shipments to Hizbullah. Indeed, Hizbullah bases in the Bekaa Valley near Syria still can receive arms shipments via Syria. Israel was thought, by bombing such a base, to be drawing attention to that hole in the UNO plan. Thus the rationale given by the Foreign Minister is irrational. The French used to pride themselves on Gallic logic. It is not evident in France's foreign policy statements. STATE DEPT. DUCKS QUESTIONS Sec. Rice let the press ask her questions, most of which I'm not going to get into. Did Hizbullah use human shields? (It's common= practice.) She wouldn't be surprised if it did, but she did not acknowledge whether it did at Kfar Qana. (She's not pro-Israel.) She did dispute the assertion by Douste-Blazy that Iran is a force for stability. One reporter said he saw Hizbullah initiate the war, and the world blame Israel for it. The world, including many US newspapers, also condemns Israel as fighting too hard. He doesn't understand how the world could take such an unjust stance. Another reporter said he had not known that Hizbullah has amassed 14,000 rockets and that apparently the Mossad had not known. He wondered why UNIFIL did not enforce the UNO resolution to disarm Hizbullah. A reporter looked forward to the influx of UNO peacekeepers (IMRA, 8/2). How come that reporter had not known the Hizbullah has amassed 14,000 rockets. Israeli sources had been warning about that for months. Apparently, he covers the Mideast but does not deign to check Israeli sources. Why didn't UNIFIL enforce the UNO resolution to disarm Hizbullah? UNIFIL units are afraid to or wouldn't want to. That reporter needs a seminar on the Mideast. Peacekeepers are for keeping the peace. There is no peace in Lebanon. First the terrorists must be pacified. That requires combat troops. Just as US forces sometimes get sent into areas without their mission having been defined carefully, so, too, this ceasefire was declared without the practical considerations having been defined. For the reporter who wondered why the world blames Israel, it's simple -- Israel is a Jewish state. ENEMY POPULATIONS WITHIN Canadians and Europeans have been demonstrating in the streets in behalf of Hizbullah, which is banned in Canada. B'nai B'rith Canada suggests not tolerating demonstrations in behalf of a banned terrorist organization (IMRA, 8/2). Put that way, the issue becomes one of free speech. A better way to put it is that Muslims are easily roused to violence and their advocacy of terrorist organizations is part of their campaign against Western civilization. Since it is part of their war on their own countries, of course such demonstrations should be banned. Muslim populations as a whole are hostile, radicalizing, and growing. The broader question is why allow within the country an enemy population. There is no excuse for bringing in what is like a transparent Trojan horse. THE PERSISTENCE OF ANTISEMITISM The ancient Babylonians, German Nazis, Islamo-fascists, and Muslim regimes have in common hatred of Jews. There also are those in any society who blame the victims, Jews, instead of the tyrants. Contemporary anti-Semitism comes from the Left (and Islam) and from people thought to be mainstream -- actors, journalists, documentary film makers, and Ivy League professors. "Anti-war" rallies condemn Zionists, Israel, or the Lobby. Old story. People talk about the Jews controlling our society, while oil wealth is bankrolling a growing fascist army determined to destroy Western democracy. Westerners didn't mind Hitler's picking on the Jews. He then turned on the rest of them. He hated everybody but his own. He the more easily got started by liquidating Jews. Now the Muslims are talking not only about the Jews. Iran threatens to destroy the US. Muslims in Europe talk about taking over and repressing everybody else (Warren Kozak, NY Sun, 8/21, Op.-Ed.). "Anti-war rallies" are not against war. They are against the US or Israel defending itself after having been attacked. Those supposedly mainstream professionals largely are leftists or radicals, often ignorant and naive about the subject. DESTRUCTION OF P.A. ARABS' HOUSES The Palestinian Center for Human Rights protested to Israel against the IDF giving civilians less than an hour to leave their houses, before the houses would be bombed. This is not sufficient time to remove belongings or appeal to an Israeli court against the decision. The Center cites the Geneva Convention prohibition of destruction of civilian property except for immediate military necessity. The Center does not know what was immediately necessary militarily to destroy those houses, which it claims posed no threat. It cites ten houses destroyed under the recent warnings, and thousands destroyed all told. It asserts that the decision to destroy may be based on stale intelligence (IMRA, 7/31). P.A. statistics and claims usually are false or misleading. They attribute to Israel deaths and demolitions caused by Arabs. They count as destroyed houses abandoned buildings used by terrorists for ambush. They complain about illegally built buildings having been destroyed. There may have been thousands of buildings destroyed, but there are thousands of illegal buildings that weren't and should have been. By asserting that intelligence may be stale, the Center implies that when fresh, the house should have been destroyed earlier. In that case, it presented a military threat. That means it was used by terrorists for weapons, planning, or hiding. The Arabs abuse civilian facilities like that, a warcrime. The Center fails to complain about the Arabs' war crimes and the resulting loss of innocent Israeli lives. It should be disregarded. The Center disingenuously misses the point of the warnings. The IDF has to destroy the houses promptly. However, the IDF doesn't want to kill the residents, so it gives them just sufficient warning to escape with their lives. Some of them don't deserve that, having cooperated with the terrorists, thereby turning themselves into combatants. If the decision were subject to adjudication, the terrorists would remove If the decision were subject to adjudication, the terrorists would remove their weaponry during the course of the hearings. That would give war criminals an advantage. The decision must be up to the Israeli military. Imagine if every act of war by one side were subject to judicial review! Ridiculous, isn't it? What kind of judicial review has the Center demanded of the P.A., which, itself, or via the PLO, executed people on suspicion of having cooperated in some way with Israel? The Geneva Convention does not apply to the Territories and was designed for a different purpose from that which the Center proposes. In addition, the Center seeks to exploit the rules and ethics of war and of human rights in behalf of a population that flouts the rules and ethics of war and of human rights. The Center thus collaborates with terrorism. We should not let it recruit the rules of civilization in behalf of the Islamist attempt to destroy civilization. This Islamist attempt to adjudicate the war is one of the Islamist tactics. The enemy is using the Western legal systems to thwart Western self-defense. In reaction, the West should review its rules and keep warfare further from the courts. KFAR KANA Sacrificing military surprise to humanitarian policy, Israel dropped warning leaflets on Kfar Kana, a Hizbullah stronghold. Hizbullah illegally emplaced rocket launchers between civilian buildings, there. It often stores weapons in civilian buildings. The terrorists fired more than 150 rockets from the village, and the terrorists hide there after firing the rockets. PM Olmert emphasized that the residents had often been warned to leave. Israel attacked. It did not know that civilians remained behind, or it would have desisted. An explosion killed 57 residents, half of whom were children. Most of the world's press condemned Israel. Israel took responsibility, and then investigated. Israeli commanders noted a half-hour lag between its bombing and the fatal explosion. Israel may not have caused it (Arutz-7, 7/31). Yes, Israel may not have caused the explosion. The Arabs have plenty of explosives around, and are careless with them. If Israel won't attack when civilians are around, then enemy civilians won't leave, and Israel will lose. It should attack anyway. It did more than its duty in sacrificing military surprise in order to warn civilians to leave. It is the responsibility of adults to take care of their families and of warned civilians to evacuate. What warning do Arabs give Israelis? Once again, the Army takes responsibility and then investigates and begins finding that it was not responsible after all. Too late, as usual. Israel's public relations are further damaged. The IDF should have told the rest of the world that an accusation before investigation is a hostile act, andthe world's unconcern about the Arabs' constant, deliberate attacks on civilians proves hypocrisy. FRANCE'S FOREIGN MINISTER SPEAKS At a press conference. with the whole world his stage, Foreign Min. Douse-Blazy called Iran a "stabilizing force in the Middle East." No, Iran armed Hizbullah and prodded it to start the current war and to destabilize Lebanon and Israel. Iran is developing nuclear technology illegally and deceitfully. It threatens other countries with a war of aggression using nuclear weapons (Arutz-7, 7/31). Iran keeps the US off balance in Iraq. It now finances Hamas terrorism against Israel. The French tend to call Pres. Bush a wild fool. But Iran is wild and the French leaders are fools. Douse-Blazy's statement is so wrong and wrongful as to be almost insane. SEC. RICE ACTUALLY SAID THIS She said that Hizbullah should disarm "voluntarily" (Benny Avni, NY Sun, 8/17, p.1). So should the Nazis and Communists have disarmed voluntarily. People out to conquer the world don't disarm voluntarily. Does she take us for fools? I think she got her way, which was to stop the Israeli juggernaut, and the disarming part is lip service. BRITAIN'S ISLAMIC MENACE After the recent plot by British Muslims to bomb several airliners, terrorist profiling was proposed. It would focus on young Muslim men, who, after all, are the usual culprits. The most senior Muslim British policeman called that discriminatory (when it really is to the point). Muslims also object to suggestions that Britain should do more to prevent Muslim youth's radicalization and to improve Muslim cooperation with police. Islam is imperialist, but the Muslims act as if nothing is their fault or responsibility. Far from being apologetic, British Muslim leaders try to shift the blame from their radicals to PM Blair, for helping fight terrorism abroad. They pretend that his foreign policy "drives them to terrorism." (It may, but that is no excuse and reveals their policy of collective punishment and what kind of threat they pose to British society.) The Muslim leaders go on to warn Britain to pull out or face more terrorism. They don't say that they would exhort to terrorism, but their warning is a threat. It is implied blackmail. To sum up, some of their people plot a heinous crime, and upon its discovery, their leaders try to excuse them and intimidate British foreign policymakers over it. The problem with the Muslims is that they do not care about their own casualties, in a nuclear war. They do not see nuclear war as mutually assured destruction. They accuse the West of not caring about Muslim casualties, in war. However, "It is not the West that retards the spilling of Muslim blood as of little importance, but the Muslims themselves." (Daniel Johnson, NY Sun, 8/17, Op.-Ed..) Yes, when their bombs meant for Jews ikill Muslims, the terrorists simply call those Muslims "martyrs." The world doesn't care about slain Muslim if not slain by Jews. HIZBULLAH'S TALL TALES Just as the P.A. issues false accusations of Israeli atrocities, so, too, Hizbullah falsely claims combat victories against Israel. It claimed to have sunk a second Israeli ship, without evidence. The first ship already is back in service. It claimed to have shot down an Israeli plane, whereas the Israeli plane bombed a rocket launcher. It even claimed to have driven the advancing Israelis out (IMRA, 8/1 from Michael Widlanski). CONFUSION IN ISRAELI CABINET When Israeli policy was not to accept a ceasefire, Vice PM Peres declared, contrary to policy, that Israel would accept it as soon as Hizbullah adhered to it (IMRA, 8/1). This is the second time Olmert's policy has been contradicted by a Cabinet member. This has happened in other administrations, too. Usually, the appeasement-minded contradiction wins out. I think it is a franker view of actual, long-range policy. 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@aol.com. |
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FROM THE HEART OF MAJOR GENERAL, USMC (RET.) RICHARD COOKE
Posted by Harry W. Gluckman, August 28, 2006. |
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I often mention in my posts a little Mexican restaurant that I frequent here in San Diego that goes by the name of Las Quatro Milpas, which serves the best authentic Mexican food in San Diego. I mention it today, because of what has changed when I stand in that long line in the heat down on Logan Avenue waiting for those 5 dear Mexican woman to serve the hundreds of us who show up before I melt in the hot sun. The line outside of Quatro Milpas is a place to meet new friends, reunite with people you have not seen in weeks or months, but happen to get that same desire for that Chorizo at the same time you did, so that every time you show up again, you can restart your friendship as if it never stopped. Everyone has a story about how long they have been coming to Quatro Milpas or how they discovered it, or how long was the longest line they have stood in waiting to get to their food. What has changed, is that this week, instead of the jovial mood in the line, I was struck with the thought of what would happen to this place if someone were to walk into the line, and get into the restaurant, around say 1300 hours, at the height of the lunch rush and blow about 100 people to hell in the name of Allah. As I thought about this, I wondered what it must be like for the people in Israel, who, no matter where they go, have to consider the possibility of terrorism, and that their next steps out into society might be their last. I thought about what it must be like for a little Israeli schoolchild on a bus heading from school when someone gets on the bus in the middle of summer wearing a large overcoat. I have an anger that will not go away this morning, as I watch the media try to tell me that Israel is the aggressor, that they are wantonly killing civilians, and that they must agree to a cease-fire with people who have sworn to kill them. I wish I could say I cannot imagine how we got to this point in society, where a portion of our society would side with the very monsters that have killed both Israelis and Americans, because of a fear of violence, but the reason is all too clear. The free world has been too tolerant of the non-free world. We have allowed them to be portrayed as victims, and to assume the moral high ground at the same time that they cut the heads off innocent people and film it for worldwide consumption. Okay, that is the nice way to put it. The honest way to put it is that we have lost our nerve. When a society of radicals can drag a dead American through the streets of their towns, and hang their bodies from a bridge as a collective finger flashed at America, and our response is "patience" we have lost not only our nerves, but our balls as well. I get a sense from the older veteran friends of mine in this city that our problem is that we have it too good, and do not remember what was done on our behalf to make things this good. Have we forgotten that for every time we can leave our homes, go stand in line at our favorite restaurant, and NOT think about the possibility of someone bombing the place, which someone many years ago gave their very life for that freedom we enjoy? I think the young people in line at Quatro Milpas and wonder how many of them would have volunteered to fly with along side General Doolittle on his way to Tokyo, knowing they had not the gas to get home? Omaha Beach, anyone? I understand that these days, in Marine Corps boot camp, a recruit can call a "time out" if he is feeling too much stress. Is our State Dept. running the Marines now? This, I find disgusting. But no more disgusting then those who seek a cease-fire in Lebanon this morning after civilians were killed after their building collapsed from the concussion of a bomb dropped near them that was targeting the site of where rockets were launched into Israel resulting in the deaths of 18 Israeli civilians. It is as though these Israeli deaths do not matter at all. Especially when you stop to consider that this conflict began with Hezbollah coming across the Israeli border, ambushing and killing 8 Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two more. Cease-fire, my ass! To every person who believes that you can reason with these animals, I must ask you where your mind went. It is the weakness of the free-world's NON-response that has allowed the terrorist threat to grow into a movement that threatens our very existence. When a U.S. soldier can be dragged through the streets of Somalia and our response is to LEAVE, when 280 Marines can be bombed in their sleep and our response is to LEAVE, when after terrorists kill Spanish civilians on a train, and their nation's response is to elect capitulating socialists who order the immediate retreat of their soldiers from Iraq, and so on, and so on, what are the terrorists to think, but that the free world has become a pussy? The fact that a majority of Americans think this nation needs AN EXCUSE for going after terrorism after 911 scares the hell out of me. It suggests that we as a nation will eventually fail to produce the men and women who every day, stand between freedom and tyranny. Yesterday, San Diego had its Gay Pride Parade. Oh, the joy.. It was billed as the largest 'celebration' in the city's history. THIS city. The very city where sailors came home to after fighting in Midway. The city that trains half of this nations Marines, hosts the USS Ronald Reagan, the USS Nimitz, the former Fightertown USA...our largest celebration is for the GAY...PRIDE..PARADE. Ponder that with me, will you? We are at war. I want Israel to continue, even escalate their attacks on Lebanon. I want them to ignore the media, ignore the pundits, and ignore even the weak among them who want to find a peaceful way out of this current conflict. History teaches us that until a bully is beaten, the bully keeps coming. The free world paid for our freedom in blood, and if blood is what it will take to keep it, then lets just have at it now, shall we? Let Iran and Syria attempt to aid Hezbollah. Let Israel attack them. Let it escalate until we are forced to fight at Israel's side. Then, can we for the last time, just kick some ass until it is over? Every generation must pay this price, as long as there are those who seek to force us to follow a dictatorial ideology. Radical Islam says, "Agree or die." In response, we should stop asking them, if there is a middle ground to be reached. We should be saying, "Fine, but it is YOU that will die." Israel, I see you fighting not just for your freedoms, but also for the world's. I trust that if you continue, the free world will be forced to side with you, even if it means that a few of us die in the process. The time is now. It is time for THIS generation to prove itself worthy of those that came before us. It is time for us to say NO MORE to the terrorist threat, to find them and kill them. Do not stop fighting, Israel. Make the free world help you put an end to this madness. In doing so, you might help us find the courage and moral convictions that made us free to begin with, so that one day, little Jewish children, and old lovers of Mexican food in America can go about our daily lives with the freedom that others died to give us. Contact Harry Gluckman at harry@gluckman.com> |
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TERRORIST THEATER TRICKS
Posted by Naomi Ragen, August 28, 2006. |
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This was written by Caroline Glick and it appeared in the Jerusalem
Post |
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What are we seeing when we watch events from the Middle East on our television screens? Is it news or is it terrorist theater? Let us observe two media events which occurred on Sunday in Gaza. Sunday afternoon released hostages and Fox News journalists Steven Centanni and Olaf Wiig spoke before the cameras. The fact of their release and their statements were reported by more than 1,000 news organizations throughout the world. At the press conference, Centanni and Wiig, who were forced by their Palestinian captors to convert to Islam, praised the Palestinians. Centanni said, "I just hope this never scares a single journalist away from coming to Gaza to cover this story because the Palestinian people are a very beautiful, kind-hearted and caring people that the world need[s] to know more about." Wiig similarly praised the Palestinians. While their remarks were covered extensively, no one seemed to think that the fact that their first post-release statements were made at a Palestinian Authority sponsored media extravaganza in Gaza was significant. No one noted that the men were flanked by Palestinian "security forces," and stood next to Hamas terrorist leader and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. No mention was made of the fact that the two were initially kidnapped by just such PA "security officials," or that Haniyeh is one of the leaders of one of the most fanatical jihadist organizations in the world, an organization that the majority of the "beautiful, kind-hearted and caring" Palestinians voted into office last January. That is, no mention was made of the fact that until the two men left Gaza, they remained unfree. No one asked whether they had been given the option of not giving a press conference in Gaza. And now that they have spoken, there can be little doubt that a second press conference by the two men, in Israel or the US where no one will force them to convert to Judaism or Christianity or threaten to kill them, will draw far less media interest. After their press conference, the two men became yesterday's news. Conveniently, the same day the PA released the men who its own forces had kidnapped, Reuters reported that the IDF had shot a missile at its press vehicle and wounded two cameramen - one from Reuters and one from Iranian World TV network - while they were en route to a battle taking place between IDF forces and Palestinian terrorists. Reuters, which is demanding an independent investigation into the attack, is portraying its cameraman Fadel Shada as an embattled hero who would do anything to bring the truth to the world. Yet it is unclear why anyone should believe either Shana or Reuters. Shana told Reuters that as he was driving to the battle scene, "I suddenly saw fire and the doors of the jeep flew open." He claims to have been wounded by shrapnel in his hand and leg. These are minor injuries for someone whose vehicle was just hit by a missile. But then, the photographs taken of his vehicle after the purported missile attack give no indication that the car was hit by anything. There is a gash on the roof. The hood is bent out of shape. But nothing seems to have been burned. Cars hit by missiles do not look like they have just been in a nasty accident. Cars hit by missiles are destroyed. Yet the glass on the windshield and the windows of Shana's vehicle isn't even shattered. In the photographs taken of Shana on the way to the hospital in Gaza, he lies on a stretcher, eyes closed, arm extended in full pieta mode. He is not visibly bleeding although there are some blood stains on his shirt, but then his undershirt is completely white. I did not see these pictures in the media coverage of the purported IDF attack on the Reuters and Iranian cameramen. I saw them on Powerlineblog Web site. I did not see any questions raised from either the Israeli or the international media on the veracity of Shana's tale, which of course, provides a nice balance to the Centanni-Wiig hostage story. AS IS the case with the Palestinian war against Israel, one of the most notable aspects of Hizbullah's latest campaign against Israel has been the active collaboration of news organizations and international NGO's in Hizbullah's information war against Israel. Like their rogue state sponsors, subversive sub-national groups like Hizbullah, Fatah and Hamas, see information operations as an integral part of their war for the annihilation of Israel and defeat of the West. And their information operations are more advanced than any the world has seen. As becomes more evident with each passing day, they have successfully corrupted both the world media and the community of NGOs that purportedly operate in a neutral manner in war zones. It is not a coincidence that I saw the pictures of the Reuters' vehicle on Powerline and not in the media coverage of the purported attack. Both the global media and the international NGO community abjectly refuse to investigate themselves. As democratic governments and their militaries have proven incapable of dealing with the phenomenon (in part because they seek to curry favor with the media and the international NGO community), the blogosphere has taken upon itself the role of media watchdog. BLOGGERS HAVE become a critical component of the free world's defense in the current war. During the Hizbullah campaign in Lebanon, bloggers scrutinized coverage of the war in a way that has never been done before. Their work has exposed the dirty secret of the Middle East that the media has hidden for so many years: The global media and the international NGO community, which profess to be neutral observers, are in fact colluding with terrorist organizations. The blogosphere, and particularly Little Green Footballs, Powerline, Zombietime, Michelle Malkin, and EU Referendum, have relentlessly exposed the systematic staging of news events, fabrication of attacks against relief workers, and doctoring of photographic images by Hizbullah with the active assistance of international organizations and the global media. The International Committee of the Red Cross, with its internationally mandated status as a protected organization, is particularly culpable. The blogoshere - and specifically EU Referendum and Zombietime Web sites - have shown that Red Cross employees in Tyre and Kana fabricated from whole cloth a tale of an Israeli airstrike against Red Cross ambulances a tale of an Israeli airstrike against Red Cross ambulances in Kana on July 23. In an exhaustively documented report, "How the Media Legitimized an Anti-Israel Hoax and Changed the Course of a War," Zombietime showed how Red Cross employees took an old, rusty ambulance and alleged that the IAF had attacked it with a missile that blew a hole straight through the middle of the red cross on the ambulance's roof. The Red Cross allegation was reported as fact by such "credible" news organizations as Associated Press, Time magazine, the BBC, ITV, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Age, MSNBC, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both published accounts of the attack as evidence of Israeli "war crimes" in Lebanon. Zombietime clearly proved from simple scrutiny of the photographs taken of the ambulance, that the hole in the cross was not the result of a missile attack but the work of the ambulance manufacturer. It was the hole for an air vent. The pock marks on the roof were the result of age and decay. There had been no fire in the ambulance. There was no attack. It was a complete fabrication, concocted by Red Cross employees who enjoy their protected status because their organization has pledged its neutral status in this and all wars. ONE WEEK later, as EU Referendum reports in a similarly detailed investigation of the much condemned IAF bombing of Kana on July 30, (which actually happened a mile north of Kana at Khuraybah village), Red Cross relief workers actively participated in the staging of a perverted media extravaganza where the bodies of dead children were paraded about before the waiting camera crews for hours and hours. Rather than demand that the ICRC account for the clear breach of its binding commitment to neutrality, and rather than attack the Lebanese Red Cross for its active collaboration with Hizbullah, the international media has attacked the bloggers. They are brushed off as "Israel supporters," and "right-wing extremists." The aim of these brush-offs is to convince "right thinking" citizens that they oughtn't have anything to do with these champions of truth and human decency. As each day passes, the governments, formal and informal legal apparatuses, and media of free societies show themselves to be less and less capable of contending with he information operations conducted against their societies by subversive forces seeking their destruction. As each day passes it becomes clear that the responsibility of protecting our nations and societies from internal disintegration has passed to the hands of individuals, often working alone, who refuse to accept the degradation of their societies and so fight with the innovative tools of liberty to protect our way of life. The vigilance of just a handful of bloggers brought us the knowledge of the corruption of our media and the network of global NGOs that we have come to rely on to tell us the "objective" truth. It is up to all citizens of the free world, who value our freedom to recognize this corruption, applaud the bloggers and join them in refusing to allow these corrupt institutions to cloud our commitment to freedom. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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WORLD OPINION IS WORTHLESS
Posted by Avodah 15, August 28, 2006. |
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This was written by Dennis Prager and it appeared in Jewish World Review (www.JewishWorldReview.com). Dennis Prager hosts a national daily radio show based in Los Angeles. |
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If you are ever morally confused about a major world issue, here is a rule that is almost never violated: Whenever you hear that "world opinion" holds a view, assume it is morally wrong. And here is a related rule if your religious or national or ethnic group ever suffers horrific persecution: "World opinion" will never do a thing for you. Never. "World opinion" has little or nothing to say about the world's greatest evils and regularly condemns those who fight evil. The history of "world opinion" regarding the greatest mass murders and cruelties on the planet is one of relentless apathy. Ask the 1.5 million Armenians massacred by the Ottoman Turks; or the 6 million Ukrainians slaughtered by Stalin;
Ask any of these poor souls, or the hundreds of millions of others slaughtered, tortured, raped and enslaved in the last 100 years, if "world opinion" did anything for them. On the other hand, we learn that "world opinion" is quite exercised over Israel's unintentional killing of a few hundred Lebanese civilians behind whom hides Hezbollah -- a terror group that intentionally sends missiles at Israeli cities and whose announced goals are the annihilation of Israel and the Islamicization of Lebanon. And, of course, "world opinion" was just livid at American: abuses of some Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. In fact, "world opinion" is constantly upset with America and Israel, two of the most decent countries on earth, yet silent about the world's cruelest countries. Why is this? Here are four reasons: First, television news. It is difficult to overstate the damage done to the world by television news. Even when not driven by political bias -- an exceedingly rare occurrence globally -- television news presents a thoroughly distorted picture of the world. Because it is almost entirely dependent upon pictures, TV news is only capable of showing human suffering in, or caused by, free countries. So even if the BBC or CNN were interested in showing the suffering of millions of Sudanese blacks or North Koreans -- and they are not interested in so doing -- they cannot do it because reporters cannot visit Sudan or North Korea and video freely. Likewise, China's decimation and annexation of Tibet, one of the world's oldest ongoing civilizations, never made it to television. Second, "world opinion" is shaped by the same lack of courage that shapes most individual human beings' behavior. This is another aspect of the problem of the distorted way news is presented. It takes courage to report the evil of evil regimes; it takes no courage to report on the flaws of decent societies. Reporters who went into Afghanistan without the Soviet Union's permission were killed. Reporters would risk their lives to get critical stories out of Tibet, North Korea and other areas where vicious regimes rule. But to report on America's bad deeds in Iraq (not to mention at home) or Israel's is relatively effortless, and you surely won't get killed. Indeed, you may well win a Pulitzer Prize. Third, "world opinion" bends toward power. To cite the Israel example, "world opinion" far more fears alienating the largest producers of oil and 1 billion Muslims than it fears alienating tiny Israel and the world's 13 million Jews. And not only because of oil and numbers. When you offend Muslims, you risk getting a fatwa, having your editorial offices burned down or receiving death threats. Jews don't burn down their critics' offices, issue fatwas or send death threats, let alone act on such threats. Fourth, those who don't fight evil condemn those who do. "World opinion" doesn't confront real evils, but it has a particular animus toward those who do -- most notably today America and Israel. The moment one recognizes "world opinion" for what it is -- a statement of moral cowardice, one is longer enthralled by the term. That "world opinion"at this moment allegedly loathes America and Israel is a badge of honor to be worn proudly by those countries. It is when "world opinion" and its news media start liking you that you should wonder if you've lost your way. Contact Avodah 15 avodah15@aol.com |
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ISRAEL MUST WIN THE MIDDLE EAST MIND GAME
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, August 28, 2006. |
| Nassan Nasrallah suggests if he had anticipated Israel's reaction to Hizbullah's cross border raid, murders, and kidnappings he would not have committed the crimes. Hmmm! No doubt, many Arabs in southern Lebanon are correctly beginning to blame Hizbullah for misery inflicted; indeed for cowardly behavior in starting a war with Israel, then hiding their combative hides and deadly weapons within civilian enclaves, most egregiously behind the skirts of women, and yet to be developed small bodies of young children. Such a strategy does not befit Hizbullah's heroic image, unfortunately still strongly maintained by a naive majority of Lebanese citizens, as well as the vast majority of ego-deflated Middle East Muslims, selectively foraging for any scraps of information they can twist into victory against hated Jews/Israel. Yet, Nasrallah's admission, true or false, must be analyzed carefully. Did something go wrong? Is Hizbullah's direct patron Iran not happy having to now shell out duffle bags of petrocurrency to rearm its fanatical fighting force as well as rebuild much of Lebanon? How much bang did Iran get for its buck? Furthermore, an international force is now forming between Israel and Lebanon, minimizing any chance of near future mischief. Israeli leaders would be wise to exploit any such favorable ramifications, from Israel's perspective, by mobilizing effective Arabic and Farsi communication networks throughout the Middle East, dissolving Hizbullah and Nasrallah's armor plated veneer, replacing it with a deserved yellow cloth, branded with capital 'C', befitting such craven extremists who surely besmirch the warrior image of their holy prophet Mohammad, behaving like forked-tongue snakes slithering through villages of presumed civilian brethren to shield their own contemptible biological substance from an Israeli military juggernaut. Imagery is everything in this violent chess game, where from Israel's perspective, a self-assured in your face Jewish warrior trumps one that is dispirited, and a cowering Hizbullah pseudo-soldier trumps one exuding an aura of 'God-willing' triumph. Israel's battle against Hizbullah must not be manipulated to rescue Middle Eastern Muslims from self-inflicted humiliation born of an inability to cope with modern secular century twenty-one. A collective Israeli swagger becomes a dagger in the hearts of sworn enemies possessed by psychological baggage bearing the term 'loser'. Indeed, Israel must attain first place in a mind game marathon of immense importance; second place will bring nothing but tsuris to this beleaguered nation. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 28, 2006. |
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PROMOTING ANTI-U.S. ARAB NATIONALISM IN THE U.S. US diplomacy needs people who know Arabic. The best foreign language training for it is in Middlebury, Vermont. The courses, however, insinuate an anti-American, Arab nationalism. That was not Congress' intent when it subsidized attempts to understand the Arabs. Here are examples of the biased indoctrination there? Maps did not label Israel but showed "Palestine" as one country. Lebanon was shown having a temporary border with Syria -- the School was taking Syria's position that Lebanon is not an independent country but belongs to Syria. "Persian Gulf," the official name designated by the UNO and recognized by the Arabs, is called "Arab Gulf." After the grades were in, an Israeli student complained about the maps. The maps were taken down. The Arabic School Administration didn't just notify students of Muslim and Christian prayer groups, it encouraged them to join them. When asked why the many Jewish students weren't offered a Jewish prayer group, the director said he would allow it, but the students would have to apply through him. In the atmosphere created by the extremist maps, they felt too intimidated to. They formed their own group. The other schools of foreign language at Middlebury celebrated the Fourth of July, not the Arabic School. "Visiting faculty from the Middle East treated with noticeable coolness older students sporting closely cropped hair, courteous manners, and discipline suggesting membership in the U.S. armed forces. Students eager to curry favor with Arabist professors would contribute their own suspicions, snide remarks, and cynicism. As if beholden to the Arabist atmosphere, most students and faculty avoided contact altogether with those dubbed hukuma (government) or jaysh (army). While it was an Arabic school policy not to allow faculty and students to bunch up in permanent cliques and faculty had an obligation to engage those who remained aloof, these "suspect" students were, like the Jewish students and self-effacing dhimmi faculty, forced to huddle together during mealtimes and breaks." The School banned alcoholic beverages during school events and student parties. The director claimed the ban was College policy, but the other Schools had no such ban, just as at parties in Lebanon, Tunisia, and Bahrain don't. The School was imposing a strict Islamic interpretation. Likewise, Middlebury instructed the Arabic School dining services to conform to the halal dietary restrictions of Islam. This implied all Arabic speakers to be Muslim and all Muslims to be observant. But less than 20 percent of the Arabic school community was Muslim. No such accommodations were made for the Jewish students who kept kosher, even though their numbers exceeded those of the Muslims. The Wednesday lecture series encouraged disdain for minor ities and constantly condemned the "Orientalists" and non-Arabs. No visiting lecturer portrayed Arabs or Muslims as masters of their own destiny. Not once was the notion entertained that Arabs and Muslims could be oppressors and victimizers as well as victims. Indeed, both the lectures and a weekly Arabic movie series billed as part of the program's curriculum took pains to depict Arabs and Muslims as powerless and abused victims of Western imperialism, Zionist rapacity, modern-day Crusaderism, and a medley of foreign interventions and conspiracies. From the Orientalist bent of an insidious Hollywood, to the wickedness of the U.S. war on terrorism, to the vilification of Middle Eastern minoritiesas imperialist agents and Western moles bent on the destruction of the Arabs and their culture, these lectures and films went to great lengths to malign outsiders and dismiss dissent as product of local quislings. In one lecture, the Lebanese were derided as denying their Arabness. In another, they were mocked for celebrating their mountains rather than, like other Arabs, their desert scenery. Although "Millions of Assyrians, Berbers, Copts, Chaldaeans, Jews, Kurds, and Maronites both in the Middle East and in the diaspora object to unqualified Arab nationalism," the School director insisted that an instructor delete the phrase, "according to Arab nationalists," before "the Arab world (stretches) from the Gulf to the Ocean." He gave an excuse about it being poor grammar. Ironically, Arabs have become less nationalist. Nor should a school language program incorporate ideological propaganda. That does not prepare Americans for dealing with the Mideast properly. Neither is it scholarly (Middle East Forum, 7/30). The West has no intent of destroying the Arabs or of doing more than allowing them to make their own decisions. The West hopes they won't decide to ratify the jihadist vow to destroy our culture. HIZBULLAH ESCALATES Hizbullah warned that it was getting more effective means of fighting. And it did. It launched an imported rocket that can reach Netanya, well past Haifa (Arutz-7, 7/30). This news further exposes the folly of the retreat from Lebanon that entrenched Hizbullah on the border with Israel and allowed it to build up its forces and import arms from Iran via Syria. FACTS REVEALED IN OP.-EDS. One expects the news columns to be informative, and the Op.-Ed. Columns to be judgmental. In the 8/18 NY Sun, however, facts were put into evidence that I had not encountered in the news columns. Seth Gitell reported that the Pakistani troops, a major part of the international UNO force in Somalia, shirked combat. Italian members thwarted US to capture of the offending warlord. The warlord had an understanding with UN contingents that neither side would attack the other. Some of the Italians apparently flashed their headlights towards the city, when US helicopters took off. If the US had liquidated that warlord, the 18 Yanks might not have been lynched. Later, the US tried to protect ethnic Albanian Muslims in Kosovo, after the Europeans let thousands be slain. French officers in NATO informed Serbia of part of the NATO operations plan. The Europeans objected to Gen. Wesley Clark's desire to use ground troops and Apache helicopters and bomb a troublesome Serb airbase in Montenegro. When he ordered air strikes, France protested. (The US specialized in bombing civilian Serbs.) UNO troops in the Congo are having sex with young girls. Mr. Gitell wonders what success UNO forces would have in Lebanon, especially since France, Italy, and some Muslim states, all hostile to Israel, would make up those forces? John Batchelor wrote that Saudi King Abdullah tried to bribe Turkey to abandon its treaties with the US and Israel, if the war widens and Iran enters it. He was trying to buy protection from Iran. The Kurds have sold out to Iran, for protection against the Turkish Army, which would pursue them if they persecuted ethnic Turks in the Kurdish area. If the war widens, the Palestinian Arab refugees in Jordan, armed by Syria, probably would join Syria. The Bedouin, who saved the monarchy before, have been bribed or radicalized by S. Arabia. (Since Jordan is part of Palestine, they aren't refugees.) A previously unstated motive for Iranian interference in Iraq is to neutralize the Shiite holy cities there, so as to leave the Iranian Shiite holy city predominant. It seems as if the whole Mideast is about to go up in flames. What is the US trying to do? Let Hizbullah escape and Iran suffer no defeat. HIZBULLAH FIGHTS DIRTY Hizbullah was found to possess Israeli uniforms (IMRA, 7/31). Hizbullah violates the rules of war, but demands the status of prisoners of war. IRAN'S ROLE IN LEBANON Iran has trained, armed, and directed Hizbullah fighters and sent hundreds of technicians, trained suicide bombers, and other volunteers and built underground depots for Hizbullah. N. Korea sent technicians, too. When Hizbullah claims to have surprises in store for Israel, believe it (IMRA, 7-30 from MEMRI). We are in a world war, not just fighting terrorist organizations. It isn't right that Iran's military escapes retaliation for its role in the war. ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS? Beneath the civilian buildings that Israel bombed in Lebanon were bunkers and arms depots. The UNO and journalists rarely mention that and that Iran and Syria are behind the Hizbullah war. Europeans and Asians are left with the false impression that Israel is attacking civilians and that the war is a local matter, In the spread of anti-Zionist bias, Human Rights Watch is instrumental. HRW issued seven statements falsely accusing Israel of civil rights violations, and only one against Hizbullah, which commits many. HRW sometimes has a slight statement against the Arab side, in answer to critics. Journalists usually accept what the biased NGOs claim, without investigating for themselves. When the claims are checked, they are found false or unsupportable. HRW and Amnesty Intl. use millions of dollars for self-promotion rather than research. The EU promotes NGOs that falsely accuse Israel of aggression (IMRA, 7/30 from Gerald Steinberg). If only there were enough integrity in the major media to expose "human rights" NGOs! ISRAEL SACRIFICING LIVES TO PLEASE BUSH The Olmert administration has agreed to suspend Israel Air Force sorties for 48 hours, ostensibly to give investigators more opportunity to check a bombing error. The IAF would forestall actively prepared attacks, but would deny ground troops air support unless they are under attack. In those 48 hours, Hizbullah could rearm and maneuver without worrying about helicopter gunships. The result may be to get Israelis killed. This was agreed to just to please Pres. Bush (IMRA, 7/30) or should we say, Emperor Bush? Governments must learn to put their national security first. That means Israel must say no to the US, and the President must say no to the antisemites in the State Dept.. There are too many casual accusations against Israel and too many investigations of Israeli military maneuvers. Too much second-guessing of Israeli and US military moves. Investigations can be useful, if done in good faith, but they should not be allowed to impede the fight against Islamist aggression. 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@aol.com. |
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REWARDING TERRORISM
Posted by Yaron Brook, August 28, 2006. |
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Irvine, CA--"President Bush's decision to give a quarter of a billion dollars in 'humanitarian aid' to the Lebanese people is a moral obscenity," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. Given that Hezbollah controls much of Lebanon, and given that most of the destruction inflicted by Israel was done to neighborhoods heavily supportive of Hezbollah, any U.S. assistance to the Lebanese will benefit Hezbollah and the population that supports it. Moreover, the Lebanese people do not deserve any help -- since Israel left Lebanon in 2000, the Lebanese elected Hezbollah to the parliament, gave them two cabinet seats, and permitted the Islamic terror group to arm itself and launch unprovoked attacks on Israel's civilian population. If the goal of President Bush is to win over the Arab street, he will not succeed. No amount of American aid will buy the hearts and minds of those who hate us and want to see us dead. Aid will, however, earn their contempt--by showing them that they can support anti-American terrorism without reprisal. It is bad enough that Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia are still funding Islamic terrorists and their sympathizers. "It is unconscionable that the United States would decide to join them, and help a terror group that has murdered hundreds of Americans in the past," said Dr. Brook. Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute (www.aynrand.org/) in Irvine, CA. He is a recognized Middle-East expert who has written and lectured on a variety of Middle-East issues. Dr. Brook served in Israeli Army Intelligence and has discussed the Israeli-Arab conflict and the war on Islamic totalitarianism on hundreds of radio and TV programs, The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." Contact the writer at media@aynrand.org. |
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WHAT'S WITH THE UN, ARE THEY BLIND?
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 27, 2006. |
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This was sent by Ed Threlkeld (Ed.Threlkeld@dts.ca.gov).
It was written by Yoni Tidi today and it
appeared in the Jerusalem Post
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One should ask; how did the UN observers NOT see this bunker being built? It was 40 yards wide and a mile long. That's a lot of dirt and cement trucks moving around. IDF forces from the Golani Brigade blasted open a Hizbullah bunker overnight Saturday some 400 meters from the security fence near Rosh Hanikra, it was reported on Sunday. The bunker was discovered a mere stone's throw from a UN post. According to Lt.-Col. Jassem Elian, a senior officer in the Golani Brigade, "Hizbullah dug a 40-meter by two-kilometer pit, in which they built dozens of outposts." Elian added that the bunker had "shooting positions of poured concrete," and that the combat posts inside were equipped with phone lines, showers, toilets, air ducts, and emergency exits, as well as logistical paraphernalia for Hizbullah. A Golani officer told the Jerusalem Post that among the force's findings was a Katyusha rocket launcher, most likely used in rocket attacks against northern Israel during the war. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nurit@gmail.com |
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TIMES'S A WASTING
Posted by zalmi, August 28, 2006. |
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Olmert and his motley crew should have been out by now. But he is playing for time, prevaricating on the make-up of the enquiry commission. Netanyahu and Lieberman of the Right should not make the same mistakes with Kadima as Olmert made with Nasrallah. They must now mobilise all forces, without mercy, to oust Kadima in the Knesset. Just as Nasrallah kidnapped our young heroes, Kadima kidnapped the security of our state in its blind adherence to the principles of surrender for peace. There is no peace. There will never be peace. Even if the Palestinian Arabs will it with all their hearts, the Jihadists in Iran and Arabia will never ever permit a peace treaty with Israel. That is implicit in their mission to totally subjugate the Infidels to the will of their God and their prophet. It is also the means of their survival as despotic leaders for as long as the conflict= can be stoked and Israel cast as the external enemy. A faraway conflict far more important than stable homes and education for Palestinian kids, more important than jobs for Iranian school-leavers, more important than womens' rights in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Why do our leaders and leader-writers not understand this? Israel is not Ireland.
Time is a wasting.
Let Olmert smoke his Havanas in opposition. Israel needs strong and brave leadership committed to the secure future of our nation in the fullness of its homeland. Contact zalmi at www.zalmi.net |
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THE MYSTERY OF HATE
Posted by Happy Harry, August 27, 2006. |
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This was written by Yair Lapid. |
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Hundreds of years of fighting, six and a half wars, billions of dollars gone with the wind, tens of thousands of victims, not including the boy who laid down next to me on the rocky beach of lake Karon in 1982 and we both watched his guts spilling out. The helicopter took him and until this day I do not know whether he is dead or survived. All this, and one cannot figure it out. And its not only what happened but all that did not happen - hospitals that were never built, universities that were never opened, roads that were never paved, the three years that were taken from millions of teenagers for the sake of the army. And despite all the above, we still do not have the beginning of a clue to the mystery of where it all started: Why do they hate us so much? I am not talking about the Palestinians this time. Their dispute with us is intimate, focused, and it has a direct effect on their lives. Without getting into the "which side is right" question, it is obvious that they have very personal reasons not to stand our presence here. We all know that eventually this is how it will be solved: in a personal way, between them and us, with blood sweat and tears that will stain the pages of the agreement. Until then, it is a war that could at least be understood, even if no sane person is willing to accept the means that are used to run it by. It is the others. Those I cannot understand. Why does Hassan Nasralla, along with tens of thousands of his supporters, dedicate his life, his visible talents, his country's destiny, to fight a country he has never even seen, people he has never really met and an army that he has no reason to fight? Why do children in Iran, who can not even locate Israel on the map (especially because it is so small), burn its flag in the city center and offer to commit suicide for its elimination? Why do Egyptian and Jordanian intellectuals agitate the innocent and helpless against the peace agreements, even though they know that their failure will push their countries 20 years back? Why are the Syrians willing to stay a pathetic and depressed third world country, for the dubious right to finance terror organizations that will eventually threaten their own country's existence? Why do they hate us so much in Saudi-Arabia? In Iraq? In Sudan? What have we done to them? How are we even relevant to their lives? What do they know about us? Why do they hate us so much in Afghanistan? They don't have anything to eat there, where do they get the energy to hate? This question has so many answers and yet it is a mystery. It is true that it is a religious matter but even religious people make their choices. The Koran (along with the Shariaa - the Muslim parallel to the Jewish Halacha) consists of thousands of laws, why is it that we occupy them so much? There are so many countries who gave them much better reasons to be angry. We did not start the crusades, we did not rule them during the colonial period, we never tried to convert them. The Mongolians, the Seljuk, the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, the British, they all conquered, ruined and plundered the whole region. We did not even try, so how come we are the enemy? And if it is identification with their Palestinians brothers then where are the Saudi Arabian tractors building up the territories that were evacuated? What happened to the Indonesian delegation building a school in Gaza strip? Where are the Kuwaiti doctors with their modern surgical equipment? There are so many ways to love your brothers, why do they all prefer to help their brothers with hating? Is it something that we do? Fifteen hundreds years of anti-Semitism taught us - in the most painful way possible - that there is something about us that irritates the world. So, we did the thing everyone wanted: we got up and left. We have established our own tiny little country, where we can irritate ourselves without interrupting others. We didn't even ask a lot for it. Israel is spread on a smaller territory than 1% of the territory of Saudi-Arabia, with no oil, no minerals, without settling on another existing state's territory. Most of the cities that were bombed this week were not plundered from anyone. Nahariya, Afula, and Karmiel did not even exist until we established them. The other katyusas landed on territories over which no one ever questioned our right with regards to them. In Haifa there were Jews already in the 3rd century BC and Tiberias was the place where the last Sanhedrin sat, so no one can claim we plundered them from anyone. However, the hatred continues. As if no other destiny is possible. Active hatred, poisoned, unstoppable. Last Saturday the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called again "to act for the vanishing of Israel"` as if we were bacteria. We got used to it so much that we don't even ask why. Israel does not hope and never did for Iran to vanish. As long as they wanted, we had diplomatic relations with them. We do not have a common border with them or even any bad memories. And still, they are willing to confront the whole western world, to risk a commercial boycott, to hurt their own quality of life, to crush what's left of their economy and all that for the right to passionately hate us. I am trying to remember and cannot: have we ever done something to them? When? How? Why did he say in his speech that "Israel is the main problem of the Muslim world"? more than a billion people living in the Muslim world, most of them in horrible conditions. They suffer from hunger, poverty, ignorance, bloodshed that spreads from Kashmir to Kurdistan, from dying Darfur to injured Bangladesh. How come we are the main problem? How exactly are we in their way? I refuse to accept the argument that claims "that is just the way they are". They said it about us so many times that we have learned to accept this __expression. There must be another reason, some dark secret that because of it, the citizens of South Lebanon allow to rouse the quiet border, to kidnap the soldiers of an army that has already retreated from their territory, to turn their country into a wasteland exactly at the time they finally escaped twenty years of disasters. We got used to telling ourselves worn expressions - "it's the Iranian influence", or "Syria is stirring behind the scenes" - but it is just too easy explanation. Because what about them? What about their thoughts? What about their hopes, loves, ambitions and their dreams? What about their children? When they send their children to die, does it seem enough for them to say that it was all worth while just because they hate us so much? Contact the poster at happyharry613@yahoo.com |
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THE (NOT) FORGOTTEN PRISONERS OF ZION
Posted by Yaaqov Ben-Yehudah, August 27, 2006. |
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This comes from http://orangeprisonersofzion.blogspot.com. It is a letter from Marilyn Cytryn to Hamodia (www.hamodia.com). |
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Dear Sir, In your August 27th editorial in Hamodia
Our grandson, Shimshon Cytryn, has been accused by the media and
prosecution of severely injuring an Arab (from the Muwassi group)
before the expulsion of Gush Katif. In an interview with the same
Arab on Reshet Bet, he denies being hurt by a "settler" but states
that his injury was incurred by the butt of a soldier's rifle. This
Arab inflicted injuries on several of Shimshon's friends (there are
pictures to prove this.)
This same Arab is part of the Muwassi crew that was battling with
our soldiers during the recent war in Gaza where the air force was
used to protect the ground forces. Despite all this, our grandson
still lingers in jail with criminals and druggies while the Arab has
never been convicted of any transgression.
Shimshon's appeal for house arrest was due to take place on August
28th. It has been postponed a week as the prosecutor claimed not to
be ready. Our concerns should primarily be with the unfairness of our
own legal system.
Sincerely,
Contact Yaaqov Ben-Yehuday and yaaqov.ben.yehudah@gmail.com |
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WE MUST NOT BE CENSORED BY POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND WE CANNOT TIPTOE AROUND THE ISSUES
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 27, 2006. |
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Are the British finally waking up? Like Americans, our brothers, the British, may need one of two more whacks to really wake up and take stance and proper measures. This article is by Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor The Daily
Telegraph (UK). It appeared August 25, 2006 in The Daily Telegram
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The alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners and last year's terrorist attacks on London have made more people fear Islam as a religion, not merely its extremist elements, a poll for The Daily Telegraph has found. A growing number of people fear that the country faces "a Muslim problem" and more than half of the respondents to the YouGov survey said that Islam posed a threat to Western liberal democracy. That compares with less than a third after the September 11 terrorist attacks on America five years ago. The findings were revealed as Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, conceded that the multi-culturalist approach encouraged by the Left for two decades had probably been a mistake and could have contributed to the alienation that many young Muslims said they felt and experienced. Figures published yesterday by the Office for National Statistics also showed that immigration was now the driving force behind population growth. Last year the number of people living in Britain rose by 375,000 on the previous year to more than 60 million. That was the biggest annual rise since 1962 at the height of the post-war baby boom. Most of the rise was the result of record levels of immigration, which also produced the highest birth rate for 30 years. The YouGov survey confirms ministers' fears that the country is becoming polarised between Muslims and the rest of the population, which is suspicious of them, and that a belief in "a clash of civilisations" has taken root. Since a similar poll was conducted after the July 7 bombings in London last year, there has been a significant increase in the number of people worried about some of their Muslim compatriots. The proportion of those who believe that "a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism" has nearly doubled from 10 per cent a year ago to 18 per cent now. The number who believe that "practically all British Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding citizens who deplore terrorist acts as much as any-one else" has fallen from 23 per cent in July last year to 16 per cent. However, there remains strong opposition to the security profiling of airline passengers based on their ethnicity or religion. A higher proportion than last year now feels that the police and MI5 should focus their counter-terrorism efforts on Muslims and far fewer people are worried that such an approach risks dividing the country or offending law-abiding Muslims. Most strikingly, there has been a substantial increase over the past five years in the numbers who appear to subscribe to a belief in a clash of civilisations. When YouGov asked in 2001 whether people felt threatened by Islam, as distinct from fundamentalist Islamists, only 32 per cent said they did. That figure has risen to 53 per cent. Five years ago, a majority of two to one thought that Islam posed no threat, or only a negligible one, to democracy. Now, by a similar ratio, people think it is a serious threat. The findings illustrate the huge task facing the Government's new "cohesion and integration commission," which was formally launched yesterday, charged with finding out whether the multi-cultural experiment has failed and, if so, why. Miss Kelly said that "difficult questions" had to be posed and answered by the commission, which was promised by the Government more than 12 months ago in its response to the July 7 atrocities on the London transport system that killed 52 passengers and four Muslim suicide bombers. "In our attempt to avoid imposing a single British identity and culture, have we ended up with some communities living in isolation from each other with no common bonds between them?" she asked. Miss Kelly said that diversity had been "a huge asset" but she acknowledged that the wave of immigration, the highest in British history, had brought fresh challenges. These included the importation of "global tensions" and the growing alienation of white Britons worried by the pace of social and cultural change. After years when many on the Left have either shut down the debate on cultural diversity or sought to avoid it, Miss Kelly said: "We must not be censored by political correctness and we cannot tiptoe around the issues." She said: "Our ideas and policies should not be based on special treatment for minority ethnic faith communities. That would only exacerbate division rather than help build cohesion." The commission will be chaired by Darra Singh, the head of Ealing council, in west London. He called for "a vigorous and open debate about diversity based on facts, not scaremongering". He said: "The commission is a real opportunity to get to grips with this challenge." Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "To be truly effective, any attempt to reach out to disaffected members of Muslim communities must incorporate honest debate about Government foreign policy and some counter-terrorism measures." Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nurit@gmail.com |
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WHAT IS 'HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH' WATCHING
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 27, 2006. |
| This was written by Alan M. Dershowitz and it appeared in the Jerusalem Post August 24, 2006. |
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When it comes to Israel and its enemies, Human Rights Watch cooks the books about facts, cheats on interviews, and puts out predetermined conclusions that are driven more by their ideology than by evidence. These are serious accusations, and they are demonstrably true. Consider the following highly publicized "conclusion" reached by Human Rights Watch about the recent war in Lebanon between Hizbullah and Israel: "Human Rights Watch found no cases in which Hizbullah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack." Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nurit@gmail.com |
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OTHERWISE COMPASSIONATE HEARTSTRINGS
Posted by Women in Green, August 26, 2006. |
| This was written by Sarah Honig and it appeared in the Jerusalem Post. |
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On Friday night, July 14, the conflict in Israel's north was already a
few days old. Some folks in battered Nahariya decided to leave town.
Among them were the Pesachovs, who sought safety at Grandma Yehudit
Itzkowitz's home in Moshav Meron. 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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WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, UNIFIL? YOU BROADCST ISRAELI TROOP MOVEMENTS
Posted by Lori Lowenthal Marcus, August 26, 2006. |
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DURING THE RECENT month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel, U.N. "peacekeeping" forces made a startling contribution: They openly published dail real-time intelligence, of obvious usefulness to Hezbollah, on the location, equipment, and force structure of Israeli troops in Lebanon. UNIFIL--the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978--is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old. Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its cover of the other side ever got. This war was fought on cable television and the Internet, and a lot of official information was available in real time. But the specific military intelligence UNIFIL posted could not be had from any non-U.N. source. The Israeli press--always eager to push the envelope--did not publish the details of troop movements and logistics. Neither the European press nor the rest of the world media, though hardly bastions of concern for the safety of Israeli troops, provided the IDF intelligence details that UNIFIL did. A search of Israeli government websites failed to turn up the details published to the world each day by the U.N. Inquiries made of various Israeli military and government representatives and analysts yielded near unanimous agreement that at least some of UNIFIL's postings, in the words of one retired senior military analyst, "could have exposed Israeli soldiers to grave danger." These analysts, including a current high ranking military official, noted that the same intelligence would not have been provided by the U.N. about Israel's enemies. Sure enough, a review of every single UNIFIL web posting during the war shows that, while UNIFIL was daily revealing the towns where Israeli soldiers were located, the positions from which they were firing, and when and how they had entered Lebanese territory, it never described Hezbollah movements or locations with any specificity whatsoever. Compare the vague "various locations" language with this UNIFIL posting from July 25: Yesterday and during last night, the IDF moved significant reinforcements, including a number of tanks, armored personnel carriers, bulldozers and infantry, to the area of Marun Al Ras inside Lebanese territory. The IDF advanced from that area north toward Bint Jubayl, and south towards Yarun. Or with the posting on July 24, in which UNIFIL revealed that the IDF stationed between Marun Al Ras and Bint Jubayl were "significantly reinforced during the night and this morning with a number of tanks and armored personnel carriers." This partiality is inconsistent not only with UNIFIL's mission but also with its own stated policies. In a telling incident just a few years back, UNIFIL vigorously insisted on its "neutrality"--at Israel's expense. On October 7, 2000, three IDF soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah just yards from a UNIFIL shelter and dragged across the border into Lebanon, where they disappeared. The U.N. was thought to have videotaped the incident or its immediate aftermath. Rather than help Israel rescue its kidnapped soldiers by providing this evidence, however, the U.N. obstructed the Israeli investigation. For months the Israeli government pleaded with the U.N. to turn over any videotape that might shed light on the location and condition of its missing men. And for nine months the U.N. stonewalled, insisting first that no such tape existed, then that just one tape existed, and eventually conceding that there were two more tapes. During those nine months, clips from the videotapes were shown on Syrian and Lebanese television. Explaining their eventual about-face, U.N. officials said the decision had been made by the on-site commanders that it was not their responsibility to provide the material to Israel; indeed, that to do so would violate the peacekeeping mandate, which required "full impartiality and objectivity." The U report on the incident was adamant that its force had "to ensure that military and other sensitive information remains in their domain and is not passed to parties to a conflict." Stymied in its efforts to recover the men while they were still alive, Israel ultimately agreed to an exchange in January 2004: It released 429 Arab prisoners and detainees, among them convicted terrorists, and the bodies of 60 Lebanese decedents and members of Hezbollah, in exchange for the bodies of the three soldiers. Blame for the deaths of those three Israelis can be laid, at least in part, at the feet of the U.N., which went to the wall defending its inviolable pledge never to share military intelligence about one party with another. UNIFIL has just done what it then vowed it could never do. Once again, it has acted to shield one side in the conflict and to harm the other. Why is this permitted? For that matter, how did the U.N. obtain such detailed and timely military intelligence in the first place, before broadcasting it for Israel's enemies to see? Lori Lowenthal Marcus is a lawyer and President of the Zionist Organization of America, Greater Philadelphia District. This article appeared in The Weekly Standard, Volume 011. Issue 47. September 4, 2006. |
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THIS IS BEAUTIFUL
Posted by David Nathan, August 26, 2006. |
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What it means to be a Jew
I am not the least afraid to go any place,
I didn't change or stop doing anything I used to do before this mess began! People tend to forget that twice the casualties From terror
More people still die from heart attack, cancer, And other things,
Don't misunderstand me,
WE HAVE NEVER BEEN BETTER OFF!!!! It's only TV and the media
Only 60 years ago,
No Country,
We were then 650,000 Jews!
Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, attacked all at once. The country the UN "gave us"
The country started from scratch!
We fought against
We have today
Intel - Microsoft - IBM develop their stuff here. Our doctors win world prizes For medical developments. We made the desert flourish, Selling oranges and vegetables to the world. Israel has sent its own satellite into Space!!
We sit proudly,
The only countries in the world
To think that only 60 years ago,
We crawled out of the burning ashes of Europe,
Who the hell was Mr. Arafat To make me Scared?
You make me laugh! Passover was celebrated;
Take it easy, folks, We will overcome The present enemies too. No matter Which part of human history you try! Think of it, For us, The Jewish people, Our situation has never been better!!! So, Let's Lift our Heads High,
Any nation or culture That tried to mess around with us Was destroyed -
Egypt?
The Greeks?
The Romans?
The Third Reich?
And look at us,
As long as we keep our identity,
So, sorry for not worrying, Not bitching, Not crying, Not being scared. Things are O.K. here. They surely can be better, But still: Don't fall for the media junk,
Yes, our morale is low, So what? It's only because we weep for our dead While they enjoy the blood. This is the same reason why, We will win, after all. You can forward this e-mail If you choose. To the whole Jewish community, And to people throughout the world. They are part of our strength. It might help some of them To keep their heads up high. Tell them That there is nothing to worry about. Tell them to think BIG, and To see the whole picture. "See You Next Year in Jerusalem." Contact the author at davenathan@aol.com |
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TEACHING DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL IN THE MAINSTREAM SCHOOLS OF THE
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY
Posted by David Bedein, August 26, 2006. |
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As this is being written, in late August 2006, news wires around the world are running a story that Machmud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, has launched a new peace initiative with Israel. However, the new school books that this same Machmud Abbas has now introduced in the Palestinian Authority school system - run independently of Hamas - represent a curriculum that prepares a new generation of Palestinians to destroy Israel. Following fervent support given to Hizbullah's total war on Israel by Abbas and the Palestinian Authority this summer, this raises the question as to whether the new school year in the Palestinian Authority, opening next week, will simply ad fuel to the fire of the Palestinian Authority's war against Israel, instead of a new peace initiative with the Jewish State. Since these PA school books have also been incorporated in the Arab schools in Jerusalem, which raises cause for further concern, while a movement is afoot in the Israeli Arab schools in the rest of Israel to adopt the PA curriculum in their schools. Indeed, the latest study of PA textbooks, (ww.intelligence.org.il/eng/default.htm), commisioned by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Herzelia, www.intelligence.org.il, an agency that had been consistently supportive of the Oslo Peace Process, speaks for itself. Here are some pearls of wisdom that Palestinian children will learn from the new school books of the Palestinian Authority this year: 1. Israel does not appear on any maps of the world in the new PA texbooks, while maps of Israel replace the name Israel with Palestine in all of the new Palestinian Authority school books. (p. 4) Tarikh al-Hadarat al-Qadima (History of Ancient Civilizations), 5th grade textbook, p. 53. Al-Iqstisad al-Manzili (Home Economy), 10th grade textbook, p. 42, Tarikh al-'Alam al-Hadith wal-Mu'asir (History of the New Modern World) 10th grade textbook, p. 86. 2. The new Palestinian School Books "annex" sites in Israel to Palestine: "Haifa is a Palestinian seaport", (p. 7) (Lughatuna al-Jamila (Our Beautiful Language) Vol. 2, 5th grade textbook, p. 86). "Galilee, Nazareth and Beit She'an are regions in Palestine" (p. 7) (Al-Iqtisad al-Manzili (Home Economy), 10th grade textbook, pp. 36-37). 3. The new Palestinian school books mention Israel only as an enemy, in reference to "occupation of lands" in 1948 and 1967. Ex: "there is no doubt that the Israeli occupation has a negative impact on [Palestinian] agriculture and its export" (p. 8) (Lughatuna al-Jamila (Our Beautiful Language) Vol. 1, 10th grade textbook, p. 102). 4. The new Palestinian school books present Zionism only as an enemy movement. a. "the Palestinian people are under an oppressive siege, limiting their movement and way of life" ( p. 9) (Al-Tarbiyah al-Islamiyyah (Islamic Education), Vol. 1, 5th grade textbook, p. 49). 5. The new Palestinian School Books make the false claim that an "extremist Zionist" set fire to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969 (p. 12) (Tarikh al'Alam al-Hadith wal-Mu'asir (History of the new Modern World), 10th grade textbook, p. 106) when it was really a mentally unstable fundamentalist Christian Australian 6. The new Palestinian School Books teach that the 1st Zionist Congress at Basel fostered the Zionist State based on a secret decision of what came came to be known as the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion". (p. 13) (Tarikh al-'Alam al-Hadith wal Mu-'asir (History of the News Modern World), 10th grade textbook, pp. 60-64). 7. The new Palestinian School books teach that the only ancient inhabitants of Israel were Arabs, ignoring any ancient Jewish presence. "Concentrated...in the land of Al-Sham {Greater Syria}...was the culture of the Canaanite and Aramaic peoples who migrated there from the Arab peninsula" (p.14-15) (Tarikh al- Hadarat al-Qadima (History of Ancient Civilizations), 5th grade textbook, Foreward). 8. The new Palestinian school books teach that Palestinians must use war and violence to accomplish their goals, especially martyrdom. (p.18) The heroic mother, "who incessantly presents one sacrifice [fida'] after another" (Lughatuna al-Jamila (Our Beautiful Language), Vol 2, 5th grade textbook, p. 31). The warrior goes to war faced with one of the good options: victory or martyrdom in battle for the sake of Allah. (Ibid. Vol. 1, 5th grade textbook, p. 70). (p.19) "Allah designated the people of this land (Al-Sham and Palestine) to an important task: they must stand on the forefront of the Muslim campaign against their enemies, and only if they fulfill their duy to their religion, nation, and land will they be rewarded as stated in the scriptures." (Al-Tarbiya al-Islamiyyah (Islamic Education), Vol 2, 10th grade textbook, p. 50). 9. The new Palestinian school books feature children with names such as Jihad (holy war) and Nidal (struggle). (p.22) (Tarikh al-Hadarat al-Qadima (History of Ancient Civilizations), 5th grade textbook, p.6). 10. The new Palestinian school books stress the importance of "return" of refugees to all of Palestine - by violence. (p. 22) "The wrong must be made right by returning them to their homes: we returned to the homeland after a long absence". (Lughatuna al-Jamila (Our Beautiful Language), Vol 2, 5th grade textbook, p. 43). "Returning to the homes, the plains and the mountains, under the banners of glory, jihad [holy war] and struggle" (Lughatuna al-Jamila (Our Beautiful anguage), Vol 1, 5th grade textbook, p.88). David Bedein is Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency. (http://Israelbehindthenews.com). Contact him by email at media@actcom.co.il or go to www.ibtn.co.il |
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US STATE DEPT INVESTIGATING ISRAEL'S USE OF US-MADE CLUSTER BOMBS
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 26, 2006. |
As background -- this comes from yesterday's Jerusalem Post.
The State Department's Office of Defense Trade Controls launched an investigation into Israel's use of three types of American weapons, anti-personnel munitions that spray bomblets over a wide area, The New York Times reported. The Los Angeles Times interpreted it as you'd expect. I wrote this letter to the LA Times. |
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Dear LATimes editor: Trying to accuse Israel of illegal use of cluster type bombs is egregious. One cannot be bias as to the parameters of the use of such bombs. Where is the outcry and condemnations about Hezbollah's many, way too many to count, war crimes and illegal actions? It is fast becoming clear that Hezbollah is the victim and Israel is the war criminal. The world has lost all its moral values and moral compass! Starting a war just because I wanted to and got the urge to do so is illegal, inexcusable and unacceptable; Crossing borders, killing eight and kidnapping two soldiers from sovereign nation's land are illegal; Not allowing the International Red Cross to visit and report on the condition of the kidnapped soldiers is illegal, inexcusable and unacceptable; Shooting 4,000 missiles loaded with thousands of lethal ball bearings on sovereign country's civilians and civilian residence is inexcusable and unacceptable; Damaging the entire northern Israel, just because I wanted to start a war is illegal, inexcusable and unacceptable; Using [Lebanese] people as human shields in warfare acts is inexcusable and unacceptable war crimes; Using fabricated propaganda is most insightful, inexcusable and unacceptable; such propaganda only taints and misleads the mind of the, not so elite, masses; Allowing Iran and its proxy Hezbollah to call to wipe out the population living in Israel and nobody in the international community reacts, except with polite words is illegal, inexcusable and unacceptable and a crime against humanity. So how legal it is for a responsible newspaper not to point all the above motioned out? Why there is always such a rush, whether justified or not, to accuse Israel and Jews of whatever possible? What is it with the world? Where have the moral compass gone? What makes Amnesty International a bit credible when this organization's record is stained and marked with lies, deceit and immoral victimization of the victims? If I can have an explanation to the above points then there is room to discuss whether Israel was justified to drop cluster type bombs on Hezbollah positions or not. As far as I am concerned Israel was way to gentle in its attempt to bring Hezbollah to its final demise. Other countries, including the USA, would have acted by far more vigorously and would have used by far more lethal, than cluster type, bombs and NO ONE would have said a word or started an investigation. The world is fast sinking into no moral compass abyss. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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THE NECESSARY ACCOUNTING
Posted by Naomi Ragen, August 26, 2006. |
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This article was wrtten by Caroline Glick and appeared yesterday in
the Jerusalem Post
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Today two groups of protesters are gathered outside the Prime Minister's Office. The Movement for Quality Government is demanding the establishment of an official commission of inquiry, headed by a Supreme Court justice to investigate the handling of the war in Lebanon. Down the road, IDF reservists are demanding that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz resign. The critical question arising from the separate protests is whether or not the country's current political and military leadership are capable of drawing the proper lessons from the war. If Israel's national and military leaders are incapable of drawing the appropriate lessons, then there is an urgent need to embrace the reservists' demand that both the political and military leaders of the country resign. Currently, the Israeli public is referring to the latest war as the Second Lebanon War. Yet this is untrue. The latest war was fought on two fronts - Lebanon and Gaza. It was precipitated by Palestinian aggression against Israel from Gaza. By referring to the war as the Lebanon War, the regional nature of the war is ignored. The name does more to confuse than to clarify what just befell us. In many respects, the ability of the Olmert government and the IDF to learn from their experience can be assessed by how they are reacting to events in the Palestinian Authority as they have unfolded against the backdrop of Hizbullah's perceived victory in Lebanon. Specifically, their refusal to acknowledge the role Fatah and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas are playing in the current situation is a cause for alarm. This refusal manifests itself in Israel's reaction to both the abduction of Fox News journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig a week and a half ago in Gaza and the continued captivity of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit. Centanni and Wiig were kidnapped by PA security forces associated with Fatah. When their demand that Abbas pay them money in exchange for Centanni and Wiig was refused, the kidnappers sold their hostages to a Fatah terror cell that currently holds them. That is, Abbas's security forces and his Fatah movement rather than Hamas are responsible for the two men's fate. Moreover, knowledgeable Palestinian sources state with certainty that Shalit has been held since his abduction in June in Khan Yunis by Fatah and Hamas terrorists. Khan Yunis is controlled by forces loyal to Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan. If Abbas were interested in seeing Shalit released, his forces would be able to free Shalit at any time. But Abbas is not interested in releasing Shalit. Rather, he is demanding that the Hamas government order Shalit be transferred to his control to enable him to negotiate his exchange for hundreds of terrorists imprisoned in Israel. Abbas's dispute with Hamas is over who will get the credit for springing Palestinian terrorists from prison. Hamas is unwilling to give up the glory, and so is Abbas. So Shalit remains in captivity. Abbas's handling of both hostage situations leads to one conclusion: He is part of the problem. If the government wanted to bring about Shalit's release, it would be placing all the responsibility for his capture and captivity on Abbas. It would have isolated Abbas in the infamous Mukata in Ramallah, just as it isolated Yasser Arafat there during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002. But the government is doing none of these things. The government is not acting against Abbas and Fatah because it is ideologically unable to define Abbas or Fatah or the Palestinian Authority as Israel's enemy. Olmert and his colleagues require the fiction of Abbas as a moderate leader and the fiction of Fatah as a moderate counterweight to Hamas to justify their planned policy of retreating from Judea and Samaria and their current policy of continuing construction of the security fence and removing scattered outpost communities. Both these policies involve Israeli relinquishment of control over the territorial expanse of Judea and Samaria. THE STRATEGIC logic that stands at the core of the government's policies is that territory is a liability, that static defenses like the security fence, augmented by the air force and commando units, will be able to defend Israel's cities and towns from attack. Unfortunately, the IDF shares this strategic logic. This fact was made clear Monday by Division Commander Brig.-Gen. Guy Tzur in remarks before reserve officers about the results of the war in Lebanon. According to officers who participated in the closed meeting, Tzur told them that Israel was better off for not achieving its strategic objective of dismantling Hizbullah in Lebanon. We won the war in 1967 and since then we have been paying the price of that victory, he said. We won the war in 1982 and for 18 years we were forced to remain in the Lebanese quagmire, he continued. That is - according to Tzur, who claimed that he was repeating a statement made by OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh - it is not in Israel's interest to conquer and control territory used by its enemies to attack it. Victory, which requires us to hold territory, is by this reasoning, not in Israel's interest. This was the strategic logic that directed both the government and the IDF in the war in Lebanon. This was the logic that brought the General Staff, Olmert and Peretz to believe that it was possible to win the war with air power and special forces alone. This was the logic that informed the IDF's decision to concentrate the belated ground offensive in the condensed territory of the villages along the northern border and not order the forces to take over the territorial expanses around the villages, which controlled the villages, while quickly advancing to the Litani River. This was the logic that caused the IDF to fight against Hizbullah as if it were fighting terror cells in Jenin. The IDF reservists who have set up camp across from the Prime Minister's Office and demand the resignation of Israel's top political and military leaders are united in their deep sense of frustration. They share the view that their fighting methods in Lebanon were unsuited to the enemy they faced in battle. They are correct. The IDF's campaign did not permanently diminish Hizbullah's abilities as a fighting force. It did not stop the missile attacks on northern Israel. It did not bring IDF hostages Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev home. The campaign failed to achieve its stated objectives because it lacked a guiding strategy regarding the control of territory. Olmert, Peretz and Halutz based the war effort on a view that Israel must not control territory. And so they adopted the notion that it would be possible to destroy Hizbullah from the air. When that concept was proven false, it was replaced with the idea that special forces augmented by small numbers of regular combat forces could clean out the villages along the border and so deal a heavy blow to Hizbullah. When that concept roved false in Maroun Aras and Bint Jbail, it was replaced first by paralysis and then by an intellectual breakdown. THIS BREAKDOWN led to the belated decision to send in three divisions. This was the right decision, but rather than let the troops advance as a massed force and so overrun Hizbullah positions and take control over the heights surrounding the villages before being sent in to clear out the bunkers, the massive forces were deployed as if they were a small force. The men were concentrated in condensed areas of the villages and not fanned out along the surrounding heights. Their high concentration turned them into easy targets for Hizbullah's anti-tank missiles. The way the troops were deployed suited all of Hizbullah's comparative advantages while bringing neither the IDF's advantage of mass nor its advantage of firepower to bear. As became clear after the first several days of engagements, Hizbullah fought neither an offensive nor a defensive war. It did not attack IDF formations nor did it defend its battle stations. Its doctrine is simple: bleed Israeli civilians and IDF units to break Israel's will and humiliate it. Its success in achieving its aim was manifested by the government's decision to sue for a cease-fire. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 not only cancelled out any tactical advantage the IDF had managed to gain, it paved the way for Hizbullah's rearmament and for the deployment of the UNIFIL force that will act not to dismantle Hizbullah but to prevent Israel from taking any further action to win the war decisively. Yet, still clinging to the view that territory is bad, neither the General Staff, which insists that Israel won, nor the government, which is begging anti-Israel governments in Europe to send their forces to Lebanon, is capable of understanding what just happened. This brings us back to the demand for the formation of a judicial commission of inquiry. There is no doubt that it is necessary to conduct a serious review of the war in Lebanon and Gaza. But there is no way that such a review can be accomplished by a Supreme Court justice. There are two principal reasons for this. First, an official commission is a legal body and its proceedings are legal proceedings. But the issue of why Israel failed to achieve any of its objectives in the war is not an issue of law. It is an issue of policy and military operations. Judges are no more qualified than the average citizen to investigate these issues. Secondly, and more importantly, for the past decade and a half, the Supreme Court has been leading the offensive against the notion that Israel should either identify its enemies or defeat them. For the past 15 years the Supreme Court has been constricting the tactical freedom of the IDF in Lebanon, Judea, Samaria and Gaza. It has inserted itself into military planning and political initiatives in a manner that has undermined the IDF's ability to adequately protect Israeli citizens and territory from assault by outlawing tactics that contradict the liberal justices' multicultural and post-nationalist sensibilities. Indeed, it is just these sensibilities, and the fear of Supreme Court intervention, that has tied the hands of successive governments and General Staffs in attempting to confront the growing unconventional threats to Israel emanating from Hizbullah and Palestinian terrorist groups. From all this it becomes self-evident that both the demand for Olmert, Peretz and Halutz to resign and the demand that an accounting be made of the mistakes that led Israel to its strategic defeat in Lebanon are necessary. It is also clear that the only way that the proper lessons can be drawn is for the current military and political leadership to be replaced by alternative leaders capable of understanding the nature of the threats that surround us. For both objectives to be achieved, the only commission of inquiry that should be established is the inquiry of the citizens of the state that takes place in general elections. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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ANFAL, ARABS, AND AUSCHWITZ ...AN OPEN LETTER TO MY DEAR KURDISH FRIENDS
Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, August 26, 2006. |
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For over three decades now, I have admired and staunchly defended you -- at times, at great cost to myself. As a doctoral student in the '70s--whose career was nipped in the bud by a tenured anti-Israel professor at Ohio State University, whose only mention of Kurds in any of his courses was when he mocked their cause while telling tales about his travels through Turkey--I, alone, had to bring the plight of your people up in the midst of ceaseless discussions centered around creating a 22nd state for Arabs at the expense of the Jews' sole, resurrected one. The most advanced doctoral student in the program never got a dissertation advisor. Today, I take pride in the wonderful progress you have made in Iraqi Kurdistan. Stay united, my friends--your divisions have repeatedly played into the hands of your surrounding enemies in the past, and many will work to resurrect them in the future. My country's overthrow of Saddam was commendable. But with Saddam gone, it was somewhat like the loss of Marshall Tito for Yugoslavia. As the latter was an artificial country that was really never meant to be, consisting of age-old enemies pieced and glued together, for others' interests, with the collapse of an empire after World War I, so too was Iraq. You were promised independence back then, when folks were proclaiming Arabia for the Arabians, Judea for the Jews, Armenia for the Armenians, and so forth. President Woodrow Wilson supported your cause. But that was not to be British petroleum politics acted in collusion with Arab nationalism to abort your aspirations. You see, many of the same forces at work to deny your rights--the rights of some thirty million Kurds who are still stateless today, never knowing what the morrow will bring, while Arabs proclaim over six million square miles of territory as purely Arab patrimony--have been at work to deny the same to your ancient neighbors, the Jews. The Hebrew Bible speaks of the Hurrians -- your ancestors. And those forces include powerful ones right in my own country. While our histories are not exactly analogous, there is still much that is in deed too often tragically similar. There were times when you joined the Pan Islamic movement to subjugate your Christian and Jewish neighbors, holding them as virtual slaves as my friend and scholar, Dr. Andrew Bostom, recently reminded me. And Salah al-Din became Islam's hero against the Crusaders. But what would the latter have said had he lived today, in the very Syria where his statue is now featured, or in Iraq, where Saddam, on trial for Anfal, sees himself as the modern day Salah-al-Din? My dear Kurdish friends, do you not see a similarity between how Arabs have viewed your aspirations and rights in the age of nationalism and how they view that of the Jews? Recall that one-half of Israel's Jewish population are refugee families from that allegedly -- purely Arab patrimony, -- and another million of these folks fled to France, the Americas, and elsewhere. Like the Kurdish child forced to sing songs in Syria praising his Arab identity, Jews also had to consent to a forced Arabization in order to just survive. While there was no Holocaust per se in the -- Arab -- East (though in modern times the Mufti of Jerusalem was Hitler's good buddy), the Jew also frequently never knew what to expect from day to day -- and there were plenty of massacres, pogroms, forced conversions, and such to go around. Not to mention the expected state of dhimmitude and forced Arabization that was simply expected to be accepted. And any of whom the Arabs call kilab yahud--Jew dogs--who dared dream the same dream Arabs proclaim solely for themselves--a life of dignity and political self expression--paid the ultimate price -- that same price hundreds of thousands of your own people have paid for also dreaming that same exclusively Arab dream. Long ago I predicted the obvious, while hoping I would be wrong. As Yugoslavia imploded and exploded with Tito gone, Iraq's days were numbered as well with the overthrow of the Saddam. Whatever else he was, he was also the temporary glue. And without him, the age-old blood feuds were bound to erupt -- especially with the Big Brother Shi'a Ayatollahs to the east. Call it a civil war or not as of yet, a unified Iraq's days are numbered. It's a matter of just how much longer America is willing to bleed its economy and its blood. And, my Kurdish friends, if you believe the Shi'a have your own best interests close to their hearts, guess again. But you are not that foolish. And we already know quite well what Sunni Arabs think about your cause. We've had close to a century of those lessons. I guess I can understand some of you distancing yourselves from Israel, the Jew of the Nations. You have to live, after all, amongst those who have already proclaimed that the birth of Kurdistan would be viewed as that of another Israel. And Israel, at times, has also distanced itself from you--largely in order to appease its powerful on again, off again Muslim friends, the Turks. I 'm not thrilled about that. While the Turks have no trouble demanding a 22 nd state for Arabs--and second one for them in -- Palestine -- (Jordan already created in 1922 from the bulk of the original 1920 mandate), they expect everyone, including Israel, to oppose Kurdish aspirations for a sole state of their own. Now, when the Arabs' Anfal campaign to eradicate your people a few decades past is again at least being mentioned (but certainly not showcased as it should), the gassed Kurdish children of Anfal and those of the Jews at Auschwitz share this other nasty thing in common. They were both targeted for genocide because of who they were. Think of the charges that have been brought against Israel because of its war against Hizbullah--an organization which hijacked a nation and which is dedicated to Israel's destruction. Disproportionate force we have constantly heard. Truth be told, if killing Arabs was all that Israel wanted to do, with the amount of bombs and such dropped, there would not be one Arab left by now in the targeted areas. Israel tried as hard as possible--given the fact that Hizbullah, like Hamas & Co., habitually uses their own people as human shields--to limit the loss of innocent life. But I believe you already know this. So, what's next? Demand your rights when the inevitable comes. Do not settle for less this time. The hard-won autonomy you have must be solidified. Hopefully, my own country will come to its senses--despite the Arabists too often in control at the State Department--and realize that the one best shot at furthering American values in the region lies with the creation of a strong Kurdish state, willing to live in peace with its neighbors, but also able to deflect their aggression. As Israel has been a haven for Jews seeking freedom and safety, open your even larger doors to your own oppressed brethren elsewhere. Don't foment turmoil amid Kurdish populations in Iran, Turkey, and Syria, for this will backfire both on yourselves in Iraq and your brothers across the borders. Having said this, you should not shy away for demanding civil rights for those folks. Those who seek to live in an independent Kurdish state will have-- like Jews with Israel--a place to go to. While Ahmadinejad sets up cartoon exhibitions denying the Holocaust and deman ding Israel's destruction allegedly for Arab rights, he continues to butcher Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis, and Arabs in his own country for the crime of demanding their own rights in Iran. I dare dream a dream -- Are you ready? Here it goes. America sets up bases in the Kurdish north--with your consent, of course. Like Incerlik in Turkey. It trains and equips a powerful Kurdish military, equipped with the same state of the art weapons it supplies to Arab despots. While the Arabs blow each other apart to the south and Iran plots its long-awaited revenge, an economically, politically, and militarily secure Kurdish state emerges in the only area in Iraq that has any real chance at stability -- your own. I see a future alliance between the forces of peace and tolerance -- Israel and Free Kurdistan. While I would like to include others in this as well, the sad fact is that even in the so-called moderate Arab countries, most are still just biding their time and have still not reconciled to the fact that other peoples, besides Arabs, are entitled to a slice of national dignity in the region -- especially since those folks have suffered under Arab rule. And for those who claim that all was well for Jews until they dared dream that dream spoken of earlier, I have not one but two bridges to sell you. The Sorbonne's Tunisian Jewish professor, Albert Memmi, and the Egyptian Jewess, Bat Ye'or (dhimmitude), are essential reading on this topic. As with Kurds, Jews were simply expected to submit and accept Arab subjugation and Arabization. Together our peoples hold the promise for a better future for all in the region. Hopefully, others will eventually join us in building that better tomorrow for all. Impossible, you say? The Jew's King Solomon had an alliance with Hiram from Phoenicia--Lebanon--millennia before the Arabs' Caliphal imperialist armies conquered both lands (around the same time they took yours as well). The Temple of Jerusalem was built from Hiram's cedars. An Israeli child is born with the expectation that he or she will help heal and bring good to the world -- including to those who seek only to destroy. I wish I could say the same for the Arab child. Too often the latter is seen as a potential human bomb to blow up those who simply want a small slice of the same rights Arabs demand so much of for themselves. Arafat loved to call the Arab mother his best weapon. Sadly, for the Arab, there are too many Darfurs, Anfals, and such--in both th e past and the present--for this self-centered, subjugating, intolerant behavior to be mere coincidence. And, my dear Kurdish friends, both of our peoples deserve something better. Think of the potential in the days, months, and years which lie ahead. 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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CONTROVERSIAL MUSLIM GROUP GETS VIP AIRPORT SECURITY TOUR
Posted by David Nathan, August 26, 2006. |
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This article comes fro World Net Daily (WND) August 18, 2006. |
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Feds show CAIR latest screening steps, sensitive counterterrorism procedures The Department of Homeland Security took a Muslim group with known past ties to terror organizations on a VIP tour of security operations at the nation's busiest airportat the same time British authorities were working to break up a plot to blow up U.S. airlines. On June 21, a senior DHS official from Washington personally guided Muslim officials from the Council on American-Islamic Relations on a behind-the-scenes tour of Customs screening operations at O'Hare International Airport in response to CAIR complaints that Muslim travelers were being unfairly delayed as they entered the U.S. from abroad. CAIR is a spin-off of the Islamic Association for Palestine, identified by two former FBI counterterrorism chiefs as a "front group" for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Several CAIR leaders have been convicted on terror-related charges. During the airport tour, CAIR was taken on a walk through the point-of-entry, Customs stations, secondary screening and interview rooms. In addition, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents were asked to describe for CAIR representatives various features of the high-risk passenger lookout system. In a meeting, Brian Humphrey, Customs and Border Patrol's executive director of field operations, assured CAIR officials that agents do not single out Muslim passengers for special screening and that they must undergo a mandatory course in Muslim sensitivity training. The course teaches agents that Muslims believe jihad is an "internal struggle against sin" and not holy warfare. Customs agents involved in the CAIR tour at O'Hare tell WorldNetDaily they were outraged that headquarters would reveal sensitive counterterrorism procedures to an organization that has seen several of its own officials convicted of terror-related charges since 9-11. "Isn't that nice of CBP," one agent said, to provide a "group like CAIR with a guided, behind-the-scenes tour of our customs facilities, explaining how programs designed to catch Muslim terrorists work." CAIR says the tour allayed its concerns about profiling and that it "looks forward to continuing the relationship with U.S. Customs and Border Protection offices in the region, and to furthering understanding between the organizations as well as facilitating future communication in order to eliminate problems for Muslim travelers before they even arise." The Muslim-sensitivity training course at O'Hare is taught by Margaret Nydell, an Arabic professor at Georgetown University, home to a large Saudi-financed center on Islamic studies. A Customs and Border Protection supervisor described Nydell's instruction, along with CBP's companion training manual and video, as "politically correct drivel." "It's all about how Islam means peace and tolerance," he told WorldNetDaily. "We're told how to deal with Arabs and Muslims, that they are loving people and not terrorists. That jihad is struggle with sin and has nothing to do with violence." The Department of Homeland Security invites CAIR itself to conduct sensitivity training for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and supervisors (CBP's counterparts) in Chicago. The course is taught by local CAIR officials Christina Abraham and Mariyam Hussain. More than 30 ICE staffers have gone through the CAIR awareness program so far. CAIR -- which is bankrolled by the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates, two countries that formally recognized the Taliban -- also offers religious and cultural sensitivity training about Islam and Muslims to the military. In June, for example, CAIR trained more than 300 military personnel at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Ariz. Also in June, CAIR was invited by the Pentagon to a ceremony dedicating the first Islamic center in Marine Corps history at Quantico headquarters outside of Washington. Washington-based CAIR also has regular meetings with the FBI and Justice Department. In fact, FBI case agents complain the bureau rarely can make a move in the Muslim community without first consulting with CAIR, which sits on its advisory board. CAIR in the past has cried racism and bigotry when the bureau has moved unilaterally with investigations and raids in the community. Contact David Nathan at davenathan@aol.com |
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4 HORRIBLE THINGS WHICH MUST BE PROTESTED!
Posted by Lee Caplan, August 25, 2006. |
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Shalom everyone. Please see the 3 articles below, each of which describes something absolutely despicable in the State of Israel. The case against Danny and Itzik Halamish is just another in a series of witch hunts conducted by the government and judicial system against good Jews who don't fit in with the way in which they envision the country. Please try to help with their legal expenses as described below. The issue of administrative detention is another manifestation of this witch hunt. Baruch Hashem, there are some efforts being made within the country to put a stop to this despicable process, but there needs to be more of an outcry against this horrible administrative detention. The issue of Jews vs. Israelis described so poignantly by David Wilder in the 3rd article is an absolute disgrace, and his analysis of the war is right on the mark. Finally, once again the Israeli leadership takes an irresponsible action which puts our brethren at increased risk by re-opening the Rafah crossing. We must fax and call our Israeli consulates, as well as the Israeli leadership, and loudly protest these outrages. We must let them know in no uncertain terms that we can not and will not support a country that perpetrates these outrages against its people. They ask us to organize demonstrations in support of Israel and to counter the media perversion against Israel, and these are very important to do. We have a right to ask them to clean up their act and thereby earn our support, and we have an obligation to our brethren who are endangered by their irresponsible actions and who are suffering under their persecution to demand that they clean up their act! Tizku lemitzvos. Gut Shabbos and kesiva vachasima tova.
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From Women in Green
Dear Friends, Many things have changed since the war in Lebanon. But one thing has not yet changed in our country: the legal persecution of loyal Jews whose only crime is wanting to live in the Land of Israel and trying to defend themselves when attacked by Arabs. We call upon all of you to read the kakfaesque story of Danny and Itzik Halamish, two brothers who live in Maaleh Rehavam (a small community of 30 residents, in the Judean desert not far from Tekoa). Danny and Itzik are dear personal friends of ours and we will do all we can to prevent them from going to jail. Itzik and Danny are two out of 5 sons of the Halamish family. The Halamish parents were among the founders of the community of Ofra. They have raised 5 wonderful sons, all proud and loyal Jews. Four of them decided to follow in the footsteps of their parents and be the second generation of Halamishes that would found a new community in the land of Israel. Together with friends, the Halamish boys founded Maaleh Rehavam 4 years ago. Itzik is 27 years old and works as a builder of homes and as a carpenter. Women in Green leaders and members met Itzik in Kfar Yam,Gush Katif, where he spent the last few months helping to build tent cities for those outsiders who came to support GK. They have stayed in close contact since then. Danny is 36 years old, married to Limor and they have a one year old baby girl, Naama. If we do not intervene, those 2 wonderful Jews might end up in jail for months- accused and found guilty of things they never did. We must help them gather the funds to cover the expenses for an appeal. Please help them by: 1) taking the few minutes necessary to read the story
With love from Israel, Ruth and Nadia Matar, Women in Green Danny and Itzik Halamish: trial summary Background: A number of incidents have occurred in Gush Etzion in which Jews have been attacked by, or with the aid of, Arab shepherds: Dov Driben was murdered by Arab shepherds; two children, Kobi Mandel and Yossi Ashram, were murdered in the Haritun Cave by Arab shepherds; prior to the murderous attack on the settlement of Carmei Zur, Arab shepherds observed the settlement for 30 days and constructed a model of it on a sand table in an orchard near the settlement; About two months ago, Arab shepherds stabbed a Jewish couple near a spring close to the settlement of Bat Ayin. The IDF regards the shepherds as a threat, and consequently refers to them as such in briefings given to guards, and also drives them a way from the proximity of Jewish settlements. At the beginning of 2004 Arab shepherds began approaching the region of Ma'aleh Rehavam and Sdeh Bar. The IDF, in cooperation with the security officer of Sdeh Bar, drove them off on several occasions. The Incident: On February 21, 2004, Arab shepherds again approached the settlement of Ma'aleh Rehavam, in a place that was not the usual one for grazing. The Sdeh Bar Security Officer, Baruch Feldbaum, attempted unsuccessfully to drive them away. Feldbaum requested help from Ma'aleh Rehavam. Two members of the Ma'aleh Rehavam Fast Response Team, Danny and Itzik Halamish, joined him and drove with him to the place, to which in the meantime additional Arab shepherds had arrived. The Arabs refused to leave the place. More and more Arabs arrived, and their level of hostility increased as their numbers grew. When there were about 20 Arabs near the Jews, with even more Arabs approaching, the Arabs close to the Jews threatened them with stones and sticks, and began surrounding Danny and Itzik. Baruch was standing a few dozen yards further back. At this stage Itzik fired a single warning shot in the air from his pistol, but this had no effect. Baruch Feldbaum fired a few shots aimed at the ground, and thus enabled Danny and Itzik to withdraw. The Jews retreated and drove away from the place. One Arab received a superficial wound from ricochets of stones. The Arabs contacted the police and filed a complaint about being attacked. The Treatment of the Complaint: The police arrested Baruch, Danny and Itzik. They were interrogated for three days using a variety of methods, that included lies, threats, and false accusations. (The police attempted to accuse them of the murder of an Arab who had been in the region of the Arab village of Tekoa.) The Jews maintained that the Arabs had in fact attacked them, but the police ignored this claim and refused to check it out. The police have impounded the Jews' weapons in order to examine them. The weapons were taken from them and were not returned, but neither were they examined. Near the duty officer's desk in the Etzion police station, there was attached to the wall a notice issued by the police general staff stating that the residents of the Jewish hill settlements are problematic and that one of the aims of the police in 2004 was to submit 20 charges against them. During the interrogation the chief interrogator told Baruch that the police intended to submit a charge sheet against the Jews regardless of the results of the interrogation. The Jews were charged with assault and injury under aggravating circumstances, as well as acts of recklessness and negligence. The Arabs were not summonsed for an interrogation or even a clarification, and the police admitted in court that they did not intend to interrogate the Arabs at all. The Judicial Process: According to the Hebrew judicial process as laid down in the Bible, the function of the judge is to investigate and question and thus arrive at the truth. The State of Israel does not use the Hebrew judicial process but employs instead the adversary legal system, which is based on the method of rivalry. In this method the prosecution attacks and the accused defends himself. The judge does not interfere in the discussion but gives a ruling based only on the material presented to him. This method originated in Europe and is based on the principle of a duel between knights. (Each party hires a knight to fight on his behalf and the judge decides the winner.) In this method the personal opinion of the judge can be decisive regarding the result of the trial. In Britain and the US this method is balanced by means of a jury -- a group of ordinary people (not lawyers) whose function is to determine if the accused is guilty or not. This method prevents a person being found guilty or innocent, as the case may be, in circumstances that an ordinary person would consider unreasonable. In Israel there is no jury and the judge gives a ruling as he sees fit. In Israel the judges are appointed by other judges, and cannot be dismissed. A judge approaching retirement or who otherwise does not expect a promotion is not under any form of supervision or criticism. The Trial: The prosecution claimed that the Jews came to the place with the intention of harming the Arabs, and that the Arabs were grazing their flocks innocently. The prosecution claimed that the IDF does not regards the shepherds as a threat, even though the prosecution witness from the regional brigade HQ gave evidence to the contrary. Four Arab prosecution witnesses gave contradictory evidence: their evidence conflicted with their statements in the police station on the day of the incident; and their evidence contradicted that of each other, regarding important details, such as who fired, and whether the shots were fired before or after the arguments between the Jews and the Arabs. The Arabs gave evidence, and the prosecution claimed, that an Arab child aged 4 was injured in his head from the shots fired. The army paramedic who accompanied the soldiers who met the Arabs making the complaint, gave evidence that he was shown an Arab child aged 8 with no injuries. The defense argued that it was the Security Officer's function to look after the security of the settlers and to drive off the Arabs from places near the residenti al areas, and that Danny and Itzik acted under the orders of the Security Officer. Even if Baruch acted in excess of his authority, they were still supposed to conform with his instructions. The defense claimed that the Arabs were the attackers, and that the Jews acted in self defense. The Court Ruling: The accused were found guilty of all the charges. All their arguments were rejected. The conviction was based on two principles: Firstly, the judge ruled that the evidence of the Arabs was reliable, in contrast to the evidence of the Jews that was not, because the Arabs gave evidence without contradictions while the Jews contradicted themselves. The judge did not indicate what were the contradictions in the evidence of the Jews, and ignored the obvious contradictions in the evidence of the Arabs, including those indicated specifically by the defense. Secondly, the judge ruled that the situation in which the Jews were surrounded by dozens of Arabs armed with stones and sticks, with additional Arabs approaching, was not dangerous, nor was there any reason to think that it was dangerous. The judge ignored the arguments of the defense mentioned here, as well as additional arguments. It should also be mentioned that during the hearings regarding extension of the period of detention, even before the Jews had made any statement, the evidence was examined by Justice of the Peace Shimoni and District Judge Ravid. Both judges wrote that the evidence indicated that the claim of self defense put forward by the defense could not be rejected out of hand. The Security Officer, Baruch, was sentenced to one year's imprisonment, that was later reduced to six months after two appeals. Danny and Itzik are likely to receive a similar sentence. This is not an exceptional case. Settlers are being brought to trial in a systematic way. For example, ten years ago an Arab terrorist ran down Jewish hitch-hikers at the Giva Tzarfatit junction in Jerusalem. The terrorist was shot and killed by several people who were present at the time. The police arrested one of the Jews who had shot the terrorist and confiscated his pistol. The police issued a press statement saying that the investigation had indicated that this was a road accident and not a terrorist attack. On the very same day an Arab terrorist organization announced that they were responsible for the attack, and the police were forced to rescind their statement. The person who shot the Arab terrorist received a commendation from the IDF, but the police refused to return his gun to him. Danny and Itzik were part of the Rapid Response Team of Ma'aleh Rehavam, but they are now not permitted to possess a gun. The defense of their settlement has been gravely harmed as a result of this incident. This is not the only case in which the police have damaged the security of the settlers. Danny and Itzik Halamish intend to appeal against their conviction. The appeal will cost a lot of money (tens of thousands of dollars). If you wish to help, you can send a contribution to HONENU. The HONENU Non Profit organization provides legal aid to hundreds of Jews who are participating in the struggle for Eretz Israel. Contributions to Honenu are recognized for tax purposes in Israel (Regd. non profit organization No. 580386571, according to section 46B of the income tax law); and in the USA (Tax ID: 30-0198003). Honenu will transfer the money to Danny and Itzik without deducting a fee. Should any money remain after the appeal, it will be given to Honenu. www.honenu.org.il Please mail Shekel checks to Halamish, Ofra 90627, Israel. For Tax-deductible dollar checks please write check to "HONENU". Do not forget to earmark it: "for Danny and Itzik Halamish" and send it to: HONENU, 8204 Lefferts Blvd, Suite 381 Kew Gardens, New York 11415, USA. Backlash Against Administrative Orders as Mother-of-6 Arrested
The issue of administrative detention -- the imprisonment or restriction of citizens' movement without trial -- is the subject of a new campaign by Knesset and extra-parliamentary efforts. Administrative detention, a legal remnant from the British Mandate period, allows security forces to hold citizens in prison without allowing them to meet with a lawyer, stand before a judge or even be informed of the allegations against them. At this time, at least fifteen Jewish activists are being held by the government in such a manner. The Shas Party will raise the issue of the use of administrative detention again st Land of Israel activists at Sunday's cabinet meeting, according to MK Yaakov Margi. "This is a tool that must not be used so readily, and certainly not against Jews," Margi told Arutz-7. He says he will discuss the matter personally with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Public Security Minister Avi Dichter. One of those being held without trial is Ariel Groener, who works for the Honenu Legal Aid organization, which has been a leading proponent of doing away with administrative detention. Groener has been imprisoned for a month and a half and is due to be released on August 31st. Honenu officials are weary that a pretext may be created to keep him imprisoned even longer. The Mattot Arim Land of Israel activist movement embarked Thursday on a campaign combating the use of administrative orders against residents of Judea and Samaria. The movement terms the policy, "political oppression of the settlers by way of the legal system." Mattot Arim spokeswoman Suzy Dym says the result of the administrative orders -- not just imprisonment, but often restraining orders and house arrests far from activists' homes -- create an intolerable situation, which is implemented without a trial. Dym suggests detentions are now the tool of choice for pushing through the forced expulsion of Jews from places in Judea and Samaria. The campaign, she says, will focus on the fact that, "the settlers are not the enemy and are not terrorists." Dym says the campaign includes calling upon MKs and government ministers to ensure that a resident of Judea and Samaria, like any other resident of the State of Israel, if suspected of any crime, would be treated by the police and prosecuti on in a reasonable manner, without the use of administrative orders and other extra-judicial loopholes. "We are asking for adherence to equal enforcement," Dym says. "The law must be enforced equally for an Arab and a city-dweller suspected of similar crimes." Referring to the lack of punitive measures for illegal Arab and Bedouin building, Dym says, "If, to our great embarrassment, there is not the capability" or "there is insufficient budget" to enforce the law in an effective manner in Holon and Ramle, in [the Bedouin Negev village of] Rahat and in [the Galilee Arab village of] Taibeh -- and of course within the police force itself -- then the law must be applied equally for all." "It is not possible that at the same time the law should be applied specifically in [the Samaria communities of] Tapuah and Yitzhar," Dym added. "They Send Enough Police to Arrest a Mafia Crime Boss" Dozens of police entered the community of Tel Menashe Thursday afternoon to arrest Miriam Adler, a mother-of-six who was forcibly expelled from her home in Sa-Nur last summer -- a month before the rest of the community was evicted. Adler, a vocal leader of the struggle against the destruction of four communities in northern Samaria, was arrested and placed in administrative detention together with her husband shortly before the implementation of the Disengagement just over one year ago. Police used considerable force in apprehending the couple while they were visiti ng family in Gush Etzion. Their six children were left alone to face the riot police who arrived at their home to force them to leave. Adler filed a police complaint against the arresting officers, but she says the case was closed without any investigation of the matter. Adler was forcibly arrested Thursday following a court order dealing with her refusal to appear before a Jerusalem court on charges that she attacked the four arresting police officers. "I refused to dignify the indictment with any response and so they sent enough officers to arrest a mafia crime-boss to bring me to court by force," she said. Israelis or Jews?
IDF reservists are petitioning a demand for answers. Why weren't they allowed to win? Why were the decision-makers indecisive? IDF officers have started confessing: "We are arrogant." Blame is flying every which way and finger-pointing is at its peak. Yet, the real point has yet to be addressed. A few days ago, following Olmert's statements that the next planned expulsion of some 100,00 Jews from Judea and Samaria is no longer on the top of his priority list, I received an email dealing with 'convergence.' In my words, the letter said, 'It's not enough to see expulsion dropped from 'number-one' priority. We have to make sure it is dead and buried, never again to be resurrected.' Very true. How can we make sure that happens? Why did we lose the Hizballah war? Because the Israeli army, rather than prepa re for battle with the enemy, prepared for war with its brethren. The government spent millions of dollars and immeasurable man-hours training the troops, not how to win a guerilla war against terrorist-barbarians, rather, how to expel men, women and children from their homes, 'b'regishut' -- sensitively, but with 'nechishut' but with resolve. The brainwashing involved was unparalleled: One example: Participants were told to close their eyes and imagine the most beautiful scene they could think of -- where they would most like to be. That accomplished, they were then told to imagine that a wall now divides between their utopia and themselves. Following the imaging, with eyes wide open, they were then told: The dream is peace, and the wall is the 'settlers.' The one must be removed in order to reach the other. Who were those brainwashed? Not only the man on the street, the privates and the corporals. Rather, the cream of the crop, officers in the standing army and the reserves, of all ranks. They were forced to listen, breath, and then implement, the crime of all crimes: evicting brothers and sisters from their homes and then abandoning the land to the enemy -- an act never ever done before by any people in the world. From the moment Sharon, together with Olmert, and later with the backing of Mufaz, decided to eradicate Gush Katif from the map, the IDF was transformed into a WMD -- a weapon of mass destruction -- or perhaps better put, a weapon of mass self-destruction. The physical and psychological demands upon the officers and soldiers, as well as the time lost preparing for a civil war rather than a real war, there were major factors in the recent lack of victory. However, the decision-makers who forced Gush Katif down the collective throat of the Israeli public, how can we possibly expect them to have the necessary int ellect to reach the proper and necessary conclusions concerning authentic warfa re, upon which the survival of the country may be at stake? What is guiding light of these decision-makers? I recently heard a true, hair-raising story: A high-level delegation from Israel met with the French minister of war. The goal: to achieve French support for the 'convergence-expulsion' plan. The minister asked the group: How can a country perpetrate such an act against its own people? The answer: "We are Israelis. Those being expelled are Jews." In other words, we are two peoples, two nations, two seemingly mutually exclusive sects: Israelis and Jews. All well and good until it comes time for dying. When called upon to put your life on the line, it seems those lines get blurred. Then we are all ---- what? Jews? Israelis? What are we then? Who are the soldiers dying for, for Jews, for Israelis, for whom? We lost the war in the north because we forgot who we are -- what we are, and why we are here, why we are fighting. The IDF -- the Israeli Defense Forces, perhaps should change its name to the JDF -- to the Jewish Defense Forces, be cause that is the root of our legitimate right to wear uniforms, carry weapons, and if need be, die for our land and our country. Because we are Jews, fighting for our land and our people, not fighting against our land and against our people. As we begin the month of Elul, with Rosh HaShana just around the corner, it would be wise to do a little soul-searching in hopes of mending the tremendous rifts in our society. A good place to begin would be at our roots, at the source of our being, remembering that we are one people, in one land, under one G-d. Chodesh Tov -- a good month. With blessings from Hebron. Following posting of this article on Arutz 7, I received the following newspap er clipping from a reader: On the day following his defeat by Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1996 election for prime minister, Peres had this exchange with a journalist: Interviewer: What happened in these elections? Peres: We lost.
"Rafiah Crossing Reopens"
The Rafiah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt reopened for the first time since the kidnapping of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit by Hamas terrorists two months ago. His whereabouts remain unknown. European Union observers returned to operate the site, Friday, though it was initially unclear how long the crossing will remain open. The issue of keeping the site open is to be discussed between representatives of the EU and the Palestinian Authority (PA). PA officials say the Rafiah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt will be opened from 8am to 6pm on Friday. The international gateway was closed immediately following the June 25th kidnapping of IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit near the Israeli Kerem Shalom border crossing with Gaza and Egypt. Following the kidnapping, Rafiah was subsequently closed to prevent the terrorists from smuggling Shalit out of Gaza, but his whereabouts are still unknown. Arab terrorists detonated a landmine next to the security wall separating Egypt and Gaza on Thursday. It was part of an ongoing effort by smugglers and terrorists to find ways to pressure Israel into opening the crossing through which smugglers and terrorists routinely made their way between Egypt and Gaza. Security at the international gateway was transferred from Israeli control to the PA in September 2005 as part of the Israeli government's expulsion of the Jewish presence in Gaza. EU observers monitor the site on the Gaza side of the crossing while Israeli security personnel observe people who pass through the crossing by means of a video camera. Identification of those who pass, however, does not reach the Israeli security team until 8 minutes later, by which time it is too late to prevent the passage of anyone Israel deems a threat. The crossing has been closed numerous times as a result of this flaw and the fre quent security alerts posted by Israeli and other intelligence in the area. PA border official Nazmi Muhana said the crossing would be open as a result of intensive efforts by European monitors in negotiations with Egypt and Israel. The crossing has been closed since the kidnapping of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit, out of concern that he would be smuggled out of Gaza through it. Shabak (General Security Service) Chief Yuval Diskin decried the
opening of Rafiah, as tons of explosives and weapons have been
smuggled through the crossing in to Gaza, turning the terror haven
into another Lebanon.
Contact Lee Caplan at leescaplan@yahoo.com
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ISRAEL'S POLICY ON HUMAN SHIELDS; UNIFIL WAS AN OBSTACLE TO PEACE; MEDIA SEEKS FIRST TO BLAME ISRAEL
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 25, 2006. |
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ISRAEL'S POLICY ON HUMAN SHIELDS The public does not know what level of government sets policy on Arab human shields. Defense Min. Peretz has stated contradictory policies on it. The IDF has warned civilians near military targets to evacuate, so Israel can attack them without harming civilians. Many civilians refuse to evacuate. Israel generally withholds attack, IMRA has suggested, because then an attack and the ensuing civilian casualties would create poorer public relations for Israel. But refraining from attack then permits an Arab attack, with ensuing Israeli civilian or military casualties. Dr. Aaron Lerner thinks that Israel should not give priority to Arab civilians (IMRA, 8/3) especially since they often are complicit with the terrorists. We are not discussing ordinary and legal concern for civilians, but Israel's extraordinary and legally unnecessary concern. Israel should try harder to win. Victory would reduce casualties, especially its own. Its government has a duty to its own people. It also should not feel guilty about enemy civilian casualties, inasmuch as the enemy strategy is to wear Israel down by attrition. A heavier penalty for the enemy would wear the enemy down. UNIFIL WAS AN OBSTACLE TO PEACE UNIFIL never kept the peace. By holding monitoring posts next to Hezbollah positions, UNIFIL gave effective shelter to Nasrallah's terrorists, as it had done before for the PLO. For years, Hezbollah fired Katyusha rockets at Israeli civilians with impunity, under the watchful eyes of their blue-helmeted neighbours, while frustrating Israel's response through their proximity to the UN blue flags. Only in the context of the current war to defend its major cities did Israel feel obliged to take out Hezbollah firing positions even at the risk of hurting bystanders, which resulted in the errant shells yesterday that claimed four monitors as victims (albeit from UNTSO, a similar but different mission). UNIFIL's presence provided the international community with a false sense of confidence while a terrorist organization methodically built up an arsenal of deadly rockets-imported from Iran with Syrian help - and stored them in arms caches in civilian homes, mosques and hospitals. When Hezbollah disguised themselves as UNIFIL personnel to attack and kidnap Israeli soldiers, UNIFIL covered up the crime. In 2001, after UNIFIL discovered two vehicles used by Hezbollah in the raid, stained with the blood of the injured Israeli servicemen, they promptly surrendered the evidence to Hezbollah upon its request. Worse, as it later acknowledged, the UN lied by denying its possession of videotape that shed light on the abduction. The UNO is the organization that singles out Israel for special and false denunciation which other countries, that it ignores, deserve (IMRA, 7/27 from UN Watch). The UNO is a problem. THE OLMERT CABINET The Olmert Cabinet is not a team, though almost all are from the same Party. Each Minister cites different war aims from the other and expresses different aims at different times, without explaining the inconsistency (Dr. Aaron Lerner, 7/27). LINKAGE (Israel did not gain peace but merely a respite from war, when the Arabs thought it unbeatable militarily. That is why Egypt, the State Dept., and Thomas Friedman stressed diplomacy, the other route for defeating the victim of aggression. When Israel started retreating under pressure, the Arabs began to regain hope of defeating Israel.) The Arab world's desire to "wipe Israel off the map" is the result of their total immersion in an anti-Jewish, jihadist, genocidal world view as a result of the indoctrination efforts of their state-run schools, mosques and media organs. In addition, their perception of Israel being on the retreat ever since it opened negotiations with the PLO in 1993 has convinced them it is possible to destroy Israel. Iran has made destruction of Israel its goal. It is building nuclear weapons and, with help from N. Korea, long-range missiles. Meanwhile, its proxies, Hizbullah and Hamas started the attack (diverting attention from the nuclear problem Iran poses). The same imperialist ideology motivates most of the foes of the US in Iraq. Therefore, the US avoided an immediate ceasefire, lest it stave off the defeat of Hizbullah and make the US position in Iraq untenable. Israel must defeat Iran's proxy both for its security and for America's. Although the Islamists get favorable media coverage, and the media and leftists exaggerate Israel's losses and mistakes, Hizbullah has been losing. Signs of that are its patrons' calls for a ceasefire (a Muslim tactic when the infidels are winning) and Hizbullah's switch from touting victory to touting its survival. Totalitarians anticipate a lack of fortitude by democrats. They have found that if they hold out long enough, and inflict enough damage upon their enemies, the appeasement-minded among their enemies will give them a diplomatic victory. This time, they are finding Israelis much stronger-willed than anticipated. Tens of thousands of Israelis in safer areas are taking in Israelis from the northern areas subjected to Hizbullah bombardment, while the IDF reduces Hizbullah rocket stores and launchers. Hundreds of Jews are emigrating to Israel, too. The problem is not with the Israeli people but with its government. The government sent in too few troops to clean out Hizbullah swiftly. (Likewise, the US sent in too few to keep a firm grip on Afghanistan and on Iraq.) The government has been reluctant to send in sufficient troops, because that would demonstrate the invalidity of its theory that it can take cover from terrorists, behind a fence. Meanwhile, the IDF refuses to acknowledge the invalidity of its over-reliance upon air power. The government and IDF compound the mistakes out of fear to admit them. Another mistake is to think of Hizbullah solely as terrorist. Yes, it uses terrorism. But it also uses iconventional and guerrilla tactics. The IDF failed to prepare for Hizbullah's higher quality of combat. This insouciance led to carelessness by the Israeli missile boat, blasted by Hizbullah without having activated its radar warning system. Same for announcements after two days that its planes destroyed half of Hizbullah forces, for sending in too few troops to hold too large an area, and for claiming to have surrounded a town when it was only around that town. On the other hand, when the IDF finally wanted to call up reserves and send in a large force, the government refused, apparently for political purposes. That was Olmert's gift to Hizbullah. As for the troops, they are fighting with great skill, dedication, and bravery (Caroline Glick in IMRA, 7/28). Hizbullah boasts that its fighters are fearless. The Israeli soldiers fight fearlessly. Sec. Rice made a damaging statement, "strong concern about the impact of Israeli military operations on innocent civilians during crisis." Later, Pres. Bush straightened it out partly, by not citing Israel. He should have condemned Hizbullah sternly for using civilians as human shields (IMRA, 7/30). In one town, Hizbullah held the residents hostage. Enemies of Israel used to claim a linkage between the war against Saddam and the PLO war on Israel. They said, sacrifice Israel, and the US would get support against Saddam. Nonsense! But now that both wars are by jihad, there is linkage. Israel must win, for the US to win. Sec. Rice doesn't seem to care. First put down Israel, then take care of the US, is US policy. MIXED UP MUSLIM PROPAGANDA The Muslims take the ingredients of Biblical commands issued for particular circumstances, and the fact that most Israelis are Jews, and mix it into a batter that bakes into a mixed up, anti-Semitic, propaganda assault. So it was that a Hizbullah leader accused Israel of seeking out women and children to kill, claiming Israel is commanded to do so by the Torah (IMRA, 7/28 from Michael Widlanski). The Torah has no such general command. Israel strives to protect civilians; Hizbullah strives to endanger its own, partly so it can accuse Israel, and partly because it knows Israel does not want to harm civilians. Hizbullah also strives to kill Israeli civilians. What else is its rocket bombardment of Israeli cities? Ironically, Israel does not follow the Torah. Hence it wars too hesitatingly against uncivilized foes. This hesitancy produces more casualties. In that sense, the government of Israel is guilty, but guilty towards its own people. ANOTHER LEFTIST RECANTS In radio interviews, Israeli leftist playwright Yehoshua Sobol admitted he was wrong to think that territorial withdrawals would bring peace. He rebuked leftists who call for an immediate ceasefire, for that would support Hizbullah (IMRA, 7/28) which needs the ceasefire to recuperate. This war is disillusioning many leftists about appeasement. Their return to reality comes at a deadly price. MEDIA SEEKS FIRST TO BLAME ISRAEL Australia set up a civilian convoy to go out, fetch some foreign nationals and journalists, and bring them to Tyre. It did not give Israel sufficient notice. Israel had enabled other convoys shortly before to take the same route to safety. It urged Australia to wait a day, so it could assure the convoy's safety. As the convoy was moving, Israel repeatedly warned that it was heading into a combat area. Australia paid no heed. A mortar struck near the convoy, startling a driver to veer off the road, injuring a couple of passengers. The media hastily lamed Israel, although there was no indication that Israel had fired the mortar (IMRA, 7/29). Worse, the media reports such rumors as if the firing were deliberate. Interesting that it does not suspect the Muslim terrorists, who do aim to embarrass the enemy by sowing such suspicions. Journalists were treated well by the PLO, but kept under control. They largely are given their freedom by Israel, but not catered to. The journalists keep their biases against Israel. They do not take Israeli warnings or instructions seriously, neither believing nor obeying the government of Israel. Their arrogance sometimes costs their lives, but they don't reform and they blame Israel. BOMBING OF HIZBULLAH Every day, the government of Israel announces the types of targets it had struck in Lebanon the prior day. It also has been keeping track of the total number of missiles fired by Hizbullah into Lebanon. That number was 1600, as of 7/29 (viz. IMRA, 7/29). Were the targets destroyed? Were they attacked in daytime? The IDF used to attack PLO targets at night, when they were less likely to be populated by terrorists. SEC. RICE STATES POSITION OF BOTH SIDES I have every reason to believe, that leadership on both sides of this crisis would like to see an end to the violence, would like to see a way forward that puts Lebanon, the Lebanese government, in full control of its territory with the Lebanese army able to deploy south, with the south stable, with an international force that can help that to take place. (IMRA, 7/29). What "reason to believe?" The leadership on the anti-Israeli side is Iran, Syria, and Hizbullah. It doesn't want the violence to end or the Lebanese government in full control of the south. Unless a big force, probably Israeli, comes in to disarm Hizbullah, the violence would continue. There's harmful violence and beneficial violence. Depends who is doing what to whom. A ceasefire after the WWII Battle of the Bulge would have prolonged the war. RICE WORKING ON PARTIAL ISRAELI WITHDRAWAL FROM ISRAEL? Sec. Rice was said to be working on a ceasefire under which Israel would withdraw from the Shaba Farms area, part of the Golan Heights that Hizbullah claims is Lebanese and its reason for continuing to fight Israel (IMRA, 7/29). The UNO said it had been Syria. Hizbullah would get what it claimed to be fighting for; Israel would get nothing. That is the usual outcome of US negotiations, turning Israel's victory into defeat regardless of who is President. The UN certified that the area was Syrian. Israel incorporated it, thereby ending any legal basis for an Arab claim to it. However, the world does not operate on the basis of law, when Israel is involved. It operates on the basis of distortion of the law in order to thwart Israel. The State Department's traditional policy is anti-Zionist. Withdrawals are steps towards Israel's dissolution. The US should not have paid attention to Hizbullah's claim. That terrorist organization's claim is not sincere. It is the usual deceptive Islamic propaganda. Hizbullah has described its goal as the conquest of Israel and establishment of worldwide Muslim rule. That is the broad stake in which Hizbullah is the proxy of Iran, enemy of the US. Sec. Rice is assisting the enemies of the US. SUPPOSE ISRAEL HAD INVADED INSTEAD OF FIRST BOMBING LEBANON Israeli paratroopers could have seized key bridges; tank and infantry units could have taken other areas by surprise, destroyed Hizbullah bunkers and mopped up. The initial air war did not and could not do enough, but, gave Hizbullah warning. Hizbullah had time to launch hundreds of rockets. Ground troops went in too late and too shallow, while the government tried to impress the Arabs with "signals" by sonic booms or brief incursions that impress them with Israel's reluctance to use major force. Declarations that Israel would not send the troops far reassured Hizbullah! Flying over Syria without bombing it reassured Syria. Dropping leaflets on Lebanon urging the people to expel Hizbullah themselves amused people. Empty threats signal weakness (Prof. Steven Plaut, 7/30). 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@aol.com. |
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OLMERT'S NEW SURRENDER
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 25, 2006. |
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1. Olmert's new surrender:
Israel has essentially given up hope of Hizbullah being disarmed, and instead is now concentrating on ensuring that an arms embargo called for in UN Security Council resolution 1701 be implemented, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Furthermore, senior Israeli officials have made it clear in recent days during talks with foreign governments that Israel realizes a Hizbullah presence south of the Litani River is unavoidable, if for no other reason than because the organization is so well rooted there that the only way to get rid of Hizbullah would be to evacuate the entire region. What Israel does expect, however, is that the Lebanese Army and the international force that will deploy there ensure that Hizbullah doesn't have offensive weaponry to attack Israel, and that if they do try to attack, there will be someone there to stop them. 2. Olmert's surrender in Lebanon is already having repurcussions. Syria has figured out that Israel is on the run and is so weak it cannot defeat a ragtime band of terrorists shooting WWII rockets. The empty "Never Again" slogan aside, Olmert's Israel did nothing when 4000 rockets were fired at its civilians. Moreover, Syria sees that Israel is still trying to appease its way to peace and achieve peace through surrender. Senior Israeli officials are signalling they are ready to turn the Golan Heights over to Syria to become a new base for launching rockets at the Jews. SO Syria is mobilizing its entire army and moving it forward to the border with Israel, openily threatening to open a new front any day now. And why shouldn't it? Olmert has made all of Israel ripe for the Baathist pickin'. 3. If only this were true:
The way much of the Western media tells the story, Hezbollah won a great victory against Israel and the U.S., healed the Sunni-Shiite rift, and boosted the Iranian mullahs' claim to leadership of the Muslim world. Portraits of Hassan Nasrallah, the junior mullah who leads the Lebanese branch of this pan-Shiite movement, have adorned magazine covers in the West, hammering in the message that this child of the Khomeinist revolution is the new hero of the mythical "Arab Street." Probably because he watches a lot of CNN, Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei also believes in "a divine victory." Last week he asked 205 members of his Islamic Majlis to send Mr. Nasrallah a message, congratulating him for his "wise and far-sighted leadership of the Ummah that produced the great victory in Lebanon." By controlling the flow of information from Lebanon throughout the conflict, and help from all those who disagree with U.S. policies for different reasons, Hezbollah may have won the information war in the West. In Lebanon, the Middle East and the broader Muslim space, however, the picture is rather different.
Let us start with Lebanon. Immediately after the U.N.-ordained ceasefire started, Hezbollah organized a series of firework shows, accompanied by the distribution of fruits and sweets, to celebrate its victory. Most Lebanese, however, finding the exercise indecent, stayed away. The largest "victory march" in south Beirut, Hezbollah's stronghold, attracted just a few hundred people. Initially Hezbollah had hesitated between declaring victory and going into mourning for its "martyrs." The latter course would have been more in harmony with Shiite traditions centered on the cult of Imam Hussain's martyrdom in 680 A.D. Some members of Hezbollah wished to play the martyrdom card so that they could accuse Israel, and, through it, the U.S., of war crimes. They knew that it was easier for Shiites, brought up in a culture of eternal victimhood, to cry over an imagined calamity than laugh in the joy of a claimed victory. Politically, however, Hezbollah had to declare victory for a simple reason: It had to pretend that the death and desolation it had provoked had been worth it. A claim of victory was Hezbollah's shield against criticism of a strategy that had led Lebanon into war without the knowledge of its government and people. Mr. Nasrallah alluded to this in television appearances, calling on those who criticized him for having triggered the war to shut up because "a great strategic victory" had been won. The tactic worked for a day or two. However, it did not silence the critics, who have become louder in recent days. The leaders of the March 14 movement, which has a majority in the Lebanese parliament and government, have demanded an investigation into the circumstances that led to the war, a roundabout way of accusing Hezbollah of having provoked the tragedy. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has made it clear that he would not allow Hezbollah to continue as a state within the state. Even Michel Aoun, a maverick Christian leader and tactical ally of Hezbollah, has called for the Shiite militia to disband. Mr. Nasrallah followed his claim of victory with what is known as the "Green Flood" (Al-sayl al-akhdhar). This refers to the massive amounts of crisp U.S. dollar notes that Hezbollah is distributing among Shiites in Beirut and the south. The dollars from Iran are ferried to Beirut via Syria and distributed through networks of militants. Anyone who can prove that his home was damaged in the war receives $12,000, a tidy sum in wartorn Lebanon. * * * The Green Flood has been unleashed to silence criticism of Mr. Nasrallah and his masters in Tehran. But the trick does not seem to be working. "If Hezbollah won a victory, it was a pyrrhic one," says Walid Abi-Mershed, a leading Lebanese columnist. "They made Lebanon pay too high a price -- for which they must be held accountable." Hezbollah is also criticized from within the Lebanese Shiite community, which accounts for some 40% of the population. Sayyed Ali al-Amin, the grand old man of Lebanese Shiism, has broken years of silence to criticize Hezbollah for provoking the war, and called for its disarmament. In an interview granted to the Beirut An-Nahar, he rejected the claim that Hezbollah represented the whole of the Shiite community. "I don't believe Hezbollah asked the Shiite community what they thought about [starting the] war," Mr. al-Amin said. "The fact that the masses [of Shiites] fled from the south is proof that they rejected the war. The Shiite community never gave anyone the right to wage war in its name." There were even sharper attacks. Mona Fayed, a prominent Shiite academic in Beirut, wrote an article also published by An-Nahar last week. She asks: Who is a Shiite in Lebanon today? She provides a sarcastic answer: A Shiite is he who takes his instructions from Iran, terrorizes fellow believers into silence, and leads the nation into catastrophe without consulting anyone. Another academic, Zubair Abboud, writing in Elaph, a popular Arabic-language online newspaper, attacks Hezbollah as "one of the worst things to happen to Arabs in a long time." He accuses Mr. Nasrallah of risking Lebanon's existence in the service of Iran's regional ambitions. Before he provoked the war, Mr. Nasrallah faced growing criticism not only from the Shiite community, but also from within Hezbollah. Some in the political wing expressed dissatisfaction with his over-reliance on the movement's military and security apparatus. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they described Mr. Nasrallah's style as "Stalinist" and pointed to the fact that the party's leadership council (shura) has not held a full session in five years. Mr. Nasrallah took all the major decisions after clearing them with his Iranian and Syrian contacts, and made sure that, on official visits to Tehran, he alone would meet Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei. Mr. Nasrallah justified his style by claiming that involving too many people in decision-making could allow "the Zionist enemy" to infiltrate the movement. Once he had received the Iranian green light to provoke the war, Mr. Nasrallah acted without informing even the two Hezbollah ministers in the Siniora cabinet or the 12 Hezbollah members of the Lebanese parliament. Mr. Nasrallah was also criticized for his acknowledgement of Ali Khamenei as Marjaa al-Taqlid (Source of Emulation), the highest theological authority in Shiism. Highlighting his bay'aah (allegiance), Mr. Nasrallah kisses the man's hand each time they meet. Many Lebanese Shiites resent this because Mr. Khamenei, a powerful politician but a lightweight in theological terms, is not recognized as Marjaa al-Taqlid in Iran itself. The overwhelming majority of Lebanese Shiites regard Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, in Iraq, or Ayatollah Muhammad-Hussein Fadhlallah, in Beirut, as their "Source of Emulation." Some Lebanese Shiites also question Mr. Nasrallah's strategy of opposing Prime Minister Siniora's "Project for Peace," and instead advancing an Iranian-backed "Project of Defiance." The coalition led by Mr. Siniora wants to build Lebanon into a haven of peace in the heart of a turbulent region. His critics dismiss this as a plan "to create a larger Monaco." Mr. Nasrallah's "Project of Defiance," however, is aimed at turning Lebanon into the frontline of Iranian defenses in a war of civilizations between Islam (led by Tehran) and the "infidel," under American leadership. "The choice is between the beach and the bunker," says Lebanese scholar Nadim Shehadeh. There is evidence that a majority of Lebanese Shiites would prefer the beach. * * * There was a time when Shiites represented an underclass of dirt-poor peasants in the south and lumpen elements in Beirut. Over the past 30 years, however, that picture has changed. Money sent from Shiite immigrants in West Africa (where they dominate the diamond trade), and in the U.S. (especially Michigan), has helped create a prosperous middle class of Shiites more interested in the good life than martyrdom a la Imam Hussain. This new Shiite bourgeoisie dreams of a place in the mainstream of Lebanese politics and hopes to use the community's demographic advantage as a springboard for national leadership. Hezbollah, unless it ceases to be an instrument of Iranian policies, cannot realize that dream. The list of names of those who never endorsed Hezbollah, or who broke with it after its Iranian connections became too apparent, reads like a Who's Who of Lebanese Shiism. It includes, apart from the al-Amins, families such as the al-As'ad, the Osseiran, the al-Khalil, the Hamadah, the Murtadha, the Sharafeddin, the Fadhlallah, the Mussawis, the Hussainis, the Shamsuddin and the Ata'allahs. Far from representing the Lebanese national consensus, Hezbollah is a sectarian group backed by a militia that is trained, armed and controlled by Iran. In the words of Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the Iranian daily Kayhan, "Hezbollah is 'Iran in Lebanon.'" In the 2004 municipal elections, Hezbollah won some 40% of the votes in the Shiite areas, the rest going to its rival Amal (Hope) movement and independent candidates. In last year's general election, Hezbollah won only 12 of the 27 seats allocated to Shiites in the 128-seat National Assembly -- despite making alliances with Christian and Druze parties and spending vast sums of Iranian money to buy votes. Hezbollah's position is no more secure in the broader Arab world, where it is seen as an Iranian tool rather than as the vanguard of a new Nahdha (Awakening), as the Western media claim. To be sure, it is still powerful because it has guns, money and support from Iran, Syria and Hate-America International Inc. But the list of prominent Arab writers, both Shiite and Sunni, who have exposed Hezbollah for what it is -- a Khomeinist Trojan Horse -- would be too long for a single article. They are beginning to lift the veil and reveal what really happened in Lebanon. Having lost more than 500 of its fighters, and with almost all of its medium-range missiles destroyed, Hezbollah may find it hard to sustain its claim of victory. "Hezbollah won the propaganda war because many in the West wanted it to win as a means of settling score with the United States," says Egyptian columnist Ali al-Ibrahim. "But the Arabs have become wise enough to know TV victory from real victory." 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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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TO THE SHALIT, REGEV AND GOLDWASSER FAMILIES FROM JONATHAN POLLARD
Posted by Jonathan Pollard, August 25, 2006. |
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Dear Shalit, Regev and Goldwasser Families, From the moment Gilead was taken captive and then Eldad and Ehud shortly thereafter, I have not been able to stop thinking about them or about you. I pray every single day for their safe and swift return home, together with all of our MIAs and captives. My wife Esther and I feel for you with all of our hearts. Although it is not easy for me to speak about the issue of captivity, I feel I must share with you what is in my heart. When I first heard that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had declared that Israel would not even consider entering into negotiations for a ceasefire, nor any cessation of operations against Hizbullah, unless our captive soldiers, your beloved sons, were first returned home, I immediately knew that these were just empty words. Why? Because fighting a war for the return of a captive requires a moral basis. It requires a commitment to G-d, country and fellow man. It requires the kind of morality that the State of Israel no longer seems to have. I cannot say for certain just when it was that the State of Israel first disengaged from its moral roots and from our commitment to each other. But I do know that the moral decay was already apparent at least 21 years ago when I was thrown out of the Israeli Embassy in Washington and into the waiting arms of the FBI. That moral failure has gone unchallenged and unrepaired for 21 years. It is a curse, which still plagues us to this day. It is the original moral failure which gave birth to the abandonment of Ron Arad, Zachary Baummel, Tzvi Feldman, Yehuda Katz, Guy Hever, as well as the abandonment of Mudhat Yosef who was wounded on the field of battle and left to bleed to death. It is the moral failure that led to the abandonment and destruction of Gush Katif, and more recently to the abandonment of all of the citizens of northern Israel. It is the moral failure that brought us a culture of empty words and broken promises which subsequent Governments of Israel have perfected to a high art. Jewish tradition teaches that to save even a single soul, the entire Nation must be prepared to go to war. So it was when Avraham Avinu dropped everything he was doing and went out to wage war against four kings and their armies in order to secure the return of his nephew, Lot. So it was when the entire Nation went to war to secure the return of a single maidservant who was taken captive. How much more so should this be the case for our own brothers and sons, who are taken captive during their service for the security of the State! When there is no moral basis for the return of a captive, there is of course no moral resolve, no determination to succeed, and as result no effective action is taken. This creates a vacuum, which the politicians love to fill with empty words and empty promises so that they can hang on to their cushy jobs and comfy seats. Diboorim yafeem lello ma'aseem (all talk, no action) will never bring any of the captives home. Dear families, if my words seem unduly pessimistic, the reality is a harsh one, especially for those still in the pit of captivity. We cannot afford to ignore the truth. The only way we can hope to resolve the situation is to seek the roots of the problem, no matter how painful. It hurts me to tell you that the real obstacle to bringing Gilad, Eldad and Ehud home is not operational or practical. On the contrary. The real obstacle has nothing to do with Israel's ability to formulate a plan of action or to carry it out. Indeed, the only real obstacle to their release is a lack of morality, a lack of arevut hadadeet (mutual responsibility). Throughout the history of our Nation whatever Israel has truly wanted to achieve with all its heart and soul, it has achieved. The only times we have failed to realize any of our national aspirations, almost invariably the failure has been the result of some moral failure. It was not always this way. In June of this year we marked the 30th anniversary of "Operation Yonatan" the daring rescue operation which freed the hostages being held in Entebbe. Thirty years ago we did not have the equipment or the technology or the experience that we have today, but we still managed to pull off this amazing rescue mission. This mission which merited the blessing of Heaven, had at its root, the moral resolve of a Nation utterly committed to not surrendering to evil, and to absolutely never abandoning a brother in time of trouble. Sadly, that is not the case today We cannot, we must not allow this culture of abandonment to go on! The People of Israel must find the emotional strength to get right up out of the muddle of immorality -- at once - and find its way back to the path of harevut hadaddeet (mutual responsibility). We must rekindle and recapture our strength as nation that stands united -- all for one and one for all! If we can do this, and I believe we can, then we may once again be worthy of the blessing of Heaven and of the swift return home of all of Zion's prisoners. May G-d bless us all, and may we soon see the speedy release of Gilad, Eldad and Ehud, along with all Israeli captives and MIA's! Amain! With much love and blessing,
Jonathan Pollard writes from FCI, Butner, North Carolina, USA 27509-1000. |
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CALL THE ENEMY BY THE NAME IT CALLS ITSELF
Posted by Walid Phares, August 25, 2006. |
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The organized campaign against the use by government of the term "Islamic fascists" is an indication that the War of Ideas is raging in the center of the War on Terror. In this clash of words and ideas, it is the education of the public, as well as the identity of those who do the educating, that will make a difference. The less informed Americans are about the enemy's ideology, the more Islamist pressure groups can attack the president, congressional and world leaders on rhetoric, blurring the public mobilization. The term used by the president -- "Islamic fascists" -- when referring to the al-Qaida plotters in London, triggered a wave of negative reactions by Islamist lobbies, but also by moderate Muslim groups worldwide. The president most likely meant "Islamo-fascists" when he was attempting to expose the radicals. But Islamist lobbies were quick to "interpret" it as implying that "Muslims are fascists" -- an assumption which would necessarily elicit strong negative feelings from the Muslim community, moderates included. "Islamo-fascism," on the other hand (a term used by the president in speeches in 2005), makes for a more precise term because it refers to a particular set of ideologies and movements such as Salafism, Wahabism and Khumeinism, not a religious community per se. Just as the word "Crusaders" doesn't equate with "Christians," the term "Islamist" doesn't equate with "Muslims." In the Arabic debates online and on the airwaves, reform- oriented Arabs and Muslims who are opposed to Fundamentalism call the followers of the latter Islamiyeen (Islamists), fashiyeen (fascists), Jihadiyeen (jihadists) and others. Ironically, the radicals of al-Qaida and Hezbollah identify themselves as "Islamists" and "jihadists." Hence, it would be most logical to use the terminology produced by both of the Muslim sides: Islamist-jihadists. But it is important that leaders, intellectuals and academics explain to their audiences that words are part of the War of Ideas. The public must understand that there are political forces that are putting pressure on governments and media around the world to block knowledge as part of an effort to shield the radicals and the terrorists. Here is a summarized lexicon for basic words: In view of sensitivities and the complexity of the debate, terms to avoid are any association between the term Muslim and terrorism, fascism, etc, especially if it is generalized. One may be born a Muslim, but becomes an Islamist. So the term Islamic is an attribute to a behavior, an action or a self-assertion. The root identification between Muslim and Islamic is clear, but the linguistic nuance between Islamic and Islamist in the Arabic language is very narrow. In English (and other Western languages) it would be best to use the most identifiable term when addressing an ideological movement. While one can use the term Islamic when associating with radicalism, it would be academically permissible to use it while stressing on the attribute such as radical Islamic groups, instead of Islamic radicals. This description would equalize with, for example, "radical any other group." However, as advanced above, the most accurate terms would be directly borrowed from Arabic, such as Islamist and jihadists. Both are well-known ideologies with clear political and militant agendas, massively used in the Arab and Muslim world. Islamist is a perfectly legitimate term that describes a particular ideology such as Salafism, Khumeinism or jihadism. Not only is it used in the academic world as an indicator for an ideology and not a community, but it is used by followers around the world. Thus adding attributes to Islamist is academically sound and understood. For example: Islamist-fascists or Islamo-fascist, Islamist-Salafist, etc. But the most descriptive term of the actual "movement" at war with the U.S and democracies around the world is clearly jihadism or al Jihadiya. It is a militant doctrine, an ideology, which has generated movements, including the terrorist organizations at war with the U.S., Europe, Russia, India and the moderate Arab and Muslim countries. Arab media and governments use this terminology, but the most important argument is that the terrorists describe themselves as jihadists when in action, and Islamists ideologically. If Islamist pressure groups criticize any official for using the term Jihadist and Jihadism, they can be responded to that the Nazis called themselves Nazis in WWII. The U.S. president, Congress and other world leaders have the duty to alert the public with regard to the name, ideology and plans of the enemy -- in this case, the jihadists. Dr Walid Phares is a senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the author of Future Jihad. This appeared in the Sun Sentinel. (http://www.sun-sentinel.com/) |
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THE FIRST PUNIC WAR OF LEBANON
Posted by Elyakim Haetzni, August 24, 2006. |
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When the complaints of reservists reached the media to the effect that the IDF was not able to supply them with, among other things, water, I recalled images from the nightmare of the expulsion from Gush Katif; images of policemen and soldiers wearing their best expulsion outfits, with a stylish, uniform water bottle clipped on their backs. It was another piece of equipment of an organized and well-equipped army - but only for the oppression and expulsion of "the enemy within," the settlers. A year has passed and that same army went to war against the real enemy, with supply containers half-empty, without sufficient supply of food, with even necessary battle gear missing or out-dated and ineffective. Soldiers were forced to purchase bullet-proof vests and other equipment with their own funds. Whoever wants to understand the order of priorities of the leftist governments - the expulsion governments and the elites behind them - there is no better exemplification than the foregoing juxtaposition. The campaign in Lebanon was the Yom Kippur War without the crossing of the Suez Canal, without a civilian leader like Golda Meir - whose iron character crushed Moshe Dayan's hysteria - and without the young Arik Sharon. Imagine that World War II was waged, throughout, by Neville Chamberlain, the peace criminal whose "peace now"-style appeasement fed the Nazi snake. And imagine that the British military campaign in Africa was led by the failed generals who were removed by Churchill - Ritchie, Auchinlek, Wavell - and not by Montgomery. Rest assured that the Second World War would have ended with Hitler's regime intact, and only in France, or perhaps somewhere else, would there have been created a demilitarized buffer zone. And that cynical, mass-murdering liar would have signed a commitment, with his own impure and untrustworthy hand, to keep that zone free of soldiers and weapons. Nasrallah will keep his ridiculous and meaningless commitments just as Hitler would have done so. Who covered, analyzed and explained this war? That same media that is hostile to Jewish nationalism and that supports "Palestine", that is defeatist and that led to this war, those same journalists and anchormen who demanded that the IDF budget "fat" be cut, until our sons were left prey to the enemy's new anti-tank missiles. Rafael and the air industry have effective countermeasures, but it was too much money to develop and install them. It is said that experimental models that were given to the Americans were deployed successfully in Iraq. Who will pay the penalty for the blood spilled needlessly because the corrupt, bought-out government, which was drowning in surplus funds, could not find the means to supply such a necessary defensive tool? And who will pay for the poisoned minds, including the minds that were placed in charge of the internal division of the defense budget; and the minds of the staff generals who believed, in their great blindness, that the period of large-scale wars is over and that the bank of appeasements, concessions, disengagements and self-degradations is endless, to the point that there will always be something else to throw the enemy in order to avoid war? And where hides the intellectual father of the "small, smart army," that dream that crippled the military, the architect of the destruction in Lebanon - Ehud Barak? Only the Israeli theater of the absurd could have created a scenario in which the war was run - at the military and civilian levels - by those who brought it about by their pathetic weakness and their twisted thinking, in which those who are analyzing the war contributed to its breaking out, and in which, most outrageously, it is now suggested that the war be investigated by the spiritual father of the ideological downfall at its foundation - Aharon Barak. Carthage was not destroyed all of a sudden. For 200 years, it was fought by Rome, which eventually razed it to the ground and salted its earth. After the First Punic War came the Second Punic War, and the end came after 50 years. My friend Moshe Leshem brought to my attention the fact that the great Canaanite superpower - which ruled all of the western Mediterranean, North Africa and deep into the continent, as well as part of Sicily and Spain, and whose ships reached England, perhaps the leading economic power in the ancient world - was brought low, had its burial pit dug from within, by a faction known as "the Peace Party". And it was also the party of the ruling elites. In light of Arab-Iranian genocidal desires, whoever does not want this last war to be recorded as "the First Punic War," Heaven forbid, is obligated to bring down our "peace government" and put an end to the malignant "peace-philosophy" in both the civilian and military establishments. Why did Carthage fall? Because what primarily interested them was money. It was a trading superpower, a nation of millionaires that rejected any nationalist, militant, responsible approach, any proposal to preempt the clear and obvious danger, because even talk of danger was "bad for business" - never mind mobilization and preemptive war. Therefore, while in Rome Cato the Elder - like Ahmadinejad today - would end every speech with the phrase, "Moreover, I advise that Carthage should be destroyed," the ruling elites in Carthage were busy counting money. Their thoughts were on the "stock market," not on national survival. And with the end of national existence came the end of the stock market, as well. As part of that disorder, Carthage was also filled with public corruption and irresponsibility in the affairs of state. How typical it is that all of those in the leading financial circles in Israel, almost without exception, leverage their powerful influence on politicians (and on the media, which they control) according to the premise that "peace" is good for business, while settlement of the liberated land of Israel is bad for business. It is extremely worthwhile to study carefully the events of what the Romans called "the Punic Wars." After all, the rulers of Carthage were related to us, as sons of Tyre and Sidon. Hannibal crossed Spain, crossed the Alps and defeated Roman armies on Italian soil in battles that are studied until today in military war colleges. Hannibal reached the gates of Rome, but was defeated by the Romans due to a lack of support from home and the undermining of the forces of "peace" and corruption. Rome was patriotic and militant until its last drop of blood and its last gold piece; whereas, the cynical, nihilist Carthagian men of disengagement and convergence sat back and watched from the side, letting Hannibal "play for them." It was their failures and intrigues that sealed the fate of the city and the empire, which the heroism and self-sacrifice of the patriots could not save. And what does the future hold for us? Will we be able to produce a civilian leader and a military personality that the people can look up to, who will project character, charisma, incorruptibility and nobility, and most importantly, original and independent thinking that will get us out of the straits? Will the hostile media repent and return to being Jewish, Zionist, and supportive of the survival instinct of the society and the state? Carthage could have been saved only by a speedy and timely fall of the "peace government." Elyakim Haetzni is a lawyer and former Knesset member who resides in Kiryat Arba. This article appeared today in Arutz Sheva as an opinion piece. This was adapted and translated from an article by Mr. Haetzni on Arutz Sheva's Hebrew service. |
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ISRAEL, A MORAL NATION, CONTINUES TO BE VILIFIED
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, August 24, 2006. |
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Mahmoud AhMADinejad Iran's maniacal President asserts Israel should be wiped off the map. The silence from most of the outer world is deafening. What if the Jewish State suggested Iran should be wiped off the map? Would Muslim as well as Western European nations blast warmonger Israel for its disproportionate assertion? Would Kofi Annan direct his Security Council to sanction the tiny 'no-good nation' for its 'chutzpah'? Does a bear do his business in the woods? Let's face it, in the mind's eye of many sovereign governments, as well as their respective citizens, Israel can do little if anything right, but so much wrong. All good points are minimized, all bad points are maximized when you despise an entity but need a rationale to support your feelings. Six million Jews were slaughtered in a Holocaust beyond human comprehension, while many movers and shakers 'in the know' let it be. Finally, reluctantly, the Jewish homeland was founded, perhaps as compensation to a brutalized people, a tiny swath of land whittled down to less than two tenths of one percent the size of surrounding Muslim nations, and still that State of Israel must continually fight to survive, must always defend itself from abusing rhetoric. Why? What is it about Jews that make them so despised, consciously or sub-consciously by so many other folks? Indeed, for that tribe's size, it has contributed so much in medicine, science, technology, philosophy, as well as most every other discipline; has in fact achieved far more than its sworn enemies over time; yet as a reward is unduly vilified. Might this disrespected group of humans, in fact, represent the moral conscious of a species, to be shunned and mistreated for what it stands for, while that species continues to barrel down a path perhaps leading to its inevitable destruction? Israel attempted to fight a surgical, hence morally justifiable war against fanatical Hizbullah, a terrorist organization obsessed with jihad, implicated in many despicable murders and massacres, yet Israel was slam-dunked in the court of world opinion for exercising a disproportionate response. Hmmm! Were allied forces castigated by most of the world for bombing Dresden in WWII, resulting in extremely large numbers of civilian casualties? Was the Truman Administration castigated by much of the world for dropping two atomic bombs on Japan, resulting in enormous civilian casualties and immense suffering for a Japanese populace experiencing the effects of radiation poisoning for generations? War indeed is hell, yet when Israel attempts to avoid civilian casualties in a guerrilla war; where immoral Hizbullah terrorists launch deadly missiles from enclaves populated by non-combatant Lebanese men, women, and children; the IDF and its nation are excoriated. Nothing biased about that, is there? Israel can do little if anything right but so much wrong in that court of public opinion, notwithstanding the fact the aggrieved Jewish State only fights to survive. Amnesty International's recent assertion that Israel has committed war crimes over Lebanon, accusing the disrespected Jewish nation of indiscriminate attacks on civilians, is blatantly biased gratuitous rhetoric spewed upon a tiny country that truly attempted, perhaps to its own detriment, to destroy Hizbullah without harming those civilians who in fact collectively elected that sworn enemy to serve in its Parliament thus represent the will of the entire nation. Israelis could have bombed all of Lebanon indiscriminately following war time precedent set by presumably civilized nations, yet chose to follow a pathway imbued with a heightened sense of morality, even warning civilians to leave targeted areas. Of course, London-based Amnesty International did not see things that way, perhaps out of naivety, perhaps due to ingrained anti-Semitism (London after all is governed by a blatantly anti-Semitic mayor Ken Livingston), or perhaps out of a sub-conscious need to skewer a moral nation fighting to survive, utilizing surgical techniques, perhaps no other military juggernaut would employ. Let us be clear. Israel has put its own existence in jeopardy by exercising restraint in battle while Hizbullah wantonly launched deadly Katyusha rockets at Israeli civilians, yet the State with a conscience is charged with war crimes by a presumed human rights cadre with an anti-Israel (perhaps anti-Semitic) agenda. Bizarrely, these 'do-gooders' hang their hats in a city pummeled by fanatical Muslims, kindred spirits of the terrorists Israel attempted to vanquish. Alas, no good deed goes unpunished, as those descendants of victims, brutalized by last century's Holocaust beyond human comprehension, must endure guilt-laden hostility from descendants of those who perhaps stood by and watched. Israel, a nation of Jews that will not forsake moral imperatives even during war, remains in the face of those who wish to forget the sins of their ancestors. The world collectively has no shame! Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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WE ARE FAST APPROACHING THE POINT OF NO RETURN FROM ACTING UNILATERALLY
AND APPEASEMENT!
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 24, 2006. |
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After we, or our children and grandchildren, find ourselves living at the mercy of people who have NO MERCY, what will future generations think of us? That we let this happen because we wanted to placate "world opinion" by not acting "unilaterally"? By "appeasement"? We are fast approaching the point of no return. Wake Up Free World! This is by Thomas Sowell and it appeared August 22, 2006 on the Townhall website. |
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It is hard to think of a time when a nation -- and a whole civilization -- has drifted more futilely toward a bigger catastrophe than that looming over the United States and western civilization today. Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and North Korea mean that it is only a matter of time before there are nuclear weapons in the hands of international terrorist organizations. North Korea needs money and Iran has brazenly stated its aim as the destruction of Israel -- and both its actions and its rhetoric suggest aims that extend even beyond a second Holocaust. Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. This is not just another in the long history of military threats. The Soviet Union, despite its massive nuclear arsenal, could be deterred by our own nuclear arsenal. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred. Fanatics filled with hate cannot be either deterred or bought off, whether Hezbollah, Hamas or the government of Iran. The endlessly futile efforts to bring peace to the Middle East with concessions fundamentally misconceive what forces are at work. Hate and humiliation are key forces that cannot be bought off by "trading land for peace," by a "Palestinian homeland" or by other such concessions that might have worked in other times and places. Humiliation and hate go together. Why humiliation? Because a once-proud, dynamic culture in the forefront of world civilizations, and still carrying a message of their own superiority to "infidels" today, is painfully visible to the whole world as a poverty-stricken and backward region, lagging far behind in virtually every field of human endeavor. There is no way that they can catch up in a hundred years, even if the rest of the world stands still. And they are not going to wait a hundred years to vent their resentments and frustrations at the humiliating position in which they find themselves. Israel's very existence as a modern, prosperous western nation in their midst is a daily slap across the face. Nothing is easier for demagogues than to blame Israel, the United States, or western civilization in general for their own lagging position. Hitler was able to rouse similar resentments and fanaticism in Germany under conditions not nearly as dire as those in most Middle East countries today. The proof of similar demagogic success in the Middle East is all around. What kind of people provide a market for videotaped beheadings of innocent hostages? What kind of people would throw an old man in a wheelchair off a cruise liner into the sea, simply because he was Jewish? What kind of people would fly planes into buildings to vent their hate at the cost of their own lives? These are the kinds of people we are talking about getting nuclear weapons. And what of ourselves? Do we understand that the world will never be the same after hate-filled fanatics gain the ability to wipe whole American cities off the face of the earth? Do we still imagine that they can be bought off, as Israel was urged to buy them off with "land for peace" -- a peace that has proved to be wholly illusory? Even ruthless conquerors of the past, from Genghis Khan to Adolf Hitler, wanted some tangible gains for themselves or their nations -- land, wealth, dominion. What Middle East fanatics want is the destruction and humiliation of the west. Their treatment of hostages, some of whom have been humanitarians serving the people of the Middle East, shows that what the terrorists want is to inflict the maximum pain and psychic anguish on their victims before killing them. Once these fanatics have nuclear weapons, those victims can include you, your children and your children's children. The terrorists need not start out by wiping our cities off the map. Chances are they would first want to force us to humiliate ourselves in whatever ways their sadistic imaginations could conceive, out of fear of their nuclear weapons. After we, or our children and grandchildren, find ourselves living at the mercy of people with no mercy, what will future generations think of us, that we let this happen because we wanted to placate "world opinion" by not acting "unilaterally"? We are fast approaching the point of no return. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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THE TIME IS NOW. ISRAEL AND THE WEST ON THE BRINK
Posted by Phyllis Chesler, August 24, 2006. |
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This was published yesterday in the Jewish Press. |
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Our beloved Israel is engaged in an existential fight for survival. From the moment of its birth in 1948, Israel has been under constant siege. This latest war, however, feels different. It comes upon Israel after decades of non-stop terrorist attacks, large-scale military battles, and endless international boycotts and condemnation. Israel has been relentlessly demonized and successfully isolated by lethal propaganda. World-class illiterates and leading academics have loudly agreed that Israel is a "Nazi, apartheid" state that deserves disdain and death or have shamefully looked the other way as Jewish blood flowed and the noose tightened, perhaps secretly hoping that a second Holocaust -- this one for the Jews of Israel -- might somehow spare the West from experiencing its own much larger Holocaust at Islamist hands. I first wrote in these pages in 2004 and again in 2006 that the beginnings of a second Holocaust were already discernable. A handful of others also envisioned this. Only recently have some Jewish- American leaders begun to entertain this idea and to repeat our lines but without acknowledging their source. Until now I was mocked as a "Jewish Cassandra" by certain Jewish leaders and slandered, banished, or simply ignored by the mainstream (liberal, left, and feminist) media. Tragically, many of our leading Jewish intellectuals and our mainly liberal Jewish masses shared the view that whatever was happening was not really happening -- and if it was, that Israel either had only itself to blame or actually had the power to reverse the course of events. Even today, many Israeli leftists and feminists actually believe that Israel can find peace by negotiating with Hamas and Hizbullah. They send me their ideas. They boggle the mind. Over the years, Israelis have learned to live large and tough and sweet despite the unending attacks against them. Now, for the first time, Israelis, Jews, and their many supporters are beginning to contemplate the unbearable -- namely, that the siege against Israel might never end, that our Islamist enemies (and their supporters in the Western media and academy) will never stop until they wear us down completely, drive us into the sea, or annihilate us with nuclear weaponry. Of course, Israelis are not leaving (though many of Israel's wealthiest and most well connected citizens have second and third homes on other continents and work and travel outside of Israel a great deal). True, thousands of Jews have made aliyah in the past few years, despite the ongoing violence, and world Jewry, our Christian Zionist supporters, and the American government have continued to visit, fund, and arm Israel. Still, there is a somber and infinitely sad quality to the conversations I've had with many Israelis. Those who have lived long enough are exhausted and afraid. The never-ending battle for the land is consuming their young. They and their children after them have all fought and been wounded in Israel's unending wars; now they are sending their grandchildren to the front. Worse: the entire country has become the front. In the space of five weeks, trees that took one hundred years to grow were burned to the ground by Hizbullah rockets. The Israeli north became one vast ghost town, Kiryat Shmonah was devastated, more than a million Israeli refugees were forced to flee -- though they have been welcomed by other Israelis who live in temporarily safer, southern communities. (May this hospitality begin to unite our people.) But little of this has been shown by the world media, which has focused obsessively on the Lebanese civilian dead. How ironic. Israeli civilians are essentially soldiers while Iranian terrorist army members who dress in street clothes are counted by the media as "civilian" dead. Despite being stopped in some instances by vigilant bloggers, the world media continue to run Hizbullah's doctored footage and craftily arranged photo opportunities. Israelis are asking some hard but necessary questions. A Haifa resident admitted that "finally, for the first time in 40 years," she is "depressed" and wondering "whether Israel has a future." Israel's enemies, she said, "live only to fight, kill, and die. They `win' if they can reduce our way of life to one of brute existence." A resident of Jerusalem tells me "the loss is great, the fear is deep, confidence is low, support for the soldiers is high, but we feel isolated and misrepresented, misunderstood. Where will this end?" Another Jerusalem resident says, "The war in the field is barely connected to the war being constructed by the media who mold the broadcasts to fit their ideologies. The ironies are too much to bear." A refugee from Nahariya: "The Israeli government is not showing us the pictures of the northern towns. But are they getting out to the world? Do you see the Israeli wounded, are you getting the picture of what it's like to live in a bomb shelter actually or in your head for five or six weeks? How long are we supposed to do this?" The director of a northern kibbutz for handicapped and special-needs children writes that his vulnerable charges are "terrified by all the rocket-dodging" and by life in "small, crowded, underground spaces." Even some proverbially nonchalant Tel Avivians have confirmed that they have been staying home "every single night" to be close to their young children and aging parents "in case they are bombed." Today, for the first time, Israelis and Jews are beginning to think the unthinkable. How long must Israel continue to do the heavy lifting in America's civilizational war against Iran and Syria and indeed against Islamist jihad? At what point will Israel need to consider exercising its nuclear option against Iran? Can Israel, or Israel and America, succeed militarily? Even if they can, will the fallout for Israel be greater politically -- or radioactively? Must the Jews once again enact another Masada-like scenario? Or is Israel, unrestrained, still capable of an Entebbe- like commando action that will stop Ahmadinejad/Armageddon? Conversely, will the Jews have to consider leaving Israel again, at least temporarily? If they do, where will they go? To the moon? Under the sea? Perchance to Arizona or New Mexico for a century until things quiet down in the Middle East? But will Jews ever be safe in a Jew-hating world without a strong Israel? Just this month a London hairdresser refused to cut "the hair of a Jew" (a woman who had frequented the salon for a decade) and 20 Jewish shops were vandalized in Rome. Anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist, and anti-American marches (not to mention terrorist attacks against trains and buses and plots against airlines) continue unabated in every major European capital. Placards read: "Europe is the Cancer. Islam is the Answer"; "Europe You Will Pay, Your 9/11 Is on Its Way"; and "Be Prepared for the Real Holocaust." And it's not just Europe: Dislike, if not open hatred, for Israel, coupled with the belief in an evil Zionist lobby, is rampant on American campuses, within certain quarters of the American State Department, and among the progressive and mainstream media. This month in Washington, D.C., ten-year-old Arab-American girls chanted pro-Hizbullah slogans. Religious Zionists will never give up on Israel; I doubt secular Israelis will either. I certainly won't. And Israeli soldiers are absolutely willing and able to fight. But the exhaustion and the danger are real and must be factored in. We must weigh every option, make all kinds of contingency plans, be prepared to act on all fronts -- simultaneously, if need be. There are at least a million totalitarian Islamists willing to die in order to kill Jews and other infidels; more than a billion of their fellow Muslims have, thus far, refused to challenge and subdue them. These civilian-terrorists, who hide in rat-holes and caves, rooming houses and dormitories, are adept at using our technology and our legal system against us. Israel was in the forefront of fighting Arafat's kind of terrorism but we are now in the al Qaeda/Hizbullah era. New military, undercover, and propaganda strategies must be adopted. Many people, including some Jews, accuse Jews of elevating our suffering above that of other groups. They see this as selfish, even racist. In my view, what happens to Israel is a prophecy and a warning to the world about what will happen to all humanity. Perhaps this is one way the Jews are special or "chosen." We constitute God's holy classroom. If the world does not stop the jihadists in Israel, if it chooses to sacrifice the Jews once again, it will, soon enough, find itself bombed back to the seventh century and living under Islamic religious law. Several Iranian dissident friends have begged me to explain to them why America has not already stopped Iran. As one distraught dissident put it, the mullahs have already murdered vast numbers of their own countrymen and will stop at nothing to return to a Caliphate. "And the Jews?" he asks. "How can they, of all people, hesitate?" If not now, when? If not us, who? The time is now. Dr. Phyllis Chesler is the author of classic works, including the bestseller "Women and Madness" (1972) and "The New Anti-Semitism" (2003). She has just published "The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom" (Palgrave Macmillan), as well as an updated and revised edition of "Women and Madness." She is an Emerita Professor of psychology and women's studies, the co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology (1969) and the National Women's Health Network (1974). She lives in New York City. Her website is www.phyllis-chesler.com. |
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REWARDING TERRORISM
Posted by David Holcberg, August 24, 2006. |
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President Bush's pledge to hand out $230 million in "humanitarian aid" to the Lebanese people is a deadly sacrifice. Given that Hezbollah controls much of Lebanon, and given that most of the destruction inflicted by Israel was done to neighborhoods heavily supportive of Hezbollah, any U.S. assistance to the Lebanese will benefit Hezbollah and the population that supports it. Moreover, the Lebanese people do not deserve any help: since Israel left Lebanon in 2000, the Lebanese elected Hezbollah to the parliament, gave them two cabinet seats, and permitted the Islamic terror group to arm itself and launch unprovoked attacks on Israel's civilian population. If the goal of President Bush is to win over the Arab street, he will not succeed. No amount of American aid will buy the hearts and minds of those who hate us and want to see us dead. Aid will, however, earn their contempt--by showing them that they can support anti-American terrorism without reprisal. It is bad enough that Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia are still funding Islamic terrorists and their sympathizers. It is beyond the pale that the United States would decide to join them. David Holcberg is with the Ayn Rand Institute (www.aynrand.org/) in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." Contact the writer at media@aynrand.org. |
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DOES JAPAN HAVE A RIGHT TO EXIST AS A JAPANESE STATE?
Posted by David Meir-Levi, August 24, 2006. |
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One of the perhaps most popular arguments for condeming Israel is that it must be racist becuase it is a "Jewish" State, and has a 'right of return" that is racist in its favoritism to Jews, and really, like other civilized states, Israel should be a secular non-denominational state. My answer has always been: "well, do you have a problem with the Moslem Republic of Pakistan; or with the Islamic Republic of Iran; not to mention the incredibly xenophobic and apartheid Sunni Wahhabi Moslem kingdom of Arabia?" That usually stops the conversation and my interlocutor lamely attempts to change the topic or backtrack. BUT...... ........the WSJ op-ed below does a much more thorough job of exploring the issue....and asking very astute and insightful questions about this issue. It is by David E. Bernstein and it appeared today. I encourage you all to read it, memorize it, and quote it whenever necessary. Mr. Bernstein is a professor at the George Mason University School of Law. This appeared on The Volokh Conspiracy. |
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A reader, sympathetic to Israel but troubled by its existence as "Jewish state," asks: "Can you point me to any case in any example where you would say '[Country A] has the right to exist as a [Race B] or [Religion C] state?' I can think of numerous claims like this by societies in the past, which are now widely condemned." Actually, many, many countries have an official religion, including not only "backward" countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia that enforce religious law, but "progressive" liberal bastions such as Norway, Denmark, and Iceland (all Lutheran). By contrast, Judaism is not the official religion of Israel. Jewish holidays are government holidays, but that's like Christmas in the U.S. (Family law is controlled by religious bodies, but that's true for Muslims, Christians, et al., as well as Jews, and is an artifact of Ottoman and British rule. My understanding is that most Jews in Israel are against the religious monopoly on family law, but it survives because the religious parties have disproportionate power. The Arab community, which is far more traditional in its religious practices than is the Jewish community, almost certainly is more supportive of this arrangement than the Jews are, so this has really nothing to do with Israel being a "Jewish state," as such.) As for the question of "race," the problem can't be "self-determination" of a group, because the propriety of that principle seems rather well-accepted. "Jewishness" is not a racial identity, but complaints about Israel being a "Jewish state" are often put in terms of the Law of Return being "racist." The Law of Return is based on ethnic (not racial) heritage and grants anyone with a Jewish grandparent automatic citizenship (the Israeli Supreme Court has held that one is not eligible for the Law of Return if one has adopted the Christian religion, because in the complex area of Jewish identity, Jews who become Christians have left the Jewish people). Non-Jewish immigrants with no ethnic Jewish background can become citizens, with some difficulty (DML: More or less the same difficulty as can non-Danes seeking citizenship in Denmark), as can, automatically, non-Jewish immigrants closely related to Jews (e.g., spouses), many of whom have recently arrived from the former Soviet Union. Arabs who lived in Israel during the War of Independence (and thus presumptively accepted the existence of Israel and were not engaged in warfare against Israel) and their descendants have full citizenship rights, but they are relieved of one of the major obligations of Israeli citizenship, military or other national service (I think this is a big mistake, but that is a topic for a separate post). One's liberal, progressive or libertarian hackles can easily be raised at Israel's citizenship policies. Why should ethnic background entitle one to citizenship? On the other hand, Israel's defenders would argue that given that the Jews have been the subject of massive state and private violence over the past few centuries, including one attempted genocide (by Hitler) and another one that was averted only by Stalin's timely death, Jews need a homeland/refuge where they can go with automatic citizenship rights. Whatever side you take on that debate, the more interesting question is why the question of basing citizenship (in part) of ethnic descent only calls the right of Israel to exist into question. My correspondent was unaware of any other countries that have an overt ethnic identity, but, judging by immigration laws, there are quite a few, and with a few exceptions (Armenia and Germany), their discriminatory immigration policies exist, unlike Israel's, without any justification resulting from persecution of that group. For example, according to Wikipedia: "Japanese citizenship is conferred jus sanguinis, and monolingual Japanese-speaking minorities often reside in Japan for generations under permanent residency status without acquiring citizenship in their country of birth." Why does Japan have the right to exist as a Japanese state? Has this question ever been asked? An Irish government Web site states: "If you are of the third or subsequent generation born abroad to an Irish citizen (in other words, one of your grandparents is an Irish citizen but none of your parents was born in Ireland), you may be entitled to become an Irish citizen"--if, as I understand it, you register properly. Does Ireland have the right to exist as an Irish state? Several other countries recognize a "right of return" similar, but often broader, than Israel's (via Wikipedia): Armenia. "Individuals of Armenian origin shall acquire citizenship of the Republic of Armenia through a simplified procedure." Bulgaria. "Any person ... whose descent from a Bulgarian citizen has been established by way of a court ruling shall be a Bulgarian citizen by origin." Finland. "The Finnish Aliens Act provides for persons who are of Finnish origin to receive permanent residence. This generally means Karelians and Ingrian Finns from the former Soviet Union, but United States, Canadian or Swedish nationals with Finnish ancestry can also apply." Germany. "German law allows persons of German descent living in Eastern Europe to return to Germany and acquire German citizenship." My understanding is that this German descent may go back many generations. (Note that until recently, Germany's citizenship law was less liberal than Israel's, in that it did not allow people who were not ethnic Germans, including Turks who had lived in Germany for generations, to be become citizens.) Greece. " 'Foreign persons of Greek origin' who neither live in Greece nor hold Greek citizenship nor were necessarily born there, may become Greek citizens by enlisting in Greece's military forces." Wikipedia provides a several other examples, none of which seem to ever raise the same questions about the legitimacy of the states involved as the Law of Return does for Israel. Of course, Israel has the added burden that the Palestinians claiming that they are the true "owners" of the relevant land, or that at least the Palestinians who fled in 1948 and their descendants should have their own "right to return". But I think that issue exists quite apart from whether Israel's Law of Return is objectionable, and indeed must, given that the Palestinian side is calling for even fourth-generation descendants of residents of what is now Israel, who never set foot there, to be allowed based on their ancestry to return. (DML: what the author is intimating here, without going into more explicatory detail, is that if one objects to Israel's right of return, say, on the grounds that it shows favouritism to one ethno-religious group, then should not one have the same objections to the Palestinian 'right of return - haq el-auda', and perhaps even more so since the PA 'law of return' allows fourth generation identity which the Israeli law of return allows only 3rd generation identity?) In short, the perception my correspondent had, which in my experience is shared by many, that Israel is a uniquely "religious state" is not only wrong; it's backwards-- --Israel has less of an explicit religious identity than many countries (complicated, I admit, by the fact that one can in an odd way assume a Jewish ethnic identity by converting religiously). And Israel is hardly unique in basing immigration and citizenship policy at least partly on ethnic heritage (the thought that Israel is unique in this regard seems bound up with the confused notion that it must have something to do with Jews thinking they are God's "Chosen People"). The big difference is that unlike, say, Japan, Israel actually has especially strong, though I wouldn't say completely unassailable, reasons for doing so. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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FATAH LEADERS TO DISCUSS HAMAS; HIZB ET-TAHRIR STARTS TO DECLARE
CALIPHATE IN GAZA
Posted by David Meir-Levi, August 24, 2006. |
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This was written by Khaled Abu Toameh and it appeared in the Jerusalem Post today. I have added a few notes beneath his article. |
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For the first time since the Hamas victory in the parliamentary elections earlier this year, the Fatah central committee, a key decision-making body in the Palestinian Authority, began a three-day meeting in Jordan on Wednesday to discuss internal reforms and relations with Hamas. ------- (DML: I'm separating out the Caliphate part from the rest, for your ease of reading)--- Meanwhile, a radical Islamic group called Hizb al-Tahrir (Liberation Party) is planning to declare the birth of an Islamic caliphate in the Gaza Strip on Friday. The relatively small party, which is seen as more extreme than Hamas, is said to have increased its popularity following what is perceived as a Hizbullah victory over Israel. On Tuesday, thousands of the party's supporters staged a demonstration in Gaza City to mark the anniversary of the end of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It was the first demonstration in the Gaza Strip in which demonstrators called for establishing an Islamic caliphate that would rule not only in the PA territories, but the entire world. [*] Buoyed by the large turnout, the party's leaders are now considering declaring an Islamic caliphate in the Gaza Strip during Friday prayers, sources close to the party said. Jordanian security forces recently foiled a similar attempt by the party's followers in the kingdom and arrested most of their leaders. Ramzi Sawalhah, the leader of Hizb al-Tahrir in Jordan, was arrested shortly after he delivered a sermon in a mosque in which he called for replacing the monarchy with an Islamic caliphate. [*] ---------(DML: now Tuomeh returns to his main topic)------- The Fatah meeting is being held under the chairmanship of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who is also the leader of Fatah. Sixteen members of the committee, which is dominated by veteran officials representing the "old guard" in Fatah, are participating in the discussions. The meeting is being held in Amman so that Fatah leaders living abroad like Farouk Kaddoumi could attend, sources close to Abbas said. [**] Khaled Musmar, a member of the Fatah "revolutionary council," another one of the party's influential bodies, said Abbas was expected to brief the committee members on the results of his talks with Hamas over the formation of a national-unity government and demands for implementing major reforms in Fatah. He said the Fatah leaders were also expected to set a date for holding a general conference to elect a new leadership. The last time such a conference was convened was in 1989 in Tunis. "We will discuss the internal situation in Fatah and ways of reforming the party," Musmar said, referring to demands by representatives of the "young guard" to inject new and younger blood into the party and to get rid of corrupt officials. Abbas and other veteran leaders of Fatah have been under immense pressure from grassroots activists to reform the party following its failure in the parliamentary elections. However, Abbas did not invite representatives of the "young guard" to participate in the discussions - a move that has raised eyebrows among many disgruntled Fatah activists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Many of the Fatah leaders who are attending are former cronies of Yasser Arafat whose names have been linked to financial corruption and mismanagement in the PA over the past decade. "We're sick and tired of seeing the same old faces talk about the need for reforms in Fatah," a top Fatah activist in Ramallah told The Jerusalem Post. "How can they talk about reforms in Fatah without consulting with the young leaders, especially those who are in Israeli prisons?" Former PA prime minister Ahmed Qurei said participants would discuss ways of repairing Fatah after its defeat in the election. Abbas is also hoping to win the backing of the committee for his plan to form a "national-salvation government" once talks with Hamas over the establishment of national-unity government failed. PA officials in Ramallah said on Tuesday that Abbas was seriously considering the possibility of forming a government of technocrats after failing to persuade Hamas to establish a joint Fatah-Hamas government. Fatah leaders claimed Hamas was not interested in such a government because its leaders had no intention of changing their political agenda. They said Abbas warned Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh that unless he recognized Israel's right to exist, the international community would not resume financial aid to the PA. Abbas Zaki, a member of the Fatah central committee, said Hamas should copy the the model of Hizbullah, which, he added, was keen to attribute its victory over Israel to the entire Lebanese people. "Hizbullah cares very much about national unity in Lebanon," he said. "We are hoping that Hamas will learn from the experiences of Hizbullah, which enjoys the support of the overwhelming majority of Lebanese." END NOTES -- (DML) [*] Sounds crazy, doesn't it? A small terrorist organization, extremist even when compared to Hamas and Hezbollah, with a small following of outlandishly outre extremists....whom many in their own culture consider to be part of a loony loopy crowd of psychos and sickos.....THEY will declare a new Caliphate which will eventually rule the entire world: "Islam uber alles"??!! For those not old enough to remember, or not well enough versed in history to know, my paragraph above more or less paraphrases what many in Europe and the USA, and even in Germany, said about Hitler in the mid-1930s.....even as he wrote in Mein Kampf that he intended to establish a thousand-year Reich in which all Jews would be annihilated, and which would make "Deutschland uber alles"! Most thought he was crazy....but a few years later the German masses by the millions were wild with enthusiasm about their finally getting their true place in the sun, the place that Gott-in-Himmel (God in heaven) always intended for them....the ruling aryan race, in control of world affairs because the masters should indeed have dominion over the inferior ones....that is the natural order, that is the order that God wants (and getting rid of the Jews, too). And a few years after that, Europe's great powers were appeasing him with chunks of eastern europe, and a year after that world war 2 had begun, and soon all of europe was in flames, and five years later somewhere betweeen 40,000,000 and 70,000,000 people had been killed. So I urge all to take Hizb-et-Tahrir very seriously. We have strong and tragic historical antecedents to the extreme danger of ignoring their lunacy. [**] It is important to recall, when considering that our so-called "moderate" Abbas brings Fatah and PLO to Amman for their meeting just so that he can enable Farouk Qaddumi to attend (if Qaddumi entered the west bank Israel would arrest or kill him), that Qaddumi is a Fatah terrorist leader, with the blood of scores or even hundreds on his hands, who is even more extreme in his anti-Israel stance than was Arafat. Qaddumi chose to stay in Tunis in 1993 rather than go to Oslo and return to "Occupied Palestine". He contended that Arafat, by even pretending to be acquiescing to the demands of the Oslo accords, was going soft on the basic cornerstone Fatah/PLO demand that Israel be destroyed and its Jews driven from the land or killed (although there has been talk of maybe allowing the descendents of those Jews who were in "Occupied Palestine" prior to 1915 to remain on as indigenous Jewish Dhimmi under PLO/Fatah political control.). Qaddumi remained in Tunis, preaching extreme Fatah ideology of total destruction of Israel and criticism of Arafat and Abbas and Fatah for trying to find some wiggle-room within the Oslo accords for a Palestinian state even termporarily existing alongside of Israel. His basic line was, and is, "ISRAEL DELENDA EST" (a Latin quote from Cato, who used to stand up in the Roman Senate every day and utter just three words: Cartago delenda est - Carthage must be destroyed. Many thought him crazy, or just addled enough to be eccentric..... until, after years of doing this, he roused the roman consciousness to its perceived need to destory Carthage...which Rome did)..... .....So Qaddumi insists....Israel must be destroyed. That is all there is to it. For Qaddumi and his group, there is no compromise, not even for tactical purposes. Just keep killing jews in order to eventually destroy Israel and kill all of its Jews. Done. So.......when Abbas goes way out of his way to hold his meeting in Amman so that Qaddumi can join them, Abbas is going way out of his way to accomodate Qaddumi and send a signal to all who know who and what Qaddumi is and what he stands for..... .....and what is that signal? Some would say the signal is that Qaddumi's extremism is not alien to Abbas and the PLO, even as they work for some sort of rapprochement with Israel.....because, after all, in the final analysis, just as Arafat said on April 14, 2002..."Once we have our state firmly established on the West Bank and GAza Strip, then we will call upon all Arabs everywhere to join us in the last great final Jihad and use the West Bank as a launching pad for the grand assault on Jerusalem, a springboard for that glorious final invasion and liberation of "occupied Palestine"." Others would say...no, no!...Abbas is doing the smart thing. He is tryng to co-opt Qaddumi and his followers into a more moderate line, tryng to defuse Qaddumi's extremism by bringing him into the fold. If Abbas can get Qaddumi to relent and take part in the political process....well...then the political process will moderate him. The UN tried that with the PLO back in 1974. Rather than the UN moderating the PLO, the PLO radicalized and hijacked the UN. Clinton and Israel tried that with Arafat and the PLO in the Oslo Accords. Rather than the responsibilities of governnance moderating Arafat, Arafat jettisoned all pretense of governance, ruled via the "democracy of the gun", and used the Oslo Accords as the launching pad for 11 years of the worst terror war in world history. Lebanon tried that with Hezbollah in its "Cedar Revolution". Rather than Hezbollah moderating itself as it took part in the democratic processes of a new Lebanon, Hezbollah hijacked Lebanon, held it hostage, and then subordinated it to hezbollah's own terrorist intentions. Israel and Bush and the Palestinian Authority tried that with Hamas in the January '06 PA elections. Rather than Hamas now becoming moderate because of needing to handle the garbage and budget etc....Hamas left that to the PLO and went on a terror binge of thousands of Qassams, hundreds of terror attacks from the Gaza STrip, and scores of attempted suicide bombings. Given the recent history of attempts to 'moderate' extremists by bringing hem into the mainstream, I tend to suspect that Qaddumi's presence in Amman is not a harbinger of moderation.....and Abbas knows that. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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ISRAELI AND HIZBULLAH TACTICS; ISRAEL RETURNS TO CRAZY RULES OF WAR;
RICE AND ABBAS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 24, 2006. |
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HIZBULLAH TACTIC Hizbullah refused to allow civilians to evacuate from Bint Jbeil, a Hizbullah command and storage center, about to be attacked by the IDF. It kept the civilians inside, to use as human shields. This tactic worked to some extent, inasmuch as the IDF minimized its bombing and strafing, in order to spare the civilians (Arutz-7, 7/27). The pro-Syrian President of Syria complains that civilians are getting killed in this war. He also complained that Hizbullah invokes Israeli attacks. ISRAEL RETURNS TO CRAZY RULES OF WAR Hizbullah laid an ambush for the incoming Israeli infantry. It killed eight Israeli soldiers. "An IDF source explained that, considering that there are still a few hundred Lebanese citizens in Bint Jbeil, forces cannot attack the town aerially, and, thus, it is necessary to bring in ground troops." Just when the families of IDF soldiers thought that rules of the game finally were corrected so that the insanity of dying for PR was over. (IMRA, 7/26.) Israel rarely gets credit for excessively humanitarian rules of war. Indeed, Israel has been excessively criticized for allegedly inhumane military practices. POOR ISRAELI TACTIC "Last week in Maroun a-Ras, several soldiers died fighting Hizbullah around their fortified bunkers. The correct use of military power in that situation would have been to use small special forces teams equipped with nothing more than GPS trackers, laser pointers and Uzi submachine guns." The elite forces, instead of going into the bunkers, could have laser-painted the bunkers' positions to the IAF, which would have destroyed them. That would be the correct way to leverage Israel's technological advantage." "The massive bombings - the IAF's use of brute force - has its limitations with respect to high-value targets, and the deployment of ground troops neutralizes our advantages. When a soldier meets a soldier, when a Kalashnikov meets an M-16, when the fight is eye to eye, there are no technological advantages." The Israeli Cabinet does not understand the modern way of counter-terrorism, which whittles down the enemy by attrition (IMRA, 7/27 from Dr. Shmuel Gordon.) It's the old story. When the commanding general is from the air force, as is Israel's, he over-estimates air power. The strategy recommended by Dr. Gordon combines the different military branches. However, another, unmentioned branch is diplomacy, which also means propaganda. Israel is poor at that. There also needs to be a way to counteract radical ideology. The West has not figured out how to do so. The Lebanese Daily Star claims the answer is to support pro-Western and moderate Arab leaders, such as Abbas and PM Siniora of Lebanon (IMRA, 7/27). Maybe, but the Star is not Western and Abbas is neither pro-Western nor moderate. SECRETARY RICE MET WITH ABBAS "How very much admiration there is for you in the United States with the President for your courage and for your continued leadership of the Palestinian people. I know that this is an extraordinarily difficult time for the Palestinian people as well as for other innocent people in the region including, of course, the Lebanese and innocent Israelis, and we need to get to a sustainable peace for this region. That is really the problem. There must be a way for people to reconcile their differences and to move forward toward peace... we must remain focused on what is happening here in the Palestinian territories on our desires to get back on a course that will lead ultimately to the President's vision and deep vision of President Abbas -- President Bush's vision, but indeed the vision of President Abbas, of two states living side by side in peace." (IMRA, 7/25.) "Admiration for the courage" of Abbas, who refused to disarm terrorists. His "continued leadership" of the people who don't follow it? The Palestinian Arabs are an "innocent people," although they favor and support terrorism? "There must be a way for people to reconcile their differences" when the Muslim side tolerates no different faiths and seeks to dominate them? Abbas' vision of two states, when he was Arafat's assistant in seeking to eradicate the Jewish state? IDF ATTACK ON UNO POST IN LEBANON Israel attacked a UNO post in Lebanon, killing a couple of its troops. Sec.-General Annan condemned Israel for deliberately attacking the troops, then called for an investigation. IMRA thought the sequence of his statements backwards. Annan did say that he had asked Israel to be careful of that post. One of the slain troops had sent out an e-mail in guarded language indicating that Hizbullah had surrounded the post and was using it as a shield, in its attacks against Israeli forces. The UNO does not punish terrorists nor stop them, despite its mission to stop them (IMRA, 7/26). Apparently the IDF fired in self-defense, intending to strike not the post but the Hizbullah men using it as cover. SIGN OF HIZBULLAH DEFEAT After weeks of boasting, Hizbullah has gone on to denying the significance of its loss of territory, lamenting its "martyrs" deaths, blaming the US, and rebuking the Arab states for not coming to its relief. These are signs of defeat. At that time, Israel had killed an estimated 150 fighters and captured dozens of others (IMRA, 7/25). Hizbullah had become unpopular in Lebanon. Later reports indicated that it took the lead in rebuilding, and distributed Iranian cash, recouping its popularity. Hizbullah has thousands of fighters. A couple of hundred is just a dent. SIZE OF LEBANESE FORCES Anthony Cordesman wrote that Hizbullah had up to 3,500 troops, most of whom are part-timers, but many of whom are experienced. About 300 are their mainstay. As against that, he says that the Lebanese Army has 70,000 (IMRA, 7/26). He did not compare their training and arms. He did not mention the other private militias, their strength, and which side they would likely support. SECRETARY OF STATE RICE What does the Sec. of State talk about? Does she rally the forces of independence against the Islamists? No. She stresses humanitarian aid for Lebanon and the "need for a ceasefire." She mentions Syria's international obligations that it should honor. She does say that the ceasefire should prevent return to the conditions that led to the war (IMRA, 7/24). She does not explain the urgency to a ceasefire. Syria won't honor obligations with Iranian support and without compulsion. Rice's talk is lip service. She is involving the UNO, which one cannot depend on it to solve anything. WERE HIZBULAH AND ISRAELI ACTIONS REASONABLE? Hizbullah's initial attack on the Israeli Army post was called reasonable, because it was military, rather than terrorist. It actually was unreasonable, because it violated the ceasefire. It was an act of aggression. Israel's massive counter-action is called disproportional. It actually is reasonable, because Hizbullah has fired at Israeli cities before. It long has been conducting a war of constant attrition. Israel has the right to go to the source of these attacks and squelch the capability for further aggression. Proportionality refers to the difference between the means needed to reach a military objective and the means used. "When one side routinely attacks the other with no legitimate cause over years, and the other side has an interest to stop the aggression, it is allowed to use the required force to achieve that objective. In our case, we can see that a little force will not be enough, since all the force used so far is not sure to be enough." Israel is alleged to have committed war crimes by attacking civilians. No, war crimes are either deliberately attacking civilians or taking no care to avoid unnecessary casualties. Israel takes care. It is the responsibility of Hizbullah for casualties by civilians whom they use as human shields. Many of the shields knowingly volunteer, thereby losing civilian status (IMRA, 7/26). Why don't Israel's critics complain about Hizbullah doing that by bombarding Israeli cities for no military purpose?) Humans in general use logic to rationalize what their emotions favor. In the Arab-Israel conflict, they abuse logic and notions of human rights to rationalize their anti-Zionism in favor of a backward, totalitarian culture that wants to conquer them. What could be more irrational than that? Unfortunately, the media generally goes along with their perversion. 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@aol.com. |
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HOW A JEW SAVED AMERICA
Posted by Yoram Ettinger, August 24, 2006. |
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The enclosed article by Dr. Richard Booker was referred to me by Dr. Michael Widlanski [mikewid@netvision.net.il]. It highlights the shared values, which underlie the ties between the US and its sole soul ally in the Mideast, the Jewish State. Dr. Richard Booker is Founder/Director, Institute for Hebraic-Christian Studies. The cardinal role played by Haym Salomon, in the success of the American Revolution, was a natural extension of the Judeo-Christian world view, which guided the pilgrims, the Founding Fathers, the early US colleges and universities and the formulation of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. For further reading on Haym Salomon: "The Story of Haym Salomon - Forgotten Patriot", by Dr. David Allen Lewis, Springfield, MO, 1993. |
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In 1975 the United States Postal Department issued a stamp honoring a man named Haym Salomon for his contribution to the cause of the American Revolution. This stamp was uniquely printed on the front and the back. On the glue side of the stamp, the following words were printed in pale, green ink. "Financial Hero - Businessman and broker Haym Salomon was responsible for raising most of the money needed to finance the American Revolution and later to save the new nation from collapse." I personally have one of these stamps. Historians who have studied the story of Haym Salomon all agree that without his "contribution to the cause" there would be no America today. Haym Salomon bought and sold financial papers to raise money for Robert Morris who was the Superintendent of Finance for the Continental Congress. He believed that America would be a safe haven for the Jews. But this son of a rabbi, also believed that one day in the future, Jerusalem would rise from the dust, the Jews would return to their ancient homeland, and Israel and Jerusalem would once again be the home of the wandering Jew. Salomon determined to do all that he could to finance the Revolution so that America could survive until that future time when his people would once again fill the streets of Jerusalem. From one crisis to the next, Robert Morris went to Haym Salomon for help, and Salomon always responded. Haym Salomon gave his entire personal fortune of over $800,000 to the cause of the Revolution. This debt was never repaid. He died sick and penniless at the age of 45, January 6, 1785, leaving behind a young widow, Rachel, and four children all under the age of seven. Rachel tried for months after Haym's death to collect on personal loans that he had made to Robert Morris, to the Congress and others. She was requested to turn all her securities and certificates over to the State Treasurer of Pennsylvania for evaluation. After several months she made further inquiries and was informed that all of the papers relating to her inheritance had been lost. Haym Salomon was buried in Mikveh Israel Cemetery in Philadelphia in a grave which is now unmarked. Since we don't know which his grave is, we cannot even pay our respects at his graveside nor erect a marker. But the story of Haym Salomon doesn't end with an unmarked grave. There is a plaque on a brick wall bordering the cemetery that was placed by Haym's great-grandson, William Salomon in 1917. It says, "To the Memory of Haym Salomon... interred in this Cemetery the location of the grave being now unknown..." Was it just a coincidence that the year this plaque was erected was the same year of the Balfour Declaration issued by the British which begins, "His majesty's Government views with favor the establishing in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."? Was it just a coincidence that in 1975 when the U.S. Postal Department issued the stamp honoring Haym Salomon, that same year the Israeli government issued a stamp honoring Harry Truman, the American president who was the first head of state to recognize Israel? As Haym Salomon believed, America has been that save haven for the Jewish people and Israel has been reborn. As we celebrate America, may we remember the great debt we owe to Haym Salomon. While we may not be able to repay him personally, we can honor him by standing firm in our support and prayers for a strong and secure Israel and a united Jerusalem under the rule of Haym's Salomon's spiritual descendants, the Jewish people. 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 |
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HOW WEST CAN WILL WITHOUT WEAPONS
Posted by Dr. Eugene E. Narrett, August 24, 2006. |
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The title is a slight exaggeration that makes an important point: the war of resistance to global jihad can be won by just a few Western states without using their massive advantage in armaments except for deterrent purposes. Here's the historical precedent that was not taken and then the contemporary 'weapon' at hand that can put the jihad-genie back in its demonic lamp. During the last twenty-five years of the Cold War, the Soviet Bloc was maintained not by its arms but by American and Canadian wheat. That's right: so massive was the dominance of the diplomatic corps of the Western powers, so complete was their sway over the media and their higher education echo-chamber of useful idiots that it was the "enlightened consensus" that "peaceful co-existence" was the only alternative to apocalypse. Actually, foreshadowing current dynamics, maintaining the Communist threat kept alive the sense of crisis (before there was a genuine Soviet nuclear threat beginning around 1970) that allowed the politicians that front for major corporate interests to mobilize society and terrify citizens into paying for a war that could have been ended anytime from 1946-66 with minimal casualties to the West. The Communists wrecked their economy, especially their agricultural basis and could not begin to feed their people. Withholding American and Canadian wheat would have ended the Cold War before the Russians ever developed the ICBM capabilities that gave them the chance to do significant damage to the West before being utterly destroyed. How much the peoples of Eastern Europe (and most Russians) would have given had America, 1) massively bombed Soviet Russia from 1946 - 60 when our air and missile long-range delivery superiority was enormous, or 2) withheld the food gifts that kept the homicidal and imperialist tyranny afloat till taken down in the late 1980s. Me and millions of other kids wouldn't have done all those drills of scrunching up under our desks or filing down into the AV room in the school basement. Entrepreneurs like Bohemian Grove top-dog Nellie Rockefeller wouldn't have made a fortune promoting "bomb shelters" in the '50s. But unless you've got a terrified population they won't pony up big tax money for "defense" or tolerate the whittling away of civil liberties... So it is today. The British awakened the jihad-genie in the 1920s to use against the Jews, mainly, but also to create the chronic crises that would "require" a global security state as so neatly described by Huxley (1931), more grimly and accurately by Orwell (1948) and promoted by the Utilitarians from the 1830s: a strictly 'empirical' elite that would oversee all society from its "Panopticon," not unlike the floating eye atop the Masonic pyramid, and constantly adjust the levers of state to secure, ostensibly, "the greatest good for the greatest number" ---- as the seers would define it. And here we are in the "War on Terror" with the leaders of the "free" West so reluctant to name their enemy and to fight it, genuinely (a phenomenon we have just witnessed with Hezbollah, sworn to annihilate Israel while the Hellenist leaders of that state refused to fight). But the point is that the West need not mobilize or use its massive superiority in weaponry to squash jihad and put the genie back in its box for centuries. THEY NEED OUR FOOD FAR MORE THAN WE NEED THEIR OIL. The Europeans, Japanese, Indians and Chinese may SEEM to need it more than we but that's illusory. Norway, England, Mexico, Venezuela, let alone the United States and Russia have vast reserves and untapped quantities of oil. Things might slow down for a few weeks but by then, without food from North America and Europe the Islamic nations would be starving. This non-military victory is a question of political will and public awareness of its possibility. Just as Israel need only shut off the electricity, food and water in order to subdue the "Palestinians" [sic] and cause most of them to flee to their Arab brethren, so America, Canada and Europe need only stop exporting food to the Umma to bring jihad to its knees. The kamikazes among them will be dealt with quickly on the principle of answering each terror incident by subtracting an Islamic city from the face of the earth. One month and WW III is over. The peace crowd really ought to get behind this approach. It's ecologically balanced, ergnomic and very low cost. If Ralph Nader was sane, even he would like it. Now that this clean strategy is public, our leading politicians and diplomats have an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to world peace and transformation of Islam into that religion of peace we've heard so much about. No more fruit, bread, meat, vegetables, and no more trips to Vegas, Atlantic City and Foxwoods, Mahmoud. Grow your own food. What, you can't? You won't? Sorry. End of Jihad. PS and by the way: in the 1950s and '60s, national socialist Islamic states were permitted by the West, primarily Britain's and America's corporate-diplomatic elites to "nationalize" the oil industry and vast infrastr ucture that was conceived, designed, manufactured, built, connected, set to work, from drilling, and pipelines, to harbors, tankers and refineries. This "nationalization" is a cute word for THEFT by a state, usually an artificial, Empire-coined artifice like "Iraq" or "Kuwait" or "Libya." It is high time for the Western powers who applied genius, sweat equity, lives spent engineering and manufacturing to create and run the oil industry TO TAKE IT BACK, possess, police and use it for the citizens of the nations whose institutions supported their creative efforts. The sheiks, thugs, drug-dealers, slave-traders, and dictators of OPEC can crawl back into their holes and take jihad with them. It is this simple: the kidnappers and murderers of civilians, the partisans of the global caliphate and submission to Shari'a get NO MORE FOOD from those for whom they have such genocidal contempt and the West TAKES BACK ITS OIL INDUSTRY. No more good cop/ bad cop regime with Islamo-fascist despots. And the War on Terror, WW III will be over and won within a month with two-three more months for mopping up spills here and there. And then instead of a Global Security State and "Homeland Security" (loss of civil liberties for western folks who conceived of civil liberties) and an endless war of attrition, there will be genuine peace and all the blessings of abundance and prosperity and trust it brings. Let's put it on the agenda now. It's getting late. Professor Eugene Narrett teaches writing and Literature at Boston University. He is the author of hundreds of articles, columns and reviews on politics, American culture and the arts. He is completing a study on Romanticism and the longterm decline of Western Culture. He writes often on subjects relating to Israel and Judaism and is a weekly columnist for the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Massachusetts. Contact him at culturtalk@aol.com |
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"TALK WITH SYRIA," THEY SAY; HOW PRES. BUSH UNDERMINES NATIONAL
SECURITY; MIKE WALLACE & THE PRESIDENT OF IRAN
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 23, 2006. |
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U.S. SUPPLY OF IDF The US has supplied Israel with precision bombs. The Arabs criticized that as taking sides and furthering the destruction of Lebanese infrastructure. The US should take sides. The same Islamist ideology attacks Israel as attacks it. If Israel uses more accurate bombs, it won't have to blast a whole city block to get at a Hizbullah site in part of the block. That way, less Lebanese infrastructure is damaged. "TALK WITH SYRIA," THEY SAY The problem some people see with US diplomacy in the Mideast is that the US does not talk with Syria. Sec. Rice replies that that the US has negotiated with Syria before, to no avail, and still does, to no avail. The answer is a good one, as far as it goes. It falls short. How? First, the President and his Party are on the defensive over foreign policy. His opposition hardly acknowledges that this is a difficult world, and pretends that he fails to talk things over with our enemies. Sec. Rice and he should take the offensive and make sure the public knows that our new enemies do not resolve problems by negotiation. Our enemies are fanatical imperialists. They want to exacerbate problems. If they can make the problems worse by negotiations, they will, but they won't solve them. Pres. Bush should prove that his opposition is naive about foreign policy and how evil our enemies are. But he is willing to negotiate with terrorists, at times. Second, negotiations with totalitarians cannot succeed unless backed by sufficient force. If our enemies know that we would be willing and able to exercise that force, they might make concessions to us. "Concessions to us." Doesn't that sound better than our, or Israel, always making concessions to the recalcitrant enemy? Let Pres. Bush then challenge his critics to vote for more spending on the military and for more war to prevail over Iran. HOW PRES. BUSH UNDERMINES NATIONAL SECURITY Pres. Bush has instituted several controversial security measures in secret. When their practice is discovered, he defends them too vaguely to be persuasive. He has not tried persistently and persuasively to rally the people in this unprecedented type of world war. He argues that mere knowledge of the existence of some of the measures would make terrorists wary. Since he was deceptive about his sabotaging of environmental and consumer protections, he was thought sneaky about the security measures, too. His opponents draw a connection, justifiably or not. They fail to define the issues, just as he does. If defined, many people would be willing to sacrifice some civil liberties to security measures. Instead, they think the security measures dubious. Which ones are needed? ISRAEL BOMBED CIVILIAN GAZA BUILDING? Israel claimed that a building Israel bombed in Gaza was Islamic Jihad's main arms depot and that quite a few terrorists were killed in the attack. The Arabs claimed it was a civilian one. Following the bomb, photographs showed a series of explosions, proving that the building housed rockets, as Israel had contended. Secondary explosions also followed an Israel attack on a Hamas arms depot. Israel originally spared such buildings in civilian areas, but the necessity of war overcame its reluctance (IMRA, 7/25). Israel is subject to one-sided and undeserved international criticism. This and exaggerated scruples make it timid and restrained. Years of provocation pass before Israel responds forcefully. It is ridiculous to suppose that Israel deliberately attacks civilian structures. That would incur criticism without military gain. INDONESIA PULLING OUT OF NOSEDIVE? Radical Indonesian Muslims pressed so hard for a vague anti-pornography bill against a Playboy Magazine pledged not to publish nudity, that a counter-reaction has set in. The two main, moderate Muslim organizations demanded that the government crack down on organizations that promote violence in the name of Islam. Indonesians now are contemplating how to restore the country's traditional tolerance, rather than how to smother it (IMRA, 7/25 from Lebanon's Daily Star). THE RESULT OF LIBERAL IMMIGRATION POLICY "Canada's Jewish community has come under increasing attack, including a bomb threat against a synagogue, the stoning of worshippers emerging from evening prayer, and a Jewish family being sent a decapitated pig." "The tension here is palpable as Jewish individuals and community organizations being targeted by persistent phone and email abuse and threats linked directly to events in the Middle East." (IMRA, 7/25.) This is an example of collective punishment by Muslims. It is how Muslims think. Why not? They are against the rest of the whole world, and their own society is collective. How hypocritical of them to claim, usually falsely, that Israel wields collective punishment against Arabs!. TERRORISM & HUMANITARIANISM IN LEBANON A UNO executive in Lebanon reiterated the vague claim that Israel was fighting disproportionately and in violation of international law in Lebanon. What is news is that he also condemned Hizbullah, and for specifics. Hizbullah, he said, had dug tunnels and bunkers near the border. Their fighters sneak out and blend in among civilians, so as to catch Israeli troops by surprise (and to have the civilians be their shields). Hizbullah should not be proud, he said, of having reduced its own casualties at the expense of more deaths of women and children. It is cowardly (IMRA, 7/25). The Palestinian Arabs willingly are terrorists' shields. WHY LEBANON INFRASTRUCTURE DAMAGED "The IDF was still encountering Hizbullah guerrillas who were shooting from inside mosques, hospitals, and schools. They take advantage of the population" (IMRA, 7/25.) Hizbullah draws Israeli fire at mosques, hospitals, and schools. It also drew fire at a Lebanese Army radar installation from which it fired at an Israeli ship. It uses trucks, bridges, ports, airport, and ports to bring in arms. If it fought in the open and outside the cities, civilians would be far less harmed and discomforted, but Hizbullah would be eradicated promptly. HIZBULLAH TRIES TO GET SYRIA INTO THE WAR Not satisfied with Syrian arms supply, Hizbullah wants the Syrian army to enter the war. It fires at the Golan Heights, in an attempt to sucker Syria into war (IMRA, 7/25). NATO UNREADY NATO sources said that NATO could not put troops into the field soon enough to be of help in enforcing a Lebanon ceasefire (IMRA, 7/25). Thank goodness the USSR did not put NATO to the test! MIKE WALLACE & THE PRESIDENT OF IRAN Mike Wallace interviewed Pres. Ahmadinejad. There were ground rules. One was that Ahmadinejad picked the translator. Any others were unstated. Much time was wasted on unimportant matters, such as the President's hobbies and his rambling answers that kept the focus off his lying propaganda. The interview should have been a challenge to the President, who seeks nuclear weapons, supports Hizbullah, wants to exterminate Israel, imprisons dissidents and journalists, represses other faiths, etc.. Wallace went easy on him. Wallace lamely suggested that America believes Iran to be pursuing nuclear weapons, failing to mention that this is also the conclusion of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and of the Intl. Atomic Energy agency. He presented no evidence to challenge the Iranian leader... Ahmadinejad lamented the suffering in Lebanon, without being blamed for having instigated it or disproving his claims about Israeli actions. Neither did Wallace mention the hundreds of Americans murdered by Hizbullah, Ahmadinejad's alleged involvement in the takeover of the US Embassy, etc.. Wallace let stand the claim that Israel arose from the Holocaust, whereas the Balfour Declaration preceded it in recognition of the Jewish people's historical connection with the Land of Israel. Nor did Wallace bring up Ahmadinejad's messianic creed and his motive for violence. "viewers of '60 Minutes', used to tough, unflinching interviews" (David Harris, NY Sun, 8/15, Op. Ed..) It doesn't surprise me. Wallace is anti-Zionist and an advocacy journalist. He interviewed Syrian Jews in front of the secret police, and pretended their praise of Syria and disinterest in taking haven in Israel was sincere, even after he was rebuked for it. He used to ask powder-puff questions of Arafat. 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@aol.com. |
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THE WAR THAT ISRAEL CHOSE TO LOSE
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 23, 2006. |
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It was a war Israel was more afraid of winning than of losing. It was a war whose battlefield strategy was based on posturing. on acting as if Israel were conducting an actual all-out war. It was a war in which Israel attempted to defeat the enemy by not defeating him. It was a war of the make-pretend. Let us be clear. Every war has its share of mishaps, glitches, and human errors, and this one was no exception. But this war was fought after many years of massive budget cuts for the military. Convinced that the era of peace was anon, the politicians had conducted a sort of fiscal hari-kari on the army in order to allocate far more funding for nice things like social spending and pork projects. The result was tanks going off to battle without basic protective electronics, and troops marching off without medicine, ammunition and food. But the real problem in this war was that the political elite decided to prevent the armed forces from really fighting. As a result, Israel failed to achieve any of the declared goals it had set for itself. It failed altogether to stop the Katyusha blitz on northern Israel. The day before the "cease-fire" went into effect, 250 rockets hit Israel, the largest number of any day in the war, demonstrating that Israel had not even put a crimp into the terror machine of the Hizbullah savages. Despite early talk of disarming Hizbullah as part of the cease-fire, within days it was revealed that Hizbullah would in fact keep all its arms but would not parade about too openly with them. The military tactics imposed on the Israel Defense Forces by the politicians were guaranteed to create failure. At times it seemed that the strategy of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz consisted of hoping that if Israel waited long enough, Hizbullah would just run out of rockets. For the first 32 days of the fighting -- five times the period of time it took Israel to defeat the combined Arab military machine in 1967. Israeli ground troops and armor were still huddled en masse inside the Israel-Lebanon border or camped just a short distance across it. For the first 32 days of the war Israel tried to defeat Hizbullah by bombing empty buildings, empty bunkers and "infrastructure" across Lebanon. It may well be that the air attacks on Hizbullah's buildings failed to kill even a single terrorist. It was only after those 32 days, and with a UN cease-fire stopwatch already ticking, that a half-hearted "ground offensive" was launched. With the government announcing that Israel was driving for the Litani river in the final days, the ground troops made it less than a third of the way there. Bravado by the generals in announcing a massive paratroop landing at the Litani itself, or commando raids behind the enemy lines in the Baalbek Valley, proved to be nothing more than empty grandstanding. They achieved nothing. Olmert was trying to knock out rockets with a 40-mile range by taking one or two kilometers of Lebanese territory. The air campaign was a waste of time and resources. The film clips of empty buildings being blown to smithereens were designed to give the Israeli public little morale boosters, but not to defeat Hizbullah. The Olmert government, which had gone to war to win the release of the kidnapped soldiers being held hostage by the terrorists, signed a cease-fire agreement in which it gave up the demand for the soldiers. immediate and unconditional release. The cease-fire was a complete capitulation by Israel, which got a promise of a few more UN troops to sunbathe in Lebanon. But UN troops have been "patrolling" the south of Lebanon since 1978 and have yet to stop a single Katyusha or mortar attack, or even a single stone from being thrown over the border fence. As Haaretz's Avi Shavit asked sarcastically, "Did we go to war so that French soldiers will protect us from Hizbullah?" Throughout the war, the near-total failure of Israeli intelligence in Lebanon was obvious. But this was the direct consequence of Israel's 2000 unilateral capitulation, in which Ehud Barak ordered all Israeli troops out of south Lebanon in what amounted to a Monty Python version of Dunkirk. As part of that capitulation, Israel abandoned its networks of informants and allies there, many of whom were murdered by Hizbullah. At the time of the Lebanese retreat, it was argued that the move would at least unite Israelis behind any future military retaliation should Hizbullah misbehave. But Hizbullah had been misbehaving ever since, such as when it kidnapped and murdered three Israeli soldiers soon after the withdrawal. Up to a point, a closing of ranks in Israel did indeed take place, with polls showing near unanimity among the general Jewish public in backing massive military retaliation. But as the days dragged by with no serious progress, the Peace through Surrender forces came back into public view. Small demonstrations led by communists were reinforced when Peace Now and Meretz joined in demanding an instant Israeli withdrawal. The Israeli Literary Left and much of the chattering classes had backed the war at first, but toward its end they reverted to their gut instincts, with many denouncing Israel for "war crimes" and calling for "talks" with Hizbullah. (Olmert's own daughter was among those denouncing Israel's actions as criminal.) The real problem is that Israel has been captive to the Peace through Surrender mindset for so long that it is now second nature. The open terrorist aggressions by Hizbullah, combined with the near unanimous public support for serious military action, were insufficient to put fire into the bellies of the politicians. They meowed their rage at the terror. The day the cease-fire went into effect, Hamas fired rockets, including a Katyusha, into Ashkelon from Gaza. So we now know where the next front will be. In the middle of the fighting Olmert announced that the war was designed to create conditions under which he could go ahead with his "contraction" plan, which in effect would turn the West Bank into a new Katyusha base for bombarding Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Who says the Wise Men of Chelm is just a fable? Unless Israel's pusillanimous leadership is replaced with people possessing vision, willingness to fight, and determination to deal effectively with the genocidal Islamofascist terrorists, Iran's president may yet get his wish. 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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il This article appeared in the Jewish Press
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ISRAEL'S TERMINAL ILLNESS
Posted by Women in Green, August 23, 2006. |
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This article was written by Joseph Farah, editor of World New Daily
(WND) |
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We've all known brave soldiers who fought courageously in multiple conflicts only to succumb to lingering and debilitating illnesses years later. Likewise, history tells us of nations that never lost a battle in combat only to die because they lost their sense of purpose, their will to survive. I think that's what is happening in Israel today. I think the Jewish state is terminally ill. Israel may have won three major wars in its 60-year history, but it will be lucky to survive another decade of morally bankrupt leadership. It's not just former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who is comatose. It seems the whole current Israeli government is brain dead. How else can one explain Israel's agreement to Lebanon cease-fire terms that amount to unconditional surrender? I know few other commentators who have explained the development in these stark terms, but this is the reality of what Ehud Olmert's government has done. It represents, in my opinion, one of the biggest strategic blunders in the history of the country. Let's review what Israel has done: It launched a war on Iran-directed Hezbollah terrorists after they kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, killed eight others and rocketed northern Israel towns. From the beginning, Israel demanded the return of its troops and the disarming of Hezbollah terrorists. What did Israel get in the cease-fire deal? No return of the kidnapped troops and Hezbollah terrorists remain under arms. For the life of me, I don't understand why Israeli civilians are not massing in the streets of Jerusalem demanding the immediate resignation of Olmert and his Cabinet. The Israeli army is returning from Lebanon with its tail between its legs. How can you ask soldiers to kill and die for a simple objective that is later abandoned without explanation or reason? Does Olmert not understand what his surrender means? It means he has given aid and comfort to Israel's enemies. He has handed Hezbollah its biggest victory since former Prime Minister Ehud Barak unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon, handing the southern part of the country to Iran's proxy army and positioning it to claim it had defeated the Jewish state. He has also proved to Israel's other terrorist enemies -- those in Hamas and the Palestinian Authority -- that rocket attacks, assassinations and kidnappings are winning tactics against the Jewish state. Prepare to see more of them under the terms of this "cease-fire." He has demonstrated for the entire world that Israel has lost the kind of resolve it had in previous military campaigns. When the going gets tough, today's Jews evidently will just sue for peace. Hezbollah has won. That's the unimaginable bottom line after this conflict. The terrorists have won -- not in the battlefield, mind you. But they won before the war ever began because weak-kneed, cowardly, morally unfit leaders in Jerusalem would never permit Israel to win. With Hezbollah's victory, Iran and Syria have been emboldened as well. This is bad news not just for Israel, but for the entire world. If you think I overstate the case, ask yourself this fundamental question: Is Israel more secure after abandoning its conflict in Lebanon or less secure? You know the answer. Everyone knows the answer. Israel may have one of the greatest military machines in the world. It may have an intelligence apparatus that is the envy of superpowers. It may even have right on its side. But Israel is being led by men unworthy of its history, unworthy of its sacrifices, unworthy of its hard-fought victories of the past and unworthy of God's sovereign promises to bless the Jewish state forever. It's clear the only enemy that could ever destroy Israel is the kind of internal moral rot we are witnessing today in Jerusalem. Israel has just one shot at surviving its terminal illness -- cutting out the cancer that is the Olmert government. 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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ISRAELI PUBLIC DIPLOMACY'S CRITICAL IMPORTANCE IN THE WAR AGAINST THE
IRAN-HIZBALLAH AXIS OF TERROR
Posted by JCPA, August 23, 2006. |
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This is a Jerusalem Institute for Contemporary Affairs (ICA) Jerusalem Issue Brief. ICA is published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). The article is archived in Vol 6, No 9. It was written by Dr. Raanan Gissin, who was a senior advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He is one of Israel's leading spokesmen to the foreign press and the international community on security and strategic issues, and the peace process. |
Changing Perceptions: From a Theater of War to a Crime Scene Public diplomacy for any country, not just Israel, has gone global. While the conflict may be determined in local terms, such as Israel's fight against Hizballah, the ramifications of the action itself are global in nature. Therefore, public diplomacy must be geared toward the global scene. Ever since 9/11, we have been in a different type of war. We were exposed for the first time to a global network of terrorist organizations, sort of a multi-national corporation of non-state actors. On the Lebanese scene, through the careful manipulation of evidence, the theater of war has turned into a crime scene. Every action that Israel takes in Lebanon - with its densely populated villages that Israel must operate in because that's the only way that we can uproot the terrorists in them - creates an opportunity for the other side to use public diplomacy with global ramifications. Thus, instead of the war being about Israel's right of self-defense, Hizballah was able to turn it around so that the issue on the international agenda became Israel's destruction of Lebanon and Israel as the cause of world instability. The victim becomes the criminal. For example, Nasrallah ordered his men to remove their uniforms and blend in and continue to fight from within the civilian population. In this way, when Israel attacks Hizballah, the scene is one of Israel moving against what appears to be civilians, even though rockets fired from these villages are striking Israel. Attacks on what looks like civilian targets can then be called "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes." In addition, by blending in with civilians, it's easier to fight the Israelis who exercise self-restraint when fighting near civilians. Another way to change a theater of war into a crime scene is by building Hizballah positions in close proximity to those of UNIFIL. Then there is always an opportunity for a potential mishap where Israel will hit the UNIFIL position by mistake. Or Hizballah may provoke an Israeli attack by firing from a specific location and ensuring that a human shield of innocent civilians will be present at the site. These are just some examples of how Hizballah uses public diplomacy and the media as a tool of war. They create changes on the ground so that later they can manipulate the situation, and once the crime scene is created, the media look for the villain and his smoking gun. Not Like the 1982 Lebanon War: Iran on Israel's Northern Border What we are seeing today in Lebanon was not there before. The conflict is no longer a local or even a regional conflict. Iran and Syria are now deeply and directly involved. In 1982 the PLO had some support from Syria and from other Arab countries, but was basically a regional terrorist organization. Now Israel faces the "special forces" of the Iranian military, the best guerilla warfare units, in front-line positions. The whole concept of how they operate on the battlefield and in public diplomacy is directed by Iran as part of its global war design against the West. This did not start recently. When the PLO was in Tunis, having been ousted from Lebanon in August 1983, Hizballah made its debut on the scene. In October 1983, Hizballah blew up the barracks of the U.S. Multinational Forces and Observers (MFO) unit in Lebanon, killing 241 American soldiers. Back then, Iran was giving only spiritual support and some money, while Syria was Hizballah's main supporter. Over the last twenty-five years Iran has gradually created a global network, first forming an axis with Syria and then building up Hizballah, with Lebanon serving as a regional theater, one in which it had the most favorable demographic conditions - a large Shiite minority. Today Israel has strategic cooperation and coordination with the United States that it didn't have in 1982. With regard to Iran's nuclear weapons, Israel is participating in a coalition. In other words, there is a perception among world leaders that in public diplomacy, an issue that seemingly looks like a local one - and Hizballah is a classic case - actually involves a much more global phenomenon that needs to be addressed. The globalization of a local conflict has important implications for public diplomacy. What happens on Israel's northern border will affect what happens on its southern border with the Palestinians in Gaza. And the overall situation in the north and the south is going to determine the overall impact on the Arab world, and to what extent stability will be threatened in those regimes like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan that fear the rise of Hizballah. On the military operational level, sometimes terminology misleads. The head of Israel's Air Force intelligence and the deputy chief of staff referred to Hizballah as "terrorist gangs." But these are not merely terrorist gangs. This is an army - a well-trained, well-organized, and ideologically indoctrinated guerilla army - and Israel did not make that point strongly enough at the beginning of the war, neither to the world, nor to itself. Lebanon is a testing ground - like Spain in 1936 - for weapons, tactics, and doctrine of how Iran is going to fight the war when it comes to confront the West. We have to alert people not only to the fact that there are 13,000 missiles threatening Israel's very existence, but that these missiles do not belong to a terrorist organization - this is a front-line position of Iran. Not surprisingly, the head of Hizballah, Hassan Nasrallah, reportedly found refuge in the Iranian embassy in Beirut when his underground headquarters came under Israel Air Force bombardment. Israel's intelligence services knew about the bunkers and the missiles, but the wider interpretation was not made. Is it only Hizballah that will launch an attack against Israel? Or is it the Iranians building up this force as their long arm in Lebanon, to be used when they decide to make their initial move to take over? The kidnapping of the soldiers enabled Israel to preempt before the Iranians had completed their buildup. The Iranians did not want a full-scale war yet. They wanted to put pressure on Israel, but Hizballah made a mistake in its assessment of Israel's response. The end result was a "premature" war that has put the Iranian terrorist threat on the global agenda of public diplomacy, alerting the West before Iran was completely ready. In February 2006, during a meeting at the Northern Command of the Israel Defense Forces, Prime Minister Olmert was given a full briefing by the chief of staff, who said that the scenario of a kidnapped soldier should be avoided since this could cause a major strategic embarrassment. It could set the entire conflict in motion because the whole Hizballah army had made preparations for such a scenario. Hizballah was also prepared with its public diplomacy. It had prepared for this war for a long time. It had spokesmen speaking fluent English who would escort the reporters to the designated crime scenes. Hizballah knew that Israel was going to launch attacks on Beirut and that there would be scenes of destruction. From the minute Israel left Lebanon in May 2000, Iran began to implement its initial plan for a takeover of Lebanon by Hizballah. First, it got into the political system and then from within it is trying to take over. Israel struck over two thousand Hizballah targets, and not only in south Lebanon. Hizballah is fully deployed in south Lebanon, Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and on the border with Syria. By looking at the targets that Israel struck, one can see the extent of the Hizballah takeover. There was a discrepancy between public diplomacy and the actual fighting on the ground. From a public diplomacy perspective, Israel should have been seen as the victim. We were being attacked. We were the ones who fulfilled all of the requirements of the game. We were true to the international border, we restrained ourselves, we held back. Why should it be that once we start attacking, we immediately start to lose in the diplomatic arena? Because Nasrallah and his patrons in Iran successfully integrated the "ABCs" of public diplomacy into their long-term strategic war doctrine. Strategic Public Diplomacy This war is a symptom of the inability of Israel to prepare strategically with public diplomacy as a tool of war. It would be useful to learn and follow what Hizballah has done in terms of its preparations to meet the requirements of a proactive public diplomacy strategy. Today, states and governments can learn much about the effectiveness of operations from NGOs (non-government organizations). Again, unlike the 1982 war, there is an environment of NGOs - some sinister and bad, some good. Backing the terrorist organizations are NGOs that operate on the world scene with the support of other countries. Hizballah invests $15-20 million a year in its own TV station, Al Manar. That is more than the overall public relations (hasbara) budget of the State of Israel. Its broadcasts are pure propaganda, but they are professional and are carried worldwide via satellite and cable. We need to recognize that the media is a tool and that it can serve as a weapons system. Hizballah is ten years ahead of Israel in the ability to use and manipulate the media for its strategic purposes. I don't want to underestimate the limitations that a democracy has in instituting a coherent long-term public diplomacy strategy, but thinking has to start about this as a strategic issue. Hizballah had a strategic problem after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000. It was an organization in search of a cause, in search of a reason to continue to exist and justify its continued terrorist operations. Therefore, it did all it could to show that it was an integral part of Lebanon and not an agent of Iran - which it is. Armies fighting each other in the desert is a thing of the past. From now on it's "dirty wars," and that means that the role of public diplomacy is much greater. There are only two basic scenarios. Either you fight in densely populated areas on enemy territory, where the enemy is, or the enemy fights on yours. Israel is not a country that can absorb casualties. One of Israel's basic security principles is that it cannot afford to fight wars on its territory. Israel's existence is based on deterrence. Deterrence is based on the perception that Israel is able to project to its Arab neighbors who did not participate in the war - to the Palestinians, the Egyptians, and the Jordanians - that messing with Israel is too costly. This is a message that can set in motion the need to come to a political agreement with Israel. The threat Israel faces is not just Hizballah, it's Iran, and we should alert the rest of the world to that, as we alerted the world to the Iranian nuclear program. Israel is on the front line of Iran's war against the West. This may sound alarmist, but the best way to conquer fear is to tell people the truth. Tell them what we are facing, and then mobilize the world as well. Military action alone is insufficient. The globalization of terror under the auspices of Iran is a much more formidable and more clear and present danger than the Iranian nuclear threat. The minute the Iranians get nuclear weapons, they may not immediately send them against Israel on their missiles. But this will give them the kind of protection and deterrence to use the methods that they're using now in Lebanon. For instance, if there was an Iranian terrorist coup in Egypt, the world would have to weigh any reaction differently if Iran had nuclear weapons. The Iranians are coming, and we better read the writing on the wall. It is not in Arabic; it is in Persian, and it is still not too late to learn. |
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THE WEST'S CANARY
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 23, 2006. |
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Friends, The "buzz words": "International bankers," "New Yorkers," "neocons," "Zionists," "Israel Lobby" are all today's euphemism to anti-Semitism! Zionists, the Israel, the Lobby are just as catchy as they were 70 years ago and just as false. Today's anti-Semitism comes from the left, not the extreme political right. Like Adolf Hitler before them, today's Islamic fascist leaders telegraph exactly what they intend to do and appeasement doesn't work -- not then and -- not now! The Islamic fascists describe a futuristic world that has one religion, one people, and one God. When Islamic fascists condemning the "infidels" to death and destruction, it should be clear that they are not just talking about Jews Mahmoud Ahmadinejad echoes Hitler and announces, repeatedly, his sacred duty to destroy Israel and the Jews; chances are that this is just the beginning of the list of those he wishes to destroy. In 1941, anti-Semitic Charles Lindbergh suggested that the Jews should be in the forefront of keeping America out of the war because "they will be the first to feel its consequences." He was right on that score -- they were the first -- but they are never the last. Let us not repeat shameful history again. This is an excellent article. It was written by Warren Kozak and
appeared August 21, 2006 as an Opinion piece in the New York
Sun |
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Years ago, before modern devices could register poisonous gas levels in mines, miners would take canaries into the shafts with them. The birds, which are more susceptible to toxins, served a very useful purpose. If the canary fell over, it was time for the miners to get out quickly. It was a sad miner who failed to pay attention to the canary in the cage. Throughout time, whenever tyrants arose and preached a mixture of world domination and complete intolerance for most other human beings, their first targets were often a small group of people noted for giving the world monotheism, the bible and a set of basic laws that have been followed for thousands of years. From the ancient Babylonians to German Nazis to today's Islamic fascists, tyrannical regimes always seem to have one common link -- their deep hatred for Jews. At the same time there has been another continuum throughout the ages -- a small fringe in every society that blames not the tyrants, but instead, blames their victims. That would be tantamount to a miner not just ignoring his early warning device, but blaming the canary for the problem. That's not just ill advised, it's downright stupid. Sixty-five years ago, Charles Lindbergh, the hero aviator of America was such an individual. On September 11, 1941, less than three months before Pearl Harbor, Mr. Lindbergh appeared before a huge anti-war rally sponsored by the group America First in Des Moines, Iowa. In spite of the ongoing atrocities already being committed by the Germans and the Japanese, the flyer delivered an articulate and compelling speech entitled,"Who Are The War Agitators?" Answering his own question, Mr. Lindbergh told his audience there were three main forces pushing America into an unnecessary war with Germany: Franklin Roosevelt, Great Britain, and the Jews. The President, the British Prime Minister and the Jews -- there's a familiar ring to that. But, Mr. Lindbergh went one step further concerning the Jews when he added his concerns about the perceived Jewish domination in America and their "large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government." That was a constant refrain throughout America in the 1930s -- dangerous Jewish influence. This thought was spear-headed by Mr. Lindbergh, a popular radio evangelist named Father Coughlin, the industrialist Henry Ford, and all other anti-Semites. The Jewish "influence" they focused on was not much different from the classic anti-Semitism of old Europe. In their minds, Jews were using their sinister powers to manipulate our country and the world to their advantage. In truth, many professions in 1941 were still closed to Jewish people in America. If another ethnic group held a lock on industries here in America, no one seemed to complain. So the Irish, who went through their own ostracism a century before, could now control big city governments. Protestants, still in the vast majority, could control the White House, big oil, railroads, and most corporations. But the Jews were somehow different -- scarier -- more villainous. Of course, you couldn't just come out and actually say this in polite society, so different buzz words were often used -- like "international bankers" and even "New Yorkers." But everyone knew what the phrases meant. They meant Jews. Almost 70 years later, the words have changed but not the meaning. Today, we hear about the "neocons" who seem to control the mind of Dick Cheney. The "Zionists," we are told, are enflaming the Islamic world with their occupation of the Palestinians. And with a dark, evil hand, it's the "Israel Lobby" that controls the White House and almost the entire American Congress. Even the collapse of the World Trade Center was not caused by Al-Qaeda. Almost immediately after the World Trade Center fell and the Pentagon burned, rumors surfaced on the internet, first from Muslim countries but then picked up by a growing fringe element here at home, that it was "the Mosad," Israel's intelligence service which deftly committed the atrocities. All of these terms -- neocons, Zionists, the lobby -- are the euphemisms of today. But it's the same old story. It's the Jews. Again. There is one big difference now than in 1941. Today's anti-Semitism comes from the left and not the extreme political right. We are also beginning to hear it from some presumably mainstream people -- actors, journalists, documentary film makers, and Ivy League professors. Look closely at any antiwar rally almost always sponsored by far left groups today. You can see the code phrases being used to blame who and what they consider to be the real culprits behind all the problems in the world. The phrases -- the Zionists, the Israel, the Lobby -- are just as catchy as they were 70 years ago and just as false. These phrases arise at the same time the West faces another threat, not very different from the one it faced in 1941 -- a large and growing fascist army, has come out of the Middle East, bankrolled by enormous oil wealth and determined to conquer and destroy Western democracies. Again we hear the same rhetoric. Again we see the massive parades (what is it with fascists and the goose step?). We even see those straight armed salutes cheered on by wild eyed masses. And once again, there are people who either don't wish to face the problem or worse, they are aiming their sights at the wrong target. Appeasement doesn't work either -- not then and not now. It never does. In 1938, on a trip to Germany and a tour of its army and Luftwaffe, Mr. Lindbergh concluded that Germany was simply too big, too powerful, and too focused to be defeated by the Western democracies. Instead, he believed a reprimanding of the mighty German Reich would make all be well. "Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength," Mr. Lindbergh told his audience in Des Moines."History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation." Of course, history showed us quite a different outcome. The Nazis turned out to be not the most tolerant folk with which to deal (fascists never are). Mr. Lindbergh's prediction was not just off, but extremely costly. At the price of some 50 million lives, a devastated continent, immense treasure and untold suffering, the world learned that while Hitler had deep hatred for the Jewish people, he also didn't much care for the British, the French, the Danes, the Russians, the Dutch, or the Poles -- just about everyone who wasn't an Aryan German. Like Adolf Hitler before them, today's Islamic fascist leaders telegraph exactly what they intend to do. They describe a futuristic world that has one religion, one people, and one God (sound familiar?). And when we hear Islamic fascists condemning the "infidels" to death and destruction, it should be clear that they are not just talking about Jews. Remember those Buddhist statues in Afghanistan? And when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad echoes Hitler and announces, repeatedly, his sacred duty to destroy Israel and the Jews, chances are that's just the beginning of the list. Back in 1941, Charles Lindbergh insisted, in spite of everything he said, that he was not anti-Semitic and suggested that the Jews should be in the forefront of keeping America out of the war because "they will be the first to feel it's consequences." He was right on that score -- they were the first. But they are never the last. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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SOME LEBANON WAR RIDDLES SOLVED; THEIR RELEVANCE TO JERUSALEM MOVES ON SYRIA EXPLAINED
Posted by Avodah 15, August 23, 2006. |
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This comes from yesterday's DEBKAfile
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Apparently out of the blue, a clutch of Israeli ministers -- Amir Peretz, defense, Tzipi Livni, foreign affairs and Avi Ditcher, internal security -- have evinced a burning desire to talk peace with Syrian president Bashar Assad and even a willingness to discuss handing over the Golan captured in the 1967 war. Monday, Aug. 21, prime minister Ehud Olmert stepped in with a reminder: Thousands of Hizballah missiles striking Israelis came from Syria, he said. Until that stops and the Palestinian terrorist commands are ejected from Damascus, we have nothing to discuss with Syria. But the damage was done. Assad himself must have wondered what he had done to deserve this sudden attention from an American ally after three years of helping Baathist insurgents and al Qaeda fight US forces, hosting the most radical Palestinian groups including Hamas and Jihad Islami, and engineering the murder of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. The Israeli ministers timing was unfortunate; Syria continues to pump arms to Hizballah and Israeli soldiers are still deployed in Lebanon, holding the line against Hassan Nasrallahs men and their Syrian and Iranian sponsors. Furthermore, the Saudi king Abdullah and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, for whose regimes the Syria-Iran-Hizballah pact poses an existential threat, must be stewing in their palaces over the senior Israeli ministersdecision to go a-wooing after the Syrian president. DEBKAfile political, military and Washington sources offer some disclosures to account for this apparently illogical behavior: 1. After refusing to see Irans long arm behind the Hamas in Gaza in the aftermath of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza a year ago in which those ministers played a lead role they were dismayed to find themselves again face to face with Iran on a second front, behind Hizballah in Lebanon. And should Assad make good on his threat last week and go to war on the Golan, Israel will be hedged in by Tehran and its strategic partner on a third front. They therefore chose what looked like a quick fix for cutting Syria out of the hostile Iran-Syria-Hizballah-Hamas-Jihad Islami equation: Offering the Golan to appease Assad. The only trouble is that such a step would continue the land-for-peace policy which failed so strikingly in 2000 in Lebanon and in 2005 in Gaza - and which has been made irrelevant anyway by the outcome of the Lebanon war and the looming threat from Iran. 2. The second part of the minister rationale is even more troubling. The open letter of grievances signed by officers and men of the Israeli armys crack Alexandroni Brigade shocked and still puzzles the entire nation. The lack of clear decisions was manifested, they said, in the failure to act, the non-implementation of operational plans and the cancellation amid combat of missions assigned the unit. The result was that the unit was deployed too long in hostile country without any operational purpose for reasons that were unprofessional and, moreover, held back from making contact with the enemy. In every stage of the war, cold feet were evident in decision-making. The writers of the letter sensed the cold feet at the top but lacked the information to explain its cause or account for the cancellation and shifting about of mission directives in mid-battle. That was one of the riddles of the Lebanon War. Another was hinted at last week when Israel deputy chief of staff Maj-Gen Moshe Kaplinsky revealed that at 1200 noon, July 12, four hours before Hizballah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid, no one on the general staff had any notion a war was in the offing. A DEBKAfile investigation has uncovered some facts that would help explain some of the mishaps. The knife-edge threat that caught the Israeli army unprepared was welcomed in Washington. Our sources close to the Bush administration have learned that secretary of state Condoleezza Rice embraced the opening for an Israeli offensive against Hizballah in Lebanon. Vice President Dick Cheney also favored an Israeli air strike but worried about the lack of an Israeli plan for a parallel ground offensive. One of his aides later expressed the view that Olmert and Halutz had been cautioned that air offensives unaccompanied by ground assaults never achieved strategic goals, as the Americans discovered after bombing Baghdad at the start of the Iraq war in 2003. But the Israeli prime minister and chief of staff insisted that the air force was able to inflict a shock defeat on Hizballah and produce a fast and che ap victory. US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld was leery about any Israeli military offensive against Hizballah, fearing complications for the US army in Iraq at he peak of a surging sectarian civil war. But Olmert talked Rice into asking President George W. Bush to back the air offensive. The US president acceded only laying down two basic conditions: Israel must confine itself to an air campaign; before embarking on a ground offensive, a further American go-ahead would be required. The second was a promi se to spare Lebanons civilian infrastructure and only go for Hizballah positions and installations. The conditions when relayed by the secretary of state were accepted by the prime minister. The first explains why Israel ground forces were held ready in bases for three long weeks rather than being sent into battle - up until the last stage. By then, the air force offensive had proved a long way short of fast and cheap; worse, it had been ineffectual. The second condition accounts for another of the war enigmas: Israeli forces were not allowed to destroy buildings known to be occupied by Hizballah teams firing anti-tank rockets because it would have meant destroying Lebanese infrastructure. This brought Israeli forces into extreme danger; they were forced to come back again and again to repeat cleansing operations in villages and towns close to the Israeli border, such as Maroun a-Ras, Bint Jubeil and Atia a-Chaab. This exposed them to Hizballah attrition tactics at the cost of painful casualties. Only in the third week of the war, when the Bush administration saw the Israeli air force had failed to bring Hizballah to collapse, and the campaign would have to be salvaged in a hurry, did Rice give the green light for ground troops to go in en masse to try and finish off the Shiite terrorist group. Then too, an American stipulation was imposed: Israel troops must not reach the Litani River. The Israel army did embark on a tardy wide-scale push to the LItani River and as far as Nabatia and Arnoun, but was soon cut short in its tracks. American spy satellites spotted the advance and Olmert was cautioned by Washington to hold his horses. This last disastrous order released the welter of conflicting, incomprehensible orders which stirred up the entire chain of command - from the heads of the IDF Northern command down to the officers in the field. Operational orders designed to meet tactical combat situations were scrapped in mid-execution and new directives tumbled down the chute from above. Soldiers later complained that in one day, they were jerked into unreasoned actions by four to six contrary instructions. None of the commanders at any level could explain what was going on because none were party to the backroom decision-making at the prime ministers office. According to our sources, Olmert kept his exchanges with Condoleezza close to his chest and members of his cabinet and high army command firmly out of the process. The prime minister even kept the chief of staff out of the picture and did not explain why he was called on to chop and change tactics in the heat of war. Olmert absolute compliance with Rice directives without fully comprehending their military import threw Israel entire war campaign into disorder. Because of the muddle, supply trucks could not locate units and had to leave them without food and water, the subject of one of the bitterest complaints. This botched sequence of decisions and their consequences also ties in with the fishing expedition in Damascus subsequently embarked on by senior Israeli ministers. It appears that Condoleezza Rice was not exactly happy with the way the war turned out, nor with the failure of diplomacy to bring Lebanon hostilities to a satisfactory conclusion or even to deploy an effective multinational force to stabilize South Lebanon. She therefore decided to explore the chances of luring Bashar Assad away from the Iranian fold. This is a tentative idea which has not ripened into a policy - much less gained a White House go-ahead. But as soon as word was leaked to Jerusalem, several Israeli ministers jumped aboard Peretz first, followed by Livni, who there and then created a Syrian Project Desk at the foreign ministry, the education minister, Yuli Tamir and finally, on Monday, Dichter. These ministers know that the Olmert government stands on shaky legs against the spreading wave of popular disaffection over its management of the Lebanon war, its cost and its outcome. The clamor for a state inquiry is the least of the public demands. For government members who are caught between a fragile truce in Lebanon and a tenuous government, any distraction even a reckless feeler towards a declared enemy may look attractive. Contact the author at avodah15@aol.com |
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UNCLE SAM TO OLMERT: DROP DEAD
Posted by Yardena Even, August 22, 2006. |
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This article was written by Gary Pickholz and it appeared in
Haaretz |
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There has been an astonishing bipartisan sea change in Washington within the last two weeks regarding financial support for Israeli military activity in general, and what is perceived as reckless adventurism in particular. From the standpoint of Israel's finances, a vortex of factors have suddenly come together that raise significant doubt that Washington will foot the bill for the Lebanon War, much less increase military aid to Israel going forward. A significant blunder of the Olmert Administration has been its pandering to a lame duck the Bush Administration at the expense of garnering bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. American politics differ significantly from Israeli or European politics, and a fading Bush Administration has become increasingly irrelevant in terms of foreign appropriations. Even within the Republican Party, the lame duck President has ceded much of the authority to the two front leading Republican Senators for the 2008 nomination. The Olmert Administration has played the wrong hand in Washington's poker game. Simultaneously, there now exists widespread bipartisan sentiment on Capitol Hill for a radical reduction in US military and foreign aid across the board, and in the Middle East in particular. From a Republican perspective, there can be no further increase in foreign aid within the parameters of the Republican budgetary platform, which is taking a beating due to the escalating costs of the Iraqi/Afghani war. From the Democrat side of Congress, there is growing sentiment that the vast sums of American aid have only fueled the battl es of the Middle East and it is time for a significantly lower profile. Israel is the New Taiwan From an American perspective, the costs of Olmert's adventure into Lebanon are staggering both financially and politically, dwarfing the costs of the Gaza handover. America will be asked to pay over $7 billion in replacement costs to the Israelis, plus at least an additional $3 billion to rebuild Lebanon from the very bombs Congress paid for in the first place. This is prior to all calls for additional Israeli aid for its economic growth --all within 24 months of the original final date for US guarantee of Israeli national debt. All within a year of more than $5 billion in additional costs for the Gaza relocations. Senate responses fall into two categories. First: revulsion for Israel's carpet bombing of civilians in retaliation for terrorist actions, as expressed on the Senate record by Senator John Warner of Virginia, one of the two leading Republican candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination. Far more important and pervasive, however, is the taboo none dared even express until August 2006: the Israel is the new Taiwan -- a poor military ally, incapable of fulfilling its regional role irrespective of a bottomless credit, no longer worth the significant investment. Like Taiwan experienced, a sudden sea change has occurred on Capitol Hill that those funds may be better invested in other manners within the Middle East puzzle, capable of achieving greater long-term alliance and stability for America. Like Taiwan, the Israeli government may well find itself suffering whiplash from the sudden embrace of its arch-enemy by the United States as a more viable solution to pouring billions into the black hole of military adventurism What was not even a remote possibility in American Israeli relations 35 days ago is now openly discussed on a bipartisan basis as a more intelligent solution to American interests in the region. While the Olmert Administration must now work double time in repairing its image on Capitol Hill, there certainly is no prospect of discussion of even further aid to repair the damage to the Israeli economy suffered in the past month. All previous growth and prosperity projections for the Israeli economy are now worthless, and perhaps for the first time in the history of the State of Israel, discussion will focus on minimizing cutbacks of American aid rather than relying upon a bottomless line of credit with Uncle Sam. Contact the author at yardena3@aol.com |
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WAR ON THE HOME FRONT
Posted by David Meir-Levi, August 22, 2006. |
This is what I wrote previously re data mining.
The article below, written by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., raises a related issue. It appeared in Jewish World Review today. He focuses on CAIR, but his concept is applicable to the tempest over data-mining and other attempts by our security forces to anticipate and pre-empt and prevent terror attacks,and the vociferous antagonism that such actions have roused in some parts of our society. Are the people and institutions that are opposed to such activity (despite the fact that clearly such activity does help to catch terrorists before they strike) just lacking in good judgment (per Gafney's article), are they just ignorant of the facts, or do they have nefarious motives, do they want the terrorists to win? there is little doubt in my mind that CAIR and a number of other Moslem groups are in the latter category. Those groups which are funded by the Saudis, support Hezbollah and Hamas and el-Qaeda, and promulgate in their mosques and meeting halls the demise of western civiliation and the triumph of "Islam uber alles" -- they are our enemy. But what about the ACLU, the NLG, the Green Party, and a variety of far left born-and-bred American liberals and Democrats and other national personalities including some congresspersons and university professors and high-profile journalists and intellectuals, who argue so strenuously against what is so obviously necessary if we are to win this war? What category do they fall into? |
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In recent days, it has become harder than ever to deny the true nature of the conflict in which we find ourselves. As President Bush put it recently, "We are at war with Islamic fascists." To be sure, the mounting evidence does not preclude some from denying this reality. The facts are sufficiently clear, however, that we must begin to question the judgment, if not the motivations, of those at home who persist in trying to obscure the central threat we face from the totalitarian political ideology known as Islamofascism. One straw in the wind could be found in Sunday's New York Times which prominently featured an article entitled "And Now Islamism Trumps Arabism." Although the author, writing from Cairo, used throughout the euphemism "political Islam," the import was unmistakable: With its attacks on Israel and its survival of Israeli retaliation, the Iranian- and Syrian-supported Islamofascist terrorist group, Hezbollah, has added luster and new recruits to longstanding efforts to subject the entire Muslim world -- and, in due course, all non-Muslim populations -- to Taliban-style Islamist rule. The manifestations of this rising tide have become evident not only in the Muslim world -- Arab and Persian, Sunni and Shiite alike. Britain, Canada, Germany and the United States are among a number of Western nations that narrowly averted terrorist attacks, all of which appear to have been orchestrated by adherents to one form or another of the Islamofascist ideology. Particularly worrying is the fact that at least some of the would-be perpetrators of such murderous attacks fall into a category increasingly described as "home grown" -- that is, suicide-bombers who do not come from abroad, but are citizens of the country they are trying to afflict. Detecting and counteracting such individuals has proven to be even more challenging than the task of preventing their fellow ideologues from getting into the targeted nations. While it is true that Western societies are increasingly arresting individuals suspected of involvement with terror who are native-born, to call them "home-grown" is misleading. This term understates the role being played by foreign Islamists who have been allowed to establish elaborate recruitment and indoctrination operations inside such societies, including the United States. For example, mosques and their associated schools (madrassas), prison and military chaplain programs, college campus organizations and increasingly businesses induced to accommodate Islamist demands for employee prayer rooms, time off for prayers, etc. are being used as vehicles for inspiring For example, mosques and their associated schools (madrassas), prison and military chaplain programs, college campus organizations and increasingly businesses induced to accommodate Islamist demands for employee prayer rooms, time off for prayers, etc. are being used as vehicles for inspiring and/or compelling adherence to the radicals' ideology. Many of these operations receive generous funding from the most important promoter of Islamofascism in the world today, Saudi Arabia. So what are we to make of the claims of a prominent spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Ibrahim Hooper, who has publicly denied that Islamofascist imams in some U.S. mosques preach and teach in their schools the destruction of America? In response to a question from CNBC host Larry Kudlow last Thursday, Hooper declared "I've been in a lot of mosques in America. I've never heard that. It's not something that's -- I know of in the Muslim community. It's put out and bandied about by anti-Muslim bigots constantly." This is, of course, patent nonsense. Most, if not all, of those convicted of ties to terror (a population which includes, by the way, three former CAIR officials) have been associated with radical imams and mosques, Islamist missionary organizations like Tablighi Jamaat, and/or Saudi-funded campus or prison recruitment operations. This is no accident. For example, Freedom House has documented that the
Saudis have been providing their mosques in America (Saudi Arabian-financed
entities are said to hold the mortgages for as many as 80% of them) with
materials that promote jihad against Americans and other "infidels."
For too long, organizations like CAIR (which was reportedly spawned as a political front for the Islamofascist terror organization, Hamas), have been given a pass as they make misleading statements and otherwise sow confusion about the nature of this war. Especially intolerable is their practice of branding those who challenge them and their conduct as "anti-Muslim bigots." (Ibrahim Hooper evidently used such unfounded charges to prevent yours truly from debating him on Kudlow's show last week.) Now that we have no choice but to be clearer about the nature of our enemy in this war, we must stop treating those who apologize for, or otherwise do the bidding of, the Islamofascists as anything but what they are: Part of the problem. The FBI and the law enforcement community more generally, the military and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should stop allowing CAIR and its ilk to provide "Muslim sensitivity training" to their personnel. Similarly, the U.S. government should refrain from granting those like CAIR access to security-sensitive facilities and operations. Incredibly, in June, according to WorldNetDaily, a senior DHS official personally provided CAIR representatives a "VIP tour" of the Customs screening center at the world's busiest airport, O'Hare International -- at the same time British authorities were trying to prevent the penetration of their airport security systems by Islamofascist terrorists. Finally, the media must not allow, as CNBC recently did, CAIR's bullying tactics to prevent its representatives from being held fully to account. Such practices will only perpetuate the kind of muddled thinking that has to date kept the U.S. from waging the indispensable "war of ideas" against the Islamofascists, both at home and abroad. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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URI DROMI'S IHT ARTICLE AND WHY IT IS A MISLEADING FANTASY
Posted by David Meir-Levi, August 22, 2006. |
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Below is Uri Dromi's article in International Herald Tribune (IHT). Uri Dromi is the director of international outreach at the Israel Democracy Institute, Jerusalem. My (critical) comments are in CAPS. Feel free to use my input to write your own letter to Advocacy_International@yahoo.com and letters@iht.com |
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In order to be a political dove, one needs to be a military hawk. YES. THIS IS TRUE. THERE ARE TIMES WHEN IT IS NECESSARY TO MAKE WAR IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE PEACE. "FIGHT FOR PEACE" IS NOT ALWAYS AN OXYMORON. CONTRARY TO THE MANTRAS OF THE PEACE-NOW AND KINDRED GROUPS, SOMETIMES WAR IS INDEED THE ANSWER....SOMETIMES IT IS THE ONLY ANSWER. In other words, Israel will never be able to make peace with enemies like Hezbollah if they can harass the Jewish state at will and get away with it. YES. SO FAR MR. DROMI IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK. ISRAEL MUST THOROUGHLY DEFEAT HEZBOLLAH AND MAKE IT CLEAR TO SYRIA AND IRAN THAT SUCH MEANS OF THREATENING AND HARRASSING THE JEWISH STATE ARE NOT JUST DOOMED TO FAILURE, BUT COME AT SUCH A HIGH COST THAT UNDERTAKING THEM AGAIN IN THE FUTURE IS REALLY A BAD IDEA. But has Israel really beaten Hezbollah enough to make it think twice before it tries again? I think the answer is yes. NOW MR. DROMI HAS LOST IT. Obviously, Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is still around, presumably gaining admiration in Lebanon and in some quarters of the Arab world for standing up to Israel. But he now has plenty of time to ponder how badly he blundered. AND INDEED WE SEE HOW HE IS PONDERING JUST THAT ISSUE AS HE RE-GROUPS, RE-ARMS, RE-RECRUITS, RE-DEPLOYS, RE-OCCUPIES SOUTHERN LEBANON AND BOASTS ANIMATEDLYOF HIS INTENTIONS AS HE AND HEZBOLLAH AND IRAN AND SYRIA ALL PREPARE FOR THE NEXT ROUND. Nasrallah's concept of deterring Israel with his arsenal of rockets failed miserably. The Israeli rear remained resilient after 4,000 Katyushas were launched at the north of Israel, and the Israeli government and army had the willpower to strike back, even when Nasrallah used the Lebanese as a human shield. Contrary to his bravado, his organization suffered a heavy blow, with a quarter of his fighters killed and his infrastructure badly damaged. ODD THAT SOMEONE AS WELL INFORMED AS DROMI THINKS THAT NASRALLAH'S AIM WAS TO "DETER" ISRAEL. DETER IT FROM WHAT? THE REALITY IS PAINFULLY OBVIOUS. NUSRALLAH'S AIM WAS NOT TO DETER ISRAEL, BUT TO PROVOKE ISRAEL. INFLICTING MAXIMUM RANDOM DAMAGE ON ANY AND EVERY ISRAELI CITY AND TOWN AS FAR SOUTH AS POSSIBLE, WITH AS MANY CIVILIAN CASUALTIES AS POSSIBLE, AND TO BOAST ABOUT IT AND PROMISE MORE OF THE SAME....THAT'S PROVOCATION, NOT DETERRANCE. PROVOKE ISRAEL TO WHAT? TO ANOTHER MAJOR INVASION OF LEBANON, KNOWING THAT THE UN WILL COME IN TO SAVE HEZBOLLAH IN A TIMELY MANNER (AS INDEED IT DID), AND THAT ISRAEL WILL BE THE BRUNT OF WORLD OPROBRIUM, AND THAT ISRAEL DOES NOT WANT ANOTHER VIETNAM IN LEBANON, SO THAT HEZBOLLAH REAPS THE BENEFITS OF A PROPAGNADA VICTORY (WHICH INDEED IT IS DOING NOW).....THAT'S THE PLAN. Nasrallah's claim to be the savior of the Shiites in Lebanon was shattered. THIS IS PURE FICTION. NASRALLAH IS NOW AS POPULAR AS, OR EVEN MORE POPULAR THAN, OSAMA IN MOST OF THE ARAB AND MUCH OF THE MOSLEM WORLD. HE HAS EFFECTIVELY HIJACKED LEBANON....AND BECOME THE NEW SALADIN OF THE ARAB WORLD. In recent years he had shifted his focus away from fighting Israel and toward empowering the Shiite community, which has for decades been discriminated against and underrepresented in the Lebanese political system. He had managed to build an impressive system of social services and education, parallel to the state's system. Yet because of his rash provocation, many of his accomplishments are now heaps of rubble. His lieutenants hasten to shower Iranian petro-dollars on the Shiites whose houses were demolished, but it remains to be seen whether these people will continue to back him. "REMAINS TO BE SEEN"? DROMI IS WALLOWING IN SELF-DELUSION. HEZBOLLAH IS RAPIDLY BECOMING THE REAL RULER OF LEBANON. THE GOVERNMENT IS INTIMIDATED, THE ARMY HAS REFUSED TO TAKE ACTION, SECRET AGREEMENTS ABOUT COOPERATION BETWEEN THE GOV'T AND HEZBOLLAH ARE NOW NOT SO SECRET, CRITICS ARE INTIMIDATED INTO SILENCE, AND THE DRUZE AND AMAL AND PHALANGIST FORCES COWER IN FEAR. CLEARLY THOSE DAMAGED BY THE ISRAELI RETALIATION TO THE HEZBOLLAH WAR WILL BE THRILLED TO TAKE HEZBOLLAH MONEY (EVEN IF THEY HARBOUR CALUMNY FOR HEZBOLLAH IN THEIR HEARTS), AND THE ONLY REAL QUESTION IS: HOW MUCH WILL IRAN PROVIDE? Another pillar of Nasrallah's strategy, that of Lebanon's lack of state accountability, also collapsed. In the 1970s and 1980s, Yasser Arafat used the weakness of the Lebanese government to build a Palestinian mini-state in Lebanon. This was ended by Ariel Sharon in 1982. Nasrallah tried the same approach, but Lebanon today is different. Only a year ago, in the Cedar Revolution, the Lebanese kicked out the Syrians, and today - thanks to Nasrallah - they are sending the state's troops down south, together with an augmented UN force. Gone are the good old days of Beirut's impotence. So much so that the Lebanese defense minister threatened that if a Hezbollah militant launched a missile at Israel, he would be harshly punished as an "agent of Israel" because such an irresponsible act would surely trigger an Israeli reprisal. MORE WALLOWING IN SELF-DELUSION. THE SYRIANS HAVE REMOVED THEIR ARMY, BUT THEIR SPECIAL FORCES AND SPIES AND NETWORK OF INFLUENCE PEDLARS AND IRANIAN PASDARAN OOPERATIVES ARE ALL STILL THERE AND STILL IN CHARGE. THE LEBANESE STATE TROOPS HAVE ALREADY AGREED TO DO NOTHING. THE 'AUGMENTED' UN FORCE IS NOT YET AUGMENTED NOR IS IT LIKELY TO BE IN THE NEAR FUTURE (TYVM FRANCE). THE UNIFIL FORCE SINCE 1976 HAS BEEN NOT JUST A FAILURE AT KEEPING PEACE BUT A REAL BUTRESS AND ALLY TO THE PLO AND NOW TO HEZBOLLAH. AND INDEED THE BEIRUT GOVERNMENT DEMONSTRATES ITS IMPOTENCE WITH HOLLOW AND FOR-PR-AND-FACE-SAVING-PURPOSES-ONLY REMONSTRATIONS AGAINST TERRORISTS. In the Arab world, Nasrallah's stock has also dropped. His pretension to be a leader both of Shiites and of Sunnis has been ridiculed. Sheik Safar al- Hawali, a top Saudi Sunni cleric, said in a religious edict that Hezbollah, which translates as "the party of God," was actually "the party of the devil." THIS PART IS TRUE. HEZBOLLAH'S ACTIONS HAVE POLARIZED THE SUNNI-SHI'ITE DIVIDE, CREATED A SENSE OF NEED ON SUNNI LEADERS' PARTS (ESP. ARABIA AND EL-QAEDA) TO STEP UP TO THE PLATE AND OUT-DO HEZBOLLAH SO THE JIHADIST MOSLEM WORLD CAN SEE THAT THE SUNNI ARE STILL IN THE LEAD IN THE GREAT FINAL JIHAD AGAINST THE WEST. GREAT....SO NOW THE POLARIZATION, FAR FROM BEING A SET-BACK FOR GLOBAL ISLAMOFASCIST TERROR, IS ACTUALLY A SPUR TO MORE OF THE SAME. ISN'T THAT WHAT WE CALL A 'PHYRRIC VICTORY'? SO WHAT IS DROMI HAPPY ABOUT? As for the leaders of the pro-West Arab states, they have expressed their dismay at the destabilizing fiasco initiated by Nasrallah, and chose not to invite Syria's foreign minister, a supporter of Nasrallah's, to their recent meeting in Cairo. YES. THIS IS TRUE. THE SUNNI STATES FROM LIBYA AND EGYPT TO YEMEN AND ARABIA ALL FEAR HEZBOLLAH'S NEW PROMINANCE AND THE ASCENDENCY OF IRAN. PER ABOVE, THEIR ANTI-HEZBOLLAH FEELINGS BODE MORE ILL THAN GOOD FOR THE WEST. Finally, with his reckless gamble Nasrallah has left Israelis very angry and determined to settle unfinished business. The war exposed a lot of flaws in the Israeli military and civilian systems, but these will be vigorously examined and fixed. Nasrallah and his like, who have no idea how democracies function, may mistake the present turmoil in Israel for weakness. They are in for yet another surprise. THIS MAY BE TRUE. I HOPE HE IS RIGHT ON THIS POINT. Meanwhile, the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, during a tour of southern Lebanon, made a surprising statement: If Israel plays it smart, he said, we can turn this tragedy into an opportunity for peace. Sounds far-fetched? Stranger things have happened in the Middle East. YES. SINIORA SAID SOMETHING LIKE THAT. LIKE MANY ARAB POLITICIANS, HE KNOWS HOW TO POSTURE FOR THE MEDIA.....ESPECIALLY WHEN HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF WESTERN AID MONEY ARE AT STAKE. OF COURSE, IT WAS TRUE BEFORE HEZBOLLAH STARTED THE WAR, BUT NO ONE ON THE LEBANESE SIDE THOUGHT TO MAKE SUCH A SUGGESTION. ONLY WHEN IT SERVES THE PURPOSES OF POSTURING AND GARNERING MULTI-MILLIONS IN AID WHICH WILL BE HIGHLY FUNGIBLE AND RE-DIRECTED TO THE INSTITUTIONS OF CHOICE (WANNA LAY BETS THAT HEZBOLLAH GETS A GOOD CHUNK OF IT, FOR ALL OF ITS ORPHANAGES AND SCHOOLS -- THE ONES THAT ARE BUILT OVER TOP OF BUNKERS AND ROCKET-LAUNCHNG SITES) CAN ANYONE IN LEBANON SUGGEST PEACE WITH ISRAEL. THOSE FOOLISH ENOUGH TO DO SO IN NEUTRAL CONTEXTS -- WELL, LIKE FORMER PRIME MINISTER JAMAIL (SEE BELOW), THEY ENJOY A VERY SHORTENED LIFESPAN. Come to think of it, for Israel, peace with Lebanon is far more feasible than peace with Syria or with the Palestinians. There is no meaningful territorial issue at stake, and there is no zero-sum game between the two states, but rather the opposite: Both Lebanon and Israel would gain immensely from peace. Just think of joint investments, tourism and more. BRILLIANT MR DROMI. WHY IN THE WORLD DIDN'T LEBANON AND THE ISRAELI GOV'T THINK OF THAT BEFORE THOUSANDS DIED AND BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN REAL ESTATE WERE DESTROYED? FOR THOSE IN DOUBT, THAT WAS A RHETORICAL QUESTION. VARIOUS ISRAELI GOVERNMENTS HAVE TRIED TO MAKE PEACE WITH LEBANON SINCE 1947. PART OF THE 'BIG PINES' PLAN OF THE INVASION IN 1982 WAS TO SET UP A LEBANESE GOVENRMENT THAT WOULD MAKE PEACE WITH ISRAEL. IT WORKED....FOR 2 WEEKS. UNDER PRIME MINISTER BASHIR JEMAIL LEBANON SIGNED A PEACE TREATY WITH ISRAEL. HE WAS ASSASSINATED, AND THE ENTIRE GOVERNMENT RE-DONE UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF SYRIA (THEN IN FULL OCCUPATION OF LEBANON) -- EXCEPT THOSE AREAS WHERE THE ISRAELI ARMY WAS). THE NEW LEBANESE GOVERNMENT CAME OUT WITH COMPLETE REJECTION OF ANY PEACE WITH ISRAEL.....AND RONALD REAGAN COOPERATED WITH SYRIA AND THE PLO BY MEANS OF HIS ILL-CONCIEVED AND COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE PHILIP HABIB MISSION, AND WITH HIS CAPITULATION TO HEZBOLLAH'S 1983 ATTACKS ON MARINES, ON USA EMBASSY IN BEIRUT, ON THE PERSON OF BILL BUCKLEY (CIA STATION CHIEF OFFICER IN BEIRUT)....AND A HOST OF OTHER ATTACKS. Am I getting carried away here? Maybe. NO. NOT MAYBE...JUST A PLAIN GOOD OLD FASHIONED 'YES'. YOU ARE ESPOUSING A PIPE DREAM WHICH, TRAGICALLY, USES HALF-TRUTHS AND MIS-REPRESENTATIONS AND CHERRY-PICKING OF ONLY THOSE FACTS THAT FIT YOUR PARADIGM TO ADVANCE YOUR FANTASY. ONLY HARD-NOSED OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS BASED UPON FACTS IS OF ANY VALUE IN AN ATTEMPT TO ASSESS THE SITUATION. FANTASY AND PRO-OLMERT HYPERBOLE MISLEAD THE PUBLIC AND MAKE REALISTIC DECISION-MAKING MORE DIFFICULT. SUCH NONSENSE SERVES ONLY THE ENEMIES OF ISRAEL AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION. But if it happens, it will be Nasrallah's worst nightmare. And if he lives to see it, he will only have himself to blame. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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IF I WERE KING
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, August 22, 2006. |
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Have your ever wished that you were King or, at least, someone in a position to set things right. So who do I think I am to dare to wish for such exalted power? The fact is, I would be totally unsuitable for such a role. But, since in the world of wishes, you can do whatever you dream up, let's consider the following: Let us deal with the Jewish State of Israel and what could be done to elevate a society that could have been noble, exceptionally decent, pure and meet the criteria of how men should treat each other in this world. At present, society has been so distorted, that most people are uneducable. So let us not try the impossible by teaching the elite because they are simply too low down and unethical to educate at within the next 10 years. First we have to clean house of the negative role models who have sunk their roots deep into everyone's lives. Second, we dismiss the likes of Ehud Olmert, the Kadimites and move them well out of sight as role models to the public. Cheating, selfish deals in back rooms, use of public office to dip into the public treasury.... With Olmert and his collaborators out of power and out of sight, the public will no longer have a corrupt model to emulate. Next goes most of the Knesset. The choice of who goes or who stays will depend upon their character and willingness to serve the public, that is, to serve the public as a public servant. Cleaning out the so-called Legal Offices of the Attorney General's officeswill be more difficult. An Attorney General appointed for his friendliness to the Prime Minister and willing to manipulate the outcome of investigations as pay back for the 'job'. No, this one will absolutely have to go and the people will once again have confidence in the law which, of course, now they no longer have. The Courts: This Leftist Courts may be insurmountable but, since this is after all a dream sequence, we could discuss the entire unholy lot. No longer would there be petty judges putting teenage girls in jail for months and keeping them because there they refused to acknowledge the Court's superiority. These are petty men and women appointed to their posts mostly because they are PC, Politically Correct and will punish anyone who disagrees with them on political matters - such as our rights to live in the homes they built and work the farms they created. These low lifes would not only be dismissed but, given jobs as clean-up crews in Israeli jails for Muslim terrorists. The Leftist Supreme Court is now well-known world-wide as hopelessly 'activist' for their own gain and view themselves as a political party unto themselves alone. The Pack is led by Aharon Barak, Chief Judge of the Supreme Court, making this Court irrational beyond corrupt. The entire bunch would do well picking oranges on one of the Kibbutzim they intended to turn over to the Arab Palestinians. The IDF (Israel Defense Forces): This is or was the most advanced institution in all of Israel. But, this had its down side. When the Leftists from Ben Gurion on down, recognized the value of officers nurtured to be future politicians for the Leftist Labor party. So the army started turning out the likes of Rabin, Barak, Dan Halutz and dozens of others, insuring the spiraling down of the best and elevating the worst. Yes, indeed, I would re-test the entire officers corps, keeping the talent and downgrading the political. Perhaps you might agree that cutting the budgets of the Political Parties so those who would go anywhere for a buck, a shilling or a shekel would no longer be attracted to plundering the public treasury. Secret Agencies and Police: It is time to bring back the confidence of the people in the Intelligence Agencies and Police Force. At this moment, the people of Israel see their Police not as their friend and defender but as storm troopers obeying the orders of sham politicians with little or no ethics. When the Police attack elderly, unarmed women, beat up teenagers and ride German-bred horses into the crowds - these are not friends of the people. Yes, the higher echelons would be dismissed and the younger recruits would be retrained to recognize they are servants for the well-being of the people and not their masters. The Media, the purveyor of their edeas and only their ideas. If I could not close them down as a danger to the morals and ethics of the nation, I would put them under a law called: "Truth in Reporting". Clearly, the families who control the news and, therefore, the thoughts of the people should be held under a tight rein, given their tendency to each act as a separate political party but, ultimately loyal only to the Political Left and the Labor Party. Occasionally, they will switch their spin of the news, if the opposing party takes up the doctrine of abandoning the G-d given Land to Hamas, Hezb'Allah or finding a path to appeasement for Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and their Western friends. Well, there you have it. I have had my dream sequence and now you can have yours. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net |
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THE CEASEFIRE; HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH EXPLAINS THE LAW OF WAR; WHY ISRAEL MUST DEFEAT HIZBULLAH
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 22, 2006. |
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THE CEASEFIRE Here we go, again. There is another ceasefire with vague terms to be interpreted against Israel and with one-sided Israeli compliance. The pact, which the Arabs question and defy even before it is promulgated, undermines Israel's military gains against Arab aggressors. The Lebanese Army refuses to disarm Hizbullah. The Europeans do not want to fight. Hizbullah will rebuild its arms caches and resume its aggression. The Europeans, if they ever arrive, would either flee from terrorists or condemn Israel if it counter-attacks. By letting Muslims into Europe, Europeans are subject to retaliation at home by mobs and votes, thanks to their suicidal notion of democracy. Israel should not have agreed to a vague pact that calls upon it to comply before the enemy's full compliance. Israel should insist that the aggressors comply first. A worthy Israeli government would deride the pact and denounce the diplomacy of appeasement. GAUGING IDF EFFECTIVENESS The first factor in IDF effectiveness is the military budget, strategy, and rules of military conduct formulated by the civilian authorities. The government has cut the budget, abandoned strategy and adopted appeasement until provoked too much. It tilted the rules of conduct in favor of the Arab aggressors. Barry Chamish accuses the government of having inhibited the soldiers attacked by Hizbullah kidnappers from shooting them in time. It not accurate in this case, it is common enough. The second factor in IDF effectiveness is the military leadership. It has become political and appeasement-minded, but is more hawkish than the government. The third factor is troop morale. The government undermines troop morale, by over-stressing the rights of enemy troops and civilians, intimidating proper self-defense, and by anti-Zionism and hostility to religious Jewry. Nevertheless, many of the troops are religious and still fight hard. Finally comes what most people consider dominant, training and equipment, though those are curbed by the budget cuts. How should we gauge IDF effectiveness in the war in Lebanon? I have an idea to contribute on this. Each day, the IDF releases a combat report. The report includes how many rockets Hizbullah fired into Israel. The report is not cumulative, and I have not been keeping count. I wish I had. Hizbullah had an estimated 14,000 missiles. How many have been fired, and how many have been captured or destroyed without having been fired? If the IDF neutralized most, then its warfare is effective. How many has Hizbullah left? Is the IDF likelier to neutralize a bigger proportion of them? How is this effected by the ceasefire? Should Israel have agreed to a ceasefire? HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH EXPLAINS THE LAW OF WAR July 17, 2006, Human Rights Watch issued a document entitled "Questions and Answers on Hostilities Between Israel and Hezbollah" with the stated purpose of "provid[ing] analytic guidance for those who are examining the fighting as well as for the parties to the conflict and those with the capacity to influence them. The piece purports to be a neutral guide setting out the legal rules governing the current hostilities in Lebanon. However, the authors' distorted views of the underlying facts, selective omission of crucial legal issues, and insistent characterization of Hezbollah and Israel as the primary legal actors - with the attendant implied denial of legal responsibility of Lebanon, Syria and Iran to end their support for Hezbollah - all mislead readers and betray the bias of the piece. This is a consistent pattern followed by HRW in activities related to the Middle East. The most outstanding example of HRW's approach is provided by its question, What is Hezbollah's status in relation to the conflict? and the answer: Hezbollah is an organized political Islamist group based in Lebanon, with a military arm and a civilian arm, and is represented in the Lebanese parliament and government. As such a group, and as a party to the conflict with Israel, it is bound to conduct hostilities in compliance with customary international humanitarian law and common Article 3." The main HRW omission is that as a terrorist organization, Hizbullah has no sanction. The Security Council has ruled that it must be disarmed. Countries that support Hizbullah violate international law. Another omission is that Hizbullah strives to commit genocide. Shockingly, the only reference to legal obligations related to terrorism in HRW's document is an accusation that the "logic" of alleged Israeli actions "opens the door to ... terrorism," followed by a warning to Israel (!) that "international humanitarian law explicitly prohibits attacks of which the primary purpose is to intimidate or instill terror in the civilian population." What does HRW think the primary purpose of Hizbullah is? HRW denies that the Beirut airport, seaports, bridges, and roads are used by Hizbullah to import weapons, so that therefore they exclusively are civilian facilities that Israel is not permitted to bomb. To the contrary, such facilities are legitimate targets, under the rules of war (rules that Hizbullah flouts and violations that HRW ignores). Hizbullah does not make its own weaponry. It imports them. Western intelligence agencies have found the evidence of the airport use for this. HRW is fabricating its assertions and then condemning Israel based on falsehood. Further bias may be seen in the selection of issues. Eight questions are posed regarding Israeli military activity, and seven of the eight answers provided by HRW imply Israeli wrongdoing, often without legal or factual basis. By contrast, only three questions regard Hezbollah activity, with only one of HRW's answers directly acknowledging Hezbollah wrongdoing. HRW treats superficially Hezbollah's repeated violations of the laws of war in targeting civilians, using indiscriminate weaponry designed to needlessly enhance suffering, threatening the civilian population, using civilian shields and the like. Indeed, while Hezbollah's use of civilian shields and deliberate placement of military assets in civilian areas are gross violations of the laws of war, HRW refers to such acts only in passing. Another means of bias is HRW speculation, without evidence, about Israel, and only Israel, having sordid motives, and then warning Israel not to proceed accordingly. HRW finds the Hizbullah kidnapping of Israeli soldiers non-terrorist, but overlooks its being cross-border aggression and therefore illegal. It concludes that Israel has no right of self-defense! (IMRA, 7/23 from NGO Monitor). HRW deploys its huge budget to distorts human rights law so as to defame Israel and condone terrorism. It questions Israel's motive; its own are questionable. THE ROOT CAUSE THEORY Israel's current wars were launched by the Arabs from territories Israel did not control. So much for the theory that if Israel did not control territories the Arabs claim it took from them, the Arabs would leave it alone. These two wars are sponsored by Iran and Syria, as parts of their religious and imperial ambition and the Syrian regime's strategy for survival. Israel is just a pawn in their grander scheme for control first of the Mideast, then to defeat the US, then to dominate the whole world, and finally to conjure the "hidden imam" and a Muslim era. Iran takes credit for pushing the US out of Lebanon, the Soviets out of Afghanistan, the Spanish out of Iraq, and the Israelis out of Lebanon and Gaza. It commits terrorism abroad and develops nuclear weapons without great penalty. It thinks its enemies are afraid of it. That self-confidence pulls it along and persuades Muslims everywhere that their time has come, again (IMRA, 7/24 from Moshe Ya'alon). It is time for the US to pull together with Israel and apart from the UNO. The US should ask the leaders of Russia and China what they think of the Muslim plans to dominate the world. Perhaps the US has, but the US has failed to sever its corrupt and confused ties with certain Muslim countries. The US has not developed a counter-strategy. Pres. Bush wars we are in a world war, but has not followed through. US power is not growing and is not wielded usefully. It sometimes is counter-productive, as when it hinders Israel. As a practical matter and not just as an ethical one, the State Dept. must overcome its traditional anti-Zionism and use what allies it can to defend the West. PLO and Hamas doctrine is to attack Israel from whatever territory Israel relinquishes. Muslim doctrine is that any territory formerly conquered by Islam bet alter emancipated is "occupied." There can be no peace. The US helped push the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Leftists pulled Israelis out of Lebanon and Gaza. ISRAEL'WAR AIM Israel aims to reduce the menace from Hizbullah. This is reasonable but too limited. Hizbullah is just a tool of Iran and Syria. That tool can be damaged but just as easily rebuilt. The answer is to cripple the tool's wielder, Syria. Remove Syrian power, and Hizbullah probably could not make a comeback (for it would lose face from its defeat and access to Iranian arms via Damascus). Iran would lose face, too. That would halt the Arab rush into its embrace. Crippling Syria and eliminating its missiles would remove it as a direct threat to Israel, too. It might give democracy some chance in the Arab world (IMRA, 7/24 from Efraim Imbar). GAZA WITHDRAWAL POTENTIAL LAYS AHEAD The head of Israeli security warned that unless Israel regains control of the Gaza border and interior, Hamas will import and manufacture arms and build a military infrastructure like Hizbullah's in Lebanon. There would be bunkers, tunnels, and dangerous weapons (IMRA, 23). Why couldn't all those Jews who cheered at Israel's abandonment of Gaza foresee that? I think it is because they think ethics are relative and they don't acknowledge that some movements, totalitarian, bigoted, and imperialist, are evil. They think that if they satisfy the enemy's immediate demands, the enemy would drop its ultimate demands. Fantasy. ISRAELI MILITARY CENSORSHIP The IDF listed its rules for what may be disseminated about the war and what must be submitted to the censor before publication. Basically what is forbidden is anything that might inform the enemy about ongoing warfare (IMRA, 7/24). Fair, in principle. I think the code too liberal, for the enemy can learn what might help in evaluating tactics. Missing from the release is the penalty for violation. I believe that violations should be punished with discretion but severity when warranted. Some of the reporters or their agencies are hostile to Israel. SAUDI ARMS BUILDUP Iran is bidding to dominate the Arab world and via radicalism. The Saudi rulers and sect fear for their survival. Their officials give that as the reason for raising troop and arms levels, and privately admit that Israel has no imperial ambitions to concern it. An American expert thinks that S. Arabia would be buying more arms, anyway. It always does (IMRA, 7/24). If S. Arabia were not poised against Israel, why doesn't it move towards Iran its squadron on a base near Israel, a base it stocked with planes sold to it by the US on condition that they would not threaten Israel? THE HIZBULLAH STATE WITHIN A STATE What do they mean, that Hizbullah is "a state within a state?" Hizbullah directly controls a fourth of Iran, to the virtual exclusion of the government of Iran. It has foreign embassies, collects an income tax, appoints officials, and runs local schools, clinics, and many businesses. It imposes the dress code and other religious rules of fanatical, Shiite Iran. It has given the downtrodden Shiites a sense of superiority, and has connections with Shiites outside its quarter of the country. The largely Shiite Lebanese Army would be doubly reluctant to try to disarm the better armed and trained Hizbullah. Iran is using Hizbullah against Israel to rally the Arab world under its banner. It is seeking to dominate the Mideast via Lebanon, Syria, its tightening control over Iraq, Gaza, and then Israel. Israel must defeat Hizbullah as the spearhead of world 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@aol.com. |
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NOW THE FALLOUT
Posted by David Nathan, August 22, 2006. |
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This article was written by Lee Smith. He is a Hudson Institute visiting fellow based in Beirut; he is writing a book on Arab culture. |
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Israeli leaders face a reckoning, while the people prepare for the next round of fighting. HERE IN ISRAEL the reckoning has been underway at least since the U.N.-brokered ceasefire started Monday morning. The papers are loaded with detailed analysis of varying opinion, but much of the criticism of the military and political leadership has nothing to do with how they waged war against Hezbollah. Among other scandals brewing, it has been reported that IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz sold nearly $26,000 worth of stock right after the kidnapping of the two soldiers that sparked the conflict, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seems to have gotten a sweetheart deal on a luxury Jerusalem apartment last year. My Lebanese friends are curious to know if all this means that Israel is tearing itself apart at the seams. They know better, but the man who is de facto leader of their country, Hassan Nasrallah, believes that a free press and dissent are signs of weakness. Of course, it is very dangerous in Lebanon to disagree with Nasrallah, which might be why future MP Saad Hariri, son of the slain ex-Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, says he is so proud of Lebanon's "victory," which he credits to the arms of the resistance. Perhaps Saad means to preserve Lebanon's illusory "national unity," a fiction that may only serve to make it easier for IDF planners during the next round of fighting, which many believe to be inevitable. Unlike other Western observers, most Israelis don't seem particularly concerned that the Arabs consider this a great victory for Hezbollah. The fact is no one can really afford to tabulate wars the way the Arabs do, not those who make war against them nor, least of all, the Arabs themselves, who acknowledge defeat only after losing lives and land on a massive scale. The June 1967 war is the gold standard for defeat in the Arab world, but the intra-Arab slaughter at Hama in Syria and the failed Palestinian uprising in Jordan, known as the Black September, are also understood as defeats. In Lebanon, however, where the only parts of the country that were destroyed were those ostensibly "defended" by the resistance, and tens of thousands of civilians avoided death only because the enemy warned them to leave, the Arabs believe they have achieved an historic victory. "If Nasrallah sent a missile through my window," as one young Israeli Arab told me, "I would be happy just knowing that Arabs were fighting." Even though Nasrallah's rockets killed lots of Israelis, and many Arabs among them, I have yet to meet an Israeli who is scared or even nervous. Still, most here believe that they are always walking a very fine line with little room for error, and what mistakes that have been made need to be corrected quickly. In contrast, the Bush administration is now behaving more like an Arab regime, as though no one will ever have to pay the price for endangering the lives of people the administration is supposed to protect. Why Secretary of State Rice spent so much time and prestige working on U.N. Resolution 1701 is baffling. Presumably, it was to garner support for America's own fight with the Iranians; if that's so, the White House should learn from its mistakes here and correct them before crunch time. If Washington was more like Jerusalem, Rice would probably be looking for another job right now. Her ceasefire is on the verge of falling apart after less than a week for reasons that were obvious from the outset. First, the Lebanese government has said in the past that it could not disarm Hezbollah. Furthermore, in the two years since UNSCR 1559, it has demonstrated no will to do so. Second, no matter what the rules of engagement are for a reinvigorated UNIFIL, no European leader is foolish enough to commit troops if it means standing between an armed Hezbollah and a state whose very existence is threatened by an armed Hezbollah. And so, if what we have seen the last month is at least in part a proxy war between the United States and Iran, we now have an idea of what a real war between these two states would look like, as almost everyone at the table has shown his hand: The conservative Arab regimes, Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf States, will keep their mouths shut as long as they can, desperately needing an American victory. They will be under intense pressure from "the street," which supports Tehran's agenda and the Damascus-Hezbollah- Hamas axis, but between two hard choices the regimes really have none but to tough it out. Most importantly, Saudi Arabia will keep pumping oil. Maybe Europe really is "with" the United States regarding the Iranian nuclear program, whatever that may mean at this point. It agrees that Iran is a serious problem, but given the political climate in England, France, and Germany, siding with the United States will be a serious problem, and unlike their Arab counterparts, European leaders can actually lose their jobs. It's worth remembering that France was to lead the pumped-up UNIFIL force with a reported 3,500 troops and has now backed out of its commitments almost entirely--an indication of Europe's aversion to any military action in the Middle East. More to the point, it now seems clear that the Iranians have no interest in negotiating over their nuclear program. If, in this equation, Israel equals the United States and Hezbollah equals Iran, Hezbollah's refusal to disarm can be understood as Iran's refusal to give up its nuclear program. There is nothing subtle about Hezbollah's brinksmanship, they have effectively taken over the government of Lebanon and they threaten anyone who stands in the way of the resistance. Rather than disarm, they will instead conceal their arms in the south, as though prior to the recent conflict they were public about the number and location of the Chinese-made silkworm missiles they possessed. When the world community, led by the United States, has shown that it can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat on behalf of Hezbollah, why would the party of God's Iranian patron expect anything but the same deference? That means that after putting a leash on its one truly useful ally in this war, the United States is virtually alone. So now the only real question mark, the only actor whose actions are not entirely predictable at this point, is the United States. We hope. Contact David Nathan at DAVENATHAN@aol.com |
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EMANUEL MORANO'S LEGACY
Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, August 22, 2006. |
| This article was written by Caroline Glick and it appeared today in the Jerusalem Post. |
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At around 4 a.m. Saturday, Lt. Col. Emanuel Morano, a senior commander in the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal), was killed in a fierce battle with Hizbullah fighters near Baalbek in the Bekaa valley not far from the Lebanese-Syrian border. From the details of the commando raid that have filtered into the media, we learned that Morano and his men were airdropped into the area by helicopter along with their two Hummer vehicles, with the mission of attacking a Hizbullah base in the nearby village of Bodei used by the Iranian-sponsored guerrilla fighters for weapons smuggling. Iran is now working steadily to replenish Hizbullah's surface to surface and anti-tank missile stocks and augment them with anti-aircraft missiles. Israel's continued sea and air blockade of Lebanon, which Kofi Annan is pushing the Olmert government to lift, forces Iran to resupply Hizbullah by land through Syria and into the Bekaa valley. Morano and his men were discovered by Hizbullah fighters around the heavily guarded enclave and a pitched battle ensued. Morano was killed, another officer was seriously wounded and a third was wounded lightly. At least three Hizbullah fighters were killed and two were reportedly taken prisoner. Close air support from helicopters and fighter planes prevented Hizbullah reinforcements from participating in the battle or encircling the IDF commandos who were extracted - with their casualties and prisoners - after a prolonged firefight. Morano, 35, was a hero. He was admired and respected by his soldiers and officers. Those who knew him well agree that his most outstanding features were his humility and his Zionism. Morano lived modestly with his wife Maya and three young children in Moshav Tlamim by Sderot. He never wore his uniform in his community - he wasn't interested in people knowing how senior an officer he was. He was in the IDF to serve his country and his people, not for the glory. He was a loyal son of Jerusalem. EXACTLY a year before his death, Morano's humility and dedication to serving his country brought him to perform a different sort of nocturnal mission. Every night last August - until precisely 52 weeks before his death - he snuck into Gush Katif to bring food to his brother David and his family who were besieged along with the rest of the residents of Gush Katif by a force of some 50,000 IDF and police forces. These forces, who outnumbered the forces sent into Lebanon to fight Hizbullah a year later by 20,000, were under orders not to fight Israel's enemies, but to expel loyal, patriotic Israeli citizens from their homes and communities, destroy their homes and communities and abandon their land to Hamas and Fatah control. David Morano is a major in reserves in another elite IDF unit. Last year in Neve Dekalim he challenged the IDF to find one soldier who would be capable of throwing him and his family out of their home. Taking David's point and seeking to avoid embarrassment, the senior brass of the IDF beat a steady path to his door, attempting to convince him that he must leave. Sitting in a modestly furnished, book-lined living room, David repeatedly demanded to be told the strategic rationale of the expulsions. Why were these senior commanders following orders to surrender land to terrorists? Why were they turning 8,500 Jews into refugees in the Land of Israel in order to carry out a mission conceived by a prime minister desperate to avoid a felony indictment on corruption charges from the radical leftist state prosecution? David kept repeating over and over again that this was not the reason he and his four brothers served as combat officers in the IDF. He warned over and over again that expelling the Israelis from Gaza would strengthen Israel's enemies and lead directly to another war. NONE OF the officers who spoke to David could provide him with answers. The most they could do was lend a sympathetic ear as they suggested he start packing his bags. They could not convince him to leave. In the end, the events had their own momentum. By Friday afternoon, David and his family were more or less the only family left on their street. Everyone else had been expelled Thursday. Over the Sabbath, the remaining Jews of Neve Dekalim darted around in the shadows avoiding arrests by soldiers and police. When they gathered in the synagogue, they were momentarily heartened to see that a couple hundred were still on hand. But their spirits were broken. By the end of the next week, they were all refugees, their homes and communities laid to waste by IDF bulldozers. Their abandoned synagogues awaited destruction at the hands of Palestinian mobs which came three weeks later. Some of the most charged moments at David's home last summer came when he expressed his indignation over the way that IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz and his generals daily insulted the religious Zionist community. Halutz threatened to bar the youths who protested the expulsions from serving in the military. Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, who as then OC Southern Command commanded the expulsions, talked about "a lost generation," and demanded an accounting by the heads of the religious Zionist public for their children who refused to accept the legitimacy of the expulsions. Maj. Gen. Benny Ganz, who then served as OC Northern Command, claimed that the youth who protested the expulsions were a greater danger to Israel than Hizbullah. And yet, over the past year, after in many cases having to submit to humiliating interrogations by the Shin Bet, and repeated rejections by draft boards due to their "ideological fervor," thousands of the youths who protested last summer's expulsions were drafted into the army. Like Emmanuel and David Morano and their three older brothers, these soldiers make up the backbone of the IDF's regular combat and Special Forces units. Like Emmanuel Morano, a disproportionate number of religious Zionist soldiers have died in the past month of war. LAST WEEK, Vice Premier Shimon Peres tried to silence the growing calls for the government and the members of the General Staff to resign by saying that this is no time for a war between the Jews. His statement is an insult to the intelligence. Demanding accountability from incompetent political and military leaders who led us into defeat against an enemy we could and should have beaten is not opening a civil war. It is the proper response from a responsible public that understands our leaders are incapable of defending the country. Indeed, if Peres is concerned about the possibility of a war between the Jews, then he should be the first one calling for the government to resign. The Olmert government was elected with a platform explicitly committed to carrying out a war against the Jews through the conduct of mass expulsions of up to 100,000 Israelis from their homes and communities in Judea and Samaria. In the midst of this month's Lebanon war, as it became increasingly clear that he lacked the will to prosecute the war to victory, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert attempted to buck up his support in Europe and among the radical Israeli Left (of which his children and wife are proud members), by saying that the war in Lebanon would pave the way for the mass expulsion of Israelis from Judea and Samaria. Saturday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni appointed a senior diplomat Yaacov Dayan as her point man for future negotiations with Syria. Her decision to appoint an envoy for talks on surrendering the Golan Heights to Syrian dictator and Iranian toady Bashar Assad came just days after Assad announced that he hates Israel, wants nothing to do with peace and is committed to Israel's destruction. In light of Assad's statements, there are two logical explanations for Livni's move. First, like her colleagues in the Olmert government who also are pushing peace talks with Assad, Livni may be stupid. Second, Livni may have appointed Dayan in the hopes of stirring up internal fissures over the issue of land for peace. Already the radical leftists who run Israel's media are engaging in surrealistic debates about the possibility of making peace with Assad the warmonger. These debates immediately place religious Zionists on the hot seat for their stubborn insistence on settling the land which makes giving it to Israel's sworn enemies all the more difficult for people like Livni and her friends. Last summer in Gush Katif, there was no war between the Jews. Last summer, under orders from Ariel Sharon and Olmert, the IDF and the police fought a war against the Jews. David and Emmanuel Morano didn't fight against Israel. They didn't fight against the IDF. The Moranos fought against insane policies that victimized 8,500 patriots for no reason other than Leftist anti-religious prejudice, and that caused Gaza to become a new base for global jihad. And then, when war came from our emboldened enemies, as they warned it would, the Moranos loyally served beside their brothers and countrymen in defense of Israel. When the outraged Israeli public sends this incompetent government and General Staff home, it will not be starting a war between the Jews. It will be preventing another war against the Jews. 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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STEVE CENTANNI AS A HOSTAGE AND THE MESSAGE
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, August 22, 2006. |
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Why have we not heard the real truth about the Arab Muslim Palestinian Terrorists and their control of the Media - among other things? FOX NEWS has reported the facts and this irritates the Palestinians. CNN, on the other hand, plays along and tells the story in a way more acceptable to the Palestinians. I recall the 12 years in Lebanon's Civil War from 1975 to 1982 when Yassir Arafat created a State-within-a-State. Arafat's brother, in charge of Public Relations, issued press releases to the journalists hunkered down in the Commodore Hotel in Beirut. Arafat's brother handed out the press release needed for the moment and the journalists knew that they had better send the story back to their editors who, in turn, had better print the story as Arafat dictated. Ask Tom Friedman (if he's ready to 'fess up) how the journalists - including himself - feared the streets of Beirut. The kidnapping of Steve Centanni and the Photographer Olaf Wiig from New Zealand was merely the M.O. ("Modus Operandi") of the Muslim Arab Palestinians who have always done 'business' their way when it came to the Media. During the 12 year Civil War which Arafat instigated, 100,000 Christians and Muslims were killed. At least 10 Media personnel were also murdered. That was the Muslim Arab Palestinian message to the media and the media understood what they were ordered to do. Others like the NEW YORK TIMES, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, LOS ANGELES TIMES, etc. walk that fine line between honest reporting and twisting the facts so t either flatters the Palestinian terrorists or bashes the Jewish State of Israel. We recently watched John Roberts of CNN being escorted by Hezb'Allah through the alleged wreckage of the Hezb'Allah headquarters in Lebanon. The questions and answers to them were clearly scripted and Roberts went along without asking any tough questions which might have endangered his own life or those of his colleagues. Granted the Media choose their professions but, they, when they had to, they also chose to lie to keep their jobs. Conversely, in Israel the Media roams freely and there is no implied threat that they had better slant the story a certain way - or else! In fact, when it turns out that the journalist and his photographer lied and try to set up the shot, even then their credentials are not (usually) withdrawn. (Note! On very rare occasions, press credentials have been withdrawn only to be returned later.) Do the Palestinians or Arab in general threaten the Media? (To say it their way), you bet! Muslims lie and expect the world media to accept their distortions and when questioned, they storm with expressions of insult. Perhaps lying for Allah is beyond reproach. As for the Media, they are clearly scared witless and will spin the story as ordered without checking, without facts, happy to leave the scene with their head yet attached to their shoulders. There is still more to consider. Terrifying journalists to convince nations and their people that Palestinian Muslim Arab Terrorists are merely just good 'ole' boys, doing good deeds is one benefit. But, terrifying nations and their governments is a more important aspect of terror. Whether it is the Palestinian terrorists, Hamas, or the Hezb'Allah terrorists in Lebanon, acting as proxies for Iran and Syria, their goals are the same. 9/11 was a message from Islamic 'Jihadists' to all Americans. It was a terror message which was intended to have the Bush government fall into line, much the same as was expected of the media. It worked fairly well with the media but, President Bush and his team wasn't as cooperative. Perhaps whoever the terrorists were, they will release Steve Centanni, FOX NEWS anchor and Olaf Wiig, free lance photographer from New Zealand, when they discover their fellow journalists will bravely come to their aid. The threats to distort their reportage should have angered the media community so much they would cease to be a shill for the terrorists. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net |
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FOSSIL FUEL REMAINS THE BANE OF ISRAEL'S EXISTENCE
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, August 21, 2006. |
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The unintended consequences of a botched Iraqi occupation allow Iran to extend its sphere of influence to an emerging Shiite 'Sadr-stan'. Furthermore, fossil fuel addicted nations in collusion with Islamic extortionists, Big Oil, and mercenary commodities traders, propel the per barrel price of that prehistoric carbon based heroin-like energy producing substance to more than seventy dollars and climbing, enhancing revenue flows to those 'got rocks' oil-supplying Persian psychopathic mullahs and maniacal Muslim madman AhMADinejad, allowing them the luxury of amply financing proxy Hizbullah, currently in charge of Lebanon. Syrian sadists, reflecting on days when former emperor Assad won respect with mass murder followed by bulldozers, salivating at Iran's muscle flexing, join the Shiite team in its maniacal quest to morph the Middle East and Western Europe into an Imam-inspired intolerant misogynist Jew-bereft neo-Ottoman fundamentalist empire. Alas, Israel, attempting to control its own destiny in this truly less than comical 'Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World', must proceed with caution coldly assessing all facts, especially the convoluted money flows from presumably sane civilized non-Muslim industrial leviathans to less than sane oil saturated Muslim regimes to criminally insane homicidal/suicidal jihad junkies with eyes on the thighs of compliant virgins in Allahland. No Stanley Kramer produced extravaganza, even with turbaned Milton Berle and Sid Caesar playing the parts of crazed Arabs, could ever hope to compete with this real-life mayhem; it would simply stretch the believability quotient of an average audience beyond acceptable limits, unwilling to convince itself that educated societies would be so dull witted as to so enable their worst enemies. Yet truth sometimes does trump fiction, even bizarre fiction. No doubt, if such a truly dull witted non-Muslim industrial world did not so crave prehistoric Texas tea, Islamic pusher states, currently in T-Rex mode, would be less imposing than toothless herbivores foraging for veggies, a well deserved fate for century twenty-one ner-do-well nations dependent on raw-material economies. Alas, such an addiction is not easily broken as vested interests within the non-Muslim industrial world rule the day to the detriment of hoodwinked populations that just go with the flow. Tiny Israel, less than two tenths of one percent as large as surrounding hostile Muslim neighbors, the chronic shlamazel state on a planet dominated by oil-oligarchs, must take heart in the fact that brains can conquer brawn. Thus it is incumbent on the Jewish State's leaders to create incentives for the best minds in the land to develop an efficient cheap alternative energy source to replace the vicious viscous bane of Israel's existence. At some point, industrial world nations will have to reduce, perhaps eliminate, their dependence on oil, possibly when the impact of global warming finally hits world citizenry so hard, even vested interests will not be able to contain the panic-driven clamor for change. Might such a time give rise to a prepared Israel's day in the sun? Might a wise Prime Minister, currently on the ropes, suggest such a course of action, for the sake of a legacy now seemingly in tatters? Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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THE COMING WARS
Posted by Naomi Ragen, August 21, 2006. |
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This article was written by Caroline Glick and it appeared in the Jerusalem Post August 18, 2006. |
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Since the cease-fire was implemented in Lebanon, we have heard scattered reports indicating that a prisoner swap with the Palestinians may be in the works. In exchange for hundreds if not thousands of Palestinian terrorists now held in Israeli prisons, IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who has been held hostage by Palestinian terrorists for nearly two months, may be released from captivity. These reports lend weight to the view that things are back to normal. Terrorists kidnap Israelis and hold them hostage and Israel releases terrorists in order to free them. It is a comforting thought for people like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his colleagues and the members of Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz's General Staff who continue to believe that it will be possible for Israel to sign on a dotted line and achieve "a normal existence." Unfortunately, the chance that Shalit will be released is almost as small as the chance that Israel will be able to achieve a "normal existence." Palestinian sources explain that the decision of whether or not to release Shalit is firmly in the hands of the Iranians and Syrians, and they are not in any mood to horse trade with the Jews. Today the Palestinian Authority is nothing more than yet another Iranian proxy. During the past month of war in Lebanon, it was the supposedly moderate Fatah terror group and the supposedly moderate Fatah-led Palestinian security forces that organized mass rallies in the streets of Ramallah and Gaza cheering on Hizbullah and calling for Hassan Nasrallah to bomb Tel Aviv. Now, in the aftermath of the cease-fire, which handed Hizbullah and its state sponsors Syria and Iran the greatest victory in their history, forces in the PA are actively preparing for a new round of war against Israel. As Hamas spokesmen have put it, Israel's defeat in Lebanon has convinced them that it is possible to adopt Hizbullah's methods to destroy the Jewish state. Amid false reports that he was planning to dissolve the Hamas government and replace it with a government of technocrats, Abbas went to Gaza on Monday morning and asked Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh if Fatah could join his government. As instructed by his commanders in Teheran and Damascus, Haniyeh has not yet agreed to Abbas's offer. Rather he set humiliating conditions which Abbas must accept first. Abbas already agreed to Hamas's demand that he allow the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization to also join the government. He is similarly expected to agree to Hamas's demands that Fatah join the government as a junior partner and that it abandon its negotiations with Israel. Throughout the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian areas of Judea and Samaria, the Palestinians are gearing up for their next round of jihad with Israel. As was the case six years ago, they are beginning with public executions of Palestinians accused of helping Israel combat terrorism. Just this week, a crowd of hundreds hooted and stomped their feet in ecstasy as unmasked murderers killed one such Palestinian "collaborator" in Jenin. So while all eyes are glued on Lebanon, the Palestinians may well start the next war. And we know exactly how that war will look. They will use missiles, mortars and rockets that they will smuggle in from Egypt to kill Israelis in their homes in the South. They will infiltrate Israeli cities by digging tunnels under the security fence around Gaza, and from Egypt and from towns and cities in Judea and Samaria and murder us in ever growing numbers. They will receive money, weapons and combat instruction from Hizbullah and Iranian operatives in Gaza and abroad and they will attack us while protesting their everlasting dedication to jihad and their anger over Israel's "aggression." Then there is Syria. Syrian President Bashar Assad's address Tuesday was a watershed event. After 14 years of beating around the bush, Syria finally came clean. Peace, Assad said, is dead. We hate Israel and we want to destroy it. If not us, then our children will destroy it. All the Arabs that want peace with Israel are traitors. Long live Hizbullah and we're going to war to conquer the Golan Heights as a first step towards destroying Israel. So Syria is planning to attack us. Perhaps it will do so while Hizbullah is carrying out what Nasrallah called the "building and reconstruction jihad" where with Iranian funding Hizbullah will rebuild Lebanon for the Lebanese and so hammer one more nail in the coffin of the Lebanese nation state and move 10 steps ahead in the Iranian colonization of Lebanon. Yes, while Hizbullah goes forward with Lebanese reconstruction, and with Iranian and Syrian assistance reequips and upgrades its arsenal of war and rebuilds its force structure, Syria will likely open a new front on the Golan Heights. Like the Palestinians, the Syrians will be following the Hizbullah model. Assad knows that his antiquated conventional forces are incapable of conquering and holding the Golan Heights. But, if Israel fights Syria the same way it just fought Hizbullah, then that doesn't matter. Syria, with its arsenal of Scud missiles whose range covers the entire country and armed with its chemical and biological arsenals that can act in the best case as a deterrent force, will be able to kill thousands if not tens of thousands of Israeli civilians and soldiers in the coming battle and cause property and economic damage to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. Syria believes that it will be able to cause sufficient damage to make Israel sue for a cease-fire as we just did with Hizbullah. So like Hizbullah, Syria expects to gain at the UN Security Council what it could never hope to achieve on the battlefield. Specifically, given the precedent of Resolution 1701, Syria no doubt believes that in exchange for its aggression, it will receive international recognition for its territorial demands against Israel; an international force on the Golan Heights that will make it difficult for Israel to respond to future attacks; a major upgrade in its international profile; and billions of dollars in international assistance to rebuild in the wake of any damage caused to Syrian infrastructures by IDF operations. Behind the Palestinians and the Syrians lies Iran, the guiding light behind the present jihad. Iran, with its burgeoning nuclear weapons program, is the single greatest danger to international security. It is the single greatest danger to Israel's survival. To date, Iran has made do with fighting Israel through its proxies, to great advantage. But Iran has made it absolutely clear that it intends to join the fray directly - when it is good and ready. And of course it will be good and ready when it has nuclear weapons. If Iran is allowed to attain nuclear weapons, there is no reason to doubt that it will use them. If Iran attacks Israel with nuclear weapons, then of course we are looking at a future war scenario involving not thousands of dead, but millions. As all of Israel's leaders have been quick to point out over the years, the threat of a nuclear armed Iran is not just dangerous for Israel but for the entire world. Iran has its Persian Gulf neighbors in its gun sites. It has directly threatened the US and Europe. Although this is true, the fact that Iran is a threat to the entire world does not give Israel the ability to shirk from its responsibility to contend directly with Iran. Doing so would be tantamount to signing the death warrant of the Jewish people. In the not so distant future, we will find ourselves at war with Iran. Today, the choice of whether we fight that war in our own time, and before Iran gets nuclear weapons is in our hands. If we hesitate, if we and the rest of the free world waste precious time with worthless diplomatic wrangling with the ayatollahs, war will come to us, but on the enemy's terms. And we will have only ourselves to blame. All of these future wars present us with a clear challenge as a country. We must prepare for war. This means, that technologically, we must engage in a crash program to find means to protect our cities from missile attack. We got off relatively easy this time. Hizbullah chose not to attack our industrial centers but showed it has the ability to do so through its missile attacks near Haifa's port and its attacks near Hadera's power plant. Militarily, we must not relent in targeting our enemies. The IDF must target every Palestinian terrorist. It must reassert control over the international border between Gaza and Egypt. Israel must accept the reality that the PA is a terrorist organization, not a legitimate regime, and stop viewing Abbas and his associates in Fatah as potential peace partners. Obviously, Israel must give up the idea of transferring Judea and Samaria to Palestinian control and take all necessary measures to stabilize the situation on the ground in a manner that neutralizes the threat of Palestinian jihad. Furthermore, the war in Lebanon exposed the results of years of neglect of the IDF reserve forces. These forces must be properly equipped, properly trained for war, and properly led. The talk of releasing men from reserve duty at 35 must be abandoned. The IDF has to accept that it is a fighting force in war. Commanders have to stop acting like yuppies in uniform and understand that they have a war to train for and fight and win. Finally, Israel needs a political leadership that will be capable of telling the Israeli public the truth that has been ignored for the past decade and a half. We are not a "normal" nation and we are not going to get peace in the coming years. We are an abnormal nation in our neighborhood and in the world and will always remain so, as is our right. Our people must be ready to sacrifice for the survival of the state and the defense of our freedom to be abnormal. We need leadership that will tell the Israeli people that a struggle awaits us but that our democracy, our freedom, and our values give us the power of creative thought that will allow us to beat the dull forces of jihad that surround us. In response to Assad's speech on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that Assad has to decide if he's on the side of peace or on the side of war. Defense Minister Amir Peretz outdid even that when he said that now that the war is over, it is time for Israel to get down to the real business of peace and to set the conditions for a renewal of the peace negotiations with Syria. In so responding to Assad's unequivocal warmongering, our leaders again have shown us that they have learned nothing and are incapable of learning anything from the disaster into which they led us with Hizbullah in Lebanon. There is no missile that is capable of penetrating their walls of self-deception and delusion. They are blind and deaf to all evidence that their way of appeasement has failed. With the Olmert government's stubborn insistence that Israel won the war it just lost, with the General Staff's absurd statements that the mission was successful, it is clear that both our political and military leadership must be replaced as quickly as possible. Our enemies give us no time for hesitation. They plan their next wars in broad daylight as our leaders squawk in the darkness of their ideological stupor. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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THE ORDEAL OF ARAB CHRISTIANS
Posted by Magdi Khalil, August 21, 2006. |
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The recent, simultaneous bombing of six Iraqi churches reflects the ser iousness of the predicament of Arab Christians, who are trapped between the hammer of terrorists groups and extremists, and the anvil of fanatic governments that skillfully manipulate the issue of religious radicalism for their own benefit, while reinforcing religious, ethnic and sectarian discrimination among their citizens. Arab Christians live in the bosom of a racist culture that claims superiority over non-Muslims, fueled by a legacy mostly filled with violence and hatred and a history centered on strife, murder and viciousness. Obviously, the Christians of the Middle East have lost the demographic race to the benefit of their Muslim compatriots. Their numbers continue to dwindle not just due to natural factors, but because many of them chose, or were compelled, to emigrate. Some fell victims to the constant pressures that escalated to fata l attacks. And others succumbed to the temptation to renounce their faith. Â The Christians of Southern Sudan were the only ones to maintain their place in that difficult contest, and though they paid a dear price, they discovered the means to achieve a realistic balance of power and face off eradication designs. A survey of the present situation of Christians living in the Middle East demonstrates a problematic and distressing cycle: Arab Christian populations are declining, resulting in an erosion of their political power, which in turn causes their conditions to worsen and ultimately drives them out of their own homeland. This pattern is repeated throughout the region. In Lebanon, Christians represented 50-60% of the population prior to 1975; today this percentage has declined to 25-30%. Most importantly, their political influence has severely weakened. The Lebanese emigration ministry estimates the number of emigrants at five million, more than three and a half million of which are Lebanese Christians. In the past Lebanon was known to be a safe haven for persecuted individuals who were hunted because of their religious or intellectual beliefs. Today, however, it is driving out its own children because of the Arab infringement, the Palestinian foolishness and the Syrian occupation. The Lebanese Patriarch Nasr Allah Safir talked with LBC TV station about the Christian situation saying: "The Christians feel left out, their presence being clearly unwanted". He commented on the injustice committed against Lebanese Christians: "Lebanon was in a state of war, and it was the agreement of El Taef that put an end to this war, but only a partial and selective implementation of the agreement was carried out." The writer Mushee Maouz confirmed this statement in his book Middle East Minorities Between Integration and Dissension, with the following words: "Since 1943, and for many decades, the Maronite Christians of Lebanon, the Shiâ'a, and the elite Sunni have worked together in a diverse, legal and democratic system that was controlled by minorities. However, the shift in favor of Muslim communities, Radical Arab nationalism and military Palestinian existence, as well as the Syrian and Israeli intervention ended up alienating the Maronites and forcing them to take a defensive stance." Iraq witnessed an increase in Christian emigration following the defeat of Sadam Hussein in the second Gulf War, as the political speech took religious tones and the economic situation continued to deteriorate. Once Baghdad fell at the hands of the Coalition troops, the fanatics came out of their dark caves and began attacking the liquor shops owned by Christians. As a result more than two hundred shops had to be closed. The attacks became more serious as they then targeted Christian women who were not veiled, Christian residences, and finally took the lives of a number of innocent Christians citizens. The final attacks targeted Christian churches during Sunday services and resulted in alarge number of casualties and injuries. News reports mentioned that thousands of Iraqi Christians were forced to migrate to Syria in the aftermath of such attacks, proof enough that the so called "resistance" is nothing but another facet of the vicious terrorism that assaults innocents and ultimately seeks to ruin the new Iraqi experience. During a few decades, the percentage of Palestinian Christians has dropped from 17% to less than 2% of the total population. The Israeli newspaper Badiut Ahrunut report ed that entire neighborhoods in Beit Gala, Beit Lahm and Beit Sahur have been em ptied of Christians because of the overwhelming Islamic tide that has turned the Palestinian cause into an Islamic issue, and the growing power of the fundament alists who are imposing their rules and views on the Palestinian community. According to the BBC, the Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem, who, in 1920, represented 50% of the population, currently represent a mere 10%. The Palestinian Intifada, under the leadership of Islamic organizations, had a detrimental effect on the Christians who were required to pay a type of tax to those organizations to support suicide missions. News coming out of the Holy Land is disturbing. In Gaza, Christian women, in fear of being attacked by Islamic fanatics, have donned the veil. During the crisis in the Church of the Nativity, a reporter from Los Angeles managed to sneak into the church and indicated that the terrorists have raided the church, leaving nothing intact. They used the wood of the temple as fire fuel, and the pages of Bibles as toilet paper. Another incident that took place in Nazareth City, when the fanatics tried to build a mosque right in front of the Church of the Annunciation, clearly reveals the intentions of the fundamentalist organizations to establish an Islamic state on this most sacred Christian ground. The situation of Egypt's Copts is definitely not promising, as they are now more marginalized then ever. The reports issued abroad refer to them as "an isolated minority", "a minority under siege", "a persecuted Church" and "an oppressed minority". To quote Mushee Maouz: "The Copts' participation in political life is minimal. The peaceful integration of the Copts into their society started in the middle of the 19th Century, but was regularly interrupted by the militant Islamic movement that disconcerted the Copts and created tensions between Muslims and Christians. The Copts continued to swing back and forth between integration and rejection throughout the 20th Century, and isolation became the common pattern under the rule of autocratic regimes." This dismal situation propelled a million and half Christians to emigrate to the United States, Europe and Australia. The exact number of the Christian minority living in Egypt remains a well guarded government secret. Of all the Arab regimes, the Syrian and Jordanian regimes are deemed the best in their dealings with Christian citizens. Nevertheless, the Islamist movement and the deteriorating economic situation have badly affected the Christians in these two countries. Since the events of September 11, tensions are running high in the region, and hatred towards all that is related to the West is growing almost to the point of triggering a collision between the East and West. To quote the British reporter Martin Buckley: "The Christians in Jordan feel that they are being pushed into a difficult corner, either to belong to the Western World or to the Arab World." Growing suspicions surround the Christians, falsely accusing them of being "a fifth column" or an "inside enemy" - another example of a prevalent mindset that constantly casts doubts about the Christians' loyalty and patriotism. It seems that Christians are sadly destined to pay the price whenever tensions or conflicts arise between the Arab World and the West. Throughout the ages of Arab invasion and Ottoman occupation, Christians of the Middle East: the Copts, Armenians, Syrians, Maronites, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Aramaeans have suffered from persecution along with other minorities like the Shi'a, Kurds and Druz. Their situation improved, however, when the modern state was founded after the collapse of the Ottoman rule and at the onset of Western colonization, becoming more engaged in their societies in response to the emergent concept of citizenship. Unfortunately, at the escalation of militant regimes and fascist religious movements, a relapse occurred costing the minorities most of their justly earned citizenship rights. The bleak situation of the Christian Arabs has caught the attention of honorable men who chose to confront the sinister tide that has overtaken the region, and some of them paid dearly for their courage such as Dr. Farag Fouda and Prof. Saad Eddin Ibrahim; the former who was assassinated in 1991, and the latter who was jailed during 2000-2003. A number of Arabic writers have recently produced candid articles and other publications calling attention to the ordeal of Arab Christians. Saudi Prince Talal Ben Abdelaziz wrote an a rticle entitled "The Survival of Christian Arabs", in El Nahar, a Lebanese newspaper, stating the following: "The Christian Arabs' situation is the product of an environment overwhelmed by fanaticism and a violence level which can trigger disasters of historical proportions, and, most of all, the product of an environment strongly disposed to eliminate the different other. The continued existence of the Christian Arabs in their homelands will reinforce the foundations of the modern state, the cultural diversity and democracy, and put an end to the continuous loss of scientific, intellectual and cultural abilities in our region. Their emigration is a mighty blow that will prove detrimental to our future." Mr. Muhammad Hasanayn Haykal wrote the foll owing words in the magazine entitled Perspectives: "I personally feel, as others certainly do, that if we do not address the issue of Christian emigration, if we continue to overlook it or neglect it on purpose, then we will face an Arab scene that will not just be different from the current one, but one that would have definitely lost part of its assets on a human and cultural level. It would be such a loss if the Eastern Christians leave believing that there is no future for them or their children here, Islam would then be left alone in the East, with only the company of Zionist Judaism - and most specifically that of Israel." As for Mr. Galal Amin, he wrote the following enlightening words: "Evidently, the issue of Muslims and Copts is not a religious issue, it stirs up all our issues: education, freedom, rational thinking, justice, ethics and development. If this argument is valid, then it is obvious that if we want to see Muslims freed, we need to free the Copts first." Mr. Tarek Heggy wrote the following comment: "Progress and modernization are infectious! And it is up to the minorities of the Middle East to pass on these notions into our region". There were many other inspiring words, in addition to a significant
visit from Pope John Paul II, who wished to support and encourage the
Middle East Christians. However, no matter how important the words
and visits are, neither of them is capable of achieving significant
results. Only when the foundations of the modern state are firmly set
in place, can we dare hope that this situation will change.
Democracy, liberty and citizenship - the basics of a modern state -
were the factors that initiated the integration of Christians within
their societies in the first half of the last century; and it was the
absence of these factors during the second half of the last century
that sent them back into the dark ages of isolation and persecution,
where they still abide.
Magdy Khalil is an Egyptian writer and analyst residing in the
USA.You can contact him at magdikh@hotmail.com |
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THIS WAR IS FAR FROM OVER
Posted by Jan Willem van der Hoeven, August 21, 2006. |
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O my soul, my soul!
Terrible destruction is set to come upon Israel. Syria plans a surprise attack, emboldened by the success of the Hizb'allah fighters against Israel. Bashar el-Assad openly calls for the destruction of Israel and puts his army on the highest alert possible. Syrian pilots sit in their jets on their runways, ready to take off. Nearly all sections of the Syrian population side emotionally with Hizb 'allah, calling for the re-entry of Syrian troops into Lebanon to join their fight against Israel. Totally blind to what is cooking in Syria, leftist circles in Israel immorally call yet again for constructive dialogue with a regime of murderers. Syria has murdered people both inside that country (more than 20,000 of its own citizens in Hama) as well as outside of it, among them various politicians and journalists in Lebanon. Nonetheless, many on Israel's left persist in parroting the defunct line: that to achieve peace with Syria it is best to talk to these killers, ev en if doing so will result in the complete surrender to them of the Golan Heights, and all this for not even a real peace. For Assad will never give up his dream, and his father's dream, of a greater Syria that one day will include all of Lebanon through a Syrian-dependent Hizb'allah, and via the Syrian-faithful Khaled Meshal and his Hamas-directed Palestinians they one day intend to roll in to Israel. Israel is sleeping, many content that the very costly war just fought by courage ous Israeli soldiers in Lebanon has for the time being come to a kind of precari ous but ominous halt. And the world -- mostly biased and/or anti-Semitic -- is as usual applying more pressure on Israel to keep this fragile ceasefire than it is willing to apply on the Lebanese government, still afraid to rein in the Hizb'allah which, by its blatant attack and naked aggression, brought all this death and destruction upon that beautiful, Swiss-like country....Italy May Head U.N. Force, The Media Line - 2006-08-21 While all reports until now have spoken of either France or Turkey spearheading the United Nations 15,000-strong force in southern Lebanon, it looks as though Italy may take on the role. The French had offered to lead the force but were only prepared to commit a maximum of 400 soldiers. Italian President Romano Prodi has said he is prepared to send a sizeable force to Lebanon, but no official figure has been published. Senior U.N. officials are unhappy at the slow pace of troop commitments from Western countries and in particular from France. Reports on Monday suggest The U.N. may increase UNIFIL powers to allow the soldiers to open fire if necessary, something that the existing UNIFIL force has not been mandated to do. -- "GSS Chief Warns: Ignore Gaza and it Will Become Lebanon," Ezra HaLevi, Arutz-7 - 2006-08-21 The head of Israel's General Security Service issued a warning Sunday against treating Gaza with the same neglect that led the government to disregard six years of Hizbullah's preparations for war. Shabak (General Security Service) chief Yuval Diskin told the government ministers at the weekly Cabinet meeting that the "intensification of terror infrastructure in Gaza is a strategic problem which, if not treated properly, will result in a situation just like in Lebanon." "Tons of explosives and hundreds of weapons," Diskin said, "have been smuggled in recently through the Philadelphi Corridor." That corridor, a strip between Egypt and Gaza that contains the Rafah Crossing, was abandoned by Israel during the Disengagement, against the protestation of IDF intelligence. In return, Egyptian and European Union guarantees were to have ensured that the border would remain controlled and free of weapons smuggling.... "Iran tests short-range missile," Associated Press, The Jerusalem Post - 2006-08-21 Iran on Sunday test-fired a surface-to-surface short-range missile a day after its army launched large-scale military exercises throughout the country, state-run television reported. "Saegheh, the missile, has a range of between 80 to 250 kilometers," the report said. It said the missile was tested in the Kashan desert, about 250 kilometers southeast of the capital of Teheran. Saegheh means lightning in Farsi. Iran has routinely held war games over the past two decades to improve its combat readiness and to test equipment such as missiles, tanks and armored personnel carriers. But the new tests, in the wake of the Lebanon-Hizbullah fighting, seemed certain to create new tensions with the West....Jewish philosopher: Survival depends on strength Rick Hellman, Editor The Jewish Chronicle - 2006-08-21 ...When The Chronicle reached Rabbi Greenberg for a telephone interview last week, Israel was still embroiled in open warfare with the Hezbollah guerrilla army in southern Lebanon. The hundreds of civilian casualties Israel caused while pursuing Hezbollah, however, has generated a chorus of critics ripping the Jewish state for its "disproportionate" response. As a leading thinker on the Jewish use of power, the rabbi is often asked to respond to how such actions comport with the biblical injunction for Israel to act as "a light unto the nations"? Light unto the nations "It's a fair question," Rabbi Greenberg said. "The human calling is to complete and perfect the world. The relationship between God and humanity is a partnership. It's about making a world of life, of human dignity, of justice, overcoming war. That's the main vision of the Jewish teaching for all humanity, not just Jews. We saw ourselves as teachers, as role models to show how you do it in the real world. It's easy to talk, but how do you live it? I've always felt Zionism - Israel - fits that profile perfectly. "The Holocaust made clear that if you're weak and powerless, you can't protect your own dignity; your own life. That is why Jews became overwhelmingly Zionist. ... After World War I and the overthrow of western imperialism, colonialism, we (the Jews) were one of the first countries to do that. Israel became a living, teaching model on how to establish power and sovereignty. The question is how to do that without afflicting oppression on others. The Third World dictators became as bad as those they replaced. The Jews reached out to Arabs in peace and were rejected. ... "Israel's role has been very much a light unto the nations. The catch is, it was never accepted by its neighbors. ... So maybe that is a negative form of light unto nations. .... Israel became a negative test, and it has become even more climactic now, with the growth and rise of radical Islam, which is against modern values, equality and all these other issues. That's why they are so antagonistic to Israel; it is the modern example of what they are not. Moral failure "The sad part is also that the world has not handled this problem well. The U.S. has done magnificently. But as Islam has gotten stronger, Third World pressures have grown. Europe has ... demonized Israel and will not stand up for it. ... In Europe, I feel the pathology is the temptation to appease them at Israel's expense. "Rabbi Greenberg defended Israel's conduct of the war against the Lebanese "Party of God." "To begin with, the whole world should have demanded Hezbollah disarm," Rabbi Greenberg said. "That is the only reason Israel had to go to war; the Lebanese did n't control their territory. ... But instead of condemning it, they equate the two. ... "The French foreign minister said Israel is using disproportionate
force. But the other side is trying to undermine your very life and
society with terror. No country in the world would stand for it....
Jan Willem van der Hoeven is Director of
International Christian Zionist Center in Jerusalem.
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IN THE SPIRIT OF PEACE...
Posted by Fern Sidman, August 21, 2006. |
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It has now been an entire week since the UN mandated cease fire between Israel and Hezbollah terrorists went into effect. Not ones for wasting time, Hezbollah has already been receiving arms shipments through Syria, courtesy of the Iranian government. According to Arutz Sheva, 8/19/06, "Israeli forces carried out a raid deep in southern Lebanon Saturday morning, disrupting Syrian arms shipments to Hezbollah terrorists. One IDF officer, Lt. Col. Emmanuel Moreno died in the operation. Lebanese officials confirmed that three Hezbollah members were killed in the confrontation. Unofficial sources report that two Hizbullah terrorists were captured by IDF troops during the operation, which took place near Baalbek in eastern Lebanon. About 97 kilometers (60 miles) north of the Israel-Lebanon border, Baalbek was the scene of previous IDF strikes against Syrian arms shipments to the Hizbullah. Two IDF soldiers were also reportedly injured during the mission. They were flown to a hospital in Israel. The air force flew drones and warplanes across eastern Lebanon early Saturday in order to cover up the commando attack in Baalbek. A special forces unit unloaded army vehicles from a helicopter and headed toward the city, but Hezbollah terrorist guerillas intercepted them. The operation in Lebanon was apparently exposed, military sources said, when IDF planes had been identified; however, the mission went ahead as planned." The report goes on to say that, "The UNSC resolution establishing the cease fire prohibits foreign weapons from reaching Lebanon without authorization of the Lebanese government. Israel considered the continuing arms shipments to Hezbollah to be a violation of the cease fire. As Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said on Saturday, "Israel is entitled to act to defend the principle of the arms embargo." And what is the reaction of the United Nations? What is the reaction of the international body dedicated to peace? It is of no surprise that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has blamed Israel for violating the cease fire and has unequivocally condemned its actions. This cease fire agreement does not call upon the Lebanese army or the international peacekeepers to disarm Hezbollah. This cease fire agreement does not call for the immediate return of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers. This cease fire agreement does not even call for Hezbollah forces to remain outside of southern Lebanon. It has been reported that if Hezbollah does dispays its arms, the army and the "robust" international peacekeeping force comprised of armies from pro-Muslim countries can confiscate such weapons. It is clear that this cease fire, whose main objective is to allow Hezbollah to rearm and thus place Israel in even greater danger, will be short lived. The Lebanese army will be as effective at reigning in Hezbollah terrorists as a squadron of Keystone cops would be. They are an army whose membership is composed of fifty percent Shiite Muslims who are avowed Hezbollah supporters. It is an army without a proven track record in its ability to stop Hezbollah forces from entering southern Lebanon. It is an impotent army, an army who is not trained to handle this kind of guerilla warfare and above all, it is an army that lacks the resolve to defeat Hezbollah. According to the UK based Guardian newspaper, 8/19/06, "An internal Lebanese army statement, circulated among forces in the past week, has called for troops to stand "alongside your resistance and your people who astonished the world with its steadfastness and destroyed the prestige of the so-called invincible army after it was defeated". The report goes on to say that, "According to sources close to the army command, there has been a tacit agreement between Hizbullah and the army that those fighters who hail from the south will return to their villages and all arms will be put out of sight. Publicly displayed weapons will be seized but any further attempt to disarm the group has been ruled out for the time being. Retired general Nizar Abdel-Kader, a former deputy chief of staff for army personnel who is in close communication with the army command, told the Guardian: "The army knows there is a gun in every household, they are not going to go out and look for them ... What we are concerned about is the launchers. There is an agreement with Hizbullah that any weapons that are found will be handed over." A mutual respect and cooperation exists between the army and Hizbullah, according to Gen Kader. "They are two very separate entities but they cooperate on security issues," he said, adding that many of the army's troops were from southern Lebanon. One defence analyst who asked not to be named said that, in the south, the army often acted as a subordinate to Hizbullah's military apparatus. "All intelligence gathered by the army is put at the disposal of Hizbullah but Hizbullah does not offer the same transparency to the army," he said. "In a sense, military intelligence in the south is operating on Hizbullah's behalf." Another retired general, Amin Hoteit, now a professor at the Lebanese University, said: "The army sees Hizbullah as a group that is defending the country and so assists them as best it can." Speaking last year, the Lebanese army chief of staff, General Michel Suleiman, said: "Support for the resistance is one of the fundamental national principles in Lebanon and one of the foundations on which the military doctrine is based. Protection of the resistance is the army's basic task." The relationship had been strong for many years, Gen Kader said. "From 1996 onwards there has been a consensus in the army command that Hizbullah was a legitimate national defence force and that the government should extend its umbrella to protect the resistance." He said most army officials viewed the deployment primarily as a "counter-penetration force" working to prevent the infiltration of Israeli intelligence and military patrols. Hizbullah's top official in south Lebanon, Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, told reporters in Tyre this week that the group welcomed the Lebanese army's additional deployment in the south. "Just like in the past, Hizbullah had no visible military presence and there will not be any visible presence now," he said. "We are helping them with our experience by advising them on the best strategic areas to deploy and the best means of protecting this land from Israeli and US violations." This reports spells out the truth concerning the intention of the Lebanese government. It is as clear as day, yet we can expect no condemnations from the United Nations and we will hear no concerns being voiced from the international community. It is clear the Hezbollah terrorism is alive and well and is being buttressed and actively supported by the Lebanese government. It is imperative that we know that good and evil cannot co-exist in one place. The government of Lebanon, the UN and the world cannot make us believe that true and lasting peace will ensured between Israel and Hezbollah while no enforcement of a true disarmament is going to take place. The UN can no longer speak of the "spirit of peace in the region" while it clearly sides with those whose objective is to thwart any real vestige of peace and whose main objective is to destroy the State of Israel. No international peacekeeping force can deter Hezbollah from its agenda and no force in the world can fight to protect the Jewish State. Today, it is Katyusha rockets that are aimed at our cities and towns. Tomorrow and in the future it will be more sophisticated weaponry, more longer range missiles with the capacity to destroy major population centers in Israel, with the result being mass genocide. With each passing moment, Hezbollah has a free ride to receive more weapons, to re-arm and re-group and to place themselves in a position to be even more dug in than before. More tunnels and passageways will be built and a more effective military strategy will be developed. There will be no worldwide condemnations and denunciations of Syria and Iran's role is funding Hezbollah terrorists. There will be no outcry of indignation when other Arab countries join the bandwagon and begin to lend support to Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a well organized and highly skilled band of militias who have been thoroughly trained for warfare and they are being funded to the tune of billions. Very soon they will be capable of launching a global campaign of terror, the likes of which we have never seen before. The State of Israel, the people of Israel stand alone. If the Jewish State will not protect itself from its enemies, we can not expect that the UN or that the world will do so. We must develop the strength and resolve to destroy our enemies and we must demand that the government of Israel protect its citizens. Our very lives and the lives of future generations are at stake. Our only salvation must be our reliance on the Almighty G-d of Israel. Our only true defense will come through our collective acknowledgement of the Creator of the Universe, as our salvation and our strength. It is incumbent on us to remember the words of King David, those words that we say from the beginning of the month of Elul until after the holiday of Succot. These words can be found in Psalm 27 which says, "Hashem is my light, and my salvation, whom shall I fear? Hashem is my life's strength, whom shall I dread? When evildoers approach me to devour my flesh, my tormentors and my foes against me -- it is they who will stumble and fall." Contact Fern Sidman at AriellaH@aol.com |
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ALL U.N. MEMBERS ARE EQUAL, BUT ...
Posted by Max Yas, August 21, 2006. |
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When Afghanistan allowed bin-Laden to establish headquarters on their land, training camps for al-Queda terrorists, stock weapons and plot terror attacks on sovereign states, culminating with the destruction of the World Trade Center and death of about 3,000, the UN passed resolutions which Afghanistan always rejected. NATO invaded and although Afghanistan still has a way to go, it is heading in the right direction to establish a democratic government. After Israel withdrew in 2000, in compliance with UN resolution 1559, from a buffer zone established in South Lebanon, Hassan Nasrullah and his Hezbollah were allowed by Lebanon to establish a state within the state of Lebanon, with parallel ministries and members in the Lebanese Parliament as well as posts in the Lebanese Cabinet. They too plotted and carried out terror attacks against a sovereign state. Why wasn't Lebanon dealt with in the same manner as Aghanistan. It apears that some member are more equal than others! Lebanon ignored UN resolution 1559 to disarm Hezbollah, which promptly set about staging terror raids into Northern Israel. They dug a tunnel under the border, killed eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two. Israel had no option but to protect her citizens. Israel placed at risk the lives of her soldiers and her citizens in order to avoid "collateral damage". Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets loaded with ball-bearings for maximum random kill of civilian men, women and children. Fortunately their aim was not very effective and about 95% landed in empty fields. Nevertheless Israel lost over 100 soldiers and several hundred civilians. Hezbollah "fighters" do not wear uniforms, but dress like ordinary Lebanese civilians, which is an International Crime, and hid behind civilian shields: an other International Crime! This made it impossible for Israelis to distinguish between soldiers and civilians. Their rocket launchers were hidden in civilian areas, even in Mosques and warehouses. In consequence over 1,000 Lebanese were killed, but there is no way to establish with certainty how many were "fighters" and how many civilians. After five weeks of fighting the UN agreed on a cease-fire resolution. It is interesting to note that this resolution was not covered by Chapter 7 and therefore unenforceable. This cease-fire is a result of compromise and includes some provision that may lead to peace. Or it may have a negative effect for peace.The negative aspects in resolution 1701: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is given the authority to decide on compliance. In the past Annan was quick to condemn Israel. There is no provision for the release of the two Israeli soldiers, whose kidnapping triggered this war. In 2000 the UN agreed that the Israel has fully withdrawn from Lebanon. Now the ownership of the Shaba farms is back on the agenda. Provision for reparations for Lebanon were made, but none for Israel. On the positive side: Israel retained her right to self-defence. Within the fist week the cease-fire showed signs of weakness: France reneged from her promise to supply 4,000 soldiers and cut it back to 200. Although the cease-fire agreement states explicitly that Hezbollah does not have the right to rearm, it made no provision for enforcement. When Israel took action to stop a shipment of arms from Syria Mr. Annan immediately blamed the Israelis for a breach of the agreement. Hassan Nasrullah claimed victory for merely surviving for five weeks. The damage to his assets was far, far greater than his rockets inflicted on the Israelis. Israeli soldiers, some 30,000, were in South Lebanon and reached the Litany River. Nasrullah was saved by the UN call for a cease-fire while the momentum was all with Israel. The free world learned about the true nature of Hezbollah and the support they received from important pro-Syrian politicians. The president of Lebanon, Mr. Emile Lahoud, a former commander of the Lebanese army appointed many like-minded, pro- Syrian officers to important posts and stated that the "Lebanese army will fight, but not against Hezbollah." This is a short synopsis and many questions are left unanswered.
Please feel free to submit any questions or comments to Unfortunately Israel lives in a bad neighborhood and may be forced
to use maximum power before she is accepted by her neighbours.
Contact Max Yas at maxyas@shaw.ca |
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PRES. BUSH'S SKEPTICISM OF AGREEMENTS; WHAT IS THE WORLD WAR LIKE?; WEST EUROPEAN ANTISEMITISM
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 21, 2006. |
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SEN. LIEBERMAN -- VICTOR The night he won the primary race to be the Democratic candidate for the US Senate, Ned Lamont stated his policy on dealing with Iran's nuclear threat. "We should bring in allies and use carrots as well as sticks." He evidently failed to notice that we deputized Britain, France and Germany to negotiate with Iran for three years and that Iran had been offered plenty of carrots and has not been threatened with many sticks. Once again, a disconnect with reality." (Michael Barone, NY Sun, 8/14, Op. Ed..) He is naive about evil Iran. NY Times readers called Sen. Lieberman "out of touch." Yes, he is out of touch with his Party's radical elements, who advocate policies that have failed. PRES. BUSH'S SKEPTICISM OF AGREEMENTS Pres. Bush told a reporter that Israel would keep fighting for weeks before a ceasefire agreement were insisted upon. He said the Mideast is littered with discarded agreements that don't work. The problem is not lack of a ceasefire agreement but the movement against democracy (IMRA, 7/28). It's not just against democracy but against all other religious con cepts. Nevertheless, Pres. Bush's stated understanding of the issue is valid. Trouble is, he and his State Dept. then proceeded toward an unworkable ceasefire agreement. Bush does not do what he said he would. WHAT IS THE WORLD WAR LIKE? It is global, ideological, and cultural. It encompasses mosques, madrassas, "charities," banks, and boardrooms in many countries. Countries we mistakenly counted as friends and moderates finance it with the funds we send them for oil. Although Islamic culture is backward, its jihadists use modern technology and methods for indoctrination, communications, and destruction. We welcomed into our society many Islamists working for our conquest. They recruit bombers. We let them preach, because usually they don't advocate immediate violence. But their followers eventually do commit violence. Therefore, we should revise our concept of speech being free except for exhortation to immediate violence presenting a clear and present danger. We must keep better track of what they are plotting, all over. Instead, the US and U.K. treat extremist Muslim organizations deferentially, as representative, and neglect the moderates, whose help we need (Richard Perle, NY Sun, 8/14, p.1). He thinks moderates are a majority. I think they are an exception. The Muslim masses generally express sympathy for jihad. WHY DOESN'T E.U. CLASSIFY HIZBULLAH AS TERRORIST? Mr. Solana of the EU claims insufficient data. Meanwhile, Hizbullah claims intent to strike every part of Tel Aviv (Arutz-7, 7/19). Hizbullah is bombarding Israeli cities randomly and intensively. It has fired at civilian targets for years. But the EU hasn't sufficient data? A self-respecting Israel would kick Mr. Solana out of the country, he who makes demands upon Israel but condones terrorism. LEBANON'S CALL FOR AN END TO FIGHTING Lebanon called upon the UNO and such Western agencies as the EU and the Vatican to press Israel to cease its fighting (Op. Cit.). Why doesn't it call upon Iran and Syria to press Hizbullah to cease its fighting? As for the EU and Vatican, they should call upon Israel to fight harder and get rid of the terrorists. The terrorists are the common enemies of all Western countries and religions (and most others, too). Europe look's backward at past enemies. ISRAEL'S NEW TACTIC Israel used to target for assassination field commanders and foot soldiers of terrorist organizations. Now it targets the leadership, too. This should disrupt those organizations more effectively (MEF Forum, 7/21). HAMAS' NEW WEAPON Hamas had developed a katyusha capable of traveling 24 kilometers (IMRA), thanks to the removal of IDF monitors from Gaza. WEST EUROPEAN ANTISEMITISM A study of anti-Semitism in W. Europe found that it is mostly among the few "intellectuals." These intellectuals share the old-fashioned, crude notions of hatred of the Jews with the more fashionable notions, as when the Prime Minister of Spain donned a kaffiyah, that the Arabs have a right to attack Israelis, to free themselves (Prof. Steven Plaut, 7/23). The Arab goal is to enslave. Unfortunately, intellectuals run government and the media, and are influential. Surprisingly, they have not gotten their prejudice more widely shared. Sadly, the same sort of intellectuals exist in Israel, where they cheer on Hizbullah! They staff some of the colleges there. For shame! RUSSIA BACKS HIZBULLAH Russia has been giving Hizbullah diplomatic support (IMRA, 7/23). Russia and China are old-fashioned. Their dreams of world influence if not dominance lead them to support any enemy of the West, even though the Islamists also are enemies of Russia and China. The great powers would gain more from peace than from strife. But they promote strife. I don't relish declaring Russia an enemy of the US. I would prefer to persuade it of its common interests with the US. Putin knows that Russia is a dieing country, but he thinks he can simply pay bonuses to reverse his population decline that leaves the country open to eventual Muslim domination. MEDIA AS AN ARM OF WAR Hizbullah runs a TV station, al-Manar. It broadcasts hate-propaganda, emphasizing blood libel against the Jews, their murder, and martyrdom in attempted murder. The libel includes accusations that Jews consume the blood of Christian children and that God sanctions the killing of Jews. In its counter-attacks against Hizbullah, Israel bombed al-Manar. The International Federation of Journalists condemned Israel for doing so. It complained that Israel silences media with which it disagrees (IMRA, 7/23 from Palestinian Media Watch). This is the usual tack of condemning an insufficient defense by Israel against utter evil, as if the defense were offensive. Actually, Israel allows Arab TV stations and journalists onto its territory (and risks their spyingor broadcasting items of military use to enemies in combat). The condemnation is overstated. What relationship does a media have to war? During WWII, the US media was patriotic but reasonably fair. Totalitarian media are arms of the state. To totalitarians, the media is a weapon. In the Arab-Israel conflict, the media is the Arabs' main weapon, for it undermines Israel's military victories. The European media feeds its people a fare of anti-Zionist propaganda. But the Muslim media rouse its people to vicious aggression. Israel should bar it. The question implied by Palestinian Media Watch is why the international federation of Journalists condemned Israel for attempting to shut down hate-propaganda. Does the Federation condone hate-propaganda? Does it have a naive belief that all societies' media are equally entitled watchdogs of government, totalitarian media are lapdogs? Are international organizations crippled by having a majority membership of dictatorships and their appeasers? 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@aol.com. |
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THE REAL BLUNDER IN LEBANON
Posted by Women in Green, August 21, 2006. |
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This was written by Michael Freund and was published August 15, 2006. |
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Not since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait has a Middle Eastern leader made such a grievous strategic mistake, both in underestimating his foe and miscalculating the impact of his own course of action. Inexperience at the helm combined with hesitation and uncertainty produced an unmitigated fiasco, one that raises serious questions about whether this person is truly fit to lead. While many might view the above description as referring to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his handling of the war in the north, there is in fact another figure in the region, one to whom it would appear to be even more applicable. And that person is none other than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Sure, Teheran and its ally in Damascus are no doubt celebrating Israel's agreement to the dubious UN cease-fire. If you listen carefully enough, you can probably still hear them clinking their glasses together as they toast the damage that was done to the Jewish state. Over the course of a month, their nasty little proxy group in Lebanon managed to fire some 4,000 rockets at Israel, inflict grave damage to its economy and send a third of its populace into bomb shelters. They killed 156 Israelis, wounded more than 3,000 others, and pierced the country's aura of military invincibility. But at the end of the day, these achievements, if one can call them that, will end up exacting a heavy price from Syria and Iran. Inevitably, the trouble they have stirred up in the region over the past month is bound to boomerang right back at them. Indeed, by transferring advanced rockets and weaponry to Hizbullah, Teheran and Damascus have just unwittingly proven one of the Bush Administration's central contentions regarding the need for preemptive action against rogue states in the global war on terror. The two countries have demonstrated that they are ready and willing to share missile systems with a terrorist organization, thus strengthening the case that they must be prevented from obtaining weapons of mass destruction at all costs. This very point was at the heart of an important speech made by US President George W. Bush last October in which he outlined America's strategy for fighting terror across the globe. Speaking at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, Bush made clear that, "we're determined to deny weapons of mass destruction to outlaw regimes, and to their terrorist allies who would use them without hesitation." Furthermore, he stated, "Any government that chooses to be an ally of terror has also chosen to be an enemy of civilization. And the civilized world must hold those regimes to account." THUS, BY supplying weapons to Hizbullah, Syria and Iran have inadvertently provided concrete evidence for all the world to see of just how dangerous the combination of "outlaw regimes" and their "terrorist allies" can be. In this respect, Israel is fortunate that the conflict erupted when it did, because had it occurred in another five or ten years, who knows what types of horrific weapons might then have been found in Hizbullah's arsenal. And so, by inciting the start of hostilities last month in an effort to divert the world's attention from their nuclear program, Iran may actually end up achieving precisely the opposite. Through their actions, Iran has just made the case, better than the most eloquent of Washington press spokesmen ever could, as to why they pose a grave and immediate threat to the entire free world with their obstinate pursuit of nuclear weapons. And it is this very same argument, which the Iranians have just unwittingly bolstered, that Bush may one day soon choose to make in justifying the need for possible military action against Iran to stop their drive toward nuclear weapons. In other words, to borrow Lenin's phrase, Iran and Syria may have just sold the rope from which they themselves will eventually hang. Moreover, the violence of the past month has also been an educational process of sorts for both the American and Israeli publics, underlining in very stark terms the danger posed by Iran and Syria. Their intractable opposition to the West, and their willingness to wreak havoc on Israel and its citizens, only served to highlight their status as a menace that must be tackled as quickly as possible. So if Bashar Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thought that igniting a war along Israel's northern border would somehow help them to save their own skins, they may soon find out just how sorely mistaken they were. And, like Saddam, their blundering adventure abroad may yet come back to haunt them sooner than they imagine. 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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BUMPER STICKER SURVEY
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 21, 2006. |
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1. I live in what is probably one of the most entrenched leftist neighborhoods in Israel, conservative only when compared with Hashomer Hatzair kibbutzim. Until recently, roughly every third car in the neighborhood had some sort of leftist bumper sticker. Some just said "Peace Now," others demanded evacuation of the occupied territories for Israel's sake, others denounced settlers as criminals, and some simply read "Shalom Chaver". On shabbat I went for a long walk around the neighborhood, enjoying the absence of katyusha explosions. This is not exactly the most scientific way to gauge things, but what I saw was a political revolution. In the entire neighborhood, I could not find a single leftist bumper sticker. And this in the bastion of Haaretz and Meretz! The car owners had taken them all down. True, I also did not see a lot of right-wing bumper stickers. But most rightists are reluctant to put political bumper stickers on their cars because of the well-known notorious practice by leftists of vandalizing such cars. I did see some though. What I saw more of were generic patriotic bumper stickers such as "We will Win" or "We are Fighting for Our Home" and "Israel stands With the Golan". 2. From Nissan Ratzlav-Katz at Arutz7: 'I heard on the BBC (horrors!) a report from southern Lebanon in which the reporter interviewed one of the Lebanese soldiers moving into the south of the country. He asked the Leb soldier if the army would disarm Hizbullah. '"But if we take away their arms, they will not be a strong force!" the soldier answered incredulously. Like, duh - stupid Brit. Why would we do that?!? The reporter continued saying something like: "This soldier apparently does not have a handle on the mission here." Actually, I think he has a pretty good idea. 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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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THE WORST GOVERNMENT IN THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL
Posted by Naomi Ragen, August 20, 2006. |
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We finished a quiet Sabbath in the relative safety of Jerusalem, only to check the news and find out the heartbreaking news that seven more Israeli soldiers have been killed and eighty-four injured in the worst-led war in Israel's history. In addition, the government who interfered with the military (i.e.go win the war without upsetting CNN and the BBC), imposing guidelines that have helped get not only our boys killed left and right, but our civilians as well, has now decided to accept a Security Council resolution which ensures that Israel's soldiers and her people have made their ultimate sacrifice for nothing: our kidnapped soldiers will not be returned. Hezbollah will not be disarmed. And Israeli forces will be replaced by some U.N. force and a bunch of European anti-Semites who will allow Hezbollah to re-arm. The full text of the resolution has been published in YNET. So far, 1,784 Israelis have responded. The overwhelming majority have this to say: We went to war to free our kidnapped soldiers. Why aren't they mentioned? For shame. Olmert, Peretz, Halutz, the triumvirate of losers. Let me add this: Mr. Olmert, Mr. Peretz, Mr. Halutz: You have squandered the lives of our soldiers. You have squandered our opportunity to free the nation of Israel from a deadly enemy. You have set the stage for the next war. By September, we will be under attack once more. Do the decent thing: Resign, all of you, and let Mr. Netanyahu, General Yaalon (who was kicked out because he refused to go along with the disengagement) take over. Resign Mr. Olmert. Resign in shame for your incompetence. Your inability to carry out a single one of the objectives you so stirringly announced at the beginning of this war. With all of you and your incompetent Kadima-led government out of office, we will all be safer and better prepared when the rockets start to fall once again, as they inevitably will with the U.N. and the French guarding our borders. And if you won't do the honorable thing, we will do everything we can to get you fired. You make me sick. I am ashamed to be a citizen of my country under your leadership. I am appalled to have a son in the IDF under your leadership. For shame, for shame, for shame! Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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LEBANON AND THE UNITED NATIONS -- LEMMINGS OR LIONS?
Posted by David Singer, August 20, 2006. |
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The ceasefire brokered by the United Nations in Lebanon offers possibly the last chance for political stability to be restored in Lebanon and for Lebanon to rid itself forever of forces over which it has no control. Will the United Nations and the Lebanese Government seize this opportunity and finally act like lions or will they, like lemmings, continue to rush towards the edge of the abyss into which both have already started to slide and from which both may never get out? Judging by what is happening, it appears that the lemmings will again prevail over the lions. Woe betide Lebanon if this is allowed to happen. The United Nations appears to be baulking at giving its' 15000 strong force being sent into Lebanon clear rules of engagement to disarm and disband Hezbollah as Security Council Resolution 1559 demands. Failure to do so will confirm that the United Nations is not prepared to translate its Security Council resolutions into concrete action. It will send a clear message to terrorist groups world wide and their sponsoring States that Security Council resolutions are not worth the paper they are written on and that terrorists can continue to operate with impunity from any member's sovereign territory free of international intervention to forcibly remove them. The United Nations force must be given the right to search for and destroy all armaments not under the control of the Lebanese Government, to stop the delivery of armaments into Lebanon unless expressly approved by the Lebanese Government and to take all steps including armed intervention to disband the structure and organization of Hezbollah's military arm. Anything less will be a waste of time and lead to Israel intervening once again with even more devastating force to defend its' own sovereign territorial integrity. Hezbollah has justified its' continuing occupation of 2400 square kilometres of Lebanon -- one quarter of the country -- as necessary to drive Israel from, and gain Lebanese sovereignty over, 25 square kilometres of desolate land called the Shebaa Farms. Lebanon condoned this situation by continuing to dispute a ruling by the United Nations in 2000 that this small piece of land belonged to Syria, from whom it was captured by Israel in 1967. Trading sovereignty over 2400 square kilometres in order to gain sovereignty over 25 square kilometres must surely be the most bizarre decisions ever made by any Arab nation in their ongoing conflict with Israel. This abdication of its national security and foreign policy has cost Lebanon dearly and has become the catalyst for the abject position in which Lebanon finds itself today. 15000 Lebanese homes have now been totally destroyed, a large section of Lebanon's roads, bridges and other vital infrastructure has been reduced to rubble, its economy set back for 20 years and its environment devastated by an oil spill that threatens the rich marine life in its territorial waters. A thousand deaths, many more thousands injured and maimed, and countless others traumatised by constant and incessant bombing raids testifies to Hezbollah's foolhardy action in entering Israel to abduct two soldiers, kill three others and then fire a barrage of 3000 rockets into Israel. It appears Lebanon has not learnt the lesson of the Sheba Farms folly and is still obsessed with gaining sovereignty of the area. It was deemed so important an issue that it was included in the seven point plan prepared by Lebanon as it urgently sought the current ceasefire, calling on the United Nations to place the area under United Nations jurisdiction until the Lebanese claim to sovereignty was fully settled. Instead of rejecting that call, the United Nations has stood its' decision in 2000 on its' head by agreeing to once more deal with Lebanon's claim to the Shebaa Farms within 30 days of the ceasefire resolution. What will happen if the United Nations reverses its decision? What does this say about the competency of the organization? Will Syria accept such a reversal? Will Israel withdraw? Why did Lebanon have to wait six years and subject itself to such destruction and humiliation before asking the United Nations to review its' earlier decision? Lebanon needs to let go of this issue. It has and will continue to bring Lebanon to its' knees if it persists. A loss of face is far preferable to further loss of life and limb. Lebanon or Lebezbollah? That is the question that both Lebanon and the United Nations need to answer without delay if Lebanon is to end the suffering and bloodshed inflicted on it for the last 30 years because of its' loss of control over its' sovereign territory to others with different agendas. David Singer is an Australian Lawyer and Convenor of 'Jordan is Palestine International' - an organisation calling for sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza to be allocated between Israel and Jordan as the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine. Contact him at dsinger@gmail.com |
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ISRAELI JUDGE DENIES ARMY VETS PREFERENCE
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 20, 2006. |
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Flash! Breaking News! Israel has just become the first nation on earth in which a judge ruled that granting army veterans preferences is unconstitutional. A bit astounding, considering that Israel does not even have a constitution. In the second-stupidest court decision of the year, a Haifa judge has ruled that the University of Haifa's policy of granting army vets preferences in allotment of scarce dorm space is illegal because it discriminates against Arabs. Most Arabs do not serve in the army, because they are not conscripted, although no one is stopping them from volunteering to serve. And those Arabs who serve their country would have gotten the dorm preferences. A court motion was filed by an Arab "civil rights group" in collaboration with anti-Zionist extremist Ilan Pappe, a faculty member at Haifa U, against the university for this "discrimination" in favor of army vets. They claimed it was unfair to Arab students. The judge agreed. Let us be clear what this means. A wounded Jewish soldier coming home from the front and an Arab radical student waving a Hezbollah flag are competing for a dorm slot. (The dorms are underpriced, by the way, which is why the demand is so high.) SO now, according to court diktat, the university would have to grant the room to the Hezbollah cheerleader if the latter could show, say, he was coming from a further distance or that his father had lower reported income. (A colleague of mine suggested years ago that dorm rooms be allotted by grades only, not "social need", but the proposal was shot down.) The idea of dorm buildings at Haifa U being bedecked with Hezbollah flags by Arab students is not so far-fetched. Radical Arab students on campus have long marched about with PLO flags. Radical Haifa U professors in the past hoisted the PLO flag on campus and would have no problem doing the same with a Hezbollah flag. Ilan Pappe has an article in this week's "Socialist Worker", a Trotskyite rag in the UK, cheering the Hezbollah. It is at http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9495 Pappe was involved in the court petition, bragging in a published letter
that "We beat them." His anti-Israel sidekick Yuval Yonay, who
teaches "queer studies" at Haifa U, backed Pappe and issued a call on the
university NOT To appeal the ridiculous court decision. For background on
Yonay, take a look at this:
Haifa District Court has ruled that Haifa University's dormitory application process, which gives preference to Israel Defense Forces veterans, is discriminatory against Arab students. The university's policy of requiring dormitory applicants to have completed military service in the IDF excludes most Arab applicants. The precedent-setting verdict was handed down Thursday by Judge Ron Sokol, following a petition submitted by Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel - together with three female Arab students. Last year, the university denied the three women's requests for rooms in university dormitories, despite their difficult economic straits and the low frequency with which public transportation reaches their respective home villages. The university decides which students will receive rooms in the dormitories based on a list of criteria including socio-economic status and academic achievements. As Haaretz has published in the past, 40 percent of the points required to fulfill the criteria can be garnered by having completed military service. The court accepted the claims made by Adalah and the students, who said that the military service requirement creates a discrimination against the Arab students, and ordered the university to abolish it. "The inclusion of the military service requirement results in discrimination against a variety of sectors [especially the Arab sector]" Sokol wrote. He said that even though there are Israeli Arabs who do serve in the IDF, "Military service is not open to the general Arab public of the State of Israel" and noted that Israeli Arabs are legally exempt from service in the IDF. Sokol also ruled that limiting the granting of benefits only to those students who contributed to the country via military or national service discriminates against students who contributed in other ways. (Like waving Hezbollah flags? -- SP) Precedent-setting ruling Adalah lawyer Susan Zohar said Sunday this marked the first time that the courts have disqualified the use of military service as a criterion for granting benefits, a common practice among institutions of higher learning, employers and housing managers. "The ruling is likely to have ramifications on other universities who make use of military criterion," Zohar said. She noted that Adalah will made use of the court's ruling in its current battle in the High Court of Justice against the Israel Lands Administration's practice of using military service criterion when distributing plots of land. This is also the first time a court ruled Haifa University discriminates against Israeli Arab students following years in which discrimination claims had been leveled at the institution. (In fact, Haifa U strongly discriminates in FAVOR of Arab students by means of affirmative action. That is one reason why Haifa U has the largest Arab student body in Israel.) If you would like to urge the university adminsitration to fight the court
verdict and also to do something about seditious faculty members, the
emails and faxes of the Rector and President appear here:
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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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WHAT IS GOING ON? -- ISRAEL VERSUS HEZBOLLAH 2006
Posted by Yoram Shifftan, August 20, 2006. |
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This was written by Francisco Gil-White (gilwhite@comcast.com) and it summarizes and quotes from the very important 1968 Pentagon report on Israel's security. |
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I have seen much pessimism from Jewish patriots in the wake of the 'cease-fire' that the United States and the United Nations have sought to impose in order to protect Hezbollah, and which Israel's leaders have accepted. Many have characterized the result as one where Israel lost the war, and they have lamented what they perceive as the damage to the earlier perception that Israel was invincible, with negative consequences to the deterrence of Israel's enemies. My own view is less pessimistic. It is certainly true that Ehud Olmert lost the war by agreeing to a 'cease-fire' that, like previous US and UN-brokered cease-fires in southern Lebanon, will protect the antisemitic terrorists and allow them to re-arm. But in my view Ehud Olmert was going to lose whatever war he was called upon to wage. I don't think he is a patriot. So the question for Jewish patriots is this: Which war would you rather have Ehud Olmert lose? Remember that Ehud Olmert was rushing to cleanse the Jews out of the West Bank -- like his mentor, Ariel Sharon, had done with the Jews who lived in Gaza -- in order to turn this territory over completely to the terrorists. For those paying attention to geopolitical realities, as opposed to the pro-Oslo propaganda statements of US and Israeli officials, the probable outcome of Ehud Olmert's policies was not difficult to foresee. Relatively low-level but constant Hezbollah attacks from the north, and PLO-Hamas attacks from Gaza in the south, would have made the relocation of the evacuated West Bank Jews to the north and south of Israel impractical, particularly given that a stream of Jews native to those areas would be fleeing the Hamas/Hezbollah attacks towards the relative safety of the Tel-Aviv-Yafo area (as indeed many have now fled). Tel-Aviv-Yafo already contains about half of all Israeli Jews, and as a result of Olmert's 'convergence' and the terrorist attacks from north and south the Israeli Jews would have been further concentrated there. Now, the West Bank and Gaza, according to a 1967 Pentagon study done immediately after the Six Day War, are strategic territories that, if relinquished, will guarantee the destruction of Israel.[1] This Pentagon study was not carried out for Israel's benefit and Israel was not informed of its conclusions. It was kept secret and made public only many years later because somebody filed suit to have it released under the Freedom of Information Act. That the US ruling elite did not share with the Israelis its view of the vulnerability of the Jewish state, but instead pressured Israel to participate in the Oslo process that has for purpose to hand over precisely these indispensable territories to the antisemitic terrorists, is consistent with the entire history of US foreign policy towards the Jewish people and state, which has been a constant sponsoring of Israel's enemies and sabotaging of Israeli self-defense.[2] One does not have to be a military genius, or even a mediocre professional military strategist, to see that the Pentagon's 1967 study reached correct conclusions concerning the indispensability of the West Bank and Gaza to a defensible Jewish state. The Tel-Aviv-Yafo area, where the Israeli Jews are being concentrated, is the tiniest strip of land, with no more than 18 km. (11 miles) between the West Bank border and the Mediterranean Sea. Many of my readers live in cities that are wider than this, and those who are in good physical condition can easily jog this distance. Ehud Olmert's policies would have turned Tel-Aviv-Yafo from the large concentration camp it now is into a death camp. Why? Because Tel-Aviv-Yafo is a lowland, and the West Bank ground that the terrorists would control completely after Ehud Olmert's so-called 'convergence' -- if the Israelis had allowed it -- is highland. Once the West Bank Jews had been evacuated and concentrated, PLO/Hamas, armed to the teeth by the Arab states, would simply have started shooting downwards from the West Bank hills, while PLO/Hamas attacked from Gaza, and Hezbollah and the Lebanese army attacked from the north. But that is not all. Egypt would have attacked also, from the south, while the Syrian and Iranian armed forces added themselves to the Hezbollah/Lebanese forces that they control. It is true that in order to do this Iran would have to rush through Iraq but that would not be a problem, because the US has been withdrawing from Iraq for a year, and it is clear to everybody that Iraq now belongs to Iran (HIR has argued that the US attacked Iran in order precisely to achieve this outcome).[3] Saudi Arabia, which the US has turned into one of the most heavily armed countries in the world,[4] would have overrun Jordan in order to join the attack on Israel (assuming the Jordanians didn't simply invite them in and join the attack as well, which I think is more likely). This is the war that Ehud Olmert was going to lose, and losing this war would have destroyed Israel, and its people. It is much better that Ehud Olmert lost this other war in Lebanon. The reason the war in Lebanon took place, in my view, is that the rabid attack dogs employed at the lower levels by antisemitic terrorist forces such as the PLO, Hamas, and Hezbollah are so deranged, so transformed into beasts of prey anxious to gorge on Jewish blood, that they can be difficult to restrain. This is especially true as the final moment approaches, when the suicidal behavior of the Israeli ruling elite leads the hounds of death to smell an easy prey. So, eager for the kill, they snapped their master's leash and caused some trouble to the carefully laid plans for the next anti-Jewish genocide. Consistent with this are the Arab criticisms of Hezbollah, which accused Hezbollah not of unacceptable terrorism against Israeli civilians, but of "miscalculation," and of engaging in "unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible acts."[5] In other words, Hezbollah's attack was premature, because the West Bank had yet to be fully cleansed of its Jews and the United States had yet to fully turn Iraq over to Iran. So what happened is that Hamas and Hezbollah became too violent, too soon, forcing Ehud Olmert's government to produce some kind of response, however weak and ham-fisted, there to prevent the patriots in the officer class of the Israeli Defense Forces from leading a revolt.[6] The outcome of this war is not as bad as many are saying. True, Hezbollah will rearm and prepare for the next assault under the protection of the United Nations and the Syrian-controlled Lebanese state, as it has done before.[7] But Hezbollah does need to rearm, and it will now be more difficult than before to carry out the evacuation of the Jews living in the West Bank. Moreover, as ineffectual as the Israeli response was, it was a response, and more than what we have seen for years in the face of constant terrorist assault. I am not sure that the Arab regimes are really learning from this that the Israelis are easy to beat, despite the propaganda to the contrary; after all, it was Hezbollah, not Israel, that asked for the cease-fire, and with special urgency as the major Israeli assault was to begin. It is also possible that Ehud Olmert's government will not even survive, because many Israelis are waking up to the vulnerabilities of the Jewish state, and to the suicidal nature of the policies favored by the Israeli ruling elite. All in all, Hezbollah has bought Israel a bit of time -- at least a year, by my reckoning. Since the alternative was a war of extermination that Ehud Olmert was going to lose, Jewish patriots everywhere, ironically, should be thanking Hezbollah. But in order fully to understand what lies ahead, and what those of us, Jews and Gentiles, who defend the Jewish people against the antisemites can do from this point forward, it is important that we have a good grasp of Israeli and Diaspora Jewish politics. I will endeavor to explain this in future pieces, and I will begin by taking a look at the Israeli media. So, I invite you to read the following piece -- Part 2: "What is wrong with the media? Why does the Israeli media also attack the Israelis?" Footnotes [1] The following piece quotes the relevant portions of the Pentagon study and analyses it in its political context, with links to the original document (to go directly to the Pentagon study, see further below): "1967 -- After the Six-Day War, the US put pressure on Israel to relinquish the territory gained, even though it knew it was indispensable to Israeli defense"; from "IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL: A Chronological look at the evidence"; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White. http://www.hirhome.com/israel/ihrally.htm#1967b PENTAGON STUDY: This Pentagon document was apparently declassified in 1979 but not published until 1984. It was published by the Journal of Palestine Studies: "Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense"; Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2. (Winter, 1984), pp. 122-126.< This file is especially useful because it shows a map with the "minimum territory needed by Israel for defensive purposes" http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pentagon.pdf And by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs:
And as an appendix in: Netanyahu, B. 2000. A durable peace: Israel and its place among the nations, 2 edition. New York: Warner Books. (APPENDIX: The Pentagon Plan, June 29, 1967; pp.433-437) [2] "IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL?: A chronological look at the evidence"; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White. http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm [3] "BUSH JR.'S WAR ON IRAQ: A general introduction"; Historical and Investigative Research; 1 December 2005; by Francisco Gil-White. http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/iraq-general-intro.htm [4] According to Frontline (PBS), the US-led military buildup of Saudi Arabia has made this country "ultimately...the largest beneficiary of U.S. weapons sales in the entire world" and "one of the most heavily armed countries in the world." SOURCE: "The Arming of Saudi Arabia;" Transcript of FRONTLINE Show
#1112; Public Broadcasting System; Air Date: February 16, 1993.
[5] The quotations are taken from the following two articles: Pro-western Arab states temper reaction: Jordan, Egypt, others risk domestic peace with mild comments, Ottawa Citizen, July 17, 2006 Monday, Final Edition, NEWS; Pg. A5, 364 words, Hugh Miles, The Daily Telegraph, CAIRO Militia Rebuked by Some Arab Countries, The New York Times, July 17, 2006 Monday, Late Edition - Final, Section A; Column 2; Foreign Desk; TURMOIL IN THE MIDEAST: THE ARABS; Pg. 1, 1027 words, By HASSAN M. FATTAH; Reporting for this article was contributed by Nazila Fathi from Tehran, Suha Maayeh from Amman, Jordan, Mona el-Naggar from Cairo and David E. Sanger from Vermont., BEIRUT, Lebanon, July 16 If you would like to see HIR's analysis of what the Arab reaction to Hezbollah's attack means, visit: "THE ARAB REACTION, AND WHAT IT MEANS: Get ready for the rebirth of the PLO..."; Historical and Investigative Research; 25 July 2006; by Francisco Gil-White. http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hezbollah5.htm [6] HIR has produced an analysis of this dynamic, by looking at previous events that followed the same pattern, here: "THE ARAB REACTION, AND WHAT IT MEANS: Get ready for the rebirth of the PLO..."; Historical and Investigative Research; 25 July 2006; by Francisco Gil-White. http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hezbollah5.htm [7] To place in historical perspective the manner in which the United States reacted to this war, by proposing a quick cease-fire and UN troops that will protect Hezbollah, read the following piece: "UNDERSTANDING THE US POSITION (Part 2): Why does the US propose a United Nations intervention?"; Historical and Investigative Research; 1 August 2006; by Francisco Gil-White. http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hezbollah4_2.htm |
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OPEN LETTER TO GUNTER GRASS
Posted by Marcia Leal, August 20, 2006. |
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This was written by Daniel Johnson August 18, 2006. |
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Dear Gunter Grass, What makes most Germans feel betrayed is not the fact that you were a member of the Waffen SS, a criminal organization, but that you made the fateful decision not to share with anybody the most important single fact about yourself. Not with your fellow writers in the Gruppe 47, most of whom were, like you, war veterans, who gave you your first breaks; not with the publishers and the book trade that marketed you as the voice of a new, untainted but angry young generation, and above all not with the reading public, which has remained true to you since you broke onto the literary scene in 1959 with your first novel, "The Tin Drum." It was, and is, a modern classic. It was followed in quick succession by two more war novels, "Cat and Mouse" and "Dog Years." Over the years you have returned again and again to the war years for inspiration. Four years ago you published "Crabwalk," your fictionalized depiction of the tragic sinking of the liner Wilhelm Gustloff, laden with German refugees fleeing the Russians in the last days of the war -- a subject dear to the hearts of old Nazis that, had you not been a life-long Leftist, would have cast doubt on where your true sympathies lay. But you did not vouchsafe your readers that essential detail about what you were doing at the time. Throughout your fiction there are characters in denial, whose bad faith or failure to come clean have terrible consequences. From the first, you invested "the power of silence" with supernatural force. Variations on the theme are repeated over and over again in your work. You urged Germans to break their unhealthy silence about the Holocaust, the "inability to mourn" in the catchphrase of the day. But you did not follow your own advice. I have before me two of your books. The first, a translation of your speeches and, yes, open letters, is entitled "Speak Out!" Published in 1968, it is introduced by Michael Harrington, a leading American liberal, who praises you for your outspoken courage as a public intellectual. The ironies here are too obvious. The other volume is your 1960 collection of poems, "Gleisdreieck," as always beautifully illustrated by the author. One of the best is "Nursery Rhyme": "Wer spricht hier, spricht und schweigt?/Wer schweigt, wird angezeigt./Wer hier spricht, hat verschwiegen,/wo seine Grönde liegen." (Who speaks here or keeps mum?/Here we denounce the dumb./To speak here is to hide/deep reasons kept inside.) Yet, strange to say, nobody ever thought to ask whether you, too, might have had something to hide. Granted: you are not the inmate of a mental hospital. Unlike Oskar Mazerath, the diminutive hero of "The Tin Drum," you do not play the drum incessantly nor utter shrieks so high-pitched they shatter glass. Oskar, your brainchild, disguises himself as a retarded infant with a mental age of three in order to bear witness to the sinister events around him, Germany's descent into the abyss of the Third Reich. Oskar's unbearable scream is a protest, all the more eloquent for being inarticulate, against that silence in the face of depravity that made Hitler possible. In Oskar, you created one of our most memorable metaphors for the moral insanity of Nazism. Now, however, you have forced us to read your books again, and in an ambiguous light. In your interview last weekend, you sought to justify your decision to volunteer as a teenage revolt against the narrow confines of your petty bourgeois home. To thus romanticize your youthful Nazi allegiance is, frankly, sickening, but maybe that is how you saw it at the time. If so, "The Tin Drum" may not be the novel we thought it was. Your harsh social satire is aimed at the people you grew up with, small shopkeepers with a bust of Hitler beside that of Beethoven. In real life, however, your bid for freedom was not directed against the Nazis, but for a more radical version of the ideology: the death or glory paganism of the Waffen SS. Would the book have been read as it was, would it have won you the Nobel Prize, would Volker Schlndorff have made it into a no less remarkable movie, if your background had been known? But you are not a literary character. You are a writer: the most celebrated in Germany, perhaps even in Europe, and winner of every imaginable literary award, including the Nobel Prize. For nearly half a century you have been recognized by your country's citizens as a moral arbiter, even (absurdly) as the conscience of Germany. In that capacity, you have sat in judgement on your fellow Germans, as indeed on America and just about everybody else. Like your American counterpart Noam Chomsky, like countless writers and intellectuals of the left from Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Harold Pinter, you have worked hard to discredit the political and economic system to which you owed your success: capitalism. You did your best over many years to undermine the Atlantic alliance -- the same alliance, incidentally, that liberated Europe from the tyranny of your countrymen. During the Cold War, and now in the war against Islamist terror, you have frequently made use of your hard-won liberty to make common cause with its enemies. You joined in the mythologizing of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist movement. You are a supporter of the European ideal, but only as a counterweight to America. You were delighted when Chancellor Schröder broke with President Bush over the Iraq issue, and legitimized the tide of anti-Americanism that then swept Germany. Soon after the liberation of Iraq, I was told by one of your fellow writers that you were so angry with Tony Blair and George Bush that you were boycotting Britain and America. You probably won't know Aurel Kolnai's book "The War Against the West," a study of Nazism published in 1938. But its title sums up Hitler's struggle. Now that we know how you began your career, with a thorough indoctrination in the Waffen SS, your lifelong loathing of the West takes on a new and sinister significance. You have always presumed to occupy the moral high ground, condemning the elected leaders of the West on the somewhat dubious authority that Germans have traditionally accorded to intellectuals. I say dubious, because you know as well as anyone how that authority has been abused in the past. Heaven knows, you had enough fun at the expense of Martin Heidegger in "Dog Years," mercilessly satirizing his "jargon of authenticity," his existential angst and phoney pathos, his pseudoprofundities and oracular orotundities. You know as well as I do how deeply the Nazi bacillus took root in German culture, and how the gullible Germans, stylizing themselves as the nation of "Dichter und Denker," of poets and philosophers, let themselves be manipulated by fanatics and fiends. You didn't only lecture Nazi intellectuals, either. One of your many open letters reprimanded the East German writer Anna Seghers for lending her authority to the Berlin Wall in 1961. By the time the Wall came down in 1989, you seemed to have had a change of heart. You embarked on a quixotic campaign to persuade Germans that they would really be better off living in two states. The only people who agreed with you were the old communist intellectuals who had done well out of the division of Germany.Yet even they, apologists for a totalitarian regime in which they no longer believed, were not as disingenuous as you. It was part of your disguise to adopt as a badge of honor the old anti-Semitic insult "rootless cosmopolitan." Your friend Stefan Heym, communist time-server that he was, was the genuine article. As a Jew, he had been driven out of Germany in 1933, and returned in 1945 as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army. He might even have interrogated you. Luckily for you, he did not. The East Germans would have had no hesitation in blackening your name, despite the fact that your anti-Americanism and your lifelong campaign to detach West Germany from NATO were quite useful to them. Why did you lie? For your 60-year silence was a lie, an unspoken reproach that forced you to lie again every time you sat down to write. Perhaps you no longer know why you did it. I have a theory, which may be mistaken, but which takes us back to your own "zero hour" at the end of the war. When you started your life again after your release from POW camp, you decided to be an artist. That was your first love, and you were talented. You have never ceased to draw and print. Your collected graphic art, "In Kupfer, auf Stein" (In Copper, on Stone), documents an impressive body of work. But you were not content to be a humble printmaker. You wanted to be a great writer. In literature, unlike art, you were a late developer. You did not get your first poem published until you were 28, and you were 32 by the time your first novel appeared. But you were determined to make your name as a writer. It was only when you became a literary celebrity that your secret became a huge liability. If you had grasped the nettle then, your new career, which meant so much to you, might have been stillborn. You chose silence. And so you made your pen your accomplice, in one of the shabbiest deceits ever practised on a reading public -- a German public that desperately needed you to be the person you presented yourself as. In the annals of European literature, I cannot recall a similar case. Literary hoaxes, even those in which the author has pretended to be an eyewitness to the Holocaust, are innocent by comparison. You are often compared to Thomas Mann, but you are no more a Mann than you are a man. The only Mann character with whom you have much in common is Felix Krull, the confidence trickster. Your rise and fall recalls the greatest of all German myths, that of Faust, which Mann explicitly connected with Nazism. Your fate, though, is not tragic, but comic. Your reputation, which was already in decline, now lies in ruins. It is no consolation that you may acquire a new following among the Germans you most affected to despise, those who think the Waffen SS has been much misunderstood. I saw you once. I have only a dim memory of it, because it was well over 30 years ago, when I was a schoolboy of about the age at which you volunteered. You came to give a reading in London, together with two other German writers: your friend the novelist Siegfried Lenz and the East German poet Peter Huchel. The other two were men of integrity, neither of whom concealed his conduct in the Third Reich. But you were the star turn, reading from your play about Brecht's role in the 1953 workers' revolt in East Berlin, "The Plebians Rehearse the Uprising." You were sympathetic to Brecht and his grubby compromises -- praising Stalin and Ulbricht in public, writing bitter verses in private ("Would it not be easier for the government/ To dissolve the people/ And elect another?"). I should have seen then and there what kind of man you were. I remember warming to Huchel, by then a broken, disillusioned figure living in exile and waiting to die. But my German teacher had eyes only for you: the hero of the West German Left, the very model of a modern intellectual. I suppose I was impressed, too. I subsequently devoted much of my life to writing about German politics, history, and culture. You touched my life, as you touched countless others. What, though, if we had known you for what you really were? Now that we do know your secret, the least most people might expect would be an act of contrition. But I, for one, do not expect it from you. You are not sorry, neither for what you did nor for what you did not do. To apologize now would merely compound your insincerity. We want no more pilgrimages to Auschwitz. No, Mr. Grass, it is too late for that. You have lived and will die a fraud, a coward, and a hypocrite. One day you may be forgotten, but you will never be forgiven. As I suspected, the East German communist secret police, the Stasi, knew all about your Waffen SS membership. The truth would have come out anyway when your Stasi file is published next year. Your decision to keep quiet actually exposed you to blackmail by the Stasi. It seems that the facts were also contained in American military archives. Your file might have surfaced at any time over the past 60 years, if anybody had cared to look. I see, too, that your publishers are rushing out your memoirs early, to cash in on the worldwide publicity generated by your admission. They have also released brief extracts to tempt us. They disclose that you remained an unrepentant anti-Semite even after the war. While working as a prisoner of war in the kitchens at a U.S. air base, you found yourself -- almost certainly for the first time in your life -- having to treat Jews as equals. Your co-workers were Jewish refugees, recently released from German concentration camps, who must have endured unimaginable suffering and humiliation at the hands of your comrades in the SS. Not surprisingly, when a row broke out in the kitchen, they shouted: "Nazis, you Nazis!" Well, that was no more than the truth. You admit that you were proud to serve in the Waffen SS. So how did you respond? "We retorted: 'Just go away to Palestine!'" For you, it seems, the war wasn't over. You still wanted a Europe, and especially a Germany, that was Judenrein, ethnically cleansed of Jews. Given your hostility to Israel today, some 60 years later, we are entitled to ask whether your "denazification" went far enough. From what we have seen of your memoirs, I do not expect to learn much from them. The extracts so far published do not explain the mystery of your silence. "I kept silent about it after the war out of a growing shame," you write.You still do not seem to understand that your silence was itself shameful. Now that you are under intense though belated scrutiny, you are full of self-pity and self-justification. On German TV on Thursday night, you complained: "What I am experiencing is an attempt to make me a persona non grata, to cast doubt on everything I did in my life after that." No, Mr. Grass: It was you who did that to yourself. Yours sincerely,
Contact Marcia Leal and marcia.leal.eejh@gmail.com |
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LET NONE CALL IT TREASON
Posted by B'nai Elim, August 20, 2006. |
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This was written by Nachum Shifren |
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This will come as a shock to you "Zionists" out there that haven't heard the post-mortem about this institution. Better look up a new ideology for yourself. The latest aliya statistics confirm that the patient was dead on arrival: nobody is interested in "Zionism" nowadays except the religious. Interestingly enough, it was Ehud (one-world-order) Olmert himself who bemoaned this fact; Jerusalem was in "danger" of becoming a place of only Charedim and Arabs. The inference here is that Zionism must also be inclusive, able to embrace a "diversity" of thought (Oh, how I hate that word!). The inference here is that we as Jews need to be "normal" people, with bowling alleys, fast foods, malls, drugs, prostitution, and pop culture. If anything drove the nail in the coffin of "Zionism," it was the latest outrage in Lebanon. As if, the ripping out of 8,000 families in Gush Katif didn't cause this, but let's not go there right now. We, (the Jewish people), went to war against an enemy that took our soldiers. We had to get them back. We went to war to crush our enemy, to prevent them from ever harming a Jew ever again. Where are the soldiers? How long will it be until the rockets start up again? Everyone knows the answer. Therefore, we must ask some hard questions about this treachery that truly endangers every Jew on this planet. The government knows that Hezbollah (may their name be blotted out speedily in our days) will attack again. Why did they stop their incursion to eliminate them? Because this government fears the Gentile more than they fear the G-d of Sinai. They believe, against their own logic and bitter experience with the UN, that somehow the =91peacekeepers=92 will watch over them. Could there not be a crueler joke than this? The UN that voted to sanction Israel, calling Zionism racism? The UN that never tires of censuring Israel as expansionist and a denier of "human rights. (Hmm, well, they may have something there, with all the times we got arrested for attending Kahane demonstrations!). A friend of mine wrote me, "Why should I go to reserves and serve in Lebanon for a country that ripped me out of my home in Gush Katif and gave my land to the terrorists? Our family remains homeless, moving from place to place. Every dime we had, we invested in our home. Now, they want me to die in Lebanon? I'll go to jail first!" This has all the makings of a civil war. It is not Jihad, Hezbollah, or, Al Qaeda that threatens the Jewish people. It is the illegal, corrupt, anti-Jewish government of Israel that is sending us to the brink. How much longer can the Jewish people tolerate a system that has more concern for the terrorists than Jews? Never before in the history of the IDF has a system brazenly abandoned its soldiers in the manner that we have recently witnessed. Where are they? What message does this send to the terrorists? There is a tight media lockout against the ideas I am expressing in this column. You will never hear a reporter or journalist in Israel say the things I do, because he knows what will happen to him, his family, and his job. We are, simply put, living with a regime that thinks only of its grip on power, whatever the cost in human life or Jewish souls. It's just that nobody's got the gumption to talk about it. And that's why they had to get rid of Rabbi Kahane. At every turn, he pointed out the contradiction between Judaism and the state of Israel. So let us not dare to call this latest debacle what it is: treason, pure and simple. In any other normal (secular) country, these leaders would be rounded up and put before a firing squad. Bring it on. Bring on the war we know is coming. Bring on the Jewish "sleeper cells" in Israel that will liberate the Jewish people from the long love affair the state has had with fascism a la Soviet Russia. Bring on the struggle we know must ultimately liberate us from a liberal "supreme" court that gives more rights to Arabs than Jews. Bring on the struggle over the Temple Mount where Jews are forbidden to tread; but where Arabs desecrate the site daily. Bring on the fight to free from political prisons the followers of Rabbi Kahane, yet Gay and Lesbian "pride day" marches are held through the city of Jerusalem. No, it isn't the Arab I fear. It's the Leftist Jew, sitting in the Knesset, mandating, sanctioning, betraying the promise of Abraham with the bat of an eyelash. It is the Jewish lemming that darkens my soul, knowing full well that he prefers a fiery death from Hamas rather than to yield to the Sovereign of the world, to His word and promise. This Sabbath, we shall read: "Behold, I have given you a blessing and a curse. A blessing if you follow my commandments. A curse,=94 if otherwise. The government of Israel has spoken and made their decision. It's now up to us. Please recite this Chapter of Tehillim for the Holy-land The three captive soldiers being held by Arab Moslem terrorists are Gilad (ben Aviva) Shalit in Gaza, and Ehud (ben Malkah) Goldwasser and Eldad (ben Tova) Regev in Lebanon.Contact B'nai Elim at news@bnaielim.org |
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PSYCHOLOGY
Posted by Batya Medad, August 20, 2006. |
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In "Guys and Dolls" Miss Adelaide blames her cold on "psychology." Is that the reason the State of Israel is endangering itself with the most "peculiar" and "perverse" policies? Psychology?!? For a long time I've been ranting about the fact that Israel so proudly brings distinguished guests to Yad Vashem instead of showing our connection to the Land and how quickly and miraculously we've developed industry, agriculture and modern cities here. I've always thought the reason was to get sympathy. "Pity me! Pity me!" our politicians cry out! Pathetic, I thought, but now I see it as an even worse symptom of a pathological condition. They want a "mommy" or "daddy" to take care of them. Olmert's peculiar statement in a more complete version, from the words we all know so well, shows how far removed he is from reality: "We are tired of fighting. We are tired of being courageous. We are tired of winning. We are tired of defeating our enemies. We want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies. We want them to be our friends, our partners, our good neighbors. And I believe that is not impossible." Olmert, along with many Israelis, just wants to be liked. That's the simplistic interpretation, and considering his similarity with other "right wing" Israelis who lost their principles as soon as they were Prime Minister, I think Miss Adelaide is on the right track. They all act like many victims of physical and emotional abuse. They want to be liked, pitied and only feel secure if they don't have to take responsibility for themselves. The early Zionists wanted to imitate western culture, like the Jewish People when they demanded from Samuel the Prophet: (4) Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah. (5) And they said unto him: 'Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways; now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.' Today's Israelis dream of a country combining what they think of as the best of Europe and the United States. For spiritualism, they prefer visiting India, since they wouldn't want their materialistic life-style compromised. Remember that even after the Holocaust, the survivors still worshiped and admired German culture. This last fiasco of a war, when Olmert and Peretz were forced to follow up on their threats to go in and rescue the kidnapped soldiers, ended up a disaster. I was embarrassed listening to the news in New York, when my government was begging the United Nations and United States to organize a "peace-keeping" force. Olmert and gang are so tired that they refuse to take full responsibility for our defense. They don't understand that it's an "all or nothing affair." The UN has made it clear that if Israel is out of Southern Lebanon, it may not go in, even for one of our quick army actions. In addition, the UN does not plan the sort of force Israel wants. Also our "claim to fame" that ours is the "most moral army in the world" is just a joke to that very world, since no other army would ever endanger its soldiers the way the Israelis do. Victims of abuse have a need to be liked, even if it endangers themselves. What we do need is a good therapist! Batya Medad lives in Shiloh. She can be reached by email at Shilohmuse@yahoo.com or visit her website http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/ or go to http://www.shilo.org.il |
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WEAK OLMERT TEAM VERSUS IRAN'S NUKES
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, August 20, 2006. |
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CNN newscasters on August 14th have been speculating as to what Hezb'Allah's Hassan Nasrallah would be likely to do IF Iran's Mahmoud Abahdinejad supplies Hezb'Allah's Nasrallah with nuclear missiles. They generally agreed that Hezb'Allah - at Iran's urging - would use nuclear weapons against Israel. There were follow-on discussions as to parallel events such as using liquid explosives in 10 American aircraft coming from England to be detonated over American cities or over the Atlantic Ocean simultaneously. Additional discussions continued throughout the day about the downstream effects of Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's unwillingness to follow Israel's well-established Military plans to engage Hezb'Allah. Olmert, Chief of Defense Amir Peretz, Chief of Staff Gen. Dan Halutz, ostensibly told Hezb'Allah that Olmert was ready to cut and run. Olmert had accepted Gen. Halutz' concept that this War could be won in 3 days from the air. Halutz wanted the glory equal to Ezer Weizman's air attack which decimated the Egyptian Air Force on the ground during the 1967 Six Days War. Halutz was still consumed with a War of the past and he had two civilian advisors, Olmert and Peretz, who were not only amateurs but, as with all politicians, their orders reflected political interests and not the winning of a War. This was a "test war" for Iran, using Hezb'Allah as its Proxy. The Russians, too, had their opportunity to test their 'Koronet' anti-tank missiles against Israel's famed Merkava Tank. General media discussion revolved around the many terrorist groups who were closing ranks, thereby becoming a deadly threat to the Free West. The media debated whether we should talk or fight. Muslims fanatics spread across Europe and are growing in America. The main well-known terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezb'Allah, Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigades, the Palestinian Authority and others were all well-armed, trained and funded with the Free West donors' money. All are gathering under the banner of Islamo-Facism as their reason for attacking the West. In the North Olmert's blunder gave Lebanon a government ruled by Hassan Nasrallah and his Hezb'Allah terrorist organization - with Syria and Iran, the ultimate masters.. Reports indicate that wherever Hezb'Allah terrorists were driven out of southern Lebanon, they are now returning in droves with their families to their bunkers and tunnels with whatever missiles remain hidden. All this is under an agreement where the war against terror become meaningless. Each of the Western nations have made limp attempts to develop counter-insurgency authorities such as Homeland Security in America. But, they are still playing with rules and laws designed for a time when nations fought each other and abided (to some degree) with such laws as the Geneva Convention. They find it difficult to use racial/religious profiling despite the fact that all but one major terror attack in the last 25 years has been conducted by Muslim fanatics against their host country or the world-wide airlines. Israel, having experienced the most exposure to terror, has also been the worst at protecting her civilian population - lest it anger the E.U., the U.N., America and the Arab League. Israel secretly tried out the Oslo Accords to appease the Muslim and Arab nations, but learned nothing from the Oslo failure. Ehud Barak abandoned the Israeli security strip in southern Lebanon in the year 2000. Therefore, Barak caused a vacuum which quickly filled with Hezb'Allah terrorists, armed, trained and funded by Iran and Syria, armed with thousands of Katyusha missiles. Here again, the politicians and Leftist Generals of Israel or America learned nothing. Binyamin Netanyahu was next as Prime Minister and he surrendered 80% of the Jewish holy city Hebron, re-enforcing the belief of the Muslim Arabs that Jews will neither defend their G-d given Land or their religion. When the most feared warrior, Ariel Sharon adopted the already failed "Land for Peace", the Arabs knew that Israel's leadership was, indeed, the paper tiger. The greatest disappointment was the once great warrior, General Ariel (Arik) Sharon who, like Barak, gave up Gush Katif/Gaza to the Arab Muslim terrorist organization, Hamas, which allowed Gaza to become the perfect Global terrorists' base to launch Kassam Rockets. Sharon, Olmert and his developing Kadimites managed to fire all those who happened to disagree with his cut-and-run plan, calling them 'rebels' who turned out to be absolutely correct. Here again, Ehud Olmert was Sharon's advisor - mostly to protect Sharon's dysfunctional family for the crooked schemes that were coming to light. Sharon was the new darling of the Leftist Hebrew Media - as long as he followed the revised Oslo Accords. Now it's called "Convergence" which plans to evict, uproot, evacuate up to 250,000 men, women and children from Judea and Samaria. After one million civilians had to flee south from Northern Israel, where do you think Olmert plans to park those 250,000 from Judea and Samaria? This man, Ehud Olmert, was a man of no special credentials other than devising back room schemes, who proved his incompetence by being the first Israeli Prime Minister to lose a war started by Muslim Arabs against Israeli Jews. Olmert's foe was a mere 3,000 Hezb'Allah terrorists who were armed with 15,000 Katyusha Missiles, wholly ignored for the six years it took them to build deep fortifications in southern Lebanon. While Olmert was leading Israel's military failure by subverting his own army of courageous soldiers, the Muslim Arabs were spreading across the globe, determined to make Islam the dominant religions whom all peoples were supposed to follow and obey. WHAT THEN IS ISRAEL TO DO? Perhaps Israel should bring back those whom Sharon, Olmert and their Kadimites called "Rebels". They were the only people who defied Sharon and the gang who were giving Hamas a global base of operations by abandoning Gush Katif/Gaza. Israelis keep discovering that the Prime Ministers they have chosen are not always people of integrity. Former Minister of Knesset Uzi Landau sacrificed his career by telling the truth to the people when he could have folded and jumped into Kadima, the new receptacle for exceptionally corrupt politicians. Bibi Netanyahu once again played self-serving politics even to this day as Israeli soldiers are being buried due to a mis-led war. Will the people march to the P.M. office and remove him and his utterly weak and contemptible Cabinet? Even the Leftist Hebrew paper Ha'aretz has stated that Olmert must go. In the meantime, we observe two dangerous incompetents, making decisions on what to do about Iran and Mahmoud Abmadinejad. He not only pledges to destroy Israel with a nuclear bomb (on August 22nd), but he bases his conclusion that this is the time of the return of the Mahdi of Islam (which he seems to believe is really his role). Additionally, Abmadinejad does not fear a nuclear reprisal because within the Muslim Koranic doctrine, to die fighting the infidels will assure a glorious life after death. Israel's well known second strike nuclear capability is no deterrence to such a religious fanatic. Are Olmert and Peretz capable of even thinking about nukes falling on Tel Aviv or Jerusalem - let alone doing something pre-emptively to prevent such a strike and preserve the nation? I don't think so. Olmert and his Kadimites will instead rely upon U.N. agreements, pledges by America to assist - which will, of course, be only after a saturation missile attack with nukes and chemicals. How is that two men with dysfunctional families were able to drag the Jewish nation into a similarly dysfunctional response to terror. Olmert and his crew must be dragged out of office now and not wait for the formalities dispensed by an activist Leftist Supreme Court. The newscasters will, no doubt have a lot to say but, will they say it before Israel is hit with a nuclear weapon or after. At one time, before Israel became a puppy on a short leash held by America, the Israelis would have pre-emptively acted to preserve the Jewish State. Now they have pathetic leadership, more concerned with the opinion of other nations, each of whom played a role in doing them best to complete the Genocide ramping up from the Middle Ages, through WW2 and now well into the Third World War. Olmert, Peretz, Peres, Halutz are deep into planning how to avoid being blamed for a catastrophic failure. The soldiers were magnificent in their courage, bravery, youth and the older reservists who left their jobs and families went into battle despite the lack of decent leadership at the top. Even as these young and older soldiers are being buried or fitted with prostheses for missing limbs, due to the failure of leadership, those same leaders are planning self-serving hearings which will serve to keep them in their power seats. I will be writing more on these coming sham hearings and urge other analysts to peel away the PR (public relations) campaign now being formed to shield the perpetrators from the wrath of their own people. Added Note from E. Winston: Will PM OLmert, his gang and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz have the sense to vaporize Iran or simply wait for Israel to vanish? If Israel is to play her role as the sacrificial goat, then - after Iran explodes its bomb - America will have sufficient reason to eliminate Iran. DEBKAfile: Iran's Military Exercise & Apocalyptic Plans For Israel &
World
Washington is keeping a sharp weather eye out for Tuesday, August 22, which this year corresponds in the Islamic calendar to the date on which many Sunni Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on his winged horse Buraq to "the farthest mosque", which is traditionally identified with Jerusalem. According to the Muslim legend, on that day, a divine white light spread over Jerusalem and the whole world. DEBKAfile's intelligence sources report that information rated "highly credible" has reached US undercover agencies of a secret report presented to Iran's supreme ruler Ali Khamenei by Abdollah Shabhazi, one of the heads of the Supreme National Security Council. He claims to expose a mega-terror plot against Jerusalem scheduled for August 22, which aims at killing large numbers of Jews, Arabs and Christians. This atrocity will reportedly arm the United States and Israel with the pretext for hitting Iran's nuclear installations, as well its capital, Tehran, and other big cities. Shabhazi says the US and Israel need to launch a military campaign to restore the deterrent strength they lost in the Lebanon war. The massive attack will reportedly focus on the Old City of Jerusalem and its eastern suburbs. The Iranian report claims that the plotters, who are not identified, are eager to recreate the divine white light whish spread over Jerusalem in the year 632. It does not rule out the use of a non-conventional weapon. DEBKAfile reports that the authorities in Israel do not appear to be taking this threat seriously, unlike Washington - and Tehran. Deeply impressed, Iran's rulers launched a large-scale are, sea and ground exercise Saturday, Aug. 19. The maneuver, dubbed the Blow of Zolfaghar (the sword used by Imam Ali), involves 12 divisions, army Chinook helicopters, unmanned planes, parachutists, electronic war units and special forces. State-run television reported a new anti-aircraft system was tested "to make Iranian air space unsafe for our enemies." The massive military exercise will spread over 14 of Iran's 30 provinces and last about five weeks. DEBKAfile adds: The point of this massive display of might is in fact to place Iran's armed forces on the ready for the contingency of a US-Israeli offensive on August 22 as per Shabhazi's prediction. The exercise will be moved to Tehran to prepare the capital for a potential assault. August 22, furthermore, is also the day of Iran's formal reply to the incentives packages on offer from the West in return for halting its uranium enrichment projects. For weeks, Tehran was under pressure from the United States and Europe for an earlier reply, but insisted on August 22. Prof. Bernard Lewis, the great scholar of Islam and the Middle East offers the background in the Wall Street Journal on Aug. 8: "In Islam, as in Judaism and Christianity, there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time - Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam. Mr. Ahmadinejad and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the U.S. about nuclear development by Aug. 22. This was at first reported as "by the end of August," but Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement was more precise." Revolutionary Iran habitually links fundamentalist symbolism to political events. Prof. Lewis explains the significance of Aug. 22 and adds ominously: "This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind." The Shiites do not recognize Rajab 27 as the date of Muhammad's purported flight to Jerusalem but celebrate Mabath to commemorate the day they believe Allah appeared before Mohammed in a cave and told him he had been chosen as the prophet to spread the divine message across the world. Mabath is marked by Shiites in Iran and other parts of the Middle East with great ceremony. Claiming to represent the true Islam, the Shiite rulers of Tehran are expected by Washington to mark the date by demonstrating their military superiority for all Muslims to see. In addition to Bernard Lewis's hypothesis, speculation is rife in Washington about what Iran has in store for next Tuesday. Tehran may announce success in producing enriched uranium of a higher grade, meaning it is no more than six months away from a weapons-grade capability. While providing justification for UN Security Council sanctions, Tehran prefers to believe that this announcement will be its passport for admission to the world's nuclear club and its attendant privileges, including the right to enrich uranium independently. In the meantime, the Iranians are putting on a spectacular show of
military bravado to show the world and reassure their own people that
they are not afraid of threats.
Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His
articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the
Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For
Strategic Studies (www.freeman.org/online.htm).
Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net
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HOW DO FIGHT SOMEONE WHO ISN'T AFRAID TO DIE?
Posted by Shaul and Aviva Ceder, August 20, 2006. |
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This was writen by Mona Charen and appeared in Jewish World Review (www.jewishworldreview.com) August 18, 2006. |
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When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert addressed the Knesset and claimed victory against Hezbollah, some members of the body audibly scoffed, reports WorldNetDaily. Israel's tentative military campaign, Olmert asserted, "changed the strategic balance in the region." Well, he's right about that part. By failing to crush Hezbollah, as 90 percent of the Israeli public, the U.S. government, the French and even the Saudis hoped they would do, Israel has sustained the most damaging defeat of its history - and this defeat has hurt the United States as well. An Israeli columnist, calling himself an "optimist," notes that contrary to Hassan Nasrallah's prediction that Israel would "'collapse like a spider web,' it didn't collapse." Those are not words to chill the hearts of Hamas and Hezbollah. In a better world, the tactics of Hezbollah - crossing an international boundary in an unprovoked act of ruthless aggression; kidnapping soldiers; using civilians as human shields; deliberately targeting Israeli civilians - would have provoked universal revulsion. Every death of an innocent Lebanese would have been laid at the feet of Hezbollah. But in the world we actually inhabit, the European Union, Muslims throughout the world and many on the left in the United States condemned Israel instead. This war brought us not embedded journalists but embedded terrorists, woven into the fabric of civilian society - missiles hidden in mosques, launchers within laundries. Hezbollah, with a large assist from the Reuters news agency, boldly and blatantly falsified photographs and other news from Lebanon - strategically posing human beings (dead and alive), stuffed animals and weeping women for world media consumption. Thanks to alert bloggers like those at LittleGreenFootballs.com, we have come to recognize the ubiquity of figures like "Green Helmet Guy" posing as a Lebanese rescue worker when he almost certainly works for the terrorists - the Leni Riefenstahl of Hezbollah. One part of the world that proved particularly vulnerable to this manipulation was Israel itself. It fought this war with one eye on the camera. And though utterly unskilled in such tactics itself (where were the pictures of suffering Israe lis?), the Israeli government worried excessively about the public relations price it was paying to defend itself. But by failing to finish the war, Israel did itself far more damage than any public relations hit could do. It emboldened the enemy - and Israel's enemy in this war is our enemy, too. How do you fight people who are not afraid to die? Well, certainly not by letting them believe that such tactics succeed. Iran, the font of so much misery in the world right now, has no reason to believe that defiance of the United Nations, Nazi-like belligerence toward the U.S. and Israel, funding and training of suic ide bombers, and the pursuit of nuclear weapons have brought them anything but gin. Hezbollah was their cat's paw. Had it been crippled, they would have felt the pain. The psychic blow would have been enormous. The psychological war is every bit as important as the one fought with bullets (it has always been so). It's one thing to blow yourself up for a great cause that is everywhere on the march. It's quite another to sacrifice your life for futility. At this moment, Israel has done the most dangerous thing we in the West can do: It has withdrawn from a fight without victory. The U.S. has offered some wobbly signals as well. Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute reports that after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced that the U.S. would "engage " Iran, a top Iranian official jeered, "Why don't you just admit that you are weak and your razor is blunt?" A few days later, an Iranian Revolutionary Guards boat unfurled a banner as it passed a U.S. Navy ship in the Persian Gulf. It read: "The U.S. cannot do a damn thing." A Hamas columnist has predicted that Hezbollah's "victory" will open the door to a "third intifada." We await the consequences elsewhere around the world - from London to New York to Baghdad to Bali to Calcutta - of jihadists who feel the wind at their backs. Contact Shaul Ceder by email at shaul.ceder@gmail.com |
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WHAT DO THE MUSLIMS WANT FROM ISRAEL?
Posted by Shaul and Aviva Ceder, August 20, 2006. |
| This was written by Richard Z. Chesnoff and it appeared in the Jewish World Review (www.JewishWorldReview.com). |
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I've been reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict for more than 42 years and I've just come to a horrifying but unavoidable conclusion: Nothing has changed - and probably nothing can change - Israel's enemies' fanatic refusal to accept her right to exist. It is simply too deeply ingrained in the psychology of the region. It was loud and clear in Arab capitals back in the '60s, and today it remains the driving force in most of the Islamic world. Israel's latest battles repeat the story. Why would Hezbollah murder and kidnap Israeli soldiers without provocati on? Why were thousands of Iranian and Syrian-made missiles lobbed from Lebanon onto Israeli cities and towns? Why are Palestinian rockets still landing on Israeli homes and villages? What do these people want? The answer is simple: Israel's destruction. These Muslim madmen will never stop their murderous war of terror against Israel, just as England's thwarted jihadi bombers will keep trying to blow up airlines and trains and office buildings in their worldwide struggle to spread "the true word." It is a twisted form of a noble religion, and it defies Western logic - because the Muslim world would gain far more by cooperating with Israel. Consider what's been accomplished by Israel, the only non-Islamic sliver in the vast lands that lie between Pakistan and Morocco. With less than 1/1000th of the world's population, Israel boasts a $100 billion economy larger than all of its immediate neig hbors combined, the highest ratio of university degrees and museums to population in the world, and some of the world's finest medical, scientific and high-tech research facilities. Most vital: despite nearly constant war, Israel has absorbed, built homes and provided jobs for millions of Jewish immigrants - 800,000 of them refugees from Arab countries. Now consider the sorry record in the Arab world. Illiteracy and disease still reign supreme. In the year since Israel left Gaza, the Palestinians have accomplis hed next to nothing. Where are the housing projects for Palestinian refugees? Wh at happened to the network of high-tech hothouses the Palestinians inherited from Israeli settlers? Most have been vandalized or neglected into ruin. After 60 years, Gaza's Palestinians continue to whine, live off the global dole and put their efforts into building rockets instead of a future for themselves. They teach their children that Jews are "apes," Christians are "swine" and Israel should be wiped off the map. At a royal banquet in Jordan recently, I sat next to the sophisticated editor of one of the Mideast's most influential Arab dailies. He spoke of how "most think ing Arabs" understand that some kind of "pragmatic peace" must be maintained with Israel. But when I asked the man - the epitome of a "thinking Arab" - if he believed Israel had a legitimate historical place in the Middle East, he was shocked. "Do you expect us to be Zionists?" he asked rather scornfully. Might not be a bad idea. At least fewer Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli children would die - and the Arab world might have something it doesn't have today: hope. Contact Shaul Ceder by email at shaul.ceder@gmail.com |
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ARABS: THE MANTRA WE MUST ALL REMEMBER AND RECITE
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 20, 2006. |
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The mantra we must all remember and recite:
Arabs are either at your feet or at your throat! Contact the author at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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ISRAEL INHABITS A WORLD REPLETE WITH CONTRADICTORY FORCES
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, August 19, 2006. |
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Humans inhabit a world replete with contradictory forces. Most Israelis, perhaps most planetary observers, having set the bar so low for Hizbullah and so high for Israel, perceive the former, still standing, as victor in a clash of armies. Yet, northern Israel, for now, is no longer threatened by armed fanatics, as Lebanese and international troops begin to monitor Lebanon's southern border. Furthermore, the misguided notion of unilateral withdrawal from Judea and Samaria is for now thankfully dead, hopefully immune to resurrection, last rites recited by most Israelis and their leaders, presciently grasping the likelihood of an Iranian supported terrorist infected West Bank if such a dastardly deed was consummated. Would that state of awareness exist if Israel crushed Hizbullah? Jews, indeed, through the ages have experienced mixed bags of joy and tsuris, no doubt the latter in the blackest of spades during a Holocaust beyond human comprehension, yet the consequential creation of the Jewish State Israel drowned out the venomous voice gurgling 'death to the Jews' with a wondrous chorus of 'NEVER AGAIN'! Israel, however, must ever monitor the monitors along its northern border, ever assuring that terrorists do not once again infiltrate. Concurrently, the Jewish high-tech economic dynamo can once again rev into high gear, strengthening the material substance of its society. Israel's spiritual substance, alas, curiously conflicted by the misperception of defeat against a sworn enemy, must focus on one prominent fact; that its IDF had no choice but to surgically attempt to destroy Hizbullah combatants and their deadly Iranian supplied weapon systems, maniacally mixed within civilian enclaves. The home court advantage of an enemy, indeed fighting a guerrilla war on its own turf, willing to sacrifice innocents for the sake of its own collective cowardly hide and worldwide propaganda value accrued through collateral damage attributed to an already disrespected nation, is incredibly daunting; neutralizing the military might of most any juggernaut with but a dollop of moral fiber, unwilling to level all life, innocent and despicable. Yet, in Einstein's universe where God does not roll dice, let us hope contradictory forces eventually will intertwine into one cogent ball of life guided by morality and wisdom. Today's State of Israel, ever tested by terrorizing militants obsessed with delusional thinking awash in vestiges of a primitive predatory past, must keep its focus on a higher cerebral plane. It must not allow other nations or its inner bogeyman to define the consequences of its decisions. Israel must keep its eye on the prize, ever striving to improve the lives of its citizens with vanguard technology, robust commercial enterprise, and a stellar educational system; unlike the degenerate raw material economies and maniacally skewed educational systems of its hostile neighbors. Hizbullah fanatics and kindred spirits are unfit to inhabit century twenty-one, along with those Islamic despots who rule over populations resembling powder kegs each in search of a lit fuse. If Israel did not now crush Hizbullah, so what! The IDF did not have to survive by hiding behind Israeli citizens. That moral comparison between adversarial armies is highly significant in the greater scheme of things. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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HOW SHERLOCK HOLMES MAY HAVE ANALYZED ISRAEL'S PREDICAMENT
Posted by Martin Sherman, August 19, 2006. |
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The Israeli Foreign Ministry has just produced a report casting grave doubt's on the feasibility of the "Convergence" Plan -- the theme on which the incumbent government (including the Foreign Minster who commissioned the study) was elected to power. (The Haaretz coverage of the report - in English and Hebrew - is provided as attachments). This of course raises an interesting question of some urgency: If unilateral withdrawal, which was adopted because negotiated withdrawal was deemed unrealistic, is now also deemed unrealistic, what policy options remain for Israel?? In this regard I urge you to peruse the proposal presented in following site(s), which seems to now emerge at the only viable alternative for the preservation of Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish people: http://www.jerusalemsummit.org/eng/hs_short_eng.htm (English)
Dr. Martin Sherman is in the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University. He has written extensively on water, including "The Politics of Water in the Middle East," London: Macmillan, 1999. He was a senior research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, and served for seven years in Israel's defense establishment. |
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AUSTRALIA'S STANCE ON ISLAMISM
Posted by Barry Shaw, August 18, 2006. |
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Other countries, namely Britain and Canada, can learn from this official message from Australia. I am particularly impressed by the simple statement "Immigrants, not Australians, must adapt". |
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Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to Australia and her Queen at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his Ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown. Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state, and its laws were made by parliament. "If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said on national television. "I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are 2 laws governing people in Australia: one the Australian law and, another, the Islamic law, that is false. If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country, which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option," Costello said. Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he said those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked to move to the other country. Education Minister Brendan Nelson later told reporters that Muslims who did not want to accept local values should "clear off. Basically, people who don't want to be Australians and who don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well, then, they can basically clear off," he said. Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation's mosques quote: "IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali, we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians." "However, the dust from the attacks had barely settled when the 'politically correct' crowd began complaining about the possibility that our patriotism was offending others. I am not against immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone who is seeking a better life by coming to Australia." "However, there are a few things that those who have recently come to our country, and apparently some born here, need to understand." "This idea of Australia being a multicultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. As Australians, we have our own culture, our own society, our own language and our own lifestyle." "This culture has been developed over 2 centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom" "We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society, LEARN THE LANGUAGE!" "Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right-wing political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture." "We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us." "If the Southern Cross offends you, or you don't like "A Fair Go", then you should seriously consider a move to another part of this planet. We are happy with our culture and have no desire to change, and we really don't care how you did things where you came from. By all means, keep your culture, but do not force it on others. "This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, 'THE RIGHT TO LEAVE.'" "If you aren't happy here, then LEAVE. We didn't force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted." Maybe if we circulate this amongst ourselves, American citizens will find the backbone to start speaking and voting the same truths! SEND THIS TO EVERYBODY YOU KNOW! Barry Shaw made aliyah from Manchester, England, 25 years ago with his family. He writes the "View from Here" columns from Israel. To sign up to receive his emails, contact him at netre@matav.net.il |
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GATORADE IS NOT THE PROBLEM -- TOILETRIES DON'T COMMIT ACTS OF TERRORISM
Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, August 18, 2006. |
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This was written by Bob Lonsberry. |
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Toiletries don't commit acts of terrorism. Muslims do. So why can't I take my toothpaste on the plane? How is it that Gatorade is forbidden? Why can't I have a bottle of water? Because we aren't really fighting a war with terror, we are losing a struggle with political correctness. It is not so much the evil of outsiders, it is the cowardice of Americans. The cowardice that won't let us call a spade a spade, that makes us all live in an alternate reality, that puts survival secondary to servility. We are fighting World War III with one arm tied behind our back. Last week was a good example. A group of two or three dozen fascist Muslims in England and Pakistan plotted to blow up 10 or 12 passenger-laden airliners in transatlantic flight. The purpose was to celebrate and reprise the attacks of September 11. The means was the detonation of explosive liquids disguised as common liquids -- like Gatorade or shampoo. The plot was discovered, followed and -- hopefully -- foiled by British intelligence with an assist from Americans and Pakistanis. Immediately, new restrictions were put on airline passengers. Because the plotters planned to use liquids, passengers were forbidden to bring liquids onto airplanes. Not medicines, not creams, not drinks, not nothing. Untold hundreds of thousands of airline passengers immediately and indefinitely lost the right to carry liquids or pastes on themselves or in their carry-on luggage. Which is stupid. Because Gatorade's not the problem. Muslims are the problem. Can we be honest enough to just admit that for a minute? The plotters uncovered in England were all Muslims. They all had Muslim names. They all but one or two were of Pakistani descent. They were motivated by religious bigotry. They wanted to kill because they were Muslim and they wanted to kill the people they wanted to kill because those people weren't Muslim. Yet political correctness forbids us from mentioning that, much less acting upon it. In fact, on the ABC network news over the weekend, the plotters were called "British Extremists" -- as if somehow the fact they were in Great Britain was defining of their extremism. The fact is they were Muslim extremists, but the American media is so in bed with the diversity-training crowd that that fact can't be mentioned. Also on American newscasts over the weekend, the story was told of three men buying thousands of disposable and untraceable cell phones, an an activity with possible terrorist linkages. Not surprisingly, very few accounts noted that the men were Muslims with Muslim names. Political correctness has sanitized this fight to such an extent that we are not allowed to even identify the enemy. Which is not toothpaste. It is Islam. An Islam practiced by tens of millions of people around the world and which repeatedly and consistently puts armies and cells of terrorists in action around the world. No doubt there are peace-loving Muslims, it's just that they have an amazing capacity for keeping a low profile -- or demanding that people respect their religion. Our desire not to offend Muslims and their culture has great potential to cost American lives. Countless American= lives. Here's what I mean. Let's lay aside political correctness for a moment and use scientific analysis. Let's use reason and logic for just a minute. For example: How many terrorist acts have been committed involving liquids carried onto airplanes by passengers? Answer: Zero. Second question: How many terrorist acts involving airliners have been committed by Muslims? Answer: All of them. Third question: Why are we focused on liquids instead of Muslims? Answer: Beats me. Why is it that the protection of our airline industry is focused on products, not people? Why is it that we go to such extreme lengths to screen materials, but purposely avoid screening the people who carry them? Wouldn't we be safer if we focused our security efforts largely on Muslim passengers? Especially young, male Muslim passengers? Isn't the fact that every single act of airliner terrorism involved a young, male Muslim relevant? Does it make sense to take away a mother's bottle of Children's Tylenol and a grandmother's bottle of Coke while at the same time purposely not profiling likely terrorists? Can't we be honest enough to admit that profiling potential terrorists by religion, national origin, gender and age is a good idea? Aren't we bright enough to understand that asking a few extra questions of a young Muslim airline passenger is not the same as pulling over a black man just because he's driving in a "white" neighborhood? A group of people was arrested last week for plotting a terrorist attack. They were young Muslim men. Just like the group before that and the group before that and the group before that. And the group before that. So, naturally, you can't take Chapstick on an airplane. Toiletries don't commit acts of terrorism. Muslims do. Maybe if the government spent less time looking at your carry-on bag and more time looking at young male Muslim passengers we'd all be a lot safer and a lot less inconvenienced. This isn't about Gatorade, this is about jihad. It's time to stop focusing on products and start focusing on people. People who happen to be Muslim. 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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LET THE DEVIL TAKE TOMORROW
Posted by Women in Green, August 18, 2006. |
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This was written by Moshe Arens |
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To lead the nation in a war to victory was just too much for them. Too heavy a burden for their narrow shoulders. That trio - Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz and Tzipi Livni - asked and received a mandate to lead the people of Israel, promising to take our fate into our own hands and unilaterally establish Israel's borders by evacuating Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria, and turn Israel into a country "in which it will be a pleasure to live." We do not know and probably will never know if they would have been up to that task, but we now know they are not fit to govern Israel in these trying times. They had a few days of glory when they still believed that the IAF's bombing of Lebanon would make short shrift of Hezbollah and bring us victory without pain. But as the war they so grossly mismanaged wore on, as northern Israel received its daily dose of 150-200 rockets, the Galilee was destroyed and burned to the ground, over a million Israelis sat in shelters or abandoned their homes and both civilian and military casualties mounted - gradually the air went out of them. Here and there, they still let off some bellicose declarations, but they started looking for an exit - how to extricate themselves from the turn of events they were obviously incapable of managing. They grasped for straws, and what better straw than the United Nations Security Council. No need to score a military victory over Hezbollah. Let the UN declare a cease-fire, and Olmert, Peretz, and Livni can simply declare victory, whether you believe it or not. An almost audible sigh of relief could be heard from the Prime Minister's Office as the negotiations that were supposed to lead to a cease-fire began at the UN. The appropriate rhetoric has already started flying. So what if the whole world sees this diplomatic arrangement - which Israel agreed to while it was still receiving a daily dose of Hezbollah rockets - as a defeat suffered by Israel at the hands of a few thousand Hezbollah fighters? So what if nobody believes that an "emboldened" UNIFIL force will disarm Hezbollah, and that Hezbollah with thousands of rockets still in its arsenal and truly emboldened by this month's success against the mighty Israel Defense Forces, will now become a partner for peace? Does a cease-fire that will avoid further casualties among the IDF's soldiers not outweigh these concerns over future events? Many politicians are notorious for preferring short-term considerations over a long-term view. Examples abound of the dangers of such myopic policies. From Munich in Europe of 1938 that set the stage for World War II, to Oslo in 1993 which brought Arafat and his cohorts from Tunis here, to the disengagement from Gush Katif last year that brought Hamas to power, and Barak's hasty withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, which sowed the seeds of the latest intifada and is the root cause of the current war - the rotten fruits of that withdrawal we have been reaping this past month. The long-term implications of an Israeli agreement to a UN brokered cease-fire at this time are obvious. Israel's enemies, and they are many, will conclude that Israel does not have the stamina for an extended encounter with terrorism. You do not need tanks and aircraft to defeat Israel - a few thousand rockets are enough. Katyushas today and Qassams tomorrow. Don't let Olmert, Peretz and Livni fool you: These rockets will keep coming after Israel is seen as not only punished but also defeated in this month-long war. "Yesterday is dead and tomorrow's out of sight," Dean Martin used to sing. Olmert may be humming this song as he agrees to the UN cease-fire resolution, and Peretz and Livni can sing the refrain "let the devil take tomorrow." But tomorrow will come much sooner than they expect. And it will find Israel with nothing left of its deterrent capability that used to keep its enemies at bay. The war, which according to our leaders was supposed to restore Israel's deterrent posture, has within one month succeeded in destroying it. That message will not be lost on Hamas, the Syrians and the Iranians, and possibly even some of our Arab neighbors who for many years had forsworn belligerence against Israel. The task facing Israel now is to restore its deterrent posture and prepare for the attacks that are sure to come. But not with this leadership. They have exhausted whatever little credit they had when they were voted into office. 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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A YEAR AFTER: NO CONSENSUS ON THE EXPULSION
Posted by Hillel Fendel, August 18, 2006. |
| From yesterday's Arutz-Sheva |
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Exactly a year has passed since the expulsion from Gush Katif, and despite the suffering of the expelled and the Hizbullah War, there is still no national consensus on the matter. One year ago today, on August 17, 2005, tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers and policemen descended upon the residents of Gush Katif (- the northern Shomron was targeted a week later) and began forcibly removing them from their homes. An article in on the Ynet Hebrew news site depicting the suffering of the expelled over the past year - including family breakups, suicide attempts, unemployment, and more - has aroused a wave of comments. Despite the sympathetic nature of the article towards the former residents, the talkbacks show that Israeli society is still very divided over the issue. Dozens of couples have begun divorce proceedings, and many others are suffering various difficulties between spouses, with children, and among themselves. Quoting a psychologist who has treated many Gush Katif couples, the article tells the plight of "men 50 years old and over who were used to working hard their whole lives and who now can't get out of bed..." Another psychologist talks of a woman who constantly relives the trauma of not being allowed to go to the bathroom for 30 hours while on the bus out of the Gush, and the resulting humiliation, and others who cannot remove from their minds the sight of long columns of black-uniformed soldiers coming to take them from their homes. "Their gentle struggle against the evacuation created a situation in which the extent of their fury never found its true expression," one psychologist said. "A man's home is his castle - this is very instinctive. Think what type of fury erupts from a person whose home is destroyed - yet they never expressed it... Then their long hotel-stays greatly hurt the family cell, with the children far away from the parents' room, and the families not eating together for months - one of the most important aspects of religious family life... Then they put them into these caravillas, and now they are reduced to prowling back and forth there like lions in a cage." The grave situation depicted in the article did not particularly move all its readers, however. One particularly hostile commenter, who evoked many objections by later talk-backers, wrote, "I feel only derision towards you. Get divorced, leave the country, become poor... I heard that some rich farmers who were expelled from Gush Katif are doing good business in Ethiopia; go there - it's good for all of you. And make room there for the new expellees from the West Bank; you can build settlements in Ethiopia." A typical response to this writer was: "You are so full of hatred." Another one wrote, "I have trouble believing you are Jewish." Most of the writers had some form of empathy for the settlers, even if they did not agree with them. "The disengagement was a correct move," one wrote, "it's just too bad that the evacuated residents are in such a bad state. In my opinion, it's both their fault and the government's fault. It seems strange to me that people who announced that they had lost all confidence in the country, waited for that very country to save them." Others criticized them for not having anticipated the expulsion in advance, and for "not raising their children properly." In response to many of the more negative comments, one wrote the following: "I have read all the comments up until now and I am shocked at what I see. Every argument, as far as you are concerned, has only to do with politics? Every time the word 'settler' is mentioned, it arouses your glands of [self] hatred and fury? Can't you simply read the article as it's written - a description of tremendous emotional distress of an entire public...? Where does this incessant hatred come from? Every single one of you, if you would sit face-to-face with one of these families and hear their story, would feel empathy and even sadness - regardless of your political opinions. Enough of this unending hatred!" Another comment, signed by "Man of the Left," was entitled, "When I started reading the article, I felt nothing." It then continued, There's this unspoken feeling we have that it's not our fault, but rather theirs [the expelled residents]. Those who feel that the settlers never should have been there, and that it was wrong for them to build communities there, cannot identify with the pain of being uprooted. Automatically the well-known phrases of wasted money and soldiers who were killed there start jumping up in our heads. But in the middle of the article, I had another thought - that something is not right if I am closed to what is being described here. It describes not a disengagement - but a collapse. The collapse of genuine life. And to be honest, it's not totally their fault, because the State is that which decided on the direction of settlement as something that is justified. The State encouraged them - and the Stated crushed them. I still think we had to leave Gaza - but maybe if it was in the framework of real peace... perhaps the idea that their loss gave us something significant would have changed something. Furthermore: The State knew that the disengagement would happen; it was not right that alternate communities were not prepared... They were not only expelled from their homes - but from their lives... For this, I admit guilt. One commenter wrote that the residents often treated the army as if "the army owes them something." Largely in response to that, one young soldier wrote, "I was there and evacuated Shirat HaYam, Kfar Yam, and some others... So first of all, [the above commenter] is either an idiot or has no idea what he is talking about. The large majority of the residents behaved in a way that cannot but be admired. They love every piece and stone of this country, more than what most of us can even comprehend, and are willing to sacrifice so much for concepts such as faith, common decency, and love of the Land... To call them lawbreakers is simply stupidity and a misunderstanding of the reality and the facts... The lack of support that the government and some parts of the country showed our brothers (!!!) whom we removed from their homes - that is what widened the gap between us and created the crisis, no less than the process of the evacuation itself... The high percentage of elite army fighters, officers and fighters in various IDF units among them is almost illogical. I talked to officers who lost their soldiers and people who were wounded in war or by terrorism in Gush Katif. Try, please, just to understand them, instead of hating them for nothing... I am a secular youth, aged 20, from central Israel, who was sent at such an early age to defend and sacrifice for the country in which we all live..." One philosopher summed up the situation by reminding his fellow-countrymen that "at least we're home." He wrote: Whenever an El Al flight takes off from Tel Aviv, after five minutes everyone starts complaining about the service, etc. But when they're on British Airways or Lufthansa, those same Israelis sit quietly, without making a peep, and even praising the airline. What's the conclusion? That if you move abroad you will be like Jews who are detached and scared, planning where to run to when the persecutor comes and thinking how to prevent your children from assimilating. Therefore, I'm not impressed with your cries for a second. You're just like the El Al passengers... Others said that the government had truly done them an injustice. One wrote very succintly, "Sharon, Sharon! Too bad you're not around to see what you have caused!" Another one summed up by noting the just-ended war in Lebanon and quoting Joseph's brothers in the Bible who said, "But we are at fault for seeing his suffering when he pleaded to us but we did not listen - and therefore this suffering has come upon us." |
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ARMY THREATENS TO DESTROY SOLDIERS´ HOMES
Posted by Bryna Berch, August 18, 2006. |
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At last, Olmert has found a group he isn't afraid to bully -- the loyal citizens of Samaria and Judea. He's planning to kick them out of their homes and productive businesses so they can be added to the welfare rolls. These are citizens that have contributed sons and daughters to the IDF to protect Israel. Which is more than Olmert has done -- his boys ran away out of the country, and his daughter is gungho for the Arabs. He mucked up the war against Hezbollah. How much more damage does he have to do before they kick him out? This is from yesterday's Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNationalNews.com). |
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The bureaucracy rolls on. With its residents still in Lebanon under emergency call-up orders, the Yesha town of Maaleh Rehavam learned that officials were headed to post eviction orders on its doors. Families in Maaleh Rehavam - a small outpost community in eastern Gush Etzion - were surprised to note this morning that Civil Administration officials were on their way to post eviction orders on their homes. Of the 30 residents, including five families, five are in Lebanon after having been called up on emergency basis this past month, and two others are in the standing army. 
Some town officials believe that the army wished to take advantage of the situation in which a quarter of the men were away to give out the notices. "It is shocking to think," town secretary Moriah Halamish said, "that with war happening on two fronts, north and south, the defense establishment finds the time to give out these orders. The State is taking advantage of the fact that our men were drafted to war in order to fulfill this new expulsion decree. Good citizens go off to fight with emergency orders, and are then forced to return to receive a slap in the face in the form of an eviction notice on their doors." Others feel the truth is more mundane: "The bureaucracy has a calendar and a schedule, and no one thinks whether now is a good time to do it or not; it just gets done." So says Nadia Matar, co-chairperson of Women in Green, a grassroots Land of Israel organization. "The previous orders expired," she said, "and they have to be renewed, and that's it. There's no consideration as to whether right now, with people still on the front lines in Lebanon, it might not be a good idea to go ahead with destroying Jewish homes." Postponed for a Week In the event, Maaleh Rehavam's secretary Moriah told Arutz-7 this afternoon, "We were informed later today that the 'mission' has been put on hold. I believe this is largely due to the press coverage by Arutz-7... Zambish [Yesha leader Ze'ev Chever] called the Civil Administration, and they said they're sorry, they didn't realize, and they will postpone giving us our eviction notices for another week. But we will not rest; there is no reason for our homes to be destroyed." Maaleh Rehavam is a mixed religious-secular community, home to five families and several singles. Residents lived in caravans for the first two years after its founding, and three permanent homes have been built in recent years. It overlooks the Judean Desert, the Herodion, Tekoa and Nokdim, home to MK Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu). The community is an eight-minute drive from Jerusalem, but the residents must now drive almost an hour due to the government?s refusal to open a newly paved road. The community is not illegal - but neither has it been officially approved, and for this reason, the government says it plans to destroy it, in keeping with its promise to the US to raze all "unauthorized" outposts. The radical left-wing Peace Now organization has filed a court suit, demanding to know why the government has not yet implemented the demolition orders it issued regarding Maaleh Rehavam and other small communities throughout Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Demanding an Apology The people of Maaleh Rehavam recently demanded an apology from the Maariv newspaper for writing that their community is illegally located on private Arab property. "This article presents us as land thieves," a letter from the town's secretary states. "If a serious investigation had been done, as could be expected from a newspaper of your level, you would have found that the neighborhood is [a part of] the town of Nokdim, is totally located on state lands, and that the residents were even allocated land for planting and grazing. The neighborhood is in the process of being approved." This was not the only time the Maariv newspaper has exposed itself to criticism of being anti-Yesha. Earlier this week it publicized a listing of cities and towns in which the soldiers killed in Lebanon had lived. However, though the chart listed the names of dozens of towns and cities, it concealed the disproportionately large role played by the towns of Judea, Samaria and Gaza by hiding them in the "others" column. Ronen Tzafrir, of the non-religious pro-Land of Israel Nahalal Forum, had strong criticism of Maariv. "When there is something positive to say about this fantastic public," he said, "which educates towards heroism, sacrifice and love of land, suddenly Maariv forgets the word 'settlements.'" Tzafrir called upon the public to boycott Maariv. In fact, nearly 10% of the 117 soldiers who were killed in the five weeks of fighting in Lebanon were from towns in Yesha (Judea and Samaria) - almost twice as much as their proportionate numbers in the population. Their names: Lt.-Col. Ro'i Klein, 31, of Eli
Yesha Growth The total population in Judea and Samaria grew by some 3% in the first half of 2006, according to Interior Ministry statistics. At the end of June, the total population in these areas stood at 260,932 people, a growth of nearly 7,200 over the previous six months. The Yesha Council welcomed the news, stating that the extra thousands of new citizens, even as the government continued to talk about uprooting them, showed the strength of the Judea and Samaria settlement enterprise. |
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"TOWEL HEADS"
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 18, 2006. |
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This has been going around the internet. |
Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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THE BLATANT HYPOCRISY OF THE WORLD
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 18, 2006. |
| This was written by Frederick Forsyth and it appeared in the Daily Express, August 11, 2006. |
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It must surely be true that the level of lies and hypocrisy that a
society can tolerate is in direct proportion to the degeneration of
that culture.
Personally I am not particularly pro or anti Israel, pro or anti Arab or pro or anti Islam. But I do have a dislike of myth, hypocrisy and lies as opposed to reality, fairness and truth. Watching the bombing of Lebanon it is impossible not to feel horror and pity for the innocent civilians killed, wounded or rendered homeless. But certain of our politicians, seeking easy populism and the cheapest round of applause in modern history, have called the Israeli response "disproportionate". Among thee politicos are Jack Straw and that master of EU negotiations William Hague. That accusation can only mean: "disproportionate to the aggression levelled against them". Really? Why did the accusers not mention Serbia? What has Serbia got to do with it? Let's refresh our memories. In 1999 five Nato air forces -- US, British, French, Italian and German -- began to plaster Yugoslavia, effectively the tiny and defenceless province of Serbia. We were not at war with the Serbs, we had no reason to hate them, they had not attacked us and no Serbian rockets were falling on us. But we practically bombed them back to the Stone Age. We took out every bridge we could see. We trashed their TV station, army barracks, airfields and motorways. We were not fighting for our lives and no terrorists were skulking among the civilian population but we hit apartment blocks and factories anyway. There were civilian casualties. We did not do it for 25 days but for 73. We bombed this little country economically back 30 years by converting its infrastructure into rubble. Why? We were trying to persuade one dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, to pull his troops out of Kosovo, which happened to be (and still is) a Yugoslav province. The dictator finally cracked; shortly afterwards he was toppled but it was his fellow Serbs who did that, no Nato. Before the destruction of Serbia, Kosovo was a nightmare of ethnic hatred. It still is. If we wanted to liberate the Kosovans why did we not just invade? Why blow Serbian civilians to bits? Here is my point. In all those 73 days of bombing Serbia I never heard one British moralist use the word "disproportionate". The entire point of Hezbollah is not to resolve some border dispute with Israel; its aim is to wipe Israel off the map, as expressed by Hezbollah's master, the crazed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. That aim includes the eradication of every Israeli Jew; i.e. genocide. Serbia never once threatened to wipe the UK off the map or slaughter our citizens, yet Straw, in office in 1999, and Hague, leading the Conservative Party, never objected to Serbia being bombed. As an ex-RAF officer I am persuaded the Israelis fighter pilots are hitting civilian-free targets with 95% of their strikes. These are the hits no TV network bothers to cover. It is the 5% that causes the coverage and the horror: wrong target, unseen civilians in the cellar, misfire, unavoidable collateral casualties. Unavoidable? Israel has said in effect, "If you seek to wipe us out we will defend ourselves to the death. You offer us no quarter, so we will offer none to you. But if you choose intentionally, inadvertently, or through the stupidity of your government to protect and shelter the killers among yourselves then with deepest regret, we cannot guarantee your exemption." Yesterday we Brits learned that certain elements in our society had tried to organise a mass slaughter of citizens flying out of our airports. We will have to take draconian measures against these enemies in our midst. Will Messrs Hague and Straw complain our methods are disproportionate? Not a chance. Now that, dear readers, is blatant hypocrisy. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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GEORGE BUSH SAVED THE WORLD - JUST IN TIME
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, August 18, 2006. |
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When President Bush responded to the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the White House (the intended target) by suicidal Muslim fanatics, he may have inadvertently saved the world. Few will want to admit that George Bush did something good for America and all the world's nations. For some time terrorism by fundamentalist Islamic Jihadists has haunted our planet but, it was tolerated because it was reasonably small and generally out of sight - although growing exponentially. All that changed when Georg Bush kicked over the poisonous ant hill of terror with their carefully carved tunnels, false fronts and an aggressive plan of recruitment. The Free World's civilization simply could not or would not see what was taking place under our feet. Like ants, burrowing out of sight, terrorists were building cities of terror and making connections with each other. Why didn't our vaunted Intelligence know what was going on? Similarly, why didn't our State Department "Middle East Experts" knew that our supposed "best friend and ally" Saudi Arabia, was the deep pockets for Global Terror? Didn't our spooks and State Department know that Saudis, both in the Governing Kingship and their private wealth, "Jihadists" (fighters for Islam) of the Saudi kingdom were funding sleeper terrorist cells in Europe and America? Not only were they funding terror cells but the Saudis had also set up Madrassas (Schools to teach Strict Islam) which taught pure hatred for un-believers in Islam? Their curriculum taught that it was only right in Allah's will to make all the world an Islamic Caliphate with Muslims superior to all others - that all other religions must be subordinated to Islam or the infidels must die. Those were always the teachings but, only until the Muslims reached "critical mass" in numbers, money and weapons would they dare to put their planned Global Jihad into operation. Why didn't we know? The simple answer is that President Bush was out-of-the-loop, whereas the State Department Arabists were deep in the know. But, then again, so were the likes of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Admiral Bobby Ray Inman when they decided to countermand President Reagan's orders to shell Syria after it was determined that Syria was responsible for having Hezb'Allah send the truck bomb that murdered 242 American Marines in their Beirut barracks. Some, at the highest level of government, knew the aggressive nature of Islam but the profits in oil and sales of weapons blinded them to the threat. Perhaps it was not so different when the State Department, linked with major U.S. corporations, sold trucks, weapons to the Nazis during WW2. It was as if the corporations and the U.S. State Department were responsible only to themselves. The U.S. even saved the most notorious SS Nazi officers and CEOs of corporations that worked Slave Labor until they were dead. The same seems to be true today except, instead of names like Eichmann, Goering, Heydrick, Goebbels, etc., we have names such as Arafat, Abdullah, Ayatollah, Mahmoud Abadinejad, et al. They are the same brothers-under-the-skin, with the State Department still at the epi-center. President Bush may not have known that those under his command were really a "shadow government" which seemed to take orders from Bush but, in effect, they ran their own network. This is why Syria was always untouchable - even after they sent the bomber who murdered 242 Marines sleeping in their barracks. Bush attacked Afghanistan, along with Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. Things started to come apart for the global terror network but, Bush hadn't a clue that he had disturbed a growing network, far more advanced then anyone could possibly imagine. The money flow in was endless, given that we oil users were paying for our own funerals. Had Bush waited another few years so the mix of terrorists could further their plans and obtain more WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) with NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) warheads from the Russians, Chinese and North Koreans, et al, America would be forced to agree to any demands by Iran and other "Jihadist" States to obey or else! Those who had previously armed Saddam Hussein's genocidal terrorist army would remain silent lest their names and the roles they played come to light. So, President George Bush and the U.S. military attacked Iraq and properly caught or killed the dysfunctionally murderous Hussein family members - Saddam and his evil sons. Udi and Kusai. Here again, Bush disturbed a significant part of the world's growing terror network. Given just a little more time, Saddam could have been sitting in the Saudi oil fields, with every well wired to explode unless we Westerners accepted his commands - which included agreeing to his ownership of Kuwait and her rich oil fields. We are now seeing the results of Iran's quiet backing of the Hezb'Allah in Lebanon as it spreads throughout the Middle East as Iran's cats-paw. We are seeing the same in Europe as the Muslims expand their powers, their threats and the weakness of obsequious European leaders who hope to appease the demanding Muslims, both locally and the Arab Muslim nations who have their stranglehold on the world's oil supply. Bush may have saved the World by making the Islamists prematurely show their intent to gain world power. Many, particularly those in the media, choose to spin the conclusion that, IF had Bush had NOT attacked global Jihadists so aggressively, terrorists would have either remained dormant or low key (using acceptable low-level terror). History tells another story when you see Islam ramp up their power which is growing exponentially. When they then attack, they may conquer large areas of Europe where appeasement only increased - exponentially - the appetites of the Muslim conquerors. Bush, for all his supposed faults, has caused terror to expose itself before it became an indomitable force. Granted, the Europeans are already failing to maintain their cultures as Muslims stream in, demanding obedience to the ways of the vicious Shariah laws (most strict form of Islam). One can only wonder to where the native populations of France, England, the Netherlands, etc. will immigrate as the Muslims take over their societies. In any case, it was George Bush who gave us a "Better Late than Never" heads-up on Global Terror. Hopefully, the Left Liberal Media will finally awaken to the phenomenon fo the attacks by Islam in every corner of the globe. Please send President George Bush a Thank You note for doing America and the world a favor. Now, we can only hope that he stays the course! Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net |
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HOW TO STILL WIN IN LEBANON AND IRAQ
Posted by Irwin N. Graulich, August 18, 2006. |
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America overwhelmingly won the fighting in Iraq, yet continues to lose the war. Israel won every battle in Lebanon, yet supposedly lost the war. Wait a second--how is that even possible? How can it be that South Beirut looks worse than Hiroshima; that the entire southern part of Lebanon is comparable to Dresden; that Israel pretty much devastated Hezbollah, eventually winning over every town it entered. Didn't the IDF get to the strategic Litani River, even though it occurred later than first anticipated? Yet CNN, The New York Times, al Jazeera, and Europe, all call it a defeat for Israel. Of course Olmert (pronounced "all merde") and Amir Peretz (pronounced "a mere putz") screwed the war up from the outset, although it is easy to be a Monday morning General, especially if you are a CNN reporter. Yet Jacques Chirac (pronounced "merde"), that amazing military strategist, declared, "Israel used 'disproportionate force,' although they somehow lost the war." Only a French prostitute for Saddam like Mr. Chirac (pronounced "merde") could come up with such a ridiculous statement. I'll tell you what was disproportionate, Jacques. America, who was never even threatened, using massive power to save Europe in 1945; that was truly disproportionate, "Mr. Vichy" Chirac. How is it possible that millions of non innocent Lebanese accomplices of Hezbollah (aka Lebanese civilians) are crying about their lost homes and families, blaming Israel for the devastation, while their brave rolly polly hero Nasrallah hid in a basement in Iran, declaring a great victory? Doesn't the world understand that if Israel were not one of the two most moral countries in the world along with the US, then all of Beirut, no, all of Lebanon would have looked like Nagasaki, without Israel ever touching its nuclear arsenal? Yet the Hezbollah terrorists declare victory because they "stood up" to the Israeli military. Joe Louis' opponents all stood up to him--so what? They were still knocked out. But Nasrallah (pronounced "Nazi rally") and Ahmadinijad (pronounced "a mad dog on Jihad") had the audacity to declare, "Hey world. Do not believe your lying eyes because Islam won! And do not pay attention to the Hezbollah goose steppers and Nazi salutes you saw being displayed on tv by Hezbollah children as young as 10. We are the good guys." It is a new type of military strategy, actually quite brilliant. No matter how badly you lose i.e. Iraq or Lebanon, you simply declare victory. The macho Arab and Muslim armies cannot fight against the West, evidence the way both Israel and America have humiliated them every single time. So Muslim nations have developed a brand new weaponry called "collateral damage," disproportionate response," and "collective punishment," launched with the help of the supposed Zionist-controlled media. There you go Israel and America--so much for caring about those "innocent civilians." This is what you get for being so nice and not using force properly. Perhaps carpet bombing Beirut and The Sunni Triangle would have produced far fewer Israeli and American casualties, and ended the fighting much sooner. How is it possible that America invaded the supposed great war machine of Iraq and defeated, no decimated, the strongest Arab/Muslim army in the Middle East in just one month, capturing 90% of the top Baathe party officials including the main man himself--Saddam Hussein, while killing both his sons? Yet the evil insurgents (aka terrorists), the Arab/Muslim world, the American left, a majority of the Democratic party, Europe and Hugo Chavez all say in unison, "Hey America, do not believe your lying eyes, because you guys have lost." The answer to this dilemma is fairly simple if we just go to Cairo, Egypt where there is an impressive museum dedicated to the Egyptian victory over Israel in 1973 (sic). I mean, is that a joke? Welcome to the Arab/Muslim version of war, where "winning is losing and losing is winning." The Arab and Muslim world finally figured out a way to defeat America and Israel...lie about it, just like Hitler and Goebbals, who used the big lie technique for their own propaganda war. Ever since Sabra and Shatillah, Israel's enemies learned that you can murder your own people, show it on CNN...and then successfully blame the Jews. According to Nasrallah and his terrorist corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Iran, "Victory is the fight itself." With that type of rationalization, one can never lose as long as one man is left standing, even though he is shaking in his sandals and holding a white flag. Western democracies are both brilliant and stupid, strong and weak, all at the same time. America and Israel have the power to destroy whom they want, when they want and how they want. However, the big stumbling block is their obsession with decency and morality. And the Arab/Muslim media has made an art form of misusing this important Judeo-Christian quality. The Zionist-controlled media (sic) shows photos (some falsified by Muslim journalists) of Lebanese mothers and children suffering the results of the "big, bad Israeli war machine" and naturally, our hearts hurt. The Jewish/Christian psyche feels compassion when we see any children in pain, unlike our enemies who celebrate the deaths of their teenage suicide bombers. However, imagine a photo of Adolf Hitler as a baby, suffering with a bad case of measles. I guess we should cry for little Adolf. It is important to view all photos/videos within their proper context, which is the reason that CNN is the ultimate form of propaganda. If Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman worried about so called "innocent civilians" and "collateral damage," Americans today would be speaking German and singing praises to the Fuhrer! There were babies in Nazi Germany and Japan who were blown to smithereens along with their mothers. But that is a consequence of war and the blame is totally on the evil enemy of democracy. Today, our liberal politicians and CNN have lectured us that we must "win over the hearts and minds of the Arab and Muslim world." If I hear that despicable phrase again, I will need a barf bag. Who needs to win "hearts" that want to destroy everything American, Christian and Jewish? Who needs to win over evil minds that cherish suicide bombers, beheadings and death? Frankly, we should be more concerned about stopping their hearts from beating! Their minds and hearts are not embarrassed by bin Laden, Saddam, Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad, because these men happen to be fellow Muslims. "Bad Muslims" do not embarrass most of the Muslim world; but a political cartoon about their Prophet Mohammed does indeed embarrass them. And this concept is the KEY to winning the war in Lebanon, Iraq and worldwide terror--embarrassment, humiliation, disgrace and shame. Those are the West's secret weapons in addition to maintaining our great strength. In the Arab and Muslim world, a man's honor is everything--everything. Accepted Western values such as women's rights diminish a "real man's" honor in their minds. Thus a wife is just a piece of property who should cover herself with a burqa, stay home, not drive a car, cook dinner and have babies. If a Muslim man cannot control his wife or children, he loses the respect he enjoys in the eyes of other Muslim men. In the Arab/Muslim world, once "honor" is impaired, great efforts are required to restore it. Hence, honor killings are prevalent because a daughter has dated someone against her father's wishes or may have had any form of premarital relations. Imagine that--killing your own daughter gains respect. And yet the whores at CNN want us to be compassionate to people who believe these evil ideas. The secret weapon to winning this battle with Islamic Fascists (thank you GWB) and the entire Islamic world, (except most American Arabs and American Muslims who do not have this hang up), is to understand that the Islamic world's honor is the collective property of their family or the entire Muslim nation. If honor is lost, it causes the loss of "karam," which is dignity...and DIGNITY, dignity is everything! To Nasser, Arafat, Saddam, Ahmadinejad, Assad, Nasrallah and the Arab/Muslim street, if their "karam" is damaged, if they are insulted or shamed, they are obligated to put up a great show in order to restore their dignity. The man who has self respect never allows anyone to insult or defeat him with impunity. Why did the media stop showing the Saddam capture video of American troops using a tongue depressor to check out his hoof and mouth disease? Because a lot of pressure from Arab and Muslim countries was applied to everyone not to show it. Embarrassing Saddam is like embarrassing all Muslims. Can you imagine an American saying we should not broadcast the Timothy McVeigh capture because he is an American? So how does America, Israel and the West defeat these sick monsters? Listen carefully Mssrs. Bush and Olmert. You guys think you are sophisticated because you do not respond to the bad guys comments. You say you do not want to stoop to their level, because we are better. Western democracies--listen up. Don't you understand that by not responding to their macho rhetoric, we are emboldening them. Let us give al Jazeera some excellent material for the Arab/Muslim street to hear. The difference is that we can back up our rhetoric and they cannot. Of course we are better, a lot better. But we are cutting our noses off to spite our faces if we do not respond to evil, even verbally. These are valuable lessons that one learns only in the Brooklyn schoolyard, where you must deal with psychotic, psychopathic bullies like the leaders of Muslim countries. So George and Ehud, here is some valuable information and quotes culled from a top secret CIA report, which should be used in upcoming speeches. 1) Everyone knows that Fatso Nasrallah had to run and hide in Iran because he feared that Israel would do to him, what Israel had done to his pathetic, cowardly little son in the 1967 war. "Chic" Nasrallah calls it a big victory to "stand up" to the IDF. "Stand up" in this case actually means, "We lost miserably, but we will lie and say we won." Nasty Narallah knows that if the lie is repeated often enough, a la Joseph Goebbals, people will believe it." Notice that Nasrallah's wife is never seen in public. The reason he hides her is probably why the burka was originally invented. Because Mrs. Nasrallah is so hideous looking, that she could burn your retinas out if you looked at her ugly face for too long a period of time. therefore, a veil is absolutely necessary for the good of the neighborhood. 2) And check out that little spider monkey who runs Iran. Is he a joke or what? The skinny little midget, Ahmadinejad, needs a nuclear weapon because of a serious case of "penis envy," since Allah, God or nature did not give him his fair share. "Little" Ahmadinejad also makes his wife wear a burqa to hide her mustache. Had he not married her, she could have successfully toured with the side show of Ringling Brothers Circus. Notice how Ahmadinejad never takes "the little woman" (she's even shorter than him), to any government function. That is probably the only good thing he is doing for Iranian society. Her face would crack a tv camera. She is one hideous looking First Lady. At least King Hussein got himself a hot American babe, although not a very bright one. 3) Reviewing Syria's military qualities, Bashir Assad and the arrogant Syrian Foreign Minister produced some interesting results. The Syrian leadership seems to have forgotten how Big Daddy Assad lost the entire Golan Heights to Israel in a few days. The truth is that the Helena, Montana police department could defeat the entire Syrian army in today's environment. If Syria is not careful, our analysis tells us that Israel will be negotiating about the return of Damascus instead of the Shebaa Farms. 4) For Americans to win in Iraq, there is an easy strategy. American soldiers are in Baghdad patroling the streets, and have already won the war. The Marines have become a police force, unable to enforce law and order on the most immoral population on the face of the planet. The only thing that Iraqis can do successfully, is blow up their own people every day. Therefore, US armed forces should leave very, very soon. If Iraqis choose to set up a democracy, we should wish them good luck. However, if Iraqis choose another dictator, a theocracy, divide the country or anything else, America should wish them well. As long as they do not bother any of their neighbors who are America's friends, or dare to hurt us through any form of terrorism, they can literally do what the hell they want to each other. However, should Iraq go outside their borders or threaten any of America's friends, the United States will pull a Schwartzenagger and "We'll be back!" 5) Declaring victory in Iraq and leaving the Iraqi people to their own talents (sic), is only part of the winning strategy. How about turning over Saddam, Tariq Aziz and their partners in crime to the Israelis for one of the greatest show trials ever? After all, they did attack Israel in the Gulf War, so Israel can put them on trial as war criminals. We were just notified by the Israelis that the new prisoner uniform in Israel for court appearances on tv is wearing a pair of tight shorts, a sleeveless t-shirt ( "A" shirt), no sox and the prisoner's head must be covered with a pair of sexy women's Victoria Secret underwear (red color). If the Middle East did not like Abu Ghraib, wait until these images from an Israeli courtroom are shown on al Jazeera. And should a defendant like Saddam Hussein get out of order and yell at the judge, he will be grabbed by the neck and pushed back down into his chair by his Israeli "female" guard. 6) Before leaving Iraq, America might consider capturing the Iraqi Nasrallah, his twin dish towel wearing fatso, al-Sadr, who had the audacity to lead a demonstration of hundreds of thousands of his followers against Israel. Amazing, that the most evil people on earth have the nerve to criticize and demonstrate against Israel. The above suggestions are not satirical. Not at all, although many leftists and liberals are probably more angry with this writer than with the evildoers. That is par for the course. Yet, this is how we can win the war on terrorism. When Ahmadinajad and friends see what could eventually be in store for them, their rhetoric and ideas will certainly change. That type of public embarrassment is a fate worse than any torture and death to that mindset. The key to winning in Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, et al is to totally destroy their nation's dignity publicly. This includes embarrassing their families, their history, their leaders--all with truths. In fact, that is why the entire Arab and Muslim world is angry with Israel. I mean, why does Malaysia, Indonesia and Kuwait hate Israel and refuse diplomatic relations or trade? Israel does not "occupy" one square inch of their land. If it really was the Palestinians, how come not one word was said against King Hussein of Jordan who massacred the Palestinians and threw the remainder of them out of his country in what has become known as Black September of 1971. The simple answer is that the entire Muslim world is angry with tiny little Israel because this rag tag bunch of ex-Yeshiva boys totally humiliated every single Arab and Muslim nation by building a gorgeous, successful country in the Middle East from sand dunes, produced one of the most incredible scientific and technological societies in the world, and then had the audacity to decimate any Arab/Muslim country that attempted to destroy them. Talk about humiliation! And the Saudis, even with all of their oil money, are still humping camels in the desert. Check out Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, et al--all third world countries that have not developed to any modern extent. Can we blame them for hating Israel so much? How dare those arrogant little Jews embarrass a billion Muslims! These are real answers to winning the war against terrorism, about which every single Western democracy should be concerned. If we do not begin to respond to their evil rhetoric, we will have to respond to their evil nuclear weapons. Only then, it will be a little late. And by the way, I think Mr. Nasrallah has an orgy with 72 virgins in his near future--so do not accept any invitations for a victory dinner party at his home. Irwin N. Graulich is a motivational speaker on morality, ethics, religion and politics. He is also President and CEO of a marketing, branding and communications company in New Yoqrk City. He can be reached at irwin.graulich@verizon.net |
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TURNING ISRAEL'S "WEAKNESS" INTO A STRENGTH
Posted by Naomi Ragen, August 18, 2006. |
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This was written by Aaron Lerner, who is Director of Independent Media Review and Analysis (IMRA). Contact IMRA at imra@netvision.net.il go to the website: http://www.imra.org.il |
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A generation of proponents of Israeli concessions assured the Israeli public that if things didn't pan out that the IDF could always cover the mistake in judgment at a relatively low cost. Israel's perceived weakness in the last war fundamentally changes all that. I say "perceived weakness" because the outcome of the war reflected mostly the incompetence of the civilian decision makers rather than any crippling faults in the military. Yes - there were problem in the IDF, but the most part, the IDF soldiers and field commanders, through a combination of initiative and bravery, were able to perform well despite the failings of the IDF technocrats and planners. The problem wasn't with the IDF "machine" but with the machine's indecisive civilian operators who, as Maj. Gen. Benjamin Gantz, commander of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Army Headquarters put it, took a promising "bullet train" battle plan and turned it into "an urban bus with several stops., Thanks to the perceived weakness, Israel can no longer be expected to take reckless so-called "risks for peace". Israel can no longer be expected to risk handing over the control of territory to terror groups promising to be on good behavior. Israel can no longer be expected to risk ignoring the build up of illegal weapons within its security envelope. An envelope that still includes the Gaza Strip as well as the West Bank. Israel can no longer be expected to risk relying on inevitably ineffective third parties to supervise border points on its security envelope. By the same token, Israel can no longer be expected to take the huge risk of withdrawing from the Golan Heights in a "land for piece of paper" swap. Israel's perceived weakness can also be used to justify changes in its policy towards Arab human shields, what with the potentially devastating consequences if Israel, in the course of respecting human shields, were to be perceived again as weak. Israel's perceived weakness can also be tapped to justify a freeze on action against the outposts. The post war IDF arguably simply cannot afford to divert or compromise the vital resources in needs to defend the State just to rip Jews out of their homes. Yes. It is hardly pleasant to hear out enemies call us weak. But that doesn't mean we cannot exploit it to our advantage. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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WHY AM I VERY CONCERNED?
Posted by Christopher Barder, August 18, 2006. |
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After two weeks away from the UK and reading the New York
Times and Early on it was obvious that a full-scale land offensive was necessary to find Hizballah and to flush them out. It was also clear that aerial advantages had to be used to the full and provide every kind of protection for tanks and men in a close support role as well as a fully-fledged 'softening up' aspect. According to hopefully misleading media reports, Israel was surprised by enemy resistance levels. Or these reports were not mere disinformation and there was an Israeli intelligence failure. If however Israel knew what to expect, then its tactics did not use surprise and 'shock and awe' sufficiently. What was also declared was that Hizballah was surprised by Israel's forceful response. Either that is disinformation or the Israeli deterrence level was very low. Punishment for kidnap and murder should, after all, be expected. Yet the Hamas-Hizballah axis meant a two front 'low intensity' war, avoidance of which was part of the reasoning for the cession of Sinai. Toleration of Hamas's election result by the EU and others, and the acceptance of the arms and man-power build-up under the yellow flag looming over Rosh Hanikra by the Lebanese government and by Israel meant strategic position and diplomatic capability were being lost progressively by Israel and for that matter by any right thinking personnel in the US; which latter gave way for no gain to the immoral pressure for a cease-fire. Instead of no cessation until the kidnapped were returned, and the condition had to be alive, we now have rumours of trade-offs, massive moral equivalence emanating from a hostile to Israel UN Secretary-General, and diplomatic phrasing turning treatment of terror organisation Hizballah into the equivalent of a high contracting party to international treaties as if its state-within-a-state presence were not illegal but normative and merited full diplomatic and political status or at least that of a government representative, which, of course, to no small extent it is. War aims of the return of the kidnapped and the destruction of terror organisations, themselves totally justifiable especially, in the context of constant civilian population bombardment now appear to have been bent and twisted to create a kind of non-peace for a short while, as if Israel has to buy this by military action and at the cost of lives and its economy. So much for withdrawal and the slur and injury to the SLA and its forces and so much for the UN and EU and the rest: constant attacks on Israel count for nothing and so does Israel's right to defend itself however often the US administration and perhaps occasionally although not in Europe Mr. Blair may mouth these platitudes. Unless Israel goes to war, nobody else cares within the 'international community' about its civilian suffering and when it goes to war it is unwilling either to adopt the timing and tactics necessary and (perhaps for this reason) is unable diplomatically to finish an essential job. And thence militarily is left exposed without clear-cut victory because of weakness or fear or what among the political echelon. Reparations for Israel? Who discusses them seriously? The figures for Lebanese casualties seem also to play out not at all justly on the international circuit. Who knows a civilian from a terrorist? Who knows who was what kind of casualty? Hozballah have boasted to the media that after fighting they change from their fatigues and become unrecognisable. And where is the condemnation for the use of human shields rather than for those trying to defend their children by having to attack their aggressor? For years, including those in the 'age of peace' created by the Oslo accords, the Palestinian Arabs have targeted Jewish children. The Israelis and their 'purity of arms' doctrine, from the 1980s to Jenin, and including all contemporary orders, have assiduously avoided, and apologised for, any civilian and child deaths. Yet there is no serious moral outrage and diplomatic damage done to those who deliberately target women and chlildren and put up theirs in the front line in the worst of danger, in some hideous inversion of the Western standard of safety rules demanding 'women and children first' in escape procedures. When Winston Churchill demanded he be given the tools to finish the job he did not aim for anything less than total victory over grotesque evil. Shamefully the West, including the Bush government, has willed into being far less than such a victory in the 'war on terror'. My concern is that Israel has agreed to be forced into exactly the same compromise and the clarion fanfare of Nasrallah's supporters and those 'elected' terrorists, Hamas bear witness to this. The undermining of Israel's abilities in the Arab propaganda on these matters is echoed by the vitriol in the Western media. My concern is that all Israel's supporters make it clear that terror must not be allowed to survive because when it does so, it claims and is proclaimed victorious, however militarily damaged and weakened it may be. President Bush showed considerable cheek when he proclaimed Israel victorious. The rest of us can only hope and wrestle with our doubts -- and with the Arab and Western media determination he shall be wrong and Israel also. Christopher Barder is the author of Oslo's Gift Of "Peace":The
Destruction Of Israel's Security. He has published in the Jerusalem
Institute for Western Defence, The Maccabean, Outpost, Nativ and the
Arial Center. Barder is also a member of the Advisory Board of the
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
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ISRAEL'S FALSE MORALITY; ARABS' NEW WORRY; WHO WILL DISARM WHOM?
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 18, 2006. |
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ISRAEL'S STRATEGIC LOSS Israel may defeat the forces of Hizbullah, but not the force of jihad. First, it let itself be barraged by missiles, without strong counter-measures. This showed its enemies that its population is vulnerable. Its enemies now smell blood. The welling up of warfare should have been foreseen. It follows every Israeli withdrawal. Nevertheless, the rulers of Israel placed a blind faith in withdrawal. They ignored warnings of the missiles Hizbullah had been accumulating. They also had a misplaced, blind faith in the efficacy of air power. The Air Force, however, was not provided by intelligence agencies with a proper list of targets, just as the people were not apprised of the risks they faced. Caught unprepared, the people reacted less favorably (but with more courage than when Saddam attacked). When Israel reacted, it left the main opponents, such as Syria, unpunished (lost the rest of the article). THE VICIOUSNESS OF ARAB PROPAGANDA After Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza, in July, they returned in force. The P.A. and its media cried that Israel was using internationally banned weapons, such as nail-laden bombs. That is as unproved and defamatory as past P.A. claims that Israel uses ray guns and radioactive weapons (Michael Widlanski in IMRA, 7/19). It also is hypocritical. P.A. terrorists put nails into their bombs. The Arabs always accuse enemies of doing what the Arabs do. Disregard or expose their claims! Are ray guns banned? I don't think they were invented yet. If the West understood the Zionist principle of "purity of arms," it would scoff at the charges. MEANWHILE, P.A. CIVIL STRIFE CONTINUES
Masked gunmen killed a guard at a house they were trying to blow up. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights "calls upon the Palestinian National Authority, represented by the Attorney-General, to investigate these crimes, and to bring the perpetrators to justice." (IMRA, 7/19). It has made that call many times. There is no indication it ever is heeded. FALSE ISRAELI MORALITY Peretz, who is also the chairman of the Labor Party, said he was proud that in Gaza a soldier told him that he did not fire at a terrorist armed with a launcher "because the terrorist was holding the hand of child." "These aren't hostages being held by the terrorists. These are people who are fully aware of the situation and yet have decided to remain and shield the terrorists from Israeli attack." (Dr. Aaron Lerner, IMRA, 7/20.) ASSESSING HIZBULLAH Hizbullah is more than a terrorist organization. It has a well-trained and supplied army, acting without restraint. It would do whatever it can and whatever its masters in Iran order it to. Fighting it is a strategic decision by Israel, for Hizbullah is Iran's first line of defense (IMRA, 7/19) and offense. ASSESSING PM OLMERT Israel's "most decorated soldier," PM Barak, had pulled the IDF out of southern Lebanon. Northern Israel became subject to rocket attacks by Hizbullah, but the warfare no longer was daily. The Left short-sightedly called that retreat a successful model for withdrawal from Gaza and from Lebanon. PM Olmert called the retreat from Gaza a successful model for withdrawal from Judea-Samaria. Now Israel is back to daily warfare in both, because it withdrew, leaving the terrorists free to build up their forces (Prof. Steven Plaut, 7/19). Olmert and other leftists were criminally negligent. The NY Times' authoritative sounding editorials, did not warn against the folly of the retreats. ISRAELI ARABS PM Olmert telephoned condolences and support to the Arab mayor of Nazareth, which was bombed by Hizbullah. The Mayor refused to say anything against Hizbullah. All he would demand is that his Israeli government make peace (IMRA, 7/19). His loyalty? ARAB ATTITUDE Many Arab countries would rather make money than fight Israel. They are more worried about Iran, which threatens them, than about Israel, which does not. The Sunnis are afraid of a Shiite axis, including Iran, Iraq, and Syria, with large Shiite minorities in some Gulf States. The King of Jordan keeps criticizing Israel, but he has expressed alarm about the Shiites, organizing for dominance (Michael Rubin, MEF News, 7/19). HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH (HRW) WAKES UP? HRW said that the Hizbullah rocket attack against Israeli civilian areas violated international law and probably was a war crime (IMRA, 7/19). Only probably? Yes, HRW explains that the attack may have been indiscriminate rather than deliberate targeting of an Israeli city. At least HRW finally condemned the terrorists. WHO TARGETS WHAT? On July 19, the IDF released this report of its targets: "In the past 24 hours the Hezbollah terror organization launched over 140 missiles into Israel, killing two children and wounding dozens of civilians. Also in the past 24 hours, the IDF carried out aerial attacks against over 200 terror targets in Lebanon. Among the targets attacked: 14 Hezbollah structures and command posts across Lebanon.
Since July 13th, the IDF has targeted over 200 Katyusha rocket launching sites in Lebanon." (IMRA.) The NY Times and London newspapers report Lebanese casualties but, as far as I can see, do not use these IDF releases to indicate the military nature of Israeli targeting. The newspapers leave a false impression, the impression that the London newspapers cultivate in their implied indignation against Israeli forcefulness, of wanton destruction and disregard for civilians. The disregard for civilians by the terrorists, who position themselves in civilian areas, rarely gets notice in the Times. THE DANGER OF FIXED EXPECTATIONS Military analysts, civilian and military, thought Hizbullah chief Nasrallah a force for stability. He had not made many attacks. They thought he had acclimated himself to the status quo. They assumed that conditions would not change. They were mistaken (admission by correspondent Aluf Benn in IMRA, 7/20). WHO WILL DISARM TERRORISTS? The Lebanese Army had threatened to join with Hizbullah, if Israel invaded southern Lebanon (IMRA, 7/20). Hamas has intensified its fighting in Gaza, possibly to divert Israel's effort from Lebanon. It has used P.A. police buildings in Gaza as refuges, possibly to undermine Fatah control over those police. The IDF believes that the police chiefs do not want them there. Israeli forces have surrounded the buildings and demanded that the wanted terrorists surrender. Some did. A few opened fire upon the Israelis, and were killed (IMRA, 7/20). Nevertheless, people of note still propose, despite years of violations of those terms in peace agreements, that the P.A. and the Lebanese Army disarm the terrorist militias. How much Arab violation does it take for those people of note to realize that infidels cannot rely upon the Arabs? 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@aol.com. |
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ARMY THREATENS TO DESTROY SOLDIERS' HOMES
Posted by Naomi Ragen, August 18, 2006. |
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More from Aaron Lerner's list. Where are our priorities? We must get rid of the people in power and change direction if we are going to survive. I mean it. Aaron Lerner is Director of Independent Media Review and Analysis (IMRA). Contact IMRA at imra@netvision.net.il go to the website: http://www.imra.org.il |
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This is called "Army Threatens to Destroy Soldiers´ Homes." It was
written by Hillel Fendel Thursday and it appeared yesterday on Arutz-7
Radio
The bureaucracy rolls on. With its residents still in Lebanon under emergency call-up orders, the Yesha town of MaalehRehavam learned that officials were headed to post eviction orders on its doors. Families in Maaleh Rehavam - a small outpost community in eastern Gush Etzion - were surprised to note this morning that Civil Administration officials were on their way to post eviction orders on their homes. Of the 30 residents, including five families, five are in Lebanon after having been called up on emergency basis this past month, and two others are in the standing army. Some town officials believe that the army wished to take advantage of the situation in which a quarter of the men were away to give out the notices. "It is shocking to think," town secretary Moriah Halamish said, "that with war happening on two fronts, north and south, the defense establishment finds the time to give out these orders. The State is taking advantage of the fact that our men were drafted to war in order to fulfill this new expulsion decree. Good citizens go off to fight with emergency orders, and are then forced to return to receive a slap in the face in the form of an eviction notice on their doors." Others feel the truth is more mundane: "The bureaucracy has a calendar and a schedule, and no one thinks whether now is a good time to do it or not; it just gets done." So says Nadia Matar, co-chairperson of Women in Green, a grassroots Land of Israel organization. "The previous orders expired," she said, "and they have to be renewed, and that's it. There's no consideration as to whether right now, with people still on the front lines in Lebanon, it might not be a good idea to go ahead with destroying Jewish homes." Postponed for a Week In the event, Maaleh Rehavam's secretary Moriah told Arutz-7 this afternoon, "We were informed later today that the 'mission' has been put on hold. I believe this is largely due to the press coverage by Arutz-7... Zambish [Yesha leader Ze'ev Chever] called the Civil Administration, and they said they're sorry, they didn't realize, and they will postpone giving us our eviction notices for another week. But we will not rest; there is no reason for our homes to be destroyed." Maaleh Rehavam is a mixed religious-secular community, home to five families and several singles. Residents lived in caravans for the first two years after its founding, and three permanent homes have been built in recent years. It overlooks the Judean Desert, the Herodion, Tekoa and Nokdim, home to MK Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu). The community is an eight-minute drive from Jerusalem, but the residents must now drive almost an hour due to the government's refusal to open a newly paved road. The community is not illegal - but neither has it been officially approved, and for this reason, the government says it plans to destroy it, in keeping with its promise to the US to raze all "unauthorized" outposts. The radical left-wing Peace Now organization has filed a court suit, demanding to know why the government has not yet implemented the demolition orders it issued regarding Maaleh Rehavam and other small communities throughout Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Demanding an Apology The people of Maaleh Rehavam recently demanded an apology from the Maariv newspaper for writing that their community is illegally located on private Arab property. "This article presents us as land thieves," a letter from the town's secretary states. "If a serious investigation had been done, as could be expected from a newspaper of your level, you would have found that the neighborhood is [a part of] the town of Nokdim, is totally located on state lands, and that the residents were even allocated land for planting and grazing. The neighborhood is in the process of being approved." This was not the only time the Maariv newspaper has exposed itself to criticism of being anti-Yesha. Earlier this week it publicized a listing of cities and towns in which the soldiers killed in Lebanon had lived. However, though the chart listed the names of dozens of towns and cities, it concealed the disproportionately large role played by the towns of Judea, Samaria and Gaza by hiding them in the "others" column. Ronen Tzafrir, of the non-religious pro-Land of Israel Nahalal Forum, had strong criticism of Maariv. "When there is something positive to say about this fantastic public," he said, "which educates towards heroism, sacrifice and love of land, suddenly Maariv forgets the word 'settlements.'" Tzafrir called upon the public to boycott Maariv. In fact, nearly 10% of the 117 soldiers who were killed in the five weeks of fighting in Lebanon were from towns in Yesha (Judea and Samaria) - almost twice as much as their proportionate numbers in the population. Their names: Lt.-Col. Ro'i Klein, 31, of Eli
Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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DON'T DRINK THE KOFI ANNAN COFFEE!
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 18, 2006. |
This comes from The Peoples Cube website:
It has wonderful satirical articles and graphics. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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THE CONVERT
Posted by Cal Thomas, August 17, 2006. |
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During the Cold War, American intelligence loved getting its hands on defectors from communism. The reasoning was that these people had the best information about the plans of the other side, information that would help America defeat them. In the present war against what President Bush has properly labeled "Islamic fascism," defectors are just as valuable. The Israel Project, an international nonprofit organization devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel, recently made a former leading imam and radical Islam expert available for media interviews and I had a chance to speak with him. He goes by the name of Sam Soloman because of death threats from those not happy with the information he has about their plans to dominate the world. Soloman was brought up in the Islamic tradition and became a "recruiter," which he says is something like an assistant teacher. One of his responsibilities was "brainwashing people in the Koran." He tells me "The suicide bombers go through stages, and the most important stage is not when they blow themselves up. The most important stage is conforming them to the (Muslim) ideology. Once they are conformed to the ideology, the rest is easy. That is the role I had." Soloman is in double trouble. Not only did he abandon Islam and the terrorists' objectives, he has also become a Christian, which has marked him for death. Born in the Middle East, he visited Washington from his adopted country, which he declines to name to protect his family. Soloman speaks with knowledge, credibility and conviction. He has memorized large sections of the Koran and tells me, "There's not a single verse in the Koran talking about peace with a non-Muslim, with the Jews and the Christians. Islam means submission. Islam means surrender. It means you surrender and accept Islamic hegemony over yourselves..." I ask him about the best strategy for fighting it: "It cannot be combated simply by force. It needs to be combated ideologically, spiritually (as well as) through arms." Soloman says the outlets for Islamic ideology are religious -- seminaries, the madrassas (Koranic schools) and especially the mosques. "From the beginning, Mohammed used the mosque to propagate this ideology. It was in the mosque that jihad was declared (and) that troops were sent to conquer the rest of the world. The mosque was the seat of government and Americans are right to be concerned about (their growth)." He asks Americans to inform themselves about the real teachings of Islam and not to fall for what various Islamic groups say it teaches. Soloman says, "The simplest Islamic book you open" teaches that all unbelievers (in Islam) are profane people. "Because of the (Koranic) text and what it says, it incites violence." He begins quoting verses from memory, too quickly to write them all down. One is, "Slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush." (Surah 9:5) Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear. Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. "This kind of tactic of taking verses out of context can be used against any religious faith," says Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, an Islamic civil rights and advocacy group. "It can and has been used against the Bible and has been used against the Quran." "These verses deal with the real experience of the Muslim community at the time when they were under attack. It's not a general injunction to go out and harm people. The only people who take it that way are those who want to promote hostility toward Islam and Muslims. They would object if the same thing were done to their faith." Yes, but virtually all Christians and Jews denounce the infinitesimal few who claim to be Jewish or Christian and use their "holy books" to justify violence against others as a direct command from G-d. Asked whether the Koran commands the killing of or violence against all nonbelievers, Ali Khan, national director of the Chicago-based American Muslim Council, replied: "No. (That's) far from the truth. There's nothing in the Koran, no verse that I'm aware of, that advocates the killing of nonbelievers." The terrorists and those who preach from mosques throughout the Middle East must be reading a different version, then, because virtually all of their sermons that I've read claim their G-d wants them to kill all "infidels." Soloman says Americans must demand from the leading Islamic hierarchy, such as the Muslim World League and the Union of Imams, a fatwa that makes it clear "that this is not what the text means and that these texts are no longer effective. They have passed their date. But if they remain effective and eternally valid, then in America we have a serious problem." How serious? He says. "They are infiltrating and undermining every part of this society. We are promoting Islamic mortgages, Islamic insurance companies. There are 29 banks in the United States promoting Islamic banking. Since 1999, Dow Jones has launched Dow Jones Islamic Index and has subjected itself to be governed by an international Sharia board." (Sharia is the religious law of Islam outlined in the Koran.) Soloman adds, "The Islamic organizations have their missionaries and there are active or sleeping cells in this country." He mentions one, Tablighi Jamaat, "a Pakistani organization that is hand-in-glove with the Wahaabis, strong Muslim sects known for their strict observance of the Koran, and a strong facilitator of al-Qaida and other factions of terrorism. They alone have 1,000 missionaries in New York, 50,000 across the United States. This is only one organization. In 1994, I took a map and started putting pins in it. I found there is not a single state without a mosque. Since then (the number) has increased." Americans must see past their natural reluctance to paint all members of a group with a broad brush and realize our failure to act now against this clear and present danger in the ways Sam Soloman recommends will lead to a disaster for us that is far worse than our Cold War enemies had envisaged. This appeared on the Townhall website:
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DID ISRAEL LOSE THE WAR AGAINST HIZBULLAH?
Posted by Laurence Uniglicht, August 17, 2006. |
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No doubt, the bar is set at a stratospheric level for Israel, most observers expecting its war machine to crush any Arab enemy. Conversely, the bar is set so low for Hizbullah, all the fanatical jihadists had to do was not trip over it, indeed survive juggernaut Israel's onslaught in the minds of most observers. Sadly Hizbullah was not crushed, it did survive, although much of its deadly weaponry, especially its substantial cache of Iranian provided missiles and launchers, was obliterated by the IDF. Alas, Israel did not secure the release of its kidnapped soldiers, and that is terrible. Israel lost many lives, both in the military and civilian sector, in fact suffered many casualties and much property damage, and that is also terrible. Israel received a worldwide black eye to its image for destroying much Lebanese infrastructure, as well as causing the deaths of many Lebanese civilians; that too is terrible; but what other choice was there? Hizbullah deliberately and immorally mixed its troops and deadly weapons within civilian populations; thus (presumably) innocent Arab men, women, and children would likely be injured or killed, even though the IDF did everything humanly possible to hit only Hizbullah targets. Yet, Hizbullah won that despicable propaganda war, as much of the world only blamed Israel and not cowardly maniacal Hizbullah for such devastation, absorbing anti-Israel photos and descriptions, many doctored, by so many media outlets with no sense of fairness. But, did Israel lose the war against Hizbullah? Hizbullah's military force is being replaced by other Lebanese troops as well as an international military coalition, within southern Lebanon, abutting Israel's northern border, in effect nullifying the terrorist threat to Israel posed by those jihad junkies. Northern Israeli citizens can begin to breathe a sigh of relief, Warren Buffet's substantial investment in an Israeli manufacturing concern within the Golan Heights, for one, can once again begin to earn profits as the Israeli economic dynamo is safe to resume operations, reservists can return to civilian life, and the Jewish State, in general, can once again flourish without fear of Katyusha rockets landing in civilian enclaves. All this is not exactly chopped liver. Furthermore, Iran's diversionary war now in remission, worldwide eyes, minds, and demands can return to proper focus, hopefully thwarting the maniacal Persian upstart's nuclear ambitions. Let ego-deflated Arabs, grasping at any perceived reason to relieve a perpetual state of humiliation, dance in the streets, eat sweets, and sip tea, as if all this will improve their non-productive lives. Israel is in the process of regrouping, contemplating facts on the ground, and will continue to kick high-tech economic butt while surrounding raw material Muslim economies, populated in large part by dysfunctional citizenry, besot with the disease of anti-Semitism, continue to languish. Now, did Israel really lose the war against Hizbullah? Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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THE IDF WAS TAUGHT TO LOSE
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, August 17, 2006. |
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Israel's current Defense Minister Amir Peretz has assembled a mix of retired military officers and businessmen - supposedly known for their analytical abilities - to investigate Israel's ignominious loss in Lebanon to a relatively small number of Hezb'Allah terrorists. Hezb'Allah is guided by Hasan Nasrallah, a non-military man - himself advised, armed and funded by Syria and Iran. Expect a lengthy investigation designed to make the people forget and then whatever penalties are assessed will also disappear into that void of 'cover-up'. Regrettably, given past investigations, I do not have much hope for a hard look by any official committee appointed by the Israeli government in their desperate need to explain Israel's loss. Once Israel was known as the most fierce of armies, capable of superior performance on the ground, in the air, in the sea and especially with her incomparable intelligence. But, much of her superb capabilities were swept away by a host of politically-driven reasons that weakened this once great army. The IDF was "taught" to evict Jews from their homes instead of being trained to fight her self-declared hostile neighbors. Clearly, Olmert interfered and subverted Israel's military planning as if he was personally acting in the interests of Hezb'Allah and Hamas. Throughout the many wars which Israel was forced to fight, the influence of the world's nations played a role of growing significance on the outcome of each war. In each war that Israel succeeded in winning, B'SD (with the help of Heaven), major powers stepped in and forced Israel to surrender her victory and withdraw to indefensible lines. Unlike the Allies of WW2, Israel was never allowed to demand a full surrender of the attacking Arab Muslim armies, rightfully insisting on a negotiated peace. It seemed important to the nations who had commercial ties with such nations as Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf oil nations to not lose their vaunted Pride and Shame for having lost in battle to those Jews whom they thought were so lowly. Israel was forced to accept 'diktats' from both her friends (America) and such enemies as the then Soviet Union, China, and other nation states as embodied in the United Nations. Israel was not only a friend of her American allies but she knew she had to listen to a great Superpower who supplied military aid, cooperation in weapons' development and a backup in the face of hostile world governments. With those elements at stake, when you are told to restrain your country's response to deadly Arab Muslim attacks, you generally do what you are told. Once taught restraint, a country becomes reluctant to fight full out. In effect, you learn or are taught to lose - a failing which is mostly driven by weak politicians - especially when former generals become the ruling politicians. Israel was not America's vassal state but she could not fight wars with successful pre-emptive tactics lest she infuriate the oil-producing Arab and Muslim nations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai, Egypt, etc. who were considered allies of America and her oil multinational companies. Israel was like a small marble, rolling around among the big balls of a billiard table. Israel's politicians and military knew that she must seek approval, first of her American friends before taking any action. Many examples demonstrate Israel's learning these lessons of defeat following victory. Israel was given strict orders not to eliminate Yassir Arafat, the Master Assassin Terrorist, lest the Muslim world would become angry and attack interests in the Western Free World. Israel watched Hezb'Allah build a veritable underground city fortress just across her northern border with Lebanon which was loaded with missiles and armaments, paid for and shipped by Syria and Iran. Ariel Sharon, the once great warrior general, could not attack these fortified positions lest it weaken the Lebanese government which barely existed - except as a false front for Syria and Iran. Lebanon's Army consists of Hezb'Allah and Syrian officers running a State within a State. Israel was not allowed to attack Lebanon's southern front and, when she did, this incursion was conducted by inexperienced and frightened politicians with one eye on America's opinions and directions - with the other eye on possible Israeli casualties which would anger the voters who would then throw them out of office. Then there were the PC, Politically Correct generals like Dan Halutz, Shaul Mofaz, and Moshe Kaplinsky and others, whose primary goals were to elevate their own status and negotiate additional military aid from our only ally (America) who had to be kept happy. Strangely, by teaching Israel obedience and restraint, they took away her spontaneity and fighting spirit. When the U.S. counted on Israel's Army to destroy Hezb'Allah, they instead found an Army that had skimped on training for war, guided by a Prime Minister whose only thought was to abandon Gush Katif/Gaza, followed by the abandonment of Judea and Samaria. Olmert and the other amateur - Defense Minister Peretz - failed their obligations, resulting in too many Israelis being killed fighting an enemy whom they were not trained to fight. We Americans were surprised and disappointed at Israel's poor performance at the top command level, forgetting the years when they (the Americans) demanded restraint. Investigating today's Israeli military failure to succeed in defeating a small number of well-armed terrorists should match the most flagrant cover-up to date. Does anyone believe that Olmert-Peretz-Peres-Livni-Halutz will allow full disclosure, resulting in their dismissals? The degradation of Israel's ruling clique of elites has been going on so long that even when caught red-handed in a host of crooked affairs, the people elect them again. They listen to speeches by corrupt politicians, knowing they are liars and pretend that they just heard a brilliant set of opinions. What's wrong with the Israeli/Jewish people? Are we so wedded to stupidity that we cannot tell the difference between people with integrity and those who ride on slogans? If Israel is to survive, her government and many of her political generals must simply be thrown out of office. Let's find the rebels whom Sharon and Olmert threw out of the government, because they dared to say that abandoning Gush Katif/Gaza was a bad plan whose only beneficiaries would be Hamas in Israel's south and then Hezb'Allah in her north. Israel must be de-programmed from losing so our friends will be pleased. Perhaps as Terror expands globally, America will realize that weakening Israel has NOT been in the best interests for America's safety. Now we see the forecasted mix of global terrorists, claiming their "rights" in Europe and America, expecting compliance because their population numbers are reaching "critical mass". Israel's weak Supreme Court once made it illegal to display any sign reading: "No Muslims No Terror". I wonder if, after the next 9/11, will we see mass deportation of Muslims to their country of origin and/or to a place where they can find acceptance of a Global Caliphate run on Shariah laws according to Fundamentalist Islamic Jihad. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net |
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TIME TO WRITE A STRONG MESSAGE TO PRESIDENT BUSH!
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 17, 2006. | ||
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Friends, Last night we attended the Zionist Organization of America meeting and listened to irritating and rather shocking updates on Israel's government actions, the situation in Israel in general and our State department actions, which brought about our suggestion to write to President Bush and Madam C. Rice. Please join Batya Dagan and our in our -- speaks for itself -- petition messages below. Or write your own. BUT MAKE IT STRONG. | ||
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White House: president@whitehouse.gov
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Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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RETURNING TO NORMAL IN LEBANON AND ISRAEL
Posted by David Frankfurter, August 17, 2006. |
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Dear Friends,
The northern border has been quiet since the cease fire with Hezbollah came into force Monday morning. People are beginning to return to their homes on both sides of the border. And now the clean-up begins. It is a sobering thought that the damage in Lebanon was a totally predictable outcome of that nation's deliberate flaunting of UN resolutions demanding that it take control of its own territory and disarm the terrorists that were usurping it. Instead, it invited those same terrorists to join its government. Worse, it condoned and encouraged the war crimes of launching attacks against civilians in a neighbouring sovereign state and the use of its own citizens and civilian areas as human shields. Lebanese infrastructure and many private homes - including those used as weapons facilities and rocket launching pads - will need repair. Iran has stepped up to the plate, and the Hezbollah will once again be its proxy. Europe, concerned about the positive image Hezbollah will gain was quick to announce that they will set aside hundreds of millions in humanitarian aid, which it is channeling through charitable agencies, the UN and the Lebanese government. All in all, though, the message for those who survived will be that the war was not so bad for Lebanon. Israel got the message, and Lebanon gets lots of new infrastructure houses, and even furniture. All courtesy of international donors. In all this, however, where is Israel? The international community seems to have completely ignored the affect on ordinary Israeli citizens of the month of war, in which they were the direct and sole targets of Hezbollah's war crimes. Which international charity or donor has come forward to offer even a token? If you are surprised by the question, consider the extent that your media reported the damage to Israel. Did you know that 500,000 Israelis fled their homes in the north, and that the rest were forced to spend long hours in bomb shelters? Have you heard of the stream of refugees returning to their homes in Israel's north, to confront their damaged houses, destroyed businesses, lost sales. The international coverage has been almost completely focused on Lebanon. Here, though, are the statistics for Israel. Hezbollah rockets landing in Israel -- 4,000 One of the reasons that the media did not cover the story is that Israel moved its civilians out of danger to the extent possible. All around the country not only did people take in friends and relatives, but also complete strangers. The stories are many and heartwarming. The stark contrast on the other side of the border, where civilians were used as human shields, and in some cases even physically prevented at gunpoint from fleeing is clear. Of course, as is the case in the Palestinian Authority, international aid will be interpreted as tacit support for the war crimes that created the humanitarian disaster. And Israel will be left to cope on its own. David Frankfurter is a business consultant, corporate executive and writer who frequently comments on the Middle East. To subscribe to his 'Letter from Israel', email him at david.frankfurter@iname.com. Or go to http://www.livejournal.com/users/dfrankfurter/ |
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FOUND IN SOUTH LEBANON APARTMENTS AND BUNKERS
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 17, 2006. |
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Pictures of some Hezbollah equipment and maps by which they followed on the IDF manouvers during the war, all found by IDF in bunkers AND apartments in South Lebanon. 
Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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THE OLMERT GOVERNMENT MUST GO
Posted by Women in Green, August 17, 2006. |
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The article below was written by Caroline Glick and appeared in the Jerusalem Post on August 15, 2006. Just before the ceasefire last Monday, foreign television crews interviewed some Israeli reservists about their reactions to the war. The general feeling they expressed was one of extreme disappointment: "It was a waste of time. We didn't get our soldiers back. Hizbullah still has its weapons. A lot of our guys got killed. We stopped everything in the middle." The opinions of these soldiers are prevalent in today's Israel. The Olmert Government has utterly failed us, and MUST be replaced. Olmert's political indecision and delay is responsible for one of the greatest catastrophes that has yet befallen Israel. In the words of Caroline Glick in another article previously published in the Jerusalem Post on August 8, 2006, entitled: "Talkin' about a revolution." Territory [our Jewish Land] is vital. Jihad is real. Israel has a right to defensible borders. Israel is not to blame for our enemies' hatred. May we be granted a new and loyal leadership by the G-d of Israel, which will not undo the great miracle of our "Return to the Promised Land." With Blessings and Love for Israel,
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From all sides of the political spectrum calls are being raised for the establishment of an official commission of inquiry to investigate the Olmert government's incompetent management of the war in Lebanon. These calls are misguided. We do not need a commission to know what happened or what has to happen. The Olmert government has failed on every level. The Olmert government must go. The Knesset must vote no confidence in this government and new elections must be carried out as soon as the law permits. If the Knesset hesitates in taking this required step, then the people of Israel must take to the streets in mass demonstrations and demand that our representatives send Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and their comrades out to pasture. Every aspect of the government's handling of the war has been a failure. Take relief efforts as an example. For five weeks the government ignored the humanitarian disaster in the North where over one million Israelis are under missile assault. The government developed no comprehensive plan for organizing relief efforts to feed citizens in bomb shelters or for evacuating them. And then there is the military failure. The IDF suffers from acute leadership failures - brought to Israel courtesy of Ariel Sharon who hacked away at the General Staff, undermined its sense of mission and treated our generals like office boys just as he decimated the Likud by undermining its political vision and promoting its weakest members. Yet, guiding the generals to make the right decisions and finding the generals capable of making them in wartime is the government's responsibility. It was the government's responsibility to critique and question the IDF's operational model of aerial warfare and to cut its losses when after two or three days it was clear that the model was wrong. At that point the government should have called up the reserves and launched a combined ground and air offensive. But the government didn't feel like it. It wanted to win the war on the cheap. And when the air campaign did not succeed, it abandoned its war goals, declared victory and sued for a cease-fire. When the public objected, after waiting two precious weeks, the government called up the reserves but then waited another unforgivable 10 days before committing them to battle. All the while, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni did her best to demoralize the IDF and the public by publicly proclaiming that there is no military solution to what is clearly a military conflict. OLMERT'S DECISION Friday to begin the ground offensive was by all accounts motivated not by a newfound understanding that this is a real war, but by the headlines in the newspapers that morning calling for his resignation. Yet, by Friday, the IDF had only 48 hours to achieve the objectives it had waited a month to receive Olmert's permission to accomplish. Diplqomatically, in the space of five weeks the government managed to undermine Israel's alliance with America; to hand Syria, Hizbullah and Iran the greatest diplomatic achievements they have ever experienced; and to flush down the toilet the unprecedented international support that US President Bush handed to Israel on a silver platter at the G-8 summit. The UN cease-fire that Olmert, Livni and Peretz applaud undercuts Israel's sovereignty; protects Hizbullah; lets Iran and Syria off the hook; lends credibility to our enemies' belief that Israel can be destroyed; emboldens the Palestinians to launch their next round of war; and leaves IDF hostages Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in captivity. Israel's diplomatic maneuvers were cut to fit the size of our Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni who believes that her job is limited to being nice to other foreign ministers when they call her up on the telephone. In an interview with Yediot Aharonot over the weekend, Livni defended her decision not to engage in public diplomacy by claiming that this is not an important enough task for the foreign minister. It makes sense that this would be her view because as one who understands neither diplomacy nor English, she is incapable of conducting public diplomacy. Livni argued that the job of the foreign minister is "to create diplomatic processes" - whatever that means. She also claimed that the best way to gain international support is not by publicly arguing Israel's case, but through back door discussions devoted to developing good relations with other foreign ministers. This is ridiculous. The job of the foreign minister is to defend Israel and advance Israel's national interests to foreigners, not to be their friend. ASIDE FROM the fact that the government's bungling of the military mission meant that Olmert and Livni sprinted to the negotiating table empty handed, the reason that the UN Security Council cease-fire resolution ignores every single Israeli demand is because Israel didn't aggressively pursue its goals. While the Lebanese and the Arabs massed all their forces and pressured the UN, the Foreign Ministry asked US Jewish leaders to say nothing about the draft resolution and to make no public objections to that diplomatic process Tzipi and Ehud "created" with their "friends." And so Israel's positions were ignored. Yet the reason that this incompetent, embarrassment of a government must go is not simply because it has delivered Israel the worst defeat in its history. This government must go because every day it sits in power it exacerbates the damage it has already caused and increases the dangers to Israel. Iran has been emboldened. Its success in the war is now being used by the ayatollahs to support their claim of leadership over the Arab world. In evidence of Iran's success, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met in Cairo with Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. So now, after 27 years of official estrangement, Egypt is moving towards establishing full diplomatic relations with Teheran. The Palestinians have been emboldened. Hamas leaders and spokesmen are openly stating that just as Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000 precipitated the Palestinian terror war in September 2000, so Israel's current defeat in Lebanon will spur the outbreak of a new Palestinian terror war against Israel today. THE AMERICANS have lost faith in Israel as an ally. After he gave Israel every opportunity to win this war, even signaling clearly that Israel should feel free to go as far as Beirut if necessary, President Bush was convinced that Olmert simply didn't want to fight. The Americans were shocked by Israel's performance. They know that we can win when we set our mind to it and were flummoxed when presented with an Israeli leadership that refused to even try. Today we have 30,000 soldiers in Lebanon with an unclear mission. Because of the failure of this government, Israel now needs to contend with an emboldened Hizbullah protected by Kofi Annan. Already on Sunday, Annan sent a letter to Olmert instructing him that once the cease-fire is put into effect, the IDF will be barred from taking action even if it comes under attack. As far as Annan is concerned, resolution 1701 says that if Israel is attacked, all it is allowed to do is call his secretary. Given that both the Lebanese army and the countries which plan to send forces to Lebanon all say that they will not deploy to the south until after Hizbullah is dismantled, it is clear that the military mission is still to be accomplished. In its helter-skelter offensive over the weekend, the IDF performed brilliantly as it tried to accomplish in 48 hours what it had been denied permission to accomplish for an entire month. Still now, in the diplomatic minefield this government set for it, the IDF remains the only military force capable of fighting and dismantling Hizbullah. But there can be no doubt that it will not be accomplished under this government. There will be time to inquire into what has gone wrong in the IDF. There will be time to fire the generals that need to be fired. But we don't need a commission to determine what we need to do. Because of the Olmert government's failures, ever greater battles await us. As the dangers mount by the hour, we must replace this misbegotten government with one that can defend us. 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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HOLLYWOOD IS MARCHING AGAINST HEZBOLLAH AND HAMAS!
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 17, 2006. |
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With the Australian blood that runs in her veins she is feisty. We thank Nicole Kidman and the Hollywood pact who joined her for taking public stand against terrorism. Friends, Hollywood is finally waking up! Keep these name in mind! |
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NICOLE Kidman has made a public stand against terrorism. The actress, joined by 84 other high-profile Hollywood stars, directors, studio bosses and media moguls, has taken out a powerfully-worded full page advertisement in today's Los Angeles Times newspaper. It specifically targets "terrorist organisations" such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. "We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas," the ad reads. "If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die. "We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs." A who's who of Hollywood heavyweights joined Kidman on the ad. The actors listed included: Michael Douglas, Dennis Hopper, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Danny De Vito, Don Johnson, James Woods, Kelly Preston, Patricia Heaton and William Hurt. Directors Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Michael Mann, Dick Donner and Sam Raimi also signed their names. Other Hollywood power players supporting the ad included Sumner Redstone, the chairman and majority owner of Paramount Pictures, and billionaire mogul, Haim Saban. Addendum from TheLady@bayarea.net
Please understand that those public figures actively taking the Jewish side should expect certain revenue loss. Like Natalie Portman or wrestler Goldberg, their names will be added to pro-Arab websites announcing the boycott of anything these people do. The 84 signees will forever be blacklisted by a whole segment of the population for their support of Israel. The 84 are to be applauded, appreciated and their products deserve
our patronage.
Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com
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JEWISH-ISRAELI NEWS: WAR'S END?
Posted by Sandy Rosen-Hazen, August 17, 2006. |
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First things first.....I want to thank you for all of your wonderful e-mails and to apologize for not replying to any of them!!!! As you know I've been keeping very busy with my "WAR Update" and other newsletters, such as for Organ Donors, various charities, etc.....all the while feeling terribly guilty about my dreadful neglect of personal e-mails from everyone, but I do promise to answer all of them VERY soon!!!! Following, is the FINAL Update for this war, so..... the Last, but far from least, personal note from Sandy..... for yet another time, this important reminder: My "WAR Updates", # 1 through # 9, are filed on my Web Site, in case you've missed any of them.....also there are now over 450 photos in the "WAR Album" on my Web Site!!!!! Meanwhile. just a short note here (before getting on with the subject of this newsletter "WAR's end?!?!") to let you know how I feel about Arabs.....in case you didn't already know!!!! Yes, this is me (the person who has fought for equal rights for everyone, all of my life).....making an exception!!!! Just got this.....LATEST POLLING SHOWS:
Consider this & the American-Muslim item (A NATIONAL POLL QUESTION.....Subject: Can a Muslim be a good American?) below.....then you'll understand my reply to it: NO, Muslims can NOT, but Mexicans can!!!! I have come up with a terrific solution for America's illegal immigrant problem with the Mexicans (who only want to work at jobs Americans won't do.....cleaning homes, picking produce, gardening, etc.)!!!! Invite ALL the Mexicans in and give them full American citizenship.....on the condition that each of them KILL at least two anti-American Jihadist Arabs (who are there only to hurt us)!!!! Thus TWO huge problems solved.....lots of law-abiding, hard-working Mexican citizens.....and NO more fanatic Arab ones!!!! Aren't I brilliant?!?! So, why hasn't the government thought of doing this?!?! They really should!!!! Love always, Sandy ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A NATIONAL POLL QUESTION ...
Can a good Muslim be a good American ( or, even a good citizen of any country) -- I forwarded that question to a friend that worked in Saudi Arabia for 20 years. The following is his forwarded reply: Theologically - no. Because his allegiance is to Allah, the moon god of Arabia. Religiously - no. Because no other religion is accepted by his Allah except Islam (Quran, 2:256) Scripturally - no. Because his allegiance is to the five pillars of Islam and the Quran (Koran). Geographically - no. Because his allegiance is to Mecca, to which he turns in prayer five times a day. Socially - no. Because his allegiance to Islam forbids him to make friends with Christians or Jews. Politically - no. Because he must submit to the mullahs (spiritual leaders), who teach annihilation of Israel and Destruction of America, the great Satan. Domestically - no. Because he is instructed to marry four women and beat and scourge his wife when she disobeys him (Quran 4:34). Intellectually - no. Because he cannot accept the American Constitution since it is based on Biblical principles and he believes the Bible to be corrupt. Philosophically - no. Because Islam, Muhammad, and the Quran do not allow freedom of religion and __expression Democracy and Islam cannot coexist. Every Muslim government is either dictatorial or autocratic. Spiritually - no. Because when we declare "one nation under God," the Christian's God is loving and kind, while Allah is NEVER referred to as heavenly father, nor is he ever called love in The Quran's 99 excellent names. Therefore after much study and deliberation....perhaps we should be very suspicious of ALL MUSLIMS in this country. They obviously cannot be both "good" Muslims and good Americans. Call it what you wish....it's still the truth. If you find yourself intellectually in agreement with the above statements, perhaps you will share this with your friends. The more who understand this, the better it will be for our country and our future. Pass it on Fellow Americans. The religious war is bigger than we know or understand. It sure as Hell IS!!!! Thus my reply to Can a Muslim be a good American? is:
Below, my remarks are in square brackets [..] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
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[Now, for what's happening here since the "cease-fire.....]
All our wars ended with a sense of missed opportunities, including the War of Independence. For 20 years David Ben Gurion lamented the flawed consequences of that war calling his restraint from conquering East Jerusalem and the Judea region an "infinite tragedy." During the Six Day War we achieved our most shining victory alongside our greatest missed opportunity: We didn't know how to turn our victory into peace. The Yom Kippur War stemmed from that missed opportunity, and the missed opportunities from the first war in Lebanon, aimed at healing the wounds of the Yom Kippur War, appeared right on the planners' war table. All our operations carried out to silence Lebanon ended in bitter disappointment, as did the last war. This doesn't say a thing about the justness and wisdom of any particular war, but about wars in general. Wars never fulfill the hopes of the victor, and frequently a glorious victory brings with it the worm that gnaws away at the fruit. Had we not driven out the Arabs who had settled in the Land of Israel, we would not have been able to build a stable country for the Jewish people, however, that's how we created the Palestinian exile, which is the root cause of our problems. Consequences of war Our victory in the Six Day War saved us, but created the National Palestinian Movement. Our duration in Lebanon began with the aim of destroying the PLO's kingdom but instead created Hizbullah. Our redeployment from Lebanon saved us from spilling our blood on its turf, but enabled Iran to establish an offshoot in our neighborhood. We have yet to find a leader who can predict three moves in advance. Olmert proved that he was unable to predict even two, and thus he joins a long list of former prime ministers. Brunt of economic damage The number of rockets fired at us during this war almost equaled the number of injured civilians. On average, each missile hit and maimed a single person. The majority of the wounded suffered from shock and recovered within a short time. Every human life is priceless, however when making the national calculation, the level of home front losses is not high. The direct damage to property is also not too bad. The brunt of the economic damage is the loss of working days and the standstill of commercial life in the north of the country. Had businesses continued working as in peacetime, the casualty figure would have been much higher, but presumably would not have exceeded the number of losses incurred during the second Intifada (uprising). These are heavy losses and they cannot be discussed with cool rationality, but when considering the plight of a nation, thinking about them is unavoidable. Next war inevitable The next war is inevitable, and we may assume that rockets will once again be fired on our home front, and are likely be worse the next time around. It has been proven that an offensive strategy that employs conventional weaponry does not eliminate the enemy, particularly an enemy prepared to destroy its own country in order to achieve a delusional victory. Israeli war tactics, according to which we must transfer the fighting to enemy land as quickly as possible, will not always be implemented. We should, therefore, fortify ourselves, build protected spaces in every area where people congregate, accelerate the development of anti- missile solutions, improve the services rendered to those suffering the consequences of war, and plan the strategy by which we shall continue working under fire. I would recommend setting up a committee to handle such matters; however my suggestion is uncalled for because a similar committee headed by Dan Meridor submitted its conclusions just several months ago. Not such a bad situation As long as the Arabs continue rejoicing at their success in delaying the Israeli army, at the cost of their country's ruin, then our situation is not too bad. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Day After /
Initial statistics compiled by the Police Northern District, show that since the conflict broke out on July 12, Hezbollah fired 3,790 rockets across the border into Israel. Of these, 901 landed in communities, and 42 civilians were killed as a result of rocket strikes. The Health Ministry said 4,262 civilians were treated in hospitals for injuries. Of these, 33 were seriously wounded, 68 moderately and 1,388 lightly. Another 2,773 civilians were treated for shock and anxiety. The Israel Air Force conducted some 15,500 sorties over Lebanon and attacked more than 7,000 targets there. These flights included 10,000 combat sorties, some 2,000 battle helicopter sorties, some 1,000 Saar helicopter sorties, more than 1,300 reconnaissance flights and some 1,200 transport sorties. Israel Navy vessels sailed for more than 8,000 hours opposite Lebanon's beaches and fired about 2,500 times at Lebanon's coast. Targets included rocket launching sites, launchers, weapons stores, roads, Hezbollah infrastructures and radars, fuel depots and the coastal road. The IDF said that despite the 33-day blockade on Lebanon, it has permitted more than 200 ships to reach the country to evacuate civilians and bring relief supplies. The naval blockade on Lebanon will be maintained until a means of supervising materiel smuggling is established, the IDF said. Kiryat Shmona and the surrounding communi ties were the hardest hit - 1,012 rockets fell there, including 372 inside Kiryat Shmona and another 354 within its municipal boundaries. The municipality said 25 of its residents were wounded and 81 suffered from shock, and that 2,003 apartments and 151 vehicles were damaged. Throughout the conflict, only about 6,000 of the 24,000 residents remained in the town. Some 400 of them were evacuated for a few days yesterday. Meanwhile, residents of the Western Galilee began trickling back following the cease-fire. In the morning people were still wary of leaving the shelters, and the streets were mostly empty. In larger towns like Kiryat Shmona, Nahariya, Carmiel, Acre and others, shops and businesses remained shut. A few cafes reopened along Nahariya's main street, but few patrons were seen and most stores remained closed. Most residents, however, were yet to return to their homes after fleeing from the rockets some four weeks ago. A few businesses reopened in Acre as well. In Kiryat Shmona, where the streets had been deserted for the past month, people left their bomb shelters and walked outdoors. A few stores opened, and customers arrived. Traffic lights began to function for the first time in more than a month. "The air is a little different today," one of the residents said. Residents were doubtful and uncertain about the cease-fire agreement. Some said they very much hoped the Katyusha rocket fire would not be renewed, but were still apprehensive. In the afternoon, the local authorities in the north finally advised residents that they could leave their shelters, subject to Home Front Command instructions. People returned to their routines in Ma'alot yesterday morning, and many were seen in the streets. The residents, especially those whose homes were damaged or who were forced to shut their businesses, fear they will not be compensated adequately and are uncertain about their future. The mayors of the confrontation-line communities are scheduled to hold an emergency debate today to assess the damage and prepare for the future. The Israel Police said it would send hundreds more policemen to the northern district as reenforcements to help residents resume their routine. Police Commissioner Moshe Karadi held a debate at Police National Headquarters yesterday. Karadi instructed police chiefs to provide the necessary protection to people returning home after a long sojourn away. Education Minister Yuli Tamir said yesterday that the school year would open as scheduled on September 1 at most schools. However, the Education Ministry will make the final decision tomorrow, after its officials meet with mayors and municipal education directors in the north, in accordance with the instructions of the Home Front Command. Tamir said some 10,000 northern residents staying in boarding schools will be evacuated this week so that the school year will be able to open on time. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Those Poor, Innocent Lebanese:
Let me get this straight. You allow one of the largest terrorist organizations in the world to set up shop throughout your country. You permit them to completely take over the entire southern third of your country and you claim to have seen nothing. You allow the terrorists to build sophisticated, fortified bunkers and you did not see any heavy equipment building them. You allow the Hezbollah terrorists to move into many of your towns and villages, including the complete takeover of one of the largest neighborhoods in Beirut, where they proceed to build numerous, complex command and control centers ... and you claim ignorance. You allow the terrorists to store weapons, bombs and rockets in your basements. You turn a blind's eye when they carry arms into your restaurants, stores and buildings. Yet you call yourself an "innocent civilian." You sleep with dogs, you wake up with fleas.
You watch the parades with hundreds of thousands of participants including children screaming, "Jihad. Death to Israel, Jews and Americans," burning American and Israeli flags. Goose-stepping soldiers with Nazi-like salutes receive your cheers--and all of you "innocent civilians" did not see a thing (even though you were captured on videotape). There are giant posters of the rubenesque terrorist leader, Hasan Nasrallah, all over Lebanon with headlines declaring the imminent destruction of Israel. Yet you choose to elect this terrorist party to your government--and all of the so called "innocent Lebanese" do not know anything about anything. Twenty thousand rockets and launchers are shipped into your country along with other military equipment by plane, truck and ship, and the government industrial complex knew absolutely nothing; and neither did all those "poor, innocent civilians" who are now crying. The Lebanese "knowingly allowed (aka aided and abbetted)" murderous terrorists to proliferate in their sovereign nation. Like spoiled teenagers, they now refuse to take any responsibility. Of course there are some truly innocent civilians, but there were hundreds of thousands of beautiful German babies and mothers in Dresden and Berlin who were blown to bits. If an attack emanates from your country, the entire country is responsible. That is how life works. Sometimes it is unfair. I hate when people lie to my face and expect me to believe their vile fabrications. Does the Muslim world really think that the vast majority of Americans are that foolish? Only the quislings at CNN like Larry King, Nic Robertson, Wolf Blitzer, et al will fall for this Joseph Goebbels-style propaganda. The confused, immoral left and their paper of record, The New York Times only see "innocent civilians throughout Lebanon." Europe, that moral bastion which gave birth to Nazism, will look at photos of men, women and children in despair, without putting the image into its proper context. Yet countries like Sweden, Switzerland and Ireland, who could not decide whether to support Hitler or Churchill during WWII, can drum up the moral authority to criticize Israel today. And leave it to Vichy, France 2006 headed by Jaques "Petain" Chirac to condemn Israel's response. Seeing television snippets of wounded or dead Lebanese with people sitting on the ground crying and calling them all "innocent civilians" is the same as looking at a photograph of the armpit of Christie Brinkley and saying, "Here is the photo of a supermodel. Isn't she beautiful?" The armpit picture is only a part of the story. When human beings see babies or mothers hurting, no matter what, we feel the pain. If we saw baby pictures of Charles Manson, we would want to cuddle him. We cannot look at photos of so-called "innocent civilians" in a vacuum. It is important for all "moral, decent" human beings to realize that the compassion emotion is similar to the sex emotion. Often times, it interferes with truth, logic and morality. Listen up, all you "Innocent Lebanese along with your innocent, Hezbollah supporting government." Do you want to know why your towns, villages and cities are smoldering? Do you want to know why 800,000 people are homeless and 600 are dead? Do you want to know why your infrastructure is devastated? The answer is: "The Jews are simply not going to pack up their little valises and walk into gas chambers again. The Jews will not be taken from their homes and marched into the Mediterranean Sea by Nazis or Hezbollah-Hamas-Syrian-Iranian, Nazi-like sympathizers. The Jews in Israel or anywhere else are just not going to allow themselves to be shipped away like you dream about every day. Attention all radical Muslims throughout the entire world and Jacques Chirac. The Jews will not be walking into death camps or graves ever again, and if you dare try it, Qana, Tyre, Nabatiyeh, Bint Jbeil, Kounine, Beit Yahoun, Rashaya, Baalbek, Majdel Zoun, Ayt-a-Shab, etc. will all look a whole lot worse than Dresden and Berlin. And Beirut may in the end become hotter than Hiroshima. Attention Lebanon--your country is smoldering because Jews are sick and tired of being murdered. You keep pushing those pathetic, weak, Torah studying Jews by using terrorism and kidnapping soldiers and all, yes all, of Lebanon will be smoldering. I urge any person that will be having dinner with Sayed Hassan Nesrallah, the big fat brave man hiding in his little rat hole while his fighters are being picked off like little olives on a tree, to make sure his life insurance is fully paid. Nasrallah is just a pimp for Iran, sending out his Hezbollah terrorist hookers to "screw the Jews." The amazing thing is that Iran is not an Arab country. They should not be involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict. They do not border Israel, so there is no Iranian territorial dispute where they claim, like everyone else, that Israel occupies their land. Yet, Ahmadinejad's (pronounced--"a mad dog on Jihad") hatred for Jews and Israel rivals that of Adolf Hitler. It is no wonder that the Iranian president feels this way. Israel is supreme in virtually every area--technically, militarily, scientifically, culturally, morally and religiously. Each attempt by macho Muslim/Arab countries to destroy Israel has been met with a totally devastating, humiliating defeat. Like Saddam, the skinny little Ahmadinejad aspires to be the big hero of the Muslim world. Ahmadinejad should not be deluded into thinking that he will get off as lightly as the Lebanese. He does not comprehend is that Israel will not use a tongue depressor when they capture him and his associates. Should Iran dare make one wrong move on Israel, Israel will simply "Beat the Shiite out of them!" Irwin N. Graulich is a motivational speaker on morality, ethics, religion and politics. He is also President and CEO of a marketing, branding and communications company in New York City. He can be reached at irwin.graulich@verizon.net. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Day After /
GAZA STRIP - The Palestinian prime minister's office is located on one of the small unpaved streets in Gaza's Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who last week managed to secure the consent of Hamas' armed wing to stop its Qassam rocket fire, enjoys a relatively quiet work environment - as long as the IDF isn't bombing his offices. But shortly after 4 P.M. yesterday, that quiet was disrupted when a van mounted with speakers parked nearby, blasting songs in praise of Hassan Nasrallah. The noise disturbed a meeting attended by Haniyeh, who is in no hurry to tie his fate with that of Hezbollah's secretary general. During the war in Lebanon, Haniyeh worked to stop the rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, and thereby avoid creating the impression of a second front against Israel. His spokesman, Ghazi Hamad, even stressed that there is no obligation to link the situations in Lebanon and the territories. Hamad's statements reflect Gaza residents' greatest fear - that after Israel finishes the war up north, it will be free to settle accounts with the Palestinians. This sentiment is heard in every conversation, and the impression created is that most Gaza Strip residents would be happy to return the kidnapped soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, to Israel. "If you find Shalit, do us a favor and take him with you," is a common utterance by Gazans who encounter an Israeli these days. "It's clear to us that we will pay the price of Lebanon as long as Shalit is being held here," said one of the Palestinian security services heads in Gaza. "You'll see that the IDF will enter Gaza to blot out what happened to it in the north." Haniyeh and his cabinet also understand the trap they are in. If the government pressures the kidnappers to release Shalit immediately with no return, the war-weary Gazan public will support it. The problem will be the families of Palestinian prisoners as well as radicals, who will be quick to brand Haniyeh and his people "traitors" on Al Jazeera. Clan power The entrance to Shifa Hospital in Gaza reeks of excrement from the donkeys tied to the gate. A sophisticated maternity ward built with Belgian donations is inside the building. Each month, an average of 950 babies are born in this hospital alone. The hospital is filled with patients' families, but also with legally armed men, members of Hamas' "operational force." They were sent here to maintain order following harassment of the medical staff by illegally armed men. This problem is evident in every area. An ordinary citizen who wants to resolve a legal problem with a friend or neighbor knows that the best way is to bypass the courts and hire armed men. Everyone has friends with weapons, and even if these are lacking, $100 will buy you four armed men for a whole day. They can help with debt collection, removing business rivals or taking over land. There are almost daily reports of assassinations, abductions and clan fights. On Saturday, for example, 5,000 people participated in a reconciliation ceremony between two clans whose dispute had cost several Palestinian lives. The fighting was triggered by two kids arguing over a falafel sandwich. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Disappointed locals want response to Qassam fire to be same as approach to rocket attacks on north. Residents of southern Israel are slamming Defense Minister Amir Peretz for adopting a more lenient approach to Qassam rocket attacks on communities in the south compared to the harsh response offered to rocket fire on northern residents. During the war in Lebanon, southern residents were excited about declarations by Peretz and his insistence on engaging in ground operations in the face of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's resistance. The southerners hoped that Peretz would adopt the same attitude to Palestinian rocket attacks originating in Gaza. However, the locals were bitterly disappointed to hear the defense minister's speech Wednesday that called for renewal of negotiations with the Palestinians. "I believe there's no room for any dialogue with the Palestinians," said Gil Ta'asa, the chief of security in the southern community of Netiv Ha'asara. "I think we learned a thing or two in the past month. The equation now is much simpler: For every Qassam fired we should destroy the house where it was fired from, exactly as was done against Katyusha fire in the north." Alon Davidi, who heads the anti-Qassam protest committee in the town of Sderot, wrote Peretz a letter, slamming him for his declarations regarding the need to renew negotiations with the Palestinians at this time, "while our dead are still lying before us." "His words upset many good people with common sense and an open heart," he wrote. "As if we didn't learn anything the past month. As if we didn't discover what's the Arab world all about on all its arms, starting with the President of Iran... and including some of the Arab Knesset members." "We have Amir Peretz the hallucinating politician, the hero of the Israeli Left, and then there's Amir Peretz who wants to hit Hizbullah with full force," Davidi concluded in his letter. 'Gaza withdrawal a mistake'
"At some phases in the war it appeared he finally realized where we live and what's the character of the old, menacing Middle East," Davidi said. "But then came his miserable declaration and showed us we shouldn't get excited about a few left-wingers who became wiser. There's still the hardcore within the government -- people with imagination who dream about peace and all sorts of agreements." Meanwhile, Deputy Mayor of Ashkelon Shimon Cohen also voiced his displeasure, adding that "now of all times, after the month we had in the north, anyone with a little intelligence in his head realizes that Arab mentality means a deal signed with us is no deal." "We must go back to full control of the Gaza Strip until we end Qassam fire," he said. "After what happened in Lebanon this is much clearer. Now it's clear to me that we made a terrible mistake while withdrawing from the Gaza Strip." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After being called to emergency reserve duty two weeks ago and much indecision on the part of the officers of how we would be utilized in the raging conflict, my unit was assigned a complicated mission. We were to penetrate some ten kilometers into Lebanon and root out and engage Hezbollah guerrillas that were concentrated in bunkers on a mountain slope facing northern Israel. Intelligence and aerial photographs described a site that was heavily fortified and defended by several cells of well-trained and equipped jihadists. Despite a sustained aerial bombardment by the air force, Katyusha rockets continued to be launched from the area into Haifa, Nahariya, Tzfat. The decision was made that the launchers could only be destroyed and the guerrillas eliminated by ground troops. The problematic nature of the action foreboded heavy casualties on our side. It's like trying to pull a rattlesnake out of its hole without getting bitten. Mine is a demolition unit, so the mission fell on us. I was honored to be the heavy gunner that would be on the point team. After three days of training, we crossed the border into Lebanon on foot, a week ago Sunday, and marched through the night, pushing deeper and deeper into Hezbollah's backyard. At dawn, after the first long night's march, we rushed the small village of Quzah in a hail of gunfire, grenades and missiles, and blew down doors and commandeered homes where we waited out the day. Our orders were to only move at night. We tried to rest inside the home as best we could, considering the intensity of the fighting all around us. Heavy artillery being fired from the Israel side of the border rained around the blocky outcropping of hilltop villas. Knowing we were in the area but unsure of our precise whereabouts, Hezbollah operatives in the hills surrounding us launched missiles and mortars shells randomly into the homes in the village through the night. Automatic gunfire was everywhere and we had no way of knowing if it was theirs or ours. Early that morning we received horrible news over the radio: in a village half a mile to our east, an advanced anti-tank missile was launched into a window of a home where a unit we had been working with in parallel was hunkered down. The result was devastating; nine killed, forty wounded. We had been with those guys hours before, sipping Turkish coffee around the buses before we crossed over the border. Now we heard their cries for assistance over the radio. Our initial objective was delayed as we were ordered to take up positions on a hillside in order to secure the evacuation of the dead and wounded under the cover of darkness back into Israel. In the hours just before dawn, we assaulted the village again and entered into the homes where we laid on the bathroom floor and in other rooms that did not have exterior walls. Quzah would be our home for two long days and nights. In daylight hours, we peered out the kitchen window at a valley to the east of us and watched as volleys of Katyushas were launched from the brush into northern Israel to our south. It was surreal seeing the Israeli towns across the border from the same perspective as the enemy. It was terrible. It was beautiful. We did our best to direct the artillery cells and the F16s to the precise positions, calling in coordinates as we peered out of the wreckage of previously shelled homes. If we saw a missile battery that was close enough, we crawled into the streets and fired our own rockets into the brush. The valley was bombarded relentlessly by artillery shells, the cannons systematically sweeping the area, tearing up huge swaths of earth. Every so often a shell would strike something hidden amongst the trees and a secondary explosion would erupt and missiles would fly from the brush in all directions like fireworks on the fourth of July. The secondary explosions were identified by us, and by pilot-less aircraft patrolling the skies; we zeroed in, and F16s swooped in, dropping massive bombs. We watched as huge silent explosions left moon sized craters, and moments later the sound and the concussion would hit us. It was as if the atmosphere would rip in the tremendous blasts, shaking the homes violently. We remained in that bombed out village for two nights, all the while taking mortar shells and hostile gunfire into the windows of the homes. You could hear the whistle of the mortars as they came down, and you could do absolutely nothing but sit on the floor and hope that it would not fall in your lap. It sounded as if Cadillacs were being catapulted into the village and the explosions shook the already shaky building and chunks of red-hot shrapnel rained down in the streets. At night, we left the houses and commandeered different homes so that Hezbollah would not zero in on our exact positions. We monitored their radio transmissions and heard them directing their fire to where they thought we were. We slept in one-hour stretches, if at all. After the last of the casualties was evacuated from the adjacent village - an excruciatingly slow process in which another one of our tanks was hit and four more precious soldiers lost - we left the village and continued on our march deeper into Lebanon. After two nights of hard treks through impossibly difficult terrain, we arrived to a hillside a few kilometers from our objective. Different units commandeered small villages along our route and provided cover for us as Hezbollah cells fired on us from the hillsides. The artillery was constant, pounding any structures that were along our path a kilometer before we would arrive. As planned, we arrived to a hillside where we waited amongst the scorched brush and shattered terraces for supply helicopters that were to come and drop off water and additional explosives that we would use to destroy the bunkers. After receiving the supplies, we were to continue making progress on foot to execute our mission. We were exhausted, filthy, but happy for the brief opportunity to drop our packs. And then, the unthinkable. The helicopters arrived gloriously, six of them, flying low over our heads. We had thought the area was relatively secure and the helicopters landed in a field maybe two hundred yards from where we sat behind boulders. After making their drops, the helicopters roared away again one by one towards Israel, again flying low, directly overhead. Suddenly, as if in a dream, I saw a rocket rise up out of a field maybe a hundred yards to the left of us. It took me a moment to realize what was happening, To my horror, the missile struck the fourth helicopter's left side, maybe 40 feet directly over my head. There was a huge fireball, and I don't know if I saw it or if I imagined it, but I pictured the pilot struggling with the controls. We thought the helicopter would crash down on us and there were a few moments of indescribable terror, but the crippled aircraft flew another 50 yards, turned over on its side and fell onto the hillside. There was a mushroom cloud of black smoke that enveloped a huge orange ball of fire as the helicopter exploded. I don't remember if I heard the explosion, I just remember my captain next to me in the bush saying, "my God, my God." Immediately, Hezbollah mortar shells began to rain down on our position and we dove for cover as the earth boiled around us. The remaining helicopters banked away and flew off, shooting off decoy flares. A second land-to-air missile rocket narrowly missed a Black Hawk that arrived to survey the scene of the crash. It too deployed decoy flares and swooped away. Heavy gunfire ripped through the pitch-black night, but I was uncertain if it was theirs or ours. I saw from where the missile came but couldn't shoot for fear of hitting one of our own in the darkness. This continued for many hours, and when the barrage ceased we retreated back into the valley, leaving a small force in the area to search for and watch over the wreckage of the helicopter. Hezbollah was sure to try to take the remains of the pilot and crew for ransom. Later, we learned that five of the helicopter's crew died in the crash. The loss was more than any of us could bear, but we considered ourselves fortunate. The helicopter was struck after it had made its drop. Minutes before, it had been full with some thirty soldiers. Because of the crash, we did not receive the supplies as planned, a serious development considering that we were down to out last canteens of water. In the few frantic hours before daylight, planes parachuted crates of water to us, but we were unable to find them in the rough terrain, and as dawn broke we retreated back to our previous positions before the Hezbollah snipers and mortar men emerged from their bunkers. We quickly hollowed out and entered into bushes and waited for night to come. To sleep was impossible. I was struggling against exhaustion and dehydration following the previous night's frantic search for the supplies. I had slept maybe four hours in previous four days and the constant burden of the heavy machine gun I carried and my battle vest with some thousand rounds of ammunition had taken its toll. I received two saline infusions in the bush and tried to eat from the few battle rations that remained but was unable to keep anything down. Most of day, three other soldiers and I sat in silence, unable to sleep, each absorbed in his own thoughts, resigning himself to a singular and unforeseeable fate. Some day I will find the words to describe the thoughts that go through your head under such circumstances. To try now would be futile. When dusk fell, we again geared up. The officers were determined to carry out the mission without further delay, but we were down to our last drops of water. Over the radio we learned that the bodies of the helicopter crew had been recovered. The officers decided to divide the unit into two task forces; one to evacuate the wounded amongst us: three soldiers who had broken or sprained ankles and legs in the previous days' frantic marches over the harsh terrain. They would be airlifted along with the remains of the helicopter crew back into Israeli territory. The second unit was to search for the water that had been dropped from airplanes the night before. After, we were to reunite and make our final push to the mountain slope to put an end to the firing of rockets from that area into our cities in the north. I was placed in the squad to evacuate the wounded, and as we made our way to the landing site carrying the stretchers, a call came over the radio. A General Staff order was made to all forces operating in the area: immediately stop all proactive measures in observance of a cease-fire, a cease fire that we had no idea was even in the works. Just like that, the war was suddenly over, for now. With news of the end of hostilities, the decision was made to evacuate me in my weakened state along with the wounded. Again, I found myself in the same area where I watched a helicopter shot down the night before, preparing to board a helicopter myself. The Black Hawk emerged from the black depths of the valley below us. As soon as it landed we ran to it, carrying the stretchers and the sacks with the remains of the dead. We dove inside and immediately the helicopter rose sharply and banked away, shooting flares from its sides to act as decoys for incoming rockets. I found myself lying amongst the dead and injured as the flight crew trampled over us. I could only see the fire from the flares and could have no idea if the extreme banking of the helicopter was a defensive measure or if we had been hit. After a few moments of terrifying uncertainty thinking we would hit the ground at any second, the helicopter leveled off and we rose sharply out of the range of any Hezbollah rockets and flew back into Israel. I was released from the hospital a few hours ago after being treated for severe dehydration and exhaustion. I just wanted to let everybody know that I am fine. Sorry if I made you guys worry too much. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reserves paratroopers brigade commander tells Ynet: Terrorists were surprised, had their back to us, at a certain point, we saw a rocket launcher driving towards us, unaware It was one of the most impressive battles in the war against Hizbullah. Dozens of terrorists were killed, many weapons -- including a 24-head rocket launcher - were destroyed, and not a single IDF soldier was hurt. The 'Spearhead' paratroopers reserves brigade, whose glorious past includes operations such as the liberation of eastern Jerusalem, crossing the Suez canal, the first Lebanon war and Operation 'Defensive Shield', succeeded, a moment before the ceasefire, to surprise and strike at Hizbullah. Brigade commander Col. Etai Virov told Ynet about the battle, which began Friday and ended Monday morning when the ceasefire took effect. "Most of the enemy didn't know what hit them, they tried to discover the location of their shooters facing Israel, but we were attacking from the north," he said. Invading the enemy's tactical homefront
Hundreds of additional soldiers, including Virov himself, walked for 12 hours, circumventing Beit Lif, in order to join the airlifted forces, resulting in almost a thousand soldiers positioned north of the enemy force. "We found ourselves in the Hizbullah homefront, in launching areas... We fought for more than three days. We fought through thickets, destroyed launchers and trucks carrying arms, fired at gunmen and killed dozens of terrorists," Virov recounts. "At a certain point, we saw a 24-head rocket launcher 500 meters from us... driving as if they thought no one could see them. We destroyed the launcher, along with the rocket. The two terrorists inside were killed," he continued. The brigade commander explained the logistical difficulty of the operation: "There was no access route and the soldiers were hauling 35-40 kg of equipment, each. Provisions were air dropped and we would send groups of soldiers, with bags, into enemy territory to get water and a little food. The enemy knew that we were there, but didn't realize the extent of the force or weaponry that we had." Regarding his soldiers, Virov has nothing but praise. "No soldiers in the IDF could be more steadfast... Their motivation was sky high. They're in excellent physical condition. No one complained or broke down." Wednesday night, the soldiers began the final march home, which ended at nine a.m. on Thursday. "We have a great sense of fulfillment," summed up Virov. "We successfully executed our mission and returned with no casualties." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Day After / Kiryat Shmona -
Kiryat Shmona, blasted by hundreds of Katyushas during the 34-day war, has suffered damages totaling tens of millions of shekels. Chief municipal engineer David Talbich said 2,003 apartments were damaged, with about 50 completely demolished by direct hits. In addition, three kilometers of water pipes have been destroyed, 45 craters pit the streets, and 151 cars and 100 graves were blown apart. Businesses and factories were hit, as were 12 schools, two of which will find it difficult to open for the new school year. Deputy mayor Sami Malul said it will take at least a year before the city can restore its infrastructure. But the city's residents are starting to come home. After a month, the traffic lights are working again on Tel Hai Street, the city's main street, as if to signal that the city is coming back to life. Some drivers did not know how to react - some ran the red light, some slowed down on the green. Hannah Ben-Hamu did not know how to react to the cease-fire. "I'm staying near the shelter for now," she said. "A bunch of Katyushas fells here, and I'm not taking any chances. Maybe it's the fate of this town to live in tension. I have a daughter who couldn't take it anymore. She moved a few years ago as far away as possible, to Eilat." A few shops have reopened. At the Shipudei Hamerkaz restaurant, owners Meir Yifrach and Eyal Amar were cleaning up, but hungry patrons would be disappointed. The pair opened the eatery just six months ago, and were just starting to see a profit. But last month broke them. "I'm overdrawn by NIS 25,000," Yifrach said. The two did not hide their anger at the bank. "They knew how to run to the TV and advertise easy loans to businesses in the north. But now when we need them, they're avoiding us," Yifrach said. Amar added angrily: "What's this home front everybody's talking about? I'm falling apart. They fought the war on our backs, and now nobody cares about us. Our war is just starting." Mayor Haim Barbevai entered the municipality building via a door that a few days ago was broken down by angry residents who were not given help to leave town. "The physical reconstruction doesn't scare me," he said. "The problem is the social situation. We are in a deep crisis," he added. The town's elderly population is a case in point. "If it wasn't for him, I would be dead," senior citizen Alex Koranin said regarding Shaul Daniel, who hands out food for a non-profit assoc iation. Daniel said the elderly are in a severe state of fear, helplessness and loneliness. The cease-fire infuriated some residents. "I don't know why we agreed to this," Avraham Ashtemaker said. "We shouldn't have stopped until they brought us Nasrallah's head on a platter." Ashtemaker, who had nightmares from the Yom Kippur War over the past month, looked up at the seared slopes of the Naphtali mountains overlooking Kiryat Shmona from the west. "Everything is dead; the green is gone. I don't think we'll be rehabilitated until the mountain is green again," he said. Most residents are pleased that quiet has returned to their town. "Finally my son Alex will be able to get dialysis in town," said Elizabeth Soroka, who lives in the same apartment block as Ben-Hamu. "During the war we had to go to the hospital in Safed three times a week, and it was very hard." Another neighbor, Bela Harustelov, left the shelter pushing a shopping cart filled with the things she and her husband used during the month in the shelter. "This was the first morning in a month that I wasn't afraid to take a shower," she said. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Northern residents return home:
For the first time in over a month, Nicole Gino hung her laundry in the back yard of her Metulla home on the Lebanese border. As she straightened out the clothing on the line, she was glad to be back but uneasy because she felt as if Hizbullah was still watching her from the apartment buildings across the valley. Only a orchard of fruit trees separates her house on the community's edge from a neighboring Lebanese village. Israel's shelling of Lebanon this summer and its ground war did not convince Gino that Israel had vanquished Hizbullah. But the cease-fire declared on Monday morning did convince her to finally head home after being on the road since mid-July with her two teenaged children and her elderly mother. While the government and the Home Front Command announced that life had returned to normal in the North on Tuesday, one day after the cease-fire went into effect, Gino struggled with the word "normal." Public buses ran again throughout the north and cars clogged the road as more than 90,000 people who had fled began returning home. But Gino's drive home on Monday evening was different then it would have been even two months ago. She passed tanks and soldiers camped along the road instead of the many tourists she would typically have seen hiking and picnicking at this time of year. Along the narrow streets of the hilltop community of 2,000, soldiers still march in and out of Lebanon. "There are even soldiers in back of our house. I feel like I'm in a military camp," Gino said. When she walked into her small home on Lebanon Street it was filled with dust and dirt. "I was up until 4 a.m. cleaning. And I washed the floors again today," she said. Laundry was folded on her kitchen table and more loads were in her washing machine. "I love Metulla, but this has exhausted me," said Gino as she sat and smoked a cigarette at her kitchen table. "I had no energy to come back. It's hard, very hard." Having lived in Metulla for 30 years, Gino is a veteran of rocket attacks and wars with her neighbors. But none of them were like this one, said the mother of six, including Oz, 19, who is in Lebanon. For Gino the war started at the end of June when Hamas attacked a tank on the Gaza border. Among the two soldiers killed was her daughter Orit's fiancé, Hanan Barak, 21, of Arad. "I so loved him," she said, wiping tears from her eyes. He came so often to their house that now her daughter has shied away from returning because being there reminds her too strongly of him. Then there was her son's bar mitzvah, which was planned for July 15. She had expected more than 100 people to fill the synagogue and instead they barely got the 10 men needed for her son to read from the Torah. Between the rocket attacks and artillery shelling it was dangerous to even head to the synagogue, Gino said. But it was news a few nights later of a possible terrorist infiltration that sent her fleeing in the night. Now that Gino has returned to her home, she thinks it is only a matter of time before the next round. "I don't believe there will be peace," she said. Even before the outbreak of hostilities she felt the building of tension. Over the years, she said, the buildings in the Lebanese village across the way have crept closer and closer. Often she feels as if people are spying on her and on others in Metulla. Still, she intends to stay put as long as possible, having exhausted her own ability to stay with friends and family as she has for the last month. "I have nowhere else to go," she said. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Education Minister Yuli Tamir, Finance Minister Avraham Hirschson, Interior Minister Roni Bar-On, Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter, and Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog met Tuesday in Karmiel with the mayors of all northern local authorities. Olmert gave the mayors a report on plans for rehabilitating the North, saying the government would work to ensure that the school year began on time on September 1. "This is the central mission of the government in the period ahead," Olmert said. "We will return life in the North to normal and lead the region forward (Kadima in Hebrew)." Earlier in the day, Prime Minister's Office Director-General Raanan Dinur led a delegation of directors general of ministries to the North. Dinur announced a new "sister city" program in which the 15 largest cities in Israel would each adopt a city in the North. Olmert said the Prime Minister's Office would begin a nationwide campaign to convince Israelis to take vacations in the North. In Kiryat Shimona, residents were busy returning home Tuesday and cleaning up their houses and businesses. Standing in his debris-filled store where a rocket hit over a week ago, Levi Zion estimated it would take a month to fix the damage. The windows were shattered and the concrete wall was marked with holes. Pieces of the ceiling lay on the floor. Food had fallen off the shelves. Cereal boxes, jars of chocolate spread and stacks of paper cuts were scattered everywhere. Still, he was hopeful he would be able to reopen soon. A few blocks away, Vered and Avishay Zinati, whose store was left unscathed, said they were unsure they wanted to stay. Newlyweds, the couple had recently returned to work from their honeymoon when they heard that two soldiers had been kidnapped on July 12. "I had a bad feeling," said Avishay. They didn't wait for the rockets to fall from the hills above them. "We closed the doors, took the car keys and left," he said. "We didn't even pack, Vered added. They returned on Tuesday, having spent money they couldn't afford on hotels and supplies. Between those bills and the loss of a month's earnings from the store, Avishay estimated he had lost all the money he made in the last year. He's not waiting for the next round between Hizbullah and Israel, he said. His hope is to close the store and move to the US. "There is no future here," he said. Gil Hoffman contributed to this report. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PLEASE SIGN this petition which is intended to force the world community to compensate Israel for Hizballah caused damage,
just as it prepares to compensate Lebanon!!!!
It is at
It reads: A Call to the UN to Provide Reparations To Israel Too for the Hezbollah War To: United Nations The Hezbollah War was brought on by a terrorist organization that hijacked the sovereign state of Lebanon, a member of the United Nations. Hezbollah, with the assistance of Iran and Syria, defied Security Council Resolution 1559 which, among other things, "Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias." Hezbollah launched this war against Israel, a democratic and sovereign state, and a member of the United Nations. Hezbollah is neither a state nor an official body belonging to one. Lebanon was to some degree an accomplice to its own loss of sovereignty by failing to act to protect it and failing to return to the Security Council for help. The UN Security Council failed to discharge its obligation. It allowed Hezbollah to entrench itself in Southern Lebanon and to spread its terror to the people of Lebanon. Both Israel and Lebanon have suffered great loss of life as well as widespread physical damage as a result of this war started by Hezbollah. It is, therefore, incumbent upon the world community, which stood aside while Hezbollah armed and trained for war, to provide reparations for the damage and destruction brought on by the aggression which sprang from Lebanese territory. We therefore call upon that community to bear the cost of rebuilding Israel in addition to Lebanon. Israel, which had withdrawn from Lebanon some years ago, was forced to engage in a defensive war to save the lives of its citizens. We further call upon the world community, through the United Nations, to seek indemnification for the damages from Iran and Syria the controllers of Hezbollah. Sincerely, The Undersigned [That's YOU!!!!] [I've just read and signed the online petition: "A Call to the UN to Provide Reparations for the Hezbollah War"!!!! I'm signator # 17860.....Sandy Rosen-Hazen My comment there is: "We can not respect a UN that pays reparations to terrorists based on their propaganda and does not intend to do the same for the Israeli victims of Hizbollah!!!"!!!! I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might agree, too.....if you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider signing yourself.....PLEASE add YOUR signature!!!!] You can sign it by by clicking here. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [Also, VERY important, PLEASE sign one more petition, which I have already signed.....it is a plea for UN action against the terrorists to get three IDF soldiers, who have been kidnapped, returned safely to us!!!! Please take the time to send out a request to your entire e-mail list asking all your friends to sign the petition, which requests the actions that will, G-d willing, result in the return of these fine young men:] It is at http://www.kidnappedsoldiers.com [It reads:] Kidnapped Israeli Soldiers - Bring them Home In order to bring the painstaking effort of attaining peace to its realization, the State of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, has made two courageous and exceptional decisions: Withdrawal from Lebanon and disengagement from the Gaza Strip. These were two very difficult decisions made by the courageous leadership of a peace-seeking country. In return, Israel was confronted with hostility, terror and ongoing attacks on its borders with the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. From the beginning of July, Israel has endured malicious and brutal attacks perpetrated on and within its borders by two terrorist organizations: Hammas and Hezbollah. To date, three IDF soldiers have been kidnapped and many killed. As a citizen of the free world, I am calling for the United Nations and my government to ban political, economical and tourist relations with the Lebanese, Iranian and Syrian governments, who serve as host countries to these terror organizations and who are supporting them financially. [Total Signatures to Date: 87870 -- PLEASE add YOURS.....] You can sign by clicking here. [THANK YOU!!!!] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Trickling back to Kiryat Shmona, residents survey
KIRYAT SHMONA, Aug. 15 (JTA) The entire Gigi family was cleaning out Hamburger House, a small fast-food restaurant along Kiryat Shmona's main road. Jars of condiments, cases of orange soda and stainless-steel pans lined the sidewalk as the family prepared for its reopening Wednesday, after the restaurant closed during a month of war. Omri Gigi, 25, who opened the restaurant just more than two years ago, hopes its reopening will herald better times in his hometown. "It will be hard, but we have to keep going," he said. The streets of Kiryat Shmona still were largely empty Tuesday, with only a handful of residents trickling back since a cease-fire was declared Monday in Israel's war with Hezbollah. Busloads of residents who took shelter in the center of the country slowly are making their way back to the city. Residents, some of them gone for the entire month, had a chance to survey the damage the shattered windows and crumpled ceiling of a ceramics shop, the gaping hole in the ceiling of one of the city's main shopping malls. Nurit Masiky, 43, got off a bus after almost three weeks of wandering between family and hotels, and could not stop smiling. "I want to kiss the ground. This is what we have been waiting for," she said, her two daughters by her side. Across the road, a new, cream-colored house with red shingled roof lay in silent disarray: A Katyusha rocket had crashed through its roof and through the second floor. Most of the shingles lay scattered in the garden below. Exposed silver roof beams reflected the harsh afternoon sun. The family that lives there had yet to return. But a neighbor from an adjacent house arrived home Tuesday and tried to grasp the new landscape of the city he has lived in since he immigrated from Iraq in 1956. "Kiryat Shmona has been destroyed," said Yehuda Yehuda, 75, looking at the house and then to the nearby hills, where forest fires have destroyed what was a view of endless green. Nearby, Shaked Perets, 23, sat in the ruins of her father's ceramics shop which before the war sold bathtubs, tiles and building supplies. The store's large showroom was empty; all the merchandise had been destroyed when the store took a direct hit from a rocket. "I think of all it took to build this business, and now it's all destroyed and we'll have to start again," she said. Perets wondered out loud if government compensation would come in full. She said she resents the government for giving partial payments at first, forcing people to pay out-of-pocket with money they don't always have. Sitting on a black leather couch, the one piece of furniture that remained unscathed, Perets said she feels numb. Not only were her father's shop and her own apartment damaged, but she's grieving the death of a friend, killed in Lebanon over the weekend, just before the cease-fire went into effect. "This is just property," she said, looking at the remains of the store. "Nothing compares to the lives taken." Outside of the store, whose windows were blown out, a few drivers navigated down the street. Most businesses were still closed, some of them shuttered. One of the few businesses open was a small barber shop owned by Shai Buhbut, 30. A long line of young men sat on the bench inside, waiting for haircuts. Buhbut said he had lost a lot of money in the month he was not working, but was sure he'd be able to recover financially if the cease-fire held and fighting indeed stopped. "If it happens again I will have to consider moving to the center of the country," he said. He turned toward a customer, and continued buzzing the side of his hair. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [People are still
nervous.....]
Rocket-warning sirens sounded in northern Israel on Thursday for the first time since a cease-fire went into effect along the Lebanese border on Monday. The sirens sounded due to a technical malfunction, Army Radio reported. There were no reports of rockets landing anywhere in the north. Sirens sounded in the Hula Valley and in the northern towns of Kiryat Shmona, Safed and Rosh Pina at 10:30 A.M. Thursday. Israel Radio announced that residents of the towns should seek shelter. Both Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces have refrained from aerial attacks since the UN-brokered cease-fire went into effect Monday morning. The Haifa port returned to routine functioning on Thursday, and residents flocked back to their homes in the north. Hezbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets at Israel during the month of fighting. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ University students in North say they aren't ready to start school:
Batsheva Dano had planned to spend the summer finishing up her college exams and waitressing to earn money for next semester. Instead, the war in Lebanon broke out, and the Tiberias resident spent much of the past month in shelters. Local colleges shut down, so her exams were never given, and businesses were closed, so she also could not work. Now, she has no money for the coming year's tuition. When she went to register, she said, "They asked me for NIS 2,500. I don't have the money. They said, 'pay in installments.' But I don't have a credit card." "My parents are also not working because of the situation," she continued. "Three weeks ago, two Katyushas fell 50 meters from our house. My mother has severe asthma; she was hospitalized and had an operation. I'm not sleeping nights. Every boom makes me jump." Dano's financial woes are not uncommon. A month ago, therefore, the Knesset Education Committee adopted a National Student Union proposal to establish a scholarship fund for students from the North. But the Education Ministry says that it has no money for the fund. Moreover, because the war broke out during final exams, most northern colleges postponed their finals until September. The schools promised the students some assistance. But two student petitions now circulating at Haifa University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology are demanding a more radical solution: that the exams be canceled, and all students simply be given a passing grade. Unsurprisingly, the universities have refused. But Dekel Cohen, chair of the Kinneret College Student Union, backs the idea. "People in the center [of the country] don't understand the gravity of the situation," he said. "There are students suffering from anxiety, students who are afraid to come to the college or to leave their buildings ... There are also students serving in the reserves. We aren't capable of studying right now." A. has a different problem. She had planned to start a master's degree in psychology this year, but to be accepted into the program, she needs to pass a national exam. And since the program is very competitive, a difference of even a few points on the test can be the difference between acceptance and rejection. The exam is held in October - not long after the rescheduled finals that students missed this summer - and most students attend a three-month preparatory course that started last month. A. therefore called the National Testing Center, which administers the exam, to ask that an additional, later sitting be scheduled for students from the North. The response shocked her. "You can take the material and sit in the shelter and study!" the clerk said. "And if you can't study at your house in the North, why don't you move to the center of the country?" The center told Haaretz that it is currently talking with the universities about the possibility of an additional test date. The war also caused registration at most northern colleges to plummet.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Despite fragile cease-fire. Israel still draws U.S. travelers:
NEW YORK (AP) -- Even Hezbollah missiles couldn't keep Hilda Goodman and her husband from canceling a trip to Israel they planned 13 years ago -- when their grandson was born. For his bar mitzvah in October, the couple plan to be in Jerusalem. Since hostilities in Israel and Lebanon started in July, Americans looking at the Middle East as a travel destination have had to answer a pressing question: to go or not to go. While tens of thousands of would-be visitors canceled flights, at least as many others are proceeding with travel to Israel -- including tourists, college students, devout Jews and some Christians. "We're going on the belief that things will work out," said Goodman, of Miami, adding that she knows dozens of other Americans going to Israel for the Jewish holidays of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah this fall. "People who really want to go to Israel for spiritual reasons don't cancel," said Batia Plotch, an Israeli-raised Manhattan trip organizer whose siblings live in northern Israel. Hundreds of college-age Americans also are heading to the region, or are already there. Carolyn Judge, a 28-year-old from the Chicago area who is of Roman Catholic heritage, arrived three weeks ago with 46 other Americans to attend medical school at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. "I'd never been to Israel before. But I have no sense of impending doom here -- I jog every morning and feel completely safe," Judge said by phone. At Tel Aviv University, about 20 Americans originally planning to attend classes have canceled so far, according to Olivia Blechner, director of academic affairs at Israel's Consulate General in New York. But more than 500 college-age students who belong to the Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish movement will attend a dozen yeshivas in Israel starting next month. "If we were not to go, the message we would be sending is one of despair," said rabbinical student Levi Schectman, 22, of Milwaukee, who will study at the Chabad Lubavitch Mayanot Yeshiva in Jerusalem. "The fact that we're going strengthens the people who have to live through this; it boosts their spirits." Of the more than 40,000 monthly U.S. visitors to Israel, as many as 35 percent canceled their trips in the month after the violence started in July, said Ari Sommer, Israel's tourism commissioner for North and South America. Christian groups that planned Holy Land pilgrimages later this year are holding off -- with promises that they won't have to pay any flight or hotel penalties should they decide to not go, Sommer said. If they do travel, their itineraries will omit a standard tourist stop, the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, which has been under fire. To help the decimated tourism industry there, a promotion has been offered to Americans, giving them the chance to reserve nights in hotels and bed-and-breakfasts, which have lost about $2 million a day. The offers can be redeemed until June 2007. Yitzchak Ariel, a New York City doctor, his wife and two young children finally decided to go to Israel in early October for a Jewish holiday, the harvest feast of Sukkot. Ariel convinced his wife by telling her that going to Israel "is just as safe as riding the subway in New York, with the possible terrorist threats here." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Extreme travel: Tour guides sell 'Katyusha circuit':
Travel agents recently asked the operators of Gonen Holiday Village to arrange a "Katyusha trail" tour of the area and sightseeing at damaged locations throughout the Galilee. Ori Alon, marketing director of the kibbutz resort, located near Kiryat Shmona, said that "people want to come and express solidarity, and see what took place in the North over the past month." She said the site is planning a package that will include visits to Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, which suffered both casualties and property damage, visits to homes in Kiryat Shmona that were hit by rockets, and meetings with people who spent time in bomb shelters. The package will also include visits to regional historic sites and an evening sing-along. Chairman of the Upper Galilee Kibbutzim Tourism Forum, Meir Levy, said his organization is preparing a "day after" program to encourage tourism to the area. "We know Israelis, and hope that, as usual, following a difficult period, they will return in droves to the Galilee to support us," Levy said. The Upper Galilee Regional Council is putting together a week-long event that will include a solidarity march, calls for peace, and a variety of other activities. The Tourism Ministry is allocating about NIS 3 million for an advertising campaign aimed at promoting domestic tourism throughout the North. In addition, Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog is sponsoring an initiative that would create a separate budget for "affirmative action marketing" for incoming tourism. If approved, tens of millions of shekels would be added to the 2007 state budget for this purpose. One hotel that will not benefit from this program is the Hacienda, near Ma'alot, which is part of the Shalom Plaza chain. After a NIS 15 million renovation over the past year, the hotel was hit by three missiles, and will remain closed for several months. "Unfortunately, it will take us a long time to restore it," assistant marketing director for the chain, Shauli Dor, said. "We lost this summer, and we'll lose the autumn's Jewish holiday season as well," he concluded. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Police search for unexploded ordnance across north:
More than 1,000 police officers, aided by Israel Defense Forces soldiers and Israel Nature and Parks Authority and Jewish National Fund officials, began searching tourist destination spots and nature reserves in the north on Wednesday to locate duds and rocket parts that landed over the past month. Vacationers and tourists streaming to the north will have to beware of numerous rocket duds still scattered in the region. Police sappers safely detonated eleven duds in the Galilee on Wednesday. Sweeps were also conducted in Haifa and Tiberias as well, after the Home Front Command gave its approval Tuesday to reopen beaches on the Sea of Galilee. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fight for the peace:
President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah are all declaring victory. They can't all be right. Many Israelis and outside observers seem to agree with Assad and Nasrallah that Israel lost. Yet whether the war was a defeat for Israel depends not just on the war itself, but on who wins the peace. If we - the US, Europe and Israel - give up on the aftermath, defeat is a certainty. But why should we give up? The other side is certainly losing no time in fighting to shape the peace. On Tuesday, Nasrallah announced that Hizbullah would not disarm, and Assad openly defended the Islamist organization, claiming, "The resistance is necessary as much as it is natural and legitimate." Lebanon's Defense Minister Elias Murr, while sending 15,000 troops southward, said, "The army is not going to the south to strip Hizbullah of weapons and do the work Israel did not." The Lebanese government is reportedly going to allow Hizbullah to keep "hidden weapons" in the south. Contradicting his own statements and the reported agreement regarding hidden weapons, Murr also said, "The resistance is cooperating to the utmost level so that as soon as the Lebanese army arrives in the south there will be no weapons but those of the army." [But, how many Hizbollah members will be in the Lebanese Army?!?!] Finally, the commander of UNIFIL, French Maj.-Gen. Alain Pellegrini, made a mockery of himself and his force when he told the BBC that if he saw the IDF and Hizbullah fighting he would "beg" them to stop. Given all this, it is hardly surprising that Bush's and Olmert's insistence that we are on track to disarming Hizbullah and creating a new reality is being met with widespread ridicule. If nothing changes, such defeatism will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The US, Europe, and Israel, however, need not stand by helplessly as UN Security Council Resolution 1701 becomes a dead letter before the ink has dried. Before the war, the European Union steadfastly rejected American and Israeli requests to place Hizbullah on its terrorist list. Even during the war, on August 1, as Hizbullah was bombarding Israeli civilians night and day, Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, responded to a letter from 213 members of the US Congress urging the union to change its position by saying: "Given the sensitive situation, I don't think this is something we will be acting on now." If the EU does not want to see Lebanon once again become a pawn of Hizbullah and Iran, counting down to the next war, now would be a good time to change its position. The EU should immediately say to Lebanon that if Hizbullah is not disarmed, the EU will regard it as a terrorist organization, and regard Lebanon as country that supports terrorism for refusing to disarm it. Similarly, Iran and Syria are openly expressing support for Hizbullah and opposition to its disarmament. The US and the EU must quickly state that they will seek sanctions against these countries for supporting terrorism and violating Lebanon's independence. The UN rightly took Syria's assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri seriously. It appointed an investigator, and took action when the investigation clearly implicated the Syrian regime. A tougher approach should be taken toward the continuing Syrian/Iranian arming of Hizbullah. As important as the assassination of a former prime minister is, it pales beside the consequences for Lebanon and the region should Hizbullah be allowed to rebuild its arsenal, or even to retain the arms currently in its possession. [But, how many Hizbollah members will be in the Lebanese Army?!?!] The UN, therefore, should launch a full investigation of the Syrian/Iranian arming of Hizbullah, similar to the investigation into the Hariri assassination. The results should be linked to sanctions against these two nations, until such time as this international aggression is stopped. To help force the UN's hand, Israel should send an ultimatum backed by force to Syria to stop its support for anti-Israeli terrorism, similar to the Turkish ultimatum to Syria to stop arming the PKK - as proposed by Efraim Inbar on this page. The skeptics assume that none of this will happen. Past behavior gives every reason to believe they will be proven right. Why, though, must the West blindly repeat its mistakes? We do know this: If Bush and Olmert do not even attempt to leverage the obvious lessons of this war to dramatically change UN and European policy, their claims of victory stand no chance of becoming reality and recent bloody history will, at best, repeat itself. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lebanese cabinet won't force Hezbollah to disarm
The Israel Defense Forces has begun its withdrawal from southern Lebanon, handing over some of their positions to a UN force, the army said early Thursday. "Following a joint agreement of members of the IDF, UNIFIL and the Lebanese army, the process of transferring authority has begun," an army statement said. Under a UN cease-fire agreement, Israel was to transfer control of its positions in southern Lebanon to the UN force, who would then turn it over to the Lebanese army. [But, how many Hizbollah members will be in the Lebanese Army?!?!] More than 50 percent of the areas Israel holds have been transferred already, the army said. The area extends north and east of the town of Marjayoun and another area further west. "The process will be carried out in stages and is conditional on the reinforcement of UNIFIL and the ability of the Lebanese army to take effective control of the area," the statement said. [But, how many Hizbollah members will be in the Lebanese Army?!?!] The Security Council resolution authorized up to 15,000 UN peacekeepers to help 15,000 Lebanese troops extend their authority throughout south Lebanon, which Hezbollah controls, and called on Israeli troops to withdraw "in parallel." The aim is to create a buffer zone free of Hezbollah fighters between the Litani River, 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of Israel, and the UN-drawn border. There are currently some 2,000 UNIFIL troops in the area. Lebanese cabinet will not force Hezbollah to disarm The Lebanese cabinet on Wednesday accepted the Lebanese army's plan to deploy in southern Lebanon, and ordered 15,000 troops to depart for the area south of the Litani River after midnight Thursday. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora was set to announce the imminent deployment late Wednesday. According to the cabinet decision, Hezbollah will not disarm in southern Lebanon, but its members will refrain from carrying weapons in public. The agreement was reached following deliberations with Hezbollah representatives that lasted days. The Lebanese government's decision contradicts United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, reached last week, which determines that the area south of the Litani River will be free of arms, aside from those held by Lebanese soldiers and UNIFIL troops. The cabinet made the decision after Hezbollah rejected all demands to disarm south of the Litani. "The weapons of the resistance are the only ones, of all Arabs, that succeeded in standing up to Israel and defeating it. No one can take away the weapons of the resistance, certainly not by force," pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, who headed the cabinet meeting, said. "The Lebanese army will deploy [in the south] and will be for all the Lebanese," he told reporters. [But, how many Hizbollah members will be in the Lebanese Army?!?!] Al-Jazeera reported Wednesday that Hezbollah rejected all proposals, including that it transfer its weapons to the Lebanese army, transfer its weapons to UNIFIL or allow the Lebanese army to search the organization's positions for weapons. A compromise was reached, according to which Hezbollah will not conduct military activities in southern Lebanon. [But, how many Hizbollah members will be in the Lebanese Army?!?!] The government decision does not mention collecting Hezbollah weapons, but only that there will not be an "armed military presence" of Hezbollah in the south, or of any factor aside from the Lebanese army or UNIFIL. [But, how many Hizbollah members will be in the Lebanese Army?!?!] Hezbollah's top official in south Lebanon, Sheik Nabil Kaouk, told reporters in Tyre that the group welcomes the Lebanese army's additional deployment in the south. [No kidding?!?!] "Just like in the past, Hezbollah had no visible military presence and there will not be any visible presence now," he said. [No, Not "visible", but how many Hizbollah members will be imbedded within the Lebanese Army?!?!] That was the strongest indication that the guerrillas would not disarm in the region or withdraw, but rather melt into the local population and hide their weapons. [Within the Lebanese Army?!?!] The United States welcomed the Lebanese decision to deploy troops. "It shows their commitment by a democratically elected government to holding the peace, to holding this cessation of violence, their willingness to act in accordance with the United Nations Security Council resolutions," State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos told reporters. Halutz: IDF will halt pullout if Lebanon army not deployed The cabinet, which includes two Hezbollah ministers, reached its decision only hours after IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said Wednesday that the IDF would halt its withdrawal from southern Lebanon if the Lebanese army did not deploy in the area within days. "The withdrawal of the IDF within 10 days is dependent upon the deployment of the Lebanese army," Halutz told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Commitee, according to a spokesman. "If the Lebanese army does not move down within a number of days to the south... the way I see it, we must stop our withdrawal," Halutz added. The army's deployment would be a symbolic force, a political source in Beirut said on Tuesday. Over the coming weeks the deployment will increase. This will be the first time in more than two decades that the Lebanese army has positioned itself along the border with Israel. However, foreign journalists in Lebanon expressed pessimism at the ability of Lebanon's army to confront any other armed force in the area. The notion that the Lebanese army will be able to deal with Hezbollah "is simply a joke," they said. [Especially because Hizbollah members WILL be IN the Lebanese Army!!!!] The Lebanese army's ability to wage war is indeed very limited. Israeli military sources said that army suffered a great deal due to the presence of Syrian forces in the country. During Syria's years in Lebanon, the army's role was limited mostly to internal security functions. In recent years the Lebanese army has not acquired any new equipment or arms. Most of its Western-made weapons are aging; Syria is providing Lebanon with some Russian-made equipment. Overall, the Lebanese army has a small number of tanks, armored carriers (both tracked and wheeled) and a few helicopters. [But, how many Hizbollah members will be in the Lebanese Army?!?!] However, the significance of the deployment stems from the army's symbolic presence in the south of the country. Israeli sources note that during tense periods following the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, the army dispersed demonstrations - including those of Hezbollah, Palestinians and extremist Islamic groups - in refugee camps throughout the country. "The army could make the effort and be effective, but at the end of the day that is a political issue," Lebanese sources said. The Lebanese army consists of conscripts. Until a decade ago its brigades were divided along sectarian lines, but following the Taif Agreements of 1989, which officially ended nearly 15 years of civil war, this has changed. However, while sectarian divisions are no longer active in the army, its composition reflects a balance of power among Lebanon's various groups. Christians make up about 40 percent of the force. The remainder are Muslims, both Shi'ites (35 percent) and Sunnis (25 percent). Also, in an effort to avoid the development of ties between the army and local populations, the units are repositioned inside the country regularly. In 2005 the Lebanese parliament decided to cancel mandatory conscription and transform the army into a professional force. The process is expected to be completed by next year, at which point the army will stand at 40,000 men. There are currently 50,000 soldiers, and 15,000 more reservists. [But, how many Hizbollah members will be in the "new" Lebanese Army?!?!] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Enough about "our" war.....here's a little on EVERYone's war: Terrorists Win: Deodorant Banned from Airplanes by Ann Coulter -- HumanEvents.com -- August 16, 2006 Last week, British authorities arrested 24 members of a terrorist cell plotting to blow up about a dozen U.S.-bound planes simultaneously. As a result of those arrests, we learned: ** Nothing being done by airport security since 9/11 would prevent a bomb from being brought onto an airplane; and ** This terrorist plot -- like all other terrorist plots -- was stopped by ethnic profiling. Last week marked the first official admission that everything government airport screeners have been doing until now is completely pointless -- unless you're an airport security guard with a thing for women's undergarments, in which case it's been highly effective. As we now know, all the ingredients necessary to blow up an airplane can be carried in small liquid containers. Airport security has not even been looking for small liquid containers. Judging from my personal experience, they seem to have been focusing on finding explosive devices inside women's brassieres. After five years of submissively complying with bag checks, shoe checks and underwire bra checks, Americans have now been informed that the hell we've been going through at the airports has been a useless Kabuki theater. The procedures that have wasted millions of hours of time cannot keep the most basic bomb materials off an airplane. This is like locking your windows to prevent burglaries, while leaving the front door wide open. Airport security has been using metal detectors to confiscate sharp objects that could be turned into make-shift weapons, which could then be used by terrorists to commandeer control of a plane and fly it into a building. Except the terrorists can't do that because we've seen that trick before. After 9/11, airline passengers will never allow a half-dozen terrorists to take control of a plane again. Indeed, on 9/11, passengers on Flight 93 prevented terrorists who had already been given control of the plane from flying it into a building after hearing what had happened to the first three hijacked planes. To pull off a 9/11-style attack now, literally half the passengers on the plane would have to be terrorists. (At least the airport screeners wouldn't have to worry about confiscating a lot of deodorants.) I think a planeful of Arabs would attract attention -- except from people who had recently completed a government training program teaching them not to notice anyone's appearance. Not even a group of liberal Democrats flying off to a Renaissance Weekend would stand for that. The sole objective of airport security post-9/11 has been to accomplish the impossible -- remove all sharp objects from a plane -- in order to prevent an attack that won't ever happen again. (OK -- well, that and finding out what color of lingerie Ann Coulter prefers.) The plan seems to be to make flying so unpleasant that terrorists -- like the people who write laws about airport security -- will refuse to fly commercial air. On that theory, we could also keep terrorists off planes by forcing passengers to undergo root canal surgery before boarding, making them stand on their heads for an hour, or enacting an "all Whoopi Goldberg in-flight movie" policy. What stopped last week's terrorist attack was ethnic profiling. We don't know the details of the British intelligence work that nabbed the 24 Muslims because The New York Times has not been able to obtain that classified information and publish it on its front page yet. But it is a fact that you could not catch 24 Muslim terrorists by surveilling everyone in Britain equally. Without the ethnic profiling going on outside of airports, no security procedure currently permissible inside airports would have prevented a terrorist attack that would have left thousands dead. Airplanes, ports, bridges, subways and shopping malls cannot ever be sanitized against every type of attack that can be dreamed up by fanatics engaged in asymmetrical warfare. We have to target the fanatics themselves. Baby formula doesn't kill people. Islamic fascists kill people. Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of "Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Slander" and most recently of "How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)." Sandy Rosen-Hazen lives in Safed. Contact her by email at
Sandy@israel.net or go to her website:
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WHO FIGHTS WANTONLY; MUSLIMS HAD THEIR OWN CRUSADES
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 17, 2006. |
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ARAB HYPOCRISY OVER CRUSADERS The Arabs still resent the Crusades, which ended about eight hundred years ago. What were the Muslims doing at that time? They were conquering the sub-continent of India. Their standard is: attacking them is immoral, but their attacking others is moral. IS ISRAELI BOMBING WANTONLY DESTRUCTIVE? It is, according to London and NY Times newspapers. They report the destruction, including Arab claims about it, probably exaggerated. They seldom report the reasons or how Israel goes about it. Both in Lebanon and in Gaza, the IDF knew that certain houses in civilian areas were storage depots for enemy arms. Nevertheless, for some time, it restrained itself from attacking those houses, lest civilians around them be injured. The enemy use of those houses is a war crime, for endangering civilians. After a while, Israel felt it worse to suffer casualties as a result of enemy war crimes. It still did not attack those houses. Instead of dropping bombs on the neighborhoods, it dropped leaflets warning residents to clear away from weapons depots, for their own safety. The warnings gave the enemy time to transfer the weapons cache. Warning given, the IDF then bombed those houses. The newspapers report the Israeli destruction of Arab houses, as if it is Israel that lacks a conscience about Arabs. Israel also was blamed for creating a refugee problem. If the media were fair, it would hold the terrorist aggressors responsible for their crimes. This media failure shows bias. Who really lacks a conscience, here? (1) The Arab enemy and supporters, for endangering theown civilians; (2) The media, for ignoring that crime and defaming Israel, which committed no crime; and (3) The Israeli government, for initially giving preference to enemy civilians over its own civilians and troops and then for giving the enemy time safely to transfer the weapons cache. The Israeli government is too solicitous of enemy civilians and of foreign media. It does not get favorable mention by the foreign media for its good deeds. Its appeasement of the media is futile. It does not know how to present its own case. The media plays up Arab suffering and plays down Israeli suffering, and equates suffering morally, although the Arabs caused both types of suffering and deserve little sympathy for supporting attempted genocide. The media makes Israel appear to be causing the suffering. If the media were fair, it would carry IDF reports of the tonnage of relief supplies that it lets through. Considering the Arab goal of jihad, should Israel let food and fuel through into Gaza, engaged in a genocidal war against the Jews, for no reason but religious intolerance? 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@aol.com. |
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ISRAELI LEFT NOW GETS IT TOO
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 17, 2006. |
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Yoram Kenyuk is an Israeli author known for his far Left opinion and thinking. He waited longer than 60 years to write this article. And even with these words it is difficult for him to shake the Fascistic Left off, thus praises his daughter of her actions in the Israeli check posts. Pregnant Palestinian woman living in Shchem but wants to give birth in Ramallah driving the Israeli security forces crazy, preoccupies them, thus assists a Jihadist homicide bomber to cross the check post 500 meter away from it and execute his task in Nataniya killing innocent civilian. (I guess Yoram Kenyuk and his daughter is just one more enemy within Israel does not need - shame on him!) |
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There Are No Katyushas In The Square The Jews do not release evil and occupy from F-16 but fascism and the Left have one truth. They called me to say that Saturday night there is anti-war protest-demonstration. Against what war? There were time I would be protesting in my sleep; I will be among the first to action. I will be against any occupation atrocities, against that war in Lebanon. But what kind of occupation there is now in Lebanon? We left it; we left Gaza. The Iranians say Israel must be wiped out; must be wiped off the map. What other country on the face of the earth is threatened with being wiped out? To what nation they refer to in London and Spain when they say it lives on blood and occupation, killing, murdering and war crimes? Here they write that the war was Olmert's muscle demonstration and he got caried away so he could be remembered in history as a statesman. In the building where I live there us a girl who told me that the kids in Nazareth were killed because Israel did not build shelters because it wanted Arabs killed in Nazareth but she did not know that in the very religious Tzfat there were no shelters either. So demonstration for what? That Israel does not want anyone exhorting its destruction and is not prepared to get hit by rockets falling on Ashkelon, Sderot, Naharyia, Haifa? Is there any other city in the entire world that is prepared to be hit by rockets and yet sit quietly and find excuses and understand the enemy and in fact even support it? The Left leader Noam Chomansky met with Hezbollah?according to its own leaders is a terrorist, murderous, extremist, nationalist organization?and he saluted. The fascism Left, like the Right, does not believe it is possible the other side is on the right of the issues. They believe there is only one truth. We recognize that from the days when we set apposite the "Nations' Sun" murderer of millions and they stood and said that the revolution there is also ours. Not occupation, Jihad Someone said I joined the Right. Wrong, but what is with them? Anyone who is not for the destruction of Israel, or for belly crawling is to the Right. But what is wrong with that? True, I am not to the Right but what exactly is to the Right in the Arab-Jewish story? In this war the victory will be when you lay the truth on the threshold. I read articles how it all connected to the occupation. That we need to negotiate, but with whom? What Lebanon has to do with occupation? It is not evil and occupation the Jews release from their F-16. It was always clear but we ignored it: it is the radical Islam war with the West where we are its accessible tip so that Spanish and French can hate us. Since Balfour Declaration, with us it is the war with the Arabs. No Muslim entity can take in another national entity to be a nation within a nation. Look at the ancient Coptic Egyptians. Today they are seven percent of what they were and still they are persecuted; not because they are Christians but because they are occupied nation. I read about future investigative committees on the 11-days war and how our military, the government, the entire nation all are captured by banal slogans and are victims of motional extortion, existence false alarm and because we occupy Jennin Katyushas were shot. Hezbollah attacked us in South America and Lebanon before it discovered Shebba Farms that is after all Syrian territory. So what do we do? In the protest-demonstration we spoke about our crimes, that it is a cruel war, where children are killed on both sides and in light of the munitions, there, more than here. But homicide bomber is not just a Jew who traveled to Shchem (Nablus) to blow a movie theatre and one has to be inhuman to believe what I read in the newspapers. On the other hand, I have no problem they write this. I have a problem if this is the entire truth. I am not evil and in spite the many killings I support this war and Olmert who is managing an important war, war of principle. In one minute he became a statesman. He is the manager who knows to differentiate between the chaff and straw. A man is an animal Perhaps I am mistaken and this could be so. God was mistaken when He created the world. Everything could happen. What is not possible is that there is only one truth? It is not us who allowed extremist terrorists build their foundation inside the living rooms. There is a moment when a man is an animal. In nature everyone fights for survival until it gets to the charming journalists the cynical, wise philosophers. This time we are fighting for our existence. We returned to the days when at 17 I joined the military (Plamach) because the Arabs did not agree to accept the division of the territory, thus opened fire on Jewish vehicles. And only few days earlier because of the dream of a multinational country, I was a member of a youth movement. No, I am not embarrassed about those days when, much before there was occupation I shouted against occupation. I was there and I was hit. Not that bad. I was on the committee for the displaced I will do it again. And I was in the Galil with a Communist who, in a small village was shouting in German against my Mom and Dad. I love my activist daughter sitting near the check posts, helping Palestinians in trouble, being hit by settlers and soldiers but does not sit at home to write her thoughts. She believes in the "state of all its citizens." So do I. It is the most logical solution. But I am not prepared to give up on the Jewish state; therefore I believe we will need to fight another 100 years because there is not an Arab in the world that will accept us as Israel; not big, not small; not conquering like in the 30s when traveled in armored cars, not like now with the occupation. After the Ma'alot massacre, I suggested to Arab friends, poets, writers, and artists, to issue a mutual condemnation announcement and at the same time condemn Israel air strikes on Lebanon. They did not agree because the murderous Palestinians are guerrilla fighters and Israel is a terrorist state. For years I did not understand that but now, when I see those who object Israel's occupation cheer for Hezbollah I understand it very well. p.s. After the Ma'alot massacre, Israel's air force did not attack Lebanon; then we still respected Lebanon air space sovereignty. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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EUREKA - WE HAVE DISCOVERED ISRAEL'S ACHIEVEMENT IN THE WAR!
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 17, 2006. |
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1. The banner headline in Haaretz today: Defense Minister Peretz Claims the Army did Not warn Him there were
Missiles and Rockets in Lebanon!
Now I personally published at least 50 articles and web postings after the Barak capitulation and unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon, warning that northern Israel would soon be bathed by thousands of Hezbollah katyushas, and I was hardly alone. I wonder what else Peretz was never warned of by the army - maybe that snakes bite and that smoking is bad for your health? 2. Meanwhile, Dan Halutz, Israel's commander in chief of the army, has at last gone on the war path - against other generals he claims are leaking news of his own incompetence to the press. Halutz threatened his generals with surveillance of their phone lines to identify the leakers. I am waiting to see if he orders his staff to burglarize the Watergate hotel. 3. Eureka - We have discovered Israel's Achievement in the War! No one is even pretending any longer that the ceasefire agreement Israel signed will produce the disarming and dismembering of the Hezbollah Islamofascist terror mechanism. Haaretz reports that the new understanding is that Hezbollah will keep all its weapons but simply will not parade them too openly in public. Really. SO it is now official. Israel sacrificed 117 soldiers and dozens of civilians, absorbing 4000 katyusha rockets, so that the Hezbollah terrorists would henceforth have to hide their katyusha rockets underneath their galabiya's!! 4. Uri Bar Yosef teaches political science at Haifa University. He is a post-Zionist extremist and close associate of Ilan Pappe. Writing a guest Op-Ed in Haaretz today, he has a new idea for a peace plan. Israel should give the Golan Heights to Syria, give the Palestinians everything ThHEY want, and by doing so the Iran problem will be solved. Israel will no longer be threatened by Iran, which will be "isolated", left with no supporters other than some Israeli professors. Of course, that would be because Israel will by then have been converted into a web site. (In Hebrew, at http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/751646.html) 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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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BENJY HILLMAN HY'D
Posted by BritishLikud-Herut Organization, August 17, 2006. |
Dear Friend, It was a storybook wedding; such a fine picture they cut, the handsome young Israeli officer in slacks and a white shirt, dancing with his young beautiful bride; it could have been a movie, only it was so much better, because it was real. The image of Benji, with his shy smile and twinkling eyes surprising his bride Ayala and serenading her to the delight of hundreds of guests, as everyone, and particularly Ayala, simply reveled in the moment, stayed with us all, long after the wedding was over. It was one of those freeze frame moments in time, to cherish forever. And then only three weeks later, we had a chance to get together-family and friends all over again, only this time there were no invitations, no dancing, and no smiles, no twinkling eyes and no tinkling glasses. And Ayala was not beaming in a magnificent white wedding dress, she was broken and dressed in black; Israel's latest young war widow. Benji was a son of Olim from England. He became a Company Commander in one of the most elite commando units of the Israeli army. He didn't talk much about it; he was not a talker; he was a do-er. He died as he lived, volunteering just three weeks after his fairytale wedding to lead his young men from the front in a bitter battle in Lebanon, with the cry of every Israeli combat officer Acharay! - follow me! - on his lips. Benji gave his life defending the People of Israel, and in reality, every Jew and every decent citizen everywhere, so that one day we can all know real peace.... Benji had an unstinting sense of responsibility toward the soldiers under his command, particularly those in distress. Many Chayalim Bodedim - lone soldiers have left their home countries in order to fulfill their beliefs in the most selfless form, by volunteering to defend the People of Israel. These young men have no family in Israel, barely speak Hebrew, cannot rent an apartment because they don't get enough income from the army, and have nowhere to go when they do get leave from base. They must seek out places to stay, figure out a way to do their laundry, grab an inexpensive meal, or take care of personal errands instead of catching up on precious sleep and receiving perhaps a little well deserved care and attention. In addition, there are boys whose families are living far below the poverty line, who are not treated to a home-cooked meal, whose family residences are inadequate, unheated, lacking electricity or phone services. Some lone boys returning fatigued from training or warfare collapse from exhaustion on a tattered couch or a bare mattress flung in a hallway. Others hail from severely dysfunctional or abusive backgrounds -- these boys, who put their lives on the line every day for Israel's home front, cannot even risk going home for fear of physical harm. Benji Hillman had several such boys in distress under his command, and he was acutely aware of their circumstances. During the Shiva -- the week of mourning following his death -- we were struck by the tales of so many chayalim bodedim who related Benji's tireless efforts to assist them, selflessly and caringly, quietly and without fanfare. We would like to continue Benji's legacy, and help ensure that every soldier serving in defense of the Jewish people has a place to go home, even if his family is thousands of miles away or just unable to take care of him. We, the family and friends, have established a charitable endeavor - Keren Benji Hillman. Keren Benji Hillman's goal is to provide these boys with general and financial assistance, a warm bed, good food, a room of their own away from the army, and of course all the love, care, attention and help that they need at Habayit Shel Benji (Benji's Home). If you are looking for a way to help Israel in one of her most challenging hours, here is an opportunity to really make a difference to the lives of the young men who are giving up so much for all of us; here is a chance to give a little back. We hope you are able to respond to this call to help us establish an enduring legacy to the life and selfless values of Benji. In order to enable us to create, build and run this Keren, (for the first number of years), we are seeking to raise the initial $1M USD from family and friends. The future of the Foundation will be financed by periodical fundraising events, Private Charities, NPOs and Governmental grants. A financial plan will be made available upon request. We ask you to consider what donation you are able to make in order to ensure that the young men who put their lives on the line for us, know and feel that we care about them-now and always. Not all of us are built for the front line. All of us can show we care. Benji would have read this and done something about it immediately, we hope you do too. With love and our deepest thanks and appreciation for all your support, it really makes a difference to us all. The family and friends of Benji Hillman hy"d Yehi Zichro' Baruch - may his name blessed forever. In Israel and other Countries other than UK and US, donations may be forwarded to: -- Keren Benji Hillman -- Mercaz Khilati Torani Bnei Adat Yisrael -- Hahayil 7/7 Raanana, or made by direct bank transfer to Bank Mizrahi, Branch 423, account 520957 -- Keren Benji Hillman -- Mercaz Khilati Torani Bnei Adat Yisrael. In the UK: donations may be forwarded to: "The Benji Hillman Charitable Foundation" 23 Wykeham Rd, London NW4 2TB or made by direct bank transfer to "The Benji Hillman Charitable Foundation" NatWest Account number 82063354 sort code 601034. In the US: Please send pledges to info@benjihillman.org or by post to Hahayil 7/7 Raanana, Israel -- details regarding charitable tax deductions will be provided. Direct donations may also be sent to this address or made by direct bank transfer to Bank Mizrahi, Branch 423; account 520957 Swift -- Keren Benji Hillman -- Mercaz Khilati Torani Bnei Adat Yisrael -- These Donations may not be tax deductible. Keren Benji Hillman is a charitable endeavor devoted to social welfare projects in Israel. Funds will only be channeled as such. If you would like to learn more about Benji, please visit the web site: http://www.benjihillman.org If you would like more information about The Benji Hillman Charitable Foundation or add a memory or contribution of your own please to the website, please e-mail info@benjihillman.org or call +972 522 428 448 Donations are tax deductible and recognized as charitable contributions in Israel and UK -- receipts will be provided for tax purposes. US donations are tax deductible only after sending pledge and receiving further instructions. * Important -- Following a donation we would ask you to email or fax
your personal and contribution details to info@benjihillman.org or
+972-9-7466669 for bookkeeping purposes. Please mention if you need a
tax receipt/country. All details will be kept completely confidential.
Contact the British Likud-Herut organization
at info@likud-herut.org.uk
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AIRPORT SECURITY: TAKE AWAY MY MASCARA? THIS MEANS WAR!
Posted by Arlene Peck, August 17, 2006. |
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For years, I have been writing that there is a whole evil culture out there called "Islam" which wants to kill everybody who is not them. Like a mantra, I've repeated over and over, "Israel is the canary in the coal mine and these crazed maniacs don't give a diddly-squat about 'Land for Peace.'" Nor do they have a desire to live "as neighbors, with Israel, side by side." The Arab interpretation of "peace" is far from our Western understanding: "Side by side" to them means "Drive Israel into the sea." That is non-negotiable, and is, in fact, a prior condition before they set their sights on the rest of the world with the aim of forcing all people into submission to Islam. Even now, as churches and synagogues burn across the world, here, on every corner of mainstream America, mosques are popping up as fast as you can say "Where's the Wal-Mart"? If you don't believe me, then where are the protests of any of these 1.4 billion servants of Mohammad who aren't in agreement with the latest terrorist plot to blow up a dozen or so airplanes leaving Great Britain for the U.S.A? The only protest that I have seen was an article about an Arab group protest against "racial profiling" at airports or seaports. Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American- Islamic Relations (CAIR) advocacy group complained at a news conference about President Bush's use of the term "Islamofascist," saying, "We believe that it is counterproductive to associate Islam or Muslims with fascism." He's kidding, right? Actually no. He then said, "We ought to take advantage of these incidents to make sure that we do not start a religious war against Islam and Muslims." Mr. Awad's finale was, "We urge him (Bush) and we urge other public officials to restrain themselves." Wouldn't it have been lovely, if maybe instead of veiled threats, they took advantage of this opportunity to state at a press conference that they were planning a massive rally planned to show that this "peaceful culture" was speaking out against terrorist behaviour? Far from demonstrating their identification with our society, the only "protest" has been from some Arab groups concerning "racial profiling." Wouldn't it have been an amazing sight if any adherents of this "religion of peace" who live in our country marched carrying American flags, and denounced terrorism wherever it comes from? Well, folks, I have a theory. I believe that while not all Muslims are terrorists, just about all terrorists seem to be Muslims. Asian schoolchildren at the airport do not need to be checked. Middle-aged American women do not have a history of hijacking airplanes for Jihad. I don't think Southern Baptists on holiday need to be given all that much scrutiny. But maybe it is time to start profiling. Given the just foiled attempt to down planes from Great Britain to the U.S. in what was to be the biggest terrorist attack in history -- sponsored by, you guessed it, radical Muslims -- I don't feel bad if folks from Middle Eastern descent have to spend a little extra time at the security check point. In fact, I think that maybe it's time for a national ID card. How about putting a hold on Arabic "students" coming into the country? How about attaching GPS tracking devices (at their expense, of course) to all those students who might just fit the terrorist profile? You know, so they don't "get lost" trying to get to Montana ... But no. Radical Muslims have managed to use the very freedoms we enjoy against us. They have managed, via anti-American organizations like CAIR and the ACLU, to use our legal system to sue us, silence us, and sanction us! They have managed to silence their critics through politically correct intimidation. (The last time I wrote about this topic, for instance, I was labelled a "hate speech writer" by Google and one of my publishers, "The New Media Journal" was taken off the Google news search engine). Now that we can't bring perfume or baby formula onto an airplane, is the global war against Islamic terrorism finally getting our attention? Funny -- I thought 9/11 should have been enough. There is no way to defeat this enemy except through overwhelming force -- because there is nothing this enemy respects like strength. But nothing has gotten my attention more than when I was packing a suitcase today and realized that I couldn't even pack my mascara because it would be confiscated. Same for my toothpaste and cell phone! Taking away our makeup might be just enough to show them the power of the AARP! Pretty soon we're going to have to travel to the airport naked in order to comply with the restrictions Islam has set up for us. Arlene Peck is an internationally syndicated columnist and television talk show hostess. She can be reached at: bestredhead@earthlink.net and www.arlenepeck.com |
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OLMERT MUST GO
Posted by Professors for a Strong Israel, August 17, 2006. |
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There is great importance in investigating both the military aspects
of the war and the functioning of the political echelon before and
during the war. It is necessary to set up both a military commission
and a national commission of inquiry. Still, it is undeniable that the
first round of the war ended badly for Israel. The next round can
break out at any moment.
The state doesn't have the leisure to wait for commissions of inquiry. Professors for a Strong Israel declares that Ehud Olmert, together with the ministers of defense and foreign affairs, must be replaced immediately. This is essential so that reconstruction and preparation can begin, unhampered by any process of whitewash. Professors for a Strong Israel can be reached at Tel: 050-551 8940. Or contact Benjamin Svetitsky at bqs@julian.tau.ac.il |
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GOING TO COURT
Posted by Salah Choudhury, August 17, 2006. |
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Greetings from Dhaka, Bangladesh! Today, 17th August 2006, when the country is observing the First Anniversary of Islamist Bomb Attack, which took place throughout Bangladesh last year, I shall have to appear before the Court of Metropolitan Session Judge, at 2 pm. Government brought this false sedition case against me for criticizing the rise of Islamist millitancy and forecasting the hidden activities of Kindergarten Madrassas in 2003. According to my lawyer, Advocate Samarendra Nath Goswami, the court should have either framed the charge or dropped the case just on the very first day of receiving the Chareg Sheet. But, in my case, the first date was on 25th of April 2005 and the courts have already shifted more than six dates without different excuses. Today too, I am anticipating almost a similar game by the court or the government. Possibly they will not even hear my case today or the judge might ask my lawyer for another date. This is a clear harrassment and violation of human rights. Meanwhile, I got information from my sources that the Public prosecutor's Office is taking preparations for Framing the Charge today as per the instructions of the Government. If the Charge is framed, trial will automatically begin in several days. It is also learnt that some infleuntial pro-radical quarters in the government are trying to send my case for Speedy Trial so that they could some how manage to get me convicted. As you all know, Bangladesh has recently established a bridge named 'HEZBOLLAH BRIDGE' at Cox's Bazar area. According to press report, State Minister for Communication Salauddin Ahmed inaugurated the bridge on Batkhali river. While inaugurating the bridge, the state minister for Communication said, "I have named the bridge afer Lebanese Hezbollah as the token of our love and affection for them". The minister further said, "Hezbollah is the only organization which is fighting against Israel". This is a very notorious signal to all peace loving people in Bangladesh. Religious extremists are becoming increasingly powerful in this country. Yesterday, I gave an interview to vernacular daily 'Amader Shomoy' www.amadershomoy.com where I said that, by supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Bangladesh government has in other words supported terrorist organizations like Jamaatul Mujahedin Bangladesh (JMB), because both are of similar nature. Such attitude of Bangladesh might ultimately make it friendless in international arena. Anyway, now I am going to the Court. Please pray for me. The writer is a journalist, columnist, author, amd editor of "Weekly Blitz". Email him at salahuddinshoaibchoudhury@yahoo.com |
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PREPARE FOR THE NEXT ROUND
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 16, 2006. |
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Friends The immediate beginning of the end of Hezbollah. It is high time to speak to the Syrians again - in Turkish How upsetting, annoying, discouraging, deflating and defeatist is to know that with U.N resolution 1701 we have accomplished nothing more than giving Hezbollah, now emboldened to ecstasy, the opportunity to take a breather, rearm fast and try take another fight with Israel. I hope next time, no leaflets, no warnings, no conscious, but making Lebanon Hezbollah graveyard. This was written by Efraim Input, who is professor of political
science at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and director of the
Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
It appeared in the Jerusalem Post
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The IDF has exacted a heavy price from Hizbullah for its aggression, but failed to achieve an unequivocal victory. It was a mistake to believe that military pressure could generate a process whereby the Lebanese government would disarm Hizbullah. Neither the latest UN Security Council resolution or the deployment of an international force will be able to overcome the centrifugal political processes that have beleaguered the divided Lebanese society. Similarly mistaken was the belief that reliance on air power could paralyze Hizbullah's capacity to harm Israel by launching thousands of short-range rockets. The political and military circumstances surrounding the cessation of the fighting in Lebanon have left Hizbullah shaken but still a force to be reckoned with in Lebanon and a proxy for Syria and Iran. This inevitably means that Israel needs to prepare for another round. The IDF must learn and digest the military lessons of this campaign, and it needs to prepare, doctrinally and technologically, to better deal with military challenges such as short-range Katyushas and anti-tank missiles. The IDF's reserve units need serious upgrading, and more money needs to be diverted to the defense budget. Above all, strategic rethinking is necessary. SUBDUING SYRIA is the key to managing the Lebanese crisis, to rolling back Hizbullah, and to weakening Iran and its radical Islamist influence in the Middle East. In order to attain victory in the next military engagement, Israel should target Damascus. Syria allows supplies for Hizbullah to pass into Lebanon from its territory and provides the channel for Iran to do likewise. Syria's use of Hizbullah as a means of bleeding Israel has gone unpunished for too long. That being the case, the strategic address for dealing with Hizbullah and for restoring lost deterrence remains Damascus. Only military pressure on the regime of Bashar Assad can deny Hizbullah military capabilities and signal Israel's readiness and ability to respond tenaciously. Israel must emulate Turkey's behavior in October 1998, when Ankara forced Hafez Assad to cease long-time Syrian support for the terrorist Kurdish organization, the PKK. Turkey's ultimatum and unequivocal determination to use massive force against Syria then proved sufficient to coerce Damascus into cooperating. The current international constellation renders Syria susceptible once again to military pressure. Today, in addition to its support of Hizbullah, Damascus continues to house the headquarters of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, despite past promises to the US to close down their offices. Syria also disrupted American and French attempts to restore Lebanon's independence, particularly after Rafik Hariri's murder in February 2005. Washington knows that Syria is allowing the infiltration of insurgents into Iraq from its territory, and President Bush has made it clear he holds Syria to blame for the Lebanese crisis. Even Arab states would prefer to see Hizbullah, a radical Islamist organization, seriously weakened. Most try to suppress such groups at home. Moreover, the Shi'ite Hizbullah is correctly seen as an Iranian proxy, while the involvement of Iran, a historic rival of the Arabs, fuels fears of a Shi'ite ascendancy in Mideastern politics. THE TIME is, therefore, ripe for Israel to isolate Hizbullah from its sources of support. An ultimatum should be issued to Syria to cease the transfer of supplies to Hizbullah. If the ultimatum is not taken seriously, Israel should begin bombing the crossing points on the Lebanese-Syrian border and gradually expand its attacks on Syrian targets. The air campaign that has been problematic in hunting down a guerrilla force such as Hizbullah could prove effective against a state such as Syria that presents many valuable targets. Syria is militarily weak and unable to engage Israel in a conventional war. While it possesses an arsenal of long-range missiles with the potential to cause considerable damage, Israel's air force has demonstrated its ability to paralyze the long-range missiles in Lebanon, and it could eliminate Syria's long-range missile threat as well. The risks of regional escalation are minimal. Iran is in no position to intervene directly and is unlikely to provide a pretext for speeding up the international processes geared to bring its nuclear ambitions to a hal t. A successful campaign against Syria would eclipse Hizbullah's sense of victory after the recent campaign in Lebanon, enhancing Israeli deterrence. It would also diminish Iran's influence in the region and lessen Iran's capability to retaliate in the event that its nuclear installations were attacked. The next round could serve as a lesson to all radicals who advocate terror against militarily superior powers. Indeed, the Palestinians, who have been much influenced by Hizbullah's past successes, would pay attention and might learn to calibrate their goals accordingly. Finally, it would strengthen Israel's value as a strategic asset to the West. Taming Syria is the key to weakening Hizbullah, Iran and the radical Islamist forces in the region, and to maintaining strategic superiority. In short, it is high time to speak to the Syrians again - in Turkish. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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ISRAELI ARABS WHO FLED KATYUSHAS HUMILIATED IN WEST BANK CITIES
Posted by Avodah 15, August 16, 2006. |
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This was written by Roee Nahmias for YNET
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Several Arab families decided to act on Hizbullah Chief Hassan Nasrallah's "recommendation" and leave rocket-stricken Haifa during the war in south Lebanon. They traveled to Palestinian towns like Bethlehem and Ramallah, and even to east Jerusalem, but soon after decided they had rather return home and face the rocket menace. The reason: The bad treatment awarded to them in hotels, restaurants and stores, as well as ongoing harassments of their wives and daughters on the part of the local residents. Ghani Abassi, married and a father of three daughters, decided to go with his family to Bethlehem and flee the Katyusha attacks. Abbasi traveled to the Palestinian town with some 10 other families from Haifa, who all chose to stay at local hotels. Unfortunately, this was when their true nightmare began. "I waited for three days until I got a room. Then it turned out that the air conditioning wasn't working, and I was told that the reason was the high price of electricity. I decided that this wasn't that bad, because we felt we were among our brothers at the West Bank and were willing to endure the terrible heat, knowing we're safe and that our visit was also of financial help," Abbasi described to the website of the Israeli-Arab newspaper al-Sinara. "However, the treatment we received was disgraceful and dreadful," he said. "We walked around town for a while, but the attitude we encountered on the part of the locals was horrible. The youngsters on the street started harassing our wives and daughters and used shocking expressions that I cannot even bring myself to pronounce," he said. Another Haifa resident, who went with his family to Jerusalem to escape from the rocket threat, said that the local merchants blatantly took advantage of the situation and inflated the prices in stores. A bottle of mineral water that usually sells for about NIS 4, for instance, was being sold to the Haifa tourists for NIS 10. 'Even foreigners are respected there' They told us, 'you are worse than the Jews.' We heard expressions of joy over the fact we have fled our homes, and some even tried to attack us. We were disgusted and decided to return to Haifa," he said, stressing that he used to be a regular donor to the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. According to him, after that day and the humiliation he experienced in Bethlehem, he does not plan on donating even one shekel. "We thought we are one nation and that what really hurts them, hurts us too. We went to demonstrations for them and we donated a lot of money to them because we thought they are our brothers and that is our obligation. But, what we found was exploitation and undeserving treatment toward someone supposedly from the same nation," he told. The same resident added that he expected the families from Haifa and Nazareth to be warmly received in the West Bank towns, but what took place was the exact opposite. Today he speaks with regret about the two days he spent in Bethlehem. "While touring in Ramallah, a few youngsters said to us, 'you are the same as, even worse than, the Jews.' We tried to understand why they were acting that way toward us, but they attacked us and a fight broke out. We are very sorry for what happened and we couldn't have expected such an unfit welcome from members of our nation whom we had respected and appreciated very much. But they didn't respect us at all, and saw as worse than the Jews. We are very sorry for what happened and that we drove all the way there to see the painful truth that they don't respect us there," said Ghani Abassi. Abassi added that the restaurants jacked up prices for customers because they thought they were foreign 'tourists.' "Even foreigners are respected there, but we, their own brothers, felt like they don't respect us, and my friends and I asked why? Are we unworthy of the respect due to members of the same nation?" Following such treatment, Abassi and his friends hurried back to the lap of the Katyushas and air raid sirens of Haifa. "'We will never again make a donation or participate in a demonstration for the West Bank from now on," said one of them. Contact Avodah 15 by email at avodah15@aol.com |
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WINNERS AND LOSERS IN THE CEASE FIRE
Posted by David Meir-Levi, August 16, 2006. |
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Dear Mr. President, (8.16.06) The DEBKAfile publications below allow us to draw the following conclusions about the current state of the Lebanon war: 1. There is no cease-fire. Hezbollah will not disarm. No country is willing to send in troops to face an armed Hezbollah, except Moslem countries that are antagonistic to Israel and with which Israel has no diplomatic relations... No troops, no cease fire. 2. Hezbollah is concentrating its fighting forces in south Lebanon just as Israel is preparing the IDF for more military action in south Lebanon; so both sides are gearing up for the next round and know that there is no cease-fire. 3. The pretend-cease-fire [pretend because the cease-fire demands that Hezbollah disarm. Hezbollah will not disarm. Neither UNIFIL nor Lebanese army has power to disarm Hezbollah. The Lebanese government has agreed to not make an issue of disarmament. An armed Hezbollah is in violation of the cease-fire agreements. Hezbollah violations of the agreement means that Israel can violate as well. All cease-fire signatories know that. So they are only pretending to create a cease-fire] creates a local political victory for you and Blair, akin to Chamberlain's Munich victory - ephemeral at best. 4. The pretend-cease-fire creates an international victory for Hezbollah which now surpasses Osama and el-Qaeda in popularity among that portion of the Moslem world population which supports the world-wide jihad against global non-belief. 5. Hezbollah's victory has emboldened Assad to prepare for war against Israel. 6. Hezbollah now rules Lebanon, with Syria ... which means that Iran, via Syria, now rules Lebanon, which means that Lebanon will soon become the Shi'ite terror capitol of the Western fertile crescent. 7. Iran is the big winner; as it concludes that the Lebanon War has cleared the way for its nuclear weapons program to forge ahead without hindrance. 8. You, Mr. President, and the USA and the EU and UK and the West and Israel and Lebanon, are the big losers. I hope y'all do a better job with the next round.
PS. #9: Debka does not mention this, but it seems to me that this Hezbollah/Syria/Iran/Shi'ite terrorist victory will embolden the Shi'ite terrorists in Iraq to further terrorism there, which means more Iraqi and USA dead, more chaos and civil war, and less chance of the survival of an Iraqi democratic government. It will also embolden el-Qaeda (once again, the USA behaves like a paper tiger; and even the undefeated Israeli war machine is defeated), as well as the el-Qaeda wannabees who operate as sort of terror-franchise groups copy-cat-ing el-Qaeda but perpetrating terror attacks that are not initiated by nor coordinated with el-Qaeda. Now they have a new role-model. |
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DEBKA: PM Fouad Siniora announces Lebanese troops to be deployed in S. Lebanon from Thursday, Aug. 17
DEBKAfile: This deployment was made possible by the deal he struck with Hizballah for their juxtaposition in the south and along the borders with Syria. Hizballah will remain fully armed. Earlier, we uncovered details of this deal, which totally rules out guarantees for Hizballah to be disarmed and removed from the south as stipulated by France and other donors of Lebanon peacekeepers. Most of the governments which offered troops, led by France, refuse to send them as long as an armed Hizballah is present, as the French, Turkish and Malaysian foreign ministers stated when they visited Beirut Wednesday. Australia has also backed out, leaving only Indonesia and Morocco. However, Israel will not accept UNIFIL contingents from countries which have never established diplomatic relations. The Israeli chief of staff Lt.-Gen Dan Halutz said Wednesday it might be months before Israeli forces could quit Lebanon, given the hold-ups in deploying an effective international force to start policing the south. This standoff and the unrestricted return of Hizballah fighters to the south, the ceasefire now in its third day is tenuous and the UN Security Council Resolution 1701 as a whole increasingly fragile. When Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni flew to New York Tuesday to fight for the multinational force to come together with a mandate for effective operation, she knew it was more or less a lost case, despite prodding on the UN secretary from Washington. DEBKAfile's Beirut sources report that the deal brokered in Beirut by the Shiite parliament speaker Nabih Berri has six components; 1. The Lebanese army, which hopes to muster 7,500 men, will move into Hizballah's former positions along the Lebanese border with Israel. 2. Hizballah's fighting force including its rocket and missile launchers will be concentrated in 50 of the 180 villages and towns of South Lebanon, which will be closed to Lebanese troops. 3. The Lebanese army will help Hizballah gather all its weapons and rockets scattered across the south and transfer them to these Hizballah-controlled strongholds. 4. Hizballah fighters will not wear uniform or display their weapons in public. 5. A Hizballah presence will be permitted in all parts of South Lebanon not occupied by Lebanese troops. This includes its reoccupation of the small towns just behind the border lilke Maroun a Ras and Ayt a-Chaab, the sites of fierce Israeli-Hizballah battles. 6. Lebanese units will deploy at all the official border crossings into Syria, but not the dozens of unauthorized crossing points, which will remain under Hizballah control. DEBKAfile: Nasrallah is transferring his entire fighting force from northern Lebanon to the South
The rockets and guns were silent up to Wednesday, Day 3 of the ceasefire -- although Tuesday, Israeli troops shot at 5 Hizballah fighters in two separate incidents, killing at least three. However, the swelling numbers of returning Hizballah fighters with their families are jamming the roads south -- also blocking the deployment of the 15,000-strong Lebanese force ordered by UN SC resolution 1701 to take over the South and disarm Hizballah. The Hizballah are moving back into their still undamaged bunkers and fortified civilian dwellings opposite the Israeli border. Therefore, while thousands of displaced people in Israel and Lebanon headed back to their ravaged homes, DEBKAfile's military sources report trepidation about the durability of the ceasefire which Israel declared Monday morning. Everyone is talking about the inevitability of a second round. Hours after the ceasefire went into effect Monday morning, 6 Hizballah fighters were shot dead in three incidents with Israeli troops. Israeli forces inside Lebanon will hold their positions until a strengthened international force and the Lebanese army take over. The discharge of reservists called up for the war begins at the end of the week although the Lebanese defense minister promised to move his men into position by then only north of the Litani. Northern Israelis towns and farms face immense reconstruction and recovery projects after Hizballah's 33-day rocket blitz. After the ceasefire Monday, Hizballah staged victory celebrations in Beirut, while its leader, Hassan Nasrallah proclaimed a "historic and strategic victory" over Israel. Hizballah fighters in uniform directed the traffic in Beirut and took up police duties. Nasrallah also promised his men would help repair destroyed villages in the south. Nasrallah Is Already Carving out Lebanon's Future
President George W. Bush and prime minister Ehud Olmert in speeches on Aug. 13 laid down the law on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701. Bush said the motion marked a pivotal moment in the Middle East and would end Hizballah's state within a state. This term was borrowed from an earlier Lebanon reality: The stranglehold Yasser Arafat's PLO held on South Lebanon and Beirut in the 1970s. Tuesday morning, an Israeli spokesman emphasized that Hassan Narallah "must" obey the Security Council resolution. If he failed to do so, Israel "would have to do the job." DEBKAfile's exclusive sources in Beirut report that Nasrallah's machinations represent a reality which is a world away from this kind of rhetoric: 1. He has notified Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora that the only concession he is willing to make with regard to the Hizballah presence in South Lebanon is to avoid exhibiting his fighters' weapons in a demonstrative fashion. 2. Hizballah forces in the South will not oppose the deployment of Lebanese troops and a strengthened UNIFIL force, so long as they understand who their hosts are, namely Hizballah. The inference here is that foreign peacekeepers' steps will be dogged by Hizballah fighters. This action nullifies the injunction to the Beirut government to assert Lebanese sovereignty in every part of the country, which was stressed by the US president in his speech. 3. Siniora must stop referring to Hizballah's disarmament or else Hizballah ministers and MPs will topple his government by withdrawing their parliamentary support. Nasrallah is not standing aside for anyone -- certainly not the US-backed Siniora government - to carve out a new future for Lebanon. His men are already out consolidating his "state within a state." Rather than wait for government or international assistance to repair destroyed villages in the south, Hizballah volunteers are on the spot helping the returning refugees to start reconstruction work. Just as Olmert talks about rebuilding northern Israel after it was pummeled by 4,000 Hizballah rockets, so too does Nasrallah use the language of a national leader in reference to the ravaged South. Monday, Aug. 14, in his 10th televised speech of the war, the Hizballah leader made no bones about being short of funds, but said his men would be on hand to help with repairs. This device is a neat way of opening the door for Hizballah fighters and cadres to reach their former bases, fortifications and bunkers facing the Israeli border, in their capacity as volunteers and aid workers donating their services to the national reconstruction effort. To rebuild his depleted South Lebanon army, Nasrallah also quietly ordered all Hizballah fighters in the north, the Beqaa Valley and Baalbek, to pack their bags and head south with their families. DEBKAfile's sources add: Scrutiny of the refugees flooding back to the south since the ceasefire declared Monday morning by Israel shows that this traffic was kicked off by the massive transfer of Hizballah's cohorts to the south in the guise of distressed refugees. International television cameras recorded the first families in cars, all showing the V sign, displaying placards of Nasrallah and honking loudly, as they headed back to their flattened homes in the south. Hizballah thus regrouped in the south by a smooth, rapid maneuver, which pulled in its wake a wave of genuine refugees. Israeli troops left to secure the south were helpless to halt this tide. The jammed roads also block off Israel's lines for supplies and reinforcements. The IDF spokesperson had little choice Tuesday but to announce troop withdrawal within days. So, whether or not Hizballah was defeated as the US president claimed matters little: Nasrallah has had the last word in the current round of the war. How will this affect the deployment of the Lebanese army and Unifil? DEBKAfile's sources report US ambassador in Beirut Jeff Feldman as pressing the Lebanese premier hard to do something about the situation. But Fouad Siniora finds himself in dire straits. When he broached a plan to confine Lebanese troops to the nine Lebanese-Syrian border passes, instead of a complete deployment in the south, he was greeted with a blunt threat from Damascus. Assad, conversing with a visiting delegation of Egyptian Nasserites, remarked Hizballah's battle had taught him there are other options beside peace. Then, turning to Beirut, the Syrian ruler added that it was time for the Siniora government to go. In any case, Hizballah has managed to clog the roads and the destroyed bridges to the south with swarms of refugees, so blocking the region off to access by the Lebanese units. The Americans have proposed organizing with French help an amphibious landing by sea at Tyre. Our military sources add that this idea appears to be a non-starter because no Lebanese army units have ever trained in commando beach assaults. But even if they manage to reach the shore, they will walk into the arms of their Hizballah "hosts." France, Turkey and Malaysia will not deploy troops for Lebanon force without Lebanese government guarantees for disarming Hizballah
This message was carried to Beirut Wednesday by French, Turkish and Malaysian foreign ministers. DEBKA-Net-Weekly: Iran concludes the Lebanon War has cleared the way for its nuclear weapons program to forge ahead without hindrance
A complete analysis of the significance of Iran's take on the war, its impact on America's standing and the overall Middle East strategic balance is offered by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's experts and exclusive Tehran sources in its coming edition (due out this Friday, 8.18.06).
David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli,
currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern
studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director
of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org).
Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com
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FAUXTOGRAPHY: THE MEDIA SCANDAL CONTINUES
Posted by David Meir-Levi, August 16, 2006. |
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Whether as a new and hi-tech version of Lenin's 'useful idiots', or as venal collaborators, major western mainstream news media outlets are blithely, happily, and perhaps knowingly, taking Hezbollah's "Hezballiwood" and passing it on to their audiences (that's us) as though the staged attrocities and fake corpses were indeed news. Alert bloggers and some very few media professionals have demonstrated that Hezbollah and Hamas create fictitious scenes to horrify audiences and make Israel look like it is committing attrocities against innocent children and other civilians...and the news is gradually leaking out. PS. remember Eason Jordan's public admission after Saddam Hussein's fall: CNN was self-sensoring its news of Iraq for 9 years under Hussein....because if they didn't conform to Hussein's demands, they would be denied access in Iraq... and... well... if they were denied access, then some other news channel would do Saddam's bidding... so why not just keep on lying to the public and pretend that Saddam's propaganda was in fact real news? And note below, the CNN spokesperson's admission that Hezbollah takes the journalists on guided tours, shows them what the terrorists want them to see, and, basically, tells them what to say.....and then the journalists do as they are told. Thanks to a venally willing media, and/or to media professionals who don't have the brains that God gave a napkin, much of our mainstream media is now simply propaganda outlets for Hezbollah and Hamas and other Arab/Moslem extremist groups (Iran? Osama?) for whom truth does not suit their purposes. This was written by Michelle Malkin and it appeared today in Jewish World Review. |
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It's the story that the journalistic elite would rather just go away. In the aftermath of Reuters' admission that one of its photographers, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated two war images from Lebanon after bloggers smoked out his crude Photoshop alterations and all 920 of his Reuters photos were pulled, evidence of far more troubling photo staging and media deception in the Middle East continues to pour in. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (littlegreenfootballs.com) calls it "fauxtography." One of Hajj's photos was an iconic image of a dusty dead child with a clean blue pacifier clipped to his shirt, paraded by a corpse handler at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Qana, Lebanon. Mainstream journalists have sneered at bloggers' suspicions, first raised at EU Referendum (www.eureferendum.blogspost.com), that some of the gruesome photos from that scene may have been staged. Washington Post photographer Michael Robinson-Chavez, who was at Qana, huffed: "Everyone was dead, many of them children. Nothing was set up." But last week, a German television station aired damning video footage from the scene showing a lead propaganda director (dubbed the "Green Helmet Guy") positioning a young boy's corpse, yanking it from an ambulance, placing it on two different stretchers for the cameras, and pushing bystanders out of the way for clearer shots. This Lebanese version of horror film director Wes Craven was identified by the Associated Press in a softball profile as "Salam Daher," who told the reporter, "I am just a civil defense worker. I have done this job all my life." To clear-eyed readers, that's an inculpatory statement, not an exculpatory one. How many more "jobs" has Daher overseen? And how many more media stage managers like Daher are out there? Not all photographers overseas have their heads in the sand. Last week, Middle East-based photographer Bryan Denton, whose work has appeared in the New York Times, revealed on the professional photography website Light Stalkers (lightstalkers.org) that he had observed routine staging of photos -- and even corpse-digging -- by Lebanese stringers: "I have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in people[']s arms." Denton noted that he had witnessed the photo choreography at numerous protests and evacuations, as well as at an Israeli airstrike location in Chiyeh, Lebanon. Denton followed up with a second post reporting that respected photographer friends of his Lebanon informed him that "this was not an isolated incident" and that "this has been something [I]'ve noticed happening here, more than any other place [I]ve worked previously." Which is probably why bloggers have noticed so many copious
examples of phony-looking scenes -- from countless pristine stuffed
animals lying in the foreground of destroyed buildings Miscaptioning (which always makes Israel look worse, never Hezbollah, go figure) adds another dimension of fauxto deception. One Associated Press image of an anguished father carrying his dead 5-year-old daughter into a Gaza City hospital last week blamed the death on an Israeli airstrike. Charles Johnson found a correction of the caption revealing that the girl had been killed in a swingset accident. I found a Reuters photo of an 18-month-old girl with two broken legs that was pulled by the wire service in late July after being included among a photo set of hospital patients injured in an Israeli air raid. In truth, the girl had been admitted for a "routine hospitalisation." Then there was the New York Times' misrepresentation of a half-naked young man sprawled Pieta-like, appearing dead, amid Tyre rubble. The original Times' website photo caption? "The mayor of Tyre said that in the worst-hit areas, bodies were still buried under the rubble..." Turned out the "dead" man was a "rescue worker" who was supposedly "injured" (with his baseball cap tucked neatly in his arm as he closed his eyes and flung his head back) and had been photographed in several other scenes running around the bombing site. Isolated incidents? In a rare moment of candor, CNN's Anderson Cooper revealed the routine mechanics of Hezbollywood propaganda tours last week: "I was in Beirut, and they took me on this sort of guided tour of the Hezbollah-controlled territories in southern Lebanon that were heavily bombed..they clearly want the story of civilian casualties out. That is their - what they're heavily pushing, to the point where on this tour I was on, they were just making stuff up. They had six ambulances lined up in a row and said, OK, you know, they brought reporters there, they said you can talk to the ambulance drivers. And then one by one, they told the ambulances to turn on their sirens and to zoom off, and people taking that picture would be reporting, I guess, the idea that these ambulances were zooming off to treat civilian casualties, when in fact, these ambulances were literally going back and forth down the street just for people to take pictures of them." "Just making stuff up." Remember that. Meanwhile, the media ostriches carry on. Joe Elbert, Washington Post assistant managing editor for photography, told ombudsman Deborah Howell smugly: "We don't use tools to change reality." Newsflash: You are the tools being used. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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AJC DEMANDS OF THE RED CROSS: END SILENCE ON TERRORISTS' ENDANGERING OF CIVILIANS
Posted by American Jewish Congress, August 16, 2006. | |
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[Editor's Note: See also below.] | |
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August 15, 2006 -- The American Jewish Congress is demanding that the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) criticize Hezbollah's positioning military assets in densely populated civilian areas. "If the International Committee of the Red Cross wants to effectively protect civilians, it will address this problem, beginning now," said Jack Rosen, American Jewish Congress President. "If it does not, it should give up the pretense of being a disinterested arbiter of international humanitarian law." In an August 7, 2006 letter to Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, AJCongress President Jack Rosen observed that during the Lebanon conflict the Red Cross had failed even once to protest the dangers to Lebanese civilians resulting from Hezbollah's policy locating military assets in civilian areas. The principle of distinction not only forbids deliberate attacks on civilians, it also requires that military targets be kept apart from civilians and civilian facilities. Rosen cited the Third Geneva Convention Article 28, which provides that a violation of the duty to segregate military targets does not deprive a military target located amongst civilians of its military character. Additional Protocol I, Article 51 likewise allows attacks on military targets if the anticipated military gain outweighs the harm to civilians. The American Jewish Congress is a membership association of Jewish Americans, organized to defend Jewish interests at home and abroad, through public policy advocacy, in the courts, Congress, the executive branch and state and local governments. It also works overseas with others who are similarly engaged. The American Jewish Congress is well known for its history, since 1918, protecting human rights through the application of law both in the U.S. and internationally. Among its founding members and leaders were Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter. In 2005 AJCongress was a convener with Catholic University and the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) of a professional legal symposium on the Law of War. ### This is the full text of the letter to the International Committee of the RedCross:
Contact American Jewish Congress News Bureau at Communications@AJCongress.org or go to the website: www.ajcongress.org |
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DIPLOMACY OR FORCE, WHICH FIRST?; SHOULD ISRAEL STRIKE SYRIA?; MEDIA BALANCE
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 16, 2006. |
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EGYPT LETTING TERRORISTS IN Terrorists are passing through Gaza and entering Egypt, so as to get at Israel from south of Gaza, where it is less defended. There is no indication that Egypt is trying to impede their entry (IMRA, 5/17). Egypt will be surprised and outraged when some of those terrorists attack Egypt. WHEN ISRAEL WITHDREW FROM LEBANON Years ago, Israel kept Hizbullah from raiding Israel, by occupying a security zone in Lebanon. France wanted Israel out. It contended that if Israel withdrew, Hizbullah would dissolve for having fulfilled its mission. France said it would get the UNO to send peacekeepers to prevent a Hizbullah return, and would disarm Hizbullah. (Sounds identical to the current UNO ceasefire resolution.) Europe did nothing, Hizbullah rearmed, the current war resulted. Instead of admitting policy failure, Europe condemns Israel as acting "disproportionately" in trying to rid itself of the terrorist aggression. It does not define "disproportionate." But Israel is trying to reduce the threat of Iran, which is backing Hizbullah and seeking nuclear weapons to do so. Now that is disproportionate. If Europe puts a halt to this small war, the eventual result would be a big one (Gerald Steinberg in IMRA, 7/17) perhaps preceded by small ones. DIPLOMACY OR FORCE, WHICH FIRST? Sen. Clinton partly blames Pres. Bush for the current war in Lebanon. She contends that he should have exercised more diplomacy, and that diplomacy works. No, diplomacy does not work with totalitarian aggressors. We got wars because her husband failed to use force or at least to retain the option of using it. (He reduced the size of our military.) Worse, such diplomacy as the West engages in rewards violators. The answer is to defeat aggressors, then impose solutions or work them out with successor regimes, without letting the defeated regime retain power and begin to rearm (Michael Rubin, Middle E. Forum, 7/17). WHAT DO S. ARABIA & JORDAN SAY? S. Arabia accuses Israel of all sorts of aggression. It has nothing to say about the Arabs who attack Israel and provoke Israel into retaliation. The King of Jordan concurs (IMRA, 7/17). S. Arabia is known to be extremist, but the King is supposed to be moderate. He's not. WHY DID IDF BOMB AIRPORT, BRIDGES, & HIGHWAY Israel's Foreign Ministry explained why its military bombed the airport, bridges, and highway in Lebanon. Those dual-use facilities all were being used to supply Hizbullah with arms. To the accusation that Israel fails to exercise restraint, the Ministry replied that it took abuse from Hizbullah for six years, something no other state would have (IMRA, 7/17). There were three weeks when I didn't read newspapers. When I did read them, I found Israel being condemned for bombing airport, bridges, and highway needed by refugees and relief agencies. There was no dispute with Israel's explanation and no mention of it. I would call that omission thoughtless and leading to bias. WHY DID IDF ATTACK LEBANESE ARMY RADAR? "A Lebanese army radar installation in A-Nazriya, in southern Lebanon, was targeted, this in light of the use of such installations by the terrorist organization Hizbollah against IDF forces -- for example the incident last Friday, in which 4 sailors were killed -- and in order to prevent incidents like these from reoccurring in the future." (IMRA, 7/18 from IDF.) I had read a news account that expressed puzzlement over the IDF attack, since the world counts on the Lebanese Army opposing Hizbullah. ISRAEL RADIO CONDEMNS THE FAR LEFT Radio Israel referred to the "radical Left Meretz Party." It usually reserves terms of opprobrium for right-wingers (Dr. Aaron Lerner, IMRA, 7/17). It did it in the context of Meretz opposing the government's waging of war. I don't think labeling in Israel is rational but propagandistic. SHOULD ISRAEL STRIKE SYRIA? The Six Day War might have been averted if Israel had retaliated directly against Syria, instead of against the terrorists that Syria set against Israel. Now, Israel might be wise to destroy the 500-tank force that the Syrian regime has brought to the border but needs to help maintain its power. Such a blow would indirectly advise the dictator that if he wants to live, he had better stop supplying Hizbullah. The risk is that instead, he would launch missiles against Israel (Michael B. Oren of Shalem Center, in Prof. Steven Plaut, 7/17). Syria helps our enemies in Iraq, too. It must be stopped. Israel isn't making a good enough showing. It is submitting to adverse diplomacy without having won decisively enough. Suppose Egypt concludes that if small forces can tie down large Israeli ones, then Egypt's huge army might prevail over Israel? MEDIA BALANCE DISCUSSED BY NY TIMES The Times interviewed journalists and Middle East experts about whether and how to present the news, especially emotion-inducing still photographs, with "balance." ABC said "Our job is not to decide whether or not one side deserves more or less. Our job is to report the news." The main consideration was whether to show civilian casualties proportionately. Would doing that insinuate a fair or a false moral conclusion? Most casualties are Lebanese. Critics of Israel plump for proportionality, implying their belief that guilt is in proportion to casualties. CAIR accused Israel of fighting "disproportionately" and needlessly killing civilians. It gave no examples. (The Arabs almost never do. "Disproportionality" is one of these new code words, that applies guilt without being examined for the justice of it.) Defenders of Israel reject moral equivalence in casualty-for-casualty, because Israel is merely defending itself against terrorists who use their own people as human shields. Max Boot thinks that Hizbullah has the advantage in the way news is presented, "because it is not being pinned with immoral and unconscionable war tactics, not to mention the genocidal war aim to wipe Israel off the map." (Heather Timmons, 8/14, C1.) The Times is notoriously biased against Israel. It practices advocacy journalism, in general, more by subtlety than by slavering accusations. It is not the proper referee in such a discussion. Its forums have a way of missing or downplaying the point. I drew out of it points from the back of the article, a place that most readers don't reach. I think the main question should be the definition of news and the purpose of presentation. I think the answer is to present the whole truth in a rational perspective that leaves audiences informed about the issues. Few news articles relate the IDF explanation for bombing what seems to be civilian infrastructure. This leaves the IDF appearing wantonly destructive, to audiences that do not know much about warfare. Some photos were doctored, to make Israel seem bad. Whatever photographs are chosen, their captions and the accompanying narrative should reveal the tactics and purposes of each side. If civilians are being killed, audiences should know why. Guilt for the deaths of civilians used as human shields is that of those who use them as such, according to the Geneva Conventions. The media, liberals, and foes of Israel have gotten the idea across that all civilian deaths are equivalent, and that all are wrong yet they ignore most Israeli ones. They hold both sides equally guilty until one side, Israel, fights harder. They have twisted moral considerations, in their anti-Semitic self-righteousness. Thus in the name of ethics, they plump for immorality. NGO'S BIAS AGAINST THE ISRAELI SIDE Concurrent with the outbreak of the fighting, major international NGOs, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International (AI), Christian Aid (CA) and World Vision International (WVI) issued statements. As in the past, these politicized statements do not distinguish between Hizbollah's intentional attacks against civilians, and Israel's response against strategic Hizbollah targets, many of them located in residential areas of Beirut. Terms such as "war crimes", "disproportionality", and "collective punishment" are used indiscriminately to promote an anti-Israel political agenda, and the context of the conflict was distorted or simply erased. This moral equivalence between terror and legitimate self-defense is particularly pronounced in Amnesty International's press release of July 13. AI declared that "Israeli and Lebanese governments, and Hizbollah, must take immediate steps to end the ongoing attacks against civilians and civilian objects", describing both Israel and Hizbollah's actions as "war crimes." Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International's Middle East Programme said that Israel must "respect the principle of proportionality when targeting any military objectives or civilian objectives", without providing a standard for determining proportionality in the wake of Hizbollah's attacks. The statement said that "Israel must put an immediate end to attacks against civilians", falsely asserting that Israel deliberately targets civilians, in a manner similar to Hizbollah. AI also failed to mention that Hizbollah's military headquarters are located in southern Beirut, and that the positioning of military/guerrilla installations in residential areas is considered a war crime, as defined by Protocol I (1977) to the Geneva Convention, article 51(7), relating to human shields. Hizbollah also store and launch missiles from civilian villages in southern Lebanon, but this is not criticized by AI. The NGO charged that IDF strikes on infrastructure targets constitute "collective punishment", despite the clear military rationale of sealing off air and sea ports, roads and other such targets to prevent the re-supply of arms from Syria and Iran. In contrast, Amnesty failed to condemn Hizbollah's initial aggression or to call for the release of the two abducted Israeli soldiers. On July 13, Human Rights Watch stated in a press release that "Israeli military officials and Hizbollah leaders traded threats to attack areas populated by civilians," erasing the facts and context. HRW's blanket comment at the end of its statement that "international humanitarian law requires that armed forces distinguish between combatants and civilians" again serves to promote this inappropriate and unethical equivalence between aggression and legitimate response. HRW made no mention of Hizbollah's use of Beirut's residential neighborhoods as a human shield, expressly forbidden under international law. (In contrast, HRW ran a vocal campaign in 2002 against the alledged use of Palestinian civilians as "human shields" in IDF operations). HRW also did not call for the release of the captive Israeli soldiers. HRW also published a seven page "Question and Answers" document on Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah on July 17.[1] The document makes a number of veiled accusations against Israel which are inflammatory, without foundation, and which deligitimize any Israeli response to attack. These include the charge that the IDF's current tactics "opens the door to deliberately attacking civilians and civilian objects themselves - in short to terrorism," and that Israel's "destruction seems aimed more at...preventing [the civilian population] from fleeing the fighting and seeking safety," This very document reports on Israel's leaflet drops on Beirut instructing civilians to evacuate the area before IDF bombing missions, so HRW's assertion that Israel may be attempting to prevent civilians from seeking safety is contradicted by its own report. HRW also states that the IDF's arguments for bombing Beirut airport "are at best debatable", which follows a noticeable trend of HRW contradicting the IDF based on military expertise with dubious credibility. HRW states in a number of places that it "sets out these rules before it has been able to conduct extensive on-the-ground investigation," demonstrating the primacy of its political agenda over accurate analysis. Christian Aid published a news report on July 13, legitimizing Hizbollah's attack by stating that it was "an attempt to negotiate the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails." There was not mention of the fact that the three Lebanese prisoners held by Israel are terrorists, one of whom, Samir Kuntar, was convicted by an Israeli court in 1979 of two murders, including the beating to death of a four year old girl. The CA report also claimed that the Hizbollah attack took place "on the Lebanese border with Israel", erasing the illegal cross-border nature of the incident. Christian Aid explicitly condemned the Israeli response, claiming that the IAF targeted areas in southern Beirut without mentioning that this area is Hizbollah's headquarters, and ignoring its use of civilians as human shields. The report also states that "52 Lebanese civilians have been killed by Israel's offensive in the country in retaliation for the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah militants". The use of the term "retaliation" falsely implies that Israel has deliberately targeted civilians as a form of retribution. As in other recent CA reports, the text was emotive so as to direct the reader to a clear political agenda. The report said "days of dread and despair long-lived by the Lebanese during the war seem to have returned" but made no mention of the fears and emotions of Israeli civilians in the northern cities of Haifa, Nahariya, Acre, Tiberias and others. This selective empathy illustrates CA's consistent partisan and politicized stance against Israel, and its exploitation of moral claims to pursue this agenda (this was taken verbatim from NGO Monitor in IMRA, 7/18). 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@aol.com. |
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K-K-K-KATYA - KATUSHA MATH
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 16, 2006. |
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1. Katyusha Math So let's do some math. The Hezbollah savages fired 4000 katyushas and other rockets into Israel. These killed 41 civilians. 18 of those were Arabs, people the Hezbollah obviously was not trying to hit. That leaves 23 Jews. That is a kill ratio of about one Jew murdered per 200 rockets. The katyusha had been the most effective weapon of the Red Army in World War II and it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that it was what defeated the Wehrmacht. In Israel, it mainly created emotional stress and high blood pressure. That was the weapon that Ehud Barak and his parody of Dunkirk had rained down upon Israel. Loaded up with ball bearings to create maximum civilian carnage. But in the end, the super-weapon of terror killed in a month fewer people than a normal month's worth of highway accidents in Israel. An occupational hazard of economists is a knowledge of statistics. Those who asked me how I got through the katyushas now know the secret. statistically speaking, there was no more reason to fear them than fearing a ride on the highway in Israel. One does not live one's life in perpetual fear of other drivers, so why get stressed out by katyushas? Really. Nevertheless, I believe a collective "Birkat Hagomel" (blessing for being saved from danger) is in order. The katyusha today is effective mainly in terrorizing children and old people. And in shutting down civilian activity (and damaging the economy). My guess is that the Iranian missiles are even less of a serious weapon (unless loaded with nukes). [Remember that old song K-K-K-Katie from the 20s? You more creative types are invited to do an update, called K-K-K-Katya (Katyusha)] 2. The Israeli media is quickly reverting to leftist defeatism. Here is Amira Hass in Haaretz:
"On the one hand, the Israeli who "doesn't intend" cuts himself off from the Israeli occupation and colonialism machine, and exempts himself from the responsibility for the intention to harm Palestinian civilians, an intention that is inherent in the very existence of an occupation machinery. And on the other hand, he cuts the Palestinian response off from the existence of the occupation machine: After all, they as individuals and as a collective "intended to harm civilians," and this because of their eternal essence as Muslims, as Arabs - which is independent of us." 3. But one of the silliest fetishes of the media this week is the matter of General Dan Halutz's stock holdings. Let me explain. It seems that just before the war, Halutz, the Commander in Chief of the Army, sold some stock shares, and when the war started the stock market at first dropped 8% although quickly rebounded. The media has made this a banner scandal. Israel's version of Enron? Yawn. Let me emphasize that I do not like Halutz and think he mucked up the entire war and should be forced to resign due to Israel's failure in the war. Let me also say that I disagree with the chattering media moral posturers and am not convinced there is any substance to the stock sell-off story at all. First, Halutz's entire stock portfolio was about $25,000. To think that he sold it off in order to capitalize on insider information about the war is far-fetched. It would have saved him from maybe a $2000 capital loss, which he would have made up the following week when the stock exchange rebounded. If he had done short sales for a million dollars, or even if he would have sold the portfolio and then repurchased it within the week, it would be more suspicious. Second, the accusation that he utilized insider information to make a pathetic two grand is to attribute to him economic savvy and shrewdness that I really doubt he has. Third, the balance he had was so small that selling it off could explained by a mere desire to buy a used car for a kid. True, like Caesar's wife, generals should avoid even the appearance of impropriety. And true, Halutz should resign for OTHER reasons, namely displaying incompetence as a general. But get a grip! 4. The New Anti-Semitism
Israel's wars tend to bring anti-Semites out into the open, and the current one is no exception. What is interesting, however, is the degree to which anti-Semitism has migrated from its traditional haunts on the Right to the Left. Sure one still finds traces the older Jew-hatred among Catholic traditionalists like actor Mel Gibson and pundit Pat Buchanan. But more fascinating is the social acceptability of anti-Semitic talk on the Left. Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton, cites in the Wall Street Journal, an unappetizing sampler of comments posted on the websites supporting Ned Lamont over Senator Joseph Lieberman in last week's Democratic primary in Connecticut. One blogger calls for Lamont to "define what it means to be an American who is NOT beholden to the Israeli Lobby." Another adds, "As everybody knows, Jews care ONLY about other Jews," and urges readers to ignore "Jewish propaganda about participating in the civil rights movement of the "60s." Still another made fun of Lieberman for not shaving during the Three Weeks, and suggested he dye his beard "blood red." "Lieberman is a ... religious bigot," opined another Daily Kos reader; "Lieberman cannot escape the religious bond he represents. ... [H]is wife's name is Haggadah ... or Diaspora or something you eat at Passover," reads one post at Huffington Post. When it comes to vitriolic hatred of Jews and Israel, however, the American Left cannot compare to the European. Few European newspapers will ever again make the mistake of publishing a cartoon noting the fatal attraction of followers of Mohammed for suicide bombs. But cartoons equating Israelis to Nazis are commonplace. Jostein Gaarder, one of Europe's best-selling novelists, employed all the classical anti-Semitic tropes in a recent diatribe against Israel in the Norwegian daily Aftenposten. "To act as G-d's Chosen People is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity," he writes. "We do not believe in divine promises as a justification for occupation and apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind. ... We laugh at those who still believe that G-d has selected one people in particular as His favorite and given it silly, stone tablets, burning bushes, and a license to kill." If Gaarder is like most of his countrymen, he probably has not seen the inside of a church in decades, but that does not prevent him from singing the praises of Christianity over the beliefs of the Jews, with their taste for the "blood vengeance that comes with an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth..." "Two thousand years have passed since [Yoska] humanized the old rhetoric of war... For two thousand years, we have rehearsed the syllabus of humanism, but Israel doesn't listen." The state of Israel no longer exists, Gaarden proclaims triumphantly. It is now without defense. In his Christian magnanimity, he calls for mercy on Israeli civilians as they prepare to enter yet another Diaspora. Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, resorts to same slur about primitive Jewish bloodlust, by portraying Israeli bombing in Lebanon as motivated by nothing other than a desire for revenge, and not as part of an effort to protect Israeli civilians who have spent more than a month in bunkers under missile fire. "An eye for an eye -- or more accurately in this case twenty eyes for an eye -- may have been the morality of some more primitive moment," Roth writes in condemnation of Israel. Of course, anti-Semitism on the Left is not exactly a new phenomenon. Karl Marx himself was a master of anti-Semitic vitriol. And his follower Stalin was planning a major bloodletting of Jews at the time of his death. Yet there is something new in the hatred of Israel and Jews that needs explanation. QUITE SIMPLY, ISRAEL AND THE WARS THAT IT MUST CONTINUALLY FIGHT against those who have vowed to wipe it off the map, prevent Western intellectuals from engaging in their favorite fantasy: the belief in a completely rational world, in which men of good will can iron out their differences over the conference table without resort to violence. It is a worldview that denies the existence of irreconcilable goals, and sees all conflict in terms of interests that can be compromised. There is no place in this worldview for Islamic jihad bent on subjugation of the entire world under Islamic law. So the world denies the threat, just as it once denied the threat of Hitler. Europeans prefer to believe that the jihadists are motivated by grievances that can be assuaged, just as they once imagined that Hitler would be satisfied if German "grievances" were answered and the Sudetenland returned. It is terrifying to contemplate a nuclear Iran following the impeccable religious logic of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in Iranian textbooks: "[I]f the [infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all of them. Either we will all become free or we will go to the greater freedom, which is martyrdom." Doesn't leave much room for deterrence through Mutual Assured Destruction does it? And it is frightening to acknowledge that Islamic terrorism is not generated by any grievances, but because terrorizing the world gives Moslems power that they feel in no other sphere. So the world prefers to ignore the source and nature of the threat. After Canadian police uncovered a plot to blow up Parliament and behead the Prime Minister, they reassuringly announced that the plotters were drawn from a broad cross-section of society -- except, of course, for the fact that they were all named Mohammed or Ahmad. And similarly, Scotland Yard, after foiling a well-advanced plan to blow up ten planes over the Atlantic last week, described the plotters only as of southeastern Asian ancestry and English-born, while omitting their jihadi motivation. It is far more comforting to imagine that Islamic anger is fueled solely by the Israeli "occupation" than to confront the worldwide scope of the jihadists' ambitions and the non-negotiability of their demands. If only the historical mistake of creating Israel in the first place, and the "anachronism" of a state based on religious identity -- or at least one based on Jewish identity -- removed, then the rest of the world could simply sit down and discuss things rationally. Israel's crime is that it will not go along with the plan as peacefully as Czechoslovakia did. 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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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LEBANESE CEASEFIRE PLAN IN JEOPARDY
Posted by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, August 16, 2006. |
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The U.N. ceasefire plan is falling apart, leaving the possibility Hizbullah will re-arm itself while Israel's hands are tied by international pressure. Foreign Minister Tzippy Livni told CNN Tuesday that the government has evidence that Iran and Syria already are supplying Hizbullah terrorists with more arms via Syria. The government is relying on United Nations Security Council resolution 1701 - the ceasefire - to solve the problem, but the agreement appears to have been followed by more problems than solutions. France has provided the latest hitch in the deployment of the proposed international United Nations force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The French General in charge of UNIFIL was quoted in a French newspaper as saying that it could take up to a year to deploy the forces. Paris has promised to send thousands of troops to lead the international force to carry out the ceasefire resolution, which requires "the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that... there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese State." However, the resolution also calls for "no foreign forces in Lebanon without the consent of its government," and Lebanon already has said it will not force Hizbullah give up its arms. The French defense minister also has said its forces will not take away arms from Hizbullah terrorist guerillas. Thousands of French soldiers are on ships ready to sail to Lebanon, but the government now is backtracking, wanting a clear definition of its mandate and when soldiers can open fire, according to the The Associated Press. In a classic "chicken and egg" situation, the French government has said it does not want to commit how many soldiers it will send until other countries commit themselves. However, most nations have said they will act only after France takes the lead. Germany, a major European Union power, still is hesitating. The government has agreed in principle to send troops, but they may be deployed in non-sensitive areas to prevent the unwanted situation of German soldiers firing on Israeli troops or vice-versa. Deployment of an international force is complicated by the presence of Hizbullah terrorist guerillas. Theoretically, the 18-mile swath of land south of the Litani River to the Israeli border will be manned by Lebanese troops, who have been absent for two decades from the area where Hizbullah has been firmly entrenched. Hizbullah's terrorist guerillas have built up a powerful infrastructure of weapons, especially during the six years following Israel's rapid withdrawal in 2000. It also has established itself as the social benefactor to the predominately Shi'ite Muslim population, providing services in place of the government and making itself a de facto state within the country. The Lebanese government is approaching a compromise solution that would leave Hizbullah armed on condition its weapons are concealed. This violates the UN resolution, which states in Paragraph 8 that southern Lebanon must remain free of armed groups other than the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL. However, Arutz-7's Hillel Fendel notes, the situation is muddled by the presence of a contradictory clause; Paragraph 3 "emphasizes [as opposed to 'calls for' - ed.] the importance of the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory... so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon." In any event, leaving Hizbullah armed keeps a status quo situation which U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has insisted would not be tolerated. The current UNIFIL generally has been acknowledged as ineffective in preventing Hizbullah terrorists from attacking Israel. He told BBC this week that if his forces see a ceasefire violation, "I call both parties... I beg them to stop." Evidence also has been produced that UNIFIL abetted Hizbullah in the abduction of IDF soldiers several years ago. Israel has agreed to withdraw its troops in conjunction with the deployment of the new international UNIFIL force, which is to patrol along with the Lebanese army. The AP quoted unnamed IDF sources as saying the withdrawal could begin as early as Thursday. But the plan is dependent on the deployment of Lebanese troops, which so far have remained north of the Litani River. The Lebanese government has not been able to meet to discuss the deployment because of divisions within the government, which includes two representatives of the Hizbullah terrorist organization and another three ministers who are pro-Hizbullah. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack has explained the dilemma in the same language the American government used to rationalize the authority of the Hamas-led legislature in the Palestinian Authority (PA). In response to a question asking why Lebanon does not take steps to disarm Hizbullah, McCormack replied, "Well, what we are saying is the Lebanese people have a choice. They have to decide their own politics." Hizbullah arch-terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah also has refused to give up his weapons. The IDF discovered many of them during the war, including advanced rockets, throughout southern Lebanon. Nasrallah, resting on the laurels of having prevented Israel from returning the two IDF soldiers his terrorists kidnapped, said in a televised speech Monday night that those calling for disarmament are guilty of "insensitivity and immorality." The difficulty in distinguishing between civilians and Hizbullah terrorists also makes the U.N. plan more theoretical than practical, according to the Washington Post. "[Hizbullah] keeps its presence secret and many militia members are local residents who take up arms only when called on by their leaders," the Post writes. "Their departure has not been envisaged," Lebanese officials said, "and only the militia's officers and their weapons must be pulled back north of the Litani as part of the U.N. cease-fire." "What are the alternatives you have come up with?" Nasrallah asked in his speech. "Can the Lebanese army and the United Nations troops step up to the plate to defend the nation? Haste and simplification are out of the question. We were ready and will always be ready for dialogue to extend the authority of the state. We are part of the government and a basic part of it." Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu is a writer for Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNN.com). |
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THE WAR ISN'T OVER AND IT WON'T BE OVER UNTIL ISRAEL AND THE WEST...FIGHT TO WIN!
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 16, 2006. |
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August 15, 2006 - www.JewishWorldReview.com
"Not Over Over There" was written by Cal Thomas and appeared
in Jewish World Review
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Fighting to obtain a cease-fire is not likely to encourage Israeli soldiers who have given their lives and limbs to defeat a mortal enemy. And turning to the United Nations and its anti-Israel secretary general to monitor the cease-fire is not exactly a confidence builder, given the U.N.'s record in the region. Who believes the United Nations has the guts or other necessary body parts to disarm Hezbollah, as a previous U.N. resolution required the terrorist organization to do? When arms and missiles continue to flow from Iran and Syria, will the United Nations shout, "halt" and apply the necessary force to stop them? They didn't before. And what makes anyone think that Hezbollah is about to disarm? The Jerusalem Post reported recently that: "The Lebanese government was scheduled to meet on Sunday to discuss the disarming of Hizbullah south of the Litani River, but postponed that meeting following indications by the guerrilla group that they would not do so." Writing in the Aug. 13 edition of the Jerusalem Post, JWR columnist Carolyn Glick observes, "The resolution makes absolutely no mention of either Syria or Iran, without whose support Hizbollah could neither exist nor wage an illegal war against Israel." Hezbollah's diplomatic victory feeds its erroneous claim of sovereignty over Lebanon's Shaba Farms, a large area on the Golan Heights that separates the Syrian Golan region from the Upper Galilee. The dispute over who owns the territory is between Syria and Israel, not Lebanon and Israel. For the United Nations to "award" this land to Lebanon gives Hezbollah bragging rights and a claim that the only way to win territorial "concessions" from Israel is to go to war. At best, Hezbollah has been hurt enough to buy Israel time to rebuild its damaged towns from the hundreds of rockets fired indiscriminately at civilian targets with virtually no outrage from the international community, whose fire is reserved for Israel's unintentional strikes on civilians (many of whom may not be civilians at all, as we have learned from some doctored photographs). At worst, Hezbollah will regroup to fight another day with even more dangerous weapons and stronger resolve. Israel's political leadership must decide whether it wants a nation born in modern times out of a Holocaust to die a slower and inevitable death through terrorist attrition? -- aided and abetted by the United Nations and most of Europe -- or whether, as the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin once told me, Israel alone must be responsible for its own defense and future. Writing in Haaretz, columnist Ari Shavit calls 2006 "the most embarrassing year of Israeli defense since the establishment of the State of Israel." He laments the absence of a "learning curve" by the government, its slowness to react to provocations and its caution, which he calls "a recipe for disaster." Shavit adds, "Its attempt to prevent bloodshed is costing a great deal of bloodshed." And the cause of these failures? "We were drugged by political correctness." The U.N.'s failed efforts in the region extend at least to 1978 when it created the Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in response to the Coastal Road Massacre during which Palestinian terrorists based in Lebanon hijacked a bus and murdered 36 hostages. After invading Lebanon to destroy the PLO's terrorist base, The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution calling on Israel to "immediately" withdraw. It established UNIFIL to "assist the government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority to the area." That never happened and terror returned. When Israel again cleaned out the area in 1982, terror returned as Hezbollah. Too many years elapsed before Israel acted again, thus allowing Hezbollah to establish tunnels, weapons and manpower, which made the current war much more difficult for Israel. Within the memory of most people over 40, the free world could distinguish between good and evil. But today, fewer make such judgments and "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter." Instead of the World War I lyric "we won't come back till it's over, over there," we -- or in this case Israel -- comes back before it's over. As a result, it isn't over and it won't be over until Israel and the West get over moral equivalency and political correctness and fight to win. The evil guys are fighting to win. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO BUY GLOBAL TV NEWS?
Posted by Naomi Ragen, August 15, 2006. |
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Much has been written about the overwhelming hostility to
Israel in the media. The following article from the well
known website littlegreenfootballs.com is very enlightening
on this subject.
Naomi |
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How Much Does It Cost to Buy Global TV News? The vast majority of the TV news pictures you see are produced by two TV news companies. Presented here is a case for how a large amount of money has been used to inject a clear bias into the heart of the global TV news gathering system. That this happens is not at question, whether it is by accident or design is harder to tell. You may not realize it, but if you watch any TV news broadcast on any station anywhere in the world, there is a better than even chance you will view pictures from APTN. BBC, Fox, Sky, CNN and every major broadcaster subscribes to and uses APTN pictures. While the method by which they operate is interesting, it is the extra service this US owned and UK based company offers to Arab states that is really interesting. About the Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is a not-for-profit news gathering and dissemination service based in the US.Formed in 1848, the AP grew up from an agreement between the six major New York newspapers of the day. They wanted to defray the large telegraphy costs that they were all independently incurring for sending the same news coast to coast. Despite being highly competitive, they formed the Associated Press as a collection agency and agreed to share the material. Today, that six-newspaper cooperative is an organization serving more than 1,500 newspapers and 5,000 broadcast outlets in the United States. Abroad, AP services are printed and broadcast in 112 countries. Associated Press Television News Associated Press Television News (APTN) is a wholly owned subsidiary of AP. It was formally set up as a separate entity in 1994. It is run as a commercial entity and aims to make a profit. Any profit it does make is fed back to AP (which is non-profit making: APTN profits reduce the newsgathering costs incurred by the 1500 US newspapers that collectively own the AP). APTN is the largest television news gathering player (larger than Reuters, its only true competitor in this field). While AP is based in the US, APTN operates out of large premises in Camden, London. They have news teams, offices and broadcast facilities in just about every important place in the world. APTN uses news crews and broadcast facilities all over the world to record video of newsworthy events (in News, Sport and Entertainment). These pictures are either sent unedited or very partially edited back to London. Most news is fed back within hours but they also cover and feed certain events live (news conferences in Iraq, press conferences after a sporting event etc.). Most of these stories are sent in with "natural sound": there is no journalist providing a voice over, but the choice of what to shoot is in the hands of the local producer and camera crew. Local crews are sometimes employed directly by APTN, or more often "stringers" are hired for a particular event or paid for the footage they have already captured. Once the stories have been fed back to the UK they are edited. This is a round the clock operation. The goal is to produce a 30 minute news bulletin comprising 6 or 7 stories every few hours. These stories are made by editing down the raw "rushes" that come in from all over the world. This is done by a team of producers who work for the news editor. They don't supply a voice over but they do edit, discard and sequence pictures dictating the emphasis and direction of the story. They will accompany each story with a written description of each shot and the general reason this was a story. This is repeated for News, Sport & Entertainment with a geographical emphasis that shifts around the world as different markets wake and sleep. The output of this is called the "Global News Wire" (GNW). The Business of TV News This is how APTN makes its money: news organizations (mostly TV but not all) subscribe to APTN and pay an annual amount to both watch and then re-use the stories that are fed over the GNW. The stories are supplied with sound, but no journalist to do a voice over. Most commercial news stations (like the BBC, SKY, Fox or CNN) would take this feed, decide which pictures to use then re-edit it and supply an appropriate voice over for the story. The video comes with a written description of the shots and the events that occur in them. The fee for this feed depends on the size of the receiving organization, their audience size and a negotiation with APTN's sales force. It is pretty much impossible, however, to operate a TV news organization without taking feeds from either APTN or Reuters or usually both. The agreement with APTN usually allows the receiving news channel unlimited use of the video for two weeks. If they want to re-show those pictures after that they have to separately license the pictures (which can cost anything from $100 to $10,000 per 30 seconds depending on the content). A Separate Service for Arab States However, there is another significant part of their business model that affects the rest of the business. While most of the world takes news pictures with minimal interpretation beyond editing, the Arab Gulf States have asked for and receive a different and far more expensive service. These states pay for a complete news report service including full editing and voice overs from known journalists. The news organizations in the Arab countries don't do anything (beyond verify that they are appropriate for local tastes) before broadcast. What this means is that while there are around 50 people producing news pictures for the whole world working in Camden at any time, there are a further 50 Arabic speaking staff producing finished stories exclusively for the Arab states of the gulf. This has a tremendous effect on the whole feel of the building as these two teams feed pictures and people back and forth and sit in adjacent work areas. The slant of the stories required by the Gulf States has a definite effect on which footage is used and discarded. This affects both the Gulf newsroom and the main global newsroom. This full service feed is much more expensive for the customers than the usual service, but it is also much higher margin for APTN. This is partly because there is great commonality in what they can send to most of the Gulf States taking this service: stories are made once and used in a number of countries. Disproportionately Negative Coverage of Israel Anything involving Israel is a favorite with Gulf Arab
states for showing to their viewers. Could this be the
reason why Israel receives such a disproportionate amount of
particularly negative coverage especially and increasingly
ever since the early 1970's? HonestReporting
The way in which raw footage such as APTN's is compiled into a news report and sent round the world has also been analyzed. The Second Draft (www.seconddraft.org/) gives a comprehensive view of how editing can make all the difference. APTN is the gatekeeper that sits between you and the actual event. You will never see what the editors at APTN see before they compile your evening news. What do you think is cut out? The Wrap-Up Was this organization set up with this in-built bias on purpose? Is there some way that the expensive payments made by Gulf state governments form part of a deliberate attempt to skew the media? In "Islam and Dhimmitude" (2002) by Bat Ye'or on p294-296 she recounts how decisions were taken in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 to try to put across an anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist message. Successive conferences resolved to contribute vast sums "to universities, centers for Islamic studies, international communications agencies, and private and governmental organizations in order to win over world opinion." (p296). The messages from these conferences stressed an addition to the more familiar violent jihad: they also emphasized the importance of jihad by the written and spoken word-what we would recognize as classic propaganda. Without question APTN's interesting business model represents a concrete example of an ongoing financial "contribution" to an important communication agency promoting a pro-Arab bias. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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ISRAEL LOSES LEBANON WAR
Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, August 15, 2006. |
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This was written by Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily's Jerusalem bureau
chief. It appeared yesterday on the World Net Daily website:
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JERUSALEM -- In the coming days, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his government ministers will attempt to persuade Israeli voters and the international community that Israel achieved its political and military objectives during its campaign in Lebanon. Olmert will likely claim Hezbollah's capabilities have been minimized; a strong, armed force will soon be deployed in south Lebanon capable of contending with Hezbollah; and that the political momentum for a new Middle East settlement is now on Israel's side. In actuality, these claims couldn't be further from the truth. Israel lost the war in Lebanon on all fronts. This is so largely because Olmert refused to allow the Israeli Defense Forces to do its job. Days after Hezbollah provoked Israel last month by firing rockets into Jewish towns and by ambushing an Israeli military patrol unit killing 8 soldiers and kidnapping two others, the IDF presented Olmert with several battle plans it says could have devastated Hezbollah within an estimated three weeks. The plans, drawn up and improved upon over the course of several years, called for an immediate air campaign against Hezbollah strongholds in south Beirut; aerial bombardment of key sections of the Lebanese-Syria border to ensure the kidnapped soldiers were not transported out of the country and to halt Syrian re-supply of arms to Hezbollah; and the deployment of up to 40,000 ground troops to advance immediately to the Latani River -- taking up the swath of territory from which most Hezbollah rockets are fired -- and from there work their way back to the Israeli border while surrounding and then cleaning out Hezbollah strongholds under heavy aerial cover. To the dismay of military officials here, Olmert did not approve the plan. He initially allowed only a limited air campaign that focused on some high-profile Hezbollah targets, the Beirut airport and roads that led from Beirut into Syria. But the main smuggling routes between Syria and Lebanon, sites very well known to Israeli intelligence, were essentially off limits to the Israeli Air Force because Olmert didn't want his army operating too close to Syria for fear it would bring Damascus into the conflict. IDF suffers from lack of troops in Lebanon, insufficient air coverage When Hezbollah met Israel's air campaign with massive rocket attacks against northern Israeli communities, the IDF again presented Olmert with a plan for a large ground deployment to the Latani River. The Israeli Prime Minister -- under heavy pressure to step up operations in response to Hezbollah rocket fire -- approved only a smaller ground offensive of up to 8,000 soldiers who were not allowed to advance to the Latani. The IDF was directed to clean out Hezbollah's bases within about three miles of the Israeli border. Small forces, though, did advance further while isolated special operations were carried out deep inside Lebanon. Afraid of being accused of using excessive force and firing indiscriminately into population centers -- charges leveled at the Jewish state anyway -- Olmert limited the IAF to strategic bombings only. The air force was not allowed to clear the way for ground troops to enter. And so the IDF -- with a force one fourth the size it asked for -- engaged in heated, often face-to-face combat over the course of weeks with a well-trained, well-armed Hezbollah militia that had planned with Iran for up to six years for this battle. Israeli soldiers found themselves up against Hezbollah gunmen who fought in civilian clothing and hid behind local civilian populations. Well-orchestrated Hezbollah ambushes took tolls on troop battalions. Iranian-supplied advanced anti-tank missiles proved extremely effective against Israeli combat vehicles. The IDF suffered in very specific ways on the battlefield because of a lack of enough ground troops. One example was a battle that began July 25. The Israeli army attempted to strangle Bint Jbail, a town of about 30,000 commonly called the "Hezbollah capital" of south Lebanon. Because there were not enough troops to completely surround the strategic village, Bint Jbail's northern entrance was not sealed off, and, according to army sources, hundreds of Hezbollah fighters were able to infiltrate and join with the already 150 or so gunmen inside. The IDF had to contend with a larger Hezbollah contingent as a result. Nine soldiers were lost in heavy fighting the next day. Another 14 soldiers were killed at Bint Jbail the next two weeks. On several occasions the past few weeks, while heavy diplomacy looked to be gaining momentum, such as during Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's visits here, the IDF was actually asked by the political echelon to halt most operations and troop advances for up to 36 hours while negotiations ran their course. Military leaders now charge that some troop battalions, instructed to hold positions outside villages but not to advance, actually became sitting ducks for Hezbollah anti-tank fire, which killed at least 35 Israeli soldiers. After the diplomacy failed, soldiers were ordered to carry on. This piece of information will likely be brought to light by commissions of inquiry already initiated into the performance of the IDF and the culpability of Israel's political leadership. Hezbollah showed other impressive gains. In what Israel admitted was a major blow to its navy, Hezbollah during the initial fighting hit an Israeli naval ship with an Iranian Silkworm C-802 radar-guided anti-ship cruise missile, killing four soldiers and damaging the warship. It was the first time the missile had been introduced into the battle with Israel. Military officials here said the Israeli ship's radar system was not calibrated to detect the Silkworm, which is equipped with an advanced anti-tracking system. Olmert turns down 'necessary' military ops WorldNetDaily was made aware by senior military officials of several meetings in which IDF officials petitioned Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz for a larger ground force and for more heavy aerial cover, or at least for ground troops already in Lebanon to be authorized to reach the Latani River in hopes of cleaning out the villages nearby such as Tyre, from which many rockets are launched into Israel. The petitions came more frequently as Hezbollah rockets landed further and further south inside Israel. Tens of thousands of troops were put on standby in northern Israel, but were not allowed to enter Lebanon. The smaller IDF numbers on the ground in Lebanon carried on, eventually with instructions to create a buffer zone of about 3 miles within which the Hezbollah infrastructure would be entirely wiped out. The zone would do little to stop rocket fire into northern Israel, since most rockets were fired from positions deeper inside south Lebanon. Officials say the IAF was still restrained from targeting key positions close to the Syrian border in the Bekaa Valley from which intelligence officials say Hezbollah received regular shipments of rockets and other heavy weaponry originating in Iran and transported via Syria. Israel bombed roads in the area a few kilometers from Syria, but many weapons smuggling routes at the border remained intact. While Syria placed its military on high alert, Olmert told reporters several times Israel had no intention of bringing Damascus into the war. Last weekend, after Hezbollah rockets killed a record 15 civilians in one day, Olmert's cabinet finally gave the green light for an enormous IDF ground invasion and for an advance to the Latani River. Many military officials here told me they were elated the IDF would at last be given the freedom to do what it had wanted to do nearly one month ago. The cabinet, though, left the timing of the new operation to Olmert, who held the advance back until Thursday morning. By Thursday evening, the IDF, which charged ahead from four main fronts, reached the Latani River and even beyond in full force and prepared for an intense battle to overtake the areas used by Hezbollah to fire rockets. The IDF estimated it would need another four to six weeks to successfully wipe out the Hezbollah infrastructure in the areas. But a day later a cease-fire resolution was adapted. The U.S., perhaps wanting to cut its losses after Israel's month-long poor performance, supported a cessation of military activities in Lebanon. Hezbollah remains intact, Israel's enemies emboldened The IDF continued its advance until this morning, beginning to clear out some villages. But not nearly enough gains were made, as was amply demonstrated yesterday when Hezbollah fired over 240 rockets -- its largest one-day volley yet -- into northern Israel, killing one civilian and wounding at least 26 others. Now the cease-fire is being implemented. Perhaps it will hold, perhaps it won't. Either way, Hezbollah has won the war. It put up an incredible fight against IDF forces paralyzed by Israel's leadership. The terror group maintains a good deal of its infrastructure in south Lebanon and still has the ability to fire hundreds of rockets per day into Israel. Even if Israel restarts its larger offensive, Hezbollah still can regain the initiative by carrying out larger escalations, such as firing its long-range Zelzal rockets into Tel Aviv. Hezbollah is ecstatic about the deployment of "15,000 soldiers" from the Lebanese Army to replace Israeli troops in south Lebanon. The Lebanese Army doesn't have 15,000 standing troops. Aside from a small air force pool, the Army doesn't have a reserve unit from which it can call up large numbers. The plan, according to Lebanese officials, is to recall Lebanese soldiers who served during the past 5 years, which means many out-of-shape, unprepared ex-soldiers will be charged with protecting the Israeli border. Take into account the sectarian divisions of the split Shiite-Sunni Lebanese Army -- with many soldiers sympathetic to Hezbollah's cause -- and you have a force that will, at best, do little to contend with Hezbollah, and at worst prompt an internal civil war. Not to mention, the Lebanese Army is poorly armed and ill-equipped. The cease-fire call for the establishment of a backed-up United Nations force in south Lebanon is also taken as a victory for Hezbollah. The terror group does not believe any international force will be willing to die to defend Israel's borders or that it will have the ability to block the group's re-supply routes between Syria and Lebanon. Hezbollah knows that if the IDF couldn't defeat it, European forces, led by countries opposed to Israel's Lebanon campaign, will be no match. For Israel, an international force on its borders will impede the ability of the IDF to operate with freedom during any future conflict with Hezbollah. The Jewish state's credibility took a massive toll when Olmert agreed to the current cease-fire calling for negotiations at a later date for the two soldiers Hezbollah kidnapped. Olmert had repeatedly vowed the war would only stop after Hezbollah returned the abducted Israeli troops, and now the prime minister is ending the war without even vague promises of the soldiers' assured safety or indications they are alive. Hezbollah sees this as a victory. The cease-fire places the Shebba Farms, territory held by Israel but claimed by Hezbollah, up for future negotiations, granting Hezbollah the ability to claim its fighting brought international legitimacy to its territorial demands. The cease-fire doesn't place an immediate arms embargo on Hezbollah, but only calls for future talks on stopping weapons transfers to the terror group. This leaves Syria and Iran free to rearm and regroup Hezbollah. The two state sponsors of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran learned during the last month that they can orchestrate a proxy war against America's Middle East ally at no cost to their regimes. They engineered a tough fight against Israeli forces and came out on top. They will be emboldened to continue their war against Israel and U.S. troops in Iraq at a fevered pitch. Iran smells Western weakness and will forge ahead with its nuclear ambitions. And terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza are foaming at the mouth. Today, Abu Aziz, second-in-command of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, told WorldNetDaily that Hezbollah's victory leads him to believe the end of Israel is in sight. He said he realizes now is the time to "attack Israel from all directions." And so the enemies of the U.S. and Israel are poised for another war. They smell victory, and why shouldn't they? The last month demonstrated that with weak Israeli leadership in place, the Jewish state can be defeated. 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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NASRALLAH IS ALREADY CARVING OUT LEBANON'S FUTURE
Posted by David Nathan, August 15, 2006. |
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DEBKAFile Exclusive Report
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President George W. Bush and prime minister Ehud Olmert in speeches on Aug. 13 laid down the law on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701. Bush said the motion marked a pivotal moment in the Middle East and would end Hizballah's state within a state. This term was borrowed from an earlier Lebanon reality: The stranglehold Yasser Arafat's PLO held on South Lebanon and Beirut in the 1970s. Tuesday morning, an Israeli spokesman emphasized that Hassan Narallah "must" obey the Security Council resolution. If he failed to do so, Israel "would have to do the job." DEBKAFile's exclusive sources in Beirut report that Nasrallah's machinations represent a reality which is a world away from this kind of rhetoric: 1. He has notified Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora that the only concession he is willing to make with regard to the Hizballah presence in South Lebanon is to avoid exhibiting his fighters' weapons in a demonstrative fashion. 2. Hizballah forces in the South will not oppose the deployment of Lebanese troops and a strengthened UNIFIL force, so long as they understand who their hosts are, namely Hizballah. The inference here is that foreign peacekeepers' steps will be dogged by Hizballah fighters. This action nullifies the injunction to the Beirut government to assert Lebanese sovereignty in every part of the country, which was stressed by the US president in his speech. 3. Siniora must stop referring to Hizballah's disarmament else Hizballah ministers and MPs will topple his government by withdrawing their parliamentary support. Nasrallah is not standing aside for anyone -- certainly not the US-backed Siniora government - to carve out a new future for Lebanon. His men are already out consolidating his "state within a state." Rather than wait for government or international assistance to repair destroyed villages in the south, Hizballah volunteers are on the spot helping the returning refugees to start reconstruction work. Just as Olmert talks about rebuilding northern Israel after it was pummeled by 4,000 Hizballah rockets, so too does Nasrallah use the language of a national leader in reference to the ravaged South. Monday, Aug. 14, in his 10th televised speech of the war, the Hizballah leader made no bones about being short of funds, but said his men would be on hand to help with repairs. This device is a neat way of opening the door for Hizballah fighters and cadres to reach their former bases, fortifications and bunkers facing the Israeli border, in their capacity as volunteers and aid workers donating their services to the national reconstruction effort. To rebuild his depleted South Lebanon army, Nasrallah also quietly ordered all Hizballah fighters in the north, the Beqaa Valley and Baalbek, to pack their bags and head south with their families. DEBKAFile's sources add: Scrutiny of the refugees flooding back to the south since the ceasefire declared Monday morning by Israel shows that this traffic was kicked off by the massive transfer of Hizballah's cohorts to the south in the guise of distressed refugees. International television cameras recorded the first families in cars, all showing the V sign, displaying placards of Nasrallah and honking loudly, as they headed back to their flattened homes in the south. Hizballah thus regrouped in the south by a smooth, rapid maneuver, which pulled in its wake a wave of genuine refugees. Israeli troops left to secure the south were helpless to halt this tide. The jammed roads also block off Israel's lines for supplies and reinforcements. The IDF spokesperson had little choice Tuesday but to announce troop withdrawal within days. So, whether or not Hizballah was defeated as the US president claimed matters little: Nasrallah has had the last word in the current round of the war. How will this affect the deployment of the Lebanese army and Unifil? DEBKAFile's sources report US ambassador in Beirut Jeff Feldman as pressing the Lebanese premier hard to do something about the situation. But Fouad Siniora finds himself in dire straits. When he broached a plan to confine Lebanese troops to the nine Lebanese-Syrian border passes, instead of a complete deployment in the south, he was greeted with a blunt threat from Damascus. Assad, conversing with a visiting delegation of Egyptian Nasserites, remarked Hizballah's battle had taught him there are other options beside peace. Then, turning to Beirut, the Syrian ruler added that it was time for the Siniora government to go. In any case, Hizballah has managed to clog the roads and the destroyed bridges to the south with swarms of refugees, so blocking the region off to access by the Lebanese units. The Americans have proposed organizing with French help an amphibious landing by sea at Tyre. Our military sources add that this idea appears to be a non-starter because no Lebanese army units have ever trained in commando beach assaults. But even if they manage to reach the shore, they will walk into the arms of their Hizballah "hosts." Contact David Nathan at davenathan@aol.com |
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WHY ISRAEL HAS NO PEACE AND ONLY WAR AHEAD
Posted by Marcel Cousineau, August 15, 2006. |
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The peace process is Israel's covenant with death. What Satan could not accomplish against Israel by war, he succeeded by a trojan ally and their Road Map. Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scornful men, Who rule
this people who are in Jerusalem,
One thing is sure. This is only a pause in the war and when it breaks out again it will involve Syria and Iran and the death and destruction will be extreme. The Bush peace plan led to this war because it caused Israel to be percieved as weak by her enemies. While Israel prostrated herself for peace, Hezbollah and Hamas prepared for war. ALL DETERRENCE WAS LOST, thanks to the Bush pressure on Israel to surrender land and make suicidal gestures for no peace. All these years Israel religiously followed Olso and the Road Map for peace. Instead of peace war explodes freom every corner. By weak acts of appeasment and bending to pressure from a bad friend to surrender their land to Islamic terrorists, Israel planted the seeds of war. Now the harvest of hell from this evil Road Map covenant with death and hell fall upon Israel as they are percieved as weak and ripe for destruction. Israel has lost all the deterrence it ever had by capitulating to U.S. pressure to surrender and appease for a phony peace process. Satan has succeeded in peace against Israel where he could not thru past war's. So what Bush and Rice accomplished by their temporary cessation of hostilities resolution in the U.N. bodes ill for planet earth. A weak P.M.Olmert begins to get heat for his confused war and failure to rescue the kidnapped IDF soldiers. Israel elected losers in their last election and now many voters begin to see the error of their ways. IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz was selling his stock portfolio at 12:00 pm July 12th and both left and right are calling for his resignation. The corrupt Israeli politicians were drunk on the fumes of the failed Bush Road Map and were caught unprepared for war. THEY'RE FINISHED ! Hopefully this war will spell the end of Kadima and the party of appeasment and surrender and Israel will prepare for all out war with the Islamic hordes which approaches. Iran and Syria are more excited than ever about finishing their final solution of Israel. Here's a snippet of what even the Israeli left are saying: Mr. Prime Minister, establish a national emergency government that will determine the mistakes we made for years that led to this war," Itzik said. "This [new] government must prepare us for the next war. This government will express the consensus among the people over our just execution of this war. This is the national call to readiness of us all." Marcel Cousineau can be reached at his website: http://averyheavystone.blogspot.com |
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KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE PRIZE!
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, August 15, 2006. |
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Keep your eye on the prize! Israel's war against Hizbullah was only a warm up to the big confrontation just around the corner. Muscle-flexing Iran talks the talk, but will not walk the walk, when the Jewish juggernaut smashes its nuclear infrastructure to smithereens. Delusional Arabs believe the fanatical Iranian-supplied missile launching Hizbullah Shiites whipped Israel, not realizing all they did was waste their weapons stash, reducing their current threat level to irrelevance. Indeed, Jewish generals are quick learners, comprehend mistakes, and will not repeat them when Israel wipes Iran off the map as a Middle East power to be reckoned with. Furthermore, the Bush Administration has every thing to gain politically by supporting Israel's preemptive strike against Iran's mad mullahs and swaggering president AhMADinejad. In fact, it would surely be wise if a large contingent of U.S. forces in Iraq forthwith redeployed to the north in friendly virtual Kurdistan, allowing them at the right moment to fill the Iranian skies with war planes in sync with Israeli bombers. It would be surprising if Iranian despots did not already sense their day of reckoning, thus Israel and its formidable ally America must not wait too long for their combined attack, thwarting Iran's ability to prepare a defense. Is there any other way to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal? The zealots in charge truly believe they must create chaos on Earth, and what better way to achieve that aim then by nuking Israel, so the Imam of their warped imaginations will swoop down from some sort of Allah heaven and morph the planet into an infidel bereft Islamic paradise. Those criminally insane Persians cannot be allowed to continue on their merry way along the Muslim road to a likely nuclear Armageddon. Such warped thinkers cannot be deterred from their catastrophic quest with logic. The concept of mutually assured destruction has no meaning when dealing with raving jihad junkies, obsessed with martyrdom. How many more homicide/suicide bombings will it take before the civilized world realizes fundamentalist Islamic lunatics are not close to playing with full decks, and that such lunacy is quite representative within the bowels of Iran? This is serious business! Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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THE JOKE WAS ON ME, DON'T BE NEXT
Posted by Jack Engelhard, August 15, 2006. |
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Finally, it happened. Like "tag, you're it," I got zapped. Some prankster out there sent me a personal and insulting message under the name of a well-known network anchorman, and I fell for the trap. I responded in heat, thinking it was legit. Well, it wasn't. Let that be a lesson, first of all to me, to be more careful. I should have seen this coming. I'd been warned that some people were out to get me for my journalism that confronts media bias, and even more so for the novel that I've got running as a serial on Amazon.com - The Bathsheba Deadline. This novel is about many things, but it is especially about media manipulation and how certain members of the press distort the truth. Watch out, I was told, you are stepping on big toes. So, I'd been braced for an attack, and it came, but not from a real journalist; from a trickster. I got duped. Small comfort, but everybody's been getting duped. Oprah got duped, and so did Reuters and the New York Times and the New Republic and all the rest. How can we tell fact from fake? We can't. The best bet is to assume that everything is fabrication and deception until proven absolutely otherwise - and even then, who knows? This may well go down as the age of deception. (Islam is a religion of peace, Al Franken is a national political figure and Paris Hilton is a national cultural figure who once got higher TV ratings than a State of the Union address by President George W. Bush.) We have always been victims of media manipulation, but only today is it so obvious. Reuters was caught in the act of doctoring those photos from Lebanon, all in an effort to damage Israel, just as Abu Ghraib was used by the left-tilting news media to damage the United States and to paint our entire military with the same brush. Never mind that 99.9 percent of American soldiers and Marines, as well as Israeli soldiers, are heroic and honorable. Media manipulation does not begin and end with Reuters. Media watchdog Honest Reporting learned that the BBC's Fayad Abu Shamala energized a Hamas rally by declaring that "journalists and media organizations are waging this campaign shoulder to shoulder together with the Palestinian people." Well isn't that special. Anyway, we always knew this - that the BBC and others sponsor Islamic terror against Israel, but dress it up as news. Over at TV's Comedy Central, Jon Stewart proudly announces that his coverage of America and the world is clearly "fake news," meant for laughter. NPR, the BBC and all the rest may want to consider this disclosure for themselves. Over here in the USA we can afford to laugh (once in a while) at all the fake news that passes for genuine coverage. In Israel, it's life or death by the hour, so it's quite amazing how easily those Israelis were duped into relinquishing Gaza. All those reporters and commentators deserve thanks for that folly. They're the ones who, like Frankenstein, invented and molded Ariel Sharon. They created him, babied him, burped him, into their own (radical Left) image. Today, it's Ehud Olmert and his confederacy of dunces, but Olmert is a tough sell for members of the press here and in Israel. He wasn't elected and it should be remembered that soon after he took office, he said that he was tired of fighting and tired of winning. So, congratulations, he lost! (That certainly is the perception, if not the reality.) In this campaign against Hizbullah, Olmert kvetched and diddled like Woody Allen, but in Judea and Samaria, against 70,000 peaceful Jewish Israelis, he intends to stand tall and do John Wayne. Here, he intends to go ahead with another iron first against rabbis and yeshiva students. Israel's far-left Haaretz newspaper ran a piece by Ari Shavit that scolded Olmert for his teetering leadership and insisted that Olmert must go. Some of us have noticed how peaceniks grow downright bullish and militaristic the nearer those bombs fall to their businesses and homes. So, when even the Left has had enough of getting bamboozled, maybe there is hope for all of us. What's my excuse for getting duped by a fake e-mail? Listen, I am not perfect. I am a man of faith, a trusting person. I even expect the Philadelphia Phillies to line up for this year's World Series. Jack Engelhard's latest novel is called "The Bathsheba Deadline;" it is Amazon.com's first serialized novel. He is also the author of the novel Indecent Proposal and the award-winning memoir of his experiences as a Jewish refugee from Europe, Escape From Mount Moriah. His novel The Days of the Bitter End is being prepared for movie production. Contact him at viewopinion@aol.com |
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HIZBULLAH 'VICTORY' BOOSTS PALESTINIAN ARAB EXTREMISTS
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 15, 2006. |
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These are the people you want to give land to and live side-by-side with Israel. These are the people you want to make peace with; these are the people you agreed to ceasefire with; wake up Israel and wake up world. Hizbullah won the war and in doing so has given hope to the Arab and Muslim world that where there is faith, strong will and preparation, nothing is impossible. The army that 250 million Arabs combined thought to be too powerful has been put in check by a group of less than 10,000 men! That is indeed legendary and has many, many, many implications. An unequivocal expression of the Arab and Islamic goal--to destroy Israel. And by joining with Al Qaida, "the rest of the jihadists in the world will win." Bush was right to finally identify our struggle fighting against Islamic fascism but is wrong and weak on his stance about it. This was written by Abu Khaled Toameh and appeared August 13, 2006
in the Jerusalem Post
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At least 50 newborn babies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been named after Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah over the past month, sources in the Palestinian Authority Health Ministry told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. The move is an indication of his growing popularity of Nasrallah among Palestinians and Arabs in general, many of whom hail him for merely daring to stand up to Israel. As the war nears its end, some moderate Arabs expressed fear that the widely-perceived conviction on the Arab street that Hizbullah had won would enhance the position of those who argue that Israel can be defeated or destroyed. "Almost every day we have a case of parents asking to name their newborn babies after Nasrallah," one source said. "This reminds me of the days when Palestinians used to name their children after Saddam Hussein because of the missile attacks on Israel during the Gulf War." Naming babies after Nasrallah is only one of the ways many Palestinians have been expressing their gratitude for the Shi'ite leader for firing thousands of rockets and missiles at Israel and for inflicting heavy casualties on the IDF. Nasrallah's posters and the yellow flag of Hizbullah have flooded local markets. CDs containing new songs heaping praise on Nasrallah and Hizbullah are being sold on the streets of Palestinian cities for NIS 10. One of the most popular, Welcome the Hawk of Lebanon, includes 14 songs and parts of speeches delivered by Nasrallah since the war broke out. Some of the songs while others urge the Palestinian factions to copy Hizbullah's tactics and step up attacks on Israel. Expressing enormous admiration for Hizbullah, Palestinians across the political spectrum agreed that Israel had suffered a humiliating defeat. "This war has shown once again that Israel is much weaker than it is perceived, especially in the Arab world," said Ziad Abdel Fattah, a Fatah operative from a village near Ramallah. "Other than kill hundreds of civilians, Israel failed to achieve most of its goals, particularly the destruction of Hizbullah. Everyone saw how Israeli soldiers were forced to retreat in the face of the heroes of Hizbullah." Muhammad Atiyeh, who describes himself as a Hamas supporter, is convinced that the war in Lebanon could signal the beginning of the demise of Israel. "After 30 days of fighting, Israel had to beg the Americans for a cease-fire," he said. "Had it not been for the US, Israel would have vanished a long time ago. We have seen in recent years that Israel does not have the capability to confront Muslim warriors from Hamas and Hizbullah. The day will come when all Muslims will unite and wipe Israel off the map." Echoing a similar view, Palestinian Authority Minister of Culture Atallah Abu al-Sabah said that the war in Lebanon has proven that it's only a matter of time before Israel disappears. "The saying that Israel is here to stay has proven to be a false one," he told a pro-Hizbullah rally in Gaza City. "Israel can be defeated and this is what the Arab regimes should know. It's time to remove the dust from Arab weapons and to use them to liberate Palestine and the Aksa Mosque." He expressed his wish that "every Arab capital would have its own Hizbullah... Hizbullah has taught Israel an unforgettable lesson and we hope that all the Arab countries will start recruiting and training young men to fight like the great Hizbullah fighters." Palestinian political analysts said the fact that many Palestinians and Arabs are convinced that Hizbullah had won the war will boost the popularity of extremist groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida. "This war will have negative repercussions on the Palestinian arena," said former PA minister and political analyst Ghassan Khatib. "The radicals who believe that force is the only way to resolve the conflict will be strengthened as a result of this war." Arab commentators were quick to declare over the weekend that Hizbullah had won the war. Writing in the Mathaba News Network, columnist Zaher Mahruqi said the Hizbullah "victory" will boost the status of jihadists around the world. "As the jihadists movements prove their potency on the battleground in southern Lebanon, the rest of the jihadists in the world win, at the very least, a psychological victory and a renewed sense of legitimacy," he said. "After all, Hizbullah, which was coined to be a terrorist group by world powers, is now viewed as a legitimate and capable resistance movement." Noting the fact that al-Qaida had come out in support of Hizbullah, Mahruqi continued: "This symbolic unification, which came at a time when the Arab regimes had been stripped of final grain of manhood when they stood helpless while the children of Kana fell, entails the rise of jihadists and the beginning of a free fall of [pro- Western] Arab leaderships. "Hizbullah won the war and in doing so has given hope to the Arab and Muslim world that where there is faith, will and preparation, nothing is impossible. The army that was thought to be too powerful for the 250 million Arabs combined has been put in check by a group of less than 10,000 men. That is indeed legendary and has many implications." Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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REALITY SETS IN: GLOBES POLL SHOWS DRASTIC FALL IN SUPPORT FOR OLMERT GOV'T
Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, August 15, 2006. |
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After decades of fantasy and disconnection from reality, the "Israelis" are waking up. My hope is that as soon as there are two minutes of quiet, they will not slip back into the narcosis that has characterized them until today. Those who wish to keep the public awake must not be gentle with them. Quite the contrary. It is necessary to remind the public (and the specific individuals that have brought this disaster on us) as to whom is to blame for all this as bluntly and as brutally as possible. Do not be polite. Do not be forgiving. Point the finger. Name the names. This information comes from IMRA (www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=30621) yesterday. |
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Globes poll shows drastic fall in support for Olmert gov't
Globes correspondent: Globes poll shows drastic fall in support for gov't Only 6% of those polled think that the agreement achieves most of Israel's goals. The first political outcome of the 33 days of war has been a drastic drop in support for Kadima and Labor, according to a "Globes-Smith" poll conducted by Rafi Smith. The survey, which was conducted just before the ceasefire went into effect, reveals that were elections held today, Kadima would win less than 20 Knesset seats (compared with 29 in the last election in February), while Labor would get 12 seats only. This result represents a marked change from the trend during the past month of war in the north, when the public expressed its support for the government and the IDF, with views that could be described as "patriotic." The poll also reveals that around half the public think the ceasefire will hold up for a month, while 35% think it will last no more than a week. Only 6% of respondents think that UN Security Council Resolution 1701 is good and achieves most of Israel's goals, and only a quarter of those polled think that this is the best agreement Israel could achieve, under the circumstances. 38% feel the agreement is not good but that there is no alternative but to accept it. In all, 66% think the agreement is not a good one. 58% of respondents feel that Israel achieved only a few of its goals, or achieved nothing at all, against 16% who thought so 11 days ago. Only 3% feel that Israel has achieved all, or most of its goals, against more than a third who thought so a week ago. 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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FROM THE ONLY MK THAT I RESPECT
Posted by Sergio Tessa (HaDaR), August 15, 2006. |
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MK Eldad:
MK Aryeh Eldad responded to the ceasefire which took effect this morning:
Eldad said he demands the creation of a government commission of inquiry to investigate the mistakes made in fighting the war. He called for the resignations of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz (Labor) and IDF Chief-of-staff Dan Halutz "in order to enable Israel to prepare for the inevitable war with Iran and its agents." Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net. |
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NGOS CONTINUE TO ATTACK ISRAEL
Posted by David Meir-Levi, August 15, 2006. |
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When all the NGOs are spouting the same lies, you can be pretty sure that they are working off of the same script. who gave them that script? This comes from the NGO Monitor. Contact them at NGO_Monitor@mail.vresp.com |
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NGO Statements on Lebanon A large number of NGOs have made numerous statements about the current conflict in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah. The crisis began on July 12 when Hezbollah fired tens of rockets at Israeli towns, then crossed into Israeli territory, abducted two soldiers and killed three others (five other Israeli soldiers were killed while attempting a rescue mission). NGO statements have focused overwhelmingly on alleged Israeli infractions of the rules of war while paying little attention to the approximately 2,700 rockets Hezbollah fired at Israeli towns and cities in four weeks, and the militia's use of human shields. Common themes in the NGO statements include: Accusations of "disproportionate force" by Israel, with no explanation of what would comprise a proportionate response to Hezbollah terror and missile attacks; Below is a selection of a few of the most imbalanced NGO statements on the conflict. NGO Monitor's updated summary and analysis of NGO activities related to the crisis can be found here. Amnesty International - In a July 13 press release Amnesty International (AI) said "Israel must put an immediate end to attacks against civilians", and provocatively asserts that Israel deliberately targets civilians. NGO Statements on Gaza Israel's military operation in the Gaza strip has also continued after the abduction of Corporal Gilad Shavit on June 25. Since NGO Monitor's previous report, NGOs have made further political statements which erase the context of Palestinian terror activities, including the ongoing Qassam rocket fire from Gaza. Contact David Meir-Levi at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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LETTER TO HAARETZ EDITOR
Posted by Zalmi, August 15, 2006. |
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This essay appeared today in Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNationalNews.com). |
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To David Landau
Dear David: I haven't much time for Ehud Olmert, but for all the scorn he is about to face over his leadership in this war and the loss of our precious youngsters, my finger points firmly at you and your fellow editors of the so-called "thinking man's press". In bending over backwards to air liberal opinions, you have left no space for the Pravda: the truth. You have forsaken the prime calling of a journalist: to probe and inquire. To cast light into the dark corners of political corruption and to expose those in whom the citizens' trust would be misplaced. Instead you have signally failed in this duty. In particular by allowing Ariel Sharon a trouble-free election run to lead this nation over a precipice which -- only by the grace of G-d -- has been stopped at the last moment. Had Gilad Shalit's kidnapping not precipitated this conflagration, Hizballa's blitzkrieg would most likely have taken place after Kadima's handover of Judea and Samaria with devastating consequences. How long do you think Ben Gurion's new airport would have lasted within a 6km missile range? It is time to review your editorial policy. Israel has more than enough demonizers and self-hating Jewish pundits in the outside world without paying for more in newspaper subscriptions. It is time you started flying the flag like the rest of us. Contact Zalmi at zalmi@zalmi.net |
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RED CROSS ADMITS TO AIDING WOUNDED HIZBULLAH FIGHTERS
Posted by Michael Freund, August 15, 2006. |
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This appeared today in the Jerusalem Post. Do they help wounded IDF soldiers? [Editor's Note: See also above.] |
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The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) provided medical care to Hizbullah terrorists wounded while fighting against Israel, the Jerusalem Post has learned. "The moment a Hizbullah fighter is injured, he is considered a non-combatant, so we must take care of him," ICRC spokeswoman Carla Haddad told The Jerusalem Post by phone from Geneva. "We are a neutral intermediary and the ICRC has a mandate to intervene." Haddad confirmed that ICRC personnel in southern Lebanon, working together with members of the Lebanese Red Cross, had offered medical assistance and other unspecified forms of relief to Hizbullah members hurt on the battlefield. The Post contacted the ICRC after a photograph appeared in Thursday's New York Times depicting Red Cross workers assisting wounded members of Hizbullah to cross a makeshift bridge over the Litani River. Citing the 1949 Geneva Conventions, Haddad said the ICRC "can come into any situation and assist civilians and non-combatants. The same treatment is given to both sides." Asked if the ICRC would assist wounded Hizbullah fighters even if it meant they would then be able to return immediately to the battle or continue firing rockets at Israel, Haddad replied, "There is nothing wrong with assisting the war wounded." Pressed to clarify if the organization would also provide aid to al-Qaida members wounded in clashes with US troops in Afghanistan, she momentarily hesitated before saying, "Yes, of course. We would assist non-combatants on both sides." Contacted by the Post, Carol Miller, spokeswoman for the American Red Cross in Washington, defended the ICRC's policy, insisting it was required under international law. "The Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law protect non-combatants in armed conflict - the wounded, civilians, prisoners of war, medical personnel and humanitarian Red Cross workers," she said. "The ICRC is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions and operates as a neutral intermediary in armed conflict, providing protection and humanitarian assistance to non-combatants." According to Miller, the ICRC makes no distinction between soldiers of a sovereign state and those belonging to a terrorist group. "The characterization by one side of the other as terrorists," she said, "does not alter the fundamental protections of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law. We do not takes sides in an armed conflict; we neither condemn nor support a side. The movement provides humanitarian assistance to vulnerable people in need, without regard to which side they may seem to be on or what they may be called." The American Red Cross, Miller said, has thus far sent $500,000 to the ICRC for relief activities in Lebanon and an additional $80,000 has been raised. She did not express any concern that the aid being provided might end up helping Hizbullah fighters. "Our neutrality is essential to our humanitarian action," she said.
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AMATEURS
Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, August 15, 2006. |
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Dear friends, The bunch of amateurs now running the Israeli government would have been laughable, if the situation were not so tragic. Hezbollah declares victory.
FOX reports that Thousands of human shield civilians are returning to South Lebanon, among them many armed Hezbollah terrorists. Kofi Anan says that it will take weeks if not months until a UN force reaches Lebanon. It is clear that the UN Resolution is another international swindle on a monumental scale. And what does Amir Peretz, the amateur Israeli Defence Minister say? He declares that Israel is now ready to resume negotiations with Syria....Heh?!? His small mind does not even begin to comprehend the enormity of the situation. Any suggestion of negotiations now can only be interpreted by Syria as a total capitulation. What cards is Israel left with after such a political debacle? Asad is sleeping calmly tonight, with a peaceful smile on his face. Time to get rid of this government of Chamberlains. NOW! Your Truth Provider,
Yuval Zaliouk writes the Truth Provider columns. To subscribe, send an email to ynz@netvision.net.il |
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YOU CAN HELP SUPPORT ISRAEL
Posted by Jael Kurtz, August 15, 2006. |
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I live in Bet Shemesh. Although I am not directly affected by the war and its aftermath directly. All of us in Israel and across the world are looking to find ways to help those who need it the most. Here are some suggestions. 1. If you are planning an event or looking for a special gift consider ordering Israeli merchandise that can be shipped directly to your home to add an Israeli flavor while supporting a suffering economy. To look up different vendors who will ship their merchandise abroad
visit "Party favors"
2. Check out www.americanchayal.org, a project designed to help IDF soldiers and residents of the North. 3. Be optimistic, start planning your next trip to Israel now. For some great ideas of interesting tourist sites and places to stay visit "Places to stay" http://www.celebrateisrael.com/DisplayCategory.asp?CID=9
Contact Jael Kurtz at jaelyk@gmail.com |
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HEZBOLLAH FIRES ROCKETS AT ISRAELI SOLDIERS
Posted by Naomi Ragen, August 15, 2006. |
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Friends, A report from YNET 15/8/06 filed at 2:58 am says that Hezbollah fired four bombs at Southern Lebanon, despite the ceasefire, in an attempt to harm Israeli soldiers. No one was hurt. Israel did not fire back.I'm sure no one is going to report this violation in your local paper unless and until -- God forbid -- Israelis are hurt and then retaliate. Then Israel will be blamed for breaking the ceasefire. Please note. Naomi Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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CHILDREN CHALLENGE THE SYSTEM
Posted by Moshe Dann, August 14, 2006. |
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This month, two 15-year-old girls, Oriah Shirel and Iska Federman, were released from N'vei Tirza, a maximum security prison in Israel, where they had been kept for eight weeks. Their crime: participating in a demonstration in a neighborhood of Hebron, where they live. Oriya was not charged with any violence or attempted violence; Iska was charged with throwing stones, but there is no proof. Oriah and Iska had come to protest the Israeli government's decision to rebuild a wall abutting the Jewish neighborhood of Avraham Avinu and a playground. On the other side of the wall is an Arab home from which Jews have been attacked. When initially brought before a court, the girls refused to go along with the proceedings. They declared that they did not recognize the legitimacy of the court and what they call a system of injustice that has plagued Israel, especially those Jews living in "settlements" (Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, the "West Bank"), and in Hebron, in particular. Judge Uri Ben-Dor ordered the girls held in prison until the end of their trials in November, despite an unusual prosecution request to speed up the process. Even if convicted of all charges against them, the girls would not have likely been given a prison sentence, certainly not one of such length, and not under harsh conditions. It is clear that the court was punishing these girls for what they believe, not for what they've done. This is not new. Since the evacuation of Jews from their communities in Gaza and northern Samaria, hundreds of Jews have been jailed, some for months, for minor misdemeanors, civil disobedience - many without charges or trials. Recently, in anticipation of the government's unilateral withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, scores of "activists", most with families, have been jailed or given orders preventing them from living in the areas to be evacuated. Hebron, specifically, has had a history of alleged police discrimination against Jews for many years. A report issued more than a decade ago documenting systematic abuse was ignored by the government and the media. Arab snipers and gangs have murdered and wounded Jews living in Hebron's enclaves since Jews moved back nearly three decades ago to neighborhoods once inhabited by one of the oldest and most prestigious Jewish communities in the world. These areas had been destroyed during the Arab riots of 1929, when 67 defenseless Jews were murdered and scores more wounded and mutilated. A few months ago, the government arbitrarily and without justification ordered Jews to vacate a building in the Avraham Avinu neighborhood that had been legally purchased from Arabs. Other buildings in the area built by Arabs in the 1950s on land owned by Jews have been slated by the government for evacuation. This, too, has been a source of contention. While police claim that Jews harass and provoke their Arab neighbors, local Arabs are often arrested for attacks and potential attacks. But several activists in Hebron's Jewish community have been held in administrative detention and under house arrest for long periods of time - without charges or trials. Twelve years ago, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, a physician who served the entire community, both Jews and Arabs, is alleged to have killed 29 Muslim worshippers in the Machpelah Cave, the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs built more than 2,000 years ago. As a result, the shrine was divided into exclusive areas for Jews and Muslims. Four years later, in 1998, Israel turned over nearly all areas of Hebron inhabited by Muslims to the Palestinian Authority, as part of the Wye River Agreements. In return, the Palestinian Authority committed itself to stopping all incitement and violence against Jews. In another case, 15-year-old Tirtza Sariel, from the Jewish community of Elon Moreh, was arrested for throwing olives at Arabs. She has been in prison for over a month and refuses to sign court documents; Judge Ben-Dor decided to keep her in prison until the end of proceedings, which may take months. Violations of civil (and human) rights are serious issues, especially when children are involved. A year ago and again this month, I contacted the main public organization dedicated to helping children, the National Council for the Child, directed by Professor Yitzhak Kadman. Then and now, they refused to get involved. Professor Kadman said that he thought the girls preferred to remain in prison. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel also refused to get involved. Where are the professionals, the lawyers and social workers? Newly elected Labor Knesset Member Shelly Yachimovich, chairwoman of the Knesset's Committee on Children, came out strongly against the court's decision regarding the imprisoned children. Prominent legal experts have also questioned the reasonableness and legality of the court's decision. But nothing can be done, since there is no mechanism to challenge the court's decisions in this matter. The Supreme Court, specifically Justices Aaron Barak, Ayala Procaccia and Dorit Beinish, has supported lower court decisions to imprison and restrict those who oppose government policies, some without charges or trials. This may explain why these young girls (and their parents) have chosen to suffer, in order to expose what many have called Israel's "injustice system." The only organization that provides immediate legal assistance to Jews who are arrested is Honenu, a tiny non-profit crisis-response group led by Shmuel ("Zangy") Medad. On call day and night, Zangy is usually the only resource available to Jews, as Israel's civil rights organizations seem paralyzed and the courts violate basic norms of democracy and justice. In addition, Civil Rights for Jews in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, directed by Mrs. Orit Struk, works with Knesset members and documents police brutality. Their reports have led to judicial and disciplinary actions against violent policemen. Moshe Dann is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem. Contact him at moshedan@netvision.net.il |
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HEZBOLLAH'S POLITICAL BLITZKRIEG
Posted by Walid Phares, August 14, 2006. |
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Many in the media and sectors within public opinion are wondering why the U.S. isn't able to get a mild French draft of a UN resolution passed quickly via the UN Security Council? Others are stunned to watch Lebanon's Prime Minister, Fuad Seniora, crying in front of the Arab League meeting and calling for the rejection of a strong Multinational Force, caving in to Hezbollah. Commentators are barely able to decipher why is it that the so-called allies of the U.S. in the War on Terror -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar -- are pushing for Israeli withdrawal, rejecting the multinational force while maintaining the status quo for Hezbollah. It sounds as if the year 2005-2006 was full of mirages: Cedars Revolution in Lebanon, free elections, and formation of an anti-Syrian Government backed by the son of the slain PM of Lebanon, Saad Hariri. Qué pasa? Who is calling the shots now? Israel is pounding southern Lebanon and many bridges into rubble, but Hezbollah is on a terror blitzkrieg, wrecking political havoc inside Lebanon and in the region. Israel is scientifically winning the military battle and Hezbollah is crumbling the political future of the war anyway. Back in April of 2005, while Assad was pulling its hardware back into Syria and the free world was celebrating the very colorful Cedars Revolution in Beirut, Hezbollah's counteroffensive was being designed as follows: 1. Absorb the fury of the Lebanese masses but kill their political project And here comes the Hezbollah Blitzkrieg: A. Luring the Lebanese politicians of the Cedars Revolution into stopping the demonstrations short of toppling pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud. Hence having Lahoud's intelligence services protecting the activities of the "axis" (Hezbollah, Syrians, Iranians, others) in Lebanon. Keeping Lahoud in place secured a pressure on the Lebanese Army, since the President is the "commander in chief." First target achieved by July. Brilliant. B. Running in the legislative elections "before" being disarmed, and with 300 million dollars to spend on voters, Hezbollah and its Amal allies secure 30 members of Parliament. That's the equivalent of the Taliban running for elections when they were in power, but on a provincial scale. Results: More Hezbollah MPs enter the new Parliament, supposed to be anti-Syrian. And incredibly (never seen in any other country), while the resistance to Syria get a comfortable majority in the assembly - 70 percent), it ends up bringing back pro-Syrian Nabih Berri as a speaker: Allah knows how this so-called majority shot itself in the foot twice in one month with maintaining Lahoud and Berri in place. Second Hezbollah target achieved by early July. C. Outmaneuvering the Seniora Cabinet by threatening to isolate the Shia from the Government if the Hezbollah bloc doesn't obtain four ministers. A bloc that can veto all decisions on the Lebanese Army deployment and on the disarming of militias. A high school analyst realizes that Hezbollah has just grabbed the Cabinet capacity of disarming it! Objective secured by August 2005. D. Between July and December 2005, the "axis" terror squads assassinate Cedars Revolution leaders who didn't accept the Hezbollah influence in the Lebanese government, among them: Samir Qassir, George Hawi, and particularly Gebran Tueni, the leading young figure of the Revolution. Other journalists and cadres were targets of plots, shootings and threats including May Chidiac. Cedars Revolution beheaded by end of the year. E. By March 2006, Hassan Nasrallah signs an "agreement of understanding" with General Michel Aoun, ex anti-Syrian politician, separating his movement from the pro-Government parties and splitting the Christian community in two camps. The opposition to Hezbollah was reduced to shambles. Druze leader Walid Jumblat and a few Christian MPs are still firing against Syria and gently against Hezbollah. Nasrallah accompanies his victorious offensives with Iranian funding of many socioeconomic projects outside the traditional Shiite strongholds. F. By April 2006, Hezbollah's dual blitz moves faster, as the government is almost paralyzed on the implementation of UNSCR 1559. On the one hand, Nasrallah and his ally Nabih Berri induce the remnants of the anti-Syrian politicians to sit down around a "dialogue table" to discuss the "future of Lebanon" away from street demonstrations. In other words, drop off the Cedars Revolution, i.e. what made you visible to the international community and let us waste your time in Byzantine discussions. Hezbollah gained three more precious months. G. Meanwhile, through the very open Lebanese Syrian borders, Iran sent all the weapons systems needed by Hezbollah to wage the "deflection war" against Israel. Nasrallah's Plan A was a limited war against Israel followed by a revolt against the Seniora government and its takeover. Israel made it into a longer war. So, Hezbollah's Plan B is a longer resistance against whatever Israel is cooking, with still a near future control of the Government. Now the Jihadi blitz is provoking regional and international results, or about to. Hezbollah threatens the Seniora Government of disintegration if it doesn't abide by its plan. Nasrallah and al Manar speaks of open battle till the end. But the real plan of the Iranian-Syrian axis is in fact to use the Seniora Government as a hostage. The seven-point plan of the Lebanese cabinet has been approved, some say suggested by Hezbollah: No deterring-MNF, no chapter 7, no Security Council resolution that would disarm the militia, etc. Seniora cries in front of the Arabs, Nasrallah calmly controls the situation and most Lebanese politicians have become irrelevant in the equation. The mostly Sunni Arab government hears the Sunni Prime Minister of Lebanon pleading for his 7 points (Hezbollah recipe to survive and strike back) and rushes to Manhattan to convince the U.S. and France into watering down the draft. Ironically, the bombed-into-rubble Nasrallah is shelling the UN Security Council with "Arab diplomats." He knows all too well that, in the absence of the Cedars Revolution (abandoned by its politicians but still breathing), he is winning the political offensive. Since no one is opposing his agenda in Lebanon and as his services have almost controlled the "news rooms" of most Lebanese media; and as we learn progressively that the Hezbollah agencies have most messages of foreign correspondents practically under control, while Jihadi and oil influence is widespread throughout the contractors of the news agencies worldwide, Nasrallah is in business. His blitzkrieg is pushing forward politically, for now. With UNSCR 1701 voted, Hezbollah's options have been reduced to two. For the resolution, a salad bowl of measures in all directions, relies almost completely on the Lebanese Government's determination to seize back control of the country with UN support. Nasrallah will have to fight the resolution upfront or seize the control of the Lebanese Government, so that he would paralyze the implementation of the resolution. My instinct tells me he is going to try to do both: control the government and continue the war.
Walid Phares holds degrees in law and political science. He has taught
and lectured at numerous universities worldwide, has written seven
books on the Middle East and published hundreds of articles in
newspapers and scholarly publications. He is a senior fellow with the
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C. Contact
him at phareswire@aol.com
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BRITISH OBSESSION WITH "PALESTINE";
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 14, 2006. |
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BRITISH OBSESSION WITH "PALESTINE"
My airline in Britain was targeted by Islamist terrorists. Meanwhile, British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq are fighting for their own lives as well as to quell the Islamist uprising. But Britain continues to focus largely on "Palestine," where it has identified no immediate national interest. It purports to have humanitarian concern for "Palestine," but it ignores worse humanitarian crises and comes out on the wrong side of this one. I think that the real motive is a complex bias arising from politics, historical context, and ignorance. The result is an obsession, with daily headlines about the war in Lebanon. Hence the poster in an Anglican Church asking, "Are you dissatisfied with Blair's failure to intervene in Palestine"? I ask, why should Britain intervene? "Intervention" is a code word for frustrating Israel's drive against the same Islamic fascist philosophy that Britain is fighting elsewhere, as stated. Why intervene against Israel? For one thing, intervene because it is the Jewish state, and the public has been coached by a biased media to think it does all the evil things of which the evil-doing Arabs accuse it. For another thing, Britain's press drops hints that it is smarting, like France, over having lost its super-power status to the US, which it perceives as favoring Israel. One of the sharpest blows to its super-power status was delivered by a private group of nationalistic Jews in Palestine, who drove Britain out and were mis-labeled terrorists for having done so. The British have forgotten that they had practiced terrorism against the Jews and had devising concentration camps for civilians in the Boer War. For a third thing, war and its associated problems are an excuse for radical elements to demote PM Blair. They have the same excuse in Connecticut against Sen. Lieberman. By Laborites, this vendetta against Tony Blair is ingratitude, for he revived the electoral chances of their Party. For Britain and the US, this hostility towards the heads of government hurts the national interest. Whatever their other faults, and they are many, Blair and Bush, to the extent that they do, represent and present the case for self-defense against the world war known as jihad. Would that they be more consistent. For a fourth, there are pacifists under the illusion that war always is wrong by both sides. They should visit the Churchill Museum in London. There they would find that he rose to combat appeasement of the Nazis. He was mocked before he was enlisted. He had warned that making concessions to the Nazis would be futile, only making the aggressor stronger. People didn't listen. Millions died needlessly, as a result. People had accused Churchill of inanity, and now some have accused Blair of insanity. But his explanations are the rational ones. Would that his explanations be more persistent. The Museum fails to draw the parallel to the same initial Western response to Soviet expansionism and to Islamic expansionism. The Soviets and Islamists have been as fascistic in their own ways and in similar ways as the Nazis. One of the similar ways was hatred of the Jews. One would think that antisemitism would be discredited by now. Some British dailies do explain enough of the facts for readers who want to figure things out. Columnists admit that the Arabs started the war with Israel but call Israel's response unnecessarily "aggressive." They make some reasonable points, but their logic is one of loose association rather than direct causation. They rely mostly upon insinuation. They smear, rather than make a case. ON REFLECTION, MUSLIMS WRONG ON DANISH CARTOONS Months passed before Danish Muslims professed to outrage over the publication of the cartoons and over their content. This indicates that the controversy is phony. It is an Islamic attempt to cow the non-Islamic world. It worked. I came to see the issue a little differently in London, where the Albert & Victoria Museum is displaying Islamic art. I saw portraits of Muslim leaders, especially Iranian. A placard explained that the usual Islamic rule (intended against portraying God or an idol) prohibited the representation of religious figures but usually did not enjoin the representation of secular figures. Danish Muslims would not depict a likeness of Muhammad, but have no justification for objecting to Danish non-Muslims doing so. Muslims may feel they must obey Islamic law, but they have no right to demand that non-Muslims obey it as well. That demand fails to recognize our freedom. The non-Muslim world was under no ethical obligation to apologize to Muslims for depicting him. The West apologized for insulting Muhammad, although the Western media was so cowed by the mercurial Muslims, that it mostly didn't discuss the content. My paper, the NY Sun did discuss it, as I stated before, and found the cartoons either accurate or innocuous. On examination, those cartoons that commented about Islam did not mock it as a religion but the terrorists who cite it as religious authority for their terrorism. Muslim leaders exploited Western timidity and ignorance to place themselves in the position of victims, even while they rioted and murdered, victimizing thousands of innocent people. They picked on people according to religion and nationality, even though those people had nothing to do with disseminating the cartoons. I think that the world should have condemned the Muslim masses for heeding their leaders and their leaders for rousing them to violence against innocent people. If we had the "vibrant media" that we claim to, our media would have denounced the discrimination of the Muslim masses for persecuting people according to their beliefs or nationality. In fact, the correlation between Islam and violence should have been found too frequent and intense to be coincidence. The point is, either millions Muslims act wrongly and falsely in the name of their religion, in which case they have a criminal conception of it that its leaders should heal, or they act wrongly but correctly in its name, in which case it is criminal. If the latter, then the fact that it is a religion should not protect it from prosecution. There are religions and there are religions. If that one won't respect others, why should others respect it? Incidentally, the exhibit stated, "Quranic manuscripts contain God's word." The placard should have worded it, "Muslims believe that Quranic manuscripts contain God's word." BRITISH POLICE I met a former police officer in Wales who once had loved his work and mission, but had come to count the days to retirement. Many of his colleagues do, too. He blames this on an overemphasis on the human rights of the culprits, to the detriment of the victims' human rights. This is true in the war on terrorism. When the pendulum swings back his way, I hope it does not swing too far, turning backward on human rights. HALF-HEARTED BRITISH FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM I am grateful that British intelligence foiled a plot to bomb my airline. But that is not good enough. We need a complete victory against Islamist terrorism, to be safe and to retain our freedom. Such a victory cannot be secured by people, such as the British, who refuse to name the problem: Islamist fascism (if not Islam). The suspects were called terrorists, rather than Islamic terrorists. Police said they were discussing the arrests with "community leaders," without mentioning "Britain's large and increasingly radicalized population of unassimilated Muslim immigrants" whose leaders they were meeting. The BBC described the suspects as "British-born," among whom "some have links to Pakistan." Home Secretary, John Reid, said, "This is not a case of one civilization against another or one religion against another." (If not that, what is it?) The airport plot is related to the London subway bombings, the Madrid bombings, the Bali bombing, and 9/11, as it is to the wars in Iraq and Lebanon. Fighting Islamist insurgents in Iraq and the Arabs in the P.A. is not a distraction from the war on terrorism. If the British don't acknowledge who the enemy is, or don't know who he is, how can they fight him effectively? On identifying that enemy, and defining him as a nihilist, one must conclude that once cannot negotiate peace with him. By contrast, US Homeland Security Sec. Chertoff finds the plot "suggestive of an al Qaeda plot." Atty. Gen. Gonzales attributed it to "a vicious and determined enemy that is intent on harming American lives. Pres. Bush found the crisis "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation." (NY Sun, 8/11, Ed..) I think that Pres. Bush put it best. People call him stupid, but they don't understand his clearly stated points about this war. They don't want to. THE "TIMES," PUTIN, & BUSH Greg Myre explained why Israel attacked most of its targets in Lebanon. He was not too coherent, but that's the newspaper's style. He said Hizbullah declared an "open war." (Aren't all Arab wars "open," i.e., against civilians? Pres. Bush was credited with understanding why Israel reacted violently, because Hizbullah initiated it. Pres. Putin agreed that what Hizbullah did is unacceptable, but suggested that the Israeli response should be balanced. He admitted that Israel can't leave Hizbullah controlling the border. Its rockets have a long range (7/16, A1). Why should Israel's response to bigoted aggressors, seeking to conquer it, be balanced? It is unethical to be balanced between aggressors and victims. Let Putin be more mentally balanced! 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@aol.com. |
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THE SPIRIT OF APPEASEMENT
Posted by Women in Green, August 14, 2006. |
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This was written by Avi David and appeared August 4, 2006. Avi Davis is an adjunct fellow of the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, a Washington, D.C.-based policy institute. |
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Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzyhentisyn, in his acceptance speech before the Nobel Prize Committee in 1970, declared that the 20th Century had been one long record of appeasement by the West in favor of totalitarianism. "The spirit of Munich is not a thing of the past," he stated sardonically, "...it is predominant in the 20th Century. The entire civilized world trembles as snarling barbarism suddenly re-emerges and moves into the attack. And the West finds that it has nothing to fight with but smiles and concessions." During the half hour on the morning of July 13, when Katyusha rockets slammed into the northern Israeli town of Safed, those words took on a profound meaning for me. The news hit hard, since two of the Hizbullah-launched rockets landed within 400 yards of my Israeli home in the center of Safed's Old City. But beyond my personal anguish, I became aware of an implacable reality. In the 58 years since the War of Independence, Safed had not experienced a single terrorist incident, let alone a major rocket attack. Violence, of the type experienced in other parts of the country, had never been a feature of life in the town. But the explosion of seven Katyushas in the same hour, resulting in one death and 30 injuries, swept the once-tranquil mountain village, suddenly and traumatically, into the turbulence of the 21st Century and the worldwide struggle between freedom and Islamo-fascism. No one should have been surprised. In the six years since Israel's retreat from the fourteen-mile security zone in southern Lebanon, Hizbullah, Iran's Lebanese proxy, had created an arsenal of nearly 13,000 missiles poised against Israel's northern towns. Anyone who had visited Israel's border with Lebanon and witnessed the garish, provocative displays of yellow flags, posters, fortifications and abundant weaponry, in places only 50 feet distant, knew that it would be just a matter of time before Hizbullah's juggernaut of destruction would be unleashed against the north. The Hizbullah terrorists who launched those rockets were, of course, not measuring their place in history. They were capitalizing on what they perceived to be instability, weakness and distraction among Israeli leaders. The kidnapping in Gaza and subsequent Israeli retaliation offered a convenient feint and opportunity to instill a realization in exasperated Israelis that the Arab wars against Israel did not end in 1973, 1993 or with the collapse of the second Palestinian intifada. Those wars continue and will continue as long as Israel exists. That is the sad message delivered by the Katyushas that battered Safed that Thursday morning. For no matter what Israel does - whether it be the signing of peace treaties, withdrawal from disputed territory, the securing of United Nations guarantees of its borders or the policing by international peacekeepers - nothing will stem the tide of hatred and revulsion in the Arab and Muslim world against the Jewish state. Arab revanche, it must finally be understood, cannot be answered with either appeasement or accommodation; it can only be met with crushing force. It is this reality that has yet to sink into the mindset of both Israeli and American leaders. Having been burned by the conclusive failure of the Oslo peace process, Ehud Barak, six years ago, piled tragedy upon mistake. He ordered an evacuation from the Lebanon security zone, abandoning the IDF's loyal allies - the Christian-dominated South Lebanese Army - without so much as a whisper of assurance by the Lebanese government of calm on its southern border. While witnessing the build up of the Hizbullah and Hamas arsenals over five years, Barak's successor, Ariel Sharon, made the second calamitous mistake of withdrawing from Gaza, mandating the destruction of flourishing Jewish communities only to behold, within days, the transformation of the settlements' ruins into launching pads for Kassam missiles aimed directly at southern Israeli population centers. The foolhardy tide of concessions has not yet abated. As Israel reels under attacks on two fronts, the present prime minister, Ehud Olmert, continues to hew to his unfocused policy of unilateral withdrawal, by calling for even further territorial concessions, proposing to abandon dozens of West Bank communities in an attempt to create permanent borders for the State of Israel. That those borders would prove indefensible does not seem to trouble him. But the war in which Israel is now engaged is simple proof that walls, fences, unilateral disengagements or even bilateral agreements are no protection against sophisticated weaponry in the hands of terrorists who have little respect for, or interest in, the maintenance of the status quo. With the incontrovertible confirmation of the folly of such an approach, a pitiless reality must now surely be settling in - withdrawal and territorial concession will never be interpreted in the Arab world as anything but weakness, retreat and surrender. It is a certain invitation to war and a guarantee of unending violence and strife. The era of smiles and concessions must be brought to an end. The answer to terrorist kidnappings and rocket launchings can only be overwhelming, devastating military force - a message that must be understood not just in the terrorist strongholds, but in the faraway capitals where their sponsors hatch, plan and finance their proxies' next battles. 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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A REALISTIC CEASE-FIRE?
Posted by Gerald M. Steinberg, August 14, 2006. |
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It takes an unusual intensity of faith -- or naivete -- to believe that the cease-fire mandated by UN Security Council 1701 will actually end this conflict. The language calls for ending the flow of weapons from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah; for a demilitarized zone in Southern Lebanon to be enforced by the Lebanese Army and a "robust" international force; and for the return of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers, without the release of terrorists held in Israeli jails. These objectives will all be difficult to achieve, to greatly understate the case, and the results of previous efforts to implement similar agreements are not encouraging. Instead, cease-fires generally provide a temporary pause in which the parties rearm and prepare for the next round. In the past thirty years, in which Lebanon's weak political structure has been exploited as a base for anti-Israel terror -- first by the Arafat and the PLO, and then by Iran and Hezbollah -- the UN has adopted dozens of resolutions and plans. All contained the right words, but were never implemented. In 2000, when Israeli troops withdrew from all of Lebanon, as certified by the UN, the promised French-led European forces never arrived to patrol the border. For the current effort to end differently, the rules of the game must change in a fundamental and unprecedented manner. The slim hopes for such a change come from the impact of the 31 days of destruction. The terms of negotiation after any war are determined by the distribution of power when it ends -- the words that are used are, at best, decoration. In this case, the question is whether the IDF has succeeded in weakening Hezbollah's capabilities to control Lebanon, and in preventing the terror organization from rebuilding its arsenal of missiles provided by Syria and Iran. Within this framework, the UN, Lebanon, and the international forces have an opportunity to take responsibility to implement the terms of the cease-fire resolution, but Israel must show a readiness to act on its own at the first sign of weakness or violations. France and the other "guarantors" of the cease-fire will only take the risks necessary to implement it if they know that failure to do so will be catastrophic to their own interests. The first test and clashes are likely to come quickly, as Lebanese civilians, no doubt mixed with some Hezbollah members carrying weapons and explosives, seek to return to the towns and villages in Southern Lebanon. Israeli troops which are located in these areas will seek to prevent this until the international force is in place, resulting in a very predictable and easily manipulated confrontation. The cease fire could break down immediately in the absence of a solution. Another key issue is the future of the main Hezbollah leaders, and the ability of Israel to continue to impose restrictions on their movements. Between 2002 and 2005, Israel's decision to keep PLO leader Yassir Arafat isolated and under house arrest, contributed significantly to the defeat of the Palestinian terror campaign. If Hassan Nassaralah, the head of Hezbollah, is unable to surface in Lebanon for fear of an Israeli attack, his ability to rebuild his organization will also be impaired significantly. Finally, the fate of the two Israeli soldiers whose kidnapping on July 12 triggered this war remains very uncertain. The UN resolution is particularly vague on this topic, and here again, the terms and outcome of the negotiations will depend on the power relationship. Israel is hoping to exchange captured Hezbollah fighters for their release, but this would mean a defeat for Nassrallah. Similarly, Israeli agreement to release terrorists would be seen as weakness, although the costs were still far greater than Nasrallah anticipated in launching the attack. Either way, there is no straight forward solution. Gerald M. Steinberg directs the Program on Conflict Management at Bar Ilan University and is the editor of www.ngo-monitor.org |
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A CEASEFIRE OUT OF CHELM
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 14, 2006. |
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1. This is called "Sellout" and was written by P. David Hornik,
Front Page Magazine, August 14, 2006.
P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Jerusalem. He can be reached at pdavidh2001@yahoo.com. If America got fed up with Israel and decided to accede to a UN "ceasefire" resolution, there were reasons for it. For a month an inexperienced Israeli prime minister who had said he was tired of fighting and wanted to turn Israel into a fun place, with a Peace Now, Marxist defense minister at his side, paraded Israel's delusions in an effort to defeat Hezbollah on the cheap. First was the attempt to triumph from the air -- a basic plank of Olmert's "disengagement" and "convergence" philosophy that says Israel can safely cede territory to its worst enemies because the air force can handle any problems that arise. Then there was the attempt to stop Hezbollah's rocket fire with limited ground forays and a pathetically narrow "security zone" a kilometer or two into Lebanese territory -- reflecting a hope that Israel could prevail without mobilizing or losing any significant number of soldiers. In recent days, though, Olmert and the Israeli leadership had shown that they were on a learning curve and were preparing a major ground incursion up to the Litani River and possibly beyond. At the very least, Olmert realized he was finished politically unless he could show the distressed Israeli public that he could stop the rockets once and for all. Hezbollah, finally, was in for a drubbing. That is why it is so tragic that at this moment, America decided to bend to international pressure, put the brakes on Israel, and endorse a document that is a shameful exercise in moral equivalence and facilitation of ongoing terror. Security Council Resolution 1701 "Calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hizbullah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations," drawing a precise parallel between jihadist aggression and the effort to ward it off. The document also calls for the release of the abducted Israeli soldiers only in the preamble, while also claiming a need to "settl[e] the issue of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel" -- in other words, terrorists who include the sadistic child-murderer Samir Kuntar. The resolution at least cannot be accused of equivalence when it "Calls on the international community to take immediate steps to extend its financial and humanitarian assistance to the Lebanese people, including through facilitating the safe return of displaced persons and ... calls on it also to consider further assistance in the future to contribute to the reconstruction and development of Lebanon" -- without mentioning Israeli rehabilitation in so much as a breath. Here the Security Council, with American consent, adopts the BBC-CNN-Reuters view of the conflict in which suffering within the country that has harbored Hezbollah for over two decades, and elected the organization as a sizable faction in its parliament with two cabinet posts -- counts; whereas Israeli suffering, devastation, and displacement do not. The resolution calls for "delineation of the international borders of Lebanon, especially in those areas where the border is disputed or uncertain, including by dealing with the Shebaa Farms area." This is a direct reward to Hezbollah for using the false Shebaa Farms issue to keep terrorizing northern Israel for six years, the UN itself having affirmed that Israel had left Lebanon completely in 2000 and that any further territorial dispute over Shebaa Farms concerned only Israel and Syria. The resolution puts Israel on a very short tether in terms of looking out for its future security. "Upon full cessation of hostilities," it "calls upon the government of Lebanon and UNIFIL ... to deploy their forces together throughout the south and calls upon the government of Israel, as that deployment begins, to withdraw all of its forces from southern Lebanon in parallel" -- not leaving Israel even a decent interval to try and ensure that Hezbollah does not return to fill the void left by its departing forces. Then, even more ominously, the resolution "Affirms that all parties are responsible for ensuring that no action is taken ... that might adversely affect the search for a long-term solution, humanitarian access to civilian populations ... or the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons. ..." If the UN were an institution that had always given Israel a fair shake, this might not be so unpromising. But that, of course, is not what the UN is, and one can particularly expect the phrase "might adversely affect the search for a long-term solution" to be applied liberally to any future Israeli attempts to defend itself militarily. But Resolution 1701's most glaring weaknesses are precisely in those areas that some are touting as its strengths. The resolution "Calls for ... the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani River of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL"; "authorize[s] an increase in the force strength of UNIFIL to a maximum of 15,000 troops"; and even hints at a military role for UNIFIL by authorizing it "to take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities." UNIFIL having become a synonym for uselessness at best and collusion with terrorism at worst, a UNIFIL force beefed up with troops from France and other dhimmified countries that relate to Iran as a business partner does not inspire confidence. More significant, though, is Resolution 1701's treatment of the Lebanese government as the main actor in this story that is supposed to ensure peace and stability. Essentially, anything the document is supposed to achieve is subject to Lebanon's veto. The word consent appears three times in the text, each time in reference to Lebanon: "The Security Council...[e]mphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory...so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon...." "...no foreign forces in Lebanon without the consent of its government... " "Calls upon the government of Lebanon to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel.... " Again, if Lebanon were a country (a) solidly in the pro-Western camp and (b) powerful enough to assert its will in its territory, these items would be cause for hope. But the resolution, which remarkably never gets around to mentioning the words Iran or Syria, ignores the facts that Lebanon has basically been a plaything of Syria and, less directly, Iran for at least a quarter-century; that much of its populace, army, and government, particularly the Shiite component, enthusiastically backs the Hezbollah-Syrian-Iran axis and is essentially part of it; and that Lebanon's weak, ethnoreligiously dissonant army is no more capable of exerting control than a 15,000-man UNIFIL force. Allowing Israel to take a few more weeks and rout Hezbollah -- preferably also with some sobering strikes against Syria -- would have created a different scenario and, most important, perceptions of a Western victory and humiliating jihadist defeat. That may have allowed the truly moderate Christian, Druze, and Muslim forces in Lebanon to start trying to retake control of their country while leaving the Iranian-led jihad axis reeling. Instead the United States and the world community have chosen with this dire Security Council resolution to create a powerful scenario of perceived, and to some extent real, jihadist victory while ensuring continuing instability and endangerment of Israel. It is a moment that will come back to haunt America and the West. 2. The WSJ understands what Ehud of Chelm does not:
Ever since war broke out last month on the Israeli-Lebanese frontier, the Bush administration has said it wouldn't tolerate a return to the "status quo ante," in which Hezbollah behaved as a power unto itself within the Lebanese state. Yet after reading the text of the U.N. Security Council's cease-fire resolution adopted unanimously on Friday, we'd say the "status quo ante" is nearly what we've got. And perhaps worse than that, because Hezbollah has now shown it can battle Israel to a military draw. The new resolution does call for disarming Hezbollah, just as resolution 1559 previously did, but without saying who will do it. Presumably that task is intended for the Lebanese Army, which is supposed to occupy the parts of southern Lebanon from which Hezbollah launched its attacks on Israel. But Lebanon's army is a weak force, consciously undermined over the years of Syrian occupation, and is largely Shiite. There's reason to doubt it will be able to disarm Hezbollah's still-powerful Shiite military. The resolution also calls for beefing up Unifil, the existing U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon that also couldn't disarm Hezbollah. The addition of French troops to Unifil will help, but the resolution fell short of invoking the Chapter VII powers that U.S. officials had previously said were necessary to ensure a strong enough U.N. presence. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insists that the resolution has Chapter VII powers in all but name, but we'll see what happens the first time Hezbollah again challenges Unifil authority. The likelihood is that Unifil and the Lebanese army will co-exist with Hezbollah, which will slowly re-arm to intimidate Lebanon's government and strike Israel or the U.S. again at the time of its choosing. All the more so because Hezbollah's main suppliers, Syria and Iran, have suffered no negative consequences from their role over the last month. If anything, their regional clout has been enhanced, with growing calls in the U.S. and Europe for appeasing both countries with assorted "carrots." Yes, the new resolution calls for an arms embargo against Hezbollah, but Iran and Syria have evaded such strictures before. And both countries will now attempt to extract more diplomatic concessions from the U.S. and Europe as a price of not re-arming Hezbollah. Syrians are under U.N. investigation for their suspected involvement in last year's murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and Iran's nuclear activities put it in material breach of another Security Council resolution. Syria wants the Hariri investigation dropped or at least its findings downplayed, and Iran may feel better positioned to flout the U.N.'s August 31 deadline to suspend uranium enrichment. Perhaps it is true that the Bush administration had little choice but to accede to a cease-fire resolution. President Bush took some political risks for resisting an immediate cease-fire, not least in Iraq where the fighting in Lebanon was helping radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stir up anti-U.S. sentiment. Last weekend's much better U.S.-French draft resolution was also resisted by the Sunni dictators of the Arab League fearful of a political backlash at home after their early criticism of Hezbollah. As usual, the likes of Egypt and Jordan chose to direct this public anger toward the U.S. and Israel. No doubt some of them are intimidated by Iran and the growing power of Hezbollah. The French also flipped their position -- which serves us right for saying something nice about them last week. The Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is also responsible for indecisive war leadership. Mr. Bush gave him time and international political cover to act militarily, yet Mr. Olmert made the mistake of insisting on war without prosecuting it with sufficient speed and force. To paraphrase Napoleon, if you decide to disarm Hezbollah, then disarm Hezbollah. After his Cabinet agreed to the cease-fire, Mr. Olmert said yesterday that "Hezbollah won't continue to exist as a state" and that "the Lebanese government is our address for every problem or violation of the agreement." For him to say anything else would be an admission of defeat after a bloody month. But even many Israelis in his own party are saying that, after firing more than 3,000 rockets into Israel, nearly 800 into residential areas, Hezbollah is emerging from this conflict stronger than either Sadat or Nasser after their wars with Israel. Perhaps, for a time, this cease-fire resolution will "stop the violence," as Kofi Annan likes to exhort. But the price for letting a transnational terrorist group like Hezbollah claim victory is likely to be far more bloodshed in the future.
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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com.
Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il
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YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A GENIUS
Posted by Batya Medad, August 14, 2006. |
Ok, I admit that in a way, I'm cheating, since I'm old enough to remember some historical events. In addition I've always liked newspaper reading, politics and history. One thing has stayed constant the past few decades, Lebanon is incapable of keeping its territory peaceful. It's not an "ancient country." It was given independence by the French in 1943, and it's name doesn't even appear on maps as separate from Syria. Syria was ruled by France until 1946. Interesting facts, generally ignored. Besides WWII, the 1940's were busy years on the "independence" scene. India, Pakistan and Israel also became independent then, though they had been ruled by Great Britain. Actually other countries in the Middle-East aren't much older. Take a good look at the maps. (map sources: Map showing the decline of the Ottoman Empire, Map showing the British Mandate) Look at how much of the middle-east was shared by European empires, less than one hundred years ago. 
On the maps, you'll see no country, nor nation, called Jordan; Transjordan is a name for the territory on the eastern, "other side" of the Jordan River. There was no nation, nor People, called "Palestine;" it was just the name given to the territory on the western side of the Jordan River. The only native or historical people in the middle-east fighting for its independence was the Jewish People. The other countries and all of the borders were drawn and invented by international politicians and diplomats. After constantly cutting down/reducing the land allocated to a Jewish State by the Balfour Declaration, in November, 1917, we were left with an indefensible slice of territory. It was just our victory in the War for Israeli Independence, a defensive war against the British Mandate and all of the Arabs who attacked us, which left us with a slightly larger territory. Getting back to Lebanon... The Hizbollah, may not be the official government, but it rules in southern Lebanon, the territory closest to Israel, and that's why the cease-fire is so farcial. Hizbollah, correctly, sees it as a victory, and that's not only a danger to Israel; it's a danger to the entire world! The "peacekeeping force" will not be able to keep the peace; that's for sure. It won't even manage to pick up all the pieces of what Hizbollah destroys. Israeli soldiers died in vain, because they were sent to fight for nothing. There was no battle plan, because the government never planned on destroying the enemy. Your can't make peace with real terrorists, people who enjoy, are proud of murdering civilians. The Israeli Government must be changed! It must be toppled, nothing superficial and cosmetic. Let Olmert hide out with his draft-dodger sons abroad. Let Tzachi stay in Florida. Rumor has it that not a single minister has a son fighting on the front lines. Those who ruled during this defeatist war don't even have a moral right to be in future oppositions. They must resign from politics and public life forever! Israeli leadership used to say "after me!" Now they sit in their safe bunkers and send others into danger. Olmert said that he's "tired." If he's "tired," he should retire. He must! After a forest burns down, different plants grow. And I believe that once we have a chance to clean out all of these tired, corrupt politicians, we will be pleasantly surprised by the fresh, new leadership that will fill the vacuum, G-d willing.
Batya Medad lives in Shiloh. She can be reached by email at
Shilohmuse@yahoo.com or visit her website
http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/ or go to http://www.shilo.org.il
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INNOCENCE? IN A SENSE
Posted by Eric Maher, August 14, 2006. |
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The cease fire imposed by the UN and France and agreed to by the US. has now been in place for three hours. While we welcome the respite from more missiles and injuries and deaths, we all in Israel cannot help but - wonder, speculate, fear, conjecture, all the adjectives you can think of - when this latest round of peace will be over and the fighting will begin in earnest. Several points become very clear. While there are more points to ponder let's tackle these first. 1) Israel has lost this round. 1) Israel's shifting objectives in this war actually made it impossible to win given the current paradigm. They started out wanting to get the hostage soldiers back - they so far have failed miserably. Then they wanted to destory Hezbollah - they may have killed some fighters and destoryed some rockets but hezbollah will now emerge as the defacto rulers not of southern lebanon but of all of lebanon. They can justly and rightfully claim PR victory and actual victory in that they more than survived and in fact carried out a part of their mandate while they didn't detroy Israel they did in fact terrorize and disrupt Israel and Israelis. They wanted to prevent rockets from raining down on Israel - far from stopping the number of daily attacks rose to an icredible 250 on the day of the cease fire. 250 rocket attacks and israels response is STILL politically correct? Imagine, please imagine, Just imagine that 250 missiles fell on detroit from WIndsor or on Seattle from vancouver or bufalo from Toronto. or SanAntonio from mexico! How long would the US stand still or even remotely care about the fallout of consequences before they obliterated the opposing city and force? Or England or France or Russia or CHina! How long would any normal nation stand still for such atatcks and Israel stood by and dithered about a response for over a month! Unbelievable and unacceptable. Israel has neither weakend hezbollah, liberated captive soldiers, prevented rockets from falling or achieved ANY of the stated objectives. SCORECARD Hezbollah 1 Israel 0 2) The next round will be much deadlier 2) All a ceasfire has ever accomplished historically has been to allow the two sides to rearm and re stock with better and deadlier weapons and war plans. So what if Israel pushed Hezbollah north of the Litani river - which it is not certain that they have done. Iran has already said that they will re supply hezbollah with more better advanced and longer range weapons during the cease fire. The next round will be more fierce and savage with higher grade weapons and any gains that may have been made which in essense as stated are none - will quickly fall by the wayside. 3) The US is angry with Israel 3) The US stragic plan was for a savage Israel to take out Hizbollah, force them to the east to Syria, (which is already in command and control of teh latest round of missile firings from syrian territory no less) then Israel attacks syria who allied in a mutual defense pact with Iran would then force iran to directly attack Israel THEREBY giving the US the excuse (as if they need one) to attack Iran directly and take out the nukes and Syria from the east and take out baby assad. Israel timidly did not fulfill US expectations and so Bush is angry and disappointed to say the least and also this UN ceasefire was truly ALL that could be salvaged from the ruins. 4) Miracles occurred on a daily if not hourly basis 4)Fact well over 3000 missiles rained down on Israel and yet only dozens died, not thousands. Look at all reports from Iraq. In the normal course of events, a bomb blows up and scores die. SCORES if not hundreds. A bomb blows up in Bali and over 300 people die. Here in Israel the Divine supervision is palpable. You can see daily how we are somewhat safe or as the Torah says, it is not the missile that kills it is the sin that allows the missile to reach its address. The surest and best method is prayer and tehillim. As the torah tells us Ha Kol Kol Yaakov meaning (from genesis) the voice is yaakovs voice but the hands are the hands of esau. In partnership, teh Jewish people must send out troops coupled with an equal or greater number of people learning and praying on all our behalfs. SO yeshiva bachurim (students) are equally important to the soldiers in the field one cannot succeed without the other. 5) The overwhelming majority of the Jewish people were united on this action 5) Well over 90+% of Israelis are for the war. Now war is not a popularity contest. BUT when you have essentially acitizens army as israel does, where her reserves constitute the main body of the army, then it is axiomatic that the support of the people who make up the army is essential to the battle. In this case after 13 years of left wing insanity starting with Oslo and culminating with the expulsion from Gaza of all the Jewish residents, the main body of the Jewish people is frustrated, angry and aching to clean clocks. The crying shame is in not having a leadership that unleashes the rage. 6) It may not have been the correct action to take 6) This is a tough point. At the beginning of both the Gaza and the Lebanon affair, Olmert was really faced with only two valid options. 1) To negotiate a prisoner swap and get the soldiers back it certainly would not have been the first time israel would have released terrorist prisoners. In fact (I am no posek but...) The basic halacha regarding this is that the prisoners should have been released to get the soldiers back. It is a case of absolute certainty against potential threat. Here we know/knew that if we attacked hezbollah it was certain that they would attack and shoot back and fire rockets. It is NOT rocket science to realize that if they have stockpiled 13000 missiles and rockets, they intend to use them. So they did and so innocent Jews died and of course the soldiers who also died. That was the certainty. The potential was that the prisoners (terrorists in jail) when released MIGHT have attacked and terrorized again and MAYBE might have caused innocent death. SO Halachically when weighed against one another the correct course of action is to negotiate a release based on uncertainty rather than attack and incurr absolute. Face it folks Hamas and Hezbollah (Pahched in the face) slapped Olmert and Peretz in the face and embarrassed them so this whole war really came down to Olmerts pride. If this is the case then all the deaths and injuries and destruction of Northern Israel (which nevuah and the gemorah speak about by the way) were all for NOTHING. What collasal waste. what arrogance. What sadness. 7) Nietsche once again is proven right - what does not destroy me makes me strong 7) What does not destroy me makes me strong. Again no rocket science here. the Hezbos are not destroyed they will be back and stronger than ever. Like Heracles and the Hydra. Until he torched each neck, the untorched necks grew TWO new heads deadlier than the one he cut off in the first place. Wait for it folks the next round with Iran is coming closer. 8) Either the arabs are becoming stronger and Israel weaker or there is something seriously wrong (or both!) 8) OK this one is NOT EXACT (spoiler warning here) I in no way have official numbers. I have seen these bantered about and cannot confirm or deny them. But they are plausible so I'll use them. a) The six day war, the death ratio was 1 IDF soldier to over 25
arabs killed! (1:25 remember that number) Total ISraeli war dead 800
These are not absolute numbers, certainly as I mentioned not even official and accurate, but they give good overview as to the problem. The arabs are getting to be better soldiers and Israel not so good? or perhaps the method and means of warfare has changed completely. This we know to be true. Now Hezbollah is not an army they are a rag tag group of terrorists trained by Iran. The geurilla method of warfare means higher casualty rates. BUT the reticence in targeting villages and so on including collaborating civilain populations is appalling. One of the problems of course is that the Hezbos fire from just those villages that they WANT israel to attack for example Hamas fired at jerusalem from Beit Jalla - a CHRISTIAN village south of Jerusalem, daring israel to wipe it out and remove the Christians from the vicinity. They want the mid east christian rein as well as judenrein. Remember dresden and hiroshima. I am not advocating nukes, but if a rocket is fired from a village that village ceases to exist. make southern lebanon a parking lot. The price to be paid by the arab side is not high enough. In the anals of war fare when a country is an aggressor they lose land as a result of the aggression. Only with Israel and tha arabs does the reverse happen. I am reminded when in 92 Rabin as defense minister deported 400 arabs to lebanon. The world screamed. IF IF IF he had deported 400,000 of them the world would have screamed just as loud but something positive would have been accomplished. Instead the 400 were brought back and israel lost another fight. The political will is not there by the leadership to win. Rush Limbaugh said it best unleash the army and win the peace. unconditional surrendur has historically been what it takes to make peace that lasts. Not this abortion of a ceasefire that salves Olmerts pride. We will all suffer for it. Contact Eric Maher at ericmahr@netvision.net.il |
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LEFTIST HYPOCRISY
Posted by Yehoishophot Oliver, August 14, 2006. |
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A comment I saw: How many times have we heard the rantings over the years "I don`t want my child to die defending the settlers." Funny these same people don`t seem to mind the settlers dying defending Haifa. Contact Yehoishophot Oliver at rabbioliver@gmail.com |
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THE ONLY OPTION IS TO WIN
Posted by David Nathan, August 14, 2006. |
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This was written by Newt Gngrich and it appeared August 11, 2006 in the Washington Post. Newt Gingrich is a former speaker of the House, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America." |
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Yesterday on this page, in a serious and thoughtful survey of a world in crisis, Richard Holbrooke listed 13 countries that could be involved in violence in the near future: Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Somalia. And in addition, of course, the United States. With those 14 nations Holbrooke could make the case for what I describe as "an emerging third world war" -- a long-running conflict whose latest manifestation was brought home to Americans yesterday with the disclosure in London of yet another ghastly terrorist plot -- this one intended to destroy a number of airliners en route to America. But while Holbrooke lists the geography accurately, he then asserts an analysis and a goal that do not fit the current threats. First, he asserts that the Iranian nuclear threat is far less dangerous than violence in southern Lebanon. Speaking of the Iranian-American negotiations, Holbrooke asks, "And why has that dialogue been restricted to the nuclear issue -- vitally important to be sure, but not as urgent at this moment as Iran's sponsorship and arming of Hezbollah and its support of actions against U.S. forces in Iraq?" In fact an Iran armed with nuclear weapons is a mortal threat to American, Israeli and European cities. If a nonnuclear Iran is prepared to finance, arm and train Hezbollah, sustain a war against Israel from southern Lebanon and, in Holbrooke's own words, "support actions against U.S. forces in Iraq," then what would a nuclear Iran be likely to do? Remember, Iranian officials were present at North Korea's missile launches on our Fourth of July, and it is noteworthy that Venezuela's anti-American dictator, Hugo Chávez, has visited Iran five times. It is because the Bush administration has failed to win this argument over the direct threat of Iranian and North Korean nuclear and biological weapons that Americans are divided and uncertain about our national security interests. Nevertheless, Holbrooke has set the stage for an important national debate that goes well beyond such awful possibilities as Sept. 11-style airliner plots. It's a debate about whether we are in danger of losing one or more U.S. cities, whether the world faces the possibility of a second Holocaust should Iran use nuclear or biological weapons against Israel, and whether a nuclear Iran would dominate the Persian Gulf and the world's energy supplies. This is the most important debate of our time. It rivals both Winston Churchill's argument in the 1930s over the nature of Hitler and the Nazis and Harry Truman's argument in the 1940s about the emerging Soviet empire. Yet Holbrooke indicates that he would take the wrong path on American national security. He asserts that "containing the violence must be Washington's first priority." As a goal this is precisely wrong. Defeating the terrorists and thwarting efforts by Iran and North Korea to gain nuclear and biological weapons must be the first goal of American policy. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, if violence is necessary to defeat the terrorists, the Iranians and the North Koreans, then it is regrettably necessary. If they can be disarmed with less violence, then that is desirable. But a nonviolent solution that allows the terrorists to become better trained, better organized, more numerous and better armed is a defeat. A nonviolent solution that leads to North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons threatening us across the planet is a defeat. This failure to understand the nature of the threat is captured in Holbrooke's assertion that diplomacy can lead to "finding a stable and secure solution that protects Israel." If Iran gets nuclear weapons, there will be no diplomacy capable of protecting Israel. If Iran continues to fund and equip Hezbollah, there will be no stability or security for Israel. Diplomacy cannot substitute for victory against an opponent who openly states that he wants to eliminate you from the face of the earth. Our enemies are quite public and repetitive in saying what they want. Not since Adolf Hitler has any group been as bloodthirsty and as open. If Holbrooke really wants a "stable and secure" Israel he will not find it by trying to appease Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. This issue of national security goals will be at the heart of the American dialogue for some time. If our enemies are truly our enemies (and their words and deeds are certainly those of enemies) then victory should be our goal. If nuclear and biological threats are real, then aggressive strategies to disarm them if possible and defeat them if necessary will be required. Holbrooke represents the diplomacy first-diplomacy always school. We saw its workings throughout the 1990s, as Syria was visited again and again by secretaries of state who achieved absolutely nothing. Even a secretary of state dancing with Kim Jong Il (arguably a low point in American diplomatic efforts) produced no results; such niceties never do in dealing with vicious dictators. The democracies have been talking while the dictators and the terrorists gain strength and move closer to having the weapons necessary for a terrifying assault on America and its allies. The arrests yesterday of British citizens allegedly plotting to blow up American airliners over the Atlantic Ocean are only the latest example of the determination of our enemies. This makes the dialogue on our national security even more important. Richard Holbrooke has established a framework for a clear debate. The Bush administration should take up his challenge. Contact David Nathan at davenathan@aol.com |
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RESOLUTION FOR DISASTER
Posted by Fern Sidman, August 13, 2006. |
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In a matter of a few hours, the Israel Defense Forces will lay down their arms against the Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon in what the United Nations has termed a "cease fire". UN resolution 1701 calls for an immediate halt to Hezbollah attacks and Israeli "offensive military action." It further calls for the deployment of Lebanese Army forces in southern Lebanon together with UNIFIL forces. The resolution also calls upon the international community to extend financial and humanitarian assistance to Lebanon, though it makes no mention of the damages suffered by Israel. Under the persuasion of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Cabinet unanimously approved the UN resolution, with the lone abstention of Transportation Minister Sha'ul Mofaz. According to Arutz Sheva (8/13/06), "the cease fire has already faced much domestic criticism in Israel. It does not meet the two stated objectives of Israel's offensive in Lebanon: The release of the kidnapped soldiers and the disarming of Hezbollah." Former Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom of the Likud has stinging criticism of the ceasefire plan being formulated in the United Nations. He calls it a "disgrace" and a "historic tragedy." Speaking with Voice of Israel Radio on Friday morning, Minister Shalom said if the UN proposal is accepted, "Israel's position would be worse than it was at the beginning of the war: It does not call for a large multi-national force in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah would not be disarmed, and a parallel is made between our abducted soldiers and murderous Lebanese terrorists held by Israel such as Samir Kuntar." "It could even be," Shalom said, "that Syria might conclude that it can get the Golan Heights back by sending over some missiles to Israel." Shalom's party colleague, former Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman MK Yuval Shteinitz, took an even stronger stance. If Israel accepts this "shameful" cease fire, Shteinitz said Friday morning, "the government must resign and new elections must be held." The Lebanese Cabinet has also approved the cease fire resolution, however according to CNN, (8/13/06), "The two Hezbollah members of the Lebanese Cabinet said Saturday the militia wanted to keep its weapons south of the Litani River -- a zone the U.N. resolution calls for demilitarizing. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah indicated that the two Hezbollah ministers voted for it in a spirit of national unity. The Lebanese Cabinet planned to meet Sunday to discuss implementing the plan, but then postponed the meeting for up to two days. A Lebanese government minister said the postponement came at the request of parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, a key negotiator with Hezbollah, to give government officials more time to discuss the plan with Hezbollah." Hassan Nasrallah has stated unequivocally that Hezbollah forces will continue to conduct attacks as long as the Israeli army is on Lebanese soil. Israel has maintained that its troops will remain in Lebanon until the Lebanese army and the international peacekeepers arrive to secure the buffer zone. According to news reports, that could take up to 7-10 days. Plenty of time for Hezbollah to regroup and rearm and come back with even more ferocity than it has already displayed. This war is far from over, but for the time being it is Hezbollah who can bask in the glory of victory. It is clear that the leadership of the Israeli government has failed miserably in executing a military strategy that can ensure an Israeli victory over Hezbollah. Since the beginning of this conflict on July 12th, the flip flop, schizophrenic Olmert government has spoken loudly but has carried a small twig. Throughout this conflict Olmert had promised the people of Israel that the Jewish State would implement every measure to disarm Hezbollah and push their forces north of the Litani River in Lebanon. Let us review the inexplicable events of the last week. At the beginning of the week, the Israeli Cabinet voted to expand its ground offensive. Immediately subsequent to that vote, Olmert announced that the offensive would be delayed to allow for diplomatic measures to be taken. Hours before the UN vote on Friday, August 11th, the Olmert government switched gears once again and unleashed the 30,000 Israeli troops in Lebanon. Even the media is in a quandary as to exactly what Israel's strategy is and are collectively questioning the wisdom behind such erratic changes in policy. Hezbollah has declared victory over the "invincible" Israeli army, and rightfully so. This week alone Hezbollah has killed over 65 Israeli soldiers with the heaviest loss coming yesterday, with the killing of 24 Israeli soldiers and hundreds wounded. Over the last week, Hezbollah has launched over 160 Katyusha rocket attacks every single day aimed at northern Israel with the heaviest coming today with the launching of over 200 rockets, crippling the city of Haifa and surrounding areas. Thus far, 143 Israeli have been killed, while over 1000 have been wounded. And while the world watches, the inept, confused and terrified Israeli government hands a monumental victory over to Hezbollah on a silver platter. The Olmert government is one that not only has failed to protect its citizens, to disarm Hezbollah terrorists, and to secure the release of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers, it is one that is determined to herald a new era of more Israeli deaths as it emboldens Hezbollah through its cowardice and obsequious rhetoric. Even the banner headline of yesterday's left leaning HaAretz newspaper stated that "Olmert Must Go". It is clear that the government of Israel had no real and clear plan to ensure victory for Israel. It is clear that Olmert's words and actions were not in sync. It is clear that the hesitation and indecisiveness of the Israeli government's military strategy has paved the way to more destruction and much greater danger for the Israeli populace and military. It has admitted defeat because of its fear of world opinion and its inability, at the beginning of this conflict, to call for a massive ground offensive. Weeks went by and despite Israeli air strikes, there was no clear indication that Hezbollah forces had been dramatically weakened. This war was handled by a bunch of amateurs and now Israel is paying the price. The legendary reputation of the Israeli army as a incredible and accomplished fighting force has been eradicated and thus has lost the respect of the world. What once was is no more, but what could have been was never realized because of a government that lacks the fortitude and temerity to call for bold actions. The government of Israel has acquiesced to its greatest nemesis, fear of world opinion. It is a government that would rather see over a million of its citizens living in bomb shelters for over a month, to see its villages, towns and cities be rapidly destroyed and the lives of its people be thrown into total chaos. And so we stand humiliated and defeated as our enemies celebrate the impending downfall of "the Zionist entity" as they call it. At this dark and painful moment in the history of the Jewish people and the State of Israel, it behooves us to pause and reflect on some profound words. Words that were spoken decades ago, words of vision and foresight, words of warning, that tragically were never heeded. Rabbi Meir Kahane, ZTK"L, of blessed memory stated the following: "It may affect the tender soul of the more spiritually intellectual among us, but one can never attain peace or security by 'compromise' with bitter enemies who have no intentions of compromising with you" (Our Challenge, 1974, p. 32) And to those who want this conflict to end without destroying those forces who seek our annihilation, and to those who seek peace through bogus cease fires, we must remember these words: "But the Arab problem will not go away, because the very existence of the Jewish State creates it" (Rabbi Meir Kahane, They Must Go, 1981, p. 8) And Rabbi Kahane in his incredible vision also stated, "The most fundamental obligation of government - the source of its legitimacy and right to rule over the people - is its responsibility to guarantee the lives and safety of its citizens. If it either cannot or will not fulfill that obligation, it faces the loss of its moral and legal authority" (Israel: Revolution or Referendum?, 1990, p. 95) And the question that is at the very core of this conflict is as follows: "Is it not legitimate to challenge an Authority which is either unable or unwilling to put an end to a terror that takes the lives of its citizens and that threatens the very existence of the state?" (Rabbi Meir Kahane, Israel: Revolution of Referendum?. 1990, p. 110) Let us clearly and unequivocally announce to the leaders of the State of Israel that: "In the name of 'peace' there would be no Jewish state; in the name of 'morality' there would be no Jewish nation" (Rabbi Meir Kahane, Our Challenge, 1974, p. 33) Now is the time to appeal to the Almighty G-d of Israel, to beseech the Master of the Universe with our fervent and heartfelt prayers for our survival as a people and as nation. Now is the time to plead with the Almighty that he infuse our leaders with the courage and strength it takes to destroy our enemies and may He reveal His strength, His glory and His majesty for all the world to see. And may we never forget these words: "If Jewish weakness in the eyes of the nation - if Jewish weakness is proof of G-d's non-existence, then how do we prove to the nations that the G-d of Israel is indeed the One G-d? And not only is He not impotent, and not only exists, but He is G-d? Surely, by Jewish victory, Jewish strength" (Rabbi Kahane's last speech, November 5, 1990) Contact Fern Sidman at AriellaH@aol.com |
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BOTTLE AND BABY USED AS BOMB
Posted by Naomi Ragen, August 13, 2006. |
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When will people get the idea that dead babies are just a tool to terrorists? They parade their bodies cynically, even if they fell off a swing, claiming world sympathy. And they include them in terrorist attacks, Why are you going to have to taste your baby formula in front of airport security? Because the British terror plot included parents and their baby, whom they were planning to blow up mid-air, taking a plane full of soft-hearted passengers (who were no doubt horrified at the staged and doctored pictures of Qana) with them. Which once again proves that if you really care about children, you have to be in favor of destroying terrorists, and not tie the hands of those fighting them. Below, an article about it. It was written by Fiona Hudson and appeared today in the Daily
Telegraph
Naomi |
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A HUSBAND and wife arrested in the British terror raids allegedly planned to take their six-month-old baby on a mid-air suicide mission. Scotland Yard police are quizzing Abdula Ahmed Ali, 25, and his 23-year-old wife Cossor over suspicions they were to use their baby's bottle to hide a liquid bomb. The theory is one of the reasons security chiefs are now insisting mothers taste babies' milk at check-in desks before allowing them to take bottles aboard flights. The pair are among up to 23 suspects being questioned over a plot to bring down nine airliners over five US cities, killing thousands of people in the air and on the ground. The questioning of the group comes as British Government sources yesterday revealed many of those suspects posed as relief workers to travel to al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan. It has also been revealed that security services are secretly monitoring "dozens" of fresh plots involving hundreds of suspects which could be unleashed at any time. One government source said at least 30 priority cases were under urgent investigation. " All those 30 are seen as serious, determined attacks that will happen unless we stop them," the source said. Police spent yesterday combing through the Alis' east London housing commission flat for clues. Cossor took her baby with her to the police station during last week's raids but her son is now being cared for by grandparents. Cossor's grandfather, Nazir Ahmed, 84, said Abdula had travelled to Pakistan about four weeks ago. "We didn't understand what the hurry was and why he needed to go," Mr Ahmed said. A neighbour at the flats where the married couple lived said he would be stunned if claims were true. "I simply cannot believe he could have been involved in a plot like this. He is religious and seemed to love his family," the neighbour said. "I would never have dreamed he could have been involved in anything like this." A family friend of Cossor said she had known the arrested mother 12 years and believed her to be innocent. "I think it is a case of mistaken identity. The last thing she'd be interested in is terrorism. They are just simple day-to-day people going about their own business," she said. Police in England have reportedly recovered bottles containing peroxide, including some with false bottoms, from a recycling centre close to the homes of some of the arrested suspects. It has emerged MI5 agents launched covert intrusions on the homes of some suspects several weeks ago in "sneak and peek" operations to plant listening devices and gather evidence ahead of the arrests last week. Links between suspects in the jet bomb plot and those behind the London 7/7 attacks have also come to light. There are reports as many as five of those arrested attended the same terror training camp in Pakistan as two of the July 7 London suicide bombers. And US intelligence sources said they believed at least two of the suspects had trained in Karachi and met al-Qaeda operatives in the lead up to the 7/7 attacks. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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"MOUSSAUOI DAY" IN BRITAIN
Posted by Zalmi, August 13, 2006. |
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August 10th. A day that can be added to the yahrtzeits of September 11th and July 7th imposed on our world by Islamic terror. I think of it as "Zacharias Moussaoui Day" for Britain. A day that unfortunately America wasn't fortunate enough to have been granted by fate. Had the so-called 11th hijacker been discovered in the USA as today's plotters were in the UK, the catastrophe of 9-11 would have been avoided and more than 3,000 innocent men and women would still be enjoying their lives and families today. So, what will Britain do with this gift of fate? This gift of life. Will it regard it as a wake-up call?
Despite the upheaval at Heathrow airport, I chose not to cancel my plans to catch El Al's overnight flight to Israel. The Islamists may want to wipe Israel off the map but, so long as it IS on the map, I'm damned if they're gonna stop me visiting it. By my 8 pm check-in Terminal 3 was eerily quiet. Most travellers had either cancelled or been cancelled. The few passengers trudging toward their departure gates seemed helpless and vulnerable without their faithful carry-ons and backpacks. Instead, all of us carried a small plastic bag containing tickets, passport, money and any essential medicines. That's all. Possibly the most painful wrench was having to part with cellphones. It was a truly eerie feeling not seeing or hearing a single cellphone in use between check-in and the gate. And it was comical listening to the pre-flight announcements about switching off cellphones which no-one had with them. To call home before boarding I had to use a payphone. I haven't used a payphone in years! It was truly like going back in time. Walking around clutching ziplock bags, bereft all our gizmos and gadgetry. But then I thought: Isn't that exactly what the Islamists want?q To take us all back in time? To a primitive dark-age of Sharia law, holy wars, imprisonment of women, summary execution and beheadings. It reminded me of the plane that landed in Riyadh airport and whose captain announced: "We have just landed in Saudi Arabia. Please set your watches back 300 years". Contact Zalmi at zalmi@zalmi.net |
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MORE ON MEDIA DISTORTIONS
Posted by Barry Shaw, August 13, 2006. | ||
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More on the phoney images of war, when terror groups like Hizbollah provide the emotional shots that Western media photographers and reporters crave for. After all, such shots boost their ratings. It also forms public opinion against Israel, and for the terrorists | ||
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AP captures Hezbollah setting up Photo Shoot for Reuters [Staging
the Fauxtos] Yahoo News Photos/ Reuters: Sharif Karim/Mohamed Azakir
Posted on 08/11/2006 11:47:13 AM PDT by TaxRelief
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Barry Shaw made aliyah from Manchester, England, 25 years ago with his family. He writes the "View from Here" columns from Israel. To sign up to receive his emails, contact him at netre@matav.net.il |
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ISRAEL EXISTS IN A KAFKAESQUE WORLD
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, August 13, 2006. |
| Israel exists in a Kafkaesque world where tiny morphs to huge, restrained morphs to disproportionate, and humane morphs to inhumane. The Jewish State controls but two tenths of one per cent the land mass of a substantially hostile Muslim Middle East where the practice of Judaism mostly everywhere else is virtually forbidden, still Israel allows freedom of religion within its postage stamp size region. Yet those discriminated against Jews are popularly accused of occupying Muslim land and abusing Arabs. The Jewish State surgically fights for survival against enemies, engaged in terrorist activities such as homicide/suicide bombing aggressively attempting to effectuate Israel's annihilation, still the democratic besieged "target of aggression" nation restrains any impulse to obliterate those aggressors, humanely attempts to minimize Arab civilian casualties, while those cowardly jihad obsessed combatants Hizbullah and Hamas intermingle their bodies and deadly weapons with civilians populations. Yet Israel is popularly accused of disproportionate and inhumane responses to such jihad junkies. Even many intellects, that should know better, rarely observe irony in this sadistically surreal scenario, accept popularly skewed opinion, thus dishonestly cast aspersions against Israel directly or implicitly. Marketing Israel's case worldwide, where up is down right is left and blue is red, sadly has not been a priority among strategists supporting the beleaguered state. The word "occupier" remains associated with Israel even though intrepid Israeli troops in Judea, Samaria, and formerly Gaza insure the safety of peaceful Jewish citizens, threatened by hostile Arabs, thus are protectors not occupiers. Such Israeli citizens residing in Judea and Samaria are still widely and disrespectfully referred to as "settlers", as were erstwhile kindred spirit Jewish Gaza citizens, yet nurture the land, build modern communities, and wish to dwell in peace like rational folks everywhere, not at all fitting the besmirched definition of settler morphed to connote trespasser. Bizarrely, every war Israel fights seems to depict Jews as overpowering aggressors and Arabs as hapless underdogs, bar set so low that not tripping is victory. How might that idea flourish when in fact a relatively few million Jews, in reality, must always contest the venom of several hundred million Jew-despising Muslims, all yearning for the downfall of Israel. Furthermore, how can Hizbullah cowards, hiding themselves and their deadly weapons behind women and children to foil moral Israeli warriors, be considered heroes, yet their leader Nasrallah, himself safely hidden underground, is the "mother of all heroes" within the muddled hearts and minds of so many Muslims? Truth indeed takes a backseat to manipulated conceptualizations, especially when such distortions are not countered robustly by advocates for justice. Perhaps no misconception is more blatant, popularly accepted, and destructive to Israel then when the term Palestinian describes a distinct people, falsely but ever so successfully morphing mostly Jordanian Arabs for the purpose of sympathetic propaganda? Again, where are the advocates for justice? Alas, lies and skewed thinking not vigorously disputed become truth by default. Israel deserves better! Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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JEWISH-ISRAELI NEWS: WAR HITS SAFED-9
Posted by Sandy Hazen-Rosen, August 13, 2006. |
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WAR IN THE NORTH: DAY 34 What Israel has done for US lately:
Many pundits in Washington, among them supporters of Israel, anticipated better results from the month-long war against Hizbullah. They were hoping for Israel to put Iran and Syria on the defensive by using IDF military might to eradicate Hizbullah much faster. Some have already concluded that this was an opportunity squandered. The truth is that the last month has not been "a walk in the park" for Israel. We have been fighting a ruthless, well-armed and well-trained, albeit small, army that has spent the last six years preparing for this war while we have been busy on many other fronts. Nevertheless, those in Washington who are disappointed with the results should consider a list of dividends that America has received from our campaign: First and foremost, Israel has sent a loud and clear message that any terrorist entity that carries out an act of aggression will pay a heavy price. Moreover, we have proven that a "spoiled" Western society, as Hizbullah perceived Israel, can withstand barrages of rocket-fire on its civilians and still maintain an unfaltering resolution to stand up and fight. Second, by exerting heavy military pressure on Hizbullah and the Lebanese government, we forced the collapse of Nasrallah's strategy that was based on unaccountability and terror-deterrence. In so doing, we created the necessary conditions to compel the international community to take long-overdue measures to implement earlier UN resolutions that the free world hopes will ultimately turn Lebanon into an accountable, sovereign nation. If this happens, Syria and Iran would be the main losers of this war. Security Council Resolution 1701 approved Friday is the direct result of that pressure, and now it is up to the international community to ensure that it is implemented. Third, we helped people across the globe world understand the extent of the threat that Iranian radicalism poses to the entire free world, and why it is so important to prevent it from becoming a nuclear power. Fourth, we exposed Syria's role in supporting terror - both by facilitating the transport of Iranian weapons to Hizbullah, and by supplying its own heavy, long-range rockets and other weaponry to this terror organization. You might be surprised to know that until this war, the international community had refused to acknowledge that Syria supplied these rockets to Hizbullah. Fifth, we have shown how irresponsible the Russians were in supplying Syria with state-of-the-art weapons that have ended up in the hands of Hizbullah. And finally, we helped the world to better understand the dangers posed by Hizbullah's fundamentalist brainwashing machine. In terms of the systematic and deliberate killing of civilians, the difference between Iranian-sponsored Hizbullah and Nazi Germany is that while the SS sought to conceal its deeds - including from German society - Hizbullah proudly proclaims its successes in killing Jewish civilians. This stream of distorted Islamist extremism is cut from the same cloth of twisted ideology to which the planners of the thwarted terror attacks on airliners flying out of London subscribe. This is a short list of what Israel has achieved in the last month. These significant, concrete advances should go a long way to satisfying those wondering what Israel has done lately for those who live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. The writer is a brigadier-general and former head of IDF Military Intelligence's research department. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Written the day the war was supposed to have ended.....
We won war because unlike Nasrallah we didn't lie, and will learn from our mistakes. It's difficult to write this today, when dozens of families join the circle of bereavement. Yet we must say it, in a clear voice, in the face of the cries of joy heard in parts of the Arab world, and also because of the confused voices on our side. This war (I heard a kid who suggested calling it "Summer Vacation War", because it ruined his vacation and will end just in time for the school year to start?) ended with an Israeli victory. Period. How do we measure victory? Despite the pain, a country's achievements are not measured by human life, but rather, by long-term objectives and accomplishments. The return of the abducted soldiers is therefore important, but not the essence. Similarly, the suffering endured by residents of the North -- and those were significant hardships indeed -- is no reason for mass depression, but rather, one component we must fully understand in order to draw proper conclusions. We remained united We won because the world recognizes that the situation in southern Lebanon was unbearable and therefore must be changed. The United Nations Security Council signed a document that makes it clear we have only Israel and Lebanon, with the Hizbullah a sort of gnat that doesn't quite exist. The happy days where every Hizbullah militiaman could wave his Kalashnikov across the border fence are over. Move it, boys. We won because we didn't lie. Losses were reported honestly, even when they were difficult. A reserve officer who returned from the north of the country spoke about hearing fluent Persian on Hizbullah's two-way radios. Add this piece of information to the report about the bodies of Iranian fighters uncovered by the IDF. Do you think you'll ever hear about it from the other side? You'll hear nothing -- Iran already denied it. Yet this is not the only lie: We also had the "massacre" in Qana, the "thick smoke" produced by the creative photographer in Beirut, and many more. We don't lie, for better or for worse. Mostly for better. We also won when it comes to the dry figures. We endured losses, tanks were hit, as well as a missile boat, and a helicopter was shot down. And what happened on the other side? Well, here's the thing: When the war is being fought against an enemy who is both a liar and hides information, it's hard to know. Therefore we'll base this on IDF reports that are referring to very serious losses to Hizbullah's fighting force. According to the most optimistic reports, the group was in essence wiped out south of the Litani River, along with weapon caches accumulated there over six years. We won because despite annoying displays of radicalism here and there, we remained united. The radical Left managed to enlist a record number of dozens of protesters across the Defense Ministry. The radical Right embarrassed the IDF's chief rabbi. And in between we were left with 99 percent of a stubborn people conveying a united message: This is a war for our home, we must continue. Last week I met my hair dresser and saw black circles around his eyes. Tiredly he told me that he and his partner decided to drive up to the northern town of Kiryat Shmona to give the people in bomb shelters haircuts and make them merry. They were there until 2 a.m. Nobody forced them to go there, or paid them to do so; they simply decided to do it. We won because of such Israelis. We won because we're coming out of this war beaten, but on our feet. Lebanon will need long years to recover. Hizbullah's fate is completely unknown, while its patron Syria is already eagerly eying the temptations offered by the world. After all, Nasrallah's power was measured in his secretive ties with Damascus and Iran and the blows he would deliver our way on occasion, like a mosquito. The moment the mosquito turned into an elephant everyone in the world talks about, the secrecy is gone. Also gone is the grand plan for a strategic assault on the State of Israel. The surprise element of thousands of missiles hitting us without warning is also gone. Everything is gone. Iranians should hang Nasrallah It's not my place to offer advice, but if I were the Ayatollah Khamenei I would invite Hassan Nasrallah to Teheran this month and hang him downtown. Make no mistake about it: Nasrallah will still be delivering boastful speeches left and right and claiming this was the greatest victory ever in Lebanon. However, then he will review what he's left with: A beaten organization that the world is expecting to quickly come off the stage and that needs to contend with an international document that forbids it from holding any weapons or receive arms from anyone. Then, Nasrallah we'll have to ask himself some heavy questions. Triumph over Nasrallah's culture of lies It's so difficult to clear the war's fog and examine what's happening clearly. We lost our best sons. We sustained several painful blows to our military pride -- and mostly, we learned important lessons. The most important lesson is that of complacency: Those who for years dozed off and neglected developments to our north eventually paid the price. Those who neglected the IDF's reserve forces for years and groomed "prestigious" forces at the expense of the guys who walk in the sand were humiliated when the moment of truth arrived. Indeed, our genuine victory grows out of those lessons. Israel is a country that makes mistakes, but also one that analyzes its errors without hiding and lying. Everything is open to criticism, both political and on the part of the media, and everything can be fixed and changed. Yes, this also means replacing our leadership, if you wish. And this, perhaps, is the secret of our great triumph over Nasrallah's culture of lies. Despite all, we won. Sandy Rosen-Hazen lives in Safed. Contact her by email at Sandy@israel.net |
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THE RELIGION OF PEACE RALLIES
Posted by Rachel Neuwirth, August 13, 2006. |
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See attached which comes from B Konheim. Also click the link below for more sickening photos of yesterday,
San Francisco rally:
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New York City 
Moscow - Palestinian students hold a Hezbollah flag and anti-war posters, and shout anti-Israel slogans as they picket the Israeli Embassy in Moscow Thursday, July 20, 2006. Posters read: Israel Nazism Fascism. Arab world, we have common enemy. If you want peace, stop occupation of Palestine. (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze) 
Montreal, Canada 
Sidney, Australia - The spiritual leader of Australia's Muslim community, Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali, in brown cape, joins members of Sydney's Lebanese community in a march through Sydney's central business district Saturday, July 22, 2006. More than 10,000 people, carrying coffins and chanting 'No war,' rallied to protest against Israel's attacks on Lebanon. (AP Photo/Mark Baker) 
London 
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U.S. DIPLOMACY ON LEBANON; TRAVELING THRU THE RED ALERT
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 13, 2006. |
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WHAT IS RUSSIA UP TO? One often comes across news from less known sources that get insufficient notice. (IMRA is my source for this.) One time it is about a French university pairing up with an Arab one. Another time it is that Russia and Syria discussed how their two friendly armies might cooperate in their countries' mutual interests. What mutual interests has a French university with an Arab one that does not believe in Western academic integrity and that is part of the jihad against the West? What mutual interests have the armies of Russia and Syria? Nothing, for Russia. Plenty for Putin's ambition, if one thinks about it. Imagine Russia as a would-be Soviet Union - enemy of the West, eager to expand in influence if not in territory, mercenary, and now vengeful. Aiding Syria harms the West. Military cooperation is another term for military sales, too. Russia is a major arms dealer. So is the US. The US subsidizes the "sale" of arms to the Arabs. THE PROPOSED BUFFER ZONE IN LEBANON Sec. Rice is proposing a buffer zone in Lebanon, patrolled by a strong foreign force. What is its prognosis? If Hizbullah is destroyed, Lebanon would not need a buffer zone. It could seal the border, itself. If Hizbullah is not destroyed, the terrorists would attack the "foreign occupiers." How long would European troops stay there under fire, especially when Islamists whom the Europeans tolerate in their own countries commit terrorism in the name of freeing Lebanon? Not long. Then the situation would revert to the unsatisfactory condition since Israel withdrew from Lebanon. Before Israel withdrew, southern Lebanon was mostly free and secure. If Israel had let the largely Christian Free Lebanese Army expand, it might have freed the whole country. Instead, it undermined the Free Lebanese Army and let Hizbullah expand southward. THE U.S. ROLE AND REACTION Pres. Bush described the terrorist plot against air travelers as another battle by Islamist terrorists against the rest of the world. It is. Why can't his Democrat detractors join him in this declaration? The dust has not settled, but the US diplomatic effort in the UN for the first time is not just to stop the fighting when Israel is winning. The US purports to be seeking a Security Council resolution to disarm Hizbullah and use Lebanese troops to keep it away from the border with IsraeI. That is fair. It certainly is a good step. I think, however, that the solution must be broader, for Iran and Syria retain the capability of interfering in Lebanon and arousing more warfare. And Islam continues to stimulate jihad. TRAVELLING THROUGH THE RED ALERT My London hostess greeted me last Thursday morning with the news that most flights home were canceled and the rest were hardly accessible. She graciously offered to let me stay longer. She asked what I would do. I said, "I'm a New Yorker. I'll get through." We hailed a taxi, to drive to the train-to-airport station. The driver said don't bother, the station is closed. I said, "We'll see." He found the barriers down. Now he warned that it would be chaotic. To the contrary, it was a prompt ride. At the airport, however, a crowd had built up, because inspection was so painstaking. We waited, waited, and waited. Tedium and tension were relieved by a charming toddler. The government severely restricted what we could carry on. I had to stuff into my already hernia-tempting valise what I had intended to carry on, including a canteen. After the luggage was checked, they forbid us to carry on food. I find airline food mostly junk, but lacked a doctor's note. I started eating my provisions while waiting to board. I was savoring a small loaf of organic raisin-carrot bread, as tasty as cake, when they told me to get on board and jettison the food. I stuffed my mouth, and threw out the rest. I am not happy with whoever comes between my food and me. I boarded my airline's last daytime plane out, but had to wait for the US Immigration Service to clear the flight. Fortunately, it did so expeditiously. A thunderstorm, however, slowed our approach. The squall ended, but the US shut down the terminal over a breach of security. I figured we would be diverted to another airport while police searched every nook of the terminal, but permission to land came an hour later. There was no dock, due to the backlog ahead of us. Another hour, on the hot tarmac without water or air conditioning. Later, a Customs Officer welcomed us to the USA. How I like to hear that, although London impressed me more than New York City! Baggage claim, however, was Purgatory. Before loading the luggage onto conveyor belts, Customs inspectors searched it again. They removed liquids from many suitcases. They left mine and even the nuts and cheese, not banning them as potentially disease-bearing. It took a numbing three hours to get all my baggage! I spent 21 ½ hours traveling that day. But that toddler amused us right up to my getting into the taxi at Newark Airport. In perspective, I enjoyed the best weather for all of the three weeks, except the days of departure and return. I left America just before a heat wave rolled in, arrived in England just after its heat wave rolled out, and returned just after another American hot spell dissolved. The day of departure, rainstorms kept me from getting to Newark airport in time, but kept the pilot at bay, too. He arrived an hour after I did. At least I got aboard. The delayed landing in England forced me to taker a later train, which then lost a few hours to strikes. The delays at the start were almost as bad as the ones at the end, and did not involve terrorism. And that therapeutic baby was with me the whole way. What shall we make of this? I find people too patient. Their civility under stress is admirable, but they consider this our new way of life. I don't. I think that our rights, privacy, and comfort are being compromised unnecessarily, in the name of the human rights of a culture striving to rob us of ours. It makes no sense to tolerate people increasingly and so easily indoctrinated to murder us. We owe them nothing. I would expel the Muslims, to regain our rights and our security. 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@aol.com. |
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EXCLUSIVE PHOTO OF EFFECTIVE DEFENSE AGAINST KATYUSHAS
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 13, 2006. |
The Umbr'Allah!
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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF: 1948 AND 2006
Posted by by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, August 13, 2006. |
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Arabs called to leave Haifa to facilitate the killing of Jews 1948 - Arab League tells Arabs to leave Haifa to facilitate the killing of Jews 2006 - Hezbollah tells Arabs to leave Haifa to facilitate the killing of Jews Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's request of Arabs to leave Haifa to facilitate the bombing and killing of Jews in Haifa is the identical call heard by the Arabs of Haifa and other cities by the Arab League attacking the new State of Israel in 1948. 2006 - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah: "I have a special message to the Arabs of Haifa, to your martyrs and to your wounded. I call you to leave this city. I hope you do this. ... Please leave so we don't shed your blood, which is our blood." 1948 - Palestinian journalist describes Arab leaders action in 1948: "To the [Arab] Kings and Presidents: Poverty is killing us... yet you are still searching for the way to provide aid... like the armies of your predecessors in the year of 1948, who forced us to leave [Israel], on the pretext of clearing the battlefields of civilians... " Itamar Marcus is director of PMW - Palestinian Media Watch - (http://www.pmw.org.il). PMW is based in Jerusalem. Barbara Crook, a writer and university lecturer based in Ottawa, Canada, is PMW's North American representative. |
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IT'S TIME TO TAKE TO THE STREETS
Posted by Nadia Matar, August 13, 2006. |
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We have already been at war for a month. The most terrifying picture of all is becoming clearer and clearer: the State of Israel is being run by a band of "losers" who do not know how to conduct a war. Funeral after funeral, condolence visit after condolence visit, we hear in the media the most forceful speeches by the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister, as if they are finally willing to go all the way in fighting - but time after time we realize that these are media spins, to create such an illusion among the public. Whoever reads between the lines understands that the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister don't have a clue what to do. As Caroline Glick writes in the August 8 (Tuesday) edition of the Jerusalem Post: "Olmert today devotes his attention not to addressing the question of how Israel can win this war, but rather to how he can convince the Israeli public that he is not a failure. And he is not alone. Over the past week the main push of the Olmert government, the IDF General Staff and the left-wing establishment in Israel has been to prepare the public to accept their version of events. All three groups have their own specific agenda. But their goal - maintaining their power and avoiding accountability for their leadership failures - is a shared one." In light of all this, we in Women in Green have decided that we can no longer be silent. After numerous deliberations and consultations with knowledgeable people, we understood that the most suitable slogan today is "The People Demands Victory!" But this needs clarification - for Olmert is continually trying to convince us that what he is doing now in the north is already a "victory," and so we must further explain ourselves. Last week, we held,a 24-hour vigil starting on Tuesday, and throughout the night until Wednesday, opposite the Prime Minister's Residence at Paris Square in Jerusalem, we handed out to those who passed by flyers and we wrote an explanatory sheet saying: Dear Citizen  Shalom We, Israeli mothers, whose sons, grandsons, and husbands serve in the army, and many of whom are fighting in the north, have put our daily lives on hold for 24 hours, together with our friends and family, for a vigil opposite the Prime Minister's Residence, to tell him: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Too may times in the past the people of Israel has fought and its sons have given their lives - for nothing. The "diplomatic solution" turned victory into defeat. In light of the "cease-fire agreement" that is taking shape now - an agreement that includes clauses that spell out defeat and Israel's total surrender to the Hizballah, we appeal to you with this call: No to a cease-fire - No to the release of terrorists - No to a withdrawal from Mount Dov (Shaba Farms), which means abandoning the Golan - No more withdrawal from the Promised Land - Every withdrawal is weakness and a surrender to the enemy - No to leaving the last Hizballah terrorist in South Lebanon - The people is united in its demand for True Victory! All that our courageous and heroic soldiers need to receive are the correct orders to rout the Arab enemy - the orders that the government, which apparently is more concerned for the well being of the Arab enemy's citizens than for the well being of Israel's citizens and soldiers, still has not given. help to us to put pressure on the government so that it will not succumb to the dictates of the domestic extreme left and the dictates of the external enemies of Israel. Inundate the offices listed below with faxes and telephone calls with the unequivocal call that The People Demands Victory! - No more surrender! No more withdrawal! LET THEM KNOW Office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: tel.: 02-6705510, fax: 02-5664838 Office of Defense Minister Amir Peretz: tel.: 03-6975436, fax: 03-6976218 Office of the Chief of the General Staff Dan Halutz: tel.: 03-5691111, fax: 03-5698299 We send our prayers to the Holy One, blessed be He, to protect the soldiers of the IDF, and to give them the strength to fight the Arab enemy to the bitter end. May it be His Will that our soldiers return to their families healthy and whole, together with the POWs and MIAs. ----------------------------------------------- In addition to this letter, we also printed up a sticker that proclaims, in large letters "THE PEOPLE DEMANDS VICTORY!" In small letters it says: No more surrender - No more retreat - No more release of terrorists - Yes to the capitulation of the Arab enemy - Yes to victory - Yes to the Promised Land of Israel." I feel the need to share with you some of the responses by people to the distribution of this material. This was simply amazing. The stickers and the letter were snatched from our hands. There was such unbelievable eagerness by citizens, who said: "At last, you've taken to the streets." "At last, we hear a clear and unequivocal message." This was with the exception of a few individuals, from the extreme left, who told us: "I don't want victory, I want peace," without understanding that there will be peace here only when we are victorious and defeat the Arab enemy, and have him understand that this is our Land, and we will never relinquish it. The thousands who passed by there, religious and nonreligious, young and old, in a car or on foot, reminded us how wonderful and wise a people we have, that is simply going mad and silently anguishes over Israel's lack of leadership. Especially prominent among all those we met during those twenty-four hours in the street, were hundreds of residents of the north, refugees in Jerusalem. "We're from the north, yes, we want a true victory," was the sentence that we heard the most often. One grandmother stopped and told us that she has seven nephews in Lebanon. She went through all of Israel's wars, and she never saw a war that was conducted so ineffectively, and in such a criminally slipshod manner. "The shortcoming of the Yom Kippur War, is nothing when compared to today's failures," this grandmother said. She ended with the hope that when a Commission of Inquiry will be established for the present war, the government will fall, together with the entire leftist "conception." In the evening a family came with sleeping bags to spend the night with us. They are Jews who live in the United States, but because of the war they came to Israel to be with the people of Israel during the fighting. They rented an apartment in Jerusalem and decided to join our vigil. At one a.m. a young man with a guitar came by. He said that he was a soldier without his family from the United States who volunteered to serve in the army. He was in the north, and was wounded in his hands by shrapnel, as a result of which he received three days of rest before he returned to the north. He thanked us for holding the vigil, and he said that this message greatly strengthens the soldiers. He took a big package of stickers and letters to distribute to his friends in the north. It seems that the strong support for our vigil by passersby greatly bothered the Prime Minister. Every hour one of his many guards came by and apparently reported to his superiors what was happening, and about the many posters that were hung around the square, on which we wrote: "Let the IDF Win - The People Demands Victory!" Many automobiles honked their horns in identification with these signs. In the morning a vehicle of Jerusalem Municipal inspectors arrived. A senior inspector ripped down the banners, tore some of them, and said that signs could not be hung up there. I will meet him in court in two months, since he gave me a report and a summons to court for "the crime of hanging signs." We continued the vigil, holding the signs in our hands, and we continued to distribute the material until the end of the day. This morning I received a telephone call from a woman in Ashdod who had heard about the vigil, and she asked to be sent material. She felt that she could no longer remain at home. She had never gone out to demonstrations, but the situation was unbearable. She wanted to organize the women in Ashdod to take to the streets and demand that the government stop being merciful to the cruel, and to finally pulverize the enemy with bombardment from the air, before soldiers are endangered. "What has happened to us?" she asked. It is already written in the Torah that the only way to act against a murderous enemy is in accordance with the principle: If someone rises to kill you - rise early to kill him! The message by the woman from Ashdod is actually the correct message now. We can no longer stay at home and quietly cry over every soldier and civilian who was wounded or killed. In light of the fact that the extreme and traitorous left has once again raised its head and is attempting to weaken the people's spirit, and in light of the fact that the government itself is a leftist government with its own agenda, and therefore cannot be relied upon to act without any ulterior motives on behalf of the national interest of the people of Israel in its Land/ The Jewish-Zionist public must take to the streets, today, with the so basic and necessary demand: Let the IDF really be victorious! The people demands victory! - A true victory, as a result of which our leaders would never dare speak any more of withdrawals, surrenders, and "convergence plans". Based on what we saw in our vigil opposite the Prime Minister's Residence, the people is ready, and this is the call of the hour. If only the leaders and rabbis of the public would take up the challenge and begin to act, to take the public into the streets en masse. They cannot, once again, thrust this mission upon the ordinary citizen. Since, however, they have not yet organized and are still mired within its paralysis, we must not wait. We must start small, each one where he lives, in the hope that many small vigils will have a snowball effect, to arouse the entire leadership and infuse it with a spirit of courage and fortitude. Buy poster paper and markers, write on them patriotic messages such as: "Let the IDF Truly Be Victorious!", "The People Demands True Victory!", "No to Surrender", "No to a Withdrawal", "Yes to the Submission of the Arab Enemy", "The Land of Israel for the People of Israel" - and go to the nearest intersection, together with friends and family. This is an emergency call-up order, not only for soldiers, but for us all, without exception. May it be His will that the Holy One, blessed be He, hear our outcry and give the people of Israel the strength, the boldness, and the bravery to be victorious, on all fronts, against all those who arise to destroy us. An Addendum: It is a fact that the Israel plans on accepting the UN Security Resolution. That will give a near total victory for Hizbollah and its state sponsors Iran and Syria [Must Read Caroline Glick, "An unmitigated Disaster," August 13, 2006, in the Jerusalem Post. [Editor's note: you can read it here.] The time has come for the people of Israel to demonstrate in the streets and demand total victory. We should also demand this government GO HOME- for Israel will never be victorious as long as Olmert and his bunch of Kadima losers will be running the country 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 This essay was published August 10, 2006. |
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NORTH--SOUTH, EAST--WEST
Posted by Rachel Saperstein, August 13, 2006. |
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The Lerner family is hosting their daughter's in-laws. They are refugees from Haifa in the north, now staying in the Nitzan refugee camp in the south. Last year's refugees hosting this year's refugees. They were picked up in the middle of the night, unable to endure any further. Their shelters were designed for short-term use, with no water or toilets, and have now been in continuous use for a month. Our Gush Katif youth speed to the north, delivering food, diapers and baby formula to those still huddling in shelters. They speak, sing, dance and give hope to our northern brothers and sisters. We were there, they point out, bombed for five years. The media makes no mention that this cruel war in the north is a direct consequence of the destruction of Gush Katif in the south. The Arabs, given a prize, were emboldened and they acted. Today Kiryat Shmona lies ruined by Arab missiles. Last year, at this exact time, Gush Katif was destroyed by a Jewish government. Moshe and I have the remains of a Kassam rocket which exploded near our home in Neve Dekalim. The words Al Kuds were printed on its tail fins. Al Kuds is Arabic for Jerusalem. The message is quite clear. The war was not about Gush Katif. It was about Jerusalem. Just as the war in the north is not about Lebanon. It is a war to destroy Israel. Last year the people of Israel and Jews from abroad chose to ignore the message. They let Gush Katif fall. Today our country is in ruins. Last week a plot to destroy airliners from Britain to the United States was foiled. The message is clear. The war, of which ours is a part, is of the east determined to destroy the west. The west chooses to ignore the message. Just as Gush Katif led straight to Lebanon, so the war against Israel will lead straight to the war against the west. While the war rages in the north, we have been receiving signals that Syria is stockpiling huge quantities of weapons along its border with Israel. The weapons are deadlier and have a longer range. Yet our prime minister still speaks of his "convergence" plan to remove 100,000 Jews from Judea and Samaria and to give our Biblical homeland to our enemies, bringing the heartland of the country into the range of enemy weapons. Win or lose, the Arabs win. Is it any wonder that we, the refugees of Gush Katif, are still angry, hurt, bewildered and horrified by the results of our expulsion. Excuse me if I'm still crying. When we see the direct results of this horrible crime of expulsion against us now visited on the entire people of Israel, of course I cry. When I recall that our rabbis and political leaders worked with the government to commit this crime, yes I cry. When I recall that our soldiers and police chose to carry out this crime, I cry. And today I cry as I see innocent Israelis left without food and water in bomb shelters. And when our young soldiers are killed and wounded, I cry. When we begged, pleaded and warned the Jewish world that this is what will eventually happen if we are expelled, we were met with indifference. The Jews would not listen to us. Today they rush to raise money for the refugees of the north huddled in their shelters. Monies that will largely disappear into organizational coffers as did most of the funds raised for us. To those who criticize my outcry, my "whining", my despair, please understand I do it for you, the next victims of Islamic hatred. The Sudden Jihad Syndrome shooting in Seattle will be repeated many times over. No more prizes to our enemies! No Convergence Plan!! At stake is not the survival of Judea and Samaria. At stake is the survival of Israel. At stake is the survival of our world. I'd like to suggest the following: If you want to help those in the north and continue to help the Gush Katif refugees, mark your check "Operation Dignity/North" and we will pass on 50% to one of the food distribution programs mentioned above while using the remainder for Gush Katif refugees. OPERATION DIGNITY is bringing hope, financial aid and employment to our people. OPERATION DIGNITY needs your help to revitalize a once proud people. Send your check, earmarked "Operation Dignity" to Central Fund for Israel
OR Central Fund for Israel
Rachel Saperstein and her husband, Moshe, were among the thousands of
Jews kicked out of their homes in Gush Katif, in the Gaza strip, and
forced into temporary quarters so dismal, their still-temporary
paper-based trailers in Nitzan, seemed a step up. Contact them at
ruchimo@.netvision.net.il
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BETRAYAL AND REVERSAL
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, August 13, 2006. |
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The regime of defeat, destruction, and suicide in Jerusalem, pawns not only of the State Department but, to judge by their deeds of omission and commission in responding to Hizbollah, of the Knights of Malta, etc, have led the Jewish people into a disaster that yet may overwhelm them. They have betrayed Jews of today, yesterday and tomorrow: they have spit on everything we have kept alive for millennia and endangered not only our honor, homeland, and Israelis, but Jewish survival. Note that Olmert's administration has completed Labor-Mapai's elevation of self-contempt and castration into the first principle of the state. The state is governed by women in black. Victory has been erased from military doctrine and national discussion. "The enemy must not be defeated too badly" a panel of IDF officers wrote in 2001; that principle has pursued its logic until it is only Israel that can be defeated. Peres-Olmert-Kadima-Labor: this smersh has turned Israel into a pseudo-nation and the IDF into a pseudo-army whose main task is not to offend CNN, Reuters, and other media. This is impossible but they intend that Israelis die trying. They have transformed all aspects of Israel into the Jewish state they see: a byword and object of derision. They have labored to verify Nasrallah's contemptuous taunt of a 'spider-web state.' If Olmert-Peres are not removed, they will put forces in place that will remove Israel: it's them or the Jewish people upon whose lives all their policies spit and spit again, and give over to death that redeems nothing but is used only to expel Jews. They are monsters... The IDF reportedly intended a lightning response to the rocket attacks that have driven Israel into bomb shelters while the ayatollahs watch with keen and bloodthirsty interest. The IDF is responsible for the survival of the state; it is tasked with defending the Jewish people and the entire land of Israel, in eliminating existential threats like those hovering every nearer about us. They must act; people who have lost loved ones to the incompetence and posturing of Olmert the destroyer must act; medical staff that treat the traumatized and shattered Jews who have long been fair game in their land that successive 'surrender and retreat' governments have turned into "open season on Jews" ville; those with more power have the most reponsibility: act now and save Israel or the end is soon upon us. The hostile population, 95% of which chose Hamas or Fatah, both pledged to destroy Israel, must be driven out just as Hezbollah, whom they support, must be destroyed along with its Syrian and Iranian patrons. If Israel's deterrence and honor are not re-established we will see the end. Professor Eugene Narrett teaches writing and Literature at Boston University. He is the author of hundreds of articles, columns and reviews on politics, American culture and the arts. He is completing a study on Romanticism and the longterm decline of Western Culture. He writes often on subjects relating to Israel and Judaism and is a weekly columnist for the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Massachusetts. Contact him at culturtalk@aol.com |
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EDGAR, MALCOLM, HOWARD, RON...WHAT WERE YOU DOING WHILE ISRAEL CRUMBLED?
Posted by Buddy Macy, August 12, 2006. |
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Ehud Olmert is single-handedly destroying the Jewish State. As the article below describes, he made crucial gross errors in his handling of the war that have left Israel in an extremely weak, perilous position, instead of destroying her enemies, striking a severe blow against terrorism and bolstering her standing in the international community. In addition, during the month-long war, he has succumbed to international pressure that was based on Hizbullah lies and severe media bias, and he has damaged the confidence of the IDF and encouraged disunity among its soldiers and Israel's citizens. Ten days ago, speaking with the Associated Press, he said, "I'll surprise you. I genuinely believe that the outcome of the present [conflict] and the emergence of a new order that will provide more stability and will defeat the forces of terror will help create the necessary environment that will allow me... to create a new momentum between us and the Palestinians (referring to more unilateral withdrawals)." This is from www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=109044: Word of Olmert's statements quickly spread through the ranks of the IDF units fighting in Lebanon. Army Radio featured a father from Ofrah, one of the communities slated for destruction due to its proximity on the "other" side of the Partition Wall. "I text-messaged my two sons serving in Lebanon to tell them to come home," he said. "It is outrageous that the man sending them to war states that the victory they are risking their lives for will result in their family being expelled from their home, allowing it to become exactly what Gaza and southern Lebanon have become." This past Wednesday, despite the war in the north, the call-up of reserves and the needs of children and their parents in bomb shelters, 30 IDF soldiers, police officers and riot policemen were dispatched to destroy the foundations of a Jewish home in Samaria! It was being built by retired IDF officer Shaul Halfon, who served with former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the elite Unit 101. Apparently the war in the north and south is going so well that Olmert decided he had plenty of soldiers to spare to send to destroy a Jewish home, Halfon told Arutz-7. This next is an excerpt from "Analysis: IDF fumes over denied
victory" by Yaakov Katz, Jerusalem Post, Aug. 11, 2006. ...Only when all that failed did Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his cabinet approve a large-scale incursion into Lebanon and the re-creation of the security zone. See also the article by Jonathan Ariel called "Analysis: Government And Idf Racked By Unprecedented Leadership Crisis." from Israel Insider. [Editor's note: you can read the full article below.] Contact Buddy Macy at vegibud@aol.com |
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DIGGING UP DEAD BODIES FOR A PHOTOSHOOT
Posted by Linda SoG, August 12, 2006. |
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This comes from Little Green Footballs
(littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=22071_ Photographer_Alleges_Unearthing_of_Bodies&only) |
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Photographer Alleges Unearthing of Bodies From the international photographer's forum Lightstalkers.org,
photojournalist Bryan Denton, in a message from Beirut Lebanon,
describes the most vile sort of photo staging imaginable:
i have been working in lebanon since all this started, and seeing the behavior of many of the lebanese wire service photographers has been a bit unsettling. while hajj has garnered a lot of attention for his doctoring of images digitally, whether guilty or not, i have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in peoples arms. these photographers have come away with powerful shots, that required no manipulation digitally, but instead, manipulation on a human level, and this itself is a bigger ethical problem. By the way, I recommend reading the entire linked thread to see the prevalent attitudes of the photojournalists posting there. It's not very different from a Daily Kos thread. UPDATE at 8/12/06 3:13:24 pm:
UPDATE at 8/12/06 4:15:12 pm: Denton posted again later in the thread after being harshly criticized by the other photographers, and softened his stance but did not back off from his allegation. And notice: in the later post he says this was not an isolated incident. hi all, It's all beginning to come out in the open now. Contact LindaSoG by email at linda@lindasog.com |
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RABBI MEIR KAHANE EXPLAINS THOSE ON THE LEFT - APRIL 7, 1989
Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman, August 12, 2006. |
Emanuel A. Winston writes in The Jewish Press in August 2006:
Although I have not belonged to political parties, I can recognize logical conclusions. Sometimes even those who are held in contempt by the majority have remarkable insight and have forecast events thought improbable by this vast majority. I have not read the works of Rabbi Meir Kahane1 but ever so often; I have received e-mails quoting his predictions. Where they meet the test of common sense and logic, I do not dismiss them because others think they must be wrong coming from a source they do not admire. The following e-mail I received is a truth that I have long recognized. I concur with the statement on its merits. The following article by Rabbi Meir Kahane, which was printed in the New York Times, on Friday, April 7, 1989, could have been written today. |
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"The 'Guilt' Of Jews Threatens Israel"
No one, no people, has so sadly honed guilt to a finer art than we Jews. There are, invariably, those liberal Jews who instinctively feel guilty about everything - whether they had anything to do with what's wrong or not. It is a fascinating form of pathology, worthy of a dissertation in abnormal psychology and suggesting the need for some form of national couch. And, of course, it is this corrosive guilt that lies at the heart of the ideological disintegration of Israel today, a process that threatens the very existence of the Jewish state. "We are occupiers and conquerors; we oppress innocent people; our national soul is being corroded; we are, above all, guilty!" Lo, the poor Arab of the West Bank and other "occupied territories," that simple innocent, ground under the heels of the Jewish occupation army. Lo, the poor territories of 1967, which have become the "major obstacle to peace" because of Israeli intransigence. Lo, the racism and latent fascism that is at the very heart of a Zionism that favors Jews in a thing called a Jewish state. What in the world can possess Jews in Israel to forget the massacres of Jews by Arabs in 1920, 1921, and 1929? And why, in their intellectual minds, did they occur? Could the murder of 67 Jews on one day in Hebron 60 years ago (1929) have been caused by Arab anger over the "occupation"? And when more than 500 Jews were massacred in Arab pogroms stretching from 1936 to 1938, was it Israeli refusal to return the lands of 1967 that was at the heart of the problem? And when the Arabs turned down the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947 -- which would have set up a tiny, grotesque Jewish state and an Arab one that might have been called Palestine: Was the Six-Day War of 1967 the root of their decision to try to wipe out the then-600,000 Jews in the land? What causes Jewish liberals to take the Arab position on every issue? What causes them to babble about "the occupied lands" of 1967? Do they not know that the Arabs see the entire area of 1947 and all the Jewish cities and towns within the pre-1967 state as "occupied" also? Do they not realize that to the Arab, Tel Aviv and Haifa, the golf course at Caesarea and all the kibbutzim of the enlightened left are also occupied? Of course, the humanists and moralists of Israel know that, and that is precisely the problem. Deep in their hearts and minds, the Jews on the left and of liberal bent secretly fear that the Arab is right, that the Jew really has no right to come to a "Palestine" that had a majority of Arabs and make it into a Jewish state. The terrible ghosts of Jewish guilt gnaw away at the tortured Jewish liberal soul with the thought that perhaps the Jews are indeed "occupiers" and colonialists. This Jewish secular liberal agonizes with himself daily because, along with his guilt, he lacks the courage to give up his kibbutz to the oppressed Arab. He wallows in a corrosive guilt that rapidly becomes self-hatred. And so he must take the Arab position on every issue in the pathetic hope of winning from the Arab a crumb of forgiveness. He must fight for their right to get part of the "stolen" land so he can keep his part of the "theft." What a pathetic creature, and how dangerous he is. He seeks to commit national suicide and would take all of us with him. Jerome S. Kaufman is National Secretary of the Zionist Organization of America. and host the Israel Commentary website (http://www.israel-commentary.org). |
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JEWISH-ISRAELI NEWS: WAR HITS SAFED-#8
Posted by Sandy Rosen-Hazen, August 12, 2006. |
| My comments are in square brackets [...] |
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[Not a very optimistic view, nevertheless, it IS the truth.....]
Sometimes a country has to take a slap in the face in order to wake up to the changed reality around it. That's what happened to Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which 2,600 were killed, and in the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which claimed more than 1,000 victims. Now Israel has gotten a slap during the war with Hezbollah. It is unfortunate that each time, the searing of Israel's consciousness involves losses, destruction and suffering. In the Arab states, too, there are many who think that the war has created a new reality. In their perception, the Israel Defense Forces is having a hard time subduing Hezbollah. In Syria they are wondering whether the time hasn't come to liberate the Golan Heights by force. Advocates of peace with Israel in the Arab world are on the defensive. If this is the trend, the way is being paved for another round of war. For many in the Arab world, the campaign between Israel and Hezbollah is part of a larger picture, which also includes the inability of the United States to quash the insurgency in Iraq. The Arabs are seeing that military might is not a guarantee of success. There are also those who understand that in today's situation, it is the intention of Iran, Hezbollah's major supporter, to intervene more than ever in inter-Arab affairs. Fortunately for Israel, this war erupted before Iran has acquired the ability to threaten the use of nuclear weapons. From this point of view, the war appears to have come too early for Iran's liking - and a good thing, too. Tehran understands that part of the infrastructure it created for Hezbollah will be destroyed in the war, so it is important for it that the border crossings into Lebanon remain open, to enable Hezbollah to be rearmed. The international force that is to be deployed in southern Lebanon will be meaningless if it does not ensure that Iran and Syria are prevented from getting weapons and rockets to Hezbollah. Internationalization Israel has always been opposed on principle to having foreign soldiers do its work for it. In the past, Israel's agreements to the deployment of United Nations forces were obtained almost by coercion. Now an international force has to remove Hezbollah's rockets and act as a buffer, shielding Israel. The IDF's legal department and its Plans and Policy Directorate are finding it difficult to formulate a position concerning the proposal that the multinational force in Lebanon base its activity on the mandate of Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. This chapter allows for the use of force and the imposition of sanctions against anyone who violates a cease-fire. A force of international soldiers, to be led, in this case, by France, might decide that Israel is violating the cease-fire and therefore that it should be subjected to sanctions. A well-known American legal expert, Prof. Anne Bayefsky, warns against such a development. Tactics Nothing about the deployment of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon resembles what existed there in the war that began in June 1982. Hezbollah built a system of underground tunnels which recalls what the Vietcong did in Vietnam. Its fighters, who hide in the tunnels and occasionally surface to attack Israeli troops and to fire rockets, had to be removed by means of fuel bombs and similar means. What exists in southern Lebanon was planned by Iranian advisors led by the chief of the Al-Quds (Jerusalem) force in the Revolutionary Guards, Qassam Sulaymani. In this war, the technology possessed by the IDF, and by the Israel Air Force in particular, makes possible more accurate strikes, both by day and by night. However, the international media also have satellites that can photograph and transmit immediate reports about almost every movement. With their help, Hezbollah is able to forgo much of its intelligence staff, because it receives real-time information about the accuracy of its own hits and about the IDF's movements. Hezbollah can thus easily evaluate Israel's likely moves, even before the government has even discussed them. Prevention Shortly after the withdrawal from Lebanon, in May 2000, Israel discovered that Iran had begun sending huge quantities of rockets and other weapons to Hezbollah, and was also training the organization's men. Afterward it emerged that Syria was also supplying heavy rockets to Hezbollah. This information was made known to prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, but they decided not to launch a preventive war. Barak, who had led the pullout from Lebanon not long before these developments, did not want to send the IDF back into Lebanon. In addition, Israel was in the midst of a serious intifada. Sharon understood well the emerging reality in Lebanon and the dangers inherent in it, but preferred to focus on the Palestinian arena and did not want to open a second front. The result was that Israel did not take even one defensive measure against the burgeoning convoys of weapons, ammunition stores and rockets. Above all, this policy was adopted because of the apprehension that the international community would view an operation against the rockets in Lebanon as an unjust war of prevention. The conclusion is that a small democracy cannot allow itself to wage a preventive war against a terrorist organization, however dangerous it may be. That prerogative is reserved solely for great powers, and usually only after they have been attacked. There was a time when Israel was more daring in this regard. Deployment Israel was not taken by surprise by Hezbollah's military capabilities: Military Intelligence (MI) and the Mossad intelligence organization knew about the developments in the organization. However, when intelligence estimated that there were some 12,000 Katyusha rockets in southern Lebanon, the responses in Israel were: "Stop threatening the nation of Israel," and "Your real goal is to increase the already bloated defense budget." Research institutes and similar bodies devoted little space in their publications to the Hezbollah threat. On July 22, 2005, I wrote in Haaretz: "It is doubtful whether Israel has a sufficient answer at present to the threat of Hezbollah rockets. Even if you destroy 80 percent of them, over a million residents in the north of the country will continue to sit in shelters." On March 3, 2006, I wrote that Hezbollah, and in effect Iran, already has the ability to strike targets south of Haifa, which involves a sophisticated Iranian move that was carried out in cooperation with Syria and Hezbollah. In the view of some, this does not constitute a strategic threat, because the same targets can be hit by means of terrorist attacks, I wrote, and then asked: Is the fact that some two million people will be confined to shelters and schools, and workplaces will be closed, not a strategic blow!? A report that was drawn up a few months ago by former minister Dan Meridor and a group of experts stated: "Hezbollah is a significant security threat, mainly because of its rocket capabilities, which cover a substantial portion of the country's area. The Hezbollah threat demands an early and appropriate security deployment, both in the spheres of terrorism and in the spheres of rockets. It calls for the urgent positing of a response to the Hezbollah challenge, and especially to the steep-trajectory threat, in order to make it possible to cope with scenarios of escalation and deterioration." That is exactly what happened on July 12. There were also other opinions. For example, the GOC Northern Command, Major General Udi Adam, stated in an address in February that while Hezbollah was indeed becoming stronger, it was moving in a political direction. "Hezbollah is digging in, but it's not terrible that it is building outposts, because these make good targets for Israel," Adam said at the time. Deterrence Vanquishing large terrorist organizations militarily is not like vanquishing regular armies. Former chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon believes that a guerrilla organization can be defeated in a prolonged war of attrition. It will not be a knockout, but a victory on points. True, intolerable damage can be inflicted on Hezbollah, from which it will take the organization years to recover. It is not true that guerrillas have always won. In some cases the "price" that was exacted from them was too great to enable them to persist with their threat. The problem is that exacting a "price" intensifies the hatred of the population on which the guerrilla organization relies. It is impossible to persuade Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah to forsake his messianic ideas, at the center of which is his ambition to destroy Israel. Many in Lebanon and in the Arab states understand how dangerous he is - not only to Israel, but also to many Arabs. Still, there are ways to influence his organization. For example, the Syrians, during their period in Lebanon, were able to restrain Hezbollah in certain cases. That situation has changed. The present war will undoubtedly serve to deter Nasrallah in the future. But in regard to other Arab elements, it is very possible that Israeli deterrence will be somewhat undercut. On the one hand, these elements understand that Israel is capable of reacting with cruel "craziness" if a certain red line is crossed. But on the other hand, they may reach the conclusion that the way to hurt Israel and bring about its withdrawal is not by means of tanks and planes, but by firing thousands of rockets and missiles at the country. This should not be construed to mean that Israel's deterrent capability failed in all the limited confrontations. In the past, Israel succeeded in its war against the PLO, even though that organization fired Katyushas into the country from Lebanon. Israel succeeded in those confrontations when the other side had something to lose. Those confrontations generally ended in a broad war in which Israel achieved a temporary victory - until the next round. According to the conclusions of a study by Yuval Knaan, from the University of Haifa, Israel's achievements when it bombed infrastructures in Lebanon were generally limited. Victory An interesting argument was conducted in Israel in recent years between the intelligence chiefs and the commanders of the air force about whether air power is capable of vanquishing a terrorist organization and eliminating the rocket threat. In a discussion convened by former prime minister Sharon, the MI director at the time, Major General Aharon Ze'evi-Farkash, said that the political echelon should not be misled into believing that a complete solution exists for the problem of the rockets. In another discussion, held at Northern Command headquarters, the GOC Northern Command at the time, Benny Gantz, said, "If such is the case, we have to prepare for a protracted ground move." Apparently, his proposal-demand was not internalized. Precisely because intelligence understood this point well, the IDF's failure, overall, in preparing a comprehensive combat doctrine to wage war against short-range rockets is so pronounced. The air force knew it would have difficulties in this sphere, and therefore a broader operational response was needed, along with significant investments in research and development. Former IAF commander David Ivry wrote in a publication of the Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies that air power cannot be victorious by itself in the war against terrorism. Tactical intelligence in the war on terror, Ivry noted, is the dominant element and the most difficult to achieve; it cannot be attained solely from the air, because technological solutions are insufficient for this purpose. Ivry undoubtedly recalled the failure of the Americans to damage the Iraqi network of missiles that attacked Israel in 1991; clearly he was aware of the lack of a substantive victory by Israel at the end of Operation Grapes of Wrath in Lebanon, in 1996, which made use primarily of air power. Of exceptional interest is the approach of the chief of staff (and former commander of the IAF), Dan Halutz, who is conducting the present war. He made the following remarks in a discussion at the National Defense College in January 2001, but they illustrate his strategic conception today: "Many air operations were generally implemented without a land force, based on a worldview of Western society's sensitivity to losses. A land force is not sent into action as long as there is an effective alternative. Small forces, in commando format, have been utilized. The IAF is a partner in or decides wars. "This obliges us to part with a number of anachronistic assumptions. First of all, that victory equals territory. Victory means achieving the strategic goal and not necessarily territory. I maintain that we also have to part with the concept of a land battle. We have to talk about the integrated battle and about the appropriate force activating it. Victory is a matter of consciousness. Air power affects the adversary's consciousness significantly." The future Many of the IDF's training booklets will likely undergo reexamination after the present war. The IDF has to examine itself in regard to "counter-fire" and to maneuvering whose goal is not the seizure and holding of territory. An additional effort will have to be made in the sphere of intelligence. Successes in hitting targets require that different ways be found to renew the "bank of targets," even when they exist in a civilian milieu. In this kind of war, technology that makes it possible to locate and strike at terrorist leaders is of the utmost importance. After the American failure against the Scud missiles in 1991, a few Arab states and Iran stepped up the development of surface-to-surface missiles. This process will be even further accelerated in the wake of Hezbollah's rocket attack on Israel. The Palestinians, too, will undoubtedly intensify the development of Qassam rockets and the smuggling of Katyusha rockets into the territories. Israel must prevent by force the continuation of this "festival of rockets" against its populations. Against the Palestinians two levels are required: genuine political negotiations and instilling in them the knowledge that Israel will not be merciful if rockets hit its citizens. It is more complicated to promote a satisfactory solution against a rocket and missile threat in general. After the 1973 war, Israel studied its failure to cope with the antiaircraft missiles that hit its planes and was able to change the situation. The same thing must now be done with regard to the surface-to-surface missiles and the rockets. This will be a difficult and expensive effort. In addition, Israel must make it clear that if it is attacked, it will exact a steep strategic price from its enemies. At the same time, we must not ignore what we have long known: Power has limits, especially when wielded by a small country. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [Also, too pessimistic for me, albeit a lot of truth here.....]
That kind of happy end doesn't look likely on our northern front. Neither a political accord nor a military victory will change the situation as long as Iran is around, controlling the height of the flames. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Analysis: IDF fumes over denied victory:
The booms of Katyusha rockets continued; another day of what has become routine in the North. But the IDF was holding position, waiting for orders that did not come. After 30 days of fighting, the war with Hizbullah seemed to be nearing its conclusion Thursday. Just a day earlier, the situation had looked drastically different. The security cabinet had approved the army's request to send thousands of troops up to the Litani River and beyond in an effort to destroy Hizbullah's infrastructure and to stop the Katyusha attacks. After the cabinet meeting, one division actually began moving north from Metulla. Its goal - to clear out al-Khiam and Marjayoun and to reach the Litani. But then, under pressure from the US, Defense Minister Amir Peretz made a frantic call to Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz and ordered him to stop the division in its tracks. "We need to give the diplomatic process one last chance," Peretz told Halutz. The orders trickled down the chain of command and by the time they reached 366, it had already reached Marjayoun, a stone's throw from the Litani. With the UN Security Council on the verge of passing a cease-fire resolution, the IDF understood on Thursday that Operation Change of Direction was ending, for better or for worse. The IDF was disappointed. Senior officers said they had been looking forward to the fight. Reaching the Litani and eliminating Hizbullah from the villages on the way could have provided, senior officers believe, the victory that Israel has been trying to obtain since July 12. By Thursday night, the chance of that happening was drifting away. The only way to hurt Hizbullah, a high-ranking officer in the Northern Command said, was to use the military. "Diplomatic processes will not achieve the right effect," he said, acknowledging that the incursion up to the Litani was not to be. "The key is the military operation. That is the only way to stop Hizbullah." But the political echelon thinks differently, and from the first day of this war the politicians, senior officers said, held the IDF back from escalating its offensive and hitting Hizbullah hard. First it was the massive air campaign. Then came the limited, pinpoint ground raids. Only when all that failed did Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his cabinet approve a large-scale incursion into Lebanon and the re-creation of the security zone. This wishy-washy decision-making process cost the IDF lives, according to one senior officer. "A military force always needs to be on the offensive, pushing forward and keeping the enemy on its toes," he said. "When you sit still for too long, you turn into a target and you begin to get hit again and again." That is what has been happening. Over the past 30 days of fighting Hizbullah, the army has lost 83 soldiers, 35 of them this week. "That is what happens when you sit still and don't move," the officer said. "The enemy fortifies its positions and gains the upper hand." The results of sitting in place can also be seen in the way most of the soldiers who died this week were killed. Hundreds of anti-tank missiles have been fired at troops in southern Lebanon. When a force sits still it becomes an easy target, officers said. One said he thought that the number of casualties from "just sitting and waiting for orders" could turn out to be the same as the IDF would have lost had it been allowed to make the push to the Litani. "My mission was to prevent Israeli armored reinforcements from chasing after the kidnappers," said Hussein Ali Suleiman, a captured commander of a Hizbullah anti-tank cell, in a video released by the IDF this week.. He participated in the kidnapping of two IDF reservists on July 12. Suleiman is just one of hundreds of Hizbullah gunmen who have been trained as anti-tank missile operators. On Thursday, one soldier was killed when his tank was hit by a missile. The tank that came to rescue him was also struck and several soldiers were wounded. On Wednesday, four soldiers were killed when their tank was struck. Nine others were killed in a building that collapsed when it too was hit by anti-tank missiles. The IDF has been at a loss to stop the mostly old and primitive rockets. Hizbullah has been preparing for this war for the past six years and, alongside the 13,000 short-range Katyusha rockets, it has amassed thousands of anti-tank missiles.. Hizbullah has thousands of Soviet-built Sagger, Cornet and Fagot anti-tank missiles, as well as the French Milan and the US-built TOW, all supplied by Iran and Syria. These missiles are usually fired by a two- or three-man team. There are many lessons the IDF needs to learn from the fighting about anti-tank missiles and the way to deal with the threat, a high-ranking officer said. But the most important lesson the top brass has to internalize is that it needs to bring clear plans to the political echelon and to always be on the offensive. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chief of staff: We tripled our forces in southern Lebanon:
Less than half day after Security Council authorized ceasefire agreement, IDF establishes its hold in Lebanon, within framework of broadened military operations. Lieutenant General Halutz hints one-of-a-kind operations carried out Friday night, but fails to elaborate. Five soldiers moderately wounded in incidents throughout battle zone Over the weekend the Israel Defense Forces tripled its forces in southern Lebanon in relation to those in the field on Thursday, as revealed by Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Dan Halutz. In the largest landing operation in the history of the Israel Defense Forces, the military landed forces deep into southern Lebanese territory Friday night as part of the broadened military operations. Defense Minister Amir Peretz, who visited the Northern Command Friday, met the troops a short while before they boarded the helicopters. The air force prepared the helicopter landing to be in areas with the lowest levels of danger. He said that the IDF is currently fighting a just war: "We are fighting over our borders and we will continue to operate until we achieve our objectives. We are forced to pay a heavy price for our desire to protect the country's borders. I can't say that the casualties incurred up to this point will be our last." Lieutenant General Halutz referred to the UN Security Council resolution in construct a ceasefire in the region and to send 15,000 overseers to southern Lebanon who will have operational authorities. According to him, there is a time gap between the decision of the cabinet to broaden the military operation and the Security Council decision. "We will fight Hizbullah until it will be decided what the structure will be here," said Halutz. According to him, the IDF needs a number of days to complete its control of the field & another number of weeks to damage the terrorist infrastructures. He also hinted that one-of-a-kind operations were performed Friday night, but refused to elaborate on them. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [This weekend's "events".....]
Rocket fire resumed on northern Israel Saturday, leaving several northern residents lightly wounded. Alert sirens sounded in the Ramot Naftali mountain range on Saturday at around 3:00 p.m. The IDF ordered local residents to enter bomb shelters or protected rooms. Earlier Saturday, two rockets hit open areas near Safed. Two local residents were lightly wounded from shrapnel in the attack. Rockets that fell in Kiryat Shmona lightly wounded four residents. Several others were taken to hospital for shock. 120 rockets were fired at northern Israel on Friday. A katyusha rocket directly hit an eleven story building in Kiryat Shmona Friday afternoon. Rescue workers said that no major damage had been done to the building and there was no danger that the building could collapse. A number of rockets hit Kiryat Shmona earlier Friday, wounding one woman who had been directly hit by shrapnel, while another person was lightly wounded. At least three rockets hit Safed on Friday afternoon, lightly wounding two residents who were taken to Ziv Hospital. Several people in both locations were taken to hospital for shock. One home in Haifa sustained a direct hit from several rockets on Friday morning. Rescue forces were rushing to the scene. In an earlier barrage, two people were lightly wounded from shrapnel and several others suffered shock in the Carmel region. At least one rocket fell in Shlomi and four landed in a community near Nahariya. Though a Nahariya home was hit directly, no one was hurt in the attacks. Fifteen rockets hit Haifa on Friday, five of them landing in residential areas. One of the rockets left a large crater in the road and shattered nearby windows, leading police to suspect that the rocket was larger than previous ones. Two people were wounded by shrapnel. Several buildings sustained damage from the attacks. Fires broke out in several areas hit by rockets in Haifa. A farm in the Galilee Panhandle sustained damage after being hit by a rocket. Several rockets also landed in near Ma'a lot. Sirens were heard throughout the day in Safed, Tiberias, Ramot Naftali, Kiryat Shmona, Haifa, Krayot, Shfaram and Acre. [Also this weekend:] Seven Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed and 11 seriously wounded in heavy clashes Saturday with Hezbollah forces in south Lebanon, after Israel dramatically expanded its ground operation in the area. See: www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/749479.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Rocket hits house near Safed; 3 injured:
Rocket attacks on north resumed; Upper Galilee house sustains direct hit, 3 people lightly hurt. Several rockets landed Saturday afternoon in Israel's north. According to reports, five rockets landed near Safed, and one directly hit a house in one of the communities in the areas. Magen David Adom paramedics treated five people -- two were lightly injured by shrapnel and the other three suffered from shock. Ofer Zivon, 43, who witnessed the attack, told Ynet: "A rocket struck the bedroom, the roof was totally destroyed. The windows are gone. The shower is also completely ruined. Shrapnel fell on the road. I'm a resident of the place, and this is the first time that a rocket landed here." Zivon said that no siren preceded the attack. "No siren was heard in the community. They prefer not to activate it so as not to frighten the children. I have spent so much time in Lebanon that it doesn't scare me." One of the rockets struck a house in Safed, and one person suffered from shock. Several other rockets landed in the Kiryat Shmona area. police said that one person was lightly injured and two buildings s ustained damages. All the people injured in the various attacks were evacuated to the Ziv Hospital in Safed. Siren was also heard in Tiberias, but no rockets landed in the area. On Friday, Hizbullah fired a Khaibar-1 rocket at Haifa. The explosion of the 320 mm rocket echoed as far south as Hadera, residents said. A barrage of several long-range Katyusha rockets landed in the city on Friday, with one of the rocket slamming in the midst of the coastal highway, which was reopened in the afternoon. In Kiryat Shmona, a man was moderately injured by shrapnel from a rocket that hit a building Friday afternoon, paramedics said. Several people were treated for shock and firefighters battled a fire that broke out in the 11-storey building. [See my comments on this subject below!!!!] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Nasrallah: Rocket attacks will end when Israel halts air strikes:
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Saturday that the militant organization would abide by the UN cease-fire resolution but continue fighting as long as Israeli troops remained in south Lebanon. "We will not be an obstacle to any (government) decision that it finds appropriate, but our ministers will express reservations about articles that we consider unjust and unfair." Nasrallah grudgingly accepted the cease-fire plan in a televised address as the Lebanese Cabinet was in session to vote on whether to agree to the UN resolution, which was passed Friday. Hezbollah has two ministers in the government. The Shiite cleric said Hezbollah rocket strikes on northern Israel would end when Israel stopped airstrikes and other attacks on Lebanese civilians. Some of the heaviest fighting of the war raged Saturday as Israel sent an avalanche of military power into Lebanon, dispatching thousands of troops and columns of armor into the rocky hills just north of its border. Nasrallah called continued resistance to the Israel offensive "our natural right" and predicted more hard fighting to come. "We must not make a mistake, not in the resistance, the government or the people, and believe that the war has ended. The war has not ended. There have been continued strikes and continued casualties," he said. "Today nothing has changed and it appears tomorrow nothing will change," he said. [See my comments on this subject below!!!!] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Soapbox" article from YNet News, August 12, 2006.....
He says: "God Almighty gave Israel to the Jewish people through his covenant with Abraham. If Israel fails to adhere to God's word, it will become another America, bogged in another Vietnam". All international attempts to solve the problem between Israel and radical Islam by diplomatic means have proven futile. And it remains certain that a peaceful resolution of this struggle will never, ever, be achieved by man. No nationality on the face of the earth can lay claim to the land of Israel, because it belongs to God Almighty, the God of the Bible - and he, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, gave it to the Jewish people through his covenant with Abraham. God entrusted the land to Israel as part of His covenant decision to redeem the world through Abraham and the Jewish people. Thus my stand with Israel and her right to the land flows out of a love and concern for all nations. No prophet, preacher, evangelist or theologian can overrule that eternal covenant. It has been proven without a shadow of a doubt throughout the ages that, eventually, destruction comes to any individual, organization or country that comes against this Holy Land and its rightful owners. There is only one word that matters, and that is the word of the living, Holy God. His word will prevail when everything else has failed. Despite many generations of people who have manipulated themselves into religious positions and then twisted that Word, God's truth will stand - now, and forever. God laughs at the nations World leaders repeatedly attempt to capture the hearts of barbarians bent on altering God's word and claiming ownership of a land that does not belong to them. But Israel need not put her fate in the hands of the international community. The calloused attitude of the United Nations, most of Europe and the Middle East will not prevail against God's divine order. He laughs at the nations in their attempts to alter the ownership of the Land of Israel. Israel must continue to pursue a course that will probably not be embraced by the global community - which has been reticent to face the real culprit behind terrorism: radical Islam. The world has chosen to turn a deaf ear to continued declarations by terrorist organizations that their goal is to annihilate Israel. A lack of resolve on Israel's part to respond with force will be viewed by terrorists as encouragement to continue their uncivilized aggression against a civilized nation. Until recently, the international community has been successful in seducing Israel into believing that it has to trade land for peace. Israel still carries the Name of Almighty God, and will one day welcome the promised Messiah to this land. But if Israel fails to adhere to God's word, it will become another America, bogged in another Vietnam, having to retreat in shame because of a lack of total commitment to eradicate the enemy. By seeking to please the international community, Israel has sadly placed itself in a vulnerable position and suffered much unnecessary loss and tragedy. While the international community as a whole has been oblivious to this suffering, it has been fully comprehended by many, especially Israel's brothers and sisters in the evangelical Christian community who have been supporting Israel through prayer and economic assistance. Olmert's mission Ehud Olmert, the man God has placed in office to lead His people, can become another David... or another Saul. His obedience to the word of God to stand boldly against the enemy will determine the fate of the Jewish people for years to come. For the moment, God has put the power into Olmert's hands to spark a tsunami of support from the millions of Bible-believing Christians around the world to stand with Israel; a people strong enough in America to elect a president. These Bible-believing Christians are totally committed to the preservation of Israel and her people. Their prayer is that Israel will pursue a course of strength rather than weakness, and not negotiate away more land with people whose end goal is not peace but rather the destruction of Israel and her people. Just as a shepherd boy answered the call of God to go against Goliath, let us pray that Olmert will wisely use the most effective tools of battle to eliminate an evil cancer that is growing not only in the Middle East but throughout the world. Reality dictates that Israel must move forward and once again put her trust in an Almighty God, Who for over 100 years now has been restoring the people of Israel to their ancient homeland in faithfulness to His covenant promises to Abraham. Israel can only survive through faith in the Almighty and a total commitment to eradicate the evil of terrorism. With this two-pronged focus, Israel will emerge the victor. [Amen!!!!] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [Day 32 of the war here and the UN is at it, AGAIN.....] Previous UN Security Council resolutions, that failed: [Note: Hezbollah has responded to the current (1701) proposal with "conditions", although the totally ineffective Lebanese government and Israel were expected to agree to its implementation!!!! Today, August 12, 2006 (full article above) Nasrallah said: "Today nothing has changed and it appears tomorrow nothing will change" Nasrallah also vowed, today: "to fulfill 'national, jihadic
obligation' to defend from 'Zionist enemy'" and, he claimed it is
Hizbollah's "natural right" to fight Israel!!!! See Jerusalem Post
article:
[To see complete text of the newest (1701) resolution:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [Sandy's note: In the last 3 days, Yana's kindergarten across the street had a direct Katyusha hit, as did the entrance to Building 215 (I live in 213 and Felicia lives in 214).....also just above us on Tzahal St, (where Felicia lived until last year) Building 10 sustained a direct hit and Bldg. 9 was hit for the second time, also the Industrial area, just below us was hit yet again, as was the forest in the Wadi adjacent to our homes, where a massive blaze ensued!!!!] [Sandy's comment on article "The battle for the home" above: My darling 28-year-old Grandson, Noam, is sharing his 2-room bachelor pad, in Ramat Gan, with TEN members of our family: Stacey, Irene Debbi, Nissim, Heidi, Shimon, Jennifer Rene, Ya'akov Yisrael, Sandy Carl and DorEl Irving!!!!] [Sandy's Suggestion: Please comment on the now over 400 photos I've uploaded to my Web Site's "WAR Album".....thank you!!!! Sorry the ones of my kids taking shelter during attacks in Safed will only be there when/IF the Photo Shop opens, because I don't use a digital camera!!!!] [Sandy's opinion: Anyone who thinks that troops from anti-semitic France will help keep Hizbollah at bay......think again!!!! France is the country that refused to join the USA and Great Britain in fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq & is the country that is home to a multitude of Islamic fanatics!!!! France, where Jews are persecuted daily.....coming to defend the Jewish country?!?! This is too absurd for words!!!!] Sandy Rosen-Hazen lives in Safed. Contact her by email at Sandy@israel.net |
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THE WORST GOVERNMENT IN THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL
Posted by Naomi Ragen, August 12, 2006. |
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We finished a quiet Sabbath in the relative safety of Jerusalem, only to check the news and find out the heartbreaking news that seven more Israeli soldiers have been killed and eight-four injured in the worst-led war in Israel's history. In addition, the government who interfered with the military(i.e.go win the war without upsetting CNN and the BBC), imposing guidelines that have helped get not only our boys killed left and right, but our civilians as well, has now decided to accept a Security Council resolution which ensures that Israel's soldiers and her people have made their ultimate sacrifice for nothing: our kidnapped soldiers will not be returned. Hezbollah will not be disarmed. And Israeli forces will be replaced by some U.N. force and a bunch of European anti-Semites who will allow Hezbollah to rearm. The full text of the resolution has been published in YNET. So far, 1,784 Israelis have responded. The overwhelming majority have this to say: We went to war to free our kidnapped soldiers. Why aren't they mentioned? For shame. Olmert, Peretz, Halutz, the triumvirate of losers. Let me add this: Mr. Olmert, Mr. Peretz, Mr. Halutz: You have squandered the lives of our soldiers. You have squandered our opportunity to free the nation of Israel from a deadly enemy. You have set the stage for the next war. By September, we will be under attack once more. Do the decent thing: Resign, all of you, and let Mr. Netanyahu, General Alon (who was kicked out because he refused to go along with the disengagement) take over. Resign Mr. Olmert. Resign in shame for your incompetence. Your inability to carry out a single one of the objectives you so stirringly announced at the beginning of this war. With all of you and your incompetent Kadima-led government out of office, we will all be safer and better prepared when the rockets start to fall once again, as they inevitably will with the U.N. and the French guarding our borders. And if you won't do the honorable thing, I will do everything we can to get you fired. You make me sick. I am ashamed to be a citizen of my country under your leadership. I am appalled to have a son in the IDF under your leadership. For shame, for shame, for shame! Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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KRAUTHAMMER BERATES ISRAEL
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, August 12, 2006. |
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Alas, if Israel does not soon hammer upstart Hizbullah, per neo-con Charles Krauthammer, pummel the Persian trained Shiite "Katyusha rocket launchers" to the mat for a ten count (surely a T.K.O. will not do), then century twenty-one's "Jewish Joe Lewis" nation will be just another "bum" in the eyes of got-rocks promoter America, no longer useful, ready to be put out to a Middle East pasture with more scorpions than milk and honey. Say it isn't so, G.W.! Don't vibrant democratic values, state of the art technology, and a vibrant first world economy count for anything? Not according to the highly indignant neo-con Hammer in a syndicated Washington Post diatribe. "The United States has gone far out on a limb to allow Israel to win and for all this to happen. It has counted on Israel's ability to do the job. It has been disappointed... (Olmert's) search for victory on the cheap has jeopardized not just the Lebanon operation but America's confidence in Israel as well. That confidence-and the relationship it reinforces-is as important to Israel's survival as its own army." "Excuse me Mr. Krauthammer and all those who agree with your abusive rhetoric. Drop dead in a ditch!" Let us hope less chastising sorts populate positions of power within the Bush Administration, not exactly a stellar example of competence when it comes to post war planning, more essential indeed than blowing a regime asunder with "shock and awe". If pompous neo-cons remain so upset at morally concerned Israel's difficulties in subduing a cowardly inhumane morally bereft enemy that intermingles combatants and deadly weapons with Lebanese civilians, what exactly would they propose? Would such pretentious popinjay's, their bloated buttock's plopped on cushy armchairs, demand that Israel sacrifice even more of its precious children, perhaps employing less surgical techniques, for "Team U.S.A."? Substantial numbers of ground troops are ever necessary to win wars, Israel's generals and its Prime Minister are well aware of that fact, but how dare some non-Israeli jackass spout disappointment, having the unmitigated audacity to assert America's confidence in Israel is jeopardized because Hizbullah is not being taken out fast enough! No doubt Hizbullah is Iran's proxy, thus roundly defeating that fanatical terrorist organization would give the Persian Shiite muscle flexing imperialist regime a very blood nose, engendering clandestine kudos from all robed and suited Sunni movers and shakers to American politicos; presumed captains of battleship Israel. But Israel should not be America's proxy, and by no means a protectorate of its formidable ally, as suggested by Mr. Krauthammer! Israel should be America's equal partner in an ever-necessary war on terrorism, both allies adhering to policies of respective self-interest, and if that is not satisfactory to some neo-cons, who cares?!? Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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IF THEY WROTE ABOUT THE WARSAW GHETTO LIKE THEY DO ABOUT THE
HEZBOLLAH WAR
Posted by Barry Shaw, August 12, 2006. |
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This comes from
I can't explain the present situation any better than this! This should be pinned on the wall of everyone who is criticizing Israel today. |
 Barry Shaw made aliyah from Manchester, England, 25 years ago with his family. He writes the "View from Here" columns from Israel. To sign up to receive his emails, contact him at netre@matav.net.il |
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ALL EYES ON LEBANON
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 12, 2006. |
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Bright Joseph Farah -- his wisdom never fails him! If you know him, please send my remarks to him too. This article was published August 1, 2006. Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate. His latest book is "Taking America Back." He also edits the weekly online intelligence newsletter Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, in which he utilizes his sources developed over 30 years in the news business. The world could fall apart, the USA could kill thousands in one day, and NO ONE CARES until -- Israel and Jews become involved! 600 "suspected" Taliban do not equal to 500 identified Hezbollah guerilla fighters ready to kill many thousands of Israeli civilians. What a shameful, biased and two-faceed world it is! |
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You know, it's funny. For years I've been trying to get people to pay attention to the deaths and destruction and injustices being perpetrated on my beloved Lebanon. And nobody cared. When Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization tried to take over the country and make it his terrorist playground, nobody cared. When people were dying by the thousands in the civil war, nobody cared. When Syria had its boot on the neck of its tiny neighbor for 25 years, nobody cared. When Iran dispatched Hezbollah terrorists into the country to undermine home rule by Lebanese, nobody cared. When Muslims chased millions of Christians from the country, tipping the balance of power, nobody cared. But now, all eyes are on Lebanon. Do you know why? Because Israel has tried to clean up this hornet's nest. Yet, all we hear about is how many Lebanese are dying. Can I let you in on a little secret? Guess what the total death toll is among Lebanese during the extent of this war including Hezbollah terrorists, many of whom are not really Lebanese? You better sit down. The total death toll is just over 500. Now, far be it for me to minimize death tolls. One innocent death is a tragedy. But this is the total all terrorists, civilians, Lebanese army, everything. The whole world is going nuts over this "slaughter". The French, the Russians, the British and yes the Pakistanis. What is needed is some perspective here. May I offer it? Last month alone, U.S. troops in Afghanistan announced killing 600 "suspected" Taliban. That's one month alone. We've been occupying this foreign country since 2002. It began in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. U.S. forces went halfway around the world to attack a sovereign nation, to overthrow the government and kill as many people as it deemed necessary over the last five years to prevent more terrorist attacks in the future. Few would suggest that Afghanistan represents any imminent threat to the U.S. today. By the way, according to U.S. military spokesmen, a total of 1,700 Afghanis have been killed since the start of the year. That includes some civilians, some aid workers and more than 70 foreign troops. But, last time I checked, there weren't demonstrations in the streets of the U.S. or elsewhere around the world over this war. Instead, everybody is going ape over Lebanon. By the way, the government of Afghanistan, installed by the U.S., is happy about the war. President Hamid Karzai wants to see the terrorists rooted out of his country. He recognizes it represents the best chance for his nation to be free. Meanwhile, back in Lebanon, a government that has tolerated terrorist bases on its soil for years and years is suddenly indignant about Israel's retaliation against incessant attacks from those strongholds. Does any of this make sense? Do you think those screaming about the bloodshed in Lebanon really give a hoot about Lebanon? If so, where have they been for the last 30 years? Why is Lebanon the top story in every newscast? Why is Lebanon on the front page of every newspaper? Don't you get the impression that the violence there is probably worse than anywhere else on the planet from this focus? Clearly it is not. And the only difference is who's doing the butt kicking in Lebanon. As for me, an American of Lebanese and Syrian heritage, I don't want to see a "cease-fire." I want to see Lebanon freed of the terrorist blight, once and for all. I want to see Lebanon freed from domination by Iran and Syria. I want to see Lebanon be Lebanon. I don't want to see Lebanon suffer for another 30 years. It's time to clean up the mess and allow this poor, little country to heal. And that means getting rid of the disease of Hezbollah now. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT; "ROOT CAUSE" ROT; ARAB REACTION
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, August 11, 2006. |
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WILL ISRAEL ABANDON WAR EFFORT? An Israeli general reported on TV that Israel has destroyed all the Hizbullah positions on the border. He was asked whether Israel would allow Hizbullah to rebuild them, after the fighting ends. He did not know. Last time, Israel let Hizbullah rebuild them starting the next day (IMRA, 7/12). Hizbullah stores thousands of missiles in unmarked garages and houses. Israeli forces might not find them. The IDF may not end their menace (Paul Krugman, NY Times, 7/18, Op.-Ed.) If Israel had destroyed the border forts when half rebuilt, Hizbullah would not have been able to monitor Israeli troops, sally forth to kill and capture some. It might not have been able to fire rockets as far into Israel. If Israel lets Hizbullah rebuild them, Hizbullah would retain its semi-dominance over Lebanon. Israel once before let Lebanon get taken over by the enemy, when it pulled out, instead of letting the free-Lebanese forces extend their hegemony. Does the general not know the answer because PM Olmert did not decide upon one, or does Olmert intend to return to appeasement? Appeasement that got Israel into this mess. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT Capital punishment poses problems in civilian courts, because judicial mistakes are made and the punishment cannot be relieved. Those problems are less likely to occur in cases of terrorism. People oppose capital punishment for terrorists, i.e., war criminals, because they consider it inhumane. They argue that if murder is wrong, so is execution. Prof. Steven Plaut points out (7/12) that leaving masses of terrorists alive can lead to their release and recidivism and encouragement of terrorist recruitment. They go on to murder more innocent people. That is inhumane. It endangers innocent civilians. Not having capital punishment for terrorists in general is inhumane. Of course, the cowardly appeasement-mindedness that results in Israel exchanging hundreds of live terrorists for a very few live or even dead Israelis really is what is wrong. Prof. Plaut is arguing to remove the opportunity for cowardly Israeli deals. PERES TOSSES OFF CLICHES Vice-PM Peres and the P.M. of Japan jointly declared the goal in the Mideast: to fight terrorism, resume peace talks, and improve the economy (IMRA, 7/12). Improving the economy is irrelevant to Islam, which considers religious imperialism as its primary obligation, regardless of its people's needs. "Fight terrorism" is an empty slogan, if one resumes peace talks with terrorists who violate peace agreements. Peace would be temporary. Victory is needed. "ROOT CAUSE" NONSENSE How to end terrorism? Many people suggest resolving terrorism's "root causes." Then they cite what are not causes, such as poverty, lack of education, and the continuation of the Arab-Israel conflict. For example, poverty-stricken Mali does not produce terrorists. Many terrorists are educated. The Arab-Israel conflict is the result of jihad, which employs terrorism. That conflict cannot be ended by diplomacy, because diplomacy does not reform fanaticism. Diplomacy stays the hands of the avenging angels, and jihadists exploit diplomacy. Under cover of negotiations, Arab and Iranian terrorists struck against the US and Israel a number of times. Pres. Khatami of Iran used to talk about a dialogue of civilization, while Iran financed Hizbullah. He made fools of the West, which applauded him and failed to crack down on Iran. Treating terrorist leaders as "peace partners" enables them to bring in more arms. They don't keep agreements, anyway. Arafat used to overrule what his negotiators had agreed to. Terrorists use terrorism to win concessions in diplomacy and to gain popular support. Hizbullah won popular support via terrorism, more support than was won by other private relieve organizations that did not commit terrorism. (What kind of a people are they, that terrorism is popular with them, those "innocent civilians)? Refuse diplomacy, deny concessions, and terrorism loses its value to jihad. The West thinks that its concessions are making peace. The Muslim Arabs interpret the concessions as weakness and themselves as having pried them out of the West by force. Concessions to them encourage them to fight harder. (Concessions are a cause of terrorism! The redundant modifier, "root," indicates group-think.) Terrorism is done because terrorism succeeds. Just as military and diplomatic concessions help terrorism, so does giving publicity to terrorists. The Western media dwells on terrorist kidnappings. They make the terrorists seem less evil, by writing human interest stories about them and their families. Paying ransom has built a kidnapping industry. The ransoms finance terrorism. The Israeli retreat from Gaza brought Hizbullah trainers into the area, to boost Hamas' fighting ability. The US failure to immediately conquer Fallujah enabled the terrorists to get away and enthused them to multiply car-bombings. In trying to accommodate terrorists, these well-meaning people tend to blur the distinction between the evil of terrorism and the societies they attack. These people think they are being practical, but their inability to grasp that Muslim terrorism is based on religion leads them in impractical directions. What works well against terrorism? First, one should abandon policies that feed it. Then, isolate and assassinate terrorist leaders. This weakens and degrades the capability of terrorists, eventually exhausting the movement. Punish the states that host them (Michael Rubin, MEF News, 7/12). His analyses always are thoughtful. Think of the futility of the negotiations with, and concessions to, Adolf Hitler. He was determined to conquer. Diplomacy boosted his ability to do so. The antidote is study thine enemy. HOW HARD TO FIGHT? The "NY Times" urges Israel to spare civilians. Otherwise, it would make them angrier (7/13, Ed.). Israel tries to spare civilians more than any other army except perhaps the US Army. Shouldn't the "Times" recognize that? Israel tries too hard, thereby impeding its military objectives. The thought of making the Arabs angrier has an amusing side. The Arabs have been trying to annihilate Israel since before statehood. Anger is embedded in their religion. They are most unfair about their grievances. They blame most of their problems on the Jewish people, and almost none on themselves. Of course, Israel should try to spare civilians as much as feasible. Now why doesn't the "Times" give such advice to the Arabs, who try to slay civilians as much as possible? WAR OR INCIDENT? Sec. Rice described the kidnapping by Hizbullah as an incident to be resolved peacefully (7/12). It isn't an incident. It is part of the war. Hizbullah also has been firing on Israel over the years. It is acting on Iran's orders and with Syrian help. She is looking at it too narrowly. IRAN'S NEXT STEP Iran is believed ready to finance Syrian weapons acquisition (IMRA, 7/12). When Syria's arms were rusting, Israel relaxed. IMRA had warned that the degradation of the Syrian Army might be temporary. Pres. Bush does not try to reduce the demand for oil, though the high demand provides Iran the funds for terrorism. ARAB REACTION TO ISRAELI THREATS The head of Al Aqsa brigades in Judea-Samaria said that the Arabs soon would launch rockets at the remaining cities not previously reached, by firing them from Judea-Samaria. He credited foreign allies for this imminent capability. What about Israeli threats of a fierce retaliation? He scoffed. He finds the threats fierce but the retaliation flimsy and fleeting. Israel, in turn, scoffs at the promised menace. In response, the terrorist leader pointed out that Israel also didn't take the promised menace from Gaza seriously at first, but the Arabs there kept improving their rocketry. The rockets at first had a range of perhaps 7 kilometers. Now they can reach 25 (IMRA, 7/13). 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@aol.com. |
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OLMERT'S OBSESSION
Posted by Janet Lehr, August 11, 2006. |
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On July 25 in an address to the refugees of Gush Katif, while rockets rained down on Northern Israel from Haifa on the sea to the Galilee, Olmert publically announced reaffirmation of his plan to "realign" to "converge" (he is looking for the most palatable word, but by his shifting about we see that he hasn't yet found the con man's golden key) for his heinous plan. Israeli's are too polite -- in Arabia he would have been stoned to death, there and then; on that spot would have risen a great Star of David, symbol of Hope for the survival of the Jewish People. Arutz Sheva was first with the news. The left wing Ha'aretz reported this. Gratifyingly I received an enormous number of reprints of his speech from Israel Lives readers. Not to be misunderstood, Olmert repeated his plan on August 3 in a public address in the Knesset. To this Abu Maamun, a senior leader in Jenin of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades wrote, "The Gaza withdrawal is the first result of our second Intifada (launched in 2000) and we see that Olmert still speaks of a second disengagement from the West Bank, and now Israel is under rocket attack. This is a great period and I believe a new era." At the funeral of IDF soldier Yehuda Greenfeld, a 27-year-old father of two, one of the reservists killed by a Katyusha on Sunday, his sister eulogized him by calling on soldiers to refuse to die in the "War for a Peaceful Realignment." His family now faces the prospect of being forcibly removed from its home due to their location "behind" the Partition Wall - the third bereaved family in such a position since the start of the Re-Engagement War. Yes, an overwhelming percentage of Israelis is pulling together to fully end Hezbollah's presence on its Northern border -- Of what use when we have Olmert? Contact Janet Lehr by email at janetlehr@veredart.com |
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OLMERT CANNOT REMAIN IN THE PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE
Posted by Boris Celser, August 11, 2006. |
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"I just heard Shimon Peres declare on CNN: "We didn't start this war, therefore we don't have to win it. We just have to stop it." What kind of a stupidity is this? Which war DID Israel start?" -- Judith Binder Even Ha'aretz is worried. See below. Sorry for being insistent, but I have to make an important announcement. I wrote, back in Jan. 2005, the following paragraph, as part of an article, when Sharon was PM and Olmert and Peres his two "Abus". http://www.think-israel.org/celser.unite.html "The authorization given to the IDF to crack down after the recent suicide bombing at a Gaza crossing was at once put on hold after the new Security Cabinet convened. The decision to cut security ties with the PA was immediately reversed. Welcome back, Shimon Peres. What a way of running a country, in such a "consistent" way! In comparison to Peres, Olmert must be telling himself: "Ich bin ein beginner"! Rightly so!" This is my announcement: Olmert has graduated. He can even teach. Boris This article was written by Ari Shavit and it appeared today in Haaretz (www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/749484.html) |
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Ehud Olmert may decide to accept the French proposal for a cease-fire and unconditional surrender to Hezbollah. That is his privilege. Olmert is a prime minister whom journalists invented, journalists protected, and whose rule journalists preserved. Now the journalists are saying run away. That's legitimate. Unwise, but legitimate. However, one thing should be clear: If Olmert runs away now from the war he initiated, he will not be able to remain prime minister for even one more day. Chutzpah has its limits. You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeat and remain in power. You cannot bury 120 Israelis in cemeteries, keep a million Israelis in shelters for a month, wear down deterrent power, bring the next war very close, and then say - oops, I made a mistake. That was not the intention. Pass me a cigar, please. There is no mistake Ehud Olmert did not make this past month. He went to war hastily, without properly gauging the outcome. He blindly followed the military without asking the necessary questions. He mistakenly gambled on air operations, was strangely late with the ground operation, and failed to implement the army's original plan, much more daring and sophisticated than that which was implemented. And after arrogantly and hastily bursting into war, Olmert managed it hesitantly, unfocused and limp. He neglected the home front and abandoned the residents of the north. He also failed shamefully on the diplomatic front. Still, if Olmert had come to his senses as Golda Meir did during the Yom Kippur War, if he had become a leader, established a war cabinet and called the nation to a supreme effort that would change the face of the battle, a penetrating discussion of his failures could be postponed. But in blinking first over the past 24 hours, he has become an incorrigible political personality. Therefore, the day Nasrallah comes out of his bunker and declares victory to the whole world, Olmert must not be in the prime minister's office. Post-war battered and bleeding Israel needs a new start and a new leader. It needs a real prime minister. Contact Boris Celser by email at celser@telusplanet.net |
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KADIMAH (FORWARD) TO FAILURE
Posted by Dr. Alex Grobman, August 10, 2006. |
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AB Yehoshua, a leading leftist, has called on the Olmert Administration to "stop thinking six years ahead," to cease fightingimmediately, and to rely on international intervention instead. On July 27, the Associated Press reported that Israel's UN ambassador Dan Gillerman rejected any significant UN participation in a prospective international force, saying more seasoned troops were required for such an unstable situation. It appears that Israel maybe pressured to change its objection sand allow some form of an augmented United Nations Interim Force (UNIFIL) to supervise a cease- fire. Israel's concern about the inability of UNIFIL to enforce a truce is more than justified. Established in 1978, UNIFIL's mission was to "confirm the Israeli withdrawal [from Lebanon], restore international peace and security, and assist the government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area." Two thousand men from China, France, Ghana, India, Ireland, Italy, Poland and Ukraine were deployed in a buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon. "It has never been able to prevent any shelling of Israel, any terrorist attack, any kidnappings," Gillerman said. "They either didn't see or didn't know or didn't want to see, but they have been hopeless." Gillerman ridiculed the name of the force-"Interim in U.N. jargon is 28 years." Part of the problem is that Hizballah is a formidable opponent. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage once suggested that Hizballah "may be the A-team," of terrorist organizations while al-Qaida may be "actually the B-team." On April 18, 1983, a Hizballah suicide bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut resulted in the death of 63 people. On October 23, 241 Americans were killed when they bombed the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut. Hizballah was responsible for attacking the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait in 1983 and 1984. Also in 1984, they murdered the CIA bureau chief in Beirut. In 1988, Lieutenant Colonel William Higgins, who directed a UN peacekeeping force, was killed. In 2001, a federal grand jury indicted the organization for the al-Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996, in which 19 American Air Force personnel were slain. Another obstacle UNIFIL faces is the lack of support from Syria or Lebanon. In Sinai and on the Golan Heights, the Jerusalem Post notes, UNIFIL is "successful" because Syria and Egypt want to avert a clash with Israel. Syria and Iran are not so inclined in Lebanon, where UNIFIL is ineffective and provides more protection to Hizballah than it does to Israel. UNIFIL also has another problem as Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN, explained. The UN was created to keep global peace, yet it sometimes has difficulty in differentiating between victims of aggression and the aggressors. One example of this occurred in the early afternoon of October 7, 2000, five months after the Israeli military withdrew from Lebanon. In a clear breach of international law, Hizballah terrorists crossed the Lebanese border, ambushed three Israeli soldiers who were patrolling along the Israeli-Lebanese fence near the border gate, and abducted them. The UNIFIL observation post was on a hill 400 yards from the gate, allowing the observers to see what was transpiring. Even an Arab newspaper confirmed this Gold notes. The Daily Star of Beirut reported on October 11, 2000 that "interviews with UNIFIL troops who witnessed the snatch..." Two hours after the kidnapping, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) informed UNIFIL of the seizure of their wounded soldiers by Hizballah. No roadblocks were set-up by the UN peacekeepers to apprehend the terrorists. On June 28, 2001, Major General Gabi Ashkenazi, head of the Northern Command of the IDF, questioned Terje Roed-Larsen, UN Special Coordinator for peace negotiations in the Middle East, whether UNIFIL had a videotape of the kidnapping. He suspected that UNIFIL commander General Kofi Obeng of Ghana of having the tape, and that UN headquarters in NY knew about it. Roed-Larsen allegedly claimed that there was no tape. In May 2001, Obeng turned over the tape to UN, but did not want to show it to Israel since it would be conceding its "impartiality." UN officials noted, "UNIFL had to maintain a delicate balance and could not simply share sensitive information about one side with the other." Strict impartiality was supposed to be observed by the Israelis and the Lebanese, not Hizballah, Gold pointed out. Even after the abduction, UN officials expressed their support for Hizballah, which was seen as a source for stability in the region. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, with Prime Minister Ehud Barak, on June 21, 2000 said: "Let me say that Hizbullah...is a player in the south of Lebanon... I did tell Mr. Nasrallah that Hizballah exercised restraint, responsibility and discipline after the withdrawal, and that we would want to see that continue, and I'm sure from the indications that he gave me that he intends to do it." In 2003, a senior political advisor to UNIFIL claimed: "Today's calm in south Lebanon is due to Lebanese intelligence and Hizballah." Hizballah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers in July 2006 is a further example of the UN's continuing duplicity in dealing with Israel, and its failure to function as an instrument of peace. Israel cannot afford to let the UN or any country dictate the way it defends its citizens against those who seek to annihilate them. Dr. Grobman's new book Nations United: How The UN Undermines The US and the West will be published in the Fall of 2006. |
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CAN WAR BE WON WITH LIES?
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, August 10, 2006. |
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The simple answer is...Of Course! One merely needs a few drops of truth, mixed with exaggerations, a fog of lies and an audience willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the liar - even when there is little or no doubt. For example, a weeping President of Lebanon speaks of sending 15,000 Lebanese soldiers to patrol Southern Lebanon and, therefore, Israel will no longer have to concern themselves with Hezb'Allah missiles. If one looks a bit closer, you will see that most of the Lebanese Army, particularly at the officers and commanders levels, are actually Hezb'Allah through and through. Offering 15,000 of heretofore virtually useless Lebanese Army which has refused to control and disarm terrorists, be they Hezb'Allah, Palestinians or even the Al Qaeda who may be entering Lebanon sub rosa. Why would anyone believe that they would virtually turn against themselves to disarm and break their conduits of missiles, weapons, explosives, funds and terrorists flowing from both Syria and Iran? For instance, Hezb'Allah's Zarqawi's home was spotted and targeted by Israel in Ein Al Hilwe in Sidon, called a "teeming Palestinian refugee camp", actually a town of over 100,000 in Southern Lebanon. Some will recall the early days of Yassir Arafat, master Terrorist, first head of the Palestinian Authority and later Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) when they kashered Terrorists by absorbing them into the PA Army replete with uniforms, a weekly paycheck (courtesy of the donor nations' taxpayers' money from America and Europe) but, all remained loyal to these various terrorist designations: Hamas, Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigades, Tanzim, PFLP, Hezb'Allah, and even Al Qaeda. All were in one way or another recruited so their Government "cover" would be acceptable to the UN, the EU, and the US. The U.S. trains Iraqis for the new Iraqi Army but, they too often switch back into their Terrorist roles when needed. Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) President of the Palestinian Authority, accepted many of the Terrorists into his Palestinian Army so all were legitimized to collect donor money for their salaries. If their stage name were to be considered acceptable politically, then the billions of aid could flow freely. Most of those dollars dressed up as humanitarian aid invariably went into the pockets of the terrorists to purchase armaments from Iran and Syria, usually straight out of the armories of Russia, China, North Korea and many of the European nations who blustered their denial. Regrettably, Israel's politicians were so anxious to appease, to keep the appearance of peace - even as their excellent Intelligence Services informed them of the growing stockpiles for 6 years of weapons, some so advanced many armies had not yet put them into their inventories. The failure of Israeli politicians and Leftist Generals in their war with Hezb'Allah Terrorists' Army will be a mandatory course in Officers' Training Colleges internationally of how Israel's politicians and generals put the nation of Israel at risk, merely to keep their high paying positions and climb the ladder of personal success. But, all that should come out in future hearings if they can assemble a group of incorruptible judges who do not have political bias. Right now the nations are encircling Israel's wagon train pushing weak politicians never known for their staying powers. No doubt, we will soon hear things about a re-deploying UNIFIL (United Nations International Force in Lebanon) whose record for 20+ years as peace keepers is beyond abysmal. They were well known to the terrorists as friends who would never think of stopping a band of Hezb'Allah making their way towards Northern Israel on a Terror operation. So Hezb'Allah attacked Israeli soldiers, kidnaping 2, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. I fear that anything that smacked of UN forces would from the onset be viewed as a waste of time. Would a European force be more accountable in fighting Arab terrorists attacking Israel? Not likely. Granted, there would be lot of theatrical deploying, building of fortifications, training photos and some staged events where the International Force would be shown setting up a check point and "heroically" turning back some groups of Terrorists who would complain that: "It's not fair being stopped." But, Nasrallah, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Ayatollahs would continue pressing forward and digging in, building deep tunnels with their Iranian supplied missiles until they obtained a few nuclear tipped missiles. There would be regrets all around. The Jews would be sorry they didn't turn Iran and Syria into radioactive deserts while they still could. The Americans would be similarly regretful as a few cities in the US would be turned into rubble (perhaps radio-active, as Iran's Abanadinejad promises), wondering why they didn't act to evaporate Abadnadinjad and the entire Iranian government - along with the every nuclear development site now known. Should Iran and Syria cease to exist, the Islamic Jihadists around the world would no longer have their core sponsors. Granted Muslims world wide would be furious the West interfered with their Allah-given rights to force all of humankind to follow Shiriah laws and be observant to Allah. Russia, China, North Korea would be equally angry when their markets for WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) including NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) - as well as conventional weapons including missiles with a shooting range to reach Europe and even America dried up. I fear that we may already be too late to act in our own best interests, termed "survival". Can a war be won with lies? Hasn't that already happened? Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net |
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RON NACHMAN: "LAND FOR PEACE" WILL NEVER BRING PEACE TO ISRAEL, BUT ONLY BLOODSHED.
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 10, 2006. |
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Friend, my personal friend Ron Nachman speask...Please just read what he has to say. Nurit |
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"An Open Letter from the Mayor of Ariel in Samaria" Dear Friends, This is one of Israel's most difficult hours. Islamic terrorists are attacking Israel on two fronts. Hamas, who rule the Palestinian Authority, are continuing Arafat's strategy of unabated terror from Gaza, while Hizbullah implements the demonic policies of Iranian leader Ahmadinejad, who calls for the destruction of Israel. We are at war. The militant activities of Hamas are not an "uprising", but terrorism in the fullest meaning of the word, and the battles raging in the north are not mere skirmishes but full-fledged war. This war began when Israeli soldiers were killed and kidnapped without any provocation by Hamas and Hizbullah. As I write this, so many of Israel's finest young men are risking their lives for their country. This includes members of my own family, serving in elite units of the IDF. We have had many sleepless nights. For me, like all of Israel, this war is very personal. For years, Arabists and "peaceniks" of all kinds have tried to convince us that all hostilities in the Middle East are a result of Israel's "occupation of Arab lands", Gaza, the so-called West Bank, the Golan Heights, Southern Lebanon. But this war was initiated by Hamas in Gaza and by Hizbullah in Lebanon, both lands ruled by Moslems. In 2000, Israel totally withdrew from Southern Lebanon and so there is no territorial issue there. We could have lived in peace with Lebanon if it had not become a base of Iranian-Syrian sponsored terror. Since Israel left Southern Lebanon, it has come under the terrorist control of Hizbullah. Last year, Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces withdrew from Gaza. The rationalizations of our politicians were two-fold: In keeping with the "Land for Peace" theory, the assumption was that the disengagement from Gaza would bring peace. If, however, terror continued, Israel would have the right to do whatever was necessary to expunge the terror. We have learned the hard way but the following should be clear to all of us now: 1) "Land For Peace" will never bring peace to Israel, but only bloodshed. 2) When you run from terror, as Israel did in southern Lebanon and Gaza, terror chases you. When it comes to fighting terror, I am in total agreement with President George W. Bush. To win the war on terror, we must eradicate not only the terrorists but also those who harbor and finance terrorists and their evil activities. 3) Many Israeli leaders placed no value on the strategic importance of land, mistakenly assuming that conventional weapons were not a real threat. Missile damage For the first time, since Israel became a state, 1/3 of the country is now paralyzed by conventional weapons, missiles and rockets supplied to the terrorists by Russia, Syria and Iran in quantities possessed by few sovereign nations. The politicians and generals who supported the withdrawal from South Lebanon and Gaza and insisted Israel would still be the region's super-power were wrong. Even conventional weapons can pose a real threat, not only to Israel's military power but to the people of Israel. Amazingly, despite all this, our leaders are still speaking of "Realignment" or "Convergence". I cannot imagine where we are to "converge" -- to the Mediterranean Sea? Look at the map of Israel. Imagine that Ariel was no longer there [Ariel is some 20 miles east of Tel-Aviv] and in our place, on the high ground directly overlooking the Coastal plain, stood terror strongholds of Hamas and Hizbullah. You could not land at Ben-Gurion airport safely or stay at a hotel along the sea shore and the residents of Tel Aviv would be in greater danger than those in the north today. Currently, Ariel is one of the safest places in Israel. Still, we are deeply affected by the war. Almost no family has been untouched. Many of our sons and daughters are serving in the Israeli army and many more have been called up for reserve duty. All these brave soldiers are our children and our hearts break with every loss. It is important that you know that Israel is paying an incredibly high price in this war, primarily because we so value all human life, because the IDF is under strict orders to avoid civilian casualties, even in enemy territory. Hizbullah is taking full advantage of this approach, entrenching well trained terror- mongers in the midst of civilian population, placing its rocket launchers in residential buildings, using innocents as human shields. Over a million Israelis are under attack in our northern cities. Children have spent the entire summer in bomb shelters and families are being evacuated from their homes, some with no place to go. Hundreds of these families, whose homes have become the target of Arab terror, are currently being hosted by friends and family in Ariel. The municipality has made all its services available to them to make their stay here a little easier. Ariel's Milken Family Community Center is hosting 50-100 children from the north every day for summer activities. Our social workers and psychologists are treating stress and trauma. I am sure you can imagine that this has not been easy for Ariel's host families. We have doubled and tripled the number of food packages we distribute every Friday and will continue to do so, though we are receiving no outside aid. We will not only continue our summer programs for children and youth, we will increase activity. We do this because, as always, the residents of Ariel are willing to open their homes and their hearts to those in need. It is imperative now that we remain united in our support of Israel, both Israelis and Jews around the world and all those who believe in the western values of freedom and democracy. Our fate is intertwined as we all face the threat of Islamic terror. In closing, I want to express our deep admiration and gratitude to the courageous men and women of the Israel Defense Forces and to the many volunteers from Israel and abroad, who have put their own safety on the line in order to protect and defend the Jewish Homeland. Our hearts and our prayers are with you. Ron Nachman
Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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OLMERT AND CRONIES
Posted by Boris Celser, August 10, 2006. |
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This is what they are. Crooks and incompetents and inexperienced in warfare. Olmert was never fit to be PM, and his lack of action plus determination to converge can neither be discarded or forgiven. I'm as competent to be DM as Peretz. Mofaz is a frustrated man, so why not sabotage his successor, even in times of war? The FM expects help from the UN. Peres should be in a mental institution or in death row. The soldiers are complaining of obsolete equipment and poor training. They are not allowed to win. They are allowed to die unnecessarily. In a normal country, this wouldn't happen. But Israel is not a real democracy. In a real democracy or in a real dictatorship, soldiers are allowed to fight to kill and win. Had the northern areas (and the rest of the country) been real constituencies with representatives representing them, action would have been demanded and taken place over the last 6 years. Ditto for Gaza, Judea and Samaria, etc. This is my (Boris's) assessment: Olmert was very serious when he said this war supports the idea of convergence. He knows he can fool the Israeli public with the help of the Israeli press. When this war is over, without anything major like victory being accomplished, he will have little trouble convincing the people that: KASSAM ROCKETS ARE BETTER THAN KATYUSHA ROCKETS, AND SO ARE SUICIDE BOMBERS, BECAUSE THEY CAN BE STOPPED, WHILE ANTI-TANK MISSILES CAN NOT. AND THE PEOPLE WILL BUY IT, BECAUSE IT IS A RETURN FROM THE UNKNOWN TO THE KNOWN. IT'S BACK TO "NORMAL". BACK TO CONVERGENCE. DON"T BELIEVE ME? ASK THE ISRAELI PRESS HOW THEY PLAN TO PROCEED WHEN THIS IS OVER. And that's Israel's system of government. It's the real enemy, far more difficult to fight than Hizbullah terrorists disguised as civilians. Boris Contact Boris Celser at celser@telusplanet.net |
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JEWISH-ISRAELI NEWS: WAR HITS SAFAD - REPORT #7
Posted by Sandy Rosen-Hazen, August 10, 2006. |
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Still trying to give you human interest stories, along with the news from here & still posting war-related photos on my Web Site for YOU.....now up to "page" 32 (12 photos per "page").....atleast 12 photos for each of the 30 days that we've been at war!!!! Go to http://groups.msn.com/SandysPhotosChildrenElephants My comments below are in square brackets [...]. |
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[The first article is about Safed, where as you know, I live...]
An old, familiar aroma leads to a one-way street on the southern end of Safed: the smell of Elite instant coffee, whose plant is nearby. Like the coffee, the street - Lohamei Hagetaot - is unpretentious, Israeli. Numerous Katyushas have landed on and around the street during the past month. The last one, on Tuesday, severely damaged the apartment building at No. 50. Most of the residents have already fled. Most of those who haven't say they would leave if they had enough money. So far "only one resident" has been severely injured, people say. But a month of Katyushas has taken its toll everywhere: the scarred walls, shards of glass on the sidewalks, look on the faces of children and adults. The Ari taxi company is the only one of the city's four taxi services still running. Bus service is patchy, and if you don't have a car, you have to use taxis. "These days, people are going only to the doctor, hospital or supermarket," Pinhas Cohen, a veteran Ari driver, says. "Short trips." Cohen says he just took a passenger to the supermarket, and the man was very nervous because he heard that a bombardment was coming. "We're the city's shrinks. We have to calm the residents down." Cohen, like the other drivers, waits on the street for business. Where does he go when a siren sounds? "We don't need a shelter here; we have an atomic shelter," another driver lets on. He was refering to the adjacent tomb of an ancient sage, Rabbi Benyamin. The tomb is empty except for one yeshiva student, praying quietly. At noon, a bus stops in front of the three big apartment blocks opposite the shuttered Rachel's Blessing grocery store. Reserve soldiers begin to unpack cartons of cleaning supplies, rice, sugar and coffee. Women begin to gather around the bus. "It doesn't matter whether they need the stuff or not," a reservist says. "They take it. Things are very bad here economically," he adds. A "For Sale" sign hangs from a balcony in every other building. Until the Ohana family at Lohamei Hagetaot 7, entrance A, manages to sell, Shoshi and her five children run back and forth from their apartment to the shelter, seven floors, with no elevator. Ohana's husband was called up. The family prefers sharing the shelter at number 9 with the Ethiopian Malkamo family. "Nasrallah, die already," 11-year-old Yuval Ohana wrote on the walls of the shelter, in which the city has installed air conditioning and a TV. "She's been very anxious," Shoshi says. The other kids insist on going to the shelter across the street, where there are kids' activities. Shortly after they leave, a siren sounds. Compared to the other buildings on Lohamei Hagetaot Street, No. 50 is up-scale, thanks to Project Renewal, which renovated it recently. Tuesday's explosion ripped apart the new plaster. A sticker from Property Tax personnel invites residents to file claims. "Property tax said they'd give me money for every piece of window shutter," Yitzhak Alkobi, a neighbor, says. "The problem is I can't find them." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tel Aviv to host mass wedding for couples from North:
The dress rehearsal at Hangar 11 in Tel Aviv's old port yesterday was like a military operation. Forty couples stood holding hands as producer Eliran Bardougo briefed them on the mass wedding ceremony they will take part in next week. "Pay attention. At the entrance there will be a red carpet, on which you'll walk up to the canopies (huppas). By the sea, 40 canopies will be waiting - everyone must bring his own guys to grab him a huppa, okay? There will be no safes, am I clear? Put the checks in grandmother's pocket," he said. All the couples are residents of the bombarded North who decided to take part in the mass wedding Bardougo is producing in Tel Aviv. "It's incredible how in Tel Aviv you don't feel what's happening where we come from," mused Dror Buchnik of Yesod Hama'ala. Buchnik, 32, and his fiancee Livnat Halal, 31, had booked Tiberias' Ganei Mitzpor for an August 9 wedding but a month ago a rocket hit the hall and demolished it. Buchnik didn't have time to mourn the postponed wedding. He is a fire fighter in Safed and is busy from morning to night putting out fires caused by the rockets. "I'm seeing him today after he has been gone for almost a month," says Halal. The invitations for 600 guests had been printed, but remain at home. Halal's wedding dress remains in her seamstress' bombed-out house in Ramot Naftali. "It's dangerous getting to her; she also fled the moshav." Two weeks ago a colleague at the fire depot saw Bardougo on Channel 2 inviting couples from the north, whose wedding was canceled due to the fighting, to contact him. "We called Eliran, but we weren't sure. It isn't the wedding we were dreaming of - but we realized we had no other choice at the moment," she said. Some 350 other couples also called Bardougo. "We had to be picky," says Bardougo. "We focused on couples who were both from the north and took only those who proved they were really about to be married." The mass ceremony will be held by Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger. Bardougo says he turned down Arab and Christian couples who asked to take part in the ceremony "due to the need to hold a kosher Jewish wedding ceremony." "We also turned down the gay and lesbian couples who called me," he says. Bardougo said he had the idea of producing a mass wedding when his niece Liraz and her fiance Tzali had to put off their wedding. "I made some phone calls to friends in the business and everyone was enthusiastic. Galit Levy agreed to design dresses for everyone; Segal Fashion agreed to provide suits for the grooms; Shuki Zikri agreed to do the brides' hair; Shelly Gafni agreed to make them up. Everyone volunteered," he said. He also recruited a DJ and singers Shlomi Shabat, Lior Narkis and others. The couples were asked to invite no more than 100 guests each. "The ceremony and party will be in the Hangar 11 club, but outside there will be a quiet compound for guests who want to sit quietly," Bardougo told the couples. The brides held their final rehearsals in beauty parlors yesterday. At 6:30 P.M. they arrived for a final group photograph. On thetir wedding day they will arrive earlier, to be photographed against the backdrop of the sea. "We want all the ceremonies to take place together, so that you all break the glass together," Bardougo instructs them. The couples ask repeatedly why no safes were arranged for the checks. But Buchnik and Halal are not bothered. "We asked our guests not to bring anything. In any case once this war is over we'll have a big party. They can bring the checks then," Buchnik says. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION: Sandy Rosen-Hazen lives in Safed. Contact her by email at Sandy@israel.net |
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NORTHERN REALITY
Posted by Judy Lash Balint, August 10, 2006. |
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You have 45 seconds to run for your life. That's the amount of time it takes for a missile launched from southern Lebanon to reach a housing development in Akko (Acre) a few miles north of Haifa on Israel's Mediterranean coast. Yesterday, as the wail of the warning siren blared through city streets in northern Israel, I made that run several times either into a bomb shelter if we happened to be near one, or, into the stairwell of a building if that's all we could find. After four weeks of war many residents of Israel's northern cities have given up running in and out of the shelters. Those with resources or relatives have fled south out of missile range, and those who are left have become resigned to spending their days underground to escape the continuous rocket barrage. A military information officer hands out a stark information sheet about the Hezbollah threat: Katyusha missiles: 122 mm., Range 12 miles. Fajr 3 missiles; 240mm., range 28 miles; Zilzal missiles; 882lb warhead, range 62-125 miles. It's difficult for the non-military mind to absorb the statistics of the barrage of missiles directed against Israeli citizens, but for anyone who spends time in northern Israel today there's no need for any understanding of ballistics to appreciate the effects of Hezbollah's cowardly war against civilians, houses and hospitals. It's as if someone had drawn an imaginary line across the country between the port town of Haifa and Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, about 40 miles to the east. Everything north of this line appears eerily deserted and lies in the twilight zone of communities that have come under attack from more than three thousand missiles over the past month. A few years ago UNESCO designated the Old City of Akko as a World Heritage Site because of its magnificent archaeological and historic treasures that include a 13th century fortress and an ancient port. Tourism began to flourish as Israelis and foreigners alike discovered the unique atmosphere of the bazaars and alleyways of the city and its mix of mosques and synagogues close to the sea. Tourism proved to be a boon to the 50,000 citizens of Akko, one of Israel's most mixed cities. But today, thanks to Nasrallah's rockets, the streets of Akko are virtually deserted. Deputy Mayor Zev Neuman estimates that his city is made up of 30 percent new immigrants; 30 percent Arabs and the remainder are longtime residents. Neuman says that 80 percent of Akko's residents remain in the town. To date, fifteen homes have been destroyed and sixty-five are damaged. On a quiet street lined with modest two-family homes, we see one of Nasrallah's targets. A crater has replaced the patio, which is still strewn with children's playthings and a mangled barbecue grill. Baseball-size holes decorate the walls of the house -- the remains of the powerful ball bearings that Hezbollah packs into the Katyushas to ensure maximum carnage. A little further down the street the public bomb shelter is filled with lithe, noisy teenagers engaged in a ping-pong tournament and younger kids sit down to lunch on their mattresses that line the walls. The airline-style meals are delivered by city workers and volunteers since no one wants to risk standing in their kitchen to cook, and there's nothing to buy since most stores aren't open anyway. It's not safe to be in the open away from a bomb shelter for any length of time. By now, many of the shelters that hadn't been used in years have been supplied with air conditioning units, TVs, fans and toys thanks to donations from well-wishers abroad. Tami Raviv, a municipal social worker, is on her daily rounds of the shelters. She tells visitors that she feels for the innocent Lebanese citizens who are suffering from Israeli retaliation to Nasrallah's assault, but her major concern is the after effects of the war on Israel's northern population. The tension of the past weeks is etched on the face of Zahava, a slim, blond woman in her late thirties who feels tethered to the bomb shelter. "We're scared all the time," she admits. "But we can take it -- we just want the army to do what's needed. Let them take how much time they want," she asserts. A few minutes on the road out of Akko, the warning siren sounds. With no bomb shelter in sight we make a run for the stairwell of a three-storey apartment building and hope for the best. We're told that if we hear a siren while driving on the open road the only thing to do is jump out of the car and hit the ground. That way the danger from flying shrapnel and ball bearings is minimized. After each rocket warning we're supposed to wait for 15 minutes or the all-clear signal before venturing out. Three curious people were killed in Akko last Thursday when they left their protected area to look at a Katyusha that had just fallen. A second hit killed them. Apart from a few emergency vehicles and army trucks the roads are completely empty as we drive on up the coast to through Nahariya and turn east toward Maalot-Tarshiha. It's eerie in the midst of a beautiful day in the middle of the summer vacation season to see deserted playgrounds, empty swimming pools and closed shopping areas. The only people about are army reservists waiting for rides north at the junctions. The north is one of Israel's most beautiful regions. Lush rolling hills, quiet forests and stunning vistas draw vacationing Israelis by the thousands in normal times. Today the only visitors are journalists, volunteers and the army. A unit of older army reservists is unloading boxes of food into the lobby of the municipality building in Maalot. For the 7-8,000 people who have stayed in the town that has taken 450 katyusha hits in 28 days, the delivery is a lifeline. We're already on our way down to the municipal bomb shelter that serves as the mayor's war room when the siren sounds for the umpteenth time that day. One house is still burning from the previous direct hit that happened as we were driving up to the picturesque town in the hills overlooking Wadi Koren. A tense Mayor Shlomo Buhbut is briefing Minister of Infrastructure Binyamin Ben Eliezer who has come to assess the damage. Buhbut was a Labor Knesset Member during the Oslo years, between 1992-1996. Today he tells Ben Eliezer to go back to Jerusalem and tell Prime Minister Olmert that the Forum of Mayors of Northern Cities demands that there be no cessation of the campaign to rid the area of Hezbollah. "We need to eradicate them. They're an obstacle to peace," Buhbut asserts. Ben Eliezer responds with fighting words. "We're not going to let Nasrallah play games with us any more. If anyone will dare touch our people on this side of the border we'll destroy them, and they'll be responsible. There's no moderation," the minister asserts. "Nasrallah thinks he can control the life of people in the Middle East. No more." Ben Eliezer tells us that there's interaction between Hezbollah and every terrorist group in the world, and leaves no doubt that he has little hope of anything positive coming from the idea of leaving the Lebanese Army in control of southern Lebanon. "They're under the control of Hezbollah. They're Hezbollah in uniform," he concludes. The beleaguered Mayor points out that since the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, Maalot has turned itself into a thriving town focused on absorbing immigrants and developing the B & B cottage tourism industry. "But look what they've done in those same years?" he asks rhetorically of his northern neighbors across the border. Still, Buhbut expresses residual echoes of his peacenik roots as he says wistfully, "They should be able to see the benefits of peace and quiet..." Apparently the idea that Moslem fundamentalism doesn't hold peace and quiet as a core value hasn't yet got through to Buhbut. Maalot resident Yaakov Marks takes a more sanguine view. Marks, who has lived in Maalot since immigrating from New York in the late 1970, and served for 20 years as a medic in the IDF reserves says simply: "We want it taken care of once and for all." He and his wife Rina raised six kids in the upper Galilee town. One of their sons who completed his Israeli army service in the elite Givati brigade is now serving with the U.S Army in Iraq. Across town in Tarshiha, Israeli Arabs sit out the war in the same kind of shelters as their Jewish neighbors. Katyusha shrapnel killed three Arab farmers here just last week. The Maalot-Tarshiha municipality delivers the same TV dinners to Arabs and Jews and the same cheery murals even grace the walls of the Tarshiha shelter as we saw in Akko. The road from Maalot-Tarshiha to Tsfat winds along hilly roads lined with forests and valleys. All along the way we see evidence of the Katyushas that have evidently missed their human mark and landed in open wooded areas. Scorched earth and blackened trees scar the landscape. Smoke rises from the latest hit and a firefighting airplane drops its load of pink flame retardant in an attempt to limit the damage. The holy city of Tsfat with its kabbalistic leanings, historic synagogues and ancient burial places is another virtual ghost town. As the home of the northern command of the IDF, and a town with a very weak population of poor Ethiopian and Russian immigrants, Tsfat has become a frequent Hezbollah target. Here too, there are Israelis who are both scared and defiant. As the prospect of an intensified ground offensive gathers momentum and Israel sustains more civilian and military casualties, it's the resolve and steel will of the people that will make or break this war. Visit http://flickr.com/photos/jerusalemdiaries/ to see my photos from the north. Judy Lash Balint is an award-winner investigative journalist and author of "Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times" (Gefen). It is available for purchase from www.israelbooks.com |
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OLMERT CONTINUES TO FIGHT HIS ENEMY -- JEWS
Posted by Lee Caplan, August 10, 2006. | |
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TO: Aviv Ezra
Shalom Aviv. Can't a single day go by without the government of Israel doing something to enrage us? The following is absolutely enraging. Why aren't these Yassamniks up in Lebanon or down in Gaza fighting the real enemies in Israel's war for survival? Why can't they demonstrate their brutality on terrorists and their buildings from which they kill us instead of on loyal Jewish citizens merely exercising their G-d given rights to make a home in Eretz Yisrael? Don't the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister have anything more important to worry about than a Jew building a house? We are enraged by this. Please let the authorities in Israel know how we feel about these repeated abuses against our brethren. Instead of promoting much-needed unity, the government of Israel is doing its best to promote senseless hatred among brothers. We will not tolerate this. If this type of activity doesn't stop at once, then we will be forced to reassess our activity on behalf of the State of Israel. Sincerely,
Contact Lee Caplan at leescaplan@yahoo.com |
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THE RHYTHM METHOD OF PROTECTION AND - MERETZ RETURNS TO THE JIHAD FOLD
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 10, 2006. |
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1. For the first month of the fighting, the Israeli government of Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres, and Amr Peretz was following a very clear strategy to stop the katyshas. It was simple. Israel would sit and wait for the Hezbollah to finish firing its 15,000 or so rockets at Israeli children and civilians,and then, when all the rockets had been fired, the Hezbollah would be out of ammo and there would be peace. In the face of growing public rage over dealing with the rockets by
means of Quaker quietude, the government yesterday decided that one of
these days it might actually order Israeli troops forward away from
the border areas from which Edward Said threw rocks, but not now and
not yet and who knows. Maybe when the weather cools off, or after
Succos, or when the Hezbollah has run out of rockets. When the timing
is good. I suggest we all call this the "rhythm method of protection."
2. Meanwhile, until now, the "Zionist Left", which is how Meretz and Peace Now like to describe themselves, were keeping a low profile. Having created the entire situation in the first place where rockets are blanketing northern Israel, they preferred to help that fact be forgotten by posturing as part of the national consensus. When 99% of Israeli Jews want to see the Hezbollah annihilated militarily by Israel, discretion was the better part of valor. The pro-Hebollah and pro-Hamas street protests in Tel Aviv and Haifa were pathetic and small, organized by the communist party and its front groups, like "Women in Black," and some tenured traitors and Arab fascist organizations. But in light of yesterday's cabinet vote to expand the fighting in
Lebanon one of these days, Meretz and Peace Now have now seen the
light and henceforth will be standing shoulder to shoulder with the
communists in the protests, demonstrating solidarity with the katyusha
launchers.
Peace Now had already been placing ads in the papers (paid for by
guess who?) demanding a ceasefire and instant "negotiations" with the
Hezbollah, and of course some nice UN troops from Borneo to make sure
that the Hezbollah rockets allowed to remain on the Israeli border are
not fired too often. David Grossman, perhaps the most radical of the
Literary Left, is re-joining the ultras in Left, after a very short
hiatus as a Zionist, although AB Yehoshua is still holding out
3. For decades the Arab propagandists, by which I mean the Jewish leftists, have been trying to deny that the Arab leadership in 1948 ordered all the Arabs in Israeli territory to flee, clearing the way for the manly Arab armies to drive the Jews into the sea, and thus created the "Palestinian refugee" problem. By repeating over and over that no such calls to flee had come from the Arab leadership, in spite of so much historic documentation of those calls, the Left hoped to create the myth of "ethnic cleansing" of Arabs by the Jews in the 1948-9 "Naqba". Well, thank goodness for the Hezbollah, helping to correct the historic record, which this week is working to prove how wrong the Left always was and how true were those reports of calls by the Arab leaders for local Arabs under Jewish rule to flee in 1948. The Hezbollah has issued identical calls for Haifa Arabs to flee so that Haifa can now be obliterated by Hezbollah rockets: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060809/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ mideast_fighting_nasrallah;_ylt= AjguVunimGx0qEA1cl3s8r6s0NUE; _ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ-- Nasrallah urges Arabs to leave Haifa By Joseph Panossian, Associated Press Writer Wed Aug 9, 3:25 PM ET Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday warned all Israeli Arabs to leave the port city of Haifa so the militant group could step up attacks without fear of shedding the blood of fellow Muslims. Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, has been the frequent target of Hezbollah's rocket attacks. "I have a special message to the Arabs of Haifa, to your martyrs and to your wounded. I call on you to leave this city. I hope you do this. ... Please leave so we don't shed your blood, which is our blood," Nasrallah said. Nasrallah heaped criticism on the assistant U.S. secretary of state for visiting Beirut Wednesday as the Israel's Security Cabinet decided to expand the ground offensive in southern Lebanon. "We will be waiting for you at every village, at every valley. Thousands of courageous holy warriors are waiting for you," he warned the Israelis. 4. From: Edward Alexander You can't accuse Seattle Jews of learning nothing at all from the
shootings of two weeks ago. Here, e.g., is today's comment from one of
the wounded, Dayna Klein, about the attack: "I see this as an amazing
opportunity. I see this as a chance for Seattleites and people across
America...to look at some serious issues about workplace safety, gun
control, gun violence and empowerment."
Otherwise Jewish community leaders are every day "reaching out" to
Muslims in the joint effort to show--if you glance at the Seattle
papers over the past ten days you'll see what I mean--that Islam is
indeed "the religion of peace."
5. From Wall St Journal:
So Mel Gibson, arrested in Malibu, Calif., for drunk driving, tells
a police officer that "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in
the world." Pity the actor for not substituting the word "Israelis"
for "Jews." The latter apparently confirms his long-suspected
anti-Semitism. The former would have made him a darling of
right-thinking progressives the world over, especially at this moment
of Middle East stress.
How do you spot an anti-Semite? An old joke tells the story of an
elderly traveler at the Vienna train station asking passersby whether
they hate Jews. After a score of indignant "No's," one fellow finally
admits that, why yes, he does hate them. "Thank goodness for an honest
man!" exclaims the traveler. "Would you mind looking after my bags
while I run to the men's room?"
Real-life efforts to identify anti-Semites tend to be more
complicated. When French synagogues were torched at the height of the
intifada three years ago, Tony Judt, a Jewish scholar at New York
University, described them not as incidences of anti-Semitism but as
"misdirected efforts, often by young Muslims, to get back at Israel."
Last Friday, a Muslim-American named Naveed Afzal Haq forced his way
into the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, shot
five people and killed one. "These are Jews, and I'm tired of...our
people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East," Mr.
Haq reportedly told a 911 operator. Perhaps this, too, was just
another misdirected effort to combat Middle East injustice.
Then there is the tricky matter of criticism of Israel and whether
those who dislike the Jewish state dislike Jews as well. "Anyone who
criticizes Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have
significant influence over U.S. Middle Eastern policy...stands a good
chance of being labelled an anti-Semite," write Stephen Walt of
Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago in a recent
controversial paper. The professors allege that the so-called Israel
Lobby manipulates the media, infiltrates the academy, blackmails
politicians and gets the U.S. to finance or fight immoral wars on
Israel's behalf -- familiar anti-Semitic tropes, at least when
directed explicitly at Jews. But Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer insist
that their criticism is only of the Lobby, not of Jews per se, and
suggest that their harshest critics are latter-day Joe McCarthys.
Barring some Gibson-like indiscretion on their part, it may be
impossible conclusively to prove them wrong. But a study in the
current issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution
(http://jcr.sagepub.com) by Yale University scholars Edward Kaplan and
Charles Small offers solid statistical evidence that the harsher one's
views of Israel, the likelier one is to be an anti-Semite.
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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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IDF DISGUSTED WITH OLMERT
Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, August 10, 2006. |
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Let us hope that the professional level of the IDF will show the same courage and patriotism it has always shown in dealing with the external enemies of Israel in its dealings with our internal enemies. The shame that has been poured on the IDF by its participation in the Sharon and Olmert (pronounced all-merde) pogroms will only be removed when they will have the courage to remove the authors of that treason. This article is by Jonathan Ariel and is called "Analysis: Government
and IDF racked by unprecedented leadership crisis." It is by Jonathan
Ariel and it appeared yesterday in Israel Insider
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Relations between the country's political and military leadership are at the lowest point in the country's history, on the verge of a crisis. In addition, there is a growing lack of confidence between Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, the first CoS to hail from the air force, and many of his general staff colleagues from the ground forces, who say he and his "blue clique" [blue being the color of the air force uniform-ed] do not fully appreciate the nature of ground warfare. According to informed sources, there is an almost total breakdown in trust and confidence between the General Staff and the PM's office. They have described the situation as "even worse than the crises that followed Ben Gurion's decision to disband the Palmach, and Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan's cynical decision to place all the blame for the Yom Kippur fiasco on the IDF's shoulders. Senior IDF officers have been saying that the PM bears sole responsibility for the current unfavorable military situation, with Hezbollah still holding out after almost a month of fighting. This plan was supposed to have begun with a surprise air onslaught against the Hezbollah high command in Beirut, before they would have had time to relocate to their underground bunkers. This was to have been followed immediately by large scale airborne and seaborne landing operations, in order to get several divisions on the Litani River line, enabling them to outflank Hezbollah's "Maginot line" in southern Lebanon. According to these officers, Olmert was presented with an assiduously prepared and detailed operational plan for the defeat and destruction of Hezbollah within 10-14 days, which the IDF has been formulating for the past 2-3 years. This plan was supposed to have begun with a surprise air onslaught against the Hezbollah high command in Beirut, before they would have had time to relocate to their underground bunkers. This was to have been followed immediately by large scale airborne and seaborne landing operations, in order to get several divisions on the Litani River line, enabling them to outflank Hezbollah's "Maginot line" in southern Lebanon. This would have surprised Hezbollah, which would have had to come out of its fortifications and confront the IDF in the open, in order to avoid being isolated, hunted down and eventually starved into a humiliating submission. This was exactly what the IDF senior command wanted, as Israeli military doctrine, based on the Wehrmacht's blitzkrieg doctrine, has traditionally been one of rapid mobile warfare, designed to surprise and outflank an enemy. According to senior military sources, who have been extensively quoted in both the Hebrew media and online publications with close ties to the country's defense establishment, Olmert nixed the second half of the plan, and authorized only air strikes on southern Lebanon, not initially on Beirut. Although the Premier has yet to admit his decision, let alone provide a satisfactory explanation, it seems that he hoped futilely for a limited war. A prominent wheeler-dealer attorney-negotiator prior to entering politics, he may have thought that he could succeed by the military option of filing a lawsuit as a negotiating ploy, very useful when you represent the rich and powerful, as he always had. Another motive may have been his desire to limit the economic damage by projecting a limited rather than total war to the international financial powers that be. Whatever his reasons, the bottom line, according to these military sources, is that he castrated the campaign during the crucial first days. The decision to not bomb Beirut immediately enabled Nasrallah to escape, first to his bunker, subsequently to the Iranian embassy in Beirut. The decision to cancel the landings on the Litani River and authorize a very limited call up of reserves forced the ground forces to fight under very adverse conditions. Instead of outflanking a heavily fortified area with overwhelming forcers, they had to attack from the direction most expected, with insufficient forces. The result, high casualties and modest achievements. This is the background of yesterday's surprise effective dismissal of OC northern Command Maj. General Udi Adam. According to various media sources, Olmert was incensed at Adam's remarks that he had not been allowed to fight the war that had been planned. Adam allegedly made these remarks in response to criticism against his running of the war, and the results so far achieved. Olmert's responsibility for inaction goes much further. The US administration had given Israel the green light to attack Syria. A senior military source has confirmed to Israel Insider that Israel did indeed receive a green light from Washington in this regard, but Olmert nixed it. The scenario was that Syria, no military match for Israel, would face a rapid defeat, forcing it to run to Iran, with which it has a defense pact, to come to aid. Iran, which would be significantly contained by the defeat of its sole ally in the region, would have found itself maneuvered between a rock and a hard place. If it chose to honor its commitment to Syria, it would face a war with Israel and the US, both with military capabilities far superior to Iran's. If Teheran opted to default on its commitment to Damascus, it would be construed by the entire region, including the restless Iranian population, as a conspicuous show of weakness by the regime. Fascist regimes such as that of the ayatollahs cannot easily afford to show that kind of weakness. As previously mentioned, Iran's military capabilities are no match for Israel's. Bottom line, all Iran could do is to launch missiles at and hit Israel's cities, and try and carry out terror attacks. If there is one thing history has shown, it is that such methods do not win wars. Israel would undoubtedly suffer both civilian casualties and economic damage, but these would not be that much more than what we are already experiencing. We have already irreversibly lost an entire tourist season. Any Iranian and Syrian missile offensives would be relatively short, as they are further form Israel, and therefore would have to be carried out by longer range missiles. These, by their very nature are much bigger and more complex weapons than Katyushas. They cannot be hidden underground, and require longer launch preparations, increasing their vulnerability to air operations. In addition it is precisely for such kinds of missiles that the Arrow system was developed. The end result would be some additional economic damage, and probably around 500 civilian casualties. It may sound cold blooded, but Israel can afford such casualties, which would be less than those sustained in previous wars (for the record, in 1948 Israel lost 6,000, 1% of the entire population, and in 1967 and 1973 we lost respectively 1,000 and 3,000 casualties). The gains, however, would be significant. The Iranian nuclear threat, the most dangerous existential threat Israel has faced since 1948, would be eliminated. It would also change the momentum, which over the past two decades as been with the ayatollahs. This could also have a major impact on the PA, hastening the demise of the Islamist Hamas administration. Instead, according to military sources, Israel finds itself getting bogged down by a manifestly inferior enemy, due to the limitations placed on the IDF by the political leadership. This has been construed by the enemy as a clear sign that Israel is in the hands of a leadership not up to the task, lacking the required experience, guts and willpower. In the Middle East this is an invitation to court disaster, as witness by Iran's and Syria's increased boldness in significantly upping the ante of their involvement in the war. Some senior officers have been mentioning the C-word in private conversations. They have been saying that a coup d'etat might be the only way to prevent an outcome in Lebanon that could embolden the Arab world to join forces with Syria and Iran in an all out assault on Israel, given the fact that such a development would be spurred entirely by the Arab and Moslem world's perception of Israel's leadership as weak, craven and vacillating, and therefore ripe for intimidation. Seeing the once invincible IDF being stalemated by Hezbollah's 3,000 troops is a sure way to radiate an aura of weakness that in the Middle East could precipitate attacks by sharks smelling blood. 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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UNITED WE FIGHT
Posted by Sergio Tessa (HaDaR), August 10, 2006. |
| Following last year's destruction of Gush Katif and northern Samaria, many felt betrayed by the State of Israel and by the army that carried out that horrible deed. Families that had traditionally sent their beloved sons to the IDF's elite units, to take an active role in defending our people and our land, could not deal with the fact that "our" army was now being used against Jews most dedicated to the land and the nation. Feelings for the IDF will never be the same. Many reserve soldiers and youth about to be drafted swore to themselves that they would never don an IDF uniform again. Certainly, this caused mixed feelings, because up to that time, these same people viewed the IDF with the greatest of respect, even deeming it holy. It is not hard to identify with these feelings of frustration and anger towards the mechanism that betrayed them. Today, the dilemma becomes even greater, as the people of Israel are under attack from north and south, bombarded by Islamic armies that wish to wipe us all out. Frustration reaches a new climax when the Israeli prime minister makes no effort to hide his intention to continue with his expulsion plan, using the IDF as his tool, as soon as the Hizbullah enemy is neutralized. It certainly is a predicament. How can one wear the uniform to fight the enemy, when one knows that the same army's soldiers will eventually be used to destroy one's home and displace one's wife and children? In spite all of this, at times such as these we must put all issues aside and go out to battle. For how can one sit quietly when Jewish blood is being spilled like water? Is it not written, "Thou shalt not stand idly by your brother's blood"? Still, there is an issue of treachery toward our soldiers in the field of battle that must be addressed - the government and army policy that endangers IDF soldiers in order not to hurt "innocent" civilians. It is this twisted "morality" that has caused Jewish heroes to fall in this present war. No country or army in the world behaves in such a way. It is not ethical to put our soldiers in harm's way, to consider their lives of less value than those of the enemy population. General George S. Patton is quoted saying, "The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." It was good for him and it is good for us. The lives and well-being of our soldiers come first. If the leaders of the state feel that we must be more merciful to the enemy population than any other army, then they can drop fliers to inform the enemy civilian population to vacate all of the terror-infested areas, and then, after a 24-hour period, have the air force bomb and wipe out every building that might harbor the enemy. Do not expose Jewish soldiers by sending them into hostile enemy villages to carry out pinpoint actions against one individual terrorist or another. If there is a dilemma before one going out to war today, it is the question: Are my commanders looking out for my welfare first and foremost? Or are they pitying the enemy population, and turning me into cannon fodder? We must demand that all means are employed to protect the lives of our troops, even at the cost of the lives of the enemy civilian population. For this is a milchemet mitzvah (obligatory war) as Rambam defines it: "To rescue Jews from an oppressor who comes upon them." We are obligated to go out to protect our brothers. God willing, as we succeed in smashing the Islamic tyrants in the north and in the south, we will overcome the enemy from within and succeed in the struggle for maintaining the integrity of the Land of Israel. Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net. |
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BULLET PROOF VESTS FOR THE IDF
Posted by Avodah 15, August 9, 2006. | |
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Dear Friends of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces, As the battles in Lebanon and Gaza rage, IDF Medical Corps combat paramedics are saving the lives of our soldiers every day. Now, we urgently need your assistance to help the combat paramedics perform their life-saving mission. At the request of the IDF Medical Corps, AFL-American Friends of Libi has launched a national campaign to raise funds to buy 3,000 medical equipment vests to protect IDF combat paramedics as they risk their lives to treat injured soldiers. These are light-weight, functional vests, specially designed by the IDF's Medical Corps and produced in Israel, that enable combat paramedics to render life-saving treatment of injured soldiers more quickly, easily, and safely. Here is what your tax-deductible contribution to Libi will buy:
In all, we intend to raise $500,000 to purchase the 3,000 vests that the IDF Medical Corps so urgently needs. Please do not delay. Help save lives of the brave soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces today. Make your tax-deductible donation today. Attached you will find a message from General (Res.) Danny Matt, Chairman of the LIBI Fund. Sincerely, The Board of Directors of the American Friends of LIBI, Lawrence Grodman, President Robert Finkel, Israel Paul & Yael Lipof, New York & Connecticut Nazy Nazerian, California Sarah Biser, New Jersey David Golden, California Harry and Marvin Freedman, Mid-West Eric Neplokh, California Bernice & Herbert Heinstein, New England Shimshon Erenfeld, New England The following letter was recently received by the American Friends of LIBI: Tel - Aviv, July 2006 Dear Friends of Libi, Israel is at War! The country is being attacked both on the Northern and Southern borders forcing the civilian population to remain in bomb shelters and protected areas. Following the unprovoked attacks on our forces along the Gaza and Lebanese borders by the Hamas and the Hizballah, the killing and abduction of IDF soldiers and the massive shelling of our cities and towns, the Israel Government has declared a State of Emergency throughout the country. The Israel Defense Forces have launched an extensive military operation to take all the necessary measures in order to remove the threat to the citizens of Israel, who are exposed to continuous bombardments. In these difficult days our civilians are once again showing their courage and determination in the face of threats to their very lives, expressing their absolute confidence in the ability of the IDF to defeat the enemy and restore stability along our borders. The Jewish people all over the world stand with us in our struggle to defeat these forces of evil, who aim to drive us from the Land of our Fathers and our Forefathers and to wipe us off the map of the world. Friends of Libi, together with you, we are not alone. With our deep appreciation for your assistance and support, General (res.) Danny Matt
Contact Avodah 15 by email at avodah15@aol.com |
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CUPPA JOE OR CUP OF JIHAD: CARIBOU COFFEE'S TERRORIST TIES
Posted by Bruce Tuchman, August 9, 2006. |
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This was written by Debbie Schlussel is a political commentator and attorney. She is a frequent guest on ABC's "Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher" and Fox News Channel. |
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You'd be surprised that your morning cup of coffee is tied to terrorism. But for Americans who buy coffee -- or anything else -- at Caribou Coffee, their "Cuppa Joe" is tied to the Muslim brotherhood, the Muslim boycott of the West, and a bunch of Saudi Sheiks. Caribou is closely tied to a prominent religious Muslim leader, Dr. Yusuf (a/k/a Youssef) Abdullah Al-Qaradawi, who said, "Now we see our brothers and children in Al-Aqsa and the blessed land of Palestine generously sacrificing their blood, giving their souls willingly in the way of Allah. All Muslims must help them with whatever power they have." Caribou Coffee Company, Inc., the large Minnesota-based chain of premium coffeehouses trying to compete with Starbucks, describes itself as "a classic American growth company" with "the look and feel of an Alaskan lodge." But, in fact, Caribou is not "classic American." It is owned by the Bahrain-based First Islamic Investment Bank -- to the tune of 87.8%. First Islamic's officers and Board of Directors consist primarily of Saudis, and its key religious advisor is Al-Qaradawi, spiritual advisor to the terrorist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, according to one of Daniel Pearl's last Wall Street Journal articles. Al-Qaradawi's association with the Muslim Brotherhood -- home to Mohammed Atta and Bin-Laden boss Ayman Al-Zawahiri--is the reason Al-Qaradawi was imprisoned for several years in Egypt and was banned from preaching in Cairo mosques. In addition to praising homicide bombers, Al-Qaradawi has issued numerous anti-American and anti-Semitic fatwas, including a boycott of American and Israel products. In an official statement released by Caribou, the company denies all ties to Al-Qaradawi, and in fact, do not even mention him by name, referring to him only as "an outside advisor." In an interview, Caribou Coffee CEO Don Dempsey told me, "He has nothing to do with our company. Nothing!" Caribou also claims that "Our ownership ... is 100% opposed to terrorism of any kind, anywhere -- period." Dempsey told me that the only statements he's seen that Al-Qaradawi has made were in opposition to the terrorist events of 9/11. He told me. "I don't have time to look up his statements. He doesn't work for our company." Caribou's denials are understandable, as Dempsey admitted that a large portion of Caribou's customers are Jewish, and many of its stores, like the two stores in West Bloomfield, Michigan (suburban Detroit), are near primarily Jewish neighborhoods. But, actually, Al Qaradawi is a key advisor to First Islamic, whose website states, "First Islamic is guided by the following principles in conducting its activities: Above all, ensuring that all activities conform to Islamic Shari'ah (religious law)." Until last week, when a damaging e-mail made its way around the Internet, First Islamic's website featured a Shari'ah Supervisory Board, listing its chairman as "Dr. Yusuf Abdullah Al-Qaradawi, Chairman, Seerah & Sunnah Center, Qatar University; Professor, Faculty of Shari'ah, Qatar University." The beauty of the Internet is that, even though First Islamic does not want you to read this, the page can still be accessed because it has been cached by the Google.com search engine. First Islamic's website states, "The Bank's Shari'ah and legal teams, with the active involvement of the Shari'ah Supervisory Board, work closely with the direct investment, real estate and asset management teams to develop the Bank's ground-breaking Islamic investment and financing structures. To ensure rigorous compliance with Shari'ah requirements, the Shari'ah and legal teams, and through them the Shari'ah Supervisory Board, are involved in the key phases of each new transaction. After a transaction closes, it is continuously monitored to ensure ongoing Shari'ah compliance." Caribou's press statement would only say "We ... understand that this relationship [with Al-Qaradawi] is under review." Would, say, a K-mart "relationship" with David Duke remain under review, or would he be fired instantly? When I asked Caribou CEO Dempsey why the organization would not immediately sever all ties with Al-Qaradawi, he continued to state that "this person" had condemned 9/11 and that this was the only statement of Al-Qaradawi's he'd seen and didn't see what was wrong with it. But in Al-Qaradawi's official fatwa on the attacks, released by his own Islam Online and several Muslim news agencies on September 13, Al Qaradawi used the 9/11 attacks to attack Israel and Jews, emphasizing "our strong opposition to the American biased policy towards Israel." Moreover, he implied that Arab Muslims are much more afflicted than American victims of 9/11. "We Arab Muslims are the most affected by the grave consequences of hostile attack on man and life. We share the suffering experienced by innocent Palestinians at the hands of the tyrannical Jewish entity." In a December 2001 article in Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram Weekly, Al-Qaradawi was described as "the Arab world's most famous and certainly most popular Islamic scholar." In that article, Al-Qaradawi's decrees were summarized. "Instead of putting money into building a mosque or go[ing] on the haj (religious pilgrimage to Mecca), Muslims should donate this money to support Palestinians fighting occupation and other struggles of Muslim populations." Al-Qaradawi also denies "that Bin Laden should give himself up," opposes "taking part in the US coalition against Afghanistan," calls on Muslims to "boycott Israeli and American products," and demands "a fair international trial for" Bin Laden. In another fatwa, Al-Qaradawi wrote, "It is Jihad to liberate the Islamic lands from those who attack or conquer them. These are the enemies of Islam. This Jihad is an absolute obligation and a sacred duty. ... All the Muslims of the world must assist. Palestine is the land of the . . . Muslims, . . . the land of Al-Aqsa and the blessed territory." He goes on to attack "the USA, and . . . the world Jewish community. Jihad is obligatory." Since Al-Qaradawi decreed, "Muslims in America must work with companies who are least hostile to Muslims, least allied to the Zionists," that should tell you something about Caribou -- the company, in which his Shari'ah Supervisory Board approved of an 87.8% investment. Americans should take just a smidgeon of Al-Qaradawi's advice and boycott the "American" company with which he is associated, Caribou Coffee. Why spend money with a company whose key advisor supports terrorism, and approves of terrorism? To Al-Qaradawi, spilling of innocent blood -- not drinking coffee -- is good to the last drop. Contact Bruce Tuchman at bruce@nycat.org |
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COSTELLOS IN CANAAN
Posted by Women in Green, August 9, 2006. |
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This article was writteen by Sarah Honig and it appeared in the Jerusalem Post August 3, 2006. |
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Enemies in two war zones - Lebanon and Gaza - from which Israel unilaterally withdrew to the very last inch, refuse to let us be despite egregious concessions. That's what happens in savage circumstances when deterrence is eroded. As vilified retreat-opponents ceaselessly warned, hostilities from areas recklessly ceded necessitated IDF reengagement. Presumably that should have triggered contrition about Ehud Barak's May 2000 midnight flight from Lebanon and last year's Gush Katif expulsion. The incontrovertible collapse of the concept that produced both catastrophic pullbacks should relegate plans for the next unilateral folly to history's rubbish bin. Nevertheless, bungles and botches notwithstanding, Ehud Olmert vows not to change his mind. While guns blaze, his strategists plot stunning breakthroughs to overhaul the entire diplomatic configuration, banish impasse and amaze all with their dazzlingly brilliant patch-up of tattered "road map" remains - thereby enabling them to uproot more settlers while avoiding the semblance of unilateral repair, heaven forfend. The innovative technique to win international accolades for gratuitous concessions to a Hamas regime will be to pretend they're not unilateral, but constitute phase 2 of the road map, i.e. the establishment of a Palestinian state within "temporary frontiers." Olmert will thus obtain the international green light he so craves for surrendering territory in return for naught, while the Palestinians, in receipt of ceded strategic assets, will glory in their independence and the "impermanent" status of their borders. This open-ended arrangement will enable them to keep insisting on more. PALESTINIAN statehood with an internationally endorsed potential for expansion is no mean achievement. For starters, it'll encompass the entire Gaza Strip and over 90 percent of Judea and Samaria - largely everything outside the security fence as delineated by our Supreme Court, which never misses any opportunity to risk Israeli lives by shrinking this tiny state's waistline and further contorting its insecure convoluted circumference. The only interim exception will be a narrow strip in the Jordan Valley that'll either be provisionally regulated by a vestigial IDF presence or by impeccably trustworthy international supervisors (like those who collaborated with Hizbullah). That, according to Olmert's creative copywriters, will do the trick and liberate us from all pesky obstacles on the road map to "realignment" within what ultra-dove Abba Eban dubbed the "Auschwitz borders." Subsequent to an incomparably wrenching national trauma, we'll doubtlessly find ourselves as liberated as Abbott and Costello were after a screwy cellmate in Lost in a Harem apparently extricated them from an Arab despot's dungeon. "Follow me," the cellmate commands, promising to lead the pair through secret passages. They do, and he strides in circles, only to stop where he started, announcing that they're now outside and free. Childlike Costello protests that they're "still in the same place." "Keep quiet," Abbott admonishes him, "You're attracting a crowd of people" (said crowd presumably as menacing as the censorious world opinion that might bedevil Israel were it to behave in vexingly uncooperative tell-it-like-it-is Costello-style). But unenlightened Costello could spot nobody other than his two fellow "escapees," congratulating each other on a job well done - like Olmert and his crew of ever-resourceful advisers, who prepare to cunningly put one over the whole world with one wee adjustment and take us back precisely to... where we once were. THAT WAS exactly six years ago, before then-premier Barak foiled his own quick fix at Camp David. Barak planned on giving almost everything away (roughly like Olmert), but with one snag. He wanted Yasser Arafat to declare that the conflict was thereby concluded. No more demands, irredentist aspirations or pretexts for future ferment. The whole Clinton-conceived deal fell through because Arafat couldn't abide "end of dispute" phraseology. He couldn't countenance committing himself to any blueprint that would leave Jews a sliver of a toehold in their ancestral homeland. Since Barak's clever getaway from Lebanon had convinced Arafat that Jews could be forced out, he launched his bloody intifada just to avoid the unthinkable undertaking of "no more bloodshed." So much for buying peace with land. Olmert's ingenuity boils down to waiving even Barak's last-ditch problematic proviso, the one that got Arafat's dander up so much he rejected tantalizing territorial gifts and went to war instead. His aim was to get all he was offered without forgoing any add-on casus belli. While Arafat appeared to have initially failed, in sober retrospect his intransigence paid off handsomely. Israel's relinquishing of Gaza posthumously bore out the Arafatian contention that it was preferable to terrorize Jews than compromise with them. Now being brewed in Olmert's inner circle is the victory Arafat didn't live to savor. Arafat's heirs and torchbearers will get effectively what Barak dangled before them, but minus the stipulation that they desist from plotting the Jewish state's destruction. The international community will henceforth underwrite Palestinian assertions that confrontation isn't over, not by a long shot. Negotiations to slice more off Israel and inundate it with hostile Arabs will resume, along road-map guidelines, after Olmert has "realigned" us behind the transitory security fence. If, at any stage, we won't budge beyond that, the Arabs will be judged as harboring just grievances. Horrified Costellos in Canaan will scream "Hey Aaabbott," and "here we go round again," but to no avail. Like the oddball who directs our disaster-bound duo round and round, Olmert will proclaim that we're making remarkable progress. Suspicious sorts among us may share unsophisticated Costello's intuition that the man who loopily leads him nowhere at a time of mortal danger is delusional. "I've a brother who's crazy, but I'm not," the leader reassures the skeptic. "Who told you?" Costello persists. "My brother," the leader retorts. 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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NO RESTRAINT AGAINST ISLAMIC TOTALITARIANS
Posted by Holcberg, David, August 9, 2006. |
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Calls from the Bush administration and European leaders for Israel to restrain itself against the barbarism of Islamic totalitarians are acts of moral treason in the war on Western civilization. Given that the goal of the Islamic totalitarians is to destroy, or subjugate, all of us in the Western world, Western leaders should be cheering Israel's offensive against them, not demanding restraint. Any attempt to deter Israel from taking further military action, precisely when it is attempting to obliterate Hezbollah and remove it as a threat, is an unspeakable act of moral depravity. If Western civilization is to fall, it will not be because of the strength of the Islamic totalitarians, but because of acts of moral weakness and cowardice, such as the calls for restraint we now hear coming from Washington and many European capitals. David Holcberg is with the Ayn Rand Institute (www.aynrand.org/) in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." Contact the writer at media@aynrand.org. |
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KODESH
Posted by Michelle Nevada, August 9, 2006. |
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There is a moment at the end of Shabbat every week when the last rays of the sun have died and the silence of darkness envelops everything around me. It is the moment of Havdalah, the moment of the separation between the sweetness of Shabbat and the bustle of the week. During that moment, I seem to hear more acutely, see more finely, and think more clearly than at any other time. Everything takes on significance as the Havdalah candle spits and sputters with life, the orange-blossom water sits uncapped before me, and the wine, held only by surface tension, teases the lip of the cup. It seems so simple, really, to end the week this way, but this small ceremony holds the key to Jewish identity. When I say the blessing, I think of this week, every week, that Israel finds itself in conflict with those around her, and I understand: "Blessed are You, HaShem, our G-d, King of the universe, who separates between the holy and the profane, between light and darkness, between Israel and the nations, and between the seventh day and the six workdays. Blessed are you, HaShem, who separates between the holy and the profane." There is something lost, as always, in the translation from the Hebrew. The word kodesh is significant in the blessing, and its dual meaning in Hebrew is at once poignant and provocative. Kodesh is often translated only as "holy", but it also, simultaneously, means "separate". This word is the key to what it means to be Jewish in the world. We can't have it both ways - in order to be holy, we must make a separation between Shabbat and the work week, between men and women, between kosher and non-kosher, between good and evil. To live as a Jew means that the separation also includes ourselves: we must make a distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish people, we must make a distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish groups, and we must make a distinction between Israel and all the other nations in the world. It is no wonder that, when Israel goes to war, she goes alone. Whether we like it or not, we are G-d's people, G-d's nation. We don't have a choice in the matter. Some people of other nations become offended by this idea. They assume that, because we are G-d's chosen people, that we have some kind of superiority complex, that we think we are better, or more privileged, or more deserving of reward. The opposite is true. When you are a member of G-d's nation, more is expected of you. You are endowed with an extra serving of responsibility and obligation that is not put upon other people and other nations. We are expected to live with kodesh - holiness and separateness - according to Torah, and we are expected to be strong and forthright in our commitment to living that way. Sure, we have freedom of choice, just like any other person or nation, but if we chose to act like other nations, then G-d will not allow us to prosper. The most obvious example of this concept is in Samuel (8:7) when the nation of Israel demands that the prophet Samuel appoint them a king like other nations. Samuel is upset by the request and asks G-d for guidance. G-d replies, "...it is not you whom they have rejected, but it is Me whom they have rejected from reigning over them." In other words, the only time the nation of Israel chooses to act like other nations is when Israel has rejected G-d. My older sister used to say to me, "You must make the right decisions, or someone else will make them for you." Her warning, like the warning G-d gives the nation of Israel, infers that if the correct decisions are not made to accept responsibility in the world, the responsibility to choose will be curtailed. This is a continuation of the idea of kodesh. When Israel chooses to act like a nation obligated to moral responsibility and duty, we are blessed. When Israel acts like other nations, G-d withdraws blessings from us and limits our ability to function as a nation. We can choose to be kodesh, or G-d will chose to make us so. This is why, when Israel acts to please the other nations and the other peoples of the world, we are cursed by the same people we tried to impress; but when we act in a correct manner, denying the importance of those people and nations around us and turning, instead, to G-d, we are successful and blessed. This is the irony of a Jew's identity in the world. We must be a nation that is not governed by world public opinion, but a nation that is governed by G-d and Torah, responsibility and obligation. The protection of our land, our people, and our way of life is a sacred responsibility - both in peace and war. It is my hope that our leaders will not soften their stance in answer to the voices of other nations, that they will not heed the false claims of our enemies, and that they will not turn from supporting our right to exist as a nation under G-d. Further, I pray that the leaders of Israel will not forget what it is to obligate themselves to the protection of this nation when peace comes and they are asked, once again, to give away land that is not theirs to give. We must remember who we are, why we are here and to Whom we owe allegiance. "Blessed are you, HaShem, who separates between the holy and the profane," should be a moment of clarity for every Jew. Contact Michelle Nevada at Michelle_Nevada@comcast.net
This essay appeared in Arutz-Sheva August 6, 2006.
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TIME TO CHANGE PRIORITIES
Posted by Mrla 26, August 9, 2006. |
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This is by Larry Shapiro. |
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The Nazis were so intent on cleansing the world of Jews that they devoted many of their industrial assets, including thousands of rail cars, to transport Jews from little villages all over Europe to the extermination factories. Devoting so much of their infrastructure to genocide hampered their ability to supply their armies and was detrimental to their war effort. It was clearly more important for the Germans to kill Jews than win the war. Did the Nazis know they were criminals? Of course they did. They hid as much evidence as they could, including human evidence, when they marched half dead Jews away from the death factories in a last ditch attempt to hide their grisly activities. After the war, many Nazis slithered into a pipeline operated by sympathizers and were smuggled into far away countries. Many changed their names to avoid being brought to justice and nestled back into their towns and cities to live out their lives unmolested. This awful chapter in history must be remembered because today there are Nazi like countries and terrorist militias who are also intent on killing Jews. But unlike their Nazi predecessors who in many cases knew they were doing wrong, these latter day exterminators have no sense of wrongdoing whatsoever because their activities are reinforced by a malignant religious doctrine that says that if infidels cannot be subdued they must be killed. They believe that the Jewish state of Israel is illegally on Muslim lands. Muslim honor demands that Israel's Jewish population be eradicated. And not only Jews in Israel. In the West, and particularly in Europe, this Nazi reincarnation is being ignored -- and even supported. Many humane people, bolstered by the United Nations unrelenting criticism of Israel, spend their moral energy delegitimizing Israel rather than holding to account those who are acting to destroy it. Their moral indignation towards Israel can be summed up by a brief conversation that my sister had with a woman at a social function. My sister opined that the war in the Middle East was very unfortunate for Israel. The woman said "what should Israel expect after its 40 year brutal occupation of Palestinian lands?" Photographs of Quebeckers waving Hizbullah flags at a recent "peace march" confirm that many would rather support Islamic fascism than Israel. Jews are always perplexed and startled at the spittle flying out of people's mouths when the name Israel comes up. A theory was proposed that the world is tired of feeling guilty for the Holocaust. Its guilt is absolved by saying to Jews: "Look you are no more moral than us; your state is a Nazi state just like the one that murdered your people; you should know better." To say this, they have to ignore the facts that are readily available to them. The cost to their intelligence is bearable, even welcome and far cheaper than guilt or anti-depressants. On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that an anti-Israel attitude could simply be a reflection of people supporting an underdog. This becomes problematic, however, when the same people are indifferent to other underdogs such as the Tibetans or the victims of the genocide in Darfur. Is criticism of Israel anti-Semitic? While these human rights minded people deny that their criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, their criticism is often accompanied by accusations that the Jewish lobby (or neo-cons, a fancy name for this lobby) is manipulating world events. Their obsession with Israel has led them to take their eyes off the danger to their own safety posed by radical Islam, often at their own peril -- New York, Madrid and London come to mind. Even though, in a rational world all the people in the region deserve to live in peace and freedom, we Jew infidels understand that the struggle for the Holy Land is about genocide, not independence or justice. It has been claimed that the wall of hate from one end of the Arab world to the other is generated by Israel's "occupation." If this is true, how can one explain the many wars waged against Israel prior to the "occupation" and the acts of hatred by Arabs toward Jews that took place long before Israel came into being? There is no question that Israel has not always been just. There are many people including Jews who believe that Israel lost its soul when it occupied Arab lands. I happen to be one of them. But it must be acknowledged that Israel has tried to abandon the "occupation." First it negotiated with Yasser Arafat whose response was the Second Intifada. Then it withdrew from Lebanon and finally from Gaza only to have Hamas, the elected government of the Palestinians, identify Israel's unilateral pull out as weakness that it has exploited by ratcheting up the violence Priorities must change. So with respect, I beg my friends in the media and academia, in government and the professions -- some who are Canada's intellectual elite -- to set aside the cycle of violence moral equality shtick, and for all our sakes finally acknowledge that it is not the occupation; it is not Israel's penchant for killing Palestinian kids in Gaza, as a journalist friend of mine madly suggested. It is rather, the desire of radical Muslims to reclaim land that they believe once belonged to them. This includes Spain and other areas that Muslims once ruled, the Dar al-Islam, the lands of Islam as they so beautifully describe it. To my friends, I respectfully suggest that combating Islamic fascism should be a greater priority for you than demonizing Israel. Utilize the energy devoted to hating Israel to educate others, maybe assisting teetering young Muslims to appreciate our way of life, or providing assistance to Palestinians to help them shed their victim mentality, so that they can begin to build a country of their own, free from the imperative to destroy their neighbor and free from having to take revenge. There's a lot of work to do, but none of it will get done if your negative feelings towards Israel end up assisting its enemies, who, whether you like it or not, are your enemies too. Contact Mrla26 by email at mrla26@aol.com |
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ABBAS ENDORSES HIZBOLLAH
Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, August 9, 2006. |
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Jack wrote, "He's the Good Guy, remember? The 'moderate.' The peace partner. He's the one the GOI gave a thousand rifles and 3 million rounds of ammunition so that he could fight the extremists. George and Condi agree, after all." This is a David Bedein special to the Evening Bulletin. These are Excerpts of remarks by Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian President, (Al Arabiya TV, 17:45 (GMT+3) AUGUST 06, 2006) "We definitely perceive the resistance in Lebanon as noble Arab resistance". Note - The following was translated from Arabic by the Middle East News Line |
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ANCHOR: The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has noted that members of the Palestinian government are either being arrested or pursued by the Israelis. His declarations came in a press conference that was held in Sana'a, as he was carrying out an official visit. MAHMOUD ABBAS: The Palestinian government members unfortunately are either being arrested or pursued. Most of them who are in the West Bank were arrested, and some of them in Gaza are wanted or were captured, and the Israeli air forces are pursuing them from one place to another. ANCHOR: President Abbas has mentioned that the Palestinian issue is the source of all the other issues in the Middle East and the world. He called for a return to negotiations. MR. ABBAS: The Palestinian issue is the source of all the other issues, not only in the region but in the world. And I believe that every wise and rational person believes that it is important to return to the negotiating table. But this is not for going back to what is called the negotiations process. The 'process' takes years and will not lead to any results. What is required is that the world gets into the essence of the topic and deal with it from it roots. I hope that this lesson has reached their hearts and minds. ANCHOR: The Palestinian President believes that anyone who defies the occupation will get the same thing that the Palestinian people are fighting for. Abu Mazen described the resistance in Lebanon as 'noble Arab resistance'. MR. ABBAS: The Arab people's resistance leads to the same issue. This means that anyone who defies the occupation is going to the same target and will get the same result. Therefore, we definitely perceive the resistance in Lebanon as noble Arab resistance. There is no doubt about that. It is fighting forcefully and it gave a good example of
resistance. However, in the end, other processes might appear in
different directions. For instance, there is an agenda in Lebanon. If
this agenda is authorized, it will deal with the Lebanese process.
There isn't any corresponding Palestinian agenda, therefore this might
take place after some time.
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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TARGET THE IRANIANS IN LEBANON
Posted by Aaron Bashani, August 9, 2006. |
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The following letter was sent today to the Jerusalme Post today. |
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The nature of the Iranian threat to the world is becoming clearer by the day as Teheran maneuvers its Hizballah proxies in Lebanon. Every Arab leader knows that this policy also includes the eventual Iranian take-over of the entire Persian Gulf. For the Ayatollahs, the road to Arabia and its Holy Cities passes through Palestine and Iraq. To achieve this, the Iranian Shia leaders have stated their willingness to suicidally sacrifice millions for Islam, if only thereby to eliminate the Jewish State. They have started this in Lebanon and Gaza, so far on the cheap, through the death of only Jews and Arabs. And yet, the current Iranian-Hizballah war against the Jewish State and Sunni Arabs provides Israel with a unique opportunity to send a message to the Iranian war machine by specifically targeting not just Hizballah but each and every Iranian in Lebanon, wherever they may sit or travel. However painful it may be for us now, this first campaign in the global war against the fanatical leaders in Teheran can only be won by the removal of the Iranians from the Mediterranean Basin and the creation of a Free Lebanon. Contact Aaron Bashani at artb@netmedia.net.il |
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THE CHANGE IN ISRAEL'S NATIONAL DIRECTION
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 9, 2006. |
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For the past 14 years, Israel has invested all of its energy in pursuit of make-pretend peace. Now the Olmert government has at last changed direction. The Olmert government is, instead, conducting a make-pretend war. 
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BERNARD LEWIS' ANALYSIS: WE MUST WATCH FOR "AUGUST 22," A TERRIFYING DATE
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 8, 2006. |
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Friends, You better pay attention to my writing and the article below. If in the cold war the emphasis was on "M utual Assured Destruction" [MAD], this MAD is no longer. Now we have mad rogue regimes that will not abide by MAD, rather will push the [red] button on first opportunity given to them. If you have not figured this out yet, all the 22 Arab countries are governed and controlled by the most dysfunctional governments and the Arab societies are all apartheid like, extremely sexist, racist, and the like negative traits the USA NEVER paid attention to and recognized before. Since their nature is to blame all their faults on others, they so readily put their downfall on Israel accusing and blaming here for being Apartheid, racist and Nazi state. In addition, we now need to concentrate on saving our planet from the Islam religion madness of MAD. Judaism and Christianity believe in the cosmic struggle at the end of time -- Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon; the Shiite Muslims believe in the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil. It is clear that the return of the "Hidden Imam" is defined by crazy Iran Ahmadinejad and his followers as follows: they clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the U.S. about nuclear development by Aug. 22. This was at first reported as "by the end of August," but Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement was more precise. What is the significance of Aug. 22 -- In the Islamic calendar this year, Aug. 22 corresponds to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. By tradition this is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back ( c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. Though it is far from certain that nutcase Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely on Aug. 22, it would be wise to bear this possibility in mind. Iranian 11th-grade schoolbook passage is revealing a quote made by Ayatollah Khomeini: "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [ i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom, which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours." For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement. I am scared; are you? This article by Bernard Lewis appeared today in the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, is the author, most recently, of "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" (Oxford University Press, 2004). http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115500154638829470.html |
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During the Cold War, both sides possessed weapons of mass destruction, but neither side used them, deterred by what was known as MAD, mutual assured destruction. Similar constraints have no doubt prevented their use in the confrontation between India and Pakistan. In our own day a new such confrontation seems to be looming between a nuclear-armed Iran and its favorite enemies, named by the late Ayatollah Khomeini as the Great Satan and the Little Satan, i.e., the United States and Israel. Against the U.S. the bombs might be delivered by terrorists, a method having the advantage of bearing no return address. Against Israel, the target is small enough to attempt obliteration by direct bombardment. It seems increasingly likely that the Iranians either have or very soon will have nuclear weapons at their disposal, thanks to their own researches (which began some 15 years ago), to some of their obliging neighbors, and to the ever-helpful rulers of North Korea. The language used by Iranian President Ahmadinejad would seem to indicate the reality and indeed the imminence of this threat. Would the same constraints, the same fear of mutual assured destruction, restrain a nuclear-armed Iran from using such weapons against the U.S. or against Israel? There is a radical difference between the Islamic Republic of Iran and other governments with nuclear weapons. This difference is expressed in what can only be described as the apocalyptic worldview of Iran's present rulers. This worldview and expectation, vividly expressed in speeches, articles and even schoolbooks, clearly shape the perception and therefore the policies of Ahmadinejad and his disciples. Even in the past it was clear that terrorists claiming to act in the name of Islam had no compunction in slaughtering large numbers of fellow Muslims. A notable example was the blowing up of the American embassies in East Africa in 1998, killing a few American diplomats and a much larger number of uninvolved local passersby, many of them Muslims. There were numerous other Muslim victims in the various terrorist attacks of the last 15 years. The phrase "Allah will know his own" is usually used to explain such apparently callous unconcern; it means that while infidel, i.e., non-Muslim, victims will go to a well-deserved punishment in hell, Muslims will be sent straight to heaven. According to this view, the bombers are in fact doing their Muslim victims a favor by giving them a quick pass to heaven and its delights -- the rewards without the struggles of martyrdom. School textbooks tell young Iranians to be ready for a final global struggle against an evil enemy, named as the U.S., and to prepare themselves for the privileges of martyrdom. A direct attack on the U.S., though possible, is less likely in the immediate future. Israel is a nearer and easier target, and Mr. Ahmadinejad has given indication of thinking along these lines. The Western observer would immediately think of two possible deterrents. The first is that an attack that wipes out Israel would almost certainly wipe out the Palestinians too. The second is that such an attack would evoke a devastating reprisal from Israel against Iran, since one may surely assume that the Israelis have made the necessary arrangements for a counterstrike even after a nuclear holocaust in Israel. The first of these possible deterrents might well be of concern to the Palestinians -- but not apparently to their fanatical champions in the Iranian government. The second deterrent -- the threat of direct retaliation on Iran -- is, as noted, already weakened by the suicide or martyrdom complex that plagues parts of the Islamic world today, without parallel in other religions, or for that matter in the Islamic past. This complex has become even more important at the present day, because of this new apocalyptic vision. In Islam, as in Judaism and Christianity, there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time -- Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined. Mr. Ahmadinejad and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the U.S. about nuclear development by Aug. 22. This was at first reported as "by the end of August," but Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement was more precise. What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back ( c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind. A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours." In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead -- hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement. How then can one confront such an enemy, with such a view of life and death? Some immediate precautions are obviously possible and necessary. In the long term, it would seem that the best, perhaps the only hope is to appeal to those Muslims, Iranians, Arabs and others who do not share these apocalyptic perceptions and aspirations, and feel as much threatened, indeed even more threatened, than we are. There must be many such, probably even a majority in the lands of Islam. Now is the time for them to save their countries, their societies and their religion from the madness of MAD. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@gmail.com |
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AN OPEN LETTER TO PAT BUCHANAN
Posted by Burt Prelutsky, August 8, 2006. |
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Pat Buchanan, not satisfied merely looking like a Herblock depiction of a bigot, a man who never allows an opportunity to slam Israel slip through his fingers, has been on a rampage because Israel has finally gone after the murderous thugs and sadists of Hezbollah. The fact that the terrorists don't wear uniforms means that every time the Israelis kill one of them, Buchanan and his ilk get to insist that Israel is targeting civilians. Buchanan's concern for civilians isn't nearly so evident when it's Jews who are targeted by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PLO's suicide bombers. One of the sillier things Israel has done in recent years was to fall for the land for peace con game. They surrendered territory and any number of settlements as a gesture of good will. Good will gestures made to terrorists and tyrants are the height of folly and cowardice, and it doesn't matter whether it's the Arabs or Adolf Hitler. Offer your hand to the tiger and don't expect him to stop nibbling when he gets to your wrist. Because Israel plays such a prominent role in the news and because it's managed, against all odds, to survive for 58 years, one can easily over-estimate its actual place in the world. The fact of the matter is that unless you were at the top of your geography class, you'd be hard-pressed to find it on your globe. To give you a clear idea of what Israel is up against, keep in mind that there are 22 countries in the Arab League. The League encompasses 5,200,000 square miles; Israel was 8,000 square miles before giving up the aforementioned turf. What's more, there are 312 million people living in those 22 countries. Israel's population is six million, more than a million of whom are Arabs. So far as Buchanan and his friends are concerned, it would seem that the only thing that's required to make Israel the jewel of the Middle East is for those five million Jews to disappear. You have to wonder what it is about those 8,000 square miles that the Arabs covet. It's not as if Israel sits on huge oil deposits. Why aren't five million square miles enough? I mean, if you had five million dollars, would you cry yourself to sleep every night because you didn't have $5,008,000? Let's face it -- before the Jews built universities, hospitals and concert halls, and planted trees and crops, the place was nothing but 8,000 square miles of kitty litter. So many people are happy to trumpet "No blood for oil." How is it that we never hear them, or Mr. Buchanan, telling the Arabs, "No blood for sand"? Contact Burt Prelutsky at burtprelutsky@aol.com |
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97% OF PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY ARABS SUPPORT HIZBULLAH
Posted by David Meir-Levi, August 8, 2006. |
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I don't trust polls taken in populations under the control of a violent brutal terrorist government..... ......BUT..... ......these numbers, even if we pare them down significantly to account for those who are saying what they think the Authority wants them to say, auger ill for peace with the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. When they think that there is a real chance of a military victory over Israel (Just by not wiping Hezbollah out in the first week, Israel has 'lost the war' in the eyes of many Arabs and other Moslems worldwide), a significant number suddenly reveal their true preferences. If they had their 'druthers', they'd 'druther' a "Palestine" from the river to the sea, with the Jews either dead or exiled. Where would negotations start? Kill only half of us? This situation substantiates what Israeli military leaders have been sayiing since the late 1930's: peace is possible only when the Arab states and terrorist leaders are convinced that they are not able to destroy Israel. European, UN, UK and USA diplomatic niceties that pretend that there is a political solution to the conflict only feed the Arab lust for another Jihad and another war and more terrorism. This was written by Hillel Fendel of Arutz Sheva
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A poll taken early this month by Near East Consulting, a Ramallah-based data analysis firm, shows that virtually the entire Palestinian Authority - 97% of those polled - support Hizbullah. Arab-affairs correspondent Dalit HaLevy reports that the poll's results are a sign of the radicalization of PA society. Among Christian Arabs in the PA, 95% said they support Hizbullah. Over 90% said the kidnapped Israeli soldiers should not be freed unconditionally, while 6% said they should never be returned. 55% of those polled said they identify with Hizbullah's goal of destroying Israel - 11% more than in a previous poll a month earlier. Only 51% said they support a diplomatic agreement with Israel - a drop of 25% - although 78% support a ceasefire. |
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IN THE MUSLIM MIND, IT'S ALL ABOUT SELF RESPECT
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, August 8, 2006. |
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The ego-deflated Arab street now creates a hero in the embodiment of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hizbullah, for presumably standing tall against the Jewish Israeli IDF dynamo, even though ignored facts on the ground suggest cowardly Hizbullah fighters place their bodies and deadly weapons including missiles and launchers next to Lebanese civilians, including women and children, thus forcing moral Israeli troops to surgically limit the scope of their actions. In other words, mighty Israel refuses to obliterate its sworn enemy, as it would inflict unacceptable levels of civilian casualties. Period! Some hero! Yet, Nasrallah calls the shots, safely hiding within some bunker, his hide obviously more valuable than the expendable hides of ordinary Lebanese Arabs. Alas not surprisingly, a psychologically battered cognitively dissonant humiliated portion of Islamic culture, bereft of achievement, losers floundering within a technologically advancing secular world, programmed to respond favorably to sadistically sick martyrdom, hitches its wagon to any perceived superstar, even one with truly despicable credentials. None of this suggests that Hizbullah is not a well-trained army with advanced weaponry provided by Iran and Syria, however, it still incorporates civilian human shields into a maniacal strategy, and is still led by the aforementioned ambitious self-consumed psychopath who yearns to someday assert control over an intolerant fundamentalist neo-Ottoman Shiite empire composed of today's Middle East as well as Western Europe. Indeed, many Muslims, especially Sunni Muslims, who support this Machiavellian religious rogue for presumably standing up to Israel, concurrently perhaps unwittingly support an emerging Shiite revolution, ever contrary to the tenets of Sunni doctrine. This of course does not sit well with current Islamic rulers, more than a little fearful of their own vulnerability if Nasrallah led Hizbullah, proxy of Iran, is perceived by Arab hoi polloi to prevail over Israel. Such a less than desirable potential shift in power structure can indeed create the strangest of bedfellows. Thus might prescient Israeli diplomats consider clandestinely forming alliances with agitated Sunni Middle East rulers sensing worse case scenario evictions from their virtual thrones? Why not begin to detract from Nasrallah's image in the mainstream Arab media? Exploit the fact that ordinary Lebanese civilians, especially women and children, are continually put in harms way, in effect used as human shields, by craven Hizbullah pseudo-soldiers? How might such a humiliating war plan bolster the manhood of an ordinary Arab male? How can a psychologically downtrodden Arab street support an army of "girly men", hiding behind the skirts of women and immature bodies of young children? Archenemy Israeli warriors would never so lower themselves indeed resort to such a humiliating tactic. Furthermore, displaying a frightened Nasrallah bedecked in big man's size de rigueur burka and head scarf, crouching in a bunker, with Israeli warplanes soaring in the distant skies, on the front page of popular Sunni publications, would go a long way in shattering any macho illusions of a fierce Muslim fighter, ala Islam's revered prophet Mohammad. Never forget, in the minds of ego-deflated Muslims, it's all about gaining self-respect by displaying strength. Nasrallah's Hizbullah fanatics, more importantly Iran, will lose that all-important war for hearts and minds of the Muslim masses if perceived in a humiliating light. No missile strike can compete with such a mind reprogramming coup d'etat. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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MEL GIBSON AND THE JEWS
Posted by Harry W. Weber, August 8, 2006. |
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The recent anti-Semitic outbursts of that super- talented actor, Mel Gibson, captured the attention of the world. "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world", declared the inebriated actor. He later apologized profusely, claiming that he is not a Jew hater. The question is: Was the denial made by Mel Gibson the persona, or by Mel Gibson, the actor? The Jewish sages nearly two thousand years ago, in their psychological wisdom, declared that a person's true character can be revealed -- b'kisso, b'koso uve ka'aso -- through his wallet, his cup and bile. In other words, a person exposes his real self by his behavior when money is involved, his behavior when intoxicated, and his behavior when angry. All this they perceived before the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, talked about the id, ego and superego in the human psyche. One does not have to be a Sigmund Freud to come to the sad conclusion that one who was raised as the son of a rabid anti-Semite and a shameless Holocaust denier, who produced a blatantly anti-Semitic movie (The Passion of the Christ), and who answered an interviewer's simple question, "Did the Holocaust happen?", not with an immediate and resounding "of course", but with a rambling, confused and inconclusive monologue -- is a fell fledged anti-Semite! No doubt about it. The only doubt remaining in this matter is the response of the Jewish community at large, and even more important for Mel Gibson, the response of the Hollywood moguls, many of whom, to Mel Gibson's misfortunate, are Jewish. Will they cut off all business contacts with the anti-Semite, or in the name of business, will they decide, after a politically correct period of seeming displeasure, to "forgive and forget"? Will they punish one of Hollywood's biggest stars and lose all those millions? My guess is that the spin doctors have already decided how to "rehabilitate" the anti-Semite. The Jews will forgive and forget till the next Gibson scandal. I suggest another approach. Forgive Mel Gibson if he agrees to the following plan: 1) that a leading Rabbi will accompany him to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and to Yad Vashem in Israel; 2) that he be given a few lessons in recent Jewish history by Elie Wiesel; 3) and finally after he has been detoxified and de-anti-Semitized, he should be "encouraged" to donate six million dollars (peanuts to him) toward Holocaust education in the world. That sum is just one percent of the worldwide gross sales of his movie The Passion of the Christ, and just happens to be one dollar for every Jew murdered in the Holocaust. A more fitting donation is hard to find, nor a more appropriate expression of contrition. Only then should his apologies be believed -- for by then he would have satisfied the condition of the Sages -- b'kisso, b'koso ube ka'aso. His repentance will be through his money, his drinking, and his anger. Harry W. Weber is a C.P.A. (U.S., Israel) and a political commentator, whose English articles appear on many websites. Contact him by email at sandyirv@netvision.net.il |
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TALKIN' ABOUT A REVOLUTION
Posted by Bryna Berch, August 8, 2006. |
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This article is by Caroline Glick and it appeared today in the
Jerusalem Post |
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It is hard to know how the current phase of the war will end. If all goes according to Condoleezza Rice's plan, the UN Security Council will vote today on the draft cease-fire resolution negotiated between the US and France. Whatever marginal diplomatic gains the Olmert government may try to convince the public the draft resolution contains for Israel, the fact is that regardless of the language eventually adopted, and whatever force of French, Egyptian, Turkish, Italian and German soldiers will or will not be deployed to Lebanon, all any cease-fire resolution will do is ensure that there will be another round of war. This is the case because none of the moves being considered involve the one action that would prevent the next war. That action is an Israeli victory against Hizbullah in Lebanon, and an Israeli and allied strike against Hizbullah's state sponsors Syria and Iran, which promote Hizbullah's wanton aggression against Israel as a central campaign in their global jihad aimed at annihilating the Jewish state and defeating Western civilization. In the hours that followed Hizbullah's massive missile barrage against Israel Sunday, which left 15 dead and more than 150 wounded, many voices expressed the hope and expectation that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the IDF General Staff would finally approve a military campaign aimed at destroying Hizbullah's capacity to attack Israel. It was anticipated that they would finally authorize the IDF's plan to advance ground forces to the Litani River and take the necessary measures in Tyre, Sidon and other cities to wipe out Hizbullah's capacity to launch missiles against Israel. But Olmert would have none of it. In the aftermath of the carnage in Kfar Giladi and Haifa, he continued to maintain that Israel had already won the war, and that the best way to end the conflict was to accept a Security Council resolution that would enable Hizbullah - the advance guard of the Iranian army of jihad - not only to survive as a fighting force, but to declare victory against Israel. OLMERT TODAY devotes his attention not to addressing the question of how Israel can win this war, but rather to how he can convince the Israeli public that he is not a failure. And he is not alone. Over the past week or so the main push of the Olmert government, the IDF General Staff and the left-wing establishment in Israel has been to prepare the public to accept their version of events. All three groups have their own specific agenda. But their goal - maintaining their power and evading accountability for their leadership failures - is a shared one. Olmert and his colleagues are pushing three ideas to advance their claims of competence. First, they claim that Israel has already won the war. They back up this claim by pretending that the draft UN Security Council resolution is a success, and that a multinational force will protect us. Second, they pretend that the Palestinian jihad against Israel is unrelated to the Lebanese jihad against Israel and that, as a result, their plan to transfer control over Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians remains sound. To this end they continue to support Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas even as he openly praises Hizbullah and his own security forces participate in terrorist attacks against Israelis. Moreover, they ignore the fact that Hizbullah terrorist-in-chief Hassan Nasrallah is the most popular figure in Palestinian society. Finally, by preventing the ground offensive that all those IDF reserve divisions were called up to execute, they continue to pretend that the control of territory is unnecessary for national defense. After all, what is an air-based strategy other than a way to convince the public that wars can be won without land? THE ONLY way Israel can beat Hizbullah is by conquering enough Lebanese territory to take Israeli territory out of missile range and holding that territory long enough to kill the Hizbullah operatives launching the attacks and destroy their arsenals. Yet today ground operations center on retaking the former security zone - a tiny foothold, control of which makes no impact on Hizbullah's continued ability to rain missiles on sovereign Israeli territory and render a quarter of the population internal refugees or relegated to hiding in bomb shelters for weeks upon weeks. And the message is clear: Since the ground campaign has been unsuccessful in stopping the onslaught, control of territory is not a guarantee of defense and can therefore continue to be surrendered. As for the IDF, its narrative was best enunciated by OC Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin at the cabinet meeting on Sunday. After impressing the impressionable ministers and media with data on the number of bombing sorties and the number of Hizbullah missile launchers destroyed, Yadlin presented the IDF's case for victory. He claimed that Nasrallah has gone from being perceived as the hero of the Arab world to being seen as the destroyer of Lebanon. According to Yadlin, all Hizbullah has going for it is now is Syrian and Iranian support and a whole mess of missiles. In so arguing, Yadlin conveniently ignored the fact that pro-Hizbullah rallies are being attended by millions throughout not just the Muslim world, but in the West as well. The war in Lebanon has led senior Egyptian figures to call for the abrogation of the peace treaty with Israel; to the galvanizing of support for jihad in Iraq and, indeed, throughout the world; and to the scapegoating of Israel again by Western leftists as the aggressor in the conflict. For their part, the leftist pontificators in the media, supported by their fellow travelers in Israeli academia, who together took control over the public debate a generation ago, are continuing their advance. These people, who forced the public to replace enquiry with intellectually fatuous slogans like "occupation" and "the Lebanon quagmire" and "peace," which all serve to block enquiry, are plowing on. Rejecting the growing accusation that their push to force Israel to surrender South Lebanon to Hizbullah six years ago and surrender Gaza to Hamas and Fatah last summer is the reason for the current war, they claim they were right all along. LEFTIST NEWSPAPER columnists and television and radio commentators are arguing that the cause of the current war is Israel's refusal, to date, to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria, and Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem to Fatah and Hamas. In their world the fact that global jihadists are explicit about their intention to destroy "the Zionist entity," whatever its territorial boundaries may be, is studiously denied. The fact that Palestinian society is a jihadist society and that the international Left increasingly rejects Israel's very right to exist remains either irrelevant, or a matter that can be appeased away by further territorial giveaways. Additionally, leftist opinion-makers are now arguing that the main lesson of the war is that unilateral Israeli actions are the problem. Writing in Ma'ariv last Thursday, Nadav Eyal argued that the next step will be to use the multinational force that the UN, the Olmert government and the State Department wish to deploy to Lebanon as a model that will enable future Israeli withdrawals from Judea and Samaria (and presumably from the Golan Heights and Jerusalem). By this new logic we should continue to retreat, but next time, the French and the Turks will protect us. Many international commentators who understand what a Hizbullah victory will mean for international security rightly argue that the international community today is repeating the mistakes of the 1930s, when it refused to contend with the growing dangers emanating from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Here in Israel, the historical period that is being recalled with increasing frequency is the winter of 1973. Then, in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, as Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan sought to place all the blame for Israel's refusal to prepare for Egypt's October 6 invasion, in spite of obvious signs that it was about to take place, on the IDF, demobilized IDF reservists, led by Captain (res.) Moti Ashkenazi, launched a national protest movement. Their demand for accountability forced Meir and Dayan to resign and set the conditions for the Likud's rise to power in 1977. THERE IS a palpable sense in Israel that we are on the edge of a revolutionary moment. Our national leadership in the government, the IDF and the media has utterly failed us. As we stand poised on the edge of an even larger war, the main question that hangs in the balance is what lessons the Israeli people will take from the current fiasco. Will we continue to believe their fictions, or will we find a way to abandon them and move on with leaders who understand that territory is vital, that the jihad is real, that Israel has a right to defensible borders, and that Israel is not to blame for our enemies' hatred? |
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THE BEST ANALYSIS TO DATE OF THE ORIGINS OF THIS WAR AGAINST HEZBOLLAH TERROR
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 8, 2006. |
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This is
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LEBANESE JOURNALIST WRITES THE TRUTH ABOUT THE WAR
Posted by Jack Golbert, August 8, 2006. |
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This is from http://forums.france5.fr/arretsurimages/Lateleaujourlejour/ Les-gens-plus-hypocrites-terre-sujet-3041-1.htm It is by Michael Béhé in Beirut. It was translated from the French by Llewellyn Brown. Thanks are due Barry Shaw (ns_netre@matav.net.il) for including the satellite picture as part of his distributing the translation of the original article from the Metula News Agency. Frequently, the translation has appeared without the satellite photo. As Shaw writes in his introduction to the article "You can read what is really going on in Lebanon. These are some of the truths that the international media are not telling you. They highlight the complicity of the Lebanese Government with Iran and Hizbollah." |
In fact, our country had become an extension of Iran, and our so-called political power also served as a political and military cover for the Islamists of Teheran. We suddenly discovered that Teheran had stocked more than 12,000 missiles, of all types and calibers, on our territory and that they had patiently, systematically, organized a suppletive force, with the help of the Syrians, that took over, day after day, all the rooms in the House of Lebanon. Just imagine it: we stock ground-to-ground missiles, Zilzals, on our territory and that the firing of such devices without our knowledge, has the power to spark a regional strategic conflict and, potentially, bring about the annihilation of Lebanon. We knew that Iran, by means of Hezbollah, was building a veritable Maginot line in the south but it was the pictures of Maroun el-Ras and Bint J'bail that revealed to us the magnitude of these constructions. This amplitude made us understand several things at once: that we were no longer masters of our destiny. That we do not possess the most basic means necessary to reverse the course of this state of things and that those who turned our country into an outpost of their islamic doctrine's combat against Israel did not have the slightest intention of willingly giving up their hold over us. The national salvation discussions that concerned the application of Resolution 1559 and which included most of the Lebanese political movements were simply for show. Iran and Syria had not invested billions of dollars on militarizing Lebanon in order to wage their war, simply to give in to the desire of the Lebanese and the international community for them to pack up their hardware and set it up back home. And then, the indecision, the cowardice, the division and the irresponsible behavior of our leaders are such that they had no effort to make to show their talent. No need to engage a wrestling match with the other political components of the Land of Cedars. The latter showed themselves - and continue to show themselves - to be inconsistent. Of course, our army, reshaped over the years by the Syrian occupier so it could no longer fulfill its role as protector of the nation, did not have the capacity to tackle the militamen of the Hezb [hezb-Allah: the party of Allah. Translator's note]. Our army whom it is more dangerous to call upon - because of the explosive equilibrium that constitutes each of its brigades - than to shut up behind locked doors in its barracks. A force that is still largely loyal to its former foreign masters, to the point of being uncontrollable; to the point of having collaborated with the Iranians to put OUR coastal radar stations at the disposal of their missiles, that almost sunk an Israeli boat off the shores of Beirut. As for the non-Hezbollah elements in the government, they knew nothing of the existence of land-to-sea missiles on our territory? That caused the totally justified destruction of all OUR radar stations by the Hebrews' army. And even then we are getting off lightly in these goings-on. It is easy now to whine and gripe, and to play the hypocritical role of victims. We know full well how to get others to pity us and to claim that we are never responsible for the horrors that regularly occur on our soil. Of course, that is nothing but rubbish! The Security Council's Resolution 1559 - that demanded that OUR government deploy OUR army on OUR sovereign territory, along OUR international border with Israel and that it disarm all the militia on OUR land - was voted on 2 September 2004. We had two years to put implement this resolution and thus guarantee a peaceful future to our children but we did strictly nothing. Our greatest crime - which was not the only one! - was not that we did not succeed but that we did not attempt or undertake anything. And that was the fault of none else than the pathetic Lebanese politicians. Our government, from the very moment the Syrian occupier left, let ships and truckloads of arms pour into our country. Without even bothering to look at their cargo. They jeopardized all chances for the rebirth of our country by confusing the Cedar Revolution with the liberation of Beirut. In reality, we had just received the chance - a sort of unhoped-for moratorium - that allowed us to take the future into our own hands, nothing more. To think that we were not even capable of agreeing to "hang" Émile Lahoud - Al-Assad's puppet - on Martyrs' Square and that he is still president of what some insist on calling our republic? There is no need to look any further: we are what we are, that is to say, not much. All those who assume public and communicational responsibilities in this country are responsible for this catastrophe. Except those of my colleagues, journalists and editors, who are dead, assassinated by the Syrian thugs, because they were clearly less cowardly than those who survived. And Lahoud remained at Baadbé [the president of the Lebanese Republic's palace. Editor's note]! And when I speak of a catastrophe, I do not mean the action accomplished by Israel in response to the aggression against its civilians and its army, which was produced from our soil and that we did strictly nothing to avoid, and for which we are consequently responsible. Any avoiding of this responsibility - some people here do not have the minimal notions of international law necessary to understand! - means that Lebanon, as a state, does not exist. The hypocrisy goes on: even some editorialists of the respectable L'Orient-le-Jour put Hezbollah's savagery and that of the Israelis on a par! Shame! Spinelessness! And who are we in this fable? Poor ad æternum victims of the ambitions of others? Politicians either support this insane idea or keep silent. Those we would expect to speak, to save our image, remain silent like the others. And I am precisely alluding to general Aoun, who could have made a move by proclaiming the truth. Even his enemy, Walid Jumblatt, the Druse leader, has proved to be less vague. Lebanon a victim? What a joke! Before the Israeli attack, Lebanon no longer existed, it was no more than a hologram. At Beirut innocent citizens like myself were forbidden access to certain areas of their own capital. But our police, our army and our judges were also excluded. That was the case, for example, of Hezbollah's and the Syrians' command zone in the Haret Hreik quarter (in red on the satellite map). A square measuring a kilometer wide, a capital within the capital, permanently guarded by a Horla army [1], possessing its own institutions, its schools, its crèches, its tribunals, its radio, its television and, above all -- its government. A "government" that, alone decided, in the place of the figureheads of the Lebanese government - in which Hezbollah also had its ministers! - to attack a neighboring state, with which we had no substantial or grounded quarrel, and to plunge US into a bloody conflict. And if attacking a sovereign nation on its territory, assassinating eight of its soldiers, kidnapping two others and, simultaneously, launching missiles on nine of its towns does not constitute a casus belli, the latter juridical principle will seriously need revising. Thus almost all of these cowardly politicians, including numerous shiah leaders and religious personalities themselves, are blessing each bomb that falls from a Jewish F-16 turning the insult to our sovereignty that was Haret Hreik, right in the heart of Beirut, into a lunar landscape. Without the Israelis, how could we have received another chance - that we in no way deserve! - to rebuild our country? Each Irano-Syrian fort that Jerusalem destroys, each islamic fighter they eliminate, and Lebanon proportionally starts to live again! Once again, the soldiers of Israel are doing our work. Once again, like in 1982, we are watching - cowardly, lying low, despicable, and insulting them to boot - their heroic sacrifice that allows us to keep hoping. To not be swallowed up in the bowels of the earth. Because, of course, by dint of not giving a damn for southern Lebanon, of letting foreigners take hold of the privileges that belong to us, we no longer had the ability to recover our independence and sovereignty. If, at the end of this war, the Lebanese army retakes control over its territory and gets rid of the state within a state - that tried to suffocate the latter -, it will only be thanks to Tsahal [the Israeli Defense Forces. Translator's note], and that, all these faint-hearted politicians, from the crook Fouad Siniora, to Saad Hariri, the son of Lebanon's plunderer, and general Aoun all know perfectly well. As for the destruction caused by the Israelis ... that is another imposture: look at the satellite map! I have situated, as best I could, BUT IN THEIR CORRECT PROPORTIONS, the parts of my capital that have been destroyed by Israel. They are Haret Hreik - in its totality - and the dwellings of Hezbollah's leaders, situated in the large Shi'a suburb of Dayaa (as they spell it) and that I have circled in blue. In addition to these two zones, Tsahal has exploded a nine-storied building that housed Hezbollah's command, in Beirut's city center, above and slightly to the left (to the north west) of Haret Hreik on the map. It was Nasrallah's "perch" inside the city, whereby he asserted his presence and domination over us. A depot of Syrian arms in the port, two army radars that the Shiite officers had put at the Hezb's disposal, and a truck suspected of transporting arms, in the Christian quarter of Ashrafieh. Moreover the road and airport infrastructures were put out of working order: they served to provide Hezbollah with arms and munitions. Apart from that, Tsahal has neither hit nor deteriorated anything, and all those who speak of the "destruction of Beirut" are either liars, Iranians, anti-Semites or absent. Even the houses situated one alley's distance from the targets I mentioned have not been hit, they have not even suffered a scratch; on contemplating these results of this work you understand the meaning of the concept "surgical strikes" and you can admire the dexterity of the Jewish pilots. 
< center>Satellite map of Beirut (Google Earth) Circled in red, the razed area, in blue, area where the dwellings belonging to the terrorist organization's top brass have been destroyed (Michael Béhé) Beirut, all the rest of Beirut, 95% of Beirut, lives and breathes better than a fortnight ago. All those who have not sided with terrorism know they have strictly nothing to fear from the Israeli planes, on the contrary! One example: last night the restaurant where I went to eat was jammed full and I had to wait until 9:30 pm to get a table. Everyone was smiling, relaxed, but no one filmed them: a strange destruction of Beirut, is it not? Of course, there are some 500,000 refugees from the south who are experiencing a veritable tragedy and who are not smiling. But Jean [Tsadik. Editor's note], who has his eyes fixed on Kfar Kileh, and from whom I have learned to believe each word he says, assures me that practically all the houses of the aforesaid refugees are intact. So they will be able to come back as soon as Hezbollah is vanquished. The defeat of the Shi'a fundamentalists of Iranian allegiance is imminent. The figures communicated by Nasrallah's minions and by the Lebanese Red-Cross are deceiving: firstly, of the 400 dead declared by Lebanon, only 150 are real collateral civilian victims of the war, the others were militiamen without uniform serving Iran. The photographic report "Les Civils des bilans libanais" made by Stéphane Juffa for our agency constitutes, to this day, the unique tangible evidence of this gigantic morbid manipulation. Which makes this document eminently important. Moreover, Hassan Nasrallah's organization has not lost 200 combatants, as Tsahal claims. This figure only concerns the combats taking place on the border and even then the Israelis underestimate it, for a reason that escapes me, by about a hundred militiamen eliminated. The real count of Hezbollah's casualties, that includes those dead in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, Baalbek and their other camps, rocket and missile launchers and arms and munition depots amounts to 1,100 supplementary Hezbollah militiamen who have definitively ceased to terrorize and humiliate my country. Like the overwhelming majority of Lebanese, I pray that no one puts an end to the Israeli attack before it finishes shattering the terrorists. I pray that the Hebrew soldiers will penetrate all the hidden recesses of southern Lebanon and will hunt out, in our stead, the vermin that has taken root there. Like the overwhelming majority of Lebanese, I have put the champagne ready in the refrigerator to celebrate the Israeli victory. But contrary to them - and to paraphrase Michel Sardou [a French singer. Translator's note] -, I recognize that they are also fighting for our liberty, another battle "where you were not present"! And in the name of my people, I wish to express my infinite gratitude to the relatives of the Israeli victims - civilian and military - whose loved ones have fallen so that I can live standing upright in my identity. They should know that I weep with them. As for the pathetic clique that thrives at the head of my country, it is time for them to understand that after this war, after our natural allies have rid us of those who are hindering us from rebuilding a nation, a cease-fire or an armistice will not suffice. To ensure the future of Lebanon, it is time to make peace with those we have no reason to go to war against. In fact, only peace will ensure peace. Someone must tell them because in this country we have not learnt what a truism is. Ména will continue to inform its readers of the evolution of the situation, by way of continuous official statements on this site for the minor developments, and by emailing "breaking news" to its subscribers, in the case of major events. Editor's Footnotes: 1. Michael Béhé is alluding to the book Le Horla by Guy de Maupassant. 2. Stéphane Juffa, "Les 'civils' des bilans libanais," July
24, 2006, Contact Jack Golbert at golbert@actcom.co.il
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PEACE NOW NOW IN HAARETZ; WRITING UP THE WARSAW UPRISING WITH
TODAY'S MEDIA'S MENTALITY
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 8, 2006. |
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1. Haaretz - the Palestinian newspaper printed in Hebrew.
Even Haaretz cannot ignore the sudden change in the national temperament. In the editorial cartoon today, one sees a Tel Aviv secularist bohemian type, in a cafe with a pony tail, wearing a Peace Now shirt, and declaring to his friends, "It will not end until we erase Beirut from the face of the earth." While the Far Left still churns out some "Peace by Surrender"
columns for Haaretz, it is amazing how many Op-Eds are being run there
cheering the fighters, endorsing the use of armed might by Israel,
pooh-poohing the reports of Lebanese civilian casualties, and
otherwise demonstrating patriotism so alien to Haaretz these past
decades. (See
Here is another way that you can tell that something basic has changed in Israel. In all previous wars, the radio filled up right away with whiny songs about yearnings for peace. In the Lebanese campaign of 1982, the radio even had various seditious, let's all surrender, songs. Ever since the Yom Kippur war, a horrid, cacophonous whiny song about "You promised us peace (but did not deliver)", which mars every Memorial Day in Israel. Even the Oslo withdrawals had their own peace songs, including one "Farewell to thee, oh Gaza." Well, the current war has produced but one song so far and it is a doosie! It is called Shir Ha-Milchama or the War Song and can be read in full in Hebrew here:
Here is a partial translation: But who can break a powerful people,
And who can defeat those ascending the mountain,
And who will raise their hands (in surrender) in the middle of the battlefield?
For we are stronger than ever,
Yes, folks, for the first time in two decades, there is talk in Israel not of being sensitive to The Other and demonstrating our commitment to sharing, but rather of Victory. The "V" word is being used in polite company 2. Wish I could take credit for this: www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1679958/posts
Europe's view of the present Israeli offensive against Hezbollah as an "overreaction" and "disproportionate use of force" is rooted in relatively recent history, say progressive researchers. In 1943, Europe itself suffered from a similar Jewish overreaction to some controversial German policies, in an event known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when Zionist radicals attacked the National Socialist German Workers Party that was loved by the German people for its far-reaching educational and social welfare services. In fact, many academics who teach Peace Studies at prestigious universities believe that it was the Zionists' "disproportionate use of force" that had ruined hopes for peace in Europe and caused a humanitarian crisis that could have easily be avoided if only Jews had shown restraint and tolerance towards the democratically elected German government. In fact, the reaction of world's media to the current Middle Eastern crisis is almost identical to that during the 1943 Warsaw crisis when, as modern historians claim, militant Zionists jeopardized the fragile peace that European leaders and progressive intellectuals had been trying to achieve by civilized means - as evidenced by the following collection of quotes and headlines of the time: European politicians avoid apportioning blame BRUSSELS, April 30, 1943 -- European leaders today expressed their "acute concern" over the intensifying conflict between Jews and the Gestapo in Warsaw, which they fear may further deteriorate fragile peace in Europe. Foreign ministers of the few remaining independent European powers adopted a declaration calling for an immediate end to the hostilities. Reflecting differing views among European nations, the document appears worded to avoid apportioning blame. It notes the Nazi Resistance must immediately make the operation of their gas chambers more transparent, while adding that Jews must show "utmost restraint" and not resort to "disproportionate action." League of Nations anti-bias panel accuse Jews of racism Members of a League of Nations anti-bias panel criticized Warsaw Jews on Thursday for violating humanitarian law and racially targeting the Nazis. Jewish Uprising Triggers Humanitarian Crisis 16 Germans dead and 85 wounded In Warsaw Slaughter Europe's call for an end to hostilities in the Warsaw Ghetto raises questions over how long Jews can stave off international pressure to end their three-week offensive in Warsaw, which has claimed hundreds of lives and created a refugee crisis. While moderate politicians are urging Jews to exercise "restraint" in their retaliation against the Nazis, most European leaders are denouncing Jewish retaliation as "disproportionate." Goebbels: Jews must be held accountable for war crimes Joseph Goebbels, a charismatic spokesman for the popular National Socialist German Workers Party, described the aftermath of Jewish strikes as "dramatic" and said Jewish forces had struck "very important elements of infrastructure," demanding that perpetrators be brought to justice at a press-conference in Berlin on Wednesday. "Jews must be held accountable for their war crimes, terrorism, and systematic human rights violations committed against the Aryan people," Mr. Goebbels said. How could both sides have blundered so badly? Miscalculations by Jews and Nazis have weakened Europe's fragile unity. A ceasefire is needed immediately. Where is Zionist exit strategy? Jewish hawks have started a war without any plausible objectives, any viable plan for disengagement, or any rational assessment of costs and benefits. Are they ready to absorb damage on the home front? Poll: The tide of public opinion has shifted in the direction of Gestapo The Jews' bloody response to concentration camps has united their enemies and divided their friends, the results of a current poll show. Atrocities committed by the Zionist militants in Warsaw and elsewhere have appalled Western opinion. The stature of the Gestapo grows, and the uprising has succeeded in discrediting moderate Germans and silencing the Nazi leaders in Berlin who were ready to start talking instead of killing. See also 3. Spinoza Spin:
THE SPIRIT OF SPINOZA HAD A BODY
"The spirit of Spinoza" by Cornell West.
Cornell West invokes the spirit of Spinoza to sustain his argument for a global humanitarian ceasefire in the Middle East. Enlightened by the great philosopher's Socratic spirit, all parties to the conflict would choose "self-examination" over "parochial prejudice," abandon their harmful attitudes and actions, settle their differences, and achieve security and justice for all. Unfortunately diplomatic efforts to impose a ceasefire in Lebanon apply only to the IDF, and Professor West's philosophical ceasefire applies only to Israel. On the philosophical level as in military matters, no one in the jihad camp-- Hizbullah combatants, their Iranian masters, Syrian go-betweens, and Lebanese hosts--derives the slightest value, idea, or action from any philosophical tradition that could be connected to Baruch Spinoza. In a spirit of tolerance we must at least grant them the right to espouse the jihad values they are currently applying in the field. An authentic ideological conflict fuels the persistent violence aimed at the State of Israel during six decades of existence. Every peace plan based on the assumption of shared values and pragmatic solutions has failed miserably. Let us not forget that the spirit of Spinoza lived in a body, a Jewish body. If Spinoza lived today, he might be a professor at Haifa University, in danger of being excommunicated from among the living by a killer rocket fired from neighboring Lebanon. In order to survive and elaborate brilliant philosophical thoughts he would have to seek shelter in the midsection of his tiny homeland. -- but Nasrallah has promised to seek him out and strike him dead right there -- or take refuge in a bomb shelter that might or might not resist the next attack. Cornell West solemnly promises this "resurrected" Spinoza: "the world must never ever permit another Holocaust against Jews." The rigorous philosopher might reply: it is not the world, it is Israel that will never permit another mass slaughter of Jews. Jews are not asking the world to make a promise that it cannot keep. And the very wording of West's appeal shows why. He condemns "the ugly ... subjugation of Palestinians, the plight of their prisoners in Israeli jails ... the anti-Arab bigotry. the vicious Israeli occupation.. and decries .. .innocent Lebanese victims of Israeli bombs." He asks why we refuse to enforce UN Resolutions that "condemn occupation like 242 and 338" and not "those that call for disarming people who resist occupation like 1559." The irony would not be lost on a brilliant philosophical mind. A well-intentioned professor draws up the indictment that would justify the next extermination project and packages it as an appeal for a reasonable approach to ending the conflict. The "barbaric suicide bombers" are simply expressing the above grievances; Hizbullah chief Nasrallah, echoing his mentor Ahmadinehad, plans to "resist occupation" by exterminating the Jews; the "vicious Israeli occupation" is its very existence; and the "plight" of Palestinian prisoners is a consequence of courageous Israeli resistance to that evil extermination project. Count on us. We will never allow it to happen. 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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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IN WARTIME JEWISH LAW AND MORALS PUT OUR LIVES BEFORE ENEMY LIVES, EVEN NON COMBATANTS
Posted by Sergio Tessa (HaDaR), August 8, 2006. |
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This is from a while back, but remains a problem given the immoral (according to Jewish Law) behaviour of our army that endangers and sacrifices our soldiers and civilians so as not to hurt the enemy populations. Jewish Law teaches EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what TsaHa"L prides itself of on the base of some professor's ideas which have NOTHING to do with Jewish sources. This is from an article by Uri Glickman and is from
Maariv
Rabbi Dov Lior, chairman of the settler's rabbinical council ruled that killing civilians during warfare is permitted if it will save lives. This next is from an article called "State of War Justified Hitting the Enemy" and it appeared May 19, 2004 in Arutz-Sheva (www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=62734). (IsraelNN.com) Rabbi Dov Lior, who heads the Yesha Rabbinical Council, announced earlier that in a state of war, the IDF may target the enemy even though it involves hitting "innocent citizens". Rabbi Lior pointed out our Torah teaches us the importance of protecting the lives of our soldiers and citizens, and the true morality of the Torah, adding we must not feel guilt due to the morality of the non-Jews. Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net. |
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JEWISH REFUGEES IN CYPRUS -- ZIONISM IN REGRESSION
Posted by Shifra Shomron, August 8, 2006. |
| We've all seen the movie Exodus. In one of the first thrilling scenes, a young man jumps off the truck convoy of 'illegal immigrants' taking them back to the ship to be interned on the island of Cyprus. Our young man punches a British soldier, leaves his bag on the truck and frantically dashes away. He is risking his life for freedom and for his land. He swiftly clambers up a stone fortress -- two Brits are hot on his tail -- reaches the top and ... no escape! The Brits reach him; he punches one, picks up a large stone to throw at the other. He's grasped, a wrestle ensues; he's flung off the stone wall and lands with his clothes torn, bloody and unconscious. The Brits pick him up and carry him away. Yes, once -- a mere matter of fifty odd years ago -- we were prepared to fight so as to stay in Israel and not be dragged off to Cyprus. How things have changed: now Haifa and Krayot residents are buying 'refuge apartments' in Cyprus according to Ynet news (7 August 2006). Four families have already purchased furnished apartments in Limassul and other towns. If more rockets fall in Haifa, these families are packed and ready to move. So, the secular Zionist dream has failed: Israel is not a refuge for Jews. Israel is not -- but Cyprus is. The lovely island of Cyprus to which Holocaust survivors were dragged kicking and screaming. They reached there and were placed in encampments surrounded by barbed wire, British soldiers at the entrance, and wooden bunks in the rooms. But after all, now Cyprus is modern and developed: high rise apartments, English fluency, inducted to the European Union? Forward! To Cyprus! And what about Israel? What about our torn and bloodied country? Our country is torn, because we have been tearing pieces off to fling to the jackals surrounding us. Our country is bloodied, because the jackals keep lunging, snapping and biting... and we restrain. Since Israel is restraining itself from properly defending the residents of Haifa, Krayot, Tsfat, S'derot etc... perhaps the Israeli government should reach an agreement with Cyprus permitting building large encampments. We'll provide the barbed wire. Shifra Shomron is a young woman, who, together with her family and friends, were expelled from her home in Gush Katif, Gaza by a capricious government. She now lives in a Nitzan Caravilla site. |
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HOW THE UN LEGITIZES TERRORISTS
Posted by Sergio Tessa (HaDaR), August 8, 2006. |
| This was written by Alan M. Dershowitz and it appeared in Jewish World Review (www.jewishworldreview.com/0706/dershowitz_un.php3) |
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If anyone wonders why the UN has rendered itself worse than irrelevant in the Arab-Israeli conflict, all he or she need do is read UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's July 20 statement. Annan goes to great pains to suggest equal fault and moral equivalence between the rockets of Hezbollah and Hamas that specifically target innocent civilians and the self-defense efforts by Israel, which tries desperately, though not always successfully, to avoid causing civilian casualties. In his statement, Annan never condemns, or even mentions, terrorism, which is a root cause and precipitator of the conflict. Even Annan was forced to acknowledge that "Hezbollah's provocative attack on July 12 was the trigger of this particular crisis"; that Hezbollah is "deliberate[ly] targeting ... Israeli population centers with hundreds of indiscriminate weapons"; and that Israel has the "right to defend itself under Article 51 of the UN charter." But he doesn't stop there. He goes out of his way to insist on equating Hezbollah's terrorists with Israeli military response, which he labels "disproportionate" and "collective punishment." He condemns both Hezbollah and Israel. He also criticizes Israel for its efforts at preventing Qassam rocket attacks against its civilian populations, noting that the Hamas rockets have produced no "casualties in the past month." (This, of course, is not for lack of trying.) He ignores Hamas' long history of terrorism against innocent civilians. Annan then calls for an "immediate cessation of indiscriminate and disproportionate violence" on both sides, again suggesting a moral equivalence. Among the most immoral positions anyone can take is to suggest a moral equivalence between morally different actions. Part of the goal of organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas is to gain moral legitimacy for their terrorist tactics by having them equated with the conventional military tactics used by democratic regimes. Only the morally obtuse -- or perverse -- cannot recognize the difference between a terrorist group that targets civilian population centers with anti-personnel weapons designed to maximize civilian casualties and a democracy that seeks to prevent terrorism by employing smart bombs designed to minimize civilian casualties. Annan knows better than to suggest a moral equivalence. He is fully aware of the tactic employed by terrorists of launching their rockets from, and hiding behind, civilian shields, so as to make democracies have to kill some civilians to get at the terrorists. But Annan heads an organization that is so anti-Israel that as the late Abba Eban, the early Israeli ambassador to the UN, once put it: "If Algeria proposed a resolution that the Earth was flat and that Israel has flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 120 to 3, with 27 abstentions." Many such resolutions have been passed by the General Assembly, including the notorious one equating the Jewish national liberation movement with "racism." Other one-sided resolutions have been passed by the General Assembly legitimating terrorism. Only the U.S. veto -- which does not operate in the UN General Assembly -- has prevented one-sided resolutions by the Security Council. If a space alien from a distant planet were to land at the UN, he would come away with the impression that Israel is not only the sole offender in the Middle East, but the worst offender in the entire world. He would single out Israel for condemnation and exclude it from membership on many UN bodies, on which Syria, Lebanon and Iran serve in positions of honor. Annan himself has a long history of one-sided condemnations of Israel. In March 2004, Annan "strongly condemned" Israel's targeted killing of Sheik Ahmad Yassin, the terrorist leader of Hamas, without condemning Yassin for his murderous actions or his organization for the murder of Jewish civilians. In December 2003, Annan "strongly condemned" Israel's assault on a Palestinian refugee camp where two gunmen were thought to be hiding. And in 2005, he issued the most tepid of statements -- expressing "dismay" -- at threats by Iran's president to "eliminate" Israel, a member nation of the UN. The list goes on and on. And even worse than the one-sided condemnations that ignore Hezbollah and Hamas are the numerous statements that perversely suggest moral equivalence. The UN peacekeepers on the Lebanese border have turned out to be collaborators with Hezbollah, videotaping the Hezbollah kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers in 2000 and then refusing to release the video -- which could have helped in the rescue -- on the grounds that it might compromise their "neutrality." This is a real test for the UN. If it cannot -- or will not -- distinguish between terrorists who target civilians and a democracy that seeks to stop the terrorism while minimizing civilian casualties, it has become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net. |
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THE GRAND FANTASY
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 7, 2006. |
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"O power of fantasy that steals our minds from things outside,
to leave us unaware, although a thousand trumpets may blow loud -- what
stirs you if the senses show you nothing?"
Over the past 14 years, Israeli diplomacy and defense policy have been entirely based upon a bizarre fantasy. That fantasy is an imaginary "theoretical" description of how the Middle East conflict can be brought to an end. It goes something like this. If Israel makes a "sufficiently generous" offer to the "Palestinians", then the "Palestinian leadership" will collaborate with Israel in ending the war by issuing a joint statement with Israel, proclaiming that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been settled once and for all. The PLO or whichever group will "represent" the "Palestinians" at the time will announce that there are no longer any outstanding issues of conflict with Israel. The proclamation will confirm that all matters of disagreement with the Jewish state have been resolved to Palestinian satisfaction. The Palestinians will announce that there is no longer a state of war with Israel as far as they are concerned. In this fantasy, this announcement from the Palestinians is the first step, but also the critical means for disarming the entire conflict between the Jewish state and the Islamic world. Once the Palestinians have announced that they regard the war with Israel as over and done, then none of the Arab or Muslim states would pursue armed conflict with Israel any further, or so the theory argues. After all, the official reason for the Arab assault against Israel has always been to assist "Palestinians". But if the Palestinian leadership itself is proclaiming that it no longer has any outstanding grievances or "issues" with the Jews and has made its peace with Israel, then these other states would be forced to follow suit, fall in line, and end the conflict. Finally, because the Arab and Islamic worlds are stockpiling weapons at an astronomical rate, including weapons of mass destruction, the proponents of the fantasy emphasize the necessity of "striking a deal" with the Palestinians as soon as possible, making it all the more urgent to extract the grand pronouncement that all Palestinian grievances have been redressed. In this entire fantasy scenario, it should be noted that the "Palestinians" play the central and critical role in pulling it off. By buying them off with concessions, Israel wins its magical pronouncement from the Palestinian leadership, the declaration neutralizing the entire assault against Israelby the Arab states and Iran. Israel simply needs to be generous enough to coax the Palestinian leadership into cooperation. In the view of the proponents of this grand theory, there can be but one solution, the elicitation from the Palestinians of that magical pronouncement of the end to the conflict. And that can be elicited by offering the Palestinians their own state everywhere in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Today one needs to take a specially deep breath, so many years after the Oslo "handshakes" and so many weeks into the war with the Hezbollah and its sponsors, to grasp how entirely and overwhelmingly Israeli official "thinking" has been captive of this fantasy scenario for so long, and how thoroughly the entire Israeli political leadership has believed in it. The fantasy may have begun as a misconception of Israel's far Left. But by the beginning of the 21th century, it had not only captured the thinking of the entire Israeli Labor Party, but also of most of the Likud, including its entire "Kadima wing". It boggles the mind. It is as if the leaders of an entire country rested their political outlook on belief in astrology and magicians. It is like trying to imagine Winston Churchill and FDR fighting off the Nazi beast with voodoo dolls. The problem with the "grand concept" is that it is entirely erroneous, completely unrealistic, and the chance of its being implemented has always been zero. The entire "doctrine" is fallacious precisely because there is no chance at all that the "Palestinian leadership", the critical players in the "theory" who hold all the real strategic aces, will ever play along, no matter how many concessions Israel makes!! Let us be clear. The "Palestinian leadership" will never issue any such magical pronouncement of an end to grievances, as per Israeli fantasies, even AFTER every Israeli Jew has been tossed into the sea. Indeed, the most absurd aspect of the fantasy is that the Palestinians themselves are fully aware that Israel is basing its strategy upon it! Knowing that everything depends on the Palestinians issuing the magical statement ending the war and neutralizing the Arab states, the one certainty in this uncertain corner of the globe is that no such a statement will never be proffered by any Palestinians. No set of Israeli concessions will ever be sufficient to "buy" the magical pronouncement. The transfer of the entire West Bank and Gaza to a "Palestinian state" achieve nothing, and neither would the transfer even of the Galilee and the Negev to "Palestine". A Jewish state on both banks of the Yarkon creek in downtown Tel Aviv would be an "intolerable infringement on Palestinian rights" that would always make the end-of-conflict declaration impossible to issue. Indeed, no set of Palestinian misbehavior will ever be seriously punished by Israel as long as Israel is captive of this end-of-the-conflict fantasy. Since everything in the "theory" depends upon winning the Palestinian's good will and eliciting the declaration of the end of the conflict, Israel must always offer the Palestinians everything they demand, short of Israel's own immediate destruction, while never undertaking serious reprisals against Palestinian terrorism. But the doctrine will STILL fail, precisely because Israel will NOT offer its own immediate destruction. No set of "generous concessions" that leaves any Jewish state in existence in any set of borders will be sufficient to carry the fantasy to its "end of conflict" denouement. Moreover, since the Palestinians will never issue the magical "end of conflict" pronouncement at the end of any rainbow Israel manages to concoct, the Israeli strategy of appeasement will never produce the neutralization of the conflict and the end of the war that Israeli leaders believe it will deliver. The regular shrieks from the politicians and the media, about how time is working against Israel and so is making the "end of conflict" pronouncement all the more urgent, miss the point. The Arab world may well be stockpiling arms and weapons of mass destruction for a final reckoning, but Israel cannot sidestep dealing with those fundamental facts by means of its strategy of fantasy. Israel needs to develop real-world policy for dealing with those real-world threats, not wrap itself up in a cloak of make-believe. 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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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ADVOCATES OF 'PROPORTION' ARE JUST UNBALANCED
Posted by Shaul Ceder, August 7, 2006. |
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This was written by Mark Steyn and it appeared in Jewish World Review (www.JewishWorldReview.com) |
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"Disproportion" is the concept of the moment. Do you know how to play? Let's say 150 missiles are lobbed at northern Israel from the Lebanese village of Qana and the Israelis respond with missiles of their own that kill 28 people. Whoa, man, that's way "disproportionate." But let's say you're a northwestern American municipality -- Seattle, for example -- and you haven't lobbed missiles at anybody, but a Muslim male shows up anyway and shoots six Jewish women, one of whom tries to flee up the stairs, but he spots her, leans over the railing, fires again and kills her. He describes himself as "an American Muslim angry at Israel" and tells 911 dispatchers: ''These are Jews. I want these Jews to get out. I'm tired of getting pushed around, and our people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East.'' Well, that's apparently entirely "proportionate," so "proportionate" that the event is barely reported in the American media, or (if it is) it's portrayed as some kind of random convenience-store drive-by shooting. Pamela Waechter's killer informed his victims that "I'm only doing this for a statement," but the world couldn't be less interested in his statement, not compared to his lawyer's statement that he's suffering from "bipolar disorder.'' And the local FBI guy, like the Mounties in Toronto a month or so back, took the usual no-jihad-to-see-here line. ''There's nothing to indicate it's terrorism related,'' said Special Assistant Agent-In-Charge David Gomez. In America, terrorism is like dentistry and hairdressing: It doesn't count unless you're officially credentialed. On the other hand, when a drunk movie star gets pulled over and starts unburdening himself of various theories about "f -- -ing Jews," hold the front page! That is so totally "disproportionate" it's the biggest story of the moment. The head of America's most prominent Jewish organization will talk about nothing else for days on end, he and the media too tied up dealing with Mel Gibson's ruminations on "f -- -ing Jews" to bother with footling peripheral stories about actual f -- -ing Jews murdered for no other reason than because they're f -- -ing Jews. On the other other hand, when the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, announces that if Jews "all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide,'' that's not in the least "disproportionate.'' When President Ahmadinejad of Iran visits Malaysia and declares, apropos Lebanon, that "although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented," well, that's just a bit of mildly overheated rhetoric prefacing what's otherwise a very helpful outline of a viable peace process: (Stage One) Please don't keep degrading our infrastructure until (Stage Two) we've got the capacity to nuke you. Right now, Israel's best chance of any decent press would seem to be if Mel Gibson flies in and bawls out his waiter as a "f -- -ing Jew.'' What can we deduce from these various acts, proportionate and not so? If you talk to European officials, they'll tell you privately that that Seattle shooting is the way of the future -- that every now and then in Seattle or Sydney, Madrid or Manchester, someone will die because they went to a community center, got on the bus, showed up for work ... and a jihadist was there. But they're confident that they can hold it to what the British security services cynically called, at the height of the Northern Ireland ''Troubles,'' ''an acceptable level of violence'' -- i.e., it will all be kept ''proportionate.'' Tough for Pam Waechter's friends and family, but there won't be too many of them. I wonder if they're right to be that complacent. The duke of Wellington, the great British soldier-politician, was born in Ireland, but, upon being described as an Irishman, remarked that a man could be born in a stable but it didn't make him a horse. That's the way many Muslims feel: Just because you're born in the filthy pigsty of the Western world doesn't make you a pig. What proportion of Muslims is hot for jihad? Well, it would be grossly insensitive and disproportionate to inquire. So instead we'll put it down to isolated phenomena like the supposed "bipolar disorder" of Pam Waechter's killer. In the struggle between America and global Islam, it's the geopolitical bipolar disorder that matters. Clearly, from his own statements about "our people," for Pam Waechter's killer his Muslim identity ultimately transcended his American one. That's what connects him to what's happening in southern Lebanon: a pan-Islamist identity that overrides national citizenship whether in the Pacific Northwest or the Levant. Not for all Muslims, but for enough that things will get mighty "disproportionate" before they're through. Twenty-eight dead civilians in a village from which 150 Katyusha rockets have been launched against Israel doesn't seem "disproportionate" to me. What's "disproportionate" is the idea that civilian life should be allowed to proceed normally in what is, in fact, a terrorist launching platform. But, when an army goes to war against a terrorist organization, it's like watching the Red Sox play Andre Agassi: Each side is being held to its own set of rules. When Hezbollah launches rockets into Israeli residential neighborhoods with the intention of killing random civilians, that's fine because, after all, they're terrorists and that's what terrorists do. But when, in the course of trying to resist the terrorists, Israel unintentionally kills civilians, that's an appalling act of savagery. Speaking at West Point in 2002, President Bush observed: "Deterrence -- the promise of massive retaliation against nations -- means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend." Actually, it's worse than that. In Hezbollahstan, the deaths of its citizens works to its strategic advantage: Dead Israelis are good news but dead Lebanese are even better, at least on the important battlefield of world opinion. The meta-narrative, as they say, is consistent through the media's Hez-one-they-made-earlier coverage, and the recent Supreme Court judgment, and EU-U.N. efforts to play "honest broker" between a sovereign state and a genocidal global terror conglomerate: All these things enhance the status of Islamist terror and thus will lead to more of it, and ever more "disproportionately." Contact Shaul Ceder by email at shaul.ceder@gmail.com |
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THE ISRAELI ARMY HAS BEEN DELIBERATED WEAKENED OVER THE PAST SIX YEARS
Posted by Helen Freeman, August 7, 2006. |
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The Israeli Army was deliberately sabotaged and weakened over a period of six years, through the actions of the European Socialist regimes acting through their Leftist quisling puppets outside and inside the Israeli government. The Crimes of Sharon, Olmert, Halutz and Peres: The Leftist quislings in the Israeli government allowed Hezbollah Guerrillas and Iranian Soldiers to build sophisticated, technologically advanced command and control bases, complete with satellite systems and communications equipment, along the Border and all over Lebanon, and to Arm themselvs with stores of sophisticated, deadly anti-Tank missiles, rockets, mortars, grenades, machine guns, tunnels and bunkers, and hundreds if not thousands of mobile rocket launchers. It was the Deliberate obfuscation and misinformation campaign waged by Sharon, Ezra, Barak, Olmert, Peres, and their Leftist Cabal at every level of government to hide the Arming and training of Hezbollah along the Northern Border, that they had recklessly abandoned without conditions in 2000. The concept of "unconditional withdrawal" was born in 1993, and once undertaken, the Israeli government then used all resources at its disposal in every branch of government and the media, to cover-up its related dangers and failures in a misinformation campaign; and each successive "unconditional withdrawal" was then undertaken to avoid exposing the culpability and failures of those involved. The Disengagement Plan and resultant Expulsion of Jews can be compared to feeding the Monster you are hiding in the Basement to keep him quiet: an attempt to obfuscate and keep the Nasrallah Monster, the Israeli government had created, quiet. What was the Disengagement in reality? It was the deliberate weakening of the Israeli Army over a period of six years, by using Officers, planning and resources and facilities, and training entire brigades and reservists on Jewish eviction techniques, such as the "locking arms technique", the "five rings plan" and the "grab an arm and put fingers in settler's nose technique". As a result, Entire brigades were never trained in fighting Hezbollah Geurrillas, training exercises were never performed that would prepare soldiers for their current missions inside Hezbollah infested villages, and proper military equipment was never ordered that would assist the soldiers in their current battles: This article is called
"IDF reservists: Our missions are unclear, our combat equipment is
antiquated" and is
by Amiram Barkat and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents
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Reserve soldiers are returning from fighting in south Lebanon with harsh criticisms of their operational preparedness and the combat equipment with which they had been supplied. After three days of combat in south Lebanon, infantry soldiers from the Israel Defense Force's reserve Carmeli Battalion returned Sunday to Israel. A., a young reservist who spent his mandatory service in the Golani Brigade during the second intifada, said, "For two days, we barely made any progress. The soldiers simply don't really know what the mission is. You are mostly kept busy with protecting yourself." Interviews with the battalion's soldiers revealed a picture of complicated fighting under heavy Hezbollah fire in which the soldiers know very little of their mission. Nearly every reserve unit has complained about a lack of emergency equipment over the past several days. The soldier's in A.'s brigade operated in the villages of Kila and Bnei al-Awad in the central sector. A. says that things he witnessed in recent days in Lebanon bear no resemblance to anything he saw as a recruit in the Palestinian territories. "We seized a few homes in the village under constant bombardment from mortar shells," A. says. "It is nothing like the territories. During daylight hours, you do not see a living soul. You barely see anything at night either. There are apparently people who pass Hezbollah information regarding the location of our forces and they fire mortar shells. The shells fall around you and that is frightening. "Many soldiers don't have short-barreled M-16 rifles, communications equipment or even tourniquets," "A" said. Hanan (fictitious name), who serves in an elite reserve unit, said soldiers returning from combat in Lebanon were forced to hand their weapons over to soldiers heading north across the border. Gili is also a soldier in an elite reserve infantry unit that is supposed to be supplied with the most sophisticated equipment. One week ago, when his unit was deployed to Lebanon, it became clear that most of their wartime equipment was missing from their emergency warehouses. "We are supposed to enter the fray against guerilla fighters who have been training for six years," Gili said Monday. "And our weapons are the only advantage that we have over them. During all the years that I served in the reserves, we had the best equipment but now that we have reached the moment of truth the equipment has vanished." Soldiers from the Alexandroni Brigade now serving in Lebanon were shocked to discover they were issued equipment dating from the first Lebanon war in 1982. "My helmet was manufactured in 1981," said 22-year-old Gal. "It is three years older than me." The unit's maintenance officer, Eli Altman, said the newest equipment was naturally distributed to combat soldiers in the regular army. Altman added, however, "We could have ensured that the equipment in our warehouses would be useable." Less deployment, more training Former chief reserve officer Brigadier General Ariel Heimann said he was troubled by the combat fitness level of reserve soldiers. It is no secret that the IDF's reserve units were the main victims of budget cuts over the past several years. "The easiest thing is to cut training hours," Heimann said. "What is clear is that the reserve units have not been trained enough. The extent to which this lack of training is critical can only be measured during combat." Against the background of budget cuts, Heimann and others led reforms in reserve service in which it was decided to exempt reserve forces from military operations and limit their days of service to training. Heimann maintains that the current war proves the wisdom of this decision. Contrary to soldiers in the regular army, reservists are not required to maintain their fitness level. Before their deployment in Lebanon, soldiers from the Alexandroni Brigade trained for three days. During this short period of time, the reservists were meant to prepare themselves long hikes through steep, rocky terrain while carrying equipment weighing up to 40 kilograms. Reserve deputy battalion commander Major Ziv Rozelman said their extensive combat experience and their earlier periods of deployment in Lebanon give make up for their lower fitness levels. Deputy Battalion Commander Major Ziv Rozelman claims that reservists'
previous combat experience and the fact that, unlike recruits, they
served in Lebanon in the past compensates for their lack of physical
fitness. "There is no doubt that enlisted soldiers are stronger but we
are like old bulls: We work slowly but surely and take no risks."
Helen Freeman is with AFSI. Contact her at afsi@rcn.com
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HOW TO MAKE IT END
Posted by Steven Plaut, August 7, 2006. |
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1. So many people are asking "When will it all end?" But the answer is so simple. It will not end until Ramat Aviv is attacked massively by rockets and missiles. 2. The Israel of today is not the same country as the Israel of a month ago. The metamorphosis in the media illustrates it better than anything else. Sure, Gideon Levy and Amira Hass are still cheering for a Hezbollah victory. But suddenly they are almost alone. The bulk of the Israeli media writers are suddenly militant and patriotic. Yesterday's leftist lemmings are suddenly demanding a more serious ground invasion of Lebanon, and urging that Israel resist calls for a ceasefire. Ultra-leftists like Yaron London are suddenly warmongers. Perhaps one of the best illustrations of all this is the change in
the ultras of Israel's literary Left. Far-leftist writers like Amos
Oz, AB Yehoshua, and even David Grossman, are suddenly patriots. In a
large ad in the Hebrew press (can be read in Hebrew at
Of those who have learned nothing by the way, the most glaring is Ehud Olmert. He declared that the war in Lebanon is all designed to allow him to go forward with his unilateral retreat plan for the West Bank, which caused some soldiers to take off their uniforms and refuse to fight for such a "goal". Even Dan Margolit, Israel's most distinguished journalist (centrist, or mild lefty), denounced Olmert for this folly and demanded that new elections be held before Olmert does anything in that direction. Insisting that Olmert no longer had any popular mandate to make ANY concessions to the Palestinians. Another indication. In large ads a far-leftist pro-terror media group calling itself "Keshev", a group we have commented upon before, is suddenly denouncing "the conscripted media" in Israel, meaning the media endorsing Israel's right to defend itself against terror. This enrages "Keshev". Keshev had grown used to the past 20 years in which Israel's media were entirely conscripted in promoting the agenda of the far Left. Now that so much of the media are calling for escalating the war against terror, Keshev and its other well-funded mini-groups of the extremist left are suddenly upset about the "conscripted media". 3. Holocaust Denier Norman Finkelstein, Neve Gordon's mentor and hero, is very proud to have made it into this deck of cards:
Israel Arab politicians continue to cheer and applaud the rockets landing in Israel. Yesterday the leftist Attorney General decided not to prosecute one of the worst of these, not open procedures to strip him of his Israeli citizenship. By the way, evidently al-Jazeera had advanced warning of the attack on the reservists in Kfar Giladi that killed 12 yesterday. That has NOT landed the al-Jazeerans in Israeli prison. 5. Well, I know I am going to get flack for this. But the only way to stop the attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon, at least short of creation of a serious Lebanese army, is to empty it. To remove its population. Depopulate it! And keep moving the empty no-man's land area deeper and deeper until no missiles hit Israel. And if that line has to be in Syria, so be it. The fact that Israel has yet to obliterate the Syrian military machine in this affair is a matter of greatest national shame. And while we are on the subject, (partial?) depopulation of the Gaza Strip is not a bad way to end the Kassams on the Negev as well. I proposed years ago to put all of Gaza under permanent house arrest, with everyone in permanent curfew, being supplied with nothing but stale pita and sour tasting water. Permanently. But allowing out-migration! 6. How do you know Olmert and Peretz are still playing games? When the headline reads "In heavy fighting today 6 terrorists were killed." When it says "In heavy fighting today, 10,000 of the enemy were killed, you will know that Israel has stopped playing. 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. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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I'M SITTING ON THE FLOOR & FASTING...... AGAIN .....
Posted by Lee Caplan, August 7, 2006. |
| This was written by Ruthi. Contact her at luveretz@netvision.net.il |
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Today, Monday, Yud Gimmel (13th) Av, 5766, marks exactly one year since the terrible, evil deportation and wanton destruction by Jews of a very precious part of Eretz Yisrael. Today marks a year since this present churban, and a short while after, the burning of all those superbly beautiful and exquisite Batei Knesset (Shuls), where hundreds of thousands -- perhaps even millions -- of prayers went unanswered. Today marks a year since so many thousands of wonderful, true Jews, always concerned about their fellow Jewish brethren everywhere, lost almost everything in their lives: men and women, husbands, wives, mothers, grandmothers, fathers, grandfathers, teenagers, younger children and infants -- because of unprecedented cruelty by Jewish so-called "leaders". Today marks a whole year of wandering without direction for so many thousands of people, still homeless, still unemployed, their savings exhausted, wondering what will happen next. Today marks a year since the beginning of untold suffering for so many G-d fearing, good Jews who are still bewildered as to why these terrible events actually happened. So many unanswered questions: why masses of the dati leumi (nationalistic religious) Jews didn't come down to Gush Katif in their hundreds of thousands to prevent it. Why didn't the same dati leumi and other nationalistic soldiers put down their arms and refuse such immoral, wicked orders against fellow Jews? Today marks a year since the bottom of my world fell out. [And I was only living in Gush Katif temporarily, with a home to which to return.] I didn't believe for one second -- until the very end -- that the eviction would happen, that the most beautiful paradise of Gush Katif (that I'd loved so much ever since I visited Yamit some 29 years before) would soon lie in ruins, as a result of Jewish bulldozers: the biggest chillul Hashem (desecration of G-d's name). Etched forever in my memory: hordes of black-clad police and unending rows of soldiers of the I.D.F. -- the Israel Deportation Forces, each one with a small Israeli flag sewn on the left side of his/her uniform, obliterating their identification numbers. They were "only following orders" -- just as in Nurenberg and all such subsequent trials after WWII -- the Nazis stated they had been doing. I've asked some if they'd been ordered to rape the girl next door in public, would they have done so too, "only following orders". For as Iong as I can remember, I myself have almost worshipped that beautiful blue and white flag. Even in the galut, all over my home there were always Israeli flags in all forms. But ever since that distorted abuse of the flag I adored so much, I have removed them all, The flag stands for a medinah whose leadership and, for that matter, whose very foundations are rotten to the core. Only a Torah true State can embody everything we stand for, our raison d'etre for being here and for having received this precious Land directly from Hashem. Now only orange remains. Now only memories remain. Yes, I am sitting on the floor, fasting, with various Kinot for Gush Katif and all the photographs, collages and memories of a place so vibrant and flourishing, so full of Torah and good deeds, laughing children and love. For a year now I'm full of anger for all the wicked injustices that are continuing to be perpetrated full steam ahead by those cruel and evil "powers that be", even in the middle of the current war, promising much more annihilation of our precious country. I said last year as I was being carried out of Netzer Hazani by the female Jewish soldiers that I will never be the same again. I won't: something inside me has died. Dedicated to the loyal, steadfast, salt of the earth people of Netzer Hazani. May HaShem soon see fit to rebuild all of Gush Katif and Northern Shomron, and indeed the whole of Aza -- Gerar -- only in Jewish hands. May we soon be rid forever of this and all wicked governments, bereft of anything Jewish. [Today's anniversary is of Netzer Hazani & many other yishuvim although others remained until after Shabbat.] |
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THE TRAP
Posted by Aaron Lerner, August 7, 2006. |
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Subject: National Security Advisor Hadley: IDF forces in Lebanon will only have right to defend themselves if Hezbollah attacks [Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: "if Hezbollah does not cease all attacks, as the resolution will call for it to do, and does attack Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, they're going to have to have the right to defend themselves" Mr. Hadley graciously agrees that the IDF does not have to turn the other cheek when attacked but it isn't clear what the meaning of "defend themselves" means. Strictest definition: Hezbollah forces can prepare to attack IDF positions to their heart's desire free from concern that the IDF will pre-empt their attack. Once Hezbollah does in fact attack, the IDF can return fire only as long as the firefight continues. The moment that the Hezbollah forces disengage the IDF force is no longer engaged in self defense if it continues firing or chasing the retreating Hezbollah forces. The above description may sound incredible to those reading this who are now familiar with some of the more bizarre arrangements Israel has found itself involved in with the Palestinians. The "hudna" that many in Washington were so fond of allowed the Palestinians to "lock and load" as long as they didn't pull the trigger - and when they did pull the trigger it was explained that it was the activity of forces not part of the mainstream and thus had no significance vis-a-vis the "hudna" as a whole.] ======== Press Briefing by National Security Advisor Steve Hadley
MR. HADLEY: Good morning. I'd be glad to answer any questions you folks have. Q: Steve, how are you going to get Hezbollah to sign on to this cessation of hostilities? MR. HADLEY: The resolution will call for the Lebanese government and the Israeli government to accept the framework of a political arrangement that will be set out in this first resolution. And also, of course, to accept this call for a cessation, a full cessation of hostilities, which means Hezbollah attacks to stop and Israeli offensive operations to stop. It's really going to be the Lebanese government that is going to have to set out and accept the arrangement on behalf of the Lebanese people. As you know, Hezbollah is a part of that government. They will have to take on that responsibility. In addition, of course, we are asking those countries with influence on Hezbollah to send a clear message, and that would be particularly Iran and Syria, to send a clear message to Hezbollah that it needs to accept the will of the international community and support the decision made by the Lebanese government. I think it's interesting if you have a situation where the international community is calling for a full cessation of hostilities supported by the Lebanese government -- it was supported by the Israeli government, and Hezbollah says no, that will tell you something about who wants peace and who does not, and that will be a clarifying moment. I think it's important to say that if, when this first resolution is adopted -- which we hope will be tomorrow afternoon or Tuesday morning -- I don't think you'll see an instantaneous end to the violence. As you know, historically, these cease-fires take some time to go into effect, particularly if, unfortunately, Hezbollah were to reject it. But we would want, in any event, to move towards a second resolution, because everybody, I think, understands how this needs to end up -- which is that the Lebanese government needs to be able to exert its authority throughout the country; the Lebanese army needs to be able to move south and take control of that territory, which it has not done and has not had for the last several years; and that it is going to need help to do so. And that's what the UNIFIL force, the United Nations force that is now there can do -- but also, the multinational force is so important to strengthen the hand of the Lebanese army when it moves into southern Lebanon, and to give Israel some assurance that if Israel then pulls out, Hezbollah will not come back in. So everybody knows that's where that needs to end up. We need a second resolution to get there, and that's why once the first resolution is adopted, we will try and move very quickly towards a second resolution. Q: Steve, is the administration now going to talk to Iran and Syria to make this point, and try to have some back-and-forth with them? As you know, many of your critics say you haven't been talking to your enemies, who actually hold the key to this. MR. HADLEY: Well, in some sense, you know, every time someone like me gets up and talks and says what they've just said, we've sent a message to Syria and Iran. I mean, it's not as if they don't hear what has been said. Secondly, in terms of both of these countries, there are a number of countries that are sending the same message. That's really been an approach we have had both with respect to Syria and Iran, to try and get the international community and as many countries as we can sending the same message to Syria and Iran. In terms of Iran, as you know, we are very anxious to enter into a discussion with Iran on their nuclear program. And we have proposed to do so if they will simply do what the international community, what the Europeans, who have been handling the diplomacy with them have called for, what the IAEA Board of Governors have called for, which is to suspend their nuclear enrichment programs. So we would like very much to be entering into a discussion with Iran on that issue and potentially other issues. But they've got to take a step to show that they are willing to come into compliance with the international community. Q: On this particular issue, though, I know Syria says they don't want to be just sent messages, they want to have a conversation about that. Is the administration open to that? MR. HADLEY: Throughout the firs term of this administration and into the second, we have had ongoing, very high-level discussions with Syria. They involved Secretary of State Powell, they involved Deputy Secretary Armitage, they involved Bill Burns, who was then Assistant Secretary of State. Those were a bit interrupted after the murder of Rafik Hariri, and evidence that the Syrian government may have been responsible for that. And at that point, we withdrew our ambassador. But we continue to have an embassy there, we continue to have a charg who does have -- attempt to have conversations with the Syrian government. So the problem really is not that we haven't had conversations; the problem is we have not had action out of the Syrian government. It has been very clear what the international community has asked it to do. For example, with respect to Lebanon, there are three Security Council resolutions -- 1559, 1595, 1680 -- all make clear what the parties need to do, including Syria. The problem isn't that Syria doesn't know what the international community is requiring of it -- the problem is Syria isn't doing it, that Syria is not acting. Syria has a choice to do what the international community has asked -- to come into increasing relations in the international community, or to defy the international community and to continue to isolate itself and to become a handmaiden of Iran, which is really what they've become. And so the problem is not that Syria doesn't know what's being asked of it, it's not that a lot of people aren't talking to them, it's not that we haven't been talking to them over the years -- the problem is they're making choices, they're making bad choices. They need to make different choices. Q: Mr. Hadley, you say the first resolution won't bring about an instantaneous end to the violence, it's going to take a second resolution that will bring in this international force. Given that, when do you anticipate that we'll get a vote on the second resolution? And how soon do you expect a force to be able to get in there to back up the Lebanese army? MR. HADLEY: We would hope -- let me just be clear: We would hope that the first resolution would, over time, result in the cessation of violence. It will call on the parties to do what I said: Hezbollah to stop its attacks, Israel to stop its offensive military operations. But I'm just saying as a practical matter, as you sort of look forward and try and anticipate what might happen, we know, historically, that even if all parties agree to the cease-fire, it takes time for it to come into place. And we want to move very quickly, in any event, towards the second resolution. Our hope is that it would be days, not weeks. The long pole in the tent, as they say, of course, is the formation of this multinational force that takes some time. And, quite frankly, that's why we had to divide it into two resolutions, so that we could get the violence down, while we took the time that's going to be required to put together this multinational force. We hope we're going to do it as quickly as we can, but these things are difficult. We also hope, let me just say, that the adoption of the first resolution will free up the international community and a number of folks who may contribute to that force to be able to focus on that effort and put together the force as quickly as we can. Q: And just so we understand, the U.S. still has no intention of contributing forces to that force? MR. HADLEY: We have talked about supporting that force, and there are things that we may be able to do with those kinds of unique capabilities the United States has -- you know, we've done this before with other forces -- lift, intelligence, command and control, logistics and those things. But, you know, given the history, we think that the idea of putting U.S. ground combat forces on the ground, this probably doesn't make sense; it isn't going to be something that will be designed to advance the objectives that the international community and that the President has set for us. So we think that wouldn't really advance the cause. Q: The resolution calls for Israel to stop its offensive military operations. But Israeli officials have always said these are defensive maneuvers against Hezbollah's attacks. So how do you reassure the Lebanese that, short of having Israeli forces withdraw from Lebanese territory, that Israel would stop its attacks and stop the violence? MR. HADLEY: It will be called on to stop its offensive activities. And I think the choice of that word is to recognize, of course, that if Hezbollah does not cease all attacks, as the resolution will call for it to do, and does attack Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, they're going to have to have the right to defend themselves. That's what that's trying to do. Q: Has Israel had any offensive attacks yet? MR. HADLEY: I'm sorry? Q: -- described anything so far as being offensive that they've been doing? Or this has all been defensive, right? MR. HADLEY: Well, when people talk about offensive military actions they would be thinking about the air strikes that have occurred out of the southern area, and they would be thinking about the military operations that the ground forces have been undertaking. Those, I think, would be, in common parlance, viewed as offensive military operation. Q: Can you talk to us a little bit about the time you spent with the President yesterday? How much time did you spend briefing him? And, also, are there any plans for the President to call any of the other foreign leaders involved to, perhaps, move things along? MR. HADLEY: Yes. The Secretary of State and I flew down on an airplane yesterday, spent most of the time on the phone with Israeli leaders, with those folks on the ground talking to the Lebanese leaders, because, obviously, we want to come up with a resolution that is acceptable to the Security Council and will work, in terms of Lebanon and Israel. When we got down, we sat down with the President and reported on those conversations, so he knew exactly where we were. We also reviewed with him the situation, and, quite frankly, got some pretty clear guidance from him on the way forward as to how he wanted to proceed in not only the second resolution, but beyond. He's in the process, obviously, of developing an overall strategy for the Middle East as to sort of what comes next -- which is something that the President is good at and encourages us to do: How does this fit into an overall strategy? We had an opportunity to talk about that at lunch. We then went off and did a number of things, in part carrying out what the President had directed us to do and then to get some additional information. Before dinner that evening we had another discussion and, in some sense, had a sort of strategic discussion of: Okay, let's assume we get through the first and second resolution, where do we head, in terms of the Middle East, more generally? This kind of a brainstorming session. He has been in touch with world leaders on this issue, where it is appropriate and where it will advance the diplomacy. A lot of what's happening in New York right now is now into the details of draft language, which is not appropriate for heads of government to be negotiating Security Council text over the phone. He did have a good discussion with Prime Minister Blair of the United Kingdom today. It was comparing notes on where we are, in terms of this first and second resolution; again, beginning to talk a little bit about the strategy for the Middle East more generally, after we get through this current crisis. It was a good conversation; it's a conversation they've had from time to time, for some time. Q: But no calls on the horizon, either to the Lebanese or Israeli Prime Minister? MR. HADLEY: If it will advance diplomacy, the President will do it. Q: Mr. Hadley, given the ultimate goal of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah -- which is the destruction of Israel -- what's in it for them to go along with this resolution at this point in time? MR. HADLEY: Well, they're going to have to make a decision about how far they're prepared to go in defying the international community. I think what's interesting is that the attack by Hezbollah came on the 12th of July, and by the 16th of July, four days later, you had a G8 statement by the leaders, the G8 leaders -- these are major industrialized countries -- that were meeting in St. Petersburg. And, it's interesting, if you go back and look at that document, it sets out the framework that we have really been pursuing since then. One of the things that's very interesting is that it made clear -- unanimously adopted by France, the U.K., Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada, the United States and Russia -- it made clear that Hezbollah was the offending party. It was an unprovoked attack on Israel. It was in a position -- it did it in defiance of the Lebanese government, without informing the Lebanese government, and it had been able to do so because the Security Council resolutions that I referred to have not been carried out. And it also made clear that they were supported by Syria and Iran. So the international community has made very clear who the offending party here is. It will now make clear in the Security Council resolutions what needs to happen to get out of this crisis. It will be calling on all states to facilitate that process. And Syria and Iran are going to have a choice to make as to whether they are prepared to try and confront and defy the international community. Q: Again, what is the incentive for them? Despite all of the language that came out of the G8, the weapons have continued to flow into Lebanon from Iran, probably elsewhere. So what's, you know, the carrot out there? MR. HADLEY: Well, part of it is do they want to be increasingly isolated by the international community; do they want to be in a situation where there are financial measures and, ultimately, international sanctions imposed against them. There are sanctions that are available for violations of arms embargo, for example. There are penalties -- and we've made it clear, particularly, for example, in the nuclear discussions, that there are two paths, and if they defy the international community there will be consequences and sanctions, increasing isolation and increasing difficulty in doing business and being part of the international community. And the question is whether they want to walk down that road. Q: But what changes that now? I mean, Iran has been dealing with sanctions and isolation since -- MR. HADLEY: No, they haven't. On the contrary. Iran is very much integrated into the international community. We have had sanctions on Iran, but the international community has not, the Europeans have not. It's interesting, Iran is a different case than North Korea, which has already isolated itself. Iran has not. Iran has commercial relations, it has diplomatic relations, it sees itself as a regional power and a global power. And the question is whether it wants to go in a situation where the international community basically turns its back on Iran. That would be a situation we've never had before. And, indeed, one of the things that has been, I believe, this President's achievement has been if you look at where we were with the Europeans in the 1990s about our views on Iran, it was not a shared conception. The Europeans, the Russians did not view Iran as a threat, let alone the strategic threat that it has become. And one of the things this President has done is get to the point where we have now the whole international community saying Iran is making a strategic challenge to us all by its support for terror, by its supporting Hezbollah, for the kinds of things we see in Lebanon, by the way it treats its own people, by its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Think about how difficult this crisis would be now if Iran had a nuclear weapon. And what we're heartened by is the international community is beginning to understand what is at stake in the broader context of this current struggle. That's why the G8 report and statement was so important. That's why it's been interesting that Russia has gone from supporting Iran's nuclear program to, in recent years, cooperating with the rest of us in trying to rein that program in. So there has been a sea change, and Iran needs to take that into account. It is really confronting the international community. And the international community is wakening to the challenge. Q: Steve, two quick ones for you. One is, have you had explicit conversations with Japan and Germany about ultimately imposing international sanctions on Iran? And the other is, do you need this second resolution -- you said in days, not weeks, do you need this second resolution to start talking with the logistics of an international force, or has that already begun? MR. HADLEY: There have been some conversations, but there's been a reluctance to do it until we could get and be sure that the international framework is in place. And so we hope that this first resolution will hasten that. Secondly, in terms of sanctions on Iran, as you know, there was an agreement in the nuclear context that if Iran did not suspend its enrichment activities and reprocessing activities and come back to the negotiating table, that there would be action in the U.N. Security Council. There was a resolution, as you know, adopted a week ago, that says that if Iran does not comply with what the international community has asked of it by August 31, it will return to the Security Council under Chapter 7 and under a provision of Chapter 7 that envisions economic sanctions. So that is already on the table, with respect to Iran. Q: So you think this consensus will hold, moving out of a nuclear context and into the Lebanon/Israel context? MR. HADLEY: We would hope that it would. And we think it's interesting that in the middle of this Lebanese crisis we did have, I think, the United Nations Security Council did adopt, by a vote of 14-1, the resolution on Iran's nuclear program. And I think it was, in a way, fortuitous, that it was a signal to Iran, even in the Lebanese crisis, that the international community is united on the broader issue of Iran. Q: Mr. Hadley, is there any sense that Hezbollah's military capability has been weakened as a result of all this fighting? MR. HADLEY: It's hard to know. I think the answer is that it has been weakened. That's certainly, I think, what the Israelis think. I think what is important is that the diplomacy now makes clear that we're not going back to the status quo ante; that a situation where Hezbollah controls the south, continues to be armed, basically has a kingdom within a kingdom -- that is not acceptable anymore to the Lebanese government or to the international community. And that's what, of course, getting the Lebanese army into the south, getting the multinational force to support it is all about, to send that message to Hezbollah that the rules of the game have changed. And we think that will be a great setback to Hezbollah and a great thing that will strengthen the Lebanese government, and to become really a sovereign, democratic government in charge of all of its territory. That's where we want to go. Q: Can you talk about your plans and Secretary Rice's plans -- how long are you guys planning to stay here? And she had mentioned that she may not go to New York. MR. HADLEY: I'm not aware that she said she may not go to New York. Q: She would go if and when it was necessary. Do you know -- MR. HADLEY: Well, I think what we hope is that we've had a good opportunity to speak with the President yesterday; we will today. We've also been on the phone pretty constantly working the diplomacy. Our hope would be that in New York there is agreement on this resolution. And then, of course, the issue will be whether the foreign ministers will come and sit in the Council to vote on it or not. I think that's still an issue that's' being worked. But we would like to get to the point where the resolution could be voted on, on Monday or Tuesday. Steve Holland, last question. Q: You've said that the international force is the long pole in the tent. What are the complications in setting that up? MR. HADLEY: It's the normal stuff: Who's going to contribute forces, when will they be ready to move, who's going to lift them to get them into the theater; once they're in the theater, where do they go. I mean, it's all the nuts and bolts of moving people and heavy equipment; getting a command and control, taking disparate pieces and integrating them into a single force with a unified command and control. You know, these things are things militaries do -- they just take time, because they're big movements. Thanks very much. Q: What is the timeframe for the force? When do you think the force might come in? MR. HADLEY: We'd like to do it in days, not weeks, but it's going to take some time. We're going to try and move it as soon as we can, but I can't give you a timeframe. Q: So by the end of the week? MR. HADLEY: I can't give you a time. Q: Wait, Steve. Days, not weeks -- that's for the deployment of the force, or the second resolution? MR. HADLEY: We would like to have days not weeks for the second resolution, which would authorize the force. And, obviously, as soon after that as the force can move, the better, because it's what we all want -- it's what the international community is going to want, what the Lebanese and the Israelis -- how many days that is, how long that will take, I can't tell you. That's what the force planners are going to have to come up with, in putting this force together. Q: That's what my question was -- MR. HADLEY: I'm sorry. Q: -- the logistics of getting that force together. MR. HADLEY: I got you. I didn't give you a good answer, I'm sorry. Thank you. END 9:23 A.M. CDT
This is from Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director of Independent Media Review and Analysis (IMRA). Contact IMRA at imra@netvision.net.il go to the website: http://www.imra.org.il |
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ISRAEL ISN'T FIGHTING A PROPAGANDA WAR BUT A REAL WAR FOR ITS VERY EXISTENCE
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 6, 2006. |
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Friends, The International community, the UN and all other like organizations are shouting against Israel's efforts to defend itself and ALL conveniently forget that the only one to be blamed for today's Israel-Lebanon war is Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. Israel may be losing the propaganda war, but it isn't fighting a propaganda war -- it's fighting a real war for its very existence. Israel will need to deal with its PR later. Now she must deal with getting rid of the world most dangerous terror organization nestle on its northern borders. Israel must do all that it can to defend and protect its sovereign territory, its towns and villages and its citizens from the rockets and missiles -- shot indiscriminately at Israel civilian population -- and designed to inflict the utmost damage on civilian population. This article by Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, the least is brilliant journalism. Nurit |
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But you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist, either, to wonder how many of the male 'civilians' killed by the Israelis are actually Hezbollah terrorists or whether everything we're being shown from Lebanon is for real. Islamonazis are sophisticated propagandists and they know they'll find a gullible audience in the civilised world for their carefully-strewn teddy bears, strategically-placed 'Baby Milk Factory' signs (in English) and wailing widows from central casting. Have you ever noticed how every time a coalition air strike goes astray in Iraq it always manages to hit a 'wedding party'? Why is there only ever one child's shoe in the rubble, never a pair? There always seems to be a broken medicine box, too, with a handy red cross -- never a red crescent, mind you -- on the lid, just in case we haven't got the message. Credulous CNN correspondents and hand wringing BBC reporters fall over themselves to sign up for the Hezbollah guided tour of the ruins. I use a rough rule of thumb whenever I watch television coverage of the Middle East. Anyone who pronounces Hezbollah as 'Hiz-bull-arrrgh' and Israeli as 'Izza-ra-ay-lee' is almost certainly telling lies. The bien-pensant buzzword used to describe Israel's bombing is 'disproportionate'. But what's 'proportionate'? Are the thousands of rockets fired at genuine civilian targets in Israel 'proportionate'? It is only because Israelis are hunkered down in underground shelters built out of necessity and bitter experience, or have fled out of range of Hezbollah's salvoes, that there haven't been piles of bodies on their side of the border. What would 'world opinion' consider an acceptable death toll before acknowledging Israel's right to retaliation and self-defence?,000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? Hezbollah has started a war it knows it can't win in the certain knowledge that there will be civilian casualties. Its stated aim is to kill as many Israelis as possible and if innocent Lebanese get caught in the crossfire, tough. These fanatics have little or no regard for human life. Their tactic is to hide among civilians; to use terrified women and children as human shields; to deploy school playgrounds as rocket launch sites; hotels and apartment blocks as command centres; homes as weapons dumps; mosques as air-raid shelters. I've heard reporters referring to Hezbollah as a 'resistance' movement. They love it, don't they? Just as they insist on calling terrorist murderers 'radicals' or 'militants' -- as if there's no difference between Al Qaeda and Aslef train drivers on unofficial strike. What they never point out is that if Hezbollah didn't exist, there would be nothing to resist. Israel is the Tony Martin of the Middle East, lashing out in fear and frustration after enduring years of provocation. Just as Tony Martin was abandoned by the police to endure burglary after burglary at his remote farmhouse, so the 'international community' has done nothing to disarm and disband Hezbollah or prevent it and Hamas repeatedly attacking Israel. The United Nations hasn't lifted a finger to stop Iran and Syria supporting and supplying a standing terrorist army in Lebanon. There are no sanctions against the barking mad president of Iran when he constantly threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and is hell-bent on obtaining nuclear weapons. Iran has put Lebanese civilians in the front line of its lunatic war against Israel and the U.S. in particular and Western civilisation in general. So where's the international condemnation? Hezbollah is the provisional wing of Iran. Would it be 'proportionate' if Israel attacked the paymasters and ringleaders of Hezbollah in Tehran? It may yet come to that. But first Israel has to remove the immediate threat to its security. The United Nations isn't going to do that. The UN is a busted flush, led by the laughable Kofi Annan -- the Chauncey Gardiner of world diplomacy. When it left the U.S.-led coalition to go it alone in Iraq, it sent a clear message to other tyrants and rogue states that they had nothing to fear from the UN. Listening to 'world opinion' has got Israel nowhere. It was told it should trade land for peace. So it did. It got war. Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon six years ago. Hezbollah boasts that it has spent that time preparing for this fresh assault, building tunnels and bunkers and stockpiling a deadly arsenal of 13,000 weapons, which it is now raining down on Israeli civilians. There are hourly calls for a ceasefire, but when Tel Aviv suspended bombing for 48 hours the response was a record number of Katyusha rockets fired into Israel in return. I saw a BBC reporter standing on a hillside trying to convince us that because missiles were still being fired from Lebanon despite three weeks of fighting, it was evidence that Israel's tactics weren't working and it couldn't win. Hezbollah has spent six years building up its arsenal in preparation for this war. Who said an Israeli victory would only take three weeks? If there is a ceasefire, Hezbollah will simply regroup. There's talk of a negotiated settlement, but how do you cut a deal when one side says it will not be satisfied until the other is totally eradicated? Lasting peace has only ever followed total victory in war. Even if Israel and Hezbollah/Iran agree to walk away tomorrow, we'll be back here again in a few years. Then there's the Palestinian question. Again, even though Israel ceded territory in pursuit of peace, terror attacks and kidnappings on Israeli soil have continued. There's talk about dusting off the old 'road map'. Israel accepts there will have to be a two-state solution, but the only 'road map' of the Middle East its enemies will accept is one without Israel on it at all. Meanwhile, spare a thought for the Jewish community in Britain. They're as distressed by the carnage as the rest of us and there are divisions over Israel's actions. No one wallows in the death of innocents -- except, of course, Hezbollah and its Iranian puppet-masters. THIS time of year, there are 15,000 British Jewish teenagers in Israel on the traditional summer rite of passage. And there are 30,000 British passport holders living in Israel. Although we had wall-to-wall coverage of grumbling British passport holders being evacuated from Beirut, there doesn't seem to have been equal concern about our fellow citizens under bombardment on the other side of the border. What struck me about the recent pro-Israel demonstration in London was the number of Union flags in the crowd. These are our people. I didn't notice any Union flags at the Stop The War rally, though there were plenty of 'We Are All Hezbollah Now' banners. It doesn't seem to dawn on them that if you want to stop the war you've got to stop Hezbollah. But what drives most of these 'peace campaigners' is not so much a desire for peace as a hatred of Israel. Every time something goes off in Iraq we're told it will radicalise young Muslims back in Britain. We hear that Tony Blair's failure to call for an immediate halt to the Israeli offensive has put us at imminent risk of another Islamist homicide attack on our streets. Despite the Hezbollah war on Israel and the mounting casualties -- and the widespread condemnation of Israel in this country -- I've yet to hear anyone warn that young British Jews are queueing to blow up themselves and hundreds of others at Brent Cross shopping centre. I repeat, this war is awful. The civilian deaths are a tragedy. But there won't be peace in the Middle East until the likes of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas recognise Israel's right to exist. And, I'm afraid, this side of kingdom come, that just ain't gonna happen. Israel may be losing the propaganda war, but it isn't fighting a propaganda war -- it's fighting a real war for its very existence. Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4Nuritg@gmail.com |
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THIS IS A GREAT IDEA TO HELP THE KIDS IN ISRAEL
Posted by Shelters Pizza Israel, August 6, 2006. |
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This is a great idea to help the kids in Israel who sit in shelters for over 16 days! It is a voluntary project which lets you show your support and solidarity by ordering pizzas and ice creams to those kids! http://www.SheltersPizza.com Even if you don't donate, please don't forget to forward this email to your friends and family, and let them know that there is something they also can do to help the kids in Israel! Contact Shelterspizza by email at shelterspizza@gmail.com |
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THE INTERNATIONAL FORCE: AN OWNER'S MANUAL
Posted by Barry Rubin, August 6, 2006. |
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The Franco-American ceasefire plan looks good, and for precisely that reason Hizballah, Iran, and Syria want to sabotage it. It should soon be apparent to the world that Israel prefers peace and that the radical trio seeks continued strife within Lebanon and on the border. Among the ceasefire proposal's key points are the following: - A south Lebanon buffer zone, which only Lebanon's army and an international force can enter. If this is really implemented, the border should become calm, Lebanon will prosper, and the terrorists will be dealt a major defeat. Therefore, during the coming days Hizballah, Iran, and Syria--aided at least in part by a fearful Lebanese government--will try to scuttle this program. Will the world stand up to the terrorists and their sponsors or is it going to water down the ceasefire plan into something they can accept? But what if the world does stand behind such a serious effort to change things for the better? Let us assume there is an agreement to create an international force with a mandate for maintaining the peace. All of the following contingencies had better be covered by their rules of engagement. - What happens when Hizballah forces resist being disarmed? All of the scenarios above are not just possible; they are virtually guaranteed to happen. The great temptation, of course, is for the force to ride around in nice vehicles, take rest breaks at the cafes of Beirut, and do nothing else in between. What will the inner culture of the force be: don't hassle the Hizballah and they won't bother you; don't make waves; if you don't shoot at them, they won't shoot at you. Yes, that sounds about right. May the force be with you. Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research
in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center
university. His co-authored book, Yasir Arafat: A Political
Biography, (Oxford University Press) is now available in paperback
and in Hebrew. His latest book, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab
Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, was published by Wiley
in September. Contact him at gloria@idc.ac.il or go to his website:
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A WAKE UP CALL: THE COST OF INDECISIVENESS
Posted by Yoram Ettinger, August 6, 2006. |
| Washington has urged Jerusalem to accelerate to 150 miles per hour on the road to destroying the capabilities of Hizballah, the Syria-Iran proxy, which murdered 300 Americans in Beirut in 1983 and is involved in anti-US terrorism in Iraq in 2006. However, Jerusalem does not press the pedal to the metal, and does not exceed 80 miles per hour. The pro-Israel Wall Street Journal, which generally reflects the Bush-Cheney world view, has expressed the US disappointment: "Israel has pledged not to stop without disarming Hezbollah; a defeat for Israel will mean more danger and far more casualties down the road? President Bush's entire vision for the Middle East would suffer a severe setback if the current fighting ends with Hezbollah still a credible military force?" (August 1, 2006). The more Israel retreats from the original goals of the war (i.e. disarming Hizballah), the more it undermines its stature as a producer of national security, which upgrades US power-projection, and the more it is perceived as a consumer of national security, which seeks US assistance. The more Israel appears unwilling -- or unable -- to obliterate Hizballah's capabilities, the more it advances Hizballah's regional posture, adrenalizing the veins of terrorist regimes, weakening pro-US Arab regimes such as Jordan and Kuwait, exacerbating Mideast instability, undermining Israel's and US' posture of deterrence, planting seeds for the next and more horrific war, and lessening US interest to expand strategic cooperation with Israel. The more Israel distances itself from its defiant tradition, which has been forged by the 1948 Declaration - and War - of Independence (in face of US military embargo!), by the 1967 Six Day War (resisting US pressure and French military embargo) and by the 1981 bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor (in spite of US, UN and European threats), the less committal are many of Israel's staunch allies on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue and in the Christian community. The more protracted is the war, the more difficult it is for President Bush to sustain his staunch support of Israel's war on terrorism in face of pressure by Bush 41st, Jim Baker, Brent Scowcroft, Richard Haas, the State Department and the CIA bureaucracies, the multinational oil and engineering companies, Saudi Arabia, Europe and the UN. The more Israel subordinates its military operations to diplomatic processes, to international public opinion and to extreme concern for collateral damage (unmatched by any western military!), the less effective is its military and the higher the level of Israeli fatalities. Moreover, the US defense establishment is concerned whether Israel has misconstrued the "1982 Lebanon Quagmire". Is Israel throwing the "baby" (the necessary destruction of PLO capabilities to spray northern Israel with Katyusha missiles) out with the "bath water" (the ill-advised attempt to change the regime in Beirut)? The more Israel engages itself with diplomatic processes -- before it obliterates Hizballah capabilities -- the more is the US sucked into these processes. The processes enhance the profile of the UN, Europe and Foggy Bottom (which aim at Israel's retreat to the 1949 lines on all fronts), promote the role of the US as an even-handed mediator at the expense of its position as a unique ally of Israel, and yield undue pressure on Israel for sweeping and reckless concessions. The more Israel calls for a multi-national force in Southern Lebanon, the more it is portrayed as a country, which ignores the flight by such forces from Lebanon (i.e. US and France in 1983), which relies on subcontractors for its own defense, even when the subcontractors constitute a human-shield for terrorists and a major hurdle for Israeli hot-pursuits of terrorists. A multi-national force in Lebanon would severely undermine the relations between Israel and the components of the multi-national force. The longer the war lingers on, the more thoroughly will the Hizballah experience be implemented by Palestinian terrorists in Judea & Samaria and (especially) in Gaza, which is rapidly becoming Hizballistan, adding fuel to the fire of regional anti-US terrorism. President Bush and Vice President Cheney do not consider Israel a puppet; they consider the Jewish State a unique ally with shared-values, mutual threats and joint strategic interests, a critical First Yard Line outpost in the third World War between western democracies and Middle East-based Islamic terrorism. Therefore, they have not approached Israel even-handedly. In fact, they have prodded Israel to resume the daring and the determination, which catapulted the Jewish State from being the remnant of the Holocaust in 1948 to a major non-NATO ally of the US since 1988. Israel's resolve to devastate Hizballah to submission -- and not just to win -- requires a shift to a higher gear, driving at 150 miles per hour. Israel's leaders are well-advised to study the US colloquialism: "If you can't roll with the Dobermans on the street, stay on the porch with the Poodles." 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 |
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SEND A FREE NOTE & CHOCOLATE BAR TO AN ISRAELI SOLDIER
Posted by Allan Lewish, August 6, 2006. |
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Dear Friends, Click below to send a personal message of support and a chocolate bar to an Israeli soldier for free (courtesy of Elite and the Heritage Affinity Services credit card). Please forward this to others, too. www.websense-media.co.il/has_200706/default.asp?gid=friend Foward this to your friends. Contact Allan Lewis at drdoctor@013.net.il |
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THE BRINK OF MADNESS: A FAMILIAR PLACE.
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 6, 2006. |
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This was written by Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War. It appeared yesterday in National Review Online (www.nro.com). |
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The West is morally bankrupt; anyone who thinks otherwise I suggest they rethink their thinking...just look around, Europe in 1938 is all over... When I used to read about the 1930s -- the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany, the appeasement in France and Britain, the murderous duplicity of the Soviet Union, and the racist Japanese murdering in China -- I never could quite figure out why, during those bleak years, Western Europeans and those in the United States did not speak out and condemn the growing madness, if only to defend the millennia-long promise of Western liberalism. Of course, the trauma of the Great War was all too fresh, and the utopian hopes for the League of Nations were not yet dashed. The Great Depression made the thought of rearmament seem absurd. The connivances of Stalin with Hitler -- both satanic, yet sometimes in alliance, sometimes not -- could confuse political judgments. But nevertheless it is still surreal to reread the fantasies of Chamberlain, Daladier, and Pope Pius, or the stump speeches by Charles Lindbergh ("Their [the Jews'] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government") or Father Coughlin ("Many people are beginning to wonder whom they should fear most -- the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination.") -- and baffling to consider that such men ever had any influence. Not any longer. Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians. It is now nearly five years since jihadists from the Arab world left a crater in Manhattan and ignited the Pentagon. Apart from the frontline in Iraq, the United States and NATO have troops battling the Islamic fascists in Afghanistan. European police scramble daily to avoid another London or Madrid train bombing. The French, Dutch, and Danish governments are worried that a sizable number of Muslim immigrants inside their countries are not assimilating, and, more worrisome, are starting to demand that their hosts alter their liberal values to accommodate radical Islam. It is apparently not safe for Australians in Bali, and a Jew alone in any Arab nation would have to be discreet -- and perhaps now in France or Sweden as well. Canadians' past opposition to the Iraq war, and their empathy for the Palestinians, earned no reprieve, if we can believe that Islamists were caught plotting to behead their prime minister. Russians have been blown up by Muslim Chechnyans from Moscow to Beslan. India is routinely attacked by Islamic terrorists. An elected Lebanese minister must keep in mind that a Hezbollah or Syrian terrorist -- not an Israeli bomb -- might kill him if he utters a wrong word. The only mystery here in the United States is which target the jihadists want to destroy first: the Holland Tunnel in New York or the Sears Tower in Chicago. In nearly all these cases there is a certain sameness: The Koran is quoted as the moral authority of the perpetrators; terrorism is the preferred method of violence; Jews are usually blamed; dozens of rambling complaints are aired, and killers are often considered stateless, at least in the sense that the countries in which they seek shelter or conduct business or find support do not accept culpability for their actions. Yet the present Western apology to all this is often to deal piecemeal with these perceived Muslim grievances: India, after all, is in Kashmir; Russia is in Chechnya; America is in Iraq, Canada is in Afghanistan; Spain was in Iraq (or rather, still is in Al Andalus); or Israel was in Gaza and Lebanon. Therefore we are to believe that "freedom fighters" commit terror for political purposes of "liberation." At the most extreme, some think there is absolutely no pattern to global terrorism, and the mere suggestion that there is constitutes "Islamaphobia." Here at home, yet another Islamic fanatic conducts an act of al Qaedism in Seattle, and the police worry immediately about the safety of the mosques from which such hatred has in the past often emanated -- as if the problem of a Jew being murdered at the Los Angeles airport or a Seattle civic center arises from not protecting mosques, rather than protecting us from what sometimes goes on in mosques. But then the world is awash with a vicious hatred that we have not seen in our generation: the most lavish film in Turkish history, Valley of the Wolves, depicts a Jewish-American harvesting organs at Abu Ghraib in order to sell them; the Palestinian state press regularly denigrates the race and appearance of the American Secretary of State; the U.N. secretary general calls a mistaken Israeli strike on a U.N. post "deliberate," without a word that his own Blue Helmets have for years watched Hezbollah arm rockets in violation of U.N. resolutions, and Hezbollah's terrorists routinely hide behind U.N. peacekeepers to ensure impunity while launching missiles. If you think I exaggerate the bankruptcy of the West or only refer to the serial ravings on the Middle East of Pat Buchanan or Jimmy Carter, consider some of the most recent comments from Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah about Israel: "When the people of this temporary country lose their confidence in their legendary army, the end of this entity will begin [emphasis added]." Then compare Nasrallah's remarks about the U.S: "To President Bush, Prime Minister Olmert and every other tyrannical aggressor. I want to invite you to do what you want, practice your hostilities. By God, you will not succeed in erasing our memory, our presence or eradicating our strong belief. Your masses will soon waste away, and your days are numbered [emphasis added]." And finally examine here at home reaction to Hezbollah -- which has butchered Americans in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia -- from a prominent Democratic Congressman, John Dingell: "I don't take sides for or against Hezbollah." And isn't that the point, after all: the amoral Westerner cannot exercise moral judgment because he no longer has any? An Arab rights group, between denunciations of Israel and America, is suing its alma mater the United States for not evacuating Arab-Americans quickly enough from Lebanon, despite government warnings of the dangers of going there, and the explicit tactics of Hezbollah, in the manner of Saddam Hussein, of using civilians as human shields in the war it started against Israel. Demonstrators on behalf of Hezbollah inside the United States -- does anyone remember our 241 Marines slaughtered by these cowardly terrorists? -- routinely carry placards with the Star of David juxtaposed with Swastikas, as voices praise terrorist killers. Few Arab-American groups these past few days have publicly explained that the sort of violence, tyranny, and lawlessness of the Middle East that drove them to the shores of a compassionate and successful America is best epitomized by the primordial creed of Hezbollah. There is no need to mention Europe, an entire continent now returning to the cowardice of the 1930s. Its cartoonists are terrified of offending Muslim sensibilities, so they now portray the Jews as Nazis, secure that no offended Israeli terrorist might chop off their heads. The French foreign minister meets with the Iranians to show solidarity with the terrorists who promise to wipe Israel off the map ("In the region there is of course a country such as Iran -- a great country, a great people and a great civilization, which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region") -- and manages to outdo Chamberlain at Munich. One wonders only whether the prime catalyst for such French debasement is worry over oil, terrorists, nukes, unassimilated Arab minorities at home, or the old Gallic Jew-hatred. It is now a cliché to rant about the spread of postmodernism, cultural relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities, and government -- and never more so than in the general public's nonchalance since Hezbollah attacked Israel. These past few days the inability of millions of Westerners, both here and in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real story, not the "quarter-ton" Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and suburbs. Yes, perhaps Israel should have hit more quickly, harder, and on the ground; yes, it has run an inept public relations campaign; yes, to these criticisms and more. But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times: a humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself against terrorists from the 7 th century, while under the scrutiny of a corrupt world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of Islamic terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western societies under duress. In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around. Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4Nuritg@gmail.com |
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ISRAEL MUST FIGHT STRATEGICALLY
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, August 5, 2006. |
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In some later decade, if our species, minds saddled with vestiges of a competitive violent past, is ever so fortunate, there could be peace on Earth. But not now! Israel truly fights for near future prosperity, perhaps its very survival, as intrepid young soldiers enter unfamiliar territory within southern Lebanon, alas, playing to the strength of Hizbullah combatants. Why indeed does the beleaguered Jewish State cede home field advantage to its archenemy? How many historical examples can be cited more than suggesting victories emerge to nations only when they utilize their strengths? America, Israel's one formidable dependable ally, itself mired in a no-win strategy bereft of inherent juggernaut strength, attempting to hold together an unglued Iraq, can indeed alter that dysfunctional situation by redeploying all troops to the proximate north into friendly virtual Kurdistan, allowing Sunnis and Shiites to fend for themselves in a most uncivil civil war of their own choosing. America's presence in the chaotic minefield of Baghdad and extended 'burbs does more harm than good, as the superpower foolishly misuses its troops for no rational purpose. Once freed from such folly, the might of America can focus on that most perilous regime next door. America, Israel, and indeed the entire civilized world must forthwith come to grips with an emerging Machiavellian Persian nuclear power, strategically underwriting terrorist organizations such as Hizbullah and Hamas, not coincidently Israel's most zealous enemies. If the muddled mullahs of Iran, as well as their mouthpiece AhMADinejad, are neutered, the aforementioned no-longer-financed fanatical terrorist proxies will no longer remain viable forces, today tormenting Israel, tomorrow likely extending tentacles far beyond, attempting to suffocate perceived infidels hither and yon, especially throughout a yearned for intolerant neo-Ottoman Imam-possessed Europe. Yet European leaders, heads in sands of denial, still believe the Islamic desert rats are not after their own tender gun-shy non-Muslim hides. Yet Kofi Annan and his contemptible cadre of immoral moralizers, Israel haters that they are, refuse to even chastise Iran's mad Muslim AhMadinejad, who strongly suggests Israel should be wiped off the map. What can one expect, however, from soulless U.N. stewards that watch but refuse to act while militant Arab Muslims perpetrate genocide on Black Africans in Darfur Sudan at the behest of oil-rich Islamic tyrants who rule that wretched land. In other words, Israel and America, perhaps with a few allies but mostly alone, will have to rescue this imperiled planet from a fundamentalist Islamic assault metastasizing in its early stages with computerized emerging mass destructive strength of T-Rex vintage, whose predatory mother board resides in Tehran. With American forces entrenched in virtual Kurdistan, Israel can vigorously return AhMADinejad's venomous volley, threatening to morph his Shiite stronghold into a pile of rubble. (Will Kofi Annan berate Israel for whispering such sweet nothings?) Israel's war against Revolutionary Guard trained Hizbullah and even Hamas is tantamount to a war against the bloody Islamic underwriters of such creeps, such got rocks fossil fuel moguls squatting mostly in Iran. It is therefore imperative that Jewish generals rethink a strategy of boots on the ground for any length of time, opting for potential missiles launches at remote targets as well as warplanes over the skies of Tehran (and Damascus if necessary). Hizbullah will not endure when and if it no longer is able to replenish its supplies of weaponry, especially deadly rockets. Hamas will no longer be a threat as well. The tiny nation of Israel must fully utilize its technological superiority, not its precious children, if it is to succeed in overcoming hateful Islamic militants that will not be satisfied until Israel is no longer a viable State. Period! It is understandable that a moral Jewish State today desires to minimize Lebanese civilian casualties, in effect human shields, exploited by Hizbullah cowards, but surgical strategies must be balanced with successful strategies weighed in favor of minimizing casualties perpetrated on its own troops and citizens. Therefore, keep Hizbullah and Hamas at bay, but with American support, threaten and if necessary attack the thickening Persian jugular well before nuclear considerations enter into the strategic equation. Nothing is more critical! Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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WHO'S THE FOOL?
Posted by David Wilder, August 5, 2006. |
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View hundreds of pictures: In Memory of Gush Katif: http://www.hebron.com/english/gallery.php?id=166 |
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A number of people have approached me, asking why I've refrained from writing, expressing an opinion about the current situation in Israel. In truth, I've had trouble writing for the past year. Gush Katif threw me totally out of kilter. And my thoughts concerning many different sorts of 'leaders' are so severe that I've had second thoughts about expressing myself via the written word. However, perhaps the time has come to end this self-imposed exile. But I must warn all those who continue to read. What I have to say is not easy to think, not easy to write, and surely will not be easy to read. As found on various internet sites, usually before viewing pictures: Warning: these words may not find favor in your eyes. There -- you've been warned. The past few weeks have found my thoughts somewhat hybrid -- the war and Gush Katif. And not necessarily in that order. A year is a long time, but it's also a very short time. It's difficult to reflect -- in order to reflect you have to be able to step back, to view from a perspective -- a perspective of time and distance. Gush Katif is still much too close to be able to really step back. And it's not just the pictures. A few days ago I posted almost 250 photographs of mine from Gush Katif. It's difficult to look at them and not cry -- it was so beautiful -- as I once described Kfar Darom, a Gan Eden, a Garden of Eden, a paradise. How can one, using his own two hands, destroy a paradise? However, it's not just the pictures. Story time: Numerous times last year, I mentioned my friends from Kfar Darom, the Sudri family. About a month ago, their daughter Tamar (made famous in a picture of her, all orange) visited us. She and her family now live in a monstrously dangerous city -- Ashkelon, which has come under fire from Arab-launched missiles, launched not far from Tamar's old home in Kfar Darom. Tamar sat with us, joining us for a pleasant Shabbat meal, when she told us the following story: She had to travel north, and at her parents' request, went by train, rather than hitching a ride. She sat in a car with two other people, both men, both in uniform. At some point the train came to an abrupt unscheduled stop. Some kind of problem was going to cause a lengthy delay. After a little while the three passengers began playing a word game: each would name a letter and then have to name a place starting with that same letter. Eventually the letter 'Kaf' was mentioned and Tamar immediately said "Kfar Darom," which starts with the letter "Kaf." One of the soldiers exclaimed, "That's not a place. It doesn't exist." Tamar: "Of course it exists." 1st soldier: "But it doesn't exist anymore. 2nd soldier: I second that -- I helped evict such-and-such a family from Kfar Darom." 1st soldier: "I was there too. I bulldozed down houses. And if I ever find that family whose house I tore down, I'll kill them. Their house destroyed my bulldozer." Time-out for explanation: Due to the continued rocket attacks on Kfar Darom, the families had to add a very heavy protective substance to their roofs, effectively making them 'rocket-proof.' When the houses were being destroyed, these rooftops fell on the bulldozers, causing them major damage. Tamar: Oh, really? Which house did you bulldoze that caused such damage to your vehicle? 1st soldier: The house which was -- and he described exactly where the house was. Tamar, livid and barely breathing, whispered back: I lived there, in Kfar Darom, in that house -- that was my home. The two soldiers paled and immediately shut up. The game came to an end. Shortly afterwards the train began moving again. As soon as it came to a station, the two men fled, even though they hadn't yet reached their destination. Can you possibly image, coming face to face with the person who shredded your house, for no reason whatsoever -- bulldozed it, the way you knock down a building of blocks? I certainly cannot. I've told this story to numerous people, but even writing it, it brings tears to my eyes. How can people, Jewish people, be so cruel to their own brethren? So maybe now others will accuse me of the same cruelty, maybe even worse. So be it. It is so clear that everything we are facing today in the north (and in the south, which seems to conveniently been forgotten), is a direct result of last year's expulsion and abandonment of Gush Katif and the northern Shomron. Years ago, following the abandonment of Sinai and outbreak of hostilities on the northern border, Hebron-Kiryat Arba Rabbi, Rav Dov Lior, said time and time again, one is the result of the other. Israel thought that relinquishment of land would lead to peace. G-d is proving to us otherwise. Ditto the present. However today is even worse. Today we are being attacked from the very land we abandoned to our enemies. And to add icing to the cake, the so-called prime minister, in the midst of the battles, proudly exclaims that he plans to continue with the absurdity: the 'victory' over Hizballah in Lebanon will act as a hoist with which he will continue to rid the Jewish people of its G-d-given land throughout Judea and Samaria. So that the enemy will have an easier time knocking down planes entering and leaving Ben Gurion airport. One might ask: if G-d is trying to teach us a lesson, why must the innocent suffer? All those in the north, now without homes, having fled, or somehow living in bomb shelters? Tens and hundreds of thousands of people, refugees in their own land. It seems so cruel. Where were all these, tens and hundreds of thousands when thousands of rockets fell on Kfar Darom, Neve Dekalim, and all the other communities in Gush Katif? Where was Israel radio when terrorists plagued Gush Katif, day after day. Where were 'good Israelis' when a criminal decision was made to uproot thousands from their homes. No noise, no protest, no nothing. Just quiet. And amongst many, happiness. 'Ah, at last. Finally. Now maybe we'll see the beginning of peace with our neighbors.' I have trouble finding any sympathy in my heart for the communities to the north of Gush Katif, who have been coming under Kasam rocket fire -- all the left-wing kibbutzim and moshavim, who couldn't wait to see the trucks full of furniture leaving Gush Katif. Did they really think that it wouldn't happen to them? Where are they now? And I have trouble finding sympathy in my heart for the hundreds of thousands up north who have no where to go. Where were they when Eretz Yisrael was being ripped apart? Where were they when other Jews were being torn from their homes and stuffed in hotel rooms like cattle. Where have they been for the past year, while thousands of people have been left unemployed, their livelihoods destroyed, at the drop of Sharon's proverbial pin, the decision of a madman, who thought that the destruction of Gush Katif would answer all his problems. To the contrary. Gush Katif brought about his downfall. His successor thinks it can't and won't happen to him? Let's wait and see. The country, the people, have to learn a lesson. As the saying goes, when you play with fire, you get burnt. We keep playing, and we keep getting burnt, but then we go back and make the same mistake again. The ironies of the war are too great to be overlooked. Mr. Mustache, Mr. Peace himself, trying to lead the charge into Lebanon, as Defense minister. I have no sympathy, none whatsoever, for those supposed leaders, whose terms of office will almost certainly come to a swift end as a result of their overwhelming ineptitude. Leading the troops into the Gusk Katif decimation, Ehud Olmert and Tzippy Livni thought that following in the footsteps of Sharon would be easy. They are starting to learn otherwise. As soon as the war ends, and the enormity of their mistakes is realized, they, together with Peretz, will fall from public office, never to be heard of again, except perhaps in the history books, where they will be shamed and ridiculed. Why? Because Israel has lost a war to group of terrorist guerrillas. Not to a foreign power, not to the Syrians, Iranians, Egyptians, rather to Nasrallah and Hizballah. There's no way around it. We lost this one. Even if the seeming 'end result' is spun out into a major PR victory. Why? Because Nasrallah has shown the whole world how a small group of guerrillas can turn Israel upside down, how they can kill Israelis, soldiers and civilians, and force hundreds of thousands from their homes. It makes no difference if Nasrallah survives the war or not. He has won. He has proven, following in the footsteps of Arafat, that Israel is not invincible. If he can do it, anyone can. It is truly miraculous that our surrounding neighbors have not yet taken advantage of our unbelievable weakness and joined the party. Why not? The present Israeli leadership, totally inexperienced, totally stunned and dizzied by the ferocity of the Hizballah rocket attacks, wouldn't know how to respond to coordinated Syrian-Egyptian-Jordanian attacks on Israel. All we have left is to pray to G-d in heaven that this catastrophe ends before our enemies can get their act together. Yet, with all of the anger and bitterness towards these 'leaders,' there has to be a small small space left for pity. After all, our people are dying. A friend of mine came into my office earlier today and presented me with the following parable: The village fool was standing in the town square, really making an idiot of himself. Amost all the villagers stood around, watching, laughing and joking, enjoying the show. Except for one person, who stood back, crying. One of the villagers approached him and asked, 'why aren't you joining us, watching the fool make such a fool of himself? He answered: "Yes, but he is OUR fool!" The fact that we, Am Yisrael, in Israel and around the world, allowed Gush Katif to fall, that we allowed the Northern Shomron to fall, that fact that we allowed Olmert to be elected Prime Minister, that fact that we allow him dare say that this war will act as a hoist to Gush Katif, Part Two -- So you tell me -- who's the fool? David Wilder is spokesman of The Jewish Community of Hebron. You can contribute directly to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB10, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, hebron@hebron.org.il, 972-2-9965333 or write to The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, hebronfund@aol.com |
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THE MOST SERIOUS CROSSROADS FOR ISRAEL'S POLITICS AS WELL AS USA-ISRAEL RELATIONS
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 5, 2006. |
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Friends, Now it is the most serious crossroads for Israel's politics as well as USA-Israel relations. Olmert's clear weakness and failing and his search for victory on the cheap leaves the question: is Israel still a net asset to the USA or now liability? Israel's war with Hezbollah is:
The defeat of Hezbollah would be a huge loss for Iran, both psychologically and strategically. But much more is at stake. Israel's leaders do not seem to understand that a military failure in Lebanon would be ruinous to Israel's relationship with its most vital lifeline -- America. This was written by Charles Krauthammer and
it appeared yesterday in Jewish World Review
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Israel's war with Hezbollah is a war to secure its northern border, to defeat a terrorist militia bent on Israel's destruction, to restore Israeli deterrence in the age of the missile. But even more is at stake. Israel's leaders do not seem to understand how ruinous a military failure in Lebanon would be to its relationship with America, Israel's most vital lifeline. For decades there has been a debate in the United States over Israel's strategic value. At critical moments in the past, Israel has indeed shown its value. In 1970 Israeli military moves against Syria saved King Hussein and the moderate pro-American Hashemite monarchy of Jordan. In 1982 American-made Israeli fighters engaged the Syrian air force, shooting down 86 MiGs in one week without a single loss, revealing a shocking Soviet technological backwardness that dealt a major blow to Soviet prestige abroad and self-confidence among its elites at home (including Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev). But that was decades ago. The question, as always, is: What have you done for me lately? There is fierce debate in the United States about whether, in the post-Sept. 11 world, Israel is a net asset or liability. Hezbollah's unprovoked attack on July 12 provided Israel the extraordinary opportunity to demonstrate its utility by making a major contribution to America's war on terrorism. America's green light for Israel to defend itself is seen as a favor to Israel. But that is a tendentious, misleadingly partial analysis. The green light -- indeed, the encouragement -- is also an act of clear self-interest. America wants, America needs, a decisive Hezbollah defeat. Unlike many of the other terrorist groups in the Middle East, Hezbollah is a serious enemy of the United States. In 1983 it massacred 241 American servicemen. Except for al-Qaeda, it has killed more Americans than any other terror organization. More important, it is today the leading edge of an aggressive, nuclear-hungry Iran. Hezbollah is a wholly owned Iranian subsidiary. Its mission is to extend the Islamic Revolution's influence into Lebanon and Palestine, destabilize any Arab-Israeli peace, and advance an Islamist Shiite ascendancy, led and controlled by Iran, throughout the Levant. America finds itself at war with radical Islam, a two-churched monster: Sunni al-Qaeda is now being challenged by Shiite Iran for primacy in its epic confrontation with the infidel West. With al-Qaeda in decline, Iran is on the march. It is intervening through proxies throughout the Arab world -- Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq -- to subvert modernizing, Western-oriented Arab governments and bring these territories under Iranian hegemony. Its nuclear ambitions would secure these advances and give it an overwhelming preponderance of power over the Arabs and an absolute deterrent against serious counteractions by the United States, Israel or any other rival. The moderate pro-Western Arabs understand this very clearly. Which is why Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately came out against Hezbollah and privately urged the United States to let Israel take down that organization. They know that Hezbollah is fighting Iran's proxy war not only against Israel but also against them and, more generally, against the United States and the West. Hence Israel's rare opportunity to demonstrate what it can do for its great American patron. The defeat of Hezbollah would be a huge loss for Iran, both psychologically and strategically. Iran would lose its foothold in Lebanon. It would lose its major means to destabilize and inject itself into the heart of the Middle East. It would be shown to have vastly overreached in trying to establish itself as the regional superpower. The United States has gone far out on a limb to allow Israel to win and for all this to happen. It has counted on Israel's ability to do the job. It has been disappointed. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership. Foolishly relying on air power alone, he denied his generals the ground offensive they wanted, only to reverse himself later. He has allowed his war cabinet meetings to become fully public through the kind of leaks no serious wartime leadership would ever countenance. Divisive cabinet debates are broadcast to the world, as was Olmert's own complaint that "I'm tired. I didn't sleep at all last night" (Haaretz, July 28). Hardly the stuff to instill Churchillian confidence. His search for victory on the cheap has jeopardized not just the Lebanon operation but America's confidence in Israel as well. That confidence -- and the relationship it reinforces -- is as important to Israel's survival as its own army. The tremulous Olmert seems not to have a clue. Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4Nuritg@gmail.com |
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MY 19 HOURS IN A BOMB SHELTER JUST 6 MILES FROM LEBANON
Posted by Buddy Macy, August 5, 2006. |
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Shalom Everyone!
The first five days of my trip to Israel have been extremely eventful. On Monday and Tuesday, I attended events in Jerusalem that were part of the commemoration of the one-year anniversary of the expulsion of more than 9,000 Jews from northern Samaria and Gush Katif. I saw a wonderful, moving, full-length documentary about the events and people leading up to the expulsion last August. I highly recommend Avi Abelow's production, "Home Game." Tuesday, I attended a reunion at the beautiful Jerusalem convention center, a rally at Independence Park and an extraordinary service at the Western Wall along with about 20,000 others, including thousands of expellees. Fortunately, I did not need to understand Hebrew to appreciate the smiles and hugs of the expellees as they reunited with old friends. They have an indomitable, optimistic spirit -- one filled with faith, love and Jewish values. If you have not yet done so, please visit www.katifund.org and make a contribution to help the Jewish refugees, writing, "We Give Generously" in the "Comments" section of the simple form; or, send a check to Friends of Gush Katif, PO Box 1001, Little Falls, NJ 07424-1001. This past Wednesday, I drove up north with two men who were delivering supplies to the people of Nahariya. Located just six miles from the Lebanese border, the beautiful coastal town has suffered a large number of rocket attacks since the war began; especially, during the past week. Shortly after our arrival, the rocket warning siren went off. About a minute later, we heard a boom; a katyusha had landed approximately 500 meters from us. Soon after, a couple more rockets struck further away in town. One woman who was with us went into a mild state of shock. (We were in a specially-protected building at the time.) After some calm, I was driven to the bomb shelter of a nearby apartment building. Perhaps as many as 80 to 90% of the apartment's residents had traveled south to get out of range of the deadly weapons. I walked down and stepped into the shelter. Living inside this small space (maybe 30' by 22') were more than 20 people, including nine youths, three very young children and a lovely woman who is eight-months pregnant with her fourth child. The people were obviously pleased to have a visitor. I had brought a few things with me (crayons, a couple of coloring books, paper, etc.) and gave them to the kids. They were most appreciative of the simple gifts. I formed an almost immediate attachment with many of the "residents." I played Israeli Monopoly with some of the kids, talked and joked with them and the adults, and ate with them. (The Israeli Government supplies the food for people forced to live in shelters.) They shared their food with me. Even in their awful situation, our fellow Jews were thinking of someone other than themselves! And, they kept of! fering me things - coffee, snacks and more. One of the residents, formerly of Georgia (Russia) put beautiful tefillin on me and had me read the prayers, providing me with help along the way. When we finished praying, he removed the tightly-wrapped tefillin and I noticed an impression the strap had made into my arm. He explained to me that that was a mitzvah. Praying with Aharon was a very special experience. In the early evening, it was arranged for me to visit children of employees at the Western Galilee Hospital - Nahariya. I was about to enter a van when the siren went off again. This time, there were four more rockets fired into Israel. About five minutes later, I was driven to the medical facility, where I tried to lift the spirits of the children. It is the only hospital located along any of Israel's borders, and is the one whose eye department had been destroyed only two days earlier by a katyusha. Fortunately, the hospital had planned for an attack a while ago, and it contains a huge underground emergency facility. No one was injured in the katyusha attack, but the building suffered substantial damage -- 10 million shekels (about 2.4 million U.S. dollars) according to one hospital source. Returning safely from the hospital, I was back among my new "family" in the bomb shelter. It seems as if everyone who lives there, under extremely tense, crowded conditions, is amazingly calm and strong, caring, cheerful and optimistic. And, they take pride in their temporary home. After lunch, some of the older boys and girls took the floor mats outside to the porch; the boys then cleaned the floor with water and bleach and let it air dry. The shower in the shelter was not working. The children and adults have been living in this concrete facility and on the sheltered porch of the apartment building for 24 consecutive days. Some of the adults go to their apartments at night to get clothing or other supplies, or to escape the boredom for a little while. (The rockets are fired mostly during the daytime, because, at night, the Israeli Defense Forces are sometimes able to identify the fire from the rocket launch. By 3 in the afternoon on the day I arrived in Nahariya, 200 rockets had been fired into Israel, including dozens into this once thriving coastal community. Tragically, one of Nahariya's residents was killed by one of those rockets. The people of Nahariya and the other northern Israeli towns who have not moved to the south, either because they are poor, they don't want to leave their homes, or they don't want to give into terrorism, set a wonderful example for all Israelis to emulate. The unity and togetherness they display, as with the people from Gush Katif and northern Samaria, are to be greatly admired. I feel so fortunate to have met each and every one of those heroic Israelis. If you would like to help them out financially, please email me for the information. Shavua tov and best wishes, Buddy Macy (052)484-5605 (until at least Tuesday morning, Israeli time [7 hours ahead of EDT] 973-785-0057 upon my return to New Jersey Contact Buddy Macy at vegibud@aol.com |
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APOCALYPTIC NIGHTMARE OF THE TWO POWER BLOCS LOOMING
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, August 4, 2006. |
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Here we are, after three weeks plus of Iran's war via "Hizbollah-Lebanon" on Israel having just concluded the fast of the saddest date on the Jewish calendar, 9 Av on which dates both Temples were destroyed and Europeans, rubbing it in, expelled Jews from England (1293), France (1306) and Spain (1492). Jews and that part of the world interested in their calendar are about to enter "the seven weeks of consolation" with the prophetic readings of comfort as promised by G-d through Isaiah (beginning with chapter 40). But if the lessons of ancient and recent history and of contemporary events are not heeded with discernment and redemptive action decisively and quickly taken, dancing will be turned into ashes and, G-d forbid, not only figuratively. For more than a decade, in newspaper columns, magazines, books and electronic fora I have described the Anglo-American diplomatic-economic elites taking down their own nations and, above all, Israel in complementary jousting with the Russian imperial bloc as both stagger toward a world of perpetual attrition war and terror, a multicultural world of forgetting and rootless human resources. Since the 1950s they have focused especially on the Middle East as the forum they best can milk for economic gain and influence, and more especially, for the world of endless crisis and crisis management that will reduce all peoples, ruled nominally by "the world community" to peonage. The punishment and destruction of the regime of Saddam Hussein could have been completed in 1991, had the rulers of America not blackmailed and sidelined Israel which had made the take down possible by destroying the Franco-Italian nuclear reactor of the Ba'ath regime, was superficially completed in 2003. The lag was to put into place the Oslo - Road Map process, itself an extension of Camp David, a process that leads to a decimated Israel that is a multi-cultural client state of the US, "defended" by NATO troops. There is no time right now to discuss and explain the suicidal sources and nature of the Anglo-American project. What we must recognize is the degree to which American and Israeli soldiers have been bleeding for an improbable, indeed, insidiously deceitful imperial project that actually advances Russia's imperial ambitions, the better to achieve the world security state in which terror is endemic and victory unknown. "Iraq" is an artificial construct, like "Lebanon," one of several made-in-Whitehall (with some French 'finish') between the World Wars. Like all artificial nations it has been and is unstable and violent, always on the verge of disintegrating and governable only by imposed tyranny or empires. Once it became clear that America would not fight with its only dependable ally, Israel who was and remains the target of the Anglo-American elites world project, that the "war on terror" would not become "a war on terror-producing and supporting states," the failure of the American invasion of Iraq and a massive increase in Islamic jihad became inevitable. To defeat terror requires destruction of the nexus of terror in the world, the artificial states of Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia and Iran, whose pro-Western shah was blind-sided by France and the State Department in 1979. So now we have Hassan Nasrallah, Commander of Hizbollah "(the army of allah") pushing Iran's goals summarized by his refrain" "our slogan, which Imam Khomeini taught us, will remain lofty and strong; namely, "Death to America! Death to America!" Once the shad went down, Iran promptly created Hezbollah and except when Israel went into "Lebanon" in 1982, the "army of allah" has grown. Now this extension of Iran whose "capital is Beirut" as Hassan Nasrallah not only proclaims and demonstrates, has launched the initial invasion leading to the Shiite apolcalypse that this year comes on August 21. On that day, the 12th or "hidden" Imam will emerge as the "Mahdi" the true leader who will take the world to ruin from which only Shiites will emerge. President of Iran, Mahmoud Admadinejad believes himself to be the 12th Imam. He has been threatening to exterminate Israel, Jews and America ("Islam will sit on the throne of America! America will be an Islamic nation") for many months. So did his "spiritual" predecessor, the still dominant Ali Khamenei who is credited with being the Supreme councillor of Hezbollah. Mesopotamia, for whose impossible and artificial unity as "Iraq" (the word means "the edge" and never has been a nation till the British put it together to anchor their dominance of the Mideast and its oil, meant ultimately to include "Jordan" and Israel) American troops have been dying is exploding in a Shiite rebellion. This has been predicted often and by many. Holding "democratic" elections in an artificial state composed of many different and hostile ethnic, religious, language groups with very different histories and belief systems was bound to explode. It has, and hundreds of thousands of Shiites are "exercising their democratic rights" by parading and burning effigies of Bush, Blair and Olmert (if only they would take him and his unconditional surrender party). Because America's leaders, like those in Isreal, failed to define victory and the enemy honestly and accurately, the enemy is conquering with results that will dwarf any terror seen to date. At this very late hour it is essential, if Israel and even America are to survive that Iran and its client / provinces Syria and Lebanon be defined as enemies and that all their various armed forces be destroyed. If there is to be anything like peace, or even armed and sustainable truce, Mesopotamia must be partitioned into its three main historical divisions and America take control, with Britain of the oil industry Americans and British built from scratch. Above all, if there is to be sustainable peace or truce, Americans must demand that their supposedly accountable politicians clearly and genuinely empower and assist Israel in destroying the enemies within and around it, jihadist enemies that heretofore have been armed and enabled by Anglo-American as well as EU-Russian leaders. If America does not free itself from its status of a client-colony to the treacherous elites in Britain, the UN and its assorted NGO's and cults we are looking at the destruction of the America we have known. It will follow Israel, whom its diplomatic and "intelligence" cadres have attacked and betrayed for decades, into ruins and we will all be living like the Jews in Maalot or Sderot and will inherit the chronic apocalypse described by Orwell. Destroy Iran - Hezbollah now; then destroy the House of Saud; empower Israel and assist it to the regime change and victory its people yearn for. Do this or we will not only see but feel the pit closing around us before this terrible summer is past. Americans, call your congressmen and Senators; Israelis, get rid of Olmert-Kadima or they will collude in getting rid of you... And there will be no comfort. Professor Eugene Narrett teaches writing and Literature at Boston University. He is the author of hundreds of articles, columns and reviews on politics, American culture and the arts. He is completing a study on Romanticism and the longterm decline of Western Culture. He writes often on subjects relating to Israel and Judaism and is a weekly columnist for the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Massachusetts. Contact him at culturtalk@aol.com |
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THE FASCISM OF "MUSLIM OUTRAGE"
Posted by The Reality Show, August 4, 2006. |
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Please see http://www.israelendtimes.com for complete treatment and background essays... |
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We all saw the rage, the notorious violent Arab street, they always have "issues", Don't they? One day it's a cartoon, another day it's a scarf in Paris, then a racist quarrel on Australian beaches. What? Did you think for one minute that Muslims protesting are of "botherly love", like lately after Huzbollah terrorists used civilians, especially the husbands/fathers using women and kids, so that the "outrage" will be great.) so that they would die (directly by them or indirectly) en masse are merely worried about dead or injured Arab Muslims? You have got to be kidding! Where's Arab Muslims "outrage" when they murder each other because of fascism between Sunni Shiite on a DAILY basis in Iraq? Where's Arab Muslims "outrage" when Iranian Islamic Republic oppresses Ahawazi Arabs? or its entire nation? Where's Arab Muslims "outrage" when their brothers & sisters are oppressed in ALL Arab Muslims regimes, especially in Syria? Where's Arab Muslims "outrage" when Arab Muslims massacre 2,000,000 Muslim Africans in Sudan? Or Where's Arab Muslims "outrage" on Hamas', Islamic Jihad's schooling into the death cult and using children as human bombs and as human shields? Or, Where's Arab Muslims "outrage" at the Hezbollah that uses kids to be human shields, that enters into civilian homes and hijacking rooms to be missile launchers? Or, What if UN investigators will be let to invesigate who has killed the women and children in Qana, and it will turn out that he building that has collapsed 7 hours after Israeli operation on he terrorists was undermined by the terrorists and to be Huzbolla's direct massacre? Do you really expect the masses of "innocent" mainstream Arab Muslims to protest the Hezbollah Islamists crimes on their owen people? And just Why not? Let me tell you why not, because the entire "outrage" is never an honest pain but always the pure fascism against the infidel, epecially the 'Zionist infidel'. So is the "payback" from so many Iraqi Arab Mulims to the American that have onl saved them from Saddam's boot. For Islamo Arabs tells us: "We can kill each other ferociously but don't you dare infidel touch us and if we can pin our crimes on an infidel, that WILL do!" Islamofascism! Contact The Reality Show at http://lightonthings.blogspot.com |
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EUROPE -- THY NAME IS COWARDICE
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 4, 2006. |
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A spotlight on European hypocrisy in a German editorial -- MUST read! If any of you still feel that this war on terror is a mistake, here is an opinion from an unexpected source. It's fascinating that this should come out of Europe. Mathias Dapfner, Chief Executive of the huge German publisher Axel Springer AG, has written a blistering attack in Die Welt, Germany's largest daily paper, against the timid reaction of Europe in the face of the Islamic threat. MUST be read by all Americans; history may well certify its correctness. |
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A few days ago Henry Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe -- your family name is appeasement." (See below.) It's a phrase you can't get out of your head because it's so terribly true. Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives, as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to toothless agreements. Appeasement legitimized and stabilized Communism in the Soviet Union, then East Germany, then all the rest of Eastern Europe, where for decades, inhuman suppressive, murderous governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities. Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo, and even though we had absolute proof of ongoing mass-murder, we, Europeans debated and debated and debated, and were still debating when finally the Americans had to come from halfway around the world, into Europe yet again, and do our work for us. Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European Appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians. Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore nearly 500,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace movement, has the gall to issue bad grades to George Bush... Even as it is uncovered that the loudest critics of the American action in Iraq made illicit billions, no, TENS of billions, in the corrupt U.N. Oil-for-Food program. And now we are faced with a particularly grotesque form of appeasement. How is Germany reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic Fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere? By suggesting that we really should have a " Muslim Holiday" in Germany? I wish I were joking, but I am not. A substantial fraction of our (German) Government, and if the polls are to be believed, the German people, actually believe that creating an Official State "Muslim Holiday" will somehow spare us from the wrath of the fanatical Islamists. One cannot help but recall Britain's Neville Chamberlain waving the laughable treaty signed by Adolph Hitler and declaring European "Peace in our time". What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership gets it? There is a sort of crusade underway, an especially perfidious crusade consisting of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims, focused on civilians, directed against our free, open Western societies, and intent upon Western Civilization's utter destruction. It is a conflict that will most likely last longer than any of the great military conflicts of the last century -- a conflict conducted by an enemy that cannot be tamed by "tolerance" and "accommodation" but is actually spurred on by such gestures, which have proven to be, and will always be taken by the Islamists for signs of weakness. Only two recent American Presidents had the courage needed for Anti-appeasement: Reagan and Bush. His American critics may quibble over the details, but we Europeans know the truth. We saw it first hand: Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, freeing half of the German people from nearly 50 years of terror and virtual slavery. And Bush, supported only by the Social Democrat Blair, acting on moral conviction, recognized the danger in the Islamic War against Democracy. His place in history will have to be evaluated after a number of years have passed. In the meantime, Europe sits back with charismatic self-confidence in the multicultural corner, instead of defending liberal society's values and being an attractive center of power on the same playing field as the true great powers, America and China. On the contrary -- we Europeans present ourselves, in contrast to those "arrogant Americans", as the World Champions of "tolerance", which even (Germany's Interior Minister) Otto Schily justifiably criticizes. Why? Because we're so moral? I fear it's more because we're so materialistic, so devoid of a moral compass. For his policies, Bush risks the fall of the dollar, huge amounts of additional national debt, and a massive and persistent burden on the American economy -- because unlike almost all of Europe, Bush realizes what is at stake -- literally everything. While we criticize the "capitalistic robber barons" of America because they seem too sure of their priorities, we timidly defend our Social Welfare systems. Stay out of it! It could get expensive! We'd rather discuss reducing our 35-hour workweek or our dental coverage, or our 4 weeks of paid vacation...Or listen to TV pastors preach about the need to " reach out to terrorists. To understand and forgive". These days, Europe reminds me of an old woman who, with shaking hands, frantically hides her last pieces of jewelry when she notices a robber breaking into a neighbor's house. Appeasement? Europe, thy name is Cowardice. God Bless America.
Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4Nuritg@gmail.com
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HELP YAD ELIEZER FEED THE HUNGRY
Posted by Yad Eliezar, August 4, 2006. |
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Dear Friends, We need your help urgently. Yad Eliezer is supplying hot meals all over the north. We have requests for boxed food from thousands of families. This is in addition to the thousands that we feed on a regular basis. Yad Eliezer is the largest distributor of food to needy families in Israel Yad Eliezer runs over 12 different food and social service programs, including monthly food deliveries to over 7,000 Jewish families, the Yad Eliezer Job-training Fund, The Big Brother mentoring program, Meals on Wheels, and as surplus produce program. Yad Eliezer is committed to providing these services to over 50,000 individuals while keeping overhead expenses to a minimum and utilizing a cadre of trained volunteers in Israel and North America in every facet of the organization. Please go to http://www.yadeliezer.org/ and see what you can do to help us continue to help Israel. |
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STUPID MORSHED KHAN BARKS AGAIN...
Posted by Salah Choudhury, August 4, 2006. |
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Greetings from Dhaka! Just few hours back, Bangladesh Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia came back from Malaysia after attending the Special Summit of OIC. Foreign Minister M. Morshed Khan once again passed extremely objectionable remarks on coming back from Malaysia. He said, "Attack on Lebanon was a direct attack of Israel on any moderate Muslim country. We are horryfied at such attack. We shall write letters to United Nations Security Council asking them to take immediate measures in stopping such Israeli agreesion." Personally I believe, Morshed is a man with no knowledge on international realities. He will certainly screw up Bangladesh's interest by behaving in this way. He is gradually trying to incline Bangladesh towards extremist countries like Iran. Earlier this man termed Israeli actions as 'state terrorism'. According to our information, during stay in Malaysia, Morshed Khan had secret meetings with Iranian counterpart. He is also influenced by Palestinian diplomats in Dhaka. Reason behind such behavior is also evidently clear. he has failed to get bebefits like duty free access of Bangladeshi readymade garments to USA. Now he tries to show to the Bangladeshi PM and government that, he has developed 'great relations' with new partners in the Arab countries. We would like to request our friends and colleagues to kindly take note of such stupid stands of Morshed Khan. Weekly Blitz shall continue to confront this barking element in Bangladesh government. Bangladeshi Foreign Secretary Hemyet Uddin Ahmed told reporters in a press briefing, "in the name of rescuing two-three people, Israel is violating all norms of international law. It is continuing agreesions and barbaric atrocities on Lebanese people. International community should put compell Israel to resume the peace process with Palestine". Meanwhile, Bangladesh foreign ministry has declared to send forces to Lebanon through UN Peace keeping forces (if they are deployed). Islamic Constitution Movement (ICM) brought out a procession today (after Jumaa prayer) from baitul Mukarram national mosuqe protesting 'Israeli actions' on Lebanon. Bangladeshi Foreign Ministry under the leadership of M. Morshed Khan is becoming increasingly pro-radical and it is adopting extremist policy of countries like Iran, Syria and Lebanon. Personally I feel, international community, especially the United States should take stern actions against Bangladesh for gross violation of human rights, repression of press and for repressing religious minority. As Gabriel Oppenheim wrote in his article in The daily Pennsylvalian, Bangladesh is really becoming the next terrorism gator. I already told my friends that, extremist Islamist groups like Hizbut Tahrir and Hezbollah are gradually becoming active in this country.
The writer is a journalist, columnist, author, amd editor of "Weekly
Blitz". Email him at salahuddinshoaibchoudhury@yahoo.com
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NO CEASE-FIRE UNTIL HEZBOLLAH IS OBLITERATED
Posted by Yaron Brook, August 4, 2006. |
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Irvine, CA--Echoing numerous world leaders, Pope Benedict has called for an immediate cease-fire in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, asking both to "immediately put down their arms." "But that's the last thing Israel should do," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "Israel must continue its war in Lebanon until it obliterates Hezbollah's presence there. And the leaders of every civilized country should be urging Israel to do just that. "Israel is Western civilization's frontline in the war against Islamic totalitarianism, a religious ideology that seeks to subjugate the whole world to Islam. "It is in the self-interest of every free or semi-free country in the world that Israel defeat Hezbollah, an Islamic terror group sponsored by the Islamic republic of Iran. "The Islamic totalitarians will not be defeated until we in the West support Israel and gain the courage and the moral certitude to fight them without restraint." Dr. Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and a recognized Middle-East expert who has written and lectured on a variety of Middle-East issues. The Institute promotes the ideas of Ayn Rand--best-selling author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and originator of the philosophy of Objectivism. |
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THE SPIRIT OF APPEASEMENT
Posted by Avi Davis, August 4, 2006. |
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Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzyhentisyn, in his acceptance speech before the Nobel Prize Committee in 1970, declared that the 20th Century had been one long record of appeasement by the West in favor of totalitarianism. "The spirit of Munich is not a thing of the past," he stated sardonically, "...it is predominant in the 20th Century. The entire civilized world trembles as snarling barbarism suddenly re-emerges and moves into the attack. And the West finds that it has nothing to fight with but smiles and concessions." During the half hour on the morning of July 13, when Katyusha rockets slammed into the northern Israeli town of Safed, those words took on a profound meaning for me. The news hit hard, since two of the Hizbullah-launched rockets landed within 400 yards of my Israeli home in the center of Safed's Old City. But beyond my personal anguish, I became aware of an implacable reality. In the 58 years since the War of Independence, Safed had not experienced a single terrorist incident, let alone a major rocket attack. Violence, of the type experienced in other parts of the country, had never been a feature of life in the town. But the explosion of seven Katyushas in the same hour, resulting in one death and 30 injuries, swept the once-tranquil mountain village, suddenly and traumatically, into the turbulence of the 21st Century and the worldwide struggle between freedom and Islamo-fascism. No one should have been surprised. In the six years since Israel's retreat from the fourteen-mile security zone in southern Lebanon, Hizbullah, Iran's Lebanese proxy, had created an arsenal of nearly 13,000 missiles poised against Israel's northern towns. Anyone who had visited Israel's border with Lebanon and witnessed the garish, provocative displays of yellow flags, posters, fortifications and abundant weaponry, in places only 50 feet distant, knew that it would be just a matter of time before Hizbullah's juggernaut of destruction would be unleashed against the north. The Hizbullah terrorists who launched those rockets were, of course, not measuring their place in history. They were capitalizing on what they perceived to be instability, weakness and distraction among Israeli leaders. The kidnapping in Gaza and subsequent Israeli retaliation offered a convenient feint and opportunity to instill a realization in exasperated Israelis that the Arab wars against Israel did not end in 1973, 1993 or with the collapse of the second Palestinian intifada. Those wars continue and will continue as long as Israel exists. That is the sad message delivered by the Katyushas that battered Safed that Thursday morning. For no matter what Israel does - whether it be the signing of peace treaties, withdrawal from disputed territory, the securing of United Nations guarantees of its borders or the policing by international peacekeepers - nothing will stem the tide of hatred and revulsion in the Arab and Muslim world against the Jewish state. Arab revanche, it must finally be understood, cannot be answered with either appeasement or accommodation; it can only be met with crushing force. It is this reality that has yet to sink into the mindset of both Israeli and American leaders. Having been burned by the conclusive failure of the Oslo peace process, Ehud Barak, six years ago, piled tragedy upon mistake. He ordered an evacuation from the Lebanon security zone, abandoning the IDF's loyal allies - the Christian-dominated South Lebanese Army - without so much as a whisper of assurance by the Lebanese government of calm on its southern border. While witnessing the build up of the Hizbullah and Hamas arsenals over five years, Barak's successor, Ariel Sharon, made the second calamitous mistake of withdrawing from Gaza, mandating the destruction of flourishing Jewish communities only to behold, within days, the transformation of the settlements' ruins into launching pads for Kassam missiles aimed directly at southern Israeli population centers. The foolhardy tide of concessions has not yet abated. As Israel reels under attacks on two fronts, the present prime minister, Ehud Olmert, continues to hew to his unfocused policy of unilateral withdrawal, by calling for even further territorial concessions, proposing to abandon dozens of West Bank communities in an attempt to create permanent borders for the State of Israel. That those borders would prove indefensible does not seem to trouble him. But the war in which Israel is now engaged is simple proof that walls, fences, unilateral disengagements or even bilateral agreements are no protection against sophisticated weaponry in the hands of terrorists who have little respect for, or interest in, the maintenance of the status quo. With the incontrovertible confirmation of the folly of such an approach, a pitiless reality must now surely be settling in - withdrawal and territorial concession will never be interpreted in the Arab world as anything but weakness, retreat and surrender. It is a certain invitation to war and a guarantee of unending violence and strife. The era of smiles and concessions must be brought to an end. The answer to terrorist kidnappings and rocket launchings can only be overwhelming, devastating military force - a message that must be understood not just in the terrorist strongholds, but in the faraway capitals where their sponsors hatch, plan and finance their proxies' next battles. This appeared in Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNationalNews.com). |
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THE RULES OF WAR
Posted by Reify, August 4, 2006. |
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Seriously speaking.... we have in this man a chance for real leadership, which is desperately needed, NOW. Shmah Y'Israel, it's time to awaken to needed change. Shame to waste it. Shabbat Shalom! This article was written by Moshe Yaalon and appeared in the Washington Post yesterday. Moshe Yaalon is a retired lieutenant general; he was chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces from 2002 to 2005. He is now a distinguished military fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. |
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The conflict in the Middle East is about much more than Israel and Hezbollah, or even Hezbollah's Syrian and Iranian sponsors. What is at stake are the very rules of war that underpin the entire international order. Sadly, judging from how most of the world has responded to Israel's military action against Hezbollah, these rules have been completely abandoned. The rules of war boil down to one central principle: the need to distinguish combatants from non-combatants. Those who condemned Israel for what happened at Qana, rather than placing the blame for this unfortunate tragedy squarely on Hezbollah and its state sponsors, have rewarded those for whom this moral principle is meaningless and have condemned a state in which this principle has always guided military and political decision making. Faced with enemies who openly call for its destruction and victimized by unremitting wars and terrorism since well before it was born, Israel has risked the lives of its citizens and its soldiers to abide by this principle in a way that is unprecedented in the history of nations. Here is but one of countless examples: In 2003, at the height of the Palestinian terror war against Israel, our intelligence services discovered the location of a meeting of the senior leadership of Hamas, an organization pledged to the annihilation of the Jewish state and responsible for some of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever carried out against Israel. We knew that a one-ton bomb would destroy the three-story building and kill the Hamas leadership. But we also knew that such a bomb would endanger about 40 families who lived in the vicinity. We decided to use a smaller bomb that would destroy only the top floor of the building. As it turned out, the Hamas leaders were meeting on the ground floor. They lived to terrorize another day. Imagine for a moment that the United States had advance knowledge of the meeting place of al-Qaeda's senior leadership. Does anyone believe that there would be a debate about what size bomb to use, much less that any leader would authorize insufficient force to do the job? So while it is legitimate to question whether Israel should go to such extreme lengths to avoid civilian casualties, it is preposterous to argue that Israel uses excessive force. Even more absurd was the shameful statement last week that Israel appeared to have deliberately targeted U.N. officials -- a statement fit for a knave or a fool, not for the secretary general of the United Nations. Rather than lead the fight against those who target civilians and use them as human shields, Secretary General Kofi Annan has strengthened them. It is clear to any objective observer that Hezbollah is using Lebanese civilians as human shields. It builds its headquarters in densely populated areas, embeds its fighters in towns and villages, and deliberately places missiles in private homes, even constructing additions to existing structures specifically to house missile launchers. The reason terrorist groups such as Hezbollah use human shields is elementary. They try to exploit the respect for innocent human life that is the hallmark of any civilized society to place that society in a no-win situation. If it fails to respond to terror attacks, it endangers its own citizens. If it responds, it runs the risk of killing innocents, earning world opprobrium and inviting diplomatic pressure to stand down. Hoping to retain its high moral standards in the face of such a cynical enemy, Israel has made every effort to avoid harming civilians. We have dropped fliers, sent telephone messages and broadcast radio announcements so that innocents can get out of harm's way. In doing so, we imperil our own citizens since, by losing the element of surprise, we invariably allow some of the enemy to escape with their missiles. But at Qana, Hezbollah responded to Israel's compassion with more cynical brutality. After launching missiles at Israel, the terrorists rushed inside a building. When Israel fired a precision-guided missile to strike at the terrorists, scores of civilians, including children, were killed. The difference between us and the terrorists is clear: We endanger ourselves to protect their civilians. They endanger their own civilians to protect themselves. If tragedies such as Qana are not to be repeated, then, rather than condemning Israel, the world should be directing its anger at Hezbollah and at the Syrian and Iranian regimes that support it. Terrorists are fanatics, but they are not idiots. If the terrorist tactic of using human shields helps them achieve their goals, they will utilize it. If it undermines their goals, they will abandon it. If we want to live in a world where civilians are never used as human shields, then we must create a world in which employing such measures results in the unequivocal condemnation of terrorists and in forceful action against them by the civilized world. If the world were now blaming Hezbollah, Syria and Iran for the innocent Lebanese killed, hurt or displaced in this conflict, then it would be sending a powerful message to every terrorist group on the planet: We will not tolerate the use of human shields. Period. Instead, those who condemn Israel have sent precisely the opposite message. They have told every terrorist group around the world that the use of human shields will pay huge dividends, thereby providing them with a powerful weapon that endangers innocents everywhere. Contact Reify at freify@netvision.net.il or go to his website: http://paradive.blogspot.com |
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OLMERT MUST MAKE A CHOICE BETWEEN LIVES OF HUMAN SHIELDS AND ISRAELIS
Posted by Sergio Tessa (HaDaR), August 3, 2006. |
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This is from Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director of Independent Media Review and Analysis (IMRA). Contact IMRA at imra@netvision.net.il go to the website: http://www.imra.org.il |
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There are many issues raised or clarified by the war in Lebanon that can wait. Whether one accepts Prime Minister Olmert's dubious claim that a victory in Lebanon would for some reason serve to insure that the Hamas-Land his proposed massive retreat from the West Bank would create would not serve as a platform for firing thousands of short-range missiles into central Israel or not, the debate can wait. All agree, after all, that Israel is not retreating from the West Bank in the coming weeks or even months. But there is one burning issue that urgently requires not only debate but also a clear and rational determination: the policy towards human shields. Question: what do you do when a group of "innocent civilians" that has already been warned to vacate an area in which there are weapons that constitute a clear and present danger to Israel decline to leave? Right now the official Israeli answer is: "do nothing". That's "do nothing" even if that means that the consequence of respecting enemy "innocent civilian" human shields is that Israeli citizens die. Let's be clear about this: the Israeli decision to give priority to the lives of enemy human shields over Israeli lives is not dictated by international law. International law doesn't require sovereign states to engage in such bizarre behavior. What then is behind this Israeli decision? Better yet, what Israeli authority has made this decision? The IDF? The Minister of Defense? The Prime Minister? The Security Cabinet? The Cabinet? The Knesset? The IDF mentions this position in its press releases but it isn't clear if it is the result of a formal process or simply something that developed with time. Minister of Defense Amir Peretz has talked about human shields but his position has been inconsistent over the course of the war, first stating clearly that human shields would not be allowed to prevent the IDF from acting to stop the rocket attacks against Israel only to publicly take the opposite position after Qara. This policy question is far too vital to leave to the IDF to set. As a sovereign democratic state, it is up to the democratically elected civilian Israeli authorities to establish and take responsibility for the IDF's human shield policy. And the decision of these authorities should not be in the form of an off-the-cuff remark reflecting the investment of next to no serious thought regarding either the true moral issues at stake or the potentially devastating consequences of continuing to honor human shields. Israel's success not only in reestablishing its deterrence but in adequately protecting its citizens could very well hinge on this issue. The longer the current half-baked policy remains in place, the greater the danger to the Jewish State. Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net. |
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SAUDI MONEY ATTACKING FREE SPEECH IN AMERICA
Posted by Robert Locke, August 3, 2006. |
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This appeared July 12, 2006 in American Daily
(http://americandaily.com/article/14507 ) |
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The laws of Saudi Arabia, based upon the sharia law mandated by the Koran, do not recognize the rights and freedoms guaranteed Americans by the Constitution. The Saudi government makes no secret of its ambition to export Islamic tyranny worldwide, as the Koran commands. What most Americans don't realize, is that American courts are helping it in a number of ways. For example, they are collaborating with Saudi attempts to squash the free-speech rights of Americans with abusive libel lawsuits. Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is a victim of one such lawsuit and a bellwether for the future of free speech in post-9/11 America. This well-regarded Israeli born American expert on the financing of terrorism is the author of several books and the director of the New York-based American Center for Democracy (www.acdemocracy.org) In 2003, she published a book, Funding Evil, alleging that a Saudi billionaire, Khalid bin Mahfouz, a pillar of the Saudi establishment, had been instrumental in channeling money to Moslem terrorists. Dr. Ehrenfeld wrote that bin Mahfouz, the former owner and chairman of Saudi Arabia's largest bank, National Commercial Bank, had allegedly transferred $74 million from the bank's Zakat (Charity) Committee to the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and the Muwafaq "blessed relief" Foundation. Muwafaq was allegedly then the channel to al Qaeda itself. Such use of Islamic charities to fund terrorism is a known pattern. The highest reaches of Saudi society, including its vast royal family, have been plausibly accused. These allegations are not drawn from thin air, nor do they lack official support. In October 2001, according to former national security advisor Richard Clarke testifying before the Senate Banking committee, the U.S. Treasury Department designed Yasin al Qadi, head of Muwafaq, as a terrorist, because of the al Qaeda tie. Clarke said that Muwafaq had "reportedly transferred at least $3 million, on behalf of Khalid bin Mahfouz, to Osama bin Laden [sic] and assisted al Qaeda [sic] fighters in Bosnia." One would like to be fair to Mr. Mahfouz, on the off chance that he is merely a wealthy businessman who has shared boardrooms with evil people. But this man has a long history of acknowledged connections with financial wrongdoing. Look, for example, at the tortured exoneration, on his own official website, of his indictment in the legendary BCCI scandal: "Khalid Bin Mahfouz was an investor in BCCI and for a time a non-executive director. At no stage did he hold an executive position in the bank. When BCCI collapsed, Khalid Bin Mahfouz, together with others, was indicted in New York State on the grounds that he had withdrawn sizeable investments in the bank just before its collapse. Khalid Bin Mahfouz vigorously contested the allegations because he had acquired the right to "put" his shares in BCCI at the time he made his investment, and had legitimately exercised that right. Clearly, this man is no Boy Scout. People do not pay $225,000,000 to get the prosecutor to settle a case against them unless they know they are substantially likely to get convicted. It is probably no accident that bin Mahfouz was named among the defendants in the lawsuits by the families of the 9-11 victims, seeking total damages of more than $1 trillion, for his alleged role in helping finance al Qaeda. Strictly speaking, he is of course innocent until proven guilty, from the point of view of criminal actions. But he is still, at minimum, a legitimate object of tough investigative journalism, such as American businessmen and politicians have to put up with all the time. Dr. Ehrenfeld's book, which backs up its charges with extensive documentation, is legitimate. If bin Mahfouz were an American tycoon, this would not even be in question. But why tolerate scrutiny, when you have the money to abuse the legal system into silencing your critics? Bin Mahfouz has sued Dr. Ehrenfeld in a British court -- despite the fact that her book was not published there, nor are he or Dr. Ehrenfeld British -- solely in order to take advantage of the fact that Britain has different standards on libel than the US. Because of historic attitudes towards a man's right to his reputation, in Britain a claimant need not prove that the allegedly defamatory statement was false -- only that it was potentially damaging to his reputation. The courts require the writer to prove his allegations true, and the writer must call original sources to the witness stand to do so. Under American law, the burden of proof is the reverse: claimants must prove the allegations false. Furthermore, following the famous New York Times vs. Sullivan case of 1964, there is a "public figure defense," giving substantial protection to journalists writing about politicians and other prominent people. In order to win, a claimant must not only show the allegations false, but made maliciously or with reckless disregard for truth. Worse, British law requires the loser in a court case to pay the winner's court costs. This is the real attraction for shady millionaires: the chance to bankrupt their opponents into silence. Because of this, Britain has become a Mecca for rich but shady characters seeking to purchase the appearance of legal vindication. There's even a name for it: libel tourism. Because Dr. Ehrenfeld's book was based upon public information, like statements by government officials, it would have been impossible to to bring her intelligence sources to testify to vindicate her claims. Therefore, she declined to respond to the British lawsuit, and lost by default. Her book was banned in England, and the judge issued an injunction against her. But the larger issue, of course, is how it became the business of a British court to render judgments against American authors. The legal pretext here is laughably flimsy: despite the fact that the book was never published, or even offered for sale, in the UK, 26 Britons bought copies over the Internet from American booksellers like Amazon.com (which, to its credit, joined an amicus brief supporting Dr. Ehrenfeld in this.) And a few downloaded the first chapter, which was posted on the Internet. By this standard, every author in the United States is now subject to Britain's Victorian libel laws, and the Declaration of Independence has failed. Obviously, British police can't arrest Dr. Ehrenfeld on the streets of New York, or garnish her life savings here in America. But bin Mahfouz can request a U.S. court to enforce the judgment against her, as there are treaties between the UK and the US to that effect. It is obviously reasonable for an American court to make an American pay parking tickets racked up in Berlin, just as we would expect a German court to enforce a similar judgment in the converse case. But enforcing other nation's diminished conceptions of free speech are another matter entirely. To their credit, American courts are not entirely unaware of this problem. In 1997, the Maryland State Appeals Court refused to enforce an English libel ruling against an American, arguing that, "the principles of English libel law fail to measure up to the basic human rights standards and are repugnant to public policy and the constitutional ideal of free speech." This may be an exaggeration, if it were only a matter of the English choosing what laws they want to live under. But it's not, when their laws are being exported here due to the mindless deference of our own legal system. After she forfeited her case in the UK, Dr. Ehrenfeld asked an
American court to declare the unenforceability of the British judgment
in the US. It declined to do so, on the paradoxical grounds that it
lacked jurisdiction -- precisely what the British court lacks, on any
sensible interpretation. Her case is now being appealed; her lawyers'
quite-readable brief may be downloaded here:
This thoughtlessness by our courts has already damaged freedom of speech in America, and the difficult and dangerous work of investigative journalism against terrorism. As Dr. Ehrenfeld notes, "[British] libel laws have a pernicious chilling effect. I know of two publishers who have cancelled books that cover similar issues to mine -- books they had already commissioned and bought -- because they don't want to get involved in lawsuits." The danger element is no joke. Bin Mahfouz has apparently sent emissaries at all hours to threaten Dr. Ehrenfeld, and one of his well-dressed henchmen is alleged to have told her on March 3, 2005, "You had better respond. Sheik bin Mahfouz is a very important person and you ought to take very good care of yourself." Coming from a man who may have had Osama bin Laden's phone number in his rolodex, this is not a laughing matter. Other authors have been affected. Due to bin Mahfouz's intimidation, Gerald Posner, in his book Secrets of the Kingdom, does not mention him or the Muwafaq organization. Loretta Napoleoni similarly expunged bin Mahfouz from her book Terror Incorporated. Dozens more apologized, retracted and paid fines. Dr. Ehrenfeld was also prevented from attending an October 2005 conference in the UK on the financing of terrorism, due to her jeopardy under the libel law. Dr. Ehrenfeld's legal expenses may exceed $300,000. Despite the moral support of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, she has of yet received no financial help from the publishing industry whose freedom to print is being threatened. Friends of free speech and American sovereignty can donate to her cause here: www.public-integrity.org/support. Contact Robert Locke by email at robert_locke_journalist@yahoo.com |
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PEACE WILL COME WHEN JEWS LOVE THEIR CHILDREN MORE THAN HOPE AND PEACE
Posted by Sergio Tessa (HaDaR), August 3, 2006. |
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This was written by Walid Shoebat, Ex-PLO terrorist.
It is archived at
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While Golda Meir stated "We will have peace when Arabs love their children more then they hate us", and hoped for peace, Arabs simply got worse in their hatred of Jews and in sending their children on more suicide missions. Yet Golda has passed away and her hope that Arabs love their children more then their desire to kill Jews simply diminished. The reverse of this hope is the reality. So we need to revisit her statement and adjust it to reality - the reality that Jewish children need to be loved more then hope, and more then peace. Is this possible to achieve? When a nation looks towards the responsibility to protect children first, then it will elevate strength and honor above the desire for a one sided peace. With strength and a will to fight and win, violent Arabs will see their futile attempts, and will be forced to submission. Jews repeat "peace" more then any other word, while Arabs repeat"submission" more then anything else to the point that their entire faith is called "Submission." If both sides spoke the language of the other, then we will indeed have peace. If Arabs spoke "peace" as Jews do, then the problem will be over. If Jews pushed "submission" to Arabs as Arabs understand it, then the problem will be over. Yet it will take a miracle to convert people's views and neither side is willing to change anytime soon. Yet Israel's great achievements in history has always been a combination of hard work, genius planning, all these with additional great miracles. What we need is a miracle. We need a monumental effort from the ground up to send out a clear message that we must love life, more then we love peace. That the priority must not be peace, but the preservation of Jewish life. Peace cannot live in a vaccume, but must be achieved by fighting for the right to survive. The words "peace" only exists in Islam to serve Muslims. The concept is understood totally different then the Jewish concept. When I used to watch Jewish leaders make speeches as a youngster, and I listened to all of them beginning with Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan' repeating the word "peace" so many times, that it always gave me the sense that Jews were weak and defeated. While most Jews would tend to think that the world thinks as they do, I know better. In my culture and religious Islamic upbringing we would never use the term "peace" as in Jewish faith and traditions. Just compare the songs and verses. Compare Jewish songs with Arab songs, compare Jewish religious teaching with Islamic regarding the word "peace" and you will finally get it. When one is at war with an enemy, one needs to understand the enemy's concept of victory and defeat, and apply things accordingly to that enemy's understanding. When Jews say "peace" Arabs think "victory", and when Jews demonstrate "victory" Arabs think "submission". What we need is to understand that the process to achieve victory is not a long attempt to educate Arabs who hate Israel. We saw all the Holocaust footage, listened to all the peace speeches, heard all the arguments -- nothing has worked. It's not only Arab education that Jews need to strive for, but Jewish education. When it comes to the Arab Muslim world, Jews need to think in reverse. What Israel needs is not Olmerts, but Pattons. But in order to change the Olmerts we need to start from the ground up by educating Jews, and perhaps even use Arabs to do it. Speaking at Jewish audience I am always asked "why do you preach to the choir"? Yet we are not. For the key to victory is a most difficult task a few of us Arabs who love Israel would like to achieve. That is to convince Jews to finally get it - what Jews need to love is their children, more then they love peace. Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net. |
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THE HARMLESS CHILDREN OF HEZBOLLAH?
Posted by Sasha Stawski, August 3, 2006. |
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This was written by Henryk M. Broder and it appeared today in
Der Spiegel,
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Germans are squabbling about whether Israel's military strikes against Lebanon are justified. But how else can Israel defend itself against Hezbollah rockets? By staging sit-down protests along the Israeli-Lebanese border, perhaps? It was more than 20 years after the end of the Second World War, during the 1960s, when Germans realized that the Nazis had murdered a large number of Jews as part of their proposed "final solution of the Jewish question." The Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, which continued for two years (1963-1965) and involved 183 court sessions, resulted in an extensive documentation of what had occurred in the concentration camp near the Polish city of Oswiecim. The German public was shocked, horrified -- and most of all, surprised.
Apparently no one had ever read Hitler's Mein Kampf, heard
Hitler's speeches, subscribed to the Nazi newspaper Stürmer or
even noticed that their Jewish neighbors had "moved out" without
taking the furniture.
More than a decade later, in 1978, German television aired the four-part TV series "Holocaust." Once again the Germans reacted with horror, shock, and endless surprise. The fate of the Jewish family portrayed in the film brought tears to German eyes. They asked questions for which there were no answers. "How was that possible?" And: "Why did the Jews allows themselves to be led like lambs to the slaughter? Why hadn't they defended themselves?"
This question dominated debates on the Holocaust for almost 20 years, until Daniel Goldhagen published his book "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" in 1996. The book caused another wave of shock and horror. But this time the upheaval was not over what the book described, but about its author, who spoke of "eliminatory anti-Semitism" and claimed that the "final solution" was the logical endpoint of a development implicit in German identity.
Ever since Goldhagen's book, the debate is no longer about what the
Jews experienced and didn't survive, but about what the Germans knew
or didn't know -- about how many of them were more or less willing
accomplices in the Holocaust. The focus of the discussions has shifted
from the victims to the perpetrators, and the perpetrators are trying
to present historical proof that they too were victims, at least in
the end, when Dresden was bombed -- an event the political chief of
the neo-Nazi NPD party has likened to the Holocaust -- and when the
Gustloff, a converted cruise ship filled with German refugees,
was sunk by a Soviet submarine.
Shifting the blame
By this point in the public conversation, Berlin-based political scientist named Ekkehard Krippendorf had already contributed an original thought. He claimed that if the Jews hadn't allowed themselves to be deported -- if they had practiced passive resistance and organized sit-down strikes -- the Germans would have rallied to their cause, the Third Reich would have been shaken to the core and the worst catastrophes would have been avoided.
So historical blame was re-distributed. In Krippendorf's analysis, the Jews were not only to blame for anti-Semitism -- there wouldn't be any anti-Semitism if there weren't any Jews -- but for the Third Reich as well. They had the power to destabilize the system and missed out on that unique opportunity.
Today the debate has advanced by a few rounds. Every day you read and hear people saying the Israelis have done to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews. Meanwhile the Germans -- or rather the "non-Jewish Germans," as the new expression goes -- take it to be their historical duty to ensure that the Jews learn from their own history and behave decently. Sociologist Wolfgang Pohrt's remark on the perpetrators who turn into probation assistants and make sure their victims don't relapse was never more topical and accurate than today.
The old question "Why didn't the Jews defend themselves?" is no longer fashionable. Today the Jews are accused of defending themselves. They're blamed for concluding from the last-attempted "final solution" that it's better to defend yourself early than to let yourself be pitied afterwards. As nice as the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin may be -- it's a place "one likes to visit," according to former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder -- a day on the beach in Tel Aviv or in Nahariya beats it hands down.
Now Germany -- where even a convicted cannibal can successfully sue
for violation of his constitutional rights -- is witnessing a lively
debate over the means by which Israelis should be allowed to defend
their basic right to lie on the beaches of Nahariya or Tel Aviv.
Politicians such as Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul from the Social Democrat
party SPD, researchers such as Udo Steinbach from the Orient Institute
and journalists such as Heribert Prantl from the center-left daily
Süddeutsche Zeitung are among those who argue that Israel's
reaction to the rocket attacks from Lebanon is exaggerated and
"disproportionate." "No one is denying Israel the right to defend its
borders. But rockets fired across the border don't threaten the
existence of a state," writes Claudia Kühner in the Swiss daily
Zürcher Tages-Anzeiger, for example.
Stop shooting and start shopping?
But if rockets designed to fly across borders don't threaten a state's existence, then who or what does? Excessive payroll fringe costs? Excessively low taxes? Too many unemployed people? Too few children? And how would the Swiss react if one of their border regions were attacked with rockets? Would they retaliate by firing "Luxemburgerli" pastries from their famous confectioner? Or would they airdrop coupons issued by the Migros grocery chain and urge their attackers to "Stop shooting and start shopping"?
Of course the question of a "proportionate response" is entirely justified -- and it's justified when asked about Israel or any other state. And: Those who ask the question have to be ready for an unexpected answer. It's a sign of reasonableness and moral maturity that Germans like to solve problems by sitting down at a round table to talk. The approach has worked for workplace conflicts and squabbles within clubs and associations, but it turned out to be ineffective in Northern Ireland and Kosovo. And it amounts to committing suicide for fear of dying when you're dealing with an enemy that loves death more than life.
The late King of Jordan had no qualms about using his might to put down a Palestinian uprising during "Black September" in 1970. He ordered refugee camps to be bombed. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people died. The PLO then moved its headquarters to Lebanon. Arafat moved to Cairo and later to Tunis.
Former Syrian President Hafis al-Assad, the father of Syria's present ruler, pulled no punches in fighting insurgent members of the Muslim Brotherhood. He devastated the city of Hama in February 1982, killing between 10,000 and 30,000 civilians. No one accused him of "genocide" -- and if someone had, al-Assad would have asked his critics not to meddle in the domestic affairs of his country.
When one considers what Israel is doing one has to admit that it is behaving quite moderately -- notwithstanding the bloodbath in Qana, in which dozens were killed including children. What happened in Qana just shows that the precision of high-tech wars can lead to catastrophic results. The war isn't between two regular armies, but one between an army and a guerrilla group that doesn't hesitate to use civilians as a human shield. At least the Israeli army warns the civilian population of imminent bombings by dropping leaflets, whereas Hezbollah fires Katyusha rockets without warning, in order to terrorize a civilian population.
"It'll work out somehow."
The most powerful army in the Middle East is fighting with one hand tied behind its back -- and paying for the mistakes of politicians. Everyone in Israel who had something to do with defense knew Hezbollah wasn't building holiday camps for Palestinian orphans in southern Lebanon -- it was preparing for military action. Instead of sounding the alarm because UN Resolution 1559, which calls for Hezbollah to disarm, wasn't being implemented, the choice was made to ignore the danger. The Israelis were glad to have turned their backs on the Lebanese quagmire. You could once again go shopping in Kiryat Shmona and swim in Lake Genezareth without having to hear the sounds of combat.
Of course it would have been better to disarm Hezbollah when it was
still possible to do so relatively easily. But such a decision would
have been difficult to justify within Israel -- and it would have
caused the world to brand Israel as an aggressor. And so UN Resolution
1559 vanished into the mists of history, and the Israelis -- who can
only think and plan in the short term -- said to themselves: Ichije
tov -- "It'll work out somehow."
And since they didn't commit the necessary atrocities straight away, they're now paying twice the cost. They're fighting an enemy they underestimated and they're being pilloried as aggressors. It's not just on the nationalist and radical-left fringes of German civil society where people agree that Israel is the "new center of genocide" -- similar noises can be heard from the political center. Israel should negotiate with Hezbollah instead of shooting innocents, some commentators say.
You'd think Hezbollah was a group of children who had been playing with matches in the barn -- and that the Israelis insanely stoked the fire until the whole farm burned down. That kind of view is widespread in Germany. This is a nation where people will seriously debate whether a civilian airplane hijacked by terrorists should be pre-emptively shot down. But Israel is supposed to wait for Hezbollah to fire its rockets and then go complain to Kofi Annan.
Common roots
So the Germans' "becoming-good-again" -- predicted by essayist Elke Geisel 20 years ago -- enters its final stage. The "Holocaust" has been outsourced; now it's taking place in the Middle East. What started with the question "Why didn't you defend yourselves?" ends with the cool observation that the Jews have learned nothing from history, and that they are doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to them. And it's apparently the task of Germans to admonish and educate them. Ahmadinejad's willing executioners only want the best for Israel.
Theologian and itinerant preacher Jürgen Fliege reminds Israel of the "common cultural and religious roots" that "our ancestors laid down in the Torah." The principle of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" is "no call for abandoning restraint in an emergency situation and swearing revenge, come hell or high water," writes Fliege. According to him, what the principle really means is: "Only one soldier for one kidnapped soldier" -- everything else would be going too far. In a ludicrous reversal of cause and effect, action and reaction, perpetrator and victim, Fliege calls on the Israelis to act moderately. But why doesn't he direct his appeal at Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah? Perhaps because in Hezbollah's case the "common cultural and religious roots" are still so fresh they should be given time to develop.
Even though Germany's former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has now relaized that the conflict with Hezbollah and Hamas is not about "occupied territories" but about Israel's existence, Middle East expert Michael Lüders finds it lamentable that "the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories" west of the border "are not perceived as a problem," unlike the "terror" that threatens Israel's existence. And he really does place "terror" in quotation marks -- suggesting it doesn't exist outside the subjective perception of Israelis. Western policy "in the region," he writes, creates "its own counterpowers, especially in the form of Islamic fundamentalism." With those words, Lüders justifies everything that Islamic fundamentalists do.
But what logical conclusion would have to be drawn from this
insight that Lüders is still hesitant to utter? In order to eliminate
the fuel of Islamic fundamentalism, the West would have to abandon
Israel. The message is clearly there between the lines, and it's only
a question of time before it's raised explicitly. For now, Lüders
contents himself with Schadenfreude. "Even if Israel were to succeed
in defeating Hezbollah and Hamas tomorrow -- the day after tomorrow
there would be new groups with different names, ready to continue the
struggle against the omnipotence of the Washington-Jerusalem axis."
Unlike the word "terror," Lüders doesn't place "the omnipotence of
the Washington-Jerusalem axis" in quotation marks -- to him, that
phenomenon is perfectly real. It used to be referred to as the
"Jewish-American claim to world dominance." Today, it's not just
Iranian President Ahmadinejad who is wishing for "a world without
Zionism" in order to preserve world peace.
The situation is getting uncomfortable for the Israelis. They're
beginning to suspect that they can't win this war, because they're
dealing with an international public that demands a "proportionate"
reaction even in an "asymmetrical conflict." And the appeals to
respect international law and the rules of the game are always
directed at Israel, never at those who believe that all means are
justified in the struggle against Israel.
If the Israelis don't succeed in defeating Hamas and Hezbollah,
they will have to come up with other forms of resistance. How about
sit-down strikes along the Israeli-Lebanese border?
Contact Sacha Stawski at sstawski@honestly-concerned.org |
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VIDEOS AND GRAPHICS OF THE LEBANON WAR
Posted by Nurit Greenger et al, August 3, 2006. |
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From Nurit Greenger: Over 150 video clips from Israel-Lebanon War at http://www.4law.co.il/leb1b.html From Meyer Katzper: A Map showing how small an area of Beirut is actually under attack vital_perspective_clarity/images/beirut.jpg
FYI How will the proposed multi-national force above southern Lebanese border stop such rocket attacks if the launch sites are simply moved further north? This map, from here at ConceptWizard, shows the flight paths and major strike points of the rocket barrage hitting Israel. http://www.conceptwizard.com/n-israel.html From Nancy Karkowsky http://www.ouradio.org/photo_gallery/image_full/679 From Nurit Greenger: For so long Israel tried so hard to put her arms down. The Arabs nations want so much more from Israel; they want Israel extinct. Enough is enough of these crazy, demented, anti-Semitic-Anti Zionist, hateful inhuman. This video, issued by the IDF Public Relations Division, is really worth the 4 minutes watch?please pass to many others! http://yoholo.livejournal.com/159979.html?mode=reply From Merla Watson transmitted through Laureen Moe: I hardly know what to say or to do these days. I am sending out as much info to you as the server will allow each day before I am maxed. I feel such an urge - that the time is soooooo short when we can speak out the truth. There are so many other demands upon my life right now - as I am sure it is true also of you - but this is paramount and must be done. The Update will have to wait. Pray for strength for me if you have a minute... Merla Watson - Here's the video - WATCH! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIx0QMDj8Z4 The Jerusalem Post: Lebanon: Myths and Facts, Aish.com's new 2 minute movie. www.aish.com/movies/JP/Lebanon.asp From Nurit Greenger: This site is In MEMORIAM to all the dead soldiers. You too can light a virtual candle. Please sign and light a candle for the fallen. www.funlove.co.il/minisite/war-lebanon/index.php Four separate instances of deliberate Hezbollah fraud and fakery and some staged photos are shown in this excellent video. When will it end? When YOU demand that it end! When YOU demand that they stop playing dirty tricks on you. www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp Beautiful photos of soldiers -- Netzach Yisrael Lo Y'shaker Keep scrolling down, many images. masoret.hevre.co.il/hydepark/topic.asp?topic_id=1990937 masoret.hevre.co.il/hydepark/page=2&topic_id=1990937 masoret.hevre.co.il/hydepark/page=3&topic_id=1990937 masoret.hevre.co.il/hydepark/page=4&topic_id=1990937 masoret.hevre.co.il/hydepark/page=5&topic_id=1990937 masoret.hevre.co.il/hydepark/page=6&topic_id=1990937 From Linda Zog: Green Helmet acting as cynical movie director in qana http://www.tube.com/watch?v=4vPAkc5CLgc From Yaaqov Ben Yehudah (yaaqov.ben.yehudah@gmail.com): Photos of Mistakes -- Shaking hands with men who had vowed to destroy Israel. esseragaroth/2006/08/more-mistaken-photos-photos-of.html From Nurit Greenger: Comment by MAIN PRO-PALESTINIAN-ARAB NGOs: The following is an interview with a British Member of Parliament on Lebanon. In this day that even the slightest comment against Israel labels you as anti-semitic for life, his words must be heard. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=249JaIaubVw From Boris Celser: Video Description: Germany`s NDR presents unpublished video footage from the qana events, demasking "Green Helmet" as a cynical movie director, staging photographs with a liitle boys body. Personal Message This video is awesome! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D4vPAkc5CLgc From Nurit Greenger: This comes from LGF -- Little Green Footballs -- (littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=22137_ Hitler_the_Mufti_of_Jerusalem_and_Islamic_Fascism&only) We've seen a still of the Mufti, Haj al-Amin al-Husseini, seated next to Hitler, but this is a video of the mufti visiting Hitler. It is a German documentary and is called "Hitler, The Mufti of Jerusalme and Modern Islamo Nazism." A LGF reader, Amalie #89, commented: "The Mufti's hatred of the West was matched only by his hate of the
Jews. It is not a coincidence that Germany suddenly abandoned the
policy of expelling Jews and adopted far harsher methods a short time
after the Mufti arrived in Germany. When Haj Amin came to Germany
again, the Nazis decided to execute the Final Solution to the Jewish
Problem -- the Holocaust. "The Mufti was one of the initiators of the
systematic extermination of European Jewry," reported Eichmann's
deputy, Dieter Wisliceny. "[He had] played a role in the decision to
exterminate the European Jews. The importance of this role must not be
disregarded ... The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic
extermination of European Jewry." We do not know if al-Husseini played
a major role in shaping the Final Solution. "There is, however,
abundant first-hand evidence of the part the Mufti played in making
foolproof the ban on emigration (of Jews out of Germany)," wrote
Joseph Schechtman [Editor's note: Read more about what Schechtman
wrote in David Storobin, "Nazi influence on the Middle East During
WWII," January 5, 2005 "UN ambulance picking up fighters in Gaza Strip" The most damaging evidence is towards the end of this 90 second footage. www.youtube.com/BombInsideAmbulace From Jacob Richman (jrichman@jr.co.il): I posted pictures of our soldiers on my website at: http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/israel/army/jriar088.jpg Taking a rest http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/israel/army/jriar112.jpg Havdalah at the front lines http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/israel/army/jriar115.jpg Havdalah at the front lines http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/israel/army/jriar116.jpg Davening on a tank http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/israel/army/jriar117.jpg Golani soldier kissing a donated Torah http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/israel/army/jriar118.jpg From Nurit Greenger: "Children of the Future Jihad-Why their kids hate us."
They do not learn science, literature, history or geography; they do not learn to be good citizens -- good people! From morning to night they are fed with lies, distorted information, hate, killing and death. Their psyche preparedness is to kill, mayhem and impose Islam. Get sick -- get mad -- We shall see how long will it take you to get mad? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hBuiSP8X6E&mode=related&search= (http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20060809120900953) From the New York Times photo essay by Tyler Hicks on July 27, 2006 comes this unbelievable fraud! This photo is part of a photo essay entitled "Turmoil in the Mideast" - Reports from Israel and Lebanon: Attack in Tyre" accessible through the NYT website. All of the photographs are attributed to Tyler Hicks/The New York Times. The photograph shown on your site is photo number 6 in the array. gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/08/new-york-times-busted-in-hezbollah.html From "archduke" on eureferendum: August 3, 2006 Mr Green Helmet directing and talking to reporter? The interesting bit is at the end of the video - note the 2 "red cross" workers and how they pose for the cameras - they even put the stretcher down at one stage, while the lead "red cross worker" adjusts his helmet as he's posing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyZsq3jyJ6w&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Flittlegreenfootballs%2Ecom%2Fweblog%2F http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyZsq3jyJ6w&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Flittlegreenfootballs%2Ecom%2Fweblog%2F Buddy Macy: Images of Jerusalem http://films.izfone.com/ http://www.video.exposetheleft.net/video/brigitte-gabriel.wmv |
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TRUTH ALWAYS COMES TO THE SURFACE, LIKE OIL ON WATER
Posted by Sergio Tessa (HaDaR), August 3, 2006. |
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After showing an incredible level of military amateurism, which RIGHTLY has allowed Hizbollah - after three weeks of wrong campaign by TsaHa"L - to say that they had already won since they resisted more than all the Arab armies together and they keep on shooting missiles at will on our cities and citizens - and we know how much myth is much more important than reality in Arab public opinion; now Olmert [see http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=108999] openly admits that his real objective is to defeat Jewish Patriots and Pioneers, not to destroy terrorists which he alleges to be impossible. Apparently, for people like him, TsaHa"L can succeed in full only against Jews: against the Arab terrorists, when they are not called "peace partners", there is no military solution. The current war, it appears, is nothing but a smoke screen to distract from his real objective: deporting more than one hundred thousand Jews from their homes and the creation of more Judenrein territories in the Land of Israel. The attack on Lebanese infrastructure, done against our Lebanese Christian allies suggestions, INSTEAD of destroying Hizbollah in the South of Lebanon and put an end to the daily launch of hundreds of missiles which is striking hard our home front for the first time since 1948, has not helped to achieve anything else except eliminating the world support - even if just a silent one - which was very extended at the beginning of the war, and to reunify almost all of the parties in Lebanon around Hizbollah, so as not to look like traitors who support those who are bombing your country all over. Here the media lie to us and tell us fables, bubba mayses, sippure' savta; but, in spite of all the spins and the useless censorship (you can get whatever info you want through foreign and other media) it is possible to understand the catastrophic level of the military lack of real success for the first three weeks through the fact that they just keep on praising the resistance level of our population on the home front. If winning a war means just stoically bearing thousands of missiles and to allow a terror organization to keep on firing them at will, then we can just add the term "victory", used instead of failure, to the Orwellian dictionary that has been used in Israel for years: "sacrifices for peace" to call Jews murdered by terrorists; "separation" used instead of flight in front of terror; "desengagement" used instead of deportation of Jews or "realignment" use instead of MORE deportations; "political process" used instead of appeasing terrorists, ecc.. ... Just as bombing Lebanese infrastructure, roads and bridges in and around Beirut, was called "fighting Hizbollah". The question is rather simple: it is the ideology behind all that which is a losing ideology that brings only tragedies on all of us; the ideology of what Jewish traitor Josephus Flavius called with lots of praise the "party of peace", the party of the grasshoppers that has infested Israel from the time of the Spies, through the betrayals in from of Babylon, the invitation sent to Roma Legions in 66 A.E.V. to come to Yehudah, etc.. (see http://www.devinsper.com/ for a great comprehensive source) The government's intention, since the beginning, was not to destroy Hizbollah and to push back what was left to the North of Lebanon; the purpose was to play a political game of suicide called "The New Middle East", using the last attack ny Hizbollah ("last" since in six years they killed a lot of Israeli soldiers and civilians and threw hundreds of missiles without any response) for a politica bet on the skins of all of us which has shown itself as a complete and bloody disaster; the delusion of the "New Middle East" which Peres and Olmert have been dealing as heroin to the Israelis if you cared to listen to them. In order to destroy Hizbollah there is no alternative to the massive bombardment of the Shiite villages in Southern Lebanon, including the city of Baalbek, followed within a very short period of time (almost immediately, not waiting three weeks without having done the previous job!) by a MASSIVE ground attack, using the enormous superiority of fire of TsaHa"L; not acting with tweezers, pinzetta, with GREAT commando operations that OUR YOUNG HEROES execute better than anyone else, but risking their lives for nothing! What for do we need an army with an incredible fire power if what is lacking is the ideology, the moral strength, the faith, the belief to be right, which allow us to USE IT? If war needs to be fought and won by the citizens in the home front rather than by the army, why not to use half of the defence budget to protect the citizens, to build decent bomb shelters, to FEED and provide free medicines and health care for the elderly and the children whose percentage among the ever growing community of Israeli poor has been increasing constantly? In a little while they will tell us that they won the war. Then they'll tell us that there is "peace, peace, but there is no peace"... In the meantime, our enemies, inside and outside the country, get ready for "peace" as THEY conceive it: the peace of Jewish cemeteries, our eternal peace. Those who are responsible for all this, will get out of every situation, anyway, with fattened bank accounts, just as traitor Kastner, i"s, who left Budapest - in agreement with Eichmann and Himmler, with whom he was dealing just as our leaders did with Arafat, Abu Mazen, etc. - with money and a train towards Switzerland abandoning and betraying his People.(see Perfidy" by Ben Hecht at http://tinyurl.com/qk5n3) Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net. |
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WHY DO AMERICAN JEWS FIND IT EASY TO ATTACK GIBSON AND HARD TO
ATTACK HEZBOLLAH?
Posted by Dan, August 3, 2006. |
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I got a question for Jews everywhere? Why is it so easy to attack Gibson, yet not Hezbollah? This Jewish attack on Gibson feeds into the bias that Jews run Hollywood. They attack Gibson for his film and they attack him for his comments (even though they were despicable). Well, American Jews forgot to attack Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorists. They continue to support leaders whose sole solution towards combatting terrorism is giving up land. They supported Clinton, who brokered a deal that would have given mostly all of the West Bank to Palestine. They continue to support Olmert, a weakling of a Prime Minister who speaks of still withdrawing from the West Bank (as if withdrawing from the Gaza Strip wasn't enough- but hey only Hamas gained control {no big deal, right}). Hey I have a challenge for all American Jews: instead of attacking a man who made a few hateful remarks, why don't you try attacking animals who kidnap and murder innocent Israelis? Where is your real mental toughness and strength? You all pick an easy target. If Hezbollah remains in power, it won't be credited to Hezbollah, it will be credited to Olmert and his supporters (many of whom live in the United States). Contact Dan at avalanche_col500@yahoo.com |
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SETTLER RESERVISTS: OLMERT IS INSANE
Posted by Bryna Berch, August 2, 2006. |
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This comes from today's YNet. Shmulik Hadad, Liron Milstein and Ilan Marciano contributed to the report. It is unbelievable but Olmert doesn't feel a 2-front war -- fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and El Fatah in Gaza -- is enough. He wants to open up a 3rd front -- expelling some 100,000 Jews from Samaria and Judea (the west bank of the Jordon River). Right now, Jews from Haifa and other northern towns have fled to become neighbors of some of the Jews expelled from Gush Katif. If Olmert gives up Samaria and Judea, where will the Jews of Tel-Aviv flee, when the rockets come crashing down on their heads? What is really scary is that Olmert is fiercely determined to empty Samaria and Judea of its Jews. He's much much weaker when it comes to fighting Israel's Arab enemies. It kind of reminds me of Hitler, who was so invested in killing Jews, he gave that task some of the resources that should have been devoted to killing the soldiers of England and America. Olmert is one weird dude. A case study in psychopathology. He isn't fit to be prime minister. |
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Right-wing reservists called up for Lebanon operations criticize PM for saying a victory in Lebanon will advance realignment plan in West Bank; 'Hizbullah is protecting Israel against itself,' one settler says Efrat Weiss Settlers in the West Bank called-up to the reserves, were unhappy with comments by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that "Israel 's victory in Lebanon will give a new momentum to complete the disengagement from the Palestinians by evacuating most settlements in Judea and Samaria." Soldiers living in West Bank settlements are torn between defending the country and the fear of being evacuated from their homes. "If we succeed in Lebanon would they evacuate us from our homes. It's a feeling that you are going to war while at the same time endangering your home," Y, a resident of the West Bank who has been called up to join troops deployed in Lebanon, told Ynet. "Olmert's comments caused demoralization. It brings down your motivation and causes a lack of motivation with the task because I know that if I succeed, my home is in danger," Y said. A resident of Ofra, a father of two IDF officers serving in Lebanon, added: "The prime minister has gone insane. In the middle of war and on the first anniversary of the terrible disengagement he is telling soldiers living in Judea and Samaria: If we win -- we will evict you from your homes. I call on the prime minister to reconsider and eliminate the issue from his agenda." "How can the prime minister express himself as such when his sons evade the army and live abroad? How can he say things like that about soldiers serving and fighting as we speak? He needs to open his eyes, listen to what Israel society is saying and realize he is disconnected. We were conscious stricken in Lebanon, then in Gaza and were won't have this happen a third time. If he doesn't retract his words, these soldiers will leave the war," he said. 'Disrespectful remarks' Oren Sternberg, a former spokesperson for Gaza settlers, told Ynet he refused to be drafted for operations in Lebanon. Oren said he was aware of Olmert's intentions prior to Wednesday's comments. "At the time being Olmert is not even trying to blur his horrible plan and it can be said in double irony that Hizbullah is protecting the State of Israel from itself," he said, He added that settler soldiers should "put their arms down" as the only way to save Israelis from "Nasrallah's presence in Judea and Samaria and a total disaster." Sternberg said friends of his serving in Lebanon have been outraged by Olmert's comments. "Reservists from Gush Katif were not obliged to enlist to the reserve. They are their because of their volunteering spirit. Olmert's remarks are disrespectful and ridicule the soldiers, many of whom wear kippas," he added, saying that Olmert should not be surprised if settler reservists decide to quit the army. "If I were in Lebanon now, despite the motivation to fight for the state, I would have returned home. I wouldn't have accepted to be a tool of Olmert's -- to fight and win then be evicted from home." |
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BANGLADESH -- A NEW HUB FOR TERRORISM
Posted by Canadian IPP Organization, August 2, 2006. |
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This was written by Selig S. Harrison and appeared today in the Washington Post. Harrison is a former South Asia bureau chief of The Post and the author of five books on South Asia. He has covered Bangladesh since 1951. He is the director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy and a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. |
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While the United States dithers, a growing Islamic fundamentalist movement linked to al-Qaeda and Pakistani intelligence agencies is steadily converting the strategically located nation of Bangladesh into a new regional hub for terrorist operations that reach into India and Southeast Asia. With 147 million people, largely Muslim Bangladesh has substantial Hindu and Christian minorities and is nominally a secular democracy. But the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) struck a Faustian bargain with the fundamentalist party Jamaat-e-Islami five years ago in order to win power. In return for the votes in Parliament needed to form a coalition government, Prime Minister Khaleda Zia has looked the other way as the Jamaat has systematically filled sensitive civil service, police, intelligence and military posts with its sympathizers, who have in turn looked the other way as Jamaat-sponsored guerrilla squads patterned after the Taliban have operated with increasing impunity in many rural and urban areas. To the dismay of her business supporters, the prime minister gave the coveted post of industries minister to Matiur Rahman Nizami, a high-ranking Jamaat official who has helped promote the growth of a Jamaat economic empire that embraces banking, insurance, trucking, pharmaceutical manufacturing, department stores, newspapers and TV stations. A study last year by a leading Bangladeshi economist showed that the "fundamentalist sector of the economy" earns annual profits of some $1.2 billion. Now the BNP-Jamaat alliance is rigging the next national elections, scheduled for January, to prevent the return of the opposition Awami League to power. Voter lists are being manipulated, and the supposedly neutral caretaker government and the commission that will run the election are being turned into puppets. The BNP argues that coalition rule helps moderates in the Jamaat to combat Islamic extremist factions. But the reality is that Jamaat inroads in the government security machinery at all levels, starting with Home Secretary Muhammad Omar Farooq, widely regarded as close to the Jamaat, have opened the way for suicide bombings, political assassinations, harassment of the Hindu minority, and an unchecked influx of funds from Islamic charities in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf to Jamaat-oriented madrassas (religious schools) that in some cases are fronts for terrorist activity. With some 15,000 hard-core fighters operating out of 19 known base camps, guerrilla groups sponsored by the Jamaat and its allies were able to paralyze the country last Aug. 17 by staging 459 closely synchronized explosions in all but one of the country's administrative districts. When the key leaders of these groups were captured, they were kept by the police in a comfortable apartment, where they were free to receive visitors. A cartoon in the Daily Star of Dhaka on July 24 showed them lounging on a rug, conducting classes in bombmaking. Their fate and present place of confinement is uncertain, and all of the major guerrilla groups are back to business as usual. The bitterness of Bangladeshi politics is often attributed to a personal vendetta between two strong women, Prime Minister Zia and the Awami League leader, Sheikh Hasina Wajed. But the roots of the current struggle go back to 1971, when Bengali East Pakistan, led by the Awami League, broke away from Punjabi-dominated West Pakistan to form the nation of Bangladesh. The Jamaat, which originated in the western wing, opposed the independence movement and fought side by side with Pakistani forces against both fellow Bengalis and the Indian troops who intervened in the decisive final phase of the conflict. For Pakistan's intelligence agencies, especially Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the legacy of the independence war has been a built-in network of agents within the Jamaat and its affiliates who can be utilized to harass India along its 2,500-mile border with Bangladesh. In addition to supporting tribal separatist groups in northeast India, the ISI uses Bangladesh as a base for helping Islamic extremists inside India. After the July 11 train bombings in Bombay, a top Indian police official, K.P. Raghuvanshi, said that his key suspects "have connections with groups in Nepal and Bangladesh, which are directly or indirectly connected to Pakistan." A State Department report cited evidence that one of the Jamaat's main allies, the Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami, also headquartered in Pakistan, "maintains contact with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan." Bangladesh Harakat leader Fazlul Rahman was one of the six signatories of Osama bin Laden's first declaration of holy war against the United States, on Feb. 23, 1998. Since the October 2002 Bali bombings led to repression of al-Qaeda, some of its Indonesian and Malaysian cells have shifted their operations to Bangladesh. What makes future prospects in Bangladesh especially alarming is that the Jamaat and its allies appear to be penetrating the higher ranks of the armed forces. Among many examples, informed journalists in Dhaka attribute Jamaat sympathies to Maj. Gen. Mohammed Aminul Karim, recently appointed as military secretary to President Iajuddin Ahmed, and to Brig. Gen. A.T.M. Amin, director of the Armed Forces Intelligence anti-terrorism bureau. The respected journalists in question cannot write freely about the Jamaat without facing death threats or assassination attempts. The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists has published extensive dossiers documenting 68 death threats and dozens of bombing attacks that have injured at least eight journalists. "We are alarmed by the growing pattern of intimidation of journalists by Islamic groups in Bangladesh," the committee said recently. "As a result of its alliance with the Jamaat-Islamiyah, the government appears to lack the ability or will to protect journalists from this new and grave threat." The Bush administration has yet to speak with comparable candor. The latest State Department annual report on terrorism mentioned only one of the three Jamaat militias as a terrorist group and avoided direct criticism of the BNP for its coalition with the Jamaat, referring only to the "serious political constraints" that explain the government's "limited success" in countering "escalating" terrorist violence. On July 13 the U.S. ambassador called Bangladesh "an exceptional moderate Muslim state." The United States and other donors gave Bangladesh $1.4 billion in aid last year. There is still time for the administration to use aid leverage and trade concessions to promote a fair election by calling openly and forcefully for nonpartisan control of the Election Commission and the caretaker government. In addition to implicitly threatening an aid cutoff if it is rebuffed, the administration should offer the powerful incentive of duty-free textile imports from Bangladesh if Prime Minister Zia cooperates. In Pakistan, the United States has been gingerly pushing Gen. Pervez Musharraf for democratic elections because it needs the limited but significant support he is giving against al-Qaeda and fears what might come after him. But what is the excuse for inaction in Bangladesh, where the incumbent government coddles Islamic extremists and a strong secular party is ready to govern? Contact Canadian IPP at cipp@rogers.com |
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HEZBOLLAH USES CHRISTIAN VILLAGES TO SHIELD ITS MILITARY OPERATIONS. VIOLATES INTERNATIONAL LAW
Posted by Sliwa News, August 2, 2006. |
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This article is by Dr. Keith Roderick. For Interviews with key pro-democracy activists inside and outside of Lebanon, contact Rev. Dr. Keith Roderick by phone at 202-498-8644 or by email at keith.roderick@csi-usa.org |
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WASHINGTON, August 1, 2006: Hezbollah is using Christian villages to shield its military operations against Israel. Southern Lebanese Christian villages, such as Ain Ebel, Rmeish, Alma Alshaab, and others are being used by Hezbollah terrorists for launching missile attacks. "Hezbollah is repeating the same pattern that it practiced against Israel in 1996," says former South Lebanese Army commander, Col. Charbel Barkat. "Hezbollah is hiding among civilian populations and launching attacks behind human shields." A Christian from the village of Ain Ebel, who is nameless because he fears retribution by Hezbollah, discovered Hezbollah guerillas were setting up a launcher to fire Katyusha rockets from the rooftop of his home. Ignoring his pleas to stop, they fired the missiles. He immediately gathered his family and fled home, which indeed was bombed and destroyed 15 minutes later by an Israeli air strike. In addition to having their homes commandeered for launching Hezbollah's attacks, there have been attempts to obstruct Christians from fleeing their villages. On Saturday, July 28, Hezbollah fighters fired upon several Christians fleeing Rmeish with their families, wounding two according to Christian sources in south Lebanon. Hezbollah has been the ruling power in the south since Israel withdrew from Lebanon six years ago. Christian villages suffer from extensive neglect of infrastructure under Hezbollah rule. Even though Christians pay the taxes for basic government services, such as road repair and other utilities, these services are rarely provided. On the other hand, Shiite villages supportive of Hezbollah do not pay taxes and benefit from infrastructure development and new residential and business construction. Once the majority, the Christian population in Lebanon since the civil war has declined to under 40% due to pressures by Islamic militias supported by Iran and Syria. "Hezbollah is the issue," warns Rev. Dr. Keith Roderick, Washington Representative of Christian Solidarity International and secretary general of the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights. "A misrepresentation of the position of most Lebanese Christians is underway." Roderick recently traveled to Lebanon to meet with the leaders of the Cedar Revolution and Lebanese activists. Sami El-Khoury, president of the World Maronite Union, says that reports on Christian support for Hezbollah are misleading. "Contrary to Western press reports, indicating high percentages of Christian support for Hezbollah, 90% of Christians, 80% of Sunni and 40% of Shiites in Lebanon oppose Hezbollah," says El-Khoury. Christian Solidarity International (CSI) laments the destruction and violence inflicted upon the Lebanese country and acknowledges that the international community must play a role in Lebanon's restoration. It also recognizes that if Hezbollah is not disarmed, the future of Lebanese Christians and all pro-democracy supporters will be bleak. "The Lebanese government should focus their rage against Hezbollah, not Israel," notes Tom Harb, secretary general for the International Committee for UN Security Council Resolution 1559 (UNSCR 1559). CSI calls for the U.N. to establish a politically independent commission to investigate Hezbollah's violations of the Geneva Convention's provision for the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol 1). This protocol prohibits the use of civilians as military shields. CSI also calls on the U.N. Security Council to deploy without further delay an international force in southern Lebanon and eastern Lebanon to facilitate a cease fire between Israel and Hezbollah, stop the flow of arms from Syria to Hezbollah, and assist the Lebanese government in fulfilling its obligation to disarm Hezbollah in accordance with UNSCR 1559. Contact Sliwa News at sliwanews@aol.com |
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OUT OF HIS OWN MOUTH - OLMERT DISQUALIFIES HIMSELF
Posted by Benjamin Svetitsky, August 2, 2006. |
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Statement to the Press from
Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Kadima, has disqualified himself from continuing as Prime Minister of Israel. The aggression of Hamas and Hezbollah is a direct consequence of his pathetic policy of appeasement. How can he declare, in the heat of his incompetent management of a two-front war, that victory is in hand -- and that this victory will accelerate the "convergence" program! The man is detached from reality. In fact, Nasrallah's reading of the situation shows a stronger grasp of reality than Olmert's. Kadima has only led Israel "forward" to the bomb shelters. Professors for a Strong Israel can be reached at Tel: 050-551 8940 Contact Benjamin Svetitsky at bqs@julian.tau.ac.il |
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AS AHMADINEJAD WATCHES
Posted by Women in Green, August 2, 2006. |
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This article was written by Caroline Glick and appeared in the Jerusalem Post, July 31, 2006. |
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the man to watch these days. And yet it would seem that those in positions of power are paying him little heed. Ahmadinejad, whose proxy army Hizbullah is now waging war against Israel, has promised to respond to European and American demands to cease his country's illicit nuclear programs on August 22. As Robert Spencer, a noted expert on Islam, has explained, August 22 corresponds with the 27th of Rajab on the Muslim calendar. According to Islamic tradition, that is the day after Muhammad made his nighttime journey to Jerusalem and then flew to heaven from the Temple Mount, lighting up the skies over the holy city in his wake. This week the UN Security Council is supposed to pass a resolution giving Iran until August 31 to end its nuclear programs. The obvious meaning of the new deadline is that until then, in spite of Iran's direction of Hizbullah's war against Israel - a state which Iran daily threatens to destroy - no action will be taken against Teheran. Indeed, in all the talk of Security Council resolutions regarding the war that Iran's proxy force Hizbullah is waging against Israel, no one has mentioned the possibility of condemning Iran, or Syria, for their sponsorship of Hizbullah. AS THE STAKES of the war against Israel rise by the day, we find the international community, led by the US, and willingly followed by the Olmert government, scope-locked on a diplomatic agenda that is irrelevant to the imminent dangers Israel and the world now face in the midst of this Iranian sponsored jihad. Indeed, it is worse than irrelevant. It is counterproductive. For if the aims of the ongoing diplomatic blitzkrieg are all met, Israel will find itself denied its right to self-defense; with its legal right to secure and recognized borders in tatters; and with Hizbullah sitting pretty behind a protective shield of the Lebanese military and an international force that will not attack it. On Wednesday the UN Security Council will vote to approve a resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter that will mandate a cease-fire and the establishment and deployment of a multinational force to Lebanon. The tasks of the proposed force will be to man a buffer zone in southern Lebanon; enable the deployment of the Lebanese army along the border with Israel; and control Lebanon's international border with Syria. The purpose of the force is to prevent Hizbullah from attacking Israel and to cut it off from its logistical base in Syria while barring Israel from continuing the fight. THERE ARE several basic problems with this approach. First, Chapter VII resolutions are the only UN resolutions that enable the Security Council to use force and other coercive tools against UN member states. Any state breaching them is considered an international lawbreaker. Israel's enemies have for decades sought to have Israel come under the authority of Chapter VII resolutions, but the US has blocked all such attempts, understanding that they are aimed at denying Israel the right to defend itself. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues claim that the proposed multinational force would protect Israel. Yet it is already clear that this will not be the case. As things now stand, the proposed force will be led by France. Indonesia and Turkey have reportedly offered to participate. With France leading the international community in condemning Israel for defending itself; with some 40 percent of Indonesians telling pollsters that they wish to participate in jihad; and with Turkey led by an Islamist government, can anyone believe that this force will neutralize Hizbullah? None of these countries even accept that Hizbullah is a terrorist organization. OBVIOUSLY this force will not fight Hizbullah. But it will prevent Israel from attacking Hizbullah. And given that the force is to be mandated under a Chapter VII resolution, were Israel to take independent measures to defend itself, it would immediately become an outlaw state open to arms embargoes and other sanctions. Moreover, the planned multinational force is supposed to facilitate the Lebanese army's deployment along the Lebanese border with Israel. This is supposed to be a good thing. Yet, since the outbreak of the war, the Lebanese army has been actively fighting with Hizbullah. Its radars have been used to lock in Israeli targets for Hizbullah missile crews. It is paying pensions to the families of fallen Hizbullah fighters. On Sunday its soldiers reportedly shot at IDF helicopters in the Bekaa Valley.But. to date, the US-led international community refuses to recognize the Lebanese army as a combatant, and similarly insists that the aim of the postwar settlement should be to strengthen both the Lebanese government that includes Hizbullah and the Lebanese army that fights by Hizbullah's side. IN HER discussions with Israeli leaders, Rice has proposed that in the framework of a settlement of the current crisis, Israel give Mt. Dov on the Golan Heights to Lebanon. There has been almost no public debate about the reasonableness of the US position. Yet even the most superficial analysis makes it clear that such a move would be catastrophic for Israel's long-term viability. Mt. Dov, which Hizbullah refers to as the Shaba Farms, is not and has never been Lebanese territory. In 2000, following Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, the UN certified that Israel had removed itself from all Lebanese territory. The UN further confirmed that Mt. Dov was territory Israel wrested from Syria during the course of the 1967 Six Day War. The UN stated that the fate of the territory would be determined in the course of negotiations toward a peace treaty between Israel and Syria. Hizbullah cut the Lebanese territorial claim to Mt. Dov out of whole cloth as a pretext for continuing its war against Israel after Israel left Lebanon. Its claim that Mt. Dov is Lebanese territory has been rejected by the international community. Yet today, the US is prodding Israel to give Mt. Dov to Lebanon as a confidence-building gesture toward the Lebanese government, which of course supports Hizbullah's demand. By adopting this Hizbullah demand, the US is breaching the decades-old foundation of the Law of Nations, which stipulates that states cannot win territory from other states through armed aggression. ADDITIONALLY, by supporting Hizbullah's demand, the US is in effect suing for a Hizbullah victory in this war. Hizbullah has never demanded Mt. Dov for itself. It demands the vast territory that connects the Syrian Golan to the Upper Galilee for Lebanon. And the Lebanese government, which the US seeks to strengthen, supports this Hizbullah demand just as it supports all of Hizbullah's demands. If Lebanon receives the territory, Hizbullah will be the clear victor in this war. Moreover, by even suggesting that Israel consider giving Mt. Dov to Lebanon, the US is undermining the very notion that Israel has a right to recognized borders. If after Israel removed itself to the international border Lebanon can receive support for additional territorial claims against Israel, that means there is no line to which Israel can remove itself in the Golan, or in Jerusalem, or in Judea and Samaria or Gaza and safely assume that its borders will be recognized by the rest of the world. In short, by backing Lebanese claims to Mt. Dov, the US is paving the way for future territorial claims for West Jerusalem, the Galilee, Haifa, indeed for all of Israel. Israel will never be able to trust that any peace treaty it signs is final. An act of aggression by its enemies may pave the way for additional claims, which in the interests of strengthening the Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian, or Syrian governments the international community is liable to support. IT WOULD seem that, in spite of themselves, both the US and the Israeli government have managed to maneuver themselves into diplomatic positions that undermine their own national interests. Somehow, between the US's early and misguided decision to ignore the Lebanese government's support and responsibility for Hizbullah and the Olmert government's clearly halfhearted prosecution of the war, both governments have gotten lost. The goals that now form the basis of their diplomatic agendas serve only to advance the interests of their enemies. A clear break from the current path must be made immediately. Ahmadinejad is looking on and laughing. 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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CHECKMATE
Posted by D.J. Teeboom, August 2, 2006. |
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Wars are won by taking advantage of the weaknesses of your enemy. In the war against Islamic Fascism however, their weaknesses are untouchable and it's our opponents who hold the initiative. How Hezbollah handles the West 'Human shield technology' is more effective then the most advanced air-defence system money can buy. Hezbollah and the other Islamic radicals have figured out what our vulnerabilities are, and they are making good use of it. The West however does no such thing. We are fighting under rules which make it impossible to take advantage of any of our enemies' weaknesses. No matter how overwhelming our military advantage may be, we are powerless when confronted by the nihilism of the human shield. Radical Muslims understand that western society has evolved to a point where our sensitivity to civilians casualties makes it impossible to wage war effectively. If violence is not an option then the only way to confront radical Islam is by speaking out against it. This however, is also not possible because we are not allowed to insult Islam. 'Respect' has turned into a weapon against the West, preventing us from using our cultural and intellectual superiority to expose radical Islam as the deceiving inhuman ideology which it in reality is. If we do not resist with either force or words, then this conflict is as good as lost. Israel and Hezbollah As opposed to other countries the Jewish state cannot submit to Islam, because submission in Israel's case means destruction. Israeli's have no other option but to fight and as a result of their resistance to radical Islam, they destroy western illusions in the process. The 'Islam is peace' crowd hates Israel because it forces people to recognize what's going on. Take a look at Somalia, at Canada, take a good look at the spread of Islam in South-America. See what people have to deal with in India, Indonesia and all those other places where non-Muslims meet Islam. This is the root of the problem, not occupation. It wasn't so long ago, a little more than 20 years, when Shiites were a virtually unknown sect in predominantly Christian Lebanon. Today nobody dares to count how many there are out of fear that Lebanon will instantly turn into yet another Sharia state. The left needs to continue to believe in the occupation because the alternative is a reality of fear. As soon as people realize it's not the occupation which is the problem, but the existence of a non-Islamic state in land which Islam claims for itself, then the realization sinks in that we are dealing with an expansionist ideology. Land which once was Islamic must stay in Muslim hands forever and those areas which are not Muslim must one day become Islamic. This makes Islam a threat to every non-Muslim. Israel's answer to Hezbollah is called disproportionate, which basically means it's ok for Hezbollah to shell a neighbouring country and expect to get away with it. People don't understand - or maybe they do - that a country which does not launch a grand invasion when it is being bombarded by missiles, is guilty of a disproportionately weak response. A perception of weakness invites more attacks. Muslim fundamentalists are fighting to destroy Israel, not to reach some sort of compromise. Hope to achieve this victory recruits new terrorists, and nothing increases this hope more than weak Israeli responses which are condemned by the world. The Islamic world is also watching and they see a few thousand Hezbollah terrorists holding their ground against the Israeli's. The experience of 1967 and 1973 was, that whoever picked a fight with the Israeli army was defeated and humiliated in a few days. But after 3 weeks Hezbollah is still fighting and able to shell Northern-Israel, while the Israeli Air Force appears to be powerless to stop them. The myth of the invincible Israeli army has been shattered. If Israel accepts cease fire without any achievements against Hezbollah, then it will be the beginning of war, not the end. The Ayatollahs in Iran are relieved. If the Israeli Air Force cannot prevent Hezbollah from firing Katushas, what chance does it have against Iran's nuclear facilities? Despite unique American support Israel lacks the political will to chase Hezbollah out of Lebanon. The Americans would be pleased if Israel wiped out Hezbollah because they have a problem with Islamic fighters who sneak over the Syrian border into Iraq. Destroying Hezbollah means isolating Syria which in turn would help the US. But this appears not the be happening, so what exactly is Israel's value to America If this goes on... What chance do the Americans still have to achieve victory in Iraq? Soon Iran will have nuclear weapons while Islam continues to spread in Europe, Africa and Latin-America. Who dares to hope that the tables will turn? How long will it take before America gives up, and makes a deal with radical Islam? Arabs and Muslims are telling each other that Israel's days are numbered. The first Intifada during the 1980s forced Israel to accept the Oslo accords. In the 90s Hezbollah kicked Israel out of Southern-Lebanon and a few years later Hamas chased Israel out of Gaza. Now Northern-Israel is being bombarded and the Israelis cannot even defeat a few thousand terrorists. If you dream about the destruction of Israel your future looks bright. The achievements of the soldiers of Allah were the stuff of dreams 30 years ago. This is the moment Muslim fundamentalists have been waiting for. This is the war they always wanted and it will escalate. As for us -- Europe, America and Israel -- we are checkmated. We cannot fight effectively against this enemy without breaking our self-imposed rules, nor can we criticise them because we don't want to insult them. This article was originally published in Dutch at
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WE DEMAND VICTORY FOR ISRAEL
Posted by Barbara Lerner, August 2, 2006. |
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Dear Friends, I have just read and signed the online petition: "We Demand Victory For Israel" hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition service. It is in both Hebrew and English. To sign, please click here. I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider signing yourself. To view it, just click here. Best wishes, Barbara Lerner Contact Barbara Lerner by email at xlerner@ameritech.net |
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ON TISHA B'AV WE REMEMBER
Posted by Aryeh Yosif Gallin, August 2, 2006. |
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Today, on the Ninth of Av, we REMEMBER the destruction of the First and Second Temples of Jerusalem, the Assyrian, Babylonian and Roman exiles, European Catholic Crusades, Spanish and Portuguese Catholic Inquisitions, Ukrainian Chmelnitzki massacres, Nazi German Jewish Genocide (Holocaust), the current Rosh HaShanah War/Philistine Chaos ["Palestine Authority"] Pogrom, and other tragedies that befell and are befalling the Jewish People. We chant the words of the Book of Eicha (Lamentations), which begin: "How does the city [Jerusalem] sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become as a widow! She that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!" WE LOOK FORWARD Today, on the Ninth of Av, we also LOOK FORWARD to the fulfillment of the words of the Prophet Zechariah: "And the word of the Lord of Hosts came to me, saying: 'Thus says the Lord of Hosts: The fast of the FOURTH month, And the fast of the FIFTH, and the fast of the SEVENTH, And the fast of the TENTH, shall be to the House of Judah joy and gladness, And cheerful seasons; therefore love you truth and peace'". Our sages explain that "the fast of the fifth" month "is the Ninth of Av, when the Temple was burnt":
"Metzudath David explains that this prophesy [from Zechariah]
is for the future, when the above fast days observed by the
House of Judah will be joyous occasions for Judah. The House
of Israel [Lost Ten Tribes], however, will have its own
festivals commemorating the days Israel fasted and mourned".
REESTABLISHMENT OF THE ISRAELITE BIBLICAL COMMONWEALTH We look forward to the building of the Third and Final Bet HaMikdash (Temple) of Yerushaliyim and the reestablishment of a Torah-based government with its three branches: the Sanhedrin (Judicial Branch), Priesthood (Legislative Branch) and Davidic Monarchy (Executive Branch), all of which will have their offices on the Har HaBayit (Temple Mount) at the Bet HaMikdash (Temple) of Yerushaliyim. Shabbat Shalom from Yerushaliyim,
Aryeh Yosef Gallin is Founder and President of Root & Branch Association in Jerusalem (www.rb.org.il). He can be reached at rb@rb.org.il |
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THE FRENCH-HEZBOLLAH CONNECTION
Posted by Mrla 26, August 2, 2006. |
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This article was written by Olivier Guitta and it appeared in the
Weekly Standard July 31, 2006. It is archived at |
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FRANCE HAS A LONG HISTORY in Lebanon, a country it administered under a League of Nations mandate from 1920 to 1943 and whose elite is bilingual in French and Arabic. France also has a history with Hezbollah, going back to the group's beginnings more than twenty years ago. In order to appreciate why French president Jacques Chirac is so far hanging tough for the disarming of Hezbollah in the present crisis, it is useful to cast a backward glance. For those 241 U.S. servicemen blown up in their barracks by Hezbllah on October 23, 1983, were not the only Western soldiers to die in Beirut at the hands of the Islamists that day. A good place to begin the story is 1978, when France contributed troops to UNIFIL, a United Nations force created to monitor the Lebanese-Israeli border. After a long series of Palestinian cross-border raids killing Israelis, the Israeli army had crossed into Lebanon and pushed the Palestine Liberation Organization north of the Litani River. UNIFIL's job was to police the peace. The peace didn't last. In 1982, after another Israeli incursion, some 800 French troops joined an equal number of U.S. Marines and 400 Italian troops to supervise the evacuation of the PLO from Lebanon and serve, once again, as peacekeepers. The same year, Hezbollah was born. This new Shiite force created and funded by Iran lost no time in targeting the French in Lebanon. First came a rocket attack on soldiers in April 1983; then in August, the hijacking of an Air France jet in Tehran. The hijackers, who belonged to a closely allied pro-Iranian terrorist group, Islamic Amal, demanded France's withdrawal from Lebanon, an end to French military aid to Iraq (then at war with Iran), and the liberation of Lebanese prisoners from French jails. The mastermind of this operation was Hussein Moussaoui, who, for his next trick, attacked the U.S. and French barracks in Beirut, killing not only those 241 U.S. servicemen but also 58 French soldiers. Two weeks later, the DGSE (the French equivalent to the CIA) learned that the Iranian embassy in Beirut had ordered the murder of Gilles Vidal, number two at the French embassy. The DGSE attempted a preemptive strike. They packed 500 kilos of explosives in a French military jeep marked with the Red Cross emblem and parked it next to the Iranian embassy. The trigger failed, so the French agents tried to ignite the explosives with bazooka shots, but this also failed. The Iranians discovered the jeep and with it proof of French responsibility. The next day, Tehran pointed the finger at France. An influential member of the Iranian parliament, Hojatoleslam Mohammed Ali Mohavedi Kermani, addressing that body, taunted: "The French people are so scared that they could not find anyone ready to martyr himself with their rigged Jeep operation against the Iranian embassy in Beirut. Only the agents of Hezbollah are capable of doing such things." It was war. In retaliation for the barracks attack, France bombed the Islamic Amal and Hezbollah camp in Baalbek. The success of this operation is still debated. While some insist no terrorists were killed, a secret report to President François Mitterrand (subsequently made public) listed more than 20 Lebanese Shiite militants dead (39 according to Lebanese forces), along with 12 Iranian "advisers." The Ayatollah Khomeini denounced France as a "terrorist state." Iran's revenge was not slow in coming. Hezbollah bombed the French embassy in Kuwait on December 12, then killed ten French soldiers in Lebanon. On December 21, after a bloody truck bomb attack on a French position, the Islamic Jihad (another name for Hezbollah) claimed responsibility and gave France ten days to leave Lebanon or suffer reprisals. On the 23rd, Paris expelled six Iranian "diplomats" suspected of terrorist ties. And on December 31, Islamic Jihad made good on its threat by bombing simultaneously the Marseilles train station and the high speed Paris-Marseilles train, killing four. In 1984, to Hezbollah's great satisfaction, French troops left Lebanon for good. Nevertheless, Iran again ordered Hezbollah to target France, mostly because of French support for Saddam Hussein. Between March 1985 and January 1987, Hezbollah took 16 French citizens hostage in Lebanon, most of them journalists and diplomats. Some remained in captivity for as long as three years, and one was murdered. Boasting of Iran's sponsorship of these activities, Sheikh Fadlallah, "spiritual" leader of Hezbollah, was quoted in the French daily Libération as saying: "France is standing in front of a locked vault. There are three keys. The smallest is the Lebanese one. So even if I were holding your countrymen, I could not free them by myself. My little key is not enough. The Syrian key is larger. But it is not enough, either. You need to get the third key, that of Iran." In addition to kidnappings, Iran, working through Hezbollah, orchestrated a terror campaign in the streets of France between December 1985 and September 1986 that killed 13 and injured hundreds. Alain Marsaud, head of the French counterterrorism unit, summed up the purpose of the campaign this way: "Iran, the sponsor of the attacks, used a Lebanon-based Hezbollah network plus a Maghrebi logistics cell to convince France to change its foreign policy." In fact, the Tunisian mastermind of the 1986 attacks, Fouad Ali Saleh, was close to many of Hezbollah's top leaders. He had spent three years studying in Qom, Iran, under Ayatollah Khomeini. Upon his arrest, Saleh stated: "Islam's stronghold is Iran. Your country, helping Iraq fight Iran, is an enemy. ... Our main goal is to bring France back to reason by violent actions." The DST, the French equivalent of the FBI, noted in its final report to Prime Minister Chirac: "Nothing could have been decided without the blessing of either Iranian parliament president Rafsanjani or Ayatollah Montazeri." The 1990s were comparatively uneventful, but in February 2000, left-wing prime minister Lionel Jospin described Hezbollah as a "terrorist" group during a press conference in Israel. The French foreign minister, Hubert Védrine, traveling with Jospin, whispered to him: "You went a little too far there!" Whereupon President Chirac angrily reminded Jospin that the president shapes France's foreign policy, not the prime minister. Obviously, Chirac, remembering the bombings and kidnappings of the 1980s, did not want to provoke Hezbollah. Which is why, despite Hezbollah's blood-soaked pedigree, Chirac invited Hassan Nasrallah, the group's secretary general, to attend the Francophone Summit in Beirut in October 2002. But on December 17, 2003, Chirac's semi-good relationship with Hezbollah came crashing down. By supporting the ban on the hijab -- the headscarf worn by some Muslim women -- in France's public schools, Chirac incurred the wrath of Sheikh Fadlallah. In a letter to Chirac, Fadlallah threatened "likely complications" if the ban were passed, which it was in 2004. In recent years, there has been some equivocation in French policy towards Hezbollah. Thus, in May 2004, the French ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte, called Hezbollah mostly a "social" organization. Furthermore, Levitte argued that there was no reason to put the group on the European Union's terrorist list. Nevertheless, in August 2004, France and the United States cosponsored U.N. Resolution 1559 calling for the removal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and the disarming of militias including Hezbollah, although the French initially hedged on the second point, stressing that Hezbollah could be disarmed only by the Lebanese authorities. And at home, France took some unilateral actions against Hezbollah. Notably, in December 2004, France banned Al-Manar, Hezbollah's virulently anti-Semitic and propagandistic television channel, though it did so only under tremendous pressure from outraged French politicians and members of the public. The hate speech common on Al-Manar could no longer be ignored in light of the tough French laws on anti-Semitism. The real tipping point in French policy, though, was the murder on February 14, 2005, of Rafik Hariri, former prime minister of Lebanon and a close friend of Jacques Chirac. France reacted by adopting a tougher stand towards Hezbollah. On August 29, Chirac, addressing French ambassadors, stated that every aspect of Resolution 1559 must be enforced, and Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy reiterated this a few days later in an interview with the newspaper Asharq Al Awsat. Minister of European Affairs Catherine Colonna went so far as to condemn Hezbollah's "illegal and violent actions" against Israel. Only on the matter of putting Hezbollah on the E.U.'s list of terrorist organizations has France continued to drag its feet. Hezbollah is a political party, say the French, and to declare it a terrorist organization could destabilize Lebanon. Yet France is edging toward linking the T-word with Hezbollah. Gérard Araud, French ambassador to Israel, declared on September 27 that France wants to give Hezbollah "a share in the democratic process and to understand that in this democratic process there's no place for weapons and for terrorism." He went on to say that putting Hezbollah on the terrorist list would change nothing but would play into the hands of the Arab world, which would see in this action "an American-Zionist plot." France "does not want to give them that pleasure." Then last year, Iran threatened to reactivate its deadly proxy, Hezbollah, if France were to take a harsher stance against it at the U.N. Security Council. This may explain why President Chirac delivered a speech on terrorism on January 19, 2006, in which he declared that in case of a terrorist attack against French allies (most likely the Gulf monarchies) and/or national interests (including oil facilities), the French response might be nuclear. The message was clearly intended for Iran -- and Hezbollah. Since the current fighting in Lebanon began on July 12, after Hezbollah fighters killed eight Israeli soldiers and abducted two more, France's reactions have been a mixed bag. While Chirac has criticized Israel for using "disproportionate force," he has also said there is "no other long-term solution" than to disarm Hezbollah "as soon as possible." While visiting Haifa on July 23, Foreign Minister Douste-Blazy had to take cover from Hezbollah-launched Katyusha rockets, an event that may have reinforced France's resolve. Said Douste-Blazy, "The first condition for a cease-fire is of course the disarming of Hezbollah." The war of words continues. Now let's see what France does. |
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ADVICE FOR MEL
Posted by Eugene Narrett, August 2, 2006. |
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A few evenings ago famous actor and director Mel Gibson was arrested for speeding (going about 110 mph in a 65 mph zone). He also was driving drunk. Hint: he will not lose his license or do jail time for this very lethal combination of crimes. Nor is he likely to suffer serious punishment for berating, threatening ("I'm going to f*** you" were among the reported threats) and resisting the officer who arrested him. There was a particularly interesting aspect to this matter whose ripples continue to spread, thanks partly to the illustrious Director himself. When he was being arrested, and when he was not cursing and threatening the officer, Gibson repeatedly cursed the Jews: "f***ing Jews, they're responsible for all the wars in the world," "they own the world" and similar Protocols of the Elders of Zion types of genocidal slander........ Mel and his charming father have a record of publicly emitting such slander. What finally prompted this note was Mel's 'heartfelt' attempt to disperse the fallout from this exposing of his character and intentions (at a time when most major world media and diplomats are working overtime to vilify the Jewish people, to compel them to cease defending themselves and generally to set conditions for their slaughter) by appealing for sympathy, understanding and help from the Jews. My, my......... This is a familiar aspect of history. For centuries, as their first historical records tell us, the Arabs used to visit the Jewish towns and farms that dotted the northwestern parts of what now is called "Saudi Arabia" and beg for food. "Always the Jews had fruits, melon and bread for us," runs the account. And they gave with an open hand until the 'armies of the prophet' passed through and with the help of various treaties that they signed and broke as suited them and left nothing in their wake "except ruined farms and imporverished farmers..." Now Mel wants succor from the people whom he has lethally slandered. So I thought I'd do something very Jewish and make a positive from a negative, bring good out of evil. Mel, here's what you need to do to "get back on the right path." You mentioned that you owned Malibu and that's probably not much of an exaggeration. You no doubt own many other valuable properties and securities... So, my dear and would-be penitent friend, friend who does have an enormous amount to atone for in regard to your vicious lethal slanders of the Jewish people, what you need to do, now, is to liquify all your assets. And then you need to work with the kind of Jews you probably don't know, proud, patriotic, Torah-loving Jews and to finance regime change in Israel so Jews like them become visible to the hate-filled world and bring life, dynamism and peace to Israel. Mel, after your forces effect total regime change, you are going to fill the JNF, ILA, and so on with leaders dedicated to filling the entire land of Israel, both banks of the Jordan river with new and expanded Jewish settlements, businesses, farms, houses of study. You are going to make major contributions to Israeli Defense Industries after demanding that they produce their own jet planes and create and maintain peace in the entire region. Mel, you are going to spend your entire fortune doing and insuring the fulfillment of this dream. This is going to cleanse you, my friend, and turn your filthy wealth and mind into beautiful, life-giving and productive purposes of amends. And then you are going to choose, because Judaism is all about individual responsibility, free choice and consequences of one's actions, Mel, you are going to choose between spending the rest of your life in a Jewish house of study and prayer, or hanging your self. Would not the former be more lovely and productive? Do please follow this path and it will be well with you and you will earn the sympathy, compassion and genuine esteem of those who matter most. your future friend, Eugene Narrett
Professor Eugene Narrett teaches writing and Literature at Boston University. He is the author of hundreds of articles, columns and reviews on politics, American culture and the arts. He is completing a study on Romanticism and the longterm decline of Western Culture. He writes often on subjects relating to Israel and Judaism and is a weekly columnist for the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Massachusetts. |
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FALLEN HEROES -- THE HILLTOP YOUTH
Posted by Sergio Tessa (HaDaR), August 1, 2006. |
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This is a picture of fallen war hero Lt. Amichai Merchavia, ZTUQ"L,
HI"D, while being strangled and rendered unconscious by Sharon and
Olmerd's goons in Amona a few months ago for defending Jewish rights
in Eretz Israel. He was killed last week in Bint J'bel.
Other photos from Amona can be seen at 
Another soldier killed in the Bint Jbeil battle, Ro'i Klein, lived
in a community slated for destruction by the IDF. This is for all the ignorant people who keep on quoting leftist media and the people who called the Amona youth who resisted the police and were savagely beaten "asaf suf", garbage, hoodlums, and criminals. As you can see, one of the HEROES fallen in Bint J'bel was NOT ONLY a SARBAN GHERUSH, who refused to obey the illegal order to deport Jews from their homes in Gaza, but was also BEATEN UP by the Ghetto Polizei of the Judenrat in Amona! MANY AMONG THE BEST OF OUR YOUTH ARE TO BE FOUND AMONG THE HILLTOP YOUTH! Now, the Olmert Government is preparing for more expulsions! This article is called "Despite War, IDF Distributing Demolition Orders to Outpost" by Ezra HaLevi. It appeared today in Arutz-Sheva (http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=108910). |
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Though many assumed that the destruction of communities in Judea and Samaria had been postponed, if not canceled, due to the war, the IDF distributed demolition orders to one community Tuesday. The administrative orders pave the way for the destruction of 15 permanent homes in the hilltop community of Givat Ronen (also known as Skali's Farm), near the town of Har Bracha, in Samaria. "We are outraged that even during wartime, the IDF is forgetting its true duties and continues to view the settlers as the nation's enemies," Har Bracha's secretariat said. Since the start of the war, the issue of the outposts has been mentioned repeatedly -- as the homes or passion of three of the soldiers wounded and fallen in Bint Jbeil Lebanon last week. Major Ro'i Klein, the Golani Brigade commander who saved the lives of his men by jumping on a live grenade in Bint Jbeil last week, lived in the hilltop community of Givat HaYovel, near Eli -- in the Binyamin region. IDF officers, slated to destroy his home in the coming months, instead arrived in Givat HaYovel to inform his widow Sara and their two children, of his heroic actions and death on behalf of his country. The list of communities slated for destruction by the government is based on an understanding reached with the U.S. Government whereby communities founded after the arbitrary date of Ariel Sharon's election as prime minister are considered "unauthorized outposts" rather than nascent towns. Another Golani Brigade commander, Yisrael Friedler, was shot in the arm during the same battle at Bint Jbeil, while overseeing the rescue of his fellow soldiers under heavy Hizbullah fire. Friedler, who oversaw door-to-door operations in Gaza's Beit Hanoun just weeks earlier, lives in the Gush Etzion hilltop community of Sde Boaz - an ecological community of both religious and secular Jews. A home built by Sde Boaz residents was destroyed by the IDF in January. Friedler's wife was pushed, his horse's stable demolished and his brother-in-law arrested during the clashes as security forces used tear gas and pepper spray against residents and local supporters who flocked to the site. Another soldier who fell in Bint Jbeil, Golani platoon commander Lt. Amichai Merhavia, appears in pictures from October, 2002, being beaten unconscious by Yassam riot police attempting to destroy the privately-owned hilltop community of Havat Gilad (Gilad's Farm). The sequence of photos can viewed by clicking here (photos by Miriam Tzachi). Prior to the Disengagement, Merhavia wrote a letter to the Chief of Staff, objecting to the manner in which the Gaza withdrawal was being orchestrated. Halutz sought to dismiss him from his position permanently as a result, but he eventually returned to his unit, where he was even promoted, just weeks prior to his final battle. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week told former residents of Gush Katif that he is determined to carry out his planned withdrawal from areas behind the Partition Wall in Judea and Samaria, regardless of the current war and the IDF's forced re-entry to Gaza. Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net. |
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HOLD DAMASCUS RESPONSIBLE
Posted by Daniel Pipes, August 1, 2006. |
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"There will be an international force [in Lebanon], because all the key players want it," an American official asserted recently. He appears to be right, as even the Israeli government has embraced the plan, announcing it "would agree to consider stationing a battle-tested force composed of soldiers from European Union member states." The key players might "want it," but such a force will certainly fail, just as it did once before, in 1982-84. That was when American, French, and Italian troops were deployed in Lebanon to buffer Israel from Lebanon's anarchy and terrorism. The "Multinational Force" collapsed back then when Hezbollah attacked MNF soldiers, embassies, and other installations, prompting the MNF's ignominious flight from Lebanon. The same pattern will no doubt recur. Back then, Americans and others did not regard Hezbollah as their enemy, and this remains the case today, notwithstanding the war on terror; in a recent Gallup poll, 65% of Americans said their government should not take sides in the current Israel-Hezbollah fighting. Other, equally bad, ideas to end the anarchy in south Lebanon include: Deploying the Lebanese Armed Forces, the Lebanese state's official military. Hezbollah is within the government of Lebanon and would veto the LAF controlling the south. Also, Shiites sympathetic to Hezbollah make up half of the LAF. Finally, the LAF is too amateurish to confront Hezbollah. This appeared today in the New york Sun and was entitled "This Cease-Fire Won't Hold". |
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GAZA SYNAGOGUES
Posted by Alex Grobman, August 1, 2006. |
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Please tell me why disengagement was so imperative that Jews had to be expelled from their homes for the sake of "peace." Where is the peace? When is it coming? What did it accomplish other than ruin people's lives? Olmert, Peretz, Livni and Peres and all the other wonderfully incompetent apparatchicks of Kadimah are now experimenting with another stage of disengagement--from the north of Israel. They are doing a superb job. Will that bring peace to Israel? I read that Olmert still wants to move the Jews out of Yehuda and Shomron. Is that so the Arabs will have a better chance of destroying Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem and Ben-Gurion Airport with their missiles? One of my sons told me that he sees homeless Jews from the north walking the streets of Jerusalem, even in their community of Ramat Shlomo, which is off the beaten path. So depressing. Yet it is heartening how people all over the country are opening their homes to their fellow Jews. Seeing the beautiful and inspiring synagogues adds another dimension to the loss. So unnecessary. They are so inviting. They beckon you to doven in them. What surprised me is that shuls do not have to cost millions and millions of dollars to be so inspiring. Apparently what really matters are the people with whom you doven and your own attitude toward the experience. Who would have thought? I heard Gal Luft, Ph.D. on Fox tonight. He and Annie Korin run the Washington, DC based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS). As always, Gal was articulate and brilliant in explaining Israel's case. His cousin, a Lt. Colonel, was killed in the Apache helicopter accident in Safed last week. Both Gal and Annie are doing incredibly important work. AG Dr. Grobman's most recent book is "Battling for Souls: The Vaad Hatzala Rescue Committee in Post War Europe" [KTAV]. He is also co-author of "Denying History: Who Says The Holocaust Never Happened?" (University of California Press, 2000) His next book "Zionism=Racism: The New War Against The Jews" will be published in 2005. |
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ON THE WAY TO THE FRONT
Posted by Naomi Ragen, August 1, 2006. |
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Friends, This is called "Thank You for Your Protection" and was written by Avraham Berkowitz. It appeared at http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=408136 Rabbi Berkowitz is the Executive Director of the Jewish Federation in Russia. A beautiful story. Contact him at berkowitz#fjc.ru Naomi |
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This morning as the sun rose over Jerusalem, my wife Leah gave birth to a beautiful baby girl at the Hadassah Medical center. A few hours later I drove to the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Malachi where my wife's parents live. After packing several personal items that my wife will need for her hospital stay, I set out to drive back to Jerusalem. As I passed the central bus station in Kiryat Malachi, I saw an Israeli soldier waiting to get a ride. I rolled down the window and asked him where he needed to go. He said his base is near Jericho, but if I can take him to Jerusalem that would be great help. I was in a particularly upbeat mood today--after all, we were blessed with our fourth child and third daughter--but the reality around me in the holy land is down and worrisome. Israel is being attacked by its neighbors and we are fighting a war to defend ourselves. As fighter jets from the nearby air force base roared overhead, we cruised down the highway, and I get acquainted with Shachaf Raviv of Beer Sheva. His story gives a face to and direct association with the soldiers fighting for our land and people today. Shachaf, 21 years old, is a medic in the IDF. He tells me that yesterday his senior officer sent him home for one night to spend with his family because today he and his unit will be leaving their base near Jericho and heading up north to the battlefield on the border of Lebanon to be part of a team of doctors and medics who will be giving critical first aid to the wounded soldiers and civilians. His officer said he will not have any weekend breaks for a while and therefore sent him to bid farewell to his family. Shachaf told me of the feeling in his house last night, "no one slept, they surrounded me with love and care for hours. My father immigrated to Israel from Portugal in the late sixties and fought in the Yom Kippur War and my mother came from Tunisia to the promised land around the same time. They spoke of their dreams for themselves and our future. "I am the third of four children and currently the only son in the army. My parents named me Shachaf which means "seagull" in Hebrew but this morning when my mother said goodbye she held me for a long time and was crying, she kept calling me Rachamim--the Jewish name they gave me at my Brit ceremony, which in Hebrew means 'mercy' and 'compassion.' She cried and said 'Rachamim today you will need G-d's compassion and protection--We all need G-d's rachamim.'" As we continued to drive I encouraged Shachaf and spoke to him about the great role he has in protecting the land of Israel and the Jewish people in Israel and ultimately Jews all over the world. At 12:00 PM I turned on the radio to the headline news. "Eight troops from Golani's 51st Battalion," the announcer said, "lost their lives on Wednesday during heavy fighting with Hezbollah terrorists in the southern Lebanese village of Bint Jbail. Another officer was killed in a clash at Maron a-Ras. Over twenty soldiers are wounded..." Shachaf asked me to turn the radio off and give him spiritual inspiration instead before he heads to the front lines. I shared with him thoughts that I heard and learned from my Rebbe and teacher, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory. During past conflicts in the Land of Israel, and during times of danger for the Jewish people, the Rebbe made practical suggestions of good deeds, mitzvot, that would elicit G-d's blessings and protection. I quoted him from the Torah that speaks of G-d protecting the land and we discussed the need for us to understand the deeper truths as to why we have our permanent homeland specifically in Israel, as promised to us in the Torah. Shachaf was very grateful to hear how Jews and non Jews all over the world are praying for them and thinking of them every day now and wishing for their success and G-d's protection. When we came to Jerusalem I opened my briefcase. I had a new Mezuzuah in a plastic case and I gave it to Shachaf. I told him, "I am giving this to you for protection, but you must return it to me when you come back and I will go to Beer Sheva and put it up in your bedroom." Shachaf liked the idea. I said, "It says in the Torah 'Emissaries of a good deeds are not harmed.' You have a Mezuza--it will protect you." Shachaf put the mezuza in his front left pocket and promised me he would leave it there until he comes back, he will also tell the story of our meeting to his fellow medic soldiers and tell them they have added protection. I then pulled out an envelope with $500 that a member of my community gave me yesterday to give to distressed Jews in the north, and asked Shachaf to be my personal emissary to distribute these funds to wounded soldiers and civilians. At first he refused to take it, but after we exchanged e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers he agreed and promised to report to me exactly how he gave the funds to people who really need it. We only met an hour before, but we suddenly were deeply connected to each other. We embraced, the Mezuzah protruding from his pocket and his rifle strapped across his chest. I looked at him with tears in my eyes and said, "Rachamim, thank you for your protection"; and he looked me back in the eye while placing his hand over the mezuzah I gave him, and said "Avraham, thank you for your protection." I am writing this article on my laptop while sitting in the room at Hadassah Hospital while my wife rests. I look at the beautiful face of our little newborn daughter and thank G-d for His blessings and pray for His protection for my child and all the rest of His children. As the Jewish world will pray this Shabbat for the protection of the soldiers of Israel, I will have in mind Rachamim Raviv. Please think of him and thousands of more like him who need G-d's rachamim, mercy, and full protection. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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TOO FEW DEAD JEWS
Posted by Sergio Tessa (HaDaR), August 1, 2006. |
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This was written by Jonathan Rosenbaum and it appeared in the
Jerusalem Post July 29, 2006. It is archived at
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European criticism of Israeli military responses to attacks upon Israel and its citizens has become so formulaic that the various EU officials and foreign ministers can probably recite it in their sleep. First comes a ritualistic acknowledgement of Israel's right to defend itself followed inevitably by the accusation that the particular Israeli response was disproportionate. So automatic is the second statement that it completely vitiates the first. The Europeans never bother to explain what response they would consider proportionate or how those actions would obviate the threats to Israel's civilian population. After the Sbarro bombing, for instance, would the proportionate response have been to send an Israeli suicide bomber into a Ramallah pizzeria? How do the Europeans know that Israel's actions are disproportionate? The "asymmetry in the reported death tolls," explains the New York Times' Steven Erlanger, in a July 19 news story. In short, there are too few dead Jews. The reliance on death tolls to determine the propriety of Israeli military action is more than a little problematic. First, it turns warfare into a weird kind of boxing match in which one can only hit one's adversary as hard as he hit you. That is not how either boxers or nations fight. American U.N. ambassador John Bolton rightly ridiculed the European view of proportionality earlier this week. If Hezbollah kidnaps two Israeli soldiers, he asked, does that mean that Israel can do nothing more in response than capture two Hezbollah operatives? Something close to that view does, in fact, prevail among critics of Israeli military action. News stories denigrate the destructive capabilities of Palestinian weapons, for instance, and downplay the impact of those weapons on Jews living under their threat. Thus the Times' Erlanger quotes a Gaza resident who characterizes Kassams as nothing more than "needle pricks," even as he insists on the Palestinians' inalienable right to continue delivering those needle pricks. To limit Israel's response to such "needle pricks" -- actually it is usually far less, since Israel would never fire Kassams into Beit Hanun -- constitutes an open invitation to aggressors, since they know in advance that they will never pay a higher price than the damage they inflict. A mere count of body bags further ignores the fact that those bags have a provenance. Many other questions have to be asked -- e.g., are the bodies those of combatants or civilians? If the bodies are those of civilians, were they killed because the enemy embedded military targets among the civilian population? It is also relevant to know who started the fighting. How many Lebanese would have been killed by Israel in the last two weeks if Hezbollah had not attacked Israel within its internationally recognized border? (Lebanon is not, incidentally, a completely innocent bystander to Hezbollah terrorism. For one thing, it is the internationally recognized sovereign in the area from which Hezbollah acts. In addition, at a recent Arab League gathering of foreign ministers, the Lebanese foreign minister introduced a resolution implicitly endorsing the pretexts with which Hezbollah justifies attacks on Israel -- i.e., Israel's retention of Sheba Farms and the holding prisoner of Lebanese nationals who have murdered Israeli citizens in terror attacks.) Reliance on body bag counts is misplaced for another reason as well. Neither diplomats nor journalists have the ability or inclination to verify claimed body counts. Four years ago, the European press recited without challenge Palestinian claims of a cold-blooded massacre in Jenin of 500 or more civilians. The true number of Palestinian civilians killed in intense house-to-house fighting was less than 30. WERE THE LAW TO PROCLAIM BODY COUNTS the standard of proportionality, the law would be, in Mr. Bumble's words, "an ass." That, fortunately, is not international law. Luis Moreno, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, has written, that "the death of civilians during armed combat does not itself constitute a war crime." Nor is proportionality measured by how many casualties the enemy has inflicted. Rosalyn Higgins, the President of International Court of Justice, writes that proportionality is not judged "in relation to any specific prior injury, [but rather] in relation to the overall legitimate objective of ending the aggression." Proportionality, then, is a function of the goal of thwarting aggression against a state's territory or citizens. Where the aggressor, like Hezbollah will never surrender or lay down arms, and where its explicit goal is to kill every Israeli citizen, Israel is obviously entitled, under Higgins' standard, to respond with great force indeed. Unfortunately, diplomats and journalists, for whom the term "proportionality" comes trippingly off the tongue, consistently overlook the fact that it is a legal term, with a specific (albeit not absolutely clear) meaning. The reason that international law recognizes no such rule as, "Thou shall do to thine enemy no more than thine enemy has done to thee," is that no nation in the world has ever acted according to such a formula. To bring about the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan in World War II, the Allies mercilessly bombed German cities, and dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. The latter deaths were justified at the time as necessary to prevent the loss of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers in a land assault on Japan. More recently, NATO bombers struck at Yugoslavia over 72-straight days, and killed approximately 500 civilians, even though Slobadan Milosevic did not threaten any NATO country. And many innocent civilians were killed by American bombers in both Afghanistan and Iraq. I mention these facts not so much to point out the hypocrisy of Israel's critics (with the exception of the contemptible French, who flew 10% of the NATO missions against Milosevic and regularly vote for U.N. resolutions condemning Israel's disproportionate responses), but rather to suggest the inevitability of error when the bombs start dropping, as in the case of Yugoslavia. And Hiroshima proves the general rule that no nation ever values the lives of its citizens equally to the lives of enemy civilians. Israel, which has never deliberately targeted civilians, has neither the duty nor right to be the first. Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net. |
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"WORLD OPINION" IS WORTHLESS
Posted by Nurit Greenger, August 1, 2006. |
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"World Opinion"! What is it? History had shown us it is synonymous to: relentless apathy, morally wrong, manipulative, distorted and rather worthless; courage was taken out of its equation, it is rather annoying and too many times most infuriating. Time to recognize that "world opinion" is nothing more than endless moral cowardice statements one cannot and should not be enthralled by. This was written by Dennis Prager and it appeared in Jewish World
Review (http://www.JewishWorldReview.com) today. It is archived at
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And here is a related rule if your religious or national or ethnic group ever suffers horrific persecution: "World opinion" will never do a thing for you. Never.
Ask the 1.5 million Armenians massacred by the Ottoman Turks;
Ask any of these poor souls, or the hundreds of millions of others slaughtered, tortured, raped and enslaved in the last 100 years, if "world opinion" did anything for them. On the other hand, we learn that "world opinion" is quite exercised over Israel's unintentional killing of a few hundred Lebanese civilians behind whom hides Hezbollah "a terror group that intentionally sends missiles at Israeli cities and whose announced goals are the annihilation of Israel and the Islamicization of Lebanon. And, of course, "world opinion" was just livid at American abuses of some Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. In fact, "world opinion" is constantly upset with America and Israel, two of the most decent countries on earth, yet silent about the world's cruelest countries. Why is this? Here are four reasons: First, television news. It is difficult to overstate the damage done to the world by television news. Even when not driven by political bias -- an exceedingly rare occurrence globally -- television news presents a thoroughly distorted picture of the world. Because it is almost entirely dependent upon pictures, TV news is only capable of showing human suffering in, or caused by, free countries. So even if the BBC or CNN were interested in showing the suffering of millions of Sudanese blacks or North Koreans -- and they are not interested in so doing -- they cannot do it because reporters cannot visit Sudan or North Korea and video freely. Likewise, China's decimation and annexation of Tibet, one of the world's oldest ongoing civilizations, never made it to television. Second, "world opinion" is shaped by the same lack of courage that shapes most individual human beings' behavior. This is another aspect of the problem of the distorted way news is presented. It takes courage to report the evil of evil regimes; it takes no courage to report on the flaws of decent societies. Reporters who went into Afghanistan without the Soviet Union's permission were killed. Reporters would risk their lives to get critical stories out of Tibet, North Korea and other areas where vicious regimes rule. But to report on America's bad deeds in Iraq (not to mention at home) or Israel's is relatively effortless, and you surely won't get killed. Indeed, you may well win a Pulitzer Prize. Third, "world opinion" bends toward power. To cite the Israel example, "world opinion" far more fears alienating the largest producers of oil and 1 billion Muslims than it fears alienating tiny Israel and the world's 13 million Jews. And not only because of oil and numbers. When you offend Muslims, you risk getting a fatwa, having your editorial offices burned down or receiving death threats. Jews don't burn down their critics' offices, issue fatwas or send death threats, let alone act on such threats. Fourth, those who don't fight evil condemn those who do. "World opinion" doesn't confront real evils, but it has a particular animus toward those who do -- most notably today America and Israel. The moment one recognizes "world opinion" for what it is -- a statement of moral cowardice, one is longer enthralled by the term. That "world opinion" at this moment allegedly loathes America and Israel is a badge of honor to be worn proudly by those countries. It is when "world opinion" and its news media start liking you that you should wonder if you've lost your way. Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4Nuritg@gmail.com |
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THIS IS HOW CNN 'MAKES' THE NEWS
Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, August 1, 2006. |
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The email came from Jack de Lowe. He wrote this after receiving an email from Suzanne (see below)." The press has great power for good and bad. When that power is abused, it can be very dangerous. |
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Dear Jack, You will never guess who called me today. A CNN reporter who left the following message on my voicemail: "I am doing a story on the debate within the Jewish community re: the conflict in the Middle East. We are looking for a different perspective. The majority of people (Jewish) we spoke to in the area are supportive of the role of Israel defending herself. We are looking for those who may want to take a more peaceful stance and still support Israel." Do you believe the chutpah? She is suppose to be a journalist and she "frames" the story before she goes out and works on it? Yup, CNN does have their agenda alright. I did not call her back.
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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THE WANDERING JEWS OF GUSH KATIF ARE STILL WANDERING
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, August 1, 2006. |
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The deliberate bureaucratic bungling of both Sharon's government and now Olmert's government has turned the evacuated Gush Katif families into refugees. It's not unlike floating a check with no funds in the bank - with the intention of delaying payment or not to pay at all. Perhaps the U.N. will accord them "refugee" status and fund them as they do the Arab Muslim 'so-called' Palestinians. But, there may be a better way to catch the attention of a government intent on dodging its obligations.. Let's identify by name and address all the Committee members, followed by Knesset Members who put these good people on the road to nowhere. This applies to the first government under Sharon and Olmert, etc. Then there is the second government of Kadima who continued the policy of deliberately avoiding payment and all other obligations. Let us further identify the bureaucrats who deliberately abused their positions by holding back promised funding, promised farmland, promised communities kept together and the myriad of mean-spirited lies covered over with planned bungling. By comparison, we know that Sharon, Olmert and Company organized the extraction of 10,000 Jewish men, women and children from their homes, farms, schools, synagogues, factories, businesses and cemeteries with meticulous detail, completing the Gush Katif/Gaza and North Samaria "ethnic cleansing" in about one week. Then they destroyed all their homes, gardens, farms and most of their infrastructure - all with Germanic efficiency and planning. Why didn't Sharon devote his vaunted attention for exquisite detail to recreating their new homes and re-establishing their 26 formerly integrated communities? The only possible answer is that Sharon and Olmert did NOT intend to provide them with a "solution" but meant to divide them and scatter them and dispirit them so they could not organize protests. By withholding payment and all else promised pre-evacuation, Sharon and Olmert succeeded in what can only be called their War against Jewish Settlers. Once we know where all these Knesset Members, Committee Members, and bureaucrats who now live in security and comfort, then we can direct all the 'refugees' to move into their apartments. Clearly, they were quick to offer the assets of the settlers, backed up with financial competence of the State and then reneged. I especially single out the current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's luxurious apartment - which he recently sold for a price far exceeding its value and then stayed there for a modest rental fee. This slick deal is presently under serious investigation by the State Comptroller for bribe taking. I am sure Olmert would not object to a Jewish 'refugee' family with many children, sharing his space and luxury, given his role in forcing them into the street and personally welshing on what he and Sharon promised via contract. Of course, Sharon's farm (called The Sycamore) was itself first obtained by some slick manipulation of Israel's banking laws. It could probably be used as a new settlement and host a whole former Gush Katif community, it's so big. Here again, Sharon showed no pity, let alone honesty when he made a commitment to the settlers of Gush Katif and the Northern Shomron. Then he broke his word and his governments's commitments. As for the other bureaucrats, when the door to their apartments are opened, just move right in and stay until the promised money is paid out and your new homes, to your specifications and dreams (not trash trailers) have been provided - in the communities together with your long-term friends. Similarly, other collaborators in the Katif Scam - like Gen. Halutz, Gen. Mofaz, Yossi Beilin, Shimon Peres, Tzachi HaNegbi and all the others - will surely have no objection in accommodating these good people who they forced out of their homes "for the good of all" or, so we were told. Using the law of 'eminent domain' as a legal force to displace Jews is worth reversing and evacuating the politicians who voted for this fiasco. This seems like a good idea whose time has come. SHELLING THE ENEMY ACCORDING TO KADIMA'S HIT LIST If those who wish to really protect all of Israel, using Israel's vaunted military force, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and have them hit real targets of the terrorists who are targeting them, not empty fields and empty buildings. They must do the following: Plant evidence that there are Jewish settlers who have sneaked into the Arab Muslim training grounds. Olmert will, no doubt, declare an emergency session of his Kadimites and demand a plan to clean out those 'sneaky' Jews. He will assign Halutz the task of blasting those areas. Halutz (as you may recall) could barely contain himself, jumping out of his seat every few minutes, demanding immediate action "to clean out those Jewish settlers". If you really want Olmert, Peretz, Halutz to attack Arab Muslim terrorist Palestinians' positions instead of empty fields and buildings, you must make those targets irresistible. If you float the rumor that there are Jewish settlers in those areas, then Olmert will release Halutz to actually hit hose targets with enthusiasm. Olmert and Peretz will pop corks in the Prime Minister's office for a job well-done. Of course, Defense Minister Amir Peretz (the primo amateur), would demand to be heard. He would likely add: "We have to be careful not to cause collateral damage among the Palestinians." "The targeting must be precise against those 'rabid' settlers." "We cannot affort to get the terrorists angry by hitting any of their people or arms depots." "Hitting the Jewish settlers is a gesture they are sure to appreciate and will, no doubt cause Hamas and Fatah to restrain future terrorist attacks." "In the meantime, Peres, Livni, Peretz and other ranking Kadimites can safely watch the action as those 'sneaky' Jewish settlers are pounded into dust." What a Machaya (Pleasure) it will be for the Kadimites and others of the Left! Olmert has been called the 'perfect fool'. (Although, no one can be that perfect at anything.) He has what he calls "ideas" ricocheting around in the emptiness of his skull. Olmert has adopted the Arab Muslim peculiarity of mouthing an idea and then acts as if the idea came from some an unimpeachable source and, therefore, not to be questioned. He taught his children nothing. All three of Olmert's children are Leftists and live outside of Israel. In that vast vacuum of where a mind should be, one might find all sorts of tubes, connected to the Arabist State Department, some connected to Peres, Weissglas, the Oval Office, etc. With all these tubes and ideas of others being pumped in to keep the body and brain seemingly alive, Olmert should be in political critical care facilities - all pumped up full of hot air, with pink and rosy skin. This empty mind has discarded all past history of Arab dis-ingenuousness. That they lie as part of their culture, often when there is no need for the lie - of that there is no question. Olmert, like an Arab Muslim, makes up a scenario for the Israeli public of the benefits to driving the Jews from their Land into a compressed Ghetto, he believes (or says) will be defendable. He also believes (or declares) that filling the vacuum left by the Jews will bring in peaceful Muslim Arab Palestinians, first called "Convergence", now called "Re-alignment". We patiently await the next slogan suggested by the State Department to make treason seem reasonable. As we wait for more disinformation, we can watch Gaza turn into a super Global Terror Base and the executioner of nearby Israeli citizens, while the Media refuses to report on this major blunder. Why would Olmert think that, believe that, propose that... Perhaps it's because Olmert is not known for his ability to think of solutions on a national or international scale as a humpty-dumpty lawyer who really is a scrambled mess. Speaking of believing, why would Olmert believe that he is 'teaching' either the Arab Muslim Palestinians or the Jewish Israelis a lesson by creating another Gush Katif/Gaza debacle in Judea and Samaria (called the 'west bank' by the media and the world)' What clues have been given that, under Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) or a successor that the various terrorist elements in Fatah, let alone the more virulently violent Hamas will cease following the Islamic-driven mandate to drive the Jews into the sea. Even Mohammed had a cap or time limit for agreements with infidels of 10 years. Naturally, Islamists, following their Hadith (Oral Law) would break all agreements as soon as he (Mohammed) was able but 10 years was the maximum because of the precedent set by Mohammed with the Hudabaiya Agreement in the Seventh Century. By the way, if you read the stories about "refugees" from the hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, the situations of the people forced out of their homes (1) and the Israelis Jews forced out of their homes - they are all in the same rotten, leaky boats with no homes, no jobs, no schools, no communities, no houses of worship, etc. The only difference was that President Bush had assembled a bureaucratic nightmare of incompetents while in Israel the same incompetents, with the added twist that they planned to renege on all promises of funding for the Jewish 'refugees'. Bumbling, while not acceptable is one thing but, pure evil intentions is another. ### 1. "For Many Education is Another Storm Victim" by Shaila Dewan New York Times June 1, 2006 Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net |
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