"Once in a while you get shown the light,
in the strangest of places if you look at it right." - Robert Hunter

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: Sometimes the camera captures what our eyes cannot see. This occurs both when we move in very close, as in macrophotography, and when we slow down the shutter speed to trap movement the eye cannot perceive. When that happens, with a little luck, you can snare some magic in a bottle.

In the upper photo, I encountered a family of Ibex out for a late-afternoon stroll in the sandy hills above Ein Avdat. This proud male stood undaunted between my camera and the setting sun, which spilled some flare onto my lens. In this case, what I might normally try to avoid actually enhances the mood of the image. The big buck is nearly in silhouette and the bright background helps outline his form and strength as I portray him mid-stride, accented with some unforeseen sparkle.

Feel free to share this email with all the photography buffs in your life.

In the lower photo, this friendly egret, while eyeing me cautiously, allowed me to very slowly encroach upon his afternoon feeding along the shoreline at Herzliya Beach. Birds are extremely skittish, so having an extended period to observe and then capture a close-up of a wild bird in its habitat was reason enough to celebrate. Add to that the way the setting sun turned the splashing water into flying sparks and I had the making of a unique image. By slowing the shutter just a bit (to 1/100th sec.), I was able to keep my subject in sharp focus yet also elongate the water droplets, adding some enchantment to the shot. Just another afternoon at the office along the Mediterranean coast.

TECHNICAL DATA: Upper photo - Camera: Nikon D700, handheld, manual exposure, center-weighted metering mode, f20 at 1/500th sec., ISO 400. Raw file converted to Jpeg. Lens: Nikon 70-200 zoom at 80 mm. Date: Oct. 28, 2012, 4:05 p.m. Location: On the road from Sde Boker to Ein Avdat, Negev Desert.

TECHNICAL DATA: Lower photo: Camera: Nikon D300, handheld, manual exposure, center-weighted metering mode, f9 at 1/100th sec., ISO 400. Raw file converted to Jpeg. Lens: Nikon 18-200 zoom at 130mm. Date: July 4, 2011, 6:28 p.m. Location: Herzliya Beach.

Yehoshua Halevi has worked more than 25 years as a professional photojournalist, teacher, mentor and photographer of life cycle events. His credits include a distinguished list of international clientele, including major publications, highlighted by National Geographic, as well as non-profit organizations, corporations and private individuals. Contact him at smile@goldenlightimages.com

This is amazing. And even more amazing is that this hasn't been published long before now.

Unbelievable, but the speech below was written in 1899!

(Wikipedia—The River War)

I am sending the attached short speech from Winston Churchill, delivered by him in 1899 when he was a young soldier and journalist. It probably setsout the current views of many, but expressed in the wonderful Churchillian turn of phrase and use of the English language, of which he was a past master. Sir Winston Churchill was, without doubt, one of the greatest men of the late 19th and 20th Centuries. He was a brave young soldier, a brilliant journalist, an extraordinary politician and statesman, a great warleader and Prime Minister, to whom the Western world must be forever in his debt. He was a prophet in his own time. He died on 24 January 1965, at the grand old age of 90 and, after a lifetime of service to his country, and was accorded a State funeral.

HERE IS THE SPEECH:

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step, and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."

Churchill saw it coming...

Sir Winston Churchill

Contact Yoram Fisher at yoramsli3438@aol.com

"He ever must believe a lie, who sees with and not through the eye,"

warned William Blake. An image has an enormous power to deceive. UC Irvine psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has demonstrated that doctored images can manipulate the memory an individual has of an event: Researchers find memory can be manipulated by photos.

The strange case of Muhammad al Durah, a boy whose death 13 years ago was attributed to Israel Defense Forces aggression, is marked by that kind of deception.

Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors recently noted that the Israeli government issued a report showing what we all knew: that there was no evidence Muhammad al Durah was killed by the Israelis. The findings come thirteen years too late to warrant much by the way of media attention. That must change.

Unfortunately, the case of Muhammad al Durah is one of the greatest hoaxes and blood libels perpetrated against Israel. The young cowering child became an icon, with stamps being issued in the Arab world showing his frightened face and validating the bloody Second Intifada that led to the cold-blooded deaths of 1,000 Israelis.

The staged scene in which the boy was killed was even evoked in the brutal deaths of innocent people. It was linked with the October 2000 lynching of two Israeli army reservists in Ramallah. It was also was seen in the background when Daniel Pearl, a Jewish-American journalist, was beheaded by al-Qaida in 2002.

Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors has had the opportunity to showcase and support the work of Philippe Karsenty who is committed to setting the record straight. His decade-long fight is far from over. Neither is ours. Watch the video here.

Karsenty, a media analyst, noted the footage, taped by French-Israeli France 2 journalist Charles Enderlin, was staged. As a result, he has waged a decade-long battle, having his good name called into question and being convicted of defamation in France. Karsenty was fined €7,000 ($9,000) by the Paris Court of Appeals on June 26.

This sets a dangerous precedent and calls into question France's commitment to veracity and free speech. Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors will continue to support Karsenty, both in his legal fight and bringing attention to the media, but we need your help. Our resources are limited.

Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors (CJHS) (also known as Alliance for Israel and World Jewry) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit tax exempt organization dedicated to educating the public in the United States and abroad about the intellectual and cultural climate that led to the Holocaust, and the ideas and philosophy that bring about a totalitarian dictatorship. CJHS seeks to protect freedom by raising awareness of the aggression and scapegoating that inevitably follow the abandonment of individual rights and the embrace of collectivism. CJHS advances these goals by hosting educational events concentrated in four areas: (1) examining U.S. diplomacy toward Israel and the Middle East, with a focus on the right of the State of Israel to exist and be recognized as a Jewish State; (2) restoring the teaching of and respect for Western values in K-12 education; (3) documenting anti-Semitism and promoting human rights; (4) exposing the existential threat posed by Islam to the liberties and freedoms of western society.

A Jewish student from Kansas was denied entry into Britain for a summer job several weeks ago apparently due to a customs agent's anti-Semitism.

After being detained for more than nine hours, he was put back on a plane to the United States by customs officials. During that time he was never told why he was being denied entry.

According to the the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, the British man who had offered Louis "Chip" Cantor summer work experience, Kevin Shilling, said the British border agent he spoke to in his attempt to get Cantor admitted into Britian made more than one anti-Semitic comment to him during the telephone conversation they had.

Chip Cantor told his story to two local television stations last month. On June 4, he told KMBC he was traveling to Britain to visit and gain summer work experience, and to participate in a fundraiser for a child who has cancer. He left Kansas City on Wednesday, May 29, landed in Britain after 10 p.m. London time and waited in line to go through customs.

When he got to the front of the line, a female customs agent began looking at his passport. Chip's father, Chuck Cantor, said his son told him the customs agent was very pleasant toward him until she saw the Israel stamps in his passport. Then she simply walked away with his passport without speaking a word to him. Chip told his father he estimates she was gone 45 minutes to an hour. He never saw her again.

"He has a lot of Israel stamps," Chuck said. Chip has been to Israel several times including two programs sponsored by Young Judea the six-week Machon program and a gap-year program. Chip Cantor graduated from Shawnee Mission East High School in 2009 and will be a senior in the fall at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Finally, according to Chuck, a different, uniformed customs agent came to see him and told him the agents would be taking his bags and detaining him for questioning. He was not told why.

Once in the interview room Chip told his father that he was told if he changed any of his answers to any questions, he was going to go to prison.

"He said, 'Why would I change my answers? I told you the truth,'" Chuck said.

According to the Chronicle, Chip wasn't allowed to be in sight of his luggage and eventually was put into what he described to his father as a detention cell.

"At some point a woman who was wearing a burka came to the cell to photograph him," Chuck said. At that point he was fingerprinted as well.

As she was doing this, she said to him, "We're putting your name and fingerprints and photos into a database. From now on it is going to be very difficult for you to ever travel in the United Kingdom or anywhere in the E.U. It will be up to each individual country to decide if they want to admit you."

Chuck said Chip kept telling the customs agents he had not committed any crimes or done anything wrong. Eventually another agent came to tell Chip he was being deported.

Now several hours after he was detained, Chip was given the opportunity to call his father. Chuck asked to speak directly to the customs agent involved and was connected with Philip G. Yeomans.

After Chuck spoke to Yeomans, he contacted Kevin Shilling, his managing director and owner of Shilling Communications, the British company where Chip was supposed to be employed for the summer. It was about 3 a.m., London time. Shilling, who is not Jewish, called Yeomans.

Shilling noted that while the conversation didn't accomplish anything, Yeomans made several anti-Semitic comments. At one point, Shilling recounted, when Shilling was explaining the reason Chip was in the country, the customs agent told Shilling that Chip should have lied to the customs agent, adding, "A Jewish kid would find that easy."

Yeomans, the custom agent, also told Shilling any additional attempts to aid Cantor would be useless and "the little Jew will be on his way back to his rich daddy," in a matter of hours.

Chip said he was given only a half of a sandwich and very little water throughout the nine hours of detention. In the morning, Chip was escorted to the plane by another customs agent for a flight back to the United States. "The guy walks him onto the plane and in front of everyone, like a prisoner, he says here is this man's passport. Do not give him his passport until you land in the United States," Chuck said he was told. The American Airlines purser told Chip that, in 17 years flying internationally, he had never seen anything like it.

When contacted by the Chronicle, Shilling said, "I'm really so sorry for Chip and the way he was treated. I want to reassure all your readers that if they plan a visit to the U.K., once they get past the U.K. Border Agency they will find friendly, welcoming people, without prejudice."

Contact Aryeh Zelasko at zelasko@gmail.com

The National Security Administration headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland: The NSA conducted digital eavesdropping against EU facilities.

America's NSA intelligence service allegedly targeted the European Union with its spying activities. According to Der Spiegel information, the US placed bugs in the EU representation in Washington and infiltrated its computer network. Cyber attacks were also perpetrated against Brussels in New York and Washington.

Information obtained by Der Spiegel shows that America's National Security Agency (NSA) not only conducted online surveillance of European citizens, but also appears to have specifically targeted buildings housing European Union institutions. The information appears in secret documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden that Der Spiegel has in part seen. A "top secret" 2010 document describes how the secret service attacked the EU's diplomatic representation in Washington.

The document suggests that in addition to installing bugs in the building in downtown Washington, DC, the European Union representation's computer network was also infiltrated. In this way, the Americans were able to access discussions in EU rooms as well as emails and internal documents on computers.

The attacks on EU institutions show yet another level in the broad scope of the NSA's spying activities. For weeks now, new details about Prism and other surveillance programs have been emerging from what had been compiled by whistleblowerSnowden. It has also been revealed that the British intelligence service GCHQ operates a similar program under the name Tempora with which global telephone and Internet connections are monitored.

The documents Der Spiegel has seen indicate that the EU representation to the United Nations was attacked in a manner similar to the way surveillance was conducted against its offices in Washington. An NSA document dated September 2010 explicitly names the Europeans as a "location target".

The documents also indicate the US intelligence service was responsible for an electronic eavesdropping operation in Brussels. A little over five years ago, EU security experts noticed several telephone calls that were apparently targeting the remote maintenance system in the Justus Lipsius Building, where the EU Council of Ministers and the European Council are located. The calls were made to numbers that were very similar to the one used for the remote administration of the building's telephone system.

Security officials managed to track the calls to NATO headquarters in the Brussels suburb of Evere. A precise analysis showed that the attacks on the telecommunications system had originated from a building complex separated from the rest of the NATO headquarters that is used by NSA experts.

A review of the remote maintenance system showed that it had been called and reached several times from precisely that NATO complex. Every EU member state has rooms in the Justus Lipsius Building that can be used by EU ministers. They also have telephone and Internet connections at their disposal.

Contact Kit Goto at k.goto@mail.com

Due to circumstances that have arisen while writing Obama's Final Solution Tour Part 2, this essay turned into an emergency alert. The body of the work provides the key to understanding how we arrived at this critical moment in history that will shape the future of mankind, and how to gain ultimate victory over terrorism by honoring the guidelines our founders left to prevent the advance of global tyranny. And we must act for America stands on the very precipice where victory for freedom over tyranny in this world lays in the balance.

We cannot wait to 2016 to elect a new President — even waiting for the election of a new Congress in 2014 will be too late. We must act for we are facing a watershed event, watershed event? To find out read the op-ed when it is published.

In the meantime I am sending out a sneak preview of Obama Final Solution Never Again is Now for America and Israel, Part Two because what is happening in Egypt is newsworthy.

Discussing foreign policy in Obama Final Solution Tour, I quoted from a December 11, 2012 op-ed "Where is Barack Hussein Obama, the hero who stood for freedom in Egypt and the Islamic World?"

"Obama said Americans must respect the rights of the Islamic people and that their voices must be heard." Why is Obama hesitating? Why is he not asking Morsi, like Mubarak before him, to step down? Isn't there more than enough proof that Morsi is a dictator, or does Obama believe that the Muslim Brotherhood and their partner in crime, Iran, can be honest brokers for peace in the Middle East?"

It is now 2013, and incredulously, he let Morsi know he has his back as he has just given Egypt 14 fighter jets and $250 million in aid — this to a country that has joined with Iran and Hamas to destroy Israel. Is this the reward he gives to the enemies of America and Israel when they become Islamic terrorist states? It sounds more like an incentive.

How is it possible that everyone ignored the fact that it has been more than 6 months since Morsi took over Egypt and turned it into an Islamic terrorist state, yet during that time Obama had not asked Morsi to step down like he did to Mubarak before him, This is a fact that the mainstream media chose to ignore and still does while inexplicably the right wing media followed suite.

Now the people in Egypt are in revolt asking Morsi to step down. How about you Obama are you finally ready to ask Morsi to step down, or would you have the Egyptian people do your dirty work.

President Obama, how many Americans have died to ensure our freedoms and the freedoms of others throughout the world? Sir, how can you, as our President, champion a foreign policy that would align our nation with leaders of countries and peoples who are determined to eliminate those precious rights? How can we, as Americans, observe this act of betrayal and not call out for justice.

Do you expect us to just sit here and watch everything we have fought for, for more than 234 years, be dishonored, desecrated and defiled?

Mr. Obama, as President of the United States of America, you swore to protect our Constitution from enemies, foreign and domestic. Obama you violated your oath of office, how can you champion a terrorist initiative? Fascism must be defeated, not cajoled, if we are to achieve a lasting peace. Where are our youthful American patriots? Why are they not asking Obama to step down?

But a larger question looms, where was the GOP and our political pundits, why did they not launch a national campaign in 2013 to demand Obama make his intentions known to the American people concerning Mohammed Morsi's status. Why did Obama not ask Morsi to step down?

Contact neveragainisnow@live.com

A top American adviser has been working to establish new ways for the United States to guarantee Israel's security in the event it no longer occupies the West Bank — part of the effort by Secretary of State John F. Kerry to restart peace talks, according to officials familiar with the strategy.

Retired Marine Gen. John R. Allen, who is serving as a special adviser to both Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, has been seeking to identify Israel's potential security gaps and remedy what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had complained were outdated or incomplete assurances of cooperation and equipment from the United States, the officials said. The goal is to remove potential deal-breakers at the outset of the push for new talks before they can spoil what Kerry calls a last chance for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Allen, the former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has visited Israel twice for discussions about ways that the United States could update agreements reached with Israel during the last major push for a peace deal, in 2007 and 2008. He also held meetings with Israeli security officials this month in Stuttgart, Germany, where some of the U.S. military staff assigned to Allen is headquartered.

Allen and his Israeli counterparts are seeking "effective, innovative and feasible options that could be proposed to political leaders," said a senior Obama administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide the first detailed account of Allen's mandate and progress.

The Obama administration has been publicly mum about the scope and intent of Allen's work since he was appointed to the job in May, saying only that it is part of wider effort to improve the chances for peace. Kerry is trying simultaneously to stimulate the Palestinian economy with new private-sector investment and dust off a dormant offer from Arab nations for a blanket peace agreement that would settle most disputes with Israel.

Netanyahu has agreed to resume peace talks so long as the Palestinians drop preconditions for the negotiations. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is under heavy U.S. pressure to drop or soften those demands and return to talks that have been moribund for most of the past five years.

Kerry met separately with Netanyahu and Abbas during several days of shuttle diplomacy over the past week, before departing Sunday.

"The purpose is not to take issues off the table, but to drive a deeper examination of a range of issues so all parties can see what options might exist and to see if common ground can be found," the U.S. official said.

But addressing Israel's concerns about security threats coming from an independent Palestinian state next door at the front end of negotiations is the underlying premise of Allen's work, others briefed on his efforts said.

An account of meetings Allen has held with Israeli officials, provided anonymously by a participant, shows that he is addressing some of the biggest potential obstacles to Israeli approval of the comprehensive peace deal Kerry wants to broker.

"The rationale behind reaching understandings on U.S. security guarantees at this point is to render certain Israeli security demands from the Palestinians moot and thus remove them from the negotiating table," one person briefed on the effort said. The account was provided to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because Allen's meetings were confidential.

Allen's team was dismayed by the initial Israeli discussions, which participants described as less substantive and less cooperative than U.S. officials were expecting, given that Allen's job was created to address Israeli security concerns.

George Little, a Defense Department spokesman, said Allen is "supporting Secretary Kerry's comprehensive efforts to forge a way ahead on Middle East peace."

"Those efforts involve discussions along the full range of diplomatic, political and security issues," he said. "Gen. Allen's role is focused on the security dimensions of this initiative."

A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington said: "We are deeply committed to, and appreciative of, Gen. Allen's mission. We are working with him with the utmost seriousness and openness to lay the essential groundwork for peace."

Israel's intelligence minister, Yuval Steinitz, who participated in meetings with Allen, said the Israelis were exploring their options, but he stressed, "we made it very clear that technology is not enough for us."

Steinitz said that Israel "had very bad experiences, even with massive deployments of U.N. forces. We can't trust only technology and international troops." He said that despite the presence of international troops, the militant organization Hezbollah had amassed 40,000 rockets and missiles in southern Lebanon. Along the Syrian boundary in Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Austrian peacekeepers recently pulled out after being fired upon by combatants in Syria's civil war. "U.N. forces are there until you need them," Steinitz said.

Steinitz emphasized that in his view Israel, "for real security," would need to maintain control of the Jordan Valley, as well as the air and sea space around any future Palestinian state, "for decades."

Perhaps the most contentious issue under discussion is military control over the Jordan Valley.

Netanyahu said last year that he would never sign a peace agreement that did not leave some Israeli security presence in that area, where Israel has built large Jewish settlements. Although a peace deal now would almost certainly redraw the 1967 border to include some Jewish settlements inside Israel, the new border would inevitably abut land under Palestinian control.

Other issues Allen is raising with Israel include security management of new land and maritime borders and control and surveillance of airspace around Israel and early warning stations to alert Israel of incoming missiles or rockets, two people briefed on the effort said.

Brief exploratory talks between Israeli and the Palestinians fell apart last year over Israeli security demands, both Palestinian and Israeli media reported at the time. The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv reported afterward that Israel had softened an earlier demand that it retain sovereignty over the Jordan Valley. Tight new security measures could suffice, the paper reported.

A permanent Israeli military presence inside a newly independent Palestine would be a deal-breaker for Abbas, so the challenge would be to design an Israeli security presence of sufficient duration and size to satisfy Israel while making clear that the arrangement is not open-ended.

Although the U.S. position on many such particulars is vague, the assumption behind Allen's work is that the United States would promise to help Israel strengthen some potential security weaknesses in the context of a final peace deal with the moderate Palestinian Authority.

A $10 billion U.S. arms package for Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates announced this year is primarily aimed at countering potential threats from Iran. But its guarantee that Israel will maintain and expand its military edge over even Arab neighbors that are close U.S. partners is a model for a potential future arrangement balancing Israeli and Palestinian concerns, the senior U.S. official said.

The package deal announced by Hagel during a Middle East trip in April includes advanced missiles, refueling tankers and advanced radar for Israeli warplanes. The United States would also provide V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft for Israel that can be used for land and sea border patrol.

The two Persian Gulf nations could purchase U.S. warplanes and missiles, but the arrangement is meant to ensure that those weapons could not be used against Israel.

Possible future U.S.-Israeli military cooperation could also follow the model of the jointly developed Iron Dome missile interception system now shielding areas of Israel threatened by rockets from the Gaza Strip.

Israel withdrew from Gaza unilaterally in 2005, and the Palestinian militant faction Hamas soon took over. Israeli hard-liners skeptical of a peace deal to settle Israel's much longer border with the West Bank often point to Gaza as a cautionary tale.

Contact Daily Alert at dailyalert@list-dailyalert.org

Secretary of State John Kerry is back in Israel today for another bout of what some wags are calling "couples therapy" for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas. The chances of this push leading to fruitful negotiations, let alone a peace agreement, are slim. But what is most interesting about the chatter all this talking about talking is producing is the way the Palestinians and other critics of Israel are trying to raise the ante even before anyone sits down together. Thus, the willingness of PA negotiator Saeb Erekat to turn the announcement of building permits in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem into an excuse for not making peace tells us a lot more about the Palestinian mindset than it does about the Netanyahu government.

The permits for constructing 69 apartments in the Har Homa neighborhood was treated as a big deal in today's New York Times, which validated Erekat's attempt to inflate the decision into a cause célèbre. The Times was also quick to compare it to the 2010 episode in which the Obama administration picked a fight with Netanyahu over a routine announcement about a housing start in a 40-year-old Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem. The administration claimed it was an "insult" to Vice President Joe Biden, who happened to be passing through the city at the time. Little good came of that for anyone, especially since the Palestinians failed to use the U.S. tilt in their direction by returning to peace talks. But it bears repeating that the Palestinian desire to claim that any building in parts of Jerusalem that were once illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967 and during which Jews were banned from even worshiping at the Western Wall—let alone living in those parts of their ancient capital — is an obstacle to peace simply doesn't make any sense.

Even under a peace plan, such as the one proposed by Netanyahu's predecessor Ehud Olmert, Israel would retain Har Homa and other Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem — though the former PM did concede sovereignty over the Old City (something few Israelis would accept). The point is, if the Palestinians really want a state in almost all the West Bank (something Netanyahu has signaled this week he can live with) and a share of Jerusalem, what does it matter to them how many Jews live in the parts they won't get?

Palestinian objections about building in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem are no more logical than Israeli complaints about Arabs building homes in the West Bank in parts of the country that would not remain under Israeli control. But Israel isn't complaining about Arab building. They're just asking the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table without preconditions after boycotting talks for four and a half years.

But, of course, such Palestinian complaints do make sense, at least from the point of view of most Palestinians. Their goal isn't a state alongside Israel or to share Jerusalem. They want Jews out of Har Homa for the same reason they want them out of most other parts of the country since what they desire is a Palestinian state free of Jews.

Attempts to depict the Jewish presence in Jerusalem as illegal is deeply offensive, but in line with PA propaganda that has consistently sought to deny Jewish ties to the city and Jewish history itself. While the PA cannot be under any illusion that the Netanyahu government—or any Israeli government for that matter, regardless of who is at its head—would consent to giving up Jerusalem, what they want is to brand every Jew there a "settler" who can be treated as an outlaw rather than a party to talks with rights. Treating building even in those areas that no one thinks would be handed over to the Palestinians under any circumstance as off limits is not about making peace. It's about delegitimizing Israel.

So long as the Palestinians cling to the delusion that Israel will be shifted out of Jerusalem or back to the 1967 lines — something that President Obama has reinforced with his frequent support for using those lines as the starting point for talks, should they ever be resumed — the chances that a peace agreement will ever be signed is nonexistent. Peace is theoretically possible on terms that would call for the Palestinians to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state. The focus on opposing the Jewish presence in the

Contact Daily Alert at dailyalert@dailyalert.org

The EU mission in Jerusalem and Ramallah on Sunday condemned the recent execution of two Palestinian Authority Arabs in Gaza by Hamas authorities, a statement quoted by the Ma'an news agency read.

"The de facto authorities in Gaza should refrain from carrying out any executions of prisoners and comply with the de facto moratorium on executions put in place by the Palestinian Authority, pending abolition of the death penalty in line with the global trend," the statement said, according to Ma'an.

On June 22, Hamas hanged two men accused of collaborating with Israel. Two days earlier, a military court in Gaza sentenced a Palestinian Authority Arab man found guilty of the same charge to death.

The EU said it was firmly opposed to capital punishment and its abolition "contributes to human dignity and the progressive development of human rights."

Describing the death penalty as cruel and inhuman, the EU said the sentences were "failing to provide deterrence to criminal behavior, and representing an unacceptable denial of human dignity and integrity," reported Ma'an.

The Gaza government has said that it was using the death penalty as a means to deter PA Arabs from collaborating with Israel. Hamas interior ministry official Salah Addin Abu Sharkh said the government had "a clear goal and several means to eradicate this dangerous epidemic," including executing convicted collaborators.

The Gaza government vowed in June to enforce the death penalty against collaborators, while the department of public prosecution said it would be demanding corporal punishment in "high profile" homicide cases.

In March, Hamas said it had a list of collaborators but offered a one-month amnesty for informers to give themselves up in return for leniency.

The terror group announced in April that it had begun arresting suspected collaborators with Israel following the amnesty period and indicated that the campaign had been "a success."

Under Palestinian Authority law, collaboration with Israel, murder and drug trafficking are all punishable by death. All execution orders must be approved by the PA chairman before they can be carried out, but Hamas no longer recognizes the legitimacy of Mahmoud Abbas, whose four-year term ended in 2009.

Amnesty International has called on the public to mail Gaza's Hamas terrorist rulers in order to appeal against other executions.

Arutz Sheva, also known in English as Israel National News, is an Israeli media network identifying with Religious Zionism. Contact Arutz Sheva at www.israelnationalnews.com

The Left lives on slogans. Ever since the time of the Communist Manifesto, with the brilliant catchprase, "You have nothing to lose but your shackles," their flock yearns for political sayings created by masters of brainwashing and psychological warfare. The Israeli Left, for some time now, has not been part of the social or socialist Left. It has become bourgeois and rich, but it has not lost its passion for ideology and for debate and controversy. Its spiritual homeland is no longer Soviet Russia but Palestine, and at the heart of its new argument is not the distribution of wealth but the distribution of the land. They also require, as always, someone who they can condemn as a reactionary, living in the past, who is the object of their hatred.

Formerly, it was the contemptible capitalist; in our day it is the relentless settler, and the red ideology has been replaced by a new belief — the cult of "peace on our enemies' term"

As is their habit, they found a catchy slogan for their new belief system — "Land for peace," but this slogan now lies buried in the sands of Gush Katif (Gaza), where the Israeli public learned that the true quid pro quo for territories is Hamas rule and rockets, not peace. But slogans are plentiful and so we have had to endure "Shall we forever live by the sword?", "A horse and its rider", "Peace is made with enemies", "Window of opportunity", "No free lunch", "The demographic demon" and "Time is in favor of the Arabs."

With time, these slogans have worn out because the facts have flown in their faces. Now only one slogan remains, to which television's Channel 10 just devoted a special program: the threat that if Israel is not divided, the State of Israel will become 'a bi-national state.' Yossi Sarid, (a well-known journalist and former Knesset member of the left) elaborated in that broadcast with the words "the end of the Jewish State", and Meron Benvenisti (a writer and journalist) added, "the train has already left the station."

Is this panic justified? If the fear is that the State of Israel will lose its Jewish majority, then the question is primarily a demographic one and, in this regard, the past years have brought good news. As opposed to the situation in the middle of the last century whereby there were, on average, six children more in Arab families than in Jewish families, today the Arab family has an average of three children and the Jewish birthrate has grown to an equal number. Moreover, the Jewish birthrate is on the rise while the Arab birthrate is declining, and the latter is the situation in almost the entire Middle East. The trend in Israelis characteristic not only of religious Jews but also of the secular population, and this is contrary to the decreasing birthrates in the entire Western world. Today, forty-six years after the reunification of Israel, the Jews are still a majority in all of western Israel, the Gaza Strip included, and this majority is not in danger.

Furthermore, we are not obligated to grant all the Arabs of Judaea and Samaria Israeli citizenship coupled with the right to vote for the Knesset. And as long as they have not been enfranchised, all talk about "the end of the Jewish State" is demagoguery. As long as there is solid Jewish majority in the Knesset, the state is Jewish.

Here the Left introduces the argument that if we do not grant the Arabs of Judaea and Samaria citizenship, our state will no longer be democratic, and the world will not for long abide a situation of "occupation" without rights. This claim deserves serious consideration. Let us begin with the fact that for the Arabs the situation today in Judaea and Samariais not one of “occupation." Only the Jewish settlers are subject to the rule of the military government and its regulations, that is, held under occupation. All the Arabs, including those in Area C, are under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Albeit, the Arabs in Area C are under the authority of the Israeli civil government in matters of planning, construction, traffic etc. but their lives are essentially governed by Ramallah. Furthermore, there is no disagreement in the Jewish public that, were Area C to be annexed to Israel, its Arab residents should be granted Israeli citizenship. Their number is estimated at 70,000, and that number would certainly not endanger the Jewish majority.

Approximately half of the Arabs of the disputed territories live in the Gaza Strip where, in effect, they are living in a separate state. Nobody can claim that "Hamastan" in Gaza is under Israeli occupation. On the contrary, there the Left's dream of dividing the land has already taken place on a small scale. The Left can therefore relax — Gaza will certainly not be the cause of diminishing the percentage of Jews in the State of Israel.

Areas A and B too, are not ruled by Israel. True, sometimes the IDF does arrest suspects there, but that is done across other borders as well, and it happens only because the Palestinian Authority routinely violates its obligation, in accordance with the Oslo Agreements, to arrest terror suspects.

The Arabs of Judaea and Samaria have a parliament, a government, a flag, a national anthem, representation in all the countries of the world including in the United Nations, they have security forces which deploy automatic weapons, including machine guns, they have independent radio and television broadcasting systems and total economic freedom. Their government offices function in every imaginable sphere. What don't they have? Jerusalem. Also, heavy military armaments and authority over the approximately 400,000 Jewish settlers. The border crossings are under Israeli authority, as are the skies, and the Palestinian Authority is not permitted to enter into international agreements which are of a sensitive nature vis a vis Israel. The reason for this is clear: without these limitations we would have Iran's Revolutionary Guards on the border of Petach Tikva, a military pact would have been signed between Ramallah and Teheran and at Ben-Gurion International Airport no flights would be able to take off or land. The current situation in Ramallah is called Autonomy. Even the disrespected Oslo Agreements were resolute in not granting full sovereignty to the Palestinian Authority. In effect, the Israeli Military Authority was not dismantled, it just "retreated." What remains is a rather limited Israeli affinity. Does this endanger the Jewish character of the State of Israel? Nonsense!

And still, the Left will insist, why do not the "Palestinian people" in Judaea and Samaria, in addition to the local matters over which they were given full democratic rule by the Oslo Agreements, deserve to receive full political sovereignty a state, and not just autonomy? To this there is a very clear reply because they already have such a state, but they chose to call it Jordan.

The territory of "Palestine" which the League of Nations gave the British in trust mandate to administer for the purpose of establishing a "National Home for the Jewish People", stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Iraqi border, including today's entire Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. However, a few months after the ratification of the Mandate (1922), the British requested from the League of Nations, and received, permission to remove the entire area east of the Jordan River from the territory being considered for the Jewish National Home, and that, in order to be able to reserve this territory for the Arabs who were already rebelling against the very idea of a Jewish national home. The British were indebted to the Hashemite dynasty, which fought alongside their armies against the Turks. Therefore, they rewarded the older brother with the Kingdom of Iraq and the younger brother received the Transjordanarea which was designated an emirate and its new ruler, Abdullah, received the title of Emir and eventually became King. The area was declared closed for Jewish aliya and settlement and as the secretary to the Emir, Sir Alec Kirkbride, wrote in his memoirs, it was designed to fulfill the nationalist aspirations of the Arabs, which had recently awakened and found their expression in bloody riots.

Here, then, obviously, was the foundation for the realization of the great vision of the Left (and of Benjamin Netanyahu), "two states for two nations", one to the east and the other to the west of the Jordan River. And in this vision the Arabs, which later were to name themselves "Palestinians", were not short-changed at all since the eastern portion comprised more than three-fourths of the entire original mandatory territory and what was left for the Jews, the area between the river and the sea, was only one fourth of the whole.

At that time, the local Arabs came up with two brilliant schemes:

1) They re-invented themselves as a separate people, which they named after the British Mandate territory of Palestine the 'Palestinian People'

2) They created, out of thin air, a new national designation which they named after the new Jordanian Emirate the 'Jordanian People'.

From then on, even though the Arabs of the Jordanian Kingdom continue to identify themselves as Palestinians, they concurrently have acquired an identity as Jordanians. As a result, anyone who believes that the vision of a national state for the Palestinians should be fulfilled in Transjordan is immediately accused of trying to steal that country from its rightful owners, the "Jordanians." Against his will he is forced to search for an alternative territory for the "stateless" Palestinians within the small quarter of the mandatory territory which the British left for the Jewish homeland that is, to subdivide the area a second time and thus to render questionable the sustainability of the territory which remains as a Jewish State and turn it into a caricature of a state.

It is also important to point out that in Jordan there is only one people, a people who call themselves 'Palestinians.' There are also Bedouin living there but they do not see themselves as a separate nation. As a result, in that area, which historically is the Land of Israel, and among themselves is called Palestine, there lives a people who identify as Palestinians and nevertheless, it is called Jordan. This enables the Palestinians to claim that they have no home and that the Jews are the ones who must supply one for them out of the small portion which was left for them. Those Jews in Israel who are not ready to play along with this comedy and claim that one partition was enough are called fanatics, messianic, dreamers and even Fascists.

In summation, I am willing to take a risk and say that all the Arabs in the biblical Land of Israel, on both sides of the Green Line, can live a full life under Israeli rule, and a part of them in the framework of autonomy. They will vote for their local autonomous Home Rule, but not for the Knesset in Jerusalem. They will vote in their national elections for the parliament in the eastern part, whether it will still be called 'Jordan' or the name will be changed to 'Palestine'. The logistics were already worked out by the sages of Oslo. Thy allowed the Arabs living in East Jerusalem, which was annexed to the State of Israel, to vote in the elections for the Palestinian Authority in Jerusalem in the Salah a'Din Street Post Office. In the same way, American, Russian and French citizens living here vote in the elections in their countries.

Will this lead to the loss of a Jewish majority in Israeli elections? Most certainly not!

Ted Belman is a retired lawyer and the Editor of Israpundit. He made aliya from Canada last year and now lives in Jerusalem, Israel. Contact him at tedbel@rogers.com

Ronit Avrahamof Shapira, known to many as Ronit the newscaster from Youtube political satire Latma, survived a road ambush by rock-throwing terrorists Sunday night. She was in the family car that was being driven by her husband, Eliezer ("Leizi"), and their small children.

Shapira told the tale on her Facebook page.

"The rock terror has reached us, the Shapira family, too. An Arab terrorist tried to murder us too, tonight.

"We were traveling in our car in Samaria, at 10:00 p.m. Leizi identifies rocks on the road, understands what is happening. He shouts to me, to protect our babies in the back seat, and as fast as the speed of light, a stone (Not just any stone. Think of a large rock, and now think bigger. Something the size of a nice grapefruit) smashes the window next to me.

"Pieces of glass everywhere. On my body, in every possible place, on our babies. They are reclining innocently in their seats and a million bits of glass, large and small, cover them. And a kind of glass dust, that only G-d knows how to clean off of them. And off of me.

"I am injured. Blood. A little, but blood nonetheless. On the face, on the hands. On my baby's leg. We flee for our lives. Scared to death that more rocks may be headed our way. I am not sure what is going on. Are we being fired upon? When the rocks hit the car, the noise is powerful, like gunshots. Plus the flying glass and the blood.

"Luckily, Leizi the hero does not lose control of the wheel. Luckily, he shouted to me in time, I bent over, I protected the children, most of the pieces of glass hit me and I avoided getting hit in the head by a rock. Let us only make it safely to the nearest checkpoint!

"We made it. We can emerge from our shellshock now. Or not. I am trembling. Checking to see that everyone is OK. Thank G-d, we are. At the checkpoint, they debrief us, they ask us a lot of questions, we clean ourselves, the children and the car from tons of broken glass (who knew a window had so much glass in it?), we try to calm down. It's true, they tried to murder us just now, but we emerged safe. We can try to start breathing now.

"In the newscasts tomorrow, people will once again wag their fingers about the 'terrible terrorism' in which walls are sprayed with 'price tag' slogans, and ignore once again an attempted murder, one of many that take place on our roads every day, because who cares?

"Our partners in peace want us to die. That is what they want. One cannot make peace with murderers. The murderers have blood on their hands and I have blood on my forehead. Shalom.

Sergio HaDaR Tezza can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net

The official Palestinian Authority media continues its condemnation of Palestinian Media Watch for exposing that the PA promotes hatred and terror.

The latest PA TV attack comes in response to PMW's recent bulletin exposing that PA TV glorified three Palestinian terrorists who are serving a total of166 life sentences for planning suicide bombings and preparing the bombs that were used in numerous terror attacks.

PA TV host Manal Seif responded as follows:

"Palestinian Media Watch... slandered these heroes and claimed that they are terrorists... if they see all these prisoners as terrorists — we see them as heroes."

According to PA leaders and official PA TV, killing Israelis is a positive achievement and therefore Palestinians who murder Israeli men, women and children are "heroes."

Responding to PMW's bulletin, which exposed PA TV's glorification of the three terrorists, the PA TV host defended her program. She referred by name to the three prisoners who are serving 166 life terms for suicide bombings that targeted civilians at Hebrew University, cafes, restaurants, pedestrian malls, and hotels, among others, and emphasized that they are "heroes."

The following is the full text of PA TV's rejection of PMW's use of the word "terrorists":

PA TV host: "I want to tell the Israelis that our prisoners are heroes and not terrorists. What I saw reminded me of an Israeli website called 'PMW', or 'Palestinian Media Watch,' a site that monitors the Palestinian media. Of course every visit that we film for a prisoner gets them angry. I was surprised a week ago that [regarding] brother Ibrahim Hamed, brother Abbas Al-Sayid, and brother Abdallah Barghouti, they [PMW] objected, they were upset, they slandered these heroes and claimed that they are terrorists. If they see Abdallah Barghouti (67 life sentences) as a terrorist, Abbas Al-Sayid (35 life sentences)as a terrorist, Ibrahim Hamed (54 life sentences) and Nasser Awais (14 life sentences), if they see all these prisoners as terrorists — we see them as heroes... I salute you, all you heroic fighter prisoners, and of course, I always wish you freedom."

This verbal attack on PMW is the latest of several attacks on PMW by the official PA media. In an attack on PMW last year, the official PA daily protested the impact that PMW is having in European Parliaments and US Congress. PMW's reports have led parliamentarians and governments to reconsider their funding of the PA or to restrict the PA's use of their money.

"The organization [PMW] published a new report, [From Terrorists to Role Models] a copy of which was sent to the American Congress and to world leaders, in order to incite against the Palestinian Authority and for the adoption of [political] steps against it, because of what it described as PA calls and praise for terror, its inculcation of hatred of Israel, and the glorification of leader and activist Martyrs, whom the organization [PMW] and its [Israeli] government describe as terrorists.

The new [PMW] report stated: The Palestinian Authority has named streets, public squares, and schools after Palestinian leaders and fighters, such as, for example, the Abu Jihad School in Araba, in the Jenin region, and some schools are even named after Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad)...

The report included some brief background on these leaders, and what it described as the crimes, which they had carried out against Israelis."

A few months ago following NRK Norwegian TV's story on PMW which showed the PA's hate messages against Jews and Israel, which NRK TV noted was being funded by Norway, the PA Ambassador to Norway attacked PMW. [PA TV (Fatah), Feb. 17, 2013]

These and other Palestinian Authority attacks on PMW are an indicator of PMW's success in creating international awareness of the actual activities, the hate content and the glorification of terror in the official PA world.

Itamar Marcus, Director of Palestinian Media Watch (http://www.pmw.org.il), is an authority on Palestinian Arab ideology and policy. He was Israeli representative to the Tri-Lateral Anti Incitement Committee established under the Wye accords, and has written reports on Palestinian Authority, Syrian and Jordanian schoolbooks. Nan Jacques Zilberdik is an analyst at PMW, focusing on the opinions and messages of the Palestinian Arab leadership as transmitted to the Palestinian Arab public, with an emphasis on the impact on peace, messages and values communicated to children, and glorification of terrorists. This article is archived at
http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=9296

There is a sense of fatalism in Washington about Secretary of State John Kerry's quest to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Many experts have concluded that the conditions for peace don't exist and are unlikely to exist anytime soon. So far, White House officials have not begrudged Mr. Kerry's investment of time and energy in the initiative, but there is little expectation that President Obama, bogged down with so many other priorities, will get very involved unless real progress emerges.

Still, Mr. Kerry keeps doggedly plowing forward. Despite the skeptics, this issue is of such importance that he is right to stay focused on it, at least until it becomes clear that neither side is willing to seriously engage. And while his trip to the region last week — his fifth — produced no breakthrough, he said he had made progress and would return again soon.

On Thursday, he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, then drove to Amman to confer with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Friday. He later flew by helicopter back to Jerusalem for another meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, then one with President Shimon Peres of Israel. On Saturday and Sunday, he shuttled between the leaders again.

Whether there is any substantive narrowing of differences between the two sides is unknown. Mr. Kerry's determination to maintain secrecy is frustrating to anyone following his mission but also tactical, since unveiling details prematurely is more likely to back Israelis and Palestinians into opposite corners. The Jerusalem Post reported on Friday that Mr. Kerry proposed a series of meetings between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas. The newspaper said Mr. Netanyahu accepted the plan and Mr. Abbas was being pressured to do the same.

The public signals from both sides have been confusing. There is division in Israel's conservative government, where hard-liners have tried to undermine Mr. Kerry's initiative by advocating more West Bank settlements, which are a death knell for any Palestinian state, while moderates have endorsed a two-state solution. The Israeli news site Haaretz.com reported that Mr. Netanyahu has "shifted" and is now serious about the peace process and a two-state solution. One can only hope that is true.

It does not help that the Palestinians are more disorganized than ever since their highly competent prime minister, Salam Fayyad, was ousted and replaced by someone who resigned a few weeks later. Mr. Abbas has insisted that Israel halt all settlement building before negotiations could resume and reportedly also wanted some Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails. Israel's government has not initiated new settlements since it was formed in March; even so, it has moved forward on 69 previously approved apartments in East Jerusalem.

There have been no direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks since 2010. Mr. Kerry has made clear he wants to make headway on negotiations well before September, when the United Nations General Assembly will once again debate the Middle East. If that does not happen, there may come a point when Mr. Kerry and President Obama will have to decide whether it continues to make sense to invest this level of energy in this project indefinitely without a commensurate commitment by Israel and the Palestinians.

Contact John Cohn at john.r.cohn@gmail.com

This time of the year is difficult. Last week marked the beginning of 'the three weeks,' a twenty-one day period of mourning, concluding with the Tisha b'Av fast, the anniversary of the destruction of the first and second Temples. During these three weeks we refrain from celebrations, such as weddings and other festivities. Generally speaking, these days are meant to be a time of deep introspection, attempting to fathom the horrors the led to, and followed the destruction of Jerusalem and eventual exile from our land.

Jewish tradition explains that the horrors of the ninth day of Av did not begin with the fall of the Temples in Jerusalem. Rather, many hundreds of years earlier, while still in the desert, following the exodus from Egypt, the Israelites, accepted the account of ten spies, who reported that:

The land, through which we have passed to spy it out, is a land that eats up its inhabitants. And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night. And they said one to another: 'Let us appoint a leader, and let us return to Egypt.

These words, forsaking Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, were uttered on Tisha b'Av, the ninth of Av. This date being the root of the calamities which befell the Jewish people on this day, including not only the destruction of the two Temples, but also the day on which Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492.

Unfortunately, the Tisha b'Av fast does not designate an end to our sorrow. For exactly eight years ago, on Monday the 10th of Av, the day after the fast, Ariel Sharon's government followed in the footsteps of Titus and Nebuchadnezzar by destroying Gush Katif in Gaza and communities in northern Samaria, leaving 10,000 homeless, and many of them jobless. And leaving parts of our land in the hands of our enemies. The cost: over 13,000 rockets shot into Israel, and two small wars. So far. A few days ago, HaAretz newspaper reported: Likud minister: Netanyahu ready to compromise, withdraw from over 90% of West Bank if security concerns met.

Minister says security remains Netanyahu's main concern, but the PM knows that for a peace agreement, 'he will have to evacuate more than a few settlements'.

The various and assorted media reports dealing with the US attempts to renew 'piece talks' between Israel and the Arabs spew forth numerous rumors such as the HaAretz story. Is it true? Who knows? But, Netanyahu has declared his intention to create a 'palestinian state' and has participated in chopping up Hebron. In January, 1997 he signed and implemented the Hebron Accords, thereby abandoning most of Hebron to Arafat and the PA. That being the case, the above-quoted headline could very well be true.

For the time being, Kerry left Israel without achieving his goal. The talks are still stuck. But that' not enough. We must continue to take affirmative action — not only say no — but progress.

That's what happened today. A military appeals panel ruled that Beit HaMachpela in Hebron was legally purchased and Jews should be allowed to move back in.

At the beginning of April, 2012, a group of Jewish families moved into a newly purchased building across the street from the Tomb of the Patriarchs, calling it 'Beit HaMachpela.' A few days later, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, together with Netanyahu, ordered the families expelled. No real reason was given. We later learned that the Attorney General told the Prime Minister that he might be accused of war crimes in Geneva for 'appropriating Arab property in Hebron.' Since then, the building has remained empty.

Despite Israeli insistence that the building was not legally purchased, the PA arrested an Arab named Abu Shahala and ostensibly sentenced him to death for his role in the sale.

Numerous Israeli leaders visited Beit HaMachpela, including Minister Moshe Bugi Ya'alon, who said during Succot, 2012, that the government would 'make the right decisions' and also declared his belief in the continued development of Hebron and all of Judea and Samaria. He said that the return to these places in 1967 was not 'temporary' and promised to assist in the continues growth of the community.

Presently he has a chance to fulfill his promise, as Defense Minister, buy signing the necessary permits allowing Jews to move back into Beit HaMachpela.

This is the rectification of the sins of the spies, the spies in the desert and the spies who relinquished parts of our holy land in the past 30 years. This is the answer to those who continue to preach hate against Jews in Israel in general, and specifically against Jews in Judea and Samaria, and most prominently, against Jews in Hebron. This is the appropriate response: returning to our land, and to our homes, and in this case, to Beit HaMachpela in Hebron.

David Wilder is spokesman of The Jewish Community of Hebron. You can contribute directly to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB10, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, hebron@hebron.org.il, 972-2-9965333 or write to The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, hebronfund@aol.com

Jerusalem Post reports:

Three African migrants were injured in two knife fights in south Tel Aviv last week, near the site where a Sudanese migrant stabbed and wounded six people a day earlier, when a Sudanese migrant stabbed several passersby near the Central Bus Station in south Tel Aviv on Sunday, leaving one Israeli in moderate-to-serious condition, and five other people lightly wounded.

The government of Benjamin Netanyahu (and the Knesset) bear responsibility for the recent outrage against Jews in their 'own...Jewish State.

Failure to deport these African Moslem marauders has caused internal terrorism against Jews ever since they arrived (with the blessing and 'assistance) of the inept Olmert government some seven years ago which was continued with the Netanyahu governments. Not only was the IDF instructed to stand aside and 'let them in' in many cases transportation was provided for these dredges out of Africa.

Could anyone imagine border guards on the America's border with Mexico actually providing transportation into America's heartland for illegals.

Since their arrival they have turned South Tel-Aviv into hovels, forced Jews to flee (in their own country) raped young girls and old women, brutalized people, committed epidemic crime waves, terrorized those Jews who had not fled, brought African borne diseases into the country, used public parks and playgrounds as their sleeping quarters and polluted these areas using them as outdoor toilets.

They have spread across the country, endangering 'Jews' from Eilat to Ashdod, to Netanya and even in Jerusalem.

{They have not criminalized Arab communities in Israel} While it's true that Israel takes it's orders (as regards these infiltrators) from the ever present, hostile United Nations, several 'friendly' nations, the liberal, mostly leftist Israeli Judiciary, and also seems to be swayed by (not well meaning) leftist anti-Israel liberals within Israel itself, the U.K. and the U.S.

Add to this that the organization that still calls itself 'Zionist', the now leftist Hadassah, had a three page feature in their magazine a couple of years ago showing a Sudanese African women cradling her baby; 'qvelling' that these people were in Israel. {92% of the Moslem intruders from Eritrea and the Sudan are young males}.

The present Israeli government has let it's hands be tied, by all of the above adversaries. If the present Israeli government and (the Knesset) cannot protect Israeli's from the internal hordes they allowed into the country, they should formally throw in the towel, to allow a stronger ruling class to assume responsibility for the protection of the population.

With 73,000 invaders roaming the country, every (Jewish) Israeli is at risk of being attacked. If you, (the Israeli government) cannot, deport them... please resign.

Egypt kept 'pushing them into Sinai, Bedouins from Sinai and the Negev (for a price) fed them into Israel. If these people were really refugees (which they aren't)who supplied them with the funds. Instead of Israel paying a ransom- in- reverse to some country (in Africa) to take them which would take another two or three years placing more Israeli's in harms way, some 'brave' person in the Knesset should suggest the immediate expulsion back to where they came from by way of the Sinai and Egypt.

On the subject of 'expultions and deportions: In May 2012, Ahmed Bani-Jaber followed a teenage boy and girl to the Gan Ha'ir mall parking lot in central Tel Aviv, brandished a knife and forced them into the garage's bathroom, where he forced the couple to carry out sexual acts on one another and raped the 17-year-old girl. The young girl later said she felt violated as a person and as a Jew.

This was no isolated incident. Crimes against Jews by Arabs has risen steadily over the past thirteen years.

MK Uri Ariel recently stated in Poland that Israel must, and will protect all Jews all over the world.

How's about in the Jewish homeland?

Contact K at noahsworldtv@gmail.com

Sadly, not only do some Islamic leaders insist that Egypt's Christians have no right to protest, but apparently so does the current U.S. administration: Days before the protests, U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson asked the Coptic Pope to urge the Copts not to protest thus validating Sharia law's position concerning subjugated Christians.

Hours before the June 30 protests began against Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood party, the nation's Christians were once again singled out for behaving like citizens who have the right to participate in the protests.

In Minya, Upper Egypt, where millions of Christians live, letters addressed to the Copts threatened them not to join the protests, otherwise their "businesses, cars, homes, schools, and churches" might "catch fire." The message concluded by saying, "If you are not worried about any of these, then worry about your children and your homes. This message is being delivered with tact. But when the moment of truth comes, there will be no tact." It's signed by "People zealous for the nation."

Such threats are not limited to anonymous letters. During a recent TV interview, Sheikh Essam Abdulamek, a member of the parliament's Shura Council, warned Egypt's Christians against participating in the June 30 protests. "Do not sacrifice your children," he said, as "general Muslim opinion will not be silent about the ousting of the president [Morsi]."

Notable in all these threats is that Christian children are specifically mentioned as targets the easiest and most effective way at punishing "uppity" Copts who think they, too, along with the millions of other Egyptians, have the right to protest the Brotherhood and Morsi. These threats are not empty; since the rise of Morsi and the Brotherhood, the targeting of Coptic children has been on the rise. Some, especially young girls, are regularly abducted, raped, shamed into converting to Islam and then "marrying" their rapists. Coptic boys have increasingly been abducted from the doorsteps of their churches and held for ransom. Most recently, a 6-year-old Christian boy was murdered by his kidnapper after the boy's family paid the ransom. (Read more about the jihad on Egypt's Christian children.)

The number of notable Islamic personages on record threatening Egypt's Christians is significant: in December 2012, Safwat Hegazy, a prominent Brotherhood figure and preacher, threatened every Christian who dared vote against Morsi's Sharia-heavy constitution. In a video, speaking before a throng of Muslims, he said:

A message to the church of Egypt, from an Egyptian Muslim: I tell the church — by Allah, and again, by Allah if you conspire and unite with the remnants [opposition] to bring Morsi down, that will be another matter [screams of "Allah-hu Akbar!" ("Allah is Greater!") followed by chants of "With our soul, with our blood, we give to you, O Islam!"]. [T]here are red lines — and our red line is the legitimacy of Dr. Muhammad Morsi. Whoever splashes water on it, we will splash blood on him" [followed by more wild shouts of "Allah-hu Akbar!"]

Around the same time, Dr. Wagdi Ghoneim who earlier praised Allah for the death of the late Coptic Pope Shenouda, cursing him to hell and damnation on video made another video, entitled, "A Notice and Warning to the Crusaders in Egypt," a reference to the nation's Christians, or Copts, which began with him saying, "You are playing with fire in Egypt, I swear, the first people to be burned by the fire are you [Copts]." The heart of Ghoneim's message was genocidal:

The day Egyptians and I don't even mean the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafis, regular Egyptians feel that you are against them, you will be wiped off the face of the earth. I'm warning you now: do not play with fire!" "What do you think that America will protect you? Let's be very clear, America will not protect you. If so, it would have protected the Christians of Iraq when they were being butchered!"

Later, a few months ago, while discussing the ongoing protests against Morsi, Sheikh Abdullah Badr, an Al Azhar trained scholar and professor of Islamic exegesis, made the following assertion on live TV:

I swear to Allah, the day those who went out [to protest], and at their head, the [Coptic] Christians I say this at the top of my voice the day they think to come near Dr. Morsi, I we will pop their eyes out, and the eyes of all those who support them, even America; and America will burn, and all its inhabitants. Be assured, the day Dr. Morsi is touched by any hand whatever, and connected to whomever, by Allah it will be the last day for us. We will neither leave them, nor show them any mercy.

Of all of Egypt's citizens, its indigenous and original inhabitants the Christian Copts are also the most denied equal rights; a revealing reminder of how Islam entered Egypt, with the sword and violence, and why most Christians, over the centuries, converted: to remain Christian was to remain a third-class, barely tolerated "citizen," who paid extra taxes, jizya, and was denied any equality with Muslims.

Sadly, not only do some Islamic leaders insist that Egypt's Christians have no right to protest, but also, apparently, so does the current U.S. administration. Days before the June 30 protests, U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson asked the Coptic pope to urge the Copts not to join the protests thus validating Sharia law's position concerning subjugated Christians: they must never complain against their Islamic overlords, in this instance, Morsi and the Brotherhood.

Raymond Ibrahim is author of the new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (published by Regnery in cooperation with Gatestone Institute, 2013). A Middle East and Islam expert, he is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and associate fellow at the Middle East Forum. This article appeared July 01, 2013 on Gatestone Institute International Policy Council and is archived at
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3803/egypt-christians-protests

Egyptian army officials on Monday issued a 48-hour ultimatum to the country's political echelon, calling on the Muslim Brotherhood-linked government of President Mohammed Morsi to respond to the concerns of millions of protesters who took to the streets on Sunday calling for Morsi's resignation. he statement, issued by the country's Defense Minister, General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, emphasized that the army has no intention of ruling the country, but that if "the people's demands" were not met then the army would "announce a road-map for the future and the steps for overseeing its implementation, with participation of all patriotic and sincere parties and movements." At least 16 people, including an American, have been killed during anti-government demonstrations that began last Wednesday and peaked on Sunday. Nearly 800 have been injured. Protesters expressed anger not only at Morsi but at his Muslim Brotherhood movement in general. Multiple regional headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party were stormed and looted over the weekend, including the movement's national headquarters in Cairo. In the northern city of El Sharkeya, activists who stormed the local Muslim Brotherhood headquarters destroyed official documents. Morsi has seen his support plummet since he was inaugurated a year ago. A power grab designed to centralize power around his presidency, coupled with a push for the hasty passage of a controversial constitution grounded in Islamic law, burned political capital necessary to implement badly needed economic reforms. The result has been a downward spiral in economic stability and political legitimacy.

U.S. Cabinet officials are emphasizing the need for sanctions against Iran, and are assuring policy-makers that the American and global economies are able to absorb the effects of new economic measures against the Islamic republic. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said at a conference in Aspen, Colo. that it would be "the best thing for Iran and the world" if sanctions would work. Lew also commented on the recent election of revolutionary cleric Hassan Rouhani to be Iran's next president by emphasizing that a change in Iran's nuclear posture would "require decisions that are made at their highest level," a reference to Iran's political system in which Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — and not the Iranian president — wields control over the country's foreign policy. Meanwhile Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz explained in an interview in Vienna that Iran has lost its position as a "dominant player in the [global oil] market," and that growing output from the U.S. and Iraq could offset the loss of Iranian crude envisioned by bipartisan U.S. lawmakers advocating further sanctions. Last week veteran U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross, evaluating the Iranian regime's calculations in permitting Rouhani to run and win the presidential election, concluded that the Supreme Leader's control means that "it is far too early to consider backing off sanctions."

Syrian government troops launched a major offensive over the weekend on rebel-held areas within the strategic city of Homs, part of a campaign that observers believe is aimed at consolidating the Bashar al-Assad regime's control in the aftermath of the regime's Hezbollah-backed success in seizing the strategically critical city of Qusayr. Securing Homs would insulate the regime's supply lines between the country's capital, Damascus, and the Mediterranean Sea. The offensive came after reports emerged Friday that opposition forces managed to seize a major military outpost near the southern city of Deraa, positioning rebels to target the government-controlled city. Meanwhile new developments are underscoring the sectarian dimensions of the conflict. Hundreds of rebels are believed to have fled across the Syrian-Lebanese border for medical treatment, which is reportedly being paid for by sympathetic Lebanese Sunnis. The Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front also issued a statement claiming that it was coordinating with other Syrian rebels groups in orchestrating attacks on government troops.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has rejected a package of Israeli goodwill gestures designed to coax the Palestinian leader back to peace talks, where further Israeli concessions would be discussed. A Palestinian official told Xinhua that the Israeli confidence-building measures — which included the release of security prisoners and programs designed to bolster Abbas — were insufficient 'for President Abbas to accept returning to the negotiating table." Abbas reportedly conveyed as much to Secretary of State John Kerry last Friday, during the U.S. official's fifth peace process-related visit to the region. Abbas has imposed a series of additional preconditions he demands be fulfilled by Israel before the Palestinian leader will agree to return to peace talks. Meanwhile Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet this weekend that "Israel is ready to begin negotiations without delay, without preconditions" and that Israel is "not putting up any impediments on the resumption of the permanent talks and a peace agreement." A poll released Friday showed that a majority of Israelis also back the resumption of peace talks.

Contact Israel Project at press@theisraelproject.org

The aerial view of Egypt's cities, towns and villages across Egypt on June 30th, teaming with supporters of the Tamarud freedom movement, resembled an ant colony (industrious with a heavy load many times their weight) filling squares and streets and overflowing into neighborhoods to demand what has long been their goal — the removal of Egypt's President. On the one year anniversary of President Morsi's term, hundreds of thousands of protesters (reports estimate several million) delivered a petition necessitating Mr. Morsi's immediate resignation.

Twenty-five percent of Egypt's population signed the petition roughly the same number of voters in last year's presidential election. If this massive effort accomplishes the task, the world will see for the first time a blueprint for a freedom revolution in the Middle East as Egypt extricates itself from a totalitarian Islamic regime.

This enormous collective action takes place now after a year of Morsi's unfulfilled promises and the harsh evidence that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have moved away from the principles of freedom and democracy and the general welfare of the country. Demonstrating patience in the past year toward an elected President-turned dictator who orchestrated Egypt's constitution into an Islamic Shariah document, Egyptians have seen Morsi's agenda and conduct contravene his election promises.

Even so, the leader of the free world, Barack Obama, phoning Morsi from his South African location to respond to Egypt's crisis, has requested that Egyptian people begin "talks" with Morsi (see Arabic Al Ahram, 6/30/13 entitled, Obama: We support democracy and peaceful protests to bring about change in Egypt). Does this mean that Mr. Obama favors a Morsi presidency over the potential for a democracy in Egypt? We know that after all the world has seen in Egypt in the past year, that Morsi's Brotherhood- backed regime is uncompromising and can't be trusted and is pulling Egypt backward into an Islamist state.

In the Al Ahram article cited above, a twitter statement from the U.S. State Department is quoted as President Obama saying, "We would like to engage the opposition and President Morsi in a constructive dialogue on how to move their country forward." It is unlikely that Egypt's opposition movement this time around would welcome or desire such a facilitator after a long year of seeing where America's support really lies.

The Muslim Brotherhood must be eradicated from Egypt with a Morsi departure. Morsi now appeals to the U.S. to back his desire to remain engaged in Egypt's future political process if he were to step down now. His plea to the U.S. leadership no doubt includes his political backers as well, the Muslim Brotherhood. If this happens, Egypt's freedom fighters will be sunk once again in a mire of lies, backwardness and obfuscations. As long as Egypt maintains a Muslim Brotherhood presence to any degree — an organizational one or an active political remnant freedom, human rights, equality under the law and democracy will suffer obstruction, disorder, and vengeful vendettas.

What hopeful signs do we have at this moment, from both inside and outside Egypt, that the uprising in Egypt's streets today — a potential turning point for freedom and human rights will be successful when, to be thorough, the Muslim Brotherhood must be expunged from offices and made irrelevant once again? One answer lies in Qatar, the funder of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Freedom and Justice Party, which already disinvested from the Muslim Brotherhood and their instrument, Morsi, some time back. Thus, Qatar's money no longer enabled Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood to buy citizen favor and sympathy with free handouts, playing a significant role in leading the Brotherhood to this current crisis.

Just two days ago, a fearful Qatar dynasty took further steps internally against Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood workers and imams, most notably deporting Qaradawi (spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood) back to Egypt, voiding his Qatar citizenship. A festering mistrust within Qatar's ruling family of the Brotherhood and its influence very possibly fostered a change in Qatar's Emir a week ago from father to son. The order given by the ruling family and "the people of solution and contract" to Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani to step down a request seen as a disgrace was presumably to ensure that his favor for Muslim Brotherhood appointments would be rolled back disabling Brotherhood penetration into Qatar government and institutions. His replacement, Crown Prince, Sheikh Tamim (bin Hamad al-Thani), finalized the Muslim Brotherhood severance.

Unsuccessful of either leasing the Pyramids or controlling the Suez Canal, both promised to them by the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt during this past year, Qatar proceeded to pull the financial rug out from under the Muslim Brotherhood, causing them to falter and making their weaknesses more apparent to the people. All arrogance and no foresight, the Brotherhood undervalued Qatar, their funding agent, and the Tamarud movement, their stubborn opposition, and both recognized and then took action against Brotherhood empowerment and supremacy.

Things are looking up for freedom-fighters right now. The Egyptian military firmly sides with the people and has given a 48-hour notice by radio address to Egypt's rulers to comply with the people's request and step down. Otherwise, the military will intervene and take action to achieve the people's goals. Unlike January 2011, military leaders wait along side citizens for rulers to bow to their demands. As an added measure of support, the military states it will not take part in political deals as before — ones antithetical to the prevailing mood of the country. Military leaders this time show a great sense of responsibility toward the people, which signals the Muslim Brotherhood that it must tackle the Egyptian military if it chooses to linger beyond Morsi and cause trouble. Hopefully it will not.

With the vast and complex task of building a brand new democracy before the country, two well-known pro-democratic figures have just surfaced with a TV interview suggesting a two-man team manage Egypt for six months once Morsi is gone: Ahmed Shafiq and El Baradei. If two re-cycled, yet trusted names, can hold in place a temporary interim administration, this will allow freedom-fighters to develop leadership and parties with democratic platforms — a much improved scenario from January 2011.

Ashraf Ramelah is founder and president of Voice of the Copts, a non-profit organization educating on Christian persecution in Egypt and intolerance of Islamic regimes. Contact Ramelah at aramelah@voiceofthecopts.org

I would like to begin with a link to a Youtube that provides an audio news broadcast about Muslim Brotherhood leader Qaradawi and Obama's connection to him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgJX01zhQMY&feature=youtu.be

It well worth listening to and sharing. People sometimes receive audio information better than the written word. And this information is pure dynamite. (With thanks to Salomon Benzimra of the Canadians for Israel's Legal Rights.)

~~~~~~~~~~

As to that reprieve I am referring, of course, to the fact that Secretary of State John Kerry left the area yesterday without having been able to achieve a "breakthrough" that brought the Israelis and the PA to the negotiating table.

Temporary, however, because he left behind two staff members to continue his efforts, and declared that progress has been made. ("I know progress when I see it.") The expectation is that, having stated his intention to pursue this, he'll be back here before long.

I could track his movements over the past few days, but will not. Suffice it to say that he did "shuttle diplomacy," with multiple meetings both with Netanyahu and with Abbas (both in Amman and in Ramallah).

As to the "progress," there are conflicting unofficial reports. At no time has there been any solid indication that Abbas has relinquished his pre-conditions — a freeze on building past the '67 line, acknowledgment that this line represents the basis for negotiations, and release of 123 specified prisoners convicted before the advent of Oslo.

See the statement by an Abbas spokesman yesterday:

"Abu Rudeineh said that Abbas affirmed the Palestinian national fixed positions regarding the establishment of an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital based on the 1967 borders, and the release of prisoners."

http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=22731

~~~~~~~~~~

What Abbas may have done (and this is not clear) is soften his pre-conditions just a bit, so that a partial freeze might be acceptable to him, and perhaps the release of fewer prisoners than he had wanted before the start of negotiations, with the rest to follow.

See here for information on those prisoners, who are frequently referred to as "political prisoners" but in many cases have blood on their hands:

http://imra.org.il/story.php3?id=61405

~~~~~~~~~~

The big question from the Israeli perspective is what Netanyahu has offered. According to Maariv, he would be willing to freeze building outside of Jerusalem and the major settlement blocs, and to release 60 of those prisoners. He balks at conceding that negotiations would be based on the '67 line (as well he must!),

"...sources close to Netanyahu [are] saying that [the demand for acknowledgment of the '67 line] was ridiculous because borders were a final-status issue that couldn't be decided before talks were even resumed." I find this statement scary because it implies that there is the possibility of deciding for the '67 line (with adjustments) after negotiations started.

According to one report, Netanyahu would mention that line if "Abbas accepted some of Netanyahu's long-held views on a final-status agreement: that the Palestinian state must be demilitarized, that its western border must run along Israel's West Bank security fence, and that Israel must maintain military control of the Jordan."

http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-abbas-reportedly-closer-to-talks-deal-after-kerry-meetings/

This is, in my opinion, shtuyote — unmitigated nonsense and double talk. Not only will Abbas never mention these things (which Netanyahu well knows and surely counts on), if Abbas must accept the view that the western border would run along the security fence (not sufficient anyway), then Netanyahu's mentioning the '67 line becomes moot. This merely points up the enormity of the differences.

But it's all speculative anyway. For according to Israel Hayom:

A senior Israeli diplomatic official said Netanyahu stuck to his position that there should be no preconditions for the renewal of negotiations."

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=10363

If this is accurate, and not the above report, then great, as far as it goes.

~~~~~~~~~~

My deep regret is that we don't have a leader who stands up and says, "Look, there was no '1967 border' — only a temporary armistice line. There was a war in 1967 in the first place because that armistice line was not secure, and after that war the UN Security Council acknowledged (Resolution 242) that another border providing greater strategic depth was necessary."

As long as this is not clarified, officially, by Israel, the world continues to swallow the Arab myth that Israel "belongs" behind the "1967 border."

~~~~~~~~~~

However Kerry chooses to paint the situation regarding how "close" the parties have drawn, what I see is still an enormous gap.

Should the parties actually sit down together — something I still consider doubtful — this hardly means that there will then be a slow, steady progression in negotiations until a "two state solution" is achieved. The differences between the parties are insurmountable: There are the PA demands on Jerusalem, return of "refugees," etc. And the PA is not going to sign off on that "two state" situation, with "end of conflict" and recognition of Israel as the Jewish state.

However...it is far preferable that there be no negotiations for a host of reasons.

~~~~~~~~~~

A few additional comments before turning entirely to other subjects:

Netanyahu and other members of his administration refer repeatedly to the need for Israeli security. We need the Jordan Valley for security. We need sufficient strategic depth for security. Israel must guard the high lands of Samaria so there can be no rockets launched at the airport. But all of this, while valid, is entirely insufficient. And this I will most certainly be returning to. Israel has rights in Judea and Samaria — totally aside from security requirements.

As was totally expected, the PA is pointing a finger at Israel, saying that our intransigence is the stumbling block. But I am pleased that, when "Kerry was asked by reporters if it was Israel's refusal to impose a building freeze in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem that was responsible for the fact that no negotiations had been set...Kerry said that 'the answer is no.'"

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/169458

This represents a change from the time when Obama breathed down Netanyahu's neck demanding that freeze.

~~~~~~~~~~

What makes me totally bananas is when left wing Israelis blame Israel for the failure of negotiations to take place. For example: "So what are Kerry's chances for success? Eventually they boil down to whether Netanyahu breaks the habit of a lifetime and commits to negotiating, in good faith, with the Palestinians."

Outrageous in the extreme, considering the PA positions.

~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile, the good news is that right wing nationalists won some important Likud party positions in elections yesterday:

Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon is now chair of the Likud Central Committee.

Deputy Foreign Minister Ze'ev Elkin is now chair of the Bureau (Ideological Committee).

And in a tightly contested race against Miri Regev, Transportation Minister Israel Katz retained the chairmanship of the Likud Secretariat.

All have pledged to work with Netanyahu, and the prime minister has shown signs of becoming more involved in the goings-on of his party (something he has neglected). But the results of these elections are read as a sure sign that Netanyahu's control within the party is slipping.

~~~~~~~~~~

Egypt.

Yesterday marked the first anniversary of the inauguration of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and millions (17 million according to the JPost) took to the streets to demonstrate against the Islamist Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. Demands were made for Morsi's resignation and Brotherhood headquarters in Cairo came under attack.

Shades of the "Arab Spring" uprising against Mubarak, with Tahrir Square in Cairo packed and major unrest in places such as Alexandria. Reportedly less violent than demonstrations against Mubarak had been, the turmoil has nevertheless brought with it some 10 deaths.

There is huge anger, that Morsi co-opted the revolution and turned it towards his ends. Elections are due in just months. But, without a doubt, the exceedingly dire economic situation — with hunger and the near-implosion of the economy — is a precipitating factor in the unrest.

While four government ministers have resigned, Morsi has shown no inclination to do likewise.

~~~~~~~~~~

A key issue in all of this is the role of the army, which is not powerless but stepped back with the Morsi election, allowing him to proceed.

Today I asked two of my key Israeli, Arabic-speaking experts on Middle East what the role of the army was likely to be. One advised me that if the situation got out of hand, the army, indeed, was likely to move back into play. The problem, which we discussed, is that the army would then have responsibility for addressing the dire economic conditions of the country, something that it was reluctant to undertake. (There are those who believe that the army pulled back a year ago understanding that Morsi was doomed because of those ever-worsening conditions.)

A second expert, however, provided a key piece of information: The Egyptian military, he told me, is seeking major economic support from Saudi Arabia. (The Saudis are eager to see Morsi come down.) Should the military receive this assistance, said my source, then it would be prepared to step in without the same fear that it would be left with an impossible situation.

~~~~~~~~~~

Today a major military announcement — an ultimatum to Morsi to share power — was broadcast on state television, declaring that Egypt was in danger.

The Egypt Independent is providing the clearest understanding of what is going on:

"A spokesperson for the General Command of the Armed Forces, speaking in an audio statement broadcast by state television, gave all political groups in Egypt a 48-hour grace period to respond to the demands of the people.

"The army reiterated its 'call that the demands of the people be met and gives [all parties] 48 hours, as a last chance, to take responsibility for the historic circumstances the country is going through,' the statement, read out on television, said.

"'If the demands of the people are not met in this period[the army] will announce a future roadmap and measures to oversee its implementation.'

"The statement praised Sunday's protests against the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood and President Mohamed Morsi.

"On June 23, Defence Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sissi (pictured below) said that the moral responsibility of the army towards the people compels it to intervene and prevent the country from sliding into a dark tunnel of conflict, internal strife, criminality and treason.

"This responsibility demanded the army save Egypt from the possibility of becoming a failed state."

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/armed-forces-gives-48-hour-ultimatum-until-take-over

What is more, according to the Egypt Independent:

"Thousands of protesters erupted in joy on Monday after the military said it would intervene if the people's demands were not met in 48 hours, an AFP journalist said, after millions took to the streets to call on President Mohamed Morsi to step down.

"'Come down Sissi, Morsi is not my president,' the protesters chanted, urging the country's Minister of Defence, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, to intervene.

"On the streets of Cairo, cars beeped their horns and waved Egyptian flags after the army statement."

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/tahrir-square-erupts-joy-after-egypt-army-statement

~~~~~~~~~~

While the army is certainly not a democratic institution, it would assert a good measure of stability, while tilting pro-West and supporting the peace treaty with Israel. Apparently troops have already been deployed in cities along the Suez Canal to protect it.

There are those who believe the fall of the Brotherhood in Egypt would have a domino effect. All I know for certain is that it would be a major embarrassment to Obama, who has supported the Brotherhood.

~~~~~~~~~~

A very serious comment with regard to a statement made by the ranking Republican members of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, at a press conference here in Jerusalem last night.

First they indicated that, while they supported Kerry's efforts here, the Syrian situation was far more pressing. Said Graham, "The peace process is important but Syria is literally blowing apart: 100,000 dead."

Indeed, severely misplaced priorities within the Obama administration. Indicated the two, Obama has demonstrated a severe lack of leadership. They dismissed the idea of an international conference as worthless.

All true, too true.

However, concerned that the killing stop, they suggest that there be real US intervention in Syria: Addressing the Obama administration, Graham said, "If you don't get this right soon, the whole region is going down."

McCain elaborated, saying that Hezbollah was helping Assad, as were the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and there was Russian equipment for them to use. "Meanwhile the freedom fighters have only light weapons...It is an unfair fight."

FREEDOM FIGHTERS? We're talking jihadists here. Extreme Islamist radicals who have co-opted the fight against Assad.

"So what we want to see is the declaration of a no-fly zone. We can take out their runways and negate their air power using Patriot missile batteries close to the no-fly zone and provide weapons they [the rebels] really need... They need anti-tank and anti-air weapons. That's what I mean by American leadership."

http://www.jpost.com/International/Top-Republican-senators-urge-Obama-to-intervene-in-Syria-318276

I never thought I would say this, but this proposal makes the do-nothing policy of Obama look like great leadership. How disheartening, how frightening, that ranking members of the US Armed Services Committee should be so clueless.

They claim to be strong supporters of Israel. And yet they seem to have not a notion of what it would mean that radical Islamists, directly to our north and determined to destroy Israel for the sake of their Caliphate, should have anti-aircraft weapons. One of the things we worry about is that, if Assad falls, his sophisticated weaponry might end up in these radical hands.

The radical horse is out of the barn, and that is how it is. Had Obama acted sooner in strongly supporting a more moderate rebel force in Syria, that would have been leadership that might have made a positive difference. But now?

Syria indeed may be finished as an autonomous nation, and destruction is leaking into Lebanon. But it's an exaggeration to say that "the whole region is going down." We're doing OK, and so far Jordan, in spite of the Syrian refugees that have flooded in, is holding on. But give jihadists those weapons — Heaven forbid! — and that's when there would be a risk to the whole region.

We have here a sterling example of that old saying, The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

~~~~~~~~~~

Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info

Wearing tattered clothing marked with the Star of David, these immigrants look at their new home — some with relief, some with a hint of trepidation.

The year is 1944, and they are Jewish survivors of the Nazi concentration camps in Europe, still wearing the signs of their ordeal. They have just arrived at the new immigrants' reception camp at Atlit, during the British Mandate of Palestine.

Four years later, on May 14, Zionist Leader David Ben-Gurion announced to the world that the state of Israel would come into existence at midnight after the termination of the mandate and following the 1947 UN Vote on Partition.

Israel's Independence Day — Yom Ha'Atzmaut — is celebrated in Israel according to the lunar Hebrew calendar — and this year marked the 65th anniversary of the nation's independence on April 15 and 16.

Here, Mail Online looks at the events that took place leading to the birth of the nation, the conflicts that have dominated its history and faith in the Holy Land...

Jewish survivors of the Nazi concentration camps in Europe still wear the signs of their ordeal on their tattered clothing at the new immigrants' reception camp at Atlit, during the British Mandate of Palestine in 1944.

In 65 years, Israel has surpassed the dreams of its founders, emerging as the Middle East's strongest military force, a global hi-tech powerhouse and a prosperous homeland for the Jewish people.

It has weathered the global financial crisis better than most, with unemployment below 7 per cent and a growing economy.

As a 'startup nation', it has pioneered breakthroughs, including wi-fi technology, the computer firewall and instant messaging.

In the past decade, Israeli scientists have won six Nobel prizes in chemistry and economics.

1936

Members of the 2nd Battalion of the former East Kent Regiment, informally known as Buffs, keep watch from a lookout post in Acre. The town was part of the British mandate of Palestine from 1918 until 1949, when it was incorporated into the state of Israel

1938

Women of the Haganah train in one of their settlements in Palestine. The Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organisation that would form the core of the Israeli Defence Forces

British soldiers escort a group of Arab prisoners from the Old City of Jerusalem after a revolt against the British

It has absorbed immigrants from more than 100 countries to host the world's largest Jewish population, evolving from a largely agrarian backwater to consistently rank high in measures of standard of living.

'The state of Israel is truly a fantastic success story, perhaps among the greatest success stories of the 20th century,' said Tom Segev, an Israeli author and historian.

'There's an Israeli culture, a renewal of the Hebrew language. The most amazing thing is that we now have a third generation of Israelis for whom the country is a given. "Israeliness" has become something that we take for granted.'

THE BRITISH MANDATE OF PALESTINE EXPLAINED

British general, E H Allenby rides away from Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, after his formal entry on foot in 1917

The Mandate system was instituted by the League of Nations in the early 20th century to administer non-self-governing territories.

The mandatory power, decided by an international body, was to consider the relevant territory a temporary trust and to see to the well-being and advancement of its population.

In July 1922, the League of Nations entrusted Britain with the Mandate for Palestine.

Recognising 'the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine', Britain was called upon to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine-Eretz Israel (Land of Israel).

Shortly afterwards, in September 1922, the League of Nations and Great Britain decided the provisions for setting up a Jewish national home would not apply to the area east of the Jordan River, which constituted three-fourths of the territory included in the Mandate.

This area would later become the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The British Mandate authorities granted the Jewish and Arab communities the right to run their internal affairs.

The Yishuv liberation movement then established the Elected Assembly and the National Council. The economy expanded, a Hebrew education network was organised and cultural life flourished.

However, the Mandatory government failed to maintain the letter and spirit of the Mandate.

Under Arab pressure, it withdrew from its commitment, especially with respect to immigration and land acquisition. The White Papers of 1930 and 1939 restricted immigration and acquisition of land by Jews.

Later, immigration was limited by the 1930 and 1939 White Papers, and land acquisition by Jews was further restricted by the 1940 Land Transfer Regulations.

After the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution to partition Palestine on November 29, 1947, Britain announced the termination of its Mandate over Palestine, to take effect on May 15, 1948. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed.

1946

Jewish pioneering settlers erect the first hut of Kibbutz Dovrat, a co-operative farming community, on October 31

The ship Asya, which had been renamed the Tel Hai, lands in Haifa on April 3. The ship is carrying survivors from the concentration camps at Dachau, Auschwitz and Berg

1947

The crowded illegal immigration ship Exodus, carrying Jewish refugees from war-torn Europe enters Haifa port on July 18

Jubilant residents celebrate in Tel Aviv on November 29 with what would become the Israeli flag after the UN's decision to approve the partition of Palestine

1948

Jewish immigrants, arriving in Haifa aboard a refugee ship, wave the future flag of the state of Israel shortly before its official establishment

The last of the British troops leave Haifa, Palestine in June

David Ben Gurion, who was to become Israel's first Prime Minister, reads the Declaration of Independence on May 14

THE PROMISED LAND: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ISRAEL

1800s: The Zionists start a movement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.

1917: The Balfour Declaration gives British approval to the effort to create a Jewish homeland. After World War I, the area comes under British control, which allows some Jewish settlement.

1939-45: World War II. Six million Jews killed by Nazis during Holocaust.

1948: On May 14, the State of Israel is proclaimed. David Ben-Gurion is its first prime minister. Neighboring Arab countries declare war, but Israel survives.

1949: Chaim Weizmann becomes first president of the state of Israel.

1950: The Law of Return was passed allowing any Jew to settle in Israel.

1967: During the Six-Day War, Israel attacks Egypt. Israel occupies the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai peninsula and Syria's Golan Heights, and extends its control to all of Jerusalem.

1973: On October 6, during a Jewish holy day, Egypt attacks territory occupied by Israel. The conflict is known as the Yom Kippur War.

1978: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign the U.S.-sponsored Camp David Accords. The countries sign a peace treaty on March 26, 1979.

1982: Israel invades Lebanon to drive out Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) fighters who are attacking northern Israel.

1984: Operation Moses sees immigration of Jews from Ethiopia.

1987: A Palestinian uprising against Israel starts in the West Bank and Gaza.

1992: New government headed by Yitzhak Rabin.

1993: The PLO and Israel agree to recognise each other's existence. The treaty is known as the Oslo Accords.

1994: Jordan and Israel sign a peace treaty.

1995: Rabin is assassinated at peace rally and Shimon Peres becomes prime minister.

2000: In September, Palestinians initiated riots after Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount.

2008: The Palestinians and Israelis continue to trade attacks. The U.S. tries to restart the peace process.

2009: Benjamin Netanyahu becomes Prime Minister.

2010: In December, a forest fire rages for four days in northern Israel. It is the biggest and deadliest in Israel's history.

1949

New Jewish immigrants eat their meal together in a large barracks housing entire families at the Shaar Aliya immigrants' camp in Haifa on July 1

On the other hand, Segev noted that the country is still grappling with the same basic issue that plagued it in 1948 — its relations with the Palestinians.

Israel remains in control of about 2.5 million Arabs living in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Israel captured the areas, along with the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Six Day war, withdrawing from Gaza in 2005.

The Palestinians claim all three territories for a future state.

Israelis argue that the Palestinians have rejected generous peace offers, a claim the Palestinians reject, pointing to Israel's construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as a sign of bad faith.

1967

During the Six Day war, the Israelis defended it as a preventative military effort to counter what they saw as an impending attack by Arab nations that surrounded Israel.

A line of Egyptian prisoners, captured during the Israeli advance during the Six Day War in June 1967

Israeli troops and armour advance against Egyptian troops at the start of the war, near Rafah, Gaza Strip

Egyptian prisoners captured by Israeli troops, during the Six Day War

1973

The Yom Kippur war was fought by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria against Israel from October 6 to 25, 1973.

Israeli army Southern Command General Ariel Sharon (bandaged) with Defence Minister Moshe Dayan (left) during the Yom Kippur War in October on the western bank of the Suez Canal

Despite all their issues, Israelis are among the world's happiest people.

Recent surveys by the OECD, Gallup and the United Nations' World Happiness Report all had Israel near the top.

Most Israelis appear to have developed an ability to block out the nation's problems and focus on life in a country that just a century ago was just a dream.

Yet it remains a divided society, and its most intractable problem — peace with its Arab neighbors — has yet to be resolved.

The Jewish renaissance in the Holy Land remains a work in progress.

See more historical photographs to honour the 65th Birthday of the State of Israel visit at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2322735/Israels-65th-anniversary
-From-pioneers-present-day-remarkable-pictures-struggle-celebration-Jewish-homeland.html

Contact Dr. History at drhistory@cox.net

It is tempting to watch American foreign policy and Russian foreign policy and assign all the naiveté and sloppy thinking to one and all the clever, chess-playing skills to the other. But that would be wrong. Neither side is very clever and Russia's hand — and that of the Arabs, Turkey and Iran — looks even less good today than it did a month ago.

The Russian government has announced the pullout of all Russian military forces from Syria, including those who were in the naval base at Tartus, Russia's only (small) toehold in the region. Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told the pan-Arab newspaper al Hayat last week, "Today, the Russian defense ministry does not have a single person in Syria." He also downplayed the significance of Tartus, saying the base "does not have any strategic importance." Bogdanov was not including "technical experts" remaining in Syria to teach soldiers to use their Russian-origin weapons, but he did mention that about 30,000 Russians still live there. The Russian news agency Interfax reported that 128 of them left on Wednesday.

Russia finds itself in a predicament, having counted on Assad overcoming the resistance and quickly regaining control of the country. His father, after all, had killed 35-40,000 people in 1983 in Hama and driven the Muslim Brotherhood and any other opposition underground. Syria had been considered entirely "stable" since then, a notion reinforced by numerous American politicians who worked assiduously to end Bashar Assad's isolation. The Russians had no reason to think the West would intervene in Assad's suppression of the rebellion either directly or by offloading the responsibility to regional allies Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

For the Russians, a quick end to the fighting would have been a "double win." First, radical Sunnis would be defeated on a battlefield. This, for Russia, is a strategic issue, as Russian Muslims in Chechnya and Dagestan are Sunni, increasingly Islamist, and funded by Saudi Arabia. Second, Russia would prove that it was a loyal Superpower patron while the U.S. was still stumbling around after abandoning Hosni Mubarak and supporting al Qaeda elements in the overthrow of Gaddafi.

Putin thought he couldn't lose. But Russia is losing — as are Iran, Hezb'allah, Hamas, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

Assad didn't score a sharp, decisive victory. Quickly seeing an opportunity to help Sunnis against the heterodox Shiite Alawite Assad (and with a "wink and a nod" from Washington) Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia began arming and training rebel factions, including some considered terrorist by the U.S. Not enough thus far to enable the rebels to win, but enough to keep them on the battlefield and open the gates to foreign intervention, including from al Qaeda-related militias.

The shift in the Syrian revolution into a Sunni-Shiite battlefield has led to an open rift between Syria, Iran, and Hezb'allah on one side and the Arab world and Turkey on the other. Countries that used to come together to denounce Israel are now denouncing one another (a silver lining in a very dark cloud). Egypt broke relations with Syria. Syria threw Hamas out of Damascus — or Hamas left, depending on whose story you believe. Iran has cut back its financial support and arms to Hamas (another silver lining) and appears to be instigating friction between Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza by encouraging Islamic Jihad to launch rockets at Israel knowing Israel will hold Hamas responsible.

Even Sunni coreligionists Saudi Arabia and Qatar are falling out. Qatar, flush with cash, has been tweaking its larger, more influential historic rival. Longtime analyst of Muslim politics Harold Rhode recently wrote in inFOCUS magazine:

Roughly speaking, the Qataris, along with the now only nominally secular Turkish Republic, support the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudis support Salafi, i.e., other radically anti-Western fanatical Sunni fundamentalist groups. They disagree on the nature and theological principles of the future Muslim Caliphate that they believe will rule the entire world... Qatar continually looks for ways to poke the Saudis in the eye.

And Roula Khalaf and Abigail Fielding-Smith posit in the Financial Times that Qatar may not have been prepared for the level of diplomatic maneuvering required to manage the Syrian opposition — or even the part of the opposition that the country funds.

Qatar finds itself pulled into a complicated and fractured conflict, the outcome of which it has a decreasing ability to influence, while simultaneously becoming a high-profile scapegoat for participants on both sides. Among the Syrian regime's numerous but fragmented opponents, the small Gulf state evokes a surprisingly ambivalent — and often overtly hostile — response.

The choices made by Qatar and Saudi Arabia have caused both Russian nightmares to come to pass: First, the influx of foreign fighters to Syria includes Chechens, both directly from Chechnya and from elsewhere in the Middle East. They bring fighting skills with them, but will also learn new ones that can be taken back to the Caucasus along (perhaps) with more weapons and more international support.

Second, instead of being a loyal friend to an Arab leader, as opposed to the fickle United States, the fact is that Russia is now mired in support for a genocidal bastard in a war that has led to more than 100,000 deaths, the apparent use of chemical weapons, and the decided use of artillery, helicopters, and aircraft to bombard civilian centers.

No one in the Arab world wants to be Putin's friend.

Oddly enough, although President Obama has done his very best to retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan, lead from behind in Libya, outsource the Syrian revolution to the Gulf States, and find common ground with Putin, the regional players are all certain that it is the United States that has to exercise political leadership, provide weapons for the rebels, and maybe undertake direct American military action, to bring the Syrian war to a close. We may do none of those things — America's policies have been awkward, grudging, stumbling and sometimes working at cross-purposes — but the fact that the Arabs think we can and should leaves Putin's belief in Russian political supremacy in the Middle East in tatters as well.

The Jewish Policy Center, a non-profit organization, provides timely perspectives and analysis of foreign and domestic policies by leading scholars, academics, and commentators. Contact Jewish Policy Center at list@jewishpolicycenter.org

A truthful insight of a man. Architect of Destruction

Have we ever heard Obama speak lovingly of the U.S. or its people, with deep appreciation and genuine respect for our history, our customs, our sufferings and our blessings?

Has he ever revealed that, like most patriotic Americans, he gets "goose bumps" when a band plays "The Star Spangled Banner," or sheds a tear when he hears a beautiful rendition of "America the Beautiful?"

Does his heart burst with pride when millions of American flags wave on a National holiday or someone plays "taps" on a trumpet? Has he ever shared the admiration of the military, as we as lovers of those who keep us free, feel when soldiers march by? It is doubtful because Obama did not grow up sharing our experiences or our values.

He did not sit at the knee of a Grandfather or Uncle who showed us his medals and told us about the bravery of his fellow troops as they tramped through foreign lands to keep us free. He didn't have grandparents who told stories of suffering and then coming to America, penniless, and the opportunities they had for building a business and life for their children.

Away from this country as a young child, Obama didn't delight in being part of America and its greatness. He wasn't singing our patriotic songs in kindergarten, or standing on the roadside for a holiday parade and eating a hot dog, or lighting sparklers around a campfire on July 4th as fireworks exploded over head, or placing flags on the grave sites of fallen and beloved American heroes.

Rather he was separated from all of these experiences and doesn't really understand us and what it means to be an American. He is void of the basic emotions that most feel regarding this country and insensitive to the instinctive pride we have in our national heritage. His opinions were formed by those who either envied us or wanted him to devalue the United States and the traditions and patriotism that unites us.

He has never given a speech that is filled with calm, reassuring, complimentary, heartfelt statements about all the people in the U.S. Or one that inspires us to be better and grateful and proud that in a short time our country became a leader, and a protector of many. Quite the contrary, his speeches always degenerate into mocking, ridiculing tirades as he faults our achievements as well as any critics or opposition for the sake of a laugh, or to bolster his ego.

He uses his Office to threaten and create fear while demeaning and degrading any American who opposes his policies and actions. A secure leader, who has noble self-esteem and not false confidence, refrains from showing such dread of critics and displaying a cocky, haughty attitude.

Mostly, his time seems to be spent causing dissention, unrest, and anxiety among the people of America, rather than uniting us (even though he was presented to us as the "Great Uniter"). He creates chaos for the sake of keeping people separated, envious, aggrieved and ready to argue.

Under his leadership Americans have been kept on edge, rather than in a state of comfort and security.

He incites people to be aggressive toward, and disrespectful of, those of differing opinions. And through such behavior, Obama has lowered the standards for self-control and mature restraint to the level of street-fighting gangs, when he should be raising the bar for people to strive toward becoming more considerate, tolerant, self-disciplined, self-sustaining, and self-assured.

Not a day goes by that he is not attempting to defy our laws, remove our rights, over-ride established procedures, install controversial appointees, enact divisive mandates, and assert a dictatorial form of power. Never has there been a leader of this great land who used such tactics to harm and hurt the people and this country. Never have we had a President who spoke with a caustic, evil tongue against the citizenry rather than present himself as a soothing, calming and trustworthy force. Never, in this country, have we experienced how much stress one man can cause a nation of people on a daily basis!

Obama has promoted the degeneration of peace, civility, and quality of cooperation between us. He thrives on tearing us down, rather than building us up. He is the Architect of the decline of America, and the epitome of a Demagogue. "Obama comes from a community organizer background where it's us against them. But that's not who we are. And that's not the position the leader of our Nation should take." Dr. Benjamin Carson

Obama appears to be a tormented man and is filled with resentment, anger, and disdain for anyone of an opinion or view other than his. He acts in the most hateful, spiteful, malevolent, vindictive ways in order to manipulate and maintain power and control over others. Perhaps, because, as a child, he grew up harboring an abiding bitterness toward the U.S. that was instilled in him by his family and mentors. It seems to have never left him.

It is not the color of his skin that is a problem for anyone in America. Rather it is the blackness that fills his soul and the hollowness in his heart where there should be abiding pride and love for this country.

John D. Trudel, Consultant Emeritus, Inventor, Engineer, Author, retired Adjunct Professor (U. of Oregon), and Novelist. Contact Trudel at mail@trudelgroup.com

The streets of Egypt have been convulsed with truly gigantic protests against the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi. These demonstrations are far larger than those which ousted previous dictator Hosni Mubarak. There has been violence, with several deaths reported. A battle erupted as protesters stormed and firebombed the Cairo offices of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Morsi regime is looking shaky, with a reported ten ministers resigning to demonstrate solidarity with the protesters. The Egyptian military has indicated it plans to step in and restore order within 48 hours. The demonstrators gave Morsi one day to resign. Morsi has taken to referring to the protesters as "enemies of Egypt."

The protesters are motivated with general disgust at the poor performance of Morsi's administration, coupled with growing alarm at the concentration of power in the hands of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. They remember President Obama's role in installing the Morsi government — banners declaring Obama a supporter of "terrorism" and "fascism" have been seen in the crowds. Anti-American and anti-Israel sentiments have also been expressed.

This chaos clearly spells the end of the narrative that portrayed Egypt as a triumph of Obama's foreign policy. Perhaps that's why the American media has been under-reporting the crisis and downplaying the size of crowd estimates. It doesn't seem like they'll be able to underplay the story for much longer.

Contact Daily Events at HumanEventsDaily@email.humanevents.com

15 Years after 44 nations including the United States signed the groundbreaking Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, museums are finally being faulted for their intransigent position on returning stolen art from the era.

Through legal and other tactics to block survivors or their heirs from pursuing claims, many museums have been able to hold on to their prized possessions despite clear proof contradicting their right to ownership.

"The response of museums has really been lamentable," Jonathan Petropoulos, the former research director for art and cultural property for the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets, told the New York Times. "It is now so daunting for an heir to go forward."

Christine Anagnos, executive director of the museum directors association, said its members were committed "to resolving questions about the status of objects in their custody." She told the Times that most cases are resolved through negotiation before claimants feel compelled to file suit.

Part of the problem is the murky nature of the process. The Times writes: "Critics, including the Holocaust Art Restitution Project and the Commission for Art Recovery, say problems arise in the less straightforward cases, where documentation is missing or it is unclear whether Jewish owners freely parted with a work of art or were coerced by the Nazi authorities into selling it for a pittance."

For example, the complicated nature of claiming stolen art from a museum can be witnessed in the case of the heirs of German artist George Grosz.

In 2011 a federal judge dismissed the Groszes' lawsuit, citing the statute of limitations (a tactic used by many museums). Before the case landed in court, the museum hired the former United States attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach (who died in 2012) to review their evidence. Katzenbach concluded that Grosz's Jewish art dealer had fair title to the works and freely sold them. The Groszes' own experts, though, declared that the dealer was forced to flee Germany after his gallery was "Aryanized" in 1933 and given to a Nazi Party member.

This interpretation was affirmed in April by a ruling from the German government's advisory commission on plundered art in an unrelated case involving the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. While there is "an absence of concrete evidence," the commission concluded that on balance, "it is to be assumed that the art dealer was forced to sell the disputed painting because he was persecuted."

Margaret Doyle, a spokeswoman for MoMA, told the Times the museum has no interest in retaining works to which it does not have clear title. "After years of extensive research," she said, “including numerous conversations with Grosz's estate, it was evident that we did in fact have good title to the works by Grosz in our collection and therefore an obligation to the public to defend our ownership appropriately."

But George Grosz's son Martin, 83, points to a letter his father wrote in 1953 after seeing one of the works, "The Poet Max Herrmann-Neisse," hanging at MoMA: "Modern Museum exhibits a painting stolen from me (I am powerless against that) they bought it from someone, who stole it."

Contact Algemeiner at editor2algemeiner.com

Sadia Saifuddin, a UC-Berkeley student and a leader in the two most extreme anti-Semitic organizations on US campuses, has been nominated for the prestigious position of the student member (for the 2014-15 academic year) of the University of California Board of Regents. California's Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Speaker of the Assembly are ex-officio Regent Board members. Sherry Lansing is the Chair of the Board. Senator Diane Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, is also a regent. The student regent participates in the board that sets policies for the renowned University of California system, which consists of ten campuses throughout the state.

The student regent member is supposed to represent the perspective of the entire student body of the University of California system. Yet, Saifuddin's record at UC Berkeley is one of involvement in extremist hate groups. This participation raises serious questions regarding of her suitability to be the person to represent the diverse student body of the University of California.

Saifuddin, has been active in the infamous Students for Justice in Palestine-SJP (on the ADL list of the Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in America), and the Muslim Brotherhood's Muslim Students Association-MSA, which is an anti-American and anti-Israel organization (see here, here, here, here and here). She is a leader in the manipulative and fraudulent BDS movement, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which aims for the destruction of the Jewish state. Eminent academics, including Larry Summers and Alan Dershowitz of Harvard, have described the BDS as "anti-Semitic."

Saifuddin co-sponsored the divisive resolution in the Berkeley student Senate, calling upon the entire University of California system to divest from companies that do business with Israel.

A high school senior applying to college recently wrote regarding Saifuddin's organizations, SJP and MSA: "I am scared because of the false propaganda and bullying — yes, bullying — taking place on college campuses nationwide led by two student groups — the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine (see here the whole article).

A lawsuit filed by two UC Berkeley students details a pattern of harassment and physical assaults by members of Saifuddin's groups at UC Berkeley. These incidents cross the line from allowing free speech into creating a hostile campus.

A complaint filed by the ZOA documents Jewish students at the University of California Irvine are being subjected to harassment, intimidation, and discrimination by Saifuddin' MSA.

Letters that have been written to the University Regents by concerned UC students, faculty and California residents, were ignored. The confirmation of Saifuddin's nomination is supposed to take place at the next Regents meeting, July 16-18.

Exposure of the true nature of the BDS by the national media, coupled with the fact that the UC Regents are going to nominate a campus BDS leader would make the UC Regents and California leadership realize that the nomination of a racist bigot would harm UC's reputation irreparably. And that it will have, among other repercussions, serious financial consequences.

Once the issue is effectively publicized in the mainstream media, it would enrage the public and force the regents to reconsider the misguided nomination of the extremist BDS leader. Many Jews, and non-Jews, would be motivated to use their leverage and support of the UC to exert influence on the Governor and the California and UC leadership to overturn this obscene nomination.

The nomination of Sadia Saifuddin to the position of University of California student regent presents us with an opportunity to go on the offensive. We are now positioned to expose, in the national and international media, the true nature of the BDS and the organizations behind it. It's high time the BDS is fully uncovered as the deceptive, libelous, anti-Semitic propaganda campaign it is, and that the public is made aware that the BDS' real objective is to turn Israel into a pariah state and bring about its destruction.

Natan Nestel is a former chairman of the Israel Students Organization in North America. He was a graduate student at U.C. Berkeley, founded the Jewish Student Union and is a co-founder of the Israel Action Committee. Contact him at natannestel@gmail.com

The world hypocrisy and double standard reaches unfathomable magnitude when it comes to Jews and Israel.

There are many walls in the world, please view: un_LES MURS DANS LE MONDE.pps — that were built to mark borders between countries and to defend borders. Israel never had a border wall between her and any of the countries that border with her. That is even though all these countries bordering with Israel are her stanch enemy and are at war with her since Israel was established.

Not having a protective border wall between the Arabs living in hostile territory and Israeli territory has caused the loss of many Israeli lives. So finally Israel had no option but to erect a Security Wall and the world went berserk. The Jews built a Security Wall to keep the enemy out so they do not kill more Jews but that shames them; this is a 'wall of shame'! Apartheid wall!?

Not one wall, erect between countries is ever mentioned; they do not bother anyone and in fact hardly anyone knows they exist. But the Israeli Security Wall rubs the entire world wrong. Is it because Jewish blood is cheap to pour and needs no protection!? It is Hefker and of no consequence.

All the walls and barriers in the world were erected by countries that wanted to prevent the unwanted and undesirable from entering into their territory. That includes the wall between the United States and Mexico.

Good Border Fence Makes Good Neighbors:
http://newsblaze.com/story/20120216105628nurg.nb/topstory.html

But when Israel puts up a Security Wall it is called the Wall of Shame! Why shame? Because it is a shame and unacceptable for Jews to protect their lives from terror and homicide bombers entering their country with one goal in mind: to kill, to kill, to kill, Jews?!

Enough of this already! Enough of the double standard, even triple standard, when it comes to Jews and Israel! Enough of one set of rules that applies to the entire world and one set of rules that were invented and applied to Israel and Jews only!

Learn about the walls of the world and ask yourself why the Israeli Security Wall that has given the Israelis security and peace of mind and reduced the killing of Israelis by Arab terrorists by 98% bothers the world so much! Is it because living Jews bother the world?

Wall of the world: (copy onto the browser): un_LES MURS DANS LE MONDE.pps

Nurit Greenger is an advocate for Jews, Israel, the United States and the Free World in general and sees Israel and the United States, equally, as the last two forts of true democratic freedom. Since 2006, she has been writing about events in these two countries. Nurit believes that if you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything. Contact Nurit Greenger by email at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com.

The cartoon that appears on the cover of this issue is far more than a mere cartoon. It represents a mindset, a culture, a way of life that is steeped in cruelty and savagery and blood. It is the real face of Ishmael.

It is a cartoon that appeared in a major Jordanian newspaper (Al Rei, August 8, 1990) following the brutal murder of two youngsters in Jerusalem by Arabs who stabbed them tens of times and mutilated their bodies. The cartoon, which glorifies the deed, shows the two in the form of long-nosed, Star-of-David-hatted Jews impaled on a bloody scimitar that makes up part of the Arab name of Jerusalem, Al Kuds.

It is more than a cartoon. It is the graphic and naked face of Ishmael, of the Arab mentality and mindset, of an Islam-Araby that is at total odds with the moral values of a civilization grounded in the Divine seven commandments of the children of Noah. How easy, how obscene, for the liberal-left and humanist twisters of morality to sit in the shadow of Lincoln Center or the Golden Gate or Beverly Hills or Harvard Square or the salons of elitism and discourse on a world they know nothing about. How gratifying to comfortably discourse on a world they know nothing about. How gratifying to comfortably babble about ethics and morality and humanism when it is so safe (so very safe) a theory, and when it is the other person who is called upon to be "moral."

How satisfying to the parlor-café liberal to bandy about the phrases we all so love to rail against: "racism," "intolerance," ad nauseum. The cartoon is the reality, the liberal humanists are the caricature, living in their own plastic, egotistical world. Unwilling to make real sacrifices of money and body, they pay instead a huge lip tax to "humanism" and "morality."

The reality lies well without them. It exists in the fresh graves of two young Jews of Jerusalem brutally and terribly murdered by a people that glorifies the act with a cartoon of blood. One thinks back just a few years ago to the steps of a Cairo government building, where lay the Foreign Minister of the very same Jordan. He had just been shot by a "Palestinian," another cultural product of Islam-Araby. The "Palestinian," having shot him, now proceeded to drink his blood.

Spare us your morality and your indignation both. Those of us who are normal and Jewish, truly Jewish, know exactly how to deal with the cartoonists of blood. Because we have no intention of being the subject of any others.

The article above was written September-October 1990 (Ellul 5750-Tishrei 5751). Contact Barbara Ginsberg at barbaraandchaim@gmail.com

UNRWA, which serves half a million Palestinian pupils in UNRWA schools, now seeks new funding for UNRWA summer camps and for the new school year.

UNRWA received 1.2 billion dollars in donations last year from more than 20 western countries. (1)

The Center for Near East Policy Research, which has examined UNRWA policies over the past 24 years, asks donor nations to place conditions on the funding because of the UNRWA curriculum.

The Center, directed by David Bedein, held an informal briefing for foreign diplomats and reporters at the Knesset on June 24th on the subject of the UNRWA curriculum.

Dr. Arnon Groiss, a senior journalist and PhD in Islamic Studies, was the presenter. Dr. Groiss served as Director of Research for the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE) between 2000 and 2010, during which time he translated textbooks from the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, and Iran.

At the briefing, attended by officials from Canada, Norway, Australia, Egypt, and Great Britain, together with senior officials of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the International Christian Embassy, Dr. Groiss presented the findings from his decade-long research in translating and analyzing Palestinian Authority schoolbooks used in UNRWA classrooms. (2)

The event, hosted at the Bayit HaYehudi Conference Room, welcomed Ayelet Shaked, Knesset member of the party, which is part of the government coalition.

At the briefing, Shaked noted that many Knesset members feel that UNRWA policies present an obstacle to any peace building process in the region, and asked that donor nations carefully monitor the funds that they contribute to UNRWA schools, because these schools are the place where the next generation is being incited to continue the war against Israel.

MK Ayalet Shaked

Dr. Groiss's briefing on UNRWA education could not have been timelier, coming four days after Catherine Ashton, the E.U. Commissioner on Foreign Relations appeared at an UNRWA school in Gaza on World Refugee Day, where she declared that the E.U. must continue to be UNRWA's "strongest supporter."

UNRWA is now conducting an energetic you tube campaign with donor countries in which it presents itself as promoting an innocuous curriculum filled with summer sports.

Few decision makers of donor nations to UNRWA can see through this misleading campaign — including Catherine Ashton, who lauded UNRWA summer camps in her June 20th speech.

However, Dr. Groiss unmasked realities of UNRWA education when he shared recently published PA textbooks, now used in UNRWA schools in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.

A short film was screened "INSIDE THE UNRWA CLASSROOM," (3) produced by The Center for Near East Policy Research, reporting from UNRWA schools located in Jerusalem, Nablus, and Gaza

Dr. Groiss also presented inflammatory materials taken from the PA books and used by UNRWA, illustrating demonization of the other, non-recognition of the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel within any border, historically (Israelite period) or present-day 1948 borders, and indoctrination for the right of return, through violence and bloodshed.

Dr. Groiss emphasized that the concept presented in the PA textbooks is that the 'Zionist entity' has only greedy ambitions and none of the books show any fact-based historical identification of the Jews to Israel, either in the past or in the present.

According to PA history texts used by UNRWA, the characters of the Bible, including Holy Places mentioned there, are Palestinian, and only Palestinian.

In maps distributed in all UNRWA schools, there was no 'Jewish' Holy Temple and no Jewish connection to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, but rather, only a 'temple' with no attributes of Jewish-ness Dr. Groiss showed how all Jewish holy sites are transformed in PA texts into Islamic holy sites.

Current maps taught in UNRWA schools also portray Jerusalem's Old City show no "Jewish Quarter".

All students from UNRWA schools are taught about the "Right of Return" as the only realistic option and human right.

Dr. Groiss read from a poem taught to fifth grade UNRWA students: 'We Shall Return,' in which it teaches children to return "under the flag of glory, Jihad and struggle, with blood, sacrifice, fraternity and loyalty.'

Diplomats from the five nations represented at the briefing were attentive and open to Dr. Groiss's report. They promised to bring these issues to the discussions of their respective governments.

A Norwegian representative asked Dr. Groiss to comment on the call of some Israeli politicians to annex Judea and Samaria- the West Bank.

Dr. Groiss pointed out that political positions taken in Israel have nothing to do with an UNRWA educational system that molds the minds of half a million pupils to prepare them for war to "liberate" all of Palestine.

Dr. Groiss emphasized that the donor governments must take full responsibility for what UNRWA teachers impart to their students.

The Norwegian Government, whose representatives from their consulate in Jerusalem and their embassy in Tel Aviv attended the briefing, has come under intense pressure about their unconditional funding of UNRWA and the PA activities.

Nestleder Jan Dybfest,Thomas Rem Berdal:Norwegian Diplomats

In that context, the Center plans to conduct audiovisual briefings on UNRWA during the fall of 2013 in the U.S. Congress, the Parliaments of the EU, Norway, Australia, and Canada.

The Center for Near East Policy Research will now make its UNRWA videos and documentation of UNRWA indiscretions available to legislative staffers of all donor countries, in the hope that irrefutable evidence will counter any attempt to whitewash or distort the actual UNRWA educational policies.

(1)http://www.israelbehindthenews.com/library/pdfs/Top20DonorsUNRWA2010.pdf

(2) http://www.israelbehindthenews.com/bin/content.cgi?ID=5620&q=1

(3) http://israelbehindthenews.com/bin/content.cgi?ID=5382&q=1

The article above was written by David Bedein who is a MSW community organizer, an investigative journalist and Director of Israel Resource News Agency Center for Near East Policy Research. In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies. Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post. This article appeared July 01, 2013 and is archived at
http://israelbehindthenews.com/unrwa-under-the-knesset-spotlight/9898/

In March 2011, the largest gathering of the Muslim Brotherhood international members (Ikhwan al-Muslimun) in more than fifty years congregated in Istanbul to attend the funeral of Turkish politician Necmettin Erbakan (b. 1926).

Described as the founder of the Turkish Islamist movement, the engineer and Aachen- RWTH University educated Ph.D. began his political career in 1969, running as an independent and winning the office of deputy in Konya, in Central Anatolia.

It was with the direct assistance of Erbakan and his Islamist movement that the Turkish community in Germany formed one stream of Europe's nascent international Muslim Brotherhood movement; The IGD (Islamische Gemeinschaft Deutschland) of Egyptian exile Said Ramadan formed the other. After obtaining a law degree from University of Cairo in 1946 Ramadan had been chosen by Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna to become his personal secretary. He would later marry Banna's daughter. He was one of the first eminent Muslim Brothers to find a home in Europe. He and Erbakan were never known to have worked at cross-purposes.

In Turkey, Erbakan's spiritual guidance derived from Mehmet Zahid Khotku, a very influential Sufi (Naqshbandi) sheikh. He encouraged Erbakan to create a political movement within Turkey that would serve the specific needs of the Muslim community.

Although religious guidance came from Sheikh Khotku, Erbakan alone hatched the main political tenets of this movement and was active for four decades in that nation's often-hostile political environment. Prior to Erbakan's political emergence the Ikhwan al-Muslimun had little influence within the Turkish polity. Turkey then was a nation dominated by secular politics. Still, the Islamist movement had its proponents. The most important had been Bediuyzzaman Said Nursi (1873-1960), a Kurdish Turk and scholar who sought to reconcile the daunting issues of Science and Technology with Islam. His "Risale-i Nur", a six thousand-page commentary on the Quran, was distributed throughout the Middle East. Nursi had maintained a relationship with Ikhwan leaders, and persistently sought to enhance the "unity in the Islamic world on the social level."

After Nursi's death, Erbakan emerged as leader of Turkey's first important Islamist movement, the Milli Salamet Partisi (National Salvation Party). His early political journeys were far from easy. In 1979 he broke with Mehmet Khotku, his religious mentor who was the leader of the Iskenderpasha movement. The two differed over the issue of Iran. Khotku was troubled by the Shiite revolution in Iran. Erbakan was not. Erbakan was forced out from Khotku's movement and thereafter led his own political movements.

The future of both Erbakan and his National Salvation Party were clouded following the military coup of 1980, and after which the party was prorogued. Ostensibly forced from Turkish politics, Erbakan was still able to found the Refah (Welfare) Party in 1983. The Refah was an unabashed Islamist party, "which featured strong anti- Western, anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, and anti-secular elements."

Maintaining his interest in Europe, Erbakan founded the Milli Gorush in Cologne in 1985. That movement eventually counted hundreds of cells operating clandestinely and closely watched by German intelligence. While Erbakan challenged the unbelievers in Europe, in Turkey he challenged Turkey's secular dogma. He supported the celebration of Islamic feasts, and the use of Islamic dress. He pushed for a greater role for religion in public life. In economics, he urged the creation of a pan-Islamic currency, and his foreign policy welcomed the Islamist and Shiite government of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Often called "Khoca" -- or mentor, a term given to religious teachers or wise men -- he was respected even by his enemies and was twice named deputy prime minister.

Erbakan would reemerge as a political force in 1990. By then he was a close friend of such Muslim Brothers as the Sudan's Hasan al-Turabi, Tunisia's Rashid al-Ghannouchi and Sheikh al-Zindani of Yemen. And with the demise of the Soviet Union, he spearheaded the effort to fund the construction of madrassas and Islamic Centers, and the distribution of hundreds of thousands of Koran in the former Turkic provinces. While the program succeeded thanks to Saudi largesse and funds from Muslim charitable organizations with headquarters in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan, Erdagan had reason to be pleased with the outcome. (See "The Revival of Islam in Central Asia and Caucasus," M. A. Karim, Renaissance, Institute of Islamic Sciences (Al-Mawrid), Lahore, Pakistan. ( http://www.renaissance.com.pk , undated.) As head of the Refah Party, he was personally involved in the Islamist effort in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and directly supported the activities of a number of gunrunning Islamic charities active in the Balkan wars.

In the general election of 1995, the Refah gained slightly more than twenty percent of the general vote. And in 1996, Erbakan reached the apex of his career when at age seventy he emerged as the first elected Islamist Prime Minister in Turkey's modern history. As prime minister, he sought to loosen Turkey's ties to the European Union. He traveled widely in both Arab and Muslim worlds. A year after taking office he was ousted by the military, "for violating the constitutional principle of secularism." Unabashed, Erbakan's new creation, the Felicity (Saadet Partisi) Party, emerged in 2001.

Erbakan was still a powerful political figure when Felicity was banned a few months after its founding. And in March 2002 Erbakan was sentenced to two years and four months in prison on bogus charges of corruption. He was soon pardoned. By that time, however, Erbakan seemed a spent figure and his Felicity Party would never assume much importance. His place in the Islamist movement was assumed by a former protégé, Recip Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan, the former mayor of Istanbul, chaired the emerging Justice and Development Party (AKP), a movement which was seen as more pragmatic and more "modern" in outlook than the movements led by Erbakan.

*** ***

Nearly two million Turks attended Erbakan's funeral -- at which street vendors did a brisk business selling scarves emblazoned with the message "Mujahid Erbakan." There were many honored guests including representatives of Turkish political parties, and guests from more than sixty countries. Notably, a plethora of Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood leaders arrived in Istanbul to pay their respects. They included:

* Recip Tayyip Erdogan. Turkish premier.
* Khaled Meshaal. Hamas leader, living in Damascus.
* Mohammed Nazal. Hamas political bureau member living in Syria.
* Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Taskhiri. Iran's senior cleric and head of the World Forum for Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought.
* Mohammad Mahdi Akef, former Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood with headquarters in Egypt.
* Ibrahim Mounir. Muslim Brotherhood leader living in exile in the UK.
* Yusef Nada. Europan exile and self-described Ikhwan foreign minister.
* Ghaleb Himmat. European resident and business partner of Youssef Nada.
* Rachid Ghannouchi. Tunisia's leading politician and Muslim Brother.
* Ibrahim al-Masri. Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood leader.
* Mustafa Mohammed Tahan. Secretary-General of the International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations (IIFSO).
* Ahmed Abd al-Aty. Secretary-General of the IIFSO.
* Ibrahim el-Zayat. Federation of Islamic Organizations In Europe (FIOE) official, and representative of the Muslim Brotherhood in Germany. Married to sister of Mehmet Sabri Erbakan, nephew of Necmettin Erbakan, Manager of the European Mosque Building Association.
* Ayman al-Ali. FIOE representative.
* Chakib Makhlouf. President of FIOE.
ª Ali Bayanouni, former Ikhwan Comptroller General in Syria. * Qazi Hussain Ahmed. Amir of the Pakistani Jammat-e-Islami.
* Abdur Rasheed Turabi. Head of the Islamic Party of Kashmir.
* Lutfi Hasan Ishaq. Chairman of Indonesia Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).
* Abdel Rahman Swar al-Dahab. Former Sudanese President and Director, International Islamic Dawaa (Outreach).

In addition, former Indonesian President Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie visited the Turkish Embassy in Jakarta to convey his condolences. The former president had been friends with Erbakan during their years in Germany, and he had been witness at the wedding of Erbakan's daughter.

From Bosnia it was announced that soil from the grave of former Bosnian President Alija Izetbegović would be sent to Istanbul to be comingled at the burial site. (AA-Anatolian News Agency, Aksam, Turkey, February 28, 2011).

Other Islamists who could not attend included Hasan al-Turabi; the noted Sudanese Islamist who was under house arrest in Khartoum.

It was Ghannouchi, likely speaking for many of those present, who publicly declared, "In the Arab world in my generation, when [people] talked about the Islamic movement, they talked about Erbakan. When they talked about Erbakan, it is comparable to the way they talked about [Ikhwan founder] Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb." Ghannouchi added, "Erbakan was not only my friend but also my mentor, he had a distinct reputation in the Arab world." Distinct indeed.

Perhaps no more than a handful of Islamists could expect a similar turn out and such an outpouring of affectionate words at their funeral.

*** ***

Among Erbakan's proudest achievements was the creation of the Developing Eight, or D-8, a small group of the most populous Muslim countries. At the behest of Erbakan, representatives of Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Egypt and Nigeria had assembled at the "Conference on Cooperation for Development" held in Istanbul on 22 October 1996. The conference was the first step towards the establishment of the D-8, and it was followed by an Istanbul Declaration issued at the end of the Summit of Heads of State and Government held in Istanbul on 15 June 1997. The D-8 Secretariat and Executive Directorship were then located in Istanbul.

Subsequently, D-8 summits were held in Istanbul, Dhaka, Cairo, Tehran, Bali and Kuala Lumpur. There have also been eleven Council of Foreign Ministers meetings, 26 Commission meetings and a large number of meetings held at the technical level. A Headquarters Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Turkey and the D-8 Secretariat situating the organization in Istanbul was signed on 20 February 2009.

While it is easy to ignore the D-8 that had no major achievements, their population still comprises some 1 billion people, or about 15% of the world's population. Half of the members are cited in top 25 merchandise exporters of the World, and two of them are members of the G-20. In the Muslim World itself, the G-8 accounts for around 45% of all exports of the Organization of the Islamic Conference's 57 members. While D-8 nations had a trade volume of $1.15 trillion in 2009, the organization acknowledges that intra D-8 trade accounted for only $67 billion, or a paltry 5.7% of the total. Nonetheless, it was believed that once the Preferential Trade Agreement was promulgated that D-8 intra-trade would certainly increase.

Since the ouster of Egypt's Mubarak, the D-8 put into effect a Preferential Trade Agreement in August 2011. Members were optimistic that it would enhance economic and trade integration, and it is certainly the most significant achievement the organization has achieved to date. Members expressed confidence that a new trade bloc would emerge, and when it does the OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference] will be "on notice" that in trade matters it would have to be "more proactive."

Two months later, On October 26th, 2011 the D-8 Secretariat announced that a customs agreement had been promulgated. (Despite speculations that Iran would not accede, Tehran ratified the Multilateral Agreement Among D-8 Customs in September.) The agreement involving trade facilitation, customs duties, tariffs and inspection was intended to overcome delays in intra D-8 trade. By its own admission, the D-8, "aims to improve the developing countries' positions in the world economy, diversify and create new opportunities in trade relations, enhance participation in decision-making mechanisms at the international level, and provide people with better living standards."

The D-8 has also announced that it will take the initiative in investing in the halal industry and thus provide high quality products for both Muslim and non-Muslim populations. The nearly two billion Muslims already formed a strong consumer base with $610 billion spent annually on halal food, and the increase in demand approached an annual increase of 25%. It is estimated that the global halal industry is worth about US$2.7 trillion and is growing rapidly at an average 25% annually.

*** ***

The D-8 is hardly the counterweight to the G-7 group of industrialized nations that Erdagan had hoped. Still, a major step has been taken toward establishing economic, political and social unity among eight (often overlooked) Muslim countries. Although the D-8 is generally considered a trade organization, its potential to metamorphose into something much large and more political is now possible. The possibilities are enormous now that the Mubarak government and the former Egyptian stumbling block have been removed and the possibility of an Egypt-Iran alliance grows daily.

It is worth mentioning that two months following the Erbakan funeral Hasan Bitmez, the leader of the Turkish members of the Islamist Felicity Party, other Turkish Islamists were present at the opening of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Headquarters in Cairo. It was reported that the gathering, attended by Ikhwan from many nations (including Jordan, Malaysia, Nigeria and Somalia), was the "cause for quiet celebration as the founding chapter of the international Ikhwan al-Muslimun opened its headquarters in Egypt for the first time in sixty years." The Hurriyet newspaper reported that Muslim Brotherhood Chairman Dr. Mohamed Badie promised that the opening of the headquarters was part of the Ikhwan aim to see that Egypt had "a civilian government with a reference to Islam."

*** ***

The real key to the development of the D-8 as an institution, and as an economic and political power, depends on the budding relationship being forged between Egypt and Iran. According to Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood now maintain close contact.

Most recently, in late January 2012, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi stated, "Tehran is in constant contact with the Muslim Brotherhood." He seemed particularly pleased with the results of recent elections that brought the Ikhwan's Freedom and Justice Party to the forefront of Egyptian politics. He added that Iran was prepared to enhance diplomatic relations with Egypt to the ambassadorial level.

According to Salehi, after more than two decades during which Egypt and Iran had no official ties, Iran is now prepared to promote its diplomatic relations with Egypt to the ambassadorial level -- "particularly in light of the Muslim Brotherhood's recent ascendancy to power." And Iran would "immediately" send an ambassador if Egypt agreed. Salehi noted that some unnamed countries were "not happy about improving relations between Egypt and Iran," but stated, "If Egypt, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia cooperated, all would benefit."(Al-Masry Al-Youm, Cairo, 31 January 2012.

For certain, the D-8 would benefit, and Erbakan certainly would have been pleased. It was, after all, thanks in large part to his efforts the Turkey-Iran alliance was well settled.

As Fatih Erbakan noted during the funeral, his father had always held Iran in highest regard. When prime minister, he paid his first visit to Iran, and the last country he visited before his death was Iran. "When he was working on the Muslim Unity and D-8 project, he was pressured from inside and outside Turkey 'to prioritize Arab countries'. They suggested that 'Iran's role should be secondary.' However, my father always asserted that 'Iran is our closest brother. It is the country that struggles most bravely against world Zionism. Thus we first need to embrace them'. My late father had a famous expression 'We are [the] opposition in Turkey but [in] power in Iran'." (Seyfeddin Kara, "Remembering Erbakan, Crescent International, 5 April 2011.)

Just as the chess pieces have been swept from the table, and the success of the D-8 seems possible, the Syria problem has emerged. It threatens to pit Turkey against Iran. should that happen, all D-8 bets are off the table.

During his visit to China last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recalled that the city of Shanghai was "one of the few places that opened its gates" to Jews fleeing Hitler. Officials of the Chinese Communist government, standing nearby, beamed with pleasure at the expectation that people all over the world would read how their regime rescued Jews.

But is it true?

As the prime minister noted, the port city of Shanghai was a haven for many European Jewish refugees during the Hitler years, at a time when most other countries, including the United States, closed their doors to all but a fortunate few. It is important to note that much of China was under Japanese military occupation from 1931 until 1945, and immigration to Shanghai was controlled by the Japanese government, not the Chinese. The Japanese, hoping to improve their relations with the U.S. and the American Jewish community, permitted about 20,000 German and Austrian Jews to settle in Shanghai during the 1930s.

This immigration was made possible in part by false documents given to Jews by the Dutch consul in Lithuania, Jan Zwartendijk, and by transit visas to Japan provided, without official sanction, by Japan's acting consul-general in Lithuania, Sugihara Chiune. Officially the visas were good for only eight to 12 days, but the Japanese authorities allowed the refugees to remain in Japan for up to eight months until they found other destinations. Many went to Shanghai, including 500 rabbis and students (and their families) from the famous Mir Yeshiva.

Beginning in 1943, most of the Jews in Shanghai were confined to a two-square-mile section of the city known as the Restricted Area. Conditions were harsh but certainly not comparable to what Jews suffered in Europe. These Jews were saved from the Holocaust because of Japan’s – not China's – policies.

There were several individual Chinese citizens who came to the aid of the Jews during the Holocaust. But they were nationalists, not Communists; they were associated with the anti-Communist forces led by Chang Kai-Shek, who later lost the Chinese civil war and fled to Taiwan in 1949.

One was Dr. Li Yu Ying, a prominent scholar and president of Soochow University. While living in the United States in the 1940s, he served as one of the co-chairmen of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe (better known as the Bergson Group), an activist movement that held rallies, lobbied in Washington, and sponsored hundreds of full-page newspaper advertisements promoting rescue of Jews from the Nazis. Dr. Ying had previously served the Chang Kai-Shek government in several capacities, including as China’s representative to League of Nations meetings.

Two other Chinese citizens have been honored by Yad Vashem for assisting Jews during the Nazi era. One was Pan-Jun-Shun, who moved from China to Russia in 1916 (more than thirty years before the Communists took over in China). He was living in the city of Kharkov, in the Soviet Ukraine, when the Germans invaded in 1941. Pan saved a Jewish girl named Ludmilla Genrichovna from the Nazi round-ups by hiding her in his home.

The other Chinese rescuer was Dr. Feng Shan Ho, who served as China's consul-general in Vienna from 1938 to 1940. He issued unauthorized visas to Jews trying to escape Nazi-controlled Austria, enabling them to reach the safety of Shanghai. Dr. Ho represented the Chang Kai-Shek government. And after the nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949, he served as Taiwan's ambassador to Egypt, Mexico, and other countries.

Nuclear strategy is a "game" that sane and rational decision-makers must play.

In the best of all possible worlds, Iran could still be kept distant from nuclear weapons. In the real world, however, any such operational success is increasingly unlikely. More precisely, the remaining odds of Israel being able to undertake a cost-effective preemption against Iran, an act of "anticipatory self-defense" in the formal language of international law, are incontestably very low.

What next? Almost certainly, Jerusalem/Tel-Aviv will need to make appropriate preparations for long-term co-existence with a new nuclear adversary. As part of any such more-or-less regrettable preparations, Israel will have to continue with its already impressive developments in ballistic missile defense (BMD.) Although Israel's well-tested Arrow and corollary interceptors could never be adequate for "soft-point" or city defense, these systems could still enhance the Jewish State's indispensable nuclear deterrent.

By forcing any attacker to constantly recalculate the requirements of "assured destruction," Israeli BMD could make it unrewarding for any prospective aggressor to strike first. Knowing that its capacity to assuredly destroy Israel's nuclear retaliatory forces with a first-strike attack could be steadily eroded by incremental deployments of BMD, Iran could decide that such an attack would be more costly than gainful. Of course, any such relatively optimistic conclusion would be premised on the antecedent assumption that Iran’s decisions will always be rational.

But what if such a promising assumption should not actually be warranted? Moreover, irrationality is not the same as madness. Unlike a "crazy" or "mad" adversary, which would have no discernible order of preferences, an irrational Iranian leadership might still maintain a distinct and consistent hierarchy of wants.

Such an Iranian leadership might not be successfully deterred by more traditional threats of military destruction. This is because a canonical Shiite eschatology could authentically welcome certain "end times" confrontations with "unbelievers." Nonetheless, this leadership might still refrain from any attacks that would expectedly harm its principal and overriding religious values or institutions. Preventing an attack upon the "holy city" of Qom, could be a glaringly good example.

It is also reasonable to expect that even an irrational Iranian leadership would esteem certain of its primary military institutions. This leadership might still be subject to deterrence by various compelling threats to these institutions. A pertinent example would be the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a core power behind the Iranian dictatorship, a principal foe of the Iranian people, and the current leadership's generally preferred instrument of terror and repression.

It could be productive for Jerusalem/Tel-Aviv to hold at risk the Guard's physical facilities, its terrorist training camps, its navy of small attack boats, its missile program, the homes of its leaders, and even its space program.

Most civilian targets would be excluded from an Israeli attack; so would those particular military targets that were not identifiably Guard-related. Any such calculated exclusion would not only be in Israel's best overall strategic interests. It would also be necessary to ensure normal Israeli compliance with the law of war, a commendably exemplary adherence to military rules that has long characterized Israel’s defense forces.

Ethical conduct is deeply embedded in authoritative IDF protocols. This moral imperative is well-known to every soldier of Israel as Tohar HaNeshek, or the "purity of arms."

Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, a nuclear Iran could still be very dangerous to Israel if its leadership were in fact able to meet the usual criteria of rationality. Miscalculations, or errors in information, or successful coup d'etats, could lead even a fully rational Iranian adversary to strike first. In these particular circumstances, moreover, the very best anti-missile defenses would still be inadequate for providing any significant population protections.

If Iran were presumed to be rational, in the usual sense of valuing its national physical survival more highly than any other preference, or combination of preferences, Jerusalem/Tel-Aviv could then begin to consider certain plausible benefits of pretended irrationality. Years ago, Israeli General Moshe Dayan, had warned prophetically: "Israel must be seen as a mad dog; too dangerous to bother." In this crude but insightful metaphor, Dayan had already understood that it can sometimes be rational for states to pretend irrationality.

What if an Iranian adversary were presumed to be irrational in the sense of not caring most about its own national survival? In this aberrant but still conceivable case, there would be no discernible deterrence benefit to Israel in assuming a posture of pretended irrationality. Here, the more probable threat of a massive nuclear counterstrike by Israel would probably be no more persuasive in Tehran, than if Iran's self-declared enemy were presumed to be rational.

"Do you know what it means to find yourself face to face with a madman?" inquires Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV. While this pithy theatrical query does have some relevance to Israel's mounting security concerns with Iran, the grave strategic challenges issuing from that country will be more apt to come from decision-makers (1) who are not mad; and (2) who are rational. Soon, with this clarifying idea suitably in mind, Israel will need to fashion a vastly more focused and formal strategic doctrine, one from which aptly nuanced policies and operations could be reliably fashioned and drawn.

This doctrine would identify and correlate all available strategic options (deterrence; preemption; active defense; strategic targeting; and nuclear war fighting) with critical national survival goals. It would also take very close account of possible interactions between these discrete, but sometimes intersecting, strategic options.

Inevitably, calculating these complex interactions will present Israel with a computational task on the highest order of difficulty. In some cases, it may even develop that the anticipated "whole" of Iranian-inflicted harms could be greater than the technical sum of its discrete "parts." Recognizing this task as a preeminently intellectual problem, is the necessary first step in meeting Israel's imperiled survival goals.

In the broadest possible terms, Israel has no real choice. Nuclear strategy is a "game" that sane and rational decision-makers must play. But, to compete effectively, any would-be victor must first assess (1) the expected rationality of each opponent; and (2) the probable costs and benefits of pretending irrationality itself.

These are interpenetrating and generally imprecise forms of assessment. They represent challenging but vital judgments that will require accompanying refinements in intelligence and counter-intelligence. Also needed will be carefully calculated, selectively partial, and meticulously delicate movements away from extant national policies of deliberate nuclear ambiguity.

For Israel, it will soon no longer be sensible to keep its "bomb" in the "basement."

More than likely, Iran will manage to join the "nuclear club." How, then, will its key leadership figures proceed to rank order Tehran's vital preferences? To answer precisely this question should now become a primary security policy obligation in Israel.

Any failure to answer successfully could have genuinely existential consequences for the Jewish State.

Ted Belman is a retired lawyer and the Editor of Israpundit. He made aliya from Canada last year and now lives in Jerusalem, Israel. Contact him at tedbel@rogers.com

Cleansing of Gaza Strip is Needed
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/lieberman-israel-needs-to -conquer-and-thoroughly-cleanse-gaza-strip-8671919.html

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's closest political ally has called for Israel to carry out a "thorough cleansing" of the Gaza Strip as a tenuous ceasefire between its Hamas rulers and the Jewish state frayed.

Former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman called for Israel to reconquer the crowded coastal enclave to avoid "finding ourselves in two years with Hamas having aircraft and hundreds of missiles that will reach beyond Tel Aviv".

His comments came as the Israeli Air Force attacked targets in the Gaza Strip after six rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel...

Mr. Lieberman suggested that neither the eight-day aerial campaign Israel launched in November with the stated goal of halting rockets from Gaza, nor the devastating Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09 in which more than 1,100 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died, had proven effective at quelling the violence.

"Without willingness to take things to their conclusion we merely increase the threats," he said, adding that Hamas "has no intention of coming to terms with the Jewish presence in the land of Israel and therefore what is needed is to seriously consider conquering the Strip and carry out a thorough cleansing."

Food for Thought
For over 20 years public opinion has been skewed by deliberate anti-Israel propaganda toward the idea that there is no other solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict but the "Two State Solution". International bigots in the UN, members of the so-called unbiased democratic press and even the governments of Israel are unwilling to recognize the existence of several alternatives - "The Sinai Solution" is one of them!

Islamists Who Advise the US Government
Arif Alikhan - Assistant Secretary for Policy Development for the US Department of Homeland Security

- Mohammed Elibiary - Homeland Security Adviser

- Rashad Hussain - Special Envoy to the (OIC) Organization of the Islamic Conference

- Salam al-Marayati - Obama Adviser - founder Muslim Public Affairs Council and its current executive director

- Imam Mohamed Magid - Obama's Sharia Czar - Islamic Society of North America

- Eboo Patel - Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighbourhood Partnerships

Not so Moderate New Iranian President
http://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-president-elect-implicated-in-1994-argentina-bombing/

A newly elected Iranian president Hasan Rowhani was allegedly involved in plotting the deadly 1994 attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires , according to the indictment filed in the case. The attack, attributed to Iran and carried out by the terrorist group Hezbollah, killed 85 people and injured hundreds. The 2006 indictment names Rowhani as a member of the committee headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that planned the bombing, the deadliest attack of its kind in Argentinian history. (Those who do not want to stop Iranian nuclear program are falsely portraying the new Iranian president as a reformist. They are aware that he will be nothing more but a subordinate to Khamenei s committee!)

Enemy Within - Arabs are not Israelis
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/169279#.V0NIhEKVsWM

An elected Arab member of Knesset MK, Afou Agbaria (Hadash), publicly called for an Intifada (violent uprising) during the heated debate on the law which legalizes pirate Bedouin settlement in the Negev.

Israel Does Not Exist in PA Textbooks
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/169303#.V0NI10KVsWM

The textbooks used in UNRWA-funded schools never acknowledge any Jewish rights in "Palestine", nor any Jewish past in the Land of Israel. "Israel is delegitimized and demonized in these texts and no peaceful solution to Arab-Israel conflict is ever discussed" said Dr. Arnon Groiss, a respected expert in the promotion of Tolerance in Education. The funding for the schools are provided by Western countries, led by the US, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Australia and others.

A True Christian Cannot Be Anti-Semite
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/169256#.V0NQiEKVsWM

Pope Francis has condemned anti-Semitism, saying that it has no place in the church. "Because of our common roots, a true Christian cannot be anti-Semitic," Francis said at a meeting with a delegation of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC). The Church "firmly condemns hatred, persecution and all manifestations of anti-Semitism," he said. (Nice sentiment, but will he publicly confess atrocities the Church have committed and facilitated against Jews? How about Torahs, Jewish books and artefacts, hidden in Vatican underground vaults, that the Church has systematically stolen from Jews since Roman times - will he return them?)

Egypt Tightens Gaza Blockade
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/22/gaza-uninhabitable-blockade-united-nations

Egypt has intensified a crackdown on smuggling tunnels between its volatile Sinai desert and the Gaza Strip, causing a steep hike in petrol and cement prices in the PA controlled territory. Predictably, since it's the Muslim Brotherhood government of Egypt and not Israel treating the Palestinians so pitilessly, nobody seems to care.

Israeli Volunteers - Front Line of Defence
http://magenyehuda.net/

Members of Magen Yehuda and Community First Response Teams commonly known as "Kitot Konanut" are civilian volunteers who give of themselves and put their lives on the line to help protect their home communities. These are few incidents from just one community:

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/167085#.Ua8dl9LdfnQ

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/168376#.Ua8cktLdfnQ

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/269079#.Ua8c09LdfnQ

Al-Dura Hoax Saga Continues
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/169345#.V0NR20KVsWM

French media analyst Philippe Karsenty has been convicted of defamation for accusing French state television of staging the infamous footage of Mohammed al-Dura, the Arab boy who fuelled a campaign of lies against the state of Israel and became a symbol of the second intifada.

Syria Conflict will End when Israel Falls
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/25/iran-commander-syria-conflict -end-israel-falls/

A commander in one of Iran's volunteer military units said that the world will know when the conflict in Syria ends - it will be marked by the fall of Israel. "The end of chaos in Syria will lead to the collapse of the Zionist regime," said Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, who commands Iran 's Basij force. (They hate and kill each other with vengeance, but blame the existence of Israel?)

Native Canadians Reject Palestinian Propaganda
http://www.torontosun.com/2013/06/14/native-jewish-bond-thicker-than-water

Ryan Bellerose is a Metis from Alberta. He founded Canadians for Accountability, a Native rights advocacy group. (Please read his perspective on the anti-Israel propaganda)

Why is this not a Front Page News?
http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/riots-in-chinas-muslim-xinjiang-region-kill-27/?cat_orig=world

Riots in China 's ethnically divided Xinjiang region left 27 people dead last Wednesday. According to state police opened fire on "knife-wielding mobs". It was the latest spasm of violence to hit the troubled western region, which is about twice the size of Turkey and is home to around nine million members of the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority.

IDF Seizes Large Weapons Stash
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/169386#.V0NTf0KVsWM

IDF forces seized a large cache of illegal weapons, which were discovered in the homes of Arab terror suspects. Overall, 19 terror suspects were arrested overnight throughout the Jordan Valley and Judea and Samaria regions. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said: "More than a dozen shooting incidents were reported since the beginning of 2013 in Judea and Samaria. Counterterrorism activities in the region are crucial to the prevention of such incidents." "The IDF will not tolerate any threat to the safety of the citizens of Israel and will continue to act against those responsible."

Quote of the Week:
"This is a Jewish state that s a democracy, not a democracy with some Jewish elements. We need to strengthen these principles, and give them legal priority." - Yariv Levin, Member of Knesset (Likud) - Israel must stop apologizing to anti-Semitic international bigots and start implementing the plan of national revival!

World Loves Palestinians
http://www.jpost.com/printarticle.aspx?id=317119

Unlike other refugees, the Palestinians have their own set of rules, their own funding and even their own international agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency or UNRWA. To paraphrase George Orwell, all refugees are equal, but some refugees are more equal than others.

In 2012, the United Nations spent six times more on every Palestinian refugee as compared to all other refugees. Like a favored child, the Palestinians have been on the UN's permanent payroll for over 60 years and are entitled to every service from healthcare to housing and from food rations to education. When it comes to refugees from Syria or Somalia, responsibility falls to the host country to provide basic assistance.

While UNHCR's approach teaches independence, UNRWA's approach prepares the Palestinians to be lifelong dependents. Under UNRWA's framework, Palestinians can continue to be called refugees long after they acquire citizenship and find permanent housing.

...By allowing refugee status to pass to Palestinian children and grandchildren, the number of Palestinian refugees has ballooned from a few hundred thousand in 1948 to over five million today. Left unchecked, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will continue to be added to the UN's permanent payroll every year.

...If the current trend continues, then, in ten years there will be 6.8 million. The 10 million mark will be reached in 2035, when a Palestinian child born today will be 22 years old. And in 100 years, there will be 116 million Palestinian refugees!

This is clearly unsustainable, but the only 'solution' acceptable to the Arabs, to supporters of BDS, to a majority of UN members, and even to our local "Peace Fresno" organization is that all of these Arabs will "return to their homes" in what is today Israel. In the meantime, their 'oppression' qualifies them to engage in violent actions.

...By making the Palestinians the poster children for international victimhood, the Arab states believe they hold a permanent trump card to defame and pressure Israel . While the Arab states are saturated in petrol dollars, the funds mysteriously dry up when it comes to assisting Palestinians and subsidizing UNRWA.

Scan the list of UNRWA's top contributors and you'll find it's exclusively North American and West European countries.

To put it more bluntly: the US and the Europeans are contributing more than $650 million a year (2011 figure) to help the Arab nations build a weapon to use against the Jewish state. And the Arabs pay almost nothing! What a deal.

And it is more than simply a demographic weapon. UNRWA in Gaza supports Hamas in several important ways, particularly by way of its educational system. Teachers use books and materials supplied by the Hamas regime. Many Hamas leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh, are graduates of UNRWA schools, and teachers sometimes moonlight as terrorists. (The international bigots only 'love' invented Palestinians because they hate the existence of Jewish states!)

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 a website at www.shamrak.com. He can be reached by email at StevenShamrak@gmail.com

A court may have ordered the city of Tel Aviv to enforce the law on Sabbath store openings, but Mayor Ron Huldai is planning a solution that will maintain the status quo.

Huldai spoke with city council members on Monday evening regarding the court order and plans for the future.

The city will abide by the order, he said, but added, “We will use our judgment and use enforcement in cases where there is some disturbance to public order.”

Ultimately, he continued, “our plan is to find the right way to entrench as law the balance we have here – a reality which the overwhelming majority of city residents are fine with.”

The High Court ordered the Tel Aviv municipality to take steps to enforce the law requiring store inside cities to close on the Sabbath.

Justice Elyakim Rubenstein referred to the city’s current methods of enforcement as a “bluff” that did not uphold the law in practice. While Tel Aviv may have an image as the “city that doesn’t stop,” he said, Tel Aviv is not in a different country, and must balance Jewish tradition with democracy like the rest of the country.

Small business owners had complained that the city’s current indifference to the law leaves them unable to compete with larger stores, which can afford to risk the fines that occasionally result from ignoring the law.

Last year the Tel Aviv City Council approved public transportation on the Sabbath. It also created a plan to close streets in the city center on the Sabbath.

Contact Arutz Sheva at news@israelnationalnews.com

(Washington, D.C., June 27, 2013). Today, four families of Navy SEAL Team VI and special ops forces brought suit in federal court in Washington, D.C. (Case No. 13-cv-974) over the death of their sons, whose helicopter was shot down by Taliban jihadists on August 6, 2011, in Afghanistan. Among those who died in the crash were 16 Navy SEALs and 8 special ops servicemen, including the sons of Charles Strange, Doug and Shaune Hamburger, and Sidh Douangdara.

As alleged in the complaint, the disclosures of classified information by Vice President Biden and then newly sworn-in Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta that SEAL Team VI was responsible for the killing of Osama Bin Laden put a "target on the backs" of the now fallen heroes and their families. Predictably, the Taliban retaliated by blasting the helicopter out of the air and killing all on board.

Also joined in the suit is the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and Islamic leader, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is alleged to have tipped the Taliban off about the coordinates of the Extortion 17 operation, the helicopter that was blasted out of the sky carrying our nation's heroes. It has been widely reported that Iran pays a bounty of $1,000 to the Taliban for each American serviceperson killed.

Larry Klayman, the founder of Judicial Watch and now Freedom Watch (see www.freedomwatchusa.org), and former U.S. Justice Department prosecutor, legally represents these plaintiff families and observed the following upon filing suit:

"It is hypocritical and outrageous that while the Obama Justice Department can criminally charge Edward Snowden for allegedly disclosing classified national security information and wage an international manhunt for his arrest, Biden and Panetta get off scot free for their callous, cynical, opportunistic illegal release of the identity of SEAL Team VI in the Bin Laden killing – allegedly orchestrated to boost President Obama's and Vice President Biden's reelection prospects in the months leading up to the 2012 November 6 election. This underscores how the nation's 'leaders' in Washington are not held to the same standards as are other citizens. It therefore falls upon the families of Navy SEAL Team VI and special ops servicemen to seek justice in the civil courts, as Biden and Panetta are 'not above the law.' The hard reality is that Biden and Panetta are alive 'feasting' on their 'political notoriety,' power, and wealth, while the brave heroes who gave their lives for our nation's security are dead, thanks to them!"

To punish Biden and Panetta for their alleged criminal acts, the complaint asks for over $200,000,000 dollars in damages. If successful, the damage award will be used to aid and support the surviving families of fallen heroes like the plaintiffs' sons.

Contact FSM Security at info@familysecuritymatters.org

He wrote:

The American Dream ended (on November 6th) in Ohio. The second term of Barack Obama will be the final nail in the coffin for the legacy of the white Christian males who discovered, explored, pioneered, settled and developed the greatest Republic in the history of mankind.

A coalition of Blacks, Latinos, Feminists, Gays, Government Workers, Union Members, Environmental Extremists, The Media, Hollywood, uninformed young people, the "forever needy," the chronically unemployed, illegal aliens and other "fellow travelers" have ended Norman Rockwell's America.

The Cocker Spaniel is off the front porch...the Pit Bull is in the back yard. The American Constitution has been replaced with Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and Chicago shyster, David Axelrod, along with international Socialist George Soros will be pulling the strings on their beige puppet to bring us Act 2 of the New World Order.

Our side ran two candidates who couldn't even win their own home states, and the circus fattster Chris Christie helped Obama over the top with a glowing "post Sandy" tribute that elevated the "Commander-in-Chief" to Mother Teresa status.

People like me are completely politically irrelevant, and I will never again comment on or concern myself with the aforementioned coalition which has surrendered our culture, our heritage and our traditions without a shot being fired.

You will never again out vote these people. It will take individual acts of defiance and massive displays of civil disobedience to get back the rights we have allowed them to take away. It will take Zealots, not moderates--not reach-across-the-aisle RINOs to right this ship and restore our beloved country to its former status.

Those who come after us will have to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to bring back the Republic that this generation has timidly frittered away due to "white guilt" and political correctness.....

I'm done.

Contact Yaacov Levi at ylevi1993@gmail.com

Libels

Since the Palestinian Authority was established it has systematically indoctrinated young and old to hate Israelis and Jews. Using media, education, and cultural structures that it controls, the PA has actively promoted religious hatred, demonization, conspiracy libels, etc. These are packaged to present Israelis and Jews as endangering Palestinians, Arabs, and all humanity. This ongoing campaign has so successfully instilled hatred that fighting, murder and even suicide terror against Israelis and Jews are seen by the majority of Palestinians as justified self-defense and as Allah’s will.

Throughout history bogus conspiracy accusations have been used to incite hatred, violence, and mass murder. The myriad conspiracy libels concerning Israel, Israelis and Jews are an integral part of the Palestinian Authority’s ongoing hate promotion. PA libels claim that Israel conspires to infect Palestinians with AIDS, spread drug addiction, conspired and successfully murdered Arafat, and more. The PA’s goal has been to inculcate hatred to the degree that fighting and murdering Jews and Israelis will be glorified as heroic self-defense.

Libel: Israel to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque

Both Fatah and Hamas have generated and sustained religious hatred by disseminating the libel that Israel is attempting to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque. With close to 100% of Palestinians identifying themselves as believing Muslims, this claim is highly inflammatory and is often combined with the call to “defend Al-Aqsa” from the Jews. The Al-Aqsa libel includes numerous fabrications: Israel was behind a mosque fire in 1969; Israel is currently digging under the mosque in order to topple it; Israel plans to replace it with a new Temple; Israel is preparing a missile attack on the mosque, and more. This libel has been actively promoted since 1998.

Fatah spokesman: Jerusalem bus bombing was a “natural response” to Israeli policies, including "repeated invasions of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque"

Source: Donia Al-Watan (independent Palestinian news agency), Apr. 18, 2016

Headline: “In the first official response – Fatah: The operation was a natural response to the occupation’s crimes”

“Official Fatah spokesman in occupied Jerusalem Raafat Alayan emphasized that what happened today [April 18, 2016] on the Israeli bus in occupied Jerusalem was a natural response to the Israeli acts against the Palestinian people, including killing, arrests, blockades, and repeated invasions of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque. Alayan added that we do not seek or want violence, but at the same time we seek and wish to live in dignity and security. However, the occupation government’s policy aims to drag the region into a cycle of violence, and we have warned the Israeli right-wing government time after time that this policy of escalation will not lead to security for the Israelis. Alayan concluded his words: If Israel is looking for a security solution – there are no such solutions with the Palestinian people, the only solution is for Israel to implement the decisions of the international institutions.”

Fatah official claims there are "Israeli attempts to Judaize the Al-Aqsa Mosque"

Source: Donia Al-Watan (independent Palestinian news agency), Apr. 6, 2016

Headline: "Al-Qawasmi: The settlers' invasions of the Al-Aqsa Mosque are an Israeli crime that we will not ignore"

"Fatah Spokesman Osama Al-Qawasmi stated that the invasions by the extremist settlers, led by the extremist [Yehuda] Glick, of the Al-Aqsa Mosque plaza constitute a crime against the Islamic holy sites and the Palestinian people's rights, a scandalous violation of international law, a gross offense against Muslim sensibilities and harming of their rights to their blessed mosque, and an Israeli attempt to establish facts on the ground and turn the settlers' invasions of the Al-Aqsa Mosque into a routine matter – which will not happen under any circumstances. In a press statement, Al-Qawasmi emphasized that the Palestinian people will come out against Israeli attempts to Judaize the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and establish facts on the ground under different slogans. Likewise, he emphasized that the Al-Aqsa Mosque and its plaza will remain an Islamic mosque and nothing else, and that it is a red line [that cannot be crossed]. He also added that any attempt to change the status quo before and after the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 will lead to a complete explosion of the situation in the occupied territories."

The PA considers any presence of Jews on the Temple Mount an "invasion."

PA Minister of Religious Affairs: The Al-Aqsa Mosque is in danger from “Israeli plots” to destroy, divide, or replace it with the “alleged Temple”

Source: Amad, Independent Palestinian news website, Apr. 1, 2016

Headline: "Ida'is: More than 109 attacks and violations against the holy sites during the months of January and February"

"[PA] Minister of Religious Affairs Sheikh Yusuf Ida'is stated... 'The occupation has turned the occupied city of Jerusalem into a military base through widespread and increased deployment of its forces around the holy sites, in various streets, and around the city, as part of a series of intensified Israeli measures.' Likewise, he said that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is in grave and immediate danger today, which is increasing from day to day, which necessitates the determination of a mechanism of action on the Islamic, Arab, and international level, to deal with the Israeli plots in order to save the [Al-Aqsa] Mosque from destruction, division, and the building of the alleged Temple."

"Division according to areas and times" refers to a proposed law (May 2013) being reviewed in Israeli Parliament that would allow for both Jews and Muslims to pray on the Temple Mount. The law seeks to designate separate prayer times and areas of the site for Muslims and Jews. Israeli PM Netanyahu has stated on many occasions that the Israeli government has no intention of ‎changing the status quo on the Temple Mount.

PA Grand Mufti: “Settlers” are trying to “steal the Islamic Palestinian holy sites,” in order “find their fake history under them”

Source: Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Mar. 8, 2016

Headline: “The Grand Mufti condemned the continuation of the Israeli excavations under the Ibrahimi Mosque (i.e., the Cave of the Patriarchs)”

“Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories and preacher at the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque Sheikh Muhammad Hussein condemned the continued excavations that the settlers are carrying out under the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. He announced yesterday [March 7, 2016] that the settlers are acting, under the cover of their racist government, to steal the Islamic Palestinian holy sites, and to paint them in colors fitting their barbaric Zionist beliefs. Likewise, they are trying in vain to find their fake history under them, similar to the destructive excavations taking place under the walls of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

PA Minister of Religious Affairs: Israel has "policy" to "take over the holy sites"

Source: Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Mar. 4, 2016

Headline: “The occupation’s attacks against the noble cave in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron”

“The Department of Religious Endowments and the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC) revealed yesterday [March 3, 2016] the grave offensive being carried out by the occupation authorities against the Ibrahimi Mosque (i.e., Cave of the Patriarchs) in the city, through excavations within the noble cave, where the graves of the prophets and their wives, peace be upon them, are located… Minister of Religious Affairs Yusuf Ida’is condemned the attacks against the Ibrahimi Mosque, and clarified that no place of religious worship is safe in light of the attacks and crimes being perpetrated against them by the Israeli occupation and its settlers. He continued: ‘Israel is attempting to completely take over the holy sites through this malicious policy,’ and emphasized that the mosque and historic holy sites in Palestine are Islamic and belong only to the Muslims.”

Abbas: Terror wave is a "peaceful" response to Israel's "defiling" the "holy sites" and its "killing" of Palestinians

Source: Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Mar. 3, 2016

Headline: "The President: We object to the intervention of an external factor in internal Palestinian affairs"

"The Fatah Revolutionary Council opened its 16th session yesterday evening [March 2, 2016] in the presence of [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas and the members of the Fatah Central Committee… Abbas noted that the peaceful popular uprising is in response to the actions of the occupation, its disregard of all signed agreements and lack of adherence to their implementation, the fact that it has continued to defile the Islamic and Christian holy sites, the policy of arrests, the demolitions (i.e., of houses of terrorists), the killing, the expulsion, the closure, and the siege."

What Abbas referred to as "peaceful popular uprising" is in fact a wave of Palestinian terror attacks which at the time of Abbas' speech had included: 79 shooting attacks, 203 knifings, and 39 car ramming attacks, in which 33 Israelis were murdered and 387 wounded.

The terms "all means," "peaceful uprising," and "popular uprising" are ‎often used by PA leaders to refer to events that include violence and deadly terror ‎against Israeli civilians such as rock-throwing, stabbings and even shootings.

Israel carries out demolitions of terrorists' houses. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "Demolition orders are issued only against the residences of terrorists who commit the most serious offenses" and it is "an act of deterrence meant to discourage Palestinians from carrying out future terror attacks so as to minimize their number." (MFA website)

PA Minister of Religious Affairs: Al-Aqsa Mosque is in "grave and immediate danger" from Israeli plans to divide it or build the "alleged Temple"

Source: Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Mar. 2, 2016

Headline: "Ida'is: 109 Israeli violations..."

"[PA] Minister of Religious Affairs Sheikh Yusuf Ida'is stated... that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is in grave and immediate danger, and that this danger increases with every passing day. He noted that this requires the consolidation of a method of action on the Islamic, Arab, and international levels in order to fight against the Israeli plans and save the mosque from the threats of demolition, division, or the building of the alleged Temple.”

"Division according to areas and times" refers to a proposed law (May 2013) being reviewed in Israeli Parliament that would allow for both Jews and Muslims to pray on the Temple Mount. The law seeks to designate separate prayer times and areas of the site for Muslims and Jews.

PA official warns that Israel is "harm[ing"] Muslim holy sites... "stealing" them, "destroying" them, and "expelling" Jerusalem residents

Source: Donia Al-Watan (independent Palestinian news agency), Mar. 1, 2016

Headline: "Issa: Israel is harming the Islamic and Christian heritage in Jerusalem”

"Dr. Hana Issa, a lecturer and an expert in international law [and secretary-general of the [PA's] Islamic-Christian Council for Jerusalem and the Holy Places]... noted that 'The occupation authorities were not satisfied with violating the Palestinians' human rights, but went even further and harmed the holy sites. The Israeli authorities are carrying out excavations around the Noble Sanctuary (i.e., the Temple Mount), stealing and destroying properties and Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem, and expelling its residents. All of this is in order to eliminate the Noble Sanctuary, the Dome of the Rock, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and all of the Islamic and Christian cultural heritage around or near them.”

Fatah spokesperson summarizes meeting led by Abbas: Fatah "stand[s] against" Israel`s "damaging" of "holy sites, primarily the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque"

Source: Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Mar. 1, 2016

Headline: "The [Fatah] Central Committee discussed the situation, emphasized its absolute support of the effort to end the rift [between Fatah and Hamas], and praised the French initiative – Fatah expresses its appreciation for the educational role of the teachers and calls on them to end the strike immediately"

"The Fatah Central Committee held a meeting last night [Feb. 29, 2016] led by President Mahmoud Abbas in the Presidential Headquarters in Ramallah… Official Fatah spokesperson, Fatah Central Committee member, [and official Presidential Spokesperson] Nabil Abu Rudeina stated...'The Central Committee again praised the Palestinian people’s resolve on its land, its popular peaceful resistance, and its standing against the occupation and its daily crimes – summary executions, arrests, demolition of homes, taking over lands, and damaging the Islamic and Christian holy sites, and primarily the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.' He noted that the Central Committee stands in admiration of our pure-hearted Martyrs (Shahids) and brave prisoners.”

Fatah official: Palestinians carrying out terror wave because holy sites are being "desecrated” and the land is being "Judaized"

Source: Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 9, 2016

Headline: "A delegation of the Jenin district and the Fatah Central Committee express condolences over the [death] of the Martyrs of Qabatiya"

"Jenin District Governor Ibrahim Ramadan, Fatah Central Committee members, [Fatah Central Committee member] Mahmoud Al-Aloul, and [Fatah Central Committee Member and Commissioner of Foreign Branches] Jamal Muhaisen, representatives of Fatah's West Bank branches and heads of the security establishment...expressed condolences over the death of the three Martyrs (Shahids) from Qabatiya – Ahmad Abu Al-Rub, Muhammad Kmeil and Ahmad Zakarneh – in Jerusalem who were shot by the occupation...

Mahmoud Al-Aloul stated in a speech he gave in the name of the [Fatah] Central Committee... that our people is demonstrating its unity and its strength against the occupation every day. He added that our people is a group of heroes, all of them like the three Martyrs, who were brought up on the love of the homeland and sacrifice for it, and it is not strange that our people is making sacrifices when it sees its holy sites desecrated and its land Judaized.”

Fatah spokesman condemns "continued [Israeli] invasions of the Al-Aqsa Mosque"

Source: Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 4, 2016

Headline: "Alayan: The operation (i.e., terror attack, 1 killed) in Jerusalem proves that the occupation cannot force a security solution with the Palestinians"

"Official Fatah Spokesman in occupied Jerusalem Raafat Alayan stated that the Israeli occupation's violations against the Palestinian people, especially in occupied Jerusalem, can only lead to more resistance and more attacks by our people, who refuse the occupation in all its forms. Alayan noted that the Palestinian people cannot accept the Israeli violations in the holy city – the continued invasions of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the demolition of homes, the arrests, the attacks against citizens and women, the distancing of Jerusalem residents from Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and holding onto additional Martyrs' bodies – and it cannot be that they will pass without natural responses."

Contact Daily Alert at dailyalert@list-dailyalert.org

In 1938, Tolkien was preparing to release The Hobbit in Germany. The publishers first wanted to know if he was of Aryan descent. This was his response.

"...if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject—which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride."

Contact GWY123 at GWY123@aol.com

AJC executive director David Harris 370. (photo credit:Wikimedia Commons)

In the age of social media and round-the-clock news cycles it is no secret in the Jewish world that the stodgy, old-fashioned organizations of yesteryear are finding it increasingly difficult to stay relevant.

Built to function in a bygone era, many American Jewish groups are neither nimble nor savvy enough to garner the media attention they so desperately need to drive the fundraising operations upon which they rely.

And so, like the Kardashian clan or the gang from the Jersey Shore, some will go to any lengths to get a headline, even at the expense of their remaining dignity. The latest to do so is none other than the 107-year old American Jewish Committee (AJC), which in exchange for a moment in the sun decided to sell Israel down the river.

Last month, after Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett said that, "The attempt to establish a Palestinian state in our land has ended," the AJC decided to weigh in, with its executive director David Harris issuing a sharply-worded press release on June 17.

Calling Bennett's remarks "stunningly shortsighted," Harris declared that they should be “repudiated by the country's top leaders." Citing comments made by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Harris affirmed that the AJC supports the so-called “two-state solution.”

His broadside was quickly picked up by New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, who never misses an opportunity to lambast Israel, and gleefully cited Harris in doing so.

Way to go, David, you got your mention in "the paper of record"! Normally, I would not give more than passing thought to Harris' hogwash. After all, his pronunciations about Israeli policy have as much impact as the graffiti scrawled on the Broadway-7th Avenue local subway line. But Harris'sheer chutzpah, and his readiness to criticize Israel in order to cuddle up with those on the Left, cannot go unanswered.

To begin with, it is worth recalling that Naftali Bennett was elected by the Israeli people in a free, fair and democratic election. He is a senior partner in the ruling coalition, and is answerable to the Israeli public.

Who elected David Harris? Comfortably ensconced in the AJC office on 56th Street between Lexington and Park in Manhattan, with four Starbucks, two kosher restaurants and Bloomingdale's nearby, what gives Harris the right to pass judgment on Bennett's position? If Harris is wrong, and the implementation of a two-state solution were to lead to Israel’s demise, God forbid, would he have to live with the consequences? Or would it simply mean a shift in his organization's marketing strategy? Harris, like many other self-appointed American Jewish "leaders," seems to have succumbed to that age-old malady known as "Self-Importance Syndrome."

After attending enough cocktail parties with senior Washington figures, and sipping some red wine, people such as Harris actually begin to believe their own press releases, and attribute to themselves a significance that is not commensurate with reality.

They truly think that what they have to say about the reality on the ground in Israel is just as consequential as what the Israeli public's elected officials pronounce.

Worse yet, they see nothing wrong in contributing to the perception that there is a growing divide between Israel's government and America's Jews.

Needless to say, anyone familiar with the history of the AJC should hardly be surprised by this turn of events. For despite some of its pro-Israel positions in recent years, the AJC's attitude toward Zionism has a rocky record at best.

Consider, for example, the following sordid episodes: In 1943, AJC president Judge Joseph Proskauer published a "Statement of Views" which objected to Zionism and its attempts to establish a Jewish state. "In the United States as in all other countries," it said, "Jews like all others of their citizens are nationals of those nations and of no other; there can be no political identification of Jews outside Palestine with whatever government may there be instituted.”

In other words, the AJC wanted to make sure that no one would in any way associate them with a future government of Israel, should one arise.

Then, in late October 1943, as Hitler's Final Solution was in full swing, the AJC chose to provoke a rift in American Jewry by formally withdrawing from the American Jewish Conference, which brought together dozens of Jewish organizations for the first time.

The reason for their pull-out? The AJC objected to the Conference's embrace of the Zionist program calling for the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel after the end of World War II.

As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on October 26, 1943, the move sparked outrage, prompting three prominent AJC members to resign in disgust. They pointed out that the AJC move "threatens to disrupt American Jewry at a time when unity is vital in our efforts to save the remnant of Jewry in Europe, to safeguard Jewish rights everywhere and to assure the fulfillment of Jewish aspirations in the Jewish National Home."

But that hardly seemed to matter much to the AJC leadership of the time, which was more concerned with distancing itself from Zionism than anything else.

Even today, on the AJC website, the words "Zionism" and "aliya" are nowhere to be found in the sections defining "Who We Are" or the organization's "Guiding Principles."

And this is what makes the AJC's decision to carp about the future of Israel so incredibly impudent and impertinent. They are too afraid to declare themselves Zionists, but not at all hesitant about calling for the creation of a Palestinian state.

Unlike Harris and his ilk, I chose to move to Israel and raise my children here. This past Sunday morning, I watched as my 19-year-old son crawled out of bed at 5 a.m., slipped on his military uniform, and headed back to his base to continue his training in an elite infantry unit.

Should he and others like him ever have to go into combat, the knowledge that David Harris and the AJC will be issuing press releases and chasing after television cameras to offer their opinions will do little to hearten those of us who reside in the Jewish state.

So let Harris talk all he wants about the future of the land of Israel.

Ultimately, it is those of us who live here who will decide.

Michael Freund served as Deputy Communications Director in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office under Binyamin Netanyahu. He is the founder and chairman of Shavei Israel/Israel Returns -- www.shavei.org and www.IsraelReturns.org -- a Jerusalem-based organization that searches for and assists the Lost Tribes of Israel and other "hidden Jews" seeking to return to Zion. In addition, Freund is a correspondent and syndicated columnist for The Jerusalem Post. A native New Yorker, he is a graduate of Princeton University and holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia University. Email him at msfreund@earthlink.net. This article appeared July 01, 2013 on Jerusalem Post and is archived at
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/David-Harris-and-the-AJCs-Self-Importance -Syndrome-318362

We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.

The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ‘silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous. Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were ‘peace loving’?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic, uncomplicated points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

Now Islamic prayers have been introduced into Toronto and other public schools in Ontario, and, yes, in Ottawa too while the Lord’s Prayer was removed (due to being so offensive?) The Islamic way may be peaceful for the time being in our country until the fanatics move in.

In Australia, and indeed in many countries around the world, many of the most commonly consumed food items have the halal emblem on them. Just look at the back of some of the most popular chocolate bars, and at other food items in your local supermarket. Food on aircraft have the halal emblem, just to appease the privileged minority who are now rapidly expanding within the nation’s shores.

In the U.K, the Muslim communities refuse to integrate and there are now dozens of no-go zones within major cities across the country that the police force dare not intrude upon. SHARIA LAW prevails there, because the Muslim community in those areas refuse to acknowledge British law.

As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts – the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

THE ARAB SPRING IN EUROPE by Anat Berko

It is not difficult to portray Western women as licentious whores. For Muslim men, the West has no honor whatsoever. Even if immigrants try to adopt the culture of their new countries, the cultural and religious indoctrination breeds only the rejection of all the values of the host countries. What we are witnessing is not multiculturalism; it is a violent attempt by guests to devour their hosts, along with their houses, property, culture and legacy.

In a 1996 interview, Hamas founder and leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin stated that "every Arab rule that does not rule by the law of Allah and his religion is to be rejected." That was 17 years ago, long before the so-called Arab Spring, the terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe and the "days of rage" declared by Muslim rioters worldwide; now the breathing spaces between the attacks get shorter, and turn into years of rage.

One would expect that Muslim immigrants, whose children were born in the West, would adapt, become part of the Western society and partake of its freedom -- otherwise, why did they immigrate? What we see, however, is the opposite. The beheading of a British soldier in London, and the murder of a soldier in France, are only the beginning of a wave of violence and a dictatorship of fundamentalists who will call the tune. The wave of riots and vandalism carried out by Muslim immigrants in France in 2005 was just a hint at what is to come. The immigrants are brainwashed in the mosques, the madrasas [Islamic religious schools] and informal discussion groups, all of which represent the West as worse than Sodom and Gomorrah.

Western women in particular are easy prey; it is not difficult to portray them as licentious whores. Since in Muslim culture the honor of a man is dependent on the behavior of his woman (like chattel), especially when it comes to accepting the laws of modesty, chastity and sexual conduct in general, for Muslim men the West has no honor whatsoever. The face of Europe is changing rapidly, as is clear to anyone walking along a street in Paris, London or Berlin. The veiled women are immediately obvious, their hair covered by hijabs or their faces covered with niqabs; their personalities, identities, features and femininity obliterated, their freedom of movement hindered, ground under the heel of religious dictates chained to the past, despite their living in enlightened, progressive Western countries.

Even if immigrants try to adopt the culture of their new countries, the cultural and religious indoctrination breeds only the rejection of all the values of the host country. As Sheikh Yassin put it, "Islam rejects all the cultural and social aspects of the West that contradict Islam and its religious laws [the sharia], for example, we reject women going with the faces uncovered, prostitution and all the immoral aspects of life in the [Western] world."

It was not by chance that the pepper-sprayed "woman in red" became the icon of the struggle against Islamization in Turkey. We saw women at the demonstrations in the main square of Istanbul shouting "Run, Erdogan, run, the women are coming!" The Western world, until now nodding sagely and saying it is a matter of cultural differences, is beginning to realize that it will have to pay a heavy price for its tolerant approach to the murders, "honor killings," rapes, oppression, abuse of and traffic in women and girls -- not only in the Islamic countries but among the Islamic immigrants in the West.

There are, broadly, two different movements, heading in opposite directions: The West looks forward and seeks progress, the welfare of the individual and scientific achievements. The Muslim immigrants, on the other hand, look longingly backward, their faces turned resolutely to the days of Muhammad. For both, the status of women is an indication of the struggle for the face of the West. The gap is widening and the liberal approach is collapsing along with its hypocritical double standards, political correctness and submission to multiculturalism. What we are witnessing is not multiculturalism, it is a violent attempt made by guests in various countries to devour their hosts whole, along with their houses and property, culture and legacy. For anyone who has not been paying attention, the Arab Spring has arrived in Europe, and it would be a good idea to get ready to deal with it.

Contact GWY123 at GWY123@aol.com

• U.S. calls on Egyptian president to resign, as protesters and army set deadlines for meeting demands
• House Foreign Affairs Committee calls on White House to increase Iran pressure
• Palestinian stance on peace process creates tension with State Department
• Turkish Deputy Prime Minister blames “Jewish diaspora” for unrest, violence

What we're watching today:

• The Obama administration has urged Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to hold early elections and decentralize political authority in the meantime between a new prime minister and a new cabinet, but is stopping short of demanding his immediate resignation, according to senior administration officials who spoke to CNN today. Meanwhile anti-government protestors declared that they will march on Egypt’s presidential palace Tuesday night if Morsi does not respond to calls for him to resign, while the country’s military has given the embattled leader and his Muslim Brotherhood-linked administration until Wednesday to “meet the demands of the people” before it steps in with a “roadmap” to restore order. Morsi rejected the ultimatum and its Wednesday deadline, declaring that he would pursue his own plan to quell the unrest. Millions of anti-government protesters have taken to the streets in demonstrations that began last Wednesday and peaked on Sunday. Activists have been explicit in demanding the removal of Muslim Brotherhood influence from political life, and some of the protests have targeted Brotherhood facilities. In response, Brotherhood officials have threatened to create vigilante “self-defense committees.” At least five top Egyptian officials, including two spokesmen and the country’s foreign minister, have resigned in protest over the government’s handling of the chaos.

• Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday called on President Barack Obama to increase pressure on Iran, with all but one member of the committee signing on to a bipartisan letter emphasizing that the election of Hassan Rouhani to be Iran's next president "unfortunately has done nothing to suggest a reversal of Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capacity” and that Rouhani himself "indicated his support for Iran's nuclear ambitions in his first post-election press conference." The letter also notes that "decisions about Iran's nuclear program and foreign policy rest mainly in the hands of Iran's Supreme Leader" Ali Khamenei. During the election Khamenei preemptively prohibited the eventual winner from making concessions to the West. The letter comes amid renewed scrutiny of how Iran has been able to evade the current sanctions regime. Last month the magazine Foreign Policy published a leaked U.N. report detailing Iran's sanctions-busting activity and describing 11 distinct instances in which Iran has violated sanctions, including attempts to acquire infrastructure usable for its atomic program. This morning Reuters published an expose outlining how Iran is exploiting sanctions loopholes in order to import ore from Germany and France that could be used for making armor and missiles.
• Tension has developed between Secretary of State John Kerry and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, with reports emerging that Kerry's efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are being stifled by preconditions that Abbas insists must be fulfilled before he will return to the negotiating table. Kerry recently concluded his fifth trip to the region focused on promoting talks, during which Israel offered a series of confidence-building measures that were rejected by Palestinian leaders. Evaluating the situation, a senior Palestinian official downplayed the chances that Kerry would succeed. The preemptive declarations of failure echo those made by Palestinian officials last May during a previous Kerry trip. The personal strain between Kerry and Abbas may reflect similar, visible distance that emerged between President Barack Obama and the Palestinian leader during Obama's trip to the region.
• Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay on Monday blamed the "Jewish diaspora," as well as international media outlets, for the protests that began in Istanbul in late May and spread throughout the country. Four people were killed and more than 7,000 injured as the government responded to the unrest with heavy-handed tactics condemned by U.S. and E.U. officials. Ankara has also come under heat for cracking down on public criticism of the government. Last month Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out against media criticism, amid government crackdowns on journalists and social media users. This week a Turkish newspaper filed a former complaint against CNN International journalist Christiane Amanpour for "provoking the populace through false news."

Contact The Israel Project at press@theisraelproject.org


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The concept of removing a religious or ethnic community from a certain region brings back the dark memories of World War II, yet has become mainstream when it is applied to a part of the land of Israel.

A recent official visit to Ramallah, the "capital" of the Palestinian Authority, by the official delegation of the Italian city of Turin, and led by leftist mayor Piero Fassino, could not include the Vice President of the Jewish Community, Emanuel Segre Amar.

Why? Because he is a JEW. Yes, because he is a JEW. Why did the Italian institutions and their representatives accept the Arab "judenrein" demand, as the Nazis called entities cleared of Jews?

Emanuel is the son of Sion Segre Amar, a famous figure of the Jewish community of Turin in the first years of the XX century, a brave Zionist pioneer who was sentenced to prison by a Fascist court and thrown into jail along with Leone Ginzburg.

How shameful that his son has not been allowed to set foot in the "occupied territories". Yes, occupied, but by despicable Islamists and anti-Semites.> Segre Amar didn't even get to set foot in the PA part of Hevron, the cradle of Judaism and the Jewish people.

In December 2010, PA President Mahmoud Abbas said it clearly: "I will never allow a single Israeli to live among us on Palestinian land." That is why today you can't find a single Jew in Tulkarem, Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah or Gaza. This is the only apartheid, the real apartheid, and it is supported by Barack Obama, the European beaurocrats, the Western multiculturalists, the Christian institutions and - lest we forget - the liberal Jews. Emanuel Segre Amar delivered a letter to Mahmoud Abbas. Here it is below.

"Jerusalem, 24 Sivan 5773, June 2, 2013

Mr. Mahmoud Abbas,

I was born in 1944 in Jerusalem, where my parents took refuge to escape the deportation that threatened all Jews because of the German occupation of Italy. For political reasons with which I disagree, I can not meet you during our visit, so I send you this letter through the Mayor of Turin, Piero Fassino...

Peace can only be achieved in the Middle East with the recognition of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people, as already agreed by the Conference of San Remo 1920; by adding the State of Israel in all the maps used in schools in the Islamic world, especially in Palestinian schools; by the promotion of interaction and collaboration between scientists, scholars, artists and athletes; by the abandonment of the de-legitimization of Israel at the United Nations; by the outlawing of terrorist groups aimed to the killing of Israelis and destruction of Israel; by the end of economic boycotts against Israel.

Mr. President, the Israeli soldiers do not use children as shields when theere is a fire exchange with terrorists, Israeli schools and summer camps do not brainwash students to carry on violent actions against civilians, and religious leaders of Israel don't praise children who commit terrorist acts.

I think the way in which the Palestinian Authority educates their children and their society is a key indicator of its true intentions. Despite all this, I do not want to lose hope that you will [decide to] work hard to build a true culture of durable peace.

Cordially,

Emanuel Segre Amar
Vice President of the Jewish Community of Turin".

This shocking Italian story reveals two key elements downplayed by the Western media- That the Palestinian Arab Authority, Israel's "peace partner", is the first "state" to officially prohibit Jews since Nazi Germany. And that the Western political mainstream accepts and condones this racism, this insistence on a Judenrein area of the Holy Land - the dream of Adolf Hitler come true at last. No, sorry Herr Hitler. Not even your Nazi Germany in the 1930s knew this level of anti-Jewish pathology.

Contact GWY123@aol.com at GWY123@aol.com

President Obama's ongoing mishandling of Edward Snowden's defection highlights key failings in his dangerously flawed approach to defending U.S. national security. Whatever Snowden's ultimate fate, Obama's mistakes have already cost America dearly during his first term in office, and will undoubtedly cost us more in his second. Our adversaries have carefully assessed Obama, and will continue taking advantage of his weakness and incompetence. Consider some lessons we have learned from the Snowden affair:

1. The Obama Administration saw retrieving Snowden as a legal issue rather than a matter of political willpower. Last week, the Washington Post reported the obvious: "for the first 12 days, the Obama administration's effort [to extradite Snowden]... was a by-the-book legal affair — overseen by the Justice Department and involving few if any diplomatic overtures." Surprisingly for the liberal Post, its reporters concluded "that legalistic approach has resulted in a political and public relations debacle."

Indeed. Countries with bilateral extradition treaties often use judicial proceedings as an efficient, non-controversial way to resolve such issues. But for every country, entry and exit are fundamental matters of sovereignty, ultimately determined by executive authorities. These are the officials in Beijing, Hong Kong and Moscow where Obama should have concentrated his efforts, with a clear, forceful message: we want Snowden and we want him now.

Moreover, Obama's penchant for legalism is dangerously embodied in his approach to international terrorism. He has never accepted the reality of a "global war on terror," and works continuously to convince Americans the war is almost over. Obama views terrorism as a law-enforcement problem, the failed paradigm of the 1990’s which led tragically to al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks.

Law is a powerful governance instrument, but its appropriateness and effectiveness are not unlimited. Especially in international affairs, where law's force and effect are at their weakest, relying on legal techniques rather than political strength is a prescription for trouble.

2. Obama's "lead-from-behind" style fails once again. Obama left the hard work of getting Snowden back to his bureaucrats. Neither he nor his Secretary of State apparently bothered to call their counterparts or engage in vigorous diplomacy. On June 27, Obama admitted his passivity, saying "Number one, I shouldn't have to. Number two, ...I'm not going to have one case of a suspect who we're trying to extradite suddenly being elevated to the point where I've got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading [with China and Russia] on a whole host of other issues."

Leaving aside his jaw-dropping personal arrogance, Obama's answer shows that even after four-and-one-half years in office, he still doesn't understand international politics. A diplomatic message's seriousness is reflected both by its wording and by the level of the person conveying it. If Russia, China and others believe the President doesn't think Snowden's return is serious enough to engage himself personally, they will assume Washington is just going through the motions. Obama's performance, therefore, is not merely an incompetent misuse of his authority, but proof that his on-the-job training hasn't worked.

3. Obama doesn't grasp the instruments available to him as President. Obama also said disdainfully that "I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker." Of course, military force has never been an option here, but Obama's disinclination to act decisively is unfortunately far broader. Even though everyone else in his Administration, including his press spokesman, declared retrieving Snowden to be a very high American priority, Obama seems not to care.

Not surprisingly, therefore, both Russia and China act as though they have nothing to fear from the United States. There need to be consequences for Beijing and Moscow, not only to demonstrate that we took Snowden’s defection seriously, but also because friends and adversaries alike are all carefully observing how Obama performs on this issue, reaching their judgments about how he will act in the next crisis.

And yet, as far as we know Obama has imposed no consequences. For China, which has already allowed Snowden to escape, Obama should, for example, recall our Ambassador from Beijing and our Consul General from Hong Kong, and put day-to-day bilateral diplomacy on ice. More dramatically, Obama should also permanently lift all U.S. travel restrictions on officials of the Taiwanese government (officially known as the "Republic of China"), and lift all restrictions on Taiwanese diplomats in the United States, including permitting meetings with U.S. officials in the State Department building. Beijing will be extremely unhappy with these changes, which is exactly the reaction we want for their failure to cooperate with us over Snowden.

4. Obama either doesn't fully understand the potential damage caused by Snowden's treachery, or he is doing crassly political damage-control spin. Labeling Snowden a "hacker" is certainly disparaging, but also seems designed to downplay the national-security damage Snowden has inflicted. By low-keying the implications, Obama is also trying to minimize his own failure to retrieve Snowden, as he did after the September 11, 2012 murders of our Ambassador and three others in Benghazi. This is, therefore, either political spin or a fundamental failure to understand what every other responsible U.S. official has said about the gravity of the information China and Russia may have obtained. Conceivably, therefore, this may be the very worst of Obama's mistakes, enduring evidence that his years in office have simply taught him nothing about the importance of maintaining America's national security.

We do not yet know how the Snowden affair will end, but we have seen enough already of Obama's mishandling of the defection to understand yet again how weak and incompetent a President he is. Worse, our adversaries see Obama yet again as a man of near infinite flexibility on foreign and defense policy issues, especially now that the 2012 election is safely behind him. By now, even Jimmy Carter looks good in comparison.

Contact Daily Events at HumanEventsDaily@email.humanevents.com

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal had a front page story: "As U.S. Pulls Out, Feuds Split Afghanistan's Ruling Family." This title is both comic and tragic but it is not "news".

"A Ruling Family feud" is Afghan history and, perhaps, psychology. Afghan Emirs and Shahs seized thrones mainly from their brothers, half-brothers, uncles and nephews. Rulers were routinely tortured and murdered by their relatives; some were allowed to live, but with their eyes gouged out.

This is, indeed, the Wild East and it was always very wild. Afghan rulers have always used their deals with Britain, Russia, and Germany to accomplish their own ends. Stealing as much money, land, and power from as many Afghan people as possible and sharing it with one's family members is the norm in Afghanistan — as is stealing from your own family. Educated and modern-thinking Afghan men, who envisioned a more progressive and lawful Afghanistan, have been known to rot in jail, in cages, and in holes for 20 years, where their torture was uniquely gruesome, and administered by psychopaths in the employ of whoever ran the country.

By definition, business as usual in the Wild East, means hiring only your family members — then spying on them, and assassinating them when necessary. It also means greasing the wheels of commerce by bribing every single gate keeper. This is considered more civilized than a (selfish) fixed price. Other customs are also seen as superior to those of the West's such as arranged child marriage, first cousin marriage, and polygamy. From a non-Western point of view, marriage is a matter for adult family members to decide, it is too important to leave to children or to the vagaries of "love." Large networks of trustworthy relatives guarantee land and resource consolidation, safety in times of great danger, and a rather large posse with whom to socialize.

They have a point given the neighborhood in which they live.

Mohammed H. Anwar grew up in the slums of Kabul during World War One. His poverty was unimaginable — but he taught himself, he was tutored and mentored and ultimately received a world-class education in America. Anwar would not be surprised by the WSJ headline, above, or by any of the recent headlines about Afghan bank corruption, restless, regional warlords, the volatile instability of the central government, cyclical and barbaric civil wars, ruling family feuds, etc. None of this is new.

Anwar wrote an extraordinary memoir, (Memories of Afghanistan), which was eventually published by his late son, Keith. Author House brought it out in 2004. Anwar describes normalized child abuse, an epidemic of sadistic teachers and mullahs, the totally acceptable although savage, pre-Taliban mistreatment of women (bridal night rapes, non-stop drudgery, humiliations of polygamy, honor killing), the extensive network of royal spies, the repeated "orgies" of public executions.

Anwar describes how a gentle and innocent young boy (who happened to belong to the "wrong" family), was homosexually raped every night in prison — and how he killed himself when he was released; how a gentle mullah, who had an unacceptably open mind, was stoned to death by a large, laughing group of men; how educated Afghans were systematically chosen for torture and death; how homosexual pederasty and boy prostitutes were endemic in Kandahar.

Anwar himself was educated in America and married an American woman. Both escaped from Kabul in 1942-1943. Anwar's wife was also named Phyllis.

As I recount in my forthcoming book, An American Bride in Kabul, I was once married to a westernized Afghan man whom I had dated for two years at college. He was a glamorous and sophisticated man who was seemingly modern in every way. I was only 18 when we first met. I blithely followed him to Kabul where I suddenly found myself held captive in a polygamous family for five long months.

Most Westerners (and Afghans who write about themselves), focus on the large Afghan family picnics, warm hospitality, love of poetry, Nature, God, and kite-flying. That is true too — but if you are held captive, none of that matters.

I had embarked on a grand but dangerous adventure. Would I have gone to Kabul had I read Mohammed H. Anwar's book? I am not sure. I nearly died there — but since I lived, and escaped, my experience has really helped me understand that all cultures, including those we wish to romanticize, are characterized by injustice and cruelty, but that while the Wild East may be charming and beguiling, and while its individual citizens may be humane and sympathetic, that Afghanistan has never been ruled by law or experienced a peaceful transition of rulers; its tribal feuds are fierce and last forever; its educated intelligentsia and its women have always been endangered. Afghanistan has a history of barbarism that is truly breathtaking, almost unbelievable — and one that existed long before the Taliban came to town.

Phyllis Chesler is an American writer, psychotherapist, and professor emerita of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island. This article appeared July 02, 2013 in the World Post and is archived at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phyllis-chesler/family-feuds-wild-east-st_b_3534931.html

From the Jerusalem Post:

There was a 99.6% drop in the number of people illegally entering Israel from the country's border with Egypt in June, as compared to June of last year, the Population, Immigration, and Borders Authority said on Tuesday.

According to PIBA, in June only five people illegally crossed into Israel, as opposed to 928 last June. Altogether, according to government figures, only 34 migrants have entered this year, as opposed to 9,570 by the same point in 2012.

Presenting the figures on Tuesday, Interior Minister Gideon Sa'ar said Israel will continue its efforts to stop the influx of illegal migrants, and to return so-called "infiltrators" to their home countries or a third country which remains unnamed.

Is a hearty Mazel Tov in order...or... is this an April fools joke...or just the sad truth - of the ineptness of the Olmert and Netanyahu governments in allowing (and in many cases assisting) the Moslem hordes from sub-Sahara Africa to enter Israel in the first place, causing havoc (crime-molestation-rape) in South Tel-Aviv, and spreading across the country like (what it is) an African borne... plague.

Now, the government has come up with a pipe dream, that some country ..somewhere, will take these undesirables ...of the hands...of the Israeli [politicians] ..but they say it will take time.

{Is there another country besides Israel, that would allow thousands of despicable hordes to enter their country and create havoc within it's borders, terrorizing and displacing some of it's population}?

The more time these Eritrean and Sudanese (mostly male) Moslems have to roam around the country, the more the Israeli Jews will be at risk.

How many more Jews have to be raped, beaten, robbed, stabbed, before it begins to dawn on the government that these invaders are a threat to life and limb of innocent Jews, who happen to be living in,what was once a safe- for- people... Jewish state.

*{No Arabs have been criminalized by these marauding despots}

During past few years, Jews affected by this crime wave have urged their government to protect them and rid the country of this pestilence, Members of the Knesset, various Ministers,including Prime Minister Neyanyahu have cried that the Africans have to be deported.

Nothing has been done. The 64,000 dollar question is why not....and if the government, (which keeps pledging that they are duty bound to protect all Jews , and especially those in Israel) has it's hand tied by an outside 'force'..isn't it time for the independent- brave -strong country of Israel to throw off the shackles, round up the infiltrators and deliver (expel) them back to Egypt (in the same manner in which they came) by way of the Sinai or Gaza.

Contact K at noahsworldtv@gmail.com

Finance Minister Yair Lapid

While Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has yet to convince Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to agree to unconditional talks, senior politicians on both sides are beginning their own talks.

On Tuesday, the Israeli and PA Finance ministries resumed ties, with Finance Minister Yair Lapid sitting down to talk with his PA counterpart, Shukri Bishara. Netanyahu coordinated the meeting.

Senior officials in the Israeli and PA tax authorities were present as well.

Sources in the Finance Ministry said the goal of the talks was to "resume economic cooperation and implement confidence-building measures, in order to improve ties and for the benefit of both partners."

The meeting ended with a decision to form a joint taskforce that will meet once every two weeks. Its purpose will be "to quickly and efficiently move ahead regarding the relevant issues," Finance Ministry spokespeople said.

Contact Coalition for Israel at voices@unitycoalitionforisrael.org

WHEN she was gang-raped by four men at the age of 13, her village classed her as a "black virgin" and ordered her killed.

In the rural village of Dadu in southern Pakistan, tradition held that Kainat Soomro's own family should murder her, as her sexual assault had made her a token of disgrace.

Four years later, Kainat is alive and a documentary about her story is premiering on television in the US.

But that doesn't mean she or her family is safe.

As the film Outlawed in Pakistan shows, Kainat Soomro is still "destined to be killed" because she took the step - extraordinary in Pakistan - of fighting for justice.

The film is a testament to her family's strength and endurance in a life which has only become more difficult the longer they have stood up against tradition.

The Soomros have faced isolation, fear and intimidation from the four men Kainat accused of raping her, and from the members of the small village who were afraid of challenging moral laws which have been in existence for centuries.

By virtue of making the rape accusation, Kainat is an outlaw in her own country.

The film, which was selected for screening in the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, retells the story of the young girl's attack while walking home from school down a narrow village street by a shop where Kainat says the owner, Shaban Saikh, and three other men including a father and son held her down and sexually assaulted her.

The village declared her "kari", or a black virgin, and ordered her family to carry out an honor killing to end the shame a rape victim brings to a family, according to Pakistani culture.

The alleged rapists beat her father and one of her brothers. Her older brother went missing for three months and was found murdered.

But Kainat's parents refused to kill their daughter, instead deciding to take up her cause in a legal system which places the burden of proof on the victim.

"They told me I am not a real man," Kainat's brother, Sabir tells the film-makers, Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellmann, "[that] you failed to follow your tradition, you failed to kill your sister."

Meanwhile, threats of death and further violence have forced the Soomros from the house they owned in Dadu to the city of Karachi, where all 18 family members now live in a two-bedroom apartment.

The men are unable to find work, so the women embroider fabrics to pay rent and they often have to resort to asking charities for food.

Her father says the family has "lost everything" pursuing the case in which neither the police or government authorities will take any responsibility.

When Kainat attends court she undergoes a barrage of "nasty" questions, up to 300 at a time, including "what part of your clothing did you remove?" or "who raped you first?".

The presiding judge is affronted that Kainat has brought the charges, and rules against her in part because she has accused a father and son of a gang rape.

"In his view," the film's narrator says, "he said that would never happen in Pakistan" and describes Kainat’s accusations "as a product of her own fantasy".

The men are acquitted, and, in an interview with the film makers, appear bewildered at why their accuser didn't just stay at home "and keep quiet".

They see their acquittal as proof Kainat "does not have good character. If she was a decent woman, she would have sat at home, silent."

The film portrays Kainat's persistence in her quest for justice, hiring an attorney, making television appearances, appealing court decisions and her unwillingness to back down in the face of continued adversity as heroic.

Even as Kainat and her family say they will fight on, perhaps for years, her lawyer suggests the future will be difficult.

Contact Roberta Dzubow by email at Roberta@adgforum.com

Newly-elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Human beings have a massive capacity to ignore bad news, as if dispensing with information that is either inconvenient or detrimental to one's life will simply make the problem go away. Thus, the mainstream media could perhaps be forgiven for having bought into the solicitous charm offensive that is currently being conducted by Iran's newly elected president, Hassan Rouhani, in which the radical Islamic leader has fallaciously cast himself as a "moderate," despite the overwhelming evidence that directly undermines this assertion. However, those actively working to advance the vital national security interests of the United States and of its one true ally in the Middle East, Israel, know better than to mask, mitigate or underestimate the truly evil inclinations of the clerical Islamic regime in Tehran. We have, quite literally, seen this movie before: it is called Argo.

In 1953 the Central Intelligence Agency helped secure the throne of the Shah of Iran, who became for the next quarter-century the much vaunted centerpiece of American foreign policy in the Middle East. On December 31, 1977, President Carter infamously described Iran's leadership as "an island of stability in a sea of turmoil." The C.I.A. repeatedly confirmed the president's faulty assessment. Just a few weeks later, however, riots broke out in the streets of Tehran. Yet even as the riots spread, some of the C.I.A.'s top analysts issued a draft National Intelligence Estimate that predicted the Shah might survive for another decade.

But the C.I.A. was soon caught fast asleep. On January, 16, 1979, armed thugs and loyalists of Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, a seventy-seven-year-old religious fanatic who returned from exile to Tehran, over-ran the Shah and his minions. Less than a year later, the Carter administration ignored advice given to it by the C.I.A. (which had finally begun to grasp the realities) and let the Shah enter the United States to seek medical treatment. Two weeks later, a group of Iranian"student protesters" violently seized the American Embassy, where they held fifty-two Americans hostage for 444 days. Ayatollah Khomeini recognized the value of embracing a military confrontation with the United States as a major means of consolidating his power and endorsed the hostage-taking.

Six State Department officials were lucky enough to find refuge at the Canadian Embassy across town, where they stayed for seventy-nine days. In January of 1980, the C.I.A. conducted a successful covert operation and extracted the American officials. They did so by posing as a fake film production company that had traveled to Iran to film location shots for their feigned upcoming movie, Argo.

No such luck greeted the remaining hostages. A special operations mission – Operation Eagle Claw – failed spectacularly, when an American helicopter crashed into a transport plane in the Iranian desert. Eight special operations commandos were killed in the crash; and as a result, life became increasingly unpleasant for the hostages. The hostages were eventually freed by their captors on the day that President Carter left the White House – and just minutes after the new American president, Ronald Reagan, was sworn into office. The entire ordeal was a humiliating blow to America’s perceived military might.

Now, as then, the United States government is seemingly unable, or at least unwilling, to protect its own interests and allies in the Middle East from belligerent Iran. True, Congress has passed harsh economic sanctions targeting Iran's banking, energy and export sectors, which together have conflated the country's economy. It is also true that President Obama has allegedly authorized covert action to be conducted against Iran, including the implementation of the Stuxnet virus and the mysterious disappearance of some Iranian scientists. However, these efforts have neither brought down the current regime nor have they stopped Iran's nuclear program.

Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, has been involved in the Islamic revolution since its murderous inception. In 1978 Rouhani helped Khomeini found the regime and has since allegedly assisted in plotting the country's vast terror operations. Most notably, Rouhani was Chairman of the Supreme National Security Council from 1989 until 2005, during which time the Council is reported to have helped mastermind the 1994 bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires and of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

Furthermore, like his presidential predecessors, Rouhani has demonstrated clear anti-American and anti-Semitic views. In 2002, for example, Rouhani conducted an interview with ABC News, in which he blamed the Jews for America's foreign policy: "After September 11," he said, "the hardliners, especially the Zionist lobby, became more active and, unfortunately, influenced Mr. Bush." Rouhani also defended Hezbollah as "a legitimate political group" and called Israel "a terrorist nation." Most recently, in an interview with Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Rouhani denounced what he called Israel's "inhumane policies and practices in Palestine and the Middle East."

Finally, Rouhani is intimately involved in advancing Iran's development of nuclear weapons. He served as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator under President Mohammad Khatami from August 2003 until October 2005. In 2004 Rouhani gave a speech to the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, in which he explained how he was playing for time during the nuclear talks he was conducting with Britain, France and Germany ("EU-3"): "While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the [nuclear conversion] facility in Isfahan. By creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work there." Rouhani's deputy at the Supreme National Security Council, Seyed Hossein Mousavian, even described in a book his boss' approach as the "widen the transatlantic gap" strategy.

And yet quixotically, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough responded eagerly to Hassan Rouhani's election victory, announcing that the Obama administration is prepared – once again – to enter direct negotiations. "There's a great opportunity for Iran," said McDonough, "and the people of that storied country, to have the kind of future that they would, I think, justifiably want."

It remains to be seen how Rouhani will conduct his term in office. But if the past is precedent, then the United States can ill-afford to sugarcoat the truly evil propensities of the Ayatollahs and of Rouhani. Doing so harms, rather than advances America's national security interests in the Middle East.

Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird has it right. In a recent interview with the Times of Israel, Mr. Baird said, "There's always a reason to [delay action] another two or three months." If the Iranian clerics want to demonstrate that they are operating in good faith "they can make meaningful progress [with the West]," he said. "These people don't deserve the benefit of the doubt."

Mr. Baird's analysis is spot on. Hassan Rouhani is a cunning terrorist mastermind. History shows us it would be foolish for the West to regard him as otherwise.

Sergio Tezza can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net

When the War of Independence began, it quickly assumed the nature of a civil war. Those opposing the declaration of statehood fought alongside the organized armies of their kinsmen, which invaded the territory of the infant state from all directions. The fighting was bloody, and the opponents of independence used terrorism against the population seeking statehood. The country was partitioned between the areas of the new state and the territories remaining under the rule of the foreign invaders.

As the fighting dragged on, the opponents of independence began a mass exodus. In most cases, they left because they feared the consequences of staying on as a political minority or because they simply opposed on principle the new political entity. In some cases, they refused to live as a religious minority under the rule of those practicing another religion. In some cases, they were expelled forcibly. They fled across the frontiers, moving their families to live in the areas controlled by the armies of their political kin. From there, some joined the invading forces and launched cross-border raids. When the fighting ceased, most of the refugees who had fled from the new state were refused permission to return.

The events described above did not transpire in 1947-49, but rather in 1775-1781. The refugees in question were not Arabs, but Tory "Loyalists" who supported the British against the American revolutionists seeking independence. During the American War of Independence, large numbers of Loyalist refugees fled the new country. Estimates of the numbers vary, but perhaps 100,000 refugees left or were expelled, a very significant number given the sparse population of the thirteen colonies.

While there are many differences, there are also many similarities between the plight of the Palestinians and that of the Tory refugees during the first years of American independence. The advocates of Palestinian rights are in fact clearly in the same political bed with King George`s allies who fought against American democracy and independence.

Like all wars of independence, both the Israeli and American wars were in fact civil wars. In both cases, religious sectarianism played an important role in defining the opposing forces, although for Americans, taxation was even more important. (Israelis suffered under abominable taxation only after independence.) Among the causes of the American Revolution was the attempt to establish the Anglican Church, or Church of England, as the official bishopric of the colonies. Anglicans were the largest ethnic group opposing independence in the 1770s, as were Palestinian Muslims in the 1940s, although in both cases, other religious/ethnic groups were also represented in the anti-independence movement.

Those fearing the possibility of being forced to live as minorities under the tyrannical religious supremacy of the Anglicans and Muslims, respectively, formed the forces fighting for independence. The Anglicans and Muslims hoped to establish themselves with the armed support of their co-religionists across the borders. New England was the center of patriotism to a large extent because of the mistrust of the Anglican church by the Puritan and Congregationalist majorities there. The later incorporation of the separation of church and state into the U.S. Constitution was largely motivated by the memory of would-be Anglican dominance.

Among the leaders of the Tory cause were many Anglican parsons, perhaps the most prominent being one Samuel Seabury, the Grand Mufti of the Loyalists.

In both the American and Israeli wars of independence, the anti-independence forces were a divided and heterogeneous population, and for this reason lost the war. In the American colonies, the Tories included not only Anglicans, but other groups &mdash including Indians, Scots, Dutch, and Negroes — who feared for their future living under the rule of the local political majority. Tory sympathy was based on ethnic, commercial, and religious considerations. Where Loyalist sentiment was strong enough, namely in Canada, the war produced a partition, with territories remaining cut off from the newly independent state.

When independence was declared, the populations of the opposing forces were about even in both 18th century America and 20th century Palestine. The exact distribution of pro- and anti-independence forces in the American colonies is not known, but the estimate by John Adams is probably as good a guess as any — namely, one-third patriot, one-third Loyalist, and one-third neutral.

When fighting broke out, civilians were often the first victims in both wars. The Tories formed terrorist units and plundered and raided the territories under patriot control. The southwestern frontier areas of the colonies, like the southwestern border of Palestine, were scenes of particularly bloody terrorism. In South Carolina, the Tory leader Major William Cunningham, known as "Bloody Bill," became the Ahmed Jibril of the struggle, conducting massacres of patriot civilians. Tory and anti-Tory mob violence became common. The historian Thomas Jones documents many cases of Tories burning patriot homes, but claims the patriots seldom did the same.

Terrorist raids were particularly common along the New England coast and up the Delaware River. General Sir Henry Clinton organized many guerilla raids upon patriot territory. Loyalists also launched assassination plots, including an attempt to murder George Washington in New York in 1776. Among the terrorists participating in that plot was the mayor of New York City.

There were Loyalist insurrections against the patriots in every colony. Tory military activity was particularly severe in the Chesapeake, on Long Island, in Delaware, in Maryland, and along the Virginia coast. As violence escalated and spread, the forces of the revolution took countermeasures. Tories were tarred and feathered. Indiscriminate expulsions sometimes took place. Tory areas were sometimes placed under martial rule, with all civil rights, such as habeas corpus and due process, suspended.

Queens County, New York, a Loyalist stronghold, was put under military administration by Continental troops, and the entire population was prohibited from travel without special documents. General Wooster engaged in wholesale incarceration and expulsion of New York Tories. The Continental Congress called for disarming all Loyalists and locking up the "dangerous ones" without trial. New York Loyalists were exiled to Connecticut and other places, and sometimes subject to forced labor.

Loyalists were sometimes kidnapped and held hostage. In some colonies, expressing opposition to the Revolution was grounds for imprisonment. In some colonies, Loyalists were excluded from practicing law and from some other professions. Tories were frequently stripped of all property rights, and had their lands confiscated. In colony after colony, "Acts of Banishment" forced masses of Loyalists to leave their homes and emigrate. The most common destination was the Canadian Maritimes, with others going to the British West Indies, to England, and to Australia.

In both the Israeli and American wars for independence, anti-independence refugees fled the country in order to live in areas under the control of their political allies. Many who opposed independence nevertheless stayed put. After the wars ended, these people generally found the devil was not as bad as they had feared, and were permitted to live as tolerated political minorities with civil rights. (This in spite of the fact that many refused to recognize the legitimacy of the new states, sometimes for decades.)

The colonies/states that had banished Loyalists refused to allow them to return, even after a peace treaty was signed. In most cases, property was never returned. There was fear that returning Tories could act as a sort of fifth column, particularly if the British took it into their heads to attempt another invasion. (Such an invasion took place in 1812.) The newly independent country, like Israel, initially resolved many of its strategic problems through an alliance with France.

The Tory refugees were regarded by all as the problem of Britain. The American patriots allowed small numbers to return. Others attempted to return illegally and were killed. But most languished across the partition lines in eastern British Canada, mainly in what would become Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The refugees would never be granted the "right to return." In most cases, they would never even be granted compensation for property; Benjamin Franklin was among the leading opponents of any such compensation.

At this point, the similarity between the Palestinian refugees and the Tory Loyalists breaks down. The British, unlike the Arabs, did a great deal to settle their refugees, rather than force them into festering camps, and allotted $20 million for their resettlement. The Tory refugees quickly became a non-problem, and never played any subsequent role in British-American relations.

Nevertheless, an interesting thought-experiment might be to imagine what would have occurred had the British done things the Arab way. Tory refugees would have been converted into terrorist cadres and trained by British commandos. They would have begun a ceaseless wave of incursions and invasions of the independent United States, mainly from bases along the Canadian frontier. The British, Hessians and their allies would have launched a global diplomatic campaign for self-determination for the Loyalist Americans. They would have set up an American Liberation Organization (ALO) to hijack whalers and merchant marines and assassinate U.S. diplomats.

Benedict Arnold would have been chosen ALO chairman and would have written the Tory National Charter under the nom de guerre of Abu Albion. The British would have organized underground terrorist cells among the Loyalist population that had not fled. Britain and her empire would have boycotted the new country commercially and pressured others to do the same, asserting that the national rights of the Loyalist people were inalienable and eternal, no matter how many years had passed since the refugees fled. International pressure would have been exerted on the U.S. to give up much of its territory and to internationalize Philadelphia.

For more than fifty years, the position of the American State Department has been that Israel should grant the Palestinian refugees the "right to return," that Israel is liable for the suffering of the refugees and should be responsible for their resettlement. The State Department also thinks the refugees should be represented at Middle East peace talks. The State Department is sympathetic to calls for recognizing the rights of the refugees to self-determination and political expression.

The State Department, in other words, is exhibiting Loyalist Tory sympathies. A large portrait of Benedict Arnold should grace the office of every "Arabist" at Foggy Bottom.

This article was written by Steven Plaut who is a native Philadelphian who teaches business finance and economics at the University of Haifa in Israel. He holds a PhD in economics from Princeton. He is author of the David Horowitz Freedom Center booklets about the Hamas and Jewish Enablers of the War against Israel. The article appeared July 03, 2013 in the Frontpage Magazine and is archived at
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/97456/patriots-refugees-and-right-return-steven-plaut

Abbas decorates Hawatmeh with the Star of Honor medal

Abbas said this about the terror leader:

"Brother Nayef Hawatmeh (head of DFLP) is decorated with the highest order of the Star of Honor in recognition of his important national role in service of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people"

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has awarded the "highest order of the Star of Honor" to arch-terrorist Nayef Hawatmeh. This is a continuation of the policy followed by Abbas and the PA to glorify terrorists responsible for murdering Israelis, as documented by Palestinian Media Watch.

Nayef Hawatmeh is the leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). The DFLP carried out many deadly terror attacks, including the killing of 22 schoolchildren and 4 adults after taking them hostage in Ma'alot, the killing of 9 children and 3 adults in an attack on a school bus, the killing of 7 in a Jerusalem bombing, the killing of 4 hostages in an apartment building in Beit Shean, all of which took place in the 1970's. In addition, the DFLP has participated in and claimed responsibility for dozens of other terror attacks, including a suicide bombing near Tel Aviv that killed 4 in 2003.

Abbas himself signed the PA declaration decorating Hawatmeh with the Star of Honor, which praises Hawatmeh's "efforts to raise the flag of Palestine since the launch of the Palestinian revolution."

Below is the announcement on PA TV News, followed by the ceremony at which Abbas decorated terrorist Hawatmeh with the "Star of Honor":

PA TV newsreader: "President of the State of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas decorated Secretary General of the Democratic Front [for the Liberation of Palestine] Nayef Hawatmeh with the highest order of the Star of Honor."

PA official: "By the authority vested in us, and for the public good, we have decreed the following:

'Brother Nayef Hawatmeh is decorated with the highest order of the Star of Honor in recognition of his important national role in service of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people, and in recognition of his efforts to raise the flag of Palestine since the launch of the Palestinian revolution, through the stages of the ongoing struggle. [Signed by] Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine.'"

After this announcement, Abbas hung a large ribbon with the Star of Honor medal around Hawatmeh's neck. The ceremony was also posted on Abbas' YouTube channel.

Abbas' honoring of terrorist Hawatmeh is the continuation of his policy to glorify terrorists:

• Dec. 2012, Abbas honored 6 terrorists responsible for killing hundreds of Israelis and two American diplomats

• Jan. 2013, Abbas pledged to follow path of 15 terrorists responsible for killing hundreds

• March 2013, Abbas honored murderer of 2 students

• April 2013, Abbas honored planner of attacks that killed dozens

• May 2013, Abbas refused to condemn or dismiss his advisor who glorified murderer, as requested by 5 members of US Congress

See below for all details and texts.

Abbas' granting the Star of Honor to terrorist Hawatmeh, glorifying the murderers of hundreds, rejecting US Congress' demand to condemn terror glorification, as well as having the PA pay high monthly salaries to Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons, reflect one of the significant PA policies today. The international community has conditioned its contacts with and funding of the PA with the demand that it stop encouraging terror. In response, the PA has found a successful way to both "stop encouraging terror" for the international community, while at the same time continuing to promote terror to its own people. Today, the PA rarely calls directly for killing Israelis and Jews, thereby creating the perception of satisfying the technical requirements set by the world community. However, at the same time the PA glorifies terrorists who have already murdered and pays all terrorists in Israeli prisons a monthly salary, thereby sending a clear message to Palestinians of support for terror.

This policy, led by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, is the PA's solution to continue promoting terror, while simultaneously receiving international funding. Ironically, the Western funding of the PA's general budget in fact pays for PA TV, official PA events, and salaries of the many PA civil servants, which are all actively implementing the PA's terror glorification, as well as the salaries for the terrorists themselves in prison. What remains is the absurd situation that the United States, the EU, and the European countries are funding the very terror-supporting activities that they are condemning.

Details of Abbas' terror glorification cited above:

(descriptions of all terrorists follow at the end)

Dec. 2012, Abbas honored 6 terrorists responsible for killing hundreds of Israelis and two American diplomats

In his speech a day before the celebration of Fatah's anniversary, Abbas singled out as Shahids, Martyrs who according to Islam are rewarded in Paradise for their exemplary Islamic behavior, several leaders of terrorist organizations. They included Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, PFLP leader Abu Ali Mustafa, Black September leader Abu Iyad and others responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis.

Jan. 2013, Abbas pledged to follow path of 15 terrorists responsible for killing of hundreds

In his speech on the occasion of Fatah's anniversary, Abbas pledged to follow the path of numerous terrorists, and others responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis. He also mentioned Hitler's ally the Grand Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini, who recruited Muslims to fight with the Nazis in World War II.

March 2013, Abbas honored murderer of 2 students

In March, Abbas sent the Secretary-General of his office, Tayeb Abd Al-Rahim, to honor a terrorist prisoner by visiting his family. In 1984, terrorist Abd Rabbo killed two Israeli university students who were hiking south of Jerusalem. At gun point he tied them up, put bags over their heads and then shot and murdered them. He is currently serving two life sentences for these murders. Abbas sent his representative to speak to the murderer's mother and convey "President Abbas' and the Palestinian leadership's greetings to her." At the meeting, Abbas' official stated that "the best of the Palestinian people's sons are in prison."

April 2013, Abbas honored planner of attacks that killed dozens

Abbas honored another terrorist in April by sending the District Governor of Jenin, Talal Dweikat, to speak on his behalf and glorify arch-terrorist Abu Jihad as "one of the giants and heroes who wrote epics of bravery." Abu Jihad headed Fatah's military wing and planned many deadly Fatah terror attacks. PA and Fatah officials have repeatedly praised Abu Jihad for orchestrating the most lethal attack in Israeli history, the hijacking of a bus and killing of 37 civilians, 12 of them children. The official PA news agency WAFA has credited him with being responsible for the deaths of 125 Israelis.

May 2013, Abbas refused to condemn or dismiss his advisor who glorified murderer, as requested by 5 members of US Congress

Last month, Abbas chose to stand by his advisor's glorification of a murderer who stabbed an Israeli father of five to death in April of this year. Senior PA official and advisor to Abbas, Sultan Abu Al-Einein, praised the killer as "heroic fighter" and added: "Blessings to the breast that nursed Salam Al-Zaghal." Following Palestinian Media Watch's exposure of this terror glorification, five members of US Congress wrote a letter to Abbas demanding he condemn the glorification and remove Abu Al-Einein from office. However, Abbas decided to support his official and defied the Congressmen's request, refusing to remove him from office or even condemn him.

Descriptions of terrorists honored by Abbas:

Abu Jihad (Khalil Al-Wazir) — Founder of Fatah and deputy to Yasser Arafat. He headed the PLO terror organization's military wing and planned many deadly Fatah terror attacks, including the most lethal in Israeli history, the hijacking of a bus and killing of 37 civilians, 12 of them children.

Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf) — Founder of Fatah and head of the terrorist organization Black September. Attacks he planned included the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 and the murder of two American diplomats in Sudan in 1973.

Abu Ali Iyad — He was appointed head of Fatah military operations in 1966, and was responsible for several terror attacks.

Omar Al-Qassem — He led a terror squad that crossed the Jordan River into Israel to carry out a terror attack in 1968. Caught by Israeli soldiers, the squad killed two soldiers.

Abu Ali Mustafa — He was the Secretary-General of the terror organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP planned and carried out numerous terror attacks against Israeli civilians since its founding in 1967 and throughout the Palestinian terror campaign between 2000- 2005 (the Intifada).

Ahmed Yassin — Founder and former head of the terrorist organization Hamas. The Hamas movement is responsible for numerous terror attacks and the deaths of hundreds of Israeli civilians.

Abu Sabri Saidam — Deputy Commander of operations for Fatah's Al-Asifa military unit.

Abu Yusuf Al-Najjar — He was Arafat's deputy, and commander of operations for the terrorist organization Black September.

Saad Sayel - Senior Fatah commander. He led the PLO forces that were based in Lebanon during the early 1980s.

Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rantisi - Co-founder of the terrorist organization Hamas.

Ismail Abu Shanab - He was senior official in the terrorist organization Hamas.

Fathi Shaqaqi - Founder of the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad, which has carried out numerous terrorist attacks, killing hundreds of Israeli civilians

George Habash - founder of the terror organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP planned and carried out numerous terror attacks against Israeli civilians since its founding in 1967 and throughout the Palestinian terror campaign between 2000- 2005 (the Intifada).

Abu Al-Abbas - He headed the terror organization Palestinian Liberation Front. He planned the hijacking of an Italian cruise ship in 1985, in which one passenger was killed.

Haj Muhammad Amin Al-Husseini - Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during the British mandate, and spiritual and political leader of the local Arab population. He strongly opposed Zionism and was behind riots and attacks on Jews. During World War II he actively collaborated with Nazi Germany, meeting Adolf Hitler and recruiting Muslims for the Nazi army.

Sheikh Izz A-Din Al-Qassam - He was an influential Islamic preacher in British Mandate Palestine during the 1930s. He led a Muslim terror group. The terror organization Hamas' military wing is named after him.

Issa Abd Rabbo - He killed two Israeli university students, Ron Levi and Revital Seri, who were hiking south of Jerusalem in 1984. At gun point he tied them up, put bags over their heads and then shot and murdered both. He is serving two life sentences in an Israeli prison.

See more examples on PMW's website of PA Chairman Abbas glorifying terrorists or endorsing his PA officials doing it.

Contact PMW Bulletin at pmw@palwatch.org

Apparently in Europe today, anti-Semitic imagery is becoming increasingly mainstream. This year we have seen a Norwegian paper's crude attack on circumcision as well as the UK's Sunday Times cartoon promoting hate on Holocaust Memorial Day.

Now, Germany's most widely-read broadsheet daily "Suddeutsche Zeitung" has accompanied a review of liberal Jewish American commentator Peter Beinart's book with this cartoon:

The caption beneath translates as:

Germany is serving. For decades now, Israel has been given weapons, and partly free of charge. Israel's enemies think it is a ravenous Moloch. Peter Beinart deplores this situation.

Moloch was a Canaanite and Phoenician deity associated with child sacrifice.

Given the anti-Semitic blood libel against Jews of killing gentile children and the related libel that portrays Israel as a child-killer, the message behind the imagery is impossible to ignore.

That a German newspaper has published this, in light of that country's particular history, makes this all the more outrageous.

Is this further evidence of the demonization of Israel and the Jews in Europe? Read our exclusive interview with Professor Manfred Gerstenfeld, who claims that recent studies suggest that over 150 million Europeans hold a demonic view of Israel.

Following much criticism, the newspaper acknowledged that it would have been better to have used another image but maintained that the cartoon was not anti-Semitic and there had been a "misunderstanding."

Perhaps the misunderstanding is in the newspaper's contention that Israel and Judaism are two unrelated concepts (translated from the German):

Ernst Kahl's horned, hungry monster has nothing to do with anti-Semitic stereotypes. One must look at the picture along with the caption. So, only the enemies of Israel see Israel in a way that is similar to the monster pictured. In addition, the State of Israel is not to be equated with Judaism.

Trying to separate Israel and Zionism from the Jewish people is a tactic employed by those who claim that their anti-Zionism and hatred of Israel cannot possibly be motivated by anti-Semitism be it intentional or not.

In rival German newspaper Die Welt, Henryk Broder writes that there is something even worse at work here. He points out that the cartoon is not a new one. The artist, Ernst Kahl, had neither Israel nor the Jews in mind when he drew it — the cartoon was not commissioned to illustrate anything to do with Israel, the Jews or the Peter Beinart book.

"We didn't go through all of that (Iraq) to come back home and watch you surrender what we fought for happen based on the demented acts of a couple of mad men."

Contact FSM Security at info@familysecuritymatters.org

Secretary of State Kerry has dedicated enormous amounts of time to getting the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table. The last serious negotiations took place toward the end of the Bush administration, and failed when the PLO rejected a remarkable offer from then-prime minister Ehud Olmert. An attempt to get negotiations started was made by the Obama administration on September 1st, 2010, but after a round of talks in Washington things broke down very quickly.

The problem has in my view been the imposition of preconditions by the Palestinian side, including a demand for a total construction freeze in settlements and in Jerusalem. Here the Obama administration deserves mention as well, for its adoption of the demand for a total freeze put PLO chairman and PA president Mahmoud Abbas in a corner: he could not demand less than the Americans, at that point led by George Mitchell and Hillary Clinton, were demanding.

Because neither the Israelis or Palestinians want to get blamed by Mr. Kerry or the United States for blocking talks, Kerry may well "succeed:" that is, he may get talks started. This may not happen at the top level of Abbas and Netanyahu, but serious talks can be held a level or two down.

I put quotation marks around "succeed" because the goal, after all, is not getting them to the table; it is getting an agreement. Some good is done by getting a negotiation started, of course: it may calm the situation in the West Bank for a while-if, and only if, it is accompanied by moves that make life easier there. Here the Kerry efforts on the economic side are a very good adjunct to his diplomatic activities. If talks continue for several months we may get through the UN General Assembly this Fall without a huge Palestinian diplomatic effort against Israel at the UN and other international bodies-especially in UN agencies whose admission of "Palestine" to membership would trigger a freeze on American payments (as has happened in UNESCO).

On the down side, a collapse of talks could create additional tensions. Presumably both sides, and Secretary Kerry, know this and would seek to avoid a sudden collapse if talks do begin.

But what has been and remains mysterious to me is why Mr. Kerry thinks progress will be made on final status issues if and when he manages to get talks started. What's new here that would lead to optimism? All that is new in the region-from tensions between Hamas and Fatah that make concessions tougher for Abbas to troubles inside Likud that pressure Netanyahu against concessions, to the situations in Lebanon and Jordan, the amazing levels of violence in Syria, and the current instability on Egypt-suggests that making peace will be harder, not easier, than in the past when attempts after all failed.

There is a viewpoint that the two sides are "an inch apart" and just a bit of serious negotiating will bridge the gap, but that has always seemed nonsense to me (and I discuss this in detail in my recent book, Tested By Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict). An inch apart on the many Israeli security demands, such as control of the Palestinian air space and electro-magnetic spectrum and of the Jordan Valley? An inch apart on Jerusalem itself, which great numbers of Israelis do not wish to see divided ever again but which most Palestinians demand at least significant parts of as their capital? An inch apart on the "refugee" issue-when Palestinian leaders have never told their own people that there will be no "right of return" and that Palestinian "refugees" will never go to Israel? To the extent that "everyone knows what an agreement would look like," both Israeli and Palestinian leaders and populations have for decades rejected those terms.

One can be an optimist about whether Kerry will be able to get talks started and a pessimist about whether those talks will go anywhere. And that's my view.

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

Former Defense Minister Ehud Barak has secured himself a prestigious post after finding himself outside of the political arena. Yediot Achronot reports Barak is now a special consultant to the Israeli office of Swiss bank Julius Baer Group Ltd. Yediot adds that in early 2012, Julius Baer opened an office in Israel and Barak will help it establish business ties with Israel's wealthiest people.

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. Contact Aryeh Zelasko at zelasko@gmail.com. This article appeared July 03, 2013 in the Yeshiva World News and is archived at
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/175819/barak -become-swiss-banks-man-in-israel.html

Is it just incompetence, or is there something else going on here?

Obama's only real competence, it seems, lies in spying on Americans and imposing new restrictions on their liberty. This fact may be the key to understanding this president. He has shown himself sympathetic toward every anti-American dictator on the planet, warmly embracing Hugo Chavez, lifting travel restrictions to Castro's Cuba, and (when he thought no one could hear him) promising a cozy second term with President Putin.

Obama's love affair with Marxist tyrants has not earned him any favors — not even the return of one globe-trotting traitor. The best he can do is issue a weak protest and direct his new secretary of state to remark that Hong Kong's and Russia's actions in regard to Snowden are really "disappointing." That kind of swagger should make the Chinese and Russian leadership wet their britches.

For his part, Obama has done nothing, perhaps because he is still in thrall of anyone who calls himself a Marxist. The only people he really distrusts are Americans, especially those patriotic Tea Party members who care about their country's future.

Does President Obama really hate the American people that much?

I think he does. He hates America as it is and as it has been, and, as he openly admits, he wants nothing less than to "fundamentally transform America." One does not completely transform a nation into the opposite of what it is unless one hates that nation as it is. That fact explains why Obama has done so little to protect America while doing so much to spy on, disparage, and attack ordinary Americans.

Obama seized on the financial crisis of 2008 as the pretext for passing a sweeping stimulus bill, the Dodd-Frank financial services regulation, and the seriously mislabeled "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." Now, with the help of "extreme weather" coverage on every mainstream news service, he has been ginning up another crisis as the pretext for sweeping regulation of the entire economy. And just last week, in a speech at Georgetown University, he has announced what that regulation will cover.

It will cover just about everything. Every activity that uses energy, or that used energy in its manufacture or requires energy for its maintenance, will be regulated — not by Congress but by the president directly.

That is the strategy behind Obama's new pronouncements on the "social cost" of carbon emissions. As Obama put it in his Georgetown speech, "the costs of these [climate] events can be measured." Nothing could justify the actual cost of Obama's new emissions push, which will raise the cost of electricity along with everything else from cars to refrigerators to new homes. But if the "social cost" of carbon emissions is factored in, suddenly the new guidelines are made to seem affordable.

But what is the "social cost" of carbon? It is the cost of future climate events that "might result" from increased carbon emissions. In fact, no one knows whether there actually will be more extreme weather events — or even what constitutes such an event. Is a cold winter such an event? An abnormally wet spring? An average year, with its share of tornados and wildfires? The truth is that the president is engaging in pure speculation as the basis for policies that will cost hundreds of billions in spending and millions of new jobs.

As Obama himself pointed out at Georgetown, America's carbon emissions are "at the lowest levels in nearly 20 years." Yet, according to the president, it is in precisely in this period ("the last 15 years") that scientists have recorded rising temperatures. The president's science seems a bit confused.

It is all too much like Stalin's fascination with the pseudo-science of Trofim Lysenko. Stalin's faith in Lysenkoism set Soviet agriculture back decades. Yet Lysenko's theories of the heritability of acquired traits became the basis of Soviet agricultural policy — just as the unproven science of global warming has become the basis of American energy policy under Obama.

Lysenkoism ended in disaster for the Soviet Union, and the science of global warming is leading the U.S. and western Europe toward a similar economic disaster. This year, California's Central Valley, which supplies much of America's fresh fruits and vegetables, will receive only 20% of its normal water allocation for fear of harming the Delta smelt. A president with real leadership qualities would suspend the efforts to save the smelt and save the humans instead. But this president is terrified of offending the environmental lobby. In fact, he wants to go farther. Why should farmers have any water at all if the smelt's future is at stake?

It's not difficult to see where the pseudo-science of global warming is taking us. Obama has already declared that, in effect, there shall be no new coal-fired power plants and that at least one third of existing coal-fired plants are to be shuttered in the near future, and all of them eventually in the carbon-free future he dreams of. He is preparing regulations that will make it impossible to produce efficient and economical full-size trucks in the numbers now needed to run our economy. His next step will likely be an assault on our nation's ability to produce shale gas through the safe technology of hydraulic fracturing.

And that's just the beginning of the total makeover that Obama has in mind for America. Did I mention persecution of journalists? Forced unionization of workplaces? Abortion on demand, funded by every employer? Racial discrimination in perpetuity against non-minorities? And environmental regulations as far as the eye can see, affecting every aspect of life?

From the flow per second of your morning shower to the temperature at which you set your thermometer at night, from the car you drive to what you eat, from where and how your children are educated to how you fund your retirement, Obama wants government to control every moment of your existence. Long ago, in a glorious revolution, Americans rejected this sort of tyranny when it was imposed on them by the British Crown. Our only chance now is at the ballot box in 2014 and 2016.

Sergio HaDaR Tezza can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net

As we celebrate our nation's 237th birthday, a crucial facet of American life has all but vanished. We have forsaken, in a systematic and deliberate public manner, one of our most fundamental duties: fostering civic virtue in each and every one of our citizens.

What does it mean to be an American? Politicians in both parties keep pushing to create a new "path to citizenship" for millions of illegal aliens. But if sovereignty and self-preservation still matter in Washington, citizenship must be guarded ferociously against those who would exploit and devalue it at every electoral whim.

The pavers of the amnesty pathway think illusory requirements of paying piddling "fines" and back taxes will inculcate an adequate sense of responsibility and ownership in the American way. Other fair-weather friends of patriotism satisfy themselves with shallow holiday pop quizzes on American history to fulfill the "well-informed" part of the "well-informed citizenry" mandate of our Founding Fathers.

But Thomas Jefferson said it well: "No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice. These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government."

John Adams said it better: "Liberty can no more exist without virtue ... than the body can live and move without a soul."

And Thomas Paine said it best: "When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary."

Civic virtue cannot be purchased with token gestures or passed down in perfect form like a complete set of family china. A life of honor, honesty, integrity, self-improvement and self-discipline is something you strive ever to attain. Being American is a habit of mind, but also a habit of heart and soul. Abraham Lincoln spoke of the "electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world."

Calvin Coolidge, profiled in "Why Coolidge Matters," a terrific new book by Charles C. Johnson, echoed the Founding Fathers' emphasis on virtue, restraint and work ethic. "If people can't support themselves," he concluded, "we'll have to give up self-government."

The failure of public schools to impart even rudimentary knowledge of self-government principles, natural rights theory and the rule of law is compounded by the suicidal abandonment of civic education. As Stanford University education professor William Damon notes: "Our disregard of civic and moral virtue as an educational priority is having a tangible effect on the attitudes, understanding and behavior of large portions of the youth population in the United States today."

Add militant identity politics, a cancerous welfare state, entitled dependence and tens of millions of unassimilated immigrants to the heap, and you have a toxic recipe for what Damon calls "societal decadence — literally, a 'falling away,' from the Latin decadere." Civilizations that disdain virtue die.

Independence Day sparklers will light the skies overhead this July 4th, but George Washington's "sacred fire of liberty" belongs in the breasts of Americans every day of the year.

How to rescue citizenship and civic virtue?

Let's start by sending a message to politicians in the nation's capital who imperil our sovereignty.

Citizenship — good citizenship — is not just a piece of government-issued paper. It is not merely a bureaucratic "status." It's a lifelong practice and propagation of founding principles. A nation of low information is just half the problem. A nation of low character cannot long remain a free nation.

Daily Events is a free e-letter sent every weekday by Senior Writer, John Hayward. It's a snapshot of what's new, now, and worth knowing in politics. Join the hundreds of thousands of news-savvy conservative activists who pride themselves on being in the know. Contact Daily Events at HumanEventsDaily@email.humanevents.com

As we approach Independence Day 2013, this might be a good time to take stock on the American experience: where we are, where we came from, what we are supposed to be and what we have become, collectively, as a country. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that the United States of America has become something other than what our Founders and Framers would have envisioned. In fact, it could be argued that the "old white guys in wigs" would not only be shocked for what we have become, but for our apathy in allowing our country to become what it is.

Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying:

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have."

Today, the United States federal government is so large and so intrusive that it not only employs 4.4 million people, but holds a national debt of over $16.8 trillion dollars. This does not address a $124.6 trillion unfunded liabilities mandate. These numbers appear shocking because they are shocking. And when one takes into consideration that each year the US federal government operates "in the red," even though they glean $2.902 trillion in revenue from various sources (individual income tax being the primary source at $1.359 trillion), one can only conclude that the federal government has taken on the role of the arrogant spendthrift, and one that disavows Benjamin Franklin's sentiment, "When you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty."

But perhaps the whole of our modern American experience can be summed up in the end state of this quote by Thomas Jefferson:

"A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.

Taxation
In the formative days of our Great American Experiment, the Founders and Framers set up a federal government limited in its authority and scope. In fact, in the early days of our Republic the federal government operated almost completely on revenues gleaned from tariffs and trade. It wasn't until the 19th Century that the "income tax" would come to be and even then, until the passage of the 19th Amendment, the constitutionality of the income tax was held in question.

Today, thanks to an inequitable tax system — the Progressive tax system — we have a populace that is purposefully divided into factions: one that pays federal taxes, another that avoids paying federal taxes, and yet another that believes the taxes collected are due them. In a land where everyone is supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law (read: government), we have allowed those who we elect to office to literally create a class system, through which they manipulate the citizenry for political gain and the retention of power.

Religion
To say that the United States of America was founded on deep-rooted desire for the individual to be free to practice the religion of his or her choosing is to understate the importance of the issue. Truth be told, the issue of religious freedom delivered pilgrims to American shores centuries before. The Founders and Framers, being deeply reverent men — much to the opposite of claims by the secularists of today — understood all too well the importance of not only freedom of religion (the natural law right to worship in the dogma of choice) but the idea of recognizing something larger than self where government was concerned. As our founding documents — the Charters of Freedom — are predicated on the understanding and acknowledgment of Natural Law (the acknowledgement of a Higher Power), it is only the intellectually dishonest who argue religion did not (and does not) play a significant role in the government of our Republic.

To wit, The Declaration of Independence states:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."

Yet, today, military chaplains are forbidden from even displaying a Bible on their government issued desks for the ignorance of history served up at the hands of Progressive and secular activists.

Today, because of an activist Judicial Branch (and at the urging of Progressive and secular activists), the innocent notion of a separation of Church and State, which in its original intent was meant to reassure one denomination that another would not be placed above it in an establishment of a "national religion," i.e. the Church of England, has been grotesquely distorted to require the ever-increasing banishment of all religious symbols from the public square. And at the same time, the federal government — in the form of ever-expanding entitlements — seeks to replace the Creator as the Alpha and the Omega for the American citizenry.

Law
At our country's inception, the Judiciary — the Judicial Branch and all federal courts in its charge — was to administer federal law in the context of constitutionality. Was it constitutional or what is not? Or was the question reserved for the States and the judiciaries of those States, per the 10th Amendment?

Today, our entire legal system -federal as well as the lessers — is held hostage to a system of precedent law; Stare decisis et non quieta movere, a Latin term meaning "to stand by decisions and not disturb the undisturbed." This is understood to mean that courts should abide by decided precedent and not disturb settled matters, regardless of whether the decision was born of activism. If the judiciary produced judgments and opinions that had fidelity to the Constitution — as the Constitution mandates, then the notion of stare decisis would be a good thing. But those who serve in the Judiciary are equally subject to human intellectual infirmities as are those who serve in the Executive and Legislative Branches. Truth is, one decision based on ideologically; one activist decision, forever moves law away from the Constitution.

As Steven G. Calabresi, a professor of law at Northwestern University School of Law and a visiting professor at Brown University, opined in a paper titled, Text vs. Precedent in Constitutional Law, published the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy:

The argument...is that the doctrinalists are wrong in arguing for a strong theory of stare decisis for three reasons. First, there is nothing in the text, history, or original meaning of the Constitution that supports the doctrinalists' strong theory of stare decisis. Second, the actual practice of the US Supreme Court is to not follow precedent, especially in important cases. In other words, precedent itself counsels against following precedent. And, third, a strong theory of stare decisis is a bad idea for policy reasons...

Both textualism and originalism supply arguments as to why following precedent is wrong. As for the text, it is striking that there is not a word in the Constitution that says in any way that precedent trumps the text."

Yet, decisions on issues from voting rights to life-ending procedures, social issues to mandatory health insurance are continuously based on precedent law, or stare decisis. And with each decision that bows to stare decisis, we move further away from fidelity to the Constitution.

Self-Reliance
At the founding of our nation, our citizenry was comprised on those who wanted the freedom to build, to create, to glean the benefits of their labors based on the effort with which they sought success. Pride was not the product of artificially installed self-esteem, but a humble condition of dignity, arrived at through determination, education — sometimes, or most times autodidactic — and perseverance. The United States was a nation of strong individuals, determined to embrace the freedom — the liberty, that the New World afforded them; a nation of people with a commonality based on self-reliance and a brotherhood born of the love of liberty and justice for all, not just the oligarchic few.

Today, our country has devolved into a socialistic nanny-state, complete with an entitlement faction that will very soon not only outnumber Ayn Rand'' "producers" but a faction that celebrates its gluttony; its piggish appetite for entitlement, even as they scheme to avoid the responsibility of maintaining the Republic; even as they demand more from a government whose seemingly sole purpose is to concoct new ways to extract wealth from those who produce. Today, 47% of the nation's people do not pay federal income taxes. Today, 23 million households are dependent on food stamps. Today, nearly 49 percent of the citizenry lives in a household where at least one member receives a direct benefit from the federal government.

That those duly elected to office exploit this societal malady for purposes of maintaining power is tantamount to a betrayal of the very principles held by those who gifted us the exquisite beauty of liberty. I wonder, if the Founders and Framers could confront the elitist oligarchs of today's American ruling class, would they be strong enough to do so with temperance?

On this, the 237th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence, we would be wise to self-examine our national condition. Do we really want to be a nanny-state? Do we really want to admire a legal system that moves further away for the very basis for our freedom with each decision? Do we really want to support a government that increasingly steals from the producers to give to the dependent class of their own creation, and for purely ideological and politically motivated purposes? Do we want to be a nation that stands arrogantly in its belief that We the People — or They the Government — are the highest power to which we must answer, therefore abandoning our God-given right to acknowledge Natural Law?

In 1964, future president Ronald Reagan gave a speech titled, A Time for Choosing, in which he said:

We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right...

"You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done."

Today, my fellow Americans is Independence Day. Please, think about it.

Frank Salvato is the Executive Director for BasicsProject.org, a non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy and the threats of Islamic jihadism and Progressive neo-Marxism. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His organization, BasicsProject.org, partnered in producing the original national symposium series addressing the root causes of radical Islamist terrorism. He also serves as the managing editor for The New Media Journal. Mr. Salvato's opinion and analysis have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times, Accuracy in Media, Human Events, and are syndicated nationally. He can be contacted at contact@newmediajournal.us.

Curiously, a massive wave of anti-Obama sentiment in Egypt has been utterly ignored by vintage media, even though the protests may be the largest in all of human history.

Consider the dichotomy: Obama 2011: Mubarak Must Go; Obama Today: 'It's not our job to choose who Egypt's leaders are'.

See more photos at:

http://drudgegae.iavian.net/r?hop=http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2013/07/15-photos- from-tahrir-square-protests.html

Contact ARNYBARNIE at ARNYBARNIE@aol.com

Egypt's military on Wednesday ousted Mohamed Morsi, the nation's first freely elected president, suspending the Constitution, installing an interim government and insisting it was responding to the millions of Egyptians who had opposed the Islamist agenda of Mr. Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood.

The military intervention, which Mr. Morsi rejected, marked a tumultuous new phase in the politics of modern Egypt, where Mr. Morsi's autocratic predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, was overthrown in a 2011 revolution. The intervention raised questions about whether that revolution would fulfill its promise to build a new democracy at the heart of the Arab world. The defiance of Mr. Morsi and his Brotherhood allies raised the specter of the bloody years of the 1990s when fringe Islamist groups used violence in an effort to overthrow the military government.

In an announcement read on state television, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the Egyptian defense minister, said the military had taken the extraordinary steps not to seize power for itself but to ensure that, "Confidence and stability are secured for the people." Under a "road map" for a post-Morsi government, the general said, the Constitution would be suspended, the head of the Constitutional Court would become acting president and plans would be expedited for new elections while an interim government is in charge.

The general, who had issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Mr. Morsi on Monday to respond to what he called widespread anger over his administration's troubled one-year-old tenure, said the president's defiant response in a televised address on Tuesday had failed "to meet the demands of the masses of the people."

The general's announcement came after the armed forces had deployed tanks and troops in Cairo and other cities where pro-Morsi crowds were massing, restricted Mr. Morsi's movements and convened an emergency meeting of top civilian and religious leaders to devise the details of how the interim government and new elections would proceed.

Ahram Online, the government's official English-language Web site, said the military had informed Mr. Morsi that he was no longer head of state. There was no word on Mr. Morsi's whereabouts. But in a statement e-mailed by his office, Mr. Morsi rejected the military's intervention. "Dr. Mohamed Morsi, the president of the Arab Republic of Egypt, emphasizes that the measures taken by the General Command of the armed forces represent a complete military coup which is categorically rejected by all the free of the country who have struggled so that Egypt turns into a civil democratic society," his statement said.

"His Excellency the president, as the President of the Republic and the Chief Commander of the Armed Forces stresses that all citizens, civilians and in the military, leaders and soldiers, must commit to the constitution and the law and to not respond to this coup that sets Egypt back and to maintain peacefulness in their performance and to avoid being involved in the blood of the people of the homeland. Everybody must shoulder their responsibilities before God and then before the people and history. "

The military had signaled early in the day that it intended to depose Mr. Morsi. By 6:30 p.m. military forces began moving around Cairo. Tanks and troops headed for the presidential palace — although it was unclear whether Mr. Morsi was inside — while other soldiers ringed the nearby square where tens of thousands of the president's supporters were rallying.

Many of the Islamists had armed themselves with makeshift clubs, shields made of pot covers or metal scraps and plastic hard hats, and there were small scuffles with the better-armed soldiers. Some soldiers fired their weapons in the air. But the military forces held back. Soldiers also were seen erecting barbed-wire fences and barriers around a barracks were President Morsi may have been working. Mr. Morsi's senior foreign policy adviser, Essam el-Haddad, issued an open letter on his Web page lamenting what he called a military coup.

Security officials said the military's intelligence service had banned any travel by President Morsi and senior Islamist aides, including the Muslim Brotherhood's supreme guide, Mohamed Badie, and his influential deputy, Khairat el-Shater. Gehad el-Haddad, a Brotherhood spokesman, vowed that the group would not bend in its defiance of the military. "The only plan," he said in a statement posted online, "is to stand in front of the tanks."

The Obama administration, which has been watching the crisis with increased worry, reiterated that it had taken no sides and hoped for a peaceful outcome. "We do, of course, remain very concerned about what we're seeing on the ground," a State Department spokeswoman, Jennifer R. Psaki, told reporters a daily briefing. "And we do realize, of course, that is an extremely tense and fast-moving situation in Egypt."

The escalating tensions between Mr. Morsi's Islamist supporters and their opponents continued to spur street violence overnight. Egyptian officials said at least 18 people had died and more than 300 were injured in fighting near an Islamist rally in support of Mr. Morsi near Cairo University. State media reported that the dead included victims from both sides and that most died of gunshot wounds.

Even before the military deadline expired, there were signs of a new crackdown on Mr. Morsi's allies in the Muslim Brotherhood. Police officials said Wednesday that they had arrested six bodyguards protecting the Brotherhood's spiritual leader. The police initially reported that more than 40 Islamists were wounded by birdshot, and Islamist witnesses later said that the police had begun shooting at them as well. But after the initial attack, the Islamists began lashing out and beating people suspected of being assailants. Opponents of the Islamists said they too were shooting as the fighting continued through the night.

By morning, the area around Cairo University was filled with burned cars, smoldering piles of garbage, makeshift barricades, and torn textbook pages in English, French and German. Campaign posters from last year's historic presidential election still hung on the walls. A few hundred Islamists and a smaller crowd of their opponents clustered in opposing camps, both sides armed with clubs and sticks. A sign hung by Mr. Morsi's supporters declared: "To the coup supporters, our blood will haunt you, and you will pay an expensive price for every spilled drop of our blood."

The military posting quoted General el-Sisi as saying, "It was more honorable for us to die than to have the people of Egypt terrorized or threatened." Brotherhood leaders have sounded increasingly alienated and determined to fight. "Everybody abandoned us, without exception," Mohamed el-Beltagy, a senior Brotherhood leader, declared in a statement posted Tuesday on the Internet. "The police looks like it's assigned to protect one group of protesters and not the other," he wrote, "and maybe instead of blaming the thugs they will shortly accuse our supporters of assaulting themselves in addition to their alleged assault on the opposition.

Contact Israel Commentary at israelcommentary@comcast.net

Now that the Egyptian military appears to have granted the nation's wish to be rid of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, as millions have been chanting, "Irhal" ["Leave office"] — al-Qaeda appears to have stepped in.

Hours before Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was sidelined by the military council, Muhammad al-Zawahiri, Egypt's al-Qaeda leader, declared that the terrorist organization would wage a jihad to save Morsi and his Islamist agenda for Egypt. (They would not be the first Islamic terrorists to come to his aid; Hamas members were earlier arrested from inside Muslim Brotherhood headquarters, where they opened fire on protesters.)

According to a July 2 Veto Gate report, "al-Qaeda, under the leadership of Muhammad Zawahiri, is currently planning reprisal operations by which to attack the army and the Morsi-opposition all around the Republic [of Egypt]." The report adds that, hours before this information was ascertained, Zawahiri had been arrested and was being interrogated only to be ordered released by a presidential order. He has since fled to the Sinai, where al-Qaeda is stationed — not to mention where Morsi had reportedly earlier summoned thousands of foreign jihadis to come to his aid whenever necessary, and where he may even have smuggled Muhammad Zawahiri's brother, Ayman Zawahiri—al-Qaeda's supreme leader.

In another report, Muhammad Zawahiri "offered joy to our Muslim Brothers in Egypt, for in all circumstances, we will not lose, Allah willing — quite the contrary." He added that "if matters reach a confrontation, then to be sure, that is in our favor — for we have nothing to lose. And at all times and places where chaos reigns, it's often to the jihad's advantage." Zawahiri concluded by saying that even if many and important jihadis and Islamists are arrested, it matters not, "for we sold our souls to Allah" — a reference to Koranic verses like 9:111 — "and welcome the opportunity to fight to the death."

In the context of all these threats, many Egyptians are understandably worried. Right before the military intervened, a Tahrir TV host frantically and repeatedly called Morsi a "murderer," and the Brotherhood, a "gang of murderers," adding, "Oh Minister of Defense — move! Move! Move and save the country! There is no time!" This may also explain why so many leading Islamists — including Morsi himself — have been arrested and held by the military, on the charge of inciting Muslims against anti-Morsi demonstrators, by portraying them as "apostates" who must be fought and killed for are trying to resist the implementation of the Sharia of Allah.

They may also be being held as hostages to dissuade al-Qaeda from waging an all-out jihad, as many of those arrested — Safwat Hegazy, Hazim Abu Ismail, Tarek al-Zomor, Khaled Abdullah — are open friends of Muhammad Zawahiri.

On the other hand, although the Brotherhood has been portrayed in the U.S. as "just another" political party — or, in the mystifying words of James Clapper, Obama's director of national intelligence, "largely secular," which is the last thing it is — it is folly to think that Morsi, the Brotherhood, and all their Islamist and jihadi allies are going to go peacefully.

Now that the Islamists have tasted power — Salafis, Muslim Brotherhood, or al-Qaeda — it is unlikely that they will quietly release the reins of power without a fight. History has proven that many jihadis never give up — unless they are in prison or dead. And as Egyptian al-Qaeda leader Muhammad Zawahiri pointed out, not only have they long been inured to sufferings and deprivations — they have nothing to lose.

Raymond Ibrahim is author of the new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (published by Regnery in cooperation with Gatestone Institute, 2013). A Middle East and Islam expert, he is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, associate fellow at the Middle East Forum, and author of The Al Qaeda Reader. Contact Raymond Ibrahim at Raymond@RaymondIbrahim.com. This article appeared July 04, 2013 in the Gatestone Institute International Policy Council and is archived at http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3812/al-qaeda-jihad-morsi-egypt

Moshe Feiglin

If Egypt is any example, Israel must immediately remove Israel's Army Radio from the control of the IDF, said MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud). Feiglin made the comments after the Egyptian Army threatened to remove President Mohammed Morsi of Egypt at the beginning of the week, a threat they eventually made good on.

Regardless of one's opinion of Morsi, it was clear that in a democracy the army needed to have its powers limited, Feiglin said — and that included transferring communications to civilian control.

"The existence of Army Radio is a major problem," Feiglin said during a discussion of the Knesset Economics Committee at the beginning of the week on allowing Army Radio to broadcast advertisements.

"The army has no business managing a private-sector information source, because such a situation can lead to a takeover of the civilian government by the army," as happened in Egypt, Feiglin said. According to Feiglin, the first thing an army does is take over the means of communications — which also occurred in Egypt, when the army shut down radio and TV stations sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood.

"There is no room for this kind of situation in a democracy," he added. If the IDF still wanted input into the station, he said, it could transfer ownership of Army Radio to a group of retired officers — who were now civilians.

Israel's Army Radio, which began broadcasts in 1950 during the War of Independence, has special programs geared to soldiers in addition to other broadcasts and may be listened to 24 hours a day reaching every part of Israel. It has been criticized heavily by the right for a leftist stance of a good number of its broadcasters.

Contact Jewish Leadership at shelli@manhigut.org

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The latest chapter in the Egyptian Revolution is being celebrated by many as another victory for democracy and freedom. However, it is nothing more than a return to the military dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Egypt's troubles may only be beginning.

The Egyptian army's announcement of an ultimatum "to heed the will of the people" in retrospect said it all. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Minister of Defense appointed by the democratically-elected president he was about to ouster, talked about "the will of the people" in the typical manner of dictators, as if the people were united. In fact, the people were deeply divided between an opposition that wanted President Mohamed Morsi's head and his supporters who believed that the first president in Egypt's history to be elected in free elections should be allowed to remain for the full four years in office, as stipulated by the constitution. This constitution, they argued, was supported by 63 percent of voters in a national referendum.

The army's moves on the ground clearly showed that it sided completely with the opposition. All of their demands were met and more: Morsi was ousted and placed under arrest, the constitution was suspended, a government that included the military was set to take over, and new presidential and parliamentary elections were called for the distant future. Just to make sure, the military refrained from committing itself to any timetable.

The clearest indication that Egypt is moving back in time — restoring what the Egyptians call "the deep state" that prevailed under Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak — was the decision to replace the ousted democratically-elected president with the President of the Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour. Mansour's bio reveals that he started his legal career in the legislative section in the President's Office under Gamal Abdel Nasser, showing clearly that he is not the man that will allow any moves to restore democracy.

Ironically, the same upper-middle class youth who ousted former president Hosni Mubarak were now instrumental in the comeback of Mubarak's Egypt. The same youth who just a year ago shouted "down with the military" and were used by Morsi in his confrontation with the army, were now equally used by the military and others in the "deep state" to bring themselves back to power. The military lost power to Morsi after ruling Egypt ineptly for eighteen months in the aftermath of Mubarak's ouster. Just one year later they find themselves back on top.

The youth, the military, and the United States should have been wiser. They should have allowed Morsi his full term in office to fail. At that point, a weak president ruling over an even weaker state might have been pressured to hold democratic elections once again. Washington could have placed pressure on the Egyptian government to hold free elections in such a situation, reminding Morsi that an American withdrawal of financial and technological aid could cause Egypt to collapse. The Muslim Brotherhood, in the biggest and most important Arab state, would have then been elected out of office. This would have delivered a clear message throughout the Arab world that politics is about electing people who are armed with policies needed to address society's pressing problems, not with guns and other modes of suppression. The focus on the highly contentious issues of religious and national identity would have given way to an emphasis on the pragmatics of enhancing human welfare and citizen rights.

Instead, the bitter adherents of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Salafist groups (and at a later stage the youth in Tamarod once they realize that they were wronged again) might learn an entirely different lesson, an ominous one played out in other revolutions: the beheading of potential counter-revolutionaries in a manner they themselves refrained from doing after Mubarak's ouster. Despite the fireworks and roars of Egypt's opposition as Mubarak's military took over the reins of power, Egypt's trials and tribulations are hardly over. They might only be unfolding.

The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (also known by its acronym, the BESA Center) advances a realist, conservative, and Zionist agenda in the search for security and peace for Israel. The center conducts policy-relevant research on strategic subjects, particularly as they relate to the national security and foreign policy of Israel and Middle East regional affairs. BESA Center publications and policy recommendations are directed at senior Israeli decision-makers in military and civilian life, the defense and foreign affairs establishments in Israel and abroad, the diplomatic corps, the press, the academic community, leaders of Jewish communities around the world, and the educated public. Contact BESA at besa.center@mail.biu.ac.il

A recent revelation claiming that Israel had supplied high-tech weapons to Pakistan has caused a flutter. Although vehemently denied by the governments of Israel and Pakistan, the fact that the United Kingdom's department for business, innovation and skills, which assesses export licences, had listed Pakistan as one of the destinations to which Israel exported arms with British components in 2010 and 2011 has generated bewilderment.

As Israel's single largest customer buying up to 50 per cent of its total weapons exports, India has reasons to be anxious if the allegations are true. The items mentioned by the British as transfers from Israel to Pakistan include electronic warfare suites, radar and optical target acquisition systems and aero engines.

Such sophisticated equipment could retrofit Pakistan's American heavy Air Force capacities and enhance its conventional fighting power against India.

If one were to extrapolate further (and the unpredictable history of Israeli military diplomacy does permit peregrinations), what if there were direct sales of other military hardware from Israel to Pakistan without the "third party" route involving British components? It would be a sacrilege from the Indian point of view if Pakistan clandestinely received, say, Israeli weapons that neutralize Israeli materiel which India uses to secure its porous border with Pakistan.

As an Islamic Republic that does not recognise Israel, Pakistan could be interpreted as pulling a fast one on the whole world if the details of defence dealing contained in the British records are true. The former Pakistani dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, had always shown a pragmatic streak in wanting to open channels with Israel.

In 2012, much after he relinquished power, he gave an interview to Haaretz explaining why Israel and Pakistan must cooperate.

Albeit such candour would be anathema to anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli Islamist zealots in Pakistan, Musharraf argued that an Israel-Pakistan rapprochement would help Islamabad counterbalance New Delhi.

"Israel has always been pro-India against Pakistan advising them (Indians) and cooperating on intelligence, which is a very big deal. Pakistan adjusting its stance towards Israel has the advantage of possibly breaking those anti-Pakistan activities."

In a cloak and dagger world, the motives of Pakistan to try and court Israel are obvious. But why, if the British government's report is accurate, would Israel want to jeopardise its business and political relationship with its No. 1 client, India?

Analysts have come up with varied rationales. One is that Israel may be subtly sending India a warning not to cosy up to Iran by demonstrating that Tel Aviv can hold the hand offered by the opportunistic military top brass in Rawalpindi.

A related speculation is that since Pakistan is a Sunni majority country at odds with Iran on the question of protecting Shia minorities, Israel is conveying a hint to Tehran that it could be surprised by its eastern neighbour, Islamabad.

Iran's official Press TV has closely followed the revelations of Israel arming Pakistan, indicating that there is great interest in Tehran about what exactly happened with those British arms component sales.

Researchers have documented a pattern in Israeli defence diplomacy to arm governments that can check the activities of Iran and its allied militias. In 2009, the then Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman visited nu­merous African nations with defence contractors in tow and called for closer ties "in view of efforts by countries like Iran to influence them (Africans) and establish themselves there".

But can Pakistan realistically be a means for Israel to apply pressure on Iran? Despite the helping of anti-Iranian guerrilla groups like Jundullah by Pakistan, the notion seems far fetched that Pakistan can be a means to undermine Iran.

Where Israel is accused of secretly exporting weapons to Sunni Arab countries like Egypt and the UAE, it is obvious that the strategic motive is to contain Iran. The Daily Telegraph quotes an Israeli security expert, Yiftah Shapir, as saying: "These reports (of Israel arming Arab states, including those which do not officially accept the right of Israel to exist) do not surprise me there is now much more direct arms sales between Israel and the Gulf states, as we now see ourselves as being on the same side against Iran."

Yet, Pakistan is an immediate neighbour of Iran and the antagonism that the Sunni Arab states have towards Iran is not quite matched by Pakistan. The Islamabad Tehran relationship is more nuanced than an outright sectarian lens would imply.

The other line of guesswork on the supposed backdoor military relationship between Israel and Pakistan is the purely commercial one. While no sane arms exporter would play to lose its main customer, that is India, there could be a diversification strategy in Israel to sell to more countries in order to have flexibility with prices. No manufacturer likes a market structure that is a monopsony (where there is only one main buyer).

Linked to this are bu­reaucratic turf wars within Israel between the foreign ministry and the defence ministry, on who to export weapons to and why. We got a glimpse of this mess when Israel's state comptroller held the defence ministry's director general, Udi Shani, responsible for violating export laws by approving foreign arms deals to three unnamed countries "despite opposition from the foreign ministry". The same Udi Shani is on record commenting that arms exports are "the most lucrative industry for the state of Israel".

We may never know if Israel indeed went to Pakistan to earn extra bucks, or if some unknown saboteurs intent on sowing doubts in the India Israel equation deliberately marked weapons not shipped by the state of Israel to Pakistan as official sales.

This is a delicate time for reassuring New Delhi that not much (if any) Israeli weaponry has reached Islamabad. In the past, Israel was forced by the US to stop supplying defence wares to China. India has the market power visavis Israel to seek similar guarantees visavis Pakistan.

Yet, the murky nature of the international arms trade should alert us to the reality that anything can happen. The key for India is to maintain mutually beneficial ties with Israel while gauging, via classified and open source intelligence, the decision-making calculus which informs Israel's military diplomacy.

Ted Belman is a Canadian lawyer and editor of the IsraPundit.com website, an activist pro-Israel website. He now lives in Jerusalem. Contact him at tedbel@rogers.com

Dear Friends,

As a Jew who was born and grew up in America, I have always appreciated July 4th for the blessings that the United States has bestowed upon her Jewish residents. In 1776, there were less than 2,000 Jews in the 13 colonies and because over the next two centuries America ensured liberty and justice for all, that number has grown to several million today. July 4th is therefore a day when Jewish Americans demonstrate our deep love for the USA.

For the past 64 years ago, Jews worldwide have had another reason to thank the United States, and that is her strong support for the State of Israel. America was the first country to recognize the Jewish State in 1948 and since that day, the United States has blessed Israel greatly. Many religious Jews and Christians believe that America's prosperity stems from its support for Israel as the literal outcome of God's promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, "I will bless those who bless you." Yet, there are very strong forces today who are working hard to undermine American support for Israel.

Last month, we conducted a survey and more than half of all respondents requested that we provide more news from Israel. You asked and we listened! Over the past several weeks our staff has worked tirelessly to develop a new website and email newsletter called "Breaking Israel News." Our slant is neither liberal or conservative — just Biblical. We will report the latest news from the Holy Land with the view that the headlines each day from Jerusalem represent the fulfillment of Biblical prophesy and God's promises. Each week we will take a poll to let you weigh in on various questions regarding Israel's role in the world and our first poll question is, "Do you believe that America's prosperity arises from the USA's support for Israel?"

My personal quest and our mission statement at Israel365 is to promote the Biblical significance of Israel and I hope that "Breaking Israel News" furthers this vital interest. A news site is an expensive undertaking and if you join me and think our goal is worthwhile, please contribute to our efforts and in appreciation of your donation, you will receive a pin bearing the US and Israeli flags so you can proudly show your support for the two countries you love. What better way to celebrate July 4th?

Finally, I'd like to thank the staff of Israel365 who has dedicated so much extra time these past few weeks preparing for the launch of "Breaking Israel News." Today, we took a fun break to enjoy a July 4th-Israeli-Style-BBQ and I'd like to introduce you to the team.

From left to right: Avi Staiman (Breaking Israel News editor), Avery Ratz (data manager), myself, Ayal Kellman (Director of Operations), Lorien Tova Balofsky (Art Director), Aliza Abrahamowitz (writer) and Simone Sommers (bookkeeper). Not pictured are Jillian Ezekiel (office manager), Tzippora Shechter (graphic designer) and Ahuva Balofsky (writer). They all join me in wishing you a happy 4th of July.

Shalom from Israel,

Rabbi Tuly Weisz

Contact Rabbi Tuly at rabbituly@israel365.com

It's been rather amazing to witness:

The enormous crowds of millions and millions in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Egypt — some say this was the biggest demonstration in history. Filled with fury at Morsi and his regime. Close to 50 people died in the violence that ensued with those demonstrations.

And then, when the army moved in, the way in which the rage turned to cheers of jubilation, partying and the setting off of fireworks.

The will of the people seems clear here (although I qualify this, just as bit, for there are many more millions who were not in the street than the several million who were.)

It took one year for Morsi to be undone.

The claim on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood is that they are victims of an illegal coup that has overturned a democratically elected government. But the reality is that, while there were elections, once Morsi was in office, he moved to strengthen the Brotherhood in all aspects of the government — ignoring urgent needs of the nation and establishing a very repressive regime. It was repressive with regard to political enemies, but most specifically and horrendously so with regard to the Coptic Christians.

To refer to what went on in the Morsi administration as "democratic" would be stretching it more than a bit.

~~~~~~~~~~

At present, the UN and the international community more broadly are shying away from use of the term "coup," which implies illegitimacy. For it seems clear that what has taken place is what the people want.

What must be watched carefully is what will happen with regard to funding of Egypt, primarily by the US, but also by other nations and the EU. The country is on the brink of financial collapse.

~~~~~~~~~~

Morsi — who is being held in a military compound along with key Brotherhood leaders — was overthrown yesterday after he refused military demands that he share power. He made statements about preferring to die rather than compromise when he had been democratically elected.

Countering this, senior armed forces commanders took an oath:.

"We swear to God that we will sacrifice our blood for Egypt and its people against all terrorists, extremists and the ignorant,"

That's quite an oath. The military means business.

~~~~~~~~~~

Defense Minister and military chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi — who led the oath — announced that the constitution that had been passed by Morsi's Islamist allies in December would be frozen for up to 12 months, giving time for a new one to be drawn up and passed by referendum. This constitutional change is slated to take place before presidential and parliamentary elections are held. Presumably, the constitution will govern the form of those elections. Precisely who will draft this new constitution is not clear.

In any event, presidential elections will be held earlier than had been scheduled under the Morsi regime; in the interim, the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly al-Mansour, will lead the nation, joined by a military figure.

Al-Mansour had just been sworn in as head of the Supreme Constitutional Court days before al-Sisi appointed him. He is a virtual political unknown, although, according to Israel Hayom, former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter said Mansour was "Mubarak's man in Saudi Arabia."

Egyptian military jets — demonstrating full military support — flew in formation as al-Mansour took his vows.

~~~~~~~~~~

When al-Sisi made his announcement on state television, opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei (pictured below) sat with him. Elbaradei, an attorney, was IAEA Director General from 1997 to 2009.

Also present were Dr. Ahmed el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of al-Azhar (Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning), and Coptic Pope Tawadros II. Their presence was designed to demonstrate civilian support for the military action. But it also set a new tone in terms of non-Islamist participation — and most dramatically with regard to the Coptic Church.

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/egypt-army-topples-morsy

~~~~~~~~~~

The Egyptian street is quiet now and the army is clearly in control. It has deployed wherever there was concern about unrest. This refers mainly to Brotherhood strongholds, but includes, for example, the border between the Sinai and Gaza (to preclude Hamas infiltration and involvement),

~~~~~~~~~~

The Brotherhood is down. The question is whether they are out. To hear them tell it, they are not. It remains to be seen.

Properly, Israel, while watching the situation very closely as it unfolds, is making no comment about what is happening in Egypt. That does not mean there are no opinions in the government, of course.

As Israel Hayom explained it:

"For Israel, a leadership made up of military generals, who understand the importance of preserving good relations with the U.S., is more approachable than a leadership with religious leanings." More precisely: radical, fundamental religious leanings.

~~~~~~~~~~

From where I sit, the current situation offers the possibility of a considerable improvement over the Brotherhood regime. I'm delighted to see its failure.

The military tilts in a more westward direction and is far more likely to honor the peace treaty with Israel. What is more, this should cut Brotherhood support for Hamas, have an effect on what goes on in the Sinai (with regard to controlling terrorist elements there), and possibly have a dampening effect on Brotherhood efforts in other places. (Some are already speaking about the domino effect of the Brotherhood coming down in Egypt, but I think it's too soon for such presumptions.)

AlBaradei's name is being advanced as a candidate for president down the road. The man was a headache when he headed the IAEA, and he certainly is no friend to Israel. But neither is he Muslim Brotherhood — sworn to Israel's destruction and a world-wide caliphate.

Another name being bandied about is that of Amr Moussa who served as secretary general of the Arab League. Definitely not a friend of Israel.

The point is that we're not going to see crowds dancing in Tahrir Square with Israeli flags any time soon. We'll have to take what we can get. Mubarak was not a great lover of Israel either, but we were able to reach an accommodation with him.

~~~~~~~~~~

A major issue that remains to be played out is whether the military will step back enough to allow for some genuine democratic process, or if it will revert to the control that constituted Egypt from Nasser through Mubarak. Mubarak's regime was a repressive military regime; he went down when the army abandoned him.

The benefit to the nation right now of such a military regime, with all of its negative aspects, is that it can confer stability. One of the greatest worries in Egypt now is the specter of on-going chaos, which would render the country literally ungovernable. As it is already on the verge of bankruptcy, only strong management can bring it around. A situation in which millions of people are without enough to eat is unthinkable, but it must be thought.

It is in this sense that the possibility of destabilization by the Brotherhood is particularly worrisome.

~~~~~~~~~~

One thing can be said with reasonable certainty: Although his situation is not exactly good, we can assume that Mubarak had a good laugh yesterday.

~~~~~~~~~~

See Daniel Pipes on "Delight and worry about Egypt" (emphasis added):

"Delight is easy to explain. What appears to have been the largest political demonstration in history uprooted the arrogant Islamists of Egypt who ruled with near-total disregard for anything other than consolidating their own power. Islamism, the drive to apply a medieval Islamic law and the only vibrant radical utopian movement in the world today, experienced an unprecedented repudiation. Egyptians showed an inspiring spirit.

"If it took 18 days to overthrow Hosni Mubarak in 2011, just four were needed to overthrow Morsi this past week...

"My worry is more complex. The historical record shows that the thrall of radical utopianism endures until calamity sets in.

"In the case of Islamism, this...process has already begun...

"But I fear that the quick military removal of the Muslim Brotherhood government will exonerate Islamists...

"In short, my joy at Morsi's departure is more than offset by my concern that the lessons of his misrule will not be learned..."

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=4867

~~~~~~~~~~

And then, Dan Margalit, writing about "Obama's hope of a moderate brotherhood dashed" (emphasis added):

"...The United States is celebrating 237 years of independence on Thursday. That the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood took place on this day is charged with symbolism. U.S. President Barack Obama has actively contributed to the mirage of Egyptian democracy under the Muslim Brotherhood that has developed in the wake of his Cairo Address in 2009, after which he abandoned his ally, former President Hosni Mubarak.

"Obama threw his support behind Morsi, dismissing reports that his election was rigged, because he believed the Muslim Brotherhood's voice was the voice of the Egyptian street.

"Obama was convinced that there were moderates in the Muslim Brotherhood. He envisioned a Turkish-style democracy emerging in Egypt, only to discover that Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was constantly obstructing the American bandwagon's path...

"The Muslim Brotherhood's failure was inevitable; it had nothing meaningful to offer to the tens of millions of starved, unemployed Egyptians or those who, despite their academic backgrounds, are now aimlessly wandering the streets.

"Morsi's departure dashed the romantic hope that there was someone inside the Muslim Brotherhood you could do business with..."

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=4871

~~~~~~~~~~

From this I can segue into my closing comments. Yes, how strange...fireworks in Egypt and fireworks in America.

I am well aware that today is the Fourth of July. I am, after all, an American by birth and breeding. I have long been proud of what the America I knew has stood for. It remains part of who I am.

Of course, I wish all my American readers a Happy Fourth.

And yet...yet...I also grieve. Because the America I knew — and what it stood for — seems to be no more. This has been a very frightening thing for me — and for many of you who write and tell me what you see in America.

I have documented — and will continue to document — the changes in my postings and I know that my distress is palpable.

And so, today, on the Fourth, my prayer is that America will find herself before it is too late.

The pictures below of the Egyptian street of a few days ago were not seen in mainstream media sources. But they should be seen by all Americans. They might provide a wake-up call:

http://directorblue.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/15-photos-from-tahrir-square-protests.html

~~~~~~~~~~

Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il And visit her website at www.arlenefromisrael.info

Hamas Weakened by Leadership Change in Egypt, Qatar
The article below was written by Joshua Levitt who is a Contributor for The Algemeiner. Previously, Joshua served as an advisor to the newspaper, as its Managing Editor and as Senior Correspondent. This article appeared July 04, 2013 in the Algemeiner and is archived at
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/07/04/report-hamas-weakened-by-leadership- change-in-egypt-qatar/

Terror group Hamas will be weakened by this week's "second revolution" in Egypt, as millions of Egyptians forced President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood from power, and by the inter-generational transfer of power in Qatar, where Hamas leadership has been based, Al-Monitor reported in two articles, citing unnamed officials and policy experts.

The Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, shares its ideology with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, although the two groups are not formally linked; with the Brotherhood's loss of power, analysts believe Hamas will also suffer.

Al-Monitor referenced news reports that some 7,000 Hamas militants were thought to be in Egypt to support the Brotherhood, although Egyptian and Hamas officials denied those claims. Al-Monitor reported that, like Hezbollah, Hamas is accused in Egyptian courts of organizing the jailbreak of several senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders, including former president Muhamed Morsi, in 2011. Egyptians also believe that Hamas has ignited instability in Sinai, including the April abduction of Egyptian soldiers and officers, although Hamas denied involvement.

In Qatar, the transfer of power from Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani to his son, Prince Tamim bin Hamad, could change the Islamic movement's relationship with the country, where Khaled Meshall, Hamas's political leader, has been based since departing Damascus, Syria, earlier this year.

Al-Monitor wrote: "Qatar has been an important refuge for Hamas during the movement's critical times. It served as a temporary headquarters for its leadership abroad after it left Jordan, and currently serves as a base for some of its leaders after they broke ties with the Syrian regime. Furthermore, Qatar has provided financial support to the Gaza Strip, and was the first country to openly provide such support to the Hamas government in Gaza."

Anti-Zionism of Fools: What Egypt and the Guardian Can Learn From Israeli Democracy.
The article below was written by Adam Levick who is Managing Editor of UK Media Watch - an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). Before joining UK Media Watch Adam Levick was a researcher at NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem based research institution that combats attempts by non-governmental organizations to delegitimize the State of Israel. Prior to working for NGO Monitor, Adam spent five years working in the Civil Rights Division at the national office of the Anti-Defamation League where he was responsible for analyzing and contextualizing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in progressive journals and political blogs in the U.S. Adam is a member of the Online Antisemitism Working Group for the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism and has published reports for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on the topics of: anti-Semitism in progressive blogs and anti-Semitic cartoons in progressive blogs. His essays have also appeared in the Jerusalem Post and the Guardian, as well as Elder of Ziyon, and the blog of the American Jewish Committee, Z Word. This article appeared July 04, 2013 in the Algemeiner and is archived at
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/07/04/anti-zionism-of-fools-what-egypt- and-the-guardian-can-learn-from-israeli-democracy/

When the nineteenth Israeli Knesset was sworn in March, it represented merely the latest chapter in a 65 year history of non-violent democratic political transitions in the Jewish state.

Though Israelis of course disagree on any number of domestic and foreign policy issues, extremes within the country remain at the margins, and the centre continues to hold. And, whilst there are factions lobbying for evolutionary change in social policy, and with regard to negotiations with the Palestinians, the country's economy is exceptionally strong, their democracy remains robust and there is no serious political faction agitating for revolutionary change.

As the dramatic developments unfolding in Egypt now demonstrate, democracy isn't one single event but rather a persuasion — a political habit of mind nurtured by the behavior of a nation's citizenry, its cultural, media and religious gatekeepers and political class. It generally can not be imposed by a foreign power, nor brought to life by a (temporary) strongman. Political parties with no ideological propensity towards progressive, representative forms of government can not be trusted to govern in a manner which show fealty towards such democratic norms as the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, and a system of laws which fiercely protect the rights of women, minorities and political dissidents.

As the brief reign of the reactionary movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood shows us, political Islam — as with the Pan-Arabism and statist dictatorships which preceded its rise within the region — is fundamentally at odds with truly liberal political aspirations within the Arab world.

Interestingly, the Guardian earlier today published an editorial not only criticizing the military coup by praising the Muslim Brotherhood as, yes, defenders of constitutional democracy, demonstrating again — as with their defense of Hamas' 'democratic' legitimacy — the institution's inability to recognize the difference between democrats (those who seek representative forms of government) and demopaths (those who seek democratic legitimacy in order to destroy liberal society). As one Arab pundit recently observed about Morsi's 'reforms' which had the effect of merely solidifying Brotherhood control of the country and codifying illiberal Islamist doctrine: "Morsi proved that political Islam seeks to use democracy only to seize power only to bury the democratic dream later."

Additionally, if the strength of a democracy can in part be measured by how well the nation treats the proverbial 'other', Morsi's government — which nurtured a society in which the beleaguered Christians and Bahais (and even Shiites) faced increasing discrimination and violence — failed miserably. Further, while it may be a bit cliché to note that the health of a society can be gauged by how well they treat their Jewish minority, the following passage, from an essay written by a Muslim named Ahmed Hashemi, commenting on the increased antisemitism in Egypt (a nation with a Jewish population of, at most, 40) after the revolution, rings true.

...if we are going to establish a healthy, tolerant society that respects differences, and pursues a pluralistic democracy, we have to accept that Jews and the Jewish community have been part and parcel of our own communities. This affirmation of coexistence represents the essence of today's civilization. An 'Arab Spring' without religious tolerance that rests on strong anti-Semitic attitudes cannot bring about genuine democracy and freedom. In a peaceful and democratic Middle East, everyone can prosper and flourish.

In reading the Guardian Daily, it seems that the most pronounced effect stemming from their largely uncritical advocacy on behalf of Arabs (including Palestinian Arabs), and their hostility towards Zionism, relates not to its injurious influence on Israel, but the harm it inflicts upon their Arab protagonists by legitimizing their sense of victimhood and their immutable grievances against the Jews.

As the most successful democracy in the region, Hashemi added, "possessing a strong and diversified economy and a dynamic multiparty political system in a tyranny-affected region, Israel can be a role model."

The Guardian's ideologically inspired legitimization of the Arab world's hostility towards Israel nurtures their continuing social pathos and sclerotic economies, and ensures that, whatever party takes power in the next Egyptian government, the shining example of diversity, tolerance and sober, reflective and liberal self-government to their north will never be leveraged to their advantage.

The anti-Zionism of fools makes it more probably that the 'Arab Spring' will continue to be merely a chimera.

Jewish Woman Explains How She Outsmarted Her Muggers With Sting Operation (INTERVIEW)
The article below was written by Algemeiner Staff and appeared July 04, 2013 in the Algemeiner it is archived at
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/07/04/exclusive-jewish-woman-explains-how-she- outsmarted-her-muggers-with-sting-operation-interview/

The story of a 24-year-old Jewish woman being robbed in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y. got a lot of attention on The Algemeiner website earlier this week, not in small part because of the unique method by which the assailants were eventually captured.

In an interview with The Algemeiner "Sarah" — as we'll refer to her, said from the outset that the two girls, only 16 and 15, appeared to be up to no good.

"About halfway down the block from my house I saw two girls behind me and I was suspicious but I just kept walking. I started to feel really uncomfortable so I decided to pop over to the other side of the street. As I was crossing the street they grabbed my ponytail and shoved me to the ground. I fell on my hands and knees and they grabbed my cell phone, which was in my hand, and ran," she relayed.

More concerned with her own welfare, she thought little of her lost Apple iPhone until the following day, when, taking advantage of her sister's iMessage app — which allows iPhone owners access to text messages through a computer — she was made aware that the thief was texting out crude messages and images to her contacts.

"You can't even print what she was sending," Sarah told the Algemeiner. "Fortunately I could follow what she was sending to people and so was able to go onto Facebook and let those people know that my phone had been stolen."

This is where the story gets interesting.

"I didn't care so much about the phone but I definitely wanted to let these girls know that it was not OK to do what they did," Sarah told The Algemeiner.

So she decided to set up a sting. She had a friend message her phone saying that she wanted to make a delivery to the tune of $850 that evening. The two girls responded to the message, telling Sarah's friend that they would pick it up as Sarah would be busy.

Of course, Sarah arrived at the meeting with undercover detectives, who arrested the girls on-sight.

"They didn't really react. They sort of realized what was happening and accepted it," Sarah told The Algemeiner.

The 15 year-old was released to her parents but the 16 year-old was arrested and is expected to receive probation.

As for any precautions Sarah might take in the future? "I want to get mace, definitely — and also therapy. I'm like a lunatic now after this."

The Algemeiner Journal is a New York-based newspaper, covering American and international Jewish and Israel-related news. Contact Algemeiner at editor@algemeiner.com

When my daughter was two years old, our apartment building had an electrical fire that ultimately destroyed the two apartments above us. After we evacuated, my wife and I sat with our children on a nearby hill, along with most of the neighborhood, and watched as the red and yellow fire engines came rolling in, one after another. To the adults, the threat to life and property was clear, and we sat still, quietly sharing our worries and thoughts about what was unfolding. When the next set of yellow fire engines arrived, our daughter, in her two-year-old innocence, cheered "Look — more buses, and more buses!" and it was obvious she did not share our fears.

Before we can be trusted with matches, we must learn that fire is dangerous. In a similar vein, when we consider steps to be taken toward unity and peace it's crucial to understand the dangers of the alternative.

The Jewish month of Av begins this Sunday night. "When Av enters, we decrease our joy," says the Talmud. Both Holy Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed on the 9th of Av, and the month is historically prone to misfortune. The 1st of Av also marks the day Moses' brother Aaron, the high priest in the Tabernacle, died, his Yahrzeit (see Numbers 33:38). It's appropriate to learn a lesson from the deceased on his Yahrzeit so we turn to the Mishna in Pirkei Avos 1:12, "Be students of Aaron. Love peace and pursue peace." This is a fitting message for the Talmud attributes the destruction of the Second Temple, and the current exile of the Jewish people, to "senseless hatred," the enemy of peace.

Many of us sadly consider conflict exciting, like playing with matches, and often encourage it. Our culture of cruelty indulges in the pleasure of snarky comments and one-line insults. Cheers of "Fight! Fight! Fight!" can be heard from the sidelines of our society as if we've never left the schoolyard. Can we profess to be lovers of peace if we're busy flexing our debating muscles instead of listening to each other and looking for common ground? To be clear, argument for the sake of uncovering the truth is laudable, and we don't make peace at any cost. Our goal though must be to build bridges, not create chasms. The 1st step in the peace process, is to step back; to see where the put-downs have taken us, and acquire a distaste for contention. (Based on Rav Shimshon Pin cus zt"l)

We cry in Av for the loss of G-d's Holy Temple and the exile. The cries also mourn the disunity that brought us here. May the rebuilding of our attitudes, and ultimately our relationships and communities, herald the return of G-d's Presence and closeness, and may we soon peacefully unite in His service.

Contact GWY123@aol.com

Copy of the flyer:

In 1947, Hindus were approximately 25% of the population of Pakistan. Now, Hindus constitute less than 2% of the population. Pakistan officially and routinely discriminates against non-Muslims through a variety of laws and constitutional provisions that favor Islam. School textbooks and curriculum continue to promote Islam alongside hatred and intolerance towards non-Muslims, particularly Hindus. Islamist militants continue to attack civilians with impunity, while the Pakistani state and society are becoming increasingly Islamized. Pakistan remains the epicenter of global terrorism and utilizes terror as an instrument of state policy. Recurring reports point to an alarming trend of Hindu girls being kidnapped, raped, held in madrassas (Islamic seminaries), and forcibly converted to Islam. Hindu temples continued to be attacked and illegally occupied. The Hindu community lacks independent control over their places of worship. Poor Hindus continue to be economically exploited and subjected to inhumane conditions through the bonded labor system. Large numbers of Pakistani Hindus have sought refuge in India to escape religious persecution, yet India is denying them refugee status or any great degree of help (HAF Report)

In 1947, Hindus constituted nearly 30% of Bangladesh's population. By 2013, an estimated 40 million Hindus were "missing" from Bangladesh. Today, Hindus comprise less than 10% of the population. Hindus of Bangladesh continue to be victims of ethnic cleansing waged by Islamic fundamentalists that includes daily acts of murder, rape, kidnapping, forced conversions, temple destruction, and physical intimidation. Victims call it 'Slow Genocide' and 'Minority Cleansing'. In 2013, militant Islamists led deadly and violent riots against the Hindu & other religious minority groups and destroyed hundreds of temples, more than 1500 Hindu homes and the undocumented killing of many Hindus and other minorities.

Put Diplomatic and Economic Pressure on the Government of Bangladesh to ensure the safety of the Hindus and other minorities; bring to justice the war criminals of 1971 and ban Jamat-e-Islami, Bangladesh; enact hate crime bill; rebuild destroyed temples and give compensation to the affected minorities.

Narain Kataria is President, Indian American Intellectuals Forum and charter member of our Stop Islamisation of Nations Sikh-Hindu Coalition. Contact Kataria at KatariaN@aol.com

Like each year, some people from the Los Angeles Jewish and Israeli community and others, who view this terror attack in the right perspective, begin their 4th of July celebration with a somber reminder of the loss of Vicki Hen at exactly 11:20 a.m. on July 4, 2002.

Victoria (Vicky) Hen was fatally shot by Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, a deranged Egyptian born Moslem terrorist who targeted the El Al — the national airlines of the Jewish state Israel — counter, at Bradley International Terminal of LAX where Vicky was employed. Vicki was only 25 years of age when she was gunned down in the first Islamic act of terror in the West Coast of the USA. In this terror attack Yaacov Amidinov also lost his life.

Vicki was a victim of Islamo-terror. And why was she such a victim? Because she was Jewish.

In the Jewish culture there is a saying, he who saves one soul saves an entire world.

I will turn this saying and say, he who was killed among us, Jews, as if an entire nation was killed.

For some reason the murder if Vicki has been pushed aside and almost forgotten. If not for Avi Hen, Vicki's father, endless efforts to keep his daughter's murder in the authorities and the public at large memory, with the help of his family and close friends, who every year remind and invite the public to attend the tribute at LAX, I doubt if people will remember. If not for the terrific staff at the consul general of Israel, who send a media reminder to the local TV channels there would not be the proper reminder coverage. Instead of having multitude of people in attendance to make a national statement, we fail on our cause.

Our forgetfulness is inexcusable.

This is the eleventh year we do not have Vicky amongst us. Her memory must live on in our hearts forever. Vicki lost her life in order for the nation of Israel to never forget who we are. We must make an annual statement that Vicki did not lose her life in vain.

Next year, please God, it is imperative that several hundred people gather around Vicki's memorial stone at LAX and make a statement on behalf of Vicki, that we are a strong nation, not a victim nation, and when we say Never Again, we mean it.

May Vicky's soul be bound in the bond of life.

Contact Nurit Greenger by email at nurit.nuritg@gmail.com. Visit her blog: http://ngthinker.typepad.com

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing this message forthwith mostly to explain some of the deep meaning behind what has happened in Egypt over the last few days. At the same time, our focus on the attempted ayatollah take-over of Syria has not diminished. In fact, the JCA website now contains the full 22-minute interview that was originally posted June 10th on the INR radio website (Tamar Yonah Show) with the Title, Tip-Toeing with Syria, and the following textual introduction:

Aaron Braunstein, from the Jewish Covenant Alliance, joins Tamar on the threats and spillover, from Syria. Braunstein, is a former U.S. Foreign Service Officer who has worked in Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Muslim West Africa for 30 years as part of the United States Foreign Service. He explains the Arab-Islamic mindset, and paints a picture of how the Syrians might drag Israel into the conflict, and why. A very informative interview and program looking at the moral dimensions in the Syrian civil war.

Anyone concerned about the circumstances under which either side in the Syrian civil war could wish to attack Israel should listen to this 22-minute interview !!

And Now Across the Sinai to Egypt

Today, we are obliged to turn our focus to the historic events unfolding in Egypt, Mother of the World (Um al-Dunya). I hasten to write these words given my great responsibility for understanding events in Egypt having served there for five years (1990-95) as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer at the American Embassy, just one block from Tahrir Square — its name, "Freedom" (Herut), could not be more relevant than today.

In February 2011, I posted an article on the JCA Website entitled, "Will the Moslem Brotherhood Sacrifice the Egyptian Army?" This article was originally published in the New York Times Internet Edition. It referred to the Brotherhood's never-ending struggle against its only effective opponent, the Egyptian Army. The article warned of the danger that, under the right circumstances, the Brotherhood might try to entice the Army into a war with Israel so that the Army would even lose. Yes, lose, however strange this may sound to Western ears, it is not at all strange to Middle Eastern paranoid or megalomaniac ears — ears that all too easily vibrate to whispering mouths and then to arms. And the arms acted this week !

Such defeat of the Army by Israel, remembering that, in the first instance, the Army is the Brotherhood's arch-enemy, would lead directly to national demoralization, to the apparent failure of Nationalism, and thereby to the speedy Islamist advancement of the Brothers' totalitarian democracy — subjugation of the minority by the majority (please refer to my Prof. Yaacov Talmon's monumental works on this subject).

The Army would have been derelict not to realize that this would entail a total reformatting of the Army, stripping away all its huge economic holdings, while positioning the Brothers own new Revolutionary Guards at the Army's neck. A model for this is easily seen in Ayatollah Iran's reconstitution of the Iranian military — what works for extremist Shia Islam can surely work for extremist Sunni Islam since the warped thinking is the same.

Since this original article was published (and circulated by JCA in Arabic translation !), the Moslem Brotherhood has sought total power under the banner of free elections. In the process it cleansed the Army of its (aging) old guard and appointed officers more to its liking. The Brotherhood, however, understood that the clash of interests between itself and the Army, between Nationalism and Islamism, had not changed. That at some point, by whatever means, it would have to cripple the Army. Yet, it could not then go for a total restructuring of this relationship even though the Army sensed Brotherhood's ultimate devious plans to cripple it under the guise of Islam. And now it is too late for the Brotherhood, all thanks and praise to Allah ! The Brotherhood's headstrong abuses of power and the return of millions to Tahrir Square, have finally boiled over.

And what helped sound the alarm as to the Brotherhood's totalitarian plans? One has only to remember all the Islamist clerics who fortunately did not hesitate to call in Tahrir Square for the eventual "liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine", a call most recently by Sheikh Al-Qardawi, a most prominent "spiritual" leader of the Brotherhood. Many Egyptians must surely have asked what this has to do with Egypt's woes and the revolution's demands if not with the Brotherhood's Islamist plans for Egypt itself. [The only recent good to come out of al-Qardawi's Sunni mouth is his labeling of Hizbollah, not as the "Party of God", but as the "Party of the Devil", and it's not even Jewish !] Verbal attacks on Israel during the revolutionary fever in Egypt should not be explained away as nothing more than "pious" Islamist wishes, rather than as an operative imperative for totalitarian rule by Master Jihad, Sunni Branch, first of Egypt and then the world.

The fact that Al-Qardawi and the Brothers are staunch supporters of Hamas in Gaza will now not be lost on the Egyptian Army.

One and all should fear the Brothers for all the otherwise democratic gifts they seem to proffer!

Contact Jewish Covenant Alliance at connect@covenantalliance.org

Just a fast summary of this week's events in Egypt.

As we sit back and observe the Egyptian army making mass arrests of the Islamofascists from the Muslim Brotherhood, possibly even taking some of them out back and shooting them, while army commanders now in power are warning the country about the dangers of allowing Islamists into the corridors of government, while the Hamas loses it main power base and support network (the Hamas has long been little more than an appendage of the Muslim Brotherhood), the Middle East is looking lovelier than it has in quite a long time.

And I think the entire situation can be summed up with a very slight adaptation of that old classic song from the early 1940s called Mairzy Dotes (you can see it performed on Lawrence Welk here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dny_JDlwGFM, and another rendition here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpiUDODpeno)

The original song and lyrics are here:

Mairzy Doats http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mairzy_Doats

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey

A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?

Which really means:

Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy. A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you?

Ready for the commentary on Egypt? Called Morsi Dotes. Here goes:

Morsi's goats, Islamic dotes, Jihadist party Slithy.

In prison now eating ivy, oh boo hoo.

Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments — both seriously and satirically — on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. Write him at splaut@gmail.com His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com.

1. Egypt's Hangover-Analysis: Millions Celebrating, but Success Remains Uncertain
2. Israel Fears for Sinai Security
3. Hezbollah Watching IDF movements
4. IDF Continues to Thwart Terror Attacks in Judea and Samaria
5. Aerial Surveillance along the Gaza Border
6. Kerry's Peace Process; Still No Breakthrough
7. Syrian Opposition Meets in Turkey to Elect New Leadership
8. History Comes to Life

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1. Egypt's Hangover-Analysis: Millions Celebrating, but Success Remains Uncertain

The Egyptian army, with the support of groups opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood regime, deposed not only Morsi, but also a determined Islamist movement that is experienced in situations involving a siege and de-legitimization and has millions of followers in Egypt. Therefore, it is not at all certain that President Morsi's ouster will bring Egypt the coveted political stability. What's even less certain is that the transitional regime will succeed in alleviating, even a little, the economic distress in the Arab country and increase the personal security of the citizens—regardless of their political and religious affiliation.

The jubilation of the Muslim Brotherhood's opponents is understandable, but this is just momentary ecstasy; the masses are drunk with power, but the hangover will be felt in the coming days.

In order to estimate how Morsi's ouster by the army will advance the economy, stability and security in Egypt—if at all—we must focus in the next few days on the following:

1) The response of the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood to the army's maneuver. Prior to General al-Sisi's speech, in which he effectively deposed Morsi, Brotherhood members, even senior ones, threatened to resort to violence to protect the president.

They have weapons, motivation and a sense of victimhood now that they have been removed from power. The question is whether they will physically oppose the measures announced by the army or accept the verdict. The resistance can be passive — such as staging strikes — but it can also be violent. Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie, who has yet to respond to the dramatic developments, will dictate the movement's future. This is probably not the last we've heard of the Brotherhood, just as Hamas was not satisfied with its victory in the 2006 elections in the Palestinian Authority and carried out an armed coup in 2007 to seize control in Gaza. In this regard, it is important to see how the Egyptian army will be able to separate between Morsi's supporters and opponents.

2) The period after Mubarak's ouster has taught us that the opposition groups know mainly what they do not want, but find it difficult to present a clear list of demands. They find it even more difficult to draft a list that is acceptable to those who will represent them in the interim government's institutions. This is another sign that the street is in power, and not only in Egypt.

Those who celebrated Morsi's ouster do not have an agreed upon leader to represent them. While many opposition organizations have authorized liberal leader Mohamed El Baradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to represent them, the young people who initiated the second revolution in Egypt have yet to crown a leader of their own, and it remains to be seen whether they will have an influential role during the transition period. In short, we have to wait and see whether the army will succeed in establishing the complex transitional government announced by General al-Sisi.

3) Rewording the Egyptian constitution: One of the main reasons for the revolt was that the previous constitution was tailored to the needs of the Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia laws [Islamic law] were defined as a source of authority. Now the opposition groups will apparently look to draft a constitution with fewer Islamic characteristics. The question is how the Muslim Brotherhood's loyalists will react.

4) We must see how the US and other countries react to the army's move. Should President Obama criticize the ouster of Morsi, it may encourage the Muslim Brotherhood to reverse the situation through political or violent means-or both simultaneously. The question is whether the US will deliver on its threat to stop providing assistance to Egypt in the event of a military coup. The Americans will most likely say that in overthrowing Morsi the army heeded the demands of the people; in doing so, Washington will be granting legitimacy to the interim government.

5) The response of the Arab countries, particularly that of the Gulf States which provide Egypt with the economic assistance that has helped it avoid the definition of a bankrupt country, is also important. If the Arab countries, particularly Qatar and Saudi Arabia, decide to continue funneling billions of dollars to Egypt, as they have done over the past year, it will be an important component in the stability of Egypt's economy, political life and personal security. It can be said that the Gulf leaders and their deep pockets will determine the fate of the second revolution in Egypt.

As far as Israel is concerned, it appears that Morsi's ouster will not have a direct effect on us, certainly not in the short term. It is clear that the army will have fewer resources and less time to dedicate to the goings on in Sinai and Gaza, but we should not expect a dramatic change in the relations between Israel and Egypt. The army, which is the de-facto ruler of Egypt, has an interest in preserving the peace treaty with Israel and preventing attacks on the Jewish state from Gaza and Sinai.

(By Ron Ben-Yishai, Ynetnews, July 4, 2013)
http://m1e.net/c?15837249-aXEsgcSpl.upE%4025915651-xYvjTKFAWN0rw

Prayer Focus Pray that the interim government will act responsibly during this transition period, with the best interests of Egypt's citizens at heart. Pray for the day when Isaiah's prophecy (Isaiah 19) will come to pass.

Scripture "Then the LORD will be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians will know the LORD in that day, and will make sacrifice and offering; yes, they will make a vow to the LORD and perform it." Isaiah 19:21

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2. Israel Fears for Sinai Security

A day after the Egyptian army deposed President Mohamed Morsi and suspended the constitution, Israel is concerned that Jihadists will exploit the situation to carry out terror attacks.

"It's hard to believe the Egyptians will overcome the ever-deepening polarization between the Islamist Egypt and the secular Egypt," an Israeli state official estimated Wednesday.

"Ultimately, they will have no choice but to find an agreed-upon framework for cooperation but until they do, we might see violent clashes," he added.

On Wednesday, former Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer remarked that "The Muslim Brotherhood's bizarre regime is over and done with. If a secular candidate wins it will have a huge impact on the entire Middle East."

State officials describe the current situation in Cairo as a nerve-wracking game of poker. "On the one hand, Morsi doesn't want to resign; on the other, the army doesn't want to take full responsibility. Egyptians are starting to realize that Islam is not the answer. It provides them with no solution to the economic situation," one state official said.

He noted that Israel enjoyed good security cooperation with Egypt under Morsi's leadership. "It's not about us, we're monitoring the situation from the sidelines."

The Prime Minister's bureau has ordered the cabinet not to publically discuss Egypt.

Government officials denied reports that Israel has allowed the Egyptian army to deploy reinforcements in the Sinai Peninsula.

However, the past few days have seen increased military activity in the border area with Egyptians trying to seal smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. The Egyptian army is hoping to prevent the movement of Hamas militants from the Strip to Egypt and thwart the smuggling of weapons into the country.

State officials have admitted that growing instability in Egypt would make it harder for the Egyptians to maintain their control in Sinai. The main concern is that Jihadists will use the vacuum to try to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel or the Egyptian army.

(By Itamar Eichner, Ynetnews, July 4, 2013)
http://m1e.net/c?15837249-89/iRCqkBaAL2%4025915652-U5YXjE5lBzx6k

Prayer Focus Pray that the turmoil within Egypt does not escalate to the point where Islamic terrorists are able to control the Sinai and therefore threaten the stability of Israel's southern border. Ask the Lord to give wisdom to the IDF commanders as they determine what course of action to take.

Scripture "I will lift up my eyes to the hills — from whence comes my help? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth." Psalm 121:1-2

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3. Hezbollah watching IDF movements

The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] has recently shown soldiers manning the northern border a peculiar set of pictures — Hezbollah men, in full regalia, armed with proper military equipment, carefully watching and documenting the IDF's movements.

Seven years after the Second Lebanon War, what seems to be a grievous breach of the UN resolution ending the conflict is for the IDF's northern commanders a sign of Nasrallah's growing boldness.

"This is a group that is compulsive in its data collection regarding the IDF's movements," a senior ranking officer from the northern command told Ynet in regards to Hezbollah.

Despite IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz's statement that "fire is singeing the edge of Nasrallah's robes," the terrorist group is still active in the Shiite villages of southern Lebanon.

"They show up on the border with new vehicles and fully uniformed; they set up a camera and advanced night vision equipment, and follow our troop's every movement. This not necessarily a violation, and Lebanon's army does not confront them, but we try to break our routine as much as possible," he said.

"Hezbollah is beginning to feel more comfortable and has begun pushing the boundaries. It has recently begun to fortify its (affiliated) Shiite villages as well as reconstructing firing positions and infrastructure," he noted.

The challenge facing the division's commanders-commands who faced heavy criticism for their conduct in the kidnappings and events prior to the Second Lebanon War — is how to keep soldiers alert despite the relative calm and picturesque landscapes of the north.

While along the Syrian border mortars fly in the air and al-Qaeda operatives can be seen scurrying along the Syrian Golan; and in the south, the developments in Egypt make Hamas look moderate, Lebanon offers a more complex task for commanders.

The Herev (Sword) brigade, which is charged with manning the Lebanese border, completed a major exercise this week simulating a direct conflict with Hezbollah.

"At 2 am senior officers threw (lower ranking) regional commanders from their beds and informed them that their positions are taking fire, there are heavy causalities and that they have lost communications with one of their outposts-go!" a senior commander in charge of the exercise told Ynet.

The point was to get the troops "to go from 0 to 100," he said, stressing the need to keep troops alert despite the quiet.

The twist is that the Herev brigade is comprised solely of soldiers of Druze ethnicity.

During the exercise they were forced to face off against soldiers from the Kfir brigade pretending to be Hezbollah fighters. The exercise itself seemed real enough, with smoke screens, plastic bullets and mock rocket launchers.

Lieutenant-Colonel Shadi Abu Fares, the brigade's commander said: "We know Hezbollah is getting stronger and bolder. To preserve the operational (adrenaline) we strive to create quality operational exercises" allowing soldiers to engage even after they have been spotted by Hezbollah scouts.

(By Yoav Zitun, Ynetnews, June 30, 2013)
http://m1e.net/c?15837249-9SrSLP24aP8sE%4025915653-gPPkrfJUxrw2o

Prayer Focus As Hezbollah becomes bolder and the pressure rises on Israel's northern border with Lebanon, we thankfully remember that the Lord will strengthen His people as they trust in Him. Pray for the soldiers and their commanders; that they would seek the Lord and not be afraid.

Scripture "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked came against me to eat up my flesh, my enemies and foes, they stumbled and fell. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war may rise against me, in this I will be confident." Psalm 27:1—3

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4. IDF Continues to Thwart Terror Attacks in Judea and Samaria

The IDF's Kfir Brigade continues to record operational successes, thwarting terror attacks in Judea and Samaria. Over the past two weeks, soldiers of its Netzah Yehuda Battalion discovered an illegal hunting rifle and dozens of bullets in a Palestinian vehicle in the area of Jenin, and a force of Kfir's Haruv Battalion arrested an adolescent armed with a pipe bomb in the Etzion sector of Samaria.

"On Wednesday of last week [June 19], a force of the auxiliary company accompanied the forward command group, so as to disrupt and prevent terror activity in the sector," the commander of the Netzah Yehuda Battalion's auxiliary company, Cpt. Shai Baruch, told the IDF Website. "As part of our disruptive and preventive activity, we are setting up checkpoints in changing locations to randomly check vehicles and to search for weapons being transported by vehicles."

Late that night, the soldiers noticed a speeding taxi and signaled the driver to stop. After checking the trunk and the passengers, they searched the trunk, where they found an illegal hunting rifle and roughly 50 bullets. The passengers were taken for questioning.

"An incident of this sort is not rare, but it is not something we forget," Cpt. Baruch explained. "We are prepared operationally for every incident in the sector, and specific events like the discovery of a hunting rifle contribute to the soldiers' sense of confidence in themselves and to their sense of the importance of our activity here."

In separate incidents, the Kfir Brigade's Haruv Battalion encountered a would-be attacker, preventing him from carrying out the intended attacks.

"On Friday [June 21], we received a report of a suspicious adolescent near the entrance [of a post] throwing rocks at the post," Lt. Niv Juami, a deputy company commander in the battalion, told the IDF Website. "A force immediately went to pursue him, but the adolescent ran away, and then the force went to a different incident. After a while, the adolescent returned to throw rocks, and when we approached him, we ran after him to one of the alleys, in which he lunged at us suddenly with a large rock in his hand and ran toward us."

Lt. Juami said the adolescent continued and approached the IDF force, which began to follow procedures for arresting a suspect. The force caught him and checked that he was not armed. The attacker was then taken for questioning by Palestinian forces.

Two days later, the company received a report about the same youth, and its soldiers immediately responded. They identified the youth and observed him attempting to ignite a round object with metal parts and an exposed wick.

"The force understood immediately that it was a pipe bomb, seized [the explosive] and disposed of it far away in open territory. Luckily, the youth did not manage to ignite the explosive," Lt. Juami explained. He also mentioned that IDF trackers arrived to search the area while the youth was taken for questioning.

According to Lt. Juami, any incident in which a 13-year-old boy attempts to attack IDF soldiers with an explosive is relatively unusual.

"The explosives threat is very familiar in our sector, but the attempt by such a young boy is particularly alarming," he said. "Such an incident illustrates the threats that we face here and sharpens the alertness in the sector. The management of incidents of this kind is a matter of seconds, and everything depends on the force's readiness and preparedness. I feel that the forces are ready for incidents like these and even more extreme [incidents]," he said.

(By Yael Livnat, Israel Defense Forces, June 30, 2013):
http://m1e.net/c?15837249-WvVZjrsKSogXA%4025915654-sHtxNopiXxuRo

Prayer Focus Thank the Lord for exposing the plans of the enemy and giving the IDF success in thwarting many planned terror attacks. Ask the Lord to keep the soldiers alert and ready for any danger as they stand guard to defend the citizens of Israel.

Scripture "But as for me, I would seek God, and to God I would commit my cause-who does great things, and unsearchable, marvelous things without number. He frustrates the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot carry out their plans." Job 5: 8-9, 12

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5. Aerial Surveillance along the Gaza Border

The Nesher battalion, subordinate to the Southern Command, is responsible for the gathering of combat intelligence. The soldiers in the Nesher battalion perform operational and tactical intelligence collection, helping to identify the location and understand the intentions of terror organizations across the borders.

The Combat Intelligence Corps has significantly upgraded its detection systems in the past few years. The Nesher Battalion has recently integrated new, more advanced methods of intelligence collection, including radar systems, remotely-controlled weapons, and advanced surveillance balloons, which float about 300 meters [984 ft] up in the air and are traditionally equipped with sophisticated cameras, providing a stealthy avenue for determining the position of enemy threats.

Up until the beginning of 2013, the Nesher Battalion was responsible for gathering combat intelligence on all of Israel's borders contained within the IDF's [Israel Defense Forces] Southern Command. In March, the Southern Command appointed the Nesher battalion solely responsible for identifying and containing threats originating from the Gaza border area.

According to Maj. Shai Barda, deputy commander of the Nesher battalion, the battalion consists of six companies: four operational companies and two border companies (one for Gaza's southern border and one for its northern border), all of which are responsible for intelligence collection. One of the four operational companies is tasked with the use of the surveillance balloons, which they operate across the Gaza border.

"These balloons have two missions," Maj. Barda said. "One is to assist the soldiers on the ground in monitoring every visible inch of the borders and the second is to gather long-distance field intelligence that is requested from us."

Maj. Barda explained that the border area is very active and that there is no shortage of threats to monitor and contain. "We see some kind of activity along the border every day," he said.

"It's very unique to serve along the Gaza border," Maj. Barda said, explaining that in recent years that area has been the focus of high tensions and armed conflict. During operations Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense, use of the advanced surveillance balloons provided highly needed intelligence and tactical assistance to IDF forces in identifying terrorist threats.

Maj. Barda explained that the company responsible for the balloons is unique in that they are required to have training both in observational and combat duties. "They work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Apart from days of high wind, the balloons are up in the air day or night, hot or cold.

"If there is an area that is not visible from the ground, these advanced surveillance balloons can go as high as 300 meters [984 ft] and cover any ground that may be difficult to observe from down below," Maj. Barda said.

"99% of the year, the balloons spend up in the air," he concluded.

(By Sahar Raz, Israel Defense Forces, July 2, 2013)

http://m1e.net/c?15837249-jnYQ.7YRsk7Pg%4025915655-DdEB2sQlFwg7g

Prayer Focus Lord, we bring before You another border which has the potential for violence that will affect Israel. Use these surveillance balloons as well as other methods to reveal the hidden plans of the enemy. Be a wall of protection for Your people.

Scripture "Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; defend me from those who rise up against me. Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloodthirsty men." Psalm 59:1-2

===========================================================

5. Aerial Surveillance along the Gaza Border

The Nesher battalion, subordinate to the Southern Command, is responsible for the gathering of combat intelligence. The soldiers in the Nesher battalion perform operational and tactical intelligence collection, helping to identify the location and understand the intentions of terror organizations across the borders.

The Combat Intelligence Corps has significantly upgraded its detection systems in the past few years. The Nesher Battalion has recently integrated new, more advanced methods of intelligence collection, including radar systems, remotely-controlled weapons, and advanced surveillance balloons, which float about 300 meters [984 ft] up in the air and are traditionally equipped with sophisticated cameras, providing a stealthy avenue for determining the position of enemy threats.

Up until the beginning of 2013, the Nesher Battalion was responsible for gathering combat intelligence on all of Israel's borders contained within the IDF's [Israel Defense Forces] Southern Command. In March, the Southern Command appointed the Nesher battalion solely responsible for identifying and containing threats originating from the Gaza border area.

According to Maj. Shai Barda, deputy commander of the Nesher battalion, the battalion consists of six companies: four operational companies and two border companies (one for Gaza's southern border and one for its northern border), all of which are responsible for intelligence collection. One of the four operational companies is tasked with the use of the surveillance balloons, which they operate across the Gaza border.

"These balloons have two missions," Maj. Barda said. "One is to assist the soldiers on the ground in monitoring every visible inch of the borders and the second is to gather long-distance field intelligence that is requested from us."

Maj. Barda explained that the border area is very active and that there is no shortage of threats to monitor and contain. "We see some kind of activity along the border every day," he said.

"It's very unique to serve along the Gaza border," Maj. Barda said, explaining that in recent years that area has been the focus of high tensions and armed conflict. During operations Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense, use of the advanced surveillance balloons provided highly needed intelligence and tactical assistance to IDF forces in identifying terrorist threats.

Maj. Barda explained that the company responsible for the balloons is unique in that they are required to have training both in observational and combat duties. "They work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Apart from days of high wind, the balloons are up in the air day or night, hot or cold.

"If there is an area that is not visible from the ground, these advanced surveillance balloons can go as high as 300 meters [984 ft] and cover any ground that may be difficult to observe from down below," Maj. Barda said.

"99% of the year, the balloons spend up in the air," he concluded.

(By Sahar Raz, Israel Defense Forces, July 2, 2013)
http://m1e.net/c?15837249-jnYQ.7YRsk7Pg%4025915655-DdEB2sQlFwg7g

Prayer Focus Lord, we bring before You another border which has the potential for violence that will affect Israel. Use these surveillance balloons as well as other methods to reveal the hidden plans of the enemy. Be a wall of protection for Your people.

Scripture "Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; defend me from those who rise up against me. Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloodthirsty men." Psalm 59:1-2

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6. Kerry's Peace Process; Still No Breakthrough

After four days of shuttle diplomacy between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), US Secretary of State John Kerry left Israel on Sunday (June 30). Responses to the four days were mixed. In his own words, Kerry said: "I am pleased to tell you that we have made real progress on this trip and I believe that with a little more work, the start of final status negotiations could be within reach."

From the Palestinian side, "It was a positive and profound meeting with [Palestinian] President (Mahmoud)Abbas but there has been no breakthrough so far and there is still a gap between the Palestinian and Israeli positions," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told reporters after Kerry finished talks in Ramallah with Abbas, his third meeting in as many days.

Prime Minister Netanyahu's weekly address to the cabinet on Sunday included the following statements: "I held a third meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry last night until the early morning, along with my colleagues on the negotiating team. Israel is ready to begin negotiations without delay, without pre-conditions. We are not putting up any impediments on the resumption of the permanent talks and a peace agreement between us and the Palestinians. There are things that we will strongly insist on in the talks themselves, especially security. We will not compromise on security and there will be no agreement that will endanger Israelis' security, and I believe, I think, that it is necessary that any agreement, if it is achieved, be submitted to the people for a decision."

Abbas and the PA have been insisting on preconditions before they will agree to resume the direct negotiations that came to a halt in October 2010. These preconditions include an independent Palestinian state based on 1967 borders with east Jerusalem as its capital and the release of PA prisoners being held in Israel.

Kerry has not given a specific date for his return to the area although restarting the talks remains a high priority. Having gained the status of a non-member observer state in the United Nations last November, Abbas has indicated that if negotiations remain stalled, he will use other diplomatic options to move them forward.

(By Janet Aslin, Bridges for Peace, July 1, 2013)

Prayer Focus Pray for Prime Minister Netanyahu as he negotiates the difficult diplomatic channels with world leaders who do not give credence to the covenantal relationship between Israel and the Lord. Pray for unity among Israel's leaders concerning the Land-her inheritance from God.

Scripture "You shall therefore keep His statutes and His commandments which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which the LORD your God is giving you for all time." Deuteronomy 4:40

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7. Syrian Opposition Meets in Turkey to Elect New Leadership

The Syrian National Coalition, the Western-backed group of opponents of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, is meeting in Istanbul on Thursday [July 4] to elect new leadership and attempt to repair the growing fractures in its less-than-united front. At least three candidates are seeking to head the group as it tries for the second time in as many months to unify the opposition forces.

The meeting comes as Assad declares that the opposition has failed. In an interview with the newspaper Al-Thawra, the president is quoted as saying the opposition has "exhausted all of their tools" in its attempt to overthrow his government. The death toll in the civil war that began in March 2011 is now estimated to be about 100,000.

(By The Media Line, July 4, 2013)

Prayer Focus We ask that wisdom be given to Israel's government, especially to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ya'alon, as they monitor the Syrian situation. Pray that God will protect His people from violence and that He will fulfill His divine purpose in this neighboring country.

Scripture "For the LORD gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding." Proverbs 2:6

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8. History Comes to Life

Three complete cooking pots and a small ceramic oil lamp were uncovered inside a recently discovered small cistern in a drainage channel that runs from the Shiloah Pool in the City of David to Robinson's Arch. The archaeological excavations were being conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) in the vicinity of the Western Wall.

These latest finds date to the time of the "Great Revolt." The vessels were discovered inside the drainage channel that was exposed in its entirety from the Shiloah Pool in the City of David to the beginning of Robinson's Arch. The "Great Revolt" took place from AD 66 to AD 70 and was the first of three major Jewish rebellions against the Romans. It eventually resulted in the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70.

According to IAA archaeologist Eli Shukron, "This is the first time we are able to connect archaeological finds with the famine that occurred during the siege of Jerusalem at the time of the "Great Revolt." The complete cooking pots and ceramic oil lamp indicate that the people went down into the cistern where they secretly ate the food that was contained in the pots, without anyone seeing them, and this is consistent with the account provided by the historian Josephus."

In his book "The Jewish War" Josephus describes the Roman siege of Jerusalem and in its wake the dire hunger that prevailed in the blockaded city. In his dramatic description of the famine in Jerusalem he tells about the Jewish rebels who sought food in the homes of their fellow Jews in the city. These, Josephus said, concealed the food they possessed for fear it would be stolen by the rebels and they ate it in hidden places in their homes.

Josephus wrote: "As the famine grew worse, the frenzy of the partisans increased with it...For as nowhere was there corn to be seen, men broke into the houses and ransacked them. If they found some they maltreated the occupants for saying there was none; if they did not, they suspected them of having hidden it more carefully and tortured them. Many secretly exchanged their possessions for one measure of corn — wheat if they happened to be rich, barley if they were poor. They shut themselves up in the darkest corners of the their houses, where some through extreme hunger ate their grain as it was, others made bread, necessity and fear being their only guides. Nowhere was a table laid..."

(By Edgar Asher, Ashernet, June 27, 2013)

Prayer Focus The 2,000-year-old evidence from such turbulent times reminds us that, although God's people have suffered as a result of their disobedience, He has never abandoned them. Praise God for His faithfulness to keep Israel as a nation.

Scripture "Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food; though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls-yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." Habakkuk 3:17-18

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Note:

All Scripture is taken from the New King James Version, unless otherwise noted.

Contact Robert Hand by email at borntolose3@att.net

In about five years from now, one will be able to travel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 28 minutes, via the high speed rail line currently being constructed. "The electric trains will travel 160 km/h [100 mph] on the line. According to the Transportation Ministry, the project includes a number of impressive architectural feats. The 680 engineers working on the line are creating Israel's longest and tallest viaducts, as well as a double tunnel more than 11 kilometers long." (The Times of Israel)

In the meantime, one can take the scenic hour and a half train ride which runs along a route similar to the one opened by the Turks in 1892 between Jaffa and Jerusalem, the "slow train." Michal and I have long wanted to take this route but we never seemed to find the time. Just recently, while touring with our friends from Phoenix, we finally did it. Come along for the ride!

First, we took the regular train from Kfar Sava to Tel Aviv, where we had time for lunch before departing. The 'slow train" soon left the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and stopped at Lod. The ancient Jewish town had been renamed Lydda by its Greek and Roman conquerors. The British revived the name "Lydda" during the Mandate era, in the same way that they revived the Greco-Latin name Palestine. Lod, a medium — sized city, is mentioned several times in the Bible and the New Testament. bustling town of merchants and scholars, its heyday was from the 5th century BCE until the Roman defeat of the Jews in 70 CE. Later, after the Arab conquests throughout Arabia and north Africa (mid-7th century to early-8th century CE), Lod was again elevated in importance. In 1099, Lod fell to the Crusaders, who named it St. Jorge de Lidde and ruled there for nearly a century. By the 13th century, Lod was again under Muslim control.

Lod was occupied by Jordan's Arab Legion in 1947, after the Arab rejection of the United Nations Partition Plan. It was conquered by the Israel Defense Forces in July 1948, during Israel's War of Independence. Located adjacent to Ben-Gurion International Airport (called Lydda Airport until Israel's independence), Lod is a major transportation hub servicing and repairing civilian aircraft from many countries, as well as building commercial and military jet aircraft. The population of the city is mostly Jewish, though there is a substantial Arab population. New neighborhoods attracting middle-class families have recently been built there, elevating the status of the city. (www.britannia.com)

Soon after leaving Lod, we arrived in the nearby city of Ramla (not to be confused with the Palestinian Arab city of Ramallah). Ramla was founded at the beginning of the 8th century by the Umayyad Calif Suleiman ibn Abd el-Malik as his short-lived capital, actually the only Arab capital ever located in the Province of Palestine. It was the seat of Arab governors of Palestine in the 8th and 9th centuries, as well as the provincial capital of the Mamluks in the 14th century. Ramla's best known historical site is the "White Mosque," erected at the beginning of the 8th century by the original Umayyad rulers. It was rebuilt by Saladin at the end of the 12th century, and its iconic minaret was constructed during the Mamluk period. Today, only the minaret is still standing.

Along with Lod, Ramla rejected the Partition Plan to share the land of Palestine with the Jews. Consequently, battles broke out there between Jewish and Arab forces in December 1947, as each side jockeyed to gain position before the withdrawal of the British the following May. During the battles, most Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from Ramla, before Israel's 1948 victory. Today, the mixed Jewish/Arab city is developing its tourism sites and its economy. New shopping malls and public parks have been built, and a municipal museum opened in 2001.

The view from our train became more picturesque after it departed from Ramla and as it passed beautiful farming areas before we began the climb towards Jerusalem. But before entering the Judean Mountains, the train stopped in Beit Shemesh, a large city with a growing ultra-Orthodox (haredi) community. Beit Shemesh is mentioned frequently in the Bible. In 2 Samuel it is identified as the first city encountered by the Philistines after they captured the ark of the covenant.

Beit Shemesh played a prominent role in the War of Independence. After the war, its first inhabitants were Jewish Bulgarian immigrants who were joined by more immigrants from Bulgaria, Iran, Iraq, Romania, Morocco and Kurdistan, making Beit Shemesh a typical 'Development Town.' In recent years, many English-speaking Israelis and new immigrants have moved there. (www.wikipedia.org)

The haredi population of the city is now close to 50%. There were highly-publicized clashes between the haredim and the less stringently religious population in Beit Shemesh during the past year. One result of the very unseemly events there is that Rabbi Dov Lipman, formerly of Baltimore, was elected to the Knesset. He became known because of his support of Beit Shemesh's Modern Orthodox community, although he classes himself as "haredi." Lipman, a member of the Yesh Atid party, is the only current member of Knesset born in America. He has a masters degree from Johns Hopkins University.

The ascent from Beit Shemesh to Jerusalem comprised about half of the journey. We enjoyed wonderful views of the mountains, ancient agricultural terraces, and forests that lined the route, while the train traveled beside a a small stream which wound through the mountains before petering out. There was little sign of civilization until we reached the outskirts of Jerusalem, after which we quickly arrived at the Malha station, located far from the city center.

We took a taxi into the center, exiting at King David St. There we enjoyed the fabulous views of the Old City and the Judean Desert from the viewpoint adjacent to the windmill erected by philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore in 1857. The windmill's purpose was to provide income for the community of Jews Montefiore enabled to move from the crowded confines of the Old City into the first new Jewish community outside the Old City walls, Mishkenot Sha'ananim. A replica of Montefiore's diligence (carriage) is on display at the windmill, located next to the upscale Yemin Moshe residential quarter.

While on the short walk to the fabled King David Hotel, our friends were surprised to see the Jerusalem branch of the Swed Masters Workshop, renowned for its intricate, handcrafted, silver creations. We stopped at the store and were treated to a tour and lengthy explanation by manager Arie Stavisky. Our friends were very happy to be able to purchase a beautiful travel set of Shabbat candlesticks. This was indeed serendipitous, because they had purchased two identical sets at Swed's New York branch seven years ago, years before the birth of their third granddaughter.

Before the return journey home, we treated ourselves to wonderful coffee and pastry on the lovely terrace of the King David Hotel, which deserves an article all on its own. Enjoying the ambiance and the view of the Old City from the terrace, we were very happy to have finally taken the slow train to Jerusalem, a ride in which "getting there" was at least half the fun.

Pictures: train ascending to Jerusalem, Montefiore windmill, Swed "teapot," King David terrace and pool

Steve Kramer moved to Israel with his wife and two young sons in 1991 from Margate, NJ. After working for years in the beer distribution business in America, Steve had several jobs in Israel before retiring in 2008. Since 1995, Steve has written a weekly opinion column for the Jewish Times of southern N.J. (www.jewishtimes-sj.com). His articles now appear in 3 e-papers: Times of Israel (blogs), ISRAELSEEN, and San Diego Jewish Times.

LET'S GET OUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT

The Children of Reuven and the Children of Gad had a very great multitude of livestock... They said to Moshe and Elazar... Let this land be given to your servants as a possession; do not bring us across the Jordan. (32:1-5)

Moshe Rabbeinu's reaction to this request was rather harsh. First he accused them of shirking their communal responsibilities: — Shall your brethren go out to war while you sit here? (32:6). Then he compared them to the spies who dissuaded the heart of the Children of Israel, not to come to the Land that the Lord has given them — (32:9). And to top it all off, he called them — A society of sinful men (32:14)!

In the end, though — after some clarifications, amendments, and conditions — Moshe consented to their request. The commentators try to figure out what their "sin" or error was, and what they said to convince Moshe that they would not fall into that trap. R. Yehudah Nachshoni (Hagute BeParshi'ot HaTorah) sums up the major approaches and asserts that the commentators identified five "sins": 1) exaggerated subjugation to materialism; 2) an attempt to free themselves of their communal obligations; 3) a secular approach to Eretz Yisrael; 4) isolation from Klal Yisrael; 5) despising the Desirable Land.

In reality, these categories can be consolidated into three broader groups: 1) love of material possessions, 2) rejection of the Chosen Land, 3) lack of Jewish unity. The following Midrash underscores these three "sins" and shows that they are all interconnected:

Three gifts were created in the world. If a man is privileged to possess one of them, he has attained the desire of the whole world. If he is privileged to possess wisdom, he has attained everything; if he is privileged to possess strength, he has attained everything; if he is privileged to possess wealth, he has attained everything. When is this true? When they are gifts of Heaven and come by virtue of the Torah, but human strength and wealth is worthless... Two rich men arose in the world... — Korach from Israel and Haman from the Gentiles — and both of them were utterly destroyed. Why? Because their gifts were not from the Holy One Blessed be He, rather they grabbed it for themselves. You find the same phenomenon by the Children of Gad and the Children of Reuven. They were wealthy and possessed an abundance of livestock, but they loved their money and settled outside the Land of Israel. Therefore, they were exiled first, before all the other Tribes... What caused this? The fact that they separated themselves from their brethren because of their possessions... (BeMidbar Rabbah 22:7)

Thus, their love of money led to their rejection of the Holy Land and their isolation from Klal Yisrael. (Note that the Midrash compares the Children of Reuven and Gad to Korach and Haman! Astounding!)

This Midrash seems to imply that the eastern side of the Jordan is not considered part of Eretz Yisrael, as it says, "They settled outside the Land of Israel." There is much debate on this point (which is more appropriate for Parashat Mas'ei, which delimits the boundaries of the Promised Land), but I think Rav Aviner clarifies the issue nicely in Tal Chermon (pp. 306-7). Discussing Moshe's comparison of the Children of Reuven and Gad to the spies, R. Aviner asks:

What is the comparison? On the contrary, they did not despise the Land; they displayed a bond to this part of the Land, which was destined for them! However, their bond stemmed from an egotistical concern for their own financial gain. They neglected the all-encompassing unity of the Jewish people, and they forgot that all of Eretz Yisrael belongs to all of Am Yisrael, and that one must see to it that the entire Land is conquered. Moreover, the conquest of the western side of Eretz Yisrael precedes that of Transjordan, for there are different levels of sanctity in the Land of Israel: The land of Judah — the site of the Sanctuary — is the holiest place; then comes the Galilee; and only afterwards comes Transjordan. Of course, this piece of land is also included in the sanctity of Eretz Yisrael, but it is relatively less holy, in comparison to the other areas...

The lesson to be learned from the "sin" of B'nei Gad and B'nei Reuven, especially as seen through the eyes of Chazal in the above-cited Midrash, is obvious. We must put our priorities in the right place and realize that the future of Am Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael is more important than our own physical comfort.

Perhaps in this context (and considering that Tish'a B'Av is fast approaching), it is appropriate to quote the Yerushalmi on the reasons for the second destruction. We are all familiar with the Bavli's version: "Why was the Second Temple destroyed...? Because of groundless hatred" (Yoma 9b). Few people, however, are aware of a small, but significant, addition found in the Yerushalmi: "...Because they loved money and hated one another for no reason..." (Yoma 1:1)!

I must share one more idea that is very applicable to the current situation here in Israel. As mentioned above, the first thing Moshe said to the Children of Reuven and Gad was, Shall your brethren go out to war while you sit here? R. Yonatan Eybeshitz explains this as follows: "Do you think that when the enemy goes to war against your brethren on the western side of the Jordan, he will let you dwell tranquilly in your portion?! Don't think such a thing! If you sit complacently and fail to help your brethren in the wars that are destined to occur in Eretz Yisrael, the enemy is likely to attack you as well, after he defeats the other tribes. The Jewish nation's strength lies in its unity. When it is united, it can defeat all of its adversaries..." (Parpara'ot LaTorah, p. 241).

Contact The Hebron Fund at info@hebronfund.org

Here's the story of the Middle East and of U.S. policy over decades in a few words in a headline from an article by Mark Landler and Jodi Rudoren:.

"Chaos in Middle East Grows as the U.S. Focuses on Israel"

I'd call it:

Kerry Shuttles as the Middle East Burns

Once again the United States is too busy trying to get the Holy Grail of Arab-Israeli peace while every country is in turmoil. Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Iran, etc., are in dangerous crises. Yet the White House stays wake at night not about Benghazi but about fantasizing on dream-boundaries in Jerusalem. Once again, U.S. policy is trying to free Palestinian terrorists convicted of murder while tens of thousands of innocent people are being killed or imprisoned.

Not only is peace unobtainable because of Palestinian intransigence, but the powerful Islamist and nationalist forces don't want peace. Peace with Israel would stir up more unrest and violence. Any Arab leaders who made peace would face overthrow and assassination. Everyone in the Middle East knows this; it often seems that nobody in Washington does. And Tony Blair, the negotiator for the Quartet-U.S., EU, UN, Russia-has been to Jerusalem 75 times in a decade with nothing to show for it. Here's another headline from the Washington Post

"Egypt's Protesters find a new villain: the U.S. Ambassador"

I'd rewrite this one as

"Egypt's Protesters find a new villain: the U.S. President"

In other words by helping to overthrow a U.S. ally, Obama bought 2.5 years of supposed popularity followed possibly by massive bloodshed along with a massive expression of a triumphalist anti=American, anti-Christian, antisemitic, anti-woman, anti-gay dictatorial movement?

Is it impossible to wake up, find a realpolitic, anti-Islamist strategy? Where are the experts to expose this emperor's new clothes game?

I have a particular respect for the second Lord Melchett, Henry Mond (1898-1949). My interest in him began simply because of the nearby street named after him, but then expanded when I did my research for a book, Assimilation and Its Discontents, about Jewish history. And now he has illuminated, from an obscure 75 year old book, the current situation of the international Jewish situation.

II.

Let me start at the beginning. The first Lord Melchett, Alfred Mond, built on his father's success as a chemist and became an extraordinary business success, a very powerful man indeed. He died in 1930 and was succeeded by his son, Henry. Both men were strong and active Zionists, both in donations and in politics.

Despite Alfred's support for Zionism, the family's social ambitions he was raised in the Anglican church. After becoming the second baron Melchett, Henry returned to Judaism in his 30s.

The first piece of wisdom Henry taught me was a story he told that went like this. He and his wife were founders of Tel Mond and he was head of the British Agency for Palestine. Mond also tried to help Jews escape Germany.

When he was a Liberal member of parliament during the time of Nazi rule in Germany, Henry was asked, to his astonishment, why he spent so time for Jewish and Zionist causes. He replied that Britain had many people to defend its interests; the Jews had very few. Still, today more true than many people realize despite the numerous and often well-funded groups that do little or nothing effective.

But I digress. I hadn't known that Mond had written anything much but today I pulled down a dusty book entitled Twelve Jews, published in that fateful year 1934. Mond's contribution is a chapter on Chaim Weizmann.

What caught my eye was this passage:

"In 1933, when the Hitler menace struck Jewry the greatest blow it has received since the Middle Ages...Jews who had avoided Zionism like the Plague became supporters of the movement both in opinion and act. Weizmann had the extraordinary experience of addressing a meeting...on a platform where his two immediate supporters one either hand were L.G. Montefiore and Mr. Anthony de Rothschild, who had been signatories to a letter protesting against the Balfour Declaration as being impracticable and undesirable sixteen years previously."

Now I don't want to exaggerate but I suggest that the menace facing the Jewish people today is the greatest certainly since that time and the second greatest since the end of the Middle Ages. I will stress that it is a distant second but number two, indeed. The voices baying for Jewish blood, the fashionableness of antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric, are once again at a peak.

There is Iran's nuclear program, the rising forces of openly genocidal Islamism, the threat in Europe and even America from certain sectors of society, the intimidation on some campuses, the intellectual ant-Israel and antisemitic sentiments stemming from the far left and even from "polite society," as well as the advance of assimilation among other factors are deepening.

Personally, I am quite optimistic about Israel, far more than the Middle East or Europe. Yet, still many others aren't.

So let me ask this question: Where is that solidarity displayed in 1933 today? Where are the people who have come out for the defense of Israel, even if they formerly lacked enthusiasm for it? Of course, I am not referring to those for which this statement does not apply. Please remember that point.

I see two main reasons for this. One is pure, raw, and unadulterated cowardice. This would be forgivable except that those who speak out are not risking physical well-being but merely social cachet. This was, of course, the rationale of Montefiore, whose distinguished ancestor did so much for the well-being of the Jews in the Land of Israel as did some of the Rothschild family also.

The openly expressed reason that these men had opposed the Balfour Declaration was that it might undermine their social status as Englishmen if they could be accused of a dual loyalty and even associated too much with their grubby communal colleagues. They understood, to their credit, that the nature of the new threat required a different response, just as many dropped their previous objections and gave help after independence was attained for Israel in 1948.

The other rationale for failing to rally publicly to the support of Israel and increasingly imperiled Jewish communities, again to speak bluntly, is that their problems were their own fault. Israel just hadn't taken enough risks and made enough sacrifices and concessions for peace. The arrogant and ignorant who have not taken the time to inform themselves-it is tempting but too wordy to name names so I will resist it-are a disgrace.

I have always maintained tongue in check that no Jew need starve because they can make a good living as a critic of Israel-again, I fight back the temptation to give names but invite you to do so. This in itself falls into two broad categories.

The first is the belief in the creation of a utopia in which Jews should instead sacrifice themselves on the altar.

Here the statement of the wealthy spoiled brat Rosa Luxemburg is appropriate to remember:

"What do you want with these special Jewish pains? I feel as close to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations in Putamayo and the blacks of Africa with whose bodies the Europeans play ball... I have no special corner in my heart for the ghetto: I am at home in the entire world, where there are clouds and birds and human tears."

Cool, except the Germans took Luxemburg's leftism on her and on the Jews. The tiresome pose of the Jewish citizen of the world who trumpets his or her own nobility endlessly continues to be absurd. Israel is a reality and is not noble enough for them in its warts. They must have an abstract cause; they must show themselves selfless to the echoes of their own self-praise, and much to their profit.

The other aspect should be uncomfortably reminiscent of the rich Western Jews who looked down on the inferiority of the "YIdden" of Eastern Europe with their embarrassing religiosity and vitality. The alleged morally superior can criticize and so show their neighbors that they are perfect, untouched by doing anything that might require getting their hands dirty, wrapped up in the costume of altruism. It is a disgrace that a Jew can bash Israel, side with the enemies of its people, and smugly pretend virtue and profit by social status and professional benefits from such "neutrality."

Melchett concludes with a story about his father when they visited Babylon. In referring to the battle that was still being engaged in, the senior Mond said:

"You see, had it not been the case centuries ago, that some small proportion of our people were prepared to return to [the land of Israel], to be the Zionists of that day, we should all have perished in the civilizations that perished with Babylon. It is only because of those few who returned at that time, that you and I are able to stand here and look upon these ruins. And where are those that took us into captivity in Babylon?"

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION MIDDLE EAST POLICY: SEE WHAT I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU?
http://www.gloria-center.org/2013/07/obama-administration-middle-east-policy -see-what-ive-been-trying-to-tell-you/

First, I want to apologize that I have often used intemperate language to describe U.S. policy and the people making it in the last 4.5 years. Perhaps I have put off some of you who would otherwise have been persuaded that something is very wrong. Therefore, I have tried to do another version of this approach. Remember, I'm not responsible for the way the questions are phrased here.

Q: How can the United States become the ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, a one-time Nazi collaborator which has never changed its political line since; a movement to impose Sharia states and restore the caliphate; a movement that is genocidal against Jews, and is also anti-Christian, anti-Shia (all Shia, not just the Islamists), wants to kill gays and make women into second-class citizens?

A: Pretty amazing isn't it? Can Americans really not realize this?

Q: How can the United States-he very same politicians-oppose support for the pro-American Nicaraguan Contras against the pro-Communist Sandinistas but now support with arms the ant-American Syrian rebels-Brotherhood and worse?

A: Pretty amazing isn't it? Can Americans really not realize this?

Q: How can the U.S. government stand by passively and watch four American officials be murdered by al-Qaida in Libya?

A: Pretty amazing isn't it? Can Americans really not realize this?

Q: How can the U.S. government pretend that the Israel-Palestinian peace process is going to work when the Palestinians refuse to negotiate for a dozen years, and the Palestinian Authority, because of Hamas ruling Gaza, doesn't even represent the Palestinians?

A: Pretty amazing isn't it? Can Americans really not realize this?

Q: How can the U.S. government support the Mursi Egyptian regime-anti-American and wanting to install Sharia in a strict version-yet refuse to back the pro-American Mubarak regime?

A: Pretty amazing isn't it? Can Americans really not realize this?

Q: How can the U.S. government allow internal influences on itself by the Muslim Brotherhood?

A: Pretty amazing isn't it? Can Americans really not realize this?

Q: How can the U.S. government censor what the military and FBI teaches the people on the front lines of the counterterrorist struggle so that they don't even understand political Islamism?

A: Pretty amazing isn't it? Can Americans really not realize this?

Q: How can Israel be constantly criticized for intransigence despite the risks and concessions it has taken during the last 21 years while the Palestinian Authority is portrayed as moderate and flexible when it won't even talk and continues to glorify terrorists and almost always reject Israel's existence?

A: Pretty amazing isn't it? Can Americans really not realize this?

Q:How can the Western media portray the new Iranian president as a moderate when he has always been a mainstream regime security official and hasn't even done anything yet?

A:Pretty amazing isn't it? Can Americans really not realize this? Next thing you know he'll get the Nobel Peace Prize without having done anything.

Q: How can the U.S. government ignore a dozen years' record of an Islamizing regime in Turkey, the destruction of democratic institutions, and now the violent suppression of peaceful demonstrations?

A: Pretty amazing isn't it? Can Americans really not realize this?

Q; How is anti-Israel sentiment reaching record heights in the American elite without any real reaction from the American Jewish community and support for the actual policies-though not the cultural-ideological manifestations-by American Jewish politicians?

A:Pretty amazing isn't it? Can Americans really not realize this?

Q: How can U.S. policy negotiate with the Taliban when anyone should see that this will signal the Afghan government that it cannot trust Washington and there's also that little matter of September 11?

A: Pretty amazing isn't it? Can Americans really not realize this?

Q: How can the U.S. government and media constantly criticize Israel as intransigent when the Palestinian Authority has refused to negotiate seriously for 12 years while Israel has been ready to talk at any time without preconditions and has repeatedly made concessions to encourage talks?

A: Pretty amazing isn't it? Can Americans really not realize this?

Q: Well, don't you have anything else to say?

A: Sure. Look, I don't have any problem understanding why this is U.S. policy. Some people tell me that while my ideas are good my harsh language prevents serious open-minded others from listening to it. I think the rules have changed. That dissent is kept out of the mass media as much as possible. Why don't I hear what I'm saying with nicer wording? Doesn't the strength of the argument and evidence prevail any more? Isn't the crisis bad enough to justify urgency and strong warnings? Have'n't my predictions been accurate? If you want take my arguments, change the wording, and explain in a polite way the worst Middle East policy in U.S. history go right ahead. Oh, and remember how many people are dying, being oppressed, and injured because of these policies.

What I cannot understand is that about half the American people, and more than half of American Jews who are facing the government that has been more indifferent to U.S. interests, that is signalling a desire to appease enemies and jettison friends, and an indifference to Israel's security (I mean regional mainly, not so much bilateral) greater than any administration in history, seem as if they don't realize it after four years of error.

Sergio Tezza can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net

Special Rapporteur for 9/11 Truth

U.N. official under fire for appearing on truther's radio show

The United Nations special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights appeared on a "9/11 truth" radio show in May and questioned the "official version" of the Sept. 11 attacks, the latest in a string of controversial comments to draw criticism.

U.N. official Richard Falk, who came under fire in April for suggesting the Boston marathon bombing was a justifiable response to America's interventionist U.S. foreign policy, was a guest on the May 31 episode of Truth Jihad Radio hosted by "9/11 truth" advocate Kevin Barrett.

Falk praised during the interview Barrett's "patient effort to tell the truth, and to get more and more people that are willing to say: At least that there are important unanswered questions that deserve a response, that the official version [of the Sept. 11 attacks] has unacceptable gaps in it."

"Questioning that deeply the official version of 9/11 does touch the third rail of American political sensitivities, and there is an attempt to discredit and destroy anyone that makes such a bold statement," Falk continued. "This has intimidated a lot of people, and makes people more reluctant than they might otherwise be to raise these suspicions about how to understand that transformative event that has been used to project American power around the world and to engage in these very destructive and dysfunctional wars, Iraq and Afghanistan being the main examples."

Falk was introduced on the show as "the U.N. special human rights rapporteur for the Palestinian territories."

The host Barrett during the interview questioned whether the Boston bombing was "another false flag attack" and slammed the "Neocon crazies" who criticized Falk's comments about the attack.

Barrett also claimed that the vast majority of Muslims, himself included, believe that the Sept. 11 attacks were an "inside job" designed to incite a war against Islam.

"Is there a way that maybe, given the fact that four out of five Muslims say [9/11] was an inside job, that we can approach this from a human rights perspective, in saying that it's Islamophobic to accept the official story without questioning it?" Barrett asked Falk.

"Yes, you can certainly argue that," Falk responded.

Barrett has previously questioned the Holocaust.

U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog group, called on U.N. leadership, including Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, to reprimand Falk for his comments.

Ban's spokesperson told the Washington Free Beacon that the U.N. chief vehemently disagrees with Falk's remarks, adding that Falk is an independent rapporteur appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council and does not represent the secretary general.

"We've made it very clear that the secretary general does not share his views on topics like this," said Farhan Haq, associate spokesperson for the secretary general."[Ban has] made very clear that he disagrees with Mr. Falk, including his accounting of the Sept. 11 events."

A spokesperson for Pillay did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

It is not the first time Falk has promoted Sept. 11 conspiracy theories. He wrote in 2008, "Any close student of 9/11 is aware of the many serious discrepancies between the official version of what took place and the actual happenings on that fateful day in 2001."

Falk's tenure at the United Nations has been riddled with controversy. He posted a cartoon in 2011 of a yarmulke-clad dog urinating on Lady Justice and chewing on a bloody skeleton, prompting accusations of anti-Semitism.

Falk later apologized for the cartoon, saying that he "didn't realize that it could be viewed as anti-Semitic and still do[es] not realize."

He has also equated Israel's policies in the Palestinian territories with Nazi actions during the Holocaust.

UN Watch is a Geneva-based non-governmental organization whose stated mission is "to monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own Charter". Contact UN Watch at briefing@unwatch.org

Paul Weston in the United Kingdom ... "I am a racist" ...

Is this process occurring here in the US? You listen, you decide, where do you stand — leftist-name calling notwithstanding.

Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWcVguB0GaY&feature=youtu.be

Contact Dr History at drhistory@cox.net

A new meme or figure of speech has begun to circulate among conservative writers and thinkers with increasing frequency and appositeness-namely, that we are living in a world turned upside down, to cite the title of a major book by Melanie Philips, itself derived from Christopher Hill's study of revolutionary 17th century in England. (The term "world" is used by these writers to refer primarily to the Western sociopolitical domain or provinces thereof.) Almost everywhere we look we see this trope corroborated by extensive empirical testimony, of which I will flag only a few significant instances.

It is a world, as we have just seen, in which respectable and knowledgeable anti-jihadist freedom fighters Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller are forbidden entry to the U.K. as disturbers of public order and social peace while avowed terrorists are welcomed into the country and allowed to live handsomely on the public dole. It is in this same benighted nation that anti-Sharia activists Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll of the English Defence League are arrested for entering a Sharia-controlled zone in Tower Hamlets, a borough of London, on their way to Woolwich to honor Drummer Lee Rigby, slaughtered by Islamic terrorists. As reported on The Gates of Vienna website, "the Metropolitan police have now taken on the responsibility of enforcing the borders of these shariah-controlled zones, applying the rules laid down by the Islamic inhabitants.

It is a world in which courageous media analyst Philippe Karsenty, who has shown beyond doubt that the infamous al-Dura event implicating Israel is an out-and-out hoax perpetrated by France 2 TV, finds himself convicted by the French courts for defamation-the Dreyfus affair redux. The Court of Cassation's decision to remand the case to the Court of Appeals, which had originally acquitted Karsenty and then overturned its prior verdict, is not only "outrageous," as Karsenty justifiably claimed, but legally problematic. As the JTA news source reported, "In returning the case to the appeals court, the high court said the appeals court had overstepped its bounds in ordering France 2 to send it the rushes of the report." In other words, from the perspective of the High Court, soliciting evidence is impermissible. Shades of Canada's Human Rights Tribunals and Supreme Court decision, which regard truth as unacceptable in their proceedings if it offends a member of a designated minority group. The same travesty exists in many European nations.

It is a world in which the adherents of catastrophic global warming deliberately ignore the massively accumulating evidence to the contrary and politicians are inaugurating policies, based on a fraudulent and corrupted science, that promise to destroy their economies.

It is a world in which powerful Democratic politicians in the U.S. oppose Voter ID laws on the grounds that such legislation would discriminate against black minorities. The facts that (1) I.D. is required for almost every other form of access to official institutions irrespective of caste or color, and that (2) the absence of such laws results directly in voter fraud and the skewing of electoral results, almost always in the Democrats' favor, are conveniently forgotten or intentionally suppressed.

It is a world in which Iran chairs the UN Conference on Disarmament and Syria was recently a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

It is a world that has fallen in love with a manifestly false Palestinian narrative to which it unthinkingly subscribes and that adamantly refuses to consult the historical muniments that are readily available to any interested mind-in other words, a Euhemeristic world that interprets "myths as traditional accounts of historical persons and events" (Merriam-Webster).

It is a world that insists on portraying Islam as a "religion of peace" when a prodigious number of its expressions in the theological canon, in the jurisprudential literature, and in actual and undeniable events on the domestic and international stages indisputably indicate the complete reverse. In this world, minority cultures and especially the Islamic community are, in effect, given precedence over the heritage cultures. Here the West could learn from Vladimir Putin who, in an address to the Duma on February 4, 2013, stated in part: "In Russia live Russians. Any minority, from anywhere, if it wants to live in Russia...should respect the Russian laws. If they prefer Sharia Law, then we advise them to go to those places where that's the state law...we will not grant them special privileges, or try to change our laws to fit their desires, no matter how loud they yell ‘discrimination'. We better learn from the suicides of America, England, Holland and France, if we are to survive as a nation."

Experiencing terrorist atrocities on our own soil; remarking how Islamic-inspired anti-blasphemy laws are gradually encroaching upon the bedrock principle of free speech; noting the rising incidence of Jew-baiting and antisemitic propaganda among Islamic groups and organizations; and witnessing the epidemic of Muslim rapes of non-Muslim girls and women in Australia, Britain and Scandinavia (to name only the most prominent examples), we know-or should know-that Putin is absolutely right. The ignominy is only compounded by the shameful response of our media and government apparatchiks who dismiss, cover over or explain away these abominations as the fault of an uncaring society that treats its immigrants badly.

Such instances of sheer malfeasance and, not to put too fine a word upon it, utter stupidity can be multiplied at will, leading many conservative writers to re-interpret George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon and Jean Raspail's The Camp of the Saints not as mere dystopian novels prone to exaggeration but as prophetically accurate visions of the future-a future which has become the present. I would add to this apocalyptic library Samuel Butler's 1872 novel Erewhon, describing a world in which everything is done backwards and inefficiently. ("Erewhon" is "Nowhere" spelled approximately backwards.)

In Erewhon, for example, there are no machines (cf. our mounting legislation against successful industries in favor of unworkable "renewable resources"); coinage is trimmed (cf. our sinking currencies); offenders against the law are coddled as ill (cf. our pampering of lawbreakers as suffering victims of social indifference or oppression); the ill are regarded as felons (cf. the innocent are often criminalized); and so on ad nauseam. We live in a backwards world in which the decent are regarded as indecent, defenders of western institutions are considered as terrorists, correct naming is derogated and often prosecuted as slander and "hate speech," violence is justified if committed by our enemies, unseasonable cold weather is interpreted as an infallible sign of global warming-the beat goes on.

It should be clear by this time that we have lost our bearings and have sacrificed both our sense of reality and our survival as a genuinely liberal culture on the altar of unreflected sentiment, a reluctance to deal with or even recognize unequivocal evidence, and a wholly mistaken conception of our fundamental interests. We have, for the most part, colluded in an agreement that upside down is right-side up, backwards is forwards, and madness is sanity, as if we had been stricken by the ideological version of the Black Plague. It is a world gone perhaps irreversibly mad, for certain forms of madness may be untreatable-in which case we are truly lost. Of course, the world has never been in its right mind, but we can say that the comparatively more enlightened sectors in the West have at least perambulated canzicrans, sideways like a crab.

Today, sideways would be a blessing, for we are moving inexorably backwards-toward the infancy of the mind, toward the re-medievalization of power relations, toward cultural dissolution, toward a renewed primitivism issuing in civilizational suicide, in short, toward our contemporary Erewhon, our "Nowhere," which is also an anagram for: "Now here."

Contact YogiRUs at YogiRUs@aol.com

The only way to fight anti-Semitism is "to call a spade a spade", says Minister Naftali Bennett at Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism.

See VIDEO on line

Speaking at the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism, Bennett, who serves Minister of Diaspora Affairs, told attendees, "I'm asking all of you — go out. Don't relent. Don't be quiet. Speak up."

One of the more clever methods of anti-Semitism is to claim that Israel's sole mission is to be a refuge for Jews after the Holocaust, thereby asserting that the land of Israel isn't Jewish land, said Bennett.

"Part of the truth is that this land, where we are right now — Jerusalem and Israel — is the land of the Jewish people," he declared. "It's so very simple: Israel belongs to the Jews. Period. It's not a compensation for the Holocaust. Israel is the Jewish State. We have to say that again and again."

He added, "Friends should absolutely criticize us, which is fine. We're far from perfect. No one's perfect, but we're trying to strengthen the only pillar of democracy in an ocean of radical Islam which is out to wipe out the world. We're here fighting. It's not easy, but we're doing it. We're doing it and we're creating start-ups. We're trying to do good. We don't always succeed, but we try."

"We're doing our best and we're going to continue doing our best, but we need you guys to go out and tell people the truth, and the truth is that Israel is the land of the Jews and we're here to stay, and we're not going to be silent anymore," said Bennett.

The Unity Coalition for Israel has convened an alliance of Christian and Jewish organizations actively working together to generate support for the State of Israel. With more than 200 autonomous partners, representing more than 40 million Americans, we are the largest network of Pro-Israel groups in the world. Contact Unity Coalition for Israel at voices@unitycoalitionforisrael.org

This week the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister blamed mass protests in his country on the "Jewish Diaspora.' Millions of Egyptians took to the streets demanding the ousting of President Morsi who was subsequently removed from power by the Egyptian military. Jordan blocked 254 news websites and Iran was discovered to be importing missile-grade ore from Germany and France. The world was also reminded of the savagery that is Syria's civil war when a video of rebels decapitating a Catholic priest with a kitchen knife went viral.

And John Kerry visited Israel. Again.

Just about everyone is wondering why.

His fifth time in the last three months, Kerry was on an Israel-PA 'peace process' shuttle diplomacy bender that included an all-night session with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and a press conference at the end that was optimistic in tone, but nothing else.

"What's John Kerry doing here?" asked Ben Sales in a JTA column. "John Kerry's bid for Mideast peace is doomed," declared veteran commentator Jeffrey Goldberg writing for Bloomberg. "Chaos in Middle East grows as the U.S. focuses on Israel," ran a New York Times headline, and more subtlely a Chicago Sun Times article announced that "Kerry's admirable Mideast push faces daunting obstacles."

Citing "former administration officials," The New York Times tried its hand at an explanation, suggesting that Kerry is focusing on Israel and the Palestinian Authority because it is the only place in the region where the United States can still exert influence. No doubt hard to believe, and considerably worrying if true. Another explanation The Times cites, that strikes me as just strange, is that it is really all about Jordan. "Resuscitating the peace process is also vital to Jordan," former State Department official Dennis Ross told the paper, 'which is reeling from the wave of refugees from Syria and can ill afford a new wave of Palestinian unrest in the neighboring West Bank."

More likely, the reason Kerry is focused on Israel and the Palestinian Authority is because Arab states and their friends and backers continue to push the issue to the fore, mostly to distract from their own internal failings. The 'linkage' ideology is alive and well in the Arab world, not because it is true but because blaming Israel serves the interests of most Arab despots.

Since the beginning of the year Kerry has visited numerous Muslim countries including Afghanistan, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Brunei, some of them multiple times. It is likely that at each stop he has been greeted with the same advice; solve the "Israeli problem" first.

But if there is one thing that the escalating events in the Middle East have made abundantly clear to the Israelis, it is that there is no long term stability without real democracy, and there can be no sustainable peace without stability.

Events in Egypt, Turkey, Syria and beyond have shown that an agreement with any autocrat whose time in power is likely to be short-lived would not be sustainable. PA Chairman Abbas is an autocrat and therefore can't be propped up in any sustainable way with all the will in the world.

George W. Bush was right. If America wishes to export peace, it must first export democracy. And if it is progress that Kerry seeks, this is where he must begin.

The situation in Egypt provides a prime opportunity to start with. U.S. support for either side should be made conditional on the establishment of a true democratic system of government. Elections alone are not enough, as Natan Sharansky writes in The Case for Democracy, "A society that is not free but in which elections are held, should never be considered democratic." The 'linkage' that actually works is the linkage of Ronald Reagan and 'Scoop' Jackson, whereby the United States establishes its relationships based on how said country treats its own citizens.

In the meantime, John Kerry is trying to place a cherry on a cake that has yet to be baked. If Kerry wants peace in the region he must introduce the region to the ways of peace, to democracy, first.

Dovid Efune is the Editor-in-Chief of The Algemeiner and director of the GJCF and can be e-mailed at defune@gjcf.com.

The immigration overhaul passed last week by the Senate — the biggest piece of domestic legislation to be considered this year-now moves to the House, where its prospects are widely said to be "uncertain." Which is to say, it's in trouble. In fact, the Senate's version of an immigration bill has no chance of House approval. The House may pass its own, different version, but even that is an iffy proposition. To understand why, consider the most important fact of political life in the capital these days: If the Washington establishment is from Mars, the Republican caucus in the House is from Venus.

Many House Republicans — particularly the younger freshmen and sophomore members who now make up a stunning 46% of the caucus — don't much care what conventional wisdom says they should do. They are happy to rock the boat. Two weeks ago, conventional wisdom said, as the majority party, House Republicans simply had to muster the votes needed to pass a farm bill despite misgivings about its size and shape. Instead, 62 House Republicans rebelled and voted against it because of its cost, and the bill failed.

Now, conventional wisdom says the national Republican Party's imperative to build bridges to Hispanic voters, as well as business-community support, means House Republicans must pass a comprehensive immigration bill. Yet that simply isn't the way the world looks to many House Republicans. They come from districts where the concerns of the national party don't matter much, and the concerns of liberals who want a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants matter even less.

In other words, they come from very red districts, many of which have gotten more red since the redistricting that followed the 2010 Census. Their constituents are predominantly conservative and predominantly white. A Wall Street Journal analysis shows that only 38 of the 234 House Republicans — just over 16% — come from districts where Latinos account for 20% or more of the population. Their districts also are heavily Republican. Indeed, 42 Republican House members won with more than 70% of the vote last year. (The same is true in reverse for Democrats in the polarized House, by the way; 83 of them come from districts so blue they won with more than 70% of the vote.)

By the same token, very few House Republicans come from the kinds of swing districts where they have to worry a lot about what President Barack Obama wants. Just 17 of the 234 House Republicans elected last year come from districts where Mr. Obama carried the presidential vote. In such heavily conservative districts, writes analyst David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, "The overwhelming share of House Republicans will have more to fear from a 2014 primary than a 2014 general election." Against that backdrop, it's instructive to look at that June 20 vote in which the House defied history by defeating the farm bill, a measure with a mix of coveted farm subsidies and food-stamp funding that has always been enough to make it politically irresistible.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a conservative Republican from Kansas, is openly critical of the House's GOP leaders. One member who bucked those expectations — and seemingly his own political interests — to vote against the bill was conservative Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas. Mr. Huelskamp is a farmer, and he represents Kansas' "Big First" district, a giant swath of central and western Kansas that is larger than some states and that receives the second highest per-capita share of farm subsidies of any district in the nation.

Yet he spurned the wishes of his own party's leaders by voting against the farm bill and its agriculture subsidies. He complained that almost 80% of its funding goes to a food-stamp program that is mushrooming in size and cost to the federal government. The second-term lawmaker led a revolt by like-minded young conservatives who considered the bill an example of government spending gone overboard, whatever its other virtues; 13 of 36 House freshmen also voted no. "People said the old deal was that all these people from agricultural districts are just going to vote for a farm bill," Mr. Huelskamp said in an interview. "Well, no. I'm not going to go for 80% for food stamps to get the 20% for us."

Has that vote created problems among all the farmers and agriculture interests back home? "I haven't really had much push-back," he said. "What I'm hearing from home is, 'What we expect you to do, Tim, is we expect you to get Congress out of the rut we've been in.' "Mr. Huelskamp has defied his party's own leaders so openly that he's been kicked off the Agriculture Committee. That did cause some dismay among agriculture interests back home. On the other hand, he was unopposed in winning re-election last year. Which is worth keeping in mind if you assume the House will pass an immigration bill just because it's expected to.

Israel Commentary is a unaffiliated political news service that attempts to post information not readily available in most news outlets. Contact Israel Commentary at http://www.israel-commentary.org/

These days, when Egyptian spokesmen appear in the media — Mursi's supporters as well as those demanding his resignation — there is new and disagreeable rhetoric that increasingly dominates the public discourse. It begins with the name of the opposition movement, called "tamrrud" — "rebellion". It is no longer a protest or demonstration, it is a rebellion. The rebels waved signs with the slogan "irhal" — "leave" or "get out" — exactly like the signs that the demonstrators in Tahrir Square ("Liberation", from the British) waved two and a half years ago, when the target was Mubarak. By using this slogan, the demonstrators are equating Mursi with Mubarak, and there can be no worse insult to the president, who won the first democratic elections ever held in Egypt. Another slogan that was brought out of the January 2011 demonstration storage bin is "al-sha'b yurid isqat al-nitham" — "the people want to topple the regime". The implicit message is that the regime of the Muslim Brotherhood is just as illegitimate as Mubarak's regime was.

Others yell "Mursi — Kursi", meaning "Mursi, the chair", mocking Mursi for being stuck to his chair like Mubarak was, in his time. Mursi's supporters cling to the concept of the Shar'iyya — legitimacy — that the elections gave him, and assert that the demands for his resignation are illegitimate. His opposition calls out, "We will defend you, Egypt", implying that "the Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to our homeland and our country", and some yell, "Free Egypt" (from the Brotherhood's occupation).

But the new and ominous factor is how both sides freely use radical expressions not used in the past, like "We will not yield", "red line", "blood will be spilled", "to the end", "we will fight with our spirits and our lives". These expressions clearly connote the tremendous amount of tension between the two camps: the opposition to Mursi in Tahrir Square, and his supporters in Rab'ia Al-Adawiyya Square. There was also tension regarding what the army would do when the period of the ultimatum elapsed, because the army imposed the ultimatum on both sides, but it was rejected by both sides. The Army has called on everyone "to act responsibly" because a descent into violence — the beginning of which was marked by more than twenty fatalities and hundreds of injured — would bring a national disaster upon Egypt, the beloved country of both sides.

However, too many people feel that it is "now or never": the rebels feel that if they go back home, Mursi and the Brotherhood will rule over them forever, and the Brotherhood is sure that if their victory is taken from them by force they will crash as an organization, which ultimately attained its goal and then failed to hold on to it. Each side wants absolute victory for itself, and total defeat for the other side. In post-Mubarak Egypt — unfortunately — a sense of collective consciousness where everyone can sit together and solve conflicts peacefully has not developed. The cultural polarization, political radicalization, the torrid summer, the economic collapse, the high unemployment, the hopelessness, the increasing violence, the approaching Ramadan and rhetoric of extremism all are jet fuel that is poured on the public conflagration in Egypt. These are the materials that national disaster is made of, and Egypt is surely capable of deteriorating into a situation similar to that in Syria.

Israel — surprisingly — is almost not mentioned at all in relation to the crisis, which is proof of both its seriousness and its severity. Nevertheless, Mursi — in an attempt to throw a bone to the masses — might cut off relations with Israel, or send the army into Sinai to "regain sovereignty" of the peninsula, but the worst thing would be if millions of Egyptians begin marching toward Israel in search of two things: water and bread. The waves of the Egyptian disaster might arrive to our shores, and we must be prepared.

Contact Nurit Greenger by email at nurit.nuritg@gmail.com. Visit her blog: http://ngthinker.typepad.com

I WILL NOT SUBMIT TO ISLAM!

I want to thank the organizers of this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance. It is a great honor for me and it is a privilege really to be among today's distinguished speakers.

I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppression.

It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel. The UN has itself become a tool against Israel. For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state — Israel. Hitler couldn't have been made happier.

The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.

But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN's anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people. Please hear me out.

By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale. For over 50 years the indigenous black population of Sudan — Christians and Muslims alike — has been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum.

The UN is focused about Palestinians, while ignoring ethnic cleansing in Sudan.

In South Sudan, my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005.

Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.

The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them, and they are treated with a special privilege. Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored.

The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan's conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur? It is not a "tribal conflict."

It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan, everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and forcibly converted the indigenous people to Islam. In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabized. They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide! But nobody at the UN tells the truth about Darfur.

In the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans — Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains.

Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?

What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is "Israeli crimes" and Palestinian suffering. My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering. What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin. But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.

Chattel slavery was practiced for centuries in Sudan. It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s. Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.

I am a living proof of this crime against humanity.

I don't like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.

I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family's left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word "no." All I could say was "yes," "yes," "yes."

The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF — under pressure from the Jewish-led American Anti-Slavery Group — 16 years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.

But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN's actions.

Today, tens of thousands of black Sudanese are enslaved and the UN is silent.

My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League. As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.

I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. When Egyptian security forces slaughtered 26 black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo. They needed shelter and they found it in Israel.

Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees' only hope was to reach Israel's side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.

Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area. Do you know what this means!?

And the Arabs say Israel is racist!?

In Israel, black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt, Israel is "heaven."

Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism — the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Beautiful black Jews.

So, yes... I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.

Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow.

Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We — a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis — all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned. So that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.

In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a 12 year old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel, she said: "This is our people." I was never able to find an answer to my question.

On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.

In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel's legitimacy.

As a friend of Israel, I bring you the news that my President, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir — publicly stated that the South Sudan embassy in Israel will be built — not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its peoples, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply telling the truth. Our truth.

My Jewish friends taught me something I now want to say with you.

AM YISRAEL CHAI — The people of Israel lives!

Contact Medicine Hat at pswc@shaw.ca

The immigration overhaul passed last week by the Senate — the biggest piece of domestic legislation to be considered this year — now moves to the House, where its prospects are widely said to be "uncertain." Which is to say, it's in trouble. In fact, the Senate's version of an immigration bill has no chance of House approval. The House may pass its own, different version, but even that is an iffy proposition. To understand why, consider the most important fact of political life in the capital these days: If the Washington establishment is from Mars, the Republican caucus in the House is from Venus.

Many House Republicans — particularly the younger freshmen and sophomore members who now make up a stunning 46% of the caucus — don't much care what conventional wisdom says they should do. They are happy to rock the boat. Two weeks ago, conventional wisdom said, as the majority party, House Republicans simply had to muster the votes needed to pass a farm bill despite misgivings about its size and shape. Instead, 62 House Republicans rebelled and voted against it because of its cost, and the bill failed.

Now, conventional wisdom says the national Republican Party's imperative to build bridges to Hispanic voters, as well as business-community support, means House Republicans must pass a comprehensive immigration bill. Yet that simply isn't the way the world looks to many House Republicans. They come from districts where the concerns of the national party don't matter much, and the concerns of liberals who want a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants matter even less.

In other words, they come from very red districts, many of which have gotten more red since the redistricting that followed the 2010 Census. Their constituents are predominantly conservative and predominantly white. A Wall Street Journal analysis shows that only 38 of the 234 House Republicans — just over 16% — come from districts where Latinos account for 20% or more of the population. Their districts also are heavily Republican. Indeed, 42 Republican House members won with more than 70% of the vote last year. (The same is true in reverse for Democrats in the polarized House, by the way; 83 of them come from districts so blue they won with more than 70% of the vote.)

By the same token, very few House Republicans come from the kinds of swing districts where they have to worry a lot about what President Barack Obama wants. Just 17 of the 234 House Republicans elected last year come from districts where Mr. Obama carried the presidential vote. In such heavily conservative districts, writes analyst David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, "The overwhelming share of House Republicans will have more to fear from a 2014 primary than a 2014 general election." Against that backdrop, it's instructive to look at that June 20 vote in which the House defied history by defeating the farm bill, a measure with a mix of coveted farm subsidies and food-stamp funding that has always been enough to make it politically irresistible.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a conservative Republican from Kansas, is openly critical of the House's GOP leaders. One member who bucked those expectations — and seemingly his own political interests — to vote against the bill was conservative Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas. Mr. Huelskamp is a farmer, and he represents Kansas' "Big First" district, a giant swath of central and western Kansas that is larger than some states and that receives the second highest per-capita share of farm subsidies of any district in the nation.

Yet he spurned the wishes of his own party's leaders by voting against the farm bill and its agriculture subsidies. He complained that almost 80% of its funding goes to a food-stamp program that is mushrooming in size and cost to the federal government. The second-term lawmaker led a revolt by like-minded young conservatives who considered the bill an example of government spending gone overboard, whatever its other virtues; 13 of 36 House freshmen also voted no. "People said the old deal was that all these people from agricultural districts are just going to vote for a farm bill," Mr. Huelskamp said in an interview. "Well, no. I'm not going to go for 80% for food stamps to get the 20% for us."

Has that vote created problems among all the farmers and agriculture interests back home? "I haven't really had much push-back," he said. "What I'm hearing from home is, 'What we expect you to do, Tim, is we expect you to get Congress out of the rut we've been in.' "Mr. Huelskamp has defied his party's own leaders so openly that he's been kicked off the Agriculture Committee. That did cause some dismay among agriculture interests back home. On the other hand, he was unopposed in winning re-election last year. Which is worth keeping in mind if you assume the House will pass an immigration bill just because it's expected to.

Israel Commentary is a unaffiliated political news service that attempts to post information not readily available in most news outlets. Contact Israel Commentary at
http://www.israel-commentary.org/

In a recent TV interview on MSNBC, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor and the "Father of al Qaeda," stated :

"I think our [Obama's recent anti-Assad] posture is baffling, there no strategic design, we're using slogans. It's a tragedy and it's a mess in the making. I do not see what the United States right now is trying to accomplish. It all seems to me rather sporadic, chaotic, unstructured, and undirected. I think we need a serious policy review with the top people involved, not just an announcement from the deputy head of the NSC that an important event has taken place and we will be reacted to it.

"We are running the risk of getting into another war in the region which may last for years and I don't see any real strategic guidance to what we are doing. I see a lot of rhetoric, a lot emotion, a lot of propaganda in fact."

But Brzezinski also stated the same "serious policy" in aDaily Beast (DB) 2009 interview (less than 3 years ago), that if Israel attacked Iran's nuclear weapons' sites, then the US should somehow stop the Israeli planes:

"DB: How aggressive can Obama be in insisting to the Israelis that a military strike might be in America's worst interest?

Brzezinski: We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?

DB: What if they fly over anyway?

Brzezinski: Well, we have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren't just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse."

Now, how exactly do these Brzezinski "policy" positions prove that he is an Iran-Firster? Or really, why has Brzezinski gone so hysterical over keeping Shiite Assad intact and protected from the anti-Assad Sunni rebels?

In fact, former President Clinton (no Bush Republican, he) just came out strongly for an anti-Assad US intervention. The answer is simple.

First, you have to remember that Brzezinski will strongly push any position that catastrophically harms Israel, even if it also catastrophically harms the United States.

Second, Brzezinski is an Iran-Firster who wants Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb. In short, Brzezinski wants nothing less than a nuclear-armed Iran which can annihilate Israel, and murder 6,000,000 Jews.

But how does one get from Brzezinski's protecting Assad to Iran's nuking Israel? Brzezinski, the chess player, understands that Assad and Hizbullah are effectively Iran's first, and only, line of defense against an Israeli solo-attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Why? Because on Brzezinski's chessboard, if Assad (Iran's rook) is toppled, Hizbullah and its arsenal of missiles become an isolated and useless Iranian pawn against Israel in the event of an Israeli pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear weapons' facilities (Iran's Queen).

Even better, in a post-Assad Syria, al Qaeda will likely exact infinite revenge on Iran's isolated South Lebanese Hizbullah pawn. With Israel's IDF on its south, al Qaeda to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and the Lebanese Sunnis to the north, Hizbullah is road-kill Sunni-style. And Iran, and especially Brzezinski, know it.

However, contra-wise, before an Israeli decision of whether or not to solo-attack Iran, without Hizbullah's 50,000 missiles neutralized and with Assad's weapons' life-line to Hizbullah still intact, Israel would be highly likely not to decide to attack Iran without full US agreement and participation. (Iran's pawn easily gets promoted to a devastating check-mating Queen.).

Brzezinski profoundly knows that Obama's United States will never attack Iran, or will never agree to attack Iran under any circumstances. (Only a delusional Israeli policy maker who wants to create a 'West Bank' Palestinian state would actually believe Obama's "bait and switch" that he will attack Iran, if Israel creates a PA State.)

So, working backwards, Brzezinski reasons, "If, ab initio, Iran has a viable 50,000 missile Hizbullah counter-attack on Israel, Israel won't attack Iran alone without the US." Hence, by protecting Assad, Brzezinski is protecting Iran's counter-attack on Israel in the event Israel executes a solo attack on Iran.

By knowing the United States under Obama will never attack Iran, Brzezinski then sees Israel as blocked into not attacking Iran at all. (Iran's pawn pins Israel's queen from attacking.) And, of course, Brzezinski, without an Israeli attack, then sees that Iran gets the nuclear bomb. Iran then checkmates Israel into a nuclear Holocaust. But one will likely say, "Didn't Israel attack Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirik all alone? Israel can do the same thing with Iran!" Sorry to burst the delusional bubble... Iran's multiple nuclear sites are hundreds of additional miles due east from Iraq's Osirik.

And, unlike the Israeli-Iraq attack flight-path that was topographically flat as a pancake, to reach all the likely Iranian nukes sites, Israeli planes would have to climb over the Zagros mountains that run north-south, and form Iran's Western border's natural fortress-line.

The Zagros Mountains tower over 4,000 meters high, and are on par with the Alps and the American Rockies. Given the military scale and scope of such an Israeli operation, a dead-certain Hizbullah 50,000-strong rocket counterattack on Israel's home-front would likely be a political tipping-point against Israel deciding to launch such a daring solo-Israeli attack on Iran to begin with.

There's the nub of the problem. A Syria with Assad means an Iran with a nuclear bomb. No way around it.

But just to show you how intellectually dishonest and duplicitous Brzezinski's current pro-Assad analysis is, let's review a short "videotape" of Brzezinski's past, and more recent "policy" decisions. First, Brzezinski is the intellectual father and architect of the master Sunni terrorist al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden himself. Brzezinski was Jimmy Carter's policy architect of arming the radical Sunni al Qaeda Islamists in Afghanistan to defeat the Soviet Union.

Did anyone hear Brzezinski recant his Carter years' al Qaeda Afghan policy? Why was Brzezinski's arming of the Sunni al Qaeda good to attack the Soviet Union with, but Obama's arming al Qaeda to attack Iran perceived as bad? (MAD worked for decades with the Russians, but will never work for a day with the Iranians.) Because Brzezinski understands that now al Qaeda's attack on Assad and Iran would be helping Israel defeat Iran.

Thus, Brzezinski takes the exact opposite policy today from the one he took 20 years ago, so as to harm Israel, and help Iran, the free world's greatest enemy.

That was in the early 1980's! What's Ziggy said for himself lately? Well, how about Brzezinski's recent "analysis" about the United States arming the anti-Gaddafi rebels, and the US actually attacking Gaddafi? In a March 30, 2011 interview with Amar Bakshi(AB), Brzezinski stated"

"AB: Do you support the intervention in Libya?

Brzezinski: I support the intervention in Libya because I have the strong sense that if we did not [intervene], our credibility in the entire region — which is already very much at stake — would be shattered and Gaddafi would emerge as the leader and symbol of Arab radicalism."

Yikes!! That hurts. Brzezinski, the master geo-strategist, got it 100% wrong. The exact opposite happened. Libya became an absolute safe haven for even more extreme terrorists who then proceeded to murder our Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

But most importantly, according to Brzezinski's "objective" reasoning, Gaddafi who had agreed to disarm himself of nuclear weapons, and had 'only' killed 1,000 Libyans was fair game for total United States destruction, but a Shiite-Iranian Puppet Assad who is on the United States list of terror states, and who has murdered 100,000 people and used chemical weapons on civilians should be completely protected by the United States.

Brzezinski issues such contradictory policies because he is a rabid, pathological Jew-hater. Remember, Brzezinski always opts for what's worst for Israel, and best for Iranian regime, even if it is what's worst for America.

Yes, there are some pundits who, Polonius-like, fret over arming the anti-Assad rebels. And yes, the anti-Assad rebels aren't nice people. I admit they're nasty people, and I wouldn't invite them to a Bar Mitzvah.

Nevertheless, Stalin murdered 20,000 Polish Military officer POWs in cold blood in 1940, but the US in 1941 still armed him to the hilt against Hitler.

The choice is clear: either arm al Qaeda today to defeat Assad and Iranian regime, or prepare soon to have an Iranian nuclear bomb decimate Tel Aviv tomorrow, with Washington DC sure to follow in due course.

Joan Swirsky has been a longtime health-and-science and feature writer for The New York Times Long Island section and the recipient of seven Long Island Press Awards. She was a science writer for The Women's Record, writing over 175 articles on the issue of breast cancer on Long Island, publicly acknowledged as driving two redesigns of the New York State Study on breast cancer and as the first journalist in America to put the breast cancer-environment relationship "on the map" of public consciousness. Contact her at joanswirsky@gmail.com

The turnaround in Egypt is a once in a generation opportunity. Can Western, and Arab, leaders seize it?

The Egyptian army has ousted the elected Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi. Gigantic anti-Morsi demonstrations forced the hand of the armed forces. An interim, secular, government will take office, headed by the Chief Judge of the Constitutional Court. The parliament and the constitution are abolished. This is a huge setback for the Muslim Brotherhood and its Salafist allies. It is potentially a triumph for liberal, secular, Christian and mainstream Muslim Egyptians.

Now what? Egypt still faces a disastrous economic and financial crisis that cannot be put off for more than a few weeks at the most. It faces hunger, unemployment and social unrest. With the best will in the world the new government will have an almost impossible task before it. Some commentators have even suggested that it would be better if Morsi had survived, because then he and the Brotherhood would have been blamed for the collapse. As it is, if and when it happens the new government will get the blame.

This is a huge opportunity and an equally huge risk for the West, plagued as it is by weak and vacillating leadership. The new government in Egypt should be supported in every way, to demonstrate that the world cares about what happens in the Arab world, if it indeed does. Verbally, diplomatically, politically, economically and financially, Egypt must be encouraged and helped to succeed under its new leadership. If this is not done, history will never forgive the West and it will be largely responsible for the horrific consequences.

Will the right things be done? Doubtful. The Obama Administration has supported the Muslim Brotherhood government since the beginning and tried to save it at the last minute by threatening to cut off financial support for the armed forces. It is not by chance that many of the signs and placards carried by the demonstrators attacked Obama as supporting Morsi against the will of the Egyptian people. They are right. There has been over the past year no condemnations of the many anti-democratic measures taken by the Brotherhood government. The European government have been equally complicit.

If the new government and the armed forces are blamed for the inevitable crash and there is another change of government, it is likely to be even more authoritarian than the Morsi regime. No chances will be taken and society will be "cleansed" in the way it was in Iran after the Khomeini coup. This is the most dangerous outcome possible for both the West in general and Israel in particular. The Gulf states and Saudi Arabia should also step up to the plate--their future is also at stake in what happens in Egypt.

What, indeed, can be done with the right support? In an initial phase the gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan should be reopened and protected. Every effort should be made to restart the tourist industry and assure the security of the tourists. In the longer term, Egyptian agriculture must be rationalized and mechanized, perhaps through the formation of cooperatives made up of the peasants of a particular area. Cultivation of high-value crops should be encouraged, for local consumption and for export; wheat and beef can be imported.

The country has never been properly surveyed for oil, gas and mineral resources and this should be done as soon as possible, with emphasis on non-traditional deposits that can be "fracked" and rare metals, as well as minerals such as potash. Laws and regulations should be reviewed expeditiously to remove impediments to innovation and investment. Egypt has a large population and thus a large internal market. This can serve as a base for the rapid development of consumer industries.

In every one of these areas, Israel can be of great assistance and should offer its collaboration freely. It is an opportunity that comes once in a generation. The future of the entire region is at stake.

The world's responsibility

It has become commonplace to say that the grotesquely over-hyped "Arab Spring" has turned into the "Arab Fall" or even the "Arab Winter". Nothing of the kind. To go from spring to fall or winter is simply the fate of most revolutionary movements, as in the "French Spring" of 1789, the "Russian Spring" of 1917 and so many others. What is going on in the Arab world at present is much more than that. The Arab Spring has turned into the Arab Nightmare.

I do not refer simply to the tens of thousands who have been killed in Syria, or the hundreds of thousands driven from their homes into internal or external exile. I refer particularly to the bestial barbarism into which the region has sunk. This is not, except perhaps in theological terms, a regression to the seventh century c.e. it is a regression to prehistoric times and customs. Let's see:

A small family gathering of the miniscule group of Sh'ia Muslims in Egypt is invaded by hundreds of their Sunni neighbors who bludgeon them to death, burn down their house and drag the corpses through the town.

A dozen fourth-grade students in Syria are told by rebels to write "Down with the Tyrant" on the walls of the school, which they dutifully do. When Assad's forces take the town back, these children are arrested, beaten, and have their fingernails torn out.

Various Muslim clerics issue fatwas that it is all right to rape non-Sunni women, whether Christian, Sh'ia or whatever.

Demonstrators in Cairo and elsewhere gang-rape women in full sight of all.

A rebel leader in Syria takes a bite from the heart of a slaughtered captive.

Beheadings take place routinely throughout the region.

I have no desire to go on. It is perfectly obvious to all but the Western media and political class that the "Arab Spring" has turned into a bestial nightmare. And not only in Arab countries. The "moderate" Islamist government in Turkey unleashes its police on a bunch of tree-hugging kids, who are beaten, gassed, blinded and killed. When they take refuge in hospitals and hotels their places of refuge are invaded by the police and filled with teargas. The lawyers who defend detainees and the doctors who treat the injured are arrested.

Guess what, "leaders" of the "civilized" West. The Turkish regime is not "moderate". The Muslim Brotherhood is not "moderate". Islam is not a "peace-loving" religion. Are all Muslims to be condemned, from the Philippines to Morocco and beyond? Of course not. Are all Arabs to be condemned? Of course not. But the perpetrators of these barbaric outrages will either be condemned and opposed in every way possible, or the pusillanimous, hypocritical and dishonest Western elite will deserve itself to be condemned for all time.

Not all Germans were Nazis. Not all Russians slaughtered millions of their fellows. Not all Chinese were involved in the killing fields of Mao's giant concentration camp. Ask the Cambodians, the Rwandans and yes, the Armenians of almost a century ago, who came to their aid and support when they were being systematically exterminated by their own governments and neighbors? Answer: no-one.

Tens of billions of dollars and thousands of lives were expended to defeat a secular dictatorship in Iraq, which has resulted in turning the country over to the bloodstained ayatollahs of Iran. What is being done now to put a halt to the prehistoric barbarism spreading through the region? Why of course--it's all due to the "fact" that Israel won't make an agreement with the Palestinian Authority and evacuate the West Bank, so the story of south Lebanon and Hezbollah and Gaza and Hamas can be recreated all over again.much closer to the heartland of the Jewish state. Hypocrisy is the mother's milk of politics; we all know that. But there has to be some sort of limit, doesn't there?

If the rest of the world does nothing to stop beheadings, slaughter of innocents, cannibalism and serial rape, then morally speaking the rest of the world is equally guilty.

Contact ACD/EWI at rehrenfeld@renrenfeld.com

I never thought I would agree with Putin on much of anything, but now I do!

With immigration looming, interesting that Putin has an opinion.

Putin's short speech!

I never thought I'd say this, but "Hooray for Putin!"

Putin's Speech on Feb. 04, 2013

This is one time our elected leaders should pay attention to the advice of Vladimir Putin...

On February 4th, 2013, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, addressed the Duma, (Russian Parliament), and gave a speech about the tensions with minorities in Russia.

"In Russia live Russians. Any minority, from anywhere, if it wants to live in Russia, to work and eat in Russia, should speak Russian, and should respect the Russian laws. If they prefer Sharia Law, then we advise them to go to those places where that's the state law.

Russia does not need minorities. Minorities need Russia, and we will not grant them special privileges, or try to change our laws to fit their desires, no matter how loud they yell 'discrimination'.

We better learn from the suicides of America, England, Holland and France, if we are to survive as a nation. The Russian customs and traditions are not compatible with the lack of culture or the primitive ways of most minorities.

When this honorable legislative body thinks of creating new laws, it should have in mind the national interest first, observing that the minorities are not Russians."

The politicians in the Duma gave Putin a five minute standing ovation. If you keep this to yourself, you are part of the problem!

THE AFRICA THEY NEVER SHOW YOU

Very interesting!!!

When I think of Africa the first thing that comes to mind is Jungle, Lions, Apes, Hippos, and Hyenas. These photos show you a whole new Africa. Be sure to read the last two paragraphs which I think are indeed pertinent. Very interesting! Make sure you read the last couple of sentences.

Mansion in Gabon

South Africa

Cape Town, South Africa

Housing estate in Accra, Ghana

If you thought the houses in Ghana were spectacular, you would be speechless with this house in Nigeria ... just another mansion under construction

City of Dares Salaam-Tanzania

See more pictures at: yoramski3438@aol.com

Surprising, modern and upscale isn't it... so how do you like the real Africa now? And ~ ~ ~ why aren't their rich helping their poor, instead of us? Tell me again — how much foreign aid goes into these countries?

Consistent unflattering media portrayals would have you to believe something entirely different, e.g., Africa is still some kind of wild, savage, and untamed jungle. I wonder why that is?

Have you seen the pics of the life styles in Saudi Arabia and Dubai? I'm beginning to believe that the U.S.A.is truly the 3rd World Country and that we should stop sending my tax dollars overseas to anyone. I'm also convinced that the people in our government and in the media as well as George Soros, Ben Bernanke, and, Oh yes, our president ~ ~ ~ know that WE are the third world and the most naive, gullible, and stupid people in it. The big cities all over the world make Las Vegas look like a State Fair or a country carnival.

Contact Yoram Fisher at yoramski3438@aol.com

Lt. Col Matthew Dooley, a West Point graduate and highly-decorated combat veteran, was an instructor at the Joint Forces Staff College at the National Defense University. He had 19 years of service and experience, and was considered one of the most highly qualified military instructors on Radical Islam & Terrorism.

He taught military students about the situations they would encounter, how to react, about Islamic culture, traditions, and explained the mindset of Islamic extremists. Passing down firsthand knowledge and experience, and teaching courses that were suggested (and approved) by the Joint Forces Staff College. The course "Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism", which was suggested and approved by the Joint Forces Staff College, caught the attention of several Islamic Groups, and they wanted to make an example of him.

They collectively wrote a letter expressing their outrage, and the Pro-Islamic Obama Administration was all too happy to assist. The letter was passed to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey. Dempsey publicly degraded and reprimanded Dooley, and Dooley received a negative Officer Evaluation Report almost immediately (which he had aced for the past 5 years). He was relieved of teaching duties, and his career has been red-flagged.

"He had a brilliant career ahead of him. Now, he has been flagged." — Richard Thompson, Thomas More Law Center

"All US military Combatant Commands, Services, the National Guard Bureau, and Joint Chiefs are under Dempsey's Muslim Brotherhood-dictated order to ensure that henceforth, no US military course will ever again teach truth about Islam, that the jihadist enemy finds offensive or just too informative." — Former CIA agent Claire M. Lopez (about Lt. Col Dooley) The Obama Administration has demonstrated lightning speed to dismiss Military brass, that does not conform to its agenda, and not surprisingly, nobody is speaking up for Lt. Col. Dooley.

IT'S A SAD DAY FOR THIS COUNTRY WHEN GOOD LOYAL MEN LIKE THIS GET THROWN UNDER THE BUS, BECAUSE NOBODY HAS THE COURAGE TO STAND UP!

Share this if you would. Let's bring some attention to this.

John D. Trudel is a novelist, writer and author of "God's House". Contact him at mail@trudelgroup.com

The Realities of the New Likud Leadership

The headlines in the MSM are already screaming out that 'hardliners', the Israeli 'hawks', have gained power in the Israeli government's Likud party during elections at the end of June. The news reads that Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon has become the chairman of the party's Central Committee and Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin takes over the Likud bureau, both outspoken opponents of the two-state solution with much influence in the newly elected government of Israel. The expected result of the Likud's vote will be obstacles to any of PM Netanyahu's negotiations, especially those requiring concessions to the Palestinians.

But, these are not 'hardliner,' nor are the majority of the 2,808 members of the Likud Central Committee that took part in the vote. Their label should be 'realist,' for they are the ones who see the truth, want to face the truth, and then propose more realistic ideas for sensible solutions.

'Hardliners and hawks' have a connotation of being inflexible, extreme and power-hungry for land grabs...these Israelis display none of these characteristics. Many of the Knesset members were born and have lived in Israel for decades having personally witnessed the continuing deceitful and self-defeating tactics of the PLO leadership and can no longer continue to play their charade.

And what is their charade? Blame and stall the peace-negotiations by asking for concessions and demands prior to coming to the negotiation table and blame the Israelis for not conceding as a sign of good faith. And of course, the world continues to believe that the Palestinian-Arabs really want to negotiate and the Jews are the ones creating the obstacles. This continues to be the biggest lie since the Palestinians were first invented as a People.

Parliamentary Ministers, along with many Israeli citizens, have lived in Israel for much of their lives and their first-hand experience, not the one-sided stuff the pro-Palestinian and Arab media has sent out into the public arena, has opened their eyes to reality. Their vote is no longer based on hopes and dreams, nor myths and lies spread by anti-Semitics and Qur'an followers with political agenda to eliminate Israel.

These are people who have lived through 4-5 decades of conflicts with the PLO and see history repeating itself over and over again, and nothing but hatred for the Jews continues. They see that text books are still given out at Palestinian schools to further the Arab cause of hatred and justify attacks on innocent Jewish people. They hear the words that the Palestinians want peace, but even their children are used as terrorist throwing concrete stones at drivers on the roads of Israel. They find weapons being stored in the West Bank for future attacks on Jews, but pro-Palestinians continue to pressure the Israeli government to open all border crossings. They see another PLO leader like Arafat, the past-his-term President Abbas, being corrupt, keeping his people impoverished and frustrated, and not being a genuine partner in peace. They hear air-raid sirens alerting Israeli citizens to run to bomb shelters instead of a call to work together to make the Middle East a prosperous place for all.

The realists of Israel know the truth and finally have come to terms with the undeniable facts. They know that Jews gave up much of the lands designated to become a Jewish state in the 'Mandate for Palestine' and got Jordan AND then the Palestinians in the West Bank; they gave up more land for peace and got Gaza; they fought to unify Jerusalem, then gave up the Temple Mount for peace, but got desecration and are prevented from praying there; they were honorable partners in the Oslo Agreement, but Arafat would not sign, and instead retaliated with attacks; they freed over 1,000 Arab prisoners in exchange for one kidnapped IDF soldier and got threats of more kidnappings and killings; they stopped construction for 10 months two years ago and only the last weeks did the PLO even think about meeting and then demandede the continuation of the ‘no-building' policy...and there is much more that the world refuses to see.

What the rest of the world needs to recognize is that the Israelis have lost their patience for games, especially the same ones over and over that always have produced the same result, whereby Israel is the loser.

Israel must remain strong to protect itself from the PLO and Hamas, not to mention the Sunni-Shi'ite-nonsectarian civil wars raging in Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and other pockets of Arab conflicts. It is a reality in the Islamic world that appeasement is a sign of weakness and all it brings is elation, conviction, fanaticism and confidence in the hearts of the Muslim world that the time is right to annihilate Israel and then take on America.

I can only hope and pray that the new Likud government will continue to be 'hardline and hawkish" and remain courageous in their efforts to protect the Jewish right to survive and prosper in the only tiny nation meant to be for the Jewish People.

Contact JanSuzanne Krasner atjansuzanne1@gmail.com

The Boston Marathon bombings highlighted again, the challenges of assimilating Muslim youth. In general, we too easily overlook — even in the midst of a raging debate over our immigration policy — what Norman Podhoretz once referred to as "the brutal bargain" that immigrant children must accept in order to assimilate into the society their parents chose for them. For Muslims today, the drama involves not so much overcoming poverty and educational deficits but adapting to a society whose values are sharply at odds with their religious heritage.

Among Muslim-American youth, especially since 9/11, this has led to heightened criticism and suspicion of U.S. government policies at home and abroad. More generally, it has resulted in a hard-edged identity politics that has encouraged some young Muslims to define themselves not only in opposition to the government but to American society and culture.

Marcia Hermansen, a Muslim who is also a professor of Islamic studies at Loyola University in Chicago, recounts her shock when she "encountered some Muslim students on my campus who seemed to feel vindicated by the destruction and loss of life on September 11!" This trend was picked up by Pew pollsters who reported in 2007 that Muslims older than 30 were much less likely (28 percent) than those aged 18-29 (42 percent) to agree that, "There is a natural conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society."

So today Muslim Americans are being reassured that it is permissible — even desirable — to have non-Muslim friends. And that it is okay to attend business lunches where non-Muslim colleagues drink alcohol. And that it is definitely a good idea to vote and get involved in civic and political affairs.

Other topics are addressed with discretion. Explicit displays of Islamic triumphalism are now rare. The topic of intermarriage with non-Muslims is typically avoided. Controversial political issues get finessed. Since 9/11, Muslim Americans have learned to be much more discreet about their views on Palestine and U.S. support for Israel. Much of the energy concerning such issues has been re-channeled into opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and especially in Iraq or to the Obama administration's reliance on drones.

In most mosques here, leadership is up for grabs. Contrary to what non-Muslims think, imams are not necessarily in charge. They are typically foreigners who understand Islam but lack specific knowledge about American culture, society, and politics. Their command of English may also be limited.

One factor that weakens and even compromises Muslim-American leaders is the longstanding and pervasive presence of the Muslim Brotherhood here in the United States. Most of the major national organizations and their leaders either have direct ties to the Brotherhood or come out of that milieu. The Brothers also conceal their activities from their fellow Muslims, sometimes even their own families. Countless mosques have been riven by conflicts over clandestine Brotherhood efforts to take over boards, and the memories of such battles die hard.

The Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, where Suhaib Webb is the imam, is a case in point. The ISBCC is explicitly and officially managed by the Muslim American Society (MAS). But, what Webb and his many non-Muslim supporters refuse to acknowledge is that MAS is the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. To knowledgeable observers inside and outside the community, this is simply incontrovertible. This lack of candor on the part of Muslim leaders understandably arouses anxieties among many Americans about their loyalty to this nation.

Yet perhaps an even more pressing question is how such deception further undermines the leadership needed to guide their own people forthrightly and authoritatively — especially troubled and turbulent Muslim-American youth.

Israel Commentary is a monthly American magazine on religion, Judaism, politics, social and cultural issues. Founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945, it was edited by Norman Podhoretz from 1960 to 1995. Contact Israel Commentary at israelcommentary@comcast.net

1. Many people today are confused as to what characterizes an Israeli Leftist and how this species differs from others, including rational homo sapiens. To help things along we have composed this guide for identifying them:

1 Israeli Leftists: Believe the only way to defeat terrorism is by agreeing to the demands of the terrorists.

Non-Leftists: Believe the only way to defeat terrorism is by terrorizing the terrorists

2 Israeli Leftists: Believe the entire Middle East conflict is about the attempt to deny self-determination to Palestinians.

Non-Leftists: Believe the entire Middle East conflict is about the attempt to deny self-determination to Jews.

3 Israeli Leftists: Believe the key to peace is removing Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.

Non-Leftists: Believe the key to peace is removing PLO/Hamas occupation of Israeli lands.

4 Israeli Leftists: Believe that PLO violence is because Israel was not generous enough in its offers to the Palestinians.

Non-Leftists: Believe that PLO violence is caused by any offers of concessions to the Palestinians.

5 Israeli Leftists: Believe that Israeli gestures and concessions reassure the Palestinians and make them more moderate.

Non-Leftists: Believe that Israeli gestures and concessions convince the Arabs that Israel is weak, vulnerable, and destroyable.

6 Israeli Leftists: Believe that current Palestinian violence and atrocities are caused by Israel's refusal to remove Jewish settlements from the West Bank and Gaza.

Non-Leftists: Believe that current Palestinian violence and atrocities are caused by Israel's removing Jewish settlements from Gaza's Hamastan and from the West Bank.

7 Israeli Leftists: Believe that peace can only be achieved through granting statehood to the Palestinians.

Non-Leftists: Believe that peace can only be achieved through Denazification of the Palestinians.

8 Israeli Leftists: Believe that the quintessence of the Middle East conflict is the injustice perpetrated against Arabs by Jews.

Non-Leftists: Believe that the quintessence of the Middle East conflict is the injustice perpetrated against Jews by Arabs.

9 Israeli Leftists: Insist Jews have only themselves to blame for the hostility and hatred directed against them.

Non-Leftists: Insist Leftists have only themselves to blame for the hostility and hatred directed against them.

10 Israeli Leftists: Insist they are in fact loyal, patriot citizens who seek only the best for their country.

Non-Leftists: Agree, except they note that Israeli Leftists regard Palestine as their country.

11 Israeli Leftists: Believe Arab violence is caused by Israel using excessive force to contain it.

Non-Leftists: Believe Arab violence is caused by Israel using insufficient force to contain it.

12 Israeli Leftists: Believe there is no military solution to the problem of terrorism.

Non-Leftists: Believe there is no non-military solution to the problem of terrorism

2. There is a bizarre story in Shvi'i one of the weekend pamphlets distributed in synagogues in Israel.

It seems that London Orthodox Jews are helping Moslems protect mosques there.

There is a Jewish defense group calling themselves Hashomrim in Hackney, started in 2008. They patrol the hood.

In London mosques tend to be located close to Jewish sections (like near Regent Park)

So the local Moslems asked Hashomrim to help. They agreed and patrol the streets where the mosques are.

Hackney Gazette did a story on it, summarized in the Israeli pamphlet.

The full story can be read in Hebrew by going to page 9 of this web page:

http://www.dmag.co.il/pub/shvii/index.html

Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments — both seriously and satirically — on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. Write him at splaut@gmail.com His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com.

A former terrorist prisoner and senior terrorist's brother will both address Knesset.

Members of Knesset and ministers who support the "two-state solution" and diplomatic talks with the Palestinian Authority have organized a conference that aims to provide a response to the spate of public officials who have recently declared that there is no realistic solution to the Israel-PA conflict on the horizon.

Among the speakers who will appear at the conference Monday are controversial PA figures.

One of the names that stands out is that of Dr. Khalil Shikaki, who directs the Center for Palestinian Policy and Research in Ramallah. Shikaki's brother, Fathi Shikaki, was a senior Islamic Jihad terrorist who was assassinated by the IDF in 1995.

Shikaki has suggested in various articles and interviews that the majority of PA resident Arabs would welcome a U.S.-imposed peace deal between Israel and the PA along the lines of the Geneva Accord.

Another participant in Monday's event will be former PM Minister of Prisoners Affairs Ashraf al-Ajrami, who served 12 years in an Israeli prison for terror-related offenses.

MK Moshe Mizrachi (Labor), who invited both men, said Sunday that he does not see their presence in Knesset as a problem.

"Against all the voices trying to make us despair, telling us there is nobody to talk to, and talking about a binational state to the Jordan River, in days when the American Foreign Minister is banging his head against the walls trying to restart the diplomatic process, in days when the renewed Arab Initiative which offers both a future agreement with the Palestinians and regional peace agreements has been thrown in the garbage, I thought it would be best to support the voices that seek peace and truly believe in it," he declared.

Arutz Sheva, also known in English as Israel National News, is an Israeli media network identifying with Religious Zionism. Contact Arutz Sheva at news@israelnationalnews.com

Palestinian Authority TV continues to promote Islam-based hate speech and Antisemitism, voiced by little children. In this latest example, two sisters recited a poem that included the following demonization of Jews:

"You who murdered Allah's pious prophets (i.e., Jews in Islamic tradition) Oh, you who were brought up on spilling blood You have been condemned to humiliation and hardship Oh Sons of Zion, oh most evil among creations Oh barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs."

The poem also taught that Jerusalem is not for Jews, because Jerusalem "vomits" out the Jews who are said to be "filth" and "impure":

"Jerusalem vomits from within it your impurity Because Jerusalem, you impure ones, is pious, immaculate And Jerusalem, you who are filth, is clean and pure."

Palestinian Media Watch has documented previous examples of hate speech and Antisemitism voiced by children on official PA TV, including:

• Jews are "Allah's enemies, the sons of pigs... They raped the women in the city squares, They defiled Allah's book [the Quran] in front of millions"
• "Zion is Satan with a tail"
• Jews are "inferior and smaller, more cowardly and despised"

For more examples click here.

The following is the transcript of the poem recited by the little girls on the PA TV program Palestine This Morning:

PA TV reporter: "Let's meet these girls who want to recite a short poem."

Girl 1: "I do not fear the rifle because your throngs are in delusion and ignorant herds.

Jerusalem is my land, Jerusalem is my honor

Jerusalem is my days and my wildest dreams.

Oh, you who murdered Allah's pious prophets (i.e., Jews in Islamic tradition)

Oh, you who were brought up on spilling blood

You have been condemned to humiliation and hardship.

Oh Sons of Zion, oh most evil among creations

Oh barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs

Girl 2: Jerusalem is not your den

Jerusalem opposes your throngs

Jerusalem vomits from within it your impurity

Because Jerusalem, you impure ones, is pious, immaculate

And Jerusalem, you who are filth, is clean and pure.

I do not fear barbarity.

As long as my heart is my Quran and my city

As long as I have my arm and my stones

As long as I am free and do not barter my cause

I will not fear your throngs

I will not fear the rifle."

Itamar Marcus, Director of Palestinian Media Watch (http://www.pmw.org.il), is an authority on Palestinian Arab ideology and policy. He was Israeli representative to the Tri-Lateral Anti Incitement Committee established under the Wye accords, and has written reports on Palestinian Authority, Syrian and Jordanian schoolbooks. Nan Jacques Zilberdik is an analyst at PMW, focusing on the opinions and messages of the Palestinian Arab leadership as transmitted to the Palestinian Arab public, with an emphasis on the impact on peace, messages and values communicated to children, and glorification of terrorists. This article is archived at
http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=9308

April 3, 2013

Senator Patty Murray

Senator Maria Cantwell, Washington, DC, 20510

Dear Senator:

I have tried to live by the rules my entire life My father was a Command Sergeant Major, U.S. Army, who died of combat related stresses shortly after his retirement. It was he who instilled in me those virtues he felt important; honesty, duty, patriotism and obeying the laws of God and of our various governments. I have served my country, paid my taxes, worked hard, volunteered and donated my fair share of money, time and artifacts.

Today, as I approach my 79th birthday, I am heart-broken when I look at my country and my government. I shall only point out a very few things abysmally wrong which you can multiply by a thousand fold. I have calculated that all the money I have paid in income taxes my entire life cannot even keep the Senate barbershop open for one year! Only Heaven and a few tight-lipped actuarial types know what the Senate dining room costs the taxpayers. So please, enjoy your haircuts and meals on us.

Last year, the president spent an estimated 1.4 $billion on himself and his family. The vice president spends $millions on hotels. They have had 8 vacations so far this year! And our House of Representatives and Senate have become America's answer to the Saudi royal family. You have become the "perfumed princes and princesses" of our country.

In the middle of the night, you voted in the Affordable Health Care Act, a.k.a. "Obama Care," a bill which no more than a handful of senators or representatives read more than several paragraphs, crammed it down our throats, and then promptly exempted yourselves from it substituting your own taxpayer-subsidized golden health care insurance.

You live exceedingly well, eat and drink as well as the "one percenters," consistently vote yourselves perks and pay raises while making 3.5 times the average U.S. individual income, and give up nothing while you (as well as the president and veep) ask us to sacrifice due to sequestration (for which, of course, you plan to blame the Republicans, anyway).

You understand very well the only two rules you need to know — (1) How to get elected, and (2) How to get re-elected. And you do this with the aid of an eagerly willing and partisan press, speeches permeated with a certain economy of truth, and by buying the votes of the greedy, the ill-informed and under-educated citizens (and non-citizens, too, many of whom do vote) who are looking for a handout rather than a job. Your so-called "safety net" has become a hammock for the lazy. And, what is it now, about 49 or 50 million on food stamps — pretty much all Democrat voters — and the program is absolutely rife with fraud with absolutely no congressional oversight?

I would offer that you are not entirely to blame. What changed you is the seductive environment of power in which you have immersed yourselves. It is the nature of both houses of Congress which requires you to subordinate your virtue in order to get anything done until you have achieved a leadership role. To paraphrase President Reagan, it appears that the second oldest profession (politics), bears a remarkably strong resemblance to the oldest.

As the hirsute first Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834-1902), English historian and moralist, so aptly and accurately stated, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." I'm only guessing that this applies to the female sex as well. Tell me, is there a more corrupt entity in this country than Congress?

While we middle class people continue to struggle, our government becomes less and less transparent, more and more bureaucratic, and ever so much more dictatorial, using Czars and Secretaries to tell us (just to mention a very few) what kind of light bulbs we must purchase, how much soda or hamburgers we can eat, what cars we can drive, gasoline to use, and what health care we must buy. Countless thousands of pages of regulations strangle our businesses costing the consumer more and more every day.

As I face my final year, or so, with cancer, my president and my government tell me "You'll just have to take a pill," while you, Senator, your colleagues, the president, and other exulted government officials and their families will get the best possible health care on our tax dollars until you are called home by your Creator while also enjoying a retirement beyond my wildest dreams, which of course, you voted for yourselves and we pay for.

The chances of you reading this letter are practically zero as your staff will not pass it on, but with a little luck, a form letter response might be generated by them with an auto signature applied, hoping we will believe that you, our senator or representative, has heard us and actually cares. This letter will, however, go on line where many others will have the chance to read one person's opinion, rightly or wrongly, about this government, its administration and its senators and representatives.

I only hope that occasionally you might quietly thank the taxpayer for all the generous entitlements which you have voted yourselves, for which, by law, we must pay, unless, of course, it just goes on the $17 trillion national debt for which your children and ours, and your grandchildren and ours, ad infinitum, must eventually try to pick up the tab.

My final thoughts are that it must take a person who has either lost his or her soul, or conscience, or both, to seek re-election and continue to destroy this country I deeply love and put it so far in debt that we will never pay it off while your lot improves by the minute, because of your power. For you, Senator, will never stand up to the rascals in your House who constantly deceive the American people. And that, my dear Senator, is how power has corrupted you and the entire Congress. The only answer to clean up this cesspool is term limits. This, of course, will kill the goose that lays your golden eggs. And woe be to him (or her) who would dare to bring it up.

Sincerely,

Bill Schoonover

I Love America, It's the Government I hate!!!!

Contact midenise at midenise@zahav.net.il

The Israeli media reported Sunday that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will be pried free from his yacht to return to the Middle East this week to try, yet again, to convince Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate. In practice, that means trying to convince the Israelis to offer dangerous concessions, since the Palestinians have been concluded since Obama took office in 2009 that they are under no real pressure to come to the table.

The Daily Caller reports that experts find Kerry's focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "baffling" at a time when Egypt is in the throes of a military coup, Syria is mired in civil war, Turkey is facing massive protests and Iran is moving rapidly toward becoming a nuclear power. But they are asking the wrong question. Kerry serves Obama's agenda, and so the real question must be why the president is expending so much energy on the issue.

Obama's trip to Israel in March may have reassured Israelis, and pro-Israel Americans, that he does not hate the Jewish state — once an open question given his radical past, his record in office, and his appointment of critics of Israel such as Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. Yet Obama's outreach did not mean that the issue became any less important to him, even after he failed, in his first administration, to push the sides any closer together.

Indeed, Hagel's appointment was only the first of several that indicated Obama intends to keep the pressure on Israel, regardless of circumstances. Hagel was long a proponent of "linkage" — the idea that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is the root of U.S. difficulties in the Middle East. His confirmation was followed by the nomination of Samantha Power, an advocate of outside intervention in the conflict, as UN Ambassador.

The president made clear in March that he sees the issue as one of fairness. It is not "fair" that Palestinians do not have a state, he told Israeli students — never mind that both sides had an equal opportunity to establish and build their countries, and that Palestinians and the Arab world generally chose to destroy Israel rather than to help Palestine. Evidently Obama wishes to redistribute Israel's success — hence skipper Kerry's intense efforts.

More than a mistake, Kerry's mission represents Obama's strategic choice to diminish the U.S. as a world power. As Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick observed: "The image of Kerry extolling his success in 'narrowing the gaps' between Israel and the Palestinians before he boarded his airplane at Ben-Gurion Airport, as millions assembled to bring down the government of Egypt, is the image of a small, irrelevant America."

Sergio Tezza can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net

Jonathan Pollard, a former naval intelligence analyst began serving a life sentence at the Federal Prison in Butler, North Carolina on March 4, 1987, for the crime of passing classified material to Israel. From the government's standpoint a lengthy trial had the potential of divulging sensitive material. For his part, not wishing to chance a life sentence at trial Pollard and the prosecutors worked out a plea deal.

According to the deal both sides agreed upon, Pollard would plead guilty to: "One count of conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a foreign government." By doing so, his wife Anne also was allowed to plead out for her complicity in the crime. She served three years of a five year term and was released. In accordance with the plea, and to avoid life imprisonment, Pollard pledged full cooperation with a government espionage assessment team and swore non-disclosure of sensitive material he had privy to.

Not content with the second tier of the espionage statute to which Pollard plead guilty to: "to the advantage of a foreign nation," the Sentencing Judge, Aubrey Robinson abrogated the agreement and instead sentenced him to the more severe first: "to the injury of the United States."

So what exactly information did he steal and was its disclosure so detrimental to U. S. security that 27 years incarceration isn't sufficient? Based upon the point of view of those that advocate for him and others wishing he rot in jail, opinions vary. However all sides agree:

His interest was solely in helping the Israelis find out more about Soviet and Arab military and intelligence capabilities.

His priority was to obtain Arab (and Pakistani) nuclear intelligence.

He passed intelligence on Arab exotic weaponry, including chemical weapons.

Soviet aircraft, air defenses, air-to-air missiles and air-to-surface missiles

Arab order-of-battle, deployments and readiness.

Contact GWY123 at GWY123@aol.com

In Egypt, that is. Nor should we be terribly surprised: The Brotherhood had threatened that they were going to generate all the unrest they could. Over the weekend there was considerable violence, with over 30 more dead.

An announcement had been made that ElBaradei — who had been a political rival of Morsi's — had been appointed interim prime minister. But then several sources carried the story that this appointment had been put on hold because of Islamic outrage over it.

In fact, there have apparently been calls by ElBaradei for the Brotherhood to share in rule. The Brotherhood is being placated at some level, and this may provide a hint as to where things are going.

~~~~~~~~~~

Notions of democracy ruling in Egypt are pie-in-the-sky. An election does not constitute "democracy." Neither does yielding to the will of a violent mob. Genuine liberal democracy connotes several things that are totally lacking in Egypt — rights of minorities, freedom of speech and press, etc. etc.

This is what journalist Fiamma Nirenstein said about Egypt in a very thoughtful e-mail posting three days ago, "New Wishful Thinking on the Arab Street":

"...It is terrible to see Egypt fall apart. This is exactly what is happening right now, however, right before our eyes. And let's make no mistake. For the time being, no democratic solution is in sight.

"...The Army will back up the interim technocrat Cabinet that it has announced, but it is clear that the Generals, more than the revolutionary crowd, have ousted the Morsi government, recognizing the urgent need to avoid further bloodshed. Still, while the mayadin (the squares) filled with waves of hate and confrontations, while the Army tried to control the situation, we invented a happy ending to the story, with the good guys — the seculars — taking power and chasing out the bad guys — Morsi and his Islamists.

The real story, however, is one of failure, of the popular rejection of a mediocre man, who, once in power, predominantly worked for his own organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, systematically placing his friends in key posts and shutting out everybody else. It is the story of an incompetent leader who never uttered the word 'technology' or gave hope for some work for the youngsters in a bankrupt country because he was afraid that it would be taken as an endorsement of modernity and incur the disapproval of his Sunni sheikhs. Morsi has stirred up the lava of hate simmering under the lack of a democratic outlet and a free press, as well as an extreme economic crisis...Egypt's opposition has always been composed by a crowd who lacks the privilege of power. In one year, Morsi became the bogeyman of half the country. He had a moment of glory when General Tantawi left the post-Mubarak interregnum to Morsi and the power that came from having been elected. For the people, there was the illusion of democracy. But this word is dysfunctional for Egypt.

"Professor Bernard Lewis has said that the elections are a point of arrival, not a point of departure. Now, it has been written that the Islamists are democratic but not liberal, and that the liberals are not democratic. Actually, they are overturning an elected government. The same crowd that overturned Mubarak and sang the praises of Morsi throughout the various incarnations of Tahrir Square...is there again, now enraged against Morsi..."

~~~~~~~~~~

As to that crowd, which turned from fury to cheers when Morsi was removed from power, I note that there have been reports of group rapes of women within the demonstrations, with no one coming to the women's aid. See "The noble savage is naked, and violent":
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=4879.

~~~~~~~~~~

Barry Rubin — "some thought on the latest events in Egypt" — has written something very similar to what Nirenstein said about the situation, albeit in more prosaic or "tachlis" (down to business) terms:

"The latest events in Egypt confirm one of the salient patterns that have governed the upheavals in the Arab world of the last years. This is the troubling but unmistakable fact that despite all the chatter about peoples' power, democracy, civil society and the rest of it, when it comes to the real, grown-up exercise of political power in the countries in question, there remain only two contenders: the forces of political Islam, and the armed forces of the ancien regime.

"That this is so seems empirically irrefutable — from Algeria to Gaza, via Syria and Egypt — the forces that when the talking is done go out to do battle with one another for the crown are the Islamists and the armed men of the regime (the latter usually organized under the banner of a secular, authoritarian nationalism.)

"What is currently taking place in Egypt is a military coup in all but name. The army — the force through which Mubarak, Sadat and Nasser governed — is mobilizing to end the one year rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. It remains to be seen whether Mohammed Morsi and his comrades will yield to this mobilization, or attempt to resist it.

"If they attempt the latter, Egypt will stand before a situation analogous to that of Algeria in 1991, when the regime's military sought to annul the election victory of the Islamist FIS movement. The result was a bloody civil war which in retrospect may be seen as the precursor of what is now taking place in Syria, and what may now lie ahead in Egypt."

http://www.gloria-center.org/2013/07/power-and-the-arab-revolutions-some-thoughts-on-the-latest-events-in-egypt/

~~~~~~~~~~

Caroline Glick looks not just at what is happening in Egypt but also the failure of those in charge of American policy to understand it in "Clueless about Cairo coup":

"Wednesday Egypt had its second revolution in so many years. And there is no telling how many more revolutions it will have in the coming months, or years. This is the case not only in Egypt, but throughout the Islamic world.

"The American foreign policy establishment's rush to romanticize as the Arab Spring the political instability that engulfed the Arab world following the self-immolation of a Tunisian peddler in December 2010 was perhaps the greatest demonstration ever given of their utter cluelessness about the nature of Arab politics and society. Their enthusiastic embrace of protesters who have now brought down President Muhammad Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood regime indicates that it takes more than a complete repudiation of their core assumptions to convince them to abandon them.

"...There are only three things that are knowable about the future of Egypt. First it will be poor. Egypt is a failed state. It cannot feed its people. It has failed to educate its people. It has no private sector to speak of. It has no foreign investment.

"Second, Egypt will be politically unstable. Mubarak was able to maintain power for 29 years because he ran a police state that the people feared. That fear was dissipated in 2011. This absence of fear will bring Egyptians to the street to topple any government they feel is failing to deliver on its promises — as they did this week.

"Given Egypt's dire economic plight, it is impossible to see how any government will be able to deliver on any promises — large or small — that its politicians will make during electoral campaigns. And so government after government will share the fates of Mubarak and Morsi.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0713/glick070513.php3

~~~~~~~~~~

Daniel Pipes — in his "Intricacies of Egypt's Coup d'Etat Explained" — indeed does deal with several complexities confronting Egypt right now that are not addressed by the other commentators.

He, too, says that:

"There are only two powers, the military and the Islamists: This sad truth has been confirmed repeatedly in the past 2½ years of Arabic-speaking upheaval, and it has been confirmed again now in Egypt. The liberals, seculars, and leftists do not count when the chips are down. Their great challenge is to become politically relevant."

But he addresses a great deal more as well. Most significantly that:

"The military officer corps has a vast and unhealthy control over the country's economy. This interest transcends all else; officers may disagree on other matters, but they concur on the need to pass these privileges intact to their children. Conversely, this materialism means that they will make a deal with anyone who guarantees its privileges, as Morsi did (adding new benefits) a year ago."

Pipes suggests that Sisi may be in league with the Salafis, and that Mansour may be a figurehead, although it's too soon to know these things yet.

http://www.danielpipes.org/13054/egypt-coup

~~~~~~~~~~

So let's put aside notions of democracy in Egypt and pray that the military will have the strength and determination to secure some modicum of stability in the country. The alternative would be catastrophic and a weakened Brotherhood is to the good. But it should not be imagined that the military — while it may serve the nation well right now — is a benign force that acts primarily according to national interests.

~~~~~~~~~~

With all of this, the outrage continues, as Kerry continues to pump for "peace negotiations" in the face of crises all over the Middle East.

In my next posting I will look at this, and other significant issues that remain on the front burner, such as Iran.

Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il And visit her website at www.arlenefromisrael.info

Media, U.S. government, and Egyptians comment on Egypt's coup as if in a fog. Some deliberately mislead but most are misled. They don't understand the basics. They are used to extrapolating from political labels, but the labels are misapplied.

Let's start with the exception, a clear-sighted analysis by David Brooks, the token conservative at the New York Times. Usually I find him more token than conservative, and the Times more paper than news. On July 5, however, he made probably the most intelligent distinctions and deductions. These days, such qualities should be treasured.

Mr. Brooks' first differentiation is between those who believed that the responsibilities of governing would sober Pres. Morsi and those who believed that his fanaticism would subvert the country. The first school of thought has "flunked," the latter has graduated.

Well of course! As I point out, totalitarian-minded leaders' primary goal is exclusive power. The great hope against Hitler was that governance and democracy would make him act responsibly. Hitler was no ordinary socialist with some ethics and some concern for peace. He was radical and psychotic.

By Western standards, so are Islamists. Most Muslim leaders do not care about their people's welfare. The Islamists have an ideology of active persecution of disfavored classes of people, as did Stalin. They live to die for Islam. Most fail to run the country responsibly. Mr. Brooks thinks they cannot govern well.

Turkey's Islamist President Erdogan, however, is about as practical as Islamists come. He amasses power and imposes religion gradually and methodically, but also tries to nurture the economy and avoid corruption. He is what the first school of thought would call pragmatic, though he is faltering now. In any case, he is dictatorial, intolerant, and imperialistic. Then what good is he? More time in office strengthens his power.

Back to Brooks. He reiterates that Islamists consider what they feel about things the way we consider facts. I find liberals tending that way. Just by feeling ideologically that there is some social problem, they consider the problem's existence a fact. They feel that a regulation would solve the problem, so they pass a law. They end up creating or exacerbating problems, as Pres. Obama and his Congressional cohorts are demonstrating.

Mr. Brooks observes that Islamists form strong opposition movements and seem like an alternative government by providing "street services" to the people. But they lack the mentality needed to govern democratically or prudently. Mr. Brooks is the rare commentator who knows that Islam cultivates a different mind-set from Western ones. If only our State Dept. made that distinction! No wonder its Mideast policies fail.

What did Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood do to warrant overthrow? They "subverted judicial review, cracked down on civil society, arrested opposition activists, perverted the constitution-writing process, concentrated power, and made democratic deliberations impossible." I notice that Islamists felt encouraged to threaten people, to insist on repressing non-Islamists, to call for war, and even to propose demolishing the pyramids.

Free elections are not inherently democratic, Mr. Brooks points out. Not if it brings to power enemies of democracy. Here Mr. Brooks hints that those who lament Morsi's fall because he had been "democratically elected" misunderstand democracy. Democracy doesn't continue when dictators subvert it. I conclude that a coup was justified.

Pres. Obama does not conclude that, though his comments are ambivalent. Remember how the democracy-restoring, constitutional process whereby Hondurans ousted their Chavista president but were punished by Obama as being undemocratic? In Egypt, the U.S. made the Muslim Brotherhood seem legitimate and the U.S. seem unprepared and against the people, Mr. Brooks thinks that is because the U.S. tried to establish relationships with it. I think it is because Obama and his appointees favor Radical Islam and are not patriotic.

First, Obama helped undermine the former government, paving the way for Islamist rule. Came Islamist rule, and Obama increased military subsidy of it! Down fall the Islamists, and Obama considers ending military subsidy. Obama, who subverts many laws, claims that if the coup in Egypt is a coup, the law leaves him no choice. But the law doesn't prevent him from asking Congress to redefine forbidden coups so as to allow overthrow of dictatorships.

But then, Obama is undemocratic. He rules increasingly by decree and seizes unconstitutional power. Liberal laws reduce individual decision-making and free speech.

Mr. Brooks hit on it when he referred to civil society as a key part of democracy. Democracy requires private organizations unfettered by police state licenses and IRS harassment. If requires a free press. It requires a population that understands democracy and how to govern and has time to organize politically before voting. Therefore Morsi's election was not really democratic.

What will the coup do for Egypt? It may return Egypt to a dysfunctional military state but without the Islamist threat to world peace. What can the U.S. do? Uphold Egyptians who really want democracy, prescribes Mr. Brooks. I agree, but don't expect much.

What puzzled me was that the Islamists reputedly had infiltrated the military, that Morsi had appointed General Sisi as its head because he was Islamist, and that the military feared a civil war if it intervened against Islamist rule. According to the NY Times of 7/5/13, it turns out that the general gave a false impression to deceive the Islamists.

Some Muslims say that it was wrong to overthrow a democratically elected leader. Islamists contend that the coup, like the one in Algeria some years ago, demonstrates that purported democrats will not allow Islamists to rule even if the people vote for them. Of course, more examples show that Islamists are allowed to rule. But the point is not how Islamists gain power. The point is that when they do, they work against democracy.

Can Democracies Cope With Known Terrorists?

For ten years, Britain tried to deport Abu Qatada. It finally succeeded in shipping him off by chartered plane to Jordan. There he had been sentenced to life in prison for terrorism, but now that he is back, he will be re-tried. Jordan had to promise not to obtain evidence by torture and to bring human rights agents along for the ride.

British security officials say that he and other immigrants like him work with an Al Qaeda-linked network. He helped develop cells that plot against Britain and the U.S..

German security agents found tapes of Qatada preaching terrorism, in Hamburg apartments used by 9/11 bombers.

During the extradition process decade, Qatada spent periods in prison, to prevent his abusing bail to continue plotting. The government paid for his lawyers, who exploited the immigration and judicial systems for a decade.

Qatada leaves behind a wife and five children, still living on government welfare (John F. Burns, NY Times, 7/7/13, A4).

Islamists make a travesty of Western legal and welfare systems, originally intended to protect innocent people's lives. But now those systems are used to wage war on society. Those systems need reform.

The legal system should be streamlined to save time and money. Innocent people sometimes need too long a period to clear themselves. In this case, a guilty person dragged out the case to fend off justice.

The newspaper article did not explain why Britain, itself, did not put Qatada on trial. The practice of convicting in absentia and then re-trying the convict seems wasteful

Britain is a sucker for Islamists whom the welfare system supports almost so that they can be free of having to earn a living and therefore can devote themselves to subverting the West. Recently I quoted an Islamist urging fellow Muslims in Britain to help bring down British society by not working and taking welfare subsidy instead of contributing tax revenues to it. Obviously, Western countries must try to screen out immigrants who don't come with job or business prospects and especially those who are Radical Muslims.

Oh, Western societies want to be nice about foreigners? How "nice" is it to allow in thousands of people who wish to murder citizens?

Why didn't Britain deport the whole family? What obligation has a government to such people who abuse the country's hospitality?

In the U.S., we say, better let 10 guilty people go than punish one innocent person. Problem is, 10 Islamists themselves can punish many innocent people.

Richard H. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses are a regular feature on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com.

A New York photographer looking for the crown jewel of his photo project found taking an image of Orthodox Jews more complicated than at first thought, the New York Times reports.

A view camera similar to the one used by Richard Renaldi.

Richard Renaldi, referred to as "a matchmaker for tense times" by the Times, has been working on a photography project in which he captures complete strangers posing together while touching, as if they were intimates.

On a recent venture into Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he tried to cajole Orthodox Jews into taking part in the project, but he was met with stiff resistance until one Abraham Weiss stopped to look at Renaldi's camera. Renaldi made his best pitch, but Weiss, citing possible censure from his fellow Chasidim, ultimately declined.

Renaldi told the Times he wasn't discouraged by the rejection. "It took me three years to get a Muslim woman," he said. In six years, Mr. Renaldi said, "I've only had one time when I couldn't get a shot."

Weiss suggested Renaldi go to Crown Heights or Borough Park, where "they're more open." Renaldi took that advice and was rewarded for it: he immediately met a 24-year-old Yeshiva student from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement named Shalom Lasker — who said in halting English: "No problem. Only men, right?"

Within ten minutes the shot had been captured with him close to Jeff Desire, a worker in a local fish market, and photographer Renaldi, once again having found himself overcoming the odds, was able to get his shot.

The Algemeiner Journal is a New York-based newspaper, covering American and international Jewish and Israel-related news. CNBC called it "the fastest growing Jewish newspaper in the United States" and former Senator Joseph Lieberman described the paper as an 'independent truth telling advocate for the Jewish people and Israel." The Algemeiner's Advisory Board is chaired by Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. Contact Algemeiner editor@algemeiner.com

A group of larch trees planted among pines change color to form the shape of swastikas in a forest outside Berlin, as shown in this Nov 4, 2000 photo.

Over 20 years ago, a landscaper in eastern Germany discovered a formation of trees in a forest in the shape of a swastika. Since then, a number of other forest swastikas have been found in Germany and beyond, but the mystery of their origins persist.

Blame it on the larches. Brandenburg native Günter Reschke was the first one to notice their unique formation, according to a 2002 article in the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. To be more precise, however, it was the new intern at Reschke's landscaping company, Okoland Dederow, who discovered the trees in 1992 as he was completing a typically thankless intern task: searching aerial photographs for irrigation lines.

Instead, he found a small group of 140 larches standing in the middle of dense forest, surrounded by hundreds of other trees. But there was a crucial difference: all the others were pine trees. The larches, unlike the pines, changed color in the fall, first to yellow, then brown. And when they were seen from a certain height, it wasn't difficult to recognize the pattern they formed. It was quite striking, in fact.

As he was dutifully accomplishing the task he had been given, the intern suddenly stopped and stared, dumbfounded, at the picture in his hand. It was an aerial view of Kutzerower Heath at Zernikow — photo number 106/88. He showed it to Reschke: "Do you see what this is?" But the 60-by-60 meter (200-by-200 foot) design that stood out sharply from the forest was obvious to all: a swastika.

Reschke is actually a fan of his native Uckermark region of northeastern Germany, extolling its gently rolling hills, lakes and woods, as the "Tuscany of the north." But what the two men discovered in 1992 in that aerial photograph thrust this natural idyll into the center of a scandal.

A Swastika as a Birthday Gift?

Reschke chartered a plane to fly over the area, and indeed, a neatly delineated swastika was clearly visible. The local forester, Klaus Goricke, set out to uncover the origin of the troubling larch formation, and he found out that the trees had been there for a long time. By measuring the trees, he came to the conclusion they had been planted in the late 1930s. That means that for decades, during every spring and autumn, a massive swastika took shape in the Kutzerower Heath — surviving the Russian occupation, Communist rule in East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall without ever attracting notice.

The fact that it went undiscovered for so long was in part due to the short period of time each year that it was visible. Furthermore, it could only be seen from a certain altitude, and the airplanes that headed north out of Berlin were already much too high for passengers to see the swastika in the forest. Private planes, on the other hand, were forbidden in East Germany.

It didn't take long for rumors to spread about how the swastika got there in the first place. A local farmer claimed that he had planted the trees as a child, with a forester paying him a few cents for each seedling he put in the ground. Others reported that it was put there as a sign of loyalty after a nearby villager had been taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp by the Nazis because he had secretly been listening to the BBC. Still another version holds that a local Nazi leader ordered the trees planted on the occasion of Hitler's birthday. Finally, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported that it was planted in gratitude to the Reich Labor Service for building a street in Zernikow.

Whatever the truth may be, the story began to make waves well beyond the region. French reporters suddenly appeared in Zernikow, eager to fly over the heath to see the swastika for themselves. The daily Le Figaro published an article on the forest formation that reportedly led then-French President François Mitterand to call his German counterpart, Roman Herzog. Soon thereafter, the German president began pressuring the local forestry office to get rid of the offensive symbol.

A Scramble to Remove Trees

The effects were immediate. In 1995, forestry workers armed with chainsaws made their way to the copse of larches and cut down 40 trees. They reported back to their supervisors that the symbol was now unrecognizable, and the commotion surrounding the Kutzerower Heath quickly subsided.

But the forestry workers were badly mistaken. It took five years before their error was discovered, but in 2000, the news agency Reuters published photos of a bright yellow and clearly visible swastika in the forest near Zernikow — even if the edges were a bit frayed. And the media response was once again immense. Even the Chicago Tribune wrote about it, noting that the swastika forest was not helpful for a region that had already become notorious for racist violence.

In fact, officials started becoming increasingly worried that the place could become a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis. This prompted the Agriculture Ministry of the eastern state of Brandenburg to plan drastic measures. In 2000, Jens-Uwe Schade, a ministry spokesman, told Reuters that the intention had been to cut down all the trees in the area. But the BVVG, the federal office in charge of property management, blocked the plan because ownership of some of the property was in dispute and only gave the green light for state forestry officials to cut down 25 of the trees.

This was done on the morning of Dec. 4, 2000. Forestry workers had to be very careful about choosing which trees to cut down and about making sure that the swastika was no longer visible. They also had to cut the stumps just a few centimeters above the ground so that they could no longer be viewed from the air.

Fads and Fables

However, planting swastikas in forests wasn't something that only happened in the Uckermark. As Jens-Uwe Schade already explained in 2000, this had become "a fad among National Socialist foresters" during the Nazi period.

For example, already in the early 1970s, US soldiers complained to the government of the state of Hesse after finding not only a huge swastika on the southern slope of a spruce forest near a place called Asterode, but also the year "1933" formed by larches. A similar symbol reportedly caused a major stir in Jesberg, in northern Hesse, when it was discovered in the 1980s. And, in 2000, a professor of folklore found a swastika of evergreen Douglas firs planted backwards in a deciduous forest in Wiesbaden. In fact, reports soon started emerging about tree swastikas all over Germany.

In Sept. 2006, the New York Times also reported on a complete forest near the remote village of Tash-Bashat, in Kyrgystan, shaped as a swastika. The origins of this swastika in reverse measuring some 180 meters (600 feet) across were also shrouded in legend and uncertainty. One villager claimed that an ethnic German forest supervisor, who had been exiled to the east but was a Nazi sympathizer, directed the planting of the forest in the 1940s. Another reported that the trees had been planted by a mysterious "professor" in the 1960s before he was taken away by the KGB. A local guide said the trees had been planted in the late 1930s as a sign of German-Russian friendship when Hitler and Stalin signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact. Reporter C.J. Chivers also found legends the forest had been planted by German POWs pressed into forestry duty. He never did track down its true origins, but he wrote that, if it really really was planted by German prisoners, the "symmetry in the tree line... may be the Third Reich's only practical joke."

Contact Robert Hand by email at borntolose3@att.net

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's outgoing president boasted on a televised interview on July 6, that his outgoing administration is leaving behind a stronger economy with more than $100 billion in foreign currency reserves, "of course if we include gold reserves," which he described as "a gift for the next administration." Ahmadinejad had another parting gift to the Iranian people and the incoming administration. On July 7, he ordered the central bank to drastically devalue the country's currency.

On August 3, Iran's incoming president, Hassan Rowhani, will be facing a demoralized nation, says a recent Gallup poll." Half of Iranians say there have been times in the past year when they have had trouble paying for adequate shelter and for food their families needed. In each case, the 50% figure is the highest among 19 populations in the Middle East and North Africa region that Gallup surveyed in 2012 and 2013."

Rowhani, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei's choice, has been readying himself to tackle the country's economic problems with a team of neo-liberal economic thinkers. Dr. Raz Zimmt of The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, offers the following analysis:

From Niavaran Street to the president's office — Hassan Rowhani's economic team

During the campaign for president of Iran, Hassan Rowhani expressed views consistent with a liberal outlook on economy. The president-elect is an advocate of the economic policy pursued by former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, based on privatization, deregulation, and economic openness.

Reports published in the Iranian media in recent weeks indicate that some of Rowhani's top economic advisors are affiliated with the Niavaran school of thought, established on neo-liberal economic principles. Its adherents support a free-market economy and a reduction of government economic intervention. Major economists affiliated with that school of thought and considered close to Rowhani are Dr. Mohammad Baqer Nowbakht, Dr. Mohammad Tabibian, Dr. Ali-Naqi Mashayekhi, Dr. Mas'oud Nili, Mohammad-Ali Najafi, Dr. Mas'oud Roghani-Zanjani, Dr. Mohammad-Hossein Adeli, and Dr. Majid Qassemi. These top economists, who may come to hold some of the top economic positions in the new administration, played a major role in shaping Iran's economic policy in the 1980s and 1990s. By promoting economic reforms, they took a neo-liberal stance, sought to reduce government economic intervention, encouraged private and even foreign investments in the economy, and drove the private sector forward. In the 1980s, as Iran was facinga severe economic crisis, these economists played an important role in drawing up recommendations that contributed to the decision made by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini to agree to a ceasefire with Iraq in 1988.

During the first presidential debate, held on May 31, Hassan Rowhani laid out his economic vision. Among other things, he argued that the government should dramatically cut its expenses to help fight inflation and encourage production to bring back stability to the economy. Rowhani expressed his support for promoting the privatization process and voiced disappointment at the lack of progress made in that area. He said that only a small number of privatized government companies had gone over to private ownership, and that ownership of most companies had in fact been transferred to semi-government bodies, making it impossible to increase economic competitiveness. Rowhani said he was opposed to the existence of monopolies and called for a competitive environment. He added that the government must provide economic security to encourage potential investors and allow them to make medium- and long-term plans. Speaking about the subsidy policy reform, Rowhani said that changes are needed in the way the program is run since it benefits the top and bottom income quintilesbut hurts the middle class. He expressed his support for reestablishing the Management and Planning Organization (formerly the Planning and Budget Organization), disbanded by President Ahmadinejad, saying that the knowledge of private-sector economic experts and entrepreneurs has to be put to use and that they have to be brought into the decision-making process.

Rowhani's remarks were indicative of his support for liberal views that call for the decrease of the government's economic intervention. Rowhani is an advocate of the economic policy embarked upon by Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani during his time as president (1989-1997), which was based on privatization, deregulation, and economic openness. The Niavaran school of thought: Iranian neo-liberal economy Reports published in the Iranian media in recent weeks indicate that some of Rowhani's top economic advisors are affiliated with the Niavaran school of thought, established on neo-liberal economic principles. Its adherents support a free-market economy and a reduction of government economic intervention.

Starting in the 1990s, top economists affiliated with that school of thought have worked within the Institute for Management and Planning Studies (IMP), which has ties to the Management and Planning Organization. The institute is situated on Niavaran Street in Tehran, a short distance from the Expediency Discernment Council's Center for Strategic Studies, headed by Rowhani.According to its official website, the institute was established to conduct research in planning and economic development. Its missions include carrying out research to improve skills and develop methods of planning; identifying problems in the field of planning and budgeting and propose solutions to remove the obstacles in that field; organizing courses in economic, social, and cultural planning and development; increasing the planners' technical knowledge; collecting and publishing documents pertaining to planning, preparation of plans, and budgeting; publishing journals in the field of economic development and planning; and cooperating with the president's office, government ministries, and other public institutions in the institute's areas of responsibility.

The influence of the Niavaran school of thought on shaping Iran's economy reached its peak under President Rafsanjani. The most notable economist belonging to that school of thought is Dr. Mohammad Tabibian; other major economists affiliated with it are Dr. Ali-Naqi Mashayekhi, Dr. Mousa Ghaninejad, Dr. Mas'oud Nili, Mohammad-Ali Najafi, and Dr. Mas'oud Roghani-Zanjani. Mohammad Baqer Nowbakht, Hassan Rowhani's top economic advisor, is affiliated with that school of thought as well. Nowbakht is currently the head of the Economic Research Department at the Expediency Discernment Council's Center for Strategic Studies. In recent years the center has become a leading venue for economists affiliated with the Niavaran school of thought to engage in economic discourse.

The ongoing dispute on "Islamic economy" in Iran The efforts of the economists affiliated with the Niavaran school of thought to promote neo-liberal economic views reflect the dispute-one that goes back to the Islamic revolution-between different economic philosophies. The areas of debate are the government's involvement in economic life, the right to private property, social justice, as well as capital and hired labor profits. The struggle to create an Islamic economic system began with the establishment of the Islamic republic; however, the interpretations with regard to the would-be fundamental properties of an Islamic economic system were quite numerous.

During and after the revolution, three main approaches were formulated in Iran as to the meaning of the limits of private property in Islam: the radical approach, the populist-state approach, and the conservative or free-market approach. The radical approach, which took after the philosophy of Dr. Ali Shariati (1933-1977), one of the main ideological architects of the Islamic revolution, rejected the right to private property, arguing that Islam goes against capitalism, private ownership, and class exploitation. The populist-state approach accepted the right to private property, with some limitations. Those limitations, according to that approach, must be imposed to ensure that all people can realize their right to property, thus maintaining social equality. Its supporters believed that the state had to be allowed to define property rights and set the limits for their implementation.

The conservative approach suggested that Islamic religious law is definitely in accord with the functioning of the market system and the principles of neoclassical analysis, arguing that the most important rights are property rights. Its supporters emphasized economic growth over social equality, explicitly recognized the profit motive, and accepted the market price mechanism as being fair and rational.

Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic revolution, left no room for doubt that Islam did allow ownership of property-provided that the property was acquired by legal means, he decreed. Khomeini accepted market relations but rejected capitalism. In his last will, he proposed the concept of Islamic balance, which did not justify oppressive and unrestrained capitalism yet was not opposed to private property. In 1984 Khomeini decreed that it was Islamically illegal to prevent the private sector from engaging in foreign trade, and that it was inappropriate to restrict the citizens' freedom as far as economic activity was concerned.[1]

The economic team of the president-elect

As already mentioned, Hassan Rowhani's economic team consists of top economists affiliated with the Niavaran school of thought, chiefly Dr. Mohammad-Baqer Nowbakht, who was the spokesman of Rowhani's election headquarters. Nowbakht, born 1950, is the most prominent economist to advise the president-elect. He served as member of the Majles and is the secretary general of the Moderation and Development Party (Hezb-e E'tedal va Towse'eh), a centrist party formed in 2002 and affiliated with the moderate wing of the reformist camp. Nowbakht, who received his Doctor of Economics degree from the University of Paisley, Scotland, is considered one of the top candidates for a senior economic position in Rowhani's new government. In an interview to Iranian TV on June 16, Nowbakht went into some detail about the president-elect's economic plans. He said that the next government intends to continue with the implementation of the subsidy policy reform, but also introduce changes that will take into consideration the different income levels of those who receive government cash benefits under the reform program. He said that the government needs to stop paying cash benefits to people in the upper income levels, and thus allow the rest of the population to receive higher benefits. According to Nowbakht, the new government intends to create a comprehensive database to break down the population by income level and use that database to achieve a more just division of national resources.

In his remarks, Nowbakht discussed the harm that has been caused to the Iranian middle class in recent years as a result of the economic policy pursued by Ahmadinejad's government. He noted that the new government intends to work for increasing the citizens' buying power and curbing inflation by controlling liquidity in the economy and the means of production. He said that the government intends to provide benefits to entrepreneurs to encourage more new businesses to open. Among other things, a new bureau to be established under the president's office will be in charge of reducing the government bureaucracy currently required to obtain a license for a new business. According to Nowbakht, the new president is expected to appoint a vice president for development affairs who will also be responsible for the new bureau. Nowbakht further noted that the new government intends to complete approximately 2,800 development projects across Iran that have not been completed in recent years. Each project will be prioritized according to its significance, and economically unjustified projects will be canceled. Other major economists affiliated with the Niavaran school of thought and considered close to Rowhani are Dr. Mas'oud Nili, Dr. Ali-Naqi Mashayekhi, Mohammad-Ali Najafi, Dr. Mas'oud Roghani-Zanjani, Dr. Mohammad-Hossein Adeli, Dr. Majid Qassemi, and Dr. Mohammad Tabibian.

Dr. Mas'oud Nili, who received his Doctor of Economics degree from the University of Manchester, UK, is currently head of the Department of Economy at the Management and Economy School of the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. In the 1990s he held a number of top economic positions, including deputy chairman of the Planning and Budget Organization, head of the Economic Privatization Committee, and head of the expert panel that was responsible for drawing up a strategic document that discussed industrial development in Iran. He played a major role in formulating the first, second, and third economic development programs (1989-1993, 1995-1999, and 2000-2004, respectively), and was an advisor to the ministers of petroleum and industry.

In April 2013 Nili took part in an economic program aired on Iranian TV Channel 1 in which he strongly criticized the Ahmadinejad government's employment policy. He presented data according to which in 2006-2011 the government had created only 14 thousand new jobs a year, compared to approximately 695 thousand jobs a year in 2001-2006. His remarks sparked a controversy and prompted the government to release an announcement rejecting his claims and arguing that in recent years it had created about 780 thousand new jobs each year.

Dr. Ali-Naqi Mashayekhi, who received his Doctor of Business Administration degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is the dean of the School of Management and Systems at the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. Since the 1970s Mashayekhi has held top economic positions in the academia and the regime, including chief advisor to the director of the Planning and Budget Organization, advisor to the ministers of housing, industry, and energy, and advisor to the Foundation for the Oppressed. He has also worked as an advisor for leading Western companies, including AT&T and McKinsey.

Mohammad-Ali Najafiwas the minister of culture and higher education in Mir-Hossein Mousavi's government (1981-1984) and the minister of education in Rafsanjani's government (1987-1997). During Mohammad Khatami's presidential term he was appointed as director of the Planning and Budget Organization. He is currently a lecturer on mathematics at the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. In the 1970s he began studying for his Ph.D. at the MIT, but returned to Iran in the wake of the Islamic revolution and did not complete his studies. Dr. Mas'oud Roghani-Zanjaniis a lecturer on economics at the Alameh Tabataba'i University in Tehran. In the 1980s and 1990s he intermittently served as director of the Planning and Budget Organization. In the 1980s he resigned from his position on two occasions (in 1985 and 1988) due to differences of opinion with the then Prime MinisterMir-Hossein Mousavi, who held leftist economic views.

Najafi and Roghani-Zanjani are considered two of the likeliest candidates for director of the Management and Planning Organization, assuming that the organization is in fact reestablished by the president-elect. Dr. Majid Qassemi and Dr. Mohammad-Hossein Adeli formerly served as governors of Iran's Central Bank (Qassemi in 1986-1989 and Adeli in 1989-1994) and are, too, considered economists who are close to Rowhani. Qassemi is currently the chairman of the Macroeconomic Committee in the Expediency Discernment Council and is a close ally of Mohammad-Baqer Nowbakht.

Adeli, who received his Doctor of Economics degree from the University of California, is considered one of the leaders of the economic reform launched by Rafsanjani during his presidential term after the Iran-Iraq War. Upon completing his term as governor of the Central Bank, Adeli, who had been Iran's ambassador to Japan in 1986-1989, returned to the Iranian Foreign Service. He served as ambassador to Canada (1995-1999), deputy foreign minister for economic affairs, and ambassador to the UK (2004-2005). After leaving the Foreign Ministry, Adeli founded Ravand, an independent institute for economic and international studies.

Dr. Mohammad Tabibian, as already mentioned, is considered the most prominent economist affiliated with the Niavaran school of thought. He received his Doctor of Economics degree from Duke University, North Carolina. He served as deputy director of the Planning and Budget Organization in the Rafsanjani administration and played a major role in formulating the first and second development programs. He co-founded the Management and Planning Studies Institute in Tehran.

In a recent article, Tabibian called for the reestablishment of the Management and Planning Organization. He argued that the organization is necessary to help the president and the government steer the economy, and that its disbandment by Ahmadinejad deprived the government of one of its most important tools for steering the economy and undermined its ability to make economic decisions. He said that the organization's independence and ability to interact with various state authorities-necessary means for performing its duties-took a hit when its powers were transferred to the Ministry of Economy (http://mtabibian.com/).

Rowhani's economic team in service of the regime in the 1980s and the 1990s[2] In the 1980s and 1990s some of the top economists who are currently members of Rowhani's economic team, mainly Mas'oud Nili, Mas'oud Roghani-Zanjani, Ali-Naqi Mashayekhi, Mohammad Tabibian, Mohammad-Ali Najafi, and Hossein Adeli, played a major role in shaping the economic policy of the Islamic republic. Among other things, they were involved in formulating the economic development programs and advancing the privatization policy.

By promoting economic reforms, these economists took a neo-liberal stance, sought to reduce government economic intervention, encouraged private and even foreign investments in the economy, and drove the private sector forward. They even supported the recommendations of the World Bank and in some cases were willing to confront adherents of radical leftist economic policies, who disapproved of free-market economic principles and advocated for greater government intervention in the economy. For instance, Mas'oud Nili discussed the tensions that arose between the top economic advisors and the decision-makers in the 1980s:

"Since the spirit of that time was in opposition to a capitalist economic structure, capitalist ideas and people who may approved of them were perceived as gheyrekhodi [not one of us, alien]".

In the 1980s, as Iran was facing a severe economic crisis brought on by the prolonged war against Iraq, these economists played an important role in drawing up recommendations that contributed to the decision made by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini to agree to a ceasefire with Iraq in 1988. In late 1986 Roghani-Zanjani, then the director of the Planning and Budget Organization, alerted Prime Minister Mousavi to the consequences that a continued war against Iraq would have on Iran's economy and the stability of the Islamic republic. Mousavi was largely unimpressed with the warnings; however, he did eventually permit Roghani-Zanjani to write a letter to the leader of the revolution to communicate his concerns.

Aided by Nili, Tabibian, and Mashayekhi, Roghani-Zanjani composed a letter setting out the conclusions reached by the Planning and Budget Organization on the consequences of continuing the war. He stressed in his letter that making decisions on continuing the war was the exclusive province of the religious leadership, but stated that there were two options: to follow in the footsteps of the Shi'ite Imam Hussein and sacrifice everything for the sake of a war effort that was unlikely to succeed, or end the war and move on to dealing with the economic crisis and the escalating crisis brought on by the dramatic increase in birth rate. It is not inconceivable that the letter had an influence on Khomeini's decision, made just months after the letter was received, to agree to a ceasefire with Iraq.

[1] For further information on the dispute between the different economic approaches in the Islamic republic, see: Sohrab Behdad, "A Disputed Utopia: Islamic Economics in Revolutionary Iran", Comparative Studies in Society and History, 36 (1994), 4, pp. 775-813.
[2] This section is based on: Ehsanee Ian Sadr, To Whisper in the King's Ear: Economists in Pahlavi and Islamic Iran, A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 2013.

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is the Director of the New York-based American Center for Democracy (ACD) and the Economic Warfare Institute (EWI). She has authored hundreds of articles and several books on terrorist financing and political corruption. This article appeared July 08, 2013 on the American Center for Democracy (ACD) website and is archived at
http://acdemocracy.org/rowhanis-economic-revolution/

An Egyptian protester lights up a flare as hundreds of thousands of Egyptian demonstrators gather in Cairo's landmark Tahrir Square during a protest calling for the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi on July 1, 2013.

The Egyptian military has given President Mohamed Morsi until today to resolve the country's political crisis or else it will step in. "If the people's demands are not met," Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, announced on Monday, the army "will have to disclose its own future plan."

Aside from promising that "no one party will be excluded or marginalized," Sisi failed to elaborate on his roadmap to restore stability to Egypt. That's perhaps because no one, not the government, not Morsi's ruling Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Freedom and Justice party, not the army, nor even the protesters themselves know what it is that the 3 million people who have taken to the streets of Egypt are demanding. The unhappy reality is that in all likelihood, the vast majority of the protesters do not want anything except to end the chaos in their country, which they apparently aim to do by gorging themselves on violence.

The White House has called for early elections and warned the military against a coup. The bigger problem is that the Egyptian army has no plan to stabilize the country. And even if the army takes over, what price is it willing to pay to keep the streets quiet? Shooting protesters? How many? Egyptians, contrary to received wisdom, do not love the army, or else hundreds of people wouldn't have flashed laser lights at a military helicopter the other night in an effort to blind the pilot and crash it. The army can't bring order because the energies unleashed with the fall of Mubarak two-plus years ago can't be put back in the bottle.

The Egyptian army has only one card left to play. Western journalists and other true believers in the promise of the Arab Spring may be shocked by the suggestion that Egypt may be headed to war with Israel in the not-too-distant future. But as the country implodes, war has become the easy way out. It doesn't matter that the Egyptian army doesn' want another catastrophic contest with Israel-neither did Anwar Sadat 40 years ago when he saved Egypt by going to war with Israel, which in turn helped him acquire the superpower patronage of the United States.

***

Of course, some prominent American commentators believe that the point of the current demonstrations in Egypt is to revive the liberal democratic goals of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak. However, it's worth noting that the main goal of the revolution, after pushing out Mubarak, was to win a political system with free and fair elections in which Egyptians would get to choose their own government. That was in fact accomplished-and Morsi won. Academic experts and Western journalists might be perturbed that there is too much reliance on Islamic law in Egypt's new Constitution, but many Egyptians believe in Islamic law-and people do not typically ransack their own country to protest amendments to a legal document.

A more relevant complaint perhaps is that Morsi has empowered his own party at the expense of others. However, in Egypt this is not a political problem but a cultural one. In a country that treats wasta, or connections, like a civic virtue, every businessman, bureaucrat, and village mayor is going to employ his own people, so why would it be different for the country's top political official? There is no Egyptian president who would not do precisely what Morsi has done in stacking his government with allies.

Egyptians are definitely angry at the state of their country's economy. But the fact that staples like bread, rice and oil have skyrocketed is to be blamed almost entirely on the fact that protesters have filled the streets since January 2011. In bringing down Mubarak and prosecuting the regime's technocrats who won high marks from the IMF for reforming the Egyptian economy and attracting foreign direct investment, the revolutionaries ensured that it would be at least a generation before any Egyptian official sought to implement the same policies.

It was in order to avoid unrest that Morsi balked at cutting subsidies and otherwise reforming the economy to satisfy the IMF's requirements for a $4.8 billion loan. If Qatar wasn't floating the Morsi government a few billion dollars every couple of months, Egypt would starve. And how do the Egyptians repay Doha's munificence? By claiming that Morsi's fall will return Qatar to its proper and, compared to Egypt, insignificant place in regional affairs. Maybe Qatar's newly enthroned emir will decide he'd rather build more air-conditioned soccer stadiums than feed the inhabitants of the Nile River valley.

Up until two and a half years ago, tourism was one of the country's main sources of revenue, but political instability has kept visitors away-as has violence directed against foreigners. No one is going to visit a country where American college students are stabbed to death in broad daylight and Dutch journalists are gang-raped in Tahrir Square, ground zero of Egypt's glorious revolution.

***

What is unfolding in Egypt is not about politics or the economy, it is simply a medieval carnival of grievance and rage, where every appetite, no matter how vicious, can be indulged, because no one feels a stake in preserving any larger, inclusive whole-however that whole is described. It is easier for Western commentators to get a fix on the chaos when it appears to be motivated by religious hatred. Last week, four members of Egypt's minuscule Shia community were surrounded, beaten, and stabbed to death in their village outside Cairo. Since the mob was incited to murder by a Salafi sheikh, it was clear who was responsible for this bit of butchery, an Islamist fanatic.

The chain of accountability is a little more difficult for those same Western analysts to track when it's the anti-Morsi forces who are drawing blood. All of the Muslim Brotherhood's offices across Egypt have been stormed, and the national headquarters was torched. Sixteen people are dead, allegedly including Brotherhood supporters, whose apparent sin was backing a political party that won a free election-the last one that Egypt is likely to see for quite a while.

If foreign journalists and analysts have failed to be appropriately appalled by the demonstrations, it is because in their worldview, the Islamists are the bad guys and the secularists are the good guys. Now that Egyptians are mad at Morsi, the thinking goes, the Egyptians will get their liberal revolution back-along with that cool guy from Google. Reporters are told in man-on-the-street interviews that Morsi is the problem. The complaint should sound familiar because that's exactly what the same protesters said about Mubarak. The one thing everyone is definitely agreed on is that the problem with Egyptian society isn't the Egyptians themselves.

A competent leader, likely not Morsi, will soon come to see that he has no choice but to make a virtue of necessity and export the one commodity that Egypt has in abundance-violence. So, why not bind the warring, immature, and grandiose Egyptian factions together in a pact against Israel, the country's sole transcendent object of loathing? Indeed, it's not entirely clear why Egypt's venomous strains of anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic sentiment have not yet hit fever pitch. Yes, Morsi doesn't want to get the White House angry. And there's also the obvious fact that Egyptians are too divided against themselves right now to be unified against anyone else. But that can't last for long, or else Egypt will implode.

So, here are the facts that Egyptians and Western reporters alike would rather not face: There is simply no way that today's Egypt can feed its own people, or fuel the tractors that harvest its crops-let alone attract tens of billions of dollars in foreign investment to grow a hi-tech miracle along the banks of the Nile. That's fantasyland stuff-like the fantasy of an American-style constitutional democracy run by the Muslim Brotherhood and guaranteed by the Egyptian army.

So, what's left? A short war today-precipitated by a border incident in Sinai, or a missile gone awry in the Gaza Strip, and concluded before the military runs out of the ammunition that Washington will surely not resupply-will reunify the country and earn Egypt money from an international community eager to broker peace. Taking up arms against Israel will also return Egypt to its former place of prominence in an Arab world that is adrift in a sea of blood. But even more important is the fact that there is no other plausible way out: Sacrificing thousands of her sons on the altar of war is the only way to save Mother Egypt from herself. The Egyptian army has only one card left to play. Western journalists and other true believers in the promise of the Arab Spring may be shocked by the suggestion that Egypt may be headed to war with Israel in the not-too-distant future. But as the country implodes, war has become the easy way out. It doesn't matter that the Egyptian army doesn't want another catastrophic contest with Israel-neither did Anwar Sadat 40 years ago when he saved Egypt by going to war with Israel, which in turn helped him acquire the superpower patronage of the United States.

***

Of course, some prominent American commentators believe that the point of the current demonstrations in Egypt is to revive the liberal democratic goals of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak. However, it's worth noting that the main goal of the revolution, after pushing out Mubarak, was to win a political system with free and fair elections in which Egyptians would get to choose their own government. That was in fact accomplished-and Morsi won. Academic experts and Western journalists might be perturbed that there is too much reliance on Islamic law in Egypt's new Constitution, but many Egyptians believe in Islamic law-and people do not typically ransack their own country to protest amendments to a legal document.

A more relevant complaint perhaps is that Morsi has empowered his own party at the expense of others. However, in Egypt this is not a political problem but a cultural one. In a country that treats wasta, or connections, like a civic virtue, every businessman, bureaucrat, and village mayor is going to employ his own people, so why would it be different for the country's top political official? There is no Egyptian president who would not do precisely what Morsi has done in stacking his government with allies.

Egyptians are definitely angry at the state of their country's economy. But the fact that staples like bread, rice and oil have skyrocketed is to be blamed almost entirely on the fact that protesters have filled the streets since January 2011. In bringing down Mubarak and prosecuting the regime's technocrats who won high marks from the IMF for reforming the Egyptian economy and attracting foreign direct investment, the revolutionaries ensured that it would be at least a generation before any Egyptian official sought to implement the same policies.

It was in order to avoid unrest that Morsi balked at cutting subsidies and otherwise reforming the economy to satisfy the IMF's requirements for a $4.8 billion loan. If Qatar wasn't floating the Morsi government a few billion dollars every couple of months, Egypt would starve. And how do the Egyptians repay Doha's munificence? By claiming that Morsi's fall will return Qatar to its proper and, compared to Egypt, insignificant place in regional affairs. Maybe Qatar's newly enthroned emir will decide he'd rather build more air-conditioned soccer stadiums than feed the inhabitants of the Nile River valley.

Up until two and a half years ago, tourism was one of the country's main sources of revenue, but political instability has kept visitors away-as has violence directed against foreigners. No one is going to visit a country where American college students are stabbed to death in broad daylight and Dutch journalists are gang-raped in Tahrir Square, ground zero of Egypt's glorious revolution.

***

What is unfolding in Egypt is not about politics or the economy, it is simply a medieval carnival of grievance and rage, where every appetite, no matter how vicious, can be indulged, because no one feels a stake in preserving any larger, inclusive whole-however that whole is described. It is easier for Western commentators to get a fix on the chaos when it appears to be motivated by religious hatred. Last week, four members of Egypt's minuscule Shia community were surrounded, beaten, and stabbed to death in their village outside Cairo. Since the mob was incited to murder by a Salafi sheikh, it was clear who was responsible for this bit of butchery, an Islamist fanatic.

The chain of accountability is a little more difficult for those same Western analysts to track when it's the anti-Morsi forces who are drawing blood. All of the Muslim Brotherhood's offices across Egypt have been stormed, and the national headquarters was torched. Sixteen people are dead, allegedly including Brotherhood supporters, whose apparent sin was backing a political party that won a free election-the last one that Egypt is likely to see for quite a while.

If foreign journalists and analysts have failed to be appropriately appalled by the demonstrations, it is because in their worldview, the Islamists are the bad guys and the secularists are the good guys. Now that Egyptians are mad at Morsi, the thinking goes, the Egyptians will get their liberal revolution back-along with that cool guy from Google. Reporters are told in man-on-the-street interviews that Morsi is the problem. The complaint should sound familiar because that's exactly what the same protesters said about Mubarak. The one thing everyone is definitely agreed on is that the problem with Egyptian society isn't the Egyptians themselves.

A competent leader, likely not Morsi, will soon come to see that he has no choice but to make a virtue of necessity and export the one commodity that Egypt has in abundance-violence. So, why not bind the warring, immature, and grandiose Egyptian factions together in a pact against Israel, the country's sole transcendent object of loathing? Indeed, it's not entirely clear why Egypt's venomous strains of anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic sentiment have not yet hit fever pitch. Yes, Morsi doesn't want to get the White House angry. And there's also the obvious fact that Egyptians are too divided against themselves right now to be unified against anyone else. But that can't last for long, or else Egypt will implode.

So, here are the facts that Egyptians and Western reporters alike would rather not face: There is simply no way that today's Egypt can feed its own people, or fuel the tractors that harvest its crops-let alone attract tens of billions of dollars in foreign investment to grow a hi-tech miracle along the banks of the Nile. That's fantasyland stuff-like the fantasy of an American-style constitutional democracy run by the Muslim Brotherhood and guaranteed by the Egyptian army.

So, what's left? A short war today-precipitated by a border incident in Sinai, or a missile gone awry in the Gaza Strip, and concluded before the military runs out of the ammunition that Washington will surely not resupply-will reunify the country and earn Egypt money from an international community eager to broker peace. Taking up arms against Israel will also return Egypt to its former place of prominence in an Arab world that is adrift in a sea of blood. But even more important is the fact that there is no other plausible way out: Sacrificing thousands of her sons on the altar of war is the only way to save Mother Egypt from herself.

The Egyptian army has only one card left to play. Western journalists and other true believers in the promise of the Arab Spring may be shocked by the suggestion that Egypt may be headed to war with Israel in the not-too-distant future. But as the country implodes, war has become the easy way out. It doesn't matter that the Egyptian army doesn't want another catastrophic contest with Israel-neither did Anwar Sadat 40 years ago when he saved Egypt by going to war with Israel, which in turn helped him acquire the superpower patronage of the United States.

***

Of course, some prominent American commentators believe that the point of the current demonstrations in Egypt is to revive the liberal democratic goals of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak. However, it's worth noting that the main goal of the revolution, after pushing out Mubarak, was to win a political system with free and fair elections in which Egyptians would get to choose their own government. That was in fact accomplished-and Morsi won. Academic experts and Western journalists might be perturbed that there is too much reliance on Islamic law in Egypt's new Constitution, but many Egyptians believe in Islamic law-and people do not typically ransack their own country to protest amendments to a legal document.

A more relevant complaint perhaps is that Morsi has empowered his own party at the expense of others. However, in Egypt this is not a political problem but a cultural one. In a country that treats wasta, or connections, like a civic virtue, every businessman, bureaucrat, and village mayor is going to employ his own people, so why would it be different for the country's top political official? There is no Egyptian president who would not do precisely what Morsi has done in stacking his government with allies.

Egyptians are definitely angry at the state of their country's economy. But the fact that staples like bread, rice and oil have skyrocketed is to be blamed almost entirely on the fact that protesters have filled the streets since January 2011. In bringing down Mubarak and prosecuting the regime's technocrats who won high marks from the IMF for reforming the Egyptian economy and attracting foreign direct investment, the revolutionaries ensured that it would be at least a generation before any Egyptian official sought to implement the same policies.

It was in order to avoid unrest that Morsi balked at cutting subsidies and otherwise reforming the economy to satisfy the IMF's requirements for a $4.8 billion loan. If Qatar wasn't floating the Morsi government a few billion dollars every couple of months, Egypt would starve. And how do the Egyptians repay Doha's munificence? By claiming that Morsi's fall will return Qatar to its proper and, compared to Egypt, insignificant place in regional affairs. Maybe Qatar's newly enthroned emir will decide he'd rather build more air-conditioned soccer stadiums than feed the inhabitants of the Nile River valley.

Up until two and a half years ago, tourism was one of the country's main sources of revenue, but political instability has kept visitors away-as has violence directed against foreigners. No one is going to visit a country where American college students are stabbed to death in broad daylight and Dutch journalists are gang-raped in Tahrir Square, ground zero of Egypt's glorious revolution.

***

What is unfolding in Egypt is not about politics or the economy, it is simply a medieval carnival of grievance and rage, where every appetite, no matter how vicious, can be indulged, because no one feels a stake in preserving any larger, inclusive whole-however that whole is described. It is easier for Western commentators to get a fix on the chaos when it appears to be motivated by religious hatred. Last week, four members of Egypt's minuscule Shia community were surrounded, beaten, and stabbed to death in their village outside Cairo. Since the mob was incited to murder by a Salafi sheikh, it was clear who was responsible for this bit of butchery, an Islamist fanatic.

The chain of accountability is a little more difficult for those same Western analysts to track when it's the anti-Morsi forces who are drawing blood. All of the Muslim Brotherhood's offices across Egypt have been stormed, and the national headquarters was torched. Sixteen people are dead, allegedly including Brotherhood supporters, whose apparent sin was backing a political party that won a free election-the last one that Egypt is likely to see for quite a while.

If foreign journalists and analysts have failed to be appropriately appalled by the demonstrations, it is because in their worldview, the Islamists are the bad guys and the secularists are the good guys. Now that Egyptians are mad at Morsi, the thinking goes, the Egyptians will get their liberal revolution back-along with that cool guy from Google. Reporters are told in man-on-the-street interviews that Morsi is the problem. The complaint should sound familiar because that's exactly what the same protesters said about Mubarak. The one thing everyone is definitely agreed on is that the problem with Egyptian society isn't the Egyptians themselves.

A competent leader, likely not Morsi, will soon come to see that he has no choice but to make a virtue of necessity and export the one commodity that Egypt has in abundance-violence. So, why not bind the warring, immature, and grandiose Egyptian factions together in a pact against Israel, the country's sole transcendent object of loathing? Indeed, it's not entirely clear why Egypt's venomous strains of anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic sentiment have not yet hit fever pitch. Yes, Morsi doesn't want to get the White House angry. And there's also the obvious fact that Egyptians are too divided against themselves right now to be unified against anyone else. But that can't last for long, or else Egypt will implode.

So, here are the facts that Egyptians and Western reporters alike would rather not face: There is simply no way that today's Egypt can feed its own people, or fuel the tractors that harvest its crops-let alone attract tens of billions of dollars in foreign investment to grow a hi-tech miracle along the banks of the Nile. That's fantasyland stuff-like the fantasy of an American-style constitutional democracy run by the Muslim Brotherhood and guaranteed by the Egyptian army.

So, what's left? A short war today-precipitated by a border incident in Sinai, or a missile gone awry in the Gaza Strip, and concluded before the military runs out of the ammunition that Washington will surely not resupply-will reunify the country and earn Egypt money from an international community eager to broker peace. Taking up arms against Israel will also return Egypt to its former place of prominence in an Arab world that is adrift in a sea of blood. But even more important is the fact that there is no other plausible way out: Sacrificing thousands of her sons on the altar of war is the only way to save Mother Egypt from herself.

Contact Sanne DeWitt at skdewitt@comcast.net

1. As you know, the Egyptian military has overturned the Terror-ocracy of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. I never quite understood just what they had done with the Muslim Sisterhood but we will have to address that some other morn. Anyways, there are all sorts of reports coming out of Egypt about how the military is taking Islamists out back and disposing of them in an environmentally friendly manner.

But this just raises some questions of what the Egyptian military should be doing with the carcasses of those Islamist fundamentalists from the "Bro-hood." Being an ever-helpful sort of fella, I have begun a list of proposals. Inspired by that book about the 101 things to do with a dead cat. So here is what I have come up with so far:

101 Things for the Egyptian Military to Do with Dead Islamist Fundamentalists:

1. Upset the environmentalists by using them to poison piranha fish.

2. Use them to help boost Purina's stock value.

3. One word: McNuggets.

4. Give them tenure at Ben Gurion University.

5. Fire them off into space so Barry Chamish's UFO friends will never want to visit earth again.

6. Clone them and sell the spinoffs as 21st century scarecrows or as members of the Neturei Karta.

7. Pretend they are Rachel Corrie and run a bulldozer over them.

8. Save Holland by using them to plug the dikes.

9. Let them occupy Wall Street with a sign reading "Will Terrorize for Food".

10. Market them in the bazaar as carpet beaters.

11. Let the US javelin team train on top of them for the Olympics.

12. They make a great speed hump.

13. Tie them to a pole and use them as the bait at the dog race track.

14. Send them to the Harvard BDS leaders.

15. Enroll them in the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Seminary. Hey, they already have taken more Rabbinic courses than Michael Lerner.

16. Halloween Decoration.

17. Clearicil could use them in its commercials to show what happens if you use the inferior brand.

18. Export them to France as a wine supplement.

19. Sell them as organic produce in Berkeley.

20. Tie them to the back of cars for newlyweds in MTV commercials.

21. Use them to scare your kids when they refuse to clean their rooms.

22. Sell them as a Yigal Tomarkin original sculpture.

23. They give people 101 reasons to prefer having a dead cat.

24. Use them to become the patron saint for dung beetles.

25. Sell them to that Museum in Sweden that ran the "Snow White Pure" sculpture.

27. Enter them in the Texas State Cow Chip Toss as the world's largest cow chips.

28. Make them the drummer in a punk rock band. Or better yet, the drum.

29. Tell Anna Nicole Smith they are rich.

30. "Fear Factor" TV show could make people sit on a bench next to them.

31. Put them in an envelope and send him to the Elect Ralph Nader committee.

32. Let Brandeis hire them for its peace and justice studies program.

33. Rent them to Cubans as a device to hold their place in the bread lines while they go off fishing.

2. What is a Liberal?

Liberalism is in many ways more of a theology than a political philosophy. And like any theology, its proponents reach their conclusions and ideas through faith, not through technical testing of hypotheses. Just as believers in God do not subject Him to laboratory tests or statistical regression analysis, so followers of the Great Liberal Kahuna, the embodiment of liberal superstition, promote their system of beliefs based upon faith.

The following are the basic principles and axioms upon which all thinking and public debate must be conducted if you wish to be a true progressive and liberal person who cares:

First of all, and indeed most importantly of all, liberals should be free to call everyone else nasty names because they are so caring and moral. No one however should be permitted to call liberals anything. For a liberal to call someone nasty names shows social concern and awareness. For someone to call a liberal a nasty name back is immature and impolite and is avoiding the issues. When liberals smear others, it is freedom of speech. When critics of liberals disagree with the opinions of liberals or question the motives of liberals, it is libel.

Liberals need never document their claims. All liberal claims are self-evident. Whenever a liberal is presented with documentation of facts that contradict the liberal's theology, the liberal must insist that no evidence has been presented at all. No scientific sources that present facts contradicting liberal theology are admissible. Especially regarding climate change. They must be dismissed as being right-wing and "neocon." All arguments with a liberal may be settled by telling the non-liberal that he or she reminds you of Rush Limbaugh of Glenn Beck or Margaret Thatcher.

Ironically, these days the greatest bugaboo of liberals is battling against what they call "neo-liberalism." They never define the term but they seem to mean any advocacy of allowing markets to operate. Liberalism once meant free markets. Today it means opposition to free markets. Liberals dub those who still hold the archaic opinion that markets perform better than bureaucrats as "Neo-Liberals."

Liberals are quite sure that everything wrong with the world is because of the United States. Anything left over that is wrong with the world is the fault of the Jews. Terrorism is merely resistance to America and Jews by people with legitimate grievances. The only people in the world whose access to guns liberals believe should not be restricted are Palestinians.

Liberals prefer the internet to libraries. That is because there are too many reactionary books and magazines on the shelves in libraries. You can spend your life on the internet without reading anything that contradicts liberal political theology. Liberals never study economics, statistics or public policy analysis. That is because these things tend to undermine liberal preconceptions.

Liberals support proposals that make real problems of the world worse, just as long as advocating them can make the liberals feel caring and righteous. Liberalism, like jacuzzis, is all about feeling snug and warm and good. Liberals hate the idea that life involves tradeoffs. After all, when there are tradeoffs it is harder to feel righteous. In other words, liberalism is largely a form of recreation designed to make its advocates pleased with themselves, and never mind when liberal ideas make real problems of the world much worse. It makes liberals uncomfortable to imagine mentally ill people being forcibly institutionalized; so they prefer that the mentally ill be homeless, just as long as the homeless do not enter neighborhoods where liberals live.

Liberals also believe in magic, and insist that complex world problems can be resolved using hocus pocus. They believe criminals can be rehabilitated and so need not be incarcerated. They are sure capital punishment does not deter any crime. Liberals believe poverty can be eliminated by making it illegal to employ people at less than the minimum wage, and insist this will not produce unemployment. They are convinced that people can live in cheap housing if rent controls make it illegal to rent housing units at higher prices. They firmly believe that setting price limits on what the medical system can charge for services will produce affordable health care, not shortages. They do not think anyone will work or produce less if tax rates are very high. Liberals are sure that poverty is caused by low self-esteem. So is poor school performance. All problems of life may be resolved by raising self-esteem.

Marxists may believe in "economic determinism" but liberals believe in the Holy Trinity of Race, Gender, and Sexual-Orientation Determinism. Liberals favor apartheid just as long as it is affirmative apartheid, that based upon dumbed down standards and racial-gender quotas. If there are proportionately more blacks in prison than whites, liberals insist that it is because the courts and police are racist. If there are many more males in prison than females it is because males commit more crime.

Liberals always say "people of color" so that everyone will know they care. They use the female pronouns half the time or more to prove they are egalitarian. Liberals refer to Israeli Arabs as (occupied) Palestinians. They pretend to believe the "transgendered" are a gender and that transgendered people are normal.

Liberals pretend that they do not care about material things, but will never sell their smartphone or condo in order to help out those living in hardship. Liberals sob endlessly about poverty, misfortune, and inequality but are not interested in foregoing any of their own income or wealth to transfer it to the poor. They believe low-income people should be helped using YOUR money, not theirs. They believe in income redistribution just as long as no one tries to redistribute any of their own money away from their own pocket. The property of liberals is sacred; other people's property is to be used for social engineering and doing good.

Liberals also prefer that poor people in the Third World starve rather than embrace capitalism and live like Western liberals do. Liberals insist that low-income people need government help and nanny-state protection to know how to live and raise children and spend money and find work. Marijuana should be legalized, while salt and sugar and trans-fats should be criminalized. The only people never in need of being told by bureaucratic Big Brother or the governmental Mary Poppins how to live or take care of themselves are liberals.

Liberals insist that they are more caring and compassionate than anyone else. They claim conservatives are people who hate children and flowers and kittens. Conservatives may consider liberals to be wrong or foolish, but liberals consider conservatives to be evil.

Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments — both seriously and satirically — on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. Write him at splaut@gmail.com His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com.

President Obama, already known to his staff as a "sophisticated" and "voracious" consumer of intelligence reports, has just found a way to enhance his intelligence briefing experience even further, by choosing Avril Danica Haines, whose resume includes reading erotic fiction out loud to paying customers, as a new deputy CIA director.

Twenty years ago, after dropping out of a graduate program in physics, Haines co-owned a Baltimore bookstore, which featured regular "Erotica Nights" with readings of erotic prose over dinner (couples $30, singles $17).

Apparently, the expertise she obtained in the process later qualified her to perform as a lawyer in the White House Counsel's office in charge of the CIA's undercover actions, now followed by the number-two position at the top spy agency, where she will be composing and reading provocative stories of crime and passion to the president directly.

This job was previously performed by Michael "Benghazi" Morell, who resigned in disgrace after he was outed as the author of the scandalously indecent talking points on the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Avril Haines is likely to be a more competent replacement, given her know-how in motivating dirty old men working in the Pentagon, ICE, Missile Defense Agency, TSA, Secret Service, and State Department, to take their minds off internet porn and actually interact with a live woman who has intimate knowledge of undercover operations, probing deeply together into the matter at hand. As an added bonus, President Obama is expected never again to miss 66 percent of daily intelligence meetings.

Liberal policies have always been based on raw, knee-jerk emotions, best summed up in the title of a 1968 tune, "If it feels good, you know it can't be wrong." Taking the feel-good principle to a whole new level, this administration's behavior has long resembled adventures of a sexually liberated woman in touch with her inner flower child; it stands to reason that they would eventually hire one. Expect more exciting foreign policy adventures driven by erotic sensations in response to international crises.

If the aftermath of the Arab Spring is generating butterflies in the stomach, you know it can't be wrong. In contrast, supporting the persecuted Christians in Egypt and elsewhere in the Muslim world is a proven turnoff. But let's try sending U.S. troops to help suppress the opposition to Egypt's Islamists regime and see if causes a salacious tingling sensation. It does — let's send even more troops! Let's send troops to Jordan too. And let's give arms to Islamic fundamentalists in Syria. Yes! It feels so good, it hurts!

Political scientists may actually have an opportunity here to build an objective geopolitical scale by quantifying amorous body responses to international stimuli, ranging from Palestine's aphrodisiac to Israel's buzzkill. All other international entities, organizations, and movements can be arranged between these two extremes in the order of titillating magnitude: the ultimate liberal method of determining foreign policy, building alliances, and making permanent decisions based on fleeting emotions.

At a time when America is being attacked by just about every tyrannical, fundamentalist, and plutocratic international leader, from China to Russia to the Middle East to Latin America, the appointment of an erotic aficionado to lead the nation's top intelligence agency is quite symptomatic: if we can't fight back, the next best thing is to get professional advice on how to lie back and enjoy the experience.

Soft music and candlelight are optional.

Dr. Rich Swier is Publisher of www.DrRichSwier e-Magazine. He holds a Doctorate of Education from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, Dr. Swier is a 23-year Army veteran who retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1990. He was awarded the Legion of Merit for his years of service. Contact him at drswier@gmail.com

Since taking office in January 2009, or even before then, Barack Hussein Obama has been working with a number of US intelligence honchos, James Jones, Clapper, Donilon, and others to promote the rise to power of Muslim Brotherhood governments in Sunni Arab countries as well as encouraging governments run by the MB's Shiite counterparts, as in Iran and its ally, Syria [dominated by Alawites, an offshoot sect of Shiism, considered heretics by Sunnis but as Muslims by Shiites, at least as long as convenient], and by Sunni counterparts of the MB as in Turkey. Obama's first trip abroad after taking office as president was to Ankara, where Erdogan — a veteran Judeophobe — had successfully subdued his possible political opposition in the army and the judiciary, installing his own men, and had adopted an aggressive pro-Islamist foreign policy with overtones of nostalgia for the Sunni Ottoman Empire. Obama's second trip abroad, in June 2009, was to Egypt where he was going to make the Arab and Muslim worlds love America, while he forged an alliance of sorts with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Even before the 2008 presidential elections in the USA that brought him to power, he had his mentor Zbig Brzezinski travel to Syria, to Damascus. There he promised cooperative, helpful relations with the Syrian regime led by Bashar [Junior Basher] Assad, in contrast to the critical attitude of Pres. Geo. Bush II towards Junior Basher after the Hariri assassination, perpetrated by Assad through the instrumentality of Hizbullah. If only Obama were elected, of course. John Kerry, while still a senator, made a trip to Damascus too, promising — like Zbig — friendly, profitable relations with Washington while Obama stayed prez. The Obama administration considered Junior Basher a "reformer," with Hilary notoriously making that point more than once after Junior had already begun to butcher his opposition.

Whereas Erdogan has been referred to as Obama's BFF and is reported to speak with Obama on the phone weekly, Obama brought the Muslim Brotherhood out of official political ostracism in Mubarak's Egypt. He not only invited the MB leaders to his notorious Cairo speech but he had them sit right up front, close to him. The speech itself became notorious for falsely praising Islam as a great force in the progress of civilization. Today, Egypt, long a Muslim country, has an illiteracy rate of 40%. Not quite the model of a land in the vanguard of civilization.

Promoting political Islam has been the real foundation of Obama's Middle East policy. In fact, Obama's foreign policy mentors, Lee Hamilton and Zbig Brzezinski, are both pro-Islamist. Yet this pro-Muslim policy had to be revised after the Arab Spring. To be sure, when crowds in Tahrir Square in Cairo — January-February 2011 — called on Mubarak to leave, Obama echoed those calls and also stated that an MB govt in Egypt would be acceptable to the United States. One of Obama's intelligence honchos, James Clapper, even lied to Congress on the MB's behalf, saying that it was "largely secular," in order to portray the MB as innocuous and even benevolent.

Obama has also favored Iran's Nuclear Bomb project, contrary to his campaign promises, opening his hand to the ayatollahs, hoping for friendship with them, failing to support the freedom demonstrators in Teheran after the falsified results of the 2009 election. That he was finally forced to endorse sanctions against Iran was due in great part to the ayatollahs' refusal to reciprocate his wishes for friendship. Sort of a relationship of unrequited love.

To be sure, the real US foreign policy as shaped by the State Department, CIA and other agencies, has long been pro-Muslim and pro-Arab. This goes back at least to Franklin D Roosevelt's meeting with King Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud [called Ibn Saud] in 1945. But it never has been so blatant as it is now under Obama.

To be sure, the USA favored the Islamist takeover after Algerian Islamists won the elections in 1991. The ruling faction there, originally called by the grandiose name, National Liberation Front [FLN] — as if they were liberators — did not let the Islamists enjoy their electoral victory. This set off a civil war in which the Islamic Salvation Front [Front Islamique de Salut — FIS] proved their salvation credentials much as the FLN proved its liberation credentials. Both sides slaughtered fellow Arab Muslims before the civil war petered out in the early 2000s. The Islamists especially slaughtered, killing many tens of thousands of their brethren.

The USA again, in the person of Sec'y of State Condoleezza Rice, insisted that Hamas — the Palestinian Arab affiliate of the MB — be allowed to take part in Palestinian Authority elections in January 2006, although the Oslo accords forbid any party refusing to ever live in peace with Israel from taking part in the Palestinian Authority government.

Obama's administration, following in the footsteps of Condoleezza, Zbig, Lee Hamilton, the Dulles brothers, William Polk, and others, openly argued in favor of the "moderation" and "pragmatism" of the Muslim Brotherhood [as indicated in the first paragraph above].

Now the White House and State Dept are feeling sorrowful over the overthrow of the MB president of Egypt, Muhammad Morsi, as an anti-democratic act although the overthrow is supported by tens of millions of Egyptians. It is often claimed in American and British media that Morsi was elected in free and fair elections. What they conveniently forget is that Morsi as a stalwart Muslim Brother despised democracy and human rights, although Morsi and the MB do not mind using the lofty slogans of democracy and human rights when it is advantageous for them to do so. However, Morsi proved his contempt for democracy in November 2012, when he grabbed dictatorial powers for himself. The New York Times for once allowed respect for truth to take precedence over its pro-Islamist editorial policy:

CAIRO — With a constitutional assembly on the brink of collapse and protesters battling the police in the streets over the slow pace of change, President Mohamed Morsi issued a decree on Thursday granting himself broad powers above any court as the guardian ofEgypt's revolution... Mr. Morsi, an Islamist and Egypt's first elected president, portrayed his decree as an attempt to fulfill popular demands for justice and protect the transition to a constitutional democracy. But the unexpected breadth of the powers he seized raised immediate fears that he might become a new strongman...

"An absolute presidential tyranny," Amr Hamzawy, a liberal member of the dissolved Parliament and prominent political scientist, wrote in an online commentary. "Egypt is facing a horrifying coup against legitimacy and the rule of law and a complete assassination of the democratic transition."

So much for Morsi's loyalty to democracy. What concerns us more is that Morsi's defeat may represent a defeat for the decades long pro-Islamist policy of most of the US foreign policy establishment, a policy of which Obama has been the most blatant exponent. There is not much that Obama can do about Morsi and the MB's defeat. He and his coterie will have to get around it one way or the other. They will look for other ways of surrounding Israel with very hostile states that refuse any peace or compromise with Israel, which they apparently hoped that an MB govt in Egypt would do much to accomplish, aligning with Hamas in Gaza, Hizbullah in southern Lebanon and the murderous Assad regime in Syria.

More generally, this defeat in Egypt may represent a turning point for the Muslim Brotherhood — not only in Egypt — the start of a slide downhill, starting slowly at first, maybe gaining momentum further down, but relentlessly downhill in any event, whether fast or slowly. As Carlo Panella argues, "The disaster in Cairo is a chapter in the general failure of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Arab world." [Il disastro al Cairo è un capitolo del fallimento generale dei Fratelli musulmani in tutto il mondo arabo]. As the Arabs say, Inshallah [in Spanish,!Ojala que fuera!], and as Jews say: Im yirtseh HaShem. Panella adds: "In Egypt, to very briefly summarize, the Brotherhood confused the weakness of the secular parties with a license to impose an Islamist dictatorship. It made mistaken calculations and threw the largest Arab country into chaos." [In Egitto, in estrema sintesi, la Fratellanza ha confuso la debolezza dei partiti laici con la licenza di imporre una dittatura islamista. Ha sbagliato i suoi calcoli e ha gettato il più grande paese arabo nel caos].

Another cause of Morsi and the MB's downfall — and maybe the major one — is that, due to their focus on jihad and enforcing Islamic law, shari`a, even for minor matters, they neglected the economic disaster that took a poor country under Mubarak to economic disaster which very much accelerated after Morsi became president one year ago.

The MB and Islamists generally have used the slogan: Islam is the solution [al-Islam huwa al-hal]. That is, the solution to all of man's economic, political and social problems, and so on. Many Egyptians in their desperation gave the MB the chance to prove that proposition last year when a majority, albeit not overwhelming, voted for Morsi to become president. Since then Morsi and his comrades have demonstrated that this proposition was just another false, empty and even dangerous political slogan. Morsi's one-year reign has been a social and economic disaster for Egypt, with increasing poverty and decreasing safety on the streets.

When you are worried about how much of a woman's face is showing more than you worry about how much she and her husband and children are getting to eat, then you are inclined to avoid doing what is needed to even minimize the poverty and starvation rampant in Egypt. Even more so than in Mubarak's time or in the year and one-half between Mubarak's overthrow and Morsi's election last year.

The recent popular outrage against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, culminating in their overthrow, is a good thing. It puts Obama and his minions in a quandary. What to do now, now that a political instrument cultivated and favored for years, has been rejected by the masses in the most populous Arab country?

Ted Belman is a Canadian lawyer and editor of the IsraPundit.com website, an activist pro-Israel website. He now lives in Jerusalem. Contact him at tedbel@rogers.com

In scattered locations across Egypt, mobs of hard-line Muslims enraged over the deposing of the country's Islamist president this week attacked Christian homes, business and church buildings.

Angry over what they saw as a coup, the attacks came as part of massive, nationwide protests culminating in a declared "Friday of rage."

Fewer than 12 hours after the Egyptian military announced that it had expelled Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohamed Morsi and his cabinet members from office, reports of attacks against Christians by Morsi supporters began trickling in. The attacks picked up steam, and by Friday afternoon (July 5), the national police service notified church leaders to be on the lookout for license plate numbers of several cars that informants said terrorists had packed with explosives, a source who requested anonymity told Morning Star News. The source said police informed Christian leaders that the cars were headed toward churches in Cairo and the surrounding area looking for targets.

Christians across the country were uncertain about their future, wondering if the violence would be short-lived or whether the past week was the start of a civil war in which they would be targeted as Christians in Syria are.

"This is just the beginning," said one Coptic Christian woman from Upper Egypt who requested anonymity for fear of her safety. "They won't be happy until they steal everything we own and kill us all. How can anyone be full of so much hate? If I took my eyes off God, I would shrink and die."

The first attack happened in the early morning hours of Wednesday (July 3) in the village of Delgia in Deir Mawas, Minya Governorate. Dozens of Morsi supporters attacked Al Eslah Church, a building that belongs to an evangelical congregation. They fired shots at and looted the church building, sources said; there were multiple reports that the building had been burned, though that could not be confirmed with certainty. They also attacked some Coptic-owned homes in the area.

Witnesses said the mob then moved on to a Catholic church in Delgia, St. George Church, and set aflame a guest-house where a priest lives. The mob also pelted the church building with rocks, fired weapons at it and destroyed the priest's car, Morning Star News learned from the witnesses.

The priest was in the guest-house when it was set on fire, but he was able to make it to a hole in the roof, where a group of Muslim neighbors pulled him out and hid him from the mob. The priest suffered only superficial injuries, but the guest-house was destroyed along with several Christian-owned businesses, according to church officials.

Later the same day, a group of Islamists tried to attack the main Coptic cathedral in Qena, but the military fought them off. The group moved on to attack Christian-owned homes and businesses in the area, sources said. Also on Wednesday (July 3), a mob attacked the Church of the Holy Virgin in the coastal town of Marsa Matrouh with stones, but the military also repelled them.

"It is a miracle no one was killed in the attacks — I am really worried about my family, because they live so close to the church," the woman from Upper Egypt told Morning Star News. "They can be attacked any time now."

Contact FSM Security Update at info@familysecuritymatters.org. This article appeared July 08, 2013 on Family Security Matters and is archived at
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/morsi-supporters-attack-christian-targets-in-egypt-after-removal-of-president?f=must_read

US President Barack Obama quietly signed his name to an Executive Order on Friday, allowing the White House to control all private communications in the country in the name of national security.

President Obama released his latest Executive Order on Friday, July 6, a 2,205-word statement offered as the "Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions." And although the president chose not to commemorate the signing with much fanfare, the powers he provides to himself and the federal government under the latest order are among the most far-reaching yet of any of his executive decisions.

"The Federal Government must have the ability to communicate at all times and under all circumstances to carry out its most critical and time sensitive missions," the president begins the order. "Survivable, resilient, enduring and effective communications, both domestic and international, are essential to enable the executive branch to communicate within itself and with: the legislative and judicial branches; State, local, territorial and tribal governments; private sector entities; and the public, allies and other nations."

President Obama adds that it is necessary for the government to be able to reach anyone in the country during situations it considers critical, writing, "Such communications must be possible under all circumstances to ensure national security, effectively manage emergencies and improve national resilience." Later the president explains that such could be done by establishing a "joint industry-Government center that is capable of assisting in the initiation, coordination, restoration and reconstitution of NS/EP [national security and emergency preparedness] communications services or facilities under all conditions of emerging threats, crisis or emergency."

"The views of all levels of government, the private and nonprofit sectors, and the public must inform the development of NS/EP communications policies, programs and capabilities," he adds.

On the government's official website for the National Communications Systems, the government explains that that "infrastructure includes wireline, wireless, satellite, cable, and broadcasting, and provides the transport networks that support the Internet and other key information systems," suggesting that the president has indeed effectively just allowed himself to control the country's Internet access.

In order to allow the White House to reach anyone within the US, the president has put forth a plan to establish a high-level committee calling from agents with the Department of Homeland Security, Pentagon, Federal Communications Commission and other government divisions to ensure that his new executive order can be implemented.

In explaining the order, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) writes that the president has authorized the DHS "the authority to seize private facilities when necessary, effectively shutting down or limiting civilian communications."

In Section 5 of his order, President Obama outlines the specific department and agency responsibilities that will see through his demands. In a few paragraphs, President Obama explains that Executive Committee that will oversee his order must be supplied with "the technical support necessary to develop and maintain plans adequate to provide for the security and protection of NS/EP communications," and that that same body will be in tasked with dispatching that communique "to the Federal Government and State, local, territorial and trial governments," by means of "commercial, Government and privately owned communications resources."

In the last few days, and not counting the mounting death toll in Egypt itself, hundreds more people have been killed in various atrocities in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and other parts of the Arab/Muslim world. Add to these thirty students set on fire in a school by Islamists in Nigeria — and G_d only knows what else and what the morrow will bring. Unfortunately, this kind of stuff has become all-too-common these days. Perhaps worse still, we're no longer shocked and have come to expect such goings on "over there."

Oh yes, there's more news regarding that region as well...

The Obama Administration, looking for something it can point to in terms of success, is still looking to force Israel into virtual suicidal agreements with Arabs. These are the very same folks who swear that they'll never recognize Israel as a State of the Jews even after it's forced, by its American friends, back to its pre-'67 war, nine to fifteen mile wide, '49 armistice line existence.

As many of us have warned, do the year 1938, Munich, Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, Neville Chamberlain, Hitler, and the promise of "peace for our time" ring some familiar bells?

Amidst all the nauseating barbarity surrounding them, the Jews, nonetheless, are simply expected to expose the necks of their children yet further to those who already have track records of slaughtering Jewish families in their sleep, decapitating infants to boot.

Any Israeli leader who caves in on such issues should think carefully about the fate of Korach, Dathan, and Abiram.

Moving on...

True to form, the Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick has written another perceptive analysis. This one deals with the recent military ouster of Egypt's first allegedly fairly, democratically-elected president, the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi.

Some folks have spoken of Morsi as being a potential latter day George Washington. Besides fellow Islamists in Hamas's Gaza, Turkey, Tunisia, and elsewhere, leaders such as President Obama and the Iranian mullahs have cozied up to him as well. Obama seems to have this attraction for Islamists throughout the region — as long as they don't actually come out and wear an al-Qaida name tag too prominently.

Nevertheless, excerpts from two quotes should suffice to put talk of such analogies to rest.

On his visit to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island in 1790, George Washington proclaimed, "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance."

In 2010, Mohamed Morsi urged Egyptians to nurse their children and grandchildren on hatred for Jews and later called them descendants of apes and pigs
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/opinion/president-morsis-repulsive-comments-against-jews.html?_r=0.

In other words, according to Morsi "to bigotry all sanction, to persecution all assistance."

In fairness to Morsi, the Jew problem is entrenched in Egyptian society at large — including in the Coptic Christian community where Islam's "killers of prophets" and "sons of apes and pigs" are deemed "G_d killers" as well.

Nevertheless, Morsi's no George Washington, that's for sure. And not only when it comes to Jews. Just ask those 12 million or so native Copts mentioned above, the folks who pre-date the Arab Muslims who conquered them by millennia. Murdered men, kidnapped and raped women, burned down churches, and so forth.

Okay, enough of George Washington Morsi. Let's return to Caroline Glick's astute piece for a moment. Here are some excerpts to contemplate before I add more of my own two cents' worth...

"The American foreign policy establishment's rush to romanticize as the Arab Spring the political instability that engulfed the Arab world following the self-immolation of a Tunisian peddler in December 2010 was perhaps the greatest demonstration ever given of the members of that establishment's utter cluelessness about the nature of Arab politics and society...US reporters and commentators today portray this week's protests as the restoration of the Egyptian revolution. That revolution, they remain convinced, was poised to replace long-time Egyptian leader and US-ally Hosni Mubarak with a liberal democratic government...Subsequently, we were told, that revolution was hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood. But now that Morsi and his government have been overthrown, the Facebook revolution is back on track.

And again, they are wrong...As was the case in 2011, the voices of liberal democracy in Egypt are so few and far between that they have no chance whatsoever of gaining power, today or for the foreseeable future. At this point it is hard to know what the balance of power is between the Islamists who won 74 percent of the vote in the 2011 parliamentary elections and their opponents. But it is clear that their opponents are not liberal democrats. They are a mix of neo-Nasserist fascists, communists and other not particularly palatable groups...None of them share Western conceptions of freedom and limited government. None of them are particularly pro-American. None of them like Jews. And none of them support maintaining Egypt's cold peace with Israel.

Egypt's greatest modern leader was Gamal Abdel Nasser. By many accounts the most common political view of the anti-Muslim Brotherhood protesters is neo-Nasserist fascism." — http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=318818

No doubt, Egypt poses a serious dilemma for those wishing greater freedoms for all peoples across the globe.

Like many others, I support the right of people everywhere to elect officials who will represent them. One way or another, folks should have a say in what policies their elected officials pursue as well

Having stated this, however, I also believe that a nation's majority must not abuse its power for self aggrandizement, suppression of dissent, and to the detriment of the opposition and minorities. A further complication also arises over what can actually be categorized as "abuse" in these regards. No doubt, the majority and the minority will have differences about this as well. So, who decides?

Democracy as a mere tool for dominance is not what those who have come to idealize that form of government have in mind. Indeed, some of the main fears about democracy have been the potential for mob rule, the actions of irrational masses, and oppression by the majority. America's Founding Fathers handled such concerns via blending democracy with republicanism and a viable constitution that places limits on the actions and results the majority can accomplish.

Since the so-called "Arab Spring" sprung over two years ago, those who espouse freedom and democracy — but with their heads still kept above the sand — have thus been faced with a serious quandary. And while Glick's must-read analysis deals with Egypt per se, the game is really about the same throughout the region — with one notable exception, of course (guess who?). After all, what really are the choices in Syria, for example? Pick your poison...And while there are some more tolerant alternatives in Syria as well, as Glick points out for Egypt, they too lack the power, are ignored by the world's power brokers, and so forth.

When all of this was first transpiring and naiveté was at its peak, there were those complaining about alleged double standards. They're still around.

On the one hand, for example, they pointed out that while Israel claims to be the only real democracy in the region, when popular revolts erupted in the predominantly Arab/Muslim World surrounding it against abusive despots (like the one which toppled Mubarak and brought Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood into office in Egypt), the Jews and some others remained far more cautious in their support and assessments. And that brings us back to our main focus — democracy in the Middle East.

Democracy can be a wonderful idea, and while variations of it exist, equality and freedom have been closely identified as important characteristics since its origins. While ancient Greece is often touted as its birthplace, other peoples have also contributed to its tenets. America's own Liberty Bell, for example, has a quote from Leviticus 25:10 in the Hebrew scripture on it..."proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof."

But there are indeed different species of democracy, and the devil is in those differences. Hence the problem we are now dealing with.

Some forms of democracy provide more freedom and representation; others include better protections for minorities, meaningful checks and balances in government, and so forth. These are how Western style democracies operate — or at least should.

The problem, however, is that democracy can also simply be interpreted to mean the rule of the majority, and — especially in some situations — such a system can lead to the oppression of others. It is these latter points which are key to understanding concerns about the demonstrations and revolts which are now, once again, taking place in Egypt and elsewhere in the region.

Furthermore, "majority rule" democracy in the Arab/Muslim world is especially troublesome.

To begin with, much of the non-stop blood-letting going on as this piece is being penned is between Arab Muslims themselves — the age-old conflict between the Shi'a and Sunni.

When Bashar al-Assad's father slaughtered tens of thousands of Arabs in one month in his "Hama Solution" in the '80s, they were members of the Syrian Sunni Islamist counterpart to Mohamed Morsi's Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The Shi'a being blown to bits daily in Iraq are targeted by Sunnis, etc. and so forth.

Regardless of whoever is in the majority under such circumstances, unless there are real Western-style checks and balances present, "democracy" will not have much meaning.

But, beyond Arab to Arab relationships, there are other complicating dimensions to this problem in the region — the dhimmi factor and beyond.

While it is true that there are some Arab and other Muslim moderates, those who either profess an Arab and/or Muslim supremacy (or who support those who believe this) remain in the forefront of most, if not all, Arab Muslim nations today.

A few examples should suffice...

A few years back, a referendum which led to the freedom of the south occurred in the Sudan. It took literally millions of dead, maimed, enslaved, and refugee black Africans to finally bring this about. Their sin? They were non-Arabs, not sufficiently Arabized enough, and/ or non-Muslim blacks who wanted freedom from the subjugation of the Arab Muslim north of the country.

Now, keep in mind that the continuing problem of Darfur, in the western region of the Sudan, was not addressed here. The slaughter and subjugation of its Muslim — but black, non-Arab (nor Arabized enough) — people still has no end in sight.

While the Sudan has not had democracy, no amount of protests or revolts by Arabs against one Arab regime or another will change the attitude of Arabs of any and all stripes towards those whom they typically call 'abid (slaves) — the native blacks. Keep in mind that these are the same folks who like to scream about allegedly "racist Zionists" — and get much of a virtually clueless world to acquiesce.

Since we're discussing Egypt and its neighbor to the south, the Sudan, in North Africa, how can the plight of tens of millions of other native, but non-Arab, people who also live in that area also not be considered in a discussion about democracy? Actually, the plight of those people has been too often deliberately ignored — even by most experts in academia and the State Department. Far too often, the closest most students ever get to the subject is reading about Berber musicians and rugs.

The reality is that native Amazigh and Kabyle culture and language have been suppressed and frequently outlawed, to the point where parents have been forced to name their own children with Arab and "good" Islamic names, instead of their own. The "Berbers" resisted the Arab Jihadi conquests for centuries and are still murdered today when they protest against their Arab subjugators too loudly.

Listen to this quote from an Amazigh publisher on the inside jacket cover of my own book (http://q4j-middle-east.com):

"The Amazigh (some 35 to 40 million Berbers) are struggling every day for their most basic human rights. All of those and more are refused to the Amazigh people on their own land by the Arab-Islamist dictatorial states in North Africa. In comparison, Israel is a dream democracy for us."

Tell me please — how will democracy, in its more limited definition, change things for the Imazighen when a subjugating Arab majority, with its non-egalitarian elitist ruler and ruled mindset, still prevails? And there's yet another point to keep in mind related to this as well. How many of those so-called "Arabs" in the majority in North Africa and elsewhere were actually other native, non-Arab people whose families were earlier forcibly Arabized?

President Sadat's Foreign Minister, the non-Arab Copt, Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, is quoted by his visiting Israeli author guest, Amos Elon, saying that there was no room in the region for any other culture but Arab and that if Israel wanted to be accepted, it too must be Arabized. As I like to say, Uncle Boutros instead of Uncle Tom (actually, that's the name of a chapter on the subject in my book).

Before returning to the democracy problem as it relates to Egypt itself, the plight of some 40 million native, stateless Kurds must also once again be quickly addressed.

While I've written about these people often, it is worth repeating that the Arab majority has routinely employed the same oppressive and/or genocidal policies that they have used against blacks or Berbers in North Africa towards Kurds and others as well. The name of Ismet Cherif Vanly's book says it all, "The Syrian 'Mein Kampf' Against The Kurds." Over the years, Iraq's Anfal Campaign in the '80s and earlier atrocities slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Kurds in the name of the Arab nation.

How will the valid aspirations Shi'a and Sunni Arabs have for a better life for themselves change both of their oppressive attitudes in Kurdistan?

Again, this is not to say that reasonable Arab grievances-all over the region-should not be addressed. But it is to say that the mere fact that millions of Arabs — who suffer under the type of rulers that their own culture specializes in producing — demonstrate and rebel against their own regimes does not erase the fact that there will still be much to worry about by vast numbers of non-Arab peoples even when Arab despots, medieval potentates, or other murderous autocrats are toppled.

Okay, this essay is already too long — so it's time to shift the focus back to Egypt itself.

While there are Berbers in the west, black Nubians in the south, and once upon a time Egypt had a substantial population of post-Exodus native Jews, the Copts are, by far, the largest non-Arab population in the land. They are the true native people, descendants of the Pharaohs, who, after being subjected to the rule of the hated Byzantines, were conquered in the 7th century C.E. jihad as Arabs burst out of the Arabian Peninsula and spread out in all directions.

Today, there are somewhere between twelve and fifteen million Copts in Egypt-depending upon whose numbers you use. As Christians, they, with the Jews, were tolerated, to a degree, as "People of the Book" as long as certain rules of the conquering, subjugating Arab Muslim road were adhered to. The latter have been referred to as dhimmitude, and those "protected' people are known as dhimmis. Boutros-Ghali is the dhimmi par excellence.

The best approach for the Copts over the centuries has been to keep a low profile, pay the special taxes, prove usefulness, quietly accept subservient status, and find ways to ingratiate and prove loyalty to the Arab majority and its rulers. In other words, as already hinted to above, Copts have existed in Egyptian Arab society by turning themselves into a sub-nation of Uncle Tom Uncle Boutroses. For non-Americans, please look up what "Uncle Tom" refers to — in case you can't figure it out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom). Still, this didn't guarantee that the next slaughter or burned down church was not just another day away...

Since we're discussing Copts, Arabs, and Jews, it's also important to understand that, even though there are barely any Jews left in Egypt, Copts don't need Arab Muslims to teach them how to hate Jews. While there are few Jews in Egypt, there is a powerful Jewish State next door. So, the topic is still relevant.

The Copts' own faith has taught them to hate alleged Jewish G_d-killers for centuries — long before Muhammad ever even entered into the picture. Listening to the Copts' late pope, Shenouda III, was like hearing a speech from the best Western anti-Semites have to offer. Copts have thus had more than one reason to join their own abusive Arab neighbors in their mutual antagonism of the Jew.

So, as usual, the Jews are in an even more precarious situation — no matter who is in power amongst their neighbors. And this also points to the bigger problem impacting the prospects for the ascendancy of Western-style democracy anywhere in the region.

You see, with the exception of an imperfect (but still light years ahead) Israel, all of the institutions needed to promote tolerance, the acceptance of diversity, to build an egalitarian society, and so forth barely exist anywhere in the Arab/Muslim world.

Yes, Morsi's Islamist Muslim Brotherhood was rejected by millions (yet somehow supposedly won the earlier presidential election), but &mdash as Caroline Glick and others point out — many of those now in the opposition have their own nasty baggage as well. And both sides accuse the other of being in bed with the Jews. So much for the tolerance factor.

Yes, once again, there are voices of moderation in Egypt — but they, like those elsewhere in that region, are very isolated and are virtually powerless.

Unfortunately, the characteristics we have come to associate with more tolerant, inclusive democracy in the West do not have fertile ground in the Arab/Muslim world. Democracy there still translates into the rule of the majority — and that majority is rarely, if ever, in a sharing mood.

The alternative to this scenario is often expressed via a self-empowered minority whose modus operandi is manifested via a "the best defense is an offense" approach to politics. Think Saddam's minority Sunnis versus the dominant Shi'a in Iraq and Assad's minority Alawi Shi'a offshoot versus the Sunni majority in Syria.

These are the cold, hard realities at hand — and the past century of the oil-addicted West coddling up to such folks instead of taking a more meaningful stance on specific key issues did not help matters any.

As just one of many examples, more often than not, the same American State Department, which has always been quick to criticize Israel if it breathed one too many collective breaths, has also too often acted deaf, dumb, and blind to daily doses of barbarism and oppression occurring throughout the Arab/Muslim world.

Given this deliberate neglect and the infertile nature of the specific ground in which it was now somehow expected to take root, to expect Western-style democracy to emerge in the region — whether in Egypt or anywhere else — would have taken a miracle. And one of the last of those to occur in the neighborhood involved some dude who led his people out of Egypt across a body of water not far from where Egypt blockaded Israel in 1967 — but about thirty-three centuries earlier.Unfortunately, the land of the Pharaohs is no closer to inclusive democracy today than it was back then.

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

There's a lot of "ugly" here in the Middle East. And while I intend to move on to matters other than Egypt, I begin with the latest in that place of violence and turmoil. The Brotherhood--calling for an uprising across the country--is determined that matters will be as difficult as possible. There great reason to worry about Egypt:

This morning, Brotherhood people stormed the Republican Guard headquarters where Morsi is being held. The military, saying that terrorists had tried to storm the building, fired upon the crowd. Reports are that some 43 have been killed and hundreds wounded.

The casualties are likely to further inflame Brotherhood anger.

~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile, turmoil grows in the Sinai, which is rife with radicals and terrorists.

The crossing between the Sinai and Gaza at Rafah is being kept closed and some 40 tunnels have been destroyed in the last couple of days; this to preclude Hamas involvement in what is taking place.

Terrorists have fired on the police station near the crossing and at three military checkpoints in the Sinai. On Saturday a Coptic priest was shot dead by a gunman.

Additionally, yesterday a pipeline that supplied gas to Jordan was blown up by Islamic militants south of El Arish in the Sinai.

~~~~~~~~~~

Reports are surfacing about a major operation in the Sinai planned by the military. According to the Maan (Palestinian Arab) News Agency:

"...coordination is ongoing between the Egyptians and the Israelis to bring military vehicles, troops and jets into Sinai to fight terror.

"'The Egyptian military activity in the Sinai is coordinated with Israeli security elements and authorized at the most senior levels in Israel, in order to contend with security threats in the Sinai that pose a threat to both Israel and Egypt,' the army said in a statement."

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=611743

~~~~~~~~~~

The nature and the quantity of military equipment that Egyptian officials want to bring into the Sinai must be cleared by Israeli officials, for they transcend what is permitted by the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, which mandates demilitarized areas in the Sinai.

This bridge was crossed before during the Morsi administration, although I believe even more equipment &mdash particularly with regard to plane— is planned for use in the Sinai this time. Many here in Israel are opposed to the granting of such permission and vastly uneasy about the potential repercussions of this change in the status quo down the road. Questions are raised regarding whether all the equipment being brought in is truly of the sort needed to battle local radicals.

I don't see that Israel has much option in the matter, however. It would be exceedingly impolitic in the current situation to refuse to allow the military to bring in equipment it says it needs to take out terrorists and radicals in the Sinai. What is more, it truly is to Israel's benefit that battle should be done with them. During the Morsi administration, a great show was made of acting against them, while in fact not much was done. This time, it might be different. Might.

~~~~~~~~~~

Now as to Kerry's continuing efforts:

Two days ago, Al Hayat (London) reported that Kerry's plan for generating "peace talks" includes cessation of all building in Judea and Samaria outside the major settlement blocs and the release of 103 prisoners arrested before Oslo.

Perhaps worst of all, according to this report, Israel would be required to allow the Palestinian Arabs to build in Area C.

Required? Area C, according to the Oslo Accords, is fully under Israeli control, both civil and security. As it is, Israeli authorities are looking the other way or conferring quiet blessings on Palestinian Arab projects in Area C. But to make it part of a concession formally? An outrage and an infringement of our rights that should not be permitted.

According to Times of Israel:

"Other sources in the report were quoted as saying that the plan includes a pledge by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to publicly commit to negotiations using the model laid out by US President Barack Obama during his visit to the region: two states living side by side, on the basis of the 1967 lines with land swaps, as well as Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state."

http://www.timesofisrael.com/kerrys-peace-plan-includes-settlement-freeze-outside-major-blocs/

This is vile. Seeking a pledge by the prime minister to negotiate on the basis of the 1967 armistice line — because that's what Abbas demands.

The talks would continue for a period of six to nine months, and be broken into three phases, during which time final status issues would be discussed. Work towards stimulating $4 billion in investments would proceed at the same time.

Netanyahu's office has had no comment on this "plan."

While Israel Hayom reported yesterday that:

"A senior Israeli official said on Saturday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no intention of caving to Palestinian demands ahead of talks..."

Netanyahu is seeking "an assurance that negotiations will be held over a long period of time and will cover all the issues.

"[He] wants to avoid a situation whereby Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will try stepping away from the negotiating table after a few meetings and turn to the United Nations in September under the premise that Israel is to blame for the failure of the talks."

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=10507

At the same time, Abbas continues to make it clear that he intends to make no concessions and is proud of this.

~~~~~~~~~~

The concern here is not that Israeli concessions will result in a "Palestinian state," but that they will weaken the Israeli position by establishing precedents and facts on the ground.

~~~~~~~~~~

I have just read a statement in a news source that Kerry will ask Netanyahu to commit to negotiating on the basis of the 1967 line because in 2009, during his talk at Bar Ilan University, the prime minister already committed to a Palestinian state on that line.

Lest some of my readers also see this statement and believe it, I provide a correction here. Netanyahu spoke about two states living side-by-side. Unfortunate enough. But no where does he speak about the borders between those states being defined by the 1967 line (an armistice line). In fact, he says that Jews have ancient rights to Judea and Samaria — and makes it clear that the settlements are not the cause of tension between Israel and the PA.

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/2009/pages/Address_PM_Netanyahu_Bar-Ilan_University_14-Jun-2009.aspx

How fast and loose people play with the facts.

~~~~~~~~~~

Right now, Kerry's wife is very ill, and his personal situation may delay his next visit here. Maybe he'll have time to rethink his entire preposterous position.

Barry Rubin — in his article, "Chaos in Middle East Grows as the U.S. Focuses on [Harassing] Israel" — sums up the situation well.

Playing on a NYTimes headline, Rubin has coined his own: "Kerry Shuttles as the Middle East Burns."

"Once again the United States is too busy trying to get the Holy Grail of Arab-Israeli peace while every country is in turmoil. Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Iran, etc., are in dangerous crises. Yet the White House stays wake at night not about Benghazi but about fantasizing on dream-boundaries in Jerusalem. Once again, U.S. policy is trying to free Palestinian terrorists convicted of murder while tens of thousands of innocent people are being killed or imprisoned.

Not only is peace unobtainable because of Palestinian intransigence, but the powerful Islamist and nationalist forces don't want peace. Peace with Israel would stir up more unrest and violence. Any Arab leaders who made peace would face overthrow and assassination. Everyone in the Middle East knows this; it often seems that nobody in Washington does. And Tony Blair, the negotiator for the Quartet-U.S., EU, UN, Russia-has been to Jerusalem 75 times in a decade with nothing to show for it."

http://www.gloria-center.org/2013/07/chaos-in-middle-east-grows-as-the-u-s-focuses-on-harassing-israel/

~~~~~~~~~~

Please, also see a significant piece by Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, on "Kerry and the struggle over the Jordan Valley":

Gold makes the case, both historically and with regard to current security needs, for Israel to retain the Jordan Valley, which Kerry would have us relinquish. (The Valley is a part of Area C, it must be noted.)

Not only is there concern about movement of enemy forces coming from the east — should Jordan fall to Islamists, for example. There is this issue as well:

"Second, Israeli control of the Jordan Valley is... needed also for neutralizing the growing threat from advanced weapons that can be smuggled to terrorist organizations. Israel learned the hard way that when it left the Philadelphi Route at the outer perimeter of the Gaza Strip, the scale of weapons smuggling, particularly from Iran, surged, and Gaza became a strategic threat to Israeli cities.

Military strategists are aware how important this factor is in winning counter-insurgency wars of the future. After spending ten years hosted by U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, Max Boot just published a 600-page book on the history of guerrilla warfare. He suggests that there are five factors behind the success of insurgency forces; the fourth is their ability to obtain reinforcements in the form of weapons or even manpower.

"When Boot looks at Israel's success in halting the wave of terror attacks in its cities in 2002, he cites the "IDF's success in sealing off the West Bank" from resupply as a key component of its strategy. Boot's analysis makes sense. In Gaza, where Israel no longer could control of the outer perimeter of the territory at the Philadelphi Corridor, it lost its counter-insurgency war with Hamas and other groups and withdrew. But in the West Bank, it defeated terrorism by fulfilling this essential precondition for winning a counter-insurgency campaign by retaining the Jordan Valley."

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=4877

What Gold points out is that "Western diplomats...have been predisposed to accepting the Palestinian narrative on territory and the Israeli narrative on security. This struggle has direct implications for the future of the Jordan Valley.

"...Israel is many times inundated with suggestions that it replace the IDF with international forces ... For Israel, relying on international peacekeepers in the Jordan Valley would be far too great a risk for any responsible Israeli government to take.

"Currently, in order to back up Secretary of State Kerry's shuttle diplomacy, the U.S. has begun a quiet dialogue with Israel over how it might have its security protected should it withdraw the IDF from the West Bank."

That is, the US proposes international forces in the Jordan Valley to protect us when we pull back.

This is the stuff of nightmares and cannot be allowed to happen. Gold does not believe it will.

~~~~~~~~~~

There was a massive explosion in an arms depot in the Syrian port city of Latakia, a couple of days ago, with some 10 to 20 Syrian soldiers killed. But there is no consensus as to what caused it — bombs from foreign aircraft, cruise missiles fired from warships, or something else. Syrian officials are saying that it was caused "by a terrorist group aligned with al-Qaida." Israel is "studying the situation."

Latakia is historically an Alawite center.

~~~~~~~~~~

Hezbollah may begin to play a lesser role in the civil war in Syria. Two different factors play into this.

First, Lebanese Shiite supporters of Hezbollah and family members — particularly in the Ba'albek region — alarmed by the number of Hezbollah fighters, including senior commanders, who have been lost in Syria, are petitioning Hezbollah leaders for a pullback in the deployment of Hezbollah men into Syria.

The opinion expressed by those seeking a pullback is that "their children had fought Israel in 2006 and other wars, 'in response to the call for resistance against Israel.'

"However, they said their men's participation in the fight against the Syrian rebels, in defense of the Syrian government, was 'shameful' and that it was 'unacceptable' to embroil their men in a war in which they 'had no interest at all.'

It is hoped that a delegation can be sent to Iran, to explain that Hezbollah cannot continue to bear the burden it currently carries without assistance, and to seek the deployment of Iranian troops to join the fighting.

This was reported by Asharq Al-Awsat.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=10543

~~~~~~~~~~

And then, at a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting on Friday, it was decided that sanctions against Hezbollah would be instituted because of its involvement in fighting with Assad.

"The meeting was convened 'to develop mechanisms to monitor movements, financial transactions and business operations of Hezbollah.'

The "decision to impose sanctions was taken 'after the discovery in GCC states of several terrorist cells linked to the group."

http://imra.org.il/story.php3?id=61445

The Council consists of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman.

~~~~~~~~~~

We cannot afford to lose sight of Iran, no matter what else is going on. I'm picking up different stories about the rate of nuclear development there, how Israel can handle matters, etc.

I will not belabor all of this here, but wish to make several significant points.

Israel has stood alone in her concern about the implications of a nuclear Iran. It's a very lonely place to be. If I believe that Netanyahu is serious about anything, it is his concern about this, which goes back several years unremittingly.

I myself had thought we would have hit Iranian nuclear installations by now. But I clearly have no inside information and lack the capacity to explain why we haven't, and what ramifications and considerations he is dealing with. I don't know what is being done behind the scenes or what understandings are in play with other nations.

What I do believe — or strongly suspect — is that there have been two red lines. One is the line our prime minister drew on a chart at the UN last year. This one has to do with how close to developing that bomb Iran is. (Presumably Iran is very close to the line but has not yet crossed it.)

~~~~~~~~~~

But there is another line, in terms of our ability to hit those installations, which are being buried way underground. We may have passed the time when we any longer have the capacity to hit directly because we lack the equipment — the 30,000 pound bunker busters that the US possesses and refuses to sell to us (and obviously has not used).

Admittedly, there is other sorts of damage we might do, but a direct hit may be possible only via the US at this point. And the prospects of this happening are probably just about nil.

~~~~~~~~~~

I am deeply unhappy to have to write this...

and disturbed, to boot, by the perception being embraced in many quarters (particularly at the White House) that the Iranian president-elect, Hassan Rohani, is a "moderate," and that renewing negotiations might be in order.

Please see Joseph Klein's piece on this:

"The Obama administration is using the election of Iran's new president-elect, Hassan Rohani, as an excuse to consider resuming negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Iran is cleverly running the clock, using the election of the moderate-appearing Rohani as bait to lure the Obama administration and its European allies into another round of useless talks while Iran forges ahead to develop a nuclear arms arsenal.

"Rohani, a cleric, had served as the Supreme National Security Council chairman under Presidents Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1997) and Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), and was Iran's chief nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005. He is perceived as a 'moderate' compared with the other candidates who ran for president against him. However, everything is relative. Hundreds of reformist and pragmatic candidates, and all women, were barred from running. Rohani was the last so-called 'reform' candidate standing...

"...Rohani is an insider. He is reported to be very close to Khamenei...

"'Dr. Rohani is absolutely in the pro-regime camp. He is loyal to the Ayatollah Khamenei and is committed to obeying his wishes and orders,' the Iranian Christian leader, Dr. Hormoz Shariat" is reported to have said.

In terms of demeanor and rhetoric, Rohani is expected to project a far more reasonable image than the outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, Rohani was highly critical of Ahmadinejad and refused to serve in his administration. However, a shift in style does not mean a shift in substance.

"Rohani sees negotiations as merely a tactic to buy time in advancing Iran's nuclear program. It is worth noting that Ayatollah Khamenei had specifically requested his appointment as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator in 2003, a post he retained until Ahmadinejad came to power...

"Even if Iran's new president-elect Hassan Rohani wanted to steer Iran's nuclear policies in a fundamentally different direction, which is hardly likely, he will have no power to do so. Hardliner Ayatollah Khamenei will continue to be in charge, which means no real change."

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/will-obama-take-the-moderate-iranian-presidents-bait/

Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il And visit her website at www.arlenefromisrael.info

The Cost Of Islamisation Of Europe
http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/189477/norway-loses-713000-every -muslim-immigrant-daniel-greenfield

Norway loses 4.1 million kroner ($713,740.30) for each non-western (Muslim) immigrant coming into the country and that immigration has cost 70 billion kroner ($12,185,810,000) in seven years. On Wednesday the newspaper determined that the government spends 2 million kroner ($348,110) per newly arrived non-Western immigrant they get to work or study.

Nevertheless, according to figures from Statistics Norway (SSB) fewer and fewer start work or studies. Only half of the participants who completed the program in 2010 are doing something useful after two years of training in Norwegian.

Including social benefits and course fees, the state has spent a total of 56 billion kroner ($9,747,080,000) on training of 56,000 immigrants from 2004 to 2010.

This also means that the government has spent 23 billion kroner ($5,743,815,000 on 23,000 people that are not doing anything useful. (This financial information probably does not include the cost of combating the crime rise and incarceration of Muslim offenders. The effect on social coherence is impossible to calculate!)

Food for Thought by Steven Shamrak
Under the Arab peace plan Israel would have to recognize Palestine as a legitimate state, giving the fake Palestinians the right to claim Jewish land as their own. There is no real requirement for the immediate recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Israel would also have to accept the return of the so-called refugees and their descendants — who left the land on their own accord following orders of their leaders who were planning the genocide of Jewish people — turning Israel into another Arab state. This is the plan of destruction of the only Jewish state through the Arab demographic upsurge, which will be followed by the second Holocaust. Not surprisingly it is welcomed and widely supported by all international anti-Semitic bigots!

Fatah Calls to Overthrow Hamas
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Fatah-calls-on-Palestinians-to-overthrow-Hamas -in-wake-of-Morsis-fall-318792
PA leaders expressed joy over the downfall of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi's regime, with some calling on people in the Gaza Strip to follow suit and topple the Hamas government. (There is no loyalty in an Islamic wolf pack.)

Amnesty International just Woke up to Hamas Atrocities?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/169398#.VvGS10KVsWM
Amnesty International called on the public to mail Gaza 's Hamas terrorist rulers in order to protest the hanging of two local men and to appeal against other executions, as Hamas hanged the two men accused of collaborating with Israel. It was the fifth such sentence handed down by the coastal enclave's authorities since the beginning of the year. (After years of terror and violation of the Human rights AI finally made a weak attempt to confront Hamas, calling on people to "write immediately in Arabic or your own language condemning the executions... as applications of the ultimate form of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment" after executions.)

'Westernization' of Saudi Arabia?
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah issued a decree changing the country's weekend from Thursday and Friday, to Friday and Saturday, aligning itself with other Gulf countries and Israel. Some religious clerics criticized the change calling it an "imitation of Jews" and Westernization. (Is this the most important change Saudi Arabia needed? Human rights abuse, freedom of speech and religion, as well as the rights of women, and the practice of slavery can wait!)

Another Fake Regret Due to 'Misunderstandings'
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2013/07/03/German-paper-depicts-Israel -as-monster/UPI-73211372850662/ A German newspaper, Munich-based Sueddeutsche Zeitung, has expressed regret after publishing a cartoon that appeared to depict the state of Israel as a hungry beast devouring German military weapons. The newspaper said in a brief statement on its website Wednesday that it regretted "misunderstandings" caused by the caption and that publishing the cartoon "was a mistake."

Shuttle Diplomacy Did not Work Again
US Secretary of State John Kerry wound up his fifth peace shuttle trip for reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at the end of a fruitless third conversation with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah Sunday, June 30. Abbas turned down Kerry's blueprint for both sides to forego preconditions and return straightaway to the long-stalled peace talks. The Secretary left Ramallah empty-handed after the Palestinians reverted to their three-point ultimatum: Israel must first accept 1967 borders as the basis for negotiations, release Palestinians terrorists jailed more than 20 years and freeze West Bank and Jerusalem construction. (Israel must issue its own ultimatum: Get lost from our land!)

When Delusion Prevail
US Secretary of State John Kerry has ended meetings with Israeli and PA leaders without an agreement on resuming peace talks — but said gaps had been narrowed and he would return to the region soon. "We have made real progress on this trip. And I believe that with a little more work, the start of final status negotiations could be within reach," he said before his departure from Tel Aviv. "We started out with very wide gaps and we have narrowed those considerably," he said, without elaborating. "We are making progress. That's what's important and that's what will bring me back here." (Activity is not Accomplishment! One thing is definite, he likes to travel)

Intel is Looking at $10B Investment in Israel
Intel is reportedly in talks with Israeli officials about investing another $10 billion into the company's manufacturing plants in Israel, upgrading an existing plant and building a brand new plant. (Just about all Intel CPU chips rely on technology developed in Israel.)

Sinai Jihadists Fired Rockets on Eilat
A Sinai-based jihadist group, Jamaat Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis, claimed on Friday that had it fired two Grad missiles towards the Israeli Red Sea resort city of Eilat. On Thursday evening, residents of Eilat reported hearing loud explosions in the city.

Fence that Saves Lives
http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/southern-border-fence-works-great-here/?cat_orig=world
New security fence along the Israel-Egypt border has not only stemmed the tide of illegal immigration to Israel, but has also protected the Jewish state from terrorists operating in the Sinai Peninsula. Every day that passes underscores how correct and how important the decision was to build the fence in the south, said the Israel 's Prime Minister Netanyahu. "You must remember that this fence is equipped with very advanced means... to protect the State of Israel against the double threat of illegal migration and terrorism from Sinai."

Quote of the Week:
"There is an obsession on the verge of lunacy around the idea of two states, and many people follow the idea like prisoners of war... the public is more Zionist than its representatives in the Knesset." — MK Yoni Chetboun (Bayit Yehudi)

Islamic Mutiny — Egypt and Israel on Alert
http://www.debka.com/article/23098/Egyptian-Israeli-military-alerts-prompted-by-Islamist-mutiny-threat-from-Sinai-and-first-attacks
Egyptian and Israeli forces raised alert levels Friday, July 5, after the Muslim Brotherhood declared a revolt against the army for ousting Mohamed Morsi on July 3. A "War Council" established in Sinai formed a coalition with Hamas, Jihad Islami and al-Qaeda-linked Salafists, following which gunmen mounted a multiple attack in northern Sinai. Egyptian Patriot anti-missile batteries and anti-air weapons systems were posted to protect Suez Canal shipping from rocket fire. An Egyptian officer warned the army would forcibly prevent the rise of an "Islamic caliphate" in Sinai.

Note: Seven members of Hamas were arrested in Cairo after being caught with explosive-laden cars meant to be used in a series of attacks in Egypt.

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

WARNING!!!

PHOTO IS GRAPHIC

Public Hanging in Iran

More than 60 Iranians have been executed since the recent presidential elections on June 14th, opposition and human rights activists told Arutz Sheva.

Activists condemned the elections themselves as a "sham", given that the Iranian "Supreme Leader" Ayatolla Khameini hand-picked the list of eligible candidates.

The number of those executed by the regime since the election now stands at 61, including 6 women and a young man who was just 15 at the time of his arrest. Executions in the cities of Ahvaz, Shahrekord and Karaj were carried out in full view of the public.

The wave of executions appears to belie predictions by some commentators that Iran is entering into an era of moderation after the election of Hassan Rouhani, hailed as a "moderate" by much of the Western media. Other commentators have noted that Rouhani is part of the ruling regime's inner circle, — he was only allowed to run after a careful vetting process by the Supreme Leader — and dismissed his image as a "moderate" as little more than a ruse by the regime to buy more time as it continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Indeed, a 2006 article by The Telegraph reveals Rouhani's penchant for manipulating western observers, noting the key role he played in hiding Iran's secretive nuclear program from European inspectors.

"Twitterstorm"

In response to the executions, human rights activists called for a "#StopDeath" Twitterstorm, which had already begun by Sunday. Those calls followed a statement by Maryam Rajavi — President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran — in which she called upon the international community to take immediate action to stop the executions, which she described as an attempt by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameini to "prevent the appearance of any rift after his great failure in the sham elections."

Jacob Campbell, Co-Chairman of the Ashraf Campaign (ASHCAM), said: "As a human rights group, ASHCAM utterly condemns the recent wave of executions in Iran.

"But it would be a mistake to assume that this is merely a domestic issue for Iranians. The clerical regime's apparatus of terror and repression extends well beyond Iran's borders. This year alone, Tehran's terrorist Qods Force has massacred 10 Iranian dissidents in Camp Liberty, Iraq, whose only crime was speaking out against the regime.

"Even leaving Iran is no guarantee of escaping the wrath of the mullahs."

Arutz Sheva, also known in English as Israel National News, is an Israeli media network identifying with Religious Zionism. Contact Arutz Sheva at news@israelnationalnews.com

Even before the Mandate for Palestine was published in July 1922, the British Government found Jewish settlement to be legal and legitimate. In an Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine during the period of 1920-1921, Herbert Samuel, [the] High Commissioner and Commander-in-Chief of the British Government had this to say:

There are at the present time 64 of these settlements, large and small, with a population of some 15,000. Every traveler in Palestine who visits them [the Jewish settlement], is impressed by the contrast between these pleasant [Jewish] villages, with the beautiful stretches of prosperous cultivation about them and the primitive conditions of life and work by which they are surrounded.

"Large sums of money were collected in Europe and America, and spent in Palestine, for forwarding the [Zionist] movement. Many looked forward to a steady process of Jewish immigration, of Jewish land colonization and industrial development, until at last the Jews throughout the world would be able to see one country in which their race had a political and a spiritual home, in which, perhaps, the Jewish genius might repeat the services it had rendered to mankind from the same soil long ago.

"The British Government was impressed by the reality, the strength and the idealism of this [Zionist] movement. It recognised its value in ensuring the future development of Palestine, which now appears likely to come within the British sphere of influence. It decided to give to the Zionist idea, within certain limits, its approval and support. By the hand of Mr. Balfour, then Foreign Secretary, it made, in November, 1917, the following Declaration:

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish People, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish Communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other Country."

Contact Robert Hand at borntolose3@att.net

1. The University of Haifa, where I am employed, is often referred to in Israel as the Arab University of Haifa, the Arab analogue to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In a number of ways, such as in affirmative action practices in hiring and admissions, Jews are second-class citizens at the University.

Today the President of the University of Haifa, Amos Shapira, sent out a special email message to all faculty and students on the campus. The message wishes all Moslem students and faculty members a Happy Ramadan and an "easy fast." You can see it below. An identical message was sent out (in different colors) by the University of Haifa Arab-Jewish Center.

There are just a few minor problems with all this. The message is sent out less than a week before the Ninth of Av, yet makes no mention of the Jewish fast on that day nor does it contain any greeting or wishes for Jews with regard to the Ninth. The inclusion of the wish for an "easy fast" is particularly Orwellian, since this is not at all a traditional Moslem greeting or wish but a Jewish one. This is not the first such case of Ramadan greetings being sent out by the same official who does not have any special wishes for Jews regarding the Ninth. And if I am not mistaken, no "easy fast" message has ever been sent out to campus Jews before Yom Kippur either.

I have long suggested that the Arab-Jewish Center at the University change its name to the Arab Center, since it clearly has no interest in Jews.

If you would like to ask Shapira why University of Haifa Jews are undeserving of any greeting for THEIR fast day, write or e-mail

President of the University of Haifa at
president@univ.haifa.ac.il
a.shapira@univ.haifa.ac.il

2. The past few weeks the Middle East has just been becoming a happier and happier place. We of course have the Egyptian military turning the Muslim Bro-hood into pothole putty. But we also have the Syrian opposition demolishing the Hezb'Allah. Today's large car bomb in Beirut is just the latest case of the Hezb'Allah terrorists getting their comeuppance from the Syrian opposition after the Hezb's rallied to support the Asad junta against the opposition. It is now estimated that the number of Hezb'Allah terrorhoids killed in the Syrian civil war and its Lebanese collateral events is LARGER than the number killed by Israel in the last Lebanese War. That of course is a disgrace for ISRAEL but certainly is a reason to celebrate. And let's not hear any complaining about how we should not rejoice in the annihilation of this vermin. The wisest of men said:

And in the downfall of the wicked there is joy!

--- Proverbs 11: 10

So I wonder when the ISM or International Solidarity Movement will be sending its people as human shields to defend the Hezb'Allah terrorists? Will they be joined by faculty members from Ben Gurion University?

3. Ok, this is not the BIGGEST scandal in Israel's leftist media, but it is certainly one of the funnier ones. It concerns Yediot Ahronot, which likes to claim to be the daily newspaper with the greatest circulation. Actually the freebie Israel Hayom has a larger daily readership. In addition, newspaper readership in Israel is dropping to the floor faster than Bill Clinton's gotkes thanks to the internet. In any case, Yediot tries to compete with Haaretz for the title of the most uncompromisingly leftwing propaganda instrument in Israel.

A few days ago Yediot ran a news story about what was supposed to be the world's first Bedouin female standup comic, named Fatima. Yediot claimed she was one of four wives of a Bedouin man, and she herself had given birth to 17 children. The story listed the village where she lives.

Yediot was too lazy to check the story out or even google Fatima's persona. Turns out she is a Jewish woman from Ramat Gan named Gila Zimmerman (no relation to the victim on trial in Florida). She does a shtick called Fatima the Bedouin.

I used to think that the scenes in the movie "Bruno" with Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat), where he interviews a Palestinian and Israeli leftist who were unaware that it was all a goof, were the funniest example of media imbecility one could find. In the interview Cohen kept referring to the Palestinians as Pakistanis. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iZf3U6rlNI and also
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/david-letterman-sacha-baron-cohen- bruno-lawsuit--352162 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmXuQOZd_qE)

So where is Bruno-Borat now that we really need him to "out" the imbeciles who publish Yediot Ahronot?

Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments — both seriously and satirically — on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. Write him at splaut@gmail.com His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com.

Twenty-five years ago, today, at 6:22 a.m., Hezbollah terrorists—with help from Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization and Hafez El-Assad's Syria — murdered 241 U.S. Marines while they slept in barracks in Beirut. A bomb more powerful than 12,000 pounds of TNT was driven into the barracks and blew the Marines to bits. They were there as peacekeepers-to protect Palestinian Sunni Muslims who invaded Lebanon from Israeli forces who were trying to clean up Lebanon from these Palestinian terrorists, who raped Shi'ite daughters and murdered Shi'ite sons in front of their parents. The mass-murdered Marines were there to protect Muslim barbarians from Maronite Christians who were trying to hold on to their fragile majority in the country and control of its government so their country wouldn't turn into the extremist hellhole it has now become.

It was a tragic event in U.S. and Marine Corps history. But even more tragic is that 25 years later, America hasn't learned any of the lessons loudly broadcast in that and related episodes for Americans in Lebanon and in other interactions with Muslims around the world bent on our destruction.

The most basic of lessons should have been learned before President Reagan sent the Marines on this failed mission: No good deed goes unpunished. Even more basic: Why do a good deed for barbarians? We shouldn't have been there. We should have let Israel and the Maronites finish the clean-up job they began, and things would have been different in Lebanon and the Mid-East today... for the better.

Instead, we sent our Marines there, and made them sitting duck targets, ordering them to sit with unloaded rifles and a weak barbed wire perimeter, lest we offend the Muslims. Our Marines were ordered to keep ammunition in their belts, not their guns.

Twenty-five years later, those barbarians are here and their punishment is only beginning. The real punishment will be felt not by us, but by several generations into the future. The Shi'ite Hezbollah terrorists working in unison with their Sunni allies are not longer confined to the streets of Beirut and South Lebanon. They control the streets of Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, Michigan and are growing like a virus in Southeastern Michigan. Two key allies of Hezbollah spiritual leader Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah-the man who issued the fatwah for the mass murder of those Marines-are now two of the most prominent Islamic clerics in America, being feted by American Presidents and Presidential contenders and being given regular columns in a major newspaper by an irresponsible, clueless, PC editor.

Not only did President Ronald Reagan — in the biggest misstep of his career — pull up stakes and surrender to Hezbollah after they attacked and murdered our troops in cold blood; but he and his successors surrendered portions of American soil to Hezbollah through lax immigration and rampant political correctness for two-and-a-half decades thereafter. Where once they only marched in Lebanon's streets, now tens of thousands of Hezbollah's minions march on America's streets. Talk about reverse containment. Hezbollah is containing us, not the other way around. It is spreading. Donald Rumsfeld, then a special envoy to Beirut, says the lesson he learned about terrorists was that we must take the war to them, to go after them where they are, where they live.

But we did not do that to them. They did that to us. Over the last quarter-century since the attacks, that's what they did to us. Now, they live where we live. They took their war to us, where we are.

A quarter century later, Hezbollah has won and continues to spread its victories throughout the Western world. Here's the scorecard:

* In April, 1983, Hezbollah drove a van bomb into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 46, including 16 Americans. America was the intended target. But the U.S. did nothing in response.

* In October 22, 1983, the 241 U.S. Marines were murdered by Hezbollah, along with countless others injured. Consistent with the April attack, America not only did nothing to respond, but America packed up and left Lebanon. America's non-response-for which President Reagan was never called to talk—and its swift pullout were specifically cited by Osama Bin Laden as proof that America didn't have the will to make its enemies pay...or even to survive. He cited:

the decline of American power and the weakness of the American soldier, who is ready to wage cold wars but unprepared to fight long wars. This was proven in Beirut in 1983, when the Marines fled.

Bin Laden had the ethos right, but not the correct group. The brave American soldier did and still does have the preparation and will to fight this enemy. Sadly, the American soldier's commanders and politicians and law enforcement bureaucrats in America don't have the will. Their will is to engage in political correctness, allow Hezbollah on our shores through a "peaceful" slow invasion, and bend over backward, forward, and every which way for them

* In 1985, Hezbollah hijacks TWA 847 and tramples and tortures to death U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem. His lifeless body is thrown off the plane for U.S. cameras to show nightly TV news audiences. America does nothing to respond. Today, Hezbollah's chief negotiatiator, Nabih Berri of Deaborn, is speaker of the Lebanese Parliament and a figure honored with visits by and gushing from American Secretary of State Condoleeze Rice. Berri, who heads terrorist group Harakat Amal (the Shi'ite Amal Militia), brokered his alliance with Hezbollah through marriage, and is also constantly feted by top American Muslim leaders from Dearborn. In December 2005, Germany released to freedom Mohammad Ali Hamadi, one of the Hezbollah hijackers who tortured and murdered Stethem'a story I broke on this site. Both German leader Angela Merkel and U.S. President George Bush allowed this to happen and neither did a thing to stop it.

* In 1992, Hezbollah and Iran bombed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 22, and in 1994 Hezbollah and Iran blew up the Jewish Community Center of Buenos Aires, killing almost 100. The target was specific: Buenos Aires has the largest Jewish community in Latin America. Hezbollah was asserting its presence and establishing a base in South America. A decade-and-a-half later, America finally noticed...far too late. Hezbollah is already entrenched not only in U.S. soil, but elsewhere on our hemisphere. Hezbollah and Iran paid Argentinian President Carlos Menem, an Arab and "former" Muslim $5,000,000 to cover up their involvement and block any real investigation.

* In June 1998, Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda worked together to bomb and blow up the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. The target was U.S. servicemen living there. 19 of them were murdered. America did nothing to avenge their blood. Once again, Bin Laden was right about America's will to fight this enemy.

* In 2000, a man named "W." from Texas runs for President and wins, making his pandering to Hezbollah's tens of thousands of Shi'ites from Dearborn a centerpiece of his campaign, and garnering their Islamic endorsement. He makes ending of both "profiling of Arabs" and the use of "secret evidence" against Islamic terrorists points in a Presidential debate against Al Gore. For this, George W. Bush is hailed by Osama Siblani, editor of the Arab American News and brother of a top executive of Al-Manar a/k/a Hezbollah TV. Bush eagerly accepts this, making many trips to fete the Hezbollah crowd of Dearborn, despite the fact that Siblani's "newspaper" has been identified as Hezbollah's key publishing house organ and Siblani one of its top agents.

* In 2001, when Bush takes office, he makes Hezbollah's top friend in the U.S. Senate, Spencer Abraham, his Energy Secretary. No biggie that the defeated U.S. Senator from Michigan just sent $86 million in U.S. taxpayer money to Hezbollah in South Lebanon.

* Also in 2001, on September 11th, America is attacked. John Chipura, who barely survived the 1983 Marine barracks attack by Hezbollah, is a New York City fireman. He is last seen on September 11th running up into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. His scheduled October 2001 wedding would never take place.

Hangs with Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Hezbollah's Spiritual Leader

Who Ordered Murder of 241 U.S. Marines

* Throughout his first term, George W. invites to his Crawford, Texas ranch, fetes at the White House, and visits in Dearborn, three of Hezbollah's top Iranian-backed imams-Hassan Qazwini, Mohammed Ali Elahi, and Husham Al-Hussainy. The President is photographedd kissing and hugging each of them at various times in his Presidency. Despite Qazwini's frequent trips to Lebanon to hang with Hezbollah spiritual leader Fadlallah-the man who ordered the murders of the Marines 25 years ago today-Bush invites Qazwini to his ranch to help him design the American taxpayer giveaway to his mosque, via the "faith-based funding initiative."

* Also, in 2000, Republican Congressman Joe Knollenberg, his then-chief of staff Paul Welday, and then-U.S. Senator Spencer Abraham sought almost $300 million dollars in U.S. aid to Hezbollah, at the request of their non-constituent, Jim Zogby of the Arab American Institute. They got $86 million of that and sent it straight to the terrorists that murdered our Marines. Knollenberg is in a tough re-election fight and Welday is seeking a seat in the Michigan House. Remember this on election day.

* In 2002, a New York Times front page story floats the not-so-subrosa Condoleezza Rice-Colin Powell-George W. Bush plan to remove Hezbollah from the State Department Terrorist List and help aid the group in its plans to takeover Lebanon in its entirety politically. Who cares about 241 old blown up skeletons of Marines when we have a "Religion of Peace" to pander to and a Nobel Peace Prize to win?

* In 2003, Marine survivors and relatives prevail over a federal judge, who declares Iran liable for the Beirut bombing of the Marines, awarding $2.7 billion to them and against Iran. Because of Bush Administration pandering to Iran and Bush Justice and State Department machinations, these survivors and family members have never seen a dime. The Bushies refuse to give them any Iranian assets. At the same time, the Bush Administration has increased supposedly embargoed trade with the Hezbollah patron-state from $8 million per year under the Clinton Administration to almost $150 million per year.

* Also in 2003, President Bush's hand-picked U.S. Attorney, Jeffrey Collins, discusses with the Detroit News and his friend, "former" Islamic terrorist Imad Hamad, their mutual support for the wearing of Hezbollah t-shirts in the Detroit area. Collins is Hamad's date to a Detroit News "Michiganians of the Year" banquet. The Detroit News refuses to answer questions regarding why it picked this Palestinian supporter of Islamic terrorism as a "Michiganian of the Year."

* In 2005, U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy III joked at a Hezbollah mosque in Dearborn Heights that he doesn't know why Hezbollah is on the State Department terrorist list, that the group just does great "humanitarian work." Murphy allowed Hezbollah's top American financier, Talal Chahine, to flee the country and allowed him to run and collect profits from his American business, even after he was indicted for fleecing American taxpayers of $7 million and laundering $21 million to Hezbollah through that business. Today, Hezbollah praiser and enabler Murphy is a Bush-appointed federal judge whose major ruling has been to allow ineligible voters to cast their ballots in November.

* In 2006, during the Israel-Hezbollah war, tens of thousands of Hezbollah and HAMAS supporters march daily through the streets of Dearborn and Detroit with photos of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and swastikas. America pressures Israel to quickly end the war and give a de facto victory to the terrorist group, further strengthening it and its terrorist recruitment efforts.

* In 2007, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff visits Hezbollah's imams in Dearborn, feting them with his pate and blather. Not long after his protege, Julie L. Myers, fetes the rest of Hezbollah's key leaders at a banquet at Dearborn's Hezbollah Social Club, the Bint Jebail Cultural Center.

Their top official in Michigan and Ohio, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agent in Charge Brian Moskowitz transformed an office that went after Hezbollah financiers and smugglers into an office that panders to Hezbollah's top operatives here and refuses to get in the way of the terrorist group's Dearborn- and Dearborn Heights-based operations. He also holds regular "apology sessions' in the few cases that there are meaningless, toothless raids on Hezbollah charities that are then allowed to remain open for business.

* In 2008, John McCain invited Hezbollah agent, key financier, and open supporter Ali Jawad to sit atop his campaign finance committee. The McCain will to denounce Hezbollah terrorists who murdered our troops is so weak that McCain wouldn't release a statement stating why he dumped Jawad, despite Jawad's declared support for Hezbollah. "We don't care about the Hezbollah stuff," declares Ambassador Ron Weiser, who heads up McCain's finance efforts in Michigan and stands to garner yet another ambassadorship from McCain. No big deal that Dearborn police caught Jawad selling smuggled cigarettes for Hezbollah, or that he gave about $200,000 in funds to Hezbollah-backed Lebanese Member of Parliament Ali Bazzi to get him elected. Also in 2008, Jawad is invited to a pandering hour-long interview by airhead Detroit radio talk show host Frank Beckmann, on the station that hosts Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Beckmann gushes over Jawad's fanciful stories and open support for Hezbollah, saying it isn't a big deal: "So, you support Hezbollah. But anyway ..." Beckmann even allows on the airwaves, unchallenged and undisputed, Jawad's claim that Hezbollah was not behind the Beirut Marine barracks bombing. Even Hezbollah admits-in fact, brags and celebrates-that it committed this dastardly act 25 years ago, today. Disgusting and irresponsible. But, today, Hezbollah gets positive play on our airwaves and even has in its corner so-called "conservative" talk show hosts like Beckmann. Also this year, Arthur Horwitz, a far-leftist and self-hating Jew who owns the Detroit Jewish News, formed a partnership with Hezbollah's Siblani and his pro-Hezbollah/HAMAS Arab American News.

Hangs with Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Hezbollah's Spiritual Leader

Who Ordered Murder of 241 U.S. Marines

* Today, Imam Mohammed Ali Elahi-open supporter of Hezbollah, crony of Hezbollah's Fadllalah who issued the order to blow up the barracks, and former spiritual leader of Ayatollah Khomeini's Navy in Elahi's native Iran-has U.S. citizenship, despite the fact that he lied about his ties to Hezbollah on documents to get and remain here and garner citizenship. He was sent here by Iran and Hezbollah to further radicalize the Shi'ite Muslim community. He told The Washington Times that the Jews are behind the 9/11 attacks on America.

Also, today, Elahi is the only Hezbollah agent in America to have a regular column in a major newspaper for his anti-American, anti-Semitic ravings. He was given a regular column by irresponsible, pandering Detroit News Editorial Page Editor Nolan Finley, whose excuse is, "Well, he has a following." So did Hitler. So does David Duke.

Yes, Hezbollah has done quite well in taking its jihad against 241 U.S. Marines on Beirut soil in 1983 to 300 milllion Americans on U.S. soil over the two-and-a-half decades since. Their actions have been met with silence-and even reward-from a weak, pandering America, every single step of the way.

While America panders to a mass murdering terrorist group, Scherna Sutton lives alone. Her fiance, Cpl. Craig Wyche, was murdered 25 years ago in the Hezbollah attack. She has never found anyone else who measures up to him. All she has left is his letters.

All Cpl. Doug Held's family has left are audiotapes he sent his parents.

Sgt. Stephen Russell is alive. He sat at the guard booth powerless to respond as he watched the homicide bomber drive the truck through the barbed wire and toward the 1,600 sleeping Marines. As noted, he and other Marines were forced to keep their rifles unloaded.

But he blames himself for the attack and lives with the guilt and frequent nightmares. He told USA Today he can still hear the voices of the wounded and dying in Beirut and sleeps alone on the floor at night. He hasn't spent the night in the same bed as his wife in many years.

Read this important piece from last week about what happened that morning of October 23, 1983, and what happened to some who were lucky enough to survive but unfortunate enough to suffer the consequences.

A quarter century later, America barely remembers the lives of 241 U.S. Marines murdered in cold blood by the terrorist group that now has a strong presence on U.S. The remains of 241 brave U.S. souls are turning over in their forgotten graves.

From my October 23, 2006 post remembering this important anniversary:

A few of the Marines managed to escape. A trucker friend of mine from Michigan was among them. He told me that Palestinian and Syrian gunman with machine guns surrounded the perimeter of the Marine barracks, showering those few who managed to escape the fiery explosion with bullets...

While I admire Ronald Reagan greatly, he made a great mistake after this attack. Not long after, he pulled up the stakes and sent our Marines home. There's an old saying from Stalin or Lenin:

And you shall probe with bayonets. If you find steel, retreat. But if you find mush, keep digging.

Islamists found mush in America, when they drove us out of Beirut. Then, in 1985, they murdered Navy Diver Robert Stethem and after him, there were the torture deaths of Colonel William R. "Rich" Higgins and CIA Attache William Buckley-actions they would not likely have perpetrated, had we shown the Hezbos who's boss. But we didn't. Then they found mush in Somalia, and a cornucopia of other places. Bin Laden and others saw this. And they don't forget. "The Marines fled after two explosions," Bin Laden once said of the U.S. in Lebanon...

****

Read about Armando Ybarra, who lived but is seriously disabled in his right leg. He was awarded a Purple Heart.

Beirut Attack Survivor, Marine Armando Ybarra, Then...

Armando Ybarra, Now...

[On one of the memorials to the slain Marines,] "They Came in Peace" is carved on the wall-something you can never say about our Islamist enemies.

Yoram Fisher lives on Kibbutz Kfar Blum Doar Na Galil Elyon. Contact him by email at yoramski@yahoo.com.

CAR BOMB RIPS THROUGH HEZBOLLAH NEIGHBORHOOD IN LEBANON, DEEPENING FEARS OF REGIONAL SUNNI-SHIITE WAR

A car bomb that ripped through a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut on Tuesday injured dozens of people, heightening tensions between Lebanon's Sunni and Shiite sects and deepening concerns that the sectarian conflict in Syria, between the region's Sunni and Shiite powers, will escalate into a full-blown regional war. Sunni rebels had vowed to strike Hezbollah areas in Lebanon in retaliation for the Iran-backed terror group's activities on behalf of Syria's Bashar al-Assad regime, and last month a Lebanese Sunni cleric had threatened to take "military" action against the Shiite group. The Jerusalem Post reported that "shocked and angry residents were quick to blame Sunni militants." Tuesday's bombing is the second attack on the Shiite area of Beirut in as many months, with rockets striking the neighborhoods in late May. Analysts are increasingly pessimistic that regional sectarian tensions can be dampened, and are instead predicting that "there is a good chance that there will be more than 10,000 foreign fighters on either side of the Syrian war within a year or two."

ISLAMISTS INFILTRATING EGYPT FROM HAMAS-CONTROLLED GAZA STRIP TO CLASH WITH ARMY, LAUNCH TERROR ATTACKS

Dozens of terrorists linked to Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups have entered the Sinai Peninsula from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip with the intention of clashing with the Egyptian army. The infiltrations come in the aftermath of the Egyptian military ousting the country's Brotherhood-linked former President Mohammed Morsi, which in turn occurred after anti-government Egyptian activists poured into the streets in the largest national protests in the history of humanity. On Sunday, the Egyptian army arrested 14 jihadists in the increasingly unstable territory who were reportedly planning to carry out attacks against Egyptian troops. The deepening crisis comes amid news that Islamist terrorists are seeking to target Arab-Israelis vacationing in the Sinai in order to damage Egypt's tourism industry. Tourism is arguably Egypt's key cash industry, and has largely collapsed in the aftermath of the chaos sown by the 2011 Egyptian revolution and subsequent electoral empowerment of the Brotherhood.

EGYPTIAN INTERIM GOVERNMENT APPOINTS NEW PRIME MINISTER, AS MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD REJECTS POLITICAL ROADMAP

Former Egyptian Finance Minister Hazem el-Beblawi has been named Egypt's prime minister, as the country's military moved to stabilize political chaos that began weeks ago when millions of anti-government protesters flooded into the streets demanding the ouster of the country's Muslim Brotherhood-linked then-President Mohammed Morsi. Beblawi had criticized Morsi's Islamist administration last month, blasting the group for failing to restore political legitimacy to the government and economic stability to the country. For their part, Brotherhood officials rejected a plan announced by the interim government aimed at putting Egypt on a fast track to amending the country's controversial constitution, which had been hastily rushed through the Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly last year. The constitution was widely criticized for its heavy emphasis on Islamic law at the expense of religious and gender minorities.

WARNINGS OF HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE AS SYRIAN ARMY MOVES TO SEIZE CONTROL OF STRATEGIC CITY OF HOMS

Syrian government troops continued their assault on Homs this week, threatening to fully wrest control of the strategic city from rebels who have used it to threaten the regime's supply lines between Syria's capital, Damascus, and the Mediterranean Sea. Homs has been considered "the capital of the revolution," and its loss by the opposition would be the second critical victory for the Syrian regime after Hezbollah-backed Syrian forces seized the city of Qusayr last month. Meanwhile, United Nations officials slammed the offensive and deplored the lack of basic necessities in Homs. It is estimated that between 2,500 and 4,000 civilians are trapped in the fighting in and around the city, and Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Director Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence France Presse today that the wounded are dying due to lack of medical equipment.

Contact Israel Project at press@theisraelproject.org

If there is good "stuff" happening in the Middle East, it is almost certainly happening in Israel. In recent days, every time I post I want to end with some of that good stuff, but lose momentum after writing about all the bad. And so today I will reverse procedure.

Abdu Razek, an Ethiopian boy of about nine who was severely mauled by rampaging hyenas in his small village, and disfigured as a result of his injury, has been brought to Israel for treatment. Hospitals in Ethiopia did not have the sophisticated equipment necessary for addressing his situation: he requires surgery on his head and major skin grafting on his face.

While funds are still being raised for his treatment, he was brought on Monday to the Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya. The hospital's director-general, Dr. Masad Barhoum, said:

"I'm proud to be a part of this health care system that acts without hesitation to save the life of a child, not just those in Israel but also to provide humanitarian aid internationally when we are able. This shows the unique nature of Israel."

The United Jewish Communities, the Jewish Agency, the Joint Distribution Committee and the Foreign Ministry collaborated to make the this happen; Dr. Rick Hodes, chief physician of the JDC's medical mission in Ethiopia, started the process by calling attention to the boy's plight.

http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Boy-injured-by-rampaging-hyenas-brought-to-Israel-for-treatment-319137

Please, share this story about Israel, which is so often vilified as "racist" and "apartheid."

~~~~~~~~~~

A similar story about Israeli medical care can be told about injured Syrians — at least 100 by some counts — who have crossed the border seeking Israeli medical help in the recent months of the civil war.

Most of these Syrians come to Ziv Medical Center in S'fat, which is in the north, not far from the Syrian border; there are three other northern hospitals also receiving Syrians. The treatment they provide often saves lives.

Doctors have no information on whether their patients, frequently in critical condition, are civilians, members of the Syrian army, or rebels.

"It's our duty as a regional hospital," says Dr. Amram Hadary, director of the trauma unit at Ziv. "We cannot ignore that the Syrian conflict is happening behind our door. We cannot close our eyes, ears and hearts to what is happening there. It's a catastrophe."

"We treat patients regardless of religion, race, nationality, and give the best care we can provide," Ziv Director, Dr. Oscar Embon, explains.

"For me, they are human beings in need of treatment. I'm not thinking of them as enemies. I'm glad as a physician that we have the opportunity to exercise humanistic principles. I'm very glad to be able to do what we're taught to do.

"...Because of the critical condition in which many of them arrive, we don't question who they are. It is irrelevant. They are patients and are treated with the best measures we have in the hospital. Everyone gets the same treatment.

"One of our raisons d'etre is not only to treat the civilian population here but everyone who needs trauma treatment in the area."

Israel's Health Ministry and Defense Ministry have agreed to jointly fund the hospital treatment for Syrians.

http://israel21c.org/social-action-2/israeli-doctors-save-syrian-lives/

Where else in the world, my friends, would we encounter this attitude?

~~~~~~~~~~

Archeologists in Israel have announced that they have found remnants of the ancient Tabernacle — the center of Jewish worship in the Land of Israel that pre-dated the Temple — that was at Shilo between the conquest of the Land of Israel by Joshua and the rise of King David.

You can find details here:

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/169512

~~~~~~~~~~

"U.S. sources told the Reuters news agency on Monday that congressional committees are holding up a plan to send U.S. weapons to rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

"The delay is over fears that such deliveries will not be decisive and the arms might end up in the hands of Islamist rebel groups.

"Both the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees have expressed reservations behind closed doors at the effort by President Barack Obama's administration to support the insurgents by sending them military hardware."

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/169735

This is certainly good news. Some decision makers in the US have their heads screwed on properly, even if the resident of the White House does not. Indeed, weaponry might end up in the hands of Islamist rebel groups!

~~~~~~~~~~

I turn now — sigh...there seems little choice — to the bad news, with the observation that situations are shifting so rapidly it's difficult to keep track. What is more, there are often conflicting reports on any given situation, so that nailing down the facts is a challenge.

And I want to emphasize one point critical to our understanding of what is happening in the Middle East:

We are witnessing an intensifying Sunni-Shia war; this fact must be kept in mind as we consider patterns of attacks, surprising new alliances and movements across borders.

~~~~~~~~~~

There was an explosion at about noon today in Dahiyah, a southern suburb of Beirut that is a Hezbollah stronghold. There are some 53 wounded and possibly one dead. The source of the explosion is believed to be a car bomb estimated as weighing 40 kilo (about 18 lb.). According to the Daily Star (Lebanon) the blast left a crater two meters wide and over two meters deep, and destroyed 15 cars in the parking lot where it took place. Plumes of black smoke rose in the air.

~~~~~~~~~~

Unsurprisingly, Hezbollah pointed a finger at Israel. But it's looking as if responsibility lies elsewhere: There were reports of the sounds of celebration (firecrackers, gunfire) following the bombing, in the Bab Tabbaneh neighborhood of Tripoli (Lebanon), where there have been anti-Shiite clashes.

At first an official with the Free Syria Army claimed responsibility, and then a spokesman for Free Syria denied involvement.

Lebanese Interior Minister Marwan Charbel said the attack was "a criminal act aimed at destabilizing the country and creating Sunni-Shiite sectarian strife."

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4402729,00.html

Israel's Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon concurred:

"The war in Syria has found its way to Lebanon long ago because of Hezbollah's involvement in it. You can see it in Tripoli, Beirut and Sidon and in this morning's car bomb attack. This fight is between the Sunnis and the Shiites and Israel will not intervene in it."

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=10581

~~~~~~~~~~

Israel is being charged with responsibility for more than today's blast in Cairo:

I had written yesterday about a mysterious blast in the Syrian port city of Latakia, and the host of different theories circulating regarding how the attack was generated. Israel was said to be "studying the situation."

Now a spokesman for the Syria Free Army Supreme Military Council says that the site of the attack was the navy barracks at Safira, near Latakia. His claim is that a rebel intelligence network has verified that newly arrived Yakhont missiles were being stored there.

They were hit in a pre-dawn raid on Friday, he says, and the force of the blast indicated weaponry beyond anything the rebels possess but consistent with a military such as Israel's.

Asked by reporters about the blasts at Latakia, Defense Minister Ya'alon said:

"We have set red lines in regards to our own interests, and we keep them. There is an attack here, an explosion there, various versions — in any event, in the Middle East it is usually we who are blamed for most."

This — of course — tells us nothing concrete. "we have red lines in regards to our own interests, and we keep them" is as close to acknowledgment of involvement that we will get.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Yakhont is a Russian anti-ship cruise missile. Russia provided such missiles to Syria in May, in spite of Israeli and US protests.

The concern in Israel has been that Hezbollah would receive Yakhonts from Assad and use them against our navy as well as our Mediterranean-based gas rigs.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4402936,00.html

~~~~~~~~~~

I would like to say "Hurray for us!" and put this in the good news section. But I don't really know that we destroyed those Yakhonts, do I? So I'll leave it here. In any event, good that them were apparently destroyed.

~~~~~~~~~~

Things have quieted down considerably on the streets of Cairo today, which is most certainly not bad news. What is more, the interim president, Adli Mansour, is moving quickly, in an effort to placate various elements. He has now announced that parliamentary elections will be held in six months, with presidential elections to follow.

And he has appointed an interim prime minister: Samir Radwan (pictured below). An economist by training — who studied at the University of London — he is a former finance minister appointed not by Morsi, but by Mubarak. He is said to have a liberal perspective and an interest in employment issues; he severely criticized the last Egyptian budget.

Nothing, but nothing, is more important than the economy in stabilizing Egypt. It remains to be seen what his contribution to this stabilization will be, if any.

What is of significance is that the extreme Islamist Nour party agreed to accept his nomination because he is a technocrat — a person with technical expertise and not just a politician, and has had government experience. While the Brotherhood was pushed out of power, the Nour party — Egypt's second largest Islamist party — had been courted by the military as a participant in negotiations over the new government. There was an eagerness to show inclusiveness, with Islamists involved, if not the Brotherhood.

Just yesterday, Nour, which had opposed AlBaradei, had announced it was pulling out because of the killing of pro-Morsi protesters. But apparently now it has reversed its position.

The hope is that a full cabinet of technocrats will be appointed soon.

The news today brought a modicum of hope to Egypt, and the country's main shares index rose 1.7 percent.

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/nour-party-would-accept-former-finance-minister-pm

~~~~~~~~~~

Be aware: None of this provides a promise that things will go smoothly in Egypt now. The Brotherhood is still there. And a fickle mob is watching.

The Public Prosecutor has begun investigations of pro-Morsi people who generated the riot outside Republican Guard headquarters. Some 650 people have been detained so far.

Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info

The New York Times of July 9 published five letters about Egypt. All are consistent with the paper's editorial policy. Was that the basis for their selection or does the newspaper mold readers to conform? Let's see their points [followed by my parenthetical reaction].

1. A Middle East historian laments the ouster of Morsi, arrests of Muslim Brotherhood leaders, and closing of some media outlets. It thwarts "Egypt's march toward democracy." "There are better ways to oust an unpopular government..."

[What better ways? Morsi had staged a coup, halting the imagined democratic "march."

The military undid Morsi's coup, but democracy there remains elusive].

2. The second letter suggests what a better way. That way is to allow recall petitions for new elections.

[This could be a non-violent way. Since many elections are close, however, it could lead to perpetual recalls land elections. No time for incumbents to govern.]

3. The third letter wonders whether one's support for the ouster of Morsi indicates a refusal to accept any election one does not like.

[It wasn't the election but the imposition of an Islamo-fascist state that prompted the ouster. In my opinion, such imposition is the likely outcome of any Islamist electoral victory, be that imposition gradual or swift.]

4. Oberlin history professor Sarah Waheed finds David Brooks' assertion that Egyptians lack the mentality for democracy an insult to "the will, humanity and democratic aspirations of millions of Egyptians." She finds Brooks' logic colonialist. Egypt is more complex than that.

[Indeed, Egypt is more complex. Those millions mostly don't understand democracy. They have no experience in it. They don't know that democracy usually requires a democratic culture and society, not just elections.]

[They are not alone. Our ruling elite doesn't understand democracy, if it thinks that is what Egypt had. Nor do our ruling Democrats understand democracy, as they impose more regulations that infringe on free speech and deprive people of choices, interfere with our federal-state system, and seize private property without due process of law.]

[Besides those millions in Egypt, other millions of people there do not want democracy. They exploit democratic elections to gain the power to repress.]

5. A professor of political science at Syracuse U. thinks that democracy in Egypt requires giving religious as well as secular parties a chance to govern. He writes that the Muslim Brotherhood's poor performance does not mean it should be weakened "by nearly any means," as David Brooks had suggested. A ban on Islamism, he warns, would encourage radicalism and violence as the only Islamist path to political power.

[Interesting view of church-state separation. The professor calls the Brotherhood a "religious" party. Too mild a term. It is an Islamist Party.]

[Here's the real problem. Radical Islam, if not also non-radical Islam, is fundamentally like Nazism and Bolshevism. All three ideologies are intolerant and especially antisemitic, violent, deceitful, totalitarian, and imperialistic. Would the professor have suggested that Germany and Russia could not have been democratic without letting the Nazis and Communists vie for political rule? Would he have thought that banning them would radicalize them and turn them toward violence? Well, they were radical, they were violent, and yet they did participate in the political process. They used that process to fasten terrible dictatorships upon their countries and other countries.]

[The Islamists must be stopped. We should oppose their ideology, but our President refuses to. Ask him why.]

The editorial alongside the letters seeks a better constitution [okay] and new elections. [The secular parties still haven't developed platforms and remain disorganized. The even more radical Salafists are well organized. With support from Brotherhood members, they could win. Then what? More Islamist subversion? Another military overthrow?]

The editorial states, "It is hard not to feel some sympathy for Pres. Obama. He was obliged to work with Mr. Morsi, a democratically elected leader,..." [Obliged? Has the Times forgotten how instrumental Pres. Obama was in bringing the Muslim Brotherhood to power? The Times is so partisan, that perhaps it fails to notice Obama's snubs of Britain, Poland, Czech Republic, Israel, and Mubarak. But didn't it notice the ways by which Obama acted to legitimize the Brotherhood before the election? Didn't it notice his wanting to increase military subsidy of Egypt after the Brotherhood victory? Didn't it notice Obama's tolerance of Brotherhood and Turkish repression of aspects of democracy?]

[Letters to the Wall St Journal are more informed, thoughtful, individualistic, and challenging of the editorials than are letters to the Times. What an implicit indictment of the Times! Perhaps if Times readers were better informed, their letters would be more sensible.]

Richard H. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses are a regular feature on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com.

Israel last week urged senior U.S. officials not to respond to Egypt's coup by halting the $1.3 billion in aid America gives the Egyptian army every year.

The Israeli request was transmitted via several different channels, a senior American official said.

Marathon phone calls about the coup took place between Jerusalem and Washington over the weekend. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon spoke with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and National Security Advisor Yaakov Amidror spoke with his White House counterpart, Susan Rice.

The senior American official said the talks were aimed at coordinating U.S. and Israeli positions on the Egyptian crisis. During those calls, and in follow-up conversations afterward, the Israelis warned that cutting military aid to Egypt would likely impact negatively on Israel's security, especially given the possibility of further security deterioration in Sinai.

They also warned that halting the aid could undermine Israel's peace treaty with Egypt. Though the American aid isn't officially part of the Camp David Accords, it began as a direct result of the treaty. Moreover, the United States is a signatory to the treaty's security annex, alongside Israel and Egypt.

Ever since the treaty was signed in 1979, U.S. aid to Egypt has continued uninterrupted. It wasn't affected by the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981 or by President Hosni Mubarak's ouster in 2011 and the Muslim Brotherhood's subsequent rise to power. The Americans' one and only condition for continuing the aid has always been that Cairo uphold the peace treaty.

Israel therefore fears that any change in this U.S. policy could undermine the Egyptian army's commitment to the treaty. Senior Israeli officials in Jerusalem said that this week, Israeli diplomats in Washington will try to make this case to senior senators and congressmen.

The senior American official said that Israeli officials voiced satisfaction at the coup and the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood government. Nevertheless, he added, Jerusalem and Washington agreed that the Egyptian army should transfer the reins of power to a civilian government as soon as possible and ensure that free elections are held.

Amidror even told Rice and her counterparts in other Western countries that he hopes whatever new government arises will form as broad a coalition as possible, and not freeze out the opposition as the Brotherhood did.

An intense public debate is taking place in Washington right now on the question of whether to halt aid to Egypt. On one hand, U.S. law explicitly bans government funding to any government that took power in a military coup. On the other hand, the White House, the State Department and the American defense establishment all believe that continuing the aid is a U.S. security interest.

Consequently, much of the debate has revolved around whether what happened in Egypt can really be defined as a coup. The camp that favors an aid cutoff includes a bipartisan group of senators and congressmen whose most prominent spokesman is Republican Senator John McCain. On Sunday, McCain said publicly that a military coup had taken place, and therefore, the aid must be halted.

But White House Spokesman Jay Carney said yesterday that the administration hasn't yet determined whether this was a military coup or not.

"It's our view that it would not be wise to abruptly change our assistance program" to Egypt, Carney said, noting that Washington seeks to help the Egyptian people transition to democracy while also staying faithful to America's national security needs.

"To be blunt, there are significant consequences that go along with this determination, and it is a highly charged issue for millions of Egyptians who have different views about what happened," he added, pointing out that the millions of Egyptians who opposed the ousted government don't consider what happened to be a coup.

Carney stressed that the administration would take as much time as it deemed necessary to decide how to term last week's events, and is holding talks with Congress about the law. But he said continuation of the aid would likely depend on how quickly Egypt transitioned to a civilian, democratic government.

Contact Sanne DeWitt at skdewitt2comcast.net

As new information is finally starting to leak out about what really happened in Benghazi on that fateful night of September 11, 2012, NOTHING is more telling than this one single photograph...for this photograph proves that Ambassador Christopher Stevens did NOT die of smoke inhalation in the embassy compound as was claimed by the Obama administration, but was taken alive, raped, sodomized, and God only knows what else...and Barack HUSSEIN Obama, Hillary Clinton, and all those in their vile orbit knew this from day one and all bold-faced lied.

They all willfully, deliberately, and with malice LIED to Ambassador Stevens' family and to 'We the People'. And while we all know that some claim that Stevens was the middle-man in Obama's gun and weapons running operation to the Syrian rebels, or that he was actually kidnapped to trade for the Blind Sheik and mistakenly killed, I believe that what I will tell you about this picture coupled with Obama's cover-up and LIES, gives credence to my belief (one that I've had since day one) that Ambassador Steven's found out Obama was running guns and weapons under the table to the al-Qaeda supported Syrian rebels, and was silenced before he could expose what Obama was doing.

Before I get to the photograph we must let the lead-up facts speak for themselves.

First, we all know there was NO spontaneous mob protest outside the consulate as Obama claimed for the first two weeks after the attack. Mob violence that got out of control because of an anti-islamic YouTube video he said, but a video that few had actually seen, that is until he went on Pakistani TV bloviating and apologizing for it after the fact. And with both former CIA Director David H. Petreaus and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that NO video was involved, they both bold-faced lied to Congress when first questioned, claiming that it was the video and the video alone that caused the attack. But I hate to tell them...NO I'm happy to tell them...lying under oath is a felony...an arrestable offense.

Second, Obama and crew still continue to claim there was NO warning of an impending attack issued by our Benghazi consulate. LIARS...there were many calls fearing an attack was imminent sent out by NOT only the Benghazi consulate and Ambassador Stevens himself, but also by our Tripoli embassy. Stevens sent out numerous pleas for help in the days and hours before the attack, because he knew of and feared the significant number of well-armed militias, all with ties to al-Qaeda, that were roaming the area around Benghazi. Also, remember that just a few months before, in June of the same year, a terrorist attack on the British Ambassador to Libya was attempted (thankfully it failed) causing both Britain and the International Red Cross to close their Benghazi offices...and the Red Cross just does NOT pick up and run without justification.

Those events in June alone should have served as a warning to Washington that our consulate and our people were in danger.

Third, fast forward to September 10th, when al-Qaeda head honcho Ayman al-Zawahrin publicly called on Libyans to seek revenge for the killing of a Libyan al-Qaeda leader, and that the next morning, September 11th, Libyan so-called 'police officers' who were supposed to be helping guard the compound were seen taking pictures of the inside of the compound. In fact, Ambassador Stevens sent an e-mail to DC that morning stating that he found this picture taking "troubling" and received NO reply. Now add in that on the afternoon of September 11th, the Blue Mountain Security manager, whose company also provided some of the guards for the Benghazi compound, sensed something was wrong and put out an alert via radio and cellphone, and according to media reports, there were roadblocks and check points set up well in advance of the attack because of his alert.

Fourth, our response to all this was to send up an unarmed surveillance drone over the consulate compound about 90 minutes AFTER the attack started...the very drone through which Barack HUSSEIN Obama watched our people being slaughtered...which of course he claimed he NEVER did. And if you believe that I've got some swamp land to sell you, because (and this is my belief alone) this man had to make sure Stevens was killed one way or the other so his 'secret' would be safe...so rest assured he saw it all.

And now remember all the conflicting reports of orders being issued or orders NOT being issued to 'stand down'. I say ordering forces that were prepared to assist during an on-going attack to 'stand down' or NOT giving go orders at all to units ready, willing, and able to assist is NOT an act of negligence as some are trying to claim, but borders on...if NOT is...an act of treason.

And so, General Carter Ham, then commander of AFRICOM whose jurisdiction took in Benghazi, testified last week about that fateful night during a closed door hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, but isn't it odd that NO reports of his testimony have been reported on...NONE whatsoever by any of the news media...just reports on the testimony of underlings...hmmm...

What we do know at this point is that two Marine anti-terrorist teams based in Rota, Spain, were ready to go assist in Benghazi, but reports claimed that it would have taken the first team 23 hours to get to Tripoli (which is an out and out LIE for while the two locations are 1,553 miles apart they're only 3 hours 5 minutes apart in flight time), and that the second team was NEVER deployed because they were told that US personnel had been evacuated from Benghazi...another LIE because NO one had been evacuated and NO one was sent in to evacuate anyone. And isn't it also odd that NOT one of these supposed 'evacuees'...survivors actually...eye witnesses to the day's events...has been seen or talked to by any media outlet...convenient huh. Also, there was a 130-man, fully armed Marine Force-Recon unit on the ground in Sigonella, Sicily, that could have been in Benghazi in 1 hour and 14 minutes, for the two locations are only 610 miles apart, but was NEVER called to do so.

So, with General Ham testifying in a closed-door session with the House Armed Services Committee, we still CANNOT get word of what his testimony entailed, but underling Lt. Col. S.E. Gibson said his commanders...and who pray tell were those commanders...told him to remain in the capital of Tripoli to defend Americans in case of additional attacks, and to help survivors being evacuated from Benghazi...but at that time NO one was being evacuated as the consulate was under heavy attack with NO help coming to either aid or rescue them.

And even with this testimony, even if the actual words 'stand down' were NOT uttered, the bottom line remains that with NO help forthcoming...with all parties involved making excuses for why help couldn't be sent...this proves there was a total lack of military response to Ambassador Stevens' pleas for help even with what the drone overhead was showing, and that in and of itself is an order to 'stand down' as far as I'm concerned.

Now to the photograph itself and remember this is NOT a newly released photograph but a photograph now seen differently, because one main point in this photograph has been overlooked by all...until now that is. Remember reports by a Libyan doctor claimed Stevens died 'at the consulate' of "severe asphyxia," sometimes known as smoke inhalation, but results of an autopsy done on Stevens' body after it was returned to the US have NOT been made public to either prove or disprove that. And then known al-Qaeda terrorist Abdallah Dhu-al-Bajadin piped in claiming Stevens was killed by lethal injection 'at the consulate', and while some do NOT discard that as a possible cause of death that too has NOT been proven or disproved, again because our government has NOT released our US done autopsy results. But no matter as neither of those scenarios is the truth because Ambassador Stevens did NOT die at the Benghazi consulate...he died...NO he was MURDERED...after being taken very much ALIVE from the consulate and at the direct hands of the enemy...an enemy aided by our president...and here's the proof...

Notice Ambassador Stevens being carried by the barbarians...notice his right arm hanging down limp...now notice his bent left arm up by his face trying to either protect his face, cover his eyes, or even wipe tears from his eyes, but guess what...dead men do NOT wipe tears from their eyes nor do they try to cover their faces...NO...AMBASSADOR STEVENS WAS ALIVE NOT DEAD FROM SMOKE INHALATION and NO crap that he died at the hospital...and NO nonsense that maybe rigor-mortise had set in to bend his arm because that takes hours to happen and the time frame for that just isn't here. This man was NOT being taken to a hospital after death as claimed but was dragged ALIVE through the streets, raped, sodomized, brutalized, and murdered by these muslim bast*rds, and this is why NO official US autopsy reports have been released. This fact had and still has to be hidden at all costs for Stevens being alive at this point could very well blow Barack HUSSEIN Obama's cover-ups of why that night in Benghai happened.

Bottom line...our miserable muslim sympathizing president and his equally miserable former Secretary of State both NOT only LIED to us all about the reason for Benghazi, but also covered-up the cause of Ambassador Stevens' death and everything relating to Benghazi. And that, I believe, is grounds for immediate arrest for treason.

Contact ARNYBARNIE at ARNYBARNIE@aol.com

A normal component of negotiation is to understand the basic elements of an opposing side's position. Negotiation is impossible if one of the parties has an eliminationist view or one of total negation of the other's existence.

One can begin with the charter of the PA (unchanged to date). Article 15 reads: "The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint is a national (qawmi) duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the liquidation of the Zionist presence."

Article 19: "The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural rights in their homeland, and inconsistent with the principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, particularly the right to self-determination."

These declarations can be considered political, but there is a strong religious aspect as well. The Qur'an is considered perfect, eternal and unchangeable. In Sura 2:191 we read: "And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter." Islamic tradition states that the Caliph Omar declared Palestine from the sea to the Jordan as Waqf (holy endowment) land consecrated for all Muslim generations forever. How can anyone calling himself a religious Muslim recognize the foreign conquest of land which is holy to Muslims alone? Reconquest is considered fard'ayn; i.e., duty incumbent on every Muslim.

To move from foundational text to recent times: Hamas cleric M. Abu'Ita (Al-Aqsa TV, July 13, 2008): "The annihilation of the Jews here in Palestine is one of the most splendid blessings for Palestine. This will be followed by a greater blessing, Allah be praised, with the establishment of a Caliphate that will rule the land and will be pleasing to men and God." Prime minister Abbas has repeatedly stated that Hamas and the PA "are one". Sheikh I. Mudaynis (PA Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs, PA TV Sept. 10, 2004): "The Hour [of Resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill them. The Muslims will kill the Jews, rejoice!"

Sheikh Atiyyal Saqr, former head of the Al-Axhar Fatwah Committee, issued a fatwah (April 15, 2002) declaring Jews "apes and pigs". After listing 20 negative traits of Jews with relevant Qur'anic citations, he assured all that the perfidious Jews would be vanquished by the Muslim umma.

Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradhawi (called the "world caliph" and principal religious advisor to the Muslim Brotherhood) on Al Jazeera TV, Feb. 1, 2009 called the Holocaust "divine punishment" and encouraged Muslims to do the same thing, "Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers [Muslims]."

After the Cairo signing ceremony for the unity agreement between Hamas and the PA on May 4, 2011, Yunis al-Astal, a member of the PA parliament stated (on Hamas Al Aqsa TV, May 11, 2011): "...the Jews were brought to Palestine a a divine plan that would give the Arabs the honor of annihilating the evil of this gang."

PM Abbas delivered a new year's message (Jan. 4, 2013) in which he lauded Haj Amin al-Husseini, Hitler's chief Muslim ally, as someone whose legacy should be "emulated" by the Palestinian people. Haj al-Husseini was the same person who wrote to the foreign minister of Romania from Berlin (June 28, 1943) insisting that 1800 Jewish children and 200 adults who were to emigrate to Palestine be prevented from embarking. He also wrote to Hungarian authorities to prevent any Jews from leaving for Palestine and suggested that Jews should be sent to places where they would be "...under active supervision, for example in Poland." Haj al-Husseini was successful in achieving these goals.

To this very day, Israel does not exist on maps or in textbooks used in all elementary and high schools in Palestinian areas of the West Bank. Palestine is portrayed from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Every city in Israel is considered "occupied territory". Any reference, be it biblical or archeological or historic to the Jews in and near Jerusalem is totally negated or censored. The "right of return" of millions of "Palestinian refugees" is inviolable. The Fatah Facebook page states (in Arabic): "The Day Will Come When We Will Return to Jaffa".

PA TV (May 23, 2013) lauds and honors Abbas Al-Sayyed on his birthday. Al-Sayyed was responsible for the 2002 Park hotel bombing in Netanya.

PM Abbas (at the June, 2013 Ramallah Conference) stated: "The responsibility for defending and restoring Jerusalem and purifying its holy sites is not that of the Palestinians alone, but the entire Arab, Islamic and Christian nation."

The Qur'an is the declared basis of Islamic belief and its highest authority. How can Muslims change or modify the perfect and eternal word of Allah and come to any sort of equitable agreement with an independent Jewish state? The Qur'an and the modern charters of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas render any such negotiated agreement either temporary in nature or impossible in execution. More to the point, how can Jews disregard past and present (all of the above and much more besides) and believe that a negotiated settlement will end thirteen centuris of historical hatred and enmity?

The essay above was written by Harold B. Reisman, PhD. Contact him at hbr0292sbcglobal.net

Haaretz has contempt for Israel, seeks to have Israel exterminated, and to that end, campaigns to have Israel shunned as an apartheid state, according to Prof. Steven Plaut. He paints much starker pictures than do I, so I thought he was exaggerating. He has proved his case against Haaretz article-by-article, but not as a whole. Following his link, I got to see a couple of dozen editorials. So vile and one-sided, just as he claimed!

To read the whole article on the following link, one must register http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/another-brick-in-israel-s-apartheid-wall.premium-1.530440.

The new brick in what the paper considers a whole gamut of apartheid measures, is a bill improving veterans benefits. The paper and the Far Left calls veteran benefits "racist."

Many countries grant veterans benefits. The U.S. runs hospitals for veterans. They serve and save their countries, let their countries succor them. No racism involved.

The Israeli draft gives Arabs the option of enlisting or not. Leftists used to demand the same benefits for Arabs who do not give military service. When Arabs do enlist, they receive veteran benefits. The program is a reward for service done, not discriminatory against Arabs. An element of discrimination is conscripting non-Arabs while letting Arabs abstain.

Israel's social National Insurance Institute (NII) "pays a modest old-age pension, child support allotments, income supplements for the poor, death allotments, stipends for the disabled and unemployed," and for divorced women not getting child support and for active reservists. NII started covering only army veterans, as a veterans benefit. It was a fallback position in case of getting hurt on duty or of losing one's job.

Why not return to the principle of veterans benefits, Prof. Plaut asks. Exclude all those who do NOT serve in the military-Arabs, Ultra-Orthodox, drug addicts, and leftist "conscientious objectors." Let them "buy their own life insurance and pensions and disability insurance in the private market." Give veterans preferences in university admission. Want veterans benefits? Join the army, and help defend your country.

"Affirmative action" is supposed to compensate for past discrimination. Jews suffered from discrimination by Arabs for centuries. Give them preferences, Plaut suggests, I suppose tongue in cheek.

Arguing against that position, leftists may say no, one cannot give preferences to a majority. To which Prof. Plaut responds, "affirmative action" benefits women, doesn't it? In Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, the non-Chinese majority got preferences. "So why not for Jews?" (6/18/13.)

I wanted to display the titles of related editorials of Haaretz, but couldn't find them again. They all took the Arab side and denigrated Israel. None complained about the thousands of Arab attacks on Jews, the Palestinian Arab oppression of Arabs, P.A. incitement to terrorism, P.A. propaganda against the Jewish historical presence in the land, and indoctrination against the right of Jews to self-determination.

Richard H. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses are a regular feature on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com.

I'm guilty of defamation... even though the court concurs that I was proven right.

I'll have to pay the 7,000 euros.

On June 26, the Paris Court of Appeals found me guilty of defamation against television station France 2 and broadcaster Charles Enderlin.

After waiting one long week following the verdict, I was finally able to get the written arguments of the judges. The arguments state that — despite the hoax eventually becoming obvious to all who looked at the case — I was found guilty for having said that the al-Dura news report was a hoax...too early, in November 2004.

Had I published that exact same article today now that the facts are clear, I would not have been found guilty. Interestingly, the Court of Appeals did not ask me to remove the original article from my website. (You can still read it here: "France 2 : Arlette Chabot et Charles Enderlin doivent etre demis de leurs fonctions immediatement.")

Though technically a legal defeat, the decision is a step forward for my ultimate goal of having the truth revealed about the al-Dura hoax. I fully agree with French author Michel Onfray: "The judges apply the law, they don't tell what is fair or right." This verdict confirmed that France 2 still doesn't have a single piece of evidence to substantiate their al-Dura report. The judges had to reverse the burden of the evidence — using the extremely restrictive French defamation laws — to prevent France 2 from having to produce any evidence to confirm the report's authenticity, and to temporarily block the recognition of the hoax.

French taxpayer money has been used to silence legitimate and necessary criticism of France 2's disinformation.

This verdict further established that the only witness of the al-Dura news report — the France 2 cameraman — contradicted himself: contrary to what Charles Enderlin repeated many times, the cameraman does not have the images of the child's agony. Moreover, the Court of Appeals agreed that France 2's reluctance to show their raw footage makes their story doubtful.

Despite these successes, all is not well following this verdict, of course. The most problematic issue is that the verdict grants French journalists the privilege of being free from criticism regardless of their work's authenticity. Indeed, the French authorities which should have forced France 2 to correct their fake report refused to act. The high authority which controls TV broadcasts — along with most of the French media outlets, French politicians, and the French judges — circled the wagons to protect a hoax which looks more and more like a state lie.

The verdict is written with the same terminology and bias as France 2's written arguments. It also could have been released prior to the additional January 16, 2013 audience — nothing in this verdict has not already been written by judges in earlier arguments. It's a mystery as to why they had to postpone the publication of the verdict twice, and why it took them so long — more than five months — to deliver this predictable verdict.

Further, the Court of Appeals ignored important and decisive information, and removed some of my words from context — sometimes transforming them — to be able to find me guilty of defamation. For example, the verdict claims that I accused France 2 and Charles Enderlin of having deliberately staged the al-Dura hoax, whereas I clearly claimed the opposite in my article with this sentence:

Charles Enderlin is mistaken, so he mistakes us.

This sentence, of upmost relevance to the charge, was completely ignored by the judges.

The verdict also does not take into account all the witnesses who testified on January 2013. It ignored Esther Schapira, who testified of conversations which took place between us long before I published my article. My own investigation, my demonstration, my research, my sources, my discoveries, and the pieces of evidence which I had before November 2004 have been completely ignored.

The verdict thus rejects the right of any citizen to count on his own perceptions and common sense, and to express his ideas publicly. For example: how is it possible that the al-Duras were shot 15 times by high-velocity bullets without having a single drop of blood on their bodies, their clothes, or the wall on which they were leaned? Expressing this common-sense thought now rises to the level of defamation.

The court agreed that I met a few people who had seen France 2 raw footages before I published my article, but they remembered — once correctly — that when some of these people witnessed at the court in Paris upon my request, they refused to declare that the report was a hoax. When heard by the court in September 2006, Richard Landes only agreed to declare that "the images which were broadcast were doubtful," and added that he "was not certain of anything but that there were some mistakes which fed the controversy."

So what does the future hold?

The verdict, which follows many others on al-Dura which were politically motivated, doesn't leave me optimistic about the French judicial system. The investigation to discover the truth of the al-Dura report is now over: we have enough pieces of evidence to determine it to be a hoax. But these trials have shown that French defamation laws prevent freedom of speech. A French citizen cannot criticize freely — without any risk of legal hassles — a media outlet which broadcast false information. This reality allows powerful media outlets to judicially harass those who dare to alert on their misconducts.

Considering that, this fight to establish the truth might need to be taken up in places other than the French courts, and maybe in other countries.

As the French courts reject any competence to determine the authenticity of the al-Dura news report, it seems that only an independent, free, and transparent investigation committee will be able to decide if al-Dura was a hoax or not. France 2 and Charles Enderlin agreed to participate in this future commission.

Me too.

Richard H. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses are a regular feature on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com.

That's OK, just don't burn or deface the Koran!!

Every day Shirts like this are mass produced, marketed, sold and worn throughout the Middle East.

The mass-murder of 9-11 is a celebrated event by millions of Muslim people.

Does racism and offending other races only apply to whites and non-Muslims?

Paul Rotenberg lives in Toronto, Canada. Contact him at pdr@rogers.com

Marxist sociologist Sami Samouha (or Samoha) polled Israeli Arabs (http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/169296#.Ucv9wK8UHQx). He found that at least 58% of them approve of violence (Intifada) against Jews by P.A. Arabs and by themselves if conditions of P.A. Arabs and of themselves do not improve. An Israeli Arab MK called for an Israeli Arab uprising. [Hundreds of masked Arabs paraded in Ramallah, exhorting the people to rise up, to restore Arab "dignity." (IMRA, 6/8/13)]

70% reject Israel's right to have a Jewish majority.

63% approve of Iranian nuclear development, although probably geared to bombing Israel (Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/27/13).

No matter the polls, liberals keep telling me that most Arabs are tolerant of Israel. They think that the Arabs will make peace with Israel, when it is clear that they want to destroy or overcome Israel. Their hatred for the Jewish people is so entrenched and rabid, that they would not mind Iran developing nuclear weapons, presumably to use against Israel. They'd sacrifice their lives to kill off the Jews. They have a religion of death. Some tolerance! Some peacemakers!

Usually the Israeli Left does not demand prosecution of Arab MKs calling for revolution, does not demand their expulsion from the Knesset, and does not even object. But when Israeli Jews discuss measures of defense against an eventual Arab revolution or a P.A. uprising, the Left calls for prosecution of those Jews for "incitement." I think the Left is unpatriotic and antisemitic.

Richard H. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses are a regular feature on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com.

Two years ago, we told you the story of Gila and Ariel Arditi, a Bnei Anousim couple from Colombia with a "West Side Story"-style romance and a hidden Jewish past.

After the Arditis began to seriously explore their Jewish roots while living in Bogota, Colombia's capital, Shavei Israel enabled them to move to Israel in late 2010. They enrolled in Shavei's Machon Miriam Spanish and Portuguese-language Conversion and Return Institute.

Now, years of hard work and determination have paid off: the Arditis, who are both in their 60s, recently completed their studies at Machon Miriam and formally returned to Judaism following an appearance before the Beit Din — Rabbinical Court — in Jerusalem. There was only one thing left to do: get married (again), this time according to Jewish Law and with a full Jewish ceremony. As at the beginning, Shavei Israel was there for this final step on the Arditis' Jewish journey.

With Shavei's help, the wedding was held in Jerusalem's Heichal Shlomo synagogue. This is the same building where Machon Miriam is located and the ceremony was followed by a festive meal in the Institute's classrooms, attended by Shavei Israel staff, teachers and students from Machon Miriam, and even a couple of young men from the Spanish and Portuguese department of Yeshivat HaKotel, who came to inject some extra simcha (joy).

Contact Shavei Israel at info.shavei@gmail.com

On Wednesday, Egypt had its second revolution in as many years. And there is no telling how many more revolutions it will have in the coming months, or years. This is the case not only in Egypt, but throughout the Islamic world.

The American foreign policy establishment's rush to romanticize as the Arab Spring the political instability that engulfed the Arab world following the self-immolation of a Tunisian peddler in December 2010 was perhaps the greatest demonstration ever given of the members of that establishment's utter cluelessness about the nature of Arab politics and society. Their enthusiastic embrace of protesters who have now brought down President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood regime indicates that it takes more than a complete repudiation of their core assumptions to convince them to abandon them.

US reporters and commentators today portray this week's protests as the restoration of the Egyptian revolution. That revolution, they remain convinced, was poised to replace long-time Egyptian leader and US-ally Hosni Mubarak with a liberal democratic government led by people who used Facebook and Twitter.

Subsequently, we were told, that revolution was hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood. But now that Morsi and his government have been overthrown, the Facebook revolution is back on track.

And again, they are wrong.

As was the case in 2011, the voices of liberal democracy in Egypt are so few and far between that they have no chance whatsoever of gaining power, today or for the foreseeable future. At this point it is hard to know what the balance of power is between the Islamists who won 74 percent of the vote in the 2011 parliamentary elections and their opponents. But it is clear that their opponents are not liberal democrats. They are a mix of neo-Nasserist fascists, communists and other not particularly palatable groups.

None of them share Western conceptions of freedom and limited government. None of them are particularly pro-American. None of them like Jews. And none of them support maintaining Egypt's cold peace with Israel.

Egypt's greatest modern leader was Gamal Abdel Nasser. By many accounts the most common political view of the anti-Muslim Brotherhood protesters is neo-Nasserist fascism.

Nasser was an enemy of the West. He led Egypt into the Soviet camp in the 1950s. As the co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement, he also led much of the Third World into the Soviet camp. Nasser did no less damage to the US in his time than al-Qaida and its allies have done in recent years.

Certainly, from Israel's perspective, Nasser was no better than Hamas or al-Qaida or their parent Muslim Brotherhood movement. Like the Islamic fanatics, Nasser sought the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of the Jews.

Whether the fascists will take charge or not is impossible to know. So, too, the role of the Egyptian military in the future of Egypt is unknowable. The same military that overthrew Morsi on Wednesday stood by as he earlier sought to strip its powers, sacked its leaders and took steps to transform it into a subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood.

There are only three things that are knowable about the future of Egypt. First it will be poor. Egypt is a failed state. It cannot feed its people. It has failed to educate its people. It has no private sector to speak of. It has no foreign investment.

Second, Egypt will be politically unstable.

Mubarak was able to maintain power for 29 years because he ran a police state that the people feared. That fear was dissipated in 2011. This absence of fear will bring Egyptians to the street to topple any government they feel is failing to deliver on its promises — as they did this week.

Given Egypt's dire economic plight, it is impossible to see how any government will be able to deliver on any promises — large or small — that its politicians will make during electoral campaigns.

And so government after government will share the fates of Mubarak and Morsi.

Beyond economic deprivation, today tens of millions of Egyptians feel they were unlawfully and unjustly ousted from power on Wednesday.

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists won big in elections hailed as free by the West. They have millions of supporters who are just as fanatical today as they were last week. They will not go gently into that good night.

Finally, given the utter irrelevance of liberal democratic forces in Egypt today, it is clear enough that whoever is able to rise to power in the coming years will be anti-American, anti- Israel and anti-democratic, (in the liberal democratic sense of the word). They might be nicer to the Copts than the Muslim Brotherhood has been. But they won't be more pro-Western.

They may be more cautious in asserting or implementing their ideology in their foreign policy than the Muslim Brotherhood. But that won't necessarily make them more supportive of American interests or to the endurance of Egypt's formal treaty of peace with Israel.

And this is not the case only in Egypt. It is the case in every Arab state that is now or will soon be suffering from instability that has caused coups, Islamic takeovers, civil wars, mass protests and political insecurity in country after country. Not all of them are broke. But then again, none of them have the same strong sense of national identity that Egyptians share.

Now that we understand what we are likely to see in the coming months and years, and what we are seeing today, we must consider how the West should respond to these events. To do so, we need to consider how various parties responded to the events of the past two-and-ahalf years.

Wednesday's overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government is a total repudiation of the US strategy of viewing the unrest in Egypt — and throughout the Arab world — as a struggle between the good guys and the bad guys.

Within a week of the start of the protests in Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011, Americans from both sides of the political divide united around the call for Mubarak's swift overthrow.

A few days later, President Barack Obama joined the chorus of Democrats and Republicans, and called for Mubarak to leave office, immediately. Everyone from Sen. John McCain to Samantha Power was certain that despite the fact that Mubarak was a loyal ally of the US, America would be better served by supporting the rise of the Facebook revolutionaries who used Twitter and held placards depicting Mubarak as a Jew.

Everyone was certain that the Muslim Brotherhood would stay true to its word and keep out of politics.

Two days after Mubarak was forced from office, Peter Beinart wrote a column titled "America's Proud Egypt Moment," where he congratulated the neo-conservatives and the liberals and Obama for scorning American interests and siding with the protesters who opposed all of Mubarak's pro-American policies.

Beinart wrote exultantly, "Hosni Mubarak's regime was the foundation stone — along with Israel and Saudi Arabia — of American power in the Middle East. It tortured suspected al- Qaida terrorists for us, pressured the Palestinians for us, and did its best to contain Iran.

And it sat atop a population eager — secular and Islamist alike — not only to reverse those policies, but to rid the Middle East of American power. And yet we cast our lot with that population, not their ruler."

Beinart also congratulated the neo-conservatives for parting ways with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who counseled caution, and so proved they do not suffer from dual loyalty.

That hated, reviled Israeli strategy, (which was not Netanyahu's alone, but shared by Israelis from across the political spectrum in a rare demonstration of unanimity), was proven correct by events of the past week and indeed by events of the past two-and-a-half years.

Israelis watched in shock and horror as their American friends followed the Pied Piper of the phony Arab Spring over the policy cliff. Mubarak was a dictator. But his opponents were no Alexander Dubceks. There was no reason to throw away 30 years of stability before figuring out a way to ride the tiger that would follow it.

Certainly there was no reason to actively support Mubarak's overthrow.

Shortly after Mubarak was overthrown, the Obama administration began actively supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood believed that the way to gain and then consolidate power was to hold elections as quickly as possible. Others wanted to wait until a constitutional convention convened and a new blueprint for Egyptian governance was written. But the Muslim Brotherhood would have none of it. And Obama supported it.

Five months after elections of questionable pedigree catapulted Morsi to power, Obama was silent when in December 2012 Morsi arrogated dictatorial powers and pushed through a Muslim Brotherhood constitution.

Obama ignored Congress three times and maintained full funding of Egypt despite the fact that the Morsi government had abandoned its democratic and pluralistic protestations.

He was silent over the past year as the demonstrators assembled to oppose Morsi's power grabs. He was unmoved as churches were torched and Christians were massacred. He was silent as Morsi courted Iran.

US Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson and Obama remained the Muslim Brotherhood's greatest champions as the forces began to gather ahead of this week's mass protests. Patterson met with the Coptic pope and told him to keep the Coptic Christians out of the protests.

Obama, so quick to call for Mubarak to step down, called for the protesters to exercise restraint this time around and then ignored them during his vacation in Africa.

The first time Obama threatened to curtail US funding of the Egyptian military was Wednesday night, after the military ignored American warnings and entreaties, and deposed Morsi and his government.

This week's events showed how the US's strategy in Egypt has harmed America.

In 2011, the military acted to force Mubarak from power only after Obama called for it to do so. This week, the military overthrew Morsi and began rounding up his supporters in defiance of the White House.

Secretary of State John Kerry was the personification of the incredible shrinkage of America this week as he maintained his obsessive focus on getting Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians.

In a Middle East engulfed by civil war, revolution and chronic instability, Israel is the only country at peace. The image of Kerry extolling his success in "narrowing the gaps" between Israel and the Palestinians before he boarded his airplane at Ben-Gurion Airport, as millions assembled to bring down the government of Egypt, is the image of a small, irrelevant America.

And as the anti-American posters in Tahrir Square this week showed, America's self-induced smallness is a tragedy that will harm the region and endanger the US.

As far as Israel is concerned, all we can do is continue what we have been doing, and hope that at some point, the Americans will embrace our sound strategy.

Contact Israel_Politics2 at israel_politic2@yahoogroups.com

Word is, Pres. Obama will bring Robert Malley into the State Dept. as a senior advisor. Mr. Malley was a leading Mideast advisor to Sen. Obama campaign. When his negotiation with Hamas became public, he became an embarrassment to the 2008 presidential election campaign, and was fired. Now Pres. Obama is retrieving Mr. Malley. Who is he? Currently, Mr. Malley, an attorney, works for the International Crisis Group, an affiliate of anti-Israel activist George Soros. What is his record?

• "In a July 2001 op-ed in the New York Times, Malley blamed Israel for the failure of the Camp David Peace talks, contrary to the accounts of all of the other Americans and Israelis involved, including U.S. Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross and President Clinton himself." Saul Singer debunked that theme in 2002, in the Middle East Quarterly.
• "In an April 2007 Los Angeles Times op-ed, Malley advocated for negotiations with Syria, despite his own admission that Syria would not 'cut ties with Hezbollah, break with Hamas or alienate Iran as the entry fare for peace negotiations.'" Nevertheless, he suggested, without evidence, that Syria would actually do these things if Israel signed a peace giving away the Golan Heights (and Israeli territory illegally seized by Syria in 1948).
• He also claimed "that Syria would not continue to sponsor terrorist groups, when in fact it has sponsored continuously the Kurdish PKK, al-Saiqa, Asbat-al-Ansar, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and of course Hezbollah in Lebanon."
• In November 2012, Malley argued that an Israeli/Palestinian peace actually requires Mahmoud Abbas Fatah/Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the terrorist group which calls in its Charter for the destruction of Israel (Article 15) and the global murder of Jews (Article 7), to unite. [Fatah's charter also calls for war and the destruction of Israel.]
• Labeling Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria "colonies," he contended that Israel must promise to cede them to the P.A., in order to resume the "peace process."
• "Malley has advocated in favor of containing a nuclear Iran, even criticizing President Obama because he "took containment of a nuclear-armed Iran off the table."
• A Congressional aide described Malley as considering terrorist groups not enemies but as political groups with whom we can negotiate.

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein is concerned that this pro-Iran, pro-Hamas, and anti-Israel activist will help formulate U.S. policy on the Mideast. "It is also deeply worrying that President Obama has apparently no compunction at appointing to a position of such responsibility someone with whom, on major aspects of Middle East policy, he has publicly disagreed."

"When running for president in 2008, then-Senator Obama said clearly that he did not agree with Robert Malley's support for recognizing Hamas without Hamas making substantive changes to its platform and behavior." Why now would Pres. Obama elevate the same person he had to fire? (ZOA press release, 7/2/13.)

ZOA also stated, "His father, Simon Malley, was a virulently anti-Israel member of the Egyptian Communist Party and a close confidante of Yasser Arafat." To consider that as evidence against the son, one must show that the son worked closely with the father.

Demanding that Israel return to Syria part of the original State of Israel that Syria had taken by aggression follows totally the Arabs' anti-Zionist line, and is unjust. It indicates devotion to jihad. Peace does not depend on appeasement of aggression. Appeasement whets aggressors' appetites. This is especially so of aggression by Arabs, who consider appeasement of them precedent for demanding more appeasement, not peace.

The notion that Israel must make concessions to fanatical and genocidal Arab aggressors to get peace is weird. Why no concessions from the Arabs — they have no cause except imperialism and intolerance, i.e., jihad? If the Arabs want peace, they don't need undeserved concessions.

The real question should be, not who is Malley, but who is Obama. He keeps nominating and appointing people whose views contradict Obama's assurances to the American people and to Israel, that he will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. In a very few months, Iran will get them and the capacity to build a hundred a year!

Based on Obama's nominations, should we believe Obama's assurances or gauge his policy by his whole anti-American team? Why else would he pick a whole team like that? Not because he relishes having to disagree with them all the time. jVoters bewarfe! Obviously, Obama lied about disagreeing with Malley, to appease voters. Lying on matters of national security is serious. It turns our elections into fraud, too.

Some Americans suggest negotiating with Islamist terrorist groups and terrorist states out of naivete about the fanaticism and destructive goals of those Islamists. But Malley knows those groups. Then he must favor negotiating so we don't defeat those groups and so the negotiations bring them concessions that take Israel down and weaken the U.S. against international jihad.

The Obama administration is riddled with pro-Islamist subversives. Those people make all sorts of errors and lies. Some basis for U.S. policy!

What is the agenda of the Obama administration? I think the rot starts at the top, with the former Arabic scholar and Muslim now President and a professed Christian. Remember that his long-time pastor hated many groups, not the Nation of Islam, however. That's the pastor with whom Obama felt close for two decades, but claimed he never noticed his hatred of whites, women, and Jews. At that point, Americans should have stopped believing Obama.

Richard H. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses are a regular feature on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com.

Egyptian Army Commander and Defense Minister Abdul Fattah al-Sisi was faced in Cairo with that experts say was the largest human gathering in history — somewhere between 17 and 30 million people — demanding a chance to redo the 2011 revolution. A "mulligan," so to speak. The military responded by removing Morsi and announcing that it would not rule but rather manage a civilian-run transition.

The Obama administration should be pleased. Having made a mess of Egypt by abruptly withdrawing support from a longtime ally; by failing effectively to express its displeasure with 18 months of military rule that included the arrest of American and Egyptian NGO workers; and by accepting without comment Mohammad Morsi's power-grabs, his increasingly heavy-handed imposition of Sharia law, and violence against minorities, the U.S. is essentially getting its own "mulligan."

And indeed, the U.S. appears loath to deem the army ouster of Morsi a "coup," which would trigger an automatic cutoff of U.S. aid, more than 80 percent of which goes to the military. While never explicitly linked to the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty of 1979, successive American governments have done their best not to tamper with the military figure, believing... well, believing what? Mainly, the United States appears to believe that we pay Egypt not to go to war against Israel and they'll march on Jerusalem if we stop.

This formulation was always a mistake, first because it ceded American leverage in advance. It also allowed Israel to be blamed over the years for the repression of the Egyptian people, and contributed to anti-Americanism based on the belief that the U.S. would tolerate anything that happened inside Egypt (the assassination of Anwar Sadat, corruption, sectarian violence) as long as Israel was protected. The truth is more complicated and might be made to serve American interests as much as Egyptian ones.

The Egyptian military is not champing at the bit to go to war with Israel, and is not held back by the American bribe — um, aid. Furthermore, the generals are not sanguine about losing the United States as their chief supporter and do not see their future in the arms of Vladimir Putin. That is the definition of American leverage, but for it to be effective, the U.S. has to be willing to withhold as well as to pay.

Saudi Arabia, thrilled by the ouster of Morsi, has promised billions to the new Egyptian government, but that money will be needed to shore up the sinking civilian sector, buying food and fuel. Even if there was something left for the military, it isn't only the money. Egyptian military officers attend schools in the U.S. and partner with U.S. forces in counterterrorism and special operations exercises; the relationship is deep and valued by the Egyptians. The Saudis cannot replace that — and neither can the Russians.

Despite 30 years of upgrades in weaponry and training, or because of them, the army has shown no interest in a) provoking Israel or b) helping Hamas. The military has no desire to put itself to the test against the IDF, and understands that the IDF isn't the enemy.

In Sinai over the past few years, weapons flowing westward from Iran and eastward from Libya have crossed the peninsula, and terrorism from international jihadist groups has increased. This is despite the efforts of the Egyptian military, not by collusion. The agreed-upon-with Israel increase in military sweeps, the additional equipment, and the operations close to the Israel-Egypt border have, according to Israel's Defense Minister, slowed smuggling. That fact that Islamists have been reported heading toward Sinai to fight the Egyptian military since the ouster of Morsi argues that this is a moment when American leverage would be at its peak.

Hamas, which had believed the election of Morsi would end its political and economic isolation and open a supply line from Egypt to Gaza, has been furious that the military has gone to great lengths to improve its performance and seal the Gaza/Egypt border. Contrary to popular opinion (including popular opinion in Washington) the military was uninterested in helping boost Hamas in its war against Israel, not only because of the American input, but also for two reasons entirely unrelated to Israel. First, Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Second, despite the fact that Palestinians are Sunni, Hamas is an outpost of Shiite Iran.

Among the regional players the Egyptian military most detests is Iran. his is another exploitable point of agreement with the United States, and a difference with Russia.

An article in the London Sunday Times recounted the growing closeness of Morsi and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, including the latter's visit to Cairo in February. According to the article, Sisi believed Morsi was planning to replace him and was doubly worried when Ahmadinejad said he had offered to defend Egypt in the event of an attack. The Times cited the Egyptian weekly Al-Usbua, saying, "Sisi told the president the army objected to his remarks, which were an insult to the military and questioned its strength and its ability to face threats to the security of the country."

But even when Morsi took a position that irked the Iranians, he didn't do well with the military. Shortly before his ouster, Morsi had broken relations with Syrian President Bashaar Assad, giving a boost to the Islamist rebels fighting the government. While the military might have been pleased by Morsi's break with Iran on that issue, the specter of a Muslim Brotherhood or al-Nusra victory over a secular dictator was unappealing in the extreme.

The Egyptian military gave the people their "mulligan" and gave us another chance to get it right. This time, the administration should understand where the real power in Egypt lies, and not be afraid to use its considerable leverage to support the civilian demand for an accountable and transparent government. Ambassador Patterson should be brought home if for no other reason than that the Egyptian people believe she is President Obama's emissary to the Muslim Brotherhood, and the president should make it clear that participation in elections is a privilege reserved for those who ascribe to at least minimal standards of respect for individual civil liberties and rule of law. If President Obama can't or doesn't want to, if he prefers to pay what he thinks is bribe money, or chooses to cut off the funds to slap at the military or support the Brotherhood, the failures in Egypt will only multiply.

The article above was written by Shoshana Bryen who is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center. This article appeared July 10, 2013 on American Thinker and is archived at
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2013/07/the_us_gets_a_mulligan _in_egypt.html#ixzz2YejLjN8X

The Israel Antiquities Authority keeps discovering more evidence of Jewish habitation [and not Arab] in ancient Judea. It was excavating near the Western Wall, in the Jerusalem Archaeological Park. Inside a cistern it found three intact cooking pots and a small ceramic oil lamp from the time of the Great Revolt. The vessels were inside the drainage channel that was exposed in its entirety from the Shiloah Pool in the City of David to the beginning of Robinson's Arch.

Excavation director Eli Shukron said this is the first archeological evidence connected to the famine during the Roman siege of Jerusalem almost two thousand years ago. The evidence jibes with Josephus' account of rebels breaking into people's houses to find food. People hid their small supply of food and ate it secretly. Hence the pots were found in the underground cistern (IMRA, 6/27/13).

The Arabs keep denying ancient Jewish history in the land and the extensive evidence of it. They affirm a non-existent Palestinian Arab history for which they have no evidence.

Although it is only natural for archeology to be almost an Israeli national hobby, the wonderful Palestinian Arabs depict Israeli excavation as a plot to undermine the mosque on the Temple Mount. Who is plotting? Unstated. Evidence of the plot? None. Smear? Constant.

The last thing that Israel would want is to be blamed for the collapse of the mosque, which, however due to Arab carelessness, would be blamed by the Arabs on Israel. It would be a pretext for a united jihad against Israel.

The P.A. and Hamas describe Israeli visits to the Temple Mount as "storming" the Mount. Tour groups don't storm places. In fact, they act circumspect, knowing how violent the wonderful Palestinian Arabs get when their religion of tolerance is put to the test, as by sharing a holy site.

Why do Israelis "storm" the Mount? The P.A. calls it an effort to change the Arab character of a city, a city that was built by Jebusites and Jews, long was the capital of a Jewish kingdom, and has had a majority of Jews for about the last 175 years. Nobody ever complains that Arab construction in Jerusalem, much of which is financed by sources interested in gaining an Arab majority, is an effort to change the Jewish character of Jerusalem.

Maybe people should complain about the Arab effort, which goes on all over Israel and Judea-Samaria. Israelis should be frank about Arab attempts to take over the country. This should a struggle for Israeli survival. At least, the Arabs are making the effort for their side. They must be smarter than the Israelis, except that their whole effort of jihad is inhumane.

Richard H. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses are a regular feature on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com.

It was encouraging to see five sitting US Congressmen — led by Rep. Michele Bachmann — send a letter to the Office of the Inspector General at the State Department recently; it made reference to the familial relationships Huma Abedin — Hillary Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff and closest advisor — has to the Muslim Brotherhood. Abedin has much fewer than six degrees of separation (1 or 2 depending on your interpretation) from Egypt's newly elected Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Mursi.

One year ago, when Walid discovered the names of 63 leaders who make up the Muslim Sisterhood — which is essentially nothing more than the female version of the Brotherhood — we learned that Huma's mother, Saleha, was one of those leaders. Little attention has been paid to the other 62 leaders, however. One of them is Najla Ali Mahmoud, the wife of Mursi. Both are members of the Guidance Bureau, which proves fallacious the claim that Najla is just an innocent and naïve spouse.

This would make Huma's mother a close, personal colleague of the wife of a virulently anti-Semitic racist who has officially been declared the first president-elect of post-Mubarak Egypt. Mursi also sat behind a Muslim cleric at a presidential campaign rally before the first round of elections, nodding in approval as the cleric enthusiastically informed the crowd that under Mursi, Jerusalem would become the new capital of the next Caliphate.

Abedin has the ability to leak highly sensitive state secrets; she is closely associated with her Muslim Brotherhood family; she even joined Clinton at an event with Saleha at Dar El-Hekma College in Saudi Arabia and another leader who appeared on the list of 63 as an associate of Saleha Abedin-Suheir Qureshi. Huma's brother-Hassan Abedin-has also collaborated with an al-Qaeda godfather Omar Naseef and Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, two of the most influential terror supporters in the world.

All signs point to Huma using a technique championed by Qaradawi himself. It's called Muruna and it allows Muslims to go to extreme lengths to deceive and convince non-Muslims they pose no threat. One such act permitted by Muruna would be for a Muslim woman to marry a non-Muslim man if it furthered the cause of Islam.

Consider, Huma Abedin is also the wife of former US Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who happens to be Jewish. Why hasn't Huma denounced her mother or the views espoused by the Sisterhood? In fact, as the twitter sex scandal involving Weiner was playing out last year, the New York Post reported that the former Congressman allegedly claimed that there were three women he needed to reconcile with — Huma, Hillary, and Saleha. Perhaps the biggest red flag of all is why Huma — a practicing Muslim — wasn't disowned by her family for marrying a Jew in the first place.

When it was learned that Saleha was a member of this extremely nefarious group, Walid was able to uncover mountains of evidence from news sources — in Arabic — that implicated Huma's mother as being part of a plot reminiscent of Hitler's Nazi Germany. Today, much of these connections have vanished. Short of identifying Saleha as the Dean of Dar el Hekma, her tracks have been all but covered.

If she and Huma aren't stealth collaborators, why is this so?

Contact Yoram Fisher at yoramski@yahoo.com

Israel's economic infrastructure, such as financial institutions, water companies, food factories and pharmaceutical manufacturers are wide open to cyberattack and need to take urgent steps to protect their computer systems, a leading think tank has warned.

Scores of these civilian targets constitute Israel's "soft underbelly" since they are not covered by government efforts to protect critical infrastructure, including military and security installations, says Gabi Siboni, program director of the Institute for National Security Studies' cyberwarfare program.

"Cyberdefense in the civilian arena is not being dealt with, in contrast to the defense sector, including defense industries, and scores of critical national infrastructures which receive regular guidelines on the issue from government departments," he told the business daily Globes.

"But telecommunications carriers, including Internet service providers and other entities with systems, which, if attacked, are liable to substantially disrupt service to a large clientele, are not defined by the government as critical infrastructures, and there's no authority [that] directs them how to prepare against a possible cyberattack.

"While dozens of critical national infrastructures are protected, someone deciding on an attack will prefer to focus his efforts on the soft underbelly, against those who are unprotected," Siboni said.

"The target could be the water company of a large city. Today, water companies and critical entities in the economy are not protected for such a situation because no one demands that they should be prepared."

Siboni's warning, which he will present at an INSS conference this week on the financial industry's preparedness for a cyberstrikes, comes amid major efforts by U.S., European and other governments to erect cyberdefenses around a comprehensive range of critical civilian infrastructure as the danger of crippling cyberattacks grows.

Recent disclosures of extensive electronic eavesdropping by U.S. intelligence on agencies of the European Union and other allies, including diplomatic missions, have heightened international concerns about the perils of cyberattacks.

The Financial Times said last week Europe "should transform itself into a data protection fortress."

Israel, which along with the United States has engaged Iran in an ongoing cyberwar largely aimed at sabotaging Tehran's nuclear program, has been in the forefront of building up cyberdefenses as the Iranians have struck back.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has sought to accelerate the construction of these defenses, and says the Jewish state is hit by hundreds of cyberstrikes every month.

Syrian government loyalists have joined the onslaught in recent months as Israel has mounted airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in Syria amid the country's civil war.

On May 25, Israeli officials disclosed there had been a failed attack two weeks earlier on the water system in the northern city of Haifa, a major port and naval base. They said the attack originated in Syria in apparent retaliation for an Israeli airstrike earlier that month.

Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael, chairman of the National Council for Research and Development, said critical Israeli infrastructure such as the electricity and water industries and the stock exchange undergo hundreds of cyberattacks every week.

"The number of cyberattacks is huge," he said. "We're talking about an attack every moment. We have to constantly think about the upcoming threats."

In June, Netanyahu reported "a significant increase in the scope of cyberattacks on Israel by Iran. ... The targets are our vital national systems.

"In effect, aside from electricity, water, the railways and banks, every area that's open in economic life, not to mention defense, is a potential target for cyberattacks."

Netanyahu's previous government established a national cybercenter to help coordinate with the military and intelligence services to counter cyberattacks.

"Today, cyber is part of the battlefield," he declared. "This is not tomorrow's warfare — it's already here today."

Iran, which has been on the receiving end of U.S. and Israeli cyberstrikes beginning with the notorious Stuxnet virus that crippled part of Tehran's uranium enrichment program in 2009-10, has been making a determined effort to enhance not only its cyberdefenses but its offensive capabilities as well.

A key catalyst for boosting cyberdefenses in the United States and its allies were two recent high-profile attacks, one against Saudi Arabia's oil industry, blamed on Iran, and an alleged North Korean attack on banks and media companies in South Korea.

Contact Paul Lademain by email at lademain@verizon.net

If our fat, bumbling, economy-crushing colossus of a central government has seemed particularly ineffectual over the past year, it's because the federal worker bees have all been ordered to spy on each other, and it's probably very time-consuming. McClatchy News takes a look at President Obama's amazing Insider Threats Program, "an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for 'high-risk persons or behaviors' among co-workers." And they might be looking at criminal penalties if they don't file timely spy reports.

Obama mandated the program in an October 2011 executive order after Army Pfc. Bradley Manning downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents from a classified computer network and gave them to WikiLeaks, the anti-government secrecy group. The order covers virtually every federal department and agency, including the Peace Corps, the Department of Education and others not directly involved in national security.

Under the program, which is being implemented with little public attention, security investigations can be launched when government employees showing "indicators of insider threat behavior" are reported by co-workers, according to previously undisclosed administration documents obtained by McClatchy. Investigations also can be triggered when "suspicious user behavior" is detected by computer network monitoring and reported to "insider threat personnel."

Could this get any creepier? Oh, yes. Yes, it could.

Federal employees and contractors are asked to pay particular attention to the lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors — like financial troubles, odd working hours or unexplained travel — of co-workers as a way to predict whether they might do "harm to the United States." Managers of special insider threat offices will have "regular, timely, and, if possible, electronic, access" to employees' personnel, payroll, disciplinary and "personal contact" files, as well as records of their use of classified and unclassified computer networks, polygraph results, travel reports and financial disclosure forms.

I know what you're thinking: this sounds like "profiling," and that's supposed to be heinously evil, isn't it? The same thought occurred to some of the government's own scientific advisers, who said that "trying to predict future acts through behavioral monitoring is unproven and could result in illegal ethnic and racial profiling and privacy violations."

And it's not just federal employees cutting eye holes in their morning newspapers so they can spy on each other:

While the Insider Threat Program mandates that the nearly 5 million federal workers and contractors with clearances undergo training in recognizing suspicious behavior indicators, it allows individual departments and agencies to extend the requirement to their entire workforces, something the Army already has done.

Training should address "current and potential threats in the work and personal environment" and focus on "the importance of detecting potential insider threats by cleared employees and reporting suspected activity to insider threat personnel and other designated officials," says one of the documents obtained by McClatchy.

But what if the Leak Police decide to do some leaking? Who catches them? Who watches the watchmen? Presumably they are required to spy on themselves, and submit regular reports of any suspicious activities they catch themselves indulging in, such as reading this very website. Oh, crap, you're not a government employee, are you? Quick, click here for some innocuous government-approved infotainment, and reassure your co-workers by humming your favorite meaningless Obama campaign slogan: Yes, we can. We are the ones we've been waiting for. Forward! You didn't build that. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your plan.

Naturally, no one in the Most Transparent Administration in History was willing to talk to McClatchy about the Insider Threat documents they obtained, beyond a ritual declaration that "civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy" would be cherished by everyone involved. Of course there was no further explanation of how those rights were respected by this insanely intrusive program. Why do you demand proof, impudent citizen? You aren't one of those... subversive types, are you?

McClatchy puckishly notes that all this institutionalized paranoia somehow failed to prevent Edward Snowden from waltzing into a security position, robbing the intelligence community blind of data, and turning into a one-man global security threat, all while still on probation as a new hire. Intrusive and hilariously ineffective? Throw in "ideously expensive," and you've got a classic Obama program.

What we've got here is the strange paranoia of a White House that enjoys utter, slobbering, breathlessly romantic devotion from the press...but is scared out if its mind that something damaging will leak out to them anyway. Obama seems even more bitter and resentful of the media than Richard Nixon, even though the press loves him as much as it loved JFK, and it has demonstrated its loyalty by crushing any number of damaging stories. (Two more people just got killed by the Fast and Furious guns the media steadfastly refused to discuss.) Perhaps this could be taken as a tacit admission that Obama knows how fragile his alleged popularity is, and how much it depends on the relentless efforts of his volunteer campaign auxiliaries in Big Media.

And there's also a heavy dash of overcompensation, because no one leaks to the media more recklessly than Obama...when it makes him look good.. Congressional investigators have been struggling to get to the bottom of those White House leaks for years. There are some legitimate concerns about national security buried in the Insider Threats Program, but a lot of it seems like posturing designed to make the White House look tough on an offense it has frequently committed.

Maybe if the government wasn't so large and out of control, it wouldn't need to keep so many secrets from voters. That solution isn't likely to occur to this Administration, so if you work for the government, be careful not to talk about your money problems, problems with your spouse, how much you admire plucky underdogs, or how stressed-out you're feeling, and don't make too many copies at the copy machine, because those are all "indicators" that might trigger your co-workers to file a report on you...and if they don't, they could face much sterner punishment than anyone involved in the IRS abuse-of-power scandal. If you don't work for the government, President Obama would like to remind you that it's vitally important for you to trust it far more than he does.

Contact Daily Events at HumanEventsDaily@email.humanevents.com

• CNN airs "unflattering" footage of Egypt jihadists throwing teenager off roof
• Britain expands push for European Union to blacklist Hezbollah, as Bulgarian officials again confirm group's links to 2012 bus bombing
• Argentina facilitating Iranian penetration of Western Hemisphere, blocking investigations into terror activities
• Array of Palestinian factions blast Israeli-Palestinian meeting as "normalization"

• CNN this morning posted to the top of its international online front page a report highlighting incidents in Alexandria during which Muslim Brotherhood supporters threw teenagers off rooftops, killing at least one of them. The outlet contextualized the video on its site with a caption suggesting that the atrocities risked shedding "an unflattering light on Egypt's jihadists." Also threatening to cast Egyptian jihadists in an unflattering light is a video released on Monday reportedly showing Islamist gunmen mixing with demonstrators demanding the release of Muslim Brotherhood-linked former President Mohammed Morsi and then firing at army troops. Muslim Brotherhood officials have since tried to blame the incident, which took place outside Cairo's Republican Guard headquarters over the weekend and which left dozens dead, on the army. The accusations are in tension with explicit reports from the scene — including those offered by Brotherhood-linked witnesses — to the effect that the live fire did not come from the army, and that "thugs" in civilian clothes had carried out the shootings. The army subsequently moved against Brotherhood figures it accused of being linked to the violence, arresting several top Brotherhood officials including Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie. An article yesterday in the influential Al Arabiya declared that the Brotherhood may be "falling back to violence after its failure to lead the country."
• Britain is placing increased pressure on its European Union partners to formally blacklist parts of Hezbollah as a terror organization, months after E.U. diplomats began privately acknowledging that new evidence of multiple terror plots conducted by the Iran-backed group on E.U. soil made it difficult to sustain objections to imposing such a designation. The new evidence included additional disclosures by Bulgarian authorities tying Hezbollah to the July 2012 bus bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria that killed five Israelis and a Bulgarian, alongside the Cypriot conviction of a confessed Hezbollah member on terror-related charges. Last week Bulgaria's new government reiterated Sofia's stance that Hezbollah was linked to the bombing, with Interior Minister Tsvetlin Yovchev declaring that "the announced stance of my colleagues is right and I support it." E.U. diplomats — including and especially those from Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Germany — have been increasingly public about their efforts to sway holdouts to blacklisting Hezbollah's military wing. This week Washington Institute fellow and counterterrorism expert Matthew Levitt addressed the E.U. Parliament regarding Hezbollah's terror activities on the Continent, which he traced back decades.
• Observers are increasingly alarmed at moves by Argentinian officials that seem aimed at facilitating Iranian infiltration of South America and blocking efforts to expose the terrorist activities of Tehran and its proxies throughout the continent. Terrorism experts testifying before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency yesterday described how Buenos Aires permitted Tehran to access Latin American Free Trade Zones via Argentina's own access to those zones, and to use the country to establish a terrorist network throughout the region. Joseph M. Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, outlined the existence of an Iranian-controlled "pipeline to move illicit products all across the region." Under Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the country's exports to Iran have skyrocketed over 1000 percent, going from $84 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion three years later. Kirchner's government has hampered U.S. efforts to unravel the extent of Argentina's ties to Iran, with the administration blocking requests for Argentinean prosecutor general Alberto Nisman to testify in front of Congress on Iranian terror activity throughout South America and in Argentina.
• A recent meeting in Ramallah between Israeli and Palestinian officials was blasted by several Palestinian factions — including elements of the Fatah group to which Western-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas belongs — for promoting "normalization" between Israel and the Palestinians. The denunciations were not the first time in recent weeks when Fatah members have lashed out against efforts to bridge gaps between the parties, and they come in the wake of polling data showing that more than half of the Palestinian public believes that the Palestinian government should reject a current U.S. peace initiative. Palestinian officials have in recent weeks again rejected the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians without preconditions.

Contact The Israel Project at press@theisraelproject.org

This is the central problem in most Muslim countries: the difficult choice between a man-made, civilian, military, "infidel" government, and a totalitarian Islamic theocracy.

This latest revolution in Egypt, the second in the last two years, is a symptom of a deep-rooted problem at the heart of Islam itself: Egypt is on the verge of a civil war to bring a resolution to the never-ending tension between what Islam demands versus what the people really want.

This is the central problem in most Muslim countries: the difficult choice between a civilian, military "infidel" government, and a totalitarian Islamic theocracy. The problem is compounded when most Egyptians consider themselves both Muslim and lovers of democracy, but refuse to see that Islam and freedom cannot co-exist. How can Islam anywhere produce a democracy when freedom of speech and religion are outlawed, where there is no free and independent judiciary, and equal rights for women, minorities and non-Muslims are legally suppressed?

Islam also cannot let go of government control: since its inception, Islam has lacked the confidence in its own survival without government enforcement. As Muslim Brotherhood leader Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi stated this winter on Egyptian television, "without the 'Death for Apostasy' laws, apostasy laws, Islam would have failed with the death of Mohamed, as people would never stay in this religion otherwise." It is no coincidence therefore that Islamic law dictates that all Muslims must be ruled by Sharia, and declares that all secular governments, made by man, not by Allah, are heresy and an abomination.

While mosques are busy teaching Muslims how to carry out jihad, hate Jews and mistreat Christians, their imams allocate no time to preach the values of peace and trust as a foundation for an orderly society or civilization. As a result of such an Islamic education, Muslims who know they want freedom are unable to build the value system on which to achieve it.

Egypt's dilemma is nothing new, but the good news today is that finally there is an awakening in Egypt regarding the tyranny that Sharia law brings, especially if it is made the basis of a constitution. Despite this awakening, however, not one rebel in Tahrir Square was able openly to carry a sign saying, "Sharia must become null and void." The majority of Egyptians still believe that to say that would be an act of apostasy, punishable by death.

All current surveys still show that the overwhelming majority of Egyptians still support Sharia law, or at least say they do. This is where the problem lies: the laws of a society are the mirror of its morality. Egyptians cannot make believe that they can have both Sharia and freedom, or that their laws do not have to match their style of government and what they can feel comfortable with. According to Sharia, a Muslim head of state must rule by Islamic law, and must preserve Islam in its original form, or he must be removed from office. Islamic law leaves no choice for any Muslim leader but to accept, at least officially, that Sharia is the law of the land, or else be ousted from office. Sharia also commands Muslims to remove any leader who is not a Muslim. Because of that command, Muslim leaders must play a game of appearing Islamic and anti-West while trying to get along with the rest of the world. It is a game with life and death consequences for them.

That stricture is the reason many Egyptians today agree to keep Sharia in the constitution, even if only symbolically. But how can Egyptians be so naive to believe they can ignore the laws of their constitution? As long as Sharia is on the books, even if it is ignored, the country can never have true stability and freedom. Even with revolutions, Egyptians can only achieve cosmetic changes with no substance; changes such as, the name of the country, its flag, national anthem, or even putting on or taking off women's hijabs.

Although Egyptians were always exuberant about the removal of a regime or a dictator, they never were about a change in the religious, cultural and moral foundations of the country. Whether it is the Egyptian revolution of 1919, 1952 or 2011, the change achieved has always been superficial, or for the worse. Somehow whenever the Muslim mind comes to the underlying religious ideology that is the foundation upon which its systems are erected, it freezes.

The result is a majority of confused citizens whose trust is shattered; moral standards in conflict, and laws and the concept of reality distorted. But how long can this warped existence last undetected? So far it has succeeded for 1,400 years without collapsing, but can this latest revolution be the crack in the stranglehold of Sharia?

Egyptian secularists have achieved a great step against the Muslim Brotherhood, but will they be able to sustain it? The Muslim Brotherhood has powerful roots in the Egyptian psyche, and the Brotherhood has vowed a bloodbath against any secular government.

For any secular government to remain in power, it needs to turn tyrannical and put in jail members of the Muslim Brotherhood. This has already begun; arrest warrants against leaders and 300 members of the Brotherhood were issued within hours of the removal of Morsi.

Egypt is now back to square one; a military dictatorship is, for the moment at least, the only solution that can preserve and sustain a certain level of secularism in the face of the constant Islamic assault that human rights, freedom of religion and democracy. The assault has also been on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, on August 5, 1990, was repudiated and superseded by the Organization of Islamic Conference [OIC] in favor of the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which, in article 24, in its entirety, concludes that "All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari'ah." Article 19(d) also posits that, "There shall be no crime or punishment except as provided for in the Shari'ah."

One can only hope that this military dictatorship will not be like others, which promise elections and freedom, but remain as autocracies for decades.

Contact GWY123 at GWY123@aol.com

A new unauthorized report from an Israeli emergency service offers staggering figures of attacks against Israelis in the West Bank and Jerusalem that are rarely heard about in the media.

Hatzalah Yehudah and Shomron, a volunteer emergency medical response organization that works along with the IDF and Israeli security forces throughout Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley, compiled the report.

According to their statistics, there were 5,635 attacks in the first half of 2013 against Jewish inhabitants of the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Greater Jerusalem regions alone, including 611 molotov cocktail attacks and 5,144 rock attacks. In addition, there were 8 shooting attacks and 3 stabbing attacks. In total, the violence left 1 person dead and 171 injured, including a 3 year-old girl who was seriously injured.

Yehudit Tayar, a medic and spokeswoman for the Hatzalah organization, began translating the report into English and disseminating it two years ago. She told The Algemeiner that the reason behind her efforts was the fact that news of violence against residents in the area wasn't reaching a wider audience.

"There are so many minimized reports that people hear about-if they hear it at all," she says, adding, "we have to get the truth out."

"If there is spray painting on the side of a mosque or an Arab's tires are slashed it is on the news, but violence against us is ignored," she said.

"Can you imagine being attacked on a consistent basis and it not even being reported?"

Eytan Buchman, a spokesman for the IDF, told The Algemeiner in an email that the situation isn't perfect, but that the region is relatively safe.

"The current situation in Judea and Samaria is one of relative calm and security, particularly when compared to the previous decade," he said.

"In 2012, for the first time in over a decade, not one Israeli was killed from terrorist action in the region. This is a direct result of ongoing security operations, including tight-knit cooperation with relevant intelligence organizations, cooperation with the Palestinian security forces, the success of the Security Fence and civil/economic measures that provide an improved routine way of life for local residents."

Buchman does admit that violence in the area has increased, but said that the IDF was taking necessary steps to mitigate the threat against residents.

"Since operation 'Pillar of Defense,' security forces in the West Bank have witnessed a measured increase in acts of popular violence, including thousands of cases of projectile throwing and hundreds of Molotov cocktails," he told The Algemeiner.

"In many cases, these incidents stem from isolated activity that is difficult to project and therefore contain. The IDF has increased deployment in certain flashpoints in order to contain this violence. In addition, legal measures have been taken against offenders, with over 1,300 indictments for terrorist activity and over 850 indictments for rioting served by the Military Courts in Judea and Samaria in 2012."

Security forces have done a stellar job of thwarting larger scale terror attacks. In January, according to Hatzalah's report, security forces broke up a Hamas cell in the Hebron region which was planning to carry out out terror attacks. And in May security forces also exposed a cell under the command of Hezbollah that was planning to carry out kidnappings and other terrorist activities.

For her part, Tayar says that while the security forces have made changes, including increasing patrol units in the area, but in general she feels as if the security situation is deteriorating. "It's become worse," she says, "and our so-called Palestinian peace partners honor the terrorists and incite against us," she said, before adding, "so we'll continue with our efforts."

The Algemeiner Journal is a New York-based newspaper, covering American and international Jewish and Israel-related news. Contact Algemeiner at editor@algemeiner.com

It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts, That all sin is divided into two parts.

One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important, And it is what you are doing when you are doing something important, And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called a sin of omission

and is equally bad in the eyes of all right-thinking people, from Billy Sunday to Buddha, And it consists of not having done something you shuddha

— Ogden Nash

Writing in the Toronto Sun (published 5/16/13) Farzana Hassan claimed Daniel Pipes' most recent pronouncement on the subject, ostensibly, of "Islamic Antisemitism," was as follows:

He said the religion of Islam itself is not inherently hostile to Jews, and Muslim Antisemitism scarcely existed before the establishment of the state of Israel.

Pipes, however, subsequently claimed Hassan's account of his talk to the "Muslim Committee Against Antisemitism," was "sympathetic, but inaccurate."

Daniel Pipes doth protest Ms. Hassan's characterization far too much.

Never denying that he spoke the actual words Hassan claimed, Pipes instead provided this purely casuistic response that avoids the logical implication of his alleged words-and in fact reinforces Hassan's interpretation of their meaning!

He said "the religion of Islam itself is not inherently hostile to Jews," Not true. A sense of Muslim superiority over Jews goes back 1,400 years, to the very origins of Islam. "and Muslim anti-Semitism scarcely existed before the establishment of the state of Israel." True in the technical sense that the tropes of Christian antisemitism, including the obsessive fear of and hostility toward Jews, goes back only two centuries and only came fully into its own after 1948.

Fortunately, Pipes' own albeit quite limited and superficial writings putatively addressing the subject of "Islamic Antisemitism," date back just over 30-years. As can be gleaned, objectively, from this "oeuvre," Ms. Hassan's encapsulation of Pipes' views is consistent with what he has actually written, and argued. Indeed, as I will demonstrate, Pipes negates the very existence of Muslim Antisemitism-Muslim conspiratorial hatred of Jews, not mere (and benign) feelings of "superiority"-as an indigenous phenomenon rooted in sacralized Islamic doctrine, and manifested in Islamic history, across a continuum of almost 14 centuries.

The most striking, repeated public examples of Pipes' willful negation of the doctrinal Islam in Islamic Antisemitism were evident when the same very distinct, Jew-hating Koranic motif received broad media attention, on two occasions, 10-years apart.

During a televised discussion, June 24, 2002 with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, Pipes was asked to comment about excerpts from an interview of a three-and-a-half year old Muslim girl, Bismallah, originally broadcast on Saudi Arabian Iqra TV, May 7, 2002. The specific segment Pipes was shown for his analysis included these statements:

Basmallah: Allah's mercy and blessings upon you.

Amer [adult interviewer]: What's your name?

Basmallah: Basmallah.

Amer: How old are you, Basmallah?

Basmallah: Three and a half.

Amer: Are you a Muslim?

Basmallah: Yes.

Amer: Basmallah, do you know the Jews?

Basmallah: Yes

Amer: Do you like them?

Basmallah: No.

Amer: Why don't you like them?

Basmallah: Because.

Amer: Because they are what?

Basmallah: They are apes and pigs.

Amer: Because they are apes and pigs. Who said that about them?

Basmallah: Our God.

Amer: Where did he say that about them?

Basmallah: In the Koran.

Ignoring the child's own Koranic reference, confirmed and elaborated by the adult Muslim woman interviewer (in an immediately following portion of the interview not shown that night on Fox News, but widely available), Pipes opined:

My view is that Antisemitism of this sort is historically a Christian phenomenon [emphasis added], but, in the course of the past two generations, as a result of propaganda coming out of the Egyptian government, the Iranian government, the Iraqi government, the Saudi government of this sort, it has become pervasive. Now what's so striking about this particular film clip is that it's a 3 ½-year-old. But you hear the same words coming out of the preachers in the mosques. You'll hear it from the politicians. You'll hear it in the schoolbooks, in the schoolrooms. You'll hear it pervasively. It is...

Just over ten years later, in January, 2013, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reproduced 2010 video interviews of then popularly elected Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi during which he openly characterized "Zionists," unmistakably Jews in his parlance, as inveterately "hostile in nature," "fanning the flames of civil strife wherever they were throughout history," and being "the descendants of apes and pigs." Earlier, between 2004 and 2007 as reported by the Muslim Brotherhood's own Arabic Ikhwanonline.com (translated and published in English on 11/16/12 by The Investigative Project on Terrorism), when serving as an elected Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarian in the Egyptian People's Assembly, and/or a member of its Guidance Bureau, Morsi had enunciated the same Antisemitic (and jihadist) themes with more specific Koranic references. Ikhwanonline.com, from November 21, 2004, quoted Morsi stating:

It is confirmed by the Quran that Jews are the most hostile of men to Muslims. The Almighty says: "Certainly you will find the most hostile to those who believe are the Jews and those who are polytheists." [Koran 5: 82] The verse confirms that Jews are the most hostile enemies of the Muslims, as the Almighty says "and prepare for them all you can of power, including steeds" [Koran 8: 60], [Note: The beginning of the verse is on the Brotherhood logo] a verse which urges preparation for this enemy with all our energy to prepare us to confront him at any time; because Zionists are traitors to every covenant and convention...there is no peace with the descendants of apes and pigs, [Koran 5:60]

Daniel Pipes was interviewed by the Jewish News Service about Morsi's statements-redolent with specific Jew-hating Koranic citations-given the flurry of publicity the Egyptian President's hateful commentary had generated. Pipes offered only this threadbare "explanation," once again ignoring the specific Koranic origins of Morsi's most widely publicized citation referring to Jews as "descendants of apes and pigs."

Morsi's "descendants of apes and pigs" quote comes as no surprise, but fits into a long record of his own and of Muslim Brotherhood statements

These two episodes illustrate quite unmistakably Pipes' deliberate negation of a striking Antisemitic motif from the Koran. Worse still, on the earlier occasion, in 2002, Pipes had the temerity to recast this uniquely Islamic motif as "historically a Christian phenomenon."(Of note, in his 2003, "Militant Islam Reaches America," p. 205, Pipes refers to the re-statements of this Koranic theme about Jews by American Muslims, i.e., "sons of monkeys and pigs," as the "Nazi-like vocabulary of racism.")

Notwithstanding Pipes' Islamic negationism, and concomitant, if absurd, projection of Islamic Jew-hatred on to Christianity (or Nazism), the "apes and pigs" references to Jews, derive from motifs repeated in specific Koranic verses, the classical and modern exegeses of these verses by Islam's most authoritative Koranic commentators, and their elaboration in the canonical traditions of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Indeed, as I will also show, the overarching historical "context" within Islamdom reveals that this canonical Islamic Jew-hatred and intimately related jihadism has been actualized across a nearly 14-century continuum — past as prologue to the present.

This summary assessment is based upon my own exhaustive study of primary Islamic doctrinal and historical sources-confirmed whenever possible by contemporaneous non-Muslim primary source materials — as well as seminal analyses by the greatest Western specialists who actually took the time to study the phenomenon of Islamic Jew-hatred, including its textual basis, and resultant historical manifestations. These important scholars of Islamic Antisemitism, spanning a century from the late 19th through late 20th centuries — from Hartwig Hirschfeld in the mid 1880s, Georges Vajda in the late 1930s, S.D. Goitein in 1971, and Haggai Ben-Shammai in 1988 — have demonstrated, collectively, all of the following:

• Clear historical evidence of specific Islamic antisemitism, from the Geniza record of the high Middle Ages (10th to 13th centuries) — including the coinage of a unique Hebrew word to characterize such Muslim Jew-hatred, sinuth — published in full by Goitein as of 1971
• The content of foundational Muslim sources detailing the sacralized rationale for Islam's anti-Jewish bigotry, including Hartwig Hirschfeld's mid-1880s essay series on Muhammad's subjugation of the Jews of Medina, based upon the earliest pious Muslim biographies of Muhammad, and George Vajda's elegant, comprehensive 1937 analysis focusing primarily on the hadith (the putative words and deeds of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, as recorded by pious transmitters)
• Haggai Ben-Shammai's concise 1988 study of key examples of Jew-hatred in the Koran and Koranic exegesis

In stark contrast, Daniel Pipes published output on (allegedly) Islamic Antisemitism comprises only the thinnest-and dogmatically bowdlerized-gruel. Using both academic (JSTOR, Google scholar, Index Islamicus) and non-academic (Google, Bing, Yahoo) search engines, in addition to searches of Pipes' extensive personal website archive (www.danielpipes.org), and even writing to Pipes for any additional works of his these searches did not uncover [he declined to reply], I could find only two modest essays which broached the subject of "Islamic" Antisemitism: "The Politics of Muslim Antisemitism,"Commentary, August 1981; and "The New Antisemitism," 1992, a text submitted to the World Conference on Antisemitism and Prejudice in a Changing World, Brussels: World Jewish Congress, Jonathan R. Cohen, ed.

The latter 1992 essay elucidates Pipes' own views — which persist unmodified to this day. He accepts the idea, and its "implications," that "Muslim" Antisemitism

...is essentially an import from Europe...that [Muslim] Antisemitism is relatively superficial. It is a tool, it is an instrument to be used against Israel or other Jews. It arose as part of the Arab-Israeli conflict, specifically with Gamal Abdul Nasser in Egypt in the 1950s, and it will last only so long as it is useful.

This "profound" insight, what he terms "the heart of the matter," leads Pipes to conclude:

The phenomenon is more imported than indigenous. And I am somewhat optimistic about the possibility of change, recognizing that the last generation or two have been surrounded by anti-Semitic themes and that some of these will stick. For in contrast with Western anti-Semitism, what one finds in the Muslim world is impersonal. Few Muslims have contact with Jews, and what is emphasized is the conspiratorial dimension, the larger, the theoretical, abstract political dimension rather than personal animus.

That Pipes remains willing to pontificate at all, after his paltry, intellectually lazy, and transparently agenda-driven writings on what he terms "Islamic," or "Muslim" Antisemitism, is a galling act of hubris. The following succinct overview of painstaking research I have conducted on Islamic Antisemitism soundly debunks Pipes' slothfully assembled understandings. Not a shard of even this brief, summary evidence I adduce (reams more can be found in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism) is contained in Pipes' puny output.

The theological basis of recently deposed Egyptian President Morsi's conspiratorial, dehumanizing allegations against the Jews-egregiously ignored by Daniel Pipes — is a centralAntisemitic motif in the Koran which decrees an eternal curse upon them for purportedly slaying the prophets, and transgressing against the will of Allah (Koran 2:61, and 2:90—91, reiterated at 3:112). It should be noted that Koran 3:112 is featured before the pre-amble to Hamas' foundational Covenant.

This central motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60, and 5:78, which describe the Jews transformation into apes and swine (5:60), or simply apes, (i.e. verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been "...cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary's son' (5:78). According to the earliest sacralized, pious Muslim biographies of Muhammad (by Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Saad), just before subduing the Medinan Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza and orchestrating the mass execution of their adult males, Islam's prophet invoked this striking Koranic motif for the Jews debasement, addressing these Jews, with hateful disparagement, as "You brothers of apes." Muhammad himself also repeats the Koranic curse upon the Jews in a canonical hadith (Sunan Abu Dawoud, Book 37, Number 4322): "He [Muhammad] then recited the verse [5:78]: '...curses were pronounced on those among the children of Israel who rejected Faith, by the tongue of David and of Jesus the son of Mary'."

The related verse, Koran 5:64, accuses the Jews of being "spreaders of war and corruption" — a sort of ancient Koranic antecedent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion — invoked not only by Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, but "moderate" Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who cited Koran 5:64 during a January 2007 speech which urgedPalestinian Muslims to end their internecine strife, and to "aim their rifles at Israel."

Indeed, the Koran's overall discussion of the Jews is marked by a litany of their sins and punishments, as if part of a divine indictment, conviction, and punishment process. The Jews' ultimate sin and punishment are made clear: they are the devil's minions (4:60) cursed by Allah, their faces will be obliterated (4:47), and if they do not accept the true faith of Islam — the Jews who understand their faith become Muslims (3:113) — they will be made into apes (2:65/ 7:166), or apes and swine (5:60), and burn in the Hellfires (4:55, 5:29, 98:6, and 58:14,15,16,17,18,19).

Classical Koranic commentators such as Tabari (d. 923), Zamakshari (d. 1143), Baydawi (d. 1316), and Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), when discussing Koran 5:82, which includes the statement "Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews," concur on the unique animus of the Jews towards the Muslims, which is repeatedly linked to the curse of Koran 2:61/2:90-91/3:112.

For example, in his commentary on Koran 5:82, Tabari writes:

In my opinion, [the Christians] are not like the Jews who always scheme in order to murder the emissaries and the prophets, and who oppose God in his positive and negative commandments, and who corrupt His scripture which He revealed in His books.

Between 2004 and 2010, Muhammad Morsi repeated direct citations of or references to Koran 5:60, 5:64, and 5: 82 during interview discussions of the Jews and Israel. Morsi's understanding of these verses comports with their classical exegesis in the seminal Tafsir al-Jalalayn — meaning "The Commentary of the Two Jalals," named after its two Egyptian authors: Al-Suyuti (1445-1505), a brilliant multidisciplinary scholar; and his mentor Jalalu'd-Din al-Mahalli (1389-1459). The great contemporary Dutch Islamologist Johannes J.G. Jansen notes in his treatise "The Interpretation of the Koran in Modern Egypt," Tafsir al-Jalalayn remains one of the most popular as well as the most authoritative Koranic commentaries in Egypt.

Here are the glosses on 5:60, 5:64, and 5: 82 from Tafsir al-Jalalayn:

[5:60]...those whom Allah has cursed and put far away from His mercy and with whom he is angry — turning some of them into monkeys and into pigs by transmogrification — and who worshipped false gods. These are the Jews... "False gods" refers to Shay??n [Satan]. They [the Jews] worship him by obeying him. Such people are in a worse situation — because they will be in the Fire — and further from the right way (the Path of the Truth) [i.e., Islam].

[5:64] When their circumstances became reduced because of their denial of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, after they had previously been the wealthiest of people, the Jews say "Allah's hand is chained" — implying that He is unable to send provision to them and that He is miserly. Allah is far exalted above that. Allah continues by saying: Their [the Jews'] hands are chained — and kept them from performing good actions as a supplication against them — and they are cursed for what they say! No! Both His hands are open wide — and emphatic description of generosity, and the hands are singled out for mention since what the generous give of their property, they give with their hands — and He gives however He wills — expanding and constricting and no one can object. What has been sent down to you from your Lord increases many of them in insolence and rejection of it. We have cast enmity and hatred between them — each group opposing the others — until the Day of Rising. Each time they [the Jews] kindle the fire of war against the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace Allah extinguishes it. Whenever they try to do that, Allah repels them. They [the Jews] rush about the earth corrupting it through acts of disobedience. Allah does not love corrupters and will punish them.

[5:82] You, Muhammad, will find that the most hostile people to those who believe [i.e., the Muslims] are the Jews and the idolaters...on account of the intensity of their unbelief and ignorance and their preoccupation with following their desires.

Morsi's conjoining of this doctrinal Islamic Jew-hatred to annihilationist jihadism against the Jews of Israel is also entirely consistent with mainstream, classical Islamic tenets.

Muhammad's brutal conquest and subjugation of the Medinan Jews and their subsequent expulsion by one of his companions, the (second) "Rightly Guided" Caliph Umar, epitomizepermanent, archetypal behavior patterns Islamic Law deemed appropriate to Muslim interactions with Jews. George Vajda'sanalysis of the anti-Jewish motifs in the hadith remains the definitive work on this subject. Vajda concluded that according to the hadith, stubborn malevolence is the Jews defining worldly characteristic: rejecting Muhammad and refusing to convert to Islam out of jealousy, envy and even selfish personal interest lead them to acts of treachery, in keeping with their inveterate nature: "...sorcery, poisoning, assassination held no scruples for them."

These archetypes sanction Muslim hatred towards the Jews, and the admonition to, at best, "subject [the Jews] to Muslim domination," as dhimmis (as per Koran 9:29), treated "with contempt," under certain "humiliating arrangements."

The Koranic curse (verses 2:61/3:112) upon the Jews for (primarily) rejecting, even slaying Allah's prophets, including Isa/Jesus (or at least his "body double" 4:157-4:158), is updated with perfect archetypal logic in the canonical hadith: following the Muslims' initial conquest of the Jewish farming oasis of Khaybar, one of the vanquished Jewesses reportedly served Muhammad poisoned mutton (or goat), which resulted, ultimately, in his protracted, agonizing death. And Ibn Saad'ssira account (i.e., one of the important early pious Muslim biographies of Muhammad) maintains that Muhammad's poisoning resulted from a well-coordinated Jewish conspiracy.

The contemporary Iranian theocracy's state-sanctioned Jew hatred employs this motif as part of its malevolent indoctrination of young adult candidates for national teacher training programs. Affirming as objective, factual history the hadith account (for eg., Sahih Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 47, Number 786) of Muhammad's supposed poisoning by a Jewish woman from ancient Khaybar, Professor Eliz Sanasarian notes,

...the subject became one of the questions in the ideological test for the Teachers' Training College where students were given a multiple-choice question in order to identify the instigator of the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad, the "correct" answer being "a Jewess. "

It is worth recounting — as depicted in the Muslim sources — the events that antedated Muhammad's reputed poisoning at Khaybar.

Muhammad"s failures or incomplete successes were consistently recompensed by murderous attacks on the Jews. The Muslim prophet-warrior developed a penchant for assassinating individual Jews, and destroying Jewish communities — by expropriation and expulsion (Banu Quaynuqa and B. Nadir), or massacring their men, and enslaving their women and children (Banu Qurayza). Subsequently, in the case of the Khaybar Jews, Muhammad had the male leadership killed, and plundered their riches. The terrorized Khaybar survivors — industrious Jewish farmers — became prototype subjugated dhimmis whose productivity was extracted by the Muslims as a form of permanent booty. (And according to the Muslim sources, even this tenuous vassalage was arbitrarily terminated within a decade of Muhammad's death when Caliph Umar expelled the Jews of Khaybar.)

Thus Maimonides (d. 1203), the renowned Talmudist, philosopher, astronomer, and physician, as noted by historian Salo Baron, emphasizes the bellicose "madness" of Muhammad — Maimonides refers to Muhammad as "Meshugga" — and his quest for political control. Muhammad's mindset, and the actions it engendered, had immediate, and long term tragic consequences for Jews — from his massacring up to 24,000 Jews, to their chronic oppression — as described in the Islamic sources, by Muslims themselves.

As also characterized in the hadith, and analyzed by Vajda, Muslim eschatology (end of times theology) highlights the Jews' supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl — the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ — or according to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish.

At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjal is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered — everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree, as per the canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985) included in the 1988 Hamas Covenant (in article 7).

Promoters of modern jihad genocide have repeatedly invoked Islam's Jew-exterminating eschatology. 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, composed a 1943 recruitment pamphlet for Balkan Muslims entitled, "Islam and the Jews." This incendiary document was rife with the anti-Semitic Koranic verses cited herein, as well as Jew-hating motifs from the hadith, and concluded with the apocalyptic canonical hadith describing the Jews' annihilation.

Forty-five years later, the same hadith was incorporated into the 1988 Hamas Covenant, making clear its own aspirations for Jew annihilation.

At present, according to polling data published in July, 2011, 73% of Palestinian Muslims surveyed agree with the annihilationist dictates of this canonical hadith.

Lastly, a profound anti-Jewish motif occurring after the events recorded in the hadith and sira, put forth in early Muslimhistoriography (for example, by Tabari), is most assuredly a conspiratorial Jew-hating theme associated with "the birth pangs" of Islam: the story of Abd Allah b. Saba, an alleged renegade Yemenite Jew, and founder of the heterodox Shi'ite sect. He is held responsible — identified as a Jew — for promoting the Shi'ite heresy and fomenting the rebellion and internal strife associated with this primary breach in Islam's "political innocence", culminating in the assassination of the third Rightly Guided Caliph Uthman, and the bitter, lasting legacy of Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian strife.

Two particularly humiliating "vocations" that were imposed upon Jews by their Muslim overlords in Yemen, and Morocco — where Jews formed the only substantive non-Muslim dhimmi populations — merit elaboration.

Moroccan Jews were confined to ghettos in the major cities, such as Fez (since the 13th century) called mellah(s) (salty earth) which derives from the fact it was here that they were forced to salt the decapitated heads of executed rebels for public exposition. This brutally imposed humiliating practice — which could be enforced even on the Jewish Sabbath — persisted through the late 19th century, as described by Eliezer Bashan:

In the 1870's, Jews were forced to salt the decapitated heads of rebels on the Sabbath. For example, Berber tribes frequently revolted against Sultan Muhammad XVIII. In order to force them to accept his authority, he would engage in punitive military campaigns. Among the tribes were the Musa, located south of Marrakesh. In 1872, the Sultan succeeded in quelling their revolt and forty-eight of their captives were condemned to death. In October 1872, on the order of the Sultan, they were dispatched to Rabat for beheading. Their decapitated heads were to be exposed on the gates of the town for three days. Since the heads were to be sent to Fez, Jewish ritual slaughterers [of livestock] were forced to salt them and hang them for exposure on the Sabbath. Despite threats by the governor of Rabat, the Jews refused to do so. He then ordered soldiers to enter the homes of those who refused and drag them outside. After they were flogged, the Jews complied and performed the task and the heads of the rebels were exposed in public.

Yemenite Jews had to remove human feces and other waste matter (urine which failed to evaporate, etc.) from Muslim areas, initially in Sanaa, and later in other communities such as Shibam, Yarim, and Dhamar. Decrees requiring this obligation were issued in the late 18th or early 19th century, and re-introduced in 1913. Yehuda Nini reproduces an 1874 letter written by a Yemenite Jew to the Alliance Israelite in Paris, lamenting the practice:

...it is 86 years since our forefathers suffered the cruel decree and great shame to the nation of Israel from the east to sundown...for in the days of our fathers, 86 years ago, there arose a judge known as Qadi, and said unto the king and his ministers who lived in that time that the Lord, Blessed be He, had only created the Jews out of love of the other nations, to do their work and be enslaved by them at their will, and to do the most contemptible and lowly of tasks. And of them all...the greatest contamination of all, to clear their privies and streets and pathways of the filthy dung and the great filth in that place and to collect all that is left of the dung, may your Honor pardon the expression.

And when the Jews were perceived as having exceeded the rightful bounds of this subjected relationship, as in mythically "tolerant" Muslim Spain, the results were predictably tragic. The Granadan Jewish viziers Samuel Ibn Naghrela, and his son Joseph, who protected the Jewish community, were both assassinated between 1056 to 1066, and in the aftermath, the Jewish population was annihilated by the local Muslims. It is estimated that up to four thousand Jews perished in the pogrom by Muslims that accompanied the 1066 assassination. This figure equals or exceeds the number of Jews reportedly killed by the Crusaders during their pillage of the Rhineland, some thirty years later, at the outset of the First Crusade. The inciting "rationale" for this Granadan pogrom is made clear in the bitter anti-Jewish ode of Abu Ishaq, a well-known Muslim jurist and poet of the times, who wrote:

Bring them down to their place and return them to the most abject station. They used to roam around us in tatters covered with contempt, humiliation, and scorn. They used to rummage amongst the dung heaps for a bit of a filthy rag to serve as a shroud for a man to be buried in...Do not consider that killing them is treachery. Nay, it would be treachery to leave them scoffing.

Abu Ishaq's rhetorical incitement to violence also included the line,

Many a pious Muslim is in awe of the vilest infidel ape

Moshe Perlmann, in his analysis of the Muslim anti-Jewish polemic of 11th century Granada, notes,

[Abu Ishaq] Elbiri used the epithet "ape" (qird) profusely when referring to Jews. Such indeed was the parlance.

The Moroccan cleric al-Maghili (d. 1505), referring to the Jews as "brothers of apes" (just as Muhammad, the sacralized prototype, had addressed the Banu Qurayza), who repeatedly blasphemed the Muslim prophet, and whose overall conduct reflected their hatred of Muslims, fomented, and then personally lead, a Muslim pogrom (in — 1490) against the Jews of the southern Moroccan oasis of Touat, plundering and killing them en masse, and destroying their synagogue in neighboring Tamantit. An important Muslim theologian whose writings influenced Moroccan religious attitudes towards Jews into the 20th century, al-Maghili also declared in verse, "Love of the Prophet, requires hatred of the Jews."

Mordechai Hakohen (1856-1929) was a Libyan Talmudic scholar and auto-didact anthropologist who composed an ethnographic study of North African Jewry in the early 20th century. Hakohen describes the overall impact on the Jews of the Muslim jihad conquest and rule of North Africa, as follows:

They [also] pressed the Jews to enter the covenant of the Muslim religion. Many Jews bravely chose death. Some of them accepted under the threat of force, but only outwardly...Others left the region, abandoning their wealth and property and scattering to the ends of the earth. Many stood by their faith, but bore an iron yoke on their necks. They lowered themselves to the dust before the Muslims, lords of the land, and accepted a life of woe — carrying no weapons, never mounting an animal in the presence of a Muslim, not wearing a red headdress, and following other laws that signaled their degradation.

Here is but an incomplete sampling of pogroms and mass murderous violence against Jews living under Islamic rule, across space and time, all resulting from the combined effects of jihadism, general anti-dhimmi, and/or specifically Antisemitic motifs in Islam: 6,000 Jews massacred in Fez in 1033; hundreds of Jews slaughtered in Muslim Cordoba between 1010 and 1015; 4,000 Jews killed in Muslim riots in Grenada in 1066, wiping out the entire community; the Berber Muslim Almohad depredations of Jews (and Christians) in Spain and North Africa between 1130 and 1232, which killed tens of thousands, while forcibly converting thousands more, and subjecting the forced Jewish converts to Islam to a Muslim Inquisition; the murderous persecutions of the Jews of Egypt by al-Hakim during the early 11th century, one of which was timed for Passover in 1012; Jews in Alexandria and Cairo being pogromed and plundered in 1047, 1168, 1265, and 1324; and Sultan Baybars in the 13th century blaming Jews for starting a plague, and subjecting them to extortion, massacre, and expulsion; the 1291 pogroms in Baghdad and its environs, which killed (at least) hundreds of Jews; the 1465 pogrom against the Jews of Fez; the late 15th century pogrom against the Jews of the Southern Moroccan oasis town of Touat; the 1679 pogroms against, and then expulsion of 10,000 Jews from Sanaa, Yemen to the unlivable, hot and dry Plain of Tihama, from which only 1,000 returned alive, in 1680, 90% having died from exposure; recurring Muslim anti-Jewish violence — including pogroms and forced conversions — throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, which rendered areas of Iran (for example, Tabriz) Judenrein; the 1834 pogrom in Safed where raging Muslim mobs killed and grievously wounded hundreds of Jews; the 1888 massacres of Jews in Isfahan and Shiraz, Iran; the 1910 pogrom in Shiraz; the pillage and destruction of the Casablanca, Morocco ghetto in 1907; the pillage of the ghetto of Fez Morocco in 1912; the government sanctioned anti-Jewish pogroms by Muslims in Turkish Eastern Thrace during June-July, 1934 which ethnically cleansed at least 3000 Jews; and the series of pogroms, expropriations, and finally mass expulsions of some 900,000 Jews from Arab Muslim nations, beginning in 1941 in Baghdad (the murderous "Farhud," during which 600 Jews were murdered, and at least 12,000 pillaged) — eventually involving cities and towns in Egypt, Morocco, Libya, Syria, Aden, Bahrain, and culminating in 1967 in Tunisia — that accompanied the planning and creation of a Jewish state, Israel, on a portion of the Jews' ancestral homeland.

On May 20, 2013, Daniel Pipes declined to accept Rabbi Jon Hausman's gracious offer to host a debate between Pipes and myself (at the Rabbi's Temple Ahavath Torah, Stoughton, MA) about the nature-doctrinal and historical-of Islamic Antisemitism. Previously, I had accepted Rabbi Hausman's proposal. Having now examined Pipes' flimsy, pseudo-academic charlatanism on the subject matter of the proposed debate, I can fully understand his decision.

Ted Belman is a retired lawyer and the Editor of Israpundit. He made aliya from Canada last year and now lives in Jerusalem, Israel. Contact him at tedbel@rogers.com

1. You know things are REALLY going well when Haaretz and the radical Left in Israel are hysterical. And hysterical they are this week. It seems there is a new Knesset initiative to regulate and restrict the funding from foreign sources of the legions of picayune anti-Israel leftist NGOs and "organizations" in Israel. Basically these groups all have the same Israeli members, who migrate from group to Potemkin group to make it look like there are oodles of such organizations. These "organizations" could not exist at all were it not for the funding they get from hostile foreign organizations and governments. It is a bit like pro-Nazi organizations being allowed to operate in the UK and the US in 1942 where they are funded by the Third Reich and by "organizations" operating in Germany.

Organizations representing foreign interests are required to be registered as agents or lobbyists for foreign powers in the US and in some other places. A few years ago Knesset Members from the Non-Left proposed requiring that leftist NGOs in Israel provide disclosure of the sources of their funding. The Left sobbed that this was anti-democratic and Bibi Netanyahu had a sudden attack of cowardice and ordered the Likud not to support the initiative. That bill would not have stopped the trouble-makers' funding, just expose it.

Now a new bill is being introduced into the Knesset, sponsored by Knesset Member Ayelet Shaked, from the "Jewish Home" party of Brother Naftali. Here is her web page https://www.knesset.gov.il/mk/eng/mk_eng.asp?mk_individual_id_t=904 and her email, should you wish to send her a Yasher Koach, is ashaked@knesset.gov.il.

Her bill evidently goes further than the earlier Due Disclosure proposal that Bibi shot down and it would restrict governmental funding from abroad for some anti-Israel NGOs operating in Israel. Specifically, it would "limit foreign governmental funding to Israeli NGOs that oppose Israel's Jewish character or Israeli democracy, advocate boycotting Israel or trying its soldiers in international courts, or incite to racism or terrorism."
(http://www.timesofisrael.com/facing-ngo-bill-lefts-sweeping-opposition-could -prove-counterproductive/) The Left is whining that the bill seeks to harm "human rights" groups, and the "human rights" groups in question are far-Leftist anti-Israel propaganda groups who care about human rights about as much as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Hamas do so.

As I say, anything that makes the Left hysterical must be something of sublime value, beauty and importance. The best manifestation is the Haaretz editor, and it goes well beyond the usual Stalinist-era screeching inside Haaretz. See it here:
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/ignorant-of-democracy-extreme-right-is-after-ngos-once-again.premium-1.535094 According to the editors of the Palestinian newspaper printed in Hebrew:

"The extreme right (sic) has been obsessively trying to introduce nationalist content into the education system, exclude Israel's Arab minority and make a mockery of the very idea of democracy by subordinating it to religion in the guise of Zionism. To all this must now be added an idiotic new initiative, which, if successful, would eliminate freedom of expression in Israel and thwart legitimate criticism."

And what is objectionable about the bill? Haaretz replies: "The bill states that it would be enough for a single employee of such an NGO to do one of five things — call for a boycott, divestment or sanctions against Israel, urge the indictment of Israel Defense Forces soldiers in an international court, reject Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state, incite to racism, or support armed struggle against Israel by a terrorist organization or enemy state — to deprive the NGO that employs him of the right to raise more than NIS 20,000 from a foreign political entity." To which we can only respond, Well Duh!

Then, after comparing Israel to the world's worst fascist regimes, Haaretz adds: "But Weinstein was wrong: The racist coalition set up by Benjamin Netanyahu is not only jealous of those benighted countries, but it wants to surpass them. Shaked, in her ignorance of democracy, is convinced that by shattering the mirror that reveals the crimes of Israel's policy of occupation and its discrimination against its own Arab minority, and by halting the activity of NGOs that still care about the rights of Israeli citizens, the world will come to believe what's said in Israeli propaganda films. Shaked's proposal undermines the basic civil rights of freedom of speech and freedom to express an opinion."

We sure hope Shaked also introduces a bill to shut down any newspaper advocating those forms of treason as well! Ignorance of democracy? Coming from the Israeli pre-perestroika Pravda?

Note how often Haaretz tosses about the word "racism" in the editorial and "news coverage" of the proposal. Indeed it is hard to find a Haaretz Op Ed or editorial these days about ANYTHING that is not based upon accusations that Jews and Israelis are "racists." Haaretz has never spoken out against the "racism" inherent in things like Arabs and Leftists cheering on suicide bombers, calling for Iran to nuke the Jews, or demanding that Jews be denied self-determination and have their country annihilated.

I would like to propose that we all adopt as a general strategy the following: Anyone who uses the word "racism" to refer to Jewish attitudes and treatment of Arabs should be automatically presumed to be an anti-Semite and a traitor. Accordingly nothing else that person says should be considered worth listening to and the proper response to all claims coming from that person should involved references to his or her mother.

2. Meanwhile, as you know every week or two Haaretz runs one single token non-leftist Op-Ed article so that its apologists can pretend Haaretz is pluralistic and so that they can roll their eyes in mock shock whenever anyone says that Haaretz is about as neutral and pluralistic as the national newspapers of Cuba. Ironically, this week's Op Ed by Zionist Israel Harel may do the best job of debunking the above Haaretz editorial. So naturally Haaretz does not run it in its English newspaper and web page, only in Hebrew, at http://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/.premium-1.2068514.

Harel starts by pointing out that Shaked's bill would not restrict the treasonous activities of the leftist anti-Israel NGOs in Israel, merely restrict the funding from abroad that they may accept. The United States under Roosevelt and Churchill's Britain may have jailed and banned treasonous organizations supporting the enemy in time of war, but nothing of the sort appears in the Shaked proposal.

Harel adds that no one objects to Israeli campaign finance laws that restrict the fund raising activities of legitimate political parties so why should anyone object to Shaked's proposal regarding funding for tiny renegade anti-Israel NGOs pretending that they care about human rights. He singles out Peace Now, which he says may have once been a more or less bona fide Israeli political organization but is today little more than a lackey for its foreign funding masters, who pull the Peace Now puppet strings today.

3. One of the worst Jewish anti-Semites on earth just kicked the bucket and the world is far better off without him and his ilk.

Ilan Halevi was an anti-Israel radical Maoist who lived in Israel for a while in the 60s and 70s. He joined the small Maoist-Trotskyite splinter "Matzpen," some of whose members were later involved in an espionage-terrorist ring. Halevi then left for France and became an "executive member" in the PLO. See http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/ilan-halevi-jewish-member-of-the-palestine-liberation-organization-dies-in-paris.premium-1.535053

Note how Haaretz is censoring the page so that only pro-Matzpen talkback comments are being allowed to show.

4. I had the strangest experience this past week. I was wandering on the Haifa beach and suddenly saw this ancient oil lamp on the beach. I rubbed it and this Djinn or genie popped out.

Vie geht's, said the genie to me. Thanks for releasing me, kinderloch. In exchange I have decided to grant you 4 wishes.

Ok, says I. As my first wish, I would like to ask that the Syrian opposition start shooting and blowing up Hezb'Allah terrorists.

Your wish is my command, says the genie, although he pronounced "wish" as a Yiddish-sounding VISH.

Ok, next I want the Egyptian military to cease power and start shooting the Islamofascists from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Hamas terrorists from Gaza.

No sooner said than done, boychick, said the genie, directing me to look at page http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4403706,00.html as proof.

Ok, now I would like to see a Matzpen traitor dispatched and sent off to meet his maker, say I, and meeting Stalin as his "maker" in hell is an acceptable arrangement.

Kenne Hurre, it's done and he's toast, says my genie. But that leaves you just with one last wish.

So let me get this straight, say I. The Syrian opposition is blowing up Hezb'Allah terrorhoids. The Egyptian army is shooting Islamofascists and terrorists. Arafat's "Jewish" executive board member from Matzpen is recycled. Right?

Absolutely, says the djinn.

Well, in that case, says I, as my 4th wish I think I'd like a diet coke.

Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments — both seriously and satirically — on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. Write him at splaut@gmail.com His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com.

Popular libertarian and gun rights' activist is arrested July 9 after publishing YouTube video loading and cocking a shot-gun between the White House and Capitol building.

"The United States Park Police are terrorist thugs," said Liz Delish, the producer of Adam vs. The Man, a daily video podcast featuring peaceful activist, Adam Charles Kokesh. USPP functions as a full-service federal law enforcement agency with responsibilities and jurisdiction over federal public parks.

Kokesh released July 4 a short YouTube video calling for an open carry march on Washington for July 4, 2014. The video was allegedly taken at Freedom Plaza, a few blocks from the White House which falls under the jurisdiction of USPP.

During the 21-second video, Kokesh loaded and cocked what appears to be a shotgun, which launched a federal investigation because carrying a firearm on public property is a felony at our nation's capitol.

Nine days later, at approximately 7:45 p.m., the Kokesh residence located in the town of Herndon, Va., agents of the federal government and local police raided it and they took him into custody. He is held at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center.

Delish, who was inside the Kokesh residence when the raid occurred, said, "After two loud knocks at the front door and a brief pause, the police broke down the door with a battering ram."

Once the police were inside, they threw a flash grenade into the foyer area, she said. "I thought someone got shot." A flash grenade is a non-lethal explosive that produces a blinding flash of light and loud noise, devised to temporarily disorient a person's senses.

There were eight adults inside of the home and one pet, she said. "Luckily Adam's pit bull Baloo was safely secured in his crate at the upstairs of the home."

"The 30 to 40 police officers that entered had lasers, body armor and creepy-looking helmets," she said.

Delish said she was shaken-up by the incident that lasted six hours. "I went towards the back of the home to exit, and there were four or five police officers on the back porch with drawn firearms."

The adults were ordered into a small front room, their cell phones were taken, and they were summarily handcuffed without being Mirandized, she said. Miranda is a warning given by police to criminal suspects in police custody before they are interrogated to preserve the admissibility of their statements in a court of law.

"Their behavior was unprofessional and their search of our persons and the home gratuitously unconstitutional," she said.

"They ransacked the two-story home, and pushed items into piles," she said. "One of the officers purposefully knocked over a glass of water on my possessions."

One of the adults had a Glock 30 pistol in his possession, Delish said. "He immediately informed the police and they retrieved his firearm."

"Later he was punched in the back of the head for asking to use the rest room," she said. "I witnessed Kokesh being kicked by a police officer while he was handcuffed and seated."

"The police used every opportunity they could to rough us up," she said.

In 2007, Kokesh received national attention for being an outspoken opponent of U.S. military intervention in Iraq. He was an eight-year Marine veteran and former corporal in the Iraq War.

"Adam and I had a very busy day," said Darrell Young, the producer of Adam vs. The Man. "I stepped out to get something to eat and returned to a barrier of police officers two blocks away from Adam's house."

All passersby were being stopped and questioned, he said. "Some were allowed through, some were not."

Young said that because he is a black man they would not let him through. "When I tried to get around them, a cop car tried to run me off the road."

The amount of force used was outrageous and excessive, he said. "The amount of money spent in this endeavor could have been better served feeding hungry children."

Young said he identified 30 to 40 police officers, three or four helicopters, special equipment, undercover officers, and a light armored military-style vehicle.

"There are very few people who have the courage to stand up for our constitutional rights," said Danny Panzella a libertarian activist and radio host from New York.

Kokesh is risking his own freedom for us, he said. "He is being brave and should be respected." "We are completely committed to non-aggression," he said. "Law enforcement operates by intimidation."

Kokesh is making a powerful statement, Panzella said. "If he is convicted of a crime he will be a martyr. If he is acquitted he will be a Second Amendment hero."

Second Amendment advocates, tea party patriots, Republicans and constitutionalists should seize on this opportunity to promulgate reasonable laws that do not put innocent people in cages, he said. "If there is no victim, there is no crime."

Contact Daily Events at HumanEventsDaily@email.humanevents.com

WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY!

*Our Phones ~ Wireless

*Cooking ~ Fireless

*Cars ~ Keyless

*Food ~ Fatless

*Tires ~ Tubeless

*Dress ~ Sleeveless

*Youth ~ Jobless

*Leaders ~ Shameless

*Relationships ~ Meaningless

*Attitude ~ Careless

*Wives ~ Fearless

*Babies ~ Fatherless

*Feelings ~ Heartless

*Education ~ Valueless

*Children ~ Mannerless

Everything is becoming LESS,

Even though Obama promised U.S. More...

In fact we are ~ Speechless

And our PRESIDENT is ...

CLUELESS!

and might I add, USELESS!

Contact ARNYBARNIE at ARNYBARNIE@aol.com

Well, I did write in my last posting was that "there are often conflicting reports on any given situation, so that nailing down the facts is a challenge."

But did I have to make the case myself?

My correction today has to do with the identity of Egypt's newly appointed interim prime minister. I wrote on the 9th that it was Samir Radwan.

But it isn't.

I didn't pull this name out of the air. I read on reputable English language Egyptian sites, first that he was the front runner, approved by the Islamist Nour party, and then that he had been offered the position. Silly me. I assumed that was it.

The real new interim prime minister is Hazem El-Beblawi (below). Like Radwan, he is a liberal economist and served as finance minister (although after Mubarak was brought down); he was also approved by the Nour party. He is now busy moving ahead and trying to form a government.

Perhaps most significantly, he has secured commitments of billions from Gulf states, which should serve to keep things together until a viable economic plan can be put in place.

~~~~~~~~~~

According to the NYTimes, $12 billion has come in already from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait. These are states delighted to support a counter to the brotherhood.

The Times story is actually fascinating:

"The streets seethe with protests and government ministers are on the run or in jail, but since the military ousted President Mohamed Morsi, life has somehow gotten better for many people across Egypt: Gas lines have disappeared, power cuts have stopped and the police have returned to the street.

"The apparently miraculous end to the crippling energy shortages, and the re-emergence of the police, seems to show that the legions of personnel left in place after former President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011 played a significant role — intentionally or not — in undermining the overall quality of life under the Islamist administration of Mr. Morsi.

"When Mr. Mubarak was removed after nearly 30 years in office in 2011, the bureaucracy he built stayed largely in place. Many business leaders, also a pillar of the old government, retained their wealth and influence.

"Despite coming to power through the freest elections in Egyptian history, Mr. Morsi was unable to extend his authority over the sprawling state apparatus, and his allies complained that what they called the "deep state" was undermining their efforts at governing.

"While he failed to broaden his appeal and build any kind of national consensus, he also faced an active campaign by those hostile to his leadership, including some of the wealthiest and most powerful pillars of the Mubarak era."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/11/world/middleeast/improvements-in-egypt-suggest-a-campaign-that-undermined-morsi.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

If this report is accurate, there may be less instability inherent in Egypt's situation than what is being described by commentators.

~~~~~~~~~~

The US, it should be noted here, has decided it will honor its commitment to deliver four F-16 jets to Egypt in the coming weeks, part of a package of 20 jets to be supplied in total this year. The first four were delivered in February.

The deal, made originally with Mubarak in 2010, was inherited by Morsi, and is not being overturned now. Unrest in the country remains a concern, but better fighter jets in the hands of the military than a Brotherhood regime.

With this announcement, it becomes clear that the US has decided not to consider the change of regime a "coup." There's a great deal of facile talk about responding to the demands of the people.

Whether Egypt needed (or needs) these jets at all is another story. But it must be understood that this is part of the $1.3 billion in aid supplied to Egypt by the US: aid money allocated to Egypt is turned back to the US for the jets.

~~~~~~~~~~

El-Beblawi is not the only one moving ahead: The Brotherhood continues to try to stir up the unrest to the maximum, while the military is playing tough, bringing charges against Brotherhood leaders.

The military is gearing up for a major operation against Islamists in the Sinai, which Israel is expected to approve. A report, based on an ostensible Egyptian security source, is being floated that the military has killed 32 Hamas gunmen who were in the Sinai. But this is not confirmed — and in fact is denied in several quarters.

Whether it's the case or not, Hamas has clearly taken a hit in terms of support with the downfall of Morsi and the ramifications of this have yet to play out.

~~~~~~~~~~

A rocket was launched into the area of southern Israel adjacent to Gaza this afternoon. No one was injured. There is speculation as to whether Hamas, post-Morsi, is trying to flex its muscles.

~~~~~~~~~~

According to experts at IHS Jane's Intelligence Review who have studied satellite imagery, Saudi Arabia has a (hitherto unknown) missile base deep in the desert, with ballistic missile launching pads that have markings pointing to Tel Aviv and to Tehran.

Seems the Saudis — who despise and fear Iran and, as a result, have increased their "discreet back channel communications" with Israel — are covering all their bases, or what they perceive to be their bases. While they are major instigators of terrorism, I do not think they are about to launch missiles on us.

A deputy editor at IHS Jane's Intelligence Review qualified the assessment thus:

"We cannot be certain that the missiles are pointed specifically at Tel Aviv and Tehran themselves, but if they were to be launched, you would expect them to be targeting major cities. We do not want to make too many inferences about the Saudi strategy..."

The Saudi armaments are dated and it is believed an update is in process.

http://www.benzinga.com/news/13/07/3745987/ihs-reveals-saudi-arabias-undisclosed-missile-site#ixzz2YlP199U7

~~~~~~~~~~

Here's yet another example of the ever-elusive nature of "truth":

Maariv has reported, — relying on "sources in Washington" — that Netanyahu "was willing to release 40 Palestinian prisoners with blood on their hands... even without any Palestinian commitment to return to the negotiating table."

According to this report, the US and Israel have both already informed Abbas about the impending release.

However, according to Haviv Retig Gur, writing in the Times of Israel, a senior official in the prime minister's office says this report has "no basis in reality."

~~~~~~~~~~

George Will has always been a savvy and literate commentator of the world scene, and I am pleased to share what he says here, in a piece called "Egypt's preferable tyranny":

"Former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi knows neither Thomas Jefferson's advice that 'great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities' nor the description of Martin Van Buren as a politician who 'rowed to his object with muffled oars.' Having won just 52 percent of the vote, Morsi pursued his objective — putting Egypt irrevocably on a path away from secular politics and social modernity — noisily and imprudently.

"It is difficult to welcome a military overthrow of democratic results. It is, however, more difficult to regret a prophylactic coup against the exploitation of democratic success to adopt measures inimical to the development of a democratic culture.

"Tyranny comes in many flavors. Some are much worse than others because they are more comprehensive and potentially durable. The tyranny portended by Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood promised no separation of politics and religion, hence the impossibility of pluralism, and a hostility to modernity that guaranteed economic incompetence. Theologized politics, wherein compromise is apostasy, points toward George Orwell's vision of totalitarianism

— 'a boot stamping on a human face — forever.'"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-egypts-preferable-tyranny/2013/07/10/84b049a8-e8c0-11e2-a301-ea5a8116d211_story.html

~~~~~~~~~~

Then, please! see Harold Rhode's important and insightful article, "Honor and Compromises in Middle East Leadership" (emphasis added):

"Why couldn't Egypt's deposed President Morsi admit mistakes? Why couldn't he 'compromise' with the military and stay in power? And what can one learn from Morsi's behavior about the concept of leadership in the Middle East?

"In the Middle East, leaders almost never admit that they made mistakes: doing so would bring shame...on them. Shame in the Middle East is about what others say about you — not what you think of yourself. While to some extent this is true in Western culture, in general Westerners are more susceptible to feelings of guilt, rather than shame. The Western concept of compromise — each side conceding certain points to the other side in order to come to an agreement — does not exist in the Middle East. What is paramount is preserving one's honor...People will go to any lengths to avoid shame; they are prepared to go to jail, risk death, and even kill family members (usually females) to uphold what they perceive as their honor and that of their family. The consequences of dishonor are always permanent and always collective, often extending to the entire family and even the entire clan.

"This battle to avoid shame at all costs indicates why Morsi, Erdoğan, Saddam, Assad, Arafat, and Abu Mazen — when they either have painted themselves into a corner — or have been painted into one — can never back down.

"If our policy-makers could understand this cultural imperative, they might better be able to understand why we constantly fail to achieve our policy goals, and how better to achieve them.

"...Both Arafat and Abu Mazen, both of whom have led the Palestinian people, cannot sign any agreement with Israel to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict and recognize Israel and a Jewish state. When, at Camp David in 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat 97% of everything said he wanted, Arafat jumped up and said that he could not sign such an agreement: he 'didn't want to have tea with Sadat' — a reference to the Egyptian leader who had been assassinated at least partially for having signed an agreement with Israel. Arafat knew that had he signed, he would have been regarded as having backed down from a confrontation and therefore shamed; been considered a traitor by his people, and most likely killed.

"U.S. President Clinton, in a display of how little he really understood about leadership and the values of the Middle East, looked on at Arafat's reaction in amazement. But no compromise would have been possible. Egypt, during its negotiations with Israel for the peace treaty signed in 1981, held out for 100% of what it asked for — and got it. Had Arafat gotten 100% of what we wanted, Israel would no longer exist.

"The same holds true for the Palestinian Authority's current leader, Abu Mazen, to whom, later, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert offered an even better deal than had been offered to Arafat. Condoleezza Rice, like President Clinton, also looked on in amazement at Mahmoud Abbas's reaction...

"The same condition continues to hold true today. Why Secretary of State Kerry and the Obama administration believe they can persuade Abbas sign an agreement guaranteeing Israel's right to exist in any form is astonishing. These leaders can lead only so long as they are not perceived as a shamed sell-out and traitor."

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3844/honor-compromise-middle-east

~~~~~~~~~~

Please share this far and wide, my friends, with people who require this education — particularly decision-makers.

What galls me is why people such as Clinton and Rice, who experienced astonishment at the PLO intransigence, do not stand up now and tell Americas — leaders and electorate — that negotiations are just not going to work. Bill Clinton, in particular, is a duplicitous enabler, smiling at his wife when she was secretary of state, and at Obama, when in truth he knows better. Terribly naive, I guess, to expect honesty, forthright pronouncements for the sake of the nation. They just play the game. Let's pretend, and let's pressure Israel.

~~~~~~~~~~

Rhode mentions Erdogan as one of those unable to back down. Remember the Netanyahu "apology," which distressed many of us when it was made? It had been predicted that this would bring a normalization of Israeli-Turkish relations. It has not happened and is not likely to happen.

And now Erdogan is struggling with his own (relatively low key) unrest.

~~~~~~~~~~

Michael Oren is leaving his position as Israeli Ambassador to the US in September. He will be replaced by Ron Dermer, a very good man. Dermer has been a close advisor to the prime minister, to his right.

Today Oren gave an interview to Haaretz; it typifies the sort of positions he's taken that make me glad he's leaving.

Stating that Obama is a "true friend" to Israel, he said that the president was misunderstood:

He "tried to make peace with the Arab world...This was misunderstood in Israel...

"And when an American president goes to Egypt and goes to Turkey and doesn't come to visit us, it causes a sense of insecurity..."

Excuse me? What a gross oversimplification of the situation. Oh that I would have the time and space necessary to expand upon this.

Oren was then asked questions about Netanyahu's readiness to go to war against Iran in spite of world objections. He said there is no escape from our responsibility as a sovereign nation to act on our own behalf. He believes the prime minister is capable of handling such a mission.

"Netanyahu now faces a Ben-Gurion-type dilemma. The question he faces is similar to the question that faced Ben-Gurion in May 1948 and the question that Levi Eshkol faced in May 1967." [Re: whether to go to war]

http://www.timesofisrael.com/oren-netanyahu-certainly-capable-of-handling-iran-threat/

And so?

Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il And visit her website at www.arlenefromisrael.info

Israel won't be challenged by the conventional forces of a coalition of enemy states for the foreseeable future.

That's the critical working assumption that serves as the basis for decisions now in the process of being made that will determine what the IDF will look like for years to come.

What a convenient and comforting premise.

Then again, how much comfort can one really get from the assessments of experts who failed to accurately predict any major development in the region in the last half a century?

Yes. As of this afternoon it seems that Sunni-Shia animosity take precedence over the Arab-Jewish conflict.

But what about tomorrow?

Yes, the Syrian army has no doubt been eroded by their civil war. But there's a lot more to the region than Syria.

The armies in our neighborhood have huge quantities of advanced conventional weapons for land, sea and air based combat.

And there is absolutely no way to predict with any degree of reasonable certainty who or what will be giving the orders to those armies within the relevant planning horizon.

It would appear that the plans for a "slimmer smarter" IDF includes devoting huge resources for a second squadron of F-35Is — a platform whose very justification of existence is predicated on the working assumption that in the coming decades no one is going to come up with a gizmo that facilitates identifying, targeting and shooting down what at this time is hard to pick up using instruments now deployed in the field.

Question: is this a rational working assumption?

Hint: F-35's can't defend against enemy F-35's or their Russian equivalents. So you can be pretty sure that everyone is working in earnest to develop this gizmo.

But there's another equally troubling aspect of the F-35's that demands consideration: almost all, if not all, maintenance on the F-35's will be performed by the United States.

This puts America in the position that it can essentially veto any major Israeli operation either by withholding services or by making it known that If the operation is launched that Israel can expect to experience service delays.

That's bad enough. But consider this: There are Israeli operations that the White House may welcome behind closed doors as it officially distances itself from them. Everyone else in the world also will know that Israel relies on American maintenance services for the F-35's. The world, therefore, may take the position that any Israeli operation using F-35's has Washington's approval.

[Please note: Washington doesn't have to announce a freeze — though this has, indeed, happened in the past. Instead it can simply have the American companies notify Israel of delays for ostensibly technical reasons.]

How could this impact the use of the F-35's?

How will this very overt dependence impact US-Israel relations?

As we mark the 40th anniversary of the consequences of failed "concepts", the Yom Kippur War, it would be most appropriate that we take special care to avoid finding ourselves driven by some kind of herd mentality to embracing false "concepts" today.

Richard H. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses are a regular feature on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com.

After four months in intensive care units, an Israeli 3-year-old seriously injured in an Arab rock-throwing attack was able to return home, if only for two short days.

Adele Bitton spent this past weekend with her family but returned to her rehabilitation center, where she has been staying since May, for treatment and rehabilitation on Sunday.

"Adele is improving day by day," her mother told Israel's Channel 2 news website. "Her medical condition is stable... Every day brings more good news."

The little girl was critically injured in March near the West Bank community of Ariel, when a truck forced to divert from its lane due to Arab rock throwing collided head on into the car she was riding in. Her mother and two sisters who were also in the car escaped with light wounds.

The Algemeiner Journal is a New York-based newspaper, covering American and international Jewish and Israel-related news. Contact Algemeiner at editor@algemeiner.com

As the Muslim sacred month of Ramadan began on Monday, President Obama extended a statement of greeting to the Muslim community:

With the start of the sacred month of Ramadan, Michelle and I extend our best wishes to Muslim communities here in the United States and around the world.

For the world's 1.5 billion Muslims, Ramadan is a time for thoughtful reflection, fasting and devotion.

It is also an opportunity for family and friends to come together and celebrate the principles that bind people of different faiths--a commitment to peace, justice, equality and compassion towards our fellow human beings. These bonds are far stronger than the differences that too often drive us apart.

This month also reminds us that freedom, dignity and opportunity are the undeniable rights of all mankind. We reflect on these universal values at a time when many citizens across the Middle East and North Africa continue to strive for these basic rights and as millions of refugees mark Ramadan far from their homes.

The United States stands with those who are working to build a world where all people can write their own future and practice their faith freely, without fear of violence.

In the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that millions of Muslim Americans enrich our nation each dayserving in our government, leading scientific breakthroughs, generating jobs and caring for our neighbors in need.

I have been honored to host an iftar dinner at the White House each of the past four years, and this year I look forward to welcoming Muslim Americans who are contributing to our country as entrepreneurs, activists and artists.

I wish Muslims across America and around the world a month blessed with the joys of family, peace and understanding. Ramadan Kareem.

It is noteworthy that, in referring to the "millions of refugees" who "mark Ramadan far from their homes," Obama is likely referring to the Palestinian cause, particularly the refugee issue, which is the ultimate stumbling block in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The numbers of Palestinian refugees from Israel's war of independence — which was not launched by Israel, but by Palestinians and neighboring Arab countries — has been inflated for decades in a calculated attempt to deny Israel legitimacy.

As for the president's statement that Ramadan is "an opportunity for family and friends to come together and celebrate the principles that bind people of different faiths — a commitment to peace, justice, equality and compassion towards our fellow human beings," the Christians in Egypt who have been scapegoated and attacked in the wake of Morsi's ouster by the Egyptian military likely are not experiencing much of that tolerance alluded to by Obama.

Similarly, during the month of Ramadan, Arab television channels air "entertaining" programs such as Khaybar, which is the name of the Jewish community in the Arabian Peninsula conquered by the prophet Muhammad in 628 CE. The docudrama concerns relations between Muslims and the Arab tribes of Medina, as well as with the Jews of Medina and Khaybar and their expulsion from that area.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reports indicate that, in early 2013, the show "focuses on the social, economic, and religious lives of the Jews, including their politics, their plots, and the way they managed and controlled the [Aws and Khazraj Arab] tribes." In addition, the show depicts "the [Jews'] hostility and hatred towards others, along with their treacherous nature, their repeated betrayals, and their despicable racism."

Ironically, Muslims are expressing outrage toward President Obama on Twitter following his Ramadan good wishes on Monday.

The Washington Times reports that some Muslims are doubting the sincerity of Obama's wishes.

"My mom just told me that Barack Obama wished all Muslims a happy Ramadan, I told her that maybe he should stop killing us too," one user tweeted.

Many Muslim critics of Obama complained about the forced feeding of Guantanamo Bay detainees during Ramadan fasting, as well as drone strikes in the Middle East.

"I am assuming Obama's greetings to Muslims wrt Ramadan are also directed at Muslims he will be force feeding at #GTMO during that month," another user tweeted.

Another tweeted, "Obama wishing Muslims a happy Ramadan while he drone bombs them is like Hitler wishing Auschwitz a happy Hanukkah #samedifference #ramadan."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called upon Obama to halt the practice of force feeding.

"We believe it's wrong to force feed at any time but it is particularly upsetting to do it through Ramadan," CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper told The Guardian.

Sergio Tezza can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net

Last March 22, at the tail-end of President Obama's visit to Israel, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu "apologized" over the phone to Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident-in which Israeli commandos, in fighting for their lives against a club- and knife-wielding mob of Turkish Islamists, killed nine of the attackers.

The apology drew sharp criticism, mainly from Israeli and U.S. conservatives. Some blamed Netanyahu for allegedly cravenly giving in to Obama; some blamed Obama for allegedly pressuring Netanyahu into the move.

I didn't join the critics at the time. First of all, there was Netanyahu's wording. He told Erdogan he "apologized for operational errors that may have led to a loss of life." In fact, it's agreed in Israel that the commandos' landing on the ship was poorly planned, and if done differently could have averted a violent eruption.

That doesn't mean Israel actually had anything at all to apologize for. It didn't; the Turkish side had instigated the aggression. But Netanyahu did not say he "apologized" for the fact that his soldiers had defended themselves, which indeed would have been deplorable. It was a nuance worth noting.

More importantly, though, I thought the "apology" might be justifiable as a realpolitik move if it led to restored Israeli-Turkish strategic cooperation. The critics pooh-poohed that possibility as well, stressing Erdogan's nature as an anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic Islamist.

They had good foundations for saying that; but the history was a bit more complicated. Although Erdogan and his Islamist AKP had first taken office in 2003, the strategic relations had continued after that point. In 2005 Erdogan visited Israel with a large group of businessmen, held talks with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, laid a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, and said Iran's nuclear program was a threat not just to Israel but to the whole world.

True, relations started to sour before the Mavi Marmara when Erdogan-not a huge fan of Israeli self-defense against terrorists-objected to Israel's 2008-2009 operation against Hamas in Gaza. Already in October 2009, Erdogan barred Israel from participating in an aerial exercise with Turkey, the U.S., and Italy.

By last spring, though, it seemed that common Israeli and Turkish concerns about the Syrian crisis and Iran-greased by some propitiatory words from Netanyahu-could lead to at least a low-key resumption of ties. In April it was reported that Israeli national security adviser Yaakov Amidror was in Ankara to get Turkey's agreement, in exchange for Israeli favors, to Israeli use of a key Turkish airbase. An Israeli military source called Turkey, before the 2010 crisis, "our biggest aircraft carrier."

By now, though, there have been no further reports in that vein. Israeli-Turkish talks have stalled, and there has been no normalization of relations or exchange of ambassadors. It appears that, regarding Erdogan's disposition toward Israel ca. 2013, the critics were right.

Indeed, as Walter Russell Mead notes, Erdogan and his AKP have — quite in contrast to any warming toward Israel — been heavily playing the anti-Semitism card in reacting to recent Turkish protests against Islamist rule. Erdogan attributes the protests to "dark forces" and the "interest lobby." While these are understood as anti-Semitic code words, other elements in his party have been more explicit.

Mead quotes from an article in The Turkey Analyst:

the main pro-AKP daily newspaper Yeni Şafak claimed that it had uncovered evidence that the...protests had been orchestrated by the "Jewish lobby" in the U.S. and even published the names and photographs of a number of prominent Jewish Americans who it alleged were the leaders of the conspiracy. The Yeni Şafak article was publicly endorsed by a succession of leading members of the AKP... On July 1, 2013, the Turkish Cihan news agency quoted Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay as publicly accusing the "Jewish Diaspora" of responsibility for the...protests...

Erdogan himself has not explicitly identified Jews as being responsible... Yet neither has he condemned or attempted to distance himself from the claims. Indeed, he has instructed several state institutions...to launch an investigation to uncover evidence of suspicious financial trading by foreign financiers before and during the protests and to identify the foreign "dark forces" he is convinced are trying to undermine him.

Given the timing of Netanyahu's telephone chat with Erdogan last March - at the end of Obama's visit - it can reasonably be inferred that, whether or not Netanyahu deserves to be blamed for going along with it, the Israeli "apology" and supposed reconciliation was Obama's idea. Has Obama learned anything from the failure of that idea?

The question is not meant to be rhetorical. Last week another Islamist party, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, was overthrown. As with Erdogan, Obama had shown considerable sympathy toward the Brotherhood. The fact that he's now continuing military aid to the Egyptian army that overthrew them suggests Obama has realized that the Brotherhood was not such a positive force after all.

The AKP, unlike the Brotherhood, has been steadily arrogating power to itself for a decade, and it seems unlikely that the Turkish anti-AKP protests can go as far as the Egyptian anti-Brotherhood protests went. The next Turkish national elections, though, are in 2015. Can Obama start seeing the Turkish picture more clearly, as he and his administration seem (belatedly) to be reading it better in Egypt?

The article above was written by P. David Hornik who is is a freelance writer and translator living in Beersheva and author of the book Choosing Life in Israel. This article appeared July 11, 2013 on Frontpage Magazine and is archived at
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/196544/obamas-israeli-turkish-detente-goes-bust-p-david-hornik

Reuters reports that Syria and Iran will both pursue seats on the U.N. Human Rights Council later this year. There "will be 14 seats available for three-year terms [that begin] in January 2014."

Of those 14 seats, four seats will be up for election among the "so-called Asia group" of council members. The Middle Eastern and Asian countries vying for those seats include China, Iran, Jordan, Maldives, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Vietnam.

UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer responded to this news by saying, "Countries that murder and torture their own people must not be allowed to become the world's judges on human rights."

He pointed to recent inroads both countries have made at the U.N. to show that diligence will be required now more than ever: "Because both regimes were recently elected to other U.N. human rights panels-Iran on the women's rights commission and Syria on UNESCO's human rights committee-we cannot take anything for granted."

Sergio Tezza can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net

History teaches us that a sustained and coordinated international response is required to combat such grave threats to international peace and security.

As EU foreign ministers prepare to meet later this month in Brussels to determine whether a consensus exists to declare Hezbollah — or part of it — a terrorist organization, five disparate developments have converged to document the Iranian-Hezbollah terrorist connection — and to make the compelling case for the EU to not only designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, but to undertake a panoply of anti-terrorist remedies against both Iran and Hezbollah.

First, on the eve of the first anniversary of the bombing of a tourist bus in Bulgaria last July 19 that killed six people — including five Israelis — and injured dozens more, Bulgarian authorities have confirmed once again Hezbollah's responsibility for this attack.

Second, in its annual Country Reports on Terrorism, the US State Department documented "a clear resurgence of Iran's state sponsorship of terrorism" and that of "Tehran's ally Hezbollah." The report finds that "Hezbollah's terrorist activity has reached a tempo unseen since the 1990s."

Third, recent court cases in Kenya and Nigeria convicting Iranian and Hezbollah operatives of involvement in terrorist activity are evidence of the expanding Iranian- Hezbollah terrorist network in both East and West Africa, and demonstrate how Africa can become a beachhead for terrorism against American, European and Israeli — as well as African — targets.

Fourth, the Iranian-Hezbollah strategic partnership has intensified its involvement in Syria — and its complicity in crimes against humanity against the Syrian people — while Syria itself is increasingly an Iranian protectorate.

Indeed, this week, the United Nations Security Council called for "all Lebanese parties" to withdraw from Syria. Due to Russian objections, Hezbollah was not mentioned by name, but it is clear that the Security Council was referring to the thousands of Hezbollah fighters who have been helping Bashar Assad combat rebel forces.

Finally, Argentinean Special Prosecutor Alberto Nisman — who has spent the last eight years investigating the bombing of a Jewish cultural centre (AMIA) in Buenos Aires in 1994, which killed 87 people and injured more than 300 — released a 500-page report last month documenting the Iranian-Hezbollah penetration of Latin America that has been used "to execute terrorist attacks whenever the Iranian regime decides so, both directly or through its proxy, the terrorist organization Hezbollah."

In an eerie but not unrevealing coincidence, the Bulgarian bombing took place on the 18th anniversary of the AMIA attack, which the Argentinean minister of justice described to me as the greatest terrorist atrocity in Argentina since the end of the Second World War.

In his report, Special Prosecutor Nisman notes "the distinctive terrorist pattern created by the ayatollah's regime, which is characterized by the dual use of diplomatic officers, cultural or charity associations and even mosques" to plan, orchestrate, carry out, and provide cover for terrorist operations.

Indeed, as we approach the 19th anniversary of the AMIA bombing, Nisman's exhaustive 800-page report from 2006 bears recall both for its finding of fact and conclusions of law regarding the AMIA terrorist bombing, and for its nexus to the current spate of terrorist attacks targeting Jewish and Israeli nationals.

First, Special Prosecutor Alberto Nisman concluded that the mass terrorist bombing was conceived, planned and ordered by the "highest echelons in the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran." In other words, this was not the act of "a radical faction" within Iran. It was a state-orchestrated act of mass terror.

Accordingly, the Argentinean state prosecutors called for national and international arrest warrants to be issued for former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani and former members of his government, including thenminister of intelligence and security Ali Fallahian, then-foreign minister Ali Velayati and the former general commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Mohsen Rezai.

Interestingly enough, two of the eight preapproved candidates in the Iranian presidential election were the same Mohsen Rezai and Ali Velayati who are the subjects of INTERPOL Red Notices in connection with their roles in the 1994 bombing.

Second, the report documented the central role of Hezbollah in carrying out the AMIA attack, characterizing it as the "terrorist proxy of the Iranian regime." As such, it called for the arrest of Imad Mugniyeh, the head of the Foreign Security Service of Hezbollah at the time of the attack. The report further identified the driver of the vehicle used in the suicide bombing attack as being a Hezbollah operative.

Third, the report stressed — something which is often overlooked or forgotten — that the attack must be seen as an act of anti-Jewish terrorism. "Any interpretation of the terrorist attack that ignores this salient characteristic," they wrote, "runs the risk of sinning by omission."

Fourth, the report referred to the vast Iranian intelligence and operational structure that had "infiltrated" Buenos Aires, while documenting the extra-territorial terrorist tentacles of the Iranian regime.

Included in this structure were the Iranian Embassy and extremist elements in Shi'ite mosques identified in the report. In addition, the report noted that Iranian ambassadors in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay departed from their respective embassies a few days prior to the attack.

Finally, and again with ominous implications for Iran's nuclear weaponization program, Special Prosecutor Nisman wrote: "We can also prove that a pivotal motivation for the attack was Argentina's decision to cancel the contracts for providing nuclear technology and arms to the Islamic Republic of Iran."

In particular, as referenced above, the Argentinean terrorist bombing presaged the increasing and compelling evidence of Iranian and Hezbollah footprints in a series of terrorist attacks throughout 2011 and 2012 — and even into 2013 — which spanned five continents, and has included countries such as Kenya, Turkey, Cyprus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Singapore and the US.

Given the clear and compelling evidence of the escalating Iranian state sponsorship of international terrorism — and of the complicity of Hezbollah — the question arises: What can the international community do to combat this dangerous wave of international terror? And what must the international community do to hold the perpetrators to account, lest a culture of impunity continue to encourage terrorist acts? First, all states have the responsibility to invoke the legal, diplomatic, economic and political instruments at their disposal to confront Iranian terrorist aggression. These instruments include, but are certainly not limited to, increasing bilateral and multilateral diplomatic and economic sanctions; the mobilization of political pressure to isolate the Iranian regime as a pariah among the nations; the naming and shaming of the Iranian perpetrators and their Hezbollah proxies to combat plausible Iranian deniability of their culpability; and the bringing of these perpetrators to justice.

Second, and more specifically, state parties to the Genocide Convention should initiate interstate complaints before the International Court of Justice against Iran — also a state party to the Genocide Convention — for its incitement to genocide, a standing violation of the convention.

Third, states must hold Iran accountable for its attacks against diplomats, pursuant to the Islamic Republic's obligations under Article 13 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons, including Diplomatic Agents, which it ratified in 1978.

Fourth, the international community should invoke the panoply of legal remedies against the Iranian regime and its terrorist agents, including: States should list the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, an organization that has been at the vanguard of the Islamic Republic's campaign of state terrorism, as a terrorist entity; the Argentinean judiciary's decision — and resulting INTERPOL arrest warrants — should be enforced; civil suits should be instituted where appropriate against Iran and its terrorist agents for its perpetration of acts of terror; and, the principle of universal jurisdiction should be invoked to hold former Iranian leaders — under indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity — to account.

Fifth, Hezbollah and its proxies must be held accountable through increased and enhanced sanctions, blacklisting and the like. Indeed, the EU must finally blacklist the Hezbollah terror group, as Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands have done, lest it make a mockery of the rule of law and encourage further Hezbollah terrorism.

Sixth, Israel — as the leading target for this Iranian wave of terror — should be included in anti-terror cooperation discussions and international forums, such as the recently established US-sponsored Global Counter — Terrorism Forum. It is shocking that Israel was excluded from such a forum given not only the horror of its experience, but the extent of its anti-terror expertise. Global security and cooperation efforts must include Israel if they are to be effective and successful for all concerned.

Simply put, the recent wave of terrorist attacks must serve as a wake-up call for the international community, which must act to combat this culture of incitement, terror and impunity. History teaches us that a sustained and coordinated international response is required to combat such grave threats to international peace and security. We must act now to hold Iran and Hezbollah to account, lest more lives be lost.

Daily Alert is a digest of hyperlinked news and commentary on Israel and the Mideast. Contact Daily Alerts at dailyalert@list-dailyalert.org

The PA considers water and waste as weapons against Israel, not as areas of cooperation.

It comes back again and again: The canard that Israel is denying West Bank Palestinians water rights negotiated under the Oslo Accords.

Haaretz returns to the issue every once in a while with stories about water supply disruptions in the Palestinian Authority, Israeli confiscation of Palestinian water tanks in the Jordan Valley, or Palestinian Water Authority reports about "disproportionate" water allocations to settlements.

You have to read the fine print to discover that illegal Palestinian tapping into Israel's water lines and massive Palestinian water wastage are the causes of the problem. You have to study the issue in depth to discover that it is not Israeli "occupation policy" but Palestinian political resistance against joint water management and cooperation that is responsible for the slow development of the Palestinian water sector. The PA considers water and waste as weapons against Israel, not as areas of cooperation with Israel.

For too long, Israel has failed to respond in detail to Palestinian accusations of Israeli "water apartheid" which are ubiquitous in the UN and NGO world. Only recently has the civil administration and the Israel Water Authority, along with one of Israel's top hydrologists, Prof. Haim Gvirtzman, begun to fight back with properly documented counterclaims.

The newly released studies show clearly that that Israel has fulfilled all of its obligations according to the agreements it signed in 1995 with the Palestinian Authority (and in fact has exceeded them), while the Palestinians are wasting tremendous amounts of water while refusing to utilize modern water conservation or sewage treatment methods.

In an exceptional study (http://besacenter.org/mideast-security-and-policy-studies/the-israelipalestinian-water-conflict-an-israeliperspective-3-2/>) published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Gvirtzman shows that large differences in per capita consumption of natural water between Jews and Arabs that existed in 1967, when the administration of Judea and Samaria was handed over from Jordan to Israel, have been reduced over the last 40 years and are now negligible.

He thoroughly refutes Palestinian accusations of inequitable and discriminatory Israeli water policies.

The Palestinian Authority consumes 200 million cubic meters of water every year, with Israel providing more than 50 m.c.m. of this — which, under the Accords, is more than Israel is supposed to provide a full-fledged Palestinian state under a final-status arrangement.

Nevertheless, the Palestinian Authority claims that it suffers from water shortages in its towns and villages due to the Israeli occupation and it cites international law in support of its claims. These claims grandiosely amount to more than 700 m.c.m. of water per year, including rights over the groundwater reservoir of the Mountain Aquifer, the Gaza Strip Coastal Aquifer and the Jordan River. These inflated demands amount to more than 50 percent of the total natural water available between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

But Gvirtzman, of the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University (who has for years been part of the Israeli team for water coordination with the PA), demonstrates that the current division of natural fresh water resources between Israel and the Palestinians is fair. Israel's population stands at 7.2 million, five times the actual West Bank Palestinian population of 1.4 million. Proportionately, Israel controls 1,200 m.c.m. of the available natural fresh water, and the PA 220 m.c.m. In per capita terms, this works out to about 160 metric cubes of water per person per annum in both Israel and the PA.

As for settler water use, well, Israel sends into the West Bank for Palestinian usage far more water than settler communities use.

Statistics released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and the Palestinian Water Authority for World Water Day this past March, according to Gvirtzman, are fabricated.

Straight-out lies. In complete contradiction of the PA's concocted data, Gvirtzman shows that every Israeli citizen pays more for his or her water — in order to subsidize Israel's sale of water to the Palestinians at discount prices. In fact, residents of Ariel and Ma'aleh Adumim (not to mention Tel Aviv and Haifa) pay twice as much for their water as residents of Nablus and Ramallah pay for their water — if the latter bother to pay anything at all.

But most of all, Gvirtzman's BESA Center report accuses the PA of doing almost nothing to preventing massive leaking in its domestic pipelines; almost nothing to implement modern water conservation techniques; and nothing to recycle sewage water for irrigation.

In fact, many Palestinian farmers routinely overwater their crops through old-fashioned, wasteful flooding methods. Generally, they don't pay their own water bills, so they don't care to conserve. (The PA uses international donor money to pay for this waste.) Moreover, at least one-third of the water being pumped out of the ground by the Palestinians is wasted through leakage and mismanagement — by the Palestinian Water Authority's own estimates.

The PA euphemistically calls this "unaccounted for water."

Worse still, no recycling of water takes place in the Palestinian Authority and no treated water is used for agriculture. By contrast, in Israel about half of all agriculture is sustained by treated waste water. In fact, Israel's use of treated waste water, its desalination activities, and its measures to reduce water losses in the water system add 800 m.c.m. per year to its water supply, amounting to one-third of Israel's total water usage.

At the same time, 95 percent of the 56 m.c.m. per year of sewage produced by the Palestinians is not treated at all. Palestinian sewage flows untreated into the streams and valleys of the West Bank, and infiltrates into the Mountain Aquifer, polluting it for Jews and Arabs alike. Some 17 m.c.m. per year of raw Palestinian sewage flows into (pre-67) Israel too.

Only one sewage plant has been built in the West Bank in the past 15 years, despite there being a $500 million international donor fund available to the Palestinians for this purpose, and despite the fact that Israel has practically begged the PA to build these sewage plants. Only very recently did the PA agree to accept World Bank funding for wastewater treatment plants in Hebron and Nablus.

Even when Israel builds a sewage pipeline, like the Wadi Kana trunk line to collect waste water from several communities in the Kalkilya district and treat the sewage in Israel, the PA declines to cooperate. It has not connected the 11 Palestinian towns in the area to this new sewage line.

"The Palestinians generally refuse to build sewage treatment plants," Gvirtzman says. "The ugly truth behind all the anti-Israel propaganda is that PA is neither judicious nor neighborly in its water usage and sewage management."

Unfortunately, the international community has allowed the PA to get away with this hostile behavior; to continue its strategy of noncooperation with Israel; to flout all logical standards of professional conduct.

With Israel's mega-water desalinization plants coming online, Israel will soon have more than enough water for its own needs as well as sufficient water for sale to the PA. "But first, the PA needs to become a responsible actor," says Gvirtzman. "It must prevent water wastage, collect real fees from its citizens for water usage, and deal professionally with its sewage. It must also stop stealing from Israel's wells and pipelines, while running around the world falsely accusing Israel of stealing Palestinian resources."

Indeed, the PA has violated its water agreements with Israel by drilling over 250 unauthorized wells, which draw about 15 m.c.m. a year of water, and by connecting these pirate wells to its electricity grid.

Moreover, the PA has illegally and surreptitiously connected itself in many places to the water lines of Israel's Mekorot national water company — stealing Israel's water. (That's why the civil administration recently confiscated some PA water tanks in the Jordan Valley.)

The civil administration points out that the PA has barely begun to tap into the Eastern Aquifer in the West Bank (which was allocated to PA use by accord with Israel), from which it could produce another 60 m.c.m. per year. The Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee has approved the drilling of 70 water wells by the PA for this purpose, yet more than half of the approved wells have not yet been drilled. This would put a grand total of 260 m.c.m. of water per year at the disposal of the PA.

The Palestinians also have rejected on political grounds a proposal which would have created a water desalination plant in Gaza specifically to meet Palestinian needs. The US had set aside $250m. for the project, which again could have yielded a huge increase in the amount of available water for the Palestinians.

But hey — it's much easier to steal water from Israel and simultaneously complain that Israel is drying out West Bank Palestinians.

Which leaves us with the following question for John Kerry and the international community that is so earnestly trying to impress upon Israel the necessity of establishing a Palestinian state: Can you guarantee us that your much-touted Palestinian state will be any more responsible than the Palestinian Authority has been in cooperating with Israel in so many vital civilian areas, such as water and waste management? Or, might Israel have reason for concern that a Palestinian state will be even more nasty and belligerent?

Daily Alerts is a digest of hyperlinked news and commentary on Israel and the Mideast. Contact Daily Alerts at dailyalert@list-dailyalert.org