| HOME | Featured Stories | June 2009 Blog-Eds List | Background Information | News On the Web |
Opinions And Editorials By Our Readers
NOTE: Links to Videos are at the bottom
of this page.
|
ISRAEL THE BEAUTIFUL: SEA MEETS LAND AT HABONIM NATURE RESERVE
Posted by Yehoshua Halevi, June 30, 2009. |
|
This is one of Yehoshua Halevi's Golden Light Images. Yehoshua Halevi writes: "HOW I GOT THE SHOT: It's so hot in Israel this week that I thought a refreshing image of our watery coastline might offer a tiny bit of relief. This shot was taken at Habonim Nature Reserve along Israel's central coast near Zichron Ya'akov. I had been camping for several days and had an opportunity to study the layout of the park and find an optimal shooting location. There are numerous rocky points that jut out into the sea, affording a chance to shoot the incoming waves from an unusual perpendicular perspective rather than the more typical head-on view one has when standing on the beach. The continuous action of the ocean is similar to the dancing flames of a fire. No wave is alike and the pattern of crest, foam, and spray is constantly changing. My goal with this photo was to capture all of these elements simultaneously while also showing some aspect of the landscape not buried in rushing water. Since I was not racing against rapidly changing light, I stood quietly for a few moments and studied the scene, picking up on the rhythm of the waves and honing in on the key areas of the composition where timing would be critical. I prioritized my exposure to a fast shutter speed and clicked off a few frames, then turned off my camera and returned my mind to admiring the setting. When photographing in nature, photographers have to be careful not to lose sight of the moment as they push themselves to create an image that will only be appreciated in another time and place. It's a challenging paradox, but I have found that without that meditative immersion in a place, its beauty will not reveal itself to me. It's nice to take home a memory, but if you never really visited in the first place, then what is the point of going?
Contact Yehoshua Halevi by email at smile@goldenlightimages.com
and visit his website:
|
|
OBAMA'S 3AM PHONE CALL
Posted by Saul Goldman, June30, 2009. |
|
Contact Saul Goldman at gold7910@bellsouth.net |
|
PETITION OF SUPPORT OF DR. YORAM BLACHAR, PRESIDENT OF WORLD MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
Posted by Paul Rotenberg, June 30, 2009. |
|
Anti-Israel activity and campaigns in the medical press are unfortunately nothing new; however they have reached a new "low" in the last few months. The most recent manifestation of the anti-Israel phenomenon infecting the medical world is a letter spearheaded by Dr. Derek Summerfield and signed by 725 physicians, "publicly protesting and appealing against the recent appointment of Dr. Yoram Blachar, longstanding President of the Israeli Medical Association, as President of the World Medical Association." The "facts" set out in the letter are nothing new. There were allegations made against Israel of torture, but no names were provided. An effort was made by the Israeli Medical Association to speak personally with each and every physician who signed the letter. Most were never employed by, nor had any connection to, the Israeli Prison Services as claimed in the letter. All of the three physicians who were employed there vigorously denied any involvement in interrogations, torture or medical approval for the above. The letter further states that Dr. Blachar has made statements which were untrue on at least 10 occasions in the Lancet and the BMJ. No basis is made for these claims other than the opinion of the authors. Finally, Summerfield goes so far as to accuse the IMA ethics chairman, Prof. Avinoam Reches, of being personally involved in torture. Whatever political views one may hold, we firmly believe that politics has no place in medicine. Medicine is meant to serve as a bridge, not a divide. The intermingling of medicine and politics is dangerous, particularly when opinions, presented as facts, are printed on the pages of medical journals. The current situation is viewed as extremely dangerous for the future of Israeli medicine, of academic freedom and international cooperation. ACTION — IF YOU ARE INVOLVED IN THE MEDICAL PROFESSION, a letter of support for Dr. Blachar, for the IMA and for Israeli medicine can be found: here. Please sign your name and country and in the 'Notes' section please include your title, field of medicine (or other) and place of employment. Please send this letter on to others whom you feel might be similarly interested in expressing support. Thank-you for your support,
Editor's Note: Read Barron, "Following the Herd" for another example of Summerfield's distortions and lies. Paul Rotenberg lives in Toronto, Canada. Contact him at pdr@rogers.com |
|
TERRITORY OR INSANITY?
Posted by Victor Sharpe, June 30, 2009. |
|
Military wisdom from 40 years ago. Immediately after the June 1967 Six Day War, a secret memorandum was issued by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Their conclusions were that any peace settlement between Israel and the Arab belligerents would only succeed if Israel retained certain territories vital for its continued existence and survival. The areas the Joint Chiefs declared as the minimum defensible borders for the Jewish state included the Golan Heights, the western half of Samaria (the northwestern part of the West Bank), all of Judea (the southern part of the West Bank), the Gaza Strip and several portions of the eastern Sinai Peninsula. This, of course, occurred before the world became obsessed with the creation of an Arab terror state within the narrow territory between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan. Since that report in 1967, the Begin government gave away all of the Sinai. Under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his deputy, Ehud Olmert, Israel gave away the entire Gaza Strip in 2005, with catastrophic consequences for the Jewish state. Ehud Barak, Israel's present Defense Minister, had years earlier withdrawn from the southern Lebanon security strip, thus allowing the Islamist Hizbullah to fill the vacuum with dire consequences for northern Israel. A conflict broke out — the Second Lebanon War — disastrously mismanaged by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It was launched too late and ended too soon. After Israel endured over 10,000 incoming missiles from Hamas-occupied Gaza, a war was finally launched by Israel. It too began too late and ended too soon, and the Islamist Hamas continues to pursue its ambition of finally destroying Israel. Israel is under the greatest pressure in years from an American administration to give away the ancestral Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria. President Barack Obama is perceived by many to be a clear and present danger to the very survival of the reconstituted Jewish state. In the aftermath of the Six Day War, the US Joint Chiefs were not interested in Jewish patrimony or Biblical history. They were solely concerned with the strategic necessities for Israel's survival in a very bad neighborhood. That is why they set out what the bare minimum retention of territory for Israel should be. Col. Irving Kett (USA, ret.) also prepared an Army War College study on Israel's security needs in 1974. His study was called, "A Proposed Solution to the Arab-Israel Conflict". In it, he strongly suggested that, from a military point of view, Israel's borders should be constituted to make it a compact state with natural boundaries on all sides — the Jordan River to the east, Golan Heights to the northeast, the Litani River in the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the west and the historic boundary with the Sinai Peninsula to the south. As a direct result and consequence of Arab aggression, most of those borders had been attained by Israel at one time or another. Irving Kett had not been aware that another memorandum had been produced earlier, on June 29, 1967, for Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara by General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the JCS, at the direction of President Lyndon Johnson. That study was declassified in 1983 and, as I mentioned earlier, it recommended that Israel keep all of Judea, the western half of Samaria, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and two significant parts of east and south Sinai. The similarity between the memorandums is quite remarkable. Colonel Kett pointed out what the IDF has always known, but what too many Israeli politicians preferred to ignore; namely, that there is vital strategic value in the mountain range which forms the spine running through Judea and Samaria. The highlands run some 54 miles from Jenin in the north to Hebron in the south and dominate Israel's coastline. The spine is 12 miles wide and Israel simply cannot afford to vacate it. It was assumed for years by both the Israeli military and politicians that if a Palestinian Arab state came into existence it would have to permit an Israeli defense line on the Jordan River (the Allon Plan), and that such a state would have to be demilitarized. The answer, of course, would be to have made permanent the suggested boundaries proposed in both Kett's memorandum and the earlier JCS report of some 40 years ago. Events have moved on since then. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank would never agree to this and Hamas in Gaza would scornfully dismiss it out of hand. The Arabs have become even more vicious in their anti-Jewish rhetoric and behavior, and a jihadist Iran has all but encircled the Jewish state through its Islamist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon. The Arab-Israel conflict is not, and never has been, merely a war over territory. It is, and always has been, a religious war. Islam will never accept a non-Muslim state, whatever size or shape it may be, within lands previously conquered by Muslims in the name of Allah. The "two-state solution", so beloved of President Obama and President George Bush before him, requires Judea and Samaria to be given away to the Palestinian Arabs. But the Arabs have no intention of making peace, which should be enough for an Israeli government and Prime Minister with intestinal fortitude to defy the world's pressure for the Jewish state to slowly and surely disappear. After all, Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Shamir all said "no" to American presidents in the past and prevailed. Interestingly, Colonel Kett had also suggested that the Palestinian Arabs be resettled in a state in the Sinai. The other famous suggestion has been that Jordan is Palestine, which is based upon the historical fact of the first "two-state solution" enacted in infamy by Great Britain some 87 years ago. Even President George W. Bush, when visiting Israel as Governor of Texas, was moved to utter, "The whole of Israel is only about six times the size of the King Ranch near Corpus Christie." Yet even he, after becoming president, called for a "two-state solution" west of the Jordan River. Pushing Israel back to the "Auschwitz borders", as Abba Eban called them, where the Jewish state is only nine miles wide at its most populous region, is what the "two-state solution" is all about. The dread euphemism "Final Solution" comes to mind. Hopefully Binyamin Netanyahu stressed the territorial insanity of that fact over and over during his meeting with Obama in the White House. Victor Sharpe is author of the book "Politicide — The attempt to murder the Jewish state" and "The Blue Hour and Other Strange Tales." His essays and articles have appeared in many places including Outpost, FrontPageMag.com, Wall Street Journal and London Daily Telegraph. |
|
A TALE OF 2 NORWEGIAN NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS FOR LITERATURE
Posted by Shaul Ceder, June 30, 2009. |
|
This was written by Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, D.C. It appeared in the Jerusalem Post. |
|
Norway recently assumed the chairmanship of an international task force on Holocaust education. Yet the Norwegian government also recently launched a year-long celebration of the life and work of a supporter of the Nazis. The object of this adoration is Knut Hamsun (1859-1952), author of such acclaimed novels as Hunger, Pan and Growth of the Soil, which won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920. Among the latter book's most ardent fans was Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who had it translated and published in a special edition for German soldiers during World War II. The feeling was mutual. Hamsun welcomed the Nazi occupation of Norway, met personally with both Goebbels and Adolf Hitler, and in 1943 sent his Nobel Prize to Goebbels as a gift. After the war, Hamsun was arrested for treason but escaped trial after he was found to suffer from "weakened mental capacities." He was, however, found to be civilly liable, and received a substantial fine, because of his membership in the Norwegian fascist party Nasjonal Samling, led by the infamous Vidkun Quisling.
NONE OF THAT has stopped the government of Norway from undertaking "Hamsun 2009," commemorating Hamsun's 150th birthday with a year of public events, exhibits, commemorative coins, a new 27-volume collection of his writings and, on August 4 (Hamsun's birthday), the opening of a $20-million, six-story Hamsun Center in his home town of Hamaroy, complete with the unveiling of a huge bronze statue of the honoree. Queen Sonja personally kicked off the festivities, joining members of the Hamsun family for a viewing of the National Library's exhibit of Hamsun's handwritten manuscripts. The exhibit included an article Hamsun wrote hailing Hitler as "a warrior for mankind, and a prophet of the gospel of justice for all nations." Afterward, the queen would say only, "I think we'll have to keep two thoughts in our head at the same time." Evidently she meant thoughts about both Hamsun the writer, on the
one hand, and Hamsun the Nazi supporter, on the other. A third thought
might be in order — a thought about the fact that the royal family was forced to flee Norway when the Nazis, so admired by Hamsun, occupied their country.
THE CONTRAST between the experience of the royal family in the 1940s and the behavior of the Norwegian royalty today is not the only irony in this story. Consider the fact that the only other Norwegian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in the past 100 years was Sigrid Undset, a fervent anti-Nazi — in other words, Hamsun's moral opposite. Undset (1882-1949) won the Nobel Prize in 1928 for her novels about life in medieval Scandinavia, including the trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter. Joseph Goebbels had no interest in Undset's works; the accolades of her countrymen, and her readers around the world, had to suffice. Undset fled Norway in 1940 to escape the Nazis. Taking up residence in New York City, she soon became cochair of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe (better known as the Bergson Group), which pressed the Roosevelt administration to rescue Jews from the Nazis. While the Nazis, cheered on by Hamsun, were deporting more than 700 Norwegian Jews to Auschwitz in the autumn of 1942, Undset was a leading activist in the Bergson Group's campaign of rallies, newspaper ads and Washington lobbying for US action to save the Jews. Yet there is no word from Oslo about any plans by the Norwegian government to hold any year-long celebration of her life and work, nor to erect a statue of her, nor even to sponsor an exhibit acknowledging her literary and moral achievements.
ALL OF WHICH would be bad enough, but to make matters worse, Norway recently assumed the chairmanship of the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education Remembrance and Research, a group of 26 European countries organized in Stockholm in 1998 to promote awareness of the Nazi genocide. In an essay published last week, Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, challenged Norway's chairmanship of the task force. "This country is unfit to hold such a position when in the same year it has held major memorial activities for the Nazi-admirer Hamsun," Gerstenfeld wrote. Each of the countries belonging to the task force has pledged to carry out the eight-point final declaration of the Stockholm Conference. Point number six is particularly relevant to the Knut Hamsun controversy: "We share a commitment to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and to honor those who stood against it." This puts the Norwegian government in something of a bind, because instead of honoring "those who stood against the Holocaust," such as Undset, it is honoring someone who stood for it. In the 1940s, Undset and Hamsun made their choices: Undset sided with good, Hamsun with evil. Today, Norway too must make a choice, between venerating the memory of the Holocaust, and desecrating it. It cannot do both. Contact Shaul and Aviva Ceder at ceder@netvision.net.il |
|
OBAMA IS INTERVENING ON THE WRONG SIDE IN HONDURAS
Posted by Shaul Ceder, June 30, 2009. |
|
This was written by Jack Kelly and it appeared in the Jewish World Review. |
|
Manuel Zelaya, a Hugo Chavez wannabe, was elected president of Honduras in November, 2005. He wanted to serve a second term. But there was a difficulty. Under the constitution of Honduras, the president may serve only a single four year term. Mr. Zelaya proposed to circumvent that difficulty by holding a popular referendum on whether he should be allowed to run for a second term. But there was a difficulty with that, too. The constitution of Honduras provides only one way for the constitution to be amended. That is by a two-thirds vote of all the members of the national congress in two consecutive regular annual sessions. The supreme court of Honduras ruled the referendum was unconstitutional, and the national congress passed a law forbidding referenda within 180 days of a national election. (Honduras' next is this November.) But Mr. Zelaya pressed on. When the army — acting on an order from the supreme court — refused to distribute ballots for the referendum (which had been printed in Venezuela), the president fired its chief of staff. The supreme court unanimously declared the firing illegal, and Honduras' attorney general asked congress to oust the president. Push came to shove on Sunday (6/18). The army, acting on a warrant issued by the supreme court, arrested Mr. Zelaya and sent him into exile (in his pajamas, to Costa Rica). This was described as a "coup" by the news media, and was denounced by, among others, Hugo Chavez, who threatened military action to restore Mr. Zelaya to power, and the Obama administration. It's the administration's view the coup was an "illegal and illegitimate act that cannot stand," officials, briefing on background, told journalists. Mr. Zelaya must be returned to power, they said. "Knowing trouble was brewing in Honduras over several weeks, the Obama administration warned power players there, including the armed forces, that the United States and other nations in the Americas would not support or abide a coup," the AP quoted "officials" as saying. "They said Honduran military leaders stopped taking their calls." It seems more accurate to say that Mr. Zelaya, with Venezuelan help, was trying to execute a coup against the Honduran constitution than to accuse the military — which was acting on orders from the supreme court and with the support of the legislature (124 of 128 deputies in the unicameral congress endorsed Mr. Zelaya's removal Sunday afternoon) — of having done so. Daniel Lopez Carballo, a retired Honduran general, told CNN that if the military hadn't acted, Mr. Chavez, the Venezuelan dictator, would have been running Honduras by proxy. Typically in a coup, the military seizes control of the government. But the military quickly surrendered power to an acting president — from Mr. Zelaya's own party — chosen by the national congress. The streets of Tegucigulpa were quiet after Mr. Zelaya's removal, perhaps because not many Hondurans like him. In a Mitofsky poll taken in April, Mr. Zelaya had an approval rating of 25 percent, the lowest of 18 regional leaders. So Mr. Obama is intervening on the wrong side. But if you take him at his word (a dangerous thing to do), the wonder is that he is intervening at all. This is the guy, you'll remember, who was so concerned about being perceived as "meddling" in Iran's internal affairs that he, alone among Western leaders, refused to denounce the blatantly stolen election in Iran, or to express support for those who protested the theft. Mr. Obama is now doing with regard to Honduras what he has refused to do with regard to Iran: organizing an international coalition to pressure the country to reverse course. Why threaten Honduras, but not Iran? Honduras is no threat to us. Iran is. A large majority in Iran oppose the government's brutality. Apparently, a large majority in Honduras support what the army has done. There is a disturbing consistency to Mr. Obama's apparent inconsistency on Honduras and Iran. In both the case where he has intervened, and in the case where he hasn't, he has taken the side of anti-American dictators (in Mr. Zelaya's case, a wannabe dictator) over the vast majority of their people. "We're getting a close look at Obama's priorities, and they are hideously out of step with democracy and the rule of law," said Web logger Ed Morrissey. Contact Shaul and Aviva Ceder at ceder@netvision.net.il |
|
TEEN WOUNDED IN ARSON-ROCK TERROR ATTACK ON YITZHAR JEWS
Posted by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz, June 30, 2009. |
|
In what appears to have been a coordinated attack on Jews from Yitzhar, in Samaria, a group of Arabs set fire to agricultural fields on Monday evening and then released a barrage of rocks at people responding to the arson. IDF forces responded to the incident and dispersed the attackers. Yitzhar residents said Arabs from the neighboring village of Assira al-Kabaliyeh set fire to agricultural land belonging to the Jewish community. When people from Yitzhar went out to the fields to try and put out the flames, they came under a rain of rocks thrown by a gathered group of Arabs. A 17-year-old Jewish youth was hit in the eye by a rock thrown by one of the attackers. He was hit as he attempted to stop the flames from spreading in the Shalhevet Yah neighborhood on the outskirts of Yitzhar. The youth was taken by ambulance to the Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikva with light head injuries. Not prepared to withdraw, Yitzhar residents responded to the provocation and a confrontation ensued. However, even after the initial fire was extinguished by Yitzhar residents, the clash continued. Responding to reports of the violence, IDF forces were dispatched to the scene. The soldiers employed riot control measures to break up the Arab mob and end the confrontation. According to eyewitness reports, some of the Arabs continued to throw rocks and set fire to other sections of the Yitzhar fields as they withdrew. There were no injuries reported among the soldiers. Yitzhar, a Jewish community about eight kilometers southwest of Joseph's Tomb in Shechem, has been the scene of repeated clashes between Arabs and Jews claiming rights to the community's land. Founded in 1983 on a strategic hilltop, Yitzhar is home to about 500 people.
Nissan Ratzlav-Katz writes for Arutz-7
(www.IsraelNationalNews.com).
|
|
FRENCH PRESIDENT CALLS TO OUST FM LIEBERMAN
Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, June 30, 2009. |
|
This is very good news for Lieberman and very bad news for Netanyahu. As I predicted before the elections, Lieberman has become the big winner. At nearly every turn of the political wheel of fortune, Netanyahu looses and Lieberman wins. Netanyahu's in character betrayal of his voters when he capitulated to the enemy's demands for an Arab terror State in Yeshah drove off tens of thousands of Likud voters. He followed this up by an even more noxious act of betrayal by imposing a tax on the poor. This has lead to his condemnation by the most loyal and faithful block in the Likud, the merchants of Machenah Yehudah. It seems that Netanyahu can not make a move that does not seriously harm the Likud and elevates Lieberman. If the Likud is to survive and not be supplanted by Lieberman's group, it must rid itself of Netanyahu. The sooner the better.
Stop complaining and fight back! Here's how:
Have a nice day |
|
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for the removal of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in a blatant move, probing deep into Israel's internal political arena. According to a Channel 2 News report on Monday night, the meeting in Paris last week between Sarkozy and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was not a cordial as the Prime Minister's Office wishes us to believe. Channel 2 reported the French president told the prime minister that Lieberman most be removed from his post due to his extremist views, suggesting that he replace him with former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, today the opposition leader. Drawing an extreme example, Sarkozy reportedly added that even Jean-Marie Le Pen is a nice person when one meets him. Tzachi Moshe, media advisor to Minister Lieberman, stated if the statements attributed to the French leader are correct, then his statements represent blatant interference in Israel's internal affairs and his words are "grave and serious". Moshe called for an across the board condemnation of the president's interference in internal affairs, expecting a response from all political parties regardless of affiliation.
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. |
|
THE BIBI TWO-STEP
Posted by Moshe Dann, June 30, 2009. |
|
The Iranian nuclear issue is moot. It became moot when George W. Bush left the White House. Nothing will prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power — especially not President Obama. It's doubtful that Israel would risk a pre-emptive attack and its aftermath. Israeli politicians, military egos, and media pundits, however, have created a hysterical state of mind which is now being used to garner support for destroying more Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. This provides Prime Minister Netanyahu with a perfect excuse; dealing with Iran is more important than West Bank outposts. Sound logical? Most PR does. But it presents a totally false symmetry. What does Iran have to do with settlements? The idea that evacuating Jews will bring Arabs into a coalition against Iran and promote regional strategic cooperation is delusional. With Iran in full support of Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda in Egypt, Sudan, Somalia and other Muslim countries, who cares about a few Jews living on hilltops? Obama has painted himself into a corner. Unwilling to take on Iran militarily, he has turned against the closest and most vulnerable target, Israel. And Netanyahu — as in previous confrontations over policy differences — may be wobbling, yet again. Remember his excuses for signing the [1] Wye Agreement in 1998, which turned over major cities and vast tracts of land to the PA? "Now they will be accountable," he burbled. He went along with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's [2] "disengagement" from Gaza because, he said, his role as finance minister was too important to leave. He failed to lead Israelis fed up with corruption and ineptitude after Israel's botched action against Hezbollah in Lebanon. It could be another set-up, or a new dance step. Iran needs the American bogeyman to unite; America needs the threat from Iran to whip Israel into major security surrender; and Netanyahu needs both to build a strong coalition and stay in power. He's been through all of this before; he won't make the same mistakes. Whether or not Iran has the capability of launching a nuclear-tipped missile from its territory is unclear. Thanks to Pakistan and North Korea, Iran may have acquired the technology for a smaller nuclear devise mounted on ballistic missiles that could be launched by small groups anywhere, most likely via Hezbollah and Hamas proxies. The obvious advantage of Iran's use of a proxy is that it's harder to trace its origins, thereby offering Iran protection from retaliation, at least for a while, if at all. This situation severely limits Israel's options, primarily its reliance on anti-missile defense. Chances are good that an incoming missile will be intercepted, which would then entitle a response with full force. Ironically, once it achieves nuclear capability, Iran is more identifiably dangerous, and therefore more limited. The more threatening Iran becomes, the higher the stakes, the more intense a confrontation and the likelihood of a serious response. This offers the only real chance to prevent Iran from attacking. The United States, Britain and France (at least) must warn Iran that launching a missile — any missile (since it can be assumed to be a WMD) — would result in the total annihilation of Iran by a combined international force. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's refusal to make this clear weakens any opposition and offers no incentives for Iran to change course. The warning to Iran must be clear, unequivocal, and substantive, obligating the "great powers," including NATO, to become part of a control mechanism, and one that will act decisively. There can be no question about the ramifications of a first-strike launch using WMD. The advantage of such a system is that it virtually locks in all participants and everyone knows the rules. Iran's success up to now has been due to the lack of rules, clear red lines, and meaningful consequences. The responsibility for prudence and self-preservation as well as the system itself, therefore, is incumbent on every player. And once armed, there is no withdrawal. Without doubt, Iran, like Pakistan and North Korea, will try to distribute and build facilities for WMD, and they may be initially successful, as occurred recently when a nuclear facility was being built in Syria. It would appear, however, that these initiatives could be readily eliminated. Countries which have WMD and threaten others should be ostracized. This could easily become part of the UN Charter and other international bodies. In this way, Iran acquiring nuclear weapons could be a blessing in disguise, if it prompts a new way of thinking about the problem and how to contain it. As more nations acquire nuclear weapons they can learn that it's also a responsibility. This, however, has nothing to do with Jews, settlements, elephants, or camels. And if you think Obama knows the dance floor, Bibi can show him a trick or two. Moshe Dann, a former asst professor of History (CUNY), is a
writer and journalist living in Jerusalem. He can be reached at
moshedan@netvision.net.il
|
|
GIVE DESPERATE, HUNGRY ISRAELI CHILDREN FOOD AND FUN THIS SUMMER!
Posted by Meir Panim, June 30, 2009. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
FROM ISRAEL: AFLOAT IN LUNACY
Posted by Arlene Kushner, June 30, 2009. |
|
It's hardly a new refrain in these postings: the sense that the world is upside-down and crazy. Unfortunately, that sense is only growing stronger. Several people forwarded to me in recent days a quote from columnist Burt Prelutzky, that says, in essence, when Obama receives his physical, he should have a brain scan, because there has got to be something terribly wrong "with a man who seems to be far more concerned with a Jew building a house in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran." Not funny at all, really, because it cuts too close to the bone of truth. ~~~~~~~~~~ From a purely informal source in the US (and I readily acknowledge that this is not confirmed) comes information that a Democratic Congressperson in a key position is saying that even Obama's people are finding themselves unable to convince the president to cool it a bit on the issue of settlements. It seems that when it comes to a complete settlement freeze Barack Hussein Obama is mushuga al ha-devar. On this issue he's crazy — obsessed. Obsession is a good word, for it has been pointed out that if his goal is promotion of a genuine peace negotiation, what he's doing — which hardens Israeli hearts against him — is counterproductive. Jackson Diehl, deputy editor of the Washington Post, described the situation accurately when he recently wrote that "Obama began with a broad strategy of simultaneously pressing Israel, the Palestinians and Arab states to take concrete steps toward peace", but that this has "narrowed to a single point: a standoff with the Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu over whether 'natural growth' would be allowed in Jewish settlements." MK Otniel Schneller, of Kadima, please understand, has now lambasted Obama administration officials, charging that they hold beliefs influenced by "far-Left opinions outside of the Israeli consensus" (about which more below). Schneller, who is interested in promoting a "peace deal" with the Palestinians, says that "the most dangerous thing to the peace process is to push the Israeli public into a corner." He calls the current Obama demand "extortion." http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1246296531821 ~~~~~~~~~~ The other side of the coin, in terms of what Obama's position does, is to make the Arabs, who think they have a free ride, more intransigent. The Jerusalem Post editorial today alludes to a recent article by David Ignatius in the Washington Post that quotes an Arab diplomat as telling him that what Arabs demand is not a settlement freeze but rather an imposed settlement. The editorial carries this one step further, indicating that Obama has also been hearing this from "some in the ostensibly pro-Israel community in Washington, led by J Street." J Street, funded by George Soros, is at the heart of what Schneller was referring to in terms of "far-left opinions." J Street may proclaim itself pro-Israel in its own fashion, but in my book it is solidly anti-Israel. And dangerous. The painful fact is that Soros, having done funding for his campaign, has the ear of Obama. Any American, Jew or non-Jew, who genuinely cares about Israel, and is not yet aware of this, needs to (in the words of the late, great advice columnist Anne Landers) "wake up and smell the coffee." ~~~~~~~~~~ The heat is on our government from all sides with regard to freezing of the settlements. From the Quartet, and from various European nations, including those just visited by PM Netanyahu. Additionally, Sweden, which is no friend to Israel, is poised to
assume the EU presidency. NGO-Monitor has just released information
detailing "Swedish government funding for radical [anti-Israel] NGOs
under the guise of human rights and humanitarian aid."
~~~~~~~~~~ The question then is how well Netanyahu and company will continue to hold in the face of all of this. There are mixed messages, and concern grows. We're hearing talk about a "compromise" on the subject, some way to reach a meeting of the minds between Jerusalem and Washington. That has to be bad news. In some quarters it's said we may ultimately agree to a "temporary" freeze, for three or six months. That would be very bad news indeed. Right now DM Barak is in New York, and today held a four hour meeting with George Mitchell. Immediately before he left, the Defense Ministry revealed that it had improved the construction of 50 homes in the Samaria community of Adam — part of a master plan for 1,500 homes for the Binyamin region. This may or may not have been timed to deliver a message. (In due course I'll have more to say about these plans.) ~~~~~~~~~~ Emerging from the meeting, half of which was held privately between the two parties, Barak told reporters that he and Mitchell were "not stuck on the issue" of settlements, and that he had indicated to Mitchell that Israel will consider "any positive contribution to the peace efforts." He said there were still gaps between the sides (the US stance has not softened), but that efforts would continue to reach understandings. What understandings? Vague diplomatic talk. We will have to see what emerges, or ensues in follow-up talks. But the reference to gaps, and efforts to downplay the settlements as focus of the talks is encouraging. It would certainly seem that Barak did not acquiesce today to a freeze, even a temporary one, on the building in settlement blocs. This broadly comports with what YNet had reported: that a forum, which included Barak, PM Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Lieberman, and Ministers Benny Begin and Moshe Ya'alon, met yesterday in preparation for Barak's meetings with Mitchell. It was decided that settlement construction would not be frozen now, and that there would be an attempt to convince the US that discussion on this could be delayed until talks with the Palestinians were under way. Talks with the Palestinians? Let us hope they continue to balk. We may have a deliberately devised catch 22 here: with the PA saying they won't talk because we haven't frozen settlements. ~~~~~~~~~~ And so, my friends, it's time to let our voices be heard again. Here in Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu has to be thanked for not caving, and urged as strongly as possible not to cave to Obama in the future.
In the US, forget the obsessed Obama. Contact your own Senators and Congresspersons. Tell them you are adamantly opposed to pushing Israel on a settlement freeze. Ask them for a greater focus on what the PA will do to stop incitement. For your Congresspersons:
For your Senators:
Remember, folks, numbers count. Circulate this request, please! ~~~~~~~~~~ An unsettling sign of caving to Obama, however, has come with agreement on another front: some withdrawal of IDF forces from major PA cities, to allow day-to-day takeover by PA security forces being trained by General Dayton — forces, it should be noted again, that, according to reliable reports, Dayton himself indicated might turn on Israel within two years if they don't get what they want. The PA is looking for a situation in which the IDF would be prevented from returning to these cities. The IDF maintains the right to return if necessary. If this has a deju vu feeling it is because we've been on this merry-go-round before. Ultimately, it is the IDF that controls terrorism in those cities, and ultimately, we always have to return. The concern — the deep concern — is with regard to the security risk in the interim. ~~~~~~~~~~ French President Sarkozy was way out of line in recently urging Netanyahu, according to a Channel Two report yesterday, to "get rid of Lieberman" and (are you ready for this?) replace him with Livni. Our Foreign Ministry responded that this represented "intolerable intervention in internal Israeli affairs." And Netanyahu has in turn responded appropriately, indicating that Lieberman was an important part of the government team. Today he told more than 20 ambassadors from EU nations that he has complete confidence in Lieberman. ~~~~~~~~~~ All is not grim, however, in spite of the above. According to Reuters, the US has given assurances that it will continue to support Israel at the UN. Additionally, US loan guarantees have been re-approved. ~~~~~~~~~~ President Peres left Sunday for a four-day visit to Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan — the first visit by an Israeli president since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the two Muslim states. He is being accompanied by a delegation of 60 senior officials of leading Israeli companies in the fields of water technology, agriculture, communications, medical technology, and defense. Azerbaijan stood its ground against an irate Iran, even though Iran re-called its ambassador and expelled Azerbaijan's ambassador in protest. In fact, according to Yediot Ahronot, an Iranian official went to Azerbaijan a month ago to persuade Azerbaijan to cancel its visit from Peres. Baku's response: "We don't tell you whom to meet when you meet with Armenians, and you won't tell us whom to meet either. Azerbaijan is a sovereign country, and no one will tell it whom to receive." So, we have friends, and in this case a Muslim friend, to boot. ~~~~~~~~~~ According to Arutz Sheva, the "Religious Zionist Budget" will not be cut in the coming year. This budget provides funds for strengthening Jewish identity, supporting hesder yeshivas (which combine Torah study and IDF service), and bolstering youth groups associated with the religious Zionist movement. Sounding good from here. ~~~~~~~~~~ Also sounding good: The IDF Spokesperson's Office has confirmed that the Navy has seized a "Free Gaza Movement" boat, "Arion," that was headed for Gaza in violation of the Israeli blockade on the Strip. The boat was taken to Ashdod, and the crew detained by the IDF. This is something the Olmert government never had the guts to do. ~~~~~~~~~~ And one last, important, piece of good news for today: Drawing on the principle of "universal jurisdiction," which is — as I recently wrote — being abused for political purposes, a Spanish court had been proceeding with the investigation of the IAF bombing in Gaza on July 22, 2002 that killed Hamas terrorist Sheikh Salah Shehadeh and 14 others. The original complaint was lodged by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) and involved war crimes allegations against seven senior Israeli officials, including former IDF chiefs of staff Dan Halutz and Moshe Ya'alon, and former defense minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. Today, Spain's National Court, in a 14 to 4 vote, decided not to proceed with the case. The legal reasoning that was applied has not yet been announced. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info |
|
OBAMA ON THE ROPES — A RANK AMATEUR
Posted by LEL, June 31, 2009. |
|
Obama thaw on Israeli settlement construction follows Iran setback, Saudi brush-off. This below is a DEBKAfile special that comes from today's IsraPundit
|
|
The Obama administration signalled a new mood of compromise on settlement construction just ahead of the key talks in New York between Israel's defense minister Ehud Barak and prime minister's adviser Yitzhak Molcho and US envoy George Mitchell Tuesday, June 30. While the Israeli delegation was still airborne, the US state department spokesman Ian Kelly said: "We've been working with all the parties to try and come up with... an environment conducive to the resumption of negotiations. I'm not going to prejudge what happens tomorrow." Asked by reporters if that meant the US administration was ready to compromise and accept a suspension of settlement activity instead of a total halt, Kelly said that some level of flexibility was part of the negotiation process. "Working our way to our resolution, I'm not going to say we're not going to compromise. Let's just see what happens." At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs said: "I don't want to get ahead of some very important meetings tomorrow between Ehud Barak and George Mitchell, except to say that we're optimistic about making progress." DEBKAfile's political analysts attribute this large crack in US president Barack Obama's unswerving push for a total halt on settlement activity on the West Bank to four new developments: 1. The prospect of direct US-Iranian dialogue on the nuclear issue has vanished into the blue yonder as relations go from bad to worse in the aftermath of Iran's disputed presidential election. A tough US stance against Israel as a bargaining chip with Iran is no longer relevant. The Obama administration had factored Arab reciprocity into its campaign to halt Israel's settlement activity. When it was denied, the White House saw no point in continuing to lean on Israel. 3. More and more former Bush administration officials are challenging the administration's insistent denial of Bush administration understandings with Israel on settlement expansion to accommodate natural growth. These officials emphasize that the understandings exist both orally and in writing. Monday, June 29, the Washington Post offered three reasons for the White House's decision to ease up on its "absolutist" position: "First, it has allowed Palestinian and Arab leaders to withhold the steps they were asked for... Second, the administration's objective... is unobtainable... No Israeli government has ever agreed to an unconditional freeze and no coalition could be assembled... to impose one. Finally, the extraction of a freeze from Netanyahu is, as a practical matter, unnecessary... both the Palestinian Authority and Arab governments have gone along with previous US-Israeli deals by which construction was to be limited to inside the periphery of settlements near Israel — since everyone knows those areas will be annexed to Israel in a final settlement..." In view of the US administration's newfound flexibility on the settlement issue, Israeli government circles see the tables turned and the American squeeze deflected to coercing the Palestinian Authority to return to the negotiating table. Egypt has set July 7 as the deadline for the warring Palestinian factions — Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah and the Islamist Hamas which rules Gaza — to get their act together and achieve a united national front ahead of peace talks with Israel. Netanyahu, after accepting the two-state principle, pulling Israeli troops out of four Palestinian towns, thinning out West Bank roadblocks and making his point to Washington on the settlement freeze, is ready to invite the opposition Kadima party and its leader, Tzipi Livni, to join a national unity government under his rule. Foreign minister Avigdor Liebermann and his nationalist Israeli Beitenu party might present an obstacle. Therefore, some political circles in Jerusalem assign the anonymous leak to the media Monday, June 29, which cited French president Nicolas Sarkozy as bluntly advising Netanyahu when they met at the Elysee last week to get rid of Avigdor Lieberman and replace him with Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, as a prod for Lieberman to step aside. Contact LEL at LEL817@yahoo.com |
|
OBAMA SWEET-TALKS DICTATORS, YET STRONG-ARMS ISRAEL
Posted by AFSI, June 30, 2009. |
|
The article below was written by M.K. Moshe Arens and
appeared in Haaretz
"The right of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria is a basic principle not subject to negotiations. The Israel prime minister has to make this crystal clear." |
|
Dealing with U.S. President Barack Obama constitutes a major challenge for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It has been a long time since America last had a president as powerful as Obama, who controls both houses of Congress and is wildly popular among the American public. It is from this advantageous position that Obama has decided to confront Israel, and now the Israeli prime minister has to decide how to respond. Meanwhile, the world's troublemakers in Tehran, Damascus, and Pyongyang are getting away with murder. As for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar Assad, Obama has decided to sweet-talk them. Meanwhile Kim Jong-il is still waiting to see how the U.S. president will deal with him, as North Korea continues to threaten the world with its nuclear-tipped missiles. The exception to it all is Israel — Obama is telling Jerusalem in no uncertain terms what he expects from it. No doubt about it, the American leader has decided to use strong-arm tactics on America's long-time ally. He has carefully and deliberately targeted the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria as the focal point of the pressure he has decided to apply on Netanyahu. For years these settlements have been castigated by Israel's enemies, and even some of its friends, as constituting an obstacle to regional peace — a sentiment also echoed by the Israeli left. With that kind of backing, Obama must have concluded that Netanyahu will have no choice but to buckle. That is why he and Hillary Clinton are keeping up the pressure. "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements... It is time for these settlements to stop," he declared in Cairo. To leave no room for doubt, Clinton emphasized that Obama was referring to all settlements, including Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. Those who choose to take comfort in Obama's choice of words — he referred to "legitimacy" rather than "legality," and talked about "continued" Israeli settlements — are only fooling themselves. Obama has targeted all Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria as well as East Jerusalem's Jewish neighborhoods, and he does not intend to let go easily. Netanyahu made a serious error of judgment in trying to parry Obama's opening serve by explaining the need for additional settlement construction due to the "natural growth" of the Jewish population there. Referring to the space required for kindergartens, nurseries and homes for newlyweds does not convince someone who does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement construction. Expecting heartfelt sentiments from your opponent in this game is not going to get us anywhere. Obama is playing hardball. While efforts to assuage the concerns of the Israeli public regarding relations with the U.S. — by saying that the settlement issue is negotiable — may leave an impression in Israel, they are falling on deaf ears in Washington. The right of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria is a basic principle not subject to negotiations. There is more at stake here than mere rights to natural growth. Britain tried to abrogate these rights in the infamous MacDonald White Paper of May 1939. That document ended up in the trash bin of history. The Arab Legion tried to deny this right from 1948-1967, after destroying the Jewish settlements in the area, only to be driven out in the Six-Day War. And today, too, no coalition of friends or foes is going to succeed in this endeavor. The Israel prime minister has to make this crystal clear. The gauntlet has been dropped and it has to be taken up. Succumbing to the pressure that is being applied on the settlement issue will only result in additional pressure on other issues, and before long Israel's position on matters of principle and substance will begin to crumble. This is not going to be easy, but Israel's staunch supporters in the U.S. will stand by it. It will be a test for the American Jewish leadership — and for the people of Israel. Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI is 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. Barry Freedman is Executive Director. If you would like to be on AFSI's email list then contact them at: afsi@rcn.com |
|
IRAN COUNCIL CERTIFIES AHMADINEJAD VICTORY
Posted by Daily Alert, June 30, 2009. |
|
This was written by Michael Slackman and it is archived at
|
|
As the certification was announced, security and militia forces flooded the streets, and protesters who were already out marching down Tehran's central avenue, Vali Asr, broke into furious chants. The marchers were quickly dispersed, but other Iranians, urged by opposition Web sites, went to their rooftops to yell "God is great!" in a show of defiance. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the Guardian Council's secretary, sent a letter to the interior minister saying the panel had approved the election after a partial recount, according to state television. "The Guardian Council, by reviewing the issues in many meetings and not considering the complaints and protest as valid, verifies the 10th presidential election," Ayatollah Jannati wrote. The letter made scant mention of the sweeping public anger and accusations of fraud. Earlier in the day, apparently in an attempt to create a semblance of fairness, state television said the Guardian Council had begun a random recount of 10 percent of the ballots in Tehran's 22 electoral districts and in some provinces. The recount only aroused new skepticism, however, when the official news agency, IRNA, said that in one district, Mr. Ahmadinejad won even more votes than he had in the first count. Opposition candidates had refused to participate in the review by sending representatives, saying that the election should be annulled because of widespread fraud. "There is a serious crisis of confidence and danger between the state and a large section of the population," said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. "I think this anger and discontent right now might have been managed and controlled, it might not erupt again in the next two days or week. But it has not been resolved." "It is a divided country now," said an Iranian political analyst who would speak only anonymously to avoid retribution. "We have two completely different world views. Ultimately, it is the competition between tradition and modernity." Speaking to reporters in Washington on Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Iranian government was facing an enormous credibility gap over the election, something the day's events in Iran did little to address. "I don't think that's going to disappear by any finding of a limited review of a relatively small number of ballots," she said. Asked whether the United States would recognize Mr. Ahmadinejad as Iran's president, she said only, "We're going to take this a day at a time." The decision to certify the election seemed to reflect a growing split among the Iranian leadership about how to respond to a nation that has been left badly scarred after widespread protests, and a violent government crackdown that left at least 17 dead and hundreds more injured, hospitalized and jailed. One group of officials under the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Mr. Ahmadinejad appeared to be trying to resolve the internal dispute by shifting some blame to foreign powers, particularly Britain, and by continuing reliance on the hammer-fisted policy of dispatching the police and militia members to beat protesters. But there appear to be a growing number of officials and clerics who are deeply concerned about the unrest. On Monday, the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of Parliament was scheduled to visit the holy city of Qum to meet with two grand ayatollahs. A day earlier it met with two former presidents, Mohammad Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in an effort to ease the strains that have developed since the June 12 election. The speaker of Parliament, Ali Larijani, a former nuclear negotiator, has emerged as a powerful opponent of Mr. Ahmadinejad. It is not clear how far those seeking some kind of reconciliation will be able to push their drive, as the current hard-line leadership of Mr. Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei has continued to lash out at the opposition and insist that Iran's troubles are a result of meddling by foreign powers. The nation's intelligence chief charged that the protests were inspired by Western and "Zionist" forces, and Mr. Ahmadinejad called Monday for an investigation into the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young protester who became a symbol when a video of her dying moments in the streets was seen all over the world. Witnesses said she was shot by a member of the Basij, the government militia. But now the government is pressing an account that foreigners killed her to undermine its credibility. Political analysts inside and outside the country doubted that the millions who participated in the rallies would believe the government's version. But there are millions more citizens who may, because they receive virtually all of their information from state media — primarily television — and because of Iran's history of exploitation by the West. On Sunday, the authorities arrested nine Iranian staff members of the British Embassy in Tehran, and while five had been released Monday, four remained in custody for what the intelligence service said were efforts to incite and organize the protests. But as the arrests ratcheted tensions up between Iran and the European Union, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman tried to ease back on Monday, however slightly. "Reduction of ties is not on our agenda with any European country, including Britain," the spokesman, Hassan Qashqavi, said. Iran's economy, even before the electoral crisis, was suffering from the drop in oil prices, with inflation of at least 15 percent — and by some estimates 25 percent — and damaging unemployment. On Sunday, the government announced that it had to end all subsidies for gasoline used by private vehicles, a decision that was expected, but given the timing, suggested serious strains to the state budget. Antagonizing the European Union, Iran's largest trading partner, could do further damage. There was already some indication that some of Iran's most powerful groups, close to the supreme leader, were growing anxious over the state of the nation. European security experts, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, confirmed reports in Italian and Turkish newspapers that large sums of money had been sent to havens outside the country from banks controlled by the Revolutionary Guards. There was another lesson from Sunday that challenged the government's belief that it can return to a state of normalcy by crushing protests and talking about recounts without also offering hope of an objective review. The Iranian calendar is filled with a large number of national, religious and cultural memorials, holidays and observances. On Sunday, one memorial turned into a protest by thousands of people, forcing a recognition that without shutting down civil life for a vast majority of Iranians, there would be no way to prevent large crowds from gathering. "I think the memorials and the various anniversary dates, particularly for the most recent martyrs, present the greatest of threats to the regime of gatherings that could gather steam and momentum," said Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow with the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. "I expect authorities will continue to do all they can to prevent people from gathering in large numbers in such occasions." Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo. Editor's Note: The cartoon is not part of the original
article. It comes from the June 30, 2009
Atlas Shrugs website
The Daily Alert is sponsored by Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and prepared by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA). To subscribe to their free
daily alerts, send an email to daily@www.dailyalert.jcpa.org
|
|
NO NEW CLASSROOMS FOR JEWS IN SAMARIA; U.S. DEMANDS ISRAEL GIVE UP
GOLAN, TOO; TURKEY TURNING AGAINST ISRAEL
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 30, 2009. |
|
POLITICAL VEGAN RESTAURANT IN TEL AVIV A new restaurant was opened as a gathering place for leftists. Uniformed and armed Israeli soldiers are barred. The restaurant's rationale is that it opposes all forms of oppression, including killing animals for food and the Israeli "occupation" of Judea-Samaria (Prof. Steven Plaut. Unable to persuade the majority to adopt their views, the leftists seek to force their views upon the majority. This majority is growing, because leftist concessions to the Arabs have gotten thousands of Israelis killed. Suppose that ban extended to all food stores. Who then would defend those leftists from the Arabs, who have tried a number of times to wipe out the Israeli Jews? What "occupation?" The Territories are within the Mandate that recognized the Jewish people's pre-existing right to recover them. Foreign powers later conspired to deprive the Jewish people of them, but that does not negate Jewish rights. Repeated Arab aggression against Israel brought the Territories under Israeli control. That is where it belongs. Incidentally does the restaurant allow Arab customers, or does it boycott them, too, for their actual oppression What happens when Israel relinquishes control over territory? IDF forces left Lebanese soil. Result: Hizbullah oppresses the Lebanese and made and prepares war on Israel. Israel abandoned its own communities in Gaza. Result: Hamas oppresses the Arabs and made and prepares war on Israel. Can't just let territory fall into the hands of a terrorist enemy. Those vegans ought to learn from Israel's mistakes. Let them put pressure on the Arabs, who are the aggressors, not on defenders of Israel! If you want an outstanding vegan or vegetarian meal in Jerusalem, at modest prices and with friendly service, try the Village Green near Zion Square. They won't bother you over politics. For more on discrimination in Israel, click here:
Defense Min. Barak authorizes or rejects building plans in Samaria
and outside the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli population there is
growing. [Many being Orthodox, have large families.] Barak rejected
the building of 20 new classrooms for children
Isn't that carrying appeasement-minded politics too far? PM NETANYAHU ON IRAN MOTIVE FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu discussed Iran's motive for
nuclear weapons. He said many people suppose that it merely is a
status symbol. Netanyahu thinks otherwise. He pointed out that Iran
furnishes allies with thousands of rockets for murdering Israeli
civilians
A regime bent on mass-murder does not seek nuclear weapons just for show. Can sanctions stop Iran? After all these years of attempted sanctions, leaving Iran just months from nuclear weapons, sanctions have proved futile. U.S. DEMANDS ISRAEL GIVE UP GOLAN, TOO In addition to demanding that Israel give up the strategic mountain
provinces of Judea and Samaria, plus Gaza Strip, U.S. envoy Mitchell
demands that Israel cede the strategic Golan Heights. He depicts this
as part of peace-making
The U.S. would strip Israel of strategic borders past which the Arabs repeatedly launched attacks on Israel. It would give those regions, some of which now are parts of the State of Israel, to Arabs who still want to destroy what would be left of Jewish sovereignty. That is not peace-making. It invites war by boosting the prospects of victory, irresistible to jihadists. Foolish, if peace were the U.S. goal. Futile, if long-term Arab friendship, were the U.S. goal. Effective, if destruction of the Jewish state is the U.S. government's goal. For more on U.S. diplomacy with Syria, click here: (Diplomatic butter-up with Syria) To see how the U.S. is opening up another front against Israel,
click here:
MURDER FOR HONOR In Gaza, a father admitted murdering his daughter as an "honor
killing." In Israel, an Arab was indicted for murdering his daughter
in another "honor killing." In the other part of the Palestinian
Authority (P.A.), male and female relatives admitted murdering a youth
on suspicion of his assisting Israel. P.A. police have not uncovered
any evidence that the youth did. The P.A. commander said he'd bring
the youth's killers to justice
I think the Arabs should redefine "honor" and due process. Sometimes the Arabs attributed murders to the anti-sin motive, but really were extorting property or taking personal vengeance. To appreciate Arab Muslim culture more, click here:
TURKEY'S ISLAMIST REGIME The Turks have come to sound like the Arabs and like Iran's leaders. For example, Turkey's Islamist media calls Jews names such as "blood-sucking vampires." For another example, the pro-government media called the Gaza incursion genocide and a crime against humanity. They did not say the same when visited by Sudan's vice-president (Haymi Behar in Jewish Political Chronicle, Spring 2009, p.7 from Ynet, 3/1/09) who actually commits genocide. I'm not sure the Muslims mean their epithets only symbolically. They take the Koran literally, and it calls some or all Jews pigs and apes. TURKISH ANTI-ISRAEL MINI-SERIES The Arab world is displaying a Turkish miniseries. The programs depict Israel as helping organized crime spread prostitution and drugs throughout Turkey. Turkish Jewry reports other TV programs there being antisemitic (Elgar Lefkovits, Op. Cit., p.9 from Jerusalem Post, 2/25). Bad enough that among the people there is solidarity with foreign Muslim aggressors, but worse the government indoctrinates in bigotry. How fast Turkey descended into primitive religious hatred! Wild lies instead of facts. Speaking of lies, what say you now about President Obama's claim that Islam is tolerant? Not when it is in a militant phase. Minorities never have security. Jews in Turkey fared much better under secularist regimes and my grandfather was the Sultan's clock repairman before that. ISRAELI TOURISTS SHUN TURKEY. NOW Turkey used to be the most popular destination of Israeli tourists. Almost 10,000 Israelis have canceled season-start trips to Bodrum, Turkey, alone. They were prompted by the insulting treatment of their President by the Turkish President in Davos. Turkey's Minister of Tourism feels that his own President's outburst boosted Turkey's popularity among the Arabs (Op. Cit., p.9 from Dagan News Agency, 4/3/09). The Turkish President did not insult personally his Israeli counterpart. Personally, I consider Pres. Peres a most subversive, anti-Zionist conspirator. Turkey formerly ruled over the Arabs and repressed them. Somehow, the Arabs don't blame Turkey for past colonialism TURKEY & THE EU & UN Anders Rasmussen was Prime Minister of Denmark when a private Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad. The Prime Minister defended the rights of a free press. In any case, it was beyond his power to censor. Nevertheless, when most NATO members supported Mr. Rasmussen's nomination to head NATO, Turkey objected. It acceded only when given: an EU concession in negotiations on Turkey's membership application, the appointment of two Turks to senior NATO posts, and an apology by Rasmussen. This was a step away from freedom of the press, because the government accepted a penalty imposed by Turkey. [Muslims often defame non-believers but bridle at non-believer criticism of themselves, whether the criticism be valid or not.] For 20 years, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) systematically used accusations of "Islamophobia" and of "insults to Islam" to cow critics. It is getting the UN to abandon human rights and freedoms. The US resists some of the UN resolutions against freedom of speech and religion, but does not make "a vigorous counterattack in defense of freedom." [Therefore, the resolutions keep coming. We should be trying to defeat their radical ideology.] In 1990, the OIC issued the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. They patterned it after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but subordinated rights to undefined Islamic law. It subordinated freedom of speech to their laws against blasphemy. The UN didn't adopt it but nevertheless cites it. The OIC attacked human rights reporting. In 1994, the UN special rapporteur on Sudan reported that Sudan's capital punishment for anyone older than seven and convicted of apostasy or adultery violated Sudan's commitment to human rights agreements. Sudan called the report blasphemy, because it criticized Sudan's Islamic law. Sudan warned him he might be condemned to death. In 1997, OIC members Egypt, Bangladesh, Algeria, Pakistan, and [reputedly moderate] Indonesia, etc., condemned the UN special rapporteur on racism of blasphemy for reporting antisemitism in Muslim states. The next report exempted the Muslim world from that scrutiny. In 2002, the OIC bloc got the UN Human Rights Commission to end special reporting on human rights in Iran. That year, in response to the Danish cartoons, the OIC got the special rapporteur on freedom of expression to include instances when freedom of expression is racially or religiously discriminatory (Paul Marshall, Jewish Political Chronicle, spring 2009, p.10 from the Weekly Standard, 4/16/09). Making concessions to Islamists curbs our own freedom to prevent their conquering us. The OIC represents 57 Muslim governments. Its position is against freedom. How can they claim Islam is consistent with democracy? 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 and visit his website:
|
|
LILY STEINER SHARES SOME INSIGHTS WORTH READING
Posted by Mr La, June 30, 2009. |
|
Lily Steiner is West Coast executive director of American Friends of the Ariel University Center (AUC). |
|
Obama and the State Department are just ignorant, there is no other suitable word for it, polite or otherwise. They have not taken the time to go and visit what they negatively call Settlements and what I proudly call Settlements. Same place, same set of facts, different perspective because they have not been to see it work. A place where Jews, Arabs, Russians, Ethiopians, every religion, nationality, age and creed live, work, innovate and get along — this is anyone's definition of Peace in the Middle East. Ownership of land and boarders can come later, but talk about reality on the ground, and where it is happening. This type of peace exists now in the Middle East — it exists in lots of places within Israel, and it has always existed in areas that are labeled as Settlements. From the very first settlement, before the creation of the state of Israel, Jews have always reached out to their Arab neighbors and successfully integrated them into their lives and celebrations. They have done and do this out of innate hospitality, but also for selfish reasons; there are 22 Arab countries, each of them enormous both in geographical size and population, it was never Israel's intent to take them over or conquer them, but to live together with them in Peace. How stupid do you need to be to believe Israel wants to conquer the whole of the Middle East for a Jewish Homeland? First of all there are not enough Jews in the whole world to populate it, and second of all, it is just a ridiculous premise. The facts show that Israel shares it knowledge and natural resources with the world as well as its Arab neighbors, despite the political conflicts and war, and it is much greater giving than getting on Israel's part. If you want Peace, get the Arabs to model some of what is going on in the settlements, on Arab lands, and then it won't matter who has sovereignty over it. Ariel is the newest University in Israel. It has 11,000 students, 500 are Arabs — the number would be higher, but the Arabs are afraid their own families and friends will kill them if they are found to be studying at an Israeli institution. Ariel University is in the heart of the largest Settlement, it is a Settlement to be proud of, both the city and the University. Every University classroom has an Israeli Flag. Every student, including the Arabs, must take a course in Jewish Heritage each semester. There are no problems, all the student¹s cross the green line to come and study each day. This Settlement should be expanded, not stopped on threat of destruction — it is a MODEL OF PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST. Just because the Arab PR machine coined the phrase "Settlements are block to Peace in the Middle East" does not make it true, it is just a case of tell a lie often enough and loud enough and people will believe it. Even the President and State Department of the U.S.A. I am not asserting that there has never been a crazy person in a settlement, but I am yelling from the rooftops that there are thousands of individual stories of cooperation and living and caring together in the settlements than there are negative incidents. It is always, and I will state this again, it is ALWAYS the attacks by Arabs on the settlements, which create the negative press for the settlements, when these settlements are the victims in the attacks. We have the model in Gaza of what happens when Settlements are disbanded. Even the Arabs, who lived and thrived there, did not pick up and continue a lucrative industry that would have made them and their children proud, instead, they destroyed it and so now remain poor and beholden to their extremists. They then compound this by assisting in the distribution of arms and ammunition to destroy the very Jewish people who were helping them feed and clothe their children before they forced them to leave. I want to call on all Settlers to make yourselves known. Write about who you are and what you do and let the world see that you are kind, and creative; professionals, blue collar workers, what you do with your lives and your families. I know you help with sick, orphaned and troubled teens, I know you have interests as far reaching as classical music to obscure bohemian pottery and rock music, but let the world know, connect to people with the same hobbies, interests and dreams, and let them know you are proud to be Settlers and why you are proud — you took a piece of land that the Arabs never believed would be anything but desert and you make it bloom and flourish each and every day. Share your stories of Peace in the Middle East today, let everyone know about the Arabs that live and work among you happily and who given the choice would never chose to be a citizen of a Palestinian State, because there is no Peace in Arab communities or villages with anyone other than other Muslims. What the stupid, blind, idiotic world is suggesting is not Peace in the Middle East, but an apartheid that will forever separate the Jews and the Arabs. Settlements should be applauded and looked up to as a model upon which to base Peace. Each and every person who went out and made a home for themselves in the areas won by Israel in 1967 when it was attacked on all fronts by its Arab neighbors, each and every person who took a risk in developing a home in these uncharted areas that were left barren and empty for so many years, each of you should be so proud of what you have achieved and accomplished — and if you do not live there and do not know what those achievements and accomplishments are, then go and visit, go and look, and see the reality, not the empty words of those that do not want to live in peace and do not care if their children ever do. Be proud to be a settler, you have done wonderful things — now share them with the world.
Contact the poster at mrla26@aol.com |
|
70 ACADEMICS 'DISAPPEAR' IN IRAN CRACKDOWN ON DISSIDENTS
Posted by Shaul and Aviva Ceder, June 29, 2009. |
|
From Le Soir Brussels: "Nato Can Take Teheran In 7 Days In Order To Restore Democracy Like They Did In Serbia And Iraq." This was written Hana Levi Julian and it appeared in
Arutz-7
|
|
Iran is continuing its crackdown on dissidents protesting irregularities in the country's presidential elections with the arrest of 70 academics who met on Wednesday with challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi. The Kalemeh web site, which is linked to Mousavi's campaign, reported that it was not known where the professors were taken. Other prominent dissidents, as well as at least 10 foreign journalists and some 26 Iranian reporters, have "disappeared" in a similar manner in recent days. Despite the risk, protesters clashed again Wednesday with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's special Basij militia force, which has brutalized many of the demonstrators since the June 12 elections. Email readers, click here to see the footage. WARNING: Many of the images snapped during and after the violence are graphic and disturbing. Water cannons, tear gas canisters and batons wielded by riot police did not stop the protesters from continuing to defy a government ban on gatherings and demonstrations to protest the results of what they insist was a rigged election. The crowd, which massed outside the Iranian parliament building, was forced back by armored vehicles. "Basiji [militiame beat people down like animals," a local source told The Jerusalem Post. "It was like they were beating up dolls. The security forces were out for blood. Hundreds of them charged out of nowhere. The next thing we saw was fire, blood, and clouds of tear gas." A massive demonstration was planned for Thursday by Mousavi, who called for a 'Sea of Green' to blanket the central square in Tehran in what he said he hopes will be the largest protest on the streets of Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Mousavi's trademark campaign color was green. At least 17 people were reportedly shot to death by Basij militiamen, according to the AFP news agency, but it is impossible to know whether the number is accurate because of constrictions placed upon journalists in the field. Protesters said many more were wounded as well. The New York-based Human Rights Watch and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran both stressed in statements issued to the media that the government is holding hundreds of activists without access to lawyers or their families. Most have not been charged, and many risk being tortured. Contact Shaul and Aviva Ceder at ceder@netvision.net.il |
|
MAINE FINES GROUP FOR `INFLAMMATORY ANTI-MUSLIM MESSAGE'
Posted by LEL, June 29, 2009. |
|
The Christian Action Network (CAN) runs afoul of bureaucratic political correctness. This was written by Patrick Poole and it appeared June 25,
2009 on Pajama Media
Patrick Poole is an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military. |
|
An organization in the national spotlight recently for producing a documentary identifying several dozen potential terrorist training compounds in the U.S. has offended the sensibilities of Maine bureaucrats, who have fined the organization $4,000, alleging among other things that the group sent out mailings containing an "inflammatory anti-Muslim message." The group in question, the Christian Action Network (CAN), received notice of the fines and the fundraising ban in a May 6 letter from Elaine Thibodeau of the State of Maine's Department of Professional and Financial Regulation.[1] Enclosed in the letter was a prepared consent agreement for CAN to sign agreeing to all of the state's allegations, waiving all rights to appeal, and agreeing to pay the $4,000 fine. As part of the consent agreement, CAN is required to agree to all of the state's allegations, including their assertion that their mailing amounted to hate speech. "These bogus charges and fines the State of Maine has imposed are nothing but an attempt to stifle our free speech and silence our organization from speaking out about the steady creep of radical Islam in America," CAN president Martin Mawyer told Pajamas Media. "We fully intend to appeal the state's penalties because if they successfully silence us here, we will quickly find that we won't be able to speak out anywhere." CAN was in the news earlier this year following the release of their documentary, [2] Homegrown Jihad, which details dozens of compounds across the U.S. operated by Pakistani Sheikh Mubarak Gilani, who has previously been identified in State Department reports as a terrorist leader, and his group, Jamaat al-Fuqra.[3] The documentary looks into the past terrorist acts of the group in the U.S., including the assassination of two moderate Muslim leaders, the firebombing of non-Muslim religious facilities, and an investigation[4] by Colorado authorities that led to convictions and lengthy prison sentences. These activities have been covered in several FBI domestic terrorism reports and a more recent assessment[5] by the Center for Policing Terrorism. Other prominent convicted terrorists, including "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid, D.C. Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad, and NYC landmarks bomb plotter Clement Rodney Hampton-El, have been identified as former members. But what has Maine bureaucrats roiling is a fundraising mailing sent by CAN (a copy of which was provided to Pajamas Media) regarding a public school curriculum used in California requiring students to pray to Allah, dress up as Muslims, adopt Muslim names, and learn the five pillars of Islam. Since Christians and Jews are not given similar accommodations, CAN encouraged their supporters to send a petition to Maine Gov. John Baldacci asking him to prevent such instruction in Maine public schools. Among the stated allegations in Thibodeau's letter and the consent agreement is that this amounted to hate speech, claiming: 5. The correspondence contained an inflammatory anti-Muslim message. In two separate rounds of correspondence with Thibodeau, I inquired what basis the state used to determine that the mailing was "inflammatory," but she refused to address that question on both occasions. In addition to running afoul of ideological sensibilities of Maine state employees, Thibodeau makes two regulatory claims that prompted the $4,000 in fines. The first claim made by the state is that CAN was not properly registered when the mailings were sent. The second is that CAN used Maine Gov. John Baldacci's name without his permission. CAN responds that they made all efforts to comply with state law and promptly provided additional information requested by Thibodeau's office. And they provided Pajamas Media with documentation that seems to flatly contradict the State of Maine's allegations. While Thibodeau's letter claims that CAN's charitable solicitation license expired in November 2007, CAN produced copies of canceled checks cashed by the Maine state treasurer that accompanied their 2008 renewal and registration. Nothing in what the state has sent to CAN indicates that 2008 registration was in any way defective (or even mentions it), which creates problems for the state's position, for if the previous year's registration was in order, and CAN claims to have received nothing to indicate otherwise, their fundraising mailing would have fallen within the 90-day renewal period when the mailing was sent. The state's claim that their 2009 registration was out of order and that they were fundraising without a license would therefore be moot as the mailing was sent prior to the renewal period's expiration. In support of their position that CAN was not properly registered this past April, Thibodeau's office claims that several pages of CAN's annual audit were not properly transmitted with their application and notified them of the error by email on April 6. Her letter acknowledges that they received the missing pages on April 21, postmarked on April 13. This constitutes the grounds for the state's $1,000 fine. Thibodeau confirmed that the state doesn't send out any official notice that an organization's application has been approved. "They have created a black box registration process where if they don't like what you're saying, they will go back through your application and determine that your application wasn't correct, and suddenly you're violating the law," Mawyer said. "That's what we believe has happened in this case." Perhaps more troubling for free speech advocates is the state's claim that CAN needed the governor's permission in order to use his name on the petition that the group urged supporters to send to him: 8. Governor John Baldacci did not give written consent, or any other consent, to the Christian Action Network to use his name for the purpose of soliciting contributions. This was the stated basis for assessing the heavier $3,000 fine. Thibodeau's letter and the consent agreement also allege that the use of Baldacci's name was intended to suggest his endorsement of CAN. But Mawyer notes that the U.S. Postal Service examines all of their fundraising solicitations, including looking for any implied endorsements, before they are mailed. "It would be a violation of federal law for us to make any false representation concerning any endorsements, which is one reason why we submit all of our fundraising letters to the Post Office for their approval prior to anything being sent out under our non-profit mailing permit, as was the case with this fundraising package," Mawyer said. "We have had the Post Office reject packages in the past, and we have rewritten them to get their go-ahead. Now Maine is telling us in essence that even if we get federal approval beforehand, the state retains the right to reject their interpretation and impose their own standard if they disagree with the content of your mailing." It is particularly telling that while the state claims that CAN implied the governor's endorsement, they did not assess any fines based on this allegation, perhaps with the problem of the Postal Service's prior approval of the CAN mailing in view. But the free speech chilling effect from Maine could be enormous as their interpretation of state law could virtually outlaw any issue mentioning government officials without obtaining their prior written consent. As Mawyer observes, "Imagine not being able to criticize a public official without their express written permission or without any reference to them whatsoever." One important outstanding issue following the rounds of correspondence between Pajamas Media and Thibodeau concerns a public complaint received by her office about the content of CAN's mailing cited in her May 6 letter. Her letter gives specific dates on all other matters except this one. Mawyer's concern is that the complaint may have not only preceded the state's notification of the missing pages to the application, but also their decision to consider CAN's solicitation license invalid. I specifically asked twice on what date the complaint was received and Thibodeau refused to address the question both times. "There's little doubt that our documentary on Islamic terrorist camps operating inside the U.S. and our statements of concern about the spread of radical Islam is at the heart of the state's actions. And we can't help but conclude based on the available evidence that if we were ACORN, or any other group advocating some left-wing cause, they would be using a less-than-rigorous scrutiny in their interpretation of the law," Mawyer said. "Would they ever dare consider applying these standards to CAIR [the Council on American-Islamic Relations]?" CAN is appealing the fines issued by the State of Maine and is also considering a lawsuit to prevent bureaucrats from using rulings after the fact to go after charitable organizations running afoul of political correctness. If Maine were to prevail in this case, they fear that it would not only be used by groups like CAIR to attempt to discredit CAN's investigative work, but also be an invitation for Maine and other states to use bureaucratic interpretations to go after other organizations making similar "inflammatory anti-Muslim messages." Footnotes [1] http://www.maine.gov/pfr/index.shtml [2] http://www.christianaction.org/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=13 [3] http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/pakistan/ terroristoutfits/jamaat-ul-fuqra.htm [4] http://www.ago.state.co.us/pr/121001_link.cfm.html [5] http://www.centerforpolicingterrorism.com/pdf/JAMAATAL-FUQRA2.pdf Contact LEL at LEL817@yahoo.com |
|
IS THERE DISSENSION IN THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE ABOUT OBAMA'S OUTREACH TO THE ISNA
Posted by LEL, June 29, 2009. |
|
This was written by The Iconoclast and it appeared in New
English Review
|
|
This coming week, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) will hold its annual convention in Washington, DC. The Obama Administration has done a literal two step. As reported by IPTNews," FBI Replaces Brotherhood-Tainted Liaison with Brotherhood-Tainted Liaison", the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI have simply exchanged one Muslim Brotherhood Front, CAIR, for another, the ISNA. This is in furtherance of outreach to the American Muslim community following the President's Cairo U. speech. In a controversial move the Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced that it will send representatives to attend the ISNA convention. IPT News report noted that there is serious dissension in the DOJ and FBI over this ISNA issue. There is good reason for these internal DOJ and FBI concerns given the recent convictions in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial. The federal prosecutors had named CAIR, ISNA and several other Muslim Brotherhood front groups as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial. This trial resulted in May convictions of five officials of the Muslim charity on charges of funneling over $12 million in funds to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization. Two of the HLF officials fled the US in 2004 for Syria when the indictment in the original trial was handed down, as we have posted. The ISNA has admitted ties to Hamas. The Investigative Project alerted us to an Indianapolis NBC affiliate WTHR investigation of the ISNA, which has its national headquarters in that area. The report, "Images in Conflict," was done back in 2004 but is still relevant. You can watch the WTHR report on YouTube, here and here. In the transcript of the WTHR investigation of ISNA were these revelations: On Holy Land Foundation and Hamas connections Tucked away on the farmland of rural Plainfield, Indiana, are headquarters to one of the largest Islamic organizations in the country — the Islamic Society of North America. On convicted felon Sami Al Arian, Triple I-T and Saudi funding Recently indicted University of South Florida professor Sami Al Arian is one controversial figure ISNA supported. In a federal indictment, Al Arian is accused of heading the U.S. front for the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The DOJ links him to the death of 100 civilians overseas, including two Americans. When Al Arian was arrested, ISNA issued a statement critical of the government. Thus, in light of the Holy Land Foundation and Al-Arian convictions, ties to the extremist Triple I-T and Hamas, you can understand why there is dissension in the Justice Department FBI `substitution' of the ISNA for CAIR at the behest of the Obama White House. |
|
ACLU PUSHING FOR MORE MONEY FOR HAMAS
Posted by Steven Emerson, June 29, 2009. |
|
The American Civil Liberties Union released a report (together with a You Tube video) attacking the U.S. government's efforts to shut down terrorist-financing charities. The report was based on 120 interviews, 115 of which were conducted with Muslim community leaders and other Muslims "directly affected by" U.S. government policies regarding the charities. It suggests (contrary to a substantial body of evidence) — that the U.S. government was wrong to have acted against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, the Global Relief Foundation and other charities accused of raising money for terrorist organizations. The report also perpetuates the myth that the United States government may be planning to prosecute persons for unwittingly contributing to charities that were fronts for terrorism. The ACLU asserts that post-September 11 policies targeting these charities have a "disproportionate" effect on Muslims and "are undermining American Muslims' protected constitutional liberties and violating their fundamental human rights to freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom from discrimination." It recommends a series of policy changes which include repealing Executive Order 13224, issued shortly after September 11, which creates mechanisms for designating persons and organizations as "specially designated global terrorists" (SDGTs). The ACLU also calls on the FBI to employ the" least intrusive means" necessary to accomplish its investigative objectives and urges the federal government to ban law enforcement practices that "disproportionately" target people "based on ethnicity, national origin or religion." In his June 4 Cairo speech, President Obama asserted that there are too many impediments to Muslim efforts to fulfill their obligation to give charity, or zakat. As we have previously noted, this is patently untrue. The only way "loosen" restrictions would be to effectively to cripple current U.S. law barring material support for terrorism. The ACLU recommendations mean "more money for Hamas," said Dennis Lormel, who created the FBI's terror financing section. Terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah use the charities to build hospitals and provide food to the poor to win the trust of local Muslims. They then use "this credibility to enlist children as suicide bombers," Lormel said. But if the ACLU had its way, the U.S. government would lose critical tools for preventing U.S. charities from sending money to terrorist organizations. Using the "least intrusive means" would make it much more difficult (if not impossible) to shut down terrorist — financing charities like HLF, Lormel told IPT News, because they could deny the government the ability to use methods like wiretaps which were critical to building a case against the group for providing funds to Hamas. Ending the SDGT designations would take away a valuable deterrent to abuse. "We know from experience that people stop donating to these charities once they are designated as supporters of terrorism," added Lormel, a 28-year FBI veteran who oversaw its stepped-up efforts to shut off the flow of funds to terrorist organizations after September 11. The ACLU complaints about the "disproportionate" impact of these investigations on Muslims overlook the reality that most of "the terrorist violence we've seen the past eight years comes from the Muslim world," says Jonathan Schanzer, who worked as a Treasury Department counterterrorism analyst in the George W. Bush Administration. One myth running through the ACLU report is that the government may be preparing to prosecute persons who contributed to such charities out of ignorance. American law makes it illegal to provide support to any entity designated a terrorist group by the federal government. But the 1995 executive order signed by President Clinton and legislation enacted the following year by Congress cementing it into law do not affect donations to relief agencies that have not been so designated. Virginia Imam Mohamed Magid claims that Muslims have a legitimate fear that they could innocently contribute to a charity today and find themselves under investigation several years later if the government concludes that the charity is financing terror. But for someone to be convicted of a crime, prosecutors must prove they knew that money would go to benefit a terrorist organization. Before the Treasury Department shut down the HLF in 2001, it had been considered the largest Muslim charity in the United States. Five leaders of the organization were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms for providing $12 million to Hamas. But Jim Jacks, the lead federal prosecutor in the HLF case, notes that only leaders were charged — not the people who contributed money believing it would be used for humanitarian projects. "There was never an instance where a donor has been prosecuted or sanctioned for making donations to the Holy Land Foundation," Jacks said. "The people who were prosecuted and held accountable were the people that set up and ran the Holy Land Foundation and knew what they were doing." Lormel said the procedure used in the HLF trial has been implemented across the board. "The government has not gone after donors in any of the other [terror-financing] cases," he said. The ACLU suggests in its report that that the HLF, Global Relief Foundation (GRF), Al-Haramain and Benevolence International Foundation cases were little more than witch hunts targeting Muslims who were not involved in terrorism. But in each of these cases, the government has presented substantial information linking the groups to terror. In the HLF case, the five defendants were convicted after a two-month trial on all counts of conspiring to provide money to Hamas. Jurors convicted the five after hearing testimony from expert witnesses such as Matthew Levitt, former deputy assistant Treasury secretary, who explained the connection between Hamas' military and social branches and how the HLF used zakat committees to route money to Hamas. During the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis repeatedly said the evidence was clear that "The purpose of creating the Holy Land Foundation was as a fundraising arm for Hamas." In the GRF case, the Treasury Department detailed the group's connections to al Qaeda and the Taliban, including contacts with Wadih el-Hage, Osama bin-Laden's personal secretary, who was convicted for his role in the August 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. After years of wrangling with Saudi Arabia, the Treasury Department last year designated Al-Haramain's worldwide operation for having provided material and financial support to al Qaeda. In Bosnia, for example, they found links between Al-Haramain and Al-Gama al-Islamiyya, an Egyptian terror group that signed Osama bin Laden's Feb. 23, 1998 fatwas against the United States. In Bangladesh and Kenya, Al-Haramain members were implicated in assassination plots against U.S. citizens. These are just a small fraction of the connections between Al-Haramain and terrorist organizations cited by the Treasury Department in designating it a supporter of terrorism. In the case of the Benevolence International Foundation, the group was designated for supporting terrorism because of memos like this, in which members of the group establish a terrorist base in Sudan. The designation occurred in 2002 after Bosnian authorities uncovered ties between Benevolence International Foundation and Al Q aeda. But in attempting to manufacture a case that the U.S. government is persecuting Muslims, the ACLU chose to overlook considerable evidence showing that these charities are involved in terrorism. This appeared today in Jewish World Review. |
|
ISRAEL 'FED UP' WITH US DECLARATIONS AGAINST YESHA
Posted by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, June 29, 2009. |
|
A senior Israeli government official said that Israel is "fed up" with American statements against Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, the Hebrew-language Yisrael HaYom (Israel Today) newspaper reported Monday. As Defense Minister Ehud Barak flies to Washington for meetings with U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, the unnamed senior official stated, "Israel will demand that any compromise be part of a wider program of regional peace, and only after agreement on the basic principles outlines by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in his [recent] speech at Bar-Ilan University." The Prime Minister declared for the first time that he would accept the creation of a new Arab state on part of the land of Judea and Samaria on condition that it be de-militarized and that the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as a Jewish state. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has categorically rejected both conditions after having been encouraged by American and European support for the Arab-world demands that Israel surrender all of the land restored to the Jewish state in the Six-Day War in 1967, including the Western Wall and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Government sources told Yisrael HaYom that during Defense Minister Barak's visit, "The Americans will hear decisive statements regarding the possibility of freezing construction for Jews in Judea and Samaria. Israel will be prepared to listen to a freeze only if it is temporary and if the Americans will explicitly state" that it will later approve building in communities with a high concentration of Jewish residents. Israel has stated for public consumption that good relations with the U.S. are important, but any freeze, even temporary, is likely to meet stiff opposition from Shas and Likud party ministers. Shas leader Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) said, "This kind of thinking is incorrect. The discussion needs to be not only about 'settlements' but also about obligations of the PA." The Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria (Yesha) is thoroughly opposed to any restrictions on building for Jews but is willing to vacate certain hilltop communities, also called "outposts." Pinchas Wallerstein, a long-time leader in Yesha, wrote in a local newspaper in Samaria this week that if an outpost was built on Arab land that cannot be purchased by Jews, the Yesha Council would agreed to transfer it to another location on condition that the current building freeze is removed. He charged that the new American government is trying to take "Barak Hussein Obama's pound of flesh for the Arab world towards which he now sets his sights." President Obama stated in his Cairo University speech earlier this month that "the U.S. does not view the settlements as legitimate." he has issued repeated calls for a halt to building for Jews, Even the Washington Post, which usually sides against Israeli policies in Yesha, is concerned with the Obama administration having painted itself a corner in the Arab-Israeli peace process. Jackson Diehl, the newspaper's deputy editorial page editor, wrote Monday morning: "The administration made the mistake of insisting that an Israeli settlement 'freeze' — a term the past three administrations agreed to define loosely — must mean a total stop to all construction in the West Bank and even East Jerusalem. "This absolutist position is a loser for three reasons. First, it has allowed Palestinian and Arab leaders to withhold the steps they were asked for; they claim to be waiting for the settlement "freeze" even as they quietly savor a rare public battle between Israel and the United States. Second, the administration' s objective — whatever its merits — is unobtainable. No Israeli government has ever agreed to an unconditional freeze, and no coalition could be assembled from the current parliament to impose one.
This article appeared in Arutz-7,
|
|
AFTER U.S. PRESSURE, BARKAT TO HALT 70% OF EAST JERUSALEM DEMOLITIONS
Posted by Ralph Levy, June 29, 2009. |
|
My Comment: makes you wonder why the sudden change??
The article below was written by Nir Hasson and appeared in Haaretz
|
|
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat is set to announce a plan to freeze demolition orders on around 70 percent of unauthorized construction in the east of the city, Haaretz has learned. The municipality would also negotiate compensation terms with families evicted from the remaining 30 percent. The plan represents a departure from earlier statements, in which Barkat spoke out against illegal construction by Palestinians in East Jerusalem. According to various estimates, Jerusalem has some 20,000 unauthorized buildings, home to around 180,000 people. The demolition of each house requires considerable legal efforts and a heavy police presence, amid fears that protests by residents and housing activists can escalate into riots. In recent years, the municipality did not have the time or resources to demolish more than 100 houses a year. "Since the mayor took office, the municipality has been working on housing planning in the east of the city, which includes increasing construction opportunities in some areas, expanding housing in others and stopping illegal construction in areas where no construction is allowed," the mayor's office said in a statement. "The reality on the ground is being taken into consideration in the planning process when possible. City Hall will present the plans when the time is right." Upon taking office in November, Barkat spoke out several times against unauthorized construction, which soon provoked a clash between him and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In March, Barkat told reporters that Clinton's statements against house demolitions in East Jerusalem were "air" and that avoiding demolitions could "send the wrong message out to lawbreakers." He was quoted by The Associated Press as saying he rejected "the claims we're throwing people out of their homes. If you're building a house without the appropriate permits you need to be prepared to suffer the consequences." Sources close to Barkat said they were "astonished" at the forcefulness of the American reaction to what they perceived to be a purely municipal matter. The deputy mayor for East Jerusalem affairs, Yakir Segev, who is preparing the plan with Barkat, said it was the permits policy that pushed residents to build illegally, as only 18 permits were issued in 2008. "To get a construction permit in East Jerusalem you have to be more than a saint," said Segev. On the other hand, he said the municipality simply did not have the means to enforce all the demolition orders, and that there was no formal way to resolve the crisis. Gray houses Sources at City Hall told Haaretz that these two factors prompted the municipality to begin working on a new solution. The program was inspired by the Goldberg Committee's report, which recommended the legalization of certain unauthorized Bedouin villages in the Negev. In the Jerusalem plan, retroactive construction permits will not be handed out, but homes will be listed as "gray houses" — they will stay illegal but all legal actions against them will cease. Their new status will allow City Hall to collect municipal taxes, which will be invested in a separate municipal company to improve East Jerusalem, while the residents will be able to legally sell their houses if they wish. Owners of houses that do not receive formal status will have the chance to take part in negotiations on voluntary eviction with compensation. Barkat is currently seeking a project manager for the program. Sources in the municipality said the role had been offered to former Meretz MK Ran Cohen, but Cohen declined. Ralph Levy blogs at Politics1_Politics1 and can be reached by email at stargate_time@yahoo.com |
|
EUROPEAN FUNDING FOR THE NARRATIVE WAR
Posted by Gerald M. Steinberg, June 29, 2009. |
|
European efforts to play a major role in Arab-Israeli peace discussions have again been overshadowed, this time by US President Barack Obama's initiative. To raise Europe's visibility, the rate of official visits has increased, and a number of academic conferences on Europe's role are taking place. For example, yesterday the Hebrew University began a three-day conference with the ambitious headline "Strengthening the Forces of Moderation in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Role of the European Union After the Gaza War." For diplomats and policy-makers, a "frank and honest exchange of views" on the problematic European track record in academic settings could be very helpful in correcting decades of misjudgments. For example, during the Oslo process, the European Union and its member states were convinced that Yasser Arafat was a "force of moderation," providing him and his corrupt Fatah cronies with suitcases of money, justified as necessary to "grease the wheels" of the peace process and Palestinian state building. Instead, the cash went to foreign bank accounts and terror. In Europe, there have been very few independent analyses of these and other diplomatic and policy failures. Fearing embarrassment and worse, officials rejected calls for an independent investigation, until the European Parliament forced the European Commission to hold an inquiry (known as the OLAF report). But years later, this report remains top secret, meaning that few if any lessons were apparently learned. Given this record and the difficulties that Europe has in analyzing itself, serious academic research and conferences can play a very positive role. Unfortunately, many of these discussions of European policy feature speakers and officials who prefer to preach to Israelis rather than investigating their contribution to failure. In parallel, important issues related to policy failures are conspicuously absent from such conferences.
ONE SUBJECT consistently avoided in the quasi-official research and conference framework is the massive European funding for radical nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) whose activities fuel the conflict instead of "strengthening the forces of moderation," as proclaimed in the title of this conference. Through the "Barcelona program" and aid schemes, the European Commission and member governments provide tens of millions of euros every year to Palestinian, Israeli and other NGOs. The ostensible objectives include promoting democracy, peace, development and human rights, but the results are often counterproductive and fuel the conflict. These NGOs lead the demonization and delegitimization of Israel, through labels such as "apartheid" and "war crimes," based on the strategy adopted at the 2001 Durban Conference NGO Forum. For example, European NGO funding is the primary engine behind the "lawfare" assaults against Israeli military and civilian officials — a form of soft-war aggression through the courts which accompanies the "hard war" of terrorism. The current case in Spain (chosen for its lenient universal jurisdiction policies) is led by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which is funded by the European Commission, Norway, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and other governments. Indeed, PCHR is a central force in the NGO demonization and political warfare against Israel. These European-funded "lawfare" cases are part of the much wider process, conducted through highly political NGOs in Israel that seek to overturn the government's policies — groups like B'Tselem, Yesh Din, Machsom Watch, Bimkom, Ir Amim, Adalah, Mossawa, etc. (The EU claims to fund these NGOs under the guise of limited projects, but the amounts often constitute the bulk of the total operating budget.)
AN EXAMINATION of the activities of European funded NGOs demonstrates that they do not contribute to "strengthening the forces of moderation." Many are active in promoting anti-Israel boycott campaigns, one-state proposals (meaning the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state) and submitting tendentious claims to UN "investigatory" committees. A serious discussion of these issues would ask questions like: How does this happen? Who guides these decisions? Why are European government funds for NGOs used to undermine compromise, mutual acceptance and the two-state solution that Europe claims to support? The chaos in EU funding for NGOs and frequent overlaps add to these problems — there is no coordinator or central data source. European transparency regulations are ignored in this area, and no records or protocols are available for NGO allocations under European Commission programs. The names and possible conflicts of interests of the policy-makers are hidden from public scrutiny. Evaluation processes, if any, are secret, making it difficult to explore constructive changes. When NGO Monitor was unable to obtain the most basic documents and threatened a lawsuit under the EU's own transparency rules, European officials sent a CD containing about 50 documents, most of which had all the relevant information deleted including the names of NGO partner organizations and the evaluation criteria. It was impossible to decipher the few meaningless statements and figures that remained, making constructive evaluation impossible. These issues should be high on the agendas of discussions and conferences, such as the one taking place at Hebrew University. Unfortunately, these "difficult" subjects and conflicts are largely avoided. Comfortable but misleading headlines, such as "Strengthening the forces of moderation," take precedence over the open examination of European support for "lawfare," the "right of return" and Palestinian rejectionism. Gerald Steinberg is executive director of NGO Monitor and chairman of the Political Studies Department at Bar Ilan University. |
|
IDEOLOGUE-IN-CHIEF
Posted by Paul Rotenberg, June 29, 2009. |
|
The article below was written by Caroline Glick and it was
today in the Jerusalem Post
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1246296529986&pagename= JPArticle%2FShowFull Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Her book "The Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad," is available at Amazon.com. Visit her website at www.CarolineGlick.com. Contact her by email at caroline@carolineglick.com My comment written as message to Caroline, I agree with most of what you wrote here but not with your conclusion. He is, in a sense, Carter-like. He came out of nowhere, the electorate refused to look at who he really was and they elected an idea and got an unfulfilling real person, he is really too inexperienced to maintain the position and it all got exposed after he was elected president. But Carter was a much lower tech president in a much slower world and the art of communication is very different today. Carter had little experience or capability in communication and this is, of course, where Obama excels. He has a whole network of communicators around him who constitute a massive safety net, pinned up by the likes of Soros and lots of big money. They talk ideologies that the public, by and large, does not perceive or begin to understand. Did you ever walk out of a lecture and hear the other students say "Wow, that must have been really good, I didn't understand a word he said". The voters, the administration, the money, they are all too invested in him to "allow" him to fail. Finally, this communications thing is very malleable. I don't believe we will see the total failure in Washington that we saw under Carter, we will see a bigger and bigger, deeper and deeper hole being dug and Obama and his administration like spiders doing a dance on a web strung across the top, trying to stay level with the ground around them. Either the next president will have to climb out of a deep deep hole to re-float the ship of America freedom and democracy, if he is capable, or if he is not up to the task we are seeing the beginning of the demise of the American era. All in all, Obama has too many people, too invested in him, to allow abject failure. That is another article I've been wanting to write titled "Not With a Bang but a Whimper". We are used to seeing history through the lens of our history textbooks and that was all about memorizing dates. Things happened on specific dates that we could list on our tests. So the fall of the Roman Empire "happened" this era began and ended, that era began and ended. Someone must have snapped their fingers and it was done. We have even begun to see the Holocaust as an event that began and ended, we barely have the perspective that allows for the build up and the lengthily destruction of that evil empire. We are loosing context, cause and effect, as we have for most of history unless we are the professor who specializes in that particular era. In fact, when we hear that professor speak it is an epiphany that it was such a complex progression and that in the current parlance, it was so nuanced. (I hate that word because the way most people use it implies that it only applies to the issue they are discussing and the world itself is not completely "nuanced", but that is another whole rant). Anyway, back to bangs and whimpers, we are taught and view the world as a series of bangs and we expect things to happen in bangs. So people are watching for the American bang and all they are getting is a series of whimpers. We are seeing the demise of America in a series of whimpers and we do not recognize it because it is not what we expect to see. Historical perspective will eventually expose the bang and I wonder how many people will recognize it then. Paul |
|
For a brief moment it seemed that US President Barack Obama was moved by the recent events in Iran. On Friday, he issued his harshest statement yet on the mullocracy's barbaric clampdown against its brave citizens who dared to demand freedom in the aftermath of June 12's stolen presidential elections. Speaking of the protesters Obama said, "Their bravery in the face of brutality is a testament to their enduring pursuit of justice. The violence perpetrated against them is outrageous. In spite of the government's efforts to keep the world from bearing witness to that violence, we see it and we condemn it." While some noted the oddity of Obama's attribution of the protesters' struggle to the "pursuit of justice," rather than the pursuit of freedom — which is what they are actually fighting for — most Iran watchers in Washington and beyond were satisfied with his statement. Alas, it was a false alarm. On Sunday Obama dispatched his surrogates — presidential adviser David Axelrod and UN Ambassador Susan Rice — to the morning talk shows to make clear that he has not allowed mere events to influence his policies. After paying lip service to the Iranian dissidents, Rice and Axelrod quickly cut to the chase. The Obama administration does not care about the Iranian people or their struggle with the theocratic totalitarians who repress them. Whether Iran is an Islamic revolutionary state dedicated to the overthrow of the world order or a liberal democracy dedicated to strengthening it, is none of the administration's business. Obama's emissaries wouldn't even admit that after stealing the election and killing hundreds of its own citizens, the regime is illegitimate. As Rice put it, "Legitimacy obviously is in the eyes of the people. And obviously the government's legitimacy has been called into question by the protests in the streets. But that's not the critical issue in terms of our dealings with Iran." No, whether an America-hating regime is legitimate or not is completely insignificant to the White House. All the Obama administration wants to do is go back to its plan to appease the mullahs into reaching an agreement about their nuclear aspirations. And for some yet-to-be-explained reason, Obama and his associates believe they can make this regime — which as recently as Friday called for the mass murder of its own citizens, and as recently as Saturday blamed the US for the Iranian people's decision to rise up against the mullahs — reach such an agreement.
IN STAKING out a seemingly hard-nosed, unsentimental position on Iran, Obama and his advisers would have us believe that unlike their predecessors, they are foreign policy "realists." Unlike Jimmy Carter, who supported the America-hating mullahs against the America-supporting shah 30 years ago in the name of his moralistic post-Vietnam War aversion to American exceptionalism, Obama supports the America-hating mullahs against the America-supporting freedom protesters because all he cares about are "real" American interests. So too, unlike George W. Bush, who openly supported Iran's pro-American democratic dissidents against the mullahs due to his belief that the advance of freedom in Iran and throughout the world promoted US national interests, Obama supports the anti-American mullahs who butcher these dissidents in the streets and abduct and imprison them by the thousands due to his "hard-nosed" belief that doing so will pave the way for a meeting of the minds with their oppressors. Yet Obama's policy is anything but realistic. By refusing to support the dissidents, he is not demonstrating that he is a realist. He is showing that he is immune to reality. He is so committed to appeasing the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ali Khamenei that he is incapable of responding to actual events, or even of taking them into account for anything other than fleeting media appearances meant to neutralize his critics. Rice and Axelrod demonstrated the administration's determination to eschew reality when they proclaimed that Ahmadinejad's "reelection" is immaterial. As they see it, appeasement isn't dead since it is Khamenei — whom they deferentially refer to as "the supreme leader" — who sets Iran's foreign policy. While Khamenei is inarguably the decision maker on foreign policy, his behavior since June 12 has shown that he is no moderate. Indeed, as his post-election Friday "sermon" 10 days ago demonstrated, he is a paranoid, delusional America-bashing tyrant. In that speech he called Americans "morons" and accused them of being the worst human-rights violators in the world, in part because of the Clinton administration's raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993. Perhaps what is most significant about Obama's decision to side with anti-American tyrants against pro-American democrats in Iran is that it is utterly consistent with his policies throughout the world. From Latin America to Asia to the Middle East and beyond, after six months of the Obama administration it is clear that in its pursuit of good ties with America's adversaries at the expense of America's allies, it will not allow actual events to influence its "hard-nosed" judgments.
TAKE THE ADMINISTRATION'S response to the Honduran military coup on Sunday. While the term "military coup" has a lousy ring to it, the Honduran military ejected president Manuel Zelaya from office after he ignored a Supreme Court ruling backed by the Honduran Congress which barred him from holding a referendum this week that would have empowered him to endanger democracy. Taking a page out of his mentor Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez's playbook, Zelaya acted in contempt of his country's democratic institutions to move forward with his plan to empower himself to serve another term in office. To push forward with his illegal goal, Zelaya fired the army's chief of staff. And so, in an apparent bid to prevent Honduras from going the way of Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua and becoming yet another anti-American Venezuelan satellite, the military — backed by Congress and the Supreme Court — ejected Zelaya from office. And how did Obama respond? By seemingly siding with Zelaya against the democratic forces in Honduras who are fighting him. Obama said in a written statement: "I am deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of president Mel Zelaya." His apparent decision to side with an anti-American would-be dictator is unfortunately par for the course. As South and Central America come increasingly under the control of far-left America-hating dictators, as in Iran, Obama and his team have abandoned democratic dissidents in the hope of currying favor with anti-American thugs. As Mary Anastasia O'Grady has documented in The Wall Street Journal, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have refused to say a word about democracy promotion in Latin America. Rather than speak of liberties and freedoms, Clinton and Obama have waxed poetic about social justice and diminishing the gaps between rich and poor. In a recent interview with the El Salvadoran media, Clinton said, "Some might say President Obama is left-of-center. And of course that means we are going to work well with countries that share our commitment to improving and enhancing the human potential." But not, apparently, enhancing human freedoms. FROM IRAN to Venezuela to Cuba, from Myanmar to North Korea to China, from Sudan to Afghanistan to Iraq to Russia to Syria to Saudi Arabia, the Obama administration has systematically taken human rights and democracy promotion off America's agenda. In their place, it has advocated "improving America's image," multilateralism and a moral relativism that either sees no distinction between dictators and their victims or deems the distinctions immaterial to the advancement of US interests. While Obama's supporters champion his "realist" policies as a welcome departure from the "cowboy diplomacy" of the Bush years, the fact of the matter is that in country after country, Obama's supposedly pragmatic and nonideological policy has either already failed — as it has in North Korea — or is in the process of failing. The only place where Obama may soon be able to point to a success is in his policy of coercing Israel to adopt his anti-Semitic demand to bar Jews from building homes in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. According to media reports, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has authorized Defense Minister Ehud Barak to offer to freeze all settlement construction for three months during his visit to Washington this week. Of course, in the event that Obama has achieved his immediate goal of forcing Netanyahu to his knees, its accomplishment will hinder rather than advance his wider goal of achieving peace between Israel and its neighbors. Watching Obama strong-arm the US's closest ally in the region, the Palestinians and the neighboring Arab states have become convinced that there is no reason to make peace with the Jews. After all, Obama is demonstrating that he will deliver Israel without their having to so much as wink in the direction of peaceful coexistence. So if Obama's foreign policy has already failed or is in the process of failing throughout the world, why is he refusing to reassess it? Why, with blood running through the streets of Iran, is he still interested in appeasing the mullahs? Why, with Venezuela threatening to invade Honduras for Zelaya, is he siding with Zelaya against Honduran democrats? Why, with the Palestinians refusing to accept the Jewish people's right to self-determination, is he seeking to expel some 500,000 Jews from their homes in the interest of appeasing the Palestinians? Why, with North Korea threatening to attack the US with ballistic missiles, is he refusing to order the USS John McCain to interdict the suspected North Korean missile ship it has been trailing for the past two weeks? Why, when the Sudanese government continues to sponsor the murder of Darfuris, is the administration claiming that the genocide in Darfur has ended? The only reasonable answer to all of these questions is that far from being nonideological, Obama's foreign policy is the most ideologically driven since Carter's tenure in office. If when Obama came into office there was a question about whether he was a foreign policy pragmatist or an ideologue, his behavior in his first six months in office has dispelled all doubt. Obama is moved by a radical, anti-American ideology that motivates him to dismiss the importance of democracy and side with anti-American dictators against US allies. For his efforts, although he is causing the US to fail to secure its aims as he himself has defined them in arena after arena, he is successfully securing the support of the most radical, extreme leftist factions in American politics. Like Carter before him, Obama may succeed for a time in evading public scrutiny for his foreign-policy failures because the public will be too concerned with his domestic failures to notice them. But in the end, his slavish devotion to his radical ideological agenda will ensure that his failures reach a critical mass. And then they will sink him. Contact Paul Rotenberg by email at pdr@rogers.com |
|
OBAMA IS DANGEROUS TO ISRAEL
Posted by Shoula Horing, June 29, 2009. |
|
It seems obvious by now that President Obama seeks a clash and confrontation with Israel in order to improve U.S. relations with the Arab and Muslim world. Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that the U.S. president is picking a public fight with a supposed ally over the recycled and mostly mythical controversy that construction for natural growth inside already-existing Jewish settlements is the major obstacle to peace in the Middle East? But the warning signs indicate a much more dangerous scenario for Israel. It appears that President Obama's public confrontation and dictates are not only to pressure Israel to withdraw to the suicidal borders of 1967, but he is attempting to change a 40-year-old pillar of U.S. foreign policy of supporting and allying with Israel in the Middle East. President Obama seems to have adopted the point of view held for may years by those who are called " Arabists" in the tradition of former President Carter, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and ex-Sec of State James Baker, who believe that the reason there is no Middle East peace is that the United States has failed to become engaged in Middle East diplomacy and failed to pressure Israel to capitulate to Arab and Palestinians demands, including a settlement freeze and the two-state solution. Of course, those who are prone to take the Arab side have long believed that U.S. alliance with Israel is to blame for the conflict between the Arab/Muslim world and the U.S., resulting in anti-American hatred and terror. They advocate good relations with the strategically important, numerically superior, oil-rich Islamic nations of the Middle East at the expense of the United States' special alliance with Israel. Political sources close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu say that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama's senior political consultant, David Axelrod, are behind the clash between the administration and Israel. Israel historically has depended on the White House to balance the weight of the State and Defense departments, whose officials usually lean toward the Arab side. Israeli officials say that under Obama, the White House has become the main problem. Weakest link President Obama chose the settlement dispute because he perceived it as the weakest link in Congressional and American Jewish support for Israel, as both have been exposed for years to the Arab propaganda campaign of misinformation and historical revisionism. In his Cairo speech, Obama claimed that the settlements are" not legitimate and undermine efforts to achieve peace." This is the first and only administration since Carter to repeat the illegitimacy claim, which has no basis in international law. In 1967, Israel entered the West Bank in a war of self-defense after being attacked by Jordan. This is why, when it adopted Resolution 242 in November 1967, the U.N. Security Council did not call Israel to withdraw from all territories it captured. Rather, 242 allows Israeli presence in some of the West Bank territories. The previous occupier of the West Bank had been Jordan, which conquered the area in 1949 in an aggressive conquest. Jordanian sovereignty in the territory was not recognized by the international community, apart from Pakistan and Britain. Prior to the 1949, the governing document for legal rights in the West Bank was the 1922 League Of Nations Palestine Mandate, given to the British in order to establish a Jewish home in Palestine. There was never an Arab or Muslim state called Palestine or any other name in any area west of the Jordan River; only a Jewish one. Palestine was a geographic name for the area given by the Romans 2,000 years ago after they destroyed the Jewish state called Judea. It seems that, legally, Israel has a better title to the area than Jordan or any other future Palestinian entity. Negligible issue The claim that settlement activity is an obstacle to peace because it will diminish the territory of a future Palestinian entity is baseless. First, the amount of territory taken up by the built-up area of all 121 settlements in the West Bank, with 245,000 residents, is estimated to be just 1.7 percent of the territory. Most of the settlements are located in major blocs, very close to the 1949 armistice line. Many of them are suburbs of Jerusalem, such as Gush Etzion, Maale Adumim and Ariel. The argument that a settlement will undermine a future territorial compromise lost much of it force after Israel dismantled settlements in the Sinai in 1982 as part of its peace treaty with Egypt and unilaterally withdrew 9,000 Israeli settlers and dismantled all settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Moreover, for the last five years, since the advent of the "Road Map" international peace plan, all Israeli governments, including the present one, have adhered to guidelines that were discussed with President Bush but never formally adopted: that there would be no new settlements; no Palestinian-owned land would be expropriated or otherwise seized for the purpose of expanding exiting settlements; public funds would not be earmarked for encouraging settlements; no new outposts would be built; and construction would be confined to within the boundaries of existing settlements for "natural growth." So the public fight initiated by the Obama administration with a democratic ally was not over physical expansion of settlements into disputed territories but over a negligible issue such as construction for "natural growth" inside existing settlements for a population growth, This encompasses things like adding a room to a house or a floor to a house when a baby is born, or adding another classroom to a school or kindergarten. For the last five years, the major settlement blocs are becoming more populated, but not geographically larger, which does not affect Palestinian life, interfere with Palestinian mobility or agricultural activity and does not take land that Palestinians owned or used. It has been understood in the last decade by both Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush that, in any final peace treaty, Israel will keep the major close-in blocs of settlements and compensate the Palestinian accordingly with land swaps from within Israel itself. President Clinton agreed to that in 2000 at Camp David and in 2001 at Taba, Egypt. President Bush agreed to this principle in a 2004 letter to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Stating that "in light of new realities on the ground ... it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final-status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." The two-state solution In his Cairo speech, Obama's reiterated his position that the only solution to the Middle East conflict is the so-called two-state solution. But in fact, whenever an Israel government has offered the Palestinians a sovereign, Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, Palestinian Authority leaders rejected the offer and never even made a counteroffer. In 2001 in Taba, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to Arafat — in the presence of President Clinton — an independent Palestinian state in all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank with a divided Jerusalem. Arafat rejected the offer and started the second intifada, a campaign of terror which resulted in the death of over 1,000 Israelis. In December, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, made Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — in the presence of President Bush — an unprecedented peace proposal in which Israel would retain only 6.5 percent of the West Bank, and, in return, the Palestinians would receive full territorial compensation from inside Israel. Jerusalem would be divided on a demographic basis, with the Palestinians having sovereignty over the Christian and Muslim quarters in the Old City, with the Temple Mount — the holiest site of the Jews — to be entrusted to a special international regime. Olmert also accepted the principle of a "right of return" for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and offered to settle thousands within Israel. But the so-called moderate Palestinian leader rejected this offer to end the "occupation" and achieve a two-state solution. It seems the Arab world still has only a one-state solution for the Middle East. It is a "final solution" that eliminates Israel altogether. Pressure will intensify Now, even though Netanyahu has explicitly agreed to the concept of a Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state, a true and secure peace for Israel will not occur under Obama's watch. Instead, unfair pressure, public confrontations, dictates and blame will intensify against Israel. A "two-state solution" might appease the Arab/Muslim world, but it will endanger Israel's security. In a recent poll, just 6 percent of Jewish Israelis consider the views of President Obama to be pro-Israel while 50 percent considered the policies of Obama to be more pro-Palestinian. Eventually, the majority of Jews in the U.S. who voted for Obama will have to decide who they need and support more — Israel and its people, or Obama.
Shoula Romano Horing was born and raised in Israel. She is an
attorney, a national speaker and a radio host in Kansas City, Mo. Her
e-mail address is Shoula1@aol.com
|
|
SHARIA RAPIDLY INNUNDATING THE UK
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, June 29, 2009. |
|
This was posted yesterday by Freedom Fighter on the JoshuaPundit website
|
|
Ever since the UK caved in[1] and allowed sharia courts legal jurisdiction in civil matters, the face of used-to-be-Great Britain has changed remarkably, as sharia courts metastasize and dispense Islamic justice[2] behind closed doors.. The tribunals, working mainly from mosques, settle financial and family disputes according to religious principles. They lay down judgments which can be given full legal status if approved in national law courts. Intimidation? Death threats? Unfair to women? No, really? I can't imagine what else the British government expected when they allowed British justice and common law to be bypassed in favor of a 7th century barbarism that only contributes to British Muslims being separated from the country's mainstream. It's a green light to Islamist separatists like The Muslim Council Of Britain to essentially create a state within a state. A prediction: don't be surprised if our Dear Leader, the self-proclaimed Defender of the Islamic Faith[3] makes a push for a similar layer of sharia courts in America. Remember, you heard it here first. Footnotes [1] http://joshuapundit.blogspot.com/2008/09/bye-byebritain.html [2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196165/
[3] http://joshuapundit.blogspot.com/2009/06/
Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com
|
|
AMERICANS & RADICAL ISLAM: WHO IS BIASED?; OBAMA'S ABSURD DECREES; "NATURAL GROWTH" & ILLEGAL ARAB BUILDING
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 29, 2009. |
|
CHINA & INDIA MAKE AMERICA'S MISTAKES China demands that an international treaty on global warming exempt India and China, now creating the most greenhouse gases. China argues that since the U.S. developed by burning fuel, China and India should have that privilege. The U.S. did not know it was harming the environment. Now China does know that it harms the environment. Its pollution sickens its own people and spreads abroad. I think that the Chinese position is reckless. President Bush was correct to reject the Kyoto accords, for they embodied China's position. China and India are making America's worst domestic mistake. They are building roads and buying cars. That will use up the world's fuel sooner, warm the globe sooner, and pollute more. People will spend time in traffic, instead of on more efficient mass-transit or working near home. How old-fashioned!. Since the end of the gasoline era is in sight, it may well be in their lifetimes, those Chinese will have cars without fuel. Meanwhile, they drive up our Con Ed bills. AMERICANS & RADICAL ISLAM: BIAS & OBJECTIVITY Interesting story, the NY Times reporter escaping from Taliban captivity! He enters war zones to get the other side's story. They kidnapped him. Why? They didn't demand money or political concessions. We do know that totalitarian Muslims fear independent journalism. They often don't care how sympathetic or willing to listen the reporters are. If the reporters are Westerners, Radical Muslims may turn on them. This isn't a case, then, of grievances. This is a case of barbarism against civilization. I estimate that Radical Islam is 90% wrong and civilization is 90% right. Radical Islam's whole cause is wrong, but civilized countries aren't angelic. They may exploit or make unfair demands. Example: the U.S. armed Saddam with weapons of mass-destruction against Iran. The U.S. must learn to refrain from such callous, self-defeating expediency. At least civilized countries don't promote hatred of other faiths, their conquest, their murder, and imposition of backward dictatorship upon them. Some readers mistake my arguments against military and political Islam for bias against religious Islam, and object to it. But I don't object to the religious aspects of Islam, they are not my business. I object to political and military attempts to impose Islam on others. I treasure freedom, warts and all. If bias concerns those readers, why don't they object to the bias by Radical Islam? They can see only one side, the least meritorious one. They also jump to conclusions from a single article of limited scope, and complain that I omitted other sub-topics. The other topics usually are in some of my 360 other articles. OBAMA POLICY ON IRAN & ISRAEL MORE ABSURD President Obama is making it increasingly clear that he is not
going to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Therefore, his
demand that Israel jeopardize its national security and national
identity to the Arabs, in return for U.S. action to stop Iran, becomes
increasingly absurd
This policy never was logical. Neither was it challenged by the conventional media and conventional politicians, however illogical the policy. Those parties almost always get it wrong, but those are the ones whose views get most heard. Not enough people have learned to get their information from a variety of sources including non-conventional ones. To start a string on Obama's policies on Israel, click here: (Obama duplicityon Israel, Iran) HAMAS STOLE & ABUSED MORE HUMANITARIAN AID Hamas seized thousands of tons of medical equipment, moved it to warehouses or used it for its gunmen, and sold the rest to citizens. Hamas also seized 46 ambulances donated to the Palestinian
Authority in Gaza. After stripping them of medical supplies, It
repainted them and used them as troop transports
Compare the Radical Muslims' actual depravity with their false accusations of same against Israel. The Radical Muslims think evil of the Jews because they are taught to but also, in my opinion, because that is how they act, so they expect others to act likewise. For more on Hamas' callous abuse of its own people, click here:
U.S. SEEKS EGYPT'S HELP Under-Secretary of State Burns said that the U.S. seeks Egypt's help on a variety of issues. "The peace process between the Palestinians and Israel, the scene in Iraq and Sudan as well as a number of issues of bilateral concern were discussed" (http://www.imra.org.il/ — Independent Media Research & Analysis, 6/8). It would be about time that Egypt helps. I remember when it helped terrorists escape U.S. pursuit. Egypt is a dictatorship that favors jihad against Israel, not peace. Egypt has helped block action against Sudan's genocide. The U.S. tends to get burned by reliance upon Muslim "allies" — remember the CENTRO alliance? The U.S. called S. Arabia an ally, while it was the main sponsor of jihad. The U.S. had better be careful. So should everyone else. The U.S. does not always act in good faith. Will Egypt deal in good faith? For ideas on that, click here:
For a piece showing we can't rely on Egypt, click here:
NEW ABBAS & OBAMA DEMAND OF ISRAEL The Palestinian Authority (P.A.) and President Obama have devised a new demand of Israel. The P.A. will claim that its retrained forces have lived up to their end of the bargain, so Israeli forces should withdraw from all checkpoints and P.A. cities. The P.A. will further demand that the IDF not be let back in. The bargain was that the P.A. would show that it can eradicate
terrorism, in return for removal of IDF forces. The P.A. did not
fulfill its task. Terrorism was not eradicated. The P.A., itself,
continues to advocate bigotry and terrorism. Few terrorists have had
success, not because of P.A. police, but because of IDF raids and
checkpoints. Whenever Israel reduces its raids and checkpoints,
terrorism ramps right back up
The P.A. and Abbas remain dedicated to jihad and approving of terrorism when practical. Jihad overall is anti-American. If Obama endorses the P.A. position, the proof would mount that he is anti-Israel, anti-peace, and anti-American, in fact if not entirely in theory. For those who just started reading my articles, I made similar criticism of President Bush and his mentor, Secretary Rice. This is not a partisan issue. The State Dept., which guides our Presidents, doesn't care about political parties but about its biases and its turf. To help gauge Abbas' sincerity and flexibility in negotiation, click
here:
NATURAL GROWTH" & ILLEGAL ARAB BUILDING This is taken from Israel's plan to boost the economy of the Palestinian Authority (P.A.). Area C is controlled by the P.A., Area B by Israel. "These projects, conducted based on a master plan meeting Western standards, including amenities such as gardens etc., enable Palestinian villages in area B to legalize previously unauthorized construction spilling over into area C, expanding the boundaries of these villages, and enabling them to develop within these expanded boundaries. It should be noted that these projects have made it possible to cancel demolition orders previously issued for these areas and leave existing construction in place." (http://www.imra.org.il/ — Independent Media Research & Analysis, 6/10). Why doesn't the U.S. object to that natural growth and illegal construction? Why doesn't Israel? Israel discriminates against Jews, just as does the U.S. against the Jewish "settlers." To help evaluate State Dept. sincerity on settlements, click here:
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 and visit his website:
|
|
DRENCHING LITTLE SRULIK
Posted by LEL, June 29, 2009. |
|
This was written by Sarah Honig as a Another Tack column in the June 25, 2009 Jerusalem Post |
|
When I grew up, got to meet and even strike up a friendship with my childhood idol Dosh (the late Kariel Gardosh), I asked him which, to his mind, was his most enduring political caricature. For that, he replied, we need to return to December 1956, approximately a month after the Sinai Campaign and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Dosh noticed that while the international community was seething about Israel's feisty self-defense, it wasn't overly perturbed about the human rights and self-determination brazenly crushed beneath heavy military armor right in Central Europe. 
Dosh produced far more dramatic and memorable cartoons, but he estimated that the situation portrayed in this one would always stay topical. The hypocrisy, Dosh recalled, was hardly surprising but nevertheless galling, particularly the shamelessness of it. So he compressed it all into one frame. In the background a house labeled Hungary is going up in flames. In the foreground UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold, in firefighter gear, wields a hose labeled UN. But he's not dousing the blaze. He's drenching little Israel — Dosh's iconic sandal-clad Srulik — who stands soaked, angry and perplexed as he's subjected to more wet punishment. Dosh produced way more dramatic and memorable cartoons, but he estimated that the situation portrayed in this one would always stay topical. He predicted that Israel would always be the world's whipping boy, thrashed for the misdeeds of others and used for diversionary tactics. Instead of dealing with urgent crises and genuinely alarming dangers, the powers-that-be will rage at Israel to draw attention away from their own dereliction and cowardice. "The old czars," Dosh noted, "used to say, 'Beat the Jews and save Russia.' Today it's 'beat the Jews and save the world.'" He reckoned "this would stay true even when nobody remembers Hammarskjold."
IF DOSH only knew how right he was. Today he'd probably have produced a very similar pen-and-ink commentary, but with Iran burning and Barack Obama extinguishing — Israel. The more things change, the more they stay the same. As pro-democracy demonstrators are killed in Teheran and as its ayatollahs further their designs to arm themselves with nukes, the leader of the free world harps on Israeli settlements. You can almost understand where he's coming from. Iran is a tough customer, and crazy too. It's tempting not to rile it and to deflect criticism by focusing on some lonely remote outposts in the middle of Judea and Samaria's barren moonscape. Not only isn't Israel scary like Iran, it'll broadmindedly collaborate in an effort to appease its detractors. How facile it therefore is to claim that peace and bliss on earth hinge on tearing down a few Jewish tents, rickety lean-tos, ramshackle sheds and decrepit trailers. It's true heroism to take them on in the guise of securing global propriety. It's plain to see that no greater peril plagues humanity — if we only avert our gaze from Iran, that is. Accordingly, to stress the need to downplay the Iranian fuss, Obama gave his people a lesson in moral relativism: "It's important to understand that, although there is amazing ferment taking place in Iran, the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised." Not unexpectedly, Obama informed the unenlightened masses that he won't take sides:" I take a wait-and-see approach... It is not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling in Iranian elections." Of course it's one thing to entertain such notions, but quite another to broadcast them out loud. All sorts of perceptions may prevail in the Oval Office and shape policy, so long as they're not ballyhooed. Blabbermouth statecraft, however, is a bad idea. Noisy hype doesn't go unnoticed, especially not in the nuance-sensitive Mideast. Obama may arrogantly consider himself superclever, but his overtly declared nonintervention is equivalent to intervention. His error is eerily reminiscent of the series of egregious errors toward Teheran during the term of Jimmy Carter, the past-president most like Obama, though hardly as radical.
IN HIS MEMOIRS, Ayatollah Khomeini's first foreign minister Ebrahim Yazdi writes that "the shah was doomed the minute Carter entered the White House." The novice president indiscreetly sent all the wrong signals, beginning with an exceedingly public cold-shoulder to the shah. The mullahs were heartened and exuded confidence. Increasingly shaken, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi sought to ingratiate himself to Carter by relaxing restrictions on opposition agitators. That further emboldened the religious fanatics and spawned unrest. Carter admonished the shah against quelling the disturbances by force. Willy-nilly, Carter's bungling was instrumental in installing a reactionary, repressive theocracy in Teheran. Under the banner of freedom, Carter helped the forces of medieval darkness. The shah was a goner and the ayatollahs repaid Carter by holding 52 American embassy staffers hostage for 444 days until he was replaced by Ronald Reagan. Carter's indisputable legacy was the bloodshed of the Iran-Iraq War, the carnage at the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center and Israeli Embassy, the burgeoning of Hizbullah and Hamas, the co-option of Syria/Lebanon and Gaza into Iran's evil sphere, massive worldwide terror-mongering and lately nuclear ambitions and rhetoric about wiping Israel off the map. During the entire embassy standoff fiasco, strikingly ineffectual Carter dithered piteously. Yet he compensated for inaction on one front by hyperactivity on another. As per the Dosh depiction, he turned the water-jets on Israel.
CARTER'S ENTIRE diplomatic energy reserves were misspent on pressuring Menachem Begin at Camp David, and quite ruthlessly. His latent anti-Semitism would finally manifest itself with the publication of his Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. His misguided liberalism in international affairs led Carter to bolster the worst despots in our time while lashing out at one of the most intrinsically democratic of societies anywhere — Israel. Unrepentant, Carter hobnobbed with Gaza's terror-kingpins last week and spuriously censured Israel for treating Gazans "more like animals than human beings... Never before in history has a large community been savaged by bombs and missiles and then deprived of the means to repair itself... This abuse must cease. The crimes must be investigated. The wall must be brought down, and the basic right of freedom must come to you," he told Hamastan's ayatollah-proxies, without a word about Israel's pullback from Gaza, the uprooting of 21 settlements and the atrocities that Gaza subsequently unleashed on Israel. Carter is Obama's mentor and Obama is the new Carter. Their motto is: In democracy's name be kind to democracy's most rabid enemies and be nasty to embattled democrats. Hence, while it's "not productive" for Obama to meddle in Iran, it's imperative he meddle in Israel. Deja vu. As in Carter's administration, a lopsided artificial balance must be struck in pseudo-sophisticated statesmanship. In other words, no matter where fires flare uncontrollably, the fire hoses will be aimed at Israel. This is why Dosh's nearly 53-year-old caricature remains ever-relevant — just as he predicted.
Contact LEL at LEL817@yahoo.com
|
|
MOUSAVI, AHMADINEJAD, AND ISRAEL
Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, June 28, 2009. |
|
But, some background first... One would think, with all the hatred towards Jews and Israel spewing forth out of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian mullahs' mouths, that Iran has always been the bitter enemy of the Jewish nation. Not so...in fact, the Kurash Prism is an ancient Iranian document which gives testimony to Cyrus the Great's decree allowing the Jews to return to Judea, freeing them from their captivity in Babylon in 539 B.C.E. It corroborates the Jews' own Biblical account beautifully in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah. And then there is the Book of Esther, again, in the Hebrew Bible as well, again testifying to this age-old relationship between these two ancient peoples. Jews were grateful to their powerful Iranian liberators and served in their armies throughout their empire. At the fortress in Elephantine, Egypt, for example ancient documents related to this were discovered along with a synagogue built there for Jewish soldiers serving under the Iranian ruler. Centuries later, when Judea fought for its freedom and independence against the Roman Empire in the 1st and 2nd centuries C.E, it was Iran, again, which came to the Jews' aid. And centuries later still, on the eve of the Arab explosion out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century C.E., ancient documents record a Jewish army aligning itself with Iran against the hated Byzantines. So, what happened? Well, for one thing, there was that not-so-little thing briefly mentioned above...the Arab conquest. After Muhammad and his successor imperial, Caliphal armies burst out of the Peninsula in all directions, both Israel/Judea/Palestina and Iran fell to the Arabs' jihad in the spread of their Dar ul-Islam. In the Middle East, especially, often internal differences due to ethnic and national conflict are reflected in religious expression. The Khorasani and other mawali–disgruntled Iranian converts to Islam — thus became followers of the martyred 'Ali...Shiites...in opposition to the brand of Islam of their Arab conquerors, the Sunni Umayyads. They supported the Abbasids, who would soon conquer the Umayyad seat of Sunni Arabism in Damascus. Baghdad would next become the new capital of Islam. Struggles between the Shi'a and Sunni continued, but by the 16th century the former became the adopted religion of state by Iran's Safavid Shahs. While the fate of Jews under both branches of Islam was fragile, to say the least, in some ways it was even worse at the hands of the Shi'a. Thus, as the centuries progressed in a henceforth Muslim Iran — and a Shia one, at that — Jews would soon find themselves in an awkward position whereby their very lives and livelihoods depended upon a powerful, more secular political ruler (Shah) who could act more on their collective behalf against the powerful force of the hostile religious establishment, the ulema and the mullahs. While some pre-Islamic problems are noted in the Book of Esther, the fate of Iranian Jews had far more ups and downs clear up to the present time due to the situation brought on with the Arab Muslim conquest of the land. And since Jews were largely dependent on the political power of the Shahs, if the latter were unjust or whatever, the masses — stirred up by the mullahs — frequently took it out on the Jews. Okay...let's jump to the present. Recently, Iran held a presidential election in which the mullahs' front man, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, supposedly defeated Mir Hossein Mousavi. Major demonstrations against Ahmadinejad and the mullahs have broken out by numerous people who feel that the election was stolen. The mullahs' Revolutionary Guards have given warning that their patience is wearing thin. Whatever the differences in foreign policy which might exist between the two candidates (probably not many), the protests are mainly over internal matters...freedom, in all of its true democratic forms, as the main example. And this, my friends, is the real reason for folks like Ahmanejad's professed hatred of the Jews and the Jew of the Nations... Undemocratic, oppressive dictators always make sure that they have at least one great, external bogeyman to channel internal frustration, unrest, and violence against. Who better than the world's scapegoat and whipping post par excellence...the Jew? Hopefully, more and more Iranian people will start to see through this
injustice as they rethink that age-old relationship between their own
nation and that of the Jews.
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:
This article appeared on the Last Crusade website:
|
|
IS OBAMA A PRESIDENT OF A DEMOCRACY OR A KING/DICTATOR?
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, June 28, 2009. |
|
Americans thought they were electing a President for a democratic nation. Little did they know they were about to elect a King to rule over all Americans. Kings have their own self-centered agendas, often believing their rule is one of destiny, chosen by their gods. To what gods has Barack Hussein Obama pledged his allegiance? Who will be his chosen friends and new allies in the world? Many have wondered about Obama's true agenda. Where does his heart and soul lie? Perhaps he is, as claimed, a true Christian or, in his other self, he is the Muslim as he was born. While Obama's words for Israel speak of "peace", his actions and those he has gathered around him speak of an agenda that sides with Islam's goal to eradicate the Jewish State from the Earth. Perhaps Obama is not an evil man but, his soul has bonded (as if they are his true blood brothers) with Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, among others — while they act as enemies of the democratic nations of America and Israel. Some will think that Obama made a Faustian bargain with the devil to claim his destiny as King of America. In doing so, he has taken on the obligation of rule in his mind by divine right. Obama would not be the first ruler/dictator whose supreme arrogance led him to believe he was doing his god's work. We have seen such self-delusion in Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, Saddam Hussein, the Iranian Ayatollahs, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Hafez al Assad — even back to ancient times. Perhaps it starts merely as ambition but, that ambition grows uncontrollably and soon there stands a man who believes the gods smile upon him — That he is to be lord and master over a whole nation, perhaps even the world. But, to fulfill his destiny he has to take up the sword against the One G-d and His chosen people, the Jews. Such dictators propagate the belief that the nation of Israel must be cut down, along with the Jewish people IF Obama and his followers are to lead the world — or at least America. Perhaps, not so strangely, the nations and civilizations who attacked Israel at any point in historical time to conquer the Jews in order to add the One G-d of the Jews to their panoply of gods have all vanished. Only the Jews have remained a a people for over 3000 years. Now Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people in their ancient homeland and with their ancient language. We observe in our own time that the more American Presidents move against the Jewish State, the more catastrophes are visited upon America — including hurricanes, volcanoes, great heat or cold, drought, plagues of dire illnesses and now the financial melt-down of the American economy. It takes either a very brave man or a fool to challenge the G-d of the Jews. One can, of course, be both a brave man and a fool. When Obama made his speech in Cairo deferring to the Muslim world, it was obvious that another catastrophe would inevitably follow soon. We now watch in horror as the Iranian Republican Guard and Security Forces viciously slaughter their own people who are demonstrating unarmed in the streets. Eyewitnesses describe the Hamas and Hezb'Allah Palestinians beating and breaking of bones of innocents. The young people protesting the fraudulent election call these Arabic-speaking Palestinians "animals" and "thugs" for their virulent attacks. This people's resistance to their country's fraudulent election may spark a revolution in Iran from the radical Islamic dictatorship — despite the Ahmadinejad government's violent attacks. Such a real peoples' revolution could likely send a message to the other 56 Islamic nations to similarly rise up against repressive Muslim rule. We observe North Korea preparing more accurate missiles and rockets with greater range — accompanied with nuclear tests. All this prepared potential for a Nuclear Holocaust is proceeding in several countries now (especially Iran and North Korea) — under Obama's watch — as he ramps up his adversarial attacks only against the Land of Israel and the Jewish people — in obsequious deference to Islam. I know there is more, perhaps worse, coming. Whether it will be called Armageddon among other catastrophic prophecies, only time will tell. America is a great, noble and generous country. Her people are extraordinary when it comes to rescuing other nations from tyrants. Regrettably, all that can change in the hands of a regime where her leader, along with others, believe they can run the country without the interference of America's legal Constitution. That attitude is prevailing as friends and allies are betrayed and America's Treasury is raided as if a Coup d'etat has already been implemented and Obama "owns" the Treasury with all that pours into it as either taxes or confiscation. Perhaps the destiny Obama seeks as an articulate amateur are the failures he is stimulating. The talk in Washington among the insiders is that Obama will no longer listen to anyone, believing he is the messiah who can therefore do no wrong. Hopefully, America and Israel can survive his one term in office. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at gwinston@gwinstonglobal.org |
|
OBAMA'S MOVE AGAINST JERUSALEM GETS CLEARER
Posted by Susana K-M, June 28, 2009. |
|
This comes from the June 26, 2009 One Jerusalem website: http://www.onejerusalem.org/2009/06/obamas-move-against-jerusalem.php
|
|
This week Obama's favorite think tank, The Center for American
Progress, issued a report
The study's premise is that the Old City of Jerusalem is a problem. This means that the State of Israel must give up control of the Old City. (It should be noted that reports of the Center of American Progress have repeatedly stated the thinking of the Obama Administration. One Jerusalem brought the Center's influence to public attention and it was the basis for our predictions that Obama would give a speech to the Muslim World and try to negotiate with Iran's mullahs.) The Center's report on Jerusalem focuses on what entity should replace the State of Israel as the administrator of the Old City, i.e. The Temple Mount, Churches, etc. It does not entertain the idea that Israel should continue in this role. It does not acknowledge that since the State of Israel wrested control of the Old City it has been secure and open to all people. This reality was certainly not the case from 1948 to 1967 when Jewish population was forcefully ejected from the Old City and its synagogues and schools destroyed. In other words, Obama begins with the premise that the current successful situation must be replaced to satisfy the Palestinians. The plan they highlight creates a third party administrator of the Old City. This, of course, will be a failed experiment. At best it will create a situation that the Old City will be the center of dispute and conflict. For one, Israeli security will be replaced by some international body: The Ant-Israel United Nations? Obama's determination to bend over backward to satisfy the political whims of Israel's enemies is clear, disturbing, and dangerous. It must be stopped. If you want to be part of saving Jerusalem from Obama we urge you to take a few minutes to bring this blog post to the attention of friends, relatives, and supporters of Israel. Urge them to sign our petition to keep Jerusalem united under the State of Israel so they can stay informed about what is happening and they can participate in action items we will bring to your attention during the coming months. To sign the petition, click here. If you care about the future of Jewish controlled Jerusalem now is the time to get involved. Contact Susana K-M at suanema@gmail.com |
|
PLEASE GIVE $10 — OBAMA'S OUTPOST!!!
Posted by Buddy Macy, June 28, 2009. | |
Your contribution of $10 will be greatly appreciated! Send your $10 to
Please forward this to your list, NOW!
| |
|
Background: News Item — Arutz-7, June 5, 2009. (IsraelNN.com) A new settlement point was erected Friday next to the Samarian Jewish community of Kokhav Ya'akov. From Fundable.com
The plan is simple:
Why is what we are doing important? As Obama leads the world to demand an Arab State in the middle of the Land of Israel, we must all send a very strong message that the Jewish People and all supporters of the Land of Israel will not allow for its destruction! In addition this project will help strengthen the morale of the courageous Jewish youth that go out and rebuild over and over again. Why $10 and not more? We understand that Obamas Outpost will be destroyed many times. Do to the difficult economic times we do not want to make any serious financial demands on anyone. However if thousands of us make that small $10 donation it will become a very hefty sum and no one will feel the loss personally. As a community it will help strengthen our resolve. PLEASE NOTE:
Contact Buddy Macy by email at vegibud@gmail.com |
|
TWO ARTICLES ON PALESTINIAN ISSUES
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 28, 2009. |
|
1. PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY PRIME MINISTER SALAM FAYYAD'S RESPONSE: A NARRATIVE HE DARES NOT SPEAK
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's big policy speech received global attention. Not so that of his Palestinian counterpart, Salam Fayyad. Fayyad's June 22 presentation deserves careful analysis. Fayyad is prime minister for one reason only: to please Western governments and financial donors. Lacking political skill, ideological influence, or strong support base, Fayyad does keep the money flowing since he's relatively honest, moderate, and professional on economic issues. But his own people don't listen to him. Most PA politicians want him out. International pressure keeps him in. So here's the Fayyad paradox. If he really represented Palestinian stances and thinking, there'd be some hope for peace. Since he's so out of tune with colleagues, though, Fayyad sounds sharply different from them. And even he's highly restricted by what's permissible in PA politics, limits which ensure the PA's failure, absence of peace, and non-existence of a Palestinian state. His first problem is that Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and seeks the PA's overthrow in the West Bank. Most Fatah and PA leaders prefer peace with Hamas rather than Israel. Make no mistake: this is a mutually exclusive choice. If Hamas merged with the PA the resulting would be far too radical to negotiate a solution, not to mention being en route to becoming dominated by Tehran-allied radical Islamism. Moreover, to keep the door open for such conciliation, the PA can't come closer to making a deal with Israel. But that's not all. In veiled — an appropriate word here — language, Fayyad says Palestinians must avoid "politicizing" the Gaza issue so that any sanctions continue against the Hamas regime there. By not opposing the suicide bombers, Fayyad follows suicidal policies. By fighting any isolation or sanctions on Hamas, the PA ensures that Hamas tightens its hold on the Gaza Strip and so doesn't need to accept PA leadership. By supporting Hamas's ability to attack Israel without costs, the PA ensures its Islamist rival can appear to be the more effective fighter against Israel, thus undermining the appeal of PA leadership or of any peaceful solution. Second, while not directly endorsing terrorism and violence — in contrast to most of his colleagues and the PA's own institutions — Fayyad argues that Israel holding any Palestinian prisoners in jail is "a violation of international law." In other words, if a Palestinian attacks or murders Israelis, Israel has no right to imprison him. What option does it have? Only to set them free to try again. Here, too, he supports and glorifies cost-free terrorism. Indeed, only a few days before, some of his top officials sat in the audience of a show in which the ruling Fatah party bragged that it was the proper Palestinian leader because it was more effective at anti-Israel terorrism than Hamas. Third, Fayyad argues that it's not the PA's job to convince Israel by its behavior or to negotiate bilaterally on the basis of mutual concessions and compromises. Instead, as other PA leaders have openly stated recently, the PA's strategy is to get the world to pressure Israel to give it everything it wants. While presenting his speech partly as a response to Netanyahu, Fayyad confronts none of the Israeli leader's points, merely dismissing his position as a vague, which it certainly wasn't." (Ironically, in contrast to most Western observers, Fayyad acknowledges that Netanyahu endorsed a two-state solution six years ago). But it's Fayyad who is vague — Netanyahu gives a list of specific Israeli conditions; Fayyad does nothing of the kind. In fact, he does something peculiar. According to him, Netanyahu is presenting an "Israeli narrative" about the conflict, while Palestinians say they have their own "narrative," but Fayyad says he won't talk about it! Why is he so vague rather than giving his own case? Because he cannot do so. The Israeli narrative as laid out by Netanyahu is clear: Jews want and merit a state; the conflict is due to an Arab refusal to accept that state's existence. This Israeli narrative does not prevent a two-state solution, one state for each people. The Palestinian narrative, to this day, is that Jews have no such right to a state and that all the land is rightly Palestinian, Arab, and (for most) Muslim. This Palestinian narrative does prevent a two-state solution, and its continuity — even reinforcement by Hamas most of all but also by the PA — is the cause for the peace process's failure and the fact that it will continue to fail. That is what Fayyad cannot admit. Indeed, the main Palestinian strategy debate is merely about the most effective way of wiping Israel off the map. He does claim that Palestinians' "main aspiration" is to have their own homeland, which he promises will live in peace, cooperation, and respect with its neighbor. But he cannot say it would resettle all Palestinian refugees within its borders, won't bring in foreign troops, will end the conflict permanently, or will provide Israel with security guarantees. It will certainly never recognize Israel as a Jewish state even while the PA's own constitution defines Palestine as an Arab and Muslim state. Fayyad might prefer such an outcome, but that's not the Palestinian position and he knows it. Fayyad says the PA has done a good job and that "the citizens sense this progress." Why, then, is the PA afraid to hold elections, even in the West Bank? It is no secret that the PA isn't popular and fears Hamas's appeal. He speaks of building a strong economy, dealing with poverty, developing social services yet gives no sense of how this might be done. Even given massive international subsidies, the PA's management remains poor, riddled with corruption and incompetence. Fayyad can do nothing to reform it since the political elite isn't with him and he has no power over the warlords and their gunmen who are often the real powers in the West Bank. Finally, he predicts a Palestinian state within two years. Yet he has no way to make this happen except to prove that the real reason the peace process hasn't succeeded is the misconception "that it is always possible to exert pressure on the weaker side in the conflict as if there is no limit to the concessions that it could offer." In other words, the reason why peace has not been achieved is because the PA had to make all the concessions. The truth, of course, is the exact opposite. Israel withdrew from most of the territory, allowed 200,000 Palestinians to come in, backed the formation of the Palestinian Authority as the power ruling the territories, cooperated in the establishment of security forces, agreed to billions of dollars in international subsidies for the PA, and so on. And what concession did the Palestinians make? They said to international audiences — though not in their own media, mosques, schools, or internal statements — that they accepted Israel's existence and sometimes — but far from always — when it suited them, stopped some terrorist attacks. That's it. Yet, even aside from the fact that the one-sided process favored the Palestinians, doesn't Fayyad see the irony in his words? He advocates precisely the same approach he claims has caused the peace process to fail. He views Israel as the weaker side — in relation to the West — and yet thinks those other countries will force it to make concessions without limit. By feeding the PA's false belief that the West will pressure Israel into giving them a state in the borders they want, without concessions, restrictions, or even PA implementation of past promises, the U.S. and European governments are doing a very effective job in sabotaging any possibility for peace. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's big policy speech received global attention. Not so that of his Palestinian counterpart, Salam Fayyad. Fayyad's June 22 presentation deserves careful analysis. Fayyad is prime minister for one reason only: to please Western governments and financial donors. Lacking political skill, ideological influence, or strong support base, Fayyad does keep the money flowing since he's relatively honest, moderate, and professional on economic issues. But his own people don't listen to him. Most PA politicians want him out. International pressure keeps him in. So here's the Fayyad paradox. If he really represented Palestinian stances and thinking, there'd be some hope for peace. Since he's so out of tune with colleagues, though, Fayyad sounds sharply different from them. And even he's highly restricted by what's permissible in PA politics, limits which ensure the PA's failure, absence of peace, and non-existence of a Palestinian state. His first problem is that Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and seeks the PA's overthrow in the West Bank. Most Fatah and PA leaders prefer peace with Hamas rather than Israel. Make no mistake: this is a mutually exclusive choice. If Hamas merged with the PA the resulting would be far too radical to negotiate a solution, not to mention being en route to becoming dominated by Tehran-allied radical Islamism. Moreover, to keep the door open for such conciliation, the PA can't come closer to making a deal with Israel. But that's not all. In veiled — an appropriate word here — language, Fayyad says Palestinians must avoid "politicizing" the Gaza issue so that any sanctions continue against the Hamas regime there. By not opposing the suicide bombers, Fayyad follows suicidal policies. By fighting any isolation or sanctions on Hamas, the PA ensures that Hamas tightens its hold on the Gaza Strip and so doesn't need to accept PA leadership. By supporting Hamas's ability to attack Israel without costs, the PA ensures its Islamist rival can appear to be the more effective fighter against Israel, thus undermining the appeal of PA leadership or of any peaceful solution. Second, while not directly endorsing terrorism and violence — in contrast to most of his colleagues and the PA's own institutions — Fayyad argues that Israel holding any Palestinian prisoners in jail is "a violation of international law." In other words, if a Palestinian attacks or murders Israelis, Israel has no right to imprison him. What option does it have? Only to set them free to try again. Here, too, he supports and glorifies cost-free terrorism. Indeed, only a few days before, some of his top officials sat in the audience of a show in which the ruling Fatah party bragged that it was the proper Palestinian leader because it was more effective at anti-Israel terorrism than Hamas. Third, Fayyad argues that it's not the PA's job to convince Israel by its behavior or to negotiate bilaterally on the basis of mutual concessions and compromises. Instead, as other PA leaders have openly stated recently, the PA's strategy is to get the world to pressure Israel to give it everything it wants. While presenting his speech partly as a response to Netanyahu, Fayyad confronts none of the Israeli leader's points, merely dismissing his position as a vague, which it certainly wasn't." (Ironically, in contrast to most Western observers, Fayyad acknowledges that Netanyahu endorsed a two-state solution six years ago). But it's Fayyad who is vague — Netanyahu gives a list of specific Israeli conditions; Fayyad does nothing of the kind. In fact, he does something peculiar. According to him, Netanyahu is presenting an "Israeli narrative" about the conflict, while Palestinians say they have their own "narrative," but Fayyad says he won't talk about it! Why is he so vague rather than giving his own case? Because he cannot do so. The Israeli narrative as laid out by Netanyahu is clear: Jews want and merit a state; the conflict is due to an Arab refusal to accept that state's existence. This Israeli narrative does not prevent a two- state solution, one state for each people. The Palestinian narrative, to this day, is that Jews have no such right to a state and that all the land is rightly Palestinian, Arab, and (for most) Muslim. This Palestinian narrative does prevent a two-state solution, and its continuity — even reinforcement by Hamas most of all but also by the PA — is the cause for the peace process's failure and the fact that it will continue to fail. That is what Fayyad cannot admit. Indeed, the main Palestinian strategy debate is merely about the most effective way of wiping Israel off the map. He does claim that Palestinians' "main aspiration" is to have their own homeland, which he promises will live in peace, cooperation, and respect with its neighbor. But he cannot say it would resettle all Palestinian refugees within its borders, won't bring in foreign troops, will end the conflict permanently, or will provide Israel with security guarantees. It will certainly never recognize Israel as a Jewish state even while the PA's own constitution defines Palestine as an Arab and Muslim state. Fayyad might prefer such an outcome, but that's not the Palestinian position and he knows it. Fayyad says the PA has done a good job and that "the citizens sense this progress." Why, then, is the PA afraid to hold elections, even in the West Bank? It is no secret that the PA isn't popular and fears Hamas's appeal. He speaks of building a strong economy, dealing with poverty, developing social services yet gives no sense of how this might be done. Even given massive international subsidies, the PA's management remains poor, riddled with corruption and incompetence. Fayyad can do nothing to reform it since the political elite isn't with him and he has no power over the warlords and their gunmen who are often the real powers in the West Bank. Finally, he predicts a Palestinian state within two years. Yet he has no way to make this happen except to prove that the real reason the peace process hasn't succeeded is the misconception "that it is always possible to exert pressure on the weaker side in the conflict as if there is no limit to the concessions that it could offer." In other words, the reason why peace has not been achieved is because the PA had to make all the concessions. The truth, of course, is the exact opposite. Israel withdrew from most of the territory, allowed 200,000 Palestinians to come in, backed the formation of the Palestinian Authority as the power ruling the territories, cooperated in the establishment of security forces, agreed to billions of dollars in international subsidies for the PA, and so on. And what concession did the Palestinians make? They said to international audiences — though not in their own media, mosques, schools, or internal statements — that they accepted Israel's existence and sometimes — but far from always — when it suited them, stopped some terrorist attacks. That's it. Yet, even aside from the fact that the one-sided process favored the Palestinians, doesn't Fayyad see the irony in his words? He advocates precisely the same approach he claims has caused the peace process to fail. He views Israel as the weaker side — in relation to the West — and yet thinks those other countries will force it to make concessions without limit. 2. PALESTINIAN LEADERS PREFER ADVOCATING — EVEN WHEN
THEY'RE NOT PRACTICING — TERRORIST VIOLENCE
Volcanoes are classified historically as active, dormant, and dead. The second group is merely inactive at present but could blow any time. As a terrorist organization, Fatah, the leading group in the Palestinian Authority (PA) which supplies nearly all of its leaders, is dormant, not dead. The unfortunate reality is that the ideology that favors the total destruction of Israel as a higher priority than getting an independent Palestinian state is still dominant; all the mechanisms of terrorism are still in place; incitement goes on daily. It's a very good thing that these are not active and it is important to try to keep them that way. But the real PA and Fatah are far from the diplomatists' dreams and the journalists' description of the group as "moderate." This is a problem not only because it blocks any hope of a negotiated peace, but it also ensures the group's ineffectiveness. While Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is a pretty genuine moderate, he is also rather alone in that category. What can Fatah and the PA offer better than Hamas? In theory, the answer is a simple one: a dedication to obtaining a state, living in peace, raising living standards, and providing West Bank Palestinians (the ones it rules) with a better life than Gaza Strip Palestinians (the ones Hamas rules). There are, however, daily reminders by these same leaders — Fayyad
excepted — that this is not the primary focus of Fatah and the PA. An
interesting video
The televised show was put on by Fatah in order to demonstrate why it is better than Hamas. With top Fatah and PA officials prominently seated in the audience, the event is a mock debate in which Fatah "proves" it is better than Hamas. How? By getting Western aid? By having better schools? By holding out the likelihood of a Palestinian state where refugees can be resettled? No. By more effectively killing Israelis. Here's the transcript of the key section: Fatah student taunts Hamas: "Since Hamas seized power, we haven't heard of any martyrdom operation [suicide-bombing]." And what happened in Ramallah? Two unarmed Israeli reservists who were driving got lost, wandered into Ramallah, were taken into custody by the PA police, and then turned over to a mob which tore them apart and murdered them in cold blood. This is one of the greatest achievements Fatah offers to prove its superiority. The other main Fatah point is that Hamas is "chicken" because it no longer fires as many rockets and mortars at Israel as it did before the attack. Of course, Fatah can't win on that point either since it wasn't firing any at all. And of course the implication is that Hamas should prove it is macho and an appropriate leader for the Palestinians by attacking Israel more. Aside from the extremism and anti-peace views this approach indicates it is simply a losing argument for Fatah and the PA. Hamas can easily out-terrorism Fatah. If that is the criterion there is no doubt who will win in this competition. Here is the problem with the argument, so often heard, that Fatah and the PA are "moderate," often accompanied by the speaker saying, "If I were them...." or "If they were smart...." Well, if Fatah and the PA were led by Western Europeans or Obama supporters we would indeed be better off. They'd say: All Hamas can offer is more decades of bloodshed, whereas we can get Western support, get a state really fast, resettle all the refugees there, get billions of dollars in compensation money, raise living standards, and end the violence. But they never say that to their constituents. Why? Because that isn't their set of priorities. For Fatah and the PA the competition in violence and martyrdom, the seeking after total victory, the refusal to make concession or compromise isn't only an immoral argument, it is also an inevitably losing one against both Israel and Hamas. It is, however, the policy they prefer because this is what the vast majority of them believes in and they also fear that if they were to adopt a real moderate policy they'd lose popular support. To debate the latter point is most interesting — the Fatah/PA leaders may not be right to think that — but those doing such debate are outsiders. The actual leaders know what they themselves think and will do.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and co-author of "Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography" and "Hating America: A History" (Oxford University Press). His latest book is The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). Prof. Rubin's columns can now be read online at http://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/column.html. Contact him at profbarryrubin@yahoo.com |
|
'PROOF' OF KENYAN BIRTH TWICE SCRUBBED BY EBAY
Posted by WND, June 28, 2009. |
|
This is by Drew Zahn and appeared yesterday in WND. |
|
Editor's note: Since publication of this story, the auction item has been removed for the third time. None of the item identification numbers in this article remain valid. An eBay seller who previously promised to deliver a certified copy of President Obama's actual birth certificate — from a hospital in Mombasa, Kenya — has twice had his listing removed from the popular auction website. In a third listing, however, the seller calling himself "colmado_naranja" has explained why the birth certificate was twice yanked by eBay administration. "The first cancellation was done in what eBay describes as being in the interests of keeping my account safe," the newest listing claims, referring to the now scrubbed item # 160344374585. "eBay was under the impression that a third party had accessed and compromised my account, that this third party put up the Barack Obama African birth certificate auction and that I had no knowledge of the said listing." 
As WND reported, colmado_naranja's original listing claimed, "President Barack Hussein Obama II was born in The Coast Provincial Hospital at Mombasa in Kenya at 7:24 p.m. on August 4, 1961." The seller, who according to the eBay rankings has completed dozens of transactions on the behemoth auction site without difficulties, further said this birth certificate is the real deal, obtained while he was traveling in Kenya. "Kenyans were amused at how gullible Americans could be when it came to obvious things like the fact that Kenyans overtly admit to Barack Jr.'s Kenyan birth, yet the Americans continue to believe that they know better," colmado_naranja wrote. "I delved further and found that a birth certificate was on file at The Coast Provincial General Hospital at Mombasa." According to the third, and newest, listing, however, even after calling eBay customer service and restoring the original auction under a new item number, the birth certificate sale was scrubbed again, a second time, for another reason altogether. Colmado_naranja's second listing of the birth certificate, item # 160344928067, had already generated significant attention this morning. WND readers emailed, stating the bids had topped $7,000, even as high as $10,000 for the alleged Kenyan document. Even those critical of the questions surrounding Obama's birth and eligibility to serve as President noticed, as members of the message board Democratic Underground claimed to have reported the auction to eBay administration as a "forgery and offensive item." _ At some time around 10:30 ET this morning, however, the second auction listing was scrubbed as well. In the third listing from colmado_naranja, the seller explains, "This time their reasoning for the cancellation was that birth certificates and other forms are government ID are prohibited on eBay." Nonetheless, the auction lives on. Under its now third eBay number, 160345002984, the item up for sale is listed as a "story" and specifically states the document is a gift to the winner, not the object of bidding itself: "I'm now auctioning my story (true story) of how I obtained U.S. President Barack Obama's Kenyan birth certificate," the listing states. "The winner of this auction will not bear copyrights to my story. However, along with my story the winning bidder will also take home U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama's Kenyan (African) birth certificate. Certified birth certificate. I am giving the birth certificate to the bidder that wins this auction, which is for my story." Just to be certain, the listing restates, "You are not bidding on Barack Obama's Kenyan birth certificate in this eBay auction." Neither photos nor any verification of the seller's claims are available at this point. In the original listing, the seller explained, "I am not posting any photos of the birth certificate here on eBay. I have not seen this birth certificate anywhere on the Internet, to post it here on eBay would lead to a flood of facsimiles on the Internet. This would inadvertently decrease the value of the certificate as well." WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President." Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time. Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born. Send a contribution to support the national billboard campaign that asks a simple question: "Where's the birth certificate?" Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions. WND has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, his Punahou school records, his Occidental College records, his Columbia University records, his Columbia thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, his passport, his medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records. 
Because of the dearth of information about Obama's eligibility, WND founder Joseph Farah has launched a campaign to raise contributions to post billboards asking a simple question: "Where's the birth certificate?" The campaign followed a petition that has collected almost 400,000 signatures demanding proof of his eligibility, the availability of yard signs raising the question and the production of permanent, detachable magnetic bumper stickers asking the question. The eBay birth certificate seller is a self-proclaimed "collector of old Dominican and Cuban money" and has worked in the Congo. "This spring I traveled through Kenya and its capital Nairobi. I was overwhelmed by the 'iconicized' face of U.S. President Barack Obama that displays itself throughout the country. I had lunch at a small eatery and noticed that the club sandwich with fried plantains was now known as 'Obama's Plate of the Day,'" the seller wrote on the initial auction page. "As an American I was bombarded with questions in English (English is national language of Kenya) on my feelings and opinions of a Kenyan governing the United States of America. The first several times I responded in saying that not enough time had elapsed since Barack Obama's appointment as president of the U.S.A., and that I'd have to hold my official opinion until at least January 2010, a year in office might be sufficient for me to judge his ability to govern the U.S.A. The seller also cited the fact that Obama has not release his "Hawaiian" birth certificate. His administration, the seller says, "in an attempt to put the birth certificate issue to a rest, has presented the American public with a fake, forged, fraudulent Hawaiian birth certificate." The seller indicated a willingness to respond to questions about the item, for which bidding was set to begin at $1,000. But the seller said questions would be evaluated and may not get a direct response. The "certification of live birth" posted online and widely touted as "Obama's birth certificate" does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same "short-form" document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true "long-form" birth certificate — which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician — is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny. Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a "natural born citizen," no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama's claim to a Hawaiian birth.
Drew Zahn is a news editor for WorldNetDaily.
|
|
SETTLERS SUCCESSFULLY SUE MAARIV FOR LIBEL; AHARON BARAK; JEWS
BELONG IN JUDEA AND SAMARIA; ANTI-FUR LAW STOPPED
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 28, 2009. |
|
1. This story is just so delicious that I cannot resist posting it. In fact it is so wonderful and encouraging that not a single Israeli newspaper, radio or TV show, other than the Righist Makor Rishon, had the courage to report it. It seems that a Jewish settlement filed a libel suit against Maariv, Israel's second largest print daily, and won. Maariv had falsely reported in a news story that the settlement of Maale Rehav'am in the West Bank was sitting on land illegally expropriated from Palestinian Arabs. That turned out to be a lie. Residents of the settlement successful sued. The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court ordered Maariv to pay 13,000 NIS in damages to the settlers and issue a public apology. The whole settlement has 30 people living in it and it is one of those that Obama is demanding that Israel evacuate. So let us hope this case serves as a grand legal precedent: Tell a lie about settlers and pay! 2. For years I have been claiming in postings, blog entries and articles that the ex-Chief Justice of Israel, Aharon Barak (he is not a relative of Ehud) is an anti-democratic anti-Israel leftist extremist moonbat. Barak was the leading proponent in Israel of the anti-democratic doctrine of 'judicial activism,' which should be called judicial tyranny, under which non-elected judges make up laws and dictate governmental policy about just about everything. Barak also insisted that anyone who happens to sit on the Israeli Supreme Court should issue rulings based on 'enlightened opinion,' which means whatever Aharon Barak personally thinks in any given week, and that those same sitting judges should perpetually select other judges by themselves to sit on the Supreme Court and other courts, regardless of what the Israeli voter wants. When I would slap around Barak in my postings, many people objected that I was showing disrespect to Israel's Chief Justice, and was exaggerating his anti-democratic tendencies. Last week Barak had the kindness to step forward and prove that I was correct, and in fact showed I was underestimating his political biases and dislike for democracy. Last week, Barak took off his muzzle, now that he is retired, and launched a malicious broadside against Israel, Zionism, and 'settlers.' The most outrageous thing he said was that the Jews were plotting to throw the Arabs into the sea. The truth of course is that the Arabs are trying to throw the Jews into the sea, but Orwellian inversions are the favorite tactic of leftist cranks. Barak also criticized Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria as an 'occupation,' and said the Israeli presence there leads to human rights offenses and racism elsewhere in Israel. Barak's presence on the Supreme Court produced anti-democratic restrictions to freedom of speech and to the trashing of any form of checks and balances on the court's 'activism,' and led to an explosion in anti-Jewish racism by Israeli Arabs and Jewish leftists. There are numerous news reports on the Barak outburst, but try these:
3. LA Times runs a pro-settlement column!:
No one, including a president of the United States of America, can presume to tell me, a Jew, that I cannot live in the area of my national homeland. That's one of the main reasons my wife and I chose in 1981 to move to Shiloh, a so-called settlement less than 30 miles north of Jerusalem. After Shiloh was founded in 1978, then-President Carter demanded of Prime Minister Menachem Begin that the village of eight families be removed. Carter, from his first meeting with Begin, pressed him to "freeze" the activity of Jews rebuilding a presence in their historic home. As his former information aide, Shmuel Katz, related, Begin said: "You, Mr. President, have in the United States a number of places with names like Bethlehem, Shiloh and Hebron, and you haven't the right to tell prospective residents in those places that they are forbidden to live there. Just like you, I have no such right in my country. Every Jew is entitled to reside wherever he pleases." We now fast-forward to President Obama, who declared on June 15 in remarks at a news conference with Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, that Jewish communities beyond the Green Line "in past agreements have been categorized as illegal." I believe the president has been misled. There can be nothing illegal about a Jew living where Judaism was born. To suggest that residency be permitted or prohibited based on race, religion or ethnic background is dangerously close to employing racist terminology. Suppose someone suggested that Palestinian villages and towns in pre-1967 Israel were to be called "settlements" and that, to achieve a true peace, Arabs should be removed from their homes. Of course, separation or transfer of Arabs is intolerable, but why is it quite acceptable to demand that Jews be ethnically cleansed from the area? Do not Jews belong in Judea and Samaria as much as Palestinians who stayed in the state of Israel? Some have questioned why Jews should be allowed to resettle areas in which they didn't live in the years preceding the 1967 war, areas that were almost empty of Jews before 1948 as well. But why didn't Jews live in the area at that time? Quite simple: They had been the victims of a three-decades-long ethnic cleansing project that started in 1920, when an Arab attack wiped out a small Jewish farm at Tel Hai in Upper Galilee and was followed by attacks in Jerusalem and, in 1921, in Jaffa and Jerusalem. In 1929, Hebron's centuries-old Jewish population was expelled as a result of an Arab pogrom that killed almost 70 Jews. Jews that year removed themselves from Gaza, Nablus and Jenin. The return of my family to Shiloh — and of other Jews to more than 150 other communities over the Green Line since 1967 — is not solely a throwback to claimed biblical rights. Nor is it solely to assert our right to return to areas that were Jewish-populated in the 20th century until Arab violence drove them away. We have returned under a clear fulfillment of international law. There can be no doubt as to the legality of the act of my residency in Shiloh. I am a revenant — one who has returned after a long absence to ancestral lands. The Supreme Council of the League of Nations adopted principles following the 1920 San Remo Conference aimed at bringing about the "reconstitution" of a Jewish National Home. Article 6 of those principles reads: "The administration of Palestine ... shall encourage ... close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands." That "land" was originally delineated to include all of what is today Jordan as well as all the territory west of the Jordan River. In 1923, Britain created a new political entity, Transjordan, and suspended the right of Jews to live east of the Jordan River. But the region in which I now live was intended to be part of the Jewish National Home. Then, in a historical irony, a Saudi Arabian refugee, Abdallah, fleeing the Wahabis, was afforded the opportunity to establish an Arab kingdom where none had existed previously — only Jews. As a result, in an area where prophets and priests fashioned the most humanist and moral religion and culture on Earth, Jews are now termed "illegals." Many people insist that settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention. But that convention does not apply to Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza district. Its second clause makes it clear that it deals with the occupation of "the territory of a high contracting party." Judea and Samaria and Gaza, which Israel gained control of in 1967, were not territories of a "high contracting party." Jewish historical rights that the mandate had recognized were not canceled, and no new sovereign ever took over in Judea and Samaria or in Gaza. Obama has made his objections to Israeli settlements known. But other U.S. presidents have disagreed. President Reagan's administration issued a declaration that Israeli settlements were not illegal. Support for that position came from Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, former president of the International Court of Justice, who determined that Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria did not constitute "occupation." It also came from a leading member of Reagan's administration, the former dean of the Yale Law School and former undersecretary of State, Eugene Rostow, who asserted that "Israel has a stronger claim to the West Bank than any other nation or would-be nation [and] the same legal right to settle the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem as it has to settle Haifa or West Jerusalem." Any suggestions, then, of "freezing" and halting "natural growth" are themselves not only illegal but quite immoral. Yisrael Medad is head of information resources at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem. 4. Well, the main headline involving political clashes between the 'Chareidi' ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem and the rest of the population there these days is about a parking garage operating on Shabbat. However there is another bizarre confrontation that has been less noticed. It was triggered because of an idiotic attempt to prohibit imports of fur into Israel. Ronit Tirosh, a backbencher member of the Knesset from the Kadima Party, decided to try to drum up some votes for Kadima among animal rights nuts and people who think fur is murder. The problem is that a lot of the black-coated ultra-Orthodox guys wear fur 'streimels,' those archaic round fur hats that were in fashion in Poland 400 years ago and that some of the Chareidim think make them look more pious. Trust me, Moses and King David did not wear streimels. But dubious taste in haberdashery aside, there was no reason to antagonize the Chareidim with a silly anti-fur law designed to appease animal rights nuts. After suggesting that the Chareidim just use synthetic furs, Tirosh and her cronies seem to be backing down now. Which is good, because I have a confession to make. I have a streimel made out of fur. Actually it is a Davy Crocket hot with a raccoon's tail down the back of it, and I only wear my streimel on Purim and once in a while to spook my students. But on this I am with the Chareidim — and am telling Kadima politicians: Hands off my Tennessee-fur Streimel! Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments — both seriously and
satirically — on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. Write him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il His website address is
|
|
NAKBA NONSENSE
Posted by Martin Sherman, June 27, 2009. |
|
Nakba commemoration unrelated to exercise of legitimate individual freedom. Adherence to the doctrine of democratic governance is not a suicide pact. Neither is it obligation to self-destruct by means of terminal stupidity. Belief in democratic principles does not require one to forego the distinction between friend and foe, between ally and adversary. Sadly this something of which many Israeli MKs — including Benny Begin, Dan Meridor and Michael Eitan of the Likud — seem to have lost sight, in their opposition to the proposed law prohibiting public commemoration of the 1948 Arab defeat — a.k.a. the Nakba. The attempt by Israeli Arabs to institutionalize public commemoration of the Nakba has nothing to do with the exercise of legitimate individual freedom of expression in a healthy and vibrant democracy. For as much as it is a ceremonial manifestation of mourning over the consequences of Arab defeat, it is also — ipso facto — a ceremonial manifestation of disappointment at Jewish survival. These two aspects are inseparable sides of the same coin. It is in essence a collective declaration of regret and sorrow that the Jews were not wiped out as a national entity. Much nonsense has been written recently by Nakba apologists. For commemoration of the Arab "disaster" is not analogous to individuals or groups protesting some (real or imagined) evil or defect in their society which should be removed or repaired. It is not a demand to right a wrong that society or the state inflicts on particular categories of citizens. Rather, it is an implied rejection — in toto — by an entire community of the state and society in which it resides, a collective refusal to come to terms with their very existence, with their intrinsic nature, and with the most elemental foundations upon which they are based. Let us make no mistake: The demand for the commemoration of the Nakba is not motivated by a desire to mark any sense of personal loss but by a sentiment of national loss; not by a feeling of grief on a private level but by identification with tragedy at a national level; and not by a desire restore losses at an individual level but for restitution of honor at a national level. And the only way to address this grievance is by the obliteration — or at least the negation — of the Jewish nation-state. Clamor for commemoration It must not be forgotten that anyone who was personally touched by the events that comprised the Nakba would today be close to 70 at the very least. They certainly do not make up the bulk of those demanding public lament of the Arab military debacle. The clamor for commemoration does not arise from dispossessed, deprived refugees but fully enfranchised citizens who are neither impoverished, nor persecuted or homeless — as the ample homesteads found in abundance throughout most Arab villages in Israel clearly testify. Indeed, had there been no Nakba, the personal socio-economic conditions of most Israeli Arabs would in all likelihood be far worse than it is today — as comparison with of the surrounding Arab countries, not endowed with extravagant oil reserves, such as Syria, Jordan and Egypt, will irrefutably show. These facts demonstrate how ludicrously inappropriate the examples provided by some Israeli public figures who have endeavored to argue in favor of permitting public Nakba memorial ceremonies. One of the more inane of these attempts was made recently by Yair Lapid in a piece entitled"The Right to Hate." His major argument was an inapt attempt to liken the act of burning the American flag by an obscure (an arguably eccentric) individual, which was sanctioned by the US Supreme Court, to widespread organized political activism aimed at negating the founding values of the State, lamenting the defeat of its enemies and perpetuating the adversarial narrative of "Return.". Unwittingly, Lapid lets slip that he see Israel's Arabs on a par with neo-Nazi skinheads and frenzied mobs in Gaza. He writes: If someone doubts our right to exist — be it on the hills of Umm al-Fahem or in Munich's beer halls, in Gaza's crowded streets or in the thick woods of Babi Yar — it's their problem. He thus blithely blurs the distinction between Israeli citizens allegedly loyal to the state, and its most rabid enemies. Proponents of the law could hardly ask for a stronger endorsement. Transgressors should not be imprisoned And when he asks "Since when do we need Arab approval?" he betrays just how much he misunderstands the issue and how badly he misses the point. The proposed law preventing Nakba commemoration is not about acquiring Arab approval but preventing Arab incitement. For in quoting the previously mentioned US Supreme Court decision, Lapid conveniently omits to mention that one of central considerations was that the court concluded that the flag burning in this case did not cause or threaten to cause a breach of the peace. Can he honestly say that this is so in the case Nakba memorial ceremonies? Can he honestly assure us that the chances that such events will lead to "breaches of the peace" are negligible? That political agitators will not exploit such occasions to keep an open wound festering and to prevent it healing with the passage of time? Indeed, Lapid would do well refer to another ruling of the US Supreme court, which although passed in 1919 still is considered a central pillar in current judicial thinking in the US: "...the character of every act depends on the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a crowded theatre and causing a panic. . . ..When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right." (Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr) There is clearly something deeply flawed in a society that permits a significant segment within it to express grief at the success of that society's success to prevail over its enemies' intent to destroy it. That is why the proposed law is not infringement of democratic rights but a refreshing reflection of national sanity and santé. However, on one matter the opponents of the law have got it right: Transgressors should not be imprisoned. Rather, they should be stripped of their Israeli citizenship — at least in cases of repeated offenders. Indeed, this should not be a problem — for why should they object to being relieved of membership of a collective they obviously find so obnoxious and objectionable that its very existence is deemed a "catastrophe"?
This article appeared June 8, 2009 in YNET
|
|
ISRAEL IS 2009 CZECHOSLOVAKIA: THE CZECHS WEREN'T INVITED TO MUNICH, EITHER
Posted by Nurit, June 27, 2009. |
|
Israel's not invited to talks to negotiate her fate. The symptoms that the world sees Israel as 2009 Czechoslovakia are mounting...anti-Semitic and anti Israel nations and organization who favor the Arabs have decided that they are the best parties to negotiate the fate of Israel and the peace process between Israel and its foes! In these negotiations NO ONE is on Israel's side. To whom does this make sense but to Israel's foes?! This below comes from the Fresnozionism.org website
|
|
Foreign ministers of Group of Eight countries urged Israel to halt all settlement construction in the West Bank Friday, during a meeting in Italy largely focusing on recent events in Iran. They also called on Israelis and Palestinians to renew direct negotiations over all disputed issues. Also meeting Friday on the sidelines of the summit is the Mideast Quartet — the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — to try to help move the Israeli-Palestinian peace process forward... A range of Arab League nations will join in a follow-on session Friday afternoon. Israel was not invited; the Italian Foreign Ministry said that decision was taken by the Quartet, not Italy. The BBC reports that the Quartet has also asked for Israel "to stop all West Bank settlement building activity and to open its border crossings." Palestinians have demanded this as a precondition for resuming negotiations. It's almost too easy to point out that in 1938 the Czechs were not invited to the Munich conference either. Of course this meeting will not produce a document with such immediate impact on Israel as the Munich diktat had for Czechoslovakia, but the sense of powerful nations deciding the fate of a small one in consultation with its enemies remains. If a Martian asked me why the 'Quartet' — the UN, EU, US and Russia — is particularly suited to bring about a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians, I would not be able to answer. The UN is dominated by Muslim and third-world countries and has been particularly hostile to Israel for decades. The EU's member nations have important economic relationships with Arab oil producers, and also have political and psychological reasons for tilting toward the Palestinians. The EU quietly funds many NGOs whose output is significantly biased against Israel. Russia, a traditionally antisemitic nation, has economic ties with Iran and also feels threatened by Israel's nuclear capability. This leaves the US as the sole member of the Quartet that might be expected to support Israel, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the Obama Administration has few — if any — power centers opposed to the anti-Israel forces in the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon (which has undergone significant changes since the early part of the previous administration). Add to this the fact that President Obama himself seems to be taking a tack designed to improve relations between the US and the Muslim world, and one wonders who will represent Israel's interests in this group. Contact Nurit by email at nurit_g@ca.rr.com |
|
KRAUTHAMMER ON OBAMA: BE FOREWARNED ON WHAT IS HAPPENING
Posted by Wake Up America, June 27, 2009. |
|
A friend went to hear Charles Krauthammer. He listened with 25 others in closed room. What he says here, is NOT 2nd-hand but 1st. You would do well to read and pass this along to EVERYBODY that loves his country. This is VERY serious for the direction of our country. The ramifications are staggering for us and our children. This is what my friend said: "Last Monday was a profound evening, hearing Dr. Charles Krauthammer speak to the Center for the American Experiment. He is brilliant intellectual, seasoned and articulate. He is forthright and careful in his analysis, and never resorts to emotions or personal insults. He is NOT a fear monger nor an extremist in his comments and views. He is a fiscal conservative, and has a Pulitzer prize for writing. He is a frequent contributor to Fox News and writes weekly for the Washington Post. The entire room was held spellbound during his talk. I have shared this with many of you and several have asked me to summarize his comments, as we are living in uncharted waters economically and internationally. Even 2 Dems at my table agreed with everything he said! If you feel like forwarding this to those who are open minded and have not drunk the Kool-Aid, feel free." Below is my friend's summary. I hope this gets you really thinking about what's happening in Washington and Congress. There's a left-wing revolution going on, according to Krauthammer, and he encourages us to keep the faith and join the loyal resistance. The work will be hard, but we're right on most issues and can reclaim our country, before it's far too late. |
|
1. Mr. Obama is a very intellectual, charming individual. He is not to be underestimated. He is a 'cool customer' who doesn't show his emotions. It's very hard to know what's 'behind the mask'. Taking down the Clinton dynasty from a political neophyte was an amazing accomplishment. The Clintons still do not understand what hit them. Obama was in the perfect place at the perfect time. 2. Obama has political skills comparable to Reagan and Clinton. He has a way of making you think he's on your side, agreeing with your position, while doing the opposite. Pay no attention to what he SAYS; rather, watch what he DOES! 3. Obama has a ruthless quest for power. He did not come to Washington to make something out of himself, but rather to change everything, including dismantling capitalism. He can't be straightforward on his ambitions, as the public would not go along. He has a heavy hand, and wants to 'level the playing field' with income redistribution and punishment to the achievers of society. He would like to model the USA to Great Britain or Canada. 4. His three main goals are to control ENERGY, PUBLIC EDUCATION, and NATIONAL HEALTHCARE by the Federal government. He doesn't care about the auto or financial services industries, but got them as an early bonus. The cap and trade will add costs to everything and stifle growth. Paying for FREE college education is his goal. Most scary is his healthcare program, because if you make it FREE and add 46,000,000 people to a Medicare-type single-payer system, the costs will go through the roof. The only way to control costs is with massive RATIONING of services, like in Canada. God forbid. 5. He's surrounded himself with mostly far-left academic types. No one around him has ever even run a candy store. But they're going to try and run the auto, financial, banking and other industries. This obviously can't work in the long run. Obama's not a socialist; rather he's a far-left secular progressive bent on nothing short of revolution. He ran as a moderate, but will govern from the hard left. Again, watch what he does, not what he says. 6. Obama doesn't really see himself as President of the United States, but more as a ruler over the world. He sees himself above it all, trying to orchestrate & coordinate various countries and their agendas. He sees moral equivalency in all cultures. His apology tour in Germany and England was a prime example of how he sees America, as an imperialist nation that has been arrogant, rather than a great noble nation that has at times made errors. This is the first President ever who has chastised our allies and appeased our enemies! 7. He's now handing out goodies. He hopes that the bill (and pain) will not 'come due' until after he's reelected in 2012. He'd like to blame all problems on Bush from the past, and hopefully his successor in the future. He has a huge ego, and Mr. Krauthammer believes he is a narcissist. (Remember Dr. Krauthammer is a Psychiatrist) 8. Republicans are in the wilderness for a while, but will emerge strong. We're 'pining' for another Reagan, but there'll never be another like him. Krauthammer believes Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty & Bobby Jindahl (except for his terrible speech in February) are the future of the party. Newt Gingrich is brilliant, but has baggage. Sarah Palin is sincere and intelligent, but needs to really be seriously boning up on facts and info if she's to be a serious candidate in the future. We need to return to the party of lower taxes, smaller government, personal responsibility, strong national defense, and states' rights. 9. The current level of spending is irresponsible and outrageous. We're spending trillions that we don't have. This could lead to hyper inflation, depression or worse. No country has ever spent themselves into prosperity. The media is giving Obama, Reid and Pelosi a pass because they love their agenda. But eventually the bill will come due and people will realize the huge bailouts didn't work, nor will the stimulus package. These were trillion-dollar payoffs to Obama's allies, unions and the Congress to placate the left, so he can get support for #4 above. 10. The election was over in mid-September when Lehman brothers failed. Fear and panic swept in, we had an unpopular President, and the war was grinding on indefinitely without a clear outcome. The people are in pain, and the mantra of 'change' caused people to act emotionally. Any Dem would have won this election; it was surprising is was as close as it was. 11. In 2012, if the unemployment rate is over 10%, Republicans will be swept back into power. If it's under 8%, the Dems continue to roll. If it's between 8-10%, it'll be a dogfight. It'll all be about the economy. Contact Wake Up America at Wakeupamericans@comcast.net |
|
CONTRA: SAUDI MEDIA TAKE THE LEAD AGAINST IRAN'S REGIME
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, June 27, 2009. |
|
The Washington Institute Policy Watch Paper #1545 by David Pollock and Mohammad Yaghi was entitled "Saudi Media Take the Lead Against Iran's Regime." This below is a retort by Ali Alyami written to David Schenker of the Washington Institute. Dr. Ali Alyami, a human rights activist, is the Executive Director of The Center for Democracy and Human Rights (CDHR). As written by Steve on the Rants And Raves blogsite: "Dr. Alyami strongly agrees with many people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji and many others, who say that the West is in denial and must wake up to the terrible danger they face from Islamic dangerous ideologues." |
|
Mr. Schenker, This is a pure propaganda for the Saudi absolute monarchy. If you think the extremist Wahhabis in Riyadh, are or will be any better, for anyone, than the Mullahs in Tehran, you will be in for multitude of regrettable surprises. Look at their past and present policies and practices and then tell me why you think things will change for the better in the long or short terms. The Saudi princes are extremely clever and the same can not be said about a lot of people, anywhere. Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com |
|
NO MEDDLING WITH IRAN ... BUT OH, THOSE SETTLEMENTS!
Posted by LEL, June 27, 2009. |
|
This was written by P. David Hornik and it appeared today in Pajamas Media.
P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Tel Aviv. He blogs at http://pdavidhornik.typepad.com/ |
|
This week President Obama got tougher with the mullahs — but not by much. He spoke of being "appalled and outraged" by their brutality, but also of "respect[ing] the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and ... not interfering with Iran's affairs." Yet, concurrently, Obama's administration kept up its tough confrontation with Israel over the settlements issue. A meeting in Paris between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and George Mitchell, the Obama administration's Middle East envoy, got postponed, apparently because of too much unresolved tension over settlements. Instead, Defense Minister Ehud Barak is heading to Washington to perhaps work out the issue in meetings with Mitchell and other officials. Netanyahu, in his June 14 speech at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, seemingly made major concessions to Obama. He reversed his lifelong opposition to a Palestinian state alongside Israel — saying it would have to be demilitarized, a situation known from the historical record to break down easily. And on settlements he said — and has since clarified — that Israel would build no more new ones nor set aside any further land, and would only allow natural growth within the boundaries of already-existing settlements. But it's still not enough for the administration, which keeps calling for a[1] complete construction freeze in the settlements. With attention now focusing on the fine points of this drama (Does the administration mean no more kindergartens in the settlements? That families will have to live cramped or send some of their kids to dwell elsewhere?) what is often forgotten is how much Israel has already conceded on this issue, and how biased towards the Palestinian side the issue has already become. The West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, has an official status as disputed — not occupied — territory whose ultimate disposition is supposed to be decided in negotiations. UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted months after the 1967 Six Day War,[2] calls for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" — not from "the" or "all" the territories, and nowhere does it refer to settlements. Indeed, Eugene Rostow, the late U.S. legal scholar and diplomat who played the leading U.S. role in negotiating 242,[3] wrote in 1991 that: [T]he Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip ... has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors ... the Jews have the same right to settle [in the West Bank] as they have to settle in Haifa. Israel has actually built no new settlements in the West Bank since 1999. Although since then population growth has been considerable, it has all been within already-existing settlements. Netanyahu has promised to continue that policy with no further territorial expansions of settlements. The built-up parts of the settlements today constitute[4] about 1.7 percent of the West Bank. Needless to say, extensive Palestinian building continues unhampered in much of the remaining 98 percent. And the land whose great bulk Israeli policy seems to have conceded before final-status negotiations have even begun is not any old land. It is, first of all, Judea and Samaria, the heartland of the Jewish people, the origin of the Bible and the Judeo-Christian civilization built on it. Second, it is land that mostly, according to the 1967 Joint Chiefs of Staff study (see[5] here for the map) and all other systematic U.S. and Israeli military assessments, needs to remain in Israeli hands for Israel to remain defensible. Meanwhile, it is hard to see how continued building or "natural growth" within the 1.7 percent would pose a problem for Palestinians — yet the Obama administration is making a major, contentious issue even out of this. It is often claimed, especially by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that Israel has an obligation for a settlement freeze unde[6]r the road map. That document does state that "Israel also freezes all settlement activity" — but only at the very end of a paragraph that lists these antecedent obligations of the other side: [T]he Palestinians immediately undertake an unconditional cessation of violence. ... Palestinians and Israelis resume security cooperation ... to end violence, terrorism, and incitement through restructured and effective Palestinian security services. Palestinians undertake comprehensive political reform in preparation for statehood, including drafting a Palestinian constitution, and free, fair and open elections upon the basis of those measures. Only then, according to the road map, does the Israeli settlement freeze kick in. Yet at a time when Palestinian terror continues and anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic incitement remains endemic in the West Bank and Gaza, the Obama administration keeps exerting relentless pressure on Israel for a settlement freeze and none (or so little the radar doesn't pick it up) on the Palestinians to even begin conforming with road map language. All in all, the U.S. pressure on Israel on this issue is one-sided, harsh, and obsessive, and shows none of the deference to Israeli sovereignty that Obama is still taking pains to demonstrate to Tehran. All this flows logically from Obama's Cairo speech, in which he balanced criticisms of the Muslim world with alleged equivalent sins of the Western world while singling out Israeli settlements as intolerable. Israel will likely have to choose between buckling still further, compromising its rights and jeopardizing its security, or bracing itself for ongoing, possibly ruinous discord with its ally.
Footnotes [1] complete construction freeze:
[2] calls:
[3] wrote: http://www.tzemachdovid.org/Facts/islegal1.shtml [4] about 1.7 percent:
[5] here: http://www.acpr.org.il/books/33-Zero-editorial.pdf [6] road map: http://www.un.org/media/main/roadmap122002.html P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Tel Aviv. He blogs at http://pdavidhornik.typepad.com/ |
|
THE 'RAPE' OF ISRAEL
Posted by Moshe Dann, June 27, 2009. |
|
Two years ago, Haaretz's chief editor David Landau advised US Sec of State Condoleezza Rice to "rape Israel," to force it into making concessions. Rice tried to follow Landau's suggestion, but her efforts were not matched by her boss, President Bush. Now, that policy seems to be led by President Obama himself. Assisted by Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Dennis Ross, Dan Kurtzer, and others, Pres Obama seems intent on taking Israel down. In addition to the usual left wing Jewish organizations, the Reform Movement's PAC, Americans for Peace Now, a collection of marginal anti-Israel organizations have also lined up for the gang rape. The analogy is appropriate: A stronger power forces his will upon a weaker victim regardless of what is fair, moral, and without any concern for the trauma he inflicts. The rapist (in this analogy) does what he thinks is good for himself. He wants what he wants. When rape occurs in a family situation the rapist is often aided and abetted by a family member, often the wife/mother, either to please the rapist, or — in denial — to pretend that it wasn't happening, or carelessness bordering on neglect. That a family member is involved in the rape makes the act even more traumatic, since it involves the ultimate betrayal. President Obama and his Jewish (and some Israeli) facilitators may believe that what they are doing is for Israel's own good. That might be acceptable if they explained how it works. Would a second Arab Palestinian state run by terrorists enhance Israel's security, promote peace with Israel and in the region, resolve the issues of Jerusalem, and millions of "Palestinian refugees"? Would the Palestinians and Arab states recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, and acknowledge facts of Jewish and world history? Would the proposed state include Jews with full rights, as Israel includes Arabs with full rights? Nowhere in Obama's agenda are these questions raised or answered. Nowhere is there a hint of how his plan will be carried out, nor concern for what might happen if things don't go according to his visions. That's understandable, since his policy, like sexual aggression, is single minded. His Jewish and Israeli enablers, like family members who participate in rapes, no doubt believe that what they are doing is in the name of Love. They might even argue that rape is better than murder, that forcing Israel to surrender and survive, albeit crippled and more vulnerable, is preferable to isolation, attack and invasion. Raping Israel might be convenient for some, temporarily, even a perverted rescue from more dire consequences that would assuage any feelings of guilt. As long as the victim remains alive and available, however, the rapist will return. There's nothing like conquest to whet the appetite for more. Finally, the most difficult aspect of rape is when there is compliance, when the victim, because of her fear and desperate need to please and be loved, allows the rape to occur. Many Israeli politicians and pundits believe that Israel's survival depends on American and international good will. They will do anything to achieve it, including denying national interests and integrity. Battered by accusations of causing humiliation, suffering and oppression, "the occupation," they surrender. Hungry for acceptance and temporary security, they acquiesce. For those whose "wet dream" (as Landau described it to Rice) is the destruction of Jewish homes and communities "in order to advance 'the peace process,'" to reward Arab terrorists with a state of their own, the consummation of rape may satisfy them for a while; it's no consolation for those being violated, nor will it prevent the next savagery. The author, a former asst professor of History, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem. This appeared June 26, 2009 in American Thinker
|
|
OBAMA TELLS JEWS WHERE THEY CAN LIVE
Posted by Chuck Brooks, June 27, 2009. |
|
This was written by Joseph Farah and it appeared May 29,
2009 in World Net Daily (WND)
|
|
Barack Obama is taking what he and his administration refer to as "a more balanced approach to Middle East policy." Let me explain what that literally means in real terms.It means the U.S. government is now using its clout with Israel to insist Jews, not Israelis, mind you, but Jews, be disallowed from living in East Jerusalem and the historically Jewish lands of Judea and Samaria, often referred to as the West Bank. I want you to try to imagine the outrage, the horror, the outcry, the clamoring, the gnashing of teeth that would ensue if Arabs or Muslims were told they could no longer live in certain parts of Israel — let alone their own country. Of course, that would never happen with "a more balanced approach to the Middle East. "It's the 1930s all over again. This time, it's the enlightened liberal voices of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama who are telling Jews where they can live, how they can live and how far they must bend if they want to live at all. I know you haven't heard it put like this before. I don't really understand why. There is simply no other accurate way to explain the machinations behind the latest demands on Israel from the West and the rest of the world. Israel is being reduced to "Auschwitz borders." Jews have already been told they can no longer live in the Gaza Strip. Now they are being told they can no longer choose to live in any of the areas being set aside by international elites for a future Palestinian state. Again, I ask, "Why would internationalists seek to create, by definition, a racist, anti-Jewish state that doesn't even tolerate the mere presence of Jews? "Can anyone answer that question for me? Obama and Clinton — and, thus, by definition, you and me, the taxpayers of the United States — have determined they will yield to the racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic demands of the Palestinian Authority that no Jews be allowed to live in their new state. I like to think that in any other part of the world, this kind of effort at ethnically cleansing a region would be roundly condemned by all civilized people. Yet, because most people simply don't understand the clear, official plan by the Arab leaders to force out all Jews from the new Palestinian state, the policies of capitulation retain a degree of sympathy, even political support, from much of the world. Think about what I am saying: It is the official policy of the Palestinian Authority that all Jews must get off the land! Why is the United States supporting the creation of a new, racist, anti-Semitic hate state? Why is the civilized world viewing this as a prescription for peace in the region? Why is this considered an acceptable idea? Is there any other place in the world where that kind of official policy of racism and ethnic cleansing is tolerated — even condoned? Why are the rules different in the Middle East? Why are the rules different for Arabs? Why are the rules different for Muslims? Why are U.S. tax dollars supporting the racist, anti-Semitic entity known as the Palestinian Authority? That's what we do when we forbid "settlement construction," repairs, natural growth, additions to existing communities. This is "balance"? Are there any impositions upon the Arabs and Muslims suggesting they can no longer move to Israel? No. Are there any impositions on Arabs and Muslims suggesting they cannot buy homes in Israel? No. Are there any impositions on Arabs and Muslim suggesting they cannot repair their existing homes in Israel? No. Are there any impositions on Arabs or Muslims suggesting the cannot build settlements anywhere they like? No. Now, keep in mind, there are already quite a few Arab and Muslim states in the Middle East. Many of them already forbid Jews to live in them. Some prohibit Christians as well. But now, the only Jewish state in the world, and one that has a claim on the land dating back to the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is being told Jews must keep off land currently under their own control, but destined for transfer to people who hate them, despise them, want to see them dead and will not even accept living peacefully with them as neighbors. All the while, Israel continues to hold out its naïve hand of friendship to the Arabs and the Muslims — welcoming them in their own tiny nation surrounded by hateful neighbors. Arabs and Muslims are offered full citizenship rights — and even serve in elected office. They publish newspapers and broadcast on radio and television freely. But, conversely, Jews are one step away from eviction from homes they have sometimes occupied for generations. Gaza is about to happen all over again. I hope my Jewish friends remember this well. Many of them voted for Barack Obama. Many of them voted for Hillary Clinton. These are not your friends. These are the same kinds of people who turned away ships of Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1940s. These are the same kinds of people who appeased Adolf Hitler at Munich. These are the same kinds of people who made the reformation of the modern state of Israel so difficult. I say, "No more ethnic cleansing. No more official anti-Semitism accepted. No more Jew-bashing. No more telling Jews where they can live, how they can — and if they can live. Contact Chuck Brooks at chetz18@aol.com |
|
NETANYAHU FOLDS UNDER US PRESSURE TO PULL OUT OF WEST BANK TOWNS BEFORE PEACE TALKS
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, June 27, 2009. |
|
Perhaps I am mistaken but, I find extremely articulate politicians too often without a brain in their heads. I observe Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu fumble away the Jewish nation with grandiose statements about how he was going to Europe to make Israel's case. Too bad he was too late and the Americans got there before him. A deep thinker would have known that the scurrilous team who surrounds President Barack Obama would have easily pre-planned to ambush Netanyahu. One is reminded — again — of then PM Yitzhak Shamir at the Madrid International Conference of 1991 when he was out-maneuvered by then Secretary of State James Baker III and those pejoratively called his "Jew-Boys", i.e., Dennis Ross, Aaron David Miller and Daniel Kurtzer — later to include Martin Indyk. But, President Obama has his "Jew-Boys" too: Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and the notorious Jew-haters from past administrations who have re-entered the White House 'clout clique' through its ever revolving door and are now advising him: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, Baker (again) and Jimmy Carter — all Thinking, Thinking — "How do we subvert the Jewish State of Israel?" I could not help but wonder if Netanyahu was well aware of their continual scheming plots? Did he agree to collaborate in a plan to give away Jewish cities, towns and Land and yet pretend he was 'merely' outmaneuvered? Tough Luck but, Bibi could say "It wasn't my fault!" In Obama we see another articulate speaker in the process of bankrupting America by taking over and virtually nationalizing the banks, insurance agencies, auto industries, et al. Obama has covered over his maneuvers with a flow of smooth, deep words — with no viable solutions. Obama speaks of Islam as if it was a sane, peaceful religion, even the radical forms of Islamist Terror/Blood cult with its virulently anti-West, anti-Judeo-Christian values, which teaches its children as young as 3 years old to kill themselves while killing Jews, Christians — any infidel (non-Muslim). That's definitely an act of child abuse by the Muslim clerics and the parents who kow-tow to their orders. Obama acts as if Islam is wholly compatible with Democratic values of freedom. The people of Iran know better. How do these various charlatans mesmerize their publics and cheat them out of their own rights? While Obama steals the American nation and disposes of its Constitution, does Netanyahu collaborate with those greater plans, led by the ring-in-his-nose put there by an American President, in cahoots with those of the Muslims and Arabs who adhere to the blood cult of Terrorism? The peoples of each of these two democratic nations may have been cheated out of their own sovereignty and the rights they deserve. The corruption and the gross stupidity of some of these leaders will likely result in a great war in which their nations will be filled with the dead and dying. No doubt, these leaders will be horribly punished in this life and the next but, that will make no difference to those who must die, be grievously wounded or suffer the death of their loved ones for their leaders' betrayals. How sad that what could have continued to be thriving civilizations may too soon be reduced to rubble. This below is a June 25, 2009 DEBKAfile Special Analysis entitled "Netanyahu Folds Under Us Pressure For Pulling Out Of West Bank Towns Before Peace Talks." |
|
Despite his pledge to keep security considerations uppermost in his dealings with the Palestinians, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is buckling under pressure from the US administration aimed at softening Israel up ahead of Middle East peace talks. This pressure turned Netanyahu's first official visits to Rome and Paris sour. He had hoped to outmaneuver the Obama administration's insistence on a total settlement freeze by winning the support of friendly Silvio Berlusconi and Nicolas Sarkozy for a compromise formula, which would be presented as a European-Israel deal. To achieve this, he promised the Italian and French leaders that Israeli forces would soon be pulled out of West Bank Palestinian towns. But he failed to anticipate that the Obama administration would outflank him and get there first. So his arrival in Rome and Paris was preceded by Italian and French officials parroting the Washington line on a settlement freeze, including East Jerusalem When he met Berlusconi Monday, June 22, the Israeli prime minister saw that he had already talked to Obama on the phone and promised that the Italian boot would toe the American line. In Paris, he found the same trap had been laid at the Elysees. In these circumstances, Netanyahu should never have gone through with his visits to Italy and France. And defense minister Ehud Barak should call off his trip to Washington Monday for the interview with US Middle East envoy George Mitchell which the prime minister postponed. He has little hope of persuading the administration to change its tune or head off the impending clash between his administration and the Obama White House. Netanyahu's promise to the Italian and French leaders to pull the IDF out of the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jericho and Qalqilya, has meanwhile gone on record, for no gain in Rome in Paris. But he can no longer capitalize on this major concession for a quid pro quo from the Palestinians. The IDF has also been ordered to reduce to the number of checkpoints on the West Bank to 10 active facilities to allow the Palestinians to travel from town to town free of holdups for searches — another concession to US demands. These concessions are tantamount to the handover of the main West Bank towns to Palestinian security control. It is the most sweeping redeployment of Israeli security forces since their unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria four years ago as part of Ariel Sharon's disengagement policy. To make the gesture palatable to the Israeli public — who have not forgotten that years of Palestinian suicide bombing attacks from the West Bank were finally stemmed by the IDF presence in terrorist city strongholds — Netanyahu told the army spokesman to announce Thursday, June 25, that the measures were being given a one-week trial run before being finalized. However, once in place, these measures will be practically impossible to withdraw. The Obama administration has thus cornered the Netanyahu government into giving away valuable assets to the Palestinians before negotiations have even begun. This diplomatic dexterity has not been displayed in Washington's dealings with Iran. |
|
HOW TO HELP THE PALESTINIANS
Posted by Barbara Taverna, June 26, 2009. |
|
This was written by Khaled Abu Toameh, an Arab Muslim, is a
veteran award-winning journalist who has been covering Palestinian
affairs for nearly three decades. He studied at Hebrew University and
began his career as a reporter by working for a PLO-affiliated
newspaper in Jerusalem. He writes on Palestinian Arab affairs for the
Jerusalem Post and is a columnist |
|
The leaders of the Palestinian Authority do not want the international community to hear anything about massive abuse of human rights and intimidation of journalists that its security forces are practicing almost on a daily basis in the West Bank. They do not want the world to see that, with the help of the Americans and some Europeans, they are building more prisons and security forces than hospitals and housing projects for the needy. They want the US and the rest of the world to continue believing that peace will prevail tomorrow morning only if Israel stops construction in the settlements and removes a number of empty caravans from remote and isolated hilltops in the West Bank. The Palestinians do not need a dictatorship that harasses and terrorizes journalists, and that is responsible for the death of detainees in its prisons. In the Arab world we already have enough dictatorships. The Palestinians do not need additional security forces, militias and armed gangs. In fact, there are too many of them, both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. American and European taxpayers' money should be invested in building hospitals, schools and housing projects. Investing billions of dollars in training thousands of policemen and establishing new security forces and prisons will not advance the cause of peace and coexistence. There is no doubt that many Palestinians would love to abandon the culture of uniform and weapons in favor of improved infrastructure and medical care. As for the international media, it's time to abandon the policy of double standards in covering the Israeli-Arab conflict. For many years, the mainstream media in the US and Europe turned a blind eye to stories about financial corruption under Yasser Arafat. The result was that Arafat and his cronies got away with stealing billions of dollars that had been donated to the Palestinians by the Americans and Europeans. Back then, many foreign journalists said they believed that the stories about financial corruption in the Palestinian areas were "Zionist propaganda." Other journalists said they would rather file an anti-Israel story because this way they would become more popular with their editors and publishers. Recently, a Palestinian TV crew was stopped at a checkpoint in the West Bank, where soldiers confiscated a tape and erased its content. This incident, hardly received any coverage in the mainstream media in the US and Europe. The reason? The perpetrators were not IDF soldiers, but Palestinian Authority security officers. And the checkpoint did not belong to the IDF; it was, in fact, a Palestinian checkpoint. The story of the detention of the TV crew — which, by the way, belonged to Al-Jazeera and the erasure of the footage did not make it to the mainstream media even after Reporters Without Borders, an organization that defends journalists worldwide, issued a statement strongly condemning the assault on the freedom of the media. "Journalists must be able to work freely," Reporters Without Borders said. "The erasure of this video footage proves that the Palestinian security forces try to cover up their human rights violations. This incident should be the subject of an enquiry by the Palestinian Authority." Walid Omari, the head of the Qatar-based satellite TV station's operations in the West Bank, told Reporters Without Borders that his crew was preparing a report on the death of a detainee at the Palestinian Authority detention center in Hebron that might have been the result of torture. "We were the only ones to investigate this case and we did it despite strong pressure from the Palestinian Authority," Omari said. Al Jazeera's Hebron correspondent went with a cameraman to the victim's home in the village of Dura, where they interviewed the family and filmed the body. As they were returning to Hebron in a vehicle displaying the word "Press," they were detained by Palestinian Authority security forces at a checkpoint and taken to a police station, where the video footage they had just recorded was erased. They were allowed to go after an hour. One can only imagine the international media's reaction had the TV crew been detained by Israeli security forces. Anti-Israel groups and individuals would have cited the incident as further proof of the "occupation's brutal measures" against the freedom of the media. Moreover, it is highly likely that Israeli human rights organizations like Betselem would have dispatched researchers to the field to investigate the incident had IDF soldiers been involved. Yet foreign journalists and human rights activists working in Israel and the Palestinian territories either chose to ignore the story or never heard about it simply because it was lacking in an anti-Israel angle. One can also imagine how the media and human rights organizations would have reacted had a Palestinian died in Israeli prison after allegedly being tortured. Haitham Amr, a male nurse, was detained by the Palestinian Authority's US-backed and trained General Intelligence Force on suspicion of being affiliated with Hamas. He was one of more than 700 Palestinians who are being held without trial in West Bank prisons that are run by security forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. These security forces, which are being referred to by many Palestinians as the Dayton Forces [a reference to ret. US general and security coordinator Keith Dayton], claimed that Amr was killed after he jumped from the second floor of a building where he was being held in Hebron. The family and human rights organizations insist that Amr died as a result of severe torture. If the Palestinian Authority really had nothing to fear, why did it send its police officers to detain the TV crew and confiscate the tape? Is the Palestinian Authority trying to hide something? True, Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salaam Fayad hold more moderate views than Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal. But Abbas and Fayad do not enjoy enough credibility among their own people, largely due to their open ties with Israel and the West. The security and financial support that the Americans and Europeans are giving to the Palestinian Authority is nothing but a bear hug. That is perhaps why they chose to ignore the story about the male nurse whose family says was tortured to death by security officers who receive their salaries from US and European taxpayers' money. Contact Barbara Taverna at bltaverna@yahoo.com |
|
THE ISSUE IS NOT SETTLEMENTS; IT'S PALESTINIAN OBSESSESSIVE HATRED OF JEWS
Posted by Saul Goldman, June 26, 2009. |
|
The issue is not our right to build settlements in the West Bank. The issue is that the Palestinians, after having not only rejected the UN Partition Plan and having tried to beat up on one of the partners to this contract, now come back and demand the original terms to an agreement that they rejected. I would imagine that any reasonable person would say that there is now a new deal on the table if they are serious about peace. Rabin's understanding of Oslo even Olmert's understanding of a two state solution that is negotiated between partners to a diplomatic deal is not what Obama is about. It seems that his "demands" are not only shrill and antagonistic but "imperial" in that he chooses to ignore the facts that two parties must negotiate in civility. And by ignoring these principles, he clearly sides with people who in their education, culture and propoganda prepare their children for continued hate crimes. Until then Netanyahu has every right to expand settlements in order to show the Palestinians the penalty for not engaging in peaceful negotiations. Contact Saul Goldman at gold7910@bellsouth.net |
|
B. O.'S BIRTH CERTIFICATE
Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, June 26, 2009. |
|
Now let's see how they manipulate this one. Very Interesting questions More questions, and this time some good questions. Paul Hollrah over at FSM did so yesterday and believes the issue can be resolved by Obama answering one simple question: What passport did he use when he was shuttling between New York, Jakarta, and Karachi? So how did a young man who arrived in New York in early June 1981, without the price of a hotel room in his pocket, suddenly come up with the price of a round-the-world trip just a month later? And once he was on a plane, shuttling between New York, Jakarta, and Karachi, what passport was he offering when he passed through Customs and Immigration? The American people not only deserve to have answers to these questions, they must have answers. It makes the debate over Obama's citizenship a rather short and simple one. Q: Did he travel to Pakistan in 1981, at age 20?
Q: What passport did he travel under? A: There are only three possibilities.
Q: Is it possible that Obama traveled with a U.S. Passport in 1981?
Conclusion: When Obama went to Pakistan in 1981 he was traveling either with a British passport or an Indonesian passport. If he were traveling with a British passport that would
provide proof that he was born in Kenya on August 4, 1961, not in
Hawaii as he claims. And if he were traveling with an Indonesian
passport that would tend to prove that he relinquished whatever
previous citizenship he held, British or American, prior to being
adopted by his Indonesian step-father in 1967.
Whatever the truth of the matter,the American people need to know how he managed to become a "natural born" American citizen between 1981 and 2008. Given the destructive nature of his plans for America, as illustrated by his speech before Congress and the disastrous spending plan he has presented to Congress, the sooner we learn the truth of all this, the better. If you Don't care that Your President is not a natural born Citizen and in Violation of the Constitution, then Delete this and go into your cocoon. Gabrielle Goldwater lives in Switzerland. Contact her at III44@aol.com |
|
IRANIAN DISSIDENTS CALL ON ISRAEL TO HELP GET THE NEWS OUT
Posted by CPocerl, June 26, 2009. |
|
This was written by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz and it appeared in
the New Media Journal
|
|
Iranian anti-regime activists are hoping for an Israeli technological hand to help them fight the Islamic Republic. As of now, hundreds of protesters have been killed by the regime, which is evidently using Arabic-speaking armed thugs from Hezbollah to help perpetrate the violence. "Dear Israeli Brothers and Sisters," writes Iranian dissident Arash Irandoost, "Iran needs your help more than ever now. And we will be eternally grateful. Please help opposition television and radio stations which are blocked and being jammed by the Islamic Republic (Nokia and Siemens) resume broadcast to Iran. There is a total media blackout and Iranians inside Iran for the most part are not aware of their brave brothers and sisters fighting and losing their lives daily. And the unjust treatment and brutal massacre of the brave Iranians in the hands of the mullah's paid terrorist Hamas and Hezbollah gangs are not seen by the majority of the Iranians. Please help in any way you can to allow these stations resume broadcasting to Iran. "And, please remember that we will remember, as you have remembered Cyrus the Great's treatment of you in your time of need," Irandoost concludes, signing his blogged call for help "Your Iranian Brothers and Sisters!" In an interview with Israel National News, Iranian expatriate pro-democracy activist Amil Imani said that Irandoost's message represents the sentiments of much of the youth in the streets in Iran. They have a strong belief in the technological know-how of the Israelis to overcome the Iranian regime's attempts to block communications. "This is going to be the most massive, impressive revolution of the 21st century," Imani said, "and we're seeing it live." However, he added, it is now too dependent on Internet communications, so the protesters are very much in need of outside assistance to fight the technological and information war. More generally, Imani said, the Iranian people are lionizing any leader of any nation who comes out strongly against the Islamic Republic at this time. Contact C Pocerl by email at at Cpocerl@aol.com |
|
PRESIDENT OBAMA BLAMES ISRAEL FOR PALESTINIAN SUFFERING, AND OFFERS A DISHONORABLE PLAN
Posted by Sonia Nusenbaum, June 26, 2009. |
|
This was written by Charles Krauthammer. Contact him at letters@charleskrauthammer.com |
|
Obama the Humble declares there will be no more "dictating" to other countries. We should "forge partnerships as opposed to simply dictating solutions," he told the G-20 summit. In Middle East negotiations, he told al-Arabiya, America will henceforth "start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating." An admirable sentiment. It applies to everyone — Iran, Russia, Cuba, Syria, even Venezuela. Except Israel. Israel is ordered to freeze all settlement activity. As Secretary of State Clinton imperiously explained the diktat: "a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions." What's the issue? No "natural growth" means strangling to death the thriving towns close to the 1949 armistice line, many of them suburbs of Jerusalem, that every negotiation over the past decade has envisioned Israel retaining. It means no increase in population. Which means no babies. Or if you have babies, no housing for them — not even within the existing town boundaries. Which means for every child born, someone has to move out. No community can survive like that. The obvious objective is to undermine and destroy these towns — even before negotiations. To what end? Over the last decade, the U.S. government has understood that any final peace treaty would involve Israel retaining some of the close-in settlements — and compensating the Palestinians accordingly with land from within Israel itself. That was envisioned in the Clinton plan in the Camp David negotiations in 2000, and again at Taba in 2001. After all, why turn towns to rubble when, instead, Arabs and Jews can stay in their homes if the 1949 armistice line is shifted slightly into the Palestinian side to capture the major close-in Jewish settlements, and then shifted into Israeli territory to capture Israeli land to give to the Palestinians? This idea is not only logical, not only accepted by both Democratic and Republican administrations for the last decade, but was agreed to in writing in the letters of understanding exchanged between Israel and the United States in 2004 — and subsequently overwhelmingly endorsed by a concurrent resolution of Congress. Yet the Obama State Department has repeatedly refused to endorse these agreements or even say it will honor them. This from a President who piously insists that all parties to the conflict honor previous obligations. The entire "natural growth" issue is a concoction. It's farcical to suggest that the peace process is moribund because a teacher in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is making an addition to her house to accommodate new grandchildren — when Gaza is run by Hamas terrorists dedicated to permanent war with Israel and when Mahmoud Abbas, having turned down every one of Ehud Olmert's peace offers, brazenly declares that he is in a waiting mode — waiting for Hamas to become moderate and for Israel to cave — before he'll do anything to advance peace. In his much-heralded "Muslim world" address in Cairo yesterday, Obama declared that the Palestinian people's "situation" is "intolerable." Indeed it is, the result of 60 years of Palestinian leadership that gave its people corruption, tyranny, religious intolerance and forced militarization; leadership that for three generations — Haj Amin al-Husseini in 1947, Yasser Arafat in 2000, Abbas in December 2008 — rejected every offer of independence and dignity, choosing destitution and despair rather than accept any settlement not accompanied by the extinction of Israel. In the 16 years since the Oslo accords turned the West Bank and Gaza over to the Palestinians, their leaders — Fatah and Hamas alike — built no schools, no roads, no courthouses, no hospitals, no institutions that would relieve their people's suffering. Instead they poured everything into an infrastructure of war and terror, all the while depositing billions (from gullible Western donors) into their Swiss bank accounts. |
|
ABBAS REFUSES TO REALLY NEGOTIATE; CONFERENCE ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM; PA POSITION ON PEACE
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 26, 2009. |
|
HAMAS WIFE PREFERS IDF TO ABBAS' FORCES Palestinian Authority (P.A.) police raided the house of a Hamas
suspect. The suspect's wife said they broke in without warning,
whereas Israeli forces ask, first. The P.A. police were reckless, even
damaging a Koran, whereas Israeli forces try not to damage personal
possessions. She said the Israelis are more polite
The woman's honest opinion contrasts with UN views on Israeli
behavior in Gaza, as you can find if you click here:
Israel is a tolerant society. Muslim Arab society is undergoing some modernization but still is based largely on primitive oppression, intolerance, deception, sexual neurosis, the shame-honor neurosis, and on imperialism and brutality emphasized by Radical Islam: female circumcision, beheading, amputation, stoning, and other capital punishment including "honor killing" for minor refraction. Their famous charm and hospitality does not compensate. TERRORIST ATTEMPT TO INFILTRATE ISRAEL A dozen al-Qaeda terrorists tried to cross from Gaza into Israel. They had horses laden with explosives and booby-trapped cars. They fired mortars as if hoping to divert IDF forces from infiltrators to searching for mortar launchers. The Israelis injured some of the terrorists and closed off the crossing into Israel. Hamas gets credit for reducing its firing of rockets, but it is building better rockets and it has increased attempted infiltration (http://www.israelnationalnews.com/ — Arutz-7, 6/8). Israel gets blamed for closing the crossings. To see a solution to infiltration, click here:
ABBAS REFUSES TO NEGOTIATE WITH ISRAEL President Obama asked both the Palestinian Authority and Israel to
negotiate with each other. Netanyahu agreed unconditionally. Abbas
refused unless Israel first agrees to P.A. statehood and to stop
building in
Draw your own conclusion about who wants peace and who deals honestly. CONFERENCE ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN ISRAEL On May 18, Ben-Gurion University held a day-long conference on academic freedom and responsibility. Of the many speakers, only one seemed a non-leftist. [What does that indicate about the state of academic freedom there?] The near-consensus was that professors have a right to promote their views and hire instructors not for their qualifications but for their ideology, while critics do not have a right to monitor this and question whether such behavior and the results fulfill the University's function. If instruction is based on opinions and not scholarship, what is its value, why should it be left unmonitored or allowed, and why grant professors tenure and not rotate their jobs among office clerks? The conference view was that leftist professors may seek, without standards of scholarship, to indoctrinate students against Jewish sovereignty, without private and public underwriters of universities being informed of it. Thus the conference did not take up academic freedom, it advocated academic irresponsibility. Two billion dollars a year is spent on higher education in Israel. No transparency allowed? Conference sentiment opposed public effort against mismanagement of funds reported by the State Comptroller. Why should donors to what they think are Zionist universities not know that their money really supports anti-Zionism? The conferees tried to evade this issue, making the conference self-serving. Exposes of anti-Israel academic abuse has caused donors to reduce contributions to Ben-Gurion University. [Unlike Israeli universities, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. are "...managed by boards of governors, not by their faculty. The governors have fostered world-class excellence by insisting that funds be used efficiently to attract the most talented scholars in every field, and dictating the ruthless weeding out of the merely competent. However, there was no place at the conference table for this point of view." Most Israeli university social studies departments pursue the agenda of Israel's post-Zionists: They seek to persuade "Jewish Israelis that their own state and nationalism are illegitimate." [Like the NY Times, they don't present the facts, they seek to mold public opinion.] Prof. Neve Gordon added silliness to malevolence. He contended that Israel lacks academic freedom, because the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) lacks academic freedom, because the IDF closed some of its colleges for promoting terrorism. Is terrorism protected by academic freedom? What has academic freedom in the P.A. to do with academic freedom in Israel? [When P.A. colleges are open, what would happen to students to denounced terrorism and upheld peace? They'd need life insurance. They don't have academic freedom, because they have a religious dictatorship.] Finally, the noted Prof. Amnon Rubinstein set some realistic standards for what academic freedom should not cover: (1) Activities that harm the institution, such as its boycott; (2) Activity to harm the country, such as its boycott and divestment; and (3) Hate propaganda based on historical falsification. In a slap at the other conferees, Prof. Rubinstein suggested a university duty to harbor a diversity of opinion (Dr. Yitzchak Klein, www.isracampus.org). That would be a worthy goal for American universities focused only on ethnic diversity. Students have a right to an objective education and to know what quality of education is being offered. Monitoring could go too far. It hasn't there. What has gone too far is the enthronement of non-factual, anti-Zionist, ideological indoctrination. I see two levels in this controversy: (1) Instruction should be based on the facts, so students are informed enough to reach their own conclusions; and (2) Diverse opinion may then follow but not be imposed. Israeli ideologues ignore the facts, just give opinion, and their opinions reflect almost no diversity. The modern world is too dangerous militarily and financially for a country to allow education to be entire subjective and monopolized by one view, a subversive one at that. For more on freedom to discuss the Arab-Israel conflict, click
here:
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 and visit his website:
|
|
IS ISRAEL NEGOTIATING WITH U.S. OR WITH P.A.?
Posted by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, June 26, 2009. |
|
The U.S. State Department had a tough time this week explaining to a reporter why the Obama administration is talking with Israel about the creation of a Palestinian Authority state instead of letting the two parties themselves negotiate. A journalist asked spokesman Philip Crowley, "The problem here is that it seems to be that the negotiation that's going on is between the United States and Israel.... The U.S. and Israel are friends and allies and there isn't a — there is no need for a peace deal between — the need here is for a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians, not for an agreement between the U.S. and Israel over settlements. Is that correct?" Crowley tried to explain that one of the first priorities of U.S. President Barack Obama since he took office has been to advance the peace process. In answer to persistent questioning over the issue of an agreement on construction in Judea and Samaria being worked out between Israel and the PA and not the U.S., he relied, "Our interest is to facilitate the parties to restart a negotiation that leads to a comprehensive agreement. Again, as [U.S. Middle East envo George Mitchell said, we want to get back into a formal negotiation. And we are working hard right now to create the conditions that would allow that to happen. We recognize that positions held by Israel today and positions held by the Palestinians today may be at odds." Mitchell and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu cancelled their planned meeting in Paris this week in order "to clarify" the issue of building for Jews in Judea and Samaria. The State Department also told a reporter this week that the building freeze desired by President Obama also applies to large Jewish neighborhoods near the heart of the capital. Defense Minister Ehud Barak is to meet with Mitchell next week, and Thursday's announcement by the IDF, which is halting counterterrorist operations in four major PA cities, is considered a move to appease the Obama administration. This article appeared today in Arutz-7 (www.IsrealNationalNews,com) |
|
THE TWO STATE SOLUTION IS A VICTORY FOR THE PROXY WAR AGAINST ISRAEL
Posted by Sultan Knish, June 25, 2009. |
|
When Hitler wanted to carve up Czechoslovakia he began by demanding the Sudetenland, inhabited by the Volksdeutsche, ethnic Germans living in Czechoslovakia. The world thought this was entirely reasonable and Czechoslovakia was forced to give in. Of course Hitler did not simply want the Sudetenland, anymore than he simply wanted the Rhineland. He was after a much vaster program of conquest. 
By coining the term "Volksdeutsche" Hitler created an artificial identity for large numbers of Czechs, Poles and citizens of other Eastern European nations. He used that identity to create regional fifth columns that engaged in terrorism and then used them as justification to invade and seize other nations. Only by the time his ambitions reached Poland did Western Europe wake up to realize what their appeasement toward Nazi Germany had wrought. By the time it was all over nearly 80 million were dead, a continent lay in ruins, Eastern Europe was in the hands of the Communists and Western Europe's Great Powers would never come into their own again. "Palestine" like Volksdeutsche is an artificial identity created in order to maintain a fifth column and use them to conduct a proxy war against Israel, by the same Arab Muslim powers who had tried and fail to defeat Israel on the battlefield. The tactic of course long predates and postdates Hitler. Alexander the Great made use of it in his conquests. The Russians used it only last year when they wanted to invade Georgia. But in the post-WW2 era it has most effectively been employed against Israel. The absurdity of taking a Greco-Roman name for the region and trying to turn it into two things it never was, a nation and an ethnic identity, would have been inconceivable without heavy backing from both the Soviet Union and Western liberals. But by painting the genocidal urge of both Arab Marxists and Islamists as a drive to liberate "Palestine", the proxy war by Arab terrorists backed by Egypt, Jordan and Syria, and more recently by Iran, was successfully repackaged by an oppressed people to liberate a land that never existed. As "Volksdeutsche" gave Hitler the right to carve up and eventually annex Czechoslovakia, "Palestine" has given the Muslim world and assorted leftists the right to carve up and destroy Israel under the pretext of aiding the "Palestinian People." In 1937, Awni Abd al-Hadi told the Peel Commission stating, "Palestine is a term the Zionists invented.... Our country for centuries was part of Syria," As late as 1980 the Jordanian Prime Minister stated, "The Palestinians and Jordanians do not belong to different nationalities. They hold the same Jordanian passports, are Arabs and have the same Jordanian culture." In 1977, Zuheir Mohsen, head of the second largest militia within the PLO and once considered a potential successor to Arafat, stated the premise of the proxy war quite frankly; The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism. Arafat himself expressed the same basic idea in his infamous U.N. speech in 1988, saying, "The State of Palestine is an Arab State; its people are an integral Part of the Arab nation." Hamas' Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahour repeated it in an Economist interview in 2008; He certainly would not now "accept the reality" of Israel, as some of his senior colleagues have hinted. It may, instead, become "an eternal issue", he says, looking ahead to a distant future when, "like your European Union", the Arab nation will form one state across its historic lands, joining up with other Muslim nations such as Turkey. "We [Palestinians] were never an independent state in history," he notes. "We were part of an Arab state and an Islamic state." That "Great Arab State" or "Great Islamic State", or Caliphate, has always been the endgame. Palestine is to the Caliphate, what the Sudetenland was to Hitler's Thousand Year Reich. Israel is a stubborn little non-Arab non-Muslim state that stands in the way of the great dream of the Caliphate, a vast Muslim empire stretching across the Middle East into Turkey, Asia and even the heartland of Europe itself. The fury directed at Israel from the Muslim world is in direction proportion to Israel's obstruction of this messianic vision of an Islamic Arab ruled Ummah stretching across the entire globe and fulfilling the vision of Mohammed. It was never about "Palestinian rights", because not only is there no Palestinian people, but the refugee camps were themselves created by the Arab world as a first stage for the proxy war. They began by alternately luring and badgering Arabs out of Israel during the War of Independence, for example; "Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit....It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades." And naturally as renegades they would have been treated the same as the Jews, or perhaps even worse, during what was then seen as the "inevitable conquest" of Israel by the neighboring Arab states. At the very least that would mean the loss of property and land. At most it would mean outright massacre. Once out they became refugees, kept in camps, and maintained as displaced persons, to serve as fodder for both terrorist recruitment and world outrage against Israel. As succinctly stated by UNRWA Director Ralph Galloway in 1958, "The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die." After two lost wars, the "open sore" was transformed into a new Palestinian nation that had never existed but was being suppressed by Israel. Palestinian Terrorism became global, as part of a proxy war conducted by Arab states against Israel, itself part of a proxy war being conducted by the USSR against the West. With the fall of the USSR, the proxy war has shed its Arab Marxist colors in favor of Arab Islamist ones, replacing Fatah, once backed by Arab Socialist regimes in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, in favor of Hamas, backed by Islamist regimes in Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Two State solution is the Sudetenland solution, carving up Israel and creating a sovereign and legally independent terrorist regime at war with Israel... inside Israel. With weapons flowing from around the Middle East and Pakistan through open borders, the real job of destroying Israel will finally begin. Supporting the Two State solution means quite simply supporting the endgame of the proxy war against Israel. The solution has nothing to do with Palestinian rights or stabilizing the Middle East. There is no "tough love" in it, as Obama insists, or love of any kind. It is simply the final phase in the destruction of Israel, which itself is only one phase in the creation of a global Islamic empire. Advocating the Two State solution means advocating genocide and ethnic cleansing. It means destroying the Middle East's only democracy to make way for a monstrosity that would be the worst of the Taliban writ large across the region and the globe. It means stoning, amputation and a thousand uncounted brutalities. And most of all it brings WWIII or a global clash of civilizations that much closer. There are two kinds of people who support the Two State Solution. Those who know what they support and those who do not.
This article is archived at
|
|
ISRAELIS, U.S. JEWS DIFFER DRAMATICALLY ON OBAMA
Posted by Barbara Sommer, June 25, 2009. |
|
This was written by Caroline Glick and it appeared yesterday
in the Jewish Press
Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Her book "The Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad," is available at Amazon.com. Visit her website at www.CarolineGlick.com. Contact her by email at caroline@carolineglick.com |
|
Have American Jews abandoned Israel in favor of President Obama? This is a central question in the minds of Israelis today. In a poll of Israeli Jews conducted in mid-June by the Jerusalem Post, a mere 6 percent of respondents said they view Obama as pro-Israel. In stark contrast, a Gallup tracking poll in early May showed that 79 percent of American Jews support the president. These numbers seem to tell us that U.S. Jews have indeed parted company with the Jewish state. No American president has ever been viewed as similarly ill disposed toward Israel by Israelis. With only 6 percent seeing the administration as friendly, it is apparent that distrust of Obama is not a partisan issue in Israel. It spans the spectrum from far left to right, from ultra-Orthodox to ultra-secular. But with his 79-percent approval rating among U.S. Jews, it is clear the American Jewish community is quite sympathetically inclined toward Obama. Appearances of course can be deceptive. And it is worth taking a closer look at the numbers to understand what they tell us about American Jewish sentiments regarding Obama and Israel. First, however, we should consider what it is about Obama that makes nearly all Israeli Jews view him as an adversary. The Jerusalem Post poll showed a massive divergence between Israeli Jews and Obama on the issue of Jewish building beyond the 1949 armistice line. The Obama administration has refused to budge in its hard-line demand that Israel end all Jewish building in north, south, and east Jerusalem as well as in Judea and Samaria. For its part, the Netanyahu government has refused to bow to this demand. Seventy percent of Israeli Jews support the Netanyahu government's handling of the issue with the Obama administration and 69 percent oppose a freeze on Jewish building. Beyond Obama's agitation on the issue of Jewish construction, Israelis are dismayed by what they perceive as the generally hostile approach he has adopted in dealing with the Jewish state. This approach was nowhere more in evidence than in his speech to the Islamic world in Cairo on June 4. It wasn't just Obama's comparison of Palestinian terrorism to the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, the American civil rights movement and antebellum slave rebellions that set people off. There was also Obama's inference that Israel owes its legitimacy to the Holocaust. It is that claim — Obama repeated it during his visit to Buchenwald — which forms the basis of the Islamic narrative against Israel. It argues that Jews are not indigenous to the Middle East, and that the only thing keeping Israel in place is European guilt about Auschwitz. Not only do Israelis of all political stripes reject this as factually false, they recognize it is inherently anti-Semitic because it ignores and negates 3,500 years of Jewish history in the land of Israel. With Israeli distrust of Obama so apparent, and so easily explained, two questions arise: How has Obama managed to maintain American Jewish support despite his unprecedented unpopularity in Israel? And what is the likelihood that when push comes to shove, American Jews will stand with Israel against the president they so admire? Obama's great success in maintaining support among American Jews owes much to the fact that most American Jews do not pick up the same messages from Obama's statements as do Israeli Jews. Whereas Israeli Jews recognize that it is morally obscene, strategically suicidal and historically inaccurate to suggest that Israel has no rights to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and that Jews have no right to live there, American Jews do not intuitively understand this to be the case. Consequently, while Israeli Jews recognize Obama's calls for a total freeze in Jewish construction in these areas as inherently hostile, most American Jews do not. Beyond this, for the past 15 years, Holocaust education — more so than Zionist education or Jewish religious education — has become the hallmark of American Jewish identity. As a consequence, American Jews may not see anything objectionable in Obama's inference that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust. If the divergence in U.S. Jewish and Israeli attitudes toward Obama is simply a consequence of a lack of American Jewish awareness of the significance of Obama's positions and policies for Israel, then the disparity in views can be easily remedied by a sustained issues awareness campaign by Israel and by American Jewish organizations. For many of Israel's core American Jewish supporters, such a campaign would no doubt go a long way in energizing them to challenge the administration on its positions vis-à-vis Israel. But there are other factors at work. According to the American Jewish Committee's 2008 survey of American Jews, some 67 percent of American Jews feel close to Israel. These numbers, while high, are not significantly higher than similar support levels among the general U.S. population. (A survey of general American sentiment toward Israel conducted this month by the Israel Project shows that support for Israel has dropped by 20 percent in the past nine months — from 69 to 49 percent. Presumably, Jewish American support for Israel has also experienced a drop.) More significantly, the AJC survey showed that in the lead-up to the 2008 presidential elections, only three percent of American Jews said a candidate's position on Israel was the most important issue for them. Indeed, according to survey after survey of American Jewish opinion over the past decade, U.S. Jewish support for Israel, while widespread, is not particularly deep. This sentiment lends to the conclusion that American Jews will not abandon or temper their support for Obama simply because he is perceived as being hostile to Israel. The picture, then, is a mixed bag. Support for Israel against Obama will likely rise as a consequence of a sustained educational campaign among American Jews about the issues in dispute and their importance for Israel's security and national well-being. But even in that event, it is unclear how dramatic the shift would be. Given the shallowness of U.S. Jewish support for Israel, no doubt many American Jews will not care enough to reassess their positions on either Israel or Obama. The one bit of encouraging news in all this is the persistence of support for Israel relative to Palestinians among rank and file Americans. Palestinians are supported by a mere five percent of Americans. No doubt it is this disparity that is motivating leading Democratic politicians — most recently Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic Senator Robert Menendez from New Jersey — to publicly distance themselves from the administration's Mideast policies. If U.S. Jewish leaders and pro-Israel activists can educate just a fraction of the American Jewish community, and motivate them to stand with Israel in a significant way against administration pressure, this will likely motivate still more lawmakers and politicians from both parties to maintain support for Israel against the administration. Certainly it will help convince Israelis we haven't been abandoned by American Jewry. And that in itself would be no mean achievement. Contact Barbara Sommer at lsommer_1_98@yahoo.com |
|
JIHADIST FORUM THREAD DISCUSSES IF AND WHEN ONE MAY EAT THE FLESH OF U.S. SOLDIERS
Posted by Cpocerl, June 25, 2009. |
|
This comes from Memri and is archived as No.# 2420 at
|
|
A recent thread on the Al-Falluja jihadist forum discussed the case of whether a Muslim who has nothing else to eat may kill an infidel in order to eat him. The discussion was prompted by a recently published book by Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi, one of the most influential jihadist sheikhs active today. The following is a summary of the discussion thread. The full text of this report is available to subscribers. Contact www.memri.org for information. On June 13, 2009, a member of the Al-Falluja forum who uses the moniker "Al-Maqdisi's Student" wrote a post based on this passage [in full report] titled "Is it permitted to eat the flesh of American soldiers? A quote from the illustrious Sheikh Al-Maqdisi, may Allah preserve him." He began by recounting an exchange between the early Muslim commander Khalid b. Al-Walid and the Byzantine commander at the battle of Yarmuk (in the year 636 C.E.) The Byzantine commander said to Khalid that the Muslims had only gone out from their land due to hunger, and offered to buy them off. Khalid responded: "It was not hunger that drove us out of our land, as you say; we are a people who drink blood, and we know that there is no blood more delicious than Byzantine blood. That is why we came." Contact C Pocerl by email at at Cpocerl@aol.com |
|
FROM ISRAEL: SHALIT
Posted by Arlene Kushner, June 25, 2009. |
|
It is now three years since Gilad Shalit was grabbed by terrorists who had tunneled under the fence at the border of Gaza. He is presumed alive, but Hamas, which is holding him, has not permitted visits by the International Red Cross, as prescribed by international law — and a Hamas spokesman is now saying nothing is assured but Israel has to do an exchange in any event. A letter from his parents was sent to him via Jimmy Carter, who met with Hamas officials very recently; a return letter is awaited. PM Netanyahu and DM Barak have both pledged to devote themselves to the effort to secure the release of Shalit. At the beginning of June, Netanyahu appointed former senior Mossad operative Haggai Hadas as the new envoy to take over indirect Shalit negotiations with Hamas. In the vast few days there have been rumors flying regarding an imminent deal; the original source for this was the Palestinian Maan news agency — which said Shalit was about to be turned over to the Egyptians, as a first step in a negotiated release. Our government is denying this. I confess a bewilderment as to what, precisely, the Netanyahu government could (or would) do, that would satisfy Hamas, when Olmert's readiness to release even some Hamas prisoners with blood on their hands (not all) was not enough. But I am not privy to inner negotiations and have no guess as to what other factors might be involved. The Jerusalem Post is calling for an investigation of why, in the last three years, we have not mounted a serious effort to rescue him. ~~~~~~~~~~ We are continuing to see a tremendously schizoid situation with regard to the relationship between Hamas and Fatah (the PA). There is still talk, however diminishing, of working towards a unity government. Khaled Abu Toameh has reported that the PA said this week that they would release hundreds of Hamas detainees as a gesture towards reconciliation with Hamas. But it was only two weeks ago that PA police arrested 36 members of Hamas in what was seen as an action that further deteriorated Hamas-Fatah relations. And it was just yesterday that Palestinians from the area of Kalkilyia in Samaria told the US radio network NPR that there was PA fear of a Hamas coup in Judea and Samaria similar to the one that had taken place in Gaza two years ago. Said Fatah representative Ahmed Shreen: "The Hamas leadership wants to take over [Judea and Samaria] and the proof is that they [PA police] have discovered large weapons cache right here in Kalkilyia in Hamas areas. What I am worried about is that while we are talking in Cairo, Hamas will be planning the coup." ~~~~~~~~~~ On Tuesday, Israel released Abdel Aziz Dweik, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, from prison — where he had been since Hamas's abduction of Shalit. Dweik is affiliated with Hamas, which was victorious in the last legislative elections in the PA. There was speculation that this was evidence of a coming deal with Hamas on Shalit, but authorities claimed, no, that it's just that his term was almost up. (Why release him even a day early?) At any rate, Hamas is now saying that Dweik should be acting president of the PA. I've been wondering what took so long here. If you remember, Hamas claimed that Abbas, who had completed a four-year term as president in January — four years being the term specified by the PA constitution — no longer legally held the office. Abbas claimed that the president and legislature — also according to the PA constitution — are supposed to be elected together, and as he began a year early because of Arafat's death, he had a year to go. Now, with Dweik — who as speaker of the parliament is next in line — out of jail, Hamas is doing a more direct challenge. This is a further indication that "reconciliation" is not on the way. ~~~~~~~~~~ A statement today by Hamas politburo head in Damascus, Khaled Mashaal, sheds further light on the current Hamas-Fatah dynamics and the role being played by the US. He praises Obama's "new language" towards Hamas: "It is the first step in the right direction toward a dialogue without conditions, and we welcome this." In any event this shouldn't surprise us, but especially now that we know Carter met with State Department personnel before meeting with Hamas is this not unexpected. However, said Mashaal, this is not enough. What the US must do is pull out General Dayton, who is in charge of training PA forces in Judea and Samaria — presumably to take out Hamas terrorists. This, explained Mashaal, is counterproductive to reconciliation efforts. One would think so. ~~~~~~~~~~ We heard from Dov Weissglas — who was chief of the prime minister's office for Ariel Sharon — recently, with regard to the fact that there was an understanding between the US and Israel that permitted development for natural growth inside existing settlements. Now Elliot Abrams, who was in charge of Mid-Eastern Affairs for the US National Security Council during the period in question, and was involved directly in meetings with Weissglas, has written a piece in the Wall Street Journal, "Hillary is Wrong About the Settlements." Says Abrams, in return for his pulling out of Gaza completely, as well as from four communities in northern Samaria, the US worked out an understanding on the issue of settlements with Sharon that: "There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line (of any given existing settlement), no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic incentives and no construction of new settlements. ~~~~~~~~~~ PM Netanyahu, in Paris, was subjected to a good deal of pressure by French President Sarkozy with regard to the settlements. I just love the way the Europeans (as did Obama) make declarations about how they are solidly supportive of our right to security, and then proceed to push a situation that threatens our security. Netanyahu was supposed to meet with US envoy Mitchell in Paris, to discuss the settlement issue, but the meeting was called off, apparently mutually. They are not ready to talk yet. ~~~~~~~~~~ Herb Keinon, in the Post, has offered a cogent analysis of what Obama is achieving, or failing to achieve, by his adamant insistence on a total freeze on building in settlements. On the one hand, quite simply, Obama may be doing this to garner credibility with the Arab world. This may not be palatable to us (in fact, seems enormously inequitable), but it makes sense as a strategy. However, if Obama's goal is to foster movement in "peace negotiations," what he is doing is severely counterproductive. By making negotiations dependent upon something Netanyahu cannot and will not deliver, he has effectively forestalled the possibility of negotiations. Keinon points out that Abbas doesn't really want to negotiate with Netanyahu anyway. What Obama has done is given him the excuse to not do so. ~~~~~~~~~~ From my perspective, of course, while there is no reason or justice in making us and not the PA the stumbling block, a situation of no negotiations sits just fine indeed. And so Obama may, very inadvertently, be doing us a favor. ~~~~~~~~~~ Interestingly, Shaul Behr, in his blog, has expressed a similar thought. Better not a friend in Washington, he reasons. For then there are no illusions, "and no need to pander." "Obama has truly surpassed all my expectations for alienating Israelis. It really is amazing how he has swung Israeli public opinion since his inauguration: when he started out he had 31% of Israelis thinking he was pro-Israel, versus 14% who felt he was pro-Arab, and 40% felt he was neutral. The latest opinion polls have only 6% still thinking he's pro-Israel, 36% neutral, and fully 50% now feel he's pro-Arab. You gotta hand it to the guy — that is really amazing work. Not only has he debased himself by groveling in front of the Muslim world with his cringing apologetics in Cairo, but he has succeeded in completely alienating Israelis to the extent that only 6% of us feel that he's on our side! "To me, this is very good news. He now has absolutely no leverage to extract any more stupid unilateral concessions out of us."
~~~~~~~~~~ I recommend "A call for American boldness in Iran," by Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum:
~~~~~~~~~~ "The Good News Corner" This is a special piece of good news for me as it involves a personal connection. Three of my granddaughters in Beit Shemesh attend Orot Banot — a religious nationalist school for girls that runs through sixth grade. Yesterday, I attended the graduation of the eldest, Rachel, which was held right here in Jerusalem. School graduations in Israel tend to be elaborate programs, with dramatic and musical elements — and this was no exception. Part of what was offered for guests was a dance sequence by the girls. As it happens, one of the girls in the class, Chen, is in a wheelchair. She was brought out on stage and placed in the very center. In her hands was a hoop that had streamers attached, and as the girls danced around her she waved the hoop high — essentially the star of the routine. My daughter than told me about the annual class trip. Tiyulim (trips of various sorts — including some extended, in outdoor areas) are routine for Israeli schools, and it is traditional to do one at the end of the year. Chen was brought along in her wheelchair. But there was some hiking done in terrain where the wheelchair could not be managed. And so the school had hired two men to carry Chen on a stretcher, so that she would not be left out. Lastly, this: Various girls were given solo speaking parts to introduce segments of the program, and so forth. Rachel had such a part. So did Chen, brought to sit next to the podium with a teacher at her side. She struggled a bit in speaking her part and when it was over and she was being wheeled off the stage, she burst into tears. Then I saw girls from the sidelines rush to be with her, embrace her, and comfort her. Does it get better than this? A source of great pride. Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il and visit her website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info |
|
RABBI VOLPO'S HALACHIC RULING
Posted by Jake Levi, June 25, 2009. |
|
THE FACTS:
Therefore, we rule, with the power of our Holy Torah, as follows:
We hereby put our signatures to the above, during the week of Parshas Shlach, with the blessing that "'We should go up at once; for we are well able to overcome it.' Rabbi Shalom Dov Volpo
|
|
Contact Jake Levi at jlevi_us@yahoo.com |
|
ISRAEL'S RELIABLE FRIEND: THE PRESIDENT PROPOSES BUT CONGRESS DISPOSES
Posted by Yoram Ettinger, June 25, 2009. |
|
President Obama and his advisors pressure Prime Minister Netanyahu to avoid intensive contacts with Congress. They claim that such contacts would undermine the Presidency, and would therefore damage US-Israel relations. However, refraining from such contacts would demote Congress into a "Supporting Actor", and thus would be an insult to the American People, to its representatives on Capitol Hill and to the US democracy, which regard Congress as a "Co-Starring Actor." In the long run, it would degrade vital Israeli interests and weaken US-Israel relations. In 1992, I was told by then Majority Leader, Senator George Mitchell: "Doesn't Israel realize that the US is not a monarchy and that the President is strong but not omnipotent?!" And, in fact it was Congress — and not the President — that stopped US military involvement in Vietnam (Eagleton Amendment), Angola (Clark Amendment), Nicaragua (Boland Amendment), forced the USSR to let the Jews go (Jackson-Vanik Amendment), approved emergency aid to the former USSR (Aspen-Nunn Amendment), toppled the White regime in Pretoria (Anti-Apartheid Act), provided Israel with emergency assistance following the 1991 Gulf War in defiance of Bush/Baker, etc. Recent Israeli governments have underestimated the power of Congress, as a result of the highlighted global profile of the President. Still, a US President is powerful, but — unlike Israeli Prime Ministers — he is not the chairman of his party and not the leader of his congressional slate. He does not anoint the Speaker, majority leaders and committee chairs. And he does not determine which bills should pass in Congress. The President is one of three arms of government, which are equal in power and independence. He is constrained by the decentralized Federal system, by an effective Separation of Powers and by an elaborate system of checks and balances, which are designed to prevent tyranny. The President initiates and executes policy, but Congress — which is featured in the first article of the US Constitution — possesses the "Power of the Purse" and the authority to change, suspend and initiate policy, prevent senior presidential appointments and add and eliminate government departments and agencies. While the relative presidential weight increases during national security crises, the relative weight of Congress is upgraded during financial crises. The confrontational/defiant nature of the President-Congress relationship, constitute a significant watchdog over US democracy. Israel's government assumes that the Congressional Democratic majorities provide President Obama with a "free ride." However, Senator Robert Byrd, President Pro-Tempore of the Senate has persisted in quipping at Democratic and Republican presidents: "Legislators are the servants of the Constitution, not the servants of the President." Former Speaker, Democratic House Member Tom Foley, advised President Clinton in 1993 not to take House and Senate Democratic majorities for granted: "We won't be able to support all your ambitious policies, because our political life expectancy (running every two years) is different than yours (running every four years)." Clinton ignored the advice and caused the Democratic Party crash in the November 1994 election. The loyalty of the 535 federal legislators — who represent districts and states more than political parties — is first and foremost to their constituents, to the Separation of Powers and to the independence of the Legislature and only then to the President. Therefore, over 30 Democratic House Members supported the impeachment of Clinton, many Democrats opposed Clinton's free trade initiatives, caused Obama to rescind the appointment of anti-Israel pro-China Chas Freeman, forced Obama to boycott the UN Durbin II Conference and are not automatic supporters of Obama's proposals to close down the Guantanamo jail, to bail out Wall Street and the Detroit car makers, dramatically increase the national debt, etc. As the November 2010 congressional elections approach, and as economic recovery is further delayed, the more dependent Obama becomes on a willing Congress and the more independent and defiant will the legislators become. In 1891, six years before the First World Zionist Congress, in defiance of the US Department of State, 400 US dignitaries co-led by the Speaker of the House and the Chairman of the House International Relations Committee signed the "Blackstone Memorial," which called for a Jewish national home in the Land of Israel. In 1922, 26 years before the establishment of the Jewish State, The US House and Senate unanimously passed a Joint Resolution, reaffirming congressional support of a Jewish State between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. The enhancement of Israel's critical interests and the demonstration of respect towards the US democracy, behoove Israel's Prime Minister to cultivate ties with Congress — the most authentic representation of the US public, equal in power to the President, a bastion of support for closer US-Israel ties, which appreciates the unique covenant binding the US and the Jewish State: Democracy, shared Judeo-Christian values, mutual regional and global threats and joint strategic interests. Ambassador Yoram Ettinger is a consultant on US-Israel relations as well as the Chairman of Special Projects at the Ariel Center for Policy Research. Formerly the Minister for Congressional Affairs to Israel's Embassy in Washington, DC, Ettinger also served as Consul General of Israel to the Southwestern US. He is a former editor of Contemporary Mideast Backgrounder, and is the author of the Jerusalem Cloakroom series of reports. Contact him at yoramtex@netvision.net.il This article appeared in YNet. |
|
OBAMA & THE MILITARY'S MORAL DILEMMA
Posted by Cpocerl, June 25, 2009. |
|
This was written by Robert Klein Engler and published June
18, 2009 on
Chron Watch
Robert Klein Engler lives in Oak Park, Illinois. His book, Contra Obama, is available from Lulu.com. |
|
There is now reasonable doubt that Mr. Obama meets the U.S. Constitution's requirement of "natural born" citizenship. This means that there is also reasonable doubt that he is qualified to be President of the United Sates and commander in chief. The Kenyan citizenship of his father, the age of his mother, the lack of a [long form] birth certificate, the ambiguous nature of a Certification of Live Birth, the possible forgery of birth documents, the inability of the press to view passport and college records, and even his own statements, all add to the uncertainty many have about Mr. Obama's qualifications to be President. Even the often quoted "proof" by Janice Okubo only adds more gasoline to the fire of doubt. She said: "Therefore, I as director of health for the State of Hawaii, along with the registrar of vital statistics ...have personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama's original birth certificate on record..." Notice that she does not say that this document proves that Mr. Obama was BORN in "Hawaii." Until proof of U.S. citizenship is presented beyond a reasonable doubt, it is reasonable to say that Mr. Obama is probably a usurper to the office of President. Yet, for many Americans, this is irrelevant. They believe that holding the office is proof that one is qualified for the office. Even if the Supreme Court declared upon the examination of the evidence that Obama does not meet the Constitution's qualifications to be President, what can be done? The chief justice of the court is not going to the Oval Office with a broom and sweep it clean. The same can be said for many other American institutions. The people have voted. The man is popular. What Constitution? We prefer the thrill up our leg. These are some of the arguments put forward to support the current regime. The Military and the Constitution There is one American institution, however, that has a moral responsibility to support the U.S. Constitution. That institution is the U.S. military. The Constitution is the bedrock upon which military order and discipline is founded. Colonel Anthony E. Hartle claims in his book ''Moral Issues in Military Decision Making,'' that "When military members pledge to the support and defense of the Constitution, they commit themselves, by logical extension, to the principles and values that form the basis of its provisions." In their paper, ''Divided Loyalties: Civil-Military Relations at Risk,'' DiSilverio and Laushine write: "The commissioning of military officers is another source of legal support for the Constitution as the primary legitimate authority." "The commission from the Commander-in-Chief states, 'this officer is to observe and follow such orders and directions, from time to time, as may be given by me, or by the future President of the United States of America.'" DiSilverio and Laushine continue: "The requirement to follow orders also applies to those officers appointed over the subject officer. As Anthony Hartle contends, the fundamental law of the United States is the Constitution, and the commission confirms the supremacy of the Constitution..." "Hartle goes on to say that if a President were to issue an unlawful order, military officers would be obligated to disobey it, and that this obligation derives its moral basis in the commissioning oath." This same obligation to disobey also holds against an order issued by an unlawful or usurper President. Add to this, all entering the U.S. military take the following oath: "I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States..." The writer of the ''Natural Born Presidency Blog'' reminds us that, "Military personnel are subject to a world unlike anything a CIVILIAN would ever understand. It is an anachronistic, rule oriented, self contained society which doesn't react amiably when confronted with a breakdown of good order and discipline." Then he cautions us. "It should be noted...a significant gray area exists regarding whether an ineligible President can render a 'lawful order.' There exists a strong probability the court will reinterpret the Constitution to allow Mr. Obama to hold the office. If such occurs, the military, as a WHOLE, will nod affirmative..." If a person is clearly not a natural born citizen, then it is hard to imagine how Congress or the Supreme Court can make him one. Furthermore, members of the U.S. military have a moral obligation NOT to follow his orders. As Hartle states, "this obligation derives its moral basis in the commissioning oath." If Obama is not qualified to be President from the start, then he simply is not President. The only gray area is in the hearts of his supporters. He cannot even resign. He can only be removed. To complicate matters even further, The Uniform Code of Military Justice may be invoked to get at the truth. Writing in the Huffington Post, Martin Lewis wanted to use this Code to remove George W. Bush from office. If he is right, we can turn the tables and use his argument against Mr. Obama. Lewis writes, "Article 7 of the Uniform Code Of Military Justice specifically says...'Any person authorized under regulations governing the armed forces to apprehend persons subject to this Code may do so upon reasonable belief that an offense has been committed and that the person apprehended committed it.'" Removing Obama from office, in Lewis' words, "would not be an action to undertake lightly...However, given the current imperilment of U.S. troops...you have a greater responsibility to your nation, your code of honor, and to the U.S. Constitution." The Constitution is a document with some flexibility. However, the military is an institution that abhors flexibility. Discipline, order, and the chain of command are not flexible. Neither is the line between life and death, honor, and victory. The Chicago Connection Barack Obama claims to be a Chicagoan. He is no more a native Chicagoan than Sammy Sosa, who allegedly took illegal performance-enhancing drugs to play baseball. In spite of this, there is a Chicago connection to the moral issues raised by Obama's uncertain natural born status. In 1815 the land that was to become Chicago was Federal Territory. Fort Dearborn, located by what is now Michigan Avenue and the Chicago River, was commanded by Captain Heald. Captain Heald was ordered to evacuate the fort by General Hull, who commanded Fort Detroit. What documents we have about Chicago's early history tell us that Lieutenant Helm and Captain Wells, who came up from Fort Wayne, tried to discourage the evacuation. Some historians believe that the order itself was vague and allowed for mitigating circumstances. It seems that there were enough supplies at the fort to outlast a siege. The native forces outnumbered the U.S. forces almost ten to one. What to do? Question a vague order and save your command, or have a drink and press forward to Ft. Wayne? Opinions differ as to the character of Captain Heald. Some argue that he was a conservative yet inept a career officer. Regardless of his character, he chose to follow orders, and evacuated the fort on the morning of August 15, 1812. The result of the evacuation was the Fort Dearborn Massacre. It occurred on the shore of Lake Michigan about a mile and a half from the fort. The moral dilemma faced by these Ft. Dearborn officers, at what was then a relatively unknown outpost, is no different from the moral dilemma faced by U.S. military officers today. In light of the reasonable doubts concerning Obama's status as Commander-in-Chief, what to do? Captain Heald and Lieutenant Helm survived the massacre, but Captain Wells did not. Nor did Ensign Rohan, a young officer stationed at Ft. Dearborn. Ensign Rohan was the first graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point to die in battle. Duty, Honor, Country The motto of the U.S. Military Academy is "Duty, Honor, Country." These words are imbedded in the academy's coat of arms. It is the duty of an officer to be a moral agent and to support the Constitution. Honor and country mean nothing if duty is ignored. The crisis in military discipline and order created by the doubts that swirl around Barack Obama's status as a natural born citizen can be easily resolved. A simple birth certificate showing birth in Hawaii, along with college and passport documents released to the public, is all it takes. Up to now, Obama has done little to dispel once and for all the reasonable doubts about his status. He has created, instead, the greatest "moral issue in military decision making" in the country's history. Given doubts about Obama's natural born citizen status, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have a moral duty to investigate Obama's qualifications to be President. They must then report their findings to those under their command and the American people. Anything less looks like a violation of their oath and a disregard for the Constitution they swore to defend. If we expect a soldier to die for the Constitution, then he must expect his officers to live by the Constitution. This is not an issue of legitimate succession to office of Commander-in-Chief, but an issue of usurpation. The moral duty here for military officers is clear: Demand proof, or serve without honor, or resign. Citizens and servicemen alike should be mindful that once the Constitution is made void, the United States disappears. Who wants to fight and die for nothing? Ensign Rohan did not die for nothing. Contact C Pocerl by email at at Cpocerl@aol.com |
|
MOVIE REVIEW — 'THE STONING OF SORAYA M.'
Posted by Family Security Matters (FSM), June 25, 2009. |
|
This was written by Pam Meister, editor of FamilySecurityMatters.org. |
|
A young woman is killed by a stray bullet in the streets of Tehran during the current political uprising in Iran. Her name is Neda. Her death, caught on video and seen around the world via YouTube, became a symbol for everyone in Iran who is a victim of the oppressive regime of the Khomeinists, those responsible for the Islamic revolution three decades ago and who have turned the nation of Iran into the dictatorship of today — its so-called electoral process a joke to anyone with a conscience. The death of another young woman also becomes symbolic of the oppression of the people of Iran. However, her death transcends one nation and represents the oppression of women throughout the Middle East and everywhere Sharia law is the law of the land. And unlike Neda of today, her death was not mercifully quick, nor was it a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her death was slow, painful, and brought about by one man's desire to be rid of a burden, assisted by others who are easily swayed, easily bullied, or easily fooled — or some combination of the three. I'm not giving anything away when I tell you that the young woman, Soraya, is stoned to death — the name of the film is, after all, The Stoning of Soraya M, which opens in limited release around the nation on Friday, June 26th (see the theater list at the end of this review). But despite knowing what was coming, I was still stunned. Shocked. Horrified. Saddened. Angered. These are just some of the words that come to mind when watching this powerful film. Directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh (The Path to 9/11) and written by
Nowrasteh and his wife Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, Soraya is based on the
1995 true story book of the same name by Freidoune Sahebjam. Sahebjam,
an Iranian journalist who was sentenced to a death fatwa in abstentia
for his reporting on the crimes of the Islamic Republic, continued to
return incognito to Iran to investigate sensitive issues surrounding
the Tehran Islamic Regime. It is during one of his covert trips that
he meets, purely by chance, Soraya's aunt Zahra (played by Shohreh
Aghdashloo). Zahra is determined that the tragic farce played out in
the name of Sharia "justice" shall not be confined to the walls of her
small village, to be buried and forgotten. She is determined that the
world shall know of the horror that played out there just the day
before she meets Sahebjam (played by Jim Caviezel), who is stranded in
the village as he waits for his car to be repaired by the local
mechanic. Seeing a tape recorder in his bag, Zahra manages to pique
his interest despite his initial skepticism, and she tells him of the
final days of Soraya (played by Mozhan Marnò).
BEAUTIFUL CINEMATOGRAPHY BELIES THE UGLY HUMAN NATURE ON DISPLAY. The stark location of the village — due to the movie's offensive nature to Islamists, filming took place in a remote village in an undisclosed Middle Eastern country — matches the bleak lives of the women who fare worse under the new Islamic regime. Pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini are everywhere, lest anyone forget who's now in charge, and women move about the village covered by their chadors, lest they offend anyone by showing themselves. Soraya is married to Ali (played by Navid Negahban), who has tired of his wife after 20 years of marriage and yearns for a younger woman — a 14-year-old. The problem lies in his inability to support two wives, and he is trying to divorce Soraya. For her part, she is unhappy being married to the cruel and unfaithful Ali, but won't divorce him because she won't be able to support herself or her two daughters, whom Ali would happily throw out in the street with Soraya — keeping their sons with him, of course. When the family is eating dinner, Ali is verbally and physically abusive toward Soraya, and it's obvious that his two sons have been indoctrinated into what Ali tells them is "a man's world. Never forget that, boys." Because Soraya won't go along with his plans for a divorce, Ali must come up with another arrangement, and he begins to weave an evil plot of deception that eventually ensnares the whole village. He relies on the frailties of human nature to help him attain his goal, including greed, jealousy, and anger. Key players in this terrible scheme are the Mullah (played by Ali Pourtash), Ebrahim, the mayor (played by David Diaan), and Hashem, the village mechanic (played by Parviz Sayyad). When writing the script, the Nowrastehs stayed true to the real-life characters, but felt they needed to add shading to the characters of the men in order to more broadly reflect how different people react under extreme peer pressure and mob rule. "Frankly, we humanized many of the male characters to show their inner conflicts and dilemmas, whereas in the book they are all evil to the core," said Cyrus. Each of these men has a reason for his complicity, and while some of their reasoning is almost understandable, it doesn't make it any easier to accept. Ali, however, remains untouched by the Nowrastehs. His evil cannot be airbrushed. Something seen often throughout the film are characters fiddling with prayer beads, especially Ali and the Mullah, who act together as ringleaders in this travesty. It's an action that is representative of the false piety that calls upon them to "cleanse" the village of the "defilement" allegedly brought upon it by Soraya. During the stoning, the Mullah tells the men present that "with each stone you throw, your honor will return." This is why such murders are called "honor killings," as they are meant to restore the honor of the family when a woman brings "shame" upon it (usually in a sex related manner).
ONE OF THE MOST COMPELLING SEQUENCES IN THE FILM happens as Soraya prepares to die, saying goodbye to her daughters and passing on what little worldly goods she has to them. Meanwhile the men and boys of the village prepare for the stoning by digging a large pit and collecting stones that will be hurled at the immobilized Soraya less than an hour later. It's hard to believe that the stoning scene (achieved by a combination of puppetry, stunt performers and CGI) was scaled back from the reality of stoning deaths, the type of which continue to occur around the world today. For guidance, director Nowrasteh not only read the detailed scene in the book, but watched frightening, covert footage of real stonings. He said, "All I can tell you is that compared to what I saw and read, the scene in the movie is far less graphic than it could have been." Regardless, there is enough violence and attendant emotion to justify bringing a box of tissues, including when Soraya's sons are exhorted to stone their own mother, "Go ahead, boys. For God." One question remains: if the men are so sure that their actions are justified and sanctioned by God, why do they try so hard to keep Zahra from telling the itinerant journalist about it? First-rate performances are delivered by a first-rate cast. Except for the parts where Zahra is relating her tale to Sahebjam in English, the entire film is in Farsi with English subtitles, which aids the viewer in immersing himself in Soraya's world: a world where supremacist religious fanaticism and misogyny collide with stomach-turning results. This is a film that should not be missed. As we left the screening room, I heard one woman say, "The timeliness of this is frightening." This is true, but unfortunately, such honor killings happen around the world where Sharia law rules, not just in Iran. It's time for the disinfection of sunlight to do its work on this most shameful state of affairs. Due to the film's graphic nature, I would not recommend it for anyone under 17 (hence R the rating). Rated R (cruel and brutal violence)
LIST OF THEATERS AND OPENING DATES: ARIZONA
CALIFORNIA
COLORADO
CONNECTICUT
GEORGIA
ILLINOIS
MARYLAND
MASSACHUSETTS
MICHIGAN
MINNESOTA
MISSOURI
NEW JERSEY
NE W YORK
OHIO
OREGON
PENNSYLVANIA
TEXAS
WASHINGTON STATE
WASHINGTON DC
|
|
FATAH BOASTS ABOUT LYNCH MURDER OF TWO ISRAELI SOLDIERS IN 2000
Posted by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, June 25, 2009. |
|
As PMW reported earlier this week, PA (Fatah) TV marked the second anniversary of the Hamas takeover of Gaza by broadcasting a public Fatah event that focuses on vilifying Hamas. One part of this performance features a graphic video of Hamas members brutally beating a Fatah member in Gaza. 
Another part criticizes and mocks Hamas for the decrease in its terror operations against Israel, glorifies Fatah terror, and ends with Fatah boasting that they "arrested two soldiers in Ramallah," a reference to the October 2000 lynching of two Israeli reservists. In this scene actors portray a Hamas teacher and student supporters of Fatah and Hamas, debating which movement is greater. Significantly, the competition between Fatah and Hamas supporters is based not on who has built more Palestinian infrastructures, nor on who has promoted peace, but rather on who can take credit for more terror. The debate ends when a Fatah student trumps Hamas's boast of having kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit by mentioning the "arrest of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah" by the PA-Fatah. This alludes to the lynching and gruesome murder of two Israeli reservist soldiers who accidentally entered the Palestinian Authority-controlled city in October 2000. While the picture of a Palestinian celebrating the killing by waving his bloody hands to the mob horrified the world, the murder remains a source of pride for Fatah. [Note: Seated in the front row at the event are Fatah leaders, including Muhammad Dahlan, former head of PA security; Kadura Faras, head of the PA Prisoners' Association; Nasser Al-Qidwa, former PA Minister of Foreign Affairs; Samir Al-Mashharawi, senior Fatah official; and others.] Click here to view the "terror competition" between Fatah and Hamas The following is a transcript of the act: Fatah student taunts Hamas: "Since Hamas seized power, we haven't heard of any Martyrdom operation [suicide-bombing]." Hamas teacher: "It's called 'fighter's rest'." Fatah student: "A Hamas fighter needs rest, but a Fatah fighter doesn't need rest?!" Hamas teacher: "Every fighter has the right to rest." Fatah student: "Why is it that when Fatah stops fighting, you [Hamas] say they're cowards, but when Hamas stops fighting, you say it's 'fighters' rest'?" Hamas teacher: "I don't know much about resistance [terror] and fighters..." Fatah student: "The first shot was fired by the PLO; the first Jihad was carried out by the PLO [audience applauds], with all the other factions — but Hamas always opposed. Hamas student: "What do you say about Hamas having kidnapped the [Israeli] soldier Shalit [still held hostage — Ed.]?" Hamas teacher: "Ahaaa!" Student: "By Allah, it's good." Hamas student: "Did Fatah ever capture a soldier?!" Fatah student: "It was the [other] brigades who captured him [Shalit] and sold him to you [Hamas]. It's a deal that you [Hamas] made for your own benefit, not for the [Palestinian] people's benefit. [Applause] Fatah student: Remember, in Ramallah the [PA-Fatah] police
arrested two soldiers — have you forgotten, teacher?!" [A
reference to the lynching in Ramallah in October 2000 — Ed.]
Itamar Marcus is director of PMW — Palestinian Media Watch
— (http://www.pmw.org.il). PMW is based in Jerusalem. Barbara
Crook, a writer and university lecturer based in Ottawa, Canada, is
PMW's North American representative. Contact Palestinian Media Watch
by email at pmw@pmw.org.il and visit the PMW Video Library at |
|
LEBANESE STEREOTYPING OF JEWS; PSYCHIATRY, ISLAMIST STYLE?; OBAMA'S
HARD TRUTHS AND FALSEHOODS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 25, 2009. |
|
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY DID NOTHING FOR PEOPLE The Palestinian Authority (P.A.) has 16 years of autonomy to build schools, roads, courthouses, hospitals, and other institutions to serve its people. Neither Fatah nor Hamas has done so. They divert funds to war on Israel and to their private bank accounts. President Obama makes it seem as if the resulting suffering of P.A. residents somehow is Israel's fault. It's the fault of the Arabs' own, elected leaders (Charles Krauthammer in Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/5). Nevertheless, Obama wants to set those leaders up as sovereigns. What would that solve? For part of the explanation about P.A. neglect of its people, click
here:
LEBANESE STEREOTYPING OF JEWS In discussing President Obama's speech in Cairo, the Lebanese Daily Star referred to Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, as someone "whose pro-Israeli sympathies can't be questioned." IMRA asks why can't it be questioned. Mr. Emmanuel told the Israel lobby to come up with a better plan
before it criticizes U.S. policy. IMRA asks, better for whom
That newspaper in ethnically divided Lebanon assumes, as Muslim Arabs often do, that because Rahm Emmanuel is Jewish, he must be pro-Israel. That stereotyping is false. Several of my articles cite Israeli professors who call for boycotting or overthrowing Israel and even supporting Muslim terrorism. They are far from being pro-Israel and not far from being antisemitic. For another Lebanese controversy with Israel, click here:
IS U.S. POLICY TOWARDS ISRAEL RACIST? The U.S. and other international elites tell Jews they may not live in certain areas of the Land of Israel. This is in addition to many Arab states having expelled their Jews and not allowing Jews in. The Obama regime tells Jews they may not build in such areas and must move out of them. It does not give similar orders to the Arabs. This is discriminatory (Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/5 from Joseph Farah, 6/5). For Jews, Obama wants Jim Crow laws. But so did Pres. Bush. For more on U.S. discrimination against Israel, click here:
EGYPT SETS UP FARMS ABROAD Egypt has been setting up farms abroad to supply it with wheat. The
foreign countries include Zambia, Uganda, Tanzania, and Niger
Israel taught Egypt dry farming. For further irony about Egypt tutoring foreigner states in
agriculture, click here:
DRUZE MOVING INTO LEBANESE OPPOSITION? Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Lebanese Druze, wants to join the opposition. His reasons are not ideological but practical. Already a third of
Lebanon's population, the Shiite numbers, wealth, and power are
growing. They buy up the land. They dominate the coastal area where
half the Druze live. Lacking reliable allies, the Druze cannot resist
Hizbullah any more. The Christian population is dwindling. The Sunnis
are becoming more radical, hence pose a danger to the Druze. Mr.
Jumblatt concludes that the Druze must learn to live with the Shiites,
although he does not favor their ally, Syria
The Druze are known for practicality, necessary for survival. Jumblatt sounds like the wise old American Indian chief who tells his bellicose young braves that they had better learn to live with the white man. That wasn't easy, either. If the Druze pull out of the governing coalition and ally themselves with Hizbullah, then Hizbullah would secure its dominance over Lebanon. I think that Israel's Left wing, led then by Foreign Min. Livni and PM Olmert, in their defeatist withdrawal from imminent victory over Hizbullah in Lebanon, sealed Lebanon's fate and undermined their own country's. It was a great blunder. Finishing and winning the war in Lebanon would have destroyed a big terrorist front and rescued Lebanon. That would have promoted peace, not premature withdrawal and losing the war. They left the terrorists able both to take over Lebanon and to threaten Israel more. Israel has no strategic sense, as it lets its enemies build up around it. Nor has the State Dept. any strategic sense, as it encourages that build-up out of a blind antipathy towards Jewish independence. How can one respect or admire the U.S., when it favors enemies over allies? For an explanation showing that the U.S. has not caught on to the
Iranian/Syrian/Hizbullah axis' power, click here:
PSYCHIATRY, ISLAMIST STYLE? In a Hamas TV film for women, an Egyptian psychiatrist calls
Israelis terrorists motivated by a love of money and by the Israeli
curriculum. He verifies and endorses the Holocaust
Let the psychiatrist debate Iran's Holocaust-denying President! As proof, the psychiatrist cites an alleged teaching not in the Israeli curriculum. The Israeli curriculum and media stress peace and tolerance, unlike the Egyptian, Jordanian, or Palestinian Authority curriculum, media, and mosques. Such are the adversaries who pursue the Jewish people — defamatory and vicious. For a short explanation of terrorist motive, click here:
OBAMA'S "HARD TRUTHS" FOR MUSLIMS President Obama vowed to tell the world's Muslims "hard truths." Instead, his remarks fighting extremists, equal rights for women, freedom of religion, and democracy were vague. He omitted policy proposals that would have to be taken seriously. He urged them to fight Islamic terrorists without mentioning that terrorists' "intellectual, political and monetary foundations and support come from the very mosques, politicians and regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt that Obama extols as moderate and responsible." On gender equality, he ignored common Islamic "honor killings," female genital mutilation, and repression of women's legal and human rights. He compared Muslim women to discrimination against U.S. women, which is not comparable. He advocated religious freedom, but ignored Saudi religious repression. He praised democracy, but overlooked Arab tyranny. He misled people about Israel, too. Yes, he verified the Holocaust and denounced antisemitism [again without suggesting culprits and reform]. But he also upheld the Arab view that the Jews intruded into Palestine and that Israel developed from the Holocaust. He thus undermined the Jewish people's age-old, historical, regional roots and the legal recognition of the right to their homeland well before the Holocaust. Like the Arabs, Obama called Muslim Arab terrorism against Israel, "resistance." He equated the Palestinian Arab struggle against Israel to the U.S. civil rights movement and slave rebellions. That is not a hard truth, that is moral dishonesty. He did propose some policies. (1) End Jewish building in Judea-Samaria. He says that would bring peace. It cannot possibly do so. (2) Convert Iran's nuclear weapons development to nuclear electrical development. He says that would prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It cannot possibly do so. [Iran has equipment and fuel for making bombs. It could make bombs at will. Stopping Zionist development cannot win friendship from the Islamists — too bigoted. It would strengthen and encourage them to launch a final offensive.] Obama's policy toward Israel can be explained only by hostility.
His real purpose is to abandon Israel in favor of friendship with the
Arab world. His Administration harps on Jewish building but not Fatah
terrorism nor on N. Korean ties to Iran and Syria. The Israeli people
realize this (Caroline Glick in
Obama is duplicitous, facilitates war, and endangers civilization. He gets his lieutenants to go along with him. How long will he be able to get away with his deceptions and failures? How many millions will be killed, first? Now consider the opportunities Israel lost, by not annexing and resettling most of Judea-Samaria, to fortify its geographic position! Israel waited, but now the U.S. government has turned harder against it than even before. Israel was foolish not to devise its own strategy. It didn't have a strong enough Right wing. To see more flaws in Obama's policy on Israel, click here:
IRAN BECOMING IMPREGNABLE, WITH ITS MISSILES? Iran started to mass-produce a supersonic surface-to-air missile system. It can trace swift enemy aircraft and strike them 40 kilometers away, with a huge blast (http://www.imra.org.il/ — Independent Media Research & Analysis, 6/6). Iran is developing quite a military. Iran considers itself a super power. SANCTIONS INEFFECTIVE AGAINST IRAN The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that "Iran continued to expand its uranium enrichment program despite three sets of UN Security Council sanctions meant to pressure Teheran into freezing such activities." Iran refuses to cooperate with IAEA inspection. Syria refuses, too. Each rogue state sees that the others get away with it
For more on sanctions, click here:
MORE OBAMA FALSEHOODS IN CAIRO He praised Islamic tolerance in Medieval Muslim Cordoba and Anadulus. Actually, Islamic rule discriminated against Christians and Jews. They were not allowed to worship in public or build new temples. They paid a special tax on non-believers. He claimed that Palestinian Arabs suffered trying to get a state. Actually, they had several specific opportunities, but rejected them. He said that a Muslim country, Morocco, was the first to recognize the United States. No, it was the Netherlands. He pegged the Muslim population of the U.S. at 7 million. Major studies estimate 1.3-2.7 million. [Islamist organizations claim the larger figure.] He promised frankness in his speech, but ignored Palestinian Arab and other Muslim persecution of Christians. He mentioned Darfur, but not that Arab states helping to block a UN remedy. He called Jewish houses in Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem
illegal, although those were not sovereign territory when Israelis
moved in, and therefore do not fit the definition of "occupied"
For earlier articles covering more of Obama's dissembling, click
here:
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 and visit his website:
|
|
LEADERSHIP WE CAN BE PROUD OF
Posted by Moshe Feiglin, June 25, 2009. |
|
Sihon gathered all his people together, and he fought against Israel. And Israel smote him with the edge of the sword, and possessed his land from the Arnon unto the Yabbok. (From this week's Torah portion, Chukat, Numbers 21:32-34) And the king of the children of Ammon answered unto the messengers of Yiftach: 'Because Israel took away my land, when he came up out of Egypt, from the Arnon even unto the Yabbok, and unto the Jordan; now therefore restore those cities peaceably. (From this week's haftarah, Judges 11:13)
Even today, international law places complete responsibility for the consequences of a war on the instigator. Territory that is captured by a country that was attacked becomes the sovereign soil of the victim of the aggression. Germany lost great tracts of territory in World War II, as did Japan to Russia. That is the way the world works and that is the way it should work. For some reason, these simple rules, understood world-wide, were not clear to the king of Ammon and are not clear to all the kings of Yishmael who fight against us today. Why don't these rules work for Israel? The answer is that we do not have a leader like Yiftach, who answers the nations in the Name of G-d. After the king of Ammon complained to Yiftach that centuries before, the Children of Israel had "stolen" his land, Yiftach had a very clear and simple answer: The G-d of Israel has driven the Emorites out before the Children of Israel and you think that you will possess their land? Whatever Kmosh, your god has inherited to you, that is what you shall inherit. And whatever Hashem, our G-d has inherited to us, that is what we shall inherit. (Judges 11:23-24)
Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) is a group of people inside
the Likud party who want to see Israel adopt a more Jewish character.
Moshe Feiglin, its cofounder, has emphatically said he does not want a
theocracy, but he does want a State based on Jewish values. The
Manhigut Yehudit website address is http://www.manhigut.org.
To learn more about Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) and to read
their plan for Israel's future, visit www.jewishisrael.org.
Or contact Shmuel Sackett, International Director (516) 330-4922
(cell)
|
|
LADY HISTORY REPLIES SCATHINGLY TO OBAMA'S HIPPIE SPEECHES
Posted by N. Natan, June 25, 2009. |
|
Nowadays Lady History has become a jarring and hurried Teacher. Whereas, in the past, it took centuries before she condescended to unveil the infra-lines of force which had agitated and propelled peoples, at present, Lady History takes only a few days to make a magisterial striptease of True Reality. In Iran's case, a single week has sufficed to demonstrate crudely "in vivo" the immutable Koranic rigidity of Islamic society. And the least that we can say is that this Muslim opaque Reality, so abruptly unveiled by last Iran's feverishly eruption soon infected by an unrealistic hopes collapse, does not correspond at all to Obama's hippie "progressive vision" of Islam, as complacently publicized in his Unreality Show of Cairo. When considering the precise timing of succession of all these resounding events, one cannot be prevented to think that Obama did intimately hope that he would decisively influence Iranian elections, and, through their desired results, triumphantly display to the entire World the marvelous power of his rhetoric which had made him win the American Presidency. But, obviously, his eloquence does not reach the understanding of True Islam mass crowds and power structures. And all his admonishments, with such frightening sentences as: "The World watches Iran", clearly miss their target and contribute only to confusion and to tragic false hopes, as, for this precise example, the Great Ayatollah does not mind that the World watches, or does not watch Iran, as long as Allah may watch the Supreme Leader's accomplishments. Therefore, Obama, the new pupil in the class of Lady History, may now begin to learn the ABC, i.e. that True Islam crowds and structure powers listen to Allah, not to Obama: And learn also, by the way, that Judeo-Christian Democracy will never be compatible with Islam as defined by the Koran. Whether pupil Obama will, maybe one day, understand this moral infrastructure basic and primary Law is finally of rather unimportance. What will become exclusively important is that, in the following historical events to rush in sooner than expected, Barack Hussein Obama may have to go bow eighty degrees to Ayatollah Khameini, and beg him not to wipe off Tel-Aviv, if not for the sake of Israel, at least for the sake of World economy. Here again we can predict that impassive Ayatollah Khameini will answer the President of the USA that the World economy's fate lies in the Hands of Allah and in His Hands alone. Also, after thus grading Obama's lacunal knowledge, Lady History will severely enjoin her pupil to learn that we are now in the eye of the Ideologies Cyclone: Therefore Lady History will certainly ask Obama to get rid, in his exercise book, of some hypnotizing and convenient "UnTruths" which blur the necessary compass to navigate in the tense world maze: Untruth 1: The Israel-Palestinian "problem" is at the core of the confrontation between West and Islam. Al-Qaida, Talibans, Islamic Terrorists and Pirates, etc. could not care less about Israelis and Palestinians: For them, Israel problem is a conventional and efficiently emotional scapegoat and propaganda utensil. But, in reality, they are only interested in grabbing Power from the most powerful... As for Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah & co, the problem of Palestine is simple, or rather, there is no problem of Palestine: Allah willing, Israel must and will disappear, sooner or later: any other solution to this "problem" cannot work. Untruth 2: Economy and education problems fuel Islamic Terrorists candidates. Politicians and commentators have a very short sighted memory: the 9/11 attack on New-York was carried out by educated and university Muslims, and it is most probable that the next attacks on America will be carried out by the same sociological kind of Muslim activists. Unfortunately, the USA, probably by ignorance and lack of security concentration, do nothing really efficient to deter such attacks, despite most sophisticated complacent appearances. Untruth 3: Islam is a global, stable and cohesive peaceful Ideology. The antagonism between Shiites and Sunnites will soon be amplified by the innate dominance trend of IranTheocracy "Revolutions" to replace Petrodollars Autocracies, through Iran glorious "Religious Democracy model": Which means, de facto, to replace Shah, Kings, Sultans, Emirs, etc, by Religious Supreme Leaders, such as Ayatollahs, Mullahs, Ulemas, Imams, etc. Of course this fatal Struggle for Power will become more and more ruthless... Untruth 4: Moderate Islam (1 billion) will triumph over extremist Islam (a few). Moderate Islam dozes in some autocratic (openly or disguised) regimes through anaesthetizing True Islam roots. But, in the end, the vivid Ideological roots prevail invincibly, as continuously demonstrated by Islam History and Development: For example, where and when does take place the International Islamic Council of Ayatollahs, Ulemas, Mullahs, Imams, etc, who condemn, unanimously and irrevocably, bloody Jihad, and dare, thus, publicly contradict the Prophet? Meanwhile, despite Lady History's daily teachings of True Reality, America will go on spending, in the most inappropriate way, billions of dollars and thousands "regrettable" lives in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, etc, under a leadership painting complacently in glowing colors a ceaseless Unreality Show: So, the President of the USA will go on trumpeting triumphantly the alluring slogan "Down with Reality Truth!", whatever the price will have to be paid for having so absurdly ignored it! Natan is maverick Expert on War on Terror at ideology-war-observatory.blogspot.com and the Author of the new authentic History of the Temple of Jerusalem. |
|
DOCUMENTS SHOW SAUDI LINK TO EXTREMISTS
Posted by Paul Rotenberg, June 24, 2009. |
|
This is very sad. We live in a twisted world.
This article was written by Eric Lichtblau and it appeared in today's
New York Times
|
|
WASHINGTON — Documents gathered by lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family, but the material may never find its way into court because of legal and diplomatic obstacles. The case has put the Obama administration in the middle of a political and legal dispute, with the Justice Department siding with the Saudis in court last month in seeking to kill further legal action. Adding to the intrigue, classified American intelligence documents related to Saudi finances were leaked anonymously to lawyers for the families. The Justice Department had the lawyers' copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material. The Saudis and their defenders in Washington have long denied links to terrorists, and they have mounted an aggressive and, so far, successful campaign to beat back the allegations in federal court based on a claim of sovereign immunity. Allegations of Saudi links to terrorism have been the subject of years of government investigations and furious debate. Critics have said that some members of the Saudi ruling class pay off terrorist groups in part to keep them from being more active in their own country. But the thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents compiled by lawyers for the Sept. 11 families and their insurers represented an unusually detailed look at some of the evidence. Internal Treasury Department documents obtained by the lawyers under the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, said that a prominent Saudi charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, heavily supported by members of the Saudi royal family, showed "support for terrorist organizations" at least through 2006. A self-described Qaeda operative in Bosnia said in an interview with lawyers in the lawsuit that another charity largely controlled by members of the royal family, the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, provided money and supplies to the terrorist group in the 1990s and hired militant operatives like himself. Another witness in Afghanistan said in a sworn statement that in 1998 he had witnessed an emissary for a leading Saudi prince, Turki al-Faisal, hand a check for one billion Saudi riyals (now worth about $267 million) to a top Taliban leader. And a confidential German intelligence report gave a line-by-line description of tens of millions of dollars in bank transfers, with dates and dollar amounts, made in the early 1990s by Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz and other members of the Saudi royal family to another charity that was suspected of financing militants' activities in Pakistan and Bosnia. The new documents, provided to The New York Times by the lawyers, are among several hundred thousand pages of investigative material obtained by the Sept. 11 families and their insurers as part of a long-running civil lawsuit seeking to hold Saudi Arabia and its royal family liable for financing Al Qaeda. Only a fraction of the documents have been entered into the court record, and much of the new material is unknown even to the Saudi lawyers in the case. The documents provide no smoking gun connecting the royal family to the events of Sept. 11, 2001. And the broader links rely at times on a circumstantial, connect-the-dots approach to tie together Saudi princes, Middle Eastern charities, suspicious transactions and terrorist groups. Saudi lawyers and supporters say that the links are flimsy and exploit stereotypes about terrorism, and that the country is being sued because it has deep pockets and was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers. "In looking at all the evidence the families brought together, I have not seen one iota of evidence that Saudi Arabia had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks," Michael Kellogg, a Washington lawyer representing Prince Muhammad al-Faisal al-Saud in the lawsuit, said in an interview. He and other defense lawyers said that rather than supporting Al Qaeda, the Saudis were sworn enemies of its leader, Osama bin Laden, who was exiled from Saudi Arabia, his native country, in 1996. "It's an absolute tragedy what happened to them, and I understand their anger," Mr. Kellogg said of the victims' families. "They want to find those responsible, but I think they've been disserved by their lawyers by bringing claims without any merit against the wrong people." The Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment. Two federal judges and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals have already ruled against the 7,630 people represented in the lawsuit, made up of survivors of the attacks and family members of those killed, throwing out the suit on the ground that the families cannot bring legal action in the United States against a sovereign nation and its leaders. The Supreme Court is expected to decide this week whether to hear an appeal, but the families' prospects dimmed last month when the Justice Department sided with the Saudis in their immunity claim and urged the court not to consider the appeal. The Justice Department said a 1976 law on sovereign immunity protected the Saudis from liability and noted that "potentially significant foreign relations consequences" would arise if such suits were allowed to proceed. "Cases like this put the U.S. government in an extremely difficult position when it has to make legal arguments, even when they are the better view of the law, that run counter to those of terrorist victims," said John Bellinger, a former State Department lawyer who was involved in the Saudi litigation. Senior Obama administration officials held a private meeting on Monday with 9/11 family members to speak about progress in cracking down on terrorist financing. Administration officials at the meeting largely sidestepped questions about the lawsuit, according to participants. But the official who helped lead the meeting, Stuart A. Levey, the under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, has been outspoken in his criticism of wealthy Saudis, saying they have helped to finance terrorism. Even if the 9/11 families were to get their trial in the lawsuit, they might have difficulty getting some of their new material into evidence. Some would most likely be challenged on grounds it was irrelevant or uncorroborated hearsay, or that it related to Saudis who were clearly covered by sovereign immunity. And if the families were to clear those hurdles, two intriguing pieces of evidence in the Saudi puzzle might still remain off limits. One is a 28-page, classified section of the 2003 joint Congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks. The secret section is believed to discuss intelligence on Saudi financial links to two hijackers, and the Saudis themselves urged at the time that it be made public. President George W. Bush declined to do so. Kristen Breitweiser, an advocate for Sept. 11 families, whose husband was killed in the World Trade Center, said in an interview that during a White House meeting in February between President Obama and victims' families, the president told her that he was willing to make the pages public. But she said she had not heard from the White House since then. The other evidence that may not be admissible consists of classified documents leaked to one of the law firms representing the families, Motley Rice of South Carolina, which is headed by Ronald Motley, a well-known trial lawyer who won lucrative lawsuits involving asbestos and tobacco. Lawyers for the firm say someone anonymously slipped them 55 documents that contained classified government material relating to the Saudi lawsuit. Though she declined to describe the records, Jodi Flowers, a lawyer for Motley Rice, said she was pushing to have them placed in the court file. "We wouldn't be fighting this hard, and we wouldn't have turned the material over to the judge, if we didn't think it was really important to the case," she said. Paul Rotenberg lives in Toronto, Canada. Contact him at pdr@rogers.com |
|
AMERICAN JEWS STILL REFUSE TO SEE THE LIGHT ON OBAMA
Posted by Mr La, June 24, 2009. | ||
|
This was written by Richard A. Baehr, the co-founder and chief political correspondent for the American Thinker. For his day job, he has been a health care consultant for many years doing planning and financial analyses for providers. | ||
|
Two recent public opinion surveys released in Israel and the United States demonstrate that the campaign by President Obama and members of his diplomatic team to criticize and isolate Israel over the issue of settlements in the West Bank is having an impact in both countries. In Israel, a survey sponsored by the Jerusalem Post revealed a stunning result: just 6% of Israeli Jews now regard the U.S. president as pro-Israel. Another 86% regard Obama as either pro-Palestinian (50%) or neutral between the two parties (36%). No American president has ever been viewed in Israel this way, and it has taken but five months for the Israelis to come to understand the new reality in U.S.-Israeli relations — that the special relationship and friendship between the two countries has ended, at least at the level of the U.S. president and his administration. A second survey conducted by the Israel Project to measure support for Israel or the Palestinians in the United States indicates that the withering criticism of Israel by the new administration has taken a toll on support for Israel in the U.S. In five months, support for Israel has dropped from 57% to 49% The administration has made three arguments in support of its new tougher approach with Israel: 1. The Israeli settlements are at the core of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. This last argument fully encapsulates the Saudi "peace plan," which may be why the president bowed to the Saudi prince when they met. While it may not be good to appear to be pro-Israel, appearing to be pro-Muslim and pro-Saudi is just fine. Unfortunately for the Obama team, the current unrest in Iran has been inconvenient for their three-part fairy tale of the conflict; making nice to the mullahs and casting aside Israel has not made the mullahs more reasonable and open to the West. So too, it would be hard to argue with a straight face that al-Qaeda would have abandoned their 9/11 attacks if only Israel had frozen settlement growth. It is also inconvenient for Obama that the Islamic terror group Hamas, which controls Gaza, continues to reject any reconciliation with the Palestinian Authority, rejects Israel's right to exist anywhere, and rejects any end to the use of violence to achieve its goals. For Hamas, Israeli settlements that need to be abandoned include Haifa and Tel Aviv. Finally, it has been inconvenient that the administration's point person on Iran, Ambassador Dennis Ross, now moved into the White House to a new job, has specifically dismissed the linkage between the Israeli Palestinian conflict and the Iranian nuclear program. The administration has made a bet that by focusing on settlements, an issue that has been controversial both within Israel and among American Jews, it can divide and conquer. There are many liberal Jews who are totally in thrall to the Obama agenda on domestic issues and to Obama personally (psychiatric textbooks could be written on this latter item, but regrettably, they would need to be autobiographical). During the campaign, there was concern among some liberal Jews about Obama's history and long friendship with people hostile to Israel such as Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Professor Rashid Khalidi, Ali Abunimah, and Samantha Power. To counter this, the campaign rolled out a chorus line of Chicago Jews who could swear for Obama's bona fides as to his love for both Israel and the Jews. For most liberal Jews, Israel is an issue — but not the issue. Abortion rights, separation of church and state, stem cell research, universal health care, saving the planet — these issues are what ignite real political passion for many liberal Jews, not support for Israel. When I appeared on a panel for the NJDC at the Democratic convention, people in the audience seemed annoyed that the subjects of support for Israel or the Iranian threat were even raised as issues. But the poll results from Israel have got to be worrying to the Obama team. Liberal Jews are a critically important fundraising group and voter bloc for Democrats. With the economy remaining very weak and Obama's national approval ratings sagging, the 2010 midterm elections and the presidential race in 2012 could be more competitive than were the Democratic sweeps in 2006 and 2008. Will some liberal Jews step back, uncomfortable with the perception that Obama is hostile to Israel? Has Obama crossed a threshold among Jewish voters, much as Jimmy Carter did in 1979-1980, leading to a greatly diminished level of Jewish support in his run for re-election (Carter won but 45% of the Jewish vote in 1980). To counter this perception, the lapdogs of the Jewish left — in particular, J-Street (a group whose real mission seems to be to reduce the power and influence of AIPAC) and the NJDC — are furiously spinning how Obama is still fond of Israel and the right choice for peace (which presumably is just around the corner if only Israel caved on the settlements issue). It is too early to tell if Obama's near daily haranguing of Israel has cost him any substantial Jewish support at home. Blindness, after all, is not cured by taking off an eye patch. And to be sure, Obama has more public relations skills and personal charm than Carter ever had, and a far more compliant canine-like obedient national media committed to protecting the Obama brand. But there is anxiety out there among some liberal Jews about Obama's cold hand to Israel, coupled with Iran's nuclear program, which despite all the current turmoil is full steam ahead at the moment. Some Democratic members of the House and Senate are clearly sensing there is a problem with a normally reliable constituency group. In recent days Senator Menendez of New Jersey and even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have created some space between themselves and Obama by reiterating their traditional support for Israel. So far, there is no evidence that the Obama team (including Hillary Clinton and George Mitchell) is backing off its settlement mantra. As cautious as Obama has been in refusing to support the Iranians on the streets, he has been quite abrupt in his willingness to cast aside decades of ties between the U.S. and Israel. Israeli Jews have caught on that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. Will American Jews wake up as well? EDITOR'S NOTE: There was an interesting encounter between two of the readers of the original article.
Contact the poster at mrla26@aol.com |
|
AZMI BISHARA: THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS 'PALESTINE'
Posted by Mr La, June 24, 2009. | |
|
This comes from Carl in Jerusalem, who blogs at israelmatzav.blogspot.com | |
|
I wonder how many of you remember Azmi Bishara, the former Knesset member who walked into the Israeli embassy in Cairo in April 2007 and resigned from the Knesset after he got word that he was about to be indicted for treason for helping Hezbullah aim rockets during the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Bishara has not come back to Israel since. Here's an interview with Bishara (in Hebrew) from Israel's Channel
2 television that took place approximately ten years ago. A fuller
translation than what you are about to see will follow the interview
(Hat Tip: Shy Guy).
And here's a more complete translation than what you saw on the screen: In an Interview with Yaron London (Israel's Channel 2, recorded about a decade ago), Bashara said: "I don't think there is a Palestinian nation. I think there is an Arab nation, I think that this (the term "Palestinian nation") is a colonial invention. Palestine, up to the end of the 19th century was southern Syria. Yes folks, I keep telling you, there's no such thing as 'Palestine' or a 'Palestinian.' Even the Arabs themselves occasionally acknowledge that truth when their guard is down. Here's another example. In an interview given by Zuhair Mohsen to the Dutch newspaper Trouw in March 1977, Mr. Mohsen explains the origin of the 'Palestinians': The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism. So why does everyone expect Israel to cut out half of its guts to create a real state for an imaginary people? Why does everyone expect Israel to endanger its own security to give a state to a people that does not exist? posted by Carl in Jerusalem
Contact the poster at mrla26@aol.com |
|
ISRAEL THE BEAUTIFUL: THE RAMON CRATER IN THE NEGEV
Posted by Yehoshua Halevi, June 24, 2009. |
|
This is one of Yehoshua Halevi's Golden Light Images. Yehoshua Halevi writes: "HOW I GOT THE SHOT: A moment of silence for the death of a legend: Kodak announced this week it is discontinuing its revered Kodachrome slide film, which had fallen out of favor, first by newer films and later by the advent of digital technology. While the technical tools of photography will always impact the craft, it is the artist's vision which shapes the final product more than anything else. Fortunately for me, I received a gift in the fourth grade from a wonderful and prescient teacher who rewarded my prowess in the multiplication tables with a puzzle game called Hi-Q. The game required assembling seven odd geometric shapes into more than 200 different wholes. The game kept me busy for years and apparently I'm still playing as I seek to compose features of the natural environment into moving photographs. This week's image comes from Mitzpe Ramon, the giant crater in Israel's Negev Desert. The crater is vast, barren, dry, and intimidating and I was looking for a way to represent these qualities while also adding a touch of grace to the image. The desert teaches the visitor respect for nature and one can only appreciate its subtle beauty alongside that attitude of respect. I tried this image as a vertical, and although the triangles lined up nicely, that composition lost the expansiveness that is so definitive of the desert. I had been watching the clouds, but couldn't find any earthly complement until I stepped out in front of the small pile of rocks that make up the foreground and give depth to the image. They are a small detail, but a crucial missing link that completes the picture.
Contact Yehoshua Halevi by email at smile@goldenlightimages.com
and visit his website:
|
|
UNSUSPECTING AMERICAN JEWS FUND ANTI-ISRAEL ORGANIZATIONS
Posted by Sonia Nusenbaum, June 24, 2009. |
|
Funded Groups work with Palestinian Authority, promote Iran nukes This was written by Samuel Sokol and David Bedein and
it appeared yesterday in World Net Daily.
Sammy Sokol is a writer for the Israel Resource News Agency. David Bedein is director of the Israel Resource News Agency. |
|
A U.S. organization has been receiving money from perhaps unsuspecting Jewish donors to support blatantly anti-Israel groups. American Jews wishing to donate money to Israeli causes routinely utilize local city Jewish federations as a middleman. Hundreds of millions of dollars per year are sent to Jewish federations across the country with the expectation contributions will be used to aid worthy causes in Israel. Many U.S. Jewish federations as well as individual Jewish donors give to the New Israel Fund, or NIF, a Washington, D.C.-based foundation dedicated to fostering social change and progressive causes in Israel. The NIF budget comes from a combination of donors. These include the Ford Foundation, grant organizations such as the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation and the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, as well as various Jewish communal federations such as the Jewish Federation in New York, the Durham-Chapel Hill Federation and the Jewish Federation of Grand Rapids. However, while many of the programs run by the NIF are considered laudable in the pro-Israel community, such as work the group does with economically disadvantaged Ethiopian immigrants, the flagship grantees of the NIF are Israeli-Arab nongovernmental organizations that openly and unabashedly dedicate themselves to removing the Jewish character of the state of Israel. The NIF disperses hundreds of thousands of dollars for the core budgets of such groups as Adalah: The Legal Center for Minority Arab Rights in Israel, Mossawa: The advocacy center for Arab citizens in Israel and I'lam media center for Arab Palestinians in Israel. Supporting Iran's nukes I'lam was founded in the wake of the Palestinian intifada, or terrorist war, initiated in September 2000 after then-PLO Leader Yasser Arafat turned down an Israeli offer of a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem. The first director of I'lam was Hanin Zoabi, recently elected as a member of the Israeli Arab Balad Party in the Knesset. Zoabi's party spawned Azmi Bishara, the Israeli Arab Knesset member who fled Israel after he was threatened with prosecution for allegedly aiding the Hezbollah terrorist organization. Balad officials routinely condemn Israel and at times openly present themselves as representing the state of "Palestine." In April, in Zoabi's maiden interview to the Jerusalem Post as a Knesset member, she declared her open support for Iranian nuclear weapons as a counterbalance to Israel. Zoabi, in her capacity as the director of I'lam, helped draft and sign the Haifa Declaration, which called for the negation of Israel's Jewish identity and for a "comprehensive change in Israeli policy, whereby Israel abandons its destructive role towards the peoples of the region. ..." In March, I'lam's so-called empowerment coordinator, Zaher Boulos, issued a "cry of solidarity with the Palestinian people who hold strong to the establishment of a Palestinian state that is independent with Jerusalem as its capital and the return of the refugees to their homes" at the annual conference of the Forum of Journalists, an I'lam affiliate of which he is also coordinator. The conference expressed "support for the Palestinian people in their struggle for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and the return of refugees." Also in March, I'lam issued a press release stating Israel cannot "liquidate the fact that Jerusalem is the capital of Arab culture and will be the future capital of a Palestinian state, and tomorrow will be the focal point of the Arab and Islamic world and the progressive forces in the world." The terminology in I'lam's media publications resounds with terms such as "massacre" and "ethnic cleansing," as well as accusations of war crimes and the targeted murder of journalists. Last year, the NIF-funded organization held a conference in Ramallah with journalists from the Palestinian Authority which "aimed to develop and facilitate working relationships between Palestinians journalists in Israel and in the West Bank, and to discuss the role of the Palestinian media on both sides of the Green Line" as well as "exploring strategies for Palestinian media practitioners in addressing Israeli, European and U.S.-American media." I'lam's official statements are representative of the rhetoric employed by some of the NIF's grantees. I'lam posted on its website a statement declaring, "The (Israeli) soldiers are the grandchildren of the Nazis' victims, the Nazis' survivors. They have come here to consume food quickly and consume life quickly. This is the true image of Israel." The statement was made in the context of accusing Israeli soldiers of a "massacre" against Palestinian civilians. The connection of I'lam to the PA is reflected by its current staff. Sanaa Hammoud, the current director of I'lam, was a senior official of the PA's Negotiations Support Unit in Ramallah and served in Jerusalem as a senior communications adviser for the Palestinian leadership. Wadea Awawdy, who served on the founding board of directors of I'lam, worked as a correspondent for the official PA publication Al-Ayyam, which routinely prints anti-Israel propaganda. I'lam's international relations coordinator, Nasser Victor Rego, has issued numerous statements of support for Hamas, terming the Islamist group "The Palestinian resistance," while providing a link on his blog to the website of Hamas' armed wing, the Essedeen Al-Qassam Brigades. Nasser also has called on the international community to boycott Israel. Rego would not return calls to comment on the issue. In addition to receiving funds from the NIF, I'lam is also a grantee of Al-Quds: Capital of Arab Culture, which works under the auspices of both the PA and the Arab League. Among other charges laid against Israel in materials distributed by I'lam are allegations that the Hebrew media contains, "Encouragement for killing and destruction." Other anti-Israel groups Also supported by the NIF is Adalah, which defines itself as a non-partisan human rights organization. However, its agenda differs significantly from its self-definition. Jerusalem-based researcher Arlene Kushner, in her study of Adalah published by the Center for Near East Policy Research entitled "Inside Adalah," finds that "in various venues — including the Durban U.N. conference on racism — Adalah has charged or participating in charging Israel with grave breeches of international humanitarian law, war crimes, willful killing, racism, apartheid [and] ethnic cleansing." Adalah takes the position that the Israeli government is a "junta which proves each day that it is the most fascist and racist in history." In 2007, Adalah proposed a constitution for Israel in which immigration of Jews would be banned except for "humanitarian reasons." With its demand for the right of return for so-called Palestinian refugees, Adalah sees Israel's future as one with an Arab majority, which would create another predominantly Arab-Muslim state. Another group funded by the NIF is Mossawa. Last month, Mossawa and fellow NIF grantee Coalition of Women for Peace wrote to the Norwegian government and asked "the Norwegian people to join us in our efforts and to stop investing in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory." Naomi Paiss, director of communications for the NIF, declined to comment for this report. |
|
MUSLIM RULES FOR SEX WITH ANIMALS — THIS IS WHAT OBAMA TELLS US TO RESPECT
Posted by Cpocerl, June 24, 2009. |
|
— Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini Contact C Pocerl by email at at Cpocerl@aol.com |
|
SHOOT A SERB: THE MUSICAL!
Posted by Shaul Ceder, June 24, 2009. |
|
This was posted by Julia Gorin on her website: |
|
Srdja Trifkovic sent in the following: Take a deep breath and a large whisky. As another tipster on this, named Diana, wrote: "Don't miss the seven-minute youtube [video]. It provides a rare authentic taste of the American view of the world that brought us the Kosovo war...and other tragic farces. I am speechless." A news story by Lynda Edwards and entitled "Ex-Law School Dean
Spins Kosovo Experience Into Rock Opera" describes a musical written
by Hank Perritt, the former dean of Chicago-Kent College of Law. The
article is in the ABA Journal As ludicrous as the concept is, there seemed always something inevitable about a Serb-killing musical, didn't there? Here is an interview with the senile old fool who thought of this. The news clip opens with the song "Shoot Them All". Check out his reference to the "mostly Christian KLA." That's almost like saying "the mostly caucasian Vietcong." (And yes, "Miss Saigon" was his inspiration for this.) Hey, Israel-watchers — if you liked the play about Rachel Corrie, you'll LOVE the musical about the KLA. In fact, the concept is only a few rungs beneath the sequel to Corrie — "Hamas: The Musical!" — given that Hamas is actually more moderate than the KLA. Contact Shaul and Aviva Ceder at ceder@netvision.net.il |
|
NAÏVE US WORLD VIEW OF MUSLIMS; MEDIA PRO-ARAB BIAS; EX-DEFENSE
MINISTER: BUILD MORE SETTLEMENTS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 24, 2009. |
|
HISTORY IN ISRAELI SCHOOLS Israel's curriculum doesn't entirely cover the Jewish people's long history. One subject not approved by the Education Ministry is that of Arab refugees. Arabs are trying to get that subject taken up, as "the Catastrophe." Some educators prepared a kit on it, embodying the Arab view. They are distributing it to teachers without Ministry approval but with the approval of some teachers (http://www.imra.org.il/ — Independent Media Research & Analysis, 6/4). Should the curriculum on the Holocaust advocate from the Nazi point of view? That would be absurd. The Nazi view is false and evil. Same for the Arab view. History is not a point of view. It is a set of facts and judgment derived from the facts. The Arab narrative lies and misleads in order to indoctrinate. The key facts: the Arabs tried to seize the country and exterminate the Jews, lost, and mostly fled. They pretend that Zionists were the aggressors and expelled them. For more on "catastrophes," click here:
DIPLOMATIC BUTTER-UP OF SYRIA Syria will have a vital role in forging peace, said U.S. envoy Mitchell to Syrian leaders and to reporters. "The U.S. has long sought more Syrian help with keeping weapons and fighters from crossing from Syria into Iraq." The Obama administration hopes that this palaver would encourage Syria to help. Mitchell seeks a "relationship built on mutual respect and mutual interest. Syria presently supports Hamas (NY Times, 6/14, A12). Mutual interest and "more Syrian help?" Syria promotes war in Iraq, though sometimes it reduces border crossing temporarily. "Mutual respect?" ISRAEL TRAINING DESCENDANTS OF HISPANIC JEWS In the Middle Ages, Spain and Portugal coerced many Jews to convert
to Christianity. Conversos who secretly practiced Judaism, formerly
called Marranos, now are called Bnai Anousim. Hundreds of their
descendants studied Judaism and are returning to its faith. Israel is
training 70 Bnai Anousim how to defend Israel's reputation
Hundreds of converses in Peru asre taking courses in Judaism and emigrating to Israel (Simon Romero, NY Times, 6/22, A8). NAÏVE U.S. WORLD VIEW OF MUSLIMS White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod explained Pres. Obama's
Cairo speech. It visualizes most Muslims as extraordinary people
simply wanting better lives. This perceives people mainly as
consumers, with similar values and without ideology. Actually, many
people have competing national aspirations and sacrifice for what they
consider higher goals. The U.S. view is insulting and naïve. U.S.
policy should take foreign cultures into account (Dr. Aaron Lerner,
http://www.imra.org.il/ — Independent Media Research & Analysis.
6/4).
For Thomas Friedman's world view, at least in part, click here:
MEDIA BIAS IN ARAB-ISRAEL CONFLICT Reading a couple of NY Times editorials, I was struck by the absence or weak presentation of opposing arguments. The editors made their case unfairly. Opposition cases mostly were brushed off as insufficient. That editorial judgment lacks factual backing. How shall readers and voters decide about the issues? In its news columns, the NY Times picks facts tendentiously or quotes people without giving readers the facts on which to evaluate those quotes. This practice would give equal weight to opposing sides, if the opposing quotes were of equal length and emotional appeal. They are not. Guess which side gets the longer and more emotional quotations? On the Arab-Israel conflict, it is the side that the Times favors, the Arabs. Which Israelis are consulted, if any? The ones that favor appeasing the Arabs. Bias in the Western media is more deeply entrenched, now. The Free World always had difficulty reporting accurately from dictatorships. Dictators can bar or harass nonconforming journalists. The PLO and Syria murdered their own reporters, attacked or threatened Western ones, and the PLO once kidnapped reporters from the NY Times and colleagues. To preserve their lives and livelihoods, Western journalists censor themselves or submit to censorship. The media did not so advise audiences. The Times and the others tried not to repress news of the kidnapping of their employees, as if that were not news. It was news. It was exciting and significant news. Not knowing Arabic or the area, and relishing safety, many Western journalists turned to Arab go-betweens for photographs and local news. Some Arabs want to be professional journalists, others share their people's religious bias. Those in the Palestinian Authority have to cope with more threats than outside journalists — the Arab ones' families may be held hostage to "handlers'" conformity to the official line. Lately, NY Times articles are co-written by Arabs and by American Times reporters. This may not distress the editors much, because the Times mostly favors the Arab side, journalistic ethics be damned. For readers, however, crucial facts are omitted, falsehoods are substituted, one side gets more coverage, wording is value-laden, and picture captions are misleading. The photographs of Israel often show it at its worst or in conflict with the Arabs, in such a way as to generate sympathy for the Arabs. Israeli advances often are ignored. Beautiful settlements are not shown, though their architecture is stunning. Arabs are shown as unhappy, even deprived, though they are unhappy in being unable to deprive the Jews of their lives and property. That the newspapers rarely admit. ISRAELI EX-DEFENSE MINISTER: BUILD MORE SETTLEMENTS Former Israeli Defense Min. Moshe Arens rejects limiting building in Judea-Samaria to "natural growth." He points out that the Jewish people built there not because of "natural growth but because of natural rights." "'Our settlement in the Land of Israel is the basic right of the Jewish Nation,'" Arens said, 'based not only on the Bible and Jewish history, but [also] on international recognition during the times of the League of Nations and the British Mandate.'" He asserted Israeli sovereignty in opposition to demands by President Obama. He also opposes building new outposts without authorization. "Middle East expert Dr. Mordechai Keidar believes that U.S.
President Barack Obama has been misinformed regarding the problems
facing the region. Obama means well, Keidar says, but does not
understand the centuries-old issues of poverty, illiteracy, tribalism
and extremism facing Muslim countries, or how those issues play into
Arab hatred of Israel."
For more on "settlements," click here:
WHAT DO PALESTINIAN ARABS THINK OF STATEHOOD? Most Palestinian Arabs think that the two parts of the Palestinian Authority, Gaza and Judea-Samaria, are too disunited to form a state. Amnesty International criticized both halves for arbitrary detention, torture, and stifling of free speech. "Obama did not explain in his Cairo speech...how he plans to get the
two groups to unite. 'Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize
past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist,' Obama said,
but did not elaborate how this might occur."
For more on Arab statehood, click here:
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY POLICE ATTACK IN JERUSALEM Two Israeli Members of Knesset drove to the Kalandia and Kfar Akeb neighborhoods in northern Jerusalem, to observe illegal Arab construction on Jewish-owned property. Israel has sovereignty throughout Jerusalem. However, Israeli police told MK Eldad and MK Arial that although they had a right to go there, the police would not escort them. The police say they don't patrol there. What did the MKs find there? The observers were accosted by Palestinian Authority (P.A.) police,
who ordered them to stop. The Israelis fled, as the P.A. police rammed
them and called for backup
When not watched, P.A. personnel infiltrate areas they agreed not to. For more on the character of P.A. forces, click here:
For more on informal, secret division of Jerusalem, click here:
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 and visit his website:
|
|
MILLER, ABRAMS BOTH SAY SETTLEMENT PRESSURE MISGUIDED
Posted by Mr La, June 23, 2009. |
| This was written by Eric Fingerhut and it appeared yesterday in the JTA news service. |
|
Why has the United States made settlements such a big issue with Israel in the last few weeks? Two veterans of Middle East peace negotiations — from opposite sides of the political spectrum — say they are puzzled by the president's approach. Both Aaron David Miller, who advised Secretary of State Jim Baker on Arab-Israeli issues during the George H.W. Bush and was at the Camp David negotiations during the Clinton administration, and Elliott Abrams, who was deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration, agreed last week that the Obama administration's pressure on Israel over settlements isn't the correct move right now. And both said they saw virtually no chance of a conflict-ending agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians anytime soon. They spoke at a Bethesda, Md. synagogue at a forum — sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and t he American Jewish Committee's Washington chapter. The crowd seem jarred from Miller and Abrams' pessimism, after hearing all the hope for a peace deal that has come out of the White House and some quarters of the Jewish community since Obama's inauguration. Miller's criticism of the White House was particularly notable, because he is not opposed to getting tough with Israel — he pointed out that every time the United States has succeeded in achieving a breakthrough in the Arab-Israeli conflict, there has been "some measure of unhappiness" and tension. He also believes that settlements are a big problem (although he said even his old boss Baker knew he couldn't get Israel to freeze "natural growth" of settlements). But "as legitimate a problem as settlements are with respect to undermining the environment toward a negotiation," said Miller, they are a "distraction" given all the problems that need to be addressed. "Given the stakes and reality, we are going to need a relationship with Israel of great intimacy in order to do this. We need to think very carefully about how we're going about it, where is the strategy, what is the objective," he said. And while fighting with the Israelis in pursuit of a true "breakthrough" is worth it, he sees virtually no prospect of an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians on the four core issues of Jerusalem, borders, security and refugees. "There's a tension between two realities" that "cannot be reconciled" at that time, said Miller. "The commitment on the part of a young and transformative president who does not want to be the president on whose watch the two state solution dies, competing with the almost unimaginable possibility that Israel and Palestine can enter into a negotiation and reach a conflict-ending agreement." Abrams also said that the settlement issue was not being handled "in a way that is likely to produce the most from Israel," particularly the fact that it was happening "on page one" instead of behind closed doors. "You catch more honey with flies than vinegar," he said. But Abrams added that he didn't understand "how we got to where we are today," considering that media reports have revealed that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had offered Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas 96 percent of the West Bank along with land swaps that added up to virtually 100 percent and "the answer he got back is nothing." "I would have thought this puts the onus on the Palestinians to do something, I would have thought that offer by Olmert shows the settlement expansion issue is phony" because Olmert's offer was better than the one made by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack at Camp David 10 years ago, said Abrams. "I don't understand," he added, the apparent decision "to take the position that Israel is the problem." What is the most significant issue right now? For Miller, it is the Palestinians being able to control security in their territory. "A state must maintain a monopoly over the legitimate forces of violence within its society," he said. "If you do not control all the guns, then you constituents will never respect you, and your neighbors will respect you less." As the night went on, both Miller and Abrams continued to agree — there was no reason to be hopeful about a breakthrough. Abrams noted that while everyone has thought they have known the basic terms of a Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement for decades, such a deal still hasn't happened. Maybe that's because "they don't want them" and "neither side, looking at what the deal would be, is prepared to say OK." Miller essentially concurred, saying, "Neither side is prepared to realistically protect its own interests while meeting the interests of the other side." Why did these two advisers associated with opposite ideological camps find themselves agreeing so much? Miller said it was a "fundamental testament to just how deep-seated and nasty this conflict really is." "I'm not here to say it can never be solved," said Miller, but "America cannot afford to have a policy based in illusion." Contact the poster at mrla26@aol.com |
|
A WEAK AMERICAN PRESIDENT. BEHOLD OBAMA ON IRAN
Posted by Anne Bayefsky, June 23, 2009. |
|
President Obama has staked his reputation on being a human rights guru to people around the world. But his remarks at Tuesday's news conference and behavior since taking office have instead exposed a different persona — that of human rights charlatan. On June 15, three days after the phony Iranian elections and the same day that seven Iranian demonstrators were murdered, Obama's UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, made a speech in Vienna promoting the Saint Obama vision: "The responsibility to protect is a duty that I feel deeply. ... We must prepare for the likelihood that we will again face the worst impulses of human nature run riot, perhaps as soon as in days to come. And we must be ready. ... We all know the greatest obstacle to swift action in the face of sudden atrocity is, ultimately, political will. ... It requires above all the courage and compassion to act. Together, let us all help one other to have and to act upon the courage of our convictions." A week later there were multiple casualties, injuries and threats, and 46 million voters wrenched away from that doorway to freedom that had opened — if only a crack. But when the president was asked Tuesday: "Is there any red line that your administration won't cross where that offer [to talk to Iran's leaders] will be shut off?" He answered: "We're still waiting to see how it plays itself out." And when asked again, "If you do accept the election of Ahmadinejad ... without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working to achieve?" He answered: "We can't say definitively what exactly happened at polling places." And asked again: "Why won't you spell out the consequences that the Iranian people..." He answered: "Because I think that we don't know yet how this thing is going to play out." And yet again: "Shouldn't the present regime know that there are consequences?" He answered: "We don't yet know how this is going to play out." This is a man who embodies the opposite of the courage to act. His appalling ignorance of history prompted him to claim at his press conference that "the Iranian people ... aren't paying a lot of attention to what's being said ... here." On the contrary, from their jail cells in the Gulag, Soviet dissidents took heart from what was being said here — as all dissidents dream that the leader of the free world will be prepared to speak and act in their defense. The president's storyline that we don't know what has transpired in Iran is an insult to the intelligence of both Americans and Iranians. Our absence from the polling booths doesn't mean the results are a mystery. The rules of the election were quite clear. Candidates for president must be approved by the 12-member Council of Guardians. As reported by the BBC, more than 450 Iranians registered as prospective candidates while four contenders were accepted. All 42 women who attempted to run were rejected. So exactly what part of rigged does President Obama not understand? Instead of denouncing the fake election, President Obama now tells Iranians who are dying for the real thing "the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran." Whose sovereignty is that? The Hobbesian sovereign thugs running the place? Sovereignty to do what? To deny rights and freedoms to their own people? In a state so bereft of minimal protections for human dignity, why should the sovereignty of such a government be paramount? But President Obama didn't want to dwell on the daily reality of sovereign Iran: A criminal code that permits stoning women to death for alleged adultery and hanging homosexuals for the crime of existing. Instead, he repeatedly invoked "respect" for "their traditions and their culture." This is the same mantra he espoused to the Islamic world in Cairo when three times he spoke of the "rights" of Muslim women to cover up their bodies. Knowing full well that women in the Muslim world face the contrary problem of surviving after refusing to cover up their bodies, he never once dared to mention that this was also a human right. What part of cultural relativism and traditional oppression does President Obama not know how it plays out? In his scripted remarks, the president gave the impression of talking tough: "The Iranian government ... must respect those rights [to assembly and free speech]. ... It must govern through consent and not coercion." But with the "or else" pointedly missing from his lines, he made it plain that he continues to have high hopes of partnering with this current Iranian theocracy. "I think it is not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people." This Iranian government has told us in deeds, as well as in words, exactly what path it has chosen. President Obama has told us his path also: pandering to Islamic radicals and empty posturing. Ironically, the rest of the world claimed they wanted a weak American president whose foreign policy would read "apologize, capitulate and stand down." Now that they have what they asked for, real human rights victims are being forced to pay the piper. Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and at
Touro College. She is also editor of www.EyeontheUN.org.
|
|
ISRAELI RADIO SHOW CAPTIVATES IRANIANS
Posted by LEL, June 23, 2009. |
|
This is by Yaroslav Trofimov and it appeared in
the Wall Street Journal
|
|
JERUSALEM — In his Friday sermon, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reserved special wrath for "Zionist radio" that he said tried to drive a wedge between the Iranian people and the Islamic Republic. Such attention from Iran's supreme leader was music to the ears of Menashe Amir, a bespectacled Iranian-born Israeli who has been broadcasting in Persian from Jerusalem for the past five decades. "We're listened to in Iran and considered very credible and effective," Mr. Amir says with pride. "We're close to the Iranian people, we know what they want, and we have our sources that give us detailed news about everything that's going on in Iran." The spread of the Internet and satellite television in Iran over the past decade seemed to eclipse the prominence of Mr. Amir's old-fashioned shortwave broadcasts on Kol Israel, Israel's public radio. But now, as the Web in Iran is either blocked or dramatically slowed and satellite-TV channels are jammed by the government amid spreading unrest, Mr. Amir has suddenly become relevant again. "Today we have many more listeners inside the country because Iranians are thirsty for any information" about the unrest, the 69-year-old Mr. Amir says. He estimates the Iranian audience for Kol Israel's 85-minute daily show in Persian is between two million and six million people. Independent audience numbers, for obvious reasons, are impossible to come by. Though semiretired, Mr. Amir has been hosting the show every day since Iran's controversial June 12 elections, narrating news summaries and taking live telephone calls from listeners within Iran. The call-in part of the broadcast, normally a weekly feature, is now on air daily due to the current unrest. Because Iran bans phone and postal links with Israel, Iranian callers dial a special number in Germany; as a precaution, Mr. Amir asks them not to mention their names or hometowns. On a recent day, as Mr. Amir sat in his tiny studio in Kol Israel's Jerusalem offices, one caller from Iran, his voice trembling with emotion, recounted how "there's blood on the streets and people are being killed like butterflies." Another urged the world to help the protesters — reminding that Persian emperor Cyrus the Great protected and aided the Jews two and a half millennia ago, and asking the Jewish state to repay the favor by supporting Iranian demonstrators today. Mr. Amir hasn't made any calls to sources inside Iran for decades, he says, fearing his voice would be recognizable to anyone who may be monitoring his contacts' phones. But he and other journalists at the service keep in touch via email and other means of electronic communications with local sources. He boasts of being able to beat the competition on anything from the latest price of cheese in Tehran to confidential discussions within the Islamic Republic's establishment. Neatly dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and a tie despite Jerusalem's sweltering heat, Mr. Amir embodies the golden age in Israel's relationship with Iran, the Jewish state's closest regional ally until the shah was overthrown in 1979's Islamic revolution. "I am 100% Iranian, and I wish the best to Iran. Israel and Iran are natural friends," he says, his studio decorated with posters of Iranian movie stars, a printout of an Iranian flag and a family photograph of Prince Reza Pahlavi, the late shah's exiled son and heir. "There are still many who remember the period of fruitful cooperation between Israel and Iran, and they want it back," Mr. Amir adds. Still, Israeli analysts caution, Mr. Amir's vision of renewed Israeli-Iranian friendship is unlikely to materialize in the foreseeable future, even if the protesters, led by former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, somehow gain the upper hand in Tehran. "The entire population has been raised for the past 30 years with the cultic mantra of "death to Israel," " says Prof. Ze'ev Maghen, a Persian speaker who heads the Middle East Studies department at Israel's Bar Ilan University. "It's almost impossible to conceive of a positive outlook on peace between Israel and Iran." Born into a Jewish family in Tehran, Mr. Amir worked for Iran's Kayhan newspaper — now the mouthpiece of the Islamic regime — before he moved to Israel in 1960. He is one of some 60,000 such immigrants — a community that still maintains close contact with the estimated 15,000 Jews who remain inside Iran. The community plans a demonstration of support for Tehran protesters on Tel Aviv's seafront promenade Tuesday. Iranian-born Israelis include Shaul Mofaz, until earlier this year Israel's minister of defense, who is often heard in Mr. Amir's broadcasts. An institution in Israel, Mr. Amir, who also edits the Israeli foreign ministry's Persian-language Web site, bristles at suggestions that he must be coordinating his programming with Israeli government officials because Kol Israel is a public broadcaster that targets a strategic foe. "Nobody gives us advice — we're the ones who give advice" to the government, he says indignantly. "We know the Iranian psychology, and can tell exactly what's happened there and what the news means." Mr. Amir minces no word in expressing his outrage over a statement by Meir Dagan, the chief of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, who told a parliamentary committee last week that the extent of fraud in Iran's contested presidential elections was no worse than what happens in liberal democracies. "If that's what Mossad really thinks, they don't have any idea of what's going on in Iran," Mr. Amir said. Kol Israel, of course, isn't the only foreign radio station broadcasting in Persian. The British Broadcasting Corporation, the Voice of America and U.S.-funded Radio Farda also beam into the Islamic Republic. Ayatollah Khamenei, however, on Friday singled out Kol Israel, naming it first in his tirade against alleged foreign interference in Iranian affairs. "The enemies are trying through their media, which is controlled by dirty Zionists. The Zionist, U.S. and U.K. radio are all trying to say that there was a competition between those who supported and those who didn't support the state," the ayatollah said, insisting that all presidential candidates fully accepted the Islamic Republic and its government system. "Accusing the government of corruption because of Zionist reports is not the right thing." Ayatollah Khamenei's diatribes are likely to lure new listeners to Mr. Amir's program, Israeli analysts say. "The enemy of my enemy may not be my friend," explains Shmuel Bar, director of studies at the Institute for Policy and Strategy in Herzliya. "But, if the regime is so much against it, you have to listen to it." Contact LEL at LEL817@yahoo.com |
