| HOME | Featured Stories | June 2006 Blog-Eds List | Background Information | News On the Web |
Opinions And Editorials By Our Readers
|
CHARITY ENDS UP IN JEWISH LEADERS' OWN POCKETS
Posted by Buddy Macy, June 30, 2006. | |||
|
This was published June 7, 2006 Gravely Imperiled, And Those Who Were Expelled Ten Months Ago Remain In Severe Need. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has announced that Israel will retreat from 95% of Judea and Samaria in order to create an independent Hamas-PLO Islamic terrorist state in the Biblical heartland of the Jewish people. This treacherous retreat will leave tiny Israel with borders that are only 10 miles wide. Even Abba Eban, the extreme left-wing former Israeli foreign minister, once called these indefensible borders "Auschwitz lines." And Golda Meir, the former Prime Minister from the socialist Labor party, once said that any Jew who supports a retreat to such borders would have to be a "traitor." For 2,000 years, millions of Jews were tortured and murdered because they did not have a Homeland in which to return. Now, the holy refuge of Israel, itself, is in grave jeopardy as never before. But most leaders of American Jewish establishment organizations not only do not raise their voices against this plan of national surrender - these Jewish leaders enthusiastically support the proposed suicidal Israeli retreats, as well as the expulsion of up to another 100,000 Jews from their G-d-given Jewish homeland...while refusing, as a whole, to assist the more than 9,000 Jewish refugees from the expulsion of last August from Gush Katif and northern Samaria. Jewish leaders with exorbitant salaries challenged If Jewish leaders need more than $200,000 per year to motivate themselves to help their fellow Jews here and in Israel, they are in the wrong "business!" For the past 25 years, prior to this past February, I had made thousands of phone calls, soliciting donations from Jewish individuals to help their fellow Jews locally, in Israel and around the world. As was the case with thousands of other solicitors throughout North America, I made these calls as a volunteer. It is time the charitable Jewish public confront the leaders of American Jewish organizations, including the executive directors and other professionals of the Jewish Federations, under the auspices of UJC (United Jewish Communities), and question the appropriateness of accepting large salaries while performing the work of charity: salaries that are paid from charitable donations. Upon completing my research, I have determined that there are more than 40 American-based Jewish organizations in which the top leader has received $200,000 or more per year in total compensation (TC). Listed below are the names of the heads of various Jewish non-profit organizations who have received more than $250,000 in TC for the fiscal year ending on the date provided:
Upon reviewing these large salaries, one might argue that they are much less than could be obtained from working in the private sector, and that they are lower than those paid at other non-profit organizations. My response to these arguments is that the salaries should be viewed from a moral perspective, one that embraces the very spirit and intent of the mitzvah of tzedakah. Is it moral to gain wealth from the charitable gifts of others (that were to a large degree solicited by unpaid volunteers)? Would the donors have given their gifts if they knew of the large amounts of money that were to go to the salaries of the top professionals? In addition, it is my contention that the relatively large salaries of Jewish leaders that are generated from small, medium and large charitable donations, encourage the recipients of that compensation to maintain the status quo, whether consciously or unconsciously. It can be assumed that individuals making 3,4,5 and even 7 hundred thousand dollars annually, wish to retain their jobs. Thus, they are more likely than not to avoid controversy, and to discourage dissent and other original and creative thought. In regard to Israel, it has been the case since the creation of the Jewish State that American Jewish charitable organizations tow the Israeli Government line, no matter how obviously misguided, immoral and self-destructive it appears to be. Any individual or group that challenges that policy takes the risk of being ostracized, or worse. While the top Jewish leadership in North America has become very comfortable financially, the expelled Jews from Gush Katif and northern Samaria continue to suffer tremendously, ten months after their expulsions from their homes and land. And, the looming expulsions of up to 100,000 more Jews under Olmert's "disengagement" turned "convergence" turned "consolidation" turned "re-alignment" plan, would place these Israeli citizens in horrendous conditions, while putting the State of Israel's very existence into serious question. Perhaps the leaders would have spoken out on behalf of their suffering brethren and would be speaking out against Olmert's plan of national suicide, had they not had so much to lose. Hoping and praying for justice for the more than 9000 Jewish refugees, and for the prevention of suffering of another 60,000 to 100,000 of our fellow Jews in Israel,
Published June 9, 2006 Two days ago I sent out a letter "exposing" the salaries of specific American Jewish leaders. Since that time, I have received quite a few emails in response to my report/commentary. The vast majority are extremely positive, though that had been expected, as my long list of email addresses is skewed towards like-minded individuals. However, I did receive four emails that are critical of my writing. Of the four, two were personal in nature, and two were in defense of the salaries of the leaders. I find those four replies quite fascinating, not for what they include, but for what they are missing. None addressed the issue of helping the Jewish refugees who are suffering tremendously, ten months after being kicked out of their homes, and from their land. And, none of the critical emails included anything about the future expulsion of up to 100,000 Jews, should Mr. Olmert, G-d forbid, have his way. I hope my email has sparked discussions and communications in the United States and in Israel -- not about whether my "attacks" were warranted, or about who or what I will "attack" next -- no, I hope my email has encouraged those in positions to effect positive change in Israel (which, by the way, is everyone of you who received the email), to have discussions with others and act, together, to end the suffering of our fellow Jews in Israel, and to prevent Mr. Olmert from executing his expulsion plan; one that would produce unimaginable suffering of our People. To the individuals I mentioned by name, and to all of the professionals and lay leaders of Jewish organizations: This is your moment to shine. We, Jews, look to you to help our fellow brothers and sisters in Israel, who, up until now, have for the most part been ignored and abandoned by their brethren. We rely upon you to end their suffering, and to prevent the suffering of tens of thousands more of our flesh and blood. Shabbat shalom,
Published June 19, 2006 A response to my email to Ronald Lauder Dear Ms. Bodner, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Lauder, Thank you for your June 12, 2006 response to my email. It has been copied and pasted, in its entirety, at the bottom of this email. Ms. Bodner, you wrote: "...But first the facts. Of every dollar it raises, JNF sends 81% to its programs. Only 19% goes to cover administrative costs and fundraising expenses. Never satisfied, JNF [ed. Jewish National Fund] is working to bring those costs in even lower. Ms. Bodner: From the 2004 JNF Annual Report, within the "Your Dollars at work in Israel" section, the following projects and percentages of dollars are listed: Land and Community Development - 24%; Tourism - 10%; Research - 3%; Water Resources and Rehabilitation - 27%; Education - 6%; Security - 9%; and Ecology and Forestry - 21%. The good thing is, the individual percentages add up to 100%. The bad thing is, the 19% for administrative costs and fundraising expenses is not included in that 100%. If "only" 19% goes to administrative and fundraising, shouldn't you have been "actually proud" to have it included in the section, re-entitled, "A Full 81%* of Your Dollars at work in Israel"? *Perhaps, less than 80%, after deducting the money spent on Zionist education in the U.S., mentioned above. On the JNF website (www.jnf.org), within the section entitled, "A Message from Ronald S. Lauder - #2 in a Series," is written the following: "I have traveled all over the world, seen great cities and mesmerizing landscapes, but there is no sight more breathtaking than the Negev desert. Here the history of our people shouts from every mountain and the hope for our people's future beckons from every valley." With all due respect, Mr. Lauder, "the history of our people shouts from every mountain" and hill in Judea and Samaria (where lies Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, the cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and the source of the Dead Sea Scrolls), from where you and other extremely wealthy North American and Israeli businessmen support the expulsion of 60,000 to 100,000 of our fellow Jews. More from, "A Message from Ronald S. Lauder - #2 in a Series": "Haruv sits on its temporary site while its permanent home beckons from a hilltop, waiting for the infrastructure to be created. Residents live in temporary caravillas, and work and go to school in nearby Kiryat Gat." Mr. Lauder: Don't you find this description to be a slight bit smug and callous? The "temporary caravillas" are mentioned in passing, as if they are resort homes suitable for a more-than-comfortable existence. How about including some of the reality behind those tiny, cardboard-thin shelters, that sometimes lack electricity and running water? And, why no mention of the Negev trailer camps for mostly former farmers? Also, what about the 113 families who, ten months since their expulsions from Gush Katif, are still living in hotels, guest houses and tent sites? Regarding the work and school nearby: You neglect to inform the reader of the 50% unemployment rate among the expellees. Have all of the adult residents living in the temporary caravillas at Haruv found work? You fail, too, to mention that many of the Jewish refugee children have attended three or four schools since their odyssey began last August, and that a significant number of them suffer from traumatic and post-traumatic stress symptoms as a result of being physically removed from their homes and communities more than 10 months ago.
And, in case you do not trust one source:
Back to Jodi Bodner's email:
Additionally, JNF raised millions for the evacuees from Gush Katif and helped clear land for hothouses, funded temporary homes and together with its partners is moving them into new communities so they can rebuild their lives. and Ronald Lauder's "A Message from Ronald S. Lauder - #2 in a Series" from www.jnf.org: "Jewish National Fund has embarked on Blueprint Negev Ms. Bodner: You wrote in your email to me, "You are right to demand oversight." In response to your encouragement, I request the following from you, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Lauder:
Ms. Bodner, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Lauder: The Jewish refugees from Gaza and northern Samaria are suffering tremendously, more than ten months after the expulsion from their homes and land. The worldwide Jewish community holds you, in addition to the other major Jewish organizations, responsible for their welfare. In addition, we would hold you and the other major American Jewish organizations responsible, should Mr. Olmert expel up to another 100,000 Jews from their homes and land. I look forward, with great interest, to receiving the requested documentation, information and written vows of "non-benefiting" by the eleven gentlemen mentioned above. Most sincerely,
Below is Ms. Bodner's entire response to my email, and my email to which she responded: Dear Mr. Macy, [ed. received 6/12/06] |
|
NEW YORK TIMES: STOP ME BEFORE I EDITORIALIZE AGAIN!
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 30, 2006. |
|
As if an article seriously discussing whether Iran's president had actually called for Israel's destruction, and a vicious review showing anti-Israel bias by Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Erlanger[1] weren't enough, the New York Times had another silly editorial on June 17. Basically its argument goes like this: Just because Hamas and Fatah are engaged in a near-civil war while trying to show how each can kill more Israelis and make more radical statements is no reason to conclude that there is not a chance for real progress in peace negotiations. The editorial also repeats the old, and by now should be discredited, idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so globally important that it shapes every other issue in the Middle East, and indeed to a large extent in the whole world. The Los Angeles Times recently said the same thing, warning that somehow the U.S. position in Iraq depended on a resolution of this issue, without explaining how this made any sense.[1] In other words, just because your potential negotiating partner has no effective government, is ruled by genocidal terrorists, launches dozens of missiles at you, and demands you be wiped off the face of the earth is no reason not to believe that they are unready to make peace. The problem at this point is that rather than analyze the problem in serious intellectual and political terms, there is an obsession that: a) this issue is the core of everything that happens in the Middle East and of terrorism, and that b) it can be fairly quickly resolved peacefully. This belief is not subject to any rational consideration. Well, it should be. By the way, in good Times fashion, Israel's building a fence and defining its claimed border is equated to "armed thugs" fighting it out. Remember, Israel can never be portrayed as better than the Palestinians in Times editorials. Here is a wonderful example of the Times' idea of an evenhanded approach, "Rockets are raining down again on innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians, inflaming passions on both sides." In addition, the Times accepts the idea that much or most international terrorism arises from the Palestinian issue. This sort of leaves out the experience of the past five years that revolutionary Islamist Jihadism is the cause (remember Usama bin Ladin?). Of course, the Palestinian issue is one motivating factor in international terrorism but this is not the 1970s of PLO airplane hijacking. I would put the Palestinian issue as no more than 10 percent of the issue, and that is probably an exaggeration. What is also fascinating, and typical, in the Times editorial is the lecturing of political groups in a tone so far removed from the real world. It is nice that the Times calls on Hamas to recognize Israel and on Arab states to pressure them to do so. But does anyone believe either of these things are going to happen? What should be done if the targets of the Times' "good advice" do not pay attention? (Listen, Mr. Stalin, why don't you stop gobbling up Eastern Europe? Hey, Mr. Hitler, be nice to Czechoslovakia!) Here is the point at which serious policy advice must come into it. But the Times does not want to engage in this practice, partly because the writers of its editorials seem to have little sense of how strategy and policy work, also because they do not want to draw the logical conclusion: there is no chance of a peace agreement, and the world should support Israel in defending itself against terrorists and extremists. What is even more shocking is the Times' lack of knowledge about the issues on which it is writing. It urges Hamas to accept the Beirut declaration, which, the newspaper is apparently unaware, demands that Israel admit all Palestinians who want to live there. In other words, the Beirut declaration--which Hafiz al-Asad's Syria and Saddam Hussein's Iraq had no trouble accepting--is the old phased formula for destroying Israel, not making real peace with it. It is equally amazing that the Times accepts at face value the old myth of Arab state devotion to the Palestinians. Of course, it says, no one expects that Arab states will abandon the Palestinians to their financial plight. In fact, they have done so for the last 12 years. Only five percent of aid to the Palestinian Authority came from all Arab lending institutions and states, putting the oil-rich countries collectively right up there with Norway. The Times has not learned that the Palestinians are not the center of Arab world considerations. Finally, it is amusing that, as credentials giving it the right to ask Arab states for a favor, the Times cites its own frequent criticism of Israel. But clearly no matter how often the Times bashes Israel, Arab states are not going to be impressed. How about a dose of reality and real fairness from what thinks of itself as the world's leading newspaper? Notes: 1. Previous E-Blogs * New York Times: Stop Me Before I Editorialize Again: June 30, 2006 |
|
The New York Times
There's a barely concealed wish among many old Mideast hands these days to just walk away from the steadily deteriorating Israeli-Palestinian situation. Armed thugs from Fatah are fighting it out with armed thugs from Hamas. Israel is building unilateral fences and defining unilateral borders. If the two sides do not really want to negotiate with each other, the argument goes, there's nothing much outsiders can do to help. That temptation to walk away needs to be strongly resisted. As bad as things are now, they can get a whole lot worse, and almost certainly will if the outside world averts its attention. Already, rockets are raining down again on innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians, inflaming passions on both sides. And when those passions explode, the deadly consequences won't be limited to Israelis and Palestinians alone. They never have been in the past, and are even less likely to be in a world of satellite television, ubiquitous Internet access, multinational terrorism and increasingly long-range missiles. Further, there is something very important that the outside world, particularly the Arab and Islamic world, can do to help. It can make plain to the Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority that if it means to become the legitimate international voice of the Palestinian people, and a true government in the community of nations, it will have to accept the minimal international ground rules already in place. These include renouncing terrorism, acknowledging Israel's existence as a sovereign nation and abiding by formal agreements previously signed by lawful Palestinian negotiators. Those are ground rules that have already been accepted by Egypt and Jordan and by the Arab League as a whole in its 2002 Beirut peace initiative. They need to be accepted by Hamas, but not as some kind of ideological concession. Hamas must see them as an admission ticket tithe real world, a necessary rite of passage in the progression from lawless opposition to a lawful government. Hamas has repeatedly heard this demand from the United States, Europe and Israel, and has repeatedly ignored it, even when it has been backed by halts in vitally needed economic assistance. Hearing it from Arab and Islamic neighbors, in the form of friendly persuasion, would be harder for Hamas to dismiss. It also could prove easier for Hamas to accommodate. This page has not hesitated to call on Washington, as Israel's most important ally, to encourage Israeli leaders to keep the door open to an eventual negotiated peace. In the same spirit, we call on the leaders of Arab and Islamic states to speak firmly and constructively to Hamas. No one expects these countries to remain silent about the sufferings of the Palestinian people or abandon them to their now desperate financial plight. But with support comes leverage, and true friends of the Palestinian people need to start using that leverage to talk straight with Hamas. Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center university. His co-authored book, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, (Oxford University Press) is now available in paperback and in Hebrew. His latest book, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, was published by Wiley in September. Prof. Rubin's columns can now be read online at: http://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/column.html. |
|
ON THE STRIP: WHERE TO GO FROM GAZA?
Posted by National Review Online (NRO), June 30, 2006. |
|
An NRO Symposium
|
|
As Gaza flares up with tension, violence, and rumors of worse, National Review Online gathered a group of Mideast experts asking them: Can anything be done to prevent more violence? Is there anything constructive to be done -- and by whom? Michael Freund Less than a year after pulling out of Gaza, Israeli forces are back again, hunting down Palestinian terrorists and attempting to rescue one of their kidnapped comrades. The only thing surprising about the return to Gaza is that it took this long to occur. Ever since the withdrawal, the Palestinians have been firing rockets on a near-daily basis into southern Israel, making life unbearable for tens of thousands of Israeli citizens. Israel's retreat created a vacuum, which al Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups quickly set out to fill, paving the way for Hamas to take control. The flow of weapons smuggled in from Egypt has soared, and Gaza has rapidly become the perfect launching pad for enemies of Israel and the West. At this point, the best thing Israel can do is to stay put in Gaza, flushing out the terrorists while creating and patrolling permanent security zones adjoining the frontier, such as the Philadelphia Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border. Only by maintaining an enduring physical presence in the area can Israel ensure that Gaza does not become a hotbed of fundamentalist strife. And only by reasserting its control can Israel provide its citizens with the security they rightly deserve. -- Michael Freund served as deputy director of communications under former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He is currently a syndicated columnist for the Jerusalem Post. Dore Gold When I used to spend a great deal of time with Ariel Sharon between 2000 and 2003, he would always say to me: "Never put yourself in a position that you only have two choices when you are under a threat: going to war or doing nothing." But that is precisely Israel's situation today. Israel's southern town of Sdeirot and the Western Negev have been struck with over 500 Qassam rockets -- in a blatant escalation of unprovoked attacks since Israel withdrew lock-stock-and barrel from the Gaza Strip. Clearly this escalation did not come about because of some political "grievance" against Israel due to its Gaza presence, which had been removed, but rather from the sense of victory that Hamas and the forces of jihad sensed from Israel's decision to pull out last August. In the meantime, the Gaza Strip has become a new center for global jihadi groups including Hezbollah and al Qaeda. The situation cannot be alleviated then by diplomatic initiatives, and the illusory hope that internal Hamas led by Ismail Haniyya is a potential peace partner if he and his colleagues break away from Khaled Mashaal's branch of Hamas in Damascus. Gaza Hamas, in fact, expressed its regrets for the loss of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and is cut from the same ideological cloth as Hamas overseas. Additionally, deterrence of terrorist groups hiding in densely populated areas does not work; the civilian casualties that can be caused are simply untenable. There is no stable deterrence balance when there is no responsible government on the other side. But there is what strategists used to call deterrence by denial: cutting off the enemy's capabilities. In this sense, stabilization will only be achieved by isolating Gaza, and preventing its further reinforcement from the supporters of global jihad, whether by suitcases full of cash or Katyusha rockets. Syria must be made to understand that it will pay a price if it continues to harbor the Hamas leadership and to reinforce the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. These are hard but necessary measures. Diplomacy should press Egypt to be more forceful in blocking the Sinai-Gaza border. Indeed, increased Egyptian responsibility in Gaza and Jordanian responsibility in the West Bank may be the only long-term effective option instead of the Palestinians' own failed political system, particularly if the Hamas regime collapses. In the meantime, it is necessary to recognize the errors of the past that occurred with Gaza disengagement and not just repeat them again in the West Bank. -- Dore Gold was the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations in 1997-99. His book, Hatred's Kingdom exposed Saudi Arabia's financial ties to Hamas and international terrorist groups. Emanuele Ottolenghi The flare-up in Gaza was to be expected, given that the Palestinian leadership lost yet another opportunity, after the Gaza disengagement, to halt its self-destructive course. Ultimately, there are two ways to read the current situation and interpret its causes. One claims that the 2000-01 attempt to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict failed because there is no genuine Palestinian partner for Israel and there are not going to be chances for peace in this generation. Given that conflict is inherent to the Palestinian-Israeli arena, disengagement was meant to create militarily, demographically, and politically more defensible lines for Israel and allow Israel to fight more effectively in a protracted conflict. If this interpretation is correct, the latest flare-up in Gaza confirms the need for Israel to redeploy and disengage from the Palestinians, given their hopeless devotion to Israel's destruction. The second view claims that the violence erupted after the Camp David failed summit in the summer of 2000 is a hiccup in a historical process that will eventually lead to peace. In this light, Israel's unilateral disengagement thwarts the chances of meaningful negotiations because it rewards Palestinian rejectionism and its violence. The latest flare-up, in this light, is evidence that Palestinian terrorism was emboldened by Israel's withdrawal and seeks to provoke Israel to further undermine its deterrence. In this sense, the Gaza disengagement appears a failure, rather than a success. Whatever the reading, Israel fell in a trap by going into Gaza with massive force. Upping the ante with targeted killings would prove more effective because it leaves the option open to invade later. Threatening to kill Hamas ministers if the kidnapped soldier is not returned would have been a better measure. The invasion allows the Palestinians yet again to play victims in the stage of world opinion. -- Emanuele Ottolenghi teaches Israel studies at Oxford University. Daniel Pipes The Bush administration sees the United States at war with Islamic radicalism; has not the time come for it to see other theaters of this same war -- Russia's with the Chechen rebels, India's with the Kashmiri insurgents, Israel's with Hamas -- as we see our own, and work for the defeat of the Islamists? Instead, in the Israeli case at least, Washington urges understanding, restraint, compromise, management of the problem, and other half-hearted and doomed remedies. The result is an ever more exhilarated and aggressive Palestinian population that believes victory within reach. Washington's mistaken approach goes back to the Oslo accords of 1993, when Yasser Arafat seemingly closed the existential conflict in writing to Bill Clinton that "The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security." But Arafat's assurances were fraudulent and the Arab effort to eliminate Israel remains very much in place. Israel, with U.S. support, must defeat this foul ambition. That implies inflicting a sense of defeat on the Palestinians, and winning their resignation to the permanent existence of a Jewish state in the Holy Land. Only then will the violence end. -- Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and a prize-winning columnist. Danielle Pletka In the last week, Hamas has kidnapped two Israelis, a soldier and a teenage settler, and threatens to kill both unless its demands are met. The al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, affiliated with "moderate" Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party, announced it could now manufacture chemical and biological weapons. Can anything be done to prevent the use of those weapons and brake accelerating Palestinian violence? The answer isn't as complicated as many suggest. Hamas and Fatah are terrorist organizations and they must be treated as terrorists, and crushed with all means necessary. They are no more entitled to violence than al Qaeda. Foreign Ministers from London, Washington, and Cairo have bleated that diplomacy must be given a chance, but President Bush has inveighed repeatedly against negotiating with terrorists. And what of the Palestinian people? Let us remember, they elected Hamas. Perhaps next time they will choose more wisely. We can help them by immediately ending fruitless efforts to appeal to "moderates" like Abbas (who was useless in his long stewardship of the PA), wholeheartedly support Israeli actions to eliminate terrorists, and throw our political and financial support behind the idea of new Palestinian political leaders more interested in serving the needs of their people than they are in killing and kidnapping. -- Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign- and defense-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Nissan Ratzlav-Katz Once upon a time, the Palestine Liberation Organization would send out terrorists under the operational name Black September, so as to maintain "plausible deniability" for actions that might not play well in the West. http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1967to1991_munich.php Today, however, the freely elected Islamists governing the Palestinian Authority feel no need even to use pseudonyms. Hamas leaders announced that the recent assault on an IDF base in pre-1967 Israel, in which two Israelis were killed and one taken hostage, was the action of Hamas "militants," of which they had no knowledge. Yet, Hamas is publicly and officially dedicated to destroying Israel and killing Jews. Furthermore, in the ten months since Israel unilaterally withdrew its military and 8,000 civilians from the Gaza region, PA-based groups, including Hamas, have fired more than 1,000 rockets at Israeli cities and have carried out several other terrorist attacks. Given this, future violence can only be prevented by eliminating the causes of current violence. And those causes are the Arab terrorist groups running the PA -- Hamas and Fatah. After more than a decade of concessions and dialogue, Israel must now destroy in order to create -- destroy the terrorists' autonomy in order to create a chance for peace. -- Nissan Ratzlav-Katz is opinion editor of www.IsraelNationalNews.com. Saul Singer> Palestinian terrorism will stop when the international community decides to hold the Palestinian leadership fully accountable for its aggression and to vocally support Israel's right to self defense. The U.N. Security Council, which has frequently condemned Israeli defensive actions, has not condemned the firing of hundreds of missiles against Israeli civilians. A U.N. resolution unequivocally condemning Palestinian terrorism and affirming Israel's rights under Article 51 of the U.N. charter, followed if necessary by the threat of sanctions, would induce the Palestinians to advance their interests by other means. In addition, the U.S. and Israel should not just speak of the need for two states, Israel and Palestine, but of the true obstacle to implementing that vision: the continuing Arab refusal to accept a Jewish state in this land. If the Arab states truly accepted the two-state solution, why did they recently fight tooth and nail against welcoming Israel and Palestine into the International Committee of the Red Cross? Why do they foment boycotts and rabid anti-Semitism? Why do the leaders of states that are ostensibly at peace with Israel refuse to visit here? And why does the international community accept such behavior without comment? -- Saul Singer is editorial-page editor of the Jerusalem Post and author of Confronting Jihad: Israel's Struggle and the World After 9/11. |
|
THE ROOTS OF ISLAMISM
Posted by Israela Goldstein, June 30, 2006. |
|
This excerpt below says it well. The article was written by Michael Gove and it appeared The only change I would make is to not limit Islamism's desire to "cleanse" so-called "Muslim lands"(which intention includes Europe). They wish to "cleanse" the world. |
|
From the Hamas killers in Gaza to Hizballah terrorists in Lebanon and Islamist fighters across southeast Asia, there is a ruthlessness in the selection of civilian targets reinforced by a willingness to embrace suicide bombing, a belief that Western influence needs to be cleansed from Muslim lands and a desire to see a narrow and highly politicized form of Islam imposed across the Muslim world. Islamism is not Islam in arms, it is a political creed which perverts Islam, just as fascism degraded nationalism and communism betrayed socialism. Islamism appeals to that part of the human soul which has always been capable of being drawn to revolution, violence, and the exaltation of the self through membership of the elect. Islamists believe in the re-ordering of society to secure total submission to a narrow, puritan, and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. They are conducting a civil war within the Islamic world designed to overthrow existing regimes, which they consider to be unforgivably apostate, and replace them with a single and unified Muslim state, the restored caliphate. Islamists believe that the sanctity and culture of Muslim lands are menaced and defiled by Western influences, from capitalism to feminism, which have to be eradicated. |
|
INFILTRATORS AND DISSENTERS; ARABS TOYING WITH ISRAEL; MIDDLE EAST ASSESSED
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 30, 2006. |
|
DEALING WITH INFILTRATORS The Government can infiltrate the patriotic movement by offering jobs. Betrayers save their bodies that way, even though they lose their souls. The greedy can get Knesset seats for becoming leaders, actually, misleaders, of the movement. They become officials of the Yesha Council. Their questions or radical proposals give some of the infiltrators away. Their usefulness to the government ends when they become ostracized. What about the reverse, infiltrating the government, to find out or get proof about its dirty tricks? Can't do it. Anyone joining a security agency gets thoroughly investigated. People with patriotic courage are known. Attempts would be severely punished. Sometimes people do ascertain facts about government deceit. Unfortunately, the media cooperates with the government in ignoring the scandal or hastens to shut off coverage of it. After all, the Prime Ministers and other leading personalities of the Kadima Party are popularly known to be crooks, but manage to avoid serious punishment. The police claim insufficient public interest in prosecution, investigation drags on or omits the more promising leads, the courts contend insufficient evidence, and the media downplays it. This is what has been happening to people who overheard PM Olmert's orders to beat Jews. The Left has things under firm control (personal source). Dissenters are harassed. Thus Nadia Matar is charged with insulting a public servant, Mr. Bassi, who brutally deported Jews from Yesha. She likened him (I think aptly) to the Judenrat of 1942 (ghetto officials who turned Jews over for deportation). The judge suggested the prosecutor withdraw the indictment, because the case is weak. Defense counsel proved that insulting officials is common in Israel but the Left isn't prosecuted; this prosecution is discriminatory. Among the protestors outside was a Nobel Prize winner, who decried the oppression of free speech in Israel. The media did not cover the trial The trial is rescheduled for September. This defendant is fortunate that the government spared her the common fate of dissidents, kept in jail while the cases are postponed. This deprives them of livelihood and freedom. Frequent prosecution costs them legal fees (letter from Ruth Matar and some observations from another source and from me). WHO CONTROLS GOVERNMENT? Theoretically, Israel and the US are democracies. Actually, a ruling elite and lobbyists control. In Israel, the government arbitrates almost everything and minutely. Israel lacks a Bill of Rights. Its whole justice system is political and ideological. Liberal notions of using the government to rectify injustices turn into pork barrel legislation and welfare mentality. Nor do government decrees resolve problems well. There is too much legislation, and too little time to consider it. Bills attract loopholes by inadvertence and by design. Some are peculiar, such as the unlimited Medicare coverage of physical therapy if done only in a hospital-related facility. The US tax code is tens of thousands of pages long! HOW IRAN DEALS WITH THE U.S. The US gleans intelligence from Iranian TV broadcasts. For examples, the Iranian intelligence minister stated that Iran uses double agents to "keep them busy and fool them" in America. Iran's chief nuclear negotiator stated that Iran negotiated with Europe in order to stall sanctions while completing components of its nuclear program. Foreign Min. Mottaki said, "We emphasize the peaceful nature of our nuclear weapons... I mean... of our nuclear power plant." Iran's chief of staff said his military plans "to put America in its place," inasmuch as "America's military power is greatly overestimated." We would be wise not to ignore their outlook (Steven Stalinsky of MEMRI, NY Sun, 6/14, p.5). Iran means to challenge the US militarily. It prepares for war, and we prepare for politics. Our enemies appear to be cleverer than we. CHECKPOINT VALUE PROVED AGAIN Two Jewish high-school girls were trying to hitch a ride near Shilo, in the Territories. Armed Arabs got out of their car and began forcing the girls in. One girl managed to run away. Then an IDF officer came along, and the Arabs tried to get away. The officer called up for an ad hoc checkpoint; it trapped the kidnappers' car. The Army has warned Israelis not to hitchhike, but people act irresponsibly. On the other hand, bus service out there is scant (Arutz-7, 6/15). ARABS TOYING WITH ISRAEL Israel boasted that it sent a serious threat to Hamas leaders, and got Hamas to stop firing rockets at Israel. There was a brief lull, just long enough to elicit such a boast. Then the rocket crews resumed launches. Hamas claimed it would try a ceasefire, if Israel stopped targeting its commanders. Other terrorist organizations, however, refused to stop firing their rockets (Arutz-7, 6/15). Some of their rockets come from Hamas. Hamas claims to have clean hands, but get other groups to do its dirty work. ABSENCE OF DEMOCRATIC FRANKNESS After the Defense Minister of Israel threatened escalation against the P.A., IMRA asked his office whether he had sole authority to follow through or required approval of the PM or the Security Cabinet. His representative told IMRA to ask the Office of the PM. The Office of the PM asked IMRA to put the question in writing, and it might reply. It replied that it may not answer (IMRA, 6/15). The government often responds to a simple question that way. An answer would reveal that the government is dissembling or bluffing, so the government just doesn't answer. ABBAS & INTERNATIONAL LAW Abbas claims that the Israeli presence in the Territories began illegally in 1967, he says, and remains illegal. He concludes that Israel should withdraw (IMRA, 6/15). In 1967, Egyptian and Jordanian invaders illegally seized the Territories. The world did recognize their rule there as legitimate, though neither did it mind it. From there, Egypt made war on Israel, and Jordan bombarded Israel. In self- defense, Israel fought back and ended up in charge of the Territories. Nothing illegal about that. There still isn't a legitimate sovereign government in place, and the locals are at war with Israel, so Israeli military presence remains needed. As for the Israeli civilians, settlement is required under the Palestine Mandate, which remains the governing legal document. PRESBYTERIANS: RELIGIOUS OR RADICAL? Since a surprise move two years ago, the Presbyterian Church has been divesting from corporations that operate in Israel, because Israel controls part of the Territories. This is not socially progressive but pro-Islamist out of naivete or antisemitism. Likewise, some Presbyterian leaders went to Lebanon, and praised Iranian-directed Hizbullah, which has murdered thousands of people. This type of radicalism has caused members to divest from the collection box and from membership. The church also funds fiercely pro-Palestinian (Arab) committees, sends representatives to Palestinian advocacy conferences, and has written obsequious congratulatory letters to the terrorist leaders of Hamas on their recent election victory. Simultaneously, the church remains remarkably docile on profoundly serious issues such as genocide in Darfur, the Iranian nuclear buildup and mistreatment of Christians in communist and Muslim countries.? "Presbyterian delegates also take leadership roles in organizations that blame the U.S. and capitalism in general for most of the world's catastrophes. The 2004 manifesto of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, for instance, went on about America's 'imperialism,' 'domination' and 'massive threats to life.'" The same activists make non-factual comparisons between S. Africa and Israel. Now that Hamas runs the P.A. and a lunatic runs Iran, the attempt to blame everything on Israel and the US becomes more embarrassing (and dangerous). Problem countries make their own problems from their preaching of hatred. Almost two dozen presbyteries formally requested ending divestment. The leadership stubbornly seeks to stymie opposition by parliamentary maneuver (Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/15). ISRAEL DID IT! AGAIN The IDF protected a convoy of three trucks bringing about 950 M-16 rifles to Abbas' Presidential Guard (Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/15). A Guard commander said that the rifles would not be used against fellow Arabs but only against Israelis, and already have been (IMRA, 6/16). Israel made this mistake, before. Olmert has no excuse for doing it again. At least Israel did not pay for the rifles. THE COURAGEOUS & THE COWARDLY For many years, Barry Chamish has defied the Israeli Establishment and exposed some of its crimes against democracy there. He has more than his share of courage. However, he began to have "accidents." He felt it would be wiser to put some distance between himself and Israel. Now in North America, he lectures about what most people otherwise don't hear. His Christian audiences have been enthusiastic. He doesn't get many Jewish audiences, any more. He thinks they are afraid or Establishment-minded (Chamish, 6/15). EUROPEANS TIRED OF PROVIDING COVER FOR TERRORISTS Israel abandoned the Gaza-Sinai crossing. International monitors came, but the P.A. had the final say in what to do and whom and what to stop at the border. The P.A. has not been inspecting baggage coming in from Egypt and has allowed Hamas ministers of government to bring in millions of dollars. The monitors feel useless, and have threatened to quit (IMRA, 6/15). They were being played for fools. They should have realized that at the outset. Too much credence is placed in the good faith of the Arabs, who thwart genuine inspection. Such is the fate of arrangements that leave power in the hands of jihadist Arabs. The Arabs know only the language of force. FOCUS OF ISRAELI DEFENSE MINISTER While rockets fall on his hometown of Siderot, Israel, Defense Min. Peretz reserves the Army against "illegal" outposts. He ordered the IDF to prepare a plan to evacuate the most defiant ones within two weeks. He is intent, he said, on upholding law and order (IMRA, 6/15). What law and order is in Israel, where the Arabs and the Left do pretty much what they want, and the religious and the Right are prosecuted for objecting? What kind of law has a government that abandons the national patrimony? Instead of using the Army to defend the country, he uses it to destroy the country. Peretz has his priorities mixed up. ARABS WANT TO SEE EIFEL TOWER A Paris court sentenced 25 Muslims from Algeria and Morocco for plotting to blow up the Eifel Tower and other places. They wanted to see the Tower fall. That was supposed to be a blow for the Chechen Muslims in Russia (Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/15). What does France have to do with Russia? The Muslims are out to wreck whatever they can of civilized areas, until they can take them over and into 7th century Islam. OLMERT PLAN THREATENS JERUSALEMITES PM Olmert announced intent to turn over certain Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem to the P.A.. He rationalizes that doing so would improve Israeli security by keeping a higher ratio of Jews in the City. What actually would result: (1) Fearing oppressive Muslim rule, the Arabs of those neighborhoods are crowding into the rest of the city. Therefore, the Arab proportion remains the same. (2) Letting the P.A. terrorists into those neighborhoods enables them to put the Jewish neighborhoods within rifle range, as well as make them easier targets for mortars. Therefore, Jewish security deteriorates. The plan's real purpose is to appease anti-Zionists (IMRA, 6/16 from Caroline Glick). That includes Jewish anti-Zionists, which the far leftists are and the other leftists are becoming. When the objects of appeasement hate the appeasers, as the anti-Zionists do, and want to conquer them, as the Muslim Arabs do, then appeasement does not satisfy hate-filled aggressors. It merely weakens the appeasers' chance for survival. Olmert's plan is criminally suicidal for his country. Specifying the Arab neighborhoods in advance enabled the Arabs in them to frustrate the immediate purpose of the plan. Where is the planning in that? The plan should have been to make the Jewish population secure by enacting, say, a five-year elimination of Jerusalem residency permits of Arabs, with compensation for their property. At least those non-citizens should be denied the welfare and travel benefits of citizens. Then living in Jerusalem would not be as coveted, though they do prefer Israeli rule. They prefer it as a whole. Enough of them, however, prefer al-Qaida to make the whole lot of them a security risk. Israel doesn't understand that, for the most part, the Arabs have a dual attitude, of preferring Israeli rule and hating Israel. PROFILING BECOMING LESS USEFUL An FBI agent noted that some Americans have converted to Islam and some Arab immigrants westernize their appearance so as to pass for Hispanics. They would not be detected by ethnic profiling. On the other hand, the many Muslim students at the University of California and many Muslim residents of towns there bear watching, the agent said. Neighbors tip off the FBI, with some good results, about the Muslims who rent apartments with a mattress and five computers, but no other furniture, or who suddenly change their license plates (Mideast Forum, 6/16). We can't watch millions, but we shouldn't have to live in insecurity. Why are we letting ourselves in for this, via immigration policies and college admission policies? MIDDLE EAST ASSESSED A couple of years ago, the US had the Islamists and other dictators on the run. After prematurely hailing some Arab feints towards democracy, the US found its emphasis and tactics on democracy had backfired, bringing Islamists into power. This includes Iraq, where both Shiite and Sunni Islamists are forcing women to don the veil, as Islamist rule creeps into neighborhood after neighborhood, and Christians flee. The US ended its emphasis though not the nearsighted micromanagement. Pres. Bush still gives pro-democracy speeches, but the dictators are cracking down all the harder. Syria and Iran are resuming their influence over Lebanon, as by arming the Palestinian Arab refugee descendants against the Lebanese. Islamist strategy now is to create chaos everywhere, both to discourage the West and to see where they can move in and pick up the pieces (Youssef Ibrahim, NY Sun, 6/16, p.6). One size doesn't fit all. We should have been trying to foster democracy in Iran, which couldn't get worse. Zarqawi's lair held a document showing that the insurgency was waning. It couldn't recruit new warriors much. The US was training counter-insurgency troops, seizing weapons, making massive arrests, constricting terrorist funding, and dividing the insurgents against each other. Zarqawi developed a counter-insurgency of splitting the US from its local allies and of striving to deflect US might by getting it into a war with Iran (Sameer N. Yacoub, NY Sun, 6/18, p.6). There is no indication that the US has developed a healthy humility from the failure of its micro-management in Iraq. After all, Congress rarely investigates State Department failure. There is little accountability and little change in mind-set. The enemy has more flexibility than has the US, except in military tactics. There seems to be little appreciation by Americans for what a great military we have developed, no longer the uncoordinated machine of the past. State Dept. stubbornness should give way to a procedure for reviewing the efficacy of policies. Likewise, Congress should include in bills a provision for periodic review of their efficacy. SUNNIS VS. SHIITES Sunni leaders have been indoctrinating their followers in hatred of the Shiites. Zarqawi proposed annihilating the Shiites. They may fall on each other, soon (Nibras Kazimi, NY Sun, 6/16, Op.-Ed.). Or is it the extremists against the semi-extremists? We just had learned that Sunnis and Shiites learned to work together against Israel and the West. Thus, Shiite Hizbullah works with Sunni Hamas. Iran assists the Iraqi insurgency in Iraq. Imagine if both Shiite Iran and Sunni Pakistan have a nuclear exchange! These Muslims had better curb their primitive notions, or nobody will be left. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
|
WE CRINGE EVERY TIME YOU SAY "MILITANT"
Posted by Join the Boycott, June 30, 2006. |
|
The LA Times says of Israel's Gaza offensive "we cringe at the
sight of a disproportionate response". More likely most Americans
wonder why Israel took so long...and cringe every time the LA Times
calls terrorists "militants". See the latest at
Stop supporting PLO propaganda. Call 1-800-252-9141 to cancel. Letters of protest to letters@latimes.com and dean.baquet@latimes.com and CC to jointheboycott@mailcity.com Join the Boycott |
|
JUST IMAGINING
Posted by Steven Shamrak, June 30, 2006. |
|
In 1964 a "Mexican Liberation Organization" for Independence of the South-West states of the USA" -- MLO - was created with the help of the Mexican government. In 1972 the MLO murdered the members of US wrestling team at Olympic Games of Munich. Since then, the citizens of the United States have been subjected to random acts of terror by the members of various factions of the MLO. 1993: Mexican and US representatives met in Oslo and signed a breakthrough agreement of mutual recognition between the USA and the MLO Organization, which began the US-Mexican peace process. The chain of agreements that followed, were facilitated by Israel - Wye River Memorandum, Camp David, summit at Sharm El Sheikh, Tenet Plan, Road Map. During all this time the MLO organization continued terror activity against the USA and ignored all agreements it had signed. The UN and EU observed the suicide bombings, kidnappings and home made rockets fired across the border by the MLO, but financially, politically and morally supported the MLO and the Mexican government struggle against the USA. Ten months ago the US government announced its decision to withdraw from New Mexico and transferred full control of the territory to the MLO. Six month ago, US government ignored the protest of its people and deported the non-Mexican population from New Mexico, hoping to save lives and reduce the cost of the conflict. The MLO responded with an escalation of the terror. Katusha rockets landed on the land of the United States. Suicide bombings and kidnappings never stopped. A week ago MLO members used a tunnel to attack a US military border post. Two US solders were killed, 4 wounded and one kidnapped. The MLO made a demand to release Mexican terrorists from US jails. The US army in order to free the kidnapped solder and punish the MLO entered New Mexico . A Power station, bridges and the Interior ministry building was bombed. An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman calls for restraint and advised that diplomacy is a viable option. The President of Mexico has asked the United Nations for help in freeing the MLO members. The UN special envoy for the Middle East, Alvaro de Soto, says he will discuss the issue with the US government. US's four-day military offensive in New Mexico has prompted recriminations during a UN Security Council debate sought by Spanish speeking countries. At least the Mexican people have a legitimate historical right to claim the South-West of USA -- Arabs, who call themselves Palestinians, have none! Steven Shamrak was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and participated in the Moscow Zionist "refusenik" movement. For the last 3 years, he has been publishing internet editorial letters on the Arab-Israeli conflict -- independently, not as a member of any organization or political movement. He can be reached by email at StevenShamrak@mail2world.com |
|
BRIDGES OF PEACE BETWEEN THE WORLD OF ISLAM AND JEWISH PEOPLE
Posted by Valery Novoselsky, June 30, 2006. |
|
Hello! My name is Zakira Zaripova. I am the resident of Israel living with my family in the town Rishon-le-Tzion. As a person from a Muslim background I aspire to dedicate my activity for building the bridges of peace and harmony between the world of Islam and Jewish people. This year I and the group of like-minded persons established the Tatar association in Israel. In our activity we rely on positive historical and nowadays examples indicative about the possibility of a peaceful coexistence between our communities. As such examples we can mention Khazar state, Volga Bulgaria, Ottoman Empire, and medieval Spain. And even nowadays we should not forget such personalities as Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi (Italy), King Mohammed VI of Morocco and Sheikh Ravil Gainutdin (Tatarstan, Russia). We are sure that the record of such examples will expand due to our efforts in this direction. We are planning to conduct communal cultural and educational events and we shall be glad to see you among our friends, wherever you live. Respond, if you are not indifferent regarding the future of relationships between the world of Islam and Jewish people. Our contact information: Zakira Zaripova
Valery Novoselsky
Zakhar Gel'man
Respectfully yours, Zakira Zaripova.
|
|
MINISTER YISHAI COMMITS TO HELP OUT-OF-WORK GAZA, SAMARIA EVACUEES
Posted by Bryna Berch, June 30, 2006. |
|
This is a news item from Arutz-Sheva
|
|
(IsraelNN.com) Minister of Industry Eli Yishai met today with farmers and business-owners from Gush Katif who have been without income ever since the government forcibly withdrew them from Gaza in August 2005 (the Disengagement). They presented to the minister the extent of their financial difficulties and the problems they face in reestablishing their previous businesses or farms. The farmers noted that the government does not provide them with alternate land to continue their agricultural livelihoods. Nor does the state provide alternate venues for independent businesses to re-open, the minister was told. Min, Yishai committed himself to help find solutions, or at least lessen the damage, for the evacuees. In Nitzan, which received most of the expelled Gush Katif families, there is now a 65% unemployment rate. 95% of the farmers are not working at the present time. |
|
HOW TO DEAL WITH THE HOSTAGE GRAB BY THE TERRORISTS
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 30, 2006. |
|
As you know, PM Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz are attacking one another, neither of whom has any idea of how to deal with the recent wave of Palestinian terror and th ekidnapping of the Israeli soldier hostage. Well, I have located an interesting commentator who seems to have an interesting take on what to do. I present here, for Olmert and Pertz to consider. The Master Plan for Dealing with the Crisis, from a knowledgable strategic commentator: "And the Canaanite heard that Israel had approached and he arose to battle with Israel and he kidnapped a hostage. And Israel swore an oath saying, 'When we get our hands on those people we will seize all their cities and confiscate everything in them.' And sure enough, right after that Israel went in and seized all their cities and confiscated their contents." But, alas, right after that the Israelis started bitching and whining, so a plague of annoying pests starting attacking them, as their comeuppance and punishment. But eventually, when they got there act together at last and finally got serious about going on the warfare against th eterrorists, they annihilated the enemy. *** The above sums up Chapter 21 of Numbers, part of this week's Torah portion. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
|
|
THE WORLD LOVES JEWS - DEAD ONES
Posted by Marcel Cousineau, June 30, 2006. |
|
DEMONSTRATIONS today in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt against ISRAEL That Israel is meekly defending themselves against Islamic destroyers angers most of the world. The rest of the world quietly sides with them by their silence. The truth -- Israel is only tolerated by the world when they silently allow themselves to be bled to death without a fight. When the Jews rise up and defend themselves this ALWAYS triggers outrage and hatred around the world as we see today. This is why the EU, US and UN call for Israel's restraint. They want the world to love dead and dying Jews, not strong ones able to fight and defeat their enemy. It's the concentration camp mentality ingrained in the minds of the west. WEAK JEWS UNABLE TO DEFEND THEMSELVES, DYING BY THE MILLIONS, ARE ACCEPTABLE JEWS. These are loved and pitied, in fact there are holocaust memorials in Europe and the U.S. to show feigned, fake compassion to the millions of murdered Jews while the world sat and did nothing. The world has not changed When Israel gets serious the west always rushed to restrain them. So much for the worth of these friends an allies. They are in reality cohorts of hell and will get what's coming. They (U.S., U.N., E.U.) are already recieving God's wrath and rising calamity for their hypocrisy and betrayal of Israel to the jihadist forces of satan. That's why a feeble and weak P.M.Olmert is acceptable to them, easliy constrained and limited in his response to the destroyers of Israel. A strong Jewish leader would never be tolerated by the U.S.,E.U.,U.N. Eventually Israel will have to snap out of this suicidal relationship with the world and defeat allah's devils before they wipe out Israel. These Islamic devils already have the worlds blessing of course when it comes to Israel who they are so willing to sacrifice. Marcel Cousineau can be reached at up2zionsg8@yahoo.com or go to his website: http://averyheavystone.blogspot.com |
|
HAARETZ EDITORIAL ABOUT GOVERNMENT LOSING DIRECTION
Posted by Yardena Even, June 30, 2006. |
|
RE: "The government is losing its reason"
|
|
This editorial reads as if written in Gaza by one of the savages. What a pity Amos Schocken wasn`t kidnapped instead of the soldier Ha'aretz article is worth reading. It is extraordinary how Haaretz through months of its editorials and "talkbacks" tell readers and viewers, both how to take the opposing stand find fault with Israel, as appalling as it is how self hatred is so evident here, it generates hatred towards the JEWISH STATE and the Jewish People!! Such is the deep seated hatred Haaretz editors have within themselves and try to project it to the web's readers!! and it's constant. every editorial is poison to the sick mind. and there are plenty of those who post at haaretz, and get published, there is no filtering. Some of you will say, It's an Israeli paper. How can it be? My response, be aware this website caters to anti semites!!! The Editorial in question Im referring to is saying that the Israeli government simply doesn't know what it's doing. I am moved to write this to this list and expose who's who in the Israeli press and who is cheering which side. It is obvious Haaretz editorials aid the enemy there is no doubt in my mind. Yardena A Even can be contacted by email at Yardena3@aol.com |
|
BACK TO THE RRH DOCTRINE
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 30, 2006. |
|
Three days of intensive military action in Gaza with virtually no terrorists killed? Battling Kassams by making sonic booms? More "signalling that Israel is deadly serious"? Yes, we are back to the RRH doctrine. Here is an earlier piece of mine on this doctrine: I've long suspected that it is the Israeli grand strategy to defeat the Palestinians by forcing them to laugh themselves to death. That seems to be the only possible way to understand the latest resuscitation of the RRH Doctrine, which has dominated Israeli policy toward the Palestinians and the Arab states since the early 1990`s. The RRH Doctrine was invented in the early days of Oslo and stands for "Really, Really Hard." Israeli governments would make deals to hand over most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the PLO, while reassuring Israelis that there was no reason for worry - if the Palestinians misbehaved, Israel would hit back at them "Really, Really Hard." The boy who cried wolf was a far more credible strategist. Even if perchance anyone ever took the RRH threats seriously, by the mid-1990`s the RRH was little more than an overly-long-running joke. Rabin and Peres had threatened it during the early days of Oslo. Later, Prime Minister Netanyahu, after each and every act of terrorism, would loudly invoke RRH, but then did little, if anything, to retaliate. After Netanyahu came Barak, who once again threatened RRH regularly. But his only implementation of it consisted of chopper attacks on empty Palestinian buildings - and only after the PLO was given advance notification so that all humans and terrorists could be evacuated. RRH was also used by Barak (and other prime ministers) to threaten Hizbullah in Lebanon and their Syrian puppet masters. After each Hizbullah attack on Israeli towns and on Israeli forces inside southern Lebanon, Israel threatened the most serious RRH. But, in the end, the only manifestation of RRH implemented by Barak consisted of a panicked unilateral capitulation and withdrawal from southern Lebanon, which left Hizbullah sitting smack dab on Israel's border, with thousands of its rockets aimed at northern Israel and with Haifa in range. When Ariel Sharon first revealed his "Gaza Disengagement Plan" after winning the Israeli election, it too was accompanied by empty threats of RRH. Israel could not get the PLO to make any concessions in exchange for surrender of the Gaza Strip and the eviction of the Jewish population there; Sharon nevertheless decided to implement the Mitzna Plan, against which he had campaigned, and withdraw without any quid pro quo. He would just go ahead with unilateral capitulation, whether the PLO liked it or not. And if the PLO failed to contain Hamas and prevent terror attacks against Israel after the withdrawal, why, then, Sharon's government would order the Israeli Defense Forces to respond with serious RRH. Yeah, sure. Hours after the Gaza capitulation was completed and all Israeli troops and settlers had been removed, the rocket and mortar attacks on the Negev began. The PLO was calling Sharon's bluff. Almost as old as the RRH Doctrine is the "Who Could Have Ever Predicted That" Syndrome. Since Oslo, every new Israeli concession resulted in escalated Palestinian violence. And the Israeli chattering classes would sigh and ask rhetorically, "Who could have possibly foreseen this?" Likewise after each violation of the Oslo Accords by the PLO, the media and the left-wing politicians would pout, "Who could have predicted that?" After years of daily proof that the entire Oslo concept was unworkable, its advocates were still responding to each new failure with total serendipity. The Israeli media could not foresee any failures of the Oslo capitulations and appeasements because the media are by and large the occupied territories of Israel's radical Left. The overseas media were even less capable of foreseeing the consequences of Oslo because they were far more interested in bashing Israel than understanding anything about the Middle East conflict. The answer to the rhetorical question of "Who could have foreseen the failures of Oslo?" is "Anyone not blinded by ideology." A few weeks after the handshake on the White House lawn in 1993, I published my first article predicting the complete failure of the Rabin-Peres Oslo initiative - in fact, it was the first such article published in North America. I predicted that the PLO would simply use any territory turned over to it by Israel to build terror infrastructure and launch attacks on Israel, and I wrote of future rocket attacks and sniper fire against Israeli towns from the PLO-controlled areas years before they actually began in earnest. And I was hardly alone in 20-20 foresight. It was not particularly difficult in 1993 to see why Oslo would fail. It is even easier now, with 12 years of disastrous "peace process" experience, to understand why Sharon.s Gaza disengagement will result in an enormous escalation of violence, not in any relaxation of tensions. Let's give the Arabs some credit. Israel has been making so many threats of RRH ever since the Oslo "peace process" began that a Palestinian leader would have to be learning-disabled to take any of them seriously. If I consider them a joke, why should Abu Mazen believe them? The Oslo Accords produced the greatest escalation in Palestinian terrorism and atrocities in modern Israeli history. At their most severe, Israeli retaliations took the form of some targeted assassinations of Hamas and PLO terror leaders. More often than not, Israeli retaliations consisted of meaningless gestures like bombing the aforementioned empty buildings or making sonic booms over terrorist concentrations, and of course the ever louder empty threats of RRH. On Israel's northern border, virtually no retaliations against Hizbullah took place, even after Hizbullah kidnapped and murdered three Israeli army officers and fired rockets into Israel. All of this brings us to the latest rocket attacks by the PLO on Sderot a few days ago. The main effect of the Gaza capitulation is that the PLO can now import unlimited supplies of weaponry from Egypt, with no ability by Israel to interfere. Israeli troops are no longer on the ground inside the Gaza Strip. We already see the results and we can clearly foresee the "unexpected" consequences that will be taking place in the near future. The PLO and its affiliates now have all the freedom they need to upgrade their rockets. The new improved Kassam rockets are already able to hit Ashkelon from Gaza. Sharon's Gaza capitulation will turn the Negev town of Sderot into Israel's Guernica. When the rockets now hit Sderot after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, Olmert and his people respond mainly with a new round of RRH. The laughter from Ramallah was deafening. Let's note that, back before 1993, when Israel held Gaza tightly with on-the-ground military rule, there were no Kassam rockets in Gaza. The Palestinian savages threw stones at Jews because real weapons were hard to procure. The PLO knows what we all know; namely, that Olmert is afraid to take the only action that, in the end, can end the shooting of Kassam rockets into Jewish homes - R&D, or Re-Occupation and DeNazification. Let's hope his successor will be less pusillanimous. 2. Taken hostage
JERUSALEM -- What's the news?" we ask each other, and everyone understands that the question refers to Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas. Though the old socialist Israel is barely a memory, in times of crisis we again become collectivized. Nothing unites Israelis in outrage more than the seizure of hostages. Next week, on July 4, Israel will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Entebbe operation that freed over a hundred Israeli hostages, and little has changed since then in the national ethos of rescue. The last Zionist ideal still shared by most Israelis is the determination to fight back. An Israeli soldier held hostage is a taunt against the Zionist promise of self-defense, an unbearable reminder of Jewish helplessness. Our obsession with hostages is a tactical weakness but a strategic strength. It allows terrorists a stunning psychological advantage: With a single random kidnapping, they hold an entire society emotionally hostage. Strategically, though, hostage-taking only strengthens Israeli resolve. And resolve is precisely what the public now expects of its government. So far, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has responded well. He began by issuing two policy guidelines in dealing with the hostage crisis. The first is that Israel won't negotiate over Gilad's release and won't exchange prisoners. The second is that Hamas leaders -- "political" as well as "military" -- will be held personally accountable for the fate of Gilad. If Olmert's government hopes to retain its credibility among Israelis, it needs to maintain those two principles. In recent months, the public has become increasingly disillusioned with the government's failure to adequately respond to the almost daily rocket attacks on Israeli towns and villages, especially Sderot. No Israeli town within the 1967 borders has experienced the kind of relentless attacks that Sderot has suffered. Even Hizbollah's Katyusha rocket attacks on the northern town of Kiryat Shmona in the early 1980s occurred in waves, with periods of reprieve between them. In the ten months since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, though, Sderot has barely known a day of peace. After the withdrawal, Israelis expected the government to enforce a policy of zero-tolerance for Palestinian attacks emanating from Gaza, even for attacks that didn't cause fatalities. Instead, the government responded unevenly, often ignoring rocket attacks that caused no damage. Many Israelis see Hamas's raid on an Israeli military post within the 1967 borders as a result of the weakness Israel has projected. In yesterday's letters column in the daily Maariv, for example, the hardline consensus was almost unanimous. "We told you so," wrote one reader who identified himself as "right wing." "Why doesn't Israel shut off electricity and water to Gaza?" demanded another reader. "Enough words, it's time to act," insisted a third. That perception of weakness could have far-reaching domestic consequences. The premise of Olmert's centrist party, Kadima, is that only a hawkish approach on security will convince Israelis to implement a dovish policy on territory. Given the Sderot precedent, though, Olmert is failing to uphold that centrist doctrine. For Olmert to win the public's agreement for another unilateral withdrawal, he needs to begin proving that he is capable of defending Tel Aviv from Palestinian rockets. And the place to begin convincing Israelis is Gaza. The military invasion of Gaza that began last night, and whose purpose is to surround the area where Gilad is presumably being held, must only be the first step. A brief invasion, a "show of force," is hardly adequate. Instead, Israel needs to resume its policy of systematically targeting Hamas leaders, just as it did several years ago, culminating in the assassination of Sheik Yassin. That policy drove most of Hamas deep underground and led to the cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Resuming assassinations against Hamas's political echelon is, of course, a declaration of war against the Hamas regime. But given its official sanctioning of kidnapping, Hamas has already declared war against Israel. Hamas's adoption of the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq comes as no surprise. After the killing of Zarqawi, Hamas issued a statement mourning his death and urging continued "resistance," thereby making the Hamas regime the world's only openly pro-Al Qaeda government. Unfortunately, the international media missed the significance of that moment. That lapse in media judgment is worth recalling in the coming days, when much of the media will be presenting the "prisoners' document" -- a set of demands drawn up by Hamas and Fatah members imprisoned in Israel -- as a historic Hamas concession, offering "tacit" recognition of Israel. In fact, the document does nothing of the sort. Nowhere does the document recognize the right of Israel to exist. Instead, it calls for Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders, followed by the "right" of Palestinian refugees to resettle in Israel and demographically overwhelm the Jewish state. The prisoners' document, in other words, is a plan for the phased destruction of Israel -- precisely why Hamas can endorse it. Driving on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, I saw this graffiti: "Olmert, gadol alecha". which roughly translates as, "Olmert, the job is bigger than you are." For Olmert to disprove that growing suspicion among Israelis, he must commit himself to the destruction of the Hamas regime. Sooner or later, Israel will have no choice but to adopt that policy. The only question is whether Olmert will still be prime minister when that happens. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
|
|
URGENT APPEAL TO HELP PREVENT KIDNAPPINGS IN ISRAEL
Posted by Voice of Judea, June 30, 2006. |
|
Today Eliyahu Ashri was buried in Israel. Eliyahu was only 18 when he was kidnapped and brutally murdered last Sunday. Eliyahu was hitching back to shcool as many young Jews often do near Ofrah, when Arab terrorists forced him into their car and sped away, passing several Israeli checkpoints, and entering into PA controlled Ramalah, where his body was found yesterday. Our sincere condolences must be extended to the family of Eliyahu Ashri. At this time all of us must also make a commitment to do everything within our power to stop such heinous attacks in the future. Eliyahu was not the first Jewish kid to stand alone at a dark and vulnerable hitching post to be abducted and murdered. Several weeks ago two girls miraculously escaped their would-be kidnappers at a hitching station near Rehelim. Hundreds, if not thousands of Jewish kids regularly wait at bus stops and hitching stations along the roads of Yesha. K.L.Y. -- Klavim Lehaganat Yisrael -- Dogs for the defense of Israel is launching an emergency appeal to raise funds to finance patrols consisting of security dogs and trained handlers to help secure these bus stops and hitching posts throughout Yesha. K.L.Y. -- Klavim L'Haganat Yisrael -- is a unique life-saving association that sponsors special bomb detection and patrol dogs, as well as their volunteer handlers to help detect and deter terrorists in Israel. The sponsorship and training of a team consisting of a dog and handler cost 10,000 dollars. K.L.Y. Klavim L'Haganat Yisrael is a fully registered Israeli Amutah Charity that has already donated and dispatched dozens of dogs and handlers in Israel and has already helped prevent at least 4 terrorist attacks by assisting the army and local security patrols in early detection of terrorist movement or by assisting the IDF in tracking after fugitive terrorists. In wake of the recent rash of kidnappings and attempted kidnappings at deserted and vulnerable hitching posts throughout Yesha, K.L.Y. is calling upon you to help us finance our patrols at these hitching stations with specially trained canines. The added presence of the dogs and their handlers at these hitching posts will make it more difficult or impossible for terrorists to simply pull up along side a lone Jewish kid and to force him/her into a car without being noticed. Where possible, KLY will also supply transport to "safer" areas. K.L.Y. is presently distributing and posting flyers in these vulnerable spots publishing a hotline where people can report lone Jewish kids hitching in "unsafe areas", and when possible, K.L.Y. will dispatch volunteers and dogs to stand with the hitchers or to pick them up. K.L.Y. is currently financing a medical response and patrol vehicle that will transport medics, dogs and handlers to patrol vulnerable hitching spots near Rechelim, Shilo, Ofra, Eli, Kedumim, Karnei Shomron, Gush Etzyon, Efrat and Kiryat Arba. Thanks to the generous contribution of supporters in the U.S., a life-saving emergency vehicle was donated. God bless the righteous individuals who have helped us purchase the vehicle and the dogs. However, the maintenance of the vehicles, volunteers and canines cost us money that we don’t always have available. The purchase of gasoline, food and housing for the dogs and volunteers, equipment and canine training is not cheap either. With the rise in the cost of gasoline in Israel, the daily cost of gas for each patrol-vehicle, can cost as much as 400-500 shekels = 100-130 dollars. Due to lack of funds we have been forced to cut back much of our canine training exercises and we lack the necessary funds to fuel the cars and to sponsor this vital work to the extent that we need to. This is a rare opportunity where you can make a direct contribution that could immediately and directly help save lives in Israel. We have brave and courageous, wonderful volunteers and we have the experts to train these special anti-terror canines. Please help us sponsor more dogs and handlers. We urge you to make a generous contribution to K.L.Y.– Klavim L'Haganat Yisrael. If you can't afford to sponsor a team for 10,000 dollars then send whatever you can. We desperately need your help and we are grateful for any and all help you can offer us. You can call 011 972 5231 80290 for further reference (From Israel, dial 052 3180290.) Emails can be sent to IsraeliDefenders@aol.com PLEASE SEND YOUR GENEROUS CONTRIBUTION NOW DIRECTLY TO ISRAEL TO
Contact the Voice of Judea by email at mishal@mishal.org |
|
GHETTO MENTALITY
Posted by Sergio Tessa (HaDaR), June 30, 2006. |
|
This was an item in Israel National News --
|
|
We built by-pass roads so that they would not kill us, since Jews are not allowed to travel freely passing by Arab villages. We cannot travel on their roads. They travel on our by-pass roads and also use them to hurt us. The government accepts all this as the ghetto Jews accepted all decision and abuse by the goyim as a ghezerà: they turn their eyes to the other side; they say "it rains" when they spit on us; they do not arrest them if they stone our cars, but arrest us if we dare defending ourselves when stoned; army and police do not even show-up when called because Arabs stone Jews, but get there within three minutes if Jews stone Arab cars; they allow Arabs to shoot THOUSANDS of bullets every day at their weddings, doing absolutely NOTHING to put a stop to the nightly shootings, but if we dare even shooting in the air when we are attacked they arrest us and confiscate our weapons. Now, after they are unable and unwilling to insure our safety and they PRE-EMPT US from defending ourselves, they want to make sure that our daily lives are impossible and we cannot travel freely. B"H, our great youth, which does not have AT ALL the ghetto mentality of our leaders, and which does not spend their days getting stoned, stabbing each other, stealing and other great occupations like those. which are UNKNOWN to the "settler's youth", have decided that IF WE CANNOT TRAVEL ON OUR ROADS BECAUSE THE ARABS ENDANGER US, THE ARABS SHOULD NOT TRAVEL ON THEM EITHER; so they are blocking the roads to Arab cars. OF COURSE, the collaborators with the Arabic speaking nazi enemy will jail THEM...
Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net.
|
|
THE SWEETNESS THAT SAYS, 'DESTROY AMALEK,'
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, June 30, 2006. |
|
One supposes that it is fitting and proper that the IAF is being gingerly used in small doses in Gaza to strike one building of Fatah brigades and to disperse a squad or two of jihadists in the act of attacking Israeli soldiers. Since we've been told by President Bush, Mr. Olmert, and numerous other brand-name politicians that the head of Fatah, Abu Mazen Abbas, is "a moderate" and since Fatah is the offshoot of Amin el Husseini's Nazi - affiliated Islamic terror movements, these small efforts are not much comfort; they are slim pickin's indeed for the retribution due and payable a long time. And since the show of force, accompanied by a few missiles for media / public consumption is meant to save Hosni Mubarak and Prince Abdullah under color of rescuing soldier Shalit we are not impressed by burblings of a 'conditional agreement'; we are depressed by reports of the slowing of the slow motion Israeli display. Perhaps what is needed here are reminders of vivid kinds, that Israelis look at photos of the murdered youth who was kidnapped while hitchhiking and shot in the head, his beautiful life being turned into inert matter by savages spawned by the Arabs culture of hate, of murderous hatred for Jews. To look at photos of Koby Mandel, Shalhevet Pass and all the others murdered since and before Oslo by the homicidal haters of the Jewish people. And then let us remember that "Amalek came and attacked Israel in Rephidim" and the positive command of Hashem to Moshe that he write as a remembrance in the Book and speak into the ears of Joshua that the hand is on the throne of G-d: Hashem maintains a war against Amalek... do not forget." And that when Samuel went to anoint Saul he told the new king to "hear the words of Hashem, Master of hosts: 'I have remembered what Amalek did to Israel. Now go and strike down Amalek and destroy everything that he has. Have no pity on him, kill man and woman alike, infant and suckling alike, ox and sheep alike, camel and donkey alike" (Exodus 17:9-16, 1 Samuel 15). And although Shaul did not complete the job, woe to those who fail to complete this job and woe and grief to all the Jewish people --- still "he struck Amalek down from Havilah to the approach to Shur." That would be sufficient for a start for now instead of the timid, approved-by-the-State Department 'show of force' and save Mubarak operation currently in place. Think of those slain, and the apposite teaching: "just as they have no pity on you, so you have no pity on them." The devastated ones need vengeance to see that there is a G-d Who judges in the land, that there is a G-d in Israel. Remember the slain Jews. Get away from 'Uncle Laban' and destroy Amalek, all of them alike. That is the only way to healing and to peace; a time for war, as they keep telling us, and then, after victory, a time for peace. Eugene Narrett's new book is "Israel and the Endtimes". |
|
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ELIYAHU PINCHAS ASHERI, ZTK"L
Posted by Fern Sidman, June 29, 2006. |
|
On this day, June 29th, 2006, the 3rd day of Tammuz 5766, the nation of Israel buried a true Eved Elokim, a faithful servant of the Almighty G-d of Israel. Today thousands of Jews across the State of Israel attended the funeral of 18 year old Eliyahu Pinchas Asheri, ZTK"L, the yeshiva student from the settlement of Itamar who was kidnapped and murdered by Arab terrorists. Asheri, a student at the pre-military yeshiva academy in N'vei Tzuf in the western Binyamin region was last seen at 9:00 p.m. on Sunday at the French Hill junction in northern Jerusalem. He was hitching a ride to his yeshiva in N'vei Tzuf. His parents, Yitro and Miriam Asheri reported him missing on Monday, but according to reports from the IDF he had already been murdered by that time. According to Arutz Sheva, "A Ramallah Tanzim terror cell, taking orders from the Gaza headquarters of the Popular Resistance Committee, carried out the kidnapping and murdered of pre-military Torah academy student Eliyahu Asheri, according to the IDF." The report went on to say, "Itamar resident Eliyahu Asheri, z'l, died immediately when he was kidnapped on Sunday, according to OC Central Commander Yair Naveh. Naveh told reporters at a briefing on Thursday that the 18-year-old victim was not kept alive, as claimed by the terrorist group that abducted him, but was "without a doubt murdered immediately." Popular Resistance Committees terrorists claimed they had kept Asheri alive until Tuesday while considering the possibility of holding him for ransom. Said Naveh, "They had absolutely no intention to hold negotiations." According to The Jerusalem Post, (6/27/06), "On Wednesday, elite police and IDF forces arrested Popular Resistance Committees operative Osam Abu Rajil, who was suspected to have been involved in the kidnapping. Abu Rajil led the forces to a mountainside north of Ramallah, where Asheri's body was found buried, Army Radio reported. Naveh confirmed Thursday that Abu Rajil was personally involved in the kidnapping. On Tuesday, a spokesman for the Hamas-affiliated PRC told Al-Jazeera that Asheri would be "butchered in front of TV cameras" if the IDF operation in Gaza did not stop. "Our patience is running out," he said. "I am announcing for the first time that the kidnapped Zionist Israel is searching for is the same settler who is being held by us. He is aged 18-1/2... and is a soldier in a pre-military academy," said the spokesman, who identified himself as Abu Abir." In addition, Arutz Sheva reported that, "The IDF did not say whether the assault rifles which the Olmert government and the United States transferred to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, (Abu Mazen) earlier this month were used at any point in the kidnapping or murder. WorldNetDaily reported in the name of "sources close to the Al Aqsa Brigades" that the guns had been used in two separate shooting attacks against Israelis within days of the transfer." Roads in Jerusalem were closed in honor of the funeral, which is to end with the youth's burial in the Mt. of Olives cemetery. Eliyahu's teachers and family, one after the other, spoke about what a sweet person he was. Over and over it was mentioned that Eliyahu's prayers were "like fire." "You went up to Heaven in a storm, like Eliyahu (Elijah) the prophet," Eliyahu's mother Miriam eulogized, in a calm and determined voice. "Now, Eliyahu - stand before G-d and speak out in favor of the Nation of Israel - don't let up until our Father in Heaven agrees to reveal Himself to His people." Yitro Asheri spoke of his son, recalling that he would always sit in their home and make peace between his siblings. "When you get to Heaven," the Australian immigrant said, addressing his son, "make peace within our people and between the Nation of Israel and our Father in Heaven." Asheri added that the world has much less prayer in it now that Eliyahu is gone and implored all of Israel to "Pray! Pray - because you are righteous and G-d desires your prayers." Eliyahu's mother Miriam told Voice of Israel Radio this morning, "At this time, I do have not much to say, for the pain is so unbearable; I can barely find a way to hold it. But one thing I can say is that many times in the past years, because of the many disagreements-between-brothers we have in this country, many times I asked G-d to give me, first of all, love in my heart for everyone. And now, following this terrible thing that happened to us, it has become clear to me how really great the Nation of Israel is - how much help we have received, and all the volunteers, and the army - there are no words to describe it... And this was the way of Eliyahu as well..." Rabbi Chaim Druckman, the national head of the Bnei Akiva Yeshivot movement and Eliyahu's adopted grandfather, said at the funeral that sometimes funerals are like sunsets, but that Eliyahu's passing is like the sun going dark at noontime. "This is not just a private funeral, but one belonging to all of Israel," he said. "His murderers intended to kill any one of us and all of us." Rabbi Avi Ronski, the Rabbi of Itamar and the man who has been tapped to become the next Chief Rabbi of the IDF, said at the funeral, "It is now clear that they murdered Eliyahu very soon after they kidnapped him, and all their announcements and threats afterwards were merely psychological pressure against us." The murder of Eliyahu Asheri comes on the heels of a Hamas terrorist attack several days ago when a Hamas 8-man force crawled through an underground tunnel into Israel, lobbing grenades and bombs at a military outpost killing two IDF soldiers, Lt. Hanan Barak, 20, from Arad and Sgt. Pavel Slutzker, 20 from Dimona A third soldier, Corp. Gilead Shalit from Mitzpe Hila was kidnapped. The kidnapping of Corp. Shalit, prompted the IDF to launch its "Operation Summer Rains" offensive Wednesday with the entry of Israeli forces into Southern Gaza. The stated goal: The release of kidnapped solider Gilad Shalit. In addition to knocking out electricity in much of Gaza, the operation has included an aerial missile attack on an electricity station south of Gaza City, aerial attacks on three bridges in the central Gaza Strip, over dry river beds, artillery fire at open areas in the southern Gaza Strip and entry of armored forces into the Dahaniya area, mainly the abandoned airport, where the IDF has set up a headquarters. This area represents a strategic control and observation point over the southern Gaza Strip. In response to the murder and kidnapping, Israeli forces arrested one-third of the Hamas-led Palestinian Cabinet and 20 lawmakers early Thursday and pressed their incursion into Gaza. Today is a day of tremendous grief and mourning for the family and friends of Eliyahu Asheri. It is also a day of mourning for the entire nation of Israel. It is not easy to forget a day on which a young Jew was buried. A young Jew, heinously murdered by Arab savages. A Jew who feared G-d and walked in the way of his ancestors, in the way of Hashem's holy Torah. It will be difficult to forget the looks of profound grief and misery etched on the faces of his parents, his siblings, his friends and neighbors. The murder of Eliyahu Pinchas Asheri was the murder of a part of each and every one of us. For the murder of Eliyahu Pinchas Asheri could have been the murder of our own son or brother. Ask any parent that has lost a child and they will tell you that they never get up from sitting shiva. The sadness and despair is all consuming and does not diminish with the passing of time. We are commanded by the Almighty G-d of Israel to be our brother's keeper, for we are all one nation, a collective body and soul. When one of us grieves and suffers, we all grieve and we all suffer. Today we have lost a brother and our tears flow freely and without respite. And we ask, why was Eliyahu Asheri murdered? Why was it he that had to spend his last moments on this earth as a captive of barbaric Arab terrorists who have no respect for the sanctity of life? We may never know the answer, however we do know that the blood of Eliyahu Asheri is on the hands of those who control the government of Israel. Of those who aid and abet Arab terrorists by evacuating thousands of Jews from their homes in Gush Katif and who plan to uproot more Jewish settlements in the ultimate goal of creating "peace" with our Arab enemy. The blood of Eliyahu Asheri is on the hands of those in the government of Israel who transfer thousands of assault rifles and a million rounds of ammunition into the hands who those who seek our destruction. We can blame a government of Israel who oppresses the free speech of Jews who oppose the Olmert convergence-realignment plan. We can point our fingers in outrage and indignation at a government who is bent on national suicide. A government comprised of spiritually bankrupt leaders that lead us to believe that genuine and long lasting "peace" can come to fruition with an enemy that has sworn our destruction. An enemy who interprets territorial compromise and conciliation as acts of weakness and surrender and who respond with even more contempt and disdain. It is true that the government of Israel is one that is devoid of belief and faith, true belief and faith in the G-d of Israel and Torah. It is a government that has elevated the concepts of a westernized democracy into their own personal god. A government that displays a callous disregard when Jewish blood is spilled. We must express our anger and our outrage and rise up in indignation at the actions of a government who is responsible for the murder of our brother, Eliyahu Pinchas Asheri. For Eliyahu's murder can be harbinger for the potential murders of our own brothers. Let us raise our collective voices in prayer and supplication to the Almighty G-d of Israel. Let us plead with Hashem to give us the strength, courage, fortitude and tenacity to oppose a government that does not protect its people. Let us beseech the Almighty to provide comfort, strength and courage to the Asheri family and to all of the nation of Israel, for on this day, a part of each and every one of us has died. Contact Fern Sidman at AriellaH@aol.com |
|
WHY IT'S NOT EASY BEING A LIBERAL
Posted by Burt Prelutsky, June 29, 2006. |
|
It was inevitable that while most of the civilized people of the world, including millions of Iraqis, celebrated the death of Zarqawi, there was one significant group that pooh-poohed the happy occasion. I refer to those notorious party-poopers, American liberals. Most of their consternation centered on two things. The first of these was that America had turned him into a martyr. Leftists insisted that his death was meaningless because dozens of Muslims would rise up to take his place, while millions of others would now be provoked into joining the ranks of the extremists. That is what the pinheads always say, but the fact is that by this time, after all the suicide bombings and after the killing of so many so-called insurgents and after the capturing of Saddam Hussein, if there's one thing that's a glut on the market, it's Islamic martyrs. By this late date, surely they must have run out of virgins in Paradise, and be making do with divorcees, the recently widowed, and elderly spinsters. The other thing the liberals started spouting off about was the suspicious timing of Zarqawi's execution. As usual, when something terrific occurs that might reflect favorably on the administration, the lefties spring into action. In this case, they claimed that we could have killed or captured the butcher of Baghdad on several earlier occasions, except that the Republicans were waiting for the most opportune moment in order to cash in politically. What they failed to bother explaining was exactly how, with elections in November, killing Zarqawi in early June could possibly be regarded as an example of cynical strategy, easily traced to the nefarious mind of Karl Rove. I suppose the thing to keep in mind is that these are the same lunkheads who kept insisting back in 2004 that, suddenly, on the eve of election day, George Bush would announce that we'd just nabbed Osama bin Laden. And when that didn't happen, I don't remember even one of them admitting he'd been a sap to suggest it. Speaking of Osama, I wish to go on record and state that I really don't care if we never capture him. Let's face it, if we did, we\d merely have to live through another farcical trial, such as Hussein\s. If it's all the same to you, I don't need to hear Ramsey Clark and a team of leftist lawyers pleading his case night after night on the news. In the end, after all, even if he were found guilty, he'd only wind up receiving a prison sentence. Frankly, I prefer to picture him roughing it in the mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan, cowering every time a helicopter flies by, than imagine him watching cable TV, working out in the weight room, and showing up in our living rooms every other week, courtesy of Larry King, Barbara Walters, and Geraldo Rivera. One question left unanswered for me was whether or not America's bad will ambassador, Jimmy Carter, flew over to Iraq to pay his respects at Zarqawi's funeral.
Burt Prelutsky has been a humor columnist for the L.A. Times and a
movie critic for Los Angeles magazine. He is the author of
Conservatives are from Mars (Liberals are from San Francisco).
This essay appeared on the Townhall website:
|
|
RADICALS THREATEN SHOAIB CHOUDHURY WITH DEATH
Posted by Shoaib Choudhury, June 29, 2006. |
|
Radical Islamist leader, Noor Hussain Noorani, personally threatened the life of Bangladeshi editor Salah Uddin Choudhury yesterday. Noorani heads the radical Khatmey Nabuat Movement (KNM), which clashed with police last week after it tried to attack an Ahmadi prayer service in the capital of Dhaka. The Ahmadi are a Muslim group that has angered fundamentalists by its belief that Muhammed was not the final prophet, and for their belief in the crucifixion of Jesus. KNM and others have been demanding that the government declare the Ahamadi non-Muslim. They are allied with various Muslim extremist groups in pressing that agenda and the imposition of Sharia (Muslim law) throughout all of Bangladesh. Choudhury, a Muslim, has been associated with various causes opposed by Bangladeshi Islamists ever since he was arrested in 2003 when he tried to go to Israel. Noorani became incensed at Choudhury after he published an editorial praising an article that warned police and the public about KNM's intention to attack the Ahamadi last week. Previously, KNM had operated unmolested in Bangladesh, but police blocked KNM attacks both on Friday and Sunday. Noorani was injured in the Sunday melee and taken to a local hospital where he was treated and released. Noorani called the editorial office of Weekly Blitz, Choudhury's paper three times within eight minutes Thursday evening. He called from his cell phone and spoke with Circulation Manager Amanur Rashid Aman. According to Aman, Noorani sounded highly agitated on the phone and repeatedly threatened to kill Choudhury and "blow away the Blitz office," located in downtown Dhaka. When informed of the threat, Choudhury, whom Islamic radicals have threatened before for his anti-terrorist stance, went to the police and filed a report. The report noted the death threats and identified the mobile phone number from which the call originated as Noorani's. "It wasn't even unnecessary for me to inform the police," Choudhury said, "since they have been intercepting all my calls for months. And because Noorani is in the limelight right now you know they are intercepting his as well." Bangladeshi officials have long intercepted all international calls, and calls by and to dissidents and religious minorities. A copy of the report had an official stamp showing that police had seen it, but thus far they have taken no action either to protect Choudhury or Blitz offices. Choudhury complained bitterly that when another paper recently received a threat by mail, the police arrived immediately to investigate the threat and protect the paper. Choudhury was freed on bail last year after seventeen months in prison after he warned about the rise of radical Islam in Bangladesh, urged his nation to recognize Israel, and advocated interfaith understanding and religious equality. He still faces sedition charges, although government officials admit there is no substance to them. This below is what Mr. Choudhury wrote: |
|
This is a disturbing news indeed. Today, we received three phone calls from Mufti Noor Hussain Noorani, Chief of ultra radical Islamist millitant group Khatmey Nabuat Movement (the organization demanding declaration of Ahmedias as non-Muslims). Kindly read the exact translation of the General Diary that had been filed with the local police station right after the incident. We are also attching the image of the GD. The most discouraging news is, police or the government are extremely reluctant in providing security to Blitz office and the editor even after the formal complaint nor they have began the investigation or any legal actions. This is for your kind information please. For further details, please call our USA Correspondent Dr. Richard L. Benkin at: +1-8479226426 or call Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury at: 880-191-326232, 880-1711-938344. The translation of the General Diary is set below:
Contact Richard Benkin at drrbenkin@comcast.net. |
|
ABBAS' NEWEST BIG LIE
Posted by Sanda Abramovici-Lam, June 29, 2006. |
|
This article was written by Caroline Glick and appeared today in
the Jerusalem Post |
|
Fresh from her tete-a-tete with PA leader Mahmoud Abbas last week, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni instructed her press flack to tell her fellow cabinet ministers to remain mum on Abbas's latest "diplomatic" gambit. In the words of her communications director Shai Ben Maor, Abbas's decision to turn a document written by convicted Palestinian murderers and attempted murderers sitting in Israeli prisons into the centerpiece of his diplomatic policy is "an internal Palestinian issue" and so Israel should not be weighing in on it. What is the context of Abbas's new initiative regarding which Israel is supposed to have no official position? After receiving the Bush Administration's full-throated endorsement during Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's visit to Washington, DC last week, Abbas sprang into action. Following Bush's characterization of Abbas as a man who "favors and speaks for peace and negotiations," Abbas - who has never lifted a finger and indeed pledged never to lift a finger to fight Hamas, Fatah or any other terrorist organization - announced that he has a new plan. Abbas's plan has two central components. First, he wants to get the PA's Hamas government to accept the document authored by convicted murderers and attempted murderers. Second, Abbas wants Israel to allow him to raise, arm and field a new militia with 10,000 soldiers to supplement the 20,000 soldiers Abbas already hired in the lead-up to the Palestinian elections in January. Both the Israeli and the international media have referred to the convicted terrorists' declaration as a "peace plan." London's Daily Telegraph's summation of what its editors considered the main points of the declaration represents more or less what all the mass media organs in Israel and abroad have been saying. The Telegraph's report claims that the plan has six main components. In its words, those components are: "A negotiated settlement with Israel if the Jewish state withdraws from land occupied since the 1967 Middle East war; continued resistance, focusing on peaceful means, on land occupied since 1967 - the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem; an independent Palestinian state on all land occupied since 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital; a unity Palestinian government uniting all factions, including Hamas and Fatah; guarantee the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their former homes inside Israel and the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israel; speeding up efforts to incorporate Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which has negotiated past interim peace accords." IF ONE were to take these terms at face value, perhaps this could be seen as a step forward. But just the barest scrutiny shows that what the jailed terrorists announced was nothing more than a new restatement of their declaration of war against Israel and a recommitment to their goal of destroying the Jewish State. It is true that the document speaks specifically of Israel's retreat from Judea and Samaria as well as Jerusalem. Yet led by convicted mass murderer, Fatah head and darling of the Israeli Left, Marwan Barghouti, the terrorists reiterated the "liberation of the land," that is, all of Israel, as their real objective. The Telegraph's assertion that the "resistance" to Israel is supposed to be largely by "peaceful means" leads a reader to assume this means that the terrorists are calling for an end to terrorism. Nothing could be further from the truth. In six separate clauses of the declaration, the terrorists make clear their continued commitment to carrying out acts of terrorism against Israel as part of their strategy for destroying the Jewish state. Those acts of terrorism are supposed to be conducted in conjunction with civil disturbances, negotiations with Israel run by Abbas (something that Iran and its client the Palestinian Islamic Jihad does not accept), as well as an international diplomatic campaign in cooperation with NGO allies intended to delegitimize and demonize Israel. Far from calling for an end to terrorism, the terrorists called for the establishment of a new joint terrorist organization called the "Popular Resistance Front" that is to be composed of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah terrorists. As they put it in their declaration, this new group's job will be "to lead and engage in resistance against the occupation and to unify and coordinate action and resistance and to form a unified political reference for the front." It is unclear what the difference will be between this proposed terrorist organization and the Popular Resistance Committees that Barghouti and his Hamas and Islamic Jihad colleagues formed in the months that preceded the outbreak of their terror war in September 2000. The Telegraph notes that the imprisoned terrorists insist that Israel accept the so-called "right of return" of the so-called "refugees," but the newspaper, like its Israeli media counterparts, fails to recognize the true significance of this repeated demand. These murderers are demanding that in exchange for a temporary cessation of terror attacks against its citizens, Israel agree to its national destruction. The so-called "right of return" is a demand that Israel accept the unimpeded immigration of millions of hostile, foreign- born Arabs to its sovereign territory. THESE MURDERERS devote an inordinate amount of attention in their declaration to detailing their desire to incorporate Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the Abbas-led PLO. They repeatedly call for unity between the "nationalist and Islamic" factions. That is, they call for unity in their ranks for the purpose of advancing their war for the destruction of Israel. Finally, in a decidedly self-serving fashion, the convicted murderers emphatically call for their own release from Israeli jails and see their release as "a sacred national duty." In short, much as one would expect, convicted Palestinian mass murderers from various terrorist organizations met in an Israeli prison yard to recommit themselves and their followers to their war for the destruction of Israel. And, much as one would expect, the international and Israeli press presented this declaration of war as a peace plan. ABBAS TOOK the media by storm with his bold declaration last Thursday that if Hamas does not accept the prisoners' declaration within 10 days he will bring it before the Palestinian public as a referendum. "What a bold effort!" the press exclaimed excitedly. Buoyed by his success, Abbas announced the second half of his plan. In order to ensure Hamas realizes that he means business, Abbas renewed his demand that Israel allow him to receive arms and ammunition for his loyal troops. He further announced his intention to increase the size of his current personal army - Force 17 - from 2,500-3,000 men to 10,000 men. There is very little new in the convicted terrorists' declaration or in Abbas's embrace of their declaration. Abbas has been embracing declarations of war against Israel since he joined Fatah as Yasser Arafat's deputy in 1959. There is also nothing new about Abbas's demand that Israel either supply him with arms or enable others to supply him with arms even though such arms and ammunition have been directly involved in the murder of scores of Israeli citizens since 1996. What is new is the response of Israel's government. Since 2000, the government has refused Palestinian requests for guns and ammunition. Yet, last week, Olmert's government allowed Abbas to receive arms and ammunition for Force 17 from Jordan and Egypt. Not only did the government allow forces committed to Israel's destruction to receive arms and ammunition, well placed sources claim that Defense Minister Amir Peretz's office was the source of the misinformation campaign that has dubbed the prisoners' declaration of war a peace plan. In misleading Israel's citizenry about the content of the murderers' war declaration and in enabling the rearmament and quadrupling of the size of Abbas's personal army, the Israeli government and the Israeli and international media have also been egged on by the Bush Administration. US military envoy to the Hamas-led PA, General Keith Dayton has reportedly been a major supporter of Peretz's desire to arm Abbas's men. The Americans have been pushing to have this militia deployed in northern Gaza where its members will purportedly stop Kassam missiles from being fired at Israel even though Abbas, their commander has adopted a plan that calls for continued attacks against Israel. It is hard to find polite words to describe an Israeli government that embraces enthusiastically a declaration of war against its country and enables its enemy to arm and field armies that have been trained to kill its citizens. It is hard not to view US support for the so-called "peace plan" as a repudiation of the Bush Doctrine. Contact Sanda Abramovici-Lam at sab@telefonica.net.pe |
|
ENOUGH TALK
Posted by Zalmi, June 29, 2006. |
|
We will stay in Gaza ... we won't stay in Gaza. Hamas should do this ... Abbas must do that. Peres says this, Ramon says that. Yap yap yap ... there is no shortage of talking heads from all branches of the government pontificating over the abduction and killing of our people. Personally I have had a bellyful of what the politicians have had to offer. Like disengagement and the senseless eviction of thousands of Jewish families most of which still languish in temporary shelters still waiting to receive a penny in compensation. Like the relaxing of border restraints and confidence-building measures for Abbas, which have been exploited for the importation of ever greater quantities of arms which will be ranged against our troops in the days ahead. And let's not forget our own shipments of thousands of assault rifles to bolster Mr Abbas's security. Then there was the wholesale release of hundreds of terrorists, each one of which our soldiers will have risked their lives to capture. And allowing a 6-times lifer like Barghouti -- who should be rotting in solitary - enough freedom to run a political campaign from his jail cell. Like showing what a pluralistic liberal democracy we are by allowing Hamas to campaign for office in our own territory and appointing an Arab MK to sit on the Defense and Foreign Relations committee. What utter farce! And for all of this, what have we got in return? Less than zero. Less than zero means going backwards. Our people used to be able to walk the streets without fear of missiles falling out of the sky. Parents used to have a reasonable expectation that their kids could roam freely in their country without fear of being kidnapped and torn to shreds by hate-crazed Islamic fanatics. No longer. These are the wages of appeasement and the price of living in denial. Denial of the plain fact that these people have one single aim. To kill as many Jews as they possibly can and to terrorise the rest into fleeing Israel. That has always been their aim. Nothing less than total erasure of the Jewish state. That is why Arafat turned down even Barak's giveaway offer at Camp David. You cannot keep throwing meat to a lion and expect it to turn into a vegetarian. So let it stop right here. Let the politicians finally shut up and let the army do what it knows best. To bring back their boy -- hopefully alive -- and flatten the terror infrastructure along the way. And to consign Hamas leaders Meshaal and Haniyeh to their heavenly virgins in the same bloodied state as Yassin and Rantisi before them. That is the only message our "peace partners" have ever understood. Contact Zalmi at zalmi@zalmi.net |
|
THE WAR THE "TIMES" DOESN'T KNOW EXISTS; NEWS ITEMS AS EDITORIALS; PRISONERS' PLAN
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 29, 2006. |
|
THE PRISONERS' PLAN FOR JAIL-BREAK The media call the Arab prisoners' plan a peace plan, as if unaware that it advocates continued fighting and flooding Israel with enemies. This is a war plan. What else should one expect of the prisoners, all terrorists, many being mass-murderers? For the media to accept their plan as a peace plan without skepticism, given its source and the prisoners' unrepentant attitude about terrorism, shouts bias or blindness. HOW TO DEAL WITH IRAN We must stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability (weapons plus means of delivery). We are about to find out that deferring action eventually requires mega-action. I hoped that we would impose sanctions and overthrow the regime before it came to war. By deferring action, we may be left only with war. Then it is a question of how and with what weapons. War is rejected by pro-democracy elements in Iran that hate the regime. They threaten to join in solidarity with the regime against US raiders or invaders. If that is their attitude, I think less of them and have less interest in sparing them. On the other hand, in the face of their opposition, war would be more difficult. JOURNALIST SETS EDITORIAL TONE IN NEWS ARTICLES The NY Times and some wire services still can't refrain from adding the adjective, "moderate," to any mention of Abbas' name. I've objected to that as being an untrue characterization of him. However, no characterization is appropriate. It is not the function of the media to declare the political temperament of foreign leaders. They should present the news and let readers reach their own judgment about who is moderate. The media is describing Abbas as moderate, so that readers would think there is some justification for US or Israeli policy of strengthening Abbas vis-à-vis his rivals. The effort to turn news reports into propaganda, and false propaganda, at that, builds sentiment for false policy. Nor does he get strengthened. AN 80-YEAR WAR THE TIMES DOESN'T KNOW EXISTS The NY Times speculated that the Gaza rockets could spark a war. (Is the bombardment not war?) It also wonders whether Israel had responded disproportionately to the rockets fired at it. Apparently not -- the rockets keep coming. Couldn't the NY Times figure that out? "Disproportionate" is a ridiculous standard, giving comfort to aggressors and discomfort to their victims. One usually wins by disproportionate means. The war the Times fears may start has been going on against Zionism since 1920, or 86 years, unless one considers this just a part of jihad, that has run for 1,300 years! NY TIMES ACKNOWLEDGES ISRAELI FINDINGS For a couple of days, the Times repeated the accusation that Israel caused the Gaza beach deaths, without acknowledging Israel's finding that it did not do it and the Arabs probably did. On 6/14, the NY Times belatedly acknowledged the IDF finding. But it also reported that Human Rights Watch (HRW) reached the opposite conclusion. Israel's Chief of Staff rejected having outsiders involved in the Israeli inquiry. He said his people are professionals, and don't need assistance (Steven Erlanger & Ian Fisher). The Chief of Staff doesn't understand. It's not a matter of needing assistance. It is one of getting an independent inspector, to overcome the conflict of interest in a self-investigation. On the other hand, given the international bias against Israel, which the Times might have reported that HRW shares, who could be trusted to be truly independent and to decide with integrity? Would HRW related its report's specifics? PRISONERS' PLAN The plan, called a peace plan, refers 14 times to resistance, the Arab code word for terrorist aggression against Israel. By contrast, Oslo and the Road Map called for peaceful resolution of the conflict. The earlier plans call for dissolving terrorist organizations, whereas the prisoners' plan calls for uniting them for resistance. Under the plan, civilians in any area not part of Israel before the 1967 war are subject to terrorism, but the plan the does not state any recognition of Israel. The area subject to terrorism includes Jerusalem and any parts of the Territories that Israel retains. A plan for terrorism is hardly a peace plan. The plan emphasizes the admission to Israel of all the Arab refugee descendants, eight times. Once admitted, the Arabs would constitute a majority and take over the country. Naturally, they would end the Jewish state if not also the Jews. That is the platform of those prisoners' organizations. Four times the plan calls for releasing the prisoners. (Aha! Thoughtful of the prisoners.) How does it make for peace to release unrepentant serial killers? Were this a decent world, it would denounce Abbas' plan (IMRA, 6/14 from ZOA). THE QUESTION NOT ASKED The Israeli Air Force bombed a car of terrorists carrying rockets (IMRA, 6/14). This bombing also injured many other Arabs. The assumption is that Israel bombed too heavily. But the car had explosives in it. Might they not have caused casualties? P.A. POLICE KILL P.A. ARABS P.A. police shot dead two Arabs whose cars did not stop at a roadblock. One Arab had stolen the car. The other, suspected of criminality, tried to ram police (IMRA, 6/14). When Israeli police shoot Arabs who run a roadblock or try to run the police over, the usual pro-Arab sympathizers complain that Israel is unreasonable, and they denounce roadblocks. There is no foreign sympathy for those Arabs when shot by P.A. police. Neither is there foreign denunciation of P.A. roadblocks. Let there be disinvestments from the P.A. by those US Church groups that purport to have a social conscience. ISRAEL TELLS HAMAS TO STORE ITS ROCKETS Israeli Defense Min. Peretz advised Hamas to return its rockets to its storerooms. He also informed Hamas that Israel knows where these storerooms are. The implication is that if Hamas resumed their use, Israel would blow up the storerooms. That means that Israel would allow Hamas to keep its rockets for use whenever it wants to (IMRA, 6/15). "...Either there will be absolute quiet, or there will be an overwhelming and singular response" Defense Minister Amir Peretz said to reporters as broadcast on Israel Television's Mabat News program on 14 June." Next day, four rockets struck Peretz' home town. His bluff was called. Then a fifth one struck, destroying the roof of a factory and wounding someone (IMRA, 6/15). If Israel knows where these storerooms are, why doesn't it blow them all up now? Israel's threats all are bluffs. The Arabs know it. If the media were honorable instead of ideological, it would expose the emptiness of government threats. HADITHA: WERE CIVILIANS MASSACRED & BY WHOM? Haditha residents' entertainment: watching Iraqi insurgents execute people, and then buying the DVD of the executions, that afternoon. Some civilians were found slain there, after marines fought there. The marines claim they merely returned fire according to their rules of engagement. Opponents of the war, such as the Times and Rep. Murtha did not wait for investigation before joining in the accusation of murder. Bodies were piled up. However, the Islamist enemy is known to place bodies so as falsely to claim their enemies committed a massacre. The media should await an investigation or undertake an investigation, before rendering a verdict. This is like Israel being accused of having committed a massacre that
either didn't occur or was done by the Arabs to themselves. As soon as
the accusation is made, Israel apologizes and the media and UNO accuse
Israel. Then Israel is found innocent (NY Sun, 6/15, Ed.). The
exoneration is muted, and hardly redeems Israel's reputation.
Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several
web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on
Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target
overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him
at richardshulman5@aol.com.
|
|
RETURN TO GAZA: WHY DISENGAGEMENT FAILED
Posted by Gerald M. Steinberg, June 29, 2006. |
|
This article appeared in the National Post
(www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id= 759aea19-42e5-4620-b7af-ef78a6d71370) |
|
As an early Israeli supporter of unilateral disengagement, I admit that this plan, like the earlier Oslo "peace process," has failed. Hopes that the unprecedented move, including the dismantling of all Israeli military bases, checkpoints and even civilian houses in Gaza would reduce the violence and promote mutual accommodation were naive. Almost a year after the exit, attacks against Israelis continue to escalate, Palestinian society is in a state of advanced anarchy and the security pledges from Egypt and Europe, brokered by the U.S., have proven worthless. The murder and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by Palestinian terrorists, who launched the attack from a tunnel dug from a house in Gaza under the border, was the last straw. Even before then, the dozens of rockets raining down on houses and schools every week, and numerous other terror efforts, had already signalled the approaching end of this unique experiment in conflict reduction. Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity for progress, Palestinians moved their rocket launching teams into the most densely populated neighbourhoods, goading Israel into responding. And whenever a Palestinian was killed, even when Israel was not involved, they could count on political groups such as Human Rights Watch to condemn the Israeli Defense Force, regardless of the evidence. The role of the Palestinian population in supporting terror is central, but the international community also bears considerable responsibility for the latest disaster. For years, the Europeans, the UN and others had provided massive support -- financial as well as political -- to PLO leader Yasser Arafat in the hope that he would make peace. After that proved to be a mirage and Arafat died, the members of the Quartet (the European-inspired framework designed to push hopes for peace co-operatively) pressed numerous schemes to prop-up Arafat's successors. These failed to achieve anything of significance. Without skipping a beat, as soon as the Israelis left, the Palestinians extended the terrorist infrastructure to encompass the resources they had gained. A few months later, the entry of Hamas officials, pledged to radical Islam and the eradication of Israel, sped up this process. As the attacks accelerated, and no evidence for a change for the better was forthcoming, Israelis also rediscovered the mistake of giving responsibility for their survival to outsiders. The security arrangements negotiated with Egypt and Europe, which accompanied the withdrawal of Israeli military forces from Gaza in August 2005, have all collapsed. The first agreement was signed with the Egyptians, after former prime minister Ariel Sharon overruled many advisors, and agreed to remove Israeli troops from the 13-kilometer border strip between Gaza and Egypt. The IDF had been very active in stopping Palestinians from smuggling explosives, terrorists and various anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles under the border. Although turning over this responsibility to Cairo was a calculated risk, the hope was by making this move, Israel would be seen to have ended the occupation of Gaza. And perhaps the Egyptian presence along the border and inside Gaza would encourage the Palestinians to turn their energies from war to peace. In parallel, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brokered a separate security arrangement covering the Rafiah crossing. On Nov. 15, 2005, Rice pressed then prime minister Sharon to agree to a joint Palestinian-European Union arrangement in this very sensitive area. The U.S. was responding to pressures from the Europeans, who desperately wanted a major role in what was seen as the latest "peace process." A short time after the agreement was signed, Palestinians bulldozed a breach in the barrier along the Philadelphi corridor and moved freely into and out of Egypt. The 70 European "observers" were shunted aside and chased away by various Palestinian gunmen. As a result, the smuggling of weapons and terrorists has grown into a torrent, and these agreements have joined many others in the dustbin of Middle East peace efforts. After paying a high price for these hopes, Israelis have rediscovered the fundamental need for direct control over their own security. This lesson has been learned on many occasions -- in 1948, when no one protected them from a mass invasion that almost crushed the nascent country; in 1967, when the UN suddenly removed the peacekeepers stationed in the Sinai following the previous war; and in 1973, when Egyptian forces were able to use weapons that the American-brokered cease-fire was supposed to have kept far away from the front. But after a few years, the combination of international pressure on Israel and the hopes that perhaps there will be changes this time, have led to another round of Palestinian attacks and a reluctant Israeli return to responsibility for its own security. It is still far too early to know how the return to Gaza will end. But even if the kidnapped soldier is released, the Israeli forces cannot simply turn around and leave Gaza, waiting for the next attempt. Israel is unlikely to reoccupy the poor and hate-filled cities, but the days when Palestinian groups could simply drive from Egypt into Gaza with weapons and terrorists are over. Reliance on outsiders -- particularly Egypt and the European Union -- for security is over, and Israel has no choice but to resume control over Gaza's borders. This will at least help to prevent more terror and kidnappings, and perhaps eventually convince some Palestinians that the only option they have is to take control over their own society, and finally make the compromises necessary for real peace. Gerald M. Steinberg is editor of NGO Monitor and director of the Program on Conflict Management at Bar-Ilan University. |
|
FOREIGN BACKERS OF PEACE NOW
Posted by Steven Shamrak, June 29, 2006. |
|
This was written by Scott Shiloh and is called "Foreign
Governments are Key Backers of Peace Now." It appeared in Arutz-Sheva
-- www.IsraelNN.com Peace Now, a far-left Israeli-based organization promoting Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders and removal of all Jewish communities in Judea/Samaria, is largely funded by foreign governments. The organization, which spends large sums of money finding and detailing every new Israeli structure in Judea and Samaria, is effectively on the payroll of at least three European governments, according to Israeli investigative reporter David Bedein? Bedein said a member of the Finnish Parliament told him the money was forwarded to Finland by the U.S. government. Bedein said another source of financing for Peace Now is the economic Cooperation Foundation, a group funded directly by the European Union. The EFC was the subject of controversy last year when the Israeli media revealed that the organization was funding the activities of left-wing MK Yossi Beilin (Meretz). The foreign governments which fund Peace Now, such as Britain and Norway, are fundamentally opposed to the existence of all Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. (Effectively, they oppose the existence of the state of Israel. This is an open violation of the sovereignty of an independent state - Israel. It is bordering upon a declaration of war! The Holocaust was not enough, they are determined to finish job!)
...and what UN is worrying about. "The Secretary-General calls on Israel to respect international law and to ensure that its actions are proportionate and do not put civilians at grave risk," - First, the UN must make a strong uncompromising ultimatum to perpetrators and sponsors of terrorism - Hamas, PLO, Al Qaeda, Jamal Islamia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and other 'quiet achievers'! Second, eradicate the internal anti-Israel infestation of anti-Semitism within the UN! Yes, I know, it is too much to ask! Business as Usual. Hamas recently declared an end to an unofficial truce with Israel. An 8-man terrorist force crawled through an underground tunnel into Israel. Two Israeli soldiers were killed, four others wounded and one is abducted during the raid. Hamas endorsed and played a leading role in the long-planned attack. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has urged the United States to press Israel to stop military escalation against the 'Palestinians'. US Urges Israel Restraint. THE international community of hypocrites urged restraint as thousands of Israeli troops massed on the Gaza border poised for an offensive over the kidnapping of a teenage soldier. (For 58 year, only Israel has being exercising restraint. It is time to get rid of our enemies once and for all and free Jewish Land!) Food for Thought Israel's consul general in New York, Aryeh Mekel, has stated that those American Jews who do not support Olmert's realignment plan "will be told to keep quiet." - The president of Australia Zionist Federation, Philip Chester, also said that Jews in Australia should not protest against deportation of Jews from Judea and Samaria, because it will not change anything. - So much for the democracy and freedom of speech! - When Jews do not challenge apathetic leadership, National disasters happen. There are many compelling examples in Jewish history. Guns Supplied by Israel to kill Jews. Members of PA President
Mahmoud Abbas' personal guard, "Force 17", used Israel's weapons to
shoot Israelis this week. Abu Yousuf, a senior member of Force 17,
said bluntly that the weapons will be used to shoot Jews, and added
that the terror organization may share the weaponry with Hamas as
well, if its 3,000-member militia is absorbed into the general PA
police force. Red Cross has Done it Again. Israel's aid organization, Magen David Adom has been admitted as a member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The Palestine Red Crescent has also become a member. Israel first tried to join the International Red Cross Movement in 1949, but Middle Eastern politics have kept Israel out. (It took 58 years for Israel to get to this point of 'recognition'. It took no time for non-existent, fictitious anti-Israel entity to be recognised by the Red Cross. Now is a very good time for Israel to resign from this deeply anti-Semitic and anti-Israel organization!) The War is Declared. The armed wing of PA governing group Hamas said its forces aided the attack, using firearms and bombs. spokesman for Gaza's Popular Resistance Committee said they carried out the attack on an Israeli army position near the Gaza Strip. (Do not kid yourself, the war is declared by Hamas government! When will Israel clear Jewish land of our enemies?) Egypt and Jordan rejected Olmert's 'Realignment'. President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah warn Israel against unilateral steps - realignment plan for the West Bank.
Steven Shamrak was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and
participated in the Moscow Zionist "refusenik" movement. For the last
3 years, he has been publishing internet editorial letters on the
Arab-Israeli conflict -- independently, not as a member of any
organization or political movement. He can be reached by email at
StevenShamrak@mail2world.com
|
|
OPERATION "SUMMER RAINS" -- TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE
Posted by Benjamin Svetitsky, June 29, 2006. |
|
From: Professors for a Strong Israel
Professors for a Strong Israel deplores the extreme procrastination that preceded the start of military action against the terrorists in the Gaza Strip. This delay served to increase their motivation and led to increased missile fire against Israeli towns and, ultimately, the recent incidents of kidnap and murder. We reject the folly of waiting for international "legitimacy" before acting to defend Israeli citizens exposed to terrorism. We demand that Operation "Summer Rains" continue beyond the rescue of the kidnapped soldier. We demand that it continue beyond elimination of the threat of the Kassam missiles. Likewise, it is unacceptable that the ultimate goal of the operation be the surrender of the Land of Israel to the "good terrorist" Abu Mazen. We demand that this operation continue until the full and final expulsion of the Palestinian Terror Authority from the Land of Israel. Contact Professors for a Strong Israel by telephone at 050-551 8940 or by email at bqs@julian.tau.ac.il |
|
PROTECTING THE REGIME VERSUS PROTECTING THE JEWS
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, June 29, 2006. |
|
We read that four IAF jets have buzzed the northern palace of jihad - host Bashir Asad, dictator son of the Syrian dictator who oversaw the murder of Israeli POWs on the Golan in 1973. We read that dozens of Hamas 'officials' have been taken into custody following the murder of 18-year old Israeli hitchhiker, Eliyahu Asheri. Have you seen the photo of this youth the savages murdered? They have murdered too many Jews. It's been a long time since it's been too many... Are you disgusted by the incremental, tippy-toe 'response' by the IDF led by the unilateral surrender artists, Ehud Olmart and Amir Peretz? You are for they are far beneath contempt; they are the face of everything contemptible, cowardly, self-hating and corrupt in Israeli politics, the cringing of the galut that is only 'proud' when beating up self-respecting Jews. So, the IAF has buzzed the palace of the main state harbor of jihadists; they've sent him a message and a warning; another in the endless chain of hollow 'don't do it again or you'll be sorry, maybe' messages in which the Israeli 'elites' excel. If they had any self-respect or concern for other Jews, if they had any crediblity of fortitude Bashir Asad's palaces would be smoking ruins right now, and all the Hamas 'officials' that have been arrested would be dead from bullets to the head in payment for the execution-murder of that beautiful young man. Nothing else will do him respect or do his family justice. Nothing else will deter similar kidnappings and murders of Jews of all ages by the savages which surround and infest Israel. The index of the regime's hollowness, cowardice and imminent collapse is its addiction to sending 'warning messages' to savages that are publicly committed to the murder of Jews. Until or unless they strike them as they need to be stricken, off the face of the earth, they will themselves be accomplices in this bloody fiasco they have inflicted upon the Jewish people. They are not for peace, but for war because they do not punish and preempt the enemy. Now, with the abominatons of islam so blatant in our faces is the time to crush the guilty into the ground so that future such will be deterred. Flatten Gaza, scrape it clean and rebuild it full of beautiful and productive Jewish towns. Professor Eugene Narrett's new book, Israel and The Endtimes is now
available at this web site:
|
|
FRIENDS OF GUSH KATIF CAMPAIGN UPDATE #1
Posted by Buddy Macy, June 28, 2006. |
|
First, a message from Dror Vanunu, International Coordinator, Friends of Gush Katif / Director, Gush Katif Committee (gkatif@netvision.net.il) "We are excited to witness the launch of a campaign fund in North America, from which 100% of the money will help the expellees of Gush Katif. I have been working closely with Buddy Macy and have total confidence in his integrity and honesty -- and in his sincere intentions of helping us. The video presentation at the commemoration in Jerusalem should be tremendously moving. I can't wait to see the faces and hear the voices of all of our friends in America and Canada. From all of the expellees from Gush Katif, thank you very much for your generosity!" Dror Dror and his family were/are victims of the "disengagement" this past August. He is dedicated to helping his fellow expellees live as normal a life as possible in these more than trying times! Since the launch of the campaign this past Wednesday on the Middle East Report radio show (www.zoaphilly.org), and on the Internet this past Thursday, I have received quite a few notes of encouragement, including the two that follow, about which nothing needs to be said: Shalom, As if that weren't enough, the following is Anita's response to my reply: Shalom, Buddy, Since the launch of the campaign last week, the fund has raised $2,900. Included among the contributions is an $1800 gift from the Eshet Chayil Foundation of New Jersey. As was explained in the first campaign email, we plan to produce a video that we intend to show on a giant television screen in Jerusalem during the commemoration ceremonies. Included on the video will be short greetings from donors of a minimum of $180* to Friends of Gush Katif, who will have emailed me a digital movie clip. Our goal is to have a 90-minute video filled from start to finish with best wishes to the expellees from their Jewish and Christian brothers and sisters around the world. If one does not have access to a video camera, he or she will be able to mail or email us a photograph to be included on the video, with a caption created underneath. For more information about the campaign, or to offer your welcomed assistance, please call toll-free: 800-BUDDY-NY (800-283-3969) from the U.S. or Canada. Outside North America, please call: 973-785-0057. Please forward this email to everyone on your list! Thanking you in advance for your most generous of support, Buddy Macy Friends of Gush Katif
Please write the following in the note section of your check: "We give generously!" Please email your video clip or photo to: vegibud@aol.com. *Please note: Gifts of any amount will be greatly appreciated! Contact Buddy Macy by email at VegiBud@aol.com |
|
PROTECTING ISRAEL FROM VICTORY
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, June 28, 2006. |
|
Mahmoud Abas' military 'wing,' Fatah's al aksa martyr's brigade boasts that it has shot a rocket bearing a bio-chemical warhead into Israel. This is quite possible and the public response of the Olmert administration minimizing the incident is predictable. Only a terrorist attack resulting in major Jewish casualties might, -- repeat, might compel the client regime of Foggy Bottom to respond with significant military force against the jihadists who are in open war against Israel. The Olmert - Peres regime is not going to accept the reality of this until it happens and when it does they cadres in the media and academia will blare that it is because Israel has not withdrawn fast or far enough toward the ocean. That's how intelligent the "enlightened ones" in Israel are. The last thing the Olmert - Barak (Supreme Court Judge and militant secularist Aharon Barak) regime wants is to be put in a position where it needs to save face and thus retain its chokehold on Israeli society by meaningfully striking the Arabs. If this clique was to take a major bite out of terrorism it would damage the regime's excuse and means for 'justifying' the alienation of the central portions of the Jewish heritage of land and holy sites. The suicidal insanity of the jihadists is less mad and more reality-based than it seems. It is based partly on an accurate assessment of the fact that the dominant elites in Israel intend on destroying the Jewish aspects of the state and that therefore terrorism can be escalated with success if it is done steadily with occasional spikes, like the kidnapping of Jewish soldiers built in to move the process along. The "Palestinian" terrorist groups are not only pawns of Arab states and ruling elites but of the Israeli secular elites that want, 1) to preempt the dawn of a truly Jewish and self-respecting Israel, and 2) to maintain their own socio-political dominance despite their small numbers. This is why the current occupation of small parts of Gaza by the IDF is so limp, so lacking in major firepower directed against all areas that harbor terrorists and all hostile population centers. This is why the IDF and Olmert regime already, as the Labor "Zionists" did in 1948 are pleading with the Arabs not to flee to Egypt but to stay in the Gaza area: they need to be as close as possible to the Jewish towns they must attack for further withdrawals to be justified until Israel reaches the size that the State deems adequate for its complete servility while also retaining utility as a target for global jihad and a steady source of computer, laser, military and medical technology. That's the game. Instead of taking grim satisfaction in the imminent destabilization and fall of the Mubarak and Hussein regimes in Egypt and Jordan respectively and their replacement by blatantly jihadist cliques whose activities might embarass Israel into a meaningful military strike, Israel's government is now aligned with American and French diplomats in laboring to extricate the kidnapped Israeli soldier as a means to saving the puppet regimes in Cairo and Amman. Of course this self-despising treachery is self-defeating for, like the expulsion of the Jews from Gush Katif it emboldens Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran and only brings closer the inevitable major attack that will force the anti-Jewish client regimes in Jerusalem to strike back decisively or to lose their hold over the IDF and the Jews. Make book on it: when the terrible attack comes, as in 1948, the forces of 'havlaga' (which is mainly a rationalization of the elite's refusal to be Jewish and embrace the birthright) will counter attack only as much as they need to do to maintain their power and facade of legitimacy. And so there will be graver and larger terror strikes until the entire unnatural charade, the wall of whitewashed plaster is swept away by a storm. Still this game plays on: Israeli reports, aping and aped by the world media, in consonant with jihadist bluster, emphasize the 'dangers' of Israel attacking its enemies throughout Gaza. Mines, booby traps, .... blather. These are serious obstacles only if the politicized IDF, true to form from 1948 to Jenin 2002 uses its ground troops as cannon fodder and refrains from making maximal use of its air force. This of course is what should be done and would reduce the jihadist enclave to the condition of Dresden in late March 1945. Maybe Rice should order Olmert to do this since it would save Mubarak from the nightmare western diplomacy and islamic imperialism has created in Gaza and so many other places. Professor Eugene Narrett's new book, Israel and The Endtimes is now
available at this web site:
|
|
THE ONGOING WAR AGAINST REALITY
Posted by Mrla 26, June 28, 2006. |
|
This article was written by Henryk M. Broder and it appeared today
in Der Spiegel
|
|
Many are treating the apparent recognition of Israel by Hamas as a sign of hope. It's not. Indeed, the Palestinians have no such intention -- and have left Israel with only military options. Once again the Palestinians are in the process of shattering the Israeli dream of peace. The building of a tunnel under the border, the attack on an army post and the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier haven't just served to stir things up in the stagnating Middle East war. The attack also served to bring the Israelis face to face with the limits of their power. And to provide the Palestinians with a short-lived though uplifting feeling of superiority. It's difficult, after all, to categorize an assault on an army unit as an act of terrorism. 
Recent history has seen the Palestinians firing homemade, short-range Kassam rockets from Gaza into Israel and Israel responding with "targeted assassinations" -- which have often resulted in civilian deaths. That was, though it may sound cynical, Middle East business as usual -- and also mirrored the situation in the north where Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon has hardly resulted in instant peace there. All or nothing Now, however, the conflict has reached a new level. The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza last summer has more than anything motivated militant Palestinians to demonstrate to Israel that the conflict is not primarily about territory, the end of the occupation and the return to the 1967 borders. Rather, it's about all or nothing. It's about the control, not the division, of the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Were the Palestinians to invest only a tiny percentage of the energy they consume in internal conflict and resistance against Israelis into the reconstruction of the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and Gaza would be much better off. And the Israelis? Those who believed that unilateral action and the construction of a fence would result in the security that negotiations have been unable to provide are now being confronted with the bitter reality. Fences and walls cannot provide absolute security -- and no matter how high such barriers are, they can still be dug under. The question they are asking themselves is this: "What is cheaper: ending or continuing the occupation?" What's the point of military withdrawal when those Palestinians who want a peaceful resolution are unable to assert themselves -- and those Palestinians who want to continue fighting merely feel vindicated and encouraged? As usual in such moments -- with the tunnel at the end of the light coming ever closer -- those who have a stake begin to clutch at whatever straw they can. The Europeans are once again trying to whitewash things. One hears a lot these days about the so-called "prisoners' document" -- that mysterious paper in which representatives from Hamas and Fatah have agreed on a common position on Israel. It is said to be nothing less than an "indirect recognition" of Israel. Ignoring the rules of democracy Leaving aside for a moment what exactly an "indirect recognition" means in practice -- no attacks within the 1967 Green Line? No attacks on Saturdays and holidays? No attacks on women and children? -- one salient fact is being forgotten. Israel and the PLO have already long since recognized each other in the Oslo Accords and all the agreements that have come since. One of the basic rules in any democracy is that a new government accepts the treaties made by the old. Germany's Christian Democrats, for example, didn't annul the agreements struck by Social Democrat Chancellor Willy Brandt with East Bloc countries in the 1960s even if, when in opposition, they did everything in their power to torpedo the policy. For Hamas, however, such rules don't seem to apply. The "prisoners' document" is a paper that is supposed to re-establish and solidify the "national unity" of the Palestinians. Inferring therein a recognition of Israel -- no matter how indirect or implicit it may be -- merely shows a tendency toward self-delusion. Nobody has yet seen the entire paper, but those bits that have been released are just as incoherent as they are explicit. And everything is discussed. Indeed, the only thing that doesn't appear is any mention of a recognition of Israel -- neither in pre nor in post 1967 borders. Only one conclusion can be drawn: Even after 40 years of occupation, the Palestinians have still not accepted reality and still dream of a return to the way things used to be. Indeed, if there is a clear message provided by the paper, it is this: The Palestinians do indeed want a two-state solution. One in those regions -- the Gaza Strip and the West Bank -- occupied in 1967. And one in that region that is today known as Israel. One shouldn't forget that the PLO was founded in 1964 with the goal of freeing Palestine from the Zionists -- three years prior to the Six Day War when Gaza was still under Egyptian control and the West Bank was a part of Jordan. Either complete victory or utter defeat Back then, talking about the "Occupied Territories" meant Haifa, Tel Aviv and Beer-Sheva. And in this respect nothing has really changed to this day. The only difference between Hamas and Fatah -- which is overlooked by "the document" -- is the question of how Israel should be defeated: either militarily or through the implementation of a "right of return" policy. Israel therefore has the choice as to whether it is wiped from the map either in battle, or by peaceful means. Whoever hopes Israel will embrace these two alternatives is kidding themselves: there is no third possibility. Israel has no other choice but to stand tough because every climb down and withdrawal is interpreted as weakness. Furthermore the word "compromise" is a foreign word in the Arab world. You either prevail or go down in a blaze of glory. For this reason a "ceasefire" is the most Hamas is prepared to offer Israel, which the Europeans insist on misinterpreting as the first step towards recognition. Rather, it's merely a tactical pause in the war against Israel. News about the new confrontation on the border between Gaza and Israel has largely displaced reports of the looming "humanitarian catastrophe" in Gaza. It's also important to find out how a government that can't even provide for its own people is getting the means to assemble, clothe and arm a new 3,000 man force. And who is arming and paying the salaries of these masked, hyper-agile young men who are storming the streets wielding bazookas? Is that what a "humanitarian catastrophe" looks like? Hamas, though a problem for Israel, is a catastrophe for the
Palestinians. It's a difference that no document can set aside.
Contact Mrla 26 at mrla26@aol.com
|
|
'PEACE PLAN' IS WAR PLAN
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 28, 2006. |
|
Matthew Kalman's "Palestine Accord seen producing little progress" (SF Chron, 6.28.06) grossly mis-represents the "accord" that terrorist prisoners in Israeli jails cobbled together in order to manipulate Abbas to get them out of jail. International media have referred to this accord as a "peace plan"; but what the jailed terrorists announced was nothing more than a declaration of war against Israel and a recommitment to Arab terrorism's "higher goal" of destroying Israel. In six separate clauses, the declaration calls for acts of terrorism against Israel, to be conducted in conjunction with civil disturbances, negotiations with Israel run by Abbas (something that Iran and its client the Palestinian Islamic Jihad does not accept), as well as an international diplomatic campaign in cooperation with NGO allies intended to delegitimize and demonize Israel. The terrorists call for the establishment of a new joint terrorist organization called the "Popular Resistance Front" that is to be composed of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah terrorists. This new group's job will be "to lead and engage in resistance (aka. terror warfare) against the occupation and to unify and coordinate action and resistance..." Such coordination will simply enhance the efficiency of their terror war against Israel. The document also insists that Israel accept the so-called "right of return" of the so-called "refugees"; but this demand in reality means that in exchange for a temporary cessation of terror attacks against its citizens, Israel agrees to its own national destruction. The so-called "right of return" is a demand that Israel accept the unimpeded in-migration of millions of hostile, foreign- born Arabs to Israel's sovereign territory. Finally, in a decidedly self-serving fashion, the convicted murderers emphatically call for their own release from Israeli jails and see their release as "a sacred national duty." So convicted Palestinian mass murderers met in an Israeli prison yard to recommit themselves to their war for the destruction of Israel, and the international press call it a 'peaace plan'. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
|
THE PALESTINIANS LOST THE LAST ELECTION
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 28, 2006. |
|
The LA Times article by Laura King and Ken Ellingwood "Israelis punch into Gaza..." (SF Chron, 6.28.06) touches briefly upon a Mid-east 'fact of life' which bears some clarification. The terrorist leadership in the Arab world, from the Hajj Amin el Husseini, grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the pre-state era, to Fatah and the PLO and Arafat and now Hamas and Abbas, have never disagreed as to their "higher goal": the destruction of Israel. Disagreement between so-called 'moderates' and radicals has been whether to pretend to make peace now and gain some political advantages or to keep up a terrorist assault with no pretense of peace, so that Jews are killed almost daily. In that context, Arafat was indeed a 'moderate'. He sought a superficial political solution so that he could muster his terror forces behind the safety of a semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority and unleash them with greater efficacy when the time was ripe....but, as his adjutant Faisal Husseini said, never loosing sight of the 'higher goal'. Hamas and numerous other terror groups opposed even this faux-peacemaking, and used terror to derail Arafat's pseudo-peace talks. Now we see the same schism within Hamas. Although he has not eschewed the Hamas Covenant and its higher goal to destroy Israel and genocide its Jews, Isma'il Haniyeh is scrambling to quell his own terror forces and keep them from undermining his recent political gains. He is playing the role that Arafat played. His immediate superior, Khaled Mash'al, safely esconced in Damascus, made an end-run around Haniyeh, and ordered the recent attack by Hamas terror forces loyal to him, in order to keep the terrorism alive and active, and to prevent Haniyeh from gaining too much power, even though this most recent unprovoked attack and kidnapping may result in a massive defeat for the Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip. For Mash'al, most of the Hamas leadership, and most of the Hamas terror army, just the slightest hint of resolution, even though it may be nothing more than a subterfuge to further the 'higher goal' later on, cannot be tolerated. The immortal words of the Hajj live on: "Murder the Jews. Murder them all!...Kill the Jews - kill them with your hands, kill them with your teeth - this is well pleasing to Allah." (Berlin Radio, 1942). For the Arab terrorist leaders, terrorism is more important than statehood. Killing Jews is more important than Palestinian political self-determination. Fatah did not lose the last election. The Palestinian people did. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
|
IDF CONFIRMS PRC REPORT OF ELIYAHU ASHERI DEATH
Posted by Avodah 15, June 28, 2006. |
|
The IDF confirmed early Thursday a report the Popular Resistance Committees issued from Gaza that it had executed Eliyahu Asheri, 18, of Itamar, who was kidnapped earlier this week in the West Bank. IDF combat engineers and Shin Bet agents, acting on intelligence, found Asheris body Wednesday night in an abandoned car in an open field outside of Ramallah. The youth appeared to have been shot to death, and initial findings indicated that he may have been killed as early as Sunday. Asheri family has been notified. After Israel fears came true Wednesday when a spokesman for the PRC in the Gaza Strip revealed an authentic copy of missing teenager Asheri identity card to the press, confirming claims that he had been kidnapped, the police elite counterterrorist squad raided a home in Ramallah in the afternoon and arrested a fugitive, who may have provided the information on the location of Asheri body. butchered in front of TV cameras if the IDF operation in Gaza did not stop. our patience is running out,he said. Contact Avodah 15 at avodah15@aol.com |
|
GAZA INVASION UPDATE
Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, June 28, 2006. |
|
This more or less says it all. I wonder how long the before they send in the troops with the wooden stick who will yell bang, bang so as not to get the guns dirty. It is really a shame because there are still some good soldiers left in the IDF. I wonder how long they can stand being made the fools of the world. |
|
From Shmuel
No casualties for the enemy.
Two islamics killed while arming a mine in their home... Perhaps it is the post war style of making war. If you know anything else let us know. Everybody here is in utter disbelief. SHmuel 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. |
|
HAMAS AND THE SHALIT ABDUCTION
Posted by Israel Zwick, June 28, 2006. |
| This article was written by Tashbih Sayyed http://web.israelinsider.com/views/8756.htm |
|
Can a war be won without understanding the enemy? No. Israel's continuing failure to stem persistent Hamas terrorism is a testimony to the fact that the Jewish state is still in dark about the real character of their enemy -- Arabs living in the historical Jewish lands. Time and again Israeli leaders have exhibited their profound ignorance of the Arab's culture of terror that nourishes the Hamas mentality. The Israeli efforts to withdraw from southern Lebanon and the unilateral disengagement to the 1967 lines around Gaza Strip have all been carried out under the perception that such gestures will achieve peace with the Arabs. But in reality, it worked the other way round. The Arabs perceived Israel's peace moves as its weakness. The Israelis have been forced to pay in blood, the price of their leaders' failure to understand the culture of terror. In this existential war for Israel, it is vital to keep Hamas' constitution in mind. A video released on the Hamas website clearly emphasizes the Arab Islamic ideology -- the subjugation of Judeo-Christian lands under Islam. Moreover, Israel's withdrawal from Gaza has been presented as a success of their policy of terror. The way Israel "ran" from Gaza after terror is presented as the prototype for future Israeli and western behavior in the face of Islamic force. Transcripts of Hamas' video leave no doubt about the true agenda of the Islamists in which the future Palestinian State, being pushed as the "only" solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict, will be a vanguard. The video boasts, "We will rule the nations, by Allah's will, the USA will be conquered, Israel will be conquered, Rome and Britain will be conquered. The Jihad for Allah... is the way of Truth and the way for Salvation and the way, which will lead us to crush the Jews and expel them from our country Palestine. Just as the Jews ran from Gaza, the Americans will run from Iraq and Afghanistan and the Russians will run from Chechnya, and the Indian will run from Kashmir, and our children will be released from Guantanamo. The prisoners will be released by Allah's will, not by peaceful means and not by agreements, but they will be released by the sword, they will be released by the gun". Sunday's (June 25, 2006) pre-dawn attack by Hamas' military wing against Gilad Shalit's tank in which the terrorists succeeded in abducting him and killing two of his crew is just another example of Hamas' culture of terror. Proving once again my premise that talks, negotiations, dialogue and peace gestures are tools of a civilized culture. In a culture of terror these methods are a sign of weakness. In this culture, murderers are lionized as Gaziz (victors), killers who die in the pursuance of their bloody trade are called Shaheeds (martyrs) who are believed to be rewarded by Allah with 72 virgins and a state in which the followers of one faith are considered as the most perfect and the others sub-human (Dhimmis) is considered as a Dar ul Amn (House of Peace). The Islamist culture of terror is in unambiguous with regard to Jews. An act of terrorism against Jews is not considered terrorism. Most all newspapers in the Muslim lands support Arab terrorism against Jews. They justify attacks on the Israeli citizens as a legitimate act of jihad (holy war). According to a fatwa (edict) issued by Egyptian Mufti Sheikh Ali Goma'a, "whoever blows himself up is a Shaheed". Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the most influential contemporary Sunni Muslim scholars is a radical supporter of Islamist terrorism and promoter of anti-Semitism. According to a research article, "he has called for targeting American forces and civilians in Iraq and provided religious justification for the use of suicide bombers against Israeli civilians. His fatwa authorizing the use of women in suicide attacks -- an ironic reflection of his "advanced" concept of women's capabilities -- provides religious sanction for Hamas when it began enlisting female "martyrs." The culture of terror that symbolizes Hamas, believes and teaches that the Jews have killed God's prophets and oppose justice and righteousness. According to this belief, and throughout history, radical Islam has inflicted enormous damage on the human race. They have achieved this by engaging in plots against other nations and ethnic groups by perpetrating destruction, evil and malice. The theology that has given birth to the Hamas mindset teaches that the infidels (non-Muslims) have been the source of such deadly diseases as the plague and typhus. They believe that Christians poisoned their water wells, and thus killed them. Can a dialogue be initiated with a culture that professes and ideology that is anti-Christian and anti-Semitic? No. Unless this culture is cleansed of their hatred for non-Muslims of all religions, nothing productive can emerge from any amount of talking or negotiating. They need to be dealt with an iron hand. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is correct in his declaration that there will not be any negotiations with Hamas over the release of IDF soldier, Gilad Shalit. "This is not a matter of negotiations, this is not a matter of bargaining," Olmert said in a speech to a gathering in Jerusalem. Olmert said Israel would fight Islamic extremists and warned that it could hit militants wherever they are. The Shalit abduction should serve as a warning that so long as Hamas is being treated as an authentic member of a civilized society, Israeli will never be able to secure peace and prosperity for its citizens. Hamas must be treated as what it is -- a group of terrorists. This past Sunday's killings and kidnapping should be taken as further proof that by rewarding terrorism with appeasement, land giveaways and negotiations, the Islamists have become further convinced that terrorism is a legitimate response in their quest to achieve their ultimate and sinister goals. Contact Israel Zwick at israel.zwick@earthlink.net |
|
ARABS INCREASE OWN COLLATERAL CASUALTIES; WHO RUNS HAMAS?; ANNAN ON BOMBINGS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 28, 2006. |
|
ISRAEL TO SET UP TERRORIST STATE Road Map Phase I requires the Arabs to eradicate terrorism and terrorist organizations. PM Olmert is drawing up an alternative to his withdrawal plan that abandons 90% of Judea-Samaria to a P.A. state, and enters Phase II of the Road Map without Phase I. Thus the Arab state would have all its terrorist militias in place, ready to resume the war from the vantage of sovereignty. Olmert claims that Israel would retain control over the Jordan Valley. That was the same language that PM Sharon had used about the Philadelpha corridor in Gaza, from which Israel was to prevent smuggling. He gave the corridor up. When the world tells Israel that retaining control over the Valley, which would give Israel a secure border where Joshua fought for the Israelites, is "occupation," he would give it up (IMRA, 6/13). Remember how weak Rabin was towards the Arabs and the US? Netanyahu was worse. Remember how appeasement-minded Netanyahu was? Barak wanted to give everything away. Remember how unrealistic Barak was? Sharon was worse. Remember how foolish Sharon was? Olmert epitomizes folly. ARABS INCREASE THEIR CIVILIAN CASUALTIES Arabs tend to gather around a car of terrorists being attacked by Israeli aircraft. The result is that more bystanders get killed. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights warns them not to. It also condemned Israel for attacking the cars of terrorists (IMRA, 6/13). It ought to demand that the terrorists evacuate from civilian areas, so as not to draw fire down upon the civilians. Terrorist deployment there is a war crime. Attacking terrorists there is not, so long as Israel doesn't blanket the whole neighborhood with artillery shells. SEEKING EQUAL JUSTICE IN ISRAEL Nadia Matar is about to go on trial in that purported democracy known as the State of Israel for "insulting" a public official. Her crime was to liken the official in charge of rousting the Jews out of Gaza similar to the Judenrat, or Jewish ghetto officials who helped Germany roust the Jews from their towns and onto the railroad trains. Matar has sued PM Olmert's daughter, Dana, for calling the Defense Minister a "murderer," after some Arab bathers in Gaza were blown up in a mysterious explosion that the P.A. faked evidence to implicate Israel in. If Israel were responsible, it was an accident. Dana did not wait for an investigation. Her rallying cry was "Long live the Intifada!" Matar's strategy is to show that the law doesn't get applied to seditious leftists, only to patriotic rightists, or to force the Left to drop the law (Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/13). In other words, Dana Olmert does favor murder, but of her own people. Olmert brags that his family influences him. SEC.-GENERAL ON BEACH & CAR BOMBINGS "Q: Mr. Secretary-General, at a time when Pres. Mahmoud Abbas is trying to force the hand of Hamas to accept the referendum, to instill the principle of the Road Map and two States living side by side in peace, Israel is conducting its offensive?" "We do accept that Israel has a right to defend itself and its population, but..." "...how shocked and saddened I am by the latest missile attack by the Israelis... I have always maintained that there has to be proportional use of force, and governments have to be careful not to take action in areas where civilians are remotely likely to be put in harm's way, and that we need to respect humanitarian international law." Sec. Annan phoned PM Olmert to accuse Israel of violating international law. Angry, Olmert asked whether the Arabs' firing of hundreds of rockets honors international law. "Why didn't you phone me after 30 rockets were fired at Israel, and say you wanted it investigated?" Annan replied that he didn't know of the week-long bombardment. (He often gives ignorance of current events as an excuse. Even when informed, he does not act.) "...with regards to the [Qassam] attacks by the Palestinians, I have always condemned it and ask them to stop doing it." "Q: Mr. Secretary, the Israelis have done their own investigation into the first attack on the beach where that girl lost her whole family, and officials are saying that they are concluding that this is a mine that was on the beach... Human rights organizations are saying that this is quite unlikely." "SG: ... an international investigation of any kind, it would require the cooperation of the parties." "SG: I have always said that I stand by... the need to be careful not to resort to extra-judicial assassination of people who do not have a chance to respond to the accusations -- whatever they may be -- because they will no longer be around to answer questions anyway." (IMRA, 6/14.) Annan attributed the blast to Israel, without knowing the facts. He has the mentality of a lynch mob. When he heard that Israel thought that the explosion came from a mine at the beach, he called this "odd." It isn't. Hamas is known to have mined the beach. Another fact he didn't know. There is no requirement for proportional use of force. Belligerents are required to try to minimize civilian casualties. That, Israel does. Why doesn't Annan acknowledge that and admit that the Arab side specializes in maximizing civilian casualties, sometimes as the sole target? International law of war forbids troops from risking civilians needlessly by stationing themselves and fighting from amongst them; it permits the enemy to attack such forces stationed in civilian areas. Annan doesn't understand international law. Yes, Annan asks the P.A. not to commit terrorism. However, the request is mild and without expectation of compliance, for the Arabs never have complied with such requests. Since they are the aggressors, commit terrorism, and endanger civilians by their presence among them, they should be condemned severely and Israel should be encouraged to fight back, not just permitted to fight back and then be rebuked for it. The questioner shows his own bias by referring to Israeli defense, which mostly is a phony attack on open areas, an "offensive" that interferes with Abbas' peace effort. The daily rocket bombardment of Israel is an offensive, and Abbas' praise of the terrorists nullifies his alleged peace effort. Yes, an ideal investigation requires cooperation. This the Arabs won't do. Let Annan remark that if the Arabs don't want to be seen as hiding the facts, they should not sweep away evidence. But can Israel get a fair international investigation? You see the bias at the UNO. During WWII, the US shot down the brilliant admiral commanding the Japanese fleet. It was not an "extra-judicial assassination." Adm. Yamoto had no right to a trial. It was war. The Arabs go in for assassination, themselves. When Israelis are the victims, the terrorists are not condemned. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
|
EX MOSSAD HEAD: NO WORTHWHILE REASON FOR FUTURE REALIGNMENT...
Posted by Judy Lash Balint, June 28, 2006. |
|
Efraim Halevy, the former head of Israel's fabled Mossad intelligence agency, drives up to a briefing at a Jerusalem think tank in his own grey sedan. No one would guess that the unassuming, British-born gentleman who steps out of the car is the architect of Israel's controversial targeted assassination policy that has eliminated scores of Arab terrorists over the past several years. Halevy, 73, headed up the Mossad between 1998-2002, years when Israel was dealing with Yasser Arafat as head of the Palestinian national movement. But Halevy identifies the current crisis triggered by the tunnel raid into Israel and the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, 19, as "the fatal moment, the ultimate moment of truth" for Palestinians. For Halevy, the author of a new book entitled Man In The Shadows: Inside the Middle East Crisis (Weidenfeld & Nicholson) the manner in which Hamas leadership deals with the kidnap situation will reveal whether there's a future for real Palestinian governance or if the territories under Palestinian control will descend into further chaos and anarchy, ringing the death knell both for themselves and as future negotiating partners for Israel. "The real question is whether the Palestine national movement has the power to create a structure of command, control and viable governance," Halevy states. "Are they capable of setting up a system of governance"? While Halevy won't predict the outcome, his analysis is that Hamas is now on the horns of a dilemma about the direction they will take. "All timetables have changed," Halevy asserts, noting that the ruling party would now be pushed to go one way or the other because a faction had chosen to instigate the well-planned tunnel incursion into Israeli territory. "We'll see all this unfold in the next 24-48 hours," he predicts. Halevy paints a scenario where Khalad Mashal, the Damascus based head of Hamas' military wing could triumph over the so-called civil wing. There's a "real possibility Mashal will succeed in leading Hamas into a spiral of destruction over this issue," he asserts. If that should occur, the future will be an even greater question mark than ever, Halevy says. But the former intelligence head posits that should the Gaza and Ramallah Hamasniks "get it together and overcome the threat from Damascus, Hamas could become a viable partner for negotiations with Israel." If they resolve the kidnapping, "we'll be in a new ball game," Halevy asserts. At that point, Hamas will have some degree of credibility and if they show that they will adhere to some basic norms of how a responsible government acts, it will be possible to deal with them, Halevy maintains. At the end of the day, Halevy insists, the ball is in the Hamas court. "Hamas has to decide how to resolve the issue of the kidnapped soldier. Israel doesn't have to do anything. If they resolve it, a new situation will arise." As far as Halevy is concerned, there's no place for Israel to support one Hamas faction over another. "We don't have to save Hamas in any way. This is a test of authority for Hamas leaders." Whether Hamas implodes or not, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert continues to push ahead with his "realignment" plan to transfer tens of thousands of Jews from Judea and Samaria. As former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's security advisor, Halevy supported the idea of leaving Gaza, but opposed the unilateral approach that meant "we got nothing, and the Palestinians see the withdrawal as a great victory." Today, Halevy acknowledges that the number of Kassam rocket attacks on Israeli communities has risen since the Gaza pullout and states categorically: "I don't see that any future realignment plan is worthwhile from a security point of view." Judy Lash Balint is an award-winning investigative journalist and author of "Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times" (Gefen). It is available for purchase from www.israelbooks.com Visit http://flickr.com/photos/jerusalemdiaries/ for some unusual photos from Israel. |
|
THERE'S A WAR GOING ON
Posted by Batya Medad, June 28, 2006. |
|
There's a war going on, and this latest "military incursion" is just one of the battles. It doesn't make me happy. I'm not a war-hungry militant. I don't want fighting and war. I want victory a genuine victory. I want the victory we had in our hands in June, 1967, but this time we're not giving the enemy the keys to the Temple Mount![1] Until we have a battle plan to defeat the Arab terrorists who are attempting to destroy us and western civilization, all of these "incursions" are just cosmetics, and they are dangerous. If you want peace, you must destroy[2] the enemy. That's the truth;
that's life.
1. Lambert Dolphin, "Preparations for a Third Jewish Temple"
http://www.templemount.org/tempprep.html
2. Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, "Palestinian Authority political
leaders advocated kidnapping-for-hostage policy," June 27, 2006,
Batya Medad lives in Shiloh. She can be reached by email at Shilohmuse@yahoo.com or visit her website http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/ or go to http://www.shilo.org.il |
|
TOUGH
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 28, 2006. |
|
1. Tough! Quick, take a fast current events quiz: 1. Since the start of the Palestinian "intifada", how many innocent Palestinian civilians have been intentionally murdered by Israel? 2. Since the start of the Palestinian "intifada", how many innocent Israeli civilians have been intentionally murdered by the PLO, the Hamas, and their affiliates? Now if you have been relying on the mainstream media, you will be forgiven for not knowing the correct answers to those two questions. The correct answer to the first question is "zero", and the correct answer to the second question is "All of them!" That's right. Not a single innocent Palestinian has been intentionally killed by Israel during the past two decades of "intifada" violence. But every single one of the hundreds of Jewish civilians killed was an intentional act of Palestinian murder. Sure, plenty of guilty Palestinians have been killed, and these include murderers, leaders in terror organizations, rank and file terrorists, and people setting up rocket launchers to fire at Jewish civilians. And sure, there have also been innocent Palestinian civilians who were killed or injured when the Jews shot back. These are people who were killed in the same Israeli anti-terror operations necessitated by Palestinian terrorist aggression and atrocities. There is a fundamental difference, however, between Palestinian civilians getting killed in anti-terror operations and reprisals by Israel and Israeli civilians, who are killed by Palestinian Islamofascists. The Palestinian dead are unintended collateral damage from operations aimed at stopping rocket attacks and other terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. True, Israeli anti-terror operations are not so "surgically exact" that only guilty terrorists get killed in them. I am quite sure that if and when such a precise military technology is invented, for killing only guilty terrorists when they hide among innocent civilians, Israel will be the first country on earth to adopt it. However, until then, when Palestinians intentionally target and murder Jewish civilians, innocent Palestinian civilians may suffer the consequences of Arab terror. Jewish civilians are ALWAYS the target of Palestinian terror. Israeli soldiers hurt by the terrorists are generally the unintended collateral damages. Israel suffers from a fundamental strategic problem, which damages its ability to defend itself, namely, the fact that modern Hebrew does not have a linguistic equivalent to the American slang expression "Tough!" True, it has some words for "What a Shame," but they do not quite convey the same meaning. As a result, Israeli politicians generally fail to respond to whines from the world about Palestinian civilians getting hurt in counter-terror operations by saying, "Tough!" There has never been a war in which only soldiers get killed, and there does not exist a weapons technology that allows military strikes to take place in an exact manner where no civilians near military targets ever get hurt. Such surgical precision is all the more impossible when terrorists intentionally hide within and behind civilian populations. International law recognizes the rights of countries at war to attack terrorists and even soldiers when they are hiding among civilians, even when such attacks produce civilian deaths. International law assigns blame for those deaths on the belligerents who use the civilians as their "human shields". As well it should. When German civilians were killed in massive allied bombing of Germany in World War II, when schools with German children were blown to bits, the American command did not send out forensics crews to examine whether the shell or bomb had really come from an American plane or perhaps from something else. The Allied command just said "Tough!". Nazi Germany had started the war, engaged in barbarous aggression and genocide, and Germany -- including its civilians -- would have to bear the consequences. Don't like German children being targeted? Then don't start a world war. Ditto for Japanese civilians killed in World War II. Let us keep in mind that far more innocent Japanese civilians died in the conventional bombing of Tokyo than in the two nuclear explosions. Bombing Tokyo was necessary to end the war. (Actually, so was bombing Hiroshima.) Civilians died as a result? Tough! When Palestinians on a Gaza beach are killed by an Israeli shell (if that is what really happened, and there are reasons to doubt it), then the moral responsibility for those deaths rests squarely on the shoulders of the Palestinian terrorists who necessitate Israeli return fire. These are the same terrorists who have fired thousands of rockets and mortar shells into Israeli civilian areas, even after Israel completely withdrew from the Gaza Strip. These are the murdering Islamofascists who have turned the Negev town of Sderot, well inside Israel's pre-1967 borders, into the Israeli equivalent of Guernica, under daily bombardment. Sderot's low-income civilians live in bunkers, afraid for their lives. Don't want Palestinian civilians killed when Israel shoots back? Simple. Stop the rocket attacks on Sderot. Don't like Israeli reprisals? Simple. Stop the terror atrocities committed by Palestinians against Jews. You want Palestinians to move about freely without being searched at checkpoints? Simple. Stop the campaign of bombings, suicide mass murders, and atrocities by the Palestinians. When the Palestinians stop murdering Jews, no one will have to check their cars. When Palestinian ambulances no longer carry explosives and murderers, no one will stop them for inspection. You want the Palestinians to earn decent wages, have a comfortable life? Simple. Suppress Palestinian terrorism. Stop Palestinian rocket aggression. Then they can even hold day jobs in Israel if they want. They are welcome to shop in Israel and get Israeli medical treatment. No problem! But as long as the terror continues, don't expect Israel to respond by turning the other cheek and abandoning self-defense. Don't like it? TOUGH! When suicide bombers blow up Israeli buses and cafes, military strikes at the perps will continue and Palestinian civilians may well die. Tough! You don't want innocent Palestinian civilians to have to die? Stop the mass atrocities against Jewish children and other living things! Don't like civilians getting hurt in wars? Then don't start wars of terror and aggression against Israel. The Bash-Israel lobby keeps coming up with new forms of political aggression against the Jewish state. The newest goes something like this. Until Israel is technologically capable of killing terrorists hiding in the middle of cities full of civilians without a single Palestinian civilian being injured as "collateral damage", then Israel should be coerced into adopting a policy of Quaker pacifism, under which it does not respond or retaliate at all to terror atrocities. In other words, by demanding that Israel only implement 100% pure military tactics that no other army on earth has ever adopted, the Bash-Israel lobby is in effect really insisting that Israel stop defending its own civilians altogether. Israel should just respond to the firing of thousands of rockets at its civilians by turning the other cheek, becoming the first nation on earth to adopt such pacifism as its military strategy. Israel must be disarmed, while the terrorism must be rewarded. And if Israel dares to shoot back, it becomes the aggressor. By the same logic, Britain and the US were the real aggressors against Germany in 1944. Such disingenuous demands for utopian purity in military operations, even when they come from Israel's own Leftists, are little more than a demand for unconditional Israeli capitulation to terror. Indeed, the only permissible defensive strategy such people are willing to allow Israel to follow is such capitulation. Let us stop with the rhetorical pretenses and affectations! People who are "only" outraged when Palestinian civilians are unintentionally hurt by Israel, but have nothing to say against the mass rocket attacks on Sderot, are naked anti-Semites. They consider Jewish children legitimate targets of Arab aggression and Islamofascist terror because they hate Jews. In reality, they do not care a fig about Palestinian civilian casualties. Such causalities are such delightful propaganda tools that can be exploited to demonize the Jews. There is only one effective way to prevent Palestinian civilian casualties, and that is to stop the Palestinian terrorist aggression against Israel. But that is the one solution to the problem that these modern day pogromchiki, including the academic brownshirts, will never allow to be implemented. 2. June 28, 2006
JERUSALEM -- Dawn broke yesterday over the Israel-Gaza border on a surreal but not unfamiliar scene: Rows of Merkava tanks, armored personnel carriers and Humvees were assembled in preparation for an incursion into the strip. These forces -- when given the green light -- would punch through booby-trapped refugee camps in search of Hamas and Islamic Jihad gunmen, while Israeli jets and helicopters hunt the terrorists from above. By invading Gaza, Israel hopes to counter increasingly bold Palestinian attacks -- such as the firing of some 1,000 Qassam rockets at Israeli border towns and the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Hamas earlier this week. The troops will probably net a large number of terrorists and may rescue the captured soldier. But while the operation may flex its military muscle, it cannot restore Israel's deterrence power or prevent future rocket attacks and kidnappings. Indeed, the attack may well prove Pyrrhic -- inflicting greater injury on Israel than on the Palestinians. The quandary Israel confronts today originated in the unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza last August. A sizable majority of Israelis supported disengagement, excruciating as it was, as a means of achieving a national consensus on the country's borders and of preserving its vital Jewish majority. Yet even those Israelis most in favor of the Gaza pullout understood that many Palestinians would interpret the move as a strategic retreat and a victory for Hamas and al-Aqsa terror. "We shot at the Jews and they fled Gaza," they would say, "so let's keep shooting and they'll abandon Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem." Israel could have refuted that claim by responding immediately and massively to every infiltration and to every rocket fired, irrespective of whether the attacks caused Israeli casualties. Gaza is now a de facto independent state, Israel should have declared, and like any other state it must bear the consequences of its aggression. * * * But Israel did none of this. On the contrary, infiltrations and rocket strikes began almost the day after the Gaza disengagement. The primary target was Sderot, a working-class town in the western Negev populated mostly by long-settled immigrants from North Africa and more recent arrivals from Russia. Israel responded with missile attacks aimed at eliminating the Palestinian rocket crews and destroying the Qassam factories. But the crews were too elusive and the factories too readily rebuilt. The attacks against Sderot and other border towns intensified -- several Qassams struck Askhelon, Israel's major industrial city in the south -- and the Palestinians elected a Hamas government sworn to escalate the violence. Israel retaliated by blasting the Qassam launching areas with artillery fire, but the barrages did little but churn up dirt and accidentally hit civilians. The Jewish state, from a Palestinian perspective, seemed helpless. Israel's impotence was the product of several factors, firstly Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's reluctance to reoccupy Gaza so soon after evacuating it. Then came Mr. Sharon's stroke and the Israeli elections, during which, traditionally, Israel refrains from staging large-scale operations. Finally, Ehud Olmert succeeded in cobbling together a left-of-center coalition that pledged to proceed with the unilateral disengagement from the territories (or, as it is now called, convergence), but largely abandoned Mr. Sharon's hard-hitting antiterror tactics. Though himself a resident of Sderot, Minister of Defense Amir Peretz, a Laborite and advocate of renewed talks with the Palestinians, vowed to exercise maximum restraint and to "count the shells" that the Israel Defense Forces fired into Gaza. Indeed, when Qassams were smashing into Sderot last week and Mr. Peretz's neighbors were on a hunger strike in front of his house, the defense minister was in Jerusalem stumping for his candidates in the Jewish Agency elections. Israel's inaction has provided a bonanza to Hamas. By demonstrating that disengagement impaired rather than enhanced Israeli security, Hamas has dissuaded many Israelis from supporting a similar withdrawal from the West Bank, from where Qassams could be launched at Tel Aviv and the Ben-Gurion airport. By firing the rockets from densely populated neighborhoods, the Palestinians have forced Israel to kill and wound civilian bystanders, sullying its reputation abroad. Indeed, many world leaders and virtually all of the press hastened to condemn Israel for allegedly firing a shell onto a Gaza beach that killed eight Palestinians. That the IDF denied firing the shell and that the Palestinians destroyed exculpatory evidence by gouging shrapnel from the victims' limbs could not repair the damage to Israel's image. Collateral damage not only hurts Israel's international standing, it also divides the country internally. Many Israelis grieve over the deaths of innocent Palestinians, even those incurred in successful strikes against terrorists. Israel's Supreme Court is now considering two lawsuits against the IDF, both filed by Israelis, for the unintentional deaths of 15 civilians while killing Hamas commander Selah Shahada in 2002. The deaths of more than a dozen Palestinian civilians by Israeli fire in the last few weeks has further widened these schisms, pinning the government between the leftists who denounce its callousness and the generals who disdain its sheepishness. An Israeli raid into Gaza will almost certainly result in a frightful number of civilian deaths. The press will once again focus on funerals and mourning families and forget the reason for Israel's action. Israelis will once again agonize over whether these casualties were justified or avoidable. Palestinians will not be the only ones killed. Hundreds of Qassams fell on Sderot but it took the deaths of two soldiers and the kidnapping of a third to move the government to consider major military action. Soldiers are Israel's Everyman -- or rather Everychild -- and Israelis are acutely sensitive to their safety. Yet in retaliating for the rocket attacks and trying to free the hostage, the IDF will almost certainly suffer casualties. After a few days of heated battles and accusations of Israeli atrocities, the government will be compelled to extract its forces from Gaza, but not all the soldiers will be going home. And the rockets will keep raining on Sderot. Posing as defenders of the land, Hamas will be made more, not less, popular by the Israeli attack, and Abu Mazen will be commensurately weakened. Mr. Olmert will be unable to proceed on convergence and the Israeli right will begin its inexorable return to office. There is, however, one way to avert a public relations disaster for Israel, to limit casualties, and to restore Israel's deterrence power: Israel must return to the targeted-killing policy that enabled Mr. Sharon to triumph over terrorist organizations. Israel must target those Palestinians who order others to fire rockets from within civilian areas but whose families are located safely away from the firing zones. No Hamas or Islamic Jihad leader should be immune from such reprisals -- neither Prime Minister Ismail Haniya nor Khaled Meshal, who masterminds Hamas from Damascus. Though there is certain to be some international backlash, the damage to Israel's image will likely be temporary. Who today remembers Abdel Aziz Ranitisi and Sheikh Yassin? Those responsible for causing injury and death to both Israelis and Palestinians must pay the ultimate price. Only then can quiet be restored to Israel's borders and progress toward either unilateral or negotiated solutions resumed. Mr. Oren, senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, is author of "Six Days of War" (Oxford, 2002). URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115146041260192673.html Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
|
|
WE LOST 29 WONDERFUL BOYS IN OPERATION DEFENSIVE SHIELD
Posted by Evelyn Hayes, June 28, 2006. |
|
We lost 29 wonderful boys as bomb targets in Operation Defensive Shield implicating the collaboration of Saddam Hussein and Arafat al Husseini/Mahmoud Abbas in suicide murder. Kadima then invited another killing field by evicting Jews from productive peaceful Gush Katif employing Bedouins and others, sending fruits, vegetables and flowers across the globe. As Kadima watched the killing field bomb Sderot extensively and shushed the attacks on Ashkelon, and knew of more tunnels it was too busy brutalizing its settled Jews on Jewish owned land in Biblical Israel. Warn all inhabitants of War zone Gaza of temporary eviction and Bomb sweep by air not with our kids. The 150,000 who rushed the gates opened by Condoleezza Rice and Kadima can be evicted by all in Gaza terrorist holdouts and sent to a safe haven in walled section of Sinai and then massive bombing of the remaining terrorist infrastructure and weapons plants. Shutting off electric and water will try out the terrorists or send them escaping through their tunnels. Where are the dogs who would be barking out the tunnels. True peaceful residents can return after Gaza is cleared and all mercenarry murdering Hizballah, Alqaida, Hamas, Fatah are sent to an Alkatraz to stop global jihad rallying by killing Jews. Stop Jihad now before it is all explosive Contact Evelyn Hayes at haze@rcn.com |
|
THE SMELL OF SUCCESS, A TOUCH OF DETERRENCE
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, June 28, 2006. |
|
One knows that the IDF, Israel and the Jewish people are poised for a long-needed and life-saving success when Arab MK's began burbling threats about ending the move into that geographic anomaly and geopolitical imposture, the Gaza strip. The smell of success also is blowin' in the wind when jihadists begin making threats about what they 'will do' if Israel gives them the pounding they have earned and that they can feel hovering in the air above their murderous heads. This babbling of the enemy is a sure sign that Israel, astonishingly (and look at what it's taken the past 13 years) is on the verge of making a major bite out of global jihad and in restoring deterrence, -- the awareness by everyone that Jewish life is precious, not cheap and that, cousin to this fact, that Jewish land everywhere west of the Jordan is going to be redeemed and soon. Israel must not miss this opportunity to bring light out of darkness, good from evil and to step away from the precipice its ruling echelons have brought it to (albeit with much great power pressure). The hail of rockets from the Gaza strip have been a kind of measure for measure revealing the suicidal stupidity and sin of removing the Jewish settlers from their beautiful communities there. The continuing and increasing attacks, and the escalating threats of the Islamic groups of more to come are facts demanding that retributive justice be exacted now. Trust us: nearly all Americans, including the malicious peddlers of bad faith in the State Department will breathe a lot easier. But that is not the main concern or benefit... At a minimum, the IDF remains in the entire southern 'bulge' of Gush Katif, isolating the terrorists from the sieve-like Egyptian border and re-establishing a permanent Jewish presence there, for life and living. In addition, all leaders of all terrorist groups that may be involved in any way with the rocket attacks or with the recent infiltration, murders of soldiers on guard duty (this isn't a war, is it? and if it is...), and the heinous kidnapping and threats to murder Israeli POW Shalit must be executed forthwith by any means. And if, heaven forbid, POW Shalit is not released promptly or if he is harmed further in any way at all then every leader and spokesman for any terror group anywhere from the Sinai to and throughout Syria and Lebanon, Yehuda and the Shomron are to be executed and the cities from which they operate flattened flatter than the towns of Gush Katif were flattened; flattened just like the cities from which the nazi murderers operated. This is the path to peace; this is the preemption of more terror attacks against Jews. This is deterrence against the continuing attrition and genocide of the Jewish people. It's about time that Israel, the main target for many centuries, led the world in bringing a big dose of retributive justice and deterrence to global jihad. That's a peace process that will succeed; the partner will be created in proportion to the massiveness of the deterrent strike. Professor Eugene Narrett's new book, Israel and The Endtimes is now
available at this web site:
|
|
TAQQIYAH -- OR, WHAT'S IMPLICIT ABOUT IMPLICIT
Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, June 28, 2006. |
|
So, did you hear the "good news"? With Israel poised to invade Gaza to strike out against those who have deliberately launched dozens of rockets and mortars against civilians in Israel proper since the latter withdrew from Gaza, Hamas and Abbas's Arafatians have come to an agreement. The good cop/bad cop halves of the same Arab coin now allegedly will call for a halt to attacks against Jews within Israel's 1949, U.N.-imposed, 9-mile wide armistice line existence if the Jews agree to give away the store. The media is reporting the story as an implicit recognition of the Jewish State. And the Arabs are laughing their butts off. For many Muslims, obfuscation--deliberate deceit--is kosher as long as it's done to promote the cause. It has a name, taqiyyah, and it is especially proper in times of a threat. For both Hamas and Abbas' Fatah, that cause--whether framed in Dar ul-Islam vs. Dar al-Harb religious or political language--has no room for a Jewish Israel -- regardless of size. There is no difference between the charters of the P.L.O. or Hamas when it comes to this subject--despite lies to the contrary. And those lies are another example of taqiyyah -- in this case telling the West what it wants to hear as opposed to reality. With Israeli tanks on their doorstep in the wake of the kidnapping of a young soldier stationed at his base in Israel proper (with subsequent news of another possible kidnapping as well) and the killing and wounding of others, it's show time once again... Tell an all-too-gullible West what it wants to hear -- even if you're not telling them that at all. So, if Israel agrees to a total retreat to its former microscopic, rump state status, and accepts being inundated by millions of alleged Arab refugees sworn to its destruction, then the good cop/bad cop team might agree to another of their so-called hudnas -- temporary ceasefires. As many have noted, Arafat's vision of this was the Peace of the Quraysh. The Muslim Prophet, Muhammad, made a temporary truce with this pagan tribe until he gained the strength to defeat them. The late Egyptian ghoul's vision is identical to that of the current good cop/bad cop team. It gets tiring having to repeat all of this stuff. But the media and others--including the U.S. State Department--act in ways that makes this repetition necessary. The most moderate of so-called Palestinian Arab moderates, the late Faisal al-Husseini, called any dealings with the Jews merely a Trojan Horse. Taqqiyah... And he explained that the real plan was for an Arab Palestine from the River to the Sea. Check out both the Arafatians' and Hamas' websites, maps, literature, and so forth if you have any doubts about the alleged new Arab plan as well. After the Six Day War in 1967, Arabs were forced to abandon the one fell swoop idea for Israel's demise for a destruction in stages strategy instead. The old/new plan now making "news" calls to first get Israel back to its indefensible, '49 Auschwitz/armistice lines, and then--as Muhammad did with the Quraysh---finish it off at the proper time. Recall that Mahmoud Abbas, the current sweet-talking, Arafatian alleged good cop, also ran for office based upon policies calling for Israel's destruction as a Jewish State. He has been simply more willing than Hamas to play the taqiyyah card. With Israel apparently ready to blast some more of Hamas's leaders to their awaiting seventy or so virgins in Islamic Paradise, it appears that taqqiyah is sounding a bit better to them as well right now. Hence the media's reporting of this alleged new joint implicit acceptance of Israel's right to exist by the Arab good cop/bad cop team. For such a "deal," Israel is expected to bare the necks of its kids. What's really nauseating is that all of this is well known and is well-documented. So why is it newsworthy when Arabs indulge in such taqiyyah--to save their own derrieres--yet again? Most nations wouldn't have waited months to take effective action against neighbors bombarding them on a daily basis. America certainly wouldn't have. And none should. Imagine trying to locate the exact car of the exact bomber amid a crowded civilian population. But what's Israel's alternative here -- to simply allow the rats to escape back into their dens unchallenged? And recall that, in Israel's particular case, the Palestinian Arab population voted into office a government openly dedicated to its destruction. So the Arab Street is a willing accomplice to the blood lust, rejectionist policies of its leaders...Not exactly an innocent group. While many in the media and elsewhere claim that there's moral equivalency at work here, murdered Jews are not killed because their brothers use them as human shields and are caught in the crossfire and such. They are innocents deliberately targeted and blown apart simply because they are Jews living in the sole, resurrected Jewish State. Keep in mind that Arabs have almost two dozen of such states (including one, Jordan, which exists on some 80% of the original 1920 borders of Palestine), most having been conquered and forcibly Arabized from native, non-Arab peoples. Consider what the Geneva Conventions has to say about this? Article #51/7: The presence of the civilian population shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attack. Think about what Israel has been putting up with from its neighbors. Article #58b: The parties to the conflict shall...avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas. The rats' dens are typically set up in or adjacent to civilian apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, etc., as America has learned for itself in Iraq. Article #51/2: The civilian population...shall not be the object of attack. Acts of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited...Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Arabs typically target Israeli civilians. In light of all of the above, there is only one course of action for Israel to take in response to the old, new destruction in phases peace of the grave plan which the media and others claim to be the Arabs' implicit recognition. It must treat it the way any other taqqiyah should be dealt with. 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 |
|
ERLANGER'S REVIEW OF LEVITT'S BOOK SPEAKS VOLUMES -- ABOUT ERLANGER
Posted by Deb Kotz, June 27, 2006. |
|
This is yet another instance of bias in Mideast coverage by a major newspaper reporter. Last week at a board meeting for Sarah Stern's new think tank, Emet, I had the pleasure of meeting a former UPI reporter who said he encountered the bias firsthand while reporting on events in Jenin. UPI initially refused to publish his piece on the lack of evidence for a massacre at Jenin because they said it wasn't even-handed. He was basing his story on IDF statements and not balancing it with the Palestinian viewpoint. The fact that there wasn't a massacre didn't make a difference. It was the covering of both viewpoints (as if the event were somehow subjective) that the editors insisted upon. It wasn't until another reported wrote a piece from the Palestinian standpoint that UPI put out both pieces together for "balanced coverage". On another note, this new book, Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, by Matt Levitt (Kemp Mill's very own whose son is an excellent t-ball player) looks quite interesting and informative. The negative NY Times review makes me want to buy it more. Check it out on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300110537/sr=8-1/ qid=1151430773/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0779505-4813736?ie=UTF8 This review of Erlanger's review was written by Dr. Barry Rubin, Director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center. It appeared yesterday in the Jerusalem Post. |
|
In a shocking anti-Israel diatribe, the New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem has revealed both his profound personal bias and basic acceptance of Hamas's political claims. These revelations came in a review by Steven Erlanger in the International Herald Tribune of June 23 (reprinted from the Times) of Hamas. Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad by Matthew Levitt, currently a deputy assistant secretary of the US Treasury department. Erlanger spends little time covering the actual contents of the book, but instead launches an attack on the book's premises, sources and on Israeli policy. The most important aspect of the review is Erlanger's complaint that Levitt "does not discuss (and never even seems to entertain) the premise that Palestinians have a right to resist a 40- year Israeli occupation and partial annexation of their land." He says that Hamas is popular because of the existence of Jewish settlements, the separation barrier, restrictions on Palestinian movements and "the failure by Israelis to support those in Fatah committed to nonviolence, like President Mahmoud Abbas..." CLEARLY, ERLANGER views the conflict from a radical Palestinian standpoint, probably without consciously understanding why his statement demonstrates this fact. Hamas itself and its main supporters do not hold their views because of anger at Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip - now greatly diminished, though Erlanger appears unaware of this - but due to a desire to wipe Israel off the map. Apparently, though, Erlanger views anti-Israel extremism - the factor that is maintaining all the issues he mentions - as merely a reaction to Israeli policies. Yet, to cite only two examples, both Hamas and Fatah rejected both peace with a Palestinian state in 2000 and Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip because they saw such developments as undermining their drive to keep the conflict going until they can attain total victory. Equally absurd is Erlanger's blaming Palestinian extremism on an Israeli failure to help Abbas. Leaving aside past Israeli funding of that leader's budget, military restraint, the turning over to him of the Gaza Strip and the recent giving of guns to his forces, it ignores Abbas's unwillingness to do anything moderate. Abbas is hardly committed to nonviolence. To cite only one example, his recent endorsement of the "prisoners' letter" explicitly endorses violence against Israelis. Hamas's success is certainly related to Fatah's incompetence and corruption as well as the nationalist group's refusal to offer an alternative, moderate program, but that is hardly Israel 's fault. WHILE ERLANGER would no doubt condemn terrorism, it is also shocking that he does not see that terrorism is not exactly covered by a right to resist occupation. The way he expresses all these issues is the same way that Hamas and Fatah propaganda explain them. And yet Erlanger is accurately explaining the thinking that lies behind most of the Times coverage, the view that Israeli is responsible for the conflict, Abbas is a moderate victim and Hamas is an understandable reaction to Israeli misdeeds. It should be remembered that Osama bin Laden and the terrorists in Iraq also justify their deeds, including September 11, as falling under a right to resist occupation. ON TWO other points, Erlanger makes interesting observations. First, he is obsessed with Levitt's use of sources, complaining that the author employs material from a research center associated with Israel's government and has worked at a think tank - the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center of the Center for Special Studies - "considered friendly to Israel." Thus, he concludes, "There will be readers of this book who will see it as fronting for the Israeli intelligence establishment and its views." Of course, Erlanger is signaling people that they should reach this conclusion. This kind of writing is inappropriate because the research center in question is almost exclusively merely translating Palestinian documents and texts. At any rate, the proper course for Erlanger would have been to point out some error or questionable interpretation by Levitt based on his use of this material. Instead, we have guilt by association. I think that what Erlanger is really doing here is revealing his own fear of being branded pro-Israel if he pays too much attention - or at times merely reports - Israel 's side of the story. There is a constant tendency to take Palestinian sources at face value but to energetically challenge Israeli sources, which have proven far more reliable. Finally, Erlanger is insistent on a very curious argument. He spends a lot of the review criticizing Levitt for not agreeing that the most important aspect of Hamas is trying to Islamicize Palestinian society rather than fighting against Israel. Ironically, this contradicts his claim that Hamas and its supporters are motivated by Israeli actions. But obviously both fighting Israel and Islamicizing Palestinian society are goals of Hamas. Indeed, Hamas believes that continuing to fight Israel, ignoring Israeli concessions and ensuring that peace fails is the best way to build support for an Islamist revolution among Palestinians. Why, then, is Erlanger obsessed with this distinction? I suggest that what Erlanger is actually saying is that what is really bad about Hamas is not that it is a racist, terrorist group with genocidal intentions against Israelis but that it is an Islamist organization. If, after all, Hamas is exercising a just right of resistance motivated by Israeli misdeeds, how can it be condemned on those grounds? The trouble with Hamas is that it is a "right-wing" religious group rather than a "left-wing" nationalist one. The bottom line of all these points is that after reading Erlanger's review it is impossible to take seriously the idea that he is a fair reporter or has a good understanding of the contemporary issues he is covering. Deb Kotz is an active member of the Brandeis Chapter of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and maintains an email list to distribute articles of interest to the local community. She can be reached at DebKotz@aol.com |
|
ERLANGER IS WRONG AGAIN. PALESTINIAN ARABS HAVE NO RIGHT TO RESORT
TO VIOLENCE
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 27, 2006. |
|
Steven Erlanger is the Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times. His review of Matthew Levitt's "Hamas" (Militant Zeal: a Sunday New York Times Book Review) makes two rather unexpected errors which will mislead readers unless corrected: 1.) "....Hamas's essential goal remains the creation of an Islamic society in Palestine. The war against Israel is actually secondary". This is not correct. The "Palestine" that Hamas seeks to Islamize, per their own oft-ballyhooed pronouncements, is "Palestine from the River to the Sea" -- all of what is today Israel. Therefore, the war against Israel is indeed primary. Israel must first and foremost be destroyed, and its Jews annihilated or exiled. Then the Islamization of that "Greater Palestine" can be accomplished. All Mr. Erlanger needed to do was to read the Hamas Covenant. Their goals, primary and secondary, are perfectly clear. 2.) "Most damaging of all, Levitt does not discuss (and never even seems to entertain) the premise that Palestinians have a right to resist a 40-year Israeli occupation and partial annexation of their land." This is not correct. Actually the Palestinians. leaders and rank-and-file, have absolutely no right whatsover to offer military or terrorist resistance to Israel. It is against international law to utilize war or terrorism or violence or mass murder to resolve a problem when peaceful means of resolution are available. Israel, the UK, the USA, the UN, or some combination of these have offered statehood and peaceful political self-determination to the Palestinian leadership at least 15 times since 1937 (the Peel commission). Every time, the offers were rejected with violence, murder, terrorism, war, and the endless relentless declaration that the Arabs would destroy Israel and genocide its Jews. Palestinian leadership has made clear, many, many times, that their goal is not a state alongside of Israel, but a state instead of Israel, on the corpses of Israel's 6,000,000 Jews. What is euphemistically and mendaciously called the "resistance" (which Erlanger somehow thinks is the Palestinan's right) is actually the continuation of the terror war begun by the Hajj Amin el-Husseini (ally to Hitler) in 1929, and continued sporadically, punctuated by full-scale wars, to this day. If the Palestinian leadership wanted their state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they could have had it decades ago. They have chosen instead to achieve their real goal with violence and war and terrorism. There is no moral, historical, or legal justification for their endless jihad against Israel. It seems that Erlanger is ignorant of international law and the history of the Israel-Arab conflict. He should do a bit of research before he errs in such a misleading manner. Will you be kind enough to print a correction? David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
|
FEAR OF ANOTHER KIDNAPPING
Posted by Hillel Fendel, June 27, 2006. |
Eliyahu, son of Miriam and Yitro Asheri, is a student at the pre-military yeshiva academy in N'vei Tzuf, in the western Binyamin area. He was last seen Sunday when he left a friend's home in Beitar Illit on his way north. He was to have joined his yeshiva colleagues on a trip to the Golan Heights, but the head of the academy called this morning to say that Eliyahu never arrived. Volunteers are on their way to Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem and west of Gush Etzion, to see if they can find a trace of the missing youth. A friend of Eliyahu informed the police early Monday afternoon that he had seen him Sunday evening at the French Hill junction in northern Jerusalem, where hundreds of people wait for rides northward every day. The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) terrorist group announced late last night that it had kidnapped a "settler." Arutz-7 has learned that an emergency room has been established in Itamar. Though his father told the police that his son has "gone off by himself" in the past, the security establishment is essentially convinced that the youth was kidnapped. A spokesman for the PRC confirmed to Ynet this afternoon that a settler had been kidnapped, but said he would not "give out information for free." Hamas spokesmen threatened even more kidnappings, until all Arab prisoners in Israeli prisons are released. MK Yuval Shteinitz (Likud) told Arutz-7 that in his opinion, it is easier to find a kidnapped Israeli in Judea and Samaria than in Gaza. Asked what he feels should be Israel's strategy today, the Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the previous Knesset said, "Beyond the problem of Kassams and a kidnapped soldier, a Palestinian Hizbullah is being formed under our noses in Gaza, with tens of thousands of young Arabs training to fight against us - and yet Israel does nothing about it." Shteinitz said that in the short range, Israel must close down Gazan infrastructures, as well as target Hamas leaders. "Ultimately," he said, "there will be no choice but to go into Gaza, as I have long proposed, and carry out another massive offensive like Operation Defensive Shield."
Hillel Fendel is senior news editor at Arutz Sheva (www.IsraelNN.com).
|
|
SURVEY OF WORLD'S MUSLIMS YIELDS DISMAYING RESULTS
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 27, 2006. |
|
This article by Daniel Pipes in the NY Sun
The Pew polls are highly respected, and seem to be done in a scientific manner. Therefore, their results are worthy of our attention. Unfortunately, the results described below are congruent with the experiences of myself and some members of my congregation (Kol Emeth) who met last week with Moslem journalists, editors, and News TV producers and anchors from Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This was in the context of a world-tour of the East-West Center and Senior Journalists 2006 Senior Journalists Seminar. While our meeting was far more than just cordial, and our interaction with the Moslem journalists was pleasasnt, productive and informative, some of us Jews were deeply disturbed by some of the journalists' questions, asked with disarming innocence and ingenue, such as: 1.) Is it true that 4000 Jews stayed home from work in their offices at the twin towers on 9/11/01? (i.e., the Jews did 9/11, didn't they?) 2.) What about the Jewish lobby. Does it really run the USA? (i.e., the Jewish Lobby runs the USA, doesn't it?) 3.) what about all those thousands of Moslems killed in Sabra and Shatila by the Israelis? (i.e., Moslems hate Israel because Israelis slaughter Moslems -- oops, no one told them that it was actually Lebanese Christian Arab Phalangists who slaughtered about 600 [not thousands] Moslem Palestinian civilians in those two refugee camps, NOT Israelis. Thus while one may argue that Israel bears partial culpability, it was Christian Arabs, not Jewish Israelis, who did the killing). 4.) How do you (Jews) deal with the fact that Israel stole Moslem land and drove hundreds of thousands of Moslems into exile? (i.e., the Arab revisionist propaganda narrative is the truth and the Israeli historical account is discounted as irrelevant or false, or is not even known). 5.) Why is everyone so focused on Moslem terrorism? What about the IRA and FARC and the Basques? (i.e., the fact that almost all of today's terrorists are Moslems has not registered with these media leaders and opinion-makers, and they seek excuses to minimize Moslem terrorism rather than confront it). Recall that the questioners are journalistic leaders in their countries. They are news editors, TV anchors, senior reporters, etc. They are the opinion-makers in their Moslem countries. They are highly educated professionals and are in professional positions where they are expected to know, and have access to the sources to learn, about the realities of the Israel-Arab conflict and the broader conflict of Western civilization against Islamofascist terrorism. They all spoke fluent English. Therefore, the naivetee of their questions, asked honestly with no sense of hesitance or untowardness, is deeply disturbing. Their questions bespoke the credibility that these senior journalist leaders gave to the Arab propaganda lies. It was, of course, excellent that we had the opportunity to explain to them why these assertions are false, what was the evidence that exposed the falsehoods, and what where the alternatives that had much evidence supporting them. [[[ in a nutshell..... 1.) if you want to cover your tracks, blame the Jews. The Saudis started the lie that 4000 Jews did not show up for work at the world trade center that day. 2.) if you have tremendous influence on Washington and you want to keep attention off of your influence, blame the Jews. Arab source and pro-Palestinian spokespersons emphasize the lie of the Jewish lobby. 3.) Christian Arabs slaughter Moslem Arabs because of the attrocities perpetrted against the Christians by the Moslems.....and both sides, plus much of the rest of the world, are happy to blame the Jews. 4.) I summarized in a brief very long one sentence the mountains of data and evidence that prove that Jews bought land, NOT stole land, and Jews developed land, and Jews created the economy and agrarian infrastructure that permitted the tripling or quadrupling of Arab populations in pre-state Israel between 1855 and 1947. Far from stealing land and driving Arabs off, Zionism created arable land from desert and swamp and brought a million arabs in. 5.) while not all Moslems are terrorists, almost all terrorists today are Moslems. A Saudi Moslem journalist made that tragic observation more than a year ago. ....]]] It was also most gratifying to see that this group accepted our explanations without objections (although that could just be politesse on their part -- no sense getting in to an irreconciliable argument, so let our hosts say what they will). But the bottom line impression that I got from this meeting is congruent with the statistics in Pipes' article. Most Moslems, in most of the world, including the very polite and cordial and peace-loving and highly educated westernized Moslems who have access to non-Moslem media, are quite willing to believe the most anti-Semitic canards promoted by Arab propaganda (funded in large part by the Saudi royal family) and by Moslem anti-Israel governments.....and to believe them without any serious critique or examination. It is more than likely that their personal beliefs make their way into their professional news activities, and thus exacerbate the problem by having their media project those beliefs onto their audiences in the Moslem world. Since these journalistic and media leaders believe the lies, then it is no wonder that Moslem rank-and-file, by the hundreds of millions, believe Osama's lies and Nusrallah's lies. Peace begins with trust. And trust begins with truth. Truth is in deep crisis due to the psychosis of denial in the Moslem world, and that may explain why peace is so problematic in the Middle East. David ML |
|
How do Muslims worldwide think? To find out, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press carried out a large-scale attitudinal survey this spring. Titled "The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other," it interviewed Muslims in two batches of countries: six of them with long-standing, majority-Muslim populations (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey) and four of them in Western Europe with new, minority Muslim populations (France, Germany, Britain, and Spain). The survey, which also looks at Western views of Muslims, yielded some dismaying but not altogether surprising results. Its themes can be grouped under three rubrics. A proclivity to conspiracy theories: In not one Muslim population polled does a majority believe that Arabs carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001, on America. The proportions range from a mere 15% in Pakistan holding Arabs responsible, to 48% among French Muslims. Confirming recent negative trends in Turkey, the number of Turks who point the finger at Arabs has declined to 16% today from 46% in 2002. In other words, in every one of these 10 Muslim communities, a majority views September 11 as a hoax perpetrated by the American government, Israel, or some other agency. Likewise, Muslims are widely prejudiced against Jews, ranging from 28% unfavorable ratings among French Muslims to 98% in Jordan (which, despite the monarchy's moderation, has a majority Palestinian Arab population). Further, Muslims in certain countries (especially Egypt and Jordan) see Jews conspiratorially, as being responsible for bad relations between Muslims and Westerners. Conspiracy theories also pertain to larger topics. Asked, "What is most responsible for Muslim nations' lack of prosperity?" between 14% (in Pakistan) and 43% (in Jordan) blame the policies of America and other Western states, as opposed to indigenous problems, such as a lack of democracy or education, or the presence of corruption or radical Islam. This conspiracism points to a widespread unwillingness in the umma to deal with realities, preferring the safer bromides of plots, schemes, and intrigues. It also exposes major problems adjusting to modernity. Support for terrorism: All the Muslim populations polled display a solid majority of support for Osama bin Laden. Asked whether they have confidence in him, Muslims replied positively, ranging between 8% (in Turkey) and 72% (in Nigeria). Likewise, suicide bombing is popular. Muslims who call it justified range from 13% (in Germany) to 69% (in Nigeria). These appalling numbers suggest that terrorism by Muslims has deep roots and will remain a danger for years to come. British and Nigerian Muslims are most alienated: Britain stands out as a paradoxical country. Non-Muslims there have strikingly more favorable views of Islam and Muslims than elsewhere in the West; for example, only 32% of the British sample view Muslims as violent, significantly less than their counterparts in France (41%), Germany (52%), or Spain (60%). In the Muhammad cartoon dispute, Britons showed more sympathy for the Muslim outlook than did other Europeans. More broadly, Britons blame Muslims less for the poor state of Western-Muslim relations. But British Muslims return the favor with the most malign anti-Western attitudes found in Europe. Many more of them regard Westerners as violent, greedy, immoral, and arrogant than do their counterparts in France, Germany, and Spain. In addition, whether asked about their attitudes toward Jews, responsibility for September 11, or the place of women in Western societies, their views are notably more extreme. The situation in Britain reflects the "Londonistan" phenomenon, whereby Britons preemptively cringe and Muslims respond to this weakness with aggression. Nigerian Muslims generally have the most belligerent views on such issues as the state of Western-Muslim relations, the supposed immorality and arrogance of Westerners, and support for Mr. bin Laden and suicide terrorism. This extremism results, no doubt, from the violent state of Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria. Ironically, most Muslim alienation is found in those countries where Muslims are either the most or the least accommodated, suggesting that a middle path is best - where Muslims do not win special privileges, as in Britain, nor are they in an advanced state of hostility, as in Nigeria. Overall, the Pew survey sends an undeniable message of crisis from one end to the other of the Muslim world. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
|
SUPERMAN JEWISH?
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 27, 2006. |
|
This was published in the New York Post June 19, 2006. It is called "Lighter side -- Mensch in Tights". |
|
Superman is the ultimate American icon - tall, built, brave. And hot. But now, as Superman is set to fly onto the big screen next week, bringing truth, justice and rippling muscles to a new generation of moviegoers, there comes word that the Man of Steel has a secret. The man behind the red cape is a Yeshiva boy. Superman - Jewish? "Only a Jew would think of a name like Clark Kent," says Brooklyn Rabbi Simcha Weinstein. "He's the bumbling, nebbish, Jewish stereotype. He's Woody Allen. Can't get the girl. Can't get the job - at the same time, he has this tremendous heritage he can't express." Weinstein has just published Up, Up, and Oy Vey! (Leviathan Press), a work that concludes, with scholarly authority and voluminous footnotes, that beneath Supe's form-fitting tights, there lurks a circumcision. In the book, and on his Web site, www.rabbisimcha.com, he outs the Jewish roots of other superheroes who conceal their true identities - an undoubtedly Jewish trait - such as Batman, the Hulk and Spider-Man. Weinstein grew up in England as Simon, a boy who worshipped the pop-culture gods of Indiana Jones and James Bond. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
|
|
PIPES TO ISRAEL: WAKE UP!; WHICH ARMY IS THE MOST MORAL?; ISM FOR TERRORISM
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 27, 2006. |
|
ISRAEL BARRAGED The Arabs have increased their rocket bombardment of Israeli towns to more than a dozen a day (as per IMRA, 6/11). The Secretary-General asked for a UNO investigation of the explosion that killed Arab bathers in Gaza (IMRA, 6/10). He did not ask for a UNO investigation of the daily barrage of Israeli towns by rockets from the P.A.. What does that tell you about the UNO? When there were a couple a day, the IDF said it would not tolerate them, but it tolerated them. IDF announcements about taking tough action, made almost daily, are ignored by the Arabs. The residents of the struck communities know this. They are protesting. Do Israelis as a whole know that their government does not provide security? PM OLMERT'S CONDITIONS FOR RETREAT "...we need to separate from the Palestinians into boundaries that can be defensible. Now, whether technically it will be called permanent or not permanent, if these boundaries will be satisfactory if they will be protected by the fence, if the international community will recognize Israel's right to have such boundaries,..." IMRA comments: "In the elections PM Olmert said he wanted to retreat to permanent borders. Now he wants to retreat to a temporary line if part of the world temporarily 'recognizes' the temporary line. Olmert isn't claiming that his proposed retreat would put a stop to the ongoing 'slicing' of the Israeli 'salami'. He also isn't clear what constitutes 'recognition'. Does this mean that products manufactured within the 'recognized' lines but beyond the 'Green Line' would qualify as 'Made in Israel' for customs clearing in Europe...' (IMRA, 6/10.) As Israel retreats from its diplomatic and territorial positions, it also retreats from the rationale for retreat. Olmert doesn't define "defensible." Without most of Yesha, the borders are indefensible. EGYPT VS. P.A. Egypt says it has evidence that Hamas trained the terrorists who set off bombs in the Sinai, and demands an accounting from the Hamas regime in the P.A. (IMRA, 6/11). Egypt has opposed Israeli and P.A. disarming of Hamas. Egypt: vipers make poor pets. DANIEL PIPES TELLS THE ISRAELIS TO WAKE UP Unlike awardees who come to express love for Israel, Daniel Pipes came to criticize Israeli timidity towards the Arabs. The Israeli ruling class does not understand the Arab viewpoint. The Arabs want to destroy Israel. Israel needs to win, but it thinks it cannot win, it must try to manage the conflict. This conflict is pressed from the Arab ground up, rather than being a diversion by the leaders to shield them from popular discontent. The Arabs have milked the false notion of "occupation," so that even as Israel withdraws, the Arabs claim they still are being occupied and Israel owes them a living. P.A. anarchy began before withdrawal, and in the long run, may hurt Israel (Pipes #679, 6/11). Pipes may not express devotion to Israel because he doesn't have any. He just opposes jihad. INVITE TERRORISTS, BAR DEFENSE MINISTER Tel Aviv University once hosted PLO founding member and apologist for terrorism, Feisal Husseini, as a speaker. Leftist professors told protestors that they should not interfere with his "freedom of speech." Tel Aviv U. invited ex-Defense Minister Mofaz to speak. Thirty leftist professors protested against the invitation, arguing that he is identified with Israeli war practices, which they suggest are criminal. One protestor against letting Mofaz speak had insisted on letting Husseini speak regardless of his actions. The Left is hypocritical as well as anti-Israel (Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/11). It is never appropriate, except by proponents of jihad, to invite a terrorist to speak at a college. Terrorists are war criminals. Against terrorism, Israel has a right to defend itself. It does not commit war crimes. The Left, impelled by self-hatred, accepts false accusations by Israel's enemies. POLLS CAN BE DEADLY Polls governed Pres. Clinton's foreign policy. To maintain popularity, Clinton backed off from confrontation with Somalia, let Saddam alone, let Iran develop nuclear weapons technology, and let the EU finance P.A. terrorism. He left these problems to Bush. (Now, Democrats blame Bush for these problems and his attempts to solve them.) Pres. Bush said he would stay the course of bringing the war to the terrorists, but he now is letting Iran develop nuclear weapons technology. He is worried by polls showing him having lost popularity (MEF News, 6/11). Campaign contributions to Clinton gave China access to US rocket secrets. Clinton's policies led to many deaths. P.A. terrorists killed hundreds of Israelis. Islamists seem about to take over Somalia. Now Bush may regain a little popularity, until Iran destroys one of our cities. WHICH ARMY IS THE MOST MORAL PM Olmert boasts, "The IDF is the most moral military in the world." It avoids inflicting civilian casualties. When by chance some occur, the country strives to correct the error (Benny Avni, NY Sun, 6/12, p.5). I think that the US military has a high ethical standing, and that Israel has a low ethical standing. The IDF avoids inflicting civilian casualties, but the terrorists exploit this chivalry (or is it obsequiousness) to kill more Israelis. It fails the basic mission of an army. Worse, it attacks its own people. It is getting worse, whereas the US is improving. CIVIL VIOLENCE IN P.A. Hamas felt somewhat strengthened by the beach bathers' deaths "apparently by an errant Israeli shell." It became emboldened to attack a P.A. police building. Fatah retaliated by attacking the parliament building dominated by Hamas (Steven Erlanger, NY Times, 6/13, A1.) The P.A. film of the beach casualties incorporated clips of an Israeli ship firing at the coast, amid P.A. sirens sounding, and sailors observing the results, before and after beach havoc scenes. The filming fabricated an impression that the ship was firing at the beach, but it showed a crater unlike that which an Israeli shell would make, and all Israeli firing was at a different time. P.A. doctors had removed shrapnel from the beach-explosion patients whom they turned over to Israeli hospitals. Israeli doctors found a bit more shrapnel. It was not the same type of metal as used by Israeli shells. The Arabs have mines and explosives all over, and fire at Israel. It is more likely that one of the Arabs' shells, than an Israeli one, fell short (IMRA, 6/12). Perhaps Mr. Erlanger didn't read his own article. On page 6, it goes on to cite Israeli claims, but omitted specifics, that the evidence was not of an Israeli shell but a P.A. one. Is he taking an editorial stance he shouldn't, unaware of self-contradiction, or still trying to leave a sour taste about Israel. I find the latter the tendency in his newspaper. There is no evidence against Israel, just an Arab claim. Arab claims usually prove wrong. The Arabs engage in false propaganda deliberately, setting up elaborate hoaxes of battles. There is some evidence here against the Arabs, such as removal of additional evidence. They destroy their own parliament building! Do gangsters deserve statehood? Oh, let us take up a collection to replace that building "for humanitarian reasons!" INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT (ISM) Every Friday, ISM members incite Arabs in Bil'in to riot against Israeli troops guarding the security fence and to impede the search for terrorists at checkpoints. ISM wants those jihadists eventually to fight the US. The organization welcomes the publicity from the "martyrdom" of any members of the cult (Arutz-7, 5/30), played for fools. ARAB BOYCOTT & MEMBERSHIP IN FREE TRADE GROUP Several Arab states that were admitted to the World Trade Organization or otherwise signed free trade agreements stipulating they would stop boycotting Israel have been found by private organizations to be maintaining the boycott. Sen. Bingamon would like to amend the law to require closer US monitoring of Arab states' compliance with their agreements (IMRA, 6/12). Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
|
HOW A FACTITIOUS DEMOCRACY EMASCULATES ISRAEL
Posted by Professor Paul Eidelberg, June 27, 2006. |
|
A basic principle of democracy is the subordination of military to civilian authority. This principle prompts democracies to pursue a foreign policy based on peace, hence to resolve international conflicts by diplomatic rather than military means. What tests the mettle of a nation, however, is not peace but war. War often steels a nation's will, produces heroes, fosters self-sacrifice and dedication to the common good. In contrast, the quest for peace is often symptomatic of self-indulgence, cowardice, and decadence. Welcome to Israel. What has happened to this once dauntless nation? What has happened to its superb military establishment, the Israel Defense Forces? Alas, the IDF has been emasculated by Israel's political elites. Thanks to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert -- and this applies to his predecessor -- the IDF, in confronting Israel's Lilliputian but implacable enemy, is governed not by military or rational criteria, not by concern for Jewish lives or even Israel's survival, but by Olmert's feckless (and futile) concern over PR or international public opinion. Olmert has surrendered the country to spin doctors. Hence he has no need of a Defense Minister more competent than Amir Peretz, a man without military expertise. And since Olmert has no intention of engaging and destroying the enemy in land warfare, what more does he need as the nation's Chief of General Staff than former Air Force commander Dan Halutz? The terrorists in Gaza as well as in Judea and Samaria never had it so good. But what about the General Staff itself? Unfortunately, Israeli officers have been politicized by the mere fact that they can retire at the age of 45 and then become Knesset members and even cabinet ministers. Without any political experience on their part, the door to the Knesset and the cabinet is opened to high-ranking officers by the parliamentary system of fixed party lists. The prospect of a political career makes them yes-men, corrupting their military integrity. None will resign in public protest against a government whose policy of appeasing the enemy cannot but multiply IDF casualties and endanger the nation's security. Of course, high-ranking officers can always take cover behind the democratic principle of military subordination to civilian authority. Amazing how much Israel suffers from the necessity of preserving its reputation as a democracy -- which requires Israeli prime ministers to pursue a policy of self-restraint against Arab terrorists, negotiate with despotic Arab thugs, and thus yield Jewish land and sacrifice Jewish lives in this ignoble and funereal quest for peace. Under Israel's erstwhile warrior, Ariel Sharon, more than 1,000 Jews were murdered by Arab terrorists, while some 5,000 more were wounded, many maimed for life. And now, under Ehud Olmert, while Kassam missiles are raining down on Sderot, the hands of the IDF are tied, making it wrenchingly obvious that Jews are disposable in the secular and reputedly democratic state of Israel. Therefore I say to the people of this country: 1) So long as this state remains a state tied by an umbilical chord to America, it will remain a paltry state and you will be sacrificed on the altar of PR. 2) So long as this state remains a state whose laws are merely a product of transient human will, it will remain a paltry state and you and your children will be expendable. 3) So long as this state remains a state that has no higher law than the immediate and narrow interests of men, it will remain a paltry state and your lives will count less than those of your enemies. 4) So long as this state remains a state divorced from God, this state will have paltry prime ministers who, in the deceitful language of "peace" and "democracy" will betray you and your noble heritage. 5) As for your General Staff, it will continue to genuflect to the cretins and cravens who rule your factitious democracy -- yes, and will do so in the name of a System of Governance that has made you powerless. Professor Paul Eidelberg is President of the Foundation For Constitutional Democracy. He can be reached by mail at 244 Madison Avenue, Suite 427, New York, NY 10016, Tel: 212-372-3752, and by email at Constitution@usa.net |
|
ISRAEL'S RUDE AWAKENING
Posted by Sergio Tessa -- HaDaR, June 27, 2006. |
|
This article was written by Caroline Glick and it appeared today in
The Jerusalem Post
|
|
It is painful to watch Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni try to contend with the terrible outcome of the Palestinian terror strike against the IDF on Sunday morning. They use so many fancy and angry words. They sound so resolute. And yet, they have nothing useful to say. Two soldiers are dead, a third is now the prisoner of jihadist killers, seven are wounded, an IDF border post has been overrun, and a world view and a security doctrine have been blown to smithereens. Olmert and his associates have four general messages. First, they tell us that Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas is responsible for bringing about Cpl. Gilad Shalit's release. Second, they say Hamas better watch out because they're gonna get it. Third, they say that Hamas won't get it until later. Finally, while stipulating that they will not negotiate with Hamas, Olmert and his associates are negotiating with Hamas. None of these messages and none of the actions that attend to them have any chance of making Israel safer. They also hold little promise of bringing Cpl. Shalit home. Yet there is next to no possibility that Olmert or his associates will widen their options to include any relevant responses to Sunday's terror offensive. Doing so would involve an admission that what the Kadima and Labor parties have presented to the public as their world view is wrong. That world view involves a denial of a basic, fundamental truth: When you empower terrorists, terrorists are empowered. WE HAVE been in this situation before. Six years ago, in October 2000, on the eve of Yom Kippur then prime minister Ehud Barak gave Yasser Arafat an ultimatum. He was ordered to end all the violence he had fomented within 48 hours or face the consequences. When as the deadline passed Arafat continued the violence, Barak did nothing. He did nothing because he could do nothing. His entire government was based on the idea of making peace with Arafat by empowering him. When Arafat chose war, Barak had nothing to say. Kadima and Labor insist that by empowering terrorists they are somehow weakening them. This is the notion that stands at the base of the government's insistence on reenacting the empowerment of Hamas and Fatah caused by last summer's retreat from Gaza by repeating it twenty-fold in Judea and Samaria. Somehow, destroying Israeli communities, ordering the retreat of IDF forces and so enabling the terrorist takeover of those lands is - according to Olmert and his associates - supposed to bring about the enhancement of Israel's security through the weakening of terrorists that Israel is empowering. Ahead of Sunday night's security cabinet meeting, Olmert reportedly told IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz not to present any wide-scale military options to the cabinet. This makes sense. Any major operation, just like any real discussion of Israel's security situation or its options for contending with it would show the failure of the government's retreat policy. And so the government entertains only fictions. The first fiction the government entertains is that of PA Chairman and Fatah Chief Mahmoud Abbas as anti-terrorist peace partner who must be empowered. Abbas is viewed as an irreplaceable resource and ally of Israel. If he goes, Israel will face nothing but Hamas. And since Hamas is bad, Abbas must be good. Unfortunately, Abbas is a terrorist too. Abbas has pocketed the money, arms and legitimacy that Olmert, the Bush administration and the EU have given him and proceeded to buck up his terrorist credentials. He appointed Mahmoud Damra, a top Fatah terrorist as the commander of his personal army Force 17. Damra is wanted by Israel for his direct involvement in the murders of scores of Israelis since 2001. Abbas took the thousands of rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition the US gave him last month and had his security chief Muhammad Dahlan issue a joint call with Hamas for the murder of all Palestinians suspected of assisting Israel in its counter-terror operations. He has been negotiating a blueprint for war - authored by jailed Fatah mass murderer Marwan Barghouti - with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and has been touting the document as a peace plan. And, his Fatah organization is as responsible for Sunday's strike against Israel as Hamas. The Popular Resistance Committees, a Fatah front group that also includes Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists claims to be holding Cpl. Shalit. Fatah has threatened to attack Israel with chemical and biological weapons and to renew shooting attacks on neighborhoods in southern Jerusalem if the IDF launches a major operation in Gaza. But none of this can be acknowledged because acknowledging that Abbas is a terrorist would mean acknowledging that empowering him means empowering terrorists. THEN THERE is the doctrine of the security fence. Olmert and his colleagues are big proponents of replacing defensive strategies with slogans and one of their favorite ones is "We'll be here and they will be there." Israel will build a fence and we'll never have to deal with the Palestinians again. But then those mean old Palestinians showed us on Sunday that they can dig beneath our fence. They show us daily that they can launch missiles and rockets and mortars above the fence. They can build ladders to climb over the fence. And of course, they can simply subcontract their killing to their collaborators on our side of the fence. But this cannot be acknowledged because doing so would be tantamount to an admission that Olmert and his associates have been passing off cliches as security plans for the past four years. The bombardment of the Western Negev that holds the population and the economy of southern Israel hostage to the whims of jihadist cells with rocket launchers has shown up another major myth that forms the basis of Olmert's world view. Olmert and his associates claim that the IDF deployment in Gaza was wasteful because all those forces were being used just to defend those annoying, fanatical settlers in Gush Katif and northern Gaza. But as the bombardment and the IDF's inability to stop the bombardment from outside Gaza shows, the IDF was not in Gaza to protect the Israelis who lived there. The IDF was in Gaza to protect Israel. Any major IDF offensive in Gaza would constitute an admission of this truth. Yet since the government's only policy is to reenact last summer's retreat in Judea and Samaria, it cannot acknowledge this truth. It needs the public to believe that the safety of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem can be guaranteed by having IDF forces sitting in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It needs the public to believe that settlers are the cause of their misfortunes and not the jihadists who are waging war against our country. That is, they need the public to believe that empowering terrorists doesn't empower terrorists. FINALLY, OLMERT cannot allow a counter-terror offensive in Gaza because doing so will lead to international condemnation of Israel. It isn't the impact of the condemnation Israel's international standing that concerns him. Olmert cannot be condemned internationally because he promised that after Israel retreated from Gaza, the international community would accept any Israeli counter-terror offensives in Gaza. Sunday's attack and Cpl. Shalit's kidnapping are watershed events. In the coming days and weeks, it will become self-evident to the Israeli public as a whole just how indefensible Olmert's plan to empower terrorists actually is. Yet public recognition of his plan's failure is not enough. In 2000, the public realized that Barak's terrorist empowering peace plan had brought us war. Yet rather than discard the policy of empowering terrorists, our political leaders simply repackaged it. What had formerly been called "peace" was called "separation" and "disengagement" and now is called "convergence" or "realignment." These euphemisms are sold to the public in turn as new quick-fixes that spare us the need to recognize the reality of war. So to our fervent prayers for Cpt. Shalit's rescue, we should add another prayer. We should pray that whereas the demise of the so-called peace process did not cause the demise of its core policy of empowering terrorists, the demise of Olmert's retreat policy will also cause the burial of the notion that empowering terrorists can do anything other than make terrorists more powerful. Contact HaDar at HaDaR-Israel@verizon.net |
|
BULLIES IN JUDGES' CLOAKS
Posted by Moshe Feiglin, June 27, 2006. |
|
As of this writing, Oryah Shirel, age 15, has been sitting in an Israeli jail for 13 days. She has not been charged with any crime. Oryah's father is an American citizen and her mother is a Canadian citizen. Oryah lives with her parents and eight siblings in Hebron. |
|
15-year-old Oryah Shirel is in jail indefinitely. But she has the key. All she has to do is to sign on bail. She refuses to do it. Oryah was arrested at a demonstration outside the kindergarten in her hometown of Hebron. She and hundreds of others had protested the Israeli government's rebuilding of an Arab home, a structure from which Jewish children in the school playground had previously been attacked. In her decision to return Oryah to her prison cell, Judge Shalev-Gartel wrote that there is no basis to believe that Oryah acted in an illegal manner. So how does a wholesome teenager who doesn't smoke, drink or do drugs end up in prison? Why doesn't she have the basic rights afforded to all minors that include the privilege to call home and to receive clean clothing? Oryah hasn't studied law. She probably cannot analyze complex situations like we, the adults, can. But Oryah has good common sense, a still unmarred perspective on reality and youthful innocence that penetrates all the layers of falsehood to which we have become accustomed. We adults need to work hard every morning to find the truth. But Oryah simply lives it. When she saw how the entire judicial system was used against the Jewish majority in Gush Katif, and when she saw how it covered up all abominations -- from Sharon's corruption to the abusive and violent police in Amona -- she understood the reality of her own situation. She declared, "You've broken all the pieces and I'm not playing the game -- I do not recognize you and am willing to be judged only according to the laws of the Torah." The poor judge didn't know exactly what to do. The defiant young girl in her courtroom had removed the mask that conceals the collective face of the system. So the judge wrote "Classified Information" in large letters at the top of the protocol of the hearing. It was a futile attempt to hide the decadence of a system that concentrates on fighting against young girls and boys, children who no longer have questions. What they do have is a simple answer that shows the way that we need to struggle today. At base, what Oryah and others like her are saying to us is, "Stop cooperating with these anti-Semites. We are the ones affording them legitimacy. Stop giving them the oxygen that they need to destroy us. Stop giving them your recognition. Because in truth, Judge Shalev-Gartel represents nothing at all. She is passé, still around only because nothing has replaced her -- yet. The positive Zionism that built this country and nurtured it is finished. The truth, morality and the positive energy are all with Oryah. If Oryah had tried to defend herself, she would have become part of the game. Essentially, she would be acknowledging the legitimacy of the Israeli judicial system. So we see that more than Oryah needs the judge, the judge needs Oryah! And Oryah has deftly disconnected the judge's oxygen supply. But now we must address an underlying issue. Does the judge really not have the authority to try Oryah Shirel? The answer is not so simple. Every state must have a judicial system. If not, anarchy would reign. What would Oryah do if she had a monetary claim? Or a civil suit? Would she then be willing to relinquish the right to defend herself? Oryah demands to be judged according to the laws of the Torah. And she is right, of course. But we are not living in rectified reality. We still drink the water from the State's pipes, use its electricity and speak through its phone lines. We still live in the Israeli reality. Yes, we are attempting (slowly but surely) to build a rectified reality on its base. But in the current corrupt reality into which G-d has inserted us, the judge has the authority -- and the obligation -- to try us. So the problem is not the authority of the judge, but rather the credibility of the judge. Israel's judicial system lost its credibility (and also its honor) in the ruins of Gush Katif. When minors are brought to trial in groups, when 8,000 Gush Katif residents are given fifteen minutes to argue in court against their expulsion, when murderers are freed wholesale while children are imprisoned until the end of the proceedings against them, there is no justice. What we have instead is judicial bullying. Judges have the authority to judge, but not to be bullies in judge's cloaks. Instead of saying, "I don't recognize the court's authority," I think that Oryah should be saying, "I don't have any faith in the judicial system." The unpleasant truth is that if you are arrested for a "patriotic offense" there is no reason to defend yourself. The system simply has no credibility. There is no reason to hire a lawyer. But even if you decide to forgo the services of a lawyer and the right to defend yourself against the band of anti-Jewish tyrants currently occupying the judges' seats, you do not have to go to jail. We appear in court because they force us to do so -- not because we have any faith in the court's credibility. We sign on bail because they force us to do so. The judges are nothing more than bullies. Is it worthwhile to make claims and counterclaims? Forget it. Should you hire a defense attorney? It's superfluous. Should you represent yourself? Don't bother. What you need to say is, "I am here against my will. You have forced me to be here. The police behind me are here to make sure that I don't run away. I am signing on bail not because I accept you as a credible judge, but because I can't afford to go to jail. There is no trial here, and I will not take part in the farce. The only thing going on here is coercion. And I have no faith in bullies. Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) is a group of people inside the Likud party who want to see Israel adopt a more Jewish character. Moshe Feiglin, its cofounder, has emphatically said he does not want a theocracy, but he does want a State based on Jewish values. The Manhigut Yehudit website address is http://www.manhigut.org. Moshe Feiglin writes "Manhigut Yehudit is the largest faction inside the Likud Party in Israel. It strives to turn Israel from The State of the Jews into The Jewish State. Contact: Shmuel Sackett, International Director (516) 330-4922 (cell)" |
|
MY SPEECH AT THE WORLD BETAR CONVENTION
Posted by Rachel Saperstein, June 26, 2006. |
|
The World Betar Convention took place at the Hyatt Hotel, Jerusalem, June 17, 2006. Saturday night, July 24th, I spoke to the young people of Betar, the Likud youth movement. Gathered from all parts of Israel and abroad, they came to see and to be heard. They are beautiful young men and women, their intense love of Israel -- all of Israel, was a pleasure to witness. Representing Gush Katif, speaking from my heart, I spoke to them. They listened carefully and later came to thank me. Standing on the balcony of the hotel, the lights of Jerusalem behind me and these upturned dedicated young faces in front of me, I spoke these words: |
|
Erev Tov and Shavua Tov. My name is Rachel Saperstein. I am 65, a wife, mother and grandmother. I came from New York to live in my homeland 38 years ago. My husband and I once lived in a beautiful home in Gush Katif. Today I am a refugee. We were forcibly removed from our home by the State of Israel. Not by the non-Jewish government of a foreign country but by the Jewish government of my own homeland. My husband lost his right arm in the Yom Kippur War. We never uttered a word of regret. We loved our country. We were ready to sacrifice. Our daughter was injured on a bus blown up by a suicide bomber. We never uttered a word of regret. It was part of the price of living in our homeland. We moved to Gush Katif from Jerusalem and the mortars and Kassam rockets fell on us night and day. We never complained for we knew we were holding on to our precious land. And when my husband was shot by a Palestinian policeman and lost part of his remaining hand, we remained silent and proud of our privilege to give to our land. And then we were rewarded for our bravery, for our courage. We and the eight thousand men, women and children of Gush Katif. We who held on to the land, we who defended our land against Arab murderers, were forced out by Jewish soldiers and Jewish police. We were put into tiny hotel rooms, flimsy tent cities and despicable trailers and, finally, into cardboard houses called "caravillas". Our possessions were locked away in containers, often destroyed by rats. We watched our homes razed, our synagogues burnt. We were left penniless. Today our children cannot concentrate on their studies, our people still weep, for we are all traumatized. Many of our men have died of heart attacks. Within 24 hours a once vital people were turned into the homeless and unemployed. The government of Israel declared that we were well compensated. That was a lie. Farmers with once thriving businesses sit and stare at television. Promises of land remain just that -- promises. The small amounts of compensation are being eaten up each day. Mortgages on destroyed homes are still being paid to the banks. Private people come to give us handouts. Supermarkets donate food for the Sabbath meals. Donations are given so that infants can receive formula and diapers. Brides receive household gifts from caring strangers. This is what the government of Israel, the Likud government of Israel, did to its people. We voted the Likud government into office under their banner of security and protecting the land. They lied to the people of Israel. Where were you? Where were the massive demonstrations to fight the evil decree? We experienced the opposite of every principle of Likud, of Menahem Begin, of Vladimir Jabotinsky, of Yosef Trumpeldor. Our precious land was given to our deadly enemies. Jews were pulled out of their homes. I am one of those Jews. You are those Jews because this is your home, too. We were betrayed. You were betrayed. You must not allow this to happen again. Today the prime minister promises other expulsions. You must not allow this to happen. Gush Katif is not a place -- it is a concept. It s every one of us. Gush Katif is the symbol of courage. You must have the courage to say NO. NEVER AGAIN. You must never reward any politician who voted for the expulsion with the privilege of serving in any office of the Likud. Likud must return to its ideology. The ideology of Eretz Yisrael l'Am Yisrael, the Land of Israel for the People of Israel. Gush Katif must never happen again. NEVER. NEVER AGAIN. Lo Nishkach v'Lo Nislach! We will not forget! We will not forgive! And we will return to Gush Katif! Rachel Saperstein and her husband Moshe lived in Neve Dekalim, Gush Katif, Gaza, Israel. She was a teacher at the Neve Dekalim ulpana and a spokeswoman for the Katif Regional Council. Her recent book, "Eviction: A Gush Katif Viewpoint", with photos by Moti Sender can be ordered from www.pavilionpress.com. They now live in a trailor camp in Nitzan. |
|
A CONVERSATION BETWEEN U.S. PRES BUSH AND ISRAELI P.M. OLMERT
Posted by Marcel Cousineau, June 26, 2006. |
|
Bush - I know you have problems in Gaza, Ehud, but you just can't go in, it will ruin our sucess and destroy momentum for Israel's destruction, oops, I mean for the Road Map peace plan. Olmert - But Mr. President, I'm under great pressure to do something. Bush - Just talk tough and mass your troops on the border with Gaza and do nothing else or I will cut you off. There are many there ready to take your place, remember that. I want to make it abundantly clear that you are not to go into Gaza,a small limited and restrained response is all that I will allow you to appease your citizens. Also I want you to crush without mercy the right who are the only opposition to my Final Solution Road Map for Israel. Demonize them, arrest them, harass them and hound them, kill them if you have to. Hitler would be proud, my plan has successfully flown under the radar and the majority of Christian's and Jews are completely off guard and asleep. Even as I protect the Palestinian terrorists and keep Israel from defeating them under threats and hard pressure they still support me. These fools are so easy to decieve and seduce. They voted for me and I work day and night to bring about Satan's New World Order. Israel has no place in this plan. Olmert - Mr. President, I went along with your plan to send thousands of weapons and ammunition to the PA, I went along with Amona, but I'm afraid some of my Military Commanders are waking up to what is going on. Bush- Don't worry, if you got a problem I'll send some of my best silencers over there and take care of it for you. We've got to neutralize Israel to get the Arabs on base with our global agenda and thats the only way they'll stay on board. We've got to deliver. Olmert - Yes sir Mr. President, I'm happy to serve you and your glorious plan. I am your obedient servant. Marcel Cousineau can be reached at up2zionsg8@yahoo.com or go to his website: http://averyheavystone.blogspot.com |
|
MINGLING WITH PLANET EARTH, INC.
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 26, 2006. |
|
Planet Earth, an orb composed of ethnic tribes surrounded by national borders, rapidly evolves into Planet Earth Inc, a global corporation without borders. One such tribe with borders, the tiny besieged nation of Israel, must ever defend itself from its militant newly formed neighbor Gaza, led by Islamic fundamentalist Hamas fanatics, as well as blatantly skewed world opinion, no doubt influenced by the seemly fact oil-addicted nations, in lock step with oil corporations, must bow to politically craven terms, etched within extorted Faustian fossil fuel contracts, entered into with Islamic rogue anti-Israeli rulers of the Middle East. What, however, might happen if say petrol leviathan Exxon-Mobil was enticed to set up a research and development facility, operated by Israeli scientists, in Defense Minister Amir Peretz's hometown Sderot, currently a seductive blip located within the crosshairs of abutting Gaza terrorist missile fire? Might a powerful incentive consequentially be launched to cease and desist from such criminal rocket launchings? If indeed "Big Oil" was to follow the magnanimous but shrewd lead of the world's second wealthiest individual, investor icon Warren Buffet, a prescient soul willing to invest a substantial cache of greenbacks into an Israeli company thus Israel's macro-economy, the Jewish State would begin to develop an impenetrable "capital shield" over its territory, guaranteed protection by the ever respected "almighty buck" so defining Planet Earth Inc. Even such jewel-laden silk robe bedecked sleaze, as the mover and shaker rogue royal House of Saud, underwriters of Wahhabi Jew/infidel despising extremism, salivate over and surely worship that "almighty buck". Furthermore, an evolving Donald Trump skyscraping edifice, soon to cast its capital presence over international dynamo Tel Aviv, will add an additional pillar of prestige as well as security to this bustling Israeli metropolis. Don't mess with the world's financial Big Kahunas! Corporate boardrooms always frown on miscreant cultists, whose abominable mischief reduces bottom-lines, a cardinal sin that will not be tolerated. Hamas, Hezbollah, and all other fringe fundamentally flawed cadres of hostile anti-secular delusional humans, remain incompatible with the imperatives of Planet Earth Inc. The ever-present ghost of a most traumatic 9/11must not be resurrected into another tangible catastrophe, ever-insured by a watchful no nonsense corporate world, thus Israel would be wise to firmly establish itself as a respected influential force within all Planet Earth Inc. boardrooms, governed by entrepreneurs affiliated with the world's industrial nations. It doesn't hurt to mingle with the money crowd every now and then. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
|
NEW ONLINE: LEARN HEBREW - WITH AUDIO AND TRANSLITERATIONS
Posted by Jacob Richman, June 26, 2006. |
|
This week I launched a new website called:
Learn Hebrew is a free, on-line, educational resource to learn Hebrew words. The flash site incorporates 46 topics, along with over 1,700 Hebrew words and phrases. Each Hebrew word is presented as an image with nikud [vowels]. When you click on a word or phrase you can hear it spoken. The high quality audio was created in a sound studio. The site is multilingual. The menus, transliterations and translations are in four languages: English, French, Russian and Spanish. Both the student and the teacher will find the site easy to use and very educational. As mentioned, the site is free to all. Feedback is welcome. Please forward this message to anyone that may be interested
in learning Hebrew. Thank you!
Contact Jacob Richman at jrichman@jr.co.il |
|
GUNS BEFORE BUTTER
Posted by Jonathan Spyer, June 26, 2006. |
|
In the last few days, the Quartet have finalized the details for the new emergency aid mechanism to the Palestinian territories. According to its remit, the mechanism is to provide "needs-based assistance directly to the Palestinian people, including essential equipment, supplies and support for health services, support for the uninterrupted supply of fuel and utilities, and basic needs allowances to poor Palestinians." If the mechanism manages to alleviate hardships suffered by innocent Palestinians--as a result, of course, of their government's refusal to accept Israel's right to exist, commit to existing agreements and so on--then it is surely to be welcomed. One can't help noticing, however, that the introduction of the aid mechanism creates a strange, two-tier structure of financing for the Palestinian authority (PA). According to this structure, the international community will agree to pick up the tab on mundane daily matters. This, in turn, will leave the elected Islamist rulers of the authority free to pursue matters that they find of greater interest. They will be in the enviable situation among governing authorities of being free to pursue higher, historic tasks, safe in the knowledge that someone else--in this case the generous taxpayer of Europe and North America--has taken on the job of preventing famine and societal collapse in the areas under their control. What, then, are the other interests which the Hamas rulers of the PA are likely to use their increased leisure time to engage in? Well, recent events offer a series of clues. On May 19, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu-Zahri was apprehended at the Rafah Crossing by PA security forces, while trying to smuggle in between 650-900,000 euros in cash. Abu-Zahri, one of the senior Hamas leaders in Gaza, at first refused to leave without the cash, and a tense stand-off ensued between PA (Fatah-controlled) security forces and Hamas gunmen at the scene. Abu-Zahri's indiscretion was only the first of a number to have come to light. Thus, on June 15, the PA foreign minister, Mahmoud al-Zahar, was caught trying to smuggle in the sum of $20m in cash, in 12 separate suitcases. Now if these were two occasions when the intrepid smugglers were caught, there were probably other occasions when they or their colleagues were not. Israel considers that the smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, a favoured route for bringing in weapons to the Strip, are also being used to bring in cash. But since Hamas dominates the elected government of the PA, why, then, is there a need to smuggle these funds past the PA's own security forces? Why, in fact, was the PA foreign minister, al-Zahar, trying to bring money past security guards who, at least nominally, are under his own command? There's a simple answer. It's the two-tier funding structure. The official coffers--meant for all the boring stuff like doctors' and nurses' salaries and medical equipment and drugs--were empty at the same moment that Hamas officials were smuggling in bagfuls of cash. And the fact that the money wasn't to be declared to the PA indicates that those official coffers were going to stay empty. This, of course, could be blamed on the wicked Israelis, and could wait until the Quartet chose to intervene. No hurry. Not the PA government's problem. The bagfuls of cash, meanwhile, were going to be spent on the exciting, important stuff. Like feeding, training and equipping a brand new 3,000 strong militia to face off against the parallel militias founded by one's political opponents. And financing the production and launching of rockets at the towns of the western Negev. What is interesting about this process is that it captures in miniature one of the basic developmental problems of many of the states of the Arabic-speaking world. It casts light on one of the processes that has kept well-funded countries poor and lagging behind in development. For as long as the ruling elites--nationalist and Islamist--of the Arab world consider that marching about in military uniforms and producing blood-curdling rhetoric are the real business of politics--with health care and living standards a minor concern unworthy of serious attention--the Arab world is going to stay poor and undeveloped--and real democratization remain a distant, receding hope. Alleviating hardship is of course a worthy goal. But the current system of aid to the PA plays the additional role of propping up dysfunctionality. Dr. Jonathan Spyer is a research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center (GLORIA) at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. Contact GLORIA by email at gloria@idc.ac.il or by phone at +972-9-960-2736. This article appeared in The Guardian, June 21, 2006. |
|
ISRAEL NEEDS THE "ILLEGAL" OUTPOSTS
Posted by Lee Caplan, June 26, 2006. |
|
A major problem facing the IDF, as a Shabak official told the Knesset Law Committee last week, is the dearth of intelligence emanating from Gaza ever since the Disengagement. The Deputy Investigations Department chief of the General Security Service told the committee that the "lack of intelligence in Gaza places us in a very problematic position." This situation contrasts with that in Judea and Samaria, where the army has intelligence sources. PLEASE DAVEN FOR GILAD BEN AVIVA SHALIT WHO IS BEING HELD BY PALESTINIAN TERRORIST MURDEROUS BARBARIANS! |
|
"Distancing Orders Issued to Outpost Activists" by Hillel Fendel, Arutz-Sheva. The government has taken its first steps to destroy four Jewish outposts in Judea and Samaria, distributing restraining orders against some 15 activists on Friday and Sunday. O.C. Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh signed the orders, forbidding the recipients from nearing the threatened neighborhoods. Activists who live in pre-1967 Israel are banned from entering Judea and Samaria (Yesha) altogether. The orders are valid for between three months and a year, and are designed to prevent active opposition to the plans to destroy the Jewish presence in parts of Yesha. The Yesha Council - the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria - attacked the non-democratic nature of the government's move. Essentially stating that people should be arrested after they commit crimes, and not before, the Council said, "Administrative measures of this nature are a tool that should be used with great caution and as a last resort in order to prevent violence. The regime must take care not to harm citizens' freedom of movement and their civil rights. We are liable to easily slide down a slippery slope using this tool, as we saw during the Disengagement." On the government's chopping bloc at present are four outpost neighborhoods: Scali, next to Elon Moreh; Hilltop 725, just south of Yitzhar; Arusi, near Har Brachah - all in the Shomron - and the Maon Farm in the Southern Hevron Hills. The Scali outpost, four kilometers east of central Elon Moreh, was started by Yitzchak Scali in 1999. He now lives there with his wife and three children. Another four families and several singles live there as well, most of them in wood houses, and they have a synagogue made of stone. Elon Moreh spokesman and veteran settlement leader Benny Katzover told Arutz-7, "Some of the wood houses were reinforced with stone as a result of two terror attacks on the outpost - one that happened two years ago, when our forces killed two terrorists, and another one four years ago." No Jews were seriously hurt in these attacks. Katzover said that by intending to destroy Scali, the government is violating an agreement it made back when Ehud Barak was prime minister. That agreement involved the "authorization" of some outposts, in exchange for the removal of some others. "This neighborhood has passed many other legal battles as well," Katzover said, "and the location of each building was precisely determined in conjunction with the Civil Administration." Hill 725, established several years ago, is an integral part of the Shomron community of Yitzhar, communally and municipally. This, despite the fact that its houses ar physically separated from its parent community by a kilometer. Five families currently live in the neighborhood, including one with ten children. Of the six buildings on Hill 725, two or three are permanent structures made of wood. A synagogue/study hall also stands on the site. The Arusi outpost, with 15 families, is so named because it was founded seven years ago by Ronen Arusi, who has since married and lives there with his wife and children. It is an integral part of the community of Har Brachah, though it is separated from most of the town by three kilometers of hills and fields. The Maon Farm, outside the community of Maon south of Hevron, is also populated by several families. The names of those who received the orders have not been publicized. Residents of one of the outposts said in response, "The government is wasting its time. We plan to live in the outposts and build them up." Aviad Visuly, head of the Land of Israel Task Force, suggests that those who received the restraining orders should turn to the courts for redress, and could even sue Gen. Naveh personally. "Administrative detention orders against someone might mean that he is planning to commit a crime," Visuly said, "but restraining orders of this type have no basis whatsoever." "Report Shows: Outposts are Not Illegal" by Hillel Fendel, Arutz-Sheva. As the gov't prepares to destroy what it calls "unauthorized" outposts, the Shomron Regional Council presents evidence that the outposts are no more " unauthorized" than many other Israeli towns. The Shomron Regional Council has prepared an extensive slide show, concentrating on several aspects of construction and authorization of new neighborhoods and communities in Israel. It aims to offset the Sasson report of over a year ago. In March 2005, State Prosecution attorney Talia Sasson prepared a report against the outposts in Judea and Samaria, terming the construction of new communities in Yesha over the years "institutionalized law-breaking." The report listed the ways in which the government "closed its eyes and enabled" the establishment of the new settlements. Various ministries and official bodies gave their own approval to each individual step, but the final approval was rarely given until much later, if at all. The Shomron Council presentation, citing the State Comptroller's report of 2005 and many other sources, shows that the outposts were built in the same manner as many towns in Israel over the years. For instance: * Yardena - along the Jordan River, north of Beit She'an - was established in 1952, but received its final authorization only 30 years later. The report also notes the extent of illegal Arab construction that is being all but ignored by the relevant authorities. It cites 399 illegal Arab-sector construction sites throughout the country, including no fewer than 30,444 units. In eastern Jerusalem, of 5,657 illegal units, only 261 were razed in the years 2001-2004, or less than 5%. A fair share of the Shomron Council presentation relates to the illegal use of land by large municipal councils around the country. In the Hof HaSharon (Sharon Coast) Regional Council, for instance, the community of Batzra used agricultural land for commercial purposes, and other towns similarly misused land. In addition, between 1988 and 2004, primarily in the 1990s, the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa built 223,100 square meters (over 2.4 million square feet) of office space in an area where, up until 2001, such construction was forbidden. The State Comptroller, in his report on this issue in 2005, wrote, "It must be thoroughly checked what causes a large local council to adopt alternative methods to those stipulated by the law, in order to implement its planning policies. Claims that municipal councils are restricted in their building plans must be dealt with." An important aspect of the Shomron Council's presentation on outposts is a 1999 Knesset speech by then-MK Ariel Sharon explaining the rationale governing the construction of the outposts. Ironically, it was Sharon, as Prime Minister, who later asked for and accepted Sasson's report against the outposts. Sharon told the Knesset, "Why did the government, at the time, decide to establish outposts on the hilltops? Was it just a whim, or a way of outsmarting someone? Not at all. The hilltop outposts were designed to enable the Jewish communities that were built by the Alignment [Labor] and Likud governments ever since the Six Day War, in areas that were designed to be security areas in our control under any agreement, to live in security, even while the diplomatic process continues. A campaign is underway to email the presentation to many Knesset Members: dazulay@knesset.gov.il; aatias@knesset.gov.il; eamsalem@knesset.gov.il; slomob@knesset.gov.il; yvaknin@knesset.gov.il; nzeev@knesset.gov.il; eyishay@knesset.gov.il; amncohen@knesset.gov.il; izchakec@knesset.gov.il; amichaeli@knesset.gov.il; ymargi@knesset.gov.il; mnahari@knesset.gov.il; mgafni@knesset.gov.il; shmuelh@knesset.gov.il; ycohen@knesset.gov.il; ylitzman@knesset.gov.il; mporush@knesset.gov.il; aravitz@knesset.gov.il; iaharon@knesset.gov.il; rilatov@knesset.gov.il; ahason@knesset.gov.il; etertman@knesset.gov.il; aliberman@knesset.gov.il; slandver@knesset.gov.il; amiller@knesset.gov.il; smiseznikov@knesset.gov.il; yshtern@knesset.gov.il; lshemtov@knesset.gov.il; zorlev@knesset.gov.il; efye@knesset.gov.il; belon@knesset.gov.il; egabai@knesset.gov.il; ithakl@knesset.gov.il; nslomianski@knesset.gov.il; meitan@knesset.gov.il; gerdan@knesset.gov.il; mcachlon@knesset.gov.il; yiskatz@knesset.gov.il; llivnat@knesset.gov.il; dnaveh@knesset.gov.il; bnetanyahu@knesset.gov.il ; gsaar@knesset.gov.il; rrivlin@knesset.gov.il; ysteinitz@knesset.gov.il; sshalom@knesset.gov.il; ntans@knesset.gov.il; zhanegbi@knesset.gov.il; zelkin@knesset.gov.il; davidt@knesset.gov.il The website of the Shomron Regional Council http://www.shomron.org.il has a FANTASTIC new presentation on the topic of outposts (in Hebrew). It shows that the "illegal outposts" are just like the "Christian children who were baked in order to make Passover matzas" -- a lie which any respectable journalist ought to be embarrassed to publish. The presentation also shows the proposed governmental method for getting authorization to build a legal outpost (slides 47 - 51). The method proposed would take 7 years (!!!) -- which is like the authorities saying, it's illegal to cross the street unless there's a green light, and then programming the light to change only every 7 hours. To save the outposts from being destroyed, with ZERO compensation paid to the families living there, kindly forward this entire email to 49 MKs. The list of the MKs' email addresses is above (scroll up). Simply press "forward", then "color" the entire list of email addresses with your mouse and move it to the "to" field of the new email you have formed. The purpose of sending this email along to the MKs is to make the outposts issue the "hot issue" in the Knesset this week (MKs know how to count. If they get an email many times -- they read it. If they get the email only a few times, they don't read it -- or they read it and don't act upon it). BONUS: By doing this, you are also saving 13 Israeli citizens like
yourself from unnecessary administrative detention Thank you for your kind cooperation in forwarding this email to the Knesset Members. Sincerely,
Contact Lee Caplan at leescaplan@yahoo.com
|
|
WINSTON CHURCHILL'S GRANDSON ON ANTI-SEMITISM
Posted by Sandy Rosen-Hazen, June 26, 2006. |
|
This amazed me, as it well might amaze many of you..... It contains history of which SO many are not aware!!!! I've read it and re-read it twice.....realizing that it is something I absolutely MUST share with as many people as possible!!!! It's called "Confronting The Challenge of Islamic Fundamentalism:" and it is an Address to the Jewish National Fund of Australia at their Annual Dinner at the Palladium at the Crown Hotel, Melbourne, on Sunday, 28 May 2006 > by Winston S. Churchill, grandson of Winston Churchill, who was Prime Minister of England during WW2. If you have no time to read it, in FULL, right now..... PLEASE print it out to read later, at your convenience, and PLEASE be sure to forward it to everyone you know!!!! Thank you.....
|
|
Governor, yr Excellencies, Mr. President, Members of JNF, Ladies & Gentlemen, It is both an honour and a pleasure to be your guest in Melbourne tonight, and to have the privilege of addressing this important assembly of the Jewish National Fund of Australia. May I say how delighted I am to be back in Melbourne -- the last time was nearly 40 years ago when I had the huge privilege of speaking at the feet of that great and most lovable Australian & friend of my Grandfather's, Sir Bob Menzies who, as Chancellor of the University, had invited me to deliver the Moomba Oration in 1968 or '69! Last year we commemorated the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II, and with it the Liberation of the Concentration Camps of Europe. That should remind us all of the continuing importance of the fight against anti-Semitism. We like to think that we are today living in a kinder, more tolerant age than our forebears. Nonetheless, racial and religious intolerance, hatred and persecution -- the scourge of our times -- are never far away. They manifest themselves in so many ways -- in bullying at school, obscene graffiti sprayed on graves or public buildings, verbal abuse and, at their most extreme, murder, mass-murder, including suicide bombings, and genocide. Of course the problem goes far wider than anti-Semitism. It extends to innumerable other racial and religious groupings beyond the Jews. In the 1990s in Rwanda, the Tutsis became the victims of genocide on a horrendous scale at the hands of their Hutu neighbours; in Srebrenica in July 1995 some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were massacred by the Serb army, under the very noses of the UN protecting force. In recent months Christians have been massacred by Muslims in Pakistan. At this very moment in Darfur, the Christians of Southern Sudan are being slaughtered by the Muslim Janjaweed militiamen in a brutal exercise of ethnic cleansing, while just last week Australian troops have had to be rushed to East Timor to quell the vicious racial violence that has broken out there. Of course, all decent, responsible people, wherever in the world they may live, whatever god they may or may not bow down to, unreservedly condemn such actions. But condemnation alone is not enough. We must all play our part in combating intolerance & racism, including anti-Semitism, wherever it rears its ugly head, and redouble our efforts to extirpate this cancer that afflicts almost every land and which, tragically, shows no sign of abating. For more than 40 years I have reported and observed the Middle East scene. As a young war-correspondent twenty-six years of age, I found myself in Israel in mid-May of 1967. I happened to be with David Ben-Gurion, former Prime Minister of Israel, interviewing him at dawn one morning in his suite at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem when -- as I recall about 6:50 am -- Kol Israel interrupted their programs to announce that President Nasser of Egypt had closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping -- cutting, at a stroke, Israel's oil lifeline. Ben-Gurion, with a gesture of the hand, ordered his assistant to switch off the radio and, shaking his great mane of white hair gravely, declared with sorrow: "This means war. I am very frightened. Not for Israel, for she will survive -- we cannot afford otherwise -- but for the younger generation. It is always the best of their generation who never return." Thereupon the great man led me out onto the balcony overlooking the Holy City of Jerusalem, where the first rays of the morning sun were striking the city's golden domes, cupolas and spires. Taking me by the arm, he proceeded to give me a succinct lesson in Jewish history: "Mr. Churchill before you, you have the City of David -- 3,000 years Jewish. But do you see the road that leads down the valley? Follow it and it will lead you to Hebron, the City of Abraham -- 4,000 years Jewish!" It was a magical moment and one that I shall always treasure. A week later, with Nasser making blood-curdling threats as to how he would wipe Israel off the face of the earth and drive the Jews into the sea, war preparations in Israel were in full swing. In Tel Aviv thousands of graves were being dug in the public parks in anticipation of large scale civilian casualties. Public appeals were made for blood, to which I, among thousands of others, responded. Among all, except the highest echelons of government and the military -- who, alone were privy to Israel's war-plan -- there was a deep-rooted fear that, with all the Arab nations mobilising against her, Israel might lose the war -- a prospect too terrible to contemplate. It took an Ezer Weizman, the most recent head of the Israeli Air Force, to be bullish about the situation as it presented itself in the first few days of June 1967, with the entire Arab world mobilising and, as they supposed, moving in for the kill. Well do I recall him telling me, over breakfast in the Tel Aviv Hilton with his gung-ho jocularity: 'The Arabs have surrounded us again -- poor bastards!' But, among the rank & file, there was deep anxiety, even fear. My Israeli reservist escorting officer, a lawyer in his mid-forties, recently married with a small daughter, told me in all earnestness that, in the event that Israel was being defeated, he would have no hesitation killing his wife and daughter, rather than let them fall in to the hands of the Arabs. It would indeed have been a second Masada. For my part, I found myself wondering what I -- a Goy and a Brit -- should do in that event, given that I was from a foreign land and had no direct involvement in the quarrels of the Middle East -- beyond a Grandfather who had been a signatory of the Balfour Declaration! Without hesitation, I concluded that I would grab whatever weapon might come into my hands and fight at the side of the Israelis. From that moment onwards, though I avow the right of the Palestinians to have their own independent state within the confines of Biblical Palestine, which has been their homeland over the centuries, I have counted myself a Zionist, firmly believing in the justice of the existence of the State of Israel. In 1973 my intelligence was no better than that of the Israeli Government and the Yom Kippur War found me a prisoner Westbound aboard the QE2 committed to a two-week lecture tour of the US. By the time I got back to Israel General Sharon was on the West side of the Suez Canal with the Egyptian Third Army in his power. I sent him an urgent message asking him to call. An hour later I was still waiting when I had to leave to have Dinner in a Palestinian fish restaurant in Jaffa with General Motti Hod, Commander of the Air Force in '67. I briefed the switchboard operators at the Tel Aviv Hilton to forward any telephone call to the restaurant. Half way through Dinner mein host, the Palestinian, called me to the phone. I went behind the bar & took the phone off the hook. A booming voice came on the line, causing me to hold the phone at arm's length: 'Winston, This is Arik!' adding with overtones of Scipio Africanus 'Arik from Africa! Winston, We have Peace! A piece of Egypt, a piece of Lebanon, a piece of Syria & a piece of Jordan!' There you have it: the Sharon vision of Peace! There is no denying that he was God's gift to journalists! Turning to the situation in the Middle East today, the recent declaration by the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that the Holocaust never happened, and that Israel is a 'tumour' to be 'wiped off the map', can only be a matter of the gravest concern, linked as it is with his decision to remove the UN seals from Iran's nuclear research facilities and press ahead with its programme to develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Of course there is no shortage of people on hand to reassure us that the Iranian President does not really mean what he says -- just as there were those around in the 1930's who made clear that, of course, Herr Hitler did not really mean what he had written in his book, Mein Kampf! Whether the government of Israel will buy such reassurance, only time will tell! But somehow, knowing Israel, I doubt it! It is by no means impossible that this reckless action by the Iranian President will provoke an Israeli, or even American, air-strike to take out Iran's budding nuclear capability, as the Israeli Air Force so brilliantly did in 1981 with Saddam's Osirak reactor, named after the Egyptian mythological God of Death. In such circumstances the political temperature in the Middle East would go stratospheric; Iran might sink a couple of super-tankers, closing the Straits of Hormuz and the price of oil could well go through $200 per barrel. That of course would be a huge inconvenience to people around the whole world and will predictably call down on Israel & the US a caterwaul of condemnation. But that might not be the worst of outcomes. The alternative -- too terrible to contemplate -- might be the destruction of the state of Israel & a second Holocaust! But, while facing realities however harsh, it is also important to use a phrase beloved of my Grandfather, to 'grasp the larger hope'. Out of the present seemingly bleak situation, it is by no means impossible that, in the coming weeks & months, the newly elected Hamas Government of Palestine may be forced to confront the reality of the permanence of the state of Israel and move to recognise its existence, within the pre-1967 boundaries, while abandoning its previous insistence on a 'Right of Return', for those Palestinians displaced in 1948. That would appear to be the wish of the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas and, were it to happen, the end of the 60-year war between Palestinians and Israelis over how to divide the Holy Land, could be in sight. What blessings would not flow from such a historic development, not just for the peoples of Israel and Palestine, but for the wider Middle East! Indeed nothing could do more to disarm the present worldwide hatred, presently directed not only against the state of Israel, but against the United States and her allies. I wish to congratulate the JNF of Australia on your important initiative to raise funds to relocate half a million Israelis from the narrow coastal strip adjacent to Tel Aviv, to the under populated region of the Negev. This is a project that is not only environmentally desirable but -- given the great vulnerability of Israel's densely concentrated population to a potential nuclear attack -- strategically sound. While hoping for the best, it always makes good sense to prepare for the worst. As you may imagine, I am deeply proud to be Winston Churchill's grandson and to have the immense privilege of bearing the name of the man who, more than any other individual, turned the tide of war in the greatest and most terrible conflict known to man. You may say I am biased -- which of course I am -- but I firmly believe that, but for Winston Churchill, Great Britain would have surrendered to Nazi Germany in that fateful Summer of 1940, when all effective resistance to the Nazi power in continental Europe was coming to an end. Though the situation seemed hopeless, Churchill, in the words of that great CBS Radio reporter, Edward R. Murrow -- made famous by President John F. Kennedy -- 'mobilised the English language and sent it into battle'. Telling his fellow countrymen that he had 'nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears & sweat,' he persuaded them to fight on for eighteen months alone, but for the strong, unstinting support of Australia, Canada and the other Dominions of the Crown. It would be wrong to say that Winston Churchill won the War, but what is true is that -- but for him -- the war would have been lost by default. It would have been impossible for America, when eventually she awoke from her reveries, to launch a D-Day style Liberation of Europe from more than 3,000 miles across the Atlantic. In such circumstances it is entirely possible that, to this day, the Nazi swastika would be flying over Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament and over all the capital cities of Europe, as far East as Moscow. The world would indeed be a very different place, and there would be many of us who would never have survived to see our children and our children's children. In 1993 I had the privilege of being invited to address a commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising at London University. Following my speech, a very beautiful lady of a certain age, approached me: 'Mr. Churchill, at the time of the Uprising, I was a girl of just 12. We had all been herded into the Ghetto -- supposedly for our safety. But then people all around us started to disappear, we knew not where -- we were all very frightened. We had one of the few radios in the Ghetto and, whenever your Grandfather was due to broadcast on the BBC, my family & our friends would gather round. I could not understand English, but I knew that if I and my family had any hope of coming through this war alive, it depended upon that one, strong, unseen voice. We were all taken to Treblinka and then to Bergen Belsen. I was the only member of my family to survive. I was liberated by British forces in 1945 -- in fact by the gentleman you see at my side, who is today my husband!' It was a profoundly proud, yet humbling, moment! I had some idea how much my Grandfather meant to the Brits, and even to the Americans but, until that moment, I had no understanding of just how much he meant to those living in Occupied Europe, most especially to the Jews. But today a new challenge confronts us: Extremist Islam has declared war on the rest of the world, as we see from their ruthless attacks -- overwhelmingly targeted at innocent civilians -- with the outrage of Nine-Eleven, the bombings in Madrid, in Bali, in London and, most recently, in Jordan. Meanwhile the Fundamentalists are doing all in their power to mobilise against us the large Muslim communities living in our midst. There today are an estimated 7M Muslims in North America; nearly half a million in Australia, while in the European Union, the Moslem community is estimated at 20M, including nearly 2M in Britain. The scale of the problem confronting Europe today is epitomised by France, which has a Muslim community of some 6M, or 10% of its population. But, taking the population aged 20 and below, that figure rockets to 30%, such is the birth rate among the immigrant communities. In other words, within one further generation, France will have become an Islamic country -- a truly awesome prospect. It is clear that the writing is on the wall for Judeo-Christian Europe, as we have known it over the past 2,000 years. Why are the alarm-bells not ringing? Can it be that we would sooner commit national suicide than risk being labelled 'politically incorrect'? Can anyone imagine a comparable situation in reverse being tolerated in Saudi Arabia? The answer is so self-evident, it needs no response. As if that were not enough, the United States is pressuring the EU to grant Turkey admission to the European Union -- something that, at a stroke, would cause the Moslem population of Europe to soar from 20 to 100M. I have a high regard for the Turks, who have long been loyal members of NATO, but that would be an act of consummate folly. It is high time someone summoned up the courage to tell Washington to mind its own business. It is deeply worrying the extent to which -- unlike all other categories of immigrants -- the Islamic communities are reluctant to bond with their fellow countrymen & women, while harbouring a separate, indeed alien agenda of their own. While the US imports its bombers from Saudi Arabia, and Spain from North Africa, it is a deeply disturbing feature of the 7/7 attacks on London that our bombers were home-grown -- a fact that should cause us to ponder, swift & hard, just where we have gone wrong. America & Britain are now experiencing what Israel has lived with for years: the curse of the suicide bomber. While on Australian soil, I wish to pay tribute to your Prime Minister, John Howard. Unique among Western leaders, he has had the courage to stand up for those values -- freedom, democracy, liberalism & tolerance -- that inspire our Western democracies, bluntly endorsing the view that those who would prefer to live under Sharia law, rather than Parliamentary law, should pack their bags & go. That said, with large Islamic communities already established in each of our countries, it is vital that we recognise that the majority of Muslims in our midst are loyal, law-abiding citizens and we must ensure that -- in our pursuit of the men & women of terror -- we do not alienate the Muslim community as a whole, for their help is vital if we are, eventually, to excise this cancer of terrorism in their midst. Intriguingly the dangers of extremist Islam were foreseen by Winston Churchill all of 85 years ago, as I discovered to my amazement, while compiling my most recent book NEVER GIVE IN! The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches. Churchill is of course well known for his gift of prescience and, specifically, for being the first to warn of the menace of Hitler & Nazism as early as 1932, and of the Soviet threat in his famous Iron Curtain speech of 1946 in Fulton, Mo. But how many know that he also warned the world of the dangers of Islamic Fundamentalism? I certainly did not! On 14 June 1921, hard on the heels of the Cairo Conference, at which he presided over the re-shaping of the Middle East, including the creation of modern day Iraq, he warned the House of Commons: 'A large number of [Saudi Arabia's King] Bin Saud's followers belong to the Wahabi sect, a form of Mohammedanism which bears, roughly speaking, the same relationship to orthodox Islam as the most militant form of Calvinism would have borne to Rome in the fiercest times of [Europe's] religious wars. The Wahabis profess a life of exceeding austerity, and what they practice themselves they rigorously enforce on others. They hold it as an article of duty, as well as of faith, to kill all who do not share their opinions and to make slaves of their wives and children. Women have been put to death in Wahabi villages for simply appearing in the streets. It is a penal offence to wear a silk garment. Men have been killed for smoking a cigarette and, as for the crime of alcohol, the most energetic supporter of the temperance cause in this country falls far behind them. Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account, and they have been, and still are, very dangerous to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina?.. In Churchill's day, of course, the viciousness and cruelty of the Wahabis was confined to the Saudi Arabia peninsula, and their atrocities were directed exclusively against their fellow Muslims, whom they held to be heretics for not adhering to the Wahabi creed -- but not anymore. Today the combination of the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia and the supine weakness of the Saudi royal family which -- as the price for not having their own behaviour subjected to scrutiny and public criticism by these austere, extremist clerics -- has bank-rolled the Wahabi fundamentalist movement, and given these fanatical zealots a global reach to their vicious creed of hatred and extremism. The consequence has been that the Wahabis have been able to export their exceptionally intolerant brand of Islamic fundamentalism from Mauritania and Morocco on Africa's Atlantic shores, through more than two dozen countries including Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East, to as far afield as the Philippines and East Timor in the Pacific. This is the stark challenge that today confronts the Western world and I fear it will be with us, not just for a matter of years, but perhaps even for generations. Whether the decision to invade Iraq was right or wrong, wise or foolish, is immaterial. The reality is that Iraq today is the epicentre of the Islamic militants' assault on the West. They are determined that democracy shall not succeed in Iraq. For our part, we cannot allow it to fail. Even before the recent serious developments in Iran, siren voices could be heard on Capitol Hill, raising the cry: 'Bring the Boys home!' I tell you: nothing could be more disastrous than if, at this juncture, the United States were to cut and run. It would, at a stroke, undermine those forces of moderation we are seeking to establish in power, betray our troops as they fight a difficult, but necessary, battle, and break faith with our gallant soldiers who have sacrificed their lives to establish a free Iraq. Gravest of all, we should be handing a victory of gigantic proportions to our sworn enemies. Let no one imagine that by pulling out of Iraq, the threat will simply evaporate. On the contrary, it will redouble, it will come closer to home and our enemies will have established in Iraq the very base that, by our defeat of the Taliban, we have denied them in Afghanistan. We shall see a desperately weakened United States, with its armed forces undermined and demoralised, increasingly at the mercy of our terrorist enemies. Precipitate withdrawal is the counsel of defeatism and cowardice which, if it holds sway, will immeasurably increase the dangers that today confront, not just America, but the entire Western world. It is something for which we shall pay a terrible price in the years ahead. When great nations go to war -- and they should do so only as a last resort -- they must expect to suffer grievous losses and must commit to war with an unconquerable resolve to secure victory. In Iraq the United States has lost some 2,500 men and women, Britain 111. Compare that to the first day of the Battle of the Somme -- 1 July 1916 -- when the British Army in a single day, nay, before breakfast, lost 55,000 men killed, wounded or missing in action. Did we talk of quitting? Did we, heck! What has happened to the mighty United States? Is she going soft? Are the elected representatives of the American people really ready to surrender to those who threaten their homeland -- indeed their civilian population -- with death and destruction? I pray that they are not, and I call to mind the words of my Grandfather, addressing the Canadian Parliament on New Year's Day 1941, in which -- referring to the British nation dwelling around the globe, but it applies equally to our American cousins today -- he declared: 'We are a tough & hardy people! We have not travelled across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains & across the prairies, because we're made of sugar candy!' In conclusion, I would remind you all of Winston Churchill's words to the House of Commons on becoming Prime Minister in May 1940, which applies every bit as much to the situation that confronts us today. You ask: What is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is Victory. Victory at all costs, Victory in spite of all terror. However long or hard the road may be; for without Victory there is no survival." Provided we have the courage to stay the course, I am convinced that we can and shall, in the end, prevail, both in Afghanistan & in Iraq. Any alternative is too terrible to contemplate. Let us fight the good fight -- and let us fight it together! How pleased my Grandfather would be to know that -- 40 years on from his death -- the Anglo-American alliance is still strong and that British, Australian & American soldiers tonight as we are gathered here, stand shoulder-to-shoulder in Iraq and in Afghanistan, confronting the peril of the hour! Long may we stand together! God bless Australia! And God bless both the State & the people of Israel! Contact Sandy Rosen-Hazen at sandy@israel.net |
|
MAARIV EDITOR DENOUNCES NAZARETH JUDGE FOR HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM COMMENTS
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 26, 2006. |
|
1. Ben Dror Yemini, the Deputy editor of Maariv, published the following column this past Friday in the weekend edition of the paper, June 23, 2006 (my translation). It concerns the Holocaust revisionist statements by the Arab woman judge, Reem Naddaf, in the Nazareth court verdict that ruled that illegal pro-terror activities by an anti-Israel extremist are protected speech, but criticism of those same illegal pro-terror activities is "slander". It is called "Judicial Autism". Here is the full text in translation: |
"Anyone today who 'dares' to recheck the events of the Holocaust and its scale, from any point of view, whether it be human, historic, scientific, political, or otherwise, immediately is turned into the target for attacks and accusations of being an anti-Semite and Holocaust Denier, worthy of being dubbed Judenrat or a Jew for Hitler. That sums up, albeit in a somewhat palliated manner, the position of the President of Iran, Ahmed Ahmadinejad, about to hold an assembly of Holocaust Deniers in Teheran. He is, as is well known, a stout defender of academic freedom of expression. Therefore groups of Holocaust Deniers, who "deviate from the known consensus", together with some others, will be assembling in Iran, and the 'truth' of the Holocaust Deniers will be published for all to see. Except that it was not Ahmadinejad who made those statements cited above! These were all statements that were written by a woman judge in Israel (Reem Naddaf of Nazareth court. SP), in her ruling in a libel suit between two academics. The rhetoric that justifies and enables hooligans and bigots to use "freedom of expression" and "academic freedom" in order to promote their agenda has arrived in Israel as well. It matters not at all which side is in the right in the specific court case. There was no justification for these pronouncements about "departures from the consensus" regarding the Holocaust, in which Holocaust Deniers wash their filthy laundry, to make a determination. And lest we err, the woman judge adds for us that she is simply not aware that David Irving himself is a Holocaust Denier. She does not know that Irving was judged in Britain and was declared a Holocaust Denier and a liar. She does not know that this same Irving is now sitting in prison in Vienna for Holocaust Denial. This woman judge is traveling down the familiar path of phony "rights discourse". This is where automatic judgment is always relativistic, where it denies there is any reality at all, only "theories". Actually, most liberal freedoms are misused by fringe elements. In the USA, these include the Neo-Nazis marching through neighborhoods of Holocaust survivors in Skokie, and in Israel they include Kahanists who want to march through Umm al-Fahm, as well as extremist fanatics like Azmi Bishara who endorse "resistance". meaning terror. All this in the name of freedom of expression. In Europe, unlike Israel, a red line is being drawn. Hence political parties who oppose basic rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom to organize, are denied constitutional protections for their own rights, because these are rights that these groups would revoke if they were to take power in those countries. This is called "democracy defending itself". This is a worthy model for implementation in Israel. When it is so implemented, instead of liberal rights being the captives of people like Azmi Bishara and Baruch Marzel, those rights will be restored to their proper position. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
|
|
WHAT IS CONSUL-GENERAL MEKEL THINKING?
Posted by AFSI, June 26, 2006. |
|
Speaking from a place devoid of all authority, overstepping his role as Consul-General and exposing the fundamental weakness of Ehud Olmert's government, Aryeh Mekel seeks to silence American Jews who would criticize current Israeli policies of appeasement, abandonment and expulsion -- and all this in the name of honoring Israel's "democratic process." In a recent interview with the Jerusalem Post, Mr. Mekel said that; "American Jews largely support Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's realignment plan, and those who don't will be told to keep quiet so that the global Jewish community can maintain a united front." Is it the job of the Consul General to speak for American Jews? Is it his job to promote the opinions of those he declares the majority and silence those he pronounces the minority? Does his personal desire for a lemming like "united front" outweigh matters of Jewish survival? According to the Consul-General's own website, the role of the Consul General is quite limited. Its primary task being: "to promote the positive image of Israel in the media and the surrounding communities ..." By seeking to silence American Jews Mr. Mekel is way out of bounds and has seriously undermined his job of presenting Israel in a positive light. Perhaps he seeks to empower himself as the voice and censor of American Jewry -- thanks but no thanks. Mr. Mekel, take note. Americans across the political spectrum cherish free speech and the right of dissent as essential elements of democracy and disdain tactics that would impose silence. Mr. Mekel would do well to stick to the parameters of his job description that includes maintaining "mutually cooperative" relationships with Jewish organizations in America and refrain from delving into the politics of propping up a weak government that fears to have the inanity of its policies challenged. It is suspected that the same approach of silencing dissent will be taken with Christian Zionists who oppose Ehud Olmert's policies -- although not through Mekel. Those that would silence can be assured that such efforts will be rebuffed and that both the weakness of the government and its attitude towards free speech will not go unnoticed by the Christian community. If the present government of Israel were confident about its direction it would not fear dissent and seek to silence it. If it was a strong government, it would not attempt to intimidate those that oppose it from speaking out. This government is neither confident nor strong and Mr. Mekel's remarks are testimony to that. Those Americans who recognize the folly of appeasing terror are in the clear majority. They recognize that the war on Israel is part of the War on Terror and will not be silenced or cowed by a weak government in Israel that has embraced appeasement and worse. A few people may be intimidated and even a few organizations, but a lemming like "unity" in support for national suicide in response to an out of bounds request fro m Mekel? Not a chance. Barry Freedman is Executive Director of Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI, a pro-active pro-Israel advocacy group. AFSI may be contacted by mail at 1623 Third Ave., Suite 205, New York, N.Y. 10128 (Tel: 212-828-2424; Fax: 212-828-1717); by email at afsi@rcn.com; or by accessing its website: www.afsi.org. |
|
FABRICATING ISRAELI WAR CRIMES; ZARQAWI; CANADA STIRS ... SLEEPS;
WAR IS WAR BUT NOT TO MUSLIMS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 26, 2006. |
|
ASSESSING ZARQAWI'S DEMISE Zarqawi had become the most dangerous known jihad commander. He still fought, whereas bin Laden hid. He had gained expertise, which he passed on to others. An aggressive leader, he inspired masses and developed theories for extending jihad. Elminating him was a major wartime goal and victory. A year or two ago, when Israel became semi-aggressive in liquidating terrorist leaders, it sent most of the dwindling number of terrorist leaders into inactivity. If the US keeps up this similar instance of success, it would greatly reduce terrorism in Iraq. The NY Times emphasized that his death won't end terrorism; more terrorists will take his place. Since he was especially qualified, they won't replace him at his level of expertise for some time. He won't inspire so many people, any more. The Times is defeatist. Democrats were discovered discussing how to minimize acclaim for this victory, lest the Bush administration gain some credit with the public. That is unpatriotic partisanship. HOW TO MISLEAD ABOUT ALLEGED ISRAELI WAR CRIMES Although he cited his source accurately, Internet writer Serwad's source misleads by omission. The story is about the arrest warrant for an alleged war crime. The threat of arrest kept an Israeli officer, invited to England, from stepping out of his plane. Some European countries and the US allow their citizens to institute a government prosecution of a foreign national for an alleged war crime in a foreign country, none of it having any relevance to the prosecuting country. Several countries amended the law to require some connection to their countries. The officer had demolished houses in Gaza. The court, on accepting the case, had as its standards: (1) Supposed applicability under the Geneva Convention; (2) The act would be a crime, if proved; (3) The defendant's country doesn't review many such cases. Israel complains that singling out Israel makes it seem "a singularly unlawful state." What did the story omit? (1) The fact that the multi-national movement has gotten out of hand. It has been pre-empted by states and individuals, many being war criminals, themselves, or who are radicals hating the US and Israel. They seize upon this and other opportunities, originally meant to impose justice, to impose injustice upon scapegoat states. The story hints that some countries have repealed the broad sweep of the statute, because it is subject to abuse. These days, lawsuits are used censor and extort, rather than to resolve. (2) The Geneva Convention does not apply to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. It applies only to sovereign territory, in an attempt to deter countries from absorbing other countries. (3) The merits of demolition are not discussed. Israel has done it for a small proportion of illegally built houses and houses, often abandoned and used for terrorism. This anti-terrorism is legitimate law-enforcement. (4) The phony self-righteous social conscience behind the lawsuit fails to object to Arab terrorism. CANADA STIRS, THEN RESUMES HIBERNATION Canada has the same unrealistic notion of itself as have some European countries. It is civilized and tolerant now (it once preferred Nazis to Jewish refugees). It supposes that all ethnic groups enjoy the tolerance, and repay it with loyalty. It does not realize that Islamic solidarity and bigotry rarely are penetrated by the best modern values. While the people slept in their cocoon of fantasy, the vigilant police uncovered a widespread domestic Islamic terrorist plot against the country. One official publicly described the plotters as of diverse backgrounds, but did not mention that all were Muslims (which is more relevant). The next day, the police chief bragged to Muslim leaders that officials did not mention the accused men's religion. And the raiders have undergone sensitivity training (as if they did something wrong). A Toronto imam called the arrests "an attack on the Muslim community" made "for the sake of pleasing George Bush." (Muslims concoct motives just to have something to say.) The imams urged academic study of how their youth got into terrorism. The plotters mostly were Canadian citizens, educated in Canadian public schools, but hear hate-speech from the imams. (The imams urge study to divert attention from their guilt.) Many Canadians still think they were attacked for some connection with the US, rather than for being a secular, liberal country. The national leadership, however, was the first to sever ties and funding for the Hamas regime, classified the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization, and went to Afghanistan to show support for the Canadian soldiers there (Adam Daifallah, NY Sun, 6/7, Op.-Ed.). WAR IS WAR, BUT NOT TO THE MUSLIMS. Israel raided and killed the former head of the P.A. Popular Resistance Committee, which has been committing much of the recent P.A. terrorism. The P.A. reacted by calling that liquidation of the Muslim war criminal itself a criminal act (IMRA, 6/8). There is no indication that the major media ever ask the Muslims what the other side in a war is supposed to do. PM OLMERT MEETS WITH KING OF JORDAN Oh how the two countries are cooperating in the endeavor to get a state for the P.A. Arabs. How appreciative Olmert is of Jordan's training Abbas' Presidential Guard (IMRA, 6/8). The Presidential Guard doubles as a terrorist organization. P.A. statehood would be at the expense of Jewish patrimony and security. The King must see Olmert as a fool. HAMAS TO INTEGRATE FORCES INTO P.A. POLICE With Egyptian mediation, Fatah and Hamas agreed to let thousands of Hamas men into the P.A. police (IMRA, 6/8). This is an important step in Hamas taking over the P.A.. Hamas will accumulate an army of the current 70,000 P.A. troops plus its own thousands plus the eight thousand that Abbas is adding to his Presidential Guard. The Quartet wanted amalgamation, without caring that it means combining terrorist forces ranged along Israel's flank. Do you think that Egypt and Russia won't show that army how to penetrate the flank in support of invaders that Israelis would be scrambling to assemble in time to block? ISRAELI MILITARY PURGE The Sharon-Olmert regimes have been purging the security agencies of brilliant thinkers who oppose unrequited concessions and retreats. Sharon dismissed three; Olmert has dismissed two more. Those leaders were responsible for new methods that the US and other militaries asked to be taught. In Israel, critical thinking is not wanted any more. The political echelon constantly makes grave strategic errors, for which brilliant military strategists have had to compensate. Now the military is going to be as witless as the politicians (IMRA, 6/9). Israeli leaders have over-sized egos and under-sized I.Q.s. ZARQAWI Zarqawi was the product of an assembly line producing terrorists. The US waits at the end of the assembly line to fight the troops that emerge. It should attack the brains behind the factory and shut down the assembly line. That means getting at the religious leaders and educators (as at al-Azhar U. in Cairo). Most Muslim governments make deals with those terrorist indoctrinators, rather than prosecute them. In the West, lobbyists and permissive welfare and citizenship systems protect Islamists. The prior two US presidents, senators, ex-officials, and lobbyists serve Muslim governments (Youssef Ibrahim, NY Sun, 6/9, p.6). So do many academicians and reporters. Many editors appease the Muslims. NY TIMES PROTECTS HAMAS' REPUTATION "Hamas had officially been abiding by an intermittent 16-month-old cease-fire," but now "Declares it will resume attacking Israel." So wrote Steven Erlanger, 6/10, A1). "Officially," yes. Unofficially, no. Hamas gave its rockets to other groups to fire. Some Hamas cells engaged in terrorism. A cease fire is a Muslim way of feigning moderation temporarily or of gaining a respite for rearming. The Times misleadingly protects the reputation of Hamas, which it calls militant rather than terrorist. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
|
THE TUNNEL FIASCO
Posted by Naomi Ragen, June 26, 2006. |
|
Friends, Could the tragic deaths of two soldiers and the kidnapping of a third have been avoided by better planning and technology? This article by Amir Oren says yes. "The IDF has two armies. There is one that fights day and night, to the best of its depleted ability; most of the time it succeeds, sometimes it fails. The second army works during office hours, from Sunday morning to Thursday afternoon, with no sense of urgency. The tunnels are being dug along the seam between the two armies." An article worth reading. My thanks to IMRA for posting.
It is entitled "Investigate the tunnel fiasco" and was written by
Amir Oren; it appeared in Haaretz Naomi |
|
Two weeks ago officers from the Israel Defense Forces Engineering Corps knocked on the door of the Geophysics Institute which, among other work, researches subterranean phenomena related to security. The officers expressed concern at the possibility that in the area of the Sufa crossing between Israel and Gaza, tunnels are being dug from the Palestinian side in the direction of the border - both for immediate crossings into Israel and for future use. Experts at the institute were asked to assist in locating the tunnels, which Brigadier General Aviv Kochavi said the IDF had failed to find. The staff expressed an eagerness to help, but asked that an official request be made, as is customary. No such request arrived; instead a Palestinian commando attack took place yesterday there against IDF soldiers. The fiasco in the handling of the Gaza Strip tunnels cost the lives of two soldiers yesterday, the abduction of another and injuries to others, and has led to an escalation in ground warfare in the Rafah area. The responsibility of the Hamas government for these developments does not free Israel of the need for a detailed evaluation of the failings of the army and the Defense Ministry in the tunnels affair. The Defense Research and Development Administration, the Ground Forces Command, the Southern Command, the Defense Ministry's administration and its minister, the General Staff - all share the responsibility, more or less, directly or indirectly. Only an authorized and independent investigation can determine the extent of that responsibility. A year and a half ago, following repeated incidents along the Philadelphi Route that claimed many lives, then chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon appointed a special advisor on the issue of tunneling, Colonel (res.) Yossi Langotsky, a geologist and a veteran of special operations with experience dealing with technologies used by the Intelligence Corps. Langotsky investigated and presented Ya'alon with a very critical report on various aspects of the tunnels. He feared that just as in the case of the downing of the Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie - which he himself had warned about as one of the authors of a report on aviation security during the 1980s - his findings would once again be ignored. The response from the upper echelons of the defense establishment to Langotsky's report was quick and to the point: It was directed not against the tunnels, or those responsible for the failings, but against the geologist himself. His assistance was apparently unwelcome, and those harmed by Langotsky's findings blamed him for being motivated by personal interests. Then defense minister Shaul Mofaz, who boasted in the Knesset about the successes in coping with the tunnel phenomenon, avoided a meeting with Langotsky. This was also the response of all the generals who were dealing with the issue - with the exception of Major General Benny Gantz who, as head of Northern Command, was worried that the Hezbollah was also secretly digging tunnels. What Gantz actually has done with respect to this problem, in his current role as head of the Ground Forces Command, which also includes the Engineering Corps, is something that needs to be clarified in the investigation. The well-known method that brands a person who sounds the alarm as a fanatic who should be ignored, worked. The handling of the tunnels situation moved along slowly, and an official announcement declared it a problem with no solution. The Palestinians were convinced - and continued to dig. If Israel is a fenced-in state, they can try to pass over and under the fence: bypassing it from above with ballistic weapons and from below by using tunnels. The IDF has two armies. There is one that fights day and night, to the best of its depleted ability; most of the time it succeeds, sometimes it fails. The second army works during office hours, from Sunday morning to Thursday afternoon, with no sense of urgency. The tunnels are being dug along the seam between the two armies. If an investigative committee headed by retired judge Vardi Zeiler is set up to probe ties between police officers and criminals, and if to prove the IDF's innocence in the killing of Palestinians on a Gaza beach, a major general is appointed to head an inquiry - surely a public commission is necessary to probe the tunnels fiasco. This year the state comptroller already examined the tunnels issue and focused on various aspects of development, intelligence and operations; a bleak draft of the findings is waiting for answers from those under scrutiny. During the past two years senior officials in the defense establishment have been involved in failures, and the system will find it difficult to rise above itself and act objectively against itself and its own. Only external elements, perhaps the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, have the power to appoint a "Zeiler equivalent," who will investigate the failures and help prevent the next foul-up. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
|
FREEING THIS SOLDIER AND PROTECTING OTHERS
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, June 26, 2006. |
|
Disengagement strikes again. The brilliance of Peres and his golem again has been shown. Expel the Jews from their homes, destroy them and give the remains to the mortal enemies of the Jewish people and the state of Israel and the sharks will be sated and Israel will be right to strike at any subsequent attacks. Lies, lies, and just another internationalist ploy to shrink Israel to a bite-size nugget for global jihad. And so rockets rain on Sderot and other west Negev towns, terrorists infiltrate in increasing numbers, more lethal versions of the fedayeen from the 1950s streaming out of the "Gaza Strip" until Israel quited them by conquering the Sinai in October 1956. But the globalist left pursues its made dream and life grows worse and worse. Soldier Gilad Shalit has been captured by savages whose penchant for kidnapping and murdering Jews is a matter of record. His situation focuses the principle issues of the entire situation with Israel's Arab enemies, the Jew haters. How to free him in a way that addresses the fundamental problems of the matzav? 1) Islam is the enemy of the Jewish people; their spokesmen remind us of this daily. Their people put into power vicious anti-Semites akin to Nazis. Somehow, those with power in Israel must recognize that these mortal enemies are blatantly at war with the Jewish people, indeed, that they intend to exterminate the Jews and to fight the war that is and has been going on since the first rocket or bullet was shot into pre-1967 Israel. The enemy must be crushed or they will crush the Jews. 2) Freeing the soldier must be done in a way that decisively deters a repetition of this heinous and familiar scenario. Here is the way to proceed: issue an ultimatum, public and private to the leaders of the enemy groups stating that they will be executed if the soldier is not released by noon tomorrow. Make it clear that this includes the entire Hamas government. Let the message be consistent, firm, and terse. Let them see signs of the death hanging over their heads and of the destruction of their entire enterprise and its boasts, its dail humiliation of Israel and the Jews. They will not murder this youth; they want to win, not die. The leaders of media darlings, cowards. If he is not freed and back in Israel by noon, by 12:30 massive attacks on Hamas and on many kinds of targets throughout Gaza and in 'Area A,' Ramallah, Jenin, Hebron, and more will be hit in a way that will leave a lasting impression. Worst case scenario: the maniacs murder the soldier, which they well may do anyway as abundant precedents have shown, and they suffer a major defeat and reduction toward nil of their ability to ever harm any Jew again. Best case scenario: they release the soldier and after the next rocket that leaves an Arab area and lands in any Jewish area the IDF does what it is trained to do and inflicts a hellacious pounding on the jihadists and the mobs that turn out to cheer their threats against Jews. Result the same: deterrence for a lifetime and an enormous reduction of islamic ability or desire to raise a hand against Jews. Let them know Jewish life and blood is precious and any attempts against it will be met with overwhelming force, storm and fury. There will be no more kidnappings and Israel will settle in its place. Professor Eugene Narrett's new book, Israel and The Endtimes is now
available at this web site:
|
|
IDF INTELLIGENCE CHIEF: WITHDRAWAL INCREASED EXISTENTIAL THREATS
Posted by Jacob Benesch, June 26, 2006. |
|
IDF Intelligence Chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin recently declared that Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza has increased the number of strategic threats to Israel's existence. Yadlin is only the latest important military and defense figure to speak about Israel's deteriorating strategic environment. Yadlin was a general in the Israeli Air Force and currently heads IDF Military Intelligence. Speaking at Haifa University's National Strategic Center on June 20th, Yadlin presented several factors that have contributed to Israel's deteriorating position in the eyes of the world. The main factor, he said, was the Hamas victory in the PA elections, after convincing the Palestinian people that their terrorist actions against Israel have been successful. In addition, Hamas forced Israel into making concessions and unilaterally withdrawing from Gush Katif. Yadlin said that Hizbullah's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah "was the first to claim that by military force alone he would make Israel retreat from south Lebanon, with no diplomatic compromise. This trend was positively reinforced by Israel's Disengagement from the Gaza Strip." Former Defense Minister Moshe Arens has also come out vocally against the withdrawal, saying that Israel must reoccupy Gaza as the only way to prevent the continuation of rocket attacks on towns and cities. Former IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon has repeatedly said that the path of unilateral concessions and the assisting of a Hamas-controlled government will lead to a costly war. International Jihadist Movements such as Al-Qaeda have put Israel in the spotlight, Yadlin explained, adding that recent activities emanating from Osama Bin Laden's terrorist network's continue to focus on Israel and the Middle East. "In the meantime," he said, "it has had a notable influence on the surroundings, such as terror attacks in Taba, rocket fire from Aqaba, and fire on Lebanon - and not on Israel itself." Meanwhile, the intelligence chief added, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to research and develop nuclear technology. Yadlin noted that the development of nuclear technology was a chief reason behind the turnaround from the positive atmosphere in Israel's strategic environment from April 2002-August 2005. His election to power in June 2005 has also contributed to this change. "General Yadlin's analysis powerfully underscores the fact that strategic threats to Israel are worsening in part on of policies like that of further unilateral withdrawals now being pursued by the Olmert government," said Zionist Organization of America's National Chairman Michael Goldblatt in a statement distributed together with a transcript of Yadlin's words. "We urge the Olmert government again to reconsider urgently the path it is proposing to take." This article appeared in Arutz-Sheva today and is archived at
|
|
JEWISH LEMMINGS HAVE THEIR DAY
Posted by Fern Sidman, June 25, 2006. |
|
If the Jewish people would ever establish a national day of celebration and glorification of the victories of those amongst them who can be defined as "lemmings", today would be that day. It has been reported by Arutz Sheva (6/23/06) that, "Members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' personal guard, "Force 17", used Israel's weapons to shoot Israelis this week, according to Israeli security and PA terrorist sources. Israel is the supplier of the weapons used in the gunfire that killed one Israeli and wounded several others, according to an interview written by journalist Aaron Klein and released Friday by WorldNetDaily. Klein quoted Abu Yousuf, a senior member of Force 17, who like many other guards is a member of the Al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigades terror group." The report goes on to say, "Olmert's administration decided to transfer the U.S.-manufactured weapons to Abbas' guard troops in a bid to shore up his ability to protect himself in the fight against the terror group Hamas for control of PA security forces. The recent shipment included 3,000 M-16 automatic machine guns and one million rounds of ammunition. Abu Yousuf said bluntly that the weapons will be used to shoot Jews, and added that the terror organization may share the weaponry with Hamas as well, if its 3,000-member militia is absorbed into the general PA police force. "These weapons will not be used in an internal war but against Israelis," Yousuf told Klein. He added as far as his group was concerned, Israel transferred the weapons to his Force 17 unit "for its own political purposes. We are not concerned with the reasons. The weapons will not be used against our brothers, only [against] Israelis." And if this news doesn't warm the hearts of the global community of Jewish lemmings, then perhaps the following will make great fodder for celebration. According to a report in The Jerusalem Post (6/25/06), "The Aksa Martyrs Brigades announced on Sunday that its members have succeeded in manufacturing chemical and biological weapons. In a leaflet distributed in the Gaza Strip, the group, which belongs to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah Party, said the weapons were the result of a three-year effort. According to the statement, the first of its kind, the group has managed to manufacture and develop at least 20 different types of biological and chemical weapons. The group said its members would not hesitate to add the new weapons to Kassam rockets that are being fired at Israeli communities almost every day. It also threatened to use the weapons against IDF soldiers if Israel carried out its threats to invade the Gaza Strip. "We want to tell [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert and [Defense Minister Amir] Peretz that your threats don't frighten us," the leaflet said." And while all this is happening, ynetnews.com (6/24/06) is reporting that PA President Mahmoud Abbas, the good friend and ally of the Jewish lemmings, is pressing US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice to intervene on behalf of the Palestinians to get Israel to stop launching air strikes in the Gaza Strip. According to their report, "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has urged US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to press Israel to stop escalating tensions, Abbas' office said Saturday. In the telephone conversation Friday, Abbas called for US intervention on behalf of the Palestinians to get Israel to stop launching airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh said." There is no doubt or question that euphoria, ecstasy and unbridled joy is filling the hearts and souls of the Jewish lemmings. They can bask in their efforts to secure a national suicide of the State of Israel and of the Jewish people. They can reap great reward and benefit from these latest news developments. The Jewish lemmings are a clever bunch and they are led by their appointed leader, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. While the world is focused on the threat of Hamas and their promises to destroy the Jewish State, the lemmings ingeniously devised a plan to help "our friends," Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. They have led us to believe that Abbas and his Fatah party are trying to quell Hamas' terrorist activities aimed at Israel. They have succeeded in convincing those who desperately want "peace" that the way to go is to support those Arabs who define themselves as "moderate" and can be reasoned with. Yes, the lemmings are great at public relations and know how to manipulate the minds of the people. The lemmings know the truth and are exploiting it for their ulitmate goal of expeditously destroying themselves. The Jewish lemmings know the truth about the background of Mahmoud Abbas. They know he is a terrorist mastermind, but they couch their rhetoric in the most palatable terms for the consumption of the masses. Quoting from an article written by this author in May of 2003 entitled "A Tale of Two Frauds", subsequent to the election of Mahmoud Abbas, a/k/a Abu Mazen, the following information came to light, "The Israeli civil rights group Shurat Hadin has announced a campaign to convince US and German law enforcement agencies to open an investigation into Mahmoud Abbas, a/k/a Abu Mazen in the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. On September 5, 1972, a squad of heavily armed Palestinian terrorists attacked the dormitories housing the Israeli Olympic team and murdered a coach and weightlifter David Berger, who was an American citizen. The terrorists then took nine Israeli athletes hostage. While the terrorists and their hostages were transported to the airport, the German police botched a rescue attempt and all nine of the athletes were murdered. The director of Shurat Hadin, attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, sent letters this week to US President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder containing new information indicating that Abu Mazen provided financing to the PLO's Black September terrorist group, in order to carry out the notorious terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympic Games. While recent newsmedia profiles of Abu Mazen have accentuated his alleged "terrorism-free" personal history, the Shurat Hadin charges that in 1972, Abu Mazen, then a high ranking PLO official, provided financing for the terrorist attacks being perpetuated by Yassir Arafat's PLO faction Fatah under the nom de guerre Black September. Shurat Hadin is basing its information on published statements by the terrorist who masterminded the Munich attack, Mohammed Daoud Oudeh ("Abu Daoud"). In his French-language autobiography, Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich, Abu Daoud describes the role of Abu Mazen in providing the funds to carry out the Black September Olympic attack. Furthermore, in an interview with journalist Don Yaeger of Sports Illustrated Magazine in August 2002, Abu Daoud reiterated his charges that Abu Mazen supplied the money for the deadly attack. In his memoir Abu Daoud states: "After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. ..." "Do you think that ... would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation?" Abu Daoud writes. "I doubt it." Today, the Bush Administration seeks a Palestinian negotiating partner "uncompromised by terror," yet last year Abu Mazen met in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell." Abu Daoud's allegations have been confirmed by sources within the Palestinian Authority, according to Shurat Hadin. Attorney Darshan-Leitner's letter to President Bush states: "Under your leadership the United States has declared that it will no longer maintain contacts with those tainted by terrorist pasts. It appears that the new Palestinian leader, on whom the United States and Israel are now pinning their hopes, was also involved in murderous attacks perpetrated by the PLO's Black September. If proven true, Abu Mazen's role in the brutal killing of the Israeli athletes and American citizen David Berger must preclude his involvement in the negotiations between the United States, Israel and her Arab neighbors." Both Germany and Israel still have the legal jurisdiction to prosecute those involved in the Munich Olympic killings." Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah and the PA are no different than Hamas. They share one goal and that is the eradication and destruction of the State of Israel and of the Jewish people. Terrorists don't change their stripes. Once a terrorist, always a terrorist. While the world and the media are quite adept is whitewashing the terrorist past of those they seek to transform into legitimate statesmen who are dedicated to "'peace", we need only look to Yasir Arafat and his ilk to see that this kind of propaganda is a thinly veiled attempt to deceive the public. And the top brass at the Jewish lemmings' headquarters know the truth as does their rank and file membership. And to those Jews who are not lemmings, to those Jews who respect the sanctity of Jewish lives and are dedicated to the preservation and survival of Israel and it's people, now is the time to rain on the parade of victory that the Jewish lemmings are enjoying. Now is the time to exude Jewish pride, power, strength, courage and commitment to their convictions. Now is the time to proclaim to the Jewish lemmings that their ill conceived plans for national suicide will be thwarted (with G-d's help) by those who believe in life, justice and righteousness. And to those who believe in the laws of the Almighty G-d of Israel and whose lives are committed to practicing His commandments and whose lives are committed to adhering to the values of Hashem's Torah, then now is the time to end the "party" for the Jewish lemmings. Now is the time to raise our collective voices in prayer to the G-d of Israel and plead for His mercy and compassion and now is the time to ask for the strength and temerity to expose the lies and corruption of the Jewish lemmings. Contact Fern Sidman at ariellaH@aol.com |
|
THE ENTIRE LAND IS A "BORDER"
Posted by Professor Eugene E. Narrett, June 25, 2006. |
|
The failure and bad faith of Israel's ruling elites since the late 1920s, the pre-state days, the days when the Histadrut - Bund formulated havlaga [Jewish self-restraint in response to Arab attacks] led to the peace processes that claimed the lives of two more Jews today near the abandoned lands of GK. Did we write 'bad faith'? Say rather, loss of faith because the failure to embrace the birthright, violently overt since the sinking of the Altalena has led directly to the relentless push of the powers to keep Jews from returning to, -- or remaining in -- the Jewish heartland and holy sites. One result of this terrible failure, the modern sin of the spies who are unable to blend gevura with chessed and thus put Jewish life always at risk, is that all of Israel has the status of a "border." In most respects this is terrible but the Torah and halacha are wisdom and the status of a border has a saving grace built into its strictures. The sages recognized that border regions are particularly vulnerable to the attacks that the nation's will never cease to make till Israel is settled completely in its place. Rav Josef Caro summed up their wisdom when he specified in the Shulchan Aruch that when an enemy attacks, or even prepares to attack even a border region of Israel then Jews are obliged to "kill them first," and that even if it is Shabbat they are to carry off the would-be assailants weapons and goods. Okay; all Israel today has the status of a border. Israel is surrounded and infested by Hamas and supporters of Hamas, the "Palestinian" population. The silver lining of this terrible situation rests in Israel's choosing to follow the explicit and practical point of the law: "kill them first" before they murder any more Jews or capture them as happened today. Whether this saving stricture is followed out of self-respect, bitterness, fear or various political or strategic motives, JUST DO IT. Avenge the spilling of Jewish blood on the entire enemy nation and thereby deter the spilling of more blood and advance the day when there will be peace. Professor Eugene Narrett's new book, Israel and The Endtimes is now
available at this web site:
|
|
US OFFICIAL UNDER FIRE OVER SAUDI FLAP
Posted by Michael Freund, June 25, 2006. |
|
In the wake of a report in last week's Jerusalem Post, an influential US congressman has sent a letter to the United States Trade Representative (USTR) pressing her to explain her defense of Saudi Arabia's record on the Arab boycott of Israel, after Riyadh's envoy to Washington admitted that the embargo remains in place. Florida Democrat Rep. Robert Wexler wrote to USTR Susan Schwab after reading an exclusive report in the Post on comments made by Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Turki al-Faisal. Speaking at a June 19 "policy lunch" at the Brookings Institution, al-Faisal acknowledged that his country continued to bar Israeli-made goods from entering the kingdom, saying that it was "an issue of national sovereignty," according to a transcript of his remarks obtained by the Post. He added that US officials had been "informed" of the continuation of the boycott, an assertion which contradicted previous public statements made by the USTR, including as recently as last month. In May, Schwab told members of the US Senate Finance Committee at her nomination hearings that reports that the Saudis were violating their pledge to dismantle the anti-Israel boycott were "incorrect". She insisted that her office had received "assurances" from the Saudis that they were no longer enforcing the boycott. In a press release issued last year, then-USTR Rob Portman said, "Saudi Arabia is legally obligated to provide most-favored-nation treatment to all WTO Members, including Israel." The Bush administration conditioned Saudi Arabia's entry into the World Trade Organization on its removal of the boycott, and the Saudis were allowed to join the group in December only after pledging to do so. The WTO, which aims to promote free trade, prohibits members from engaging in discriminatory practices such as boycotts or embargoes. In the letter to Schwab, Rep. Wexler wrote, "Ambassador Al-Faisal's assertion that Saudi Arabia continues to enforce the primary boycott of Israel stands in stark violation of its commitments under the WTO." The envoy's remarks, Wexler noted, "seemingly contradict former representative Portman's claims and, to my knowledge, contradict all other public statements on this issue made by USTR." "Ambassador Schwab," he wrote, "it is clear that either the Saudi government is acting duplicitously or there is a misunderstanding between Congress and the USTR." "At this juncture," the letter concludes, "I respectfully request that you explain to what extent - if at all - USTR was made aware of Saudi Arabia's ongoing enforcement of the Arab League boycott of Israel, and please explain the response of USTR to the aforementioned Saudi claims." The Saudi ambassador's admission that his country continues to enforce the boycott confirmed reports that first appeared in the Post over the past few months. As the paper first reported in March, the Saudis played host to a major international conference aimed at intensifying the anti-Israel boycott. In May, a Saudi delegation took part in a meeting of the Arab League's boycott office in Damascus, and Saudi customs officials contacted by the Post said Israeli-made goods were barred from entering. In an interview with the Post last week, Wexler said, "Saudi Arabia is violating its commitments to the US, and the Bush administration needs to confront them on this... if the Saudis are being duplicitous," he warned, "there need to be consequences." Michael Freund served as an adviser to former
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. This article appeared today in the
Jerusalem Post |
|
NOTHING LEFT TO SAY
Posted by Naomi Ragen, June 25, 2006. |
|
As a direct result of the destruction of the communities of Gush Katif, terrorists are now free to shoot rockets, plant land mines, and dig tunnels all over Gaza. No one takes responsibility for the attacks. And if you try to fight back, you find yourself blowing up civilians because terrorists hide behind the innocent. Today, nine terrorists infiltrated Israel with machine guns, rockets, and suicide belts. They killed two soldiers: Chanan Barak and Pavel Slotzker, They also kidnapped Gilad Shalit and injured four other soldiers. Some terrorists were killed. Others escaped back through the tunnels to Gaza. Chanan, who lived in Arad, was "the wisest, strongest man I knew," a friend said. He would have been 21 in August. Pavel, who was planning to study medicine when he finished his tour of duty, was from Dimona. He was "big and beautiful," his mother said. He was twenty. Gilad Shalit, who has been in the army 11 months, is 19. His family lives in the Western Galilee. I cannot imagine what they are going through. The horror of waiting, the search for information. May God return him safely home. I have been writing much less of late. Not because nothing is happening but because there is nothing left to say. How many times can you write that Israel's leaders are weak and deluded? And why should anyone care given their empowerment through a free and democratic election? How many times can you say the obvious, that the Arabs have a single agenda, to wipe us off the map? No one even denies it anymore, not even the Leftists. How many times can you say: We said this would be the result of the retreat from Gaza, more murder, more mayhem, not a saving of lives, but a horrible security risk that would endanger our soldiers most of all? And who doubts it now anyway? Like the collapse of the Oslo Accords, which sold a bill of goods to the gullible, no one cared, or took responsibility, or paid the price for the death of thousands of Israelis. And so it will be this time. Those who will pay the price will be the wise and the strong, the beautiful and the intelligent, who stand under orders at our borders while Mr.Olmert and Mr.Peretz are busy with their photo ops, smiling for the foreign press, shaking hands, and kissing whatever part of the enemy is available. "Put not your faith in princes," the Psalmist writes. Like the Hebrews facing the sea with the Egyptians massing at their backs, we await the future hoping for miracles, even as we mourn the unbearable reality of all our present. Naomi Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
|
THE RAT TRAP, and the Dumb Cats...
Posted by Professor Eugene E. Narrett, June 25, 2006. |
|
Assume the implausible, -- that there was a self-respecting, self-preserving, redemptive aspect of the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif and northern Samaria. The assumption is based on the long known and daily reiterated facts and goals of jihadist behavior. In regard to the gerush from GK specifically this means that the jihadists who had rained rockets onto Negev towns near GK and who had initiated many murder missions from within Arab areas of Gaza would continue to do so when and if the Jews were removed. And lo, it has come to pass. It also was predictable (and predicted by many, in the IDF, GSS and lay commentators) that additional terrorists and jihadist groups would flock into all areas of the "Gaza strip" when and if the Jews and the IDF exited and that there would be, consequently, an exponential increase in jihadist attacks and attempted attacks on Jews in Israel and on other peoples. And lo, it has come to pass. Assuming there was some rhyme or reason to the gerush, that it was some kind of bizarre, self-flagellating tactic it could only be that once the inevitable concentration of terrorists and their infrastructure into the area occurred, with the resultant increase in murderous attacks that then the IDF and IAF would sweep through the area like a sharp threshing tool of many blades and crush the enemy in their entirety, pulverize them and sweep them all like chaff into the Sinai and back toward Egypt. But no; while the IDF top brass reportedly pleads with Walmartz for significant preemptive measures every single response is vetoed by the political echelon. And this is done even though what needs no explaining is explained in detail: that the meager response of targeted missiles from helicopters is not only inadequate to stop the Arab war against Israel but that it carries a much higher probability of killing civilians and therefore bringing world diplomatic and media opprobrium on Israel. Three obvious comments: this reminds us that, 1) the official organs of the world powers are outraged when Jews respond physically to murderous attacks against them ('just shut up and get in the cattle car'), and 2) that Walmartz wants Israel to pursue a policy that not only is ineffective as deterrence but that is guaranteed to increase 'world' criticism of Israel and, thus, pressures on Israel to atone by making further unilateral concessions, -- returning more Jewish land to Arabs to create a fake state for a fake people. These points demonstrate the degree to which, 3) Walmartz is a tool of the State Department, Brussels, the Davos Group and the "world community." Indeed, this rag doll is even too limp for his handlers (and also for Egypt, Jordan and perhaps other Arab states) who fear that Israel is collapsing too fast to suit the fine-tuning of their grand designs and the maintenance of their own positions of power. Yes, the State Department finally has created an Israeli golem that is too suicidal even for its plans. It's somewhat reminiscent of October 1973: Foggy Bottom wanted Israel "to bleed a little bit" but not bleed to death, not yet, anyway. Same now: and maybe, as their end game nears checkmate and a world community without a truly sovereign USA looms ahead, just maybe they're a little nervous in viewing what they have done. The view from the very edge of the cliff is not inviting. Promoting jihad could get out of hand... Yet the war on Israel continues, and the puppet regime continues to act like it's happening on another planet. It's not sustainable: at some point, even a totally politicized IDF and citizenry worn down by decades of socialism and worse will act. And Israel's friends in the American Executive Branch notices that Walmartz garnered less than 24% of those who bothered to vote; that 70% of Jews reject the planned expulsions of Jews from Judea and Samaria; that 80% consider the new Defense Minister to be a disaster, etc. etc. The expulsion of Jews from GK would not have been morally or militarily acceptable even if there was a rat trap plan in place. As it is, events are pushing the Israeli and American establishments to enact some such response for their own self-preservation if not that of their peoples. And just as there's more than one way to skin a cat, there are various rats that may be caught when the trap eventually snaps shut. Dr. Eugene E. Narrett's |Israel and The Endtimes: Writings on the Logic and Surface Turbulence of History" (2006) is now available on the AuthorHouse Web site www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=38671 |
|
WHY CAPTURING OR KILLING TERRORIST LEADERS MATTERS
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 25, 2006. |
|
The killing of Iraq's insurgency leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has raised an issue frequently discussed in recent years: Does the death (or capture and imprisonment) of a top terrorist or extremist chieftain make a difference? It is easy to answer this question with a no. After all, the movement will continue to exist. Radical movements claim to draw nourishment from the blood of martyrs. New individuals will step forward to fill the vacant positions. In short, it may well seem that nothing changes. Such a conclusion, however, is profoundly misleading for several reasons. First, leadership does matter. The number of charismatic figures is few and highly competent people are rare. The real question is whether the replacements can do as good a job and win as much loyalty as their predecessors. To cite only one example, the terrorist Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) still exists and occasionally commits terrorist acts but after the capture by Turkey of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, the organization was far weaker. Nor should it be forgotten that there is usually more than one person who thinks himself qualified to be the next leader. Competition over high positions often provokes internal conflict and splits that undermine an organization. It does not take long--or many lost key individuals--before the quality and capability of leaders decline. The war may go on but the other side is less effective. The same applies to others in key positions, for example, bomb-makers or others who create or build weapons. This is a skill not so easily acquired, especially given the consequences of making a mistake. When top PLO or Hamas bomb-makers have been killed, the number of those blowing themselves up trying to learn the trade goes higher and the effectiveness of terrorism declines. General George Patton, the tough-as-nails American commander during World War Two, unsentimentally pointed out that the goal of warfare is not to die for one's country but to make sure that the son-of-a-bitch on the other side died for his. The point is valid. The outcome does not depend on who gets the most glory or the finest poems but on who survives and wins. Of course, there is an unspoken assumption in the argument that eliminating terrorist leaders doesn't matter: that this is a war of attrition and by proving a willingness to be martyrs the terrorists will outlast their opponents. Thus, the mere ability to continue fighting is the most important victory of all. This has been the strategy of the PLO and now of Hamas. The result is that after forty years the former is in a horrible mess and both have inflicted terrible suffering on their own people. Back in the 1960s, PLO leaders like Yasir Arafat argued, as Hamas did today, that by continuing anti-civilian terror they would drive the Israelis to flee or surrender. It did not work for them and will not work for contemporary terrorists elsewhere either. Regarding Iraq, though, this has nothing to do with the U.S. forces remaining there. If American troops leave--an idea that I think makes sense--the insurgents will have to face the Shia and Kurds, 80 percent of the population, who are not going away. In the meantime, they have created so much inter-communal hatred that any terrorist who escapes with his life will be very lucky indeed. Unfortunately, they have made it likely that many of their fellow Sunni will die as well. But to return to the question of terrorist leaders, there is another point besides the difficulty of really replacing lost cadre. One should not believe in the terrorists' propaganda that thousands are ready to become martyrs and tens of thousands are ready to be fighters. After all, terrorist armies tend to be small because they have reached the limit of who can be recruited. I well remember seeing an interview with a Hamas official who had been the most successful recruiter of suicide bombers after he was arrested. In particular, he was asked one obvious but very significant question: Since he was such a passionate believer in the cause, why had he not become a suicide bomber? His answer, and I quote him very precisely, is that "I didn't think I would be very good at it." On one level, this seems a joke. Walking into a place and pushing a button to blow oneself up is not difficult. What is hard is the psychological readiness to do so. Obviously, he--like most people--was not eager to die. Again, the PKK leader Ocalan furnishes a good example. He mercilessly ordered the murder of thousands of Turkish civilians but once captured and facing the death sentence, Ocalan squealed for peace and told his men to stop fighting in order to save his own life. Not all extremists are secretly cowards but many are far from the lions they pretend to be. It is also well established that the leaders of terrorist groups--notably the PLO and Hamas--never put their own children in the front line. In one case, Hamas recruiters approached the son of a top leader when the latter was in prison. As soon as he found out about this, he had his son sent out of the country. To cheer a terrorist group is easy, to urge others to die in a struggle is not too hard, but to ensure one's own end is more challenging. No matter what terrorist propaganda claims, the more casualties there are, the harder it is to raise additional forces. Again, this does not mean that the battle will end or that nobody will volunteer to fight but that there will be more people in the stands cheering and fewer on the playing field shooting. It is more pleasant to chant poems of praise to martyrs while sitting comfortably in one's living room. Higher-quality recruits will also be harder to find since such people are more likely to think carefully about the risks being run or to seek more advantageous employment. While there are many stories of parents bragging--after the fact--about the sacrifice of their children, there are also many accounts of parents acting energetically to stop them from getting themselves killed. So the death or imprisonment of terrorist leaders does matter a great deal. Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center university. His co-authored book, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, (Oxford University Press) is now available in paperback and in Hebrew. His latest book, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, was published by Wiley in September. Prof. Rubin's columns can now be read online at: http://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/column.html. |
|
PIE-IN-THE- SKY EDITORIALS DEMONSTRATE MUDDLED THINKING
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 25, 2006. |
|
A 03/15/2005 Jackson Diehl New York Times editorial; written at the time of a Shiite Hezbollah rally, presumably for freedom, in the streets of Beirut; suggesting radical Islamic groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah might quell their violent behavior if incorporated into political processes, can now be analyzed bolstered by the passage of time, albeit of somewhat short duration. Hamas, a militant cadre of religious Sunni Arabs, has relatively recently been democratically elected to steward the Gaza strip, land ceded to those morphed Jordanian voters by Israel. Here is a chance to test Mr. Diehl's theory. Alas, Hamas still refuses to recognize the right of Israel to exist, is on the verge of civil war with a more moderate political rival Fatah willing to negotiate with Israel, continues to allow Muslim terrorists to launch deadly rockets into the sovereign Jewish State with impunity, will not renounce homicide/suicide bombing, and does virtually nothing to improve to the dysfunctional lives of the perhaps disillusioned citizens who indeed gave Hamas the key to their hoped for state. Surely, you can take a jihad junky out of a terror cell but you can't take the terror cell out of that junky. Indeed, Diehl's philosophy of dealing with fundamentally flawed souls, as if they were rational, is perilous pie-in the-sky fantasy. The naïve author opines, "If the Islamists can be induced to pursue power by politics-if Hezbollah continues to make its case with rallies rather than car bombs in Beirut-than those movements might be detached from their violent cells and, over time, the more extreme elements of their agendas." He goes on to state "Islamists could be driven over time to moderation" presumably by the political process. Radical Islamic fundamentalists would have to, in effect, renounce twisted Koranic verse, so essential to their collective culture of violence towards the infidel, especially the Jewish infidel, if moderation were a possibility. Furthermore, Hamas would have to renounce the demented venom incorporated into its charter. "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." Is that likely? Journalists like Jackson Diehl seem afflicted with cognitively dissonant viewpoints of the world, convoluting observations to be compatible with predetermined mindsets attuned to the way they would like things to be. "You can't make a silk purse out of a camel's ear" no matter how hard you try. A secular political process will not dissuade religious fanatics, bizarrely believing paradise awaits those martyrs willing to blow themselves up along with proximate infidel victims. Such criminally insane thought processes are likely beyond redemption. Islamic extremists, as typified by Hamas, Hezbollah, and similarly demented fundamentalist cadres are not unlike metaphorical malignant tumors of the human organism that must be extricated, or in social terms at least have its participant members incarcerated. Indeed, their collective delusional ideation concerning homicide/suicide bombing ominously supplants mankind's natural survival instinct. If such poisonously programmed humans are left to replicate, infecting other members of the species, the danger exponentially increases that some day one such mutated soul will acquire a nuke and be willing to detonate, changing "life" as we know it. Think about that Mr. Diehl. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
|
WILL THERE BE A PALESTINIAN CIVIL WAR?
Posted by Pinhas Inbari, June 25, 2006. |
The Prisoners Document The June 25 Palestinian attack from the Gaza Strip on an IDF military post inside Israel, and the accompanying escalation of fighting between the two sides, is directly connected to the Hamas-Fatah struggle over the "Prisoners Document," which may be put to a Palestinian referendum. The core of that document calls for the unification of all armed factions to carry out joint operations against Israel. What remains in dispute is who exactly will lead the new unified front. Essentially, Hamas' Khaled Mashaal is telling Fatah that it will not determine for the Palestinians how to conduct the "resistance." The Palestinian legislative elections on January 25, 2006, that brought Hamas to power have created an acute, two-fold crisis in the Palestinian Authority: economic and constitutional. Due to the holding back of international aid, the Hamas-led government has had difficulty paying the salaries of its 160,000 employees, who form the backbone of the Palestinian economy. At the same time, there is a constitutional crisis over the distribution of authority between PA Chairman Mahmud Abbas of Fatah and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, both of whom were elected to lead the Palestinians. The dispute over authority has exposed the PA to the danger of civil war, which has sharpened since Abbas called for a national referendum to approve the Prisoners Document formulated by imprisoned Fatah-Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti. Abbas hopes its adoption will enable the Hamas-led government to meet the international requirements necessary to allow the resumption of international aid. However, this document neither recognizes Israel in a straightforward way, nor calls for an end to terror. It calls for accepting the PLO as a roof organization for all factions and for the adoption of its past resolutions, thus implying the recognition of Israel based on the PLO's previous statements of recognition. With regard to terror, the document calls for uniting all factions under a unified command to continue the "resistance" inside the territories and accepts the establishment of a Palestinian state inside those territories, but without renouncing the fundamental Palestinian right of return to areas inside Israel. All Hamas leaders, including Prime Minister Haniyeh, have made it clear that they reject the document. This rejection may be seen clearly on Hamas websites, although Haniyeh says Hamas is "studying the document in order to change it." Haniyeh has also questioned whether Abbas has the constitutional authority to declare a referendum. In another Fatah-Hamas showdown over authority, Hamas Interior Minister Said Siyam, who is responsible for security, deployed an armed force in the streets of Gaza. When Abbas ordered the disbanding of this force, the Hamas government ignored him. Both Abbas and Haniyeh have repeatedly declared that "civil war is not in our vocabulary." Moreover, when I asked Abbas on the eve of the legislative elections why he had decided to allow them, knowing that this might lead to the rise of Hamas to power, he replied: "for the sake of Palestinian unity." That is to say, Abbas believed it was necessary to risk the continuation of Fatah rule in order to avoid an Algerian-style civil war, and Haniyeh thanked Abbas for this position. Fatah sources have said that the referendum initiative was designed not to lead to a major conflict with Hamas but rather to offer Haniyeh a ladder with which to climb down from the current stalemate. However, the sources added that Abbas did not properly calculate the veto power of Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas' Damascus-based political bureau. Alternative Scenarios Haniyeh himself has raised another scenario: not a civil war, but the dismantling of the PA, which could threaten the stability of the whole region. Israeli security sources are indeed concerned for the future of the PA as a functioning system, and they are discussing ideas on how to transfer more responsibilities regarding the Palestinians to international organizations. Abbas does not mention the possibility of dismantling the PA, but during his May European tour he threatened to disperse the government and call for new elections. Haniyeh, however, has said that there was no need to return to the voters only a few months after the last elections, in which all the programs were presented to the people. On a different occasion Haniyeh threatened to "turn the tables" if his government collapses. So calling for early elections could well lead not to new elections but to the collapse of the PA. In such a case, Hamas would end its period of "calm" with Israel. Thus, instead of internal civil war, full-scale fighting against Israel could erupt that unites all the Palestinian factions. Another possible outcome could be a split between a Hamas-led government in Gaza and a Fatah-led government in the West Bank. Fatah sources have said Abbas was considering holding the referendum only in the West Bank. Fatah's Post-Election Plans Fatah-Tanzim leaders close to Barghouti had stated their plans on the eve of the parliamentary elections. They had assumed that Fatah would win by a small margin and had intended to propose to Hamas to join forces in a new command structure for the fight against Israel, ending the current situation in which Hamas and the PLO were launching separate military campaigns. This new joint campaign was to be limited to the territories and have as its target the toppling of Israel's security fence. In this way, they were hoping to disconnect the Palestinian "legitimate resistance" from al-Qaeda-style terror, and this is reflected in the Prisoners Document now under dispute by Hamas and Fatah. Internal Struggles Inside Hamas The chairman of Hamas' Damascus-based political bureau, Khaled Mashaal, views Hamas as in the Iranian-Syrian orbit, while Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Gaza identifies his government as part of the global Muslim Brotherhood movement. However, both view Hamas as affiliated with outside power centers. Haniyeh is also limiting his horizons to the PA, while Mashaal has a broader vision of the global spread of Islam. While Mashaal declared that the Hamas electoral victory was the beginning of a Muslim takeover of Europe, Haniyeh restricted his narrative to the borders of Palestine. According to senior Fatah sources, Mashaal had rejected the very idea of Hamas running in the elections. Once they were held and the Hamas-run government began to sink into difficulties, Mashaal tried to create a mood inside Hamas to have it abandon the idea of running a government, as something that had occurred "too early," and to return to "clandestine resistance." According to these sources, the main problem for Haniyeh is that Mashaal maintains direct command of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and this limits Haniyeh's ability to confront Mashaal. Hence, while in the dispute over the Prisoners Document Haniyeh has tried to soften his non-acceptance in ways that leave the door open for the continuation of contacts with Abbas, Mashaal expressed his total rejection right away. By the end of June, Mashaal had softened his tone, but one can suspect the sincerity of this change. Israeli security sources say Haniyeh has demanded that Mashaal help him calm the tensions. Yet both senior Fatah sources and Israeli security sources believe that at the end of the day Mashaal will impose his will on Haniyeh against any compromise with Abbas on any subject, and especially over the referendum. Fatah sources said that before Abbas launched his referendum initiative, he told Haniyeh that once he "distances" himself from Mashaal, Fatah will protect him against the Qassam Brigades. In other words, Abbas encouraged Haniyeh to split Hamas; Haniyeh ignored the offer. Internal Struggles Inside Fatah In Fatah, there is a similar internal struggle, though it is much less acute, given the fact that, unlike Hamas, much of the "outside" leadership arrived in the PA territories after the Oslo agreements. However, there were hardliners that rejected the Oslo agreements and stayed behind in Tunis under the leadership of the head of the Fatah movement, Farouq Qaddumi. Like Mashaal, Qaddumi is linked to the Syrian-Iranian orbit. He openly rejected the parliamentary elections, and after they were held he declared that the new Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) was subject to the PLO parliament-in-exile -- the Palestinian National Committee (PNC). In the current crisis, Qaddumi supports Hamas' stand of not recognizing Israel. However, unlike the situation in Hamas, the Fatah leadership in the PA is prevailing over the outside leadership since the bulk of that leadership is now in Ramallah. Nevertheless, differences inside Fatah can play a role in deciding whether the Palestinians will move toward civil war. Once they arrived in Ramallah, the former Tunis leadership developed a dislike for the younger local leadership led by Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti, and Muhammad Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub, commanders of the newly established Preventive Security forces. The fact that the Prisoners Document was produced by Barghouti -- the bitter enemy of the old Tunis echelons -- created tensions inside Fatah between the Old Guard and Abbas, whom they suspected of secretly nurturing the Young Guard at their expense. While the Old Guard of Fatah did not easily accept the loss of power to Hamas, and urged the hesitant Abbas to take action, the advent of Barghouti as the one who is controlling the development of events has led the Old Guard to limit their support of Abbas' initiative. While Abbas has so far proved reluctant to initiate a confrontation with Hamas, it is of crucial importance for him to ensure the backing of his fellow Fatah colleagues. The Hamas Conspiracy Against Jordan Support for Abbas in a showdown with Hamas could come from the alarmed Arab governments that feel threatened by the rise of Hamas in the PA, and especially Jordan, which uncovered several attempts by Hamas in Syria to operate inside Jordan. The capture by Israel of Ibrahim Hamed, the military commander of Hamas in the West Bank, led to the exposure of far-reaching plans by Hamas to attack Jordan from the West Bank, according to directives coming from Mashaal in Damascus and backed by Tehran. Abbas expressed "shock" when first informed in Amman of the details and scope of the Hamas conspiracy against Jordan, and this may have been a turning point in his stance toward Hamas. He has again raised the possibility of dispersing the Hamas government and calling for new elections, has accelerated the establishment of a new militia in Gaza to counter Hamas' new force, and has ordered the formation of a new militia in the West Bank as well. Abbas' New West Bank Militia: Aimed at Hamas or Israel? At the same time, Abbas may also be building a military force to confront Israel in the territories in line with the stated intentions of the Prisoners Document. Fatah PLO member Yasser Qaraqe' said that Hamas should not reject the document as it does not recognize Israel. Abbas advisor Ahmad Abd a-Rahman told Al-Jazeera on June 9 that the document seeks only to strengthen the Palestinian position inside the territories. Fatah senior officials have tried to convince Hamas that once "legitimate resistance" inside the territories is recognized, then "let's see what happens." Serious doubts about the possible outcome of the Prisoners Document increased with the nomination of wanted terrorist Mahmud Damra (Abu Awad) as the commander of Fatah's Force 17 in the West Bank. Dimra's connections with Hizballah and Iran raise the question of whether this opened up an opportunity for Iran to penetrate Abbas' new force, and whether this force is meant to confront Hamas -- or Israel -- as specified in the Prisoners Document. A "Lull" Means Rocket Fire at Israel Despite the tempting incentives for Hamas to adopt the document, they have so far rejected it, not only because it is written in Fatah terminology and imposes on Hamas the authority of the secular PLO, but also because it demands that Hamas stop supporting the launching of missiles into Israel. This is the distinction between a tahdiya (lull) and a hudna (ceasefire or armistice). While a tahdiya is perceived as limiting the "resistance" to the launching of missiles at Israel while stopping terror attacks inside Israel, a hudna means a complete cessation of violence. Haniyeh even spoke of a hudna in terms of "an end of conflict." Studying the course of the dialogue launched by the Palestinian factions to avoid a civil war, one can hardly conclude that Hamas was convinced by Fatah's arguments. Abbas advisor Ahmad Abd a-Rahman wrote in Al-Ayyam on June 10 of the unbridgeable division that was uncovered during the dialogue. Hamas flatly rejects the fundamental Fatah worldview including the basic asset of PLO diplomacy -- international legitimacy. Hamas also rejected the Arab League and Saudi initiatives. Furthermore, Hamas is willing to recognize the PLO as the Palestinian roof organization only on condition that far-reaching reforms be adopted that will result in Hamas becoming the leading force in that body. Hence, the dialogue has served to expose the inherent differences between Hamas and Fatah. Notably, Abd a-Rahman also discerned conflicts between the West Bank Hamas and the Gaza-based Hamas. While the West Bankers appear to be closer to Fatah's point of view, the Gazans blocked them from reaching an agreement. Hamas forced Abbas to move the dialogue to Gaza due to its distrust of the Hamas leadership in the West Bank. What Will Happen Now? Overall, there appears to be a strong possibility of a major eruption that might topple the PA, either through civil war or a renewal of fighting with Israel, the drying up of Palestinian financial resources, or all combined. Aware of this potential, Abbas and Haniyeh share a common interest in avoiding civil war. Mashaal and Qaddumi are loosely aligned to prevail over the local leadership and are linked with the Iranian-Syrian orbit. They are both interested in the collapse of the PA. Mashaal is prevailing over Haniyeh, while Abbas is prevailing over Qaddumi. The main problem inside Fatah is between Abbas and the Old Guard. They first criticized him for delivering the PA to Hamas rule, then for his hesitance to disperse them, and now for his apparent link-up with Barghouti and the Fatah warlords. Mashaal, on the one hand, and the Fatah warlords, on the other, are pushing in the direction of a collision, and are now engaged in a major military build-up for D-Day. At the same time, Haniyeh and Abbas are still committed to internal calm. Despite the current low-scale conflict between Fatah and Hamas that is claiming lives in Gaza every day, the two leaders are trying their utmost to prevent a major showdown. Other scenarios can also materialize, including the complete and final collapse of the PA, or a split between Gaza, that will remain under Hamas rule, and the West Bank, that will return to Fatah rule. While there is no reason to suspect Abbas' rejection of a renewed armed conflict with Israel, his build-up of a new militia based on Force 17 personnel who are in contact with Hizballah does raise concerns. Pinchas Inbari is a veteran Palestinian affairs correspondent who formerly reported for Israel Radio and Al Hamishmar newspaper, and currently reports for several foreign media outlets. He is the author of a number of books on the Palestinians including The Palestinians: Between Terror and Statehood. This article was published as a Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) Brief, Vol.5, No. 27, June 25, 2006. |
|
THE SIGNS OF MORAL DECAY
Posted by Sergio Tessa (HaDar), June 25, 2006. |
|
This morning at 05:30, a groups of five Hamas terrorists, coming from the Gaza Strip, penetrated a few hundred yards inside Israeli territory through a tunnel that was dug during the last few months. During the attack, two young Israeli soldiers were killed. lieutenant Hanan Barak, ZTUQ"L, HI"D, 20 years old from Arad, and sergeant Pavel Sladtzker, ZTUQ"L, HI"D, 20 years old from Dimona, and another young soldier was kidnapped, may Hashem protect him. ALL the Israeli media and the political world are boiling over and the tones are very dramatic. The guerrilla operation is being defined as a very grave fact, whose responsibility is fully on the Hamas, to which a very hard response will be given, because it is an attack of unprecedented gravity. I AM WONDERING: where were all these "honourable men" while HUNDREDS OF MISSILES WERE FALLING ON THE POPULATION OF SDEROT?... Since when an attack on military forces has to be judged with more gravity and deserving a hasher response than an attack on defenseless civilians??? THE LYING POLITICIANS AND THE MEDIA TALKING HEADS are tying to confuse the issues to justifies their ideological and practical impotence, their IMMORALITY, which has allowed a continuous rain of missiles until today without any serious attempt to end it IMMEDIATELY AND BY ALL MEANS. Their reaction todays shows how the perversion of moral values in Israel has reached such a level that Israeli citizens are treated as cannon fodder, as peons to be used and transferred at will, peons in an immoral political process made of surrender in the face of terrorism, made of concessions, appeasement and self-destruction, while the armed forces are considered more important and worthy of being avenged. THERE MUST NOT BE ANY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A JEW IN UNIFORM AND ONE IN CIVILIAN CLOTHES: THE LIVES OF ALL SHOULD BE EQUALLY IMPORTANT! ONLY A VERY HARSH RESPONSE TO ***EVERY*** ATTACK AGAINST US, A VERY PAINFUL AND BLOODY RESPONSE AGAINST THE OTHER SIDE, CAN DECREASE THE OTHER SIDE'S APPETITE TO ATTACK US AND CAN SAVE HUMAN LIVES. End Arab occupation of the Land of Israel: Judea to the Jews, Arabia to Arabs Be'ahavath Israel -HaDaR- a Torah-wing Jew from Qiryath Arba Hebron one of those THEY call "religious fanatic, gun-toting settler" :-) Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net. |
|
SHAKE THE EARTH
Posted by Paula R. Stern, June 25, 2006. |
|
Israel has, for the most part over the last year, appeared weak and inefficient in its dealings with the Palestinians. We have emphasized our desire for peace and our willingness to make painful concessions and the Palestinians hear only that we are willing to take pain, and willingly oblige. We have made unilateral concessions and for the most part the Palestinians laugh at our having given up much of our bargaining position before the bargaining has even begun. Imagine, they think to themselves, how much more the Israelis will be forced to give up when we actually do sit down to negotiate. And even more, they tease us with promises of peace -- and then explain they only mean a temporary peace, perhaps 10 years, perhaps more, but only if we weaken ourselves enough that they too will be able to follow in the path of their great Mohammed. They remember that Mohammed made a peace agreement, only to break it two years later when the enemy was weakened enough that Mohammed's victory was assured. But all our past mistakes will be as nothing if we do not make the ground shake today, if we do not act without mercy, as they have done. This morning just after dawn, 8 Palestinians attacked an army base in Keren Shalom. As military strategy goes, it was a successful operation in which 2 of the enemy were killed, 6 others wounded, and best of all, the infiltrators were able to steal back across the border after kidnapping an Israeli soldier. This was not a terrorist attack against innocents. We cannot bemoan the lack of decency or mercy that is so common in most terror attacks. This was a military incursion and must be answered in kind. That they will likely choose to hide their prize among Palestinian civilians is not our problem and we must show the same lack of mercy that was shown to us. The fact that they were able to infiltrate and attack is the fault of the Defense Minister and the upper echelons of the army who have failed to allow our soldiers to adequately defend themselves, but the reasons no longer matter. If Israel does not shake the ground to get our soldier back, if the very earth does not vibrate with our anger and our determination to return the soldier and the body parts these ghoulish gunmen claim they took, we may as well surrender all that we have left. The reason we live in Israel, the purpose for its existence is so that we Jews can live in our land, be protected by our army, and take our place among the nations of the world. If Olmert and Peretz are to be worthy of the positions they hold, they will hold back no mercy, until our boys are home. Contact Paula Stern at paula@writepoint.com |
|
LIFE FOR POLLARD VS 10 YEARS FOR MONTAPERTO: ANTI-SEMITISM THE ONLY EXPLANATION
Posted by Justice For Jonathan Pollard, June 25, 2006. |
|
Jonathan Pollard pled guilty and was indicted on one count of passing classified information with no intent to harm the United States, to Israel, a major non-NATO ally and he received a life sentence. Ronald Montaperto, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst recently pled guilty to spying for China throughout his 22-year career in government. According to a Pentagon official, Montaperto's value to the Chinese included not only the top secret information that he provided, but also his role in facilitating Chinese deception of US intelligence. According to a statement of facts submitted in the case, the information Montaperto supplied to the Chinese included top secret details of the sale of Chinese military equipment and missiles to the Middle East. Thanks to a plea deal Montaperto will be sentenced in September to a term of no more than 10 years --possibly less. Jonathan Pollard is currently serving his 21st year of a life sentence with no end in sight. In comparison to Montaperto and other spies who have committed far more serious crimes and received far lighter sentences or no jail time at all, Pollard's life sentence is grossly disproportionate. Every other possible excuse for the ongoing, 2-decades-long incarceration and mistreatment of Jonathan Pollard has been eliminated over the passage of time. Anti-Semitism remains the only explanation. A detailed account of the Montaperto case follows. It is called "Ex
DIA Analyst Admits to Passing Secrets to China. Plea deal guarantees
no more than 10 years." and it was written by Bill Gertz. It appeared
in the Washington Times, June 23, 2006. |
|
A former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst has pleaded guilty to illegally holding classified documents and admitted in a plea agreement to passing "top secret" information to Chinese intelligence officials. Ronald N. Montaperto, the former analyst who held a security clearance as a China specialist at a U.S. Pacific Command research center until 2004, pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful retention of national defense information, according to court papers and law officials familiar with the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Montaperto admitted to verbally providing [Chinese military] attaches a considerable amount of information that was useful to them, including classified information," according to a statement of facts submitted in the case. Montaperto told investigators he could not recall specific information he gave Chinese attaches Col. Yang Qiming, Col. Yu Zhenghe and other Chinese officers during his 22-year career in government. But the statement said it included both "secret" and "top secret" data. It also said he had close unauthorized relationships with the two officers. The guilty plea was part of an agreement reached Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. The conviction can carry fines of up to $250,000 and a prison term of up to 10 years. Sentencing is set for Sept. 8. A Pentagon official said Montaperto's value to China included both the secrets he shared and his role facilitating Chinese deception of U.S. intelligence by providing feedback on how those efforts were working. A senior U.S. intelligence official bluntly stated, "He was a spy for China." During questioning by investigators in Hawaii in 2003, where he was dean of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Montaperto said he verbally gave Col. Yang and Col. Yu both "secret" and "top secret" information, the statement said. "He admitted to passing classified information to military attaches who the FBI determined were Chinese intelligence officials," said a law-enforcement official involved in the case. Montaperto, 66, joined the DIA in 1981 and eight years later sought a post at the CIA that eventually led to suspicions he was a spy for China. An investigation of his links to Chinese intelligence in 1991 was dropped for lack of evidence. He had been part of a DIA program involving authorized contacts with Chinese embassy officials. However, the statement said Montaperto failed to report his contacts, as required by security rules. After leaving DIA, Montaperto continued in government at the National Defense University and then became the dean of the Pacific Command think tank until his dismissal in 2004. A second investigation that led to his guilty plea was started in August 2001 and led to the discovery of classified documents in his Springfield residence. Reached by telephone Monday at his home in Morehead City, N.C., before the plea agreement was finalized, Mr. Montaperto declined to comment. Investigators from the FBI and Naval Criminal Investigative Service started a sting operation in July 2003 that involved asking Montaperto to join a China-related intelligence program that required him to undergo polygraph testing. Under questioning prior to the test, he made the admissions about passing secrets to China, the statement said. The information supplied to the Chinese included top secret details of the sale of Chinese military equipment and missiles to the Middle East, the statement said. The plea agreement requires Montaperto undergo debriefings and forbids him any contact with foreign agents. "He's already given a lot of information," one official said. According to U.S. intelligence officials, Montaperto was among a number of U.S. intelligence officials who came under suspicion of being informants following the defection of a Chinese intelligence official in the late 1980s. The defector revealed that Beijing had successfully developed five to 10 clandestine sources of information here. Montaperto also was part of an influential group of pro-China academics and officials in the U.S. policy and intelligence community who share similar benign views of China. The group, dubbed the Red Team by critics, harshly criticizes anyone who raises questions about the threat posed by Beijing's communist regime. Contact Justice For Jonathan Pollard at Justice4JP@aol.com |
|
FRENCH ANTI-SEMITISM
Posted by Esther Green, June 25, 2006. |
|
IT'S TIME TO STAND UP, MY FRIENDS! I copied from the newsletter of today of Leah Lekarev (leahrafaeli@yahoo.com, http://www.lekarev.org, please send it to everybody you know! |
|
Once again, the real news is conveniently not being reported as it should. At present, in my Hebrew class, there is a woman who recently made aliya from Paris with her family. I have spoken with her about anti-Semitism in France and she confirmed that it is very, very serious and getting worse every week. She and her family fled Paris and came to Israel, fearing for their lives - literally. This is first hand, my friends To give you an idea of what's going on in France where there are now between 5 and 6 million Muslims and about 600,000 Jews, here is an email that came from another Jew still in France. Please read! Will the world say nothing - again - as it did in Hitler's time? He writes, "I AM A JEW -- therefore I am forwarding this to everyone on all my-mail lists. I will not sit back and do nothing." Nowhere have the flames of anti-Semitism burned more furiously than in France: In Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles; so was a Jewish school in Creteil - all recently. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with Molotov cocktails, and on the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris, the words "Dirty Jew" were painted. In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish football team with sticks and metal bars. The bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months. According to the Police, metropolitan Paris has seen 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents PER DAY in the past 30 days. Wake up, world! Walls in Jewish neighborhoods have been defaced with slogans proclaiming "Jews to the gas chambers" and "Death to the Jews. A gunman opened fire on a kosher butcher's shop (and, of course, the butcher) in Toulouse, France; a Jewish couple in their 20s were beaten up by five men in Villeurbanne, France. The woman was pregnant; a Jewish school was broken into and vandalized in Sarcelles, France. This was in the past week. So I call on you, whether you are a fellow Jew, a friend, or merely a person with the capacity and desire to distinguish decency from depravity, to do, at least, these three simple things: First, care enough to stay informed. Don't ever let yourself become deluded into thinking that this is not your fight. I remind you of what Pastor Neimoller said in World War II: First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me. Second, boycott France and French products. Only the Arab countries are more toxically anti-Semitic and, unlike them, France exports more than just oil and hatred. So boycott their wines and their perfumes. Boycott their clothes and their foodstuffs. Boycott their movies. Definitely boycott their shores. If we are resolved we can exert amazing pressure and, whatever else we may know about the French, we most certainly know that they are like a cobweb in a hurricane in the face of well directed pressure. Third, send this along to your family, your friends, and your co-workers. Think of all of the people of good conscience that you know and let them know that you and the people that you care about need their help. The number one best selling book in France is "September 11: The Frightening Fraud," which argues that no plane ever hit the Pentagon. Is it any wonder that Aliya from France to Israel has increased dramatically Contact Esther Green at eil100@zahav.net.il |
|
ANTI-SEMITISM MUST NO LONGER BE TOLERATED
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 24, 2006. |
|
The disrespected State of Israel today is not likely to dissuade its blatantly hostile enemies or more subtly anti-Semitic adversaries from maligning whatever efforts it might take to create a peaceful environment for beleaguered Jewish citizens, within its tiny parcel of land, surrounded by a vast dysfunctional geographic abyss known as the Middle East. Indeed, Israel's very existence violates the core beliefs of Muslim militants who absolutely despise Jews and everything they stand for. Manipulative rogue Islamic rulers of the region have programmed constituencies to spew venom at Jews/Israel, creating an artificial occupied Palestinian people, thus have diverted attention away from their own exploitative practices. Yet again, the Jew and Jewish homeland become convenient scapegoats for wealthy powerful Machiavellian Muslim egomaniacs. Furthermore, many hand wringing especially European non-Muslims give credence to claims disparaging Israel, rarely considering alternative viewpoints. So it goes! Reversing a tidal wave of such skewed thinking is more than difficult. It boggles any rational mind that Gaza Arabs, totally disengaged from Israel, launch deadly missiles at their Jewish neighbor with impunity, retaliatory strikes are made by Israel to protect its citizens, and presumably civilized nations such as France bizarrely castigate the Jews for a disproportionate response. If fairness were imbedded within worldwide mindsets, all reasonable nations and world bodies, including the United Nations and International Court of Justice at The Hague, would rise to the defense of Israel. Subhuman obsessed psychopaths, unleashing missiles at a neighbor for no good reason, ought to be incarcerated. The fact that the disrespected Jewish State is blamed more than those criminally insane Islamic culprits for such outrageous behavior supports the notion that we truly live on a Kafkaesque planet chronically besot with the mind wasting disease of anti-Semitism. This is not acceptable. For the human species to lift itself from the dregs of such moral decay, that debilitating Jew-bashing scourge must be eliminated! An international conference hosted in the Israeli capital of Jerusalem, requesting the presence of political, academic, scientific, journalistic, and intellectual leaders from around the globe, might convene to analyze why anti-Semitic behavior will not abate as we enter a new millennium, despite the most recent and indeed most horrific Holocaust perpetrated primarily but not exclusively against Jews, an event that should have elicited a planetary epiphany supporting the concept "Never Again", virtually ending anti-Semitism forever. If the human species cannot figure out why Jews and the Jewish homeland continue to endure so much undeserved antipathy, and as a consequence of that analysis take steps to reverse such shameful behavior, future prospects of moral growth on this troubled planet are surely dim. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
|
I RECEIVED THIS LOVELY EMAIL YESTERDAY. NO DOUBT FROM A CARING,
GENEROUS SOUL!
Posted by Buddy Macy, June 24, 2006. | |
[NOTE: My remarks below are in red and enclosed in square brackets.]
[The heading, above, and the following two paragraphs are the extent of the sender's email. There was no name or identifying mark at the end of the note. Curiously enough, the two paragraphs directly below also appeared in yesterday's edition of Howard's View (June 23, 2006/27 Sivan 5766), the weekly online newsletter written by Howard Rieger, president of UJC (the Jewish Federation network in North America), which means that the "author" of the email is both a coward and a plagiarist!] The IEC [Israel Emergency Campaign of UJC] work group also allocated $400,000 for trauma relief for those evacuated from the Gaza Strip during the disengagement, to help these Israelis adjust to new homes and communities and rebuild their lives. [Some of the expellees are still not even in there temporary homes, more than 10 months after being "evacuated." http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50467. $400,000????? That amounts to about $1.00 per expellee per week!! Wait, it gets better - please keep reading.] Federations have helped Gaza evacuees as well. The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago/Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago raised $300,000 to provide social services for Gaza evacuees in its Partnership 2000 region of Lachish/Safir, for example, while other communities such as the UJA-Federation of Northern New Jersey and United Jewish Communities of Metrowest, N.J. similarly stepped in. [What about national UJC???] [ Following is another paragraph from the same edition of Howard's View, that was not included in my new friend's email:] At the height of the matsav, UJC/ federations raised $360
million for Israel through the Israel Emergency Campaign, which
addressed many needs. During the last year we have been collecting
about $2 million in remaining IEC commitments, and this past week our
IEC Workgroup recommended distributions that will continue to make a
difference for Israelis who have suffered.
[If it was part of the emergency campaign, why was the money kept for
up to a year in a money market account? If some of it had been
distributed sooner, perhaps some of the "Israelis who have suffered,"
would have suffered a little less! And, imagine if UJC had initiated
a campaign that was dedicated exclusively to helping the expellees.
How many millions do you think would have been raised for the
"Israelis who have suffered?"]
[I find the timing of the decision to allocate the whopping
$400,000 to the expellees and the announcement of the allocation in
Howard's View to be quite interesting -- the day after the
launch of a grassroots campaign to help the suffering expellees!
Actually, I find it more than interesting; I find it motivating and
inspiring. I would like to think that the allocation was reported
yesterday as a result of Mr. Rieger having read about the launch of
the grassroots campaign the day before. Potential donors: If that is
indeed the reason, please think about the effect it would have on Mr.
Rieger and UJC if we raised $2,000,000!]
[I will be sending you my first campaign update this Tuesday, six
days after the campaign's radio/Internet radio launch
(www.zoaphilly.org), and five days after its email launch. Thank you
so much for your generosity. Buddy]
SEND CHECKS TO:
Please write the following in the note section of your check: "We give generously!" Please email your video clip or photo to: vegibud@aol.com. Donors of $180 or more will be featured on the one-year anniversary video. Gifts of any amount will be greatly appreciated! For more information, please call 800-BUDDY-NY (800-283-3969) from
the US & CA or 973-785-0057 from anywhere else. Shavua tov!
Contact Buddy Macy by email at VegiBud@aol.com
|
|
JEWS UNDER SIEGE: A CALL FOR ACTION
Posted by Mordechai Ben Menachem, June 24, 2006. |
|
This article was written by Charles Jacobs and Seth Klarman. Charles Jacobs is president and Seth Klarman is chairman of The David Project Center for Jewish Leadership in Boston. This appeared in The Jewish Week. |
|
A rush of shocking events is creating a "tipping point" in Jewish consciousness. Increasingly, Jews feel our situation has substantially changed, and for the worse. The events include Iran's nuclear threats and Holocaust denial, Hamas' electoral victory, the torture and murder of Ilan Halimi in Paris by a Muslim gang, the "discovery" by a Harvard dean that Jews actually do conspire to control Congress and American foreign policy in the service of Israel and to the detriment of U.S. interests, and the British academic boycott. All of these demonstrate for many that there is a new assault on the world's Jews. The hostility is based on a unique and intense hatred of Israel and deep resentment of its supporters, accompanied by a growing willingness to use violence. As though in a "perfect storm," two global ideologies, rooted in different radical critiques of the West, have suddenly aligned against us: 1. Islamic anti-Semitism. Fueled by Saudi petro-dollars and Iranian revolutionary zeal, a global campaign in mosques and madrassas (Islamic schools) teaches hundreds of millions of Muslims that Jews are the sons of monkeys and pigs, and killing them is a holy deed. The internet and television embellish the message: docudramas in Iran, Egypt and Jordan depict Jews harvesting the organs of Muslim children, killing non-Jews to make matzo, and plotting to rule the world. This poison reaches Muslims in the West. Europe's Jews are besieged and violently assaulted -- on the streets and in the no-longer varnished rhetoric of polite society. In America, Freedom House told Congress it found Saudi-produced hate literature aimed at Americans, Christians -- but mostly Jews -- in mosques across the U.S. 2. In the West, "Palestinianism" -- the notion that an innocent, indigenous people suffers a senseless, cruel oppression by the Jews of Israel (who ought to know better) threatens to become the standard view. It is the basis for an attack by Western radicals on Zionism, Jewish national self-determination, and by extension on Jews everywhere. The "oppression" of an Arab people by Westerners is, for the far Left, morally and politically more consequential than the massacres, enslavements, beheadings, bombings, and ethnic cleansings committed by Arabs and Muslims from London to Sudan, from Spain to Indonesia. These are treated by radicals as distractions from (even caused by) the deeper Zionist evil. Rooted in separate critiques of the West, Islam and the radical left are now allied -- in Europe and increasingly in segments of America's professoriate, media, human rights community, and the leadership of certain Protestant churches. In America, Jews fret as a vicious anti-Israel movement has taken root on American campuses, and Jewish organizations reeled last summer when five mainline Protestant denominations passed anti-Israel resolutions. Most Jews don't yet know the extent to which public high school texts -- and teachers -- are delegitimizing Israel. Anti-Semitism is a virus that morphs. In the West now, hostility to Jews has little to do with the familiar hatreds -- of Judaism or the Jewish "race." Today's antipathy makes Israel "the Jew" and its "crimes" the old "Jewish crimes" -- killing of the innocent, theft (this time of land), arrogance, and the control of business, finance, government and the media by international cabals. As before, "Jewish crimes" stand out as uniquely, even cosmically evil. And as such, they call for correction. We were unprepared; we remain confused. Arab and Muslim Jew-hatred was misread as mere "street talk" that would dissipate when Oslo brought peace. Instead, Jew-hate is an engine of the global jihad. We are flummoxed by the new breed of Western adversaries. After centuries of attack by brutes, illiterates, right wing lunatics, and Christian anti-Semites, antagonism to the Jewish collective is now generated by soft-spoken moralists with high ideals, by "anti-racists" -- some of the most articulate of whom are Jews. Set to defend against thugs yelling "kike," we are attacked instead by college professors -- today a far more insidious enemy -- who berate us for supporting "immorality." No one wants to think that sixty years after the Holocaust, a new storm threatens Jews everywhere. But reality cannot be avoided or minimized. Confused, with our defenses down, Jews need to consider the profound impact of losing the ideological battle that can destroy the Jewish state. This new time requires courageous and talented leaders to grasp these new realities and create strategies to defeat the latest defamations, grounded in a libelous portrayal of the Arab-Israeli conflict. A leadership correctly prioritizing the threat would convince us to lay aside our furious left- right debates, and teach us instead to make Israel's basic case -- from the left as well as from the right. It would gather the support of non-Jews and distinguish clearly friends from enemies. Most important, a new leadership would bravely and tirelessly tell us the truth about our new situation and recruit our talent and resources to the task. If current Jewish leaders -- in this country which has been so good to the Jewish people -- can't or won't do these things, then this small but enormously talented people will have to get new leaders. For in this, the Jewish community cannot and must not fail. Mordechai Ben-Menachem is at Ben-Gurion University. He can be reached by email at quality@computer.org |
|
ANTISEMITISM CONFERENCE IN JERUSALEM
Posted by Tsvi November, June 24, 2006. |
|
Between the 12th and 15th of June, 2006, the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University hosted an international conference entitled Antisemitism, Multiculturalism and Ethnic Identity. Leading academics, journalists, authors and activists from many countries including the USA and Australia presented well-written papers based on observation and research. The high point of the conference was, no doubt, the screening of Obsession, a forceful documentary featuring spine-chilling clips from Saudi, Palestinian, Egyptian, Iranian, Hizbullah and Al-Jazeera TV along with interviews with Israeli, American and reform-minded Arab commentators. The film is all about radical Islam and its global jihad. In the film, Ms. Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian-born Arab Moslem who now lives in Los Angeles explains the radical Moslem thinking that underlies the scenes of huge crowds of raving men (and sometimes women too) shouting "Death to America", "Death to Israel" and "Islam is destined to rule the world". Often, these mass demonstrations in Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, Palestinian territories and elsewhere include burning the US flag and effigies of President Bush, Sharon and others. After the screening, Ms. Darwish, who participated in the conference, gave a thirty minute talk that provided keen insights into the radical Arab-Islamic mentality. Ms. Darwish personally underwent this hate (her terminology) indoctrination while growing up in Gaza and Egypt before emigrating to the US. During the conference, many trenchant points were made which I wish to share with you. First, antisemitism is not just a Jewish problem. Rather, it has tremendous ramifications for the future of Western civilization as a whole and the maintenance of a, more or less, sane world order. History shows that antisemitism starts with Jews but does not end with them. As a reaction to Nazi racism and the Holocaust, it is no longer acceptable for polite, liberally-inclined Europeans to be anti-Jewish. Jews, in fact, are well accepted today as part of the European mainstream. Furthermore, the large wave of immigration into Europe from all over the world and most especially from former colonies in North Africa and Asia has transformed almost all Western democracies into multicultural nations. Historically, it was the Jews who advocated multiculturalism and pluralism as a framework for tolerance within which they could be both Jewish and British or German or French, etc. Multiculturalism presumes a certain degree of mutual respect and acceptance of other ethnic groups within a common political framework based on shared fundamental values. Today multiculturalism has backfired because the vast majority (over thirty million) of immigrants in Europe is Moslems who, for the most part, are not integrating themselves into European societies. Indeed, some Moslem clerics openly proclaim Islam's intent to replace Christianity in Europe. Serious demographers calculate that Europe will be Islamic in about fifty years since all Western European birth rates now fall well below the replacement level. Furthermore, the female replacement rate, another indicator of demographic contraction, is also negative. Of course, this does not hold true for Moslems in Europe since they produce many more children per family than do their non-Moslem neighbors. To make matters worse, there is a fairly large hard core, estimated by one of the lecturers at around 15%, of radical Moslems who support al-Qaeda, have carried out terror attacks in London, Madrid and elsewhere, who predominate in the Moslem communities and threaten moderate Moslems who do accept Western ideas of equality and mutual respect between ethnic groups and different religions too. These radicals are vehemently anti-Israel and antisemitic. It is these religious radicals who are mainly responsible for the precipitous increase in the number of attacks on Jewish persons and institutions in recent years. To appease Moslem, most European governments have long since adopted a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel stance. As Bat Ye'or, the author of Eurabia, elucidated in her talk, there is a constantly expanding European-Arab sphere of cooperation which is leading to Christian dhimmitude (the social inferiority of non-Moslems). Some European politicians like London's mayor, Ken Livingston accept and welcome Arab hate mongers while insulting Jews. In the Netherlands one law maker has even suggested adopting the Shari'a Islamic law code. Astute politicians adopt anti-Israel and even antisemitic positions so as to attract Moslem voters. Dr. Margaret Brearley, a former member of the Archbishops Council who works with the London Jewish Cultural Centre, spoke about antisemitism in Britain which is now at an all-time high. She detailed the Anglican Church's strong anti-Israel stance and activities as well as their efforts to cultivate links with the UK's Moslem community which is estimated to number between two and four million. Dr. Brearley went on to say that multiculturalism is still well accepted by the British but has, nevertheless, resulted in the creation of ghettos where Moslems concentrate and live in tight-knit neighborhoods in which mainstream British values based on "live and let live" attitudes are rejected. She reminded her audience of Abu Humza al Masri and other radical Islamic clerics who openly preach hatred of the Jews and encourage holy war against both Christians and Jews. They make good use of their rights to free speech in the democratic country they despise. A public opinion poll among Moslems in Britain in 2006, after the July, 2005 London bombings, found that 7% of Moslems believe that bombings in the UK are justified and a further 37% feel that the Jewish community is a legitimate target for attacks. The Anglican Church, which is in a state of steep decline, has set out on a path of accommodation with the Moslems that finds expression in forceful anti-Israel and anti-Jewish motifs. Most Europeans today side with the Arabs in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the more radical left-wingers question Israel's very legitimacy. Essentially, old fashioned antisemitism has been replaced by anti-Zionism. Like antisemitism, attacks on Israel can be devoid of facts, illogical and based on a double standard. Fiamma Nirenstein who writes a column for La Stampa, hosts her own TV show in Italy and has authored several books about the left's collusion with Islam's agenda including antisemitism made a passionate plea to stand up to the new antisemitism and fight radical Islamic terrorism. Nirenstein believes that Judeo-Christian civilization and modern civil society is threatened by Islamic radicals and their leftist apologists. The West's response must be firm. The conference did not go into the various definitions of multiculturalism nor make a clear distinction between multiculturalism and pluralism. Anton Pelinka of the University of Innsbruck did, however, note that there are several types of anti-Semitism (i.e. socio-economic, socio-psychological. geopolitical and religious). He pointed out that antisemitic harangues provide self-contained simple explanations that do not require proof. Professor Richard Landes of Boston University analyzed conspiracy theories focusing on how Jews are frequently blamed for the world's ills. He went on to discuss the conspiracy theories that explain the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Landes said that some of the 9/11 conspiracy theories are examples of the "inversion of cognitive egocentricism". According to this line of reasoning President Bush, the Mossad, etc. are responsible for the 9/11 attack because we (the USA) are really the bad guys who had the most to gain from the destruction in NYC while Bin Ladin is just an underprivileged Third World protestor against American hegemony, capitalism, colonialism, globalization and imperialism. Anti-Americanism, according to several speakers, is widespread in Europe because people believe that America dominates the world, attacks countries near and far, selfishly exploits the world's economy and is, of course, guilty of the worst sin of all; namely: supporting Israel and Israeli "colonialism". The power of conspiracy theories to take root among large numbers of believers, Landes explained, is founded on the capacity of these theories to point a finger at the people who allegedly benefit most from the situation at hand. Everything then fits into place to enable believers to understand the hidden forces working against them (e.g. The Elders of Zion). Professor Shmuel Trigano of the University of Paris, X-Nantere sees Europe's alignment with the Arabs as a trade-off: Europe supports the Arabs against Israel while the Arabs support Europe against American dominance. In addition to their objections to many aspects of American foreign policy, there are other factors behind Europe's anti-Americanism according to Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld who presented an incisive analysis of ethnic tensions in the Netherlands. He pointed to three important themes: Europeâs is militarily weak because European nations have been relying on US protection since WWII, Europe is dependent on Arab oil for its very survival and European statesmen cannot take a position on any issue without first taking Moslem Arab public opinion into consideration. Professor Robert Wistrich, the director of the Center for the Study of Antisemitism, noted in his keynote lecture that Europeans are also somewhat jealous of America which can be considered the world's most successful attempt at creating a viable multicultural society. Not surprisingly, there is comparatively little anti-Semitism in the US except for the fringe Nazi adherents and black Jew-hating activists who openly insult Judaism and instigate racial friction on college campuses. To sum up, we see increasing Arab/Islamic pressure on Europe but most people are still in a state of denial; claiming that the international jihad in its varying forms is not really a serious threat yet. Meanwhile, Europeans are trying to placate and appease Arabs. A key element in European-Arab cooperation is being anti-Israel. Anti-Zionism, however, is a modern adaptation of antisemitism. The humanist, liberal left (which has traditionally included large numbers of Jews) has no problem with being anti-colonial which means being pro-Palestinian which means being anti-Israel. Since the left is also against (inhuman) capitalism and globalization, it is also, by definition, anti-American. Paradoxically, the multicultural left accepts and supports European Moslem communities even though Islam relegates women to subservient status, does not tolerate homosexuality and is not favorably disposed to democracy or openness (as evidenced by the world-wide rampage protesting the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in Denmark). One speaker stated that multiculturalism has proven to be a Trojan horse for Europe, allowing in large numbers of Moslems who are antagonistic to a secular, liberal life style. Another commentator added that multiculturalism, as it has evolved in Europe today, has led to a significant increase in antisemitism. It is, therefore, bad for the Jews who are now part of the establishment in many countries. Jews in Holland, France and elsewhere are advised to take off their kipot and conceal outward signs of Jewishness. Even on the academic/intellectual level antisemitism (in the form of being anti-Israel) has manifested itself in various boycott initiatives. Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Saudi, and Egyptian academics are never boycotted or condemned for their countriesâ aggressions and abuses of human rights. But the double standard allows Europeans to indict Israeli academicians with impunity. I would add that this same double standard is responsible, in large measure, for biased news reporting where Israel is concerned. At the BBC, for instance, IRA operatives are "terrorists" but Hamas suicide bombers who blow up children on buses in Israel are "militants" (a term which can actually have a positive connotation). Contact Tsvi November at tsvinovember@hotmail.com |
|
PALESTINIANS
Posted by May Leiner, June 23, 2006. |
|
For those of you who don't like Dennis Miller, who is not Jewish, you may want to reconsider after reading his brilliant comments that follow. Please pass it on to your friends. For those who don't know, Dennis Miller is a comedian who has a show called Dennis Miller Live on HBO. Although he is not Jewish, he recently had the following to say about the Middle East situation: |
|
"A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to all Americans who still don't get it, I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you really need. Here we go: The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in the 1967 war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians." As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation." So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs Who Can't Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death." I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: "Adjacent Jew-Haters." Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country. Oops, just one more thing: No, they don't. They could've had their own country any time in the last thirty years, especially six years ago at Camp David. But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living. That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel. They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course -- that's where the real fun is -- but mostly they want Israel. Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel - or "The Zionist Entity" as their textbooks call it -- for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been around God's Earth, you know that's really saying something. It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mid east. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one. Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five Million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals.. Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding. My friend, Kevin Rooney, made a gorgeous point the other day: Just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course not. Or marshaling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab State into the sea? Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting. Now, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death. Mr. Bush, God bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that with vital operations in Iraq and others, it's in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can't be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of super models who've just had their drugs taken away. However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger of losing moral weight. We've already lost some. After September 11th our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint. If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan. Contact May Leiner at mayleiner@cs.com |
|
ISRAEL MUST RESCUE THE WORLD AND ITSELF FROM DISASTER
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 23, 2006. |
|
The potentially disastrous effects of Global warming present themselves, ever more starkly, in ominous scenarios documented by exponentially increasing ice melts at and near our planet's poles as well as on mountain peaks in Peru's Andes, and in increasing intensities of extreme weather events, related to sustained increases in water temperatures, exemplified by hurricanes along the U.S.A.'s gulf coast. Furthermore, most credible scientists hypothesize that the burning of fossil fuel has substantially contributed to this phenomenon. Indeed, major suppliers of the vicious viscous substance, surely threatening "life" as we know it on our one home in the universe, just happen to reside on the shortlist of perilous archenemies of the beleaguered State of Israel. Fundamentalist Islamic regimes such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Iran underwrite worldwide fanaticism, while oil-addicted industrial nations pour ever more revenues into the coffers of these pusher nations. Indeed, the carbon based heat-retaining molecules that so threaten our planet climatically imperil Israel's socio-economic climate, ever inducing industrial world policy decisions to the Jewish State's detriment. Thus it is imperative that Israeli Jews aggressively react to such facts on the ground, channeling all necessary resources into developing a cheap efficient alternative energy source to supplant fossil fuel. A research and development center for such a cerebral activity can be constructed in the Golan Heights. Concurrently, the political climate of Israel must be safeguarded from a disastrous policy contemplated by its current Prime Minister and his cronies. Ehud Olmert, alas, is willing to negotiate away Israeli territory with the two-named double game unapologetic erstwhile Holocaust trivializer Fatah potentate Abbas Mazen, perhaps at the behest of a Bush Administration in need of planetary kudos, or in fact unilaterally cede this precious land if all else fails. Have such Israeli leaders, led by a Sharon baton carrying Olmert, lost their collective mind? Can they not envision Hamas salivating to take credit for bludgeoning a retreating Israel into submission? The frequency of rocket fire into Israel will only increase, and surely be deadlier, with more launching sites available. Furthermore, 70,000 evicted grieving Israeli citizens from Judea and Samaria, dwarfing in number those still grieving evicted Israeli citizens formerly of Gaza, will create a reprehensible morale-deflated climate for a tormented Eretz-Israel. No doubt, Israel must begin to develop a usable alternative energy source to rescue an otherwise endangered species from catastrophically overheating to the point of no return, while simultaneously rescuing its own endangered State from political folly of no return. Is anything more urgent? Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |