THE SAUDI "PEACE" PLAN...AN OFFER ISRAEL CAN — AND SHOULD — REFUSE Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, November 30, 2008.

According to a Times Of London story on November 16th, President-elect Obama allegedly stated that Israel would be crazy not to accept the resurrected, alleged Saudi "Peace Plan." Dubya and Condi are trying real hard to force this post-Thankgiving turkey down Israel's throat as well. A bit earlier, a stop along President Bush's Middle East trip — after further pressuring Jews to further accept his vision of Abbas's latter day terrorist Arafatians as being the good cops — took President Bush to the sands of the Saudis and other Arabian Peninsula nations. A photo was published worldwide of the President wielding a sword along with Bahraini hosts, and Dubya brought along a New Year's present — tens of billions of dollars in military aid...Hey, if we don't sell it to them, the Brits, Germans, French, and so forth certainly will. So goes the argument... During that visit, Bush asked if perhaps the Arabs might reach out to Israel a bit more. Saudi King Abdullah responded that he didn't know what else he could do. After all, he came up with his own "peace" (of the grave) plan some time ago...the one Obama now claims Israel would be nuts to reject. Here it is in a nutshell... If Israel (and not a Jewish Israel) merely agreed to return to its pre-'67, 9-mile wide '49 armistice line — not border — existence and agreed to be swamped by millions of "returning" jihadist refugees (many, if not most, of whom were new-comers to the Palestinian Mandate themselves) created because the Arab attempt to nip a reborn Israel in the bud backfired, along with everything else that the Arabs demand for the Jewish State's suicide, then the Saudis and other Arabs might normalize relations with Israel. Again, the above is the plan that Obama, Condi, and Dubya consider to be an offer that Israel simply can't refuse. Of course, they'd accept such a plan for America given similar circumstances (yeah, right)...What's even more sickening is that they get stuck-in-the-ghetto-minded Uncle Abe (instead of Uncle Tom) Jews like Ehud Olmert and Shimon Peres to sing praises to it as well. Where are those Israeli elections!!!??? The Desert Kingdom has long gotten away with a virtual free pass from America and most of the rest of the world. The same folks — including academics and others who should know better — who routinely scrutinize Israel and the actions it's forced to take merely to survive, act deaf, dumb, and blind when it comes to the Saudis and too many other Arabs controlling much of the world's oil and influencing many other petrodollar-connected, multi-national corporations in the process. Together, this power and influence — via their many tentacles and manifestations — make the much spoken about "Zionist lobby" look pitiful. Years back, when I was a card-carrying member of the London-based Anti-Slavery Society, persistent reports spoke of slavery throughout Saudi Arabia and other Arab lands...in the oil fields, and other places as well. It was still "above ground" up until the middle of the last century. But it was all treated as though it didn't exist. Have you ever noticed the many black Saudis and other Arabs? Guess who and what their mothers mostly were? Hush... Okay. Let's get back on track. What else can the Saudis do to reach out to the Jews? Here's some suggestions... On Dubya's trip, he pledged some twenty billion dollars in state-of-the-art aircraft, missiles, bombs, and so forth to the Saudis, supposedly to bolster them against the Iranian bogeyman. The problem is, despite all of those Arabs prancing around with their swords, each time they were threatened — by fellow Arabs like Saddam or the Iranians — America had to pull their chestnuts out of the fire with our own blood and money anyway...despite billions of dollars in military aid given previously. Not to mention the Saudis' gift of most of the suicide/homicide bombers of 9/11. Previous sophisticated weaponry and aircraft that the Saudis pledged to place to face the Iranian threat were stationed a stone's throw from Israel instead. Indeed, they've been expanding the King Faisal Air Base at Tabuk. Prior to Bush's new holiday gift, the base contained about 50 advanced F-15S fighter-jets, which were sent to the northwestern facility on the eve of the U.S.-led war against Iraq in March 2003. Other promises related to those sales later proved to be worthless as well. So much for past and future similar Arab guarantees... What else could the Saudis do for Israel? How about honoring the pledges above, for starters. The Protocols Of The Learned Elders Of Zion is perhaps one of the most flagrantly anti-Semitic doctrines ever written. Guess who was one of the latter day leaders in endorsing and spreading it around? While the Saudis aren't the only Arabs still doing this sort of hate-spreading stuff ("peaceful" Egypt still freely indulges), ending such practices is another suggestion for the "what else"...as is ending dehumanizing "kilab yahud" — Jew dogs — even further by routinely also calling them sons of apes and pigs. Extend this further by revising the textbooks of Arab children, hatred in the media, sermons, and so forth which routinely demonize Jews and Israel, and an Arab "peace" might become more believable. Since America is poised to force a pax Saudia on Israel, are you ready for more? When Israel was squeezed by President Clinton at Camp David and Taba to cave in to Arafat and abandon its right to defensible "secure and recognized" borders instead of pre-'67 Auschwitz/armistice lines a la resolution 242, while Arafat rejected the plan, Clinton and the State Department's Arabist "deal" Prime Minister Barak was forced to accept became the new starting point for President Bush's subsequent Annapolis travesty. With numerous anti-Israel friends and advisors, it will certainly be a President Obama's as well. During the era of Clinton's "Oslo Peace," the more Israel tangibly conceded to Arabs, the more it bled. Guess who was paying Arab families tens of thousands of dollars each for having a "shahid" member blow up Jewish kids in teen night clubs, buses, pizzerias, and so forth during the Intifada (conducted under Arafat and Abbas's Fatah good cops' watch — not that of Hamas's bad cops)? Maybe Saudi despots, who condemn women victims of rape to hundreds of lashes and humiliation, could revise their policy here also... The Saudis, like other Arabs, are always quick to claim the whole region as purely Arab patrimony.Hence their additional concern about Iranians and others who call the body of water in the north the Persian Gulf instead of the Arabian Gulf. More than just words are involved here. Since Arabs claim all that they acquired after Muhammad and successor Caliphal armies burst out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century C.E., conquering and forcibly Arabized millions of non-Arab peoples and their lands, and then rejected the rights of Jews (one half in Israel who were refugees from "Arab"/Muslim lands), Kurds, Berbers, black Africans, and so forth in a later age of nationalism to resurrected political rights of their own, perhaps the Saudis need to be reminded of another time period in what is now their country... As I have written elsewhere, when Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, fled enemies in Mecca to Medina in 622 C.E. (the Hijrah), the inhabitants welcomed him. Medina had been developed centuries earlier as a thriving date palm oasis by Jews fleeing the Roman assault on Judaea (the banu-Qurayzah and banu-al-Nadir tribes, etc.). Medina's mixed population of Jews and pagan Arabs opened their doors to the future Prophet of Islam. Muhammad learned much from the Jews. While the actual timing of his decision on the qibla, the direction of prayer, may never be known, during his long sojourn with the Jews of Medina, his followers were instructed to pray towards Jerusalem. Early prominent Arab historians such as Jalaluddin came right out and openly stated that this was done as an attempt to win support among influential Jewish tribes (the "People of the Book") for Muhammad's religio-politcal claims. It is from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (which Arabs now claim Jews have no connection to — including Bush's good buddy, Abbas) that Muslims believe Muhammad ascended to Heaven on his winged horse. A mosque, the Dome of the Rock, would later be erected on this Jewish holy site after the Arab imperialist caliphal conquest of the land in the 7th century C.E. Arab imperialism? Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh... Only nasty westerners do that stuff — don'tcha know? There is no doubt among objective scholars that Jews had an enormous impact on both Muhammad and the religion that he founded. The holy sites for Muslims in Jerusalem (i.e. the mosques erected on the Temple Mount of the Jews) are now deemed "holy" precisely because of the critical years Muhammad spent after the Hijrah with the Jews. Not mincing words, the Temple Mount of the Jews had no prior meaning to pagan Arabs. While there was some early Christian influence, intense scholarship has shown that the Holy Law (Halakha) and Holy Scriptures of the Jews had a tremendous influence on the Qur'an, Islamic Holy Law (Shari'a), and so forth. Muhammad's "Jerusalem connection" was most likely not established until after his extended stay with his Jewish hosts. This was no mere coincidence...Muslim religious beliefs regarding Muhammad's conversations with the Angel Gabriel notwithstanding. When the Jews refused to recognize Muhammad as the chief political honcho, "Seal of the Prophets," and so forth, he turned on them with a bloody vengeance. Before long, with the exception of Yemen, there were virtually no Jews left on the Arabian Peninsula. And the direction of prayer was changed away from Jerusalem and towards the Kaaba in Mecca instead. Now, imagine, since Arabs claim all of Israel because of their previous conquests, that descendants of Arabian Jews staked their own claims as well? How about declaring Medina as a Jewish city? Certainly, when demands by Arabs for compensation and the like regarding Arab refugees comes to the front burner, Jewish refugees from "Arab" lands — who number more and who left behind far more property and financial assets than their Arab counterparts did due to a war that Arabs themselves started — need to put forth their own demands and need to backed by an Israeli government which will state unambiguously that there will be no fulfillment of the one claim without the other. What else can the Saudis and other Arabs do to convince Jews that the alleged Saudi "peace" now being promoted by assorted lame ducks and new ducks is indeed not simply a peace of the grave? After all, Muhammad made his "Peace of the Quraysh" too — a temporary hudna designed to buy time until he could conquer his enemies. Arafat loved to talk about this regarding Israel. Dubya's darling, Abbas, was Arafat's # 1 lieutenant and choice for Prime Minister. And Abbas & Co. insist that Israel accept all Arab demands as is. So much for negotiating... There are two words which should comprise a proper Israeli response to such Arab games...and let's just say they ain't Merry Christmas. As I've pointed out often before, the solution to the Arab-Israeli mess is not as complicated as many others have claimed. When enemies make peace, they truly negotiate so that a compromise, meeting the needs of both parties, is at least somewhat achieved. One party doesn't simply just offer a take it or leave it dictate. The Arab game plan — the alleged breakthrough offer some American leaders say the Israelis would be nuts to refuse — is, in reality, simply a ploy to force Israel to yield in "diplomacy" what hundreds of millions of Arabs have not been able to achieve on the battlefield. Seen as a starting point for further negotiations, not a take it or leave it gimmick, the Saudi plan might have some value. Getting rid of the plan's stipulation requiring Jews to allow their sole state to be swamped by allegedly returning Arab jihadis raised on Jew-hatred is a must, as just one example. Keep in mind that more Jews fled Arab/Muslim lands as refugees in a war Arabs started than Arabs who fled in the opposite direction. The difference? Jews didn't have almost two dozen other states to go to and weren't perpetually stuck in camps by their own brethren. Jews absorbed their own refugees in a state about the size of New Jersey, virtually invisible on a world map. Finally, if the Saudis and other assorted Arab despots want to really reach out to Israel, all they have to do is to grant to Jews in their sole, tiny, resurrected state a miniscule sliver of the same rights they claim for themselves in demanding the creation of the 22nd member nation of the Arab League and second, not first, Arab one in "Palestine" — Jordan carved out of some 80% of the Mandate's original 1920 borders. The day Arabs can, at long last, get themselves to do this, they will find an Israel bending over backwards, sideways, and forwards to be a good neighbor — and to the entire region's benefit. 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 To Go To Top

MARK STEYN GETS IT RIGHT Posted by Fred Reifenberg, November 30, 2008.

As usual. We don't understand it, and don't seem willing to understand it. It seems to cause cerebral cramps — it certainly causes cerebral borborygmi. Perhaps it can be beaten into us, but I'm not sure even of that. Some seem willing to endure any humiliation or deprivation, perhaps even death, rather than modify arduously acquired values. Jim This was written by Mark Steyn and entitled "Mumbai could happen just about anywhere." It appeared in Orange County Register www.ocregister.com/articles/ideology-mumbai-gunman-2242227-muslim-terrorists

When terrorists attack, media analysts go into Sherlock Holmes mode, metaphorically prowling the crime scene for footprints, as if the way to solve the mystery is to add up all the clues. The Mumbai gunmen seized British and American tourists. Therefore, it must be an attack on Westerners! Not so, said Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria. If they'd wanted to do that, they'd have hit the Hilton or the Marriott or some other target-rich chain hotel. The Taj and the Oberoi are both Indian-owned, and popular watering holes with wealthy Indians. OK, how about this group that's claimed responsibility for the attack? The Deccan Mujahideen. As a thousand TV anchors asked Wednesday night, "What do we know about them?" Er, well, nothing. Because they didn't exist until they issued the press release. "Deccan" is the name of the vast plateau that covers most of the triangular peninsula that forms the lower half of the Indian subcontinent. It comes from the Prakrit word "dakkhin," which means "south." Which means nothing at all. "Deccan Mujahedeen" is like calling yourself the "Continental Shelf Liberation Front." OK. So does that mean this operation was linked to al-Qaida? Well, no. Not if by "linked to" you mean a wholly owned subsidiary coordinating its activities with the corporate head office. It's not an either/or scenario, it's all of the above. Yes, the terrorists targeted locally owned hotels. But they singled out Britons and Americans as hostages. Yes, they attacked prestige city landmarks like the Victoria Terminus, one of the most splendid and historic railway stations in the world. But they also attacked an obscure Jewish community center. The Islamic imperialist project is a totalitarian ideology: It is at war with Hindus, Jews, Americans, Britons, everything that is other. In the 10 months before this atrocity, Muslim terrorists killed more than 200 people in India, and no one paid much attention. Just business as usual, alas. In Mumbai the perpetrators were cannier. They launched a multiple indiscriminate assault on soft targets, and then in the confusion began singling out A-list prey: Not just wealthy Western tourists, but local orthodox Jews, and municipal law enforcement. They drew prominent officials to selected sites, and then gunned down the head of the antiterrorism squad and two of his most senior lieutenants. They attacked a hospital, the place you're supposed to take the victims to, thereby destabilizing the city's emergency-response system. And, aside from dozens of corpses, they were rewarded with instant, tangible, economic damage to India: the Bombay Stock Exchange was still closed Friday, and the England cricket team canceled their tour (a shameful act). What's relevant about the Mumbai model is that it would work in just about any second-tier city in any democratic state: Seize multiple soft targets, and overwhelm the municipal infrastructure to the point where any emergency plan will simply be swamped by the sheer scale of events. Try it in, say, Mayor Nagin's New Orleans. All you need is the manpower. Given the numbers of gunmen, clearly there was a significant local component. On the other hand, whether or not Pakistan's deeply sinister ISI had their fingerprints all over it, it would seem unlikely that there was no external involvement. After all, if you look at every jihad front from the London Tube bombings to the Iraqi insurgency, you'll find local lads and wily outsiders: That's pretty much a given. But we're in danger of missing the forest for the trees. The forest is the ideology. It's the ideology that determines whether you can find enough young hotshot guys in the neighborhood willing to strap on a suicide belt or (rather more promising as a long-term career) at least grab an AK-47 and shoot up a hotel lobby. Or, if active terrorists are a bit thin on the ground, whether you can count at least on some degree of broader support on the ground. You're sitting in some distant foreign capital but you're of a mind to pull off a Mumbai-style operation in, say, Amsterdam or Manchester or Toronto. Where would you start? Easy. You know the radical mosques, and the other ideological front organizations. You've already made landfall. It's missing the point to get into debates about whether this is the "Deccan Mujahideen" or the ISI or al-Qaida or Lashkar-e-Taiba. That's a reductive argument. It could be all or none of them. The ideology has been so successfully seeded around the world that nobody needs a memo from corporate HQ to act: There are so many of these subgroups and individuals that they intersect across the planet in a million different ways. It's not the Cold War, with a small network of deep sleepers being directly controlled by Moscow. There are no membership cards, only an ideology. That's what has radicalized hitherto moderate Muslim communities from Indonesia to the central Asian 'stans to Yorkshire, and co-opted what started out as more or less conventional nationalist struggles in the Caucasus and the Balkans into mere tentacles of the global jihad. Many of us, including the incoming Obama administration, look at this as a law-enforcement matter. Mumbai is a crime scene, so let's surround the perimeter with yellow police tape, send in the forensics squad, and then wait for the D.A. to file charges. There was a photograph that appeared in many of the British papers, taken by a Reuters man and captioned by the news agency as follows: "A suspected gunman walks outside the premises of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus or Victoria Terminus railway station." The photo of the "suspected gunman" showed a man holding a gun. We don't know much about him — he might be Muslim or Episcopalian, he might be an impoverished uneducated victim of Western colonialist economic oppression or a former vice-president of Lehman Brothers embarking on an exciting midlife career change — but one thing we ought to be able to say for certain is that a man pointing a gun is not a "suspected gunman" but a gunman. "This kind of silly political correctness infects reporters and news services worldwide," wrote John Hinderaker of Powerline. "They think they're being scrupulous — the man hasn't been convicted of being a gunman yet! — when, in fact, they're just being foolish. But the irrational conviction that nothing can be known unless it has been determined by a court and jury isn't just silly, it's dangerous." Just so. This isn't law enforcement but an ideological assault — and we're fighting the symptoms not the cause. Islamic imperialists want an Islamic society, not just in Palestine and Kashmir but in the Netherlands and Britain, too. Their chances of getting it will be determined by the ideology's advance among the general Muslim population, and the general Muslim population's demographic advance among everybody else. So Bush is history, and we have a new president who promises to heal the planet, and yet the jihadists don't seem to have got the Obama message that there are no enemies, just friends we haven't yet held talks without preconditions with. This isn't about repudiating the Bush years, or withdrawing from Iraq, or even liquidating Israel. It's bigger than that. And if you don't have a strategy for beating back the ideology, you'll lose. Whoops, my apologies. I mean "suspected ideology." Contact Fred Reifenberg by email at freify@netvision.net.il. To Go To Top

IRAN, WESTERN CINEMA AND THE ZIONIST SCHEME Posted by The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center November 30, 2008.

This was written by Miriam Nissimov and was published in Iran Times No. 9, November 13, 2008. It is available at www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/iran_e002.htm Mrs. Miriam Nissimov is a research fellow at the Center for Iranian Studies and aPhD candidate at the Graduate School of Historical Studies at Tel Aviv University (irancen@post.tau.ac.il).

Since the advent of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the struggle against Zionism and Israel has captured a central place in the regime's ideology. Attacks on Zionism and Israel are commonplace in Iranian leaders' speeches, interviews, Friday sermons, and in articles and academic books. In recent years, the medium of television has been drawn and utilized in this effort. Television documentary and drama productions are increasingly dedicated to presenting the Islamic Republic's position on the annals of Zionism and the State of Israel. In 2005, The Iranian Broadcasting Authority sponsored the production of the television series "Zero Degree Turn" . Although some episodes in this series focus on the Holocaust and the fate of the Jewish people in Europe during World War II, the central plot deals with the conspiracy of "global Zionism" and its activities in Iran and the rest of the world. On the backdrop of a love story between a young Iranian man and a Jewish French woman the Zionists are portrayed as collaborators with the Nazis and as people who for the sake of implementing their Zionist objectives, harm other Jews from their own communities, and even murder Jews who dare to oppose them. Together with televised dramas, documentary productions that address Zionism also have come to occupy an important place. Throughout May-June 2008, the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (IRINN) aired the documentary series, "The Secrets of Armageddon". This series made widespread use of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" to base the claim that international Zionism aims to take over the world. In twenty-six episodes, the producers of this series also presented supposed historical plans of global Zionism to take over Iran . The depiction of Zionism as a force threatening Iran itself — and not just the Palestinian nation and the Islamic world — and the supposed uncovering of global Zionism's plot to take over Iran is a new trend in Iran 's struggle against Zionism. Since the Islamic Revolution and the establishment of the Islamic regime in 1979, many scholars in Iran have dealt with the relations between the Pahlavi Regime and Israel and the influence of Zionist forces on the decision-making process in Iran of the Pahlavi era. Yet the novelty in this series is the attempt to present Zionism as a force trying to take over Iran and turn the country into a venue for Armageddon. An additional innovation in the Iranian attack on Zionism can be found in documentar series that focus on Jews and their control over the global film industry. A twenty-six episode documentary, "Footprints of Zionism in World Cinema," which aired during May-June 2008 on IRINN, seeks to expose the "true colors" of the global film industry. The series promotes the perception that the Western film industry — primarily Hollywood — is controlled by Zionists who strive to inculcate the viewers with Zionist subliminal messages. The creators of the series, with the aid of Iranian specialists who were interviewed, explained that these messages are meant to provide a basis for the State of Israel's legitimacy and to justify its "criminal" policies. They warn that these messages operate on the sub-conscious of the viewer, and that consequently the viewer is convinced of the veracity of the messages. To substantiate this thesis, the series' producers in Iran analyze a sequence of Western films of different genres and periods, including Ben-Hur (1959), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), La vita è bella (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Meet the Parents (2000), Chicken Run (2000) and The Pianist (2002). Against the backdrop of pictures from the successful British animation movie, Chicken Run (2000), the narrator explains that the images of the fenced farm along with other visual elements are meant to conjure associations of concentration camps, and that the longings of the caged chickens for a utopian place is a metaphor for the Zionist nationalist longings (MEMRI-TV, clip 1787). While discussing Fiddler on the Roof the Iranian experts in the series determined that the positive and sympathetic portrayal of the Jewish character in the film is meant to present to the viewers with a distorted picture of the reasons and the historical background surrounding Jewish migration to the land of Israel (MEMRI-TV, clip 1807). One of the leading Iranian scholars who developed the central argument presented in this series is Dr. Majid Shah Hosseini, who in 2007 was appointed to manage the Farabi Cinema Fund, a leading governmental foundation for encouragement of cinematic creation. Shah-Hosseini is also the author of the book "The Cinema and Zionism" (sinama va tzhionist). In this book, he writes that a review of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" reveals that global Zionism aims to take over the world and that cinema- which Zionism has taken control of since its earliest days- is manipulated for the purposes of this endeavor. In order to implement its world conquest, global Zionism and its agents penetrate the film industry and infuse movies with distorted religious messages. According to Shah-Hosseini, one of these distorted religious messages deals with the appearance of a redeemer and the existence of a utopian land and society, personified in Zion . The science-fiction trilogy Matrix (1999), Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions (2003) and the references in these films to the city Zion serve, according to Shah-Hosseini, as an additional example that proves his theory about a Zionist conspiracy. Shah-Hosseini, who is presented as a Western film expert, is one of the regular interviewees in the series, "Footprints of Zionism in World Cinema". In one of the episodes, he connects the Matrix trilogy to the film Saving Private Ryan, claiming that the word 'Ryan' rhymes with the word ' Zion .' The view that Western cinema is a tool in the hands of "global Zionism" assists Iranian film critics in explaining the phenomenon that they define as a cinematic attack on the cultural heritage of Iran and on Islam. They point to productions such as Armageddon (1998), Alexander (2004), 300 (2006) and Persepolis (2007), as examples of films intended to harm Iran and its cultural heritage. In a conference held by the Association of Iranian Film Critics and Scriptwriters in April 2008, which was dedicated to this issue, the Iranian film critic Sayyid Abu-Alhassan Allawi Tabatabai asserted that films such as Armageddon and 300 are expressions of the Zionist policy which seeks to attack ancient Persian culture and heritage. In a conference on Iranian and international war films, that took place in June 2007, the Iranian filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh, a graduate of Columbia University who presently serves as Director General of the Foreign Programs Department at the Iranian Broadcasting Authority, also focused on the film 300. He claimed that the Americans have stated on many occasions that they are the enemy of Iran, and he added that this film and its like- funded exclusively by Zionists- was intended to strengthen the fighting spirit of American society. While Hollywood films rapidly find their way into Iran and are pirated in street corners in broad daylight, as admitted by the authorities in Iran (MEMRI-TV, clip 1802), it appears that the regime's cinema experts have increased their efforts to link the global film industry to Zionism, and are monitoring these matters for the sake of Iranian viewers. Iranian viewers are being warned of the concealed dangers involved in viewing Western film productions. What is interesting is that despite their harsh criticism the Iranian experts themselves are viewers of Hollywood cinema; they are familiar with it and analyze it. In addition there has been no attempt on their part to call for a boycott of Hollywood productions and no attack or criticism against Iranian viewers of Western film. These new trends in the struggle of the Islamic Republic of Iran against Zionism — trends that are manifested in the television series described above — further deepen the demonic image that Iran seeks to affix to Zionism. Zionism is not merely the ideology of the regime that occupies the land of Palestine and kills its sons, but rather it is a force whose extensions penetrate all directions and succeeds to infiltrate every household and influence the souls of children and adults alike through cinematic films that are purportedly intended to provide entertainment and pleasure. Dr. Reuven Erlich is Head of the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Israel. Its website address is http://www.intelligence.org. Send emails to news@terrorism-info.org.il To Go To Top

ROCKETS REACH ASHKELON; THE SAUDI PLAN; INTERNATIONAL LAW PERVERTED FOR TERRORISTS; Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 30, 2008.

NETANYAHU EXPLAINS WHY NOT TO VOTE FOR HIM He said he would concentrate on building up the P.A. economy. He thinks that would give the P.A. an incentive to make peace. He also emphasized Jewish and Zionist values (IMRA, 11/21). It is not a Jewish value to build up one's enemies. Motivated by religious hatred, Muslims find economics secondary. Israel helped the economy of the western Palestinian Arabs, before, but got no peace. Netanyahu mentioned police reform. He omitted rescinding their rules mandating harassment of Jews in the Territories and their brutality towards right-wing Jews. His platform is a good reason not to vote for him. IRAN & THE BOMB Iran plans to get more centrifuges. That would accelerate their production of bomb-grade material. (One of their methods of producing nuclear material is usable only for weapons, not for electricity. The government of Iran claims that its nuclear program is peaceful, but threatens to eradicate Israel. President-elect Obama hopes that June's election in Iran, would result in a more moderate government (IMRA, 11/21). Will Iran eradicate Israel with its "peaceful" nuclear development? If peaceful, why does it produce material used only in weapons? What could Obama possibly say to them that would persuade them to stop their weapons drive? As for Obama, while he waits for the next Iranian election, Iran could have more bombs ready. Then, poof! Why is he anticipating a more moderate government there? The government screens out most moderates from candidacy. Their elections are anti-democratic. Besides, the elected government does not control the military and the red guards. The supposedly moderate Khatami was frustrated by his inability to accomplish much. On the other hand, he approved of terrorism. The problem with the West is mistaking extremists for moderates. Why didn't McCain show how foolish Obama's notions are? ROCKETS REACH ASHKELON Rockets from Gaza have been striking Ashkelon, a major coastal city in Israel (Arutz-7, 11/21). Jewish nationalists warned of this. Olmert heeded not. Olmert the would-be peacemaker is presiding over the widening of the war, but calls the patriots who would have protected his people extremists. ISLAMIST TOTALITARIANISM Hizbullah enrolls most young Shiites in its areas in youth groups. The organizations indoctrinate in Islamist ideology. Hizbullah is raising a whole generation for war (NY Times, 11/21). Not only is that totalitarian. It will make the Islamist crusade endure and expand. This is a serious problem for civilization. THERE'S ADVICE & THERE'S ADVICE Since lame duck Bush can't be effective now, and we are in a depression, a NY Times Op-Ed suggested that Cheney and he resign in favor of Obama (11/22). Neither could Obama be effective now. His Cabinet hasn't been confirmed by the Senate or even formed. He has other critical appointments to make. Then there are subjects to learn, policies to devise, budgets to revise, and priorities to set. Obama may be moving more swiftly than most incoming Presidents, but he needs some time to get ready. The columnist's advice is unrealistic. THE SAUDI PLAN S. Arabia presented its plan on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. It does not acknowledge the right to Jewish self-determination. Presumptuous Plan. The plan is said to be presented on the obsolete UNO Resolution 194. 194 stated that Jerusalem should be under UNO control. Who wants that! 194 stated that Arab refugees should be permitted to return in peace. At that time, there were about 700,000. [Shmuel Katz proved there couldn't have been more than 400,000.] Now the UNO computes 4.6 million. [The UNO uses lax criteria and counts descendants, who are not refugees from some place.] The hordes sent in would swamp and destroy Israel. [Who thinks they would return "in peace?"] No, they should be settled in the Arab world, including the Territories. [I think peace is more likely if the Arabs are encouraged to leave the Territories and Israel. No fifth column that way, and no terrorism from within.] At the end of that Jerusalem Post editorial is a call for peace and a willingness to start negotiations (IMRA, 11/22). I think it unwise to negotiate with a side that still supports hatred, exclusive Islamic control, and terrorism. The Muslims use negotiations to advance domination, not make peace. Negotiations can't bring peace when the Muslims want conquest and not peace. I think that Israel should develop a Jewish strategy that denies Palestinian nationality and reclaims its patrimony. The Arab case is built on falsehood. They are most undeserving. SOMALIS HIJACK DOZENS OF SHIPS A MONTH! Countries don't know what to do about piracy, now significant. They can defeat piracy militarily. They lack the will to do so. International law deems piracy a universal threat. Every country is obliged to help defeat it. Formerly, captains hanged pirates they captured. At first, terrorism was treated as a universal menace, too. "Today, when Europe has outlawed capital punishment, when criminal defendants throughout the West are given more civil rights than their victims, and when irregular combatants picked off of battlefields or intercepted before they attack are given — at a minimum — the same rights as those accorded to legal prisoners of war, states lack the political will and the moral clarity to prosecute offenders...last April the British Foreign Office instructed the British Navy not to apprehend pirates lest they claim that their human rights were harmed, and request and receive asylum in Britain." Now, countries ignore international law on terrorism or fear terrorist reprisal. Terrorists enjoy political sympathy, and their victims, general hostility. Not only doesn't the civilized world apply existing law and update it, it condemns the few countries that do oppose terrorism. (Pres. Bush is condemned by Americans!) Gaza illustrates all this. Terrorism in Gaza is produced by the favored, Palestinian Arabs, and is practiced against the ill-favored Jewish state. Foreign countries more or less condone it. They ignore the law. Since the US and the EU have designated Hamas a terrorist organization, UNO members are required by UNO Resolution to boycott Gaza financially and cooperate in eradicating its terrorism. That means helping Israel. Instead, the US and EU subsidize Abbas, who diverts money to pay Hamas regime salaries. "The UN, EU and the US have consistently demanded that Israel provide Gaza with fuel, food, water, medicine, electricity, telephone service, port services and access to Israeli markets," which international law prohibits Israel from doing. Europeans and the UNO began working with Hamas to end Israel's maritime blockade of Gaza, again, contrary to law. They condemn Israel as an alleged violator of international law. Another perversion of justice — terrorist leaders are welcomed to Europe, where American and Israeli leaders face indictment (Caroline Glick, IMRA, 11/22). P.A. POLICE VERSION OF LAW & ORDER In Tulkarm, P.A. police seized 13 unlicensed cars, probably stolen from Israel. They destroyed them. Why didn't they return them to Israel? Meanwhile, Israel is cooperating with the P.A. conference for investors in the P.A. (IMRA, 11/22). Thus we see that the P.A. is spiteful towards Israel, while Israel is considerate of the P.A.. Imagine how contemptuous of Israel this must make 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 To Go To Top

THE OLMERT DOCTRINE; HINDUS, JEWS, AND JIHAD TERROR IN MUMBAI Posted by Steven Plaut, November 30, 2008.

1. We thought you would want to be among the first to know that Israel now has a new official anti-terror policy. It consists of releasing terrorists from prison as rewards for terrorist organizations that do NOT release Israeli captives. No, that was not a misprint. You read that correctly. The Olmert junta is about to release scores of Hamas officials, including Hamas members of the Palestinian "parliament" and Hamas "cabinet ministers," as a reward for the Hamas refusing to release kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. When Shalit was first kidnapped, Israel grabbed up some Hamas leaders and tossed them into the clink, promising to keep them locked up until Shalit was released. One of them is that clown who likes to put orange day-glo paint in his beard. Well, Shalit has NOT been released. But since the Hamas terrorhoids were originally jailed under an initial jail sentence that is about to run out in 2009, the Olmert people are arguing that they are all about to go free anyhow so why not let them go free early as a goodwill gesture? Now, this might leave you speechless. After all, I could point out to you that, regardless of what the original sentence was for these people, they could always be retried and given an additional new sentence, and this can be done over and over until Shalit is released. But then you would respond to my comment like my children are wont to do so often these days, and say "Like DUUHHH!" I could point out that once released these Hamas people will return to bombing and rocketing Israeli civilians, or that holding them in jail as a way to pressure the Hamas to stop shooting rockets at Sderot would also make sense. But then you would probably tell me, like my kids, "Like Double DUUUHHHH!!!" Yesterday the Hamas fired a mortar into an Israeli base near Gaza, wounding 8 soldiers, one of whom lost a leg and whose second leg is in danger. So you think such attacks will become LESS common or MORE common after Olmert releases the terrorhoids? But Olmert has decided to go down in the history books for the Olmert Doctrine, which consists of paying terrorists rewards for NOT releasing Israeli captives. Now releasing terrorist leaders as reward for terrorists NOT releasing Israelis has some precedents. The Israeli government repeatedly released Hezbollah and other terrorists even while the terrorists refused to release Ron Arad (or his remains or even information about him). It also repeatedly released terrorists to reward the Hezbollah for murdering captured Israeli soldiers in cold blood (so that they would then send their corpses over the border). It released baby murderer Samir Kuntar and two leaders of the actual Shi'ite militia that had originally held Ron Arad, as reward for the Lebanese Shi'ite terror NOT releasing Arad. So the Olmert Doctrine is solidly grounded in Israeli precedents. (See also this: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/2#3178 ) Oh, did you notice that the Indian anti-terror troops were not under orders to read the terrorists their Miranda rights before shooting them, nor to sit back and refuse to shoot if there might be any chance of collateral damages? Of course, India also does not release Moslem terrorists as rewards for Moslem terrorist organizations carrying out terror, but then again India is such a backward country! Oh, also, the Indian chief of the security services resigned after the failures and the inability of those services to stop the attacks. Like I say, India just is not very modern, unlike Israel, where ministers and McClellenist generals NEVER resign simply because they have been responsible for massive security disasters (such as the 2006 war with the Hezbollah)! 2. Meanwhile the amen chorus for Islamic terror is already gearing up to rationalize and justify the atrocities in Mumbai. And this includes the usual Far Leftists. The leftwing Neo-Stalinist magazine Counterpunch is already cheering on the terrorism as an understandable response to social inequality in India (see this: http://counterpunch.com/tariq11272008.html ). (Counterpunch is also running Neo-Nazi articles about how Washington is an Israeli settlement. see this: http://counterpunch.com/rosen11282008.html ). Columnist after speaker is coming out and sighing about how tough it is to be a Moslem living in oppression under Indian rule. The BBC and the rest of the media booberocracy went out of their ways to describe the terrorists as "militants." This is a bit surprising because it was India and not Israel being attacked by the terrorists. I think the media refused to use the "T" word for these terrorists thanks to the fact that so many Jews were murdered in India. It was almost one of those understandable responses by Islamic activists to Israeli settlement activity. 3. This is not a spoof or a joke. The front page headline in Haaretz today is this: "Bush asks Olmert: Why are you trying to give away the Golan Heights without getting nay quid pro quo." Think I am kidding? See http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1042008.html When Washington has to berate Israel's Prime Minister for being too anti-Israel, you know it is time for all teenagers to start yelling again, "Well, DUUUHHHHH!!!!" 4. HINDUS, JEWS, AND JIHAD TERROR IN MUMBAI By Andrew G. Bostom November 30, 2008 American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url= http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/hindus_jews_and_jihad_terror_i.html Sixty hours of jihadist terror depradations throughout India's financial capital, Mumbai — during which nearly 200 innocent victims were murdered, and 300 wounded — apparently ceased this Saturday, November 29, when Indian commandos slew the last three gunmen inside a luxury hotel, while it was still ablaze. Mainstream media coverage of these rampaging, cold-blooded murderous acts of jihad terrorism — perpetrated by a self-professed "mujahideen" organization (i.e., "The Deccan Mujahideen") — consistently ignored the clear ideological linkage to Islam. Simply put, "mujahideen" are Muslim jihadists, "holy warriors," because there is just one historically relevant meaning of jihad, despite present day apologetics. The root of the word jihad, appears 40 times in the Koran and in subsequent Islamic understanding to both Muslim luminaries — from the greatest jurists and scholars of classical Islam, to ordinary people — meant and means "he fought, warred or waged war against unbelievers and the like." As described by the seminal mid-19th century Arabic lexicographer E.W Lane, "Jihad came to be used by the Muslims to signify wag[ing] war, against unbelievers." A contemporary definition, relevant to both modern jihadism and its shock troop "mujahideen" was provided at the Fourth International Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research at Al Azhar University, Cairo — Islam's most important religious educational institution-in 1968, by Muhammad al-Sobki: ...the words Al Jihad, Al Mojahadah, or even "striving against enemies" are equivalents and they do not mean especially fighting with the atheists...they mean fighting in the general sense... Contemporary validation of the central principle of jihad terrorism — rooted in the Koran — (for example, verses 8:12, 8:60, and 33:26)-i.e., to terrorize the enemies of the Muslims as a prelude to their conquest — has been provided in the mainstream Pakistani text on jihad warfare by Brigadier S.K. Malik, originally published in Lahore, in 1979. Malik's treatise was endorsed in a laudatory Foreword to the book by his patron, then Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq, as well as a more extended Preface by Allah Buksh K. Brohi, a former Advocate-General of Pakistan. This text — widely studied in Islamic countries, and available in English, Urdu, and Arabic — has been recovered from the bodies of slain jihadists in Kashmir. Brigadier Malik emphasizes how instilling terror is essential to waging successful jihad campaigns: Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent's heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. It is the point where the means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy (sic); it is the decision we wish to impose upon him... "Jihad," the Koranic concept of total strategy...[d]emands the preparation and application of total national power and military instrument is one of its elements. As a component of the total strategy, the military strategy aims at striking terror into the hearts of the enemy from the preparatory stage of war...Under ideal conditions, Jihad can produce a direct decision and force its will upon the enemy. Where that does not happen, military strategy should take over and aim at producing the decision from the military stage. Should that chance be missed, terror should be struck into the enemy during the actual fighting. ...the Book [Koran] does not visualize war being waged with "kid gloves." It gives us a distinctive concept of total war. It wants both, the nation and the individual, to be at war "in toto," that is, with all their spiritual, moral, and physical resources. The Holy Koran lays the highest emphasis on the preparation for war. It wants us to prepare ourselves for war to the utmost. The test of utmost preparation lies in our capability to instill terror into the hearts of the enemies. The Islamic correctness of most mainstream media outlets — which refused to consider such ideological motivations, rooted in jihad — did not apply, however to Hindus, or Jews — targeted infidel victims of the attacks. Blithely ignoring obvious Islamic and Muslim connections — credit taken for the attacks by a mujahideen organization; or testimony from a Turkish Muslim couple briefly apprehended, and then released unharmed by the jihadists because, "...[w]hen the (Muezzinoglus) said they were Muslims, their captors told them that they would not be harmed" — some media (at Fox; NPR) even voiced their own "speculations" about the possible culpability of "Hindu extremists," an absurd calumny, stated in full paranoid transference mode by the Muslim Brotherhood: A photograph published in Urdu Times, Mumbai, clearly shows that Mossad and ex-Mossad men came to India and met Sadhus and other pro-Hindutva elements recently. A conspiracy was clearly hatched. Yet these same media offered no speculation about Islamic Jew hatred as an obvious potential motivation for the transparently selective attack on Mumbai's Chabad House — a focal point symbol of the miniscule Jewish community of 5000 (or 0.03%) in a city of some 15 million inhabitants. More egregiously, this neglect of any hateful Islamic motivations for the targeted murder of such innocent Jews — including a young Lubavitcher Rabbi and his wife — was accompanied by consistently dehumanizing and demeaning references to these victims as "Ultra-Orthodox," and their entirely false characterization as "missionaries." This current Jewish tragedy within a much larger non-Muslim, primarily Hindu tragedy, reminded me of the Indian Sufi "inspiration" for The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, Ahmad Sirhindi. Nearing completion of my first book compendium, The Legacy of Jihad, in early 2005, specifically the section about jihad on the Indian subcontinent, I came across a remarkable comment by the Indian Sufi theologian Sirhindi (d. 1624). Typical of the mainstream Muslim clerics of his era, Sirhindi was viscerally opposed to the reforms which characterized the latter ecumenical phase of Akbar's 16th century reign (when Akbar became almost a Muslim-Hindu syncretist), particularly the abolition of the humiliating jizya (Koranic poll tax, as per Koran 9:29) upon the subjugated infidel Hindus. In the midst of an anti-Hindu tract Sirhindi wrote, motivated by Akbar's pro-Hindu reforms, Sirhindi observes, Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam. The biographical information I could glean about Sirhindi provided, among other things, no evidence he was ever in direct contact with Jews, so his very hateful remark suggested to me that the attitudes it reflected must have a theological basis in Islam — contra the prevailing, widely accepted "wisdom" that Islam, unlike Christianity was devoid of such theological Antisemitism. Having originally intended to introduce, edit, and compile a broader compendium on dhimmitude in follow-up to The Legacy of Jihad, this stunning observation inspired me instead to change course and focus on the interplay between Islamic Antisemitism, and the intimately related phenomenon of jihad imposed dhimmitude for Jews, specifically. Of course Jew-hatred was merely a sidelight to Sirhindi's hatemongering Islamic "ethos." He was an intensely anti-Hindu bigot, as revealed by these words: Cow-sacrifice in India is the noblest of Islamic practices. The kafirs [Hindus] may probably agree to pay jizya but they shall never concede to cow-sacrifice...The real purpose in levying jizya on them [Hindus] is to humiliate then to such an extent that, on account of fear of jizya , they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It in intended to hold them under contempt and to uphold the honor and might of Islam... Completely uninformed about (and stubbornly resistant to any informed discussion of) the motivating Islamic ideology for the Mumbai attacks, the media "meta-narrative," repeated ad nauseum, is also oblivious to the living historical legacy of jihad on the Indian subcontinent. Thus journalists and even policymaking elites appear to accept at face value, and uncritically, the "rationale" for this wantonly murderous jihadism as stated, for example, by one of the Muslim perpetrators: Are you aware how many people have been killed in Kashmir?...Are you aware how your army has killed Muslims? The Muslim supremacist, jihad-inspired conflict in Kashmir — really a tragic ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Hindus by Muslim jihadists which began in earnest during the 14th century — re-emerged in late June of this year when the Indian government had the "temerity" to want to transfer 99 acres of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, a trust running the popular Hindu shrine (including the cave that houses a large ice stalagmite itself, revered by Hindus as an incarnation of Siva, the god of destruction and reproduction). Hundreds of thousands of Hindus visit the area as part of an annual pilgrimage to the cave. Please view the poignant, elegantly produced video by Kashmiri filmmaker Ashok Pandit, "And the World Remained Silent," (linked here, Parts 1 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilfJDY8rA9I&feature=related and 2 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2vsztUdkpU&feature=related) which chronicles in gory detail the brutal ethnic cleansing of some 350,000 indigenous Hindus from Kashmir during early 1990, orchestrated by Pakistan. and it's Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. (Focus on the time period 2:15 to 4:00 minutes, from Part 1 above, and witness the jihadist speech of the late, much ballyhooed "modernist reformer" Ms. Bhutto. She was a jihadist, plain and simple; the head of what remains a jihadist state.) Despite the brutal Islamization of India — dating back to the initial 8th century Arab Muslim jihad ravages, and the subsequent more extensive campaigns under the Ghaznavids (Islamized Turkic nomads who annihilated the indigenous Hindus of Afghanistan by the mid-9th century), through the Delhi Sultanate period (1000-1525 C.E.) during which an estimated 70-80 million Hindus were slaughtered — due largely to bowdlerized educational and public discourse on Islam, even many modern Hindus remain ignorant of both this history, and the Koranic injunctions which inspired the brutal waves of jihad conquest, and Muslim colonization of India. The Muslim chroniclers al-Baladhuri (in Kitab Futuh al-Buldan) and al-Kufi (in the Chachnama) include enough isolated details to establish the overall nature of the conquest of Sindh (in modern Paksitan) by Muhammad b. Qasim during 712 C.E. These narratives, and the processes they describe, make clear that the Arab invaders intended from the outset to Islamize Sindh by conquest, colonization, and local conversion. Baladhuri, for example, records that following the capture of Debal, Muhammad b. Qasim earmarked a section of the city exclusively for Muslims, constructed a mosque, and established four thousand colonists there. The conquest of Debal had been a brutal affair, as summarized from the Muslim sources by the renowned Indian historian R.C. Majumdar. Despite appeals for mercy from the besieged Indians (who opened their gates after the Muslims scaled the fort walls), Muhammad b. Qasim declared that he had no orders (i.e., from his superior al-Hajjaj, the Governor of Iraq) to spare the inhabitants, and thus for three days a ruthless and indiscriminate slaughter ensued. In the aftermath, the local temple was defiled, and "700 beautiful females who had sought for shelter there, were all captured". The capture of Raor was accompanied by a similar tragic outcome. Muhammad massacred 6000 fighting men who were found in the fort, and their followers and dependents, as well as their women and children were taken prisoners. Sixty thousand slaves, including 30 young ladies of royal blood, were sent to Hajjaj, along with the head of Dahar [the Hindu ruler]. We can now well understand why the capture of a fort by the Muslim forces was followed by the terrible jauhar ceremony (in which females threw themselves in fire [they] kindled...), the earliest recorded instance of which is found in the Chachnama. Practical, expedient considerations lead Muhammad to desist from carrying out the strict injunctions of Islamic Law and the wishes of al-Hajjaj by massacring the (pagan) infidel Hindus of Sindh. Instead, he imposed upon the vanquished Hindus the jizya (Koranic poll-tax, pace Koran 9:29) and associated restrictive regulations of dhimmitude. As a result, the Chachnama records, "some [Hindus] resolved to live in their native land, but others took flight in order to maintain the faith of their ancestors, and their horses, domestics, and other property." Thus a lasting pattern of Muslim policy towards their Hindu subjects was set that would persist, as noted by Majumdar, until the Mughal Empire collapsed at the end of Aurangzeb's reign (in 1707): Something no doubt depended upon individual rulers; some of them adopted a more liberal, others a more cruel and intolerant attitude. But on the whole the framework remained intact, for it was based on the fundamental principle of Islamic theocracy. It recognized only one faith, one people, and one supreme authority, acting as the head of a religious trust. The Hindus, being infidels or non-believers, could not claim the full rights of citizens. At the very best, they could be tolerated as dhimmis, an insulting title which connoted political inferiority...The Islamic State regarded all non-Muslims as enemies, to curb whose growth in power was conceived to be its main interest. The ideal preached by even high officials was to exterminate them totally, but in actual practice they seem to have followed an alternative laid down in the Koran [i.e., Q9:29] which calls upon Muslims to fight the unbelievers till they pay the jizya with due humility. This was the tax the Hindus had to pay for permission to live in their ancestral homes under a Muslim ruler. Regarding the Islamization of Hindu Kashmir, although Mahmud of Ghazni made brutal forays into Kashmir in the early 11th century, it was not until the mid-14th century when the ruling Hindu dynasty was displaced completely by Shah Mirza, in 1346, and Kashmir was brought under Muslim suzerainty. During the reign of Sikandar Butshikan (1394-1417), mass Islamization took place as described by the great historian K.S. Lal: He [Sikandar Butshikan] invited from Persia, Arabia, and Mesopotamia learned men of his own [Muslim] faith; his bigotry prompted him to destroy all the most famous temples in Kashmir-Martand, Vishya, Isna, Chakrabhrit, Tripeshwar, etc. Sikandar offered the Kashmiris the choice [pace Koran 9:5] between Islam and death. Some Kashmiri Brahmans committed suicide, many left the land, many others embraced Islam, and a few began to live under Taqiya, that is, they professed Islam only outwardly. It is said that the fierce intolerance of Sikandar had left in Kashmir no more than eleven families of Brahmans. Lal also notes that, His [Sikandar Butshikan's] contemporary the [Hindu] Raja of Jammu had been converted to Islam by [Amir] Timur [the jihadist, Tamerlane], by "hopes, fears, and threats." When the Moghul ruler Akbar annexed Kashmir in 1586, the majority of the population was already Muslim. Lal summarizes the chronic plight of the Kashmiri Hindus during a half millennium of Islamic rule, through 1819, which explains the modern demography of Kashmir: When Kashmir was under Muslim rule for 500 years, Hindus were constantly tortured and forcibly converted. A delegation of Kashmir Brahmans approached Guru Teg Bahadur at Anadpur Saheb to seek his help. But Kashmir was Islamized. Those who fled to preserve their religion went to Laddakh in the east and Jammu in the south. It is for this reason that non-Muslims are found in large number in these regions. In the valley itself the Muslims formed the bulk of the population. There is also a modern era nexus — rooted in jihad-between the Hindus of Islamized Kashmir, and the Jews of Islamized Palestine. Hajj Amin el-Husseini, ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, and Muslim jihadist, who became, additionally, a full-fledged Nazi collaborator and ideologue in his endeavors to abort a Jewish homeland, and destroy world Jewry, was also a committed supporter of global jihad movements. Urging a "full struggle" against the Hindus of India (as well as the Jews of Israel) before delegates at the February 1951 World Muslim Congress, he stated: We shall meet next with sword in hand on the soil of either Kashmir or Palestine. And el-Husseini's jihadist, Koran (and hadith)-inspired Jew hatred was shared by a seminal modern Muslim ideologue from the Indian subcontinent, Maulana Mufti Muhammad Shafi (d. 1976), a major late 20th century Koranic commentator. An eminent scholar, Maulana Muhammad Shafi served as a professor and as a grand Mufti of Darul-Uloom Deoband, the well-known university of the Islamic Sciences in pre-partition India. In 1943, he resigned from Darul-Uloom, because of his active involvement in the Pakistan movement. When Pakistan came into existence, he migrated to Karachi devoting his life to the service of this new Muslim state. He also established Darul-Uloom Karachi, an renowned institute of Islamic Sciences patterned after Darul-Uloom Deoband, and considered today as the largest private institute of Islamic higher education in Pakistan. Here is Maulana Muhammad Shafi's commentary on the central antisemitic motif in the Koran, sura (chapter) 3, verse 112: ...verse 112 speaks of the general condition of the Jews. They played the most virulent against the Holy Prophet [Muhammad] and the movement of Islam. It was not strange that they were the most malignant against the Holy Prophet because they had played a similar role against the Prophets before the advent of Islam. They had slandered Jesus Christ, they had plotted to kill him, they had slain so many Prophets before Jesus Christ. They had earned the wrath of Allah before the Holy Prophet by killing the Prophets and the Saints and by their vociferous opposition to the Divine Commands. This wrath increased when they deadly opposed the Holy Prophet and made treacherous and surreptitious plans to kill Muhammad and defeat Islam. They tried to harm the Muslims and prevented the common men from Islam. These activities enhanced the wrath of Allah, and curse became their eventual fate. The wrath of Allah manifested itself in conditional abasement, but permanent poverty. Their abasement could be suspended if they could cover a bond of Allah or they should be covered by a bond of the people. But the poverty and the general wrath of Allah was pitched without any suspension. Bond of God means adherence to some remnants of the Torah. Bond of men means either becoming the subjects of some Muslim State or some Christian State or some other constitutional State; or becoming a satellite or a protectorate of some powerful people, whoever they may be either Muslims, or non-Muslims, by means of some agreement, treaty, or merely political support. Their separate individual existence enjoying an inviolable sovereignty or commanding a good respect in the Comity of Nations is not implied in this verse because of the extreme wrath of Allah which is significant of their superlative Kufr [infidelity] against Allah and their extremely tremendous enmity against the Holy Prophet as compared to other non-Believers. For example, the modern State of Israel cannot survive if the Americans and Russians, etc., give up their support. [note: this commentary was written beginning in the 1960s] This is the bond of the people which has outwardly suspended their abasement. But so far as wretchedness (poverty) is concerned it is pitched on them permanently and the general wrath and anger of Allah surrounds them forever. Inner wretchedness can be reconciled with outer opulence. The Jews may have become billionaires but the wretchedness and poverty of hearts cannot leave them any moment. Parsimony has become a part and parcel of their internal self. Nearly six decades ago, Sir Jadunath Sarkar (d. 1958), the preeminent historian of Mughal India, wrote admiringly of what the Jews of Palestine had accomplished once liberated from the yoke of jihad-imposed Islamic Law. The implication was clear that he harbored similar hopes for his own people, the Hindus of India, and those of their Muslim neighbors willing to abandon the supremacist, discriminatory, and backward mandates of Islam: Palestine, the holy land of the Jews, Christians and Islamites, had been turned into a desert haunted by ignorant poor diseased vermin rather than by human beings, as the result of six centuries of Muslim rule. (See Kinglake's graphic description). Today Jewish rule has made this desert bloom into a garden, miles of sandy waste have been turned into smiling orchards of orange and citron, the chemical resources of the Dead Sea are being extracted and sold, and all the amenities of the modern civilised life have been made available in this little Oriental country. Wise Arabs are eager to go there from the countries ruled by the Shariat [Sharia; Islamic Law]. This is the lesson for the living history. The jihadist carnage in Mumbai, and some 12,327 other acts of jihad terrorism since 9/11/2001 — motivated by supremacist Islamic doctrine, and the atavistic hatred of Hindus, Jews, and other non-Muslims it inculcates — provides ugly living proof that Sarkar's wistful admonition from 1950 remains almost entirely unheeded. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments — both seriously and satirically — on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. Write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

WILL THE COUNTRY SURVIVE? (THE OBAMA CITIZENSHIP QUESTION AND THE CONSTITUTION ) Posted by Avodah, November 30, 2008.

This is by Alan Stang and was a guest column today at http://westernfrontamerica.com/2008/11/30/country-survive/

The event that will determine whether or not this nation survives was not the popular vote for Illegal-Alien Elect Hussein. It will be the decision the U.S. Supreme Court makes on whether he is eligible to serve. Some people in the other branches have said the Constitution is dead. The late Republicrud Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois — a purported "conservative" — said as follows: "The Constitution is old and needs to be rewritten." Hyde also said this: "There are things in the Constitution that have been over taken by events, by time. The declaration of war is one of them. There are things no longer relevant to a modern society. Why declare war if you don't have to? ... It's inappropriate, it's anachronistic and it isn't done anymore." So Hyde was content to leave that awesome power in the hands of one man. The Founders were not. Many Capitol sources report that when Republican leaders were reluctant to renew certain provisions of the "Patriot" Act, el presidente Jorge W. Boosh replied, "I don't give a goddamn. I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way." Told there was a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution, Boosh allegedly screamed, "Stop throwing the Constitution in my face! It's just a goddamned piece of paper!" Needless to say, Boosh is another "conservative." Of course Hyde was a legislator and Boosh is a buffoon. Their opinions are worthless. But now a confrontation approaches that will be decisive. By December first, Illegal-Alien Elect Hussein must show proof to the U.S. Supreme Court that he is a "natural born citizen." On December fifth, the entire court will decide whether to consider the question. There are only two possibilities. Either Hussein is a natural born citizen or he is not. So far, all the evidence says he is not. His grandmother says she was in the Mombasa hospital room when he was born. His half-siblings agree. His own site says he was a citizen of Kenya at birth. His step father registered him in school as a citizen of Indonesia. Last week, His Excellency Peter Ogego, Kenyan Ambassador to the United States, told WRIF Radio in Detroit that Hussein was indeed born in Kenya. On the other side, there are some forged documents; there is no evidence. And now comes an investigator who uses the name "Ron Polarik," probably for self-protection. "Polarik" is a Ph.D. with twenty years of experience validating documents, especially computer-generated documents. His report on the fraudulent Hussein documents is overwhelmingly exhaustive. Go to my site, alanstang.com, for the link to it. See what you think. If Hussein does indeed have proof he is natural born, why has he withheld it? The only speculation I can think of is he has waited all this time to reveal it in order to embarrass lawyers Phil Berg and Leo Donofrio and many others who have filed suits. By revealing it now he could play the injured party and leave lots of egg on their faces, but the new question would arise of why he has been playing games all along and wasted so much of the nation's time, when he could have put the matter to rest long ago. So far he still qualifies as Illegal-Alien Elect. If the U.S. Supreme Court rules in his favor — in the face of the metastasizing evidence — I shall conclude that the Constitution now is dead and therefore that the country is no more, because the High Court says so. Remember, this is not a case with evidence and arguments on both sides, in which the court must find the preponderance. There is nothing on the other side, except counterfeits and forgeries. One delicious aspect of the case is that during the recent campaign Hussein said he would not have nominated Justice Clarence Thomas to the High Court because, says Hussein, he was "not experienced enough," and it was to Justice Thomas that lawyer Leo Donofrio brought his action. Among the many differences between Hussein and Thomas is that we know where Thomas was born and he is considerably blacker than Hussein. Hussein also says he would not have nominated Justice Antonin Scalia. If these two and but two others vote to consider the citizenship issue when the full court meets on December fifth, the court will consider it. There would still be time to cancel the meeting of the electoral college. Will the court have the courage to do it? What would it mean if the Constitution were dead? Even before the interment, the effects are apparent, as in an approaching hurricane. The Constitution is our basic, organic law, from which all written law descends. Without it, there would be lip service, not law. The government would simply issue arbitrary decrees. There would be dictatorship. The concept of legality would evaporate. How could you tell right from wrong? Something would be right if you could get away with it. If you could not, it would be wrong. Meanwhile, remember that it was not just the superb campaign the Obamatrons mounted — including funding, organization, election fraud, etc. — that elected Hussein. Without the collaboration of the national Communist media, left and right, Hussein could not have been elected, however much funding, organization and fraud he employed. On the left there was sickening degenerate Chris Matthews, who feels a thrill run up his leg during wet dreams about Hussein. There was Katie Kook and the Communist Broadcasting System. On the right, there were Limbag, Loopy Laura and sissy puke Levin, who helped conceal the real story of Hussein, all the things we tell you here. You may recall that, more than once, I called the people in the national Communist media traitors, enemies of this country just as much as an invading Wehrmacht division would have been in World War II, except that because these propagandist agents of a foreign power do not fight in uniform, they are terrorists and therefore are not protected by the Geneva Convention. A reader responds to those comments as follows: "I would like to expand on your comment about the media traitors and their treatment by the people. These traitors can move freely about this country without ever a concern for their own personal safety. What if the anger against these elite and their pawns reaches a boiling point and their mobility of reporting anywhere in this country is no longer an option. The public can stop their propaganda and force them to stay in their secured studios only (kind of like the Baghdad Green Zone). "They at the moment believe they are still safe among us. (If I were a General fighting against them, I would make these enemy propagandists fear for their own safety and lives or kidnap them for millions and make the same elite pay us back the way they stole our money and used it against us.) It would be an effective military strategy and fund the resistance of criminal gangs who have a profit motive. Think of the Somali Pirates. It's already working. "I live in Northern Virginia and I'll never forget the whole DC sniper thing. One media woman, Martha Raddatz (ABC news) I recall was absolutely terrified at the time for her own life when these two black men were having their turkey shoot on the public. That intrigued me quite. These media cowards fear death and for their own personal safety more than anything. "They believe in no God so this is it for them, heaven on earth. Think how frightened guys like Tom Brokaw, Rivera, Mrs. Greenspan, or some other reporter would be if they feared for their own safety or being kidnapped. They would not travel anymore and be scared out of their minds. They'd be limited to DC and NY (How appropriate— the new American "Green" zone— as in green save the planet (grin).) "It will also be unsafe soon if the economy is destroyed for all people to travel long distances by car (like I do driving to Florida a lot, which some day possibly I won't be able to do) and it will devolve into dangerous crime like you see in places like Mexico or Panama. Gangs of thugs will force you over the side of the road, rob you, (possibly rape you if you are a woman) and then kill you. That is coming if this keeps up. Mad Max." It is reasonable to speculate that the author of this message is not alone, that many other Americans think the same way, Americans who are no longer impressed by television "celebrities." And by the way, I have written for radio and television in New York, as you know, and I have guested on network shows, such as the Communist News Network's "Cross Fire," Maury Povich and Morton Downey, Jr. I did the old Joe Pyne show a few times. It's no big deal. It is a world of strutting peacocks who do not deserve the name and is not at all impressive. It is a paradoxical world. The vacuum heads who run it regard you with condescension and disgust, but they must spew forth from their protected compounds to "cover" the fabricated story. They must circulate among you. More, when they make a foray into your neighborhood, they do not come merely to ridicule. They come quite literally to tear the country apart, to bring it to its knees, to prepare it for submission to a totalitarian world government. They hate and contemn everything you do and believe. As soon as they leave, their smile becomes a sneer. And their reverence for Hussein has exposed them more than ever. Their problem is that — unlike top government and financial conspirators — these media traitors of whom Goebbels would be proud, travel without bodyguards. They are relatively unprotected and accessible. Anyone inclined to take a run at them could do so. We saw a hint of what I am warning about in the recent, national campaign, when Shallow Sean Hannitwerp literally had to run to escape the heroes from We Are Change. Indeed, some years back, at the height of forced school busing, incensed Bostonians chased Teddy Kennedy down the street. The putrid stench got inside before the crowd was able to tear him apart. Yes, these were Boston Irish Catholics who keep electing him. Imagine how mad they were if they trying to kill their hero. In view of the temper of the people, that kind of thing could increase. Imagine seeing Chris Matthews or Mrs. Alan Greenscum (Andrea Mitchell) or Geraldo or one of the morons from the "View," or Mike Wallace, the scumbag whose show I used to write, running for their lives down Main Street. (See my book, Scumbags I Have Known: And Other Profundities, at www.alanstang.com.) By the way, my book, Perestroika Sunset, is a thriller about a Soviet attempt to seize power in Washington by means of a coup, using the Prisoners Of War our government abandoned in South East Asia as the pawns. In the novel, repatriated POWS and family members kidnap the traitors who have abandoned their loved ones. One by one, the traitors disappear. But there are no ransom notes. The families do not want money. There are no demands. The families know they would be useless. The perpetrators simply vanish, inspiring doubt and grinding frustration. Were they actually kidnapped, or did they deliberately disappear? Have they absconded with something? What is missing? Have they been in an accident? Are they lying unconscious in a ditch? Have they defected to the other side? I hope it is unnecessary to say this, but, just in case, all this is fiction, in a novel, not advice, not a suggestion, nothing more than an exciting story. Perestroika Sunset is thoroughly grounded in history, but it is not a roman à clef. You can read the first chapter at alanstang.com. We are mad as h-e-c-k and we're not going to take it any more. Turn off the network "news" and don't buy the "newspapers." They already are collapsing. Finish them off. Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com. And visit his blog at http://am-yisrael-blog.blogspot.com/ To Go To Top

THE THEFT OF THE PEOPLE'S RULE (DEMOCRACY) IN 1949 AND ITS CONSEQUENCES Posted by Dov Even-Or, November 30, 2008.

Shalom! Below you will find the translation of my article, which was originally written in Hebrew, and which was sent to my mailing list on November 23th. Kindly forward this article to as many people as possible. Thank you, Dov Even-Or

1.INTRODUCTION: During October '48, Legislative elections for the Constituent Assembly were scheduled. The mission of the Constituent Assembly was to legislate the Constitution and then to be dispersed so that the First Knesset should be elected according to the Constitution and the legal system should be established accordingly. De facto — the elections did take place in '49; however, MAPAI and its partners in the coalition made sure that the institution that was elected wouldn't legislate the Constitution, though it would still disperse and declare itself as the First Knesset (within 3 months from the establishment of the Constituent Assembly); And would postpone the Constitution for later. That was a public putsch and the theft of the people's rule (Democracy); this cannot be disputed by any lawyer! A Constitution is not just a declaration about the essence of the state, its identity, borders, etc., but it also determines the system of its regime and of its legislation. Therefore, even in dictatorial regimes the ruler strives to legislate a Constitution in order to give legitimacy to his regime. Seemingly, nothing traumatic occurred because the simple man does not distinguish between a Constituent Assembly and a Knesset. But, as mentioned before, there is no Constitution until this day, no system of regime and law, and the troubles we have today are direct consequence of the that theft! 2.THE RESULTS OF THAT THEFT: a.The parties took over the legislative institution and created a distorted, anti-democratic regime towards the whole of the Jewish People! b.No new system of law was legislated; the Mandatorial system was copied in spite of the fact that it was meant to serve the British and not the Jewish population that lived in the country. 3.HOW DID THE DISTORTION CREATED AFFECT THE DAILY LIFE OF THE CITIZENS OF THE STATE? a.'The First Knesset'- that had never been elected, but took over the rule deviously — instituted regulations for the Knesset that produced total control of the legislative body by the parties and their representatives, and thus control over the people. According to these regulations that exist until today, a Member of Knesset must vote according to the factional discipline (when the faction decides so); he does not have a right to act according to his own judgment. The faction heads have been and still are representatives of the party mechanism. In simple words, the people do not elect their representatives to the Knesset, so that they would use their judgment and understanding, but empower a certain party to rule the people by the means of its faction in the Knesset. This means that outwardly the parties introduce a 'leading team' of political stars to the public, that is meant to lead, but in fact, the real control is in the hands of the head of the party and his men. b.MAPAI and its sisters in power prohibited supervision over the parties and the elections to the Knesset; therefore an absurd and paradoxical situation exists until today: different public institutions are demanded to keep democratic standards, but the elections to the future Knesset are supervised by the parties of the former Knesset via the Central Election Committee that consists of members of the former Knesset. That's how they forbade the 'Kach' movement of Rabi Kahana to run for the 12th Knesset, using the pretext that it was a racist party; Arab parties may call for the annihilation of the Jewish State and the establishment of a state for all its citizens, but Kahana was not allowed to cry out that the king was naked! The ruling parties did not stop at the establishment of the 'Central Election Committee', but also prevented the public from supervising the on goings inside them. There is no supervision over the inner elections in the parties (the election of representatives to the Knesset and the election of the head of the party); that's how the 'Case Census' was born, when the money people pay to those who agree to join the party for pay and then send cases of envelopes to the party secretariat as if this was in any way democratic. c.Only in the '80's the 'Law of the Parties' was legislated; it created the job of the Party Registrar (kind of a regulator), but he does not have any real authority since he is an 'x-ray technician', i.e. he takes pictures of the situation without being able to cure it! (the legislation of this law came to offer a false impression of the situation and not to change it). d.The parties cannot survive without money-and a lot! Therefore, they legislated laws to ensure their ongoing funding and also their election needs (and what is the key for the elections? According to the exiting Knesset, a new party is not getting any funding while running for the Knesset, but an existing party will get everything!). But this is only 'small change' relative to the river of money that flows to the parties' cash box by bypassing pipes; the intent is to the money transferred to external institutions that belong to the parties, by special budgets allotted by related ministries (such as the Ministry of Education and Culture), and also moneys from the cash box of the Public Trustee (that accumulated from legacies given to the state, money that did not have any heirs or legacies that were not sought by the heirs). Such moneys are directed to bodies like 'Beit Berl' of the Labour Party, the Centre of the Kibbutz Movement, 'Beit Jabotinsky' of the Likud and mystery bodies of the MAFDAL (by its prior name). All the members of party centers, the mass media and senior academics have always known how many billions of New Israeli Shekels flow via these media and have kept quiet. (but around the 'Medicine Basket' for severe patients there are bitter disputes around ten million Shekel!) e.In order to preserve 'the system', decent people cannot be accorded access to the 'circle of trust', because they might change the tune! Therefore, quality people have ceased knocking on the gates of politics and on the other hand, mediocre grey people, invertebrate, manipulators were sucked into the vacuum and occupied positions of power in the parties, and then navigated towards the Knesset, and were not satisfied until they got themselves a place around the government table! In the end, the public discovered that it was led by low level people whose talk consisted of empty slogans, devoid of any depth, whose only aspiration was to get reelected for another term! The quality people turned to the academia, to industry and business, places where they were not selected by non-entities! f.So that the 'system' would not be affected, it was not enough to take over the Knesset, but it was also necessary to weaken the law enforcement bodies, because they might investigate and even put to trial the agents of injustice. Therefore, the judiciary was not accorded an independent status, and by control of its budget, it was compelled to answer to the government and to the man on top of the law system, the Minister of Justice. (here Judge Dorit Beinish and her predecessors are right that the Judiciary is controlled by the Executive Authority, but the boomerang came back by the take-over of the affairs of the state by the Supreme Court!) The Police got a meager budget and this prevented professionals such as lawyers, accountants and economists, from taking part in the big investigations! g.Ben Gurion assured the status of the Supreme Court, even though he knew that this body that originated from the times of the British Mandate, would not safeguard the interests of the residents of the country in those days! Ben Gurion intended to use the Supreme Court against different organizations that refused to come under his wing (such as the ETZEL and the LECHI), and against any citizen who would disobey the dictatorship of MAPAI (in the Knesset, the economy, the army, etc.) h.The irony was that the "Golem" took over; this means that due to mediocre and low people who infiltrated the Knesset, ignorant of the intricacies of legislation, terrified by confrontation with the Law, the legal system took advantage of the situation. First, there were good intentions and good deeds, such as authorization to new newspapers, the opening of the gates of the Supreme Court to Everyman, but today, (because of the system of 'election' of Judges), a reversal of the situation occurred in which the judges of the Supreme Court run the country, basing themselves on their previous decisions, that everything can be handled judicially and any law can be annulled. During the 'reign of Aharon Barak' there was a regular putsch because the Supreme Court was not authorized to annul laws or to deal with foreign affairs, security and the budget of the state! Therefore, in those domains, there is no obligation to obey its verdicts, but the leaders of the regime are afraid to speak out, because each and everyone has a Pandora Box on his back and is afraid for himself. i.THE 'ELECTION" OF JUDGES: in spite of the fact that the electing body is called 'the Committee for the Election of Judges', it has been proven that we have a committee for the appointment of judges; this means that given the fact that the committee consists of 1/3 of judges and the fact that they vote unanimously, their real power is 50%! Therefore no judge can be elected or advanced without the consent of these judges, members of the committee; the result is a closed club where only the friends of the judges are admitted. The situation that has emerged over the years is that all the judges admitted over the past two decades, especially those in the Supreme Court, were in the image of Aharon Barak! The political agenda of Aharon Barak was revealed during his interview to 'Haaretz' of April 4, 2008. He refused to admit Prof. Ruth Gabizon, because she has an agenda! Of course she has an agenda, but it is opposed to that of Aharon barak and therefore she is outside! 4. There is no expectation that the Knesset of 2009 should change the situation; especially when Dan Meridor, the new acquisition of the LIKUD, declares that Ehud Olmert has committed two errors: the one, the Second Lebanon War and the second, the appointment of Prof. Friedman for Minister of Justice. But due to this appointment, the legal system became careful with its decisions and its deeds. The only legal solution is the election of a Constituent Assembly that would legislate a system of regime and justice (that's what Former Judge Mishael Heshin thinks); if such an event does not take place as soon as possible (and the chances are slight), we will witness the collapse of the government institutions (and this will happen sooner or later), and a civil war will break out and then the outside enemies will seize the opportunity and the civil war will become Armageddon! In order to prevent such a danger, the only way is an organization of Jewish citizens in voluntary groups, intended to safeguard their lives, property and future (this will be developed in a separate article). By doing so, we will make clear to all the parties, especially the major ones, that the people has lost its faith in the regime, and therefore takes care of itself disregarding its formal leaders! Contact Dor Even-Or at evenorad@bezeqint.net To Go To Top

THE HOLY LAND FROM ABOVE Posted by Ron Gafni, November 30, 2008.

Hello, My Name is Ron Gafni, Aerial Photographer of the Holy Land. I'm trying to spread knowledge of a book of images taken while flying above the Christian Holy sites, Historical locations, cities and Landscapes of Israel. Much of the content can be seen here (top gallery): click here The book gets quite a good feedback, and I could give references if requested. The book size is A5, 64 Chrome pages (~80 Images) Soft cover, Language: English For purchase, please send 9.95 US$ either via PayPal to my email: ron.gafni@gmail.com or send cash to Ron Gafni P.O.Box 47 K. Gaash 60951 ISRAEL (it includes S&H) For large groups and communities, welcome to contact me directly attaching Image samples Regards, Ron Gafni Contact Ron Gafni at ron.gafni@gmail.com To Go To Top

LIST OF ISLAM-DRIVEN ATTACKS FROM JUST THE PAST WEEK Posted by Avodah, November 30, 2008.

Hat Tip: http://ronmossad.blogspot.com/2008/11/y-m-t.html Courtesy of www.thereligionofpeace.com It's brutal isn't it? What does any of this have to do with the West? Are any of these attacks motivated by the plight of Palestinian refugees? Are these people angry about the US Army being stationed in holy Saudi Arabia? Or maybe they're just upset about global climate change and President Bush's response to Katrina. What the apologists and pundits don't understand or don't want to admit is that it's not about democracy or capitalism or distribution of wealth or ANY of that. It's about chaos, muder, death and destruction. THAT'S IT. The sooner we realize that, the sooner the world stops trying to placate their demands, the sooner we can put an end to this nightmare once and for all. Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com. And visit his blog at http://am-yisrael-blog.blogspot.com/ To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: TERROR HERE, TERROR THERE Posted by Arlene Kushner, November 30, 2008.

On Friday night, terrorists in Gaza fired mortar shells at an IDF base near Nachal Oz, wounding eight soldiers — two seriously. One soldier — Sgt. Noam Nakash, 21, of Beersheva — has lost his leg as a result of the attack and doctors are working to save the other leg. Two other soldiers were moderately to seriously wounded. First the Popular Resistance Committees and then Hamas's military wing, Izzadin Al-Kassam, claimed responsibility. According to Voice of Israel radio this morning, Hamas has acquired 120-mm mortar shells that are more accurate and lethal than previous models they had used. ~~~~~~~~~~ In a classic instance of trying to have your cake and eat it too, Hamas announced by Saturday that this attack didn't signal the end of the "ceasefire." Spokesman Ismail Radwan said that the attack was "a natural reaction to the enemy's crimes, to the blockade and the closing of the Gaza crossings...[It] was not meant to violate the ceasefire. We are simply responding to the enemy's violations." In fact, explained Radwan, various Palestinian factions will be meeting soon to discuss an extension of the "ceasefire" past December 19. A pre-condition for an extension would be an Israeli commitment to keep all crossings open. ~~~~~~~~~~ The question now is how long the government is prepared to continue to make fools of us by playing along with this. I'm no fan of Haim Ramon, but when he's right, he's right. And he was on the mark yesterday when he said: "The agreement for calm [tahadiya] in Gaza was a mistake. Hamas was on the verge of collapse and by entering into the agreement, we helped stabilize it. We have been and will continue to pay, with compounded interest, for every day of this calm." He noted that the agreement had been the idea of Hamas, "which couldn't get control of Gaza because of our daily attacks. No other country in the world lets terrorists fire rockets on its electric power plant, which provides electricity to the people firing the rockets." ~~~~~~~~~~ I rather like the creative thinking of MK Gilad Erdan (Likud), who said the defense minister should set up a temporary detention facility in the Gaza vicinity and jail Hamas and Islamic Jihad prisoners there. "If they [members of Hamas] don't work to stop the fire, they should take into account that the rockets may hurt their men as well. When the government fails to fortify the south's residents, there's no reason to protect terrorists jailed in Israel." Of course it will never happen. Our government hasn't the guts. Can you imagine the international furor that would ensue if we put prisoners in range of rockets and mortars from Gaza? A furor — fueled by Arab PR — much greater than the international concern for our innocents who are within that range. Such is the nature of the world. ~~~~~~~~~~ Meanwhile yesterday Deputy Minister of Defense Matan Vilnai said, "There's no doubt we're getting closer to a wide-scale operation in Gaza, but it will be different from what took place in the past...The truce is important to us and to them, as we control the crossings and the other side is afraid of the IDF's strength. But we must find the right time for an operation. Their provocations are not leaving us with much choice." Heaven help us! More saber rattling. He also wants to have his cake and eat it too. What does it mean, "The truce is important to us"? What truce? Time this was said forthrightly. Sounds like he expects "a different sort of operation" that will ostensibly keep the "truce" in place. ~~~~~~~~~~ For the record, what we're dealing with is a tahadiya, which is an informal agreement to cease firing, as compared to a hudna, which is a formal ceasefire with written terms. ~~~~~~~~~~ Back to Mumbai: The story as it continues to unfold is a heartbreaker in one respect after another. In all it is now said nine bodies were found in the Chabad House, seven of which were Israeli. Rabbi Gavriel Herzberg, along with kashrut inspector Aryeh Teitelbaum were found in the Chabad library with holy texts before them. Rivka Herzberg was found covered by a tallit (prayer shawl), it is being speculated that was placed over her by her husband before he was killed. Rivka Herzberg's parents, Shimon and Yehudit Rosenberg, who have been in Mumbai since Thursday night, are eager to facilitate movement of the bodies back to Israel as quickly as possible. Jewish law requires a speedy burial. They are also seeking to cut through the red tape so that Sandra Samuel, the Indian nanny for the Herzberg's little boy, Moshe, might be granted a visa to come with them. She is the only one the child — who calls constantly for his mother — is responding to. Samuel — who saved the boy by running out of the building carrying him — is currently with him, along with his grandparents, at the home of Ehud Raz, the top security officer at the Israeli Consulate in Mumbai. The Rosenbergs had last seen their grandson about the time of the high holidays. What I have learned is that Gavriel and Rivka Herzberg lost a child to a degenerative disease, and that another child, who is ill, is in the care of relatives in Israel. ~~~~~~~~~~ Members of ZAKA — an Israeli volunteer body rescue and identification group that does selfless work with immeasurable devotion — are on the scene. They will be present, watching over the bodies, until all have been identified and brought out. They described a horrendous situation in which some victims were tied with phone cords, holy books were strewn about, blood was smeared over walls and floors, and live grenades remained. The ZAKA people protested any handling of the bodies, which must be treated with maximum respect, and any autopsies. An Israeli forensic expert will be doing some final identification. ~~~~~~~~~~ News regarding the broader picture of the terror in Mumbai is, as would be expected, a bit fuzzy at this early stage. An unprecedented four-nation intelligence investigation has been launched to uncover what happened: There will be cooperation between India, the US, the UK and Israel in this matter. What I am getting is that there were 10 terrorists, nine of whom were killed, who came from the sea. The one captured alive, Azam Amir Kasab, is Pakistani. He says it was intended that thousands would die in this multi-pronged attack, and that the Chabad House was targeted because of Israeli treatment of Arabs. UK security is investigating the possibility that British citizens may have been involved in the attack. Some sources are saying that two British-born Pakistani were among the terrorists but this is not confirmed. There are other sources that suggest an Al-Qaida connection, also unconfirmed at present. ~~~~~~~~~~ According to Roee Nachmias, writing in YNet, some Arab columnists are saying that the Mumbai attack constitutes a warning to Obama: "The Mumbai operation is a message to President-elect Barack Obama to say: you have dreams of a better world but this is the real world that you must deal with. In spite of how you have arranged your priorities, terrorism will always be at the top of the list." The really big question, of course, is how Obama will handle terrorism. ~~~~~~~~~~ Speaking of Obama, and his ostensibly pro-Israel appointments: Do you remember the Geneva Initiative? It was a private, not a gov't initiative, that aimed at "solving" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It called for return to pre-'67 borders, the sharing of Jerusalem, and the return of some refugees based on an obscure formula. It was one of those plans that, if implemented, would have brought slow but sure destruction to Israel. Well, I have just learned that Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, supported this. We need to be a lot clearer on what "pro-Israel" means. I've just seen a JTA article that identifies Obama team member Daniel Kurtzer being "well regarded in most of the pro-Israel community." Not so. Unless you call Peace Now "pro-Israel." I don't. ~~~~~~~~~~ A matter of considerable importance: This may be the last chance to secure the release of Jonathan Pollard, who has been held in US prison for far too long: 24 years. An outgoing president traditionally offers pardons. Flood the White House with demands that Pollard be let go. 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

WHO IS REALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MUMBAI MASSACRE? Posted by LEL817, November 30, 2008.

This comes from the Sultan Knish website: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2008/11/who-is-really-responsible-for-mumbai.html

Now that the Mumbai massacre is done and the bodies are being cleaned away, business can continue on as usual, but let's interrupt the proceedings for a moment to drag some of those bodies back on the floor, with a level of detail that the same media which has censored 9/11 footage and prefers to show wreath, rather than the crimes to which they themselves are accomplice to, would prefer to hide Photographs taken after the shootout give a vivid picture of the brutality unleashed on the Holzbergs and their friends after the terrorists took over the house on Wednesday, speak volumes of the nightmare the family and their friends must have gone through before they died. The Rabbi's body was found in a room on the second floor, with his legs sticking into the hall where his wife's body was found. Rivka's body was found near the legs of the Rabbi. His legs had been tied with a belt. His wife's limbs were, however, not bound. Two other Israeli girls were found dead with their hands and legs bound. They were lying next to each other. Another body was found in a decomposed state, indicating he was killed when the attack had begun. It is a horrifying scene, but it is not an isolated scene. Muslim terrorists have been murdering innocent people in this way for decades now, body piled upon body, men, women and children, murdered year after bloody year. And what has been heard from politicians and reporters, from activists and our public voices of conscience? Calls for justice? Calls for vengeance? No, time and time again, it has been calls for accommodation with the terrorists. No it is not the terrorists alone who are responsible for what took place here, but their accomplishes who sit in Fifth Avenue high rises, in the State Department, in the plush offices of a thousand humanitarian organizations, in the CNN offices in Atlanta and the Newsweek offices and a hundred thousand others pulling down six figure salaries while pulling for terror. Let them now bring forth their usual charade of sorrow, the nodding and the pretense of sympathy — as if the terrorists of Mumbai were some uncontrollable and unpredictable force — rather than the outgrowth of decades of pro-terrorist politics on the left. It was Jimmy Carter's administration which began funneling money to Pakistan's ISI, building the growth of a Southeast Asian terrorist network that encompasses Al Queda as well as the Mumbai attackers and the endless terror in Kashmir. Zbignew Brezinsky, the mastermind behind those pro-ISI politics, and Brezinsky is no fossil, but remains close to Barack Hussein Obama. It was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who aggressively used the ISI to promote Jihad, and his daughter, the much mourned martyr Benazir Bhutto, who openly used it to aid terrorism in Kashmir against India, while backing the Taliban. Had all those who wept over that corrupt vicious witch spent a fraction of the time mourning her victims in Kashmir, murdered, beheaded, rape and blown up, perhaps Pakistan's government, whose president today is Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir's husband, would not have been so blatant about getting back in the Islamic terrorism business. But the West, particularly Western liberals, seems hopelessly addicted to Pro-Terrorist politics. With the fall of the USSR, there was no longer any excuse to play footsie with Muslim terrorists. The Soviet Union had been overthrown and a new day was upon us. And the new day saw the transition from pro-terrorist politics for the sake of fighting Communism to pro- terrorist politics for the sake of pro-terrorist politics. The two Bush. and Clinton administrations cracked Israel, forcing the creation of a cancerous PLO state, that currently hosts the Muslim Brotherhood's Hamas, a wing of Al Queda and the PLO's Fatah. Concession after concession has expanded their capabilities from suicide bombings to bus bombings and now to full on rocket barrages with the technology supplied by Iran. The same left wing media talking heads, the State Department bureaucrats and liberal activists that continue to demand another pound of flesh from Israel's population and then another, blood upon blood, more terrorists freed, more land turned over — can then pretend that they are not on the side of the terrorists. Not when Samantha Power, who called for invading Israel to protect terrorists, heads up Obama's State Department transition team. Was Mumbai some unique phenomenon? Have Muslim terrorists not left similar carnage behind in New York, Paris, Madrid, London, Jerusalem, Haifa and a hundred other places? Have not Western liberals repeatedly urged rewards for those terrorists, have they not protected them and shielded them? And what of Al Queda, the cancerous growth of ISI? The Al Queda denizens of Gitmo can only bestow blessings on the endless assortment of liberal groups who have agitated for them and fought for them over these years. From the ACLU to the AJC, from the World Council of Churches to nearly every single major liberal organization in America, has worked on behalf of Al Queda, even as they pause on September 11th to leech a few crocodile tears out of their cold dead eyes, before getting back to the bloody business of enabling terrorism. No, they will protest. We did not work on behalf of Al Queda. We worked on behalf of liberal principles, tolerance, justice, hope, change and that bundle of nonsense words with which they have done their ugly work of brainwashing the West. Let us ask ourselves, when a terrorist bomb goes off, who is it that calls for concessions to the terrorists... and are not such people accomplices of their crimes? Can you negotiate a ransom on behalf of a kidnapper, turn it over to him and then expect not to be jailed for it? Yet the pro-terrorist politics of the past few decades consist exactly of that. Their collaboration with evil is sickening and yet it is a staple of their ideology. Now they will briefly pause, after spending years screeching that global warming and endangered polar bears were a bigger threat than terrorism, to shed their obligatory crocodile tears, even if they have to bring them beforehand in a dropper, before going back to doing exactly what they have been doing all along. Why does treason not prosper, is the old cynic's question. Because when treason prospers, none dare call it treason. Why don't terrorists prosper? Because when terrorists prosper, you call them President. Just ask Arafat or Abbas or Obama by way of Rashid Khalidi or Billy Ayers. The terrorist accomplices are happy enough to let the public briefly mourn the dead, throw a wreaths on the caskets, and go back to shopping for consumer electronics. After all even Caesar's murderers let him have a funeral. It is not funerals or memorials that the men and women who drive us to make common cause with terrorism fear, but the damning finger, the Mark Antony who will condemn the conspirators whose confessions are printed in issue after issue of the New York Times and the Washington Post, read over the air on NPR and issued as press releases by the State Department. And too few who would make no common cause with terrorist, speak softly when it comes to criticizing them. In doing so they echo the early Antony, who said; I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong, Who, you all know, are honourable men: I will not do them wrong; I rather choose To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you, Than I will wrong such honourable men. And so time and time again, we choose to wrong the dead, rather than the "honorable men" writing for Time Magazine, working in Washington D.C. and being waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay. But perhaps it is time to speak truly, to go look upon the bodies, to see the bullet wound in the chest fired by David Remnick, the stab wound inflicted by Joshua Hammer, the arm torn by Condoleeza Rice, the head severed by James L. Jones, the arms bound by Samantha Power, the whole catalog of crimes that continues on seemingly without end. To close with Shakespeare's Antony once more. O, what a fall was there, my countrymen! Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us. We have all fallen down, nations and individuals, in the face of terrorism. We are not weak in the face of terrorism carried out by barbarians with a handful of stolen weapons. We have been weakened, we have been made weak by the bloody treason that flourishes over us. When you read another news story criticizing the US for taking away control of Somalia from Al Queda, there writes a traitor. When you hear a call to dismantle Gitmo, you are listening to a traitor. When you hear more prattle about peace in the middle east, you are hearing treason, first or secondhand. And so the killing goes on, and the terrorism goes on, and the police burst into hotel rooms, clean up bomb sites and sift through the ashes, an hour or a day too late. Too late each time for long before the terrorist struck, bloody treason had seeded the ground and done its work. Contact the poster at lel817@yahoo.com To Go To Top

A DAY OF MOURNING Posted by Naomi Ragen, November 30, 2008.

After days of prayer and fear among Jews and good people everywhere, the horrible reality of the Islamic terrorist rampage in Mumbai was revealed in all its obscene and mindless savagery when members of Zaka entered the Chabad compound. As an eyewitness told YNET, the sight was unbearable even to the practiced eyes of those whose job it is to deal with the aftermath of murderous terror attacks:|"The place was totally destroyed. Live grenades were all over the floor. Torah scrolls and holy books were scattered on the floor, covered with blood." The bodies of the Chabad rabbi and the kashrut supervisor were found in one room, along with two other men whose hands had been tied with telephone wire. The body of the Rabbi's young wife Rivkie was found covered in a tallit. It is believed she was killed before her young husband's eyes and he wrapped her in his tallit. A grandmother from Israel, and a Jewish woman tourist from Mexico were also identified. For photos you will not see in the New York Times of the blood-soaked floor of the house of prayer and hospitality, courtesy of the "religion of peace" whose riots kill hundreds when a Koran is desecrated, please go to: http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3630586,00.html Police in Mumbai report that they found enough ammunition to blow up both hotels and to kill thousands, which according to a terrorist captured alive, was the intention. This carefully planned attack, which had the Chabad House at its center, was orchestrated from Pakistan. Vilasrao Deshmukh, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra state, of which Bombay is the capital, was quoted yesterday as saying there were two "British-born Pakistanis" among the terrorists, reports he later denied. A British Pakistani was involved in a terror attack in Israel at Mike's Place not long ago. The Mail Online reports "a banned Islamic terrorist group funded with cash raised in British mosques is believed to be behind the Mumbai attacks." The Mail reports: "The only terrorist captured alive after the Mumbai massacre has given police the first full account of the extraordinary events that led to it — revealing he was ordered to 'kill until the last breath' Azam Amir Kasab, 21, from Pakistan, said the attacks were meticulously planned six months ago and were intended to kill 5,000 people. He revealed that the ten terrorists, who were highly trained in marine assault and crept into the city by boat, had planned to blow up the Taj Mahal Palace hotel after first executing British and American tourists and then taking hostages." These descriptions brought back flashbacks to me of the Park Hotel which was rocked by a murderous explosion by Hamas terrorists right before the Seder began. Perhaps it is impossible for the average human being to understand the depth of evil represented by Muslim extremists and their supporters if you didn't witness such a thing. I deal with this in my book, The Covenant. But I feel that I am whistling in the wind. People who have not seen this with their own eyes just refuse to understand that these are not people with grievances, people who can be reasoned with. These people are Nazis. Only if you think you can speak to a Nazi and convince him to not wish to kill Jews, can such a stand make sense. No one should negotiate with any person, government official, religious leader, or member of any group that does not condemn and despise and excoriate these terrorists. No respect should be given to any religion, or member of that religion, or religious leader who does not despise and condemn these acts. When one views the bloody floor of Chabad House, one sees the bloodied face of civilization. Those who are not prepared to exterminate this evil, and those who are involved in it, are part of it. Eyewitness Jonathan Ehrlich, a businessman who narrowly escaped death in Mumbai, sent out an e-mail of his experiences. In conclusion, he writes this: The people who did this have no souls. They have no hearts. They are simply the living manifestation of evil and they only know killing and murder. We — all of us — need to understand that. Their target tonight was first and foremost Americans. Why? Because they fear everything that America stands for. They fear hope and change and freedom and peace. Let's make no mistake; they would have shot me and my children point blank tonight without a moment's hesitation. Most of us sorta know that but sometimes we equivocate. We can't equivocate. Not ever. 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. To Go To Top

MOURNING A BEST OF ... Posted by Aviva Ceder, November 29, 2008.

This comes from www.AskMoses.com — Judaism, Ask a Rabbi — Live Page 2 of 2 http://www.askmoses.com/en/article_print.html?h=272&o=2253711 30-Nov-08

Rabbi Gabi and Rivkah Holtzberg gave up their lives in 2003. And the world celebrated. That is because the life they gave up was their personal life, and the life they took on was that of public servants. In their move from Brooklyn to Mumbai they forsook any vestige of personal comfort or living. They were far from the amenities of western civilizations, the familiarity of family and friends, and the staples of an established Jewish community. Reflecting the Torah's first commandment to the world's first Jew, "Go forth from your land, from your birthplace and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you", and heading the Rebbe's call to care for every Jew, they asked not what Judaism can do for them, but what they can do for Judaism. They traveled to a distant land, so that Jews could be close to Judaism. In Brooklyn they would have continued to have easy access to Kosher food, but in India they worked hard so that others would have any access to kosher food. In New York they could continue to live in close proximity to tens of Jewish institutions, but in Mumbai they worked tirelessly to give a small community, a weary traveler and a traveling businessman a rare oasis for Jewish observance and learning. In Crown Heights and Israel they would have remained in the close circle of family and friends, but in Nariman House they made total strangers feel like family and friends. As ambassadors of G-d and emissaries of the Rebbe their concern for the needs of their fellow Jews — most of whom they never met before, and many of whom they would never meet again — overshadowed any concern for personal interests or desires. They lived on the frontiers even within an organization of pioneers. They stood out as heroes even amongst the heroes of the Rebbe's army. They excelled as luminaries even amongst a movement of lamplighters. They were amongst our best and bravest. But last week, on a November day in 2008, Rabbi Gabi and Rivkah Holtzberg's lives were taken away. And this time the world mourns. That is because this time their sacred and selfless lives were brutality murdered by ruthless terrorists. The contrast is so stark. The irony inconceivable. The wound so painful. During the standoff, a UCSC alumnus who attended many a Jewish program at our local Chabad House called to offer his best wishes and blessings. During the course of our conversation he expressed the irony and tragedy of this attack. "Rabbi", he said, "how could these people attack a Chabad house? They obviously have no clue what Chabad does. Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife would have gladly offered these guys a piece of Challah and Gefilte Fish. But they bring the rabbi bullets and bloodshed". In 1956, shortly after the decimation of the Holocaust and long before Chabad became a household name, the small movement experienced a big blow when terrorists entered the Israeli village Kfar Chabad and killed five school children and their teacher. Not unlike today, the shock and grief were paralyzing. The young Rebbe addressed the fragile movement: "In continued building will be their consolation". The Rebbe immediately dispatched ten emissaries from New York to Israel. The village grew, and so did the movement. In the 50 odd years since then Chabad has become a Jewish icon and a universal phenomenon, with over three thousand centers in more than 73 countries around the world. Surely Chabad in Mumbai, and Chabad general, will respond to this attack with renewed vigor and drive. There is no doubt in my mind that tomorrow will see a brighter day. But today, today there is a tear on my cheek. A tear from which I will have to water seeds of growth. Today there is a deep crater in my heart and a black hole in the collective Jewish soul. From which we must make light. May The Omnipresent One comfort the victims' families amongst the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. A fund has been established to care for Moshe, the two year old orphan-survivor, and to rebuild the Chabad House. To contribute go here. Arlene Kushner suggests paypal as a secure means of donating by credit card click here. The central Chabad address in the US is: Chabad Organization 770 Eastern Parkway Brooklyn, NY 11213 American Friends of Chabad in Washington DC is at: 2110 Leroy Place, NW Washington, DC 20008 In any event it is wise to earmark the donation for Mumbai. Contact Shaul and Aviva Ceder at ceder@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

DAWOOD IBRAHIM'S NAME AGAIN SURFACES WITH LATEST MUMBAI TERRORIST ATTACK Posted by Sonia Nusenbaum, November 29, 2008.

This was written by Victor Comras

It's much too early to identify the group or groups involved in the Mumbai terrorist attack or to place blame for what has occurred. Identification will come with the expert police investigation and intelligence gathering now underway. But, at this stage we are all just involved in a process of speculation — drawing on past experience with terrorist modis operandi to explain what occurred and exploring the various various possibilities and theories. Among the possible culprits being considered are several Pakistan based Islamic extremist organizations such as Lashkar-e-Tayyiba; Al Qaeda-linked or wannabe groups, and India home grown terrorist groups. One thing appears clear — the attack was well planned and organized, and that requires reliance on a sophisticated network for recruitment, logistics, training and financing. Some Indian terrorist experts suggest that Dawood Ibrahim may well be linked to organizing and financing this attack just as he did for the 1993 Mumbai stock exchange terrorist bombings. Dawood Ibrahim (birthname Sheikh Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar), for years headed the D-Company which ran a substantial hawala operation out of Mumbai, Karachi and Dubai. He reportedly moved easily between various Islamic extremist groups and Indian crime syndicates, and is believed to have acted as an Al Qaeda surrogate for several financial transactions and arms and drug smuggling deals. He was designated by the US Treasury Department as a global terrorist in October 2003, and listed as an Al Qaeda associate by the UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee on November 3, 2003. According to the Treasury Department "Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian crime lord, has found common cause with Al Qaida, sharing his smuggling routes with the terror syndicate and funding attacks by Islamic extremists aimed at destabilizing the Indian government. He is wanted in India for the 1993 Bombay Exchange bombings and is known to have financed the activities of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (Army of the Righteous), a group designated by the United States in October 2001 and banned by the Pakistani Government..." See also Treasury Fact Sheet on Dawood Ibrahim at www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/fact_sheet.pdf. Ibrahim's current whereabouts is unknown. He is believed by some to have been given safehaven in Pakistan, perhaps in the Frontier Territories, although there have been some reports of his having been arrested by Pakistan authorities several years ago. Pakistan denies these reports and maintains that he has not been given any safehaven anywhere in Pakistan. You can find more information about Dawood Ibrahim in articles posted last year by my colleagues Aaron Mannes (http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/08/dawood_ibrahim_in_the_dock.php) and Doug Farah (http://counterterrorismblog.org/2006/07/who_is_dawood_ibrahim.php) . Contact Sonia Nusenbaum at nusenbaum@juno.com To Go To Top

CHABBAD HOUSE ANTI-TERROR MISSION BADLY FLAWED Posted by Barry Shaw, November 29, 2008.

There is serious criticism from Israeli intelligence and anti-terror experts about the handling of the Chabbad House hostage situation by the Indian army. It is clear that the plan and execution was badly flawed. Some of the elements for criticism include: 1. The blind shooting into the Chabbad House rooms from neighbouring buildings by Indian soldiers. 2. The army did not sterilize the surrounding area. 3. You do not bring in special units on to the roof of a building with live hostages inside. The approach of the helicopter warns and alarms nervous terrorist who know they have little time before squat teams will storm the building to take them out. In the case of Chabbad House the terrorists blew up part of the building which killed remaining hostages. From an Israeli perspective, the Indian army acted to hastily, too heavily, did not identify the exact location or number of terrorists, and were not sufficiently surgical in their mission. Israeli special, anti-terror units would have handled the situation completely differently. Israel tried to advise and help in the hostage rescue but this was rejected by the Indian Government. The clumsy and heavy-handed methods adopted by the Indian army could also be seen in the hotel incidents. The Taj Hotel was assumed to have been cleared at least once only for the army to discover that there were still active terrorists in the building.   Moshe Holtzberg leads Sandra Samuel through Mumbai airport for flight to Israel where parents were buried. It was assumed by the media that the nanny, Sandra Samuel, and the two year old son of the Chabbad House rabbi were released by the terrorists. This is incorrect. The nanny hid in a cupboard during the terrorist incursion during which there was heavy gunfire. She hid there with an Israeli man. Later she heard the boy calling her name. Though fearing for her life she went in search of him. The man who shared the cupboard decided to stay where he was. She found the little boy standing in a pool of blood by the bodies of her parents, Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka. He was unhurt but his mother and father had been shot in the initial attack and lay dying. The nanny, Sandra, grabbed the boy and ran out of the building. Most of the terrorists were on the roof at that time. She passed the body of another man on her way out of the building. Barry Shaw made aliyah from Manchester, England, 25 years ago with his family. He runs a real estate office in Netanya. He writes the "View from Here" columns from Israel. To sign up to receive his emails, contact him at netre@matav.net.il To Go To Top

TIKKUN'S MICHAEL LERNER AND THE MUMBAI INDIANO Posted by Steven Plaut, November 29, 2008.

You all no doubt recall that right after the 911 attacks on the USA, Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine and perpetual Rabbi-Impersonator, issued a statement in the name of his Tikkun "progressives" suggesting that Americans deal with the attacks by "feeling the pain" of the al-Qaida terrorists who had attacked the United States because of their anguish over their grievances. If you think I am kidding, see this and especially this paragraph there: "When people have learned to treat each other as means to our own ends, to not feel the pain of those who are suffering, we end up creating a world in which these kinds of terrible acts of violence become more common. And as we.ve learned from the current phase of the Israel-Palestinian struggle, responding to terror with more violence, rather than asking ourselves what we could do to change the conditions that generated it in the first place, will only ensure more violence in the future." (See also this) Well, the Tikkun guru has been consistent and suggesting again that we all feel the pain of the militants and activists who conducted a protest in Mubai over the past few days. So come now and join Michael Lerner and the Tikkun Tabernacle Choir in singing the new Tikkun song about the protests and activist unrest in Mumbai. With apologies to Dean Martin, here comes the Tikkun version of Mambo Italiano! "Mumbai Indiano!" Some "activists" from Britania sailed along to India To Bombay home of Bollywood, But wait a minute, something's good! (start marimbas at this point and light the joint) Hey, Mumbai! Mumbai Indiano! Hey, Mumbai! Mumbai militantos Go, go, go, hear me Al Qaidianos We all gotta feel their pain and gotta love the Other, you know! Hey Mumbai, don't want retaliano Hey Mumbai, only capitulano Hey Mumbai! Mumbai italiano! Try some concessions and feeling all their pain and then a Osam-oh, I love a how you dance the debka But take a some advice from a nice progresso Learn how to Mumbai If you gonna bomb dem squares You can a do it anywheres! Hey Mumbai! Mumbai Indiano! Hey Mumbai! Mumbai militantos! Go, Abu, shake like we're in Havana Gonna don my peace kafiya and getta happy in the feets and Do the Mumbai Indiano Shake-a Baby shake-a cause i love a when you bomb a dem Neocons stop and run away to see their papa, And a hey Tikkun fool you don't a have to go to school Just make-a wid da Hezbiyano It's a like a nice a vino Kid you good a lookin' but you don't a-know what bombs a- cookin', till you Hey Mumbai, Mumbai Pakistano Hey Mumbai, Mumbai Indiano Ho, ho, ho, you juiced up Britanitano It's a so delish a ev'rybody come copisha Now to Mumbai Indianoooooo! 'Ats nice! UNH! Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments — both seriously and satirically — on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. Write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

INDIAN GOVERNMENT SOURCES: SEVEN MUMBAI JIHADISTS FROM THE U.K. Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, November 29, 2008.

This appeared yesterday on Jihad Watch http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/023705.php An update on this story. "Seven Mumbai gunmen are from 'Leeds and Hartlepool'," from the Mirror, November 28: "Gordon Brown yesterday urged caution saying it was 'premature' to draw any conclusions." Gordon Brown would not know what a conclusion was if it fell on him. Obfuscation... now that is another matter. Delusion.. definitely!

Seven of the terrorists who brought carnage to Mumbai are British, Indian government sources claimed yesterday. They said two British-born Pakistanis are under arrest. And another five suspects are said to have been born and raised here. Two of the seven are from Leeds, one is from Bradford and one from Hartlepool, the sources claimed. All are aged between 20 and 26. The claims were made as the death toll in Mumbai reached 155 — with predictions it could go as high as 200. The Hartlepool suspect was allegedly found in the five-star Taj Mahal Palace hotel, scene of some of the most horrific killings. The man from Bradford and one from Leeds were allegedly discovered on the 17th floor of the Oberoi-Trident Hotel. A second man from Leeds was allegedly captured near a jetty after a gang of around 25 terrorists landed in Mumbai by boat on Wednesday. The suspects were allegedly found with documentation, possibly including passports, which revealed their origin. The sources say they also spoke to each other in a heavily-accented Punjabi common in UK Pakistani communities. Gordon Brown yesterday urged caution saying it was "premature" to draw any conclusions. He said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had not told of him of "any evidence at this stage" that Britons were behind the massacres. [...] The Foreign Office and MI6 were last night trying to establish the facts amid chaotic scenes in Mumbai as Indian commandos continued operations to flush out the remaining gunmen. If the terrorists are Britons, the UK security service will have to urgently discover how they slipped through the surveillance net. In the wake of 7/7 London bombings the monitoring of militant and disaffected Muslim groups has been tightened up. The security services were criticised after 7/7 for not keeping better track of the bombers. Since the early 2000s Britain has had an unwelcome reputation as a haven for Islamic radicals. [...] Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com To Go To Top

NWA PILOT: MUMBAI TERRORIST ATTACK Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, November 29, 2008.

From Scott: I just got back from Amsterdam and brought several NWA crew members with me who were at the Oberi Hotel hotel when the terrorists attacked. Here is an account from one of our NWA Captains: Scott D

Dateline Mumbai: I was lucky. Just two hours separated me from a life altering event. Yes I was there. My flight was on approach to BOM when the first terrorist attacks took place. Our ETA to the Oberi/Trident hotel was about 90mins later. The outbound crew was scheduled to be in the lobby about 20mins after the first attack at the hotel (10:30pm). My crew spent 6hrs on the aircraft before being relocated to one of the airport hotels. In retrospect, NWA should have gotten us there immediately. We were the crew who would fly out of BOM. Being off duty on the aircraft is not resting, and I correctly guestimated how most of the decision process was going to play out over the next 12hrs. We were eating into what would be a 48hr period with (in my case) just 4hrs of sleep. I thought my day couldn't get much worse. At this moment, I'm on a flight from BOM-AMS. My crewmembers are all safe, and we have nine of eleven of the crew who were at the Oberi/Trident. Sadly, a pilot and FA are still at the Oberi, holed up in their rooms. NWA hired two different civilian extraction teams to get them out of the hotel safely ... you know, expats — challenge/response passwords & all that James Bond stuff ... That may have worked initially; but the hotel was locked down by the local military (to the exclusion of those rescue teams) and that simply provided the terrorists time to reorganize, take hostages, and prepare for a long standoff. Flashback to Oberi hotel. Some stories from that unfortunate crew follow: (Apparently, a well built hotel muffles sound more than you might think ..... ) F/A exits the elevator in the lobby of the Trident. The terrorists (probably) just gunned their way through the lobby, into a connecting hallway to the Oberi (their primary target). Bodies and pools of blood everywhere. The two girls at the front desk, Bellman, and Doorman all killed in the initial attack. All other people in the lobby were either shot/killed or helped the injured out of the hotel. The FA returned to his room then followed a housecleaner out through a (sort of) hidden stairway into the relative safety of the street. I later found out the hotel manager, who lives in the hotel with his wife and children, were all killed in the initial attack. That may point to an "insider" helping the terrorists. Another F/A goes to the elevator to head down to the lobby. Doors open and the interior of the car was splattered in blood. She returned to her room and got a few other F/A's and left that floor via the emergency exit. Once out on the exposed outer stairway, the fire door locked behind them. If they ran into trouble down below, without another exit strategy, they'd be truly screwed. Near the bottom, they heard a lot of commotion beyond a set of double doors. They were potentially stuck in a real bad situation. They backed up a bit, laid down and played possum (wouldn't have worked — no blood). A few minutes later a police team came up to their position and escorted them to the relative safety of a nearby parking garage. A male Chinese F/A was trying to escape the hotel following a hotel employee through a different pitch black service stairway. He opened a door to a short hallway leading into the lobby. Shell casings and damage littered the floor. He started into the lobby and came face to face with one of the armed terrorists. Fortunately, he was not in uniform, and wearing a European style black leather jacket.. He didn't fit the victim "profile." He turned around, back through the hallway ... got out alive. That crew eventually spent about 9hrs on an ascending ramp at a concrete parking structure about two blocks from the hotel. The F/O on the scene separated that crew from perhaps 300 other confused civilians. Automatic weapon fire and hand grenade explosions permeated the restless night. They were able to keep in touch with NWA security via an international cell phone. They got on a charter bus about 9am, and were transported to the hotel where my crew was located. I'm now in AMS. I'll be on a flight to civilization in another 3hrs. The two crewmembers stuck in the BOM hotel are still OK, but ... still waiting to be rescued ... along with Lufthansa and Air France crews. The above was a quick summary of what happened last night. I could get into a Lot more detail. But right now, there's a shower with my name in it. Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com To Go To Top

THE YOKE AROUND ISRAEL'S NECK Posted by Marcel Cousineau, November 29, 2008.

The U.S. has used the false peace Road Map to trap Israel. A crafty,restraining yoke is clearly around the neck of this once powerful now weakened nation. No one else but a treacherous friend could have gotten close enough to accomplish this. Lat week Isralei P.M Olmert returned from Washington with warnings not to go after Hamas in Gaza.Israel's hands are tied because her 'only friend' has become her slave master. The false alliance between Israel and Washington is meant only to restrain Israel and keep her from defeating her enemies. We know these Islamic enemies have no intention of peace with Israel and only one goal of destroying this Jewish nation. What is incredible is the level of U.S. involvment in this plan and the blindness and silence of the Church in America with this evil in highest places of our Government. The U.S. led Road map is the diabolical and crafty yoke around Israel's neck which has trampled her sovereignty and reduced her to slave status after the manner of Egypt. Once again the great superpower Pharoah, King of the World under Satan's direction has snared the Jews,but only for a limited time. I am convinced that very,very soon God will destroy America to remove this yoke from Israel neck so that ISRAEL can do what He has called her to do. read Jeremiah 51:17:26 [1] (America is Babylon and the destroying mountain vs24-26) Truly the elect are deceived and the strong delusion is already in place. 'And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God. For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return: the consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness. For the Lord GOD of hosts shall make a consumption, even determined, in the midst of all the land. Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD of hosts, O my people that dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian: he shall smite thee with a rod, and shall lift up his staff against thee, after the manner of Egypt. For yet a very little while, and the indignation shall cease, and mine anger in their destruction. And the LORD of hosts shall stir up a scourge for him according to the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb: and as his rod was upon the sea, so shall he lift it up after the manner of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.' — Isaiah 10:20 [1] Jeremiah 51:17-33: All mankind is stupid, devoid of knowledge; Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols, For his molten images are deceitful, And there is no breath in them. They are worthless, a work of mockery; In the time of their punishment they will perish. The portion of Jacob is not like these; For the Maker of all is He, And of the tribe of His inheritance; The LORD of hosts is His name. He says, "You are My war-club, My weapon of war; And with you I shatter nations, And with you I destroy kingdoms. "With you I shatter the horse and his rider, And with you I shatter the chariot and its rider, And with you I shatter man and woman, And with you I shatter old man and youth, And with you I shatter young man and virgin, And with you I shatter the shepherd and his flock, And with you I shatter the farmer and his team, And with you I shatter governors and prefects. "But I will repay Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea for all their evil that they have done in Zion before your eyes," declares the LORD. "Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain, Who destroys the whole earth," declares the LORD, "And I will stretch out My hand against you, And roll you down from the crags, And I will make you a burnt out mountain. "They will not take from you even a stone for a corner Nor a stone for foundations, But you will be desolate forever," declares the LORD. Lift up a signal in the land, Blow a trumpet among the nations! Consecrate the nations against her, Summon against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz; Appoint a marshal against her, Bring up the horses like bristly locusts. Consecrate the nations against her, The kings of the Medes, Their governors and all their prefects, And every land of their dominion. So the land quakes and writhes, For the purposes of the LORD against Babylon stand, To make the land of Babylon A desolation without inhabitants. The mighty men of Babylon have ceased fighting, They stay in the strongholds; Their strength is exhausted, They are becoming like women; Their dwelling places are set on fire, The bars of her gates are broken. One courier runs to meet another, And one messenger to meet another, To tell the king of Babylon That his city has been captured from end to end; The fords also have been seized, And they have burned the marshes with fire, And the men of war are terrified. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: "The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor At the time it is stamped firm; Yet in a little while the time of harvest will come for her." marcel   The Lord loves the gates of Zion More than the dweillings of Jacob Glorious things are spoken of you,O city of God ! Selah Psalm 87 Marcel Cousineau can be reached by email at zionsgates@gmail.com; and visit his website — http://averyheavystone.blogspot.com/ To Go To Top

PUT THE NUMBERS IN PERSPECTIVE Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, November 29, 2008.

There have been over 12,300 jihad attacks SINCE 9-11. More people are killed by Islamists each year than in all 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition combined. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition) Islamic terrorists murder more people everyday than the Ku Klux Klan has in the last 50 years. (source: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html) More civilians were killed by Muslim extremists in two hours on September 11th than in the 36 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. (source: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/violence/death95w.htm) 19 Muslim hijackers killed more innocents in two hours on September 11th than the number of American criminals executed in the last 65 years. (source:http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/ESPYdate.pdf) It's all about Iraq, isn't it? Yep, it's all about Iraq and... India AND the Sudan AND Algeria AND Afghanistan AND New York AND Pakistan AND Israel AND Russia AND Chechnya AND the Philippines AND Indonesia AND Nigeria AND England AND Thailand AND Spain AND Egypt AND Bangladesh AND Saudi Arabia AND Ingushetia AND Dagestan AND Turkey AND Morocco AND Yemen AND Lebanon AND France AND Uzbekistan AND Gaza AND Tunisia AND Kosovo AND Bosnia AND Mauritania AND Kenya AND Eritrea AND Syria AND Somalia AND California AND Kuwait AND Virginia AND Ethiopia AND Iran AND Jordan AND United Arab Emirates AND Louisiana AND Texas AND Tanzania AND Germany/ and/ Australia AND Pennsylvania AND Belgium AND Denmark and East Timor AND Qatar AND Maryland AND Tajikistan/ and/ the Netherlands AND Scotland AND Chad AND Canada AND China AND Nepal AND the Maldives /and /Argentina /and /Angola AND... ...and pretty much wherever Muslims believe their religion tells them to: "Fight those who do not believe in Allah, ... nor follow the religion of truth... until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of _subjection_." — Qur'an, Sura 9:29 Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com To Go To Top

ISRAEL'S INEXHAUSTIBLE PATIENCE; GERMANS ACCEPT ISLAMIC WORD PLAY; TREASONOUS ARAB PARTIES Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 29, 2008.

LIKUD LOSING ITS IDENTITY Moshe Ya'alon, the leftist security expert who had considered leaving Kadima for the far leftist Meretz instead is joining Meridor at Likud (IMRA, 11/17). Likud is bringing in future Knesset members from Left to Right. Then it has no ideology, no soul, and no purpose. How can Netanyahu claim he'll do what he promises, when his party has officials who want the opposite? ABBAS REPEATEDLY DISPROVES RICE & THE TIMES Abbas, head of the P.A., "...addressed a letter to PA Arabs on Saturday saying Israel must retreat to its 1949 borders or face war. 'The passage of years... will not force us to abandon or surrender a single inch,' of Judea, Samaria or Jerusalem." (Arutz-7, 11/16). Sec. Rice and the NY Times keeps praising Abbas as a man of peace, who renounced violence, and with whom Israel can reach a compromise agreement. They ignore his P.A. books and media that refer to all of Israel as occupied. Therefore, even his demand in that letter mentioned above is but a phase, as Arafat put it, in the conquest of Israel. His letter typifies his frequent and uncompromising threat of war. Rice and the daily never seem to notice. Think they haven't? They warrant no credibility. When they keep praising Abbas the warmonger as a peacemaker, which they know to be false, they must be lying to us deliberately. They must have another agenda. Hint: the Times traditionally is anti-Zionist. The paper and the Secretary are promoting Arafat's phased conquest of Israel. Gone would be Israel's pro-US army of half a million. Would that put the US in high standing with the Muslims? No. Their culture would have them consider the US weak for abandoning its ally, Israel. Since their jihad envisions conquering the whole world, we will have augmented their strength and diminished ours. That makes the policy of Rice and the Times harmful to our national security. ISRAEL'S INEXHAUSTIBLE PATIENCE PM Olmert and Defense Min. Barak made their usual threats against Hamas, after it and its allies fired more than 130 rockets and mortar shells into Israel and the IDF bombed some rocket launchers and crews. Their typical bluster is that Israel is running out of patience and will strike back hard, some day (Arutz-7, 11/16). Years have passed, but that day never seems to come. The patience of Israel's leaders seems inexhaustible. Undoubtedly, Hamas is counting on that. Therefore, Israeli leaders' forbearance, cowardice, or treason invokes death. U.C. BERKELEY Students at the University of California in Berkeley were at a concert sponsored by the Zionist Freedom Alliance. Suddenly, some Arabs unfurled a large Palestinian flag from the balcony, above. When a few members of the audience went upstairs to ask that the provocation be ended, about 20 of the Arab group attacked them violently as well as with antisemitic epithets. At least one assailant was arrested. The media reported the assault from the Arab point of view rather than factually and without mentioning the arrest. Jewish students later complained of numerous examples of antisemitic graffiti and harassment on campus, especially done by Students for Justice in Palestine (Arutz-7, 11/16). Some notion of justice! If American students can't attend American colleges without being attacked by foreign Arab bigots, shouldn't we reconsider our invitation to foreign students from that culture? What are we giving them technical expertise for? To help them make war on us? NOW THE TIMES ENDORSES MCCAIN'S POLICY! A NY Times editorial made these points: "Pres. Bush is right: Congress should pass the Colombian free trade agreement now." "The Democratic majority in Congress has refused to approve it out of a legitimate concern over the state of human rights in Colombia and less legitimate desires to pander to organized labor or deny Mr. Bush a foreign policy win." "...Most Colombian exports already are exempt from US tariffs. The new agreement would benefit American companies that now have to pay high tariffs on exports to Colombia." "It also would strengthen bonds with an important ally..." The Times is concerned about human rights abuses by Colombia. "But Democrats opposing the trade pact on these grounds are ignoring undeniable improvements. Violence has abated considerably during the Uribve administration..." now fighting the right-wing paramilitaries as well as the leftist guerrillas. "The number of trade unionists killed, a major Democratic concern, is still too high but has dropped sharply." "Failing to approve this trade agreement would do nothing to improve Colombia's human-rights record." It would alienate many Colombians (11/18). The editorial makes the same points that Sen. McCain did, in debating Sen. Obama. McCain called passage a "no-brainer." Has Obama no brains or was he pandering to the unions? Why didn't the Times say that on this point, they agreed with McCain? It let people think that McCain had little to offer. It waited until Obama safely won election. I find that unscrupulous. P.A. VERIFIES ISRAEL'S CLAIM Not for the first time, the P.A. accused Hamas of faking fuel shortages in Gaza. Hamas' alleged motive is to make Israel and the P.A. look bad. Fuel is not in short supply, because besides supplies from Israel, Hamas smuggles fuels in through the tunnels. As for electricity, 70% was provided by Israel (sorry, lost source). GERMANS FALL FOR ISLAMIC WORD PLAY The Berlin Center For Research On Anti-Semitism has adopted the term, "Islamophobia," without defining it. Muslims are trying to define it. They are trying to define it not just as bigotry against all Muslims but even as opposition to anything by Muslims, including Islamofascism. The head of the Muslim Council of Britain said the term includes the cheer, "Long live Israel!," and "Muslim fundamentalism is dangerous." [Muslims attacking people all over the world for having different beliefs is dangerous.] That same Muslim council head contends that prejudice against Muslims is worse than prejudice against Jews. Nonsense! European synagogues require guards, mosques don't. Attempts are made to destroy the Jewish state, no Muslim states. No broadcasters demand the extermination of Muslims, but major Muslim broadcasters demand the extermination of the Jews. Muslims organize antisemitism and jihad against Christians and Hindus! [They then have the nerve to complain about the resulting discussion of defense against it.] People at the Center suggest dropping Holocaust studies from the German curriculum, although the Muslims are in denial of it and need to be educated about it [because they are trying to resume it]. Instead of condemning Muslim antisemitism, they condemn those who condemn it. They rationalize that such condemnation rationalizes rejection of all Muslims. (From a recent source. Sorry I don't have it) I do not think that condemning Muslim antisemitism rationalizes rejection of all Muslims. Unless the Center means that all Muslims are antisemitic. If that were so, one should reject all Muslims. Unwarranted bigotry is unwarranted bigotry. What about the Muslim bigots' rejection of all Jews? The term, "fundamentalist," confuses basic beliefs with terrorist means. A more accurate statement would be: "Muslim terrorism is dangerous." Muslims try to redefine "terrorism" to exempt any means of warfare against Israel. If one thinks about it, other banned means of warfare include poison gas. Does that mean that poison gas is properly used when against Israel? Is there no inhumane means of warfare against Israel? Those who think so are inhumane and biased. UNREALISTIC PROPOSALS Some Israelis propose that Jordan patrol Judea-Samaria against terrorism. Apparently the King of Jordan rejected the offer. He was right. Think how unrealistic it is. His Palestinian Arabs already are clamoring for Israel to ease up on the Territories' Palestinian Arabs, but not for the terrorists to ease up on Israel. If he sent his forces into Judea-Samaria, how much effort would they put into cracking down on their own people, there? (Dr. Aaron Lerner, IMRA, 11/20). They would more likely throw the king out. VAGUE THREATS The King worried that an Israeli invasion of Gaza would rouse his people against his own regime. The government of Israel reassured him that it had no plan to knock out Hamas soon. An invasion actually would spare many lives (IMRA, 11/21). It would spare lives, because any war sooner rather than later would find Hamas weaker, and a war later means more casualties from attrition in the meantime. Israel has been threatening to invade Gaza for years. Who believes it? Lately, the government has been deferring the invasion with the excuse, "the time is not ripe." Israeli leaders have undefined stock phrases that don't mean anything. When will the time be "ripe?" "Ripe" is too vague. It is a means of putting off action indefinitely. I see no healthy motive for letting casualties and enemy forces mount. The Israeli government and ruling class are not healthy. When the King admits his regime is precarious, and he worries about a Muslim Brotherhood takeover, then all the more unhealthy is the Israeli officials' suggestion of having Jordanian troops patrol Judea-Samaria. Same for Egyptian patrols in Gaza. Egyptian patrols might be worse, because Egypt has been complicit in arming Hamas in the first place. WHAT TO DO WITH TREASONOUS ARAB PARTIES? The Movement for Quality Government petitioned the courts to have the Hadash Party disbanded for knowingly and boastingly putting up a convicted terrorist candidate, calling her a "prisoner of freedom." It knew she had lied to the elections commission about her sentence and failed to get a ruling that her crime did not involve "moral turpitude" (IMRA, 11/21) which terrorism does involve. A country at war should not allow political parties for the enemy. It is not a matter of allowing mere difference of opinion, but of subversion and enemy foothold. 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 To Go To Top

MUMBIA, TRIAL RUN FOR THE NEXT BIG ONE? Posted by David Meir-Levi, November 29, 2008.

Dear Mr. President, It is time to connect the dots. The attacks in Mumbai were a suicide mission, obviously. But what was their purpose? If they were a purely terrorist attack, there would be no reason to take hostages. If they were a hostage-taking attack, there would be demands of a specific nature, rather than some rant about injustice to Muslims. I most respectfully suggest that you and your advisors should consider the possibility that this attack may have had three very specific goals, none of which have yet been analyzed: 1.) muscle flexing to show the West what Islamo-fascist terrorsits can do, in order to intimidate western governments and lubricate the process whereby governments are induced to chose the path of appeasement when confronted with Islamo-fascist demands 2.) sparking a confrontation between India and Pakistan, such that the current USA-friendly civilian government will be toppled by anti-India and anti-American forces led by the Islamo-fascist forces in Pakistan 3.) generating a trial run, for the next bigger one. Re #3, consider what harm such attackers could do in any major western city. Worse, what could 50 such units do to the economy and defensive abilities of a western country? What could 500 such units do in the USA if they all struck at once, and their targets were not tourist sites but government offices, electrical power stations, military bases, police stations, major transportation hubs, radio/TV stations, the sites where cell-phones and world-wide-web electronic signals are beamed to and from satelites? Think of the paralysis, the panic, the difficulty of police and army to coordinate. And if such attacks were coordinated with a dirty bomb in Washington, or a full-blown nuclear device sailing in to NY harbor in an oil tanker....how effective would our defensive responses be? And if you are thinking that 500 is a big number, consider that various terror-watch groups estimate that Syria alone hosts close to 70,000 wannabee terrorists in training, and that over 5000 Arab and Iranian terrorists have entered our country surreptitiously via Mexico duringt he past five years. Please pass this email on to President-Elect Obama. David Meir-Levi Palo Alto, CA 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 To Go To Top

I'M A JEWISH PARANOID REALIST Posted by Barry Shaw, November 29, 2008.

I just received an email telling me that I am paranoid. This came after my recent rant against the media that refused to identify the victims of the Nariman House terror massacre in Mumbai as Jews and Israelis. The problem I have with this criticism is that it came from a British Jew. For him, it was OK for Sky News and the BBC to concentrate on events at the two luxury hotels because of the British tourists there. For him, it was enough for his national media to refer to Nariman House as containing a Jewish Center. This, for him, was sufficient understatement to represent the background of the hostages. The murder of six Israelis in Mumbai was being eulogized by Israel's Prime Minister while, on Sky, Lisa Holland was reporting on the dramatic incursion of Indian commandos, the reaction of the street crowd, the massive explosion and gunfire, and the reported death of five anonymous hostages. For my British critic this bland, sanitized, reporting is fine for him. Of course British and American terror victims deserve the respect and attention of screaming headline. It is right and proper for reporters to highlight their plight. But why do Jewish or Israeli victims not deserve the same respect? I would have expected my critic to demand more from his national media. Where was his concern? Where was his desire to learn more about the people pinpointed for yet another Muslim terror attack? They were, like him, Jews. p>We frequently see this when Palestinians are always 'killed' but Israeli terror victims simply 'die'. Look out for this next time (and there will be a next time) a Palestinian terror outrage occurs in Israel. Notice the deliberate use of active and passive verbs in Western media reporting. It is constant use and misuse of words, and slanted reporting, that frame public opinion. But back to my gripe. The last time I was called paranoid followed an article I wrote which referred to Arafat's second intifada as an Islamic religious war against the Jews where the first and main target was Israel. One recipient criticized Israeli policy and called me a paranoid. This criticism was received just two weeks before the Passover terror attack on the Park Hotel in my home town of Netanya. Like this week's writer, that critic was also a British Jew. What is it with these British Jews? Why must they cocoon themselves against the vicious Islamic hate and death that was brutally displayed recently in India? Maybe they truly believe in the cotton-wool existence of multi-culturalism, we are all the same under the skin, live and let live. It keeps them fuzzily cozy and warm at night.. But why don't they rage when their ideal perception is challenged? When their fellow Jews are targeted for killing? And that refers to Israelis. Why don't they get angry when the fate of Jews or Israelis are not highlighted, even overlooked, by their national media? Why is it impossible for Jewish activists in Britain to get these people to protest, or to join in their street demonstrations in defense of Jewish or Israeli causes? Why will they not champion our cause or help make our case to the British public and media? Why do they more open to hearing our enemies propaganda, put out by their own media, than actively supporting Jewish and Israeli injustices? Why are they so apathetic, yet call me paranoid? These people remind me of a tragic joke someone once told me. Two Jews were being marched towards the gas chambers at Auschwitz. One spat at one of the Gestapo officers and cursed him with "You are your Fuehrer Hitler will burn in hell!" His friend shouted to him, "Moshe, this is no time to make trouble!" No, my dear critic, I am not paranoid. Sadly, I am a realist. Once, like you, I saw the world through rose-tinted glasses. I voted for Arafat to be allowed back into the area. Why not? Live and let live. Right? That was before he sent his murderers to slaughter twenty two Israeli teenagers outside a Tel Aviv disco. That was before he incited and sent terrorists to execute twelve terror attacks on my town that killed fifty and maimed four hundred. You are paranoid if you think that people are coming to get you. You are a realist when you wake up and find that it's true. They have been coming to kill us for sixty years. They openly declare that they must follow their religious and political duty to kill us, the destroy us, to wipe us out. Look what happened at the Chabbad House in Mumbai. Listen to Hamas. Listen to Hizbollah. Listen to the maniac in Tehran. Or am I being paranoid? Barry Shaw made aliyah from Manchester, England, 25 years ago with his family. He runs a real estate office in Netanya. He writes the "View from Here" columns from Israel. To sign up to receive his emails, contact him at netre@matav.net.il To Go To Top

FREE MUSLIMS, BUT KILL EVERYONE ELSE; JEWS TARGETED Posted by Michael Travis, November 28, 2008.

This is from Pamela Geller of the Atlas Shrugged website http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/

UPDATED 1:31 PM: CONFIRMED that Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka were killed (NY Post) So let me understand this, Muslims are allowed to murder Jews in cold blood because we are Jews, but it is a crime to insult Islam. MUMBAI: The bodies of five hostages were found in Nariman House while the National Security Guards (NSG) killed two terrorists during the gunbattle there, NSG Director General JK Dutt said on Friday. UPDATE: SEE BELOW:Three bodies found on the 2nd floor of the Nariman House. The terrorists killed the hostages before moving on to the next floor. They killed two more hostages on the 4th floor. Third floor is the only floor remaining, commandos are there. It is just a matter of time.(hat tip Randall) Joshua wrote me, "how many chabadniks do we know? They are all sweet people with amazing ahavas yisroel". Israeli Jewish men pray for the well-being of their friends Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who are being held hostage by suspected gunmen in Mumbai, India, at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site in Jerusalem's Old City,Thursday,India_shooting_reax_jrl122   "Terrorism" the big lie used to club the minds of free men into confusion. This isn't terrorism. This is war, holy war.BTW, ever hear of Jews killing imams? (not that that matters, right) Unconfirmed: Chabad Rabbi and his Wife Murdered in Mumbai Fears have grown that the Chabad rabbi and his wife in Mumbai has been Holtzberg_3 killed. Indian helicopters dropped commandoes on the roof of the Chabad House in Mumbai early Friday morning, and a battle is continuing at this moment. Three blasts were heard inside the building, where four terrorists remain. One was killed in an earlier battle. It is thought that no more hostages are being held inside. An Indian newspaper has reported that Chabad-Lubavitch emissary Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka were murdered by Muslim terrorists who held them hostage. The Chabad couple's two-year-old son Moshe was taken out of the building by his babysitter shortly after the siege began Wednesday night. David Bogner over at Treppenwitz who was just there last week, and ate at the house of the Jewish couple that was held hostage and murdered (unconfirmed) Early in the reporting from India it became clear that the attacks were centered on tourist centers, with two luxury hotels and Mumbai's largest train terminal bearing the brunt of the attacks. And most of the reports seemed to fixate on the disturbing fact that Americans and Britons seem to have been singled out by the terrorists. Yet, seemingly unremarkable to the media, also among the targets singled out for attack was a house in a mixed residential/commercial area that is well off the beaten track. From the outside it is rather non-descript, and in fact if you didn't have good directions, you would never know it for what it is; the home of one of Mumbai's few orthodox Jewish families (I know, having eaten there several times last week). Yes, of course they reported it... but the attack on Nariman house/Beit Chabad didn't strike them as odd... or at least no more odd than the rest of the coordinated attacks. Here's why it should have.: Mumbai is a city of over 18 million people, yet there are only about five thousand Jews living there. And of those, only a few dozen are identifiably Jewish outside of the synagogue. Heck, the entire country of India — with a staggering population of over 1.1 billion people — has only about 15 thousand Jews! I'm not so good at math, but I think that if you try to express the Jewish population as a percentage of the overall Indian population, you're going to end up with a lot of zeros to the right of the decimal point. So isn't it weird that nobody seems to be talking about how statistically odd it is that this Muslim terror group sought out and attacked an unremarkable home containing one of India's only identifiably orthodox Jewish families. Apparently the breaking news from Mumbai has demonstrated anew that targeting Jews is not unusual... even when just finding Jews in India to attack is harder than finding Samoans in Iceland. So why is that unremarkable? And more importantly, why does the rest of the world continue to push us to understand and excuse murderous Muslim aggression against us... even when they hound us to the end of the earth? Yet we're the racists. The answer is that attacking us — even in a country where just finding us is like finding a needle in a haystack — is considered completely unremarkable... just part of the natural order. " Randall points out: The percentage of Jews in India is 0.00136% or just over one thousandth of one percent. It seems that Jews are 73,333 times as important as the average citizen in India!   A commando fires at suspected terrorists holed up in a house owned by Israelis in Colaba, Mumbai, India, Friday, Nov. 28, 2008. Turkish couple let off by terrorists for being Muslims (India Times) The Muezzinoglus, however, found themselves in a hostage situation, along with a group of foreigners. That night, they shared a room with three foreigners — all women. Two machine-gun-wielding terrorists stood guard over them the whole night. All the hostages were asked to reveal their religion. When the Muezzinoglus said they were Muslims, their captors told them that they would not be harmed. The other three Caucasian women were removed from the room next day, and the terrorists informed the Muezzinoglus that they had been shot. Arpaciouglu kept in touch with his friends all through the hostage crisis, up until the time they were released the next day. While the hostages allowed the couple to make one phone call to Arpaciouglu at 3am, for the rest of the day, they relied on text messages. The couples' final messages read: `Soldiers are here now. Soldiers found us'. These folks in the below pics were not so ..... Muslim Hospital attendants place the body of a victim of Wednesday's shootings on a stretcher at the St. George hospital in Mumbai November 27, 2008. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Thursday the attacks in Mumbai that killed more than 100 people were well planned and probably had "external linkages". Singh was speaking as witnesses in the Indian financial capital said commandos were preparing to storm the Taj Hotel, the Trident-Oberoi and a Jewish centre, where militants have trapped or taken hostage scores of people.   Bodies lie near the swimming pool of the Taj Mahal hotel after shootings UPDATE: One floor still to being cleared at Nariman House- By MM Online Bureau Posted On Friday, November 28, 2008 7.05pm: Fresh firing at Taj. Reports that there might be more than one terrorist holed up in Taj. Two unidentified bodies recovered from the Hotel 6.57pm: J K Dutt: Three bodies found on the 2nd floor of the Nariman House. The terrorists killed the hostages before moving on to the next floor. They killed two more hostages on the 4th floor. Third floor is the only floor remaining, commandos are there. It is just a matter of time. Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com To Go To Top

CAPTURED TERRORIST: AL QAEDA WANTS TO TAKE OVER AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN Posted by Ted Belman, November 28, 2008.

From http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=6005 This item below comes from Kiran Mathur, India Today

Terrorist Ajmal Amir Kamal, a resident of Faridkot, Multan in Pakistan, a Pakistani elite commando, caught in Taj, got his orders from shadow ISI and Osama Bin laden The man is in custody. He is an educated youth, a college student, educated in Pakistan's Islamic school where Osama Bin Laden is respected as God's Prime Agent. He got his direct orders from shadow ISI, Pakistan's clandestine intelligence militia founded by Saudi oil money and American billions of dollars paid to Pakistan to fight terror. He was caught by the Indian NSG in Taj. He was brain washed by the Islamic ideology that drives hundreds of thousands of young Muslims to the dark alleys of Waziristan where American money for Pakistan's war against terror and Saudi oil money get funneled into Al-Queda terror training ground. They want to take Afghanistan over. They want to take control Pakistani nukes. They want to slave India into submission. Terrorist Ajmal says that will happen one day, it is just a question of time. Indian security forces have him. Some say he is just a SIMI fellow from Indian college and lying about his identity. The real culprits are gone leaving him there to make up a story. He was brought to Indian shores by a large mother cargo ship. He boarded with forty others to rubber rafts silently to India Gate. The bribed Mumbai police was ready to give them the necessary cars, infrastructure to start spreading out all over Mumbai with most sophisticated ammunition and ammo dumps all over the city planned beforehand. Ted Belman is a Canadian lawyer and editor of the IsraPundit.com website, an activist pro-Israel website. Contact him at tedbel@rogers.com To Go To Top

BRITISH HATE PREACHER CHOUDARY GLOATS OVER MUMBAI TERROR ATTACK Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, November 28, 2008.

This comes from the Gateway Pundit website http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/11/ british-hate-preacher-choudary-gloats.html

Anjem Choudary: "Any Brits killed had only themselves to blame." British hate preacher Anjem Choudary blamed the Mumbai attacks on Great Britain. Choudary has spoken out about conquering Great Britain from the outside. The Daily Star reported: HATE preacher Anjem Choudary last night praised the slaughter of 125 people in Mumbai. And in a vile rant he said any Brits killed had only themselves to blame for being on the "battlefield" in the war Muslims nuts are waging against the world. Extremist Choudary, 41, the right-hand man of exiled cleric Omar Bakri, 50, and former leader of banned hate group al-Muhajiroun, said the attacks were revenge for the West's "crusades" against Islam. Outspoken Choudary, whose family live on £25,000-a-year benefits in London, raged: "Any Britons or Americans who visit Muslim countries are entering a battlefield and risk being used as hostages by al-Qaida to publicise its cause." Previous Stories Mumbai Under Terror Attack!... At least 80 Dead — Hostages Taken! (Live Firing Video!) TERRORISTS HOLD MORE THAN 100 HOSTAGE IN MUMBAI! ...Update: 125 Dead Deepak Chopra Blames Washington For Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Video Captures Mumbai Terrorist Killing MUMBAI MASSACRE — Up To 7 Terrorists Were Brits!... Over 160 Dead Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com To Go To Top

THEY MADE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE Posted by Avodah, November 28, 2008.

CHABAD: "WE WON'T BE DETERRED" This was written by Allison Hoffman, Jerusalem Post correspondent in New York. It appeared today http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename= JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1227702359810

The late couple Rabbi Gabi Holtzberg and his wife Rivka z"l, murdered at the hands of terrorists in Mumbai, India. Photo: Courtesy Chabad.org The worldwide leaders of the Chabad Lubavitch movement in New York mourned the deaths of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, discovered Friday after Indian commandos took control of the movement's center in Mumbai. The pair, who had been the movement's chief emissaries in India, were last heard from Wednesday, shortly after heavily armed gunmen stormed Chabad's Nariman House facility next door to a popular cafe that was among 10 targeted in this week's attacks. "We're going to miss him very dearly — he was a very special person, he and his wife were very special people," said Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Chabad's educational arm. His voice broke as he spoke to reporters at the Lubavitch headquarters in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood. Indian troops who cleared the Chabad building after rappelling onto the roof from helicopters found the bodies of two suspected terrorists and three other people whose identities were not immediately released. It was not clear when the victims died. An Indian employee who escaped the center with the Holtzbergs' toddler son Moshe — who turns two on Saturday — told reporters she saw them lying "unconscious" on the ground as she fled. The boy was reunited with his grandparents, who flew to Mumbai on Thursday. Moshe will mark his second birthday as an orphan after his parents were killed by terrorists some time between Wednesday, when the Chabad House they ran was attacked and Friday, when Indian commandos took over the building. Photo: AP "Today he became an orphan, without a dad and mom to lovingly embrace him and celebrate with him," Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky told reporters, adding that the Lubavitch movement would guarantee the boy's upbringing. A second son, who was ailing, was with relatives in Israel when the attack occurred. Krinsky also addressed the more than 4,000 Chabad emissaries worldwide, counseling them to remain brave in the face of adversity. "Keep strong and continue to forge ahead with courage and fortitude in the service of our people and mankind to make this world a better place to live for all," he said. "Nothing deters us," he added, after a reporter asked about whether emissaries would be afraid in the future to conduct the group's outreach activities. Chabad leaders declined to comment on security measures that were being put in place at their facilities, which dot the globe from Argentina to Vietnam. Kotlarsky said he last spoke to Holtzberg on Tuesday to finalize the details of a new center opening in Bangalore next week. "Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg made the ultimate sacrifice," Kotlarsky said. "As emissaries to Mumbai, Gabi and Rivky gave up the comforts of the West in order to spread Jewish pride in a corner of the world that was a frequent stop for throngs of Israeli tourists. Their selfless love will live on with all the people they touched. We will continue the work they started." Members of the movement gathered at the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters Friday hours before the start of the Jewish Sabbath to pray for the families of the dead, joining dozens of volunteers who had been working the telephones and monitoring news Web sites since the attacks. The Holtzbergs arrived in Mumbai in 2003 to serve the local Jewish community. The two ran a synagogue, offering religious instruction and helping people dealing with drug addiction and poverty, Kotlarsky said. Holtzberg "was the finest and nicest gentleman that you can imagine," a weeping Kotlarsky said at the news conference. "You never saw him without a smile ... he was always cheerful and greeted everyone pleasantly ... a real mensch." Gavriel Holtzberg's last known phone call was to the Israeli consulate to report that gunmen were in his house, the group's leaders in Brooklyn said. In the middle of the conversation, the line went dead. Twelve hours after gunmen stormed the center Wednesday, Sandra Samuel, a cook at the center, heard little Moshe's cries outside the room in which she had barricaded herself. She opened the door, grabbed the toddler and ran outside with another center worker. The little boy's pants were soaked with blood, and Samuel said she saw four people lying on the floor as she fled. Gavriel Holtzberg, 29, was born in Israel and moved to the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn with his parents when he was nine. He had dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship. Rivkah Holtzberg, 28, was a native of Afula, Israel. The couple had lived in New York before going to India. The Lubavitchers were one of many Hasidic groups that were uprooted from Eastern Europe by the Holocaust and came to the United States. They became the most outward-looking of the ultrareligious groups, constructing giant Hanukkah menorahs in public places, engaging in outreach among less pious Jews and building Chabad centers from Sao Paulo to Bangkok. The once-tiny sect has swelled in number and influence. Estimates of followers vary widely, ranging from the tens of thousands to a million or more. About 4,000 full-time emissary families direct more than 3,300 institutions around the world. In response to the Mumbai attacks, New York City police beefed up patrols around large hotels and Jewish centers, including the Lubavitcher headquarters, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. "This is indeed a very sad day," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at the news conference. "It is a reminder to all of us just how connected we are." The department already was on alert because of a warning earlier this week of a possible al-Qaida plot to strike the city's rail systems over the holidays. "I assure you that here in New York City, we are resolved to be vigilant," Kelly said. To Go To Top

CHABAD: ULTRA-ORTHODOX" OR ULTRA-SUCCESSFUL? Posted by Sonia Nusenbaum, November 28, 2008.

This was sent by Dan Friedman.

A friend writes: Why do we accept this routine description of Chabad members as "ULTRA" orthodox? Who determines why this label is slapped on a dedicated, peaceful Jewish organization dedicated to outreach? Must we accept it? How bizarre that, in the midst of this Islamist atrocity in Mumbai, the Jewish targets are routinely described as "ultra-orthodox" by our rapidly Dhimmified newsmedia. A subtle but insidious justification for their (as yet unconfirmed) murders, make no mistake, like calling Jews in Hebron "settlers." It's all about Gramsci...A day by day brainwashing of society to corrupt what had been assumed to be eternal principles of decency, and ultimately replace them with "new principles" that equate to pure soulless evil. Our new lamestream media motto: "Making the world safer for Jew-killers, one headline at a time." And they've been up to it at least as far back as June 1967. To which I will only add: The decadent media has two sound reasons to fear Chabad and cast it as a fringe group. First, Chabadniks are pious Jews who make no compromises with authentic Jewish values. In other words, they are not corrupt. Second, Chabad is not "ultra-Orthodox" in the sense of the insular sect the media means to imply. The truth is that Chabad reaches out and has harnessed modern communication techniques to spread its Torah-true message worldwide. (Cholent in Mumbai, anyone?) And partly for that reason, no Jewish group has had more success bringing Jews of all stripes back to their roots at Sinai than Chabad. A strong, faithful Jewish Nation? Nothing will make a sophisticated journalist toss and turn at night than that. — df Dan Friedman NYC Contact Sonia Nusenbaum at nusenbaum@juno.com To Go To Top

JIHADISTS WRECK HAVOC IN MUMBAI! Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, November 39, 2008.

Muslim jihadists identifying themselves as Deccan Mujahideen perpetrate acts of wanton murder in Mumbai, India, that nation's financial capital and major tourist center, search especially for those with U.S. and British passports but eager to snuff out the lives or maim anyone in their path, kidnap innocent victims, burn hotels, set off explosives, invade buildings including a Chabad House where several Jewish families live murdering occupants including a Rabbi and his wife, and in general wreck blood drenching havoc, attempting to intimidate the West, no doubt rationalizing their actions with skewed Koranic verse, letting civilization know that brutal savagery is alive and well, secular human life is worthless, and that losers and misfits will someday inherit the world not unlike cockroaches after nuclear devastation, reminding those with insight that Iranian centrifuges keep spinning, potentially producing all the fissile material they would need to really kick ass with humankind. Moderate Muslims worldwide cower, yet again ruing such behavior and the impact it will have on their own lives, on how others will perceive them, yet will they en mass be brave enough to vigorously denounce those killers not only to salvage their own collective image but for the sake of their besmirched gospel, for the sake of humanity, indeed for the sake of human sanity? The mental disease that induces such blatant acts of terror, perpetrated especially on non-threatening victims, has one root cause; stemming from suppression of the instinct to preserve human life, including one's own life, an inherent brain function gone awry through manipulation. We might talk about presumed injustice, lack of self-esteem, humiliation, poverty, and other factors; but the tipping point for the kinds of behavior we now witness in Mumbai, behavior we have witnessed in so many other places, comes when a coordinated group of individuals have their inherent humane instincts replaced with a delusional concept that a better world awaits after death, that for the sake of their God they must destroy the non-believer, the infidel. Many such individuals likely attended Saudi financed Wahhabi mosques or madrassas throughout Pakistan, where corrupt government officials are likely paid to 'see no evil', or similar brainwashing institutions, exposing themselves to skillful manipulators highly trained in the art of persuasion, adept at combining religion and hatred, performing their nefarious brainwashing techniques especially but not exclusively on vulnerable uneducated male youngsters. As suggested, Iran may be on its way to becoming a supplier of the deadliest material ever invented by man, not to mention current likely suppliers like Pakistan and Russia, but Saudi Arabia more than any other regime foots the bill for the mind altering process that manufactures those Wahhabi educated ambulatory human fuses necessary to detonate explosions that if nuclear would end life on earth as we know it. It's to be expected that leaders of civilized planetary nations condemn terrorist atrocities, yet other than tough talk, hand wringing, and condolences to victims, do these leaders enact policies that punish regimes housing or financing techno-human bomb factories disguised as mosques or madrassas without which killers, including walking time bombs, could not be programmed and assembled? Are Western industrial nations say buying less Middle East oil, in effect boycotting filthy rich despots of sovereign Muslim countries without which terrorist organizations, recently orchestrating acts of deadly mayhem in Mumbai, would not have the funds to operate? Not quite! British teachers unions and supporters, for one, would have their nation boycott civil nations like Israel at the drop of a hat, but would they likewise ask their nation to boycott terrorist financing Middle East oil suppliers at the drop of a turban? Not if the likes of suicide bomber apologist London Mayor Ken Livingston have anything to say about it, but that's another story! Still, the newly elected Obama Administration might be open to logical discourse concerning trade sanctions against terrorist financing nations, noting America's own experiences, especially one world changing catastrophe perpetrated on 9/11/2001 by mostly Saudi hijackers, no doubt cum laude graduates of Wahhabi Universities, noting prior terrorist attacks in Israel, Egypt, England, Spain, Indonesia, elsewhere, on land and sea, and now in Mumbai. Of course, America would first have to extricate itself from a shameful dependency on The House of Saud, primary guarantor of a most essential petrodollar, before it could consider a proper course of action, at least against that regime. Oh the tangled webs we weave! Bloodshed in erstwhile Bombay, now Mumbai, represents not only retaliation for past grievances; it screams out an ominous warning to the less than attentive West as well as civilized modernizing Eastern lands, that Muslim jihad remains afoot. How to react? Close the Wahhabi madrassas and mosques in Pakistan and elsewhere, indict rulers who finance terrorism, encourage moderate Muslims to assert themselves; condemning those who blaspheme peaceful Islam! Might a popular leader like Barrack Obama consider such steps vital to U.S. foreign policy? Might likely U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travel to Jerusalem, Israel's capital, meet with Israeli leaders, organize a Court of Justice that will secure enough evidence to issue arrest warrants for royal despots, clergy, and secular autocrats alike who finance terrorists or support terrorism in other ways? Of course they should! Neither the United Nations nor the Court of International Justice at The Hague have been sufficiently effective in this regard, heretofore allowing the House of Saud a pass, not indicting Iranian leaders for supplying arms to Hizbullah and Hamas, yet most despicably allowing brutal acts of inhumanity to continue, terrorizing as well as destroying populations in Sudan, the Congo, Zimbabwe and other venues; thus a true Court of Justice must be formed. As suggested, the United States will need to protect its currency if Saudi dictators are put out of business, perhaps by merging the besieged U.S. dollar with the euro, forming the duro, a boon to both America and Europe ending a self-defeating under the radar war to hold the position of primary oil trading currency. Furthermore, the Iranian international commodity exchange or 'bourse', yet to be fully activated, threatening to trade crude oil for euros and other non-dollar currencies will no longer hold sway with U.S. foreign policy, allowing substantive action to be taken against Iran's spinning nuclear centrifuges as well as terrorist financing operations. Jihadist ambitions will indeed be set back significantly if such a logical course is followed. Civilized nations have little time to lose. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant. 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 larose@snip.net To Go To Top

MUMBAI TERROR: IN COLD BLOOD Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, November 28, 2008.

This is a Jerusalem Post editorial: www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/Page/RSS&cid=1123495333389

The dreadful images coming out of Mumbai since late Wednesday night have stunned Israelis — and not just because the city's Chabad House was targeted along with a hospital, open market, the main train station, a popular restaurant and two posh landmark hotels. At least 125 people are known killed and some 327 wounded. The bloodbath reminds us that, though Muslim extremism is often traceable to some local grievance, it's in essence part of a larger conflict between civilizations. Islamists are violently affronted when Hindus, Jews, Buddhist or Christians are sovereign over a Muslim minority. AS WE try to make sense of the mayhem unleashed on Mumbai, a city of some 13 million souls, our thoughts naturally are with the family of Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg. We are anxious, too, for the dozen or so other Israeli hostages. And we express our condolences to the people of Mumbai who have lost loved ones in this reprehensible assault. Mumbai has been attacked six times since 1993, most recently in 2006 when 200 people were killed in a train-bombing. The nature of the latest attacks, however, with multiple terror teams hitting some 10 targets with explosives, automatic rifle-fire and grenades — in an operation that carried on from one day into the next — suggests a far higher level of coordination and training than anything seen before. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the attacks were launched from outside India "with the single-minded determination to create havoc in the commercial capital of the country." Plainly, the terrorists are connected to elements in the failed state of Pakistan. At least some of them may have arrived by sea, landing across from the Taj Mahal hotel. They hunted-down guests with US, British and Israeli passports to take as hostages. At the Chabad House, Indian neighbors nobly tried to fend off the attackers until they themselves were driven back by terrorists' bullets. Israelis feel at one with the people of India, especially at times like these. Both countries are modern incarnations of ancient civilizations. We share common political values, overlapping security concerns and a growing commerce. India was established in 1947; Israel in 1948. Both peoples rejected British rule, both faced Muslim opposition to their independence. The subcontinent was divided into the secular state of India and the Muslim state of Pakistan. In the Mideast, the Palestinian Arabs rejected the idea of two states for two peoples. Substantially, they still do. Though much still needs to be done to draw India and Israel closer, enormous steps have been taken since New Delhi first recognized Israel in 1950 and finally established an embassy in 1992. Israel has actually maintained a consular presence in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, since 1952. India is a genuine multicultural democracy. Among its 1.1 billion people are 150 million Muslims. Its former president, and father of New Delhi's nuclear program, is a Muslim. NO ONE yet knows who carried out these attacks and speculation is rampant. Pakistan has in the past encouraged terrorism in Kashmir. Its doubtful India's unstable neighbor is explicitly responsible for the aggression (the government there denounced it), but Pakistan has multiple power centers and its intelligence service has previously been linked to the Taliban. Both they and al-Qaida have an interest in diverting attention away from the Pakistan-Afghan border. And coincidentally, Pakistani troops reportedly opened fire on Indian positions along their joint border on Thursday. Still, al-Qaida specializes in mega-attacks using suicide bombers, which was not the case here. Even if it turns out that this outrage was the handiwork of Lashkar-e-Toiba — or one of its front-groups — which wants to turn India into a Muslim state, that still doesn't unveil the real masterminds. Whoever did this wanted to create panic, scare off foreigners, undermine India's economy and turn the country's people against one another. ISRAELIS have long argued that no political grievance, no perceived injustice and no religious creed can ever justify waging war against civilians. Others have sometimes made excuses for "resistance" movements. If any consolation can be derived out of the heartbreak in Mumbai, perhaps it will be that India will work ever more vigorously in international forums to isolate terrorists and the state's that sponsor them. Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com To Go To Top

WHOSE HOUSE IN HEBRON?; OBAMA ROLLING OUT RADICAL FOREIGN POLICY; NEW PLOYS FOR DISARMING ISRAEL Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 27, 2008.

TURKEY INVESTING IN IRAN Turkey agreed to invest $12 billion in Iran's natural gas. The fuel would be shipped to Europe (IMRA, 11/20). International sanctions don't work any more. The globalized economy has too many sources of funds for a few, established powers to freeze out a country with something valuable to sell. Those who think they can rely upon sanctions and persuasion cannot overcome ideology or self-interest with palaver. They are old-fashioned, if they even are well-meaning and not using the hope of a peaceful solution as an excuse for not making a difficult decision. Turkey puts itself forward as a mediator. Mediators get credit for trying, whether they really do or not. No honest broker, Turkey is Islamist now. It looks as if the world is out of control. And yet the US still neglects the ideological weapon against Islamism. For that we can thank political correctness. Political correctness forbids us to even describe the enemy as an offshoot of Islam. We mustn't offend people, even at the risk of our lives? We let matters go too far and ponder them too little. The State Dept. sabotaged Bush's policy towards Iran of regime change. The intelligence services sabotaged his possible bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities. WHOSE HOUSE IN HEBRON? Some Jews produced in court proof of purchase of a house in Hebron, including a tape showing the owner selling it to them. Arabs threatened the owner's life. Then the owner claimed he didn't sell. The case reached Israel's Supreme Court. The Court remanded the case to civil court, without ruling on the merits. The media put it that the Court ruled against Jewish ownership. A human rights advocate for the Jews of Judea-Samaria declared the judiciary biased against Jews there and especially in Hebron. The whole ruling elite is biased. The advocate noted that the government is considering legalizing the status of tens of thousands of Bedouin's houses, and allow them to stand, and to take legal ownership of more than 150,000 acres of government land that they claim by ancestry [meaning that they squatted on it]. The media and government call the illegal Bedouin areas "unrecognized," but refer to Jewish houses in Judea and Samaria as "illegal." That's a double standard. When one settler threatened violence, the media extrapolated to all, but other settler speakers disavowed violence. The Army admits that any violence by civilians is likely to come from outsiders. Another newspaper accused the house owners of "yet another case" of settlers forging their papers (Arutz-7, 11/20). I haven't heard of other cases of Jews forging such papers, but many of Arabs. The police initiate most of the violence. OBAMA ROLLING OUT RADICAL FOREIGN POLICY During the campaign, Obama shunted aside radical foreign policy advisers, when their antics drew unfavorable attention. The campaign ended, Obama is bringing them back into top positions. He deceived the electorate. He is a man in a hurry. He is in a hurry to end the alliance with Israel and make one with Syria. His advisors lie that Israel is the cause of its problems with Islam, that it caused the last offering to Arafat to fail, and that Iran needs nuclear weapons only to defend itself from Israel. They suggest that Israel's nuclear defense should being negotiated away. That would make it subject to Iranian nuclear attack for sure. Meanwhile, they want to take the Territories from Israel and give it to Iran's proxies, which then could rain more rockets on Israel. They seek a US alliance with Syria, which means delivering Israel into its hands. Syria would be free to absorb Lebanon. Syria also would be emboldened to further subvert Iraq. The radicals would have gained a more solid hold over the Mideast. [How long would our oil supply be secure?] The advisors' statements and the missions Obama sent them on are ominous. Obama's advisers predicate a deal with Iran over Afghanistan, on Shiite Iran enmity towards Sunni jihadists. Actually, Iran finances and arms al-Qaida, Taliban, and Hamas [as well as, to some extent, Fatah], which are Sunni. The Obama advisers think that Iran would be like the USSR, deterred by mutually assured destruction. If so, then removing Israel's nuclear shield means Israel's destruction. What kind of logic has Obama? Actually, Iran is not moved much by the threat of Israeli possible nuclear retaliation, which they consider not too powerful. It threatens to use nuclear weapons against Israel. The new policy is based on fantasy. Treating madmen like normal people, it gives an impression of weakness. It legitimizes genocidal Iran. Israel must find a way to knock out Iran's nuclear facilities before Obama takes office (Caroline Glick in IMRA, 11/15). But their government consists of fools, weaklings, and traitors! Obama fooled most of my friends. They don't realize that their source of news is biased. They take what they were told at face value. They don't understand foreign policy. Obama is radical or a fool; his advisors are paranoid and ignorant. Maybe he isn't a Muslim any more, but he may as well be. Bush meant to protect us, but overplayed his hand, was inconsistent, and was weak. Obama is moving to destroy Israel and jeopardize our national security. He will be our worst President, but there may be no US history to record that. LASER WEAPONRY DEVELOPMENT A US company developed a solid state laser that can destroy targets at the speed of light. Its model may set the industry standard (IMRA, 11/15). Considering Chinese spies and commercial interest in selling indiscriminately, the genie gets out of the bottle fast. Warfare will get worse. Unfortunately, mankind remains backward in the ambitions of Russia, China, and Islam, and foolish in the radicalism or naivete of US Presidents. IRAN CITES EVIDENCE OF ZIONIST INFLUENCE It states that 80 of US Jewry voted for Obama. That fact is cited as evidence that Obama is pro-Zionist (IMRA, 11/15). Iran assumes that all Jews are pro-Zionist. Many Jews are not. Obama is anti-Zionist, his advisers rabidly so. The Jewish vote does not contradict that. My fellow American Jews are notorious for voting against their own interests. They don't know what their interests are nor who protects them. SWISS LOGIC & ETHICS? NGO Monitor and the Swiss government had an exchange of e-mails. Switzerland invited the NGO, Nord-Sud XXI, to a meeting, to review the Durban conference. Nord-Sud XXI has connections with Libya, and expresses much antisemitism. NGO Monitor asked why Switzerland invited such a group, sure to try to continue the antisemitism and anti-Israel bigotry of Durban. The government replied that since that NGO was accredited with the UNO Economic and Social Council, it was invited without regard to its views. NGO Monitor retorted out that Switzerland invited only 25 out of the more than three thousand NGOs accredited with the UNO Council. That leaves the question, why did it single out Nord-Sud XXI for privileged status (IMRA, 11/15). STEP TOWARDS REALISM? How to replace or refine the Bush administration policies on terrorist prisoners? The NY Times quoted admissions that some cases against prisoners are too classified to come before civil jury trials and that some prisoners should be subject to preventive detention (Wm. Glaberson, 11/15, A13). I oppose preventive detention, but think that membership in terrorist organizations should be classified as criminal conspiracy, without waiting for members to act. NEW PLOYS FOR DISARMING ISRAEL Some think tank proposes that the US switch to favoring anti-nuclear weaponry treaties that are verifiable. It suggests that the US press Israel to join and then disarm its nuclear weapons (IMRA, 11/16). Even if the Muslim states join the proposed treaty, who can rely upon their staying in it and not violating it? We have seen countries violate the existing treaty. What makes anyone think that adherence to the treaty is verifiable? Suppose they all eliminated a-bombs. What about chemical and biological weapons? Certain Arab states have them. Biological weapons are easy to hide. Suppose all weapons of mass-destruction were eliminated. Israel's enemies would be left with several times the conventional force that Israel has. Israel would have no super weapon to prevent its being overrun. The proposal would disarm victims of aggression. Would aggressors comply? Here's another tack against Israel. Obama's anti-Zionist advisers want him to press Israel to accept the Saudi plan for Israeli evacuation from the Territories and the Golan but reject an influx of so-call Arab "refugees." He reportedly said Israel would be crazy to refuse peace with the Muslim world, but Dennis Ross denies that Obama endorsed anything (IMRA, 11/16). Israel would be crazy to believe that the deal would bring peace. Since jihad is based on Islam, and not on territorial dispute, and Islam would remain, so would jihad. But the deal would remove Israel's defensive borders. It would be easy to conquer. Guess what the Arabs and Iran would do, then! Nor does S. Arabia promise peace. Its plan states that after Israel surrendered the land, then the Muslims (for which S. Arabia does not speak) may consider normalizing relations with Israel. They wouldn't. They'd demand more, as Muslims invariably do. They'd say, take in the refugees, or its war — against which Israel could no longer defend itself. The proposals are naïve or cynical. They trust the Arabs. Israel, don't trust leftist Americans! Endorsement or Ross' denial? Is this the usual media garbling of facts? What can we figure out? Everybody is offering Obama advice, implying that he kept his views from us. Questions are, who offers it, and what does it mean. We know that government is run by defamatory leaks and trial balloons. During the campaign, Obama kept changing his policy to suit critics. No integrity! His Mideast advisors are anti-Israel. Why do you suppose he picked them? SETTLEMENTS A PRETEXT FOR ANTISEMITES "The scale of Islamic (or Arab) occupation, settlement and racism around the world is far greater than anything that Israel is accused of, but this is never mentioned in polite or diplomatic company. The Arab tribes that followed Muhammad spread their conquest and settlement activities throughout the Middle East, and then kept going to central Asia, western Europe...eastern Europe...northern Africa, and east to Asia, including parts of India, (and what is now Pakistan), Malaysia, Indonesia, and southern Thailand." "In these jihads, anyone who didn't accept Islam was simply killed — there was no 'resistance,' because no one was left to resist" [Not in India. Too many.] "After many centuries (not decades), this Arab and Islamic occupation continues to be characterized by intolerance for different faiths and opinions. The brief period of enlightened Islamic rule, under the Umayyad Caliphate beginning in the 10th century in Spain (Al-Andalus), still left Christians and Jews as second class citizens — dhimmis — who were tolerated, at best, and often persecuted and expelled. But none of this is mentioned by the politically correct defenders of Islam in the United Nations...nor is it discussed by so-called "human rights" organizations, journalists, and academics and activists on campuses." "Some Christian leaders and groups are no better in their obsessive attacks on 'Israeli occupation,' such as retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu, as well as the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Lutheran leaders campaigning for divestment, the Mennonite Central Committee, Christian Aid, Caritas and others." [They gang up on the Jews. We must help ourselves.] "Stripped of the self-righteous posturing, the emphasis on Israeli 'occupation' and 'settlement' should be recognized as simply another form of the ongoing...anti-Semitism that seeks to prevent the Jewish people from maintaining sovereign equality among the nations of the world." Neither proposed solution, Israel shrinking to 1967 borders nor Israel expanding to include millions of Arabs, works (Gerald Steinberg in IMRA, 11/15.) I agree. I have a third proposal. Israel should enforce the law against wholesale Arab violations, stop "affirmative action" and subsidies for Arabs except for loyal ones to emigrate, etc.. Israel should selectively annex areas populated by Jews, abandoned by Arabs, or undeveloped. The Jewish people would get defensible borders around the core of the Jewish homeland, without millions of Arabs. Without any Arabs! Those who propose the original two, admittedly unworkable proposals, would object that mine is unrealistic. Enforcing the law is unrealistic? Ending discrimination in favor of Arabs is unrealistic? It just needs a change in doctrine, propaganda, and a start. Each step would be protested, but would make the preceding steps acceptable. 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 To Go To Top

AMERICAN JEWISH INDIFFERENCE Posted by Chuck Brooks, November 27, 2008.

This was written by Caroline B. Glick and it appeared in the Jewish Press (http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/24027/ Jerusalem_Vantage_Po%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20.html). Caroline Glick is deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Her Jewish Press-exclusive column appears the last week of each month. Her new book, "The Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad," is available at Amazon.com.

Apparently Israel is no longer a voting issue for most American Jews. Seventy-eight percent of American Jewish voters cast their ballots for Senator Barack Obama on November 4. Obama, who boasted the most liberal voting record in the Senate, has never distinguished himself as a firm supporter of Israel and opposed the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment that called on the State Department to place Iran's Revolutionary Guards on its list of international terrorist organizations. Obama counts no deeply committed Zionists among his close associates. Men and women like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Samantha Power, Zbigniew Brzezinski, William Ayers, Robert Malley and Rashid Khalidi were all people Obama turned to for advice, guidance and support in his early years in politics and as a U.S. senator considering a run for the White House. His "pro-Israel" advisers — mainly late pick-ups as the presidential race progressed — included no ardent Zionists to oppose the voices of his anti-Israel advisors. Instead, Obama turned to Dennis Ross and Daniel Kurtzer to advise him on the Middle East. These men, like his designated White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, have views of Israel that are indistinguishable from the positions of Israel's post-Zionist Meretz party. During the course of the campaign, Obama gained notoriety for his hard left promises to appease U.S. foes like Iran, largely at the expense of U.S. allies like Israel. It could have been presumed that his expressed willingness to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have raised red flags throughout the American Jewish community. After all, given the failure of the now five-year-old European-U.S. attempt to appease Iran into ending its nuclear weapons program, it is apparent that a direct U.S. presidential dialogue with Ahmadinejad will be perceived by Iran as a green light to complete its nuclear weapons program. But American Jewish voters were only too happy to believe Obama's unconvincing attenuations of his pledge to hold talks with Ahmadinejad without preconditions. American Jews were also eager to accept his unconvincing disavowals of his association with the likes of Wright, Power, Khalidi, Malley and Brzezinski. Obama is now signaling his support for the so-called Saudi Peace Plan, first released in 2002, which calls for Israel to essentially destroy itself in exchange for its Arab neighbors establishing "normal" relations with it. The Saudi plan calls for Israel to remove itself completely to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines and accept millions of foreign-born, hostile Arabs as full citizens as part of the so-called right of return of the descendants of Arabs who left Israel in 1948. The fact that the Saudi initiative — even if Israel were to commit national suicide by taking such steps — limits the relations the Arabs would have with the rump bi-national state to "normal" rather than "peaceful" shows clearly that far from being a peace plan, it is a blueprint for Israel's destruction. In light of all of this, it is apparent that by voting for Obama, four-fifths of American Jews voted for a candidate more openly hostile to the U.S.-Israel alliance than any other major-party presidential candidate in the past generation. One might argue that American Jews were simply unaware of Obama's actual views on Israel. It is true, after all, that the U.S. media worked overtime throughout the campaign defending and hiding Obama's longstanding connections to haters of the U.S. But despite the media effort to conceal or explain away difficult truths about Obama's character, concerned American Jewish voters had access to the facts. Any number of alternative media outlets provided a steady stream of information about Obama's associations with Israel bashers. More than anything else, the willingness of American Jews to believe Obama is pro-Israel shows they simply didn't care that much. If they had cared, they would have scrutinized Obama's alarming connections at least as carefully as they attacked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for her anti-abortion views. They would have wondered what it means that Obama spent twenty years of his life in the pews of a deeply anti-Semitic church at least as much as they wondered about a Jews for Jesus preacher who once spoke at Palin's church. There are several possible and complementary explanations for American Jewry's apparent indifference to Israel's fate. High assimilation rates cause many American Jews to feel more attachment to non-Jewish causes than to Jewish causes. At the same time, the watering-down of Jewish teachings in various Jewish communities and the replacement of Jewish law and traditions with amorphous and trendy concepts of "social justice" and multiculturalism have engendered a basic ignorance of the exceptional significance and beauty of Judaism among a large portion of American Jews. Then there is the leadership crisis affecting world Jewry. Weak and uninspiring Israeli leaders and weak and uninspiring American Jewish leaders have failed to assert and explain the connection between Israel's security and the wellbeing of the American Jewish community. Whereas until the 1980s it went without saying for most American Jews that their fortunes were directly tied to Israel's security, today the unity of Jewish fate has been lost on ever widening circles of American Jews. To all of this must be added the unique self-perception of American Jewry. The American Jewish community is the only community in Jewish history that refused to view itself as an exile community. Even before the American Revolution, Jewish settlers in the New World viewed America as a permanent home. As a consequence, on a philosophical level American Jews have always held Israel and Zionism at arm's length. They could support Israel as a refuge for persecuted Jews from other countries, but they couldn't support Israel as the permanent and irreplaceable homeland for all Jews without revoking the foundational belief of their American Jewish identity. Today Israel is threatened with annihilation and the U.S. Jewish community is suffering from more blatant and organized anti-Semitic attacks than it has seen in the past fifty years. But during this year's presidential campaign, the basic truth that the security of all Jews is dependent on the security of Israel was no match for the full consequences of failed leadership, assimilation and the basic American Jewish desire to reject the singularity of Jewish destiny. Israel's next government will be called on to defend Israel against Iran and its Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese proxies, And it will be called to act at a time when the U.S. is led by an Obama administration pledged to appease these forces. Israel will have to rally all of its supporters in the U.S. to its side in order to stand up for its survival. In light of the American Jewish vote, it is an open question whether Israel will receive the help of its American Jewish brethren in its hour of need. Contact the poster at chetz18@aol.com To Go To Top

ISLAMOPHOBIA Posted by Barbara Taverna, November 27, 2008.

This was written by Isi Leibler and it appeared in the Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1227702334092&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull). Contact him at ileibler@netvision.net.il

The interfaith conference of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia which took place under the auspices of the United Nations received wide acclamation. President Shimon Peres went to the lengths of telling the Assembly that he wished that "King Abdullah's voice would become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people". The World Jewish Congress published a full page advertisement in The New York Times praising the monarch who leads one of the most oppressive and anti-Semitic regimes in the world. To their credit, the Saudis were upfront about Israel, stressing that Peres and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni were present by virtue of their UN membership and not by Saudi invitation, and that the King would not engage in any contact with them. And, despite his somewhat servile remarks in praise of Abdullah, Peres was strongly criticized by the Saudi foreign minister. As a reward for groveling to King Abdullah, the World Jewish Congress was invited to the conference after the Saudis had the chutzpa to brazenly inform them that major Jewish organizations — including the American Jewish Committee, the Presidents Conference, and the Anti Defamation League — were "too political" and would thus be excluded! It was shameful and unprecedented for a reputable Jewish organization to participate at an interfaith conference at which outsiders like the Saudis were able to veto who represents the Jewish people. It was even more outrageous that the Jews who did participate in the event failed to challenge the behavior of the Saudi regime or even relate to the vicious anti-Semitism which dominates Saudi society. After all, it was Wahhabi preachers from Saudi Arabia who initially provided the inspiration for al Qaeda, until the latter turned on the Saudi leaders, accusing them of corruption and collusion with the US and Western world. To this day, Saudi money is utilized to promote global jihad.   THIS INTERFAITH activity must also be viewed in the context of the global campaign launched by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the umbrella body representing 57 Moslem states, to criminalize any criticism of Islam — including Shar'ia law. The members of the OIC include the most tyrannical and repressive states in the world. Many deny human rights to their own citizens and brutally persecute non-Islamic religious minorities, denying them freedom of worship. Even purportedly moderate Islamic countries such as Egypt endorse domestic campaigns inciting their citizens to hatred of non-Islamic minorities, concentrating in particular on promoting the crudest forms of anti-Semitism. Some of these countries, like Saudi Arabia, also seek to globally extend the application of Shar'ia law, which incorporates barbaric practices such as stoning adulterous women to death, decapitating blasphemers, homosexuals and apostates, and cutting off limbs as punishment for petty theft. The OIC bitterly complains that Islamophobia in Western countries is rampant and escalating. Yet taking into account that global terrorism today emanates overwhelmingly from Islamic fundamentalists — including those born and bred in the societies hosting them — it is surely a tribute to Western communities that they continue to peacefully co-exist with their Moslem minorities. Without detracting from the obligation to combat hatred against Moslems and all minorities, the reality is that despite protestations to the contrary from liberals, Moslems residing in Europe face far less institutionalized discrimination than what other migrant groups, including Jews, underwent in the past. Moreover, they are not targeted by terrorists — in contrast to European Jews, their mosques and schools do not require round the clock security guards. It is also astonishing that some Moslem organizations have the impudence to demand an end to security profiling, though over 95 percent of global terrorist acts originate from radical jihadists. Profiling is undertaken exclusively as a pragmatic means to maximize security and is not related to racist bias. If red-headed individuals committed the bulk of terrorist acts it would surely not be unreasonable to profile redheads for security screening. It is even more bizarre that demands to ban profiling are frequently supported by liberals, including paradoxically, Jews who themselves represent the prime targets for acts of terror. The OIC campaign has made considerable inroads, with the UN Secretary General recently boasting that "in confronting the Danish cartoons [caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad] and the Dutch film FITNA, we sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be breached." In other words, violence, murder and blackmail have succeeded in forcing impotent Western governments to appease radical Islamist forces, even at the price of compromising hitherto sacrosanct commitments to freedom of expression. Resolutions calling for criminal prosecution of anyone criticizing Islam or Islamic practices have already been formally adopted by the inappropriately named UN Human Rights Council and subsequently by the UN General Assembly. The discredited UN Human Rights Council, which concentrates the bulk of its efforts on delegitimizing Israel, has now formally endorsed a resolution prohibiting any discussion during its proceedings that could be deemed to be critical of Islam, Moslem practice or Shar'ia law. Yet this same body has shamelessly avoided condemning human rights violations including the genocidal killings by the barbaric Islamic Sudanese government at Darfur.   THE CURRENT priority for the Human Rights Council is to ensure that the forthcoming Durban II conference is transformed into a launching pad for resurrecting the previous Durban anti-Semitic hate fest demonizing Israel. The structure of the Durban 2 Preparatory Committee says it all. The chairman is a former Libyan ambassador who described Israel as "the most tyrannical regime in the world," and he is backed by an Iranian deputy chairman. The Committee held one of its most important meetings on Yom Kippur to ensure that Israelis and Jews would not participate. In its recently released Final Document for Discussions, undisguised bias is reflected in the language employed. It refers to "Israeli apartheid," the "racist Israeli Law of Return", Palestinians as "victims of Israeli racism," and so on. This abominable body is simultaneously proclaiming that "the most serious manifestations of the defamation of religion are the increase in Islamophobia and the worsening situation of Moslem minorities throughout the world." It is incomprehensible why it took until now for Israel to recognize that Durban 2 is controlled by our most venomous enemies and is intended to serve as a global platform for promoting anti-Semitism and Israel bashing. Had we from the outset supported the Canadian decision to boycott this bogus conference, the Americans and many other democratic nations might also have resolved to distance themselves from these hate mongers. To offset these challenges, Israel must seek to create alliances with democratic nations and NGOs. Likewise, where possible, Diaspora Jewish organizations should seek out moderate Moslem groups with whom to promote genuine interfaith relationships. But such activity must be transparent. Those who accept as a precondition to dialogue the exclusion of Israeli participants or restrictions on discussion relating to Israel are harming the Jewish cause, providing respectability to extremists and marginalizing moderate Moslems. Without diminishing our ongoing efforts to outlaw hate crimes or incitement against all minorities, including Moslems, we must resist OIC attempts to pressure Western countries into criminalizing criticism of religion which, aside from being an unprecedented restriction of freedom of expression, would also deny us the opportunity of exposing Islamic extremism. Contact Barbara Taverna at bltaverna@yahoo.com To Go To Top

TERRORISTS TARGET MUMBAI JEWISH CENTRE Posted by Barbara Sommer, November 27, 2008.

This is by Amy Kazmin and it appeared today in Financial Times http://www.ft.com/cms/s/94143da6-bc5f-11dd-9efc-0000779fd18c%2cdwp_uuid= 7f5f6b12-2f66-11da-8b51-00000e2511c8%2cprint=yes.html

For thousands of Jewish travellers visiting Mumbai each year — ranging from Orthodox business people to young Israeli backpackers — the five-year old Chabad House was an important port of call, offering services that ranged from Kosher meals to holiday services to the sympathetic ear of a young rabbi. But on Wednesday night, the Chabad House was one of the carefully-selected targets of the devastating terror attacks that rocked Mumbai. An Israeli rabbi connected to Chabad House was among at least three people being held hostage by gunmen. According to Reuters a woman and a child were released and one of the gunmen was killed. However, at least four armed men remained in the building by mid afternoon on Thursday Mumbai time. The choice of the Chabad House as a target, heightening suspicions about the attackers' potential international links, or influences. India's own radical Muslims have traditionally focused their wrath on the dominant Hindu population and has never previously targetted India's tiny and diminishing indigenous Jewish community, which number just a few thousand. The founders of the Chabad centre, Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg, a young Israeli who also holds US citizenship, and his wife Rifka, were part of the Chabad Lubovitch movement, which is dedicated to deepening religious practice and observation among Jews — both faithful and secular. Along with working in traditional large Western centres with large Jewish populations, young Chabad rabbis, known as emissaries, have in recent years spread to far-flung corners of the globe, including Asia, catering to the needs of both local Jewish communities, often expatriates on assignment in business centres, and Jewish travellers. Besides promoting religious worship, study and observance, Chabad rabbis in Asia are also known for their support and aid to Jews in distress, whether as a result of illness, injury, trouble with the law, or other problems. Rabbi Holzberg and his wife set up the Chabad House in Mumbai about five years ago, soon after he finished his rabbinical training, during which he also spent a year working with a a Chabad rabbi in Bangkok. Since then they had a son, who is now two-years-old "Like all Chabad rabbis everywhere, he is a one stop response for everything a Jew would need — spiritual or material," said Rabbi Yosef Kantor, a Chabad rabbi in Bangkok, who worked closely with Rabbi Hertzberg. "He is a man with a very big heart...He was very committed to the mission he took upon himself — to do whatever was necessary to fulfill the needs of the Jewish community there." The Mumbai Chabad House — which owned the building in which it was located — catered especially to growing numbers of business travellers coming to the city each year. It also catered to some of the large numbers of Israeli backpackers who typically travel around India after completing their military services, as well as to the needs of Mumbai' s own historic, but small and rapidly shrinking indigenious Jewish community. Contact Barbara Sommer at sommer_1_98@yahoo.com To Go To Top

MOSHE FEIGLIN SPEAKS Posted by Avodah, November 27, 2008.

This is from the Joe Settler website, a blog about the Jewish State.

Last night I was at the Moshe Feiglin Primary event. The hall was packed and full of electricity. One particular event stood out in my mind for its hilarity. They showed a video of Moshe on some Israeli talk show facing off with one of the heads of Peace Now. As expected, the Leftist was saying that they are the only game in town and the Right has no solution. So Moshe took him to task. He got him to admit what he defines as the crux of the problem — the friction between the Arab community and the Israeli community, that Arabs and Jews (or was it Palestinians and Israelis?) can't live together. He had him say he loves Eretz Yisrael — all the while the Leftist kept trying to argue where the borders are, Moshe kept firm and said Eretz Yisrael and didn't discuss borders. Moshe pointed out that despite $150 Billion Dollars spent in additional security and peace measure since Oslo (from security guards to the Wall) we are further from peace and security than ever, and it is just costing more and more. Moshe then pointed out 2 Arab university studies that clearly stated that 80% of Gazans and 60% of Arabs in Judea and Samaria would like to leave and permanently move elsewhere (Dubai, Canada, and the EU leading the list of desired locations). The Peace Nower kept arguing that those studies are meaningless and irrelevant to any discussion. The show interviewer kept throwing up the word "transfer". They became heated and irrational in their responses. But Moshe calmly continued and asked, why they didn't have a problem paying Jews to leave, but do have a problem paying Arabs? Can they understand their double standard? Can they not accept that their Land for Peace formula is not working. Then Moshe dropped the bombshell. Moshe continued and pointed out that if the $150 Billion additional Dollars spent on all the additional security measures since Oslo had been wisely utilized, every Arab family in Israel could have received a minimum of $250,000 dollars each to start off a new life elsewhere. And as Israel continues to throw away money on never-ending security measure, the amount per family could actually double or triple that — not bad for your typical Arab who may at best make $5000 a year under Palestinian rule (average Palestinian salaries dropped a lot ever since the PA took over). And what country wouldn't want a new immigrant with a quarter million dollars in their bank account? At that point, the logic hit some of the other people in the show (not right wingers in fact) and they started to argue that Moshe was 100% right, and why aren't we considering that alternative instead. Moshe continued to bash the Peace Nower and asked him, does he really love Eretz Yisrael like he claims, and can he consider a moral and workable solution like this one or does he just want to kick Jews out of their homes and in reality doesn't love Eretz Yisrael? You can guess the response. In the meantime, I just find it amusing that someone would consider it immoral to offer someone (who makes just $5000 a year) $250,000 dollars to move to a new location and start a new and peaceful life. There wouldn't even be enough conflict there to even turn it into a reality TV show. Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com. And visit his blog at http://am-yisrael-blog.blogspot.com/ To Go To Top

JUDGE SLAMS POLICE, CITES BIBLE; SAYS JEW CAN'T BE BANNED FROM LIVING IN "SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF LAND OF ISRAEL" Posted by Stan Goodenough, November 27, 2008.

A Jerusalem District Court judge ruled Tuesday that an Israeli police effort to prevent a Jewish settler from living near Hebron, in what Israel's enemies call the West Bank, was unconstitutional. What was described as a mob of policemen, acting under court orders of some kind, raided the family home of Noam Federman and his wife in the early hours of the morning on October 25, reportedly smashing windows and doors, then pulling nine sleeping children out of their beds, hitting some of them, forcing them to get out, and then bulldozing their home, with all the family's possessions still inside. Federman was arrested for allegedly using violence against the police. They then petitioned the courts to uphold a ban against him entering Judea and Samaria. Judge Moshe Drori said the police request to have Noam Federman banned from entering Samaria and Judea was disproportionate " inasmuch as they sought to prevent Federman from living in a significant portion of the land of Israel." The judge also noted, cynically, that whereas the police were wanting to charge Federman with using violence against them "the one who came out of the violence totally bruised on his entire body because of that 'violence' was actually [Federman] and not the police." Israel's police, who have the unenviable task of working 24/7 to combat both crime and terrorism, have not been averse to working with the left side of the country's political establishment and acting against the so-called settlers — the strongly Zionist Jews many of who live in Samaria and Judea precisely because they believe God has commanded them to settle that land. The police, in turn, are acting on the orders of an Israeli government too weak or too cowardly to stand up against the world's demand that they vacate the land of their forefathers and surrender it to the Arabs. Drori, a kippa-wearing judge, referenced the Bible in his ruling in Federman's favor. "I would like to note," he wrote: "that the State's representative apparently did not take notice of the Weekly Torah Portion that was read aloud around the time he made his claims. It is written there that G-d decided to overturn Sodom and Gomorra because of their heavy sins. Yet even there, where the sins were 77 times worse than we could imagine, the Creator enabled the Patriarch Abraham to plead for them before He delivered any punishment." While not condoning any alleged acts of violence on Federman's part, Drori asked: "Let every person decide for himself how he would act if a police officer turns to him at 1:30 in the night and wants to give him papers ordering him out of his house, with his wife and nine young children sleeping in their beds, and their father sees himself responsible for their welfare and safety... The State did not bother to explain why it needed a force of 100 policemen to remove a person from a military zone that had been closed for ten months, with no prior warning or attempt at dialogue... The eviction was not balanced, not reasonable, not right and not appropriate." Defense Minister Ehud Barak has reportedly decided to appeal the court's decision. Stan Goodenough is a Christian Zionist; a South African national; a Mayflower descendant; an 18-year resident of the State of Israel. Jerusalem Newswire is a news service operating out of Jerusalem, Israel, that provides a condensed source of the most important daily news stories out of the region together with what we believe to be pertinent analyses and commentary. This article is archived at http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2580 To Go To Top

THE JIHADI MASSACRE IN MUMBAI Posted by Dr. Babu Suseelan, November 27, 2008.

Several Jihadi terrorists have stormed luxury hotels, crowded railway stations and an old Jewish center in Mumbai, killing more than 100 people. Hundreds of people were injured. Among the dead were Indians, Australians, Japanese and British. Jihadi terrorists also seized the Mumbai headquarters of the Jewish outreach group center Chabad Lubavitch. The savage and predatory Jihadi terrorism in Mumbai is aimed at reasserting or tightening Jihadi control over the Kafir country, India. Jihadi terrorism is nothing new in India. It is as old as Islamic invasion of India. It is widespread and systemic. Jihadi terrorism is an intrinsic part of Islam. Jihadi terrorism could not flourish as it does without the support or at least toleration of the institutions like the media, the judiciary, the police and bureaucracy. The bogus secular Congress government, media and the alienated Indian intellectuals do not openly condemn Jihadi terrorism. By treating Jihadi terrorism as individual acts of disgruntled Muslims, journalists, social scientists and pseudo secular political leaders conceal the Islamic politics underlying Jihadi terrorism. They whitewash Islamic terrorism with bogus theories and phony social analysis and in the process preclude public discussion on the real cause of Jihadi terrorism namely Islam. Yet without public discussion on the root cause of Jihadi terrorism we cannot plumb the reverberations on the Islamic psyche of feeling permitted to terrorize non-Muslims. The history of modern India is a shameful chronicle of the pseudo secular Congress party's disinterest and indifference in curtaining Jihadi terrorism. The Congress government leader's deliberate trampling of citizen's rights and their repeated betrayal of public trust has grown up behind a curtain of denial, indifference and ignorance. The recent Jihadi terrorism in Mumbai proves the horrible betrayal of the ruling Congress party which is nothing than genocide. The Congress policy on Jihadi terrorism promulgated by Italian Sonia Manio's government, under the auspicious of Manmohan Singh is a disguised program of appeasement of Jihadis through extra privileges. The Congress government instead of acknowledging its legal and moral responsibilities to the majority and safeguarding freedom and security in good faith, now proposes to wash its own hands on the majority, passing the buck to disgruntled Islamists. It is time for the majority to challenge the Congress government to reexamine their unfortunate and ineffective policy on Jihadi terrorism. Instead of offering hope, freedom, safety and security, the Congress government is providing despair and fear, frustration instead of freedom, cultural annihilation instead of life in the just society. It seems that the Congress government shows more interest in preserving and protecting Jihadi terrorists than the peace loving nationalist majority. Indifference? We have witnessed the growing concern of Jihadi terrorism in all major cities of India. Hundreds of people were dead and injured. We have watched the justifiably indignant reaction of fellow Indians to the horrors of Jihadi terrorism in New Delhi, Assam, Kerala, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ahmadabad, Vododhara, and Coimbatore. Television has brought into our homes the sad plight of dead people injured people and their families. Yet the government has ignored the plight of the victims and the seriousness of Jihadi terrorism. The facts are available, dutifully complied and checked over by the police and intelligence agencies. The Congress government's deliberate ignorance and indifference on Jihadi terrorism is inexcusable and suicidal. The government has almost endless resources to wipe out Jihadi terrorism. But the Congress government and the political leaders responsible for matters relating to security have been outstanding in their indifference and ignorance and remarkable in their insensitivity to the security needs and aspirations of the peace loving, and tolerant majority. More often, government leaders are busy appeasing criminal thinking Muslims and terrorists and buckle under Islamic political pressure. The government leaders make decisions, the policies, the plans and programs to encourage, appease, and promote Jihadi terrorism in order to increase their own importance and stress the need for their own continued presence. If the majority citizens are to realize their potential, and protect their freedom, safety and security, they have to take part in Indian affairs. They have to flex their muscles. If the present leadership is unable to come to terms with Jihadi terrorism, unable to confront its root cause that is Islam, unable to win respect for the rights and safety of the majority, the public will have no reason to believe that the existing political system has much meaning for them. The public should organize and organize effectively to destroy the Jihadi-Congress nexus. Only by being active, can we ever be at peace. Contact Dr. Suseelan at b.suseelan@gmail.com To Go To Top

UPDATE ON THE MUMBAI TERROR ATTACK Posted by Sonia Nusenbaum, November 27, 2008.

From M: Thought you would be interested in emails i am getting from colleagues living in Mumbai m

Two of the dead terrorists have been identified as citizens of Pakistan. One of the arrested terrorists has confessed allegiance to Lashkar-e-Taiba. This event has been structured like a war on the nation with sixteen different studios of action within one night seizing the entire city. It may not be ruled out that once "O" is in office in January, one of the first things that happens is a co-ordinated strike on Pakistan with US and India together playing the larger studio. I am unable to ignore the fact that the only civilian building that the terrorists today seized, the Nariman House is a tiny four storied house amidst business skycrapers on the Nariman Point. This Nariman House was owned by and resided into by an Israeli family of six. List members may pardon my reflexivity obsessed mind and not read it necessarily as conspiracy theory. Unfortunately for all the positive thinking that dominates the world, conspiracy is a reality and not mere theory. Yossi, the use of the word studio by you holds a very important significance in many senses. From: Yosi Sent: Sushil, be safe! It is most instrumental to learn that the terrorists hijacked police cars. It is a tactic that had been advanced in an al-Qaidah website instructional video along with dressing up to the occasion using uniform and learning the communications systems used by police and others.The diffusion of innovation is impressive. The multi theatre operations, coordinated and somehow rehearsed is also remindful of mid east and certain European actions. If there is logic behind this actions that goes beyond the advertised torture reason — it may go beyond tourists scare.It may suggest the onset of a new terror by Islamic — Fascists that may include US as well. While there is no reason to panic; there is every reason to be alert Yosi Contact Sonia Nusenbaum at nusenbaum@juno.com To Go To Top

DON'T FLATTER YOUR ENEMIES, PROTECT YOUR FRIENDS Posted by Barry Rubin, November 27, 2008.

In explaining why he was too fearful to vote in Jerusalem's mayoral election, an east Jerusalem Palestinian shopkeeper, Issam Abu Rmaileh, said, "I would have liked to vote because it's in our interest, but who's going to protect me and my family afterwards?" Let's call it the Abu Rmaileh principle; it is extraordinarily important in the Middle East. Why should someone support you if you cannot protect them? If they cannot depend on you to be tough, they might as well play it safe by doing nothing or make their own deal through appeasement and shout radical slogans. Here is the Abu Rmaileh principle at a higher pay grade. Jordan's Foreign Minister Salah Bashir stated in a closed meeting, "For us the Iranian surge for hegemony has become a crisis," according to a participant who asked not to be named. And here's the flip side from a frustrated American colonel fighting in Iraq, "All these guys we rounded up, they're saying in the interrogation, if we don't torture them, we're not going to get the information." How important is popularity? According to the school enthusiastic about President-elect Barack Obama in the United States, it is everything. One journalist explained that al-Qaida is afraid of Obama because, presumably, he will win away Muslims from supporting radical Islamism. It is written in the Washington Post: "Even among the followers of radical groups, such as Hamas and the Taliban, Obama has inspired a sense of change and opportunity." That last statement — intended to imply that even extremists like Obama — is worded with a shocking, though unintentional, ambiguity. It is sure true that Hamas, the Taliban, Hizbullah, Iran, Syria, and al-Qaida view this "change" as an "opportunity." Unfortunately, they view it as an opportunity for being more aggressive. Here's how Iranian Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami put it, in words typical of the reaction from Iran and these other groups. He sees Obama's slogan of "change" as a retreat caused by Iran's revolution, which brought down American power, and says the United States is continuing to decline. For them, Barack the creator of a more popular America and a figure of weakness. Should there be any doubt that his flexibility will be interpreted as retreat, no matter how well-intentioned he is? The debate in Washington is far away from the debate in the Middle East. In America's capital, the talk is of how the radicals are more moderate than thought, how they will be won over by Obama's charisma and changed American policies. The disconnect between the region and the rationalizers is frightening. There is no policy change in Washington that will appease the radicals. And there are no concessions that will make an American president popular in a meaningful way among Middle Easterners. Even more worrisome, such steps are not going to make moderates feel more secure. Here the al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri gets it just right. He tells Obama: "It appears that you don't know anything about the Muslim world and its history... You are neither facing individuals nor organizations, but are facing a jihadi awakening and renaissance which is shaking the pillars of the entire Islamic world; and this is the fact which you and your government and country refuse to recognize and pretend not to see." Zawahiri even invokes the Abu Rmaileh principle: "It appears that you don't know anything about... the fate of the traitors who cooperated with the invaders against it." In other words, anyone who cooperates with the United States or fights the Islamists will die. Al-Qaida is not a very important group nowadays. But the rise of Islamist forces is clear, even though some of them are hostile to each other. It is Iran, not Ayman, who is the main beneficiary of this phenomenon, though Muslim Brotherhood groups — most notably Hamas — are also advancing. How are President George Bush and his successor identical? Both believe that being liked in the Middle East will bring victory. Bush thought that by gifting the locals with a non-dictatorial Iraq and democracy they would come to love him. The opposite happened. Obama's strategy of being a nice guy and making concessions is likely to be less costly in direct terms for the United States but will also be used by the radicals for their own benefit. One problem with the belief that Obama's popularity and flexibility will succeed is the Abu Rmaileh principle: Don't tell me who is nice; tell me who is going to protect me. Being feared and respected, as Syrian dictator Bashar Assad rightly put it, is more important than being liked. Osama bin Ladin noted that people understandably prefer to put their money on the horse that seems more certain to win the race. A second problem is how people in the Middle East are going to find out that you are such a great guy. They don't follow the American or European media but local sources, including both government and radical Islamist propaganda. The frustrated American colonel in Iraq quoted above was bewildered by the fact that ""We poured a lot of our heart and soul into trying to help the people" only to hear them say the most inaccurate things about the United States stealing their oil, taking their land, and "turning our country over to Israel." A US pull-out may well be the right policy, but it will not bring gratitude. What's needed is not a president who can work with Iran or Syria but a president who can work with Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Lebanese forces who want their country to be free, and so on, along with Israel and Europe in a grand alignment. Yes, it is in large part a zero-sum game: What makes Teheran or Damascus happy is going to damage their intended victims. Alas, just because something isn't true doesn't mean people can't believe it. That's a truism applicable both to the Middle East and to Washington DC. Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center, and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs. His latest book is "The Truth About Syria". To Go To Top

OU'S PARVE STANCE Posted by Ellen W. Horowitz, November 27, 2008.

Like a number of OU products, this one was stamped "parve". The one page document which made its way across my desk is entitled: Working in Coalition with Evangelical Christians. And, according to reports, it is one of a number of resolutions which is expected to be approved at this week's Orthodox Union Convention in Jerusalem. It is clearly an American document, and it sort of reads like "Diaspora Jewry's First Amendment in praise of Evangelicals". The statement endorses shared values regarding religious liberty, support for parochial schools, tax policies, attitudes on same-sex marriage, and physician assisted suicide; while "agreeing to disagree" on issues like stem cell research and matters related to reproductive health policy. Modern Orthodox American rabbis are certainly intune with American culture and headlines. But one wonders if Orthodox Union rabbinic leaders read Israeli papers, or if they are in sync with those matters concerning their Jewish brethren in Israel. Those OU members who did manage to peruse their morning Jerusalem Post, on the eve of the conference, should have picked up the hint that something is terribly amiss in the holy land when headlines reported that Birthright now finds itself in the position of having to screen out Messianic Jews (JPost, November 26). And that a messianic attorney for the Jerusalem Institute of Justice, called the screening practice "blatant, ridiculous discrimination" and "a shame." That fundamentalist Christians now have a political, legislative, economic, cultural, philanthropic, and religious foothold in Israel — as well as property holdings — should have piqued the interest of any rabbi concerned with Jewish continuity. Missionary activity is running unchecked in the Jewish state and the spiritual integrity of the Jewish people is in jeopardy due to a lack of ethical accountability, legislation, and rabbinic guidelines vis a vis our relationship with impassioned Christian leaders and organizations whose very raison d'etre is and remains evangelism. These matters should surely be of the utmost concern to Jewish leaders and yet I don't see the OU addressing the halachic implications of accepting Christian monetary donations, or placing limits on Christian involvement in Israel's political decision-making and legislative process. Nor has the problematic issue of the evangelical quest for a "Judeo-Christian" union been broached by our spiritual leaders. The Jewish people are at a loss over whether or not to attend evangelical-sponsored joint prayer sessions and theologically-loaded events. And laws pertaining to avoda zara are rarely addressed by our rabbinic authorities. Basic halacha with regards to real estate purchases and conducting business with gentiles in Eretz Yisrael fails to make the rabbinic agenda, and many rabbanim steer clear of any debate having to do with freedom of religious expression versus prohibitions against spreading the gospel, and the need for counter-missionary legislation in Israel. Without rabbinic guidance and consensus the Torah observant Israeli and Diaspora public don't have an inkling of how to approach or avoid the growing Hebrew Christian and apostate Jewish community which sees Jesus as their lord and savior, and who want recognition as a legitimate community in Israel. All Orthodox rabbinic leaders should be up in arms over aggressive attempts to change the Law of Return in order to accommodate messianics. A vague statement that "many non Orthodox American Jews and their organizations have consistently questioned the advisability of working in coalition with Evangelicals...due to disagreement on other matters" is included in the resolution, but the OU statement fails to elucidate on what those "other matters" are — although they hint that they are political or theological in nature. I can tell you that one of those "other" concerns has to do with the evangelical's overt missionary agenda. Another difference of opinion may be over the territorial integrity of Jerusalem. But with regards to Jerusalem, surely Orthodox rabbis — even American ones — should have some sense of Jewish history. While numerous nations, empires, and crusaders have all valued and attached themselves to Jerusalem for political, territorial or religious purposes; without a respect for Judaism that support is worthless, detrimental and destructive to the Jewish people. And as long as numerous evangelical groups continue to see the Land of Israel as fertile ground for "harvesting souls", while simultaneously "supporting" us, then one has to question their level of respect for our faith and for our people. In the final paragraph of the statement, OU does indeed express an awareness "of the desire of some Evangelical Christians, as a matter of faith, to spread their religion to Jews", and the OU claims they will "remain vigilant to the dangers this presents to Jewish continuity". However, by relegating this concern to the end of a resolution replete with words of appreciation and gratitude to evangelicals, it takes on the status of a mumbled afterthought. It would have been far more appropriate and effective had the Orthodox Union had the gumption to place this matter of concern at the top of their agenda — after all Jewish continuity is the priority. Perhaps the most unsettling part of the OU statement does come at the beginning. OU uses the legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik z"l to defend their partnering with evangelical groups. It appears that the Rav did indeed, as the statement claims, encourage working "in partnership with all people in the service of human welfare and rights" while proscribing theological interfaith dialogue. However the current relationship being nurtured with evangelicals is inevitably replete with religious, biblical and eschatological discourse and theme. And this cooperation is often couched within the context of "preserving our Judeo-Christian heritage" — something the Rav utterly rejected. It's worth asking ourselves whether or not evangelical exclusivity has actually hindered the message of a universal striving for morality which Rav Soloveitchik did encourage, and whether or not it contributes to the alienation of non-Orthodox Jews from their Orthodox brethren. Rav Soloveichik's legacy is that of a genius who did not skirt weighty matters nor treat them superficially. His writings and halachic rulings are absolutely profound. The OU resolution on working with evangelicals is bereft of a spirit of soul-wrestling and introspection — and the Rav loved to wrestle. He was hardly parve. Even Rav Soloveitchik's halachic essay on interfaith dialogue was entitled "Confrontation", and not "accommodation". Indeed one wonders if OU's feeble and evasive stand on the missionary threat facing Israel would be deemed as an insult to the Rav who back in November of 1963 joined the halachic giants of his generation and penned a no-nonsense protest to then Prime Minister Levi Eshkol: We the undersigned...shuddered at reports of missionary activity in the Holy Land, which threatens our survival as one people in the Land and in the Diaspora... We turn to the Prime Minister...to bring to an end by legislative means the duplicity of the missions which wean Jews away from their faith." The Orthodox Union's statement abounds with "feel good" declarations on religious freedoms and American values, but it is simply too comfortable, lacks backbone, and is not intune with the reality on the ground here in Israel.   UPDATE November 30, 2008: I was informed last night (motzei Shabbat) that the OU resolution which is the subject of the below article, and was scheduled for approval at last week's convention in Jerusalem, has been withdrawn and is under reassessment due to new information being brought to light. This decision followed a flurry of activity including several private meetings with key figures from the Orthodox Union, as well as intense lobbying efforts by the newly formed grassroots movement "Jewish Israel" (their public awareness online portal will be launched next month) They can be contacted at info@JewishIsrael.com, or you can email me at ellenwrite@bezeqint.net] Ellen Horowitz and her family live on the Golan Heights. She is the author of The Oslo Years: A Mother's Journal and is working on a new book which takes a critical look at the Israel-Evangelical relationship To Go To Top

MUMBAI: MUSLIM TERRORISTS KIDNAP CHABAD RABBI AND FAMILY Posted by Sonia Nusenbaum, November 27, 2008.

This is from Pamela Geller of the Atlas Shrugged website http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/

Keep telling us that Islamic anti-semitism is a figment of Bostom's imagination. Keep telling us this is not about good and evil. I wonder if the UN is going to strongly condemn the Rabbi's family for being such a desirable target. Is reporting this story insulting to Islam and in violation of the UN resolution against "defaming Islam". Chabad's website reported Wednesday night that the organization's emissary to India and his wife Rivka were missing. The couple has a two-year-old child. According to the report, one of Holtzberg's friends received an email from the rabbi at around 11:30 pm (local time). Israeli Consulate was in touch with Holtzberg, but the line was cut in middle of the conversation. Did the Rabbi have a Uzi and if not, why not? For every Jew, a 22. Report: Mumbai Terrorists Abducted Chabad Rabbi's Family by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (IsraelNN.com) Muslim terrorists in Mumbai reportedly have abducted Chabad Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg, his wife Rivka and their child. Indian television reported that six Israelis are being held hostage. Indian media reported that a couple and their teenage son, none of them Israelis, were Rabbi_chabad_family killed in the Chabad House, called the Nariman House. One terrorist also was killed. Gunfire occasionally has been heard from the building, which the army has surrounded. At least 101 people, including five terrorists, have died since the attacks began, and 600 others have been wounded. The terrorists have held more than 250 people as hostages in the Chabad House, a hospital and luxury hotels. Several other Israelis have maintained telephone contact from their eight floor hotel rooms. The Chabad website reported that "the situation is grim." Commando forces have arrived by sea and are battling the terrorists in an effort to rescue the hostage victims. The Chabad emissary outside the building attacked (Archive photo: col.org.il)   UPDATE: (Video) Part of the Muslim's plan was to kidnap the Jews VIDEO — There is growing concern Thursday evening that the Israelis who were taken hostage by terrorists who stormed the Chabad center in Mumbai, India have been killed, this after alarming information was relayed to Israel's senior-most officials. However, there has been no definite word of their fate. At around 4:30 am Thursday four terrorists took advantage of the fact that local security forces were operating in several locations throughout Mumbai and seized the Chabad center in the city. Contact Sonia Nusenbaum at nusenbaum@juno.com To Go To Top

ROSH YESHIVA ARRESTED BY ISRAEL POLICE Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, November 27, 2008.

Rabbi Yigal Shendorfi is one of the finest persons I have ever met. He has been MOSER NAFSHO to teach Torah and provide life guidance to hundreds, if not by now thousands, of Jewish youth. It is therefore not surprising that the unJewish, Torah haters of Israel have decided to persecute him. He is guilty not only of the crime of teaching Torah but of teaching love of the Land of Israel to his students. Furthermore he is guilty of the terrible crime of being a "settler" and asserting that the Land of Israel belongs by G-D given right to the people of Israel. The wonder is that unJews waited so long to persecute him. This is by Yechiel Spira and it appeared in Yeshiva World www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/General+News/26496/ Rosh+Yeshiva+Arrested+by+Israel+Police.html

The rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Yeshu'at Mordechai, located in the Shomron community of Nachliel, Rabbi Yigal Shendorfi, was arrested on Tuesday night. According to YWN contacts in the community, the rabbi's arrest is seen as deterrence, sending a message that the authorities are now taking a harder stance, a lower-tolerance policy for residents of yishuvim in Yehuda and Shomron. Police waited for the rav as he traveled home, picking him up at the Kiryat Sefer Checkpoint. It appears that he is being held for alleged illegal activity in connection with protests that took place in the summer at the Yad Yair Outpost, near Nachliel. According to authorities, a number of security personnel and vehicles were injured and damaged as a result of the actions of youths at the outpost. Rav Shendorfi is being arraigned on Wednesday with the state requesting he be held in incarceration. Attorney Naftali Wurtzburger is representing the rav.   UPDATED THURSDAY MORNING: The rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Yeshu'at Mordechai, located in the Shomron community of Nachliel, Rabbi Yigal Shendorfi, was remanded to house arrest in the home of his brother in the community of Neriya, located a short distance from Nachliel. The house arrest order is valid until Friday. Authorities do not wish to permit the rabbi to return to his home, fearing contact with others who were present with him at the nearby Yad Yair Outpost in the summer. The rabbi is prohibited from speaking to anyone who was at the outpost during that period. YWN reported on his arrest, and it now appears he will face charges of incitement. During the rabbi's questioning, he was asked "What were you doing there?" The rav explained that the area at the time was not a 'closed military zone' so therefore his presence was not a violation of the law. As to why he was there he added then becomes an education issue and such a question he does not answer while being restrained in handcuffs. Also arrested with the rav was the yeshiva's mashgiach, Rav Shmuel Moro, who was also released to house arrest. When I spoke with him, he preferred not to release any details pertaining to the ordeal. (Yechiel Spira — YWN Israel) 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. To Go To Top

PLEASE PRAY FOR THE SAFE RELEASE OF CHABAD RABBI AND HIS WIFE Posted by Rachel Chaya Leah Yadin, November 27, 2008.

Please pray for the safe release of Chabad Rabbi and his wife being held hostage by 4 gun men! Contact Rachel Chaya Leah Yadin at sfardiprincess@hotmail.com To Go To Top

EMERGENCY Posted by Carrie Devorah, November 26, 2008.

This is from Rabbi Eilfort Dear Friends, Please read the article from www.Lubavitch.com listed below and please ACT. The Chabad emissaries in Mumbai, India are missing in this latest Muslim terrorist attack. Please say Psalms as instructed below. The power of Psalms is profound indeed. Please note that the mainstream media is neglecting to mention that a specifically Jewish target was chosen by the terrorists. The young Chabad family is not a political entity. They are a religious entity. Don't for a moment forget that Muslim terrorism is anti-Semitic. The world claims that they are "only" against Israel. The fact is that they are anti Jewish (and anti Christian). Every second that the mainstream media neglects to inform us of this fact; they are doing all of us a grave disservice. Please contact your local media and tell them to report the news honestly. Our future may depend on it. Sincerely, Rabbi Eilfort Chabad@La-Costa.org

Search for Chabad Family in Mumbai After Terrorist Strike Mumbai, India — (November 26, 2008) The situation is grim late Wednesday in Mumbai (Bombay) India where reports of more than 80 dead and 250 wounded are seeping out of the beleaguered city. Of great concern is the silence from Chabad's representatives to Mumbai, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg. No one from the Chabad center has been heard from since the attacks. The dead and wounded are victims of a sophisticated plot in which seven locations throughout the city were attacked by terrorists. Several of the city's most exclusive hotels, a restaurant, train station, and hotel were bombed. The attacks come as the country is consumed by controversial elections. The city, which is India's financial capital, plays host to many foreigners and their embassies are assisting in the search and rescue efforts. Lubavitch personnel in Bangkok, Israel and New York are working closely with the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the U.S. government to help establish contact with the Holtzbergs and other missing persons in the Chabad House area. Mumbai's Chabad House, situated near the sites of destruction, is a popular stop for Israeli tourists. The Holtzbergs offer a host of programs, including providing kosher food, to locals and visitors alike. Carrie Devorah is an investigative photojournalist based in DC. Former religion editor of "Lifestyles" Magazine, her areas of focus are faith, homeland security and terrorism. Devorah is the sister of Jewish Press columnist Yechezkel Chezi Scotty Goldberg, victim of Egged Bus 19 bombing, 1-29-04. Goldberg was a noted psychologist with expertise in at-risk youth. Contact her at carriedev@gmail.com To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: SO, NU? Posted by Arlene Kushner, November 26, 2008.

Last night at an Anglo Likud Forum at which some of the candidates for the Likud list spoke, I heard constitutional lawyer Yosi Fuchs — founder of Forum for the Land of Israel that did so much to help the people of Gush Katif. In the course of speaking about various subjects, he commented that he was convinced that Ariel Sharon's total reversal of his previous stance on keeping Gush Katif was connected to legal problems he was having at the time. That is, in promoting the disengagement Sharon moved in accordance with a leftist position, as the prosecutorial and legal system in this country is peopled heavily with individuals who tilt left — the supposition being that any action against him would be delayed if said people were pleased with his actions. Now, continued Fuchs, there is reason to believe that something similar is going on with Ehud Olmert, who came out of nationalist tradition and is now embracing stances "to the left of Meretz." ~~~~~~~~~~ Today the news carried reports of Olmert's statements on completing his visit with President Bush: "In principle there is nothing to prevent us from reaching an agreement on the core issues in the near future. I believe it is possible. I believe it is timely. A declaration is needed. I am ready to make it. I hope the other side is." This is a patently ridiculous as well as outrageous statement. Agreement on the core issues? Between now and February? He's joking. That means agreeing on the division of Jerusalem and on the issue of the refugees, not to mention final borders. I've covered this ground already. The PA is not going along with whatever it might be possible for Olmert to offer. And yet he says this. Of course, he covered himself, by indicating there wouldn't be any interim declarations, because he was aiming for a full agreement. Which, by the way, is what Abbas has been saying. But he let it be known that he wasn't going to stop trying to reach that agreement and that he considered that it was within his jurisdiction as a lame duck, transitional prime minister to do so. ~~~~~~~~~~ And now? Now we have a statement from Attorney General Menachem Mazuz who told Olmert today that he plans to indict him in the "Rishon Tours" affair, in which it is alleged that the prime minister sent bills to more than one organization for trips made abroad; the excess, said to be over $100,000, went into a special account and was apparently used by Olmert for private travel with his family. Olmert's attorneys will be given a hearing before the indictment is made. What I ponder, as do many others, is why it taken so long. This issue has been pending for months. ~~~~~~~~~~ Since Mazuz's announcement, MKs from across the political spectrum have been demanding that Olmert suspend himself immediately. MK Zehava Gal-On (Meretz) said Olmert "lacks the moral and public virtues that are necessary in order to lead." MK Ophir Paz-Pines (Labor) declared this "...a tragic day for the State of Israel. We've reached a new low point. It is wrong for a person accused by the state of criminal charges to continue sitting in prime minister's seat." MK Aryeh Eldad (NU-NRP) said he was disappointed with how slowly the legal system has been moving. "The public knows that a criminal is leading Kadima's government...[I am] constantly amazed at Olmert's 'chutzpa' — as he continues to give away territories to the Arabs and promises withdrawals while his only mandate is over the attorneys who will represent him during the trial." MK Michael Eitan (Likud) expressed concern about our foreign policy. "Olmert should announce he is freezing all negotiations until a new government is elected...a transitional government led by a [soon to be] indicted man is a government lacking the legal and moral legitimacy required for leading a nation in political moves with far reaching consequences." ~~~~~~~~~~ Is this going to stop Olmert in his brazen tracks at last? His associates say he has already resigned [with the resignation to take effect when a new government is in place after February elections] and that is enough. Olmert says he has no intention of suspending himself. But Kadima head Tzipi Livni has been discussing this with party heads and may ask him to suspend himself. He is not doing the Kadima party any good before the election. ~~~~~~~~~~ I will note here that Olmert categorically denied that Bush had asked him not to take action in Iran. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

CARPE DIEM — OR CAN WE ALL RELAX NOW? Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, November 26, 2008.

Melanie Phillips is one of those insightful, erudite commentators who is, as usual, deadly accurate in her summation of foreign and national problems. One is reminded of Caroline Glick and, not doubt hated by the twisty establishment who so ably hide behind verbiage — otherwise called lying. Phillips dissects the planned establishment of another "Jihadist" State, completing the deadly necklace of Terrorist states, stretching from Iran and Syria/Lebanon in the North, through what Egypt and Libya will become when the Muslim Brotherhood takes over. They expect to become heirs to the "Jihad" (holy war against non-Muslim "infidels"). IF it comes into existence, the poisonous Muslim Arab Palestinian State will be the centerpiece established by the Bush-Rice Administration, followed by the Obama and his staff of very hostile Arabists. This appeared in the Spectator www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3039656/ carpe-diem-or-can-we-all-relax-now.thtml

On my recent travels in America, I met two types of Republicans: those possessed by the most profound, gut-wrenching fear of the supreme danger that President-elect Obama represented for their country and the world, and those who believed that he was merely a cynical opportunist who had used radical politics as a means of achieving power but who, mindful of the need not to derail his presidency and indeed to campaign for a second term, not to mention having to face up to the dual threats of economic and military armageddon, would throw all his radical associates under the bus and govern from the centre. This later prognosis may indeed turn out to be true; as I have said before, I desperately hope that circumstances will force Obama to repudiate his past. At present we do not know whether this will happen; and so far, I have seen nothing to suggest that it will. Unlike those who see in the emerging shape of his administration evidence that he will be a pragmatic centrist, I do not think it necessarily shows anything of the kind. For sure, he has made some solid and reassuring appointments, such as his Treasury team. But did anyone really believe that a radical president would appoint obvious radicals to key roles in his administration? Maybe he really was a centrist all along. But if not, the one thing Obama is not going to do is torpedo his presidency at the very start by displaying a radical bent. The name of the game must be not to frighten the horses, and never more so than in the two most explosive areas of all: the economy and Israel. After all, the oftlinerevolutionary Alinsky school of politics in which his politics to date have been solidly anchored is entirely about stealth, iron discipline and steady incremental cultural change under the radar, so that the terms o f political trade are changed forever, as summarized here. The aim is to achieve increased control at home and decreased power abroad, in order radically to change America and neuter its power. But it must be done with maximum deniability. But hang on, people say — what about Hillary? Doesn't the fact that Obama wants to make her Secretary of State prove that Obama is a centrist, just like her? And what about Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, the son of a former Irgun Jewish terrorist? As have said before, Emanuel's parentage is irrelevant. As The Forward notes, he was not only a player in the catastrophic Oslo appeasement process but also supported the informal "Geneva initiative" which even doveish Israelis condemned as a suicide note for Israel. And as for Mrs Clinton, Hillary the Moderate is itself a fairly recent piece of triangulated reconstitution. Not that long ago, she was significantly to the left of her husband; and it must not be forgotten, crucially, that she herself is an Alinsky disciple. What is much more likely is that Hillary, a professed defender of Israel, would be used (as would, to a lesser extent, Rahm Emanuel) to provide deniable cover for Obama as his administration forces Israel to cut its own throat — the centrepiece of what passes for his foreign policy to date. For surrounding Hillary would be appointments which would be solidly anti-Israel: people who believe that Israel must be forced to jeopardize its security to bring into being a Palestinian state which they think would lance the Islamist boil because they believe that Israel is not the victim but the cause of Islamist rage and global terror. It has been widely reported that Obama has been consulting the former Republican National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, who is a leading voice in this camp. Moreover, according to the Wall Street Journal, Scowcroft is linked to a number of like-minded Republicans Obama is thought to be considering bringing into his administration, such as Jim Jones as his National Security Adviser. A few days ago, Scowcroft and Carter's former NSA Zbigniew Brzezinski (an open enemy of Israel and another of Obama's advisers) penned a significant op-ed in the Washington Post. This appeared to be a first draft of the Obama plan to force Israel back into its 1948 "Auschwitz" borders and bring a Palestinian state into being, in the quite remarkable belief that this would dissipate much of the appeal of Hezbollah and Hamas, dependent as it is on the Palestinians' plight. It would change the region's psychological climate, putting Iran back on the defensive and putting a stop to its swagger. What planet are they on? A Palestinian state would be run by Hamas as a proxy for Iran. As such, it would be a disaster for the Palestinians — as several of them have now realized as well as for Israel, the region and the world. Moreover, to allay Israel's security concerns over handing over territory to a Palestinian government that is incapable of combating terrorism, Scowcroft, Brzezinski and Jones recommend stationing an international force, perhaps from NATO, in the disputed territories. Ah yes: to repeat the conspicuous success NATO troops achieved in bringing peace in Srebenica, for example, or Rwanda, or Lebanon? The Republicans, who really don't begin to grasp just what has hit them, similarly fail to acknowledge that among their own ranks are many who, just like in the British Conservative party, share with the left the desire to neutralize American power and th row Israel under the bus. Some of those people came to power under George W Bush and set him on the disastrous path to appeasement — which his demented detractors on the left somehow failed altogether to notice. There are other unsettling indications that Obama may already be running a shadow foreign policy. Robert Malley, one of Clinton's Oslo negotiators, is one of America's most outspoken apologists for Palestinian terrorism against Israel and claims that Syrian, Lebanese and Iranian attacks against Israel are all Israel's fault. The Obama campaign distanced itself from Malley last May after the Times reported that he was meeting regularly with Hamas leaders. But a few days after Obama's election, Malley traveled to Syria, ostensibly under the aegis of the appeasement-minded International Crisis Group. Yet one of his aides told FrontPage Magazine that acting on Obama's instructions, Malley traveled to Cairo and Damascus to tell Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syria's President Assad that "the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests." And as Caroline Glick reported, Hamas terror operative Ahmad Youssef told the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper that in the months leading up to his election, Obama's advisers held steady contacts with the leaders of the terror group in Gaza, and had asked that Hamas keep the meetings secret in order not to harm Obama's chances of being elected. If Israel is to be browbeaten into committing suicide, however, it is essential that the fingerprints of the Israel-haters are not found at the scene of the crime and that it is carried out instead by someone with impeccable credentials as an Israel supporter. That person may well be Hillary Clinton who, if appointed Secretary of State, will be expected to finish the job her husband failed to do and force a Palestine state into being. To fully grasp this, it has to be understood that there are two kinds of people who threaten to deliver Israel to its enemies for annihilation. The first are the Israel-haters who want to see it destroyed. The second are those on the left who, while believing they have Israel's interests at heart, believe also that its security can be guaranteed by a Palestine state. They thus see Israel's resistance to that state as the obstacle to peace in the region, whereas in fact it would pose a mortal threat to Israel (and now also to the region and the world, since such a state would be a proxy for Iran). That's why Clinton Mark One pressurized Israel to dismember itself under Oslo and in the process turned the Palestinians from a terrorist gang into an army with international backing. Clinton Mark Two would be Oslo all over again — but this time trailing clouds of Iranian plutonium. While neutralizing America abroad, Alinkskyite politics mean c hanging the terms of trade at home to extend the power of the state and undermine western values. So it's no surprise that Melody Barnes, head of policy at the Centre for American Progress, is apparently to be director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. As Ed Lasky comments on American Thinker: The Center for American Progress is a Soros-funded group, of course. Here comes drug legalization, abortion on demand, and euthanasia. And then there's Eric Holder who has been named as Attorney-General. Holder was the Clinton administration's last deputy Attorney General. NRO recalls that notoriously he granted a pardon to the racketeer Marc Rich thanks to the intercession of his ex-wife, a generous donor to Clinton's library and legal-defense fund. Holder's role was aptly described as "unconscionable' by a congressional committee. Worse still: In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton's commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN conspirators. These pardons "of terrorists who even Holder has conceded had not expressed any remorse" were issued in the months after al-Qaeda's 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, when the Clinton administration was pretending to be the scourge of terrorism. The commutations were nakedly political, obviously designed by Clinton to assist his wife's impending Senate campaign by appealing to New York's substantial Puerto Rican vote... He is convinced justice in America needs to be "established" rather than enforced; he's excited about hate crimes and enthusiastic about the constitutionally dubious Violence Against Women Act; he's a supporter of affirmative action and a practitioner of the statistical voodoo that makes it possible to burden police departments with accusations of racial profiling and the states with charges of racially skewed death-penalty enforcement; he's more likely to be animated by a touchy-feely Reno-esque agenda than traditional enforcement against crimes; he's in favor of ending the detentions of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay and favors income redistribution to address the supposed root causes of crime. Yes, maybe Obama is really a centrist. But a real centrist would simply never choose such people to be in his administration. The most telling comment of all was made by Rahm Emanuel. As the Sunday Telegraph reported, he said of America's financial meltdown: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." He continued: "Things that we postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." Yes, there's a silver revolutionary lining in every capitalist cloud. Carpe diem, eh? 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 gwinston@gwinstonglobal.org To Go To Top

PRO-IRANIAN FABRICATIONS Posted by Kenneth R. Timmerman, November 26, 2008.

Should the next administration reach out to the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and open negotiations "without preconditions" on a broad array of security issues? Would expanding ongoing diplomatic exchanges with Iran increase the chances of convincing Iran's clerical leaders to halt nuclear weapons-related work and stop their support for international terrorist groups? These are serious questions, worthy of a serious debate based on facts and a careful analysis of the Iranian regime's 30-year track record as a negotiating partner. But that is not what the pro-Iranian lobby wants to happen. Tehran's advocates in Washington believe they are on a roll. With a president-elect who has stated repeatedly that he would conduct negotiations "without preconditions" with the Islamic Republic of Iran, they feel the time now has come to advance Tehran's agenda openly in Washington. Leading the charge is a group calling itself the National Iranian American Council, NIAC, which has been lobbying Congress to win support for an agenda that mirrors the goals of the Tehran regime. The name of this group itself is misleading. Rather than assemble a broad cross-section of Iranian-Americans, most of whom came to this country to escape the totalitarian clutches of the Islamic dictatorship, NIAC has alienated them by brazenly portraying the Tehran regime as moderate, reasonable, and misunderstood. Victims of the regime such as Ahmed Batebi would have a hard time swallowing such a benign view of the thugs now running Iran. Mr. Batebi's sole crime was to hold up in public the bloody T-shirt of a Tehran University student who had been pushed to his death by regime agents from a third-floor dormitory balcony. For his audacity, Mr. Batebi was thrown in jail, tortured, threatened with death, then locked up for nearly a decade. He escaped to the United States earlier this year after being let out from prison on a furlough. NIAC's latest ploy has been to trot out a jolly band of "useful idiots" (to use V.I. Lenin's term) to parrot Tehran's line, while misleading Congress with false facts and dangerously mistaken theories. With grant money from a congeries of left-wing organizations, some of them funded by George Soros, NIAC has devised a five-point "plan" that calls for the new administration to "open the door to direct, unconditional and comprehensive negotiations" with Tehran. NIAC would have us believe Supreme Leader Ali "Khamenei's track record reveals a cautious decision-maker who acts after consulting advisers holding a range of views," and therefore he is a man we can do business with. The International Atomic Energy Agency has discovered that on Ayatollah Khamenei's "cautious" orders Iran was conducting secret and prohibited nuclear weapons work for 15 years. Equally cautious — apparently, in NIAC's eyes — was Ayatollah Khamenei's decision to order Hezbollah to launch more than 4,000 rockets against civilians in Israel during the summer war in 2006. Also cautious, from this point of view, was Iran's decision to evacuate hundreds of al Qaeda fighters and top leaders from Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, and provide them with safe haven, material support and a new base of operations inside Iran. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is touted as the only Republican with a chance of keeping his job in the Obama administration, questioned the vanity of seeking "moderates" in Tehran in a Sept. 29 speech at the National Defense University. "I have been involved in the search for the elusive Iranian moderate for 30 years," he said. "Every administration since then has reached out to the Iranians in one way or another and all have failed. ... [T]he reality is the Iranian leadership has been consistently unyielding over a very long period of time in response to repeated overtures from the United States about having a different and better kind of relationship." The techniques used by the pro-Tehran lobby are reminiscent of those pioneered by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, who wrote in 1941: "When one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it." An essential part of the big lie technique involves silencing critics. This is what NIAC tried to do on Tuesday in a U.S. Senate forum hosted by Sen. Thomas Carper, Delaware Democrat, by refusing entry to an accredited reporter unsympathetic to its cause and by turning off microphones for audience questions. While Tehran's track record is too extensive to be developed here, a top adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned the incoming U.S. administration it would be folly to pursue a new round of talks with Tehran. "We've been negotiating with the Iranians since 2003," said Therese Delpech said during a visit to Washington. "We came to the conclusion that they are not interested at all in negotiating, but in buying time for their military [nuclear] program." Whatever decision the Obama administration makes regarding Iran should be based on an appreciation of U.S. national security interests and the real threats from Iran, as described by Mr. Carper on Tuesday, not upon the advice of groups spouting the prescriptions of our adversaries. Kenneth R. Timmerman is a contributing editor for Newsmax Media. His latest book is "Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender"(Crown Forum, 2007). This article appeared in the Washington Times http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/26/pro-iranian-fabrications/ To Go To Top

JUSTICE FOR ARRESTED TERRORIST?; JUDAISM & SOCIAL JUSTICE; IRAN BOMB PREPARATION CONFIRMED Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 26, 2008.

OBAMA RUN-OF-THE-MILL? The President-elect telephoned Abbas, and said he would work for the "two-state solution." One who says he favors the "two-state solution" doesn't know the answer or is anti-Zionist. That conventional slogan masks confusion or malevolence. Giving sovereignty to jihadists is no solution. It would engender more warfare. Neither would it make for two states in Palestine. There already are two, Israel and Jordan. WHAT IS A JUST SOLUTION FOR ARRESTED TERRORIST? At a checkpoint outside of Nablus, an Arab tried to stab a female Israeli soldier. Overpowered, he was taken for questioning. His explosives belt was removed and submitted to what Israel calls a "controlled demolition" (IMRA, 11/19). If not for the checkpoint, the terrorist would have gotten through. He might have used the explosive belt to murder people. The checkpoint saved innocent lives. I (and Judaism) value human life over convenience. Checkpoints are denounced by the State Dept., the UNO, and so-called human rights organizations for inconvenience to Arabs subject to them. I think removing them would be unjust. The news brief identified the soldier as female. I don't see its relevance, but perhaps you do, so I mentioned it. The word "innocent," for intended victims of Islamist murder is used peculiarly. Civilized people call the Israeli civilians "innocent." Why not the soldiers, too? They haven't committed crimes. They are protecting the innocent civilians. The P.A. has signed peace agreements with Israel, but indoctrinates and arms terrorists. Therefore, I consider the soldiers innocent victims primarily of the P.A. and secondarily of Israeli regimes that let the P.A. get into position to foist terrorists upon Israelis. What will happen to the attempted murderer? I call him "attempted murderer," because this attempt failed. Perhaps he made other attempts, which succeeded. Perhaps his next attempt will succeed. After all, he is likely to be released in a few years. The release is done ostensibly to boost Abbas' popularity with his bloodthirsty people. Their bloodthirstiness increases from Abbas' media and schools. Israel wants Abbas, organizer of terrorism, to be more popular. That is not just. I think the terrorist should be executed. I don't like unwarranted violence, but accept it as definite deterrence against such vicious murderers. Let him wear the belt, during controlled detonation! EGYPTIAN NAVY Egypt has 3-4 times as many warships as has Israel. Israel has as many submarines, a modern type from Germany. Israel relies upon those subs for a nuclear deterrent. Egypt now wishes to buy the same class of subs. Israel says that such subs would enable Egypt to close Israeli ports. The subs would change the balance of power in the Mideast (IMRA, 11/19). Does Egypt wants them so it can figure out how to counter-act Israel's deterrent? JUDAISM & SOCIAL JUSTICE Some Jews are confused about Judaism. They equate it to promotion of "social justice." Social justice can be sought by non-Jews as well as Jews. If that were all Judaism comprises, then there would be no role for Judaism. Judaism, however, is a religion. In that religion, one is enjoined to practice legal justice. Thus Judaism demands that the law be applied fairly to widows and orphans. Sometimes non-religious Jews consider peace the highest good. However, sometimes social justice prevails only by war. [Think of WWII.] Sometimes it isn't clear what social justice is. For example, producing ethanol may reduce oil imports and dependency. [Getting it from corn may require just as much fuel to be imported for tractors]. Growing ethanol may raise food prices. Therefore, the ethanol proposition is controversial. The justice in it is not clear. "...modern practitioners of social justice fetishism tout affirmative action programs that discriminate against Jews through quotas and reduced standards as 'Jewish social justice.'" Those programs are unjust to Jews. [They also harm society, the economy, and the coddled group that is encouraged not to bother learning how to take care of itself (Prof. Steven Plaut, 11/19). Judaism is consistent with social justice but broader. Limiting it to social justice may be a rationale for pretending to practice Judaism without difficulty or even without being religious. IRAN VS. THE WEB Iran is among the highest 20 users of Internet. The clerical regime has blocked Iranians' access to five millions websites. The government claims they are immoral and anti-social (IMRA, 11/19). Some may be, but others simply express a different point of view. In the US, adults may exercise "parental control" over what their children watch. In Iran, the regime exercises "parental control" over what adults watch. ISRAELI CHIEF-OF-STAFF ADDRESSES NATO He stated that the world's chief military problem is global terrorism. Radical states underwrite it. These terrorists are more dangerous than earlier enemies, because they don't fight in identifiable uniforms, they lack scruples, and they seek weapons of mass-destruction. Israel seeks close relationships with NATO and members in counteracting terrorism. Being in the forefront of defense against jihad, Israel has gained expertise about it. Israel has advanced technology for this. Israel makes a valuable ally for moderate states, such as those in NATO (IMRA, 11/20). The Chief put Israel's proposition well. A strange omission was his reference to terrorism as the enemy, whereas the enemy is the school of Islam that utilizes methods of terrorism. This school keeps graduating foes. Another omission was that the Islamists raise large sums from among their migrants to the West. The drawback in the Chief's proposition is that Israel betrays its allies. Thus it let the Free Lebanese Army be defeated, and its security zone in Lebanon replaced by Hizbullah. It lets its agents in the P.A. be rounded up and executed. In fact, during the Rabin-Peres regime, as a mark of confidence in Arafat, Israel turned over to the P.A. the names of its agents there. Arafat had them all liquidated. In many ways, Israel favors the Arabs and even terrorists over its own people, in property disputes, checkpoints, education. I would not trust Israel run by leftists. If Israel is so good in fighting against terrorism, why does it let or even help terrorists build up their forces in Lebanon, Gaza, and in Judea-Samaria? Didn't it fight clumsily in Lebanon, recently? Were Israel such a force against terrorism, it would not be seeking to give territory to the terrorist Abbas nor to that radical supporter of terrorism, Assad. IRAN BOMB PREPARATION CONFIRMED Some official body concluded that Iran has prepared sufficient material for a nuclear bomb. The question is how long will it take (NY Times, 11/19). Such studies always are behind or under-estimates. The earlier source that estimated Iran has sufficient material for six bombs probably is closer to the truth. The official conclusion disproves that NIE intelligence estimate that Iran was years away from producing a bomb. The NIE estimate was a political document seeking to tie Pres. Bush's arms. Why did Bush let them get away with it? Why didn't candidate McCain expose this, to strengthen his own standing? 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 To Go To Top

PRESIDENT PARDONS TURKEY — HAPPY THANKSGIVING Posted by Carrie Devorah, November 26, 2008.

Maybe his next pardon will be more significant. He should pardon Jonathan Pollard, who has served out his sentence and then some.

Carrie Devorah is an investigative photojournalist based in DC. Former religion editor of "Lifestyles" Magazine, her areas of focus are faith, homeland security and terrorism. Devorah is the sister of Jewish Press columnist Yechezkel Chezi Scotty Goldberg, victim of Egged Bus 19 bombing, 1-29-04. Goldberg was a noted psychologist with expertise in at-risk youth. Contact her at carriedev@gmail.com To Go To Top

PATHETIC ISRAELI GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND PREDICTABLE RESULTS Posted by Steven Shamrak, November 25, 2008.

US Voters are pro-Israel source: theisraelproject.org A poll of US voters conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research has shown that 72 percent of voting Americans across the political spectrum believe "even with all the problems that America faces at home now, we must still work hard to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons." American voters are clear about what they expect from their new president. They worry about the economy, war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the success of the war on terror. At the same time, they support Israel but do not want the US to interfere in the Jewish state's affairs: Which TWO of the following should be the top foreign policy priority for the next president? Is it... 57% Ending the war in Iraq 42% Defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban 42% Restoring global economic growth 19% Bringing peace between Israel and the Palestinians 16% Dealing with the instability of Pakistan 11% Meeting the threat of Putin's Russia Now, on another subject... Thinking about the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the Middle East, please tell me whether, in general, you consider yourself to be... 32% a strong supporter of Israel 25% a supporter of Israel 05% a supporter of the Palestinians 01% a strong supporter of the Palestinians 57% — SUPPORT ISRAEL; 06% — SUPPORT PALESTINIANS No More Evictions of Jews from Jewish Land! Activists hoping to keep the Peace House in Hevron under Jewish ownership have rejected offers of help from the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria (Yesha), according to organizer Daniella Weiss. The decision to reject the council's help was made by the forum managing the Peace House and was accepted by all of the relevant nationalist groups, she said. Among the groups that rejected the Yesha Council's attempts to participate were the Land of Israel Faithful, Youth for the Land of Israel, Women in Green, Homesh First, the Jewish Heart (HaLev HaYehudi), and Youth for the Complete Land of Israel. "They cooperated with the government when we fought the horrible crime of the expulsion from Gush Katif; they are cooperating with the destruction of outposts and the plan to evacuate Migron," Weiss said of the Yesha Council. "The Yesha Council's mission ended with the failure in Gush Katif." (The inability to use human resources and organize proper resistance by the Gaza leadership, if not something more cynical, allowed Olmert's unelected, traitorous government to deport 8,500 Jews from Gaza!) Freedom of Speech? Israel Way. Three young men who were charged with incitement and rioting during the expulsion from Gaza will be put on trial. The three are the founders of the "National Home' movement, Shai Malka, Ariel Vangruber and Adiel Sharabani. (Only traitors, who advocate the demise of Israel, are allowed to demonstrate in Israel!) Vision of Hypocritical Minds. U.S. President George W. Bush declared in farewell talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday that the vision of a Palestinian state remained alive, despite failure: "I believe that vision is alive and needs to be worked on." (How many more years of suffering and political pretence of "worked ons" must Jews endure to convince delusional leadership that Israel's enemies do not want peace?) Food for Thought: When Jewish people are finally able to shake off the slave mentality developed during the last two millennia, the world will see a shining country, free of terrorising neighbours. This Jewish state will then be the world's spiritual and technological leader. — Steven Shamrak It is Time to Stop Worry and Start to Act. Iran said it test-fired a new generation of surface-to-surface missile with a range close to 2,000 km (1,200 miles), almost as far as another Iranian missile, Shahab 3. That would enable it to reach Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf. (Development of an Atom bomb and testing of long-range missiles — the message is clear — Israel is the target! The Iranians have been quite frank about it.) European anti-Semitism still Flourishing. Dozens of demonstrators rallied at Oxford University to protest against the visit by President Shimon Peres. During the speech he made there, demonstrators held signs reading ''Free Palestine'' and shouted anti-Israeli slogans. (They don't just hate this traitor of the Jewish people. They just love to hate Jews!) with the Hidden Decay of Fascism. Sweden refuses to extradite a Danish neo-Nazi, saying that he has not committed any crime under Swedish law. Blind 'Peace' is Like a Bad Marriage. President Shimon Peres told Diaspora Jewish leaders at the annual General Assembly of the United Jewish Committees, "making peace is a little bit like marriage [and] you have to close your eyes and accept what is possible to accept." His audience laughed and applauded. (It is due to 'bad marriages', which should not have occurred in the first place, that we have such a high divorce rate. But the ugliest part is that they all, the so-called Jewish 'leadership', applauded this stupidity!) Quote of the Week: "Whenever the [peace] process stalls, there will be those who will pull out the Saudi plan, and the Saudis have an interest in pushing this out there now, to put on a 'constructive face' with which to greet the new US president." — unnamed Senior Jerusalem officials — Isn't it time, after 60 years of suffering from Islamic terror, to start implementing a Jewish peace plan and free our land of enemies? Delusional Summarization of Lies. Although the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have yielded no agreements on core issues, US Secretary of State Rice has decided that a departmental panel will "summarize" their transcripts and hand them over to her successors. Successful Business of Arab Countries. Police seized 82 kilos of heroin at the Jordanian border a week ago, in the biggest drug bust in the country's history. Two Arabs, aged 57 and 19, were caught carrying three large bags. (Heroin, hashish and marijuana are the major export products of the Islamic world! Oil was made by nature and is extracted by Western companies.) 'Racist' anti-Racist UN Conference. Israel had made a final decision not to participate in a U.N. forum on racism and urged other countries to boycott what she termed an "anti-Israel tribunal." In 2001 Israel and the United States walked out of the first conference in Durban, South Africa, in protest over draft texts branding Israel as a racist and apartheid. The United Nations said it regretted the decision. (The UN never regrets when Israel is deliberately excluded from participating in many UN sponsored conferences, committees etc& The UN is not a racist organization it is just an anti-Semitic one!) Another Hamas Joke. Hamas is still committed to the temporary ceasefire with Israel, senior Hamas member Mahmoud Zahar has announced. The announcement came shortly after Gaza terrorists fired rockets at Israeli towns in the western Negev. ( The key word "temporary". It does not permit Israel to carry out counter-terrorism operations in Gaza, but it allows Hamas to get ready to attack Israel at any time!) Jewish Knight? Buckingham Palace said Queen Elizabeth II has given Israeli President Shimon Peres an honorary knighthood. The palace says the royal presented the Israeli head of state with the Order of St. Michael and St. George today. ( Has he defended or betrayed the virtue of the Jewish people? As it is the latter, why has the traitor been rewarded with a knighthood of non-Jewish orders!) West Bank Outburst — Result of Pathetic Policy. source: DEBKAfile On one day, Tuesday Nov. 11, there were 30 Palestinian attacks on Israeli soldiers and border police officers on the West Bank, leaving four injured, including two policemen and an army platoon commander. The security situation plummeted from last month after Israel units were prohibited from posting snipers to defend them against Palestinian attacks. The prohibition came down from the office of prime minister Ehud Olmert and defense minister Ehud Barak. It was quickly picked up by the Palestinians, who realized that the IDF's hands were tied. By Tuesday, Palestinian terror peaked. They hurled firebombs and rocks at two border police bases in Abu Dis in southern Jerusalem and Atarot at the northern end of the capital and hit four IDF patrols. At Tekoa, southeast of Bethlehem, flying rocks pinned down a military force for hours until it was relieved by reinforcements. Rocks and bottle bombs hit at least 14 passing cars, seriously damaging some of them. Rioting Palestinians in Hebron and its vicinity hurled six firebombs, blocked main junctions with burning tires and set fire to a Jewish-owned wheat-field. According to security sources, if this goes on and the government sticks to its policy of non-response, there is nothing to stop the Palestinian gangs from moving on to firearms. The US-trained PA security forces, funded by US taxpayers, keep to the main towns and do not venture outside. Palestinian terrorists have therefore won the freedom to terrorize most parts of the West Bank. Steven Shamrak was involved in the Moscow Zionist movement. He worked as a construction engineer at the Moscow Olympic Games project and as a computer consultant in Australia. He has been publishing an Internet editorial letter about the Arab-Israel conflict since August 2001 and has a website www.shamrak.com. He can be reached by email at StevenShamrak@gmail.com To Go To Top

1. IDF's WAR AGAINST JEWS; 2. HUMAN RIGHTS FOR EVERYONE — EVEN JEWS 3. "NO NEED TO EVICT HEVRON JEWS" Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, November 25, 2008.

Some will recall the step-by-step building of Hitler's murder machine. First, Brown-Shirt thugs, then the Gestapo in Black (the Waffen SS). The regular German army was absorbed to conquer and act as guards in the extermination camps. All step-by-step. Regrettably, we see this war against the Jewish people who are valiantly building their homes in our ancient homeland. A civil war against them is building — by its own Jewish (un-Jewish?) leaders to control the people. Hitler also absorbed the High Courts of Germany by his Nuremberg Laws, much the same as we see Israel's High Supreme Court first taken over by Aharon Barak (now retired) and then handed over to Dorit Beinish — also a committed Leftist who flanks her rule with other extreme Leftists. Taking over a nation, using the familiar techniques of Fascism has long left the planning stages and is now in full action. The early 1980s saw the planning stage, followed by the Oslo Accord Surrenders, followed by the Gush Katif/Gaza abandonment and destruction. Now, the Left is effectively onto Phase-Out the settlers from Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Valley, the Golan Heights and those parts of Jerusalem which Jordan occupied and desecrated for 19 years from 1948 to 1967. Why is a Jewish government aiding the still functional PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) which was created in 1964 by Egypt, then handed over to Yassir Arafat. Remember that 1964 was before the 1967 Six Days' War when the territories were liberated back to their historic, geographic and Biblical names of Judea, Samaria and unified Jerusalem? I wonder if the IDF (Israel Defense Force) from the highest officer to the strongest foot soldiers knew they were calling down a curse on themselves and their families for generations to come by attacking their own Jewish people? Or, as the Nazis claimed: "I was just following orders."? Perhaps it would be an act of mercy to inform every Jewish soldier what will happen when they betray their fellow Jews and the Jewish nation of Israel.

1. IN ITS WAR AGAINST JEWS, IDF CUT OFF NOSE TO SPITE ITS FACE Shoshana Walker writes, "These are the most ardent lovers of Israel, willing to fight in the most elite units of the IDF. The govt just refuses to understand that loyalty and love of the land cannot be separated from one's right to LIVE on our land. If there is no turn-around in the flawed reasoning of the govt, where arabs are protected more than Jews, why not re-vamp the entire IDF, do a complete reversal, and make it arab-only, Jews don't have to serve?" "IDF to act to cut funding from institutions whose students engage in 'illegal activity against IDF and Palestinians'" by Dr. Aaron Lerner 23 November 2008 Yediot Ahronot correspondent Yossi Yehoshua reports in today's edition that Deputy Minister of Defense Matan Vilnai (Labor) held a meeting last Thursday of the defense establishment at which it was decided to act to cut funding from educational institutions that have students who are "extreme right wing activists". "Vilnai instructed the security elements to identify yeshivot, associations and schools that receive state funds within which there is incitement or whose students engage in criminal activity against the IDF and against Palestinians. The defense establishment will act to stop the flow of funds to those institutions, and in certain cases even check the legal possibility of issuing an administrative order closing down the institutions that aid in the violation of the law in the territories. This is to be carried out with the cooperation of Shabak, Yesha police, the Judea and Samaria Administrative Authority, Ministry of Education and legal elements in the Ministry of Defense and Central Command." Dr. Aaron Lerner is Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis) (Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava) Tel: 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730; Email:imra@netvision.net.il; Website: http://www.imra.org.il 2. HUMAN RIGHTS FOR EVERYBODY (EVEN JEWS) This is by Hillel Levin of Shiloh, home of the Mishkan for 369 yrs. www.ConnectionsIsrael.com"http://www.ConnectionsIsrael.com There is currently a building freeze imposed upon all of the approximately 400 thousand Jews in Judea and Samaria. The Roadmap, imposed by the United States Government and others on Israel, states clearly that the Government of Israel must freeze "all settlement activity including natural growth of settlements". (See last paragraph in Phase I, here: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2003/20062.htm. ) *GOI (Government of Israel) [Goy?] immediately dismantles settlement outposts erected since March 2001 *Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements) This is from http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2003/20062.htm [The Oslo Accord did NOT call for a freeze on Settlements. The State Department-endorsed Mitchell Report, which — for the first time — recommended a settlement freeze that had no legal foundation. For more on the Mitchell Report, to read Shusteff, "Obfuscation Of Truth: Reading Mitchell's Report," click here.] This means no new homes — no new classrooms — no new kindergartens — no buying houses (such as the famous Bet haShalom in Hebron) for a huge Jewish community having the largest natural increase rate in the entire Western world. Currently, just-married couples in Yesha simply have nowhere to live! (unless they live in a so-called "illegal outpost"). This is, simply put, cruelty to and persecution of Jews with no justification whatever. In history, many natural functions of life were withheld from the Jews: the right to have children (Egypt, in Biblical times), the right to live in Europe (Spanish and other exiles, c. 1492), the right to emigrate (Europe post-holocaust, Russia behind the Iron Curtain), and so forth. Now, the right to build a home is being withheld — aided and abetted by the United States of America, of all unlikely countries!! WHAT CAN WE DO? The OU — the umbrella group of Orthodox Jewry in the United States — is holding its bi-annual convention this week on 26-30 November at the Ramada Hotel, Jerusalem, http://www.ou.org/convention/index Plus an International Conference on Contemporary Issues & Halacha November 30 to December 2 at the Yeshurun Synagogue, Jerusalem http://www.ou.org/convention/index So far, this important American group has NOT agreed yet to put the suffering Yesha community onto their agenda; the 2008 Convention's agenda has remained frozen even when the 9 Federman children and babies were turned out of their "illegal" home in the middle of the night, in their pajamas and barefoot, among a shower of broken glass: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eboT9yPVSo&eurl=http://www.hebron.com/english/. Please write an email to the OU asking them to give the plight of the Yesha Jews a prominent place both on their agenda, in their press releases, and in the operative resolutions which govern the Organization's activities (or lack of them) for the next 2 years!!! Ask: Why is the Rabbi of England (Rabbi Sacks) one of your speakers (http://www.ou.org/convention/index — scroll down) — whereas you have no one speaking about Yesha — even though there are more Jews in Yesha than in all of England?? Write to: ndiament@ou.org, Or, if you or your Rabbi have a connection to the OU — call and speak to your contact person. Please forward interesting replies right to us at mattot.arim@gmail.com 3. 'No Need to Evict Hevron Jews' by Hillel Fendel Arutz 7 A former Supreme Court justice says that the media misled the public and Defense Minister Ehud Barak into thinking that the Supreme Court has ordered the evacuation of Jews from Peace House in Hevron. Yaakov Turkel, who served as a Supreme Court Justice for ten years until 2005, says that the ruling in question does not order the State to evict the Jews, but rather allows them to do so. He spoke with Arutz-7's Shimon Cohen and Uzi Baruch. The ruling in question was issued a week ago, and gave the Jews living in Peace House — a four-story structure along the road leading from Kiryat Arba into Hevron — three days to leave the building. After that period, the ruling states, "it will be possible to act in accordance with Squatters' Evacuation Law." Turkel emphasizes that, unlike the media reports and announcements by Defense Minister Barak and other public officials, "the ruling does not obligate the State to act to evacuate the Jews, but rather gives them the freedom to decide whether to do so or not." The ruling, and the manner in which it was understood by the media and the public, aroused great opposition to the Supreme Court among the nationalist public, as well as great tensions in Hevron in anticipation of an Amona-like clash in the building. The 20 families that live there, plus many more people who have arrived over the last few days — and especially for this past Sabbath, when the Torah portion of Patriarch Abraham's purchase of Hevron land is read aloud — began making preparations to try and rebuff security forces that may try to evict them. Ruling States: Jews 'May' — not 'Must' — be Evicted The Court ruled that the Jewish occupants "may" be removed, despite the fact that they had produced written, audio and video proof that the Arab owner had sold it to them."When the Defense Minister said he would abide by the Supreme Court ruling ordering the Jews' eviction," Turkel said, "this was very much not to my liking, since there was no such order... This misunderstanding has caused the great rift in the religious and right-wing's trust in the Supreme Court." In light of Turkel's statements, it appears that Public Security Minister Avi Dichter of Kadima did not read the ruling. "The ruling is not a recommendation, and we will implement it exactly as written," he said last week, promising that within 30 days, no Jews would be living in the disputed building. "We have no intention of straying from the Supreme Court ruling, which is the law," he said. Turkel: It Belongs in a Lower Court Asked how he would have ruled if he had been on the judicial panel, Justice Turkel said, "I would have passed the matter down to the District Court, in light of the complexity of the case and the mutual claims of forgery. The District Court would then review the evidence and decide if an evacuation order should be issued before a final ruling." This is in keeping with long-standing practice that the Supreme Court does not rule on matters pertaining to civil disputes between individuals. 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 gwinston@gwinstonglobal.org To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: LUNACY CONTINUED Posted by Arlene Kushner, November 25, 2008.

The craziness — some laughable, much deeply malevolent — simply continues. Yesterday was "Solidarity with the Palestinian People" day at the UN. Understand, the Palestinian people (such as they may be) are the only ones celebrated by the UN this way. The Kurds, for example, are ignored. This tells us all we need to know about the UN. Former secretary-general Kofi Annan, marked it as "a day of mourning and a day of grief, and the "inalienable rights of the Palestinian people" were discussed. "The event is an annual reminder that the UN's real agenda is to delegitimize the birth — and the perseverance — of the state of Israel," says Anne Bayefsky, editor of Eye on the UN. ~~~~~~~~~~ Actually, because of scheduling conflicts, this day of solidarity was marked a few days early. The real day is November 29, which is the day the UN voted the partition of Palestine in 1947. From this followed the official founding of the State of Israel, which — it might be noted — was not only founded with UN blessings but also is a full member of the UN today. ~~~~~~~~~~ One sees signs of desperation in the words and acts of several players in the area. There is, for example, PA president Mahmoud Abbas. This past week he placed ads in several Israeli papers — Hebrew press and The Jerusalem Post — reaching out to the Israeli populace to tell them that they would benefit greatly from the Saudi "peace plan," which would bring them peace with the members of the Arab League and not just the PA. The Saudi "peace plan"? That's the plan that says if we agree to terms that guarantee our destruction, the Arabs will be happy to deal with us. It calls for total return to pre-67 lines (including relinquishment of all of eastern Jerusalem and the Golan), release of all prisoners, and return of refugees. Abbas has already admitted that there will be no peace deal in 2008, and yet he seems to be grasping at straws in his last days in office (see item below). At a statement made at the UN (for the above mentioned event), he blamed Israel for blocking the peace process by not going along with the Saudi plan. He spoke about the need for this plan so that there would be 'the return of our land," and I never let such occasions pass without mentioning that it isn't their land and never has been and cannot be "returned" to them. Anyone needing elucidation of this point is invited to contact me. ~~~~~~~~~~ Abbas, reversing himself, has made another statement of political interest: He says that if there is no real progress in dialogue between Fatah and Hamas by the end of the year, he will go to general elections — presidential and legislative — in early 2009. Well, right now there is no dialogue between Fatah and Hamas, because Hamas boycotted a scheduled meeting in protest against PA arrests of Hamas people in Judea and Samaria. How likely is "real progress" in just a bit over a month? The Arab League is scheduled to meet in Cairo next week to discuss the Fatah-Hamas conflict. Hamas people are angry because they haven't been invited. ~~~~~~~~~~ There are two observations to be made here: With regard to the presidential election, Abbas has now reversed himself. While Hamas has been insisting that he is supposed to leave office in January, he has been claiming that his presidential term runs another year. The argument arose over the fact that while PA presidential and legislative elections are supposed to run together (at least in theory, every four years), Abbas was elected president in January 2005, a year before the last legislative elections were held, because Arafat had died. Abbas has been saying his term runs until the next legislative elections in 2010. Hamas is saying he has had four years and his term is over. However, Abbas cannot hold general elections because he doesn't control Gaza and Hamas will not cooperate. All denials to the contrary aside, there are two Palestinian political entities. Abbas's claim consistently has been that a Palestinian state must encompass Judea and Samaria, and Gaza. But if elections are blocked, he is stymied. The scuttlebutt is that in January 2009, Hamas will appoint or elect its own president. It does not see legislative elections (in which it won a majority in 2006) as being called for until 2010, and maintains that Abbas does not have the authority to call for elections without Palestinian Legislative Council approval. The finger pointing goes on without end: Hamas is saying that Abbas's declaration of intent to hold legislative elections means he wishes to sabotage reconciliation efforts. So...stay tuned. ~~~~~~~~~~ As to Hamas, it seems they have now accepted an Israeli offer (you read this correctly) with regard to an extension of the "ceasefire." The deal is that if no rockets are fired for 24 hours, Israel will open crossings. Who is the desperate party here? According to Hamas sources (which I have not yet seen confirmed by Israeli sources officially), mediation for this deal was done by Egypt after Barak's office contacted Cairo to express readiness to cooperate. And according to Haniyeh, other terror groups are on board with this. But a Kassam and two mortars were launched on Sunday mere hours after Haniyeh's announcement, and another Kassam landed near Ashkelon late yesterday. Other Hamas sources are saying the "ceasefire," which terminates on December 19, will not be automatically renewed but must be renegotiated (i.e., the renewed quiet is just until the 19th of December). Hamas is looking for increased readiness on Israel's behalf to keep the crossings opened. ~~~~~~~~~~ Whatever the outcome with regard to full implementation of opening of the crossings for bringing in of commercial goods, Barak decided that the crossings would be open yesterday for permitting humanitarian aid to get through: food, medicine and fuel. ~~~~~~~~~~ Abbas is about to get yet another concession from Israel: Just days ago Olmert promised Abbas to release 250 prisoners for the holiday of al-Adha next month. ~~~~~~~~~~ Olmert is in Washington, where he had a final meeting with President Bush. They did the usual routine of praising each other, and lauding the important "peace process." ~~~~~~~~~~ According to a report in Time Magazine, relying on Israeli sources, the US has warned Israel not to launch a major operation in Gaza — which would jeopardize "peace efforts" — or to attack Iran in the final days of the Bush administration. Most troublesome, if it is true. ~~~~~~~~~~ An item that puzzled me even as I wrote about it the other day has been clarified. This concerns King Abdullah of Jordan, who called in Olmert and Barak the other day and, went the original report, asked them to refrain from a major military operation in Gaza, as this would unsettle his kingdom. I struggled with this, saying it was a complete reversal of the previous Jordanian position — which was that IDF control of Hamas was a good thing because the Islamic radicalism was what would threaten Jordan. Seems, I surmised, that the king has reversed himself, in essence, to appease Hamas, which might be at Jordan's border one day soon. Well... the clarification is this: King Abdullah was furious that Olmert and Barak reported he was nervous about an operation in Gaza unsettling his kingdom. The reality, it seems, is that he was doing this at the behest of the US. At the same time, Abdullah warned Hamas that if they didn't cool the rocket fire, Israel would invade Gaza. ~~~~~~~~~~ Is there greater lunacy than the continuing push to "negotiate peace" with Syria? Arch Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar was in Syria on Monday, when he was honored by Syrian president Bashar Assad. Said Assad: "Kuntar was not merely the most senior prisoner in jail, but is also senior among free men and honoraries. His being here with us and his determination to promote Arab rights, despite everything he's been through, has turned him into a symbol of the struggle for freedom across the Arab world and the whole world. Of course, letting Kuntar go was madness as well. He told Assad that he brought with him the blessings of the great freedom fighters of Hezbollah, and he later assured the Druze of the Golan that they would soon be under Syrian control again. ~~~~~~~~~~ Syria is refusing to let the IAEA in for another inspection of the site that Israel took out, which almost certainly was a reactor. Another sign of a peaceful nation with which we can deal, yes? Right now the US and ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, are at odds over the fact that ElBaradei says Syria has the right to assistance from the UN nuclear agency in developing a reactor for producing power. The US maintains, with solid reason, that this is patently ridiculous given the larger context here. ~~~~~~~~~~ An ominous word about Hezbollah. Yesterday Barak announced that Hezbollah now has 42,000 missiles, three times the number it had before the Lebanon War. Some can reach to the south of Israel. Additionally, head of the research division of Military Intelligence, Yossi Baidatz, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Monday that Hezbollah was attempting to purchase surface-to-air missiles in order to try to bring down Israeli airplanes flying over Lebanon. This situation has evolved because Livni proudly promoted resolution 1701 (a reason in and of itself to not vote for her!) that put useless UNFIL forces in place in Lebanon instead of letting us finish the job. And, because Syria (with Iranian assistance, of course) has been doing the re-arming. Unless we get tough, get real, we will be in considerable trouble. We are in considerable trouble that could have been prevented. Israel has informed the Lebanese government that now that Hezbollah is part of that government and not a renegade terrorist force, Lebanese government infrastructure is a fair target if we are hit. It should be noted that Hezbollah now claims several villages in northern Israel, saying they don't abide by the Blue Line — the line the UN established as the Lebanese-Israeli border. There is no end, you see, in dealing with groups such as this. First it was Shaba Farms (which some actually advocated conceding) and now this. ~~~~~~~~~~ There are reports that Hezbollah, seeking to avoid a strong Israeli response is not planning to directly avenge the assassination in February of Imad Mughniyeh. Instead, they have paid tens of thousands of dollars to Palestinian terror groups to carry out large scale terror attacks against Israel. ~~~~~~~~~~ Israel has consented to the presence of 1,000 Palestinian security forces in Bethlehem before Christmas. ~~~~~~~~~~ Gen. James Jones, who is widely expected to become Obama's national security advisor, is touting the idea of NATO forces in Judea and Samaria instead of the IDF — an admission that the PA cannot handle matters on its own and a very bad idea. More to follow on this in due course. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

ISRAELI ARAB WOMEN HAVE NO PROBLEM BEING SLAPPED Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, November 25, 2008.

This is a news item from Israel Today http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=17608

Though Arabs in Israel, and especially Arab women, enjoy greater freedoms than anywhere else in the Middle East, a new poll shows that most Israeli Arab women still view domestic violence by their husbands as acceptable. Conducted by the Na'amat women's organization, the survey revealed that 70 percent of Israeli Arab women who are pushed, slapped or struck by their husbands or other males in their lives do not consider themselves victims of domestic violence. Even more respondents, 73 percent, said they would not classify as "abuse" their husbands cursing or humiliating them. The poll was conducted to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com To Go To Top

SHOULD ISRAEL DEFEND ITS AGENTS IN THE PA?; LYING ABOUT ABBAS; TUNNEL VISION Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 24, 2008.

OUTRAGE AGAINST U.S. DEMOCRACY California voters passed Proposition 8. It bans gay marriage, on the theory that marriage is a heterosexual union. Bloggers found out that a certain theater director in California had donated $1,000 to pass the Proposition. As a Mormon, he finds homosexual marriage improper. The bloggers were outraged. A composer asked the director to withhold his music from that theater. He objected to what he called "discrimination" being put into the state Constitution. Objectors were considering a boycott, but the director resigned. Supporters of the Proposition objected to the political test being given to the director, and its erosion of freedom of thought (NY Times, 11/13, C3). I think that both sides of the Proposition should uphold freedom of thought. I don't think that the distinction made by Proposition 8 is discrimination, but a different definition of marriage, the conventional ones. Be that as it may, In a democracy, voters are allowed to exercise the franchise and give financial support for their differing views without penalty. The real outrage is by those who proposed boycott instead of discussion. NEW TREACHERY BY SEC. RICE She proposes that the Security Council pass a resolution to establish another Palestinian Arab state. PM Olmert and Foreign Min. Livni oppose her. They worry that the resolution would be worded against Israel. Some people think that Rice proposed this so that she would seem to have accomplished something, anything, to remember her by (IMRA, 11/13). Or her last stab at Israel. Their worry is well-placed. The UNO is a bungling, meddling, corrupt, evil organization. It inhibits action against rogue states until the death toll is horrible. It squanders funds that might be more productively distributed by others. There is another objection. The original UNO resolution on the Territories, #242, left it up to the parties involved to negotiate a resolution. Now the biased UNO wants to impose its own view. An issue like that cannot be resolved with justice and peace by an organization biased in favor of the jihadists and against the Jews. The parties involved cannot resolve the issue, either. The Muslims want conquest. Treasonous Israeli officials may oblige them. The solution is for Israel to start annexing land and easing Arabs out, under its Mandate authority. ISRAEL WANTS TO KEEP GAZA CEASEFIRE. WHY? Israel's military keeps warning that Hamas is building a bigger and better army in Gaza, under cover of ceasefire. The intelligence agencies advise that eventually Hamas will attack Israel so drastically, that Israel will be sucked into a war. They warn that the longer an Israeli invasion of Gaza is put off, the higher will be the casualties inflicted upon the invaders by the ever-stronger Hamas. Israel's leaders know that. Nevertheless they want to keep the ceasefire for what they know cannot be much longer. Why? Dr. Aaron Lerner speculates. Israeli leaders are notoriously short-sighted and lethargic. They defer difficult decisions until more difficult and forced to decide. Alternatively, they are waiting until after elections. They would rather wait longer, letting Israelis suffer more, than decide now, so that Israelis will blame the leaders at the voting machines for having waited too long as it is (IMRA, 11/13). There is another possibility. Israeli leaders are anti-Zionist. The Far Left prefers Muslim terrorists to religious Jews. Everything Israeli leaders do, except Netanyahu's economic reforms, tends to bring Israel down. Are they deliberately positioning Israel to be conquered? Is it coincidence and utmost stupidity that keeps them leading Israel into self-destruction, since shortly before Oslo? SHOULD ISRAEL DEFEND ITS AGENTS IN THE P.A.? The P.A. sentenced an Arab there to death for cooperating with Israeli security agencies against terrorism. Israel takes no position on this. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights objects. It calls the sentence illegal and capital punishment an affront to human dignity. Dr. Aaron Lerner thinks that Israel should protect its agents apprehended in the P.A. (IMRA, 11/13). The P.A. often covers its oppression by accusing people of "collaboration." Victims may be political opponents, businessmen who refused to submit to extortion, or people in a tribal vendetta or who ran afoul of some tribe. That is not Israel's business. If the convict were an Israeli agent, rescuing him would encourage others to assist. Then let Israeli forces rescue him and give him a new identity and funds for living abroad! Or does this mean that Israel would become responsible for a dozen relatives, who otherwise would face revenge? Has Israel discovered how the P.A. detects its agents? Probably from the US training the P.A. gets. If so, and if the Israeli government were patriotic, it would object to the subversive use of US training. VALUE OF ISRAEL'S OPEN FIELDS Ceasefire or not, Gazas still fire some rockets at Israeli cities, while demanding that Israel adhere to the ceasefire and not fire back. They want to fire at civilians without penalty for waging war and fighting dirty. Arab terrorists infest civilian areas, getting the world to condemn Israel for any action that harms Arab civilians. The Arabs attribute many internecine casualties or accidents to Israeli attacks, and Israel hardly defends its reputation or undermines the jihadists'. Most of the rockets still fall in open fields or on parts of houses where residents are not sitting. It is as if God were sparing the Jews until they take counter-action. That window of opportunity is running out, because the terrorists are developing rockets of greater range and explosiveness. Keep those fields open and non-urbanized! ANOTHER REASON ISRAEL SHOULD HAVE BEATEN ENEMIES If Israel does attack Iran's nuclear facilities, Hizbullah and Hamas, among others, would fire many rockets at it. Casualties and damage would be enormous. Israel will have to fight on several fronts. It may lose, its people slaughtered. Now suppose Israel had not left its security zone in Lebanon, or had put in the effort to defeat Hizbullah in Lebanon. It would not now have to worry about Hizbullah's 40,000 rockets. Fear of those rockets may inhibit action against Iran. Now suppose, too, that Israel had not evacuated from Gaza, or it had sent a large force into Gaza to defeat and disarm Hamas. Israel would not have to worry about Hamas' rockets. It would not have to fight on those two fronts. In that case, Israel might not find its enemies opening other fronts, such as from Syria and Egypt. GETTING A RUSSIAN "PERSPECTIVE" A friend toured Russia. She claims to have gotten a Russian perspective. She was told that Russia was invaded so many times, it opposes an anti-missile base in Poland. She was told that Georgia was the aggressor against S. Ossetia. She was told Stalin's old Communist propaganda rationalizing its aggression against neighbors. My friend learned from me that Russia invaded other countries many times. Now Europe is pacifist and the US hasn't been imperialist since 1998. Anti-missiles are defensive, and Iran does threaten Europe, thanks partly to Russian help. Georgia can' t be an aggressor against S. Ossetia, part of its country. Russia occupied S. Ossetia and gave its people Russian citizenship, so it can pretend to b defending its citizens. That's aggression, Nazi style! LYING ABOUT ABBAS Some people suggest paying Jews to leave Judea-Samaria. Opponents of that measure point out that expelling the Jews from Gaza shows withdrawal's danger. Gaza became a terrorist base. Hamas took over. Ethan Bronner of the NY Times states the contrary, "The law's advocates say Gaza is a false analogy because a settler withdrawal from the W. Bank would strengthen the P.A. under Pres. Mahmoud Abbas. The authority is trying to convince the Palestinian [western Palestinian Arab] public that two states are possible." (11/14, A6.) No, the P.A. has convinced its Arabs that Israel and the P.A. are is one country, to which they are entitled, and suicide bombing to wrest Israel from the Jews is an acceptable tactic so long as it works. Abbas' regime portrays Israeli residents all as "settlers" and the Jews as evil. (The media and the schools, under Abbas' control, and the mosques, promote this doctrine. As soon as Israel withdrew from Judea-Samaria, the Muslims would devise new territorial demands. That is their way. They might cite the non-binding General Assembly partition resolution that suggested less land for the Arabs than Israel ended up with, in defense against Arab aggression. I think that the State Dept., Council on Foreign Relations, and the NY Times would agree. End of Israel. The Times is promoting a lie in behalf of its traditional anti-Zionist position. The assertion that an Israeli withdrawal would strengthen Abbas and the P.A. is stated as axiomatic. It is not, it probably is mistaken, and it does not matter. Abbas' rule is corrupt and negligent. That is why the people say they voted for a Hamas-dominated legislature. Abbas fails to reform. Polls show continued disgust with his rule. Israel's many concessions to the P.A. show no increase in popularity for Abbas. The only result is to demand more. He, himself, denigrates them as insufficient, because only abject Israeli surrender would satisfy the demands of Islam. Besides, Hamas claims that its militancy forces the concessions. Hamas is right, if you think about it. If it weren't for Hamas' rivalry with Abbas and Fatah, there wouldn't be concessions "to strengthen" Abbas. If concessions did strengthen him, why didn't the withdrawal from Gaza? The Arabs took the withdrawal as a sign of Israeli weakness. Well, wasn't it? When the infidel is weak, Islam redoubles its war. Withdrawal strengthens jihad. It doesn't matter much which faction wins. Both are terrorist. Both are subsidized by Iran. Both favor war. Abbas is more willing to advance his war aims by diplomacy. In that sense, he is more dangerous than Hamas. TUNNEL VISION The Jerusalem Post cited a Hamas claim to have a thousand tunnels, now. Some have multiple entrances. Close one, the flow goes on. Literally flowing in is gasoline, now so plentiful that prices have fallen by half! Shipments are massive. Hamas has circumvented foreign boycott of its finances and industry. It has enough tunnels not to need the surface border gates and port opened. For business, legitimizing, and P.R., Hamas brought journalists into tunnels, to publicize them and their professional engineering. Egypt is "reluctant" to close the tunnels, lest it be accused of cooperating with the boycott. Egypt used to pretend it couldn't find tunnels. Now, Dr. Aaron Lerner notes, Egypt is "reluctant" to close them, meaning they can find them. He asks why the "geniuses" who suggest that Egypt and other Arab states patrol the P.A. don't figure out that the same reluctance to displease Arabs by closing tunnels would keep the patrols from disarming and arresting P.A. terrorists (IMRA, 11/14). The Arab states aren't firing guns at Israel, but they boycott Israel, support the "solutions that would destroy Israel, conduct diplomacy against Israel, and, in the case of Egypt and Syria, assist terrorists against Israel. No thinking and decent person would suggest that Egypt be responsible for some of Israeli security. The same day that IMRA reported the truth about the tunnels, the NY Times cleverly gave the impression that Israel is imposing hardships on Gazans. Typical Times subtlety is in embedding within the main and emotional impression some downplayed but truthful statements to the contrary. The paper does not differentiate truth from false claims, leaving untruth as the conclusion. Thus journalist Ethan Bronner and Taghreed El-Khodary write that Egypt has started to shut tunnels. It omits the evident faster growth in the number of tunnel. They write that the tunnels "have been a major source of supplies and fuel — and weapons — that have offset the Israeli closings." But then they contradict that by stating Oxfam International's demand that the world "force Israel to end the closing." Again, "Electricity production has plunged for lack of fuel..." The article contradicts that by the muted, "Israeli officials suspect that there is actually enough fuel, and say that Hama officials are trying to embarrass them by closing electricity plants." "Officials suspect?" Why don't the reporters verify that and give us news instead of propaganda? Hasn't the Times heard of the pipeline to Gaza? Doesn't the Times have access to the sources that I do? Since Israel's closings have been offset, why force Israel to stop barring some goods? Oxfam Intl. may be humanitarian in other countries, but towards Israel it is part of the anti-Zionist propaganda drive. Why don't the "humanitarians" demand an end to Hamas terrorism? That demand would be humanitarian! No terrorism, no boycott. CHARITY OR TERRORIST FINANCIER? Closing arguments were presented in Texas for the retrial on whether the Holy Land Foundation financed Hamas terrorism, as charged, or education, as defended. One of the defense arguments was that Hamas never advocated the destruction of Israel (Arutz-7, 11/13). I guess the defense attorney did not read the Hamas covenant. I think that the prosecution overlooked a useful argument, one that would help understand Islamic terrorism. The jihadists are totalitarian. They draft almost all sectors of society. The prosecution might have denied that Gaza schools educate, they indoctrinate. They indoctrinate falsely in hatred, intolerance, and genocide. It is not charitable to help those schools, it is contrary to the preservation of civilization and peace. PERES PRAISES SAUDI KING The king of S. Arabia denounced religions' preaching of intolerance, leading to war. President Peres of Israel praised the king for proposing a peace plan, giving hope for the region (IMRA, 11/14). Tolerant S. Arabia bans Jews and the open practice of other religions (IMRA, 11/15). The king's religion preaches so much intolerance that its youths go all over the world to slay people of other faiths. He should be the last person advising others on tolerance. Even his proposed ban on defamation really is a ban on truth against defamation by Islam. He proposes his censorship in the name of tolerance, to lull our suspicions. Have to watch those jihadists! Clever with words. The Saudi "peace plan" is no plan for peace but for large-scale Israeli surrender and war. Israel would cede all of the Territories and part of annexed land, losing defensible borders. It would let in, and be overrun by, millions of Israel-hating Arabs born abroad but claiming to be refugees. That same king might then say, "Let the genocide begin!" Peres should denounce him. Unfortunately, Peres favors many plans for the destruction of Israel. ISRAELI GOVERNMENT ADMITS PRISONER EXCHANGE BAD The Prime Minister's Office admitted that the prisoner exchange with Hizbullah was a blunder. It was lopsided. As a result, Hamas is demanding so much in exchange for its one captive, that Israel can't accept it (IMRA, 11/14). Truth out. 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 To Go To Top

A DISARMED PALESTINIAN STATE? Posted by Daily Alert, November 25, 2008.

This was written by Amitai Etzioni and it appeared today in the Jerusalem Post www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1226404823692&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Amitai Etzioni is Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University. For more discussion, see his book: Security First (Yale, 2007) or www.securityfirstbook.com or comnet@gwu.edu

During an off-the-record meeting in Washington, DC on November 10, one of Obama's senior foreign policy advisers stated that pushing a two-state solution on Israel and the Palestinians had to take place with great urgency, as it was the best way to turn around the Middle East (which he defined as including Afghanistan and Pakistan). Three elements of the plan the United States is to push are well known (no refugee return, a divided Jerusalem, and redrawn 1967 borders), but the fourth is much less often explored. Namely that the Palestinian state be disarmed and that US or NATO troops be stationed along the Jordan River. A rocket fired by Palestinian... I suggest that this fourth condition is a dangerous trap, despite the fact that such troops played a very salutary role in the DMZ in Korean and — during the Cold War — in Germany. Before I proceed I should note that I am free to quote what was said at the meeting, but not to mention who said what or the name of the organization that hosted the meeting. I should also note that the same ideas are found in a new book America and the World, wholly composed of interviews with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, conducted by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. In the book, both interviewees agreed that "They [Israel and the Palestinians] need a heavier hand by the United States than we have traditionally practiced." Brzezinski suggests "an American line along the Jordan River," and Scowcroft favors putting a "NATO peacekeeping force" on the West Bank.   HOW CAN I count the ways the fourth condition is a dangerous trap? First of all, while the first three conditions are almost impossible to reverse once in place, the fourth one can be changed by a simple act of Congress or an order by a future American president, or — the current one. Abba Eban once compared a United Nations force stationed on the Israeli-Egyptian border, which was removed just before Nasser attacked Israel, as an umbrella that is folded when it rains. The new umbrella is not much more reliable. Second, the American troops in Iraq, and the NATO ones in Afghanistan, are unable to stop terrorist bombs and rocket attacks in those parts. There is no reason to hold that they would do better in the West Bank. Third, there are very few precedents for demilitarized states — by force. A two-state solution means to practically everyone involved, except a few foreign policy mavens, two sovereign states. A sovereign state is free to import all the arms and troops it wants. One second after the Palestinian state is declared, many in the Arab world, Iran, and surely in Europe, not to mention Russia and China, will hold that "obviously" the new free state cannot be prevented from arming itself, whatever it says on some parchment or treaty. And if this not allowed, whatever therapeutic effects the creation of a Palestinian state may engender will be about the same size as the ending of the Israeli occupation of Gaza had — either too small to measure or a negative one. A strong case for a two-state solution has been made, but it better be based on the Palestinians developing their own effective forces and an Israeli presence on the Jordan River. Neither can rely on the United States, beleaguered as it is, or conflict- and casualty-averse NATO to show the staying power for peacekeeping which neither mustered in Kosovo, Bosnia, or Haiti, and which they have never provided in Sudan and the Congo. There is a new dawn in America, but when the sun rises in Washington, it is often close to sunset in the Middle East. The Daily Alert is sponsored by Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and prepared by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). To subscribe to their free daily alerts, send an email to daily@www.dailyalert.jcpa.org To Go To Top

ISRAEL THE BEAUTIFUL: A FALL AFTERNOON NEAR METULA ALONG ISRAEL'S NORTHERNMOST BORDER Posted by Yehoshua Halevi, November 24, 2008.

Another shot of Metula in the afternoon in the fall   This is one of Yehoshua Halevi's Golden Light Images. Yehoshua Halevi writes: "HOW I GOT THE SHOT: One of the joys of teaching photography is giving a group of students the same assignment and afterward discussing their vastly different interpretations of the same subject. Invariably, it's a learning experience for everyone present, including the teacher. I played that game with myself earlier this month while racing against the setting sun to find a viewpoint that captured the radiance of fall in northern Israel. This week's photo depicts the same valley - situated just south of Metula along Israel's northern border — shown in last week's photo. Taken a few minutes earlier and looking to the south as opposed to the west and into the sun, it offers an entirely different perspective on this idyllic setting. (Use this link to see last week's photo.) This is a more complex photo which defies a brief description. I had to crop this image very carefully to remove some unsightly farm machinery and retain only the natural features of the land within the frame. Precise cropping can elevate an average photo to something exceptional, so I often experiment with different crops until settling on a final composition. In cropping this photo, I began by slicing off a small section of the olive trees from the bottom edge, which improved the photo in three ways. First, it allowed the orange plum leaves to flow more prominently into the frame by entering through the lower left corner and continuing up to the center, following the action of the photo. Secondly, a darker clump of olive trees fell into the right hand corner: having a slightly darker area along the photo's edge keeps the viewer's eyes within the photo. Finally, trimming the clump of olive trees makes them about the same size as the photo's two other prominent features. The lack of a clear center of interest pits these equally-sized sections against each other in a tense competition to hold the viewer's eye. Likewise, each of the photo's odd assortment of colors fights with the others for prominence rather than blending harmoniously. Most of the time I build the composition around the main point of interest, but in this case, the clash of color and content adds tension and imbalance while serving to enliven the overall picture. Contact Yehoshua Halevi by email at smile@goldenlightimages.com and visit his website: http://www.goldenlightimages.com. Reproductions of his work as cards, calenders and posters may be purchased at http://www.cafepress.com/halevi18 To Go To Top

ISRAEL OWES GAZA NOTHING — EXCEPT AN ULTIMATUM Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, November 24, 2008.

In May 1948, Egypt was one of a half dozen Arab states which tried to nip a nascent, resurrected Israel in the bud. And for the same reasons Arabs and Arabized have slaughtered, subjugated, and committed genocide against Kurds, black Africans, Berbers, Assyrians and others besides "their" kilab yahud — Jew dogs — who dared insinuate that they too — besides Arabs — have rights in a region proclaimed by the latter as purely Arab patrimony. One half of Israel's Jews today consist of Jews who pre-dated Arabs in that region but who fled to Israel...the refugees no one talks about. Over another million of these folks fled abroad to the Americas, France, and elsewhere. Armed to the teeth with weapons left over by the Brits from World War II, Egypt seized Gaza while a British officer-led Arab Legion in Transjordan (created itself in 1922 from almost 80% of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine) seized Judea and Samaria on the west bank of the Jordan River. Transjordan, now controlling both banks, soon renamed itself Jordan. Its occupation of those non-apportioned — not purely Arab — parts of the Mandate was recognized by only two other states. The same above Arab pair — along with Syria and a few others as well — took another shot at their 1948 goal in June 1967. Big mistake... Egypt blockaded Israel at the Straits of Tiran (a casus belli), amassed 100,000 troops, tanks, and aircraft on Israel's border, and convinced Jordan to jump on board. It then ordered the United Nations peacekeeping force out of the area so it would be able to invade the Jewish State unimpeded. Like a fireman who flees the moment a fire starts, the U.N. simply complied. It would repeat its uselessness this way many times later — stepping in only after Israel turned the tide of repeated Arab aggression, not preventing it or punishing the aggressor. Indeed, it did just this in 1948. That's how Israel wound up with mostly Auschwitz/armistice lines, not borders. Ralph Bunche, America's U.N. rep, understood this quite well. That's how Israel wound up in Gaza and in the "West Bank"...in all of six days. I have all of the newspaper articles from that time period stored in a box. As has been written many times, during the almost two decades that Egypt and Jordan occupied those areas, no one clamored for the creation of a second state for Arabs within the borders of the Palestinian Mandate. In 1947, Arabs were offered about half of the 20 % of the territory left after the creation of Transjordan and rejected this partition. Some 90% of the total area wasn't enough. They had to have it all. That was over sixty years ago — and nothing has really changed regarding the same Arab mindset that refuses to grant scores of millions of non-Arabs living in the region even a tiny sliver of the same political rights Arabs insist upon for themselves. That, in a nutshell, is the Arab-Israeli conflict. A few years back, a now comatose Prime Minister Sharon — under intense pressure from Washington — agreed to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza, a coastal area which had been repeatedly used since the days of the Pharaohs to invade the land of the Jews. It was also the land of Goliath's non-Semitic, Aegean "Sea People," the Philistines (as in Palestine), who gave both Egyptians and Jews earlier shared headaches. Sharon's withdrawal plan was highly controversial, but there was enough potentially positive aspects to it that it seemed to at least some folks worth a try. The problem is that all of the worst case scenario results soon emerged instead. Gaza was a test — and the Arabs flunked it horribly. Being the target of repeated Arab attempted destruction, Israel was under no obligation to return any territories used for those purposes before treaties of real peace — not hudna and such ceasefires — were signed. Borders and territorial possessions all over the world have historically changed for far less than what Israel has faced...including America's. And does anyone remember the Falkland War the Brits fought with Argentina? Now imagine the Brits (along with numerous other hypocrites) lecturing Israel — as they constantly do — about what the Jews allegedly need to do in their own very backyard (not thousands of miles away from home) regarding Arabs who deliberately disembowel and slit the throats of their kids and other innocents. With the withdrawal of Jewish organic farmers and so forth (Gaza thus becoming Judenrein), did the Arabs offer Israel any semblance of peace? The only thing Arabs did was to congratulate themselves about how nicely their well-known destruction in stages scenario for Israel was playing out. Before the setback in '67, they called for a one fell swoop plan for the Jews' demise. Afterwards, this was replaced with a strategy to force Israel — via diplomacy (arm twisting by its "friends") — back to its 1949, U. N.-imposed, microscopic armistice line, not border, existence. The final draft of U.N.S.C. Resolution 242 was drafted, in a rare display of true justice, to rectify that wrong after the Six Day War. Any withdrawal of Israel from territories was to be in the context of real peace treaties and to secure and somewhat defensible real borders — not armistice lines. It was expected that the travesty of the '49 lines would be rectified as Israel withdrew from territories — not all territories. Indeed, the U.N. fought very hard over the precise wording of 242 for just this reason. A reading of its architects, such as Lord Caradon, Eugene Rostow, and others, makes this very clear. Here's Lord Caradon... It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial. After all, they were just the places where the soldiers of each side happened to be on the day the fighting stopped in 1948. They were just armistice lines. That's why we didn't demand that the Israelis return to them. Nevertheless, for a very cold peace, Israel handed Egypt back the best tank trap it had, buffering itself from latter day Pharaohs, as well as oil fields it developed, major airbases, and some real semblance of strategic depth. With Sinai thus returned, Gaza was the next piece to fall in the post-'67 Arab destruction in stages game plan. Indeed, Gaza was a failed test. Arabs had an opportunity to prove doubters such as myself wrong...and we really wanted that to happen, though knew better. The "peace offering" Arabs gave Israel in return was to elect Arabs to power in Gaza who didn't even feel it necessary to play Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah's Palestinian Authority's phony game of acceptance of a Jewish neighbor. Actually, Abbas and his crew don't do this either and still refuse to speak of a Jewish Israel. Arabs can claim almost two dozen Arab states (created mostly from non-Arab peoples' lands), but how dare Jews speak of one miniscule state of their own... Yet, to prop up the West's sweet-talking, latter day Arafatian darlings, Mahmoud Abbas (one of Arafat's chief lieutenants) & Fatah had to be made the good cops by an American State Department long hostile to even the very idea of Israel (opposing President Truman on its rebirth and so forth) to the Hamas bad ones to twist the arms of the Jews. In reality, both have the same long-term plans for Israel. Check out their own official assorted websites, books, speeches to their own people, and so forth if you doubt this. In the Internet age, this is easy to do. Check out the Hamas Charter while you're at it...and the PLO/P.A.'s as well. While attacks against Israel from Gaza were launched before Hamas gained control there, they increased afterwards...hundreds of rockets, mortars, and such being launched against Israel proper after the complete, unilateral Israeli withdrawal. Instead of a hand being offered to an Israel which could indeed be very generous in peace, Arabs elected those who openly (to their credit — no game playing here) call for Israel's total destruction...the same folks who were blowing up school kids and others on buses, in restaurants, teen nightclubs, pizza parlors, and such a while back. They even set up a museum commemorating their heroism complete with fake Jewish body parts hanging from ceilings for all to sing praises to. Think about what Israel really needs to do with such an enemy. Does America's own Powell Doctrine ring a bell? Here's some of what Wikipedia has to say about it... "...Powell expanded upon the Doctrine, asserting that when a nation is engaging in war, every resource and tool should be used to achieve decisive force against the enemy, minimizing US casualties and ending the conflict quickly by forcing the weaker force to capitulate. This is well in line with Western military strategy dating at least from Carl von Clausewitz's On War." Lately, there was supposedly a ceasefire in effect. Hamas got tired of losing too many of its folks to Israel's pinpoint strikes. Yet, during this "ceasefire," Israel ceased, but the Arabs still fired. Because of this, the Jews stopped the flow of goods and services to the people who elected those who want both Jews and the Jewish State dead and who cause death, maiming, and destruction in nearby Israeli towns and cities. How unreasonable of those Jews! Just ask the U.N.'s Ban Ki-moon, the European Union's Benita Ferrero-Waldner, NGO Oxfam's Jeremy Hobbs, and so forth. They simply expect Jews to keep on out-Christianing Christians by turning cheek after cheek after cheek...not that any "Christian" country would ever put up with such murderous manure that Israel is simply expected to accept from Arabs. Tit for tat responses have never worked well with Arabs. They know there's hundreds of millions of them and about six million Israeli Jews. Now, why am I nervous about that number? Arafat used to claim that the Arab mother was his best weapon. To be taken seriously, Israel must treat Gaza's Hamas and those who elected it according to America's own Powell Doctrine. If firing rockets, mortars, and such at one's cities is not considered acts of war, then what is? If calling for the death of a nation and its people and acting on those threats are not acts of war, then what is? If ever a nation had reason to level an enemy, then who if not Israel? It certainly has the means. Not doing so and trying to be humane to the inhumane only brings hypocritical charges leveled against Jews anyway. There are few innocents in Gaza. Arab non-combatants hide murderers who in turn use the former as human shields after they deliberately attack Jewish civilians — all contrary to the Geneva Conventions, by the way. Think Perfidy Clause and such...Sad, but true. Yet, none of this matters to the U. N., the European Union folks, Oxfam, the State Department, and so forth. Arabs and Arabized are still committing atrocities, waging genocide, and so forth in black Africa and elsewhere, and all they can do is insist that Jews allow the re-supply of those who would butcher them if they had the chance. No doubt... Egypt has allowed hundreds of tunnels to be dug from its territory to supply Gaza with the means to kill Jews. Imagine if this was reversed. Pharaoh now supposedly has a peace treaty with Israel. Here's an idea...let them smuggle food and so forth instead. Furthermore, why smuggle? Let Pharaoh supply his Arab brothers with those supplies. By the way, Israel has been permitting essentials to cross into Gaza anyway. Jews aren't obligated to supply their executioners and wannabes with anything. Would any other people be expected to do this? Should be a no brainer, right? But it's that Jew thing again... Israel needs to hold elections as soon as possible...before its current non-leaders can cause even more damage. David Ben-Gurion, Golda, Jabotinsky, and Begin must be rolling in their graves. Prime Minister Olmert is soon scheduled to have some additional last minute arm-twisting done by another soon leaving official, Secretary of State Rice. Dubya, too, will likely join the gang up on the Jews party. Hey, Clinton received many millions of bucks for his Library and such from the Arab oil spigot as a gift for forcing Jews into the deadly Oslo debacle and agreeing to forsake 242's promise of secure borders, why not the scion of the Bush oil family too? He's certainly been acting that way these past few years...and I (reluctantly) voted for him. Like many other State Department types, Rice's career of squeezing Jews is sure to pay off later. Just ask James Baker III (Dubya's virtual uncle). As I like to remind folks, Condi already has one oil tanker named after her in the Chevron fleet. Shafting Hebrews and Arab potentate derriere-kissing have been lucrative business decisions for decades... Israel must have new leaders who will act as if their private parts are still intact — regardless of the consequences. If America threatens to cut off aid, then so be it. With a man who has dozens of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel friends, advisors, and supporters ready to move into the White House (he's already sent one of these folks, Robert Malley, as his senior foreign policy adviser to Lebanon's slave master, Syria), Israel must be ready to draw its lines in the sand beyond which it will no further budge. Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport, and such must not be subjected to what Sderot and Ashkelon now frequently receive...and that's exactly what is realistically to be expected if Israel does in Judea (i.e., land of the Jews) and Samaria (aka the West Bank) what it did in Gaza. A three thousand mile wide America will be shamed if it forces Israel into another Munich 1938 style "peace." Israel must insist on reasonable but effective territorial compromises regarding the remaining territories in dispute...be they the Golan Heights or the West Bank. Presidents Johnson and Reagan along with Secretary of State Shultz (an amazing exception to the Foggy Bottom rule), military commanders, and others understood this quite well. It appeared that President Bush II did too...at least for a while. Arabs (even those few Israel has "peace treaties" with) still refuse to accept the permanent reality of a'49 armistice line, 9-mile wide Israel — let alone anything beyond the virtually microscopic. Think about that purely Arab patrimony thing, the Dar ul-Islam vs. the Dar al-Harb, and so forth. And, again, think gassed Kurds, Darfur, and southern Sudan while you're at it... Given all the above, as for Gaza...Israel must send an ultimatum, not supply it. And the U. N., Oxfam, the European Union, and other assorted hypocrites and practitioners of the double standard? Let them go to where they're really needed but to where they never will...to relieve the real — not mostly self-inflicted — plight of scores of millions of non-Arab peoples still being slaughtered, enslaved, subjugated, and so forth throughout the region on behalf of Arab nationalism and its "purely Arab patrimony." 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 To Go To Top

EX MUSLIM NONIE DARWISH: MUSLIM HATE FOR JEWS WORSE THAN NAZIS' Posted by Avodah, November 24, 2008.

This was written by Aviva Woolf and it appeared in Arutz-7 www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/128511

(IsraelNN.com) Nonie Darwish, the founder of Arabs for Israel (www.arabsforisrael.com/), says that the hatred the Muslims have for Jews is even worse than the hatred the Nazis had for them. "It isn't a societal thing, it's a religious thing," she explains. "It's intrinsic to their lives because it isn't a human command to kill Jews, it's the word of Allah." In an interview with Israel National News' Ari Abramowitz and Jeremy Gimpel, the activist and author Darwish explains that it is Muslim teaching to kill non-believers in Allah, and that adherents of any other monotheistic religion must become second class citizens. Daughter of top officer Darwish is the daughter of a top Egyptian Army officer, Lt. General Mustafa Hafez, who founded the Fedayeen in Gaza — a group that launched murderous raids across Israel's southern border in the 1950's and was the precursor of the PLO. In July 1956, when Nonie was eight years old, her father became the first targeted assassination carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces in response to Fedayeen's attacks. Darwish is an outspoken critic of the culture she came from. Supported by her husband and children, she dedicates her life to exposing the false accusations against the Jews which the Arab nations are promoting. 'We did 9/11 ourselves' She explains that after 9/11, she called her friends in the Middle East to understand how something like that could have happened. She was surprised to hear all of them blame a 'Jewish conspiracy' for the deaths of 3,000 people in New York City. "How could my people," she asks, "t"How could my people, the Arab and Muslim people, accuse the Jewish people of something we know very well that we did ourselves?" he Arab and Muslim people, accuse the Jewish people of something we know very well that we did ourselves?" Although Nonie is no longer Muslim, she still refers to them as her people. Although her relatives in Egypt no longer speak to her, she doesn't see the problem in supporting Israel. "Loving the Israeli people does not mean I hate Arabs; they are my family," she states. Darwish says that she is very fearful of President-elect Barack Obama and thinks he will only add to the anti-Israel feelings in America. Still, she says: "There is nothing called 'no hope'. If there was no hope, I wouldn't be speaking." Nonie's organization is called Arabs for Israel (http://www.arabsforisrael.com/).Her new book Cruel and Usual Punishment will be available in January 2009. You can listen to the complete interview at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Radio/News.aspx/305. Contact Avodah at Avodah15@aol.com. And visit his blog at http://am-yisrael-blog.blogspot.com/ To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: FIRST THINGS FIRST Posted by Arlene Kushner, November 24, 2008.

I'm tabling other issues today to discuss what I see as priorities: First, a return to the issue of Beit HaShalom in Hevron: important because the media's highly politicized distortions in the matter have been considerable. I have learned that what I reported yesterday — regarding the fact that the High Court did not say Beit HaShalom MUST be evacuated — is indeed true. This is from Elyakim Haetzni — an attorney and former MK, resident in Kiryat Arba — who is the father of attorney Nadav Haetzni, who is representing the Jewish community of Hevron. Elyakim's key point, with all of the legalities, is that the police — who in Judea and Samaria report to the State — are conducting themselves in a different manner than would be the case if something similar were happening in Tel Aviv. When there is a charge by an ostensible owner of a building (in this case the Arab who sold the building) that there are squatters in his building, normally, unless the absolute preponderance of evidence is with the ostensible owner (which certainly is not the case here), the police decline to be involved, advising the purported owner to seek legal action or handle it himself. Here, the police have directly insinuated themselves into what is going on. ~~~~~~~~~~ A brief sequence of events: The building was purchased in 2004 by the Jewish community for close to $1 million, via an intermediary, from Palestinian Faiz Rajabi. That intermediary then paid Rajabi to arrange for renovations on the building in preparation for occupancy. Rajabi, upon discovering — when they took occupancy just over 18 months ago — that the new owners of the building were Jews (which put him in a bad place with the PA), denied having sold his building to them. He went to the police. The new owners, however, had not only solid paper documentation, but also a video documenting the sale. When the video was shown to him, he changed his story and admitted he had sold it but said he had then immediately cancelled the transaction. He did not make his case at that point with the police. ~~~~~~~~~~ About a year ago, the State reversed itself when high ranking officials for the State Attorney's office decided that some of the papers connected to the sale — which had been submitted by the new owners — were forgeries. This is critical, because this is what we read about now: the implication being that the Jewish community presented false papers for a sale that never really occurred. An eviction order was issued. This is where the story gets really strange. The State Attorney's office declared the papers "confidential" and refused for a period of time to submit them to a handwriting expert on behalf of the Jewish community, even though they had given the papers to the police in the first place. Finally they permitted Dr. Mordechai Vardi to study the documents. His professional opinion is at the heart of matters here: Dr. Vardi said the suspected forgeries were "auto-forgeries." That is, the signatures of the seller in question really were his signatures, but changed by him so that he would be able to claim they weren't. Said Vardi: "This is a conspicuous indication of a fictitious forgery. Such is the case before us; the [police] investigators' expert did not seem to realize it." These deliberate forgeries, he said, were committed so there would be an "exit hatch." What is more, payment was made by the buyers in stages from 2004 to 2005, and in each instance Rajabi issued a receipt. Even the police acknowledged that Rajabi's signatures on the receipts were legitimate. Thus, his argument that he cancelled the deal immediately after signing on to it is demolished — over the course of a year he accepted payments for his property. ~~~~~~~~~~ Given the above, one might think that the matter would have been closed. The fact that is not makes it blatantly clear that we're dealing here with politics and not just law. The government of Israel is not interested in a strengthening community in Hevron, since it would hope ultimately to turn all of Judea over to the PA, including Judaism's second holiest city. ~~~~~~~~~~ At present the High Court has turned this issue back over to a local court for final decision. But neither the State nor the Court has been willing to listen to an audio tape — with Rajabi, who was not coerced, saying that he sold the house — that the Jewish community recently submitted in evidence. ~~~~~~~~~~ I've been asked by people how they can help here, and my response is two-fold. One way of helping is by promulgating the truth — in discussion, in letters to the editor, etc. The other is by keeping the pressure on the government. ~~~~~~~~~~ Forty-nine MKs have now sent a letter to Defense Minister Barak and Public Security Minister Dichter asking them "to avoid evacuating the disputed house in Hebron and to show decency and governmental responsibility.... evacuation of the house should be avoided at least until after the elections." "We express a sentiment of deep discrimination and injustice which has overshadowed the Beit Hashalom case from the outset. The obscure refusal of the State Prosecution to reexamine the case, in light of the audio recording the settlers obtained, raises difficult emotions." Elyakim Haetzni tells me that this letter was accompanied by a statement by Justice Turkel, whom I cited yesterday. ~~~~~~~~~~ And then, concerning president-elect Obama: The comments have been coming in with regard to that fact that he's been misjudged and is really pro-Israel. This is said to be so because he has taken Rahm Emanuel on board, and because Al Qaida's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, recently released a tape severely criticizing Obama, which is being offered as evidence that the Arabs are not really pleased with him. I wish matters were that simple. I would like to cite here Barry Rubin, who is director of the Global Research in International Affairs, from his latest piece, "Don't flatter your enemies, protect your friends." "HOW IMPORTANT is popularity? According to the school enthusiastic about President-elect Barack Obama in the United States, it is everything. One journalist explained that al-Qaida is afraid of Obama because, presumably, he will win away Muslims from supporting radical Islamism. It is written in the Washington Post: 'Even among the followers of radical groups, such as Hamas and the Taliban, Obama has inspired a sense of change and opportunity.' "That last statement — intended to imply that even extremists like Obama — is worded with a shocking, though unintentional, ambiguity. It is sure true that Hamas, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, and al-Qaida view this 'change' as an 'opportunity.' Unfortunately, they view it as an opportunity for being more aggressive. (emphasis added.) Here's how Iranian Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami put it, in words typical of the reaction from Iran and these other groups. He sees Obama's slogan of 'change' as a retreat caused by Iran's revolution, which brought down American power, and says the United States is continuing to decline. For them, Barack [is] the creator of a more popular America and a figure of weakness. Should there be any doubt that his flexibility will be interpreted as retreat, no matter how well-intentioned he is? (emphasis added) "THE DEBATE in Washington is far away from the debate in the Middle East. In America's capital, the talk is of how the radicals are more moderate than thought, how they will be won over by Obama's charisma and changed American policies. The disconnect between the region and the rationalizers is frightening. "There is no policy change in Washington that will appease the radicals. And there are no concessions that will make an American president popular in a meaningful way among Middle Easterners. Even more worrisome, such steps are not going to make moderates feel more secure. "Here the al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri gets it just right. He tells Obama: 'It appears that you don't know anything about the Muslim world and its history... You are neither facing individuals nor organizations, but are facing a jihadi awakening and renaissance which is shaking the pillars of the entire Islamic world; and this is the fact which you and your government and country refuse to recognize and pretend not to see.'" (emphasis added) www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1226404813640&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

"THE DIGITAL INTIFADA" PROMISES TO FIGHT ZIONISM ONLINE Posted by Daisy Stern, November 24, 2008.

This was written by Malkah Fleisher and it appeared in Arutz-7 (www.IsraelNationalNews.com).

(IsraelNN.com) As part of its ongoing jihad against Israel, the Hamas terrorist organization has adopted a new mission, recently unveiled at its booth at a digital communications exhibition in Iran: hacking Israeli websites. A new Hamas-affiliated group, calling itself "The Digital Intifada," introduced itself in late October at the second annual National Exhibition and Festival of Digital Media in Tehran, according to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC). The objective of "The Digital Intifada" is to develop anti-Jewish websites and encourage the criminal hacking of Israeli governmental and non-governmental websites. At its booth at the Tehrani exhibit, Hamas's new computerized warfare promised $2,000 prizes for succeeding in the crime of hacking any Israeli site which is "hostile to the Palestinian people." Particular honor would go to anyone who hacked the websites of the Sephardic religious political party Shas, the Temple Mount Faithful website, and the American Internet Haganah (specializing in monitoring global jihad websites). "The Digital Intifada" booth also featured Hamas-related websites, including Palestine-info, Filastin al-'An, Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Al Aqsa TV, the PALDF Forum and Sabiroon websites, among others. Vendors distributed anti-Jewish, pro-Islamic jihadist pamphlets, scarves, and hats to interested recipients. After browsing the booth's many examples of internet-based jihad, exhibition attendees were invited to speak about the interface between the internet, fact manipulation, and terrorism with Abu Osama Abd Al-Muati, the Hamas representative in Tehran, as well as Hamas propaganda designers, experts, and political commentators. Director of the Lebanon-based Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV in Tehran Abu Hassan Zuaytar was also in attendance, as were various members of Hamas and Hizbullah. Hizbullah also had its own booth at the exhibit. "The Digital Intifada" announced several objectives for future anti-Israel propaganda work, including the production of anti-Zionist computer games for children, online pro-Palestinian forums, a digital library dedicated to labeling Jewish Israelis as "occupiers", and coordinating online battalions of digital fighters to war with Israel and Israel's allies and supporters. According to a report published by the Bethlehem-based Ma'an News Agency, "hacking into Zionist websites has become a necessity which cannot be avoided." (Ma'an News Agency quoting the Islamic Republic News Agency, October 31). Contact Daisy Stern at daisystern1@gmail.com To Go To Top

WHAT RULE OF LAW, COS GABI ASHKENAZI? Posted by Daisy Stern, November 24, 2008.

This is an op-ed piece by Leonie Ben-Simon, a freelance journalist, and it appeared in Arutz-7 p://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/8391

(IsraelNN.com) "It is very important that we uphold the rule of law," says Gabi Ashkenazi, in relation to the High Court's decision to remove Jews from a building in Hebron. That is the problem. Which law? Is the IDF Chief of Staff referring to Jewish law or the laws of a High Court that has made so many rulings which fly in the face of and contradict Jewish law? Ashkenazi is right. In a democracy, the people can elect a government which will rule all of the people, but may not represent all sectors and all of their agendas. Without the rule of law, the institutions of this democratic society will crumble. If the court is not respected, if the will of the people acts to collectively refuse to accept the judgment of the court by making enforcement impossible, then the power of government and its agencies are rendered useless. Right or wrong, Ashkenazi knows that the last "disengagement" worked, but there are many, many Israelis who now regret that they stood aside and let it happen. Substantial numbers of young soldiers who were bullied by threats of being passed over for promotions and lied to regret their participation to this day, passing on their feelings to their younger siblings now in the army, to their families and their friends. Citizens throughout the length and breadth of the country see the rockets coming from Gaza falling on Israeli homes, killing and injuring people. They now understand the implications of giving away land knowing that the "disengagement" from Gaza was not for peace, but to cause death and destruction for Israelis. What Ashkenazi is worried about is that large numbers of his soldiers are turning Right and will refuse to evict Jews from their homes again. No matter what he does — whether by passing the buck to the Border Police to do the job or by scrounging around to find a few leftists in the army who believe that the country belongs to the Arabs and will be happy to evict people — there will be blood shed this time. They may succeed in evicting and demolishing one or two homes with the rule of divide and conquer, but a wholesale eviction could bring many times the amount of protesters and also a different class of persons than those who came to Gaza, who will not lie down peacefully to be carried away like they did last time. It must be remembered that Gaza contained a few thousand Israeli Jews, although it did provide Israel with fifteen per cent of its agricultural exports. Today there are hundreds of thousands of Jews who call Judea and Samaria their home. The residents of the whole of the coastal strip have watched what is happening to Sderot and Ashkelon, soon to be Ashdod and maybe even Tel Aviv. They will not let corrupt politicians, a High Court with a leftist composition and questionable practices, nor the army put their property and their lives at risk by giving away a small strip of land, equal to a dot on the whole map of Arab lands. Their security demands that Israel remains complete and not within easy range of rockets from all sides. Our enemies wait for us to compromise our security in the name of peace before making war on the small piece of land that would be left. Ashkenazi has another problem. His allegiance is to the government who hired him, the only democratic government in the Middle East. It appears to be stable, with all of the associated institutions of government. However, when the government is totally out of step with the people, when a large and growing percentage of army officers and the majority of soldiers come from traditional backgrounds where Jewish law is lived by and respected, the question has to be asked: "When is enough, enough?" Rabbis are calling for refusals by soldiers to participate in such evacuations and demolitions; homeowners are being held in custody for joining demonstrations and not allowed back in their local area of residence; and children as young as thirteen are being arrested for protesting against the government's intention to hand over their homes to the enemy who takes every opportunity to try to kill and maim them. Israel is neither America nor a Western European country. Is it conceivable that the High Court's decision will be the trigger for major change? When soldier after soldier refuses to remove fellow Jews from their houses this time, the whole political system can very well fall. This time, the lies and threats will not work with our young soldiers. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. No wonder Ashkenazi is hauling out the principle of the Rule of Law. Contact Daisy Stern at daisystern1@gmail.com To Go To Top

DON'T IGNORE THE MAHDI SCOUTS! Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, November 24, 2008.

A frightening youth movement evolves in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. To the proximate north of the Jewish homeland goosesteps a graduating class of saluting young Muslim men adorned in disarming Boy Scout like uniforms, known as Mahdi Scouts, weaned on the fundamentalist Jew despising hatred of Hezbollah, pictured on the front page of the November 21st edition of the New York Times in an article entitled 'To Fuel Quest, Hezbollah Harnesses Youth Piety'. They march along, wearing the yellow banner of that terrorist group, mesmerized by the beat of military music pounding into their collective soul jihadist dreams of one day conquering the state of Israel. Each obsessed youth wears a tiny picture on his chest of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the infamous or famous Shiite cleric, depending upon perspective, who led the Iranian revolution. "You are our leader!" chant the boys in one brainwashed voice, addressing a Hezbollah manipulator walking to his soap box. The official addresses his psychotically induced youthful crowd with Koranic rhetoric, "We are your men!" Adolph Hitler, if able to observe this scene from the molten lava Hell he surely must inhabit, would likely drool venom, believing someday these boys would grow into jackbooted fascists in the name of their religious idol Mohammed, rationalizing their behavior with skewed gospel from their holy book, sucking up to whatever modern day turbaned creature mentored their addled brains. The melding of religion and hatred is a strategy utilized by groups like Hezbollah, a way to control and motivate impressionable flocks to do their bidding, a way to maintain power in any nation they may infiltrate. "It's like a complete system, from primary school to university," asserts Talal Atrissi, a political analyst at Lebanese University and many decade student of this particular terrorist organization. "The goal is to prepare a generation that has deep religious faith and is also close to Hezbollah." Mahdi Scouts are provided with reading lists, including one book entitled 'Facts About Jews', describing them as "cruel, corrupt, cowardly, and deceitful" as well as "killers of prophets." One chapter states "their Talmud says those outside the Jewish religion are animals." Over time Shiite youngsters become committed to the philosophy of Hezbollah, learn to despise all Jews, and no doubt would be willing to attack Israel if and when they are ordered to do so. The formation of a devout Muslim fascist army along Israel's northern border, armed with advanced Iranian weaponry, presents a clear and present danger to the Jewish homeland. Ceding the Golan Heights to Syria as an olive branch, presumably prying that hostile Arab neighbor also to the north away from Iran, supposedly enhancing pie-in-the-sky peace prospects in return as lame duck Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his stupid supporters postulate, would be a tragic mistake, casting Israel as a weak desperate nation, indeed compromising her security as well, especially in light of Hezbollah's jihadist youth movement in Lebanon, never willing to accept the existence of Israel, no doubt inviting them to attack as a consequence of that feckless indeed treasonous 'land for peace' strategy suggesting vulnerability. Only an aggressive unyielding Israel can survive in such a predatory neighborhood, surrounded by various venomous Muslim adversaries all disdainful as well as jealous if truth be told of Jews and their homeland. Rahm Emanuel, U.S. President Barack Obama's appointed chief of staff, an orthodox Jew whose Jerusalem born father fought in the Irgun, a heavyweight in this newly elected Administration who states, "I am proud of my heritage and treasure the values it has taught me.", is someone prescient Jewish leaders should now approach, educating him in the 'facts of life' and prospects of survival for the Jewish state his father so valiantly fought for, exhorting him to convince his boss that 'land for peace' initiatives must be abandoned, that a growing anti-Semitic fascist youth movement in Lebanon ought to be viewed with great concern. American clout consistent with Israel's best interests, eschewing past initiatives expecting Israel to cede the farm for virtually nothing, is best obtained from the get go of a new political regime. Act now! Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant. 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 larose@snip.net To Go To Top

FRANCE'S CHICKENS HOME TO ROOST; ARAB REVENGE; IRAN CLOSING IN; MILITARY ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE GOLAN FAULTY Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 24, 2008.

EUROPE, SYRIA, U.S., & ISRAEL Britain's Foreign Secretary, David Milibrand, met with Syria's Foreign Minister. They re-established high-level intelligence links between the two countries. The London Times explained that Syria is known for one of the best intelligence services, especially on the movement of Islamists, including their entry into Iraq. The Foreign Secretary hoped that his visit would help end Syria's isolation and draw the attention of President-Elect Obama, whom they consider preoccupied with the financial crisis. The Europeans think that the Arab-Israel conflict should be the highest foreign policy issue for the US. They contend that this conflict is the key to dealing with nuclear Iran (IMRA, 11/18). Sure Syria knows about Islamist entry into Iraq. It sends many of them! Another delusion is that Syria would give Britain intelligence that would help it defeat the insurgency that Syria's master, Iran, sponsors. I don't know whether it would go so far as to give Britain disinformation, but it would be glad to tap Western intelligence and betray it for jihad. Perhaps Britain would give Syria intelligence against Israel. Don't put anything past British intelligence! Britain forgets the purpose in isolating Syria. Perhaps Obama's first foreign policy priority should be to get US allies aligned. Nice of them to tell the US what its highest foreign policy priority is, though not so nice to tell us we pay too much attention to our economy, on which the world depends. Our economy really is our highest foreign policy priority. Without a strong economy, we can't do much in foreign policy. Next highest priority is restoring a big and robust military. Islamism, Russia, China, and foreign trade are higher priorities than the Arab-Israel conflict. Actually, that conflict is part of jihad, but Europe doesn't see the big picture. Neither did Obama. How clever those Europeans consider themselves, working to deal with Iran indirectly, via the Arab-Israel conflict. As if they can. As if that would alter Iran. Iran wants to conquer the world, perhaps destroying it in the process. Nothing will stop Iran's drive for nuclear weapons. What those clever Europeans really want is for the US to sacrifice Israel to the Arabs in return for false promises by Syria and Iran to desist. Then they will pretend that it wasn't their antisemitism that did Israel in. Then Iran will do them in. FRANCE'S CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST French-Saudi relations soured. Weapons that France sold to S. Arabia were used against French troops in Lebanon and have turned up in Afghanistan, too (IMRA, 11/18). That's what happens when dealing with Islamists. ARAB NOTION OF REVENGE Here is my understanding of the breaching of the Gaza ceasefire. Israeli intelligence discovered that Hamas had built a tunnel from which to emerge in Israel and kidnap a soldier. The trap was about to be sprung. The IDF headed it off by raiding Gaza, destroying the tunnel, and fighting gunmen in their way. The plan was to violate the ceasefire. Hamas has not denied that intent. Hamas violates the ceasefire from time-to-time, just as did the PLO. Hamas called the Israeli raid the violation. It expected Israel to wait for the kidnapping to be done. The raid served as a pretext for various terrorist groups to launching dozens of rockets into Israel. You see, those groups utilize the respite of the ceasefire to rearm. The Israeli air force detected a launch crew and wounded them. Gazans are indignant. Israel declared that the firing of a couple of dozen rockets at Israel was not a violation of the ceasefire, just isolated incidents. Doesn't that sound like political rationalization for a weak or anti-Zionist policy? Now, we learn (IMRA, 11/15) that a terrorist organization in Gaza has threatened revenge for an IDF raid that Israel denies having made. The air force explains that it did not operate in the area cited. The explosion probably was from explosives that the jihadists work with. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights has before chided terrorists for storing explosives and putting their laboratories in civilian houses, and carelessly so. The Center does not mind firing rockets at Israeli citizens, it only minds unnecessary casualties among its own people. That is its notion of human rights. Not mine. The West lack proper frankness in exposing the hypocrisy and inhumanity of human rights organizations and in combating terrorism. Haaretz expresses surprise that the ceasefire didn't hold and the fighting escalated, contrary to the interests on both sides. "On both sides" falsely makes it seem as if Israel were partly at fault. That is Haaretz' ideology. As for Arab violations and flare-ups, we've had 16 years of it. Why is Haaretz surprised? (Prof. Steven Plaut, 11/15). Intelligence is the ability to learn from experience, rather than be surprised by history repeating itself many times in a few years. RUSSIA TO GET ISRAELI DRONE TECHNOLOGY Israel had sold Georgia some drones, used in defense from Russian attack. Now Russia wants to buy a few from Israel, then manufacture more, under license (IMRA, 11/15). It is imprudent and unethical to give up one's technology to a rogue enemy, that would advice Syria how to resist the drones (or give it to Iran against the US). The naïve Israelis may think that this would placate Russia. P.A. SECURITY COOPERATION The P.A. has sentenced to execution a P.A. security officer for helping Israeli forces raid terrorists in Judea-Samaria (IMRA, 11/12). That demonstrates how the P.A. feels about real security cooperation. It calls it "collaboration." Now what was that about Israel relying upon the P.A. to keep its peace agreements by cracking down on terrorism? ABBAS' REVEALS HIS EXTREMISM Commemorating his former boss, Arafat, a founder of modern Islamic terrorism, P.A. head Abbas lauded suicide bombing for the cause. The media, that usually calls him a moderate, omitted that part of his speech (Arutz-7, 11/12). They omitted proof of his extremism, so they can keep labeling him "moderate." BRITAIN SUDDENLY ANTI-COLONIALIST Britain is trying to expand its anti-Jewish policy for Judea-Samaria to other countries. It is boycotting production by Israelis beyond the 1967 borders. It wants to pressure Jews to stop settlement "activity." Britain has no policy against Arab terrorist activity in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. Muslims manufacturing rockets there to fire at Jews is all right, but Jews growing tomatoes is a menace? What is Britain's current record? (1) Occupies Northern Ireland. (2) Holds Gibraltar, taken from Spain. (3) Holds the Falkland Islands, that Argentina claims. It set up a Constitution for the Falklands that preserves British interests there. Argentina calls this colonialism. (4) Britain holds the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean, against claims by two local countries. Britain cleared out all the inhabitants, to lease a military base to the US. The Chagossians won court cases, but still are kept away. (5) Britain claims 1.7 kilometers of the South Pole, overlapping claims by Chile and Argentina, local countries. All Britain's claims are challenged with some justification. "By contrast, Judea and Samaria are the ancient heartland of the Jewish people, the cradle of our civilization, and Israel has every right — morally, historically, theologically and militarily — to be there." (Michael Freund in IMRA, 11/12.) Legal right, too. Britain may be right about claimed territory, but it is wrong and hypocritical in its selectively anti-Israeli indignation. Its argument against Israel is pretext. NEW MILITARY ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE GOLAN FAULTY Strategic assessment has it that Israel cannot defend itself any more without possessing the Golan Heights. [That Israel did in 1967 should not be cited in favor of ceding the Heights. It was almost a miracle that would not be repeated.] Then how, Israeli military planners pondered, could Israel defend itself if Israeli politicians gave the Golan to Syria? Their answer was that Israel would have to subject the giveaway to conditions enabling Israel to recapture the Golan before Syria could move its ground forces past it. Those conditions were: (1) Demilitarized Golan; and (2) Syrian forces on the further side of Damascus, and Israeli forces in the Hulah Valley just below the Heights, so the IDF could beat the Syrian forces racing to the Golan. Those conditions depend on assumptions: (a) Syria honoring the treaty; (b) Interpreting Syrian military movement correctly; (c) Israel mobilizing immediately; (d) Israel figured accurately how long things take from the set positions; and (e) Israel correctly decides that Syria is at war and acts on it. Those assumptions are faulty. Military movement can be misinterpreted. You see, Syria plans to build cities on the Golan, populated with reservists subject to call-up. It could stage riots, move troops ostensibly to quell them, and suddenly it has an army on the Golan. Besides, the danger might be more from advanced missiles from Hizbullah along the northern Jordan River, than from Syrian divisions. A new combination of enemy forces is possible. Time to re-think the old assumptions and policy. The P.A. also would have missiles. They could keep Israeli forces from moving on the northward road. Monitors [even if honest, which non-Israeli ones would not be] would be unable to verify that the P.A. no longer is demilitarized. The new combination of dangers requires Israel to control more territory (Gen. Giora Eiland, head of Israel's National Security Agency, in IMRA, 11/8). I think the general should have put more time into editing his article for clarity. He should emphasize that whereas most Israeli strategists assume that only a couple of enemy forces would coordinate, they must assume that irregular forces would disrupt Israeli mobilization. Syria doesn't honor treaties. Syria could create false alarms, as Egypt did before 1973, until Israel lets down its guard. Leftists Israeli regimes are loathe to act. Eiland should have ended with the conclusion that in the missile era, control of territory is no less important than when the only way of waging full-scale war was to amass ground forces over an area with depth greater than Israel is at its narrow points. (That means not with city buildings in the way.) Israel should not have let the irregulars build up. IRAN CLOSING IN Iran is switching from liquid fuel missiles, with a range of 1,200 miles, to solid fuel missiles of the same range but greater accuracy (IMRA, 11/12). Iran is gaining power in deterring pre-emptive attacks on it while it develops the means of delivering devastating attacks on others. Don't other countries see this coming? If the US doesn't stop Iran now, who will? If we are not for ourselves, who is? The rest of the world doesn't care to make much effort to stop genocide, as was demonstrated in Rwanda and partly in Yugoslavia. Neither does the rest of the world like the US to be world policeman except to protect them indirectly. For indirect attack, as by infiltrating Muslims, Europe is somnolent. Anyway, the US lacks the resources to be world policeman. When the US is in danger, it should act to protect itself. It should not care what others say, others who gain from the protection they denounce when rendered by America. PERES INDIRECTLY ADMITS RABIN ASSASSINATION PLOT Shimon Peres described the Arab-Israel conflict as a joint clash. The Muslims committed repeated aggression against the Jews (IMRA, 12/12). He said that Rabin was shot while singing a song of peace. The shooting came after the meeting. Inadvertently admitting the falsity of the government theory, Peres said three shots were fired at Rabin. The government theory is that Yigal fired two shots at Rabin's back. Those however, were blanks. There was no blood on the ground and no bullets recovered. Rabin energetically entered the car, obviously without the spine-crippling injury found at hospital. (Prof. Steven Plaut claims there isn't a shred of evidence against the official theory. Much against it and little for it.) Barry Chamish's theory, backed by some medical reports, is that a third shot, in the chest, killed Rabin. Peres referred to the third shot, just as did the Dep. Defense Minister at the time, a doctor. Peres referred to Muslim leaders sharing in the mourning. He interprets this as evidence of peaceful intent. I interpret it as their interest in keeping going the kind of concessions to them that Rabin allowed and would, in turn, allow them to conquer Israel. 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 To Go To Top

PEACE? FORGET IT Posted by Victor Sharpe, November 23, 2008.

Islam will never accept Israel unless Islam itself undergoes a reformation. But by its very nature it cannot do so and still be called Islam. That said, there is no future for the Jewish state if it keeps on believing that one day the Muslim world will accept it and live in a true and lasting peace as, for example, Holland and Belgium live peacefully side by side. The only way forward for Israel is to accept the dismal fact that so long as it remains a Jewish and non-Arab state it cannot ever have peaceful neighbors who will not at every opportunity wish to destroy it. That being so, Israel must continue to prosper and thrive as a state in the knowledge that it can never let down its guard. It must ever be on its guard as were the biblical watchmen on the ancient walls of Jerusalem. But even with such a threat hanging over it like some Arab sword of Damocles, Israel can survive and grow. Even though the Jewish state yearns for peace, as all other civilized societies do, the very external threat can be turned to great advantage militarily, politically, socially and economically. Nothing keeps internal division at bay and concentrates the mind more than when the barbarians are at the gate. What is remarkable is that since the great Zionist leaders of the likes of Herzl, Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion, Begin and Shamir have passed, there has been a long and depressing parade of weak and incompetent Israeli leaders and politicians who have brought unnecessary disaster down upon the state. The worst ever is the present caretaker prime minister, Ehud Olmert, whose idiocy is simply incomprehensible. Here is a man, deeply flawed and under police investigation for alleged corruption who seems driven by some infernal force to harm his own nation and aid and support her enemies by turning a blind eye to every Palestinian Arab provocation and act of naked aggression. Along with defense minister, Ehud Barak, who is arguably one of the worst and most incompetent men ever to be entrusted with that vital portfolio, Olmert grovels at the feet of the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas. In response to veiled threats from Abbas that Israel must give to him everything he demands or else, the Israeli premier ignores the suffering of his people under bombardment in Sderot and Ashkelon and, instead, frees 250 Arab thugs who will immediately return to murdering Israeli civilians. Abbas is a miserable Holocaust denier whose very crime should place him beyond the pale for every Israeli leader. From prime ministers, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu and Sharon down to Olmert and would be prime minister, Tzippi Livni, all have been resistant to accepting the sad but awful truth that even if Israel shrunk to one down town city block in Tel Aviv, the Arab and Muslim world would still not recognize a Jewish state or agree to live with it in peace and harmony. Why not? The answer to that question is Islam itself. True peace can never be achieved between Muslim and non-Muslim nations. Islam mandates the faithful to spread their religion through territorial conquest or, as in the case of Israel, by reclaiming what Muslims believe they have lost. Even though the native and indigenous peoples of Israel are the Jews, and even if the Land of Israel was given to the Jewish people in an eternal covenant with God, it does not matter to the Muslim, for wherever the Muslim foot has once trod triumphal, that territory is forever regarded as Islamic. If such territory is lost to Muslims, then the belief is that Allah has been diminished and the land must be retaken, however long it may take. So Islam cannot and will not accept Israel. After all it is a Jewish state, governed by its Jewish inhabitants, and living in its very own ancestral and biblical homeland. But for the Muslim faithful, every part of it must become Muslim again. Until that time comes it will be considered by Muslim Arabs as within the Dar al Harb, the House of War. Peace then is merely a mirage in the desert sands. World leaders, essentially those who are secular and western, fail to understand the Muslim mindset. Israeli leaders, who of all people should understand and know better, still fall into the fatal trap of believing that the western model of lasting peace between nation states can equally apply in the Middle East between Muslim and non-Muslim nations. It is a fallacy. These leaders cling to the notion that the conflict between Israel and the Arabs in general, and between Israel and those who call themselves Palestinians in particular, is territorial. It is not. It is theological. It is, indeed, part of the existential conflict that has existed between Islam and the rest of the world since the 7th century. Judaism and Christianity are considered by the followers of Islam to be in error. The Muslim belief is that Mohammed was given the final and complete divine revelation and Islam is therefore superior to the earlier two faiths, whose followers it calls the "People of the Book." So now the Muslim cry is, "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammed is his prophet." Islam, therefore, is considered by the faithful as superior over all other faiths and peoples. It is a theological, "Islam uber alles." Herein is the fundamental fault line, which may never be bridged. Much of the Islamic world now feels empowered, as perhaps, never before, and seeks global domination with renewed vigor. This is the tangible and growing threat to the world; not global warming. There are many Muslims who remain faithful adherents to Islam but who have rejected the jihadist call for Islamic supremacy throughout the world. Hopefully the West will find some Muslim nations who have learned to accept a "live and let live" policy with their non-Muslim neighbors. But the overwhelming strength of the jihadists may be too much for them to overcome and it seems a bleak and remote possibility that true moderates within Islam will one day prevail. That may come in time, but for Israel that time is still far, far away. Tolerance and pluralism must remain a goal but it can only be achieved by world leaders understanding finally that Israel has yet to find within the Arab and Muslim world a true and genuine peace partner. The policies of the Jewish state must be ordered within the recognition of that reality; somber and depressing as it may be. But only when world leaders understand the nature of Islam's theological rejection of a genuine and irrevocable peace with Israel, and Israeli leaders realize the uselessness of trading tangible and ancestral land for a delusional "land for peace," will a long and overdue reality finally enter the conflict. I firmly believe that the majority of Israelis yearn for a valiant, honorable and stalwart leader, versed in his people's history and faith, who will arise to tell those Arabs and Islamists who remain wedded to violent jihad against Israel that they will now find a new Israeli resolve to concede not one inch to their implacable aggression, enmity and deceit. Nor will the groveling that has characterized too many Israeli leaders in the past continue. Dhimmitude, the humiliating condition that Muslims historically imposed upon both their Jewish and Christian subjects, must not ever again be tolerated in any future relationships between Israelis and their Arab enemies. What we witness today is Israeli caretaker Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, bending the knee constantly and making endless concession to the deceitful leader of the Palestinian Authority, the Holocaust denying Mahmoud Abbas. This Arab leader is not interested in peace with Israel. He is interested only in taking what ever he can from the foolish Olmert and giving nothing, absolutely nothing, in return. And that is because as a Muslim he is not permitted to make peace with a non-Muslim. Yet the terminally obtuse Olmert, and so many liberal and leftwing Jews inside and outside of Israel, remain infuriatingly blind to these simple facts. Israeli leaders of the future must understand that the frigid cold peace that exists between Israel and Egypt, and Israel and Jordan, is no more than an armistice. They must realize once and for all the historical fact that Islam does not and cannot make a permanent peace with a non-Muslim neighbor. Islam mandates that only when the non-Muslim enemy is stronger and cannot at the time be defeated, can a ceasefire (dressed up as a peace treaty) be accepted for the good of the umma (Islamic community). But as soon as the enemy is considered weak and foolish through making, for example, pointless peaceful overtures and concessions, then war is an obligation demanded by the Quran. For this reason, the Arab and Muslim world launched its many wars against the Jewish state. Only by God's grace did Israel survive but at a terrible cost in Jewish blood. Such new Israeli leaders must look to the Torah and into their own people's biblical history. They must see again the nature of their enemies as spelled out in crystal clarity by the Almighty through the words of the Jewish prophet Jeremiah: "They dress the wound of my People as though it we're not serious saying, Peace, peace, but there is no peace. We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble!" I think of the disasters that Israeli leaders like Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin brought upon the Jewish state. They were the architects of the Oslo Accords, which we now more accurately call the Oslo War. The premise of those failed accords, which have inflicted terrible suffering on so many Israelis, was for Israel to accept that its ancestral and biblical lands can be given away to implacable enemies in order to make them peaceful and accept what was left of the Jewish state. It predictably failed for all the reasons stated above. The Midrash teaches that we are like a sheep among seventy wolves. Only the great Shepherd (God Almighty) can protect us from all of our enemies. We are instructed to do what we can to defend ourselves. But at this time it seems that no recent Israeli government has been able to face the task of protecting the residents of Israel. Look how the communities of southern Israel groan under the Arab missile blitz from the Gaza Strip while the Israeli Government of Ehud Olmert remains ever timid to the point of national humiliation. We must pray to God, the true guardian of Israel, to protect us. In this I am mindful of the Jewish prophet, Joel, who reminded the ancient Jews that the covenanted land must never be given away, for as he said: "In those days and at that time when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will enter into judgement against them concerning My inheritance, My people Israel, for they scattered My people among the nations and divided up My land: Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision." Joel, speaking God's words, then proclaimed: "The Lord will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the sky will tremble. But the Lord God will be a refuge for His people, a stronghold for the people of Israel." Victor Sharpe is the author of the highly acclaimed book: Politicide — The attempted murder of the Jewish state. To Go To Top

YAD L'ACHIM PETITION TO THOSE WHO ARE INTERESTED Posted by Ellen Horowitz, November 23, 2008.

Some may find the concept of jail sentences for missionaries to be a bit draconian, but it's worth noting that lawyers representing missionaries and messianics in Israel are trying to stop counter-missionary legislation and activists by claiming they are in violation of two laws against incitement. a) The first law forbids the destruction or desecration of any religious icon or item that a group holds sacred. b)The second law forbids an Israeli from speaking publicly in any way that offends or humiliates any other religion. In this way the missionaries will have a free hand to openly proselytize without opposition, because spreading the gospel is considered a religious tenet of evangelical Christainity. That means if we are found destroying a missionary tract which has been handed to us (which is the halacha), or if we attempt to stop a missionary from approaching our children, we could be in violation of incitement laws. If interested, write: yadlachm@netvision.net.il The petition is in Hebrew at http://www.atzuma.co.il/petition/meiryad/1/1000/ Ellen Horowitz lives in the Golan Heights, Israel with her husband and six children. She is a painter, an author and a columnist for Arutz-7, www.Israelnationalnews.com. Email her at ellenwrite@bezeqint.net To Go To Top

RECLAIMING JEWISH LAND Posted by Mechel Samberg, November 23, 2008.

Source: National Council of Young Israel, November 21, 2008 http://cnpublications.net/2008/11/21/reclamation-not-occupation/ Editor's Note: Although Biblical texts cannot constitute a legal basis for land ownership, the following article illustrates the strong historical, cultural, and religious connections that Jews have to Judea and Samaria. It is tie that the "international community" recognizes that the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are built on liberated and reclaimed Jewish lands and not on "occupied Palestinian territory." See Also: "A Jew Visits Bethlehem" by Israel Zwick, http://cnpublications.net/2006/12/17/visiting-bethlehem-then-and-now/ and Rabbi Chaim Wasserman, President, Council of YI Rabbis in Israel http://www.youngisrael.org/content/dt_current.cfm

Most important, in these three places as well as elsewhere, the nations of the world, shamefully joined by substantial numbers of our Jewish brethren in Israel and America, believe that the Jews of Israel are criminal settlers and occupiers of these areas. [1] From time immemorial — almost two millennia — we felt confident when we would read the well-known Midrash about our undisputed claim to at least three specific places in Eretz Yisrael. According to the Midrash, Jews would not be accused by the nations of the world of being treacherous, illegal occupiers of these three places since the record would show that these areas were purchased by Jews, each for a good price (Bereishit Rabbah 79:7). The earliest purchase was the one we read about in Parashat Chayei Sarah where Avraham Avinu insisted on purchasing the Cave of Machpelah from Efron, the Hittite. While initially Efron offered the piece of land gratis to Avraham, our patriach insisted on paying for it. And pay he certainly did. Four hundred shekels of silver could very well be worth in the many tens of thousands of dollars these days. The second purchase of land in Eretz Yisrael was made by Ya'akov Avinu. We read about that in Parashat Vayishlach (33:18-20) when Yaakov returned to Eretz Canaan from Padan Aram. He acquired a plot of land from the children of Chamor, the father of Shechem, for 100 kesitah. That plot of land, in Shechem, we are also told at the end of the book of Yehoshua (24:32), was where the Jews who conquered the land of Canaan under the leadership of Yehoshua buried the bones of Yosef. In Yehoshua, the fact that Yaakov purchased that plot of land is quoted directly from the original reference in Parashat Vayishlach. The third plot of land that was purchased outright was what we call today the Temple Mount. David ha-Melech purchased that from Aravna, the Yevusi who owned a silo on what was to be the future site of the first Bet ha-Mikdash. The cost was 600 gold shekels where each of the twelve tribes contributed 50 shekels (Divrei haYamim I, 21:22-26 as well as Shmuel II, 24:24). Here, also, when David approached the original owner, the gracious offer was made to gift the plot of land. But David, like Avraham, refused the gift and paid royally for the spot where he built an alter. One would think that these three places would have been undisputed territory based on these biblical sources. But the reality is that these three places, especially in our times, have become points of contention and conflagration with the Palestinian Muslim population. The Cave of Machpela needs massive protection in order for the Jews to use it as a hallowed place for prayer and for Torah study. There are times when Muslims will desecrate the places within the cave that are considered to be holy to the Jews even though the Muslim population considers areas in the Cave of Machpela as holy prayer halls. The traditional grave of Yosef was destroyed in October 2000 by Palestinian thugs when the Israel Defense Forces withdrew from the area under intense fire. As I write these shared lines, by arrangement with the IDF, bus loads of all sorts of Jews come to the destroyed tomb of Yosef in the middle of the night to offer their prayers and supplications as well as to return for Torah study. As for Har haMoriah, the mountain on which David built an alter to be incorporated into the first Bet ha-Mikdash, that is probably the most contentious of all the areas. Most important, in these three places as well as elsewhere, the nations of the world, shamefully joined by substantial numbers of our Jewish brethren in Israel and America, believe that the Jews of Israel are criminal settlers and occupiers of these areas. [2] When the modern return to Eretz Yisrael from Europe became a widespread movement in the last decades of the 19th century, among the many talmidei chachamim who worked tirelessly to see that Jews made aliyah rather than flock to America, was the distinguished rav of Bialystock, Rav Shmuel Mohilever. He dedicated much of his life to the backbreaking task of organizing plans and maintaining endless contacts with Jewish leaders and communities throughout Europe. He spared no effort on behalf of the Shivat Tziyyon movement which was the precursor to the Zionist efforts of Dr. Theodore Herzl and his World Zionist Congress. Mohilever, a consummate talmid chacham, was not only a visionary but labored with specific plans and programs on behalf of the Chovevei Tziyon movement and groups. His contract with the Bialystok community allowed for him to be absent from his many duties in that Jewish metropolis for several months a year so that he could travel throughout Europe and work on behalf of the resettlement mission he championed until his dying day in 1898. Mohilever, considered to be one of the founding fathers of what came to be known as religious Zionism, commented on the length to which the Torah describes the negotiations that Avraham entered into with Efron and his Hittite people over the purchase of the Cave of Machpela. He repeatedly reminded his generation that this episode in the Torah comes to teach us that in modern times, as in the days of Avraham, in order to reclaim the land promised to Avraham's descendants, every step of land would have to be purchased for hefty sums (quoted in A.I. Greenberg, Itturei Torah, 1:183). [3] The reclamation of the land would not only take massive amounts of money. All of the early leaders, known as precursors of modern Zionism, wrote about the necessity of the Jewish magnates — Montefiore, Rothschild, and dozens others -to lead the efforts to reclaim the land step by step. It would take a huge infusion of cash. "Cash" in mishnaic Hebrew is "damim." At the same time, all of the major talmidei chachamim who led the movement of return to Eretz Yisrael also realized, and clearly wrote, that a Jewish protective police force to defend the legal acquisitions we make in reclaiming the land is absolutely necessary since it will also cost us "damim," the same Hebrew word which means blood. True, without the philanthropists, the land could not be reclaimed. But without the defenders of our legally acquired land, that would cost us the ultimate human sacrifices they would be ready to make, Avraham's descendants could not hold on to the land that they purchased. It would take damim (money) as well as damim (blood). Follow the whole of sefer Bereishit and you will see that this follows a pattern reflecting the facts of life for us, since our return to our Promised Land was the identical pattern of life for our forefathers, Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov. Our rabbis taught that "ma'asei avot siman la-banim." What happened with our forefathers is surely a sign of what can be expected of life by their descendants. Contact Mechel Samberg at mechelsamberg2@yahoo.com To Go To Top

DESTRUCTION OF FEDERMAN FARM Posted by Daisy Stern, November 23, 2008.

This comes from Yesha Bulletin http://www.yeshabulletin.com/FIGHT%20BACK/FightBack.htm

Emergency campaign against two state solution. WE MUST STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR ERETZ ISRAEL! The Federman Farm inside Kiryat Arba — was destroyed recently in the middle of the night — by the IDF. The Federman family [9 children] and the Tor family [5 children] were thrown out of their beds in only their nightwear. The destruction reminds us of the destruction of Gush Katif 3 years ago, and then the destruction & violence of Amona. Today, WIG went down with a truck jammed full of beds, sheets, kitchen equipment, dried food, toilet paper, pens and games for the children and MORE, much more. As Elisheva said after this abomination — "15 years of marriage and our home destroyed in moments" The response to our truck load was great! Our hearts are warmed", they said at your love. For our part we saw their courage; the rebuilding and the song on Sinai's guitar as well as in their hearts as they depend on the God of Israel rather than the violence of an anti-semitic government. The Jews WILL live on the hills of Israel! STOP THE EVICTION ORDERS AGAINST JEWS!! THE JEWISH PATRIOTS ARE NOT THE ENEMY. THE ARABS ARE How you can help? Write dobiim@yeshabulletin.com To hear Nadia Matar and Women in Green click here. Contact Daisy Stern at daisystern1@gmail.com To Go To Top

TWO STATES CRAMMED INTO 300 X 50 MILES? Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, November 23, 2008.

The impossible two-state solution prepared by President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as evolved by James Baker III was never intended to actually be two states. Once the second state of "Palestine" came into being, the intention was to remove the first state of Israel. This would be accomplished by the same method as evolved in Gaza. Once Israel surrendered Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Valley, the Golan Heights and those parts of Jerusalem that were occupied and desecrated by Jordan for 19 years from 1948 to 1967, the Jihadists (holy warriors for Islam) would smuggle massive amounts of weapons in. They would make the abandoned territories into a huge firing base from what was the peaceful, thriving, productive State of Israel. The State Department's "Road Map" was not created for peace but, was used merely as a ruse by the Washington Arabists to pacify and recruit the Leftists in Israel and America. Their bait was the ephemeral word of "Peace" which draws Leftist Jews like flies to garbage. The two-state Peace Plan was never intended as a good solution to Arab hatred but, more of a dedication to Israel's elimination. People like James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, the Bush family dynasty — so connected to Saudi Arabia's crude oil — knew the bait cast out and trolled under the nose of a Leftist-dominated Israeli government would appeal to their natural inclination of retreat and surrender. The Two-State architects knew that the moment the Arab Muslims were in a dominant position, sitting on abandoned territory, they could and would launch a saturation missile attack of huge proportions. The Hezb'Allah Terrorist organization in the Lebanon north of Israel has re-stocked since the 2006 Lebanon War up to 40,000 missiles ready for launch. Naturally, Syria and Iran would coordinate with their missiles (some chemicals). Hamas has built deep fortification in Gaza and, like Hebz'Allah, armed them with medium and long range missiles. The Olmert government has fled into deep denial about the danger and refuses to engage Hamas offensively, despite daily, continual missile and mortar attacks under the guise of a 6 month cease-fire. Don't expect Egypt to remain peaceful, especially when President Hosni Mubarak is gone and the Muslim Brotherhood dominates. All of this is known by the Road Map architects. They know their history. At least, they should. Israeli Leftists close their eyes to our own history and pretend that agreements with Muslim Jihadists will hold. The only Peace that will hold will be one born of Israeli Jews' strength of arms. That is the only Peace that the radical Muslim Islamists will ever respect. 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 gwinston@gwinstonglobal.org To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: HOW ABOUT THIS! Posted by Arlene Kushner, November 23, 2008.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky — 1880-1940 — was a giant in Zionist history, standing for the sort of proud Jewish integrity that kept us strong. He came out of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century as a journalist, who ultimately achieved much acclaim for his writing. The pogroms of Kishnev spurred him to organize Jewish self-defense units and to participate in the sixth Zionist Congress. He promoted the use of Hebrew and the establishment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. During WWI, he was instrumental in forming a Jewish Legion. After the war he became a member of the Zionist Executive and a founder of Keren Haysod. Taking issue with the policies of the Zionist Movement, he established the Revisionist Zionist Alliance, which promoted immediate founding of a Jewish state. Within the Revisionist movement developed the Betar youth movement, which taught young people nationalism; the Irgun, the military arm of the movement; and the New Zionist Movement, the political arm. It was the Revisionists who promoted illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine after the British blocked it. Once Israel was founded, well after Jabotinsky's death, the Revisionist Movement melded into Herut, which was a precursor to today's Likud party. ~~~~~~~~~~ Jabotinsky, who has been described as "both a visionary and a warrior," made immeasurable contributions to the Jewish state. I have thought over the years that he has been much neglected, and I have wondered how many really know about him any more. Thus it gives me pleasure to have this opportunity to write about him. ~~~~~~~~~~ And the opportunity? Seems Jabotinsky has a name-sake grandson, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who, just hours ago, stood with Binyamin Netanyahu at Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv to announce that he would be running in the Likud primary next month. Netanyahu, elated and excited, said, "Things have come full circle. It is a privilege for the Likud to have such a man in its ranks." Replied Jabotinsky: "I admit I'm excited. It's a privilege to join the movement. The last time Jabotinsky [his grandfather], Begin [Benny's father, Menachem] and Netanyahu [Binyamin's father, Benzion, still alive at 93] served the Jewish public was in World War II, when they tried to save Europe's Jews from annihilation. Today we are a team again and we want to do everything we can to meet the challenges Israel is facing." ~~~~~~~~~~ Arutz Sheva cited Jabotinsky as having said in a Yediot Ahronot interview that Oslo made things "500 times worse." A "Palestinian" state, he said, "would be the base for the international terror of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah with Iranian funding. If they opt for that we will reach a situation in which instead of 1,400 [Jewish] dead there will be 30,000 dead. They will not hesitate to use chemical weapons against us." ~~~~~~~~~~ And how about this, as well: Yaakov Turkel, who served as a justice on Israel's High Court for ten years, until 2005, has given an interview to Arutz Sheva in which he says that the High Court did NOT order the eviction of the residents of Beit HaShalom in Hevron. Rather, the court put it in the hands of the State and gave authorities the freedom to decide whether or not to evict — it said the State MAY evict. "When the Defense Minister said he would abide by the Supreme Court ruling ordering the Jews' eviction," Turkel said, "this was very much not to my liking, since there was no such order... This misunderstanding has caused the great rift in the religious and right-wing's trust in the Supreme Court." ~~~~~~~~~~ The question, I would say, is whether Barak knew full well that he didn't have to proceed with eviction but opted to put the onus on the court. The article cites Public Security Minister Avi Dichter (Kadima) who said last week: "The ruling is not a recommendation, and we will implement it exactly as written [saying in 30 days no Jews would be living in the building]. We have no intention of straying from the Supreme Court ruling, which is the law." Arutz Sheva suggests that Dichter must not have read the ruling. ~~~~~~~~~~ I will follow up on this. Justice Turkel puts much of the responsibility for the misunderstanding on the media, which comes as no surprise — the media is in the main anti-"settler." But why were there no lawyers in the past days who raised this issue? It does change matters. ~~~~~~~~~~ As to Hevron, some 20,000 visitors were estimated to have been in the Jewish Quarter of the city over Shabbat because of the Torah portion. Some have remained because of the political situation. There were a handful of incidents, involving youngsters from the outside, but for the most part things were peaceful. ~~~~~~~~~~ There was a report today that officers in the IDF Central Command were worried that when Barak give orders to evacuate Beit HaShalom soldiers and police who live past the Green Line (and figure they may be next) or those with a nationalist orientation may refuse to participate. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

CHOOSE: ISRAEL'S DEMISE OR THE PLAN-#2 Posted by Bob Kunst, November 23, 2008.

Dear "Chosen" Activists: There are 3 important statements below on the state of the mess we are in. I urge you to review each statement as to the crisis we all face and that you pray on Thanksgiving and everyday that we get through it, by actually doing something about it. It's in G-d's hands and G-d helps those who help as well. We are running out of time unless you change direction in terms of your own activism. This isn't about Dems. vs. GOP, or Libs vs. conservatives, or Likud, Labor, or Kadima. It's whether Israel and America and the West are going to survive altogether. Do you understand this issue? On Monday, Nov. 24, 2008, The disgraced Olmert will be meeting with an equally disgraceful Bush at the White House, to again see how both can screw Israel and the Jewish nation. Of course the zillion e-mails I get is also about how Obama will do bad things to Israel, instead of what Bush is already doing and is being dismissed by those of you more interested in protecting the Republican Party than either America or Israel. I truely can't listen to it anymore. You've had a year and have failed. We who have been doing all of these 67 rallies/protests and nearly 700 media to keep the issues alive, have done our mitzvots on a shoe-string and still have made a huge dent, with little to no support or recognition from those of you doing your Obama-bashings and anti-Islamic attacks. Not that they aren't worthy, but how about dealing with the full picture of the horrors we face and for G-d's sake, what you're going to do about any of it, either in the U.S. or Israel, which needs a re-awakening, big time before the collective suicide takes places that endangers all of us. You scream at the media who is anti-Israel, but again, outside of some petitions, and your pc writings, you won't do anything about creating the alternative to this madness. Al Qaeda's #2, called Obama a 'House Negro', while Hillary Clinton will be the new Sec.of State, to either continue the enormous damage that Bush/Rice/Olmert/Livni have already done to Israel, or to go into another direction, which is suggested by us below. In these very dangrous times, we have to be "David", with G-d's help, versus "Goliath":our failed Jewish leaders, EU, UN,Bush/Rice/Olmert.Livni, Obama etc. In this 'emergency' we only have till Feb. 10, 2009 for the Israeli elections and also the inauguration of Pres. Obama on 1/20/09, to set into motion our plan of action and agenda. If Livni prevails, G-d forbid, then with Obama, Israel is lost and that dividing Jerusalem and Israel means the end of the Jewish state and the next major war and vulnerability to the whole Jewish nation. We must be very highly visible in our resistance and agenda. We are the new "Maccabees'. Since "Oslo" and its failures, we've been told and sold out, without debate, of the need of the '2 states' that divides Jerusalem, the heart of the Jewish state, brings a corridor between Gaza and West Bank, both Bush and Obama support, which brings the terrorists closer to the heart of Israel and major population centers....and the next war and end of the "Jewish State", while unleashing anti-semitism globally. It is already out of control again in Europe. So what is news? Except our collective silence allows it. The '2-state' final solution of the Jews, is 'anti-semitism' and as blatant an attack upon the Jewish religion, "Covenant", history, identity, struggle and contribution of Jews, as anything out there....... Israel, with G-d's help, has always been the center of the world from its inceptions. Two factors are responsible. Jewish history in exile with both Christian attacks upon Jews and our faith, for 2000 yrs.(Crusades, Inquisition, Pogroms, Holocaust) and still going on and the Muslim attack upon Jews and our faith for the last 1700 years....Arab involvement with Hitler, 5 Arab wars and 2 Intifadas and still going on. Why isn't any of this also on the table and in the public's eye as to why we oppose the madness? The 'Road Map', proposed by Saudi Arabia, responsible for global terrorism, global oil blackmail of the world's economies, '9/11", etc...is pushing this scenario and is backed by, the Bush/Rice/ Olmert/Livni fiasco, mainstream Jewish leadership and media, as well as EU, UN and as of last week, the government of Australia, which is an omen on where Obama will be going as well. But is the '2 State' scenario, the ONLY avenue and also the weakest avenue that sets us all up for a great fall?...... or is there another approach, which is the federation of Arabs in Judea and Samaria with Jordan and Gaza Arabs in a federation with Egypt? Our Jewish Jerusalem, for over 3000 yrs. isn't negotiable, while we also show respect of other faiths there as well. Jerusalem, our Eternal Capital that re-inforces our faith and G-d's home....as well as our 5000 yrs. of 'occupying' and 'liberating' this land, so that even the Israeli Arabs have more education, health care, freedom, pensions, etc. than any other Arab in the Arab world. So why isn't the debate on this level instead of always playing defense amidst a continual bodycount based on the other very wrong considerations of '2-states' that will end the Jewish state? Given the above issues, what can we do? Remind every Jew and the world that there is another and better way, the federation way, that will work, and does not appease those bent on our collective destruction, while we show respect and inform the world, who we Jews really are and what Judiasm is all about and what happens to those who bless Israel and those who curse Israel and wish us harm. 1. While Shalom International/www.defendjerusalem.net has done 67 events/rallies and nearly 700 media from Oct. 2007 through this Nov. 2008, and we broke the 'silence' and led the protests at Annapolis, at the White House, State Dept., both national conventions etc.....and have been the most visible Jewish group in the world on a continuous level, WE NEED A REALLY HUGE RALLY ON THESE ISSUES AND BEFORE OBAMA IS INAUGURATED AND THE ISRAELI ELECTIONS AND TURN THIS INTO AN INTERNATIONAL EVENT....if you want to do something besides e-mails. a. I suggest that we take the ad we did for the Jerusalem Post, as the nucleus of this effort for both Israel and Obama and a re-awakening of the Jewish world and Israel. b. The date can be on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2009, even though College Football bowls are on that weekend. 1. This is in 6 weeks. 2.We could do this near the Holocaust Memorial on Miami Beach for a large outside event, as part of also doing inside Shul rallies, for this weekend in setting the tone for 2009 in US and Israel. We led 1500 to 5000 to protest the Nazis in 1992 there. The anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is also on 1/27/09. 3. Florida is the perfect venue, not only because resistance to Olmert and the division of Jerusalem started here in Miami-Dade, but also because the rest of the nation will be freezing and it will warm and sunny here at this time. Also, that Fla. has a huge religious community, Holocaust survivor and Second Generation community and that every Jewish group in Israel and U.S. comes here for a check and funding. 4. We can mobilize Broward and Palm Beach to join with us and they can bring down buses and perhaps help get them into the hotels which may also be suffering from the economy. 5. We can invite Obama and Bibi Netayahu to be with us and address us. 6. 'Snow birds' here, can take this campaign to their networks. 7. Those who come down from up North can participate with us. 8. Israelis living here, can also take this effort into their Israeli networks and contacts, as well as U.S. Jews and world Jewry pushing this with Israelis as well. 9. We can bring together the whole grassroots community in support as well...blacks, hispanics, gays, etc. c. We can also mobilize for rallies on this date, all across the nation and planet and at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and connect, via satellite, with this whole effort to take it to this next critical level, to maximize the media, to set into motion the policies and agenda for both U.S., Israel, EU and UN...and document all of it. 2. In uniting this effort, we will be the New Voice within the Jewish leadership that overcomes and is the missing link to the '2-state' farce and dangers they've created. This will move the entire Jewish movement and Christian Zionist movement as well to push this immediate effort as part of a continual campaign, with a new Israeli government and with this effort to get the Obama effort to also be a part of this, or major resistance to him as a result. 3. We MUST let the Israelis know that if they continue to support Livni and the division of Jerusalem and Israel and invite the next war as they have so far done, that this weakness is also inviting a giant renewal of anti-semitism across the world, based on this weakness giving the anti-semites another opportunity to come after us. This is totally unacceptable and endangering us all. Therefore we are saying to the Israelis, either get on board and really save yourselves as well as ourselves, or we are no longer going to fund those in Israel. In other words we must push this alternative as part of the package on funding. We cannot allow anything to be taken for granted. What Olmert/Livni have already done is so damaging and we must get these issues off the bargaining table once and for all. 4. We MUST tell our story. The Israelis and Jews barely tell who they are, what they stand for, how we have suffered and struggled and contributed to the world, while being the world's 'scapegoat', we are also the nucleus of the world's history and we are also the world's 'conscience.' We must also tell of our blossoming the desert, while the Arab world has left the Arabs into refugee camps as a proxy to continue the war against the Jews. These same Arab countires have rejected PA Arabs in their own countries. They have $trillions in oil revenues but care less about the PA, except to keep killing Jews. a. We must do this in film, on the Internet, with our own Al Jazeera, public t.v., and our own tv network, etc., and visibility with our bumper stickers, buttons, tee-shirts, etc. that we are not afraid to be who we are and stand up for what we belive in. We must take over the media with an entire new outreach of what is really going on here and also to support the other victims of Islamic Nazism, from its relationship to Hitler to attacking everyone they see as 'infidels' from Jews, to Christians, Hindus, Bhuddists, etc. In other words, we must organize the grassroots world in opposition to these monsters that want to finish off what Hitler started and all are vulnerable to. b. Our Jewish voice must be heard within our own community as role models for why the faith and our Covenant with G-d matters and in being and going on the offense, as we are also reversing the assimilation factor because we give meaning to this testimony. 5. All of the above effort and more will save Jerusalem, save Israel, save America and the West, and save ourselves. a. All of the above and more will hasten the arrival of the Moshiach and realize what G-d wants from us. b. We must do another 'emergency' Rosh Hashana/Yom Kipper' fast, massive shofar blowing and document all of this effort for global inspiration and impact as part of the 1/4/09 effort. c. We must do an 'emergency' Pesach that G-d freed us from slavery in Egypt and that the '2 state' insanity, keeps us enslaved to the Arab/Muslim politics, not G-d's. d. Our roots and Covenant are not subject to the world's anti-semitism, we resist....as part of 1/4/09. 6. Part of this effort has to be a global campaign to stop Iran from getting nukes and how we impact EU and UN and Obama and gang with this effort. a. Those countries who participated in the Holocaust, the grand theft, and allowed the slave laborers, and Nazi war criminals to escape, and now have allowed commercialism and crosses over the world's largest Jewish cemeteries, the death camps, are now supporting the end of the Jewish state, which is the '2-state' scenario. b. We must get Israel to oversee those camps as we would for military cemeteries and end the revisionism and lack of respect and falsehoods of what really happened. c. We must go on the offense with those behind Hitler and the destruction of Europe's Jews and emphasize the Arab role with Hitler then and today's crisis as a result. d. If Jews wandered the desert for 40 yrs., Olmert/Livni etc. are still wandering with their appeasement politics, that must be negated once and for all. ISRAEL IS 5000 YRS. OLD, NOT JUST 60. 7. We must redefine Israelis identity and role in all of this as caretakers for the history of the world, that is both the moral thing to do, but is the only thing that matters in our collective survival and not the existing betrayals to all who fought and died for being Jews. This goes beyond the secular politics and the religious politics. We must stop Israelis attacking Jews for being Jews in this effort, which is precipitating this collective suicide. Israelis must stop feeling guilty for having defeated and won over 5 Arab wars and 2 intifadas, with G-d's help, in order to be in this key position to save the planet, as well as ourselves, while honoring all who came before us. 8. This is what G-d said to Ishmael and this is what G-d said to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob about this land and this is what real Christians and Muslims believe and this is what has happened to both Christians and Muslims who wanted peace with Israel and the Jews. Our Torah is thousands of years older than Christianity and Islam of which both are based. We don't have to take a back seat to anyone and especially to their political agendas. a. You can't give away what G-d gave to our forefathers and to us and millions of Jews have been murdered for. b. You cannot betray or revise our history which is our blessings as well as our struggles. c. Our 'roots' with G-d, our Covenant, are the roots of the entire world, reacting to us, then and now and why we are who we are. We can not be ignored or trivialized or dismissed. We MUST Remember all the sacrifices. They are all a part of this journey and opportunity. 9. Directing all of this to the EU/UN/Obama, and that network, which means getting back the death camps, as well as to the Israelis government. 10. Directing all of this to the EU/UN/Obama and how to stop Iran from getting nukes.   THE 10 POINTS MENTIONED ABOVE WILL TAKE MAJOR NETWORKING, MAJOR FUNDRAISING, A FULL-TIME AND PAID EFFORT, but what is the choice here? G-d forbid, lose Jerusalem, Israel, America the West? We can do it. G-d is waiting for us to do it and will help guide us in all of this. You can make this happen and we will help as we have done daily this past year. Yours in Shalom, Bob Kunst A Comment from a Reader Subject: Re: "WWI-WWII-WWIII" Hey Bob, Gutsy and needed to be said! I just wrote this which you might incorporate onto your blog: If you thought Condi has been setting-up Israel for an upcoming, indefensible conquest from all sides, below (Iranian subs) and within... What happens when Israel ultimately balks at Obama, Brezinski, Malley, Power, pro-Palistan Rahm's demands for 'painful concessions'? What will be the blowback against Jewish citizens in the Diaspora (i.e., outside Israel)? Britain & Europe have shown record-levels of public enmity, hostility, and violence towards neighbors of Jewish identity when the news coverage starts to depict Israel as: 1) the oppressor /rejector /obstacle to justice / sovereignty for the Palestinian people- resulting in; 2) being perceived as the instigator of terrorism locally & 3) the cause of American civilian terror casualties by Palestinian sympathizers, and 4) the blame for the Mid-East instability-caused, expensive gas prices; 5) the blame for the the Iraq War for Israel, resulting in suffering and spillage of American soldiers' blood & lives; and 6) Americans' having to burden the financial cost, economic crisis, and higher taxes. Where will the good Jewish citizens of North America turn when the Political Correctness threshold for resentment towards Jewish people gets crossed? When hostile manifestations meet with no social barrier or self-defensive Jewish recourse? When job discrimination leads to harrassment (and even assaults) on them, their property, and their children (increasingly prevalent in Europe during the past few years- I've seen it with my own eyes, followed by the lack of recourse from the employed Jewish leadership)? Where will they turn when experiencing a climate too humiliating for proud North Americans — abandoned, even reviled by their fellow countrymen? What refuge will materialistic North American Jews find? Will they choose to flee their motherland to an impoverished, handcuffed, and Islamic-nuclear-terror challenged Israel — extorted into a Mexican-Standoff with apocalyptic Iran and the known Islamist-sympathist who (they denyed incriminating evidence about him) to voted 3:1 to elect to lead the world — against their own interests? The election proves that readers of sites like DemoCast and Joo-Tube must crusade to get these messages out more broadly. Bring in more readers & subscribers. Originate or forward emails to others who deserve to receive educating. Would you please get yourself (and promote to others) a free, email subscription to Joo-Tube and DemoCast? Your votes in the Weblog Awards (for Best VideoBlog) will also enhance the acceptance of our message. Thank you. This essay below was written by Don Feder. It is entitled "The Tragic Predictability Of The Jewish Vote" and is a November 17, 2008 GrassTopsUSA Exclusive (http://grasstopsusa.com/df111708.html). Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant. He also maintains his own website, DonFeder.com

Back in the 1980s, during the euphoria of the Reagan-era, Neo-cons like Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol predicted a seismic shift in Jewish voting patterns. Once American Jews discovered that voting Republican was crucial for the survival of the Jewish state, they'd naturally align themselves with the party that actually believes in national security, we were assured. It never happened. After this year's election — in which Barack Hussein Obama got 77% of the Jewish vote — we can confidently say it never will. Once again, in 2008, most American Jews voted their religion — liberalism. Some minorities have a clearer perception of where their interests lie. According to the American Muslim Task Force for Civil Rights and Elections, nearly 90% of Muslims voted for Obama, only 2% for McCain — smart Muslims, dumb Jews. If there was ever a year in which Jews should have been forced to reconsider their robotic loyalty to the Democratic Party, 2008 was it. The Democratic presidential candidate should have set off alarm bells in the head of the average Jewish voter — from his whack-job pastor's anti-Israel ravings, to his multiple ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, to his Middle East donors, to his terrorist cheering section, to his refusal to condemn Jimmy Carter's meeting with Hamas — Jews should have broken out in a cold sweat at the thought of this ideologue directing U.S. military and foreign policy. That they didn't reflects the triumph of the heart over the head. It's not that Jewish voters were unaware of the reality of Barack. The Republican Jewish Coalition spent beaucoup bucks broadcasting the facts through e-mailings to Jewish voters and ads in Jewish periodicals. Jewish voters just didn't care. My friend Rabbi Aryeh Spero says roughly 40% of Jewish voters are intellectually tied to the left — marching in lockstep to the beat of MoveOn.org, the anti-war movement, George Soros, Barney Frank, etc. Along with other dogmatic utopians, they actually believe that any enemies we have are of our own making, that America has generally been a force for oppression and exploitation in the world, that terrorism is born of poverty and despair (rather than a murderous fanaticism), that America must do perpetual penance for past mistakes, and that a Palestinian state will usher in the messianic age. I could go on, but it's too depressing. Another 25% Spero describes as "traditional, though not necessarily Orthodox. They take into account what's best for America, Israel and Jewish survival." They usually vote Republican. The last 35% are not inveterate leftists. Intellectually, they may understand the dangers of voting for an Obama. But they are connected to the Democratic Party by an emotional umbilical cord. In the end, no matter how convincing the evidence or sound the reasoning, they'll go with their hearts. Hence, through a process of self-hypnosis, most Jews have programmed themselves to believe the impossible. In the American Jewish Committee's 2008 survey of Jewish Opinion (conducted September 8-21), by 53% to 36%, Jews said the Democratic Party is more likely to make the right decisions in dealing with terrorism than the GOP — doubtless on the principle that appeasement works. By the same lopsided margin (52% to 32%), those surveyed said Democrats also were more likely to do the right thing when it comes to Israel. They probably reached that conclusion when Jimmy Carter pronounced Israel an apartheid state, and Nancy Pelosi crawled to Syria, wearing a headscarf. That McCain had an unblemished, 20-year record of support for Israel, Obama is surrounded by advisors who are hostile to Israel, and Iranian Television described the latter as "highly educated" and "eloquent," mattered not in the least. The AJC survey highlighted another reality. Among American Jews generally, support for Israel is a low priority. When asked: "Which one issue would you most like to hear the candidates for president discuss during the 2008 presidential campaign," 54% said the economy, 11% picked health care and only 3% chose Israel. To the question, "Would you support or oppose the United States taking military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons," 47% of Jews said they'd oppose America moving to save Israel from nuclear annihilation, 42% would support it, and 11% were unsure. This is perhaps the clearest indication that a significant segment of the Jewish community either doesn't give a damn about Israel or is delusional. Even though Iran is led by a raving anti-Semite and Holocaust-denier — who's said Israel "should be wiped off the face of the Earth" — even though Iran was voted most likely to commit nuclear suicide if it could take Israel with it, a plurality of Jews still said they'd oppose U.S. military action to forestall a second Holocaust. Hey, Pat Buchanan, most Jewish voters who've taken a stand on Iran agree with you! No wonder there were so many Buchanan votes in Palm Beach County in 2000. On one crucial point, there must be no confusion: There's nothing remotely Jewish about the Jewish vote. As Jewish author Dennis Prager notes, if there was a connection between Judaism and liberalism, those Jews grounded in Torah and most committed to living a Jewish life, would be the most liberal. Democratic presidential candidates would carry Borough Park and Crown Heights in Brooklyn by a landslide every time, while Manhattan's Upper West Side would be painted red. The opposite is the case. The AJC poll found that as Jewish observance went up, support for Obama went down. Obama had the support of just 13% of Orthodox Jews, compared to 59% of those affiliated with Conservative Judaism (which bears no relation to political conservatism) and 62% of Reform Jews. McCain got 78% of the Orthodox vote. Exit polling showed that of those American Jews living in Israel (overwhelmingly Orthodox) who cast absentee ballots in the U.S. election, 76% voted for McCain. The term Jewish vote is meaningless. It signifies nothing. Today, most Americans who call themselves Jews are ethnically or nostalgically Jewish. They may, occasionally, participate in Jewish rituals involving dreidels or bagels. They are not, however, Jewish in the sense that their grandparents or great-grandparents were — not even close. In this regard, they are like so-called Catholic voters. For most, their Catholicism consists of being born into a Catholic family and attending mass on special occasions. Their knowledge of Catholic dogma is nearly nonexistent. Most think the pronouncements of the Bishop of Rome quaint at best, but feel no obligation to follow his prescriptions. Thus, 56% of "Catholic voters" cast their ballots in this election for the candidate who, as an Illinois legislator, voted for infanticide, and — in the past campaign — promised to allow the federal judiciary to impose gay marriage on the states, by repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. How hopeless are Jewish voters? By a margin of 3-to-1, they voted for the man who: Was the candidate of choice of terrorists and totalitarians. In April, Ahmed Yousef, a top Hamas political advisor, called Obama a "great man, with great principles" and "a vision to change." The ruling regimes in Iran, Syria and Libya fairly salivated at the prospect of an Obama presidency. Whose pastor and mentor of 19 years compared Zionism to "white racism," accused Israel of imposing "injustice... and racism" on the Palestinians, and gave an award to Louis Farrakhan (who once called Judaism a "gutter religion") Who was endorsed by the most dangerous anti-Semite in America (Farrakhan) who called him the "hope of the entire world" Who attended Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March, and later lauded the neo-Nuremberg rally as an event that brought African-American men together and showed they were ready "to make a commitment to bring about change in our communities and our lives" Who sat on the board of the Woods Fund when it gave a total of $75,000 over two years to the rabidly anti-Israel Arab-American Action Network Whose friend Rashid Khalidi, formerly a PLO spokesman, took over Columbia University's Middle-East-studies program in 2003, which, according to the National Review's Andrew McCarthy, "he has since maintained as a bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism" Whose first director of Muslim outreach, Mazen Ashabi, quit after the Wall Street Journal linked him to Jamal Said — fingered by the Justice Department as a Hamas fundraiser Who received over $29,000 in donations from Hamas-controlled Gaza Whose election will herald a sharp decline in Zionist influence in Washington, the Rev. Jesse Jackson predicted Who said the "legitimate claims" of Hezbollah are "weakened" by its violence Who said the terrorist attacks of 9/11 grew out of "a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair" — to which we must not overreact. It's interesting to speculate on why Republicans, in the face of bitter experience, determinedly pursue the Jewish vote. Jews represent just 3% of the electorate — though they are more heavily concentrated in swing states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. But Republicans, many of them serious Christians, see themselves as the standard-bearers of our Judeo-Christian heritage. How does that work when the descendants of those who stood at Sinai reject them? The answer: Those Jews also reject the Judeo-Christian ethic and the historic mission of the Jewish people — to repair the world under the rule of God. The Republican Jewish Coalition should close its doors. Its budget, and anything else the GOP spends on wooing Jewish voters, should be equally divided between building more Orthodox Jewish day schools (thereby encouraging the Orthodox to have more children) and transporting evangelical Christians to the polls on Election Day. That would do more to help Israel and to assure Jewish survival than the money wasted quadrennially on trying to bring a message of reason to the mega-meshugeneh. Bob Kunst is Pres., Shalom International (www.defendjeruslem.net). Contact him at 305-864-5110 or shalominternational@mindspring.com To Go To Top

CIVILIZATION WALKS THE PLANK Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, November 22, 2008.

International law originally intended to protect victim nations from predatory nation is in practice no more. Unholy predator nations make up their own laws to fit their schemes. Hitler had his Supreme Courts; Stalin had his and every Arab Muslim country has theirs. The tragedy grows when America and Europe accepts these criminal laws as legal. What is even more painful is that this Israeli government has adopted the rule of illegal law. This essay is by Caroline Glick. It appeared November 20, 2008 in the Jerusalem Post. (www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1226404794131&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull). Contact Caroline Glick at caroline@carolineglick.com

A Somali pirate and a former US defense secretary are flying to London for vacation. One of them is stopped at immigration at Heathrow airport and arrested on suspicion of committing war crimes. Which one do you think it was? On Tuesday, Somali pirates, sailing in little more than motorized bathtubs, armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, and sustained by raw fish and narcotics, successfully hijacked the Sirius Star, a Saudi-owned oil tanker the size of a US aircraft carrier. The tanker was carrying some $100 million worth of crude oil. News of its capture caused global oil prices to rise by a dollar a barrel. The next day, Somali pirates attempted to hijack the Trafalgar, a British frigate, but were forced to flee by a German naval helicopter dispatched to the scene. They did manage to hijack a Chinese trawler and a cargo ship from Hong Kong. They nearly got control of an Ethiopian ship, but it, too, was saved by the German Navy that heeded its call for help in time. Piracy is fast emerging as the newest old threat to stage a comeback in recent years. Over the past week and a half alone, 12 vessels have been hijacked. And according to the International Maritime Bureau, in the three months that ended on September 30, Somali pirates attacked 26 vessels, capturing 576 crew members. Britain's Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) assesses the ransoms they netted at between $18m. and $30m. And with financial strength comes increased military sophistication. The US Navy expressed shock at the pirates' successful hijacking of the Sirius Star. The pirates staged the hijacking much farther from shore than they had ever done previously. Beyond the personal suffering incurred by thousands of crew members taken hostage in recent years, piracy's potential impact on global economic stability is enormous. In the Gulf of Aden, where the Somali pirates operate, US shippers alone transport more than $1.5 trillion in cargo annually. One of the unique characteristics of pirates is that they appear to be equal opportunity aggressors. They don't care who owns the ships they attack. On August 21, Somali pirates hijacked the Iran Deyanat, a ship owned and operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards-linked Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line (IRISL). In September, the US Treasury Department designated IRISL as a company that assists Iran's nuclear weapons program and placed it under stiff financial sanctions. Iran Deyanat's manifest asserted that its cargo included minerals. Yet shortly after the pirates went on board they began developing symptoms such as hair loss that experts claim are more in line with radiation exposure. According to reports, some 16 pirates died shortly after being exposed to the cargo. Just this week, a second Iranian ship — this one apparently carrying wheat — was similarly captured. Then, too, in September, pirates seized the Faina, a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 Russian-made T-72 tanks. The Ukrainians and Russians claimed that the tanks were destined for Kenya, but it later emerged that they may have been seized en route to Sudan. So, ironically, in the case of both the Faina and the Deyanat, pirates may have inadvertently saved thousands of lives.   THE INTERNATIONAL community is at a loss for what to do about the emerging danger of piracy. This is not due to lack of capacity to fight the pirate ships. On Monday an Indian naval frigate, the INS Tabar, sank a pirate "mother ship" whose fleet members were attacking the Tabar in the Gulf of Aden. NATO has deployed a naval task force while the American, French, German and other navies have aggressively worked to free merchant ships under attack by pirates. As David Rivkin and Lee Casey explained in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, the problem with contending with piracy is not so much military, as legal and political. Whereas customary international law defined piracy as a threat against all nations and therefore a crime for which universal jurisdiction must be applied to perpetrators, in today's world, states are unwilling to apprehend pirates or to contend with them because they are likely to find themselves in a sticky legal mess. In centuries past, in accordance with established international law, it was standard practice for naval captains to hang pirates after capturing them. Today, when Europe has outlawed capital punishment, when criminal defendants throughout the West are given more civil rights than their victims, and when irregular combatants picked off of battlefields or intercepted before they attack are given — at a minimum — the same rights as those accorded to legal prisoners of war, states lack the political will and the moral clarity to prosecute offenders. As Casey and Rivkin note, last April the British Foreign Office instructed the British Navy not to apprehend pirates lest they claim that their human rights were harmed, and request and receive asylum in Britain.   THE WEST'S perverse interpretations of human rights and humanitarian law, which bar it from handling one of the most acute emerging threats to the international economy, is a consequence of the West's abdication of moral and legal sanity in its dealings with international terror. In the 1960s and 1970s, when international terrorism first emerged as a threat to international security, the West adopted international treaties and conventions that tended to treat terrorism as a new form of piracy. Like piracy, terrorism was to be treated as an attack on all nations. Jurisdiction over terrorists was to be universal. Such early views were codified in early documents such as the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft from 1970 that established a principle of universal jurisdiction over aircraft hijackers. Similarly, in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the US, the UN Security Council passed binding Resolution 1373, which also compelled member states not only to treat terrorists as illegal combatants who must be universally denied any support of any kind, but to take action against anyone involved with or supporting terrorists in any way. That is, as in piracy, the tendency of states contending with terrorism has been to view it as an act requiring universal jurisdiction, compelling all UN member states to prosecute offenders. And yet, over the years, states have managed to ignore or invert international laws on terrorism to the point where today terrorists are among the most protected groups of individuals in the world. Due to political sympathy for terrorists, hostility toward their victims, or fear of terrorist reprisals against a state that dares to prosecute terrorists found on its territory, states have managed to avoid not only applying existing laws against terrorists. They have also refrained from updating laws to meet the growing challenges of terrorism. Instead, international institutions and "enlightened" Western states have devoted their time to condemning and threatening to prosecute the few states that have taken action against terrorists. The inversion of international law from an institution geared toward protecting states and civilians from international lawbreakers to one devoted to protecting international menaces from states and their citizens is nowhere more evident than in the international community's treatment of Hamas-controlled Gaza. One of the reasons the international community has failed so abjectly to take reasonable measures to combat terrorism is because international terrorism as presently constituted is the creation of Palestinian Arabs and their Arab brethren. Since the 1960s, and particularly since the mid-1970s, Europe, and to varying degrees the US, have been averse to contending with terrorism because their hostility toward Israel leads them to condone Palestinian Arab terrorism against the Jewish state.   THE INTERNATIONAL community's treatment of Hamas-controlled Gaza epitomizes this victory of politics over law. Both the US and the EU have labeled Hamas a terror group. That designation places Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, under the regime of UN Security Council Resolution 1373. Among other things, Resolution 1373 requires states to "freeze without delay funds and other financial assets or economic resources of... entities owned or controlled directly or indirectly by [terrorists]." That is, the resolution requires UN member states to end all financial and other support for Hamas-controlled Gaza. The resolution also requires UN member states to "cooperate [with other states] to prevent and suppress terrorist attacks and take action against perpetrators of such acts." This means that states are required to assist one another — and in the case of Hamas, to assist Israel — in combating Hamas and punishing its members and supporters. While it can be argued that given the absence of a binding legal definition of terrorism, states that do not designate Hamas as a terrorist organization are not required to abide by the terms of 1373 in dealing with Hamas, it is quite clear that for states that do recognize Hamas as a terror group, 1373's provisions must be upheld. And yet, the EU and the US have willfully ignored its provisions. They have steadily increased their budgetary support for the Palestinian Authority while knowing full well that the Fatah-led PA in Judea and Samaria is transferring money to Hamas-controlled Gaza to pay the salaries of Hamas employees. More disturbingly, the US and the EU as well as the UN demand that Israel itself sustain Hamas-controlled Gaza economically. The UN, EU and the US have consistently demanded that Israel provide Gaza with fuel, food, water, medicine, electricity, telephone service, port services and access to Israeli markets, in spite of the fact that international law actually prohibits Israel from providing such assistance, and in fact arguably requires Israel to deny it. Recently, supported by the UN, and in connivance with Hamas, European leaders began supporting illegal moves to end Israel's maritime blockade of Gaza, which was established to block weapons and terror personnel from entering and exiting the area. Expanding this trend, this week Navanethem Pillay, the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, called for Israel to end its blockade of the Gaza Strip, perversely calling the blockade a breach of international and humanitarian law. This inversion of the aims of international law — from protecting states and innocent civilians from attack to protecting aggressors from retaliation — has brought about the absurd situation where terrorist ideologues and commanders such as Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi are feted in Britain while retired Israeli and American generals are threatened with arrest. Germany welcomed Iranian President and genocide proponent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit and indicted former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for crimes against humanity. Belgium allows Hamas and Hizbullah supporters like Dyab Abu Jahjah, who calls for attacks against Jews, to operate freely, but indicted former prime minister Ariel Sharon for crimes against humanity. The consequence of this absurd state of affairs is obvious. The international law champions who argue that international humanitarian law provides a nonviolent means for nations to defend themselves against aggressors have perverted the purpose and meaning of international humanitarian law to such a degree that the only way for nations to protect themselves against pirates, terrorists and other international rogues is to ignore international law aficionados and secure their interests by force. 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 gwinston@gwinstonglobal.org To Go To Top

STRATEGY FOR J'LEM ARAB VOTE FAILED; JEWISH AGENCY AGAINST JUDAISM?; WHEN WILL ISRAEL REALIZE IT IS AT WAR? Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 22, 2008.

OLMERT'S STRATEGY This is the news: Briefed about Gaza, PM Olmert said that a war with Hamas is "inevitable." This is his logic: 1. To get a few months of relative ceasefire, Israel allows Hamas to build up an army and fortifications in Gaza; 2. Israel admits that this army would inflict considerable casualties upon Israeli forces entering Gaza in force; and 3. Olmert admits that this war is inevitable (IMRA, 11/11). Do you see any common sense to letting an enemy force build up and attack, instead of catching the enemy before it has much firepower? That is about as foolish as having withdrawn from that part of the Jewish homeland in the first place, including from Jewish communities contiguous to Israel. The contiguous Jewish communities and undeveloped areas could have been annexed. STRATEGY FOR JERUSALEM ARAB VOTE FAILED Israel allows non-citizen Arab residents of Jerusalem to vote in municipal elections. Israeli billionaire Arcadi Gaydamak promised much to the Arabs, hoping they would push him into the mayoralty. The P.A. instructed them to boycott the election. Very few voted (IMRA, 11/11). He lost. Serves him right. I wouldn't grant them even the municipal franchise. They are an enemy people. Their boycott shows that at least they heed enemy orders. Those orders may be enforced by P.A. police, to whose infiltration of eastern Jerusalem Israel closes a blind eye. HINT OF OBAMA'S MIDEAST POLICY During the presidential campaign, Obama said he would not have meetings with Hamas until it recognizes Israel and its pact with the P.A. and ends terrorism. A campaign aide, Robert Mally, was fired when it came out that he had been meeting with Hamas. Soon after being elected, Obama appointed Mally a senior foreign policy advisor. His job is to tell Egypt and Syria that the new administration would take their interests more into account (Arutz-7, 11/11). Their interests are in imperialism, jihad, and genocide. What does Obama think the US interest is? ISRAEL PREPARES OBSOLETE DEFENSE Israel is investing a fortune in reinforcing houses within current range of rockets in Gaza and in the Iron Dome defense system. The Iron Dome system could not cope with the faster, heavier mortars that Hamas has imported during the respite that the Olmert-Livni regime gave Hamas in return for a temporary [and partial] ceasefire (IMRA, 11/12). As the range and explosive power of Gaza rockets increases, houses further away will come under attack and the armor on nearer houses will be inadequate. Hiding doesn't work. Solution: invade Gaza and disarm Arabs. The best defense is a good offense. That was Pres. Bush Jr.'s notion, in invading Iraq. ANOTHER PIPE BOMB CAUGHT AT CHECKPOINT (IMRA, 11/11.) The Arabs and supporters complain that checkpoints humiliate them. Let them complain that terrorists make them necessary. As for humiliation, I don't feel humiliated when searched. I resent Muslim terrorists for making searches necessary. ANTI-SETTLER PROPAGANDA Israeli leftists and P.A. allies have a videotape allegedly of settlers beating up Arab olive pickers near Hebron. The Israeli media and politicians emphasized this news and condemned settlers. The government declared a settler menace to democracy, and vowed to punish settler violence and curb their civil liberties. At two separate hearings for the accused settlers, the film was submitted as evidence. Both judges found the film heavily edited to distort. The film did not show who started the fight, though the unarmed Jews wore prayer shawls, as if on the way to prayer. One could see Arabs and leftists beating Jews. After the Jews had disengaged, an Arab threw a large rock at one's back. The judge condemned the police for not arresting the Arab for that unprovoked attack. The media ignores the exposure of the hoax. Other Arab films were blood-libel hoaxes, such as the death of al-Dura and the Jenin and Kfar Kana massacres. Few right-wing Jews are anarchists. The Left is violent and well-funded [from abroad, including New Israel Fund]. It supports Arab violence and smears Jewish self-defense, such as inspection of Gaza fishing boats, smuggling arms. While the Israeli left uses the hoaxes to make the Right seem criminal, their foreign allies use them to make the whole country seem criminal (Prof. Steven Plaut from Caroline Glick, 11/11). Antisemitism has been globalized! DELUSIONS ABOUT PEACE Uzi Landau is running for Knesset for the Yisrael Beitenu Party instead of for Likud. He stated why. Both parties would cede territory to the Arabs, he wouldn't. However, Likud endorsed the Oslo process for P.A. sovereignty. The other Party does not believe in land for peace, but peace first, then negotiating. It is delusional to negotiate for peace with a P.A. that is indoctrinating a whole generation in suicide bombing, he said. After the P.A. institutes conditions for peace, such as eradicating terrorism and ending indoctrination in war, one may negotiate. For now, there is war. During war, one strives for winning, not for compromising. Victory makes the enemy compromise (Uzi Landau in IMRA, 11/18). Israel negotiates for peace, but the Muslim Arabs negotiate for war. Most of those who say there is a peace process don't realize this. Some of those who say there is a peace process do realize this, the cynical deceivers! THERE IS A CYCLE OF VIOLENCE Here is the cycle of violence: (1) Terrorists attack civilians; (2) Israel captures terrorists; (3) Israel releases terrorists, for goodwill; and (4) At least a third of released terrorists resume terrorism. Released prisoners have murdered 180 Israelis [and wounded others]. Some goodwill! PM Olmert seems to be trying to empty Israeli prisons of terrorists and the country of Jews (Arutz-7, 11/18). The usual meaning of "cycle of violence," assumes that Israeli retaliation against terrorism incites the Arabs to additional terrorism. False assumption! The Arabs do claim to be seeking revenge, and revenge is important in their culture. However, the Arabs are at war. War involves attacking whenever and wherever one can. The Arabs call it retaliation to put a better face on aggression. Proof is that Israel has tried absorbing attacks without responding. Nevertheless, the Arabs keep attacking. They always come up with a pretext. That's how they are. We should learn to disregard their phony excuses. Israel is like someone in a boxing ring who doesn't know he is expected to keep fighting. He asks, let's be friends; sometimes he punches back. JEWISH AGENCY AGAINST JUDAISM? The Jewish agency prepares immigrants for life in Israel. Immigrants are allowed to invite guests. Many of them want to learn about Judaism. Finding no opportunity within the institution, they invite rabbis in. Rabbis found themselves, not other guests, barred or stonewalled (Arutz-7, 11/18). IRAN'S MISSILE DEFENSIVE? Iran advises that its new, 1,200-mile missile, is purely defensive. It poses no threat to other countries (IMRA, 11/17). Iran claims that it doesn't intend to attack other countries, unless attacked first. Are you reassured? BUDGET DISPUTE HAMPERS DEFENSE The IDF bought a system of proven effectiveness in destroying rockets and mortar shells and their launchers. The system is idle, while sections of the IDF dispute which section should pay the fee for using the system. The fee is much less than the cost of armor-plating roofs of buildings (IMRA, 11/17). Is that the way to run a government? WHEN WILL ISRAEL REALIZE IT IS AT WAR? The government is awaiting permission from the Attorney-General to take fight back hard against Gaza, which keeps attacking Israel and building for a bigger war. "The High Court of Justice forbids deliberate power outages in the Strip, we have to transfer food into Gaza, and artillery fire is still banned." No wonder Hamas is defiant! The lawyers don't realize Israel is at war (IMRA, 11/17). I'm saddened as one friend after another tells me that his child is studying law. Lawyers impoverish our economy and ruin Israeli national security. ISRAELI MILITARY INTELLIGENCE Mr. Yadlin said that Syria's Assad is ready to sign a peace agreement if the US gets Israel to hand him the Golan and promises him significant quantities of arms. Yadlin failed to assess the outcome for Israel of a heavily armed Syria on the hills about it. What kind of military intelligence is that? (IMRA, 11/18). It is thoughtless, like most Israeli government findings. TURNING THE TABLES ON BOYCOTT OF SETTLERS A new movement in Britain is making progress in organizing an international boycott of goods made in the P.A.. It explains that the P.A. has been oppressing Christians and women, including a sort of apartheid, and commits war crimes. The leader's parents were tortured to death by Hamas, and he converted to Judaism (IMRA, 11/18). 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 To Go To Top

WORKING WITH SUN AND CLOUDS Posted by Fred Reifenberg, November 22, 2008.

Contact Fred Reifenberg by email at freify@netvision.net.il. Additional images are available at http://4batya.blogspot.com/ To Go To Top

UN TO MOURN 60 YEARS OF ISRAEL'S EXISTENCE Posted by Eleazar ben Yair, November 22, 2008.

For Immediate Release: November 21, 2008 Contact: Anne Bayefsky 917) 488-1558 anne@hudsonny.org NEW YORK — This Monday, November 24th, the UN will commemorate its annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People with a film depicting Jews as Nazi-equivalents and a public exhibit mourning the sixty years of Israel's existence. "The event is an annual reminder that the UN's real agenda is to delegitimize the birth — and the perseverance — of the state of Israel," said Anne Bayefsky, Editor of EYEontheUN.org. Monday's observance marks November 29, 1947 — the day that the UN voted to establish a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine — a decision accepted by the Jews and rejected by the Arabs. This year's observance is being held a week early due to scheduling conflicts. As in years past, there will be a formal meeting Monday morning of the Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, a film, an afternoon meeting of the General Assembly on the "Question of Palestine," and the opening of a public exhibit in the entrance to the UN's New York headquarters. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan referred to November 29th as "a day of mourning and a day of grief," and the usual procedure is for UN member state after UN member state to use the opportunity to grieve for the suffering of the Palestinian people at Israeli hands. The General Assembly is scheduled to adopt another six resolutions condemning only Israel for violations of human rights. The total number of resolutions criticizing Israel expected to be adopted at this fall's General Assembly is 20, as compared to only four resolutions critical of human rights records in any of the remaining 191 UN member nations. The 2008 installment of what is in essence a repeat of the "Zionism = Racism" allegation, will be the public showing of the film "La Terre Parle Arabe" or "The Land Speaks Arabic." The film draws parallels between the Nazis' final solution and the alleged Zionist design for Palestinians. It is commonly billed with these words: "...the late-19th century Zionists...drew up plans, put them into practice, then...used... force, often brutal." Here is some of the script for the UN public's edification: "Christians and Muslims alike...unite in their hatred of Zionism...I preferred to die as a martyr rather than be governed by the Jews ...We were against the Jews...The number of Jews increased constantly...The children cried ...The Hagana had no mercy, no pity. Zionists! They were Zionists!... The Jews were shooting at us, they were facing us...The Jews yelled "turn around you bastards, you dogs." They machine gunned us...They started killing people who were asleep...[We]...found a poor woman ... pregnant. They had killed her and the baby came out of the womb. They started slaughtering them until morning." The exhibit to be opened at 6 p.m. on Monday in the UN lobby — the public entrance through which school children from across the United States and tourists from around the world pass every day — is entitled "The Palestinians: 60 years of struggle and enduring hope." Bayefsky comments: "The "sixty years" of struggle is telling. It puts a lie to the alleged root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict as an "occupation" that began with the 1967 war. The real complaint is the alleged wrong of the creation of the State of Israel itself." She adds: "The carefully selected word "struggle" also speaks volumes. What the UN glorifies as a struggle is a series of wars launched by Arabs to annihilate the state of Israel beginning in 1948, and the ongoing "struggle" of Palestinian and other Arab terrorists dedicated to the same end." Past UN Palestinian Solidarity Day observances have included: a.. The display of a map in Arabic with the State of Israel missing altogether b.. Flying only the flags of "Palestine" and the United Nations, and omitting the flag of the UN member state of Israel c.. Opening the day with a moment of silence commemorating the death, among others, of suicide bombers or "all those who have given their lives for the cause of the Palestinian people..." d.. Exhibits promoting terrorism and the alleged right of return while criticizing a host of non-violent efforts by Israel to prevent terrorism from checkpoints to a security fence — all of which are invariably presented as evil steps taken in a vacuum. "Anyone hoping to see an Israeli flag flown in addition to a Palestinian one in celebration of the UN partition plan that approved a two-state solution, should not hold their breath," said Anne Bayefsky, Editor of EYEontheUN.org. She continued, "the UN tradition of mourning the creation of the state of Israel continues." EDITOR'S NOTE: The report on EU's massive funding of the Palestinian Arabs is available at http://eufunding.org.uk/FPC2004Report.pdf or at http://www.think-israel.org/nov08pix/EUaidsPA04report.pdf Contact Eleazar Ben Yair at eleazar_benyair@yahoo.it To Go To Top

POLLARD'S WIFE SEES GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY TO SECURE HIS RELEASE Posted by Bryna Berch, November 22, 2008.

When Bill Clinton was leaving the White House, he pardoned a billionaire fugitive from justice on his last day in office, As George Lardner Jr. writes today in the New York Times, The billionaire was Marc Rich, a commodities trader, and his pardon is a subject of discussion again because Eric Holder, Mr. Clinton's deputy attorney general at the time and a key figure in the clemency process, is reported to be Barack Obama's choice for attorney general. In the years since the Rich pardon, Mr. Holder has said he "never devoted a great deal of time to this matter." He also told an interviewer that, in hindsight, he wished that the Justice Department had been "more fully informed" about the case. As someone who helped cover the story for The Washington Post, I think the issue is far more complicated and deserves more scrutiny if Mr. Holder is to become our top law-enforcement official. A little history first. In 1983, Marc Rich was indicted along with his partner, Pincus Green, and their companies on 65 counts of defrauding the I.R.S., mail fraud, tax evasion, racketeering, defrauding the Treasury and trading with the enemy. (The last of these was for an oil deal with Iran while it held American hostages.) On hearing that they were about to be prosecuted, they fled to Switzerland. For the next 17 years, Mr. Rich ducked extradition requests as well as attempts by federal marshals to arrest him in France, England, Finland and elsewhere. Mr. Rich's lawyers tried repeatedly to reach a deal with federal prosecutors in New York that would keep him out of jail if he returned. Though his companies pleaded guilty and paid $200 million in fines and other penalties, Mr. Rich insisted that the case against him was weak. The prosecutors offered to drop the racketeering charges and to let Mr. Rich free on bail (without a passport) if he would return. Mr. Rich refused. The story of how the fugitive came to be pardoned by President Clinton was the subject of a painstaking study by the House Government Reform Committee. While the committee's report is the subject of some controversy — its Republican chairman, Dan Burton of Indiana, was accused of partisanship — the staff that compiled the documentation was thoroughly professional. All the citations and facts that follow are supported by testimony before the committee or its staff's documentary evidence. In 1999, Mr. Rich hired Jack Quinn, who had been Mr. Clinton's White House counsel from 1995 to 1996, to help him advance his cause. The Rich team was still hoping to strike a deal with federal prosecutors in New York, who were in charge of the case. An e-mail message to Mr. Rich from one of his New York lawyers said that Mr. Quinn felt "he could convince Eric that it made sense to listen to the professors and that he could convince Eric to encourage Mary Jo to do the same." The "professors" were two tax experts paid more than $96,000 for a study based solely on statements provided them by the Rich legal team; "Mary Jo" was Mary Jo White, the United States attorney in New York. Mr. Holder was not unsympathetic. He told Mr. Quinn in November of 1999 that he considered the New York prosecutor's persistent refusal of a meeting "ridiculous" and that "the equities" were on Mr. Rich's side. Mr. Holder told Mr. Quinn to write a letter to Ms. White with a copy to him, and promised to call her when it arrived. Mr. Holder then called Ms. White personally and, after that conversation, told Mr. Quinn she "didn't sound like her guard was up." But New York stood firm. On Nov. 18, 2000, Mr. Quinn told Mr. Holder that Mr. Rich was going to go for a pardon, a step his team had been contemplating for months. After the conversation, Mr. Quinn told colleagues that Mr. Holder had advised him to "go straight to" the White House and that the "timing is good." On Dec. 11, just over a month before Mr. Clinton was to leave office, Mr. Quinn delivered the pardon papers to the White House. "The greatest danger lies with the lawyers," Mr. Quinn wrote in an e-mail message to an aide to Mr. Rich, referring to the prosecutors in New York. "I have worked them hard and I am hopeful that E. Holder will be helpful to us." Under the rules governing pardon petitions — rules that were approved by Mr. Holder's office — the views of United States attorneys "are given considerable weight" because of the "valuable insights" they have. And yet Mr. Holder did not consult Ms. White and her colleagues about the Rich pardon petition; they did not know of it until it had been granted. Then, on Jan. 19, 2001, Mr. Holder delivered his pardon assessment to the White House, telling Beth Nolan, the White House counsel, that he was "neutral leaning favorable" on the Rich pardon. His decision, he added, was influenced by the support of Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister. The people in the United States attorney's office in New York weren't the only ones surprised by Mr. Holder's decision. Deborah Smolover, his top deputy for pardon cases, did not find out about the pardon for Mr. Rich until the White House called to inform her of it after midnight on Jan. 20. (Mr. Green won a pardon, too.) After the pardon was signed, Mr. Quinn has testified, Mr. Holder called him to commend him on "a very good job." Mr. Holder also asked Mr. Quinn to consider hiring two former aides, one of whom had already contacted Mr. Quinn on Jan. 2 "at Holder's suggestion." The precedent against pardons for fugitives was set more than 200 years ago by President John Adams. The charge, brought in 1799, was murder on the high seas against a ship's captain who was clearly trying to put down a mutiny. But the mutineers made it back to the States, ready to testify against the captain, while his supporters were still at sea. The captain was afraid to return. Asked to approve a nolle prosequi (a notice that prosecution won't be pursued, a procedure then treated as part of the pardon power), the president consulted his cabinet, which concluded that a trial should come first and a pardon, if justified, after that. Clemency, wrote Secretary of War James McHenry, should be exercised only with "great caution and on the fullest information." Mr. Holder never came close to meeting that standard. He had the last word at Justice on clemency petitions and he saw to it that he had the only word. He brokered one of the most unjustifiable pardons that an American president has ever granted. Jonathan Pollard's spying killed no one. Jonathan Pollard is not a sleezoid. Jonathan Pollard acted to protect Israel, America's best (and maybe only) friend in the Middle East. He gave Israel the information it was supposed to receive through regular channels. Yet he has sat in prison as long — and in many cases longer — than convicted spies who spied for countries such as Russia and jeopardized the lives of Americans abroad. He has served his time. President Bush could end the unfair treatment Pollard has received before he leaves office. Write him and ask him to pardon Jonathan Pollard. Jonathan has suffered long enough. ASK PRESIDENT BUSH TO DO THE RIGHT THING. Nationwide White House Call-In for Jonathan Pollard White House Telephone Number: 202-456-1111 OR 1-202-456-1414 White House FAX Numbers: 202-456-2883 or 202-456-2461 Every call is tallied by subject matter. Every time you say "Free Jonathan Pollard" it counts! Take a minute for Jonathan Pollard and call now! Click here for the facts. From Israel, use 077-566 4305. Callers are charged as if they made a regular local call. This article below was written by Sharon Roffe-Ofir today for Ynet

Esther Pollard sends emotional letter to PM Olmert, urges him to bring up her husband's release in upcoming meeting with President Bush; after more than 20 years in prison, time is right to free Jonathan, she says. The end of George W. Bush's term in office marks a golden opportunity for the release of Jonathan Pollard, imprisoned in the US for more than 20 years now, his wife Esther wrote in an emotional plea to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Saturday evening. "You have a golden opportunity to act resolutely in order to return my husband home — alive!" wrote Pollard's wife in her letter to Olmert, just before the PM heads to Washington. Today, more than ever, the release of her husband could mark the "crowning glory" of both Olmert's and Bush's term in office, she wrote. Pollard is serving his 24th year in an American prison but his wife, who has been tirelessly fighting to secure his release, believes that Olmert's upcoming farewell visit to the US is a unique opportunity that could see her husband freed from his long incarceration. "Senior American officials who in the past objected to his release now say that the more than 20 years he spent in prison are more than enough, while others believe Jonathan is a victim of injustice," Esther Pollard wrote. "I know that Mr. Bush is willing to release Jonathan, but no official request to that effect has been made by the State of Israel." "Washington is waiting to hear that the State of Israel is finally willing to take responsibility for her agent," Esther Pollard said. "Jonathan has been languishing in an American prison for 24 years now for his service on behalf of the State of Israel. I'm certain that if you ask Mr. Bush to release him now, he will respond positively to the request." This week, Americans will be celebrating Thanksgiving, which is traditionally the time for granting pardons. Esther Pollard is hoping that this year her husband's name will be on the list of those who are released. "I would like to express my support to Mr. Olmert," she said. "This is a golden opportunity, and the timing is just right — I wish him success in taking advantage of it." Pollard's wife added that the entire Israeli public supports the struggle for the release of her husband. "Jonathan is suffering terribly, both physically and emotionally, after so many years of incarceration under very difficult conditions," she wrote. "You have no idea, Mr. Prime Minister, of the kind of appreciation and admiration you will receive from all sectors of the Israeli public when you return from your meeting with President Bush and step off the plane with Jonathan. " To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: TOUCHING VARIOUS BASES Posted by Arlene Kushner, November 21, 2008.

Before Shabbat I would like to touch upon a number of subjects, some of which may be re-visited next week. The International Atomic Energy Agency announced on Wednesday that a search of the site in Syria that Israel had bombed revealed "significant" amounts of uranium particles. The agency is stopping short of saying definitively that the bombed building was a reactor, but evidence is sure pointing in that direction. ~~~~~~~~~~ The IAEA has also indicated that Iran may now have enough low grade enriched uranium to build one bomb. While the uranium would have to be further enriched and the delivery system developed, this information is ominous and deeply troubling. According to the Times of London, intelligence sources are saying this makes it more likely that Israel will hit Iran. ~~~~~~~~~~ It was revealed on Thursday that Olmert and Barak had paid a secret visit to Amman on Tuesday to speak with King Abdullah, at his invitation, regarding the violence in Gaza. Abdullah says a large scale military operation into Gaza would foment unrest in the region that might unsettle the Hamshemite kingdom. His position seems to be that the populace of Jordan, which has a Palestinian majority (Abdullah's Hashemites are a minority), would become restive at the prospect of Israeli action against Palestinians in Gaza. This makes the assumption that the Jordanian street identifies with Hamas. But until very recently the perspective was that it was radicalism — coming from Hamas — that threatened the king's throne. Growing Hamas influence in Judea and Samaria caused unease in Jordan, which indicated a distinct preference for an IDF presence at its western border. There was a time when the king would have been pleased to see Israel take on Hamas strength. What has happened is that Jordan — presumably feeling threatened by prospects of a negotiated Palestinian state at its border run by PA forces unable to restrain Hamas — decided to shift its position vis-a-vis Hamas. Thus, Jordan reestablished relations with Hamas in August. And thus, Abdullah was asking Israel's leaders to refrain from military operations in Gaza. In fact, according to the very reliable Khaled Abu Toameh of the Post, Abdullah apparently delivered a message from Hamas saying that it wishes to sustain the ceasefire. Said King Abdullah, the key to stability in the region is an Israeli-Palestinian peace. This irks me no end — for the implication here is that Israel would be remiss in defending herself and should "try harder" to achieve that peace. As if we haven't already done more than we should have in that direction. ~~~~~~~~~~ Tzipi Livni obliquely referred to this meeting in a statement saying that while we value our relationship with our neighbors, ultimately we must do what is in Israel's best interest. According to Abu Toameh, the king was told at the meeting that there were no plans in the near future to take out Hamas in Gaza, but that more limited military actions were possible. ~~~~~~~~~~ Meanwhile, reports are that the newly introduced, US-trained PA security forces in Hevron have arrested 250 Hamas terror suspects. This is said to be a first. What I wait to hear is that these 250 are tried and imprisoned as appropriate. The usual PA practice is to maintain a revolving door in its prisons. ~~~~~~~~~~ Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has announced — most appropriately — that Israel will not be attending the Durban Review Conference, being called Durban II, which is to be held in Geneva in April. Durban I, which was billed as a UN-sponsored conference to combat racism, degenerated into an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic frenzy. The most scurrilous anti-Semitism came from an NGO forum held in tandem with the conference. This second conference is supposed to review progress made on the issues since that first 2001 conference. Evidence is strong that it's heading in the same direction. See www.eyeontheUN.org run by Anne Bayefsky for documented information on what is transpiring. On November 8th, Bayefsky reported that the UN preparatory committee for Durban II has released an "outcome document" to be presented at the conference that demonizes Israel and Israel self-determination. What it implies is that Israel is an apartheid racist state that is guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. What is more, the document thwarts efforts to stop terrorism and attacks freedom of expression. ~~~~~~~~~~ In a parallel effort to delegitimize Israel, Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire, who won the peace prize in 1976 for her work with Catholics and Protestants in northern Ireland, suggests that the UN should suspect or expel Israel because of the blockade of Gaza. Why is it that these very self-righteous people never talk about what Hamas is doing to innocents in Israel? ~~~~~~~~~~ I've written extensively on the happenings in Hevron with regard to Beit HaShalom, and so I must touch on this. There are reports now of violence in the area, but the IDF is saying this is the work of "outsiders." Leadership in Hevron, which is not violent, is seeking to calm matters. Additionally, MK Uri Ariel (NU) has asked the Shabbak to investigate whether some of their own operators, servings as provocateurs, may be at work here. Lest you imagine this is far-fetched, I assure you that it is not. It has happened before. When a situation is volatile, there are elements who stir matters up and foment violence to blacken the names of those who are protesting a government position. It is prudent to reserve judgment here until more is known. The weekend will be tense, as thousands of visitors will be coming to Hevron for Shabbat. ~~~~~~~~~~ This related item is interesting: Shimon Peres, who is in England, has, according to Israel National News, told members of the British parliament that the government was willing to give most of Judea and Samaria to the PA, but it would be difficult to dismantle Jewish towns (in which 250,000 Jews live) without causing civil war. Good that he realizes this. ~~~~~~~~~~ Hopefully, come February (and elections), the whole issue of an Israeli government ready to give away large swaths of Israel will become moot. Polls are showing Likud with a substantial lead over Kadima. Depending on the poll, Likud is expected to gain 32-34 seats, with Kadima having 23-26. Labor is way down, with only 8-10 seats. In fact, Meimad has broken with Labor now because it has always received the slot for the 10th seat on a combined list and is now afraid there will be no tenth seat; they will run their own list. The prediction is that the entire right wing will achieve sufficient seats to comfortably form a coalition. As of yet, however, there is no gain shown in the polls for a combined NU-NRP list. ~~~~~~~~~~ Livni is gearing up to come out swinging against Likud as elections draw closer. Netanyahu (sounding strangely like Peres) has been promoting negotiations with the PA based on economics and not political issues. He claims that he can help the Palestinians succeed economically and only this way can peace follow — that more of the same negotiations now are doomed to failure. So be it, if this is his focus and not giving away the land. Netanyahu has come out against division of Jerusalem, as well. ~~~~~~~~~~ My information from several quarters is that Uzi Dayan, who was once considerably to the left, has shifted his position to the right. He now sees Oslo has having been a disaster. Dayan has joined Likud. ~~~~~~~~~~ Uzi Landau, meanwhile, formerly a member of Likud, is moving in another direction. He left Sharon's cabinet in protest against the disengagement, and now has announced that he is joining Yisrael Beitenu even though he disagrees with some of the positions of party head Avigdor Lieberman. Landau will have the number two slot on the list. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

CRONY CAPITALISM, PREDATORY POLITICIANS, AND THE DETROIT THREE Posted by Family Security Matters (FSM), November 21, 2008.

This was written by Newt Gingrich and it appeared in FSM http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1827/pub_detail.asp Newt Gingrich is the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and author of "Winning the Future." Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.

There's a term that's commonly applied to the economic systems of some Asian and Latin American countries. It's "crony capitalism." Crony capitalism is when government controls significant parts of the economy. Under this kind of bureaucratic micromanagement, politicians — not the free market — call the shots. And that means that the decisions that control the economy are of necessity political decisions, not economic ones. Crony capitalism is bad for government. Economic power in the hands of politicians breeds corruption. Crony capitalism is bad for democracy. Individuals and businesses outside favored industries have an unequal voice in self-government. Crony capitalism is bad for business. Politicians wedded to the status quo stifle growth and innovation. And there's one more thing about crony capitalism: It's come to America. Predatory Politicians Practicing Crony Capitalism Created the Economic Crisis It's the nature of crony capitalism to expand — for government to acquire more and more of the economy. The agents of this expansion are elected officials. Call them "predatory politicians." Crony capitalism practiced by predatory politicians is at the root of the current financial meltdown. In exchange for campaign cash and support for favored constituents, predatory politicians aided and abetted the government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as they created and fed the subprime mortgage market . Now Predatory Politicians Are About to Make It Worse And to fix the mess they created, what have predatory politicians turned to? Why, more crony capitalism of course. First, they designed Wall Street bailouts in which a former chairman of Goldman Sachs got a blank check to disburse hundreds of billions of dollars to his former colleagues on Wall Street. Then they took over an insurance company at a hugely inflated cost. Now predatory politicians want taxpayers to fund a bailout of three bloated, stagnant companies that have been losing money for years, one of which is currently hemorrhaging over $1 billion a month. The Detroit Three: An Investment Only a Predatory Politician Would Propose To reward the unions that helped produce its electoral victory, the newly empowered Democratic Congress is proposing that American taxpayers pony up $25 billion to bail out the Detroit Three automakers, Ford, GM and Chrysler. Democrats are using the current financial crisis as their excuse to bailout the autos. But in fact, the Detroit three were unprofitable long before the current crisis hit. According to one economist, GM and Ford made more money-losing investments in the 1980s than any other U.S. companies. And the Detroit money pit only got deeper in the ensuing two decades. Since 1998, GM has been losing an astonishing $1.5 billion a month. That's an investment only a predatory politician would propose. Bringing Fannie and Freddie Style Accountability to the Auto Industry One of the things that makes crony capitalism so profitable for politicians is that Washington exempts itself from the economic and financial rules it imposes on private industry. For example, in 2003, federal regulators discovered that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had engaged in Enron-style accounting fraud. But while executives at private companies who engaged in similar fraud went to prison — and Congress responded by imposing the draconian and business-killing Sarbanes-Oxley bill on private businesses — Fannie and Freddie executives barely received a slap on the wrist. One of the reasons was House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.). Frank fought tenaciously against the regulation that would have held Fannie and Freddie executives accountable and might have averted the financial crisis. Now Chairman Frank wants to bring his particular style of crony capitalism to the auto industry. Any Detroit Bailout Government Board Should Be Subject To Sarbanes-Oxley On "Face the Nation" this Sunday, Chairman Frank announced that not only would he push for a taxpayer bailout of the Detroit Three during the special session of Congress this week, but he would also create a government oversight board for the three companies — in effect, a board of directors made up of predatory politicians. I believe that it would be a mistake for the taxpayers to be forced to bail out Detroit. Companies at which union workers make $71 an hour in wages and benefits — compared to just $47 an hour at Toyota's U.S. plants — are not going to be saved by a $25 billion government check. But if Democrats do find the votes to bring crony capitalism to Detroit, Americans should at the very least insist that any government board of directors created for the auto industry be subject to the criminal penalties and lengthy prison sentences in Sarbanes-Oxley. What's fair for the rest of us is fair for predatory politicians. A Chance For President-Elect Obama to Deliver Real Change The solution to our economic problems, be they in Detroit or on Wall Street, isn't more crony capitalism; it's economic growth. While politicians in Washington are constantly calling on taxpayers to put up more and more money to bail out flagging businesses, there are practical things that wouldn't cost the taxpayers a penny that we could do to make America a better place to create jobs. One of these things is to repeal Sarbanes-Oxley. As my wife Callista and I outline in more detail in this video, Sarbanes-Oxley has had the unintended consequences of stifling innovation, killing new business start-ups and driving listings overseas. President-elect Obama won an historic victory two weeks ago on the promise of delivering change to the American people. Bailing out the Detroit auto dinosaurs is not change. It is crony capitalism in service of a failed status quo. President-elect Obama should stand up to congressional Democrats and say "no" — "no" to saddling future generations of Americans with the bill for today's crony capitalism. That would be change we could believe in. To Go To Top

FALLING; TOO OLD TO BURN Posted by Fred Reifenberg, November 21, 2008.

Left: Falling Right: Too Old To Burn Contact Fred Reifenberg by email at freify@netvision.net.il. Additional images are available at http://4batya.blogspot.com/ To Go To Top

RABIN'S SECOND THOUGHTS; HOW EVIL THE UNO IS; FUELISH PROPAGANDA FROM GAZA Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 21, 2008.

HAARETZ MISREPORTS HAMAS Haaretz journalist Amira Hass reports that if Israel recognized the western Palestinian Arabs' "national" rights, and gave them a state within the 1967 borders, Hamas would offer Israel a long-term truce. Dr. Aaron Lerner remarked, "Shame on Amira Hass for declining to spell out what this means." It means that for all the Territories and part of Jerusalem, Hamas will suspend shooting while it pours into Israel millions of people who can trace a family link to the area and it prepares its army to join the influx in bringing down the state. It is a most ungenerous offer (IMRA, 11/9). By omitting explanation, Mr. Hass makes this traditional Muslim ruse seem like a peace offer. It works! Israel's Left is willing to be deceived repeatedly. GAZA GETS FUEL Hamas is halting the importation of fuel from Israel. Almost everything Gazans need is smuggled in from the Sinai. Israeli military officials admit that the blockade is failing (IMRA, 11/9). Hamas attacked the gates where Israel was sending gasoline trucks in. Israel had to pull back. Hamas denounced Israel for withholding gasoline, and threatened to shut down the Gaza power station for pretended lack of fuel. Staged media events include filming children holding candles in a room, as if no electricity, but it was daytime and the room was darkened artificially, to deceive audiences (IMRA, 11/10). How mendacious to fake a need for sympathy! The success of the tunnels does not stop the usual anti-Zionist media and phony humanitarians from putting on long faces and denouncing the Israeli blockade as causing hardship. This includes the anarchists and Euro-parliamentarians on the third ship to reach Gaza from complaining of lack of medicine in Gaza. Quite a commentary on the media that it keeps falling for staged Arab news. RABIN'S SECOND THOUGHTS At the Rabin assassination memorial, Prof. Efraim Inbar said that Rabin came to find the PLO still terrorist and Oslo not working. Had he lived, he might have decided to reverse Oslo (IMRA, 11/10). That is just what Barry Chamish said and what I remember. Mr. Chamish believes that that is why Rabin was assassinated. I remember that Peres also hated Rabin, his rival for the premiership. SECRECY IN GOVERNMENT Pres. Bush approved and streamlined a secret procedure for raiding al-Qaida in foreign countries not officially at war with us. Our forces could move fast, while intelligence was still fresh. Each raid needed high authorization. Officials found some intelligence not reliable, and withheld approval (NY Times, 11/10). I am proud of our armed forces having become that sensible and even efficient. I thank Pres. Bush for protecting us. I don't think he should have kept the new policy secret from the people. I can, however, see another side to that. Politically, he would have gained had he informed the electorate. What definitely should be kept secret are methods, plans for particular raids, and perhaps results. If a raid takes place in a country without publicity, the country's government may not react and may be pleased. If it is publicized, the foreign government may feel impelled to react and to restrict the US. Publicity of our protecting ourselves and other people, in these days of pacifism and appeasement, harms our reputation. Our reputation is of great concern to liberals. Unfortunately, our media feels entitled to publicize military plans. The quarry escapes. We look foolish. How important is reputation? If other countries have reason to distrust or oppose us, because of reputation, we become less able to pursue our national and international interests. On the other hand, we should not forfeit pursuit of important national security, which in the case of squelching international rogue states and movements, is in the international interest, merely because it may harm our reputation. Security outweighs the approval of wrong-headed people. Find the happy medium! When I mentioned to a liberal, that as Iran assembles nuclear weapons, and neither Bush nor Obama seem inclined to stop them, she said, "If we raid Iran, the rest of the world wouldn't like us." I replied, "I don't give a damn about what the rest of the world thinks, when our survival is at stake. Will you be pleased that we preserved what the rest of the world thinks is some purity of reputation, when you, a New Yorker, sees the mushroom cloud courtesy of Iran?" Our duty is to save ourselves, liked or disliked for doing so. How much do these foreigners really like us, if we let ourselves get killed? Thomas Friedman has an answer. He remarked about the roar of foreign approval over our election results, that as soon as Obama were to protect US national interest by force, that approval would vanish. Do they think that when Obama puts diplomacy first, he'd never use force? Considering the enemies we have, ones preparing to attack us again, he is going to have to act like a President, instead of talking like a messiah. What conceit, liberals have, to imagine that everything we do is up to us! It is the same self-centeredness of which they accuse Pres. Bush. GAUGE OF HOW EVIL THE UNO IS Antisemites rant and call for mass-murder, in the UNO. They are accepted and even applauded. The UNO was set up to stop mass-murder. If Hitler could come back and make the same speech, would they applaud him? GLOBALIZATION & REGULATION It seems that Republicans say, "Shoot it or drill it," whereas Democrats say, "Tax it or regulate it." In this era of globalizing, where does regulation fit? Here is my understanding of it, opinion only, and of an early stage in globalization. It's based on The Lexus & The Olive Tree. In the industrial revolution era, regulation abounded in the industrialized states. Regulations differed country-to-country, but tended to control extensively. In the globalized era, I think that most governments will regulate, regulations will be more standard and for making order. They will not get into such detail. Companies increasingly want investors and sales globally. To attain that, they must have standard, transparent accounting and other practices. Their governments need sound economies and business law. Regulation must assure that. Otherwise, hedge funds and other global investors and purchasers will pull out. They have done so, over the years. Russian business, replete with confiscation, nationalization, and lack of law and order discourage foreign investors. Same for the P.A.. The present international crisis may make the lesson sink in. Investors no longer will assume that foreign stock exchanges and business rules all have the same, high standards of reliability. Other aspects of governmental regulation cannot run afoul of international investors, or they become counter-productive. Tax too high or spend too much, and the economy repels investors and rich taxpayers. Regulate too much out of line from other countries, and the investors outsource or move out. I hope globalization does not impede environmental regulation. A major point in the Democrats' campaign was to blame the financial crisis on de-regulation which, in general, Sen. McCain favors. The NY Times emphasized that. Then its Magazine section contradicted that with some facts, that bank regulation started by Congress and in 1988, before Bush's time and with Democrats sharing responsibility. As the newspaper keeps covering the story, it mentions earlier financial shocks here and there. Our watchdogs in the media, legislative and executive branches, and in the financial profession, slept. RABIN ASSASSINATION COMMEMORATION The whole week is devoted to paeans for the saint who wasn't. The speeches hammer home the big lie that the Right incited its followers until one committed the deed. All right-wingers are presumed guilty by association, and free speech was and remains the culprit. Don't dare criticize Rabin's policy even now! Now that PM Olmert continues those policies, he promotes the notion of collective guilt, even though he belonged to Likud then, criticizing Rabin. What right-wing conspiracy? Not one rabbi or prominent right-wing leader was found to have approved of assassination before it or afterwards. A few Kahanists might have applauded, but they may have been agents provocateurs. Half the country opposed Rabin's policy, without proposing violence. How did those policies pan out? The Oslo "peace process" armed the PLO, which killed about 2,000 Israelis. If we criticize that, are we the arrangers of murder? [Or were the Oslo schemers?] The commemoration should be a day of education that assassination disrupts democracy, and does not justify repression of freedom of speech. In the wake of the murder, dissidents were defamed, harassed, arrested, and indicted. The commemoration has degenerated into partisan beatification of Rabin. It develops a cult in which his proposals become unchallengeable, like theological canon, instead of controversial and perhaps seen as counter-productive. It demonstrates the Left's monopoly of the media, also a danger to democracy. What a hideous spectacle, when politician Ehud Barak screamed that right-wing opponents are a "cancer!" Despite lack of evidence, the Left blames the Right for the bombing of far-leftist Prof. Sternhell. The Right is depicted as inherently violent, but few within it are violent. Violence, however, is in the record of the Left. Every day, leftists commit violence against Israeli troops trying to keep terrorists out of Israel. In addition, "The Left produced the spies and the traitors, including Mordecai Vanunu, Azmi Bishara, Tali Fahima, Marcus Klingberg, and including the ring of espionage and terror operated by kibbutznik Udi Adiv (today a lecturer in political science at the Open University) in the 1970s. Those with long memories will remember the earlier campaigns of leftist violence against the Right in the 1940s, the "season," the sinking of the Altalena, the betraying of members of the Edsel to the British by the Left, the gangs of street thugs operated by Ben Gurion to beat opponents, etc." A constructive Rabin Day, devoted to stopping political violence and promoting open political debate, would set the record straight. Instead, the period is a pretext for distorting the record, dividing the country, and gaining political advantage at the expense of democracy (Prof. Steven Plaut, 11/10). PERES INVITES RIGHT TO RABIN RALLIES, BUT He said that the commemoration should be against violence and for peace. He invited the Right to participate and define their method for attaining peace, so long as they don't call Oslo a disaster (IMRA, 11/10). How the Left doesn't believe in free speech! Nor in reality. FARMING OR EXPLOSIVES? Israel bans chemical components of explosives from Judea-Samaria. Its forces have been confiscating such materials there. Most of them are of dual use, the other use being agriculture (IMRA, 11/11). The article did not make clear whether there are fertilizers and pesticides that are not components of explosives, that could be substituted. P.A. Arabs use great amounts of pesticides. I guess they should switch to organic farming. That would be better, all around. In any case, imagine the explosions, if Israel did not patrol there and have checkpoints! THE NETANYAHU ALTERNATIVE Likud's candidate for the premiership, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he would start his regime by ending political negotiations with the P.A. He would switch to economic negotiations. He would try to build up the P.A. economy. He thinks economic peace must precede political peace (IMRA, 11/11). It is difficult to comment about a mere slogan, which is what he uttered. If he built up the P.A. economy, and the religious motive for war remains, he'd have made the enemy stronger. Therefore the P.A. must stop its indoctrination in jihad. If the P.A. maintains its corruption and lack of business law, its economy won't build up and it won't develop democratic institutions. Has Netanyahu a comprehensive economic and institutional reform program? Let's see it. Warning: the Muslims do not want the Jews to tell them what to do. Their hatred reduced their economic cooperation. What's Netanyahu's formula? ABBAS: ISRAEL OFFERED THE P.A. PARTS OF JERUSALEM (IMRA, 11/11.) Olmert had denied that he even discussed it. Who is telling the truth? Olmert acts in secret, and Abbas lies. I remember that years before, the Arabs claimed that Israel had made offers I found so outrageously contrary to the Jewish national interest, that I didn't believe them. It turned out that the Arabs were not exaggerating. Put nothing beyond Israel's leftist leaders! BORDER WITH EGYPT HEATING UP Bedouin looted and burned Egyptian checkpoints at the Israeli border south of Gaza. They kidnapped 70 Egyptian police. Both sides suffered casualties. Egypt is moving tanks there, to put the rebellion down (IMRA, 11/11). The news brief does not specify the Bedouin grievance. Bedouin smuggle into Israel goods and aliens. The conflict may be over that. Or is it a pretext to move tanks close? FUELISH PROPAGANDA FROM GAZA Here is the strange way jihad operates in Gaza. Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza, after Hamas fired rockets at Israeli cities. The world condemned the blockade but not Hamas. Israel relented, letting in humanitarian goods — food, fuel, and medicine. Israel continued furnishing electricity to Gaza. Hamas stole some of the goods and hogged the electricity for manufacturing rockets. Hamas attacked the entry gates, forcing trucks back. Then it complained about hardships of its people. Hamas made those hardships! This proves that Hamas doesn't care about its people, only about propaganda against the Jewish state. The propaganda is effective — Israel rarely comments, and does not make counter-propaganda. The government of Israel pulls its punches or sympathizes more with the enemy, instead of protecting its own people from the rockets. Indeed, it accepted a truce that lets Hamas accumulate rockets for the next war. The usual anti-Israel crowd pretended that the Gazans were starving, though the food went through. Meanwhile, smugglers increased the number of tunnels from Sinai so that they import commodities as well as arms. Nevertheless, Hamas cries hardship, and the rest of the world condemns Israel for it. Egypt easily could eliminate the smuggling, but does not. Israel keeps thanking Egypt for its desultory effort against smuggling and urging it to try harder. The government of Israel pretends that Egypt is at peace with it. In allowing the arms smuggling, Egypt is conducting a war of attrition against Israel. As usual. Recently a Sinai-Gaza fuel pipeline was set up. That proves Egyptian complicity with Hamas. Gaza has enough fuel. Because of that, Hamas advised Israel that it soon would stop importing fuel from Israel. In the latest development (from IMRA, 11/12), Hamas shut its electricity generator, claiming it had insufficient fuel. It has sufficient fuel. Hamas imposed this further hardship on its people, in order to rally world public opinion against Israel more. The world falls for this type of ruse. For example, the NY Times reported what Hamas said (11/11), not what happened, which is different. In this way, that newspaper lends itself to jihadist propaganda. Has the paper no standards of decent journalism, in its anti-Zionist vendetta? 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 To Go To Top

RETIRED JUDGE URI STRUZMAN JOINS HARSH CRITICISM OF SUPREME COURT RULING ON BEIT HASHALOM Posted by Jewish Community of Hebron, November 21, 2008.

(Retired) District court judge Uri Struzman joined harsh criticism of the Supreme Court ruling dealing with Beit Hashalom in Hebron. Judge Struzman participated in one of the cases used by Supreme Court Judge Ayala Procatzia and quoted in her decision. In a critical and scholarly article written by Judge Struzman, he reviews that case ("Mishmar Ayalon") and proves that it actually contradicts Judge Procatzia's ruling in the Hebron case, and definitely cannot be used as a precedent for her ruling. "If the Mishmar Ayalon case should obligate the Supreme Court in dealing with the area under contention in the "Bayat HaChum" (Brown House — referring to Beit HaShalom) until the issue is clarified, they would have had to prevent their removal from the building," writes Judge Struzman. However, in fact, the Judge contorted the significance of the fundamental principal which can be concluded from that case, as with the other case ("Hamotral HaKafti"), which Procatzia also utilizes in her decision. Judge Struzman also mentions that that Procatzia herself participated in a third parallel case (RY"A 5518/98). In this decision, Judge Procatzia did not conclude that the situation must be returned to its previous position prior to a judicial clarification of the issues, as a necessary obligation, rather as "an accepted procedure." In addition, the other judges on that panel, Judge Englard and the Court President Barak agreed with her approach. It is very strange that Judge Procatzia's decision on Beit Hashalom, does not agree with her previous decision in a parallel case. In light of previous precedents, "the Supreme Court should have refrained from a decision based on the fundamental of "the time has passed," and to refer the case to the district court to decide the question of temporary holding of the building," writes Judge Struzman, and concludes with pointed words: as the present court has not done this,... it is not strange that the settlers are screaming that justice has not been served, rather that the judge's political opinions have been the basis for their decision." It should be noted that Judge Struzman does not relate at all to twists and lies that appear in the section dealing with the factual side of the court decision. He is unaware of the twists and lies and therefore assumes that what is presented is accurate, and also concludes that on the basis of the facts presented in the decision, from a legal standpoint, the supreme court decision is contorted and a sham. You can contribute directly in Israel to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB 105, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, email: hebron@hebron.org.il or phone: 972-52-431-7055. In USA, write to The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, email: hebronfund@aol.com or phone: 718 677 6886. To Go To Top

PALESTINIAN TERROR GROUP GLOATS OVER ZIKIM CLOSURE Posted by Mechel Samberg, November 21, 2008.

This article was written by Ali Waked and is archived at http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0%2c7340%2cL-3625760%2c00.html

'The Israelis make threats, but after each threat they withdraw and evacuate,' PRC spokesman says after IDF recruits vacated from base near Gaza. Adds: Palestinians' faith and determination will bring more victories "The evacuation of Zikim serves as further proof that the IDF is going from defeat to defeat," a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) told Ynet after the military base, a basic training facility located in the vicinity of the Gaza Strip, marked the end of its instructional activities on Wednesday. "It began with the withdrawal from Lebanon (May 2000), the pullout from Gaza (August 2005), the defeat in the Second Lebanon War (summer 2006) and, of course, the daily beating from the Palestinian resistance," Abu Abir said. "Zikim won't be the last place from which Israelis will be evacuated." According to Abir, it is the Palestinians' "faith and determination, which Israel lacks, that will bring more victories and evacuations. "The Israelis are hesitant, and mostly run away. The rocket that landed on Zikim is only a tool, just like the rockets that were fired at the settlements," he added. "The force behind the rocket is the Palestinian resistance's determination, which has shown that it is not deterred by planes, helicopters, tanks, assassinations or massacres." 'The Israelis make threats, but after each threat they withdraw and evacuate,' PRC spokesman says after IDF recruits vacated from base near Gaza. Adds: Palestinians' faith and determination will bring more victories "The evacuation of Zikim serves as further proof that the IDF is going from defeat to defeat," a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) told Ynet after the military base, a basic training facility located in the vicinity of the Gaza Strip, marked the end of its instructional activities on Wednesday. "It began with the withdrawal from Lebanon (May 2000), the pullout from Gaza (August 2005), the defeat in the Second Lebanon War (summer 2006) and, of course, the daily beating from the Palestinian resistance," Abu Abir said. "Zikim won't be the last place from which Israelis will be evacuated." According to Abir, it is the Palestinians' "faith and determination, which Israel lacks, that will bring more victories and evacuations. "The Israelis are hesitant, and mostly run away. The rocket that landed on Zikim is only a tool, just like the rockets that were fired at the settlements," he added. "The force behind the rocket is the Palestinian resistance's determination, which has shown that it is not deterred by planes, helicopters, tanks, assassinations or massacres." Company flags taken down during the ceremony at Zikim Abir continued to say that "the Israelis make threats, but after each threat they withdraw and evacuate, which only goes to show that they realize any operation in Gaza will have severe consequences. Eventually, the war will take place inside the home they stole from us. Ynet first reported on the military's intent to remove all new recruits from Zikim in June, when Deputy Chief of Staff Major-General Dan Harel announced a new policy, under which new recruits would be assigned to their designated units immediately after being drafted, and those units would be responsible for their basic training. The new policy called for one of the IDF's basic training facilities to be closed down, and Zikim was subsequently chosen. A new division is scheduled to take over the base in June 2009, but the IDF has yet to name it: "Unfortunately, this move is clouded by great uncertainties, due to disagreements within the army about the need to reassign the base and the nature of its reassignment," Zikim commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Dror Ben Hur, wrote in a letter distributed to the officers on the base. Contact Mechel Samberg at mechelsamberg2@yahoo.com To Go To Top

ZERO HOUR...IRAN NOW HAS MATERIAL FOR FIRST NUCLEAR BOMB Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, November 21, 2008.

This comes from the Joshua Pundit website and is archived at http://joshuapundit.blogspot.com/2008/11/ zero-houriran-now-has-material-for.html

Iran reportedly now has enough enriched uranium to manufacture it's first nuclear bomb. That estimate comes from nuclear experts who've been extrapolating data from the latest IAEA report. Given the feckless nature of the IAEA and the fact that they're not alowed to see everything, Iran is likely much further along than that. Considering the missiles they've tested, which can hit Europe as well as Israel, the hour is much later than we think. Assuming Iran gets nukes, how likely are they to use them? Can't we live with a nuclear Iran the way we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union? Don't bet on it. `Living with it' would be akin to learning to live with a live rattler in the house...except Iran would be more dangerous. For one thing, there's the distinct possibility- I'd say it's almost a certainty — that Iran would provide nukes down line, to the terrorist groups it sponsors and is closely allied with for use against the West. Such attacks could be very hard to trace back to Iran an dby then it might be too late anyway. And if the fingerprints were the least bit uncertain, would a President Obama and a Democrat Congress have the will to rspond appropriately in the face of massive political opposition and street theater from their constituency on the Angry Left? Even worse, in some ways, is the idea that Iran might not use the bomb...but instead would use it as a threat to coerce `respect' from the West, and use their nuclear might to blackmail OPEC to pump up the price of oil and gas and beef up its leadership of the Islamist bloc while fomenting conventional terrorism and Iran-based Islamist takeovers. What lots of people who think a simple diplomatic solution is possible don't consider is that Iran may actually be seeking a confrontation with the West as a 'divine mission'. Notice I said Iran, not Ahmadinejad...important to remember that he's merely a hired hand of the Supreme Council of Guardians and Khameini. To fully understand what we're dealing with here, we need to throw out the notion that we're dealing with a Western mindset, and examine Iran's theological and psychological makeup. All streams of Islam believe in a divine saviour, known as the Mahdi, who will appear at the End of Days. Several Islamic demagogues have raised vast armies and taken territory by utilizing this belief through history. Iran's dominant Shia "Twelver" sect believes this will be Mohammed ibn Hasan, regarded as the 12th Imam, or righteous descendant of the Prophet Mohammad. He is said to have gone into "seclusion" in the ninth century, at the age of five. His return will be preceded by chaos, war and bloodshed. After a cataclysmic battle with evil and darkness, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal Dar Islam..domination of the world by Islam and Sharia law, batta bang, batta bing. Are Ahmadinejad, Khameini and the Supreme council now pushing for a clash with the West because they feel safe in the belief of the imminent return of the Hidden Imam? And are they trying to speed up things in the hope of hastening his reappearance? Here's something to consider from Iran and Ahmadinejad's recent history. During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. After Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980 and the Iranians initially suffered military reverses, Khomeini recruited Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, and packed them off to the front. There, they marched across minefields toward the enemy lines in human waves, clearing a path with their bodies. Every one of them had one of those Taiwanese keys hung around his neck...and the children were told that these were their Keys to open Paradise. No joke. These children who ran to their deaths in suicide attacks were part of the Basiji, a mass movement created by Khomeini after the Revolution in 1979 and put on the front lines after the war began. The Basij Mostazafan — or "mobilization of the oppressed" — was a volunteer militia, most of whose members hadn't even turned 18 yet. They went by the thousands, willing martyrs for Khomeini and the regime. Today the slaughter of the Basiji is a source of Iranian legend and national pride...believe it or not. Since the end of the Iraq war in 1988, the Basiji have vastly increased both in numbers and influence, as a cadre of loyal heroes of the Islamic Republic. They've been used mostly as religious police to enforce Sharia in Iran, and as Allah's own storm troopers against dissidents. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, served as a Basij instructor during the Iran-Iraq War, and is now the poster boy for the movement. That black and white scarf Ahmadinejad wears ins't a Palestinian kefiyah, but a basiji scarf. Recruited from the more conservative and impoverished parts of the population (the exact social class Hitler used for the SA), the Basiji 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 all over Iran got solidly behind Ahmadinejad in every Iranian town, neighborhood, and mosque and pushed his presidency. He was their guy..and the regime's. Re-examine that little bit of information for a second...the man who trained children to blow themselves up for Allah at the Mullah's behest is now the country's president. Turn it over in your mind. The inmates have definitely taken over the Persian asylum. And this suicide/martyr complex is deeply engraved in the Iranian/Shia psyche. After all, why be afraid when the Hidden Imam is on his way? Something else to consider is Iran's perception of how America and the West has reacted to any confrontation or provocation. In 1979, the Iranians got away with something no other country has ever done, even in wartime. They seized a US embassy and held our diplomats hostage for over a year...and the Carter Administration did nothing about it. This perception has been reinforced since then by our retreats from Beirut after a Hezbollah suicide attack, our failure to deal decisively with Saddam after defeating him in the first Gulf War and continuing through our retreat from Somalia...not to mention our `nuanced' and indecisive response to having 3,000 of our fellow citizens slaughtered while a significant portion of the adherants of the Religion of peace celebrated it as one happy victory for the Great Jihad. And why wouldn't the mullahs feel that way? Until very recently our leaders couldn't even bring themselves to call the enemy by its right name. Iran sees us a power in retreat...eager to recoil after any forceful response by the Islamic world. And Iran considers itself the rightful standard bearer of a resurgent Caliphate Islam. Diplomacy only works when you are dealing with people that perceive they have something to lose. Sanctions and multilateral diplomacy has been and will remain a waste of time. Aside from the fact that Russia, China and certain members of the EU are unlikely to abide by them, the black market is alive and well, especially when you have oil and gas to sell. So where's that leave us? The key to solving this little dilemma is to remember that we're not only dealing with Iran's nukes. We are dealing with Iran as the leader of jihad and the Islamist movement — which is exactly how Iran sees itself. President Bush touched on this when he compared `Militant Islam' with the communist menace of the Cold War. Except that the mullahs and their pals have a very different mindset in some ways. The communists actually cared about staying alive. Are we prepared to be half as ruthless and thorough as the mullahs are towards us to preserve our lives and freedom? So far, we haven't. Fascinating it is that President Bush was in such a lather to get us into Iraq, where the nukes weren't, and has been so reluctant to deal with the real threat in Iran. It will go down as perhaps the greatest failure of his presidency, in an administration absolutely chock full of failed policy. Unless something drastic happens, or the Israelis do the job of taking out Iran's nukes themselves, we will pay in blood and treasure for that failure. Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com To Go To Top

EUROPA 2015 Posted by Eleazar Ben Yair, November 21, 2008.

The PPS set is here. Open it with a Presentation Program such as Open Office: Europe in 2015 Contact Eleazar Ben Yair at eleazar_benyair@yahoo.it To Go To Top

CRIMINALIZING CIRCUMCISION MAY FORCE OUT DENMARK'S JEWS Posted by Stan Goodenough, November 21, 2008.

After Jews have lived in Denmark for hundreds of years, the 7000-strong community that resides there today may be forced to leave. The country's legislators are studying a proposed law that would make the biblically-mandated Jewish rite of circumcising baby boys a crime. Ynetnews reported in Israel Thursday that Denmark's National Council for Children (NCC) has recommended the legislation of a law banning circumcision of boys under the age of 15. Circumcision — argued the NCC of the rite that has been practiced without protest for thousands of years by millions of circumcised men - "is the irreversible damage to a child's body before he is given the chance to object." The cutting off of a fold of skin on a boy was comparable to so-called female circumcision, the council further claimed, triggering withering scorn from Denmark's Chief Rabbi, Bent Lexner "The comparison between circumcision and the intentional mutilation of the female sex organ in certain societies is simply complete nonsense," Lexner said. The controversial proposal has won support from Denmark's Ethics Council, meaning that only the parliament's medical committee can intervene and prevent it from being heard, Ynetnews said. Stan Goodenough is a Christian Zionist; a South African national; a Mayflower descendant; an 18-year resident of the State of Israel. Jerusalem Newswire is a news service operating out of Jerusalem, Israel, that provides a condensed source of the most important daily news stories out of the region together with what we believe to be pertinent analyses and commentary. This article is archived at http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2575 To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: LUNACY Posted by Arlene Kushner, November 20, 2008.

It seems fairly pervasive. And I'll provide just two examples here, both touching on issues I've raised in the last day or two: In response to increased launching of rockets from Gaza, Defense Minister Barak placed a closure on Gaza several days ago. Barak, however, has now received an official IDF assessment saying that the closures are not hurting Hamas at all, because it is using the dozens of tunnels under the Philadelphi Corridor to bring in whatever they wish (other than fuel). Yet in spite of the fact that what is being done is not proving effective, the closures will remain in effect. Explained a ministry of defense official: "We cannot allow the Palestinians to fire rockets into our cities without a response." This really inspires confidence that our cities are well defended, does it not? To understand this statement, however, you must read the subtext: We don't want to do a major military operation into Gaza, but if we do nothing we'll be pressured in that direction. And so, we re instituting the closures. Even though they have no effect on Hamas, they give the Israeli people the impression that we're tough. One might weep from this. ~~~~~~~~~~ And then we have the on-going situation with Beit HaShalom in Hevron. Today I noted a piece on this subject that ran on YNet, written by Dror Etkes, who is with the very far left Yesh Din organization. The title of the piece: "Yet another illegal settlement." Subtitle: "Takeover of disputed Hebron home another illegal attempt to create new settlement." Huh? Yes, lunacy, but studied lunacy with an agenda. I am sharing it here to show what the good people of Hevron contend with in terms of accusations. Why call Beit HaShalom an "illegal settlement"? Because these are buzz words intended to immediately defame and delegitimize. Etkes speaks of displacing Palestinians who have lived in the area for generations and secret plots by the Jews. ~~~~~~~~~~ Because positions such as his are so often encountered in the media (and YNet was content to run this), I thought it important to touch very briefly on the facts and the background here. The Jewish connection to Hevron is impeccable and ancient. It begins with the Torah and Avraham's purchase there of a burial cave and surrounding fields. It continues with King David, who was anointed king there and ruled from that city for seven years. Judah Maccabee did battle in Hevron in the second century BCE, when the city was re-established as Jewish, following destruction of the First Temple. In Second Temple times, Herod built the huge structure that stands atop the original burial caves, which remains to this day. In the two millennia since, there has been a pattern of Jews holding fast to this city — either as a remnant people or in larger numbers, at different historical times. I cannot but merely mention this complex history here: In the 15th and 16th centuries, Sephardi Jews from Spain and Portugal established a vibrant community that lasted for 400 years. They were joined by Kabbalists and then in the late 17th and early 18th century by Ashkenazi Jews including Lubavitch Hassidim. A major synagogue had been constructed, and other substantial buildings, within a Jewish quarter. There was scholarship and commerce. ~~~~~~~~~~ The destruction of this ancient and venerable community came with the Arab massacres of 1929. The violence was instigated by the Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who later became an active supporter of the Nazis. He was, it should be noted, the mentor of Yasser Arafat. The Mufti's goal, quite simply, was the elimination of the Jewish community of Hevron. To that end he instigated and made false charges that Jews had set fire to the Al Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. (Just as the Islamic Movement of Israel makes similar charges today.) The Arab rioting began following inflammatory sermons and went on for hours, with the indiscriminate slaughter of women, children and the aged. The rioters, wielding weapons, went from house to house, crying, "Slaughter the Jews." The British, who controlled the area under the Mandate for Palestine, decided it was easier to move the survivors out of Hevron than to defend them. Thus the ancient community came to an end. ~~~~~~~~~~ When the British pulled out, and the War of Independence was over, the Jordanians controlled the area, and they made it entirely Judenrein. No re-establishment of the ancient community was possible. This possibility arose only after 1967, when Israel gained control of Judea, and of Hevron. And even then, there were difficulties as successive governments showed considerable reluctance to cooperate. A core of committed and courageous people has persisted, however. They have been called kooks, and worse, but they have a vision that is solid. They understand that the legacy that is Hevron and the Ma'arat Hamachpelah — the Cave of the Patriarchs — cannot be abandoned. Not if we are to hold our heads up and claim our rightful place in this land. Not if we are to remember who we are. There is no way to surrender our heritage because of Arab violence. And they know full well that no Jew would be permitted to pray at the Machpelah if not for the presence of the Jewish community there. Influential Muslims in the area have conceded as much. (Look what happened when the Tomb of Joseph was turned over to the PA and subsequently vandalized and destroyed.) They know, as well, that our claim to Jerusalem is weakened if Hevron is relinquished. Ultimately, the people returned to the area that was the old Jewish Quarter of Hevron, and they acquired buildings that had been Jewish. Acquired them through meticulous legal processes and purchases — not via illegal seizures. They acquired other buildings for residential purposes legally as well ~~~~~~~~~~ With the unfortunate advent of Oslo and its subsequent agreements, much of Hevron was officially turned over to the PA. But not all of it. There is an official agreement — signed by Binyamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat — with regard to a division of the city, with one portion — roughly 20% — controlled by Israel; it includes the Machpelah and what was the old Jewish Quarter. Jews have a right to live there. Understand: Jews have a right to live there. This is not remotely an "illegal settlement." Actually, the Jewish community of Hevron felt threatened by this agreement, as the Arabs were irritated that they hadn't gotten the whole city, and represented the Jews as interlopers. There has been Arab violence over the years — none more horrendous than the murder in 2001 of ten month old Shalhevet Pass, who was shot by a sniper on a nearby hill who aimed directly at her head. As to the building under question now, which is firmly and solidly within the area under Israeli control: No one was living in it for years before the Jews moved in. No Arabs were displaced. Understand this as well. ~~~~~~~~~~ I am absolutely convinced of the legitimacy of the Jewish purchase of Beit HaShalom, just as I am convinced of the insidious political motivations of the government officials who would push out the residents now. For a detailed run down of the legal issues, you might want to see the Hebron website at: http://www.hebron.com/english/ I am not confident that justice will be done in this matter, just as justice has not been done in several similar incidents over the years. But I am confident that the Jewish community of Hevron will persist. The very least we can do for them is to understand their position and to salute their courage. What is encouraging is that a greater number of Israeli citizens, not resident in Hevron, have gotten weary with what is going on and are ready to stand with them. ~~~~~~~~~~ Right now the IDF is saying they may forcibly evacuate the building after Shabbat — as many visitors are expected over Shabbat because of the Torah reading regarding Avraham's purchase of the cave. I have also noted that Minister of Religious Affairs Yitzhak Cohen is urging that nothing be done until after the elections in February: "This is an explosive public issue that could lead to the worst of all. Dealing with this crisis should be to the point and disconnected from any political influences." (emphasis added) To which I say Amen. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

CRASH COURSE ON THE ARAB ISRAELI CONFLICT Posted by Barbara Sommer, November 20, 2008.

Here are overlooked facts in the current Middle East situation. The text has been circulating among websites.

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem. Israel became a nation in 1312 B. C. E. Two thousand years before the rise of Islam. 2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel. 3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B. C. E., the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years. 4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 C. E. lasted no more than 22 years. 5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit. 6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran. 7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem. 8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem, facing Mecca. 9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. 10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms. 11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same. 12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into th e Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey. 13. The Arab — Israeli Conflict: The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won. 14. The P. L. O. 's Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them. 15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths. 16. The U. N. Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel. 17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel. 18. The U. N was silen t while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians. 19. The U. N. was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemete ry on the Mount of Olives 20. The U. N. was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like a policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. These are incredible times. We have to ask what our role should be. What will we tell our grandchildren we did when there was a turning point in Jewish destiny, an opportunity to make a difference? Contact Barbara Sommer at sommer_1_98@yahoo.com To Go To Top

MIND-SETS & POLITICS; ISRAEL RAIDS JENIN TERRORISTS; OPINIONS LAG BEHIND REALITY Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 20, 2008.

MIND-SETS & POLITICS I discussed issues with a fervent Obama supporter. Her many lapses of knowledge about broader issues made it difficult to converse. Each point she made, I disputed; each point I made, required explanation. My conservative friends despair of discussing politics with liberals, most of whom are indoctrinated with a mental strait-jacket. The conservatives, by contrast, do not automatically endorse their incumbent or candidate. They think more independently. I can see the years of NY Times and NPR campaigning against Zionism in liberals' knowledge gaps and misconceptions. It doesn't occur to them, mostly Jews, to be skeptical of what they are told. Centuries of having been deceived should keep Jews on their toes. Unfortunately, most of them don't have centuries of culture in their minds, they don't know much about it. Likewise, most of them are unacquainted with the history of 20th century appeasement. They fall for current arguments in its behalf. If they examined their assumptions, they might grasp the false underpinnings. They usually don't. They march to the polls, and many of my friends marched other voters to the polls, like sheep. Liberals still do not realize that jihad is international. They imagine each war by Muslims against us as isolated. When one country attacks us, liberals want us perhaps, perhaps to fight back against that country, but certainly to wait passively for the next front to open up against us, to the advantage of the enemy. If we fought WWII like that, we'd have beaten Japan first, but found Nazi Germany might have controlled Europe and its resources, and not been short of oil Liberals have a litany about the Iraq war. They lament our casualties as if high, though they are among the lowest in history. They think the second Iraq war was solely about oil and a-bombs. They think that Pres. Bush lied about it, whereas their Democratic leaders lied about it. They forgot about the Security Council resolutions that Iraq violated. Their notion is one of collective security, you know, the arrangement that was supposed to fend off Hitler but didn't. When it comes time to enforcing the UNO resolutions, then they back off. So much for their support for collective security! It's collective insecurity. Talk, then die. They want to go back to more discussion by diplomats. That is just what hardened fanatics or imperialist dictators want. We'd be better off scuttling the UNO. The same hypocrisy, unconscious I'm sure, applies to their notion of opposing dictatorship and genocide. They criticized the US, during the Bush incumbency, for supporting dictatorship and not thwarting genocide. One of the more oppressive dictators and a perpetrator of genocide was Saddam Hussein. When Pres. Bush overthrew him, the same liberal critics suddenly were not for toppling dictators and thwarting genocide. They failed to say that at least we did something for those people, saving hundreds of thousands of lives and prevented future aggression, as Saddam was rebuilding his armed forces. Liberals won't give an inch. The liberal litany is that more discussion would rally more countries to align with us or persuade the enemy not to align against us. They forget that we tried that for about ten years each with Iraq, Iran, and N. Korea (and western Palestinian Arabs against Israel). The Democrats misled them. Pursuit of failed policies should lead people to inquire why they failed, not insist on trying again. Elementary. Our enemies develop nuclear weapons during our procrastination. Our alternatives may be difficult, but delay reduces them. As for gaining allies, they all are "fair weather friends." They are with us until the first terrorist attack against them or until the enemy offers them more business. Sanctions can't work unless everybody piles on. Russia and China won't. My friend saw my globalization book by Thomas Friedman. She likes him. I don't. She called him objective. Her standard: He criticizes the Arabs as much as Israel. Not true. In any case, his criticism of Israel is virulent and existential. His criticism of the Arabs usually is for anti-Americanism or for stubbornly refusing to accept the tremendous concessions offered by former PM Barak and the tremendous and unilateral sacrifices that former Pres. Clinton offered. The Arab refusal frustrated Friedman's campaign to eviscerate Israel. Objective? Friedman admits that he detest Israel. He claims that occurred when they set up certain, unspecified policies towards the Arabs. Not true. He was a student activist against Israel years earlier. People like he, who claim not to like "Israeli policies on the Arabs." might tell us where they stand on the Arabs' policy towards Israelis — to murder them. Indignation only against the Jews is... No matter what I say to most liberals, they don't acknowledge anything. The best they do is have no answer. And yet they think my views must be rigid. They think that I see things in black and white, because I am adamant against jihad. Sometimes it is more reasonable to see the enemy as black and policies and motives as grey. I saw the Nazis and Communists as total enemies. They were. Their protégés, the Arab Muslims, are, too. I see multiple reasons for policies that some of my friends don't. They can be simplistic about causes and about solutions. My reaction depends on the issue and the facts. I analyze the facts before drawing a conclusion. The NY Times has ready-made conclusions about Israel, and then selects facts to suit, not very carefully about whom it quotes. Next day, my friend said she had tried to resist my contentions, because they are scary. She sees their sense. She came through. Facts and reason prevailed over emotion. THE PUZZLING ECONOMIC CRISIS Most of us have lost money from this ever-deepening economic crisis. Karl Marx didn't have a theory that covers it — it didn't result from an oversupply of goods. We are just beginning to sense what happened. Our leaders are no further. They attribute it to "greed" or de-regulation. What evasions! Just like a doctor who names your disease without offering a remedy, our leaders toss labels without knowing the remedy. They suggest what won't work, but costs a lot. This crisis, however, was predicted. It had precedents. Nobody paid attention. Who predicted it? Two books explained that our society has changed as much as it did in the industrial revolution. The authors realized the implications. One was Alan Toffler's The Third Wave. The other was Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Mr. Friedman explained the bundling of mortgages. He warned that the Internet enables extensive swift investing. Fortunes flow in and out of countries, ruining them temporarily, if they have unsound business practices. We had unsound business practices. If I had read those books a decade ago, I would not have lost much. If our leaders learn from them now, they could help us adapt to the extensive change. FRIGHTENING TALK WITH A LIBERAL One of my guests looks mild, but is a flaming liberal. He regrets the Bush, Jr. years as "lost years." Quoting Thomas Jefferson's approval of a periodic revolution, he said that liberals should have assassinated Bush and risen up against the government. He said liberals should acquire assault rifles. Upon noticing my lack of elation over Obamas election, hee asked why. I said half a sentence, and he truculently interrupted. I said, "Am I not supposed to finish a thought?" He waited. As soon as I referred to something Thomas Friedman said about globalization, he interjected that since Mr. Friedman approved of starting (I think he means starting) the Iraq war, he lost confidence in that pundit's judgment and so he won't pay attention to anything further from him. I said that I see we have no basis for discussion. Thank goodness for globalization! It diverted Friedman from his obsession with his anti-Zionism. I dislike Friedman, but respect his observations about globalization. I detest Obama more than my guest detests Bush. I think that Obama policies deprive us of a future, whereas Bush protected us until the critics cowed him. But I'm not getting an AK-47. (Conservatives probably have rifles.) Most violent revolutions end with brutes in charge. INTERNATIONAL TERRORISTS Saudis captured in Iraq claims they were treated like commodities to be sold to different organizations. They probably will be repatriated. S. Arabia claims success in rehabilitating captured terrorists. The prisoners' guardians demand punishment for clerics who issued fatwas authorizing terrorism (IMRA, 11/7). I usually omit unverified Arab claims. This one, however, may reveal a weakness in terrorism. I don't know whether S. Arabia does re-educate terrorists or its program is an excuse for their evading punishment. What is their recidivism rate? The recidivist rate of released Palestinian Arab terrorists is estimated variously, something like 50%. I bet that if Israel demolished all terrorists' houses, and confiscated funds allotted from abroad to rebuild them, the rate of terrorism against Israel would fall. SYRIA TEMPTS OBAMA 89% of US Muslims voted for Obama; 2% voted for McCain. It is not clear whether they voted against the Bush policies or for Obama's origin as Muslim. Obama's foreign policy advisor, Jimmy Carter's former advisor, Brzezinski (a rabid anti-Zionist) said that Obama's foreign policy would give priority to the western Palestinian Arabs and to reassuring Russia and China of our neutrality. Syria announced that if Obama "changes" US policy towards Syria and presses Israel into a final status agreement with the P.A., Syria would restrain Hizbullah and Hamas (IMRA, 11/7). The King of Jordan urged Obama to compel a pact (IMRA, 11/10). The King's exhortation is heard from many, over the years. Just "restrain?" Not eradicate? That is no better than a truce. It's the old Islamic ploy: get a tangible concession that shifts the balance of power, in return for a temporary, easily reversible truce. Then renew the war on better terms. It's a lot like, but worse than, the truce that Faust made with Satan for immediate relief. I don't think that Russia and especially China believe we threaten them. They are aggressor states, seeking hegemony over land or foreign resources. ISRAEL RAIDS JENIN TERRORISTS Sec. Rice visited Jenin and praised its restoration of law and order on the street. Upon her departure, Israeli forces raided Jenin terrorists, because P.A. police, whom she praised, do not (Arutz-7, 11/10). Remember this, when I criticize Obama next year, to remind yourselves that the State Dept. always is anti-Zionist, pro-Arab, and duplicitous. VATICAN-MUSLIM MEETING Both sides agreed to oppose terrorism, even if in the name of God. The Pope said he wanted to work together with Islam on their shared values (IMRA, 11/7). They share few values. Islam is Catholicism's existential enemy. Their agreement is like the old Communists-non-Communist Popular Fronts. The Communists used to their acceptance and power to try to dominate the others. A recent ploy adopted by Muslim states, and not just by Islamists, is to pretend to oppose terrorism and not be our enemy, so they gain acceptance. Actually, they oppose terrorism only against themselves. They support other terrorism. They define terrorism such that Muslims claiming to be fighting against occupation or for national liberation can use the terrorists' banned methods. The Pope was scammed. SENSE & NONSENSE ABOUT OBAMA Nonsense: Some Israeli journalists suggested that Israel follow America's example, by electing an Arab as Prime Minister. The difference is that blacks do not want to exterminate or oppress the rest of the people, but Arabs do in Israel. Sense: The stock market has been going down for months. Right after the election, it went down a lot, for another two days. Some of that may be the investors' growing realization that Democrats often mess up the economy. [Obama wants to raise general taxes and taxes on dividends and capital gains. Stocks become less attractive.] Obama won largely because the public blamed Bush [and his successor] for the financial crisis. The people remain largely conservative, passing propositions against political correctness. US Jewry voted 4:1 for Obama. Conclusion: non-Orthodox Jews have lost their Jewish solidarity (11/7 from Prof. Steven Plaut, an economics professor). GAUGING EGYPT'S INTENT Although Egypt's economy has been expanding, so has its masses' misery. The government fears rioting as well as agitation by democrats and Islamists. Haaretz says that Egypt, which now has excellent pilots and absorbs new technology, and whose forces are a match for Israel' s, couldn't afford a war. Mubarak may go to war to divert attention from his failure (IMRA, 11/7). Notice that lip service aside, Israel has neither a quantitative nor a qualitative edge! "TWO STATES FOR TWO PEOPLES" That's how Israel's Foreign Min. Livni puts her goal of negotiations with the P.A.. The Palestinian Arabs already have a state, called Jordan. Then splitting the Territories off from Israel to make another Palestinian Arab state would be three states for two peoples. However, the Palestinian Arabs are not a separate people. They are of the Arab nation, same religion, culture, and history, with minor regional variations. The western Palestinian Arabs largely are of relatively recent immigrant families. The Arab nation has 21 countries or so. Then splitting the Territories off from Israel for form another Arab country means 23 states for two peoples. Where is the principle? The principle is to keep whittling Israel down into indefensibility. OPINIONS LAG BEHIND REALITY A friend spoke with an Israeli man. He told her not to worry about Iran, Israel will do what it has to do. She accepted his bravado. I think he imagines Israel still to be as it once was. Iran is no pushover. First, Israel would have to possess the will to act. Olmert and Livni lack that will. Second, Israeli forces would have to get there. They would have to fly through hostile territory or Iraq. Pres. Bush reportedly refuses to give Israel the secret codes by which the Israeli planes could signal non-belligerency to the US forces. Otherwise, US forces would fire at the "blips." Third, Israeli forces would have to be prepared and capable. The recent war in Lebanon demonstrated lack of preparedness and incapability, particularly by the Olmert-Livni regime. Israel committed too small a force, equipped it poorly, interfered with it unwisely, and quit before having accomplished enough, accepting a disastrous agreement that the Livni-Olmert team thinks great, even as Hizbullah now threatens Israel existentially. Would that I were wrong! WHAT LIBERALS DON'T SEE ABOUT THE USE OF MILITARY They think as if we are back fifty years: if an enemy doesn't invade us, we needn't fight the enemy. Al-Qaida did attack us, first abroad, then here. Liberals don't want to admit that al-Qaida has allies who are part of that war. Some are getting weapons of mass-destruction. Shall we wait for that attack? LIVNI DEFENDS RETREATS Israel's Foreign Min. Livni upheld her regime's retreats from Gaza and Lebanon. She praised her arrangement of withdrawal from the second Lebanon War as sparing Israel years of warfare with Hizbullah. She simply called the abandonment of Gaza "good" (IMRA, 11/8). No, she foisted on Israel years of existential threat from Hizbullah's and Hamas' tens of thousands of rockets. She ruined 10,000 Israelis, expelled from Gaza. If her regime attacked Lebanon in force, Israel would have won swiftly. Smashing Hizbullah would have regained deterrence against Syria. Periodically, Israel could re-enter to keep Hizbullah down, when attempts were made to revive it. RABIN MEMORIAL Leftist political leaders again used the annual Rabin memorial as a platform to denounce the Jewish nationalists and blame them collectively for the assassination of Rabin. Their accusations are a form of incitement to violence or trampling of civil rights that they accuse the Right of. They praised Rabin, but ignored his last speech, which opposed P.A. statehood and urged Israel to retain most of the Territories. Police not only expelled some protestors, but tore up their signs and beat them up (Arutz-7, 11/9). The hypocrites ignore his speech. Israeli "democracy" in action. POLLOCRACY Israelis take a lot of polls. Polls pack a punch, convincing voters to stay home, when one candidate is said to be far ahead. Politicians deceive people about many polls. They change the results, they lie about the date taken, or publish only favorable parts. Local politicians sometimes make up a poll and attribute it to a respected pollster (Arutz-7, 11/9). Polls steer weak-minded people. Unfortunate! ISRAEL DIDN'T PREPARE THIS BEFORE? Defense Min. Barak said that the Cabinet should consider the legality of large-scale return fire at rocket launchers in Gaza. He recommended having the Attorney-General give the Cabinet a legal opinion on this. After all this time, Min. Barak still hadn't done this? (IMRA, 11/9.) As Dr. Lerner has pointed out, Israel rarely prepares for anything, but a year ago, he had suggested getting a legal opinion. 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 To Go To Top

RABBI KAHANE: FOR TRUTH'S SAKE Posted by Herb and Miki Sunshine, November 20, 2008.

This is by Tzipora Liron and it appeared in Arutz-7 (www.IsraelNationalNews.com).

"I have done justice and righteousness — leave me not to those who oppress me." For a long time, I stare at the words in my little Tehillim (Psalms) book. Something about them touches me. Only recently I began to learn about the life and teachings of Rabbi Meir Kahane. It was at a lecture last Shavuot, about the sanctification and desecration of G-d's name. The lecturer quoted from a book by Rabbi Kahane. At that point, about half of the audience suddenly got up and left. This reaction fascinated me, so I stayed until the end and listened intently. Then, I scraped together all my courage and asked the lecturer to lend me the book. It was Listen World, Listen Jew. I've read some more of Rabbi Kahane's books since and warmly recommend them all, by the way. Actually, that was not my first contact with the rabbi's ideas. When I converted to Judaism overseas, one day our teacher suddenly drove us to a shooting range. There, he just said: "I will not let any one of you go to the conversion Beit Din unless you learn to shoot a gun first. You want to be Jewish, fine. A Jew has to know how to defend himself. And if you say you can't do this because you are afraid or a pacifist or whatever, I demand from you that you do it, for me and my family that was murdered by the cursed Nazis." I never forgot that lesson. Our teacher sometimes mentioned Rabbi Kahane's name, but, thanks to pressure from the synagogue's establishment, he never went into the details. Because of the establishment's reaction, I always thought that "Kahane" meant something unspeakably radical, a taboo topic beyond any range of normal discourse, something one best stayed far away from. I'm glad that now, after my Aliyah, I got a second chance to learn more about the life and teachings of a man who literally gave himself to his people. He upheld Jewish pride into the face of a world that, for 2,000 years, had shamelessly persecuted and murdered Jews. He taught disaffected, lost teenagers that "Jewish is beautiful". He fearlessly fought anti-Semitism and challenged anyone daring to harm Jews, from American neighborhood bullies to the Soviet Union and Arab terrorists. He went to jail again and again on behalf of his people; often enough jailed even by his own people. Could there be a more intensive way of living Ahavat Israel? And Ahavat HaShem. For years, I had been saying the Sh'ma Israel prayer day after day, but I never really understood what it means when it says, "...with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your resources. Let these words that I command you today be on your heart." It was only from Rabbi Kahane's teachings that I understood that this really means placing G-d's will above our own, to transform it into our own; that you can't keep anything for yourself because your life is not your property, but a deposit from G-d. Accepting Ol Malchut Shamayim ("the Yoke of Heaven") — I never before understood how beautiful this concept is. Rabbi Kahane lived it. He loved G-d and held up the Torah uncompromisingly. He acted not out of personal considerations, but in order to fulfill G-d's will and to restore the Jewish people to their task as G-d's chosen nation on Earth, destined to live in a society of Divine holiness in Eretz Israel. Last Sunday, on the 18th of Cheshvan, was Rabbi Kahane's 18th yahrzeit. I had the honor to attend the graveside ceremony held at Har HaMenuchot and the assembly in Jerusalem after that. At the assembly, Rabbi Yehuda Kroizer, dean of the Yeshiva of the Jewish Idea, encouraged the audience to spread knowledge about Rabbi Kahane's teachings, especially his major work Ohr HaRaayon — The Jewish Idea. He said that "like there is a Chabad house in every city, you should make your house a 'house of the Jewish idea' wherever you are... and learn, even with just one study partner." Well-known right wing activist Baruch Marzel, in his speech, called out to the audience: "If Rabbi Kahane was with us today, he surely wouldn't want us to waste an entire evening on a memorial ceremony. He would get up and say what needs to be done tomorrow morning." Marzel then did exactly this by reminding the audience of the urgent need to prevent the impending expulsion of the Jewish families living in the Shalom House in Hevron and announcing the planned march with Israeli flags through the Israeli-Arab village of Umm el-Fahm, which is scheduled to take place in about two weeks. Rabbi Kahane's teachings live on among the Jewish people and what he did has left a lasting impact beyond the close circle of his followers. I'm convinced that many around the country feel that he was right and admire him, even if they don't dare to admit it openly. They are afraid. Given the hate campaign by the media and some government officials against the right-wing and the settlers of Judea and Samaria, that's no wonder. A huge, precious and dedicated part of our own people, and among them especially the followers of Rabbi Kahane, are slandered, harassed and even, absurdly, depicted as a greater threat than Arab terrorism. All this in order to embrace the real deadly enemies, for the sake of unrealistic peace accords and the next "disengagement" under the watchful eyes of America and Europe. What if that's not how we want things to be? One aspect of countering this detrimental development is indeed education and outreach. Of course, it's not the only aspect, but it is important as a foundation. It is precisely the people standing outside, drenched in the "rain" of the left-wing media hate campaign who need to be reached. They need to know the alternative. Authentic Jewish values have to be brought back into the mainstream — and that's a task for all who care about Israel, not only the followers of Rabbi Kahane. It can succeed even by simple means. If a single, well-prepared lesson on a few clear Jewish concepts worked wonders on me, it can work on others, too. Perhaps I'm too optimistic, but something inside me doesn't want to give up and doesn't want to return to obediently swallowing the media propaganda stew, and to silently watching Israel undermining it's very existence. I look back at my Tehillim booklet, at the outcry of King David: "I have done justice and righteousness — leave me not to those who oppress me." Let the voice that dared to speak the truth not be silenced. Rabbi Meir David Kahane gave everything for the Jewish people; may G-d avenge his blood. Herb Sunshine is a lawyer, qualified to practice in U.S.A. and Israel. He and his wife Miki live in Jerusalem. Contact them by email at sunshine.h@012.net.il To Go To Top

BARACK AND DENNIS THE MENACE — ROSS REMARKS ON MIDDLE EAST COULD SIGNAL TROUBLE AHEAD FOR OBAMA Posted by Joel Himmelfarb, November 20, 2008.

During his masterfully executed presidential campaign, Barack Obama didn't stumble on too many issues. One exception was Middle East terrorism — specifically his position toward Iran and its allies Hamas and Hezbollah. After delivering a powerful speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in June, in which he denounced Tehran and its terrorist allies, Obama went out of his way to distance himself from anyone who suggested that putting pressure on Israel would help achieve Mideast piece. His skill in doing this helped Obama to win close to three-quarters of the American Jewish vote. Dennis Ross But some recent comments by one of his senior foreign-policy aides, former State Department Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, hint that many of these Jewish voters could eventually face buyer's remorse about voting for Obama. In a little-noticed interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz published October 28th, Ross suggests that the United States should support stepped-up diplomatic efforts to engage Tehran, Damascus and the shaky Palestinian Authority in an effort to achieve "peace." Taken together with some of Obama's controversial comments during the campaign, Ross's remarks suggest that Washington and Jerusalem could face a tumultuous four years — especially if Israeli voters elect peace-process skeptic Benjamin Netanyahu when they go to the polls in February. During a televised debate last year, Mr. Obama said he would engage in dialogue without preconditions with hostile regimes including those in Iran and Syria. The Illinois senator later depicted Hezbollah — a Lebanese terrorist group that has killed hundreds of Americans and receives upwards of $100 million in annual aid from Tehran — as an organization primarily interested in domestic "reform." "It's time to engage in diplomatic efforts to help build a new Lebanese consensus that focuses on electoral reform, an end to the current corrupt patronage system, and the development of the economy that provides for a fair distribution of services, opportunities and employment," Obama said. This was too much for columnist David Brooks, who has often written sympathetically about Obama's candidacy. The statement, Brooks wrote, had the "whiff" of appeasement. "Is Obama naïve enough to think that an extremist ideological organization like Hezbollah can be mollified with a less corrupt patronage system and some electoral reform?" Brooks asked. When Brooks telephoned the senator in May asking him to clarify his remarks, Obama allowed that Hezbollah was not a legitimate political party, and that the group's connections with Iran and Syria made it a "destabilizing organization." But Obama also stated that the United States needs a foreign policy that examines "the root causes of problems and dangers." The Illinois senator said Hamas and Hezbollah both have to be forced to understand that "they're going down a blind alley with violence that weakens their legitimate claims." Obama's comments had an almost surreal quality to them. Hamas and Hezbollah are sworn to Israel's destruction, and have been committed to this for decades. They are heavily subsidized by Iran, and routinely distribute literature recycling anti-Semitic canards like the notorious "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and describe Jews as relatives of apes and pigs. In this context, how are their "legitimate claims" about social and political matters today any different from Adolf Hitler's claims in the 1930s about the onerous nature of the Versailles Agreement after World War I? Historians of all political stripes have spent decades debating whether Versailles was too draconian and inadvertently aided the rise of Nazism. But it didn't change the reality that, whatever grievances Germans had, Nazism was a monstrosity that had to be defeated. The same is true today of Islamofascist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. During the presidential campaign, Obama was dogged by the fact that such people took a "glass half full" approach to his presidential candidacy. "We like Mr. Obama, and we hope he will win the elections," said Ahmed Yousef, a Hamas political adviser. In an April interview with WABC Radio in New York, Mr. Yousef added hopefully that Obama wants "to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community, but not with humiliation and arrogance." In his interview with Ha'aretz (published less than one week before Mr. Obama was elected president) Ross attacked the Bush Administration for failing to push forward with Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. "When you don't engage, you leave the way open for your adversaries to actually gain more. The Bush administration wanted to disengage for its first six years in office," Ross said. This policy "actually strengthened Hamas' hand, because Hamas' argument is [that] there is no possibility for peace. The least you want to do is show that there could be an alternative answer." Actually, what the Bush Administration did was to give Israel a much-needed respite from the disastrous "peace process" put together by Ross and the Clinton Administration during the 1990s, which Yasser Arafat imploded in the fall of 2000 by launching a terror war. During the early years of the Bush Administration, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon launched a military operation which destroyed much of the terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank that flourished in part due to the policies instituted by Ross. Sharon's decision to build the West Bank security fence during the respite period brought the number of suicide bombings in Israel down to almost zero. Ross wants to apply the same principles of "peace process fetishism" (Commentary magazine's description) to negotiating with Iran. He said that Obama wants to talk to Tehran as a means of getting others "to apply more pressure on the Iranians." This is simply absurd — if other countries decide to play hardball with Iran, it will be because they perceive that there will be economic and diplomatic benefits from doing so, not because of some childlike desire to copy the United States. Finally, Ross expresses hope that Israel and Syria will be able to achieve peace at the negotiating table (although he doesn't explain how this would be any different from the experience between 1993 and 2000, when the Ba'athist regime sabotaged every American and Israeli effort to reach a peace agreement.) Early indications are that the new administration's approach to the Middle East will be a mixture of feel-good speechifying and naïveté. Joel Himelfarb is an editorial writer for The Washington Times. This article appeared today in Family Security Matters (FSM) www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1817/pub_detail.asp To Go To Top

THE AWAKENING MONSTER Posted by Moshe Feiglin, November 20, 2008.

Translated from the Hebrew article in the Makor Rishon newspaper.

What did you think, dear Hebronites? That if you paid an outrageous price, photographed and filmed the transaction for the 'Peace House' and the Arab seller standing on his head and swearing by the tail of the horse of Muhammad that the building is his and he is selling of his own free will — that you could rest easy? Did you think that the law would be on your side? That the Supreme Court would answer Amen? What, beloved brothers, did you think? You simply do not understand that we are currently facing destruction. As far as Israel's decision makers are concerned, Hebron and all of Judea and Samaria no longer exist. Israel's 'leaders' are completely subservient to the legal/media/cultural/financial/security/academic elite that vigorously clutches the steering wheel of our Titanic. In the good old days of Gush Emunim, Zionism still existed. There were forces in the Zionist Left that supported settlement throughout Israel. Gush Emunim took full advantage of that breach and with a combination of determined settlement of the land and legal and bureaucratic toil — it dotted Yesha with Jewish settlements. But today we are on a completely different page. The elites have conquered the country and closed all the breaches. Gush Katif — established by the Labor party in the most legal of procedures — is dust. The elites are just waiting for their next opportunity. After Amona, Kadimah's popularity took a plunge and Olmert withdrew his Convergence plan and the continued struggle against the settlers. But it seems that the period of grace is drawing to an end. What is happening now at the Peace House is the awakening of the monster. So now what do we do? First, we must understand that the main objective of the government mechanism today is the destruction of all the settlements in Judea and Samaria. Our Sages teach that in times of shmad, destruction, we must not make the slightest retreat. It is a zero sum game and every retreat will be used to facilitate further destruction. Second — and much more important. There is no relevant political arena outside the Likud. The Likud is not just another party. It is the national battle field. The rightist parties that were and that will be are completely irrelevant. We saw solid proof of that last week, when former head of the National Religious Party Eitam knocked on the door of the Likud and was not accepted. The faith based public must connect to the large national camp and make its voice heard inside the Likud. The direction that the Likud takes is determined by its members. If just a fraction of the energies of the faith based public was redirected from struggling over every house to making its influence felt in the Likud — we could have been assured an impressive number of faith based Likud MKs and a much more Jewish-values oriented Israel. Now you will remind me that the Likud destroyed Yamit and that the Likud destroyed Gush Katif. That is completely true. But the responsibility for that is on the shoulders of those people who ran off to hide in their sector-based parties instead of joining up with the broad national camp and wielding their influence there. Just think of the Likud as the parliament of the entire national camp. Everybody is welcome to join and to vote. Instead, we prefer to stay outside and demonstrate. The monster that has awakened now in Hebron may wait until after the elections to rear its head again. It doesn't even care who wins. What to do now? Run to register for the Likud! Let's get Moshe Feiglin elected to the Knesset! Let's make Israel the Jewish state that we've always dreamed of! Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) is a group of people inside the Likud party who want to see Israel adopt a more Jewish character. Moshe Feiglin, its cofounder, has emphatically said he does not want a theocracy, but he does want a State based on Jewish values. The Manhigut Yehudit website address is http://www.manhigut.org. To learn more about Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) and to read their plan for Israel's future, visit www.jewishisrael.org. Or contact Shmuel Sackett, International Director (516) 330-4922 (cell) To Go To Top

PRESSURING ISRAEL TO SUSPEND NUCLEAR ACTIVITY WILL NOT "BUILD CONFIDENCE" Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, November 19, 2008.

In Shmuel Rosner's Jerusalem Post article below, he speaks of a new paper which urges President-elect Barack Obama to "get tough" on Israel's alleged nuclear weapons. Please read his article slowly and thoughtfully. But, before you do, allow me to give you some commentary. October 30 to November 1, 1991 Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir attended the Madrid International "Peace" Conference. He was urged not to go but, he ignored the warnings. He assumed he could handle everything. As it turned out, as predicted it was like a "Kangaroo Court". Shamir and the other Israelis were thrust into an ambush arranged by then Secretary of State James Baker III and Baker's 3 infamous Jew-boys (as they came to be known): Dennis Ross, Aaron David Miller and Daniel Kurtzer. These 3 were selected by Baker because they were ambitious, Leftist Jews and could be depended upon to take their marching orders from Baker and the ever pro-Arab U.S. State Department. They are now advising Obama on how best to deal with Israel, as they did before. While they denied playing any significant role at the Madrid Conference, it was reported by those present that they bounced from room to room, pressuring, making recommendations and otherwise guiding the tenor of those meetings. While Ross, Miller and Kurtzer were doing their lobbying, mostly biased toward the Muslim Arab countries' position, I had an uneasy thought. I sensed and wrote then that I thought the Baker team would urge some Arab Muslim country's representative to ask for a "Nuclear-Free Zone" in the Middle East. Sure enough, near the end of the Conference, like a well-oiled scheme, the Egyptian representative did ask for a "Nuclear-Free Zone", in effect, eliminating Israel's deterrence to enemies that far out-number her. Since it was well-known that Israel probably had a Nuclear Deterrence (and was the only country in the area to be so endowed) clearly, the objective of this proclamation was, as pre-planned, to eliminate Israel's deterrent capability. If Israel obeyed those "diktats" that would translate into Israel having to face Muslim Arab aggression with conventional weapons only and limited man-power compared to the huge population of the surrounding Arab Muslim countries. That was Baker and his team's objective. Without a Nuclear Deterrence, Israel could be invaded with forces superior in numbers and arms. Without a Nuclear Deterrence, Israel could be driven, if not into extinction (G-d forbid), certainly into submission and forced to accept any compromise or surrender on Muslim Arab terms. Remember the word: Islam means "Submission". I would presume that you, the reader, knows what that could mean to the Jewish nation of Israel. Israel would be forced into a dangerous compromise of territory, return of descendants from the 450,000 Arabs who left in 1948 — now dubiously claimed to number 3 to 5 million, loss of precious ancestral sites like the Temple Mount, the Cave of the Machpelah (our Patriarchs and Matriarchs), loss of scare fresh water resources under the Judean, Samarian mountains and the Golan Heights which Israel might be forced to surrender, loss of the defensive positions on those mountains and Heights, loss of homes, farms, factories, synagogues, schools — just like what happened in Gaza. Can't we learn from that bitter experience? Israel cannot afford to (or simply refuses to) re-settle the 10,000 Jewish men, women and children that her corrupt government "ethnically cleansed" from the 21 thriving communities in Gush Katif and the 4 in the Northern Shomron. How then could she possibly re-settle 400,000 more from their homes in Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Valley, the Golan Heights and those parts of Jerusalem that were occupied and desecrated by Jordan for 19 years from 1948 to 1967? Regardless, this is the plan driven by the Bush family, Condoleezza Rice, James Baker, and now to be carried forward by Obama and his advisory team of Arabists. It appears that Ross, Miller, Kurtzer who were later joined by Martin Indyk, Baker's Jew boys all are now advising Barack Obama. They have re-sold that old kettle of dead fish (a Nuclear Free Zone) to the Obama advisory team. Keep in mind that many of Obama's advisors are notorious anti-Semites from years past: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Malley, Gen. James Jones, Jimmy Carter and Robert Gates who have been deeply linked to James Baker for years. Then there is Condoleezza Rice, scurrying to input her personal and State Department hostility into the Obama camp to insure continuity. Hillary Clinton requires more analysis given (his and her) relationship to Yassir Arafat and having been given honorary status at every Islamic Conference. Israel has not spoken abut her Nuclear Deterrence but, everyone assumes it is there in volume. The Arab Muslims do not dare attack in complete confidence and assurance that they will survive an Israeli counterstrike. The only unknown is Iran which operates on several tracks. The worst of which is their joyous acceptance of being utterly destroyed by Israel in retaliation IF Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hits Israel with even one nuclear bomb or a "dirty" radioactive bomb. Why? Because, if they die in battle against the "infidel" (non-Muslim), they would all go to Allah's warrior heaven with all the benefits they believe they will each receive: 72 virgins, rivers of honey, 'et al', as fed by the martyr-myth in Islam's blood-cult. Israel can deal with Terrorists, providing American and European Arabists do not tie Israel's defensive capability (as they have) behind their backs. In order to overthrow Israel, the main objective would be to force Israel into scraping her Nuclear Deterrence. Then the numerous Muslim Arab armies could attack and ignore their losses to Israel's conventional arms, knowing that they had much greater depth in forces which would eventually wear down Israel's conventional man-power and equipment. Many forces are at work spreading the myth that, if the Palestinians were pacified with a State of their own, they would cease their terror attacks against Israel. Moreover, they would cancel their Charter to eliminate the Jews and the Jewish State. However, the myth continues that such nations as Syria and Iran would no longer use Terror globally. Adding to that myth, then the Arab League would also cancel their Koranic-based PLO Charter to eliminate the non-Muslim "infidel" State of Israel. While the concluding and cessation of Global Terror is a matter of fiction — to date, it serves oil-driven Arabists as an adequate excuse to disarm Israel, thus appeasing the Arabs.

"Pressuring Israel To Suspend Nuclear Activity Will Not 'Build Confidence'" by Shmuel Rosner Jerusalem Post November 17, 2008 A world free of nuclear weapons is a desirable thing. A Middle East in which no country will be touting nuclear weapons will also be a positive development, providing the countries involved also live generally peacefully and do not try to destroy one another. The Institute for Science and National Security in Washington — one that deals with such matters regularly — has a new paper that Israeli media was quoting this week with an enthusiasm reserved for two things only: nuclear doomsday scenarios and major developments in reality-TV shows (it is even calling the paper a "study", a sure way of making a big deal out of not much). The paper, one must admit, does include a controversial recommendation: The Obama administration should make a key priority of persuading Israel to join the negotiations of a universal, verified treaty that bans the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear explosives, commonly called the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT). As an interim step, the United States should press Israel to suspend any production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. Toward this goal, the United States should change its relatively new policy of seeking a cutoff treaty that does not include verification. I expect such recommendations to become more frequent in the coming months, and so do some Israeli officials familiar with such matters. This will have two reasons: 1. some members of the Obama camp will be receptive to such ideas. 2. this is also a sign that the international community found no way of stopping Iran, and is now looking for new solutions to the problem of a nuclearized Middle East. In fact, the authors of this new paper do understand that the problem starts with Iran: Because of growing insecurity in the Middle East resulting from Iran's nuclear progress in defiance of United Nations Security Council demands, other countries will likely start to consider their own options, perhaps including the acquisition of nuclear weapons. So — do they go to the source and take care of Iran (thus, maybe avoiding the resulting nuclear race)? Not really. They have no solution for Iran. David Albright, the principal author of this paper, does not believe in the military option, and also doesn't have any other brilliant ideas — other than "robust diplomacy" which really means nothing. Don't blame him for that — Albright, a real expert on nuclear issues no doubt, isn't the only one who didn't yet find a way out of the Iran crisis. And he will not be the only one to find the solution for Iran in Dimona. After all, pressuring Israel will presumably be much easier for the US than pressuring Iran. But here's the problem: Where Albright and Andrea Scheel see a plan that "would establish international confidence in the peaceful nature of Middle Eastern nuclear programs", Israel will see a plan concocted by people who failed to deal with a neighborhood bully and turned their attention to other places as to avoid a necessary confrontation. This is not establishing "confidence in the peaceful nature..." — but rather establishing disbelief in the ability of the international community to deal with aggressors. In fact, applying the pressure that the authors seem to want will achieve the exact opposite of their intended outcome — unless a miraculous way will be found with which Iranian plans will be tamed: it will make Israel even more suspicious, and much less prone to give up on whatever capabilities it might have to defend itself. And rightly so. 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 gwinston@gwinstonglobal.org To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: BEIT HASHALOM — THE HOUSE OF PEACES Posted by Arlene Kushner, November 19, 2008.

Beit HaShalom, or Peace House, is a four-story building in Hevron — along the main road called Worshippers' Way that runs from Kiryat Arba to the Ma'arat Hamachpelah (Tomb of the Patriarchs) — that was purchased by Jews in 2005. Since March 2007, twenty families have lived in this house, which is now the center of a major dispute. There are serious and painful implications to what is taking place. In spite of clear legal documentation that the building had been purchased from a Palestinian by the Jewish community via a mediator, the original owner is denying that he ever sold the house. (It must be noted that it is a serious, potentially capital offense in the PA for an Arab to sell land to a Jew — which fact provides context to his denials.) In the course of proceedings, the Jewish community of Hevron submitted a tape recording, made without coercion, in which the previous owner acknowledges having sold his property. The courts declined to listen to this recording. Ultimately the issue made its way to the High Court, which on Sunday ruled that civil courts must make the final decision, but that in the meantime, the residents of the house had three days in which to vacate. Today was that deadline. This is a more detailed description of these events by Benny Katzover, who heads the Samaria Settlers' Committee: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3625503,00.html "Where is our Zionist vision? by Benny Katzover Dispute over Hebron home a new nadir in our moral deterioration The salvation of land and homes was for many years an important value and target within the Zionist enterprise. However, at this time we see moral deterioration on all fronts and it appears that we reached a new, grim phase — not only do we lack initiative for realizing the Zionist enterprise, we utilize all our vigor and talent to boost our enemies. The climax of this is happening, ironically enough, on the week where we read in the Torah about the first Jewish asset in the land of Israel at the hands of the first Jew, Abraham, who acquired the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron — located so close to the house in question. First, the facts: The House of Peace was acquired for more than one million shekels, by payments transferred through a mediator to the home's owner, Faiz Rajbi. The payments were undertaken from March 2004 to March 2005. The agreement clearly stated that ownership of the house is transferred to the purchasers at the time of sale. These facts were also confirmed by the Israel Police's labs. There is a report ruling that the receipts presented by the Jewish purchasers for the payments they made are all authentic and are not suspected to be forgeries. The sale agreement itself is also not suspected to be forged in the view of the Israel Police. In the phase between the purchase and its realization, the Jewish settlers locked the home and it stood empty for a month and a half. As the house is located at a strategic site, near Kiryat Arba, and dominates the road from it to the Cave of the Patriarchs where tens of thousands of visitors pass yearly, the IDF entered the empty building and set up a dominating position on its roof. After about two years, as part of the preparations for Jewish entry into the building, in light of the need to renovate it, more money was handed over to Faiz Rajbi through the mediator so that he renovate the home and make it fit for residence. The renovation work was carried out, and Jews moved into the home in March 2007. Different versions These facts are undisputed. In an audiotape, Rajbi recounts the fact that he renovated the building on behalf of the mediator. However, both the Prosecutor's Office and the courts refused to listen to this tape for some reason. This enabled the Prosecutor's Office to continue arguing against the move of residents into the house. Therefore, both the Prosecutor's Office and the High Court of Justice endorsed Mr. Rajbi's claim that he never sold the house; however, this claim was disproven by the police probe. After he heard the audiotape, Rajbi changed his version of the story: He said he sold the house but annulled the sale back in 2004. This version is written in all documents submitted to the various courts. However, this version too was disproved by the police labs, which ruled that the receipts issued by him up until March 2005 are authentic. How can the State Prosecutor's Office, which is supposed to be representing the Jewish state, back Mr. Rajbi when there is an audiotape where he tells his friend how he sold the house, received full payment, and renovated it in line with the mediator's request — he also tells his friend about being harassed by the Palestinian Authority. We reached a situation whereby the High Court of Justice, the Prosecutor's Office, and groups like Peace Now and its ilk are openly fighting in order to uproot not only truth and justice, but also the first root that grants us the right for our country. Where can we find a supreme court that would condemn the High Court for showing contempt to the law and to the Israeli nation? And what great foresight did the smartest man of all, King Solomon, have when he ruled that "where there is no vision, the people perish"? ~~~~~~~~~~ The issue here is one of essential justice — as the house was legally purchased and no law prevents such a purchase. It is also about the right of Jews to own property in the land of Israel. The decisions being made here are clearly political: As Jewish Community of Hevron spokesman Noam Arnon observed, if this were not a Jewish home in Hevron, this would not be happening. That is, if the Arab ownership of a home were challenged, or if the dispute were taking place within Green Line Israel, there would not be a rush to evict residents before the dispute was resolved. In fact, from prior reading I have the distinct impression that there is solid precedent for allowing residents to remain (if they have been resident for some months) until resolution. What is more, the Court named the State, at its request, as the temporary custodian of the property, so the State could decline to force eviction. What we are seeing here is a government and in particular a defense minister, prior to an election, making decisions that will impress left wing voters, who are being courted in an electoral battle against the more right wing Likud. It is, again, the demonization of the "settler." The rush to appease the Arab demand. Arabs would rather see all Jews gone from Hevron, which happens to be the second holiest city in Judaism, and a city to which Jews have rights by law and agreement with the PA. What we are seeing is a readiness to trample those rights. In my book, those Jews who are residents in Hevron are heroes, doing the work for all of Israel. A great deal more is at stake than the rights of the 20 families — as significant as these rights are. This is part of a pattern that diminishes Jewish rights to the land and accedes in every instance to Arab demands. As the move to pull back is made, our right to be here at all is reduced. If Jews cannot live in the second holiest of our cities, then where? ~~~~~~~~~~ What we may face, again, is the absolute obscenity of Jews evacuating Jews from their homes, as the government moves to act by sending in the IDF to forcibly evict the residents. Those residents will not go willingly. And they will be backed by thousands who believe in the right of the residents to stay where they are. A meeting was held in preparation for what is expected to follow. Those participating in resisting the eviction, when it comes, are being called upon not to be violent. They will, however, defend themselves. Five new families — including MK Nissim Ze'ev (Shas) — have moved into the building in a display of solidarity. And other MKs, prominent among them Aryeh Eldad and Uri Ariel (NU-NRP), have spoken out on behalf of the residents. MK Otniel Shneller (Kadima) has stated that he "has no doubt that the Peace House was bought according to the law and that it is important for the security" of Hevron. [Important because it provides a Jewish presence on the road that worshippers utilize.] ~~~~~~~~~~ And now — at the last minute, actually — the IDF has announced a delay in its move to evacuate the building. Clearly the fear of violence was a major factor in reaching this decision. Barak will holding a meeting tomorrow to review plans for the evacuation. The Post is reporting that if the evacuation is carried out, it will be at night, some weeks from now, without prior notice so that activists will not have time to regroup. They shouldn't count on this however, as I expect great vigilance in this matter. ~~~~~~~~~~ It is a great irony that our Torah reading for this Shabbat includes the story of the purchase by our father Abraham of the Cave of the Machpelah for the burial of his wife, Sarah. The first property in the land of Israel purchased with scrupulous care by the first Jew. ~~~~~~~~~~ To voice protest about the anticipated evacuation of Beit HaShalom: Ministry of Defense Ehud Barak Phone: 03-569-2010 — outside Israel 972-3- 569-2010 Faxes: 03-696-2757/691-6940/691-7915 — outside of Israel 972 — 3 and then the selected number. Email: sar@mod.gov.il Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel Livni Faxes: 02-530-3367/530-3704 — outside of Israel 972-2 and then the chosen number Email: sar@mfa.gov.il Fax is the most effective means of communicating. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

TO HOWARD FRIEDMAN/DAVID VICTOR/HOWARD KOHR: WHEN WILL AIPAC CONFRONT OBAMA? Posted by Buddy Macy, November 19, 2008.

Mr. Diament, I find it more than telling that you have responded to my email to AIPAC, while you have ignored my four previous URGENT emails to you and the OU! When are you going to begin acting in the best interest of our vulnerable fellow Jews in Israel — specifically, why have you not publicly criticized the Israeli Government for its appalling, amoral behavior in ordering the Federman/Tor attack and home destruction, for its threats to the residents of Bet Hashalom and other legally-purchased properties, and for its use and threats of further employment of administrative detention and other cruel, illegal actions against Israeli citizens throughout Judea & Samaria? In regard to your attempts to refute and discredit my AIPAC email, I ask you: If the Times of London is such an unreliable media source, why then did "the Obama campaign distance[d] itself from [Robert] Malley in May after the Times of London reported that he was meeting regularly with Hamas terror leaders (from Caroline Glick's Jerusalem Post column (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid= 1226404736073&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)? And, how were you able to definitively refute the information contained in the current Times of London piece, when the article you have cited, itself, explains, "Among those who have reportedly lobbied the incoming president in favor of the [2002 Arab peace] plan are Lee Hamilton, the former co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group; Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser during the Carter administration; and Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush?" Mr. Diament, I urge you to focus on the inaction and silence of your organization, rather than to make vain attempts at defending another. Most sincerely, Buddy Macy 973-785-0057 On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 9:19 AM, Nathan Diament wrote: Please see: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/pollak/43211 And: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1037578.html For more, see: http://www.ou.org/public_affairs/weblog_single/46408 Buddy Macy wrote: date: Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 2:13 AM Howard Friedman/David Victor/Howard Kohr: When Will AIPAC Confront Obama? Messrs. Friedman, Victor and Kohr, On June 4, 2008, Barack Obama said to you and a huge AIPAC audience: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." Now that it is apparent that the President-Elect has broken his promise, and not just "clarified" his position, when are you going to confront him about his grievous breach of trust, and what will you say to him? You owe it to all of our fellow Jews in America, including the 78% of the Jewish voters who cast their ballot for Mr. Obama, and all of the Jews in Israel, to demand that he keep his original promise. Most sincerely, Buddy Macy 973-785-0057 Report: Obama backs Saudi plan to force Israel to 1949 borders, divide Jerusalem (http://israelinsider.ning.com/profiles/blogs/report-obama-backs-saudi-plan Israel Insider http://israelinsider.ning.com/xn/detail/u_ReuvenKoret November 16, 2008 at 6:30pm Despite all his election promises and assurances to Jewish groups and Israelis, Barack Obama plans to throw his weight behind the Saudi royal family's 2002 plan to roll back Israel to at least its 1949 borders, the Times of London reported (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ middle_east/article5162537.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093) Sunday, citing sources close to America's president-elect. While the Saudi plan calls for recognition of Israel by Arab states, such promises have historically proven of scant value relative to the "hard currency" of territorial retreats. Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party, and President Shimon Peres, have said that the Saudi plan could be a starting point for discussions but have stopped far short of accepting it. Contrary to Obama's promises at the last AIPAC conference in support of an "undivided Jerusalem" — a position he retreated from days later — the Saudi plan divides Jerusalem, hands over the Old City, Temple Mount and the adjacent Western Wall to the Arabs, and calls on Israel to take responsibility for the "Palestinian refugee problem." It requires Israel to restore the strategic Golan Heights to Syria and allow the Palestinians to establish their capital in east Jerusalem. It would dismantle all Jewish settlements and even Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem, dislocating nearly a half-million Israelis, and leaving the state behind what diplomatic dove Abba Eban described as "Auschwitz borders." On a visit to the Middle East last July, the president-elect said privately it would be "crazy" for Israel to refuse a deal that could "give them peace with the Muslim world", according to a senior Obama adviser. Apparently there are many crazy Israeli, since the Saudi plan is unacceptable to the vast majority of Israelis, including Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud, the frontrunner to be prime minister in the next round of elections, slated for February 2009. The Arab peace plan received a boost last week when President Shimon Peres, a Nobel peace laureate and leading Israeli dove, commended the initiative at a Saudi-sponsored United Nations conference in New York, stepping far beyond the ceremonial role that the Presidential role typically accords. He was loudly applauded for sycophantically telling King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who was behind the original initiative: "I wish that your voice will become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people." There are unconfirmed reports that the conference had to be temporarily suspended as Peres sought with difficulty to extract his proboscis from the rectum of the plenum. A bipartisan group of senior foreign policy advisers have urged Obama to give the Arab plan top priority immediately after his election victory as the basis for an imposed solution on Israel. The advisers — enemies of Israel all — included Lee Hamilton, the former co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Democrat former national security adviser. Brent Scowcroft, a Republican former national security adviser and Israel bashed, piled on as well, suggesting that an early start to the Palestinian peace process was "a way to psychologically change the mood of the region". According to a Washington source, Obama told West Bank constable Mahmoud Abbas: "The Israelis would be crazy not to accept this initiative. It would give them peace with the Muslim world from Indonesia to Morocco." Dan Kurtzer, a former Ambassador to Israel, submitted a paper to Obama on the question before this month's presidential elections arguing that trying to reach bilateral peace agreements between Israel and individual countries in the Middle East was a recipe for failure as the record of Bill Clinton and George W Bush showed. In contrast, the broader Arab plan "had a lot of appeal". A leading Democratic expert on the Middle East said: "There's not a lot of meat on the bones yet, but it offers recognition of Israel across the Arab world." Contact Buddy Macy by email at vegibud@gmail.com To Go To Top

COST OF JIHAD; WHICH IS THE REAL EU?; SHOULD HAVE NIPPED ATTACKS ON IDF IN THE BUD Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 19, 2008.

SOMALIA FALLING Somalia's two main cities are under siege. The rest of the country is under unified Islamist control and oppression (IMRA, 11/17). That means order. Violence against the citizenry now comes only from the Islamists. Pres. Bush had helped free the country from the Islamists, before. He got no credit for it. Nobody is watching, now, as the Islamists get back in. The consequences of our side's defeat there have not been analyzed. What happened there? These backward countries, such as Somalia and Afghanistan, that really are not countries, cannot get past corrupt warlordism to unify and ward off the Islamists. The Islamists know how to maintain central control. COST OF JIHAD Jihad in the Mindaneo section of Philippines has displaced 600,000 people (IMRA, 11/17). I think that is a reflection on the religion of Islam, which made war on the Christians. WHEN ISRAEL WILL INVADE GAZA The government stated that it would invade Gaza when "conditions are ripe." Dr. Aaron Lerner asks if that means when many Israelis are killed from Gaza (IMRA, 11/17). The media fails to ask the point of waiting while the enemy builds forces. Giving such a vague prescription for invasion, such as "ripe," is a way of blustering without letting oneself be held accountable. It's a shameful government, so pathetic that it doesn't know it should be ashamed of itself. THE ENEMY WITHIN A teacher's aide, an Israeli Arab, was about to enter university. Terrorists asked her to help kidnap a Jew and bring a suicide bomber into Israel and lead her to a crowded place. She agreed to do it, but was arrested, instead (IMRA, 11/17). Isn't it nice that Israel lets Arabs live in their country, whereas in neighboring areas, the Arabs don't let Jews live amongst them! Difference is, Jews don't commit terrorism but Israeli Arabs increasingly do. TURKEY TURNED Turks are almost unanimously anti-American. They insult their secular foundation. They are in NATO but unreliable (Op. Cite.). Bar them from EU! ISRAELI DISCRETION Likud Party representatives met with representatives of both US campaigns. The meeting was for getting acquainted and exploratory. Likud would not endorse either candidate, for that would be interfering in the US election (IMRA, 11/3). It also would make an enemy of the non-endorsed candidate, who might win and make more trouble for Israel. It also would annoy Americans. Antisemites would refer to such an endorsement as evidence that Israel tries to run the US. Certain Islamist terrorist leaders felt no compunction about endorsing Obama. Americans did not seem to notice and ask why they prefer Obama. In some past Israeli elections, the US clearly hinted that it preferred Labor candidates. Those candidates won. Observers believed that at least one time, the tacit US endorsement swayed many Israeli voters to go along. They lacked the sense to investigate the US motive. I think that if they did, they would have repudiated the endorsed candidate's party. WHICH IS THE REAL EU? Having declared Hamas a terrorist organization, the EU imposed a boycott of Gaza. Nevertheless, an EU delegation visited Gaza and invited Gaza legislators to visit the EU. An EU statement attempted to justify the visit by asserting that the legislators were elected democratically. Some delegates criticized Israel for its own, partial blockade of Gaza (Arutz-7, 11/4). So the EU may boycott Hamas, but Israel may not? That is a double standard. The EU violates its own boycott. Its attempted justification for doing so is the method of election of Hamas legislators. What is the principle here, that the alleged method of election determines whether the victorious candidates are within the pale of civilization? What about their throwing rivals out of the windows, afterwards, as Hamas did? Either the EU worships the false god of democracy, or this odd respect for supposedly democratically elected candidates in a fascist dictatorship is a pretext for business as usual and for harming Israel as usual. HAMAS NEEDS MORE TRUCE TIME The IDF raided Gaza to destroy a tunnel between Gaza and Israel. The tunnel was built for sneaking gunmen into Israel, where they would kidnap Israeli soldiers for [extortionate] ransom. It had just been completed (IMRA, 11/5). [Now Hamas needs more time for the truce, to replace that tunnel. Israel is sure to oblige.] Did we say truce? Hamas fired dozens of rockets and soe mortar shells at Israel, on 11/5. Hamas said the rockets were in retaliation for that raid. The Israeli Air Force identified a rocket launcher and fired at it, killing a member of Islamic Jihad, who was with it (IMRA, 11/5). Hamas expects Israel to let it kidnap Israeli soldiers, else it retaliates. Fair? ISRAELI STRATEGIC THINKING? An Israeli arms expert said he is not worried by Egypt's upgrading its already formidable military, and whose navy far outclasses Israel' s, and whose training is geared towards invading Israel. After all, he said, "Before the current era, and before the world wars, European powers held drills with their neighbors in mind." Yes, and then Germany invaded, he failed to say (IMRA, 11/4). Israel has not even protested against the years and decades of US taxpayer funds building Egypt's military up to this level. Now they pretend their strong enemies present no danger. LIVNI MISSTATES THE REFERENDUM TOPIC The Israeli election is shaping up as a referendum on Jerusalem and the Golan. Foreign Min. Livni refuses to state her party's position. Considering her appeasement-mindedness and reticence on the subject, one may suppose her party would cede those areas. She, however, tries to miscast the election as a referendum on which party can best negotiate Israeli withdrawal from part of Jerusalem and all of the Golan. The actual referendum is on whether Israel should withdraw from those areas. Israelis generally do not want to withdraw. They do not believe that a resulting pact, called a peace agreement, would mean peace, nor that the Jewish people should forfeit those inherently Jewish areas. They do not believe that any assurances given about maintaining Israeli security would be honored (IMRA, 11/5). Assurances usually are lies or are temporary. The US has backed off assurances to Israel when called upon to honor them. ELECTION WITH VOTERS IN THE DARK [No, this time I'm not referring to the US election but to the Israeli election. Sec. Rice told reporters that until negotiators agree on all issues, there is no deal between Israel and the P.A., even though they may have agreed on some of the issues. She said that she and the negotiating parties will keep those tentative, partial agreements, until then. This means that although Israelis call the election a referendum on the negotiations, the people won't know what concessions they are voting for. Therefore, the election won't be democratic enough for them to knowingly change what the government proposes. At one point she mentioned that the P.A. needs good security forces to support a democratic government. She did not cite any steps towards P.A. democracy, which at present is not democratic. Rice repeatedly referred to the goal of setting up an Arab state (IMRA, 11/6). She did not refer to any goal of making peace nor of enhancing Israeli security. Of course, carving a second Palestinian Arab state out of the Jewish homeland would degrade Israeli security. This is especially true when that second Palestinian Arab state is run by terrorists, whether the ones in Gaza or the ones in Judea-Samaria. Won't any major journalist ask how this negotiating process is bringing peace and what steps is the P.A. taking to democratize? Someone might answer that peace would emerge from satisfying the Arab drive. But it won't satisfy the Muslim drive. The Muslims, including Abbas, state plainly that they don't consider Israel, as a Jewish state, legitimate. P.A. propaganda arouses its people to want to conquer Israel. Effective security forces that the US supposedly is helping the P.A. develop would be a tool for that conquest. It is clear that the US is building the P.A., the Army of Lebanon, and Egypt up to the task of destroying Israel. Do you think that the anti-Zionist State Dept. has not figured this out? BEST JOKE OF THE ELECTION? Perhaps the best joke about that election was in a letter to the Times. Recalling McCain's and Guiliani's scorn about "community organizer Obama," the writer said now they know what an organizer can do. OBAMA'S FIRST APPOINTMENT President-Elect Obama appointed as his Chief-of-Staff a Representative who raised the most money for the campaign. The appointee is said to be conversant with economic issues, which the Administration considers paramount. He had worked for Pres. Clinton. He was the one who pushed PM Rabin to shake hands with Arafat. Thousands of Israeli casualties later, that same aide is said to be eager to help conclude another such agreement (IMRA, 11/6). What could be more stupid, than to wish for another agreement that gets thousands more Israelis killed? This time Israel has no margin of safety. The US would lose that ally. Whether the motive be vicious anti-Zionism or naivete about jihad, forfeiting a US ally to a US enemy, as the P.A. is, this is stupid. Will the energetic Obama is not going to become Israel's Disbander-In-Chief? IS THIS THE ACT OF A DEMOCRACY? Every year, some Israelis commemorate the assassination of PM Rabin, while others meet to publicize the evidence that it was an inside conspiracy. This, 13th year, police pressured the landlord of the meeting hall to cancel the lease for the protest meeting. Organizers found an outdoor area in which to hold their meeting, but police disrupted their visual presentation. Why did police do that? MK Eldad now wonders whether there might be something to the conspiracy theory (Arutz-7, 11/7). Free speech? I read all the evidence and it conclusive. There should be a retrial, but justice system is under ideologically leftist control. That system framed a patsy. Oh, says Prof. Plaut, the accused pleads guilty. Police brutality and police charges against the accused's family could account for that, besides what is said to be his drugged appearance. IDF SHOULD HAVE NIPPED ATTACKS ON IT IN THE BUD "In Judea and Samaria for many years. Leftist groups have regularly participated in organized violence against security forces and Jews in hotspots like Na'alin and Bil'in, have been conducting "tours" of Hebron that disturb the Jewish community there and stir up resistance to its very existence, and have taken part in innumerable acts of violence against Jews and their property." The IDF asked Israel's security agency for intelligence needed for a restraining order against the activists. Hitherto, it moved only against right-wingers (Arutz-7, 11/7). 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 To Go To Top

THE OBAMA ISSUE Posted by Seth J. Frantzman, November 19, 2008.

1) Liberalism: "Americans discriminate against Obama because he is black, so let's vote for him because he is black." November 2nd, 2008 Seth J. Frantzman Liberalism: "Americans discriminate against Obama because he is black, so let's vote for him because he is black." One of the odd things to come out of the 2008 election is the claim that people wouldn't vote for Obama because he was black and thus the odd claim that he needed to be supported because he was black. As if to tell us, 'thank god, Jesus has come to cleanse the temple', our media is telling us that this is the most important U.S election of our lifetime; "this 2008 election is a milestone that may put a black man in the White House." And yet, oddly, at the same time we are being served odd tripe alongside this dish. The media tells us that the election shouldn't be about race. Then it tells us that Obama would be leading by more points if it weren't for the racism of Americans. Senators Murtha and Biden both tell us that 'Americans are having a hard time voting for a black man.' And now we learn that in fact it is our 'subconscious' racism that is keeping Obama down. This is how the race scam works in the United States. We are presented with a candidate. We are told he is black. Then we are told that if we vote against him we are racist and even if there is no evidence for that racism we are told that we are 'subconsciously racist' and then when that doesn't work we are told that we can participate in a 'milestone' event by putting a 'black man' in the white house. This rubric of racism, whereby we are first told we are racist, then convinced that we are 'subconsciously' racist and then told to like something merely because of its racist, thus making us racist even if we weren't in the first place, is part of the great lie that is 'lets talk about race.' That was the title of Nicholas Kristof's piece in the New York Times on October 30th, 2008. Kristof tells us that a recent study by Harvard's Project Implicit showed that "the mind balked at accepting a black candidate as fully American...[which shows] the gulf between out conscious ideals of equality and our unconscious proclivity to discriminate...[We] associate the idea of 'American' with white skin." One might accept that there is some truth to some of this. But Kristof takes the reader one stop further, exhorting us about how the "2008 election is a milestone that may put a black man in the white house." Kristof is subconsciously telling us something as well. He is telling us that we are all secret racists and to make up for our racism we must vote for Obama, not because Obama is a great candidate, but because he is a "black man" and we need to make this year a "milestone." Where is all the evidence for this 'secret' racism and this unconscious racism that is keeping Obama's poll numbers down and keeping people from voting for him, because as Joe Biden reminds us "a difficult time just culturally making the change, making the move for the first African American president in the history of the United States of America." Are we kidding ourselves? What poll numbers and media attention and support does Obama need in order for us to prove that we are not all 'unconscious' racists? Does he need 90% of the vote? Is it enough that only 70% of NBC media coverage of him is positive or does it have to 95%? It seems the constant claim that 'unconscious' racism is keeping Obama down and that we are having "trouble" electing a black candidate is designed to make us non-racists feel bad about ourselves and vote for Obama merely because of his race in order to prove that we are not racist. This is a brilliant tactic on the part of those, like Biden, Murtha and Kristof, who peddle it. But it is also a very low political tactic and it is, ironically, racist. There is nothing more racist than selecting a candidate because of his race. There is nothing that does less justice to the cause of equality and to African-Americans than voting for a man because of the color of his skin rather than the content of his character. 2) How much hate does the Obama victory engender? Seth J. Frantzman November 10th, 2008 How much hate does the Obama victory engender?: One of the outcomes of the election of Obama was an avalanche of hate directed against those who refused to be taken in by the idea that "if you don't vote for him you are racist and not progressive." So now those seen as 'behind the times' are being told they are the embodiment of evil, with all sorts of insults and slander being heaped upon them. One of the odd dividends of the Obama victory has been the hate being dished out against those, like myself, who did not vote for this new Jesus. It began with the pre-election idiocy dished out by Nicholas Kristoff in the Times, accusing everyone who didn't vote for the new Kennedy of being 'secret' racists. Then after the election Paul Krugman of the Times proclaimed that the "Republican Rump" had become the "party of intolerance." Then Orna Coussins, evidently another extremist oped writer, in Haaretz, declared "the era of the conservative white male is over." She claimed that "one could argue of course that the long, continuous struggle against him has not been completed yet... He has not disappeared. He still makes his voice heard — a somewhat strident voice — in newspapers, on the op-ed pages.. When he can, he still tries to deride women, or blacks, or his critics, regardless of religion, color and gender... For hundreds of years he ruled unthreatened. He had slaves — people without freedom, to fulfill his needs, manufacture his products and carry out his menial work. For hundreds of years he felt comfortable. He kept women — denied of their freedom — to take care of his sexual and feeding needs, and to raise his offspring." Hey, sister, I'm still here and the 'death' of the old white conservative male is a myth, behind the conservatives whites of the U.S are conservative blacks and Hispanics and Indians and Asians. And in the end conservative Islam, which is run by white Arabs, will crush liberalism in a way conservatives never dreamed of, to an extent and in a manner that will make leftists like Coussins scream for mercy and wish the old style 'conservative' like Goldwater would return. The leftist who plunges a dagger into our erstwhile democratic conservatism will find it has the same affect as those Communists who plunged the dagger into Hindenberg's conservative Wiemer administration, heralding the era of Nazism. But the odd gloating and baseness never ends. Paul Krugman writes again on November 9th that "if you're an American and the election of the first African-American president didn't stir you, if it didn't leave you teary eyed...there's something wrong with you." Teary eyed? Is that what we are supposed to be? Just over some skin color? Is that all we are to be measured by? That's the tragedy of liberalism, in its obsession with multi-culturaism, it cannot see beyond race and judges solely on this fact, which is disturbing. Did they get teary eyed when Condi rice was our National Security Advisor or Coin Powel was our Secretary of State or when, in 1866, the first black American, a genuine former slave, was elected to the Senate. I guess we weren't tear eyed back then when Senator Bruce took his oath. But that may have been because we judged better back then. And yes, we were Republicans back then. And yes, some of us were white, male and conservative. Leftists condemn us at their peril. They support candidates based on the color of skin and weep for no reason. It is precisely because liberals support Obama based on skin color that they have decided those who didn't support him were 'racists'. How funny to see how racism actually works. 3) Cheering for nothing: lies about Obama at home and abroad November 6th, 2008 Seth J. Frantzman Cheering for nothing: lies about Obama at home and abroad: One cartoon that appeared after the Obama victory showed a black man hugging a white man in the U.S and foreigner cheering that "Yes they can." This implies that America is some sort of 'behind the times' racist place that has finally caught up with the world. Its odd, because we don't see Christians running Muslim countries or Muslims being elected to run European countries. Who are they to cheer for us Americans? The world should examine its own soul and its own failings for it is more of a racist cesspool than America. Its time for the world to stop living vicariously through the U.S, blaming it for its problems and then celebrating for it as if the world is America. It is not. Every newspaper and media outlet is on about it: "nation elects first black president." It is as if one should be proud just to have a change of skin color in the white house (something long predicted in Hollywood movies from Dave Chapelle's comedy to 24 to Morgan Freeman as President in Deep Impact. When asked how he felt playing the first black president he said "I'm not playing the first black president, I'm playing a president who happens to be black." Thank you Mr. Freeman.), as if that were all it is, as if a man or woman is nothing but his skin color. Truly this is the most base act of man, the most base instinct and savage judgment, the lie that permeates all of our liberal presumptions about people. It is the lie of race. It is the greatest lie, made even more of a lie in the case of Obama, because he is not connected, culturally, ethnically or historically, to the heritage and history of Black Americans. But that is all the more great for him, for we can say that his path is more interesting. But it is not the same path that Mr. Jesse Jackson or David Dinkins represented. And yet we are deceived because we see that skin color and pat ourselves on the back and say "I am good today, we are good today, we overcame racial divides and we did it, we expelled the sins of our past, we have elected a black man." You see it in the smiles and adoration of the public, the semi-orgasmic displays of raunchy cheering and excitable youth, the people that are happy because they feel they have done something good, that by voting they took part in a 'civil rights struggle'. That is good for them perhaps. It is good for Americans, especially leftists, to feel good about themselves. Even rightists it seems are overtaken, Brit Hume and the rest of the hard men and women of Fox News were all over emotion. "We did it." I am happy for Mr. Obama. His energy is a positive thing. His blank slate, the fact that we know nothing about his policies, thoughts or beliefs, may bode ill or good. After all, untested young men have achieved great things, lest we forget Henry V or Alexander the Great. Obama is, of course, first an American and he embodies many things about America, the least of which is his skin color and the phony obsession with it. At his worst we must say of him, as John Gotti said of Paul 'Big Pauly' Castellano; "we got the boss we got." But the greatest lie concerning Mr. Obama is not the lie being told at home, it is the lie being told abroad. Zvi Barel wrote in Haaretz on November 4th in an article entitled 'Arab Commentators want to be able to admire America again' about how the Arabs feel about Obama. Hamad al Majid wrote in Asharq al-Awsat in London that the election of Obama is a positive thing because "it will put an end to the white man's monopoly on the White House." Lets pause for a moment and reflect on this statement. An Arab is celebrating the fact that the white man's monopoly is ending in the U.S. But what race is the Arab? He is not black and in this base world if one is not black or Asian they are white. Do Arab nations elect black leaders? Egypt had Sadat and he was murdered. In Sudan they simply genocide the blacks, such is their admiration for them. In Saudi they still import blacks as slaves. In fact the Arab world is full of racism towards blacks who are referred to variously as 'Abd' (slave) or as 'Kaffir' (infidel). In places where there are concentrations of formerly enslaves blacks, such as in the Bedouin village of Rahat in Israel or in southern Iran, southern Morocco, Niger, Mauritania, Sudan, northern Egypt or Somalia we find that those blacks are subjected to rape, genocide, assaults, harassment, discrimination, verbal abuse, enslavement and suppression. We might say its 'like the Old South'. The irony that Arabs cheer for Obama because he is black would be as ironic as Apartheid South Africa cheering had Jesse Jackson won when he ran for president. But the lies and hypocrisy doesn't end with the white Arabs. As revealed previously a survey taken in Europe showed that while Europeans wanted America to have a minority as president (and the word 'minority' is probably a fairer and more accurate description of Obama than to call him either 'Black' or 'African-American'). But those same Europeans didn't want a minority running their country. This hypocrisy of the European and the Arab and others is illustrated no better than in the cartoon that appeared in the New York Times on November 6th, 2008. It shows a white man hugging a black man in the U.S. The black man is weeping. And standing outside the U.S are five figures seeming to represent Europe, the Arab world, Asia and Africa. The five figures are cheering "Yes they could!" The insinuation is that America is some bastard child of the world, a place of racial divisions and hatred and discrimination where the people cannot see past race. They are cheering for us? As if we need their approval? Are we kidding ourselves. Lets just recall a few things about America. Was it Europeans who fought wars to end slavery. No. Was it Arabs? No. Was it Asians? No. Was it Africans? No. It was Americans. We are the only nation to have fought a war to end the institution of slavery. That is no mere thing. We only fought a war to end it because it was an institution never practiced in half of the country. But while the U.S outlawed slavery in 1863 it seems that slavery still continues in parts of Africa and the Arabian peninsula. They cheer for us? What of the other minorities? When the Irish were starving from the Potato famine did they not come in the hundreds of thousands to the shores of United States? When the Jews were called up for 30 years of brutal service in the Tsarist army where they were raped of their religion was it not the U.S that granted them entry? In fact it was the U.S that granted all the unwanted Europeans entry. And yet today they cheer for us? Is it because we took their "tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free." We took them all. Asians, Hispanics, Africans of every tribe, Cubans, Haitians (a country of freed slaves that the U.S was the first to recognize by the way), Germans. We took them. And now their former oppressors cheer for us? We turned these poor huddled masses into strong men and we sent them back to their former lands to defeat the scourges of their past. We sent them back in legions upon legions of men to defeat Nazism and Communism and all the other brands of evil that the world has conjured up. But it has not stopped. The genocides continue, recently in Rwanda, and in Darfur. The cleansing of minorities continues and is covered up. And yet they cheer for us? I am suspicious of a savage world that cheers for us. We do not cheer for them. We never cheer because we know what the world is capable of. We Americans have not seeked the approval of the world ever and it is unfortunate that we do now. We have done things on our own time and usually before the world has done them. We have ended slavery with our own strength, not because some European asked us to. We have granted rights to women and given men without property the vote. We have had our Bill of Rights and our right to guns and our abortion rights. All absent of the world telling us how to do it. And they cheer for us? It is like the man who is in the sewer cheering for the man who has already pulled himself out. We are out of the cesspool. But the world is still in it. The world lives vicariously through the U.S. If it makes them happy that is great. But they shouldn't kid themselves that they are like us. White genocidal Arabs shouldn't pretend that they are really cheering for the 'black man'. It's the same black man who they support the murder of in the Sudan. And his children are just old enough to be stoned alive in Somalia. So don't cheer for us. Look into your own soul and ask yourself why you are so happy. Is it not because you, as a world, have failed so miserably and that we Americans have always done so much better? So we have Obama. We have the boss we got. Who do you have? 4) Where are the world's Obamas: More stupidity Seth J. Frantzman November 15th, 2008 Where are the world's Obamas: More stupidity: Now people in the world are saying "where is our Obama?" Israelis are saying they need an Arab prime minister and the French are trying to find an 'Obama'. This racist idiocy that believes a country is better off just because it has someone different at the helm is tragic. Should Leon Blum have been judged based solely on his being Jewish and not on his socialist ways? Should Indira be judged based solely on being a woman and not on Operation Blue Star? Judge people based solely on one quality and one then finds they may very well be blamed for that one quality. Hatred, idiocy, and other myths were not the only thing engendered by the Obama victory. Now the newspapers are asking throughout the world 'where is our Obama'. The week of November 8-15th saw the headline in the New York Times 'Where is Europe's Obama.' Bradley Burston wrote in Haaretz that He desires to see an Arab elected the prime minister of Israel so that Israel will have its 'Obama.' There is something deeply foolish in all this. People are simply unable to judge this election beyond skin color. They believe that France needs a black president now, regardless of his policies. It is as stupid as judging former French president's Leon Blum and Mendes-France based on the fact that they were Jews. But were they any good? One was a socialist and perhaps his social programs were more influential or damning than his Jewishness? No. That couldn't be. Its enough that he was Jew in a nation of gentiles. An inability to see past his Jewishness means that he must be judged solely on that, on the idea that the 'Other' is positive based solely on his being the 'other', regardless of his politics. Is it enough to judge Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi on being women, or on their ordering Operation Blue Star and waging the Yom Kippur war in a semi-disastrous manner? But they were women. That's enough. Can we judge between Elizabeth and Victoria, or must we seem them as the same, women, regardless of Elizabeth's role in fighting for the Anglican church and repelling the Spanish Armada? Judge them only as women and we cannot see their failures and their greatness. The oddity of this is that Europe has had the 'other' in power. Holland had its Ayan Hirsi Ali, a Somali born women turned women's rights activist and fighter against Islamism. But she was run out of the country, first by death threats and then threats to deport her. England has its Lord Ahmed. It had its Disreali. It had its Stanley Baldwin, a man distinguished not by his skin color but his average workaday demeanor and humble nature. Russia has had its Obamas. It had Stalin, a Georgian, and a whole host of other foreigners and non-Russians, running the country during Soviet times, from Khruschev to Beria and Mikoyan, not to mention all the Jews such as Kamanev, Zinoviev and Trotsky. Should they be judged on their ethnicity alone? If so then the Jews certainly come off badly for their role in Communism, a link often made by Nazism and even by Churchill. Judge them on something more than skin and we might see more nuance. But in our world we can only judge on skin color, an odd byproduct of leftist run wild whereby in order to make up for the racism of the past we do the opposite, we become positive racists, judging people positively for being an other. Colleges in the U.S often reward points for certain things, such as being a 'legacy' or from some minority or some region. But that has overflowed into society as a whole. Now any old 'other', especially if he comes from one of the romantic 'others', will do. This is a dangerous savagization of society, a return to the base instincts of the tribe, except that the instinct is now reversed, instead of suspecting the 'other' we love him more. The men of the hill country of Appalachia would not be impressed. In the 17th century their songs, idioms and poems mostly justified hatred of the stranger: "Put the stranger near the danger" and "All bad and no good on the back of a stranger." The New York Times has relegated Appalachia and the South now to being 'out of touch' because these were some of the few districts that went more Republican in 2008, apparently because they are backward and racist. The Times celebrates the end of the appearance of "southern accents" in the halls of Washington. People celebrated this fact in 1865, and it was so for many decades. But the South and the hill country have an odd way of returning to America from time to time. Maybe they judged Mr. Obama on being a stranger, as Republican Saxby Chambliss supposedly said something along the lines of "look the other folks are voting." But such are the dangers of racism. Define a man by his race and one finds that one gets both ends of the stick, those who hate him based on his race and those who love him based on his race. Is that truly such an accomplishment for society? So does the world need its Obamas? Not if it just means that we get a change of color and religion in some places. It is society itself that needs reforming, the extreme-secular liberalism of Europe and the Islamism found elsewhere. Changing the color of the president may not be enough unless the 'change' embodied in the color will help the world role back immorality and terrorism. Contact Seth J. Frantzman at sfrantzman@hotmail.com and visit his website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com These essays appeared on his website. To Go To Top

CONFLATION OF THE DEFENSE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION WITH "HATRED" Posted by LEL817, November 19, 2008.

This essay appeared today in Israpundit (http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=5721) and it contained a response by Diana West.

Marc Charisse, editor of the Evening Sun of Hanover, Pennsylvania, recently announced his intention to drop Diana West's column from the newspaper because, as he put it, West "never met a Muslim she didn't hate." [His editorial is at http://www.eveningsun.com/ci_11005076.] This ready conflation of the defense of Western civilization and its rights and freedoms against Sharia supremacism with "hatred" is, of course, something we see at Jihad Watch every day. Here is Diana West's blazingly brilliant response: To the Editor: I am responding to Editor Marc Charisse's column about my work, a column I found striking for its mud-slinging crudity. In Charisse's words, my work, the product of careful research and reporting, may be summed up thus: West "never met a Muslim she didn't hate." There is no more apt word than "grotesque" to describe such an irresponsible and flippant mischaracterization of my weekly column, which very often grapples with the terrible, largely unspoken reality that Western liberties— freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, equality before the law, including women's rights and the rights of non-Muslims— are increasingly threatened by a growing deference to the laws of Islam. To underscore my point, I don't write about "Muslims." I write about Islam, the supremacist ideology constructed on laws (sharia) that justify censorship, repression, violence, inequality, and even maiming and murder of those whom the sharia leaves voiceless and powerless: dissenters, Muslim apostates, non-Muslims and women. I write about its agents— violent jihadists as well as soft jihadists, all of whom are working to extend the rule of this law across the non-Muslim world. And I write about politically correct non-Muslims who, as a public point of what is hailed as tolerance and inclusiveness have surrendered their common sense, their courage and, increasingly, their countries to the advance of this Islamic law. "Pull the plug" on me if you like. But do not slander me or my work as a manifestation of hatred toward individuals. If anything, it is a manifestation of fear— fear that our liberties are not just under assault but have already been diminished, and are destined for still more restriction in that "sharp new subtext" Charisse says the recent presidential election has added "to the subject of Muslims." Whatever that means. I'll take Charisse's assessment of my work as "confrontational" as a compliment, even if he didn't mean it that way. After all, what columnist worth his space, from Paul Krugman to Pat Buchanan, isn't confrontational? But as for branding my ideas as "inappropriate" and "out of place"— well, isn't that less the language of an American newsroom than an old Soviet politbureau? Diana West Contact the poster at lel817@yahoo.com To Go To Top

PA: 'HAMAS IS STAGING GAZA BLACKOUTS' Posted by Daily Alert, November 19, 2008.

This was written by Khaled abu Toameh and it appeared in the Jerusalem Post http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1226404771503&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah accused Hamas on Tuesday of staging the latest blackouts in the Gaza Strip in a bid to win sympathy and incite the Palestinian public against Israel and the PA. Palestinians hold candles as they march during a demonstration against Gaza fuel cuts. Photo: AP The officials said that contrary to Hamas's claim, there is no shortage of basic goods, medicine and fuel in the Gaza Strip, largely thanks to the many underground tunnels along the border with Egypt. This is not the first time that Palestinians have accused Hamas of staging Gaza blackouts under the pretext that Israel had cut off fuel supplies to the district's power grid. Earlier this year, Palestinian journalists in Gaza City told The Jerusalem Post that scenes of Palestinian children and women holding lit candles in the dark had been staged by Hamas and some Arab satellite TV stations. "There's no shortage of fuel in the Gaza Strip and the Electricity Company is continuing to function normally," said a PA official. "Our people in the Gaza Strip have told us that the blackouts are all staged as part of the Hamas propaganda." Another PA official noted that Hamas's lies reached their peak last January when its legislators held a meeting in a darkened hall of the Palestinian Legislative Council — while light could be seen coming in through the curtained windows. The official accused Al-Jazeera of serving as a platform for Hamas's propaganda machine by airing staged footage of children and women during candlelight protests in the streets of Gaza City. "There's enough fuel in the Gaza Strip," he said. "Even when Israel reduces the fuel supplies, Hamas continues to smuggle tens of thousands of liters through the underground tunnels." The Fatah-controlled Pal-Press Web site on Thursday quoted a senior official in the Gaza Electricity Company as saying that Hamas has been stealing fuel supplies intended for the power grid. The official, who asked not to be identified, also denied claims by Hamas and Al-Jazeera about power outages in large parts of the Gaza Strip. He noted that 70% of the Gaza Strip's electricity came from Israel and Egypt, while the remaining 30% were being supplied by the local company. "Hamas has seized more than 220,000 liters of fuel that was intended for generators belonging to our company," he revealed. "There's no shortage of fuel and as such there is no reason for a crisis." The official also disclosed that Hamas militiamen had been forcing the company to cut off power supplies to some areas in the Gaza Strip so as to create the impression that the outage was due to a lack of fuel caused by the ongoing closure of the border crossings. The Daily Alert is sponsored by Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and prepared by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). To subscribe to their free daily alerts, send an email to daily@www.dailyalert.jcpa.org To Go To Top

BRITAIN RE-ESTABLISHES HIGH-LEVEL INTELLIGENCE LINKS WITH SYRIA Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, November 19, 2008.

This was written by Richard Beeston, Catherine Philp and Oliver August and it appeared today in The Times (UK) www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5181164.ece

Britain re-established high-level intelligence links with the Syrian authorities as David Miliband made his landmark visit to Damascus yesterday, according to senior Syrian officials. The move, first raised earlier this year at a meeting in New York between the Foreign Secretary and his Syrian counterpart, Walid Moualem, was a key objective of the Syrian visit. The newly revived intelligence relationship could be hugely beneficial to Britain. Syria is known to have one of the best intelligence-gathering systems in the Middle East, in particular in tracking the movements of Islamic extremists into Iraq and around the region. "Miliband asked Moualem in New York whether he could re-establish intelligence links at a senior level" after lower level contacts, a Syrian official said. Mr Moualem invited Mr Miliband to take intelligence officials with him on the trip to Damascus. Mr Miliband's visit, the first by a British foreign secretary for seven years, was touted as an opportunity to test Syria's willingness to engage with the West, lifting it out of its current isolation. Washington has long insisted on isolating Syria but with a change of administration — and attitude — looming, Britain and France are leading efforts to lure Damascus out of the solitude it has found itself in since it was implicated in the murder of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri, three years ago. Mr Miliband urged Syria yesterday to take a more active role in the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians by first reaching its own peace deal with the Jewish state. Damascus and Jerusalem have recently talked on four occasions under Turkish auspices. Mr Miliband said: "We welcome the four rounds of talks that have taken place ... and we hope that they will be taken forward with new force." Mr Miliband met President Assad for the first time during his visit, which, it was hoped, would draw the attention of Barack Obama, the President-elect, away from America's economic malaise and back towards the Middle East. In their first phone call since the US election, Gordon Brown emphasised that Mr Obama's foreign policy priority should be the Arab-Israeli conflict, which he sees as the key to other concerns in the region, including the threat of a nuclear Iran. Joshua Landis, an American expert on Syria, said the visit was "a message from the British to Obama. Like the French, they want the US to push Syrian-Israeli peace. Negotiations between Syria and Israel began last May, but the Bush Administration was unhappy about the dialogue and refused to support them." Syria has long supported Hamas, which does not recognise Israel's right to exist and opposes the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's peace talks with it. Along with hosting exiled Hamas leaders, Syria also aids the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah. One of Israel's conditions for peace is that Damascus severs these links. Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com To Go To Top

BEWARE THIS SAUDI DEAL Posted by Naomi Ragen, November 19, 2008.

This was written by Melanie Phillips and it appeared November 11, 2008 in the Daily Mail www.dailymail.co.uk

With all eyes fixed upon the political excitements in the U.S, few have paid much attention to a trip made by the Prime Minister several thousand miles in the opposite direction. A week ago Gordon Brown, accompanied by his new best friend the Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, went cap in hand to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to ask them to help bail out the stricken economies of the West by pumping billions into the International Monetary Fund. It is more than a little strange that the British Prime Minister should have apparently taken it upon himself to speak on behalf of the IMF. But the real concern is that asking for help from Saudi Arabia is not like tapping your friendly neighbourhood bank manager for a bigger overdraft. No, this loan comes with a devastating IOU — nothing less than a big slice of control over Britain and the West by a regime at the heart of the attempt to bring about the Islamisation of the free world. Granted, this country is facing a truly grave financial crisis. But does this mean we should remortgage the future of the West to those whose most radical elements are actively engaged in seeing it destroyed? Alarming I have long been concerned by Britain's failure to acknowledge the true nature of the threat from global Islamism. This latest move is yet more alarming evidence of that process. Saudi Arabia is at the root of the Islamic onslaught against the West. It is Saudi's Wahhabi form of Islam which, along with its Shi'ite counterpart in Iran, aims to restore the dominance of Islam in the world and destroy rule by `unbelievers'. It is Saudi money which has fuelled the enormous spread of Wahhabi mosques, preachers and educational institutions in this country, delivering the message of holy war and radicalising countless thousands of British Muslims. And it is this Saudi ideology which was the inspiration for Al Qaeda. True, Al Qaeda turned upon Saudi itself on account of its ties with the U.S. As a result, Saudi regards Al Qaeda as its mortal enemy, and as such co-operates with Britain and the U.S in combating it. But sometimes, to rephrase the old adage, our enemy's enemy is not actually our friend, but our enemy as well. Saudi Wahhabism seeks to conquer the West through a pincer movement comprising violence on the one hand and cultural infiltration and takeover on the other. At the very least, Saudi Arabia speaks with the most lethal of forked tongues, and we should actively be seeking to diminish its influence over our affairs. But instead our Prime Minister is effectively offering it yet more opportunity to control us. Mr Brown claimed he did not want such investment to be used to gain political influence. But Lord Mandelson blurted out the truth when he acknowledged that the Saudis and other Gulf states would expect a bigger role in global institutions in return. Takeover: The Islamic world has already bought Manchester City football club. This should be enough to chill the British marrow. Islamic influence is already spreading in Britain and the West, way beyond Muslim communities themselves. The Islamic world is buying a financial stake in increasing numbers of Western institutions. Among its latest acquisitions are Manchester City Football Club, which was sold to the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, and Barclays Bank, which has secured an almost £6 billion capital injection from Abu Dhabi and Qatar. Extremist Islamist ideas are also being spread through Islamic study centres attached to our universities. According to Professor Anthony Glees, eight universities — including Oxford and Cambridge — have accepted more than £233.5 million from Saudi and Muslim sources since 1995, spreading radicalism and helping create within Britain two separate identities and sets of allegiance. 'Bribery' Shockingly, Saudi blackmail has also forced Britain to suspend its own rule of law by ditching the bribery investigation into the arms deal between Saudi Arabia and BAE systems, in response to an explicit threat made by the Saudi authorities that, if the case continued, `British lives on British streets' would be at risk. Those aren't my words, they are from Britain's former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles. Thus, the Islamists are already pulling British strings through the supremely manipulative combination of the threat of violence and the lure of unbridled wealth. Apparently oblivious to all this, however, Mr Brown has pledged to make London the global centre of Islamic banking. Accordingly, Britain's major banks are eagerly embracing sharia finance, on the basis that it is a source of vast wealth. What they fail to realise is that sharia is also a project for Islamising society, and wherever it is embraced it will use its position to do precisely that. The assumption is that sharia banking — which has at its heart the prohibition of interest — accords with ancient Islamic religious principles. Not so. Sharia banking was devised by mid-20th century Islamist ideologues specifically to further their strategy for global Islamic rule by creating separate administrative systems. Muslims are required to donate a proportion of their income to charity, including the money that goes through the sharia banking system. Yet in many instances, the clerics deciding where this `charity' money should go are the spiritual godfathers of terror, such as Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, who supports suicide bombing in Iraq and Israel, and Sheik Muhammed Taqi Usmani, who has admitted he ran a madrassa that supported the Taliban, yet who sits on the sharia supervisory board of the Dow Jones Islamic Index Fund. It's no surprise, then, that many charitable donations end up being channelled straight into terrorist organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. But apart from being a global money-laundering exercise for terrorism, sharia banking is also a beachhead in the attempt by radical Islam to infiltrate British and Western society. 'Seductive' The key point is that sharia does not recognise the superior authority of the secular law of the land. Sharia financial institutions may not be making this clear — they don't want to frighten people away — but at some future time they may do so. This is how they will endeavour to spread sharia beyond their own territory. There are already examples of sharia regulations over-riding commercial decisions. Citibank, for example, launched the Saudi American Bank (SAB) in Jeddah and Riyadh. In 1980, the Saudis abruptly seized the SAB, denied Citibank all future profits and ordered it to train Saudi staffers because the bank was judged insufficiently Muslim. When trillions of pounds and dollars become locked into Islamic banking and Saudi and other Islamic institutions, who will be in a position to argue with the Islamists when they finally call in their IOUs? But our politicians and financiers seem blind to this prospect — because they are mesmerised by the seductive prospect of so much wealth. Moreover, the British establishment does not believe that what we are being subjected to is a religious war. That is why their response to the steady encroachment of Islamic radicalism in our society is so weak. And that is why I fear the British Prime Minister is in danger of selling this country to those who are intent upon undermining our most treasured freedoms. More than giving hostages to fortune, he is enabling fortune itself to hold Britain hostage. 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. To Go To Top

SHARI'AH FINANCE IN THE USA Posted by Sonia Nusenbaum, November 18, 2008.

This is called "U.S. Treasury Department to Host Shariah Compliant Financing Forum!!!" and was written by Brigitte Gabriel. It appeared on the Acti for America website http://www.actforamerica.org.

In association with the Islamic Finance Project of the Harvard Law School, the U.S. Treasury will be hosting a forum entitled "Islamic Finance 101." You read this correctly. As the humorist Dave Barry writes in many of his columns, "I am not making this up." Indeed, despite the fact that we in ACT! for America and others have been warning about the infiltration of shariah (Islamic law) into our society for some time, to witness how quickly it is happening causes me to tremble inside. Our own U.S. Treasury is hosting a forum aimed at educating "staff from U.S. banking regulatory agencies, Congress, Department of Treasury, and other parts of the Executive Branch." So what is Shariah Banking you ask? Sharia banking was created by radicals like Sheik Qaradawi, a terrorist who today is banned from entering the United States and Great Britain. Who today leads international Islamic Finance agencies. How does he describe Shariah Finance? "I like to call it Jihad with money, because God has ordered us to fight enemies with our lives and our money." Everything in me wants to shout from the highest house top "Will enough Americans wake up in time??? Have our leaders become so blinded with greed that they are willing to sell our soul, and endanger our national security, in exchange for Arab money?" To view a PDF image of the official U.S. Treasury description and agenda for the forum, please click here. According to the Treasury document, the purpose of this forum is "...to help inform the policy community about Islamic financial services, which are an increasingly important part of the global financial industry." Speakers include: Assistant Treasury Secretary Neel Kashkari. If that name sounds familiar it's because he is the person Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson designated to manage the government purchase of distressed assets called for in the $700 billion "bailout plan." Talal DeLorenzo. DeLorenzo is one of the half dozen most important shariah advisors. He is a product of the radical jihadist madrassa Jamia Uloom Islamia in Karachi. Among his many prior positions is the Director of Education at the Islamic Saudi Academy. If that name sounds familiar it's because that academy was the focus of a U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Report earlier this year. That report documented material in the academy's textbooks that, among other things, called for the killing of "apostates" from Islam and approved of the killing of "polytheists." ACT! for America put out two emails on this and some of our local members participated in a protest at the academy. The Islamic Saudi Academy is also known for one of its more famous alumni, Ahmad Omar Abu Ali, who in 1999 was the school's valedictorian and was voted "Most Likely to Be a Martyr." Ali was later convicted on charges of terrorism and attempting to assassinate President Bush. Rushdi Siddiqui. Siddiqui is the founder and 'global director' of the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index Group. My dear members, the "Trojan horse" is within our gates. How we as the "grassroots" of America respond to this threat over the next year will greatly determine whether we begin to expel this threat or go the way of Britain and Europe. We are now in the process of producing a video that details what Shariah financing is, its implications, who's involved on Wall Street and our efforts to stop it. You will receive notice of it by email within a couple weeks. We need your activism and involvement on every level to help us protect our country. Please forward our emails to your friends and family and urge them to subscribe to receive them directly. Get involved with our chapter network. We are going to need to organize on the grass roots level to put pressure on our banking system and even boycott some major banks to stop this Islamic shariah financing. More information will be forthcoming forth in the future. We also continue to need your financial support as we forge ahead with this important work. If you haven't joined our Patriot Partner program, go to http://www.actforamerica.org/index.php/donate to find out how you can support us in this way. If we are going to win the struggle against Islamofascism, we need to have the necessary supplies in our "warchest" to fight effectively. I greatly appreciate your help and am honored to have you as a member of our ACT! for America family. Always devoted, Brigitte Gabriel   SHARIAH COMPLIANT BANKS, PARTIAL LIST From Sharia Finance Watch http://shariahfinancewatch.wordpress.com/shariah-compliant-banks/ Alpha Natural ResourcesAsset Acceptance Capital Corporation Aviva Plc AXA Barclays PLC BNP Paribas Group Citibank, N.A. Credit Agricole, S.A. Deutsche Bank AG Dow Jones & Company Inc. Equity Insurance Group Limited Goldman Sachs Group HBOS plc HSBC Holdings plc INVESCO Perpetual Julius Baer Group Maersk Logistics Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. Morgan Stanley NYSE Euronext Silicon Graphics, Inc. Singapore Power National Security and Financial Risks: Islamists are attempting to impose Shariah Compliant Finance (SCF) on Western institutions to use our own financial strengths against us. The most serious problem with SCF is that it legitimates and institutionalizes Shariah law (i.e., Islamic law), a theo-political- legal doctrine violently opposed to Western values. With $1 -$2 trillion petrodollars annually looking for an investment home, blind exuberance is driving financial institutions to adopt SCF, without even a minimal baseline for legal compliance. This willful blindness, and lack of both transparency and due diligence may cause SCF to be the next sub-prime crisis, but this time with deadly consequences. Legal Risks: Western financial institutions which adopt SCF may have criminal and civil exposure to claims of aiding and abetting sedition and the material support of terrorism, securities fraud, consumer fraud, racketeering, and antitrust violations, as well as exposure to tort claims for sedition and terrorism, and for the violation of internationally recognized norms of the law of nations. Terror Financing Mechanism: SCF as monitored wby paid Shariah law advisors to U.S. banking institutions must "purify" certain return on investment (ROI) dollars that do not meet Shariah law standards. This money must be donated to Islamic charities — including some that promote Jihad and support suicide bombing. Investment disclosures state that these profits can be as high as 6% of profits of investments. With $800 billion already in SCF assets, the potential for billions of dollars to be siphoned off for terrorism is real. This would be a serious criminal violation of U.S. law. Consider this example: Shariah Mutual Funds promote themselves as "ethical funds." To be Shariah-compliant, they donate "tainted" revenues to Shariah-compliant "charities." A post 9-11 U.S. investor in a Shariah-compliant "ethical investment" is not told that Shariah law also requires imposing Shariah as U.S. law, execution of gays and female apartheid. Is he a victim of consumer fraud? Is this same post 9-11 investor unwittingly funding terror? The government has shut down the three largest Shariah-compliant charities in the U.S. — the Holy Land Foundation, Benevolence International Foundation, and the Global Relief Foundation — after proving they funded terrorist organizations. The American taxpayer deserves answers to these questions. The Center for Security Policy (CSP) is meeting directly with members of Congress, US. regulatory agencies and Wall Street financial institutions in order to ensure the enforcement of existing U.S. laws on sedition, disclosure, material support of terrorism, and money-laundering. CSP is committed to revealing the civil liability and criminal exposure of Shariah law and Shariah-compliant finance. WHAT IS SHARIAH LAW? Understanding Shariah law is integral to understanding the dangers of Shariah-compliant finance. Shariah law is Islamic law dating back to the 7th century and is today the law of the land in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan and the law under which the Taliban operates. Recent polls reveal that only 10-15% of Muslims worldwide want to live under this all-encompassing system of Islamic jurisprudence that covers all aspects of a Muslim's life including religious, social, political, and military obligations. However, with a current population of 1.5 billion Muslims, this translates to a huge pool of Jihadist recruits and supporters — a base of approximately 150 — 225 million Muslims. Shariah law authorities, some of whom are now being paid handsomely by Barclays, Dow Jones, Standard & Poors, HSBC, Citibank, Merrill Lynch, Deutschebank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Credit Suisse and others have the power to dictate Shariah compliance as deemed by "scholarly consensus" on matters of finance, family, penal law, apostasy, and war. Examples of authoritarian Shariah law include: requirement of women to obtain permission from husbands for daily freedoms; beating of disobedient woman and girls; execution of homosexuals; engagement of polygamy and forced child marriages; the testimony of four male witnesses to prove rape; honor killings of those, principally women, who have dishonored the family; death to apostate Muslims who chose to leave Islam; inferior status of non-Muslims, and capital punishment for those "slander Islam." Contact Sonia Nusenbaum at nusenbaum@juno.com To Go To Top

NEARLY BILLION DOLLARS IN DIRECT AID DISBURSED TO PALESTINIANS IN SIX MONTHS Posted by Marc Samberg, November 18, 2008.

This myth of the poor poor Transjordanians must end!!!!!! This comes from Agence France-Press and is archived at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/KHII-7GC5JW?OpenDocument

PARIS, July 8, 2008 (AFP) — The international community has paid out nearly a billion dollars in direct aid to the Palestinians in six months, officials of the International Donors' Conference for the Palestinian State said here late Monday, while hitting out at Israeli restrictions on movement by Palestinians. The chair and the co-chairs of the Paris conference, which last December came up with pledges of donations totalling 7.7 billion dollars over three years, 'strongly welcomed' the process of disbursing the funds. The international community has paid out more than 920 million dollars in six months in direct budgetary support and signed for one billion dollars of bilateral agreements with the Palestinian Authority for development projects, according to a communique from the chair and co-chairs released by the French foreign ministry. 'This unprecedented level and rapid disbursement of contributions demonstrates the strong support of the international community to the Palestinian government,' said the statement by Quartet special Middle East envoy Tony Blair, European External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and a Norwegian representative who met at the French foreign ministry. 'The priority over the coming months will be to secure contributions of Arab League members. These will be crucial to finance the budgetary gap and to support the Palestinian institutions,' it went on. The chair and co-chairs said it was 'essential that the Palestinian government maintains a rigorous fiscal policy in relation with the future disposable revenues and contributions.' But 'restrictions by the Government of Israel on Palestinian movement and access continue to weigh heavily on the economic outlook. 'Without a significant lifting of such barriers in the West Bank, and a relaxation of the restrictions on humanitarian and commercial flows to the Gaza Strip, there is a much-reduced prospect for private sector recovery, public and private investment programmes will continue to be delayed, and consequently any economic recovery will continue to be inhibited.' The Paris conference was aimed at boosting still fragile hopes for peace launched at the latest Palestinian-Israeli peace process in Annapolis, Maryland in late November 2007, aimed at working for a Palestinian state by the end of 2008. Contact Marc Samberg at marcsamberg@yahoo.com To Go To Top

JIHAD WITH MONEY Posted by Gary Bauer, November 18, 2008.

With much of the country focused on the economic crisis, the mortgage meltdown and billion dollar bailouts, this is a good time to draw your attention to another looming financial crisis — the growing acceptance of Sharia finance in America. I suspect this is a new topic for many of you, but it is one you need to know about as it threatens our values and our national security. Our friends at the American Congress for Truth have produced a short video that explains Sharia finance and why it is so urgent that more Americans learn about this looming threat. Go to www.actforamerica.org to watch this video. Share this report with friends and family members, and encourage them to visit the site, too. We must not allow the current economic crisis to be exploited by our enemies. The meltdown on Wall Street must not become an excuse for radical Islam to gain acceptance on Main Street. So, please visit www.actforamerica.org today. Take a stand for our American values by opposing Sharia finance. We are working with leaders on Capitol Hill, like Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina, who has developed an excellent "Wake-up America" agenda, to alert more Americans to the dangers our nation and Western Civilization face from radical Islam. While many believe that the 2008 elections will usher in a new era of "hope" and "change," our enemies are not going quietly into the night. In fact, there are more warnings indicating that Al Qaeda is eager to test Western resolve with another "spectacular" attack against the United States. Meanwhile, congressional liberals and so-called "peace activists" are agitating for the new administration to repeal or rollback many of the laws that have greatly aided our homeland security efforts, including the terrorist surveillance program. Gary Bauer is the president of American Values. Contact him at gary.bauer@mail.amvalues.org. And visit the website: http://www.ouramericanvalues.org To Go To Top

KARIN IN SAUDI ARABIA Posted by Alrabaa Sami, November 18, 2008.

Karin in Saudia Arabia author: Alrabaa Sami publisher: Felibri.com (February 1, 2009) ISBN-10: 0980994845 ISBN-13: 978-0980994841 Publication Date: February 2009 Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. "It is the best I have read about the corrupt Saudi culture, its political, religious, and social system" — Andrew Higgins, Wall Street Journal   "Karin" is a real story of a German woman, who lived in Saudi Arabia for a while and fell in love with a Saudi. Later, this love turned into a devastating nightmare. The Saudi "Morality Police", notorious for their bestial brutality, raped Karin and threw her in prison. Her crime was, she was driven alone downtown by a taxi-driver. Her German-Saudi baby son was taken away and she was deported to Cyprus without passport and money. Muna, a young Moroccan woman was luckier. She managed to smuggle herself and baby after one-night marriage with Sultan, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, you can marry and divorce a woman in her absence. All you need is a religious man and two male witnesses. This is exactly what happened to Karin; she was married in her absence. Muna never saw any marriage or divorce papers. Mimi and Najat were brutally stoned to death. Najat, a deaf-dumb was caught by the "Morality Police", suspected of being a prostitute. In reality she was waiting for her brother to pick her up in front of shop window. The Morality Police Chief quickly passed sentence on Najat. He wrote, among other things: "Najat was working as a prostitute and was caught in the very act of picking up a client. We advise that she be stoned to death..." Two muttawas (Marality Police) delivered the document to Prince Salman, the governor of Riyadh. He jotted down a verdict to match the suggestion, then signed it. Najat was to be publicly stoned to death the following Friday. Mimi, a house-maid from the Philippines, was denounced by the wife of Karin's lover. She was picked up by the "Morality Police" and also stoned to death. These stories happen very often, and people are defenseless towards them. There are no courts in Saudi Arabia, and the princes there possess absolute power. Nisrin, a Bangladeshi woman, who married a Saudi, was deported and the marriage was annulled. Before that she was raped by one of those "Morality Police". A Saudi who belongs to an important tribe, cannot just marry anyone. Mohammed, a Syrian truck-driver had both hands amputated for allegedly stealing the truck he was driving. Very few atrocities like the ones I'm reporting reach the international media. In March, 2002, the Saudi Morality Police prevented school girls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing the correct Islamic dress. As a result 15 girls were burned alive." My stories are a pattern that happen day in day out. When you study Islam; the Quran and Shari'a, and live in Saudi Arabia for a while, you find out that the Saudis are in fact applying the Islamic law. "The woman who commits adultery must be stoned to death."(Quran, 36:18). "And (as for) the man who steals and the woman who steals, cut off their hands as a punishment for what they have earned, an exemplary punishment from Allah; and Allah is Mighty, Wise." (Quran 5:38). For more details, check out http://europenews.dk/en/node/13862 and "Understanding Muhammad" by Ali Sina. The book also shows that not only the Saudi regime and its religious fanatic establishment are oppressive, but also other groups in society: Saudi men oppress and ill-treat women, and Saudi men and women oppress abuse foreigners. When I delivered the manuscript of this book to friends outside of Saudi Arabia, asking them to read it over, their response was uniform: they shook their heads in disbelief. Nobody in the civilized world seemed able to fathom the extent of the arbitrariness and atrocities to which victims in Saudi Arabia are subjected. To them, it was incredible. Some remarked that I was telling stories about the actions of monsters from another planet. They could not believe that any human could act as a Saudi corrupted by power does. To Go To Top

ISRAEL THE BEAUTIFUL: A FALL AFTERNOON NEAR ISRAEL'S NORTHERNMOST TOWN, METULA Posted by Yehoshua Halevi, November 18, 2008.

A fall afternoon near Israel's northernmost town, Metula   This is one of Yehoshua Halevi's Golden Light Images. Yehoshua Halevi writes: "HOW I GOT THE SHOT: Anyone who encountered me toward the end of my recent three-day foray to the north would have seen the effects of rising three consecutive mornings well before dawn and schlepping my gear and ambition through dewy trails and prickly underbrush until darkness and exhaustion set in. After 583 km of travel by car and several more on foot and 652 shutter releases, I can reveal that I brought home five excellent landscapes. If I were a hunter, which I sometimes imagine I am when out in the wilds with my camera, I would have settled for bagging one lion. So five is a roaring success! Just north of Kiryat Shemona, a few seconds before the itinerant Israeli runs out of country, is a small valley below the town of Metula, where farmers have planted groves of pear, plum, olive, and pomegranate, along with grapes and an assortment of other greenery. I had noted this bucolic spot in the past as a potential shooting location in the right season. That moment arrived on Nov. 6 at 3:42 p.m. Turning onto a rare paved road that descended into the valley and up the far side, I found a position looking across the valley and into the setting sun. I thought at the time I had missed the moment, because there were already deep shadows on the upslope and the sun was so low I had to shade my lens with my left hand to reduce the extreme glare. Staring into the sun as I composed, I could barely see what spread out before me and I was concerned that the shadowed areas would appear as black in the final image. In retrospect, the final result as shown above is nearly perfect. The shadows miraculously fall along the outer edges of the composition and provide depth and contrast while the golden sunlight paints a swath down the center of the frame. The play of light and shadow combine wonderfully to create a beautiful, warm autumn afternoon feel. Contact Yehoshua Halevi by email at smile@goldenlightimages.com and visit his website: http://www.goldenlightimages.com. Reproductions of his work as cards, calenders and posters may be purchased at http://www.cafepress.com/halevi18 To Go To Top

ATTORNEY-GENERAL DELAYS CRITICAL OPINIONS; COULD OBAMA DAMAGE ISRAEL; THE END IN IRAQ? Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 18, 2008.

OLMERT'S STRANGE REQUEST PM Olmert said that before he could decide what to do about Gaza, he needs a proposed set of options from the IDF. The IDF replied that it had given him that. Now the decision is up to him (IMRA, 11/16). I remember that the IDF had done so, not long ago. Is Olmert procrastinating? ATTORNEY-GENERAL DELAYS CRITICAL OPINIONS Months ago, the government of Israel sent a request to the Attorney-General for a legal opinion on whether it may open fire on rocket crews in populated areas of Gaza and on whether it may cut off the supply of electricity. He has not sent the answer. PM Olmert has not pressed him. And Vice-PM Ramon said that the delay in invading Gaza is letting Hamas build up a force that would exact a much higher toll (IMRA, 11/16). Another procrastinator. Those clowns in the government must be amusing the Arabs but not the Jews. AMOS OZ CALLS FOR A POPULAR FRONT REGIME IN ISRAEL The writer-politician calls for Labor and Meretz politicians and those who supported Dov Chanin, "Stalinist" candidate for Mayor of Tel Aviv to form a popular front or a single party grouping. In other words, Labor, that stands for much appeasement, isn't radical enough for Amos Oz. He wants a popular front regime, i.e., an alliance with Communists (IMRA, 11/16). In 1993, he said an autonomous, demilitarized P.A. must show that it renounces its belligerent Covenant, the demand to flood Israel with alleged refugees [my wording], and terrorism, that it will control their fanatics, and it will allow Jews to live amongst them. Otherwise, Israel will send its forces in and smite them. The P.A. violated all those reasonable demands. Mr. Oz ignored the violations (IMRA, 11/16). Israel is finding it difficult to send forces back in. LIVNI'S STATEMENT ON CEASEFIRE She said, "The rules regarding Gaza are clear: If there is quiet and the time is not used [by terrorists] to prepare the next attack, Israel will keep the situation calm." Doesn't she realize that the ceasefire does not prohibit Hamas from using the time to make rockets, tunnels, and bunkers, so long as they don't shoot? If she doesn't, what is she? If she does, why doesn't the media expose her? The media is lazy or, as usual, is protecting leftist demagoguery (IMRA, 11/16.) HOW MUCH COULD OBAMA DAMAGE ISRAEL? Astrologers talk about an alignment of cosmic forces magnifying the power of each. Physicists talk about a tuning fork being reinforced by harmonizing soundings from other sources. In politics we have a ganging up on the Jews more widespread than ever before. An international lynch mob is forming. Why don't more people see the signs of it? I anticipate anti-Zionist machinations by Obama and his circle. He may get away with it, because, besides general media reluctance to criticize him, the media has defamed the "settlers" for years or left the public uninformed. American Jewry has been misled to the extent that it knows the issue at all. It has little understanding of the history of Israel, the tactics of Islam, or international law. It is more moved by foreign opinion than by its own people's needs. The Muslim states, Muslim colonists in the West, and mosques have been defaming Israel and the whole Jewish people for years. W. Europeans consider Israel a grave danger to peace, i.e., peace at any price, i.e., peace at the price of sacrificing the Jews. The Soviet agenda is back. What about Israel? Israel is divided: an authoritarian ruling class uses police state tactics against a decent people. The regime is appeasement-minded and even hostile towards Judaism and Zionism. The media is leftist and far leftist. Those are all the ingredients needed for bringing down the Jewish state. Will the Muslims wait for US diplomacy to erode Israeli borders more, or will they be too impatient? Will they wait for the government of Israel to expel the Jews from Judea-Samaria and break national morale? Will they use non-conventional weapons or conventional ones? Will Israel even fight back? Could it, if the initial attack cripples its communications? Some friends think this is the "end of days," and the Messiah will intercede. How will it end? Why are the decent people voiceless? Where are the "moderates?" How come my liberal friends are unable to think this through? Those secularists have as much faith that "Israel will do what it has to," as my Lubovicher friends have that a higher power will protect Israel. Do they expect the messiah when there is little faith and there are no ruling circles and armed forces on the side of justice and determined? QUAINT PROTOCOL Israel held a ceremony for turning its Gaza front over to a new commander. Heads of state visit a country and review its military honor guard. What does the review accomplish? Waste of time and money. The world moves fast, its leaders have real troops to position, no time to amble by an honor guard. MODERATES IN DISGUISE? Mohammed Fa'iz Matstafah Abu Krek belongs to the Tanzim, a militia of Fatah, the supposedly moderate organization of Abbas. Most of his squad pledged to refrain from terrorism, in exchange for amnesty by Israel. Krek was arrested in Nablus for making explosive vests for suicide bombers (IMRA, 11/16). It must be clever of that moderate to disguise himself as a terrorist. Sec. Rice is very pleased that all those moderates are patrolling P.A. cities. She concludes that having reduced street crime, the P.A. earned the confidence of Israel that it can safely withdraw from Judea-Samaria. That's a non-sequitur. I haven't heard lately whether the Arab crime wave against Israeli property has abated, but street crime in the P.A. does not affect Israeli security. Guns in the hands of the Tanzim does. It affects it adversely. The very force that the US is building up for Abbas endangers Israeli security. American troops that freed Iraq from a mass-murderer can be proud of their accomplishment. What do US troops training mass-murderers, called P.A. police, feel about their work? THE END IN IRAQ? While the Democrats are awakening to the US victory in Iraq, the Republicans do not seem to notice that a new defeat may be looming there. The Prime Minister of Iraq quietly has been firing the anti-corruption officials appointed by the US. Corruption is soaring. US foreign aid to Iraq is stolen (NY Times, 11/18). The Iraqi people would become disgusted with their corrupt regime. What is supposed to get done won't. The country is likely to fall apart. Islamists are good at appealing against corruption. If our aid is wasted, so was our war effort. What a mistake not to have gone after S. Arabia and Iran, the font of funds for madrassas, radical mosques, and insurgency! BREAKING GAZA BLOCKADE A fleet of ships carrying supplies and staffed by international activists is preparing to head for Gaza. Its purpose is to break Israel's blockade of Gaza (IMRA, 11/17). The tunnels already broke it. The people are fed. These do-gooders are helping an Islamo-fascist regime. Some humanitarians! 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 To Go To Top

ARAB GOAL OF ELIMINATING ISRAEL Posted by Herb and Miki Sunshine, November 18, 2008.

This article is entitled "Republican Decline And Not Only That" and was written by David Basch.

Studying the Wall Street Journal figures on the US presidential election, it is evident that Protestant Christian voters moved away from Republicanism. Elsewhere it was pointed out that right wing Christian voting was down by 4,000,000 voters. These alone — though not the only factors — made a great difference in results and helped bring in Obama. Some have alleged that it was the dispiriting McCain campaign that was responsible for this alienation. For myself — not a Christian — Sarah Palin's announcement of McCain's support for a Palestinian [Arab] State in the last weeks of the campaign came with shocking force. It could have been a similar shocker to Right Wing Christians, who apparently voted with their feet. As was reported, American Jewish voters in general gave Obama 78% of their vote. This was obviously not because Obama was more supportive of Israel than McCain since Obama did not disguise his support for a Palestinian [Arab] State. So this issue was not overly relevant in the decision of these Jews. On the other hand, Right Wing religious Christians do see Israel as a more important issue in their calculations than American Jews and even of some Israelis. It is therefore possible that this issue could have played an important part in the decision of Christians to defect from Republicanism. And while this may not have affected Jewish voting overall, that McCain too resembled Obama in his support for a new Arab State in Israel, McCain's support may, nevertheless, have served as a facilitator in the Jewish vote. For such Jews who indulged their liberal obsessions could then declare to the more conservative voting Jews that this vote was not cast at the cost of Israel since McCain offered no alternative.   THE OUTCOME IS VERY SHOCKING SINCE IT IS EVIDENT that support for a Palestinian Arab State is bipartisan despite the fact that this policy is based on falsifications of history and injustice toward the Jews and that its advent will be achieved at the expense of a greatly weakened Israel. Since the only reason Israel survives in the Middle East is because of its strength, such a strengthening of the Arab side will make more likely the eventual destruction of Israel — the most universal, implacable, and cherished goal of the Arabs. The Arabs are enthused at US and world support for them and the real possibility that the Muslim-Arab goal of eliminating Israel will be achieved. The irony is that the US, under cover of supporting democracy, actually sells itself out in supporting the twin Arab tyrannies of Fatah and Hamas that weaken the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel. Alas, the result will be a vanished Israel and with it a largely vanished Jewish people that will then only survive in forms such as Satmar Chassidism that rejects a humanly-achieved resurrection of the ancient Jewish commonwealth. Such Jews will be satisfied to be frozen in the pose of yearning on the Grecian vase — a youth forever yearning for his love and she being eternally fair. I can't help believing that this outcome, which seems ever more likely to be the result of the bipartisan US policy, will not only be disastrous to Israel and the Jews but will also be achieved at the weakening of traditional Christianity — what has been one of the great staples of the US ethos — that had seen in the rebirth of Israel an important religious sign. This weakening will be accompanied by the weakening of political unity in the US and its role in the world as well of the weakening of the West against the Islamic threat. The West, in this battle, will be without that once "unsinkable aircraft carrier" at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean, which was Israel. Herb Sunshine is a lawyer, qualified to practice in U.S.A. and Israel. He and his wife Miki live in Jerusalem. Contact them by email at sunshine.h@012.net.il To Go To Top

URGENT INTERNATIONAL PUSH FOR JONATHAN POLLARD Posted by Justice for Jonathan Pollard, November 18, 2008.

This is by Hillel Fendel and it appeared today in Arutz-7 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/128444

(IsraelNN.com) A massive and concerted effort is being made to bring about the release of Jonathan Pollard from prison after 23 years — directed both at PM Olmert and Pres. Bush. In the knowledge that outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush is currently preparing a list of possibly hundreds of American prisoners to pardon, the goal of the international campaign is to have Jonathan Pollard included. Many feel that this could be Pollard's last chance, after 23 years in prison. With Prime Minister Ehud Olmert scheduled to leave in a few days for a parting visit with U.S. President George W. Bush — who will leave office in two months' time, just a few weeks before Olmert is to be replaced — massive pressure is being exerted on Olmert to ask Bush for a pardon. In addition, a phone-in campaign to the White House, in which concerned citizens ask Bush directly to let Pollard to go home, is also getting underway. The Washington phone numbers are: 202-456 -1111 or 202-456-1414. A film is being circulated via the Internet, in which a host of public figures from both sides of the political spectrum are heard to express their opinions and feelings in favor of Pollard's urgent release. Among them are former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Danny Ayalon ("the issue must be on their agenda at the parting ceremony"), former Justice Minister Amnon Rubenstein of the Meretz party, former IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon, former radical left-wing MK Lova Eliav, Nobel Prize winner Prof. Yisrael Aumann ("I feel personally ashamed and I apologize"), former Supreme Court justice Tzvi Tal, journalist Mati Golan, Prof. Reuven Orda of Tel Aviv University, Makor Rishon editor Amnon Lord, Prof. Eli Pollack, Technologiot editor Dorit Aldoubi, former Deputy Education Minister Moshe Peled, and many more. The film ends with this message: "Mr. Prime Minister: This is your responsibility! Do not miss this chance! Bring Pollard back home — alive!" To see the film (in Hebrew), click here. To see a letter written by the above personalities, click here. In addition, dozens of rabbis from throughout the State of Israel have signed an open letter to President Bush, stating simply: "As a G-d fearing people, we feel a humane and ethical duty to write you concerning a deeply heartfelt matter. Mr. Jonathan Pollard is currently serving his 23rd year in prison. He is ill and his condition is serious. We respectfully request that you act mercifully towards him. Please grant him clemency as a humanitarian gesture to the Jewish People and the State of Israel. "With G-d's blessing, Mr. Pollard's release will bring only good to the United States and the American People." The letter is signed by nearly 200 rabbis, including past and present Chief Rabbis, members of the Chief Rabbinate Council, chief rabbis of cities and regional councils, and more. Not for What He Did, But for What Was Done to Him Pollard was convicted on one count of passing classified information to a U.S. ally — Israel — and lost the chance to ever directly appeal his sentence simply because of a technical oversight by his then-lawyer, Richard Hibey. As the JonathanPollard.org website explains, "Hibey, astonishingly, failed to file a time-limited statement of intent to file a direct appeal. This failure — too gross to be a mere oversight — then prevented Jonathan Pollard from ever exercising his constitutional right to a direct appeal of his sentence." Attys. Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman, who took on the Pollard case many years later at no charge, later made a claim of "ineffective assistance" on Pollard's behalf, Semmelman explaining, "I was appalled at the quality of the legal representation Jonathan received. It became apparent to us that Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life not because of what he did, but because of what was done to him." Reach Justice for Jonathan Pollard by sending an email to justice4jp@gmail.com To Go To Top

BOYCOTTING A TERRORIST REGIME Posted by Paul Lademaine, November 18, 2008.

For Immediate Distribution Successful Launch of Boycott of Palestinian Arab Goods and Services VANCOUVER, November 10 — Organizers of a new world-wide campaign to boycott imports of goods and services from so-called Palestine today expressed satisfaction with the inroads they have made in this regard. Boycott of Palestinian Goods and Services (BPGS) CEO Muhsir Mutawakil said he is looking forward to global distributors shifting their imports of agricultural and horticultural products from Gaza and the West Bank towards other sources. "The Islamic oppressive regimes in Gaza and Ramallah are enforcing apartheid rule against 120,000 Palestinian Christians and over 2 million women. This religious and gender apartheid must stop at once," he said. He noted that the multinational business community is sensitive to handling tainted products from exporters who are engaging in war crimes. Accordingly, there should shortly be a measurable decline in shipments to Western markets, including Canada, of flowers, soap, handicrafts, olive oil, figs, dates, pita and Cremisan wine from "Palestine." Mutawakil also reported successful discussions with the services industry in Canada, Australia, the USA and the UK. "There is a growing realization that fostering business dealings and exchanges in the travel, professional, educational and medical sectors with these apartheid-based regimes is counter-productive. Already, commitments made for 2009 are being renegotiated or dropped entirely," he said. The BPGS campaign is proud to be receiving the assistance of lay and religious publics in the developed world. It is confident that just as apartheid South Africa was brought to its knees by the boycotts of international civil society, so too will the brutal Hamas and Abbas occupiers of Gaza and the West Bank be defeated by NGOs like us world-wide. For Editors: Muhsir Mutawakil is a Palestinian Arab from the town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. His parents were tortured to death by the Hamas gang currently ruling Gaza. He converted to Judaism in 1994. For further information: Batsheva Waley-Mutawakil Director of Communications email: batshevawm@yahoo.com groups.yahoo.com/group/JustPeaceUK/message/24259 Contact Paul Lademain by email at lademain@verizon.net To Go To Top

FROM ISRAEL: PICKING UP Posted by Arlene Kushner, November 18, 2008.

For nine days I have been away from my computer, celebrating my Mom's 90th with family in MA. I returned today to learn that my computer will be out of commission for half of tomorrow. And so, I begin here with a brief run-down of various events, with more to follow soon. When last I wrote, I reported on the November 5th mission of Robert Malley to Cairo and Damascus on behalf of president- elect Obama. He delivered a message, according to Middle East Newsline, of Obama's readiness to be more responsive to Egypt's and Syria's concerns. This alone is unsettling, but must be followed by additional information: Malley had been an advisor to Obama until last May. But when Malley not only recommended that Hamas be dealt with directly but told The Times that he himself had had regular meeting with Hamas, it caused a furor. Thus it was announced that Obama had distanced himself from Malley, who would no longer serve an advisory function. Ben LaBolt, an Obama spokesman, said then that Malley "has no formal role in the campaign and will not play any role in the future." (emphasis added) But here he is now, serving on behalf of Obama. Questions — serious questions — are being raised about Obama's integrity in this regard. It should be noted that Malley's father Simon was of Syrian extraction, but lived in Egypt; he was passionately anti-Israel. This makes son Robert an ideal person to deliver conciliatory messages to Syrian and Egypt, and sheds light on the direction in which Obama may be going. ~~~~~~~~~~ Regardless of Obama's actual position regarding matters in the Middle East, perceptions also matter. >From various sources I am picking up concerns that the Arab world — rightly or wrongly — sees Obama as being in their pocket. This perception can have serious implications, and I will be following this closely. From one very knowledgeable source, we have this: "...the Muslim world — from Iran to Libya — regards President-elect Obama as its own. Even Al Qaida quietly sees Obama as a tool in Islamic expansionism." From an Obama aide we have a statement regarding Obama's support for the Saudi "peace" plan, which calls for Israeli pull-back to pre-67 lines. ~~~~~~~~~~ Also to be watched closely is the situation with regard to an escalating number of rocket attacks — with both Kassams and more dangerous Katyushas — on Sderot and neighboring areas from Gaza. Tzipi Livni says that this situation represents a "fundamental violation" of the "ceasefire." What she doesn't acknowledge is that there IS no ceasefire. If the attacks continue, she declared, a response that would be "harsh and painful" would follow. This is difficult for me to report on, because what is going on is not tolerable, not something any sovereign nation should tolerate. That "harsh and painful" response is long overdue. Ehud Olmert talks about pressure on Hamas via keeping crossings closed. Hamas fights back here with PR that fallaciously represents the people of Gaza as enduring inhumane conditions. The fact is that humanitarian supplies are always allowed in, but the world buys into the Hamas version of events quite readily. And Ehud Barak? He has cautioned that we should not get "carried away" because the "ceasefire" is in our best interest. Said he: "...if the Gaza factions want to resume the truce, we will consider it in a positive light." We're talking about more than "resumption" actually — we're looking at the possibility of "renewal," as the original terms are about to expire. ~~~~~~~~~~ Here is the heart of the problem: At the Sunday Cabinet meeting, Olmert declared: "The responsibility for breaking the calm and creating a situation of recurrent continuing violence in he South lies entirely with Hamas...Let no party come to the government of Israel and claim otherwise..." See, world, he is saying, ever so defensively, we have a right to respond, because they're the bad ones. "They started it," as it were. The catch is that even if they weren't "breaking the ceasefire," we would have a right to pre-emptive action because of the incredible strengthening of weapons and troops Hamas is carrying on inside of Gaza. An Israeli airstrike on a launching area on Sunday killed four gunmen. ~~~~~~~~~~ An issue to be watched and explored: Who is calling the shots now, Livni or a very lame-duck Olmert? This is in regard, in particular, to the negotiations with the PA. How much weight do Olmert statements have, when Livni is on a different wave length? And to what degree will the world, and most particularly the Quartet, attempt to hold us to injudicious Olmert statements, such as a recent one stating that we really must withdraw to close to the pre-67 lines? What undercuts Olmert most are the declarations by Abbas (this is not new) that what Olmert proposes is insufficient. Abbas still insists they must have it all. ~~~~~~~~~~ Moshe Ya'alon — former IDF Chief of Staff fired by Sharon for his outspoken stance against the disengagement, and currently a senior distinguished fellow at the Shalem Center's Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies — has announced that he will be running for the Knesset with the Likud. His readiness to become politically active is most welcome, and his addition to the Likud roster confers even greater strength on the party. ~~~~~~~~~~ From the inside, just yesterday, I learned that there is enormous discontent with Ehud Barak, head of Labor, from within the Labor party. ~~~~~~~~~~ Jerusalem mayor-elect, Nir Barkat, a secular business, promises to bring Jerusalem a new dynamism. It is to be fervently hoped so. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info To Go To Top

WHAT CONGRESS & THE MEDIA WON'T TELL YOU Posted by Fred Reifenberg, November 18, 2008.

Since I frequently give my opinion, when forwarding something, I don't see why this time should be any different. Having sent my opinion that the Democrats, and BO, would win the election, without any question, and I knew about some of the info in this article, I now predict that either nothing will be done, or something will be covered up, and excuses will be made to avoid a civil war, etc. etc. Should justice prevail, it will polarize the people to extremes, as a lot of emotions went into the decision making process, at election time..... READ ON.... This is by Devvy Kidd and it appeared in News With News http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd415.htm. She authored the booklets "Why A Bankrupt America" and "Blind Loyalty" and appears on radio shows all over the country. Devvy belongs to no organization. Contact her at devvyk@earthlink.net

"Would you rather have one tyrant 3,000 miles away or 3,000 tyrants one mile away?" Mel Gibson as Benjamin Martin, The Patriot This is the latest on the Obama citizenship crisis and then some research resources for you on major issues. In my last column, Part II, was devoted to the growing crisis over Barack Hussein Obama refusing to prove he is a natural born citizen; see here. You can get involved with the effort to contact electoral college delegates to stop their vote on December 15, 2008 by clicking here; those links are identified as such. New developments Dr. Alan Keyes filed a lawsuit in California, November 14, 2008: 'Constitutional crisis' looming over Obama's birth location. Alan Keyes lawsuit warns America may see 'usurper' in Oval Office. "The California secretary of state should refuse to allow the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast in the 2008 presidential election until President-elect Barack Obama verifies his eligibility to hold the office, alleges a California court petition filed on behalf of former presidential candidate Alan Keyes and others." Let me focus on Leo Donofrio's lawsuit which I covered in Part II of my last column. Leo is asking you to please write a short letter to Justice Clarence Thomas now that his case is docketed. You need only ask Justice Thomas to hear Leo's case on an expedited basis because Obama's refusal to prove he's a natural born citizen is building into a constitutional crisis that cannot be allowed to progress to the swearing in process should the electoral college actually go ahead and vote him in on December 15, 2008. Provide the case title and name: Leo C. Donofrio, v. Nina Mitchell Wells, Secretary of State of the State of New Jersey United States Supreme Court Docket No. 08A407 The Honorable Associate Justice Clarence Thomas United States Supreme Court One First Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20543. I have been exchanging emails with Leo and he continues to reinforce the main issue of 'natural born citizen'. His latest posting for your convenience: "Barack Obama's official web site, Fight The Smears, admits he was a British Citizen at birth. At the very bottom of the section of his web site that shows an alleged official Certification Of Live Birth, the web site lists the following information and link thereto: FactCheck.org Clarifies Barack's Citizenship "When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom's dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.'s children. "Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982." That is a direct admission Barack Obama was a British citizen "at birth". "My law suit argues that since Obama had dual citizenship "at birth" and therefore split loyalties "at birth", he is not a "natural born citizen" of the United States. A "natural born citizen" would have no other jurisdiction over him "at birth" other than that of the United States. The Framers chose the words "natural born" and those words cannot be ignored. The status referred to in Article 2, Section 1, "natural born citizen", pertains to the status of the person's citizenship "at birth". "The other numerous law suits circling Obama to question his eligibility fail to hit the mark on this issue. Since Obama was, "at birth", a British citizen, it is completely irrelevant, as to the issue of Constitutional "natural born citizen" status, whether Obama was born in Hawaii or abroad. Either way, he is not eligible to be President. Should Obama produce an original birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii, it will not change the fact that Obama was a British citizen "at birth". "Obama has admitted to being a British subject "at birth". And as will be made perfectly clear below, his being subject to British jurisdiction "at birth" bars him from being eligible to be President of the United States. "As I have argued before the United States Supreme Court, the 14th Amendment does not confer "natural born citizen" status anywhere in its text. It simply states that a person born in the United States is a "Citizen", and only if he is "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States. "Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution of the United States: "No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States." "The most overlooked words in that section are: "...or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution..." You must recall that most, if not all, of the framers of the Constitution were, at birth, born as British subjects. "Stop and think about that. "The chosen wording of the Framers here makes it clear that they had drawn a distinction between themselves — persons born subject to British jurisdiction — and "natural born citizens" who would not be born subject to British jurisdiction or any other jurisdiction other than the United States. And so the Framers grandfathered themselves into the Constitution as being eligible to be President. But the grandfather clause only pertains to any person who was a Citizen... at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution. Obama was definitely not a Citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and so he is not grandfathered in. "And so, for Obama or anybody else to be eligible to be President, they must be a "natural born citizen" of the United States "at birth". It should be obvious that the Framers intended to deny the Presidency to anybody who was a British subject "at birth". If this had not been their intention, then they would not have needed to include a grandfather clause which allowed the Framers themselves to be President. "If you click through to Factcheck.org, a more detailed discussion as to why Obama was a British citizen at birth explains the relevant statutes: "When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom's dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.'s children: "British Nationality Act of 1948 (Part II, Section 5): Subject to the provisions of this section, a person born after the commencement of this Act shall be a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies by descent if his father is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at the time of the birth. "In other words, at the time of his birth, Barack Obama Jr. was both a U.S. citizen (by virtue of being born in Hawaii) and a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies (or the UKC) by virtue of being born to a father who was a citizen of the UKC.' " "The article goes on to state that Obama's British citizenship was transferred to Kenya as Kenya became independent from the UK and that Obama's Kenyan citizenship expired when he turned 21 years old. But none of that is relevant since the Constitution requires that every President be a "natural born citizen". The word "born" is proof positive that the status must be present "at birth". If this were not the case, then, as stated above, the Framers would not have needed to put in a grandfather clause. "The Framers recognized that even they were not "natural born citizens" and so they wrote the grandfather clause in to allow any of them to become President. But the grandfather clause only pertains to those who were Citizens at the time of the Constitution's adoption. And so, Barack Obama is not a "natural born citizen" of the United States and neither is John McCain who was born in Panama, and neither is Roger Calero who was born in Nicaragua." All of Leo's court filings are posted on his site; click here. Barack Hussein Obama is a 'creation.' He has had so many names, no one can keep track of his real history. He refuses to release his records for Harvard and Columbia. It has been reported that Obama attended Harvard under a foreign student classification and that is the reason he refuses to open his records. An individual obtained Obama's SS registration form (selective service); click here and scroll down until you see the form. Obama reportedly traveled to Pakistan in 1980 and 1981 using an Indonesian passport. I am working on getting documentation on that. This web site presents the final, very technical report on the document produced by the Obama people in June. After studying the credentials of the individual and the analysis, I feel the case has been made the Certificate of Live Birth released by Obama's camp is a forgery.   BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, AKA BARRY SOETORO, aka Barry Obama, aka Barack Dunham, aka Barry Dunham is simply an empty husk delivered up as the messiah and answer to America's problems when he's nothing but a fake and a devout Marxist. If this constitutional issue isn't decided by either the courts or the electoral college on December 15, 2008, and Obama is sworn in, when the truth does come out, and it will, we will truly have a mess of monumental proportions. Even a pro-abortion supporter (who calls abortion murder) of Obama is now questioning why won't Obama produce a real, legal document? "In the closing weeks of the election, however, I became increasingly disturbed by the mainstream media's avoidance of forthright dealing with several controversies that had been dogging Obama — even as every flimsy rumor about Sarah Palin was being trumpeted as if it were engraved in stone on Mount Sinai. For example, I had thought for many months that the flap over Obama's birth certificate was a tempest in a teapot. But simple questions about the certificate were never resolved to my satisfaction. Thanks to their own blathering, fanatical overkill, of course, the right-wing challenges to the birth certificate never gained traction. "But Obama could have ended the entire matter months ago by publicly requesting Hawaii to issue a fresh, long-form, stamped certificate and inviting a few high profile reporters in to examine the document and photograph it. (The campaign did make the "short-form" certificate available to Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.) And why has Obama not made his university records or thesis work widely available? The passivity of the press toward Bush administration propaganda about weapons of mass destruction led the nation into the costly blunder of the Iraq war. We don't need another presidency that finds it all too easy to rely on evasion or stonewalling. I deeply admire Obama, but as a voter I don't like feeling gamed or played." What Congress and the media won't tell you My incoming email is simply more than one person can handle; I can't answer all the questions coming in on issues like social security, the IRS and so many more. This is column number 415 for NWVs. I have written thousands in almost 20 years; a huge number of them are on my CD. By the time this column is posted, I'll be well on my way to the West coast. God willing, I will return home to West Texas around December 3, 2008. Because I won't have a column for a couple of weeks, what I've done is take a half dozen of the biggest issues like health care and put together a compilation of columns. That way, in your spare time (no chuckling, please), you can use these references for research and get the truth. Also, many of my columns as well as Dr. Edwin Vieria and others are available for free on audio on my web site. Click here. You can listen on your computer while doing things around the house or download to your IPod or a CD and listen while driving or on the commute train or plane. Additionally, I have a limited selection of must view videos on my web site. Please feel free to also download those and get them out to family, colleagues and friends. Click here. America is not a democracy. Popular web sites and "progressive" sites all push for the destruction of this country when they chirp "Our democracy!" America's legal form of government is a constitutional republic. Please learn the difference and stop supporting mob rule. Fisher Ames, a founding father said: "A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way." Benjamin Rush said: "A simple democracy is the devil's own government." John Adams said: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." What can I do? is the common question. The ballot box is dead, this last election proves it beyond any doubt. The same Congress, with a whopping 17 "new" faces, will go back in in less than two months. Come January, our thrust has to be to the states as I have written about and an all out, constant assault (not violence) on the U.S. Congress. There is no other way until the final break down, and then no one can't say we the people didn't do everything the right way first. As my regular readers know, but perhaps not new readers, I always provide my source reference material. At the end of my columns are additional resources. Over almost 20 years I have learned from warriors; experts in their respective fields on all these issues. Because time is so short, I have made every effort to get the most credible and legally factual information available for you to get the truth. Unless we're all on the same LEGAL battlefield, Americans will continue to demand more failure instead of the constitutional solutions that held us true for so long — - until the special interest groups began purchasing the favors of Congress about a half century ago. We are now at the end of all the corruption as the system has rotted to near extinction. That compilation file is here: http://devvy.net/pdf/nov08/issues_columns.html.   EDITOR'S NOTE: The cartoon above is not part of the article. It was done by Joel Barbee, who describes himself as "an obsessive, compulsive, conservative cartoonist. He is addicted to life, liberty and the pursuit of fish! Of long standing." The cartoon appeared November 24, 20008 in World Net Daily, http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=81807 Contact Fred Reifenberg by email at freify@netvision.net.il. Additional images are available at http://reifyreadying.blogspot.com/ To Go To Top

WE STOP AT WHINING Posted by Zeev Shemer, November 17, 2008.

When do we give up trying to fix the world? When exactly do we realize that most of our efforts are in vain? When do we accept that some things are just beyond our reach? For years, thousands of us have been reading about the abuse of the left. We have been complaining about the corrupt leaders of Israel. The corrupt Justice system, the corrupt police force, the insane Oslo-groupies and the dirty Israeli mafia. For years we have suffered and shared the sad stories of murder, expulsion, imprisonment and abuse. We have been at many funerals together and at many memorials. At many protests and demonstrations. We share common goals, common aspirations and common concerns. Yet no matter what we do, because of our guilt-ridden non-violent approach, we always come out empty handed. We complain, we cry, we vent. But we change nothing, we affect nothing, we impress no one. We remember Ze'ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, how he ran around Europe warning Jews of the impending horrors that soon after took place. How he was met with the same disdain and distrust that most liberal Israelis feel about us. How his words went unheeded and the tragedies that fell upon six million Jews poured mercilessly upon them while Ze'ev was ostracized, humiliated, and persecuted by the very establishment that today holds hands with our enemies and destroyers. We remember when Rabbi Kahane warned us back in the 80's about the Arabs' increasing fury and unchallenged violence. How he spoke of Arabs shooting at Jews; he spoke about suicide bombers blowing up buses with school children, restaurants, and shopping malls years before it happened. How he too was met with disgusting displays of contempt. Not long after he was murdered, Rabin and Peres handed over thousands of machine guns to a new invented police force, and an army of bombers, snipers and savages began to take a tremendous toll on our people. They hear us, our left-wing opponents. Don't think they don't. But they dislike us and will continue to dislike us. We represent everything they don't want for themselves. They will never give up their power, even now that they are becoming the minority they will continue to dominate. They know that we will stop at whining. They know that the Amir incident was not exclusively our doing. They know about the mole Raviv and how the Shabak conned a group of frustrated Jews to do the unthinkable. They were conned to take the fight to the next level. So Barak, Olmert, Beilin, they know they have nothing to fear. They know they can and will continue to trample over the rights of Jews and they know that at night they can rest at ease. They know that we will never go beyond venting, beyond, crying, screaming, writing, dreaming and most of all, whining. Funny thing is, that the same contempt that the left has for us, Ahmedinajead has for them. Unfortunately for us, if their boat goes down, so do we. Ze'ev Shemer Ramat HaGolan, Israel Ze'ev Shemer is a college teacher in Israel. He holds a Master's Degree in Education and specializes in Judaic Studies and Language Arts. Ze'ev is a master of Aikido and Ju-Jitsu and teaches pre-army cadets. Contact him at zeev.shemer@yahoo.com To Go To Top

CONFISCATION OF RESIDENT'S WEAPONS & DANGER TO LIFE Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, November 17, 2008.

It is written that, IF a criminal comes to steal, he will also be ready to kill you. Then you are mandated to kill him first. One cannot risk his life or that of his family. Criminals come in all shapes, sizes and titles. As for confiscation of weapons, that started in earnest under the Yitzhak Rabin-Shimon Peres regime with the intent to disarming the settlers so that they may be driven out of their homes without resistance. Now it continues under the Olmert regime with some old, some newer traitors who will expose all of Israel's population to a reign of Terror with saturation missile attacks from improve fire bases. The text below is by Mordechai Sones; it is on the Confiscation of resident's weapons and danger to life.

To: Rabbi of Yishuv Nachaliel, HaRav Uriel Houbara, shlita: Shalom u'Vracha, We are hereby bringing before the Rav an urgent request for a ruling regarding pikuach nefesh (saving of endangered lives), detailed as follows: Because our communities and the roads leading to them are constantly surrounded by danger, a sudden army or government order to confiscate our weapons would appear calculated to signal an official willingness to place our lives and the lives of our families in greater danger. Recently, the army committed a surprise weapon confiscation that has stripped our communities of what little defenses we had. Therefore, it has become clear that there is complicity at the highest levels to abandon Judea and Samaria, including Arab attacks, targeted evacuations, and evictions of outposts and other yishuvim ("settlements" — "yishuv", sing.) to help maintain process momentum. There are other indications that a Palestinian State is planned to be announced in the coming year. In the past, Israel government officials promised they would not uproot "a single yishuv". Their betrayal of that promise is especially significant as they also stressed that they never said they would not allow the Palestinians to chase us out themselves or slaughter us in a first strike attack. Credible military eyewitnesses have reported Palestinian first strike capability within 20 minutes of every yishuv in Judea and Samaria. As the world's attention is focused on Gazan missiles, IDF counter-strikes, evictions of outposts, and Israeli political intrigue, the coming abandonment of Judea and Samaria is being obscured in a craftily orchestrated international protest against Israel's building of the wall — as if it were an Israeli trick for pushing back the Green Line here and there — and not an instrument to facilitate the carving off and eviction of the Jewish communities that should be protesting the fact that they happen to be on the "wrong side" of the wall to make a Jew-free Palestine. All of the nine major tyrannical regimes of the twentieth century confiscated the weapons of the populations they planned to murder or terrorize en masse. The nine regimes are listed below: Ottoman Turkey USSR Nazi Germany China Guatemala Uganda Cambodia Rwanda Yugoslavia (the former) Of the nine regimes, not one announced its intentions to its victims. All the victims were deliberately fed disinformation until the last minute in order to induce them not to resist. This may explain the transparent story repeated by each ravshatz (Civilian Security Coordinator and IDF-Settlement Liaison), including our own, Mr. Ilan ben-Shabbat, that our weapons are "not actually being confiscated; they will merely be under lock and key with me in the gun rooms, to be distributed in an emergency". 1 Although the IDF often promises weapons to be made available to the Yeshans (Judeans and Samarians) once a PA onslaught is imminent, the order to release and distribute such weapons would depend on an Israeli cabinet decision. A PA first strike's chances of success would increase if a handful of IDF officers issued orders to the yishuv ravshatzim not to resist, but to evacuate. Such orders would have to come from the top, of course, i.e. the Prime Minister him/herself. Knowledgeable disinformers may in fact not know the government's full strategic picture of implementing the betrayal, but have been briefed in meetings with IDF officials on talking points, and guided on what lies to put out facilitating such a betrayal to ensure maximum surprise and shock value against those being disarmed and attacked. As a matter of fact, six years ago, this same Ilan ben-Shabbat, then able to speak the truth without the constraints imposed by his paymasters in the army, went on record in the community's weekly newsletter more than once, saying: "Weekly Newsletter, Yishuv Nachaliel; Parshas B'Ha'aloscho (and also) Shelach, year 2002: "Message from the Ravshatz: "In light of the current situation and after investigations that were performed after all the infiltrations into yishuvim in the past months, the one who succeeded in stopping or significantly delaying the terrorists were those who encountered them first and were carrying their weapons. In light of this, I request of all those in the yishuv who have guns to always carry their weapon with them at any given time. I know that this is not easy but doing this could save lives. "Shabbat Shalom, Ilan" The Ravshatzim are therefore stuck in the middle; they have a difficult job, they are loyal citizens, and they are the constant target of kvetching instead of meaningful community support. This will only undermine their ability to stand up for you to make the clear and right decision at the vital moment. The government's goal is the successful evacuation of Judea and Samaria, with as little casualties (to themselves) as possible. The methods they are using against us to achieve this goal: Planting false hopes for Yeshans to cling to and postpone plans to resist; manufactured sense of hopelessness; appearance of fait accompli when it has not yet occurred; betrayal of trust; dividing yishuvim against each other; cut off support from rest of Israel; deception; element of surprise; and, shock of betrayal - are all designed to produce one key end-result: Jewish paralysis to allow for the swift collapse of Judea and Samaria. Meanwhile, on the frantic night of the eviction, several contradictory thoughts, emotions, pressures, and confused loyalties will have been calculated to create extreme psychological stress and paralysis for each ravshatz: A phase of sustained killings, terror, and other harassment which is gradually demoralizing the general population and especially the ravshatzim and their families for years; Sudden intensification of such incidents; The ravshatz's knowledge of the yishuv's lack of independent defensive capability; Recent orders from the IDF to leave; Fresh demonization of "settlers" in Israeli and world media with newly invented stories of Jews caught planning attacks or atrocities under the auspices of the GSS "Road Safety Committee"; At a certain point of peak violence and stress the ravshatz may receive notification that truck convoys have been pre-positioned near the yishuv to evacuate families as Palestinian Authority armored vehicles advance toward yishuvim, as agreed upon in the Oslo Accords2, is coordinated with the IDF retreat to clear the way for Palestinian declaration of statehood. These same techniques used successfully to betray and abandon the SLA in Lebanon, and the residents of both Yamit and Gaza, are being used against us in Judea and Samaria. SLA Commanders could have saved Southern Lebanon but were given orders from the IDF to betray and abandon their positions. The ravshatzim may be given similar instructions in face of PA attack. Just like the one night when SLA platoon commanders could have saved the SLA, so will the Ravshatzim have a brief chance to save Yesha (Judea and Samaria). Under these circumstances, the ravshatzim will unfortunately be the ones upon whose shoulders will rest the terrible decision if our community will survive as a community after a sudden stroke of eviction or abandonment. The day may come when the ravshatzim will have to give the orders to open the gun rooms and help — or at least allow — the Yeshans to engage in effective nonlethal resistance against an IDF-led eviction, or effective lethal resistance against an Arab first strike. We must address these issues now, to ensure the survival of your community and Judea/Samaria as a whole — for as we know, Judea and Samaria must stand together — lest Israel fall. Whether your ravshatz will stand with the group for abandonment and betrayal, or stand with us for the rescue of our yishuv and our country has become the question. We are not the ones forcing this question. The diplomatic appeasement by our government to many other nations sworn to our national destruction has created this question. For us the only question remains either to surrender, or to draw the line with our lives rather than going like sheep to the slaughter. Because we Yeshans have not been providing the answer, the answer is being made FOR us, which will further demoralize us. So unless we draw the line, it will be drawn for us in an indefensible way. If we don't draw this line now, there are no other lines for Israel to draw. The world recognizes people's right to defend their homes against aggression, and once they fail to defend those homes, the world also recognizes that they have forfeited the legitimacy of their claims to them. In 1948 the Arabs were told by their own armies to run and they ran. By the world's criteria, they lost their claim to the land when they ran. Yeshan's willingness and preparation to defend themselves against lethal or nonlethal attempts to evacuate them is Yesha's key to survival at this point. The amount of time people in yishuvim will have to hold will be temporary — it will be limited. The Iraqi army will not come against us — PA forces plus PA eviction units will have limited time. If the first strike/eviction against yishuvim is not a fait accompli within a day or two, Yeshans still wavering whether to evacuate may begin finding the courage to resist. The key factors affecting yishuv survival are the weapons, training, and organization to withstand an assault; the food, fuel, and ammunition to outlast a siege; plus an organized system to provide early warning for when an assault would take place. We are asking the Rabbis to present this information to the ravshatzim, and to make clear to them that the laws of Pikuach Nefesh obligate them to commit to their historical role in saving Judea and Samaria. When the mad night of betrayal comes, they will be the ones who can empower, or at least not interfere in Yeshans self-defense. And effective Yeshan self-defense is what it will take to buy that crucial 24-48 hours for Israel to reject the policy of acquiescence in abandonment. While the battle to collapse the abandonment policy continues, those inside the yishuvim already understanding the threat can take practical countermeasures. If the Yeshans do not summon the courage to take effective countermeasures against eviction, they will have acquiesced in their own betrayal by default. And in the eyes of the world we will have forfeited the moral right to our homes and our land. Because the hills on which our homes sit are the strategic backbone of Israel, our obligation to defend them goes beyond our obligation to protect our property from theft. The survival of Israel itself is at stake. Despite official attempts to confiscate and limit the weapons and ammunition available to yishuvim, each yishuv still has more weapons, ammunition, and trained personnel on hand than was available for the heroes of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In the historical sense, it was their heroism that placed these resources in our hands, and it would be immoral for us to squander them in paralysis when Israel's own survival is at stake. But by exposing the covert eviction preparations, we can diminish the political support for the abandonment of Yesha and eliminate the element of surprise. If we adopt effective countermeasures, we can neutralize the threat of eviction. If all the Rabbis will cooperate, with full support of the community, in ruling thus to all the Security Coordinators, it will make it much easier for each ravshatz to know that he is not alone — on the contrary, many ravshatzim are extremely concerned about the situation — we understand the difficult situation in which they have been placed by the government, and we wish to strengthen and encourage them to do the right thing. Therefore, we are urgently requesting an Halachic ruling from the Honorable Rabbis based on the unbiased, unbribed (former) testimony of the greatest yishuv security experts there are — the ravshatzim themselves — that confiscation of our weapons constitutes a grave and immediate danger to the people of our communities, both within the yishuv and on the roads, and pikuach nefesh overrides everything. We therefore request that the Rabbis rule that as a matter of pikuch nefesh, the ravshatzim must immediately return all the weapons and equipment to all the residents like before, and to inform the army that they cannot be party to a deed that will endanger all the families who rely on them and trust in them, because it is the ravshatz's job is to protect them. With much respect, Mordechai Sones sones@barak.net.il cc.: Rabbis of the Jewish People in Every Place Residents of Judea and Samaria 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 gwinston@gwinstonglobal.org To Go To Top

CHIEF EDITOR AT IRAQI TV CHANNEL: ALL THE SLOGANS WE WERE RAISED ON WERE LIES Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, November 17, 2008.

This is from MEMRI, Iran/Reform Project, Special Dispatch | No. 2118 | November 17, 2008.

In an article published in the liberal Arab e-journal Elaph, Muhammad al-Ta'i, chief editor at the Basra-based liberal Iraqi satellite TV channel Al-Fayhaa, writes that the slogans promoted by Arab dictatorships have left their citizens traumatized. He concludes his article with a plea to leave slogans aside and to consider the true common good. Following are excerpts from the article:(1) "Give a Dirham and Kill a Zionist!" "'Give a dirham and kill a Zionist!' This slogan used to be inscribed on the walls of elementary schools in Iraq, like the Al-Mirbad Elementary School in Al-Khandaq and the Al-Futuwwa School in the Al-Jumhuriyya neighborhood in Basra. "When I was young, I used to collect the requested dirham — which was 50 fils — by putting aside 10 fils each day from my daily allowance. This way, at the end of the week, I could give [the dirham] to the school, after I had deprived myself of eating the tasty sweet called burmah, settling for buying half a sambusa, or bread and chickpea soup for just 15 fils, in my attempt to implement the 'nationalist' slogan! "When we grew up, learned, and became aware of the true facts, it didn't take long before we discovered that this 'nationalist' slogan, like the others, was a lie. And so were the 'Nationalist and Pan-Arab Education' books that were distributed by the ruling Ba'th party in order to play with our feelings and emotions and to steal our dirhams — just as [the Ba'th party] stole our oil for four decades, while the pockets of those who proposed and inscribed the slogan were lined with our dirhams!" "Hundreds of Thousands of Iraqis Disappeared Because of 'Love of Nation'" "The terms 'collaboration,' '[dirty] machinations,' 'treason,' and, [on the other hand,] 'the good of the nation,' 'nationalism.' and 'love of nation' used to be repeated constantly, with only the government knowing the standards and principles that explained and governed them — the same government that sacrificed the entire people in the name of defending national unity. This is what the leader of the previous regime did in his wars in the name of nationalism — those 'nationalist' wars that were nothing but defense of the dictator's throne. "Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis disappeared because of 'love of nation,' and millions emigrated in an attempt to save themselves from the dictator's 'nationalism.' "This scene is still being repeated in many Arab countries. We would see the 'citizens' of these countries executed, arrested, and tortured for treason because they had (supposedly) made contact with foreigners. At the same time, the state-owned newspapers in those countries would write about the government's 'nationalism' when they achieved some diplomatic victory — through a deal with that same country that [ordinary] citizens had been executed for having contacts with..." People Were Left with "A Restricted Manner of Thinking Based on a Huge Number of Slogans" "All of these contradictions left the citizens everywhere — and especially in Iraq — in a state of confusion. These contradictions cast them into a cultural crisis and a restricted manner of thinking based on a huge number of slogans... "Perhaps the issue of accords with [other] states is the best example of this — especially those accords or understandings with the countries called 'colonialist,' or described as 'imperialist.' In general, these accords were depicted as treason, or those who signed them were accused of being foreign agents. "This left the traumatized citizens with the following questions: Should the government of Qatar be considered treasonous and a collaborator in the eyes of its people, given that the U.S. has its largest military base there? Should Saudi Arabia be considered a collaborator because of its excellent and warm strategic relations with the U.S.? Is Jordan a collaborator and a traitor because of its direct relations with Israel? And should the same be applied to Egypt, the land of Arabism?... "It is difficult to get clear answers to these questions, [given] the accumulation of slogans and the traumas the citizens receive from their governments. Thus, the citizen is afflicted with despondency, hopelessness, and terminological confusion — like between 'nationalism' and 'collaboration,' or between 'sovereignty' and 'subservience [to foreign powers].' "In this way, talk about sovereignty becomes preferable to attaining the good of the nation and of the citizens. The traumatized citizen does not know that [true] subservience [to foreign powers] is when his children starve and die of illness and become mentally disturbed due to poverty — while he walks on a sea of oil! And he doesn't know that [true] independence is improved living standards, good education, and free quality health care... "Let us leave the slogans to those who want to shout them repeatedly, so we can get back the dirhams that were stolen in the name of the slogan with which I opened this article — and likewise the dinars that are stolen every day under various designations and terms that are not much different than that slogan. "This is just a call to think, far removed from the slogans and from the political and psychological traumas that the dictatorships produced [in the past] — and are still producing, to this day." Endnote: (1) www.elaph.com, November 11, 2008; www.alfayhaa.tv, November 10, 2008. Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com To Go To Top

SOME PEACE. PM SPOKESMAN REGEV TO IMRA: PALESTINIANS CAN DO EVERYTHING BUT SHOOT Posted by Dr. Aaron Lerner, November 17, 2008.

Livni grossly misrepresents deal.   "The rules regarding Gaza are clear: If there is quiet and the time is not used [by terrorists] to prepare the next attack, Israel will keep the situation calm. Foreign Minister Livni — speaking on 15 November 2008 Livni: We will not hesitate to use force in Gaza if necessary — JPost.com Staff, The Jerusalem Post. Nov. 15, 2008 (www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1226404739474&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull) Question: Which is worse? A. Livni is so clueless about the agreement that she thinks it does not allow the terrorists to prepare to attack Israel. or B. Livni knows she can get away with misrepresenting an incredibly reckless and irresponsible understanding because she knows that the Israeli media, out of a poisonous combination of support for her and laziness won't point it out.

IMRA asked Mark Regev, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Foreign Press Adviser, the following question in English, on 19 June 2009 five hours after the "calm understanding" went into effect in the Gaza Strip: Is the manufacture and assembly of rockets prohibited in the Gaza Strip during the calm period and if so is this an actionable violation — Israel has the right to act against such activity? Mark Regev called back shortly later with the following statement: The understanding with Egypt talks explicitly about the total cessation of hostile fire from Gaza into Israel and about an arms embargo on Hamas. That's what the agreement explicitly relates to. IMRA: So they can run their rocket production and assembly lines inside the Gaza Strip without it being a violation of the agreement. Regev: Once again. They cannot import any military equipment into Gaza for the production process. IMRA: Right. But whatever they have at hand they can use to manufacture and assemble. Regev: They cannot shoot it. IMRA: They can't shoot it. Very good. Now they can also set up bunkers. They can bring in bulldozers and equipment and set up bunkers lining the border with Israel and build tunnels as long as they don't go through them and as long as they don't shoot from them Right? Regev: They cannot shoot at us. IMRA: They can't shoot but they can do everything else. Regev: That's what the agreement is about. You are correct. IMRA: Thank you very much. Regev: Always a pleasure sir. Dr. Aaron Lerner is Director of IMRA, Independent Media Review and Analysis, an Israel-based news organization which provides an extensive digest of media, polls and significant interviews and events relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Its website address is http://www.imra.org.il Write him at imra@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

HOW DUMB DOES PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA THINK WE ARE? Posted by Shaul and Aviva Ceder, November 17, 2008.

This was written by Diana West and it appeared today in Jewish World Review (www.JewishWorldReview.com).

Let me rephrase the question: Are we as dumb as Obama thinks? Before answering, let me lay out the background that prompts the question. Last spring, back when Hamas, the Muslim-Brotherhood-linked terror group dedicated to the annihilation of Israel through jihad, endorsed the Obama's candidacy, the young Democratic candidate was still assumed to falter when it came to support for Israel, the United States' greatest and most beleaguered ally in the Middle East. Obama may well have rejected Hamas's support, but those were still the days when the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and sidekick Lewis Farrakhan were making at least some news for both their anti-Semitic, anti-white views and their support for Obama. Those were also still the days before Hillary Clinton's ship of state completely foundered and sunk. Obama did a few things to pivot off the Hamas endorsement and his alliance with the Farrakhan-connected Wright, whose church newsletter, don't forget, actually made room for terrorist propaganda by Hamas chieftain Mousa Abu Marzook. Obama spoke of his "unshakeable commitment" to Israel, and when John McCain noted that Obama was Hamas' choice for president, Obama called that fact a "smear" and said McCain had "lost his bearings." Obama also publicly criticized former President Jimmy Carter for meeting, also last spring, with leaders of Hamas, a rancid charade complete with hugs for living terrorists, and red roses for dead ones (at Arafat's grave). Obama declared, "I have a fundamental difference with President Carter and disagree with his decision to meet with Hamas. We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel's destruction. We should only sit down with Hamas if they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist and abide by past agreements." Well, Hamas hasn't renounced terrorism, recognized Israel's right to exist or abided by past agreements — the three conditions for parleying with Hamas as enumerated by the "international community." This week, however, top Hamas adviser Ahmed Yousef — the same Hamas official who endorsed Obama last spring — revealed to an Arabic newspaper that during the presidential campaign, aides to Obama were already, as Obama might say, "sitting down" with members of the terrorist organization. "We were in contact with a number of Obama's aides through the Internet, and later met with some of them in Gaza, but they advised us not to come out with any statements, as they may have a negative effect on his election campaign," Yousef told the London-based Al-Hayat. According to Yousef, Al-Hayat reported, Hamas's contact with Obama's advisers was "ongoing, adding that he was still on good terms with some of the aides he had befriended while residing in the U.S." How interesting. "While residing in the U.S." — that is, before fleeing the country to avoid arrest on terror-related charges in 2005 — Yousef worked for the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), a Muslim-Brotherhood-affiliated organization founded by Hamas chieftain Mousa Abu Marzook (the same Marzook whose propaganda appeared in Wright's church newsletter) that served as the political command of Hamas in the United States. Along with an interlocking network of Islamic organizations, the UASR has since been designated by the U.S. government as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial. This raises a fascinating question. Which aides to the next president of the United States might Yousef have "befriended" while "residing in the U.S." - in other words, while Yousef was serving Hamas? One possibility is Robert Malley, the pro-Hamas, Arafat-revering on-again/off-again Obama adviser who heads the Middle East program at the George Soros-funded International Crisis Group (ICG). Last spring, Malley "severed his ties to the Obama campaign," as The New York Times put it, after learning that "the Times of London was preparing to publish an article disclosing direct contacts he had with Hamas." At that time, Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said: "He has no formal role in the campaign and will not play one in the future." Really? Last month, Forbes.com reported on Malley's October meeting with Syrian strongman Bashar Al-Assad, noting that Syrian government-controlled media — which, in one case referred to Malley as "a senior adviser to Barack Obama" — reported that discussions included Malley's explanation of "the role ICG would have in briefing the new U.S. administration about Syria's important role in the region." ICG, not incidentally, is home to assorted luminaries of the notably anti-Israel persuasion, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, retired Gen. Wesley Clark (who called U.S. support for Israel's 2006 war against Hezbollah a "serious mistake"), and another on-off Obama adviser, Samantha Powers. Naturally, there's more. This week, Middle East Newsline reported that President-elect Obama recently sent "senior foreign policy adviser" Malley to Egypt and Syria where he "relayed a pledge from Obama that the United States would seek to enhance relations with Cairo as well as reconcile with Damascus." According to an unnamed aide, "The tenor of the messages was that the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests." No denial so far from the Obama administration-in-waiting on this report, which is beginning to bounce around Israeli media. As for the Hamas story about secret contact with Obama aides, an Obama spokesman recently told The Jerusalem Post, "This assertion is just plain false." Time will tell, of course. There is no doubletalk fancy enough to disguise a new era of accommodation of jihad terrorists bent on Israel's — and the West's — destruction, if that is the era we are heading into. Or is there? This takes me back to my original question: Are we as dumb as Obama thinks we are? I'm afraid — really afraid — we are. Contact Shaul and Aviva Ceder at ceder@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS — ISRAEL'S OVERHEAD PHENOMENON? Posted by Ari Bussel, November 17, 2008.

The focus of Israel's Prime Minister's Conference on Export and International Cooperation held in Jerusalem last week was on Israel's "secret weapon" — innovation, with a particular emphasis on water and alternative energies — and on the financial crisis which has just started to affect Israel. Much like the United States, Israel is unprepared. It faces a spiraling down effect due to the global financial collapse, all reinforced by the winds of an impeding war now blowing. Only ten days ago most experts and commentators in Israel dismissed the idea that the global financial crisis will ever reach Israel. "The banks are strong, they are solid," it was said, "we did not allow rampant lending." Israel, the superpower, was beyond (or below) reach, it was "immune." This miraculous protection lasted only a few days, exposing those too sure of themselves. The tone then changed drastically, with opposite ways proposed to address the crisis now inevitably affecting — rather than skipping — Israel: act now or wait and act later when the situation deteriorates even further. One camp claims we need to be ready, but not to use the toolbox at the disposal of the decision makers quite yet. Increased investment in infrastructure projects is urged, and everyone is called to detach themselves from the freeze of inaction due to the upcoming elections in three months' time. Expectations yield a far greater snowball effect than is desired or can be handled, it is argued, resulting in a call for calm in view of the impeding storm. The other camp says that an extreme situation requires immediate, extreme measures. It urges immediate approval of the stalled (the Government is entangled arguing about NIS500m, about $150m). Individuals and small companies, the cells that drive the economy, should be assisted. Any bureaucratic obstacle should immediately be eliminated, and implementation of projects that are in the planning and evaluation stages should be commenced without delay. The first approach seems to mimic the drastic steps taken to counter the Great Depression of 1929. These efforts may be useful long term efforts, but their relevance to the current crisis will prove minimal. Interestingly, it was WWII that diverted all attention to an intense war effort and helped the United States exit the aftermath of the Great Depression. The second approach calls to do the right things that need to be done any way. Eliminate bureaucracy, focus on doing, not bickering, have a long term view rather than a very short one. While necessary, these steps are insufficient to resolve the crisis. Less than two weeks ago we were very sure that the global financial crisis will pass over our heads, leaving us unaffected. The first layoffs and 800 pink slips were an indication of what is to come. Looking back at statements made just days ago, we realize how foolish we were. Let us not make the same mistake with the intensified threats all around us. Lessons from the USA In the United States, just a month ago, Congress rejected at the beginning of the week allocating $700b to a rescue plan, only to approve it at the end of the same week after members of Congress were told that rejecting this emergency funding plan will most likely necessitate activating the National Guard stationed in major cities throughout the USA to ensure peace and order. Given the doomsday scenario; the funding was approved. Two things happened during that week: Initially when there was a public outcry, the value of the Dow Jones Industrial index lost a trillion dollars in one day. [In the weeks that followed, another two to three trillion were wiped off.] So the short term deliberation to save 0.7 trillion cost, at a hand wave of the free market forces, the full sum and then some 40% more. The second interesting occurrence that week was that the approval — when finally reached — was already discounted by the market that viewed it "insufficient" and wanted more. There was no end for an insatiable hunger, the very same uncontrollable greed which dominated the market for the past several decades. A remedy is not pouring money into the marketplace to quest the thirst of those greedy brokers-banks-corporations that continue to make profits beyond anyone's expectations. After all, it is always Other People's Money on the line, not theirs. What is required is the utter destruction of the system, from its very foundations. We are about to suffer greatly, whichever course of action is followed. Thus, let us follow a path that will enable us to emerge better, leaner, more independent and free for the next century from the same root causes. The remedy is not intended for the virus that controls the body but for the patient. Lacking this course of action, the virus will continue to exist. Who is the patient? You and me, our friends and neighbors, the person answering the phone when we call for service or the teller greeting us at the doctor's office. Our life savings have diminished in value tremendously. Our future income will be taxed to repay all these trillions of "rescue dollars" committed to the benefit of those who brought about the global collapse. Our credit will be cut, stopped, eliminated. What would we do when our credit cards are not honored any more? What is one to do when there is no money for rent and food? Help should be for individuals, family owned and small- and medium size companies. They are the engine that makes the economy go round. They go to work, innovate, create, serve the country. They raise families and take care of their parents and grandparents. They depend on each other. They are us and we are the promise of a better tomorrow. The Price of Gasoline and the Automotive Industry Let us look at two culprits and use the same tools we utilized before: short vs. long term action and action geared at correcting the problem and helping those affected, not at those who created the situation in the first place and are responsible for it. When the price of gas in the USA went from about $1 to $2 we were all chocking. It was prophesized that if the price reaches $2.5, everyone will stop driving. We continued past that ceiling to $3, then $3.5 and $4. When the price reached $4.5 in Los Angeles, people stepped back. Traffic at the center of Los Angeles was still heavy as always, but the freeways were emptier. $4.5 was an upper limit. We transferred our income and savings to the oil companies which kept hording billions in net profits every day. The US bank accounts were transferred en masse to the nations that control the natural reserves of oil and natural gas. Here and there the following notion had surfaced: Every time we filled up a tank of gas, we supported those intent on destroying us, paying for future terrorist activities against the USA. The notion did not leave a lasting impression. Instead of focusing on relieving our dependency on oil, the government was unconcerned. Texas had very close ties with the President, so did the Saudis. The government should have stepped it to nationalize all supply of oil, regulate the "free market forces" which really were neither "market" nor "free," and find alternative sources of energy to lessen our dependency. None was done. Now that the price of oil dropped back to below $60 a barrel, any incentive to follow such a plan dissipated. Another major culprit is the automobile industry. The industry has been announcing losses in the tens of billions per quarter, begging at times, threatening other times, that if it does not receive an immediate injection of tens of billions of dollars, another doomsday scenario will follow. While I think of myself an educated person, I do not know to explain how can a company lose billions per quarter. CLOSE THE COMPANY, AND DO IT NOW. Instead, the automobile industry went to the US Government and asked for more, then more and now even more cash. Is this the solution? Our second lesson teaches it is not. Eliminate those who are power- or money hungry, for in the greed race that cannot be satisfied, they are the cause of the problem. It is the automobile industry that could have taken some "small change," say a few hundred million dollars, and invest this amount into R&D. Alternatives to gasoline were available a hundred years ago and were buried by the automotive industry not-to-see-the-light-of-day. The technologies exist. We must rid ourselves of our dependency on foreign oil and oil in general, and the time to do so has already past, so we live on borrowed time. If money is to be poured (in the form of billion of dollars), let it be used toward a 2008 Manhattan Project. Who knows what we may find or create?!? Paying the Price and Preparing for Hardships of the Near Future Let us be clear: The financial crisis will affect every one of us, wherever we are. We must get ready now. People who have no jobs cannot afford to drive and have no money to pay for basic necessities such as food, medicine, basic clothing and a roof over their heads. These people are us, and we have to prepare now to take care of ourselves in the months and years to come. These would be very difficult times, but we will find the strength from within to face the challenges and prevail. The pioneering spirit of the United States will once again surface, and working together, we will emerge a better society, victorious. The time to start preparing is now, saving every penny of all these billions which are being thrown around as if there is a never-ending stream, abundance of cheap money. Our focus will have to be on two segments of the population: those who cannot take care of themselves and those that need to be taught so they can continue and become our future. Education will have to be revamped, reworked, recreated. Basic knowledge, basic values, all that has been ignored, forgotten or not properly taught will have to come into being again, and we will prevail — there is no other choice. The financial crisis, a result of the complete collapse of responsibility at all levels — the personal, corporate and Wall Street — has now affected all those who participated in the decades-long orgy. The time to pay the dues has arrived. It was not that many years ago that business schools throughout the USA started teaching ethics in the workplace. The trigger was a pointed finger at their graduates who were so blind sighted by money and power, they forgot the most basic ethics. Too little, too late, as it was the very same business schools who failed to produce responsible managers in the first place. GREED was the driving force and when accompanied with NO RESPONSIBILITY, it thrived. Continuing to feed this cycle is the wrong way to go. Israel — Closing a Full Circle In such trying times, either we find an inner strength as a society to protect the dignity of human beings, or we would lose semblance of humanity and become animals. When people hurt, animalistic tendencies surface, resulting in hatred, racism and bigotry becoming rampant. With these, anti-Semitism — already strong and flourishing — will explode, attacking Jews throughout the world. We close a full circle and return to the Jewish Homeland, Israel, the only home and shelter for the Jews. Israel, the World's Compass, the constant focus of the World's attention, fulfills many purposes. Its role as a safe haven must not be minimized. It is the one place held to a higher standard because we deal with it all the time, from the Los Angeles Times front page articles every morning through associating it with anything that happens around the world. Israel is more than a country, it is an idea of a better time, of a far away place of science and technology and literature and arts and music, of miracles not yet fathomed and history that binds humanity. Israel, thus, is an idea that is cherished and hated simultaneously. Israel is us, a light for the nations. It must be protected and it must prevail. As a doomsday scenario is fast approaching, the storm forces are gathering, the first to suffer will be the weak, then the Jews. As we close the first decade of the 21st Century, with a modern State of Israel, we must realize the importance of a strong Israel, to itself, to the Jews of the Diaspora and to the world. Then we must do all we can to protect it, thus protecting ourselves. Reporting from Israel, Ari Bussel Contact Ari Bussel at aribussel@gmail.com and visit his website: http://web.me.com/bussel/Site/ISRAEL/ISRAEL.html To Go To Top

FIND HEBREW WRITING FROM KING DAVID'S TIME; NORWAY FINANCES PA JEW-HATE; PERES: IGNORE REALITY; LEFT'S DOUBLE STANDARD Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 17, 2008.

FIND HEBREW WRITING FROM KING DAVID'S TIME A letter about government, in primitive Hebrew, was found on a shard near the Elah Valley, site of the David-and-Goliath encounter. It was written more than 3,000 years ago, at the time of King David (Arutz-7, 10/31). NORWAY FINANCES P.A. JEW-HATE To avoid P.A. embezzlement, Norway directly finances the P.A. media, controlled by Abbas, himself. Norway's Foreign Minister said that this media rarely broadcasts bigotry against Israel, and that the P.A. seeks peace with Israel. Palestinian Media Watch finds P.A. incitement against Israel at its peak. That media almost constantly denies Israel's existence and defames the Jewish people. Hundreds of maps in the newspapers and on TV label Israel's cities, such as Haifa and Safed, "occupied." This year, P.A. newspapers glorified every murderer of Jews as a "martyr." Dozens of shows, especially children's programs, deny Israel's existence. [The people accept their indoctrination. Then how can they be called innocent and peace-loving?] Here are some examples. "PA officials and others have been quoted in official Fatah-controlled media accusing Israel of deliberately infecting Arabs with AIDS, of spreading drugs within Arab areas, of murdering babies and planning to destroy the Al-Aksa mosque located on the Temple Mount. " P.A. newspapers accused "Israeli settlers of bringing cases full of rats to Jerusalem's Old City and releasing them in Arab neighborhoods. The rats are unusually large and ferocious, and are immune to poison. The idea is, to "force Arabs from Jerusalem." [How could Jews move in? The rats would spread, too!] "Two P.A. newspapers and TV accused "Zionists of lining Arabs up in front of death pits and shooting them, of burning Arabs alive, of forcing Arabs to work in labor camps and of running a Nazi death-camp type 'selection' in which Arabs were chosen for death or deportation." No evidence presented (Arutz-7, 10/31). Of course not, it's fabricated to make the Israelis seem like Nazis. TERRORIST RUNS FOR ISRAELI CITY COUNCIL A woman served a prison sentence for failing to inform authorities of a terrorist attack. Belonging to the cell, she had helped suggest civilian targets. Her term ended, she is running for the City Council of Sakhnin, in Israel. She declares herself proved capable of handling herself [as a terrorist.] Her Party, Hadash, thinks recommending targets for terrorism is commendable (IMRA, 11/1). Terrorists should lose their citizens' and residency rights. PERES: IGNORE REALITY He recently said, ""Peace is like love. In order to love you must close your eyes and open your heart." He made the same statement other times. He does close his eyes to the reality of Islamic Jew-hate (IMRA, 11/1). So does the Israeli government. While it closes its eyes, its people get murdered. HOW THE ARABS CAN AFFORD ARMS Russia has canceled billions of dollars of Libyan debt to it, in return for Libya's promise to buy Russian arms. Libya hasn't bought any yet, but it offered its space as a port for the Russian Navy (IMRA, 11/1). Russia canceled billions of dollars of Syrian debt, and now sells arms to Syria. When Syria was heavily in debt, short-sighted Israeli strategists cited that debt and Syria's poor economy as the basis for declaring Syria no longer a strategic menace to Israel. Dr. Aaron Lerner said that conditions change, the strategists were myopic. He was right. The US canceled Egypt's multi-billion dollar debt to it, though it was an aggressor (but not Israel's). It has given Egypt $60 billion, with which Egypt built a first class military. With that $60 billion, we could have had enough troops in Iraq. Iran arms Hizbullah, if not also Syria. S. Arabia has transferred some of its arms to other Arab states. All for a primitive ideology of warfare that the planet cannot sustain. EARLY ZIONISTS ON THE LOCAL ARABS The anti-Zionist "new historians" quote some Zionists' dairies out of context to make it seem that they wanted to expel the Arabs. In the Middle East Quarterly, Prof. Judea Pearl quotes in context and fully from early Zionist pamphlets and public speeches on the subject by Ben-Gurion, Jabotinsky, Sokolov, and Chaim Weizmann. They said that the Arabs must be respected and not ejected. Ben-Gurion chided a European Jew who thought the Arabs should be deported (MEForum, 10/31). But the Arabs rejected living in peace with the Jews. They tried and still try to expel and exterminate the Jews. Therefore, the well-meaning tolerance of the early Zionists has been proved counter-productive. It must be abandoned, both for Jewish survival and for preservation of Jewish self-determination and sovereignty. It is time to get the Arabs out of the country. LIVNI PROTESTS DECISION TO LET OLMERT NEGOTIATE Israeli law supposedly forbids interim regimes from making basic commitments. What is more basic than negotiating territorial give-away for the hope of peace? Nevertheless, the Attorney-General ruled that this law does not apply to negotiation. Foreign Min. Livni, who hopes to replace PM Olmert after the coming elections, protested against the Attorney-General's ruling. She wants to arrange the give-away, herself (IMRA, 11/2). The solution is simple. She and MK Netanyahu should declare themselves not bound by concessions of a government that so lost national confidence as to have to resign under threat of indictments. POOR ASSESSMENT OF P.A. FORCES An update on the status of P.A. forces in Judea-Samaria dealt with Israel's goal for it and only one of the risks those forces pose to Israel. The update found that the P.A. forces reduced ordinary crime but did not root out terrorism. Rooting out terrorism is the goal of the Road Map and Oslo. Arming the P.A. poses the risk of those arms falling into the hands of Hamas terrorists. The assessment omits the other major risk. That is the risk of the P.A. directing those forces against Israel. Abbas has warned that if he doesn't get what he wants from negotiations, those forces that Israel authorized and the US trained and armed would turn those arms on Israel. He demands what would destroy Israel, so he is not likely to get what he wants. That means war (IMRA, 11/1). Most P.A. troops are terrorists. Their arms already are in the hands of terrorists. DIPLOMATS TO SAIL TO GAZA? The travel agents seeking to break Israel's blockade of Gaza, announced intent to bring a shipload of diplomats there (IMRA, 11/1). After Israel let three ships through, anti-Israel diplomats find Israel too afraid to stop anybody, so they are going, too. Israel needs a pro-Israel policy. WHAT DO MUSLIMS THINK OF THE U.S.? A Saudi prince claims that most Muslims believe that the US wants to destroy Islam (IMRA, 11/2). Do they? How do they adopt such nonsense? America doesn't defend itself enough from the Islamists, aids terrorists in P.A., etc.. ISRAEL TIED UP IN SEMI-CIVIL WAR? The Israeli Left is demanding detention of right-wingers for non-existent, exaggerated, or provocateurs' threats. The exaggeration is used to defame all settlers and religious Jews. The Left gives almost no outrage nor coverage for an Arab party that nominated a terrorist as candidate and praised her for having identified where terrorists could bomb the most Israelis (IMRA, 11/2). The Left started by setting thugs on right-wing opponents, sabotaged the escape of Soviet Jewry, informed on Jewish rebels who helped end British occupation, destroyed Moroccan immigrants' tie to Judaism, and appeases the Arab enemy. It monopolizes the media and uses dictatorial tactics and defamation. ISRAELI ELECTION CAMPAIGN Foreign Min. Livni calls the election a referendum on negotiations. She declined to specify the basic goals of her negotiations. How are voters supposed to vote in a referendum without being offered choices? Many prominent figures are running in Likud primaries (IMRA, 11/3). They must sense victory. LEFT'S DOUBLE STANDARD Israeli law forbids a transition government from undertaking significant action. Thus the Supreme Court recently ruled that caretaker PM Olmert may not appoint judges. Attorney-Gen. Mazuz, however, ruled that Olmert may negotiate the cession of the Golan Heights and Israel's water supply there. Mazuz rationalized that appointing judges is legal action, whereas negotiating is political and therefore permitted. [Why?] This is a double standard. The Left, including Mazuz, permits anything that advances its agenda of appeasement of the Arabs or of multi-culturalism, etc.. When outgoing PM Netanyahu closed the illegal PLO office in Jerusalem, he was enforcing the law, taking a legal action, but the Supreme Court issued an injunction against him. That is because his action was contrary to leftist ideology of appeasement. Never mind the law, the Left puts appeasement first. "...the Left uses the rhetoric of democracy not to advance liberal norms and the rule of law in society but to destroy them both in the interest of advancing the Left's political interests." Education Min. Tamir champions women's rights, but refuses to criticize Arab clitoridectomy as barbaric, because she puts multi-culturalism first. Likewise, the US Left, including other women, criticized Gov. Palin over her femininity, just like sexists. They abandoned feminist values in order to oppose the Republican. Wasn't there enough to discuss about her record in Alaska? (Caroline Glick in IMRA, 11/3.) 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 To Go To Top

AND THEN ALONG CAME "MOHAMMED DENIAL" Posted by Steven Plaut, November 17, 2008.

Getting tired of Moslems who claim there was never a Jewish Temple up on the Temple Mount? Who insist that all the Jews are just Khazar interlopers and that Jesus was a Palestinian Arab? Or the self-hating Tel Aviv University professors who claim the Jews have never been a people, unlike the Palestinians, who go back to the Jebussites? Well, sit back and watch the fireworks! Read about the Moslem scholar who insists Mohammed never existed! It will be fascinating to see how the Islamists, always fond of Holocaust Denial, react when a Moslem scholar engages in Mohammed Denial! This article below was written by Andrew Higgins November 15, 2008 From the Wall Street Journal Almut Schoenfeld in Berlin contributed to this article. Write to Andrew Higgins at andrew.higgins@wsj.com Professor Hired for Outreach to Muslims Delivers a Jolt Islamic Theologian's Theory: It's Likely the Prophet Muhammad Never Existed

MUNSTER, Germany — Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany's first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn't like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life. So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed. Theology Without Muhammad Read a translated excerpt from "Islamic Theology Without the Historic Muhammad — Comments on the Challenges of the Historical-Critical Method for Islamic Thinking" by Professor Kalisch. Muslims, not surprisingly, are outraged. Even Danish cartoonists who triggered global protests a couple of years ago didn't portray the Prophet as fictional. German police, worried about a violent backlash, told the professor to move his religious-studies center to more-secure premises. "We had no idea he would have ideas like this," says Thomas Bauer, a fellow academic at Munster University who sat on a committee that appointed Prof. Kalisch. "I'm a more orthodox Muslim than he is, and I'm not a Muslim." When Prof. Kalisch took up his theology chair four years ago, he was seen as proof that modern Western scholarship and Islamic ways can mingle — and counter the influence of radical preachers in Germany. He was put in charge of a new program at Munster, one of Germany's oldest and most respected universities, to train teachers in state schools to teach Muslim pupils about their faith. Muslim leaders cheered and joined an advisory board at his Center for Religious Studies. Politicians hailed the appointment as a sign of Germany's readiness to absorb some three million Muslims into mainstream society. But, says Andreas Pinkwart, a minister responsible for higher education in this north German region, "the results are disappointing." Prof. Kalisch, who insists he's still a Muslim, says he knew he would get in trouble but wanted to subject Islam to the same scrutiny as Christianity and Judaism. German scholars of the 19th century, he notes, were among the first to raise questions about the historical accuracy of the Bible. Many scholars of Islam question the accuracy of ancient sources on Muhammad's life. The earliest biography, of which no copies survive, dated from roughly a century after the generally accepted year of his death, 632, and is known only by references to it in much later texts. But only a few scholars have doubted Muhammad's existence. Most say his life is better documented than that of Jesus. Sven Muhammad Kalish "Of course Muhammad existed," says Tilman Nagel, a scholar in Gottingen and author of a new book, "Muhammad: Life and Legend." The Prophet differed from the flawless figure of Islamic tradition, Prof. Nagel says, but "it is quite astonishing to say that thousands and thousands of pages about him were all forged" and there was no such person. All the same, Prof. Nagel has signed a petition in support of Prof. Kalisch, who has faced blistering criticism from Muslim groups and some secular German academics. "We are in Europe," Prof. Nagel says. "Education is about thinking, not just learning by heart." Prof. Kalisch's religious studies center recently removed a sign and erased its address from its Web site. The professor, a burly 42-year-old, says he has received no specific threats but has been denounced as apostate, a capital offense in some readings of Islam. "Maybe people are speculating that some idiot will come and cut off my head," he said during an interview in his study. A few minutes later, an assistant arrived in a panic to say a suspicious-looking digital clock had been found lying in the hallway. Police, called to the scene, declared the clock harmless. A convert to Islam at age 15, Prof. Kalisch says he was drawn to the faith because it seemed more rational than others. He embraced a branch of Shiite Islam noted for its skeptical bent. After working briefly as a lawyer, he began work in 2001 on a postdoctoral thesis in Islamic law in Hamburg, to go through the elaborate process required to become a professor in Germany. The Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. that year appalled Mr. Kalisch but didn't dent his devotion. Indeed, after he arrived at M.nster University in 2004, he struck some as too conservative. Sami Alrabaa, a scholar at a nearby college, recalls attending a lecture by Prof. Kalisch and being upset by his doctrinaire defense of Islamic law, known as Sharia. In private, he was moving in a different direction. He devoured works questioning the existence of Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Then "I said to myself: You've dealt with Christianity and Judaism but what about your own religion? Can you take it for granted that Muhammad existed?" He had no doubts at first, but slowly they emerged. He was struck, he says, by the fact that the first coins bearing Muhammad's name did not appear until the late 7th century — six decades after the religion did. He traded ideas with some scholars in Saarbr.cken who in recent years have been pushing the idea of Muhammad's nonexistence. They claim that "Muhammad" wasn't the name of a person but a title, and that Islam began as a Christian heresy. Prof. Kalisch didn't buy all of this. Contributing last year to a book on Islam, he weighed the odds and called Muhammad's existence "more probable than not." By early this year, though, his thinking had shifted. "The more I read, the historical person at the root of the whole thing became more and more improbable," he says. He has doubts, too, about the Quran. "God doesn't write books," Prof. Kalisch says. Some of his students voiced alarm at the direction of his teaching. "I began to wonder if he would one day say he doesn't exist himself," says one. A few boycotted his lectures. Others sang his praises. Prof. Kalisch says he "never told students 'just believe what Kalisch thinks' " but seeks to teach them to think independently. Religions, he says, are "crutches" that help believers get to "the spiritual truth behind them." To him, what matters isn't whether Muhammad actually lived but the philosophy presented in his name. This summer, the dispute hit the headlines. A Turkish-language German newspaper reported on it with gusto. Media in the Muslim world picked up on it. Germany's Muslim Coordinating Council withdrew from the advisory board of Prof. Kalisch's center. Some Council members refused to address him by his adopted Muslim name, Muhammad, saying that he should now be known as Sven. German academics split. Michael Marx, a Quran scholar at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, warned that Prof. Kalisch's views would discredit German scholarship and make it difficult for German scholars to work in Muslim lands. But Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, an Islamic studies scholar at the University of Marburg, set up a Web site called solidaritymuhammadkalisch.com and started an online petition of support. Alarmed that a pioneering effort at Muslim outreach was only stoking antagonism, M.nster University decided to douse the flames. Prof. Kalisch was told he could keep his professorship but must stop teaching Islam to future school teachers. The professor says he's more determined than ever to keep probing his faith. He is finishing a book to explain his thoughts. It's in English instead of German because he wants to make a bigger impact. "I'm convinced that what I'm doing is necessary. There must be a free discussion of Islam," he says. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments — both seriously and satirically — on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. Write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

BODILY DEFENSE URGED TO DEFEND HEVRON PEACE HOUSE Posted by Jake Levi, November 17, 2008.

This is by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu and it appeared in Arutz-7 (IsraelNationalNews.com).

With a bitter history of the expulsion of Jews from the Gaza and northern Samaria regions three years ago and the violent expulsion of residents from Amona two years ago, nationalists warned they will stand against all force aimed at evicting Peace House residents. Leaders have called on backers to protect the Peace House in Hevron "with their own bodies" to prevent the government from carrying out a High Court ruling Sunday ordering the expulsion of more than 20 families. The court rejected evidence that Jews bought the building and said all residents must leave until the issue is settled in a civil court. Slamming the court for carrying out a leftist agenda while totally ignoring evidence that the building was legally bought, a coordinating committee decided Sunday night to encourage more families, including public figures, to join the families in the large structure. "Rabbi Eliezer Waldman of the Nir Yeshiva called upon all rabbis to come and defend Beit HaShalom with their own bodies. Other rabbis joined Rabbi Waldman in his urgent call," the committee stated. Among additional families moving into the Peace House, located on the road from Kiryat Arba to Hevron, is Knesset Member Rabbi Nissim Zev (Shas), according to the committee. The High Court gave the residents three days to move out, but Hevron leaders estimate no action will be taken until next week because of the presence of thousands of Jews expected this week for the Sabbath when Jews around the world recite the portion of the Torah that begins with the legal purchase of the Cave of the Patriarchs by Abraham. Several people have said police will be involved in all-out war if they try to carry out the High Court ruling, and Hevron spokesman Noam Arnon said he will ask outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to intervene and prevent violence. Micha'el Ben-Horin, an IDF officer with two sons who are commando soldiers, warned that that any expulsion attempt will bring with it "violence, hatred, polarization and a weakening of the IDF." He said he personally would escort the Peace House residents out of the buildings if the government were to uphold High Court rulings that Jews can pray on the Temple Mount. Hevron leaders condemned the court decision as being part of an agenda to act against nationalists while ignoring incitement against them by leaders who oppose a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria. Initial reports by the Israeli media indicated a campaign against nationalists would continue, and Voice of Israel government radio said that statements against the High Court, calling it a "High Brothel" and "High Court of Sodom," are incitement. Media commentators also recalled the murder of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, who was assassinated by Herzliya resident Yigal Amir. They are portraying nationalists as disregarding the law. However, surveys have shown a continued dwindling faith by Israel in the court and political system, which has been accused of prejudice and bias. The committee for defending the Peace House will meet at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Kiryat Arba Sports Hall. Leaders of the Hevron community who are in the United States have cancelled their plans to appear the annual Hevron dinner and are returning to Israel in order to help organize support aganst the court ruling. HEVRON HOUSE BUYER VOWS TO FIGHT FOR RIGHTS Cheshvan 19, 5769, 17 November 08 12:24 by Hillel Fendel (IsraelNN.com) For the first time, the buyer of the Hevron building from which the government wishes to throw out the Jews speaks out. In this exclusive footage, Morris Abraham speaks from his Brooklyn home, with interviewer David Wilder of the Hevron Jewish Community. The money changes hands; what about the property? Can't see player above? Click here for the exclusive interview. Condensed transcript: Wilder: "You purchased Beit HaShalom in Hevron with your family five years ago, and now we're being threatened with expulsion. What do you intend to do?" Abraham: "We will continue to fight the government officials, who are illegally throwing us out of our home. We have presented documents, and video recordings showing the payments to the Arab owner for the home, and cassette tapes of the Arab owner saying that he received all the money for the home, and that he has begun to fix it up for us. We will continue to fight for our legal rights for our home. We won't allow the government to throw us out; my family members were thrown out already once before, in 1929 by the Arabs [after the murderous pogrom], and this time we won't allow it. Anywhere in the free world, people are allowed to live in their home — and this is certainly true in our homeland of Israel, where our forefather Abraham bought the land close to 4,000 years ago." Wilder: "How do you explain this action by the government of Israel?" Abraham: "It's completely 100% political, and has nothing to do with legality. All the documents were presented, and in any normal legal system, they would have been recognized; in this case, it is totally political, and we are just being used as a pawn, 100%." Wilder: "You and your family have invested a tremendous amount of money in this building. If you would have known then what you know now, would you have still gone ahead with this?" Abraham: "I definitely would have, 100%. Because I believe that as Jews, we have a right to occupy all of Israel, anywhere in Israel. Sometimes we have to fight for what is ours; no battle is easy. But yes, I would have done it again, and I have no regrets, and I would also encourage others to try to fund this type of projects, building the Land of Israel." Contact Jake Levi at jlevi_us@yahoolcom To Go To Top

ABRAHAM IN THE 21ST CENTURY Posted by David Wilder, November 16, 2008.

This coming Shabbat we read in the weekly Torah portion how Abraham purchased Ma'arat HaMachpela for 400 silver shekels (in today's term's, about $750,000). The story is told in the Bible in great detail how Abraham haggled with Efron the Hittite and finally bought the double cave to bury there his wife Sarah. What if...? What if Abraham had lived today in the 21st century? Abraham cannot reach out directly to Efron. If Efron knew that Abraham the Ivri — the first Jew, wanted to buy his land, he would refuse outright, knowing that the punishment for selling to a Jew is instant death by the hands of the country's elders. So, Abraham approaches Fony the Hittite, pays him a lot of money, and asks him to be a go-between, to purchase the caves for him. Of course, after raising the price a few times, Fony the Hittite agrees. He then approaches Efron with an offer that cannot be refused: 400 silver shekels for a dungeon, a cave, and some of the property around it. Efron jumps at the offer and taking the money, finds his way to his cave to count the cash, making sure he didn't get ripped off. Unknown to him, a secret camera from the roof of the cave films his greedy act. Being satisfied that the money is in order, he returns to sign the contract with Fony the Hittite. This act is also filmed, just for the history books. Fony takes the contract and films to Abraham, who can now announce the funeral plans for his dearly departed wife. A few hours later the procession begins. The casket is followed by Abraham and Isaac and thousands of others who respected this righteous woman. Unknown to them, others, from the IIA (Israelite Intelligence Agency) have infiltrated the crowd and too are taking part in the mourner's ceremony. As Abraham reaches the cave, a few hundred black-uniformed special security forces jump out from behind the rocks, trees and bushes. "STOP," they scream! "You have no permission to enter the caves of Machpela. They do not belong to you!" Abraham, having some experience with these kinds of people, pulls out the contract and films, sets up his laptop, and screens the transactions, saying, "you see — I really did buy the caves — they belong to me!" The IIA forces aren't taken by surprise. The head honcho dials quickly and within moments a panel of Hittite judges have taken their seats in front of the caves, blocking the entrance, waiting to hear the case before them. The IIA forces call on Efron: Did you sell this cave to Abraham? Efron: Of course not. IIA: How do you explain this film of you counting this money? I was asked to count it for someone else — I counted it and gave it back. The IIA then called Fony: IIA: Did you purchase this cave for Abraham the Ivri? Fony: Me? Why would I do that? IIA: For money? Fony: My morals would never let me buy property for a Jew. The IIA rests its case. Abraham calls to G-d and says: Now it's Your turn. G-d takes the stand. Abraham: Please tell the truth. Did I buy these caves? G-d: Yes, they belong to you. I created them for you during the first 6 days of creation. I even showed them to Adam and Eve. Abraham: And I paid full price for them? You witnessed this transaction? G-d: Of course, 400 silver shekels in cash went to Efron via Fony the Hittite. Abraham: I rest my case. The judges huddle and whisper hurriedly to each other. A few moments later they announce: We reject Abraham's testimony and that of G-d. We are the highest force on earth. Even G-d must obey us. The caves must stay with Efron. Abraham may not bury Sarah there. He must leave immediately. Take the body and go. Abraham shrugs at G-d, looks at his son, and they all turn around and walk away. The caves of Machpela remain with Efron, and Sarah remains unburied. That's the way it probably would have been had Abraham lived today. Morris Abraham, the righteous Jew who purchased Beit HaShalom with his father Mickey, told me this morning: "We will not be driven out of our home a 2nd time. We were expelled by the Arabs and the British in 1929 — my family was forced to leave its home in Hebron. We will not be exiled again, again expelled from Hebron, this time by the Israeli government. Just as Abraham purchased Ma'arat HaMachpela almost 4,000 years ago, so too did we, the Abraham family, buy property in Hebron. It was all done legally. We have the documents, the videos and the recordings. It belongs to us, and we will live there!" With the help of G-d. The judges, the attorney general, the defense minister, whatever they may think, are not above G-d, and justice will win out. It may take some more time butBeit HaShalom will be ours. Without any doubt! See interview with Morris Abraham: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/128419 Emergency Assembly TOMORROW Tuesday, 20 Cheshvan, November 18, Sports Auditorium in Kiryat Arba CALL ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND ASK THEM TO PLEASE COME!! AND OF COURSE — FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO ABSOLUTELY EVERYBODY! Attending: Knesset Members from Ichud Leumi, Kadima, Yadhut haTorah and Shas: MKs Uri Ariel; Otniel Shneller, Menachem Porush, Nissim Zeev. Kol haKavod to MK Nissim Zeev from Shas whose family is moving into Bet HaShalom for the duration!! Attending: Rav Lior, Rabbi of Kiryat Arba; Rav Waldman, Rosh Yeshivat Nir;Rabbi Levinger, founder of Hebron Jewish Community, Tzvi Katsover and Malachi Levinger, Outgoing Mayor and Mayor — Elect of Kiryat Arba; Daniella Weiss; Noam Arnon and more. Egged bus 160 from Jerusalem will leave Central bus Station at 6:20pm, 6:40pm and 7:00pm A bus will leave Efrat at 7:30pm by reservation only: 0505500834 or 02-9931484 Background: The Israeli Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the residents of Bet HaShalom in Hebron have three days to evacuate their legally purchased homes. For thousands of years, Jews have bought houses and fields in Eretz Yisrael — even the Ottoman Empire didn't deny them that basic right. It has taken a post-Zionist, post-Oslo Israeli government working hand in hand with a hopelessly politicized judicial system to adopt a racist policy of preventing Jews from buying and holding property in the Jewish homeland. The rights of the Jewish People in Hebron are not subject to debate. They are eternal rights that are thousands of years old. Whoever denies Jews the right to buy property in Hebron, weakens their rights everywhere in the Land of Israel. The struggle over Beit HaShalom is: a struggle for justice over land legally purchased, a struggle over the Jewish and human right to acquire property, a struggle over the rights of the Jewish Nation in the Land of Israel The battle over Beit HaShalom is therefore the battle of every Jew. ENDORSING: Jewish Community of Hebron — Kiryat Arba Hevron Municipality- Bet Hashalom residents- Loyalists of Eretz Israel- Chomesh Tehilla- Women in Green- HaMateh leHatsalat HaAm VeHaarets- Youth for Land of Israel- Sanhedrin- Mateh Shabbat Chaye Sarah- Virashtem Ota- Mattot Arim- Committee for Eretz Israel- Gush Katif expellees- Nahalal Forum David Wilder is spokesman of The Jewish Community of Hebron. You can contribute directly in Israel to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB 105, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, email: hebron@hebron.org.il or phone: 972-52-431-7055. In USA, write to The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, email: hebronfund@aol.com or phone: 718 677 6886. To Go To Top

POLITICAL PARTITION Posted by Irving Kalet, November 16, 2008.

I am attaching a "Letter to the Editor" which I wrote to the newspaper, "Haaretz", here in Israel (where I live).This letter appeared in the English Edition of Haaretz on 22 December 2003. It is the letter, as originally printed in Haaretz. I would add a lot more to it today but the basic idea is there. As mentioned in the original letter I believe that the question of the Arabs of Israel is the issue that almost all politiicans on both sides of the political spectrum in Israel, are afraid to talk about in public. However, it is a major question in Israel and has been one for sixty years. I hoped to open up a real discussion of the issue, at that time. I think that the question of the Arabs of Israel, and their relationship to the State of Israel, is still one of the major issues facing Israel, more so today, after a number of events in the past few years. I am submitting my article for publication on your website with the hope of getting some honest discussion going. Thanking you in advance Professor Yitzhak Irving Kalet

In all of the left-wing suggestions for peace agreements, the final result is a Palestinian state, which is almost 100 percent Palestinian, and a Jewish state which at the moment has at best a Jewish population of about 80 percent. And almost every serious demographic prediction says that this percentage will become substantially smaller in the near future. I might mention that the percentage of Jews and Palestinian Arabs has remained almost the same within the Green Line since the creation of the State of Israel, 55 years ago, despite the aliyah of millions of Jews. The Israeli right-wing suggestion that somehow we can continue to exist as a democratic Jewish country with another 2,000,000 Palestinian Arabs under our control is untenable. But, so is a withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders which leaves Israel as a country which will lose its overwhelming Jewish majority in our children's lifetime. Furthermore, our policy for the past 55 years towards the problem of the large Palestinian Arab minority within the Green Line has been based on contradictions, which are irresolvable unless we become a binational country. I do not have to go into all of the problems, but just two of them are enough to demonstrate the contradictions. First, how can any proud Palestinian Arab sing "Hatikva"? Second, how can Israel, as a democratic country with mandatory military service, allow a 20 percent minority of its citizens not to serve in its defense forces, because this minority group identifies with an enemy, one of whose goals has been to kill Jewish citizens of our country? The question is, how do we solve the problem mentioned above, with a minimum of human suffering? We, in the near future, under either a bilateral agreement or a unilateral act, are about to "transfer" tens of thousands of Jews from the West Bank back into "Israel." For example, the Geneva Accord leads to a number which is close to 100,000. The amount of human suffering which will be involved in this movement can only be imagined. And yet many of us, including myself, believe that if this "transfer" will somehow improve our situation, then it should be done. However, paradoxically, a similar move, of even a small number of Arabs, would be looked upon as inhuman, by many within Israel and certainly by many who live outside of Israel. My proposal is that we return to the idea of partition, but "political partition," meaning that the Palestinian Arabs presently living in Israel physically remain here, but that they become citizens, along with the other Palestinians, of the new Palestinian state, which will eventually arise in the West Bank and Gaza. Unlike the Jews in the West Bank, the Arabs presently living in Israel will not have to "physically" move, but they will no longer be citizens of the State of Israel. They will have political autonomy within the State of Israel. But, they will vote in Palestine. They will control their own local life — education, health, sanitation and so on. But, Bialik or other Israeli writers will not have to be part of their educational system, if so desired; Hebrew will not have to be studied, if so desired; and the flag of Israel and the national anthem of Israel will no longer have to be their flag and their national anthem. Let us all try to be honest, both Arabs and Jews, and try to redefine ourselves and our national ambitions in such a manner, so that the national aspirations of both sides are satisfied. Contact Professor Kalet at kalet@bezeqint.net To Go To Top

"THE CAIN SYNDROME"- THE VIOLENT HISTORY OF THE LEFT IN ISRAEL Posted by Jake Levi, November 16, 2008.

This comes from Ruth Matar, Nadia Matar and Anita Finkelstein (omen in Green). who write: As we are writing this email, we have been told that the Supreme Court has announced its decision regarding Bet Hashalom in Hebron: despite the fact that the Jews brought all the proofs necessary to prove that Bet Hashalom was properly and legally bought, the Israeli Supreme Court has ordered to evict the Jewish legal owners. The Jewish residents have three days to leave willingly, otherwise the government will evacuate them by force. We will update you as to what decisions are taken in the next few hours by the Kiryat Arba Hevron leadership. Meanwhile, it is very fitting that Women in Green just came out with a new booklet: "The Cain Syndrome"- the violent history of the Leftist Establishment's Dirty War Against the Right" Women in Green hope to find the funds to print and distribute this booklet in thousands of copies in Hebrew, English and Russian. Meanwhile the booklet, below, will be put on our website. We urge you to forward this message to as many people as you can. The time has come once and for all to stop the persecution of the leftist establishment in Israel against the national camp! This essay is called "The Mark of Cain: A history of leftist violence and the incitement against the national camp in Israel, 1904-2008" by Aryeh Yitzchaki. It feels like deja vu, but it's a real and recurrent pattern in Zionist history: when the Leftist establishment in Eretz Yisrael feels its hold on power being threatened by the Right, it abandons democratic principles and methods for Bolshevik ones. The leftist arsenal is full of dirty tricks — from disinformation to outright murder ­ but because the Israeli media and the cultural and academic elites have always been dominated by the Left, the Left's war against the Right is one Israeli war that has never been properly publicized. As the Olmert-Barak-Livni government, riven with corruption and in-fighting, conducts a close-out liquidation sale of the Jewish Nation's geographic, strategic, and spiritual assets, what alarm is being sounded? A familiar alarm about the danger to the State posed by the incitement and violence of the "extreme" right. Government forces come in the dead of night, drag the Federman family with nine children from their beds, beating and cursing them, and destroy their home together with all their possessions. When a neighbor overcome by outrage and grief curses the destroyers, a siren is sounded throughout the state that wails out the threat of the "dangerous" settlers. Israel's citizens are expected to suspend their normal cognitive activities, redefine the enemy, and stand at attention. The confluence of the approaching elections and the remembrance day for Yitzchak Rabin, marked annually as a day of hatred and incitement against the Right, is now occasioning another hunting season or "Saison," the actual name of the pre-state persecutions of the Revisionist Right. Women in Green has chosen to mark this occasion by laying out the historical record of who is violent and who threatens democracy so the public will not be duped by the government's tried and true blood libels. This booklet by historian Aryeh Yitzchaki is a brief abstract of his soon-to-be-published book on the subject. Its sketchiness is dictated by its brevity, so readers wishing to know more are advised to consult the publications listed in the Hebrew bibliography at the end. Women in Green want to thank our dear friend and member Timna Katz for the translation of the booklet into English. May we soon merit new leadership in Israel — a real Jewish leadership that will serve the interests of the Jewish people in their land. Women in Green www.womeningreen.org

During a century of Zionist history, the Left has gone to great lengths to prevent the Right from attaining leadership. The leftist factions generally utilized a two-pronged strategy to defeat their political opponents: by labeling their victims as public enemies, they justified their physical persecution. They kidnapped, tortured, beat, and murdered men on the Right and then congratulated themselves for their crimes. The Murder of Da-Haan Leftist violence started with verbal followed by physical attacks on leaders of the farmer communities of the First and Second Aliyah by workers of the left. It continued with the extradition of the Nili underground espionage network and with the failed murder attempt of the "Hashomer" organization on Yosef Lishanski, one of the Nili leaders. There were other political assassinations, such as the murder of chareidi politician Dr. Israel Da-Haan in Jerusalem in 1924 by Haganah commanders in Jerusalem led by Avraham Tehomi. Commanders of the Haganah also stole weapons from the warehouses of the rival "Haganah Leumit" organization. Vicious Attacks Against Beitar Members A new level of organized thuggery was reached with the savage beatings of Beitar Movement members all over the country by "Plugot HaPoel" groups belonging to the Histadrut. A typical attack took place during Passover of 1933, when hundreds of men armed with clubs and metal bars fell upon a group of Beitar youth, aged 12 to 14. Twenty-four children, some of them badly wounded, were hospitalized. The Arlozorov Blood Libel In June 1933, Zionist leader Dr. Chaim Arlozorov was murdered. Three innocent men, Abba Achimeir, Avraham Stavsky, and Meir Rosenblatt, were charged with the crime when their only real crime was their membership in Beitar. Kidnappings, Torture, and the Murder of Eliyahu Shlomi The war against the Revisionists continued in 1939 with the kidnapping and torture of Irgun men. The attacks climaxed with an attack by hundreds of thugs on a Beitar camp in Hertzliya on August 18, 1940. Eliyahu Shlomi was murdered and seven of his friends were wounded. The Small Saison In April of 1942, a new red line was crossed. The Shai, the intelligence service of the Haganah, organized a manhunt in which dozens of Lechi fighters were kidnapped, cruelly tortured, and finally extradited to the British. This ugly operation was called "The Small Saison (hunting season)." The Big Saison Between November 1944 and January 1945, the "anti-terrorist unit" of the Haganah kidnapped, tortured, and handed over about 200 Irgun fighters to the British. Most of the men were expelled to holding camps in Africa. The man responsible for this operation, called "The Big Saison," was David Ben-Gurion. The operation's commanders were Yigal Alon followed by Shimon Avidan. Sadistic interrogators under the command of David Shaltiel beat and tortured their prisoners with terrible brutality. Irgun commander Ya'akov Tavin was held in a barn in Ein Harod for six months, handcuffed to a bed, where he was forced to defecate and urinate. Before interrogations he was sprayed with hoses; during interrogations the nails of his fingers and toes were torn out, his limbs were scorched with white-hot metal, and other horrors too graphic to describe were perpetrated. Teddy Kollek the Collaborator In the years that followed, the Haganah continued to hand over Jewish fighters to the British and to sabotage Irgun operations. Teddy Kollek, who liasoned with the British in his capacity of Jewish Agency communications officer, was a prominent collaborator. The Haganah led the British to the hiding place of the Lehi fighters Menachem Luntz and Shabtai Druker in Moshav Yavne'el on April 6, 1943. The fighters were surrounded and fought bravely to their death. The Second Small Saison Acts of kidnapping and torture continued in 1947 ("The Second Small Saison"). On January 11, 1948, two Irgun fighters, Yedidya Segal and Moshe Levi, were kidnapped in Haifa. Yedidya was brutally tortured to death by men of the special forces of the Haganah. Moshe Levi was injected with dangerous chemicals meant to act as a "truth serum" that irreversibly damaged his health. He was released after the murder of Yedidya Segal was exposed. On April 8, 1948, twelve Irgun men sent to reinforce Mishmar Hayarden were attacked next to Ginnosar by a Palmach force of 100 men. They were savagely beaten and their weapons were confiscated. Mishmar Hayarden was left with no reinforcements, helping the Syrians to conquer the moshav later in the war. The Altalena Massacre In June 1948, the newly formed provisional government of Israel ordered the newly established Israeli Defense Forces to open fire on the Altalena, an Irgun ship carrying 900 immigrants, including Holocaust survivors, and arms to fight the battle of Jerusalem. Most of the immigrants barely managed to jump from the ship before it was blown up off the shore of Tel Aviv. Senior Palmach commander Yitzchak Rabin gave the order to open fire. Aside from bombing the ammo-heavy ship with cannons, sniper fire was directed at people in the water who were trying to reach land from the burning ship. Sixteen Irgun men were murdered in the attack, and hundreds of Jewish volunteers coming to Israel to fight the Arab enemy were arrested and humiliated. Murdered by the Shai During the War of Independence, two Irgun men were murdered without trial by the Shai, the Haganah's intelligence branch. They were suspected of unintentionally killing Haganah men in an operation against the British in 1947. The Irgun men were fighting as soldiers in the 3rd and 9th Brigades of the united Israeli army. While battling the Arab enemy, they were shot in the back to make it appear that they were killed in combat. After the Creation of the State Unfortunately, once the State came into being, the dominant Mapai party did not call for national reconciliation and unity. Instead, the Left's suppression of the Right moved from physical violence to civil and social discrimination. In the 50's, Irgun and Lehi fighters were prosecuted, ostracized, and banned from employment or advancement in many areas of public life. It was difficult for them to find jobs, and they were barred from joining the security forces. The Kastner Blood Libel The Shai created fictitious underground organizations so they could cook up new blood libels against the Right. When Israel Kastner was murdered by agents of the Shai on March 4, 1957, the murder was pinned on a fictitious right-wing underground movement. The Likud's rise to power in May 1977 put a temporary end to the incitement against the Right. For the first time in 44 years, the Left was in the opposition and briefly on the defense. But if the Left feared that once in power, the Right would treat it as it treated the Right, they quickly discovered that Menachem Begin truly sought a government of national reconciliation and unity. The Left, never interested in reconciliation but only in power, bided its time. Oslo and the Renewed War Against the Right In 1993, Yitzchak Rabin became prime minister and signed the Oslo Agreement with mass murderer Yasser Arafat. Israel's public enemy number one now became the "enemies of peace," those citizens opposed to Oslo, which included most prominently the Jewish residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. A campaign of hate and delegitimization was directed at the "settlers" which successfully marginalized them, preventing the growing mass public dissatisfaction with Oslo from becoming a decisive political force. Over the course of fifteen years, hundreds were arrested, beaten, and humiliated, thousands were harassed, and hundreds of thousands were intimidated. The government adopted methods such as fabricated criminal files, anti-democratic administrative detentions, and destruction of private property. It reached the point where ordinary civil and human rights were suspended when it came to those branded as "settlers" or "right-wing extremists." This process, sanctioned by a politicized court system and a cheering media, successfully suppressed effective opposition to the anti-Zionist drift of a post-Zionist government. The (Anti-)Jewish Division of the Shabak Its name changed, but not its methods: the State's intelligence branch was now called the Shabak instead of the Shai, but it continued to instigate operations designed to falsely discredit the Right. A special department was actually created for this purpose. The Shabak recruited agent provocateurs such as Avishai Raviv ("Champagne") who founded fake underground organizations like "Eyal" and incited unbalanced figures like Yigal Amir to violence ­ all for the purpose of destroying the legitimate and democratic opposition to Oslo and Israel's post-Zionist leadership. An entire population was dehumanized and demonized in the service of this goal. The Rabin Murder Blood Libel On November 4, 1995, Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin was murdered by an apparently lone assassin with a strong connection to Shabak agent Avishai Raviv. The entire right wing public was blamed for the murder and its leadership was singled out for a campaign of legal harassment and public condemnation. Non-official investigations of the murder have advanced dramatically, and once their conclusions are published, they will dwarf the Arlozorov blood libel. The Expulsion In the summer of 2005, a crime of epic proportions was perpetrated against the Jewish People as a whole and against 8,000 of Israel's most loyal and productive citizens in particular. Bulldozers of the State of Israel destroyed twenty-five blossoming Jewish communities in Gush Katif and Northern Samaria, and soldiers of the Jewish State dragged 8,000 men, women, and children out of the homes and farms that they had diligently and lovingly built over the course of a generation. The campaign of degradation and vilification against the people of Gush Katif and Northern Samaria that preceded their exile was especially heartless and ugly. Once Gush Katif was handed over to Palestinian terrorists to use as a base for continued warfare against Israel, the leftist government announced "The Realignment Plan," an extension of the Gush Katif expulsion in Judea and Samaria. This plan called for the expulsion of another 70,000 Jews from their homes and the destruction of 60 additional towns and villages. While Israel's abysmal failure in the Second Lebanon War temporarily froze this plan, the Left has lately resumed its efforts. The Sternhall Provocation The blatant harassment of ideologically strong individuals and communities in Judea and Samaria who live quietly on their land and the glaring disregard for their civil and property rights has been the order of the day for the past few years. To justify the unjustifiable and to remind the public who Israel's real enemy is in the wake of the approaching elections, it was time for a new blood libel against the Right. A leftist professor who has spent his career inciting violence against the "settlers" was attacked by some shadowy group that ­ surprise, surprise ­ appears to bear the hallmark of past Shabak fictions. A Second "Big Saison" Circa 2008? During these days the government has been issuing new decrees almost daily against the national camp in general and the citizens of Judea and Samaria in particular: expulsion orders, restriction orders, administrative detentions (indefinite imprisonment without legal process), police violence, the prohibition of demonstrations, cutting off water and electricity to Jewish settlements, the destruction of settlements ­ all accompanied by the familiar, strident denunciations of the "violent extremists" on the right. If the public makes clear that it knows what the real score is ­ who the violent ones really are and who is really trampling democracy ­ perhaps we can avoid a "New Big Saison" in 2008. Conclusion: Women In Green has noted the growth of a new phenomenon, a new tool in the Left's bag of dirty tricks not mentioned in the inventory above: the government is allowing outsiders into Judea and Samaria to foment constant clashes and conflict. Foreign "anarchists" and anti-Israel activists of all stripes have banded together with Israeli traitors and Arab activists to stir up trouble and undermine the Israeli army presence and the state's security needs in Judea and Samaria. These groups are funded, whether secretly or openly, by foreign, anti-Zionistic and anti-Semitic organizations, often with the cooperation of Muslim and Arab terror organizations. They are protected by an unholy alliance within the government, the Israeli press, and the judicial system. They are encouraged by a cultural and intellectual elite that lauds Israel's enemies while excoriating her defenders. May the people of Israel rise above their sectarian quarrels and differences to address the huge existential threats to Israel's existence in the coming elections. Distributed as a public service by Women for Israel's Tomorrow ­ Women in Green. Contact us to order booklets at http://www.womeningreen.org Bibliography:(in Hebrew) Arieh Yitzhaki, "The Cain Syndrome" (to be printed in the coming months Yehuda Lapidot, "The Saison David Niv, the Irgun, 1965 Shlomo Nakdimon, Altalena, 1978 Contact Jake Levi at jlevi_us@yahoolcom To Go To Top

OBAMA TO SUPPORT 2002 SAUDI PEACE INITIATIVE — ISRAELI WITHDRAWAL TO '67 LINES Posted by Tom Carew, November 16, 2008.

UN 242 did NOT provide for this, but only for deliberately unspecified withdrawl from occupied territories. Tom The article below was written by Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Sarah Baxter and it appeared today in The Sunday Times. www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5162537.ece

Barack Obama is to pursue an ambitious peace plan in the Middle East involving the recognition of Israel by the Arab world in exchange for its withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, according to sources close to America's president-elect. Obama intends to throw his support behind a 2002 Saudi peace initiative endorsed by the Arab League and backed by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party. The proposal gives Israel an effective veto on the return of Arab refugees expelled in 1948 while requiring it to restore the Golan Heights to Syria and allow the Palestinians to establish a state capital in east Jerusalem. On a visit to the Middle East last July, the president-elect said privately it would be "crazy" for Israel to refuse a deal that could "give them peace with the Muslim world", according to a senior Obama adviser. The Arab peace plan received a boost last week when President Shimon Peres, a Nobel peace laureate and leading Israeli dove, commended the initiative at a Saudi-sponsored United Nations conference in New York. Peres was loudly applauded for telling King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who was behind the original initiative: "I wish that your voice will become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people." A bipartisan group of senior foreign policy advisers urged Obama to give the Arab plan top priority immediately after his election victory. They included Lee Hamilton, the former co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Democrat former national security adviser. Brzezinski will give an address tomorrow at Chatham House, the international relations think tank, in London. Brent Scowcroft, a Republican former national security adviser, joined in the appeal. He said last week that the Middle East was the most troublesome area in the world and that an early start to the Palestinian peace process was "a way to psychologically change the mood of the region". Advisers believe the diplomatic climate favours a deal as Arab League countries are under pressure from radical Islamic movements and a potentially nuclear Iran. Polls show that Palestinians and Israelis are in a mood to compromise. The advisers have told Obama he should lose no time in pursuing the policy in the first six to 12 months in office while he enjoys maximum goodwill. Obama is also looking to break a diplomatic deadlock over Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons technology. A possible way forward, suggested last spring by Dennis Ross, a senior Obama adviser and former Middle East envoy, would be to persuade Russia to join in tough economic sanctions against Iran by offering to modify the US plan for a "missile shield" in eastern Europe. President Dmitry Medvedev signalled that Russia could cancel a tit-for-tat deployment of missiles close to the Polish border if America gave up its proposed missile defences in Poland and the Czech Republic. Ross argued in a paper on How to Talk to Iran that "if the Iranian threat goes away, so does the principal need to deploy these [antimissile] forces. [Vladimir] Putin [the Russian prime minister] has made this such a symbolic issue that this trade-off could be portrayed as a great victory for him". Ross and Daniel Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel, accompanied Obama on a visit to Israel last July. They also travelled to Ramallah, where Obama questioned Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, about the prospects for the Arab plan. According to a Washington source Obama told Abbas: "The Israelis would be crazy not to accept this initiative. It would give them peace with the Muslim world from Indonesia to Morocco." Kurtzer submitted a paper to Obama on the question before this month's presidential elections. He argued that trying to reach bilateral peace agreements between Israel and individual countries in the Middle East, was a recipe for failure as the record of Bill Clinton and George W Bush showed. In contrast, the broader Arab plan "had a lot of appeal". A leading Democratic expert on the Middle East said: "There's not a lot of meat on the bones yet, but it offers recognition of Israel across the Arab world." Livni, the leader of Kadima, which favours the plan, is the front-runner in Israeli elections due in February. Her rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Likud, is adamantly against withdrawing to borders that predate the Six Day war in 1967. Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, last week expressed his support for Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank Golan and east Jerusalem. Tom Carew lives in Ranelagh, Dublin, Ireland. Contact him at tmcarew@yahoo.com To Go To Top

HIGH COURT ACCUSED OF THEFT IN HEVRON Posted by Hillel Fendel, November 16, 2008.

(IsraelNN.com) The Supreme Court has ordered the nearly 100 residents of Beit HaShalom in Hevron — some 20 families and dozens of children — to leave the house within three days. If they do not do so, it is assumed that they will be forcibly removed, at a time and date to be chosen by the police and/or army. The court also ordered the residents to pay 30,000 shekels — half to the State for court costs, and half to the former Arab owner. The Supreme Court thus accepted the State's position in full, ignoring a cassette recording of the Arab seller admitting to a good friend of his that he had sold the building to Jews. The Court ruled that because of the "doubts" that have been raised regarding the occupants' acquisition of the property — namely, the seller's claim that he did not sell it — the situation should return to the previous status while the situation is resolved in a civil court. The leaders of the Jewish Community in Hevron plan to convene for an urgent meeting this afternoon to plan out their strategy for the next several days. Expulsion forces will not arrive any time in the next three days, according to the High Court ruling, and the Hevron pioneers will have to decide whether to issue a call for "reinforcements" to arrive after that time to try to rebuff an Amona-type eviction. Legal avenues — which can only include another appeal to the Supreme Court — will also be considered. Orit Strook, on behalf of the Hevron Jewish Community, issued this statement: "The Supreme Court's decision to steal Beit HaShalom from its Jewish purchasers came with perfect timing: Right in between the story of Sodom and Gomorra, and the story of the purchase of Hevron by Avraham. Yesterday, Jews in synagogues around the world read aloud the story of the evil people of Sodom and their destruction — and this coming Sabbath we will read how Avraham purchased the Machpelah Cave in Hevron in which to bury his wife Sarah. "Throughout the Beit HaShalom case, the entire judicial establishment has acted as in Sodom. In Sodom, too, there were courts, in which the judges enlisted all their wisdom in order to legalize injustice. The same has happened here: the laws and the precedents were all distorted unrecognizably for the purpose of legalizing the expulsion of the Jewish buyers from their property. To this end, the Court contradicted itself in every possible way. Both the judges and the Attorney General stood fast and did not allow the facts to confuse them. "Just as the Patriarch Abraham did, we bought a piece of property in Hevron, and paid for it in full. We know that justice is on our side and that the house is ours. We presented all the evidence, but were met with impervious callousness and unwillingness to hold a fair judicial proceeding. Half the Knesset Members and sizeable portions of the public — those who saw and heard the recordings that we presented — know that an injustice has been done to us, and that the house has simply been stolen from us. "The tens of thousands of people who are expected to arrive in Hevron this Sabbath to commemorate Avraham's purchase of the Machpelah Cave, as every year at this time, can take comfort in the fact that when he bought it, there was no Supreme Court, Attorney General or government to take it from him." MK Uri Ariel, head of the National Union faction in the Knesset, said, "This ruling represents clear discrimination against the settlers, amidst nefarious ignoring of the evidence showing that the building is in fact theirs. The judges and [Attorney General Menachem] Mazuz and the police should thus not wonder why the public trust in them has dropped to the abyss — for they have earned it." Shas leader Eli Yishai, the Minster of Industry and Trade, said, "It is scandalous that the Court did not deal with the purchase contract itself or its legality, and it is outrageous that the Court would remove people when the purchase is clear and evident." MK Gilad Erdan's reaction was this: "The lack of willingness by the Attorney General and the Supreme Court to consider the clear evidence regarding the legitimate acquisition of the building is very regrettable, and creates a very bad public sense of injustice. It is a sharp blow to the public trust in our legal system." The Court based its decision largely on a _case that occurred two years ago_ (http://www.hebron.org.il/english/article.php?id=238), regarding a building in Hevron known as Beit Shapira. That case, too, involved the Jewish purchase of a building from its Arab owners — and the court-ordered eviction of the Jewish residents despite the clear evidence that the house was in fact theirs. In what Strook called a "total distortion of precedents," the Court used the Beit Shapira case as an indication that the Jews "had found a system of writing purchase contracts and then unilaterally moving into the property, claiming that they had bought it, without the consent of the [other] party, thus creating a new situation ... This system cannot receive a judicial stamp of approval. Note: You can read about the Beit Shapira case by clicking here. Hillel Fendel is Senior News Editor for Arutz-Sheva (www.Israel National News.com). To Go To Top

A STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS FOR STUPIDITY Posted by Shaul and Aviva Ceder, November 16, 2008.

This was written by Kathleen Parker and it appeared November 14, 2008 in Jewish World Review http://www.JewishWorldReview.com Kathleen Parker can be reached at kparker1@mindspring.com.

Fresh ire aimed at former Harvard University President Larry Summers prompts the question: Shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on dumb things expressed in public? (Please say yes.) Forever accursed is the economist and Clinton-era treasury secretary for having raised — more than three years ago — the eensy-weensy possibility that innate differences between men and women might explain in part why more men than women reach the top echelons in math and science. His comments, though not completely without scientific basis, unleashed a millennium worth of female scorn, making Hell a suddenly attractive destination for the discriminating traveler in search of cooler climes. Research pointing to male-female differences that could partly explain different career outcomes is available to anyone in search of clues to the gender universe. But let's not go there. The social construct versus hard-wiring debate will continue unabated until the last woman utters: "No, honey, you stay in bed. I'll go see what that noise was." For these purposes, let's stipulate that Summers said a dumb thing. He didn't, really. Provocative, yes, but it was a question about theory, not an assertion of belief. Impolitic? Without question. Still, we'll call it dumb. Should said offense forevermore disqualify Summers from public service? Or even public appearances? Summers was driven out of Harvard following his remarks. In September 2007, he was dropped as the keynote speaker at a University of California Board of Regents meeting when a female professor circulated a petition to have his invitation withdrawn. Now, feminists have begun raising objections over speculation he might be considered for a second term as treasury secretary. Kim Gandy, National Organization for Women president, expressed her concerns to the Huffington Post. Gandy acknowledged that Summers is a smart guy on economics, but wondered whether his perceived bias would preclude women being hired within the department. That seems a stretch. There may be compelling reasons to appoint someone other than Summers, but his having said something dumb — or at least unpopular — once upon a time shouldn't be one of them. According to Financial Times business commentator John Gapper, Summers is "genuinely an inventive and original thinker and there are precious few of those." No mention of people skills, but haven't we had enough of hiring people according to their beer-a-bility? What say we call a moratorium on punitive measures for dumb things uttered while in the commission of "good stuff"? Many would benefit from such a moratorium. A few that come to mind: Howard "Arrrrrggggggg!!!!!" Dean; John "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it" Kerry; Andrew "He's (Bill Clinton's) probably gone with more black women than Barack" Young. The stainless steel-tongued Joe Biden gets his own page. Make that a booklet. Even Obama should get a pass for once saying he had campaigned in all 57 states with one to go, a mental detour interpreted by fevered minds on the right as proof that he's a secret Muslim. (There are — aha! — 57 member states in the Organization of the Islamic Conference.) One small slip, repeated and amplified, can have serious consequences. A new Beliefnet.com exit poll found that half of McCain voters think Obama is or was a Muslim, with 32 percent saying, "He used to be Muslim and still has too many connections to Islam." Although Republicans, led by the renowned neologist George W. Bush, are doubtless equally guilty of foot-in-mouth incursions (Trent Lott's infamous birthday paean to Strom Thurmond comes to mind), the GOP might benefit as much from an Adultery & Wide Stance Amnesty Act. Given all the words uttered in the course of a presidential campaign, some are going to be screamingly funny; others ridiculous; some embarrassing and still others painful. Covering all of the above, Biden, speaking to the Columbia, S.C., Rotary Club, all but boasted: "Hey, I'm from a slave state, too!" Well, dang, Bubba, why didn't you say so in the first place?! At the risk of a too-brisk segue, sometimes intelligent, thoughtful, talented people simply step in it. And though some misstatements are too delicious to ignore, there really ought to be a point at which good outweighs bad; when smart outpaces stupid. When even a screamer like Dean, who as Democratic National Committee chair rebuilt his party in all 57 states to run Republicans out of Washington last week, ought to be remembered best for the latter. Make that all 50 states. And give Summers a break. Contact Shaul and Aviva Ceder at ceder@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

THE SCALE OF ISLAMIC (OR ARAB) OCCUPATION, SETTLEMENT AND ... Posted by Gerald Steinberg, November 16, 2008.

This was published November 6, 2008 as "Doubles standards and the other 'occupations'" in the Canadian Jewish News www.cjnews.com:80/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15623&Itemid=86

The scale of Islamic (or Arab) occupation, settlement and racism around the world is far greater than anything that Israel is accused of In contrast to most of my colleagues, I am one of the pragmatists among Israeli political pundits — neither left nor right on issues of territory and borders. In my vision of Zionism, the central goal is to maintain and strengthen Jewish democratic sovereignty in the Land of Israel, within the existing international and regional framework. I don't see how borders that reflect biblical Israel, and encompass millions of Palestinians, further this objective, but neither do I find evidence that a return to the armistice lines set after the 1948 Arab invasion, including a divided Jerusalem, will bring us lasting peace based on mutual acceptance. Which leaves a realistic, as distinct from messianic, middle ground to be defined and carefully nurtured. Based on this pragmatic and non-ideological perspective, I have lost patience with the torrent of self-righteous and hypocritical condemnations of Israeli "occupation" and false cries of "apartheid." The scale of Islamic (or Arab) occupation, settlement and racism around the world is far greater than anything that Israel is accused of, but this is never mentioned in polite or diplomatic company. The Arab tribes that followed Muhammad spread their conquest and settlement activities throughout the Middle East, and then kept going to central Asia, western Europe (Spain and Portugal), eastern Europe (to Kosovo and Albania), northern Africa, and east to Asia, including parts of India, (and what is now Pakistan), Malaysia, Indonesia, and southern Thailand. In these jihads, anyone who didn't accept Islam was simply killed — there was no "resistance," because no one was left to resist. Unlike Israel in 1948 or 1967, these occupiers and settlers did not have the excuse of fighting for their lives against a powerful enemy sworn to "drive them into the sea." After many centuries (not decades), this Arab and Islamic occupation continues to be characterized by intolerance for different faiths and opinions. The brief period of enlightened Islamic rule, under the Umayyad Caliphate beginning in the 10th century in Spain (Al-Andalus), still left Christians and Jews as second class citizens — dhimmis — who were tolerated, at best, and often persecuted and expelled. But none of this is mentioned by the politically correct defenders of Islam in the United Nations (as it prepares for its Durban Review Conference), nor is it discussed by so-called "human rights" organizations, journalists, and academics and activists on campuses (York University being a case in point). Some Christian leaders and groups are no better in their obsessive attacks on "Israeli occupation," such as retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu, as well as the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Lutheran leaders campaigning for divestment, the Mennonite Central Committee, Christian Aid, Caritas and others. They deign to preach to Israel while ignoring the history of occupation, mass murder of "non-believers" and expulsion in the histories of their own institutions. As the successors to the occupying armies that massacred and brutally persecuted Jews, they are certainly in no position to moralize or preach to Israelis. Europe and its former colonies are largely Christian societies today as a result of this violent and intolerant history — the "occupation" continues. The claim that Muslim and Christian occupation and intolerance is all ancient history — and, therefore, irrelevant — while Israel's so-called "crimes" are recent is another canard designed to excuse the double standards. If morality (or rather immorality) had a statute of limitations, how many years would it take before these various occupations became legitimate and settlers turned into citizens? Would 20 years be enough? Or 60? Or perhaps 200 years? The bottom line is that pseudo-moral rhetoric should have no place in political considerations. Stripped of the self-righteous posturing, the emphasis on Israeli "occupation" and "settlement" should be recognized as simply another form of the ongoing racism and anti-Semitism that seeks to prevent the Jewish people from maintaining sovereign equality among the nations of the world. Gerald Steinberg is executive director of NGO Monitor and chairman of the Political Studies Department at Bar Ilan University. To Go To Top

FIND FIRST TEMPLE TUNNEL; DISPUTE HOW ARAB SHEPHERD WAS SHOT; STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT BY ISRAELI GENERAL Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 16, 2008.

ISRAEL'S BLUFF CALLED, AGAIN First, two ships sailed from Cyprus to Gaza, in defiance of Israel's blockade. The protestors boasted that they would end the blockade, but packaged their voyage as humanitarian, bringing medicine. Israel did not make clear how it would respond. It didn't stop them, fearing adverse publicity over barring medicine. The people who chartered the ship, however, claimed this as precedent. Israel denied it was a precedent. Israel said it would judge each incident individually. A third ship set out along the same route. It publicized its voyage as a similar one. Israel said that it would be turned back if it reached Israeli territorial waters. The ship reached Israeli territorial waters. Israel did not turn it back. The Arabs triumphed over Israel, again. Not so, Israel claims — next time it may stop a ship. The Israeli government reinforced the lesson it gives the Arabs — as in its threats but its failure to invade Gaza — that it bluffs. The lesson for the government is not to bluff (IMRA, 10/29). But act! Don't let itself get shamed by murderers! FIND WATER TUNNEL IN FIRST TEMPLE PERIOD King David built his palace in Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE. That palace's remains have been found. Now a water tunnel beneath it, and integrated into it 3,000 years ago, also has been found. It is being cleared of debris (IMRA, 10/29). HAMAS WANTS TO EXTEND GAZA CEASEFIRE (IMRA, 1/29). Guess it hasn't built all the bunkers yet. PERES APOLOGIZES TO MUBARAK MK Lieberman noted that Israeli leaders often travel to confer with Mubarak, but Mubarak does not come to Israel. He said that if Mubarak wants to talk with Israeli leaders, let him come to Israel. If he won't come, "to hell with him." Pres. Peres apologized to Mubarak for Lieberman's remark (IMRA, 10/29). Mubarak often insults Israel, but never apologized. Israel should not apologize to him. It makes Israel seem weak. Weakness attracts aggression DISPUTE OVER HOW ARAB SHEPHERD WAS SHOT The IDF reports that a 67-year-old shepherd in the P.A. opened fire on them, as they undertook a counter-terrorism mission one night, near Jenin. They found other weapons and ammunition near him, besides the one he used against them. The man's son originally was reported by Israeli media as having said he was told of gunfire by neighbors. An hour after it started, he came upon his father being given first aid by Israeli soldiers, unsuccessfully. They guided an ambulance to the patient. The Israeli media later said that the man was shot while herding cattle at night through an Arab village. Arabs don't herd cattle at night or through their villages. They take them out to the fields in the daytime, and return them before night. Reuters, which has been caught falsify reports, claimed that the IDF let the man bleed to death (Arutz-7, 10/29) which is what the Egyptians, PLO troops, and Jordanians did to Israelis in other incidents. Did the P.A. pressure the son to change his story, to make Israel look bad? Israel treats the Arabs humanely. A few Arab individuals reciprocate. THE SON OF HAMAS LEADER WHO TURNED CHRISTIAN Mosab Hassan Yousef was interviewed in the US, where he fled. He always was questioning. He found things in Islam he didn't like. He studied Islam and Christianity objectively. Most Muslims really have no depth in their religion nor do they know much about Christianity. They get their notions about religions from their religious leaders, whose bias presentation makes followers miss the virtues of one and the vices of the other, in his opinion. Christianity as presented lovingly by Christianity differs greatly from Christianity as presented hatefully by Islam. His conversion meant abandoning culture and family, who still love him. Mosab says that his father was not cruel like the Hamas men Mosab found in control of the interior of the Israeli prison he served in. The Hamas leaders there suspected many inmates of cooperating with the authorities, tortured them, and murdered many (Jewish Political Chronicle, Fall 2008). Regain prison control! ARAB TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS IN ISRAEL Arabs in Israel have double the per capital number of traffic accidents as do Jews. "Among the reasons cited for the disparity between the Arab and Jewish sectors: Dangerous driving, driving under the influence of alcohol, non-use of seatbelts, speeding, unsafe vehicles, unsafe pedestrian behavior, and low-level infrastructures." (Arutz-7, 10/29). Some Jewish claims to attempted vehicular homicide may be mistaken. STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT BY ISRAELI GENERAL Gen. Amos Gilad, Director of Research for IDF Intelligence issued a strategic assessment for Israel. He concludes that Israel is in a good strategic position, because there are no alliances against it now, he is proud of the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, which have state-of-the-art militaries, and the P.A. and Syria may sign peace agreements with Israel (IMRA, 10/29). I think that his details were well thought out but his conclusions stem from disproved assumptions. A strategist should not assume without a basis. I am worried about Egypt and Jordan both having capable militaries. Both made multiple wars on Israel before they were Islamist, and both have powerful Islamist movements liable to take them over. Egypt acts like an enemy in many ways, violating the treaty that Gen. Gilad is proud of. Jordan is opportunist. For now, it seeks stability. In 1967, when Israel was thought vulnerable to other Arab forces, Jordan invaded. The king at the time regretted not having pounced in 1973 war. There are alliances against Israel. Iran and Syria are the declared core. Egypt likely would join when needed. Iran's proxies have tens of thousands of rockets. One should hope that the P.A. and Syria would not sign peace agreements with Israel. Israel's ruling class, like the general, confuse agreements with peace and make concessions for agreements that facilitate Arab aggression. So it was with Oslo. Islam doesn't feel bound by peace agreements. Shouldn't Israeli strategists ask how can Muslims reconcile peace agreements with their religious injunction to conquer the world? I wrote that a week before I read an 11/3 IMRA report that the Likud Party told both US campaigns that if it forms a government, it would not be obligated by any agreement reached with Syria by the interim Olmert regime. This is the first piece of sanity I heard from high-level politicians in Israel in some time. It is encouraging. ISRAEL'S FARSI CALL-IN RADIO Israel has a call-in radio program in Farsi. Persians telephone Germany, where they are switched to the program. Most callers praise Israel for being freer than Iran, denounce their Islamist regime for oppressing them, want bread instead of nuclear weapons, and hope that outside powers, including Israel, will destroy Iran's nuclear facilities and help free them from their regime (Jewish Political Chronicle, Fall 2008). Are the callers representative of Iranians as a whole? INDONESIA TO COOPERATE WITH ISRAEL Muhammadiyah, Indonesia's organization for emergency services, and Israel's Magen David Adom will work together on natural disasters (IMRA, 10/29). They don't let bigotry or political correctness impede relief to needy people. ISRAEL ARMY RADIO BIAS Popular broadcaster Dudu Alharar was fired by Israel Army Radio. He accused the station of doing so for the reason that most informed observers suspect, his right-wing view. He probably was the only right-winger left, and served as a modest balance. The other radio stations also are left wing. Media monitor Chani Lutz documented how Army Radio's popular Razi Barkai slants his programs against settlers. About settlers, he reports unemotionally except when exaggerating minor incidents. He curbs the time devoted to them, and applies negative group labels to them. About Arabs, he reports in the form of human interest, to arouse sympathy [gives them more time, and does not apply negative group labels]. For example, when police destroyed not only the unauthorized Federman house but its contents, and when they not only arrested Mrs. Federman but beat her and some of her children, Barkai allotted only half a minute to the police state tactics. He omitted the local mayor's condemnation of the farm's destruction. On the other hand, he repeatedly broadcast and emphasized the voice of the unknown local man who cursed the police, and he spoke derisively of settlers. Another example was after a P.A. Arab burnt down a Jew's house in Yitzhar, Samaria, and stabbed a boy. Yitzhar men entered the Arab's village, and threw rocks and shot in the air. Next day, Barkai did not interview anyone from the boy's family or from Yitzhar, and tried to head off a councilman's discussion of it. He devoted three minutes to Gen. Shlomo Gazit, who made the biased statement that skullcaps on IDF soldiers remind him of swastikas. A week later, the terrorist returned to Yitzhar, where troops shot him dead. Barkai did not report it and did not ask the IDF how come he was able to keep active for a week and try again. [Did the IDF search that village enough? Finally, six months ago, Arabs in the Galilee waved PLO flags and chanted, "We want a terrorist attack. With Jewish Peace Now members in Jaffa, Arabs called out, "In spirit and blood we will redeem you, Jaffa." Barkai stated the Arab incitement to violence once. He interviewed Arabs who called the incidents isolated and talked about peace. He tones down common Arab incitement and talks up occasional Jewish incitement (IMRA, 10/28). 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 To Go To Top

A NUCLEAR NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK: THE COLD WAR'S MISSING ATOM BOMBS Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, November 16, 2008.

This was written by Benjamin Maack and it appeared November 14, 2008 on einestages.de, Spiegel Online's history Web site. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,590513,00.html Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan To the question: "Could Terrorists Find a Bomb?" The honest answer is: Why not? The terrorists have the manpower, the money and the motivation. So again, why not? The real question to ask is: Which ones have they already found and where are they now?

In a 1968 plane crash, the US military lost an atom bomb in Greenland's Arctic ice. But this was no isolated case. Up to 50 nuclear warheads are believed to have gone missing during the Cold War, and not all of them are in unpopulated areas. It was a little early to be swimming in the Mediterranean that year. But in early March 1966, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, the Spanish information minister at the time, and Biddle Duke, the American ambassador in Madrid, together with their respective families, plunged into the chilly waters off the Costa Cálida. Journalists from around the world had gathered on the beach of the small village of Palomares to report on the two families' spring bathing outing. Their interest would have been surprising, if it hadn't been for the hydrogen bomb lying on the ocean floor only a few kilometers away, a bomb with more than 1,000 times the explosive force of the one that flattened Hiroshima. Only a few weeks earlier, on Jan. 17, 1966, the worst nuclear weapons incident of the entire Cold War had taken place off Spain's southeastern coast. During an aerial tanking maneuver, an American B-52 bomber and a KC-135 tanking aircraft collided in mid-air at 9,000 meters (29,000 feet), and both planes exploded in a giant fireball over Palomares. There were four hydrogen bombs in the hold of the B-52. One landed, unharmed, in tomato fields near the village. The non-nuclear fuse detonated in two others causing bomb fragments and plutonium dust to rain down on the impact site. The fourth bomb fell into the water somewhere off the coast, burying itself in several meters of silt. But where exactly did it fall? In the weeks after the accident, Palomares looked like the set for a film about the apocalypse. On land, men wearing white protective suits and blue facemasks used Geiger counters to scan the ground for radiation. The fields were sealed off, and an entire harvest of tomatoes and beans rotted on the vine. The US government had the fields dug up and 1,400 tons of earth removed. The contaminated soil was then shipped to the United States for disposal. Dozens of American warships patrolled the coastline to seal off the area where a fisherman had seen the bomb landing in the water. It took 81 days to recover the nuclear weapon from a depth of 800 meters (2,600 feet). Expressing its shock over the events in Spain, the German daily Hamburger Abendblatt wrote: "More than any sandbox scenario, the bomb incident makes it clear what it means today to be 'living with the bomb'." Greenland's Stray Atomic Bomb The prospect of a stray, possibly damaged atom bomb lying somewhere on the ocean floor is truly horrific. Britain's BBC is currently causing an uproar with a report on the loss of an American atom bomb in 1968. When an American B-52 bomber crashed into the ice off Greenland, the conventional explosives in the bombs exploded, causing a large area to become radioactively contaminated by the plutonium that was released in the process. But what the US government kept secret for decades was that a reconstruction of the bomb components found at the site had revealed that a nuclear warhead was missing. It had apparently drilled its way through the ice in North Star Bay. It was never found. The loss of an atom bomb is not as rare an occurrence as one would hope. "The American Defense Department has confirmed the loss of 11 atomic bombs," says Otfried Nassauer, an expert on nuclear armament and the director of the Berlin Information Center for Transatlantic Security. "It is believed that up to 50 nuclear weapons worldwide were lost during the Cold War." Most of these highly dangerous weapons are still lying on the ocean floor. In April 1989, a fire on board the Komsomolez resulted in the sinking of the Russian nuclear submarine to a depth of 1,700 meters (5,500 feet) in the North Atlantic Ocean, together with two torpedoes and their nuclear warheads. On May 22, 1968, another nuclear submarine, the USS Scorpion, sank to a depth of 3,300 meters (10,800 feet) about 320 nautical miles south of the Azores. There were two nuclear warheads on board. Because of the considerable depths involved, neither the weaponry nor the nuclear reactors on both submarines have been recovered to date. Absurd 'Broken Arrow' A much larger number of atom bombs disappeared in plane crashes over the open ocean. "In the early days of the Cold War, the aircraft lacked sufficient range to cross the Atlantic on one tank of fuel," explains nuclear expert Nassauer. "Some bombers collided with their tanker planes, while others simply missed the tankers and, after running out of fuel, plunged into the sea." Between the late 1950s and mid-1960s, the most explosive part of the Cold War, US bombers carrying atom bombs were in the air around the clock, 365 days a year. Their four main routes passed over Greenland, Spain and the Mediterranean, Japan and Alaska. Only when the bombers became capable of flying across the Atlantic or Pacific on one tank did the frequency of accidents diminish. Probably the most absurd "broken arrow" (the Americans' code word for accidents involving nuclear weapons) happened on Dec. 5, 1965 on board the USS Ticonderoga. The aircraft carrier was en route from Vietnam to Yokosuka in Japan when a fighter-bomber emerging from one of the giant elevators that carry the aircraft from the ship's hold onto the deck plunged into the ocean. The pilot, the aircraft and the nuclear bomb on board sank to a depth of five kilometers (16,400 feet) and were never found. That incident was also kept secret for many years, partly because, when it was finally made public in 1981, it proved that the Americans had stationed nuclear weapons in Vietnam, after all. It also revealed that the United States had defied a treaty with Japan, under which the Americans had agreed not to bring any nuclear weapons onto Japanese territory. Blown Fuses The US military's rather nonchalant handling of its most dangerous toys was not limited to foreign countries. In fact, seven of the 11 nuclear warheads that are officially missing were lost at home in the USA. On Feb. 5, 1958, bomber pilot Howard Richardson had to jettison the hydrogen bomb he was carrying after colliding with a fighter jet. The bomb then disappeared in the shallow waters of Wassaw Sound, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Savannah, Georgia, a city of 100,000 people. Richardson, an experienced pilot, barely managed to land his aircraft at nearby Hunter Army Airfield. The crew of a B-52 that exploded on Jan. 24, 1961 as a result of a defective fuel line was less fortunate. Before the aircraft broke apart, the men managed to eject their dangerous cargo. One of the two hydrogen bombs was parachuted safely into a tree, while the other one went down in a swamp near the small city of Goldsboro, North Carolina, where it plunged an estimated 50 meters (165 feet) into the marshy ground — and where it still lies today. The crash site remains a restricted military zone. But what made this incident famous was the bomb that landed in a tree. Five of its six fuses designed to prevent a detonation failed, with only the last one averting a nuclear explosion. After this near-disaster, the security systems in US nuclear weapons were revised, and Washington asked the Soviet Union to do the same. Could Terrorists Find a Bomb? To this day, these two incidents are a hotly disputed topic among experts, military officials, conspiracy theorists and the concerned citizens of Savannah and Goldsboro. Do the two bombs still pose a danger to the residents of these cities? "Weapons that are on the ocean floor are hardly unlikely to explode," says Nassauer. Nevertheless, he cautions, "perhaps this risk is somewhat greater with the bombs that were lost on land. But virtually nothing is known about whether such bombs can explode spontaneously." A completely different fear has taken hold since the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001. What happens if terrorists acquire one of the lost bombs? An unfounded fear, says Nassauer, noting that even the military, after using all means at its disposal, has failed to find or salvage the bombs. "Quite a few weapons are located in places that are still completely inaccessible with the means available to us today," says Nassauer. The real dangers lie in the area surrounding a crash site, and they include the possibility of explosion at the time of the accident and the effects of corrosion, which could allow radioactivity to escape over decades. In Palomares, for example, the nightmare continues after more than four decades. The sleepy village his since become part of a thriving tourist region. But in 2004, two pits containing radioactive soil were discovered at the site of future golf courses and luxury hotels. Extensive soil studies revealed that other areas were still contaminated. The Spanish government has confiscated the affected land, and in 2009 US troops will be deployed to decontaminate the area once again. More than 40 years after the first bomb fell on Palomares, several thousand tons of contaminated earth will be shipped to America once again. 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. To Go To Top

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION "THE WAR ON KOSHER" Posted by Leib Reyder, November 16, 2008.

While we expect that the merits of the specific allegations will be dealt with justly through the courts, one thing is very clear - Agriprocessors is being excessively prosecuted in a most unfair and discriminatory way. Hi, I signed the petition "The War on Kosher". I'm asking you to sign this petition to help us reach our goal of 15,000 signatures. I care deeply about this cause, and I hope you will support our efforts. You can view this petition at: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/tell-a-friend/2382583 Contact Leib Reyder at leib_reyder@yahoo.com To Go To Top

THE RESCUER Posted by Jack Lauber, November 15, 2008.

This was written by Haviv Rettig and it is archived at http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jewishsociety/The_Rescuer.asp

In 1972, Toronto high school music teacher Judy Feld Carr came across a news article in The Jerusalem Post that told of the tragic deaths of 12 young Syrian Jewish men who ran across a minefield while attempting to flee Syria across the Turkish border. "I saw the article and I couldn't get over it," Carr recalled in a phone interview with the Post 34 years after that fateful publication. The daughter of an independent-minded fur trader from Sudbury, Ontario, she could not sit helpless while Syria's Jewish community suffered. "So my late husband and I decided we had to do something about it." And she did. Spectacularly. Over the next 28 years, Carr masterminded from her Toronto home an international smuggling operation, complete with elaborate secret codes, meetings overseas with foreign agents and extensive bribes for Syrian officials, which rescued 3,228 Jews from persecution. Much of Carr's work remains secret. "Even today, more is hidden than known, and we still cannot expose in detail many of [Carr's] rescues," noted a recent article in IICC Magazine, the journal of the Israeli Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center. Edited by former senior IDF intelligence officer Brig.-Gen. (res.) Ephraim Lapid, IICC Magazine quoted "foreign sources, who revealed that Carr was involved in the creation of a secret and secure information network with extensive connections," both with "official and secret sources in Israel and private ones in America." The story began as a local philanthropic initiative. Distraught over the news article, Carr and her husband, Dr. Ronald Feld, organized lectures and a study day on Syrian Jewry. The participants learned of the persecution of Syrian Jews at the hands of the local Arabs and the regime, some of which continues to this day. They learned of the 1947 pogroms in which Arab mobs smashed homes and synagogues in the 2,500-year-old Jewish community of Aleppo; of laws from the 1940's barring Jews from purchasing land; of the Muhabarat (secret police) surveillance of Damascus's Jewish quarter; of the arrest and reported torture of Jews suspected of attempting to leave the country; and of the fact (recently cited in a 2001 US State Department human rights report) that Jews are the only minority in Syria whose religion is denoted in their passports and identity cards. But, once they understood the problem, "we didn't know what to do," Carr said. "So we decided to do what we knew best from [campaigning for] Russian Jewry. We decided to call Syria." It took almost three weeks ("We were about to give up.") and the help of a Moroccan Jewish phone operator in Montreal to finally get a phone call through to Syria. "The Syrians would shut the line to Canada as soon as we asked for a Jew," Carr recalled. She finally reached the home of a Jewish woman who was on the payroll of the Muhabarat. Luckily, the woman's husband was the only one home at the time, and though the call from Canada "almost gave him a heart attack," he divulged the name and address of Rabbi Ibrahim Hamra, who would become the Chief Rabbi of Syria. Following that initial gambit, Carr and her husband "knew we couldn't call again, and it wasn't a good idea to write a letter. So we came up with an idea to send a telegram in French [which is widely spoken in Syria] asking if Rabbi Hamra needed religious books. We prepaid the answer." Ten days later came the response, a veritable shopping list of Jewish books. And so began Carr's communication with the Syrian Jewish community. Though her husband died suddenly of a heart attack in 1973, leaving her alone with three children, Carr maintained and strengthened her fragile contact with Syria's Jews. When, in 1977, she married Donald Carr, he became her confidant and supporter, and one of only a handful of people around the world who knew about her clandestine activities. Toronto's Beth Tzedec synagogue, the largest in Canada, established the Dr. Ronald Feld Fund for Jews in Arab Lands, and Carr used donations to this fund to finance her work. "We had no overhead, no executive directors, no salaries. We didn't have dinners, cocktail parties, fundraising," she recalled. "We only printed thank-you cards." Even so, she said, she received quiet financial help from Jews throughout North America. "It spread by word of mouth across Canada from British Columbia to Newfoundland. Then there was a fund in Baltimore that sent their money," she said. At its outset, the fund "was only a link to the rabbi in Damascus, and later on to rabbis in Allepo and Kamashili," the only three towns in Syria where Jews were legally permitted to reside — and even then restricted to ghettos, forbidden to own cars or to travel. "The rabbis wanted books, tefillin (phylacteries), tallisim (prayer shawls)," Carr related. Soon, the telegrams and Judaica shipments became a code. "I started inserting words into the telegrams, like 'who's in prison?'" she related. "Then the rabbi would answer with a name, hidden inside my address." In order to verify that the rabbi had received the books, Carr would write one verse of psalms inside a book, and Rabbi Hamra would reply with the next one. Eventually, the verses became a way of discussing events, and Carr began to receive updates and news from the community. As the code developed it took on additional elements, including terms taken from Chinese cooking and alcoholic beverages. Carr herself was codenamed "Gin." The operation was expanded to Aleppo when another Toronto woman, Hanna Cohen, whose brother was a rabbi in Aleppo, decided to visit him, "taking her life into her hands." Carr recalled that Cohen was arrested and interrogated, but then returned to Canada. She carried with her, hidden in her clothing, a letter for Carr "from the rabbis in Aleppo begging for books and begging to get out of Syria." And so, the network grew steadily. Through Syrian Jews who had escaped to Canada on their own, Carr slowly developed a network of contacts in and outside Syria. She communicated with Syrian government functionaries, judges and even Muhabarat officers, all of whom were brought together by the knowledge that there was money to be made in "selling Jews" to Judy Carr. She used this network to "to ransom the Jews and to pay off people on the escape route and negotiate prices." She funneled bribe money to Syrian officials through third parties and negotiated the Jews' release personally. Over time, with the cooperation of Israel's secret services, Carr had operatives moving in and out of Syria as well as ready in Turkey and Lebanon to collect escaping Jews and ferry them safely to Israel or elsewhere. One of Carr's most interesting stories concerns not Jews, but an ancient and priceless Keter, or Bible manuscript. The Damascus Keter, produced in Burgos in northwestern Spain in 1260 and taken to Muslim lands by Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition, was smuggled out of Syria by one of Carr's agents, hidden in stacks of documents. Today it resides in Israel's National Library in Jerusalem. All the time that Carr worked covertly to rescue Syrian Jews, she publicly lobbied Canadian officials, diplomats and Jewish organizations, never revealing her activities. All of them underestimated the woman with whom they were dealing, considering her an amateur activist tackling issues beyond her ken. "I never had any publicity. It had to be a totally secret operation," she said. "The world media doesn't look at Canada except for the weather report, so no one knew what I was doing." That changed in the late 1990's. In 1999, University of Toronto historian Harold Troper turned Carr's story into a book, The Ransomed of God: The Remarkable Story of One Woman's Role in the Rescue of Syrian Jews [re-released in paperback in 2007 as "The Rescuer"]. In May 2001, she was invested into the Order of Canada, the country's highest honor. Her story was "one of international drama and suspense," according to the office of Canada's Governor General, which awarded her the honor and praised her for her "selfless concern for others." She has also been recognized, albeit less prestigiously, in the Jewish world. The late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin thanked her for her "hard and dangerous work" in a 1995 letter, adding that Israel and Syrian Jews "will never be able to reward you as you deserve." She is also the recipient of the Simon Wiesenthal Award for Tolerance, Justice and Human Rights. But Carr, now a grandmother of 13, shies away from the publicity. Most of those she rescued don't know the identity of the person who, from far-away Toronto, cleared their path to freedom. "I've been to a few Syrian weddings and bar mitzvahs in Israel and Brooklyn," she said with embarrassment. "I don't like the kavod [honor], because they make me go under the chuppah (wedding canopy), and then they see who I was and that's not necessary. It's not necessary." Carr remains in touch with the rabbis of the communities, and with those she rescued from inside Syrian prisons and helped to flee to North and South America and Israel. "I gave a speech in Sao Paulo [Brazil] before Rosh Hashanah," she related, "and people there stood up and said, 'Judy, don't you know me? You took me out on the escape route.'" One of them was a Sephardi rabbi who carried with him a prayer book inscribed with Carr's handwriting. "He apologized because he knew my rules [forbidding carrying religiously identifiable objects on the escape route]," she said with pride, "but he said he put it in his pocket when he left, and it has brought him good luck." Contact the poster at yakovdov1@yahoo.com The AISH article includes a 12-min Interview with Judy Feld Carr, from CBC's "The Hour". This article originally appeared in the Jerusalem Post. To Go To Top

OLMERT STILL DOES DAMAGE Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, November 15, 2008.

Dear friends, The quotes below from an Editorial by Jerusalem Post Editor David Horovitz's speak for themselves (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1226404736079&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter). It is alarming how much damage can a lame duck like Olmert still cause. Olmert's speech at the grave of Rabin serves to prove how desperately Israel needs a strong Prime Minister at the head of a strong national coalition, particularly now when a buffer against a new Obama administration is at the heart of Israel's survival. As for the latest on Obama, his anti-Israel advisor Robert Malley continues to be involved in the President-elect's foreign policy deliberations, in contradiction of Obama's campaign promises to the contrary. Surely we all must wait to pass judgement on Obama only after he occupies the Oval Office, but the initial signs are a source of deep worry for Israel. Your Truth Provider, Yuval.

"Our presumed peace partner, offered all or almost all of the territory he seeks — by a prime minister who, on the basis of Monday's speech, surely made plain in their face-to-face talks the willingness he now publicly espouses to also "relinquish Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem" — simply said no. Humiliatingly rebuffed, the prime minister might have been expected to denounce such intransigence. He might have been expected to wonder publicly whether Abbas is any more serious than was his unlamented predecessor about reaching viable terms. He might have been expected to urge the international community to encourage Abbas to reconsider, for the good of our people and his own. But no. On Monday the prime minister pointed the finger of blame at an electorate that had chosen him to try to reach an accommodation, rather than at the "partner" who rejected it. In so doing, he both excused Abbas's intransigence and tacitly encouraged the international community to press Israel for concessions beyond the 100 percent Olmert has essentially conceded. This is not only a case of egregiously misdirected criticism. It is an invitation to the watching world to blame Israel for a failure that is not ours and seek to extract a consequent additional price — an invitation to literally further squeeze Israel that has been issued, staggeringly, by our own prime minister." "WHAT OLMERT should have said is that the Israeli public entrusted him with the task of seeking an accommodation with the Palestinians and that he failed, in part because of his own decisions and actions but in still greater part because of the abiding Palestinian incapacity to genuinely internalize Israel's legitimacy." Yuval Zaliouk writes the Truth Provider columns. To subscribe, send an email to ynz@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

THE SOUTHERN HEVRON HILLS Posted by Shalom Pollack, November 15, 2008.

One of the off the beaten track areas of Israel that I enjoy taking adventureous visiters to are the southern Hebron Hills. As we drive south from Jerusalem passing through the very cradle of Jewish history with its rolling green hills along the Patriarchs and Matriarchs" path, or the " Road of Heroism" as it is some times called, we resist the magnetic pull to stop at Gush Etzion or Hevron and continue south, fully cognizent that more Jews walked on this path than on any other road in history. Soon, after passing the turn off to Hevron the rolling vineyards give way to another dimension of the Land. The rich vineyards and orchards become more sparse and gives way to a gradual descent into a dryer wider expanse. We are entering the border land of the Judean Desert. The southern Hebron hills stand as a senitel facing east and the desert as it rolls down towards the Dead Sea Here one can see the desert as far as the horizon It is to this land suspended between civilization and wilderness that young David sought refuge from a jealous King Saul. Here he locked horns with Naval the Carmelite and met his wife to be, the wise and beautiful Avigail. To think that we are gazing on the very same hills and ravines where this drama took place. The very same hills! Where the Bible truly comes to life. There is even a new Jewish pioneer town called Carmel just where it was in ancient times. Talk about "the children returning to their borders..! I always find it inspiring to visit one of these villages unannounced. Invariably the residents are only too happy to answer alll questions and more often than not invite you in for a visit. The smaller, the more vulnerable the village the more hospitable. I have some favorite tiny ones that I just love to bring unsuspecting visitors to They can not help but be affected, indeed bitten by the spirit. We come to our destination, Susyia. Today Susyia is a thriving village that attracts students form across Israel to their prestigious schools Its field school is home base for those who come to study the region for a day or a month where they take their touring very seriously. Next to modern Susyia is the excavated ancient town of Susyia. In the centuries when Jews were banned from Roman and Byzantine Jerusalem and from the center of the country, Jews were forced to cling to an existence on the fringes — like the South Hevron hills. Unearthed recently is an entire Jewish town dating to the times of the Talmud. Homes, ritual baths, guard walls and towers to warn of approaching bandits, wells. burial caves, underground work shops and escape tunnles. An entire town unearhed And perched on the upper part of the town is the synagouge. Resplendent with an intricate weave of moasiac floors depicting Jewish symbols and Hebrew dedications and blessings, it was lovingly revealed by Israeli archeologists a few years ago. To think, a robust Jewish community lived right here where we sit. They prayed and conducted their business just where we stand. For hundreds of years Jews clung to the place until the Moslem conquest and the final expulsion or forced conersioon in the seventh century.. And today we are back. What a country! Please see snippets of my new DVD, "Israel — Ancient Roots, Modern Miracle" at my website: www.shalompollacktours.co.il Regards Shalom Pollack Shalom Pollack was born and educated in USA — he has a Masters in International Relations. He lives in Israel, where he has been a licensed tour guide for twenty years. Contact him at shalompo@yahoo.com To Go To Top

HAARETZ FINDS A SURPRISE Posted by Steven Plaut, November 15, 2008.

1. A front page lead story in Haaretz on Friday (Nov 14) began: "The continuing fighting around the Gaza Strip is surprising not only because it contradicts the prognosis of Israeli intelligence but also because it is completely in contradiction to the direct interests of both sides in the near future.." Got that? Put aside the fact that Haaretz runs editorials as if they are news stories on the front page. The real news here is that Haaretz finds it "SURPRISING" that the latest ceasefire "deal" with the savages did not hold and produced dozens of rocket attacks on Israeli civilians from the Gaza Strip in the past few days. But every single ceasefire "deal" over the past 16 years produced escalation of terror. So why exactly does Haaretz find THIS bout of rocket attacks "surprising." And the comment that the barbarism is "contrary to the interests of both sides" just proves that Haaretz is still living inside its little LSD trip and pretending that the savages have a real interest in reaching an accommodation with Israel, while Israel is the only obstruction to such a nice pastoral utopia. See http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1037264.html 2. In his weekend columns, Ben Dror Yemini, the deputy editor in Maariv, has emerged as one the few decent and honest journalists in Israel. While Left of Center, he freely bashes the Far-Left and the anti-Zionists, including the tenured traitors. Meanwhile, this past Friday, he has fried a newer fish, after noting the absurdity of Dan Meridor rejoining the Likud (instead of recruiting himself into MERETZ). Here is an excerpt from Yemini's column, translated by me (the full column in Hebrew is here: http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/811/592.html?hp=0&loc=202&tmp=2407 ): 'I believe the conspiracy theories about the Rabin assassination to the same extent as I believe all those conspiracy theories about 911 in the US. No, the MOSSAD did not direct Mohammed Ata and no, the GSS (Shin Bet) was not behind the murder of Rabin. But in recent years, in spite of the passing of time, there are those who try to disseminate "question marks" about these, and not just a few isolated individuals or organizations. Even some people who seem on the surface to be sane have joined in. There are of course many who do not belong to any particular political wing yet get swept along because they do not know how to respond to the "evidence" presented by the conspiracists who challenge the official version. 'After the bloody attack on the US on 911, an internet documentary was spread throughout the web claiming to disprove completely the official explanation of what happened that day, including the fact that the planes crashing into the towers caused their collapse. The film claimed to cite experts and engineers who show that the towers just could not have collapsed that way. They insisted there was only one "scientific" explanation, namely, that explosives placed inside the towers had been detonated and brought them down. It was all planned and coordinated with the hijackers, they claim. Similarly, Yigal Amir may have pulled the trigger, but the "real" story is much bigger, claim such people. 'Some time went by and then the internet disseminated a DIFFERENT film, this time debunking all of the claims, one by one, made by the "911 Truth" conspiracists and their film. It was an essential response. Not that it calmed down the conspiracists. The more sane of their followers, however, and there were quite a few, simply abandoned the conspiracy nonsense. 'We are now in a similar situation in Israel. The mainstream media ignore the conspiracists, who proliferate through the blogosphere. One can dismiss the conspiracists with contempt and ignore them, but it is better to debunk them, completely and overwhelmingly. Hiding our heads in the sand will not help the situation. In fact it strengthens the conspiracy camp. Some of the conspiracists in the US are anti-Semites and anti-Zionists. They insist that the Jews and the MOSSAD were behind the 911 attacks. Some of those promoting the conspiracy theory about the murder of Rabin are members of the Israeli Far Right. It is interesting to note how often "ultra-Zionists" end up collaborating in effect with anti-Zionists. The problem is with those who pretend to have some understanding of the historic event.. If the silence continues and the conspiracists are not answered fully, completely, and officially, it will be a victory for the forces of evil and that must not happen.' Afterword by SP: Yemini joins those who realize that pursuing infantile conspiracism has made the Israeli Right appear to be insane and irrelevant to so many Israelis, and has prevented the Right from having any effect on national policy. 3. Pestilinian Authority hands out death penalty against anyone who fights terrorism: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/128366 4. Billie Moscone-Lerman is an ultra-airhead, whose talking head is among the airiest. She is a journalist of sorts, and for a while had her own TV chat show, proving that state-run television that is not answerable or accountable can air even the stupidest, most boring, and silliest material. Anyways, the Billie has an article in Friday's Maariv about Dov Chanin, the Stalinist would-be KGB officer who ran for mayor in the Tel Aviv election and got a third of the vote. Since I doubt whether a single Russian-immigrant voted for him, he may have gotten half of the non-Russian Tel Aviv vote. The Billie sings his praise and her headline reads: "He is a communist but not in the sense of gulags. Rather, in the sense of dreaming of a better world." Got that? The Billie thinks there is a communism about dreams of a better world. Only in Israel could such a bimbo write for the national number two newspaper. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments — both seriously and satirically — on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. Write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

ISRAELI LEFTIST-AIDED FRANCE 2 BLOOD LIBEL; ISLAMIC "ANTI-DEFAMATION" CAMPAIGN; COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 14, 2008.

REVIEWING FEASIBILITY OF SECURITY FENCE Fence or no fence, Hamas is holding Israel at bay under threat of strategic rocket attack. The same would be true of Judea-Samaria, if Israeli troops withdrew. Therefore, it wasn't the fence that brought Israel relative security from the P.A. in Judea-Samaria, it was Israeli troops. Despite the failure of security fences, the billions of dollars to complete, and its problems for residents and property-owners, Israel blindly pushes on with it. Are Israeli politicians afraid to admit they made a mistake? (IMRA, 10/28.) They would have to admit that the IDF still is needed to protect Israel from the P.A.. In turn, they would have to admit that Israel cannot buy peace with land, and that the P.A. should be destroyed and not appeased. Admit that their ideology demanded sacrifices for peace were futile, and they'd lose elections. Perhaps the real reason for the fence is to keep Jews out. It practically has been admitted that the fence separates the area that Israel wants to keep from areas it wants to cede, including areas that Jews live in. The government knows that those Jews won't protest by firing rockets into Israel. Think about that last statement! The government calls those Jews names, but and calls Abbas, who encourages the faithful to murder Jews, peace partners. ISRAELI LEFTIST AIDED FRANCE 2 BLOOD LIBEL A French court vindicated the French Jewish accuser of France2 TV as having fraudulently claimed that the IDF murdered an Arab boy, Al-Dura. Part of France 2's case was made by the son-in-law of Pres. Peres, surgeon Raphael Warden. Dr. Warden is active in the pro-terrorist group, Doctors For Human Rights. [If they were for human rights, they would not be anti-Zionist and pro-terrorist, since terrorists deny human rights.] Based on documents from a Jordanian office, he verified that the IDF shot the boy's father. An Israeli doctor who did examine Al-Dura's father, however, found that the injuries the father claimed to have received when his son was pretending to have been shot had been inflicted at least eight years earlier (Prof. Steven Plaut, 10/28). If people understood their own culture and that of the Muslim Arabs, would they adopt psychotic ideologies? Wouldn't they realize that Muslim Arabs and Western leftists lie for their ideologies rather than admit their falsity? Like Dr. Warden, the Western media accepts certain falsehoods without much question. TAKE A BAD BARGAIN TO SHOW IT'S BAD? Daniel Gordis finds two mistakes by Israel worth making. One was abandoning Gaza. It taught Israelis that withdrawal doesn't work. The other was exchanging live terrorists for dead Israeli soldiers. That showed young Israelis that Israel will do anything to get them back (Jewish Political Chronicle, Fall 2008). Yes, more Israelis learned that withdrawal is counter-productive. Those Israelis don't count. The Israelis who do count don't learn — they want more withdrawals. A psychotic ideology drives them, and no scruples inhibit them. Doesn't matter what the majority thinks. Didn't the majority learn that Oslo doesn't work, yet Israeli regimes continue to pursue more Oslo-like pacts? No, trading for dead Israeli soldiers does not show that Israel will do anything to get its soldiers back. It didn't fight hard enough to force the enemy to return them alive. By agreeing to take them back dead or alive, the government guaranteed that those or other captured Israelis will be murdered before they are traded. By agreeing to a lopsided exchange, the government gave the enemy an incentive, that the enemy cites, to capture more Israelis. By appeasing the enemy and leaving them in power, and by releasing so many prisoners, the government perpetuates the war and the killing of young Israeli soldiers. No thanks! ISRAELI EDUCATION Israeli students "are unaware of the importance of a Jewish state and do not know why the fight for its very existence is still going on,.." This ignorance results from their secularist education (Op. Cit.) supervised by anti-Zionists. ISLAMIC "ANTI-DEFAMATION" CAMPAIGN The Organization of Islamic Conference is promoting an international resolution on religious defamation. It seeks bans on "offending" expression. Muslims define "offensive" subjectively. The resolution replaces bans on incitement to hatred and violence to what Muslims find, or pretend to find, offensive, however objective it be. "It empowers the state rather than the individual, and protects ideas rather than the person who holds them." (Ibid.) Being subjective, there is no standard. Muslins take offense at any statement of fact about Islam not showing it positively. They also object to critical analysis of Islam and to defense against defamation by Islam. They pretend great insult over humor about Islam. They who ban free speech and legitimate scholarship should have no hold over our speech! Let them start by reining in their own defamatory statements, in mosques and the media. Their Koran condemns other faiths. If they defend it as true, then truth is a defense — put that in the ban! PLO ADMITS IT'S STILL AT WAR! The PLO was sued in a US court for acts of terrorism between 2001 and 2004. Its attorney, Ramsey Clark, did not deny that the PLO committed those acts. He claimed that those acts do not fit the international definition of terrorism but are acts of war. Acts of war do not come under judicial purview in the US. The judge disagreed. He said they fit the international definition. The PLO targeted civilians in a college and at a bus stop, with indiscriminate bombs. Thus although in the name of the PLO, Arafat signed agreements with Israel and the US to halt violence, and although his successor is supposed to be in a peace process, the PLO admits it continued its war. It also admits that it used means of terrorism, which are not legitimate acts of war. [Its denial that such means are terrorism is false propaganda, part of its war.] "That the PLO justifies 'merciless capability of indiscriminately killing and maiming untold numbers' suggests it remains the terrorist organization it has always been since its founding in 1964." "When will the diplomatic bright lights in Jerusalem and Washington figure this out?" (Daniel Pipes #876, 10/28). The diplomats and many journalist have figured it out. They only pretend there is a peace process, because they either believe in appeasement or they oppose Jewish national self-determination. The State Dept. and NY Times believe both. What excuse do US Jewish organizations have for not exposing the pretense? COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT The Geneva Convention outlawed "collective punishment" — punishing innocents people as reprisals for others' crimes. The Convention was based on Nazi firing squads that chose at random 10 civilians for every Nazi killed by partisans. Nor does the Convention apply to Gaza, which is not party to it, and which is not under foreign occupation. Israel's critics claim it imposes collective punishment on Gaza, by partial blockade. In war, however, economic blockade is legitimate, as recognized by the UNO Charter. Even fuel may be withheld if taken by enemy forces, as Hamas does. The UNO has imposed economic blockades on Iraq and the Taliban, and Hamas attacks any Israeli it can, but those acts are not called "collective punishment." [If Israel does it, it is wrong?] Israel is not obliged to supply Gaza, which uses supplies to make war on Israel. Calling the blockade collective punishment is part of the strategy of de-legitimizing Israeli security by pretending its security fence is apartheid, killing terrorist leaders is a war crime, and self-defense is ethnic cleansing (Jewish Political Chronicle, Fall 2008). 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 To Go To Top

ALMOST 1,000 TUNNELS FROM EGYPT TO GAZA Posted by Marc Samberg, November 14, 2008.

I am going to go out on a limb here and take a wild stab at this. Let me guess, the tunnels are for the innocent children to play in. The article below by Khaled Abu Toameh comes via Dr. Aaron Lerner of IMRA. It is called "Perfume, Viagra, lions and fuel — smuggling is Gaza's growth industry" and it appeared today in the Jerusalem Post http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1226404731018&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Lerner writes, With close to 1,000 tunnels operating and many truckload flowing through them daily, it is hardly a "cat-and-mouse game" for Egypt but instead that "Egyptians (are) reluctant to take tough measures against the smugglers". Question: Don't all the geniuses who want to outsource Israel's security by inviting in Egyptian and other forces to the Gaza Strip and West Bank realize that the very same logic that drives Egypt's refusal to act effectively would go into play there as well?

Sixteen months after assuming full control over the Gaza Strip, Hamas appears to be stronger than ever — largely thanks to the growing number of tunnels that are used to smuggle goods and weapons under the border with Egypt. Israeli hopes that the embargo imposed on Gaza will eventually turn the impoverished Palestinians living there against the Hamas government seem unrealistic in light of the booming smuggling industry. According to sources close to Hamas, the number of underground tunnels has risen in the past two years to nearly 1,000. Once, Palestinian groups used the tunnels mainly to smuggle weapons into the Strip. But the tunnels have now become a vital tool in circumventing the Israeli commercial blockade of the district. It's no wonder the tunnels are no longer a secret, and foreign journalists are being invited to visit them and interview their owners. Hamas and its supporters have managed — through a carefully planned PR campaign — to market the smuggling tunnels as the only available means to prevent "starvation" in the Gaza Strip. Hamas leaders have even begun referring to them as "Tunnels of Life" because large supplies of food and medicine are being brought through them into Gaza on a daily basis. The longer the blockade continues, the more sophisticated the tunnel-digging process becomes. Today, engineers and well-trained excavators supervise the digging of most of the tunnels, some of which are equipped with electricity and phone lines. Some of the tunnels are said to have more than one opening on the Egyptian side so they can continue to function even after an entrance is discovered and closed by the Egyptian authorities. Hamas representatives said Thursday that while the tunnels wouldn't solve the major problems of the Gaza Strip in the long term, they were proving to be an effective tool in countering the Israeli blockade. When milk, flour and gas cylinders don't come from Israel, they are easily transferred through the many hundreds of tunnels. Who needs the Rafah border crossing to be reopened when one can get to Egypt via an underground tunnel? Who needs banks or Western Union when there can be subterranean transfers of cash? When Israel decided earlier this year to temporarily suspend fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip in response to the rocket attacks on Israeli towns and cities, the smugglers installed underground pipes that continue to pump gasoline into the Gaza Strip. As a result, motorists there pay nearly half the price they were paying several months ago to fill their cars. Underground smuggling has become one of the most profitable and sought-after professions in Gaza. Hundreds of unemployed laborers have joined the digging business, where monthly salaries range from NIS 2,500 to NIS 5,000. Most of the laborers used to work in Israel but lost their jobs because of the closure of the border crossings. "Today there's less demand for weapons in the Gaza Strip," said a veteran Palestinian journalist who has been covering the tunnels story for over two decades. "Today people want to eat and buy cheap goods from Egypt. That's why they are smuggling everything, including sheep, calves, lions, cigarettes, perfume, electrical appliances, food and even tens of thousands of Viagra pills." Both Israel and Egypt seem to have wearied of battling the underground tunnel trade. The two countries today realize that this is a cat-and-mouse game that needs to be dealt with on more than one front. The major problem Israel and Egypt are facing is that there is no one in the Gaza Strip to restore law and order along the border. On the contrary, Hamas has long been involved in the smuggling business, and its members are said to control many of the tunnels in Rafah. Once, the smuggling business was mostly run by influential clans and criminals. Today, it's an honor to be the owner of an underground tunnel, and many of the Gaza Strip's respected businessmen are said to be part of the industry. The smugglers are boasting that they are actually performing "patriotic" deeds, since they are helping their people circumvent the Israeli embargo. Seventeen Palestinian diggers and smugglers who were killed when their tunnels collapsed in the past few months have been declared shahids (martyrs) by Hamas and their families. This makes the Egyptians reluctant to take tough measures against the smugglers, fearing they will be accused by the Arab world of complicity in the "siege" against Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinians. Contact Marc Samberg at marcsamberg@yahoo.com To Go To Top

ARABS GET 140 MILLION U.S. DOLLARS IN OLIVE REVENUES IN 2008 Posted by Marc Samberg, November 14, 2008.

Here we go again, the exaggeration of olive trees destroyed and more proof that the poor poor Transjordanians are getting much more money than they want you to know. Official figures from officials in the Palestinian Authority indicate that the number of trees damaged during the harvest constituted only 0.05% of the total harvested crop. This below is from IDF Spokesperson's Office, November 13th, 2008

An Estimated 140 Million U.S. Dollars in Revenues in This Year's Olive Harvest in Judea and Samaria Approximately one month after the olive harvest began in Judea and Samaria, the vast majority of olives in the area have been successfully harvested, assisted by the early deployment of security forces in the region. This year, the harvest was made possible in many areas, including those close to Jewish communities and others in which the harvest was denied in recent years due to security or legal restrictions. During this period of time, a number of clashes occurred, but due to prior intelligence, security forces were able to immediately intervene to secure the harvest grounds. All forces were instructed to facilitate the safe continuation of the harvest and to enable its safe completion. Although most of the harvest did not require coordination with the IDF and Civil Administration, past experience and different security needs determined that certain areas called for advance coordination with the aforementioned bodies. Official figures from officials in the Palestinian Authority indicate that the number of trees damaged during the harvest constituted only 0.05% of the total harvested crop. As a part of preparations for this year's harvest, meetings were held between Civil Administration personnel and their Palestinian counterparts. The meetings included representatives of the various villages in the region, as well as important figures from the Palestinian Authority (PA) including the PA Olive Oil Department, and were held in order to coordinate a schedule for the harvest. In addition, Israeli security forces authorized the plan for the harvest, during which they would provide security, after conducting security assessments. Permits to harvest olives in the seam zone were granted to approximately 3,000 Palestinian workers for the duration of the harvest, as a part of a general enhancement in agricultural work enabled in that area. Information about the Olive Oil Industry: Olives are one of the most important crops grown in Judea and Samaria, and in the Palestinian agricultural sector. Olive groves spread over 900,000 square kilometers in Judea and Samaria, which is approximately 40% of all land used for agriculture in the area. The olive industry provides livelihood for over 100,000 Palestinian families, which account for more than 500,000 people. In a plentiful season such as this year's, the harvest provided 3,600,000 working days, compared to1,700,000 work days during the low season. These figures refer not only to harvesters, but to the marketing of the produce, the olive oil soap industry, the manufacturing of "Jeffet" as burning material and the use of olive trees for art products, such as Christian souvenirs made in Bethlehem. The harvest, which began on October 5th, yielded approximately 24,000 tons of olive oil, making it a plentiful harvest season compared to last year's 8000 ton yield. 114,000 tons of olives were harvested (compared to 41,000 tons last year), 7,000 of which will be pickled and 107,000 are designated for use in the production of olive oil. An estimated 7,000 tons of the olive oil produced will be marketed in Israel. Revenues for the Palestinian economy from the harvest this year are estimated at over 140 million U.S. dollars.   EDITOR'S NOTE: Nevertheless, thanks to a partisan media, the myth has been established that Arabs are prevented from harvesting their crops. Their attempts at marauding Jews orchards are ignored by a media anxious to establish that the Arabs are the victims. This is a story about about an Arab raid that was thwarted. "Arabs Infiltrate Yitzhar, Samaria" by Maayana Miskin Arutz-7 http://www.web-view.net/Show/0XFA865D2D96B4549FC96269C3FE212CE9 BA2505BCBC5FC9530A2BFDDBE467C819.htm Dozens of Palestinian Authority Arabs accompanied by Israeli anarchists entered the town of Yitzhar in Samaria on Friday morning. The group said it had come to harvest olives. One member of the group was senior Kibbutz Movement official Yoel Maharshak, Yitzhar residents said. IDF officers said they had not received a request to harvest olives in the area. Such a request would almost certainly have been rejected, residents of Yitzhar said, as the group was located within the territory of the town itself and not in an Arab-owned orchard. Officers and police forcibly removed the group from the town. The confrontation led to the closure of the entrance to Yitzhar for a short time. "This incident goes to show yet again how the stories about 'olive harvesting' are mainly planned provocations," residents of Yitzhar said. A similar incident took place approximately one month ago, when Arabs infiltrated Yitzhar and began damaging olive trees. Soldiers forced them to leave. Soldiers said the Arabs were apparently trying to make it appear as if residents of Yitzhar had cut down Arab-owned trees. Friday's incident came just two days after the Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency reported that Arab villagers in the Shechem region of Samaria planned to "take action against settler violence" by targeting Jewish towns in the region. The villagers said they would first target the Jews living in Homesh, in northern Samaria (Homesh was reduced to rubble in the 2005 Disengagement and has been repopulated by pioneers to a limited extent). In addition, the Arabs announced plans to hold an event in the village of Asira el-Kabalia on Saturday. The village, located near Yitzhar, was the site of Jewish-Arab clashes recently after a resident of the village infiltrated Yitzhar and stabbed a nine-year-old boy. Contact Marc Samberg at marcsamberg@yahoo.com To Go To Top

SETTLERS WHO LONG TO LEAVE THE WEST BANK — ACCORDING TO NEW YORK TIMES Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, November 14, 2008.

Once again the 'disease virus' called the New York Times featured a propaganda display, telling all who would be so gullible to fall for it, that settlers want to leave their homes because the "West Bank" (Judea and Samaria — the correct geographic terms) is besieged. In truth, 280,000 Jewish patriotic settlers living in Judea and Samaria have no intention of leaving. But, the NYT, under the Left-Liberal un-Jewish owners, the Sulzbergers, wish to start a Goebbels-like panic, both in Israel and in America. Leftists have always used propaganda trying to destroy the courage and beliefs of Jews so they will run away. This bit of printed trash uses the vague generalization of un-named settlers who are supposedly saying "The Settlement Enterprise is Doomed." Sounds like it came straight out of the mouths of Olmert, Livni, Barak, Peres and always the Israel-hating Rice. Ethan Bronner claims that "thousands of other settlers say they want to move back to within the pre-1967 borders of Israel". What is his evidence? Only 3 people are quoted by name, plus a Left-wing Knesset member, Foreign Minister and the new head of the Kadima Party, Tzipi Livni. Amongst the outright lies, falsehoods, twisting and spinning, a few good truths emerge. When any people do move out of their homes in Judea and Samaria, new families from Israel and abroad quickly move in. There is actually a long waiting list for homes in the mostly empty beautiful hills of Judea and Samaria. The Knesset member, avshalom Vilan from the very Left-wing Meretz party claims about 40% of the settlers are ready to go for a reasonable price. (I like "Vilan" last name — so close to the correct word to describe him: villain.) Vilan is leader of a 'movement' called One Home, which wants to pass a Knesset law budgeting $6 Billion to buy the homes of the weak contingent, the opportunists, of settlers so they can start over again inside little Israel. This proposed law and budget points to the failure of the Israeli government to settle and find employment for the formerly self-sufficient, profit-making 10,000 Jewish men, women and children from 21 communities in Gush Katif/Gaza and 4 communities in Northern Samaria. Relying upon the Olmert government to pay for anything other than the political embezzlers of his own Kadima Party is a well-known waste of time. Israel could not possible afford the money, let alone the moral, ethical, security and sovereignty ramifications of surrendering Israel's historic ancient homeland, the Land G-d gave to the Jewish people in perpetuity. You may have missed the full page, full color ads in recent issues of the NYT, placed by the Leftists and the Saudis, with accompanying stories and editorials telling us how much the Muslim Arabs want "peace" with Israel and the Jews. If you saw them, that sick feeling in your throat wasn't acid reflux but merely vomit forming as Jew-hating un-Jews join the Jew-hating Muslim Arabs for a big push to end Israel's life as a Jewish State. I will feel no pity when our enemies corner the Kadimites and drag them off for Islamic justice. As for the American Jewish Leftists (too often in the self-proclaimed Jewish leadership), they too will cringe and mewl how, "it wasn't our fault that we were so anxious to betray the Jewish nation" — so like the infamous "Judenratt" who thought that by betraying their fellow Jews, they were saving themselves and their families. Bronner goes on in his typical propagandistic tones, trying to sound fair, but he always circles back to his main theme of a so-called "two-state" solution, wherein Jews cannot possibly survive as the 3 to 5 million Muslim Arabs from surrounding countries flood the Jewish State in whatever Land Israel abandons. Look at how Gaza has become (as we and others predicted) a Global Terrorist firing base against Israel. The Arabs in Gaza have suffered a tremendous drop in their standard of living, income and safety. The Jewish employers have been driven away and Hamas now controls the Gaza District, with cruelty, terror, corruption and confiscation of the humanitarian aid and fuel Israel sends in. While this 2/3rd page article is typical of Leftist un-Jews, it is also the timing that bears scrutiny. In Israel, the out-going Olmert (who awaits indictment for all sorts of thievery), is pushing along with President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to evacuate all of Judea and Samaria. Additionally, they promote the pretense that a non-people should be given the sacred parts of Jerusalem as the capital of their second Muslim Arab Palestinian state. However, Mahmoud Abbas, current President of the Palestinian Authority (Yassir Arafat's 40 year partner, collaborator and financier) found even that "gift" unacceptable and wants ALL of Jerusalem — as well as ALL of Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights. The Muslims would try to evict or murder all the Jews left living there. Another un-subtle tidbit with picture appears in the NYT Index on page 2 with several of the most egregious statements for the main article. However, this propagandistic tidbit has a photo of Orthodox Jews, dancing with Torahs in their Sephardic style cases. The juxtaposition of photo, the Torahs and the men show one man with his gun hanging over his shoulder and down his back. What message would you take from this if you didn't understand that these brave, pioneering settlers do live under threat of Muslim Arab Terrorists, entering their homes, yeshivas and fields to murder, burn and destroy? The other 2 color photos on page A6 with the Bronner article are also significant. The beautiful scenic photo of the Samarian hills, puts 2 young boys overlooking this view, with 2 small fences in front of them. What's the subliminal message? Do they want to "get out"? Or are they simply admiring the view? Then look at the small map of Judea and Samaria. Some of the settlements mentioned (from which the 3 mentioned settlers "allegedly" want to "get out". However, note the fragile strategic barrier that Judea and Samaria offers to the 70% of the Jewish population on the Mediterranean coastal plain. See how easy it would be for Muslim Arabs to fire down from the Judean and Samarian mountains, IF they ever achieved control of this precious, ancient homeland. Every Jew-hating Leftist wants Jerusalem to be "Judenrein" (Jew-free). That includes the Church of Rome who, for centuries wanted all Jews off the planet. Even as all branches of Christians are being brutally pushed out of Arab Muslim countries, they want to shut down and kill the Jewish State of Israel, the only country in the Middle East that gives them full freedom of their religion. The United Nations, which for many is truly a hell-on-earth for Jews, the most evil nations on the planet meet and plot the end of Israel. Strange, isn't it? Christianity came into being because an apostate Jew, Saul, had a vision out of his frequent epileptic seizures and a Jew became the Lord they worshipped. (Saul became Paul.) But, they not only didn't follow this adopted Jew's Jewish way of life as mandated by Torah law, but they deliberately planned to kill all of his Jewish family and descendants in an unending Genocide. Similarly, the Muslims since the time of Muhammed in the 7th Century, tried to emulate his teaching learned from his life among the Jews of Medina in the Arabian peninsula (now Saudi Arabia). Since their inception, the Muslim world has been on a killing rampage against Jews. One might say that the Jews, as "A Light Unto The Nations" succeeded in influencing barbarians and pagans to cease worshiping their invented gods and reverted to worshiping one G-d. But, in the end, they are still murderous assassins who wish the Light of the Jews to be extinguished so they, the Christians and Muslims, can fight it out as to who will own G-d and be Number One in the world, be King of the Hill or have a Global Islamic Caliphate. "Settlers Who Long to Leave the West Bank " By Ethan Bronner New York Times 11/14/08 RIMONIM, West Bank — Surrounded by hostility, living on land most of the world wants turned over to Palestinians for a state, they meet quietly in Jewish settlements like this one, plotting the future. But these besieged West Bank settlers, widely viewed as an obstacle to peace, want only one surprising thing: to get out. While the vast majority of settlers vow never to abandon the heart of the historic Jewish homeland — these ancient and starkly beautiful hills whose biblical names are Judea and Samaria — thousands of other settlers say they want to move back to within the pre-1967 borders of Israel. They say the West Bank settlement enterprise — at least that part beyond the barrier of wall and fence Israel has been building — is doomed and their lives are at risk. Many say something else as well: The Israeli occupation of land claimed by the Palestinians is wrong and they want no part of it. But their houses are worthless, and they are stuck. They want help. "I came here 25 years ago to live in the countryside and raise my family," said David Avidan as he sat in a neighbor's living room here one recent evening to discuss an exit strategy. "We wanted to resettle the whole land of Israel," he added. "But now when I see how our soldiers treat Palestinians at the checkpoints, I am ashamed. I want us to get out of here. I want two states for two people. But I can't get any money for my house and I can't leave." There are 280,000 settlers in the West Bank (200,000 more Israeli Jews live in East Jerusalem, also captured in 1967), and the vast majority are firmly committed to staying and oppose a Palestinian state here. But 80,000 of them live beyond the barrier, and surveys indicate that many would leave. If they did, others might follow voluntarily. "We did a survey three years ago and again last year, and the results were the same," said Avshalom Vilan, a Parliament member from the left-wing Meretz Party. "Half the settlers beyond the barrier are ideologically motivated and do not want to move. But about 40 percent of them are ready to go for a reasonable price." Mr. Vilan is a leader of a movement called Bayit Ehad, or One Home, which wants a law budgeting $6 billion to buy the homes of 20,000 families so they can start over inside Israel. Much of the leadership of the governing centrist Kadima Party and the left-leaning Labor Party supports the law in principle, and the government has heard several presentations about it. But the leadership has stopped short of supporting passage of the law now for fear of creating an explosive rift in Israeli society. There is also concern that such a step would amount to giving away an asset without getting anything in return from the Palestinians — a unilateral act similar to the withdrawal from Gaza three years ago, which strengthened the militant Islamist group Hamas and is seen in Israel as a failure. The law's advocates say Gaza is a false analogy because a settler withdrawal from the West Bank would strengthen the Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas. The authority is trying to convince the Palestinian public that two states are possible. The advocates add that the whole point is to start the movement early in order to encourage others to follow suit and begin an orderly process for a politically and emotionally complex undertaking. Nothing will happen before elections in February, but the law's advocates hope that if Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Kadima wins enough votes to form the next government, she will move ahead with it quickly. Ms. Livni has said that as soon as there is a framework for a two-state solution, she is willing to look more seriously at passing the law. Settlers who have taken a stand in favor of such a move say life has been hard. Benny Raz, 55, who has lived with his family in the settlement of Karnei Shomron since the mid-1990s, began to call for a way out in the past few years, asking the government to buy his house and those of his fellow settlers. "My neighbors looked at me like I was a traitor or from another planet," he recounted. He said that he was fired from his job in charge of settlement bus drivers and that his wife's sandwich stand was boycotted and driven out of business. "I get threatening phone calls telling me I am going to be killed," he said. "Today, I carry a gun because I am afraid of the Jews, not the Arabs." Herzl Ben Ari, mayor of Karnei Shomron, said that Mr. Raz was fired for incompetence and that the sandwich stand had hygiene problems, both unrelated to his political activities. Dani Dayan, chairman of the settlers' council, said that while real estate in a few communities had lost value, most houses in West Bank settlements still fetched high prices. "This bill is psychological," he said in reference to the proposed law. "They want to put pressure on us and on the Israeli public to give the illusion that our fate is already doomed. They like to say that everybody knows that in the end these communities will not exist. I say the opposite. More and more people here and abroad are beginning to understand that there is not going to be a Palestinian state here." Some houses that have been abandoned by settlers unwilling to stay have been filled by young religious families that pay minimal rent and are directed there by the settlers' leadership. Mr. Vilan, the leftist lawmaker, said that under his law, moving into settlement houses bought by the government would be an offense punishable by up to five years in prison. One Home has held several dozen meetings around West Bank settlements urging those who want to leave to become active in the movement. At a meeting here in Rimonim, several people said they were afraid that what had happened to Mr. Raz would happen to them. One of those whom Mr. Raz helped persuade at an earlier meeting was Monika Yzchaki of the Mevo Dotan settlement, which like Mr. Raz's settlement is in the northern half of the West Bank and is on the other side of the barrier. She moved there 16 years ago with her husband and young children. "We came for a house we could afford in a good environment," she said by telephone. "Many don't understand that there are a lot of us who are not extremists or crazy. Now I have to show a passport at the barrier to get home. I am now living in Palestine. It used to be that I thought it was my country and they thought it was theirs. Today it is very clear it is their country." She added, "I can name 40 families that want to leave but are afraid to say it aloud." Asked for her view of a Palestinian state, she said: "I think there should be a two-state solution. You cannot live with people who don't have independence. They have to learn their own language, teach their children their own heritage. But that is their problem. My problem is that my government has left me behind." 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 gwinston@gwinstonglobal.org To Go To Top

THE RABBIS' PETITION TO PRESIDENT BUSH Posted by Justice for Jonathan Pollard, November 14, 2008.

See Also Hebrew Text at www.jonathanpollard.org

B"H November 11, 2008 / 13 Cheshvan 5769 Dear President Bush, As a G-d fearing people, we feel a humane and ethical duty to write you concerning a deeply heartfelt matter.Mr. Jonathan Pollard is currently serving his 23rd year in prison. He is ill and his condition is serious.We respectfully request that you act mercifully towards him.Please grant him clemency as a humanitarian gesture to the Jewish People and the State of Israel. With G-d's blessing, Mr. Pollard's release will bring only good to the United States and the American People. Respectfully, Chief Rabbis of the Holy Land Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu — former Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Moshe Amar — Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Yonah Metzger — Ashkenasi Chief Rabbi of Israel Members of the Chief Rabbinic Council of Israel Rabbi Shar Yasuv HaCohen — Haifa Rabbi Shlomo Shlosh — Haifa Rabbi Yehudah Deri — Beer Sheva Rabbi Yoseph Glicksberg — Givatayim Rabbi Dr. Ratzon Arusi — Kiryat Ono Rabbi Simcha Hachohen Kook — Rehovot Rabbi Avraham Yoseph — Holon Rabbi Azaria Basis — Rosh HaAyin Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz (former Minister of the Interior) — Ra'anana Rabbi Yitzhak Ralbag — Jerusalem Rabbi Yitzhak David Grossman — Migdal HaEmek Rabbi Ya'akov Shapiro — Dean of Yeshiva MerkazHaRav Rabbi Shimon Elitov — Benjamin Regional Council Rabbi Moshe Rauchberger — Chairman, National Board of Neighborhood Rabbis Chaplains of Zaka — Search and Rescue Rabbi Avigdor Neventzal — President Rabbi Ya'akov Rozha — Chairman Chief Rabbis of the Old Cities of the Holy Land Rabbi Dov Lior — Holy City Hebron Rabbi Eliyahu Medina — Holy City Jerusalem Rabbi Abraham Dov Auerbach — Holy City Tiberias Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu — Holy City Tsfat Chief Municipal Rabbis of the Cities of the Holy Land Rabbi Shimon Almaliah — Atlit Chairman, National Board of Municipal Rabbis Rabbi Yaakov Meir Rosenzweig — Even Yehudah Rabbi Aaron Badihi — Even Yehudah Rabbi Amram Ohayon — Ophakim Rabbi Avraham Rosenthal — Azor Rabbi Avraham Cohen — Azor Rabbi Moshe Hadaya — Eilat Rabbi Joseph Hecht — Eilat Rabbi Hayim Adani — Elyachin Rabbi Yehudah Stern — Elkana Rabbi Mordechai Malka — El'ad Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Grossman — El'ad Rabbi Shlomo Riskin — Efrat Rabbi Shlomo Nagar — Ariel Rabbi Yoseph Sheinen — Ashdod Rabbi Yoseph Hayim Bloi — Ashkelon Rabbi Yoseph Sharvit — Ashkelon Rabbi Avraham Yaakovson — Beer Yaakov Rabbi Yoseph Yitzhak Lasri — Beit Shean Rabbi Shimon Biton — Beit Shemesh Rabbi David Tzvi Ordentlikh — Beitar Ilit Rabbi Moshe Yehudah Leib Landau — Bnei Brak Rabbi Shlomo Amram Korah — Bnei Brak Rabbi Shalom Tzadok — Bnei Ayish Rabbi Yoseph Bar-Shalom — Bat Yam Rabbi Shaul Yoseph Weingarten — Bat Yam Rabbi Pinhas Edri — Givatayim Rabbi Yoseph Toledano — Giv'at Ze'ev Rabbi David Arye Halamish — Giv'at Ada-Binyamina Rabbi Eliezer Elbaz — Giv'at Shmuel Rabbi Yaakov Yoseph Singer — Giv'at Shmuel Rabbi Tzion Tzuberi — Gedera Rabbi Meshumar Tzuberi — Gan Yavne Rabbi Yehiel Barzilai — Ganei Tikva Rabbi Yitzhak Eliphant — Dimona Rabbi Shalom Dayan — Dimona Rabbi Yitzhak Yaakobowitz — Herzlia Rabbi Mordechai Avramovsky — Zikhron Yaakov Rabbi Shimon Biton — Hadera Rabbi David Werner — Hadera Rabbi Yohanan Gur-Arye — Holon Rabbi Mordechai Di'ei — Hatzor HaGlilit Rabbi David Peretz — Tiberias Rabbi Barukh Toledano — Tirat HaCarmel Rabbi Meir Frankel — Yavne'el Rabbi David AbuHatzeira — Yavne Rabbi Shlomo Tovim — Yehud Rabbi Yonah Turchin — Yehud Rabbi Yaakov Reitzes — Yesod HaMa'ala Rabbi Michael Vaknin — Yokne'am Rabbi David Malul — Yeruham Rabbi Shmuel Shapiro — Kokhav Yair-Tzur Yigal Rabbi Uzi Schwietze — Kfar Yonah Rabbi Avraham Shlosh — Kfar Sava Rabbi Eliyahu Malka — Karmiel Rabbi Avraham Tzvi Margalith — Carmiel Rabbi Nathan Ortner — Lydda Rabbi Hayim Hadad — Lydda Rabbi Yigal Mamillia — Migdal Rabbi Avraham Menahem — Migdal Ha'Emek Rabbi David Lao — Modi'in Rabbi Eliyahu Elharar — Modi'in Rabbi Ephraim Zalmanowitz — Mazkeret Batya Rabbi Barukh Pachter — Matula Rabbi Moshe Biegel — Meitar Rabbi Yaakov Tzakutai — Macabim-Re'ut Rabbi David Vaknin — Menahemya Rabbi Yehoshua Katz — Ma'ale Adumim Rabbi Mordechai Nagari — Ma'ale Adumim Rabbi Menahem Glitzenstein — Ma'ale Ephraim Rabbi Yitzhak Vaknin — Ma'alot Rabbi Daniel Bar-Moha — Mitzpe Rimon Rabbi Meir Kesler — Modi'in Illit Rabbi Yeshayahu Meitles — Naharia Rabbi Yoel Swissa — Neve Monoson Rabbi Shaul Ahrak — Nes Ziona Rabbi Avraham Tzuriel — Nes Ziona Rabbi Yehayahu Herzl — Upper Nazareth Rabbi Tuvia Baharir — Nesher Rabbi Phineas Cohen — Netivot Rabbi David Brodman — Savion Rabbi Yoseph Yashar — Acre Rabbi Shmuel David — Aphula Rabbi Yoseph Elbo — Arad Rabbi Ben-Zion Lipsker — Arad Rabbi David Tzedaka — Pardes Hana Rabbi Menashe Tyrie — Pardessia Rabbi Tzvi Farberstein — Kedumim Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Tuvias — Kadima Rabbi Zoseph Shimon Levi — Katzrin Rabbi Shlomo Tzadok — Tel Mond Rabbi Aminadav Krispin — Kiryat Bialik Rabbi Shlomo Ben-Hamo — Kiryat Gat Rabbi Moshe Havelin — Kiryat Gat Rabbi Yehuda Silverstein — Kiryat Tivon Rabbi Amram Bethel — Kiryat Tivon Rabbi Yoseph Avraki — Kiryat Yam Rabbi Arye Shulman — Kiryat Y'arim Rabbi Yoseph Ohana — Kiryat Motzkin Rabbi David Meir Druckman — Kiryat Motzkin Rabbi Ovadya Ya'avetz — Kiryat Ekron Rabbi Tzephania Drori — Kiryat Shmona Rabbi Shalom Levi — Kiryat Shmona Rabbi Yizhak HaLevi — Karnei Shomron Rabbi Avraham Davidowitz -Rosh Pina Rabbi Hayim Pinto — Kiryat Malachi Rabbi Yehuda David Wolpe — Rishon LeZion Rabbi Yoseph Azran (former Member of Knesset) — Rishon LeZion Rabbi Moshe Tanami — Rechasim Rabbi Yehiel AbuHatzeira — Ramle Rabbi Yaakov Ariel — Ramat Gan Rabbi Yoseph Yitzhak Volosov — Ramat Yishai Rabbi David Bar-Hen — Sderot Rabbi David Stav — Shoham Rabbi Moshe Elharar — Shlomi Chief Rabbis of Regional Councils of the Holy Land Rabbi Asher Zemel — Lev HaSharon Chairman, National Board of Regional Council Rabbis Rabbi Mordechai Weizman — Alona Rabbi Israel David Feigenblatt — Eph'al Rabbi Yitzhak Avitan — Be'er Tuvia Rabbi Shalom Ben-Hamo — Be'er Tuvia Rabbi Mordechai Malka — Be'er Tuvia Rabbi Zekharia Karmi — Be'er Tuvia Rabbi Aaron Rabinowitz — Be'er Tuvia Rabbi Shlomo Rosenfeld — Beit Shean Valley Rabbi Shlomo Azuelos — Beit Shean Valley Rabbi Yehiel Gavra — Gderot Rabbi Shlomo Ben-Ezra — Gezer Rabbi Shlomo Naphtali — Gezer Rabbi Menashe Matana — Gezer Rabbi Asher Gabbai — Gilboa Rabbi Yoseph Hayim Rosenblatt — Lower Galilee Rabbi Tzuri Na'aman — Gan Rave Rabbi Meir Knapho — Southern Sharon Rabbi Yoseph Shlosh — Southern Sharon Rabbi Yitzhak Yaakobowitz — Southern Sharon Rabbi Shlomo Sabag — Southern Sharon Rabbi Yaakov Mor-Yoseph — Zevulun Rabbi Shalom Ma'atuf — Hevel Modi'in Rabbi Meir Eliav — Hevel Modi'in Rabbi David Greenwald — Hevel Modi'in Rabbi Yaakov Avitan — Hof Ashkelon Rabbi Gavriel Surani — Hof HaCarmel Rabbi Shlomo Didi — Kinarot Rabbi Michael Shlomo Stern — Menashe Rabbi Phineas Kubani — Lev HaSharon Rabbi Yaakov ElKabbetz — Lakhish Rabbi Shimon Vaknin — Mevo'ot Hermon Rabbi Israel Roshatzky — Mevo'ot Hermon Rabbi Yoseph AlMashali- Merom HaGalil Rabbi Eliyahu Biton — Merom HaGalil Rabbi Hayim Bokovza — Merhavim Rabbi Benyamin Hen — Merhavim Rabbi Shlomo Ben-Eliyahu — Mateh Asher Rabbi Eliezer Simha Weiss — KpharHaRoeh Rabbi Eliyahu Amar — Emek Hepher Rabbi Mordechai Zamir — Jezreel Valley Rabbi Moshe Bloi — Arava Tikhona Rabbi Meir Swissa — Ramat Negev Rabbi Zion Cohen — Sha'ar HaNegev Rabbi Shalom HaCohen — Shaphir Rabbi Yonah Porat — Shaphir Rabbi Moshe Gilad — Shaphir Rabbi Yoseph Bloi — Tamar-Megillot Rabbi Yoseph Harel — Yehuda Regional Council To call 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