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EUROPE HOLDS SOLIDARITY RALLY FOR KIDNAPPED SOLDIERS
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 30, 2006. | ||
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This comes from
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Yesterday, around 5000 people gathered together outside the European Parliament to take part in a solidarity rally for the kidnapped IDF soldiers. Family and friends of Guilad Schilat, Udi Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were present and were meeting European Union parliament members prior to the demonstration. The families were asking the European Governement and their parliamentarians to use their influence in the Middle East and demand a sign of life from the captured soldiers, in exchange for aid to the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon. N Green commented on this:
Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@bca.rr.com |
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WATCH IT ISRAEL -- JIM BAKER'S TARGETTED YOU TO BE HIS SCAPEGOAT AGAIN
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 30, 2006. |
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The Left wing of America with 80% radical Left media now dominates America; it undermines American and wants us to lose in Iraq, to lose to radical Islam! Nothing to say as we are our own worst enemy! With nukes, the oil producing countries become an Iranian sphere of influence and Jim Baker will cut such a deal in a heartbeat and Bush will go along because, as former Israel PM Bibi Netanyahu said, "it is 1938 (all over again) and Iran is Germany." Baker believing that Iran can give the USA assurances it won't develop nuclear weapons is as worthless assurances as all its other assurances! The USA can only get Iran's help on Iraq if we let Tehran get the bomb! The flip-flopping of America led by Bush and now assisted by Baker and his cadre of the not so round table and the cowardice free world is our demise in front of our eyes! We shall see what transpires, more so, if Israel can stand on its two STRONG feet and defeat Baker's plan! This article was written by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann and it appeared in Jewish World Review. It is called "Can Iran help us bail out of Iraq? Maybe -- but we'd better take a hard look at the price." |
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The idea has reportedly been floated via a draft report to the Iraq Study Group (headed by former Secretary of State James Baker), which calls for a "dialogue" with Iran as well as Syria. Along the same lines, British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently said Iran could be a "partner" with the West if it did not develop a bomb. Presumably, we'd ask Iran to help stabilize the situation in Iraq, curb the Shiite militias and encourage the Iraqi government to make sufficient concessions to the Sunnis to end or at least reduce the violence. Would it work? It could. Iran certainly has sought to arm and enflame the Shiites in Iraq. Maybe the mullahs can rein in their proxies, and let us withdraw in dignity -- not holding onto the skids of the helicopter as it lifts off our embassy this time. But why would they play ball with Washington at the same time that Bush is threatening sanctions explicitly and a military strike implicitly if Iran proceeds to develop nuclear weapons? No chance. So this proposal amounts to the de facto abandonment of any military or economic actions that could deter Iran from going nuclear. Of course, Baker may seek and Iran may offer public assurances that it won't develop nuclear weapons -- the same worthless assurances it now passes out to the entire world. What will have changed is that America and Britain will be so engaged with Iran that they can't and won't bomb or even impose tough sanctions. In short, we can only get Iran's help on Iraq if we let Tehran get the bomb. Yet, with nukes, Iran gains the leverage to force Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and all the region's oil producers to move in its orbit. The Middle East will become an Iranian sphere of influence. Such an under-the-table deal would amount to a total sellout of Israel and Saudi Arabia and America's other Arab allies. The Jewish state would be left with no alternative but to take whatever military action it could to stop Iran from completing its nuclear program. American capitulation will have left it with no alternative. Would Jim Baker cut such a deal? In a heartbeat. Never a friend of Israel, he wouldn't flinch at a realpolitik solution giving Iran power throughout the region. But why would Bush go along? It would be "peace in our time" -- Munich, 1938 -- all over again. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@bca.rr.com |
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PLO IS PROUD OF BEING SOURCE OF INTERNATIONAL TERROR
Posted by Palestinian Media Watch, November 30, 2006. |
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As the world recoils from international terror, the PLO takes pride in the fact that it has been the source of world terror, and that terrorists around the world have copied their tactics and techniques. It has already been noted by terror analysts that much of world terror was started by the Palestinian terrorists, and then copied by other terrorists in their own countries for their own purposes. Whereas the world views this with contempt, the PLO's Fatah faction acknowledges this and even takes pride in it. The Secretary of Fatah in Gaza, Ahmed Hales Abu Maher, expressed pride on Palestinian TV that the Fatah "gives daily examples" that the world has "imitated," from the participation of children in combat to the widespread use of suicide terror, all of which started with the Fatah-PLO. The following is the statement on PA TV by Ahmed Hales Abu Maher, Secretary of Fatah in Gaza: "Oh warrior brothers, this is a nation that will never be broken, it is a revolution that will never be defeated. This is a nation that gives an example every day that is imitated across the world. We gave the world the children of the RPG [Rocket Propelled Grenades], we gave the world the children stone [-throwers], and we gave the world the male and female Martyrdom-Seekers [suicide bombers]." [Palestinian Authority TV, November 14, 2006] Itamar Marcus is director of PMW -- Palestinian Media Watch - (http://www.pmw.org.il). PMW is based in Jerusalem. Barbara Crook, a writer and university lecturer based in Ottawa, Canada, is PMW's North American representative. |
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STANLEY GOLDFOOT: A JEWISH HERO IN OUR TIME
Posted by Ruth Matar, November 30, 2006. | |
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Dear Friends, In the Jewish Passover Haggadah, it is written: "And it is the same promise which helped our fathers and which aided us. For not only one tyrant has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation wicked men have risen against us to destroy us. But the Holy One, Blessed be He, delivers us from their hands." Also, in every generation, there were Jewish heroes with vision who were willing to sacrifice everything, even their very lives, in order to preserve G-d's promise to the Jewish people. One such hero in our generation is Stanley Goldfoot. During his lifetime, Stanley witnessed the rise of tyrants such as Hitler and Ahmadinijad, who are bent on destroying the Jewish people. Sadly, our friend Stanley passed away last week, November 24, 2006, at the age of 92. His family and all his many friends not only mourn his passing, but remember with gratitude his love and devotion for Israel and the Jewish people. Stanley Goldfoot was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. At the age of 18 he heard a speech about the Zionist vision by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, which appealed very strongly to him. It was all he needed to hear before packing a bag, leaving a shocked family and heading for Palestine. He joined a HaShomer HaTzair kibbutz, picking eggplants in the fields, and making floor tiles, "balatot". Since he arrived alone, without an entry permit, the British police soon shipped him out of the country together with another South African. In South Africa, he was drafted into the South African Army, where he learned to handle a rifle. Stanley joined the Revisionist Party (another name for Lehi). At first opportunity, he returned to Tel Aviv to open the first "School of English" which gave him entry into the British High Society where he was privy to important information from the top echelon of the British Army. He was now able to pass this invaluable information on to other Lehi members. Stanley Goldfoot did this with alacrity, under cover of legitimately representing English and French news. His valuable "press cards" gained him admittance everywhere! He was active in many other activities against the British Mandatory Power, while working in Jerusalem as a respected journalist. Some of those activities were so sensitive that they were never made public. After the rebirth of the Jewish State of Israel, he made aliyah legally in 1956. His main goal became his desire to establish a Zionist English newspaper "The Times of Israel", which eventually appeared on the streets of Israel, New York and the West Coast of the USA. For this purpose, he even spent a year in New York to raise funds to promote his newspaper. In the first issue of the "Times of Israel", Stanley Goldfoot wrote his famous controversial "Letter to the World from Jerusalem", which at the time, caused a huge stir. His article is still relevant, and I am therefore, including it in this Letter from Jerusalem.
Stanley's wife Helen was a real trooper and diligently worked alongside of him throughout their married life to make all his endeavors a success. Stanley and Helen have been active members of Women for Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green) since its inception in 1993. Both of them have been a great inspiration to the efforts of our organization to educate the younger generation about the values and traditions of the Jewish people in our promised Land. All the Women in Green will always remember Stanley Goldfoot with love and gratitude. His memory is a blessing, not just for us, but for the entire Jewish people. With Blessings and Love for Israel, Ruth Matar P.S. Any messages for Helen Goldfoot can be sent to our email address, mailto:michaele@netvision.net.il Attn: Helen Goldfoot. I will be pleased to pass them on to her. P.P.S. I want to remind my readers that former Prime Minister
Yitzchak Shamir was an active member of Stanley Goldfoot's group,
Lehi. Also, Israel Eldad, father of Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad, was an
active member as well. Another important Lehi member is Ezra Yakhin,
author of "Elnakam", Story of a Freedom Fighter, who lost an eye in
the battle for Jerusalem. If you are interested in buying this book,
get in touch with me.
Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow
(Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their
website address is http://www.womeningreen.org
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45,000 ILLEGAL ALIENS RELEASED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES IN TO OUR POPULATION
Posted by David Meir-Levi, November 30, 2006. |
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Dear Mr. President, I got a lot of flack three years ago when I first published my article on the invasion of the USA by thoussands of Arab and Iranian illegals via the Mexican border, disguised as south american hispanics. I asserted that Arabs and Iranians, who could othewise enter our country legally, are doing so illegally because they have some nefarious purpose in mind. Some of my email recipients thought it was highly insensitive of me to ascribe evil motives to Arabs and Iranains who snuck in to our country merely to find a better life for themselves and their families. Then the NY Times and a few other papers published articles mentioning the same facts, and expressing concern that some could be terrorits. I got even more flack when I sent out emails saying that up to 5000 Arab and Iranian illegal aliens had entered the USA mostly via Mexico over the past few years and were sheltered in the broader Muslim community. The flack was because I asserted that Arab and Iranian illegals are entering illegally because they want to keep their presence under our immigration radar so they cannot be tracked once in the USA. They want that because they are here to carry out acts of terror. My critics felt I must be vastly exagerating. 5000!? Now we learn from reports summed up in the article below, that we have about 45,000 illegal aliens released into our population over the past 5 years. Among those released are at least some of the Arab and Iranian illegals who were picked up by border patrols and INS forces. They snuck in to do us harm. They got caught. Now they are back out into our population, untraceable, undocumented, and free to do us harm. Add that number to the many many more who are not caught but succeed in getting in to our country clandestinely....and 5000 terrorists among us is not an unbelievable number. Mr. President, when are you going to clamp down on the phenomenon of illegal aliens entering our country to do us harm? When one of them blows up Chicago with a suitcase bomb? This article appeared yesterday on World Net Daily (www.wnd.com).
It is archived at |
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WASHINGTON -- Half of the 91,516 illegal aliens from terror-sponsoring countries and those of "special interest" apprehended at the border between 2001 and 2005 were released into the U.S. population, according to a report by the inspector general's office of the Department of Homeland Security. The report, "Detention and Removal of Illegal Aliens," released earlier this year with little fanfare or attention, suggests about 85 percent of those aliens -- potentially the most dangerous -- would abscond and likely never be seen by authorities again. Acknowledging the danger such aliens pose to the national security, the report cites a DHS official testifying that terrorist organizations "believe illegal entry into the U.S. is more advantageous than legal entry for operations reasons." Budget shortfalls were the explanations for why some 45,008 potential terrorists were released by authorities over a period of nearly five years after Sept. 11, 2001. The budget crunches prompted immigration officials to place strict limits on detention bed space, recruitment, training, travel and expansion of enforcement programs, the report explained. In addition to the release of these high-risk aliens, 27,947 known criminals were also released between 2001 and 2004 -- including 20, 967 "from countries where the notorious Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang members are know to be active." Given that only one in four aliens attempting to enter the U.S. during this period was caught, that would suggest some 350,000 from high-risk nations entered the country through this five-year period. An additional 400,000 criminal aliens would also have made it into the country between 2001 and 2004, according to the report. That's a total of 750,000 aliens who would be either known criminals before entering the country illegally or who originated from a terror-sponsoring nation or one in which terrorists are known to operate. This news hits following WND's report yesterday that 12 Americans are murdered every day by illegal aliens, according to statistics released by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa. If those numbers are correct, it translates to 4,380 Americans murdered annually by illegal aliens. That's 21,900 since Sept. 11, 2001. But the carnage wrought by illegal alien murderers represents only a fraction of the pool of blood spilled by American citizens as a result of an open border and un-enforced immigration laws. While King reports 12 Americans are murdered daily by illegal aliens, he says 13 are killed by drunk illegal alien drivers -- for another annual death toll of 4,745. That's 23,725 since Sept. 11, 2001. While no one -- in or out of government -- tracks all U.S. accidents caused by illegal aliens, the statistical and anecdotal evidence suggests many of last year's 42,636 road deaths involved illegal aliens. A report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Study found 20 percent of fatal accidents involve at least one driver who lacks a valid license. In California, another study showed that those who have never held a valid license are about five times more likely to be involved in a fatal road accident than licensed drivers. Statistically, that makes them an even greater danger on the road than drivers whose licenses have been suspended or revoked -- and nearly as dangerous as drunk drivers. King also reports eight American children are victims of sexual abuse by illegal aliens every day -- a total of 2,920 annually. Based on a one-year in-depth study, Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute of Atlanta estimates there are about 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States who have had an average of four victims each. She analyzed 1,500 cases from January 1999 through April 2006 that included serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides and child molestation committed by illegal immigrants. As the number of illegal aliens in the U.S. increases, so does the number of American victims. According to Edwin Rubenstien, president of ESR Research Economic Consultants, in Indianapolis in 1980, federal and state correctional facilities held fewer than 9,000 criminal aliens. But at the end of 2003, approximately 267,000 illegal aliens were incarcerated in all U.S. jails and prisons. While the federal government doesn't track illegal alien murders, illegal alien rapes or illegal alien drunk driving deaths, it has studied illegal aliens incarcerated in U.S. prisons. In April 2005, the Government Accountability Office released a report on a study of 55,322 illegal aliens incarcerated in federal, state, and local facilities during 2003. It found the following: The 55,322 illegal aliens studied represented a total of 459,614 arrests -- some eight arrests per illegal alien; Their arrests represented a total of about 700,000 criminal offenses -- some 13 offenses per illegal alien; 36 percent had been arrested at least five times before. "While the vast majority of illegal aliens are decent people who work hard and are only trying to make a better life for themselves and their families, (something you or I would probably do if we were in their place), it is also a fact that a disproportionately high percentage of illegal aliens are criminals and sexual predators," states Peter Wagner, author of a new report called "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration." "That is part of the dark side of illegal immigration and when we allow the 'good' in we get the 'bad' along with them. The question is, how much 'bad' is acceptable and at what price?" But the terror threat posed by illegal aliens could make all those grisly numbers pale by comparison should a few succeed in conducting major operations in the U.S., say law enforcement officials. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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LAW VS. MORALS; CULTURAL DIFFERENCE ARABS VS. JEWS; ARAB "HUMAN RIGHTS"
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 30, 2006. |
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FAILURE OF EUROPEAN MEDIA European media and parliaments condemn Israel as unfair to the Arabs (who are fair to nobody). Their media hardly reports Hizbullah for being a proxy for genocide, for waging terrorist war against Israel, and for using its own civilians as human shields. Lebanese admit that Hizbullah social work is to build schools atop arms depots. If Israel spares the schools, Hizbullah fires rockets into Israeli cities. If Israel destroys the depots, Europe denounces Israel for bombing schools. Either way, Israel is blamed, although Hizbullah carries out war crimes that gets its own civilians killed. The European media is unfair. When Israel warned the civilians to leave Qana, from which 150 rockets had been fired at Israel, Europeans did not reinforce the warning. When Israel attacked that source of terrorism, and civilians were killed, Europeans called it a massacre, as if Israel intended to kill civilians and were not defending itself. European parliamentarians call for isolating Israel rather than the terrorists. As part of Europe's willful blindness, the chief EU envoy claims that Syria will rein in Hizbullah. (Actually, Syria is rearming it.) France claimed it wanted Hizbullah disarmed. But it called for a ceasefire that kept Israel from disarming it, and sent too few troops and without a mandate to disarm Hizbullah. France is insincere (Jewish Political Chronicle, 9/2006, p.47 from Daniel Schwammanthal, Wall. St. J., 8/7). Europe should be more concerned about surviving its own, rising Muslims populations. BRITISH ACADEMIA & CINEMA STILL PURSUING BOYCOTT Although official attempts to boycott Israeli academia, to force Israel to obey UNO resolutions and to stop "occupying" Arab land failed, unofficial attempts continue. Certain British institutions won't sell books or buy articles from Israeli institutions or authors or attend an Israeli film festival (Arutz-7, 11/12). Ironically, boycotted Israeli filmmakers and academics generally are anti-Zionist. The UNO usually makes unfair or unworkable resolutions. Israel accepts and the Arabs usually defy the mandated resolutions. Israel does not occupy Arab land, but the Arabs try to take over Israel. British academics don't let those facts get in the way of their prejudices. Neither do their media. LAW VS. MORALS "...a student's having a 'right' to wear the costume of a suicide bomber" is "the wrong point," like having "the 'right' to make a film ridiculing people with handicaps. "...it's not a matter of law; it's a matter of the tenor of a society in which civilized people wish to liveÄour society is increasingly defined by laws and politics rather than by an understanding of the pre-political, sub-legal morals and mores that promote virtuous behavior and good citizenship." (Prof. Steven Plaut, 11/12.) ISRAEL LEADS THE WAY IN SHALE REFINING Oil-bearing shale is a source of energy that could give some countries energy-independence. Problem was that one had to squeeze the oil out of the rock at high pressure and temperature. That took too much energy to extract. Israeli ingenuity has solved that problem, involving a lower temperature, less waste, more flexibility in output, and less refining. Israel has patents, and is a year ahead of other countries in preparing for production of natural gas, electricity, or liquid fuel from shale. Israel would reduce oil imports by a third. Israel's shale is of poor quality. "The company estimates it will consume 6 million tons of oil shale and 2 million tons of refinery waste each year, for an annual production of 3 million tons of product." Israel's projected cost of $17 per barrel compares with crude oil prices of $47 -- $60 per barrel or more. Profits therefore would be high, and Israel has 15 billion tons of shale (IMRA, 11/11. They should have compared the $17 cost with the costs of oil production. ISLAM ALREADY OPPRESSING EUROPE Even though Western European governments are not Islamic, Islam already is repressing the Europeans. Native Europeans who speak out against the separatism that fosters the hate-mongering and rioting get threatened and go into hiding in their own countries, leaving the Muslims triumphant. A German lawyer, herself of Turkish descent, had opposed forced marriages, honor killings, and beatings of Muslim women and girls (you know, what Pres. Bush called fine Muslim family values). She said that terrorism will be committed by third-generation Muslim immigrants and their children who, "under the eyes of well-meaning politicians have been raised to hate Western society from birth." She requires police protection, as do others. It is a decline in democracy (Jewish Political Chronicle, 9/2006, p.47 from Wall St. J., Europe, Ed., 9/6). Traditional Europe lacks the free speech with which to defend its rights and culture, while the Muslims are protected by political correctness and multiculturalism. ARABS REBEL IN KNESSET The new Deputy Defense Minister explained why the IDF fired at a site in Beit Hanoun -- it was used as for launching rockets at Israel. Why were some other Arabs killed by Israeli artillery? Misfire, but the basic responsibility was by the Arabs for committing terrorism. Deputy Defense Min. Sneh told an objecting Arab MK to take his moral preaching about it to the terrorists who bear moral responsibility for the casualties. After all, Israel had completely withdrawn from Gaza. But the terrorists attack the crossing points, and then, when Israel closes them to stop the attacks, complain of food shortage. One Arab MK, interrupting and screaming, had to be removed. Another started screaming, too. He also was sarcastic, missing obvious points that Sneh explained again. The Arabs accused Israel of deliberate massacre. Sneh said that with Israel, it is accidental, but with the Arabs it was intentional and deliberate, that's the cultural difference between the two peoples (Arutz-7, 11/14). I find Sneh too leftist, but he handled the Arab MKs well, upholding Israel's side. THE PATTERN WITH POLLARD Whenever momentum has built for Pollard to gain clemency, the same old, refuted lies are circulated about him. This time, as Israelis have become solidly in favor of clemency, an Israeli TV channel broadcast the usual propaganda against him (Arutz-7, 11/13). Since the TV reporters have access to the story, they should refute the lies, not reiterate them. This is a conspiracy to keep Pollard incarcerated. ARAB CHARTER ON HUMAN RIGHTS IMRA, 11/13, published a translation of the Arab Charter on Human Rights. Aside from calling Zionism (rather than jihad) evil, it was full of high-sounding principles. It also was full of exceptions. There were exceptions "according to law" or as |necessary to maintain order." There were qualifications, as for women's rights as defined "under Islamic law" (that subordinates women). The Arabs have issued a document of principles, whose exceptions cancel out the principles (just as in their "peace plans.") The Charter pledges freedom of the press, that most Arab states lack. The Charter is to impress outsiders. ISRAELI DEFENSE MINISTER PRAISES HIMSELF In the wake of Israel's relatively poor showing in Lebanon, though Hizbullah did not defeat it, and it was grinding down Hizbullah, Israelis demand that the new and militarily inexperienced Defense Minister resign. Defense Min. Peretz said that when the issue is examined, he will be shown to have made a major contribution to Israel's effort. He also praised the moral tone of the IDF:"I visited Gaza, and one of the soldiers there told me that in the middle of a battle he saw a terrorist with an RPG and a child standing in front of him. He tells me, 'I didn't shoot because I was afraid to hurt the child, but I knew I will meet the terrorist.'" What would that moral soldier tell the parents of a soldier killed by the terrorist? "It should be noted that Mr. Peretz made a very important 'contribution' as Defense Minister before the war: his repeated empty threats to take action in Gaza against the Qassam attacks sent a clear message that Israel wasn't serious about responding to attacks." (IMRA, 11/13.) That stated criticism is fair enough. Peretz shouldn't be blamed, however, for military lack of preparedness, which took years to unfold. He should be asked whether he inquired how ready the Army was. In my first assignment as a systems analyst, I was asked to go to a factory and give the "go-ahead" to start a new shipping system that I had nothing to do with and was not trained to check. I asked the factory supervisors whether they had procedures in place and whether their staff was ready for the changeover. The supervisors said no. I called my Vice-President back at the home office to tell him I had called the change off, for a couple of weeks. He started to lose his temper. I quieted him down by telling him that if the new procedure failed to ship the goods, he would lose customers. When the factory was ready, the system worked. IDF ASSESSING EFFECT OF ENEMIES HAVING U.S. WEAPONS Equipped with the same US weapons as Israel, Egypt and Jordan narrow Israel's military "edge." The IDF is assessing the danger (IMRA, 11/14). What about EU forces in UNIFIL? Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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IMPORTANT ANTI-SEMITISM ALERT RE: FRANCE
Posted by Mordechai ben-Menachem, November 30, 2006. |
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Recent reports out of the Jewish Community in France are sounding very ominous. The Jewish people in France have had a long history, and events of the past few years have created an atmosphere of fear and danger for the 600,000 Jewish citizens who continue to reside there. In a pattern that is reproducing itself throughout Europe and in some cases beyond Europe, France's Muslim populations are growing exponentially, (now estimated to number 5 to 6 million) and the younger members of the Muslim population are acting to promote extremism and anti-Semitism. "Nowhere have the flames of anti-Semitism burned more furiously than in France" declared one member of the French Jewish Community anxiously in an e-mail he circulated amongst his peers, trying to raise awareness and take more of a proactive stance in combating the alarming trend. Here are a few examples of some of the most recent occurrences that have created such uneasiness for our Jewish brethren living in France: * In Lyon, a car was rammed into the Synagogue and set on fire. Help us to send a message about the unacceptability that we feel towards the inactions or lack of sufficient actions by the French Government to protect its Jewish citizens from being terrorized by these hate mongers and criminals. This is a serious problem that is spreading worldwide, so please help fight back and make a statement by spreading this message to those you feel need to be informed of the problem and the above listing of companies. Following is a list of French Owned Companies and their products and services, and we are at this time calling upon the readership and all who share our values to boycott these brands. * Air France Mordechai Ben-Menachem is at Ben-Gurion University. He can be reached by email at quality@computer.org |
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ZOA CONDEMNS JIMMY CARTER'S ANTI-ISRAEL BOOK AS INACCURATE, SHALLOW & VICIOUS
Posted by ZOA, November 30, 2006. |
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The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has condemned former President Jimmy Carter's latest book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid as inaccurate, shallow and vicious. The book is but the latest in decades of attacks upon Israel by the former President. Examples of Carter's distortions, inaccuracies and hostility in this book include: Carter: "The overriding problem is that for more than a quarter of a century, the actions of some Israeli leaders have been in direct conflict the official positions of the United States, the international community, and their own negotiated agreements. ... Israel's continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land." Fact: Judea and Samaria are historically, legally and religiously Jewish land and form part of territory originally earmarked for a Jewish state by the League of Nations. There has never been a Palestinian Arab state in these areas, despite offers to establish one in 1937, 1948 and 2000 and Israel won Judea and Samaria in the 1967 war of self-defense. This land was no-one's sovereign territory and had been illegally occupied and annexed by Jordan in 1948. When under Arab control, no Palestinian state was set up there. Jews have more right to live in Judea and Samaria than any other people. Carter: Palestinian Arabs have long supported a two-state solution and the Israelis have always opposed it. Fact: The 1937 Peel Commission partition plan, the 1947 UN partition plan and the 2000 peace plan all proposed a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state. Palestinians rejected all three. Carter: In 1967 Israel launched a preemptive attack against Jordan. Fact: Jordan commenced hostilities against Israel by shelling Jerusalem and opening fire on Israeli lines, despite Israeli calls for Jordan not to intervene in the Israeli-Egyptian fighting. Israel then counter-attacked and captured east Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Carter: UN Security Council Resolution (UNSC) 242 calls for Israel to withdraw from all the territories conquered by Israel in the 1967 war. Fact: UNSC 242 does not call for immediate, total and unconditional withdrawal by Israel. Rather, it calls for Israel to withdraw "from territories occupied" (not "the territories") to "secure and recognized boundaries" produced by negotiation with the Arab belligerents of that war. Carter: Arab-Jewish violence began when "Jewish militants" attacked Arabs in 1939. Fact: Arabs launched attacks upon unarmed Jews in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936-39, murdering hundreds of Jewish civilians long before Jewish armed units were formed to defend themselves. Carter: Blames Israel while exonerating Arafat, for the Palestinian refusal to accept a Palestinian state as provided for in the 2000 Barak-Clinton peace proposals. Fact: Arafat rejected these proposals and made no counter-offer according to Clinton and chief U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross. Instead, Arafat launched a terror war against Israel that still endures. Clinton said in his memoirs that Arafat's rejection made his Middle East policy a big failure. These proposals, contrary to what Arafat said and Carter chooses to believe, would have resulted in a fully contiguous Palestinian state on more than 95% of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Carter: Confessions extracted through torture are admissible in Israeli courts. Fact: The Israel Supreme Court has explicitly outlawed the use of torture to even extract information of impending terror attacks, let alone confessions. Carter: Israel is to blame for the "exodus of Christians from the Holy Land." Fact: The Christian population of Jerusalem and other cities controlled by Jordan dropped steeply under Jordanian rule (1948-67) and is doing so again under Arafat's PA (1994 onwards), but did not under Israel rule. 70% of east Jerusalem's Christians left during Jordanian rule and since Arafat's PA took over Bethlehem in 1994, most of its Christians have left as well. Some important facts omitted from Carter's book: * The long history of Palestinian and Arab-state sponsored terrorism against Israel before 1967. Critical commentary of the Carter book: * Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law Professor: "Whatever Mr. Carter's motives may be, his authorship of this, a historical, one-sided, and simplistic brief against Israel forever disqualifies him from playing any positive role in fairly resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians" ( New York Sun, November 22). ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, "Jimmy Carter's inaccurate, shallow and vicious book is unfortunately what we have come to expect from this most mediocre of modern presidents. The book is not only riddled with factual errors and distortions fully in keeping with Carter's long-standing bias against Israel and preference for neighboring Arab dictatorships, but even manages to malign Israel in its title, as Israel is a democracy that extends full civil rights to its non-Jewish citizens, not a minority, racist regime that like apartheid South Africa. The title seems to have been maliciously chosen to harm Israel's reputation in the minds of anyone who merely sees the book's cover, because even Carter admits in the book that the situation in Israel 'is unlike that in South Africa.' The Zionist Organization of America (www.zoa.org), founded in 1897, is the oldest pro-Israel organization in the United States. The ZOA works to strengthen U.S.-Israel relations, educates the American public and Congress about the dangers that Israel faces, and combats anti-Israel bias in the media and on college campuses. Its past presidents have included Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Rabbi Dr. Abba Hillel Silver. |
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WHICH IS THE REAL OLMERT?
Posted by Israel Zwick, November 30, 2006. |
| An interchange between Zwick and Reify of the reify.blog. |
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Dear Fred:
The biggest enemy of the State of Israel is not Iran, Hezbollah, or Hamas. It is the group of secular left-wing Israelis who have no attachment to the history and culture of the Jewish people in our ancient homeland. They keep writing about the "poor, oppressed Palestinians who are suffering from the harsh Israeli occupation." They claim that if the Palestinian Arabs had their own independent micro-state carved out of Israel then they would have no reason to continue their "resistance" and there would be peace and tranquility for both Arabs and Jews. Some of these secular Jewish writers even favor the concept of establishing one united state for Arabs and Jews where there would be equal rights for all based on demography and democracy. That is more of a threat to the Jewish State than Iran's nuclear weapons. It would mean the end of the blue and white flag, the end of Hatikvah as the national anthem, the end of streets with Jewish names, the end of Jewish national holidays, and most important, the end of religious freedom for Jews in the Middle East. The Jews now living in Israel would meet the same fate as the Jews who have lived in Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Most have had to leave, and the few remaining there are in fear for their lives. Israeli Jews would have to seek safe haven in isolated communities in Montana or Wyoming. Perhaps they would return to Germany or Poland, which are now eager to reestablish Jewish communities. I don't claim to understand Ehud Olmert's strategy and, like you, I am deeply troubled by the recent ominous developments in Israel. I'm assuming that Olmert is following the strategy of Ehud Barak in July, 2000 when he offered Arafat 95% of what he wanted but Arafat still refused to end the conflict or relinquish the |right of return." Perhaps, Olmert needs to show the opposition that Israel is willing to make major sacrifices to achieve a real peace but the Arabs will accept nothing less than the dissolution of the Jewish State and expulsion of Jews from their historical homeland. If my assumption is wrong and you're right, then the Jewish people are in for some very difficult times, and we can only pray that "Hashem oz l'amo yiten, Hashem y'vorech es amo basholom." Kol tuv
Israel Zwick is Managing Editor, www.cnpublications.net.
Contaact him at israel.zwick@earthlink.net |
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U.S. PRESSURED ISRAEL TO HALT MISSILE STRIKES ON PALESTINIANS
Posted by David Bedein, November 30, 2006. |
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Jerusalem - It can now be confirmed that Israel's failure to respond to Palestinian missile attacks on Israel's western Negev region was the result of pressure placed on the Israeli government by the Bush administration. The pressure succeeded only days before Israeli armed forces were to launch an incursion into Gaza, following more than 1200 missile attacks emanating from that area in a little more than 14 months. An Israeli government official told the Middle East News Line that the White House and State Department demanded that Prime Minister Olmert suspend all operations in, and withdraw from, the Gaza Strip in exchange for a Palestinian Authority agreement to a cease-fire. The visit by President George W. Bush to Jordan yesterday, where he met with Jordanian leaders, was the primary factor for this pressure. "Olmert was first told of the cease-fire proposal when he came to Washington earlier this month," the official said. "Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Olmert and said she expected an end to Israeli military operations." U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams is expected to meet Abbas in Amman. Officials said Abrams would then issue a recommendation regarding the feasibility of a meeting between Bush and Abbas. They said the U.S. president was not expected to meet Olmert. The cease-fire, which the PA was to produce in exchange for Israel's agreement to refrain from taking defensive action, has already failed. Palestinian gunners have fired Kassam-class, short-range missiles from the northern Gaza Strip into Israel earlier in the week. "The cease-fire is still very fresh," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Monday. "We hope that those security forces, as they get in place, would stop any such rocket attacks or any terrorist attacks that might be emanating from Gaza." McCormack said the United States would seek to extend the cease-fire to the West Bank. But he said this depended on an effective cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. The State Department has also pressed Israel to ease restrictions on Palestinian travel and offer to free Palestinian convicts. The Department expressed satisfaction with Olmert's speech on Monday that offered Israel's withdrawal from large portions of Judea and Samaria on the west bank of the Jordan River in exchange for peace with the Palestinians. Olmert also expressed readiness to release a large number of Palestinian convicts in the context of a real peace agreement. The official said Rice spoke to leaders in Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to persuade Hamas to accept the cease-fire as the first step toward a U.S. peace initiative. Apart from Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been leading financiers of Hamas. Both Egypt and Qatar have invited the Hamas leader, now the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya for a state visit. Rice has been in nearly daily contact with Israeli leaders to ensure that the military refrains from operations in the Gaza Strip, officials said. On Monday, they said, the U.S. secretary discussed the ceasefire with Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz. "Condi plans to arrange to meet Olmert and Abbas and seeks to reinforce the ceasefire and discuss the next step," the official said. David Bedein is Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency.
(http://Israelbehindthenews.com). He is president of
Center for Near East Policy Research.
Contact him by email at media@actcom.co.il
This article appeared in the Evening Bulletin
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MISUSE OF ISRAELI CAMPUSES; HONORING BIN LADEN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA
Posted by Steven Plaut, November 30, 2006. |
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In Haaretz (and maybe other papers) today, there is debate about several "privatized degrees" that operate at Tel Aviv University. These are degrees in business and law that are conducted on campus for high tuition, not directly budgeted by the Israeli government budget and planning committee for higher education (VATAT). The head of VATAT, Prof. Shlomo Grossman, is quoted in the paper today as saying that even though these programs are not directed funded by VATAT, they operate on Israeli campuses, which are paid for by the taxpayer, and so require VATAT permission and approval. That is very interesting, but the fact of the matter is that for the past few years the campus of Tel Aviv University and some other universities have been misused by allowing the "Socioeconomic College" programs to operate on campus grounds. The "Socioeconomic College" is a front for the Israeli Communist Party, and the "College" teaches boilerplate Marxism and anti-Israel propaganda, using public campus facilities. In addition, of course, in-classroom leftist and anti-Israel political indoctrination is routinely conducted on these same taxpayer-financed campuses (see http://www.israel-academia-monitor.com). So perhaps Prof. Grossman and VATAT should also have something to say about that? Why not write Prof. Grossman and ask him why the communist party is allowed to operate its propaganda "college" on public facilities paid for by the Israeli taxpayer! You can FAX Prof. Shlomo Grossman, director of VATAT, at 972 2-5679969 or write POB 4037, Jerusalem 91040 Prof. Grossman's email is grossms@mail.biu.ac.il
2. "Haifa U. Arab Student Calendar Honors Bin-Laden, Nasrallah"
An Arab student calendar distributed at Haifa University marks the dates of major terrorist attacks, as well as significant dates in the lives of Arab terrorists such as Osama Bin-Laden. The calendar, sponsored by the Islamic Movement - based in the Israeli city Um El-Fahm - marks the birthday of Al-Qaeda founder Bin-Laden, the date of PLO leader Yasser Arafat's death, and significant dates in the lives of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah and jailed Fatah arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti. Also noted in the calendar are the anniversaries of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and of recent kidnappings of IDF soldiers. Students belonging to the Islamic Movement rejected criticism by many that the material constituted incitement. Mouad Hatib, the university student who was responsible for distribution of the calendars, said, "I don't understand the big fuss. It's a calendar for Arab students at the university... We mention Nasrallah and the date of the kidnapping of the two soldiers and the killing of eight others as a brave operation that led to the Lebanon war." Regarding the marking of dates in the lives of Nasrallah, Bin-Laden and others, Hatib said, "It's important that the Arab public remembers its leaders." University officials initially did not object to the journals when the written contents were brought before the administration for review. "Once it was brought to the attention of the dean that the calendar contains sympathetic pictures of people such as Nasrallah and of the attack on the Twin Towers, the permission [to distribute the material] was not renewed," a university administration statement said. "We have learned lessons as a result of this incident, and full attention will be given hereafter also to pictures in material to be distributed at the university." A statement released by the Haifa University Student Union said, "We are shocked, and we see as very serious the fact that, on the university campus, calendars were distributed including pictures of terrorists who publicly call for the liquidation of the State of Israel." Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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BAKER PANEL AIDE EXPECTS ISRAEL WILL BE PRESSED
Posted by Daily Alert, November 30, 2006. |
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This was written by Eli Lake, Staff Reporter of the New York Sun
November 29, 2006 and is archived at URL:
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WASHINGTON -- An expert adviser to the Baker-Hamilton commission expects the 10-person panel to recommend that the Bush administration pressure Israel to make concessions in a gambit to entice Syria and Iran to a regional conference on Iraq. The assessment was shared in a confidential memorandum -- obtained yesterday by The New York Sun -- to expert advisers to the commission from a former CIA station chief for Saudi Arabia, Raymond Close. Mr. Close is a member of the expert group advising the commission and was a strong advocate throughout the panel's deliberations for renewed American diplomacy with Iran and Syria. In the memo, Mr. Close shares his "personal predictions and expectations" for what the Iraq Study Group will recommend in its final report next month. Mr. Close writes that he expects the study group to urge President Bush to convene a regional conference "to enlist the support of neighboring states in establishing stability in Iraq." Among the participants in the regional conference should be "all principal states of the region," including Iran, Syria, and Israel. The inclusion of Israel, according to Mr. Close, is crucial because it will provide the only leverage by which Iran and Syria can be enticed to help stabilize Iraq. "To have any realistic chance of success, I believe that the process would have to start with the announcement of a major initiative, promoted and vigorously supported by the United States, to reach a comprehensive resolution to the Israel-Arab crisis through a process of reasonable compromise and accommodation between Israel and its Arab neighbors," he writes. While it is widely expected that the Baker-Hamilton commission will recommend renewed diplomacy with Iran and Syria in an effort to share the burden in stabilizing the country, the content of such negotiations has until now been a mystery. According to Mr. Close, the talks will center around a resolution of the conflict between the Jewish state and the Arab and Islamic world. Other members of the expert working groups yesterday, when asked about the memo, confirmed it was authentic. Mr. Close did not return an email seeking comment. But two members cautioned that the views of Mr. Close were his own and that in the last three weeks the commission and team of staffers at the U.S. Institute of Peace have not formally sought the opinions of the expert working groups. That said, some of the individual experts have provided private counsel and analysis to individual members. Mr. Close believes a regional conference centering on Israel's conflict is so likely that "If the ISG suggests a regional conference to which would not be invited, that could only be because Israel and its supporters in the United States intervened to protect Israel from involvement in a process in which it would inevitably have to make significant concessions and compromises." Mr. Close does not specify what those compromises would be. He does however write that America and Israel will need to make "significant modifications" to their current positions. He also writes that America should not offer Syria an opportunity to restore its semi-sovereignty over Lebanon. But in lieu of that, "perhaps the US will have to put pressure on Israel to make territorial concessions in the Golan." The reference is to the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed after winning from Syria in the Six Day War of 1967. The memo from Mr. Close is deeply pessimistic about any chance that Mr. Bush will achieve a victory in Iraq on his original terms as a beacon of democracy for the Middle East. He derides what he expects will be conclusions from an internal government review that "will continue to promote the delusion that Æsuccess' is still a realistic objective in Iraq." He describes Iraq as a "looming catastrophe," ending his thoughts with this terse summary: "No simple or convenient solutions. Very little hope of success. But no better ideas to work with." Mr. Close has been an outspoken critic of the war for which he was tasked to advise a strategy. On June 10, 2003 he penned an article for the newsletter "Counterpunch" in which he concluded that the Bush administration's alleged manipulation of pre-war intelligence "was a crime against those values for which America stands most proud." Mr. Close has also been an ally of Saudi Arabia. In 1977, on the day of his retirement from the CIA, while still in Jedda, Mr. Close began working with Saudi Arabia's then intelligence chief, Kamal Adham, according to one of his former bosses at the agency's directorate of operations. "On the day he retired from the CIA, Ray walked across the street and joined Kamal Adham in a business relationship," Duane Clarridge said yesterday in an interview. "To many officers in the CIA this seemed untoward because as a government official, he had an official relationship with Kamal Adham. Now he was in a commercial relationship which over the years reportedly made Close a very wealthy man." Mr. Adham later went on to play a key role in the BCCI banking scandal, where the bank was accused of bribing senior government officials in a variety of countries as well as graft. Mr. Close's son, Kenneth, is a registered foreign agent for Saudi Arabia. EXTRACTS FROM THE CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENT BY RAY CLOSE OBTAINED BY THE SUN. Fasten your seat belts, as Bette Davis would say, because it's going to be a bumpy ride. ... Baker and Hamilton will soon announce a set of recommendations of which the following is, in my opinion at least, the most important and potentially the most controversial: Encourage the holding of a regional conference to enlist the support of neighboring states in establishing stability in Iraq... All principal states of the region would be invited, particularly including Iran and Syria -- and Israel. ... This initiative could succeed only if the United States and Israel were to convey to prospective attendees in advance their readiness in principle to make significant concessions and accommodations in return for comparable concessions and accommodations from Iran and Syria, by themselves and on behalf of their allies in Lebanon and Palestine... The strongest and most forward-looking members if [sic] the Baker-Hamilton Commission, ... are prepared to recommend that effort. ... There is ... no simple or easy way to escape the looming catastrophe that was set in motion by the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 ... The ISG is also obviously going to address the question of when and under what conditions the United States will start withdrawing troops from Iraq. Some kind of withdrawal plan is a minimum insisted upon by the majority of Democratic members of the Commission and some of the Republicans, as well. ... A new and comprehensive "regional policy makeover" is a grand idea, but presents many serious complications. ... To have any realistic chance of success, I believe that the process would have to start with the announcement of a major initiative, promoted and vigorously supported by the United States, to reach a comprehensive resolution to the Israel-Arab crisis through a process of reasonable compromise and accommodation between Israel and its Arab neighbors.... The proposal to call a regional conference sounds good, but does not stand up very well to hard analysis. With George W. Bush in the White House, I cannot see a single prospective participant in a regional conference of this kind (particularly the United States and Israel) coming to the table prepared to make the compromises and concessions that will be essential to reaching a constructive outcome of US policy in Iraq. ... However ...I believe that the ISG will nevertheless recommend the convocation of a regional conference. ...Tragically, I think George W. Bush will not agree even to give it a sporting chance. |
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USAIR BOYCOTTED BY MUSLIMS -- NOW WORLD'S SAFEST AIRLINE
Posted by Ian Fletcher, November 29, 2006. |
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I DON'T NEED ANOTHER MEETING.
Posted by Buddy Macy, November 29, 2006. |
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Last month I had a telephone conversation with Howard Rieger, President of United Jewish Communities (UJC), the Jewish Federation network in North America. I had phoned Mr. Rieger earlier in the day, and he promptly returned my call. It had been a rough week for the colossal Jewish fundraising organization. On October 13th, a front-page article appeared in The New York Jewish Week criticizing UJC for disbursing a significant amount of funds from its Israel Emergency Campaign (IEC) to non-Jews in Israel. Howard Rieger responded to the article by stating that 3 percent of all IEC monies raised to-date had gone to non-Jewish Israelis in the north. Yet, according to an October 5, 2006 UJC Communications Department email containing an IEC ALLOCATIONS UPDATE, nearly $9,000,000 of the first $50,000,000 SPENT had been distributed to non-Jews. In his calculation, Rieger used the amount of PLEDGES ($300 million) as the denominator, not the actual dollars SPENT, thus intentionally creating the illusion of a much lower percentage of the funds going to non-Jews. During the phone call, I proposed to Mr. Rieger that he meet with me and several other ardent supporters of Israel. We wished to discuss the organization's lack of support for the expellees from Gush Katif and northern Samaria, its "post-war" financial support of non-Jews (without the knowledge of many of the contributors to the IEC) and UJC's silence with regard to Ehud Olmert's existence-threatening decisions regarding Israel since assuming the position of Prime Minister. Mr. Rieger's reply was short and callous: "I don't need another meeting," he said. Mr. Rieger: I am writing this email on Sunday evening and do not expect nor wish any compensation for it. You, on the other hand, receive a salary (that is paid out of contributions to needy Jews) in excess of $700,000 annually for your work on behalf of our fellow Jews - fundraising and advocacy that should be regarded by you as a tremendous privilege -- yet, you refuse to meet with me and other pro-Israel activists during working hours because you don't "need" another meeting. The Jewish People deserve and NEED much more. And, certainly, 16 months after being expelled from their homes and communities, 10,000 Jewish refugees deserve and NEED the Jewish community's concern, compassion and FINANCIAL GENEROSITY . Most sincerely,
Buddy Macy was formerly an active volunteer with UJC. Read about his story at by clicking here.Contact him at VegiBud@aol.com. |
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REWARDING TERRORISM BREEDS MORE TERRORISM
Posted by Barry Rubin, November 29, 2006. |
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The Middle East always gives us clues for understanding it if only we paid attention to them. Let us consider how four events coincided recently. First, the West is abuzz with the idea of engaging Syria about the future of Iraq. There are broad hints about satisfying Syrian ambitions to control Lebanon in exchange. Now, what conclusions might we draw here? I'll give you mine: Syria wants to destroy any investigation of its murdering Hariri, to intimidate the existing Lebanese government, and to put into power a coalition of its clients, including Hizballah. As for Hizballah, it cares more about Syrian than it does about Lebanese interests. It is an anti-patriotic organization. Always remember that Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah is the official representative in Lebanon of Iran's spiritual guide. The Syrian-backed triple alliance involves Hizballah, the lame duck Christian leader Michel Aoun (elected on a platform of combating Syrian influence!), and rented Sunni Muslim politicians. But wasn't Syria worried about losing the Western offer of negotiations and concessions if it acted brutally? Ah, that's the beauty of it all. The Syrian government is not worried about it. President Bashar al-Assad believes he can use terrorism all he wants and no one will do anything about it. After all, the attack came a few hours after UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Bashar to urge him to be nice in Lebanon. Don't hold your breath for a UN resolution condemning Syria, demanding that UN forces be allowed to patrol the Syria-Lebanon border to stop Syrian arms smuggling to Hizballah, or sanctions of any kind. In other words, the Western offer of negotiating Syria has only emboldened that government. Bashar feels like the winner and thinks the West is composed of fools or cowards who will never confront him. The attack on Gemayel was the fifteenth major assassination attempt by Syria and its allies since Hariri was killed. Gemayel was the fifth major Lebanese figure to die. Incidentally, there has not been a single violent attack on any pro-Syrian figure in Lebanon. By the way, the organization that claimed responsibility for the killing is a front group that was responsible for murdering two other anti-Syrian figures in past years. Its communique specifically attributes the murder to Gemayel opposing Syria and Hizballah. You may not want to take my word for it though, so here's what some other experts said about the assassination. Looking at the nonsense spouted by these and other people, perhaps Bashar is right in his low evaluation of the West: Expert Number One: The problem is a "cycle of violence" in Lebanon. Wrong, no cycle. Only one side is using violence. Expert Number Two: It is all U.S. President George Bush's fault. Nope. Having a Democrat in the White House would not change the behavior of Syria, Iran, and Hizballah for the better. Expert Number Three: We all better give Syria what it wants or there will be more violence. Misleading. Yes, if we don't give Syria what it wants the Syrian government will commit more terrorism. And if we do give Syria what it wants, the Syrian government will commit even more terrorism than that. The name for this person's reasoning is appeasement. The point is to show that terrorism and aggression aren't profitable. Otherwise, they will become even more popular than they are now. Expert Number Four: The real danger is that anti-Syrian Lebanese Christians will stage even worse violence. As if they were the villains here. Let's start by dealing with the violence we have already. The Christians are showing restraint, and Expert Number Four refuses even to condemn Syria and Hizballah, and in fact sympathizes with them. This is not to say that all responses are so bad; yet, it is clearly terrible enough to convince Bashar that he can have both terrorism and the West groveling, both Lebanon and international compliance. What is needed is an alternative. The international community should make it clear that Syrian backing for terrorism against Lebanon, Iraq, and Israel will bring punishment. That means isolation, sanctions, investigation, and persecution. The situation also involves a massive program of economic and military support for the current Lebanese government so that it can survive. After all, Hizballah is getting money and arms from Iran and Syria while the moderates get nothing from the West. In the immediate term, the number-one danger in the Middle East is not Iranian nuclear weapons, though that is a big enough longer-term threat, but an extremist takeover of Lebanon. All the Syrians and Hizballah have to do is kill two more cabinet ministers and the government will fall. And even the courage of Lebanon's patriotic majority has its limits. Such an event would be the most significant domestic political change in the region since the Iranian Islamist revolution a quarter-century ago. When Syria, Iran, and Hizballah engage in terrorism, this is a signal that they should be opposed vigorously. Is that so hard to understand? Does anyone really remember the lessons of September 11? Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center university. His co-authored book, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, (Oxford University Press) is now available in paperback and in Hebrew. His latest book, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, was published by Wiley in November 2005. Prof. Rubin's columns can be read online at: http://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/column.html. |
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GULLIBLE JEWS AND JEWISH PRESS
Posted by Steven Shamrak, November 29, 2006. |
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Contrary to the common belief of anti-Semites, that Jews are shrewd, we are quite trusting people and naive. For example, if today a Christian anti-Semite or an Arab terrorist, with years of Jew-bashing experience, would announce that they condemn their evil ways of the past and support Israel's right to exist, Jewish communities around the world would immediately start actively promoting them as saints. Quite often, the reason behind these kinds of transformation is sinister - It is the desire to get the free publicity for an upcoming book, movie or Jewish money for speaking engagements. Occasionally, I send my articles and letters to Jewish papers. Most often, they are rejected or 'modified' without my consent. The politically motivated editors of the Jewish publications are unwilling and unable to allow the freedom of speech, when the right of Jews to their ancestral land and the future of Jewish people are concerned. At the same time, they are able to allocate almost unlimited space and give any inconceivable excuse to the enemies of the Jewish state. The voices of Jewish self-haters are quite dominant in many Jewish publications and Internet. The discreditation of Jewish patriots and the original ideas of Zionism became a norm and they are not given the opportunity to state their case to the public at all. It seems that most of those publications are Jewish by the namesake only. They are not interested in providing the leadership for communities, they claim represent. From time to time they do raise controversial questions, like "Who is a Jew?" Most of the time, it is not done to resolve an issue, but for the sake of increasing the number of subscribers. A while ago, September of 2006, I was surprised when a correspondent of the Australian Jewish News, which is notorious for its editors' leftist ideology, expressed his interest to interview me. He wanted to publish my personal profile and information about my Internet based editorial letter in the paper. We had a 45 minutes face-to-face interview, during which we covered the wide range of questions and he made four pages of tightly written notes. Two months later, when I received a draft of the interview, many important points were omitted or distorted. Two major questions which I strongly emphasized during interview, were not included in the draft at all: Q1: Why did I start publishing your letters five years ago? -- "Because for years I observed that Jewish leaders were apathetic and unwilling in promoting Jewish unity and original Zionist ideas." Q2: What is the purpose of your letters? -- "Disseminate the idea that Jewish people have the right to live in peace on all Jewish land - Eretz-Israel?" Why is it so difficult for a Jewish newspaper to give a voice to true Zionist ideas? Why are they so considerate and sensitive to "the suffering of poor Palestinians", but ignore the sufferings of their own people inflicted by the "poor Palestinians"? Why do they support almost any national independence movement, but actively deny the rights of Jewish people and ignore Zionism - the Jewish National Independence Movement? It is time to realize that most of the so-called Jewish publications, may be run by Jews, but are just commercial enterprises targeting Jews for advertising dollars and subscriptions. It is futile to write letters to them. The only language any media organization can understand is the language of "the Bottom Line". We must stop our subscription to all anti-Jewish publications! We must switch off all anti-Israel biased radio stations or TV channels! And, we have to let them and their advertisers know that we have done so and why. Only this way they will be able to understand that the hideous status quo will not be tolerated any more and we are serious about it! They will not change their revolting attitude, but they will be forced to change their business practice, because they do love Jewish money! Food for Thought It is said, that solution to any problem can be easily found by asking the right question. There are many Think Tanks around the world, looking for answer to: "How to bring peace to the Middle East, by resolving Arab-Israel conflict?" What they must ask: "How to help Israel to re-unite Jewish land, in order to send clear message to Muslim world, that Islamic expansionism will not be tolerated any more?" What Cease-fire? Mahmoud Abbas has told an Arab audience that he will not settle for a new Arab state comprising Judea , Samaria and Gaza and that the issue of allowing millions of Arabs to enter Israel is the key to solving the Arab-Israeli conflict. (It is all or nothing! It is time for Jews to realize it and take all Jewish land back!) Ceasefire Lasted 75 Minutes. A Kassam rocket landed in the western Negev, some 75 minutes after the PA (Palestinian Authority) declared a ceasefire at 6:00am Sunday morning. (For how long can Jewish people continue to endure stupidity of the gutless, apathetic and corrupt leadership? We need leaders with strong conviction and absolutely believe in original ideas of Zionism!) Quote of the Week "...there is a growing feeling that our leaders, our ministers, are abandoning [zionist] principles in order to remain in power longer." - Natan Sharansky, during his farewell speech in Knesset. Israel Offers Another Capitulation, Terrorists Offered Death. In a major policy speech, Olmert said he was reaching out to the Arab Palestinians for peace - offering a series of humanitarian and economic incentives if violence against Israel ceased. The answer was prompt, rockets were fired into the Israeli Sderot, despite a ceasefire declared. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the attack. (The weed must be completely removed, in order to keep the garden clean. There is not difference between Hamas or Fatah! They are just different variety of the same weed.) UN: More Resolutions Against Israel. The U.N. Human Rights Council passed two more resolutions against Israel: Declare Israel's presence in the Golan Heights illegal and condemned Israel's settlement construction. The 47-member council has singled out no other country but Israel for human rights abuses since the council was established six months ago. (While International anti-Semitic bustards are in power, Islamic terror will thrive!) Internet letter. Author unknown. There can be no absolute freedom of any kind even in a democracy. Absolute freedom is anarchy and that is hardly consonant with democracy. And now I am about to preach hatred. But I will not lie. Islam is not a race. It is a death cult. It strives for death for all who are non-Muslim and it strives for the death of Muslims themselves if they wish to achieve the highest rewards, the promise of sexual orgies and gluttonous feasts, in their afterlives. Muhammad was a deceitful, bloodthirsty, rapacious, sadistic, immoral warmonger. Despite the numerous pronouncements of George W. Bush and Tony Blair and of countless Imams and murderous Islamic dictators and a few self hating Jews and uncountable anti Semites and far, far too many others, Islam is NOT "A religion of peace". Of the approximately 125 armed conflicts and massacres being conducted in the world at present, almost all of them are involve Muslims as the perpetrators and very often as the victims of their fellow Muslims. But of all the horrible diseases that plague our world the most
virulent, most devastating plague of all is Islam. As with any plague,
one must either let it run its course and hope to survive its
devastation or take all necessary measures to eradicate it.
Steven Shamrak was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and
participated in the Moscow Zionist "refusenik" movement. For the last
3 years, he has been publishing internet editorial letters on the
Arab-Israeli conflict -- independently, not as a member of any
organization or political movement. He can be reached by email at
StevenShamrak@gmail.com
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NAZI GERMANY RISES AGAIN IN PRESENT DAY IRAN
Posted by Michael Bussio, November 29, 2006. |
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It began last year around this time, the Goebbelization of Iranian
foreign policy. The Nazi Minister for propaganda and war criminal,
Joseph Goebbels would indeed be proud if he were alive today strutting
about in his jack-boots. For in Iran today, that country's
dictatorship of religious fanatics known as the Mullahs have
instructed their willing spokesman, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, the decayed
corrupt bigot, obsessed by the evil within himself, to declare in a
ranting televised speech given on December 14, 2005, that the Nazi
murder of six million Jews was a fabrication. "They have created a
myth in the name of the Holocaust and consider it above God, religion,
and the prophets. If someone were to deny the existence of God... they
would not bother him. However, if someone were to deny the myth of the
Jews' massacre, all the Zionist mouthpieces and the governments
subservient to the Zionists tear their larynxes and scream against the
person as! much as they can." Ahmadine who is jokingly referred to as
the President of Iran officiated over an October 2005 "World Without
Zionism" conference. From nearly every wall in the conference hall one
could see Nazi-like standards, in English calling for Israel to be
wiped off the face of the earth. The use of English told many that
this spewing of hate and anti-Semitism was meant for world
consumption.
The statements from Ahmadinejad shocked and still shock even the weak-kneed Europeans. The German foreign ministry even went so far as to recall their Iranian chargé d'affaires. But should Europe be so shocked? Ahmadinejad's rantings are really nothing new. We have all heard this nonsense before. In fact just four years earlier before Ahmadinejad denied that the Holocaust had ever taken place, Iran's Expediency Council Chairman ’¡ÆAli Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani declared before a student gathering at Tehran University, "If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists' strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything... It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality." Unfortunately and sadly to say the least many intelligence operatives and analyst in the United States and Europe dismissed Rafsanjani's! remarks, suggesting that he was alluding to self-defense only. However, Iranian government officials and members of the rubber stamp parliament understood exactly what Rafsanjani meant -- to threaten the West and her allies with the use of nuclear weapons one day soon. The Iranian leadership past and present has called for the eradication of the state of Israel. This includes the Islamic Revolution leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to the current Supreme Leader ’¡ÆAli Khamene’¡Æi and even so-called moderates like former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. Iranian official have made fools of the Europeans for many years now, but with Ahmadinejad's howls they can no longer deny the truth of Iranian intentions. Note the following address was given by Khatami before the Italian Parliament in March 1999: "Tolerance and exchange of views are the fruits of cultural richness, creativity, high-mindedness and harmony. One must recognize this opportunity." Khatami's conciliatory tone, though, was reserved only for gullible foreign diplomats, parliamentarians, and academics. However when spe! aking to his own people his statements are quite different. In a televised address on October 24, 2000, for example, he stated, "In the Qur'an, God commanded to kill the wicked and those who do not see the rights of the oppressed... If we abide by human laws, we should mobilize the whole Islamic World for a sharp confrontation with the Zionist regime... If we abide by the Qur'an, all of use should mobilize to kill." The destruction of Israel and the United States continues to this day to be Iran's creed. Today the civilized world, the world of open markets, the world in which the rule of law is supreme, the world where women are accorded the same rights as men, faces this extreme and fanatical religious ideology; an ideology unchecked by even so much as basic human kindness. This ideology is about to take the momentous step into a greater world. Soon Iran will wield nuclear power. For those of us connected to the global economy and live in countries where half our population are not considered like so much cattle, we can not understand the mentality of the Iranian Government, and its Mullah dictatorship which desires to drive its nation back to the Seventh Century when men and women were murdered for daring to rise the level of human thought. Today this same thinking is demonstrated in Iran by embracing a culture of death and romanticizing martyrdom. Iran's president whose mentality certainly comes into question when he denies the Holocaust and calls for the destruction of the United States and Israel, is not just crazy talk, but it's that this oftentimes mentality deranged chief of state passionately believes in the imminent reappearance of the 12th Imam, Shi'ism's version of the Messiah. In fact, it has been reported that President Ahmadinejad has been saying in official meetings that the end of history is only two or three years away. Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs he slavishly reports to fervently believe that Iran's Islamic revolution's itself is to prepare the way for the Imam's return, a return that will be preceded by worldwide destruction and turmoil. And what better way to cause such destruction and turmoil, than the eager use of nuclear weaponry. This last summer the Iranian president pushed the world to the brink of what many are calling the beginning of the Third World War. With his support and encouragement of the Iranian backed Hezbollah terror army in Lebanon, Ahmadinejad stimulated if not ordered Hezbollah's unprovoked and heinous attack upon Israel. There is no question that Ahmadinejad and those Mullahs who pull his strings are exceedingly dangerous. However, it is the epitome of irresponsibility for the civilized nations of the world to allow this Seventh Century nation to bring about war in the Middle East and worse - to go nuclear and threaten the peace of the global economy with its soon to be expanding arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Contact Michael Bussio at amblerfoley@earthlink.net |
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COMPOUND UNIFIL FAILURE IN GAZA; UNICEF ONE-SIDED; ISRAELI ARAB DRIVE TO TAKE OVER ISRAEL; NOBODY'S STOPPING IRAN
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 29, 2006. |
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HAMAS MORE DANGEROUS Hamas has boosted the range of its rockets to 21 kilometers. The explosives decomposed too soon to permit long storage. Hamas had to fire them as they were made. Smuggling in a better grade of explosives enables Hamas to accumulate them. It could lay down a blanket of explosives. That would serve as a devastating deterrent to Israeli raids (IMRA, 11/8). The smuggling was made possible by withdrawal from the Gaza border with Egypt. Israeli leaders had heeded US demands for withdrawal and are appeasement-minded towards the Arabs. The US demands are neither in Israel's interest nor in America's. They are in the interest of bias or politics. Politics is the art of the stupid. UNO OFFICIAL PROPOSES GAZA PEACEKEEPING He proposes that the Security Council send a peacekeeping force to Gaza, to achieve a similar success there that he says it did in Lebanon (Benny Avni, NY Sun, 11/7, p.7) Success? The UN force keeps Israeli forces from disarming Hizbullah and to let Hizbullah rearm for another round to the war. That's its "success," if not its purpose. DID THE U.S. FAIL IN IRAQ? Daniel Pipes said that the US over-promised for the short run. When the extravagant promises were not redeemed, Americans grew impatient. Had Pres. Bush promised less, he would have been seen as making progress in the war. UNICEF ONE-SIDED UNICEF expressed concern over the war's casualties and interference in the lives of Palestinian Arab children. It did not express similar concern over similar effects upon Israeli children (IMRA, 11/9). Neither did it express concern over the violence against the Arab children inflicted by fellow Arabs in their clan and police rivalries. Nor did it express concern over the terrible psychological damage to, and impoverishment of, Jewish children expelled from Gaza. ISRAEL STILL RELENTING & CREATING INSECURITY Israel reopened a crossing from the P.A. in Judea-Samaria to Israel, closed because of its use by terrorists. The government accompanied its concession with a threat to close it again, if terrorists use it again. The purpose was to ease the Arabs' lives (IMRA, 11/9). The US keeps demanding this despite (or because of?) Israeli casualties The pattern is: Arabs come in and bomb, Israel closes entrance, world protests, Israel reopens entrance; Arabs come in and bomb, Israel closes entrance, world protests, Israel reopens entrance. Israel should stop easing terrorists' lives and safeguard its own people's lives. Break the pattern that terrorists exploit for murder APPEASEMENT SHOWN UP, BUT STILL PROPOSED Israeli governments propose concessions to the Arabs without thinking them through. So said a former Deputy National Security Advisor. Those governments, which sneered at religious Jews for their faith, had a blind faith in appeasement. Instead of analyzing the problem and planning for contingencies, the officials assured the public that withdrawal brings peace and even if it didn't, the Army would re-enter and win. Israel withdrew from Lebanon and Gaza, and got war in return. Then the government no longer thought it could send the IDF in, in strength. Concessions are counter-productive. Nevertheless, the Olmert regime, widely condemned in Israel for foolishness, continues to propose concessions. One is to help Abbas set up still another police force. (Remember when the big, but useless reform was to consolidate the P.A. police forces?) He'd let in thousands more assault rifles (after previous allotments were turned on Israelis). He might have Israel withdraw from most of Judea-Samaria, without even getting promises of security (Dr. Aaron Lerner, IMRA, 11/9, 11/10). Olmert deludes himself into believing that Israel won in Lebanon and has regained its deterrent effect upon Hizbullah. He quotes Hizbullah's leader as regretting having attacked Israel because it responded so powerfully. But Nasrallah meant that he would have waited for when Iran needed his intervention more badly. He is undaunted. He became the Arab national hero. Hizbullah is rearming under UNIFIL and Lebanese protection for another round of warfare. How could Olmert have regained Israel's deterrent by displaying an IDF poorly trained, equipped, and led?. ISRAELI ARAB DRIVE TO TAKE OVER ISRAEL Jewish residents of Jaffa report "physical and verbal violence, repeated property damage, harassment of Jewish women and girls, anti-Jewish slogans and Nazi swastikas" and illegal construction by the Arabs. "The extent of the Arab intimidation and takeover in mixed Jewish-Arab cities was discovered to be much greater than originally thought. In cities such as Haifa, Carmiel, Nahariya, Lod, Ramleh and Be'er Sheva, a pattern of Arab population shifts has emerged over time. At first, several Arabs purchase homes in a Jewish neighborhood, and use physical and verbal violence to cause a Jewish exodus from the area. Those neighborhoods emptied of Jews then become centers of crime, drugs and prostitution." Some MKs suggested that the Arabs motives are irredentist and anti-Jewish. In confirmation, Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, "...addressing thousands of Israeli Arabs at a rally in Nazareth...said, "History has proven to us, for hundreds of years, that the occupier is destroyed and we remain on our land. And you, oh Israeli occupier - disappear!" Israel was accused of having expelled hundreds of thousands of Arabs who tried to stifle Jewish sovereignty in 1947. It didn't, but should have. Now a political party interested in doing so gets called extremist by other Israelis, whom its policy would protect from the growing civil war. Such name-calling against patriots emboldens Israeli Arabs. So do appeasement-minded policies of "affirmative action," a Far Leftist Supreme Court that forbids Jewish cities from barring Arab house purchases, leftists in universities, New Israel Fund financing of the Arabs, etc.. WHAT TO DO ABOUT ISRAELI ARABS? Israeli Arabs imperil Israel's future, admits commentator Hillel Halkin. What to do about it? Israeli Cabinet member Avigdor Lieberman proposes trading Arab cities in Israel for land in Judea-Samaria and pressing the rest of Israeli Arabs to emigrate. Mr. Halkin calls that impractical and unprincipled. He argues that it is impractical because it won't work. It is unprincipled because it inflames ethnic tensions. Halkin suggests raising Arab educational and living standards, to gain their allegiance and reduce their birthrate (NY Sun, 11/7, Op.-Ed.). I think Halkin's proposal is impractical and unprincipled. First, there is no evidence of such a program being workable, whereas population exchange has worked, though it now is not politically correct. Damn political correctness, full speed ahead! Second, it is impractical, because it would consume tremendous resources. Arabs, whose culture, which appeasement-minded people such as Halkin fail to take into account, always make more demands. They accept concessions as based on fear of them, and would inflame religious tension to ratchet up that fear and gain more concessions. They probably would find they can afford more children. Halkin has no plan to reform Arab culture and religion, the cause of the tensions. Hence his proposal is vapid. Such a program assumes that Arabs are motivated by economics and that prosperity reduces their unrest. Experience has shown that the Muslim Arabs are motivated primarily by religion, a religion of violent conflict, and that prosperity increases their participation in violence. Appeasement-minded people have yet to understand the religious root of the conflict, although we are in a global jihad. Foreign Arabs would tell Israeli ones they are traitors if they don't persist. How can the locals not help hearing radical, foreign, Arab broadcasts? What about the radical imams Israel let into the country? Halkin did not suggest turning them back. The feed-em-better theory is unprincipled, because it relinquishes Jewish sovereignty. As antisemitism rises again, foreign Jews may need sanctuary in Israel. But Israeli Arabs would demand, as part of a bi-national country, the right of Arabs to immigrate. The Muslims would come to dominate. Muslims usually persecute minorities. Why is Lieberman's proposal impractical. Halkin's reply, that it won't work, is no answer, offers no evidence, merely restates the objection in a synonym. Calling it unprincipled for inflaming ethnic tensions is like calling self-defense unprincipled for inflaming ethnic tensions. Tensions already are inflamed, because the Arabs violate many laws and threaten riots if the laws are enforced. Imams and Arab Muslim politicians preach intolerance. Leftist social science professors take the Arabs' side in much of this. Israelis need more Jewish pride and self-confidence. I think Lieberman's proposal unprincipled, because it gives up some Jewish patrimony in Israel and Judea-Samaria. This assumes that the Jews owe any territory to the Arabs. The Jewish people don't. For their many attacks, the Arabs owe the Jews plenty. All over the world, Muslims are trying to dominate other peoples. It is unwise to permit them to stay in one's countries. It means strife, fundraising for terrorism, etc.. THE U.S. ELECTION AS FOREIGN POLICY REFERENDUM The recent election turned partly on who got the US into a mess in Iraq and was our leadership stupid. "Stupid" is not defined. Those who call a particular leader stupid usually think of intelligence as a single facility. Actually, there are several facets to intelligence. Some leaders are clever at short-term politics and certain maneuvering, but foolish about letting venality or prejudice sway their long-term policies that harm the country. Pres. Clinton had eight years of Islamic attacks to develop a policy against them. He didn't. He hardly responded to the attacks, and he shrank our military forces. He pressed Israel to appease the Islamists. Clinton accepted campaign contributions from China, and let China get US rocket and nuclear technology, which is traitorous. Pres. Bush was not in office long, before the US was attacked. He did respond. But he made mistakes in doing so. He has had six years, but failed to rebuild the armed forces to handle multiple fronts. He didn't ask for the money, but approved tremendous, unneeded subsidies and tacked a tremendous financial burden upon struggling Medicare in the form of a drug prescription subsidy. He, too, pressed Israel to pull its punches in its defensive war. Both Presidents continued subsidizing Egypt, though it never was reliable and is turning Islamist. Clinton failed to perceive the global jihad, and Bush failed to rally the country against it. Both in my opinion are stupid. WHAT EVERYONE ELSE AGREES ON Israel endorses the Quartet demand that the Hamas regime agree to recognize Israel and agree to promise not to make war on it. Then they would aid the P.A.. That is like telling a serial killer he would be released if he agrees not to do it again. NOBODY STOPPING IRAN Pres. Bush and PM Olmert met and declared that sanctions should be levied against Iran and that the "international community" should stop Iranian development of nuclear weapons. In other words, nobody is going to stop Iran. Will my city be blown up first, Pres. Bush's, or PM Olmert's? What "international community?" The fifty members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference? China? Russia? France? None of them want sanctions, most of them deal with Iran, and all of them dislike the US and Israel. If the UNO can't get itself to levy stiff sanctions, how can one expect it to exert force? The US must exert leadership, take action, and hope others follow it. To be world policeman, however, requires resources. The US should husband its resources. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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WAR CANNOT BE WAGED 'PEACEFULLY'
Posted by Dvid Meir-Levi, November 29, 2006. |
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A columnist from the Toronto Sun hits the nail on the head, both
for the USA and for Israel. Peter Worthington wrote this and it
appeared November 26, 2006 in the Toronto Sun
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Want to know why we (meaning the West) won't win the war on terror? Look at Israel, arguably the toughest, least compromising of the democracies when it comes to combating terrorism. It has been fighting terrorism from the day it became a sovereign state, thanks to the UN. Yet Israel, after failing to win the brief war with Hezbollah, is back to having to defend itself against rockets from Gaza, where Hamas rules when it isn't feuding with the Palestinian Authority. The other day, after a rocket attack, Israel announced it was attacking the home of a suspected terrorist leader where explosives were stored. It gave the occupants 30 minutes warning to evacuate before war planes obliterated the house. So what did the residents do? Well, not only did they not evacuate, but neighbours formed a human shield at the targeted house and, guess what? The Israeli war planes were called off. So now, every time the Israelis give the 30-minute warning which, apparently, is policy, the "human shields" of women and children head for the targeted house, secure in the knowledge that the Israelis won't attack. This is madness -- no way to fight a war, or terrorists. And this is Israel -- the toughest democracy on the block. And yet Israel hasn't even gotten its kidnapped soldiers back from Hamas and Hezbollah, which provoked Israeli retaliation. American, British, Canadian and NATO soldiers are even more restrained. When the Americans had (or thought they had) insurgents in Iraq, mostly confined in Fallujah, a hotbed of enemy activity, rather than obliterate it (as they would have done in WWII) they gave a week's warning for civilians to depart before they attacked. BAD GUYS DISPERSED When the assault eventually went in, the bad guys were mostly gone -- dispersed to other areas to continue their slaughter of the innocent. War cannot easily be waged peacefully. Restraints often mean prolonging the war and increasing its casualties. Today, humane considerations are paramount. The symbol of peaceful protest is Mahatma Gandhi, the creator of passive resistance that anti-military activists like to cite as a way to thwart authority. Often overlooked, is that Gandhi's formula worked against the British. If he and his followers had lain down in front of Cossacks, the Wehrmacht or the Golden Horde of Genghis Khan, Gandhi would have become an asterisk of history rather than an icon. A report out of Britain recalls that when American forces first went into Afghanistan, the first Taliban they caught were terrified --apparently convinced by their indoctrination that the American monsters would rip their livers out. Consequently, captives babbled like brooks and told all they knew. Then they discovered that American soldiers feed you and generally abide by certain rules and ethics unknown to Taliban and al-Qaida. Thereafter they shut up with no repercussions. Remember the U.S. bombing of Baghdad prior to the 2003 invasion? Peace activists from the West pompously announced they'd be human shields around prospective targets. Once the bombing started, these people fled -- outraged that the Americans could be so inhumane, even though none were targeted. EX-HUMAN SHIELDS As for Israel, if its government is nuts enough to give warnings of attacks, then it deserves what happens. The next warning should be that if human shields remain, they will quickly become ex-human shields. One attack should be sufficient to persuade Palestinian human shields to take cover. It's idiotic to give warning of an attack. Hezbollah and Hamas don't warn intended targets of rocket attacks and suicide bombings. America lost the Vietnam War because it refused to do what was necessary to win -- a political decision that cost unnecessary lives on both sides, and achieved nothing. Is that the future of Iraq? It seems so. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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CEASEFIRE ALREADY A DUD; BUT SERVES ITS PURPOSES: 1938 DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN
Posted by David Meir-Levi, November 29, 2006. |
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The cease fire is a dud. 57 minutes after it began (6:00 AM Israel time on Sunday), the qassam bombardments began again with at least 9 rockets in or near Sederth, with several more a few hours later, and several more again on Monday, and again on Tuesday. So what purpose does it serve? Why does either side agree to it if it is meaningless? Why does Isral not respond as would any state in the world in a similar situation: re-invade and crush hamas? Benefits of the cease fire for: I.) Hamas: The benefits of the cease-fire for Hamas are obvious: a. the cease fire stopped the IDF re-occupation of the Gaza Strip which the IDF was insisting upon in the Knesset. A re-invasion was imminent just 24 hours before the cease fire was agreed upon. Some serious increased IDF action in Gaza was on the Knesset agenda, and would have been a real threat to the continued existence of Hamas as an effective terror group. So, the cease fire came just in time to save Hamas. b. As Hamas leaders have said (per my and Widlanski's reports below) that the cease fire is perfect; because it gives Hamas time to recuperate (and reload, re-arm, redeploy) and be in a beetter position to re-start the terror war at a time of its choosing. Indirectly, this tells us that Hamas needed time to recuperate -- i.e., the IDF was winning, was inflicting unsustainable damage on Hamas, and the cease fire saved Hamas from more such damage; and thus enabled it to regroup and recuperate to better fight the next round. c. By portraying the cease fire as a great victory for Hamas, and as a sign of weakness in israel, Hamas gains great PR advantage among its own, and its supporters everywhere. And this advantage means more money and more recruits. Just as Hamas terrorism forced Israel out of Gaza, so too now Hamas terrorism forced Israel to beg for respite, to seek some time-out from Hamas' powerful terror attacks. hamas is the victor here. d. By playing the good-cop/bad-cop game, Hamas can reap advantage from its supporters in the EU, UK, USA and UN. In the 'old days", Arafat was the good cop and Hamas was the bad one: Arafat gained plausible deniability with Cliinton for years by pretending that he wanted peace, wanted to stop the terrorism, but could not control the Hamas "hotheads". Now, Hamas is the good cop and Islamic Jihad (and the Resistance Committees and the dozen or so other terror groups in the Gaza Strip and West Bank) is the bad cop. Now it is, supposedly, Islamic Jihad that is causing the qassam attacks contrary to the input from Abbas and Haniyeh -- and poor Mr Abass and Mr Haniyeh are struggling to control their hot-headed terror sub-groups. By playing the good cop, Hamas can add weight to the Abbas request for lifting the embargo and getting billions of dollars from the West. Arafat had a great trick: one of his sub-groups, with a different name, would start a terror attack or take hostages etc....and Arafat would volunteer to come in and mediate a settlement. From Carter to Clinton, world leaders bought the charade. Arafat could look like he was a peace-maker, while pulling the strings of terrorism behiind the scenes. Now Hamas is doing the same thing. It still works. II. Olmert The benefits for Olmert are less obvious: and note well, they are for Olmert, not for Israel. a. Even if the qassam attacks continue but with less intensity and frequency, Olmert can claim that he has done something that helps Israel and Sederoth and the 44 other communities in the region that have come under qassam attacks. This may help his polls, and delay (not avert, not resolve, just delay) the crisis that the Hamas-led terrorism from Gaza Strip creates. b. Olmert disappointed Bush and incurred Bush's wrath with the Lebanon failure. Now he has a chance to make up for his earlier failure. The cease-fire is important political capital for Bush and Rice. (see below 'III'), and Olmert gains brownie points with the USA leadership by stoically keeping the IDF restrained and "giving peace a chance". It is all a charade, they all know that hamas is intransigent and will use the cease fire as it has already told the world that it will (see below, my article and Widlanski's); but the pretense justifies Olmert's political kowtowing to Bush. III. President Bush and Secretary Rice a. Bush is about to meet with King Abdullah II of Jordan, in Amman. There he will meet with President Maliki of Iraq. The odds of success (in Bush's terms) for these meetings are very slim. At least a little quiet from the Israel-Arab side will help improve these odds. Abdullah has made it clear that a resolution to the Arab-Israel conflict is a sine qua non for progress toward peace in the middle east as a whole, and in iraq in particular. The fact that such an assertion is completely irrational is irrelevant. This assertion is a cornerstone of Arab propaganda (useful against both the USA and Israel) and the articles written to rebut it have never taken hold in the echelons of power in the west. Thus, Bush gains political capital and clout if there is at least a veneer of cease-fire. b. Moreover, if Olmert does not respond to the PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) attacks, then Bush looks even better, because Bush can represent the situation as a demonstration of the hold that Bush has over Olmert/Israel/IDF. Controlling Israel, and forcing it to absorb Arab terror attacks without response, are just what Bush needs in order to look good, look like he is in charge, look like he has the power to give the Arabs what they want....all of this works to increase his political capital and make him appear still relevant with his enemies as well as his friends. c. The previous forays by Bush and Rice in the Middle and Far East have been poltiical failures. In one such foray, even the little (helpless, weak, vulnerable, recently-saved-from-perdition-at-the-hands-of-Saddam-Hussein-by-American-blood-and-guts, but proud and oil-wealthy) Kuwait gave Bush the proverbial finger and sent Rice packing without any agreements or concessions as to what Bush wanted. The only way to save face with congress (then dominated by Republicans) was to force Israel to a concession that Bush/Rice could mis-represent to Congress as 'one more small step toward peace in the Middle East" -- so Rice forced Olmert to agree to the opening of the Rafah passage between the Gaza Strip and Sinai/Egypt, and the IDF's departure from that passage; with the result that Hamas could then freely smuggle in, under the willfully blind eyes of the Egyptians, 33 tons of arms and explosives and anti-tank and anti-helicopter weaponry.....no great step toward peace; but political victory for Bush (TYVM Condi's kiniption fit at the king david hotel in jerusalem)....and, after all, what is more important? many more dead israelis or Bush's standing with congress? So now, again facing the prospect of a hard up-hill climb for some semblence of success in the Middle East quagmire (and facing now a Democrat-controlled Congress), Bush and Rice work in advance to secure some semblence of political victory for Bush, again at Israel's expense; so that Bush can appear successful and foist some semblence of his retained relevance upon the middle east leaders with whom he is meeting and from whom he hopes to extract some cooperation in the Iraq war. Olmert goes along, because he has no choice. Without American support, Israel would have a harder time now than it had in the early days of the Yom Kippur war. Where is Alexander Haig when we need him? Bottom Line: Netanyahu is right. Today is 1938, Akhmedi-Nejad is hitler, the Arab terrorist world is Germany, Hezbollah and Hamas are the Wehrmacht, Israel is Czekoslovakia, Bush is Chamberlain, and Amman is Munich. As Yogi Berra was wont to say: it's deja vu all over again. This article is called "Palestinian-Israeli "Ceasefire" Already A
Dud" by Michael Widlanski. It appeared November 27, 2006 on Front Page
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Israel and the Palestinian Authority began a "ceasefire" Sunday morning that was highly unusual in several ways:
"We will show restraint," declared Prime Minister Olmert in an appearance before Mif'al Ha-Payis, the government-run gambling concession, apparently unaware of the irony. "This is going to turn into another Lebanon," several Israeli officers told Israeli Channel Two, and other media outlets here reported widespread consternation at Prime Minister Olmert's decision. "Didn't we learn anything from six years of leaving Hizballah alone in Lebanon?" asked another staff command officer quoted by Channel 10 television. As if to buttress the fears of the Israeli Army (IDF), a spokesman for Hamas racketeers declared that the ceasefire was to Hamas's advantage. "We expect a total stop to Israeli aggression against Palestinian citizens," declared Hamas spokesman Mushir Al-Masri, in anArabic language interview with this reporter and IMRA news service. The Hamas spokesman reiterated several times that the ceasefire (would not) include the cessation of Qassam rocket construction and the massive smuggling of weapons and explosives into Gaza. More than 1,000 rockets -- with a range of six to 13 kilometers -- have struck Israeli towns and kibbutz farms in the last year, murdering several Israelis in the last month and wounding scores of others. [David Meir-Levi: over the past 5 years of random but almost daily qassam rocket attacks, 45 Israeli towns and farming communities have been terrorized, there have been almost 4000 qassams fired on these communities, 36 Israelis have been killed, hundreds wounded, hundreds more hospitalized for shock, and hundreds of millions of dollars in property damaged. Qassam rockets have twice fallen upon schools with direct hits on classrooms; and only miraculously were the classrooms empty at the time. Hamas declared before the cease fire that it would continue the qassam attacks until Sederoth became a ghost-town and would stop the attacks only when every Jew had left Sederoth]. Israel's counter-terror authorities say that more than 33 tons of explosives have been smuggled into Gaza from Egyptian-controlled Sinai in the last year since Israel evacuated Gaza, evicting almost 9,000 of its own citizens from advanced agricultural settlements there. The perceived failure of the Gaza withdrawal to produce peace, as well as the perceived strategic failure in recent combat in Lebanon, has left the Olmert Government looking desperately for ways to combat its own (drop in) popularity. For the last two months most of the public polls show less than 20-percent approval for Olmert and his defense minister Amir Peretz, while huge majorities favor the resignation of both men, along with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz. [Meir-Levi: and support for Netanyahu is rising.] Olmert, Peretz and Halutz have each tried to delay investigations of the Lebanon fighting, hoping that public disapproval will fade. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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YESHA PEOPLE STILL UNDER ADMINISTRATIVE KEEP-OUT ORDERS
Posted by Hillel Fendel, November 29, 2006. |
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The Land of Israel Legal Forum has sued in the Supreme Court on behalf of a young father - one of 20 Yesha residents banned from their their homes and jobs without being told why. Eran S. and his wife, parents to a five-month-old daughter, have been forced to leave their home in the Lehava neighborhood of Yitzhar in the Shomron and move to Jerusalem. The reason: Eran, together with nearly 20 other young residents of the Shomron, suddenly received a military order several weeks ago preventing him from living in his home. No reason was given, and the General Security Service says the "evidence" against him is too secret and potentially dangerous to be publicized to anyone. The Land of Israel Forum claims in its Supreme Court suit that the order, "which restricts the freedom of an Israeli citizen as an administrative measure," is illegal in that it may be handed down only by virtue of a Knesset law - and not by order of the IDF Commander of the Central District. The orders are in fact signed by O.C. Central Commander Maj.-Gen. Ya'ir Naveh. The Forum claims that "whenever the government finds itself in a dead end security-wise, diplomatically and/or internationally," the Jewish settlers of Judea and Samaria become the national "punching bag" and bear the brunt of "new, sudden plans to evacuate and destroy outposts and issue exaggeratedly-restrictive orders." Banned From Home Over the past few months, 20 activist Jews from various outpost neighborhoods in Judea and Samaria have received orders keeping them out of the entire region. The orders are for between three and six months. Some of the men have families with up to five children, and some have no relatives outside Yesha. The expelled residents and many of their neighbors feel that the government is merely trying to pave the way for the destruction of the outposts and neighborhoods in which they live, and weaken the local morale in general. Among them are: * Ariel Gruner, 21, married + 1, whose orders kept him bound to a house in an unfamiliar, secular Jordan Valley community were to expire next week. He has already received his new orders: a three-month ban on entering Judea and Samaria. One of the youngest of the 20 is Elad Keller, aged 19, who has been in prison for six weeks - because he refuses to agree to what he calls the "unjust and undemocratic" orders to throw him out of his home and yeshiva. A resident of Maon, with his parents, in southern Judea, and a student in the Yitzhar yeshiva in Samaria, he has refused to sign the orders keeping him away from both places - and has therefore been placed in jail "until the end of the proceedings" against him. Elad was violently arrested - receiving bruises on his neck and above his eye - and thrown into jail in mid-October. As Elad explained in court at the time, "A group of policemen came into my house one morning suddenly, telling me I have to leave Yesha. I asked why, and they said, 'Because.'" Elad's mother Ruth said, "An injustice has clearly been done, and we support our son in whatever decision he makes. He could, if he want, simply sign the orders and agree to stay out of Yesha - but he refuses to cooperate with such injustice." She and her husband Ben-Tzion and several other parents of sons in similar situations have gotten together and are working on various fronts to bring the issue to the public consciousness. "Knesset Members from several parties have gotten together," Ruth said, "with each one 'adopting' one of our sons. MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union), for instance, has adopted our son, and he visited Elad in jail, for which we are very appreciative." Recently, then-Acting Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit promised, as did Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, to personally look into all the cases. They made the promises in a Knesset session on the matter initiated by MK Uri Ariel. However, an aide to Ariel told Arutz-7 today that no results of any such reviews have yet been received from them. The aide said that MK Ariel is now preparing legislation that would ban such orders from being signed by IDF generals, and would require them to be issued only by the Defense Minister. Maj.-Gen. Naveh, who signed the distancing orders and can rescind them, can be faxed at 08-8680240; from abroad, the number is (+972)-8868-0240. Hillel Fendel is Senior News Editor for Israel National News. |
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SOUND FAMILIAR, MR. BUSH?
Posted by Michael Freund, November 29, 2006. |
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As the drums of appeasement vis-a-vis Iran continue to beat ever louder, the current situation in which the West now finds itself is coming to resemble May 1940, when Winston Churchill had to choose between diplomacy or military action in the face of a surging Nazi onslaught. The choice made by Churchill was a fateful one, and it might just have saved Western civilization. The question now is: will George W. Bush follow in Churchill's footsteps and hit Iran hard? Below is an article of mine from today's Jerusalem Post in which I
argue that for the sake of Israel and the West, it is critical that
President Bush follow the path laid down by Churchill more than six
decades ago. It is archived at
Comments and feedback may be sent to: letters@jpost.com or to me directly. |
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He was labeled a "hound," a "fool" and one whose "judgment is always at fault." Denigrated as "hopeless when in power," this wartime head of government was scorned as being arrogant, ignorant and just about everything else in between. His strategic judgment was called into question, his military approach was belittled and maligned, and his own generals even mocked him, accusing him of spouting "absurdities" and being oblivious to detail. Does any of this sound familiar, Mr. Bush? The subject of the vitriol described above was none other than the fearless lion of Britain, Sir Winston Churchill. That's right. The man now credited with saving Western civilization from the Nazi onslaught was the target of ruthless censure and disapproval. His critics were fierce and unrelenting, but that did not stop this great visionary from seeing beyond the headlines and standing up for what he knew to be right. The question now is: Will George W. Bush follow in this great man's footsteps? The threat facing the Western world is no less urgent or grave than it was in Churchill's day. Then the Nazi leader spoke openly of murdering the Jews, and of conquering the world. Now the modern-day Hitler of Persia vows to commit genocide and boasts that the West will soon falter and collapse. The only difference between the two is that while the Fuehrer could merely dream of obtaining an atomic arsenal, the tyrant of Teheran is dangerously close to getting one. And the only person standing in his way, the one whom God Himself has given the ability to stop him, is none other than the president of the United States. Without realizing it, we are standing at a defining moment not just for the Bush presidency, but for the future of the entire Jewish people and the Western world itself. Enormous pressure is being brought to bear on the president to embrace diplomacy as the means for resolving the various crises in the Middle East. In recent months, the president has come under harsh criticism for the conduct of the war in Iraq. The results of the midterm elections earlier this month gave control over both houses of Congress to the Democrats, who will surely push for a more conciliatory approach. And as The New York Times reported on Monday, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group headed by former US secretary of state James Baker will recommend that Washington engage rogue states such as Iran and Syria and open a dialogue with them. In other words, it is sounding more and more like 1940 all over again. WHEN WINSTON Churchill took office in May of that year, an emboldened Germany was on the march and the pressure to appease the Nazi dictator was at its peak. The British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, was a firm believer in negotiations, and he wanted nothing more than to reach an understanding with Hitler, in the hope that such a deal would hold. But Churchill knew that the time for diplomacy had passed. He understood that the Nazis would honor an accord only for as long as it might serve their interests, and that they would not hesitate to break it in order to achieve their destructive, long-term goals. And so, virtually alone in his belief, Churchill pressed forward, convinced that only by confronting the Nazis could the danger to his country, and the world, be averted once and for all. At a time when others were busy closing their eyes to the mounting threat, Churchill bravely sounded the alarm and refused to back down, setting the stage not for appeasement, but for victory. It is this approach, and this approach alone, that should guide the US president in the weeks and months ahead. Diplomacy has failed, and sanctions will not deter Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from pursuing his aims. Military force is the only way to prevent the ayatollahs from joining the nuclear club, and time is running out if they are to be stopped. THE SO-CALLED experts and realists are dead wrong when they predict that military action against Iran would kindle a firestorm throughout the Middle East. Precisely the opposite is true. The reverberations of putting Iran in its place would be entirely positive, and would be felt throughout the region. Right now the radicals are emboldened because they sense that America is weak and in retreat. Hence, they feel free to make mischief and continue destabilizing the area. As a result, Syria did not hesitate to orchestrate the murder last week of the Lebanese industry minister, Pierre Gemayel, and Iran is not shying away from its ongoing pursuit of nuclear weapons. And all this talk of talking with the bad guys has only served to encourage them still further. What is needed now is decisive action, and fast, to slap them down and put the radicals back in their place. A massive American air assault on Iranian nuclear installations would do just the trick. It would not only set back Teheran's atomic ambitions for years to come, but also serve as a resounding display of US will and resolve. A strike on Iran would amount to a reversal of the Shi'ite surge that is now taking place throughout the region. It would take the wind out of the Iranian leader's apocalyptic sails, and it would have a noticeable impact on the sectarian violence now raging in Iraq, too. Syria, Hizbullah and others would take notice, and America's ostensible Arab allies - all of whom are Sunni - would certainly welcome a blow against the dangerous Iranian regime. Stopping Iran in its tracks is the great challenge of our day. For the sake of the entire Western world, and the future of the Jewish people, we can only hope and pray that President Bush will rise to the occasion and do what needs to be done. "Had Britain stopped fighting in May 1940, Hitler would have won his war," wrote historian John Lukacs in Five Days in London. "He was never closer to victory." The same now holds true of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who may be just months, or even weeks away from crossing the nuclear point of no return.It was Churchill himself who once said, "I never worry about action, only inaction." As a result, he led his nation and the civilized world to victory. Mr. President, may that now become your motto too. Michael Freund is a Jerusalem Post columnist who serves as Chairman of Shavei Israel, the organization responsible for helping the Bnei Menashe. |
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ISRAEL AS TODAY'S SUDENTENLAND
Posted by Helen Freedman , November 29, 2006. |
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It is expected that the 10 person panel that makes up the Baker-Hamilton Commission will recommend that the administration pressure Israel to make concessions in an effort to entice the Syrians and Iranian to cooperate. They are in effect calling for Israel to become today's Sudetenland. It was 1938 when Eduard Benes, the President of Czechoslovakia, much against his will, was pressured into giving the Sudetenland to Hitler, as a sop to his war-like plans. Neville Chamberlain, PM of Britain and Edouard Daladier, PM of France, joined forces with Hitler against Czechoslavakia in exchange for "guarantees of Czechoslovakia's integrity." Chamberlain returned to England declaring he had achieved "peace in our time." We know that "peace" led to the death of twelve million souls, as well as the incalculable suffering of those who survived during the horrific battle that was WWII. Santayana tells us that "he who forgets history is doomed to repeat it." Must we follow the leaders who have personal agendas that are entirely unrelated to the welfare of the good people of the world? If Israel becomes the sacrificial lamb to the lusts of the terrorist nations of the Middle East, including Iran and Syria, Europe and America will be next on the chopping block. These are indeed dangerous times. Attention must be paid. Helen Freedman is with Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI) in New York City. Contact her at ghfree@aol.com |
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ISRAEL NEEDS YOUR HELP
Posted by Arlene Kushner, November 28, 2006. | |
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I devote my posting to the broad issue of Gaza, Hamas, and the "ceasefire." At the moment nothing is more relevant to Israel's security and right to exist. What is going on is horrifying to everyone who thinks clearly on the matter. Yesterday I wrote about the complaint of the terrorists that they wanted the ceasefire extended to Judea-Samaria -- and I explained how important IDF actions in that area were. By last night, the news broke that "confidants" of Olmert and Abbas were in "constant contact" trying to find a way to extend the "ceasefire" to the West Bank. At that point one could only shudder and ask an anguished "Why?" Why is Olmert eager to do this? Why would he want to give this to the Palestinians? In return for what? They had already breached the "ceasefire" and there was no evidence that they had stopped or diminished smuggling of weapons. He wasn't even making a demand: show us your good faith in Gaza and then we'll see. There are multiple possible answers to this, not mutually exclusive. None of them are good, none of them working for the best interests of the State of Israel: *Olmert has been eager to give away our land since he came into office. He was hoping to do it unilaterally, following the model of what was done in Gaza. But the Lebanon war made that policy unpopular. The alternative, then, is to find a way to negotiate the giveaway. Olmert has repeatedly said that the "ceasefire" is a first step that can lead to negotiations. As to the view of what Hamas aims to do and how this terrorist group will handle itself, there are different takes. There are those who believe that Hamas intends to hold its fire long enough to secure land concessions from Israel. As I've explained innumerable times by now -- this would be in the nature of a hudna -- with Hamas strengthening all the while in preparation for hitting us when the time was right. Those who embrace this point of view believe that Hamas is prepared to arrange a modus vivendi with Israel, lending the impression that it is recognizing Israel de-facto while actually not doing so, securing land without resolving final status issues. Others -- and I among them -- believe that Hamas is too "in your face" to carry this off and that an eruption of violence is more likely. Either way, what Olmert is currently doing counts as a victory for Hamas. As MK Yuval Steinitz (Likud) former head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee wrote in today's Post (emphasis added): "A diplomatic initiative with the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority -- even if it ultimately crashes on the rocks of terrorism and the demand to destroy Israel by means of the right of return -- will leave in its wake a fundamental difference: a de facto recognition by Israel, and therefore a de jure recognition by the world, of Hamas as a partner in the international circle without that group having made any significant and permanent change in its platform or tactics." All of this is the stuff of nightmares, a series of occurrences that I would have never thought possible. That the Western world is ultimately without principles is clear. But it is not even conducting itself in a way that is prudent from a self-protective perspective. Having a strengthened Hamas is ultimately not in the interests of Israel or the West or the so-called "moderate" Arab nations. Yet, Olmert and Bush are signing on to something that promotes this. How perverse, how self-destructive is it possible to get? Since yesterday other things have occurred. There have been further violations of the "ceasefire," as two Kassams were shot into Sderot. I asked yesterday how many violations will be too many for Israel. This applies all the more so now. A repeated insistence by Olmert that we have forbearance raises a host of suspicions as to his motivations. Not to mention that he makes us appear to our enemies as weak idiots, and therefore greatly vulnerable. Additionally, this morning IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the IDF had played only a "partial role" in the decision to participate in a "ceasefire." In other words, the IDF, seeing the "ceasefire" as not in Israel's best interests, was opposed. Halutz made it clear that in spite of attempts by the Palestinians to equate the situation in Gaza and Judea-Samaria, the IDF needed to maintain its freedom to operate in the West Bank. The Southern Command of the IDF had already warned yesterday that terrorism would increase if the "ceasefire" were extended: "The moment we walk away terror will flourish," a senior official warned. We here in Israel have our work cut out for us. That is for certain. But now I address myself to all those who are in the US. I appeal to each and every one of you, to act here to help save Israel from an horrendous situation. The bald fact is that Bush's promotion of this, his political needs, are a factor in what is taking place. I ask each and every one of you to contact President Bush, the Secretary of State, and your own Congressperson and Senator on this matter. It must be conveyed from inside of the US that this is not acceptable. I provide below contact information and some possible brief statements that can be used. (It is more effective if you state the case in your own words; the message can be short.) A letter is most effective -- preferably hard copy, sent by snail mail, or else by fax. Second most effective is a phone call. An e-mail is least effective. Then I ask each and every one of you to put this out as broadly as possible to others who are willing to do the same. If you are receiving this in Israel, by all means send to your US contacts. This is merely a beginning. If you, in the US, are in a position to generate grassroots activity on a broader scale, please be in contact with me. We need to do this big-time. (It should be noted, as I do this, by the way, that I am a US citizen, as well as an Israeli citizen.) A Sample Letter
Send to: President Bush
Sec. of State Rice
To secure contact info. for Congresspersons and Senators:
Contact Arlene Kushner at akushner@netvision.net.il or visit her
website: www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
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DON'T BE FOOLED BY RONALD OLIVE
Posted by Justice for Jonathan Pollard, November 28, 2006. |
| Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman |
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In Ronald Olive's op-ed piece, "I busted Pollard" (Nov. 20), Olive promotes his book, "Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice." Olive proclaims that his book "tells the true documented story of Pollard," "set[s] the record straight," and dispels "speculation, rumor, myths and lies surrounding the Pollard case." As pro bono counsel for Jonathan Pollard since 2000, we have comprehensive knowledge of the public court record in Mr. Pollard's case. Olive's book and op-ed piece are fanciful concoctions that are utterly incompatible with the U.S. Government's own carefully-crafted submissions to the court in Mr. Pollard's case. Jonathan Pollard was arrested in 1985. The U.S. Government conducted an overwhelmingly thorough investigation into Mr. Pollard's conduct and character, and into the harm his conduct had caused. Mr. Pollard pleaded guilty in 1986 to a charge of conspiracy to deliver classified information to Israel. He was not charged with intent to harm the U.S., although such a charge existed in the U.S. Code. On March 4, 1987, Mr. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison. Prior to his sentencing, the U.S. Government-the United States Attorney and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger-submitted over 130 pages of pre-sentencing memoranda to the sentencing judge. Those memoranda set forth in detail what the U.S. Government claimed it had uncovered about Mr. Pollard's conduct and character, and about the harm he had caused. Substantial portions of the memoranda were designated "classified" and were placed under seal. No one representing Mr. Pollard, including us-his security-cleared attorneys-has been permitted to see the classified portions of the docket since the sentencing in 1987. In his book, Olive specifically disclaims ever having seen the classified sentencing materials. Yet, he makes allegations against Mr. Pollard that appear nowhere in the unclassified, public portion of the sentencing materials. Since it is fair to assume that neither Olive nor any of his purported "sources" would violate U.S. criminal law and disclose classified information, the inevitable conclusion is that these allegations do not appear anywhere in the Government's pre-sentencing memoranda. For example, Olive claims that Mr. Pollard delivered classified information to Pakistan in the hope that Pakistan would retain him as a paid spy. Undoubtedly, Olive wants to poison the mind of the ordinary Israeli (or Israeli supporter) into believing that Mr. Pollard was a mercenary who would just as readily have spied for Pakistan (not known as a friend of Israel's) as he did for Israel. In assessing the credibility of this allegation, it is important to know that no such allegation appears anywhere in the public record docket materials. And, since we have to assume neither Olive nor any of his "sources" would risk going to prison by disclosing something that appears in the classified docket materials, it is apparent that this allegation is not found anywhere in the U.S. Government's voluminous pre-sentencing memoranda. It therefore has no credibility whatsoever. If the U.S. Government believed this and other allegations made by Olive, it would have included them in the pre-sentencing memoranda. The U.S. Government took an extremely aggressive approach toward Mr. Pollard, and would have relished the opportunity to inform the sentencing judge that Mr. Pollard had violated the law by delivering classified information to Pakistan-and with mercenary motives, to boot. The book and op-ed piece contain numerous accusations that are nowhere to be found in the public sentencing docket, and that could not be disclosed if they were in the classified sentencing docket. They are therefore in neither place, and cannot be considered even remotely reliable. In his book, Olive asserts that Mr. Pollard's conduct caused "irreparable damage" and "incalculable" harm to the U.S. However, the Victim Impact Statement submitted to the court by the Department of Justice in 1987 (and now a matter of public record) portrays a very different effect on the U.S. After preliminarily noting the substantial "breadth and scope" of the information provided, as well as the fact that "thousands of pages" of documents were delivered by Mr. Pollard to Israel, the Victim Impact Statement goes on to describe the actual damage to the U.S. as follows: Mr. Pollard's unauthorized disclosures have threatened the U.S. [sic] relations with numerous Middle East Arab allies, many of whom question the extent to which Mr. Pollard's disclosures of classified information have skewed the balance of power in the Middle East. Moreover, because Mr. Pollard provided the Israelis virtually any classified document requested by Mr. Pollard's coconspirators, the U.S. has been deprived of the quid pro quo routinely received during authorized and official intelligence exchanges with Israel, and Israel has received information classified at a level far in excess of that ever contemplated by the National Security Council. The obvious result of Mr. Pollard's largesse is that U.S. bargaining leverage with the Israeli government in any further intelligence exchanges has been undermined. In short, Mr. Pollard's activities have adversely affected U.S. relations with both its Middle East Arab allies and the government of Israel. While we cannot condone any unauthorized disclosure of classified information, the Government's own words in the Victim Impact Statement, carefully scripted to present the most compelling case for the maximum sentence (life in prison), reflect-at worst-short-term friction between the U.S. and unnamed Arab countries, and temporary reductionEliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman in bargaining leverage by the U.S., rather than permanent, irreversible, and overwhelming damage to U.S. national security, as claimed by Olive. Nowhere does Olive see fit even to mention the comparatively modest damage described in the Victim Impact Statement, which is how the U.S. Government itself has chosen to describe the harm caused by Mr. Pollard's conduct, in the court document designed precisely for that purpose. In sum, while Olive describes his book as a "true documented story," it is nothing of the sort. To use Olive's own words, his book is an exercise in "speculation, rumor, myths and lies." Contact the Justice for Jonathan Pollard organization at Justice4JP@aol.com or freepollard@gmail.com |
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"PALESTINE" = RACISM, FASCISM, APARTHEID, ETHNIC CLEANSING
Posted by The Reality Show, November 28, 2006. |
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Re: Arabist Carter hateful anti Israel book "Palestine peace not apartheid". Why don't we all call apartheid when it's really apartheid, racism where it is real racism and ethnic cleansing at it's actual happening? What would you call Arabs' forcing Israel to "clear" Gaza of Jews = i.e. non-Arabs? If this is not ethnic cleansing, What is? How will Hamas Islamic militant agenda be exempt from the usual "Islamic apartheid"? Especially at their long war on Christians like pogroms in Bethlehem, massacring Christians in Damour, killing Christians at the Pope's comment (2006), chasing out YMCA, and other incidents as part of chasing out the Arab Christians from the holyland. Why can Israeli Arabs be equal part of Israel's beautiful democracy but no Jews alowed into "Judenrein - Palestine"? Is that not far worse than mere: "apartheid"? What would you call "Palestinian" Arab racist war on Jews, by their masses (no, not a fringe minority) shouting "Itbach-Al-Yahood" slogan to "kill the Jews", the slogan that Genocide bombers use, or Arab killers of Jews in any other form, to "drive all the Jews into the sea"? If that is not racism, What is? When their war since the 1920's is actually about Arab racism on non Arabs and Islamofascism on non Muslims, i.e. Israeli Jews. Or "Palestinian" racism against blacks like cartoons against blacks as monkeys (cartoon on C. Rice, 2006)? Contact the poster at thereality show@mail.com or go to the website:
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CEASEFIRES AND BACKFIRES
Posted by Daryl Temkin, November 28, 2006. |
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Saturday night's news was a sudden surprise. Without any reported initial meetings, seemingly out of nowhere, a ceasefire was announced -- not only between Israel and Hamas but with an agreement among all the different terrorist organizations. This sounded unreal. For over five years, Israel's southern cities have been the victims of Gazan launched, indiscriminately directed, Kessam missiles. In the past few weeks, within a short number of hours, twenty to as many as one hundred missiles have been launched mainly targeting the city of Sderot. Its residents reported that the situation was unbearable. Sderot nursery schools, elementary and high schools, residences as well as factory sites have virtually no anti-missile protection. Only a 5 to 20 second warning signal allows the Sderot residents to run for cover. Traumatized children and adults have had to leave the city to seek shelter and protection. The Russian philanthropist, Arcadi Gaydamak, upon hearing of this plight, paid for transporting hundreds of Sderot children to Eilat for an "emotional sanctuary", far out of the range of the Gazan rockets. In spite of sharp criticism by high ranking Israeli governmental officials, Arcadi Gaydamak has become Israel's modern folk hero. Gaydamak's offense was that he took action to help people in need instead of waiting for the government to act. At the same time, the first suicide bomber grandmother made her debut performance. Although short lived, she successfully exploded herself but failed to kill any Israelis. Her nine surviving children and her thirty remaining grandchildren will not enjoy the anticipated fame and financial rewards that their grandmother's illustrious performance was to amass. The Gazan ceasefire was commenced on Sunday at 6:00 A.M. When the details of the ceasefire were being revealed, it was immediately hoped that Israel would have demanded the return of their kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit. This would have been an excellent opportunity to get Gilad without having to release an untold number of Arab terrorist prisoners. However, when the ceasefire details were revealed they only demanded that Israel totally withdraw from Gaza and that all the terrorist organizations stop shooting their missiles into Israel. The ceasefire included no restrictions on Gazan tunnel building or weapon smuggling from Egypt. Israel again entered into a perfect, "unilateral" ceasefire, providing no monitoring and full access for its enemy to rearm and strengthen its military weaponry and supplies. Of further confusion is that this ceasefire was not brokered by Condoleezza Rice, President Bush, the EU, or the UN. Therefore the outside pressure factor that has existed in past agreements where Israel has often been pressured to make unusual concessions, was not the operative factor. In order for the Gazans to be interested in a ceasefire, they had to be significantly hurting from the Israeli military incursion. The Gazans know that the positive benefit of a ceasefire means an opportunity to rest and to ream. Yes, the Israeli citizens of Sderot were in pain with the death of two of its community members and they clearly wanted the Israeli Defense Forces to aggressively stop the ease of Gazan rocket launching. A sudden ceasefire and an immediate Israeli withdrawal was likely not what the citizens of Sderot had in mind for their future protection. What is mysterious in this ceasefire arrangement is that Israel should have had the upper bargaining hand and so far there appears to be no evidence that they exercised any degree of that strength. Besides using this opportunity to demand the safe return of their kidnapped solder, they could have demanded proper monitoring of the Rafah and other border crossings where endless amounts of advanced Egyptian sourced weapons are openly driven into the Gaza Strip. This ceasefire occurred just weeks after the failed withdrawal from Lebanon, where within days after that agreement, against all promises and so called UN commitments, new weapons began flowing to the Hezbollah army. Within days of the Lebanon ceasefire agreement, Israeli sources reported evidence of Hezbollah's rearmament and the world refused to recognize, acknowledge, or respond. This week, even Time Magazine had the confidence to publish that Hezbollah is fully rearmed. Note that this speedy rearmament took place under the "watchful" eye of UNIFIL, now famous for only working during daylight hours and displaying its fortitude by threatening to shoot down Israeli surveillance over-flights. The Lebanese ceasefire agreement severely backfired on Israel which had immediately withdrawn all of its forces and did not receive its kidnapped soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, whose return was promised by the UN. The UN-monitored mockery has elevated the Hezbollah terrorist enemy to a position which threatens an impending takeover of the remaining Lebanese government as well as an impending military attack. How will the Gaza ceasefire backfire on Israel? Only hours after the ceasefire, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered sizeable land concessions in order to appease the Arabs for a peaceful coexistence. Olmert further offered a large number of Arab terrorists imprisoned in Israel in exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit. Then, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal announced that if within six months, Israel doesn't give over the West Bank for a Palestinian state, Hamas will launch an all out attack. It is always interesting to note the "balance" between the Israeli offers and the Arab offers. As Gazan smuggling tunnel building will continue without restriction, as Egyptian supply lines will continue to increase the already large garrison of Gazan armaments, and as Israeli leaders offer land concessions as well as the release of radicalized terrorist prisoners, this Gazan ceasefire, will hopefully provide a time of quiet for the citizens of Sderot and the other Israeli southern cities. Hopefully, Israel will also use this ceasefire time to reinforce the walls and roofs of the many nursery schools, grade schools, residential homes and business through out Sderot, Ashkelon, and the forty some other Israeli towns within missile range of the Gaza launching pads. Only nine missiles were launched at Sderot on the first day of the ceasefire. The IDF was commanded not to respond, in hope that the second day will be better than the first. So the IDF will patiently wait until the next "backfire" that will be too grave to tolerate. Daryl Temkin, Ph.D. is director of the Israel Institute which is devoted to teaching history and contemporary issues of Israel to Jews and Non-Jews throughout the world. He can be reached at DT@Israel-Institute.com or go to the website: http://Israel-Institute.com |
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SORRY JEWS. WHY YOU MUST DIE
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, November 28, 2006. |
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Who says so? In no order of importance, you start with Israel's current Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, the Kadima crowd generally. They not only wish to give up the Land as a forward firing position for the terrorist Muslims much as they did with Gaza, they are willing to release more than a thousand terrorists convicted of killing Jews who vow to kill more Jews when released. The U.N. and their various affiliates like their Council on Human Rights (and Wrongs?) Tells the Jews they must disappear, in other words, they must die to please the U.N. The Peace Now and its clones, among other Left Liberal Jewish organizations work diligently to dispossess Jews from the Land of their ancient heritage - given by G-d himself. The Peace Now actions are in deference to the Arab Muslim Palestinians whose charters and actions clearly define Jews as an endangered species, intended to go the way of the extinct carrier pigeon, the dodo bird or the dinosaur. The Muslim credo sentences Jews to death but artfully avoids using the words. The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the Jews must go, preferably in a blast of radio-active particles. He maintains that, only in such a conflagration will the Muslim Mahdi return to claim Islamic control of the planet Earth. Unlike the aberrant Jews who arrange our demise using words crafted by Peace Now, Ahmadinejad says he will kill us in straight forward language. There is always the trail of the Left to follow as they manipulated Oslo to insure that the Jews would be driven off their Land or die resisting. There is the political Party of the Left, aided by the Supreme Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak who tells the Jews that the Muslims have first claim on the Land and the Jews must go. Barak says that ancient claims don't count - from Abraham's purchase of Sarah's grave-site at the Cave of the Machpeleh on til today. Sorry, dear Jews, you simply must die out or be murdered out to please the world. There are always the predators of so-called Christian Europe who, having tasted the blood of Jews throughout their centuries of pogroms, cannot resist a second helping. They are in lock-step with the Muslims and the Arabs, even knowing that they too as Christians (non-Muslims) are on the list of nations and religions to be conquered and ruled over by Islam. This does not disparage the many good Christians who support the Jews and Jewish State of Israel as following the true Bible as G-d's Word. Here I would include the American people who admire and support the Jewish State while detesting the Muslims who monopolize Global Terror. I am amused by the Leftist Jews of Israel who think they will be spared by their perfidy and participation of saving their own murdered by the Islamists. I would predict that such as Peace Now, the Israeli Supreme Court, the Leftists in general, would be the first to face Muslim justice, IF they succeed in conquering the Jews of Israel. The Muslims preferred methods include heads chopped off, burning alive, heads crushed by cement blocks as the Arab/Muslim mobs descend on them. The men and women would be raped and killed ’¡Æen masse' as is their culture in dealing with the infidel, even those (or especially those) who betrayed their own people. In America there are the fellow travelers of the oil-laden Arab countries. There we have the Arabist State Department, James Baker III and the Jew haters who run the nation - often from a "Shadow Government" within the outward official government. Clearly, these are not the American people nor the Fundamentalist Christians who enthusiastically support the Jewish State. The minority of Jew haters want Israel destroyed and the Jewish people finished in a massive Genocide. But, as they say, the plans of mice and men oft times go astray.... I see the Planet going through a catharsis which some will call a cyclical Global Warming while others will say G-d has reached His level of tolerance with the human race. I think that Europe and Russia will go into a deep freeze as in a small Ice Age. The brief summers will be dry and the streams will dry out. There will be a long famines and the people will riot before they simply die out. Some remnant will always survive. They always do. America will be battered with storms and drought for what their leaders have done (or allowed to be done) to the Jewish people. The TV weather people will call it "Wicked Weather" - very appropriate. New Orleans' 2006 hurricanes will look like a party. I expect more hurricanes, volcanoes, tsunamis and earthquakes across Iran, Syria, Egypt - surpassing 10 on the Richter Scale. Nothing civilized will be left standing. Disease will rage. Ports and low cities will be flooded as the glaciers and ice caps melt, sending populations inland where there will be no room - no food or clean water. In the meantime, the Jew haters will say: "You must die for the greater good of all others. Albert Einstein looked for a unified force which rules the cosmos. It is there and the Jews are but a fragment - but a significant fragment. Those who would destroy us have signed their own demise. For the insignificant human race our reward of mis-using the resources of this planet and the pursuit of the Jews can bring on another Noahide period where all humans are simply destroyed, except for the vital and pure remnant. I wonder how long Peace Now, the Israeli Supreme Court, Ehud Olmert, et a' can tread water. I personally, for whatever effect it might have, prayed daily for the destruction of the Jew haters (to include those who claim to be Jewish). Is all this wishful thinking? Perhaps. But, as I see the earth's mantle shifting with earthquakes, super-storms, tsunamis, man-killing disease plagues with no cures - even the rise of Islam as the blackest of plagues. While Einstein may not have concluded his unified theory, nevertheless, the synergism is apparent. Poisoning the land, water, air is merely one element on their way to killing the Jews. All of those previously mentioned and those hidden have joined together to despoil the Planet loaned to us by G-d. Somehow, the most productive race on this planet has been categorized as evil and destined for elimination. Perhaps the higher authority, that unifies the cosmos, may feel the reverse is true. That the Jew Killers have clearly demonstrated that they themselves as unworthy of further life. I hope I am around to see them obliterated, allowing the Planet to start the long process of healing herself and the Jews also to heal themselves, along with our Jewish State of Israel. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net |
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GERMANY ANNOUNCED ITS DECISION TO STOP ALL ARMS SALES TO ISRAEL
Posted by Marion DS Dreyfus, November 28, 2006. |
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This came from Gigi Markowitz. |
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This is Israel's response. Please take a minute and read this message, as it is a good read. Several weeks ago, Germany announced its decision to stop all arms sales to Israel. Since then, other countries have followed suit. In response, Israel has canceled its annual multimillion dollar contract for its nationwide DAN buses which were manufactured in Germany, and is looking at other bus suppliers in the US, and Japan. The Europeans and their Muslim allies should understand that boycotts work both ways. When we said NEVER AGAIN, we meant it. Europe is stuck in the mentality of 1933 and conditioned to thinking of Jews as defenseless entities. The reality is very different. As long as Europe adheres to and supports its primitive Middle Ages death cult, European products must be off limits. We continue to call for a complete boycott of travel and products from the following countries France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, and China, due to their support, sponsorship, and/or participation in global Islamic terror. The voting record of the above countries at the UN openly endorses Muslim terror. Remember, every time you buy a bottle of Evian, a Carlsberg product, a Spanish melon, a Godiva chocolate, a Dior lipstick, a Gucci bag, or a German kitchen appliance, you are financing the next Muslim mass murderer. The European Union gives over $10 million per month to the Palestinian Authority, knowing full well that the money is funneled to buy, import, and train Muslim terrorists and their weapons of mass murder. We strongly encourage everyone to buy American and Israeli products instead. Buy Estee Lauder or Ahava instead of Chanel, Dior, and YSL. Tell the salespeople why. Educate the public when you shop. Europe is underwriting the Arab war to exterminate the Jewish state. We cannot sit idly by while this happens. Make your voice heard and let them feel the sting in their pocketbooks. Let the Europeans know that supporting terror does not pay. Please send this to at least 10 like-minded people Contact the poster at dreyfusmarion@hotmail.com |
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"KEY LEADER" ABBAS HAS FAILED THE PALESTINIANS AND THE WEST-RADICAL ISLAM IS WINNING!
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 28, 2006. |
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The bill of goods they go on selling and game the Palestinians play with the entire world is ludicrous but is working for them like a charm...the assumption in Israel and the West is that Abbas is too weak is a myth; he prefers to appear this way. He lacks the will and appears to be comfortable with the image of the weak leader, low on funds and resources, ALL helps to terrorize Israel. The feel sorry for me billionaire (Yes, like Yasser Arafat, this will be revealed after his death...) Abbas's message to the (feeling sorry for the Palestinians) outside world is: more weapons, more policemen and more money will enable him to move against the terrorists, which is ANOTHER fool the western world tactic, the gullible west keeps on buying into. Meantime, the Palestinians are laughing all the way to more terror, more breach of human rights, more craziness, more debilitating behavior Israel is so tired of. The gutless Israeli government and the entire West keep on missing the target, their wrongful meddling with the Palestinians affairs is constantly backfiring on them, thus, they are losing to the wicked that won one more round! As always, Khaled Abu Toameh gives us an honest and clear picture
of Palestinian politics and events. This article is called
"Palestinian Affairs: Guns and Poses," and it appeared November 23,
2006 in the Jerusalem Post |
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Last week, security forces loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas provided evidence that they were still around and functioning. One of the branches, the much-feared Preventative Security Service, announced that its members had arrested two Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on charges of "collaboration" with Israel. Another, the General Intelligence Force, boasted that its men managed to break a ring of criminals who allegedly swindled thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank. The announcements came at a time when several Kassam squads were continuing to launch rockets at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip, on an average of 8-10 per day. They also came at a time when Israeli political and security officials were - and are - embroiled in a debate over how to stop the Kassam rockets: by reoccupying the entire Gaza Strip, stepping up the policy of assassinations, or launching a limited, large-scale military operation against the terrorists and their leaders. But almost no one in the Israeli political and security echelon raised the possibility of asking Abbas to instruct his security forces to try and stop the rocket attacks. That's because the assumption in Israel and the West is that Abbas is too weak, and that his security forces have been crippled as a result of repeated Israeli military attacks. The facts, however, suggest otherwise. Abbas has control over at least 45,000 members of a dozen or so security forces in the Gaza Strip. This is in addition to thousands of gunmen and activists belonging to his Fatah party. Hamas, by contrast, has less than 5,000 militiamen, who are not as effective as Abbas's policemen and security agents, some of whom were trained by American and European security experts. Here one needs to be reminded of the fact that although Hamas is in power, the Islamist movement actually has no control over the Fatah-affiliated Palestinian security forces. Almost immediately after Hamas won the parliamentary election earlier this year, Abbas issued a "presidential decree," placing all the security forces under the jurisdiction of the "commander-in-chief" (who happens to be none other than Abbas himself) WHY, THEN, doesn't Abbas simply order thousands of his policemen to deploy along the border with Israel to halt the Kassam attacks? How come he hasn't even made the slightest effort to stop the smuggling of tons of explosives from Egypt into the Gaza Strip? The answer is simple. Abbas lacks the will - not the ability - to take harsh decisions. In fact, he appears to be comfortable with the image of the weak leader low on funds and resources . Abbas's message to the outside world is: If I only had more weapons, policemen and money, I'd be able to move against the terrorists. This was the same excuse that his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, used to give whenever he was asked why he was not doing anything to stop suicide bombings against Israel. Judging from his actions over the past year, it is clear that Abbas is not interested at all in a confrontation with Hamas or any of the radical groups in the Gaza Strip. His strategy is based on the notion that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Although he has repeatedly condemned the firing of the "primitive" rockets at Israel as "harmful" to the interests of the Palestinians, he has never ordered his security chiefs to go after the rocket squads - not even when the miserable residents of Beit Hanun, who are continuing to pay a heavy price, begged him to take action. Abbas's claim that he is lacking in weapons and money is ridiculous given the facts on the ground. Just last week, thousands of PA policemen and Fatah gunmen staged paramilitary parades in various parts of Gaza, during which they reportedly fired more than a million bullets into the air. The cost of each bullet ranges between NIS 1-NIS 5, depending on the type of rifle or pistol. Also, it is worth noting that some of the weapons and ammunition that are being smuggled from Egypt goes to Fatah militias and Abbas's security forces in Gaza. With regard to the funds, millions of dollars continue to pour into Abbas's office almost on a weekly basis. Just last week, Kuwait transferred $29 million to Abbas's bank account. The US, which is eager to bring down the Hamas government, has also been arming and funding Abbas and his Fatah party. One report cited an official US document as revealing that Washington had allocated $42 million to fund the opponents of the Hamas government, while another claimed that the Americans had decided to provide Abbas's Force 17 with an additional 6,000 M-16 rifles. Such reports have left many Palestinians confused about America's Middle East policy, particularly the idea of spreading democracy. Just over a year ago, the US and several EU countries demanded that the Palestinians hold free and democratic elections. Abbas, according to some of his top aides, first pleaded with the foreign governments to wait a little longer. Faced by strong opposition, he later decided to move ahead with his plans to hold the election on time. Abbas's major fear was that his corruption-riddled Fatah party was not yet prepared for the vote. When Abbas sought to postpone the vote, he clearly knew what he was talking about. Like many Palestinians, he, too, was aware of the growing power of Hamas, especially in the aftermath of Yasser Arafat's departure from the scene. The majority of the Palestinians saw Arafat's departure as an opportunity to pick up the pieces and repair the damage he had done to their cause for nearly four decades. They simply wanted a better life. ONE OF the reasons most Palestinians voted for Hamas was their disillusionment with Abbas and Fatah. Prior to the 2005 presidential election, Abbas ran on a platform that promised to end rampant financial corruption, enforce law and order and bring about democracy and reforms. In short, his message to the Palestinians sounded so promising that over 60% voted for him, giving him a clear mandate to fulfill his pledges. But then, Abbas did almost everything to disappoint the Palestinian people. Not only did he not keep most of his promises, but he seemed determined to continue with Arafat's legacy - one that brought only death and destruction. Instead of getting rid of all the officials responsible for financial corruption, Abbas embraced many of them, and turned them into senior decision-makers. His promise to end anarchy and lawlessness never materialized. Under Abbas's rule, warlords, gangsters and militias became even stronger and more daring. These thugs felt so confident that they saw no problem dragging a Palestinian general out of his home in Gaza City and executing him in the street. The situation has so deteriorated that, for the first time ever, the number of Palestinians killed as a result of internal strife is higher than that of those killed in clashes with Israeli security forces. The US's involvement in attempts to bring down the Hamas government has only made things worse for Abbas and Fatah. The US believes that by giving Abbas more rifles and cash it would be able to bring about regime change. But in the West Bank and Gaza, there is no shortage of weapons. Tons of explosives, rifles and missiles are smuggled across the Egyptian border nearly every day. What the Palestinians need is not more rifles - which they never use to stop Hamas, Islamic Jihad or other militias anyway - but good governance and credible leaders. The only way to bring about regime change in the Palestinian territories is by exerting pressure on Abbas to reform his Fatah party and give younger leaders a larger say in the process of decision-making. Abbas will only do this when he feels that he is under pressure from donors. He will also only start moving against the Kassam squads and weapon-smuggling when someone bangs on the table and demands immediate action. Fatah needs to undergo real changes and reforms if it ever wants to return to power. Meanwhile, American meddling in Palestinian affairs is backfiring, because many Palestinians are beginning to look at Abbas and Fatah as pawns in the hands of the US and Israel . This does not help Abbas and moderate secular Palestinians, who are facing the dangers of the growing power of Islamic fundamentalism. But, even if the Hamas government collapses - and free and democratic elections are held in the West Bank and Gaza - it is almost certain that most Palestinians will not vote for the same leaders who lost the last election because of their corruption and mismanagement Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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PRESIDENT BUSH, DON'T TRADE ISRAEL FOR IRAQ
Posted by Jerusalem Prayer Team, November 28, 2006. |
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This week, President Bush will be attending Jordon's Summit on Iraq along with Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki. His Host, King Abdullah, seems to have already articulated Arab demands, warning that the Middle East is facing a crisis with Palestine Territories, Lebanon, and Iraq at the brink of civil war. "We could possibly imagine going into 2007 and having three civil wars on our hands," Abdullah said on ABC's "This Week" program Sunday. "I keep saying Palestine is the core. It is linked to the extent of what's going on in Iraq." Abdullah said restating the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is his top priority because the "emotional impact" of the problem "can be translated to the insecurity and frustrations throughout the Middle East and the Arab world." Moderate Abdullah revealed the core problem, an ideological war in which an Arab World hates Israel and really believes that Jews are the root of all problems. But even more revealing is that Israel is the Little Satan in their eyes, and America, the crusaders, is the Great Satan. It appears the turkey carving is going to be extended beyond Thanksgiving. Once again, Israel will be forced to pay the appeasement bill for Arab rage with more land. Click here to sign the petition to President Bush. Ask him not to allow Israel to become a bartering chip for peace in Iraq. Don't distort the reality of the Global Jihadist, because everyone knows that a Zionist Crusader conspiracy is behind all Arab problems, anyway. In October 1991, Israel was dragged kicking and screaming to the Middle East peace conference in Madrid. It was their reward for not retaliating as Saddam's 39 SCUDS rained down upon the Bible land during the first Persian Gulf War; and, the U.S. froze the 10-billion-dollar loan guarantee, which was money to help absorb Russian Jewish refuges. Having covered the summit and being the first journalist to address Secretary of State James Baker, I smell Madrid all over again. Do I not recall a similar summit in Jordon after the last Persian Gulf War to launch the Road Map for peace? Iraq is indeed a mess, but then why should anyone be surprised? Iraq was established as the central 9-11 front on the war on terror. (Oh I forgot; it's not a world-war against Islamic fascists.) Terrorism must be fought in Iraq without chaos. (I did it again; terrorists are militia and insurgents, words that were coined by Daniel Webster to define America revolutionary fighters like George Washington, Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin.) We don't want to offend Muslims by admitting that Muslims are killing us. When I said on 9-11 that it was Islamic Al-Qaeda terrorist in the planes, the network station said, "You cannot say that." so I said, "Okay, maybe it is Pygmies, Eskimos, and Tahitians. Jimmy Carter paid 7.9 billion to get the hostages back, but not until Iran was certain they had achieved their political objective...444 days of humiliation, and then, releasing the hostages the day of the inauguration of Ronald Regan. If they were willing to gamble the farm on a California cowboy, you can be sure they will do their best to give us a two-year ride on the back of the protracted terror tiger in Iraq, at least until Hillary takes the oath of office. Let's not forget it's all about stalling for time until they can make the grand announcement, "We have the Bomb." Syria and Iran have been the Jihadist traffic controllers in and out of Iraq, so you can be sure they will have seats of honor at the appeasement party. To give the terrorist cartel an invitation to the VIP Summit to help with stability and democracy in Iraq is the theater of the absurd. Why should anyone be shocked at chaos? Welcome to the world of Middle East terror, or as they call it in Israel, the Iraqi intifida. The U.S. gave Syria one billion dollars for showing support at the first Persian Gulf War. You can be sure the prize will be much higher to slow down the tide of body bags in Iraq. Israel was never allowed to fight a war against terror with the P.A. Every time they tried, the U.S. ran to the rescue of the billionaire Noble Peace Prize winner and godfather of World Terror, Yasir Arafat. Texas "T" ruled the day, not moral clarity. It all began when Israel was forced out of Lebanon by U.S. Liberals. What's wrong with killing terrorists in Iraq, no matter if they were wearing a police or a military uniform? Do you think the families of 9-11 gave their loved ones so Iraq can have a democracy? Why not get over it and fight the war like the greatest generation did with Iraq as the central front? The U.S. needs to get the innocent Iraqi refuges out of the country. That would be a great reason to have a summit. And, why not establish a base in Israel and recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital? That would end the "drive the Jews into the sea ideology" once and for all. I asked Secretary Baker to do that in Madrid; his response was, "You will not engage me in fruitless dialogue." Iran and its death cults are on a fast track to wipe the Little Satan (Israel) off the map with an Atomic Bomb. Click here to sign the petition to President Bush today, and then forward this email to everyone on your list. Together, we can make a difference. Robert Gates, President Bush's nominee for Secretary of Defense, wants to talk with Iran and Syria. Why not let the 22,000-plus American families who have a wounded son or daughter talk with Iran, especially since 85 percent of all IEDs in Iraq are from Iran, according to General Moshe Yaalon, former chief of staff of Israel? Why not let the American families of the dead Marines killed in Lebanon in 1983, or the thousands of families who have a wounded or dead loved one in Israel? Why not talk to Syria since Syria has armed Hezbollah, HAMAS and the PLO for decades, and is presently turning Lebanon into the killing fields? Did America really think we could go to Babylon and not get bitten? It's a shame that George Bush's 80-year-old childhood Sunday school teacher could not have advised him. She could have read him Revelations 18:2, "Babylon the great is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird..." Now the issue is: Will we fight a world war on terror in Iraq or fight in our backyard? You can be sure if we run, they will be coming to a theater near you. Please sign the petition to President Bush today! We must not delay; time is of the essence. We need 100,000 signatures. Please don't just delete this. It will only take you a minute to pass this along to 10 friends! Please ask them to not delete it, but to do the same and ask the 10 they send to keep it going...and not delete it. Keep this going around the world. Mike Evans Michael Evans is the author of "Beyond Iraq: The Next Move," and founder of Jerusalem Prayer Team, America's largest Christian coalition praying for the peace of Jerusalem. Contact them at www.JerusalemPrayerTeam.org |
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THE LUNATIC PROFESSOR NOBLE
Posted by Steven Plaut, November 28, 2006. |
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1. Last year I published a piece on the lunatic anti-Semitic
Luddite from York University, David Noble, here:
Noble combines Luddism and dislike of Christianity with utter contempt and hatred for Jews and Judaism. He is a leftist hater of Jews who himself was born Jewish, a fact that helps him defend himself against charges of anti-Semitism. Self-hating Jewish academics are common on campus today, and range all the way from the phony sophisticates like MIT's Chomsky and NYU's Tony Judt, all the way down to the vulgar neo-nazi buffoonery of DePaul's Norman Finkelstein. Like those others, Noble has a long history of bashing Israel and demonizing Zionism. He has maliciously tried to stir up anti-Jewish passions at York, where he alleges that the board of the York University Foundation, the school's fundraising arm, is biased by "the presence and influence of staunch pro-Israel lobbyists, activists and fundraising agencies." Meaning Jews. In late November 2004, Noble got into trouble for biting the hand that pays his York salary. He was attacked by his own administration for handing out information sheets regarding the York Foundation. He maintained that the presence of Jews on the board affects the "political conduct of York's administration" in important ways, such as the "silencing of pro-Palestinian voices" on York's campus. The University then issued a press release on Nov. 19, 2004, condemning material Noble had been distributing at a campus event a day earlier as "targeting Jewish members of the York community." Noble is tied to local pro-Palestinian groups, who back him in his nuisance litigation against York. Meanwhile, he has been condemned by the Canadian Jewish Congress and the United Jewish Appeal Federation of Greater Toronto for his anti-Jewish and anti-Israel activities. But Noble's latest high-visibility antic has been against the right of Jewish students at York University to observe Yom Kippur. Most universities try to accommodate Jewish students, often asking professors not to schedule exams in the Jewish High Holidays. York actually cancels classes altogether. Noble maintains that this is "discriminatory and illegal", because classes are not cancelled (unless later made up) for every holiday of every other conceivable religious persuasion. Chris Morley, a spokesperson for Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, said canceling classes on holidays "is a decision the university has the authority to make," adding that "it seems the York policy is reasonable." Prof. Martin Lockshin, an observant Jew who teaches at York and is on the university's senate, said that the holiday policy follows a general York principle of respecting religious diversity; but - more importantly - it avoids problems that would be created when many students and faculty cannot attend class. York also holds no classes on Christmas and Good Friday, but Noble threatened to hold classes on Good Friday as a political statement. Noble demanded that York stop accommodating Jewish students and he threatened to hold classes on the Jewish High Holidays to show his contempt for them. When threatened by the administration, Noble claimed he would henceforth cancel all classes for any holiday of any sort for any religion, including those of Bahais, Zoroastrians, and Wiccans. Now just for the record, on Yom Kippur the Jewish students at York (Jews are 10% of the student body there) fast for 26 hours, pray the entire day, and may neither write nor use electricity. So it makes perfect sense to make accommodations for them, and I am sure that if anyone can find any Christian, Hindu or Moslem holidays on which people fast for 26 hours, York would similarly be happy to oblige them. Anyway, now Noble is suing his own university again and some Jewish
groups for pointing out that he is an Anti-Semite:
"Professor suing York U."
History professor David Noble is suing York University's fundraising foundation and several Jewish organizations for defamation, claiming they suggested he is anti-Semitic to try to gag criticism of their activities. Noble, 61, who is Jewish, has brought a $25 million lawsuit against the York University Foundation, including outgoing York president Lorna Marsden, as well as the Canadian Jewish Congress' Ontario region, Hillel of Greater Toronto and the United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto for their criticism of flyers he distributed. The flyers accused the university of being biased in favour of Israel and restricting pro-Palestinian groups on campus more harshly than others. Noble distributed the flyers, titled "The Tail that Wags the Dog," on campus in 2004. They named directors and staff of the York University Foundation and cited various members' links with pro-Israel agencies, such as the United Jewish Appeal. In response, Noble said, members of Hillel of Greater Toronto sent a fax to the university expressing concern that the flyer suggested "Jews control York University" . something Noble denies having said. He said he criticized York figures for their political views on Israel, not their ethnicity or religion. The University later issued a news release condemning what Marsden called "this highly offensive material, which singles out certain members of the York community on the basis of their ethnicity and political views." While it did not name Noble, it quoted a Jewish student leader who was concerned about "such inflammatory material," and said "it is unacceptable for any students to be exposed to this type of bigotry." Angry his claims were being called bigoted, Noble has already filed a union grievance seeking an apology and $10 million in damages for defamation. Noble has also filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission against York for its long-standing practice of cancelling all classes on Jewish high holidays, such as Yom Kippur. York established the policy years ago at the request of Jewish students, but it allows any student to obtain a change of schedule if a class conflicts with a religious holiday. In response, Noble, an outspoken critic of the policy, cancels his own classes on Muslim holidays as well. "Look, I have very diverse classes and I want to dramatize the point that we are a multicultural, publicly funded university, so we should either recognize all religious high holidays or none," he has said. York has an estimated 5,000 Jewish students, roughly 10 per cent of its student body, and it began cancelling classes on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur 40 years ago. Last year, Noble said he would hold classes on the Jewish holidays in defiance of York's policy, but he changed his mind after a student filed a complaint and he received threatening phone messages. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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ISRAELI MUSLIMS DEMAND NO SYNAGOGUE ON MOUNT; WAR LAW; ARABS FOR ISRAEL
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 28, 2006. |
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NY TIMES SPIN ON BEIT HANOUN SHELLING Israeli gunners aimed their cannon at a Beit Hanoun orange grove that concealed rocket launchers. Technical malfunction caused a couple of shells to go astray and kill people not aimed at. Hamas threatened "revenge." The Prime Minister of Israel expressed remorse and said he offered a "great deal" to the P.A. (Ian Fisher, 11/10, A3). See my 14573 on international legality of Israeli military operations. I think that an objective newspaper would try to report all the facts are reported and represent all sides, although I could understand ignoring the genocidal side. The Times, however, often gives short shrift to the intended Israeli victims of genocide. The Times practice of reporting just what people say, and being selectively one-sided about background information, does not properly inform the modern, rushed, non-thinking public naïve in the faith that the newspaper fully informs it. If the reporters asked more questions of Israelis, it would have more to report. For example, it could ask why Hamas threatens revenge for what was an accident, brought on by Arab aggression (the firing of rockets at Israeli cities, also a war crime). Why? Because the aggressors pose as victims merely retaliating. It is the same trick used by the Nazis and Communists. The Soviet and Vietnamese Communists had trained the PLO in tactics. I think the Prime Minister improperly remorseful. He didn't even combine the remorse with regret that the malfunction spared the rocket launchers, which is my main concern. He is a put-upon Jew, who has too much self-guilt towards the enemy, and not enough for the terrible trouble his policy makes for his own people. Where is his remorse for the needless casualties that his government's floundering has invited for his own people? He doesn't owe the Arabs anything. He was right to maintain that Israel does not fire wildly and off-target on purpose. He should have observed that Hamas talk of vengeance exploits that to continue its war of aggression as if in the right. He should have castigated the hypocrisy of Hamas' indignation, since the intended target of the shells were rocket launchers used to commit war crimes! By hastily offering concessions, PM Olmert bolsters the Arab propaganda that claims Israel acts badly and it is the victim. This proves he has no head. His callousness towards Israelis proved he has no heart. By omitting this discussion, the Times proves itself misleading. Not many readers know that the Times long has been anti-Zionist. Its publication continues to pursue that ideology. ISRAELI MUSLIMS CLAIM EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS OVER MOUNT After Muslims planned to build a fourth or fifth mosque on the Temple Mount, some Jews mentioned a plan to build one synagogue atop it. The head of Israel's Islamic Movement declared that the Temple Mount is exclusively Muslim and that Muslims would fight erection of a synagogue there (Arutz-7, 11/6). So much for Islam being a tolerant religion of peace! INTERNATIONAL LAW ON WAR MADE CLEAR & SIMPLE Muslim Arabs (who break agreements), human rights organizations (having an anti-Zionist, anti-US agenda), and antisemites who piggyback on the NGOs accuse Israel of war crimes. I find this part of the effort to de-legitimize Israel by depicting it as the successor to the Third Reich, which the Arabs admired and emulated in some ways. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs explains the international law of war. Who may initiate external war is codified in the UNO Charter. A country may start external armed conflict if authorized by the Security Council under Chapter 7 or in self-defense. Once a war begins, customary international law covers how it may be fought. One may attack only legitimate targets, to contribute to victory. In 1977, the Red Cross declared that the presence of civilians does not render a target illegitimate, as when the enemy uses roads for military transport. The military advantage must in intent be significant, in proportion to civilian damage. Mistaken intelligence that leads to disproportionate civilian damage is excused. The attack must be made so as not to inflict avoidable civilian damage unrelated to military need. Proportionality does not mean that a defender must retaliate with force proportionate to the force that committed aggression against it. A combatant may not lawfully evade the enemy's ability to distinguish between legitimate and non-legitimate targets by disguising themselves as civilians or hiding behind civilians. (Palestinian Arab terrorists surround themselves deliberately with civilians. They commit the war crime of perfidy). "Perhaps the best-known charge made by international NGOs such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (A.I.) is that Israeli attacks in Lebanon violated the rule of distinction. Yet if you look at the actual charges, you will see that they are made on the basis of bad or no evidence, linguistic misdirection, non sequiturs, and misapplication or misstatement of accepted legal standards." "A.I. describes extensive destruction of residential buildings, over 1,000 Lebanese dead - of which an unknown number were civilians, and the destruction of dozens of bridges, roads, and ports as well as fuel stations and commercial enterprises. There is no systematic discussion anywhere in its report of Hizballah's fighting positions, its methods of combat, its methods of movement and communication, or whether Hizballah's combatants dressed like civilians. Instead, Amnesty argues that the physical destruction speaks for itself and demonstrates that Israel violated the principle of distinction." "To put it bluntly, this approach has no basis in the laws of war. If one sees a residential home bombed, or even fifty bombed homes, has one seen evidence of a war crime? One cannot know without more information. Again, the ICRC commentary says that if fighting between armed forces takes place in a town which is defended house by house, it is ’¡Æinevitable that every house will become a legitimate military target.'" "This means that when one looks at a residential home that has been damaged, one has to know where this home was in relation to the fighting. How did the fighting take place? Where were the combatants? Where was their weaponry? Without knowing these things, it is impossible to know whether or not a war crime took place." "Given that Hizballah fighters based themselves almost exclusively in residential areas, and located their arms almost exclusively in residential areas, many residential houses became legitimate military targets." "The same can be said of HRW's citations of attacks in which numerous Lebanese civilians were killed. Because Hizballah fighters in residential homes are legitimate targets, as well as the roads on which they expect to travel and the buildings they use for storehouses, it is legal for Israel to attack those targets even if there will be inevitable collateral damage including dead civilians. Moreover, as noted earlier, the question of intent is crucial. If a belligerent attacks what it believes is a legitimate target, and it turns out after the fact that the intelligence was faulty and only civilians were killed, there is no war crime." "Given that all of the Hizballah fighters illegally hid as civilians in civilian areas as well as the general limitations of military intelligence, it is quite impossible for anyone to expect that Israel would have been able to identify all targets with 100 percent precision and no mistakes." "Amnesty and Human Rights Watch claimed that the use of civilian shields by Hizballah does not ’¡Ærelease the opposing party from its obligations towards the protection of the civilian population.' With all due respect, this is nonsense. When a combatant hides in a civilian house, the house ceases to be a civilian target and becomes a military target." "A.I.'s report specifically accused Israel of violating the rule of distinction in targeting civilian homes in Bint Jbeil, where house-to-house fighting occurred. Nowhere does Amnesty mention that Hizballah fighters were entrenched in residential and commercial areas of Bint Jbeil, including the center of town. There is no way for readers of the report to know (from the report) that Israel's fighting in Bint Jbeil was actually in compliance with the rule of distinction." HRW accused Israel of bombing two clearly marked ambulances. Australia's Foreign Minister examined the photographic evidence and found this a hoax. Israeli missiles had not struck the ambulances. Their damage had rusted long before the war. Secretary-General Annan accused Israel of inflicting collective punishment upon Lebanon. It did not. First, Israel held to legitimate military objectives. Second, collective punishment would refer to punishing an entire enemy population within one's own country or in occupation of another. No Lebanese enemy lives in Israel and Israel does not occupy part of Lebanon. As for Israeli use of cluster bombs, themselves not banned, Israel waited until most civilians had fled, so there would be a higher proportion of military casualties from them. "Cluster bombs are a way of killing people while reducing property damage, because the weapons widen the killing zone of an explosion. So on the one hand, these groups accuse Israel of excessive property destruction and even use the property destruction as ’¡Æevidence' of Israeli war crimes of indiscriminate attacks. On the other hand, the same groups say that attacking Hizballah personnel without extensive property destruction is also a war crime." (IMRA, 11/9 from Jer. Center for Public Affairs.) SYRIA TURNING SHIITE Iran is providing services to various Syrian towns, in return for their inhabitants converting to Shia. The Syrian government allows this. Sunnis there are alarmed. Some suggest an alliance with Israel, which would not try to convert them (IMRA, 11/8). When they come down to it, they know that the Jews are trustworthy. The Saudi King suggests an alliance against Iran with Jordan and Israel. The Crown Prince would exclude Israel. The State Dept. prefers him, though he is unreliable. Meanwhile, Saudi family life is falling apart, apparently from luxurious display replacing training in family life (IMRA, 11/8). Why don't they ask Egypt for protection? Egypt has a huge army. Perhaps they remember that Egypt sought to take over the oil-bearing countries, itself. If Iran were defeated, Israel's new Sunni allies would turn on it. ISRAEL & U.S. COOPERATE AGAINST ROADSIDE BOMBS Companies from the two countries are working together to complete a laser that can explode roadside bombs safely (IMRA, 11/8). Roadside bombs are a major source of casualties for the two countries' armies. HOW IRAN PREPARES AGAINST INVASION It announced having trained thousands of suicide bombers to blow up enemy troops or set off mine fields (IMRA, 11/8). Iran could be crippled militarily, according to a strategy I reported. By eliminating it navy, it could not threaten oil shipping lanes. By destroying its missiles, it could not attack distant countries. By bombing its oil refineries, it would not be able to move its ground troops around. A former CIA director proposes shifting to alternative energy, to reduce oil prices that finance jihad. LEBANESE COUNTER-MEASURE During the recent war between Hizbullah and Israel, the IDF went after Hizbullah emplacements in Beirut. In reaction, the Lebanese government plans to install thousands of surveillance cameras there. Soldiers would review the scenes so as to be able to counter-act the IDF advances (IMRA, 11/8). Notice that the government is not disarming Hizbullah to prevent it from starting another war with Israel, but is preparing to help it fight Israeli retaliation. This disproves the basis for the UNO ceasefire, which was to get a big UNIFIL force ready to help the Lebanese Army to disarm Hizbullah. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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SEE WHAT SHOCKED GLENN BECK
Posted by Yrachmiel Elias and Ya'akov Golbert, November 28, 2006. |
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Thanks to RadioRote, here are some addenda with links to details about bribery (and that link is only about the Bush family), purchasing of influence, control of media, international banking by the same people who finance international terrorism. No, Grasshopper, it is not the Jews, despite what you and the world has "known" since publication of the infamous forgery, the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. No, no. Image that! If you want to perpetrate genocide, you have to make people believe they are doing something positively good or at least make people indifferent to wiping those particular people off the face of the earth. That is the role of blood libels. The media, the universities, the whole intellectual establishment and very respectable and substantial segments of the political establishment are all fully complicit in setting up Israel and the Jews for the next Holocaust, God forbid! Rote du vichy wrote:
Bear with me for sending this again. It's a measure of the importance I think it has. The fact that Glenn Beck never saw this stuff before is another proof that what I keep telling you is true: the media are not reporting what is happening. They are purveying imagery that is mainly false and uninformed and follows an unassailable orthodoxy called Political Correctness. Who is in control of what is politically correct? No one even knows whose party line it is. But it is not PC to name Muslims or Islam as the enemy. No, no. That's "Islamophobia" and is one of the scourges of the world. It is not PC to tell the truth about what Islamic leaders say in their sermons or teach in their madrassas or say on their media in their own languages. It is not PC to report on intimidation of the media by Arabs and Muslims or the use by the Saudis of their three trillion dollars invested in US stock markets to intimidate the US government or their ownership of controlling interest in several of the largest 'news' services in the world or their bribery of US officials and diplomats and journalists. That too is Islamophobia. But it IS definitely PC to say that Jews control the media, that the Israeli lobby has too much power, that the war in Iraq is for the benefit of Israel and not the US, that Jewish economic power is being abused to corrupt government all over the world, that Israel is the source of all the rage by Arabs and other Muslims (Die Juden sint unser Ungluck. by any other formulation. That's PC. The result is that Glenn Beck was shocked to see this footage. He had not been informed what is going on. This footage and other similar footage has been around for years. If you have not seen it either, then you are getting your "news" from the local counterpart of Pravda. What are you going to do about it? View what shocked Glenn Beck Yrachmiel Elias and Ya'akov Golbert are co-founders of Netzah Yisrael Lo Yeshaqer. Contact them at golbert@netzahyisrael.org or go to the website: http://netzahyisrael.org |
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WE WENT TO STRENGTHEN AND LEFT STRENGTHENED
Posted by Nadia Matar & Anita Finkelstein, November 28, 2006. |
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A delegation of 14 Women in Green from Jerusalem, Gush Etzion and Beersheva, together with Prof Arieh Zaritzky from Beersheva and Yehudit Katzover from the Loyalists of Eretz Israel went yesterday to pay a shiva call to the Yaakovov family in Sderot, whose father and husband, 43 year old Yaakov HY"D, was killed by a Kassam rocket. Sitting in a big tent on the grass near their house, were Yaakov's sons, one of them 12 year old Hanan who moved us all with his heart wrenching interview on Arutz 7 TV: http://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/156651 -- See below. His brother, Salomon, will be Bar Mitzva in a month. "How will I celebrate my Bar Mitzva without my father?" he asks. A relative of the family comforted him by saying that many people, especially from his father's job, are working on giving him a nice Bar Mitzva celebration at the Kotel. Next to the boys sat their Uncle Zimru, Yaakov's brother. An amazing family! Hearing Zimru made us understand where Hanan's self-confidence and healthy Jewish pride came from. Zimru did not mince his words. "This government has to go. They are a danger to the survival of the State of Israel." Zimru told us that instead of sinking into depression, he wants to use his anger, frustration and mourning, to do all he can to bring down this government, for the sake of all the children of Israel, before more Jews will be killed. His dream is to organize the people of Sderot, wake them up into action, so that they should lead the way to the downfall of this government. He knows it is not an easy task. Zimru knows that many politicians, opportunists, will try to "use" him and thus he is very careful not to hook up with any of them. In fact he told us how his family refused to let any minister come to the funeral. During the shiva, security guards came to the shiva tent and announced that Minister Zippy Livni was outside waiting in her car, asking if they would let her come to pay a shiva call. The family told the guards: "Tell her to get out of here immediately. We do not want to see her." Hearing Hanan and Zimru talking like healthy, proud Jews, reminded us that a very large part of the People of Israel is strong. They love their Land and their Jewish Heritage. The problem is that we are stuck with the most corrupt and dangerous political leaders who are more interested in pleasing Israel's enemies than in protecting the People and the Land of Israel. We gave the Yaakovov boys a book, "Elnakam" by Ezra Yachin. The book recaptures the dedication, self-sacrifice and courage of the Lehi fighters for the freedom of Israel in the forties. On the cover of the book we wrote to Hanan and his brothers: "We went to strengthen and left strengthened. Your impressive interview in the media inspired us all and gave us all strength and hope that soon, please G-d, a new leadership will arise in Israel, a leadership of proud Jews like Hanan and his family, who are a continuation of the proud Jewish heroes described in this book." After the shiva, all 16 of us went to do some "shopping" in the center of Sderot to give the stores there some business. The city was almost a ghost-city. Many stores were closed. One could still see the horrendous damage one Kassam had done when it fell in the center of town, destroying four stores completely and shattering the glass windows of tens of surrounding stores. All the stores had a big poster attached to the front window: "Lehatzil et ha-ir!" (Save our City!). Store owners looked at our group as if we had come from Mars. When we told them we came to do some shopping to show our support, they thanked us profusely. One storeowner, seeing our orange Gush Katif bracelets and ribbons on our purses, admitted to us that she and some other Sderot residents had been in favor of the "Disengagement" plan. "We really thought there would be quiet after that. Now we are paying a heavy price for our naivete." The Yaakovov family on the other hand are not naive. At the shiva, Hanan was giving an interview over the phone. He was asked what he thought about the "cease-fire". Without blinking an eye, Hanan answered: "What cease-fire? Don't you know that what they call 'cease-fire' is simply another word for 're-arming'. They are using this period to reorganize and get more and more lethal weapons. We already had so-called 'cease-fires' in the past, and after each one of them, the attacks on Sderot were even worse." Hanan reminds us of the little boy who screamed: "The emperor has no clothes!" We left Sderot around 2:00 pm. An hour after we left, we heard on the news that two more Kassams had been shot at Sderot. Were these Olmert's so-called "cease-fire Kassams"? |
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"Sderot Orphan: 'If Sderot Goes, the Whole Country Goes'"
Arutz-7 TV's Gabi Newman spoke with 12-year-old Chanan Yaakobov, a pupil in the local religious school, whose father Yaakov was killed by a Kassam rocket six days ago. A video of the moving interview can be seen in both Hebrew and with an English translation. A transcript: Q. ...What was the first thing you thought?
Q. Do you want to continue living here in Sderot?
Q. Why? Why is it important to you?
Q. if the Prime Minister was here now, what would you say to him?
Q. And Amir Peretz, who lives here - what would you say to him.
Asked about the government, Chanan said with great emphasis: [I want] the Defense Minister and Olmert to - to say that they can't do it. They should let Bibi Netanyahu and [Avigdor] Lieberman take their place. [Gesturing emphatically with his hand] They should give up their places in the government! ... If you can do it, then I want to see your answer! I ask of you - and if not, then [eyes welling up] give up your places, but quickly! Quickly! I, the son of Yaakov, I turn to you [with choked voice]: Give up your places in the Knesset! Give them up!" Ambivalence in Sderot Residents are ambivalent about the ceasefire agreed upon yesterday by the Israeli government and PA leaders. "I personally am very happy to have a day in which I don't have to worry about Kassams," says Alon Davidi, who has led much of the local protests against government inaction. "But I know that it's not good for the State of Israel. This arrangement will merely give the terrorists more time to re-arm and prepare for the next round."
Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow
(Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their
website address is http://www.womeningreen.org
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BUSH TO PURSUE US POLICY REVERSAL ON ISRAEL--CARDS STACKED AGAINST ISRAEL
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 27, 2006. |
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These days the cards in Washington are stacked against Israel. The USA was let down by the Olmert's strategically weak government and they HAD to move on. Therefore, Bush, who first regarded the Jewish state as the front line on terror, has now braced new cadre of key advisers with new approach to Iraqi policy. These advisers are drawn from the past most known anti-Israeli administrations. The Olmert government, however forthcoming, must brace itself for a period of intensive American pressure to cede ever more assets to curry favor with the Arabs. Knowing Olmert's actions, he is already about to give the house away! Depressing! Israel, wake up! This is from today's DEBKAfile: "Bush to pursue US policy reversal on Israel in bid for Arab help on Iraq -- in his Amman talks Thursday. Brent Scowcroft is new administration policy guru." |
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DEBKAfile: Bush to pursue US policy reversal on Israel in bid for Arab help on Iraq -- in his Amman talks Thursday. Brent Scowcroft is new administration policy guru November 27, 2006, 2:26 PM (GMT+02:00) Hamas was quick to pick up the new tune emanating from Washington. Its leaders and Mahmoud Abbas declared a hurried ceasefire Sunday to take advantage of the US president's willingness to broaden his Amman talks from his planned meetings with Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki to an effort to convene an international conference on the Palestinian issue. Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert accepted the ceasefire against military advice to capture high ground. Abdullah chipped in by saying that Palestine "is the core" of all Middle East violence. No seasoned observer expects the truce to outlast Bush's departure. "How Iraq and Palestinian Issues Came to Be Twinned in Revised Bush Strategy on Iraq"
One of the most pressing pieces of business the US president George W. Bush must tackle in Amman later this week is the demand for an international conference on Iraq which must be dominated by a built-in agenda on the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. Palestinian leaders, picking up the new tones in Washington, decided to cash in by announcing the cessation of Hamas' Qassam missile attacks on Israeli civilian locations, starting Sunday, Nov. 26. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, loath to relinquish the high diplomatic ground to the Palestinians, promised Monday that after the kidnapped Israeli soldier is released, Israel will free many jailed Palestinians, including long term prisoners, as a confidence-building gesture to prove Israel seeks peace. As soon as a Palestinian unity government is formed, Olmert said, immediate negotiations could start with Mahmoud Abbas on the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. He allowed the evacuation of some West Bank settlements was possible in return for real peace and Palestinian renunciation of the return of 1948 Palestinian refugees. If such talks are successful, Olmert promised to release frozen Palestinian funds. Earlier, Ehud Olmert quickly accepted the Palestinian ceasefire - against the advice of the Israeli military. He ordered the curtailment of an effective IDF anti-missile operation and a complete troop withdrawal from the northern Gaza Strip. This left non-Hamas armed factions free to continue firing and arming while Israeli troops were ordered not to interfere. The ceasefire -- like Olmert's promises - is unlikely to survive long after Bush's departure from the Middle East. Since Sunday, every Palestinian and Israeli verbal pronouncement has been attuned to the wavelengths of Bush and his secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. She will join him in Amman and lead the effort to bring Israeli and Palestinian leaders together. Her mission will be to extract results from these encounters for tempting Arab rulers to lend the United States a helping hand on the Iraq crisis. DEBKA-Net-Weekly disclosed on November 24 that the brain behind this new strategy belongs to Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to three Republican presidents, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George Bush Sr. He is emerging as the live wire behind the latest US foreign policy departures and the pivotal figure behind the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. This panel - which submits its final report to Congress on Dec. 10 - recommends an international conference on Iraq attended by leaders from Europe, Russia, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and the main Muslim nations. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Washington sources, such a conference would spend more time on the Palestinian-Israeli issue than on Iraq. The group's leaders predict that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and other Arab participants will demand "progress on the Israel-Palestinian track" before letting the conference get down to brass tacks on Iraq. To lay the groundwork, therefore, Washington will have to give the international community free rein to squeeze Israel for far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians - and not only the Palestinians, if Syria is to be engaged. This would require a diametric reversal of George Bush's previous warm attitude towards "our friend and ally" Israel, possibly even a reversion to the iciness directed against the Shamir government in the early 1990s by the elder Bush, whom James Baker served as secretary of state and Scowcroft as national security adviser. Earlier this month, Scowcroft, as chairman of the American-Turkish Friendship League, visited Ankara for an appeal to Turkish leaders to persuade the Syrian ruler Bashar Asad to cooperate on Iraq. His mindset was revealed in an interview he gave the Turkish Daily News of Nov. 9, 2006: "I think we need to embed Iraq in a larger regional solution, and that to me goes back to the Palestinian issue. I think this would put us back on the offensive psychologically and even make Iraq easier to manage." Scowcroft then linked this viewpoint to the notion of an international conference, saying: "But I don't think this will start with some kind of a conference because everyone will come with their preset speeches and everything will freeze again. But I think that there will be some quiet consultations in the region. I believe the Arab states in the region are eager for such a conversation. Israel may not be eager, but Israel is in bad shape right now." Scowcroft was therefore the first American strategic thinker to say out loud what DEBKAfile has been reporting since early August, that George Bush and his key advisers have diagnosed Israel as coming out of the Lebanon War weakened and with its strategic situation impaired. The cards in Washington are therefore stacked against Israel these days. An unfortunate combination has emerged of a president who regards the Jewish state as strategically weak and a brace of key US advisers on the administration's new Iraqi policy who are drawn from the most anti-Israeli US administrations of the past. The Olmert government, however forthcoming, must brace itself for a period of intensive American pressure to cede ever more assets to curry favor with the Arabs. Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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LEBANON REFORMIST WEBSITE: HIZBULLAH'S PLANNED BEIRUT MARCH LIKE MUSSOLINI'S ROME MARCH
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 27, 2006. |
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This comes from MEMRI
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In an editorial posted on the reformist website Middle East Transparent on July 17, 2006, five days after the outbreak of the war in Lebanon, site editor Pierre Akel warned that Hizbullah's ultimate aim was to topple Lebanon's elected government headed by Prime Minister Fuad Al-Siniora. He said that Hizbullah was trying to replace it with a new government that would be favor of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and would reinstate "Lebanon's vassal relationship with Syria." This, he said, would be the end of Lebanon's democracy and the beginning of a "mullah-cracy," which he argued would spark a new civil war in Lebanon. On October 16, 2006, Akel published a follow-up article, in which he pointed to the accuracy of his earlier predictions. The following are excerpts from the October 16, 2006 article, in the original English:(1) Hizbullah's Ultimate Goal is to Topple Lebanese Democracy "The summer war between Hizbullah and Israel started on July 12, 2006. In an editorial dated July 17, on the Arabic page of Middle East Transparent, I wrote the following: "'For the last few days Hassan Nasrallah and his deputy, Naim Qassem, have been declaring that "it would be better for the Israelis to put an immediate end to the current clashes and to accept the principle of prisoner exchange"! Israel's reaction has been to wage an unrestrained war against Hizbullah and against Lebanese civilian infrastructures alike. Which means that the Israeli reaction has obliged Hizbullah to enter into a decisive battle prematurely... "'Hizbullah's attack should not be [regarded] in the context of the Arab-Israeli struggle. Rather, it should be viewed in the context of internal Lebanese politics... and in the context of Lebanon's relations with Syria and with Iran.' "[I further wrote:] 'What were the aims of Hizbullah's attack [on Israel]...? Was it Hizbullah's intention to merely capture two Israeli soldiers? Or was the real intention to start a coup d'état... which would allow it, in the end, to seize power in Lebanon itself ? "'Does Hizbullah's plan (which shall certainly make use of the "nationalistic" and "Islamic" prestige of a successful attack against the Israeli forces) include a "march on Beirut" with the aim of toppling the elected Siniora government [using] a mixture of [military] and political pressure, aided by President Emile Lahoud, who would sign a "decree" ending the mandate of the present government and replacing it with a new pro-Lahoud government that would reestablish Lebanon's vassal relationship with Syria, noting that Syria itself has entered into the Iranian orbit lately?'" A Hizbullah Coup Against Al-Siniora's Government Will Be the Beginning of a "Mullah-cracy" in Lebanon "And finally, [I wrote]: 'Was [this] "Fascist Scenario" - [which is] a repetition of Mussolini's March on Rome - the scenario adopted by Nasrallah and his Syrian and Iranian partners?... If Hizbullah's coup d'état is realized, then it will, in reality, be a coup d'état against the 1943 Convention (which was the basis of Lebanon's independence) and against the "Taif Accord" (which put an end to the Civil War). [This] amounts to saying that it would be a coup d'état against the liberal democratic regime and the starting point of a "mullah-cracy" in Lebanon. Such a "mullah-cracy" will [surely] spark a new civil war and [lead] to the division of Lebanon into [ethnic] mini-states.' "That article, written five days from the start of heavy Israeli raids all over Lebanon [sparked] controversy. Many pseudo-liberals and pseudo-progressives rejected its 'pessimistic' analysis and expressed their dismay, in particular, at the use of the term 'fascist' to describe Hassan Nasrallah. Inevitably, there [also] had to be some pseudo-Marxists [who] pointed out that Fascism was a "European phenomenon of the 1930s" which could not recur in a totally different, Lebanese context! "Five months later, this pessimistic scenario is unfortunately proving to be true, to the letter. The Hizbullah and Amal ministers left the Lebanese government when the ruling majority [refused to] accept their 'ultimatum', [namely, that] Hizbullah and its allies [must receive] 'one third of [the cabinet]' - which means [giving] a minority [i.e. Hizbullah and Amal] a veto power over all government decisions... "When the Lebanese government went ahead to approve the U.N. International Court proposal for Lebanon (regarding the Al-Hariri assassination case), the Syrian-appointed President Lahoud declared that the Siniora government has become illegitimate, since the Shi'ites are no longer represented in it. "Now, Nasrallah is giving his supporters 'assurances' that a 'clean government' will soon be established... Yesterday, Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei predicted that U.S. Imperialism will be defeated in Lebanon! "The background to the [current] Hizbullah-Syria-Iran offensive is easy to guess: the defeat of the Republicans in the recent U.S. elections and the possible withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. [In this situation], the anti-Hizbullah forces in Lebanon are in a less advantageous position, but certainly not in a desperate position. Remember, on March 8, 2005, Nasrallah rallied 300,000 supporters in the center of Beirut [when he] declared his loyalty to the Syrian dictator. At the time, 30,000 Syrian soldiers were still occupying the country. Yet six days later... more than one million Lebanese marched on Beirut to crush Hizbullah's attempt to keep the country under [Syrian] occupation. "It seems that Hassan Nasrallah's party is ready to play all its cards in its [thinly] disguised coup d'état. Hizbullah claims to have more than 20,000 missiles and thousands of Iranian-trained fighters. It has been strengthened by its alliance with General Michel Aoun, who seems ready to sacrifice the republic [in order to become] president. [Yet] the inherent weakness of Nasrallah's position is still there... "Even if the U.S. forces leave Iraq, the Lebanese majority has only one option: to resist Hizbullah's fascist coup d'état and... to win. For a people which is still suffering from the consequences of 30 years of civil war and foreign occupations, the novelty is that a large majority of the Lebanese has come to believe in a civil, unarmed struggle. The Lebanese majority does not want to go back to the black days of bloodshed and destruction. That is the real challenge for the people of Lebanon and for the region." Endnote: (1) http://www.metransparent.com/texts/pierre_akel/pierre_akel_hassan_nasrallah_s_planned_coup_d_etat_fascist_style.htm. The text has been lightly edited for clarity. Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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JAMES BAKER, WHO?
Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman, November 27, 2006. |
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The man who has come to rescue U.S. policy in Iraq is actually the man who rescued Saddam Hussein twice. This was written by Martin Peretz, who is editor-in-chief of the New Republic and it appeared in the New Republic. |
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The man who has come to rescue U.S. policy in Iraq is actually the man who rescued Saddam Hussein twice. The first time came early during the presidency of George Bush, Sr. It was James Baker who was in charge, tending Saddam's wounds and building up his arms. At that moment, the Baath dictatorship was still reeling from its brutal eight-year war with Iran, a conflict that presaged the uncivil strife occurring in Mesopotamia now. The second time was toward the close of the first Bush presidency, and Baker was still in charge. Iraq had been forced back from the invasion of a country it had intended to annex. The logic of the victory should have suggested unseating the aggressor--a man at once reckless and conniving, hated by (most of) his countrymen and feared by (all of) his neighbors. But that logic never penetrated the victors, who maintained Saddam in Baghdad with the goal of keeping him on a tight rope and constraining his economy by a regime of sanctions. Such a regime has rarely worked. He turned out to be especially adept at manipulating it against his longtime domestic victims and for his sectarian, familial, and geographical allies. This suffering was neither here nor there for the especially visible members of the coalition that had defeated him. Arab solidarity does not cut across doctrinal lines. This was only one reason why pan-Arabism turned out to be a roaring tiger but one without teeth. The primary consideration of Saudi Arabia, for example, was that a Sunni government of one sort or another--like the ones that had been in place since Gertrude Bell (the T.E. Lawrence of the north) installed the Emir Faisal as king in Baghdad 70 years earlier--not be displaced. This meant a permanent minority was to be in power. And, if history was an accurate predictor, it would be a brutal minority at that. A neighboring Shia state would be an enormous discomfort for the royals in Riyadh. I don't want to be cavalier about this, since, to say the least, nationhood is not a fully matured notion among the Arabs. And, if I were a responsible Saudi official, I, too, would worry greatly if adjacent Iraq became an official Shia state, especially given how the Shia minority fared under Sunni rule of the Arabian peninsula. Almost uncannily, Baker's instincts and convictions meshed (and mesh still) with the House of Saud. Forgive me for appearing like a Marxist--a vulgar Marxist, no less. But the Carlyle Group of which Baker has been a top factotum is much at home with the Sunni princely and investor dynasty. Their compatibility is almost primordial--and also very practical. Let's face it: The Baker-Hamilton Commission is a desperate rescue operation for the Iraqi Sunnis. George W. Bush has gotten us all into trouble, and he will now be taken to the woodshed by his father's faithful but resentful lieutenant. George W. never really liked Baker. (But who actually does?) The president might even muse to himself that, had Baker--and his dad--not saved Saddam 15 years ago, he would not have had the chore to do for himself. He probably wouldn't relish the irony of reading a speech by then-Senator Al Gore on September 29, 1992, lambasting the first Bush administration--and Baker, in particular--for leaving the despot-aggressor in power. Michael Kinsley has written a characteristically hilarious and insightful column in Slate, "bake me a cake, baker man: why the baker commission won't fix iraq." It focuses on the predictably "blue-ribbon" members of this gathering of senior citizens. Or, as Mike writes, "This is one torch that has not been passed to a new generation, although former Virginia senator and presidential son-in-law Charles Robb (age 67) is a fresh face in the pool of Washington Wise Men." But perhaps he forgot that, aside from Baker, two other members of the commission have sins to atone for with regard to Saddam as well: Larry Eagleburger and Alan Simpson, who, in April 1990, lectured the "haughty and pampered" Western press that dared report Baathist abuses. And what, by the way, is Vernon Jordan doing on this particular commission of sages? The truth is that commissioners rarely do the real work of the commission. That is done by its subalterns. It is true that this group is numerous and various. But several names ring alarms: Chas Freeman, Shibley Telhami, William Quandt, Phebe Marr, Marina Ottaway, Augustus Richard Norton--all fading apologists for the exhausted Sunni solution to everything. What I fear is that the thrust of the moment is to restore as much of the old orthodoxies as possible. They haven't worked for more than two decades, even as superficially as they did before, when resentments were festering not only among the Shia, but among ever more pious--and, yes, fanatical--Sunnis as well. Their ranks, too, are swelling. Sorry! Give George W. Bush his due. He took down the Taliban. And he also took down the savage Caesar. These are achievements. What he did not grasp--and what, for that matter, Baker and those for whom he speaks also do not grasp--is the sheer and relentless butchery of which both Sunni and Shia are capable. The fiendish barbarism of decapitated heads and mutilated bodies is now a reflex of the warriors and nothing exceptional, a commonplace. Even the bare rudiments of civilization will not soon come back to the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates. So what is to be done? Inevitably, Baker will deploy the only trick he knows: force Israel to retreat to the 1967 lines. OK, it can't be forced. Then at least hold a peace conference. The 1991 peace conference actually accomplished nothing, except to pay Bush-Baker's debt to their partners in the Kuwait coalition. And the Oslo accords--also nothing. In any case, although many people believe a resolution of the Palestine question is the key to everything, it is actually a key to nothing but itself. It would not affect the bloodshed in Iraq. It would not even affect the strife in Lebanon. It also would not calm the anxieties of the Saudi monarchy. Or the clamor for freedom in Egypt. Well, if a peace settlement doesn't douse these fires, another blue-ribbon panel surely will rise to the challenge. Jerome S. Kaufman is National Secretary of the Zionist Organization of America. and host the Israel Commentary website (http://www.israel-commentary.org). |
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AUSTRALIAN PUBLISHER NIXES BOOK OVER MUSLIM SENSITIVITIES
Posted by Hillel Fendel, November 27, 2006. |
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Scholastic Australia, a publisher of books for children and youth, has refused to publish a book it commissioned - because the villains are Muslim terrorists. Australia's national daily The Australian reports that Scholastic pulled the plug on a book by award-winning novelist John Dale after booksellers and librarians said they would not stock the adventure thriller. Andrew Berkhut, a Scholastic general manager, said the company had canvassed "a broad range of booksellers and library suppliers," who expressed concern that the book featured a Muslim terrorist. "They all said they would not stock it," he said. Scholastic Australia is part of Scholastic Inc., the largest publisher and distributor of books, magazines, educational and multimedia materials for children in the world. Scholastic Australia's website says it "has a strong commitment to children and education" and that it "believes that children and educators deserve the best - access to the highest-quality literature and learning materials from Australia and throughout the world." Yet Dale's book, "Army of the Pure," was canceled because of its content - despite its fulfillment of all other Scholastic criteria. "There are no guns, no bad language, no sex, no drugs, no violence that is seen or on the page," Dale said, but "because two characters are Arabic-speaking and the plot involves a mujaheedin extremist group," Scholastic's decision is based "100 per cent [on] the Muslim issue." Dale said the decision was "disturbing because it's the book's content they are censoring." In March 2004, The Australian reported, Scholastic commissioned Dale to deliver "a tough, snappy thriller" that would cause young readers to "break out in sweats and their eyes to bulge without giving them actual nightmares." Scholastic later described Dale's writing as "almost flawless." Dale is the director of the Centre for New Writing at the University of Technology. Scholastic also said that the story about four children chased by Afghan terrorists after discovering a plot to blow up Sydney's Lucas Heights nuclear reactor was a "gripping page-turner." Dale's agent, Lyn Tranter, branded the move to withdraw the book a "gutless" publishing decision. The Australian notes that the decision clashes with the recent publication in Australia of two books that attack the struggle against Muslim terrorism: Richard Flanagan's bestselling "The Unknown Terrorist," which is dedicated to David Hicks, a Westerner who was imprisoned after fighting side-by-side with the Taliban, and Andrew McGahan's "Underground," in which terrorists are portrayed as victims driven to extreme acts by the West's extreme struggle against Muslim terror. The WesternResistance.com site opines, "It seems that despite the world in which today's children are growing up, where Muslim terrorists seem hell-bent on causing widespread publicity through acts of terror, politically-correct libraries and booksellers would rather delude everyone with the lie that there is no such thing as Muslim terrorism." Hillel Fendel is Senior News Editor for Israel National News. |
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WHAT THE ISLAMISTS HAVE LEARNED: HOW TO DEFEAT THE USA IN FUTURE WARS
Posted by Michael Travis, November 27, 2006. |
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This was written by Michael Novak, who is George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute.This appeared in the Weekly Standard yesterday. |
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If I were an Islamist, a terrorist, a sworn foe of democracy, here is what I think I would have learned from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is what I would write down in my hard-earned manual of instruction. BY THE WILL OF ALLAH, in all wars to come, may it prepare our brave martyrs for combat operations! Today, the purpose of war is sharply political, not military; psychological, not physical. The main purpose of war is to dominate the way the enemy imagines and thinks about the war. Warfare is not, these days, won on a grand field of battle. Nor is it won by the force that wins series after series of military victories. Nor is triumph assured by killing far higher numbers of the enemy. The physical side of warfare no longer holds precedence. The primary battlefield today lies in the minds of opposing publics. The main strategic aim of war today is to dominate the mind of the enemy's public, and then ultimately to dominate the mind of that public's leaders. Let me offer three examples. At what moment did the war in Vietnam come to an end? At that precise moment when America's leaders decided that they could not resist the unrelenting storyline of the enemy, which had long prevailed in their own press. The press surrendered first, then the leaders of the nation. Observe that the Cold War ended not in an explosion of unprecedented violence, but rather at the precise moment when the Soviet elites no longer believed their own storyline. Superior ideas cowed them, superior will, superior narratives. Quite suddenly, the invincible Soviet elites folded, accepted humiliation, allowed the Wall to come down, and watched in bitterness as hundreds of millions of formerly captive peoples chose new forms of government. The endgame was psychological, not military. There was a military component--Star Wars--but nobody knew whether or not that would ever work. It was the idea of that weapon, and will for Reagan to proceed with it. The weaker political will yielded to the stronger will. Yet, as always, will followed storyline. First comes narrative, then the acts that give it flesh in history. What we have discovered in Iraq is the weakest link in the ability of the United States to sustain military operations overseas. That link is the U.S. media. They are Islamists' best friends. Experience shows that the mainstream press of the United States is alienated from the U.S. military. In addition, the American press is extremely vulnerable to anti-U.S. propaganda. Thus, the American public will be fed nearly everything that foreign adversaries--our band of brothers--wish to feed it about the war. Therefore, I write: Maxim # 1: To defeat America, impose upon the imagination of its media your own storyline. Even if you can muster only 10,000 soldiers over the entire countryside of Iraq, paint the narrative like this: The Americans are irresistible occupiers, and yet they cannot prevent small (even individual) acts of destruction. Daily, unrelenting acts of destruction demonstrate that chaos rules. The American strategy, and the American storyline of the war, are invalidated by continuing chaos, highly visible, every single day, on worldwide television. The new dominating story is that the Americans cannot win. Even though our own forces (for nearly two whole years now) can no longer afford to fight in a single operation lasting longer than a few hours, our martyr-brothers cannot be prevented from committing daily acts of destruction--the more stomach-turning the better--which demonstrate a ferocious will and a determination to destroy. In such wars, my brothers, whichever party maintains the stronger will, along the most durable storyline, always wins. To defeat the United States, then, it suffices to demonstrate that their vaunted military, for all its awesome power and tactical bravery in the field, cannot halt daily "chaos." To achieve this victory over America, it is not even necessary to create actual "chaos," but only its appearance. This definition of chaos cannot be made on cerebral, analytic, statistical, or comparative grounds. (In October the Times of London reported, "An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France" this year, with 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services and nearly 3,000 police officers injured. We don't need comparisons like this or comparisons with traffic deaths and violent crimes in individual U.S. states.) No, the shadowy existence of this "chaos" in Iraq is projected by a steady stream of stomach-churning, atavistic, destructive acts, staged day by day where the cameras of the U.S. press cannot resist them. Some of these acts bring orange explosions and black smoke, others consist simply of dumping dead and tortured bodies where the public cannot avoid discovering them. We design these images to show that our fighters will go where the United States will not, that our brave martyrs have harder linings in their stomachs than anyone in the West, and that our ferocity and determination, day after day, cannot be resisted. The aim of our terror is to induce surrender before the great battles are even fought. This is the true meaning of "asymmetric" warfare. The weaker side in military strength may demonstrate conclusively that it has a stronger stomach for relentless, unstoppable acts of terror. Besides, brothers, there seems to be a psychological tic in the minds of American journalists, which prevents them from understanding that our terror is ultimately aimed at them. Today, yes, they think it is aimed at their government, and will cripple their political opponents within that government. Without qualm or fear, therefore, they do our bidding day after day. Willingly, gleefully, with much self-congratulation, they pump our storyline into the bloodstream of the Western public. This is far easier than anyone ever taught us. This is our new discovery, our contribution to the history of warfare. Before our very eyes, the West grows fainter and weaker every day. Maxim # 2: Take heart, then, my terrorist brothers! Bin Laden is even more correct than we knew before the last two years. The West does not have the will to resist. Those elites among them who do have the stomach to fight back, inexorably, day after day, are being undermined by their own media. Now and in the future, the media will do our work. All we need are martyrs sufficient in number to keep a steady stream of orange flames and black smoke before their cameras, and to dump before them bodies that are stone-cold dead, and bear all over them the unmistakable blue marks of power drills and other disfigurements. Of such martyrs, we need each day only a handful. In 365 successive days, we need fewer than one thousand. This small band of brothers can defeat the most powerful army in human history. The path, my brothers, is to come to dominate the minds of their public, which they must suppose is supporting them, and in reality turns quite quickly into our best ally. This is not so huge a task, my brothers! In the long run of glorious history, the time required is like the blinking of an eye. Contact the poster at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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HANUKKAH - WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Posted by Michael Travis, November 27, 2006. |
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Hanukkah is almost upon us and my experience last year at the home of Giants pitcher Rod Beck has made me realise that the meaning of the holiday has become distorted and in urgent need of clarification. The Jewish "Festival of Lights" is not about dancing around Jewish Christmas trees, or giving to the anti-Semitic, terrorist-enabling UNICEF. Far from it. Hanukkah is ALL about the Jewish people rising ARMED to defend their families, friends, country, and their FAITH. In these turbulent times it is important to remember the true meaning of Hanukkah and not allow ourselves to be deceived by some Liberal, Politically Correct re-working of Jewish history and traditions. Jews have been commanded by G_d to defend their Communities and their Faith. The Faithful at B'nai Elim, like the Maccabees, follow G_d's commandments. This next essay is called "The Revolt of the Maccabees" by Rabbi Ken Spiro. |
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The Jewish revolt against the Greeks sets a precedent in human history - it becomes the world's first religious war. We know the details of the Jewish fight against the Greeks and Hellenism from the two Books of the Maccabees. (These chronicles are not included in the Hebrew Bible because, as we learned in Part 26, the Men of the Great Assembly had decided many years earlier what the Hebrew Bible should consist of and these events occurred much later in time. The Books of the Maccabees, which were probably written by a Hasmonean chronicler, who was certainly not a prophet, can be found in a collection called Sefer HaChitzonim which also contains other writings left out of the Hebrew Bible and which are mentioned or quoted in the Talmud.) This revolt of the Jews sets a precedent in human history. It is the world's first ideological/religious war. No one in the ancient world died for their gods; only the Jews thought that their religion - the only monotheistic religion at the time - was worth dying for. But (as we saw in Part 28), it is not just a war against the Greeks, it is also a civil war - Jews, who were loyal to Judaism, fighting other Jews, who had become Hellenized and who were siding with the Greeks. The year is 167 BCE and the horrible persecution of Judaism by the Greeks is in full swing. The Greek troops show up in the town of Modi'in (a site west of Jerusalem which you can visit today off the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway) and demand that the Jews there sacrifice a pig to the Greek gods. The elder of the town, Mattathias, who is a cohen, that is of the priestly class, refuses. But there is a Hellenized Jew in the town who is willing to do what is unspeakable in Jewish eyes. As he's about to sacrifice the pig, Mattathias stabs him, also killing the Greek official present. He then turns to the crowd and announces: "Follow me, all of you who are for God's law and stand by the covenant." (1 Maccabees 2:27) Those who join Mattathias and his five sons - named Judah, Elazar, Yohanan, Yonaton and Shimon - head for the hills, expecting that the Greeks are going to come back and wipe out the whole village as a reprisal. In the hills, they organize a guerilla army, led primarily by the oldest of the sons named Judah, nicknamed Maccabee, which means "the Hammer." Maccabee is also an acronym for mi komocho ba'alim Hashem, "who is like you among the powers O God," - the battle cry of the Jewish people. We don't know exactly how large this Maccabee army was, but even the most optimistic estimates put the number at no more than 12,000 men. This tiny force takes on the fighting Greek army of up to 40,000 men. It's not just a numerical superiority the Greeks have. The Greeks are professional soldiers - they have equipment, they have training, and they have a herd of war elephants, which were the tanks of the ancient world. The Jews are vastly outnumbered, poorly trained, and poorly equipped (not to mention, they have no elephants), but what they lack in training and equipment they make up in spirit. Most of the battles take place in the foothills leading from the coastal plain area (Tel Aviv) to Jerusalem. The Greeks are trying to march their armies up the natural canyons that lead into the mountain areas, the stronghold of the Jewish army. There's only a few places where the Greeks can ascend and this is where the Maccabees choose to take them on. Now when we read the story of the Maccabees it seems like it's something that takes place over a few weeks - the battles take place, the Jews win, and the Greeks go home. But, in fact, it takes 25 years of fighting and a great many casualties on both sides. CHANUKAH After the first three years, the Jews are able re-conquer Jerusalem. They find the Temple defiled and turned into a pagan sanctuary, where pigs are sacrificed on the altar. When they re-enter the Temple, the first thing they do is try to light a make-shift menorah (as the real gold one had been melted down by the Greeks) but only one vial of pure lamp oil with the special seal is discovered. They use this vial to light the menorah and miraculously it stays lit for eight days, by which time fresh pure oil has been pressed and delivered to the Temple. The Maccabees then purify the Temple and rededicate it on the 25th of Kislev, which is the date on the Hebrew calendar when we begin to celebrate the eight days of Chanukah. (The Hebrew word Chanukah means "dedication" or "inauguration.") Chanukah - one of two holidays added to the Jewish calendar by the rabbis - celebrates two kinds of miracles: 1) the military victory of the vastly outnumbered Jews against the Greeks; and 2) the spiritual victory of Jewish values over those of the Greek. It is this spiritual victory which is symbolized by the lights of Chanukah. The rededication of the Temple does not end the fight however. Unfortunately, some of the Hellenized Jews are not happy that the Maccabees took over Jerusalem, and they join forces with the Greeks and the fight continues. It's not until 142 BCE, during the reign of Seleucid monarch Demitrius, that the Greeks finally have enough of the fighting and sign a peace treaty with Simon, the last survivor of the five sons of Mattathias. In [that] year, Israel was released from the gentile yoke; the people began to write on their contracts and agreements: "In the first year of Simon, the great High Priest, general and leader of the Jews." (1 Maccabees 13:41-42) Thus Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel is officially restored. For the Kids! CHANUKAH Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, is observed for eight days, beginning on the evening of the twenty fifth day of the month of Kislev. This year, (2006), Chanukah starts at sundown, Friday, December 15th, and lasts for eight days thru Shabbat, December 23rd. Please see special instructions below for Friday and Saturday Menorah candle lightings. Chanukah is a wonderful holiday of renewed dedication, faith, hope and spiritual light. It's a holiday that says: "Never lose hope." Chanukah commemorates the victory, thru the miracles of Hashem, of a small band of Maccabees over the pagan Syrian-Greeks who ruled over Eretz Yisroel (Israel). WHAT DOES CHANUKAH MEAN? DEDICATIONS Chanukah has two meanings. First, and foremost, it means "dedication" because it was on Chanukah that the Beit Hamikdash (Holy Temple) was purified and rededicated to the service of Hashem, in 165 BCE, after many years of pagan defilement. Chanukah is also called "The Festival of Lights" referring to the flames kindled on each night. It is also called "The Festival of Light" as Chanukah is the victory of the forces of "light" - which include faith and loyalty to Hashem and the Jewish tradition and the will to fight for these beliefs - over the forces of "darkness," represented by the hedonistic lifestyle of the ancient Syrian-Greeks. THE MIRACLE(S) OF CHANUKAH The year was about 165 BCE. A large group of men led by Judah the Maccabee climbed to the top of a mountain overlooking Yerushalayim (Jerusalem). It was the same mountain from which, many centuries later, the Crusaders would launch their attack against the Moslems and from which, the Jordanian artillery would shell Yerushalayim in 1967. In 165 BCE, however, Judah and his men, with the help of Hashem, were about to complete a great victory, a triumph that lives on as the miracle of Chanukah. After the death of Alexander the Great, conqueror of the world and friend of the Jewish people, his Empire was divided among his generals. Eretz Yisroel (the land of Israel), - the Kingdom of Judea - was added to the Empire of Antiochus III. When Antiochus Epiphanes became king of the Syrian-Greeks, he was not content to accept the taxes and loyalty of the Jews as his predecessors had done. He wanted the Jews to lay aside their Torah and ancient religion, and, in their place, substitute the Hellenistic Greek culture and Grecian idols. King Antiochus bore down on his Jewish subjects with a measure of
ruthlessness, stubbornness and cruelty that earned him the nickname
Antiochus the Madman. (For a related story of bravery and courage
about Chana & her Seven Sons, go to Jews who dared to remain loyal to their faith were brutally tortured and murdered. If a woman had her infant circumcised, she was murdered, the baby publicly hanged, and all who participated in the Brit ceremony were executed and their property confiscated. Against this backdrop, Jewish resistance began to ebb and it seemed inevitable that the last remnants of resistance would soon be wiped out. Then, one courageous old man turned the tide. His name was Mattisyahu and he was a Kohain - head of the Hasmonean family, from the Judean town of Modi'in near Lod. The Syrian-Greek governor of Mattisyahu's region set up an idol in Modi'in, rounded up the townspeople, and introduced an "enlightened" Jew who would sacrifice a pig on the idol in recognition of the decree of Antiochus. Old Mattisyahu stepped forward and slew the traitor. With the rallying cry of, Mi Laï Hashem Ay-li (Whoever is for Hashem, let him come to me)," he called the people to rebellion. A pitifully small number responded at first - the people were numb with fear and hopelessness - but Mattisyahu's five sons led the way. They fought the Syrian-Greeks, retreated to the mountains, and began a guerrilla war against the Syrian-Greeks and their Jewish allies. Mattisyahu had not long to live, but on his death bed he charged his sons to carry on the struggle. The glorious brothers heeded his command. He passed on the leadership to his second son, Judah the Maccabee, who was a mighty warrior and a charismatic leader. Many miracles happened. Outnumbered a hundred to one, Judah and his men won many battles. Jews came to join him. In a few years, he had defeated the mightiest armies of Syria. Victory belonged to the Jew, the pure, the righteous, the loyal defender of the Torah. Following the rebellion, the kingdom of Israel was restored for 200 years, until the destruction of the Second Beit Hamikdash. So it was that Judah and his men climbed the mountain above Yerushalayim and saw that there was no resistance. On the twenty fifth day of Kislev, they marched into the Holy City and immediately made their way to the Beit Hamikdash where they saw a sight that left them shocked and angered. Idols, filth, impurity were everywhere. They rummaged through the ruins seeking at least one flask of pure olive oil with which to light the makeshift menorah they hastily put together. Flask after flask they found - every one of them defiled. Finally - another miracle! One small jug, sufficient for only one day, remained with the seal of the Kohain Gadol intact! Quickly, with trembling hands, they poured it into the menorah and lit it. It would be eight days before they could manufacture more oil for the next lighting, but meanwhile, they lit what they had. The flames of the menorah burned and burned and burned and burned and burned and burned and burned and burned. For eight days they burned. (I bet you counted). Those eight miraculous days were chosen as the eternal symbol to commemorate the miracle of Chanukah - the eight day long Festival of Lights, where we light the Menorah each evening, publicizing the miracle Hashem performed some 2000 years ago. WHY EIGHT DAYS? The question then arises, since the oil was adequate for one night, only seven days were miraculous. Why, then, wasn't Chanukah made a seven day festival? Many answers have been given over the years. Here are a few: * One extra day of celebration was proclaimed to commemorate the miracle of the military victory. LIGHTING THE MENORAH NOTE: This is just a very basic introduction. A competent authority should be consulted with any questions. The Menorah (or Hanukkiya in Hebrew), that we use today, is a nine-branch candelabra. On each night one more candle is added and lit, beginning with one candle on the first night of Chanukah and ending with the eighth on the final evening. The ninth branch is reserved for the shamash, the servant light, which is lit first and used to kindle the other lights of the Menorah. The candles of a menorah must be of equal height in a straight row. The shamash, should stand out from the rest (i.e. higher or lower). The best time to light the Chanukah candles is at nightfall. The whole family and guests should be present. Young children should also be encouraged to light the candles. Students and singles who live in dormitories or their own apartments should kindle menorahs in their own rooms. If someone can't be home by nightfall, we may light as long as people are still up and about - either at home or out of doors. On Friday afternoon, the Chanukah lights (which will burn until 1/2 hour after nightfall) are kindled BEFORE the Shabbat candles are lit. Saturday night, AFTER Shabbat ends, the Chanukah lights for Saturday night are lit. See below. The miracle of Chanukah, of course, involved pure olive oil and that's why it is preferable to kindle the Chanukah lights with cotton wicks and olive oil. Candles are perfectly all right, however. Many people prefer them because they give a steady, clean flame. The generally accepted custom is to place the menorah at a window so that it can be seen from the street. This is because we are required to proclaim the miracle publicly by means of the lights. Or, the menorah may be placed on the left side of a doorway opposite the mezuzah on the right side, so that we may be surrounded by mitzvot as we light the menorah. (such is the custom of Chabad-Lubavitch). The lights must burn for at least half an hour into the night,
(after nightfall), during which time no use may be made of the light.
The standard small colored Chanukah candles will burn long enough, but
- a word of caution - during the last few days of Chanukah when many
candles are lit, if the family menorahs are too close together, the
intense heat will cause the candies to burn down in less time. For
some Chanukah safety tips, go to
THE BRACHOT - BLESSINGS On the first night of Chanukah, Friday, Dec. 15, 2006, three
Brachot (blessings) are said. (For the Brachot, go to The first day -- candle is placed at the far right side of the menorah. On each succeeding day, an additional candle is placed to the previous night's candle's left. The lighting is done from left to right, in other words, the new candle of each night is lit before the old one(s). Light the shamash (extra candle) first. Then use the shamash to light the candles from left to right. SPECIAL SHABBAT REQUIREMENTS FOR 2006 This year, (Friday, December 15th, and Friday, December 22, 2006 ), the Chanukah Lights should be kindled early, BEFORE the Shabbat Lights (which are lit 18 minutes before sundown). Additional oil or larger candles should be used for the Chanukah Lights to ensure that they will last a full half hour after nightfall. Note: From the time the Shabbat candles are lit (Friday evening) until Shabbat ends (after nightfall Saturday night) and the Havdalah prayer (separating Shabbat from weekday) is recited, the Chanukah menorah should not be re-lit, moved or prepared. Chanukah lights for Saturday night, Dec.16th, are kindled AFTER Shabbat ends (after nightfall). HANEIROT HALOLU (THESE LIGHTS) After kindling the first candle (and on the second and later nights) while the others are being lit, this simple prayer is recited. It declares that we kindle these lights in memory of the miracles Hashem performed "in those days at this season," through the brave priestly family of Mattisyahu. It concludes by declaring that all through the eight days of Chanukah, the lights are holy - and are not to be used as a light source; only to be seen as an expression of gratitude and praise to Hashem for his miracles. One should not benefit from the light of the candles, only from the shamash and other sources of light. During the time the candles are burning, it is customary to sit by the candles, sing songs and tell stories relating to the holiday. Work should not be done in the proximity of the burning candles. MAOZ TZUR- A SONG OF HOPE AND COURAGE Maoz Tzur is the universal song of Chanukah. It traces eras of oppression - Egypt, Babylon, Haman, the Syrian-Greeks, the nineteen centuries since the Second Beit Hamikdash was destroyed and praises Hashem for redeeming Bnei Yisroel after each of them. A song of hope, it fills Jews with the courage to face the future and stresses the desire to a return of the Beit Hamikdash and the coming of Moshiach, Bimheira Beyomainu, (May it happen speedily in our days), Amen. AL HANISSIM Al Hanissim is a passage that is added on the days of Chanukah and Purim to the Birchat Hamazon (Grace after Meals) and Shmoneh Esrei (the Amidah - Silent Prayer) for morning, afternoon, and evening. It starts by expressing thanks to Hashem for the miracles of Chanukah and Purim. Then follows a section that is said on each specific holiday with details of the respective miracle that occurred on that holiday. Al Hanissim makes no mention of the miracle of the oil, per se. (The Talmud, Tractate Shabbat 21b, does however put emphasis on this miracle). Al Hanissim, focuses on both the physical and spiritual victories of the small band of Jews over the Syrian-Greek oppressors, and the guardian role of Hashem in the history of the Jews. Al Hanissim refers to the miracles that occurred "bayamim hahem bazman hazeh, (in those days, at this time)." Some say that it only refers to the miracles Hashem performed for our ancestors; others say that it also contains a large element of praise for the countless hidden miracles that Hashem performs for us every day. OTHER PRAYERS During the eight days of Chanukah, the entire Hallel (Psalms of praise taken from the Psalms of David), is recited every day in the Shacharit (morning) prayers. In addition, there is a special reading from the Torah Scroll each morning in the synagogue. The readings recall the offerings of the Nesiyim (Princes), heads of the Tribes of the Bnei Yisroel, during the inauguration of the Mishkan. WHO HAS A SPECIAL STAKE IN CHANUKAH? WOMEN! It is customary that women do no housework for the first half hour that the Chanukah lights are burning. Why? First of all because the Syrian-Greeks mistreated Jewish women systematically thru their vicious laws. Secondly, because a major figure in the victory was a Jewish woman named Yehudit, (Judith). She won the confidence of the Syrian-Greek general Halifornus. Then, after making him sleepy with wine and cheese, she decapitated him. When she hung his head out the window, the Syrian-Greek army was demoralized and the Jewish victory was greatly facilitated. THE DREIDEL The dreidel was introduced as a special treat for children. During the long winter nights of Chanukah they are given a respite from their studies and given this special Chanukah toy with which to wile away the time. The dreidel is a four-sided spinning top, also called a "s'vivon," in Hebrew. It is traditionally used to play a lively Chanukah game. The dreidel has on it's four sides, letters that tell the Chanukah message: a great miracle happened there - as if to say, "Play children, enjoy your beautiful gifts and your even more beautiful holiday. But remember, it was given us as a miracle by Hashem, our Creator and we will show our gratitude with renewed dedication to Him. "In Eretz Yisroel (Israel), the dreidel bears the letters Nun, Gimel Hay, and Pay standing for "Nes Gadol Hayah Po", a great miracle happened here. In the diaspora, (around the world), however, the dreidel says the letters Nun, Gimel Hay, and Shin meaning "Nes Gadol Hayah Shom", a great miracle happened there (in Eretz Yisroel). So even the dreidel is no idle toy. As it spins, it delivers a message. HOW TO PLAY DREIDEL Go To http://www.Torahtots.Com/holidays/chanuka/dreidel.htm to play to play spin the dreidel The dreidel is no idle toy. As it spins, it delivers a message. Each player places some dollars, quarters, dimes, or would you believe pennies, candies, raisins, or nuts into a kitty, and each player takes a turn spinning the dreidel. "Nun" means nothing, you win nothing, you lose nothing. "Gimel" means you take the whole kitty. "Hay" means you win half of what's in the kitty. "Shin" (or in Israel - "Pay") means "put in" - you lose, and must put one ...more into the kitty. THE ORIGIN OF THE DREIDEL The Syrian-Greeks decreed that the teaching or studying of Torah was a crime punishable by death or imprisonment. But the children defiantly studied in secret; and when Syrian-Greek patrols were spotted, they would pretend to be playing an innocent game of dreidel. CHANUKAH GELT On Chanukah, it is traditional to give all children Chanukah gelt (money) and/or presents. Of course, this beautiful custom adds to the children's happiness and festive spirit. In addition, it affords parents an opportunity to give children positive reinforcement for exemplary behavior, such as diligence in their studies, and acts of charity. Chanukah Gelt should be given to children after lighting the Menorah. The children should be encouraged to give charity from a portion of their money. MIRACLES AND MENUS - A HISTORIC COMBINATION Jewish tradition and religious observances are not exclusively tied to the synagogue. Judaism is an entire life experience that even permeates the kitchen. So it is that Pesach (Passover) is symbolized by the matzo and by a host of delicacies that have become integral parts of every Seder table. Rosh Hashana has its honey flavored foods. Purim has its hamantaschen, all of them contributing to the completeness of the holiday celebration. Chanukah is no exception. Which Jewish home hasn't enjoyed sizzling potato "latkes" on Chanukah. Why Chanukah? Because the ancient miracle took place through a jug of oil, so Jews for over 2,000 years have commemorated the event with delicious oily delicacies and fried food. And because the Jewish heroine Judith used cheese and milk to help her lull Syrian-Greek General Helipornas to sleep so that she could kill him, dairy delicacies like luscious cheesecake are Chanukah delights. For a few tempting recipes, go to http://www.torahtots.com/holidays/chanuka/chanstr.htm#hasmon Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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WHY NOT?
Posted by Riad Awwad, November 27, 2006. |
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Since our father is only one man, Abraham, we the arabs and you the jews have the same father. We have had, since than, a great relationship until the big forces in the world have interveened to spoil it. After the holocaust the jews thaught were to go, and they came to their cousins, the arabs. The problem is the arabs did not welcome their cousins like they should, with flowers, but with war !! I think this is the reason our area could not become like Japan or Switherland and has become the contrary, living hell every day !! There is only bloodshead between us! The terorists are the others that do not want peace to come forth in our region, political interests are those that do not let Irak, Lebanon and Israel be peacefull and calm... Well, let us try to make peace now, if not for us, then for our chidren and our grandchildren here to come !! Contact Riad Awwad at riadawwad2004@yahoo.com |
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PEACE FOR LAND
Posted by David Wilder, November 27, 2006. |
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Friday afternoon I was just coming out of a store in Kiryat Arba, when, getting into the car, I received one of the scariest phone calls I can recall. On the other end was Gerri. Gerri's husband Shlomo and I have been friends for about 30 years, of which he and Gerri have spent the last 20 years or so in Kiryat Arba. I was honored to be the 'sandak' at two of their five sons' Brit Milah, that is to be holding them during the ceremony of their circumcision. One of those two boys is studying in yeshiva. The other, Avi, is serving in the army. Gerri: "David, Avi was injured down in Gaza. He was in an army vehicle which was blown up. They say he's ok. I spoke to him. Shlomo and I are going to the hospital in Beer Sheva to be with him for Shabbat." I took Avi's phone number from her and called him. I too wanted to hear his voice. When I actually got a laugh out of him I knew he was OK. He was, according to his mother, full of 'resisim,' which, in English means shrapnel, from the explosion, but otherwise he seemed to be doing fine.
The fashion show over, we started with questions and answers. His unit, serving in Gaza, had set up an outpost in one of the more problematic terrorist neighborhoods. He was driving something similar to a tank, in back of three other vehicles, with a few more in back of him. His vehicle was targeted for the attack being that it potentially carried the most soldiers inside its metal stomach. A huge bomb, perhaps holding as much as 100 kilograms of explosives, detonated alongside the tank-like vehicle, tearing a hole in its side and sending thousands of tiny slivers of metal flying through the air. Avi, realizing immediately that he had been injured, did a quick self-check to examine the damage. Then, somehow, he managed to turn his tank around and drive some 20 minutes back to his base, with much of his body bleeding like a sieve. Much of his uniform had been burned off in the explosion, and when he reached his destination and stumbled out of the driver's seat, one of his commanders, seeing him, reeled, 'what happened to you?' Thank G-d, Avi's injuries were not terribly serious. The puncture wounds weren't very deep and none of his vital organs were hit. About as big a miracle as can be imagined. Now Avi has a few weeks off to recuperate, and then he'll report back to active duty. Whether or not he'll be able to continue in his unit will only be determined after he returns, but he didn't show any signs of wanting to run away and hide. To the contrary, he was in high spirits, despite the constant pain caused by his injuries. Avi's father explained to me: 'you know what it feels like when you get stuck by a thorn, and you can't get it out, and it hurts? That's what each one of the puncture wounds feels like.' I asked if anyone had counted how many little pieces of metal had punctured Avi's body, but the answer was negative. I guess, who would want to count them? But the whole time I was there, Avi didn't stop smiling, and I didn't hear any complaints. A real hero. Yet, despite the heroism of Avi and many others like him, sometimes I have to pinch myself to determine whether or not I'm really awake, or in the midst of some kind of nightmare. This morning Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, speaking at the grave of David Ben Gurion, again offered the terrorists, enemies of the state, whose aims start with the destruction of Israel and end with the Islamization of the world, release of murderers from Israeli jails, establishment of a terrorist state, expulsion of tens and hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes and abandonment of our homeland. All of this if only they would agree to a 'real peace.' O.K. These people are brain dead. They have nothing left upstairs. They have learned nothing from the last 100 years of history, nothing from the over 2,000 people killed since Oslo, nothing from the thousands of Kasam rockets that have been launched since the abandonment of Gush Katif, and nothing from the Hizballah-Syrian-Iranian axis which launched war on Israel this past summer. I have no hopes or illusions about these people. I only pray that G-d will keep them from doing any more real damage, that, one way or another, their plans to assist in erasing Israel from the map will be thwarted. But what about our own? Last week the rightwing Israeli weekly newspaper Makor Rishon printed an article written by Erez Tadmor, which deals with several new 'peace plans' being suggested by none other than people like former Yesha council secretary general Adi Mintz, MK Yisrael Katz, and most surprisingly, former Hebron resident Yechiel Leiter. Leiter, today a resident of Eli in the Shomron, once a prominent Hebron leader, was also a leader of the Yesha council for many years, an advisor to Limor Livnat and later to Bibi Netanyahu. His proposal, as presented in the Makor Rishon article calls for Israel to 'transfer' 5,000 Israelis in eleven communities, due to their 'problematic' locations, while declaring sovereignty over 42 percent of Judea and Samaria. That means, leaving 58% to our neighbors. He doesn't rule out 'one-sided' Israeli withdrawal: leaving heavily populated Arab land to the Arabs, while declaring Israeli sovereignty over the other land areas. Why: 'The right has, for too long, only said no -- what not to do. Now the time has come for us to say 'yes' -- what can, and should be done.' Leiter calls this plan 'hitgabshut,' which might be translated 'the integration plan.' Reading this article, I wasn't overly surprised by Katz or Mintz. The Yesha council has not been known, in the last few years at least, to be bastion of rightwing thought or action. However, seeing a man of Leiter's credentials offering Eretz Yisrael on a silver platter to our enemies is a matter of concern. But my greatest concern is this: Leiter has awarded legitimacy to all of those, be they Israeli, American or Arab, who proclaim that the solution to the Middle East conflict is land for peace. Eretz Yisrael for ... something. We must sacrifice our land (where is Hebron on your map, Mr. Leiter? Are up willing to displace your family from its home in Eli too?) for... what? For promises? For a piece of paper? For wants and wishes? Leiter, with this proposal, is walking in the footsteps of his old friend, Ariel Sharon, destroying what's left of the right, integrating the right into the left, letting the genie out of the bottle, and announcing to the whole world: YES, EVEN THOSE OF US LIVING IN JUDEA AND SAMARIA, THOSE OF US WHO SPENT DECADES BUILDING OUR LAND, THOSE OF US WHO BELIEVE THAT G-D GAVE US THIS LAND, OUR LAND, ERETZ YISRAEL, WE TOO ARE WILLING TO UPROOT OURSELVES, ABANDONING OUR HOMES AND COMMUNITIES, SACRIFICING THEM TO MOLECH. From now on, the Israeli left, fighting to destroy the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria will have a new friend: Yechiel Leiter. They will be able to say: 'Look, even one of your own admits defeat. He says eleven communities, we say fifty communities. He says 5,000 and we say 100,000 -- this can all be put on the negotiating table. But the principal is accepted by us all -- the Land of Israel, is negotiable. It can legitimately be dealt away if the deal is right, like a discarded card in a poker game. When reading such awful ideas, as presented by 'one of our own' I ask myself, why should young men, like Avi, and others, put their lives on the line. For what? Only to be told, after battling for their land and their people, that it was for naught, that we are 'giving it back?!' All I can say is, thank G-d for the thousands and thousands of Avis who, with faith and strength, are willing to give their lives for their land, for their people, for their country. Their very service is the antithesis of Leiter's 'integration plan' -- they are saying 'yes' -- yes to our land, yes to our people, yes to G-d. They proclaim, with others of us -- 'peace for land.' If and when our neighbors will stop warring against us, allowing us to live peacefully and quietly in our land, we will let them live peacefully too. As long as we are forced to fight for our land, they too will not know peace and comfort in OUR land. We will agree to give them peace when they stop trying to take away our land. Peace for Land. I wait breathlessly for the day when Avi and his friends will take
off their uniforms and participate in actively leading the State of
Israel - away from the directions offered by Leiter and his friends,
and in the direction that G-d had in mind when he promised us, and
gave us our holy land, our Eretz Yisrael.
David Wilder is spokesman of The Jewish Community of Hebron. You
can contribute directly to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB10,
Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, hebron@hebron.org.il, 972-2-9965333 or write
to The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230,
hebronfund@aol.com
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IN WAR APPEARANCES ARE DECEPTIVE; INDECENCY; HRW VERSUS HUMAN RIGHTS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 27, 2006. |
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THE MOSQUE SIEGE -- MORE The IDF chased dozens of terrorists into a mosque, from which they opened fire on Israeli troops. The P.A. media reported a crowd of women and children heeding the call to march to the mosque and escort the men to safety, but were fired upon by Israeli troops. The P.A. unwittingly admitted that its civilians acted as human shields. This was not the first time that the terrorists called upon civilians to do so (Palestinian Media Watch in IMRA, 11/5). The P.A. acts indignant that some of the women involved in that criminality and forfeiture of civilian status got shot during an Israeli attempt to get at the terrorists. What isn't realized about Muslim Arab grievances and claims to have been humiliated is that their religion teaches them that they have a duty to humiliate people of other religions. Israel, by retaking an area that had been conquered by Islam, and by ruling over Muslims, reverses Islam's notion of the march of history, just as the Communists thought they were riding the wave of the future. Muslims perceive Israeli independence as an affront to Islam. They feel humiliated unless they are humiliating other people. APPEARANCES ARE DECEPTIVE The vicissitudes of war (at least how it is reported) give the impression of both sides having a legitimate point. By fighting Israel, Hizbullah got the advantage of underdog status, although the overall Muslim forces, population, and territory make them the Goliath. The war made Hizbullah become a party to reckon with. The ceasefire made it appear to be a partner for peace. Nobody discussed what Hizbullah's cause is (because it is the destruction of Israel, nothing legitimate). The war should have shown that Israel cannot slake Muslim hostility, not by withdrawal and not by trying to make peace. Same for the West as a whole, for the hostility is due to who and what we are, not what we do. It comes from within Islam, not as a result of Western behavior. The West lives under constant threat of Muslim violence. Al-Qaeda boasts that it will win, because Westerners love life, whereas Muslims love death and will sacrifice more. Muslims prefer "greatness" in death to achievement in life. Sticking to misconception, Westerners think that Muslim extremism arises from oppression (or poverty). The West is afraid "of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism, and colonialism." (Those were and are sins of Islam, too, but most Westerners don't know it.) The West, especially Europe and the US Left, is beset with feelings of guilt. Actually, Islamists don't hate the West for oppressing them (which it does not do any more and Israel never did), but because the West ended oppression, and now Islam stands on its own. The West, being more advanced, shows it up. The same kind of Western guilt afflicts Israel. The Israeli Left thinks its country is bigoted towards the Arabs, but "...Islamic extremism is the most explicitly and dangerous expression of human bigotry since the Nazi era." (Jewish Political Chronicle, 9/2006, p.36 from Shelby Steele, Wall St. J., 8/22). Every Islamic state oppresses its own people. The stronger ones strive to oppress others, too. INDECENCY AMONG THE EDUCATED The president of the University of Pennsylvania held a Halloween party. She posed with an Arab guest dressed as a suicide bomber. Suicide bombers are war criminals who have murdered innocent people all over the world, including Americans. Whereas a university officer would not pose with a guest dressed as a member of the KKK, she is comfortable with one posing as a suicide bomber. What indecency! (Prof. Steven Plaut, 11/5.) She probably pretends to being moral, perhaps a progressive. INDECENCY IN A HOLY CITY The Ford Foundation was caught working against Israel. It pledged to stop its anti-Israel projects. It didn't. It gives hundreds and hundreds of thousands to strengthen the Arabs in Israel. Now it has a new way to divide Israelis and alienate Jews from Israel. The Foundation subsidized an Israeli organization enough to underwrite a gay parade (probably involving vulgar displays) in the holy city of Jerusalem. Religious Jews will fight against this physically. (Muslims oppose it, too.) That will alienate the mass of the Jewish people, who have come to hate homophobia more than religious Jews object to homosexuality, from Judaism and from Israel. Barry Chamish asks what else is that parade for, in that city, but just such a provocation. It is more subversive than degenerate. The government of Israel seems complicit in the impending strife. The police wanted to ban the parade, but the Attorney-General overruled them. Thousands of police are being called away from anti-terrorism duty to protect the paraders. "They put ugly graffiti on a Tel Aviv synagogue, sent notes threatening to rape religious girls, attack the mayor...and it's all likely the Shabak's (secret service) dirty tricks department at work. The people still fall for such dirty tricks (Chamish, 11/8). An Israeli MK suggested that police devote equivalent resources to allowing and protecting Jewish worshippers from Muslims atop the Temple Mount. A parade there, rather than in the anything-goes Tel Aviv, is akin to the Nazi march through Skokie, home of Holocaust survivors. Couldn't be more callous. Sometimes civil libertarians are the spearhead of barbarism. U.S. MUSLIMS DIS-ASSIMILATING The younger, American-born, Muslims increasingly alienate themselves from mainstream US life. They choose Islamic identity over Americanism. In becoming more religious, they stick to their own communities and reject "shared values and common culture." They are separating themselves in schools via Muslim student associations, Islamic lectures, separate schools, language and dress, and in centering their lives around mosques. So far, the younger generation is not terrorist, and follow a moderate leader (Jewish Political Chronicle, 9/2006, p.41 from Genevive Abdo in Wash. Post, 8/27). The author deceives herself. To become a terrorist is a two-step process: (1) Return to Islam seriously; and (2) Become radicalized. Faith in Islam, a religion of war, is the prerequisite. Is this what we want for our country? How many cells already exist? Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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JEWISH REFUGEES FROM ARAB COUNTRIES
Posted by Michael Travis, November 27, 2006. |
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The campaign for the rights and redress of Jewish refugees from Arab countries was launched at the end of October in Jerusalem and attracted coverage in the Israeli, North American, European and even Arabic press and media. The campaign, which seeks to document the stories of Jews and their lost assets, is set to continue until April 2008. During November a conference on Babylonian Jewry took place in New York; 60 years on from the exodus of Egyptian Jews after the Suez crisis, the 'Journees Egyptiennes' in Paris focused on Egyptian Jewry. In the UK, Harif organised five events, attended in all by 450 people. The US and France will launch their campaign in the Spring to coincide with the story of the Passover Exodus. If you or your relatives were forced to flee Arab countries or Iran, please register your details urgently at www.justiceforjews.com. |
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LONDON EVENTS Muslim-Jewish relations in the Maghreb, 1850 -- 1948 . Lecture by Moroccan historian Dr Mohammed Kenbib. Mon 4 December, The Sephardi Centre, London W9. 7.30 for 8pm.Harif/Spiro Ark/Sephardi Centre. Tickets £8 from Spiro Ark on 0207 723 9991. Identity and memory among the Jews of Salonica . Salonica was for 500 years a Jewish city under Muslim Ottoman rule. Lecture by Dr Bea Lewkowicz. Thursday 18 January 2007. Holland Park Synagogue, W11. 7.30 for 8pm. Harif/Spiro Ark/Jewish Genealogical Society of GB.Tickets £7 from Spiro Ark on 0207 723 9991. The last days of Babylon. Talk/ launch of Marina Benjamin's new book at Spiro Ark Centre, 25 -- 26 Enford St, W1. Saturday 3 February 2007. 7.30 for 8pm. Harif/Spiro Ark. Booking Spiro Ark on 0207 723 9991. Salonica, city of silence. UK premiere of film by Maurice Amaraggi. Wednesday 7 February 2007.Holland Park Synagogue, W11. 7.30 for 8pm. Harif/Spiro Ark/Jewish Genealogical Society of GB. Tickets £7 from Spiro Ark on 0207 723 9991. Conversation between Naim Kattan, author of Farewell Babylon and Marina Benjamin author of Last days of Babylon, Chaired by Linda Dangoor-Khalastchi. Sunday 4 March 2007, 2pm. Royal National Hotel, Bedford Way, London WC1. Jewish Book Week in association with Harif. Information 0207 446 8771. NEW BOOK Last days in Babylon by Marina Benjamin, just published in the US. To order online:
FILM : The David Project's Forgotten refugees
For all these stories and more visit the regularly-updated 'Point of no Return' at www.jewishrefugees.blogspot.com RIGHTS AND REDRESS CAMPAIGN FOR JEWISH REFUGEES Finally, a push for Jewish refugees from Arab lands
Jerusalem meeting an outstanding success
Coverage of Jewish refugees meeting
Minister calls on Oriental Jews to make claims
Mid-East refugees campaign
Libyan Jew fled in terror in 1967
Making the case for the forgotten Oriental Jews
US Jews step up campaign on Jewish refugees
Revisionist backlash to refugees' campaign begins
JEWS FROM ARAB/MUSLIM COUNTRIES Israel must become 'the Jewish quarter of an Arab town'
Satloff on Arab anti-Zionism and anti-semitism
Stolen Jewish land and property
Jewish translators salvaged Arab philosophy
BAHRAIN Bahrain's Jews cannot travel to Israel
SYRIA The unsung Canadian who saved Syrian Jewry
IRAQ US Holocaust Museum admits Nazi-Arab axis
The 1941 Farhoud was premeditated
Last Jews of Baghdad screened in London
Saddam's death sentence 'fair' -- Iraqi Jews
Can a Jew also be Arab? - Naim Kattan
IRAN Jews unwilling participants in Iranian documentary
EGYPT Brindisi erects plaque to refugees of 1956
The three exiles of Algerian Jewry
Turks remember 2003 synagogue attacks
NON-MUSLIM/NON-ARAB MINORITIES Pope expresses solidarity with Iraqi Christians
Christians flee as extremist threat worsens
More Coptic girls disappear
PALESTINIAN REFUGEES Condi Rice is for a 22nd Arab state but not for a Kurdish state
Golan, right of return top Syrian priorities
Who are Palestinian refugees?
History and the Palestinian 'right of return'
Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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HITLER'S WAR AGAINST THE JEWISH PEOPLE NOT OVER
Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, November 27, 2006. |
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Dear friends, A few days ago, one of the worst anti-Semites on my readers' list, sent me a series of anti-Semitic cartoons by Muslim cartoonists. He sent it not to express disgust but to prove a bigoted point. You see, one of the biggest lies of all time is that the State of Israel was created is a result of the Holocaust. And more: That the "poor Palestinians suffering" is a direct from what Hitler did to the Jewish people. The fact that this Nazi-bigot disseminates such lies is not at all surprising to me. Unfortunately, there are many such barbarians around. What is surprising is some of the people on the readers' list of this man (who does not even know how to use the Bcc feature in his software), among them people in The Guardian and The Independent newspapers, as well as university professors, mostly in England. That is shocking because they are regular readers on his list! In case you have also been contaminated by the above mentioned lie, here are just a few facts of many: 1) Jews always lived in the Land of Israel from the time of the Roman conquest.
Following, please find a great article on the subject by Naomi Ragen. Please read it and forward to as many readers as possible. Naomi mentions the program put together for CNN by Glen Beck. In case you missed it, please find below the link to this video. Also attached are the cartoons sent by that anti-Semite bigot. This is propaganda even the Goebels and the Nazis would be proud of.
The essay below is called "Enemies and Allies" and comes from Naomi Ragen. Your Truth Provider,
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I was in the middle of leafing through former Israeli Chief Rabbi
Lau's moving autobiography of his childhood in concentration camps,
when I came across a photo of a young person who survived Hitler, only
to die as a soldier in Israel's War of Independence. That night, I
happened to go to youtube to watch Glenn Beck's remarkable documentary
aired on CNN's Headline News. In it I saw footage of an Egyptian
television show about how a young girl's eyes are stolen and given to
the Zionists. Other television shows on Arab channels show Jews
hunting Christian children for their blood, which is needed (what
else?) to bake Passover matzohs.
It suddenly occurred to me that Hitler's war against the Jews is not over. Sixty years later, the same irrational, sick hatred, racism, fascism has targeted us again. Unlike my foolish brethren in Peace Now who seek the approval of those who hate them, I do not. There is no need to search out reasons why my children (all of whom were born in Israel and so certainly can claim the same rights as anybody born in Jordan or Syria whose parents once had a house here) deserve to be vilified and targeted and terrorized and harmed, just as there is no reason to search out the crimes of six million of our brothers and sisters who lived in other lands, lands which told them they were being murdered because their noses were too long, or because they were ruling the world, or because they refused to go back to Palestine. Such reasons can only be found in the despicable nature of the culture and society which breeds our enemies, people whose sole contribution to mankind is bottomless evil and depravity. I spit on them all, and on their friends and supporters and apologists. And to those who believe our very existence on this little piece of desert land is their just grievance, a grievance that must be avenged and redressed, I say this, quoting Zeev Jabotinsky: "We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not. There is no other morality....this does not mean that there cannot be any agreement with the Palestine Arabs. What is impossible is a voluntary agreement. As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall. Not till then will they drop their extremist leaders whose watchword is "Never!" And the leadership will pass to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions. But the only way to obtain such an agreement, is the iron wall, which is to say a strong power in Palestine that is not amenable to any Arab pressure. In other words, the only way to reach an agreement in the future is to abandon all idea of seeking an agreement at present." We are at war. It is not one of our choosing, but one that has been unleashed upon us, every single Jew in the world, and every other person who doesn't pray to Mecca, as well as many who do. This not a new war, but a continuation of an old one. The enemy has changed his outfits and his philosophies, and his laundry list of grievances, but his character and his agenda remains the same: to torture and kill and destroy. The beast is hard at work. I see the signs of him winking out at me in the careless, anti American banter of late night talk show hosts, and the headlines of almost all newspapers. Everyone has jumped on the bandwagon. All of them siding with the dictators and the beheaders and the religious fanatics for oh such liberal reasons. Yet, I haven't lost hope. While as a religious Jew, I am hoping for a miracle, I also know that God helps those who help themselves. What we need is clarity. We hold these truths to be self-evident: 1. When someone- whether it is the Prime Minister of Israel, or a Syrian diplomat or Condoleezza Rice- say they are in favor of "a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine living side by side in mutual harmony and respect" what they are really saying is that they are in favor of the demise of the State of Israel. Proof: The disengagement from Gaza, a mini two state solution, which has resulted in thousands of rocket attacks on Southern Israel, reaffirming the fact that the so-called Palestinians do not want a state of their own, but to destroy the State of Israeland all the Jews who live there. Those advocating this are siding with our enemies. We believe that the following steps need to be taken to secure the continued freedom of Israel, religion and Western values in the world. Anyone in favor of these steps, can be viewed as allies. 1. America needs to find out the identity of the terrorists in Iraq, and declare war on those who finance, supply, and send them. Well, that's it for starters. I welcome additions to the list. Naomi Yuval Zaliouk writes the Truth Provider columns. To subscribe, send an email to ynz@netvision.net.il |
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PALESTINIAN EMIGRATION ON THE RISE
Posted by Martin Sherman, November 26, 2006. |
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There is accumulating and accelerating evidence the extensive Palestinian emigration is not only feasible but is in fact gathering momentum. This comes from the Jerusalem Post and is archived at www.jpost.com/servelet/Satellite?cid=1161811251277@pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull |
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Palestinians are leaving the territories due to the harsh security and economic situation there, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. Israel Radio reported that thousands of Palestinians have received permits to emigrate to Arab and other foreign countries. Ahmed Suboh, a Palestinian Foreign Ministry official, said at a Ramallah press conference that over the last four months, foreign and Arab diplomats in the territories have authorized 10,000 Palestinians to enter their countries. Suboh said that some 45,000 additional emigration requests were currently being evaluated by various foreign representatives. The Foreign Ministry official noted that Palestinian emigration was likely to continue with the deterioration of the security situation. Contact Dr. Martin Sherman at ms6747@gmail.com |
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WACKY ARIZONA IMAM TAKES TO THE AIR ONCE AGAIN!
Posted by Michael Travis, November 26, 2006. |
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This next is a press release from MAS Freedom organization. |
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In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful MEDIA ADVISORY Imam Barred From US Airways Joins Interfaith Clerics and NAACP Leader for Press Conference, Prayer, and Flight on US Airways MAS Freedom Conducts Airport "Pray-in" and Press Conference WASHINGTON, DC - (MASNET) On Monday, November 27th, 8:15 AM, at the US Airways ticket counter located in the Reagan National Airport, Imam Omar Shahin, one of the six Imams removed from US Airways flight 300, will join Imam Mahdi Bray, Executive Director of the MAS Freedom Foundation, Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center of Philadelphia, Rev Graylan Hagler of the United Church of Christ, Hillary Shelton, Director of the NAACP-Washington National Office, and other interfaith members for a press statement, public prayer, and flight departure on US Airways. The "pray-in" is in response to US Airways' removal of Imam Omar Shahin and five other Imams traveling from a religious leader's conference in Minnesota. Three of the Imams were observed praying prior to departure. Subsequent to boarding the plane, the six were removed from the flight, handcuffed, and detained in the airport for questioning for over five hours. Upon release, US Airways and other airlines refused to allow them to purchase tickets for other scheduled flights to Phoenix. "The detention of these religious leaders, and the refusal of the airline to allow them travel, is a gross example of blatant Islamophobia and the violation of the civil rights of Muslim passengers", said Imam Mahdi Bray, Executive Director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. "The last time I checked, public prayer was still protected by the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion and speech. It's a shame that as an African-American and a Muslim I have the double whammy of having to worry about driving while Black and flying while Muslim. We charge the airline with not only discrimination, but with an action that is insulting and demeaning to these Muslim religious leaders, and to all people of faith." The MAS Freedom Foundation, and many in the interfaith and civil rights community, feel strongly that in addition to religious discrimination, the issue involving the six Imams is also a religious freedom issue. We have forwarded the case to several prominent civil and constitutional rights attorneys and legal scholars. The Freedom Foundation is the public affairs arm of the Muslim American Society (MAS), a national grassroots religious, social, and educational organization. MAS is America's largest grassroots Muslim organization with over 50 chapters nationwide. Learn more at www.masnet.org. -END- Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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THE WORLD MUST NOT SUPPORT MUSLIM BIGOTRY
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, November 26, 2006. |
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The last thing this world needs is another state ruled by bigots who refuse to allow others with contrasting belief systems to dwell within its borders. Israel, a unique tiny tolerant democracy, mostly Jewish but amply populated and in fact influenced in policy making by Muslims, Christians, an array of other faiths, as well as atheists, is nestled within a vast region substantially composed of many racist fundamentalist Islamic states that ban Jewish residents. So-called Palestinians, already heaped within the racist Muslim enclave of Gaza, are presumably willing to cease heaving deadly missiles into Israel for a while, if indeed Israel boots out all of its Jewish citizens from and cedes Judea and Samaria to those same Arabs. If ever there was an offer reeking with extortion this is it. How can civilized evolving nations worldwide, observing such hubris, not castigate Muslim bigots, utterly disregarding humane principles by so disrespecting Jewish enclaves within lands of disputed sovereignty? How can civilized evolving nations worldwide not intercede and strongly opine any government negotiating to rule over any parcel of land must first pledge to protect and defend the rights of all inhabitants, ethnicity notwithstanding, of that land, especially those that have erected communities only wishing to dwell in peace? Why in fact must civil nations coddle bigoted Arab Muslims, who share nothing in common with the concept of an enlightened tolerant mankind, an absolutely essential prerequisite to prosperity in an emerging century twenty-one? Why in fact do civil nations not support Israel's conundrum, urging that besieged State to defend itself even more aggressively from deadly missile attacks, and fervently suggest no Israeli politico bow to extortion by ceding an inch of land to in effect a criminal regime launching missiles that murder and maim innocent civilians within a neighboring sovereign nation? Any and all land developed and inhabited by Israeli citizens within Judea and Samaria is worthy of their stewardship, would not have been developed conforming to humane tolerant standards by Arabs insisting on but one theological structure barring all others, thus should remain freely accessible to Jews and all others under the sovereign aegis of laws and moral principles democratically crafted and espoused by the State of Israel, to be enforced by Israel's considerable military might if necessary. Furthermore, if fairness remains a consideration, all of Judea, Samaria, east Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights should forthwith be formally declared sovereign Israeli territory, based on precedents controlling the fate of land justifiably secured in combat. The aforementioned land was so secured in 1967 by Israel, defending itself against Arab aggressors intent on annihilating the Jewish State. The horrifically stupid act of ceding Gaza to an unstable Arab entity labeled Palestine should be promptly annulled. Any and all residents within declared sovereign Israeli territory, due to facts on the ground, must pledge their allegiance to the government of Israel to the exclusion of all other ruling cadres. Any and all residents not willing to do so should be given a reasonable amount of time to pack and leave, fairly compensated by the State of Israel for assets left behind, amounts to be determined by a fiscally prudent finance minister. Although such an edict would be entirely unacceptable to most Arab Muslim residents, at least they would be afforded an opportunity to remain and practice their faith, governed by a democratic nation, provided they recognize and adhere to the imperatives of that government. Any sovereign state has the right to expect loyalty. Any sovereign state has the right to prosecute and or expel those committing acts of treason. Israel and indeed Jews in general will be disrespected and perhaps despised by much of the world, no matter how obsequious they are, no matter how tough they are. It surely pays to be tough! Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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GETTING READY FOR HANUKKAH AND A HAPPY CHRISTMAS
Posted by Michael Travis, November 26, 2006. |
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This is called "'If IDF doesn't leave West Bank, we'll resume attacks'
-- (like they ever stopped.) The article was written by Khaled Abu
Toameh and appeared today in the Jerusalem Post
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Hamas on Sunday dismissed as "unacceptable" Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's threat to arrest any Palestinian who violates the latest cease-fire with Israel. Meanwhile, several Palestinian armed groups warned that they would resume their attacks unless Israel also halted its military operations in the West Bank. At least three groups, including Islamic Jihad, have refused to sign on to the cease-fire agreement. One of them is the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, which said it would not abide by the cease-fire as long as Israel continued to arrest its members in the West Bank. The group, which belongs to Abbas's Fatah party, was responding to the arrest of Mahmoud Kadoura, a top member of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, in Ramallah. Abu Obaidah, a spokesman for Hamas's armed wing, Izaddin Kassam, also warned that the cease-fire would collapse unless Israel stopped its military operations in the West Bank immediately. "The Israeli aggression must stop in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip," he said. "This is a temporary cease-fire and any Israeli assault on our people in the West Bank will be viewed as a violation of the agreement." Shortly after the cease-fire went into effect at 6 a.m. Sunday, Abbas ordered the deployment of some 13,000 PA policemen in the northern part of the Gaza Strip to stop the firing of rockets at Israel. Abbas also ordered the policemen to arrest anyone who violates the cease-fire. But sources close to Abbas expressed fear that Hamas would try to torpedo the deployment of the security forces. They also worried that some officers would refuse to carry out Abbas's instructions, either for political reasons or to protest unpaid salaries. Abbas's threat drew sharp criticism from Hamas, which warned against any attempt to arrest its members. "The era of political detentions has gone forever," said Khaled Abu Hilal, spokesman for the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry, which is formally in charge of the PA security forces. Condemning Abbas's threat as "provocative," Abu Hilal said: "Such threats don't help preserve the cease-fire; on the contrary, they jeopardize the cease-fire. We urge those who are issuing threats to backtrack or to deny them."
The Hamas spokesman nonetheless stressed his movement's desire to maintain the cease-fire on condition that Israel also abided by it. Ahmed Bahar, a senior Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, claimed that the initiative for the cease-fire came from Israel, not the Palestinians. "The Israelis started begging for a cease-fire because of their defeat [in the Gaza Strip]," he told reporters. "The Palestinian resistance played an important role in repelling the Israeli army. The Palestinians are always triumphant." Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led government, said representatives of all the armed groups were expected to hold a meeting late Sunday to assess the situation in the aftermath of the cease-fire announcement. "We want this agreement to succeed and take hold," he told The Jerusalem Post. "We will also launch an investigation into this morning's violations of the cease-fire. There is a consensus on the Palestinian side that the cease-fire must be based on the principle of reciprocity. I believe that all the groups are interested in maintaining this cease-fire." Earlier in the day, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh met with leaders of the armed groups and urged them to abide by the cease-fire. Following a similar meeting on Saturday night, Haniyeh phoned Abbas to inform him that all the groups had agreed to honor a conditional cease-fire with Israel. Abbas later phoned Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and told him about the decision. Explaining his organization's rejection of the cease-fire, Syria-based Islamic Jihad Secretary-General Ramadan Shalah said he was opposed to "partial truces" with Israel. "We have expressed reservations about this cease-fire because it applies only to the Gaza Strip and not the West Bank," he said. "It's not in the interest of the Palestinians to talk about a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip while Israel is continuing with its incursions, detentions and assassinations in the West Bank."
Contact the poster at michaelmgr@gmail.com
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THE GEMAYEL WARNING
Posted by Michael Travis, November 25, 2006. |
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This article was written by Caroline Glick and it was published November 24, 2006 in the Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1162378471759&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull). |
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Tuesday saw another nail driven into the coffin of US President George W. Bush's vision of a free and democratic Middle East. The Syrians aren't even trying to hide their involvement in the assassination of Lebanon's Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel. Hours after Gemayel was murdered, his killers issued a communiqu calling themselves the "Fighters for the Unity and Liberty of Greater Syria." They said that they killed Gemayel because he was "one of those who unceasingly spouted their venom against Syria and against [Hizbullah], shamelessly and without any trepidation." Gemayel, they threatened, would be the first of many victims. As they put it, "Sooner or later we will pay the rest of the agents their due..." The hit this week was not a bolt from the blue. For the past several weeks Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah and his bosses in Syria and Iran have made it brutally clear that they intend to bring down the anti-Syrian government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and replace it with a pro-Syrian, pro-Iranian coalition led by Hizbullah. Although their intentions are clear, a casual observer of events could be forgiven for finding the timing of Gemayel's murder somewhat mystifying. After all, the UN Security Council is preparing the establishment of an international tribunal to try those responsible for the February 2005 murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Why would Syrian President Bashar Assad wish to make people mad at him now by killing yet another anti-Syrian politician in Lebanon? What a casual observer misses is the simple fact that events in Lebanon do not stand on their own. Like Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon is a front in a regional war being waged against the US, Israel and their allies by Iran and Syria. Iraq is another front in this war and Gemayel's murder is intimately tied to developments in Iraq. The Democratic Party's victory in the November 7 Congressional elections convinced Iran and Syria that they are on the verge of a great victory against the US in Iraq. Iranian and Syrian jubilation is well founded in light of the Democratic leadership's near unanimous calls for the US to withdraw its forces in Iraq; Bush's firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his appointment of his father's CIA director Robert Gates to replace him; and Bush's praise for the Congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group charged with revisiting US strategy in Iraq, which is being co-chaired by his father's secretary of state James Baker III. Although his committee has yet to formally submit its recommendations, Baker made clear that he will recommend that the administration negotiate a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq with Iran and Syria. That is, he is putting together a strategy not for victory, but for defeat. Baker fervently believes that US foreign policy should revolve around being bad to its friends and good to its enemies. Consequently he thinks that the US can avoid the humiliation of the defeat he proposes by buying off Syria and Iran, the forces behind most of the violence, instability, subversion and terror in Iraq. If the US accepts their conditions, they will temporarily cease their attacks to enable a US retreat that will look only mildly humiliating to the television viewers back home. This week Bush said he has yet to decide how to move ahead in Iraq. But Baker is moving ahead without him. While Bush also said that he opposes negotiating with Iran and Syria, last Friday The New York Times reported that Baker and his group held talks recently with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem. And, as truth would have it, for the past year or so, the US Ambassador to Baghdad Zalmay Khalizad has been conducting negotiations with the Iranians. Administration sources say that Bush is expected to make a decision on the course of operations in Iraq by mid-December. But as far as Iran and Syria are concerned, the game has already been called. They are wasting no time collecting their winnings. As Gemayel was being murdered Tuesday in Lebanon, Muallem paid a visit to Baghdad. There he established full diplomatic relations between his country and Iraq. Monday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced his intention to host a three-way summit with his Iraqi and Syrian counterparts. Responding to Ahmadinejad's invitation, Iraqi President Jalal Talibani is scheduled to visit Iran and Syria next week. Just as Israelis and American Jews both bitterly recall Baker's acrimonious and degrading treatment during his tenure as secretary of state, so the Syrians and Iranians take comfort from his record. They remember Baker as the man who accepted the 1989 Taif Accord that ended the Syrian-sponsored Lebanese civil war by sacrificing Lebanese sovereignty to Assadian fascist occupation in the name of regional stability. Then too, Baker is remembered as the man who abandoned Iraq's Shi'ites to their fate at the hands of Saddam after the US failed to assist them in their post-Gulf War rebellion which the US itself had encouraged. Finally, no doubt they noticed that Baker's law firm Baker-Botts is representing the Saudi government in the 9/11 victims' lawsuit against the kingdom. BAKER'S CURRENT dealings with Iran and Syria parallel closely Israel's talks with the Palestinians in the lead-up to its withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria last year. As Baker does today, at the time Israel appealed to the Palestinians to restrain themselves temporarily to enable an orderly Israeli surrender of the territories. Last year the Palestinians demanded that Israel hand over the international border between Gaza and the Sinai in exchange for their cooperation. By forcing the IDF to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor, the Palestinian Authority transformed a tactical and symbolic victory for jihad into a strategic victory for jihad. Without Israel controlling the border, Gaza was rapidly transformed into a major base for global terrorists. Today, the Iranian and Syrian price tags for cooperation are similarly high. The Iranians demand international acceptance of their nuclear weapons program replete with European abandonment of Israel. Their demands have apparently been met. There is no end in sight for the UN Security Council deliberations over the relatively insignificant European sanctions proposal. And between British Prime Minister Tony Blair's speeches calling for Israeli capitulation on all fronts; French threats to shoot down IAF jets in Lebanon; the Spanish-French-Italian "peace plan;" and France's Arab League-like treatment of Israel in the UN, it is self-evident that the Europeans have abandoned Israel to Ahmadinejad's tender mercies. Syria set its price for cooperating with the US in Iraq when it murdered Gemayel. That is, in addition to pressuring Israel to give up the Golan Heights, the US will be expected to accept the reassertion of Syrian/Iranian control over all of Lebanon through a new government controlled by Hizbullah and its allies which will replace the Saniora government. The fall of the Saniora government will also spell the demise of the Hariri murder tribunal. Iran and Syria also demand that the US abandon its policy of regime change in both countries. Another similarity between Israel's retreat from Gaza and northern Samaria last year, its withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000, and the proposed US retreat from Iraq today are the obvious consequences of such a retreat for the US, the region and the world. Far from bringing peace and stability, as the champions of the withdrawal policy mindlessly claim, a retreat will cause more war, more instability and more suffering in Iraq, in the region and throughout the world. In the wake of a US (and Coalition) withdrawal from Iraq, the country would become an Iranian-Syrian-controlled base for global jihad. Battle-tested, heavily armed terrorists, cocky after their victory over the Great Satan, would use Iraq as a stepping-off point for attacks throughout the region and world. Israel and Jordan, as allies of the defeated great power, would be first on the list of targets. Moreover, as was the case with soldiers and officers of the South Lebanon Army after the Israeli withdrawal, and with Palestinians who assisted Israel in counter-terror operations in Judea, Samaria and Gaza before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, Iraqis who worked with Coalition forces will likely be killed, arrested and tortured by their new mafia-like terror masters. Israel will find itself beset by an emboldened, nuclear weapons building Iran, an exhilarated Assad and by Iranian proxies from Gaza to Ramallah to Beirut. BOTH ISRAEL'S decision to vacate Gaza, northern Samaria and south Lebanon and the current push in the US to leave Iraq are informed by the same strategic confusion. In choosing the strategy of retreat, Israel and the US have ignored the regional and indeed global nature of the war being waged against them. In such a war, it is impossible to view conflicts as discrete campaigns. Everything is related. Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 inspired the Palestinian jihad. Its withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria caused the two-front war this summer with Iran and Syria in Gaza and Lebanon. That war in turn inspired the current chaos on Lebanon, the Iranian-Syrian brinkmanship in Iraq, and Iran's emboldened sprint to the nuclear finish-line. The fact that both Israel and the US continue to ignore the nature of the war was made clear this summer when they accepted UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which while setting the terms for a cease-fire in Lebanon made no mention of Syria and Iran - the main parties to the war. Then too, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's stated interest in giving Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians, and the US hope to retreat from Iraq, show that both countries continue to deny reality. The most pressing question today then is whether Bush will give in to Baker and the Democrats and agree to capitulate to Iran and Syria in Iraq, Lebanon and indeed throughout the world. Unfortunately, things look bleak given that Bush relies most heavily on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice has been blocking US action against Syria and Iran for the past two years. She was the primary architect of UN Resolution 1701 this summer, has been pushing for dangerous Israeli concessions to the Palestinians and is known for her good relations with Baker. Although a great blow to Bush's vision of democracy in the Middle East, Gemayel's murder can still serve as an opportunity for the reinvigoration of that vision. If Bush sees this murder as the warning sign it is of what awaits Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Iraq and indeed the entire world if the US removes its forces from Iraq or is perceived as moving in that direction; if he finally recognizes that Iraq is not a separate war, but a great battle in a larger struggle, then Bush will be able to formulate a new strategy for victory. Such a strategy, founded on an understanding of the regional and global nature of the war, will change the emphasis of US operations in Iraq in a manner than weakens, rather than strengthens Iran and Syria. Such a strategy is the only way to ensure the continued functioning of the Saniora government and indeed the survival of Lebanon as an independent nation. Most importantly, such a strategy will be the only way to ensure that a policy will be formed and adopted by the US and Israel that will prevent Israel's annihilation at the hands of an Iranian nuclear bomb. Contact the poster at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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THE NAZI SYSTEM RE-AWAKENED - WANNSEE 2
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, November 25, 2006. |
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Muslims are rampaging all over the world and the nations are searching for a way to pacify them. They already know that Muslims, having once successfully exerted their power, cannot be pacified. The genie cannot be put back into the bottle via pacification or appeasement. The Americans in Iraq have learned this bitter lesson also on their own soil - you might say at the Twin Peaks of their power and on the symbol of their military might. The Spanish, English, French and Dutch are in the process of learning this tragic lesson in their countries. In a last desperate act of perfidy, the nations are getting ready to re-employ the Nazi solution, namely blaming the Jews for the sheer religious insanity of the Muslims. All of these events were predicted years ago, given the hatred of the Jews by the Europeans who have now accepted the pledge of genocide proclaimed daily by the Muslims. Naturally, the Europeans will elicit civilized language, in concert with the Baker-led State Department crowd to obfuscate their real intent. Tony Blair has been selected as the lead voice stating that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the root cause of Islam's global assault on the West. We see a mix of international power brokers, gathering to finalize their plans to eliminate the Jewish State as their gift of appeasement to the Muslims. History (if and when it is allowed to be documented) will speak of the individuals and nations as they re-enact the re-birth of the Wannsee Conference. For those who don't recall or are too young to remember, the Wannsee Conference was assembled January 20, 1942 by Reinhard Heydrich to plan the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" as charged by Hermann Goring, under Adolph Hitler's orders - to deport or eliminate 11 million Jews - even from countries not in a state of war with the German Reich. (1) Adolph Eichmann took notes on the fateful meeting and became the organizer for transporting and murdering Jews. He was eventually caught in Buenos Aires, Argentina by a Mossad team headed by Peter Malkin, including MK Rafi Eitan. Eichmann was tried and hanged in Israel in 1962. (2) "Never Again" seems to be happening again! Who will be likely to attend the Wannsee of 2006 or 2007? I would guess that James Baker III, Lee Hamilton and Robert Gates would have already made first arrangements through the Baker Iraqi "Group". We see that Tony Blair has joined the crowd on invitation. George Herbert Walker Bush, Baker, Brent Scowcroft and that old gang would, of course, be fully informed, no doubt, as participating advisors. The current President George W. Bush will allow (encourage) Blair-Baker et al to carry the ball until it is time to apply final pressure, then a cut-off of aid and spare parts technology, trade severing links until Israel gives up everything the Arabs and Muslims want. There are, of course, the disinformation specialists well into drafting the rationale to explain why the Jewish State of Israel is to be pressured before termination. They will, however, find different, civilized language as superficial plausibility which will give on-lookers (the American people) the sense that all of this is being done in the name of "Peace in our time". (Here "Peace" is a misnomer because the fact of peace simply doesn't exist. The talk-talk of "Peace" is always useful to mask intent.) Therefore, prepare yourselves for the finest of speeches, telling us all how what evil is being done is for the greatest benefit of all. While James Baker and gang work diligently on a 'back door' escape route for American and British troops from Iraq, at the same time they tie the hands of the Israeli Army through the corrupt Ehud Olmert - a most accommodating betrayer of his own people. In brief, while all are awaiting the Baker Report publically sometime in January, their plans have been laid long ago and are now fully operational. I would suspect that you would find a complete set of plans for the demise of Israel accumulated since they (the U.S. State Department, in linkage with Saudi Arabia and Syria) failed to stop the U.N. vote for Partition in 1947, IF you could subpoena the files of the U.S. State Department, the CIA and Baker's spy-training facility at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, Houston, Texas. (3) The underlying idea put forward at the start by the Baker-Hamilton-Gates team is that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the basis for all other Muslim rage globally. To further this idea Baker, Blair (among others) will journey to Syria and Iran to offer various appeasements if they will first pull back their "Mujahadin" (Islamic warriors) from Iraq so America and Britain can withdraw with "theatrical" face-saving honor. To achieve this first step the Wannsee Conference 2006 must offer Iran, Syria and their terrorist proxies (Hezb'Allah, Hamas) something they value. They will need to offer up Israel as that payment. No doubt, Syria and Iran have already been contacted and payment discussed. This then follows the formula of the Nazi system out of Wannsee, namely to offer the Europeans the opportunity to get rid of their Jews. Naturally, the French and much (if not all) of Europe were glad to cooperate with the Nazis even though they themselves would soon be conquered. The Europeans found the trade of their cooperation on The Jewish Question to their satisfaction. Now, in 2006-7, the same offer will be made to the Arab and Muslim countries, counting on their hatred of Jews to accept a short term bribe to halt their attacks in Iraq for a brief window of escape for American and British troops. Now it is 2006. The Arabs/Muslims have used the oil money to build vast arsenals of weapons purchased from America, Europe, Russia, China, North Korea, et al. Now they feel their long sleep as primitives is over. Now they can use both the oil weapon and the other weapons against the West. Using the hysterical rage built into their system by the Koran and Mohammed's "Hadith", they pledge to make the world one giant Caliphate under "Sharia" (Strict Islamic) laws. Jews, Christians and all others must convert to Islam, die or become slaves. The "Hudna" (temporary peace accords) Baker-Blair-Bush will be brief and the global attacks will inevitably grow exponentially. The soft Free West cannot imagine what to do to save itself. They are not yet prepared to fight or face down the "Jihadists". Under Wannsee 2 run by James Baker III the idea is to attempt to bribe the two epicenters of religious terror in Iran and Syria to stand down their subversion in Iraq long enough for the U.S. to cut and run. The Wannsee Group 2 know the Hudna (brief temporary peace) will not last any longer than what is needed to pull the American and British troops out of Iraq. They also know that al Qaeda, Hezb'Allah and/or Hamas will likely continue their terror but, for them that will be a small price, since the price (they think) will only be paid by Israel. The Baker/State Department ploy will be to feed Congress and the American people the idea that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is at the core of the Islamic Terror globally and, therefore, the unreasonable pressure applied to Israel will be deemed acceptable. Recruiting such Jews as Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak will be no problem given that they have all shown signs of prior recruitment. Olmert ran his campaign on the Olso track. Peretz similarly was for abandoning the Land. (Barak already did his part in abandoning the Lebanon Security Line resulting in the Lebanon Failure against Hezb'Allah this summer of 2006.) Olmert is trying to save his seat as Prime Minister and Kadima at any cost to the Israeli and Jewish people. Olmert will try to fire Peretz and appoint as Defense Minister Ehud Barak who still holds the stained philosophy of "Land for Peace" and whose panicky midnight retreat from Lebanon in 2000 left the vacuum for Hezb'Allah to assume power in South Lebanon, dig in and build up their Katyusha Missiles sent from Iran through Syria to cause the Second Lebanon War last summer, kidnapping 2, killing 119 and wounding 400 soldiers - killing 44 and wounding 1,489 civilians. (4) There is no proof of prior failure that will dissuade those mentioned that they were not right. The failure of Oslo keeps coming out of the grave like a voodoo zombie. Now the Wannsee 2 group is gathering as many terrorist proxies to create the pretense that Israel can rely on the word of either the Baker Boys, Iran, Syria, Hezb'Allah, Hamas, Fatah, or Abu Mazen - and always - the U.N. The Spanish, under Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, have already backed away from the prior commitment of the E.U. that Hamas must cease terror and recognize Israel before donor funds are once again pumped into terrorist groups (including Hamas). The "Trick" (being arranged) will be for Hamas to join Abu Mazen's Fatah without ceasing terror or recognizing Israel's right to exist. Hezb'Allah and Hamas say they will continue the "Intifada" until all the Land from the Jordan River to Mediterranean Sea will be in the hand of only Muslims. The Baker groups may discuss this at first but, will likely ignore it to achieve their goals of appeasing the Arabs and Muslims by eliminating the Jewish State of Israel. Groups like "Peace Now" have been working long and hard to re-partition Israel on its way to extinction both as a Jewish state and eventually its very existence. Of course, Peace Now and its clones claim they are advancing civilization but, they are a truly existential threat to the State of Israel. One could define them as merely harmless hard-core Leftists (useful idiots) but, others see them as genetically flawed Jews yearning to see the end of the Jewish race even when they themselves must die in a mass national suicide. In the meantime, Wannsee 2 moves forward, recruiting the nations to make Israel the present day Sudetenland trade to keep Hitler from invading Europe - only today they are trading Israel to keep the Muslims from taking over Europe, then America as they reach critical mass. I wonder if the new American Congress under the Democrats' control will close their eyes and let Israel slip away. Perhaps the American people, once informed, will stop the Wannsee 2 plotters. But, if the Israeli government under Ehud Olmert refuses to save their own tiny nation, why should or would others even try? I recall the John Loftus book "Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People" (5) wherein he describes a group of Jews called "Max" who hunted down traitors and killed them after the war. I wonder if the Jews of Israel are killed in great numbers, will their remnant also hunt down the collaborators? What will happen to the Jews of America after it become obvious that the Wannsee 2 has, with malice aforethought, arranged the destruction of Israel? Can the Wannsee 2 group have embarrassing witnesses reminding all Americans, that they participated in or initiated Genocide - again? Will America become like Germany, always knowing that they savagely murdered 6 million Jews? ### 1. "The Wannsee Conference and the 'Final Solution'" www.ushmm.org/outreach/wannsee.htm 2. "Hitler's Third Reich & World War 2 in the News" http://htlernews.cloudworth.com/adolf-eichmann-alois-brunner-gestapo.php 3. "Welcome to the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy" Iraq: The Iraq Study Group co-chaired by James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton, Baker Institute, Rice University, Houston 4. "2006 Israel-Lebanon Conflict: Casualties" Wikipedia http://en.wikiedia.org/wiki/2006_Israel-Lebanon_conflict 5. "Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People - 1920-1992" by John Loftus & Mark Aarons St. Martin's Press NY 1994 Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net |
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AMAZING TECHNOLOGY: ISRAEL DEVELOPING LASER TO DESTROY ROADSIDE BOMBS
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 25, 2006. |
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The talent and creativity in this little country Israel does not stop. In spite of the Arabs eagerness to make Israel vanish and them bother her in any way they could, the Israelis remains prolifically inventive. Israel has proven to be is a light to the nations; if the Israelis were only left unhindered, Israel would be a greater light unto the nations. Sadly, a great deal of her budget and mental efforts go to defend itself from the ignoramus Arabists. Wow! Now there is the possibility the USA will be able to use the described below technology in Iraq against the IEDS. The IEDS have caused enormous loss of American troop lives. What a lifesaver it will be! Thank you Israel ONCE AGAIN! This news may have not yet appeared in the local newspapers so we tell you! |
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The Israeli Armaments Development Authority (Rafael) has developed a laser system to diffuse destroy roadside bombs, which have killed hundreds of US and Israeli soldiers in Iraq and Lebanon. Rafael and American defense contractor General Dynamics have produced and deployed the system, which is called Thor. It uses the concentrated energy of a high-powered laser to clear unexploded bombs and improvised explosive devices. "The directed energy from the laser may also be used to ignite combustible materials, as a standoff cutting torch, and for other combat purposes," General Dynamics said in a statement about the project ahead of US moves to purchase and deploy the system in its army. Thor combines the Israeli-produced high-energy laser with the Browning M2 12.7-mm machine gun, made by General Dynamics, to destroy explosive devices. The weapon is used with a remote operator control station or mounted on a vehicle or bomb-squad robot. The Thor system includes sensors that work either in day or nighttime conditions to detect the hidden explosive charge. The developers report that the Thor system has already been deployed in combat operations. "Thor has demonstrated combat effectiveness in operational engagements bringing an additional precision fire gun platform to the fight, while at the same time filling a unique tactical mission role," Rafael announced. The developers explain that the directed energy from the laser is capable of rapidly clearing unexploded devices by inducing a low-order burning or deflagration reaction in the explosive material from a safe distance. "The directed energy from the laser may also be used to ignite combustible materials, as a standoff cutting torch, and for other combat purposes," the developer explains. "The kinetic energy from the 12.7mm bullet fired by the M2 functions as a standoff disrupter, destroying fusing, thick-cased munitions and booby traps, also enabling distancing explosive hazards away from the force route. The M2 machine gun ultimately provides accurate, direct fire upon enemy forces and targets in either an offensive or defensive role." The Armament Development Authority is supported by Israel's Ministry of Defense and designs, develops, manufactures and supplies a wide range of advanced defense systems. Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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AT A TORONTO UNIVERSITY, THE WAHHABIS ARE WINNING
Posted by Michael Travis, November 25, 2006. |
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This article is called "Muslims playing for power" and it was written by Sarah Boesveld. It was posted on Eyeopener (www.theeyeopener.com) November 16, 2006. |
| Ryerson University in Toronto, the Wahhabi front group calling itself the Muslim Students' Association is playing for power. And winning. As the largest student group on campus, the Muslim Students' Association has made its presence known in student politics. Former MSA vice-president Muhammad Ali Jabbar is heading up the RSU, thanks to support from the MSA. The group has monopolized use of the multifaith room, putting the true meaning of the room's name in jeopardy. Through its renewed fight against Islamophobia, the MSA has also been criticized as being increasingly polarized and turning the RSU's attention mostly toward Muslim issues. Smaller religious groups with less influence have been left wondering when their needs will be addressed. A variety of religious groups on campus have said they have felt uncomfortable trying to use the multifaith room. Eric Da Silva, president of the Catholic Student Association, says the group looked into using the room for mass but was told by RSU front desk staff that the room was "permanently booked" by Muslim students. "No one is trying to take away the space from the Muslims, we just don't want to be stepping on their toes," says Da Silva. He stresses that the group found another space to hold mass and the conflict was quickly resolved. Da Silva acknowledges that Muslims have a stricter prayer schedule than Catholics, but he challenges whether the room should be called a multifaith one. The space, which is divided to separate males from females, has rows taped on the floor for prayer and Islamic decorations adorning the walls, is only accommodating to Muslims. "I don't think the university should be calling it a multifaith room. If we went in there and decorated the room with rosary and crosses, other students would feel uncomfortable praying there," he says. The Ismaili Student's Association, a smaller Muslim student group that practices the Shiite Muslim religion, has experienced conflicting schedules with the MSA for prayer space during the month of Ramadan. On a regular basis, the smaller group uses the multi-faith room for prayer between 6 and 7 p.m. During Ramadan, when Muslims break their fast at sunset, the Ismaili students, who practice a separate form of prayer were resigned to finding somewhere else to pray. "We were pretty much in a different room every night for a month," says a member of the group who wished not to be named. "It can be frustrating at times, but you kind of have to make the best of the situation," she says of having to move so the MSA can use the room. At the semi-annual general meeting last week, RSU passed a motion to create a multifaith council in which representatives from all religious groups will come together to "learn from each other" and create "harmony on campus," Jabbar says.A Canadian Federation of Students task force tackling cultural and religious discrimination was brought to campus by members of the MSA on Nov. 1, but it only addressed the problem of Islamophobia. Anti-Semitism and racism towards other minorities were not discussed. When Ryerson campus was slammed with death threats and anti-Muslim propaganda two years ago, the MSA stepped up to the plate, denouncing these acts and doing their part to eradicate Islamophobia. "There was a lot of stuff on anti-Semitism then," says Jabbar. "There was nothing addressing Islamophobia on campus." Jonathan Vandersluis, president of Hillel, a Ryerson Jewish group, has concerns that the MSA is using its power to pay attention only to issues facing them, especially pertaining to the recent task force. "It came out of a campaign that was saying no to racism, Islamophobia, and anti-semitism. How come we're only addressing the needs of Muslims?" he asks. Vandersluis says Hillel did not get involved in the taskforce because they weren't informed about it at the time. Getting involved is something the MSA has prided itself on. Jabbar is grateful for the MSA endorsement and high voter turnout for his election victory last spring. "I'm not going to deny it," says Jabbar. "The support I got from the MSA, I really appreciated." "When something positive happens, it rejuvinates our community," he says of his election win and the support he gathered. Sarah Turnbull, who ran against Jabbar for RSU president last year, was surprised that the MSA's endorsement of Jabbar went as far as it did. "I had my Muslim friends told not to vote for me because if they didn't vote for Jabbar, the Muslims would be suppressed," she says. "In the end some of my strongest supporters were Muslims and they were more horrified by this then even I was." Turnbull also says that the MSA is what led to the "United" slate to choose Jabbar for president. "It was clearly Nora Loreto's turn (to run for president)," she says of the experienced and vocal RSU politico. Jabbar says Loreto's decision to run for vice president education was her decision alone. "That's what she holds true to her heart," he says, adding that the current slate discussed who would be best in each RSU position. Jabbar says that everyone is doing what they want to do and are working toward representing the student body as a whole, not just Muslims. As in most democracies, there are some who feel they are not being represented by the government. There are Muslim students on campus who feel their views are not represented well by the student union. RSU has put too much emphasis on Muslim issues at the cost of representing the needs of all student groups, says a Muslim Ryerson Business student who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution "Everything they're doing is Muslim, Muslim, Muslim. Whenever I hear them at their meetings that's the rhetoric they're using," he says. The 1,200 student membership of the MSA is responsible for its strong voice in the RSU, not Jabbar's presidency says MSA president Waleed Elsayed. "It was the same when Rebecca Rose was in (the RSU president's) office. She heard our concerns and so does Muhammad Ali Jabbar. Whoever the next president is, because we have an all inclusive campus, will hear our concerns too," says Elsayed. He says that the multifaith room is used most often by the MSA because of their great numbers and their prayer schedule which demands prayers five times a day. "In the future we may very well need another room just for Muslim students," he says if other groups wish to use the room more often. Elsayed says the political involvement of the MSA has not been intentionally influential. "We want to be a part of the university. Politically, there's nothing that we want, we have our prayer space in the new building." At other schools across Canada, Muslim students are still struggling to find a space of their own. Thomas Butko, professor at University of Alberta and expert on politics and Islam says the issue of prayer space at his university campus is exactly the opposite of Ryerson's. "On the most part, a lot of these multifaith areas have been dominated by Christians," he says, adding that at U of A, Muslims are a minority who don't want to "rock the boat." As the largest religious group on Ryerson's campus, Butko is not surprised that the MSA is dipping its hand into politics. "It makes common sense that larger numbers would try to be more promoters of their interests," he says. Butko says that because religion is seen as private, a large group going public with their interests can be interpreted as controversial. "People tend to be all or nothing about religion," he says. It was only 20 years ago that the Lord's prayer could be heard in public elementary school classrooms across Canada. "Many Christians still don't see this as a mixing of public and private," he says. At smaller campuses like University of New Brunswick, the MSA has little to no political influence in student government. After three years there are 70 members and have only recently gained prayer space. "We don't have plans to be represented in the student union," says MSA president Yahya Abuamer. "We don't propogate our religions, we're just showing education to erase misconceptions about our faith." El-Tantawy Attia, executive director of Masjid Toronto says it's important for Muslims to be involved in student politics. "You should not penalize an active group if the others are not." Attia commends Ryerson's MSA for its great work in helping the needy during Ramadan. It's strong numbers allows the group to make positive contributions to the Ryerson community, such as a $7,000 donation to the Community Food Room with funds raised from a fast-a-thon. Comment posted By joseph_walker on 11/23/06 I'm curious as to the source of Thomas Butko's comments regarding the status of "a lot of these multifaith areas" at the University of Alberta. As far as I am aware, there has been only one "multi-faith" designated area (currently found at SUB 011) for as long as I have been a member of the U of A Interfaith Chaplains' Association (going on 8 or so years now.) And that area has been used quite heavily by the MSA. I know this from first hand experience, and from having an office located 12 feet from the door of said multi-faith room. Perhaps the situation described by Thomas Butko existed some time ago, but for up to date information on the usage of such space, the schedule is publicly posted. The EyeOpener might also contact Greg Idell, who is in charge of facility bookings, and they will see that the situation is not quite as Mr Butko makes it out to be. Yours, Rev. Joseph Walker
Contact the poster at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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GRANDMA
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, November 25, 2006. |
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Homicide/suicide bombers, the techno human hybrid weapons of choice of Islamic fanatics, perhaps aware that mobile delivery systems more easily infiltrate pin pointed targets than static delivery systems wrecking a maximum amount of terror and destruction with but one Muslim martyr, will not lose appeal unless and until Islamic moderates vociferously condemn the practice, citing references from the Koran suggesting it violates Islamic law. Period!!! I offer a recent insidious incident of Muslim grandmother Fatima Omar Mahmud al-Najar, blessed with more than 40 grandchildren, blowing herself asunder while wounding two Israeli soldiers near the Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, being glorified on television in a so-called martyr's video, as proof that the mind set of a deviant subculture, having metastasized to become the dominating defining force within that culture, is so mentally deranged that there is absolutely no limit to what it will not only condone but what in fact swells its sadistically mutated soul with pride. No matter what tragic loss possessed this older lady to commit such a subhuman act of suicide bent on murder, the very fact this horrific end to life, especially embodied by one grandmother responsible for bringing so much life into the world, is so glorified and indeed venerated for all the world to see, speaks volumes as to the perilously psychopathic collective state of mind of those terrorist glorifiers infecting and substantially directing Islam, a faith worshipped by a sizable portion of humanity. The very fact that Islamic moderates, as well as sane non-Muslim movers and shakers worldwide, remain deafeningly silent to this appalling incident, perhaps numbed by all the other gruesome violence and consequential human misery now occurring throughout our besieged orb, bodes ominously for the health and well being of Earth's dominant species as we enter a new millennium. Secular life and limb has little value to those who influence and
perpetrate horrendous acts of violence against both soldiers and
innocent civilians, ethnicity notwithstanding. Dysfunctional Iraq
produces ever-increasing amounts of casualties inflicted by both
homicide/suicide martyring Muslim maniacs as well as kindred spirit
Muslim murderers more inclined to rig cars with lethal explosives,
recently snuffing out over 140 Iraqi Muslim lives as well as maiming
twice as many in the slums of Sadr City Baghdad. Might such behavior
be condoned in Islam's presumably holy Koran? Does a vengeful Allah
cheer on such 'virtuous' followers, even of the grandmotherly variety?
If movers and shakers thus keepers of Islamic principles and
traditions as delineated in their Koran refuse to defend its gospel by
vigorously castigating those who commit the unspeakable, screaming
'God is Great' before detonating, than non-Muslims must presume
Islam's holy book is nothing more than a handbook for sadists
including snuff addicts, like the ones who dare to glorify a sick
grandmother shrouded in a suicide belt. Would Jews or Christians or
for that matter members of any other faith allow human filth to
prostitute their most sacred texts with interpretations supporting
acts of blatant savagery? Is there any limit to what moderate Muslims
might endure concerning the blasphemy of their religion, or is the
term moderate Muslim an oxymoron? One has cause to wonder?
Lawrence Uniglicht is a
career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration.
He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He
writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion,
no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at
luniglicht@snip.net
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ISRAEL AND THE ASPIRATION FOR PEACE
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 24, 2006. |
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Israel's ONLY peace plan should be: To DEMAND from all Western Nations that want to see peace prevails in the region to SEMAND that the ENTIRE Arab World end its war against Israel; nothing more BUT for sure nothing less! Otherwise, it is now the time to call the Arab bluff. The ONLY solution to all this "repackaging the offer of a Palestinians state" BALAGAN (means: chaos) is for Israel to END her WEAKNESS and begin shouting, at the top of her political lungs, the truth! Israel must become decisive and aggressive; it should no longer view these Qassam rockets attacks coming at her daily and the endless potential homicide bombing they dismantle daily as a mere nuisance, but go with full force and actively dig in and FIGHT the terror to try bringing it to its end! Below are three articles, from Israel, the UK and the US, with views about the nature of the endless conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. The Israeli view: (1) As long as the Arabs insist on 3-million Arab "refugees" returning to Israel, the Arabs are not serious about peace. The Palestinian refugees "right to return" demand is greatly the fault of UNRWA, which crafted refugee definition solely applicable to Palestinians -- refugee status with no expiration date -- continues indefinitely for generations. (2) As long as the Arabs DO NOT stop the state sponsored Jew hating incitements in their media, Arabs are not serious about peace, and (3) As long as the Arabs DO NOT stop supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups, Arabs are not serious about peace. The UK MP view: Until now, all of Israel's compromises and desires for peace have been unsuccessful ONLY because Israel's willingness to compromise for peace has never been enough for the Arabs, and she is yet to find a serious and genuine interlocutor so that peace stands a chance. It is time the Left and the media focus its attention on finding a willing and genuine peace partner for Israel, rather than concentrating on the ONLY ONE player in the region that always displayed the utmost seriousness to having peace. The US view: Last summer it was Hizbollah's tactic; now it is Hamas, indiscriminately launching rockets into civilian populated areas, hoping to kill as many innocents as possible. Hamas has no plans to stop the rockets attacks voluntarily and the international outrage machine can only find outrage when it comes to Israel. In the meantime, the terrorists are fulfilling their last June promise to make Sderot residents leave home and turn it into a ghost town. However, in order to defeat the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, staying in Sderot is the simplest best way act to fight terrorism. Sderot residents must maintain firm stand something the Israeli government have long forgotten to have. |
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"Tell the truth about peace"
Following Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's US visit and a "new" initiative floated by France, Spain, and Italy, Vice Premier Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met at the weekend to look for ways to "break the deadlock" with the Palestinians. Olmert himself has said he wants to "get the ball rolling," and reportedly suggested new versions of his convergence plan while in Washington. The pressure on Israel and the US to fill the diplomatic vacuum, following the post-war political collapse of convergence, seems to be growing. A vacuum, however, cannot be filled by simply repackaging the policies that failed to fill it, namely the Quartet's road map and Israel's unilateral withdrawal track. Both these policies have become stalled, or worse, because they ignore the root cause of the problem. Both pretend that the obstacle to peace is the lack of a Palestinian state, when in reality the obstacle to such a state--and to Arab-Israeli peace--is the Arab refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. It has been obvious at least since 2000, when Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat a state on a silver platter, that the Palestinians could have a state over almost all of the West Bank and all of Gaza whenever they wanted. The fight is not over the remaining narrow strips of land but over something much more fundamental, whether the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world are willing to give up their desire to destroy Israel itself. Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan was quoted over the weekend as declaring: "I promise you, the occupation [Israel] won't last long. We've seen this in history. States based on oppression have been taken apart. ... We'll continue to fight it until we return to the homes we were expelled from in the Palestine of 1948." This point of view cannot be dismissed as the province of extremists. First, Hamas is the party in power, not a fringe group. But even Mahmoud Abbas, as MEMRI founder Yigal Carmon points out, is quite radical and specific when it comes to the "right of return," claiming that 3 million Palestinians must be allowed to "return" to Israel. In the Arab and Muslim world today there are the "radicals" who openly call for Israel's destruction and support terrorism as a means to accomplish this. But there is no significant opposing peace camp arguing that Israel does have a right to exist, or even a pragmatic camp openly arguing for peace for the Arabs' own sake. In such an atmosphere, no peace process worthy of the name is possible, and new American, Israeli, or European plans repackaging the offer of a Palestinian state will not only be for naught, but will tend to encourage Arab radicalism. In this context, our government has an obligation to say the truth, not just play along with harmful myths. Israel should have a peace plan: for Western nations that want peace to demand that the Arab world end its war against Israel. The Palestinians and Arab states often claim to be ready for peace. The well-worn pattern, however, is this: Israel yearns for peace while being wary of "peace plans;" the Arabs attack and prepare for war while claiming to embrace "peace." It is time for Israel to urge the US to call the Arab bluff. If Arab leaders really want peace, they should help the Palestinians out of their suicidal stalemate by setting three critical examples: 1) meeting with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem and their own capitals, 2) calling on Palestinians to give up the dream of "returning" to Israel by the millions, 3) beginning to settle Palestinian "refugees" rather than continuing to use them as pawns against Israel. In addition the Arab states could be called upon to stop fomenting anti-Semitism and supporting groups such as Hamas and Hizbullah. We understand that if Israel advocates such a policy, we will not be able to persuade the US, let alone Europe, to adopt it overnight. Yet if Israel is unwilling to tell the truth and advocate for its own interests, who will? How can we expect any other country to stand for a sensible policy with a chance of success if we ourselves do not? "Why I'm backing Israel"
The left and the Islamists portray me as a Zionist neocon, but it takes two sides to make a peace deal Some said I should have my head examined after I agreed to become the chief executive of a pro-Israel advocacy group, the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre. But people said the same when I joined Labour in the mid-80s. There is never a wrong time to do the right thing and if, like me, you are convinced of Israel's cause, then why not support Israel and why not now? I have always been a practical idealist, a non-Jew who has always believed in a two-state solution. But I have never been more concerned about the false reality many people are constructing around Israel and the Middle East, here and abroad. Our polling shows that opinion formers know that Israel is a fully functioning democracy, but care more about what Israel does than what Israel is. Since its birth 58 years ago, Israel has always been prepared to compromise for peace. From Begin's agreement with Sadat in 1979 to the Arafat-Barak talks at Camp David in 2000, Israeli leaders have been prepared to challenge their own people in pursuit of peace. Last summer Israel withdrew from Gaza, angry settlers and all. Yet the terror from the Gaza Strip has continued - more than 1,000 rockets have been fired into southern Israel in the past year. Since 2000, nine fatalities have been caused by Qassam missiles. Some media have reported the panic these missiles have caused but they downplay the impact because of the small scale of fatalities compared with those on the Palestinian side. My husband, a British soldier, is currently serving a tour of duty in Iraq. His unit has come under mortar fire nearly every night for the past six months. Not many service personnel have been killed by these missiles but every soldier fears that the next one might have his or her name on it. Do you think that a child, a parent or a grandmother in one of the towns bordering Gaza thinks there have been "only" nine fatalities? Can you imagine what that does to a civilian population? We need to think carefully about the consequences of questioning the defensive reactions of a nation-state that is constantly bombarded by an enemy calling for its destruction, especially after it has withdrawn from Lebanon and Gaza. Would we as British citizens accept a single rocket on a British town, let alone hundreds? The commentators' objection is that the response is "disproportionate". But how does a nation-state defend itself against a terrorist organisation or organisations that are part of, and deliberately hide behind, ordinary citizens? Of course the Israeli military and all military forces must act ethically. But if the number of civilian casualties continues to be the main issue, there is no incentive for the terrorists to stop using the civilian population as a shield. We live in dangerous times when, in parts of the left especially, you can't be a friend to Islam or to Muslims unless you are anti-Israel. That is exactly what al-Qaida wants us to think. Events in Rochdale at the last election represent a microcosm of what we are sleepwalking into globally. The Islamists and the left argued that, because I supported Israel and its right to exist, all my work for my Muslim constituents was a lie. They suggested I was an opportunistic, neocon Zionist, aiming to dupe them. Israel's willingness to compromise for peace has never been enough, because Israel alone cannot gain peace. The Palestinians and others in the region also have to want peace. Israel needs a serious interlocutor so that peace can stand a chance. So my question to the left is this: why not concentrate your attention there, rather than on the one player in the region who has always been serious about peace? Lorna Fitzsimons (lf@bicom.org.uk) is chief executive of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre and the former Labour MP for Rochdale. "A town under siege"
The international outrage machine is ginned up again, and all but seven members of the U.N. General Assembly recently voted to condemn Israel for its military incursion into Gaza. The buzzword -- recycled from Israel's summer war with Hezbollah -- is "overreaction." To what is Israel "overreacting?" Hamas, using the tactic that Hezbollah licensed from it this summer, is indiscriminately launching rockets into civilian areas, hoping to kill as many innocents as possible. Israel's current military action is far from an overreaction. It is, in fact, a delayed reaction. Rockets have been raining down in southern Israel for years now, and only this summer did the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) finally execute a sustained response. For more than five years, the residents of Sderot, a small development town of 26,000 in the Negev desert near the Gaza border, have been subjected to a constant barrage of Qassam rockets fired by Hamas, or the democratically elected government of the Palestinians. More than 3,000 rockets have hit Sderot and the roughly 45 smaller communities in the area. Though former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his successor, Ehud Olmert, both had promised a strong response to attacks against civilians launched from Gaza, Hamas had suffered little more than the occasional military strike against its terrorists following a particularly "successful" Qassam strike. (One such response came after a Qassam exploded meters from the personal residence of Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz, who lives in Sderot.) The military waited until late this June to attack Hamas aggressively and provide the response promised by both Mr. Sharon and Mr. Olmert. But that was actually triggered by the kidnapping of 19-year-old soldier Gilad Shalit -- even though rocket firings into Sderot had become unrelenting several weeks earlier. While the Israeli campaign against Hezbollah failed to achieve any of its stated objectives, the military scored significant success with its actions in Gaza this summer. But shortly after the rate of rocket attacks fell to just a few per week, military activities largely ceased. Not surprisingly, Hamas redoubled its efforts, and Qassam rockets again became a daily reality in Sderot and surrounding communities. Perhaps to divert attention from its failure to defeat Hezbollah this summer, Israel seems determined to degrade Hamas' ability to launch rockets at innocent civilians. But that apparent determination could crumble in the face of mounting international outcry. Never mind that the democratically elected government of the Palestinians is able to target civilians with impunity. As bad as things are in Sderot right now -- one woman was killed this month, and another person is near death as of this writing -- none of this is new. To appreciate just how much a daily fact of life Qassams have become, Sderot's school playground has four above-ground, concrete bomb shelters. The rectangular tunnels sit on each corner of the relatively small playground. So many are needed so close together because there is typically just 10-15 seconds warning, if any, before a Qassam hits. Qassams have hit all around the school. Remnants of several rockets can be seen in the street in front of it. Shrapnel is lodged in the sidewalk railing meters from the playground. Shrapnel is even on the playground itself. Not surprisingly, the residents of Sderot are both bitter and angry. Even with the recent military actions, they feel forgotten. Actually, they have been forgotten. This June, Vice Premier and former Prime Minister Shimon Peres brushed off mounting concern about a surge in attacks with the quip, "Qassams shmassams." Echoing that theme, an IDF spokesman described Qassam rockets to this columnist in July as "dumb firecrackers." Thing is, these "dumb firecrackers" kill people. Here is the Associated Press account of one Qassam attack in September 2004: "The blast blew out the windows of a house, showered a minibus with shrapnel and killed two children of Ethiopian descent. Dorit Benesay, 2, and Yuval Abeva, 4, were playing under an olive tree outside Yuval's grandmother's house when the rocket struck, emergency workers and neighbors said. "'After the rocket fell, a man, maybe 20 years old, took the boy in his arms. He was in shock. He ran with the boy, he didn't know what to do,' said Zina Shurov, 48, a neighbor. 'I saw the boy, he had no legs.'" Hamas has no plans to stop voluntarily, and the international outrage machine won't ask it to. The Islamic terrorists are merely fulfilling a promise made this June: "We have decided to turn Sderot into a ghost town. We won't stop firing the rockets until they all leave." Hope somehow remains alive in Sderot. Rabbi David Fendel believes that the simple act of staying put is his best way to fight terrorism. In fact, he's even doing more. With a new religious school and community center under construction, Rabbi Fendel is working to make Sderot stronger. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, has visited Sderot and calls Rabbi Fendel "a real hero in the war on terror." He explains, "Rabbi Fendel is not only helping Sderot, but he has taken the kind of firm stand that the Israeli government needs to in order to defeat the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah." Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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OPERATION BOJINKA
Posted by Michael Travis, November 24, 2006. |
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Note: The news coming out of London England about the thwarted plot to blow up airliners between England and United States by bringing explosive components on board and assembling bombs may be shocking, but to Annie Jacobsen, it's not surprising. Even in June of 2004, when Annie Jacobsen took her fateful flight on Northwest flight 327, it's that very scenario -- different individuals each bringing different bomb-making materials on board, assembling and detonating them while the plane is in the air -- that she is convinced was being practiced. In this excerpt from her book, Annie Jacobsen writes that this concept of bringing bomb elements on board for later assembly is nothing new: as far back as 1994 terrorists were scheming ways to do it. Below is an excerpt from Annie Jacobsen's Terror in the Skies: Why 9/11 Could Happen Again, Spence Publishing. Annie Jacobsen writes about business, finance and terrorism for a variety of national and international magazines and webzines. A graduate of Princeton University, she lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and two sons. |
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That terrorists want to build bombs in aircraft bathrooms is not news. The tactic dates from at least 1994, when Ramzi Yousef, along with his uncle, Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), set out to blow up eleven or twelve U.S. passenger jets over the Pacific Ocean, simultaneously, by building bombs in the aircrafts' bathrooms. The terrorists involved in the plot were not to be suicide bombers. Instead, they would each build a bomb on one leg of the eleven or twelve flights, set the bomb's timer for later, and then deplane. If the plan seems overly ambitious, its two masterminds were certainly capable of pulling it off. Ramzi Yousef was the terrorist who tried to bring down the World Trade Center (WTC-1) in 1993 with a truck bomb. Yousef's co-conspirator, KSM, would go on to mastermind the 9/11 attack. The plot was called Operation Bojinka (bojinka being slang in many Arabic dialects for explosion), and it was Yousef's next big operation after WTC-1. Yousef had been a kind of one-man terrorist show, barely funded and not very well organized. After his success with WTC-1, that changed. Yousef became respected as an international terrorist. The U.S. government wanted him so badly that they put a $2 million bounty on his head and air-dropped 32,000 matchbooks with Yousef's photo on them in rural Pakistan, hoping to find him. Yousef was able to evade authorities as he traveled extensively throughout South East Asia. He was now funded by his wealthy uncle, KSM, as well as his uncle's wealthy business partner, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, -- Osama Bin Laden's brother in law. For Operation Bojinka, Yousef set about perfecting a tiny explosive device that could be smuggled onto an aircraft in separate parts -- parts disguised as seemingly innocent items. Yousef first tested one of these bombs, on December 1, 1994, in the Greenbelt Theatre in Manila. By placing one of his miniature bombs under a theatre seat, Yousef simulated the physical conditions he'd later face on a plane. The bomb successfully exploded a few hours later. Fortunately the seat was empty. No one was killed but a few, local theatergoers were hurt. Yousef worked for another ten days to perfect his tiny bomb. On December 11, he carried out another test for the Bojinka plot, only this time he did it on an actual plane. Posing as an Italian member of parliament -- he traveled with a fraudulent Italian passport identifying himself as one 'Armaldo Forlani' -- Yousef bought a one-way ticket, from Manila to Cebu, on Philippines Air flight 434. Yousef carried the components of his bomb on him, including nitroglycerin hidden in a bottle of contact lens solution and bomb stabilizers disguised as cotton balls. In the hollowed-out heels of his shoes, Yousef hid batteries. During the flight, Yousef asked the flight attendant if he could change seats, telling the flight attendant he needed a better view. In truth, he wanted to occupy a seat over the plane's fuselage near the exit door. Half-way through the flight, Yousef assembled the bomb in the aircraft's bathroom. He returned to his seat and placed the bomb inside the life vest underneath. He set the timer for several hours later and deplaned. On the next leg of the flight, the bomb exploded. The twenty-three-year-old Japanese businessman, Haruki Ikegami, who was sitting where Yousef had sat died a miserable death, his legs separated from the rest of his body. Fortunately for the 273 other passengers and twenty flight crew on board the 747, the captain was able to make a heroic, emergency landing on nearby Okinawa Island. The bomb was too small to destroy the plane in mid-air and Yousef set about fine-tuning his calculations. A few weeks later, shortly before Operation Bojinka was set to unveil, Ramzi Yousef was building a bomb in his Manila apartment when one of the bombs exploded. A fire started and Yousef fled. Manila police discovered a cache of information about the terrorist on his computer, which interrupted Bojinka. Had the plot succeeded, it's likely that four thousand civilians would have been killed. Some of the details are extraordinary: Yousef needed his bombs to explode in seats above the planes' central fuel tanks, adjacent to the wings. When the bombs went off, they would ignite the plane's fuel, causing a massive, secondary explosion. Investigators would also learn that Yousef wanted the bombs to explode over heavily populated areas of the United States. In the Observer article, from February 2004, Burke reported that terrorists were again working on the nightmare scenario of building bombs in aircraft bathrooms. Burke detailed a 2002 incident involving a Moroccan jet landing in Metz, France, one that had 100 grams of pentrite (the explosive used by shoe-bomber Richard Reid) hidden in an armrest, and explained that French officials believe the explosives were placed on the jet in a "trial run." At the time of the article, the incidents had only ever amounted to dry runs. In August 2004 that changed. The Bojinka scenario became real. On the night of August 24, 2004, two civilian aircraft in Russia exploded, almost simultaneously, killing all 90 passengers and crew. The mid-air explosions were the deadly result of terrorists' bombs. The event was widely reported and has since been confirmed by the U.S. Department of State. Not as widely reported was that Russian investigators believe the detonations occurred in the two planes' toilets. Contact the poster at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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REVISITING THE 1930'S
Posted by Michael Travis, November 24, 2006. |
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It's Like Deja Vu All Over Again According to a report issued by the World Jewish Congress last week, anti-Semitic sentiments in the European continent have doubled since the beginning of the summer. And according to Professor Dina Porat, co-coordinator of the conference, the research showed a significant change in the attitudes toward Jews. And not just among extremists, but also in moderate sectors of the European population. Porat heads Tel Aviv University's Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies and the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of anti-Semitism and Racism. The report included examples of anti-Semitic cartoons reminiscent of the Nazi era published in places like Norway, Mexico and even the UK. The report also said that Ahmadinejad's repeated threats against Israel has emboldened the anti-Semites to come out of the closet, so to speak. Congress President Edgar Bronfman cited Iran's nuclear development activities as the most dangerous threat to the Jews and Israel since the Holocaust. Roger Kukerman, President of the Committee Representing the Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) said that when Ahmadinejad vows to kill the Jews and "wipe Israel of the map", the remarks should be taken seriously. Kukerman added that the only difference between the president of the Islamic Republic and the founder of the Nazi party is one of weapons. Ahmadinejad is suspected of having nuclear weapons. Adolph Hitler had none. In Germany, a poll conducted by the German Friedrich Ebert Fund surveyed 5,000 German citizens about their attitude towards the Jews. The findings showed that 18 percent of Germans believe Jews have too much influence in the country. Fourteen percent said that Jews are more inclined to cheat in business. And an equal number said Jews are not fit to live in Germany because they are different. The poll found anti-Semitism is more profound in the West than in the former East Germany. And it was more prevalent among wealthy West Germans than their poorer countrymen. In addition, the poll revealed trends that harken back to the bad old days of the 1930's. # 15 percent believe Germans are naturally superior to other people And a study commissioned for the United Nations puts the blame for the war against Islamofacism squarely on Israel's shoulders. We may wish to think of the Arab-Israeli conflict as just one regional conflict amongst many," said Kofi Annan, who leaves his post as UN Secretary General at the end of the year. "It is not. No other conflict carries such a powerful symbolic and emotional charge among people far removed from the battlefield." Annan went on to say, "As long as the Palestinians live under occupation, exposed to daily frustration and humiliation, and as long as Israelis are blown up in buses and in dance halls, so long will passions everywhere be inflamed," Annan said. The fact that Israel is "occupying" ISRAEL and not the Palestinian territories was of no interest to the committee members, evidently. And while Annan mentioned Israelis being blown up in busses and dance halls, he didn't mention that those targets were INSIDE Israel, and not in some undefined area of 'Israeli occupation'. The report was drafted in the past year by a group of twenty 'impartial' global leaders, including, believe it or not, former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and the noted Marxist apologist, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. The group making the recommendations was formed in 2005 as part of the U.N.-backed "Alliance of Civilizations" initiative. It was sponsored by the Socialist government of Spain and co-sponsored by Turkey, which is 99% Islamic. The report also called for the development of a report "analyzing the Israeli-Palestinian landscape dispassionately and objectively," and "establishing clearly the conditions that must be met to find a way out of this crisis." The fact is, the conditions that must be met to find a way out of this crisis have ALREADY been established. The conditions call for Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist and renounce violence and terrorism. It isn't Israeli policy that is an obstacle to peace. Israeli policy is to negotiate for peace with representatives that WANT peace. The report recommended renewed efforts toward the goal of establishing "two fully sovereign and independent states coexisting side by side in peace and security." Israel has already agreed to that goal. The majority of Palestinians prefer their vision of one state INSTEAD of Israel, but the report reserved its sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians. Because peace with Israel is not the objective. Peace WITHOUT Israel is. This was written by Hal Lindsey. |
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A Language Our Enemy Understands With our cities threatened with nuclear, chemical and biological bombs, it is long past time to identify our enemy, determine what is most cherished by him and assure him that he will lose all of them if he carries out these threats against our cities. First, our enemy is Islamic Fundamentalism, which believes it is Allah's will to kill as many infidels as possible in the quest to establish Islamic rule over the world. These Jihadists' most hated countries are Israel and America, which they see as the cultural centers of the most hated infidels -- Jews and Christians. Our enemy is uniquely difficult to combat because he is scattered among many nations around the world. He is often disguised and hidden among Muslims who have no desire to be part of their onslaught against innocent civilians throughout the Western Civilization. Second, we must honestly face the scope and viability of our enemy's threats. What are the threats and can he actually carry them out? All reliable western intelligence agencies believe the leader of militant Fundamentalism, al Qaeda, has acquired a number of suite case seize nuclear, biological and chemical bombs. Some even believe that Osama bin Laden has at least one nuclear warhead that could obliterate New York City if smuggled into port on a container ship. Assessment of threat -- it is very real and will happen soon. Third, what does our enemy cherish most? The dedicated Islamic 'Jihadist' does not value any of the things that normal human beings do. He does not value his life, but will gladly give it in what he perceives as 'Allah's will.' He is even willing that the lives of family and fellow Muslims be sacrificed if the infidel enemy retaliates against them for being attacked. He believes they will go immediately to Paradise as part of the great crusade to establish Islamic rule over the earth. What our enemy cherishes most are the sacred places where Mohammad received and implemented the Koran and the religion of Islam. They believe that all of Arabia is sacred soil and that no 'infidels' should be permitted to enter it. The two most sacred places are Mecca and Medina. So there is his only Achilles heel. Now let's speak the only language our enemy will understand. We must issue the most solemn and certain warning to Muslim Fundamentalists -- that if even one of our cities are attacked with a nuclear, biological or chemical bomb, then we will give twenty four hours for innocent Muslims to evacuate Mecca and Medina before we obliterate them with nuclear missiles. I realize this sounds harsh -- but it is the only action that our enemies will take seriously and affect him in something he truly cherishes and does not want to loose. For then his religion would be forever flawed. Of all religions, Islam places the most value on its holy places. The thought of no more pilgrimages to Mecca would be overwhelming. This is called a 'Haj" and is one of the essential parts of being a Muslim. Every Muslim is required to make a 'Haj' in his lifetime if humanly possible. I have believed this to be the only threat our enemy could take seriously for at least 20 years. But in the light of America's present peril, I felt it necessary to openly voice it as our only option to prevent a catastrophe from which we may never recover. May our God protect us and give us the courage to act now. Contact the poster at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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POSITIVE IMPACT OF THE RESOLUTION & MEDIA EXPOSURE
Posted by Salah Choudhury, November 24, 2006. |
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Greetings from Dhaka!
As you all know that, Bangladesh government was almost desparate in convicting me through the controversial court of radical judge Mohammed Momin Ullah. Despite repeated requests from the esteemed members of the US Congress, the false sedition charge was not dropped. Rather the Charge was framed twice; on 18th October 2006 and 13th November 2006. In the history of Bangladesh, there is no such instance of framing the charge for two times. But, in my case, it did happen. Meanwhile, esteemed members of US Congress have very kindly pressed a Resolution in the Congress (Resolution # 1080), as well European Parliament has very kindly passed a bill recently, which got tremendous coverage in Bangladeshi media. Meanwhile, Wall Street Journal, New York Sun, Daily Pennsylvanian, The Australian, Georgia Straight, Chicago Tribune, Jewish Herald Voice, Jerusalem Post and other prestigious newspapers have kindly published news items on me. A number of radio stations in USA and Canada also aired programs (interviewed me as well) on me. KGO Radio aired an excellent 55 minute program on me. Meanwhile, I have been contacted by an European journalist, who wishes to interview during next week. In fact, there will be two journalists from two of the European newspapers. A large number of Human Rights groups have also extended their support to me. Several excellent individuals are also working to help me. American Jewish Committee is doing everything possible to attract attention of important people worldwide to my case. Such exposures and resolutions have certainly put great impact on the minds of Bangladesh authorities. Many of the important people are now actively considering the possible adverse impact if I am convicted. And of course, we are still continuing our efforts through Weekly Blitz in promoting interfaith understanding, confronting religious hatred and advocating relations between Bangladesh and Israel. Even before 2003, it was considered to be a kind of 'taboo' to pronounce openly the name of Israel or praise Jewish people in Bangladesh. But, the trend got a huge blow when we published an exclusive interview of Israeli intellectual Professor Ada Aharoni or even publsihed the news on various Israeli organizations. My brother, Dr. Richard Benkin's writings were published in Bangladeshi press, which was again a very positive step. Now, the readers of Blitz knows for sure, what is our editorial policies and ideologies. Still they are continuing to read Blitz, even much carefully than they did before. Although, for some unknown reason, advertisers are affraid to place advertisements in Blitz. They think, adverisiting in Blitz might welcome unwarranted hassle for them from the radicals. And, very recently, it was even proved that, radicals are also reading Blitz to know what we are saying. My lawyer Advocate Goswami has already filed an appeal with the Higher Judiciary challenging the charge. Possibly we can expect some result from the Higher Judiciary in next couple of years. The advertisement section of Blitz is receiving inquiries from some Indian companies, who are showing interest in placing their ads in our newspaper. We have been providing them with Advertisement Rates, although till date, none of them placed their advertisements. But, their inquiries are seen as a positive sign by our advertisement section. Even though Weekly Blitz crossed it's first year of publication during this second term, we are still banned from attending state functions, and are also deprived of various advertisements from state owned enterprises and organizations. Even some of the local periodicals, with fractional circulation compared to that of Blitz, are getting advertisements amounting to a few hundred thousand Taka each year. The case, which we lodged against the attacker Mufti Noor Hussain Noorani under Explosives Act in July 2006, is still pending with Shahbagh Police Station and the government neither interrogated nor arrested Noorani for this crime. Another case, which had been lodged against the attackers belonging to the Cultural Wing of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is kept pending for investigation with Criminal Investigation Department (CID) since October this year. According to information from various sources, government is hesitant in arresting and interrogating Noorani as this might open several mesteries behind the bomb attack. Noorani might name the conspirators, which would ultimately unveil several infleuntial radical leaders. On the other hand, CID is hesitant is taking necessary actions against BNP men, fearing a victory of this party in the next general election and coming back of BNP thugs with much power and influence. Moreover, even though there is a caretaker government in Bangladesh, the administrative control still remains in the grips of BNP people. But, I believe, if the media exposure will continue and the Resolution # 1080 is passed in the US Congress, it will enhance pressure on Bangladesh government is according justice to me. Yesterday, British Trade minister met President Iajuddin Ahmed of Bangladesh in the Presidential Palace and pledged that during 2007 Britain will invest US$ 6 Billion in Bangladesh. I know, an esteemed MP raised my issue in the House of Commons but till date there is no further action from their side. Many other countries, such as, Australia and Canada are also solid development partners of Bangladesh. If there will be some actions from those governments too, the chance of finally dropping the false charge will become brighter. My profound regards to friends and supporters in USA, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Italy, Britain, East European Countries, Israel, India, Western Europe, Brazil and many other places who are very kindly extending their valued cooperation to me. My special thanks to members of print and electronic media in the world. Regards,
Salah Choudhury is a journalist, columnist, author, amd editor of "Weekly Blitz". Email him at salahuddinshoaibchoudhury@yahoo.com |
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OUR STATE OF CONFUSION
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 24, 2006. |
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Peace at any price is not peace rather it is hunda (translates from Islamists' expression: time to take a break to rebuild and then attack again). Israel disengagement from Gaza was nothing but a deadly delusion! Anyone's in Israel having aspiration to peace with the Palestinians has deadly delusion! There is a saying: "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." It is clear that Israel's current [No]leadership cannot bear much reality? There is a saying: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." No leadership of any country should be allowed to be in a position to flagrantly forget (devastating) history they must learn from so it is not repeated. At present Israel's leadership, thus Israel is totally disoriented. For his survival, PM Olmert is playing government "chairs' shuffling." Israel's "ulcer of disarray" is at its advancing stage. As I said many times before: the bazaar negotiations with Israel foes should have ended yesterday. If any of the countries, in first or seconds tier surrounding Israel wish to extend the arm of peace, Israel should proclaim: Of course we, in our sovereign borders, would like to arrive at peace. NO MORE LAND FOR [NO]PEACE! I am begging of you our Lord; change Israel's leadership to the one that will lead her back on the right path! This was written by Shmuel Katz and it appeared November 22, 2006 in the Jerusalem Post. |
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The peace-at-any-price brigade is back in business. The morning papers report that Amir Peretz is drawing up a peace plan. The other day it was Tzipi Livni. The exposure of the deadly delusion that abandoning Jewish territory and clearing it of Jewish presence would open the way to peace with the Arabs seems to have had little effect. Everything that's happened since disengagement illuminates a great divide within Israel that has existed since the state was established (and even before) between the people who believed the Arabs when they declared that their aim was the destruction of Israel and those who claimed, in spite of three generations of hard evidence to the contrary, that the Arabs only wanted a slice of land in order to make peace -- and that consequently Israel should give it to them. What followed the abandonment of Gaza was of course a new and emphatic vindication of the Right in the genuineness of the Arab threats. As for the Left, its political creed was torn to pieces. The Arabs reacted to the Gaza operation exactly as the Right had said they would. Kadima, the ragtag-and-bobtail party that Ariel Sharon cobbled together after splitting the Likud, was left without its one defining idea (abandoning Gaza as the road to peace), while the one immediate change for Israel's security was the Kassam rockets being able to reach beyond Sderot into Ashkelon. Not without irony was the proud boast by one of the Kadima stalwarts, Meir Sheetrit, soon after his defection from the Likud. With head held high he declared: "We have got rid of the kitbags of [Ze'ev] Jabotinsky and Berel Katznelson!" Had he lowered his head and looked down, he would also have realized how naked they had become. IN THE midst of this confusion, everyone began casting around for some diversion, at least a safety belt. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, conflating his government, added loose-cannon Avigdor Lieberman and his party. Olmert now commands 78 Knesset seats, a motley company unified only by the hope of survival. He also has discovered a cause, to replace our parliamentary democracy by a president independent of parliament. He expects that will enable him to survive. Inevitably this only adds to the general disorientation: We don't know which way we are going. As for the Left (Peace Now and its allies), a savior from nowhere, a deus ex machina (or mashiach?) has revealed himself: Bashar Assad, president of Syria. He has chosen a suitable moment. Viewing the disarray in Israel, he announced that he is prepared to make peace. The peaceniks at once jumped at the chance. They know, as we all know, that Assad wants only one thing, the Golan Heights -- from which Israel, with Damascus in her sights, successfully guards her northern frontier. Peace Now was completely discredited by the aftermath of the Gaza giveaway and now fantasizes the great benefits to Israel from giving him the Golan, including Assad's instant abandonment of his patron and ally, Iran. But the fact that Assad has made this offer in the midst of a national state of confusion and doubt about Israel's future should be taken as an opportunity by Israel -- to demonstrate that it has learned the lesson of the follies of the national policy of her past leaders and intends now to start behaving like a normal people. Instead of laughing at Assad's offer like the joke it is, Israel should proclaim: Of course we, in our sovereign borders, would like to arrive at peace with Syria. Israel does not demand territory from Syria, and it forgoes territory at Kuneitra, which it captured during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973. Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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THE HONORED HONOREE
Posted by Arlene Peck, November 24, 2006. |
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It takes a lot to subdue me. I am a woman who is not easily intimidated. However, recently, I was awed while sitting among some of the worlds most informed and intelligent, at the America's Truth Forum Symposium founded by Jeffery Epstein in Las Vegas while they spoke about the threat that we all face with Islamic terror. It was truly an honor to me to be made an 'honoree' among the likes of speakers like Robert Spencer, (Director of Jihad Watch) Dr. Wafa Sultan, former terrorists Walid Shoebat. Also speaking were: James Gilchrist (founder of the Minuteman Project), recognized authorities on terrorism Drs. Harvey Kushner, Bruce Tefft (CIA founder of Counter Terrorism Center, Paul Williams and Hamid Mir, the only journalist to have met with Osama bin Laden; Joe Kaufman (chair of Americans against Hate and founder of CAIR Watch) and more... The American Truth Forum is the result of the tireless efforts of activist Jeffery Epstein. People with his devotion to bring to fruition such a symposium explaining the threat of radical Islamism at our front door, are few and far between. Jeff ran a flawless conference, except, for his misfortune to book the event at the Sahara Hotel. They changed the guarantee (at the last minute) from $110 a night for the room to $400 for a room that was decorated early Howard Johnsons. Walking through the lobby was enough to give you cancer from the lingering cigarette smoke and the food was bordering on ptomaine. The entire two days of this amazing symposium were filled with information that although depressing, was something everyone should know. Joe Kaufman spoke at length how Hamas threatens America. CAIR is a durative of Hamas. Moreover, according to him, "That being the case, the United States and the Justice Dept should put CAIR on the same list of being a terrorist's organization" I personally have been a victim of this particular group. It happened shortly after I wrote a column entitled, "How has Islam Enriched Your Life." Although this article was widely published in various papers, I was singled out by Google in the New Media Journal and slandered by refusing their refusing to publish Frank Salvato's paper (www.NewMediaJournal.us) because they now considered me a 'hate speech writer'. Frank incidentally was a strong supporter of the event. I sat fascinated, while those in the know like Dr. Harvey Kushner, professor and internationally recognized authority on terrorism spoke how the universities and their Islamic studies programs are teaching hate and, a 'certain point of view'. As a parent, I find it sick that you send a kid to college, they take an American government course, and instead of learning real history, the children are learning about the degrading of America. I didn't need the symposium to tell me how the American universities today are embedded in a wave of foreign students. There is an over abundance of foreign funding of universities. The Saudis have 15,000 'students' now in full scholarships. They are sending them over to curb unrest at home. Lovely. Hey, even the ben Laden family is funding Colombia. How many loans would it take your kid to get into one of those Ivy League schools? And George Town is heavily funded. Just follow the money. The Saudis cut a check ahead of time. According to Dr. Kushner, we are embedded in waves of foreign students "Students come for one day and leave. To get their visa to get into our country." People we are churning out in our country who are getting educated do not stay. We educated them and then, they go back to foreign soil where they have their loyalty. However, they have learned how to use our laws and systems against us... I believe that CAIR has mastered that. Dr. Kushner only reiterated my feelings that the professors in our country are no longer American. They are not even American nationals. They arrive with political baggage and it is dangerous when our teachers are teaching social sciences. They have a goal and it is to teach our children hate. I remember a couple of years ago when I slipped into a local mosque and listened to a few of the well-dressed crowd that was there. The idea seemed to be to encourage their children to major in three specific fields. Those being, education, politics and communications. So, I am not too surprised to see the fruits of their labor in our newspapers now when I read stories from Muslim writers. We have begun putting them in our congress. Our universities have become totally infiltrated and it is not the American way. What is being taught? Whose thoughts are being heard? When is the last time that any of the parents have sat through one of their kids classrooms? The teachers in these classes have no intention of becoming American citizens. They are foreign nationals for the most part with the ability to make changes in their student's minds. Islam is being taught in our schools as an example of religious expression ... gawd! Dr. Kushner said, "Religious diversity is fine, however, what is the agenda when Islam is being taught while Christianity and Judaism is being shut down." The number of imams at major universities is growing and at a rapid rate. It does not seem to matter whether there is a substantial Muslim society at the school or not. What is the need for imams? I remember, eons ago, when I went to college. It was major event to have a Rabbi that came in. Now that I think of it, most of our hospitals are now filled with foreign doctors. Outsourcing and the key dramatic aspect is the university. However, I digress. There we so many speakers, and each with profound thoughts that I do not want to dwell on any one topic. The problems are immense. The question that we have to answer is how to handle it? Symposiums such as the America's Truth Forum do so much to educate us in the understanding that the minds and needs of Muslims and how no matter what, Islam and Democracy is not compatible. When we think of democracy, we think of freedom of speech, the ability to write and speak about whatever it is that bothers you. Our list of What Freedom Means to us is huge. When a Muslim thinks of democracy, they can sum it up in one sentence. They won't be a slave. Simple? Poverty is not a reason. Land has nothing to do with it either. Many countries are poor. They just don't go out and cut off heads. It is our business to connect the links and meetings like this clarify what is wrong and what needs to be done about it. I found it appalling that Jeff Epstein worked around the clock for months to bring the caliber of speakers to us. And, yet, on the final count, he struggled to break even. Where were the big 'spenders' who rush to accept plaques? How about this? People should be clamoring to assist with the dissemination of this vital information. Those fortunate enough to be able to contribute financially should be standing in line to help pay for such an educational symposium. We, as Americans and/or Jews and all human beings lucky enough to live in our free society have much to lose by keeping our heads in the sand and refusing to recognize the danger we are all in. What will it take to allow everyone to clearly see the handwriting on the wall? And don't say we haven't been given fair warning. The Islamo-fascist terrorists have stated very plainly what it is that they desire: To eradicate Western Civilization. It's time to smell the Humus. Send help to http://www.americastruthforum.com Arlene Peck is an internationally syndicated columnist and television talk show hostess. She can be reached at: bestredhead@earthlink.net and www.arlenepeck.com |
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CAN THE U.S. WORK WITH THIS "WORLD?"
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 24, 2006. |
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People suggest that the US rely more upon diplomacy than it has. They want the US to discuss problems with other governments and the UNO, and work out joint solutions. Referring to some successful UNO aid program, a friend remarked with mild sarcasm, "And they claim that the UN does not do anything." She mischaracterized the claim or at least its intent. The real claim is that the UNO does not promote international security and impedes the US from doing so. As for economic aid, it could be given without the UNO. Do conditions foster the kind of international relations the US is urged to engage in? The suggestions assume that most governments and the UNO are sincere in desiring solutions. The reality is that most appease international rogues. The US has engaged in diplomacy with rogues and within the UNO. The people who call Pres. Bush a liar claim the US did not spend much time negotiating with Saddam and Iran. Fact is, it spent ten or more years with both, in and out of the UNO. (Now who's lying?) Negotiations did not work with those regimes. Negotiations can work only if all parties want to resolve issues. Totalitarian imperialists don't have legitimate grievances to resolve, they have aggressive ambitions to achieve. They use negotiations to further those ambitions. While negotiating, they prepare their military forces to attack. The US had better attack before enemy forces have built up much. Consider what kind of a UNO we have, with China as a member of the Security Council. China's economy is expanding phenomenally. No outsider knows what China wants beyond the obvious. The obvious, though it does not seem obvious to the State Dept. -- little does -- is that China will trade with any regime however repressive and criminal. Foreign dictators can't be worse than Red China. The Chinese Communists murdered as many people as did Nazi Germany and the USSR combined. China's military is a major employer of what amounts to slave labor. China's two-fold trade goal: (1) Sequester raw materials, not just oil, for China's economy; and (2) Gain support in the UNO from governments indebted to China. The UNO is a pool of self-interested governments, not of idealists. As China and Russia court Africa and the Arabs, the Arabs are courting China and Russia. Countries that used to depend upon US support are diversifying their means of support. US foreign policy officials had better take the changing circumstances into account. The US is losing power while evil regimes are gaining it. American idealists should not expect more from the UNO than it is capable of. Being unrealistic about this makes the ideals dependent upon corrupt parties. After WWII, Americans considered whether their country should be the world's policeman. The US set up the UNO, so it shouldn't have to be. The UNO kept passing the buck to the US or dropping the ball. The US has had to be the world's policeman by default. Some countries, such as France, enjoy criticizing the US effort, while benefiting from it. The US ought to organize whatever half-way decent countries remain. It cannot impose its will. It can't afford to be everywhere and do everything. It must be selective and wiser about intervention. That means giving priority to strategic threats and perhaps genocide. We cannot afford to sully our genuine efforts by exploitative ones. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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LITTLE WARRIORS
Posted by David Wilder, November 24, 2006. |
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Please pray for the baby: Yair Nisi ben Roni Bat-tzion who was critically injured in an auto accident |
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Shabbat is starting in just over an hour, but there are some things that you feel like you have to write, even if time is short. I was busy earlier with a group from Lakewood, New Jersey, and only now can sit for a few minutes. I hope I manage to express my thoughts lucidly. It was just a week ago that we hosted, here in Hebron, somewhere in the vicinity of 30,000 guests. No, they didn't all eat at my home in Beit Hadassah. We split them up amongst the families in Hebron and Kiryat Arba.) - Well, almost. We had something over 20 at our Shabbat table. That was considered small. Others had between 50 to 100 guests. Some ate in tents set up all over, receiving Shabbat meals preordered from Hebron's hospitality center. Friday, during the day and all night, as well as all day Saturday, was amazing. So many Jews walking the streets, visiting the sites, just being here, in Hebron and Kiryat Arba, was really an event to be experienced. It is very difficult to express in words. The preparations for such a weekend are long and consuming. People worked day and night for weeks to try and insure that everyone arriving would have a place to sleep and food to eat. And even those who didn't make reservations wouldn't be left out. (We had two fellows from Ashdod who 'showed up at the last minute' looking for somewhere to eat and sleep. We gave them a place on our floor and at the table. Many others did the same, welcoming 'unexpected' guests.) People from all over the world come into Hebron particularly for this Shabbat. From the United States, from Europe, you name it and they are here. Kids, adults, everyone. Shabbat Hebron, every year when we read in the Torah about Abraham's purchase of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the Caves of Machpela, is always special. But this year was extraordinary. At least as far as I was concerned. Last Friday morning our apartment beepers started buzzing. Sometimes they inform us of an engagement and at other times of a rescheduled community event, or even of a security problem. However, last Friday morning the buzzing beeper had other news for us: "Mazal Tov to Itzik and Oriya Pass on the birth of a new little baby boy." Itzik and Oriya have two little girls. But they should have three, for Oriya gave birth to three girls. The first of those, their oldest daughter, was named Shalhevet, and over five years ago she was shot and killed by an Arab terrorist from the Abu Sneneh hills, overlooking the Avraham Avinu neighborhood. Shalhevet was in her stroller, with her parents at her side when the killer started shooting. Itzik was hit in the legs; the bullet went through Shalhevet's head, killing her instantly. What does a family do following such a tragedy, their first-born plucked from them, at only 10 months of age? Itzik and Oriya are strong people, filled with faith and love of their land, their people and their G-d. It certainly wasn't easy, but with support from family and friends, and people all over the world, they were able to overcome their sorrow and mourning. Today they live only meters from the very spot where Shalhevet was shot and killed, with their two other daughters playing outside in the playground adjacent to where their oldest sister was murdered. And after three girls, Oriya Pass gave birth last Friday to their first son. Early this morning, at the 'Kollel' (Torah Study Hall) opened in Shalhevet's memory in that same Avraham Avinu neighborhood, family and friends, from Hebron and all over Israel, celebrated the new baby's 'Brit Milah' -- ritual circumcision. During the ceremony the baby was named, David Tzuri; David, in honor of Itzik's father, David Pass. Tzur, in Hebrew, means a hard stone, and connotates strength, and is sometimes a synonym for G-d (as is suggested in the Israeli Declaration of Independence). King David, writing in Psalm 144 says "'Baruch Tzuri,' praised be my rock (my strength -- my G-d), who teaches my fingers battle and my hands war." Of course, King David started ruling here in Hebron for over 7 years before moving up to Jerusalem. So the name, David Tzuri has much meaning, for the family, privately and symbolically, relating to all of us, teaching us all. Following the loss of a child, so tragically, the Pass family didn't give up, they didn't run away. They battled, for the right to continue to live, in Hebron, in Eretz Yisrael, to continue to have children, who too can play in the city of the Patriarchs, and worship at Ma'arat HaMachpela. At the present these rights entail battle and war, privately and publicly, by each and every individual, and by the State. Sometimes these legitimate rights, to live freely and safely in our homeland are forgotten by some, but others, like Itzik and Oriya Pass, won't let them be forgotten. They are raising children, who in their very being are warriors; the fact that they live here in Hebron, or anywhere in the Land of Israel makes them so, whether they desire it or not. These little warriors are the future of our people in our land -- and little David Tzuri, together with his two sisters and the others that are yet to be born, are the best memorial their oldest sister, Shalhevet, could ever have. To the extended Pass-Zarbiv family, Mazal tov -- best wishes for many other happy occasions. From all of us in Hebron. David Wilder is spokesman of The Jewish Community of Hebron. You can contribute directly to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB10, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, hebron@hebron.org.il, 972-2-9965333 or write to The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, hebronfund@aol.com |
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CHESTNUTS ROASTING ON AN OPEN FIRE...
Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, November 23, 2006. |
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I must be dreaming...a nightmare, at that. Solid intelligence has shown large truck convoys leaving Iraq for Syria just prior to America's assault, largely over the WMD issue. This was confirmed by former political and military leaders, both at home and abroad. Arab insurgents, hell-bent on stopping the spread of the democratic disease, have freely moved back and forth across the Iraqi-Syrian border. Syria, to this date, still does not recognize an independent Lebanon....and never really has. And it has continuously assassinated--or had assassinated by its stooges--one Lebanese politician after another who believed otherwise...one just days ago. Not to mention its involvement in killing hundreds of Americans and others in Lebanon and elsewhere as well. For decades, Damascus--which largely instigated the June '67 Six-Day War which lost them the Heights--bombarded Israelis from the Golan...which, by the way, were actually to be part of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine after WWI, but wound up in Syria's hands after some imperial trading between the Brits and and the French. Indeed, over the centuries, the Heights traded back and forth between many different rulers--including Jews. Yes, it must be just a bad dream... After all, the Arab butchers in Damascus are simply peas of the same pod of the latest Arab butcher of Iraq who--thanks to us--was dragged out of his hole in the ground and is now scheduled to meet his seventy or so virgins in Islamic Paradise. Among other things (including massacres and forced Arabization of Kurds), Assad the First sired the Hama Solution--which killed far more of his Arab enemies in a month than Israel killed in all the years of fighting intifadas, Hizbullah, Fatah, Hamas, etc. and so forth. So, I'm hoping to wake up to hear that I was just imagining reading that James A. Baker III, who is now back on the front burner after working continuously for decades behind the scenes, has proposed to solve Iraq's woes by rewarding Syrian Arabs for "their cooperation" by delivering the Jews to them on a silver platter...and shafting the Kurds once again to boot. So what, pray tell, is this nightmarish price, that I hope I'm just dreaming, for Syria stopping its murderous, hegemonic behaviors? Well, for starters, it expects that Baker's former promise to Assad the First while Secretary of State to his close friend, Pappa Bush, will indeed materialize. Israel will be squeezed to return to the days when Syria freely shelled Jews below on kibbutzim, in the Sea of Galilee, and so forth. Baker, with Dubya and Condi's approval, will pressure the millennial Jewish Suffering Servant to cave in to enemies sworn to its demise. America, Great Britain, and so forth can topple governments and/or go to war thousands of miles away from home in the name of their own national security interests (what was the overthrow of Noriega in Panama or the Falklands War really all about?), but an Israel that one needs a magnifying glass to find on a world map is expected to simply return to the status quo ante and turn its other cheek...something good, predominatly Christian nations surely don't do. And rightly not...nobody should be expected to commit personal or national suicide. Yet, keep in mind that Israel had earlier indeed agreed to such a virtual withdrawal. Not long ago, an Israeli Prime Minister offered (and not the first time) an almost complete return of the Heights. The exception would cover a tiny stretch of land protecting Israel's water sources. But, of course, this was too much to ask of a Syria still dedicated to Israel's destruction, as are most Arabs. Well, bad news... I woke up with a horrendous headache...made worse when I read that I wasn't dreaming after all. Baker's Commision recommendations to pull America's--especially Republicans'--chestnuts out of the open fire in Iraq (just in time for the Christmas season, for those familiar with the late Mel Torme's song) are evidently set to shaft both Jews and Kurds yet again for Arab interests...something the State Department, unfortunately, has a long history of doing. But the American people are not stupid and have, on the whole, a good code of ethics--regardless of what Borat says. They know that the one place in Iraq where folks aren't constantly blowing others apart is in the Kurdish north. Many now also know that some thirty million Kurds don't even have one state yet let alone the almost two dozen that Arabs already have, largely by conquering non-Arab peoples and the latters' lands. And they know that that Kurdish north far more exemplifies American values and is aligned with American interests far more than any of Baker's law firm's Arab clients are. A sense of fair play must put the birth of an economically viable Kurdish state--which was indeed promised after WWI, but aborted largely on behalf of British petroleum and Arab interests--ahead of creating yet other ones for Arabs at both the Jew of the Nations and the Kurds' expense. Yet that's what Baker is up to again...evidently with Dubya's blessing. George II (whom I voted for) would be wise to work to restore a sense of morality to American foreign policy. Many Republicans, let alone others, are not too happy with him these days. Traditionally, it has taken a strong American executive to resist the Arabists who too often call the shots at Foggy Bottom...from President Truman onwards. There's lots of money to be made via the revolving doors of businesses tied to Arab wealth and government. Baker is just one of too many cases in point over the decades. George II must not allow Baker's and his own family's huge financial ties to Arab petrodollars (and hiding behind the American flag won't work...again, Americans are mostly moral and are not stupid) to dictate foreign policy in this volatile region. While a Michael Moorish/Jimmy Carter Democratic alternative won't cut it either, most Americans rejected this long ago...so it's not the model to follow. Yet, on this topic, Dubya, Condi, Baker, Moore, and Mr. Peanut all seem to agree. Jews, Kurds, and America's soul and reputation deserve something far better. Gerald A. Honigman, a Florida educator, has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in both the print media and on websites. Contact him at honigman6@msn.com or go to his website: http://geraldahonigman.com/blog.php |
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GO BIG, GO LONG, OR GO HOME
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, November 23, 2006. |
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Go big, go long, or go home. Such choices now challenge the brains of United States movers and shakers, unable to figure out what to do after clumsily breaking Iraq like a near sighted elephant haphazardly swinging its trunk through a crowded Middle East bazaar. Sadist Hussein, tyrannical boss, doling out his best shops to Sunni Baathist minions, trampling Shiite and Kurdish merchants, indeed was easily toppled by the swaggering super-powered pachyderm, but now that erstwhile bazaar lay in ruins, even lacking electricity to light darkened hallways strewn with beheaded bodies, maintaining but one thriving business known as the Baghdad morgue. Meanwhile, jihad junkies jump for joy, perceiving victory whenever 'Uncle Satan' or ally Israel, recently unable to crush Hizbullah, fall short of their ambitious expectations. In other words, in a dysfunctional Middle East, ego-deflated fundamentalist Muslims win whenever they don't trip over a bar set lower than a snake's belly, and 'Westernized infidels' lose whenever they don't pole vault over a bar raised to a level befitting world class nations, alas sometimes biting off more than they can chew. Let's not kid ourselves. Arab and Persian Middle East fundamentalist Islamic nations can fit their recent collective contributions to civilized humankind into a thimble and still have room to spare. This is not surprising as unfortunate Muslim females, nurtured within such ignorant cultures, enslaved by disgraceful sharia laws, indeed treated worse than civilized humans treat house pets, are unable to expand their minds and assert influence possibly turning things around. How can such societies that so disrespect half their members, forcing them to don head to toe burkas, presumably because their virtual slave masters, randomly endowed with the Y chromosome, have absolutely no control over repressed prurient urges, expect to thrive productively? How can societies that brainwash children with hate-filled Koranic verse, rather than nourish supple minds with secular humanistic tolerant concepts, expect to thrive productively? More importantly, when emboldened regimes like today's Iran, perhaps tomorrow's Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and possibly Iraq continue extorting exponentially increasing revenues from energy addicted non-Muslim industrial nations for fossil fuel, that prehistoric substance keeping their economies from collapsing as well as affording those war-mongering regimes the insidious opportunity to develop nuclear weapons, they imperil all civilized cultures. Let's not kid ourselves. Set backs aside, the United States, Israel, and every other non-brain dead nation on this planet had better develop strategies for dealing with an inevitable confrontation with fanatical Islamic regimes and stateless kindred spirited war crazed jihadists refusing to evolve peacefully as we enter our third and hopefully not last millennium. Might one sensible strategy involve cutting the fossil fuel cord thus revenue flow to fundamentalist Islamic regimes? It is morally unconscionable to underwrite jihad obsessed misogynist countries, enabling them to continue suffocating the natural rights of one entire gender, enabling them to nurture terrorists, enabling them to sooner or later develop weapons of mass destruction which they or their proxies will likely use. Furthermore, Iran, led by a lunatic president and muddled mullahs truly believing it is their duty to create planetary chaos, perhaps of the nuclear variety, a glowing tribute for the coming of an all powerful Imam who will slay the infidel creating a wholly fundamentalist Islamic planet, is on the brink of fulfilling that Dr. Strangelove obsession as their centrifuges turn, yet the world dawdles. Has the stupidity virus infected leaders of energy dependent nations, unable to grasp the obvious fact that preventing a nuclear holocaust trumps any inconvenience consequential to a military solution that will prevent such a catastrophe from occurring? Go big, go long, or go home may be today's operative conundrum troubling minds across the Atlantic, but a broken Iraq must be viewed within the context of the entire Middle East when formulating a strategic plan. If that unstable set of tribes, previously held together by a Sunni tyrant, morphs into another autocratic enclave this time ruled by a Shiite tyrant at the behest of frothing nukes-in-progress neighbor Iran, Uncle Sam's clumsy efforts at presumably creating a democracy in this neck of the desert could yield a potentially apocalyptical result. Furthermore, peace in our time accommodating Europe, strewn with Israel bashing Palestinian apologists, less than apoplectic about madman AhMADinejad and his crew of contemptible Imam possessed mullahs, will be the first to feel the wrath of any neo-Ottoman invasion jihad style, its urban battleground emerging in London, Paris, Madrid, Hamburg, Helsinki, and so many other European venues, manned by throngs of ghettoized Muslim immigrant warriors weaned on madrassa infected venom. It would be unconscionable if America merely walks away from the mess it created in Iraq, effectively strengthening a Hitler wannabe in erstwhile Persia. Would it however be too much to ask if politically correct Europe, for the sake of its own Westernized skin, joins the heretofore hated Bush Administration in this endeavor, likely more amenable to that consideration now that new kid on the block donkeys hold sway with that swaggering staggering GOP pachyderm after a midterm election thumping of the latter? Set aside differences, something must be done to turn the tide of disastrous fanatical Islam now! Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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MORE 'SUDDEN JIHAD SYNDROME'
Posted by David Meir-Levi, November 23, 2006. |
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Another case of what Daniel Pipes calls "Sudden Jihad syndrome". Crazed lone killer, acting on behalf of Allah, kills "despicable Crusader" (and wounds five others) for the honor of Islam, happy about it, got strength from Allah to do it, knows that Allah loves him for doing it, knows that Allah wanted him to kill a British subject today because of the way Britain treated the Arabs almost 90 years ago (Balfour Declaration). Remember the van driver near a college campus in North Carolina.
Three of the five were not targetting Jews or Israelis....just 'infidels'. what is it that created in these people the state of mind which says that killing innocent people because they are not Muslim brings glory and God's love? This is called "Allah blessed me, tells killer of British tourist," and was written by Harry deQuetteville. It appeared in the Telegraph in England (www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/23/wjordan23.xml) |
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The self-confessed killer of a British tourist in Jordan claimed yesterday that, "Allah gave me the strength to kill the Briton". Nabil Ahmad Issa al-Jaaoura, 38, is on trial for the murder of Christopher Stokes, a 30-year-old chartered accountant who was shot dead in September during a visit to a Roman amphitheatre popular with tourists in the capital Amman. Five visitors from the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, and a Jordanian tourist policeman were also wounded in the shooting spree, during which witnesses said the gunman shouted, "God is great" before being overpowered. At a military court yesterday, the defendant said he was "a soldier of Allah" and that killing a "despicable crusader" was "the closest to winning Allah's acceptance". Jaaoura, a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin, said he had been "blessed" by Allah before setting off on his mission to kill westerners. "Allah blessed me when I killed a British man and hurt others, because they are fighting the Prophet and his soldiers since the Balfour Declaration," he said, referring to the 1917 document in which the Britain promised support for the creation of Israel. "The British people... insulted the honorable Quran and women who wear the head cover." Jaourah initially pleaded innocent to murder charges. But after his comments, the prosecutor said he had confessed and urged the court "to hand him the harshest punishment". He demanded the death penalty for what he called Jaaoura's "terrorist crimes". The accused now faces sentenced to death by hanging if convicted. The trial comes as Jordan's moderate monarchy, which has made peace with Israel and is a key ally in President George W. Bush's war against terrorism, strikes an increasingly delicate balance with extremist elements among the country's population. Like the self-confessed killer of Mr Stokes, large numbers of Jordanians are ethnic Palestinians who resent Western policy in the region of which Jordan is a key part. Jordan has also been unsettled by a flood of refugees from its eastern neighbour Iraq, where Jordanian-born extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi led al-Qa'eda before being killed by US forces in June. Mr Stokes, whose family lives in Littleborough, near Rochdale, Greater Manchester, gave up his job at an audit company in Dublin to embark on a four-week tour of the Middle East. He travelled to Turkey and Syria before arriving in Jordan. The shooting which claimed his life on Sept 4 was a rare attack on tourists in Jordan. Prosecutors have said that Jaourah was acting alone and had no links to terrorist groups. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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RATIONAL INTOLERANCE
Posted by Michael Travis, November 22, 2006. |
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Tristan Murphy of the eclectic and often brilliant "Western Defence" is pushing "Rational Intolerance" as the answer to mindless appeasement! |
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Some points to make Robert Spencer over at Jihad Watch has published a list of points in answer to some of his critics, I thought that I would do the same! But unlike Spencer I've decided not to bullshit(Why is it all these learned men, criticise Islam, lay out sensible arguments, then fail to make logical conclusions based on the facts?) 1. Islam is not a race. One does not become a racist by opposing Islam. 2. I actually do wish to drive all Muslims out of the West. 3. I believe that good Muslims are by definition wicked followers of Satan, some Muslims may be good people, but by definition are bad Muslims. The best Muslims are recovering Muslims! 4. I have said that Muslims want to kill Jews and Christians, but they would get a bigger kick out of enslaving us and taxing us. 5. Islam is incompatible with mankind, civilisation and basic decency! FACT! Spain is cool by the way, quite civilised, not to many Moors where I am, although the ones that are here stand out like sewage in a bed of roses! Contact the poster at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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WHAT CAN I DO TO MAKE YOUR FLIGHT MORE UNCOMFORTABLE?
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 22, 2006. |
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They (Islamists) should not stop at boycotting US Airways...they should boycott ALL our airlines and then we know we are safer, business for our airlines will increase...after all we no longer transferring possible terrorists, and we will need to spend less money on security that we need to have so the imams and their compatriots do not blow up our airplanes...boycott our airlines already! On the other hand...Minneapolis is Islamo-fascism center where you can attend "imam conference," what ever this means apart from the getting together of Muslims to plan the take over of the USA! And our foolish government is investigating US Airways instead of sticking Homeland Security nose deep inside the-who-is-who and what-is-what in this imam conference. Not to worry! The American political correctness victimhood mentality machine is well greased; it will intimidate airlines and their passengers but will defend the rights of six imams to chant "Allah" before boarding a US Airways commercial flight, a word that coincidentally was the last word hundreds of airline passengers heard on 9/11 before they died in the greatest Islamits attack on America yet! You tell me! This was written by Ann Coulter and it appeared today on Human Events Online |
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Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling on Muslims to boycott the airline. If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether. Witnesses said the imams stood to do their evening prayers in the terminal before boarding, chanting "Allah, Allah, Allah" -- coincidentally, the last words heard by hundreds of airline passengers on 9/11 before they died. Witnesses also said that the imams were talking about Saddam Hussein, and denouncing America and the war in Iraq. About the only scary preflight ritual the imams didn't perform was the signing of last wills and testaments. After boarding, the imams did not sit together and some asked for seat belt extensions, although none were morbidly obese. Three of the men had one-way tickets and no checked baggage. Also they were Muslims. The idea that a Muslim boycott against US Airways would hurt the airline proves that Arabs are utterly tone-deaf. This is roughly the equivalent of Cindy Sheehan taking a vow of silence. How can we hope to deal with people with no sense of irony? The next thing you know, New York City cab drivers will be threatening to bathe. Come to think of it, the whole affair may have been a madcap advertising scheme cooked up by US Airways. It worked with me. US Airways is my official airline now. Northwest, which eventually flew the Allah-spouting Muslims to their destinations, is off my list. You want to really hurt a U.S. air carrier's business? Have Muslims announce that it's their favorite airline. The clerics had been attending an imam conference in Minneapolis (imam conference slogan: "What Happens in Minneapolis -- Actually, Nothing Happened in Minneapolis"). But instead of investigating the conference, the government is now investigating my favorite airline. What threat could Muslims flying from Minnesota to Arizona be? Three of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 received their flight training in Arizona. Long before the attacks, an FBI agent in Phoenix found it curious that so many Arabs were enrolled in flight school. But the FBI rebuffed his request for an investigation on the grounds that his suspicions were based on the same invidious racial profiling that has brought US Airways under investigation and into my good graces. Lynne Stewart's client, the Blind Sheik, Omar Abdel-Rahman, is serving life in prison in a maximum security lock-up in Minnesota. One of the six imams removed from the US Airways plane was blind, so Lynne Stewart was the one missing clue that would have sent all the passengers screaming from the plane. Wholly apart from the issue of terrorism, don't we have a seller's market for new immigrants? How does a blind Muslim get to the top of the visa list? Is there a shortage of blind, fanatical clerics in this country that I haven't noticed? Couldn't we get some Burmese with leprosy instead? A 4-year-old could do a better job choosing visa applicants than the U.S. Department of Immigration. One of the stunt-imams in US Airways' advertising scheme, Omar Shahin, complained about being removed from the plane, saying: "Six scholars in handcuffs. It's terrible." Yes, especially when there was a whole conference of them! Six out of 150 is called "poor law enforcement." How did the other 144 "scholars" get off so easy? Shahin's own "scholarship" consisted of continuing to deny Muslims were behind 9/11 nearly two months after the attacks. On Nov. 4, 2001, the Arizona Republic cited Shahin's "skepticism that Muslims or bin Laden carried out attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon." Shahin complained that the government was "focusing on the Arabs, the Muslims. And all the evidence shows that the Muslims are not involved in this terrorist act." In case your memory of that time is hazy, within three days of the attack, the Justice Department had released the names of all 19 hijackers -- names like Majed Moqed, Ahmed Alghamdi, Mohand Alshehri, Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi and Ahmed Alnami. The government had excluded all but 19 passengers as possible hijackers based on extensive interviews with friends and family of nearly every passenger on all four flights. Some of the hijackers' seat numbers had been called in by flight attendants on the planes. By early October, bin Laden had produced a videotape claiming credit for the attacks. And by Nov. 4, 2001, the New York Times had run well over 100 articles on the connections between bin Laden and the hijackers -- even more detailed and sinister than the Times' flowcharts on neoconservatives! Also, if I remember correctly, al Qaeda had taken out full-page ads in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter thanking their agents for the attacks. But now, on the eve of the busiest travel day in America, these "scholars" have ginned up America's PC victim machinery to intimidate airlines and passengers from noticing six imams chanting "Allah" before boarding a commercial jet. Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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INVERTED VALUES IN BEIT HANOUN
Posted by Moshe Feiglin, November 22, 2006. |
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The planned operation was the mistake. And the mistake should have been the planned operation... The recent military operation in Beit Hanoun, in which Israel attempted -- as usual -- to find the terror needle in the civilian haystack, was responsible for Israeli casualties, but registered no military achievements. On the other hand, the mistake -- the accidental shelling of a civilian building in Beit Hanoun -- should have been the planned operation in the first place, albeit in a calculated and controlled manner. Residents of territory from which Israel is fired upon must know that they have two options: Either prevent the firing or leave before their homes are destroyed. But this simple equation, clear to any normal person, is not clear at all to Israel's leaders and army commanders. The IDF's operation in Beit Hanoun was an exact rerun of all the false concepts that created the failure in last summer's war in Lebanon. It just makes you rub your eyes in amazement: The IDF is great, strong and sophisticated. But on the other hand, it is completely entangled in the values imbroglio of the "enlightened" tyranny. Israel's defeat in Lebanon created a flurry of studies and research projects, some more professional than others. The vast majority of these studies dealt with the army's technical functioning. All the generals on the talk shows and all the officers who voiced their opinions focused on the technical. That played perfectly into the hands of the political leaders, as if the problem is technical, it is easy to excuse with technical claims. But the defeats that the IDF has suffered time after time are not the direct result of military capability. Instead, the defeats are the result of the inverted values which have overtaken the military establishment. After two months in a tent in Gush Katif, I was loaded onto a bus and expelled from the region. When I got home, I said to my wife, "That's it. We don't have an army anymore." "What do you mean?" she said. "Didn't you see how well the army was prepared? The precise logistics? Tens of thousands of soldiers?" "There is no more army," I said once again. "It buried its soul in the sands of Gush Katif. Now the army is simply a pile of uniforms with nothing inside. The first time it will be up against a real enemy -- and it doesn't matter how small the enemy is -- the army will crumble." We have to understand. Israel today has no army. The IDF, captive to the ethical codes of former Chief Justice Aharon Barak and Leftist army ethicist Asa Kasher, cannot defend us. Not in Beit Hanoun and not in Teheran. For all practical purposes -- it no longer exists. First and foremost, the IDF needs an ethical revolution. The IDF has to become the army of Israel, ready and willing to fight, guided strictly by Jewish values. Jewish morals dictate that "If someone tries to kill you, you must kill him first." An army guided by Jewish morals will educate its soldiers and provide them with a love of their land and its history and pride in their Jewish heritage. It will impress them with the importance of liberating and settling all parts of the Land of Israel. No more burying our heads in the sand, no more illusions of tiring our enemies slowly. No more cowardliness. No more worrying "what will the world think?" It means authentic mutual responsibility. It means that if our soldiers are being held captive, nobody in Gaza or Lebanon is going to sleep. They want electricity? Running water? Transportation? Their jailed leaders? Their homes in one piece? Their lives? The way to get all that is to hand over our soldiers. But before everything else, the IDF requires moral purification from the stain of the Disengagement -- a painful process of dismissal of all the levels of command that were responsible for the crime of expulsion. In truth, it is a bit unfair to blame the IDF. Are the army's commanders supposed to determine its moral path? I don't remember commanders of the past taking pride in the fact that they sacrificed the lives of their soldiers to prevent harm to enemy civilians. This is an inverted value, forced on the army by the civilian establishment until it became part of the army's value system. How ridiculous is the demand to have the Supreme Court investigate the failures of the Lebanon war. The Supreme Court judges are the unmistakable source of the value inversion that has eliminated the IDF. In other words, the solution does not begin and end with the army. If Israel wants to continue to exist, it must revolutionize its entire value system. In practical terms, that means the first step is to elect a new leadership that is appropriate for the job. 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) |
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YESHA LEADER: "PEACE NOW" TRYING TO UNDERMINE STATE OF ISRAEL
Posted by Hillel Fendel, November 22, 2006. |
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Left-wing anti-settlement "Peace Now" made headlines by reporting that nearly 40% of Jewish towns in Judea & Samaria lies on privately-owned Arab land. The Yesha Council denies, but who hears? The Peace Now report, which was publicized widely in newspapers all over the world, "shows that Israel has effectively stolen privately-owned Palestinian land for the purpose of constructing settlements," the group's website says. A website summary of the report states that most Yesha settlements - 130 of them - have been constructed either entirely or partially on private Arab-owned land, and that this is illegal according to a Supreme Court ruling of 1979. Hundreds of Thousands of Jews in Yesha, Golan and Jerusalem Yaakov (Ketzaleh) Katz of Beit El - a veteran leader of the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria - dismissed the report out of hand. "They merely want to weaken us and the State of Israel, and to maintain themselves in the news," he told Arutz-7. "After what we have seen in Gaza, with the failure of the Disengagement and the senseless uprooting of thousands of Jews, which has led to the bombardment and near-emtpying out of Sderot, they know that talk of another withdrawal is out of the question. So they want to keep themselves in the headlines and publicize reports like this - but it is totally false. The Supreme Court has ruled dozens of times on these matters, and always found that the contested communities and lands were legal." "What, do they really think that we are going to uproot Maaleh Adumim and its 40,000 inhabitants? They simply don't know what to do with the 600,000 Jews who now live in Yesha, the Golan and the new neighborhoods of Jerusalem... The purpose of publicizing that report is merely to aggrandize themselves and keep themselves in the headlines." The Yesha Council has reacted thus far with only a general and non-detailed denial, pending its review of the alleged evidence that even Peace Now admits was secret. "Until 1979," Council Spokesperson Emily Amrousi told Arutz-7, "new communities, towns and neighborhoods were built all over Israel on privately-owned land, by military order. In 1979, the Supreme Court ruled that this could no longer be done - and since then, the government has carefully adhered to that principle in building new communities." Communities Were Built Based on Careful Gov't-Sponsored Research A former IDF lawyer told Arutz-7 that decisions as to where to build new communities in Judea and Samaria were based on careful and precise research, for the express purpose of making sure to avoid all privately-owned land. The late Pliah Albeck, as head of the Civil Department in the Justice Ministry, was responsible for locating lands in Judea and Samaria for Jewish communities. "She was extraordinarily careful to make sure that no land that could be considered privately-owned was used," the IDF lawyer said. "She was extra stringent, and many communities were not even built because of her findings. She would go out to the area and check to see if land that was not registered was used for grazing; she didn't want anyone's sustenance to suffer because of a new community..." "One community on the east side of Highway 60 had actually been planned to be on the west," the lawyer said, "but was moved because of what she found... There were dozens of court suits against new communities, but the Supreme Court always accepted her opinions." One source familiar with the area in Judea and Samaria said that "perhaps 5%" of the uninhabited land there is privately-owned. "Vast areas in Judea and Samaria lay totally desolate in 1967 when Israel liberated them in the Six Day War," he said. "In addition, it is likely that Peace Now used strange definitions of the term 'privately-owned.' For instance, the Turks [who ruled the Holy Land up until 1917] would sometimes tax someone for a plot of land because he planted a tree on it - and then left-wing groups come along and say that his great-great-grandson, who no longer lives in the area, is the owner of the plot... In addition, sometimes one parcel of land may have been privately-held, leading some to jump to the conclusion that all the area around it is privately-held." Hillel Fendel is Senior News Editor for Israel National News. |
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KEEP JOHN R. BOLTON THE PERMANENT U.S. REPRESENTATIVE TO THE UN
Posted by Eli E. Hertz, November 22, 2006. |
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Dear Friend, The Bush administration and GOP leaders renewed their drive for Senate approval of John Bolton as UN ambassador. Democrats maintain he is too hasty and ineffective to be confirmed. Reality and facts tell a different story; Ambassador John R. Bolton brings tremendous experience, wisdom, expertise, courage, and finally, great honor to all of us. A tireless defender of our nation's values, advocating freedom, peace and security, he is also a great friend and defender of the State of Israel and Jews everywhere. History will judge him in parity with equally outspoken intellects such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick. Please sign the petition in support of nominating John R. Bolton the Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION! "The truth may not always win, but it is always right!" Please sign the petition in support of nominating John R. Bolton as the Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations. 5,000 signatures are needed immediately! Please forward petition to all friends and associates as well as those with large email lists. Help get the word out. Help us deliver this message. CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION! Thanks
Contact Eli E. Hertz at the www.MythsandFacts.org website. |
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AN ALIYA VOYAGE ACROSS THE MILLENNIA FROM INDIA
Posted by Michael Freund, November 22, 2006. |
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Yesterday, I had the privilege of accompanying 51 new immigrants from the Bnei Menashe of India - descendants of a lost tribe of Israel - on the flight home from Bombay to Tel Aviv. This very special event was a long time in coming - for the past 3 1/2 years, since Israel's Interior Ministry shut down the Bnei Menashe aliyah in the summer of 2003, I have waged a long and protracted struggle to reverse the decision and restart the aliyah. Thank G-d, that has now finally come to pass - and by the middle of next week, we will have brought over 218 Bnei Menashe Jews to Israel. Below is an article I wrote on the plane ride over here, describing
some of my thoughts and feelings regarding this very special miracle.
It appeared today in the Jerusalem Post
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EN ROUTE TO ISRAEL: For Arbi Khiangte, Monday evening's regularly scheduled El Al flight out of Bombay was far more than just an eight-hour long trek across the ocean. Born and raised in the northeastern Indian state of Mizoram, which straddles Burma and Bangladesh, the striking 21-year-old is a member of the Bnei Menashe, a group that traces its ancestry back to a lost tribe of Israel. Since childhood, Khiangte has dreamed of moving to the land of her ancestors, the Land of Israel.
With a bright and infectious smile beaming with optimism, she told me of her strong desire to take part in building the country. "I want to be a nurse," she said. "I want to help Israel, to heal the people there. I hope that I will succeed." Now, after years of waiting, Khiangte will at last have a chance to do so. Together with 50 other members of her community, she made aliya this week as part of the first batch of 218 Bnei Menashe immigrants set to arrive here in the coming week. As chairman of Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based organization responsible for assisting the Bnei Menashe both in India and in Israel, I was blessed to accompany Khiangte and the rest of the group on their voyage home to the Jewish state. And while flying El Al is always an experience, this particular trip was something truly special. The excitement in the air was palpable, despite the late hour and the obvious exhaustion that everyone clearly felt. The immigrants had left their hotel near the seashore at 4:30 p.m. in order to allow enough time for their bus to crawl its way through Bombay's daunting rush-hour traffic. More than two hours later, they arrived at the airport, where they had to make their way through security, check-in and passport control before boarding the flight at around 11:00 p.m. It had been a long and tiring afternoon, but that didn't stop Gavriel Joram, an energetic 14 year old, from joking around with some of his fellow Bnei Menashe, lightening the mood for all those present. Previously, in a somewhat more serious frame of mind, Gavriel had shared with me his hopes and dreams for the future. "I want to be a soldier, and to defend the country," he told me, the earnestness in his voice moving me deeply. "I love Israel," he said, without a hint of the cynicism or sarcasm to which we in the West have become so accustomed. What compelling proof for the power of the Jewish spirit, I thought to myself. After all, the Bnei Menashe trace their ancestry back to Menashe, one of the 10 tribes of Israel exiled by the Assyrians some 27 centuries ago. Despite wandering in exile for so long, they managed to preserve a strong sense of pride and Jewish identity, keeping Shabbat, following the laws of family purity, circumcising newborn males on the eighth day and passing down across the generations a deeply held belief that they would one day go home again to Zion. And now, here they are, doing just that. Of the 218 Bnei Menashe that are making aliya, the youngest immigrant is an infant born just two weeks ago, while the oldest is 84-year-old Sara Haunhar, whose lifelong dream has always been "to set foot on G-d's Holy Land before I die." Waiting for her at Ben-Gurion Airport was her grandson, who arrived here several years ago. Dressed in the green fatigues of the IDF, he proudly serves in an intelligence unit, bolstering the security of his fellow Jews. It might sound somewhat silly, or even naive, but I truly believe that the Bnei Menashe aliya is a miracle of immense historical and even biblical significance. Just as the prophets foretold so long ago, the lost tribes of Israel are being brought back from the Exile. In the past decade, we succeeded in bringing nearly 1,000 Bnei Menashe to Israel under an arrangement with the Interior Ministry, whereby 100 Bnei Menashe were allowed to come here each year as tourists. They would study for conversion, and usually within a year of their arrival, they would pass the test and be accepted as Jews. But all that came to an end in the summer of 2003, after we brought a group of 71 Bnei Menashe to Israel. The newly-appointed interior minister at the time, Avraham Poraz of the Shinui Party, decided to shut down the Bnei Menashe aliya once and for all, putting it into the equivalent of a bureaucratic deep-freeze. As a result, thanks to the whims of one man, the 7,000 Bnei Menashe still in India suddenly found themselves with no hope of joining their loved ones in the Jewish state. In the wake of that decision, I approached Israel's Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and asked him to consider issuing a ruling regarding the halachic status of the Bnei Menashe, just as the Rabbinate has done regarding other Diaspora communities in the past. The chief rabbi readily agreed, and in March 2005, after studying the issue, he formally recognized the Bnei Menashe as "descendants of Israel," confirming their claim to Jewish ancestry. Then, in September 2005, he sent a rabbinical court to India, which formally converted the 218 Bnei Menashe who are now moving here this week. This is the largest group of Bnei Menashe ever to come here at one time, and it is the first group to arrive in three and a half years. More importantly, however, it marks the first time that the Bnei Menashe are coming here as Jews, recognized as such by all concerned. And so, the moment they stepped off the plane at Ben-Gurion airport yesterday, they became Israeli citizens in every respect, part and parcel of Israeli society. Every once in a while, there are moments in life when you feel like you are not just witnessing history, but actually playing a part in helping to shape it. The flight out of Bombay was just such a moment. And as I accompanied Arbi Khiangte and her fellow Bnei Menashe on their long journey home, I couldn't help but feel that we were witnesses to something far more significant than perhaps any of us might realize. Because as much as we might think that we are helping the Bnei Menashe, it is the reverse that is true. It is they who strengthen us - with their faith, with their commitment and with their undying love for Zion. At one point, when I asked Arbi Khiangte why she thinks it is so important to move to Israel, tears welled up in her eyes. "The Holy One, Blessed be He, commanded us to live there," she says. "It is a mitzva, and it is one that my ancestors have been waiting for so long to fulfill. I am happy that we are now finally going to do so." And so, I might add, are we. Welcome home, Arbi, and may your arrival pave the way for the rest
of the Bnei Menashe to follow.
Michael Freund is a Jerusalem Post columnist who serves as Chairman of
Shavei Israel, the organization responsible for helping the Bnei
Menashe.
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PALESTINIAN MISERY COME FROM THEIR LEADERS
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 22, 2006. |
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The root of Palestinian misery come from their [no]leaders. But the Palestinians are so myopic, irrational and could not give a hoot about their society, thus they protect those who cause them misery instead of arresting them so they could live in peace. At long last, someone is actually putting the horse in front of the
cart, and it comes from our neighbor to the north-Canada.
This is from the November 20, 2006 National Post
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The Jabaliya Refugee Camp in Gaza was the scene of Palestinian celebrations yesterday. No, a "martyr" from the camp hadn't managed to blow up a restaurant full of Israeli families, the usual reason for joyous gatherings among Arabs in this part of the world. Rather, the locals were celebrating the victory of their "human shields" in thwarting an air strike against the home of wanted terrorist Wail Barud. But while the assembly of hundreds of Palestinians in anticipation of the planned Israeli bombing did succeed in protecting Barud's home, the tactic may have backfired from a propaganda perspective: It served to demonstrate that Israel does not seek to kill Palestinian civilians wholesale, as Arab propagandists constantly claim. Indeed, it is clear the Palestinians themselves do not believe their own propaganda about Israel's alleged thirst for blood. Otherwise, they never would have been able to recruit all those human shields. If Israel really were as sadistic as its critics claim, it wouldn't have called off yesterday's bombing run. Just the opposite: It would have jumped at the chance to kill so many Palestinians at one go. Just imagine if the shoe were on the other foot, and hundreds of Israeli "human shields" positioned themselves in an unguarded cafe in the West Bank. Palestinian suicide bombers would be stepping over each other in an effort to attack the target. "Human shields" work only when your enemy fights like a human. A second irony is that it is men like Barud who are at the root of Palestinian misery--for if they were not firing rockets at Israel from Gaza, and smuggling in weapons from Egypt, there would be no need for the Jewish state to stage counterterrorist operations in Gaza, every square inch of which it evacuated in August, 2005. If Palestinians were more rational about where their society's interests lie, they would go to Barud's house not to offer protection -- but to arrest him so that others in the area could live in peace. Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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DARK PROGNOSIS; PROOF EGYPT BACKS ARMS SMUGGLING; MOSQUE SIEGE ILLUSTRATIVE
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 22, 2006. |
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WHAT IS "EVIL?" The Muslim media and mosques bathe the faithful in hatred. A billion people favor jihad. More than another billion are in Communist countries (China, N. Korea, and, yes, Russia, again), acting expansionist or aggressive. Meanwhile, the old antisemitism is reviving in Western Europe. So much evil! So, whom do our supposedly progressive liberals hate? Pres. Bush. I assess rather than hate, but why don't the liberals hate the people promoting nuclear war? While the head of Iran thinks that by destroying Israel and inducing world war, he will conjure the ninth, hidden imam, who may be himself, the liberals think that Bush is turning the world against the US. What kind of a world do they think this is, with imperialist Russia, China that murdered tens of millions, jealous France, and Britain afraid to curb lawless Muslims? The liberals think we should concentrate on Afghanistan, and that Bush went too far, while the Muslims fight on different levels and all over, and where we fight, the Islamists send reinforcements from places that Bush -- his real failing -- fails to overturn. Bush couldn't bring them democracy, but don't hate him for trying. Instead of thinking America bad for standing up against Islam (though only partially), think of the rest of the world once again needing America to save it. This is not the time for America to join jaded and faded Europe in its loss of faith in Western civilization. Is evil just a name for vicious and unfair policies, or is it a thing in itself, as certain religious sects believe? What kind of a species is the human one, that it goes in for this so much? ARABS PREPARE, ISRAEL DOES NOT The Arabs have attacked Israel thousands of times, half a dozen of which were called wars but really were major battles in continual jihad. Israel should be used to it. Israel must stay ready for another round, especially since the US rescues the Arabs from their previous round and helps prepare them for the next. That is, this time the US has built Egypt into a formidable foe and is training and arming P.A. forces that are said to be ready to fight Hamas but which previously instead turned on Israel. The Arabs do prepare for war. Egypt has been training to race through the Sinai. It has been letting arms flow into Gaza. Hizbullah is rearming. Hamas is modeling itself after Hizbullah, so as to inflict more casualties upon Israelis. Iran is building nuclear weapons. UNIFIL is helping the terrorists in Lebanon. Another Holocaust is coming. What has Israel been doing? Israel reduced its military budget and cut training. It withdrew from strategic areas, letting the enemy fire from closer up. Now it claims it will restore its military prowess, but it has not announced major reforms. You had better travel to Israel soon, if you want a last opportunity to do so. The State Dept. won't mind the loss of Israel. But that loss would cost the West an army that had been very helpful before and could be helpful in future. Instead, the jihadists will sense victory against the West. If Iran drops an atomic bomb on Israel, how long would it be before it drops one on the US? US anti-Zionist policy may thrill State Dept. officials but it is not patriotic. EVIL ASCENDANT When the US set out against Afghanistan and Iraq, the evil axis weakened and was frightened. The US, however, remained anti-Israel and cheap about building up its own military. Then the Democrats inhibited Pres. Bush. Now the US effort is faltering, Israel has a hopelessly stupid and short-sighted government. The axis is closing in on Israel and then would turn on the US. Europe is in a struggle for survival, itself. It is difficult to see a way out. ISRAEL NOT PREPARING FOR U.S. WITHDRAWAL The US is considering withdrawal from Iraq. This would change the balance of forces in the Mideast. It certainly would affect Israel. Israeli officials, however, have not consulted with their experts about those effects and what measures Israel should take in consequence and in anticipation (IMRA, 11/2). Israel rarely plans in advance. One advantage of planning in advance is to be ready for anticipated eventualities, rather than wait for them to materialize without a plan and without taking steps for dealing with them and then finding out that the ramifications will be felt before Israel has time to cushion them. WHO WON, ISRAEL OR HIZBULLAH? This is a matter of opinion. Analysts compare goals with results, but results depend on what people think they are. Since the Vietnam War, the West's enemies have attempted to maneuver Western public opinion into a defeatist mode, so that even while the West is defeating enemy forces, it thinks that it is losing or the war is hopeless. Arab opinion is a shifting assessment based on who seems to be prevailing. Thus when Israel was dismantling Hizbullah at the beginning, foreign Arab governments criticized Hizbullah mostly for attacking prematurely and for advancing Iranian aspirations for dominance. When Israel seemed to be bogged down, but really was hesitant and coming under UNO restriction, Arab opinion shifted. Amir Taheri notes that hardly any Lebanese joined Hizbullah's victory marches, just a few hundred in south Beirut. Shiites would more naturally mourn the loss of "martyrs." The people of Lebanon were angered with Hizbullah for bringing down upon them destruction. The major Shiite figures in Lebanon rebuked Hizbullah for doing so. Why did the media report Hizbullah as winning, when its forces were getting destroyed? Because the media wanted to harm Israel and the US (Jewish Political Chronicle, 9/2006, p.26 from Wall St. J., 8/25). Most of the media is too biased to report accurately, but the war picture is mixed. Israel foundered too much for it to have won. As Hizbullah revives, opinion in Lebanon and among the Arabs in general may be shifting back to admiration for Hizbullah. The Muslim Arabs admire defiance. PROOF OF EGYPT'S BACKING OF ARMS SMUGGLING Israel has given Egypt a list of arms smugglers operating in the Sinai. Nevertheless, Egypt never has indicted a single smuggler (despite the enterprise being large scale and requiring storage depots as well as numerous trucks taking a very few open roads to a narrow destination). Egyptian border guards are not allowed to open fire, even if fired upon, unless attacks upon them threaten their lives. By taking no action against smuggling, Egypt violates its agreement with Israel (IMRA, 11/2). Israel does not complain about Egyptian or other Arab violations. All one hears are false accusations about Israeli violations. No wonder Israel loses at public relations! ISRAEL COUNTS ON WORLD UNDERSTANDING ITS PLIGHT The only way for Israel to deter Arab aggression is to fight it disproportionately. The only way to defeat the Arabs, whose greater population would enable it to win a war of attrition, is to inflict casualties disproportionately. Reserve Major General Yaakov Amidror said that the Arabs know that (Jewish Political Chronicle, 9/2006, p.18 from Joshua Brilliant, U.P.I., 9/7). People won't admit what they really know. They would pretend to righteous indignation against Israel. There long has been a double standard against the Jews. It is severe, now. The Jews cannot count on "the civilized world," as the Holocaust proved. MOSQUE SIEGE ILLUSTRATIVE Have you followed the story of the siege of a mosque in Gaza? According to the New York Times, dozens of terrorists pursued by the IDF took refuge in a mosque. From behind its walls, they fired upon the Israeli troops. As an Israeli officer explained, the terrorists profaned that holy place by using it for war. Under international law, Israeli troops have a right to fire back at what had been a civilian place. Then Hamas appealed to area residents, especially to women, to come and act as human shields. In the 11/5 edition, we find that the women advanced, against warning, to shield terrorists, some of whom were hiding among them and who had been given some of their clothing, for disguise. Israeli troops fired at the terrorists, hitting some of the and also a few women (Steven Erlanger). This illustrates Muslim Arab tactics of treachery and other war crimes. It exposes as hypocrisy Arab complaints about casualties among their civilians. It reminds one of the failure to understand Muslim tactics, when US Presidents Clinton and Bush held off firing during Ramadan or at mosques. The US assumption was that the Muslims would appreciate and not exploit our chivalry. The Times failed to draw such conclusions. The women who came to the aid of terrorists forfeited civilian status. In justice, the Israeli troops should not have fired only at the terrorists but also should have annihilated the whole mob. Israel does not do that for two reasons: (1) A mistaken sense of decency and mistaken definition of "civilian;" and (2) The bias of the media and foreign governments, which would claim Israel is acting barbarically, although actually the Arab women and Hamas were acting treacherously. Israel should prepare the way for proper action in self-defense and to win its wars by pointing out the hypocrisy of the rest of the world, which fails to condemn the Arabs for attacking Israeli civilians and which collects relief for Arab civilians and not for Israeli civilians. ARAB BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL INTENSIFIES Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait, and Iraq, supposedly moderate and US allies, illegally have made 20% more inquiries of US corporations this year, in enforcement of a trade boycott against Israel. The general impression had been that the boycott was waning (IMRA, 11/2). Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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WHY MUSLIMS RARELY SPEAK OUT, EVEN IN U.S.
Posted by Stand With Us, November 21, 2006. |
| This was written by Adam Brodsky and it appeared November 19, 2006 in the New York Post |
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MUSLIMS are often accused of not speaking out sufficiently against terrorism. Nonie Darwish knows one reason why: Their fellow Muslims won't let them. Darwish, who comes from Egypt and was born and raised a Muslim, was set to tell students at Brown University about the twisted hatred and radicalism she grew to despise in her own culture. A campus Jewish group, Hillel, had contacted her to speak there Thursday. But the event was just called off. Muslim students had complained that Darwish was "too controversial." They insisted she be denied a platform at Brown, and after contentious debate Hillel agreed. Weird: No one had said boo about such Brown events as a patently anti-Israel "Palestinian Solidarity Week." But Hillel said her "offensive" statements about Islam "alarmed" the Muslim Student Association, and Hillel didn't want to upset its "beautiful relationship" with the Muslim community. Plus, Brown's women's center backed out of co-sponsoring the event, even though it shares Darwish's concerns about the treatment of women. Reportedly, part of the problem was that Darwish had no plans to condemn Israel for shooting Arab women used by terrorists as human shields, or for insufficiently protecting Israeli Arab wives from their husbands. In plugging their ears to Darwish, Brown's Muslim students proved her very point: Muslims who attempt constructive self-criticism are quickly and soundly squelched - by other Muslims. "Speaking out for human rights, women's rights, equality or even peace with Israel is a taboo that can have serious consequences" in the Arab world, Darwish says. In part to drive home that point, she wrote a book, just out. Its title says it all: "Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror." Darwish argues that her own community - in the Middle East and in America - is hostile to criticism, even from Muslims. After 9/11, she says, many in Egypt refused to believe that Muslims were responsible. Instead, they blamed "the Zionist conspiracy." From her childhood in the '50s, she's seen seething animosity toward Jews, Israel, America and non- believers generally pervert her culture. "I asked myself, as a Muslim Arab child, was I ever taught peace? The answer is no. We learned just the opposite: honor and pride can only come from jihad and martyrdom." In elementary schools in Gaza, where she lived until age 8, Darwish learned "vengeance and retaliation. Peace," she says, "was considered a sign of defeat and weakness." An event in 1996 inflamed her longstanding frustration with her community. Her brother suffered a stroke while in Gaza, and his Egyptian friends and relatives all agreed: To save his life, he needed to go to Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, not to Cairo. Even though they had spent their lives demeaning Israelis - and boasting of Arab supremacy. Hadassah saved her brother's life; understandably, her appreciation for Jews and Israelis grew. Today Darwish preaches not only the almost embarrassing lengths to which Jews go to seek dialogue and peace, but also their cultural, political, scientific and economic contributions. Such notions from anyone in the Arab Muslim world are indeed rare. But Darwish isn't just anyone: Her father was killed by Israelis. Yet she doesn't blame the Jewish state - for her father was Lt. Col. Mustafa Hafaz, an Egyptian who headed one of the modern world's first terrorist groups, the anti-Israel fedayeen in Gaza. Hafaz's terrorists killed hundreds, maybe thousands, of Israelis in cross-border attacks. Of course the Israelis fought back. Darwish realized that Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdul Nasser, who controlled Gaza, had sent her father to a certain death. Hafaz became a shahid - a martyr for jihad - and that bought Darwish's family great status. She'd rather have had her father alive. Darwish's message is invaluable for our age. Too few Arabs and Muslims share her desire for peace with Israel, equality and cultural reform; too few speak - in their living rooms or mosques - about the need to root out radicals from among them. When one Muslim voice does raise such sentiments, it deserves to be heard. Too bad the young Muslims (and their Jewish enablers) at Brown won't hear it. And if those values can't be espoused in America - land of tolerance and free speech - well, what hope is there for meaningful cultural change? |
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AFTER THE MUSES FALL SILENT
Posted by Michael Travis, November 21, 2006. |
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This was written by Caroline Glick and it appeared yesterday in the
Jerusalem Post
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British Prime Minister Tony Blair has gone on an appeasement spree and no one seems to mind. On Friday, Blair gave a marquis interview to Al-Jazeera's new psychological warfare platform - its English-language channel - to celebrate its launch. It is unclear whether Blair meant to give the impression in that interview that he agreed with Al-Jazeera's Man-about-Town-in-Britain David Frost's assertion that the US-British war in Iraq is "pretty much a disaster." But Blair has made unmistakably clear that what he is suing for now is an ignominious American-British retreat from Iraq. In his recent statements and actions, Blair has been unambiguous in communicating his belief that peace in Iraq begins with Israeli surrender to the Palestinians, Hizbullah and Syria. Blair sees in suicidal Israeli retreats from the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria the key to unlocking the hearts of the mullahs in Teheran and the Ba'athists in Damascus. As Blair sees it, these enemies of Israel, the US, Britain and the entire Free World will suddenly become reliable friends of the non-Jewish West if Israel is left at their tender mercies. As friends, Iran and Syria will allow the US and Britain to surrender Iraq with their heads held high as they hand global jihadists their greatest victory since the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan. No less disturbing than Blair's embrace of surrender as a national strategy is the utter lack of outrage against his decision in the British and international media. No one questioned for instance, his decision to grant Al-Jazeera in English an exclusive interview. It is widely accepted, even by some of the British media, that Al-Jazeera's Arabic satellite station is used as a recruiting tool for global jihad. It can be reasonably presumed that the English channel will be used to erode the West's will to defend itself against global jihadist domination. The fact that the network is now operating an English channel should send a chill up the spine of Western and specifically British media outlets which will now have to compete against an enemy propaganda arm masquerading as a news channel. THERE ARE many reasons that actions like Blair's strategic retreat from reason and responsibility have gone uncriticized by the media. It is not simply that Western, and particularly European journalists are overwhelmingly anti-American and virulently anti-Israel. One of the central reasons for the silence of Western intellectuals and media in the face of actions like Blair's is fear of death at the hands of jihadists. In France today, high school teacher Robert Redeker has been living in hiding for two months. On September 19 Redeker published an op-ed in Le Figaro in which he decried Islamist intimidation of freedom of thought and expression in the West as manifested by the attacks against Pope Benedict XVI and against Christians in general which followed the pontiff's remarks on jihad earlier that month. Redeker wrote, "As in the Cold War, where violence and intimidation were the methods used by an ideology hell bent on hegemony, so today Islam tries to put its leaden mantel all over the world. Benedict XVI's cruel experience is testimony to this. Nowadays, as in those times, the West has to be called the 'Free World' in comparison to the Muslim world; likewise, the enemies of the 'Free World,' the zealous bureaucrats of the Koran's vision, who swarm in the very center of the 'Free World,' should be called by their true name." In reaction to Redeker's column, Egypt banned Le Figaro and Redeker received numerous death threats. His address and maps to his home were published on al-Qaida-linked Web sites and he was forced to leave his job, and flee for his life. While Redeker e-mailed a colleague that French police have set free the man they know was behind the threats to his life, Redeker recently described his plight to a friend in the following fashion, "There is no safe place for me, I have to beg, two evenings here, two evenings there... I am under the constant protection of the police. I must cancel all scheduled conferences." For its part, Le Figaro's editor appeared on Al-Jazeera to apologize for publishing Redeker's article. This weekend British author Douglas Murray discussed the intellectual terror in the Netherlands. Murray, who recently published Neoconservativism: Why We Need It, spoke at a conference in Palm Beach, Florida sponsored by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He noted that the two strongest voices in Holland warning against Islamic subversion of Dutch culture and society - Pim Fortyn and Theo Van Gogh - were murdered. The third most prominent voice calling for the Dutch to take measures to defend themselves, former member of parliament Ayan Hirsi Ali, lives in Washington, DC today. Her former colleague in the Dutch parliament, Geert Wilders, has been living under military protection, without a home, for years. In the current elections, Wilders has been unable to campaign because his whereabouts can never be announced. His supporters were reluctant to run for office on his candidates' slate for fear of being similarly threatened with murder. Last month, two of his campaign workers were beaten while putting up campaign posters in Amsterdam. In 2000, Bart Jan Spruyt, a leading conservative intellectual in Holland established a neoconservative think tank called the Edmund Burke Institute. One of the goals of his institute is to convince the Dutch to defend themselves against the growing Islamist threat. In the period that followed, Spruyt was approached by security services and told that he should hire a bodyguard for personal protection. Although he couldn't afford the cost of a bodyguard, the police eventually provided him with protection after showing up at his office hours after Van Gogh was butchered by a jihadist in the streets of Amsterdam in November 2004. ANOTHER LEADING conservative voice, law professor and social critic Paul Cliteur distinguished himself for his repeated calls for freedom of thought and for the protection of the Dutch secular state. In the weeks after Van Gogh's murder, Cliteur was the target of unremitting criticism from his leftist colleagues in the press. According to a report by the International Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, his colleagues blamed him and his ideological allies for the radicalization of the Muslims of Holland. Clituer reacted to their abuse by announcing on television that he would no longer speak out or write about the Islamic takeover of Holland. As the Helsinki report notes, although the European Human Rights Convention stipulates that states must enable free speech, "Annemarie Thomassen, a former Dutch judge at the [European Human Rights Court] in Strasbourg, stated that the limits to freedom of speech in the European context lie where the expressed opinions and statements affect the human dignity of another person. This means that, according to her, in Europe one cannot simply write and say anything one wants without showing some respect to other persons." IN BRITAIN itself, the fact that no media organ dared to publish the Danish cartoons of Muhammad last year is a clear indication of the level of fear in the hearts of those who decide what Britons will know about their world. Melanie Phillips, the author of Londonistan, noted at the Freedom Center conference that what Britons hear is best described as "a dialogue of the demented." In this dialogue, European Islamists protest victimization at the hands of the native Europeans while threatening to kill them, and native Europeans apologize for upsetting the Muslim radicals and loudly criticize the US and Israel for not going gently into that good night. In the meantime, jihadist ideologues and political leaders are flourishing in Europe today. In Britain, aside from happily helping Al-Jazeera's ratings, the government has hired Muslim Brotherhood members as counterterrorism advisers. In the wake of the Muslim cartoon pogroms, the BBC invited Dyab Abou Jahjah, who heads the Arab European League, to opine on the cartoons on its News Night program. Jahjah, who is affiliated with Hizbullah, led anti-Semitic riots in Antwerp in 2002 in which his followers smashed the windows of Jewish businesses, chanted slogans praising Osama bin Laden, and called out, "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas!" Most recently, Jahjah published cartoons depicting Anne Frank in bed with Adolph Hitler. The first action that Yasser Arafat took in 1994 after establishing the Palestinian Authority was to attack Palestinian journalists, editors and newspaper offices. Journalists and editors were arrested and tortured and all were forced to accept PA control over their news coverage. The man charged with overseeing censorship was then information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo who in a later psychological warfare coup, signed the so-called Geneva Accord with Yossi Beilin in 2003. This is the nature of our times. We are at war and those who warn of its dangers are being systematically silenced by our enemies who demand that nothing get in the way of our complacency with our own destruction. If journalists, intellectuals, social critics, authors and concerned citizens throughout the world do not rise up and demand that their governments protect their right to free expression and arrest and punish those who intimidate and trounce that right, one day, years from now, when students of history ask how it came to pass that the Free World willingly enabled its own destruction, they will have to look no further than the contrasting fortunes of Al-Jazeera and Dyab Abou Jahjah on the one hand and Le Figaro and Robert Redeker on the other. Contact the poster at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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AN OPEN LETTER FROM HEBRON TO THE HONORABLE ROBERT RYDBERG, AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL FROM SWEDEN
Posted by David Wilder and Noam Arnon, November 22, 2006. |
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22 November 2006 The Honorable Robert Rydberg
Embassy of Sweden
Dear Mr. Rydberg, We have been informed that the Swedish foreign ministry has appealed to the government of Israel concerning an attack on Swedish citizen Tove Johansson, in Hebron, on Saturday afternoon, 18 November 2006. According to press reports, Ms. Johansson is a member of the extremist Palestinian organization International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and was in Hebron as part of a protest against the Israeli presence in the city. We would like to clarify several points concerning this incident: 1. The Jewish community of Hebron rejects any and all unnecessary violence of all kinds, by anyone, be they Arab or Jewish. This is community policy, and is enforced to the best of our ability. 2. ISM has had a presence in Hebron for over a year, and other foreign organizations, including TIPH, CPT, and others have had a presence in Hebron for a number of years. Very rarely, if at all, have there been any violent incidents between Hebron's Jewish residents and members of ISM. Community residents do their best to ignore them. At most, there are verbal exchanges between the two sides. We are unfamiliar with complaints issued by ISM activists against Hebron's Jewish residents. 3. In accordance with the above paragraph, and keeping in mind the fact that over 30,000 Jews visited Hebron on 18 Nov 2006, celebrating the purchase of the Tomb of the Patriarchs for the Jewish people by Abraham some 3,700 years ago, it is clear that the perpetrator(s) of the attack were not residents of Hebron's Jewish community. a. Hebron residents do not, and have not, physically attacked ISM members in Hebron. 4. According to press accounts, police and other security forces requested, prior to the attack, that Ms. Johansson and other protesters vacate the area, due to the sensitivity of their presence. It must be remembered that strict Sabbath observance forbids use of cameras and other such equipment. Photographing people who object to use of cameras on the Sabbath is extremely sensitive and many people object to being photographed on the Sabbath. Ms. Johansson and others were requested by Israeli security forces and others to refrain from photographing Sabbath observers, however, they refused this request. This, of course, does not justify physical attack, however, clearly, had the protestors acceded to this request, most likely the attack would have been avoided. 5. According to various internet accounts, the attackers yelled, "we killed Jesus and we will kill you too." According to eye-witnesses at the scene, this accusation is false. No such phrase was uttered. 6. In addition, according to some written accounts, Ms. Johansson did not receive proper first-aid care from medics that arrived at the scene. This is also a blatant lie. Medics from the Hebron community arrived in a community ambulance, determined the cause of the injury, and then treated Ms. Johansson just as any other injured person is cared for. The Hebron Jewish community ambulance, together with medic and driver, drove Ms. Johansson to Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, according her full treatment. 7. Finally, the presence of ultra extremist anti-Israel -- anti-Jewish organizations such as ISM and other such groups in Hebron is, as can be understood, extremely unpopular amongst Hebron residents and community supporters. Their presence is clearly provocative, with the goal of aiding Arab terrorists who attempt to murder Hebron Jewish residents and support the aim of expelling Jews entirely from the city. As stated above, Hebron's Jewish community does its utmost to ignore these people, despite the trouble they cause the community, action which, at times, borders on clear incitement against Hebron's Jewish residents as well as Israeli security forces in the area. The fact that during such a huge Sabbath celebration, ISM members saw fit to continue public protest, utilizing instruments as cameras on the Sabbath, and photographing people against their will on the Sabbath, is a tremendous provocation. Again, unnecessary violence cannot be justified, but neither can overt public provocation against such a large gathering. Had they refrained from demonstrating, the attack would not have occurred. 8. In conclusion, the Jewish community of Hebron would suggest to the Swedish Foreign Ministry that in order to avoid any other unpleasant incidents in Hebron, that all Swedish citizens, including members of TIPH and others, such as Ms. Johansson, be requested to stop their politically provocative anti-Jewish activities, leave Hebron immediately and stop interfering in internal Israeli affairs. Sincerely, David Wilder and Noam Arnon
David Wilder is spokesman of The Jewish Community of Hebron. You can contribute directly to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB10, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, hebron@hebron.org.il, 972-2-9965333 or write to The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, hebronfund@aol.com |
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PIPES RETHINKS THE EGYPT-ISRAEL "PEACE" TREATY
Posted by David Meir-Levi, November 21, 2006. |
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As usual, Daniel Pipes analyzes a worrisome problem in a manner that bespeaks his expertise and comprehensive acumen. While de iure Cairo is at peace with Israel, de facto, Egypt is an enemy. "Cairo may have no apparent enemies, but the impoverished Egyptian state sinks massive resources into a military build up. According to the Congressional Research Service, it purchased $6.5 billion worth of foreign weapons in the years 2001-04, more than any other state in the Middle East. In contrast, the Israeli government bought only $4.4 billion worth during that period and the Saudi one $3.8 billion. ...... Egypt ranked as the third largest purchaser of arms in the entire developing world, following only population giants China and India. It has the tenth largest standing army in the world, well over twice the size of Israel's." So with al-Qaeda in Sinai, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbolla in Lebanon, Iran rattling its Syrian sabre and flexing its long range WMD muscles as well, and Egypt conducting military exercizes with a standing army twice the size of Israel's......well, things look bleak in the Middle East. Unfortunantly, Pipes does not tell us just what lessons we should draw from the failure of the 1979 peace treaty to create peace. This article appeared today in the New York Sun and is
archived at David ML |
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Ninety-two percent of respondents in a recent poll of one thousand Egyptians over 18 years of age called Israel an enemy state. In contrast, a meager 2% saw Israel as "a friend to Egypt." These hostile sentiments express themselves in many ways, including a popular song titled "I Hate Israel," venomously antisemitic political cartoons, bizarre conspiracy theories, and terrorist attacks against visiting Israelis. Egypt's leading democracy movement, Kifaya, recently launched an initiative to collect a million signatures on a petition demanding the annulment of the March 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty. Also, the Egyptian government has permitted large quantities of weapons to be smuggled into Gaza to use against Israeli border towns. Yuval Steinitz, an Israeli legislator specializing in Egypt-Israel relations, estimates that fully 90% of PLO and Hamas explosives come from Egypt. Cairo may have no apparent enemies, but the impoverished Egyptian state sinks massive resources into a military build up. According to the Congressional Research Service, it purchased $6.5 billion worth of foreign weapons in the years 2001-04, more than any other state in the Middle East. In contrast, the Israeli government bought only $4.4 billion worth during that period and the Saudi one $3.8 billion. Egypt ranked as the third largest purchaser of arms in the entire developing world, following only population giants China and India. It has the tenth largest standing army in the world, well over twice the size of Israel's. Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat, U.S. president Jimmy Carter, and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin in a good mood at the Egypt-Israel treaty signing ceremony, March 26, 1979. This long, ugly record of hostility exists despite a peace treaty with Israel, hailed at the time by both Egypt's president Anwar El-Sadat and Israel's prime minister Menachem Begin as a "historic turning point." U.S. president Jimmy Carter hoped it would begin a new era when "violence no longer dominates the Middle East." I too shared in this enthusiasm. With the benefit of retrospect, however, we see that the treaty did palpable harm in at least two ways. First, it opened the American arsenal and provided American funding to purchase the latest in weaponry. As a result, for the first time in the Arab-Israeli conflict, an Arab armed force may have reached parity with its Israeli counterpart. Second, it spurred anti-Zionism. I lived for nearly three years in Egypt in the 1970s, before Sadat's dramatic trip to Jerusalem in late 1977, and I recall the relatively low interest in Israel at that time. Israel was plastered all over the news but it hardly figured in conversations. Egyptians seemed happy to delegate this issue to their government. Only after the treaty, which many Egyptians saw as a betrayal, did they themselves take direct interest. The result was the emergence of a more personal, intense, and bitter form of anti-Zionism. The same pattern was replicated in Jordan, where the 1994 treaty with Israel soured popular attitudes. To a lesser extent, the 1993 Palestinian accords and even the aborted 1983 Lebanon treaty prompted similar responses. In all four of these cases, diplomatic agreements prompted a surge in hostility toward Israel. Defenders of the "peace process" answer that, however hostile Egyptians' attitudes and however large their arsenal, the treaty has held; Cairo has in fact not made war on Israel since 1979. However frigid the peace, peace it has been. To which I reply: if the mere absence of active warfare counts as peace, then peace has also prevailed between Syria and Israel for decades, despite their formal state of war. Damascus lacks a treaty with Jerusalem, but it also lacks modern American weaponry. Does an antique signature on a piece of paper offset Egypt's Abrams tanks, F-16 fighter jets, and Apache attack helicopters? I think not. In retrospect, it becomes apparent that multiple fallacies and wishful predictions fueled Arab-Israeli diplomacy: * Once signed, agreements signed by unelected Arab leaders would convince the masses to give up their ambitions to eliminate Israel. The time has come to recognize the Egypt-Israel treaty -- usually portrayed as the glory and ornament of Arab-Israel diplomacy -- as the failure it has been, and to draw the appropriate lessons in order not to repeat its mistakes. Contact the poster at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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BOGUS
Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, November 21, 2006. |
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This article was written by Elli Rodan. I suppose this is as much confirmation as is reasonably needed to what I have been saying for years; they are all Government stooges. The Yeshah council was setup by the ruling elite as a means of controlling the settlers. This was to guarantee that Yeshah would always be "under control" and not move in a directions independent of the Israeli establishment. This is after all not surprising nor unreasonable as well. Pioneers are by nature highly independent and aggressive persons and no responsible Government wants to create a potential for civil war. In truth, as long as the elites of Israel were essentially "Zionistic" in their goals, there was really no problem. The problem began when the elites moved into the direction of being "citizens of the world." People no longer identifying with the Jewish nation, its needs and survival replaced the old time Zionists of all ideologies. That is when the fundamental conflict began. As Universalists they needed to understand and deal with the suffering of the Arabs and could not confine their highly developed moral sensitivity to such parochial issues as Jewish rights and survival. Furthermore, in order to prove their commitment to the religion of Globalism, a sacrifice was necessary. What better than Yeshah? The destruction of the Yeshah communities and its Jews would accomplish many great and wonderful things for the Universalists. * It would prove their Humanity and that they are not just lowly, dirty Jews. The primary instrument to accomplish all this has been the Yeshah Council. After years of telling everyone that they and only they represent the Jews of Yeshah, they could easily manipulate the naive settlers into their own destruction. So far they have greatly succeeded in this and have been appropriately rewarded by their masters for their success. This was written by Mrs. Elli Rodan (editor@israeljustice.com) and it appeared today on the Root and Brancy Association Ltd website. It is called "Jewish Pioneering Communities ('Settlement') Leader Benzi Lieberman Admits To Bogus Disobedience Campaign". |
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Excerpt: "Lieberman, who reported frequent meetings with ministers and senior officials, said he informed and coordinated with police before and during every protest....Lieberman was not questioned regarding the source of funding for the sham civil disobedience campaign. In 2005, left-wing critics said the protests were financed through millions of dollars in government funding....Under cross-examination, Lieberman recalled the last major protest meant to block the expulsion. On July 20, 2005, the Council organized a three-day march publicized as an attempt to enter the Gaza Strip and join Jewish residents threatened with eviction....Lieberman said 100,000 people arrived at Kfar Maimon, far outnumbering the 15,000 police and soldiers. But he said the Council -- in coordination with the government -- delayed the march to ensure its ineffectiveness. Lieberman's assertion was in contrast to the insistence of police and officials that the settlement Council refused to cooperate with authorities. At the time, [then Internal Security Minister Gideon] Ezra, who visited Kfar Maimon during the protest, denied coordination with the settlement council. 'The settler leaders never came to me and if they did, the situation would not have been different', Ezra said. 'We would have not allowed the march to Gush Katif and Kissufim'". Jewish Pioneering Communities ("settlement") leaders spent millions of dollars and recruited hundreds of thousands of supporters in a bogus civil disobedience campaign designed to facilitate the government plan to evict 16,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip and northern Shomron ("West Bank") in 2005. The head of the effort testified that the year-long non-violent campaign organized by the Council of Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip was never intended to stop the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern Shomron ("West Bank"). Instead, Council leader Benzi Lieberman said the effort, coordinated with the government of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was staged to demonstrate that the destruction of 22 Jewish communities would not take place quietly. "We tried to organize all the activities to influence the public to change decisions in the Knesset", Lieberman said. "In the end, they make the decisions". "What was more important at that time and for history was that the protest would be huge and would imprint on the public consciousness that the expulsion of Jews could not pass just like that", Lieberman added. On October 26, 2006, Lieberman testified at the trial of three withdrawal protesters -- Shai Malka, Ariel Vangrover and Adiel Sharabi -- charged with sedition and incitement in connection with the blocking of Israeli highways as part of the civil disobedience campaign. Lieberman said that in contrast to the defendants the Council coordinated efforts with the Sharon government as well as the police and military. "People who recognize the democratic fights in other countries know that this [blocking of roads] is a relevant activity", Lieberman said. "But we considered it ineffective". Lieberman and the other members of the Council were never charged or prosecuted for their activities. On the eve of the expulsion, the Council members were arrested on their way to enter the Gaza Strip, declared a closed military zone, and later released. Unlike other protesters, some of whom have spent months in jail for the offense, the Council members were never imprisoned. Malka, head of the newly-organized Bayit Leumi ("National House") movement and Vangrover were arrested on May 15, 2005 and remained in prison until after the Israeli withdrawal. Sharabi was also arrested later. The state has rarely charged the Jews with sedition, punishable by five years in prison. In his testimony, Lieberman, who said he did not know the defendants, outlined the Council's cooperation with the Sharon government. Lieberman, who reported frequent meetings with ministers and senior officials, said he informed and coordinated with police before and during every protest. "Our policy was that we informed the police", Lieberman said. "And it should be said that in this matter, the policy of the police was to permit us -- that is also in places that they didn't like so much or want it. They understood the power and the reality and the timing". Lieberman was not questioned regarding the source of funding for the sham civil disobedience campaign. In 2005, left-wing critics said the protests were financed through millions of dollars in government funding. "In my estimation, the sources of the funds were state budgets slated for municipal uses and the rest from donations", Knesset member Aryeh Eldad said. Under cross-examination, Lieberman recalled the last major protest meant to block the expulsion. On July 20, 2005, the Council organized a three-day march publicized as an attempt to enter the Gaza Strip and join Jewish residents threatened with eviction. Lieberman said 100,000 people arrived at Kfar Maimon, far outnumbering the 15,000 police and soldiers. But he said the Council -- in coordination with the government -- delayed the march to ensure its ineffectiveness. "I remember we had a discussion with Gush Katif [Jewish community in Gaza] people", Lieberman recalled. "They knew that we would begin Kfar Maimon, but in order not to disturb their lives, [we postponed it]. They knew that we would block the route and it would be very difficult for them to lead a normal life, especially the farmers. We thought that the earlier this activity would take place, the greater the impact on the public". The protesters waited at the agricultural community of Kfar Maimon for the order by Lieberman and his colleagues to march toward the Gaza Strip. Instead, after three days Lieberman, who said he coordinated the protest with the government, particularly then-Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra, declared the protest over and sent the demonstrators home. "In actuality, after we saw that 15,000 security forces were standing opposite us, about 5,000 police and 10,000 soldiers", Lieberman said, "and after we checked in many circles and saw that the information was correct, we saw the determination of the police and the cruelty in their eyes. At that time, we understood that we might endanger lives and we decided on the same evening that we were going to march to Gush Katif, not to go head to head with the iron wall. That's how we defined the security forces. A day or two later, the event was over". Lieberman's assertion was in contrast to the insistence of police and officials that the settlement Council refused to cooperate with authorities. At the time, Ezra, who visited Kfar Maimon during the protest, denied coordination with the settlement council. "The settler leaders never came to me and if they did, the situation would not have been different", Ezra said. "We would have not allowed the march to Gush Katif and Kissufim". The Council's anti-withdrawal campaign, Lieberman said, was designed to win support from within the Knesset and government. He said the settlement council -- a body comprised of regional council heads financed by the Interior Ministry -- feared a backlash against withdrawal opponents. "The red line was violence", Lieberman said. "There were some activities that we didn't agree to -- not because we thought that they were anti-democratic -- but because we considered that they would be ineffective and they would arouse public consciousness that would negate our goals". Shalom and Chodesh Tov,
Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. |
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SAVE IRANIAN DISSIDENT ZAHRA KAMALFAR AND HER CHILDREN FROM BEING RETURNED TO IRAN
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 21, 2006. |
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This courageous woman is the symbol of the struggle for freedom. Only two countries can save her: Israel or the USA that MUST take her and her children in. The video was smuggled out of the Moscow airport and is exclusive to Pajamas Media. Translation by Iranian-American filmmaker Ardeshir Arian. If you have a way to help -- HELP...if you pass this message on it may reach the people who can help to get Ardeshir Arian out of the Russian Gulag airport. |
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Iranian dissident Zahra Kamalfar has been living with her children under unspeakable conditions in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport for 73 days. They have to bath and drink from the toilets. A one-time demonstrator against the extremist theocracy, she escaped from an Iranian prison when on a two-day furlough to visit her children. She ended up being buffeted from country to country. Now in imminent danger (possibly Monday, if the Russians cooperate) of being taken back to the Islamic Republic for the Mullah's version of justice, Ms. Kamalfar speaks out in this dramatic video smuggled out of the airport to www.Pajamas Media. Please sign the petition to help Zahra & her children receive
asylum. We are submitting this affidavit to Ms. Zahra Kamalfar's application for asylum. We unequivocally support Miss Zahra kamalafar's asylum claim. She would face a serious and well-founded fear of future persecution based on her activities after she reached Russia. Zahra Kamalfar is an Iranian citizen who had made a refugee claim, together with her two minor children, Ana (DOB 1367-11-02) and Davood (DOB 1373-3-25) through UNHCR in Russia on or about May 3, 2005. Zahra and her husband were involved in demonstrations in Iran in 2000. In July 8 2004, Zahra arrested and held in jail. Zahra was in jail for 8 months. Then she was released on a 48 hour pass to visit her family. She immediately fled Iran with her two children on April 6 2005. She and her two children went to Turkey. False Bulgarian passport arranged by a smuggler. Zahra and her children traveled from Turkey, transiting through Russia on their way to Germany. When they arrived in Germany, the authenticity of their passports was questioned. Zahra made asylum claims but their asylum claims were refused by German immigration authorities and then they were sent back to Russia. When they returned to Russia, they were detained by the Russian authorities. Russian authorities assaulted her and her daughter. The Russian authorities want to send Zahra and her children back to Iran. Zahra is afraid to return to Iran as she believes she will be sent to jail and at risk of rape, torture and possibly death. She also fears her daughter will be at risk of being sexually assaulted and raped. The Russian authorities now want to deport the family to Iran; something that the family is convinced will be devastating to their life and safety. The Russian authorities are imposing pressure on the family by having them stranded in the Transit hall of the Moscow International Airport for the months, denying them all access to the most basic needs, including shower, proper food, etc. Regardless of the legalities of their case, this is a clear breach of all human rights principles. Originally, Zahra and the children were being kept at a hotel at the airport. Several months ago, they were evicted from the hotel and forced to sleep in the open terminal. They have not had access to shower facilities and are restricted to public toilets. The situation of women in Iran is inhuman, the brutality and violence against women and girls are every day occurrences in Iran. The massacred woman committed by the Iranian Islamic regime can't be denied or excused. Misogyny, racial apartheid is the norm of the Iranian Islamic regime that women are facing. Nothing can hide the fact that the Iranian Islamic government is anti-woman misogynist and antithetical to women's rights and autonomy. The Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out the rights that must be realized for children to develop their full potential, free from hunger and want, neglect and abuse. It reflects a new vision of the child. Children are neither the property of their parents nor are they helpless objects of charity. They are human beings and are the subject of their own rights. Despite the existence of rights, children suffer from poverty, homelessness, abuse, neglect, preventable diseases, and unequal access to education and justice systems that do not recognize their special needs. The Untied Nation has proclaimed that childhood is entitled to special care and assistance. The family as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and well being of all its members and particularly children should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community. For the full and harmonious development of children personality, they should grow up in a family environment in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding. Miss Zahra Kamalfar would face a serious threat to her life and liberty should she be deported to Iran. Having fled Iran and being an activist against the Iranian regime places her life in danger. She has real reason to fear persecution for her legitimate and peaceful political activism should she be returned to Iran. By deporting Miss Zahra Kamalfar and her children to Iran, who is an activist against the Iranian Regime will in actuality be a preparation of her arrest, torture and then stoning. Russia acceded to the 1951 Refugee Convention in 1993. As a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Russia is responsible for carrying out the refugee status determination procedure and granting asylum to those people who are entitled to it. We strongly urges the Russian immigration authorities and UNHCR in Russia to revisit the Miss Zahra Kamalfar's case and grant her and her children refugee recognition based on her well-founded fear of future persecution and execution. Sincerely,
Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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TOP TEN REASONS FOR NOT ESTABLISHING A PALESTINIAN STATE.
Posted by Israel Zwick, November 21, 2006. |
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The United Nations has identified almost 5000 distinct ethnic groups living in its 192 member countries (see World Ethnic Groups). Almost 300 of these have been identified as Minorities at Risk. There are over 100 national Liberation Movements that are struggling to develop regional autonomy. Yet almost the entire international community is united in its belief that the 3 million Palestinian Arabs should have their own sovereign state carved out of the minuscule State of Israel like a jigsaw puzzle. This solution, they believe, would relieve the "suffering of the Palestinian people" and resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Ostensibly, this appears to be a sensible solution. After all, if two parties can't manage to live together, they should live separately. One will live on one side of the border, the other will live on the other side of the border and all will be fine and well. But is that a realistic expectation? Let's first examine some of the basic geographic and demographic statistics. If one examines the data in the CIA World Factbook, the two states, Israel and Palestine, would have the smallest areas and largest population densities in the region, except for Lebanon. This would allow little room for population expansion. Such two micro-states would not be able to survive without a great deal of mutual cooperation. Neither could be economically viable by just remaining within their own borders. There would have to be a great deal of interdependence and cooperation between the two states on issues of regional concern. These issues include: security, transportation, commerce, agriculture, tourism, natural resources, archeology, and public health. Let's try to take a realistic view of issues that may arise with the establishment of a Palestinian state and how they may be addressed by the nascent state. There are many questions which come to mind, of which the following list is only the beginning: Mutual Cooperation. Have any of the Palestinian groups given any indication in their words or deeds that they are ready to accept and cooperate with a Jewish State of Israel in any borders at all? Are there any indications that the establishment of a Palestinian State will be followed by the cessation of terrorist tactics against the State of Israel. Can we be confident that terrorism and conflict will replaced by an amicable atmosphere of acceptance, tolerance, and negotiated compromise? Have the Palestinians said or done anything to suggest that? So far they haven't given any indication of accepting a Jewish State of Israel with any boundaries. Commerce and Currency. Both Israel and a neighboring Palestinian state would depend on an exchange of goods between the two states. That includes manufactured and agricultural goods, as well as human resources. Will the checkpoints that exist now be reduced or could they even be expanded to include both Palestinian and Israeli checkpoints at the borders? Will commercial vehicles be used to smuggle contraband goods and illegal arms? Will there be free trade or a system of tariffs and taxes on the goods. What kind of security will there be at the border crossings? How easy or difficult will it be for merchants to exchange goods between the two states? What kind of currency will be used? Passports and Visas. An independent Palestinian state will have the ability to issue passports and visas. Can we feel confident that passports won't be issued to trained terrorists who want to export their skills to comrades in other countries? Since the Gaza Strip is so readily accessible by land, sea, and air, can we be confident that the Gaza Strip won't be used as a safe haven for international criminals who are trying to escape from Interpol or the FBI? Today the Gaza Strip has become a haven for terrorists, kidnappers, and arms smuggling. Why should we expect anything different? Security and Weapons. A sovereign Palestinian state would have the right to purchase weapons for security and defense. Can we be confident that the Palestinians will do that in a responsible manner so that explosive materials and sophisticated weapons don't get into the hands of criminals and terrorists? Will the Palestinians be able to maintain a system of security and justice within their own borders? Who will security officers and judges be accountable to? Natural Resources. Fresh water and energy sources are scarce in that part of the world. Will the Palestinians and Israelis work amicably together to conserve, develop, and distribute valuable water resources? How will they determine placement of pipelines and cables? How will they ensure that both countries get an adequate supply of water, oil, and electricity? Will they work together to utilize alternative forms of energy? What kind of security will be provided for pipelines, cables, and reservoirs? Transportation. The Palestinians will probably want to construct airports, seaports, and highways. Can we be assured that they will do that with concern for security and environmental protection? Will the Palestinians show respect for archeological, historical, and religious sites in their construction plans? Let's take an example of a transportation issue that could feasibly arise with the establishment of a Palestinian State. Israel's Ben-Gurion International Airport is only a short distance from Palestinian areas. What would happen if an El-Al pilot has to circle over Palestinian airspace in a period of heavy air traffic or poor weather conditions? Is it possible that a surface to air missile will shoot up from Palestinian territory to destroy the plane and kill all 400 passengers? The Palestinians will immediately call a press conference and say, "We're really sorry that we shot down the plane, we didn't mean it. Our radar operator reported a military craft violating our airspace. We dismissed the radar operator and this will never happen again." In the meantime, 400 Jews were killed and travel to Israel will grind to a halt. Let's say the reverse situation occurs. The Palestinians build an airport on the Gaza Strip, a short distance from Tel Aviv. Israeli security officials will probably insist that all take-off and landing patterns be directed away from Israeli population centers. One day, Israeli radar detects a commercial jet over international waters in the Mediterranean heading straight for Tel Aviv. It is conceivable that the pilot had a legitimate need to modify his landing pattern because of air traffic, weather conditions, or a medical emergency on board. Israeli security officials will have only minutes to establish communication with the pilot to be sure that he has no malicious intent. If they can't do that, do they shoot down a commercial jet over international waters and kill a few hundred civilians, or do they allow the plane to continue on a possible mission of enormous death and destruction? That's a decision that not even King Solomon would want to make. Can we really trust the Palestinians to use transportation facilities in a responsible manner? Tourism. Tourists who wish to visit the Holy Land will probably want to visit Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron, Jericho, Nazareth, and Tiberias, all within driving distance from each other. Will Palestinians cooperate with Israelis to allow tourists of all faiths to have free access to these areas? What kind of security will be provided for tourist buses? What happens when the bus has to travel from Israeli to Palestinian areas? Will buses be able to travel directly from Jerusalem to Hebron or from Jericho to Tiberias, or will they have to take some lengthy, circuitous route for security reasons? Will it be possible to take a Jerusalem-Hebron-Massada-Dead Sea tour as it is now? Will Palestinians and Israelis work together to encourage tourism and commerce or will antagonistic policies discourage tourists from visiting holy sites? Public Health. Can the Palestinians be trusted to address the health needs of their own population? Will children receive their inoculations? Will geriatric needs be addressed? Will Palestinian health officials cooperate with their Israeli counterparts? Suppose an atypical epidemic breaks out in Israel. It could be a tropical disease such as West Nile Fever, or it could be bio-terrorism. Will Palestinian officials provide access to Israeli health officials to investigate the source of infection or will they make it more difficult? Will Palestinains cooperate with Israelis to control the epidemic or will Israelis have to examine birds and mosquitoes at checkpoints? Archeological, religious, and historical sites. Can we trust the Palestinians to respect and preserve the holy sites of all religions? Will there be free and secure access for all religions? Suppose the Palestinians are building new housing in Jericho and come across some artifacts from the biblical era. Will they call Israeli archeologists at Hebrew University and say, "We discovered some materials that may be of interest to you, would you like to come and examine them?" Or, will they attempt to erase any signs of Jewish history in the area? Agricultural Methods. Both states will probably want to grow the same crops and animals for food. Will there be cooperation in the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides or will there be interference? There are many more such questions. Yes, it's true that most of them could be resolved through negotiation and compromise. But if the Arabs would be willing to negotiate and compromise then there wouldn't be a conflict and there wouldn't be any need to develop another Arab state in a region that already has 22 Arab states. So what are the possible alternatives? A one-state solution wouldn't work either because eventually it would result in the dissolution of the Jewish state by demography and democracy. So that suggests that the only solution for now would be a reasonable compromise between a two-state and one-state solution. That could be accomplished through a federated arrangement, similar to the arrangement between the United States and Puerto Rico. There are few Puerto Ricans that are complaining that they have been "suffering from a lengthy occupation." That's because they are benefiting from their relationship ship with the United States, so there is no need to make significant changes. The same argument can be made for Palestinians and Israelis. If it can be demonstrated to the Palestinian people, not their fanatical leaders, that they will benefit from a federated connection with the State of Israel, then it could be adopted, even if only as an interim solution. There are many forms of federal government which can be considered. Almost any of them would be preferable to having two separate sovereign micro-states. That would not resolve the conflict or "alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people." It would only create more problems and conflicts. Those that are really concerned about the "plight of the Palestinians" should abandon the fantasy of a two-state solution and work at developing a realistic federation of an autonomous Arab entity that would operate in a loose union with the State of Israel. It could be based on a model similar to Puerto Rico or other existing forms of federations. Almost any of these would be preferable to a two-state solution and would allow the Palestinian people to benefit from the technical, agricultural, and medical accomplishments of the State of Israel. The Palestinians would only suffer more if they had their own autonomous, fragmented micro-state in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. But if they can't accept being a minority population within a Jewish federation, then they still have 20 Arab Sunni Muslim countries to go to where they can be part of the majority population. Contact Israel Zwick at israel.zwick@earthlink.net This was
published October 27, 2006 on his website CN Publications and is archived
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L'AMOUR D'UNE MERE
Posted by Pilczer, November 21, 2006. |
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Contact Pilczer at pilczer@aol.com |
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CELEBRATING THE ZIONIST FESTIVAL
Posted by Judy Lash Balint, November 21, 2006. |
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The photos are from "Photo Feature: Sigd, Holiday of Return and
Longing" by Ezra Halevi, photos by Josh Shamsi. The photo essay was
published November 23, 2006 in Arutz Sheva |
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Yesterday was the 29th of Cheshvan, not a particularly noteworthy day for most Jews in the world. But for Jews from Ethiopia, this date has long been observed as one of their main holidays, known as Sigd--a day celebrating their connection to Jerusalem and commitment to Jewish unity. For the 80,000 who have immigrated from Ethiopia during past decades, the day is a combination fast day, day of thanksgiving and gathering of the clan.
Dozens of kessim (Ethiopian Jewish religious leaders) make their way to the Western Wall to celebrate the day which expresses their yearning for Zion and their gratitude for the Torah. The slender figures cut an elegant path through the plaza in front of the wall. Swathed in simple white robes, tallits draped over their narrow shoulders, the kessim are accompanied by an entourage that includes an escort holding a colorful umbrella over their heads. The Ethiopian women arrive separately, clothed in their distinctive white dresses adorned with colorful hand embroidered trim. Shoulders cloaked in white shawls, heads covered with colorful head scarves, the women advance shyly toward the kotel to take part in the prayer service marking Sigd here in the holy city. Prior to their mass aliya, generations of Ethiopian Jews yearned for Zion and expressed their longing in the annual Sigd festival. Jews would walk for days to arrive at a mountain top where thousands would join in prayer and listen to Torah readings. Following the afternoon prayers and the blowing of the shofar, the community would descend from the mountain to partake of a festive meal. The holiday has its origins in the time of the prophet Nehemia, when the entire Jewish community assembled in Jerusalem for a day of fasting and confession. The day also commemorates the covenant between God and the Jewish people at Mt. Sinai.
For many young Ethiopian Jews now living in Israel, the mountain top Sigd exists only as a story recounted by their parents. Children were not included in the observances in Ethiopia because of the three day trek to get there and to preserve the solemnity of the day. Today, Sigd is celebrated at the kotel and then at a mass gathering at the Haas/Sherover Promenade in Jerusalem's Talpiot neighborhood. From the promenade there's a clear view of the Temple Mount, and tens of thousands of Ethiopians of all ages come together to commemorate their unique holiday. Mingling with the colorful costumes and umbrellas of the elders, are the khaki and green uniforms of dozens of young Ethiopian men and women serving in the Israel Defense Forces. Younger teens are decked out in a variety of trendy clothing on this festive day with balmy temperatures. Ancient Ge'ez chants make themselves heard over the gaggle of street Hebrew as the day progresses.
Rabbi David Yosef, a kes of the Ethiopian community who is a diminutive man with a silver beard who wears a knitted kippa, tells visitors his extraordinary life story and explains where Sigd fits into the life of Ethiopian Jews. Rav Yosef graphically describes how men and women would separately observe the ritual of ascending the mountain for the great Sigd gathering. He points out that the tradition of Sigd was handed down by oral tradition. "Many Jews believe that we didn't know from the oral tradition," he says. Rav Yosef carefully explains the Ethiopian Jewish engagement and wedding ceremonies and asserts that their practice conforms to the Mishnaic description in Tractate Kiddushin (part of the Oral Law) of what constitutes proper Jewish betrothal. He closes his remarks by noting that Sigd was essentially a way of remembering Jerusalem and strengthening Jews in a difficult galut (Diaspora) situation. But the holiday is just as relevant today. "We missed Jerusalem for thousands of years," Rav Yosef notes. "Today, in Jerusalem, we celebrate...but just as we say -- Next year in Jerusalem' at the Passover seder, so too at Sigd we pray for a rebuilt Jerusalem." For Ziva, a shy twenty-one year old from Ashkelon with thick braided hair, the Sigd celebration is a significant milestone. " I feel like it's a day of unity for us." For the young woman who arrived in Israel with her parents 13 years
ago, the observance of the ancient holiday reminds her "there's so
much to remember...."
Judy Lash Balint is an award-winner investigative journalist and
author of "Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times" (Gefen). It is available
for purchase from www.israelbooks.com
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ROOT CAUSES OF ANTI-US ISLAMIC TERRORISM
Posted by Yoram Ettinger, November 21, 2006. |
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Prime Minister Tony Blair, Jim Baker, Inc. and Brent Scowcroft allege that the less-than-a-century-old Palestinian issue is the core cause of the 13-century-old Islamic terrorism and Mideast violence. Thus, rather than flex a muscle against Iran and other rogue regimes, instead of challenging the Palestinian Terror Authority and Hamas, one should suspend disbelief, shrink the Jewish State back to the 1949 Lines and establish a Palestinian State. Such a contriving approach would, supposedly, moderate the Middle East and mollify the unprecedented wave of Islamic terrorism. Do the aforementioned gentlemen realize that if at all there is any connection between the Palestinian issue and Mideast violence (Ahmedinejad's and Saddam's megalomaniac aspirations, inter-Lebanese conflicts, Sunni-Shia' wars, domestic and inter-Muslim terrorism, etc.), the latter may be a cause of the former? Do they really believe that the Palestinian issue is a (let alone the) cause of anti-US Islamic terrorism? Enclosed you'll find the 197th issue of Straight From The Jerusalem Boardroom, which examines Blair's ingenious suggestion. Should you wish to examine previous issues, as well as previous OpEds and commentaries, please visit http://yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il and www.acpr.org.il (Hatikvah and Cloakroom links). Enjoy it, Yoram |
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Prime Minister Tony Blair, Jim Baker and Brent Scowcroft have developed an intriguing theory: The core of the 13-century-old Islamic terrorism and Middle East violence is the less-than-a-century-old Palestinian issue. They have introduced a cost-effective tactic in combating terrorism: Rather than flex a muscle against Iran and other rogue regimes, instead of challenging the Palestinian Terror Authority and Hamas, one should suspend disbelief, shrink the Jewish State back to the 1949 Lines and establish a Palestinian State. Such a contriving approach would, supposedly, mollify the unprecedented wave of anti-US Islamic terrorism. Really?! 1. 9/11 was planned while Clinton's USA and Barak's Israel were appeasing the Palestinians and the Arabs, proposing a total Israeli withdrawal, including the re-partitioning of Jerusalem and the giveaway of the Golan Heights. 2. The October 12, 2000 Islamic terrorist attack on the USS Cole (17 sailors murdered) occurred when Israel was willing to give away the store, while the US pressured Israel to absorb and compensate Palestinian refugees. 3. The August 27, 1998 Islamic terrorist assault of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania took place (257 murdered and over 4,000 injured) while President Clinton was brutally pressuring Prime Minister Netanyahu for sweeping concessions to the Palestinians and to Syria. 4. The 1995/6 Riyadh and Khobar Towers, Dhahran Islamic terror attacks (19 murdered) were carried out while Israel implemented unprecedented concessions, in spite of Palestinian hate-education, systematic violation of all commitments made by the PA and unprecedented Palestinian terrorism. 5. The February 1993 Twin Towers bombing (6 murdered and over 1,000 injured) transpired while Israel conducted the pre-Oslo talks with the PLO, snatching the PLO from the jaws of oblivion in terrorist camps in Yemen, Iraq, Sudan and Tunisia and making unprecedented concessions. 6. The December 21, 1988 PanAm-103 (270 murdered) terrorism took place a few months following the groundbreaking initiation of direct talks between the US and the PLO, while the US attempted to initiate a direct Israel-PLO dialogue. 7. The June 1985 TWA 847 hijacking to Beirut (1 US Navy Seabee diver murdered) took place when the US was backing Iraq in Baghdad's war against Iran, irrespective of the Palestinian issue. 8. The April/October 1983 bombings of the US Embassy and Marines and French military headquarters -- by Syria and PLO-supported Islamic terrorists (300 Americans and 58 French murdered) -- occurred while the US military confronted Israeli tanks in Lebanon and the US Administration blasted Israel horrifically for its was against the PLO. Tony Blair's, Baker's and Scowcroft's contention that the Palestinian issue is the core of anti-Western Islamic terrorism and Mideast violence reflects miscomprehension of Mideast reality. It diverts attention & resources away from The Core Cause: a 13 century old hate-education and terrorism, which has characterized inter-Muslim politics, domestically and externally (to be continued). Ambassador Yoram Ettinger is a consultant on US-Israel relations as well as the Chairman of Special Projects at the Ariel Center for Policy Research. Formerly the Minister for Congressional Affairs to Israel's Embassy in Washington, DC, Ettinger also served as Consul General of Israel to the Southwestern US. He is a former editor of Contemporary Mideast Backgrounder, and is the author of the Jerusalem Cloakroom series of reports. Contact him at yoramtex@netvision.net.il |
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ISRAEL'S NEW AD CAMPAIGN
Posted by Naomi Ragen, November 20, 2006. |
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This is from a List member. I don't have anything to add. |
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Dear Ms. Ragen, I just saw Livni's TV ad selling Israel. Two sophomoric young men sit on a beach and leeringly utter "wow" as beautiful, scantily clad women waltz poutingly past. It was comical in a horrible, "Springtime for Hitler" kind of way. Like that audience, I could only sit there with my mouth open, mesmerized by the utter stupidity of the ad. Does Livni think most people make Israel a destination for the beaches, when Aruba, say, is cleaner, whiter and a heck of a lot safer? Does she not even consider the thousands of Christians and Jews who flock to Israel because it is the foundation of their faiths? I would say that this ad is perfect fodder for a satirical skit on the show Saturday Night Live, but I can't see how a satire could improve on the reality...unless perhaps their ad shows kassam rockets detonating in the background. Livni is an idiot but the government officials who bought her absolutely moronic marketing concept are in a dimension beyond stupid. D.B.
[Editor's note: See "A Gay Old Time - How Israel Proposes To Improve Its Image " by Caroline Glick below.] Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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ALLAH'S ENGLAND
Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman, November 20, 2006. |
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A small redaction from a marvelous article by Daniel Johnson from
Commentary Magazine, November 2006. Please read in its entirety
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What will it mean for the Atlantic alliance if the British people in general and the Labor party in particular have indeed given up on the war against terrorism, and if the Tories mean to exploit their new political opportunity by appeasing Islamic radicalism? Pope Benedict XVI'S brief critique of the doctrine of jihad, a critique whose validity was immediately confirmed by the hysteria and violence it evoked in the Muslim world. Leaving aside the question of what exactly Benedict meant by quoting the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus on Muhammad's "evil and inhuman ... command to spread, by the sword, the faith he preached," his words put European Christians on the spot For too long, Christians have passed by on the other side as their own co-religionists have been persecuted in Muslim lands. They have hidden behind the pretense that, in David Cameron's words, Islamist terrorism is "a wholly incorrect interpretation -- an extreme distortion -- of the Islamic faith." No doubt the Muslim demonstrators outside Westminster Cathedral who demanded the Pope's execution, and who held up banners proclaiming "Islam will conquer Rome," were indeed extremists. But they were also one end of a continuum of intolerance that embraces much of Islam. The numberof Catholics suffering persecution in Muslim countries has been estimated at more than 100 million. By speaking out, the Pope ran the risk of making their situation even worse. But now that he has spoken out, European Christians in general and Catholics in particular have a duty to decide where they stand on freedom of speech and religion. At virtually the same time, Abu Izzadeen, a Jamaican convert to Islam living in London, advised a British audience in public forum that, "Britain does not belong to the English or the Queen or to the British government, but to Allah. He has put us on earth to implement shari's law." Indeed, Abu Izzadeen's attempt to claim the East End of London as an exc1usively "Muslim area" may not be mere fantasy. In 2012, the East End will host the Olympics. Waiting to be built, in a spot adjacent to the Olympic village, is the largest place of worship in Europe; the London Markaz, part of a vast complex projected to cost £100 million, most of it coming from Saudi Arabia. The organizational backer for this project is Tablighi Jamaat, a Muslim missionary group that the FBI has labeled a recruiting ground for al Qaeda. London, with over 1,000 mosques, is already Europe's unofficial Muslim capital. Its status will be enhanced immeasurably by the Markaz, whose size - it is projected to hold 70,000 worshippers - will dwarf St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. To contemplate the building of so potent a symbol of Islamic triumphalism over Europe's Christian heritage is all but incredible. Will it happen? Britain today is a nation torn between defiance and appeasement, led by a political elite that with few exceptions seems to be intimidated by Islam and reluctant to address -- when it is not complicit in -- anti-Semitism. The British people are not lost to the West, but the battle to preserve liberty in their country is only just beginning. Which makes it all the more fitting is that the immediate battleground should be the East End, the original Jewish area of London created upon Oliver Cromwell's declaring freedom and tolerance with the re-admission of the Jews in 1290. This East End has now become a Muslim stronghold and the site designated for the building of the Markaz complex. Jerome S. Kaufman is National Secretary of the Zionist Organization of America. and host the Israel Commentary website (http://www.israel-commentary.org). |
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WHO NEEDS A NEW PEACE PLAN? PALESTINIAN ARABS: A GENUINE DANGER TO WORLD PEACE
Posted by Eli E. Hertz, November 20, 2006. |
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One day after France and Spain announced a new initiative for Middle East peace, the United States seems to be ready to re-start the Israeli-Palestinian 'peace process.' Should the U.S. and the Quartet learn something from 'consistence' experience? Since 1917 and for over 30 years, the British Government controlled the land known as Palestine and ruled its inhabitants, both Arabs and Jews. That British in-depth knowledge and experience, has been reported to the League of Nations (Equivalent to today's United Nations) on the Administration of Palestine, and the report by the "Palestine Royal Commission" 1936-1937..." This is what the British reported to the League of Nations 70 years ago: "... in Palestine Arab nationalism is inextricably interwoven with antagonism to the Jews... . That is why it is difficult to be an Arab patriot and not to hate the Jews." The 1937 report concludes: "We find ourselves reluctantly convinced that no prospect of a lasting settlement can be founded on moderate Arab nationalism. At every successive crisis in the past that hope has been entertained. In each case it has proved illusory." Since the Oslo Accords (September 13 1993) through the Quartet's Roadmap that never got to square one (May 1, 2003), and the Aqaba Summit (June 4, 2003), 14 agreements and memorandums have been signed by the Palestinian Arabs. At each juncture, when attempts to reach a 'live-and-let-live' solution have been advanced, Arab responses have boiled down to a two-pronged offensive that dovetails diplomacy with violence. In short, the Arabs, and particularly the Palestinians, have refused to recognize Israel as a legitimate Jewish entity or to negotiate genuine compromise. Instead, they have tried to drive the Jews out through violence and terror. Palestinians continue to cling to a political culture of empty diplomacy and violence and a policy of rejectionism, just like countless agreements since September 2000 and countless attempts since the 1920s to cajole Palestinians into accepting Jews as something other than a subordinated so-called 'tolerated minority'. The promises continue. The hostility continues, and rejectionism and violence remains the most salient feature of Palestinian discourse. Palestinians believe that terror pays and expect the world support for the creation of a Palestinian state. A Palestinian state that has good chances of becoming a rogue state -- the kind of polity the United States is currently grappling with in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere. Back in 1971 Hebrew University social scientist Professor Yehezkel Dror wrote a short volume entitled Crazy States, solicited by the Rand Corporation. Decades before Libya's Momar Kadafi began sending contraband by diplomatic pouch and Paul Pot 'invented' the killing fields, the author envisioned the emergence of polities that 'don't play by the rules' and therefore seem crazy to westerners. At the time he was roundly criticized as an extremist and prophet of doom -- his book labeled a brilliant intellectual exercise but off the mark in terms of reality. The volume gained new respect after the 1991 Gulf War. Today no one denies the existence of 'crazy states', or as they are now labeled: rogue states. More recently, in a 1999 article devoted to how US foreign policy has addressed the problem of rogue states, Professor Barry Rabin of Bar-Ilan University defined the rogue state: "[A polity] that puts a high priority on subverting other states and sponsoring non-conventional types of violence against them. It does not react predictably to deterrence or other tools of diplomacy and statecraft." This definition seems to fit the Palestinian Authority like a glove even in the pre-state 'test' stage prior to gaining full sovereignty. A rogue state, said the author "requires special treatment and high levels of international pressure in order to prevent it from wrecking public order, setting off wars, and subverting whole areas of the world" -- a treatment regime Rabin labels "an international equivalent of incarceration or commitment to a mental institution, until there is sufficient recovery to permit reentry into the international system." The European Union for example envisage that for a state, such as Turkey - a peaceful Moslem state - joining the EU might take 10 to 15 years of negotiation and 'good behavior' on-the-ground, before being granted a conditional membership in the Union. Unfortunately, the world community has been ignoring the prospect that a full-blown independent Palestinian state will become just the kind of rogue states and renegade organizations the world is grappling with today. In light of the Palestinians' history of violence and its poor performance coping with limited freedom or autonomy -- the equivalent of a 'half-way house' to test their readiness to join the family of nations, and in light of the support (rather than pressure to 'toe the line') that Palestinians enjoy in the international arena, Palestinians independence could very well turn into a genuine nightmare. Contact the Eli E. Hertz at the www.MythsandFacts.org website.
This article is archived at
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FLEEING AND FLEAS
Posted by Steven Plaut, November 20, 2006. |
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1. So let us see if we have this straight. Ehud Olmert is outraged
that a Russian millionaire paid for the vacations to Eilat for
residents of Sderot because such vacations were, in Olmert's
"mind", escapism, fleeing from the front, abandoning their homes
because of terrorism.
Of course, all of Olmert's "doctrine", if that is the correct word, is based on fleeing before terrorists and abandoning Jewish homes in acts of capitulation. First we had the flight from Gaza, in which Olmert and his friends ordered the entire Jewish population of the Gaza Strip to be forcibly removed as an act of capitulation to terrorism. That flight of cowardice produced the thousands of Kassam rockets now landing on Sderot. So when Sderot residents "flee" to Eilat, they are simply trying to get away from the rockets brought down upon them by Olmert's own fleeing from Gaza. Then there is Olmert's still-operative grand plan to repeat the cowardly flight out of Gaza in the West Bank, so that thousands more rockets can be fired out of the West Bank into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. And finally there was Olmert's cowardly flight out of the area of southern Lebanon that Israel took this past summer, a flight of cowardice that simply makes the next war with the Hizbollah a matter of time. (Ok, I admit it, I was off. I had predicted the next war would take place this past Succot. Like the famous obituary about Mark Twain, I was just a little premature.) 2. This Week's Israeli Communist Professor He is Oded Goldreich, a communist professor of Computer Science and Math at the Weizmann Institute. That is notable, because Weizmann ordinarily is not a well-known den for leftist moonbats. There is an old stereotype of math professors who do complex advanced math but cannot add three plus three when it comes to the real world. Goldreich is an open supporter of Israel's Stalinist communist
party HADASH. He endorses it here on his personal web page: He has signed all those anti-Israel petitions, including the ones promoting a "right of return" for Palestinians, meaning their right to destroy Israel (http://oznik.com/words/040712.html ), demands for internation involvement in order to curtail Israeli sovereignty (http://www.dasbistro.com/pipermail/clarkgreen/2003-April/001218.html ), called for granting terrorist Tali Fahima a Nobel Prize (http://jacobk9.tripod.com/id25.html ), and has endorsed calls for boycotts of Israeli schools (http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/2005_05.html ) 3. In the sharpest of contrasts, now let me introduce you to Professor Hillel Weiss, a well-known professor of Jewish Thought at Bar Ilan University (http://www.biu.ac.il/faculty/hillelweiss/ ). Weiss is from the correct side of the political arena. He is active in the Professors for a Strong Israel and in the movement that opposes unilateral capitulations like last summer's Gaza "withdrawal". He holds a law degree although is not a practicing lawyer. And he has been the victim of police harassment these past few weeks. First, the police interrogated him for opposing the "Gay Pride Parade" in Jerusalem. Weiss had called for it to be cancelled, and stated that he endorses all means for preventing the holding of the "parade" in Jerusalem, even "Acts of Pinhas". The police took that as a call for violence. You know, the very same police who seem unable to recognize it when Arab pro-terrorists and Jewish leftist pro-terrorists endorse violence, terrorism, and even genocide. Now the most amazing thing about this is that Israeli prosecutors, products of the Israeli school system, even know who Pinhas was. And since Pinhas is often traditionally considered to reappear as Elijah the Prophet, my suggestion to Hillel is that every person singing about Elijah also be brought in for police questioning. (Remember those violent acts that Elijah did to the prophets of Baal? Isn't singing about Elijah clearly an act of incitement?) Then, yesterday Weiss was called in again for interrogation, this time for a different matter. It seems that Weiss is involved in a group in Israel calling itself "The Sanhedrin". It is a group of rabbis and other public figures who issue opinions about matters of the day. A while back, the "Sanhedrin" sent letters to various police and army officers who had been involved in the eviction of Jews from their homes in Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip. When these did not show up to answer questions before the "Sanhedrin", the "Sanhedrin" wrote letters to the synagogues in which these folks are members and asked that the people involved in the evictions not be called up to the Torah in aliyot. In post-democratic Israel, that also evidently constitutes an act of "incitement". Perhaps the best comment on Israel's dual judicial system (one for leftists and the other for everyone else) was a column by lawyer Yoram Shiftal in the weekly "Besheva" from Nov 16, 06. Unfortunately it is only in Hebrew and not on line, but perhaps someone out there will translate and post it. In any case, Shiftal argues that for all intents and purposes Israel's prosecutor's office is little more than a branch of the Meretz far-left party. Of the dozens of department heads within the prosecutor's office, every single one is a leftist. There had been one non-leftist, but she retired. The control of the office by those who belong to the leftist Meretz fringe explains the selective enforcement of the law, endlessly prosecuting rightists but never indicting leftists for treason and "incitement", and for the frequent involvement of the prosecution in promoting anti-religious litigation. 4. Barnard Alumnae Opposing Tenure for Anthropologist by
Gabrielle Birkner - Staff Reporter of the New York Sun
A group of Barnard College alumnae is attempting to stop their alma mater from giving tenure to an assistant professor who minimizes Jews' historical connection to Israel. In her 2001 book, "Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society," published by the University of Chicago, the professor of anthropology, Nadia Abu El-Haj says Israeli archaeology manipulates evidence to justify a modern Jewish state in the region. Relying heavily on the input of anonymous archaeologists, tour guides, and tour participants, the book portrays Israeli archaeologists as ideologues who, driven by a desire to "efface Zionism's colonial dimension," have fabricated Jews' territorial claims to Israel. Contacted by phone and e-mail, Ms. Abu El-Haj would not comment on the book, or her position at Barnard. While "Facts on the Ground" has been warmly received by some biblical "minimalists," or "biblical revisionists" ... academics who contend the Bible was written centuries later than is widely accepted and, that the text has little or no historical relevance ... it has been widely dismissed by archaeologists as a political treatise, full of erroneous statements and unsubstantiated claims. In "Facts on the Ground," Ms. Abu el-Haj suggests Jerusalem was destroyed not by the Romans, but by the Jews themselves due to rising class tensions among them. Yet, the 1st-century historian and scribe Josephus described in great detail the Roman siege of Jerusalem. Additionally, carvings in the Arch of Titus in Rome depict the Roman General Titus showing off menorahs and other objects looted from the Second Temple. In another passage, Ms. Abu El-Haj relates how a tourist questions a Jerusalem tour guide's explanation that the Judean King Hezekiah saved the city from an Assyrian conquest in 701 B.C.E. The tourist refutes the statement, claiming that Hezekiah's actions actually led to the destruction of the nearby Israelite kingdom. "Although the tourist's objection would appear to undermine the guide's interpretation .. this is a ludicrous claim, since the Israelite kingdom had been conquered twenty-one years earlier!" an archaeology professor at Israeli's Bar-Ilan University, Aren Maeir, wrote two years ago in a University of Chicago journal, Isis. The Assyrian conquest of Samaria in 722 B.C.E. is confirmed in Assyrian annals, which provide copious descriptions of the kingdom's fall, according to a retired professor of Near East archaeology at the University of Arizona, William Dever. Mr. Dever, who has authored more than 20 books on Middle East History, said Ms. Abu El-Haj seems intent on writing Jews out of ancient Middle East history, and demonizing a generation of apolitical Israeli archaeologists in the process. Barnard should deny Ms. Abu El-Haj tenure, he said, "not because she's Palestinian or pro-Palestinian or a leftist, but because her scholarship is faulty, misleading and dangerous." A 1982 Barnard alumna, Paula Stern, said she is "horrified by the possibility that Barnard College would consider appointing" Ms. Abu El-Haj to its permanent faculty. Particularly troubling, Ms. Stern said, is Ms. Abu El-Haj's conclusion that the Palestinians who in 2000 desecrated Joseph's Tomb ... a Jewish holy site in the West Bank city of Nablus ... need to be "understood in relation to a colonial-national history in which modern political rights have been substantiated in and expanded through the material signs of historic presence." In a recent e-mail message to fellow Barnard graduates, Ms. Stern, who lives in Israel, wrote, "In Abu El Haj's view, deliberately destroying ancient buildings is not to be condemned, it is to be ...analyzed as a form of resistance to the Israeli state.'" Ms. Stern urged fellow Barnard graduates to contact the college's president "if you share my concern about the implications of hiring a young scholar who writes with so little respect for the use of evidence." The president of Barnard College, Judith Shapiro, herself a cultural anthropologist, has received about 20 emails from individuals who oppose tenure for Ms. Abu El-Haj, a Barnard spokeswoman, Elizabeth Gildersleeve, said. "Her studies are on a controversial subject, and that can stir the pot," Ms. Gildersleeve said. Many of the academics who reviewed "Facts on the Ground" rejected the author's methodology and her conclusions. "Abu El-Haj has written a flimsy and supercilious book that does no justice to either her putative subject or the political agenda she wishes to advance. It should be avoided," a biblical archaeologist, a former adjunct professor at Purchase College, Alexander Joffe, wrote in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies. Mr. Joffe now works for an Israel advocacy organization, the David Project. Bar-Ilan University's Mr. Maeir, in a telephone interview, said archaeologists in Israel ... like archaeologists elsewhere ... have used their work for nationalistic purposes in the past. He said the field has evolved in recent decades, and its Israeli practitioners are not "out there working on this nationalist, jingoistic agenda of proving the Zionist point of view, and negating the Arab point of view," as Ms. Abu El-Haj would have readers believe. Ms. Abu El-Haj portrays Western scholarship as colonialist and imperialist. "The work of archaeology in Palestine/Israel is a cardinal institutional location of the ongoing practice of colonial nationhood producing facts through which historical-national claims, territorial transformations, heritage objects and historicities ...happen,'" she wrote. More mainstream archaeologists, according to Mr. Dever, trace the origins of the Israelite state to the 10th or 9th century B.C.E., contend that Bible was written in 8th or 7th century B.C.E., and that the biblical stories are "based on some historical facts. "Their minds are made up," Mr. Dever said of the minimalists, whom he calls "nihilists." "They never pay any attention to archaeological evidence, except to discredit it," Mr. Dever said. One of the most prominent minimalist academics, Keith Whitelam, a professor of religious studies at England's University of Sheffield, in an e-mail interview with The New York Sun, hailed "Facts on the Ground" as a "first-rate book." "It is important to study how national identity is constructed and the assumptions which are then built into academic work on history and archaeology," he wrote. " ...Facts on the Ground' is a very fine contribution to that debate and our understanding of the processes." Mr. Whitelam is the author of "The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History." A history and religion professor at Northwestern University, Jacob Lassner, in a 2003 review of "Facts on the Ground" published in Middle East Quarterly, wrote that minimalist archaeological claims have become a popular vehicle for those with decidedly anti-Zionist motives, writing "it is only those who deny Israel's right to exist or contest the legitimacy of its current borders who deny altogether or compromise Israel's links to the past." Even so, Mr. Lassner told The New York Sun said efforts by Barnard alumnae to block Ms. Abu El-Haj from receiving tenure would likely prove ineffectual. "Universities don't react to pressure of alumni on matters of tenure," he said. "It's not going to do very much good for alumnae to start complaining, especially if they're not scholars." Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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BLIND PANIC
Posted by Yehuda Poch, November 20, 2006. |
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When a person, particularly one in a position of power, begins to utter complete nonsense with increasing regularity, it is often a sign of panic. Perhaps, in that case, this week began with some very good news for Israel. Ehud Olmert decided to convene a meeting of several government ministers, mayors from the communities north and west of the Gaza Strip, and several ministry directors-general to discuss continuing government aid to the communities in question. Given the vastly increased safety of the residents of Sderot in recent days, one wonders first of all why such a meeting was necessary. There is precious little meaningful government aid to be continued, so any discussion must almost necessarily have been quite short. Apparently to fill the time, Olmert made the following remarks at the start of the meeting: "Throughout our history in this Land, during far more difficult times, we have never run away from our homes. We will not lend a hand to hasty actions that may be good for two or three days but which are liable to have destructive long-term effects. We do not want to take people out of their homes. Localized instances will be dealt with case-by-case but to load people on buses and whisk them off to five-star hotels? In no way is this Government policy." When I read these comments, I could not help but be amazed at the incredible hypocrisy of our prime minister. Why, just for these comments alone he should be impeached. To provide any Knesset member who wishes to attempt such a maneuver with all the ammunition necessary, I will answer these points one by one. First, it is simply untrue that "we have never run away from our homes". Twice in Israeli history, Israeli governments have driven Israeli citizens from their homes. First with the expulsion of Jews from their homes in Yamit in 1982, and second with the expulsion of Jews from 25 Israeli communities in Gush Katif and northern Samaria in 2005. The second of these forced expulsions was the brainchild of the man currently our prime minister -- the very person who uttered such an absurd comment. And beyond the expulsions, tens of thousands of Israelis were forced to leave their homes this summer as a result of the war launched on us by Hezbollah. The Olmert government's mismanagement of that war likely ensured that they will have to do so again in the not-too-distant future. Second, for Olmert to say that he "will not lend a hand to hasty actions that may be good for two or three days but which are liable to have destructive long-term effects," is simply ludicrous. Not only have Israeli governments lent a hand to such hasty measures, they have been the ones to instigate them. The Oslo process has been arguably the single most destructive Israeli policy every adopted. It created deep schisms in Israeli society, and provided the grounds for the Israeli extreme left to marginalize, ostracize and demonize the most self-sacrificing, patriotic elements in Israel who saw the danger and did not keep quiet. There was the expulsion from the Gaza Strip last summer which, beyond being a continuation of the destruction wrought by Oslo, was both hasty and incredibly destructive, as the residents of Sderot will be more than glad to tell you today. And Olmert himself had a decisive hand in the latter. To then say that "we do not want to take people out of their homes" is such a banal platitude that it would be funny if it weren't so sad. Lastly, Olmert's summation that "to load people on buses and whisk them off to five-star hotels? In no way is this Government policy," should be enough to stir the ire of even the most forgiving of Israelis. Not only has this been government policy until not too long ago, but the last of those expelled from Gush Katif and northern Samaria to leave the hotels in which they were cooped up did so almost a year after the expulsions because the government authority charged with finding them new accommodations has failed its job quite miserably. To this day, 15 months after the expulsion, only one new neighborhood has received all the planning approvals necessary, while dozens more have not yet even been brought before any committee for approval. But in Olmert's last comment, at least there is a grain of truth. The families expelled from their homes in 2005 were not put up in five-star hotels. They only got three stars if they were lucky, while many settled for school dormitories. It has become quite apparent that Ehud Olmert has completely lost his grip on reality. He is in a state of panic at the mounting criticism he faces from all corners -- a panic that is impairing whatever ability he ever had to properly run the country. The longer he stays in office, the greater the real existential danger to the State of Israel becomes. If Olmert does not resign, then for the good of Israel, our representatives in the Knesset must force him out. The damage he has wrought, and the blind eye he turns to it, are more than sufficient grounds for new elections. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Contact him at
butrfly@actcom.co.il. This article is archived at
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"STUPID" POLITICIANS & NEGOTIATIONS; NUCLEAR WAR; EGYPT THREATENS ISRAEL: WHO DOESN'T?
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 20, 2006. |
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STUPID POLITICIANS & NEGOTIATIONS Instead of figuring out what is best for our country to do and to be, many Americans are obsessed over Pres. Bush. As a typical example, my boyhood friend misses no opportunity to call Pres. Bush "stupid." Some seem to enjoy our country's predicament. They suppose that the US did not have great foreign policy problems until Bush took office. Presto, he drums up a war, and we get into trouble? They don't understand. The problems resulting in war go back more than a dozen years, through administrations of both major political parties. Pres. Bush Sr. built up Saddam, and failed to take him down. Pres. Clinton let the US military run down in size, while our enemies attacked Americans and built up their power. How lax he was! Americans should rise above partisanship and analyze realistically. My friend is pleased that hawks are leaving the current Administration. How pleased will he be if their replacements, and Bush's replaced direction, follow the policies that failed to stop jihad? The Democrats have no answer. They assert that Bush was lying about Saddam pursuing nuclear weaponry, but Bush was not and he is vindicated by the captured Iraqi documents that confirm the warnings by Ariel Sharon and other Israeli officials that Iraq transferred its nuclear program to Syria. They contend that Bush didn't negotiate, but as I have explained in earlier pieces, that is not correct. We spent years negotiating, letting others negotiate, and letting the UNO try. It didn't work. The Democrats are lying (really, overlooking the record). A policy of resolving problems with the jihadists through negotiations is based on absurd ignorance of the enemy. As fanatical as the Nazis and more fanatical than the Communists, the jihadists don't have "problems" with us. They want to kill us and then conquer us, though as they radicalize, they get more inclined to conquer us and kill us. Bush's main mistake was not in prosecuting the war on Saddam, which the UNO authorized (another fact that Democrats conveniently forget). It is that he didn't first rebuild the US military so that it would have enough troops to hold Iraq and continue on to Iran, etc.. Most leading Democrats don't realize yet that jihad is a world war, and we need a strategy. Bush, the supposedly stupid one, warned about an evil axis. Iran, heading this axis, prepared Hizbullah to the point at which it could make war on Israel. My friend, Marty, laments the Israeli government letting itself appear disinterested in making peace by refusing to "talk" with Syria. It is a point I have made. PM Olmert rightly concludes that Syria doesn't want peace, but foolishly lets Syria claim that Israel won't cooperate in making. As Marty points out, Muslims are developing weapons of mass-destruction. Israel should foster moderates and not antagonize them by spurning peace offers. I asked what moderates. He did not name any. He must have forgotten that before the rise of Islamism, the Arabs trying to destroy Israel. Almost all over the Muslim world, Muslims once not activist are becoming radicalized. Blaming enemy antagonism to Israel (or to the US) for what the victim of Muslim aggression does, is like blaming the Jews for what the Nazis did. It is not what the victims do, but that the victims are: (1) Prey; and (2) Resist jihad. In preparing to talk with Assad, Israel should be aware that negotiations with Muslims are a trap, just as they were with Hitler and Stalin. Fanatical totalitarians with imperial ambition don't make peace. They use negotiations to bolster their position against their negotiating "partners," to use the fatuous phrase employed by Israelis. The trap is that Israel states its minimum conditions and not asserting its rights, the enemy starts negotiating downward from there, and the rest of the world pressures Israel to keep making concessions, as if eventually some concession would slake the Muslim thirst. But it is a religiously-driven thirst for conquest. Concessions only bolster its drive. First, Israel would have to make its case. Crippled by self-doubt, political correctness, and appeasement-mindedness that supposes that rich Saudis and Iranians are terrorist because of poverty, Israel doesn't state its case if it even knows how to. Second, Israel would have to insist there be no pre-conditions, or else these are no negotiations but the signing of a surrender. Israel might not have the courage to insist. Third, Israel should explain that it wants peace, and therefore, as appropriate under international law, would not cede the Golan Heights. International law states that territory used by aggression, as Syria repeatedly used the Golan, may be taken by the victim if necessary to prevent aggression. The way Syria is going, it would misuse the Golan. Peace can be made with Muslims, suggests Marty, citing Egypt and Jordan. Why didn't he mention the PLO, which also signed peace agreements, but subsequently committed wars on Israel? Does he know of the Muslim doctrine of signing peace agreements so as to get a reprieve during which to prepare for war? Egypt officially but quietly is turning Islamist. Jordan's people are Islamist. Egypt leads the international diplomatic effort against Israel. Marty did not know that Egypt has gotten $60 billion worth of US aid to build an army trained almost solely to invade Israel. Egypt is the willing conduit through which the P.A. gets the arms to tie down the Israeli army and bleed the country. Since the US is pro-Israel, my friend began, why would it build up an Egyptian army to invade Israel? It is a surprising statement from Marty, who, after all, thinks the US and Israeli governments unable to act intelligently in the national interest. The State Dept. thinks it can manipulate other regions, whereas regional powers use it for their own regional agendas. That is why US attempts to work through proxies such as Iran, Iraq, and now Egypt, fail. In addition, the State Dept. traditionally is anti-Zionist. Of that, I've adduced before but suffice to say here that it opposed the formation of Israel, tried to get statehood rescinded, and continued to hobble Israeli military victories and to press Israel for territorial retreat to indefensible borders. Don't be fooled by Congressional aid. The real policy Pollard stumbled on -- hide from Israeli Arab preparations for war. Marty wants Jews to criticize both sides. I do -- the Muslim Arabs for aggression; Israel for fighting harder. It's the same as dealing with the Nazi war on the Jews. Marty is smarter than I am. I enjoy his intellectual sparkle and challenge. It can keep me on my toes. Unfortunately, however, on this subject he has fewer sources and relies largely on the New York Times, which also traditionally is anti-Zionist and which practices advocacy journalism. I've written many articles on that and demonstrated hundreds of instances of bias in that paper, indicating that its false propaganda is deliberate. It downplays news about State Dept. machinations against Israel and frames the issues to Israel's disadvantage. It harps on the need to work with moderates among the Palestinian Arabs (none of whom is in power) who are more extremist than the people of Iran. ISRAEL FINALLY BACKS JEWS REFUGEES FROM ARABS Twice as many Jews were refugees from Arab states as Arabs were from Israel. (Unlike the Arabs, the Jews had not committed aggression and were forced out.) Until now, the Jewish refugee claims were ignored. Now Israel decided to back their claims, and place them parallel to the Arabs' claims. The descendants of the Jewish refugees are content to stay where they are, they just want recognition for the record, though some will assert financial claims. They consider there to have been a population exchange. They want to show that Israel is as much for Jews from Arab states as it is for Jews from Europe. (The Arabs falsely claim that Israel was founded solely as compensation by Europe to its Jews for persecution. Zionism is broader than that.) They also want to appeal to the descendants of the Arab refugees to make something of their lives instead of letting themselves become political pawns of others (sorry, lost source). The Arabs were aggressors who left on their own, and deserve nothing. ATOMIC WAR COMING Stepping up its production of fuel for nuclear bombs, Iran now is months away from having bombs to fill its missiles with. Russia is continuing to build nuclear plants for Iran. The West imposed ridiculously weak sanctions on the rich oil state. Israel says it is preparing, but its policy hampers action. It's policy is to let the enemy encircle it, thereby hampering its ability to reach Iran and multiplying the enemy's ability to retaliate through proxies. It dithered in Lebanon, letting Hizbullah survive and invitijng hostile European forces in to protect Hizbullah. Already the French made threats, not against Hizbullah, its ostensible reason for entry, but against Israel for monitoring Hizbullah when UNIFIL should have been doing that, but it does nothing against the Muslim aggressors. The German navy sneaked a helicopter illegally over Israeli air space, when it was supposed to coordinate with Israel even for sending the helicopter up outside Israel. When Israel protested, Germany did it again! Now that is provocation! (But the media put it as if Israel had fired near the German ship.) It is clear that if Israel wanted to knock out Iran's nuclear facilities, and Syria and Hizbullah intended to retaliate against Israel, UNIFIL would fight against Israel. Olmert had begged UNIFIL to come to protect Israel. Now he is receptive to letting thousands of PLO terrorists from Jordan into Judea-Samaria. He learns nothing. Egypt has announced the dispatch of troops to the Gaza border, to block any Israeli raid on the smuggling that Egypt allows but is supposed to prevent. Israel did not protest. It both denies the Egyptian move and welcomes it as if Egypt finally will stop the arms smuggling. Egypt, however, has been building up its military, stationing it along the Canal, training it to fight Israel, and now allowing the P.A. heavy arms with which to bleed Israel. Egypt is part of the encirclement of Israel. If it gets away with sending in those troops, it would send in many more, presenting a strategic threat to Israel. It is taking advantage of the Olmert regime's weakness (IMRA, 10/31 from Caroline Glick). HOW TERRORISTS ROAM THROUGH EUROPE The EU has lax asylum and anti-terrorist laws. Terrorists can enter one country, then pass into others without being checked. They travel freely and often between Europe and the Mideast. They blend into Muslim communities. Some intermarry with native-born Europeans, and become more anonymous. Mosques and businesses launder the transfer of funds to terrorist activities. (Middle East Forum news, 10/31). The Middle East Forum reviews a book on suicide-murder by women, wondering why women sacrifice maternal instincts to abandon their children or to urge their children to blow themselves up among Israelis. Some of those women find gender equality in death that they were deprived of in life! (Op. Cit..) The Europeans need to declare war on Islamism and develop a war strategy. That means figuring out what laws and restrictions they need, and ending their old-fashioned or inappropriate rules on asylum and multi-culturalism. They need to take back their own countries. They need to regain pride in the better features of their culture, and to raise more children. RUSSIA ARMING HAMAS, TOO Advanced Russian anti-tank missiles have been sent to Gaza. These could strike at tanks or reach 5 kms. into Israel. This changes the strategic balance, as they did in the hands of Hizbullah, in the recent war in Lebanon (IMRA, 10/31). This is the penalty for Israel's having abandoned Gaza, including the border with Egypt. Egypt let the weapons into Gaza. But the government of Israel still trusts Egypt to protect the border. How do the most stupid and venal people become that country's leaders? HOW ISRAEL DEALS WITH P.A. TERRORISM The IDF declares that it will fight P.A. terrorism "with all the means at its disposal." This does not mean with all its military might. No, it means with all limits that the Olmert regime's media advisors think will keep it afloat (11/1). It pulls its punches. The regime is so incompetent, corrupt, and anti-Zionist that it places a mighty burden on its media advisors. Advisors or not, Israel continues to get the worst of it in the international press. Can't be otherwise, considering that the regime does not strive for victory; it is inhibited by its appeasement-mindedness and concern for praise from abroad, but there is so much antisemitism abroad. EFFECT OF WAR ON P.A. ARABS In the past four months, 10,000 P.A. Arabs have received permission to enter foreign countries. Another 45,000 submitted applications. As insecurity continues, so would this trend (IMRA, 11/1). AFFIRMATIVE ACTION DISCRIMINATION IN ISRAEL Israel has affirmative action for university admission. It is making up for 1,300 years of Muslim discrimination against Jews by university discrimination against... Jews! Problem is, fewer Arab students are entering medical school lately. They are failing the "ethical awareness" exam, Arab leaders claim, because they don't serve in the army. Proponents of affirmative action usually oppose high standards. High standards keep the favored group out. Rather than coax and coach the favored group to raise its standards, proponents of ethnic discrimination prefer to lower the admission standards. So your doctor isn't as good. A couple of years ago, the college boards test was eliminated. So many mediocre students then entered, that the boards had to be restored. That meant fewer Arabs again. The Left, which favors discrimination against jEWs, was disappointed. The notion that the Arabs didn't ponder ethical questions because they didn't serve in the Army is a poor excuse. First, they could volunteer for the Army. Second, they could wait a few years, gain some maturity in life, and then apply for advanced schooling. Arab MK Ahmed Tibi, who encourages the Arabs to fight Israel and therefore give Jewish youth experience in the Army and knowledge of ethics, wants a quota system for Arabs, who don't serve their country (Prof. Steven Plaut, 11/1). Help the enemy? NY TIMES OP-ED BY HAMAS A Hamas advisor wrote an Op.-Ed. defending an offer of a truce without offering to disarm. He denied that the purpose of a truce was to tighten Hamas' grip over the P.A. and to build up its military. Truces are common among Muslims, he added. He lied that the IRA agreed to a truce without offering to disarm. Actually, the IRA signed an agreement that promised disarmament (IMRA, 11/1). Hamas plans war. Islam encourages truces in order to build up militarily and then end the truce when ready to renew war. Arafat used to justify his peace agreements with Israel by citing Islamic history to that effect. I think that Islamist terrorists are beyond the Pale, and that they don't express views but false propaganda as a tool of war. The NY Times was remiss in lending its pages to them, just as it would if it made space for Saddam Hussein. EGYPT MISREPRESENTS The Foreign Minister of Egypt said that Egypt would not let Israel bomb the Gaza side of the border, to destroy the arms smuggling route that Egypt had undertaken to block but has not blocked. He said it would violate international agreements and P.A. sovereignty (IMRA, 11/1). Egypt lets heavy weapons into Gaza. The P.A. is not sovereign, but Muslims don't recognize infidel sovereignty. There are no international agreements against Israel bombing the area, there is war by the P.A. on Israel and total P.A. violations of its agreements with Israel, that Hamas openly flouts. WHAT IS BUSH UP TO, WITH IRAN? The US has accepted mild sanctions against Iran that hardly impair its economy and that make an exception of the nuclear fuel plant that Russia is completing for Iran. Bear in mind that international inspection, as constituted, does not detect much. The US is paying lip service to taking action against Iran. Apparently, the US is resigned to Iran developing nuclear weapons, launching them against Israel, and then threatening to use them against neighboring countries, Europe, and the US (IMRA, 11/1). The GOP seeks electoral victory on the grounds that it provides Americans with security. However, Pres. Bush is working within the same UNO that sabotages action against evil regimes, just as Sen. Kerry would have. EUROPEAN CHRISTIANS FOR ISRAEL The Pentacostal European Fellowship, having almost five million members, declared its support for Israel and lamented the divestment from Israel by certain other Christian sects. The Fellowship is part of a movement claiming 34 million members in Europe and to be growing fast (IMRA, 11/1). Those are Christian fundamentalists, whom Democrats dislike and fear. INTIFADA IN FRANCE Referring to Paris (or at least its suburbs), "Hardly a night passes without gangs -- many of them from immigrant families -- attacking police cars, buses, and emergency rescue teams." There are about 14 attacks a day (David Rennie, NY Sun, 11/2, p.8). Doesn't France know it has the same enemies as Israel? Let it join the anti-jihad axis! ISRAEL APPROVES 5,000 RIFLES FOR ABBAS The US demanded that Israel approve the transfer (The US claims that Abbas needs the rifles to face down Hamas, and it claims, without making a case but just asserting it, that this would be beneficial. I think both claims erroneous, if even sincere.) Abbas has said he would not wage civil war and unless Israel agrees to his own demands, he would fight Israel (IMRA, 11/1). When he does, he'd have 5,000 more rifles. SYRIA LAUNCHING ANOTHER FRONT Syria apparently is preparing some terrorists to strike down Saudi leaders whoa re antagonistic towards Syria (IMRA, 11/1). Syria gives reasons, but Muslims' stated reasons usually are pretexts. I think that S. Arabia has started to oppose the Shiite axis, of which Syria is part. Hence Syria, which is getting bold, seeks to get at S. Arabia. ISRAEL ENTERING DIPLOMACY, AGAIN Israel's Defense Min. Peretz said that the old Saudi "peace" plan basically of land-for-peace (and, I think, of bringing in refugee descendents to smother Israel), would make a good basis for negotiation. He qualified that as not accepting the plan but starting negotiations with its plan (Ibrahim Barzak, NY Sun, 11/2, p.7 from Associated Press). It has proved disadvantageous for Israel to base negotiations on an adverse principle. Israel should offer its own plan, peace for peace. Let it offer not to order the US to attack other Arab states! Of course, it cannot order the US to do anything, but since the Muslim Arabs have the antisemitic belief that Israel runs the world, why not get some negotiating advantage out of? Perhaps the world would laugh the Arab notion to death. Fresh from having proved inept at national defense, Peretz now is showing ineptitude in diplomacy. He would do better to explain why, with jihadists, diplomacy is counter-productive. Whereas Von Clausewitz described war as "diplomacy by other means," Peretz should describe Muslim diplomacy as "war by other means." Islam makes truces to build up forces and diplomacy to better position them, before renewing war. HOW UNIFIL OPERATES UNIFIL does not patrol after dark. Too dangerous. Therefore, Hizbullah (which has night vision equipment) can bring in arms after dark without UNIFIL interference. The UNO admits that Syria still is smuggling weapons to Hizbullah. The Lebanese Army, which is supposed to prevent the smuggling and disarm Hizbullah, and which could authorize UNIFIL to patrol the border, now has 20,000 men in southern Lebanon. It performs none of those duties. (Its troops largely are Shiites, as is Hizbullah; Lebanese follow communal loyalty above all.) What the Lebanese Army did try to do was to shoot down an Israeli plane flying over Lebanese air space to monitor Hizbullah's rearmament. Israel is reconsidering its commitment to the ceasefire agreement that the other parties are not keeping (Arutz-7, 11/2). Israel gets into disadvantageous agreements it would beware. Then it sticks with them too long. The US keeps demanding one-way compliance by Israel. EXPLANATION OF HESITANCY BY ISRAELI FORCES IN LEBANON The general in charge of filling the ranks explained that some battles in Lebanon were halted as soon as the government heard of any Israeli casualties in it. Of course, that is no way to run an army and direct it at war (Prof. Steven Plaut, 11/2). This is an example of the hesitancy that frustrated the Army when it had Hizbullah on the run. If in taking a few casualties, the Army would knock out Hizbullah, it would prevent many more casualties. The government's reaction to casualties is so ridiculous, it is close to being insane. Many Israeli policies and practices are equally absurd. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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AN INFIDEL INTERPRETS ISLAM
Posted by David Frankfurter, November 20, 2006. |
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Dear Friends, The British PM, Tony Blair, made a significant foreign policy speech (www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page10409.asp) on Monday (November 13, 2006), at the London Lord Mayor's banquet. He outlined his "whole Middle-East strategy". After stating Israel/Palestine "is the core", Blair drew a direct line to Teheran. "Iran is being confronted over its nuclear weapons ambitions... [T]hey are using the pressure points in the region to thwart us. So they help the most extreme elements of Hamas in Palestine; Hizbollah in the Lebanon; Shia militia in Iraq. That way, they put obstacles in the path to peace, paint us, as they did over the Israel/Lebanon conflict, as the aggressors, inflame the Arab street and create political turmoil in our democratic politics." Blair's solution to the nuclear threat, global terror and and the Israel-Palestinian dispute is simple: appeal to moderate Islam. His introduction was the base. "In this century, a new and unconventional enemy has appeared: a global terrorism, based on a thoroughly warped misinterpretation of Islam, which is fanatical and deadly." My question is this: Where is this moderate Islam? Why is an "infidel" explaining that global terrorism is a warped misinterpretation of Islam? Shouldn't it be Muslim's speaking for (not to mention protecting) their own religion? Where are the masses of Muslims who are leading or at least joining the war on terror? And I don't mean lapsed or secular Muslims - I mean religious Muslims. My studies of comparative religion in high school and the memory of the Muslims I met at university create a dissonance between what I thought was Islam, and what I see today. On the other hand, the Islamist vision of dominating the world as the sole religion has been openly and clearly declared, and is being brought to implementation stage. It is not dissimilar to the vision of the Crusaders, which led to the pogroms of the Middle Ages. Not too different to the Catholic vision that created the Inquisition. And I guess that its political edge is parallel to the vision of the 1,000 year Reich. David David Frankfurter is a business consultant, corporate executive and writer who frequently comments on the Middle East. To subscribe to his 'Letter from Israel', email him at david.frankfurter@iname.com. Or go to http://dfrankfurter.livejournal.com |
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HANUKKAH, Part I
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, November 20, 2006. |
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The core of this excerpt is a column I wrote for the Metro West Daily News in December 1996. It appeared in similar form in the January 1997 Outpost. Visit http://www.israelendtimes.com and click on the December 1996 archive for this entire essay. May Hashem bless abundantly all lovers of Israel and bring light from the gathering dark As I re-visited it it grew; it had to; the darkening and descent of the road has taught us all, hopefully, to see Hanukkah more fully in its light, the quintessential and supreme holy days of Israel: the light in the darkness, remembrance, active faith, victory and re-dedication. In honor of Rosh Hodesh Kislev, this beautiful month of dreaming and healing, of birth and the amethyst of remembrance, this portion of a longer piece is offered. The rest of this part I is archived on my site in December 1996 category. May we act to merit the stream of healing light, the milk and wine of malkhut Yehuda for us very soon |
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Hanukkah is the supreme holy day: light in the darkness; the triumph of Judaism and the loving, long-suffering Jewish people after millennia of slaughter and persecution. Courage, victory, sovereignty, Torah and light held within each family and then to fill the world... There will be nothing without victory: liberation, service, endurance, faith are meant to culminate in victory to be complete. G-d is not a magician. Faith is proved in deeds; the Promise must be activated by human endeavors. Hanukkah is a joyous re-dedication of worship, purity and national integrity. Like all Jewish holy days it is a memorial (tziyun from Zion), it commemorates a refusal to bend the knee to state power and concludes with a miracle achieved through active faith. It also is relevant that the original triumph memorialized by Hanukkah did not, in the historical sweep of things, have staying power. The battle between a Torah state and those who follow the international cult of the body, of force, fraud and sexual extravaganzas still rages, and a blend of fidelity, courage and faith is needed to save the land, -- and world again. So when we light the candles and again sing the blessings, "in those days, at this season" the substance of the wonders, battles, victories and need for salvation of Hanukkah is greatly with us. The bridge of peace, shalom linking heaven and earth must be reflected back to heaven in our deeds, proof of our gratitude and refinement, and it can only arise from the midst of shaleim, the integrity of Israel which is inseparable with its victory and eternity. The Book of Maccabees begins by glancing at the ascension of Alexander whom the world calls "The Great." But the children of Israel had a different perspective: "he traversed the earth to its remotest bounds, and plundered countless nations" the text reads, as if critiquing the principles set out three centuries earlier by Pericles in his "Funeral Oration" for the Athenian dead: "our adventurous spirit has forced a way into every land": indeed. "His pride knew no limits." "And then," the text adds, "he died," dryly making the oldest point in the book, that mortal pride is ridiculous. The problem was that Alexander bequeathed his pagan empire to kings "who brought untold miseries upon the world," the winged goat blazing a path for "the beast with iron teeth. One of these predatory Hellenistic kings was Antiochus Epiphanes, 'the incarnation' one could loosely translate his Greek idea, who became king at Antioch about 175 BCE in the historical Aram that the Greeks called "Syria." By that time the Jewish people, fighting many battles and taking many losses had survived many foreign empires and tyrants. Antiochus was not the main problem but rather "a gang of renegade Jews who sought...to enact non-Jewish laws and customs. They built a sports stadium in the Greek style, repudiated the holy covenant and abandoned themselves to evil ways." They sought to assimilate to a homogenized, secular super-State. They wanted peace in a "New Middle East." Antiochus backed this secularizing initiative ("yesterday's gone") and the habits to which it led. "He issued a decree: his subjects were all to become one people and abandon their own laws and religion." It could have been the first world security state. "Nations everywhere complied, as did many in Israel. Swine were slaughtered on the holy altar and "anyone in possession of a Book of the Covenant was put to death." But in the town of Modi'in an old priest named Mattisyahu one day had had enough. His battle cry was, "everyone who is zealous for the law and the covenant follow me!" For almost three years he led the Jews against the cultists of the body and the world State. When he died, his son Judah the Hammer led. The medieval Church considered Judah one of "the seven worthies of faith." Writing in about 124 BCE, the authors of Maccabees put Judah in a line including Abraham, Joseph, Joshua, Caleb, David, Elijah and Daniel. Like all those who worship their own power and have a snazzy new cult to sell it, Antiochus was outraged that a bunch of ragtag Jewish 'extremists' (Jews) kept defeating his well-paid Greeks. He assembled an immense force but found himself running a big monetary and popular deficit "as a result of the disaffection and violence he had brought upon the world by abolishing traditional laws and customs." But tyrants, whether in blue, green or bronze helmets know all about deficit-spending so Antiochus sent out his United Nations army complete with the high-tech weapon of that day, elephants. Praying for divine mercy, Judah unfurled a Torah scroll, sounded the shofar, led the Jews into battle against the Greeks and, as the text relates, "humbled their pride." Nest year, he marched into Jerusalem, "restored the Temple, renewed the sacred vessels and menorah, burnt incense, lit the lamps, and set the loaves of bread for each tribe on the table. On the very day of the anniversary the gentiles had profaned it, it was rededicated with hymns of thanksgiving" (the Hallel). "And the entire congregation of Israel declared that the rededication should be observed with joy and gladness at the same season, each year for eight days." The gentiles and their Jewish allies fought twenty more years to install the Olympian cult complete with Madonna (eventually they did it, with Roman might). Long before then, the Hasmonean dynasty began adopting Greek names and ways; the Romans backed the interloper Herod and put them out. Today the west is a society in which creatures like Salome are icons and the cult of the body, of concupiscent and erotic fantasies seems to have triumphed utterly. In small hill towns and outposts away from urban centers and omnipresent media and police, holy people in the old style, people of grace and integrity, the beautiful people are going against the regression that is modernism. Perhaps folks are more and more reflecting on the original social paradigm of Israel... Professor Eugene Narrett teaches writing and Literature at Boston University. He is the author of hundreds of articles, columns and reviews on politics, American culture and the arts. He is completing a study on Romanticism and the longterm decline of Western Culture. He writes often on subjects relating to Israel and Judaism and is a weekly columnist for the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Massachusetts. |
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BEWARE OF SURRENDER PLAN
Posted by Steven Shamrak, November 19, 2006. |
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These are news items from all over. My comments are in square brackets [] and italics. |
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Beware of Surrender Plan. These are excerpts from an article by Mitch Potter of the The Star of Toronto entitled "Israel secretly studies 'bold' peace bid." (www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/ Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1163631019081 ...Israeli officials are believed to be exploring a new diplomatic shady overture that calls for the surrender of large swathes of the West Bank to a new Arab Palestinian leadership in exchange for a decade-long ceasefire [Not even peace]. The plan, still in the formative stages, was outlined in the Hebrew daily Ma'ariv on Nov. 16, as a "bold and original" initiative [Only self-hating Jewish traitors can think this way]. Nothing Less. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is calling on Israel to renew diplomatic contact with the PA [they need US and EU money to finance terrorism and corruption] in the framework of a total Israeli withdrawal from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and eastern Jerusalem. In an address televised in the PA, he called on Israel to "seize the opportunity for peace." [What about the framework of a total departure of all Arabs from the Jewish land -- Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Trans Jordan! Abbas can also seize the opportunity. It works both ways. This approach will definitely bring peace to Israel! All previous negotiations and compromises made by Israel only encouraged more demands from Arabs and escalated Islamic terrorism, not only in Israel but all over the world.] Stupidity Unlimited. Olmert government is considering to authorise 1500 armed Arab Palestinian terrorists, based in Jordan, to move into the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as a way to counterbalance the growing power of Hamas. No official announcement has been made, although US President George Bush had formally requested the troop transfer before the 45-minute private meeting he held with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week. [Why not allow Iran to move armed force to Iraq, to help the coalition to fight al-Qaida? For how long will Jews tolerate this ugly attitude from so-called friends? We must do what is good for our own state, as any self-respecting nation does!] Human shield is illegal! Stop advance warnings! Stop humiliation of IDF! Stop bombings of empty buildings! Destroy the enemy! International anti-Semitism in Action. UN General Assembly condemned Israel by 156-7 vote, but systematic cross-border missile attacks against Israeli civilians were not even mentioned! Food for Thought. Who held the hands of IDF in Lebanon, when Hezbollah sent rockets to Israel, and during all other conflicts as well? Who broke many promises and started talking about two-state solution? Are we supposed to be grateful for 6 decades of war and misery imposed on Jews in Israel and the rise of anti-Semitism facilitated by our 'friends' and enemies? Under the close scrutiny the US friendship and attitude toward Israel looks surprisingly different to what we customarily think! Same Game Plan. The, so-called, Palestinian Unity Cabinet, yet to be confirmed, will not recognize Israel -- The Hamas movement representative announced in Gaza. Gaza is Terror University. Iran and Hezballah are working together with Hamas to transform the Gaza Strip into a "university" for studying terrorism. The head of Israel's Shin Bet security services, Yuval Diskin, told Israeli lawmakers that Palestinians had smuggled 30 tons of military-grade explosives as well as large quantities of weapons, including anti-tank missiles, into Gaza since Israel withdrew its troops and deported settlements from Gaza last summer. New Undetectable Suicide Belts. Israel's military and intelligence services said the two belts it had acquired "contained unusually large amounts of liquid explosives" that would have triggered disastrous consequences if detonated. Israeli Leaders Surrender. The recent fatal rocket attacks on Southern Israel have brought Israel to its knees. Israel's weekend newspapers are full of articles quoting Israeli leaders who have given up hope in stopping the ongoing attacks on Sderot and the Western Negev. On the Iranian front, Israeli leaders are no less clueless. The international media quoted Shimon Peres stating, that Israel must not take the lead in international efforts to curb Iran. [When will the gutless Gullut mentality end?] Quote of the Week: "Nazi Germany murdered over 6 million Jews during the Holocaust in World War II from 1939 to 1945. This corresponds to about 10,000 Jews a day, including women and children. On bad days the number of Jews murdered would be as high as 20,000-30,000 corresponding to a mid-size football stadium." -- All those years the anti-Semitic world was silent! The international community is quite vocal now, in order to facilitate the demise of the Jewish state! UAE turns back Israeli Delegation. An Israeli delegation was blocked from attending a United Nations-affiliated international postal conference in Dubai last week, sparking protests from the UN and an American delegation. On Tuesday, the Emirates authorities invited the Israeli delegation to return - the conference finished on Friday. [No UN resolution condemning the UAE action is expected!] UNIFIL Protests. "UNIFIL strongly protested to Israel over the flights which are unacceptable and in violation of resolution 1701," UNIFIL spokesman, Milos Struger, said. [At the same time UNIFIL have done nothing to stop Hezbollah from re-arming, this is also a violation of resolution 1701. There are no protests about it!] Empty Promises. The terrorist group Islamic Jihad made a promise to PA President Mahmoud Abbas that it would consider halting rocket attacks on Israel if Israel stops retaliation attacks in Gaza. [They did not promise the end of terror, only the consideration!] Jewish Contribution to Humanity. Charles Ginsburg (1920-1992) was the leader of a research team at Ampex which developed one of the first practical videotape recorders. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1990. Iran in the Scope. USS Boxer Strike Group, entered the Persian Gulf, the largest US landing force to reach this water in a decade. The group's commander, Capt. David Angood said that if "anything important happens in the real-world environment, the task force will deal with it in the most efficient manner." Complaints from Evil Empire. Iran filed a complaint to the UN Security Council over remarks by Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh that Israel must be ready to prevent Iran's nuclear program "at all costs." [But no one complained to the UN Security Council and no resolution was adopted over the threat made by the president of Iran to destroy the state of Israel.] PA television: Suicide is the Most Glorious Death. Death by carrying out a suicide operation is one of the most glorious ways to die and is rewarded with eternal paradise and 72 dark-eyed virgins, according to a religious instruction broadcast last week on PA television run by Abbas' Fatah party. [There is no difference between Fatah and Hamas. They use same rhetoric and the same goals!] Clear Declaration of Affiliation. Knesset member Muhammad Barakeh, speaking at a Ramallah memorial service for PA Chairman Yasser Arafat called Arafat "Our great leader" and warned that "the shoes of the child from Beit Hanoun will stomp on the head of the Israeli empire. Your security will not come at the expense of our children? You will not kill our dream..." The Arab-Israeli MK has openly identified himself as belonging to the Arab-Palestinian side. Barakeh called on Palestinians to stop firing Qassam rockets at Israel: "I unequivocally spoke against them, in front of the prime minister's deputy and other Hamas members. I said that if the means of resistance do not bring you closer to freedom and give the occupier excuses to continue his actions, you are giving him an excuse to attack you..." [He is not concerned about the lives of Jewish Israelis, but pre-occupied with the goal of Arabs to destroy Israel!] Steven Shamrak was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and participated in the Moscow Zionist "refusenik" movement. For the last 3 years, he has been publishing internet editorial letters on the Arab-Israeli conflict -- independently, not as a member of any organization or political movement. He can be reached by email at StevenShamrak@gmail.com |
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YET AGAIN, THE NEW YORK TIMES BLASTS ISRAEL!
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, November 19, 2006. |
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Yet again, The 'world class(less)' New York Times demonstrates its anti-Israel bias, in an 11/18/2006 front page marquee article 'For West Bank, It's a Highway To Frustration' by Greg Myre, a skilled writer seemingly smitten with a so-called 'Palestinian' apologist perspective. The Israel skewering hand wringing description of so-called 'Palestinian' life on the so-called 'West Bank' emphasizes a daily nightmarish check point plagued plight presumably endured by these Arabs taking little note as well as expressing no sympathy for Israel's perspective on this matter. Indeed, per the thrust of Myre's article, depicting numerous examples of Arab life being disrupted by Israeli security measures, Palestinian inconvenience is so onerous that it trumps the security of Israeli citizens, despite the little emphasized fact that many innocent Israelis have been murdered and maimed in the past when martyring homicidal/suicidal Arab lunatics were more casually allowed to enter Israeli towns and cities, then blew themselves and proximate human beings asunder. Might Myre consider interviewing and entering the opinion of but one victim of a homicidal/suicidal attack, perhaps one member of a grieving Israeli family who has lost a loved one to such perverted behavior, for the sake of journalistic fairness? Of course not, that would sabotage the objective of his not so subtle editorial disguised as an objective lengthy report on a major international issue. Any journalist or editor possessing an ounce of integrity would avoid misleading readers into believing that one particular articulated perspective on an issue was a fair and balanced piece of news, thus avoid vividly displaying any such subjectively crafted article, including any large picture emphasizing the tone of its content, on the front page of a presumably objective newspaper. Indeed, that is the function of an opinion page! The New York Times, alas, in a more subdued and well-written but nevertheless ever-potent manner, consistently presents its collective subjective anti-Israel viewpoint within its prodigious body of presumed factual news ala 'news rags' catering to a readership of intellectually bereft bigots. Furthermore, readers of that 'highly acclaimed' newspaper, in general, are not bigots (at least blatant bigots), tend to be fairly well educated, somewhat intelligent, politically concerned, as well as perhaps dependent on what they believe are objective reports and analysis' offered about subjects they have no time to independently research and contemplate. Thus The New York Times becomes a lethal mind manipulating weapon, ironically bludgeoning the only tolerant democratic nation, that happens to be defined by its Jewish culture, in a vast misogynist intolerant Islamic neck of the desert, whenever that media outlet suspects Israel behaves in a politically incorrect way toward, in the newspaper's skewed opinion, ever abused ever occupied ever challenged Palestinian waifs, ever fated to be refugees, including those that now dwell within the all Arab sovereign ceded state of Gaza, surely a place to hang their turbans and burkas, not exactly an encampment for stateless people. Might we conclude The New York Times and Al-Jazeera are kindred spirits when it comes to defining Israel? At least the latter media outlet does not attempt to disguise its proclivities. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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RESTORE ISRAELI SOVEREIGNTY OVER THE TEMPLE MOUNT
Posted by David Ben-Ariel, November 19, 2006. |
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The Wakf, the militant Muslim authority that oversees Jerusalem's Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site and Islam's alleged third holiest site (following Mecca and Medina) continue to show blatant disregard for Jewish, Christian and biblical history and non-Muslim sensitivities. Matti Friedman's AP article - "At Temple Mount Holy Site, What Is Treasure?" (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061118/ap_on_sc/israel_temple_trove) - exposes how the Wakf engaged in unsupervised and illegal gouging of the Temple Mount (the holy site of both Solomon's Temple and Zerubbabel Temple enlarged by Herod that Jesus and the apostles worshipped in), removing tons of its historically rich soil and callously dumping it in the nearby Kidron Valley (that I've walked through many times, climbing the Mount of Olives). Such atrocious acts reveal a serious lack of proper respect for archaeology and other religions and serve as an indictment against the Wakf ! and the Israeli government for looking the other way. However, this serious breach of religious respect and tolerance for non-Muslims is nothing new, as a Muslim mob overran the biblical patriarch Joseph's Tomb, site of a synagogue, burnt the Torah scrolls and murdered the rabbi who supervised the site, as well as a Druse officer trying to protect it, and utterly trashed the holy place. And who can forget the Muslim terrorists holed up in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, using the baptismal font as a latrine and abusing the New Testaments there? Not to mention the daily religious discrimination upon the Temple Mount where they illegally forbid Christians and Jews from praying or reading the Bible. These are the concrete actions of the leaders of the "Palestinian" community, documented actions that are in stark contrast to the virtues they profess to the Western media about religious tolerance and freedom of access to religious sites within "Palestine." It's past time the Israeli government act responsibly and change the deplorable status quo upon the Temple Mount, and restore Judaism's holiest site as the Temple Mount, hosting a "House of Prayer for all peoples" as envisioned by the Prophets. David Ben-Ariel is author of "Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall." Contact him by email at davidbenariel@earthlink.net |
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JUST WHAT ISRAEL NEEDS
Posted by Yehuda Poch, November 19, 2006. |
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The following very disturbing news report crossed my desk over the weekend, from the Ha'aretz newspaper: Defense Minister Amir Peretz on Thursday blasted business tycoon Arkady Gaydamak for financing a free weekend in Eilat for 800 residents of the rocket-battered western Negev town of Sderot. Peretz's reaction to Gaydamak's generosity is representative of the pompous disregard Israel's leading politicians have for the people of this country. The idea that the "State of Israel does not allow" any of its citizens to help when others are in need flies in the face of the vaunted democracy and socialist ideology that Peretz and his party claim to uphold. Gaydamak's generosity has aroused considerable controversy in Israel, both this weekend, and over the summer when he paid to house over 12,000 residents of Israel's north who fled the Katyusha attacks on their homes during the war. That such generosity should catch people's attention is a good thing. That it should raise controversy is in itself testimony to the extremely poor level of social awareness Israelis have for one another. Many news reports, and many opportunist politicians, scream loudly every so often about the income gaps in Israel, about the wide disparity between the haves and the have-nots. But that is not where the true social disparity lies. Rather, residents of one part of the country don't understand residents of another, and worse, they become alienated from residents of other localities to the extent that one could almost be in a completely different country rather than in a different region of Israel. People from one area view people from another with contempt, scorn, pity, or loathing, or they ignore them altogether. It is very true that many Israelis "did not truly experience the war" as one wounded soldier recently told me when I met him in the rehab ward. For the vast majority of Israelis living in the greater Tel Aviv area, or regions further south, the war was no more than a story on the hourly newscasts. Life went on as if the war were in some far-off land, rather than a mere hour's drive away. Along came Arkady Gaydamak, showing everyone in Israel what can be done if someone just cares enough. There are plenty of people in Israel with money to spare when the need arises. And there are plenty of charitable organizations who do so. I work for one of them, and through my work, I have the opportunity to meet people from all across Israel who have been harmed by the failures of Israeli defense, foreign, and social policy. And they are so incredibly appreciative when someone -- simply holds out a hand to help. These are the true Israelis -- the ones who put life and limb on the line daily just to be able to live in the Jewish homeland, and the ones who help them along when the going gets a little too tough in the adventure of the Jewish State. That adventure is meant to have as its crowning glory a Jewish government and Jewish army pledged to defend and promote the Jewish state in all its facets and in all realms of activity. Unfortunately, the army cannot accomplish this goal without a government of strong moral clarity and conviction of the justice of our cause. And the Israeli government lacks precisely these elements which would enable it and the army to fulfill this mission and ensure the success of this adventure. Arkady Gaydamak is a threat to the ruling classes in Israel particularly because he does what is needed. He believes fully in the Zionist enterprise. He believes fully in the people of Israel, and is willing to literally put his money where his mouth is. He is a fine example of the true Israeli. The Peretz's and Olmert's of our country are examples of what is wrong with Israeli society. They, and others speak of preparing "an organized and established plan to alleviate these residents so they will not need to knock on the doors of philanthropists." But neither Sderot residents, nor residents of the north, nor any other group of Israelis actively seeks such aid. Sderot residents don't want to be shelled day in and day out or watch their neighbors get killed or maimed by our enemies' attacks. Northern residents don't want to have their homes destroyed, their lives interrupted, or their fathers, mothers, or children killed while strolling in the garden. What Israelis want is a government that is prepared to put the safety, security and prosperity of its residents first and foremost on its agenda -- ahead of petty intrigue and personal gain, ahead of scandals and wasteful spending, and ahead of ineptitude and negligence. What Israeli residents want is a government that takes the needs of its citizens seriously, whether those needs are military, educational, cultural, social, financial, infrastructural, environmental, housing, judicial, or any other kind. The Israeli government is not preparing "an organized and established plan" to help anyone. If they were, it would have been in place long ago. Actually, the government should never have needed such a plan. Providing for proper defense of Israelis from enemy attack would have obviated the need for such plans, or for Gaydamak. Instead, the Israeli government has failed its citizens, and failed them miserably, being more interested in caving in to terrorists or to international tongue-waggers than in building up our national home on our terms. We fought a war this summer and gained exactly nothing other than greater international impediments to our future security and greater military buildup on the part of our enemies for the war that every Israeli schoolchild knows is merely a matter of time away. We have been ignoring the growing war being fought on our southern flank by an enemy growing constantly more emboldened with every missile strike that deepens the confusion and impotence of our so-called leaders. In the absence of any kind of leadership, it is up to the real "doers" of Israeli society, the Gaydamaks of this country, to do step in to the breach. That we have such people is a testament to the basic human goodness of our nation. That we have a need for such people is a testament to the failure of our national institutions to tap into that goodness and promote the fulfillment of every citizen's needs. That one of our leaders can say that the "State of Israel does not allow" such activities is testament to the abject moral bankruptcy of our national leaders. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. This article is from
his website and is archived at
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I CAN TELL YOU WHAT IT'S NOT ABOUT
Posted by Michael Travis, November 19, 2006. |
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"But I can tell you what it is not about. Not about Israel, not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are mere excuses. Algerian Muslim fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting the throats of children in front of their parents. Are you seriously telling me that this was because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians or American foreign policy?" This is from the National Post of Canada. It is based on an
interview of Dr. Tawfik Hamid by Michael Coren, who is an author and
broadcaster. Mr. Coren can be reached at his website:
www.michaelcoren.com. The article is archived at |
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Dr. Tawfik Hamid doesn't tell people where he lives. Not the street, not the city, not even the country. It's safer that way. It's only the letters of testimony from some of the highest intelligence officers in the Western world that enable him to move freely. This medical doctor, author and activist once was a member of Egypt's Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Arabic for "the Islamic Group"), a banned terrorist organization. He was trained under Ayman al-Zawahiri, the bearded jihadi who appears in Bin Laden's videos, telling the world that Islamic violence will stop only once we all become Muslims. He's a disarmingly gentle and courteous man. But he's determined to tell a complacent North America what he knows about fundamentalist Muslim imperialism. "Yes, 'imperialism,'" he tells me. "The deliberate and determined expansion of militant Islam and its attempt to triumph not only in the Islamic world but in Europe and North America. Pure ideology. Muslim terrorists kill and slaughter not because of what they experience but because of what they believe." Hamid drank in the message of Jihadism while at medical school in Cairo, and devoted himself to the cause. His group began meeting in a small room. Then a larger one. Then a Mosque reserved for followers of al-Zawahiri. By the time Hamid left the movement, its members were intimidating other students who were unsympathetic. He is now 45 years old, and has had many years to reflect on why he was willing to die and kill for his religion. "The first thing you have to understand is that it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with poverty or lack of education," he says. "I was from a middle-class family and my parents were not religious. Hardly anyone in the movement at university came from a background that was different from mine. "I've heard this poverty nonsense time and time again from Western apologists for Islam, most of them not Muslim by the way. There are millions of passive supporters of terror who may be poor and needy but most of those who do the killing are wealthy, privileged, educated and free. If it were about poverty, ask yourself why it is middle-class Muslims -- and never poor Christians -- who become suicide bombers in Palestine." His analysis is fascinating. Muslim fundamentalists believe, he insists, that Saudi Arabia's petroleum-based wealth is a divine gift, and that Saudi influence is sanctioned by Allah. Thus the extreme brand of Sunni Islam that spread from the Kingdom to the rest of the Islamic world is regarded not merely as one interpretation of the religion but the only genuine interpretation. The expansion of violent and regressive Islam, he continues, began in the late 1970s, and can be traced precisely to the growing financial clout of Saudi Arabia. "We're not talking about a fringe cult here," he tells me. "Salafist [fundamentalist] Islam is the dominant version of the religion and is taught in almost every Islamic university in the world. It is puritanical, extreme and does, yes, mean that women can be beaten, apostates killed and Jews called pigs and monkeys." He leans back, takes a deep breath and moves to another area, one that he says is far too seldom discussed: "North Americans are too squeamish about discussing the obvious sexual dynamic behind suicide bombings. If they understood contemporary Islamic society, they would understand the sheer sexual tension of Sunni Muslim men. Look at the figures for suicide bombings and see how few are from the Shiite world. Terrorism and violence yes, but not suicide. The overwhelming majority are from Sunnis. Now within the Shiite world there are what is known as temporary marriages, lasting anywhere from an hour to 95 years. It enables men to release their sexual frustrations. "Islam condemns extra-marital sex as well as masturbation, which is also taught in the Christian tradition. But Islam also tells of unlimited sexual ecstasy in paradise with beautiful virgins for the martyr who gives his life for the faith. Don't for a moment underestimate this blinding passion or its influence on those who accept fundamentalism." A pause. "I know. I was one who accepted it." This partial explanation is shocking more for its banality than its horror. Mass murder provoked partly by simple lust. But it cannot be denied that letters written by suicide bombers frequently dwell on waiting virgins and sexual gratification. "The sexual aspect is, of course, just one part of this. But I can tell you what it is not about. Not about Israel, not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are mere excuses. Algerian Muslim fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting the throats of children in front of their parents. Are you seriously telling me that this was because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians or American foreign policy?" He's exasperated now, visibly angry at what he sees as a willful Western foolishness. "Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can't you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want." Then he leaves -- for where, he cannot say. A voice that is silenced in its homeland and too often ignored by those who prefer convenient revision to disturbing truth. The tragedy is that Tawfik Hamid is almost used to it. Contact the poster at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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LAST SUNDAY'S COMMEMORATION FOR RABBI MEIR KAHANE
Posted by Gennadiy (Baruch ) Faybyshenko, November 19, 2006. |
| Hi. My name is Gennadiy and I organized a Commemoration for Rabbi Meir Kahane last Sunday. Here is the article that I wrote about the event. |
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On Sunday, November 12th the Ocean Avenue Jewish Center was the venue for a commemoration ceremony of the 16th Yahrzeit of Rabbi Meir Kahane, ZTK"L, H"YD. (May the memory of this saint be immortalized and may G-d avenge his blood). The Yahrzeit was organized by Bnai Elim (Sons of the Mighty) whose name was taken from King David's Psalm 29. The members of this organization are those who are inspired by the teachings of Rabbi Meir Kahane and decided that it was time to revive the ceremony as was done in the past. Previous yahrzeits were organized annually by Mike Guzofsky of voiceofjudea.com, however Mr. Guzofsky made aliyah in 2003. I am a young Russian Jewish man who was very fascinated about Rabbi Kahane's life and what he stood for. I only started to read about him last year and had no idea who this great person was. People don't speak his name and the media somehow never mentions him. I never knew that Rabbi Kahane fought for Jews who were locked in the Soviet Union. What a brave person he was, when his small organization was able to break the iron curtain of one of the most powerful countries in the world. Thank G-d that he freed Soviet Jews, because it was horrible living in that place where anti-Semitism was everywhere and Jews were persecuted verbally. I asked my friends if they knew who Rabbi Meir Kahane was and they had no idea. I realized that people my age don't know who he was. That was very sad to me and I started speaking to other people about him. I felt that was not enough and some actions had to be taken. When I announced that I want to organize this event a lot of older people voluntarily offered their assistance. Some helped me with the flyers, others with advertisements; and other kindly donated equipment. There is no question that the name of Rabbi Meir Kahane, ZTK"L raises some eyebrows. Even posthumously, there are those who choose to revile him and his memory. Rabbi Kahane was a visionary and a unique leader of Klall Yisroel. There is no question that everything that he predicted has occurred in the last sixteen years since his murder. His words and message were permeated with the timeless wisdom of the Torah and right now, people are beginning to realize the truth of his message. A wise man is he who sees tomorrow today. I invited a lot of talented speakers. A young woman Valeria Kvint who was mistress of the ceremony opened the event. Rabbi Burg who is the Rabbi of the Synagogue was the first speaker and he had an amazing opportunity to meet Rabbi Kahane's son, Benjamin. The meeting took place on the plane to Israel and Rabbi Burg had an opportunity to pray with Benjamin and personally speak to him. Matt Finberg who is a chairman of Bnai Elim came all the way from Colorado and spoke of Aliyah. Rabbi Kahane said that Israel needs Jews there. And Matt Finberg repeated those words. He is making Aliyah this upcoming summer and is going to live in Eli. Fern Sidman is a writer and a Jewish activist who spoke of the early days of the JDL, of Rabbi Kahane's prescience and the Israeli/Arab conflict. Rabbi Mordechai Yitzchok Friedman who is the President of VAAD HaRabonim of America made a very strong speech. He asked the question if we are not ashamed, that Jews waited two thousand of years for a State and now they are afraid to live there. Rabbi Kahane mentioned that so many times, is it fair that Jews get killed in their own state. Where do you see that happening in other countries? That is such a shame for the Israeli government that they are making different roads in Galille where Jews have to go around Arab villages that are located in the so called Green Line. Rabbi Friedman went even further and gave us example from the Torah where G-d commended Moses what to do with Canaanites. Audiences were listening quietly and no one disputed that because that was written by G-d and we mortals have no rights to deny. I was honored to see Shmuel Sackett who is a religious Zionist and a co-founder and International Director of Manhigut Yehudit. He raised a concern for a lack of Jewish leadership. I concluded the ceremony and told all the audience and asked them to speak properly when they talk to others. Rabbi Kahane was constantly repeating not to use the words of our enemies. If you repeat lie enough times, it becomes a truth. All of us can do that. We should not speak of the word West Bank, it has no meaning. I personally don't care of west bank, what is that, a shore on the west. We should only speak either of Judea or Samaria and all Jews who read bible know that Yehuda and Shomron were a heartland of biblical Israel. Also, we get so confused so many times and say the word occupied. That is what our enemies want us to speak. Older people know when they speak of that word occupied that the lands are not really occupied, but their children ask themselves this question and judging fair say if we occupied something we should give it back. We must call them liberated territories. G-d gave us those lands and League of Nations also promised them, there is no dispute here. And lastly, do not speak of the word Palestinian, there was never such country or nation called Palestine. The Soviets came up with that word to make a fake country and hoping that by repeating so much times people would start to believe in that lie. We should call them Arabs not Palestinians. How come Palestinians did not exist before Six Day War? They only started to exist when Arab countries realized that they cannot win Israel in a fair war and that is why they need some kind of fake nation to place in Israel and hoping that little by little Israel will make concessions and finally to push Jews to the Sea, G-d forbid. Followed my speech was a slide show where I was reciting the original poem HaTikva which was very emotional. The preparation took a lot of time. I did not get young Russian Jews so they would know the real history about iron curtain. I know there is an organization Shaarei Emunah and Ezra which provides a birthright and educational programs to Russian Jews and help them with Shuva (Return to Judaism). When I told the local Rabbis, they were glad to help me but unfortunately, the Gateways who sponsor them, told them if they will help me with promoting the name Kahane even once, they will lose all their donations. I can't blame them but I realized that there are people who are still afraid of Kahane. I know why, I realized why, they are afraid. They are afraid of true Judaism. Rabbi Kahane was hated because he possessed a weapon that only few people had and that was truth. He was a person who never lied and we know that truth hurts. Truth makes sense, truth opens people's eyes and truth makes decent people follow. My organization and I and hopefully all the people will once again bring Rabbi Kahane's name back and this time to listen to him instead of screaming some words that people have no idea. All I want is for everyone to speak the truth because this way we can bring the final redemption. Rabbi Kahane said once, "We don't wait for Mashiah, we bring Mashiah." Contact the poster at gennadiy1981@yahoo.com |
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REVIEWS OF ILAN PAPPE'S BOOK THE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINE
Posted by Israel Academia Monitor |
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Below are several reviews of Ilan Pappe's new book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. The first is from the Economist. It is followed by a rebuttal by Professor Menachem Kellner (kellner@research.haifa.ac.il) sent as a Letter to the Economist. Next is a letter by David Meir-Levi sent to the Haifa University administrators. The last review is by David Pryce-Jones, senior editor of National Review in New York. Mr Pryce-Jones notes, "As history, the book is worthless. In interviews Pappe regularly explains: 'We do [historiography] because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth seekers.'" [Editor's note: In case you don't know who Ilan Pappe is, he is a professor at Haifa U and an ardent Communist, who believes in the "one-state" solution to the Arab-Israel conflict; i.e., that Israel lose its Jewish identity and become Arab-dominated. He was caught red-handed helping a student, Teddy Katz, invent a massacre that supposedly took place in the 1948 War. The Alexandroni Brigade, which Pappe and Katz claimed had committed the massacre, sued and won by showing that the taped witness reports had been misquoted.] |
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The Economist
An Israeli academic who argues that Israel should confess to a deliberate campaign to expel nearly 800,000 Palestinians in 1948 is courting controversy at home SO IS it to be 1967 or 1948? For watchers of the Middle East this question is shorthand for two different ways to think about the origins of, and solutions to, the long conflict between Israel and the Arabs of Palestine. In the eyes of the 1967 crowd, Israel was entitled to the borders it had before its abrupt expansion in the six-day war of that year. To make peace, the trick is therefore to create circumstances in which Israel will give up most or all of that land and allow an independent Palestinian state to arise in the West Bank and Gaza. That, as generations of failed peacemakers have discovered, is quite a tall order. For the 1948 crowd, however, this way of thinking about the conflict is a mistake. They argue that peace is impossible unless Israel admits to and atones for the crime they say it committed nearly 60 years ago, in its independence war of 1948. That crime, they say, was deliberately to expel most of the Arabs of Palestine, close to 800,000 people, in order to be sure of having a Jewish majority for the Jewish state. Unless Israel somehow makes amends for this earlier catastrophe, which the Arabs call the nakba, peace is an impossibility. Ilan Pappe, a political scientist at the University of Haifa, is one of the purest Israeli exponents of the 1948 view. He knows how provocative it is to choose the phrase "ethnic cleansing" for the title of his latest book. But ethnic cleansing, he insists, is precisely what occurred in the first Arab-Israeli war. It was, he says, a long-premeditated crime, implemented ruthlessly and then systematically denied. In 1948 the Zionists did not happen to wage a war that tragically but inevitably led to the expulsion of parts of the indigenous population. The ethnic cleansing of all of Palestine, he maintains, was the main goal all along. Inside Israel, the historiography of 1948 has been in ferment for more than 20 years. Israel and its admirers once clung to a simple collective view about the circumstances of the state's birth. In a Solomonic judgment, the United Nations voted to divide the contested land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted the plan, but the Arabs tried to strangle the Jewish state at birth. In the course of the war that followed, the Jews overcame vast odds, guaranteeing their survival and expanding the territory allotted to them under the original plan. In the course of the fighting, most of the Arab population fled. The last bit of this over-simple narrative has by now been comprehensively debunked. In 1988 Benny Morris, an Israeli historian, published "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949", challenging the view that most of the Arabs fled of their own accord, in panic or at the behest of the Arab states. In many towns and villages they were put to flight deliberately. Mr Morris said that there was no master plan to evict all the Arabs: many expulsions took place in the heat of battle and the fog of war. But he also argued that the idea of a population transfer had been carefully considered by David Ben-Gurion and the other Zionist leaders, and hovered behind their actions and deliberations. Mr Morris and other "new historians" in Israel unleashed fierce argument. Other scholars accused Mr Morris of traducing Ben-Gurion through selective quotation. In a new version of "The Birth" in 2004, Mr Morris offered even more evidence of the extent to which the Zionist leadership hankered after a population transfer, and the alacrity with which they exploited the events of 1948 to bring one about. (Mr Morris also said, in an interview that stunned his supporters, that Israel was justified in uprooting the Palestinian "fifth column" once the Arabs had attacked the infant state, and that the number executed or massacred -- some 800, on his reckoning -- was "peanuts" compared with, say, the massacres in Bosnia in the 1990s.) Mr Pappe, however, goes a good deal further than Mr Morris. He insists that there was indeed a master plan. On March 10th 1948, he asserts, 11 men met at the "red house", the Tel Aviv headquarters of Israel's pre-state army, the Haganah, to put the final touches to Plan Dalet, "a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine". That evening, military orders were sent to units on the ground to prepare for the expulsion of the Palestinians. Mr Pappe calls this group of men the "consultancy", an ad hoc cabal of political and military leaders dominated by Ben-Gurion. And population transfer did not just "hover" in the background of their thinking, he says. It was central from the start. Still in a fog You might suppose that after 60-odd years the story of 1948 would by now have been laid bare. Historians have access, on the Israeli side at least, to military archives, political minutes and personal diaries. It is not, alas, so simple. The consultancy rarely kept minutes. Ben-Gurion was a prodigious diarist, but selective in what he recorded. Mr Pappe admits that he does not in fact know what Ben-Gurion said at the supposedly fateful "red house" meeting on March 10th. As for Plan Dalet, this is no new discovery by Mr Pappe. The plan has been public for decades and does not read unambiguously like a master plan for wholesale ethnic cleansing. The aim was to crush the Palestinian militias before the Haganah had to face the invading Arab armies. It gave commanders discretion to occupy or destroy and expel hostile villages or potentially hostile villages; some destroyed swathes of villages and a few did not. And Mr Pappe's detractors will ask why he ignores the orders sent out by the chief of staff of the Haganah, Israel Galili, on March 24th, reminding commanders of the policy to protect the "full rights, needs, and freedom of the Arabs in the Hebrew state without discrimination". Thanks to such inconsistencies, the history of 1948 will remain contentious. And like much of the "new history", this book has the defect of treating the Palestinians only as victims, not as actors in their own right. But how much really turns on this debate among historians? Mr Pappe says that Zionism needs to acknowledge and reverse its original sin. But whether or not the population transfer of 1948 was premeditated (as he says), or largely opportunistic (as Mr Morris says), history can hardly be rewound over half a century. Some thoughtful Israeli politicians have indeed acknowledged their country's portion of the blame. In his 2005 memoir, "Scars of War, Wounds of Peace", Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former foreign minister (and historian) accepted that in 1948 an Arab community "in a state of terror" was put to flight by a "ruthless" Israeli army that perpetrated atrocities and massacres. This was done consciously to enlarge the borders of the new state. But whatever the moral case for letting back the refugees, Mr Ben-Ami says, after the war this was "out of the question in a historical and political context", not least because of the illegitimate demands of the Arab states, who never accepted partition and indeed grabbed for themselves much of what should have been the Palestinian state. As Ehud Barak's foreign minister, Mr Ben-Ami was part of the team that tried at Camp David in 2000 to make peace on roughly the border of 1967. Mr Pappe is not surprised that this failed. For the Palestinians, he says, "1948 is the heart of the matter and only addressing the wrongs perpetrated then can bring us closer to the end of the conflict." But Mr Pappe wants Israel not just to apologise but also to let back all the Arab refugees, and so give up the idea of remaining a Jewish state with a Jewish majority. It is hard to imagine many Israelis agreeing to that, whatever they come to believe really happened in 1948. Letter to Economist
Sir- Your review of Ilan Pappe's book on the alleged ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Jews in 1948 is admirably fair-minded but withal mistaken on an important point. Pappe, who is on record as denying the possibility of writing objective history at all, has not written a history of the origin of the Palestinian refugees, but rather a legal brief which ignores inconvenient counter-evidence (as your reviewer indeed notes). Should, God forbid, Pappe's clients ever come to power, we are all too likely to see a real and not imagined case of ethnic cleansing, of, not by, Jews (and Christians) on the part of Hamas and Hizbollah. "Discontent with the Professor Ilan Pappe"
Dear President ben-Ze'ev and Rector ben-Artzi, Prof. Ilan Pappe is a tenured senior lecturer at Haifa University's Department of International Relations. One would expect that a high ranking tenured academician in such a department at a major Israeli university would be a top-tier scholar of the highest integrity. Unfortunately, Prof. Pappe is best known not for his scholarship, but for his high-profile anti-Israel pronouncements, and for his faux-scholarship which substitutes diatribe and propaganda for history and political analysis. Prof. Pappe stands publicly in favor of the UK's boycott of Israeli scholars and scientists. He directed and approved one of his students' masters thesis despite the fact that an Israeli court of law found that thesis to be an illegitimate, unfounded, and factually incorrect defamation of Israel's legendary Alexandroni Brigade. In his numerous highly publicized lectures in Israel and abroad he heaps opprobrium upon Israel and condemns its government for crimes against humanity -- but when called upon to offer facts and data to support his heinous accusations, he resorts to the typical demagoguery of diatribe and invective, distorting history, de-contextualizing events, offering half-quotes and mis-quotes and quotes taken out of context. He has even offered pure fiction as justification for his anti-Israel screed; and when caught in a lie, he has retorted with "I am not concerned with veracity. I have an agenda to advance". He personally confirmed that quote to me, on the air, during a radio-broadcast debate between him and myself in Northern California in 2003. These are not the words or actions of a scholar who brings honor to his institution. These are not the actions of an academician of integrity. Based upon his publications, publicized speeches, and my own debate with him noted above, I must conclude that his approach to the Arab-Israel conflict is very one-sided, consisting mostly of anti-Israel political indoctrination, pro-Arab propaganda, and an antipathy to the state of Israel which seems to me to border on the pathological. But what is more appalling is that in his coterie of publications, there is not a single discussion of the role of Palestinian terrorism, or any acknowledgment of Israel's rights to defend itself against a brutal 13-year terror war. You will never learn from his publicized writings or speeches that Israel's "occupation" of "Palestinian lands" was caused by Arab aggression and violence, and not the other way around. You will never learn that Israel offered to return conquered land in exchange for peace, many times, and the Arabs instead chose war. You will never hear that the main cause of escalated Palestinian terrorism in the past 13 years was not occupation at all, but rather the end of occupation. You do not learn that Israel, the UN, the UK, the USA, and/or some combination of these have offered Palestinian leadership its own state, next to Israel, fifteen times since 1937; only to have the offer rebuffed with terrorism and war. You do not learn that Arafat vowed to continue his terror war against Israel, on television in Jordan, even before the ink was dry on the Oslo Accords. As promulgated by Western civilization, the concept 'academic freedom' does NOT mean freedom to teach lies, hatred, subversion, and treason. Similarly, "freedom of speech" does not mean freedom of hate-speech, hate-preach, or hate-teach. I most sincerely encourage you to examine carefully Prof. Pappe's courses and writings and public presentations, in the context of the Western concept of 'academic freedom,' and in the context of Israel's current state of war with the Palestinian Authority and other countries in the Muslim world. If what Prof. Pappe teaches is sound history, and rational analysis based upon bona fide facts and validated data, then Israel, as a free country where democratic process and rule of law prevail, must accommodate Prof. Pappe's right to teach the truth even if it raises difficult political questions. However, if Professor Pappe is, as I suspect, exploiting his tenured position, and the academic license which it bestows upon him, to preach Israel-hatred under the faux mantle of scholarship, substituting transparently anti-Israel mendacious propaganda and de-contextualized narratives for honest scholarship, then he is not only betraying his profession and his academic institution; he is also aiding and abetting Israel's enemies in time of war. In doing so, he is making it easier for Israel's enemies to gain political advantage. And in doing that, he is strengthening them and aiding them in their terrorist murder of Israelis. In time of war, that is treason. Academic license is NOT license to kill. Any academic institution of quality must maintain the highest level of integrity in its scholars and in their scholarship in order to maintain its own integrity as an institution worthy of international admiration and support. The responsibility for that maintenance rests upon the shoulders of the highest officer in the University's governance. The buck stops at your desk. "Raus Mit Uns"
Ilan Pappe is an Israeli academic who has made his name by hating Israel and everything it stands for. In his view, expressed with obsession and a degree of paranoia, Jewish nationalism, that is to say Zionism, has been from its outset a deliberate tool for dispossessing the Palestinians; and therefore it is to be condemned root and branch. He reserves the Palestinian term of Nakba, meaning catastrophe, for describing what to Israelis is their war of independence of 1948. To him, Israeli politicians and soldiers, one and all, are so many murderers. Forests have been planted only to cover up the past. Houses are 'monstrous villas and palaces for rich American Jews'. Everything Israeli is ugly, everything Palestinian is beautiful. One day, he supposes, the Israelis may well consummate their original crime with something even worse. The only possible alternative lies in the immediate return of every Palestinian to his original home, and that will mean the end of the state whose existence so offends Pappe. This, of course, is exactly the inflexible position taken by Hamas and the PLO. The reader's initial reaction must be one of pity. Poor man! What a strain it must be to belong to a nation whose members are so overwhelmingly unbearable that he longs for them to be overpowered by others. Yet there is more to it than that. Sad and creepy though it is, Pappe's anger is open to rational analysis. The doctrinal element pushing Pappe into anti-Zionism is his prominent involvement in the Israeli Communist Party, known as Hadash. An outcrop of pure Stalinism and always a marginal movement, Communism in Israel rejected Zionism in favour of internationalism, according to which Jews and Arabs were to form a state together. Events, indeed the whole thrust of history, have proven this to be a complete illusion, but Pappe remains one of a minute handful still in its grip. The further emotional element pushing Pappe towards his hatred of Zionism is best elucidated by J L Talmon in his profound book, The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution. Among the 'horribly charged and tormenting questions' Talmon asks is why so many Jews have adopted identities that seemingly allow them to deny their Jewishness. Uncountable numbers of Jews have followed the example of the Karl Marxes, Trotskys and Rosa Luxemburgs who sought identities as Communists and revolutionaries in the hope that this would allow them to merge with those who otherwise would be their persecutors. Some Communists -- like Lazar Kaganovich, and many in the KGB as well as leaders in the Soviet satellites -- set about the deliberate destruction of the Jewish religion and culture. Talmon speaks openly of the neurosis and 'morbid masochism' motivating such unhappy people. In Nazi Germany a few Jews tried to camouflage themselves in a similar manner. Felix Jacoby opened his Kiel University lectures in 1933 by comparing Hitler to the Emperor Augustus. Dr Hans-Joachim Schoeps and Max Naumann even formed a movement of Jews for Hitler. With gallows humour, other Jews replied that this movement's slogan was Raus mit Uns, or Out with Us. In Israel today, Neturei Karta, a sect of ultra-Orthodox Jews, believes that the Messiah alone should bring about a Jewish state, and that Israel is therefore an impiety fit for destruction. In New York they have a branch called Jews Against Zionism, and recently they welcomed President Ahmedinejad in person there, supporting his call for genocide in Israel. Pappe is the secular and political version of these sectarians. As often happens, extremists have come from opposing poles only to reach the same conclusion. Zionism, in Pappe's conventional Marxist view, had nothing to do with the need for Jews to survive persecution by Europeans or Arabs, but was only a settler and colonialist movement cynically directed by British imperialists and their greedy Jewish collaborators. He characterises David Ben-Gurion, the driving personality in the latter stages of the foundation of the state of Israel, as someone who always intended to expel Palestinians from the land. To bring this about, he assembled a body which Pappe refers to as the Consultancy, but the details of who these people were, and what they really did, he fails to give us, instead preferring to conjure an aura of sinister conspiracy. The Israelis were always the stronger party and knew that they would win out at the end of the British Mandate in 1948, Pappe says. In contrast, the Palestinians were defenceless and hardly violent at all, designated victims whose villages were mercilessly overrun and many of the inhabitants butchered. A huge literature exists in British, Arab and Israeli archives to reveal the multiple reasons for the flight of the Palestinians at the time, ranging from a belief that invading Arab armies were about to rescue them, and they should move out of harm's way, to a cultural reflex that they could not accept Jews in positions of authority, an escapism on the part of some leaders and delusions of power on the part of others, and of course fear. Savage things were certainly perpetrated by both sides -- guerre comme à la guerre -- but Pappe will have none of that, completely ignoring the context in all its complexity and local variation. His technique is to list towns and villages as though their capture involved always and only simple brutality and expulsion. No mention of the Jewish need to survive in an existential struggle in the aftermath of the Holocaust; no mention of the 6,000 Jews killed, which was 1 per cent of the population; no mention of Azzam Pasha of the Arab League promising a massacre of Jews on the scale of the Mongols; no mention of Arab radio propaganda and disinformation; no proper account of Arab military successes, brushing over Arab atrocities and the destruction of Jewish settlements; no mention of the countervailing expulsion and expropriation of a million Jews in Arab countries. As history, the book is worthless. In interviews Pappe regularly explains: 'We do [historiography] because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth seekers.' For him, as a Marxist and anti-nationalist, 'there is no such thing as truth, only a collection of narratives'. To substantiate his particular ideological narrative, Pappe puts the worst possible interpretation on any Jewish deed or word, while validating anything said or done by Palestinians. For evidence of Israeli monstrosity, he relies on quotations from his own previous works or from Palestinian polemicists, and above all on the oral testimonies of Palestinian refugees. Over half a century of military and ideological conflict has passed since their exodus, but Pappe declares his faith that whatever they now say is true. This might all seem too pathological to matter much, but Arab and Muslim extremists are making huge efforts to contest the legitimacy of Israel, and many of their allies on the international Left will lean on Pappe for purposes of 'pilgering' and 'fisking'. The final element contributing to Pappe's mindset lies in the sphere of psychology and fashion. Contemporary intellectuals have long been accustomed to glorying in an adversarial stance towards their own society, preening themselves as men of nobler spirits than the dull indifferent masses around them, and isolated not because they are foolish but because they are brave. It is a form of snobbery -- moral snobbery -- which is why intellectuals of this kind are so widely resented. There is a fatal contradiction at the heart of Pappe's advocacy of the immediate return of all Palestinian refugees as the necessary condition of peace. If Israelis are really as vicious as Pappe presents them, then Palestinians could not possibly want to live among them. Are Palestinians to return only to wipe out Israelis or to be wiped out themselves? Poor Palestinians, poor Israelis, to be mobilised for such fates. And should Hamas, the PLO or President Ahmadinejad make good on threats to eliminate Israel, there will not be time to rescue Pappe from the consequences of his moral snobbery and his Marxism, or to discover whether he really applauds his own Raus mit Uns demise. Contact Israel Academia Monitor at e-mail@Israel-Academia-Monitor.com |
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THE BAKER-HAMILTON COMMISSION...I THINK I SMELL A FISH
Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, November 19, 2006. |
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James A. Baker III, close friend and confidant of the Bush family and Secretary of State under George the First, is back in the news again. Lest we forget, this is the same Baker who, when Israel wasn't caving in to his State Department's demands fast enough (such as his promise to Hafez al-Assad, Saddam's twin butcher in Syria, of a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan--from which Syria regularly bombarded Israelis below), responded " _ _ _ _ the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway!" He regularly referred to his "Jew boys," whom he had do his bidding for him at Foggy Bottom. It's great to have a Jew stick it to other Jews in Israel. Keep in mind that, right from the getgo, the State Department opposed the rebirth of Israel in the first place and fought President Truman all the way on this. And regarding Israel, Baker was quoted a while back as seeing it in the eyes of a hunter stalking a wild turkey. Baker has been in the background for decades, especially since his close friends, the Bushes, gained ascendancy in American politics. His law firm represents Saudi Arab interests in this country and typifies how people move through the revolving doors of businesses tied to Arab interests back and forth into government positions--especially those in Foggy Bottom. Baker's law partner, Robert Jordan, was appointed ambassador to Saudi Arabia by President Bush in 2001. Currently, among other things, his law firm is defending Saudis (who provided most of the suicide bombers) in a law suit filed by survivors and families of 9/11 victims. Baker & Co. (including the Bush clan) have gotten very rich off of Arab oil wealth. And they know full well, in the Arabs' own words, that the latter would view the long overdue birth of Kurdistan as "another Israel"-- i.e., how dare anyone else but Arabs claim political rights in "their" region. So, pardon me if I smell a fish when I hear that Baker is back on center stage regarding plans for a future Middle East. The man is tied up to his eye balls to Arab interests. In other words, Jim is an Arab's dream. In the wake of America's problems in Iraq, George II has sent Baker there as part of the Baker-Hamilton Commission. Their main goal will be to find a way out for the United States without totally losing face. America's overthrow of one of the worst of the Arabs' all-too-many Hitlers was noble...even if it came a bit too late. George the First earlier told the Shi'a and Kurds to revolt and then, along with Baker, did nothing while tens of thousands of them were slaughtered. But America never learned the Brits' earlier lesson over a half century ago, when millions of native Kurds, who lived in the area millennia before the Arabs' own conquest of it, were denied independence and forcibly tied to a newly created Arab Iraq to appease British petroleum interests and Arab nationalism...causes close to Baker's own heart. The Arabs revolted against them anyway--as foreign imperialists. Of course, without the Brits help, they never would have gotten the oil wealth in the Kurdish north. But, as Janet Jackson's song asks,"What Have You Done For Me Lately?" And, after all, if it's not the Arabs' own particular conquering and subjugating brand, imperialsim is nasty. So, America is in a similar pickle barrel now, reaping what was sown after World War I when a united nation was formed that never should have been. Iraq is the Yugoslavia of the Middle East, with hostile groups thrown together largely for others' interests. And it will likely follow Yugoslavia's same fate. As the latter's days were numbered after the death of its strongman, Marshal Tito, Iraq's days are numbered as well with Saddam out of the picture. And that's not a bad thing... By the way, America led that dissolution of Yugoslavia--which was undergoing at the time much the same as what we're seeing happening right now in Iraq. As for potential problems with the Turks, read this author's own "Talking Turkey About Turkey," "State Department Math," Horsefeathers," and/or "So What's Your Plan B?" for that response. So, what does this all have to do with Baker? Well, if the early reports I've seen about the recommendations of Baker's Commission are correct, it's going to be, "_ _ _ _ the Kurds, they don't vote for us anyway ! " A recommendation to divide Iraq into three highly autonomous federal states looks good on the surface. But, as Dr. Rashid Karadaghi points out in the Kurdish Media ( " The World According To Baker," 11/5/06), it appears that oil-rich Kirkuk will be handed over to Baker's Sunni Arab buddies to insure their economic position. To hell with the fact that Kirkuk is as Kurdish as Mecca is Arab, and Kurds lived there and ruled there since Biblical times, thousands of years before the first Arab arrived during the Arabs' own imperial caliphal conquests. To hell with the fact that many Arabs only live there now because of a forced Arabization policy in that economically important and strategic area...while they were slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Kurds over the past century. America has acted this way too often before when non-Arab interests were involved--especially those of the Kurds and Jews. Both have too often been expected to cave in to Arab interests and demands, despite the predictable bloody consequences. Almost two dozen states on over six million square miles of territory is still not enough for Arabs. They have to deny everyone else any piece of the pie...no matter how small. Thirty million Kurds in the region remain stateless and victimized by those in whose countries they now live. It's their turn now for center stage. The economic viability of that newly-proposed Kurdish federal state needs the oil wealth of its own lands to succeed. Perhaps a way to share the oil from the south and the north can be arranged. That would be acceptable. But make no mistake about it...Kirkuk is as Kurdish as London is English. Many other folks may live in Great Britain now--including lots of Arabs and other Muslims--but that doesn't change the fact any. While representing Arab interests has made Baker a very wealthy man, this gives him no right to wield such power over the fate of a people far more in tune with American values and interests than any of his Arab clients are. While Arabs blow each other apart to the south, the Kurdish region is the one example of pride and success that America can point to right now. America has shamefully used and abused these people too often in the past. It's time to atone for those sins...not to repeat them. Gerald A. Honigman, a Florida educator, has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in both the print media and on websites. Contact him at honigman6@msn.com or go to his website: http://geraldahonigman.com/blog.php |
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WHAT QUALIFIED GEORGE BUSH FOR THE US PRESIDENCY?
Posted by Batya Medad, November 19, 2006. |
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He brings a whole lifetime's experience of having sprung from the loins of a long line of entitled millionaire politicians. A native of blue-blooded New Haven, Connecticut ... Even the more objective Answers.com opens his biography with: George W. Bush became president of the United States on 20 January 2001. Bush is the son of former U.S. president George Bush, who served from 1989-93. It's clear that if he had been born into an ordinary family, he'd just have an ordinary job. As first-born son, it was obvious that the "family professions," oil and politics would always be open to him. As it happened, he also inherited the staff, including not only the VP Cheney, but Robert Gates who is taking over for Donald Rumsfeld. None of this is a secret. Bush Says He's Open to Change in Iraq, but ... Look at who's chairman of the committee! Addressing reporters in the Oval Office, Mr. Bush shed little light on the substance of his hour-and-15-minute session with members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, led by James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, From what I can see, his father US President #41 is still in
charge, at least via his team. And it's important to remember that the
Sr. Bush was very "cold" to Israel to say the least. Israel shouldn't
count on anything from the United States, except a Trojan Horse.
Batya Medad lives in Shiloh. She can be reached by email at
Shilohmuse@yahoo.com or visit her website
http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/ or go to http://www.shilo.org.il.
This essay is archived at
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THE DUPLICITOUS NEW YORK TIMES - PAPER OF RECORD, INDEED!
Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman, November 19, 2006. |
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This was written by Jason Moaz, Senior Editor of The Jewish Press. |
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New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Erlanger is so openly pro-Palestinian in his reporting that he's beginning to call to mind perhaps his most biased predecessor in that post -- the truly execrable (inferior, wretched) Deborah Sontag, whose transparently one-sided dispatches would invariably read as though she wrote them with a PLO flag draped over her word processor. On page 7 of this week's Jewish Press, the always incisive Rick Richman of Jewish Current Issues (jpundit.typepad.com) cuts the heart out of Erlanger's futile pretensions at objectivity and just plain old reading comprehension. Rarely does a book review come in for such thorough dismemberment, and the resultant carnage is a beautiful thing to behold. Erlanger is not particularly shy about trumpeting his bias: as reported in August on Ynetnews.com, he told a convention of journalists in Jerusalem that Israelis "were not interested in whether 1,000 Lebanese civilians needed to die" in the recent war with Hezbollah, and admitted he rejected an IDF offer of accessibility that would have enabled him to write about Israel's efforts to ensure the arrival of humanitarian aid to Lebanon. He was not interested in the story he told the panel. Erlanger is the character who, in an August 5, 2005 story on a claim by an Israeli archaeologist that the palace of King David may have been unearthed, gave the politically motivated lies of Yasir Arafat equal billing with historical fact. "The find," Erlanger wrote, "will also be used in the broad political battle over Jerusalem -- whether the Jews have their origins here and thus have some special hold on the place, or whether, as many Palestinians have said, including the late Yasir Arafat, the idea of a Jewish origin in Jerusalem is a myth used to justify conquest and occupation." As the Monitor noted at the time, "Just try to imagine a New York Times story on slavery that would accord historical weight to a statement by, say, David Duke, or a piece at the height of the civil rights movement in which a Times reporter would cite as potentially authoritative the ravings of some discredited boor." This, the Monitor conjectured, using Erlanger's basic framework but changing a handful of words, is what such a piece of drivel would look like: "The dispute hinges on whether Negroes are being deprived of their constitutional rights or whether, as many white Southerners have said, including Alabama Governor George Wallace, the idea of their systematic mistreatment is a myth to justify sympathy and federal intervention." Unfortunately, such mindless moral relativism -- unimaginable in a Times story on civil rights in 1966 or 2006 -- is a defining characteristic of the paper's coverage of the Arab-Israel conflict. In September 2005, in a front-page story ostensibly about the burning by Palestinians of recently abandoned synagogues in Gaza, Erlanger led with this bit of disinformation: "Throughout the abandoned Israeli settlements of Gaza, Monday was a carnival of celebration, political grandstanding and widespread scavenging for a Palestinian population whose occupiers vanished overnight..." Nothing about burning synagogues. A couple of paragraphs later Erlanger gave us this cheerfully misleading depiction:"Donkey carts were piled with bathroom fixtures, pieces of metal, skeins of wire and long pieces of wood, to feed home ovens. Men, women and children worked with a seriousness of purpose, trying to take home some little personal benefit from the return of lands many feel will somehow, as usual, end up in the hands of the wealthy or well connected." Still no mention of any synagogues set afire. A hint of the fate that befell the Gaza synagogues came several paragraphs later: "...a settlement synagogue built in the shape of a huge Star of David was smoldering; fires inside sending smoke through the edges of the star." But even there Erlanger neglected to say who or what caused those "fires inside sending smoke through the edges of the star." Finally, in the sixteenth paragraph of his 26-paragraph story Enlanger wrote, rather ambiguously and without identifying the perpetrators: "In Kfar Darom, there was an extensive march of armed fighters, but the synagogue there, was protected from burning by security forces who made a kind of headquarters out of it." New York Times, "Paper of Record" indeed! Jerome S. Kaufman is National Secretary of the Zionist Organization of America. and host the Israel Commentary website (http://www.israel-commentary.org). |
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RETURN OF THE NEW WORLD ORDERISTS
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, November 19, 2006. |
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Perhaps this title: "Return Of The New World Orderists" overstates the facts because they actually never left. When George W. Bush took office, the appearance was that he was going to be his own man and not merely a clone of his father's administration. He started off slowly but, eight months into his administration he dealt with 9/11 because he understood that a vast world of terror had developed under his father's watch and then advanced further under President Clinton. Granted, he might have continued as his father or Clinton but, that was interrupted by 9/11. As President, George W. Bush had to respond, both politically and militarily. Regrettably, Bush did not fully understand the reality and mind-set of radical Muslim Islamists. They can be bribed but they don't stay bribed. As soon as the bribe or pressure (carrot or stick) is lifted, they continue their stated trek toward their own view of a New World Order, Islamic style - as they say they intend to eliminate all "infidels" (non-Muslims) and establish a new World Caliphate with the whole world governed by and forced to obey strict Islamic "Sharia" laws. Now, that American foreign policy has failed in Iraq, the "Mujahadin" (warriors for Islam) from all over the Arab and Muslim world immigrated into Iraq to fight American and allied soldiers and those re-building the Iraqi infrastructure. How has Bush responded to this onslaught of terrorists (not insurgents)? Bush called in "officially" his father's old team, led by former Sec. of James Baker, III. Baker, with Lee Hamilton, former Representative (D. Ind.), co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, and Robert Gates, former head of the CIA were enlisted to compile a series of "recommendation" of how to get out of Iraq while saving face. Given Baker's history, he will probably try to enlist Syria and Iran but, he cannot go to them empty-handed. He must approach with the coin of "baksheesh" (to us Westerners, known as a bribe). Here again, James Baker, the pro-Arab State Department and Bush's father often used Israel and concessions from Israel as the coin of their bribe. They force Israel to surrender Land and make her vulnerable to attack by the surrounding hostile Arab Muslim countries (compounded by attacks from within by Arab Muslim "Palestinians"). Their goal is to return to Islam, their self-perceived image as indomitable Muslim warriors. Muslims cannot accept being defeated in battle - especially by Jews whom the Muslims want to believe are inferior to them. James Baker and his old team of Arabists understand this and have no problem offering Israel up as a blood sacrifice bribe to Muslims. This philosophy fits very well with the New World Order first announced by then President George Herbert Walker Bush. Here the superior nations would divide up the nations as to which countries would be eliminated, which countries would be empowered, which countries would remain merely as a workforce, and which countries would be protected and valued as material resource countries with oil and/or other valuable minerals. This becomes of vital, national interest as the superior nations decide which oil nations are to be bribed as America competes with China for oil resources. According to the New World Orderists, some nations will live; some will die and some will merely become a resource under control of the New World Orderists. Clearly, the State Department, the Baker Bunch and, always, the Europeans and the Russians under Putin have designated Israel first for truncation in order to increase her vulnerability for extinction. As for Israel, the method could be to recruit Leftist Jews (easy to do) as they have in the past. Before it was Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Bibi Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and now Ehud Olmert. Israel's Prime Minister Olmert was supposed to come to America where he would be entrapped by Bush, Rice, Baker and his team, as was once done to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in Madrid, in 1991. He was scheduled to meet November 13th with President Bush and Sec. of State Condollezza Rice before the annual United Jewish Communities GA (General Assembly). But, today November 9th, we hear that Bush and Rice are telling Olmert he shouldn't come to the White House next week. Given that Olmert is exceptionally weak and leans far to the Left, he will be too easy for the Bush team to manipulate. Olmert will either go along because he has adopted the "Oslo" track or he will be threatened with a cut-off of aid, replacement munitions, spare parts for American equipment Israel bought, jet fuel, cooperation in evolving new technologies and building weapons' systems, etc. These threats were used before by Ms. Rice at the behest of Bush after the urging of Saudi Arabia. These issues and more represent a significant threat to Israel's safety and sovereignty. Rice and the State Department carried the message. Now it will be Baker who carries a personal visceral hatred for Jews and the Jewish State. His coming advisory to Bush will, no doubt, have this anti-Israel message seeded into their recommendations. Some may recall Baker's special relationship with Syria's President Hafez al-Assad and Baker's pressure for Israel to abandon the Golan Heights to Syria - all the way down to the Lake Kinnerat (Israel's only fresh water lake resource. I would imagine that the Baker report will have a secret appendix which recommends forcing Israel to use the Saudi/Oslo Plan which calls for Israel to surrender the Golan Heights (including the Sheva Farm on Mt. Dov which oversees all of Israel's facilities of observation over the Golan Heights), the Jordan Valley, Judea, Samaria and all of Jerusalem that Jordan controlled and desecrated for 19 years. This would include orders that Israel not strike back at Arab Muslim Palestinian and/or Hezb'Allah rocket attacks, using the U.N., as usual, to condemn Israel. I expect International Forces would be deployed to "protect" the Arab Muslim "Palestinians" in Gaza, the "West Bank" (Judea and Samaria) which replicates the UNIFIL- MNF (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon/Multi-National Force), now acting as a shield for Hezb'Allah and Syria. The question is: Will Israel evict Olmert and take her proper position as a sovereign nation, entitled to defend herself against terrorists and terrorist nations, namely Iran and Syria - both of whom are being armed by President Vladimir (Ras) Putin of Russia. Note! I have added a relevant commentary by DEBKAfile which not only speaks about the hostility to Israel of the Baker team but, also mentions that the Democrats who just achieved a majority in Congress under Nancy Pelosi, as new Speaker of the House (third in line of succession to the Presidency). Ms. Pelosi and many Democrats have shared this hostility to Israel for some time. Regrettably, many Jews (except for some) rarely vote their interests and wonder why we Jews and Israel get slammed. ### DEBKAfile Exclusive: The White House intimates to Israeli PM that his scheduled visit to Washington next Monday, Nov. 13, would be untimely November 8, 2006, The Democratic midterm election victory and the defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld coming replacement by Robert Gates will usher in radical Middle East policy changes that will apply also to Israel. For now, policy-making is in a state of flux, and as long as Bush has not got together with Democratic leaders to forge a bipartisan position, there is no point in the prime minister's visit, it was indicated. A senior US official told DEBKAfile sources Wednesday night: Olmert would be wise not to insist on the visit going ahead on time," but rather take note of the president's stress in his first speech after the election that he is waiting for the bipartisan Iraq commission headed by ex-secretary of state James Baker and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton to submit their report. Bush means to base his work with the Democrats on these findings. Since the report is not just about Iraq but encompasses the full range of US policies for the Middle East and the Arab and Muslim world which will require time to air, the Olmert visit next week would be premature. According to this official, the Baker-Hamilton panel is charting drastic changes in administration policy on Israel, whose speedy implementation is recommended as the key to extricating the US from its imbroglio in Iraq. Hinging the solution of Middle East problems as a whole on the Palestinian-Israeli issue has always been the Democratic way. It is favored in particular by Nancy Pelosi of California who, as her party's candidate for next Speaker of the House of Representatives, will become one of Washington's most influential politicians. This was also Baker's line under George Bush senior in the 1980s, when he dragged prime minister Yitzhak Shamir to the Madrid Peace Conference against his will. The White House also has a bone to pick with Olmert over his remark in a television program this week when he said that two world-class leaders were working to arrange a meeting for him with Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora. US officials deny this and say this indiscretion placed in jeopardy the efforts to bolster the Lebanese government and even put Siniora in danger of his life. Olmert has a perfectly valid pretext for postponing his Washington visit in the extremely high security tension following the Beit Hanoun episode Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net |
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WE MUST SUPPORT THESE COURAGEOUS PEOPLE
Posted by Lel817, November 19, 2006. |
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This was written by Jerry Gordon and it appeared in Israpundit
(www.israpundit.com/2006/?p=3334). |
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Read Adam Brodsky's piece `Dissent Crushed' from yesterday's New York Post that I posted on Israpundit, yesterday. It is about the callow spineless quality of Hillel leadership at Brown University in knuckling under to intimidation by Muslim Student Association and preventing an extraordinary person, Nonie Darwish, a former Muslim born in Egypt, who I have written about, filmed an interview on Rabbi Rock and had the good fortune to hear along with others at a Jewish Temple in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Nonie brings truth to power in her memoir, `They Call me infidel' about the barbaric treatment of women and intolerance in Islam to non- believers as well as her personal transformation from hate to love of both Jews and Israel-the latter in part for saving her brother's life given vital treatment at Hadassah Hospital in Jreusalem. Nonie is a good personal friend of my colleague Brigitte Gabriel- herself a vessel of moral clarity in a darkening world of intolerance of truth. Both of them are in awe of another amazing woman, Dr. Wafa Sultan, not only for her elegant Arabic, but also her ability in her native language and English to skewer the masters of hate-the Imams themselves. This band of sisters are joined by a brother - former PLO terrorist and ha yedid, Walid Shoebat. And yet the truth that this 'sacred band' speaks is muzzled by spineless fearful young Jews and their leaders on college and university campuses throughout north America because they have been raised to tolerate moral equivalence in their homes and, unfortunately, their religious sanctuaries and schools, whether secular or religious. We seen it at elite and state universities throughout north America. The roll of shame includes among notable institutions; Concordia University in Montreal, Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, University of Michigan, Duke University, Columbia University, Ohio State University, the University of Memphis, University of Chicago, Harvard University, Yale University, Central Connecticut State University, Wesleyan University, University of California at Berkeley, Irvine, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, Rutgers University and, now Brown University. The common thread throughout all is the public willingness to permit intolerant radical Islamic voices to be heard at the exclusion of Christian, Jewish and other non-believing voices speaking about the dark inner craw of this `religion'. That Jewish collegiate leadership in many instances goes along with this intolerance ia an abomination that should be expunged, but it won't. The Jews are powerless to cast the first stone at patent violation of their and our civil rights to speak openly and speak the truth. Many Jews in the faculties and a few in the administrations of these institutions of higher learning are themselves the gatekeepers of this hatred of the Other. Better to live another day in quiet terror 'schnorring' the oppressors of `emet' - the truth than face the public ridicule of their campus colleagues abetted by campus administrations and yes, groups like Hillel. Will this change? Given this latest episode and those that I have personally witnessed and personally tried to counter it will not. That is why I admire speakers who bring truth to power like Nonie Darwish, my colleague Brigitte Gabriel, Dr. Wafa Sultan and Walid Shoebat. They do this day after day in the hope that we in North Amercia will wake up and say, `no mas.' No more to intolerance and the manipulation of our basic constitutional rights whether on college campuses or in the media and other public forums. North America and the US in particular constitute the last bastion along with Australia and a few island nations in the pacific against radical Islam. If we don't draw the line in this valued country of ours and aren't energized to prevent here what is happening with the patent islamization of Europe and the clear and present danger to Israel, then we have lost the battle and must inevitably face the consequences of what happened last Thursday at Brown University. Wake up chaverim - the hour is nigh and the barbarians are inside the gates. |
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OBSESSION: THE NEW DOCUMENTARY ABOUT RADICAL ISLAM'S WAR AGAINST THE WEST
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, November 19, 2006. |
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Dear Friends, Below is a short review by Melanie Phillips about the
excerpted film "OBSESSION: RADICAL ISLAM'S WAR AGAINST THE WEST". It
appeared November 7, 2006 on her website:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1379 What she writes is
essential, 'sine qua non', information. "Obsession shows you archival
footage of current Islamic TV and Arab Muslim propaganda demonizing
the Jews - threatening to kill all the Jews, then the Christians,
Hindus, Buddists, etc. until Islam rules the world. What I would add
is only that the film's director and producer selected the some of the
world's best speakers to explain this footage, including:
Itamar Marcus of PMW (Palestinian Media Watch) pmw.org.il;, John Loftus (author of "Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People 1920-1992"); Steve Emerson, executive director of The Investigative Project (author of "American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us"); Nonie Darwish, (founder of ArabsforIsrael.com, author of "Lifting the Veil; by the daughter of a Shahid"); Alan Dershowitz (author of 22 books and hundreds of articles in magazines, journals and newspapers); Brigitte Gabriel, founder, AmericanCongressforTruth.com; Sir Martin Gilbert, a leading historian of the modern world, author of 73 books, many of which use a unique series of maps to demonstrate his historical timelines; Caroline Glick, Sr. Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy and deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post; Daniel Pipes, director of Middle East Forum www.meforum.org & www.danielpipes.org; Walid Shoebat, former PLO Terrorist, www.shoebat.com; and Prof. Robert Wistrich, intl expert on Anti-Semitism, author & editor of 23 books [member of the Intl Academic Board of the Winston Institute for the Study of Prejudice] - and others, but these are ones we know personally. If you go to the website: http://www.Obsessionthemovie.com, you can read more about it and order a DVD of the full film. |
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I have just viewed the film 'Obsession', the documentary about radical Islam's war on the west, which was also shown on Fox News in the US at the weekend and which you can read about on this website. It should be made compulsory viewing for every politician and pundit who clings to the misguided belief that all we face is terrorism rooted in various grievances around the world. It is the single most powerful and terrifying public exposition of the fact that a global Islamic jihad is now being waged from Bali to Istanbul, from Chechnya to Madrid, from Morocco to Manhattan, from Thailand to Bloomsbury -- and that the world that is under attack is deeply in denial about what it is facing. More than that, this film shows in graphic and undeniable detail that this jihad is a direct descendant of Nazism. It has clear historical links -- it was to the Nazi-supporting Mufti of Jerusalem in 1941 that Hitler vouchsafed that he intended first and foremost a war of extermination against world Jewry; it has the same agenda of genocide of the Jews and world domination, and the same techniques (and almost identical motifs and visual imagery) of whipping up a frenzy of murderous rage against America and the Jews through repeated hysterical claims of their purported and infernal intention to destroy the Islamic world, conveyed through truly diabolical imagery straight out of the infernal handbooks of medieval and Nazi blood-lust. Some of the footage in this film leaves you speechless. The Shatat series on al Manar TV, for example, transmitted into millions of Muslim homes around the world, which purports to show a Jew kidnapping a Christian child and slitting his throat in order to use the blood to make Passover matzahs. This of course was the medieval blood libel against the Jews which caused unspeakable savagery to be meted out against them on the basis of a monstrous lie; and here is this same abominable lie, animated for TV and thus doubtless convincing millions of Muslims of the diabolical nature of the Jews. Just as horrifying are the children seen being indoctrinated to hate Jews and Americans, to kill them and to die. A three year old girl, asked why she doesn't like the Jews, answers 'because they are apes and pigs' (a common depiction) as was said by 'our God in the Koran'. The images of these young children, with their sweet and innocent faces, being programmed to hate and to kill are unspeakable. As a former member of the Hitler Youth observes, the techniques and iconography are identical to those used by the Nazis -- because they were learned from the Nazis. The similarities to the Nazis are indeed overwhelming. The screaming demagogues, the wholesale indoctrination of children into the cult of hatred and death, the repeated use of diabolical propaganda, the aims of genocide and global domination -- and the fact that although such aims are constantly reiterated, although the deeds that follow plumb unimaginable depths of barbarity, although the lies are as transparent as they are systematic, the watching world still refuses to acknowledge that this is indeed a global war that is being waged. Just as in the thirties, it takes refuge in fantasies and excuses and refuses to act; worse than in the thirties, it elevates Islamic fascists to downtrodden martyrs and heroes. There are Muslims in this film who speak the truth plainly and unmistakably: the Palestinian correspondent for the Jerusalem Post Khaled abu Toameh, who says that the Islamic world has hijacked his religion and has declared holy war upon the west in order to destroy its civilisation and Christianity; or Nonie Darwish, born and brought up in Gaza, who relates how as a child she was taught jihad, to wage holy war and conquer the world for Islam, and how her classmates would cry with the emotion of declaring themselves ready to die as martyrs for the cause. And Nonie Darwish is a middle-aged woman. The widespread belief in the west that jihadism, suicide bombers and the rest of it are merely responses to recent actions by Israel or America, or to 'oppression' by Israeli occupiers, is demonstrably ridiculous. This is a film about fanaticism. It does not make easy viewing. It destroys the fiction that Islamic terror is the product of 'grievances' about specific conflicts. It demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is instead the product of fanatical, hysterical, paranoid, medieval hatred, bigotry and power-mania. What it shows above all is that we are up against an ideology which turns millions towards madness and savagery -- but we are totally failing to combat that ideology. Indeed, we don't even recognise it for what it is. This film goes a long way towards opening our eyes. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net |
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JAMES BAKER AND THE HEIGHTS OF FOLLY
Posted by Michael Travis, November 19, 2006. |
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While the world anxiously awaits the first volley of missiles [and WMD's] fired at Israel heralding the beginning of the inevitable "next big war", it is important to note that the [Israeli] government is preoccupied with other plans. The recent fiasco in Lebanon has taught us that our [Israeli] government is more concerned with carrying out the orders of their State Dept. [and hence Saudi] masters, than it is with defending the Jewish State. The forced removal of Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria, and the Golan Heights is more important (not to mention lucrative, to the graft-addicted politicos) than a mere five million Jewish lives. At this critical time in Jewish history we are in grave danger of losing the next war because of being caught with our trousers pulled down around our ankles. Or Olmert's ankles. Or Ramon's ankles. Or Moshe Katsav's ankles. This comes from Investor's Business Daily 10/30/2006. |
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Mideast: James A. Baker III is back, running around saying it would be great if we talked to enemies like Syria. As the media eat this stuff up, Damascus is helping rebuild Hezbollah and has its own plans for Israel. The second coming of the former secretary of state is upon us, with Bush 41's chief diplomat heading something called the Iraq Study Group. The ISG's questionable pronouncements are being used by the MSM (mainstream media) to bludgeon and prod Bush the younger into taking a position toward the enemies of freedom that can charitably be called appeasement. The ISG, for example, seriously considered and did not entirely dismiss Sen. Joe Biden's plan to Balkanize the Middle East further by partitioning Iraq into three autonomous regions, creating less stability, not more, as well as smaller, more bite-size targets for insurgents and jihadists. Baker -- who is also selling a book -- has been making the media tour with his suggestions, including an appearance on Comedy Central's "Daily Show with Jon Stewart." In an interview on ABC, Baker opined: "I believe in talking to your enemies. I don't think you restrict your conversations to your friends. ... In my view it's not appeasement to talk to your enemies." We too believe in talking with our enemies, preferably on the deck of an American naval vessel accepting their unconditional surrender. But not the Clinton, Carter and Baker way of saying to our enemies: How can we bribe thee, let us count the ways. As co-chair of the ISG, Baker already has been talking to our enemies, meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem in New York City on Sept. 20 and with a "high representative" of the Iranian government. This has met with the editorial praise of the Los Angeles Times, which recently argued that President Bush should send Baker, "a veteran of many rounds of bruising negotiations with (Bashar al-)Assad's father," to Damascus to "jump-start" the "peace-process." During the interview on ABC's "This Week," Baker suggested that his 15 trips to Damascus prior to Desert Storm should serve as a model for the current Bush administration. Let's hope not, for during those "bruising negotiations" to get Syria, then and now officially a state sponsor of terror, to join the coalition to topple fellow Baathist Saddam, all Baker did was to ignore the same oppression and activities that we accused Iraq of, including attacking a neighbor. He said then that Syria "happens to share the same goals we do." Only if those goals include the destruction of Israel and the absorption of Lebanon. He claimed Syria had no place on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terror. And "was put on the list without any justification." While the likes of Baker and the L.A. Times claim the time is ripe and the need clear to have Syrian participation in the "process," there are Israelis as we speak who still bear the scars of Syrian participation in Hezbollah's recent attack. Missiles pulled out of the Syrian army's inventory were supplied to Hezbollah. Iranian weapons were shipped through Damascus to Hezbollah along the Beirut-Damascus highway. Missiles that struck Haifa were filled with Syrian-made ball bearings designed to maim, if not kill, Israeli civilians. And lest anyone believe Syria is willing to let bygones be bygones, a Syrian Baath party official told World Net Daily in July that Damascus was becoming a Hezbollah franchisee, forming its own similar group in hopes of recovering the Golan Heights from Israel. Shaul Mofaz, Israel's deputy prime minister and former defense minister, said recently that both Syria and Iran continue to arm Hezbollah. "Arms smuggling across the border from Syria has continued after the war," he said. "We know of the activity, but we don't know the types of weapons involved." Talk softly, Mr. Baker, but it looks like we and the Israelis may yet again need that big stick. Contact the poster at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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JAWDROPPERS
Posted by Michael Travis, November 19, 2006. |
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Al-Qaeda's best assets prime UK timebomb
British Muslims who volunteer to fight infidels in Iraq and Afghanistan are being told to go back to the UK and establish sleeper cells: British Muslims volunteering to fight against coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are being sent back to Britain to become al-Qaeda "sleeper" agents, The Sunday Telegraph has learned. MI5 agents believe that young Asian men, who have been trained to take part in the so-called "global jihad" in al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan, are now regarded as too valuable an asset to be used fighting ritish and American troops. MI5 and MI6 are working on the assumption that they are being ordered to return to their communities in Britain with instructions to establish secret, autonomous cells and to conduct independent terrorists operations without any direct input from al-Qaeda's high command. Security sources claim that al-Qaeda is unlikely to send a British passport holder to his death as a suicide bomber in Iraq when he would be far more valuable as a "sleeper" in Britain. MI5 fears that it is impossible to estimate how many British Muslims have attended training camps over the past decade or how many are back in the UK planning attacks. "Muslim leader sent funds to Irving" A founder of Britain's Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC UK) is
exposed as a financial supporter of Holocaust denier David Irving
tonight by, of all media outlets, the Guardian:
One of Britain's most prominent speakers on Muslim issues is today exposed as a supporter of David Irving, the controversial historian who for years denied the Holocaust took place. Asghar Bukhari, a founder member of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), which describes itself as Britain's largest Muslim civil rights group, sent money to Irving and urged Islamic websites to ask visitors to make donations to his fighting fund. Bukhari contacted the discredited historian, sentenced this year to three years in an Austrian prison for Holocaust denial, after reading his website. He headed his mail to Irving with a quotation attributed to the philosopher John Locke: 'All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to stand idle.' In one email Bukhari tells Irving: 'You may feel like you are on your own but rest assured many people are with you in your fight for the Truth.' Bukhari pledges to make a donation to Irving's fighting fund and says that he has asked 'a few of my colleagues to send some in too'. He also offers to send Irving a book, They Dare to Speak Out, by Paul Findley, a former US Senator, who has attacked his country's close relationship with Israel. Bukhari says Findley 'has suffered like you in trying to expose certain falsehoods perpetrated by the Jews'. In a follow-up letter, Bukhari writes: 'Here is the cheque I promised. Good luck, if there is any other way I can help please don't hestitate to call me. I have also asked many Muslim websites to create links to your own and ask for donations.' Jawdropper of the Day
Colorado's Attorney General took a trip this week to Saudi Arabia, to
explain to the leaders of the religious apartheid state why Colorado
sentenced a Saudi man to 28 years in prison for enslaving and sexually
assaulting his Indonesian housekeeper: Suthers reassures
Saudis Because in Saudi Arabia, this sort of thing doesn't even raise eyebrows.
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers flew to Saudi Arabia this week to
reassure government officials there that Homaidan Al-Turki was treated
fairly when he was convicted of sexually abusing an Indonesian nanny held a
virtual captive in his Aurora home.
Suthers sat knee-to-knee for an hour with King Abdullah and also met with
Crown Prince Sultan, Saudi journalists and relatives of Al-Turki during his
weeklong trip to the capital city of Riyadh, Deputy Attorney General Jason
Dunn said Friday.
"There was a lot of public attention in Saudi Arabia on this case," Dunn
said, adding that "misperceptions" there about the U.S. judicial system and
Colorado in particular convinced U.S. officials that the highly unusual trip
was warranted.
In June, Al-Turki was convicted in Arapahoe County of 12 counts of unlawful
sexual contact with force, one count of theft of services over $15,000,
false imprisonment and conspiracy. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in
prison.
Al-Turki has been portrayed in the Saudi press as a victim of the U.S.
judicial system's bias against Muslims. Many Saudis say Al-Turki would not
have been convicted in his own country.
The Saudi government gave Al-Turki $400,000 to post bail on the charges.
"Saudi gets long sentence"
The Saudi man sentenced to 28 years in prison today in Colorado for
enslaving and sexually assaulting his Indonesian housekeeper told the
court he committed no crimes -- he was only following "basic Muslim
behaviors:"
And the Saudi government posted his $400,000 bond. CENTENNIAL - Sniffles and sobs resonated in a packed courtroom Thursday as a Saudi man convicted of sexually assaulting his Indonesian housekeeper was sentenced Thursday to 20 years to life in prison. Homaidan Al-Turki, 37, was also ordered to serve eight additional years for theft charges. He denied in Arapahoe County District Court that he enslaved the woman and said authorities targeted him because of his religion. "Your honor, I am not here to apologize, for I cannot apologize for things I did not do and for crimes I did not commit," he told Judge Mark Hannen. "The state has criminalized these basic Muslim behaviors. Attacking traditional Muslim behaviors was the focal point of the prosecution," he said. Prosecutor Natalie Decker said the trial had nothing to do with Al-Turki's Muslim beliefs. "It has to do with what he did to her for five years," she said outside the courtroom. Al-Turki was convicted this summer of 12 felony counts of unlawful sexual contact with use of force, one felony count of criminal extortion and one felony count of theft. He also was found guilty of two misdemeanors: false imprisonment and conspiracy to commit false imprisonment. The case has captured the attention of the Muslim community worldwide. The Saudi government gave Al-Turki the money he needed to post a $400,000 bond on the charges in Arapahoe County. Prosecutors said Al-Turki brought the victim, who is now 24, from Saudi Arabia in 2000 to work as his family's nanny and housekeeper in their Aurora home. Al-Turki is married and has five children. The victim testified in court that she worked seven days a week and was paid $150 a month. She said Al-Turki and his wife kept most of that money. Al-Turki also allegedly took the woman's passport and sexually abused her. "Palestinians form human shield to protect home from Israeli air strike"
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Hundreds of Palestinians formed a human shield around the home of a militant in the northern Gaza Strip late Saturday to prevent an Israeli air strike on the building, residents said. People flocked to the home of Mohammedweil Baroud after he received a warning from the army late Saturday giving him 30 minutes to leave the house. Barhoud is a commander in the Popular Resistance Committees in the northern town of Beit Lahiya and said to be "in charge of firing homemaderockets" at Israel. Crowds of people stood on the rooftop and in the yard of the home. Israel routinely orders occupants out of homes ahead of air strikes on suspected weapons-storage facilities, saying it wants to avoid casualties. The incident in Beit Lahiya was the first time Palestinians have tried to prevent such a strike. The crowd chanted anti-Israel and anti-American slogans, and people said they were prepared to give their lives to protect the home. "Yes to martyrdom. No to surrender," the crowd chanted. "We came here to protect this fighter, to protect his house and to prove that we are capable of defeating this Zionist policy," said Nizar Rayan, a local Hamas leader who joined the protest.
This picture, released by protest organizers, show hundreds of Ethiopians taking to the streets of the capital to protest the landmark conviction by a US court of an Ethiopian man for sexually mutilating his two-year-old daughter with scissors. (AFP/HO) In the Netherlands we have seething, following the announcement
that the government may ban a misogynistic symbol of political Islam:
"Dutch Muslims hit out at proposed burqa ban" Dutch Muslims have hit out at a proposed government ban of face veils, saying it was over the top, ill-conceived and infringed religious rights. On Friday the Dutch cabinet said it was proposing a bill banning clothing that covers the face in public, targeting in particular Muslim woman wearing the burqa or niqab. The burqa is an Islamic veil covering the entire face and body and a mesh screen to see through, while the niqab is a veil covering the face but leaving the eye area clear. The garments are worn by a few dozen women in the Netherlands. Rita Verdonk, minister of immigration and integration, said the bill proposed a ban on the basis that covering the face constituted a risk to public order and safety. The ban would be imposed in public and "semi-public" places such as schools, courts, ministries and trains, her spokesman Martin Bruinsma told AFP. "In this country, we want to be able to see each other. The ban is a question of security," daily De Telegraaf quoted on Saturday the minister as saying. But representatives of the country's Muslim population were unimpressed. "They are going to have to find a better argument than security. It is an infringement on the freedom of religion," said Ahmed Markouch, a Moroccan mosques representative. He predicted that the bill would go down badly with the country's sizeable Muslim population, "because it comes from Verdonk, not because they are in favour of the burqa." Green Party lawmaker Mustapha Laboui, who is of Moroccan origin, said that although he believed the wearing of the burqa in Dutch society was "not logical", he was sceptical as to the bill's legality. And Ayhan Tonca from the CMO, a group representing Muslims, said that such a law would be "useless". UPDATE at 11/18/06 2:36:23 pm:
Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed al Tantawi, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque, thinks suicide bombing against Jews is fine but when it comes to the burqa he's a champion of women's rights. He says it's OK for a woman to show her face and hands as long as every other inch of her skin is covered: Asharq Alawsat
Q) There has been much debate in Egypt concerning the Niqab recently. From a religious standpoint what is the proper dress code for a Muslim woman? dress code for a Muslim woman? A) God says: "And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms." Since the Quran says this, we, men and women, should say: We hear and obey. What I think is meant by God's words "except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof" is the face and hands. As long as a woman's face and hands are the only revealed parts of her body, she is following the required religious dress code. As for covering the face or what is called the Niqab, this issue is more to do with traditions. And to underline the human misery and pain caused by Islamic
repression of women: KABUL, Afghanistan - Blood dripped down the 16-year-old girl's face after another beating by her drug addict husband. Worn down by life's pain, she ran to the kitchen, doused herself with gas from a lamp and struck a match. Desperate to escape domestic violence, forced marriage and hardship, scores of women across Afghanistan each year are committing suicide by fire. While some gains have been made since the fall of the Taliban five years ago, life remains bleak for many Afghan women in the conservative and violence-plagued country, and suicide is a common escape. Young Gulsum survived to tell her story. Her pretty face and delicate feet were untouched by the flames, but beneath her red turtleneck sweater, floral skirt and white shawl, her skin is puffy and scarred. More than a month after her attempt, her gnarled hands still bleed. "It was my decision to die. I didn't want to be like this, with my hands and body like this," she said, sitting on a hospital bed in Kabul and hiding her deformed hands beneath her shawl. Reliable statistics on self-immolation nationwide are difficult to gauge. In Herat province, where the practice has been most reported and publicized, there were 93 cases last year and 54 so far this year. More than 70 percent of these women die. ... An estimated 60 to 80 percent of Afghan marriages are forced, the report
said. More than half of Afghan women are married before they turn 16 and
many young girls are married to men who are several decades older, the
report said. The exchange of women and girls to resolve a crime, debt or
household dispute is also common.
Contact the poster at michaelmgr@gmail.com
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ANOTHER DEFEAT FOR ISRAEL
Posted by Marcel Cousineau, November 19, 2006. |
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Last week a once proud and invincible, now sickly, IDF called a Hamas terrorist leader in Gaza on the phone to warn him that they would target their house in 30 minutes. This is how Israel works hard to lose the war now going into it's seventh year. This weak and defeatist boy scout move used to work and was acceptable to the divider and destroyer of Israel in Washington. He has limited Israel's actions to one of sure defeat and the self loating Jews always oblige their master in Washington, always. This time the jihad men, boys, the jihad women and children came out to become human shields to protect their terrorist Hamas leader. It worked, Israel retreated. The Palestinians know how to easily play the game to win while Israel plays hard to lose. The Islamic hordes know Israel is now too stupid, weak and feeble to defeat them. Israel has become a nation which now never misses an opportunity to snatch defeat out of the mouth of victory. At one time they used to know how to fight and win wars but no longer. All of Israel's enemies can see how mad the Jews have become for a false peace. They are so intoxicated that they can no longer see straight. Delusions,madness and lies flow down from leaders Olmert Peretz, Livini on a daily basis as truth. Even the IDF has been corrupted by this terminal sickness. Who but a suicidal and sick people release Islamic terrorists from prison to kill Jews again and again in return for nothing but lies from the enemy because a phony ally tells them they must make painful concessions for only lies in return? Who but fools continue to buy the same trojan horse packaged as peace? Who but an insane people continue to put their trust in a non producing peace plan as their peace partners bring in tons of weapons and explosives into Gaza unhindered? Who but a people devoid of any rational thought allow terrorists to grow and strengthen on their borders to please a world bent on fulfilling Hitlers final solution. Who but idiots allow thousands of Palestinian terrorist Badr brigade to enter Gaza from Jordan with their weapons of war at the urging of a fake peacemaker and his phony Road Map which anyone sane can see only leads to the final solution? Who but faithless and fearful Jews can no longer say no, Never Again, and always capitulate to pressure which weakens Israel when it comes from a false ally and his Road Map. The Palestinian's human shield plan worked well in Gaza, the IDF retreated as Israel and the IDF always does today. Israel has not missed an opportunity to give her enemy victory after victory but all that matters is that their false messiah of no peace George is happy. Israel is the only one who cannot see how her pathetic weakness and appeasement has only incited another soon coming holocaust. Neville Chamberlain has been upstaged by a self loathing Jewish leadership. Only Hashem can save Israel and His people from themselves. Marcel Cousineau can be reached at up2zionsg8@yahoo.com or at his website: http://averyheavystone.blogspot.com/ |
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HINTS OF SANITY IN ERETZ ISRAEL
Posted by Michael Travis, November 19, 2006. |
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Two news items. |
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"Lieberman; Kill Hamas Leadership, Deal With Jordan"
Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman, the newest government minister, has called for discarding the US-backed Road Map plan, ignoring Mahmoud Abbas and killing Hamas's leadership. Speaking with Israel Radio Saturday, Lieberman outlined his vision for the steps Israel must take. He asserted that the Palestinian Authority's Arabs are not interested in setting up a state, but in destroying Israel "in the service of international Jihad." Lieberman said that to ensure its survival, Israel must reject all past agreements and current interim proposals, from the failed Oslo Accords to the unimplemented US Road Map to Peace. "Continued commitment to Oslo and to the Road Map will lead us to another round of conflict - a much bloodier round," he said. "And in the end we will be in an even worse dead-end position that threatens our very existence in the future." Lieberman dismissed efforts to empower Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), whose group was trounced by the Islamist Hamas in the PA's parliamentary elections. The newly appointed Minister of Strategic Threats said Israel should instead develop closer coordination with the Hashemite rulers of Jordan regarding administrating the Arab areas of Judea and Samaria. "We have always targeted the wrong places and taken care not to speak with the right people. We are seeking a reliable partner and that only exists in Jordan right now. We have to coordinate with Jordan and say that Abbas is simply not relevant. We must ignore him. He has no authority and no power." The Hashemite regime in Jordan is increasingly nervous that it will be overthrown by Islamist groups such as Hamas, which enjoy massive support among Jordan's populace, a majority of whom are Palestinian. Lieberman flat-out called for the liquidation of Hamas's entire leadership. "The entire leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad walk around freely, inciting violence. They have got to disappear - to be send to paradise, all of them. There can't be any compromise." "There is no point in targeting refugee camps or Beit Hanoun," he added. "Those people, who live on ten shekels a day, have nothing to lose. When they are killed, they volunteer gladly. We have to focus on those who have something to lose - the leaders of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad." Lieberman stopped short of calling for the complete retaking of Gaza, let alone resettlement of its destroyed Jewish towns, but did demand that Israel reassert sovereignty over the Gaza-Egypt border in order to stop massive weapons smuggling. "We have heard about the smuggling of tons of weapons, missiles and hundreds of millions of dollars into Gaza - the fuel driving this entire war," he said. "They have all failed - the international observers sitting at the Rafiah crossing and the Egyptians [who are supposed to prevent smuggling from the Egyptian side of the border]." Lieberman said he hopes his entry into the government can finally signal an end to the repetition of the mistakes of Oslo. "We must learn our lessons from Oslo, from leaving Gaza, from what happened following the disengagement," he concluded. "Without those lessons, moving on is impossible." Meretz Chairman Yossi Beilin demanded that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert fire Lieberman for his statements. "If [the PM] doesn't do so," Beilin said. "Lieberman's statement become the statements of the entire government." Some of Lieberman's statements, at least, drew support from fellow government member MK Matan Vilnai (Labor), who echoed the call to target members of the Hamas government. Former Minister of Science, Technology, Culture, and Sports, fellow Labor MK Ophir Pines-Paz, who quit the government over Lieberman's entry, issued a statement shortly after declaring that if voted chairman of the party he would issue Olmert an ultimatum -- "Either us or Lieberman." "Israel orders killing of Hamas politicians," by Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv, today's Sunday Times. IN A desperate attempt to stop the barrage of rockets fired by Hamas at Israeli villages, Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, has ordered his security chiefs to target the Islamic movement's political leadership. According to Israeli security sources, a decision to assassinate leading Hamas politicians was taken by Olmert and his defence minister, Amir Peretz. Early yesterday Israeli missiles struck Hamas targets in Gaza, including a charity run by the group. Since withdrawing from Gaza more than a year ago, Israel has targeted Hamas's military activists, but that has not stopped the rockets. Outraged by an attack last Wednesday on the village of Sderot, Israel is determined to ensure the political leadership in Gaza, the West Bank and abroad will "no longer escape responsibility". The controversial change in tactics has been driven by Peretz, who broke down in tears when one of his bodyguards was badly injured in Sderot, his home village. The army has been battling against Palestinian rocket units in northern Gaza for months and has intensified its operations there in recent weeks. Since the beginning of this month, 98 Palestinians have been killed. "The Gaza Strip is about to turn into the biggest terrorist compound on earth," Yuval Diskin, the head of the Israeli internal security service, warned a parliamentary committee last week. "We have no choice but to consider a massive military operation there." Yesterday, deputy prime minister Avigdor Lieberman called for the assassination of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders. "They have to disappear, go to paradise, all of them," he said. Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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SPECIAL AGENT JAMES BAKER
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, November 19, 2006. |
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James "(expletive deleted) the Jews, they didn't vote for us any way" Baker, a blast from the Bush 41 past, is back on the scene to rescue 'son of Bush 41' from clumsily as well as arrogantly implemented foreign policies, unraveling at mind-boggling speed, that threaten to shred his legacy to tatters. Might Mr. Baker attempt to soothe the feelings of Iranian madman disguised as president Mahmoud "wipe Israel off the map" AhMADinejad, or woo Syrian dictators with eyes on the Golan Heights prize by offering that to them? Furthermore, might this Machiavellian pragmatist, obviously no friend of Israel, be willing to negotiate away Judea, Samaria, and east Jerusalem to morphed Jordanians called Palestinians, hoping to remake the image of Bush 43 for historical consumption and worldwide kudos engendered by a perceived Middle East peace settlement at the expense of the beleaguered Jewish State? Lets not forget the 'right of return', Baker's possible piece de resistance, insuring peace in our time at least until Iran underwritten Hamas and Hizbullah rearm sufficiently to further punish what is left of Jewish Israel. Say it isn't so, but while cleaning off the splatter from rose-colored glasses Ehud never forget those immortal words "(expletive deleted) the Jews, they didn't vote for us any way." When things fall apart, a Baker's gotta do what a Baker's gotta do to put his boss' son's legacy back together again, even if that means breaking bread with jihad junkies and/or their financers. Furthermore, since a disproportionate number of neo-conservative ideologues that pushed for the Iraq invasion and occupation are Jews and supporters of Israel, when in fact such pushers served as ideal cover for the real time White House driven fossil fuel and petrodollar related reasons to topple Sadist Hussein if truth be told, why not blame Israel/Jews for today's dysfunctional politically horrific human misery causing Shiite/Iran empowering occupation and consequential GOP midterm thumping mess? Might such a concept be part of an insidious calculation in the mind of special agent 0041 Baker assigned to 'rescue mission impossible' i.e. save my boy the bungler; just in case his CIA finds a way to shed the 'faulty intelligence' stigma and another scapegoat is needed? Blue blood indeed is thicker than water as well as blood lacking the necessary pedigree, yet if the son of a blueblood conjures up those red corpuscles obvious in his Texas swagger, tells his daddy's special agent to stick the Road Map where the moon don't shine, and bolsters his legacy with more than a riot act recital to AhMADinejad, he will repair the bond now broken in the minds of many disillusioned Israelis, proving once again that at least today's President Bush is a true friend of the Jewish State, and in fact his own man. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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HOW TO WIN THE KASSAM TERROR WAR
Posted by Jock L. Falkson, November 19, 2006. |
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A headline in Ma'ariv newspaper last week sums it up: "IDF Despairs". Jerusalem Post's editorial Nov. 16, "Stop the Kassams now" provides no military solution. PM Olmert in Jerusalem Post Nov. 17 is headlined: "No 'quick fix' to Kassam attacks". Our military commanders, Cabinet Ministers and pundits tell us it's not possible to win the war against the Kassams. That the best we can do is continue searching for the launching pads and hitting the rocketeers from the air. Israel's few successes are too few to make a decisive difference. Our only solace is that Kassam fatalities are infrequent and the wounded civilian casualty count is low. Damage to homes and buildings is containable. The most serious damage is to the mental condition of people in small towns like Sderot. Their suffering clearly affects the psyche of the children and adults. They have experienced too many traumas, too many siren warnings, too many unexpected explosions, too many miracles. Worst of all is the despair of knowing that our wonderful IDF has no effective answer. Many residents are not shy to admit they don't know how much longer they'll be able to grin and bear it. Lots are reported to be leaving or have left Sderot. Who can blame them? Yet there is a relatively inexpensive military answer to the Kassams within the restrictions of Disproportionate Response. That is to replicate their Kassams with those of our own. And to lob the same number we receive every day into their populated areas next day. Plus 50 more. During the evening news services we should announce the number of Kassams we'll be launching next day. And we should add this message daily: "We'll stop when you stop." Whenever they start up again, so do we. Plus 50? Yes, the extra 50 is a reasonable attempt to achieve numerical equivalence since Hamas already has a head start, having fired over 4,000 missiles at us. That's downright unfair and clearly disproportionate. The least we are entitled to is catch up. At 50 per day, that will take 80 days to balance the Hamas' reign of Kassam terror. Then we'll have achieved a proportional balance. How long will Hamas be able to take the punishment they so happily dish out to us with almost universal silence if not approval? I'd be surprised if they withstand it for longer than a week or two. For once we're giving their civilians what they're giving ours, plus 50, what would be their point of continuing? To be put on Jock Falkson's email list, contact him at falkson@barak-online.net |
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THE STARK (UN)REALITY OF EHUD OLMERT
Posted by Buddy Macy, November 18, 2006. | |
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The article below was redacted from an article by Professor Paul Eidelberg that appeared in The Jewish Press, November 3, 2006. Please write to the following men, demanding that they remove Olmert from the OU (Orthodox Union) program this Wednesday in Jerusalem: ndiament@ou.org, steiners@ou.org, frank@ou.org. Thank you very much. This is what I wrote them. Feel free to copy it.
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On June 9, 2005, Ehud Olmert revealed what he is made of in a speech
to the Israel Policy Forum in New York. Israel's government, of which
he was the vice premier, was then in the process of preparing some
50,000 soldiers and police to implement Sharon's plan to withdraw
front Gaza and expel its 8,000 Jewish residents. Olmert told his New
York audience that the withdrawal represents "a remarkable process ...
that will have an enormous impact on everything that will happen
thereafter, in the State of Israel and in the Middle East." Dwelling
in wonderland, Olmert spoke glowingly of the unilateral aspect of the
Gaza withdrawal: "We don't have to wait anymore," he said. Glib as
usual, he even boasted to his American audience: "We really don't need
the United States to lead the [peace] process in the Middle East, we
will lead this process.
Israel will lead the process, he blabbered "because it's good for us" -- Really! "And we will lead it because it may do good to the Palestinians." (How generous!)"And we believe that if it will be good for us and will be good for the Palestinians, then it will be good." Impeccable logic! And why will it be good? Because "It will bring more security, greater safety, much more prosperity and a lot of joy for all the people that live in the Middle East." Hallelujah! Intoxicated with himself, Olmert confided: "We are tired of fighting; we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning; we are tired of defeating our enemies; we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies. We want them to be our friends, our partners, our good neighbors." This confession reveals not only an errant fool but of a degenerate. Before you turn off, ponder the words of that great Zionist, Max Nordau, a psychologist of profound learning -- an atheist who understood the mentality of Jews like Olmert. I call to your attention Nordau's 1895 work, Degeneration. This heavy tome, which was re-published in 1968, has been the subject of several doctoral dissertations. It offers a deep understanding of people of Olmert's mentality -- suffice to mention Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres and former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, who decriminalized the government's expulsion of those thousands of Jews from Gaza. According to Nordau, "That which nearly all degenerates lack is the sense of morality and of right and wrong." This degeneracy is widespread in democratic societies where moral relativism is rampant and I have evidence that the persons mentioned have been tainted by this academic doctrine. An inevitable consequence or concomitant of moral relativism is what Nordau calls "egomania," which he discusses at great length. "Egomania renders degenerates incapable of empathy. Pre-occupied with themselves, they are insensitive to the feelings of others. Degenerates lack public spiritedness, a heightened sense of outrage at the suffering of others, and of course they lack a sense of honor." I dare say it is in these terms that we are to understand not only Sharon's policy of self-restraint toward Arab terrorists -- which made the murder of an indeterminate number of Jews "acceptable" -- but also his less deadly policy of expelling Jews from their homes. Did not this egomaniac tell his cabinet: "Anyone who speaks or writes against disengagement is guilty of incitement!" Nordau also claims that the degenerate is "incapable of correctly grasping, ordering, or elaborating into ideas and judgments the impressions of the external world..." He "surrenders himself to the perpetual obfuscation of... fugitive ideas". He is given to "fixed" ideas, however nebulous (like "peace"). Moreover, "facts which do not please him he does not notice, or so interprets that they seem to support his delirium." Here Nordau anticipates Harry Stack Sullivan's concept of "selective inattention" -- typical of Jews whose lust for peace blinds them to 14 centuries of Arab bellicosity and barbarism. This selective inattention raises the question of whether degenerates compulsively misrepresent or consciously lie about reality (like unilateral disengagement is good). Nordau contends that they believe in the truth of their fabrications. Perhaps, but self-delusion may sometimes be a developmental phenomenon. Selective inattention is often the result of fear as well as of egoism. Nordau has observed this. Indeed, not only does continued fear govern many degenerates, but also such is their inability to face reality that even their instinct of self- preservation is crippled. Nordau's analysis of degenerates clearly applies to Israel's ruling elites, exemplified by Israel's current prime minister.
Contact the poster at vegibud@gmail.com |
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FORMER ISRAEL PM BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: "IT'S 1938 AND IRAN IS GERMANY"
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 18, 2006. |
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Former Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu said few days ago: "It's 1938 and Iran is Germany." But he is WRONG! In 1938 people could say, "Maybe it won't happen. Maybe Hitler doesn't mean it. Maybe we can talk him out of it. Maybe we can appease him and find a way to live with the Nazi ideology". They had NO reference. In 2006 we have plenty reference. Still in 2006, though American politicians, particularly but not only Democrats, now know that Saddam Hussein had rape rooms, he tortured, he gassed Kurds, and 400,000 bodies, including children, were found in mass graves, YET, they still DARE say, "If I knew then what I know now...," meaning if they knew that toppling Saddam would lead to a difficult, protracted and politically unpopular war, they would have NOT voted for the war in Iraq. If they knew that Saddam didn't have photo op stockpiles of WMD, but only a workable WMD program and was awaiting the end of sanctions to import the means to restart the program, they would have NOT voted for the war in Iraq. Washington does not have moral compass! Did it ever?! It also does not have the courageous clarity to act on truth! So, if in 1938 there was a glimpse of hope that Hitler didn't mean what he said, in 2006 we know better and do not have the luxury to think this way. To believe that Iran president Ahmadinejad doesn't mean what he say, or to believe that bribes and negotiations can change his mind, or to believe the "Palestinian problem" is the key to our problems is CRIMINAL and WEAK EXCUSE and the key to willful blindness and the no will to defend the world against (the Islamo-Fascism) evil. We are wiser than the world of 1938 and CAN avert the disaster that lies ahead. Indifferent world leads to disaster! This is from yesterday on JINSA Online.
It is JINSA Report #621 and is entitled
"It's 1938 and Iran is Germany."
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So said former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In some ways, maybe. And his plea that the West, "believe him and stop him", is precisely the prescription for the world's future security. But in a meaningful way, this is most assuredly not 1938. In 1938, people could say, "Maybe it won't happen. Maybe Hitler doesn't mean it. Maybe we can talk him out of it. Maybe we can appease him and find a way to live with the Nazi ideology". ("Appeasement" wasn't the same sort of dirty word then, for obvious historical reasons). Their hope that evil wasn't real was understandable. By 1945, the remnants of the Jewish people were saying, "Never Again," as in "never again" would Jews allow themselves to be without the means of self-defense and be attacked without fighting back. Others, including American political leaders, expanded the thought to mean the world had some obligation to protect those whom evil would destroy - it was their obligation "never again" to permit a Holocaust. By 1975, the Cambodian genocide mocked "never again." Rwanda and Darfur and even 9-11 are proof that the moral clarity produced by a moment of horror fades very quickly. In 2006, American candidates, particularly but not only Democrats, frequently said, "If I knew then what I know now..." They meant if they had known that toppling Saddam would lead to a difficult, protracted and politically unpopular war, they wouldn't have voted for it. If they had known that Saddam didn't have photo op stockpiles of WMD, but only a workable WMD program (including scientists) and was awaiting the end of sanctions to import the means to restart the program, they wouldn't have voted for it. On the other hand, now they know about Saddam's rape rooms; the torture; the gassing of the Kurds; and the 400,000 bodies, including children, in mass graves. If they knew those things then, wouldn't they have had to vote for the war so as not to further debase the obligation of the powerful to protect the weak? If in 1938 it was still possible to hope that Hitler didn't mean it, in 2006 we know better. To believe Ahmadinejad doesn't mean it, or believe bribes and negotiations can change his mind, or believe the "Palestinian problem" is the key is willful blindness and no defense against evil. We know now what we didn't know then. We know evil coupled with weapons of dreadful capability - whether Zyklon B or nuclear bombs--and an indifferent world lead to disaster. We are wiser than the Jews of 1938, wiser than the world of 1938. Only that can avert the disaster that lies ahead. Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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WHERE RUMSFELD REALLY FAILED
Posted by Barbara Lerner, November 18, 2006. |
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NRO is wrong about what he couldn't do.
Last week, National Review reluctantly concluded that, despite his
stellar performance in other areas, when it came to Iraq, outgoing
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "made serious -- perhaps
catastrophic -- mistakes."
If you look at the war in Iraq as NR's editors, and most other Americans, currently do -- as a local war, a war in one country only -- this conclusion is all but inescapable. As the editors correctly note, the basic objective in counterinsurgency warfare in any country is to provide security to the population. We have been trying to do that in Iraq with something like 130,000 - 160,000 troops for over three years now, and we haven't succeeded. Instead, we face a continuing insurgency and a looming civil war. From this perspective, it makes obvious sense to argue that if we put many more U.S. boots on the ground, we would have a much better chance of quelling both the insurgency and the civil war, establishing security at last and, with it, the victory we all pray for. From this perspective, Rumsfeld's steady opposition to any large increases in the number of American troops in Iraq can only be seen as a serious -- perhaps catastrophic -- mistake; and a peculiar blind spot for a man NR rightly recognizes as a visionary in so many other areas of military strategy and defense policy. The editors here offer a number of possible explanations for this blind spot, but there is one possibility they failed to consider, or even to recognize: the possibility that Rumsfeld's whole perspective on the war in Iraq is fundamentally different from theirs because he sees it as a regional war; a war that Iran, aided and abetted by its client-state, Syria, and its proxy army, Hezbollah, is waging against us. From this perspective, the war in Iraq, as President Bush has thus far insisted on defining and fighting it, ends up being for Iran an all-gain, no-pain proxy war -- a war in which Iran can insure our eventual defeat in Iraq, without paying any real price for it, by continuing to refuel both the insurgency and the civil war there for as long as it takes to get us to give up. How this is done is no secret: Iran sends a never-ending supply of money, men, and weapons to Sunni as well as Shia terrorists inside Iraq, and gives them all a safe-haven network of extra-territorial training and supply bases -- some on Iranian soil, others just across the border in Syria. From this perspective, it doesn't make a lot of sense to send greatly increased numbers of U.S. troops to Iraq. We would still be fighting a basically defensive war, and doing it in a way that would greatly increase the cost to us, in money and perhaps in blood as well, without dealing with the most intractable of the many problems we face in Iraq: the Iranian offensive. From this perspective, it makes much more sense to send American planes, warships, and missiles to strike Iran hard enough to cripple its regime's ability to make war on us -- in Iraq or anywhere else -- with either the conventional weapons they already have or the nuclear weapons they are racing to produce. I have been arguing for some time now that that is what America must do -- get off the defensive, go on offense, and bring the war home to Iran -- in order to start winning at last, not just in Iraq, but in the global, multi-front terror war our Islamofascist enemies are waging against us with increasing ferocity, vastly encouraged by Iran's growing success and seeming invincibility (see, e.g., here and here). A small but growing number of others have been willing to make the same essential point, plainly, in print: namely, that we need to hit Iran, not with straw sanctions tomorrow, but with real missiles today, because if we don't, things will go downhill for us very rapidly. Those others include Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney and Major Gen. Paul Vallely (End Game), Mark Steyn (City Journal), Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu (Front Page), Quin Hillyer (American Spectator), Mark Levin (NRO), and Arthur Herman (Commentary). The obvious question, at this point, is this: If Rumsfeld really does see the war in Iraq as a regional war that we must fight as such if we are to win, why the devil didn't he say so? The answer, I think, is that he did, many times and in many ways, starting in 2003. But he would have said it only to the president he agreed to serve, and to a very few trusted allies, like Vice President Cheney, who share Rumsfeld's sense of the loyalty that serving cabinet members owe to their commander-in-chief in a time of war. To the best of my knowledge, the only time Rumsfeld made it clear, in public, that he disagreed with the president on the scope of the war was when he acknowledged that he had asked for permission to cross the border into Syria to strike terrorists fleeing there after carrying out attacks in Iraq. He asked a number of times, beginning in 2003. The president said no. Why, then -- it seems reasonable to ask -- didn't Rumsfeld resign years ago? Didn't he recognize the obvious risk that he would fail to persuade George W. Bush to acknowledge the scope of the war; and that then he would end up being the scapegoat for this president's misconceptions about the war in Iraq and the overall state of the Muslim world today? Rumsfeld was most likely keenly aware of the likelihood of that outcome, but had three reasons for remaining at his post in spite of it. First, he wanted time to do all the good and important things he has done to modernize our military forces and upgrade our defenses. Second, he thought there was a chance, however slim, that he might eventually persuade the president to redefine the war we are fighting in a more realistic way. Then the president would be able to use the bully pulpit to educate the American people about the war that is being waged against us and the offensive action we must take to win it. Finally, I think Secretary Rumsfeld feared that when he left, he would be replaced by a very different Defense secretary -- a man clever enough to share his own understanding of Iran's centrality to the war in Iraq and much else, but not wise enough to see, or not principled enough to admit, that attempts to avoid a military confrontation with Iran by "opening a dialogue" or striking a deal have no more chance of success today than Neville Chamberlain's dialogues and deals with Hitler did in the 1930s. With the nomination of Robert Gates, a man strongly backed by the first President Bush and his key deal-makers, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, it seems that Secretary Rumsfeld has proved prescient once again. And I think that Republican hawks like Bill Kristol at The Weekly Standard -- hawks who have been screaming for Rumsfeld's scalp for years -- are not going to like the results, because, in the end, no American patriot will. This appeared in National Review Online (NRO) November 15, 2006. |
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HORSE-SENSE OR HORSE-TRADE?
Posted by Women in Green, November 18, 2006. |
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This was written by Sarah Honig and it appeared yesterday in the Jerusalem Post. |
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Earlier this year we indisputably elected a government of super-flunkies, to the likes of which even previous bunglers cannot compare -- and we've suffered quite an assortment of both schlimazels and hardly benign schlemiels. Some of our more harmful governments bamboozled public opinion sufficiently to retain popularity, but Olmert's bunch hasn't even managed that. Belying his supercilious demeanor, Olmert scores the lowest approval ratings ever for a serving premier. The Lebanese fiasco alerted the voters to their grievous error in record time, soon after they put the Kadima coterie of snake-oil salesmen in control. This crew's knack for botching every facet of combat, while neglecting noncombatants in the rocketed hinterland, boggles the mind. Our arrogant, shady and inexperienced premier - who zigzagged on every issue from convergence/realignment to cease-fire in Lebanon and negotiations with Syria - also appointed ministers as ill-suited as himself to handle that with which he entrusted them. In a true parliamentary democracy one would expect a government that malfunctions as severely as the one lackadaisically inaugurated in Jerusalem, to be removed ASAP by the legislature which approved its creation. But irony of ironies - the least deserving of all of Israel's coalitions to date has lately grown stronger. Avigdor Lieberman's alacrity to prop it (purportedly in order to thwart Iran) constitutes an unequivocal distortion of his voters' will. Lieberman's rightist ticket attracted the very voters for whom Kadima was anathema. Rushing to Olmert's rescue skews the balance of power in direct contravention of the voters' decree. But that's nothing new. The Oslo flop was facilitated by the defection of two MKs of the now-defunct Tsomet list, as much to the Likud's right as Lieberman's Israel Beiteinu. Alex Goldfarb was bribed with a Mitsubishi and Gonen Segev with a ministerial appointment. The latter Oslo-enabler's ethical status was underscored more recently by his conviction for drug smuggling and forgery. Yet what rankles more painfully than betrayal is the fact that Lieberman and Olmert are now co-hatching an overhaul of our system of government to egregiously fortify the executive at the legislature's expense (contradicting the parliamentary system's inherent premise).Thus the revamp would mandate a majority of 66 MKs to pass a no-confidence motion, making it excessively difficult to sack a premier. True, the conventional gripe is that PMs allocate too much energy to parliamentary survival and that sending them packing is a relatively attainable proposition. Yet while the desire for a stable government is understandable, so is the logic of being able to remove an out-and-out failure. Fortifying an unworthy government shouldn't be democracy's objective. Considering that this indisputably unsuccessful government has just incongruously buttressed its defenses, its mooted system alterations will reduce our anyway hypothetical democracy to a farcical facade thereof. It's already almost that. This administration's predecessor, in which Olmert was the second-in-command linchpin, expelled 9,000 settlers after then-premier Ariel Sharon hoodwinked his voters and proceeded to implement the direct opposite of the platform which elevated him to office. That may have been the most flagrant political breach of promise in Israel's annals but not the only one. Remember Amir Peretz's vow to pursue a socioeconomic agenda? THINGS BEING as they are even prior to the proposed "reform," we needn't over-exert our imagination to envision how they'll be after Olmert is rendered immune to most any parliamentary upset. Already now the public helplessly watches the abuse of powers which it conferred upon its so-called representatives. Is it then wise to further augment the clout of wanna-be autocrats? What must never be forgotten is that democracy is the expression of the electorate's sovereignty. Governments are there to serve our best interests - not to put one over us. It's half-baked - if not actually dangerous - to install via the back door a premier/pseudo-American president, who needs nobody to appoint him to form the government, whose accountability to the Knesset is negligibly enforceable and whom it's next to impossible to unseat. This insincere quasi-imitation of the American system would moreover be imposed on a structure which lacks the American model's underlying checks and balances - to say nothing of as much as a constitution. Divesting our legislative branch of its remaining authority could augur nothing auspicious. The Supreme Court daily diminishes the Knesset. Additional attenuation from an inordinately dominant executive will hardly bolster democracy. In situations of aggravated disaffection - as Israel has been experiencing since last summer's Lebanese conflict - schemes to station a strongman at the national helm boast undeniable allure. But not every powerful leader is necessarily the panacea for which the populace yearns. Moreover, the need to shore up a fraying coalition shouldn't constitute the rationale behind far-reaching changes whose implications and ramifications haven't been adequately considered. What should be approached with utmost trepidation cannot become the object of dilettante experimentation or expedient horse-trading. We need plain horse-sense. What ails our system isn't so much its technical framework but the content we voters pour into it - all too often willy-nilly, following inane fads, swayed by polls, overlooking issues and pooh-poohing serious debate. We hanker after instant solutions, dismiss bitter truths and prefer the sweet comfort of delusion. Our dereliction of the most fundamental civic responsibilities lies at the root of our travails. Avoiding the difficult and unpleasant in favor of simplistic answers to deep-seated existential problems will invariably result in bad government. Nothing afflicts our system so dreadfully that competent leaders and sound policy guidelines cannot ameliorate, if not cure. Superficial pretend reforms won't compensate for lack of elementary capability - they'll just make it possible for incompetent leaders, sans any guidelines, to make a bad situation incomparably worse. Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org |
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BAKER MET WITH SYRIANS TO DISCUSS COOPERATION ON IRAQ
Posted by Michael Travis, November 18, 2006. |
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Imagine that! The Syrians working together with the Iranians! Certainly an odd-couple, but in a region where bearded men in flowing gowns (think Carol Lombard) hold hands and stroll the shopping malls together...while women stay home, dressed in garbage bag chic -- anything could happen! Well, no, not quite "anything". Secular regimes such as Syria are anathema to Islam. Whether Saudi-Wahhabi, Irano-whacko Shiite, or good old fashioned, bomb-belted Sunni......they all agree that the secular regimes, with their tolerance of "unwrapped meat" (women's rights) and other manifestations of 21st century Western lifestyles, must be returned to the 8th century [male] bosom of Islam. Assad and his gangsters are crap, and the Syrian people deserve better.....however, it MUST be remembered that as Middle-Eastern leaders go...the gangly eye-doctor ain't that bad. Please have a look at the attached photographs. Those are the faces of typical Syrians circa. 2006...save those photos, and look again in two years time, after we have installed a religious government in Damascus....and folks like those in the pictures have either fled the country or been separated from their heads. President Jimmy Carter unleashed modern Islamic terrorism upon the world in 1979, making the peanut farmer from Georgia a hero in the eyes of millions. [of primitive, murderous savages] George Bush is set to out-do Carter by being the President who completely eliminated secular regimes from the Middle-East. Then the Islamic world will love us. Well.....not right away. Remember, there are still quite a few people in the Americas who have not yet returned to Islam. |
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"Report: Baker Met With Syrians To Discuss Cooperation On Iraq"
Former United States Secretary of State James Baker, co-chairman of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group examining strategic options in Iraq, has met several times with Syrian officials to discuss cooperation with the U.S., The New York Times reported on Saturday. Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha told the newspaper in an interview held on Friday that Baker has asked Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Muallem during a meeting in New York in September: "What would it take Syria to help on Iraq?" The Bush administration withdrew its ambassador to Damascus and has stated it will not authorize higher-level contacts because of Syria's suspected role in supporting terror groups, Iraqi insurgents and opponents of Lebanon's government. But there has been speculation the study group chaired by Baker will advocate greater U.S. cooperation with Syria and Iran as the administration considers a change in course on the war after voters vented their anger over it in this month's elections. Moustapha said in the interview that the New York meeting with Baker, which the ambassador said he had arranged, was "very promising." Other members of the Iraq Study Group also attended the meeting at Baker's request, the Times reported, and Moustapha met twice with the group in Washington. While Moustapha did not provide specifics, the newspaper reported that he told the study group what things Syria could and could not do. "We were very candid with each other," he told the Times. "We explained to them why it is in our own national interest to try to help stabilize the situation in Iraq." The White House said on Friday that Syria could play a positive role in the region, if it desired, the Times reported. "The United States and the international community have made very clear the constructive role that Syria can play in the region," it quoted Dana Perino, a deputy White House press secretary, as saying. "Even the Iraqis have said that Syria and Iran have not been constructive in Iraq; they have not supported the Iraqi unity government," Perino added. Neither Baker nor the study group's co-chairman, Democratic former congressman Lee Hamilton, would comment on the meetings with Syrian officials, the Times said. According to the Times, an outside adviser to the group who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the panel had also interviewed the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif. Baker had a three-hour dinner in New York with Iran's UN ambassador Javad Zarif, the Washington Post reported earlier this week. The newspaper, which did not say when the dinner took place, said: "Baker made clear that he was not negotiating for the U.S. but that the commission wanted Iran's input and suggestions." Contact the poster at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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THE SMILING MR. OLMERT
Posted by Naomi Ragen, November 18, 2006. |
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Friends, As the citizens of Sderot are dying from Gazan rocket attacks, our Prime Minister took his photo ops in America. He smiles, and smiles, and smiles some more. Such a happy guy, there, in America. Good hotels, important meetings with people who treat him like he is actually an important person who represents the best interests of his people. I'm sure his meals are also good. And he isn't rushed. Oh, no, why would he be rushed? Because a private citizen has come up with the funds to give hundreds of Israeli citizens in Sderot under fire a vacation in Eilat, after all. And the rocket attacks? Well, he's already dealt with that, for goodness sake. Didn't he say, courageously, right up front: "There is no quick solution?" So, why should our Prime Minister be in a rush to come home and deal with the situation of Israelis dying in their homes? He has important things to do, like visiting the Wiesenthal Center, and speaking to clueless American Jews before whom he had bluster and say: Never Again! even while he is actively preventing our defense forces from countering the terrorists who have made yet another place in Israel unlivable. Never again? Who are you kidding, Mr. Olmert? You are the facililtator of again, and again and again. So, Mr. Olmert, why are you smiling? American Jews, why are you
smiling back and shaking his hand? My friend Caroline Glick tells us
all about Israel's delighted leaders. This is called "Israel's
Delighted Leaders" and it appeared yesterday in the Jerusalem Post.
Naomi |
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To the delight of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, an international coalition has coalesced around Iran's nuclear weapons program. In his remarks Tuesday in Los Angeles before the delegates to the United Jewish Communities' General Assembly, Olmert explained his enthusiasm. First he stated, "America's leadership in preventing Iran's nuclearization is indisputable and unequaled. I just met my good friend, a true friend of Israel, President George W. Bush in Washington... His determination to prevent this most serious of developments is unquestionable. But America must have the support of the international community if we are to successfully defuse this mortal threat." So from Olmert's perspective, it is America's responsibility - not Israel's -- to prevent Iran from acquiring the means to destroy Israel. At the same time, he accepts that the US will take no action against Iran without first receiving permission from the French, Russians, Chinese and Arabs. Olmert then explained that the Arabs have to agree to let the US protect Israel. As he put it, "A coalition of moderate Arab countries can and must unite their common interest in preventing Iran from undermining stability in the Middle East. This coalition must struggle against the dangers of radical Islam that manipulate the very source of Islam itself." For her part, Livni told the crowd in California that there is little doubt that the nations of the world will shortly unite to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capabilities. As she put it, "If the promise of 'Never Again' is more important than the price of oil, then the time for international indifference and hesitation in the face of the Iranian threat has long passed." Livni then explained that she is eager to give Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians and is working to "brand" Israel as a place where it is fun to live. She concluded by recommending that American Jews invite Israeli Nobel laureates to visit their communities. In sum, our foreign minister is certain that the international community will act against Iran because it means it when it says it thinks that the Holocaust was a bad thing more than it means it when it says, "Fill it up with unleaded." Moreover, as far as Livni is concerned, the world will protect Israel because the Olmert government is so eager to render Jerusalem and Tel Aviv defenseless by surrendering Judea and Samaria to Palestinian jihadists. Aside from that, Livni trusts that the world will protect the Jews because thanks to her we have UN forces protecting Hizbullah on our northern border and we're rebranding ourselves to let the international community know that Jews are both good at science and really fun to drink with. To their credit, Olmert and Livni are correct to say that today an international coalition made up of the US, the EU and some of the Arabs is forming around Iran. But what binds the members together is their collective opposition to taking any effective action to prevent Teheran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Standing next to Olmert in the White House Monday, Bush limited his remarks on Iran to expressing his hope that the international community would agree to economically isolate Iran. International support is necessary because Iran's chief targets -- the US and Israel - don't have the legitimacy to act. As he put it, "My attitude is let's work in concert to convince the government [of Iran] that it's not just the Israeli voices speaking, or the United States' voices speaking, but there's a lot of other voices saying the exact same thing." There is no doubt that isolating Iran internationally would be a welcome development. But there can also be no doubt that isolating Iran will not cause it to end its nuclear weapons program. This is particularly true if that isolation involves approving the European draft resolution for mild sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council. In the best case scenario, the most sanctions can do is make it more difficult to Iran to reconstitute its nuclear program in the aftermath of an Israeli military attack on its nuclear installations. EACH OF the parties in the "Do-nothing-against-Iran" coalition has its own reasons for not lifting a finger. Bush's interpretation of the Democrats' victory in last week's Congressional elections convinced him not to act against Iran. Starting with his press conference last Wednesday where he announced Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's replacement by Robert Gates, Bush has made absolutely clear that as far as he's concerned, he lacks the domestic political strength to carry out a successful operation. In one of his recent daily calls for Israel's destruction, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offered Europe a Faustian bargain. He promised to leave Europe alone if the Europeans abandon Israel. On Monday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair accepted his offer. In a speech at the London Lord Mayor's annual banquet, Blair explained that success in Iraq and in Iran is contingent on Israel making concessions to Palestinian and Lebanese terrorists and to the US and Europe making concessions to Syria and Iran. The fact that Blair made this speech four days after the director general of the MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, said that today 30 terror plots are being planned in Britain; that future threats could involve chemicals and nuclear devices; that young British Muslims are being groomed to become suicide bombers; and that her agents are tracking some 1,600 suspects, tells us just about everything we need to know about Europe's interests. The fact that he made a similar statement to the Iraq Study Group, which, led by former secretary of state James Baker III is planning on recommending that the US sell out Israel and appease the Iranians and Syrians, tells us everything we need to know about how Europe feels about the US hope to isolate -- not attack -- Iran. There is little doubt that the Arab states would prefer a non-nuclear Iran. But the Arabs have no intention of preventing Iran from acquiring such weapons. To the contrary, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia now want to build their own nuclear reactors. Iran's program serves as a justification for Arab A-bombs. The implication of the coalescence of this new coalition is inescapable. Despite Olmert and Livni's breathless protestations to the contrary, no one will take action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. No one will block the prospect of Israel's annihilation. IT IS worthwhile to consider why this is the case -- if only to bring reality to the attention those directly entrusted with ensuring Israel's survival. The Bush administration is today in a state of strategic disarray. According to historian John Lewis Gaddis in his book Surprise, Security and the American Experience, one of the strategic assumptions that underlay Bush's decision to order the invasion of Iraq was the predicted psychological effect the campaign would have on regimes like Iran. In his words, "The purpose was as much psychological as military: to eliminate individuals, gangs and regimes who commit or support terrorism, but also to intimidate those who might be thinking about doing so." Unfortunately, the psychological effect was dependent on a clear US military victory. After the initial push to Baghdad and the overthrow of Saddam's regime, America's ability to defeat the insurgency was increasingly dependent on political will. That will in turn was heavily influenced by the level of international support America's actions enjoyed. The Europeans refused to back the campaign and their antagonism prevented the US from undertaking the kind of aggressive counter-insurgency measures -- particularly operations inside Syria and Iran, which act as bases for the insurgency -- that were necessary to win the conflict decisively. As time passed, the lack of European support caused an erosion of domestic US support for the Iraq campaign. It was the cumulative effect of that erosion that brought about the Republican defeat last week. The EU opposes US operations in Iraq, and indeed its member states have become hotbeds of anti-American prejudice for various reasons -- one of which is counter-intuitive. The Europeans perceive themselves as powerless dilettantes. As such, they assume that their hostility will make little impact on the US and that America will eventually win the war against the global jihad regardless of what they think. This being the case, from their perspective, nothing is to be lost in the long run, and much is to be gained in the short run, from abusing the benevolent US and appeasing the violent jihadists. France in particular would like for the US to emerge from the war victorious but weakened, much as Britain emerged from World War II. While the Arabs oppose Iranian regional and pan-Islamic hegemony, they believe they will deter Teheran from attacking them by acquiring nuclear capabilities. Moreover, an Iranian nuclear strike against Israel would serve several Arab interests. First, as long as Israel exists, Iran will concentrate on Israel and leave the Arabs alone. Second, if Iran attacks Israel with nuclear weapons, either Israel or the US will likely launch a devastating counter-strike that will significantly weaken the Teheran regime. Although awash in glory for its destruction of Israel, Iran would be in no position to assert control over the now nuclear-armed Arabs whose "Jewish problem" it had solved. But no matter, our leaders tell us. We should just think happy thoughts as they do. In Olmert and Livni's world, Israel won the war in Lebanon this summer; UNIFIL forces are good for the Jews; and Hizbullah -- which is now working to overthrow the Lebanese government -- has no interest in renewing its war against Israel. The government sees no reason to prevent 1,500 PLO terrorists from Jordan from marching into Gaza with their guns and their families. Olmert and Livni welcome the prospect of releasing thousands of terrorists from prison to "strengthen" PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, and they are eager to hand Judea and Samaria over to Abbas, not because doing so would help Abbas, but because it would good for Israel. As Livni put it this week, we want to hand over land because otherwise the so-called peace process will stagnate, and "Stagnation is not in our interest and it is not our policy." Our jovial government justifies its decision to do nothing to prevent Ahmadinejad from acquiring the means to keep his promise to destroy the Jewish state by incessantly claiming that someone else is willing and able to pay the price to defend us. The people of Israel must not be seduced by the blindness and empty promises of our leaders. All efforts must be made to sideline these incompetent, self-serving bumblers and replace them with responsible leaders as quickly as possible. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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STEVEN EMERSON: WILL WE WIN THE WAR AGAINST THE ISLAMO-FASCISTS AMONGST US?
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 18, 2006. |
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The governments of the free world are leading its citizens down a path of devastation. Only a bloody beating will pull westerners back together again. Steven Emerson is the Executive Director of the Investigative Project. My concern for the growing threat that Islam poses to the future of our world long ago led me to Mr. Emerson, who is a preeminent researcher of this issue. The vast findings of his organization are used to inform the public as well as to brief various governmental entities, such as the FBI, Homeland Security, Congress, and the White House. The Investigative Project, which consists of a staff of roughly two dozen, also provides substantive information to foreign governments. Earlier this week, Mr. Emerson's latest book, Jihad Incorporated, was the center of attention at the Regency Club in Westwood. As an outspoken critic of Islamo-fascism, Mr. Emerson has many enemies, but they cannot deter the former CNN reporter from his constant vigilance, which was evidenced by the forceful message he delivered at this book signing reception. Mr. Emerson spoke with a quiet sophistication but the message he delivered was eloquent; unfortunately, his message was grim and frightening. Nowadays, Gaza is an area saturated with arms, like anti-tank mortars and rockets, more so than anywhere else in the world. Arms are smuggled from Egypt and Lebanon. Egypt, for all intents and purposes, has simply opened its borders to smuggling. Factors such as this, Emerson asserted have eroded Israel's deterrence capability, and the country is less secure arguably than ever before. To regain its might, Israel must demonstrate a willpower that has been much lacking, even if bloodshed will result. While Al-Queda has been rendered generally ineffectual, Mr. Emerson suggested that it has been replaced by a more worrisome threat -- homegrown terrorists. Second generation Muslims in the U.S., Europe, and Canada are troubled, restless, self-activated, self-financed, and extremely radicalized. Even the Internet is being used to radicalize and recruit them to be jihadists. Today, the U.S. has the largest Hamas populations outside the Middle East that are spreading from Chicago to Wisconsin and from Florida to California. Weekend terror training camps are held in the U.S. Masquerading as human rights organizations, radicalized Islamic organizations, such as CAIR, have managed to penetrate the American political process. These organizations have injected themselves into the doings of the FBI, Homeland Security, and the State Department determined in order to gain access and legitimacy. They have earned respect from the U.S. media and have gained governmental endorsement. CAIR, however, is known to be thick as thieves with the Islamic Brotherhood. Terrorist led groups have permeated the highest levels of American government and have quietly but irrevocably altered out society forever. The job of Steven Emerson's organization is to change public opinion through information that must be gently massaged into the American consciousness. According to Emerson, "Providing unique information gains public attention and leads to action that ends up getting the bad guys." The ongoing battle for the Investigative Project is against the new, pervasive mindset of inverted victimization, whereby perpetrators are conversely recognized as victims, as in the case of the Palestinians. The media is much to blame for spreading this fire of bias, but the Investigative Project is committed to countering such regularly biased and discriminatory reporting. Mr. Emerson conveys the following message: If we continue hiding under pretence and we do not stop the Islamo-fascists, they will grow and finally take over. While a few members of Congress fight the good battle alongside the Investigative Project, many more are needed. Like very few other organizations, Steven Emerson and his Investigative Project are providing us with the necessary information to identify and address the Islamo-fascism that threatens to overwhelm us, but we must answer the challenge to act upon it. For more information or to receive daily updates, contact:
Steven Emerson, Executive Director
Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com
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BRING THE OLMERT GOVERNMENT DOWN
Posted by Sharon Rubin, November 18, 2006. |
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If you are a person who is despairing about what Olmert is doing to the country: you may have been wondering where the opposition to the gov't is, and why it hasn't been brought down. Now, for the first time, there is at least a hint of the possibility that it might be brought down. MK Effie Eitam (National Union/NRP) has gone to the Likud party to appeal for a cooperative effort, if not a full merger, to create a strong opposition to the gov't. Said Eitam: "Right now, the public is quiet, despite the revulsion they feel for this government; they feel there is nothing they can do in the current political constellation. There is great anger and disgust, but it is not being manifest. The sense is that the public is like a coiled spring, ready to burst and act -- but they need a leadership that will guide and encourage it." If this describes you, it is important for you to let relevant MKs know. Now is not a time to stay quiet. First, Effie Eitam needs to be congratulated in this action and strengthened -- let him know you are with him and that he should persist. Then, key persons in National Union/NRP and Likud need to know that you are strongly for this initiative. They need to know that something is expected of them in terms of leadership, and that they are being watched. They have to understand that you want them to take the gov't down, and that their efforts now will affect how you vote later. Below you will find phone numbers and e-mails for key persons, as mentioned above. Phoning is more effective. In most instances you will reach an aide and not the MK himself. This is fine -- deliver your message dynamically to that aide. Then, please, send this on to everyone you can think of here in Israel who is also upset with the gov't and would respond to this. We have to make this response snowball. If we don't try, for certain nothing will happen. It is especially important to move this message beyond the Anglo community to native Israelis in every part of the nation. Taking the time to do this --
It is a modest effort on behalf of a nation in trouble. MK Effie Eitam -- aide Shlomit 054-726-7810
MK Benny Elon -- head of National Union --
MK Uri Ariel -- National Union -- 050-724-1680
MK Aryeh Eldad -- National Union -- 050-787-4669
MK Zevulun Orlev -- head National Religious Party -- 052-396-9888; aide Shuki 050-569-0103
MK Binyamin Netanyahu -- head Likud -- aide Ofir 050-200-2004
MK Yuval Steinitz -- Likud -- 052-385-3280
MK Ruby Rivlin -- Likud -- aide Rivka, 050-623-3710
Contact Sharon Rubin at amazonp@netvision.net.il |
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BUSH IS EMPOWERING TERRORISTS
Posted by Michael Travis, November 18, 2006. |
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This article is by Art Moore, a news editor with WorldNetDaily.com.
It is called "Global Jihad" and appeared today in World Net Daily
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Bush empowering terrorists, charges vocal Muslim critic Wafa Sultan says 'religion of peace' pronouncement undermines her efforts to battle religion's 'barbarism' President Bush is undermining criticism vital to the survival of Western civilization and empowering terrorist leaders by proclaiming Islam a "religion of peace," says one of the most outspoken critics to emerge from the Muslim world in recent years. Wafa Sultan, a native of Syria, seized attention worldwide in February when her electrifying interview on Al-Jazeera television spread across the Internet through a video clip produced by the Middle East Media Research Institute. Named this year to Time Magazine's list of 100 influential people in the world, Sultan spoke with WND after addressing a symposium on radical Islam in Las Vegas hosted by America's Truth Forum. She understands Bush's position as president and believes he is only trying to be diplomatic, but insists, nevertheless, his words are "empowering" Muslim leaders whose ultimate aim is for Islamic law to govern the world. "I believe he undermines our credibility by saying that," said Sultan. "We came from Islam, and we know what kind of religion Islam is. In her February Al-Jazeera appearance, which has brought her death threats, she asserted the world is witnessing "a battle between modernity and barbarism which Islam will lose." The video clip is estimated to have been viewed at least 1 million times, according to the New York Times. Sultan told WND she would urge Bush to take a closer look at Islamic culture and its general embrace of violence as a means of establishment and expansion. "Facts are very stubborn things. Facts are facts," she said. "If you are not familiar with Islamic culture, how can you claim Islam is a peaceful religion?" The White House declined WND's request to respond to Sultan's comments. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the president has made
an effort to reach out to Muslim leaders at home and abroad to assure
them the U.S. is not in a war against Islam
Six days after 9-11, Bush told Muslims in remarks at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war." In an October 2002 speech in Washington, Bush said, "Islam is a vibrant faith. Millions of our fellow citizens are Muslim. We respect the faith. We honor its traditions. Our enemy does not. Our enemy doesn't follow the great traditions of Islam. They've hijacked a great religion."
But Robert Spencer, a scholar of Islam who also spoke at the Las Vegas conference, contends President Bush and other Western leaders don't need to make any pronouncements about the nature of Islam at all. "They would be much wiser to limit themselves to declaring that their foes wish to impose Islamic sharia (law) rule upon their countries and the world, and that they are going to lead the resistance to that," Spencer writes in his best-selling, controversial book, "The Truth About Muhammad." 'This is your Quran' Sultan, a psychiatrist, said that amid the death threats, she has received a flood of correspondence from Muslim men and women from around the world, using assumed names, who are "encouraging me to keep up doing what I am doing." "Once they feel protected, they will come out and speak up, I believe," she said. One e-mail came from a man in Morocco who said he gresw up in a family of mullahs. "He printed out all my articles and made a small book out of them," Sultan said. "He gave them to his 17-year-old son and he said, 'Son, from now on this is your Quran.'" Sultan told the Nov. 10 America's Truth Forum symposium the turning point of her life came in 1979 when she was a medical student at the University of Aleppo in Syria and witnessed the murder of a teacher by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the terrorist organization founded in Egypt in 1928 that spawned groups such as al-Qaida, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. "They filled his body with bullets while screaming "Allah is great,'" she said. "I was traumatized, and I started questioning what kind of god we worshiped." Sultan came to the U.S. in 1989 with her husband, David, and they later became naturalized citizens. "I decided to fight this ideology of hatred," she said, "and began to search for a new place to do what I do freely. "And here I am doing what I do," she said to applause. But Sultan admitted wounds remain. "Islam is a very painful chapter of my life, and it doesn't matter how much I try to close this chapter and move on with my life -- I will never be able to heal the ugly scar Islam left in my heart," she told the Las Vegas conferees. Sultan contended, contrary to prevailing wisdom, Islam has been a major problem for the world since its inception more than 1,400 years ago. "We need to find an effective way to deal with Islam, but it must be based on truth and honesty," she said. Previous dialogue has failed, because it hasn't been based on truth, she said, and has ended up "empowering the fanatics." "It's time to face the Islamic world and discuss with them the problems in the Islamic faith, without fear," said Sultan. While many Muslim leaders and non-Muslim apologists insist terrorists have "hijacked" Islam, Sultan asserts people such as those who kidnapped and beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002 are "true Muslims." Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders are simply following the example of Muhammad, who "committed the most brutal acts against those who opposed him," she said. By contrast, she told of meeting Pearl's mother, Ruth. "The forgiveness and love she has in her heart is stunning," Sultan said. "She believes that by showing Muslims love and forgiveness they will see the faults and reform." But Sultan cautioned that while many Muslims are inclined to this "civilized way of dealing with humans," the "thinking process doesn't fit with people who have been taught the true Muslim faith." Speaking of Muslims in Western nations in particular, Sultan said regardless of how much help and benefit they receive from their country, they "will always be loyal first to Islam." In Islam, as taught in the Quran, she said, there is no guilt toward any action against non-Muslims. Peace, she said, is impossible to achieve with true Muslim believers. "You must realize that for the Israelis to make peace with Palestinians, they must make peace with every Muslim country in the world. The Iranian president says Israel must be wiped out. What did Israel do to Iran?" Muslims, she said, are coming to the U.S. and using the country's constitutional freedom of religion to advance an alien system that seeks political dominance. It's time to "define what constitutes a religion," Sultan urged. "Please don't let your civilized way become your worst enemy and become a weak point in protecting the country and the rest of the world," she concluded. 'Islamophobic' Some of Sultan's critics complain she has no authority to criticize Islam because she no longer is a Muslim. Los Angeles Times' reporter Teresa Watanabe argued Sultan had "never been connected with progressive Islamic groups and does not know the writings of Islam's most respected voices of reform." In an interview with CNN, Hussam Eyloush of the Council on Islamic Relations' Los Angeles office called Sultan "Islamophobic" and insisted "reform is alive and well within Islam, but it will only happen by those from within Islam and not those who hate Islam." Wafa Sultan spars with Al-Jazeera host Faisal al-Qasim Sultan's February interview found her squaring off with Al-Jazeera host Faisal al-Qasim and Islamic scholar Ibrahim Al-Khouli about Samuel P. Huntington's "clash of civilizations" theory. The exchange took place on the 90-minute discussion program "The Opposite Direction," with Sultan speaking via satellite from Los Angeles. Sultan: "The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations," she said. "It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete." Al-Qasim: "I understand from your words that what is happening today is a clash between the culture of the West, and the backwardness and ignorance of the Muslims?" Wafa Sultan and Islamic scholar Ibrahim Al-Khouli Sultan: "Yes, that is what I mean." Al-Qasim: "Who came up with the concept of a clash of civilizations? Was it not Samuel Huntington? It was not bin Laden. I would like to discuss this issue, if you don't mind. ..." Sultan: "The Muslims are the ones who began using this expression.
The Muslims are the ones who began the clash of civilizations. The
Prophet of Islam said: 'I was ordered to fight the people until they
believe in Allah and His Messenger.' When the Muslims divided the
people into Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others
until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this
clash, and began this war. In order to stop this war, they must
re-examine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls
for takfir and fighting the infidels."
Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com
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CROSSING THE LINE
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, November 18, 2006. |
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Iran has apparently crossed a sacred line in the desert sand. If the Bush Administration, in concurrence with a Democrat controlled House and Senate, does not act aggressively at erstwhile Persia's blatant affront to America's economic well being the modern day superpower nation they steward risks a precipitous decline in stature not unlike tentative empires of yesteryear, perhaps licking wounds of battles gone awry. The Middle East fossil fuel rich upstart Shiite regime, in a thankfully miscalculating act of giddy defiance bereft of common sense and historical perspective, ignoring the fate of Sadist Hussein who was toppled for the same reason, spews venom at an anti-Iranian Uncle Sam and his sacred petro-greenback by suggesting it will deal in other currencies especially when selling (at extortionist prices) the raw material source of its newfound wealth to energy addicted industrial nations. "Since any transaction, made worldwide on the basis of the dollar, should be checked in the Clearing House in New York, we decided in line with the government's policies to carry out transactions in other hard currencies," recently asserts a retaliatory Persian Minister of Economy and Finance Davood Danesh Jaafari, throwing caution to a fire-breathing desert wind, fanned by unforgiving transatlantic cross currents generated by a prescient Uncle correctly noting Iran to be a member of the ever infamous axis of evil, thus logically influencing American banks to disrupt the Shiite regime's dollar-based transactions, some of which no doubt were destined for terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hizbullah. Oil for euros, oil for yuans, how dare the madman AhMADinejad and his crew of muddled mullahs in a moment of lofty exuberance, hoist with its own petard, drunk on perceived power, display such chutzpah, imperiling the value of today's challenged but still revered dollar, America's most important export and reserve currency of the world! Some things are just not done if one values his sun-baked skin. Indeed, even a self-serving vengeful interpretation of the Koran, promising an Islamic planet, will not save the day for these delusional fools, presuming those movers and shakers of today's one superpower nation do not go wobbly. It is one thing to disrespect civilized nations by ignoring civil requests to stop spinning fissile material producing centrifuges. It is one thing to disrespect the sovereign state of Israel by asserting it should be wiped off the map. But when those Iranian louts disrespect the almighty dollar, believing they've got 'The Great Satin' over a barrel, inferring they will especially trade Persian tea for paper bearing no resemblance to dead U.S. Presidents, their turbans must be adjusted way too tight cutting off blood flow to their Imam possessed brains. 'Shock and awe' indeed is not exclusively reserved for the Taliban or Iraqi insurgents. Regime change indeed is not exclusively reserved for less formidable and well-connected nations when the stakes are so high. It is almost inconceivable that U.S. movers and shakers, despite being politically bludgeoned by a disgruntled public drained of resolve by a dysfunctional Iraq occupation, will not react with force when its petrodollar status is imperiled. Yet twilights set on battle weary Roman and British Empires unable to muster zeal when overextended and weighed down by public sentiment naïve to the ways of the world. Israel surely has much to lose if its one mighty ally fatally opts not defend its dollar, the financial enabler of a world-class vibrant democracy. A sober assessment, encouragement, and promised support from the one thriving Middle East democracy aware of the inevitable fallout precipitating from an Uncle Sam that in effect says uncle to a regime obsessed with infidel annihilating jihad is a most essential duty at this most perilous moment in time. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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SAVE ISRAEL
Posted by N. Natan, November 18, 2006. |
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In an hostile Moslem environment which no Hudna (islamic truce but never peace) will ever dissolve, Israel will only survive by ascertaining itself (besides never-ending military means) as the fundamental and indisputable true Source of the Land of Israel : That is to say by its glorious founding Temple (without which nobody would have ever heard of Jerusalem). How long will the servile dhimmis Jews continue to pray at the wrong place, at the feet of the Moslems (who despise them more for that) and at a simple basis of a rampart of an antique Jewish citadel !!! Israelis politicians, journalists and other people may have a (little) excuse for remaining ignorant and silent. But it should have been the duty and the pride of Israelis archaeologists to search and discover the Truth which can be found through the study of the Temple hydraulic system (devised and working by sole gravitation) which has been miraculously preserved in the rocky underground of the Haram (the ancient Jerusalem citadel which stood upstream of the Temple). I feel ashamed for the Israeli archaeologists. I feel ashamed for the slavish dhimmi Israel, who will not survive without its founding Temple. And I sincerely hope that in the same way as the Shoah did force the Jews to recreate Israel, an atomic disaster will not finally force them to restore their Temple wherefrom they are issued. Natan Contact N. Natan at n.natan@jerusalem-4thtemple.org or go to the website: http://www.jerusalem-4thtemple.org |
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TENS OF THOUSANDS ASCEND TO HEVRON TO RELIVE BIBLICAL HISTORY
Posted by Alex Traiman, November 17, 2006. |
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Tens of Thousands of Jews will ascend to Hevron for the annual reading of Chayei Sarah, the Torah portion which records the Jewish patriarch Abraham's purchase of the Cave of the Patriarchs. Each year tens of thousands arrive at the site where the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah are buried, for the annual reading to retell and relive Biblical history. According to the Torah, Abraham made the purchase in front of a large local community gathering, for an exorbitant price, to serve as the burial ground for his deceased wife Sarah and his Jewish descendants. Genesis Chapter 23 And the life of Sarah was one hundred years and twenty years and seven years; [these were] the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kiryat Arba, which is Hevron, in the land of Canaan, and Abraham came to eulogize Sarah and to bewail her. The Jewish community of Hevron is relatively small with only 1,000 residents and students living in the city currently populated by 150,000 Arabs. However, at certain times throughout the year, as many as 100,000 Jews arrive in Hevron to visit the celebrated Jewish monument located in the city. "We are expecting tens of thousands of Jews to arrive here in Hevron this Shabbat, just several weeks after the conclusion of Sukkot, in which over 100,000 Jews came to the city," according to Jewish community spokesman David Wilder. "It shows the tremendous support the Jewish people have for the residents of Hevron, and reaffirms our commitment to live in this Biblical city," Wilder says. Yet with only permanent lodgings for 1,000 Jews, the yearly reading of Chayei Sarah (or the life of Sarah) stretches the limits of the small Jewish community's hospitality, a trait for which the patriarch Abraham was renowned. "People sleep anywhere and everywhere," Wilder says. "The weather is nice, and there will be lots of tents. Plus, literally anyplace there is a space to put a mattress or sleeping bag will be used." The annual Shabbat reading will feature many rabbis and lecturers addressing topics relating to the Torah and the Jewish people. In addition, this weekend is one of the few times during the year the large room memorializing Isaac in the Cave of the Patriarchs will be open to Jewish worshippers. "Isaac's room" houses the tunnels which lead several stories down to the underground burial caves. The room is used throughout the year by Muslims as a mosque. Yet the climax of the Shabbat will be the Torah reading itself, in the exact spot where Biblical history took place approximately 4,000 years ago. While Hevron is often in the news due to security or political concerns, the Hevron community does not expect any incidents at this peaceful annual gathering. "The only challenge will be how to get tens of thousands of Jews home safely following Shabbat," Wilder says. Wilder contends that Hevron is always open throughout the year to every Jew in the world, "Anyone that is still able to come for Shabbat is absolutely invited, and whoever cannot make it this year, should begin planning now to be in Hevron this time next year or sometime in between." This essay appeared in today's Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNN.com). |
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MALCOLM HOENLEIN CHALLENGES NEW YORK TIMES ON SHALOM TV
Posted by Shalom TV, November 17, 2006. |
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Charges that the "paper of record" has "broken the record." Suggests that The New York Times has an anti-Israel bias. In a Shalom TV interview that begins airing this Sunday, November 19, Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice-chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, levels serious charges against The New York Times in response to its publishing full-page ads stating that "the Israel lobby" (i.e. American Jewry) is responsible for the current war in Iraq and for a possible war in Iran. The New York Times printed advertisements paid for by CNI, the Council for National Interest, including an ad that ran in "The Week In Review" section the Sunday before mid-term elections. The ad included a cartoon depicting the Israel Lobby as a used-car salesman "selling" Uncle Sam on a future war in Iran with a headline stating, "The Israel Lobby Is Trying to Sell Another War." Below are excerpts of Mr. Hoenlein's comments, the professional leader of the organization that speaks on behalf of American Jewry on matters pertaining to Israel and other Jewish communities in foreign countries. HOENLEIN: "To me, the shock is not that CNI would run these ads [with] cartoons that depict the pro-Israel community in the most vicious terms; but that The New York Times would publish it. We have submitted ads that they [the Times] would not publish because they were too opinionated. "The problem is that they [The New York Times] agree more often than disagree with the sentiment in that ad. If The New York Times wanted to bend over backward [to support the principle of free speech] they would have covered a rally of 35,000 people who gathered to demonstrate against Ahmadinejad and in support of Israel. Not one word [about the rally] in The New York Times! How do you justify that? "It tells you something about The New York Times and I'm sorry to say that the newspaper of record has broken the record. "This is really of such an extreme magnitude that where we see them publish an ad of such vile content, there is no justification! And they have no moral standing anymore when it comes to reporting on Israel. It has clearly been demonstrated to be biased." Contact Shalom TV at news@shalomtv.com |
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PLOY: HAMAS-LED GOV'T WILL RESIGN. A MASQUERADED DECEIT
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 17, 2006. |
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After 59 years of Israel existing in Arabist neighborhood, I do not believe the Palestinians' intent and can predict what will happen if Hamas steps down. All we are looking at is masqueraded deceit. Sadly, the West will buy into this Palestinians' ill with good mask intent. The West will give them billions of dollars, their "leaders" will squander some, use some more to continue buying arms and deploy suicide/homicide bombers into Israel and with the rest of the money left they will continue funding teaching their children's lies, anti Semitism-anti-Israel, hate for the West and by end of the day they will sit and laugh how stupid we, in the West are, that once again we bought into their "plausible" game. And in the meantime, for a while, the world can set aside the Israeli-Palestinian's headache causing, problematic issue and the "story" can comet off the headlines. UNTIL the Palestinians true colors are exposed ONCE AGAIN, probably with another military encounter with Israel. And then, for a while, the world will AGAIN get angry with the Palestinians' behavior, realize how much money was spent in vain, how much money was misappropriated and then some action will be taken and so the vicious circle continues. What is annoying and so very wrong is that 59 years ago the world nations recognized Israel and since it has been a sovereign state, now seeking the Palestinian "leadership" to recognizes her existence. Who are the Palestinians to give their seal of approval for Israel's existence? Why Israel needs a bunch of murderers ill intent thugs to give her the stamp of approval God only knows because the Israelis and the world do not. The Palestinians need our permission to exist, if not for anything else, just see what they are taught as they grow up: not mathematics and science, history and literature, only hate, anti-Semitism, anti-west and how to take the world over for the sake of their wicked Allah. SICK it is! How sad we all appear to be, WE, not the Palestinians! Only because all has become fictional; more so justifiable! This article is called "Palestinian negotiator: Hamas-led gov't
will resign" and appeared today in the Jerusalem Post
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The Hamas-controlled Palestinian government will resign within two or three days to make way for a new unity government that could help end a punishing Western aid boycott and resume long-frozen peace talks with Israel, a senior Palestinian negotiator said Friday. The negotiator took part Thursday in a nighttime meeting in Gaza where Palestinian Authority Chairman President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas pressed forward with efforts to bring their rival factions together. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was not public. The two leaders were set to meet again Friday. Despite the reported progress, Abbas has said he hopes to tie unity efforts to a broader deal that would see Israel release Palestinian prisoners, including several jailed Hamas Cabinet ministers, in return for the release of a captured IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalt soldier. Slow progress on such a deal could delay the creation of the new government. Formation of a moderate Cabinet to replace the one headed by Hamas is an important plank in a new peace initiative offered Thursday by France and Spain, aimed at stopping constant Israel-Palestinian violence and moving toward peace negotiations. The concept is to replace the Cabinet of Hamas ministers with independent experts linked to, but not members of, the two movements. Abbas and his Palestine Liberation Organization would be charged with handling peace negotiations, while the Cabinet would deal with the daily affairs of the Palestinian areas. The sides have already agreed in principle on a compromise candidate for prime minister: Mohammed Shabir, 60, a US-educated microbiologist with ties to both Hamas and Fatah. At Thursday's meeting, Abbas assured Haniyeh that Shabir enjoyed broad international acceptance, the negotiator said. The object is to satisfy Western demands for a Palestinian leadership that recognizes Israel, renounces violence and accepts previous peace deals. At stake is vital foreign aid -- hundreds of millions of dollars a year that have kept the Palestinian Authority afloat for the past decade. Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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JUSTICE AND JONATHAN POLLARD
Posted by Justice For Jonathan Pollard, November 17, 2006. |
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This was written by Kenneth Lasson and distributed by IMRA. Kenneth Lasson is a law professor at the University of Baltimore and Director of the Haifa Summer Law Institute. |
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It is intellectually offensive to read in the Jerusalem Post a totally unsubstantiated "news" story that "Pollard Gave Info to Pakistan, Australia." It is doubly onerous that this allegation comes over twenty years after Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison, and curiously released just as rumors of clemency on his behalf are being heard. While the Post headline may be journalistically irresponsible, though, the FBI agent making those charges is guilty of patently immoral deception: the evidence he provides is a shoddy collection of hearsay, innuendo, and deceptive half-truths -- none of which ever appeared in court documents. One may rest assured that the Justice Department would have included any charges it thought it could prove in its original indictment in 1985 or in subsequent court filings. Pollard's most staunch defenders make no apology for his actions. He clearly committed a punishable wrong. He is not a hero, but he is most certainly a victim of a monumental miscarriage of justice. Here are the undisputed facts: First, Pollard was apprehended for passing classified information to a foreign government. He was never charged with nor convicted of the crime of treason. Nor was there anything in his indictment to suggest he intended harm to America -- or that he compromised the nation's intelligence-gathering capabilities, or that he caused injury to any of its agents. But where was the evidence? Our system of law requires that an accused be confronted by, and given an opportunity to challenge, his accusers. That's what Pollard was denied. What did Jonathan Pollard do to deserve life imprisonment? Nowhere does his indictment allege, as the FBI agent falsely claims, that he gave classified information to Pakistan or Australia or that he betrayed worldwide intelligence data. Nowhere in their briefings to the Senate Intelligence Committee did U.S. officials claim Pollard gave Israel sources and methods. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that Pollard is being punished for a crime he didn't commit and is being disproportionately punished for the one he did: passing on satellite pictures and reports that showed U.S.-built missile and chemical factories in Iraq. American foreign-policy architects are as embarrassed today as they were angered then that their support of Saddam Hussein had been disclosed to Israel. The anti-Pollard intelligence community never mentions the fact that the appellate decision in his case turned on narrow procedural grounds, not on the merits. The dissenting judge, Steven Williams, concluded that the government's breach of the plea agreement was "a complete and gross miscarriage of justice." President Bush should correct this longstanding miscarriage of justice. Dozens of Americans have been convicted of the same crime as Pollard and have served an average of four years. Many more perfidious spies have received lesser or no punishment -- about which the FBI is utterly mute. (There have been at least two Americans caught spying by Israel and who were quietly returned to their homeland.) Just as the law should not be bent to release Pollard, neither should it be bent to keep him behind bars. Whatever the FBI's motives in characterizing Pollard as a bête noire, they are arrogantly undeclared, anachronistic, and irresponsibly vindictive. The fair, moral, and principled thing for the President to do is show Pollard clemency. It is incumbent upon Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to insist upon it. Contact Justice For Jonathan Pollard at Justice4JP@aol.com |
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AMERICA MUST ADAPT TO RADICAL ISLAM'S STRATEGIES IN OUR HOMELAND
Posted by Bryna Berch, November 17, 2006. |
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This was written by David Steinmann and it appeared in Family
Security Matters and is archived at
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It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that Muslims in western countries would expect that our laws and culture should be bent to accommodate their behavior and actions. Those kinds of claims/demands (depending on the circumstances of the matter at hand) are simply part of an ever increasing, gradual, insistent pressure designed -- sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally -- to have western countries evolve over time into Islamic ones. But because it is hard for almost all westerners to imagine that actually happening, they tend to fall back on the cultural norms we have developed amongst ourselves which require tolerance, forbearance, compromise and understanding. All of which work just fine when all of the parties involved subscribe to the same basic understandings. But when one party comes to the conflict with an unyielding, intolerant insistence on having it done their way, as so many Muslims do when they come to western countries, then our tried and true approach to conflict resolution -- tolerance, compromise, understanding, flexibility -- fails and we are left having yielded to demands which, were they to have been seen and understood in the context of a multi-faceted on-going, protracted cultural and religious war would never have been made. Happily, the Canadian court cited in the article below did not yield to an Islam based appeal that a man's "dishonor" should be a mitigating factor in his sentence for having murdered his wife. But for every such rejection of Islamic insistence on having western countries do it their way, there are these days a dozen examples of western countries giving in and yielding to these demands in the name of tolerance, multi-culturism and flexibility. I circulate articles about some of these examples from time to time just to keep you all posted on the increasing absurdity of the west's willingness to subjugate itself to another more insistent, self confident culture. Unhappily, all signs in western Europe point to an increasingly speedy decline in their ability to articulate and defend their cultures against an aggressive Islamic insistence on the Islamisization of those countries. America and Australia seem so far to have had the most success in resisting this encroachment but even here there is an endless supply of efforts by Muslims to change our culture to first accommodate their beliefs and religion and, although they don't often articulate it clearly, eventually change us into an Islamic society. In order to defend ourselves, we will have to understand two things: what our culture is and why it is worth defending; and that there really is a religious war going on around the globe right now, the intention of which is to Islamicize the world. It has taken the west a very long time to evolve into a society we are comfortable with. But if we have come to take it for granted, or have forgotten why we value its underlying principles, or have lost the ability to fight to defend it, then we will lose this war because the other side is religiously driven and is convinced that it is fighting for its god's principles. Can a post-modern, secular society muster the will to resist that kind of assault? Our children and grandchildren are going to have to be ready to answer that question and perhaps fight to defend our culture. Often it will be a subtle conflict with its battles fought in places such as schools or in courtrooms. And sometimes the battles will be fought with guns. But they will all be part of the same conflict and we fail to understand that at our extreme peril. This isn't the kind of "war" we are used to understanding and knowing how to go about winning. Both on the battlefield and inside our own country the rules have changed and the enemy is using tactics we haven't faced before. We will have to adjust to these changes if we are to be successful. When you read the news try to see it through that kind of prism and you will understand it better and, hopefully, be better prepared to be less tolerant and more insistent that western values and culture not be eroded in order to accommodate Muslim insistence on their culture and values which are so often anathema to our beliefs and values. It's going to be hard but we are all soldiers -- like it or not -- in this conflict. And it's past time to saddle up and get into the battle. |
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ISRAELI MILITARY LEADERS SURRENDER
Posted by Voice of Judea, November 17, 2006. |
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The recent fatal rocket attacks on Southern Israel have brought Israel to its heels. Israel's weekend newspapers are full of articles quoting Israeli leaders who have given up hope in stopping the ongoing attacks on Sderot and the Western Negev. Maariv ran the following headline: "IDF Despairs." There has been an exodus of thousands of Jews from Sderot and there appears to be no-end in site. Military analysts admit that the only possible way to stop the attacks would be to reenter into Gaza and seize control of the Philadelphi pass. Israel is not prepared to take the necessary action because they fear the reaction of the international community. The European Union is already volunteering to send international troops to Gaza, a move that will effectively prevent Israel from taking any military action in the area. On the Iranian front, Israeli leaders are no less clueless. The international media quoted Shimone Peres stating that Israel must not take the lead in international efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear program. The vice premier on Thursday played down speculation that Israel might launch a pre-emptive military strike to prevent its arch-enemy from attaining the bomb. “We cannot and should not be the ones directing the campaign against Iran, because Iran is a danger to the entire world,” Peres told Israel Radio. Voice of Judea Commentary: It is simple. Israeli leaders are walking us down the road to another Auschwitz, just as Jewish leaders did 70 years ago. Israeli leaders admit that Ahmadenajad is a modern day Hitler. However, they are waiting for the world to come and rescue us. They have learned nothing from the Holocaust. And they have the audacity to say that if there was an Israel, during the Holocaust then there would not have been a Holocaust. Really? And what exactly would Israel have done? Cry to the United Nations to save them? The time has come to show faith in God and unleash the full force of the IDF to save Jews and Israel, before it is too late. Never Again? Shimone Peres and the other leaders of Israel are making all of the same mistakes, over and over again! The real slogan that represents Israel's commitment to stopping the next Holocaust is much more like "All over again". There is hope and no reason to despair. There is another way. There is a Jewish alternative of faith in God combined with Jewish firepower. We have tried the way of Shimone Peres and it has led us to defeat, despair and Holocausts. Let us try the Jewish way! Contact the poster at mishar@mishal.org |
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MULTICULTURALISM FOR MUSLIMS; MUSLIM ARABS VS. YANKS; OLMERT KNEW IDF UNREADY
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 17, 2006. |
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MULTICULTURALISM FOR THE MUSLIMS An English girl was put onto a group of six, in her science class. The other five were Pakistani immigrants. Four didn't know English. The fifth spent the whole time translating for the other four into Urdu. The girl wasn't learning anything. She asked to be placed with a group what spoke English. The school called the police, who arrested her for being intolerant. She was alleged to have called the Pakistanis a name, but that is not known. "...after forty years of angry controversy, after the transformation of entire English towns and city districts into simulacra of Karachi and Dhaka, after race riots and jihadist bombings-after all that, illiterate (in English, at any rate) Muslim South Asian peasants are still pouring into England in numbers apparently uncontrolled, and are being granted courtesies, dignities, and privileges which the native English are denied." (Miriam Gardner of American Yated Neeman, 10/25 from John Derbyshire.) British Muslims usually are not arrested for exhorting the murder of Christians and Jews. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MUSLIM ARABS AND YANKS The Muslim Arabs think differently and have different values from us, though the following examples do not hold 100%, as the West departs from its traditional values. They are hospitable but treacherous. We put a value on doing things well (or we used to), whereas they value having non-Arab Muslims do their work. We value love within marriage, they arrange marriages, treating wives as chattel and obsessing over sex. Overshadowed by the West, the Muslim sense of self-worth comes from a belief that they are the followers of God and everyone else is not. (Judaism is not exclusive.) Muslim Arabs do not build modern infrastructure, and let what they have run down. We think of contractual obligations as mutual, but they think that the superior partner has a lesser obligation than the inferior partner and that obligations to believers and clansmen override obligations to non-believers and outsiders. For example, Muslims in England put up a mosque and then demanded removal of the 600 year-old pub nearby. To superior force, they become obsequious and lie to get you to turn your back so they can stab it. They don't expect their rhetoric to be taken seriously, and are surprised when we take it and ours seriously. They issue death threats over minor matters, not really meaning it. They lie routinely, as in claiming that the Jews want Medina back. They believe in all sorts of supernatural things and have an illogical notion of cause and effect. They teach by rote and without critical thinking. They do not live in the here and now, as when they exact revenge for problems from hundreds of years ago. They blame their problems on other people (largely because they are ashamed to admit faults). They know their civilization is declining and inferior, and feel humiliated over it. (So they are trying to destroy ours.) They don't agree that everyone is entitled to an opinion. S. Arabia punishes people who don't totally follow the revealed word. They don't feel their civilization can co-exist with ours, which has pluralism, a fee media, free women, and free enterprise. They do not coexist with us in our civilization, which they try to subvert (Op. Cit., 10/30 from anthropologist Steve Bowne). TUNNELS & TUNNEL VISION Israel does not have a choice between war and peace. The Arabs are bent on conflict. Therefore, the question for Israel is how to win the conflict and minimize damage to it. Waiting for the enemy to strike, as it mostly does, will not do. The government sent the army to the Gaza-Egypt border. The troops found a dense network of arms-smuggling tunnels. Those tunnels, as well as Egypt's failure to guard the border, are the Arabs' way of maximizing the damage to inflict upon Israel. After destroying but a fraction of the tunnels the army estimated were below, the army pulled back. It gave no reason. The reason probably was that the inexperienced and appeasement-minded civilian government was afraid that if it kept the soldiers there longer, the rest of the world would criticize it. The government should do what Israel needs, not what anti-Israel outsiders want. It should have kept the troops in to do the job, retaken control over the border, and widened the corridor to make it easier to monitor (Dr. Aaron Lerner, IMRA, 10/26). It needs a public relations arm to explain the need for sending and stationing troops and to explain that tunnels lead to innocent deaths. Someone had proposed relocating the P.A. Arabs out of the town that straddles the border and provides cover for tunnels, and destroying their houses in the town. GOOD NEWS NOT RECOGNIZED AS GOOD NEWS Abbas' aide, Saeb Erekat, announced that in the past year, the P.A. economy shrank 28%. Investment in the coming year is expected under present conditions to fall 60%. If such declines continue, the P.A. areas would face total collapse. He attributed those problems to Israeli closure and foreign financial boycott (IMRA, 10/28). Arabs blame outsiders, but their thugs extort from business and induce Israeli closure. If the P.A. collapses, Arabs would move out, and the P.A. would have less cannon fodder. They would have less money for war, although Iran provides some. Israelis could reclaim deserted parts of the P.A., as Jewish patrimony, recognized by the Mandate. As Daniel Gordis wrote in the New Republic Online (8/31, reprinted in Jewish Political Chronicle, 9/2006, p.20), Israelis have learned that the P.A. Arabs don't care about statehood (as a goal in itself), they voted for Hamas not to establish a state but to wreck the Jewish one. Those Arabs deserve no sympathy. Therefore, Israel should declare the P.A. Arabs in a state of war with it, intensify closure, and block the Gaza-Egyptian border to keep Iranian arms out. This would produce a victory in the world war known as jihad. The West needs a victory. U.S. TO REBUILD LEBANESE BRIDGE The bridge connects Lebanon with commercial outlets in Syria. It will cost $20 million (IMRA, 10/28). Weapons may flow in to Hizbullah, too. Why doesn't the US first demand that Lebanon ask UNIFIL to help it stop that flow and disarm Hizbullah? EU REPRESENTATIVE MAKES DEMANDS ON ISRAEL Mr. Solana demanded that Israel fully open its border to Gaza people and goods. Closure, he claimed (without evidence, there being none), makes the Arabs angry with Israel and more violent. Vice-PM Peres retorted that closure is one answer to providing security from terrorism by the Arabs, and therefore won't be lifted until the Arabs cease terrorism. Solana also demanded that Israel transfer to the P.A. excise duties it used to send. Peres refused, pointing out that the Arabs bring their problems upon themselves. Israel will not cooperate with the P.A., so long as it commits terrorism against Israel. Peres dismissed Syrian alleged peace feelers as insincere attempts to relieve US pressure on Syria for its belligerency. Solana asked the Foreign Minister to evacuate Israel's "illegal" outposts (IMRA, 10/28). Solana mixed up the sequence of events. First comes terrorism. Then Israel takes counter-measures that reduce terrorism. The more severe the counter-measures, the greater the reduction of terrorism. Therefore, it is silly to suggest that if Israel did not take counter-measures, the Arabs would not commit terrorism. Solana should be denouncing the aggressor Palestinian Arab people, who collectively favor terrorism. Peres was uncharacteristically realistic and defensive of Israeli rights. He might have added that the EU request that Israel send large sums to the P.A., even while the EU refrains from sending much money to the P.A. because its regime is terrorist, would be financing the deaths of Israel's own citizens. He should challenge Solana over that. Having pointed out that the P.A. is violating its peace agreements with Israel, Peres should have concluded that the P.A. is just as insincere as Syria, in proposing peace. The Foreign Minister should have told Solana that his asking Israel to take legal action in its own country is an unacceptable interference in sovereign Israel's internal matters. His demanding that Israel open its borders to its enemies is outrageous. PM OLMERT KNEW THE ARMY WAS NOT READY FOR WAR Senior Defense Ministry officials warned Olmert more than once that the Army was not ready. It had been hollowed out by budget cuts for years (Jewish Political Chronicle, 9/2006, p.18 from Akiva Eldar of Haaretz, 8/15). He let it be shown up, instead of first building it back up. That cost Israel its deterrent and therefore future lives. They balanced their budget at the Army's expense, though the existence of the state is menaced by the Muslims. Soldiers died and Israeli cities were bombarded, as a result of unpreparedness combined with foolish leadership. Olmert acted prematurely. RUSSIAN CONTRACTORS AT WORK They upgraded Egypt's SAM missiles (IMRA, 10/30). Can't Russia do anything decent? Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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We Are Right! means WAR!
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 17, 2006. |
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The thought of the day ... if you find it worthwhile, please read and pass it on. There is a part of me that is proud of Israel's civility but my other part is relieved there is another perception. There are those who believe that a continued dialogue and patience with the Palestinians, Hezbollah and the like is the only way to go. But I would hate to think that an agenda of going to war against any individual or nation was thought to be a completely wrong. It is encouraging to know that behind the façade of 'we are firstly humanitarian and must find a way to talk it through,' there are reasonable and rational people who realize that the time is fast coming when enough is really enough! Why enough is enough? Giving genuine citizenship to such large Israeli Arabs population should have been enough, especially when there is no reciprocity even hinted when speaking of a Palestinian State. Allowing Arabs be full members of the Israeli Knesset should have been enough, especially when there is no reciprocity even hinted when speaking of a Palestinian State. Welcoming Arabs into Israel's hospitals, universities and the dandy beaches and providing social services even for those living outside her boarders should have been enough, especially when there is no reciprocity even hinted when speaking of a Palestinian State. Displacing 8,500 of Israel's citizens in the most painful disengagement display from homes and land ever seen should have been enough, especially when there is no reciprocity even hinted when speaking of a Palestinian State. Letting the US provide further US made arms and ammunition to Abbas should have been enough, especially when there is no reciprocity even hinted when speaking of a Palestinian State. Israel endless bending backwards trying to come up with more, and even more concessions for the Palestinians should have been enough, especially when there is no reciprocity even hinted when speaking of a Palestinian State. I absolutely love being Jewish; I am so very proud to be part of such a warm, humane human culture and tradition, but I believe we have come to the time when enough really needs to be enough! So all that remains for me is to now pray that this time, when elections come and Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu is again elected as Israel's Prime Minister he indeed follows up on his own speeches, writings and teachings that go back decades, and does the right thing! Hopefully he does what needs to be done to make Israel a stronger and safe place for all its citizens, those who already live there and those who will inevitably have to come live there, considering that Europe and Venezuela are already either Nazi or Islamo fascist greatly and gravely anti Semitic societies. I think it is good the USA takes a note when it comes to Iran and North Korea. We Are Right! means WAR! Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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ISRAEL PRODUCES NOBLE PRIZE WINNERS; ARAB NATIONS PRODUCE SUICIDE BOMBERS
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 17, 2006. |
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"While Israel is building its future with Nobel laureates, the Arab world fills its future with suicide bombers." The power to revolt is a pre-disposition to a low self-esteem, which inevitably helps building the mentality of a suicide bomber. Suicide bombers represent Arab descent people with the lowest self-esteem. Further more, Intifada is a struggle; it is the human body last movement upon death. The true meaning of a struggle -- Intifada is that Arabs are still moving yet not truly alive as citizens of the world. If Arabs continue pursuing the same policies that drove them to the lowest point in our history they are the only one to LOSE! AND, if the Arabs keep on listening to their rulers, they will always be kneeling on the sideline watching Nobel prize winners produced by the Middle East -- but not by them or for them rather by ISRAEL for Israel and the betterment of the entire world! Unfortunately it is one voice in the Islamo fascists hate and distortion cesspool. Unfortunately not enough Muslims and Arabs see, think and speak the way Farid Ghadry does. His article is called "Israel Builds for Nobel Prizes, Arabs Build for Suicide Bombers." Farid Ghadry is President of the Reform Party of Syria. But it is encouraging there are some sane ones who still exist and do speak out the truth! |
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The news this week that two Israeli scientists, in addition to an American, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, should be read with interest in the Arab world. This win says a lot about the state of affairs of the Middle East. While Israel builds its future with Nobel laureates, the Arab world fills its future with suicide bombers. Ever since the inception of the State of Israel, Arabs have had this romantic notion that through wars and revenge we can return to our past glory. Of course, they don't tell us which past they are referring to. Was it when we were governed by the Ottoman Empire or by England and France? Or was it more like 1,300 years ago when spears ruled the battleground? Ever since 1967, Arabs from all countries--but especially Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt--have lived this fantasy that we can throw the Israelis to the sea. With the 1973 near-win against Israel, Arabs concluded that one more loss is not reason enough to stop and think. One more loss, with so many lives lost on both sides, is not enough for us to understand that the continued struggle is destroying us from within. Even after Anwar Sadat came to understand the value of peace and co-existence, it seemed that more and more of our energies were diverted toward destruction. The downfall of the Soviet Union, the longtime ally of the Arab world, seemed to spur us to seek justice with the barrel of a gun rather than through pragmatic understanding. The Oslo Accords produced a willing Israel and exposed fraudulent Palestinians. Again,we watched as Arab leaders mounted a campaign of deceit to divert our attention away from our own oppression. We, the obedient Arab sheep, followed. We carried banners, objected, revolted and in the end, we created a new cadre of school children with strong arms to throw stones but without the education and discipline no brains to produce Nobel prizes. Ever since the Intifada, a term that truly spurns our sense of justice, we have achieved the lowest point of our self-esteem. Arab children that throw stones seem to feel an invisible power that is not available to the children of the State of Israel. That power to revolt consequently pre-disposes to a low self-esteem, which inevitably helps to build the mentality of a suicide bomber. Suicide bombers feel nothing, understand little, and cannot see the future. They go on automatic pilot with the brain functioning as a guiding tool to self-destruct literally, as a person and against the society that developed them. Suicide bombers represent the lowest of our self-esteem as people of Arab descent. We are in an Intifada, but it is one that is seen through the eyes of the Israeli Nobel laureates. We, as people of the Middle East, are dying and we cannot even feel it. We have reached the bottom and we do not even know it. Because of oppressive regimes that give us no chance to think for ourselves, we have no hope, no future, and certainly no Nobel prizes in science awaiting us. What very few people know is that an Intifada is also attributed to the last movement by a human body upon death. Could that be this understanding of Intifada that is the true symbol of a struggle that should have ended long ago? All Arabs are in an Intifada, still moving yet not truly alive as citizens of the world. Every time the Syrian Ba'athists call for armed resistance, secretly support groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and propagandize Arab unity, we fall further and further into oblivion. The funny thing is that very few Arabs care to understand why we do not have Nobel laureates. They blame it on Imperialism and Zionism. In their minds, absent these two forces, we could be raking in those Nobel prizes. So while Israel survives Intifadas, wars, hate, and oppressive Arab rulers, we, the Arab people, must wake-up. If we pursue the same policies that drove us to the lowest point in our history (Asr al-Inhitat or Era of Despair as opposed to Asr al-Jahyliah or Era of Ignorance that preceded Prophet Mohammed), only we lose. If we listen to our rulers, we will always be kneeling on the sideline watching Nobel prize winners produced by the Middle East -- but not by us or for us. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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MAJOR ROI KLEIN
Posted by Michael Travis, November 16, 2006. |
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The least we can do for the man, who sacrificed his life in such a heroic fashion, is to tell his story. Major Roi Klein, the deputy batallion commander of 51th batallion of the Golany infantry brigade, from the Eli settlement, was the highest ranking officer between his soldiers in Beit Jbeil. During the combat, he noticed a hand grenade thrown at his men. Since there was no time to evade the effect of the upcoming explosion, he jumped at the grenade so as to block the shards and thus save his men. His sacrifice was succesful. His men, who thus survived the battle, told later that he cried out "Shma Israel" as he jumped at the grenade. Roi Klein, a real hero in the age of anti-heroes worship, was burried at the day he turned 31. It is told of him, that he was an excellent saxophone player and a brilliantly spiritual man, who completed cum laude his engineering degree. He hiked with friends in Afrika, he had a captivating laughter. All his friends say he was a quiet, gentle man. His widow wishes their children to grow up just like him. May he rest in peace. Instead of lighting a candle, please pass the story on. He deserves
much more than that, but that's as much as we can do.
Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com
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SHOULD ISRAEL RECONQUER GAZA?
Posted by Ruth Matar, November 16, 2006. | |
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Dear Friends, The most basic responsibility of a government is to protect its citizens. The Olmert government is not fulfilling this responsibility. Yesterday, a woman was killed and a man lost his legs when Kassam rockets landed in downtown Sderot. The Islamic Jihad and Iz A-Din El-Kassam terrorists proudly claimed credit. Fatima Slutzker, a Moslem woman married to a Jew, was the seventh fatal victim of a Kassam rocket among the nearly 1,700 that have been fired since the withdrawal from Gaza. She was 57 years-old. The rockets fell not far from the house of former Sderot Mayor Amir Peretz, now Israel's Defense Minister. Maor (ben Dorit) Peretz, the 24-year-old guard assigned to protect Peretz's house was also hit by the rocket's wildly-scattered deadly shrapnel. Both Fatima and Maor were taken to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon where the woman died, leaving behind her husband and two sons. Peretz had both of his legs amputated. Six other people were treated for light injuries. Close to ten Kassams were fired at Sderot Wednesday. In addition, four other rockets were fired at the Western Negev. Another rocket landed near a children's nursery in a nearby kibbutz. The nearly 1,700 Kassams were not an accident. They were meant to kill and when they did kill Jews, the Arabs celebrated! No apologies forthcoming from them! However, when an Israeli artillery shell accidentally strayed 500 meters off course, killing 19 and wounding 29 others in Beit Hanoun, senior Fatah officials called for sanctions from the UN Security Council and incited the Arab populace to increase terror attacks on Israeli civilians. Israel's wimpy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, on the other hand, publicly apologized to the entire world for the IDF's accidental firing, giving the Arabs additional propaganda ammunition. There is currently an intense debate about whether Israel should re-conquer Gaza to stop the Kassams. The journalist Haggai Huberman wrote an excellent article in today's Hebrew newspaper Hatzofe. The following are excerpts from this article: One of the lies spread by spokesmen in the government in particular, and by the left in general, is "And when we sat in Gaza, there were no Kassams?" The answer is simple: "NO!" When we sat in Gaza, there were no Kassams. We left Gaza (and other places from where they are sending Kassams, like Beit Hanoun, Mejabliya, etc. ... in 1994 because of the Oslo agreements. [R.M. Remember the famous "Gaza-Jericho" plan?]) Before 1994, (when the IDF controlled Gaza) there were no Kassams. Not on Sderot, not on Miflassim, not on Nahal Oz. Another famous sentence uttered in these days by the left is: "We tried already everything." No! That is not true. It is true we tried everything except the one and only thing that will stop the rockets: Complete re-conquest of the entire Gaza Strip. Complete IDF security control in each and every corner. And thus we will repeat it ad nauseam! There is only one way to stop the rocket attacks. To re-conquer Gaza and stay there. It will happen sooner or later. Even Yuval Diskin, General Security Service Chief, and Avi Dichter, Internal Security Minister, already understand this. Dear friends, I am including an article by Israel Harel, columnist for the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz, entitled, "You Promised a Dove, We Got Kassams". This article sheds light on how Israel's leaders got us into this terrible mess we are in. "You promised a dove, we got Qassams" ny Israel Harel, Haaretz November 16, 2006.
* * * Member of Knesset Tzvi Hendel (National Union), commenting on the government's refusal to send in massive forces to enter Gaza, said bitterly, "Only a rocket on Tel Aviv will cause Olmert to take over Gaza." MK Hendel is wrong! A rocket on Tel Aviv will not make Olmert send forces to take over Gaza. Only a direct hit by a rocket on Prime Minister Olmert's residence in Jerusalem would accomplish this! With Blessings and Love for Israel,
Ruth Matar
Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow
(Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their
website address is http://www.womeningreen.org
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NEW "DREYFUS TRIAL;" ISRAEL TEACHES U.S. IN LEBANON; U.S. VS. TURKISH SECULARISM
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 16, 2006. |
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THE UNO IRRESOLUTION The Security Council Resolution on Lebanon was vague about who would contribute what troops when and what they would do. After the ceasefire, the troops turned out to be fewer and their mandate less than needed (Jewish Political Chronicle, 9/2006, p.8 from David Pryce-Jones, National Review, 9/11). The Lebanon War demonstrate that Israel is dependent upon the UNO and on world opinion and that its government, including the Army, has become afraid to make decisions (Op. Cit., p.9 from Amnon Rubinstein, Jerusalem Post, 8/19). Israel fought the war in the same way the US did in Iraq, with too few ground troops. The UNO ceasefire was arranged between Israel and Lebanon, but Lebanon was not a combatant, Hizbullah was. Hizbullah defied the resolution's provision for giving up its arms, and Lebanon let it be. And this was the resolution supposed to enforce the flouted Resolution 1559 about disarming Hizbullah (Ibid, p.11 from New Republic Online, 8/28). Lebanon stated that it wouldn't confiscate terrorists' weapons even if it found their caches. Israel fought with concern about inflicting casualties upon civilians and with incurring casualties, whereas Hizbullah fought to win (Ibid, p.14 from Ralph Peters, NY Post, 8/17). Hizbullah won a victory when the US sponsored the cease-fire irresolution before Israel had dismantled Hizbullah's army (Ibid, p.12 from Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post, 8/13). If the government were decisive, it would not be dependent upon the UNO. If it made an effort to win over public opinion and were peppery about false criticism, it would not be as dependent upon world public opinion. THE NEW "DREYFUS TRIAL" & ISRAEL'S SILENCE ABOUT IT A French TV station broadcast a faked film of what private investigators eventually demonstrated was a staged slaying of the Al-Dura boy, which, without evidence, the narrator blamed on Israeli forces. The film inflamed Europe against Israel. The Israeli government has not contested the film. The station sued one of its critics for libel. The critic produced extensive evidence in behalf of his accusations. Station executives did not appear in court, and its lawyer presented no evidence nor refuted plaintiff's. The court investigator concurred with the defendant. Nevertheless, the judge, in the first of three trials, sided with the station. He argued that the station was above reproach and it would stain the honor of France to admit the accusations. That was the same kind of reasoning that French officials used in the Dreyfus case, refusing to admit that the Army had scapegoated Dreyfus. By ignoring the issue, Israel demonstrated its continued lack of understanding of the effect of propaganda against Israel (IMRA, 10/24 from Caroline Glick). Even leftist journalists in Israel bemoan Israel's buffeting by international public opinion. But they have no plan to fight back. What good is a Jewish state that won't defend itself and Jews everywhere, including Pollard and against FBI and CIA bias against Jews. WEST'S NARROW STRATEGIC WAR VISION Both the US and Israel are making excuses (with some validity) for not succeeding in their current wars. Both, however, focus too narrowly. They focus on their single campaign in a single place. The real war is broader, a world jihad. They do not have a strategy for winning the broader war. (And the US thwarts Israeli defense.) Syria and Iran are running a regional war against us. In that sense, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, and Lebanon are different theaters of the same war. Our enemies also are acting as fifth columns in Europe, India, Indonesia, Australia, and the US. Israel cannot destroy Hizbullah by fighting only in Lebanon, and the US cannot protect Iraq and Afghanistan by fighting only there. We must change the regimes behind the warfare in Damascus and Teheran. Israel eliminated hundreds of Hizbullah fighters, but Syria and Iran have been rebuilding Hizbullah, and war is expected again. The answer is to cut off Hizbullah from its supply of money, weapons, training, and intelligence. The US will pay a price for halting the IDF advance in Lebanon. The same kind of Iranian missiles used against Israeli warships off the coast of Lebanon are being sent to Somalia, for use against our fleet in the oil lanes. Likewise, the same kinds of terrorist cells recently rolled up in Britain, Germany, Italy, and France may spread to the US and may have a common sponsor (Jewish Political Chronicle, 9/2006, p.13 from Michael Ledeen, National Review Online, 8/14). We let Somalia fall at our own peril. This is like my having warned years ago that our GIs are chewing up the terrorists in Iraq, but they keep coming in through Syria and Iran and are inspired by S. Arabia. U.S. TO LEARN FROM ISRAELI EXPERIENCE IN LEBANON The IDF failed to block Hizbullah's communications with Iranian headquarters in Syria. Hizbullah listened in on Israeli communications networks. Iranian equipment in Lebanese Army radar stations blocked Israeli anti-missile missiles, so a Hizbullah missile could strike an Israeli corvette. Israel also was unable to jam the military systems at the Iranian embassy in Beirut, from which Hizbullah issued its commands. Israel and the US and under-estimated Iran's advances in electronic warfare in Iraq and in Lebanon. Hizbullah communications networks were connected by optical fibers not susceptible to electronic jamming. Electronic warfare was the purpose of Iran's naval exercise in April. The US and Israel did not notice that, noticing only the old-fashioned weaponry (Op. Cit., p.15 from DEBKAfile, 8/23). Hizbullah jammed Israeli walkie-talkies. Israeli troops were so weak from hunger and thirst, so unequipped and untrained for this kind of warfare, that some refused orders that in their state would be suicidal. Orders constantly changed and largely were uncoordinated. Instead of the big force moving out, they were told to wait in concentrated groups that made better targets (Ibid. p.16 from Peter Waldman, Wall St. J., 9/1). ISRAEL FORFEITING SOVEREIGNTY OVER OLD CITY "The chronic lawbreaking among the city's Arab residents, as cited by their Jewish neighbors, takes the form of illegal construction, large outdoor events held without a license, unauthorized sellers' stands -- which are a security and safety danger to the public -- as well as the operation of mosque loudspeakers at unusual times and at high volume." (The high volume seems to reflect spite.) "In contrast to its apparent inability to enforce the law against Arab residents of Jerusalem's Old City, MK Gabbai said, the police and municipality have instituted ever more regulations limiting the freedom of movement of many Jews in the city. For example, during the just-ended Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the 800 Jews living in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City were instructed by the Jerusalem police not to leave their homes without prior coordination during the evening hours. This restriction was announced because of the large number of celebrants -- including many hostile ones -- returning from the Temple Mount each night of the month-long Muslim holiday." "Furthermore, the Ministry of Education has forbidden any school trips, including those with armed escorts, from entering the Muslim Quarter -- despite the presence of its 800 Jews. The Jewish residents of the quarter also complained to MK Gabbai about a lack of basic services, such as mail delivery, in their area of the Old City." (Arutz-7, 10/25.) There's just no living with Muslims there. ISRAELIS ALMOST LYNCHED NEAR ARMY CHECKPOINT Near an army lookout point and within sight of an IDF checkpoint, Arab drivers blocked the car of a Jewish family and attacked them. They hit them, threw rocks at them, stole their property, and tried to break their windows to get at them. Finally, another Arab pushed the assailant away. The driver had blown his horn. The soldiers at the checkpoint claim not to have noticed, but the lookout reported the attack, and got no response. Noting that earlier the Army had tried to close the road to Jews, Arutz-7 hints that the failure to protect those settlers was deliberate (10/26). IGNORANT U.S. INTERFERENCE MAY DOOM TURKEY The Islamist Prime Minister of Turkey pledged to adhere to democratic and secular norms, but uses his position to undermine the secular republic. He subverted the banking system by: appointing all Islamists, who no longer account or funds; getting Islamists who lack modern education into the civil service; and enlarging education boards and mandating early retirement to get Islamists to control colleges and courts. The secular society, especially the Army, was ready to fight back. The US (like the EU) headed it off. Out of political correctness, the State Dept. pretends that the government is not Islamist and that the Army, which wants to defend the Constitution and liberty, would be interfering in civilian affairs. The State Dept. pretends that the government is part of the democratic ethos. The Prime Minister's key comment about democracy came when he started in politics. He likened it to a streetcar that one stays on, until one gets off (Barry Rubin, Middle East Forum, 10/24). He exemplifies how Islamists exploit elections. We need to replace our State Dept. -- it's too foolish. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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THE SECOND-WORST OPTION
Posted by Jake Levi, November 16, 2006. |
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This was written by Caroline Glick and it appeared in the
Jerusalem Post November 13, 2006. It is archived at
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A week before the US Congressional elections The New York Times published a front-page story which all but admitted that Iraq's nuclear program had been active until March 2003, when the US-led coalition deposed Saddam Hussein. The Times report relayed concerns of officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency regarding captured Iraqi documents which the administration had posted on the Internet. The documents in question contained Iraqi nuclear bomb designs that could be useful to rogue states like Iran which are currently working to build a nuclear arsenal. The Times article also reported that, in the past, the same Web site had published Iraqi documents relating to nerve agents tabun and sarin. They were removed after their content elicited similar concerns from UN arms control officials. In response to the Times story an international security Web site run by Ray Robinson published a translation of a story that ran on the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Seyassah's Web site on September 25. Citing European intelligence sources, the Al-Seyyassah report claims that in late 2004 Syria began developing a nuclear program near its border with Turkey. According to the report, Syria's program, which is being run by President Bashar Assad's brother Maher and defended by a Revolutionary Guards brigade, "has reached the stage of medium activity." The Kuwaiti report maintains that the Syrian nuclear program relies "on equipment and materials that the sons of the deposed Iraqi leader, Uday and Qusai... transfer[red] to Syria by using dozens of civilian trucks and trains, before and after the US-British invasion in March 2003." The report also asserts that the Syrian nuclear program is supported by the Iranians who are running the program, together with Iraqi nuclear scientists and Muslim nuclear specialists from Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union. The program "was originally built on the remains of the Iraqi program after it was wholly transferred to Syria." This report echoes warnings expressed by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon in the months leading up to the US-led invasion of Iraq that suspicious convoys of trucks were traveling from Iraq to Syria. Sharon's warnings were later supported by statements from former IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, who said last year that Iraq had moved its unconventional arsenals to Syria in the lead-up to the invasion. ACCORDING TO the US Senate's Prewar Intelligence Review Phase II, which studied the prewar intelligence on Iraq's nuclear weapons program, in 2002, the US had learned from the Iraqi foreign minister that while Iraq had not yet acquired a nuclear arsenal, "Iraq was aggressively and covertly developing" nuclear weapons. The Senate report concluded that Saddam was told by his own weapons specialists that Iraq would achieve nuclear weapons capabilities "within 18-24 months of acquiring fissile material." In the weeks and months after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, President George W. Bush repeatedly stated that America's primary security challenge was to prevent the world's most dangerous regimes from acquiring nonconventional, and particularly nuclear weapons. When Bush's statements are assessed against the backdrop of the apparently advanced Iraqi nuclear bomb designs that were placed on the Web in recent weeks, it becomes clear that the US-led invasion successfully prevented Saddam Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons. In his State of the Union Address in 2002, Bush placed Iraq in the same category of threat to US national security as Iran and North Korea. The three rogues states, Bush argued constituted an "axis of evil" that must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. The post-Saddam insurgency in Iraq -- an insurgency largely facilitated and sponsored by Iran -- has caused the US and its coalition partners no end of grief. Some 3,000 coalition servicemen have been killed since the invasion; the overwhelming majority of casualties have been American. Frustration with the continued bloodletting in Iraq was undoubtedly the most significant factor that caused the Republican Party to lose control of both houses of Congress in last Tuesday's elections. And yet, for all the difficulties, pain and frustration the post-Saddam insurgency has caused the US, the toppling of Saddam's regime successfully prevented Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iraq is a war zone today. But it does not have, and likely will not acquire nuclear weapons -- nor chemical or biological weapons, for that matter. To that degree, Bush was neither wrong nor premature when he made it known in the months following the invasion that the US had accomplished its mission in Iraq. IN THE summer of 2003, assessing future trends on the basis of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Libya's dictator Mu'ammar Gaddafi decided to forgo his nuclear weapons program. Libya's decision to give up its nuclear weapons program was a direct consequence of Gaddafi's analysis of US intentions after the invasion. Quite simply, he believed that the best way to ensure the survival of his regime was to relinquish his aspirations to become a nuclear power. But as the months and years have progressed it has become clear that far from being a warning to other would-be nuclear armed dictatorships, the US-led invasion of Iraq was a one-shot deal. As Saddam was captured in his hole, Teheran and Pyongyang marched forward, unchallenged in their campaign to become nuclear powers. The ascent of the most dangerous regimes in the world to the status of nuclear powers reached a new climax last month. First was North Korea's nuclear bomb test on Columbus Day. Two weeks later Iran announced it was doubling its uranium enrichment by utilizing a second network of centrifuges. For their part, most of the nations of the world have looked on with indifference to these developments. South Korean Foreign Minister and incoming UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appears far more concerned with the Japanese debate over whether North Korea's nuclear test should or should not cause Japan to develop its own nuclear arsenal than with the fact that Pyongyang now has nuclear bombs. Ban's apparent moral and strategic dementia is of a piece with the international community's apathy. Europe has responded to Iran's sprint toward nuclear arms by offering its usual mix of toothless sanctions, emotional appeals and diplomatic pageantry, all aimed at marking time until Iran announces its entré into the nuclear club. Russia and China have responded to both Pyongyang and Teheran's nuclear machinations by increasing their collaboration with both regimes. AS FOR the US, Iran, North Korea and al-Qaida have all been quick to interpret the Democratic victory in last Tuesday's Congressional elections as a sign that the US has chosen to turn its back on the threat they pose to America. By firing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and replacing him with Robert Gates, who supports appeasing the mullahs in Teheran and finding a fig-leaf excuse to vacate Iraq, Bush has done everything to prove America's enemies right. Moreover, Bush administration officials' statements ahead of the president's trip to Asia this week indicate that Bush will seek to contend with North Korea by ratcheting up US engagement with Pyongyang in the six-party talks. Reasonably, the world is now assessing the US through the prism of its non-action against Iran and North Korea rather than through the prism of Iraq. And the consequence of the view that Iraq was a deviation from a norm of US passivity is nothing less than the complete breakdown of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty. Last week the Sunday New York Times reported that Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the UAE have all announced their intention to build civilian nuclear reactors. Last Tuesday, in an official visit to China, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reportedly signed an agreement with Chinese leader Hu Jintao for China to build nuclear reactors in Egypt. It is not hard to see the lesson of these developments. As the Iraq campaign shows clearly, while the price of taking action to prevent rogue regimes from acquiring nuclear weapons is high, the price of not acting is far higher. Relating this wisdom to Iran earlier this year, Senator John McCain said, "There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option [to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons], and that is a nuclear-armed Iran." The US and its allies are paying a high price for having successfully prevented Saddam from getting nuclear bombs. The price that Israel or the US, or both, will pay to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear bombs is liable to be even higher. Yet the alternative to paying that price will be suffering, destruction and death on an unimaginable scale. Contact Jake Levi at jlevi_us@yahoo.com. |
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OPTIMISM AND THE NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS
Posted by Daryl Temkin, Ph.D., November 16, 2006. |
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November 12, 2006 Last week was the anniversary of Kristallnacht, The Night of Broken Glass, which was commemorated in Los Angeles with a lecture and ceremony at, of all places, a Catholic university, Loyola Marymount University. The audience consisted of an impressive and diverse mixture of Jesuit priests, Holocaust survivors, community members, Loyola faculty members, and a group of Jewish as well as non-Jewish university graduate students. One of the many infamous milestones of the Holocaust years is named, The Night of Broken Glass. It occurred in Germany on November 9th, 1938. This was the night when Jewish life in Germany took another downward turn and hundreds of Jewish owned businesses, homes and places of worship were vandalized, destroyed and even burned to the ground. Jews of Germany were shocked to watch and experience this radical change in German society. Jews were rapidly being dehumanized. They soon became regarded as non-citizens and social outcasts. Beyond all the ugly destruction that took place on Kristallnacht, there was an additional ugly occurrence. As the Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues were burning, the German firemen arrived on the scene but not for the purpose of putting out the fires. The German firemen stood by with all their fire equipment ready for action, but they did not attempt to save Jewish property. The German firemen were there to make sure that the fires would destroy only Jewish property. On that night, Jews who never thought that cultured, well mannered, and sophisticated German citizens could possibly lower themselves to behavior far worse than animals were in the shock of disbelief. Suddenly, Jewish property, including books and Torah scrolls, became the enemy of the German people and were wantonly desecrated, burned, and destroyed. The lessons learned on that evening of Kristallnacht were many -- including that when people are lawfully permitted to act in a lawless fashion, no matter how refined they might have been, riotous animalistic behavior can suddenly be unleashed. This historic contemptible event showed that when laws controlling human behavior are withdrawn, the unimaginable may occur. The Night of Broken Glass not only shattered thousands of windows, but it shattered thousands of souls. The rude awakening of what laid ahead came into focus on this night. The horror of the burning property and broken glass led to the horror of millions of lives being physically destroyed and millions of lives being emotionally scarred with nightmares and emotional trauma that would last for generations. Currently, we are fortunate to still have some Holocaust survivors with us, but within the next decade the Holocaust will have to be understood and remembered only from books, films, and students of history. The personal testimony of this "unbelievable" event is diminished with the natural loss of each survivor. Unbelievable events are perplexing. Events are unbelievable because they seem contrary to what is typically called "human nature." Human nature is what we are accustomed to as being within a "normal range" of human behavior. Behavior beyond what is considered to be "normal" is considered "unbelievable". When the "unbelievable" or "hard to believe" event is mixed with acts of extreme evil, the event can become beyond conceivability. If not conceivable, how can it be real? Unbelievable behavior, if not supported and clearly witnessed, can easily be questioned and even dismissed for lack of credibility. After all, who wants to believe that humankind could possibly behave with such evil and cold heartedness? This is profoundly seen with the Holocaust denial literature that has been promulgated even while Holocaust survivors are still alive. At last week's Kristallnacht commemoration, a survivor of that horror-filled night shared his memories of the "unbelievable". Although he was just a child at that time, his memories contained detailed clarity. He spoke about his German childhood friends who would play with him daily; and suddenly were no longer allowed to be his friends. Childhood relationships that had been filled with friendship, fun, and intrigue, became tainted overnight with brutal anti-Semitic name-calling and multiple acts of degradation and harassment. Then, the survivor spoke about his memories of his father. He said that his father was a great lover of German life and culture. His father was an eternal optimist. And then the survivor said something that chilled many in the room. He said, "My father's optimism made it impossible for him to deal with the signs of the time and to properly respond to the evil that was about to happen." This single sentence became the outstanding thought of the Kristallnacht commemoration. It was also stated that today's world is not so different than the events of sixty and seventy years ago. Even though many German and European Jews felt safe and protected in their pre- Holocaust host countries, now, in hindsight, we see the many signs of impending danger that were missed or refused to be taken seriously. The Jewish belief in the goodness of humankind created a "limitless optimism" which included the belief that refined European culture could never allow the evil being discussed to become a reality. Optimism can be an enormous strength in human character and behavior allowing for steadfastness and hope to overcome great challenges. However, optimism can also become a type of blindness. Optimism can prevent one from seeing grave dangers when the danger is real and imminent. Misplaced optimism or optimism without meaningful limits can delude persons from seeing the very thing that they need to see. This applies to major episodes of human evil where unlimited optimism can rationalize the evil intentions as being "just their way of thinking". Healthy optimism avoids the blindness wherein distinctions can no longer be made between good and evil, and when evil becomes "good" because blind optimism infers there can be no such thing as evil. In contrast, healthy optimism effectively recognizes an impending danger and identifies evil actions as well as evil plans. In the case of an impending danger or evil plans, optimism can become a creative force to make new decisions and prevent potential catastrophe. Optimism in the face of potential catastrophe responds to the necessity to develop new choices for life to be preserved and for the catastrophe to be diminished or even extinguished. At the present time in history, misplaced and misused optimism which blocks the ability to properly respond to an impending peril could jeopardize the entire future of humankind. Kristallnacht shattered glass and shattered the optimistic illusion that "modern" humankind was immune to committing barbaric evil acts. Now, almost seventy years later, we realize that modern humankind is not so "modern" but is actually potentially more dangerous and more evil than the horrors of the Nazi era. Over the past decades, blind optimism without limits has once again returned to many Jews and non-Jews thereby making it difficult to recognize evil, to respond to evil, yet alone to know when to resist evil. Now is the time when we need a realistic and healthy optimism to help us recognize new options to explore. This type of optimism will show that we have learned from Kristallnacht and that this time we hopefully will make the right decisions to preserve and protect the future of cultured, educated and civilized humankind. Daryl Temkin, Ph.D. is director of the Israel Institute which is devoted to teaching history and contemporary issues of Israel to Jews and Non-Jews throughout the world. He can be reached at DT@Israel-Institute.com or go to the website: http://Israel-Institute.com |
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NEW LEFTIST SLOGAN: BLOWING UP BUSES IS MORE LEGITIMATE THAN SERVING IN THE IDF
Posted by Steven Plaut, November 16, 2006. |
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1. Over the past few months, the cause celebre of Israel's ultra-leftists has been battling against the construction of Israel's security wall near the town of Modi'in. The wall passes in part through lands belonging to Palestinians in the town of Bil'in, on which some olive trees stand. The ultras are outraged. How dare Israel place the lives of Jewish children ahead of Palestinian olive harvesting. The ultras label the wall "The Apartheid Wall" because the wall makes it harder for the Palestinian terrorists whom Israeli ultra-leftists support to carry out mass murders of Jewish children. Several soldiers and policemen have been seriously injured by the ultras in Bil'in. Some of those demonstrating are anarcho-fascist "solidarity" protesters who came into the country from abroad. The ultras have been violently attacking police and soldiers guarding the wall and the construction crews for many months. At least one Tel Aviv University professor, Anat Matar, was arrested for such hooliganism there. But if you think that I am unkindly exaggerating about the true agenda of the protesters against the "apartheid wall", allow me to introduce you to one of the regulars there, one Ronni Barkan, an Israeli pro-terrorist. Barkan, who has refused to serve in the IDF = Israel Defense Forces, spends his nice warm sunny afternoons attacking police and soldiers guarding the wall. Barkan is quoted in the Jerusalem Report of Nov 13, 06 as saying: "In fact, blowing up a bus is far more legitimate than serving in the IDF." Now I am wondering what all of you think about Barkan's idea. Do you think that we should load him and his Bil'in protesting comrades up on a bus and conduct an experiment in applied physics? 2. November 16, 2006 Abba Olmert
"Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go it alone." With these words, Lyndon B. Johnson greeted Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban at the White House on May 26, 1967. The Middle East was in the throes of an escalating crisis. Gamal Abdul Nasser had evicted U.N. peacekeepers from Egypt's border with Israel, blockaded the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and called on the Arab world to "throw the Jews into the sea." Israel had no intention of waiting to see if Nasser would carry out his pledge, or of keeping its troops on the permanent state of alert that was bankrupting the country. And so the Israeli government sent its foreign minister to seek Johnson's approval for mounting a pre-emptive strike. But LBJ only disappointed Eban. Though hostile to Nasser and firmly supportive of Israel, the president was hamstrung by America's imbroglio in Vietnam and by the drop in his domestic support. The most he offered the Israelis was Washington's help in mobilizing international action against Egypt. Beyond that, there was only that repeated, cryptic phrase, "Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go it alone." Perhaps a similar message was imparted by George W. Bush in his meeting earlier this week with Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Much like 1967, Israel faces a Middle Eastern leader who has repeatedly sworn to wipe it off the map, and to that end is assiduously trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Like Nasser, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can cripple Israel economically by keeping it in a state of alert, driving away foreign investment and tourism. In the absence of international commitment to thwart Iran's nuclear plans, Israel has no choice but to consider striking pre-emptively. Doing so, however, requires explicit U.S. support, or at the very least, an indication that the U.S. will not oppose such action. Like Eban 40 years earlier, Mr. Olmert came to Washington in search of a green light. But the U.S. is hardly in the position to sanction an Israeli attack. Bogged down in Iraq and hemorrhaging political capital at home, Mr. Bush resembles Johnson in his inability to approve risky military initiatives. As inimical to Mr. Ahmadinejad as his predecessor was to Nasser, and at least as sympathetic to the Jewish state, Mr. Bush is nevertheless unable to undertake a unilateral attack against Iran or even to endorse an Israeli one. This was bad news for Mr. Olmert. The Israeli prime minister hoped to secure a hard-and-fast timetable for interdicting Iran's nuclear program first by diplomacy and then, if that failed, by force. Instead, he heard that the U.S. would only support measures to isolate Iran economically and balked at the use of bombs. Though he and his administration have routinely stated a determination to prevent Iran from obtaining strategic capabilities, Mr. Bush, in the aftermath of his party's electoral defeats, avoided all public mention of armed power as a means of achieving that goal. The only option for the U.S., then, is international sanctions. These, however, have proven singularly inadequate in quashing the nuclear aspirations of North Korea -- a country far more financially fragile than Iran -- and lack the vital support of Russia, China and France. Iran has also threatened to retaliate for sanctions by cutting back oil production and increasing its support for terror. Back in 1967, Johnson also tried to apply international pressure on Egypt. He planned to issue a multilateral declaration condemning the closure of Tiran and to create a convoy of ships from 26 nations to physically challenge the blockade. But fearing for their oil supplies, European countries refused to cooperate with Johnson's d.marche, while Egypt threatened violence against any attempt to reopen the straits. In the end, only four countries were willing to sign the declaration and only two volunteered ships for the convoy. Mr. Bush is unlikely to be more successful than Johnson in marshalling international strictures against a defiant Middle Eastern regime. Nor was Mr. Olmert liable to extract from Mr. Bush more concrete backing for pre-emptive action than Eban did from LBJ. At most, Mr. Bush could have signaled his sympathy for Israel's plight and for the steps it must take to ensure its survival. The light Mr. Olmert received in Washington was probably not green, but neither was it flashing red. Eban left the White House disappointed and confused. Neither he nor the Israeli government could decipher the meaning of the message "Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go it alone." Was the president opposed to an assault against Egypt, as some of the ministers believed, or was he indicating his willingness to look the other way while Israel attacked? Ultimately, Israeli leaders concluded that, while the U.S. might condemn the action, it would probably do nothing to stop it. Johnson, for his part, understood that the Israelis had lost faith in international diplomacy and would interpret his words as a go. "They're going to hit," the president sighed, "and there's nothing we can do about it." Lyndon Johnson indeed did little to prevent Israel from launching its surprise attack against Egypt on June 5 or, after Jordan and Syria joined the war, from advancing into the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The Six-Day War was a seismic event that profoundly altered the Middle East, with reverberations that continue to convulse the region. An Israeli strike at Iran's nuclear facilities could well have a similar impact, especially as Mr. Ahmadinejad and the mullahs are certain to react violently. Mr. Olmert and his government must consider such consequences as they decide on Israel's next moves. The ramifications of that decision are certain to affect America as well. Many Arabs to this day believe that the U.S. was complicit in the Six-Day War, and even that American pilots flew Israeli planes. Such rumors will again be rife if Israel attacks Iran, and especially if Israeli jets pass through Iraq's American-controlled airspace. Israel may indeed act alone, but in the minds of a great many people in the Middle East, the U.S. acts with it. Mr. Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, is author of "Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present," forthcoming from W.W. Norton. URL for this article:
3. Lying at Stanford:
How would you react if a Stanford student organization announced the establishment of a new group called Students Confronting British Nazism, or Students Confronting Women's Blame for Rape? Or how about Students Confronting African American Inferiority? Anyone with a moral bone in his body would clearly be flooded by feelings of incredulity, followed by outrage. Why? Because these group names not only assert a blatant lie, they are also deeply offensive and dangerous. The British are no Nazis, women are never to blame for rape and African Americans are not "inferior" to anyone. The purpose of such a group would be purely negative -- its very ambition to dehumanize and delegitimize an entire group of people. Surely no Stanford student organization would stoop so low, right? Wrong! By announcing last week that it was creating a new group called Students Confronting Apartheid in Israel -- and launching a series of assaults accusing Israel of institutionalized racism, the Stanford student organization Coalition for Justice in the Middle East (CJME) -- demonstrated that when it comes to the Jewish people, even the most abusive and pernicious lies are fair game on campus. Apartheid. the official policy of racial "apartness" strangled South African nonwhites for decades, crippling countless lives with laws involving political, legal, and economic discrimination based on racial hatred. The politicized claims of Israeli "apartheid" distort the historical record and denigrate the suffering of Black South African victims. The analogy between apartheid and Israel is absurd. The revival of national sovereignty in the Jewish homeland is not a manifestation of European colonialism, in contrast to the white settlers (Afrikaans, English and others) who created Johannesburg and Pretoria. Jews are indigenous to the Middle East as is the Jewish national language, Hebrew. Anyone who has ever visited Israel knows that it is one of the most diverse multi-ethnic democracies in the world. While South African apartheid was based on denial of sovereignty for the black population, Israelis accepted the two-state solution from the beginning, including the 1947 UN partition plan. And while black labor was exploited in slavery-like conditions under apartheid, Palestinians are dependent on Israeli employment due to their leaders' own corruption and economic failures. Israel does not benefit from cheap and unskilled Palestinian labor. Rather, Palestinian dependency is a drain on both societies. It is not surprising, therefore, that Columbia University president Lee Bollinger called the comparison of Israel to apartheid "grotesque and offensive". Apartheid? Israel is the sole liberal democracy in the Middle East. Is it perfect? Of course not. No human society can ever be. However, Israel is the only place in the Middle East where Arab citizens possess equal rights (for more details, visit Freedom House at www.freedomhouse.org). Israeli Arab citizens have full parliamentary representation, vote their conscience, sit on Israel's Supreme Court, worship freely and criticize the government (constantly!) without fear. Meanwhile, the Saudi government prohibits Jews, by law, from setting foot in Saudi Arabia. CJME's actions are not only based on a spiteful myth, they are also dangerous. Racism is the 21st century's scarlet letter: Once branded racist, you're an outcast. Those who attempt to label Israel an "apartheid state" are in effect campaigning against co-existence and peace. Does one co-exist with apartheid? No. Does one make peace with apartheid? Of course not, because to do so would be morally wrong. By establishing the new group, CJME hopes that the repetition of the rhetoric of demonization ("apartheid," "genocide," "racism") will come to be accepted as truth, creating an atmosphere of intimidation for Jewish students and animosity toward Israel. Ah, but what about free speech? While even hate propaganda may be protected speech, this does not mean that it is acceptable to spread offensive lies on campus. Would we tolerate a Stanford student organization whose sole purpose is to trash any other religious, ethnic or gender-based community? Our culture of respect and diversity makes this normatively unacceptable. Equally disturbing is the one sided, selective nature of the attack. If they truly cared about protecting fundamental rights in the Middle East, the anti-Israel groups would protest gender discrimination throughout the region, where "religious" thugs murder girls who don't wear veils, or where fathers and brothers kill sisters and daughters who fall in love with a non-Muslims (so-called "honor killings"). They'd protest ethnic discrimination in Sudan, where Arab Muslims have been ethnically cleansing African Muslims and Christians for decades, driving them off their lands, capturing, enslaving or slaughtering them. They may even criticize the wholesale ethnic cleansing of nearly the entire Christian and Jewish populations of the Arab world by Arab governments. Like many of the student activists at the University, the Stanford students who make up CJME have been blessed with tremendous opportunities, energy and organizational talents. They can choose whether to invest those assets in building or destroying, creating good or doing harm. Demonizing Israel so irresponsibly is wrong and dangerous. Far better to work together towards achieving the goals of the UN Arab Human Development Report -- democracy, self-determination, gender freedom, prosperity, security and peace for all in the Middle East: Christians, Jews and Muslims. 4. Dance the Marxarena (to the tune of Dance the Macarena) First you throw your granny in the Gulag,
Steal the land and starve away the peasants,
7. New Program at Galilee College:
Following the success of our first Summer Programme on the Middle East, we are now happy to announce the opening of the registration to the 2007 session. In the last programme we had post graduates and university students from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, UK and USA. We expect that the upcoming programme will attract world wide participants who are interested in the present situation of the Middle East. We believe that the complexities of the region can be better understood when one actually sees for ones self. The programme is intended for students of History, Political Science, Middle East Studies and professionals interested in the Middle East. The course is aimed at extending the participants knowledge of conditions, developments and trends in Israel, Palestine and the environs. The programme's Academic Director is Dr. Mahmoud Yazbak, Senior Lecturer for the Department of Middle Eastern History, University of Haifa. The lectures will be held by Palestinian and Israeli academics and experts and will offer a balanced view of the situation in the region. The 2007 programme will also include events that allow first hand exposure to the Israeli-Palestine conflict: meeting with Palestinian NGOs, visit to a Jewish settlement, meeting with people from Arab villages in Israel, participating in a panel of representatives from the different political parties in Israel, etc. It would be appreciated should you bring this programme to the attention of the students at your university. A limited number of tuition scholarships will be available to qualified candidates. Students who are interested should contact the Programme Director. Ms. Shoshi Norman e-mail: snorman@galilcol.ac.il Sincerely yours
8. Bumper sticker seen: David, you are better off staying in that orphanage in Malawi! Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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THE STARK REALITY OF EHUD OLMERT ET AL
Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman, November 15, 2006. |
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This is redacted from an article by Professor Paul Eidelberg that appeared in the Jewish Press November 3, 2006. |
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On June 9, 2005, Ehud Olmert revealed what he is made of in a speech to the Israel Policy Forum in New York. Israel's government, of which he was the vice premier, was then in the process of preparing some 50,000 soldiers and police to implement Sharon's plan to withdraw front Gaza and expel its 8,000 Jewish residents. Olmert told his New York audience that the withdrawal represents "a remarkable process ... that will have an enormous impact on everything that will happen thereafter, in the State of Israel and in the Middle East." Dwelling in wonderland, Olmert spoke glowingly of the unilateral aspect of the Gaza withdrawal: "We don't have to wait anymore," he said. Glib as usual, he even boasted to his American audience: "We really don't need the United States to lead the [peace] process in the Middle East, we will lead this process. Israel will lead the process, he blabbered "because it's good for us" -- Really! "And we will lead it because it may do good to the Palestinians." (How generous!) "And we believe that if it will be good for us and will be good for the Palestinians, then it will be good." Impeccable logic! And why will it be good? Because "It will bring more security, greater safety, much more prosperity and a lot of joy for all the people that live in the Middle East." Hallelujah! Intoxicated with himself, Olmert confided: "We are tired of fighting; we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning; we are tired of defeating our enemies; we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies. We want them to be our friends, our partners, our good neighbors." This confession reveals not only an errant fool but of a degenerate. Before you turn off, ponder the words of that great Zionist, Max Nordau, a psychologist of profound learning -- an atheist who understood the mentality of Jews like Olmert. I call to your attention Nordau's 1895 work, Degeneration. This heavy tome, which was re-published in 1968, has been the subject of several doctoral dissertations. It offers a deep understanding of people of Olmert's mentality -- suffice to mention Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres and former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, who decriminalized the government's expulsion of those thousands of Jews from Gaza. According to Nordau, "That which nearly all degenerates lack is the sense of morality and of right and wrong." This degeneracy is widespread in democratic societies where moral relativism is rampant and I have evidence that the persons mentioned have been tainted by this academic doctrine. An inevitable consequence or concomitant of moral relativism is what Nordau calls "egomania," which he discusses at great length. "Egomania renders degenerates incapable of empathy. Pre-occupied with themselves, they are insensitive to the feelings of others. Degenerates lack public spiritedness, a heightened sense of outrage at the suffering of others, and of course they lack a sense of honor." I dare say it is in these terms that we are to understand not only Sharon's policy of self-restraint toward Arab terrorists -- which made the murder of an indeterminate number of Jews"acceptable" -- but also his less deadly policy of expelling Jews from their homes. Did not this egomaniac tell his cabinet:"Anyone who speaks or writes against disengagement is guilty of incitement!" Nordau also claims that the degenerate is"incapable of correctly grasping, ordering, or elaborating into ideas and judgments the impressions of the external world..." He"surrenders himself to the perpetual obfuscation of... fugitive ideas". He is given to"fixed" ideas, however nebulous (like"peace" ). Moreover,"facts which do not please him he does not notice, or so interprets that they seem to support his delirium." Here Nordau anticipates Harry Stack Sullivan's concept of"selective inattention" -- typical of Jews whose lust for peace blinds them to 14 centuries of Arab bellicosity and barbarism. This selective inattention raises the question of whether degenerates compulsively misrepresent or consciously lie about reality (like unilateral disengagement is good). Nordau contends that they believe in the truth of their fabrications. Perhaps, but self-delusion may sometimes be a developmental phenomenon. Selective inattention is often the result of fear as well as of egoism. Nordau has observed this. Indeed, not only does continued fear govern many degenerates, but also such is their inability to face reality that even their instinct of self- preservation is crippled. Nordau's analysis of degenerates clearly applies to Israel's ruling elites, exemplified by Israel's current prime minister. -- Olmert has witnessed 13 years of the Oslo policy of"territory for peace" and its consequences: the murder and maiming of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children. Yet he persists in this delusion. Olmert continues to condone the arming and release of thousands of Arab terrorists, who invariably revert to terrorism. All this is not simply a consequence of American pressure. It is not simply a consequence of miscalculation or eyen of stupidity. Israel has -- and not for the first time -- a degenerate prime minister. There is a lesson to be drawn from this analysis. Criticism of Israel's ruling elites, as if they were rational actors, is misleading if not irrelevant. Another election, even if Olmert were to be replaced by some other member of the Knesset, will not steer Israel away from the suicidal path of its last seven prime ministers. Let's stop kidding ourselves. Democracy offers no solution to this malaise -- certainly not that which passes for a democracy in the shrinking state of Israel. Jerome S. Kaufman is National Secretary of the Zionist Organization of America. and host the Israel Commentary website (http://www.israel-commentary.org). |
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REALISM NOW!
Posted by Barry Rubin, November 15, 2006. |
| Let's get serious. This is not for clearly assessing the situation and demanding that others do the same, not for apologies. And we are at a turning point not because the big changes are happening today but because they are clearly visible a bit down the road. Now is the time to make decisions about what to do. It is going to be easy to make little day-to-day, reactive decisions. Yet, this approach will be inadequate. On each of a half-dozen impending crises, a strategy is needed. Yet, all too rarely do I see discussion of the real issues, especially coming from the biggest names and in the most prestigious publications in Europe and America. Here they are: -- Lebanon. An alliance of Iran, Syria, Hizballah, Michel Aoun's local Christians, and pro-Syrian Lebanese politicians are trying to take over the country's government. Perhaps this will mean the Israel-Lebanon border will be quiet for a while since the main front is in Beirut. The moderate Lebanese majority is being threatened verbally every day with broad hints of violence to come if they don't give way. One would think that having Lebanon take over by a combination of extreme Islamists and aggressive foreign states should be a matter of some concern. Is anyone going to do anything before it is too late and the region has taken another big step toward destabilization by radicals? There is a great deal of talk about solutions to these issues, misperceived as they are, but the focus is on four phony panaceas, which will clearly not work. In fact, they are likely to make the extremists bolder and more reckless: 1. Reactivating the Palestinian-Israel peace process. I don't care what your political preferences are, but you've got to be really reality-challenged to believe in this one. PA chair Mahmoud Abbas cannot be helped by anyone. His Fatah group is divided, largely radical, and remarkably ineffective. He is weak and vacillating. Hamas daily explains it will not change its goal of destroying Israel and is salivating for a chance to get out on the battlefield. As I said at the start of the column, let's get serious. Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center university. His co-authored book, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, (Oxford University Press) is now available in paperback and in Hebrew. His latest book, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, was published by Wiley in November 2005. Prof. Rubin's columns can be read online at: http://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/column.html. |
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FOX NEWS REPORTERS FREED FOR $2 MILLION -- TERRORISTS USED CASH FOR ARMS
Posted by Barry Shaw, November 15, 2006. |
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Fox News gave $2,000,000 ransom to Palestinian terror groups. Their money buys weapons that will kill Israelis.. Palestinian terror groups and security organizations in the Gaza Strip received $2 million from a United States source in exchange for the release of Fox News employees Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, who were kidnapped here last summer, a senior leader of one of the groups suspected of the abductions told WND. Fox News reporters freed for $2 million Terrorists used cash for arms to 'hit Zionists,' payment said to encourage more abductions This is by Aaron Klein. It appeared in www.WorldNetDaily.com |
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-- Palestinian terror groups and security organizations in the Gaza Strip received $2 million from a U.S. source in exchange for the release of Fox News employees Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, who were kidnapped here last summer, a senior leader of one of the groups suspected of the abductions told WND. The terror leader, from the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees, said his organization's share of the money was used to purchase weapons, which he said would be utilized "to hit the Zionists." He said he expects the payments for Centanni and Wiig's freedom will encourage Palestinian groups to carry out further kidnappings. Officials associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party and its security organization, the Preventative Security Services, confirmed to WND money was paid for the release of the Fox News reporters. A senior leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, the declared "military wing" of Fatah, said the group received a small percentage of the $2 million, which all parties interviewed said was transferred in cash. Centanni and Wiig were released last August after being held hostage by terrorists in Gaza for nearly two weeks. Shortly before their release, a video was issued showing the two dressed in beige Arab-style robes and appearing to convert to Islam. Wiig, a New Zealand citizen, gave an anti-Western speech, with his face expressionless. Centanni later explained he and Wiig were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. One week after the abduction WND broke the story a clan from the Gaza Strip which leads terror cells of the Popular Resistance Committees were prime suspects in the kidnappings. Senior Palestinian officials told WND their investigation into the abductions led them to the Dugmash family, based in Khan Yunis and Gaza City. They said they have "evidence" the clan was "heavily involved." Members of the Dugmash clan lead the "Saladin resistance department" of the Popular Resistance Committees, an umbrella of Palestinian terror groups which previously carried out anti-U.S. attacks, including the bombing in 2003 of a U.S. convoy in Gaza in which three American government contractors were killed. The Committtees is also responsible for scores of anti-Israel shooting attacks and bombings and for a large number of rocket attacks against Jewish communities near Gaza. The senior leader of the Committees, speaking to WND on condition of anonymity, would not say whether members of his group carried out the Fox News kidnappings, but he admitted the Committees received money for "aiding" in the release of Centanni and Wiig. The terror leader said $2 million cash was transferred to the Preventative Security Services, the main Fatah security forces in Gaza, for distribution to various parties. He said the largest portion of the money was provided to the Committees' Dugmash clan, which Israeli security officials say is heavily involved in the smuggling of weapons and drugs into Gaza and which openly has led anti-Israel terror attacks on behalf of the Popular Resistance Committees. The Committees leader would not provide the exact sum transferred to the clan, but said it exceeded $1 million. Smaller sums of cash were given to select members of the Preventative Security Services, officially to pay them as "private citizens" for working overtime to free Centanni and Wiig, the terror leader said. He said most of the Security Services members who were paid are associated with elements of the Dugmash clan. A member of the Security Services confirmed the cash transfers. A sum of about $20,000 was provided to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, the Committees leader said, explaining the organization was paid to avoid conflict with militants from Abbas' Fatah party. The Committees is closely associated with Hamas, while the Brigades is a member of the rival Fatah party. A leader of the Brigades in the northern Gaza Strip confirmed the money was received but maintained his group was not involved with the kidnappings. The Popular Resistance Committees leader said aside from the large cash transfer to the Dugmash section of his group, the Committees as an organization received about $150,000. He said the money was used to purchase weapons. "We used 100 percent of the money for one precise goal -- our war against the Zionists," the Committees leader said. He said weapons purchased included rockets. "Regarding the others (the Dugmash clan of the Committees) who received the money, I can tell you one thing is very clear -- this went also to be used against the Zionists. I can't say every cent went to buy bombs, maybe it also went to pay for salaries, smuggling, buying shelter." The Committees leader said he "knows" the money came from the U.S. as part of a deal to free Centanni and Wiig but could not identify exactly which organization or government entity transferred the cash. Fox source says it's possible A spokeswoman for Fox News Channel told WND she could not provide an official statement about whether Fox was aware of money paid to free its two employees. A source at Fox told WND many parties were involved with the freedom of Centanni and Wiig, including the U.S. government, and that it was possible money was paid. A State Department spokesman said his agency did not pay for the release of the Fox News employees. The senior Committees leader and members of Fatah's Preventative Security Services told WND that as part of the cash transfer, leaders of the Security Services pledged to ensure against further kidnappings of Americans in the Palestinian territories. But the Committees leader balked at the promise. "This is just so the Americans can turn the affair into a beautiful thing by saying they have a pledge," said the terror leader. "Maybe the Preventive Security Services took the promise but we didn't. They have no way of enforcing it. The Palestinian groups can still kidnap Americans. Maybe for a short period the groups will not kidnap Americans to show respect for the promises, but if there is an escalation, we will not hesitate to kidnap Americans." The leader spoke three days after his organization and three other Palestinian terror groups signed a statement warning the U.S. is officially a target for Palestinian attacks, both in the region and abroad. He told WND the cash transfers for the release of Centanni and Wiig likely will embolden Palestinian terror groups to carry out further abductions. "This does encourage people to continue kidnappings," said the terror leader. If you'd like to sound off on this issue, please take part in the WorldNetDaily poll. Barry Shaw made aliyah from Manchester, England, 25 years ago with his family. He writes the "View from Here" columns from Israel. To sign up to receive his emails, contact him at netre@matav.net.il
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POLES DISCOVER THEIR JEWISH ROOTS
Posted by Canadian International Peace Project, November 15, 2006. |
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This article comes from Adam Easton, BBC News, Warsaw. |
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Under Nazi and communist persecution, the few Jews who remained in Poland sometimes hid their identity, leaving a surprise in store for their descendants.
Pawel works in the kitchen of a kosher restaurant in the heart of Warsaw's growing Jewish community, near the 19th Century Nozyk synagogue, a Jewish theatre and cultural centre. When he was younger, he used to be a skinhead. "I am from a Catholic family. I was baptised. My parents are still Catholics," he told me. "When I was a skinhead, I used to go around saying: oh, those Jews, look at what they've done. "It was madness because we didn't know anything about Jews or Jewish culture. It was just slogans -- like Jews Rule the World, Jews are Bad. "When there was a black person in the street, we used to chase him. If we caught him, we did what we did. "A young person always needs to find an enemy and we found this enemy in Jews, blacks and Gypsies." Six years ago, Pawel made a discovery that turned his life upside down -- he found out that he was Jewish. His parents had turned their back on Jewish life and they had never told him about his background. "When I looked into the mirror I asked myself: why should I be a Jew? It was the biggest shock of my life. It was really a huge blow. For most of my life I hated them. It was too much to take in at once." New path Pawel decided he wanted to know more about Judaism and he started attending the synagogue. Now 30 years old, he is trying to lead an Orthodox lifestyle, but it is not always easy when he wears his skullcap on the streets. "I put on a hat but it doesn't help much because I still stand out with my beard. People stare and turn around. Sometimes they say: look there's a Jew. But, I don't find it offensive. I used to behave like that." Pawel has not been able to meet some of his old friends because he is afraid of how they would react. He did not want to be photographed. But his parents are proud that he and his wife, who is also Jewish, are raising a Jewish family, even if his mother and father do not want to return to the faith. "I told my Dad it would be good for him to go back to Judaism but he said he is so used to the Church it would be difficult for him. This is their choice, there's no point in forcing it -- I just want them to be happy." Revival Warsaw was once home to the largest Jewish community in the world after New York. But 90% of Poland's Jews were murdered by the Nazis during World War II. The majority of those who survived decided to emigrate after suffering repression under the new communist authorities. But since the collapse of communism in 1989 people have felt free to talk about Jewish life and the country's Jewish community is undergoing a revival. Many Poles were brought up as Catholics and only later discovered they were really Jewish or had Jewish ancestors. At the Nozyk synagogue, which stands almost hidden beside grey communist-era tower blocks and modern glass skyscrapers in the centre of Warsaw, Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, leads the daily prayers. Officially there are just a few thousand registered Jews in the country. Some estimates suggest there could be up to 30,000 people with Jewish roots. "It's far more common than people realise. It's probably in the thousands at least," he says. "We have had support groups and certainly people have been shocked. Those who come and begin to learn about what it means to be Jewish -- in some way, at some level, end up at peace with it -- or at a liveable level of peace with it. It is not simple, it takes a lot of patience and I really stand in awe of these people because I don't know if I could do what they have done." First steps In Warsaw's Jewish school, a class of four-year-olds take their first steps as young members of the Jewish community. Here they will get a good general education but they will also learn about Jewish life, culture and Hebrew. "We hope that they will remain Jewish and that they will keep the Jewish education they received here in our school and, in the future, they will get more interested in any kind of Jewish life," the school's director, Rabbi Pavlac, explains. "Whether they choose to be religious or non-religious -- they will stay with us as a community," he adds. Like many others here, 29-year-old Rabbi Pavlac only discovered he was Jewish when he was a teenager. He has just become the country's first Polish rabbi in 40 years. Many people believe the Holocaust killed off Jewish life in Poland but people like Pawel, Rabbi Pavlac and the 240 pupils at this school are proof that it is slowly coming back to life again.
Contact CIPP at cipp@rogers.com
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SYRIA KNOWS IT CAN PROMISE THE USA ANYTHING, AND OUR DIPLOMATES SWOON!
Posted by David Meir-Levi, November 15, 2006. |
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Mirabile Dictu (amazing to say): For a change, I agree with a NY Times editorial. The USA should aggressively explore every possible peaceful means of achieving its foreign policy goals via diplomacy BEFORE adopting a harsher more threatening (perhaps even militaristic) line. Carrot before Stick. Woo before Whip. Speak softly but carry a big..... (y'all know what I mean). However, there is one caveat that I would add to the NY Times editorial below: It is important to recognize that an adversarial diplomatic interlocutor can use peace talks and diiplomatic interaction as a means of stalling and gaining time in order to bring its own preparations for war and aggression in to a higher state of readiness....thus giving it an edge in the military confrontation for which it is preparing and from which the diplomacy is supposedly dissuading it. It is sort of like: "promise her anything, but give her Arpege"; except that if the adversarial interlocutor can promise the USA anything, but knows that it does not need to give anything, and can do what it wants behind the scenes while the endless diplomatic activities are going on....then, by the time our diplomats catch on to the ruse....well, the adversarial interlocutor has already acheived what he wanted. This is what Iran has done for the past year or so. Agree to a UN deadline on stopping WMD progress; then not meeting that deadline and taking a harsh stand, and then under diplomatic pressure softening that stand and agreeing to a new deadline, much to the relief and satisfaction of the USA and EU and UK and UN....and then not meeting that deadline and blaming any and every non-Moslem country in the world for Iran's problems....and then softening under new diplomatic preassure and threats of sanctions, and then using behind-the-scenes diplomacy with potential allies against the USA and thus getting the Russian and Chinese and French support which it needed to fend off the USA diplomatic pressure and threats of UN sanctions....until...lo and behold....after all the talk and seesawing diplomacy....Iran has the bomb and no one can take it from her. This is what Arafat did for years with Israeli and USA diplomats.....much to the consternation and disappointment of Clinton and the Israeli peacenik crowd and Baraq government....until finally Dennis Ross caught on, and Sharon stopped the Arafat charade. And this is what the USSR did in the Cold War, for decades, after via negotiations the USSR came to some agreement with the West making concessions and expecting a USSR counter-concession...but then the West found that the USSR simply pocketed those concessions and then created new demands with some justification or another. That is why USA missiles in Turkey, within range of Moscow, were so important to American diplomacy during the Cold War, as were many tens of thousands of USA troops in West Germany.....and that is why it was wise and courageous of President Kennedy to not allow Soviet missiles in to Cuba. Happily, at that time, no one was preaching that we simply must learn to live with a nuclear Cuba. So, re Syria: Syria hosts c. 63 terrorist training camps. Some 70,000 wannabbee terrorists train there. Thousands of these terror-troops are in Iraq killing Iraqis and killing our troops. Others are in Lebanon working with Hezbollah, killing Israelis. Syria is acknowledged to be the supplier of Hezbollah, and the puppet of Iran. Syrian interference in Lebanon threatens the stabilitiy of the Lebanese gov't (as does Hezbollah, thanks to its supplies from Iran via Syria). Syria is, in thought, word, and deed, an enemy of the USA and the West. The diplomacy that the NY Times suggests for the USA to do with Syria must take in to consideration these Syrian actions....and weigh against those actions whatever words Syrian diplomats speak. If the actions and the words are synchronous ( a real word? I don't know. Maybe I just made it up), then diplomacy should move ahead. But if actions are not synchronous with words, then the actions speak louder.....and that non-synchronosity (real word?) may be telling our diplomats that it is time to move from diplomatic niceties to real action; action which may include such things as a carte blanche to Israel to use force to stop the Syrian supplies to Hezbollah, or full USA diplomatic recognition to Israel's annexation of the Golan heights, or a USA-sponsored motion in the UN to recognize that Har Dov (aka the Sheba'a farms) is fully and completely a part of the Golan Heights and is therefore part of Israel now (per international law re territory acquired through DEFENSIVE military actions). Historically, this has not happened. Our diplomats, in past interactions with Syria during President Clinton's term, seemed all to ready to swoon in delight over any hint of moderation from Syria, acting as though they could trust Syrian leaders to keep their word, and disregading Israeli caveats regarding Syria's real intentions. Precisely because of USA non-action against Syria, Syria and Hezbollah were able to firmly entrench themselves in Lebanon and generate the current situation in which Iran is poised to establish a Shi'ite-run Hezbollah-led proxy government in Lebanon....much to the consternation of Israel and the USA. If Syria could be made aware of the USA's firm intention to move beyond words in the event that the USA gets the impression that Syria is stalling....then the USA's diplomatic words and carrots and wooing might be far more effective. The Times editorial is called "The Road to Damascus." It appeared today. |
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Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, got what he wanted most out of his White House meeting with President Bush on Monday -- a reiteration of America's uncompromising bargaining position on the Iranian nuclear issue. Tough talk is fine, but not enough. Washington could put greater pressure on Iran and perhaps advance another urgent Israeli concern, disarming Hezbollah, by dropping its resistance to high-level talks with Syria. Whenever such talks are proposed, Mr. Bush and Mr. Olmert point out the many objectionable policies of Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad. That misses the point. Diplomacy is not simply a matter of rewarding countries that act the way Washington likes. It can also be a useful tool for trying to induce countries like Syria to behave more constructively. With Iran now asserting that it has achieved international acceptance as a nuclear state and Syria's Lebanese allies again challenging the Beirut government, it is time to give direct diplomacy with Syria a serious try. Chipping away at Lebanon's sovereignty or Israel's security to win Syria's good will would, of course, be a disastrous mistake. But without crossing those red lines it might be possible for Washington to wean Damascus away from its alliance of convenience with Tehran. Syria and Iran are not natural or inevitable allies. Washington's clumsy attempts to ostracize both regimes have managed to tighten their mutual embrace. One crucial difference between them is that Iran is thumbing its nose at international diplomacy so it can continue to learn how to enrich bomb grade uranium, and Syria is not. That is a distinction Washington needs to recognize and exploit. A Syria detached from Iran and engaged by the United States could conceivably be enlisted in reviving the Arab-Israeli peace effort and containing the spreading chaos in Iraq. Syria's national interests in both areas at least partially intersect with those of the United States and Israel. Mr. Olmert was right to sound the alarm about an Iran that continues to advance its nuclear capabilities while its president calls for Israel's destruction. For now, the most effective response would be a full-court diplomatic press, combined with an escalating menu of international sanctions until Iran agrees to halt uranium enrichment. With the threat from Iran so clear, this is no time to invent more reasons for not talking to Syria. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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IRELAND'S LARGEST DAILY: "ISRAEL DESERVES OUR SYMPATHY"
Posted by Naomi Ragen, November 15, 2006. |
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Friends, The Irish, in general, have been among the worst in Israel-bashing Europe. Therefore, Kevin Myers, a prominent columnist, is quite surprising in his honest, pro-Israel column. Thanks Kevin! I hope your countrymen wake up. This appeared in today's Irish Independent. Naomi |
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HOW does Israel choose its ambassador to Ireland? If he was struck by lightning two minutes after he was born; if his mother had inverted nipples so he could suck no milk; if the rabbi's scalpel was rusty and blunt, leading to full amputation of the organ in question; if his school was infected by scabies and he spent his childhood scratching himself almost to death; if he went bald at the age of 14, and lost his teeth at the age of 18 -- well, then clearly he is a chap who is used to misfortune, and is thoroughly qualified to be Israeli ambassador to Ireland. For this appointment would wipe the smile off the face of the happiest Jew in the world. Indeed, when Danny Kaye was offered the job, he promptly became a Mormon, and grew a foreskin. Because, there is in this country almost no popular sympathy whatever for the plight of the Israeli people, and wherever the wretched Israeli ambassador goes, he'll be met by renta-mobs of ignorant hullabalooing know-alls, howling their anthems of hatred. The apex of this anti-Israeli pathology is in the Seanad -- surely the most redundant, conceited and dim-witted upper chamber of any state in Europe. This is the home of that grisly and self-congratulatory Michael D Norris-tendency, with their regular, shrill peacock-screeches of denunciations of anything to do with Israel (usually after some disingenuous declarations about their love of Jews). University campuses, in their more modest undergraduate way, tend to follow senatorial example, typically with their banners proclaiming, "Lesbians, Gays & Trans-Sexuals Against Israel". What welcome would the Seanad or our university campuses extend to Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose forces have ruthlessly showered Israeli civilian areas with rockets? What greeting would they give the Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, or the Hamas political leader, Khalid Misshal? These fine fellows want to introduce full-blown Islamic law to the entire area of Palestine, including Israel. Would they howl these creatures down, as they do the Israeli ambassador every time that gallant tries to speak in public? Do you know, I rather doubt it. The truth is that any anti-Zionist Arab who comes to Ireland, regardless of the vileness of his general opinions, will be greeted as if he were the recently discovered love-child of Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa. No inconvenient questions for him about by which manner he prefers to execute homosexuals -- by pushing walls on them with bulldozers, as Taliban did, or the rather more existentially satisfying one of the crowd being allowed to stone them to death, as in Iran and Saudi. Ditto harlots. Ditto women who have been raped and can't prove they didn't give assent. It is not merely the sheer stupidity of the reflexive anti-Israeli attitude in Ireland, but its counter-emotionalism which is so stunning. If most people judge an issue by consulting their feelings -- which, regretably, is usually the case in this country -- then surely some hearts, if only out of sentiment alone, should be moved by Israel's dilemma. After all, the Jewish state is smaller in area than Munster, and is surrounded by a hostile Arab landmass the size of the continental United States. It has not known general peace in 60 years. Instead, almost all traditions of supporting the underdog, of siding with the weakest, of sympathising with those who have been oppressed for hundreds of years, vanish completely when the weak, oppressed underdog is Jewish and Israeli. And please, please spare me talk about the powerlessness of the Palestinians compared to the military might of Israel. Both are meaningless illusions when confronted by the demographics of the region and the cult of the suicide bomber. Laser-guided missiles can do nothing to prevent the Arabs of the region dramatically out-breeding Jews in the next half a century: smart technology cannot thwart the smarter suicide-bomber, who in a heterogeneous and open society like Israel will sooner or later blow apart the school bus or the bar-mitzvah. The generalised Arab intifada against Israel took a new shape earlier this year, with the ceaseless rocket bombardment of Israeli cities -- usually from the very areas which the Israelis had, under international pressure, obligingly just vacated. The Israeli response was exactly in line with the expectations of Hizbollah. The latter's men used civilian areas to attack Israeli towns, largely inaccurately, and imbecilic; but largely accurate Israeli counter-fire then killed sleeping civilians, as intended. Both sides were obediently following some abominable master-plan in which Hizbollah behaved with diabolical cunning, and the Israelis with abysmal stupidity. The result? Thousands dead, and Israel's international reputation even lower then before. Hizbollah is now the great political and military force of Lebanon, just as Hamas is amongst Palestinians. I write this today because I have just read -- with weary predictability: and I say that with some justification, because I did, with great weariness, predict it -- that Hizbollah are back in business on the Israeli border. Armed militants are re-establishing themselves in bunkers there, and Israeli intelligence reports they have 20,000 rockets. Their leader, Sheikh Nasrallah, disagrees. He says they actually have 30,000. No doubt we'll see who's right over the coming months. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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CRUCIAL U.S.-ISRAEL ENERGY COOPERATION ACT AT CRITICAL JUNCTURE
Posted by Neil B. Goldstein, November 15, 2006. |
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The U.S.-Israel Energy Cooperation Act, HR 2730, passed the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously in July--in large measure because Prime Minister Olmert highlighted this crucial legislation in his address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress--and it immediately was referred to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. There the bill is being held, despite assurances given to Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR), champion of a counterpart measure in the Senate that HR 2730 would be brought to a vote on the Senate floor this year. It is urgent that you contact your own Senators (their email addresses can be found by going to http://www.senate.gov/) as well as Senators Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), the Chairman and Ranking Democrat on the Energy Committee, respectively, and urge them to report HR 2730 to the Senate floor for passage during the upcoming "lame-duck" session which begins December 5th. Tell them that passage of this bill is important to you, and to the entire Jewish community, because it helps the U.S. achieve independence from imported oil from the Middle East and establishes a robust system of U.S./Israel joint research and development on energy alternatives. Tell them that there is no acceptable excuse for failure to act on this measure which is modest in scope (it authorizes a mere $20 million of research grants each year) but enormous in potential impact for helping U.S. energy independence. Tell others to weigh in, too. Please forward this Action Alert to your friends who can help reach out to other Senators. Be sure to send a cc of your email to ischneider@ajcongress.org so we can follow up. Especially key, please be sure to contact any of the following Senators whom you know, who are members of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources or sponsors of the Senate counterpart bill: Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (sponsors of the U.S.-Israel Energy Cooperation Act are marked with an *) Republicans
DEMOCRATS
Additional Co-sponsors of the U.S.-Israel Energy Cooperation
Act who do not serve on the Committee:
Neil B. Goldstein is Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress. Contact him at Communications@AJCongress.org. |
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A DEVASTATING THESIS
Posted by Michael Travis, November 15, 2006. |
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Woman killed by rocket in Sderot: Fatima Slotzker The woman who was killed Wednesday morning by a Qassam rocket in Sderot is Fatima Slotzker, a 57-year-old resident of the town. Slotzker leaves behind a husband and two children. (Shmulik Hadad) The article below was writen by Daniel Pipes, who is based in
Philadelphia and is director of the Middle East Forum. It appeared
yesterday in The Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com/) and is archived at
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Mark Steyn, political columnist and cultural critic, has written a remarkable book, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It. He combines several virtues uncommonly found together - humor, accurate reportage and deep thinking - then applies these to what is arguably the most consequential issue of our time: the Islamist threat to the West. Steyn offers a devastating thesis, but presents it in bits and pieces, so I shall pull it together here. He begins with the legacy of two totalitarianisms. Traumatized by the electoral appeal of fascism, post-World War II European states were constructed in a top-down manner "so as to insulate almost entirely the political class from populist pressures." As a result, the establishment has "come to regard the electorate as children." Second, the Soviet menace during the Cold War prompted American leaders, impatient with Europe's (and Canada's) weak responses, effectively to take over their defense. This benign and farsighted policy led to victory by 1991, but it also had the unintended and less salutary side-effect of freeing up Europe's funds to build a welfare state. This welfare state had several malign implications. # The nanny state infantilized Europeans, making them worry about such pseudo-issues as climate change, while feminizing the males. TO KEEP the economic machine running meant accepting foreign workers. Rather than execute a long-term plan to prepare for the many millions of immigrants needed, Europe's elites punted, welcoming almost anyone who turned up. By virtue of geographic proximity, demographic overdrive and a crisis-prone environment, "Islam is now the principal supplier of new Europeans." Arriving at a time of demographic, political and cultural weakness, Muslims are profoundly changing Europe. "Islam has youth and will, Europe has age and welfare." Put differently, "Pre-modern Islam beats post-modern Christianity." Much of the Western world, Steyn flat-out predicts, "will not survive the 21st century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many, if not most, European countries." With even more drama, he adds that "it's the end of the world as we know it." (In contrast, I believe that Europe still has time to avoid this fate.) America Alone deals at length with what Steyn calls "the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia." Europe's successor population is already in place and "the only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be." He interprets the Madrid and London bombings, as well as the murder of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam, as opening shots in Europe's civil war and states that "Europe is the colony now." THE TITLE `America Alone refers to Steyn's expectation that the United States - with its "relatively healthy demographic profile" -- will emerge as the lonely survivor of this crucible. "Europe is dying and America isn't." Therefore, "the Continent is up for grabs in a way that America isn't." Steyn's target audience is primarily American: Watch out, he is saying, or the same will happen to you. Pared to its essentials, he counsels two things: First, avoid the "bloated European welfare systems," declare them no less than a national security threat, shrink the state and emphasize the virtues of self-reliance and individual innovation. Only if Americans "can summon the will to shape at least part of the emerging world" will they have enough company to soldier on. Failing that, expect a "new Dark Ages... a planet on which much of the map is re-primitivized." "Knesset Rejects Bill Calling on Loyalty to 'Jewish State'"
(IsraelNN.com) The Knesset has rejected a bill submitted by Knesset Member Zevulun Orlev that would have required Knesset Members to pledge loyalty to the country as a "Jewish and democratic state." The current pledge states that MKs are obligated "to be faithful to Israel and to fulfill faithfully his duties in the Knesset." MK Orlev explained, "The State of Israel is a Jewish and democratic
state and the basic law should be changed" so that legislators pledge
themselves to those values. He said the rejection of his bill is "a
black day for the Knesset and that there are some people "who are
afraid to define the state as a Jewish and democratic...and are
prepared to sacrifice values of the country for values of political
survival."
Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr@gmail.com
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NOVEMBER COMMENTARY MAGAZINE; NEGOTIATING WITH ARABS; APPEASERS Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 15, 2006. |
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There is a lot of interest in the current issue. Daniel Johnson describes the resurrection of much of the old-fashioned antisemitism in England and elsewhere in W. Europe. This trend is promoted by the Muslims, whom politicians now are appeasing. Such is a drawback of democracy, which gives extremists the franchise. The chief Muslim leader, supposedly moderate, threatened England with turning the country's two million Muslims into terrorists, if England doesn't become more sensitive to them and to their foreign policy demands. (Perhaps England should give thought to its immigration and naturalization policy, which harbors an ethnic group that threatens brutal civil war if it doesn't get its way.) Actually, police are over-sensitive. Christian politicians and journalists have found a way out of confronting the serious problem. They divert themselves from the problem of Islamic intolerance and jihad by making the Jews the scapegoat for it. They ignore the facts and how antisemitic their statements are. All those nice Muslims supposedly are driven mad by Israel, as if Israel were the aggressor and as if Britain were wrong in helping to depose that mass-murderer of Muslims, Saddam Hussein. From that perch, the English leadership criticize any support for the defense of Israel and for solidarity with the US. As for the people of England, they seek leadership that would protect them against the real Islamic threat rather than the pretended Jewish one. Gabriel Schoenfeld debunks the notion, resurrected in the US, of Jews, and only of Jews, dual loyalty. The Harvard report that presented it as if scholarly relied upon extremist claims, and has all sorts of false premises and proofs or no proof. I think that the Israel lobby is weak. It couldn't prevent the Holocaust or get significant US amelioration of it. Neither did it stop the State Dept. from opposing formation and retention of Jewish statehood and from halting every Israel military victory and turning some of them into Arab diplomatic and territorial victories and excuses for promoting the detachment from Israel of vital territory. The problem is not the Israel lobby but the anti-Israel lobby. To turn the dual loyalty notion around, the anti-Israel lobby is very powerful and gears US policy against US national security. Another problem is anti-American sentiment by Americans. Academia cannot think straight. It has little apprehension about the Iranian menace. It thinks that we can talk the fanatics out of conflict. Not in this world. An interesting piece is Arthur Herman's presentation of a military-and-economic-and-dissident option against Iran, after considering other options. He depicts Iran as ethnically divided, the regime as thoroughly detested and without legitimacy, in Iran, and as economically and militarily vulnerable. He discusses how the US could exploit those weaknesses, unless we wait too long. He points out that the US crippled Iran militarily before, and suggests that it would be easy to do again. He seems imaginative to me, and has defused the likely objections, but I wonder whether he has taken into account the publicized modernization of Iran's military. Next month, letter writers get their say about this. Will his careful scenarios stand up? U.S. UNPREPARED FOR WAR ON IRAQ Although the war on Iraq was touted by the Bush Administration partly to capture Saddam's weapons of mass-destruction, US intelligence agencies had no up-to-date knowledge about such weapons or where they were located. The troops were dispatched without instructions where and how to search for such weapons or what to do if they found them. The US spends tens of billions of dollars on intelligence, but had almost nothing to show for it, on Iraq. US intelligence also has little information about N. Korea. We do not know how it would fight, in war (IMRA, 10/25). EGYPT RESUMING NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT Egypt claims it is for peaceful energy needs, but an Arab wrote that Arab states could finance development of nuclear weapons without concern that signing agreements not to would hinder that development. He alleged that the Arabs have no choice but to develop such weapons, because the Arabs' enemies have them. He named Israel,guided by the US, and Iran as those enemies (IMRA, 10/25). The Arabs are the aggressors against Israel. If they would not attack Israel, it wouldn't matter what weapons Israel has. The Arabs pretend that they need to defend themselves. As for the US, it restricts Israeli counter-attacks against the Arabs. NEGOTIATING WITH ARABS Every time the Arabs are offered concessions or sign an agreement under which they make promises in return for concessions, the ignore the agreement and the raise additional demands starting from where the concessions left off. They keep doing this, without the West learning to anticipate it and counteract it. Israel starts negotiations so eager for peace, that it presents its plans, including maximum concessions. The Arabs start negotiating from the maximum concessions and then demand a higher price, but don't give peace anyway, since their goal is to destroy Israel. Israel should reject Arab terms and make the Arabs offer concessions. When the Arabs prove recalcitrant, walk out (but explain to the world why). Be clear about all terms and avoid the usual vague, diplomatic language, lest the Arabs misrepresent them. Don't be taken in by Arab "friendliness." Be as patient as they, not eager for fast results, or the Arabs will may you pay for them (Prof. Steven Plaut, 10/25 from Prof. Moshe Sharon of Hebrew U.). These lessons apply to dealing with the Communists and to Israel dealing with the US. PLAGIARIZING THE PLAGUED JEWS A Jewish sage coined a memorable phrase about one's immediate obligation both to other people and to oneself. Now one finds gentiles copying it, in part, as in the Op.-Ed. headline, "If not now, when?" They borrow our people's wisdom, but mistreat our people. RESTORING THE SOVIET EMPIRE Have you noticed that Russia is punishing countries for political reasons, by cutting off the flow of natural gas? It is a means of exerting influence and regaining its sphere of influence. I had anticipated that when those countries became dependent upon Russian energy supplies. They should have anticipated it, too, and sought multiple suppliers. Meanwhile, alcoholism is becoming endemic in Russia. It is lowering male longevity below age 55. Isn't that what Russia should be concerned about? WHY ISRAELI GOVERNMENT IS SO EXPENSIVE Israeli prosecutors are working on their fifth investigation of PM Olmert for corruption. Extensive corruption is expensive not only to investigate but also costs the country for bribes and inferior service or loss of resources. Since the prosecutors take suspiciously long to indict leftist politicians, another cost is the imposition of unpopular policy by those politicians. Those politicians give away part of the Jewish people's patrimony and strategic defense. Arabs make wars and raids from those areas, inflicting still greater costs upon the people. LYING FOR GRATUITOUS POLITICAL CORRECTNESS Law and Order prosecutor asked the priest defendant who claimed God told him to kill whether God spoke by voice, but did not pin down the method. One of the characters tried to explain that religions are on the defensive. Although secularism is eroding Christianity and Judaism, he said that all over the world, Islam is under attack. It hardly is under attack anywhere, especially from the West. To the contrary, it is on the attack, almost everywhere! The producers had the character mislead the public, so as to generate sympathy for a predator religion. APPEASERS ARE IN A STATE OF DENIAL The kind of political correctness that casts a predator religion as prey is a well-meaning but harmful form of appeasement. The appeasement-minded make up theories of conduct contradicted by experience. They don't know of this experience, because, post-graduate degree or not, they are not conversant with history. Nor do they ask how their theories have worked out, before. They don't check or test theories but rely upon them. Their theories are mistaken: (1) They worked out badly, before (with the Nazis, Communists, and Muslims; and (2) They cannot succeed with totalitarian fanatics, who care only about conquest and exploit Western goodwill in behalf of war. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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BAD ADVICE ON THE MIDEAST: THE SAUDI INITIATIVE
Posted by David Bedein, November 14, 2006. |
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TO: Editors, L.A. Times RE: "Re-engage the Palestinians,"
Are M.J. Rosenberg and David Dreilinger aware that the Saudi initiative is based on Israel's acceptance of the "right of return," which would mandate that Israel give the option to 4 million Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendants to come back? Concerning the very idea of including Saudi Arabia in a peace process, why don't Rosenberg and Dreilinger relate the fact that Saudi Arabia remains in an active state of war with Israel, as Israel's only Arab neighbor that has never agreed to a cease-fire or peace treaty since 1948? And why don't Rosenberg and Dreilinger demand that Saudi Arabia cease and desist from funding terrorists and from funding Middle East studies programs at universities around the world that deny the legitimacy of Israel to exist before they start taking Saudi Arabia seriously? David Bedein is Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency. (http://Israelbehindthenews.com). He is president of Center for Near East Policy Research. Contact him by email at media@actcom.co.il |
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CHRISTIAN EVANGELICALS LEAD THE WAY IN SUPPORTING ISRAEL
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, November 14, 2006. |
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U.S. Republican and Democrat politicos have all eyes on the 2008 Presidential prize. A sizable portion of that nation's voters are Christian Conservative Evangelicals, disproportionately situated in America's heartland and south, fervent supporters of the State of Israel, comprehending the dangers of a nuclear emerging Iran and its madman Muslim mouthpiece AhMADinejad who asserts Israel should be wiped off the map, and generally vote as a bloc perhaps deciding who will reap that most cherished holy grail size prize. No doubt, today's recently midterm election Æthumped' GOP has the bulk of Evangelical support for a variety of philosophical reasons, however, the Bush Administration has disappointed certain Christian leaders by putting the kabash on Israeli's willingness to send more troops and launch more firepower into Lebanon in order to truly crush archenemy Hizbullah, now ominously viewed as heroic by many ego-deflated Arabs, for standing up to Israel. Furthermore, the Bush Administration, foreign policy initiatives unraveling, licking recent wounds engendered by angry voters, seems willing to bend and break falafel with the Iranian madman, as well as perhaps lean on the beleaguered Jewish State to cede large swaths of sovereign land, justifiably secured in 1967 while intrepidly vanquishing its sworn Arab enemies, to Hamas terrorists disguised as so-called Palestinians, themselves underwritten by that madman's Israel/Jew despising regime. Say it isn't so, yet ignoring emerging facts on the ground is unacceptable. Democrats, now controlling both Houses of the U.S. Congress, could have an opening, thus would be wise endearing themselves to that substantial bloc of Christian Conservatives as well as other sane American citizens by denouncing any emerging craven GOP policy of negotiating with terrorists. Let us hope reason clobbers today's White House with a two by four before it is too late, but if and when the Bush Administration makes nice nice in any way shape or form with Islamic fanatics, it will have lost its spine, much like Neville Chamberlain did when stroking Hitler, and can no longer be viewed by Israel as a protector and formidable ally. Democrats, perhaps prodded by independent thinkers and true patriotic Republicans, could then seize the day, and do the right thing! But will they? Many in that camp, bound mainly by similar viewpoints concerning middle class economic issues, yet world's apart on other perspectives especially those relating to foreign affairs, are not up to intellectual speed on the dangers of Islamic fanaticism. Thus, Israel's supporters, including powerful lobbies such as AIPAC, must properly educate them. The incompetently implemented Iraq occupation has left a bitter taste in the mouths of Democrats, Republicans, as well as non-affiliated Independents and needs to be decoupled from the surging threat of Islamic terrorism. Negotiating with those who only wish to annihilate the infidel serves no purpose. Iran must not be allowed to develop a nuclear capability, and if military force is needed to stop that from occurring, so be it! If this Republican White House loses its nerve, A Democrat controlled Congress must stand tall and be counted! Is anybody listening? Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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INVERTED VALUES IN BEIT HANOUN
Posted by Moshe Feiglin, November 14, 2006. |
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The planned operation was the mistake. And the mistake should have been the planned operation... Last week's military operation in Beit Hanoun, in which Israel attempted -- as usual -- to find the terror needle in the civilian haystack, was responsible for Israeli casualties, but registered no military achievements. On the other hand, the mistake -- accidental shelling of a civilian building in Beit Hanoun -- should have been the planned operation in the first place, albeit in a calculated and controlled manner. Residents of territory from which Israel is fired upon must know that they have two options: Either prevent the firing or leave before their homes are destroyed. But this most simple equation, clear to the normative person, is not clear at all to Israel's leaders and army commanders. The IDF's operation in Beit Hanoun was an exact rerun of all the false concepts that created the failure in last summer's war in Lebanon. It just makes you rub your eyes in amazement: The IDF is great, strong and sophisticated. But on the other hand, it is completely entangled in the values imbroglio of the "enlightened" tyranny. Israel's defeat in Lebanon created a flurry of studies and research projects -- some more professional than others. The vast majority of these studies dealt with the army's technical functioning. All the generals on the talk shows and all the officers who voiced their opinions focused on the technical. That played perfectly into the hands of the politicians -- both in the political and military leadership. If the problem is technical, it is easy to excuse with technical claims: There will be a commission for this and a commission for that and when we receive the conclusions we will relate to them with gravity. In the meantime we have allocated all the funds and means necessary...etc., etc. But the defeats that the IDF has suffered time after time are not the direct result of military capability -- which of course must always be upgraded. Instead, the defeats are the result of the inverted values which have overtaken the military establishment. After two months in a tent in Gush Katif, I was loaded onto a bus and expelled from the region. When I got home, I said to my wife, "That's it. We don't have an army anymore." "What do you mean?" she said. "Didn't you see how well the army was prepared? The precise logistics? Tens of thousands of soldiers?" "There is no more army," I said once again. "It buried its soul in the sands of Gush Katif. Now the army is simply a pile of uniforms with nothing inside. The first time it will be up against a real enemy -- and it doesn't matter how small the enemy is -- the army will crumble." We have to understand. Israel today has no army. The IDF, captive to the ethical codes of former Chief Justice Aharon Barak and Leftist army ethicist Asa Kasher, cannot defend us. Not in Beit Hanoun and not in Teheran. For all practical purposes -- it no longer exists. First and foremost, the IDF needs an ethical revolution. The IDF has to become the army of Israel, ready and willing to fight, guided by strictly Jewish values. The justice of its cause must be based on Jewish culture -- not Christian or Moslem. Ultimately, that is the only justice that the other nations will accept, as well. Jewish morals dictate that "If someone tries to kill you, kill him first." Jewish morals also dictate removing women from the army's combat units. An army guided by Jewish morals will educate its soldiers and provide them with a love of their land and its history and pride in their Jewish heritage. It will impress them with the importance of liberating and settling all parts of the Land of Israel. It will teach them that triumph = conquest. No more burying our heads in the sand, no more illusions of tiring our enemies slowly, no more cowardliness. It means authentic mutual responsibility. It means that if our soldiers are being held captive, nobody in Gaza or Lebanon is going to sleep. They want electricity? Running water? Transportation? Their jailed leaders? The way to get all that is to hand over our soldiers. But before everything else, it means moral purification from the stain of the Disengagement. It means a painful process of dismissal of all the levels of command that were responsible for the crime of expulsion. The current Israeli ear cannot believe that this proud policy is possible. But in the 1950's a much weaker Israel with no US support almost went to war against Jordan because terrorists from Jordan murdered Israelis on their way to Eilat. Today, after we have lost our values, our blood has become cheap. This type of proud policy seems imaginary. In the meantime, the reserve soldier's protest is waning because it did not address the real issues. The IDF will continue to break its head against the wall, to fail and to force-feed the public with stories of its great success. But in reality, we are all waiting for the next blow, which will likely be more painful and frustrating than ever. In truth, it is a bit unfair to blame the IDF. Are the army's commanders supposed to determine its moral path? The IDF did not want to draft women to combat units. It was forced to do so by the Supreme Court. Eventually, it became part of the IDF's value system. I don't remember commanders of the past taking pride in the fact that they sacrificed the lives of their soldiers to prevent harm to enemy civilians. Once again, this is an inverted value, forced on the army by the civilian establishment, until it became an integral part of its own value system. How ridiculous is the demand to have the Supreme Court investigate the failures of the Lebanon war. The Supreme Court judges are the unmistakable source of the value inversion that has eliminated the IDF. In other words, the solution does not begin and end with the army. If Israel wants to continue to exist, it must revolutionize its entire value system. In practical terms, that means electing a new leadership that is appropriate for the job. Now it's time to hear you!
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) |
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US AND SAUDI ARABIA: "SLEEPING WITH THE DEVIL"
Posted by Professor Paul Eidelberg, November 14, 2006. |
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This article is based on Robert Baer's book Sleeping With The Devil (2003). Baer was a case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1976 to 1997. His overseas assignments included stints in Iraq and Beirut. Baer, who is fluent in Arabic, handled agents that infiltrated Hezbollah, Fatah, and al-Qaeda. Sleeping With The Devil is a partly (CIA) censored account of how the United States, or rather Washington, D.C., has been cohabiting with Saudi Arabia for decades under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Let's understand why. Saudi Arabia sits on 25 percent of the world's proven oil reserves. Although the Saudi Kingdom has more than eighty active oil and gas fields, half of its proven reserves -- 12.5 percent of all the known oil in the world -- is contained in eight fields. (According to Baer, "if terrorists were to simultaneously hit only five of the many sensitive points in Saudi Arabia's downstream oil system, they could put the Saudis out of the oil-producing business for about two years. A commando boat attack could do the job."} To appreciate the importance of Saudi oil, on September 12, 2001, less than 24 hours after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Saudis put on the market an extra nine million barrels of oil, going mostly to the United States. It should be emphasized, however, that Saudi Arabia transferred half a billion dollars to al-Qaeda in the ten years beginning 1992. No less significant: The Saudis have financed the construction of thousands of mosques, many in the U.S. which preach a hatred of the West that is "as vitriolic as anything heard in Iran at the height of the ayatollahs." Baer notes that Saudi mosque schools and universities have become hothouses of militant Islam, the breeding grounds of Sunni global terrorism. Bali, Kenya, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Lower Manhattan all point back to these schools, to Saudi Arabia. Even while the Saudis spew hatred of America, Washington nurtures this Islamic virus. Why? Not because the Saudi government spends more per capita than any other country in the world on arms, but because much of those arms come from U.S. arms dealers. According to Baer, two-way trade between Saudi Arabia and the United States in 2000 was almost $20 billion. Thus, while the U.S. arms the Saudis, the Saudis call for "a world without America" -- as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has put it. Now let's go back to 9/11. It's well known that 15 of the 19 hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were Saudi nationals. According to the law, those 15 Saudis should not have been issued visas. By issuing visas to these (unemployed) Saudis, the State Department broke the law. The Saudis, says Baer, fed the ATM machines for the 9/11 hijackers. Moreover, "When NATO forces raided the offices of the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, they found before-and-after photos of the destroyed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and of the World Trade Center (when it still stood), and of the U.S.S. Cole, as well as ... materials for forging official U.S. identity cards." Baer notes that every Washington think tank has taken Saudi money, as have numerous lobbyists, PR firms, lawyers, and every presidential library of the last thirty years. Nor is this all. Despite CIA censorship, Sleeping With The Devil reveals that there is hardly a living former CIA director, assistant secretary of state for the Near East, White House staffer, or member of Congress who hasn't ended up on the Saudi payroll in one way of another. "At the corporate level, almost every Washington figure worth mentioning has served on the board of at least one company that did a deal with Saudi Arabia." Baer's conclusion: While Saudi Arabia buys U.S. arms, we buy Saudi oil, refine it, and put it in our automobiles, and a certain small percentage of what we pay for ends up funding terrorist acts against America and American institutions at home and abroad. Now Israelis can better understand why Washington endorsed the Road Map to a Palestinian state initiated by Saudi Arabia. But wait! Surely Baer's revelations are known to Israel's ruling elites. If so, why doesn't Israel's government -- with plausible deniability -- expose Washington's cohabitation with Saudi Arabia? Instead of the milk-and-toast hasbara that is supposed to endear Americans to Israel, why doesn't the government leak information about this conspiracy? Is this reticence of Israel's ruling elites a matter of timidity or of complicity? Professor Paul Eidelberg is President of the Foundation For Constitutional Democracy. He can be reached by mail at 244 Madison Avenue, Suite 427, New York, NY 10016, Tel: 212-372-3752, and by email at Constitution@usa.net |
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THERE'S NO APARTHEID IN ISRAEL. TUTU AND CARTER ARE WRONG
Posted by Meir-Levi, David, November 14, 2006. | |
To the Editor, Sam Dubal is correct ("SCAI aims for peace", Stanford Daily, 11.14.06) that both Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President Carter used the term 'apartheid' when describing what they saw in Israel. However, what he may not know is that an argument ex cathedra is the weakest form of argument. If all he can do is point to others who share his opinion, then he has really made no argument at all. Instead, it will be useful to look at the facts. Between 6/11/1967 (after the Six-Day War) and July 1, 1994 (when Arafat took over the direction of the Palestinian Authority), there were none of the tragic impositions that Archbishop Tutu and President Carter bemoan. During those 27 years of Israeli sovereignty, the economy of the West Bank and Gaza Strip flourished. The Arab population more than tripled. Seven universities grew up where only three teacher training colleges had been before. The annual average GDP was in low double digits. Israel invested hundreds of millions of dollars (and in those days, that was money) to bring the West Bank's infrastructure into the twentieth century (modernizing the sewage treatment, sewerage, water purification, roads, telephones, radio). And thanks to advanced Israeli medicine and epidemiology, the Arab infant mortality plummeted and life expectancy increased. As many as 300,000 West Bank and Gaza Strip Arabs found employment in Israel during those years. Tourism skyrocketed. The thriving and dynamic economy of the area drew hundreds of thousands of Arabs from neighboring states, who were invited in to the West Bank and Gaza Strip by Israel, as it kept the bridges across the Jordan open even though the Hashemite kingdom was officially at war with Israel. The summary above is based upon World Bank statistics and several years of UN reports on the social development (or lack thereof) in Arab countries. And, of course, there was no defensive barrier, no road blocks, no lock-downs, no curfews, no military sweeps in villages to root out terrorists and their arsenals...and, in fact, no terrorism. During those years, the terrorism came from Lebanon, where Arafat was ensconced. During those years, Arabs moved freely in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and in Israel as well. I and my wife shopped in Ramallah, and Arabs shopped in Tel Aviv and Haifa. I took my students on field trips in the hills of Judea and Samaria, with no weapons or armed guards. Arab students from Nablus studied at Haifa University where instruction in the Arabic Literature department is largely in Arabic. All of this screeched to a grinding halt when Arafat took over. In July of 1994, thanks to the Oslo Accords, Israeli sovereignty in most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip ended. The Palestinian Authority was now in charge. Between his kleptocratic government and the terrorist war which he began to wage against Israel within days of his signing the Oslo Peace Accords, Arafat effectively reversed all the gains that his own people had enjoyed under Israeli sovereignty. In 2004 the West Bank and Gaza Strip GDP was one-tenth of what it was in 1993. And, thanks to the 13-year-long terror war, being waged now by Hamas, Israel has been forced to take defensive actions that have restricted the movements of the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and have made their lives much more difficult than before the war. Such restrictions may look like apartheid; but they are not. They are Israeli self-defense against an unrelenting brutal terror war that has fielded more than 28,000 attacks, with 1,700 dead and nearly 7,000 wounded over more than 13 years. But note cause and effect. Before Arafat began his terror war, there were none of these restrictions. What Archbishop Tutu and President Carter saw may indeed have appeared to them to be akin to apartheid. But the facts demonstrate otherwise. Before the terror war such tragic circumstances did not exist. If Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were to end the terror war, those tragic circumstances could be replaced by the kind of life that Arabs enjoyed under Israeli sovereignty. There is no apartheid in Israel. There is an effective defense against an obscene and brutal terror war. David Meir-Levi
David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli,
currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern
studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director
of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org).
Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com
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EL-QODS DAY IN IRAN: THE NATION OF MUSLIMS MUST WIPE OUT THE ZIONISTS
Posted by David Meir-Levi, November 14, 2006. |
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Dear Moslem leaders,
The genocidal rantings of the Iranian leaders are beyond obscene. The obsession with the genocide of Jews has its roots in the Nazi evil of World War 2. Few in the world today hesitate to call the Nazi "Final Solution" a truly evil act. Yet there seem to be almost none today who will stand up and speak out against the evil of Akhmede-Nejad and his supporters in Iran. How can it be that Muslim humanitarian political leaders, intellectuals, artists, journalists, academicians, religious leaders, and a rapidly growing rank and file (all schooled in the enlghtened and radiant face of Islam) can countenance, in a post-Holocaust world, any Muslim nations' support for and conviviality with a broad based populist Muslim religious and political movement which proudly boasts that its divine directive is the slaughter of the world's Jews, the destruction of a sovereign state, and the eradication of Christianity as a religion? How can a humanistic, humanitarian, peace-loving, multi-cultural, freedom-loving western liberalism embrace those extremist members of a society whose most prominent and influential daily newspaper, Al-Ahram (a semi-official organ of the Egyptian government) describes world Jewry as: "...(sharing) boundless hatred of the gentiles, they kill women and children and sow destruction... Israel is today populated by people who are not descendants of the Children of Israel, but rather a mixture of slaves, Aryans and the remnants of the Khazars, and they are not Semites. In other words, people without an identity, whose only purpose is blackmails, theft and control over property and land, with the assistance of the Western countries."(June, 2001)? And, perhaps even worse, the second most influential Arab newspaper, Al-Akhbar (April 18, 2001), lamented: "Our thanks go the late Hitler who wrought, in advance, the vengeance of the Palestinians upon the most despicable villains on the face of the earth. However, we rebuke Hitler for the fact that the vengeance was insufficient." What hatred can be more vitriolic than that which reproaches the Nazis for not completing the Final Solution? -- save perhaps, that hatred which drives the Iranian leadership and other Islamofascist terrorists to finish the task for Hitler. What is remarkable is not that such sentiments exist, but that they are freely circulated in the mainstream media and internalized by the opinion-making elite throughout the Moslem world. It is as though Muslim terrorists are Teflon-coated. Their ideological roots are deeply set within Nazi fascism. They perpetrate an evil as heinous, or more so, than that of Nazi fascism. Most of us, today, have no problem condemning Nazism as evil. Yet, few seem willing to call today's Islamofascist evil by its name -- and those who do in much of the Muslim world have a very short life expectancy. What the Muslim terrorists do, what they say they want to do, and boast about what they have done or are going to do...is all heinously evil by any standard of morality. No matter how it is spun by the various pundits and journalists and politicians and academicians and pseudo-statespersons who serve as cheerleaders for the terrorists, the obvious characteristics and methodologies and goals of the Arab terrorists, based upon their own words and deeds, are evil: genocide,
...all of these are galactic violations of a variety of international legislation regarding civil and human rights, violations of international laws of war, infractions of international interdictions regarding genocide, disregard for international conventions, and violations of internationally canonized rights of women and children and non-combatants. All of these terrorist crimes are just plain evil. Therefore, even if their cause were just (which it is not -- but even if it were), their methods are evil, their intentions are evil, their aspirations are evil, their words are evil, and their deeds are evil. They are evil. Moreover, these terrorists enjoy the enthusiastic support of much political and religious leadership and rank-and-file in the Arab and broader Moslem world. Such support is evil. Openly, knowingly, enthusiastically cheering and supporting evil ... is evil. Never before, in all of human history, has there been such an obsession with such a deeply evil design. Consider the massive expenditures of money, resources, human talents, efforts, and energy that so many Arab and some Moslem state leaders have made, for over three-quarters of a century, in order to destroy Israel and exterminate its Jews; either with their own forces, or by support of proxy Arab terrorist forces. Even the Nazi campaign to exterminate the Jews of Europe never reached the multi-national dimensions, the trans-national character, the umpteen billions of dollars of expenditures, and endless relentless international propaganda campaigns of Arab leaders and Arab states -- and all for the sole purpose of destroying one small nation and its Jewish citizenry. Where else in the world, and in all of human history, do we find the leaders of so many sovereign states endlessly and obsessively diverting resources, for decades, from their own people, and neglecting their own people's needs, in order to eradicate a sovereign state and genocide its Jews? Where else in the world, and across all of human history, do we see such enormous energy poured into international collaboration for the propagation of the PR and propaganda and revisionist history and political machinations and mendacious mis-information that characterize the Arab political and propaganda assault on Israel? And this assault has been going on within the family of nations and at the UN and in the intellectual arenas of the Western world, for decades ...and all with the sole intent to demonize Israel so that it will lose the support of its allies, and thus be easier prey when its Arab enemies are ready to launch their great final jihad. Consider too the commitment that these state leaders have made to an education system that systematically demonizes Israel and Israelis (and in some cases Jews and Judaism), in order to create in the minds of their youth the cross-generational trajectory that will keep the evil alive, and will provide the justification for those evil expenditures and evil goals when the next generation comes of age. The terrorists know that today's sophomore is tomorrow's Senator. Teaching children to hate is child abuse raised to the level of public policy. Child abuse is evil. And finally, consider the cost of the lost opportunities. What would the Middle East look like today if Arab leaders had been willing to cooperate with the Zionists in the application of western agrarian technology, medicine, epidemiology, industrial technology, and science in general, to the Arab waste lands and to the impoverished peasantry who barely eked out a subsistence living on those waste lands? And how much more so, had neighboring Arab states been willing to make peace with, and work with, and build with, both Israel and the state of "Palestine" which would have come into existence with the UN partition plan of 11/29/1947 were it not for the Arab hatred and endless terrorist war? Look at the sand dunes 8 miles north of Jaffa in 1911. Then look at Tel Aviv today, built on those same dunes. Something similar could have happened in the desert south of Damascus, in the waste land north of Amman, in parts of the Sinai desert east of Egypt, on the eastern shores of the Dead Sea, and more, had the Arab leaders been willing to work with Jews, with Zionists. The cold, bitter, implacable, brutal, primitive and baseless hatred that so many in the Arab and Muslim world bear toward Israel, Israelis, Zionism, Jews and Judaism -- that is evil. And those Arab and Muslim leaders who are possessed of this hatred, and who have used it to manipulate and motivate others to hatred, for decades -- they are evil. And evil too are their intellectual collaborators in both Arab and western nations, who try to spin for us a new pseudo-reality in which that hatred hate "just cause" and that terrorism is spawned by "real grievances." Even if those spin-meisters were correct (they are not, but even if they were); still, it is obvious that there is no crime that Israel has ever committed that could justify the genocide of all of its Jews. There is no deed, no action, no excess, so extreme that it could not be rectified at the negotiations table, in peace talks, with agreements and reparations and compromises. Not even the crime of genocide justifies genocide. The Iranian (and other Muslim terror groups') lust for the murder of 6,000,000 Jews is not a quest for justice or vengeance. It is a brutal primitive psychotic baseless hatred. Baseless brutal hatred is evil. And all the more so when it impels the haters toward violence and war and destruction and terrorism and mass murder and genocide. The sheer obscenity of such a heinous endeavor is beyond description. Yet, almost no one discusses the evil nature of the Muslim and Arab anti-Israel (and anti-Jewish) program. And lest one conjecture that this evil is limited to the Arab -- Israel conflict, note that Muslim terrorists attack Arab healthcare workers and endanger gravely ill Arab patients as they commandeer Arab ambulances. Note too the destruction and violence and genocide of Moslem against Moslem in numerous parts of the Arab world: Sudan (Darfur as well as South Sudan), Iraq, Mauritania, Yemen, Algeria, Somalia, Lebanon, and Gaza. Moslems have killed more Moslems than have any non-Moslem enemies. The one single person who killed more Muslims than any other individual person in the entire world and across all of world history is Sadaam Hussein: and he is adulated by many as a great Moslem leader. Contributing to this evil is the sad fact that good, normal, friendly, peaceful Moslem society has not yet found the need or the means to mount any high-profile objections to the excesses of Islamofascist jihad. This is not to say that all Moslems are violent. I am sure that the overwhelming majority of Moslems in the world are peace-loving, honest, sincere, friendly, nice, hard-working people, loyal citizens of their countries, productive workers in their societies, moral people of integrity, who want nothing more than to raise crops and a family, to give their children the love and support and education they need to get off to a good start in life, to create for themselves as comfortable and secure a life as possible, and to leave the world a bit better off than they found it...same as most of us do. However, these are not the ones from whose ranks the terrorists are drawn. These are not the ones that pose the existential threat. There are individual Moslems who object, and some objectors have paid with their lives for their effrontery to Islamofascism's 'true Islam'. But there are no Muslim crowds demonstrating in the streets of Moslem or western countries against the Islamofascist terrorism, or against the hate-preaching imams, or against the Moslem states that support the terrorists, or against the Moslem state that threatens a nuclear war to genocide Jews -- a war that will kill unnumberable hundreds of thousands, if not even perhaps millions, of neighboring Moslems by virtue of nuclear fall out and radioactive poisoning. There are no 'million Moslem marches' to the Saudi embassy in Washington to protest the Saudi royal family's funding of terror camps. There are no Muslim petitions, written in the name of "Radiant Islam", with hundreds of thousands of signatures posted publicly against el-qaeda or Hamas or Hezbollah, petitions that could be nailed to the doors of Iranian or Syrian embassies. There are not even any fatwas (not one, as far as I know) specifically against any Moslem terrorist leaders, who have the blood of thousands on their hands (there are some that oppose terrorism in general terms, without naming a specific person as the target of this objection. But such fatwas are part of 'taqiyah', as I am sure you know). The broad, world-wide Moslem umma is cravenly silent when Islamofascist terrorists kill tens of thousands of innocents (including brethren Moslem innocents at prayer in mosques or at funerals or weddings), or announce their plans to kill millions more as they conquer and subjugate and oppress and rule over hundreds of millions more. But violent demonstrations erupt across the Moslem world at the mere rumor of a Qur'an desecrated on an American army base (I cannot help but wonder how many Qur'an texts were desecrated with the blood of innocent Moslem worshipers in the mosques of Iraq where Muslim Sunni terrorists blew up hundreds of Shi'a Muslims). Silence in the face of evil is complicity. Complicity with evil is evil. Where are the Muslims who are outraged by the obsenity of this extremist Muslim hatred? David Meir-Levi David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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ISRAEL'S TWO NOBEL LAUREATES
Posted by Naomi Ragen, November 14, 2006. |
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A few weeks ago, I read a remarkable article in an Israeli newspaper: an interview with Israel's two Nobel prize winners, who met to discuss the state of the nation. It is very long, very heartbreaking, and very important. It may also be an overdose of reality for some readers, coming on the heels of my own gloomy piece. If so, save it for another day. But do read it. It was written by Sever Plocker and appeared in Yediot Aharanot October 28, 2006. Thanks to the person who translated it from the Hebrew. It was posted by Carl in Jerusalem, at his website: |
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The Two Israeli Nobel Prize Laureates Foresee a Gloomy Future for the State From a political point of view, they are poles apart, but on one topic Prof. Yisrael Aumann and Prof. Aharon Ciechanover are of the same opinion: Pitiful and failed leadership is leading Israel to destruction What worries them most is the deterioration in academics and education "There is a close connection between the sinking of the Israeli spirit and the downfall of the State," they warn Everything here seems lacking in values, temporary, one patch on top of another, a thin bandage that can be torn off with any breeze." Two men, neither young, looked into each other's teary eyes. Behind them, on a green chalkboard, were written complex formulae. They shared stories of their experiences, but not in chemistry or in mathematics. They spoke with enthusiasm and uplifted spirits about Hassidic niggunim [melodies] and Jewish prayers. Their voices cracked, their chins trembled. In a minute, I thought, they will break down crying. It was close. The two men, Prof. Yisrael (Robert) Aumann and Prof. Aharon Ciechanover, are Israeli scientists and Nobel Prize winners. The weekend supplement to Yediot Aharanot had arranged a discussion between them on the subject of the weakening of the Israeli spirit and the failings of the Israeli leadership. I was there to report on what was a deep, painful, gloomy, and sometimes truly frightening discussion, one that leaves the listener with very little hope and a great deal of discomfort. The State of Israel, say the two professors, who are poles apart in their political views, is moving in the wrong direction. It is being swept away into the darkness, headed on a path toward possible destruction-and not because of our external enemies. Rather, we have only ourselves to blame: ourselves and our leaders, or those who call themselves our leaders. Aumann and Ciechanover found a way out of their shared pessimism in their Jewish roots. "As a scientist, I am only a tourist in the palace of the Holy One, blessed be he," said Ciechanover, "who discovers secrets of the universe that he created, systems that were hidden in it for millions of years. If there are apparent flaws in them, I try, through medicine and science, to fix them." Aumann stroked his white beard -- just as my own grandfather did, according to the only photograph of him that survived the Holocaust and his escape -- and said, "I feel the same way you do -- I feel the same way you do." Were their eyes full of tears at the end of their discussion because of the emotions aroused by the memory of the Hassidic niggun? That was not my impression. From time to time, in speaking of the fate of Israel and the failure of its leaders, Ciechanover and Aumann sounded like people on the verge of tears -- two outstanding scientists who are tormented by fear for the future of our State. The discussion began with my question, Are any more Israelis expected to win Nobel Prizes? "The question is totally irrelevant," answered Ciechanover. "The Nobel Prize," he explained, "is a rare event -- rarer than the chance of being struck by lightning on a sunny day." Ciechanover: "The State does not have to aspire to Nobel Prizes as a national agenda. So what if three people who received Nobel Prizes live here? What Israel needs is a broad educational system, a critical mass of researchers and philosophers and ethicists and men of letters who will lead her." And there is no critical mass like that? Prof. Ciechanover: "There is academic deterioration at all levels. Even among people with academic degrees, I find garbled language, a lack of cultural depth, and ignorance of general history and of the history of the Jewish people. We need institutions of higher learning headed by path-breaking leadership, but that kind of leadership has disappeared. Where are the outstanding men of letters of the past? I see a close connection between the sinking of the Israeli spirit and the downfall of the State. Without developed humanities and Jewish studies, quality science of any kind cannot exist in the State of Israel - not physics, nor chemistry, nor mathematics, nor medicine. In order to flourish, scientists of nature and technology must be nourished by the humanities: by ethics, philosophy, literature, history, and Judaism. "The fact that the State of Israel has not become the great world center for Jewish thinking and history," says Prof. Ciechanover, "is our greatest cultural bankruptcy. If we do not have here, in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the leading world center for Jewish historical research, it is proof of the fact that we have gone bankrupt." Prof. Aumann: "You are one hundred percent correct."
What is your opinion of our governmental elite? "They are pitiful," Prof. Aharon Ciechanover says decisively, while Prof. Yisrael Aumann vigorously nods his head in agreement. They are so repulsive? Ciechanover: "It is truly pitiful that there is not one among them who instills in the public a sense of inspiration. There is no one with whom you would like to speak, whose ideas you would want to hear. To tell the truth, the members of the Israeli elite in general do not voice ideas. They lack discussion, discourse -- they don't even have an agenda! They use all kinds of verbs in the Hebrew language -- to disengage, to dismantle -- that lack all meaning and sense. They are devoid of content, and in the middle of it is a soap bubble called the Kadima party." That is to say, the downfall of the universities is not occurring in a vacuum. Ciechanover: "Certainly not. What we see in the universities is merely a symptom of a serious and much more comprehensive disease. I would even call it a fatal disease: spiritual diminution. It is a cancer that has spread throughout Israeli society, to all its bodily limbs." The politicians, in the opinion of the two Prize winners, have stained public life with their behavior. Prof. Ciechanover said, "Our leadership is always raising moral questions; the public's trust in it has been lost completely. Of all the national symbols, only the anthem and the flag are not yet subject to investigation by the Attorney General or the State Comptroller. All the other symbols have already been consumed." "With such leadership," adds Prof. Ciechanover with great passion, "It is not surprising that the people's internal cohesion is weakening. The external enemy does not scare me; with the help of technology and wisdom, we will find a cure for it. What do worry me are the processes within Israeli society itself. They are the destructive ones. Even our army failed [in this summer's war in Lebanon] morally and practically -- just look at the way the IDF is now investigating itself! You sound pessimistic: Prof. Ciechanover: "I am extremely pessimistic. I fear for the very existence of the State of Israel. Everything here seems lacking in values, temporary, one patch on top of another, a thin patch cover that can be torn off with any breeze." Prof. Aumann (turns to Prof. Ciechanover): "I listened to your words and wanted so much to disagree with them, but I couldn't find a reason to do so. Just the opposite: Everything you say is correct. Your claims are problematic, but I entirely agree with them. I, too, am pessimistic. The problem is not with our neighbors, the problem is with ourselves, with our lack of patience, with the selfishness that has developed among us. Our national agenda is all mixed up: the collective interest has been pushed to the sidelines by the personal interest. The State of Israel in 2006 is something entirely different than what it was when I immigrated in 1956, during the Sinai campaign." How is it so different? Prof. Aumann: "Today, everyone worries first and foremost for himself -- I, and only I. This is all well and good for a country like Switzerland, but it is very bad for Israel. We cannot allow ourselves a selfish agenda." This selfishness -- is it not also a result of the privatization and subjugation of everything to a competitive market regime? The competitive market lauds and praises selfishness and the advancement of private interests. It has no place for national, religious, ethical and cultural values of which you speak so highly. Prof. Aumann: "I am a great fan of the market economy and of the incentives that it creates. There is no opposition or contradiction between it and Jewish values: Judaism has to be deeply absorbed in our identity. The incentive to be a Jew has to be assimilated into our soul. The Israeli educational system has to be built in such a way that the population will want to fund the study of the humanities -- the humanties, theatre, all those things that are not strictly "economic" -- just as Haredi Jews fund systems of gemilut hassadim [charitable acts of kindness.]" Prof. Ciechanover: "I was competitive all my life. Without competition, I would not have succeeded in anything - even my scientific success is a competitive success. Nevertheless, I am convinced that there is no place for a competitive market economy in preserving values that are critical for our existence. Our profitable and historical inalienable assets cannot be managed like a profit-making economic factory." How did the academic downfall and spiritual diminution begin? Prof. Ciechanover: "The downfall began long before the demise of the university: It began in the lower schools. I have no doubt of it. It is, first of all, the ongoing erosion of the status of the teacher, the main reason for which is the frequent changes in the head of the Ministry of Education. Long-term reforms in education take dozens of years; in the Israeli political reality, this is simply impossible. Does the name 'Dovrat Commission' [the most recent national commission on educational reform] still mean something to you? It has already been erased from our memory." Have we betrayed education? Prof. Ciechanover: "We have betrayed education and therefore betrayed everything. For the State of Israel, education, academia, the humanities are everything. Unfortunately, not even one of the country's universities is rated among the 100 outstanding universities in the world. The President of the Hebrew University will tell you, and the President of the Technion will tell you, and the soon-to-retire President of Tel-Aviv University will tell you: we are not capable of bringing new scientists to Israel, nor are we capable of seeking them out, as we are constantly forced to cut and cut and cut our budgets." Prof. Aumann: "Our academic failure is not only a budgetary problem. The professors all cry that we need more money for education and for the universities. Even the doctors demand more money for medicine and road planners more money for infrastructure -- as we say in the Neilah prayer on Yom Kippur, 'Many are the needs of Your people, and their understanding is limited.' We don't have to appeal to the State budget and the Ministry of the Treasury for everything. Sometimes one has to do things differently."
How differently? Prof. Aumann: "Instead of putting one's hand in the public's pocket, one can appeal to private sources. We can raise large contributions for humanities departments, and for the teaching of Judaism as well, and "sell" donors on the importance of these fields for the protection of Israel and its future. But this is still not enough. I also support an extreme increase in tuition at the universities; I would increase it ten times, to NIS 120,000 per year, even NIS 140,000 per year. At the same time, I would increase [government] stipends and grant generous loans on special terms. There is no need for the State of Israel to subsidize every student in the field of business administration or finance or technology. Let them pay a realistic tuition, or take loans, and when they receive high salaries, which are standard in these professions, they will gradually pay back the debt. But there is a definite need to subsidize the humanities, where the jobs do not offer large salaries. The state should grant them stipends and forgive the loans. If you go to law school and pay NIS 140,000 per year and later become a successful lawyer in the business world, then you certainly have to return the money that you received from the state. This is just, this is right. This is also how it works in America, where the leading universities are not public, but rather are organized as non-profit associations." But in Israel there is no tradition of business corporations that contribute, shall we say, NIS 50,000,000 to the Faculty of the Humanities or the department of Jewish history at one of the universities. Prof. Ciechanover: "Even if such a corporation could be found, I don't see this as the desired solution. Three national matters in Israel -- education, health, and security - must be the responsibility of the State. These are the foundation stones of our existence here; the State of Israel cannot entrust education to private hands. Who will fund the kindergartens and the high schools that are not, as is well-known, attractive targets for contributions? Our universities will not exist without a broad educational and academic infrastructure that only the state is capable of maintaining." Should we leave the universities outside the arena of the economic game? Prof. Ciechanover: "Not entirely. I do support the system of stipends and loans and rewarding members of the faculty according to their achievements, as none other than the Ministry of the Treasury proposed. I cannot accept a situation in which a faculty member who brings in research grants, draws attention [to his university], trains students, works publicly in the university, and is concerned about his community can receive in shekels, down to the last agora, the same salary as a member of the faculty who sits idly with his legs crossed and does nothing. Economic competition in certain fields in the universities is critical for moving the wheels of the system." Prof. Yisrael Aumann is a Haredi Jew; Prof. Aharon Ciechanover describes himself as a religious Jew: "The only music that I listen to," he tells me, "is cantorial selections. I have a huge collection of them. I grew up in a home with a deep-rooted Jewish culture. I truly and honestly believe that we will not achieve success in physics if we do not also study Jewish philosophy and Jewish ethics and the history of the Jewish people. These things are interdependent." You could have "starred" in any university in the world. Why are you here? Prof. Ciechanover: "Because I was born here and I want to live in a Hebrew-speaking environment, in the State that I fought for and in which I believe-on account of the long history of my people -- it is important to live. This country is the essence of my existence. My parents came to Israel as Jews from Poland because they wanted to establish a state in which no one would call them Zhid -- a Jewish state in which they could live a free life. They knew what they were aiming for. But this is not necessarily true of all Israelis. Our internal cohesion is falling apart; the rifts are growing from within. "I grew up with clear values, and, to my sorrow, I see around me their steady erosion. At this juncture, we have lost sight of our goal, and have no one with his hand on the rudder." Are we at the edge of the abyss? Is Israel in danger? Prof. Ciechanover: "Yes, and if we do not regain our balance, we will cease to exist. I say this in very clear language: If we don't change, we will cease to exist. We will be uprooted from this place." Prof. Aumann: "I, too, am very pessimistic and depressed. We lack the will to exist, we lack the patience to exist. We lack Zionism with a capital "Z." We have turned into post-Zionists, to our own worst enemies. From my point of view, the blackest moment in the history of the State of Israel, and perhaps in the history of the Jews in the world, was the Tenth of Av 5765." The day that the evacuation from Gaza started: Prof. Aumann: "The day that the expulsion started was the blackest moment. This was an unjustified act, immoral, not strategic, not political. It wasn't anything. My people went mad -- simply went mad." Why the people? Why not the leadership? Prof. Aumann: "Because the leadership is the product of the people; look at the last election results." Prof. Ciechanover: "Until a few months ago, I would not have agreed with Prof. Aumann. Today, even though I haven't changed my place on the political map, I have no choice but to agree with him. Last year, I was in favor of the idea of disengagement, which seemed to me to be an act of unilateral generosity towards the Palestinians. I hoped that they would respond to us in kind, but I was wrong: after the unilateral disengagement, we received only terror and more terror. The unilateral idea was bankrupt and at the same time the soap bubble [Kadima] that arose from its base went bankrupt. It is indeed still in power, but what is its message today? This party, and with it this entire government, doesn't have even a morsel of an agenda." What do you actually expect from the government? Prof. Ciechanover: "I expect the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense and all the ministers to wake up in the morning and ask themselves: After six months in office, what have we done to this country? Have we achieved even one objective that we set for ourselves and those who elected us? This is the moral minimum demanded of them. I wonder: how can they live with the failure that they created with their own hands?" You mean, why are they not ashamed? Prof. Ciechanover: "They are not ashamed because they don't care. They don't think about us. I look at them and I do not know what my future is in this country. I am very, very pessimistic and depressed." Prof. Aumann: "I am also pessimistic and depressed. But I have not forgotten that this is all our own fault - all our own fault." In this way the discussion between the two Prize
winners, our most distinguished scientists, ended but was
not concluded. They parted with a hug, and I saw tears
mounting in the corners of their eyes.
Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives
in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you
can subscribe to her newsletter.
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CIVIL STRIFE IN ISRAEL; SLAVERY; NY TIMES ON ARAB-ISRAEL CONFLICT
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 14, 2006. |
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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH AGAINST ISRAELI CLUSTER BOMBS HRW is denouncing Israeli, and only Israeli, use of cluster bombs. Other countries have them and used them, but HRW singles out Israel. It used the occasion of a Geneva conference on land mines in 2000, to go off-topic and bash Israel about this issue. Cluster bombs are bombs containing small bombs that explode around their carrier, taking out rocket launchers and crews that have moved around, to avoid regular bombs. That usage saves having to saturate the area with regular bombs. It also can save innocent lives by eliminating rocket launchers used for terrorism. Neither HRW nor the issue is in a vacuum. The background of the issue is that if a weapon has military use and not just a terrorist use, then it may be used militarily and not for terrorism. Thus warplanes are permitted, after an initial inclination to ban them, and land mines have been found to serve an effective defensive purpose (though the latter still are controversial). The question is their usage. Denying Israel its best defense against rockets, without suggesting a feasible alternative, is unethical. HRW cited only the possible negative aspects of Israel's use of cluster bombs and not the positive aspects. It ignored the Arabs' rocket terrorism that induced Israel to use cluster bombs. It also ignored Hizbullah's war crime of positioning rockets in civilian areas, but waxed indignant against Israel for killing some civilians by fighting back. The organization has been giving out false and misleading information about Israel for years. Its reports on the Arab-Israel conflict mostly criticize Israel and wrongly so, whereas the Arabs constantly commit war crimes. HRW joined the Israel-bashing, Durban conference. HRW has been proved to follow an anti-Israel agenda (Gerald Steinberg in IMRA, 10/24), as do many NGOs. These NGOs think they are being liberal and humane, but they favor inhumane, reactionary movements such as Islamism, the modern scourge of the world. CIVIL STRIFE IN ISRAEL The Arab toll in Israel from rockets exceeds the Jewish toll. Israeli Arabs are angry with the government for not protecting them better and with Hizbullah for not aiming better. Actually, the missiles are aimed well. They strike the more populated sections of towns, as if someone in town were collaborating with the gunners. The four thousand missiles, however, killed only 38 people. In one town, they struck the small parking places between houses. It seems miraculous (IMRA, 10/23). Notice the odd Arab complaint. Frankly, since the Israeli Arabs favor the rocket attacks, the government should do nothing to protect them defensively, but should do everything to root out the source of the attacks against the country. MULTICULTURALISM --MORE Does the BBC promote British culture? No, the BBC replied, "The BBC is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and it promotes it." (Call it the "anti-BBC.") A proponent of multiculturalism finds petty and irrelevant the concerns about multi-culturalism, as expressed by fellow countryman Anfindsen. Anfindsen found that present rates of immigration would turn native Norwegians into a minority. When a former majority gives way to a Muslim majority, it almost always is persecuted. Already, Muslims, knife in one hand, Koran in the other, are murdering native Europeans. Persecution is not petty or irrelevant! But the proponent of multiculturalism accused his critic of having a secret Christian agenda. He ignored Islam's proclaimed agenda. Many of the multi-culturalists are anti-religious and anti-Western. That is, they hate Christianity and Judaism. Since Islam, opposes those two religions and the West, those multiculturalists give excuses for Islamic attacks on those religions and the West (Miriam Gardner of American Yated Neeman, 10/24, from Fjordman) Those multiculturalists fail to see that in defending Islam, they defend a religion, and one lacking all the virtues of tolerance that the multiculturalists profess. Are they tolerant or are they too filled with hatred? Have they an ethical code? They need religion. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE WEST? World War II seems to have disillusioned Europeans with their civilization enough to let it be taken over, as if the answer to Nazi barbarism were to cede the field to (Muslim) barbarians. British youth know nothing about their past. Western culture is not being transmitted to them. They don't have anything to strive for, in their overly secular, welfare state. The really non-democratic EU paralyzes initiative. By contrast, Islam offers adherents a purpose in life (even though it takes away a lot of value in life). Problem is, it tends towards extremism, and Islamists compel people to follow their rules, such as women to don the veil. Thus, within free Britain, Muslims live in a totalitarian sub-culture. More men than women convert to it, perhaps because it offers them control over females (Theodore Dalyrmple from Miriam Gardner of American Yated Neeman, 10/24). SLAVERY In its prime, slavery of European Christians by N. African Muslims outnumbered the African slaves being taken to the New World. It was largely a religious slavery and vengeance for the Crusades, rather than racial, like American slavery, or purely economic, like Roman slavery. Muslim slavers captured ships, including American ships, and raided southern Europe, depopulating whole areas (in John Derbyshire's review of Christian Slaves, Christian Masters, by Robert Davis from Miriam Gardner, 10/25). In balancing Muslims and Christian slave practices, not that Arabs were a major factor in the African slave trade. In some Muslim countries, slavery still exists. SUPPOSE P.A. CIVIL WAR The P.A. may descend into civil war. Hamas is likely to prevail in Gaza, but not in Judea-Samaria. That may result in to different Arab governments. The Jaffee Center rues that outcome, because then Israel would not have a "partner" to negotiate with (IMRA, 10/26) i.e., surrender land to. Stop searching among those pirates for a "partner!" Seize upon their degeneracy to get them out of the area and annex more and more of it, thereby gaining strategic borders and water supply, and reducing the opportunity for terrorists. NY TIMES CRITICIZES RIGHTIST ENTRY INTO ISRAELI CABINET The editorial purports to identify one positive result of the Lebanon war: a new momentum to peace. This alleged momentum was prompted by Arab fears of Shiite advances and by Israel's having learned the limits of military power. Hence, the two sides would compromise. That momentum has slowed, however, because Israel hasn't supported Abbas enough, and now a right-wing party is joining the Cabinet. Its presence "makes it virtually impossible for Mr. Olmert to carry out the partial W. Bank withdrawal program he ran on just seven months ago (10/25). The wars in Lebanon and in Gaza came about because of, and demonstrate the folly of withdrawal. Hence the Times is wrong to continue advocating Israeli withdrawal, from the point of view of preserving Israel and peace. From the point of view of its anti-Zionist ideology, however, the Times is right. The Times pretends to care about peace, but it is extremist in its hostility to Jewish nationalism. Nor did the war demonstrate the limits of Israeli military power. It displayed the complacency of Israel's leadership and the failure to use Israeli military power to its limits. The Times is part of the international semi-conspiracy that tries to constrain Israeli responses to aggression and tries to shore up those aggressors. As to the Cabinet shifting to the Right, there is no evidence yet that it has. Israeli leaders are corrupt and eager for positions. They rarely stand on principle. Hence the new Cabinet member gave up all his right-wing conditions for joining the Cabinet, once he was invited. The notion of "compromise" between the Muslim Arabs and Israel is pernicious and ridiculous. Islam does not compromise. It uses agreements to pocket concessions without making concessions. The Times plays into the hands of the jihadists by pretending the conflict is territorial and therefore amenable to compromise. The conflict mainly is religious. Also, conside what a small percentage of the Jewish homeland Israel possesses, thanks to earlier compromises! Any less would render it helpless against invaders. The Times considers compromise to mean moving Jews out of land and giving the land to the Arabs, but keeping the million Arabs in the Jewish state. How one-sided! Yet the Times would have Israel make more concessions to help that jihadist, Abbas who praises the murderers of Israelis. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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SAUDIS RETURN IN RECORD NUMBERS TO US UNIVERSITIES
Posted by P. Kaufman, November 14, 2006. |
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This appeared today in the Saudi Gazette
Saudi students studying in the US have achieved a record figure as their number has reached 11,000 after several years that witnessed a drop in their numbers following the September 11 attacks, Asharq Al-Awsat, the London-based Arabic-language daily reported Sunday. These include 1,653 Saudi girls who got scholarships to study in America. The increase came as a result of the measures taken by the Saudi and American authorities, including the Saudi government's huge scholarship program to enable Saudi students to study abroad. The program began last year, along with easing in the issue of student visas from the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia. The education initiative also includes another scholarship program to enable American students to study in Saudi Arabia. "The relations at the government level are strong but at the people's level there is a lot of mistrust and hatred. This scholarship program is a good step towards eradicating some of the mistrust and hatred," Gregory Gus III, a professor at Vermont University and a specialist on Saudi affairs was quoted as saying by the newspaper. Mazyad Ibrahim Al-Mazyad, the Saudi Cultural Attaché said 10,936 Saudi students have been registered in 733 education institutions throughout the United States. He said 3,000 other Saudi students are expected to arrive in the new semester. This means their number will reach 14,000 students. Virginia occupies the fourth position after California, Florida and Colorado as a favored destination for Saudi students seeking study at US universities. There are 736 Saudi students at universities in the state of Virginia. The number of Saudi students now exceeds the number of students in the academic year 1980/1981, as their number then reached 10,440 according to the International Education Institution in New York, a non-profit organization working with the US State Department. Also, the current figure is double the number of Saudi students in the US in September 2001 when then stood at 5,579. Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the Kingdom's ambassador to the US, said joint education efforts began to increase following the April 2005 meeting between King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, who was Crown Prince then, and US President George Bush in Crawford, Texas. However, according to an official at the US State Department, Saudi students started arriving in large numbers to study in the US in the late 1970's. After 1981, their numbers started to dwindle down as more students were admitted at the Saudi universities and the Saudi government began to focus less on getting international experience. In 2001, bilateral relations were negatively affected to the terrorist attacks in 2001. For several months after the attacks, no Saudi national was granted a student visa. Mazyad said in the following year a limited number got visas. According to the International Education Institute, the number of Saudi students dropped by 25.2 percent in the academic year 2002/2003. With the advent of the academic year 2004/2005, the number of Saudi students reached 3,035. This low figure was never reached since the seventies. According to the State Department, 9,471 Saudi nationals received student visas in the academic year ending Sept. 30. This is a 297 percent increase compared to the number of visas issued in the previous year reaching 2,383. |
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GAZA MILITANTS TAKE A SENSELESS COURSE
Posted by Cameron S. Brown, November 14, 2006. |
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When Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz were sworn in on May 4, 2006, as Israel's prime minister and defense minister, respectively, the last thing either of them hoped for was to have to send troops back into Gaza. At the time it was obvious to both that if soldiers were sent back in, the entire political spectrum would view it as definitive proof that the decision to unilaterally leave Gaza in September 2005 had been folly. More important than its impact on the historical debate, however, such a move would also undermine the logic of the new government's core goal: to unilaterally withdraw from the vast majority of the West Bank and set Israel's permanent borders. It was for this reason that the two consistently brushed aside calls to re-enter Gaza, even after hundreds of unprovoked Qassam rockets were fired at Israeli towns and kibbutzim surrounding Gaza. While Peretz, a resident of Sderot (the town that has suffered most from these rocket barrages), did authorize the aerial pursuit of the militants who launched these attacks, his initial strategy was to avoid escalation and attempt to create an atmosphere that would enable Palestinians and Israelis to restart negotiations. Which is why the events since June 25 have been so tragic. No matter how much Israelis and their leaders -- who had gambled much on the successful withdrawal from Gaza -- wanted to shut the gate behind them and never think about Gaza again, Palestinian militants have done everything imaginable to drag Israel back into the Strip. First and foremost, since the withdrawal numerous factions within Gaza (including militants from Hamas) have relentlessly continued to fire rockets into Israel, almost as if driven by an obsessive-compulsive habit rather than dogma. Despite all Israeli warnings and acts of retaliation -- and despite the terrible cost this has entailed for Gazans -- militants refuse to stop firing on Israeli civilians. Yet Qassam rockets are just the beginning. Since Israel's withdrawal, militants have also dramatically increased the frenzied pace of digging tunnels to smuggle as many weapons as possible in from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. As the smuggling continues, so do these organizations build their capacity for causing havoc and terror. In addition to the anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles now being smuggled into Gaza, militants there have also come into possession of Katyusha rockets -- all as part of an attempt to mimic the tactics and weaponry used by Hezbollah to deadly effect in its recent war against Israel. Indeed, on the day Olmert was elected, Gazan militants escalated the conflict by firing their first Katyusha at the industrial section of Ashkelon, one of Israel's major cities. Finally, on June 25, these militant zealots attacked Israeli soldiers posted on the Israeli side of the border, and in doing so signaled to all their total unwillingness to recognize Israel in any form or within any borders. Beyond killing two soldiers, these attackers also kidnapped the soldier Gilad Shalit -- who is being held captive until today. For most outside observers, these Palestinian actions are exceptionally counter-intuitive. If put in their place, most people would take the opportunity presented by the withdrawal of the Israeli army and the 8,000 settlers to better the lives of their people and begin the long, hard task of rebuilding the shattered Gazan economy. Instead, these militants essentially forced Israel's leaders to re-invade Gaza, despite the fact that it meant taking the very action that would most undermine their administration's agenda. That Palestinian militants have left Israel's government with no choice but to besiege the Gaza Strip once more has not bought Israel much understanding overseas. Pictures of unarmed women running by tanks will never win sympathy, no matter the context. That the vast majority of those killed in the latest incursion into Beit Hanun were militants is also usually lost in the criticism of Israel's incursion. As well, even though Israel's own leadership is under no delusion that this latest incursion will result in a total end to the Qassam fire, what its critics fail to realize is that hitting rocket-launching crews (at least five were hit during the operation) and the experts who produce them (such as Hamas rocket-maker, Louay al-Borno) will significantly degrade the militants' capabilities and thus save the lives of Israeli civilians. Cameron S. Brown is the Deputy Director of the GLORIA Center, a research center at the Interdisciplinary Center University in Herzliya, Israel. Contact the Center at gloria@idc.ac.il This article appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune, November 8, 2006 |
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THE GATHERING STORM
Posted by Naomi Ragen, November 14, 2006. |
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Friends, Some of you have commented that I'm sending out much less material of late. This is not your imagination. As I sit in my little study in Jerusalem, overlooking the rolling hills where David once fought Goliath, I feel overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness as day after day the news gets worse and worse. There is a line from I, Claudius, the mini-series on ancient Rome based on Robert Graves wonderful book that keeps going through my head. It is spoken by Claudius, the reluctant emperor who wishes to bring back the Republic and end the corrupt monarchy. He says: "Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out." What Claudius means, is let the horrors brought about by perversions and lies and corruption come to fruition so that people will clearly see what a state their world is in, and work for change. We are definitely in the mud. Israeli leadership is the most incompetent and corrupt in her history. Everyone from our Prime Minister to our President is under investigation from everything from bribe-taking to rape. After all the bitter lessons of the fake Oslo Accords, that had our children dying in the streets, we have learned nothing, as Olmert goes once again to the Americans with yet another deadly plan to give our enemies more land, and with it, more opportunity, to kill us. It's not that Israelis don't know what is going on. They do. But people are overwhelmed by the sheer pace of events that unfold with frightening speed from month to month. Still reeling from the rocket attacks on the North, we must deal with daily rocket attacks on our South and the huge weapons influx from the Philadelphi Corridor, once closely guarded by the IDF, which is now open to endless weapons imports from Egypt, thanks to a decision made by people like Mofaz and Halutz to withdraw. Every day, some other suicide bomber is apprehended. You don't hear about it, because we don't die, but that doesn't mean our enemies have stopped trying to kill us. Some people -- the reserve officers whose lives were risked in the last debacle in Lebanon- have had the gumption to rally to bring down the corrupt government, but most of us are mired in confusion and simple fatigue. We get sidetracked by foolishness, like the decision to turn Jerusalem into a world-wide venue for gay rights activism, an idea that backfired, exposing fanaticism and hatred on all sides. No, I didn't think the parade was a good idea, but I was equally appalled by the violence and destruction wreaked on Jerusalem by the parade's opponents. I also found the activism against gay rights by the Chief Rabbinate to be the height of hypocrisy. So concerned are they with Jewish law and the holiness of the Jewish people that Chief Rabbi Amar (whose own family was arrested not long ago for assault and battery on his daughter's suitor) cancelled the much anticipated Agunah Conference. The Conference would have brought together Orthodox rabbis from all over the world in a historic effort to come up with halachic solutions to Jewish laws that encourage the blackmail and extortion of Jewish women seeking a divorce, laws which have turned the Jewish marriage ceremony into a life sentence with no possibility of parole. And while we focus all our time and energy on these ridiculous little tempests in teapots, Iran goes on building her atom bomb unimpeded, a bomb with our name on it. Olmert smiles at us from the front page of newspapers as he shakes the hand of a smiling lame duck president, confident that the U.S. is going to stop Iran and save us. His own sons already live in America, so I guess he isn't very worried. But mine live here in Israel, and I am. The world seems mired in the same kind of lethargy and Jew-hatred which preceded the Holocaust. Open any news channel, read any newspaper, and the story line continues to be the poor Palestinians, even though they continue to support the most corrupt, violent and dysfunctional regime on earth. The lies covering up Islamic extremism and its agenda worldwide continue to be flaunted by trendy films, TV shows, Hollywood "stars", once-respectable newspapers, public-funded radio shows. The victory of the Democrats over the Republicans while certainly in response to the Bush administration's many failures, also no doubt shows a weakening of the resolve to face the terrorist threat head-on, and a desire to believe that there is another, easier way to secure our freedoms, the way of negotiation, of easing the "grievances" that the Muslims have against the West. As Brigitte Gabriel writes in her amazing book,Because They Hate: "Their grievance is our freedom of religion. Their grievance is our democratic process." The Jews of America, who could do so much to strengthen their sisters and brothers in Israel, continue to be influenced by the anti-Israel propaganda. That a large portion of funds raised for the Israeli victims of the war in Lebanon by the UJC were earmarked for Israeli Arabs, who openly sided with Nasrallah, is one symptom The complete abandonment of the Jews of Gush Katif by American Jewry, so eager to help Arabs, is another. The government is supposedly helping them, you'll hear these people say. It's their own fault for not signing on the dotted line in time, for resisting government policy. The fact that everyone, even those who did sign, remain jobless, homeless and poverty-stricken because of their crime of living in an area that defended Israel's south from terrorist bombardment for many years, is unforgivable. It's as if we Jews have adopted the "hate the settler" philosophy of our enemies, and wish to join the forces that want them punished for their crime of being Zionists, and patriots, and self-sacrificing, and loyal. Jonathan Pollard, the spy who did not harm anyone, or any American interest, remains behind bars because he is a Jew who helped Israel, having long ago paid for any wrong doing, serving more time than spies who gave information to America's worst enemies and caused irreparable damage to her security. And Jews are afraid to stand up for him. That is another sign. The rockets continue to fall on Sderot and the Negev from Gaza. Each time we try to stop it, the world press gathers like jackals to condemn us. Misinformation, outright propaganda abounds. I'm sick of it. It's like emptying a flooded cruise liner with a teaspoon. In his book "The Gathering Storm," Churchill wrote: "How easily the tragedy of the Second World War could have been prevented: how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous; how the structure and habits of democratic States... lack those elements of persistence and conviction which can alone give security to humble masses; how, even, in matters of self-preservation, no policy is pursued for even ten or fifteen years at at time. We shall see how the counsel of prudence and restraint may become the prime agents of mortal danger; how the middle course adopted from desires for safety and a quiet life may be found to lead direct to the bull's-eye of disaster." Perhaps we have passed the point of no return. Perhaps our accumulated mistakes and crimes have created a downhill momentum that can no longer be stopped by human effort, but only Godly intervention, i.e. a miracle. Churchill wrote that he gained comfort from the fact that when Nazi Germany finally showed her true face, in a way that even the most naive could not ignore, "my warnings over the last six years had been so numerous, so detailed and were now so terribly vindicated, that no one could gainsay me...I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams." I doubt that the storm that is gathering, threatening all we love, and cherish and believe in, will allow us even that scant comfort. I do not want to be "terribly vindicated." I want to live out my life, and die in a good old age, my children and grandchildren safe and healthy around me, free citizens in the land of their forefathers. This is my dream. May God help us. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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PLEASE RETAIN THE EXCEPTIONAL JOHN BOLTON
Posted by Marion DS Dreyfus, November 14, 2006. |
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Dear Mr. President, I was quite sad to see the departure of that excellent man, Donald Rumsfeld, but understand why circumstances forced his departure under the new [unpleasant, even frightening] Congressional regime. But I implore you to try your utmost to retain John Bolton. This experienced and competent diplomat is quite unusual in his strength and conviction and his ability to negotiate the shoals of our many enemies. His clarity of expression and vision of a strong US are equally compelling. All those hundreds of people who have met him personally at panels and talks convened in the past months have found him deeply thoughtful, well-spoken, insightful, strong in defense, and utterly winning where it counts today. We cannot lose this gem in the viperpit that is the disgraceful UN. Please keep this wonderful ambassador. Help deliver this message. Click Here to Sign the Petition! Marion Dreyfus is a writer and travelor; she has taught English in China on the university level. She can be contacted at dreyfusmarion@hotmail.com |
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WILL THE SAUDIS SUCCEED IN EXPORTING SHARI'A TO THE US?
Posted by Michael Travis, November 13, 2006. |
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Whilst my good friend Jeff Goldstein @ Protein Wisdom is on a
semi-Sabbatical, his guest poster 'Ahem' asks: "Will the Saudis
Succeed in Exporting Shari'a to the US?" The post is a must-read, but I was particularely grateful for the
link The laws of Saudi Arabia, based upon the sharia law mandated by the Koran, do not recognize the rights and freedoms guaranteed Americans by the Constitution. The Saudi government makes no secret of its ambition to export Islamic tyranny worldwide, as the Koran commands. What most Americans don't realize, is that American courts are helping it in a number of ways. For example, they are collaborating with Saudi attempts to squash the free-speech rights of Americans with abusive libel lawsuits... Charles Johnson @ LGF wryly sums it up as "may the best culture win". So, is it about culture? You bet. Commenter 'Passerby' from Singapore speaks for the vast majority of Muslims who live outside the Islamic trouble spots. He/she is as much an onlooker as we are, very likely enjoying the same civil liberties and economic advantages as we do -- Singapore has banned wearing the Islamic headscarf in public schools and is well known for its careful policies to manage the second most densly populated country in the world, especially given the fact, that it is a multi-religious society made up of 40% Buddhists, 15% Christians, 14% Muslims, 5% practicing Taoism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Baha'i Faith, and some 15% professing no religion (source). But, most importantly, 'Passerby' has the same familiar and heartwarming memories surrounding religious ceremonies and regular rituals experienced together with friends and family from the earliest days of his/her life, spanning all the way to the present day. And when confronted with our quest here on ATB to shed light on the threats facing us and our children in the future, it must be difficult to consolidate the personal experiences and the harsh tone with which we take issue with Islam as it presents itself to us every day in the usual trouble spots. First, I want to say to all the 'Passerbys' of this world, you are most certainly welcome to join our journey and our quest to navigate through the dense forest of disinformation on all fronts, both domestically and internationlly. All here on ATB will most heartily agree with "Hatred against other religion and people in it is certainly a barrier to foster closer ties and to erase any tensions among us all."; all will cheer statements suggesting that knowledge is the only answer to combat bigotry, "so we know what is wrong and what is right." Most of us thought of Islam as just another religion and would have endorsed Al-Kafirun's call for unbiased religious tolerance. But acquiring knowledge about Islam, not slander, as 'Passerby' seemed to suggest, has caused us to take a different turn -- I can't of course allow questioning our ability to differentiate between the Qur'an and the Hadith to remain unchallenged and suggest to simply paste 'hadith' into the Google Search field on my side bar and search ATB; that should serve to nicely to demonstrate how thoroughly we go about our learning. Understanding the full extent with which both religious and political leaders in practically all Muslim countries have systematically indoctrinated countless generations with hatred and prejudice against 'Infidels', especially Jews and Christians, gives us the much needed perspective to comprehend and debate such incidents as the cartoon war and the violent reactions to the Pope's lecture in Germany. Actions speak louder than words. Christian actions were marred by dark periods in history; but unlike contemporary Muslims, we don't deny them nor do we ignore, that we have evolved during the centuries hence into a demonstrably peaceful religion -- the era of the Spanish Inquisition has passed since many centuries, but, as 'Passerby' knows only too well, her evil offspring, namely the violent suppression of heresy against Islam is very much alive in Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, to name just a few. Try build a church in Riyadh or organize a Christian prayer group in Islamabad and see how the words from Al-Kafirum hold water. It is my dearest wish, that all 'Passerbys' would redirect their concerns to the Jews and Christians living amongst Muslim bretheren in Islamic countries; any sadness, in what was mistook for hatred against Islam on ATB, should much rather be caused by the fate of those, whose life is made unbearable by violent attacks because they are either Infidels or have the courage to confront the dark ages ingrained in today's Islam. Peace is what we thought we had, and all we want. Al-Kafirun's words describe Judea/Christian actions over many many years, but bear no resemblance to the condition prevalent in almost all Islamic countries. |
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Via the Boston Globe, the current predicament of Rachel Ehrenfeld, Director of the American Center for Democracy and author of "Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It", a book exposing the role of a wealthy Saud in funding Al Qaeda. (No link to Amazon as you'll soon understand.) AN IMPORTANT question will be argued tomorrow before the federal Court of Appeals in Manhattan: should American journalists who write about controversial issues be subjected to legal intimidation from abroad? More precisely, will American courts halt the growing practice of "libel tourism" whereby wealthy foreigners sue American writers and publishers in England, despite little chance of enforcing the judgment in this country?... Judge Robert Casey of The Southern District Court in Manhattan dismissed her case: But Judge Casey ignored Ehrenfeld's plea for her First Amendment rights, and decided that he had no jurisdiction over the case. Ehrenfeld is filing an appeal and faces a daunting challenge of raising enough money to support a case that she believes will help determine whether or not American writers will be able to continue to expose America's enemies. According to an excellent and alarming article by Robert Locke
originally appearing in Dhimmi Watch in July of this year
The laws of Saudi Arabia, based upon the sharia law mandated by the Koran, do not recognize the rights and freedoms guaranteed Americans by the Constitution. The Saudi government makes no secret of its ambition to export Islamic tyranny worldwide, as the Koran commands. What most Americans don't realize, is that American courts are helping it in a number of ways. For example, they are collaborating with Saudi attempts to squash the free-speech rights of Americans with abusive libel lawsuits... Although you'd think that the issue would be crystal clear, you
would be wrong Whether American courts can block those judgments, or at least certain of their provisions, is a question none of the judges yesterday appeared especially eager to tackle. And the court expressed little interest in the First Amendment concerns that legal observers say are present in the case. And you'll be pleased to note that in related news: Democratic strategist and former Michael Dukakis campaign manager Susan Estrich, and the former American Civil Liberties Union president in Massachusetts, Harvey Silvergate, recently joined the attorneys representing two alleged Boston al Qaeda funders. It's a religious freedom case. Contact Michael Travis at michaelmgr1@yahoo.co.uk |
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MOSLEM VIOLENCE AND SEXUAL CRIMES -- A BRIEF HISTORICAL SURVEY
Posted by David Meir-Levi, November 13, 2006. |
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Almost as though pursuant to my email last week about the mass riot and rape and molestation perpetrated against hundreds of Cairo women (many veiled) by hundreds of rampaging Moslem men between the ages of 10 and 50, a Hindu Canadian has written an historical perspective of extremist Moslem attitudes and behaviors toward violence and rape. His notation of 80,000,000 victims of the Moslem invasions into India sounds hyperbolic. Actually it is modest. Other Hindu historians detail more than 100,000,000 dead in the Hindu wars against Moslem invaders between the 8th and 15th centuries. How many millions of Hindu women were raped, subsequently murdered, or kept in captivity for sex slavery, is uncalculatable. As Moslem Canadian journalist-autor Irshad Manji said in her book, there is a problem with Islam. While the overwhelming majority of Moslems world-wide may be peaceful nice folks, the religious ideology of Islam emerging from its foundation texts is an ideology that teaches in no uncertain terms the religio-racial supremacy of Islam, totalitarian control by Moslem men over women and non-Moslems with no accounability in law, and an imperialistic triumphalist apocalyptic world-view in which the ulimate triumph of Islam is to be brought about by force of arms and conquest and subjugation (and in the case of Jews -- genocide). Thus, that tiny minority of Moslems who, for whatever reason, have a proclivity to violence and to totalitarian control (where they do the controling), and to a brutally repressive misogynistic social order that encourages rape and female genital mutilation, and to a religio-fascist supremacist world order in which all non-Moslems are inferior by definition to all Moslems... ...that tiny minority receives religious legitimization and encouragement from the ideology; as well as adulation from some uncalculable number within the ranks of the peaceful Moslem population... ...while such a minority of the same ilk in western civilization is branded as psychotic or fascist. There is a problem with Islam. This was written by Ron Banerjee. It's called "Immigration,
Muslims, Veiled Threats to Democracy"
and appeared at
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Rape, genocide and gross human rights violations against ethno-cultural groups induce victims to adopt defensive mechanisms. Hindu women in South Asia adopted traditions to protect themselves from Muslim invaders, who perpetrated the largest holocaust in history against Hindus. According to Dr.Younis Shaikh (Pakistani author of the study 'Islam and Women'), eighty million were slaughtered and millions of women were raped. Sexual violence occurred on a gory and unimaginable scale: it was standard practice for Islamic warlords like Ghori and Ghazni to unleash the mass rape and enslavement of hundreds of thousands of women after the slaughter of all males. A large percentage of Muslims in South Asia today are the progeny of forcible conversions and systematic rape campaigns by marauding Muslim invaders. As a result, Hindu women often veiled themselves in public to avoid the eyes of rapacious Islamic conquerors. This was especially prevalent in regions with high Muslim populations, such as Hyderabad under the Nizams. The tradition of sati, where Hindu women voluntarily cast themselves onto burning cremation grounds after their husbands' death, gained widespread acceptance during the Islamic invasions. The most famous instance took place when Muslim invaders overran Chattisgarh in 1568: rather than submit to the rape and slavery that would follow, eight thousand heroic Hindu women committed sati en masse. Western nations with high Islamic immigration rates are also beginning to see mass rape and sexual violence emanating from Muslim fundamentalists. Paul Sheehan of the Sydney Morning-Herald reported the clear link between Australian rapes and Muslim immigrants. In one instance, a Pakistani in Australia charged with rape argued in court that his cultural background is responsible for his acts. Last week, one of Australia's senior-most Islamic clerics, Sheikh Hilali, compared unveiled women to uncovered meat who invite rape. In Europe, Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten reported that Oslo police reports found two-thirds of Norwegian sexual crimes are committed by 'non Western immigrants'. The Swedish Crime Prevention Council reports that males born overseas commit rape at four times the rate of natives Swedes. In both of these nations, Muslim immigrants comprise the largest non European population, which is echoed across Europe. TIME magazine reported in 2002 that sexual assault is rampant in France's poverty-stricken suburbs, inhabited primarily by members of the five million-strong French Muslim population. Thus, we are seeing a repeat in the West of what occurred in ancient Hindu civilization: the freedoms enjoyed by liberated women are steadily being eroded by beliefs diametrically opposed to our values of pluralism and freedom. Within some societies, it is customary for women to bear the blame and responsibility for sexual crimes. The niqab and hijab cover female bodies and it is the duty of women at all times to remain covered and avoid male attention. In Pakistan, women are sometimes stoned to death for adultery and imprisoned when they are raped. When Mukhtar Mai's brother was charged with an offence, Pakistani courts ordered her to be gang-raped by four men for her brother's offense. Viewed in this light, it is apparent why British PM Blair and Italian PM Prodi have recently raised concerns about the wearing of veils. France has wisely banned the wearing of veils in public schools. Whether or not immigrants can adapt successfully to progressive societies is dependent on how deeply entrenched are the negative values of their homelands. Oppression, enslavement, and sexual violence are rooted within the fundamentalist Islamic psyche. Many Islamic leaders who perpetrated mass rape in South Asia were deeply religious Muslims with considerable authority within the faith. Fundamentalist Muslim attitudes towards women and minorities are so divergent from civilized norms in other cultures that clashes are inevitable. These conflicts can result in drastic changes in the host cultures, such as regional adoption of veils by Hindu women and an upsurge in sati traditions. In Europe, the massive sexual violence perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists is slowly changing society. Unni Wikan, professor of sociology at University of Oslo, in 2001 blamed Norwegian women for dressing provocatively in front of Muslim men, and suggested that they should adapt themselves to a multicultural society. Western societies will soon be forced to decide whether to protect their democratic traditions or submit to medieval standards of conduct. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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WHAT HAPPENED ON 13TH NOVEMBER 2006
Posted by Salah Choudhury, November 13, 2006. |
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Greetings from Shoaib! As some of you are aware, Bangladesh is currently experiencing serious political problems, and 13th November was the day, when the entire country was under 'Blockade' programs of a major political party. Naturally, there was no vehicle on the road, and in every other place, there was large number of angry demonstrators chanting slogans. I woke up in the early morning to prepare for the court. By 8:30 am., I was already on my way. And, there was nothing on the road, except some bi-cycles and RIKSHAW (please check with google image search to know what is RIKSHAW). I had ato walk for around 3 kilometers, before I could some how manage a RIKSHAW (distance between my residence and the court is above 20 kilomemeters). Then the RIKSHAW was stopped at one point, almost two kilometers away from the court by police, who put barricades on roads. Then I had o walk again. By the time I was inside the court building, I was sweating. As you know, till now, winter is not very much experienced in Dhaka, when the temparature is approximately 27 degree celcius. The Court picked up my case at 1:35 pm., and there was a hearing for around 10 minutes. The judge, Mohammed Momin Ullah asked the Public Prosecutor to read the charge in front of me. He came and read, "By praising the Jews and Christians, by attempting to travel to Israel and by predicting the so-called rise of Islamist millitancy in the country and expressing such through writings inside the country and abroad, you have tried to damage the image and relations of Bangladesh with the outside world. For which, charges under section 295-A, 120-A, 124-A, 105-A and 108-A are brought against you. Are you guilty or not". I replied, "I am not guilty." By advocating inter-faith dialogue, supporting relations between Bangladesh and Israel, I have not done anything wrong. Regarding the existence of Islamist radicals in this country, the matter is already endorsed several times by country's press, leaders, administration and judiciary. Continuation of this false case, will open the doors for JMB criminals, whose death penalty issue is now in the higher court, in getting legal benefit. I firmly stand on my position'. Then my lawyers told the court that, they will challenge this decision to the higher judiciary. Virtually angry radical judge, then asked the Public Prosecutor to call the witnesses on 22nd Janaury 2007. What a 'great New Year gift' from the radical judge! Isn't it? May I request you all to kindly consider the following points, * Government should end all forms of harrassments on me,Travel ban on Israel should be immediately withdrawn, * Demand immediate removal of radical judge Momin Ullah from the Metropolitan Session Judge's court, Regards
Salah Choudhury is a journalist, columnist, author, amd editor of "Weekly Blitz". Email him at salahuddinshoaibchoudhury@yahoo.com |
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GAY RIGHTS, YES; JEWISH RIGHTS, NO!
Posted by Women in Green, November 13, 2006. |
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This was written by Gary Cooperberg. |
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The alleged "high court of Justice" in Israel has demonstrated clearly that it neither enforces justice, nor does it possess genuine esteem for either democratic nor Jewish values. Few people know that Israeli Law permits Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. They are prevented from doing so only by an "escape clause" which states that should the police determine that as a result of Jewish prayer the Arabs are likely to riot, and thus create a situation of danger, the police have the right to prevent Jews from praying there. The police neither wish to expose worshipers to danger, nor are they willing to invest the force necessary to protect them while exercising their legal rights, so they simply deny them those rights. The Arabs have taken note of this "escape clause" and are only too happy to provide the riots which enable Jewish police to deny Jews the right to pray on their holiest site. As such it has become an axiomatic fact that Jews are not permitted to pray there! This same "high court of Justice", in total disregard to the sensitivities of Jews, issued a permit for homosexuals to parade their brand of lifestyle in the streets of Jerusalem. After all the legal protests fell on deaf ears, a large number of hereidi Jews decided to take a lesson from the court's reaction to Arab "demonstrations". Clearly if the court permits Arab rioters to prevent Jews from exercising their legal right to pray; it would seem logical to assume that it would (democratically) follow that it would permit Jewish rioters to prevent queers from exercising their legal right to parade their brand of immorality in the streets of Jerusalem. Strangely enough this logical conclusion did not apply. The same court which would not suffer the police to muster the troops needed to protect Jews from Arab rioters, had no trouble mandating the police to use whatever forces they needed to enable the gays to parade their immorality in the streets of the holy city. Perhaps there is a brilliant lawyer somewhere in Israel who can at least use this obvious dual standard to demand that the police permit Jews the right to exercise their legal right to pray on the Temple Mount. It really wouldn't take a genius to present the case, nor would it take a judge with the wisdom of Solomon to determine what to do. All it would take is a court which possesses honesty, courage and a genuine sense of justice. Thus there is little hope for a change under the present system. Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org |
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ANTI-ISRAEL INDOCTRINATION AT BEN GURION U:ACADEMIC LICENSE NOT LICENSE TO KILL
Posted by David Meir-Levi, November 13, 2006. |
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TO: Professor Rivka Carmi,
Dear President Carmi, Ben Gurion University's Department of Politics and Government
offers a course entitled "Critical Aspects of the Occupation," taught
by Neve Gordon. Just FYI, and for your convenience, the syllabus can
be viewed on the departmental web site:
Based upon its reading list alone, the course seems very one-sided, consisting mostly of in-classroom anti-Israel political indoctrination. The reading list consists almost entirely of anti-Israel or pro-Marxist diatribes, including Arab writers who do not think Israel has the right to protect itself, or even exist. There are also known Israel-haters like Sara Roy or Azmi Bishara (the Arab Knesset Member who has been running to Syria to call for Israel's annihilation). The closest thing the reading list can offer, as at least a symbol of balance, is a 25-year old piece by Menachem Milstein, and some chapters from a book by Labor Party historian Shabtai Shevet...token pro-Israel essays overwhelmed in a sea of anti-Israel screed. But what is more appalling is that there is not a single article there about Palestinian terrorism or about Israel's rights to defend itself. You will never learn that Israel's "occupation" of "Palestinian lands" was caused by Arab aggression and violence and not the other way around. You will never learn that Israel offered to return conquered land in exchange for peace, many times, and the Arabs instead chose war. You will never hear that the main cause of escalated Palestinian terrorism in the past 13 years was not occupation at all, but rather the end of occupation. You do not learn that Israel, the UN, the UK, the USA, and/or some combination of these have offered Palestinian leadership its own state, next to Israel, fifteen times since 1937; only to have the offer rebuffed with terrorism and war. You do not learn that Arafat vowed to continue his terror war against Israel, on television in Jordan, even before the ink was dry on the Oslo Accords. As promulgated by Western civilization, the concept 'academic freedom' does NOT mean freedom to teach lies, hatred, subversion, and treason. Similarly, "freedom of speech" does not mean freedom of hate-speech, hate-preach, or hate-teach. I most sincerely encourage you to examine carefully Prof. Gordon's course in the context of the Western concept of 'academic freedom' and in the context of Israel's current state of war with the Palestinian Authority and other countries in the Muslim world. If what Prof. Gordon teaches is sound history, and rational analysis based upon bona fide facts and validated data, then Israel, as a free country where democratic process and rule of law prevail, must accomodate Prof. Gordon's right to teach the truth even if it raises difficult political questions. However, if Professor Gordon is exploiting academic license to preach Israel-hatred under the faux mantle of scholarship, substituting transparently anti-Israel mendacious propaganda and decontextulized narratives for honest scholarship, then he is aiding and abetting Israel's enemies in time of war. In doing so, he is making it easier for Israel's enemies to gain political advantage. And in doing that, he is strengthening them and aiding them in their terrorist murder of Israelis. In time of war, that is treason. Academic license is NOT a license to kill. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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POLLARD GROUP: REPORT'S TIMING DESIGNED TO KEEP HIM IN PRISON
Posted by Hillel Fendel, November 13, 2006. |
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The Committee to Bring Jonathan Pollard Home says the timing of last night's report against Pollard stems from the fear that Pres. Bush might agree to pardon him. The Supreme Court has turned down Pollard's request to disqualify his former handler from serving as a Cabinet minister, the government will not support granting Pollard "Prisoner of Zion" status -- and an Israeli TV report negatively portrays Pollard just as Prime Minister Olmert is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Bush. Israel's Channel 10 news reported last night the story of Ronald Olive -- the FBI agent who has capitalized on his 1985 capture of Pollard outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington by writing a book and delivering frequent lectures on it. Olive accuses Pollard of spying merely to puff up his own ego and of "stuffing documents into a suitcase 2-3 times a day, 3-4 times a week, for 18 months." Pollard himself has said that in fact, he used a small briefcase to make a total of 11 drops of information to the Israelis. He says that the Americans routinely exaggerate the amount of information he gave Israel by counting one page of a document as if it were the entire document -- even if that document was several volumes long. Olive, apparently enthusiastic over his arrest of a famous spy, says that Pollard stole some of "the most closely-guarded secrets of the United States" and gravely endangered U.S. security. This, despite the fact that Pollard was never indicted for compromising U.S. codes, agents, or war plans, was not charged with treason, and was convicted only of one count of passing classified information to an ally, without intent to harm the United States. The information Pollard provided Israel was supposed to have been provided to Israel according to a 1983 U.S.-Israeli Memorandum of Understanding. It included Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan and Iranian nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare capabilities that were being developed for use against Israel, as well as information on ballistic missile development in these countries and planned terrorist attacks against Israeli targets. Channel 10 also screened a surveillance camera video, with Olive's spirited narration, showing Pollard taking papers from a drawer in his desk, placing them into his briefcase, and walking out of his office with the case. The Jerusalem-based Committee to Bring Jonathan Pollard Home says that the report is full of easily refutable lies, and that it was designed only to sabotage all chances that U.S. President Bush's might consent to pardon him. "The timing of the 'exclusive' item on the U.S. Navy on Channel 10 [the video was screened on MSNBC a month ago -- ed.] is not coincidental," the organization said in a statement last night. "Its broadcast just a day before Olmert and Bush are to meet, and a week before Pollard concludes his 21st year in prison, stems from a fear by the anti-Israeli elements in the American intelligence community -- who always work to prevent his release -- that Bush is likely to respond favorably to an official Israeli request for his release." Full of Lies "The report was full of lies that can be refuted in an absolute manner," the organization states, "but the main point was not only its besmirching of Jonathan -- but the creation of the impression that there is widespread opposition to his release." Olive claimed, for instance, that Pollard received $54,000 in money and gifts from the Israelis. However, even the FBI concluded, after nine months of investigation including polygraphs, that Pollard acted for ideological reasons only, not for profit. This fact was also recognized by the sentencing judge, who declined to fine Pollard -- even while disregarding a plea bargain arrangement and sentencing him to an unprecedented life term in prison. "Every day that Jonathan Pollard remains in prison," said civil rights proponent Law Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard University, "is another day of injustice." Minister Eitan not Disqualified In a related item, the Supreme Court rejected a petition by Pollard to disqualify his former handler, Rafi Eitan, from serving as a Cabinet minister. Eitan was the director of Israel's Lakam intelligence agency which recruited Pollard, a U.S. Navy analyst, in 1984. Pollard, who submitted his suit on May 1, shortly after Prime Minister Olmert formed his government and named Eitan as Minister for Pensioners' Affairs, maintained that Eitan betrayed him and is not worthy of sharing governmental responsibility for Israel's citizenry. The suit claimed that Eitan consciously abandoned his agent to the hands of the FBI, and falsely told the Americans that Pollard had acted alone and without Israeli supervision. It further claimed that Eitan has withheld a critical document from both the Israeli and U.S. authorities -- despite knowing that it could attain Pollard's freedom and thus save his life. The suit maintained that Rafi Eitan made a calculated choice, ever since Pollard was arrested in 1985, to protect the political careers of his friends by sacrificing a soldier in the field. Supreme Court President Dorit Beinish rejected the petition, stating that Pollard had not succeeded in proving his claims. Pollard's counsel, Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, said afterwards, "It is regrettable that the Supreme Court follows the government's path and shakes off its responsibility for Pollard... True, Rafi Eitan denies everything we claimed, but did not bring a shred of evidence to disprove our claims. Neither did the government deny our claims, but said only that the Supreme Court should not intervene in the matter." MK Uri Ariel (National Union), head of the Pollard lobby in the Knesset, said today, "The Supreme Court's decision should prod Minister Eitan to do whatever necessary on behalf of getting Pollard out of jail. He should be in charge of the matter on behalf of the government." Ministers Won't Support PoZ Status for Pollard In yet another blow to Pollard, the ministerial committee for legislation -- which determines the government's stance on proposed legislation -- has nixed a bill by MK Effie Eitam (National Union) that would recognize Pollard as a Prisoner of Zion. "The government is misleading the public," Eitam responded. "It claims to be working on Pollard's behalf, but in practice, it torpedoes every initiative in his favor, and does not make great efforts to have him released." 2. Arab League Un-Freezes PA Funding, as Kassams Continue Hillel Fendel is Senior News Editor for Israel National News. |
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AL-MUHAJIR RENEWS EL-QAEDA'S DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST THE US
Posted by David Meir-Levi, November 13, 2006. |
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Can they make it any clearer? Note that Muhajir's el-Qaeda's campaign in Iraq and Osama's world-wide el-Qaeda terrorist war against "global non-belief" posit no demands, express no interest in a negotiated settlement -- except the West's acceptance of Islam. The grievences quoted first by Osama in the years before 9/11/01 were 1.) USA troops in Arabia and 2.) the West's embargo against Iraq (which Osama and Saddam claimed were causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of little innocent Iraqi children, from starvation). No one at that time took el-Qaeda seriously, and none of our leaders, from Clinton on down, seemed to feel it worth pointing out that US troops in Arabia were there at the request of the Saudi rulers; and that no Kurdistani children were dying of starvation even though they too suffered from the embargo and the limited Oil-for-food programs (thus raising the possibiliity that it was not the embargo causing the problem, but Saddam's administration of the Oil-for-Food program, that was causing the starvation -- since the Kurdistani region of northern Iraq was semi-autonomous and did its own localized administration of the oil-for-food money and food). Only belatedly did Osama, after a mild and subtle but effective tongue-lashing from Arafat, add to his list of grievences the West's support for Israel (ignoring, of course, the decades of the West's support for scores of Arab and Moslem countries, including the Palestinian Authority; and ignoring as well the EU's unmittigated anti-Israel stand and pro-Palestinian/pro-terrorist diplomancy and foreign aid; and ignoring the USA's numerous diplomatic pressures against Israel to accomodate terrorist demands even though those accomodations were clearly not in Israel's best interests). BUT -- when the USA withdrew its troops from Arabia, and the post-Gulf-War-2 Oil-for-Food scandal made it clear that Iraqi children were dying of starvation not because of the USA embargo but because of Saddam's multi-billion dollar embezzlement of aid money to build his WMD program, and the Road Map promised the end to the conflict and the creation of a Palestinian state... ...and thus all of Osama's grievances were addressed in the context of the West's non-culpability and/or compliance and/or willingness to address the grievance via honest negotiations... ...Osama still showed no interest in any sort of negotiation for the end of el-Qaeda's hostility and persistent terror attacks. Thus, with a quick look back into the last 15 years of el-Qaeda campaigns against the USA, it becomes obvious that the purpose of the el-Qaeda terror attacks, from the 2/1993 first attempt to topple the World Trade Center's Twin Towers to the current war in Iraq and the infiltration of thousands of sleeper-cell terrorists into the USA via Mexico, is the destruction of the USA and the subordination of Western civilization to Moslem rule. And that is exactly what Muhajir is telling us in his speech below. Recall that Hitler wrote Mein Kampf a decade before his rise to power. He meant every word he wrote, but no one paid attention...until it was too late. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. It is unwise for us to ignore the threats of Moslem terrorists...threats against Israel, threats against Europe, and threats against the USA. Any plans? This is called "Al-Qaida vows to blow up White House in new tape" and
was written by Christopher Bodeen. It appeared 11/10/2006 in The
Denver Post
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Baghdad, Iraq -- A new recording Friday attributed to the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq mocked President Bush as a coward whose conduct of the war was rejected at the polls, challenging him to keep U.S. troops in the country to face more bloodshed. "We haven't had enough of your blood yet," taunted terror chieftain Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, identified as the speaker on the tape. He gloated over Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's resignation, claimed to have 12,000 fighters under his command who "have vowed to die for God's sake," and said his fighters will not rest until they blow up the White House and occupy Jerusalem. It was impossible to verify the authenticity of the 20-minute recording, posted on a Web site used by Islamic militants. The CIA said technical analysis was being conducted on the tape. Al-Muhajir, an Egyptian also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, boasted that al-Qaida in Iraq is moving toward victory faster than expected because of Bush's mistakes. White House spokesman Tony Snow said the Bush administration had no comment on the tape. The tape and its often far-fetched claims came as the U.S. military announced the deaths of five more service members in the 44-month-old conflict, which has grown increasingly unpopular at home. Twenty-six American service members have been killed in Iraq so far this month. At least 59 Iraqi civilians were killed or found dead Friday as the violence threatens to spiral into all-out civil war. In one of the day's bloodiest incidents, a suicide bomber in an explosives-rigged car killed six Iraqi soldiers he had lured from behind a checkpoint. Just hours earlier, Iraq's army said it captured the Egyptian leader of an al-Qaida cell in Anbar province, an insurgent stronghold. The audio message appeared to be an attempt to exact maximum propaganda benefit from the results of Tuesday's midterm elections, in which the Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress, in part because of the war. Al-Muhajir praised the American people for handing victory to the Democrats, saying: "They voted for something reasonable in the last elections." He also said Bush was "the most stupid president" in U.S. history. "We call on the lame duck not to hurry his escape the way the defense secretary did," al-Muhajir said in reference to Rumsfeld's resignation as Pentagon chief on Wednesday. "Remain steadfast on the battlefield, you coward," said al-Muhajir, who took over leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June. "We will not rest from our jihad (holy war) until we are under the olive trees of Rumieh and we have blown up the filthiest house -- which is called the White House," al-Muhajir said. The "olive trees of Rumieh" appeared to be a reference to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, or to Christendom as a continuation of the Roman empire. [*] Al-Muhajir also told Iraqi Sunnis to ally with a shadowy mini-state that militants claim to have established last month under a man identified as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. "I vow allegiance to you," he said, addressing al-Baghdadi as the "ruler of believers" and placing al-Qaida in Iraq fighters under his command. Friday's civilian death toll was little changed from previous days. The United Nations estimates about 100 Iraqis die in violence each day, while Iraq's health minister on Thursday estimated up to 150,000 civilians had been killed in the war -- about three times previously accepted estimates of 45,000-50,000 [**]. At least 33 bodies were found Friday, most the victims of roving sectarian death squads that usually torture their victims before shooting them. Among the latest victims was a Sunni imam, Akram Jassim, 60, gunned down at the front entrance to his mosque in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, said Brig. Abdul Kerim al-Jubori, a spokesman for the provincial police. Meanwhile, Bush and his national security team will meet Monday with members of a blue-ribbon commission trying to devise a new course for the unpopular war. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton of Indiana, is expected to report its recommendations before the end of the year. Members of the group will have a joint conference at the White House with Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. [*] The "olive trees of Rumieh" is not a reference to the Mt. of Olives in Jerusalem. It is a reference to Rome and the Roman empire ("rumi" in classical Arabic). The statement means that jihad will continue until Islam has re-established its dominion over Rome (i.e., Italy) and all the rest of Europe that was once part of the Roman Empire. (DML) [**] And about 1/7th the number quoted in the NY times last month (DML) David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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BBC ADMITS NUMEROUS BIASES; FRANCE AILS, FLAILS, AND FAILS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 13, 2006. |
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HAMAS REPLACING P.A. POLICE Hamas is replacing thousands of P.A. police with its own gunmen. A few Hamas and Fatah members shoot and stab each other every day. In an attempt to retain the loyalty of Fatah's old guard, Abbas reappointed a general cashiered for padding his payroll, while P.A. police demonstrated over non-payment of their wages (Op. Cit.). It was his regime's corruption that disgusted voters with Fatah. Abbas seems impotent. I think that Hamas will take over completely. The internal strife would end. Hamas would impose order, if not law. Too much order, as is the Islamist way. BBC ADMITS HOST OF BIASES BBC executives and star presenters held a secret meeting. Imagining that their thoughts would not be leaked, they admitted to a host of biases. They "admitted what critics have been complaining about for years and which they denied: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism." "There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness." (The news brief did not mention BBC's notorious anti-Zionist coverage.) "BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians." Political correctness extended to not criticizing failings of blacks in Britain, although it is a social problem needing attention. The rest of the news piece fleshed out those conclusions. BBC reporting on jihad would be influenced by this bias (IMRA, 10/22). And blacks who need help won't get it, if problems denied. BRITISH INTELLIGENCE'S FRIGHTENING DISCOVERY American reporter Jeff Stein asks US officials involved in fighting Islamic terrorism what is the relevant difference between Sunnis and Shiites. Most don't know, although the Mideast, including Iraq, may be fracturing along Sunni-Shiite lines! This affects the war in Iraq. If our officials were aware of regional rivalries, they might exploit them in our policy and not run afoul of them. How can Members of Congressional committees involved in oversight of CIA recruiting of spies in the region do their jobs without knowing about the region? (IMRA, 10/20.) Up to now, British Intelligence had the impression that native-born Islamists acted on their own. They thought those British citizens merely were visiting relatives in Pakistan. Now it has learned that they went to learn Islamist ideology and military lore, that al-Qaeda directs them via Pakistan, and that their mission is to damage Britain. British Islamist colleges have links to Pakistan. The Islamist use campus resources on regular colleges to distribute literature in person and by computer British academics were asked to monitor campuses for extremism and to try to combat it, rather than allow Islamists free access and uncontested dissemination of their views. The request was taken as a dangerous attempt to censor, to recruit informers, and as a false linkage between Islamism and terrorism (Prof. Steven Plaut, 10/23 from Anthony Glees). It is a true linkage. The request was in defense of liberty. FRANCE AILS, FLAILS, & FAILS My introduction: Intolerance among humans, is instinctive. The civilizing process tames it. Many Americans do not understand how primitive some other cultures are. They assume that others share their live-and-let-live attitude. I have lived through clashes with three totalitarian cultures that not only are intolerant but genocidal: Nazism, Communism, and Islamism if not also Islam. Multiculturalism with them does not work. It gives them another venue for warring on us. News brief: Average youth unemployment in France is 22%, but reaches almost 50% in Muslim immigrant areas (whose students drop out and then complain about job discrimination). One baby out of three in France is Muslim, as are 70% of French convicts. Hundreds of Muslim neighborhoods follow sharia, not French law. Muslim blogs exhort to violence against Jews and wealthier Frenchmen. Most Muslims are poor and resentful; they are driving out the natives, as more unproductive Muslims immigrate. The French economy and culture are collapsing. France drafted the EU Constitution to make France central to Europe. In combination with the Arabs, it thought to become a world leader. Instead it is being taken over by its Frankenstein, and Europe is divided. (What does France have to lead, about? Can it even save itself? Where is the vaunted French pride in its culture?) The French Army is decreasingly reliable, since 15% of its members are Muslims and more are joining. The question is whether France will act to save itself and whether this would take the form of civil war. More atomic bombs may fall into French Muslim control than Iran can make! This strife was made possible by the excesses of multi-culturalism. Multiculturalism and socialism are becoming discredited in Europe, but perhaps not in time to protect against the Muslims entrenched there. The problem with Europe is that it is post-nationalist and post-religious (and dedicated to political correctness more than to liberty). Europe's intellectuals can't think. Europe may lack the spirit for defending itself against the Muslims. Contrast that with old-time Spain, although its Reconquista took centuries. China is repressing rebellion in its Muslim provinces. The Sikhs have expelled the Muslims from the Punjab. "A world war is already simmering, with Muslim clashes against Russia, Europe, Israel, China, India, the USA and Southeast Asia." (Fjordman report from Miriam Gardner of American Yated Neeman, 10/24). Islam is a religion of war and of hate. Historically, the first waves of Muslim immigrants, being a tiny minority, get along with the natives. In France, the second wave didn't assimilate at all. In the US, there seems to have been some assimilation and much economic success. But then, as the Muslim proportion grows, radicals within it remind the faithful of their alleged superiority and radicalize the masses. Then the Muslims struggle to dominate and repress. Multiculturalism and political correctness initially recognized value in other cultures and strove for tolerance rather than discrimination. Multiculturalism and political correctness got radicalized. Now they may be used to repress native culture and to prevent the natives from defending themselves against Islamic hate-mongering and exhortation to murder. It's the old story of a decent impulse being carried to a deadly extreme. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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IN-CLASSROOM POLITICAL INDOCTRINATION AT BEN GURION UNIVERSITY
Posted by Steven Plaut, November 13, 2006. |
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At Ben Gurion University, the Department of Politics and Government offers
a course entitled "Critical Aspects of the Occupation," taught by Neve
Gordon. The syllabus (Hebrew only) can be viewed on the departmental web
site:
The course is a perfect illustration of one-sided in-classroom anti-Israel political indoctrination. Taught be one of Israel's worst anti-Israel extremists, the course is little more than a semesterlong exercise in North Korean-style re-education of students who may not be sufficiently anti-Israel upon registration. To understand the title of the course, you need to bear in mind that in leftist NewSpeak "critical" means Marxist. Critical analyses of literature are mind-numbing tracts that explain literary works as exercises in class struggle. Critical legal studies are where criminality is celebrated as a moral revolt against the ruling class. You get the picture. The reading list for the Gordon propaganda course consists almost entirely
of anti-Israel or pro-Marxist diatribes. There are of course Gordon's own
screeds about how Israel is a terrorist state and engages in
torture. There is Gordon's buddy Lisa Hajjar, from the University of
California at Santa Barbara, a sociologist claiming to understand legal
institutions who has made a career out of bashing Israel
There are also long-winded fatuities written by the late Marxist
"philosopher" Michel Foucault. There are oodles of Arab writers who do
not think Israel has the right to protect itself. There are
ultra-haters of Israel like Sara Roy or Azmi Bishara (the Arab Knesset
Member who has been running to Syria to call for Israel's
annihilation). There is far-leftist Israeli lawyer (Avigdor Feldman),
alongside several articles and reports by the anti-Israel NGO
"Betselem" (see report on the group in NGO-Monitor at
http://ngo-monitor.org/archives/infofile.htm ). Israel-hating
film-maker Joan Mandell offers her expert scholarly opinions to
Gordon's students in the course, as does Haaretz extremist columnist
Akiva Eldar. There is political wisdom from the anti-Israel
architectural display of two anti-Zionist architects The closest thing the reading list for the course ever gets to letting students hear the point of view of a Zionist writer is with a 25-year old piece by Menachem Milstein, and some chapters from a book by Labor Party historian Shabtai Shevet. There is not a single article there about Palestinian terrorism or about Israel's rights to defend itself. You will never learn that Israel's "occupation" of "Palestinian lands" was caused by Arab aggression and violence and not the other way around. You will never hear that the main cause of escalated Palestinian terrorism in the past decade or so was not occupation at all but rather the REMOVAL of occupation. Concerned about the merciless brainwashing of hapless students at Ben Gurion University? Why not drop a note to the President of BGU, Prof. Rivka Carmi, at Ben Gurion University, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva 84105 Israel (e-mail: rcarmi@bgumail.bgu.ac.il.) and tell her what you think. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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IS UNIFIL FULFILLING ITS MANDATE AND WHO DOES IT PROTECT?
Posted by Dr. Steve Carol, November 12, 2006. |
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November 13, 2006
In 1978 the United Nations established the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to patrol the area of southern Lebanon and prevent the continuance of PLO attacks against northern Israel, which in turn had triggered an Israeli retaliatory incursion into Lebanon. That UN force failed in its mission. The terrorist attacks against Israel continued, thus triggering an even larger Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. UNIFIL's mandate was renewed and again proved equally ineffective. It must be recalled that since 1978, the United Nations has passed seven previous Security Council resolutions about Lebanon. All have called for the same thing. None have achieved those same goals. This should not have come as any surprise to those who studied the prior history of the United Nations involvement in Lebanon. One only needs to recall the performance, or rather lack of it, by the United Nations Observer Group in Lebanon (UNOGIL) in 1958. Its mission was to ascertain if Syria, then a part of the United Arab Republic, was smuggling weapons, men and material to Lebanese rebel forces seeking to overthrow the legitimate government of Lebanon. UNOGIL failed miserably at that task. The similarities of UN activity in 1958, 1978-2006 and since August of 2006 are remarkable. Just as the earlier UN force in Lebanon, the United Nations Observer Group in Lebanon (UNOGIL) in June 1958, did not patrol at night, so too has the current UNIFIL force conducted no patrols at night quoting Spanish UNIFIL official Richard Ortax in the German publication, Der Spiegel: 'because of the danger involved.' UNIFIL commanders said their function is to "observe changes in the behavior of the local population." What happened to the mandate to UNIFIL in UN Security Council Resolution 1701(UNSC 1701)? It states: 'The establishment between the [international border] and the Litani River of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL.' Thus the resolution calls for the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, a reference to Hezbollah, but it does not specify how this should be done. In addition, UNSC 1701, by focusing only on southern Lebanon, indicates its recognition of Hezbollah's right to continue to deploy missiles north of the Litani River, thus continuing to threaten Israel's citizenry at any time with longer-ranged missiles. Lebanese leaders have stated openly that the Lebanese army would not attempt to take away the terrorists' weapons. Additionally they would not even confiscate weapons caches it stumbled upon. So again, as was the case in 1958, weapons smuggling from Syria has continued unabated. While the current UNIFIL force boasts a contingent of some 6,000 'blue helmets' to be increased to a total of about 12,000, bolstered by 14,000 Lebanese armed forces, their performance thus far is worse than that of the UNOGIL force of 1958. Then UNOGIL was only 166 men at its peak strength, and they were charged with monitoring the 324 km (195 miles) Syrian-Lebanese border. As was stated, they were not allowed to patrol at night and were not allowed access into rebel-held areas. The current UNIFIL force has an even smaller area to monitor, an 18-by 31-mile region of southern Lebanon. They have more troops than in 1958 or 1978-2006 and yet the United Nations itself has admitted that Syria is still successfully smuggling arms to Hezbollah, which neither UNIFIL nor the Lebanese army plan to stop. Following a UN Security Council meeting on November 1, 2006, UN envoy to the region Terje Roed-Larsen explicitly admitted that Syria was actively smuggling weapons into Lebanon. He said that Lebanese government officials 'have stated publicly and also in conversations with us that there have been arms coming across the border into Lebanon.' Roed-Larsen added that Syria itself does not deny the flow of weapons, claiming only that the arms are not being dispatched by the Syrian government. This incredulous statement comes from one of the most authoritarian regimes in the world, where virtually all activity is monitored by the Assad regime. 'The consistent position of the government of Syria has been that, 'Yes, there might be arms smuggling over the border, but this is arms smuggling and the border is porous and very difficult to control,' Roed-Larsen told reporters. Turning to the interdiction of weapons smuggling via sea, the UNIFIL has at its command a multinational flotilla of German, Danish, Dutch, French, Greek, Norwegian and Swedish warships. Their mission is to prevent arms smuggling. However, this international flotilla remains outside of Lebanon's 12 mile limit, thus enabling a virtual non-stop flow of weaponry from the Syrian ports of Latakia and Tartus, along the Lebanese coast to Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon. In short, far from disarming Hezbollah, Iran and Syria have continued to re-arm and re-supply Hezbollah. Lebanon has openly abetted this. Emile Lahoud, the pro-Syrian Lebanese President who is nominally commander-in-chief of the army, has described the notion of disarming Hezbollah as "disgraceful." 'How can they ask us to disarm while the blood of the martyrs is still warm?' The one area where the current UNIFIL force has threatened to act tough is against Israel. Two recent episodes involving German naval helicopters violating Israeli air space, as well as French threats to shoot at Israeli aerial reconnaissance flights over Lebanon, have made it clear that UNIFIL sees Israel as their enemy, not Hezbollah. Israeli reconnaissance flights are to monitor the movements and re-supply efforts to Hezbollah. Here the UN has charged Israel with violating UNSC 1701 and the French commander of UNIFIL has threatened to fire upon Israeli jets. Indeed in mid-October 2006 French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie stated that the Israeli flights are "extremely dangerous because they may be felt as hostile by forces of the [UNIFIL] coalition." Thus in effect rather than being the "peacekeeping" force in the region and fulfilling its entire mandate, UNIFIL is acting (as it occasionally had in the past) as a shield for Hezbollah, behind which Hezbollah is rearming, refortifying and preparing for an even larger second round in its Iranian and Syrian-backed war against Israel. Israel, for its first 45 years, has relied only on the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to protect its territory and independence. Now it seems to be moving towards reliance on UNIFIL and the hostile international community to protect it. Worse still, as Hezbollah resumes attacks and the UNIFIL and Lebanese Army do little or nothing to stop those attacks, Israel will be faced with the problem of trying to stop Hezbollah, which means entering Lebanon yet again, and clashing with the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL. It will face international condemnation, as already has happened with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan condemning an Israeli commando attack in the Bekáa Valley in mid-August, 2006. Thus by 'making war on a UN force, Israel sets itself up as being branded the' aggressor' and being declared an 'outlaw state' by the international community. This is something that the enemies of Israel have been trying to accomplish for years! Israel must return to the admonition voiced by former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin: 'Israel alone must be responsible for its own defense and future.' No country in the world lets outsiders dictate its policies on fundamental issues of national security. Israel must not be the first to do so. Dr. Steve Carol is Prof. of History (retired) and Senior Fellow Center for Advanced Middle East Studies www.camesinfo.com. He is Offic ial Historian 'Middle East Radio Forum' (www.middleeastradioforum.org) in Scottsdale, Arizona. Contact Dr. him at drhistory@cox.net |
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THE RUDE AWAKENING OF PROFESSOR AARON CIECHANOVER
Posted by Steven Plaut, November 12, 2006. |
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1. Everyone knows that Prof. Robert Aumann, the Nobel Prize wininng Israeli economist who leans to the starboard side (mean, the right), strongly opposed the abandonment of Gush Katif and the Olmert capitulation last summer. Now another Nobel Prize winner has spoken out. Only this time, it is in some ways more significant. That is because Prof. Aaron Ciechanover, a Technion chemist, in the past paid lip-service to touchy-feely peace making and "converting swords into Technion labs" and things of that sort and has long been well left of center. But on Oct 27, 06, the professor was interviewed in Yediot Ahronot, together with Aumann. The interview is not available on line, but as part of the interview, this other Nobel Prize winning Israeli said the following: " Until a few months ago I would not have agreed with Prof. Robert Aumann. Today, even though I have not altered my basic position within the Israeli political spectrum, I must agree with him. Last year I was all in favor of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, which seemed to me an act of unilateral goodwill and generosity towards the Palestinians. I hoped they would respond in kind, but I was wrong. While we are discussing errors in judgment, let me add my own. I had been under the impression that Haifa academics were unaffected by the 4000 katyushas that landed on northern Israel and so the naifs and pipedreamers among them were no smarter than before the war. But at least one important academic has been woken up by the booms of the katyushas. The English web site of Yediot runs an abridged version of
the article in question here 2. I have purposely stayed out of the ruckus over the "gay pride parade", mainly because there were so many other hundreds of articles and commentaries on it in the media. I think little was left that needed to be said. Just one aspect that should be mentioned. Last summer, when the Olmert regime was conducting the Gush Katif capitulation and the ethnic cleansing of the Jews from Gaza, a number of mass protests were prohibited by the government lest they trigger violence, or result in large expenses for police protection, etc. Then there is the little matter of those Jews who want to pray near or on the Temple Mount. For decades the Israeli government has prohibited THAT, lest such a demonstration offend the feelings of people, Moslem people. And of course because of the danger that it could trigger violence and cost money to pay for police presence. Suddenly, the "Gay Pride" parade is Holy of Holies for the Israeli government. It HAS to be held in Jerusalem, no matter what the population of Jerusalem (and of the rest of the country) think. No Gay Pride March has ever taken place in Mecca, the Vatican, or in the temple of the Dalai Lama, but Jerusalem is not entitled to any similar consideration. 3. Spoof News: A. "Latest Lancet Journal Study Estimates U.S.
Population At 57 Trillion" "As of Thursday, October 12th, 2006, at 4:47 a.m.," the study reports, "the 57 trillionth American was born." Other demographics experts and population researchers have estimated the U.S. population at 300 million. But Lancet, according to a spokesman, used a radical new method by employing what they call, "expert guestimators," who "chose a random densely populated neighbourhood in a random big city," and stopped people in the street "at rush hour, asking them how many Americans they thought there were, just judging from taking a look around." A Lancet spokesman called the method "utterly reliable," and added that should current U.S. obesity rates continue to also grow, "the whole planet will turn on its axis, and we will all fall off. And it will all be the fault of the United States, per usual." Marni Malarkey for Iconoclast B. "Kim Jong-Il Sorry For Nuke Test, Molested As Child"
BEIJING -- North Korean President Kim Jong-Il today reportedly told Chinese diplomats that he regrets his government's recent detonation of a nuclear device, and he revealed that he had been molested as a child. "President Kim is sorry, and he takes full responsibility for the atomic bomb test," said an unnamed Chinese source, "but in the spirit of transparency and vulnerability, he wants people to know about the childhood molestation incident." The North Korean leader has reportedly checked himself into a rehab center to "heal his inner child and boost his self-esteem," but a spokesman said he is not ashamed to come out of the closet as a fascist dictator. "A lot people are going to trot out the old myths that fascist dictators are dangerous to society," said the spokesman. "But short of a few isolated genocides and unprovoked invasions, there's little evidence to substantiate that claim. It's time to move past recriminations over the nuclear test, and let bygones be bygones." C. "Bin Laden And Soros Form Political Action Committee"
(Undisclosed Location, Pakistan) -- Osama Bin Laden and Hungarian billionaire George Soros have announced the merger of MoveOn.org and Al-Qaeda into a 527 political action committee to be called The Fund for a Democracy-Free America. Speaking at a joint press conference yesterday at Bin Laden's rustic mountaintop retreat in western Pakistan, Soros praised the Al-Qaeda leader's commitment to defeating the Republican Party in next month's elections. Soros also stressed the shared values that unite MoveOn.org and Al-Qaeda. "We both hate America and Israel and all agents of the International Zionist Conspiracy, such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, the Duke of Wellington, Grandma Moses and Dwight Eisenhower," said Soros. "So it made sense to merge our operations and eliminate duplication of effort. From now on the Democrat Party, Islamofascists and anti-Semites will speak with one, united voice." Bin Laden added his agreement with Soros' comments. "Right now, terrorist branding is the name of the game. It's a win-win situation for all involved and allows us to leverage our terrorist quotient by a factor of four. We're currently at a place we want to be synergy-wise." Details of the Al-Qaeda/MoveOn.org merger have not been completely revealed. The Iconoclast has learned, however, that all members of Al-Qaeda will receive 1.85 shares of stock in Soros' "Death to the Zionist Entity and Her American Lapdogs" hedge fund for each year of membership in Al-Qaeda. Members of MoveOn.org will receive three wives, two cows and an option on a camel in exchange for MoveOn.org junk bonds.
Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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WHY DO ARAB MUSLIM "PALESTINIANS" KILL JEWS?
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, November 12, 2006. |
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We have watched Arab Muslim "Palestinians" pour into the streets, sometimes seemingly justifiably, according to their views and more often, unjustifiably. All things have a beginning before there is a middle and (hopefully soon) an end. For almost 85 years the Arab Muslims have been killing Jews in Eretz Yisrael via every conceivable method of terror. The date this frequent terror began was at least in 1920 with the first major Arab riots, murdering Jews who had come into Palestine to, as the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 mandated: "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." (1) This mandate did not occur in a vacuum. In 1857 British Consul in Palestine reported that: "The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore 'its greatest need is that of a body of population..." (2) The Immigration of Jews into Palestine had been progressing since the mid-19th Century, so that there was already a Jewish majority in Jerusalem by 1840. As the Jews brought jobs, education and improved medical care, Arabs from the surrounding states also moved in because of the Jewish invigoration of the area that Mark Twain described his 1857 visit to the Holy Land in "Innocents Abroad": "Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes...desolate and unlovely..." Twain wrote with remorse. "It is dreamland..." (3) But, the Arab Muslims spoiled their new opportunities by continuing to follow the mandate of Islam to kill Jews through every conceivable method of terror. As the terror mounted the Jews reluctantly were forced to carry guns while they worked their fields and learn the art of war. Although Israelis show restraint or try to find the specific terrorist or team of terrorists, the terrorists will kill anyone they can reach whom they consider an "infidel" (non-Muslim). This can be a suicide bomber, a bomb left in a trash can in a crowded marketplace or restaurant, or sending Kassam Rockets or Katyusha Missiles into Israeli towns and cities to blow up whatever or whomever it hits. In the Arab Muslim nations such attacks are dealt with in a massive roundup and execution which perhaps explains why every Muslim nation has cruel dictators. They don't target their Kassam Rockets and Katyusha missiles but rather, just whatever luck they might have that day...towns, schools, chemical or gasoline storage tanks, crowds of civilians...whatever and whoever is under their incoming missiles satisfies their lust for Jewish blood. The other day an Israeli tank shell hit, by mistake, a cluster of houses in Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, killing 18 civilians. The Arab Muslim "Palestinians" poured into the street, swearing vengeance. That tank wouldn't have been shooting at Beit Hanoun but, for the Hamas Terrorists who have been firing dozens Kassam Rockets into Sderot and Ashkelon on a daily basis from amoung the civilians in Beit Hanoun. The tank and Israeli soldiers were drawn there by the Kassam Rockets intended to kill Israeli women and children -- or whatever their missiles happened to hit. If ever a people were warranted to demand vengeance, it is the Israeli people. The Terrorists place their rocket launchers near or in Arab Muslim homes, schools, mosques and the civilians cheer them on. When returning fire comes, they pour into the streets, bleating that it is all unfair and they are going to seek vengeance against the Israelis who are hitting back at their Arab terrorists who are hiding among civilians. The Arab Muslims have always used women and children as their "human shields". They deliberately seek to have this so-called "collateral damage" which they can then use as propaganda to turn the world's media and influentials against the Israeli Jews. If there isn't enough newsworthy blood in the streets, they will create photo ops to create a propaganda war of words and pictures as they have done many times. Three instances come to mind of the televised story which as later disproved, long after the world reacted and believed the faux-photography: 1. During the Lebanon War of 1982, President Reagan showed on TV the picture was given of the child who looked as if her arms were amputated but, as later pictures proved, her arms were only bandaged to her sides until her injuries healed. Of course, the Europeans, the U.N., the U.S. suddenly found it necessary to condemn Israel for fighting back. When there is an especially vicious attack against Israel, killing children, teens at a café, Israeli reserve soldiers, a Pesach Seder, a bus, a University...some pro-forma B...S... is issued from the Europeans, and the U.S. administration from the Head of the State Department invariably the condolences come with the added message that 'somehow' Israel must show restraint as if being a target for terror was equal to the event itself. In other words, we hear the message "How dare you become a target for terror and 'pretend' you are a victim!" It is regrettable that 18 people were killed in Beit Hanoun but, we don't hear a great deal of sympathy about Rockets falling daily on Israel's civilian population. In fact, one detects a certain satisfaction from the complainers who try to elevate the pain of the Arab Muslim "Palestinians" over and above that of the Israelis. Israel is the target and victim but the nations and the media reverse the situation and protect the attacking "Palestinians". The eminent psychiatrist Carl Jung clearly identified this phenomenon where the aggressor blames his victim of intending to attack the aggressor -- thereby justifying the aggressor subsequent attack on his victim. The solution is really quite simple: Just stop firing Rockets and Missiles into Israel! Simple, Eh? But, will Islamists do the simple thing? Never. If they did, then neither the Arab or Jewish civilian population would be in jeopardy. However, Hamas, Hezb'Allah, Iran, Syria, individual Muslim Islamists and Arab Muslim States, and Muslim non-Arab states like Iran have plainly stated that they will not ever cease terror attacks until they "wipe Israel off the map". In fact, they will continue to arm themselves including chemical, biological and nuclear missiles of increasing accuracy and distance. At this point, I would remind the Europeans of the Koranic Doctrine, namely, that wherever a Muslim sets his foot in conquest for Allah, all Muslims must henceforth return to re-capture that land for Islam. Goodbye Spain, France, the Balkans, Italy, North Africa ... You all now belong to Islam and they are returning to claim what they think is theirs. No doubt, you will show restraint when your subways, buildings, innocent civilians are blown to bits by the incoming Muslims. I suppose it is pointless to speak of double standards since that threshold has been crossed years ago. As for Europe, Jews had about the same rights under the law as were given to them by the Arab Muslims. As Arnold Toynbee said: "The Jews were considered the "Fourth Estate" after, the aristocracy, the Church and the peasantry" -- and therefore, out of the loop. The American author Mark Twain so accurately wrote in Harper's, September 1899: "If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and obtuse learning are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all the ages, and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, and faded to dream stuff and passed away. The Greeks and the Romans followed and made a vast noise and they are gone. Other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time. But it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all. Beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew. All other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?" And the famous Russian author Tolstoy wrote in 1908, "The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He who neither slaughter nor torture of thousands of years could destroy, he who neither fire, nor sword, nor Inquisition was able to wipe off the face of the earth. He who was the first to produce the Oracles of God. He who has been for so long the Guardian of Prophecy and has transmitted it to the rest of the world. Such a nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is as everlasting as Eternity itself." (5) Jews simply didn't count except as targets for the Arab and Muslim world. So when today's Jews strike back after being shelled daily, it is simply irrelevant to the on-lookers. For them the Jews are always to blame. Terrorism is only to be condemned when it is conducted directly against American or European interests. Terror against Jews in Europe or Terror against Jews in Israel is just one of those things to be ignored. What's a Jew to do? Keep alert and smash or kill your adversary when they come to come kill you. As it says in Judaism: "Get up early and kill your enemy before he kills you." Don't wait for approval from anyone because you won't get it. If Iran is ready to strike, use a few dozen or a few hundred nukes without waiting for permission to stay alive from the Americans, the Europeans, or the United Nations. In other words, follow the advise of Tanach (the Bible) and kill the intruder because you know he will come to kill you first. ### 1, "The Balfour Declaration" November 2, 1917 http://www.mideastweb.org/mebalfour.htm 2. From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine By Joan Peters, Harper & Row, NY 1984 "James Finn to the Earl of Clarendon, Jerusalem, Sept. 15, 1957 that "...we have here Jews, who have been to the U.S., but have returned to their Holy Land..." p. 485 3, "Innocents Abroad" London 1881 by Mark Twain in From Time Immemorial.. Ibid 4. "Fauxtography Scandal" littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ See especially http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/corruption-of-media.html 5. "Concerning the Jews" by Mark Twain Harpers' Magazine September 1899 Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net |
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HASSAN NASRALLAH THREATENS HIS SUPPORTERS WILL TAKE TO THE STREETS IF SINIORA'S GOVERNMENT STAYS IN POWER
Posted by Dr. Reuven Erlich, November 12, 2006. |
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This is a publication of the Intelligence and Terrorism Information
Center |
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In a television interview, Hassan Nasrallah threatened to have his supporters take to the streets if Siniora's government remained in power. The United States blamed Iran, Syria and Hezbollah for working to overthrow the Lebanese government. Nasrallah stated that Hezbollah would demand a high price for the abducted Israeli soldiers.
Overview
The central topics of Nasrallah's interview with Al-Manar TV (October 31)
Footnotes 1. In the meantime, on November 11, 2006, Hezbollah and Amal announced that their government ministers were resigning in view of the fact that the discussions had reached a dead end. 2. Decades of Syrian intervention in Lebanon's internal affairs, which have continued to this day, ridicule the embassy's announcement. 3. Security Council Resolution 1701 calls for the upgraded UNIFIL force to support the Lebanese government in preventing arms smuggling into its territory in compliance with its request. Hezbollah vehemently opposes broadening UNIFIL's mission further afield than south Lebanon. 4. Nasrallah stated that some of the [Lebanese] security services
had confiscated silencers at the Beirut airport being sent to the
American Embassy. He claimed that they were going to be used in
assassinations carried out under the auspices of the Americans and
Israelis.
Dr. Reuven Erlich is Head of the Intelligence
and Terrorism Information Center in Israel. Its website address is
http://www.intelligence.org
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OLMERT'S ILL-TIMED WASHINGTON VISIT
Posted by Evelyn Hayes, November 12, 2006. |
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This was written by Caroline Glick and appeared in the Jerusalem Post
(http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid= 1162378367330&pagename=JPos t%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull). |
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Many downplay the significance of the US Congressional elections. It is the six-year slump, they say. But the truth is nonetheless glaring. By all accounts, Tuesday the George W. Bush era came to a close. The consequences of this turn of events on Israel will be dramatic. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that anyone has explained them to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ahead of his scheduled visit to the White House next week. Across the political spectrum in Washington today there is a sense that after years of wavering, in the wake of the Democratic victory in Tuesday's Congressional elections, President Bush transferred control over American foreign policy to his father's anti-war advisors. The President's announcement of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's "resignation" Wednesday signaled the transfer of control over the war against radical Islam from Bush's team to Bush pere's team. Robert Gates, Bush's nominee to replace Rumsfeld, served as his father's deputy national security adviser and CIA director. Gates, who will arrive at the Pentagon from his present position as President of Texas A&M University where Bush I's presidential library is located, is closely associated with former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft and former secretary of state James Baker. He is a member in good standing of the Arabist wing of the Republican Party which dominated the President's father's administration. In recent years, Gates made one notable foray into the world of international affairs. In 2004 he collaborated with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor in the Carter administration. Like former president Jimmy Carter, Brzezinski is one of Israel's greatest adversaries in US policymaking circles. It is hard to recall a problem, conflict, crisis or war in the Middle East over the past thirty years that Brzezinski has not managed to blame on Israel. Gates and Brzezinski co-chaired a Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Task Force charged with recommending a US policy for dealing with Iran. In July 2004 they published their recommendations. The Task Force called for the Bush administration to directly engage the mullahs and to use "fewer sticks and more carrots" to convince the regime in Teheran to stop enriching uranium, and to stop supporting al Qaida and the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In an effort to convince the Iranians to cooperate, the two recommended that the US discard regime overthrow as a policy option and move more forcefully to establish a Palestinian state as quickly as possible. They also recommended that the US pressure Israel not to take any military action against the Iranian nuclear facilities arguing that such Israeli actions would undermine US national interests. In recent months, Gates has been serving as a member of the Iraq Study Group chaired by Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton. The Congressionally mandated committee is scheduled to recommend new strategies for managing the war in Iraq to Bush later in the month. In a series of recent press interviews, Baker and Hamilton have indicated that they will recommend that Bush enter into negotiations with Iran and Syria. The proposed talks they say, will serve to motivate Iran and Syria to stabilize the situation in Iraq in a manner that will pave the way for a retreat of US forces from the country. Since it is Iranian and Syrian sponsorship of the insurgency that is causing the war to continue, it is fairly clear that Baker is egging for a temporary ceasefire that will last long enough to enable a pullout of US forces. The fact that the price of the temporary ceasefire will be a US defeat in Iraq and the surrender of Iraq to the tender mercies of Iran and Syria is apparently okay by Baker. SOME OF Bush's critics on the Right claim that Bush's nomination of Gates to replace Rumsfeld won't change anything. Since in point of fact Bush has been conducting talks in various venues with Teheran for the past five years, and given that since 2002 the establishment of a Palestinian state has been a central plank of US Middle East policy, these conservative critics argue that the Gates-Brzezinski recommendations are already official policy. Moreover, many claim that when Bush made the decision in April 2003 not to widen the campaign in Iraq to the sources of the then-nascent insurgency in Syria and Iran, the President effectively decided not to win the war in Iraq. This is the case because Iraq is merely one front in a regional war. As Michael Ledeen from the American Enterprise Institute, who served with Gates in the Reagan administration argues, the US cannot win the regional war while limiting its operations to playing defense on one front. When seen from this perspective, far from signaling a strategic shift in US policy, Gates' nomination merely serves to restate an existing policy. Yet Bush's policies to date have been far from consistent. Indeed, for the past several years Bush has been simultaneously advancing two contradictory policies. On the one hand, as his critics on the Right have repeatedly stated, through his engagement of Teheran and support for Palestinian statehood, he has been carrying out a policy of appeasement towards the Iranians and the Arabs. At the same time however, Bush supported Israel in the war this summer. He isolated the Palestinian Authority after Hamas took power, and throughout his first term in office, he refused to meet with Yassir Arafat in spite of the significant domestic and international pressure exerted on him to do so. Practically speaking, Bush supported Israel's right to take action to defend itself. (What Israel did with his support is a completely separate issue.) As to Iran, Bush distinguished himself from his predecessors by announcing his support for the overthrow of the regime in Teheran. In recent months, Bush and at least some of the members of his administration pointed fingers at Damascus and Teheran for their sponsorship of the insurgents in Iraq, for Hizbullah in Lebanon and for Palestinian terror groups in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. So when the full breadth of Bush's policies is taken into consideration, his decision to appoint Gates does signal a strategic shift in direction. Rumsfeld was completely identified with Bush's pro-Israel policies and with his hawkish stances towards Islamic radicalism. Rumsfeld's ouster and replacement by a follower of Baker, Bush pere and Scowcroft signals a clean break with the policies Rumsfeld embodied. Furthermore, by sacking Rumsfeld the day after the elections, Bush sent a signal to the Democrats that he is willing to forego victory in exchange for political breathing space. Did Bush have to respond to the elections by abandoning his strategic goals in the war? Some claim that pro-war Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman's reelection is a sign that support for the war is not a recipe for political defeat. Lieberman, it should be recalled, was defeated this summer in the Democratic primaries for his Senate seat by anti-war businessman Ned Lamont. That defeat, in a race riddled with anti-Semitic attacks, forced Lieberman to run as an Independent in the general elections. His victory this week is pointed to as proof that supporting the war is not political suicide. There are two main problems with this view. First, Lieberman's race was unique. As a three-term, successful Democratic senator, Lieberman's defeat in the primary did not end his support among a significant group of Democrats. At the same time, his support for the war won him the Republican vote. Republican senators like Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania were defeated with similar positions on the war because they were unable to garner any significant support among Democrats and only a handful of other Democrats ran as avowedly pro-war candidates. Secondly, while Lieberman won his reelection victory, he and fellow war supporters lost the war for the soul of the Democratic Party. A lifelong Democrat, Lieberman had to leave the party to win reelection. And he will not share the fruits of the Democratic victory in the Senate in his new status as an Independent. He will enjoy no benefits of seniority. He will not receive a committee chairmanship. While some claim that as an Independent in a closely divided Senate he will have the power to tip the scales in favor of either party, the fact is that neither party is strong enough to make proper use of his vote. So he lacks real political power. More than anything, the partyless Lieberman will serve as a constant reminder of the power of the radical Left. The radical, anti-war Left which spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting anti-war candidates and so brought about Lieberman's defeat in the Democratic primaries, made a decisive contribution to the Republican defeat in the general election. The threat posed by radical leftist donors, like multi-billionaire George Soros who have launched a crusade against all proponents of the war against radical Islam, makes Democrats and Republicans alike want to put the Iraq war behind them before the 2008 elections. THIS IS the Washington that will greet Olmert during his visit on Monday. If fortunes had been reversed and Olmert were arriving in Washington after a Republican victory, had he be inclined to do so, Olmert could have used the visit as an opportunity to communicate a number of critical messages. First, he could have recalled that Bush qualified US support for Palestinian statehood on a Palestinian embrace of democracy, peace, and active opposition to terrorism. Since by electing totalitarian terrorists to power the Palestinians have proven incontrovertibly that they oppose democratic values of freedom and human rights, support terror, and oppose peaceful coexistence with Israel, Bush's continued support for Palestinian statehood makes a mockery of his support for democracy in the Middle East. As for Iran, if the Republicans had been victorious, Olmert could have made clear to Bush that history will judge him not only by what he has done in Iraq, but by what he will do against Iran and North Korea. Olmert could have presented a plan for a joint Israeli-American operation to destroy Iran's nuclear installations. But of course, the Republicans lost the elections. Politicians and defense secretaries who would have willingly listened to such messages from an Israeli prime minister have been booted out of office, thrown into the back benches of Congress, and fired by Bush. Today Israel stands alone against the Palestinians. More disturbingly, the responsibility for preventing Iran from achieving nuclear capabilities has moved conclusively from Washington to Jerusalem. If Olmert were a strong leader, in light of the Republican defeat and Bush's response to that defeat, he could use the meeting as an opportunity to tell Bush that Israel accepts responsibility for attacking Iran's nuclear installations. But Olmert, who spent his last visit in the US capital trying to convince the Americans to support his plan to surrender Judea and Samaria to Hamas, is not a strong leader. He is a weak leader. The new wind blowing out of Washington will easily cast him asunder. In truth, little good will come from Monday's meeting at the White House. It is too bad he can't simply cancel it. Israel would be better off if Olmert called in sick on Monday morning. Contact the poster at haze@rcn@rcn.com |
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BACK TO BASICS
Posted by Max Yas, November 12, 2006. |
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The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), increasingly revealed as unabashedly pro-Palestinian, recently aired "Output for Children", a one-sided, misinformed "educational" program covering recent Middle-East history. The unjustified, anti-Israeli positions expressed could easily be adopted by impressionable schoolchildren, influencing their attitudes and behaviours today and as adults. In response to this obviously flawed BBC broadcast, Walter Leaf -- an expert in Middle-East relations -- wrote the following letter (abridged). Mr. Leaf is a member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists and the London Bureau of International Affairs and is active in many community organisations. He was a lecturer at the London College of Higher Education before retirement. Shalom from Max |
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Israel has greatly benefited the world, sharing its discoveries in medicine, technology, agronomy and the physical sciences -- all the while denigrated, existing under threat of boycott, violent attack, and invasion. The people of this tiny democracy, members of the world's oldest continuous civilization, complete with distinct language, religion, and cultural identity, are surrounded by the combined hostility of violent Palestinian gangs, the 21-member Arab League (with 50 times Israel's population and 800 times its area), and the entirety of the Islamic states, 57 in total. Your "history" programme, however, presents Israel as a thief. This is untrue. Millions of people around the world contributed to the purchase of land (often from absentee Arab landlords at high cost) which was transformed from rock, marsh and desert to today's forests, nature reserves and farmland. Other areas devolved to State land from British administrative control. More land became available when five Arab armies attempted to destroy the UN-reincarnated Jewish homeland: many of its Arab inhabitants fled (ignoring Jewish pleas -- still on record -- to remain) at the invaders' request, to leave room for the "Jews to be driven into the sea." The 600,000 refugees have been confined by their Arab brothers in most cases to primitive camps, forbidden proper rights or freedom of employment and are subsidised by the world, kept as a living reproach to Israel. By contrast, Israel absorbed with full rights all (except for a small number who settled in France) 850,000 Jewish refugees who had first been robbed then expelled from Arab lands. Under UN Resolution 242, the present borders (no more than cease-fire lines) are to give place to recognised and secure frontiers, apportioned as between Palestinians and Israelis in a "final agreement." It is obvious that these conditions are nowhere near fulfilled; it therefore follows that the land your programme producers term "Palestinian" territory is actually still disputed land under international law. Israel offered the Palestinians a share of its ancient capital Jerusalem, plus all of Gaza and 95% of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank", as the illegal occupier, Jordan renamed it), in exchange for peace. Israel voluntarily withdrew from much of the latter territory, until its use as a base for suicide attacks and rocket launchings on Israel necessitated the security measures and so-called "occupation" of which the Palestinians complain, and which would cease if the Palestinian instigators permitted both sides to live in peace. And so the programme staggers on from one misconception (to put it kindly) to another. The Jordanians drove out the Palestinians who ravaged Jordan; the Kuwaitis did likewise when Palestinians there acted as a fifth column for Saddam's Iraq; the Lebanese swept the Palestinians out for creating mayhem and murdering Christians in Lebanon. Yet, your programme highlights only the Sabra and Shatila massacres, carried out by Christians in defiance of Sharon's order for calm, and blames Israel for them. Bending over backwards, a controversial Israeli commission gave indirect censure to Sharon for not foreseeing that the Christian militia would disobey him! But that is typical of Israeli fairness, also seen when only denying a false allegation after it has been thoroughly investigated and disproved -- long after the earlier, false impression had been created by the BBC and others. Ariel Sharon successfully sued TIME magazine for misstating the truth but had neither time nor money to sue every detractor; the BBC can pride itself that it is among those who have gotten away for decades with significant omissions and distortions on this topic. Your producers are guilty of many other examples of carelessness (if nothing worse) which contribute to the bias you have been demonstrating. This is, simply put, nothing but indoctrination of children, comparable to the poisonous ideas instilled into Palestinian pupils by their history books' denial of Israel's right to its holiest site, the Wailing Wall and, indeed, to any part of its land. In search of sources, the BBC turns to consummate defamers of Israel's reputation, repeatedly discredited iconoclasts, and renegades such as Chomsky, Schlaim, and Fisk. Such a narrow selection would be invidious in an adult programme. How much more irresponsibly disastrous, how much more likely to falsely incite negative attitudes, when used in our children's "education"! There is no excuse for this. We need more representative academics and observers. There are many, including myself, who could recommend balanced, factual volumes as well as unbiased experts to provide accurate perspectives. Why is the BBC not concerned to seek them out? Why do so many programmes have to bash Israel -- even purportedly educational ones? Why do producers get away with it, time after time? Would the BBC dare to bedevil an Islamic country in this way, even though many are guilty of large-scale repression, mutilation, and murder of their subjects? In Israel, there is freedom of religion and human rights for all -- including women and Arabs who are free to reside, attend university, rise to the position of Supreme Court judge, general, diplomat. Where is such multi-ethnic opportunity possible in any other Middle East country? Why not bring out these truths for once? Why does the BBC continue to degrade its own, once first-rate, reputation? Contact Max Yas at maxyas@shaw.ca
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BOLTON MUST STAY!
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, November 12, 2006. |
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United Nations Ambassador John R. Bolton, controversial choice of a beleaguered Bush White House, has proven himself to be a formidable friend of Israel, thus must survive the fallout of a Democrat takeover of the U.S. House and Senate. Most recently, he vetoed a lopsided Security Council measure condemning Israel for military actions taken against Hamas fanatics in Gaza, albeit obsessed with annihilating Jews. What nation on earth would not react aggressively to deter deadly Katyusha rockets launched by such terrorists into their sovereign territory? But then again, this is today's Muslim Arab friendly Kofi Annan led United Nations that watches Muslim Black Africans in Darfur being mutilated, raped, and murdered by white genocidal 'scum of the earth' Muslim Arabs, at the behest of a 'scum of the earth' Muslim Arab oil-rich Sudanese government, bizarrely even squatting on that feckless institution's Human Rights Commission, and does virtually nothing; so why should anyone expect such sanctimonious Arab apologist U.N. jackals to be fair to Israel? Bolton defends Israel again and again, no doubt consistent with current and past United States' policies toward the besieged Jewish State, but the Ambassador himself is a hard nosed sort of fellow that etches an unambiguous impression on the mind-sets of his peers, ever-needed in such a den of deception, that makes a mockery of the very humane purpose it was intended to serve with dignity. Newly selected U.S. Speaker of The House Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader of the Senate Harry Reid have the clout to twist Democrat arms to launch Bolton, now mired in the abyss of a polarized Senate foreign relation's committee, into the hallowed halls of a newly elected Democrat controlled Senate hearing where he could officially if begrudgingly be confirmed next year to his ambassadorial post, and must be persuaded to do so. If this happens, it will be a feather in the Democrat's cap, demonstrating toughness while being conciliatory to a 'thumped' GOP. AIPAC as well as Israel's own movers and shakers, including its Prime Minister, should lobby in favor of their unflinching mustached ally, ever needed to put out U.N. brush fires before becoming sanction spewing infernos. Israel and supporters must make a variety of inroads with America's newly elected Democrat power base, and can do so by utilizing convincing logical arguments. Surely, today's Democrats, with collective eyes on the 2008 Presidential prize, do not want all those conservative and moderate anti-Bush mid-term votes to disappear, again disillusioned by vindictive Democrats. Why not keep Bolton where he is? Of course, he will serve at the discretion of a Republican White House with concurrence from a newly elected Democrat controlled Congress hopefully opting to take the path less traveled known as the high road, turning the corner on self-destructive bipartisan bickering. That high road paved with wise compromises can lead to the Presidency, and it wouldn't hurt if Israel and friends nudged Harry and Nancy, as well as a few other key Democrat politicos, in that direction lest critical logic circuits go awry. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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FORGOTTEN JEWISH REFUGEES
Posted by Steven Shamrak, November 12, 2006. |
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It is estimated that almost 900,000 Jews were forced from their homes
in Arab and Muslim countries in the course of the 20th century. Even
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has twice
affirmed that Jews who fled the persecution of Arab countries were
indeed refugees in every legal sense of the word.
It is estimated that Jews were robbed of more than $100 billion in personal and communal assets by Arab and Muslim governments. The Israeli governments ignored and refuse to use those facts to neutralize fictitious claims of the Arab propaganda war machine against Israel. As a result, unfortunately, the world only knows about so-called Arab refugees and their well-advertised fictitious claim on Jewish land. Based on population poll information at the time (not Arab emotional propaganda) around 460,000 Arabs left currently controlled land by Israel, during the war of Independence in 1948. They left after the order from Arab political and religious leaders. The plan was to expose Jews, who were facing the might of Arab armies, to complete annihilation. It would make it easier to kill every Jew, without bothering about identification of Arabs. Another genocide of Jewish people was planned! When Israel won the war of Independence, the number of so-called Arab refugees almost doubled over night at the end of 1948, after the UN announced that they are entitled to refugee status and international assistance! For several more years after the war, the world was still betting that the tiny Jewish state would disappear. International anti-Semites were hoping that Arabs would finish what they started in Europe! Since then the Arab Palestinians have been 'milking' the international community for almost 60 years. This is the longest running UN 'humanitarian' program, designed to perpetuate Middle East conflict and keep the international anti-Semitic flame running. It has been assisting the mob of professional refugees in their 3rd or even 4th generation. The World War 2 in Europe created almost 50 million refugees. Many of them received assistance and/or had been resettled. Now they and their children are living productive and independent lives in their own countries or somewhere else! This approach has never been applied to Arabs who left Jewish land. They are still not absorbed by the Arab countries, that most of them had actually come from in the first place. The United Nations has never respected the state of Israel as an independent and equal state. Not according to the record of the adopted resolutions, nor by attitude. The need of Jewish people to live in peace in their independent state, on the land of their ancestors is completely ignored! Jews must realize this international hypocrisy, and start to be creators of their own destiny! Tens of thousands of Arab Palestinians converged on Yasser Arafat's gravesite Saturday to mark the second anniversary of his death in a rally meant to reinvigorate his faltering Fatah Party. -- In spite of promisees given, the official cause of death of re-known homosexual is still not released. Uncharacteristically for modern medical practice, no autopsy was conducted? AIDS is still a viable front-runner as the cause of Arafat's death! Saving Lives of American Soldiers. The Israeli Armament Development Authority (Rafael) has developed a laser system, which is called Thor, to destroy roadside bombs, which have killed hundreds of US soldiers in Iraq. The Thor system includes sensors that work either in day or night time conditions to detect the hidden explosive charge. The developers report that the Thor system has already been deployed in combat operations. International Hypocrisy is still alive. Case-1: 18 Arab civilians accidentally killed, due to technical error, last Thursday during the IDF operation against Arab terrorists, responsible for the launching of the Hassam rocket into Israel. Result: Israel had apologised for the incident. The UN Security Council held a special public session of condemnation of Israel. Incident received wide international press coverage. Case-2: 68 civilians were killed when a camp Sri Lankan army shelled a camp of 2,000 people, during the operation against Tamil rebels last Thursday. Result: NO apology from Sri Lankan government. NO 'special' UN Security Council session. Almost, no international press coverage. Same date, similar actions, different international response! Steven Shamrak was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and participated in the Moscow Zionist "refusenik" movement. For the last 3 years, he has been publishing internet editorial letters on the Arab-Israeli conflict -- independently, not as a member of any organization or political movement. He can be reached by email at StevenShamrak@gmail.com |
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THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SECULAR ZIONISM
Posted by Professor Paul Eidelberg, November 12, 2006. |
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From time to time we hear that secular Zionism is dead. Actually, secular Zionism was always a logical impossibility -- as contradictory as atheism and theism. Let's define our terms. Secularism is the tendency of man to assert the autonomy of his own will or reason vis-à-vis any deity. "Man," said Protagoras, "is the measure of all things, of things on earth and in the heavens." David Ben-Gurion agreed with the Greek sophist:"...as one who is non-religious, I believe that theology reverses then true sequence of events. To me it is clear that God was 'created' in the image of man..." As for "Zionism": the term is derived from Zion, one of the most sacred words in the dictionary of authentic Judaism. Zion is the dwelling place of God's glory. It is the Sanctuary of the Torah, the Holy City which surrounds it. From Zion, from Jerusalem, the word of God -- the Truth -- shall come forth. The Jewish people, living according to the word of God in the Land of Israel, would thus be a blessing to all the families of mankind. Clearly, this was never the program of any secular party. The Likud may call itself a Zionist party, and it may even be called such by some religionists. This shallow if not disingenuous. Zionism embraces three fundamental and inseparable principles: the Land of Israel, the People of Israel, and, above all, the Torah. From this one may get the impression that "secular Zionism" is a chair with two legs: (1) the Land of Israel, and (2) the People of Israel, i.e., the Jews. If this were so, secularism and Zionism would not be wholly contradictory. But the impression is erroneous, as may be seen via a candid analysis of Israel 1948 Declaration of Independence. The very first sentence of the Declaration proclaims: "The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish People." This is a literal falsehood, even though the document was signed by four rabbis, who surely knew that the children of Israel were called a "people" as well as a "nation" before the Exodus. To compound that falsehood, the document goes on to say of the Land of Israel: "Here their spiritual, religious, and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books." Aside from the fact that such words as "religious" and "political" are foreign to the "Book of Books," to say the Jews created cultural values of national and universal significance is tacitly to deny the Law-giving at Sinai. (By the way: to refer to the Book that prescribes these cultural values as "eternal" is an oxymoron: nothing created by man is eternal.) To reinforce its secular orientation, the Declaration not only makes no mention of God, but it refers to Theodor Herzl -- the only name in the body of the document -- as "the spiritual father of the Jewish state." Here it should be noted that Herzl's tract, The Jewish State, severs the state from Jewish law and relegates Judaism to the family and the synagogue. Given the Declaration's pronounced secularism, it's reasonable to conclude that the ultimate goal of the founders of the so-called Jewish state was to change the identity of the Jewish people! This is what secular Zionism is all about: A state devoid of Torah and nominal Jews to rule the state. But for nominal Jews to rule the state they must make sure that religious Jews do not become a majority. This can be done in various ways, of which I shall mention only one: undermine religious Zionism by withdrawing from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and expelling its Jewish residents. We see, therefore, that "secular Zionism," having abandoned the Torah, has no leg to stand on. It has betrayed the Jewish People as well as the Land of Israel. But all this was foreshadowed in Israel's Declaration of Independence. That document, said the Supreme Court, has "laid down the way of life of the citizens of the State, and its principles must guide every public authority." The key operational principle of that document is political equality, which applies to Jews and non-Jews alike. The logic of this principle cannot but transform the so-called Jewish state into "a state of its citizens." There is not a single "secular Zionist" that rejects that egalitarian principle. Conclusion: Secular Zionism is an impossibility. Professor Paul Eidelberg is President of the Foundation For Constitutional Democracy. He can be reached by mail at 244 Madison Avenue, Suite 427, New York, NY 10016, Tel: 212-372-3752, and by email at Constitution@usa.net |
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BRITISH 'SILENTLY BOYCOTT' ISRAELI ACADEMICS
Posted by Israel Academia Monitor, November 12, 2006. |
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This was in Ynet News yesterday. It was written by Moran
Zelikovich. It is archived at
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Israeli researchers, professors boycotted by British press, higher education institutions in protest of 'occupation of Palestinian territories'. The International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom warns against a "silent boycott" in Britain against Israeli institutes of higher education. The council said that Israeli researchers wishing to publish articles in Britain were asked to remove the name of which ever Israeli academic institute they belonged to as a condition for publishing their articles. The latest "unofficial boycott" was initiated by the "Bibliography of Translation Studies" journal, owned by a British publishing house headed by Mona Baker, a supporter of the academic boycott on Israel. The publishing house invited professors from all over the world to send in articles for publication. Among the many professors who accepted the invitation was Prof. Miriam Shlesinger, Department Chair of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Bar-Ilan University. Shlesinger asked the new associate editor of the publication, Prof. Gaby Saldahana if she would be willing to accept Israeli articles. Saldahana replied that she would accept articles from researchers in Israel, but not from an Israeli academic institute. Shlesinger, who used to head Amnesty International in Israel, decided not to send in an article to the journal. Political protest This "silent boycott" was taking place alongside other outright boycotts on Israel. An article published on Ynet in September revealed that dozens of academics worldwide called for a boycott on Israeli academic institutes until "Israel ends its occupation of the Palestinian territories." Despite Israel's efforts to fight the phenomenon of the academic boycott, the International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom continues to receive reports on more entities which do not want to publish articles by Israeli researchers. Pro-Rector and IAB chair Prof. Yosef Yeshurun responded to the latest case and said, "We adamantly oppose the academic boycotts. Research and study, and their expression through an exchange of open and free ideas, are the basis of civilization, and in their absence there cannot be true progress of human knowledge and understanding." "Academic boycotts, whether individual or collective, must be stopped immediately," Yeshurun said. According to him, Israel did not have a clear picture of the extent of the problem, "We appeal to members of university staff and ask to be updated. Our concern is with a development, a change in atmosphere in Europe and that the term 'boycott' is used freely in scientific dialogue." "We fear the boycott will become a legitimate phenomenon. We fear the UCU meeting, an organization of 100 thousand professors, in May 2007's yearly meeting, when the issue to be discussed, at so far, is the possibility of an academic boycott on Israel," Yeshurun said. Boycott after boycott This was not the first time a "silent boycott" was put on professors of higher education institutes in Israel. In May 2006, Richard Seaford, an English professor at Exeter University, was asked to review a book for an Israeli magazine for classical studies. He refused the request and explained that he, along with many other British academics, had signed an academic boycott against Israel, in light of what he called the "brutal and illegal expansionism, and the slow-motion ethnic cleansing". Two months prior, the London Jewish Chronicle reported that the British magazine Europe Dance had refused to publish an article about Israeli choreographer Sally Ann Freeland and her dance group, because she was an Israeli artist and the editor "opposed the Israeli occupation". In June 2003, the British Telegraph reported that Andrew Wilkie, a pathology professor at Oxford University, refused to accept a doctoral student from Tel Aviv University because he was Israeli. Wilkie claimed at the time that he was joined by many British academics that were not willing to accept Israelis because of their government's "gross violation of human rights" against Palestinians. Contact IsraelAcademia Monitor at e-mail@israel-academia-monitor.com |
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THE PALESTINIANS AREN'T BROKE
Posted by Naomi Ragen, November 12, 2006. |
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Even as the Palestinians plead poverty, millions of dollars are being used to buy weapons and pay the salaries of thousands of gunmen. This was written by Evelyn Gordon and appeared in Jerusalem Post.
It is archived at
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If there is one thing at which the Palestinians excel, it is public relations. With their elected government ostracized by the West, their task would seem daunting. Yet despite this handicap, they have successfully diverted Western attention for months from two embarrassing questions. The first relates to money. In recent months, the media have been filled with dire reports about the growing humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian Authority. And at first glance, this seems logical: The West cut off aid to the Palestinian government after Hamas took power, and since Western aid comprised most of the PA's budget, a crisis would seem inevitable. Yet as recent news reports have made clear, the PA appears to have plenty of money. It has simply chosen to use its funds for purposes other than its people's welfare. For instance, Israeli intelligence has detected more than 20 tons of explosives being smuggled into Gaza this year, along with sophisticated antitank and antiaircraft missiles. Most of this weaponry goes to Hamas, the ruling terrorist organization cum party, but significant quantities also go to terrorist groups associated with Fatah, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's party. The purchase price for this materiel, including the cost of smuggling it into the Gaza, could have been used to cover the unpaid salaries of thousands of PA employees - but Hamas and Fatah would both rather buy arms than feed their people. And as long as this is true, giving either group more money would be futile. Or consider the fact, noted in an IMF report published last week, that in June, while the Hamas government was already pleading inability to pay existing PA employees, it decided to increase the PA's payroll by hiring an additional 5,400 employees, mainly security personnel -- read gunmen -- affiliated with Hamas. In other words, it had the money to hire 5,400 Hamas-affiliated gunmen: It was only when it came to teachers and doctors that its pockets were empty. OR CONSIDER the incredible fact that despite the boycott, the European Union -- for years the PA's principal donor -- has actually given more money to the Palestinians this year than it did in previous years. According to John Vinocur of the International Herald Tribune, the EU claims to have given $814 million to the Palestinians between January and October, "more than it would in a normal year." Granted, the money has not gone to the Hamas government. Some has gone to Abbas's office, some to nongovernmental organizations and some directly to PA employees, through a "Hamas bypass" mechanism set up earlier this year. But the fact remains that the EU, the PA's major donor, has increased rather than decreased its contributions -- which means that if this money were being used for its intended purpose, a humanitarian crisis would seem unlikely. So is the humanitarian crisis a propaganda lie, or has this money, too, been diverted by its recipients to purposes other than the Palestinians' welfare? BUT IF the PA's finances ought to prompt hard questions from the West, this is no less true of its counterterror efforts -- or rather, the lack thereof. For years, the West has maintained that Abbas, unlike Hamas, wants to fight terror, but is incapable of doing so. Yet in fact, Abbas's forces have demonstrated exceptional proficiency in handling certain types of attacks -- namely, those directed at Western journalists and aid workers. Over the past year, there have been numerous kidnappings of foreigners. Just last week, for instance, a Spanish aid worker was kidnapped in Gaza; the week before, an AP photographer was kidnapped there; two weeks before that, an American aid worker was kidnapped in Nablus. In every such kidnapping, however, the victims have been released unharmed, usually within 24 hours. And in every single case, this has been due to PA intervention -- usually by Abbas's office. This begs an obvious question: How is it that Abbas's security forces are so quickly able to locate and free kidnapped Westerners, but are completely incapable of dealing with any other type of terrorist activity? Even during Abbas's 14 months in sole control of the PA, from January 2005 to March 2006, his forces failed to arrest so much as a single one of the terrorists who have launched Kassam rockets into Israel from Gaza every day since disengagement. Nor were anti-Israel terrorists of any other stripe -- bomb-makers, gunmen, kidnappers - ever arrested, even when Israeli intelligence gave him information on which to act. The conclusion is obvious: Abbas's forces are quite capable of taking action when he wishes them to do so, and in the case of Western journalists and aid workers, he does. He knows that these journalists and aid workers are largely responsible for generating Western sympathy for the Palestinian cause, and it is therefore important to him that they keep coming. And since this would be less likely if they risked torture or death at the hands of kidnappers, he makes sure that kidnapped Westerners are rescued quickly and unharmed. But Abbas has no interest whatsoever in fighting anti-Israel terror, because that would be unpopular with his own public: As one September poll found, 63 percent of Palestinians support bombarding Israeli cities with rockets, 57 percent support suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and 75 percent favor kidnapping Israeli soldiers. Yet neither can he openly advocate such attacks, since that could lead to the West boycotting him like it does Hamas. The obvious solution is to plead helplessness and rely on a gullible West to swallow this plea. Unfortunately, relying on Western gullibility has so far been a safe bet with regard to both money and terrorism. But if the West is serious about wanting an Israeli-Palestinian peace, it will have to stop turning a blind eye to both the PA's misuse of funds earmarked for its people's welfare and its refusal -- not inability -- to combat anti-Israel terror. Because if the PA can enjoy Western diplomatic and material support even without amending its behavior, it will have no incentive to change. And without change, neither the conflict nor Palestinian misery will end. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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MR. OLMERT, BRING JONATHAN POLLARD HOME
Posted by Justice for Jonathan Pollard, November 11, 2006. |
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The timing of a broadcast released exclusively to Israel's Channel 10 TV tonight smearing Jonathan Pollard in a calculated disinformation campaign orchestrated by American Naval intelligence was not happenstance. Airing a day before the Bush -- Olmert meeting in Washington, and a week before Pollard completes his 21st year in prison, the smear campaign is the work of the same anti-Semitic elements in the defense intelligence community, which have always worked to keep Pollard in prison. It flows from a genuine fear that President Bush is about to set Pollard free. The smear against Pollard and the recirculation of all the old lies about the case are intended to arouse public indignation against the Israeli agent and thereby attempt to tie the president's hands preventing him from responding positively to an Israeli request to free Pollard. This kind of blatant smear campaign has been carried out successfully by the American intelligence community several times before, always at a time that freedom for Pollard seemed imminent. This is precisely the kind of smear campaign that was waged after the Wye Summit in 1998 to ensure that Pollard remained in prison, in spite of an explicit commitment on the part of the American President to free him. The President of the United States of America has unlimited powers of clemency. As has been amply demonstrated in the past by President Clinton's release of 14 FALN terrorists, and a host of faulty pardons, the president is not dependent on the approval of outside agencies for his decision to pardon. We call upon Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resist hiding behind a meaningless smear campaign orchestrated by enemies of Israel, and to immediately deal forthrightly with his obligation to secure the release of Israel's longest held captive, Jonathan Pollard. Mr. Olmert, we remind you: Israel has a captive in America. It is up to you to discharge your responsibility to secure his release after 21 years in captivity for his service to Israel. Mr. Olmert, don't come home without Pollard! Contact the Justice for Jonathan Pollard organization at Justice4JP@aol.com or freepollard@gmail.com |
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IS THERE NOT ONE COURAGEOUS, REALITY-BASED JEWISH LEADER IN LOS ANGELES?
Posted by Buddy Macy, November 11, 2006. |
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On the eve of UJC's annual gala of self-aggrandizement and idealism, this year to be held in the City of Angels, I appeal to all of the attendees of the GA (General Assembly) to look deeply into their hearts and souls. The State of Israel finds itself in the most perilous, vulnerable position in its history, yet the North American Jewish leadership ignores all of the blatant signs of doom and continues to act in the manner of business as usual. Worse still, the Jewish Federation network has invited the leading culprit in Israel's impending demise to speak to its leadership -- more than 4,000 Jews -- to serve as a catalyst to raise more money for the failing government, and uses the war as a means of maintaining their jobs and social status. Unfortunately, and tragically so, the answer to the Jewish State's severe security problems lay not in the monetary arena: no, Israel's downfall is her lack of leadership, lack of unity and emptiness of spirit. And, UJC and most of the other 52 member groups comprising The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations are guilty in their appeasement of Olmert and his cronies, and of providing nourishment to this hollow and shapeless state. Since he has become Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert has done everything in his power to suppress the traditional Jews of Israel -- those who are arguably most loyal to Israel's Land and People -- and to empower the internal and external enemies of the Jewish State. He intentionally and purposefully executed a violent attack against the protectors of, and protestors at, Amona; he refused to argue for Prisoner of Zion status for Jonathan Pollard; he did nothing to protect the citizens of Sderot from the constant barrage of missile attacks months prior to the war; he insisted on administrative detention for protestors of his now obsolete and absurd "convergence" plan; he ignored three years' worth of planning by Israel's most knowledgeable, sophisticated military strategists, and, instead, micro-managed the war in Lebanon and northern Israel, causing the unnecessary deaths of dozens of courageous, trusting Israeli soldiers and reservists; he encouraged the disunity among Israel's soldiers and citizens by continuing his calls for withdrawals from Judea and Samaria while the fighting was ongoing; he employed a policy of appeasement of the media, foreign governments and United Nations, reflected in his acceptance of a self-destructive cease-fire that has empowered Hezbollah and all of Israel's enemies by enabling the terrorist organization to regroup and re-arm with even more technologically-advanced weaponry, and by bringing a questionable (at best) force of soldiers smack against Israel's northern border; he failed to make preparations for the caring of the victims of rocket attacks in the North; he denied the formation of an independent commission to investigate the horrendous operations during the war...and, much more. In general, Olmert has displayed a complete lack of leadership since he has assumed power. Yet, this is the man UJC has chosen to feature and honor in its biggest event of the year. Since the war, UJC has raised more than $330 million for Israel, through the Israel Emergency Campaign. Several weeks ago, Howard Rieger, the president of UJC, became quite defensive; he responded to an article about the IEC by claiming that only 3% of all funds raised had gone to non-Jews. The UJC intentionally mislead its donors through the use of two separate IEC updates, the second of which contained omissions and additions. In a related matter: Until two weeks ago, the UJC, as a whole, failed to provide any assistance whatsoever to the expellees from Gush Katif and northern Samaria. For 14 months, not one dime was given to our fellow Jews who had been encouraged by successive governments to settle in those communities. Within the past 14 days, UJC has provided the more than 9,000 victims with a sum of $40,000 of the $400,000 it had allocated "...for trauma relief for those evacuated from the Gaza Strip during the disengagement, to help these Israelis adjust to new homes and communities and rebuild their lives." The total allocation comes to less than $3.20 cents per month per Jew. During this same time, United JEWISH Communities has given at least $9 million to non-Jews in Israel! I beg of you: At the GA, speak out loudly against Prime Minister Olmert's self-destructive, evil, faithless conduct. And, demand that UJC live up to its claims of helping ALL JEWS. Finally, insist that the Federation network clearly explain to whom the dollars raised will be going. Donors deserve to know the destinations of their hard-earned, compassionately-given contributions. Please examine and analyze these extremely crucial issues. Do not be an appeaser; be an independent thinker and activist on behalf of the Jewish People and Israel. Thank you so much. Most sincerely, Buddy Macy
Buddy Macy was formerly an active volunteer with UJC. Read about his story at by clicking here.Contact him at VegiBud@aol.com. |
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DON'T LET UJA DISSUADE YOU FROM YOUR NATURAL HUMANITY
Posted by Janet Lehr, November 11, 2006. |
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Let's talk taklis -- Tikun Olum Readers, good friends, don't let UJA and other members of the Conference of Presidents dissuade from your natural humanity. Mainstream American Jewish organizations largely have refused to aid the thousands of Jews evacuated last summer from the Gaza Strip. Ask and then demand that the refugees from Gush Katif be supported. What are we proving by not aiding the refugees from Gush Katif? US Jewish groups raised over $300,000,000. for the Northern Israeli Communities battered by 38 days of Hezbollah rocket attacks this summer. On the simplest, almost most callus level -- You want to see the survival of Israel? Unlike George Soros, Michael Lerner, Norm Finkelstein and other very vocal Jews who say outright that the Jews were forced onto Arab lands after WWII and should be moved...elsewhere-perhaps back to Europe from where they came. Friends, friend of my friends, listen. Jews never left the Holy Land. Jerusalem has always had a continuing presence of Jews. The surrounding land was alternately arid and swampy, hardly habitable -- millennia of erosion had robbed the land of its biblical characteristic -- the land of 'milk and honey'. In recent centuries, inhabitants were nomads. Jewish return, and rehabilitation, to this barren land began in significant numbers in the 19th century, encourage and enabled by Moses Montifiore and Baron Rothschild who deeply believed in Jews repopulating their historic homeland. Some Jews who responded, did so because 'Israel called to them'. "Next Year In Jerusalem" is, and has always been the closing line of the Passover Seder. In my home, after an evening of prayer, of retelling the story of the Passover, reciting the traditional prayer after meal, singing the final Had Gad Yarn -- all voices rose to a crescendo, NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM. Most of the Jews who returned to Palestine during the second half of the 19th century fled the waves of pogroms that swept over Eastern Europe and Russia. It takes real grit and dedication to be a settler, to tame land and to retain control of that land. Think of Israel's present population. Who are those Israeli's most likely to passionate hold fast to the land of Israel -- Are they living the cosmopolitan life in Tel Aviv? Are they research scientists at the Technion, Hadassah Hospital, the Weitzman Institute, Ramona or the amazing numbers of hi-tech startups in Industrial Parks scattered throughout Israel? Reverse your perspective, what does the resident of Tel Aviv or these insular groups of scientists know of this settler? Does the cosmopolitan Israeli, earning his living in internationally cosmopolitan ways, perhaps not feel that any government attention given the simple 'outlanders', those with an archaic religious reference point, draws too much from their more cosmopolitan interests? Israeli's are no different than Americans. When was the last time you went to your state capital? Did you ever go to Trenton or Albany or Tallahassee or Carson City, or Sacramento? Be honest, could you find it readily on a map? Has every Israeli been to Jerusalem? to Hebron? But, Mt Hermon-for sking and sun in the South, so if you as an Israeli don't go to Gstaad, you've been to Mr Hermon and to Elat. I am directly speaking about the Israelis from Gush Katif and indirectly of all Israeli's living in the Golan, in Judea and in Samaria. Supporting the Israeli's of Gush Katif should be a 'no-brainer'. The 22 communities that comprised Gush Katif were 100% fully employed; produced a net income to Israel of $100 million dollars annually; and provided a real buffer from rocket attacks onto Ashkelon and Sderot. Not bad for 8500 men, women and children. Tomorrow is too late Tikun Olum seems to have hop-scotched over the 'less interesting', more problematic Israeli. Not meant as a geography lesson or a history lesson, I ask simply that you not forget to support all Israelis in triage order. What can you do? Has your synagogue Gush Katif Fund? Start one. You wish to make a direct contribution? Speak to either of these two people -- Neither take any money for themselves. [Editor's Note: For more information on these worthy charities, See below.] Please pass this along to every Jew you know. We must not let a political moment 'bury' our own good people. If your organization won't support all Israeli's, you have choices, you can reposition your support or divide your support. Tikun Olum has become today's 'catch phrase', a light unto the world -- What are we saying to the world? Contact Janet Lehr by email at janetlehr@veredart.com |
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WHAT'S WRONG WITH THOSE JEWS?
Posted by Daniel J. Teeboom, November 10, 2006. |
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For some reason, Jews are considered to be intelligent people. I have no idea why. Just take a look at Israel. It's not exactly the brightest of stars in the sky, is it? The Israeli's left Gaza assuming that once the occupation there had ended, some sort of quiet would descend on their southern border. The assumption being, that the threat of a massive Israeli response would make Palestinians think twice about continuing the violence. Did people in Israel think nobody would die if this massive response was called for? As could be expected it has not become quiet and indeed more people are dying. Yet Israel apologizes for those deaths, and then proceeds to wonder why its deterrence is eroding. That's weird. It does not make sense to apologize for killing those 20 innocent people in Beit Hanoun. There is not a person in the world who takes this apology seriously. Instead, the whole world sees it as an admission of guilt and proof of cowardice. It seems that the Israeli's are really determined to lose this conflict, which wouldn't be that bad if the fate of Western Civilization did not depend on the outcome. It would therefore be greatly appreciated if they start behaving as if they have some sense of self-preservation left. Instead of an apology, next time try the following: "The Palestinian nation must realize that the continuation of violence will come at a great cost. The State of Israel cannot guarantee that no innocents will die, as it responds to attacks from Palestinian terrorists. The only way to prevent these innocent people from dying is an immediate cessation of violence. If this does not occur and if Israeli cities continue being under missile attack, a heavy price will be continued to be extracted from the Palestinian population. If the Hamas government wishes the killing to end, it must disarm; recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel and accept the agreements which bear the signature of the legally elected Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat. We demand no more, no less." It's not going to hurt. Israel is already known as a bloodthirsty Nazi thug. Might as well use that reputation. Who knows, it might even lead to peace. Contact the poster by email at d.j.teeboom@orange.nl |
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THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, November 10, 2006. |
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The enemy of my enemy is my friend? On many occasions, especially during dysfunctional times, even adversaries can become the strangest of bedfellows if possessing common interests. Israel, alas, is not exactly the favorite state within a Middle East region, mostly populated by Muslims, many of which are not exactly boosters of non-Muslims especially Jews. Yet this aggregate population of Muslims is not at all unified in historical perspective, thus bifurcates into tribal factions labeled Sunnis and Shiites, the former four times as plentiful as the latter, which means little in terms of potential to wreck havoc. Indeed, such factions over all are not likely to break falafel with each other any time soon. Not unlike, in effect, those legendary Western warring rifle-toting Hatfield and McCoy clans, Sunnis and Shiite leaders and their minions, especially when competing for dominance, will go at each other with all the restraint of rabid dogs, biting heads off with canines disguised as butcher knives, planting roadside bombs, or fast tracking to Allah heaven, teeming with compliant virgins, using de rigueur suicide belts to blow themselves and Muslims born into the wrong tribe asunder. We need only observe uncivil war torn Iraq for the empirical evidence of such niceties. Furthermore, Iran's Persian Shiite movers and shakers, as well as their financed kindred spirit Muslim terrorist groups Hizbullah and Hamas, are today far more dangerous specifically to Israel than are most Sunni heads of state. Indeed Iran's farcical Farsi speaking Imam seeking Shiite lunatic, disguised as its president, AhMADinejad has emphatically suggested Israel be wiped off the map. Problem is, this loon doesn't just howl at the moon while effectively declaring war on the Jewish State, but continues to reap massive quantities of extorted oil revenues from addicted industrial nations, thus has ample rials to pursue his, as well as his maniacal mullah cronies', real Dr. Strangelove nuclear fantasies of someday obliterating Jews. Therefore, Israel should forthwith ally with Sunni regimes less than comfortable with big bad mad Shiites, as well as America and European nations imbued with similar concerns, forthwith developing a strategy to neutralize this truly ominous ever-growing Shiite threat to civil existence. No doubt Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and/or his emissaries have clandestinely and otherwise engaged in a tete a tete or two with a normally less than cordial House of Saud King Abdullah in regards to this matter, as well as with other Sunni heads of state. No doubt, a smooth flow of fossil fuel so far trumps any overt action such as attempting to take out Shiite Iran's nuclear infrastructure. No doubt, if that vicious viscous trump card is not itself soon trumped by saner prescient agreements to act aggressively, possibly coalescing into a coalition of concerned Muslim and non-Muslim nations willing to stick their necks out sticking it to the mad Iranians, a 'Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' could be more than merely a Bob Dylan refrain. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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WILL AMERICA ACT TO SAVE ONE COURAGEOUS MAN'S LIFE?
Posted by Salah Choudhury, November 10, 2006. |
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This is an interview with Salah Choudhury conducted today by the
New York Sun |
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This was posted by Daniel Freedman Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is remarkably calm for someone facing death. I sat for a few minutes in a state of near shock after our conversation earlier today ended with him politely thanking me for my time and telling me that "I hope that people in the world will stand with us against radical Islamists. We can be free together and secure the world for future generations." He spoke from Dhaka, Bangladesh, where on Monday he goes on trial for his life on counts of sedition, treason, and blasphemy. Mr. Choudhury, a Bangladeshi journalist, is accused, he told us, of "praising Jews and Christians," "spying for Israel," and being "an agent of the Mossad" -- because he advocated relations between Israel and Bangladesh. He's also accused of being critical of Islamic radicals, which is considered blasphemy. He committed these crimes by writing articles favorable toward Jews and Christians. He did so, he says, because while he was born and raised in a Muslim country (Bangladesh) where he was taught a "religion of hatred" and a "religion of Jihad," his father "told from an early age not to listen and to learn for himself." He did and became friends with Jews, realized the lies he had been taught, and wanted to end "the culture of hatred." He says that if "Muslim countries want peace they need relations with Israel." Mr. Choudhury says he holds no hope of getting a fair trial. The judge, he says, is a radical Islamist who has already made clear his view that Mr. Choudhury is guilty. "In open court ... he made comments that by praising Christians and Jews I have hurt the sentiment of Muslims ... which is a crime," the journalist says. Other comments made by the Judge have made it clear, Mr. Choudhury tells me, that the judge's goal is a conviction and a death sentence. Mr. Choudhury describes his judge as a "one man judge and jury," and Mr. Choudhury cannot even present witnesses in his own defense. Why hasn't Mr. Choudhury fled Bangladesh despite having had the opportunity? Because, he says, "if I leave I will be proved to be a coward ... I want to fight the matter to the last." Many of Mr. Choudhury's colleagues have fled the country, but Mr. Choudhury, a practicing Muslim, wants to live free in his own country and beat the case set against him. "There is no pride, no honor, and no dignity in retreating," he says. Mr. Choudhury's pre-trial run hasn't been easy. He spent 17 months between 2003 and 2005 in prison without trial. Just this year he's been attacked twice. In July, his office was bombed and in October he was assailed in person. Both times the police did nothing. But he has received support from some quarters of Bangladeshi society. The "Bangladesh Minority Lawyer's Association" has been especially supportive. He said there are "many good Muslims who are silently expressing solidarity" but they fear repercussions from the radicals. Richard L. Benkin is a Chicago-based analyst who introduced us to Mr. Choudhury. Mr. Benkin's friendship with Mr. Choudhury began in 2003, before Mr. Choudhury's ordeal started. Mr. Benkin says Mr. Choudhury wrote him an e-mail in response to some online articles he'd written about Israel "which essentially said 'my country gets biased and incomplete information about Jews and Israel ... I know there is more, can you help?'" Mr. Benkin recalls. Mr. Benkin decided that to "such a cry for help there is only one response." After Mr. Choudhury was arrested in 2003, Mr. Choudhury's younger brother called Mr. Benkin to ask if he could help. Mr. Benkin says that moment changed his life, as Mr. Choudhury's case became what Mr. Benkin describes as his "obsession." "We're talking abut a man's life and a courageous individual standing up for what is right." Mr. Choudhury's case may be relatively unfamiliar to most Americans, aside from a recent column by Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal. But Mr. Choudhury does have some American allies. Mr. Benkin reports that Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) has been "fantastic." Mr. Kirk demanded a meeting with the Bangladeshi ambassador to America in 2005 and three weeks later Mr. Choudhury was freed -- after his 17 months in jail without trial. The ambassador admitted to them, Mr. Benkin says, that the charges were false. The Bangladeshi government promised the charges would be dropped, but they never were. The government feared, Mr. Benkin says, the reaction of radical Islamists who were coalition partners. There is hope, Mr. Benkin says, if America takes action. While the trial is prejudged and Mr. Choudhury will be given a death sentence, the president of the country can drop the charges if the national interest is at stake. And here's where America comes in. America gives Bangladesh $63 million a year. The American people and government might begin to question what we're getting for our investment. If the threat of reconsideration of that aid allotment isn't enough, 70% of Bangladeshi garment exports are to America. The economy is totally dependent on the garment industry. If America threatens to block Bangladeshi imports and switch, say, to Indian products unless Mr. Choudhury is freed, that could have quite an effect, Mr. Benkin suggests. At several points during the conversation with Mr. Choudhury the phone got cut off and we had to switch numbers. Mr. Benkin warned that the Bangladeshi government was probably listening. When I asked Mr. Choudhury if he was worried, he replied, "maybe someone is listening but it doesn't matter." And that, in a sense, sums up Mr. Choudhury. Why he printed articles knowing the likely anger it would provoke, why he hasn't fled Bangladesh, why he can stare death in the eye and not be concerned that he may be killed, and why he didn't care what the government heard him say. It's because when you're fighting for the truth and justice, nothing else matters. When asked what the free world can do to help him, Mr. Choudhury replies, "The more international voices" protesting the case, the better. "We can fight together and we will win." Mr. Choudhury is a man in the mold of such heroes of freedom as Vaclac Havel and Lech Walesa. The question for the American government and people is, will we stand up for him? This was posted by Anita Mathur. Let me begin with a recent article in Canadian newspaper The Georgia Straight by Terry Glavin, where while commenting on courageous Bangladeshi journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury he wrote, "If Choudhury and O'Neill were ever to find themselves competing for a bravery-in-journalism prize, O'Neill would lose. Hands down." Prior to publication of this article, renowned Israeli politician turned columnist Michael Freund in Jerusalem Post wrote, "With the rise of Islamic extremism across the globe, speaking to Bangladeshi Muslim journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is like catching a breath of cool, fresh air on a hot and sweltering afternoon. As editor of The Weekly Blitz, an English-language newspaper published in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, Choudhury has been an outspoken critic of radical Islamic fundamentalism, denouncing the hatred and violence it has spread in its wake. A proponent of greater dialogue and understanding between Muslims and Jews, he has called on his fellow Bangladeshis to recognize the State of Israel and establish diplomatic relations with Jerusalem. Though founded as a secular state in 1971, Bangladesh is currently ruled by a coalition government that includes two Islamist parties. Islamic extremism is reportedly on the rise. Of the more than 140 million people who live in Bangladesh, an estimated 106 million are Muslim. The country is due to hold elections in January, and by all indications, the radicals are set to increase their strength at the ballot box. In this tense atmosphere, Choudhury has paid a very heavy price for his beliefs. In November 2003, he was arrested at Dhaka's international airport just prior to boarding a flight on his way to Israel, where he had been scheduled to deliver an address on promoting understanding between Muslims and Jews. His visit to Israel would have been the first by a Bangladeshi journalist. The government accused Choudhury of treason, sedition and blasphemy, and tossed him into prison for 17 months, where he was tortured. He was released in April 2005, thanks in part to a campaign that was waged on his behalf by American human rights activist Dr. Richard Benkin. But the Bangladeshi government decided to pursue the charges against him, and Choudhury was arraigned in a Dhaka court on October 12 on multiple counts of espionage and sedition. Just days before the start of his trial, a mob of 40 people, including senior members of Bangladesh's ruling party, stormed the offices of his newspaper and assaulted Choudhury, leaving him with a fractured ankle. Local police failed to make any arrests, and refused to allow Choudhury to file charges against his attackers. His trial resumes on November 13, and if convicted, he could face the death penalty. Both the US State Department, as well as international human rights groups, have denounced the legal proceedings against him. Despite the dire circumstances in which he finds himself, Choudhury remains strong, upbeat and determined." But, the strongest of all was in Washington Times in their editorial on 20th October, where they wrote, "Bangladesh receives roughly $60 million in U.S. aid every year. One would think that the Bush administration should expect something in return, such as a commitment to hold off the forces of radical Islam which currently threaten Bangladesh's stability. But if the case of a moderate Muslim on trial for sedition is any evidence, Bangladesh is swiftly slipping into Islamists' hands. In happier times, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury operated an independent, English-language newspaper out of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. Angered by the rise of Islamists, Mr. Choudhury took the bold step of using his publication to oppose his country's radicalization. That caught the attention of the Hebrew Writers' Association, who in 2003 invited Mr. Choudhury to Israel to speak at a conference on establishing peaceful Jewish-Muslim relations. Mr. Choudhury accepted the invitation, but was detained at the airport by Bangladeshi authorities. That's where Mr. Choudhury's life took a tragic turn. After being blindfolded and beaten, he was held in solitary confinement for 17 months, as the government tried to build a case that Mr. Choudhury was an Israeli spy. The charge was preposterous, but in Islamists' eyes, anyone who advocates peaceful relations with the Zionist entity must be a traitor. With the help of U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk and human-rights activist Richard Benkin, Mr. Choudhury was eventually released from prison. The sedition charges, however, remained pending. Mr. Choudhury's ordeal didn't end there. In July, his newspaper offices were bombed by Islamist radicals; in September, a judge with ties to Bangladesh's Radical Party ordered his sedition trial to resume; then, earlier this month, a mob of 40 militants beat Mr. Choudhury in his offices. It is believed that Bangladeshi officials were among the mob. No one expects Mr. Choudhury to get a fair trial. Throughout all of this, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia has been noticeably absent. Her effort to balance the growing radicalization of her government with the impression that Bangladesh is a moderate Muslim country is failing badly. Both Mr. Choudhury's supporters and enemies see this trial as a crucial moment in Bangladesh's history: Either Bangladesh will live up to its image as a moderate and tolerant country or the Islamists will gain even more control. We also see it as a crucial moment for the war on terror. The United States must encourage people like Mr. Choudhury to speak out. But when they do, it must also do all it can to protect them. Freeing Mr. Choudhury will tell others like him that when you stand against Islamists, the United States will stand with you." The US media became mysteriously silent on Shoaib's case since The New York Times published an editorial on him on 24th December 2003 titled 'Risk of journalism in Bangladesh'. But, a very young journalist named Gabriel Oppenheim took up the task of breaking the silence by writing a number of articles on this issue in Daily Pennsylvainian. In his latest article titled 'Without our help, a beacon of freedom faces death' wrote, "Our country's most important ally in the war on terror is about to be killed, and most Americans don't even know it. His name is Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, and he's a Bangladeshi newspaper publisher, editor and writer. On Oct. 12, his government will try him for sedition, which carries a penalty of death. There will be no jury -- only a judge, in a case that has been fixed from the very beginning. You see, Bangladesh is currently a secular democracy of 147 million people (83 percent of whom practice Islam). But several fundamentalist groups within the country want to replace its secular system with sharia, or strict Islamic law. In order to do so, these groups have turned to terrorism. On Aug. 17, 2005, 430 bombs exploded across the country, killing two and injuring dozens. Three months later, Bangladesh suffered its first suicide bombings when at least three people detonated themselves in front of and inside two court buildings. That caught Osama bin Laden's attention. At least two arrested terrorists in Bangladesh have admitted to being sent by bin Laden. Saudi Arabia, too, has recognized Bangladesh as a potential tipping point, sending millions of dollars to the 64,000 Bangladeshi madrassas, or religious schools, that preach extremist Islam. Against this backdrop, Choudhury has published his newspaper, Weekly Blitz. It features a mix of world and local news and strong editorials against violence in the name of religion. The paper also calls for dialogue between Muslims and Jews as the first step on the road to peace -- which upsets extremist clerics, of course. So in November 2003, those clerics had the government arrest Choudhury as he tried to board a plane in Dhaka, the capital. Choudhury was on his way to Israel to attend a conference in Tel Aviv called "Bridges Through Culture," where he was to lecture on the media's role in promoting peace. But before he could board the plane, the government charged Choudhury with passport violations. It was a bogus charge, brought by a government whose ruling coalition contains two parties that openly support al Qaeda. The government then sent Choudhury to a maximum-security prison, where, as I wrote in a previous column, "he was tortured with electric shocks and beaten with field hockey sticks" until his legs broke. The government also denied him care for his severe glaucoma and refused to let him attend his mother's funeral after she died of a heart attack. Eventually, the government dropped the passport charges in favor of the sedition charges leveled in February 2004. That's where our University comes into the picture. For before Choudhury was imprisoned, he had sent e-mails to a few freelance journalists whose work he had read online, asking them to contribute to Weekly Blitz. One of those journalists was Penn alumnus Richard Benkin, who agreed to write for Choudhury's newspaper. When Choudhury was arrested, Benkin took action, lobbying his local congressman for help. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) was able to secure Choudhury's release by essentially threatening to withhold $100 million in U.S. aid to Bangladesh. But the charges were never dropped. And police continued to allow radical muftis to threaten and harass Choudhury, his wife and their two children. In July, two bombs exploded in Choudhury's office, and the police took no action, claiming to have "misplaced" the necessary report. Meanwhile, Bangladesh repeatedly postponed Choudhury's trial, keeping him in a state of continuous fear. Then, last week, Oct. 12 was set as the trial's start date. Now Choudhury faces death -- and we must act. Americans often use the "war on terror" catchphrase for political gain. But any candidate who's really strong against terror, regardless of party, must help Choudhury. Obviously, not all Muslims support extremism or violence. But few Muslim leaders have the will to speak out against violence. And it's not so easy to blame them. Choudhury, after all, is facing death, and his office has been bombed. Now that we've found a man willing to advocate for peace and denounce extremism, we must seize the opportunity. No one else will speak out if we allow those who already have spoken to die. So please write your representatives. It worked once to save Choudhury's life, and it can again. Because you are not helpless in, or removed from, some distant, guerilla war on terror. This is the war on terror." After the publication of a number of articles by Gabe Oppenheim, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Houston Herald Voice and Washington Times have published opinion editorials and editorial on Choudhury's case. Now, almost every week, from small to big newspapers in United States are covering this issue with due importance. Although Dr. Muhammed Yunus, after getting the Nobel Peace Prize was supposed to be very much in the international media, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is clearly now heading in media coverage, at least in USA. The State Department even spoke on this issue, and it is expected that the false case lodged against this Bangladeshi editor might ultimately put negative impact on the Washington's aid to Dhaka. Despite publication of quite a number of articles in US, Italian and Israeli press, fate of Choudhury remains in danger. An Islamofascists judge named Mohammed Momin Ullah decided to continue the trial and it is anticipated that, the judge wants to award him highest punishment. Beside such legal complications, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury was recently attacked and physically assaulted by the members of a major political party named BNP. His office was looted and no action is yet taken by the law enforcing agencies against the attackers. Rather, the attackers are given shelter by influential politicians, including the former political secretary to the Prime Minister. Because of fear, business enterprises refrain from giving advertisements to Weekly Blitz, which has already turned into the largest tabloid newspaper in Bangladesh. Thousands of readers are hitting the internet edition of Blitz on www.weeklyblitz.net There is no doubt that Shoaib is confronting Islamist radicals almost single handedly in Bangladesh just with the moral support of his friends and admirers in the world, especially of his 'Jewish brother' Dr. Richard Benkin. A few Congressmen have by now extended supports. But the most active amongst all is Republican Congressman Mark Steven Kirk. Kirk not only supports Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury but cares of his safety and security. Shoaib's family believes, after the November 7th election in USA, after Mark Steven Kirk will be re-elected, he will take some more stronger steps in favor of this couragous journalist to make sure that the false sedition case is finally dropped by the Bangladesh government. This is indeed be a great achievemnt of peace-loving people in the world over the Islamist radicals in a country like Bangladesh. The other great soul, who has recently joined the campaign for Shoaib is his 'esteemed sister' rabbi Sue Levy of Houston area. American Jewish Committee and PEN have given Shoaib their prestigious awards in recognition to his courage and commitment. But many of his supporters, who know his conviction for global peace and interfaith understanding strongly believes that, this heroic figure deserves the Nobel or any other similar awards. Such awards will not only make him strong mentally, but will let the world know, there is nothing good in culture of hatred or bloodshed in the name of religion. There is no room for jihad in Islam as well to kill innocent children and people. The best way to attain global peace in interfaith understanding. This is exactly what Shoaib is advocating. Shouldn't we stand for him? Yes of course! |
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; Sec. Annan's Misplaced Concern;
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 10, 2006. |
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INITIAL ELECTION THOUGHTS The election was no landslide, but the public was disgusted at a seemingly endless war. This was due partly to media bias exploiting traditional American impatience and to lack of Presidential leadership. Pres. Bush wouldn't admit mistakes, so the public didn't foresee him correcting them. Unless the US and Iraq crush the militias, we cannot win. Bush also failed to demand sufficient resources, so victory seemed unattainable. He did not campaign to broaden US perspective to world jihad, rather than just to anti-terrorism, Afghanistan, and Iraq, letting the enemy pour reinforcements into Iraq. Americans were lulled into thinking it is a minor, isolated conflict. Democrats had a chorus line about Bush not negotiating. Why didn't Republicans prove that he had attempted negotiations for years, that they don't work, and that much of the rest of the world is useless in this conflict? Democrats argue that foreigners detest Bush, therefore they oppose America. I think the picture is mixed, but is more of, foreigners detest America, therefore they oppose Bush. In many disputes, the foreigners are wrong. In two years, if not sooner, the Democrats may run foreign policy. They already influenced it by inhibiting Bush. The result was greater failure. Failure to stop Iran and N. Korea. Failure to crush the Iraqi militias, because the media would portray it as killing civilians. The Democrats failed to warn against Bush's mistakes until after they had become plain to all. Where is their foresight? If the US withdraws from Iraq, the terrorists would shift their focus to the US. They would blow up small bombs here and there, and launch nuclear bombs now and then. The Republicans failed to make the problem clear, but Democrats don't grasp the problem. SEC. ANNAN'S WORRY Sec.-General Annan expressed concern about the safety of Gaza civilians, due to Israeli attacks. He should have denounced the P.A. for endangering its civilians by: (1) Treating them as human shields; and (2) Attacking Israel, which sucked Israeli forces into Gaza, to get at the source of the attacks. Those Muslim Arabs are vicious people, voting for Hamas to prosecute the war harder, and supporting terrorism. Perhaps Annan shouldn't worry about them at all. But if he worries about them, why has he not expressed concern about the safety of innocent Israeli civilians, the Arabs' victims? By the same token, why doesn't Annan express concern about the safety of Gaza civilians due to factional strife and clan disputes? What kind of culture have the Palestinian Arabs, he might ask, that they readily have disputes and settle them by killing each other's members. The UNO is perverse, in being concerned about the aggressors and not their victims. ISRAEL TO BUILD WORLD'S FIRST WAVE POWER PLANT Sri Lanka hopes to meet its rising electricity demands with non-polluting, renewable, cheap wave power. It has arranged with an Israeli company, S.D.E., to build a 200 megawatt plant for about $130 million. The waves push against pistons in any weather, and run a generator. The plate holding the pistons could act as a breakwater. For 1 megawatt, comparable costs are: $ 650,000 for wave power
Waves, solar, and wind do not have a materials cost. Gas and coal do. The figures do not show total cost per megawatt for investment plus materials (IMRA, 10/12). CENSORING OURSELVES OVER MOZART Muslims need not attend Mozart operas, so Germany should not censor one so as not to offend Muslims. Besides, art doesn't offend, rather, people decide whether to take offense. Censorship treats Muslims as unable to dialogue, and that is patronizing. Censorship is the response that Muslims try to impose. It rewards their proclivity to violence (Daniel Barenboim the composer, Lebanon Daily Star, from IMRA, 10/12). Some art does offend. Barenboim has offended Jews. The Mozart opera, as described, is vague and probably not offensive. Muslims, however, interpret everything not flattering as offensive. Muslim organizations are impossible to dialogue with in a scholarly critical way; they seem eager to claim to be insulted, so that they gradually can impose their ethos upon others. Barenboim is right, however, that giving in to Muslim threats encourages Muslims to make more threats and commit more violence. My standard is that gratuitous or irrelevant insult is wrong, but we are in a war with Islamism and should denounce it and defend ourselves from it. I don't discuss the strictly religious aspects of Islam, which are not my business. Muslims make their intolerant and imperialist aspects everyone's business. If, in the war against Islamism, our authorities decide to show that the imperialist aspects stem from the religion, and that the religion is false in its premises, so as to discourage conversion of Western non-Muslims into terrorists and to reduce adherence to Islam abroad, I would go along with that as a practical matter of defense. ARABS PREFER ISRAELI PRISONS TO P.A. SCHOOLS Arab boys now carry small weapons to Israeli checkpoints, so they might get arrested, gain a high school diploma in prison that they otherwise might not get in the P.A., and return as terrorist "heroes." (Arutz-7, 10/12). Israeli prisons can't be so bad if Arabs seek them out. Arabs engage in all sorts of welfare frauds, as reported previously. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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IN-CLASSROOM INDOCTRINATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA
Posted by Moti Hareli, November 10, 2006. |
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The University of Haifa currently offers a propaganda indoctrination course based on one-sided propaganda being taught as "scholarship". It is in the Department of Sociology and is entitled "The Sociology of the Occupation". It is taught by an anti-Zionist lecturer who is probably the Hamas' second-favorite lecturer at the University of Haifa: Dr. Yuval Yonay. Yonay is a close collaborator with Ilan Pappe, including in promoting boycotts of Israel and "divestment". He helped to organize a series of "Nakba Days" at the University of Haifa with Pappe, in which Israelis were called upon to mourn the creation and very existence of their own country as a "catastrophe" (nakba, in Arabic). Yonay is a cheerleader for convicted nuclear traitor Mordecai Vanunu, promotes the Palestinian "right of return," which means their "right" to destroy Israel, and has been active in the groups in Israel that organize mutiny among soldiers and refusal to serve. He has petitioned to prevent army officers in Israel from speaking with high school students, and is active in both the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas Gush Shalom organization and the Israeli communist party. Yonay is a sociologist with a special interest in what he calls "Queer Studies". Yonay's academic work includes such groundbreaking articles as: "A Queer Look at the Arab-Jewish Conflict" in Theoria Uvikoret 19: 265-75 (Hebrew), which is a hardcore Marxist magazine; "Between Silence and Damnation: The Construction of Gay Identity in the Israeli Legal Discourse, 1948-1988" in Israeli Sociology 1(2): 257-93 (Hebrew); and "The Law on Homosexual Orientation in Israel: Between History and Sociology" in Mishpat u Mimshal 5(1): 531-86 (Hebrew). Yonay's course outline is crawling with postmodernist Newspeak and gibberish, about conflicting "narratives" in the Middle East and about "colonialism". The course outline by Yonay makes little attempt to hide the fact that Zionism will be represented in the course as a form of colonialism and imperialism. The course description contains the following caveat: "The course is built on the presumption that a complete separation between science (sic) and ideology is not possible, because ideological perceptions affect the way in which facts are understood and gain relevance." Well, let us put aside the question of whether sociology is even science. This course also promises large doses of "New History", meaning historic revisionism, meaning pseudo-history. New Historians generally think that facts never matter, especially when they stand in the way of destroying Israel. Required course texts in Yonay's re-education camp include material by Edward Said and assorted Marxists and anti-Zionists, as well as non-academic leftist propaganda diatribes. http://www.ee.bgu.ac.il/~academia Contact the author via IsraelAcademia Monitor at e-mail@israel-academia-monitor.com |
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HEADLINE DISTORTS STORY TO HEIGHTEN SYMPATHY FOR TERRORISTS
Posted by David Meir-Levi, November 9, 2006. |
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The headline editor for Dia'a Hadid's "Hamasa leader calls off cease-fire" (SF Chronicle, 11.9.06) needs to catch up on his/her news. There is no cease-fire. Hamas' last cease fire ended in January, 2005. Since then, and since Israel made its historically unprecedented peace offering, with its unconditional and unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, more than 1000 qassam rockets have rained down on Israeli cities. Thirty four Israelis have been killed (28 were civilians) and more than 200 wounded or maimed for life. Hundreds more have been hospitalized for shock. Qassams have hit elementary schools, and only by chance or miracle were the children absent from the classrooms. Such direct hits a few minutes later would have killed scores of children. Forty-five Israeli communities have been terrorized by endless qassam attacks during the past five years. Throw in to that toxic mix the dozens of drive-by shootings, car bombs, truck bombs, road-side bombs, sniper attacks, kidnappings, and attempted kidnappings, and attempted suicide bombings, and anyone reading even the SF Chronicle would know that far from any cease-fire, Hamas has been actively at war attacking Israel since it was elected to office. But, knowing that a naive media will enthusiastically embrace almost any Hamas lie, Hamas leaders now pretend that the Israeli accidental artillery bombing of Gazan civilians came during a cease fire. That way, the Israeli accident looks like a heinous crime, a vicious and one-sided violation of a cease fire; rather than an accidental mis-direction of defensive measures aimed at stopping the endless, relentless rain of qassam rockets intentionally aimed at Israeli civilians. Why do you help the terrorists lie about their terrorism? David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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THE NEW CONGRESS AND ISRAEL
Posted by Morris J. Amitay, November 9, 2006. |
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The Democratic takeover of both the House and the Senate will undoubtedly have ramifications for US-Israel relations the next two years. While surprises can always happen in Washington, some observations at this early point could be relevant. In the House, much will depend on whether a moderate wing, reinforced by a number of relatively conservative newcomers, can halt the leftward drift of the party in recent years. The Majority Leader race between Jack Murtha, with his call for an immediate pullout from Iraq, and the current Whip, Steny Hoyer should reveal a great deal about the future direction of House Democrats. With his rallying fellow Dems to back pro-Israel initiatives and centrist approach, Hoyer offers a stark contrast to Murtha and his supporters. Murtha's own military experience and role on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee gained him a pro-defense reputation in the past. Energized, however, by the publicity and adulation he received from the anti-war forces for his calls to abandon Iraq, Murtha has changed his behind-the-scenes profile and is now seeking a leadership spot. The soon-to-be Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has cultivated some ties with Jewish groups, but will not be as directly involved in legislative activities and initiatives affecting Israel, though she will obviously play a key role in general. What is worrisome is that some fringe Jewish groups and wealthy liberal supporters whose views on Israel and national defense can (charitably) be described as "dovish" will have greater influence on a Democratically controlled Congress. A number of very senior Democrats who will be chairing major House committees rank in the bottom 10% of the class (of 435) when it comes to Israel-related issues. They are: - David Obey (Appropriations) In fact, all five voted recently against the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which passed 361 to 37. While wielding influence on the party and attracting media attention, hopefully they will be more engaged with domestic issues rather than those affecting foreign policy in the Middle East. On the positive side, Tom Lantos is in line to take over as chair of the House International Relations Committee. Israel has no stronger, effective, committed supporter in Congress who also works well with his GOP colleagues. The new chair of the Foreign Operations Appropriation Committee will be Nita Lowey, which should be regarded as a plus. If Murtha moves on to a leadership position, Norm Dicks would chair the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Dicks is a friend of both the defense and pro-Israel communities. Based on his record, Ike Skelton, who is in line to be chair of the Armed Services Committee, should present few problems. With regard to the Senate, Joe Lieberman's very impressive win over Ned Lamont with his anti-war single-issue campaign was the best news on election night for both Israel and America's future security. Less momentous, but noteworthy, was the defeat in Rhode Island of (nominally) Republican Lincoln Chafee, who chairs the Near East Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Following in his late father's tradition, Chafee was an unrelenting critic of Israel, and single-handedly was able to derail John Bolton's appointment as U.N. ambassador. On the negative side of the ledger, four staunch Senate supporters of Israel lost their re-election contests -- Rick Santorum (PA), Mike DeWine (OH), Jim Talent (MO) -- and George Allen (VA). Allen's replacement, Jim Webb has recently advocated a "regional approach" in the Middle East. This is a cause for concern because it would invariably mean putting pressure on Israel for further concessions in order to placate our Arab "allies". Santorum was the leader in the Senate in seeking regime change in Iran and thwarting its nuclear ambitions. With a Democratic Senate majority, Joe Biden (who is running for President in '08) will take over the helm of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. While he could be considered as a better choice than Dick Lugar, whom he will replace, Biden can be erratic at times and go off on his own foreign policy tangents. Patrick Leahy, who will chair the Judiciary Committee, is also in line to chair the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of Appropriations. As a frequent critic of Israel he has supported few positive initiatives. Robert Byrd, with the worst Israel-related record in the Senate, will chair the full Appropriations Committee. Hopefully, Byrd will not interject himself in specific defense appropriations issues affecting Israel where Dan Inouye will be in charge, working well with his GOP counterpart, Ted Stevens, both very much in tune with the pro-Israel community. Carl Levin will replace John Warner as chair of the Armed Services Committee -- a net plus on Israel-related issues. The new 110th Congress will undoubtedly seek to have a say in future U.S. actions in Iraq, with the outcome there bearing directly on the future of the entire region. Here Iran's role will be of paramount importance, with signs now pointing ominously to a policy of accommodation with the mullahs -- and their nuclear ambitions. The challenge will be for a lame duck Republican administration to be able to work with a Democratic Congress to devise a strategy that secures our country's vital interests in the Middle East, while ensuring Israel's security. If you add to this formidable task, the intense political preparations for the 2008 Presidential election, the increasingly negative trends in Latin America, North Korean nukes, Russia's slide toward autocracy, the growing power of China -- and, incidentally, the worldwide Islamofascist terrorist threat -- we have a helluva year shaping up! Contact Morris Amitay at mjapc@erols.com |
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THE TRAGEDY IN BEIT HANUM
Posted by Rachel Kapen, November 9, 2006. |
| Unlike the Hamas terror organization, now an important part of the Palestinian Authority, who target Israeli citizens including women, children and the elderly intentionally, the Israeli army goes out of its way to minimize civilian casualties, all too often at personal risk to its own soldiers. Unfortunately, this isn't always possible as the American army knows all too well from first-hand experiences in Afghanistan and more recently in Iraq. But whereas the Palestinians are known again and again to applaud any Israeli loss of life, both the Israeli public and the Israeli government deeply lament any Palestinian civilians' unintentional loss of life and without fail call for a thorough investigation of the incident as is the case in the tragic loss of life amidst a family in Beit Hanun in the Gaza Strip. What Israel is doing is attempting to clean out terrorists who on a daily basis throw Kassam rockets on its population centers making life there all but impossible. If the Palestinian Authority really and truly is so concerned about the safety of its citizens as it purports to be, all it has to do is call off the Kassam throwers or better yet renounce violence against the Jewish state, a state they vehemently refuse to recognize and call fir its annihilation. Contact the poster at skapen285466MI@comcast.net |
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LET'S TALK ABOUT ANIMALS
Posted by Ellen W. Horowitz, November 9, 2006. |
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It's been a bad week for Arab women and children. Sunday started out with a horrific report on the grisly discovery of a missing four year old boy. He was found dead in a garbage dumpster in the Beduin city of Rahat. The father of the young boy reported that one of his wives (he has three of them) had stabbed to death the child of another wife, because she was jealous and unable to conceive. Police believe that at first the child's body was stored in the washing machine, but was later dumped in the garbage. On Monday, a female suicide bomber blew herself up near Israeli soldiers in Beit Hanoun. Lucky for us, she goes to paradise a bit unaccomplished after having only lightly wounded one our soldiers. That same day it was reported that an all-women's cell of Islamic Jihad terrorists was discovered and apprehended. The women were handlers of several terror cells in the areas of Jerusalem and Judea. Among other activities, they were involved in the transferring of funds from Syria to be used for the families of suicide terrorists, and for the funding of terror attacks. One of the arrested women also oversaw the building of an explosives laboratory. The less capable women have been relegated to the position of acting as human shields for terrorists -- but hey, it's a job. And just when you thought that equal opportunity employment for women had been embraced by the Palestinian patriarchal society (at least in the terror sector), a scathing report on the status of Palestinian women came to the fore on Tuesday. The Palestinian Authority's Central Bureau of Statistics reported that 23 percent of Arab women living in PA-controlled areas have experienced domestic violence, and sixty-six percent said they were subject to psychological abuse at home. The report also cited that the situation is exacerbating due to the fact that the abusers are granted virtual immunity under Islamic law. Which brings us to Wednesday's accidental artillery shelling, by the IDF, of an alleged civilian area in Beit Hanoun. As of this writing, the jury is still out on who, how, how many, when, and what occurred. And then there's always the very enigmatic Arab reaction. Based on the Islamic worldview, I'm not sure if the event constitutes wholly bad news. On one hand there's always a glut of wailing women images and morbid, heartrending photo ops provided to the press - followed by cries for revenge. But, on the other hand, the mothers of the alleged victims seem rather pleased -- at least in the interviews. One mother who purportedly lost four children was quoted by reporters as saying: "I am proud to be the mother of the shahids, it is a great honor and we pray to Allah to compensate us." After a week like this, you¹ll forgive me if I thought it was funny -- in macabre sort of way -- when Palestinian Government Spokesman Dr. Ghazi Hamad said that "Israel is not a country of humans, but of animals". For the record, he also mentioned that Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth, but that's not news -- we've been hearing it a lot lately. But Dr. Hamad, if we Israeli animals are wiped off the map, then who care for and treat your wounded that we received at Israeli hospitals? I'm not sure why our fuzzy little friends in the animal kingdom get such a bad rap by us human types. Animals are instinctive, not conniving creatures. I suppose the accurate term to describe more-than-barbaric behavior would be "subhuman". But somehow, when we hear of the carrying out of some ghastly cruelty, we naturally and instinctively gasp and exclaim under our breath, "those animals!" Throughout the last several years of world-wide carnage, I've had a lot of those catch my-breath-at-barbarism opportunities. But the quintessential animal moment for me came on October 12, 2000. Two of our reserve soldiers accidentally took the wrong turn and ended up being more-than-brutally lynched in the Palestinian Police compound of Ramallah (remember the picture with the bloody hands?) When the wife of one of the reservists called her husband's celphone, it was picked up by the butchers who informed the woman, "We are killing your husband." Since then we've watched everything from Arabs playing football with body parts, to beheadings in realtime, to the deliberate and calculated mass immolation of civilians in the name of Allah. In fact anyone who still has the capacity and sensitivity to gasp, and turn away from the glut of savagery brought upon us by global Jihad, must be a highly evolved individual. Then there are those, in the international community, who are so good at feigning outrage -- it comes with the job. International leaders were leaping to conclusions, before an accurate account of the incident had been reported, or an investigation had been completed. They rely instead on ghastly eyewitness accounts accompanied by images of corpses, funeral pyres, morgue refrigerators, and the operating theater. Normally that would be pretty good evidence to base a report on, but in Pallywood these things require verification by investigation. In the past, on more than one occasion, these images have been fabricated or arranged for dramatic effect -- We saw this theater of lies with Al Dura, Jenin, Rafah, Gaza Beach, and Qana. One can almost assume that the mishap at Beit Hanoun, whether authentic or not, could likely have a good dose of Pallywood mixed in with the tragic facts. The Foreign Minister of Italy called the incident a "massacre". He must be taking lessons from the Palestinians who have a tendency to describe everything in those terms or worse. Back in the summer of 2004 when Israel destroyed some buildings in Rafah which were used as a cover for sophisticated weapon¹s smuggling tunnels emanating from Egypt, the Mayor of Rafah compared the incident to the bombing of Hiroshima. And instead of the top wire service acting responsibly, by questioning the mayor's delusional perspective, the Associated Press proceeded to disseminate the report (it's worth noting that the deputy mayor's reference to Israel as a Nazi state which perpetrated a holocaust, also went over the news wire). The European Union described the recent incident at Beit Hanoun as "a profoundly shocking event." True enough. But it would be a profoundly intelligent move on EU's part if they would take a real penetrating look into what kind of culture their generous funds to the Palestinians have been fostering. A thorough re-assessment of their policies would be in Europe's best interest, as the flames of Jihad that the EU has been fueling appear to be spreading in their direction. It would be profoundly inspiring if the EU, instead of conveniently pointing the finger at Israel, would challenge and pressure the Arab world to try and raise themselves up from their current monstrous standing, to the level of animals -even primitive ones. Then maybe we would have somebody to talk to. But we're most likely talking about years of evolution. It's profoundly idiotic that Israel continues to use the same repeatedly failed formula when approaching libelous accusations with regards to her defensive actions: a) We instantaneously issue an apology before investigating the occurrence. I suppose we do this in order to placate the feeding frenzy of the press -- which is so very pressed to be first to deliver the goods to a salivating public.And how does one gracefully retract an apology? This kind of foolishness makes re-runs of the Three Stooges look like serious drama. As Caroline Glick rightfully pointed out, in a Jerusalem Post column covering the Al Dura trials two weeks ago, "When Israel refuses to defend itself from blood libels, it gives silent license to attacks against Israel and world Jewry in the name of those libels." But it's worth noting that despite an incompetent government response to a public relations crisis, the Israeli Defense Forces have a sense of conscious and accountability, and they try ever-so-hard to maintain the moral high ground in an insanely brutal region. The same cannot be said of the Palestinian leadership. When faced with the prospect of condemning terror attacks, Yasser Arafat used to go through almost humorous verbal gymnastics and conniptions to avoid the task. If love is defined as "never having to say you're sorry", then I guess the Palestinian authority, the EU and the UN must love us a lot -- because they never have to apologize. But remember, Dr. Ghazi Hamad, we Israelis -- with all of our faults -- are far more human than the rest of you. Because animals wouldn¹t treat your wounded, nor sincerely investigate a possible mishap, nor apologize when necessary. It seems you, the EU, and the rest the world should do their best to keep us on the map. Because I have a hunch that without Israel, you men (joined by your women and children) would have torn each other to shreds long ago. Ellen W. Horowitz lives in the Golan Heights and is the author of The Oslo Years: A Mother's Journal (Distributed by Gefen Publishing). |
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FREE OUR PATRIOTS. STOP ARMINGG JIHAD WITH LIES AND GUNS
Posted by Evelyn Hayes, November 9, 2006. |
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As we just viewed Kristalnacht videos, I have developed in my brain the picture of the magnificent Neve Dekalim Synagogue burning because Oslo addicts opened the gates for hell. The SanSur Synagogue was buried because the government knew what would happen, too. THE CHAI (18) BANISHED JEWS are the real patriots, the truth sayers, the brave and steadfast maintaining good notwithstanding the abuse to themselves and their families. They are a light for survival in the darkness of self denial and self inflicted blindness and wounds. Why, the Oslo-ites have even hidden the Balfour maps, the mandate for the Jewish state in the divided Ottoman Empire which harbored Jews during the Inquisition. You ask what caused the Lebanon War that dislocated 1,000,000 and what causes the attacks on Yad Mordechai, Sderot, Ashkelon, Netivot. The Chai Jews are telling it as it is and they are smashed with an Iron Hand while the Jihad Fatah, Hamas, Al Aksa, Force 17 and Al Qaida are given guns, money and carte blanche to suicide kill. The Iron Handed are letting the Temple Mount rust as the Big Lie of Mohammedism looms like the Big Lie of Nazi-ism, even worse, considering the worldwide network from the poor to the intellectual too lazy to read the microfilm for themselves. Shamefully, the government of Israel attacks the Jews with the same venom as their enemies, perhaps having led the way. Shamefully, the cold Osloian government of Israel supports Jihad, arms Jihad, accepts the Big Lies of the phony race and denigrates itself causing a revival of anti-Semistism, anti-Americanism, anti-West, anti-Buddhism, anti-Hinduism worldwide. As an Iraqi escapee from Saddam Hussein, the partner of Arafat al Husseini and his Mahmoud Abbas, asked me, "What's wrong with you Jews? We know Israel is Yours. Why don't You? Your self destruction is killing us!" As the question committees ask, the world knows the obvious lunacy of making peace with the enemy. Worse, the government of Oslo prefers Jihad, John Lennonism, Hedonism, Atheism, One World Disorder to Judaism and their grandparent's heritage. The civilized of the world are shocked that the victim of Jihad doesn't lick its wounds and finish its 13 year war, but wounds itself and makes criminal world jihad bolder and stronger. Your soldiers are despondent that their lives are on the line for nothing. Your generals have resigned. Giving into terror and arming it is getting Israel hijacked and worse, war. The loyal citizens of Gush Katif and their millions of supporters told you so. The facts have showed the failure of the anti-religious, anti-righteous, anti-civilized. The Iron Curtain has collapsed. The Berlin Wall was taken down. Israel does not need walls. It needs to send the PLO back to Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Uganda and all the places from which they were hired. It needs to at least follow the Noahide Laws and not support the law-asiding. The Oslo governments have dislodged the Israeli Christians and sent them fleeing to Central America and Europe. The Oslo government imports the enemies of Israel, America and freedom for all. It's one thing to be a dhimmi but to create dhimmitude is a danger to the whole world. As the Oslo government retreats, all the victims of spreading world Jihad suffer. Jihad is laughing and banking the spoils of war, spoiling it also for the peaceful amidst their savage places. The Children of Israel have put red lights up against abominations, lies, theft, murder. The liberals have installed non stopping green lights. They made Gush Katif a wasteland and a land to waste the Negev and southern Mediteranean coast. Bombs are targetting Jews from the north, the south, and there's bomb making in the wild west bank on the west side of the Jordan. Without caution, with denial, with freedom for haters, the road map of Oslo "diplunatics" is riding with the hellish into a "death-end" flaming bloody hole in the heart of the world. Stop the Road Trap. Hashem has documented in the Pathways of the Torah the "one way" street to aliyah, and goodness for all. Soon we will read of Yaakov becoming Israel, climbing the ladder, bringing the world to betterment. Free our patriots. They are the servants of Hashem. speaking out against decadence and worse. They are not those who are to be feared. They are the fearless who will bring back the blessings for the revival and survival of Klal Yisrael. Contact Evelyn Hayes at haze@rcn.com |
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FROM A BLITZ READER IN BANGLADESH
Posted by Salah Choudhury, November 9, 2006. |
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Shalom Uvracha! Many of you might not have heard this name before! His name is Mr. Sirajul Islam, who works for local and international organization as an economic affair expert. He writes for Blitz on micro-credit etc. But, this morning, quite surprisingly, he sent an article to our office requesting to see if it could be placed anywhere in any international newspapers. He told us that this article had been sent to dozens of newspapers around the world, but, of course, he does not know the fate. It's called "A Journalist's Choice." Here is the article: |
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How do I address a journalist who writes under an assumed philosophy of promoting interfaith and peace? Is he a political writer or brave enough to be an outspoken person to criticise all and everything odd around him? Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, the journalist and editor whom I know by his writings and courage but never been acquainted with, could possibly give me the best possible answer by himself had he been not fighting for his very existence now. Some people wanted to silence him forever. God knows actually why, maybe something about being seriously intrigued or to reap some harvest out of the heinous act. Born and brewed in Bangladesh, and for some time in Russia, an exceptional kind of a journalist who didn't leave virtually anybody criticizing, especially the religion-based radicals in Bangladesh. Shoaib is a known promoter of interfaith dialogue in Bangladesh, and believably a pro-democracy man who is living in 'exile' in his own country, I strongly believe, since he did grown up as being Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury. He forced to live many of us, his readers, entangled because of his work during his entire journalist's career. He is best known today for his anti-terrorist, anti-fundamentalism, and pro-interfaith writings and columns published in the Weekly Blitz, and in different international newspapers. Nobody except his enemies yet conferred him any name that could reflect the fact that he was working for a global cause locally that could promote peace, as well as something of a loner. He was in his Blitz office downtown Dhaka; I didn't see him or conversed with him ever but a reader of his-edited Blitz, and writes for the weekly. This October was timed to coincide with the end of the ruling alliance, and he irked somehow somebody either by asking to withdraw the sedition charge brought against him, or identifying some of the jurists radical, or by writing sensitive reports that hurt them. All these, or some of these, or as some powerful in the immediate past Alliance government believed that he was 'conspiring' to bring secular forces into power believed to be fatal for his life. Despite finding himself in familiar circumstances, surrounded by national or international friends and fans, I was sure he maintained a sense of alienation and estrangement. As it turns out, it's not only his beliefs and stories that are disturbing to those radicals and their pals -- it's his whole philosophy as a journalist is in alienation and estrangement in today's Bangladesh. Case in point: he became intriguing for many since many years as he did criticise everybody and everything around him that he deemed fit criticising, from criticising Awami League during their rule to his colleagues to the politicians at large especially the rise of religious fundamentalism in Bangladesh. He denounces his own kind of creatures that prompts the question: did he going to complain about the politicians, religious extremists, writers, his new ideas, even when his reading is ill-sponsored? Of course, he is distant to anywhere. Such alienation is in the very nature of being a Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury. As far as I can guess as a reader, he wanted a role of political engagement for journalists, and writers that are against religious bigotism, but he does go out of his way to dismiss the political side of his own journalist's identity. He doesn't want to be defined as a combination of the two. But life nowadays in Bangladesh has become very complicated. In our society, it is easy to identify one as a nonconformist journalist or political writer. But, I think there is only one definition: believer. One is either a believer or one is not. A believer Shoaib Choudhury certainly is an active believer, and a courageous writer. Over the years, his writing has gathered more and more attention, and the young journalist is increasingly mentioned as the most extinct variety of outspoken critics of religion-based fanaticism. Associated with a certain political view, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury worked rather in an energetic mode, in his latest stories allowing various elements to rise against him. The end result was neither bad, I think. When his writings are like bombshells, the author, the person Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is also vibrant and expansive, especially when he sees things he dislikes: impotency in people, for one thing. Religious fundamentalism, for another. I first came in touch with his writings after I've started to write for Blitz in July this year, a microfinance article first, then a memoir series remembering my childhood, my father, my family and friends, and my hometown Rajshahi (a southern district in Bangladesh), and thirdly, running a microfinance series commemorating the Global Micro-credit Summit 2006 that is being held in Halifax, Canada now. Since then, I've read Shoaib several times. I can see that he is exceptional in Bangladesh, in many senses. Reading his book, Extreme Adversity I think the transition has not been quite smoothed compared to his other writings. Some of his writings have real sense but not all. I can also see the dark side -- in the so-called politicisation, the short-cut-route to ...taken over. One can see the invasion that has swept through the psyche of the readers, either positively or negatively. Even person Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury deserves criticism if not believer Choudhury. I think as an anti-terrorist journalist, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury did keep his distance from mainstream discourse. He did not obsess by power but proved himself very powerful. Look at what he did -- he followed the criticise-all policy in many ways, and he changed. He enjoyed the power in him that he generated and metastasised the same into other. He was an angry young anti-jihadist even if he is a class journalist. He could have been a very good journalist but he became a critique-to-all, he changed. As a classic-to-be editor, he shouldn't get into the critique-to-all's den. As an editor/writer, he shouldn't get into powerful. Above all, it is power, I believe, that he dislikes. Comparing the situation in democratic Bangladesh to the other countries of the world that are suffering from the ugliness of terrorist strife, he notes in his editorials that there are many similarities between the two, but that his homeland has a much more difficult time with the change of power. It's stuck, and it's been stuck for long. One half of the problem is the transfer of the Bangladeshi society from pale-Puritanism to active fundamentalism and anarchism, but the other is the crisis of the transfer from intellectualism to money. It's all very corrupt, very aimless, and very inhumane now in Bangladesh. The journalists we admire most were similarly at odds with authority. Many were either inactive or living for extended periods outside of their normal life span. So, for Choudhury, such bravery seems to be badly necessary. I think every believer should go to the culture of protest in a way or other if they want to survive in future Bangladesh, and stay there, to live distant from our own culture of quick-fix that is promoting radicalism in a way because every believer, or journalist, or writer, really is outside of the mainstream politics, in all sense. Salah Choudhury is a journalist, columnist, author, amd editor of "Weekly Blitz". Email him at salahuddinshoaibchoudhury@yahoo.com |
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MISINFORMING ABOUT RELIGION; SEPARATION OF MOSQUE FROM STATE; THE VALUE OF ISRAEL TO THE US
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 9, 2006. |
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"A JUST SOLUTION" When you find stilted phrasing, worded as if it came off a Communist assembly line, becoming hackneyed, beware its insincerity. So it is with the phrase, "a just solution," or "a just peace." When the Muslim Arabs or the UNO or other appeasers of the Arabs refer to a "just solution," they mean an unjust exacerbation of the problem. It would be unjust, because it would favor the Arab aggressors who are not entitled to anything. It would not be a solution, because there is no solution to jihad. Jihad, or religious aggression, is inherently unjust, because Islam is the aggressor. Jihad should be destroyed. What the appeasers of the Muslim Arabs propose, however, are Israeli concessions to jihad. BUSH'S FAULTS EXAGGERATED OR MISSED Liberals criticize Pres. Bush as going too far against the evil axis. My complaint is that he doesn't go far enough. If too far, would we still be wondering whether N. Korea or Iran will set off a nuclear weapon against us? If Bush were so aggressive, he would have demanded that Israel send a bigger force into Lebanon, smash Hizbullah, then decimate the Syrian military. He would have provided US air cover against Syrian missiles aimed at Israel. Then he would have had Israel drive into the Bekaa Valley and destroy the two Syrian tank battalions guarding a farm there. His agents and Israelis would dig up what the Syrians are guarding there, and display the weapons of mass-destruction that Saddam hid there. Bush would be vindicated. His Party would have won the election. That would have been the dreaded November surprise that Democratic conspiracy-theorists had been anticipating. Apparently, Karl Rove was not the genius believed. INTERNET ANTI-JEWS There seems to be a fire-at-will kind of antisemitism on one of my newsgroup outlets. It is crude and opportunist. Some of it is daily invention of something to accuse the Jews of, however ridiculous without facts or logic, a sort of Medieval frame of mindlessness. Anything that happens, those people blame on the Jews or distort into an offense by the Jews. These people have no knowledge of history except that whatever smattering they hear of it, regardless of how poor the source, they think the Jewish people are involved. Some of those antisemites pretend to be patriotic, even while boosting enemies of the US whose ideology has attacked the US. One of those bigoted bloggers wrote on Election Day against Jewish neocons running US policy in behalf of Israel. There are fatal problems with that theory. First, most neocons were not Jewish. Second, most neocons, especially the Jews among them, are long out of the Bush regime. Third, they were an influence but not the deciding factor in US policy. Fourth, the US arms at least two enemies of Israel, the P.A. and Egypt, and supported a UNO ceasefire in Lebanon that kept Israel from destroying Hizbullah and that protects Hizbullah rearmament. Fifth, Israel and the US are beset by the same jihadist ideology, so their interests in peace are the same. Sixth, Jews are not united in behalf of Israel. Antisemites think they are, because antisemites think in stereotypical racist terms. TARGETING TERRORISTS Every week the IDF reports firing a missile at a car transporting terrorists to attack Israelis with various weapons, including rockets. This IDF policy is a little more active than the similar, targeted assassination policy that much of the rest of the world objects to. Point is, this is war. In war, one pursues the enemy. Israel defines the enemy as gunmen. The Muslim Arabs define the enemy by religion. Israel's definition is the civilized one, the Arabs' is the barbarous one. But the world sides with barbarism against the Jewish people. (Why do liberals respect world public opinion?) FORUM ON RELIGION SPREADS MISINFORMATION I attended a forum on religion in New York City, to hear about the newly uncovered but ancient book of Judas. Also on the dais were Christopher Hedges and a group of three women, one each born into Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. The ladies had become acquainted, wrote a book about the concepts of religion that they learned from each other and figured out. They and Mr. Hedges were appalling. Hedges referred to "fundamentalists" in the three faiths, and then, because he had used the same word, although it means different things for each faith, equated the Christian and supposedly Jewish ones with the Islamists, as if the Christian and Jewish ones were equally evil. They are not. He defamed them, wittingly or unwittingly. If unwittingly, it is no compliment to his knowledge. Islamists hate and murder, the others do not. He warned about the US religious Right heading us into fascism. Nonsense! Cited no evidence. He ignored the Islamo-fascists, who are blanketing the world with dictators. Like the Muslim woman, he denied that jihad is motivated by religion. He attributed it to failed societies, exploited by demagogues in the name of religion. That fails to explain why so many Muslim societies fail, why jihad has been an historic Muslim pattern, why few other failed societies resort to imperialistic terrorism, why the great appeal of demagogues is to Muslims, and why throughout Islam, doctrine is taught in terms of hating and humiliating rival faiths. Obviously, he and she are rationalizing, at best. The women's primary shortcoming is to suppose that they can study religions for a short while and on their own, decide they mean something other than what the official standard bearers say, and adopt some principles from each religion but the name of their original religion. It is obvious that the Christian and Jew swallowed a lot of false statements by the Muslim who, even if decent herself, does not speak for her faith, which she contradicts. She claims that the Islamists are a minority, but we see them calling the shots. They menace freedom of religion, freedom of thought, and modern life. She denies the obvious, such as Islamic repression of women. In many Muslim countries, women may not work, drive, or even leave the house without the husband's permission or male escort. That is repression! They expressed the common misconception that all worship the same God, so therefore all can get along. Each faith defines that God and commandments differently. The Muslim is commanded to devote a portion of his life to war against the others. How can they get along, when Muslim doctrine requires humiliating the others? SEPARATION OF MOSQUE FROM STATE The NY Times had another puff piece on Muslims, this time about Islamic schools in Britain. There are a few of them; only a small proportion of Muslims attend. It was contended that since Muslims lead a largely segregated life, it wouldn't matter much whether they attended separate schools. In anticipation of being questioned about their breeding of terrorism, Muslim educators replied that they hadn't heard of any terrorists having come from those schools. One said that his school teaches loyalty to Britain, and any Muslim school that didn't should not exist. The crowning argument is that since other faith-based schools receive subsidy, so should theirs (Alan Cowell, 10/15, A8.) The reporter accepted the interviewees' word and logic. Why? Since Islamic schools are few, it is not logical to judge their effect on terrorism by whether terrorists so far apprehended are from those schools. The question is what influence Islamic schools have, especially if government subsidy multiplies them. Many Islamic schools have bred terrorists all over the world. Would Britain, which acts hesitantly towards the Muslims, monitor Islamic schools vigorously? The question is not whether Muslims are segregated in schools now, but whether they would be segregated in Islamic schools that present a danger public schools do not. Tax subsidy for other faith-based schools does not justify tax subsidy for Islamic schools. Christian and Jewish schools don't teach a duty of warring on other faiths and do not teach loyalty to religion over state. Islam usually does, even if the Muslim interviewed is telling the truth that his school is different. The issue would be clarified if the government declared itself at a defensive war on Islamism. One then may take measures against an enemy rather than subsidize it. If the courts rule that the state may not discriminate, then it would be better to drop subsidy of all religious schools as divisive. I think that regardless of the religion-state issue, Islamic schools should not be allowed, for reasons of national security and the survival of Western civilization and the injustice of subsidizing hatred of oneself. THE VALUE OF ISRAEL TO THE U.S. Israel is one of the few countries that cheers the US on. Aside from its technological and intelligence contributions, Israel helps the US by stabilizing the area around it. By contrast, the absence of a strong ally like Israel in the Gulf region keeps that area unstable and requires US troops. The more Israel seems backed by the US, the more the Arabs don't try to attack Israel. Therefore, it behooves the US to help Israel stay strong and slap down hard the terrorist forces that do attack Israel. Then it continues to be a strategic asset to the US (Martin Kramer & Efraim Inbar, IMRA, 10/14). The US does much to weaken Israel. That harms its own strategic asset! Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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RAGE AGAINST SODOMITES: ON SHABBOS "VAYERA"**
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, November 8, 2006. |
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Clearly, the mounting rage against the aberrant homosexuals shows a sensitivity to humans who believe that men and men or women and women are, for them, the improper order. I think the outpouring of disgust is a unifying factor for normal people. But, there is enough being printed on that subject so, I will go on with what I really want to talk about. I see that many of the Israeli people are willing to take to the streets in anger over a decision by the Government and Attorney General Meny Mazuz to allow this travesty to proceed. With that example in mind, let us turn to a travesty which also deserves a greater outpouring of people, namely, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's peddling the nation's security and sovereignty. We have all seen the results of the total ineptness and corruption of this man who has single handedly compromised the security of the Jewish nation. We have seen this incompetent man appoint similarly incompetent people to buy a political position for Kadima while putting the Jewish nation at risk. Olmert bribed the Labor Party to join Kadima Party, a conglomeration of Party jumpers and general incompetents -- except for the scoundrels' capabilities to cheat and lie. So, Olmert appointed Amir Peretz as Chief of Defense which, for Israel, is the most important position in terms of defending the nation. Peretz had no experience in the military -- except as a tank mechanic -- and was known only as a Union hustlers who blackmailed the nation with Labor strikes and blocking traffic. The Jewish nation, Left and Right, should have been far more enraged at this travesty than having Sodomites prancing around the streets of Jerusalem. Although I suppose both are equal. Olmert and Peretz are a matched set of dimwits who, like 2 drunks, need to lean on each other in order to merely stand up. We have seen ample results when we lost Gush Katif and all Gaza to a political move advised by Olmert to then PM Ariel Sharon to retreat from Gaza. Even before that failed move, Sharon arranged for the Knesset to pass a law declaring that, after the expulsion and Gaza was Judenrein, then (instead of the 21 communities deemed "at risk" to Arab Muslim Palestinian terrorists and Kassam rockets) 44 communities would be "at risk" once the civilians and soldiers surrendered Gaza to the growing Global Terror Network. In effect, they knew and made tacit admission that all 44 communities would be likely targets for Kassam rockets and terror. Even as the Kassam rockets increased in volume, increased reach and accuracy, Olmert and his Chief of the Military, Peretz tied the hands of the military lest it offend Bush and Rice or the Arab Muslims "Palestinians" and/or the Arab Muslim countries. Here again, the people should have staged a revolt of Civil Disobedience, demanding that the Olmert Government be closed down and replaced with pro-Jewish leadership instead of the pro-Arab Muslim leaders they have shown themselves to be. Then came the predictable Lebanon fiasco with Olmert, Peretz and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz fumbling every move and, in the process, getting many more Israeli soldiers killed through their incompetence. If they were each employed and paid by Hezb'Allah, they couldn't have done a better job of subverting Israel's defenses. Instead of throwing them out of their jobs, the people made some noise but, basically allowed this gaggle of Kadimites to maneuver politically to stay in power. Olmert and Peretz continued to fumble every decision. They allowed the UN to send in additional connected UNIFIL-MNF (UN Interim Force In Lebanon-MultiNational Force) who ended up protecting Hezb'Allah and allowed Syria to freely re-supply Hezb'Allah with more missiles, re-building and re-occupying their bunkers and tunnels in South Lebanon. Not a peep from Olmert. When Egypt failed its commitment to keep weapons' smugglers from crossing the Sinai into Gaza, Not a peep from Olmert. When Egypt placed 5,000 troops on the Sinai-Israeli border, in total disregard for the Camp David Sinai Accords, Not a peep from Olmert. The Words "Corrupt Incompetence" is no longer adequate and as this pathetic dimwit waves Neville Chamberlain's Umbrella, shouting: "We Have Peace In Our Time!" But, still the people remained relatively silent even as Olmert and Peretz issued evacuation notices to Jews in Judea and Samaria -- as happened in Gaza/Gush Katif and Northern Samaria. Where is the rage? Where are the voice in the Knesset to cause the fall of this pathetic government -- even as the enemy closes the noose. Hezb'Allah, with Syria and Iran in the North; Fatah and Hamas in the South. Egypt closing their eyes to weapons' smuggling. The UN/UNIFIL-MNF acting as a guard to protect Hezb'Allah from Israeli reprisals as it receives tonnage of more sophisticated anti-tank, anti-aircraft missiles, explosives, Katyusha missiles, and the terrorist militias trained to used them. Iran is threatening a nuclear Holocaust to "wipe Israel off the map" while Olmert and Peretz are once again having troops trained to attack Jews. Olmert even agrees to Jordan's Palestinian Badr Brigades to strengthen the Palestinian Authority's President Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen's 60,000 man army. America agrees to train, arm and expand "Force 17" to protect Abu Mazen, as it did for Yassir Arafat. Not a peep from Olmert. There is little doubt that Olmert is not only the worst PM Israel has ever had but, the most dangerous to the safety of the nation but, still the people remain silent. I agree they should demonstrate to prevent the desecration of Jerusalem by the horde of gay and lesbian who threaten to inundate and march through Jerusalem but, as vile as that is, it will (hopefully) be prevented. If not, it will be over by next week. These other dangers will NOT! Now Olmert goes to visit Bush and Rice to receive his marching orders to continue to surrender Jewish G-d given Land and Israel's defensible borders. Bush and Family belong to Saudi Arabia and its oil. They will issue whatever instructions will benefit the Arab League. Amir Peretz has already started to babble about the "Saudi Plan" as a basis of negotiations. That includes moving back to the 1967 cease-fire lines, called the "Auschwitz Borders" by Abba Eban (known to be a dove). That includes abandoning all of Jerusalem that was controlled and desecrated by Jordan for 19 years to be the new Capital of the new Arab Muslim State of "Palestine". That includes surrendering the Golan Heights to Syria. That includes relinquishing the heartland of the country (Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley). If all that were not bad enough, James Baker III, Lee Hamilton and Bill Gates (now to replace Don Rumsfeld) are about to issue their recommendations of how to finesse Iraq. Look for these perennial Jew Haters to recommend making up with Syria and Iran, with Israel to be the sacrifice. It's all planned and Bush has bought into it. Making Bill Gates Secretary of Defense clinches it. He has a lot of history behind him regarding the Iran-Contra Affair, for one, which should come out in his confirmation hearings. Southern Israel may have to be ceded as rockets from Gaza are making life for Israel intolerable in Sderot, Ashkelon and the 42 other communities "at risk" from the increasing Kassam Rocket range and accuracy. Olmert is conducting the resurrection of the failed Oslo Plan, previously revived by Barak in the North and Olmert/Sharon in Gaza. However, Oslo is so failed it should be on life support. You are justifiably enraged because some aberrant gays and lesbians are parading in Jerusalem in various stages of undress or cross-dressing. You had better get enraged about Olmert's handing the future of all Israel over to the Arab Islamo-Fascists -- at the behest of President Bush, the Europeans, the U.N., etc. ### ***This week's Parasha describes the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as decadent cities whose residents practiced all these forms of behavior called "an abomination" in Tanach. This proposed parade also defiles the memories for Israel's many Holocaust survivors as November 10th is the 66th anniversary of "Kristallnacht" (also known as "Reichskristallnacht, Novemberpogrom, Pogromnachet and the Night of Broken Glass") a pogrom against Jews throughout Germany and parts of Austria on November 9 & 10, 1938. Jewish homes, stores and synagogues were ransacked in a thousand German cities, towns and villages, as ordinary German citizens and storm troopers destroyed buildings with sledgehammers, leaving the streets covered in smashed windows -- the origin of the name "Night of Broken Glass". Jews were beaten to death; 30,000 Jewish men and boys were taken to concentration camps; and 1668 synagogues were ransacked or set on fire -- along with their holy Torahs and books. Some will recall that the Pink Swastika spoke to the many vicious homosexuals who were often the elite in Hitler's killing machine. Aberrant behavior, whether in politicians or homosexuals, breeds a viciousness far exceeding the normal anger of ordinary people. Twisted politicians will and have betrayed their nations for nothing more than ego. Save some of your rage for a government who has betrayed the Jewish nation in all the ways previously started. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net |
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NOT NOW, NOT EVER
Posted by Unity Coalition for Israel, November 8, 2006. |
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This was published Oct 12, 2006 in the Jewish Sentinel. It was written by Howard Teich, a practicing attorney in New York City, has held multiple leadership positions in the New York and national Jewish community. |
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Israel is faced with among the most dangerous conditions I have seen in my lifetime. There are choices that need to be made today. Prime Minister Olmert has said that -- after the debacle of the unilateral retreat from Gaza, and the apparent retreat five years ago from Southern Lebanon without any guard against strengthening of Hezbollah that directly led to the recent war with Israel's northern neighbor -- his unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank is "on hold for now." I say to him that I am 100 percent opposed to giving up the land. I remember when the concept of "Land for Peace" was born amid great hopes for Israel and it's neighboring Arab states. I remember when the Jaffe Center reported its study years ago, amidst great criticism in the Jewish community, showing the need to give up the West Bank and Gaza, or face the loss of a democratic Israel through future demographic factors. I remember then Mayor of Jerusalem Olmert standing together at City Hall in New York, united for the future of Jerusalem as an undivided city, the eternal capital of Israel and the Jewish people under Israeli sovereignty. And what is the policy of the Olmert government that is now "on hold?" The plan is to remove Jews living in Judea and Samaria from their homes, and to set new borders for Israel near the Green Line. Although this plan provides for keeping portions of the West Bank, 90 percent of the land would be given back, including parts of Jerusalem. After the recent war with Lebanon, and now recognizing the extraordinary danger of missile attacks on Israel, the land of Judea and Samaria is more important than ever. In negotiation after negotiation that land was on the table. I say it should now be taken off, all of it. The Palestinians have shattered every attempt to create a peaceful resolution to their continuing war with Israel, and no longer should we be apologists for them. If choices are to be made, then let's make them. The Olmert government's "Land for Surrender" policy does not work, so lets never consider it again. Then, let's declare "Land for Peace" as a policy discontinued, and dead. It does not, and will not work. This Oslo terminology should be dropped from our lexicon. No agreements have been kept by the Palestinians, and we really have seen them as we are. Hamas and the ruling party of the Palestinian people, if we believe in their elections and democracy, if they want to develop a state, have the land to do it on, the land in Gaza which they now control. I was opposed to the Sharon/Olmert government's removal of the Jewish community of Gush Katif and I am not surprised that the Palestinian people there have been more concerned with creating a terrorist stronghold to attack Israel than to foster a future of peace and success for their own people, notwithstanding the continuing Abbas charade. As to the West Bank, the land of Judea and Samaria, it is clearly not occupied land. The land is clearly part of the ancient homeland of the Jewish people. It's time that we Jewish people take a renewed view of our vision and mission in being back in our ancestral homeland, and recommit ourselves to the entirety of the traditional homeland of the Jewish people. We have it now for the first time in nearly 2,500 years, and we must not give it up. It is our history, and our ancestory. We should declare it as such, unite it with present day Israel proper and start building a strong future for those people living there, both Arab and Jew as part of a new Israel. Yes, it's true I don't live in Israel. I am not on the front line of today's battle. Some would say I have no right to speak out on Israeli policy. I disagree. I am part of our heritage. And that means I have a responsibility for our generation, and the generations to come. That's the way we have always been as a people. We have always looked to the future, to redemption. The policy of Judea and Samaria is not a limited Israeli political issue, it is a moral and spiritual issue for the Jewish people in Israel and in the diaspora, and I have the obligation to speak out. This is a time for a new policy of "Peace for Peace," with a blueprint in place for building a future in confidence for all the people on the entire land of Israel, and those others who want to cooperate with Israel. Let's truly be a light unto the world. Think about the dangerous future with a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, terrorist states on all sides with the unimpeded possibility of mortally wounding Israel and the Jewish people. Clearly, that would be the most likely scenario unless the policy changes I have suggested are implemented now. Future generations would be facing continued poverty and war, rather than peace and prosperity. Certainly it would require a commitment to building and rebuilding the infrastructure of the Arab sections of the West Bank, which have been so significantly deteriorated under the leadership of Arafat and his successors. It would require a revitalization of the working relationship of Jews and Arabs, and the taking down of walls and barriers between the peoples. And it would require the enforcement of a lawful society in Judea and Samaria, where all people could live in security and peace, with a potentially prosperous future for all. Is this unrealistic? I think not. Yes, the world would be initially aghast. But it would see peace and progress develop, and perhaps its eyes would reopen to a new possibility. I would rather see this future for Israel and the Jewish people, one that would give peace to the Jewish people, long life to the Jewish state and progress for its Arab citizens that the future of destruction that appears today. So, Prime Minister Olmert, if it's unilateralism, then let it not be defeatism. Give up land in Judea and Samaria? Not now, not ever. The Unity Coalition for Israel (http://www.israelunitycoalition.org) is "the largest worldwide coalition of Jewish and Christian organizations, with more than 200 groups representing millions of people dedicated to Israel. Though we have many different backgrounds, we have one common goal: A Safe and Secure Israel." "Israel is not just a Jewish issue. Millions of Christians resolutely endorse the principle of peace with security for the state of Israel. Because we work closely together and speak with a united voice, our message is being heard!" |
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TOP HAMAS OFFICIALS: "WE WANT PALESTINE, FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA"
Posted by David Meir-Levi, November 8, 2006. |
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MEMRI's documentation of the Hamas demand that "Palestine" be from the river to the Sea is validation of the Israeli assertion that Hamas does not want peace, will not make peace, and will make a truce (hudna) not with the intent to make peace but with the intent to achiee a "..warrior's respite", so thus better to prepare for the next war. Just as hamas told us, 25 years ago, in its covenant, "...all treaties are worthless...the solution to the Zionist issue is the destruction of Israel". Electing them to political power did not change their basic commitments to war and terrorism and genocide. They still seek the destruction of Isre meaningless, because the USA has no leverage against them. Even the cutting off of aid is useless, since they get hundreds of millions anyway from the EU, and millions more in cash smuggled in from Arab countries, and tens of millions sent to NGOs end up in Hamas war coffers. Hezbolah is taking over in Lebanon, Hamas is taking over the PA. Both are arming for a high-tech war against israel...a war which may be conducted on six fronts at once: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt (by the Moslem Brotherhood resurrected Izz' ad-Din el-Qassam brigades), west bank terrorism, and internal Arab Israeli 5th collumn terrorism...not to mention Iranian Shihab 3 missiles that can carry nuclear war heads and can reach Israel and Egypt and European countries in the Eastern Mediterranean. Send this info to Condi and the President. Below is MEMRI No. 1351: Special Dispatch-Palestinian Authority
david ml |
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See the new MEMRI Documentary at www.MEMRIFilms.org. It's called "Arab & Iranian Reaction to 9/11 -- 5 Years Later". Top Hamas Officials: "We Want [All of] Palestine, from the River to the Sea"; "Resistance and Jihad Are Legitimate" In the nine months since it came to power, and despite the PLO's demands, Hamas has not changed its views: It refuses to recognize Israel or acknowledge its legitimacy, insists that previous Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements will be recognized only if they serve Palestinian interests, continues to lay claim to all of Palestine, and, in exchange for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, offers only a temporary hudna (ceasefire). In addition, Hamas continues to express reservations about the Arab peace initiative of 2002, and to support resistance, jihad, and abduction of Israeli soldiers. To View Clips From The Memri Tv Project On Hamas, See: http://memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S5&P1=157 The following are statements made by Hamas leaders in the last two months:
Rejection of Israel and Its Legitimacy In an interview, Palestinian Political Bureau head Khaled Mash'al told the daily Al-Hayat: "Why am I required to [recognize] the legitimacy of an occupying [entity] that is sitting on my land when there are millions of Palestinians who come from the land on which this entity is sitting? It is true that there is an entity called Israel, but I do not wish to recognize it."(1) At an October 20, 2006 Hamas convention in Khan Yunis, Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Al-Zahar stated that "Israel is a vile entity that has been planted in our soil, and has no historical, religious or cultural legitimacy. We cannot normalize our relations with this entity. The history of this region has proven [time and again] that occupation is temporary. Thousands of years ago, the Romans occupied this land and [eventually] left. The Persians, Crusaders, and English [also] came and went. The Zionists have come, and they too will leave. [We say] no to recognizing Israel, regardless of the price we may have to pay [for our refusal]."(2) In a sermon in Khan Yunis, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya said: "Israel wants Hamas to hand it the card of recognition in the hope that this would lead to recognition by other Muslim countries. Israel may have been recognized by part of the Palestinian people and by some Arab countries. However, it [now] wants something more significant -- the [trump] card of Islamic recognition -- and it wants to obtain this recognition through the Palestinian government and Hamas..."(3) Palestine From the River to the Sea On the issue of a Palestinian state, Khaled Mash'al said: "The [Hamas] movement has agreed to [the establishment of a Palestinian] state within the 1967 borders and to a hudna... As a Palestinian, I am interested in a Palestinian state and I am not interested in the occupying state. Why do people require the Palestinians [to accept] the existence of two states as one of their principles and goals? The Zionist state exists. I [wish to] speak of my Palestinian state that does not exist. I am the one that has been denied [the right to] a state, to sovereignty, to independence, to liberty, and to self-determination. Therefore, my main [goal] is to focus on obtaining my rights. I wish to establish my state."(4) Mahmoud Al-Zahar said: "We [aim to liberate] all our lands... If we have the option, we will establish a state on every inch of land within the 1967 [borders], but this does not by any means imply that we will relinquish our right to all the Palestinian lands. We want all of Palestine from [Ras] Naqura to Rafah, and from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river."(5) An announcement issued by Hamas on the occasion of the anniversary of the Kafr Qasem massacre stated: "We will not relinquish a single grain of the soil of Kafr Qasem, or a single inch of stolen Palestinian land. Sooner or later, our people shall return to its land, to its cities and to its villages from which it was expelled..."(6) On the 2002 Arab (Saudi) Peace Initiative Hamas Political Bureau Head Musa Abu Marzouq said: "Hamas has serious reservations about the [Arab] initiative since it involves acceptance of two states, Palestine and Israel. Hamas rejects this because it means recognition of Israel."(7) Khaled Mash'al also referred to the same topic: "The interested parties [involved] in the Arab-Israeli conflict and in a [potential] settlement never took the Arab initiative seriously. The problem, therefore, does not lie with the initiative or with the Arab countries, but rather with the U.S. and Israel, which reject this initiative and wish to impose the Quartet's terms on us. In the past, we were told that the [Arab] initiative is only a step [towards a goal]. Then, some of the Arab and Palestinian parties told us, officially, that accepting the Arab initiative is an important step in convincing the international community that [the Palestinians] accept the Quartet's terms. So they are not interested in the initiative itself but in its end result. That is, [they are interested in the initiative] as a step on the way to accepting the Quartet's terms.(8) On the Legitimacy of Resistance and Jihad In an October 6 speech Ismail Haniya said, "We [derive our] legitimacy from the legitimacy of the jihad. We are a government born from the womb of the resistance, from the womb of the martyrs... We are a government that comes out of resistance and jihad, and out of the desire for resistance and jihad against the Zionist occupation..."(9) Khaled Mash'al said: "We do not regard our actions as terrorism or violence but as resistance that is legitimate, even according to international law, so I refuse [to use] any term that would imply self-criticism. It is the aggressor [i.e. Israel] that is perpetrating violence and terrorism. It is [Israel] that is employing every type of terrorism against people, against the land, against the holy places and against the [very] trees...As long as my people are in exile and my land is occupied, I have the legitimate right to resist... It is the American injustice and the Zionist aggression that cause terrorism and [create] the climate of terrorism... Had the international community offered us a way to obtain our rights without resistance we would have taken it, since resistance is only a means [for us], not an end."(10) Endnotes: (1) Al-Hayat (London), October 12, 2006.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent,
non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the
Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as
background information, are available on request.
Contact them by email at memri@memri.org orgo to the website at
David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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EXPELLED YESHA JEWS INVITED TO KNESSET
Posted by Hillel Fendel, November 8, 2006. |
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The 20 Jews who have been ordered out of their homes in the Shomron for between 6-12 months will be guests of the National Union-National Religious Party faction in the Knesset today. Some 20 men, some of them married with children, have been banned from their homes by administrative military order. The issues were ordered over four months ago, leaving the men distanced from their families and jobs. Though no official explanation was given for the orders, it has been explained that the murchakim -- the expellees -- were suspected of activity against Arab olive-harvesters. In fact, however, most of them were never arrested or questioned about such crimes, and in addition, the olive-harvesting season lasts for only a month - whereas they were distanced for 6 to 12 months. The MKs of the National Union-National Religious Party invited the 20 men and their families for a visit in the Knesset, as a sign of opposition and protest to what they call this "unfair, discriminatory, selective punishment." Party spokesman Yigal Amitai also points out that many Israeli farmers have long complained about ongoing property damage caused them by Arabs -- yet the police do not take preventative measures to stop it. 
Also present at the gathering will be Atty. Yoram Sheftel, Yesha Civil Rights Organization head Orit Strook of Hevron, and MKs from other parties including the Likud, United Torah Judaism, Shas and Kadima. Central Command Officer Gen. Yair Naveh, who signed the orders, can be faxed at (0)8-8680240; from abroad, the number is country code 972, followed by 8868-0240. Defense Minister Peretz's fax number is (0)2-649-6545, and Prime Minister Olmert can be faxed at (0)2-670-5475. [Editor's Note: Read more about this by clicking here.]
Hillel Fendel is Senior News Editor for Israel National News.
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ESTHER POLLARD ADDRESSES ISRAEL'S SUPREME COURT
Posted by Justice for Jonathan Pollard, November 7, 2006. |
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In an unexpected turn of events today, the President of Israel's Supreme, Court Dorit Beinish, recognized Esther Pollard, wife of imprisoned Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard, allowing her to address the court in her husband's case to have Rafi Eitan removed from his position as a government minister. Speaking straight from the heart without notes and with no prior preparation, Esther pled before the three-judge panel consisting of Supreme Court Justices Dorit Beinish, Ayala Procaccio, and David Cheshin. Pollard opened with the hope that her words would be sufficient for the great task of addressing the justices in order to save her husband's life. She spoke passionately about the deliberate abandonment of her husband by successive governments of Israel for 22 years. Pollard said that it is an open secret both in Washington and in Israel that Rafi Eitan ran Jonathan as an agent, with the full consent and awareness of all of the top Government officials at the time - most of whom are still holding public office or senior positions in the defense intelligence establishment today. She said that it is well known that Rafi Eitan single-handedly facilitated the Government's long-standing abandonment of her husband by claiming that he (Eitan) acted alone, thereby deflecting responsibility from the Government. She said that the Americans knew from the start that Jonathan's operation was known and approved by Israel's top officials, and they reacted to Eitan's falsehoods by taking their revenge upon Jonathan. Pollard said that the appointment of Eitan as a Government minister sent a clear message to the Americans that- even after 22 years - Israel has no interest in Jonathan Pollard and that they can do as they wish with him. She said that she and Jonathan know from their own contacts in US officialdom that the appointment of Rafi Eitan by Prime Minister Olmert has been taken as a declaration by Israel that Olmert has no intention of ever intervening on behalf of Jonathan. Pollard said that Israel's abandonment of Jonathan for the last 2 decades has left him to be exploited by elements in the US hostile to Israel. She pointed out that those American officials who have no appreciation for the US -- Israel special relationship use her husband's continued incarceration to call into question Israel's reliability as ally and the status of the American Jewish community as loyal citizens. She said that as long as Israel continues to abandon Jonathan, he will be continue to be used as a weapon against the Jewish State. Pollard pointed out that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's appointment of Rafi Eitan to a ministerial position was a complete negation of the responsibility that the State owes to Jonathan. The State, she said, had officially acknowledged Jonathan as an agent in 1998 (ending years of lies and denial) but in fact, has never done anything to discharge its responsibility to Jonathan. Pleading passionately before the judges, Pollard acknowledged that she is not a lawyer and that she does not seek to convince the judges on legal grounds. Instead, she said, she is appealing to them on a moral basis. She said that in appointing Rafi Eitan as a minister, the Prime Minister had essentially changed Jonathan's life sentence to a death sentence. She reminded the judges of the moral touchstone espoused by the State of Israel never to abandon an agent in the field. She pointed out that the government's lack of responsibility towards its agent, Jonathan Pollard, now thrusts the moral imperative upon the court. She urged the judges not to allow the appointment of Rafi Eitan to stand, on moral grounds alone. She ended her appeal urging the court to go beyond the letter of the law and do what is right and moral, because a human life depends upon it. Prior to Pollard's address, Pollard's attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner presented compelling oral arguments for the dismissal of Eitan as a minister. The respondent's attorneys disputed the court's authority to intervene. The judges themselves expressed doubt about the legality of the court ordering the dismissal of a minister, and therefore asked Darshan-Leitner to consider withdrawing the case. At that point it appeared that if Darshan-Leitner would not agree to withdraw the petition, the court would simply reject it without further discussion. That is when, without prior warning, Esther Pollard was suddenly given permission to come forward and address the court. After Pollard spoke, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinish indicated that the court would consider the petition further and give its ruling in due course. Contact Justice for Jonathan Pollard at Justice4JP@aol.com |
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ALAN DERSHOWITZ DEFENDS PLAUT, ATTACKS BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY'S NEVE GORDON AS ANTI-SEMITE
Posted by Steven Plaut, November 7, 2006. |
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Alan Dershowitz wrote this November 8, 2006 in the Jerusalem Post
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It's ironic that those who shout loudest about freedom of speech for
themselves and their friends are often the first to try to silence
those with whom they disagree.
A case in point is Dr. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University, who has defamed so many people, as well as the nation of Israel. He also recently defamed me by saying that I had tried to prevent the publication of Norman Finkelstein's latest anti-Zionist screed, Beyond Chutzpah. In fact, as I specifically wrote in my letters to Finkelstein's publishers -- as Gordon knew, because I released the letters -- "I have no interest in censoring or suppressing Finkelstein's freedom of expression." Gordon's lie came straight from Finkelstein, who has a history of claiming that prominent Jews are trying to silence him, prevent publication of his books and keep them from being reviewed: "All opinion-leaders, from the left to the right, are Jews. The Silence around my book in the US -- if this is not a conspiracy, then what is one?" What's ironic about Gordon's article, though, is that just as he was falsely accusing me of trying to silence Finkelstein, he was trying to silence Prof. Steven Plaut of Haifa University. THE GENESIS OF Gordon's notorious lawsuit against Plaut was a fawning book review Gordon wrote of Beyond Chutzpah for Haaretz. In response, Plaut wrote an Internet posting entitled "Haaretz Promotes the 'Jews for Hitler.'" Plaut subsequently wrote that Yasser Arafat was Gordon's "guru" and compared Gordon to members of Judenrats after Gordon illegally entered Arafat's compound in solidarity with the terrorist leader. For exercising his freedom of speech in this way, Plaut was found liable for slander and fined NIS 80,000, by a Nazareth judge, Reem Naddaf, who went out of her way in her opinion's dicta to justify Holocaust revisionism, which of course often goes over the line into something far darker, as it does when Finkelstein espouses it to mock survivors and condemn those seeking justice. The verdict against Prof. Plaut was wrong, as I will explain by discussing both substantive and legal aspects of Plaut's accusations. First, as to substance: Gordon argued, dubiously, that Plaut meant to include him (Gordon) when he wrote "Jews for Hitler," rather than Finkelstein and his fellow-travelers such as Noam Chomsky, who have openly endorsed Holocaust deniers and revisionists. Even so, is there a factual basis behind the claim that Gordon supports genocidal anti-Semites, considering his admiration for Norman Finkelstein? Finkelstein himself isn't an outright Holocaust denier (though neither was Hitler, of course), because he acknowledges the basic facts of the Holocaust, while minimizing the number of victims. But Finkelstein is, in many ways, worse than an outright denier. He denies the reality of survivors, calling them "hoaxes" and "hucksters" and accuses Elie Wiesel of lying about his past. The major theme of the Finkelstein book that Gordon was extolling is that Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism. "Alongside Israel, [American Jewish elites] are the main fomenters of anti-Semitism in the world today. They must be stopped." FINKELSTEIN'S and Gordon's articles are featured on Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi Web sites, such as that of the Hitler-loving Ernst Zundel, who said of Finkelstein that "[h]e is making three-fourths of our argument -- and making it effectively." So if Finkelstein and Gordon aren't themselves explicitly neo-Nazi, they're at least very highly regarded by those who are -- and for good reason. It's no wonder Gordon is so attracted to Finkelstein. As I have previously written: "Considered one of the world's most extreme anti-Israel academics, [Gordon] belongs to the class of rabidly anti-Israel far-left professors whose trademark is the delight they take in comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany." The bulk of his writing consists of anti-Israel propaganda designed to "prove" that the Jewish State is fascist. Consider the irony: Gordon, who has no qualms about comparing Israelis to Nazis, has taken legal umbrage at being compared -- at least as he sees it -- to these same Nazis. Talk about chutzpah! It's absurd that Gordon is allowed to call people Nazis, but Plaut isn't (especially given that Plaut's characterization is far closer to the truth). I personally wish everyone would stop using the term Nazi, except when referring to Hitler and his followers. AS FOR the legal and civil liberties aspect of the case, it seems clear that what Plaut said -- about a public figure, no less -- falls squarely within the realm of (well-supported) opinion, and it should be protected in any free society. Finkelstein and Gordon have dragged the debate over the Holocaust and the Middle East into the gutter, and now they are trying to enhance their own statures through a forum-shopped lawsuit. Gordon is apparently afraid of the open marketplace of ideas and so he has gone whining to a friendly judge to protect his "reputation." It's an undemocratic ploy, violative of principles of free speech and fairness. So here is my challenge to Neve Gordon: I visit Israel frequently, and am easily available for service of process. I invite Gordon to sue me for essentially restating in my own words what Prof. Plaut has said: It is my opinion that Neve Gordon has gotten into bed with neo-Nazis, Holocaust justice deniers, and anti-Semites. He is a despicable example of a self-hating Jew and a self-hating Israeli. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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LEFTIST BLINDNESS AT FAULT
Posted by Bryna Berch, November 7, 2006. |
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The severe secularists (better described as marxists who deny
marxism has failed) have tried to raise Yitzhak Rabin to some sort of
secular sainthood, including trying to get his deathday declared a
Holy Day. David Grossman gave the memorial address this year; Shlomo
Angel responds in this essay published on Ynet News
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Shalom David Grossman, I would like to begin my response to your address
"Pause for a moment, take a look into the abyss. Think of how close we are to losing all that we have created here. Ask yourselves if this is not the time to return to our senses from this imaginary world of peace you have created, back to the terrible bloody reality to which we were led under false hope of peace and normalcy." You asked "when was the last time a prime minister formulated or took a step that could open up a new horizon for Israelis, for a better future?" Unfortunately, it was just recently. Just a year ago "a new horizon was opened up" upon the disengagement from Gaza. Indeed, a new horizon of evil opened up, a horizon of corruption and bereavement whose results we strongly feel. Prior to that, another "new horizon" was opened up at Camp David and in Taba; a horizon of dramatic compromise with our enemies in exchange for all of the West Bank and Jerusalem. Indeed, a blazing blood-red horizon fell on our anguished country and 1,500 people, mainly civilians, went up to heaven with it. Along the way, the horizon of the Mitchell Plan rose, then the Road Map and of course the infamous Oslo horizon. You asked when we had lost the hope to live another, better life. My friends and I and the majority of this people lost its hope on realizing that it was being led like sheep to the slaughter by talented and influential people such as yourself, surrendering themselves to the enemy at will. I have lost all hope that a spirit of life, national honor and national rights for my people will come about as long as you and your ilk continue casting the blame for the lack of peace on us, letting go of a courageous grip while ignoring the increasing Islamic and Palestinian bloodshed. No dispute over poor leadership We have no dispute over the poor quality of Israel's leadership during these difficult times. Its "conduct is indeed deceptive and sweaty." It does indeed "just focus on tomorrow's headlines," and indeed, it is unable to "link Israelis to their identity." However, the seeds of calamity were sown during those dark days when you and your ilk remained silent with self satisfaction. It was during the days when the Oslo Accords were deceptively being conceived; when Sharon and his ranch gang stole the rule of power with every conceivable trick; when you chose not to smell the stench rising from within the Kadima ranks because you chose to even bend morals and values in face of "peace." And this is also the answer to your question, what drove the State of Israel to its resoluteness and cruelty towards the poor and the suffering. In your blindness, you naturally went back to using the clichés of the never ending conflict and the occupation, but to be honest, we learned how to be impervious to poverty from you last year. We didn't hear your tormented voice in the face of the expulsion, humiliation and unemployment that befell the residents of Gush Katif for no reason. We didn't hear your concerned voice regarding the goose farmers whose source of livelihood was cut off without compensation in an arbitrary decision that put animals before human beings. But most importantly, we didn't see any real action on your part except for bemoaning the injustice of the occupation. You decided in Yitzhak Rabin's name that Israeli society would not be able to exist for much longer in a situation of unresolved conflict. The State of Israel is the 20th century's greatest miracle (on this we agree), a miracle that succeeded in taking a bunch of smoking firebrands after the Holocaust and turning the country into a state that has become a leader in science and technology, with a high standards of material and spiritual life. This miracle occurred alongside a bloody war, in which every member of Israeli society partook. The people showed its might in the recent war as well, despite the resounding failures. However, instead of concentrating on our commendable achievements during the past century, you and your blind ilk have decided on behalf of the people that it has lost its strength and therefore peace is necessary as all costs. It was this peace that brought about war, weakness and bereavement. It is the peace of a small and tired minority that is dragging an entire country into an abyss. "Behold land, for we hath squandered," you quoted the poet Shaul Tchernichovsky, when all you wanted to do was bemoan the seemingly unnecessary deaths inflicted on us because we didn't make peace. Tchernichovsky wrote his immortal poem in memory of the dead in the Arab rebellion riots, which he viewed as a terrible and necessary breeding ground for the revival of the Jewish people. He hoped that we would be worthy of their lofty sacrifice. The great poet had no idea that 70 years later a great author such as yourself would dare use his poem to accuse the offspring of the murdered, instead of the murderers. Unfortunately, I am forced to end with a reference to your pyromaniac saying. "...the appointment of a habitual pyromaniac as director of the nation's firefighters." You stood at Rabin Square and called out in your blindness to the leaders of the state to continue blocking their ears and eyes from this bloody reality and to continue pursuing peace at all costs. I can only sum up by saying that you are calling upon them to extinguish the fires of hatred, hostility and the murderous acts perpetrated by our enemies with gallons of quality oil. The fires of "peace" lit recently will only increase if we continue following self-inflicted blind people such as yourself. |
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IRAN'S HOLOCAUST CARTOON CONTEST WINNER ANNOUNCED -- WHERE ARE THE RIOTS?
Posted by Daryl Temkin, November 7, 2006. |
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It took a number of months following the publication of the Danish cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet, Mohammed, to inform many sectors of the Islamic world that it was time to ignite a multitude of global riots. The Islamic riots in which approximately 200 people were killed and extensive properties damaged were explained to the world as a justified, acceptable, and reasonable reaction of Islam to the cartoons' desecration and humiliation of their prophet. While the Western world was shocked and horrified at the Islamic response, American Islamic organizations and their leaders went public explaining that the cartoons were a violation of the tenets of the Islamic religion. Their position was to explain the actions of the rioters and to let it be known that over the centuries, Islam has been criticized and provoked by negative depictions in Western literature and culture. Dante's Inferno, written in the early 1300's, was used as a prime example of literature which shamed Islam and its prophet. Dante's poem depicting Mohammed as "the leader of the world's discord" and burning in purgatory, was an affront to Islam. According to the Muslim spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations, the combination of Islamic humiliation from Dante's Inferno, which the Muslim world has been enduring for the past 700 years, along with other negative depictions of Islam, then topped off by the Danish cartoons of 2005, just exceeded the Islamic tolerance for the West's Islamic disrespect. The Islamic rationale stressed that if the Western world wouldn't shame and provoke Islam, the Islamic violent reactions would not prevail. It was also asserted that the publication of the Danish cartoons was demanded by the Zionists. At various American university campuses, a Muslim spokesman, Molik Ali, claimed that the Zionist, Daniel Pipes, once met the Danish newspaper publisher and that was proof that the Zionists were responsible for the cartoons and for the humiliation of Islam. The Iranian reaction to the cartoons was led by Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose hatred for the Jews and the State of Israel is frequently resounded by his multiplicity of public rants calling for Israel to be wiped off the map. As a proud Holocaust denier, and as a way to get "even" for the Danish cartoon humiliation, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proclaimed an international cartoon contest for the best cartoon denying the Holocaust. In the Los Angeles area, one of the main Muslim organizations held a fund raiser and invited a public radio host from the Pacifica Radio station to be their guest speaker. Pacifica Radio which is famous for its human rights agenda and its avid support for American Constitutional freedoms was suddenly supporting suppression of the press as opposed to freedom of the press. The radio commentator stated how proud she was that virtually the entire American press refused to reprint the Danish cartoons. In front of the Muslim audience, she couldn't say the truth -- that the American press which usually loves and sanctifies the extreme latitudes of "freedom of the press" went silent due to fear for their employees' lives, fear of vandalism, and fear that their newspaper offices would be destroyed. The fund-raising meeting ended with an impassioned speech by the Muslim organization's president. He held up a cartoon that was published in the American press. The cartoon was made up of two images. The first image was a man looking at a cartoon which made fun of the Holocaust. The cartoon showed that the man's response to the idea of making fun of the Holocaust was one of tears, pain and anguish. Then the next cartoon image showed the man looking at a cartoon making fun of Mohammed, and his response was laughter. After explaining the cartoon, the organization's president, with rage in his voice stated, "This is what we have to fight against. How dare a newspaper publish a cartoon that humiliates Islam?" Last week the winner of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial cartoon contest was announced. A cartoon finalist was selected from 1,193 cartoon entries from 62 nations around the world. The country of Morocco, often termed, a "moderate" Arab country, was honored with the first place victory. They were followed by a tie for the second place between the French and Brazilian cartoons. Finally, the third place victory went to the cartoon entry from none other than the home country, Iran. The cartoon contest leaders boasted that they received entries even from countries where it is illegal to deny that the Holocaust occurred, and 202 cartoons were displayed for honorable mention. The winning cartoon depicted the infamous Auschwitz welcome sign, "Work Makes You Free" posted on top of Jerusalem's Temple Mount and a ghetto wall surrounding the Dome of the Rock structure. That was considered "clever" for this cartoon contest. Now, aren't we missing something? Where are the international Jewish riots? Where are all the mosques being vandalized and burnt to the ground? Where is the destruction and mob looting of the various embassies representing the different countries entering cartoons belittling the Holocaust? And, where are the wanton deaths of hundreds following such an outrage of Holocaust denial? The "International World Jewish Conspiracy" seems to be ignorant of this calamity, or is it just oblivious? Conducting an international cartoon contest in order to deny a fact of life is at best, childish, sad, meaningless and simply ridiculous. But that's how a Western mind responds to behavior which has no respectable place in society. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was hoping to see a reaction of Jewish riots in order to prove that Jews and Muslims respond the same to insult and critique. His hope for a riotous victory was shamed by total quietude and basically a total lack of Jewish concern. His cartoon contest was only seen as additional emphasis that he is a dangerous and deranged leader of a pernicious nation. The contrast which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad didn't predict was that according to a Western mind, lying about a fact will not turn a fact into a lie. Yes, history has shown that repeated lies do have a tendency to be credible by those who are repulsed by the truth. Although belief in a lie can be temporarily used as a powerful, hateful, and life destructive tool, belief in lies, no matter how persuasive and pervasive, have no real power to change the truth. An Iranian cartoon contest denying the Holocaust deserves a painful yawn, whereas Iran's nuclear advancements, deserve our utmost alarm, and attention, and perhaps will receive an appropriate riotous response. Daryl Temkin is with Israel-Institute (www.israel-institute.com). Contact him at daryltemkinphd@gmail.com |
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EGYPT LOBBIES THE U.S.; ANOTHER U.S. DOUBLE STANDARD?; BAKER VS. BUSH
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 7, 2006. |
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EGYPT LOBBIES THE U.S. The NY Times reported Egyptian government lobbying of the US against Israel and Egyptian dissidents' complaints against their government. Egypt complains about losing regional influence. It no longer seems able to steer the P.A.. It also is threatened by Islamist takeover, which it is opposing by repression. The government blames the US for putting it in this position. US invasion of Iraq is said to have boosted Iran into becoming a regional power wanting to dominate the other states. US emphasize on elections enabled Hamas to take power in the P.A.. US tolerance of Israel's bombardment of Lebanon brought Arab sympathy to Hizbullah for resisting it. Regime supporters allege that the rise of Islamists in Egypt largely is due to their rise in the P.A. They blame the US for not leading a fair, diplomatic solution of the Arab-Israel conflict. Some regime opponents agree, but claim that the political problem in Egypt largely is due to the regime's failure to reform the economy and reduce poverty in the country of 70 million people. Other opponents say that the people are tired of the failed ruling party (Michael Slackman, 10/22, A3). If they had birth control, they wouldn't be so poor. The 1/3-page article stated six times that the US should resolve the issue with Israel. I think that reflects the Times anti-Zionist obsession. Were the paper objective, it might have include a note that: (1) Muslim Arabs tend to blame outsiders for all their problems; (2) The Arab-Israel conflict started before Israel acquired the Territories, which would be the object of the requested negotiations, because the conflict is over Islamic refusal to tolerate an infidel state in the Mideast; (3) The real goal of such negotiations is to weaken Israel so that the Arabs could conquer it. To be fair, the US did make the non-Islamist regimes less tenable. Invading Iraq, alone, did not contribute to their weakness as much as the failure to invest enough troops and fight vigorously enough to clear out the Islamists and failure to turn power over to non-Islamists. US pressing for elections in the P.A. before a democratic ethos was built was another mistake. However, the prior regime, the PLO one, was engaged in jihad too. Egypt still is smuggling arms to the P.A., now run by Hamas, but complains about Hamas being strong? That is hypocritical. As for Lebanon, Israel's mistake was in not fighting harder. The US mistake was in not giving Israel more time to destroy Hizbullah. Then Hizbullah would have lost face. The US supported a phony UNO resolution that lets Hizbullah rebuild. Egypt's influence has been baleful. Good to hear it is waning. Egypt's internal critics omitted a key factor. The government encouraged the spread of Islamist ideology in schools and mosques. It converted Egypt from a relatively more secular country to one with an Islamist culture. No wonder the Islamists have become a major force there! Why should we mind that Egypt has less influence, considering its unmentioned hostility towards the US? I think the article was too soft on the Arabs and is a pretext for diplomatic pressure on Israel. It is not legitimate for the US to pull aggressor Arabs' irons out of the file, and impose on Israel. ANOTHER DOUBLE STANDARD BY U.S.? Some Palestinian Arabs with dual US citizenship have been denied visas to visit or work in the P.A.. The US complained that this slights their American citizenship. It wants Israel to admit those people. Just a few years ago, however, the US instituted a policy whereby it denied visas to many Israeli citizens, because they had been born in Muslim countries. Some of them were prominent Jews, such as the Defense Minister (IMRA, 10/20). The US policy reminds me of Britain's WWII policy of taking the money from, and interning, Jewish refugees from the Nazis as "enemy aliens." That heaps on injustice. US citizenship makes little difference to what threat a person poses, because the US does not bar all Islamists. An Islamist could immigrate to the US, get naturalized, and then return to the P.A. or Israel and make trouble. A Muslim could immigrate and become an Islamist. I think the US is in the wrong, on this. Masses of people seek to evade immigration laws, laws that have a reasonable purpose against unreasonable immigrants. ISRAEL NOT FACING NUCLEAR THREAT Syria seems to be priming itself for a war with Israel. Russia has 1,100 troops in Beirut, to help Hizbullah. Israeli officials are boasting that they would defeat Syria more easily than they did in 1982 (when they almost lost). They just did poorly against Syria's mere appendage, Hizbullah. Israelis still suffer from over-confidence. Nobody is doing anything about Iran's development of nuclear weapons but talking. Meanwhile, Israel is bringing in Jews from other countries to a country without jobs, leadership, and possibly without a future, to die behind security fences. It's time to send the children out of Israel (Barry Chamish, 10/21). I wonder where they would be received and where there is safety, when rogue states are allowed to develop weapons of mass-destruction. As for war with Syria, suppose Egypt joins Syria, how well would Israel do? WHAT PUTIN TELLS OLMERT & WHAT PUTIN DOES Emerged from a meeting with Pres. Putin, PM Olmert announced that Putin opposes Iran's development of nuclear weapons. At the meeting, however, Putin would not pledge to a tougher Russian stand against that development. Actually, Russia has been a key developer of the Iranian nuclear industry (Sorry, lost citation). Olmert plays make-believe. P.A. STUDENT BARRED FROM ISRAELI UNIVERSITY The student was a good one, majoring in chemistry. People criticize Israel for barring her. They think this violates her human rights. She has no right to enter Israel. Moreover, she is from a territory at war with Israel. Palestinian Arabs often used entrée to Israel to commit terrorism. It is Israel that has the human right to bar her and her people, in order to preserve its own people's lives. If an exception were made for her, thousands of applications might descend upon Israel (IMRA, 10/22). BAKER COMMITTEE VS. BUSH Former Sec. of State Baker heads a committee that is about to recommend what to do about Iraq. Baker favors abandoning Iraq to its fate, under the guise of negotiating it. He and his co-chair were chosen for their diplomatic experience. But it is an experience at failure. Baker is remembered in Iraq for having let Saddam massacre the Kurds. He is remembered in Lebanon for letting Syria take over that country. (He is remembered by me for his anti-Israel bias.) The members of the committee visited Iraq, to gain first-hand knowledge. Only one member, however, ventured outside of the fortified "green zone." What do they know that we don't? Who are these members? Barry Rubin reports that, chosen by Baker, they have one thing in common -- almost all are known for opposition to Bush policy and to blaming foreign problems on the neo-conservatives. They start out with a bias. Therefore, they are expected to recommend as a new policy the old policy of negotiations and accommodation that didn't work (Middle East Forum, 10/21). Their policy cannot work with fanatics who use negotiation to advance their military goal. Mr. Rubin says that the Iraqi insurgency grew worse when, in a premature attempt at reconciliation with the Baathists, the Administration exonerated most of the purged Baathists. They came back, without qualifications but with lists of whom to purge, and replaced qualified people eager to rebuild their country. Now the non-Baathists feel betrayed (Middle East Forum, 10/22). The US betrays many allies. It thinks it is clever, but it weakens loyal forces in favor in disloyal ones. Bush often consults Baker. Baker's current tactic should alienate Bush. ISRAELI ENGLISH "After a period of calm," another rocket "landed" at Siderot, Israel (IMRA, 10/20 from IDF release). My airplane "landed." Space ships touched down. Rockets crash and smash! The peace-loving Palestinian Arabs have been firing a rocket at Siderot almost every day, for some time. For a few days, they did not. The residents of Siderot must have been looking up at the sky, wondering when the next one would strike ("landed," indeed!). Dare they walk far from their bomb shelter? Are the kids safe? Residents were fighting off a nervous breakdown, while Army press officers deemed it a period of "calm." Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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WHEN PEOPLE ARE DIVIDED, CORRUPTION RULES
Posted by Steven Shamrak, November 7, 2006. |
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A recent poll concluded that 37 percent of Israelis energetically dislike Orthodox Jews, 15 percent said the same of new immigrants from the former Soviet Union and 13 percent named settlers. Unity of Jewish people is the goal we must achieve in order to free our land and fulfil the destiny of Jewish people. Regardless of common illusion, the unity was always problematic in Jewish society. Even before the establishment of the state of Israel. First it was Socialist against Jewish nationalist (Labour vs Igun). Since than, most of the Israeli governments used perpetuated security matters and Arab terrorism as a smoke screen, which allowed them rule the country without any accountability. Israel is being ruled by the principle "Divide and Conquer!" or to be more accurate "Divide and get Rich!" Corruption is the ruling party in Israel. It unites all Israeli politicians, regardless of their political affiliation. When people are scared they do not care about a few million dollars pocketed by politicians. When people are divided by hate, they are not able to unite and make the government accountable for failure to stop and destroy the enemies, in spite of having military means, moral and legal rights. Disunited they elect the same gutless and self-serving mob. For years the hate, that divides Israeli society, has been fostered and directed toward 'Moroccan', 'Yemenites', 'Russians', now Hareidis and Settlers. In order to keep people happy, a lip service is paid to 'feel good' slogans of Jewish unity and destiny during the international conferences and public meetings. When we understand that we are one nation, we'll be able to defeat all our enemies. First we must start with the self-serving, corrupt Jewish traitors! UN's Duplicity: "The Secretary-General urges Israel to exercise maximum restraint, do their utmost to protect civilians (use of civilians as a "human shield" by Arab terrorist is not mentioned)... He also calls on Palestinian militants to stop firing rockets against Israeli civilian targets." -- No call for the end of Arab terrorism or "restraint", just an instruction how to make it more politicly correct and exactable! Some 45 dead terrorists in the IDF's anti-Kassam military operation of the past 5 days. Three civilians were killed. Food for Thought Touring a military position on Israel's Northern border, Ehud Olmert said the Lebanon war had neutralized the threat from Hezbollah. This is another sign of his delusional state of mind! Arab Emigration. Arab Palestinians are leaving the territories. Ahmed Suboh, a Palestinian Foreign Ministry official, said that over the last four months, foreign and Arab diplomats in the territories have authorized 10,000 Palestinians to enter their countries, 45,000 additional emigration requests are currently being evaluated. (Let's hope it is just a beginning! It is estimated 700,000 Israelis overseas live in North America only, driven from their country by Arab terrorism, government inaction and corruption.) Totally Disproportional Stupidity. A new public disclosure of a partial breakdown of the defence budget reveals that the expenditures for the separation barrier (clandestine border line) this fiscal year were $300 million while the outlay for discharged soldiers was only $5.6 million of the total $2.56 billion military budget proposed for 2007. When Anything Goes. Arab women in northern Gaza were urged in a radio broadcast Friday morning to go to a mosque in Beit Hanoun to serve as 'human shields' for number of Arab terrorists who were wanted for Kassam rocket attacks had taken refuge in the mosque, which was also used as a storehouse for weapons and other materials. 'Friend of Israel'. Kofi Annan, outgoing U.N. secretary-general, proposed a registry of damages to Arab Palestinians caused by Israel's West Bank security barrier. (What about a registry of damages to Israel caused by Arab terrorism?) Demonstration Against Society Moral Rout. Hundreds of Hareidi religious Jews in the Mea She'arim neighbourhood of Jerusalem demonstrated in mourner's clothes last Tuesday night against the planned parade by homosexuals in Jerusalem. Police plans to call an additional 2,000 border police from counterterrorist duties in the West Bank to keep order during parade. (Why parade in Tel-Aviv is not enough for expressing homosexuality? Why is a need to bring it into the Holy City? If it is not a clear expression of self-hate, then what?) Gay-rights Activists Vandalized Synagogue. Vandals smashed windows in the early morning attack on the Geulot Yisrael synagogue in Tel Aviv and scrawled on a wall, "If we can't march in Jerusalem, you won't walk around in Tel Aviv." (Anything goes, when self-hate prevails!) Quote of the Week: "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, saith the LORD." -- Isaiah 54:17 Rockets Everywhere. While Qassam rockets from Gaza continue to fall on Sderot and the Western Negev, Hamas has begun to fire rockets from the West Bank at Israeli targets. A short-range Nasser 1 rocket was fired at the settlement of Migdalim, east of Ariel in Samaria. (... but Israeli government is just pretending that it is fighting Arab terror!) Hamas Army. The IDF OC southern command Maj.-Gen Yoav Galant in a briefing to Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee warned that Hamas is actively building a regular military division of tens of thousands of well-trained troops armed with sophisticated weaponry. The IDF has prepared effective plans to forestall Hamas' dangerous military enhancement in Gaza, said Gen. Galant. But, he added, the military needs the policy-makers' signal to go ahead before it is too late. (When will the political stupidity end and IDF will be allowed to clear Jewish land from Arab infection?) Jewish Contribution to Humanity. Carl Djerassi (born October, 1923 in Vienna, Austaria), is a chemist best known for his contribution to the development, together with two Mexicans scientists, of the oral contraceptive pill. There are No civilians among Arab Palestinians. 1) Arab Shepherds Shoot Jewish Motorist. The shepherds blocked Highway 35 forcing motorist Ami Derya to slow down and the terrorists approached the vehicle and pulled out a gun. 2) One IDF soldier was wounded in southern Gaza when Palestinian Authority police, armed by the Israeli government under the Oslo Accords, opened fire on IDF troops. 3) Arabs nearly lynched two Jews north of Jerusalem, while IDF soldiers at a nearby lookout watched and took no action. A Jewish man was shot and wounded by terrorists near Kiryat Arba. (...only terrorists and their supporters! And, Israel's apathy helps them!) Germany: Israel not respecting Lebanon airspace. "That Israel is still trying to control the airspace over Lebanon despite the international presence of French, Italian and other soldiers... The Israelis have so far rejected internationalization of their security..." said German deputy foreign minister Gernot Erler. (Have this "internationalization" stop Hezbollah from rebuilding its infrastructure and smuggling weapons from Syria and Iran? Why are the International leaders silent about Arab's violations?) Arab States Seek Nuclear Power.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia had discussed the possibility of investing in programs to build nuclear reactors. Experts believe that continued Iranian nuclear development was the impetus for the Arab interest in investing in nuclear power. While the Arab nations claim that they plan to develop civilian nuclear energy, which is allowed under international law, experts speculate that they intend to use the technology to develop nuclear arms. The newly expressed nuclear interest marks a change in Arab policy, which previously had called for a nuclear free Middle East. Only several months ago Saudi Arabian Prince Saud al-Faisal stated in an interview to the Times that the Saudis were against nuclear development in the Arab world. Steven Shamrak was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and participated in the Moscow Zionist "refusenik" movement. For the last 3 years, he has been publishing internet editorial letters on the Arab-Israeli conflict -- independently, not as a member of any organization or political movement. He can be reached by email at StevenShamrak@gmail.com |
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PRESIDENT BUSH, WOULD YOU PLEASE RE-VISIT THE GROSSLY UNFAIR CASE OF JONATHAN POLLARD
Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman, November 7, 2006. |
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This was an editorial in The Jewish Press October 20, 2006 |
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We have long thought the Draconian punishment meted out to Jonathan Pollard for spying for Israel was explainable only in terms of the special and intense animus toward the Jewish state on the part of all too many State Department Arabists and foreign policy functionaries. In the past this page has several times noted that Mr. Pollard is the only person in U.S. history to have received a life sentence, or anything even approaching it, for spying on behalf of an American ally. We have also noted that the circumstances of his sentencing suggested a special agenda. That is, a negotiated sentence had been unilaterally disavowed by the government and the sentencing judge, in consigning Pollard to life imprisonment, relied upon a secret memorandum written by then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, whose antipathy toward Israel was not exactly a state secret and who reportedly was enraged that Pollard had provided information to Israel on Arab military preparedness -- information Mt Weinberger opposed sharing with the Israelis. Now comes an October 9 editorial from The Jerusalem Post noting that Ronald Montaperto, a former Pentagon analyst, was sentenced last month by a U.S. judge to a mere three months in prison for passing "highly classified" information to China. According to U.S. officials, Mr. Montaperto's actions severely hampered U.S. efforts to track China's covert arms sales to nations sponsoring terrorism such as Iran, Syria and Pakistan. Of course, no two cases are exactly the same, but there are several noteworthy points to be made. The sentencing judge in the Pollard case relied on the aforementioned secret Weinberger memorandum. In the Moñtaperto case the sentencing judge, while acknowledging the "very serious charge," said he'd been persuaded to reduce the sentence thanks to letters of support from current and former intelligence and military officials. This despite the fact that the prosecutor told the court that Mr. Montaperto met at least 60 times with two Chinese military intelligence officers and provided them with top secret information. There is another disturbing dimension to this case. Mr. Pollard's attorneys have from Day One been denied access to classified information that played a role in his case. To be sure, there are procedural rules that were successfully invoked by the government lawyers in denying such access. But why this rulebook approach to Mr. Pollard on the one hand and "support" from the American intelligence and military communities for Mr. Montaperto on the other? After all, well over 100,000 U.S. servicemen were killed in the Korean and Vietnam wars, both of which were, in significant part, Chinese productions. And the U.S. has spent untold billions of dollars to defend itself against the Chinese threat. Further, there continues to be talk that classified information stolen by Mr. Pollard indirectly found its way to the Soviet Union and, as a result, a number of intelligence sources were executed. But over the years it has become increasingly clear that it was Aldrich Ames, a convicted CIA double agent, who passed the material in question to the Soviets. Even Casper Weinberger, in a moment of candor, finally conceded that the Pollard case had been "relatively minor." Jonathan Pollard is now completing his 21st year in a U.S. prison. The material he turned over to Israel has never been officially released. But, as was pointed out in the Jerusalem Post editorial, it is generally believed to have included data on Soviet arms shipments to Syria as well as Iraqi and Syrian weapons programs. We certainly do not quarrel with the government's right to withhold such information from Israel. But think about it -- the theft of information about Arab military capacities vis-a-vis Israel as a predicate for a life sentence. In the final analysis, a life is a life and Casper Weinberger's pique should not be allowed to effectively end Jonathan Pollard's. Jerome S. Kaufman is National Secretary of the Zionist Organization of America. and host the Israel Commentary website (http://www.israel-commentary.org). |
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WHERE IS ALL THAT "HUMANITARIAN AID"?
Posted by David Frankfurter, November 6, 2006. |
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Dear Friends, Truckload after truckload of food, medicines and "humanitarian aid" pass through the border crossings into Gaza. It is part of an Israeli policy to minimise the suffering of Gaza citizens, while their democratically elected Hamas government shoots rockets at Israeli civilians, attacks the IDF troops who keep the border crossings open and smuggles huge stockpiles of weapons, readying themselves to provoke a massive conflict with Israel on the lines of the recent Hizbollah attack and the ensuing war in Lebanon. Here are the latest two examples. * On November 2nd, 210 truckloads of food, medical supplies and other basic commodities were transferred to the Gaza Strip through the Karni crossing. In addition, 250 calves, 39 truckloads of medical equipment and 42,000 kg of flour went through the Sufa crossing. With the constant flow of supplies into Gaza, one has to wonder about the frequent reports of rampant poverty in Gaza. And where does all the money come from for the weapons smuggling, terrorist and politician salaries, and the luxurious lifestyles of the elite? The website of watchdog organization the Funding for Peace Coalition is full of reports of Palestinian corruption -- including at border crossings. It brought plenty of proofs from the Arafat-Abbas regimes, and implies that corruption has simply transferred its master since the rise of Hamas. And opening this morning's newspaper confirms the worst. As the original report was in Hebrew, I attach a translation for you. In short, international donations to hospitals and aid agencies are being diverted to the pockets of individuals and to the purchase of arms and payment of terrorist salaries. And some of the "aid" is not donations at all -- just a method of smuggling, using the black market to line the pockets of the corrupt and feed the Hamas war machine. One has to wonder the value of the "international observers" placed at the border crossings. One also has to wonder at the value of so-called international mechanisms to bypass the Hamas government and provide aid directly to the needy elements of the population. Where is the international outcry from governments, aid agencies and human rights organizations about the siphoning off of international aid to corruption and violence? It seems that the world has accepted that the only result of Palestinian autonomy in Gaza is to be corruption, poverty and war. And based on reports of those same agencies, not surprisingly, Israel is to blame. This article is by Itamar Eichner, and it appeared today in Yediot Aharonot. I translated it from the Hebrew. It is called "Israel investigates: Have "donations" to hospitals gone to Hamas?" David |
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Overseas and local intelligence services investigate how documents from international organizations and governments were forged and attached to deliveries that found their way to Hamas. Exclusive: The [Israeli] Government Coordinator of Activities in the Palestinian Territories and intelligence services are conducting a joint investigation, following suspicions that Palestinians have forged documents in order to transfer humanitarian donations into the Palestinian territories, and from there they ended up in the hands of the Hamas government. Additional parties, both in Israel and overseas, are involved in the highly secret investigation. The main suspicion is that standing behind the "donated" forgeries are Islamists, looking for a way around the Israeli embargo on the transfer of aid to Hamas. Those elements successfully forged permits from governments and overseas humanitarian agencies. Included are genuine donations intended for hospitals and humanitarian agencies in the Palestinian Authority. The "permits" were attached to containers of food, medicines, clothing, etc. and transported through to Palestinian Authority controlled territories, after receiving Israeli government approval. The suspicions are that the real destinations of the "donations" were for the private use of the forgers, or for sale with the proceeds being transferred to Hamas. Some of the cases are personal corruption, although some give rise to suspicions of fraud involving the Hamas government. The use of fictional donors has been revealed, with telephone numbers on the "permits" being incorrect or disconnected. In one case the Government Coordinator of Activities in the Palestinian Territories contacted the donor, in order to confirm that he in fact transferred the donation to the Palestinians. The donor denied ever having made any such donation. The donations with forged permits came are suspected to have come from several different countries, including the UK, Germany, Austria, Jordan, Spain, Canada and South Korea. Last night, Security Service sources confirmed the investigation and said that the it was multi-faceted. Shlomo Dror, spokesperson for the Coordinator of Activities in the Palestinian Territories, responded to the report yesterday evening: "Suspicions were aroused regarding the bona-fides of certain donations, concerning the way they were transferred and the organizations that stand behind them, and the matter is under investigation on our behalf." David Frankfurter is a business consultant, corporate executive and writer who frequently comments on the Middle East. To subscribe to his 'Letter from Israel', email him at david.frankfurter@iname.com. Or go to http://www.livejournal.com/users/dfrankfurter/ |
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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH ACCUSES HIZBULLAH; HAARETZ ADMITS COLLABORATION WITH GOVERNMENT
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 6, 2006. |
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ISRAEL ADMITS IT Contradicting PM Olmert, Israel's Defense Min. Peretz admitted to the Knesset that the war in Lebanon left Hizbullah strengthened, as arms continue to pour into it from Iran. He recommended taking Syrian threats of war seriously, because Syria thinks Israel weak. Therefore, a diplomatic solution would come at a great sacrifice (Arutz-7, 9/27). Hizbullah took heavy losses. It gained prestige, nevertheless, because of Israel's premature accession to the UN-sponsored ceasefire that left Hizbullah still standing and able to rearm. The UNO won't stop rearmament. Israel had the chance to block Syrian arms shipments to Hizbullah by bombing Syrian suppliers and show Syria it can be tough. Israel didn't. Its timidity is encouraging Syrian war threats. The Muslims perceive timidity as a signal to keep pressing. Ceasefires are not always humanitarian. They aren't, when they benefit jihadists. PM OLMERT TRIES TO REDEFINE ZIONISM He suggested that anyone who wants a Jewish state on any part of the Land of Israel is a Zionist. Arutz-7 reported this as Olmert suggesting that "Zionism" be redefined but not suggesting how (9/27). But he did suggest how. He suggested a redefinition to suit his failed, anti-Zionist policy of giving away, and to the genocidal enemy, strategic and water-bearing parts of the Land of Israel and probably its holiest sites. That is anti-Zionist. How small a sliver could support the "ingathering of the exiles," that is part of the meaning of Zionism? HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH (HRW) ACCUSES HIZBULLAH HRW accused Hizbullah of illegally firing cluster bombs into Israel, during the summer war. This is the first time that such a charge was made against Hizbullah, although such charges have been made against Israel (Tim Butcher, NY Sun, 10/20). Hizbullah's usage was illegal for lack of military purpose. It was terrorism against civilians. Israel's usage was legal, because it had a military purpose, although civilians were present. Hizbullah operates among and with civilians. When it operates among them, which is a war crime, it is responsible for their consequent casualties. Civilians who cooperate with Hizbullah, as by hiding or operating rocket launchers, forfeit civilian status and protection. HRW failed to acknowledge those basic rules of war. HRW does not know its own business. First HRW accused Israel of illegally using cluster bombs, adding to the chorus of indignation against Israel. After that agitation died down, and the defamation of Israel did its damage, then HRW came up with this charge against Hizbullah. That is unfair. Still to be ascertained: did Israel use cluster bombs effectively or over-used them? MAYBE HAMAS WON'T DO SO WELL "Hamas seems oblivious to the fact that its armed gangs are nowhere near as trained or disciplined as Hizbullah, and that the Gaza Strip, which is flat as a pancake, is no place for guerrilla warfare." (Youssef Ibrahim, NY Sun, 10/20, p.9.) That remains to be seen. Will Israeli forces wait for Hamas to build up to a peak? Will Israeli forces be sufficiently trained and supplied, itself, as it was not, for Lebanon? Suppose Hamas fights from tunnels and amidst civilians, whom Israelis don't shoot? HAARETZ ADMITS COLLABORATION WITH GOVERNMENT The editor of Haaretz, David Landau, publicly admitted that his newspaper repressed news of the Sharon-Olmert regime's corruption, in order to allow the abandonment of Gaza to proceed. It considered retention of that territory corrupting (IMRA, 9/28). The editor admits his slanted reporting! The Right had accused the leftist media in general of shielding the government. The Right was right. Will American journalists still describe Haaretz as Israel's high-quality daily? When the editor called "occupation" corrupting, he was insinuating that it corroded Israelis' character. There is no indication he was right. If he and the rest of the Left had not mounted a campaign to persuade Israelis that they had no right to the Territories, that their presence was shameful, and that the Arabs had a right to resist (although the Arabs had signed a peace agreement), it would have had less of a tendency to corrode Israeli morale. The Left thus harmed Israeli morale and national security. Not only was government corruption extensive, but by shielding it, the media helped it thrive. The media also facilitated extortion over the implicated officials, including extortion by leftist prosecutors, who could use their discretion to withhold charges against Sharon and Olmert so long as they continued to appease the Arabs. That is not democratic. Ironically, Peres and his circle stood to make a lot of money from the abandonment. In the end, abandonment, carried out with brutality and cheapness, was morally corrosive both to the government side, which hired police for brutality and hurt the morale of soldiers impressed into anti-Zionist duty, and to the settlers, whom it ruined after having helped them settle where it now uprooted them. It ruined those people so badly, that children became delinquent or psychological problems and adults divorced. The whole country suffered jointly, because the abandonment led to another war and ensuing casualties and destruction. It boosted morale for the Arabs, who believed that their terrorism had compelled Israel to abandon Gaza. Arabs don't see Israeli retreat as the goodwill gesture that leftists intend. Leftists need to learn that if a goodwill gesture encourages ill will, then the gesture should not be made. Thus it was the reverse of what the editor said, that he tolerated minor corruption in order to relieve the country of major corruption. UNIFIL SET TO CLASH WITH ISRAEL The commander of the UNO force maintaining the ceasefire between Israel and Hizbullah said that his troops might open fire, to prevent Israel's air force from patrolling over Lebanon (NY Sun, 10/20, p.9). The over-flights technically violate the peculiarly unworkable UNO rules of ceasefire and its enforcement. (The UNO is bureaucratic and obstructionist.) Over-flights monitor the illegal rearming of Hizbullah, which the UNO and Lebanon are not monitoring. Of course, Israeli monitoring is useless without intercepting the arms shipments. The Lebanese Army and UNIFIL won't intercept them. For Hizbullah, the ceasefire is the pause that refreshes. The ethical level of UNIFIL is such that its commanders vow not to clash with Hizbullah over its rearming and not disarming, that violate the key provisions of the UNO Resolution -- but their chief threatens to clash with Israel which is acting in support of enforcement of those key provisions. SYRIA TO TURN GOLAN INTO ANOTHER FRONT About 35,000 people live on the part of the Golan within Israel. Half are Israelis and half are Druse. Under guise of medical help for the Druse, who are citizens of Syria, Syria is trying to get the Red Cross to bring people into Israel there, and Syria would turn the newcomers into a terrorist army to harass Israel. Will the Red Cross cooperate (IMRA, 9/28) with the rogue state, Syria, and will Israel would allow immigration by Druse or Muslims? Israel should ask the non-citizens there to leave, with compensation. Syria was emboldened by Olmert's hesitancy in Lebanon ISRAELI GOVERNMENT COOPERATES WITH ARAB PROPAGANDA The Israeli government publicly pretends that Abbas is a moderate and that Egypt shares Israel's concern about letting terrorists through the Sinai-Gaza border, to destabilize the region. Actually, Abbas endorses extremist goals and methods, but suggests refraining from terrorism (to regain subsidy of the P.A.). Actually, the government of Israel privately worries about Egypt facilitating arms smuggling, so Gaza Muslims can practice a war of attrition against Israel for Egypt. Why the difference between Israel's public and private positions? If the government admitted the truth, then opponents of its policy of appeasement of the Arabs would be able to cite the government's own admission against that policy. The result is poor public relations and poor policy. Israel loses both ways. PM OLMERT MIS-CHARACTERIZES CITY'S LAMENT The P.A. fires rockets at Siderot in Israel almost daily. The mayor wants the government to root out the attackers. PM Olmert pretends that the mayor is complaining only that the government does not spend enough in town on defense (Arutz-7, 9/28). Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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THE NEW, FUN ISRAEL
Posted by Naomi Ragen, November 6, 2006. |
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Friends, Some of you have written to me about the answers your protests elicited from the Foreign Ministry. Their line was "the parade has nothing to do with us. But anyway, we think it's great, and if you don't like it just stay home." This wonderful message to supporters of Israel who view the Holy Land as just that can be explained. Apparently, our new Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, has decided that what Israel needs is a face-lift and a new image. To that end, she has hired countless PR firms who are going to "reposition" the Jewish State as a cross between European discos and Caribbean beach parties. Because everyone knows the reason that people hate Israel is because it's too religious. I'm sure Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and all our other detractors ( who everyone knows are themselves so liberal and open minded) will be overcome with joy to hear this and will immediately book their El Al flights. Because forget our Wall, our biblical landscapes. We've got great beaches! Wild discos! Another brilliant move by our novice Foreign Minister. The World Gay Pride parade, planned for Jerusalem, fits right into her agenda, and the Foreign Ministry's. Whatever they tell you. See Caroline Glick's article below. It is called "Truth in
advertising" and it appeared October 3, 2006 in the
Jerusalem Post
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Israel is trying to reinvent itself. Last week Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni hosted a conference where she launched a new multimillion dollar project to "rebrand" Israel. As Livni put it, since coming into office, she has been struck by the disparity between the vibrant, liberal, free Israel she knows and Israel's image abroad. According to research conducted by a number of public relations firms, Israel's international image is one of a war-torn society riddled with religious fanatics and intolerance. At the same time, most people view Israel as either a democracy or as a country moving towards democracy. As Livni sees it, "It's time to bridge the gap between the real Israel and its international image." The foreign minister has decided to dedicate the Foreign Ministry to the task of bridging the gap. She has hired a whole host of public relations firms who have conducted focus groups and used other mass marketing tools to figure out how to reinvent Israel in a manner that will make people like us. These PR firms together with Foreign Ministry have decided that the best way to change people's perceptions of Israel is by showing the world how multicultural it is. To this end, they plan to move the emphasis of Israel's public diplomacy from defending Israel in its bid to defend itself against its neighbors who seek its destruction to promoting Israel as a "fun" country. They will market Israel as a libertine country replete with beautiful beaches, beautiful women, wild nightlife and a large, dynamic and booming hi-tech economy. As Livni's adviser Ido Aharoni explained to reporters last week, "Israel is not perceived as fun or normal. Our job is to say, 'Yes, we are not normal, but we are far more normal than you think.'" To get this point across, the Foreign Ministry is encouraging Israelis to set up Weblogs and to post their home movies on the You Tube video Web site. It is working in conjunction with the Israel Association of Gay Men, Lesbians and Transgenders to encourage homosexual tourism and it is planning to run targeted ads in women's magazines -- for instance in Oprah Winfrey's magazine -- to show liberals that Israel is just as liberal as they are. Early next year the Foreign Ministry is scheduled to choose a marketing strategy to promote this new image or "brand" for Israel. Once it does, it will try to force what Aharoni refers to as "message discipline" on all those involved in selling Israel to the world. As both PR executives and Foreign Ministry officials have indicted, that "message discipline" will make talking about jihad a big, retro no-no. Livni's rebranding project has generated a great deal of largely positive press coverage at home and abroad. Unfortunately the project is a massive waste of public funds. Worse than that, it exposes a deep conceptual confusion among those responsible for advancing Israel's interests in the world regarding what their job is and why it is that they face the challenges they face. Simply stated, contrary to what Livni claims, it is not the principal responsibility of the Foreign Ministry to close the gap between the reality of Israel and Israel's international image. The Foreign Ministry is responsible for using diplomacy to advance Israel's national interests. The purpose of public diplomacy is to increase international sympathy and support for Israel. The level of international sympathy that Israel enjoys has little do with whether or not foreigners are aware of how beautiful our beaches are. The level of international support for Israel is little impacted by whether Israel's image is one of a vacationer's paradise or a war zone. What does influence levels of sympathy for Israel is whether or not people understand that Israel has an unconditional right to exist and an inherent right to defend itself against those who wish to destroy the state and murder its citizens. People are induced to sympathize with Israel when they are exposed to the fact that its enemies are unappeasable, and when they understand what happens to women who wear bikinis or simply demand to meet their husbands before marriage in Gaza and Ramallah. Moreover, people do not feel hostility towards Israel because they are tired of hearing about the war being waged against it. Israel lacks international support because people fail to understand why it is in their own interest to support Israel. ONE OF the major goals of the "rebranding" project is to increase tourism to Israel. To this end, several of the participants in last week's conference claimed that the fact that Israel is perceived as a religious country is a marketing liability. Israel's religious reputation drives away potential tourists who are attracted less by the divine than by the libertine, they said. This is an odd argument for people who make their living in marketing. The first rule in marketing is to start with your core market and Israel's core market is religious - particularly Christian -- tourists. Last month Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog told The Jerusalem Post that while Jews remain the largest single group of tourists to Israel, with 40 percent of the market, evangelical Christians today are closing in fast. Today every third tourist in Israel is an evangelical Christian. Israel only began making a serious effort to attract Christian tourists in 2001 when then tourism minister Benny Elon made outreach to American evangelicals his primary goal at the ministry. Given that there are some 60 million evangelical Christians in the US, it should be clear to marketing executives that Israel has barely begun to scratch the surface of their tourism potential. Moreover, Herzog noted that the millions of Christians in Latin America and Europe are yet another still-to-be tapped, massive tourism market. So if the marketing executives aren't paying attention to Israel's core market potential when they shape their rebranding concepts, who are they paying attention to? David Saranga from the New York Consulate-General told the Post last week that one of the primary target audiences that the Foreign Ministry is trying to attract is the homosexual community. Ministry officials view gay culture as the entryway to the liberal culture because, as he put it, gay culture is the culture that creates "a buzz." That is, the main target of the Foreign Ministry's multimillion dollar PR campaign is the liberal Left in the West. This makes sense not because these people are Israel's most likely supporters. To the contrary, Israel's natural supporters are the ones that the liberal Left pokes fun at. Indeed, the so-called liberal Left are the ones who call Israel "that shi**y little country" at fancy dinner parties. The reason it makes sense that advertising executives and Foreign Ministry officials wish to spend millions of taxpayer dollars reinventing Israel to receive support from the liberal Left is because overwhelmingly, these Israeli executives and officials run in liberal Left social circles. They wish to reinvent Israel because they want to be popular on the cocktail party circuit. The desire to win support from the Left is a reasonable enough goal. The problem is that these Israeli officials fail to understand the nature of their problem with their liberal friends. Leftist support of the Palestinians does not stem from ignorance regarding Israel's liberal views of feminists or homosexuals. Gay activists and feminists from New York to Paris to London to Stockholm do not participate in pro-Palestinian protests because they are under the misimpression that Israel is illiberal or homophobic or misogynistic. They participate in anti-Israel protests because they think that Israel is wrong. And they oppose Israel because they don't realize that their own freedom is closely linked to Israel's ability to win the jihad being waged against it. The fact that they believe as they do is at least partially the fault of the same Israeli officials who now wish to stop discussing why Israel fights, and instead discuss how Israel parties. FOR THE past 13 years, Israel's public relations has centered on our support for the so-called peace process with the PLO. Foreign Ministry officials believed that by making Israel's peace platform the central pillar of its international PR drive, they would inspire people to support us. But this is not what people understood. People understood that Israel was encouraging them to support the PLO. And so they did. And when PLO officials told them that Israel is a racist state, they believed them. By arguing that they should talk about how peaceful and fun Israel is, Israel's diplomats seek to rid themselves of the difficult job of defending Israel's right to exist and its right to defend itself from its enemies that seek its destruction. Rather than promote radical feminism in Israel, it is their thankless job to attack and expose those who deny the Jewish people's right to self-determination and statehood as bigoted and wrong. It is similarly the job of Israeli diplomats to demand an accounting by Palestinians. Israeli officials should be pointing their fingers at the Palestinians and their supporters and demanding to know why they deserve support after having transformed their own society into a jihadist society dedicated to Israel's eradication, to the destruction of the US and of the West and to the subjugation of Christians, women, and homosexuals. Israel will build international sympathy for its cause among its potential supporters across the political spectrum when it reframes the public debate on the Arab-Israel conflict in a manner that places the spotlight on the Palestinians and their barbarism and hatred. This is about them. It is not about our beaches. At the same time, as the experience of millions of Tibetans and Darfur Sudanese attests, garnering international sympathy is not the goal of diplomacy. Builidng international support is the goal of diplomacy. It is not sufficient for Israel to simply explain why it has a right and a duty to defeat the forces of global jihad seeking to destroy it. Israel's public diplomacy challenge is to explain to the world how jihadist violence against Israel breeds jihadist violence in Paris, Brussels, London, Melbourne, Madrid and New York, and how Israeli victories over jihadists in Ramallah, Gaza, Beirut and Teheran enhance the security of the rest of the free world. That is, Israel will be successful diplomatically not because it tells people that it is a fun place, but because it tells people that it is an important place, when it explains to people why Israel's success is related to their own success. Israel doesn't need to reinvent itself. All it needs to do is tell the truth. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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THE RIGHT OF ISRAEL TO EXIST-ONLY ISRAEL'S VERY EXISTENCE IS HER RIGHT TO EXIST!
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 6, 2006. |
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Who came up with the idea that Hamas's political legitimacy be conditioned on its recognition of Israel's right to exist? Who came with the idiotic idea that the Jews' right to exist in Eretz Yisrael has to be sanctioned by an anti-Semitic, murderous Palestinian Arab terrorist organization? If this is the case, we have lost our Jewish self-respect and our Jewish memory! Would it ever enter the mind of any Briton or Frenchman, Belgian or Dutchman, Hungarian or Bulgarian, Russian or American, to request recognition of its right to exist from ANYONE? The answer is NO! Israel was granted the right to exist by the God of her fathers at the glimmer of the dawn of human civilization four thousand years ago. Thus, she does not need the Palestinians to give her the right to exist! Under international law there are four major criteria of statehood; while Israel meets all four, the Palestinians meet NONE! We must go back to our roots, the roots Menachem Begin knew so very well: Israel must never conduct talks about its own destruction with gangs of murderers bent on destroying the State of Israel. NEVER! The Jewish people -- no one else -- are responsible for our country's right to exist; Israel's very existence per se is her right to exist!" Seal it with a kiss! Nothing more to say! This article is called "The Right of Israel to Exist" by Avner Yehuda
and appeared October 3, 2006 in Arutz Sheva |
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There is irony in the thought that were Menachem Begin alive today, he would be saddened, indeed outraged, at Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's insistence -- in consort with the US and the EU -- that Hamas's political legitimacy be conditioned, inter alia, on its recognition of Israel's right to exist. "Right to exist?" I can hear the late prime minister roundly chastising his younger successor, who declares himself to be a Begin disciple. "Are you telling me, Ehud, that our right to exist in Eretz Yisrael has to be sanctioned for political purposes by an intrinsically anti-Semitic, murderous Palestinian Arab terrorist organization? Have you lost your Jewish self-respect? Where is your Jewish memory?" Menachem Begin had a surfeit of both -- Jewish self-respect and memory. He had an all-encompassing grasp of Jewish history. Instinctively, his memory went back thousands of years and his vision forward thousands of years. Jewish nostalgia fed his soul; it nurtured his deepest convictions. So, when, on the first day of his premiership in 1977, he was waylaid by a tall, debonair, rakishly good-looking Englishman in a bow tie and a perfectly pitched BBC announcer's voice, and saucily asked whether he looked forward to a time when the Palestinians would recognize Israel, his jaw tightened in restrained Jewish anger. But, honed as he was by years of legal training, he answered with the composed demeanor of a practiced jurist, saying: Traditionally, there are four major criteria of statehood under international law. Israel is in possession of all four attributes and, hence, is a fully fledged sovereign state and a fully accredited member of the United Nations. "But, surely, you would insist, would you not, that the relevant Palestinian organizations recognize Israel as a sine qua non for negotiations with them," persisted the fellow. "Certainly not! Those so-called relevant organizations are gangs of murderers bent on destroying the State of Israel. We will never conduct talks about our own destruction." "And were they to recognize Israel's existence -- would you then negotiate with them?" pressed the correspondent. "No, sir!" "Why not?" "Because I don't need Palestinian recognition for my right to exist." Two hours later, Menachem Begin stood at the podium of the Knesset, presenting his new cabinet. He began by dryly outlining the democratic processes that led to the changing of the guard, from Labor to Likud. And then, in recollection, perhaps, of his acerbic exchange with the BBC man, he began talking about Israel's right to exist. "Our right to exist -- have you ever heard of such a thing?" he declared, passion creeping into his voice. "Would it enter the mind of any Briton or Frenchman, Belgian or Dutchman, Hungarian or Bulgarian, Russian or American, to request for its people recognition of its right to exist?" He glared at his audience and wagged a finger, stilling every chattering voice in the Knesset chamber. And now, using his voice like a cello, sonorous and vibrant, he drove on: Mr. Speaker, we were granted our right to exist by the God of our fathers at the glimmer of the dawn of human civilization four thousand years ago. Hence, the Jewish people have an historic, eternal and inalienable right to exist in this land, Eretz Yisrael, the land of our forefathers. We need nobody's recognition in asserting this inalienable right. And for this inalienable right, which has been sanctified in Jewish blood from generation to generation, we have paid a price unexampled in the annals of nations. Then, he rose up on his toes, his shoulders squared, thumped the podium, and perorated in a voice that was thunder, "Mr. Speaker, from the Knesset of Israel, I say to the world, our very existence per se is our right to exist!" A spontaneous applause rose from the benches. Many got to their feet in full-throated acclaim. It was a stirring Knesset moment -- a moment of instinctive self-recognition affirming that, though the State of Israel was then but 29 years old, its roots in Eretz Yisrael ran 4,000 years deep. Three weeks later, the very same issue cropped up once more when Prime Minister Begin first met President Jimmy Carter in the White House. As their encounter drew to a close, the president handed the premier a piece of heavy bond White House stationary on which the formal communiqué to be released in their name was drafted. "I trust this will meet with your approval," said Carter in his reedy Georgian voice. Begin ran his eye over the one-page text, and said, "Totally acceptable, Mr. President, but for one sentence." Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, an unruffled man as a rule, who had invested much effort in drafting the document, became momentarily agitated. After a year at the job, he had perfected a manner of drafting such joint statements designed to convey as little meaning as possible. "And what might that be?" he asked. "Please delete the sentence that reads, 'The United States affirms Israel's inherent right to exist.'" President Carter's steely pale-blue eyes flared in surprise. "It would be incompatible with my responsibilities as president of the United States were I to omit this commitment to your country," he said. "To the best of my knowledge, every Israeli prime minister has asked for this public pledge." "I sincerely appreciate your sentiment, Mr. President," said Mr. Begin, his tone deeply reflective, as if reaching down into generations of memory, "but it would be equally incompatible with my responsibilities as prime minister of Israel were I not to ask you to erase that sentence." "But why?" "Because our Jewish State needs no American affirmation of our right to exist. Our Hebrew Bible established that right millennia ago. Never, throughout the centuries, did we ever abandon or forfeit that right. Therefore, sir, we alone, the Jewish people -- no one else -- are responsible for our country's right to exist." So yes, Menachem Begin would, indeed, have had what to say to Ehud Olmert, were he around today. Never would he have put on the table a demand for recognition of Israel's right to exist as a quid pro quo for negotiation. To him, this was a high ideological principle, a fundamental axiom, an absolute given, a natural corollary of his all-embracing view of Jewry's extraordinary history. Ehud, take it out. Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.ca |
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THOUGHTS ABOUT ISLAM
Posted by Israel Nacham, November 5, 2006. |
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Throughout my life, I have made contact with members of the Muslim faith, and have noticed that so much of their religious practice and beliefs reflect what appears to be, a copy or a distorted representation of our Jewish religion and practices. For example, Their Halal coincides with our Kosher observance, except that they do not confine to fish with scales and fins. They indulge in prawns crayfish etc. They avoid pork like we do, but do they religiously get rid of all blood from the meat by salting the way we do? When discussing the slaughter of animals with a Shochet on a particular occasion, he disclosed to me that, at the abattoir where he works in close proximity with a Moslem doing a similar operation, he had occasion to inspect his knife, and was appalled at its bluntness. Besides, he also observed that they slaughter animals which through various infection would never pass for kosher. The Muslims practice circumcision. Are they as strict about the 8 day observance? Their fast of Ramadan. Is this a replica of sorts, of our Yom Kippur? Our religious women wear a special hair piece. The Muslim women wear attire that virtually hides their whole face except for peepholes for the eyes. The obvious reason being that they should not attract the attention of other men. They bury their dead with as little delay as possible. I heard a sermon by a Muslim cleric on the radio, refer to the fact that a man should not visit the home of a married women when her husband is away. This coincides with our Jewish practice. I suppose one could continue ad idem with examples of so much more that I am not aware of. My conclusion. I would admire their continuous practice of their replicated religion with their fanaticism, if only they would inject into their prayers and daily observance, a loud and convincing objection to the terrorism committed by their fellow Muslims in so many areas of the world. To mention the 911 incident in the USA, the bombing of a passenger train, their attempts at blowing up airoplanes carrying thousands of passengers, and so many other attrocities around the world. Surely, if Mahomed their Prophet became acquainted with our Torah teachings, and decided in his wisdom to promote a new religion, He should have followed one of the vital commandments, THOU SHALT NOT KILL. I am given to understand that there is a so-called SURA in the Koran which stated specifically that "one day the Rocks and the trees will speak and point out where Jews are hiding so that they can be found and killed." If what I have written has any merit and reflects the truth, why has the rest of humanity, the Christians, Catholics, Budists, Jews and all other religions including the moderate Muslims not drawn attention to the parallels of our religious beliefs, and the unbelievable intolerance by Muslims of the Jewish People. My question is, are the followers of the religion of Islam, worried about the exposure to the world that they in fact are practicing, in a distorted manner, the practice of Judaism? I would appreciate some comment on the thoughts I have expressed, Contact Israel Nacham by email at iti20150@mweb.co.za. |
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PRISONERS OF ZION
Posted by Miguel Stroe, November 5, 2006. |
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Please help Daniel Pinner, who was sentenced to a further six to fourteen months of jail even though the 'judge' recognized that it was only the presumed injured gazan arab that accused him and later gave a different description there was no proof presented by the prosecution that linked Daniel's shooting in the air in self defense to the arab's leg injury! You can help Daniel in the following ways: donations to his canteen and to his legal expenses. Donations to help maintain his household rent and utility expenses and the care of his dog. Please stay tuned to e-mail notices concerning how and where you can donate. In the meantime you can write letters of support to Daniel in Hebrew or in English, to: Daniel Pinner, Political Prisoner
He can also receive magazines at this address, Mishpacha, Time, Readers Digest, postcards, cartoons (no books unfortunately) Shmuel Zetham (Jeffrey Seath), a new immigrant and convert-in-progress to Judaism (arrived in march this year withdogs he trained for the Jewish Legion) from North Carolina to Tapuach. He is currently being held in Shikma prison in Ashkelon on the charge of possession of a hunting rifle (without the proper Israeli permits) in his lift. Other paraphernalia connected with the rifle were also found. Since June Shmuel has been held, first in the Russian compound in Jerusalem and Haifa's Kishon Prison, and currently in Shikma, without bail and without being granted house arrest (after unsuccessful appealing to the 'supreme court'). Shmuel, the son of a Jewish father (and Holocaust survivor) and a Cherokee mother, was born 36 years ago and raised in North Carolina's "hill and still" country. He has several siblings and his mother in N. Carolina (his father is deceased). He is down to earth and sincere, with a firm commitment to Judaism and the Jewish people. He is not a Jewish "terrorist" (a term invented by the 'government' of Israel for those Jews who are loyal to the Land of Israel and to the Jewish People). He is alone in Israel, not yet knowing Hebrew and with no family here to help him out or visit him- just his friends. Shmuel is anxious to get this whole sorry chapter of his life behind him and is eager to get on with his conversion, and most of all, with the purpose of his aliyah-to help Am Israel as much as he is able. He admitted bringing in the rifle, with which he sincerely intended to help defend his country and his people from the enemy, and is even willing to donate it to the army. At issue is not whether he actually smuggled the rifle, but his motivation to do so. The prosecution, without any proof whatsoever, claims that he brought the gun to kill arabs, and this is apparently the argument they will use in his upcoming trial, due to begin in Haifa on monday, 22 Marcheshvan/november 13. (This prosecution is by a 'government' that just transferred 3000 M-16 rifles and 1000000 bullets to the PLO/P.A. terrorist entity!!!) Here is how you can help Shmuel:
Letters to Shmuel:
Those in Israel who can attend his trial should do so at Haifa district court (contact Dina Moskowitz for details, dinamoskowitz@yahoo.com) Contact Miguel Stroe at jmstr@netvision.net.il |
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WHY ISRAEL WILL GO TO WAR AGAIN -- SOON
Posted by Michael Mgr, November 5, 2006. |
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This was written by John Keegan, Military Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph -UK (www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion). It appeared November 3, 2006. |
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There will soon be another war in the Middle East, this time a renewal of the conflict between the Israel Defence Force (IDF) and Hizbollah. The conflict is inevitable and unavoidable. It will come about because Israel cannot tolerate the rebuilding of Hizbollah's fortified zone in south Lebanon, from which last year it launched its missile bombardment of northern Israel. Hizbollah has now reconstructed the fortified zone and is replenishing its stocks of missiles there. Hamas is also creating a fortified zone in the Gaza Strip and building up its stocks of missiles. Israel, therefore, faces missile attack on two fronts. When the Israel general staff decides the threat has become intolerable, it will strike. What happened in south Lebanon earlier this year has been widely misunderstood, largely because the anti-Israel bias in the international media led to the situation being misreported as an Israeli defeat. It was no such thing. It was certainly an Israeli setback, but the idea that the IDF had suddenly lost its historic superiority over its Arab enemies and that they had acquired military qualities that had hitherto eluded them was quite false. Hizbollah suffered heavy losses in the fighting, perhaps as many as 1,000 killed out of its strength of up to 5,000 and it is only just now recovering. What allowed Hizbollah to appear successful was its occupation of the bunker-and-tunnel system that it had constructed since June 2000, when the IDF gave up its presence in south Lebanon, which it had occupied since 1982. Although the IDF had got into south Lebanon, the casualties it had suffered in entering the fortified zone had alarmed the government and high command, since Israel's tiny population is acutely vulnerable to losses in battle. Israel's plan was to destroy Hizbollah's tunnels and bunkers, but the sending of a United Nations intervention force did not allow the destruction to be completed before the IDF was forced to withdraw. Tunnel systems have played a crucial part in many modern campaigns, without attracting much attention. That is a serious oversight. The success of the Viet Cong in sustaining its war effort in Vietnam in 1968-72 depended heavily on its use of the so-called War Zone B, a complex of deep tunnels and underground bases north of Saigon, which had been begun during the war against the French in 1946-55. War Zone B provided the Viet Cong with a permanent base of refuge and resupply that proved effectively invulnerable even against a determined American effort to destroy it. War Zone B has now become a major tourist attraction to Western visitors to Vietnam. In its time, however, War Zone B was very far from being a holiday facility: it assured the survival of the Viet Cong close to Saigon and their ability to mount operations against the government forces and the Americans. Hizbollah, either by mimicry or on its own account, has now begun to employ a tunnel and underground base strategy against Israel. It was for that reason it was able to confront Israeli armoured forces in south Lebanon earlier this year. The adoption of a tunnel strategy has allowed Hizbollah to wage asymmetric warfare against Israel's previously all-conquering armoured forces. The tunnel system is also impervious to attack by the Israeli Air Force. Since Israel's reason for existence is to provide a secure base for the Jewish people, and that of the IDF is to act as their shield and safeguard - functions that have been carried out with high success since 1948 -- it is obvious that neither can tolerate a zone of invulnerability occupied by a sworn enemy located directly on Israel's northern border. It is therefore an easy prediction to foresee that the IDF will -- at some time in the near future -- reopen its offensive against Hizbollah in south Lebanon and will not cease until it has destroyed the underground system, even if, in the process, it inflicts heavy damage on the towns and villages of the region. It is likely that it will also move against the underground system being constructed in the Gaza Strip. Hamas resupplies itself with arms and munitions brought from Egypt through those channels. Gaza is a softer target than south Lebanon, since it is an enclave that Israel easily dominates. Indeed, the IDF may attack Gaza as a distraction from south Lebanon in an effort to make Hizbollah divide its forces and efforts. Destroying the underground military facilities may be straightforward, but it is likely to create diplomatic complexities, particularly with the UN. Entering south Lebanon risks provoking a clash with Unifil, the major part of whose strength is provided by France. It is unlikely that such a risk will deter Israel. When national survival is at risk, Israel behaves with extreme ruthlessness. It attacked an American communications ship during the Six-Day War because it objected to America listening in to its most secret signals. [IMRA: The Liberty was attacked by mistake. See www.adl.org/Israel/uss.asp for a review of the facts] The big question hanging over an Israeli return to south Lebanon is whether that would provoke a war with Syria, Lebanon's Arab protector. The answer is quite possibly yes, but that such an extension of hostilities might prove welcome both to Israel and to the United States, which regards Syria as Iran's advanced post on the Mediterranean shore. What is certain is that -- probably before the year is out -- Israel will have struck at Hizbollah in south Lebanon. And the strike will come even sooner if Hizbollah reopens its missile bombardment of northern Israel from its underground systems. Contact the poster at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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"GET" THE JEWS
Posted by Rabbi Yehoshua Friedman, November 5, 2006. |
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"Fret not yourself because of evildoers. Neither be you envious against them who work unrighteousness. For they shall soon wither like the grass. And fade as the green herb. Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the Land (of Israel), and cherish faithfulness. So shall you delight yourself in the Lord, and He shall give you the petitions of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust also in Him, and He will bring it to pass. And He will make your righteousness to go forth as the light, and your right as the noonday". [Tehillim/Psalm 27:1-6] The August, 2005 Gush Katif Expulsion of 10,000 Jewish Pioneering Jewish men, women and children -- together with the destruction of their homes, farms and businesses, followed by the Philistine burning and bulldozing of their synagogues (while the "international community" was either silent or privately laughing with glee) -- was conducted by Ariel Sharon to keep himself out of jail. That is why Sharon did it. Let no one think, however, that the Israeli Left cared whether Sharon went to jail or not. The real reason why the Israeli Left supported Sharon's Gush Katif Expulsion was recently given by Yair Lapid (son of Tommy Lapid of now defunct Shinui/"Change" Party "fame"). The Israeli Left supported the Gush Katif Expulsion, according to Tommy Lapid son Yair, to 'get the Jews', i.e. the national-religious and Jewish Pioneering ("settler") community in the Land of Israel. This was a classic internal Jewish version of an anti-Semitic pogrom (first conducted by Pharaoh in Egypt) intended to reduce Jews to their "natural size". It never works. Next the pogromniks escalate to real genocide. That too seems to work for a while. However, as Hans Frank of accursed memory, lawyer by profession and military governor of Nazi-occupied Poland, wrote, if even a few rabbis and teachers of Talmud escape, they will start the whole "thing" over again. To give the Devil his due, Frank was right. The Gush Katif Expulsion DID succeed in repressing the faithful Jewish community -- partially and temporarily -- except that Elazar Stern now wonders where he will get cannon fodder ("soldiers") for his next war. Stern need not worry. N.A.T.O. troops will soon be "protecting" Israel. Stern, Lapid and many Israeli politicians will most likely work for the Judenrat/Vichy Israel "government" in N.A.T.O.-occupied Israel. Yet that, too, will end. Read Psalm 37 intensively to find out why. The wicked DO prosper in the short run, but the righteous are eventually victorious. Unlike the wicked, the righteous engage in acts of hesed (acts of kindness). The wicked, who step on too many people on the way up, should not expect to receive much kindness on their way down. The Israeli Left desperately needs the religious and Jewish Pioneering ("settler") communities because we represent the remaining connection to their shrunken Jewish roots. On the other hand, the religious and Jewish Pioneering communities do NOT need the Israeli Left. The Israeli Left does NOT represent the People of Israel, they merely manipulate the People. Demographics show that "secular" (not-yet-religiously observant) Israel is not reproducing itself any more than are "secular" Europe and America. The future will be a face-off between different groups of "believers" (Jews/Christians/Muslims/Hindus/Buddhists/etc.). We will either have to fight to an ultimate victory by one side or another or else learn to live together (traditional Judaism provides a way to do this, through common human faith in G-d and observance of His Noahide Covenant and Laws, together with honoring His Land, Torah and People Covenants with Israel, as does the Muslim Qur'an). The ultra-"secular" Israeli (current) opinion molders will cease to exist once we stop buying their newspapers and turn off their television programming. Forever. We will also stop buying their commercial junk food which is imported or produced by local affiliates of multinational corporations. We will live healthier lives for much less money. We will stop taking aid (Economic A.I.D.s) money from the United States to buy American weapons and will take full responsibility for our own defense. The Warren Buffets of this world buy into commercial Israel because it is a good deal. In the future they also will buy into spiritual Israel because it is an infinitely better deal. "From out of Zion will come forth Torah, and the Word of the L-rd from Jerusalem". [Yeshayahu/Isaiah 2:3] Contact Rabbi Friedman at friedy07@netvision.net.il. This was distributed by Root and Branch Association, Ltd (rb@rb.org.il). |
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MUSLIMS USE WOMEN AS "HUMAN SHIELDS"
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, November 5, 2006. | |
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Would any American, European or Israeli man call for his wife, mother, sister or daughter to come into a fire-fight and stand as human shields to protect male terrorists? The Arab Muslim Palestinians think nothing of using women, children, the elderly as "human shields". These are the great macho Muslim men who take such pride in their self-perceived masculinity. They not only called up their women as a shield but, to bring them women's dresses to disguise themselves and escape within the crowd of women. Worse yet, after they became females some of the escaping terrorists fired their weapons from the crowd of women, drawing fire from the Israelis who were after the terrorists using the mosque as a hiding place. The Israelis return fire struck the crowd of women who were shielding the escaping male terrorists, killing two women and injured some 10 others. What heroic figures, what role models for their children. Would you hide behind the skirts of your mother, wife, sisters or daughters so you could escape? I recall how Ayatollah Khomeini in his war with Iraq, sent children to run across the Iraqi mine-fields so the Iranian soldiers might cross safely. But, not to worry, Khomeini gave them slips of paper that told the children that they would soon be in Muslim warriors' heaven. Of course, many did not die but, merely had their limbs blown off so they could live the rest of their lives as maimed cripples. There were many other instances where the heroic Muslims used their civilians as "Human Shields". In their several wars with Israel many of the Arab adversaries such as Egypt, Syria, the Arab Muslim Palestinians under Yassir Arafat in Lebanon, used to place their anti-aircraft guns on the roofs of schools, hospitals and civilian apartment buildings. The ground-to-air missile batteries were too heavy and hard to re-load so some missile batteries were actually placed in school yards at ground level. When they were hit by Israeli aircraft, the Muslims would bleat and howl about how the "inhuman Israelis were killing their children and blowing up their hospitals". In the recent attacks by the Hezb'Allah from Lebanon, they indiscriminately launched their Kassam Rockets against any Israeli city their missiles could reach. Many of the launchers were pre-positioned in Arab civilians' houses, apartment buildings, schools and hospitals. The Katyusha launchers were on wheels and kept in the living room of the apartments. When they were ready to fire, they rolled the Katyusha launcher out onto the balcony, fired and then withdrew back into the apartment. This, of course, made both the apartment and the whole building, inhabited by civilians, a must-hit target. As for the so-called civilians, they either cheered their guests who were family to them or had little choice in hosting the Hezb'Allah shooters. In South Lebanon the Hezb'Allah were funded, supplied and trained by Iran and Syria. Iran and Syria are still smuggling weapons across the border from Iran through Syria under the eyes of the MNF (Multi-National Force). In South Lebanon, the Hebz'Allah dug tunnels, built bunkers, loaded those bunkers with Katyusha missiles often within a few hundred feet of the soldiers of UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Forces In Lebanon). They only reported back to Kofi Annan of the U.N. Sadly, the UNIFIL and now the MNF acted as silent partners to Hezb'Allah pretending to be impartial Peacekeepers. The presence of U.N. "Peacekeepers" would keep Israel from shooting back at Hezb'Allah near UNIFIL or MNF outposts. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. When Israel was forced to shell an area from where the Katyusha rockets were being launched and hit a UNIFIL post, Kofi Annan and the pro-Arab U.N. threw a fit and voted condemnation. They never voted condemnation of the Lebanese Government who were supposed to put their army at the Lebanese-Israeli border, disarm and disband Hezb'Allah -- preventing them from attacking Israel. But, they never did. Terrorists would slip past UNIFIL positions to cross into Israel but, were never stopped or challenged by UNIFIL. IF the terrorists were successful in a terrorist attack, they merely slipped back past the UNIFIL soldiers with a wink and a nod. Of course, the UNIFIL soldiers could not resist a cash bribe, always denied by Kofi Annan. That "History Spin" is already being written by the Left and Liberal Media as they cast the terrorists as some sort of heroes for escaping the mosque they hid in behind a shield of women and then they demonize Israel for chasing these "poor, innocent Muslim Islamists". The firing of Kassam Rockets is reported as a matter of fact but, not a very important event. The "Spin" is that the reader is to accept Arab Terror and firing of missiles at Israeli civilians as kind of a naturally expected custom of Arabs so don't think too much about it. But, according to the Media and some in the Washington Administration, for Israel to attack for retribution is both unnecessary and the use of excessive force.
Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net |
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ANTI-SEMITIC PA CHAIRMAN MAHMOUD ABBAS CANNOT BE A PARTNER TO ANY PEACE PROCESS
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 5, 2006. |
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Al-Hayat Al-Jadida's publications spews anti-Semitism. Al-Hayat Al-Jadida is under the complete control of the office of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Last month USA Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised Abbas: "We have great admiration for you and your leadership...you have the strong support of the US and a personal commitment from President George Bush" (AP, October 5, 2006). Israeli-Jewish foreign minister Tzipi Livni thinks that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is the peace-making "star-dove." If the equation is correct, then USA Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice supports anti-Semitism and Livni will give Abbas the other cheek for another shameful insult. This comes from October 3, 2006 Arutz-Sheva (www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=114733) and is called "PA Daily: Jews Fan Flames of Evil, Provoke Wars, Control World." It was written by IsraelNN Staff. |
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The official Palestinian Authority (PA) newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida published an anti-Semitic article last week that included many classic anti-Semitic libels along with some modern "updates." Palestinian Media Watch (http://www.pmw.org.il/) reports that the themes in the October 23 article included: * Jews start wars, including the war in Iraq, to promote Jews' power and control In the article, Muhammad Khalifa, columnist from the United Arab Emirates, argues that the US is planning to control the world from a single central government in New York. The Jews, he says, control every key element in US policy, including the stock market, the media and international finance. They have used their "custom" of starting international wars to cement this US control, according to the PA daily. The Jews, says Khalifa, started the war in Iraq as the first step to "force the other Arab nations to voluntarily surrender to their will." But this tactic will ultimately fail, he says, leading to World War III and the end of Western culture. The PA paper has also launched a new spate of anti-American cartoons. In an October 20, 2006 cartoon, the US is portrayed as a menacing threat to the Arab world. America and Al Qaeda have sent the Grim Reaper, who is shown surrounded by piles of Arab skulls in Iraq, yet already searching for his next victims.
Another Oct 20 cartoon portrays Uncle Sam dominating the world
The third cartoon continues the PA's active support of Saddam Hussein and the insurgency in Iraq. It focuses on America's high losses in the past month by replacing the stars of the American flag with skulls, while Uncle Sam stares at the flag and cries.
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, which published these hate cartoons, is
under the complete control of the office of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised Abbas last month: "We
have great admiration for you and your leadership... You have the
strong support of the US and a personal commitment from President
George Bush" (AP, October 5, 2006).
Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com
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VANITY FAIR'S SICKENING PUFF PIECE ON HANIYEH
Posted by Cinnamon Stillwell, November 4, 2006. |
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In recent years, I've read more romanticized profiles of terrorist leaders in the mainstream media than I'd care to admit. But Vanity Fair's sickening puff piece on Palestinian prime minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh takes the cake. Authored by David Margolick and titled, "The Most Dangerous Job in
Gaza," As usual, all of Israel's military actions are described in a vacuum, with little to no context as to what prompted them. That would be the ongoing war of extermination against Israel on the part of the Palestinians and the Muslim world as a whole. For instance, Israel's justifiable military response in Gaza to the kidnapping of IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit, not to mention the years of violence and provocation that preceded it, is painted as (horror of horrors!) nothing more than an attempt to rid the world of the Hamas regime. As Margolick puts it: When Palestinian militants from Hamas and two other groups killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped a third, Corporal Gilad Shalit, in late June, it seemed like a minor skirmish, at least in the context of Middle Eastern carnage. But,in a land of such deep hatreds and hair-trigger sensitivities, the strike quickly prompted an enormous Israeli assault on beleaguered Gaza, ostensibly to free the abducted soldier and stop Palestinian rocket fire, but really to cripple, if not topple, the Hamas regime altogether. Get out the hanky and the violin because I think I feel a sob story coming on. Indeed, it just gets worse. Here's how Margolick describes Israel's military actions in Lebanon in response to the Hezbollah-orchestrated kidnappings of two more of its soldiers: Two weeks later, the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah staged a similar cross-border attack...It, too, prompted a colossal Israeli counterattack, one that devastated Lebanon and threatened an even wider war involving the two principal backers of the radical Islamic groups: Iran and Syria. And here I thought Iran and Syria's backing of Hezbollah's actions were what "threatened an even wider war" not Israel's response. Silly me. The article goes on to do the usual handwringing over the fate of the much-anticipated Palestinian state without any mention of the fact that its failure lies in the hands of its own people. The very same people who elected, as Margolick proudly puts it, "Haniyeh, one of those rare democratically elected Arab prime ministers." He laments the rubble of Gaza, which, as he describes it, is "only moved, never cleared away." Perhaps if the Palestinians were interested in actually creating a viable society instead of simply destroying Israel, the rubble would be cleared away, much as it is in Israel immediately following one of the many terrorist attacks on its people. But that's too much of a leap of logic for Margolick, yet another weepy western dupe to the Palestinian "cause," to make. Instead, to quote a former column of my own, he extends his misguided sympathies to tyrants and terrorists. Suddenly, Better Homes & Gardens' glowing profile of Adolph Hitler in 1938 (http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/988039/posts) makes a lot of sense. Cinnamon Stillwell is a political columnist for SFGate.com (San Francisco Chronicle online) and contributing editor to FamilySecurityMatters.org. She has also contributed to Frontpage Magazine, Campus Watch, The American Thinker, Accuracy In Media, Newsbusters, Israel National News, J-Weekly, ChronWatch, Intellectual Conservative, Think-Israel and others. She is a contributing blogger to Kesher Talk and a frequent guest on talk radio. Her perspective is that of a former liberal turned post-9/11 conservative. Contact her at cinnamon@CinnamonStillwell.com This article appeared today on her website and is archived at
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ISRAEL'S ENCIRCLEMENT
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 4, 2006. | |
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Friends, This is alarming beyond any nightmare. Serious help is needed. As usual Caroline Glick is nothing less than insightful making it very clear how dangerous and fragile Israel's security has become. Read her article below. The current government has done what Israel has always refused to allow to happen, leave its destiny in other people's hands, the presence of foreign troops to protect its safety. These troops would tie Israel's hands when she needs to defend herself. Caroline Glick is now reporting about the serious and ominous signs of words and actions by UNIFIL troops. These troops are French and Germans the countries that compromised Israel's security and Egyptian troops PM Olmert acquiesced to deploy on Israel's southern border. If that is not enough, Olmert is now considering allowing Palestinians troops to be transferred from the West Bank to Gaza. At this rate, does Iran need nuclear weapons to destroy Israel? They need not bother. Please call and write to Washington and your local Israeli Embassy/Consulate. The White House fax: 202-456 2461
TALKING POINTS: (1) Israel's border incidents with Hamas are creating a clear in real time danger to Israel and world peace; (2) Israel got into this mess, by its willingness to appease the USA and perhaps the Arab and/or the Islamic world, thus sacrificed its own security; (3) No other western government would allow this to happen to them -- what is with outside powerful governments telling Israel what is best for her? (4) The USA must stop pressuring Israel in public and behind close doors. It is clear the world took advantage of a new, inexperience Israeli government, run by a naive group of politicians that do not understand how to govern, to fight a war and to stand up to their foes and make a case in favor of with their allies. These are the letters I sent.
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Last week Iran began enriching uranium in a second network of centrifuges. Just as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dropped nearly all pretenses about his intention to achieve nuclear weapons, so too he makes it clear daily that he intends to use such weapons to annihilate Israel. The world's reaction to Iran's behavior is depressingly instructive. Russia tells us that we are being paranoid and continues to build the Bushehr nuclear plant. The Europeans cluck disapprovingly and threaten to pass a weak, "reversible" sanctions resolution in the UN Security Council whose main target is American security hawks. For his part, US President George W. Bush continues to adhere to the call for sanctions. And so we have Israel. With Iran speeding up its program, Israel may have as little as six months to launch a strike on its nuclear facilities before they can start churning out atomic bombs. Unfortunately, at this critical moment in Israel's history, we are led by Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz and Tzipi Livni. Although Olmert claims that he is taking every step to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, through his government's actions in recent months, he has steadily undercut the IDF's ability to take decisive action against Iran. Over the past two and a half months, the Olmert government has deliberately and willingly enabled Israel's encirclement by hostile forces. Deployed along Israel's northern and southern borders, these forces constrict Israel's ability to maneuver, and prevent the IDF from taking preventative actions against Iran's proxies in Lebanon and Gaza thus increasing the risks that Israel will face in the event that action is taken against Iran's nuclear facilities and constraining Israel's ability to stealthily launch any attack. Nearly 10,000 French-commanded UNIFIL troops today protect Hizbullah in south Lebanon. And increasingly, they do so while provoking Israel. Last week two incidents took place between German naval forces and the IAF. Last Tuesday and Thursday IAF jets were scrambled when a German naval helicopter entered Israeli airspace after taking off from a German naval ship off Rosh Hanikra without permission or prior coordination. What is most remarkable about the story is its repetition. Last Tuesday the German helicopter elicited a strong Israeli response. Rather than desist from provoking the IAF, the Germans repeated their action on Thursday. So what could have been viewed as a regrettable incident was transformed into a provocation. Germany's hostile behavior is par for the course with UNIFIL. Two weeks ago French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie called the IAF's overflights of Lebanese airspace "extremely dangerous," and threatened that France's forces in Lebanon were liable to fire on the IAF flights "because they may be felt as hostile by forces of the coalition." By word and deed, UNIFIL forces are making clear that they view the IDF, not Hizbullah as their enemy. As they increase their provocations against Israel, UNIFIL forces turn a blind eye to weapons being smuggled daily to Hizbullah from Syria. Were Israel to attempt to take action against Hizbullah or Syria to prevent them from attacking in anticipation of an Israeli strike on Iran, there can be little doubt how UNIFIL would respond. AND THERE is little that Israel today can do about UNIFIL. Olmert and Livni have been UNIFIL's most enthusiastic cheerleaders. They expended Israel's political capital convincing these hostile forces to perch themselves at our border. They then promised the Israeli public that the French would protect us. They are not in a position today to make demands. And then there is Egypt. Over the weekend, Egypt announced that it was deploying 5,000 troops (or "police" forces) along its border with the Gaza Strip in northern Sinai. The deployment was necessary, Egypt announced, to prevent Israel mounting a serious operation against the massive weapons smuggling that is quickly providing Palestinian terrorists with the means to transform Gaza into south Lebanon. The fact that Egypt wishes to prevent Israel from stemming the flow of weapons to Gaza -- which Egypt itself is supposed to be cutting off -- should tell us all we need to know about Egypt's intentions. But apparently the government and Southern Command weren't listening. Sunday, Defense Minister Amir Peretz denied that Egyptian forces had been deployed along the border. An IDF commander in the Southern Command strangely expressed satisfaction at Egypt's move arguing that with the larger force Egypt would finally take action to prevent the arms transfers. The Foreign Ministry assured the public that the peace treaty with Egypt allows Cairo to deploy an unlimited number of "policemen" in the Sinai. It is hard to decide which is more frightening, Egypt's move or Israel's response to it. As MK Yuval Steinitz, former chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee explains, Egypt's sudden decision to deploy a massive force along the border is a strategic threat of the first order to Israel. "Egypt," he explains, "is taking advantage of the weakness and incompetence of the government." Over the past decade, Egypt has been assiduously preparing its military for war against Israel. From the ideological indoctrination of its forces, to its massive armament programs, to the relocation of its military installations, units and logistical bases to both sides of the Suez Canal, to the training of its troops to fight "an unnamed country on Egypt's northern border," Steinitz warns that Egypt has done more than Iran to ready its forces for war against Israel. Rather than protest Egypt's actions, successive Israeli governments have swallowed whole Egypt's strategic deception. Egypt protests friendship and pretends to combat terrorism and prevent weapons smuggling into the Sinai. Yet under this friendly guise, Egypt has legitimized Palestinian terrorists and stood behind the massive weapons smuggling operations. As Steinitz puts it, "Egypt is to Palestinian terrorism what Syria is to Hizbullah. "The weapons to the Palestinians are brought in through Egyptian ports and El-Arish and are imported by land from Sudan. Those latter imports have to traverse Egypt on their way to Gaza. There is no way that the Egyptian government is not colluding with the weapons shippers." AS STEINITZ notes, over the past eight months the weapons being shipped to Gaza have been sharply upgraded. Egypt today is overseeing the import of sophisticated anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, as well as upgraded Katyusha rockets to Palestinian terror groups. And now Mubarak is sending 5,000 "policemen to the border." As Steinitz notes, Israel has no way of knowing who these forces are, whether they are police or commandos or infantry or anti-aircraft units. He warns that, "If Israel does nothing to prevent their deployment today, there is no reason to doubt that in a year or two there will be tens of thousands of Egyptian troops along the border with Israel." As Steinitz notes, not only does every single Egyptian soldier deployed along the border have a job to do in time of war, today they are perched along the border with the Negev, where, as the government turns its back on them and the IDF applauds their deployment, they are within striking distance of some of the IDF's most important military bases and strategic installations. Since 1993, Israel's leftist governments have consistently followed a strategy of transferring responsibility for our national security to our enemies. First it was Yasser Arafat who was supposed to fight Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Now it is his deputy Mahmoud Abbas, UNIFIL and Mubarak who are all supposed to fight Israel's enemies. Far from learning from our bloody experience that our enemies have no interest in protecting us, in recent months, the Olmert government has expanded tenfold our reliance on our enemies. As if having hostile Europeans guarding genocidal Iranian proxies in the north, and hostile Egyptians guarding and arming genocidal Palestinians in the south weren't enough, Sunday it was reported that the Olmert government is considering allowing thousands of armed PLO terrorists from the Badr Brigade in Jordan to relocate to Gaza. It doesn't have to be this way. Although barring a major Hizbullah provocation, it isn't clear what Israel can do against the UNIFIL forces now enabling Hizbullah to rearm, Israel can still prevent the Egyptian deployment. If the government loudly protested the move and publicly requested the Bush administration order Egypt to remove its forces, Mubarak would do so. But in light of the Olmert government's mishandling of every military challenge Israel has faced since it came to power just six month ago, it is hard to imagine it will act responsibly. But really, we don't have to worry. Olmert won't let Iran get nuclear weapons. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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WHAT'S IN IT TO THE US IN ITS TIES WITH ISRAEL?
Posted by Yoram Ettinger, November 4, 2006. |
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Jack Rains, a Houston-based friend, attorney and mediator, has shared with me the enclosed document, which highlights -- in a very creative manner -- an important aspect of the Win-Win relations between the US and Israel. Enjoy it, and may US and Israel leaders follow the leadership tenets of Abraham ("the sublime father" in Hebrew), the hero of this week's portion of the Torah: Faith, Defiance of Odds, Gratitude, Humility, Determination, Compassion and the Centrality of the Land of Israel (Abraham's Road Map focused on Nablus, Beth El and Hebron), |
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"OK. So I understand that you are ticked off at Israel, and in love with the Palestinians. That's fine with me, as long as you have truly weighed up all the facts. So, you want to boycott Israel? I'll be sorry to miss you, but if you are doing it -- do it properly. Let me help you. Check all your medications. Make sure that you do not have tablets, drops, lotions, etc., made by Abic or Teva. It may mean that you will suffer from colds and flu this winter but, hey, that's a small price for you to pay in your campaign against Israel, isn't it? While we are on the subject of your Israeli boycott, and the medical contributions to the world made by Israeli doctors and scientists, how about telling your pals to boycott the following... An Israeli company has developed a simple blood test that distinguishes between mild and more severe cases of Multiple Sclerosis. So, if you know anyone suffering from MS, tell them to ignore the Israeli patent that may, more accurately, diagnose their symptoms. An Israeli-made device helps restore the use of paralyzed hands. This device electrically stimulates the hand muscles, providing hope to millions of stroke sufferers and victims of spinal injuries. If you wish to remove this hope of a better quality of life to these people, go ahead and boycott Israel. Young children with breathing problems will soon be sleeping more soundly, thanks to a new Israeli device called the Child Hood. This innovation replaces the inhalation mask with an improved drug delivery system that provides relief for child and parent. Please tell anxious mothers that they shouldn't use this device because of your passionate cause. These are just a few examples of how people have benefited medically from the Israeli know-how you wish to block. Boycotts often affect research. A new research center in Israel hopes to throw light on brain disorders such as depression and Alzheimer's disease. The Joseph Sangol Neuroscience Center in the Sheba Medical Center at Tel HaShomer Hospital, aims to bring thousands of scientists and doctors to focus on brain research. A researcher at Israel's Ben Gurion University has succeeded in creating human monoclonal antibodies which can neutralize the highly contagious smallpox virus without inducing the dangerous side effects of the existing vaccine. Two Israelis received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Doctors Ciechanover and Hershko's research and discovery of one of the human cells most important cyclical processes will lead the way to DNA repair, control of newly produced proteins, and immune defense systems. The Movement Disorder Surgery program at Israel's Hadassah Medical Center has successfully eliminated the physical manifestations of Parkinson's disease in a select group of patients with a deep brain stimulation technique. For women who undergo hysterectomies each year for the treatment of uterine fibroids, the development in Israel of the Ex Ablate 2000 System is a welcome breakthrough, offering a noninvasive alternative to surgery. Israel is developing a nose drop that will provide a five year flu vaccine. These are just a few of the projects that you can help stop with your Israeli boycott. But let's not get too obsessed with my ducal research, there are other ways you can make a personal sacrifice with your anti-Israel boycott. Most of Windows operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel. So, set a personal example. Throw away your computer! Computers should have a sign attached saying Israel Inside. The Pentium NMX Chip technology was designed at Intel in Israel. Both the Pentium 4 microprocessor and the Centrum processor were entirely designed, developed, and produced in Israel. Voice mail technology was developed in Israel. The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 in Israel by four young Israeli whiz kids. Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R. & D. facilities outside the US in Israel. So, due to your complete boycott of anything Israeli, you now have poor health and no computer. But your bad news does not end there. Get rid of your cellular phone. Cell phone technology was also developed in Israel by MOTOROLA which has its biggest development center in Israel. Most of the latest technology in your mobile phone was developed by Israeli scientists. Feeling unsettled? You should be. Part of your personal security rests with Israeli inventiveness, borne out of our urgent necessity to protect and defend our lives from the terrorists you support. A phone can remotely activate a bomb, or be used for tactical communications by terrorists, bank robbers, or hostage-takers. It is vital that official security and law enforcement authorities have access to cellular jamming and detection solutions. Enter Israel's Net line Communications Technologies with their security expertise to help the fight against terror. SO ALL THE NOISE ABOUT THE USA LISTENING TO OUR PRIVATE TELEPHONE CALLS, YOU SHOULD KNOW IT IS ISRAEL WHO IS DOING THE LISTENING FOR US. A joint, nonprofit, venture between Israel and Maryland will result in a 5 day Business Development and Planning Conference next March. Elected Israeli companies will partner with Maryland firms to provide innovation to the US need for homeland security. I also want you to know that Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita -- 109 per 10,000 -- than any other nation. Israel has the highest number of startup companies per rata. In absolute terms, the highest number, except the US. Israel has ratio of patents filed. Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies outside of Silicon Valley. Israel is ranked 2 in the world for venture capital funds, behind the USA. Israel has more museums per capita. Israel has the second highest publication of new books per capita. Relative to population, Israel is the largest immigrant absorbing nation on earth. These immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom or _expression, economic opportunity, and quality of life. Believe it or not, Israel is the only country in the world which had a net gain in the number of trees last year. Even Warren Buffet of Berkshire-Hathaway fame has just invested millions with Israeli Companies. So, you can vilify and demonize the State of Israel. You can continue your silly boycott, if you wish. But I wish you would consider the consequences, and the truth. Think of the massive contribution that Israel is giving to the world, including the Palestinians -- and to you -- in science, medicine, Communications, security. Pro rata for population they are making a greater contribution than any other nation on earth. Contact Yoram Ettinger at http://yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il or by email at yoramtex@netvision.net.il |
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THE FUTURE BELONGS TO ISLAM
Posted by Michael Mgr, November 4, 2006. |
| This was written by Mark Steyn and it appeared in MacLeans. |
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The Muslim world has youth, numbers and global ambitions. The West
is growing old and enfeebled, and lacks the will to rebuff those who
would supplant it. It's the end of the world as we've known it. An
excerpt from 'America Alone'.
Sept. 11, 2001, was not "the day everything changed," but the day that revealed how much had already changed. On Sept. 10, how many journalists had the Council of American-Islamic Relations or the Canadian Islamic Congress or the Muslim Council of Britain in their Rolodexes? If you'd said that whether something does or does not cause offence to Muslims would be the early 21st century's principal political dynamic in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom, most folks would have thought you were crazy. Yet on that Tuesday morning the top of the iceberg bobbed up and toppled the Twin Towers. This is about the seven-eighths below the surface -- the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia and that call into question the future of much of the rest of the world. The key factors are: demographic decline; the unsustainability of the social democratic state; and civilizational exhaustion. Let's start with demography, because everything does: If your school has 200 guys and you're playing a school with 2,000 pupils, it doesn't mean your baseball team is definitely going to lose but it certainly gives the other fellows a big starting advantage. Likewise, if you want to launch a revolution, it's not very likely if you've only got seven revolutionaries. And they're all over 80. But, if you've got two million and seven revolutionaries and they're all under 30 you're in business. For example, I wonder how many pontificators on the "Middle East peace process" ever run this number: The median age in the Gaza Strip is 15.8 years. Once you know that, all the rest is details. If you were a "moderate Palestinian" leader, would you want to try to persuade a nation -- or pseudo-nation -- of unemployed poorly educated teenage boys raised in a UN-supervised European-funded death cult to see sense? Any analysis of the "Palestinian problem" that doesn't take into account the most important determinant on the ground is a waste of time. Likewise, the salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia is that they're running out of babies. What's happening in the developed world is one of the fastest demographic evolutions in history: most of us have seen a gazillion heartwarming ethnic comedies -- My Big Fat Greek Wedding and its ilk -- in which some uptight WASPy type starts dating a gal from a vast loving fecund Mediterranean family, so abundantly endowed with sisters and cousins and uncles that you can barely get in the room. It is, in fact, the inversion of the truth. Greece has a fertility rate hovering just below 1.3 births per couple, which is what demographers call the point of "lowest-low" fertility from which no human society has ever recovered. And Greece's fertility is the healthiest in Mediterranean Europe: Italy has a fertility rate of 1.2, Spain 1.1. Insofar as any citizens of the developed world have "big" families these days, it's the anglo democracies: America's fertility rate is 2.1, New Zealand a little below. Hollywood should be making My Big Fat Uptight Protestant Wedding in which some sad Greek only child marries into a big heartwarming New Zealand family where the spouse actually has a sibling. As I say, this isn't a projection: it's happening now. There's no need to extrapolate, and if you do it gets a little freaky, but, just for fun, here goes: by 2050, 60 per cent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, no uncles. The big Italian family, with papa pouring the vino and mama spooning out the pasta down an endless table of grandparents and nieces and nephews, will be gone, no more, dead as the dinosaurs. As Noel Coward once remarked in another context, "Funiculi, funicula, funic yourself." By mid-century, Italians will have no choice in the matter. Experts talk about root causes. But demography is the most basic root of all. A people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the age we live in. Demographic decline and the unsustainability of the social democratic state are closely related. In America, politicians upset about the federal deficit like to complain that we're piling up debts our children and grandchildren will have to pay off. But in Europe the unaffordable entitlements are in even worse shape: there are no kids or grandkids to stick it to. You might formulate it like this: Age + Welfare = Disaster for you; By "will," I mean the metaphorical spine of a culture. Africa, to take another example, also has plenty of young people, but it's riddled with AIDS and, for the most part, Africans don't think of themselves as Africans: as we saw in Rwanda, their primary identity is tribal, and most tribes have no global ambitions. Islam, however, has serious global ambitions, and it forms the primal, core identity of most of its adherents -- in the Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere. Islam has youth and will, Europe has age and welfare. We are witnessing the end of the late 20th- century progressive welfare democracy. Its fiscal bankruptcy is merely a symptom of a more fundamental bankruptcy: its insufficiency as an animating principle for society. The children and grandchildren of those fascists and republicans who waged a bitter civil war for the future of Spain now shrug when a bunch of foreigners blow up their capital. Too sedated even to sue for terms, they capitulate instantly. Over on the other side of the equation, the modern multicultural state is too watery a concept to bind huge numbers of immigrants to the land of their nominal citizenship. So they look elsewhere and find the jihad. The Western Muslim's pan-Islamic identity is merely the first great cause in a world where globalized pathologies are taking the place of old-school nationalism. For states in demographic decline with ever more lavish social programs, the question is a simple one: can they get real? Can they grow up before they grow old? If not, then they'll end their days in societies dominated by people with a very different world view. Which brings us to the third factor -- the enervated state of the Western world, the sense of civilizational ennui, of nations too mired in cultural relativism to understand what's at stake. As it happens, that third point is closely related to the first two. To Americans, it doesn't always seem obvious that there's any connection between the "war on terror" and the so-called "pocketbook issues" of domestic politics. But there is a correlation between the structural weaknesses of the social democratic state and the rise of a globalized Islam. The state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood -- health care, child care, care of the elderly -- to the point where it's effectively severed its citizens from humanity's primal instincts, not least the survival instinct. In the American context, the federal "deficit" isn't the problem; it's the government programs that cause the deficit. These programs would still be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a cheque to cover them each month. They corrode the citizen's sense of self-reliance to a potentially fatal degree. Big government is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you'll be able to summon the will to rebuff it. We should have learned that lesson on Sept. 11, 2001, when big government flopped big-time and the only good news of the day came from the ad hoc citizen militia of Flight 93. There were two forces at play in the late 20th century: in the Eastern bloc, the collapse of Communism; in the West, the collapse of confidence. One of the most obvious refutations of Francis Fukuyama's famous thesis The End Of History -- written at the victory of liberal pluralist democracy over Soviet Communism -- is that the victors didn't see it as such. Americans -- or at least non-Democrat-voting Americans -- may talk about "winning" the Cold War but the French and the Belgians and Germans and Canadians don't. Very few British do. These are all formal NATO allies -- they were, technically, on the winning side against a horrible tyranny few would wish to live under themselves. In Europe, there was an initial moment of euphoria: it was hard not be moved by the crowds sweeping through the Berlin Wall, especially as so many of them were hot-looking Red babes eager to enjoy a Carlsberg or Stella Artois with even the nerdiest running dog of imperialism. But, when the moment faded, pace Fukuyama, there was no sense on the Continent that our Big Idea had beaten their Big Idea. With the best will in the world, it's hard to credit the citizens of France or Italy as having made any serious contribution to the defeat of Communism. Au contraire, millions of them voted for it, year in, year out. And, with the end of the Soviet existential threat, the enervation of the West only accelerated. In Thomas P. M. Barnett's book Blueprint For Action, Robert D. Kaplan, a very shrewd observer of global affairs, is quoted referring to the lawless fringes of the map as "Indian territory." It's a droll joke but a misleading one. The difference between the old Indian territory and the new is this: no one had to worry about the Sioux riding down Fifth Avenue. Today, with a few hundred bucks on his ATM card, the fellow from the badlands can be in the heart of the metropolis within hours. Here's another difference: in the old days, the white man settled the Indian territory. Now the followers of the badland's radical imams settle the metropolis. And another difference: technology. In the old days, the Injuns had bows and arrows and the cavalry had rifles. In today's Indian territory, countries that can't feed their own people have nuclear weapons. But beyond that the very phrase "Indian territory" presumes that inevitably these badlands will be brought within the bounds of the ordered world. In fact, a lot of today's "Indian territory" was relatively ordered a generation or two back -- West Africa, Pakistan, Bosnia. Though Eastern Europe and Latin America and parts of Asia are freer now than they were in the seventies, other swaths of the map have spiralled backwards. Which is more likely? That the parts of the world under pressure will turn into post-Communist Poland or post-Communist Yugoslavia? In Europe, the demographic pressures favour the latter. The enemies we face in the future will look a lot like al-Qaeda: transnational, globalized, locally franchised, extensively outsourced -- but tied together through a powerful identity that leaps frontiers and continents. They won't be nation-states and they'll have no interest in becoming nation-states, though they might use the husks thereof, as they did in Afghanistan and then Somalia. The jihad may be the first, but other transnational deformities will embrace similar techniques. Sept. 10 institutions like the UN and the EU will be unlikely to provide effective responses. We can argue about what consequences these demographic trends will have, but to say blithely they have none is ridiculous. The basic demography explains, for example, the critical difference between the "war on terror" for Americans and Europeans: in the U.S., the war is something to be fought in the treacherous sands of the Sunni Triangle and the caves of the Hindu Kush; you go to faraway places and kill foreigners. But, in Europe, it's a civil war. Neville Chamberlain dismissed Czechoslovakia as "a faraway country of which we know little." This time round, for much of western Europe it turned out the faraway country of which they knew little was their own. Four years into the "war on terror," the Bush administration began promoting a new formulation: "the long war." Not a good sign. In a short war, put your money on tanks and bombs. In a long war, the better bet is will and manpower. The longer the long war gets, the harder it will be, because it's a race against time, against lengthening demographic, economic and geopolitical odds. By "demographic," I mean the Muslim world's high birth rate, which by mid-century will give tiny Yemen a higher population than vast empty Russia. By "economic," I mean the perfect storm the Europeans will face within this decade, because their lavish welfare states are unsustainable on their post-Christian birth rates. By "geopolitical," I mean that, if you think the United Nations and other international organizations are antipathetic to America now, wait a few years and see what kind of support you get from a semi-Islamified Europe. Almost every geopolitical challenge in the years ahead has its roots in demography, but not every demographic crisis will play out the same way. That's what makes doing anything about it even more problematic -- because different countries' reactions to their own particular domestic circumstances are likely to play out in destabilizing ways on the international scene. In Japan, the demographic crisis exists virtually in laboratory conditions -- no complicating factors; in Russia, it will be determined by the country's relationship with a cramped neighbour -- China; and in Europe, the new owners are already in place -- like a tenant with a right-to-buy agreement. Let's start in the most geriatric jurisdiction on the planet. In Japan, the rising sun has already passed into the next phase of its long sunset: net population loss. 2005 was the first year since records began in which the country had more deaths than births. Japan offers the chance to observe the demographic death spiral in its purest form. It's a country with no immigration, no significant minorities and no desire for any: just the Japanese, aging and dwindling. At first it doesn't sound too bad: compared with the United States, most advanced societies are very crowded. If you're in a cramped apartment in a noisy congested city, losing a couple hundred thousand seems a fine trade-off. The difficulty, in a modern social democratic state, is managing which people to lose: already, according to the Japan Times, depopulation is "presenting the government with pressing challenges on the social and economic front, including ensuring provision of social security services and securing the labour force." For one thing, the shortage of children has led to a shortage of obstetricians. Why would any talented ambitious med school student want to go into a field in such precipitous decline? As a result, if you live in certain parts of Japan, childbirth is all in the timing. On Oki Island, try to time the contractions for Monday morning. That's when the maternity ward is open -- first day of the week, 10 a.m., when an obstetrician flies in to attend to any pregnant mothers who happen to be around. And at 5.30 p.m. she flies out. So, if you've been careless enough to time your childbirth for Tuesday through Sunday, you'll have to climb into a helicopter and zip off to give birth alone in a strange hospital unsurrounded by tiresome loved ones. Do Lamaze classes on Oki now teach you to time your breathing to the whirring of the chopper blades? The last local obstetrician left the island in 2006 and the health service isn't expecting any more. Doubtless most of us can recall reading similar stories over the years from remote rural districts in America, Canada, Australia. After all, why would a village of a few hundred people have a great medical system? But Oki has a population of 17,000, and there are still no obstetricians: birthing is a dying business. So what will happen? There are a couple of scenarios: whatever Japanese feelings on immigration, a country with great infrastructure won't empty out for long, any more than a state-of-the-art factory that goes belly up stays empty for long. At some point, someone else will move in to Japan's plant. And the alternative? In The Children Of Men, P. D. James' dystopian fantasy about a barren world, there are special dolls for women whose maternal instinct has gone unfulfilled: pretend mothers take their artificial children for walks on the street or to the swings in the park. In Japan, that's no longer the stuff of dystopian fantasy. At the beginning of the century, the country's toy makers noticed they had a problem: toys are for children and Japan doesn't have many. What to do? In 2005, Tomy began marketing a new doll called Yumel -- a baby boy with a range of 1,200 phrases designed to serve as companions for the elderly. He says not just the usual things -- "I wuv you" -- but also asks the questions your grandchildren would ask if you had any: "Why do elephants have long noses?" Yumel joins his friend, the Snuggling Ifbot, a toy designed to have the conversation of a five-year old child which its makers, with the usual Japanese efficiency, have determined is just enough chit-chat to prevent the old folks going senile. It seems an appropriate final comment on the social democratic state: in a childish infantilized self-absorbed society where adults have been stripped of all responsibility, you need never stop playing with toys. We are the children we never had. And why leave it at that? Is it likely an ever smaller number of young people will want to spend their active years looking after an ever greater number of old people? Or will it be simpler to put all that cutting-edge Japanese technology to good use and take a flier on Mister Roboto and the post-human future? After all, what's easier for the governing class? Weaning a pampered population off the good life and re-teaching them the lost biological impulse or giving the Sony Corporation a licence to become the Cloney Corporation? If you need to justify it to yourself, you'd grab the graphs and say, well, demographic decline is universal. It's like industrialization a couple of centuries back; everyone will get to it eventually, but the first to do so will have huge advantages: the relevant comparison is not with England's early 19th century population surge but with England's Industrial Revolution. In the industrial age, manpower was critical. In the new technological age, manpower will be optional -- and indeed, if most of the available manpower's Muslim, it's actually a disadvantage. As the most advanced society with the most advanced demographic crisis, Japan seems likely to be the first jurisdiction to embrace robots and cloning and embark on the slippery slope to transhumanism. Demographic origin need not be the final word. In 1775, Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to Joseph Priestly suggesting a mutual English friend might like to apply his mind to the conundrum the Crown faced: Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed 150 Yankees this campaign, which is £20000 a head... During the same time, 60000 children have been born in America. From these data his mathematical head will easily calculate the time and the expense necessary to kill us all. Obviously, Franklin was oversimplifying. Not every American colonist identified himself as a rebel. After the revolution, there were massive population displacements: as United Empire Loyalists well know, large numbers of New Yorkers left the colony to resettle in what's now Ontario. Some American Negroes were so anxious to remain subjects of King George III they resettled as far as Sierra Leone. For these people, their primary identity was not as American colonists but as British subjects. For others, their new identity as Americans had supplanted their formal allegiance to the Crown. The question for today's Europe is whether the primary identity of their fastest-growing demographic is Muslim or Belgian, Muslim or Dutch, Muslim or French. That's where civilizational confidence comes in: if "Dutchness" or "Frenchness" seems a weak attenuated thing, then the stronger identity will prevail. One notes other similarities between revolutionary America and contemporary Europe: the United Empire Loyalists were older and wealthier; the rebels were younger and poorer. In the end, the former simply lacked the latter's strength of will. Europe, like Japan, has catastrophic birth rates and a swollen pampered elderly class determined to live in defiance of economic reality. But the difference is that on the Continent the successor population is already in place and the only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be. If America's "allies" failed to grasp the significance of 9/11, it's because Europe's home-grown terrorism problems had all taken place among notably static populations, such as Ulster and the Basque country. One could make generally safe extrapolations about the likelihood of holding Northern Ireland to what cynical strategists in Her Majesty's Government used to call an "acceptable level of violence." But in the same three decades as Ulster's "Troubles," the hitherto moderate Muslim populations of south Asia were radicalized by a politicized form of Islam; previously formally un-Islamic societies such as Nigeria became semi-Islamist; and large Muslim populations settled in parts of Europe that had little or no experience of mass immigration. On the Continent and elsewhere in the West, native populations are aging and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic. Time for the obligatory "of courses": of course, not all Muslims are terrorists -- though enough are hot for jihad to provide an impressive support network of mosques from Vienna to Stockholm to Toronto to Seattle. Of course, not all Muslims support terrorists -- though enough of them share their basic objectives (the wish to live under Islamic law in Europe and North America) to function wittingly or otherwise as the "good cop" end of an Islamic good cop/bad cop routine. But, at the very minimum, this fast-moving demographic transformation provides a huge comfort zone for the jihad to move around in. And in a more profound way it rationalizes what would otherwise be the nuttiness of the terrorists' demands. An IRA man blows up a pub in defiance of democratic reality -- because he knows that at the ballot box the Ulster Loyalists win the elections and the Irish Republicans lose. When a European jihadist blows something up, that's not in defiance of democratic reality but merely a portent of democratic reality to come. He's jumping the gun, but in every respect things are moving his way. You may vaguely remember seeing some flaming cars on the evening news toward the end of 2005. Something going on in France, apparently. Something to do with -- what's the word? -- "youths." When I pointed out the media's strange reluctance to use the M-word vis-à-vis the rioting "youths," I received a ton of emails arguing there's no Islamist component, they're not the madrasa crowd, they may be Muslim but they're secular and Westernized and into drugs and rap and meaningless sex with no emotional commitment, and rioting and looting and torching and trashing, just like any normal healthy Western teenagers. These guys have economic concerns, it's the lack of jobs, it's conditions peculiar to France, etc. As one correspondent wrote, "You right-wing shit-for-brains think everything's about jihad." Actually, I don't think everything's about jihad. But I do think, as I said, that a good 90 per cent of everything's about demography. Take that media characterization of those French rioters: "youths." What's the salient point about youths? They're youthful. Very few octogenarians want to go torching Renaults every night. It's not easy lobbing a Molotov cocktail into a police station and then hobbling back with your walker across the street before the searing heat of the explosion melts your hip replacement. Civil disobedience is a young man's game. In June 2006, a 54-year-old Flemish train conductor called Guido Demoor got on the Number 23 bus in Antwerp to go to work. Six -- what's that word again? -- "youths" boarded the bus and commenced intimidating the other riders. There were some 40 passengers aboard. But the "youths" were youthful and the other passengers less so. Nonetheless, Mr. Demoor asked the lads to cut it out and so they turned on him, thumping and kicking him. Of those 40 other passengers, none intervened to help the man under attack. Instead, at the next stop, 30 of the 40 scrammed, leaving Mr. Demoor to be beaten to death. Three "youths" were arrested, and proved to be -- quelle surprise! -- of Moroccan origin. The ringleader escaped and, despite police assurances of complete confidentiality, of those 40 passengers only four came forward to speak to investigators. "You see what happens if you intervene," a fellow rail worker told the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. "If Guido had not opened his mouth he would still be alive." No, he wouldn't. He would be as dead as those 40 passengers are, as the Belgian state is, keeping his head down, trying not to make eye contact, cowering behind his newspaper in the corner seat and hoping just to be left alone. What future in "their" country do Mr. Demoor's two children have? My mother and grandparents came from Sint-Niklaas, a town I remember well from many childhood visits. When we stayed with great-aunts and other relatives, the upstairs floors of the row houses had no bathrooms, just chamber pots. My sister and I were left to mooch around cobbled streets with our little cousin for hours on end, wandering aimlessly past smoke-wreathed bars and cafes, occasionally buying frites with mayonnaise. With hindsight it seemed as parochially Flemish as could be imagined. Not anymore. The week before Mr. Demoor was murdered in plain sight, bus drivers in Sint-Niklaas walked off the job to protest the thuggery of the -- here it comes again -- "youths." In little more than a generation, a town has been transformed. Of the ethnic Belgian population, some 17 per cent are under 18 years old. Of the country's Turkish and Moroccan population, 35 per cent are under 18 years old. The "youths" get ever more numerous, the non-youths get older. To avoid the ruthless arithmetic posited by Benjamin Franklin, it is necessary for those "youths" to feel more Belgian. Is that likely? Colonel Gadhafi doesn't think so: There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe -- without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades. On Sept. 11, 2001, the American mainland was attacked for the first time since the War of 1812. The perpetrators were foreign -- Saudis and Egyptians. Since 9/11, Europe has seen the London Tube bombings, the French riots, Dutch murders of nationalist politicians. The perpetrators are their own citizens -- British subjects, citoyens de la République française. In Linz, Austria, Muslims are demanding that all female teachers, believers or infidels, wear head scarves in class. The Muslim Council of Britain wants Holocaust Day abolished because it focuses "only" on the Nazis' (alleged) Holocaust of the Jews and not the Israelis' ongoing Holocaust of the Palestinians. How does the state react? In Seville, King Ferdinand III is no longer patron saint of the annual fiesta because his splendid record in fighting for Spanish independence from the Moors was felt to be insensitive to Muslims. In London, a judge agreed to the removal of Jews and Hindus from a trial jury because the Muslim defendant's counsel argued he couldn't get a fair verdict from them. The Church of England is considering removing St. George as the country's patron saint on the grounds that, according to various Anglican clergy, he's too "militaristic" and "offensive to Muslims." They wish to replace him with St. Alban, and replace St. George's cross on the revamped Union Flag, which would instead show St. Alban's cross as a thin yellow streak. In a few years, as millions of Muslim teenagers are entering their voting booths, some European countries will not be living formally under sharia, but -- as much as parts of Nigeria, they will have reached an accommodation with their radicalized Islamic compatriots, who like many intolerant types are expert at exploiting the "tolerance" of pluralist societies. In other Continental countries, things are likely to play out in more traditional fashion, though without a significantly different ending. Wherever one's sympathies lie on Islam's multiple battle fronts the fact is the jihad has held out a long time against very tough enemies. If you're not shy about taking on the Israelis and Russians, why wouldn't you fancy your chances against the Belgians and Spaniards? "We're the ones who will change you," the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. "Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children." As he summed it up: "Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours." Contact the poster at MichaelMgr@gmail.com |
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TODAY TEHRAN, TOMORROW THE WORLD
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 4, 2006. |
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Please try getting it already... man has the nuclear bomb, an invention that he no longer controls and could ultimately destroy him! We MUST NOT ALLOW people with extreme and fanatical religious ideology, who are undeterred by the usual calculations of self-preservation prudence, who embrace the glory and romance of martyrdom and are atavistic lovers of blood and death to have nuclear power. Ahmadinejad, Iran's dangerously crazy president, who is definitely deranged not mystical, staunchly believes in eternal bliss its fuse he wants to light with a nuclear flame? This maniac must be stopped at once. The key words are: 'If nothing is done,' than we face hyper-proliferation of weapons of mass extinction that any rogue maniacal leadership will possess to include all the fanatical and suicidal terrorists. Iran is the most dangerous political entity on the planet and it is our test case. But yet the world response has been catastrophically slow and reluctant, as if is froze in time. By NOT preventing Iran regime that is run by apocalyptic fanatics from going nuclear we will be brought to a point of no return and this will be the perfect demonstration to the world that there is no serious impediment for those similarly inclined. With weapons of mass extinction in hands of monsters, we are either going to face human destruction on a never seen scale OR, if the A-Bomb killed, in one or two cities, millions, this planet species may try preserve itself by a radical abolition of liberal democracy and reverting to strict authoritarianism -- a self-imposed expulsion from the Eden of post-Enlightenment freedom. Since Iran is about to let loose the agents of extinction the question is: do we want to preserve our 4,500,000,000 years old planet by calling to a halt to all bridge building or NOT!? You tell me! This article was written by Charles Krauthammer and appeared in Time Magazine March 26, 2006. |
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Like many physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project, Richard Feynman could not get the Bomb out of his mind after the war. "I would see people building a bridge," he wrote. "And I thought, they're crazy, they just don't understand, they don't understand. Why are they making new things? It's so useless." Feynman was convinced man had finally invented something that he could not control and that would ultimately destroy him. For six decades we have suppressed that thought and built enough history to believe Feynman's pessimism was unwarranted. After all, soon afterward, the most aggressive world power, Stalin's Soviet Union, acquired the Bomb, yet never used it. Seven more countries have acquired it since and never used it either. Even North Korea, which huffs and puffs and threatens every once in a while, dares not use it. Even Kim Jong Il is not suicidal. But that's the point. We're now at the dawn of an era in which an extreme and fanatical religious ideology, undeterred by the usual calculations of prudence and self-preservation, is wielding state power and will soon be wielding nuclear power. We have difficulty understanding the mentality of Iran's newest rulers. Then again, we don't understand the mentality of the men who flew into the World Trade Center or the mobs in Damascus and Tehran who chant "Death to America"--and Denmark(!)--and embrace the glory and romance of martyrdom. This atavistic love of blood and death and, indeed, self-immolation in the name of God may not be new--medieval Europe had an abundance of millennial Christian sects--but until now it has never had the means to carry out its apocalyptic ends. That is why Iran's arriving at the threshold of nuclear weaponry is such a signal historical moment. It is not just that its President says crazy things about the Holocaust. It is that he is a fervent believer in the imminent reappearance of the 12th Imam, Shi'ism's version of the Messiah. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been reported as saying in official meetings that the end of history is only two or three years away. He reportedly told an associate that on the podium of the General Assembly last September, he felt a halo around him and for "those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink ... as if a hand was holding them there and it opened their eyes to receive" his message. He believes that the Islamic revolution's raison d'être is to prepare the way for the messianic redemption, which in his eschatology is preceded by worldwide upheaval and chaos. How better to light the fuse for eternal bliss than with a nuclear flame? Depending on your own beliefs, Ahmadinejad is either mystical or deranged. In either case, he is exceedingly dangerous. And Iran is just the first. With infinitely accelerated exchanges of information helping develop whole new generations of scientists, extremist countries led by similarly extreme men will be in a position to acquire nuclear weaponry. If nothing is done, we face not proliferation but hyperproliferation. Not just one but many radical states will get weapons of mass extinction, and then so will the fanatical and suicidal terrorists who are their brothers and clients. That will present the world with two futures. The first is Feynman's vision of human destruction on a scale never seen. The second, perhaps after one or two cities are lost with millions killed in a single day, is a radical abolition of liberal democracy as the species tries to maintain itself by reverting to strict authoritarianism--a self-imposed expulsion from the Eden of post-Enlightenment freedom. Can there be a third future? That will depend on whether we succeed in holding proliferation at bay. Iran is the test case. It is the most dangerous political entity on the planet, and yet the world response has been catastrophically slow and reluctant. Years of knowingly useless negotiations, followed by hesitant international resolutions, have brought us to only the most tentative of steps--referral to a Security Council that lacks unity and resolve. Iran knows this and therefore defiantly and openly resumes its headlong march to nuclear status. If we fail to prevent an Iranian regime run by apocalyptic fanatics from going nuclear, we will have reached a point of no return. It is not just that Iran might be the source of a great conflagration but that we will have demonstrated to the world that for those similarly inclined there is no serious impediment. Our planet is 4,500,000,000 years old, and we've had nukes for exactly 61. No one knows the precise prospects for human extinction, but Feynman was a mathematical genius who knew how to calculate odds. If he were to watch us today about to let loose the agents of extinction, he'd call a halt to all bridge building. Contact the poster at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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MISOGYNY BLIGHTS FUNDAMENTALIST MUSLIM CULTURE
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, November 4, 2006. |
| Until and unless collective Muslim culture begins to treat women with true respect it will not evolve thus not experience success within rapidly emerging century twenty-one. In Sydney, Australia a senior Muslim cleric Sheik Taj Aldin al Hilali in a venomous sermon compared women who go without a headscarf to "uncovered meat" left out for scavengers. In that sermon the Sheik asserted, "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside...without cover, and the cats come to eat it...whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred." Many political movers and shakers, including Prime Minister John Howard, as well as many Muslim leaders justifiably condemned this misogynistic rhetoric, yet the Neanderthal cleric's basic position is shared by a multitude of other fundamentalists that infect the Islamic faith. Hilali did back pedal a bit, stating he was not condoning rape, and apologized to any offended women, magnanimously saying they were free to dress as they wished, not coincidently after receiving numerous calls for his resignation. Likely this Sheik knew he was dead meat unless an apologetic bone was tossed to the outraged throngs demanding his head. Suggesting that Islamic females must don themselves in not only headscarves but head to toe veils and burkas lest they seduce the nearest salivating males into violating their virtue is not only denigrating to females, but implies Muslim males have absolutely no control over their bodily urges. Does this not reduce the male gender to the lowest depths of savagery? Does this not infer Muslim males are ruled by the basest of instincts, inclined to pounce on female prey like rabid horned beasts, exhibiting not an ort of cerebral capacity to override such carnal acts? Is the act of rape, condoned by Hilali despite his denial, the default state of Muslim males when sighting female faces, hands, ankles, or the tiniest portion of their legs? Most importantly, given that a significant portion of Muslim male culture is indeed afflicted with attributes conveyed by this clerics horrifying homily, is it even reasonable to presume that such a cerebrally crippled subset of humankind would be able to assimilate within those cultures of enlightened nations accustomed to gender equality? This is surely a serious issue as Muslims, especially from depressed economies, migrate in exponentially increasing numbers into progressive non-Muslim nations. Such nations have every right and in fact obligation to screen immigrants, refusing to admit those exhibiting morally reprehensible philosophies antithetical to the native culture, especially males unwilling to respect the basic human rights of females. Likewise, deporting such undesirable male residents is ever appropriate. Human culture must evolve beyond a state where physical might rules. Apparently, the physically dominant male syndrome steadfastly remains within the teachings and behavior of fundamentalist Muslim culture. Gender equality advances as societies become more defined by cerebral pursuits such as secular education, technological achievement, and attempts to insure justice for all citizens, those efforts abysmally lacking in societies dominated by Islamic fundamentalists. Sheik Taj Aldin al Hilali alas is not an aberration, but a product of a misogynist environment. His rhetoric is bizarrely justified by a dysfunctional interpretation of sharia code and Koranic verse. Defensive Muslims might not wish to admit the sickness that pervades much of their culture, smothering the rights of female citizens, yet the best advice that can be given is 'patient cure thyself'. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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ISRAEL IS NOT POWERLESS. SHOWING WEAKNESS FOSTERS ANTI-SEMITISM
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 4, 2006. |
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Friends, We all know that the Nazis, Islamo fascists and even Mel Gibson like, all represent 'blame the Jews' abhorrent continuum. The power of anti-Semitism is so magnanimous it unites neo-Nazis, Muslims, leftists and even human rights activists and they march together against Israel and attack it in their newspapers and Web sites. With hatred towards Jews and Israel and anti-Semitism everywhere, assimilated Jews, like George Soros, seek to distance themselves from Israel, hoping that such posture will make them more acceptable and likeable. This is a folly that drags down the rest of us Jews. Israel is the world anti-Semitism litmus: when Israel is perceived as strong and able to stand up to its foes, anti-Semitism tends to decline but Judeophobia increased and reached climax in the course of the Gaza disengagement and during the Lebanese war, which were perceived as Israel's weakness. Respect begins with self-respect, not with cowering or cowardice. To realize [the world state of affairs] is to be prepared. To deny is to fail future generations and passivity is a curse! Galvanize to confront the barbarians in the war of ideas with no less determination than our adoption of countermeasures against terrorists seeking to bleed us. The decision is ours. If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything! This was writen by Isi Leibler and it appeared October 31, 2006 in
the Jerusalem Post
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One would have hoped that by the 21st century it would be history, but anti-Semitism today has achieved what British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has described as "global tsunami" proportions. Clearly we are destined to remain "the people that dwelleth alone." Boosted by the sponsorship of Islamic governments, the world's oldest hatred continues to proliferate and is now once more embedded into the European mindset. The same Muslims who created a global upheaval calling for the assassination of the publishers of satirical caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad have no qualms about producing and disseminating a rabid Judeophobia that would match the worst Nazi blood libels. Jews are depicted as the perfidious descendants of apes and pigs, as evil beings who sought to poison their prophet, as global disseminators of the AIDS virus, as conspirators who utilize international Zionism as the force to achieve global domination -- effectively as the source of all the woes of mankind. To this day many Muslims remain convinced that Jews were the source of the 9/11 terror attacks. If this were not enough, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, now potentially a nuclear power, has been shamelessly promoting genocide by repeatedly proclaiming his objective of wiping Israel off the map. His recently launched anti-Semitic cartoon competition ridiculing the Holocaust will soon be followed by his hosting of a conference in Teheran promoting Holocaust denial. The new anti-Semitism which demonizes Jews and Israel alike, has fused itself with the "old" European anti Jewish bigotry which is enhanced by the growing power of Muslim minorities. At least in the 1930s powerful liberal voices were condemning Nazi bigotry. Today many Europeans are in such a state of denial concerning the Islamic threat in their midst that they describe Israel as a greater threat to world peace than rogue states like Iran and North Korea. Anti-Semitism has even emerged as a unifying element among opposing global political and religious groups. Sunnis and Shi'ites, busily blowing themselves to pieces in Iraq and elsewhere, unite in spewing libels and calling for jihad against Israel and the Jews. For the first time neo-Nazis, Muslims, leftists and even purported human rights activists are marching together against Israel and attacking the Jewish state in their newspapers and Web sites. During the Lebanon war some even paraded under the banner of "We are all Hizbullah." BIZARRE THOUGH it may be, many Europeans even believed that and hold Israel and Jews responsible for terrorist outrages in their own countries. The question is whether Europeans will prove to have learned anything from the failures of their predecessors in the 1930s, who also fooled themselves into believing that appeasing totalitarian regimes seeking global domination would avoid war. Regrettably some Europeans are also now starting to mutter that the creation of Israel was a mistake. A number of "enlightened" writers, academics and politicians actually suggest that the "mistake" may even now be rectified and "Cancel Israel" stickers already appear in the UK. The parallels with Czechoslovakia are ominous. Like the League of Nations, the UN exemplifies the hypocrisy of the appeasers. Their rabidly anti-Israeli postures make mockery of their claim to any kind of even-handedness. Neither retiring UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan nor Javier Solana of the EU had any qualms about paying court to the Iranian president immediately after he had reiterated his commitment to wipe out Israel. Diaspora Jews, especially those in Europe who endure the onslaught of these brutal anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli campaigns, are becoming increasingly demoralized in the face of increasing violence and vandalism. Many now question whether there is any meaningful long-term future for their children in the societies of their domicile. One almost obscene aspect of this phenomenon is the increasing inclination of assimilated Jews to distance themselves from Israel in the mistaken belief that this may divert the animus directed against them. In the UK, where a ground-breaking parliamentary inquiry confirmed that a "witch's brew" of anti-Semitism had reached record levels, Melanie Phillips, the hard-hitting columnist and author of Londonistan, condemned the Jewish leadership for its passivity. She alleges that during the "hate fest" against Israel in the course of the Lebanon war, Anglo Jewry maintained its minhag Anglia -- behaving like cowards, being "craven and servile" and fearful of rocking the boat. The greatest damage that the current flow of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic venom can achieve is to undermine the self-confidence of the younger Jewish generation. If they witness cowardly behavior by their parents, what can one expect from them in the future? If the anti-Semitic discourse incorporating libels and lies about Israel and the Jewish people remains unanswered, we might lose them altogether, by default. The optimists believe that the outrageous behavior of the Islamist thugs will inevitably rebound against them, and the Europeans will soon wake up to these outrages and cease their groveling. But alas, there is every likelihood that anti-Semitism would even persist after the jihadist threat has been recognized. FOR THE time being, it is incumbent on us to get our act together and work much closer with Diaspora Jews. The government of Israel must realize that the battle against anti-Semitism impacts directly on us as well as the Diaspora. If the tide is not reversed, our existing relations with other nations will continue to deteriorate. That does not mean that Israel should accept the bizarre advice I once heard an Anglo Jewish peer convey to prime minister Ariel Sharon, advising him: "Whenever you feel inclined to take reprisals against your Arab neighbors, you should take account of the repercussions on us and first consult us." But we should liaise far more closely with Jewish communities and our priority must be to ensure that Diaspora youngsters remain steadfast in their commitment to the Jewish people and Israel. The reality is that when Israel is perceived as strong and able to stand up to its foes, anti-Semitism tends to decline. Public manifestations of Judeophobia reached their lowest point following the Six Day War. In contrast, the exponential revival of anti-Semitism can be traced back to the Oslo Accords, reaching its climax in the course of the Gaza disengagement and during the Lebanese war, which were perceived by our enemies as manifestations of weakness. Unlike the 1930s there is an Israel and it is not powerless in the face of anti-Semitism and, together with Jewish communities throughout the world, not least the influential American Jewish community, we can defend ourselves. But we must galvanize to confront the barbarians in the war of ideas with no less determination than our adoption of countermeasures against terrorists seeking to bleed us. The decision is ours. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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GREETINGS FROM DHAKA, BANGLADESH
Posted by Salah Choudhury, November 3, 2006. |
| This letter was sent to the members of Islam-Israel Fellowship, Root and Branch Association, Ltd. I am an Advisory Board Member of the Islam-Israel Fellowship. |
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Greetings from Dhaka! The world is unfortunately witnessing the growth of Wahhabi ("Islamist") militancy. Wahhabi radicals promote a culture of hatred, death and destruction. Although true religion always favors peace, Wahhabis use the cloak of religion, with serious misinterpretations, to provoke Muslims towards so-called Jihad (Holy War). Jihad? Against whom? Jihad against other Children of Abraham? Jihad against other innocent human beings? To our total dismay, we have witnessed the growth of the Wahhabi Taliban [ethnic Pathans who follow Deobandism, an Indian variant of Wahhabism established in India by al Saud Wahhabi missionaries in the late nineteenth century], Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden. Recently, we have also witnessed the growth of Iranian Shi'ite Ahmadinejad and Lebanese Shi'ite Nasrallah and their movements. The entire world is becoming captive to these notorious elements who promote hatred. They poison the minds of innocent people with evil thoughts. I am delighted to see that the Root & Branch Association promotes the culture of peace. Root & Branch supports efforts towards authentic intergroup understanding worldwide. I am personally indebted to members of Root & Branch for their support of our mission for peace. Although we face extreme adversity, with a sedition trial against me having begun on October 12 (conviction on a sedition charge carries the death penalty in Bangladesh), my enemies could never crush my spirit and faith. Imprisonment, torture and suffering has been the fate of my family since 2003. Time has taught us to endure extreme adversity. I am proud to have Dr. Richard Benkin, my dearest brother, who never abandoned me, when most of our relatives even tried to avoid us as the Bangladesh government brought sedition charges against me as a "spy for Israel". My weekly newspaper, The Weekly Blitz, has passed its first year. Yet during this past year we did not receive a single advertisement from prospective advertisers, as they consider us "Zionists". Yes, we are proud to be "Zionists"! This was why our publishing office was bombed several months ago. More recently, organized armed gangs entered our office and physically assaulted me, looting money and our computers, just to force us to suspend publication of The Weekly Blitz. Why? Because they want to shut down the only outspoken voice in the Muslim world which openly promotes interfaith dialogue, confronts religious hatred and advocates relations between Israel and the Muslim world. In the eyes of Wahhabi radicals, this is our "crime". Please pray for us so that The Weekly Blitz will continue publication for years to come, despite the reality that advertisers will not patronize us. Everyone knows how difficult it is to run a newspaper without advertising. By the Grace of G-d, we shall continue to publish The Weekly Blitz, at least until I have the most minimum amount required for printing. Please pray for us. Kindly visit our Weekly Blitz web site at www.weeklyblitz.net. Shabbat Shalom and Shalom u'Vracha from Dhaka, The writer is a journalist, columnist, author, amd editor of "Weekly Blitz". Email him at salahuddinshoaibchoudhury@yahoo.com |
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JEWISH VOTERS
Posted by Steve Feldman, November 3, 2006. |
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I was recently at a meeting with other knowledgeable Jewish Americans and as one might expect in an October of an even-numbered year, at one point the subject turned to politics. I say this is no surprise because Jews are said to have one of the highest -- if not the highest -- percentage of voter participation of any bloc in the nation. But what continues to surprise and disturb me is how quick some Jews are to rank concern for Israel in the middle or near the bottom of their priorities when determining which lever to pull or button to push on Election Day. There are of course many key issues to consider as you step into the voting booth or fill out an absentee ballot: These include the candidate's views on the war in Iraq, the economy, taxes, healthcare, the threats posed by North Korea and Iran, the make-up of the Supreme Court and its impact on abortion and a host of matters. The list is too long to be all-encompassing in this space. Some make the candidate's personality the key factor; for yet others, the only criteria is party affiliation. This particular group of Jewish voters I was with was talking about gun violence; healthcare; Darfur; and gay marriage as issues of equal importance -- or even precedence -- over concern for Israel's survival and prosperity. Some even stated plainly that Israel is just one issue for them, or related that their friends care about other issues more. It would have been music to the ears to the American Task Force for Palestine -- where Condoleezza Rice spoke earlier this month, the Council on Arab-Islamic Relations and like-minded groups trying their hardest to weaken or dissolve the crucial U.S.-Israel relationship. When American Jews stop caring about U.S. policy toward Israel and the broader Middle East, those groups win and Israel loses. If Israel is less secure and if American politicians are beholden to Muslim or Arab groups, American Jews are more vulnerable. If you doubt that, ask a French Jew how safe he or she feels in that country as the Muslim population grows and they flex their muscles. The current Congress has been relatively good for Israel, with some House and Senate members better than others on both sides of the aisle. In the Philadelphia area, where the conversation referred to above took place, no House members could be described as anti-Israel. Pennsylvania's senators happily are very supportive on Israel though not perfect. Each congressional district is up for grabs on Nov. 7, as are a third of the Senate seats. Of course, neither the House nor the Senate is a national election, as is, say, the presidency. Still, each Democrat or Republican elected to the House or Senate on Nov. 7 brings his or her party closer to the majority -- and control -- in each chamber. The party in control gets to set the agenda and appoint chairs of the various committees. The chairs, in turn, determine which bills and resolutions move forward, and which others die on the vine. In the current Congress, bills and resolutions concerning Israel were introduced related to funding, joint economic and research projects, encouragement and gratitude. Those out to harm Israel were also the subjects of bills and resolutions, among them the Palestinian-Arabs, Iran, Hezbollah and Saudi Arabia, with funding reductions, travel restrictions and condemnations among the arrows in the Capitol Hill quiver as representatives sought to punish those threatening our ally. So, who's better for Israel? Meanwhile, some members of the House who are antagonistic toward Israel, including one who said he saw no difference between Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces, are in-line to chair key committees should the Democrats gain the majority. These are real scenarios that could determine what steps Israel is allowed to take to fight for her very existence. We all remember the 4,000 missiles Hezbollah fired at Israel this summer and the fact that Israel had just a month to try to stop Hezbollah before the United Nations put a halt to the fight. We know Iran's intentions against Israel and its undeterred efforts to produce nuclear weapons. The only people thinking about these issues come Election Day will be concerned Jews and Christian Zionists, and also those Americans with an antipathy toward Israel. This represents a relatively small percentage of the electorate in any individual district or state. We all desire a safer, more civil nation, but there are a whole host of other constituencies to advocate for or against a whole host of social and fiscal issues. It is time for those who are committed to Israel's security and right to flourish to base their choices on Nov. 7 as to who will be best for Israel. This must be paramount even though other issues should concern us too. Israel's enemies who vote in America have their priority. We must be even more dedicated in ensuring that critical American support for Israel does not waver. Steve Feldman is executive director of the Greater Philadelphia District of the Zionist Organization of America and host of "The ZOA Middle East Report" radio program broadcast on 1540AM WNWR Radio in the Philadelphia market and available worldwide at: www.zoaphilly.org |
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BISHOP TUTU MUTES THE ALARM; POLLARD'S CASE NEVER HEARD; INTERPOL
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 3, 2006. |
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ISRAELI BIO-HAZARD DETECTOR Israelis have invented a device for public places that can detect a biological weapon and analyze whether it is of certain types (Arutz-7, 10/17). BISHOP TUTU'S SELECTIVITY Speaking in Manhattan, Bishop Tutu urged fellow Christians not to generalize sweepingly about members of other religions. They shouldn't say that some other faith encourages violence. He condemned Christianity's role in slavery, the Holocaust, and apartheid (Gabrielle Birkner, NY Sun, 10/19, p.3). Christianity does not play a role in slavery, discrimination, and genocide now. Islam does! That is a big difference. Tutu should learn the facts. Violence was proscribed in Christianity, but some leading adherents practiced it anyway. Violence is prescribed in Islam. That is another big difference. Christianity has reformed, first, in the West, with the Reformation, and more recently again. The prevailing view in Islam is that Islam may not reform. Still another significant difference. Some liberal Christian sects in the US are coming to boycott Israel and to act in such a way as to support the destruction of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. Tutu did not condemn that. In fact, he has expressed similar sentiments. He is hypocritical. Christians should condemn Islam's call for religious war or get conquered. ARMS SMUGGLING TO GAZA Since Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier, Israeli troops have discovered 25 arms-smuggling tunnels originating in Gaza houses or farms. Hundreds of trucks of arms and terrorists pass from Sinai into Gaza. Obviously, the P.A. waves them through, the European observers watch them as they go, and Israeli observers watch them on a delayed TV monitor after they've gone, to no avail. Just as obviously, Egyptian police can see the heavy arms traffic and choose not to stop it. Some arrangement Sec. Rice set up and Vice-PM Peres accepted! (IMRA, 10/19.) Sec. Rice is supposed to be clever. What did she have in mind? What mind has Peres? 15 YEARS OF ISRAEL-RUSSIA DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS On the 15th anniversary, the two countries' foreign ministries exchanged congratulatory notes full of sentiment and assertions of mutual cooperation (IMRA, 10/19). Truth is, Russia is an active military and diplomatic enemy of Israel and the whole West. "SIDE-BY-SIDE" NONSENSE Side-by-side with assertions about another Palestinian Arab state to live in peace with Israel are the massive P.A. preparations for a renewed assault on Israel. Arab claims to be peace loving are deceitful (Dr. Aaron Lerner, IMRA, 10/19). ASSESSING THE ISLAMIST MENACE Kemal Helbawy, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and prominent in Britain was about to take off for the US, when US security officials forbad his going to the US. He was scheduled for participation on an NYU panel discussing the Muslim Brotherhood. At the discussion, one panelist said he is not alarmed by Muslims who want a global caliphate. He doesn't foresee it happening. Besides, he equated the Muslim desire with an alleged desire of Christians and Jews to spread their own religions. Another panelist mocked the concern that shifting demographics would turn Europe Islamic. A panelist claimed that he heard Mr. Helbawy deliver a "very warm, very fascinating, and very Christian" speech. A panelist thought Helbawy could help the US defeat Al Qaeda. On the record, however, Helbawy has denounced Jews as Satanic. He told Muslim Arab youth not to take Jews and Christians as allies (Eliana Johnson, NY Sun, 10/20, p.3). He'd help al-Qaeda defeat the US. How naïve those panelists are! They don't know about the Muslim precept of deceit, permitted against infidels. Islamists pose as moderate, to gain acceptance in the West, but preach extremism to their followers, not reported in the West. Western leaders in the US and Britain treat extremist leaders as if they were moderates who would help against extremists. The panelists also don't evince much knowledge about religion. Judaism does not care whether its religion spreads, just that ethics spread. Christianity wants to spread it, but by persuasion. Islam wants to spread it by any means, including violence and deceit, considering war on infidels every Muslim man's duty. The panelists were equating three faiths, based on mistaken assumptions that all religions are equivalent. Europe only now is reacting against an Islamic takeover, which, otherwise was fast approaching and that still might happen. POLLARD'S CASE NEVER HEARD American officials have informally admitted that Pollard is a political hostage, in prison now not for what he did but for whom he did it. Dennis Ross dubbed him a "bargaining chip." Former Sec. of Defense Weinberger admitted that Pollard's sentence was part of an extraneous agenda. Pollard's legal appeals have been rejected on technicalities. His case never has been heard on the merits, in court. Under the plea agreement, the government avoided an embarrassing trial in return for his cooperation and the usual 2-4 years. He cooperated, but the government broke the agreement, sought an unusual, severe, life sentence, and denied him a trial. The US made an agreement to release him in return for Israel releasing Arab prisoners. Israel did its part, but the US reneged. Prosecutors are allowed access to classified records about the case, but defense attorneys with top security clearance are told they don't need to know what is in the record they might appeal! Israel doesn't help Pollard, lest it antagonize the US (IMRA, 10/10) that some people think Israel dictates to, and lest its own officials' folly be exposed. Presidential clemency for Pollard would reduce the stain on US honor. ISLAMISTS TO OPEN OFFICE IN D.C. A Syrian opposition coalition that includes the Muslim Brotherhood plans to open an office in Washington, DC, to lobby for democracy in Syria. The Muslim Brotherhood leader wants to negotiate with Israel for the Golan Heights (Eli Lake, NY Sun, 10/20). Some Arab states plunge into a stripped down version of democracy. They skip an evolutionary, practice period of democratic decision-making at all levels of society and time for building a culture out from authoritarianism and ethnic rivalry. It jumps into elections, enabling the well-funded, better organized, and deceitful Islamists to dominate. How is the US to choose whether to support the jump or to support the autocratic status quo? Is there a middle ground? If the Islamists win power in Syria, the likelihood of war increases, because Islamists are less deterred by the prospect of heavy losses. Is it significant or coincidental that the Muslim Brotherhood head said he wants to negotiate for territory, and did not say he wants to negotiate for peace? In any case, Israel would be foolish to give its strategic heights territory, from which about 40% of its scarce water supply comes, to an enemy that repeatedly used that territory for attacking Israel. Such a cession is likelier to bring war than peace. Israel should tell Syria that if it attacks again, Israel would seize the rest of the Golan Heights, now in Syria's hands. I think that the US should not allow foreign or domestic Islamist organizations here. Such a ban would include the major Muslim organizations now in the US. It is about time that we treat as an enemy those who have declared themselves our enemies. ISRAEL JOINING EUROPEAN DIVISION OF INTERPOL The Israeli INTERPOL unit had been in the Asian division of INTERPOL, although 70% of its cases involve Europe. By not being in the European division, it could not get sufficient cooperation from European police. To remedy that gap in crime-fighting, the European division has admitted Israel. This process took five years, because Arab governments objected and European did not want to displease them (Arutz-7, 9/26). Although a regional headquarters of the World Health Organization is in Egypt, Egypt will not cooperate with Israel in fighting disease. The Muslim Arabs prefer germs and crimes to cooperation with Israel. So much for the peace treaty of normalization with Egypt! Europeans humbled themselves before the Muslim Arabs, too much. JERICHO TO IMPORT ELECTRICITY FROM JORDANIAN GRID Israeli industry furnishes the P.A. with electricity. The Israeli company is running short of supply. To relieve that shortage, Israel has agreed to let Jericho, in Judea-Samaria, connect to the Jordanian power grid (IMRA, 9/27). It makes economic sense, assuming that Jericho will become independent of Israel. It makes no military sense to reduce Israel's control over the Arabs. It makes no Zionist sense to preclude integrating the Territories without the Arabs. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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THE HOLOCAUST REMEMBERED
Posted by Patrick Dempsey, November 3, 2006. |
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This is a copy of a letter which I sent to a fellow seeker of the Holocaust. May be of interest. Your friend Patrick |
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Excuse me for writing to you informally, but there have been some questions which I have been seeking, which I feel you have so often addressed. For me, there is a marker, within the death of Christ, that points us straight toward the Holocaust for the Jewish People. Within that assessment is a 2,000 year old anti-Semitic hatred. I had often heard the term, but truly came across its more vivid meaning in the Books addressing my research of 'The Holocaust'. I wandered into this collective and fully took the Holocaust to mean the Total Destruction of 6,000,000 Jews. I have no basis, other than human incredulity at such slaughter, for writing about the Jewish aspect of the Holocaust. However, in my attempt to add an Irish Catholic acknowledgement of the Abandonment of a People, and to admonish a very disturbing Indifference shown to Human suffering, I wished also to refute the Intolerable abuse of the Jews of Europe and to denounce the diabolical hatred that could commit so many horrifying crimes against an innocent People. Also, and I find Irish neutrality, during the progress of the Jewish Catastrophe, a cowardly abandonment of moral integrity which should be clearly addressed. Therefore, within my search I have found the Jewish People ever present in the tenets of all that I have sought to research. That does not preclude Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses nor any other Ethnic, Religious or Political grouping from the taint of barbaric genocide we came to witness in the 12 years of Hitler's reign. Nor is my contempt any less damning of those who treated the Roma or Sinti with genocidal contempt. If we are to define Hitler's intentions 'East', it would be wrong to extend it to the murder of all the Peoples of the East? That said, it was always Hitler's intention to mark his passage with a final confrontation with the Jewish People, and with a war for the 'living space' for the Germanic peoples. Ostensibly, Hitler claimed that the Jews were the tools of communism and the purveyors of capitalism, with those contradictions exposed to little of any concerned scrutiny. In every possible, assertive and narrative claim, the Jews were transposed before a pliable 'aryanism', into all the ills of the world, and where to be removed from existence on the back of such illogical and racist contentions. With calculated industry, the 11,000,000 Jews of the Wannsee Protocol would be slaughtered, including 4,000 of my own Country's Jews, and the procession of other victims would include all those that Hitler had considered unworthy of life! The Jewish People sustained, not only a rhetorical and legislative position within Hitler's 'weltanschauung', but they compiled a community of attention that without reason, and with clarified urgency, was identified irrationally, as a permanent threat to the establishment of the newer 1,000 year Reich. For me, it has proved problematic exploring the hatreds that we speak of, as the danger is always directed away from the investigator and toward the investigated, the Jews. But my resolve, given the sight of a 4 year old Jewish Girl, Tokele, murdered in Sokoly, even after the Germans had abandoned that part of Poland, is to add to her memory, and to the vicious nature of that particular hatred which took her life. This hatred, which conforms to all the stereotypical resonance's of an anti-Semitism that is still present today, must be rejected and outlawed. For me especially, in seeking to extract the person from statistical analysis, a survey which Eichmann sought to present to us, must hold firm to the human toll that exists within all narratives. We simply cannot allow Eichmann, or even the Holocaust, to gain further or future victory by consigning this human element to a series of statistical and calculated reports. What Eichmann demanded, and which Korherr no doubt delivered to Hitler through Himmler, has been allowed obfuscation our efforts not to conceal the human detail of the catastrophe. Often times this has caused confusion amongst researchers with varying ethnological concerns within the content of the atrocity that was perpetrated. Whether Jew, Gypsy or any other perceived threat, the calamity for history has been the discourse surrounding the tragedy. The table, containing the scroll of honour, with the 'victimhood' of the groups contained in the liturgy of the crimes, is the true disaster. "...Our history must be presented in its own context ...not as a corollary to that of another People." Ian Hancock. From here I sought to add weight to an Irish Catholic's need to show strong remorse for our neutral position, and toward the great wrong that was done. Not just here though, but elsewhere within the Holocaust and over the past 2,000 years of a Church led anti-Semitic hatred. The term of the Holocaust, for me, has become diluted by overuse. In emotive terms, its usage is resourced over the destruction of Forests and Birds, Habitats and other genocide's. My own effort does not attempt to marginalise any others, caught up with the Nazi dogma of Racial Hygiene, but my early search was to ask pertinent questions as to why there was this murder of 6,000,000 Jewish People? I am certain that -- from within the Human context of the Holocaust -- ALL Peoples, Jews and Gypsies included, hold a central theme of an assault on ALL of humanity. Likewise; the terms Shoah and Baro Parrajmos must not confuse the categorisation of 'The Final Solution' which was so marked as die Endlosung der Judenfrage for the purpose of obliterating any Jewish existence in this World. From there surely, there must remain a Jewish presence that is unique to the categorisation of the slaughter that ensued, and must answer many concerns from within the entire Holocaust. Of course:- 1) No comparative analysis can ever detail a physiological suffering, so each remains unique!Of course the enormous depth of destruction cannot become the sole motivation for research, though the extent to which the Nazi annihilation of the Jewish People has emerged, has sought to conceptualise our understanding of the meaning of evil. Therefore, any comparative analysis does little to objectify; nor can it arbitrate the sense of neglect felt by a Jewish People we wholly abandoned to selective destruction. The sheer indifference shown to such an Intolerance has weighed so heavy, while its burden has become slightly shifted by many attempts to assuage responsibility. Here, what clearly insults the memory of those who were murdered, has been the series of claims and counter claims as to who holds centre stage within the Holocaust term. I have a photograph of a Jewish/Gypsy, a Girl/Boy aboard a Transport heading toward destruction. Ownership of that Child's heritage now belongs to the Holocaust, and should prove, on a battle ground which will only blight further our memory of that awful catastrophe, the truth is too often jeopardised. Might it not be appropriate to suggest, though the Jews took time to recover their composure and need to inform, that all composite Survivoral material and Scholarly output, the product of their former educational awareness, has been much used to highlight the presence of the Gypsy within the Holocaust. Tragically, if oral history came too late to many within the Jewish Survivors consciousness, it must not become forgotten by those who need to examine the destruction of others within the Holocaust, especially the Gypsies. Scholars, such as you Ian, have been given the template by which to expand upon the Gypsy presence within that same Holocaust, but in those terms that you yourself use to afford a separate context that is neither a corollary of emerging Holocaust events nor an adjunct to its horrifying detail. The Baro Parrajmos is surely an entity within those events that separates itself from the claims made for the Jewish Holocaust? As I eulogise the loss of 6,000,000 Jews, I do not fail to acknowledge
the debt we owe to Gypsies, and those other Peoples seemingly
marginalised by this atrocity. Having learned so much from the search
for answers, my own faith has been greatly altered in the belief that
the destruction of 6,000,000 Jewish Lives was an attempt to blot out
the bloodline that stretches all the way back to Jesus Christ. The
attempt, at the genocide of all 11,000,000 Jews, selected at Wannsee,
cannot deny Jesus to the Jews, nor can we extinguish Jesus' message
that:-
I have 3 Books written and Published on the subject of the Jewish presence within the Holocaust, and though my choice has been to access the hatred for the Jewish People, it has never been my intention to stand aside from the hatred showed to so many other Peoples, the Gypsies included. If we look to the Passion of Christ we must accept that Jesus chose to die for us, and that responsibility lies with God alone, and Jesus, as the Son of Man. Any manifest outrage over such crucifixion must be 6,000,000 times more audible and rancorous in the face of that fate which destroyed the Jews of the Holocaust. If we see any outrage at all over Jesus' Crucifixion, it must never be transferred onto any one else, let alone the Jews, who are Jesus' People. Then, when we add to that Holocaust despair, the loss of so many others, how do we contain our grief? The mentioning of the Roma and Sinti in my own works, has a need to examine that grief. I felt however, that there was need of others, to not only elaborate on the presence of the Gypsy Community within the Holocaust, but to add a scholarly insight into that term that defines their own struggle. Specific terms of reference are so often missing from all need for concern and for that to be placed alongside our outrage at the genocide of any Human Being. The Gypsies form an integral part of the study of the Holocaust and are not unrelated in the struggle to understand the catastrophe meted out to all innocent Peoples. It is clear that for those residing alongside the Jews, in the 'Killing Pits', 'Death Ravines', Concentration and 'Death Camps', these must always be remembered and must never be forgotten. Any need to add ownership to the murdered within the Holocaust; in terms of those now dead, can have no comparative study to measure an individuals pain or grief. Compassion is easily learned and must be added to that sense of shame
for what an ostensibly 'christian' minority did against a largely
Jewish Majority! But have we learned from an anti-Semitic and terrible
past, or do we simply attach these lessons to add further atrocity to
that roll of dishonour? That very assault, with anti-Jewish hatred has
established a 2,000 year precedence and though today, the Gypsy is
under threat, it is the Jew who is continually and constantly
threatened, and not just in their own land. Does not the expression of
the 'pamyat' add future weight to the concurrent theme of
anti-Semitism that was perpetrated throughout the realm of the
Holocaust? Do we not signify the lack of learning from our past when
we hear such expressions as:-
This we see as the tone of that abridgement between The Final Solution and the continuing solution of the Jewish Problem? We, who must call ourselves Holocaust historians, must adopt that innate sensitivity to engage other scholars in the growing debate over the Jewish position within the Holocaust. We also have a responsibility to those, who have had their voice removed from our chosen arena, to tackle those who occupy the Holocaust with denial. Where historians debate the context, the uniqueness or even the intention to fundamentally destroy, the denier is allowed space to percolate the rancour that exists between too many like minded seekers of the truth. Fundamentally, our duty is to the honest memory of 6,000,000 Jews, if we choose to concentrate on the Jews of the Shoah, or to the 500,000 Gypsies of the Baro Parrajmos, if that is the direction we take. What we must not do is enter into any debate over whose presence is the most unique, the most trivial or whose presence deserves most of our attention. I have chosen a direction which has the Jews as its central concern, but that does not mean that I am at all unconcerned by those Gypsies, Homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses or Mentally infirm, who are as deserving of memory, eulogy and Remembrance as anyone else caught up in the conflagration. All disrespect of humanity is dishonourable, and to know that Gypsies are threatened, that Jews are under threat and that the threat to what civilises us, is a confiscation of earlier bigotry and self destructive racial hatreds, is to remove ethical concern from centre stage? If we do not learn to reject the hate filled truth of this terrible consumptive, humanity will remain stunted, our Children will have an irregular perspective of our integrity and history will be devoid of all honesty. If we then argue that 1,000,000 Irish Dead, from the Famine, is indeed a Holocaust, or if the intense indifference shown toward the 1,000,000 Armenians who perished, becomes another Holocaust, the definition of terms sought to trivialise the Jewish Catastrophe, will take on a newer connotation. In search of meaning we have definitions that seek to position and categorise, and we should allow the category of Jewish Destruction a relevance that is within the context of the Holocaust, but outside the context of the Baro Parrajmos, the Irish Famine, the Armenian Tragedy or even the genocide of the Tutsis. For me it is simple to know that the Jewish presence was not alone, but that alone the Jews would have been chosen for destruction. To end this letter with:- "...Always to Remember, Never to Forget." Patrick Dempsey is an Irish Catholic who writes on the Holocaust. Contact him at patrick1010@tiscali.co.uk |
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EGYPT AND WEAPONS SMUGGLING/EMPTY PROMISES TO PREVENT 'HAMASTAN'
Posted by Daily Alert, November 3, 2006. |
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This article was written by Ze'ev Schiff and it appeared today in Ha'aretz
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What is the best proof that Egypt is taking action against smugglers of weapons and explosives from the Sinai into the Gaza Strip to militant organizations? Security experts in Israel say it is the number of smugglers arrested, and the number of those charged with smuggling arms. However, Egypt has not arrested a single arms smuggler and no one has been brought to trial, even though Israel's security and intelligence services have given the Egyptians a list of the names of those involved in the gun running. Security sources say this is a very frustrating reality and are hard pressed to explain why it is so. There are many Egyptian promises. Talks are being held in diplomatic and polite conversation with Israeli officials, but in practice nearly nothing is being done to prevent large-scale smuggling through the Philadelphi Route, and elsewhere, including the sea. Israel has agreed to the increase of Egypt's border police force on the Sinai-Gaza border, but in practice nothing has changed. The frustration among the security services is great because they can name the individuals organizing and carrying out the smuggling operations. It is possible that here and there someone was arrested for a short while. The rules of engagement for the Egyptian forces guarding the border are also strange. The Egyptian guards are not allowed to shoot Palestinian smugglers. They are also not allowed to return fire unless they are endangered. Clearly the Egyptians are making great efforts not to hit Palestinians, even law breakers. In the special military agreement between Israel and Egypt, regarding security along the border, the overall Egyptian role in preventing smuggling is specified. Egypt must ensure that illegal arms and ammunition are not brought into the Sinai, that illegal arms sales and their transfer to the border do not take place, and that the arms are prevented from crossing into the Gaza Strip. This means that avoiding total action against the smugglers is a violation of the agreement. Israel finds it hard to explain what the reasons behind the Egyptian behavior are. Lack of efficiency was considered, or corruption perhaps, but these are insufficient reasons. There are others who argue there is a deliberate Egyptian policy to allow conditions that cause Israel difficulties and perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This view contradicts Israel's assessment that Egypt is concerned the Gaza Strip may be transformed into "Hamastan," a bastion of Islamic radicalism capable of flowing over into Egypt. Either way, the smuggling continues with growing intensity. Iranian funding is playing a significant role in this. Neglecting the prevention of smuggling will harm the Palestinians, Israel and Egypt. Daily Alert summarizes some essays and articles that appeared in
newspapers, magazines and journals. These are prepared for the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and available at
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PA OFFENSIVE CAPABILITIES INCREASING, WITH US HELP
Posted by Nurit Greenger, November 3, 2006. |
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Outrageous! I am furious! The IDF Southern Command chief: The USA government is helping Fatah terrorists, thus weakening Israel. Forgive me for being totally out of the political correctness ramification but Israel should blow Gaza off the map of this earth! Enough is enough of the feces called Palestinians. The Whitehouse is constantly taking away from Israel's military superiority in the regime. We need to immediately establish our own powerful media campaign. The US posture to strengthen Abbas is at a cost to Israel's security. And this is to help a man who continues a program of incitement and hatred toward Jews and Israel in the PA media which he alone controls. Call the Whitehouse. Send your letters of protest to Bush and Rice. The White House: fax: 202-456 2461 phone: 202-456-1111
This article was written by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz and it was published November 1, 2006 in Arutz-Sheva http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=114579 |
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Fatah terrorists are receiving US arms and training, while Hamas terrorists are preparing missile & anti-tank divisions. IDF officer criticizes: IDF's operations are not targeting the Hamas build-up. Speaking before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday, the IDF Southern Command chief warned that the Palestinian Authority's ruling Hamas organization is planning to establish missile and anti-tank units. The new units were decided upon in light of the lessons Hamas learned from the Hizbullah's successes against Israel during the recent war in Lebanon, the IDF commander explained. "Hamas is establishing an organized division with anti-tank capabilities and with missiles that could reach threatening distances," Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant told the Knesset committee. Anti-tank missiles caused about a third of the IDF casualties in Lebanon during the recent campaign against the Hizbullah. Military analysts, as well as Hamas propagandists and strategists, have noted that long-range missiles of the type used by Hizbullah deployed in Judea, Samaria and Gaza would place many Israeli strategic facilities in danger. In an initiative presented as an effort to counter the growing strength and influence of Hamas, the United States has been arming and training a militia affiliated with the Fatah terrorist group, headed by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas. The premise for the American support is that Fatah and Hamas are headed for a violent civil war, and the US prefers a Fatah victory. Maj.-Gen. Galant told the Knesset Committee that IDF operations in Gaza, no matter how extensive, have all been part of general security operations, "and were not specifically intended to degrade the strengthening Hamas or its building up of its forces." Overall, he said, "the strength of Hamas has grown immensely and significantly since the Disengagement." The IDF commander described a complex system of tunnels along the Philadelphi Route, "most of which are camouflaged and not even dug up. The minute there is an order for smuggling, they dig out an opening and connect to a preexisting tunnel; and after the smuggling is completed, they cover it over." He said that Hamas has begun building an army-like hierarchical infrastructure, including Special Forces, brigades and battalions. In part, these units are meant to counterbalance such forces currently under the command of the Fatah organization, headed by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). "It is reasonable to assume that, in the future, Hamas will put into the field a force of thousands of terrorists, organized and well armed...with weapons systems and night-vision systems, which will form a division. In addition, Hamas is constantly working to increase the range of the Kassam [rockets] -- and the technology is within reach." According to security analyst Aluf Benn, American security coordinator General Keith Dayton presented Quartet representatives in London last week with a program for training the PA's presidential guard -- Force 17, controlled by Abbas -- using Egyptian, British and Jordanian instructors. PA sources say the training by Americans started more than a month ago, at a compound near the Intercontinental Hotel in Jericho. In the past, official PA militias were found to have used weapons provided by the US and Israel in terrorist attacks on Jewish targets. Earlier this month, in an interview with WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein, a Force 17 terrorist implied that weapons supplied to Fatah from the United States would be transferred to the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, which is recognized as a terrorist organization under US law. Contact Nurit Greenger at 4nuritg@ca.rr.com |
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HUNGER STRIKE
Posted by Women in Green, November 3, 2006. |
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[Editor's note: Read about this outrageous example of judicial arrogance in "Patriotic Outposters Hit with Restraining Orders" by clicking here.] |
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Arrested father says: "I won't eat or drink!" Meir Bertler, married and father of a little baby, one of the 19 Jews from Judea and Samaria who received an expulsion order from all of Judea & Samaria -- was arrested yesterday for the crime of...being at home. Meir and the other 18 Jews have decided not to respect the Bolshevik order of expulsion and exile. They are not guilty of anything. Nobody accuses them of anything and it is unheard of that a government can simply decide that a group of citizens will not be allowed to live at home and in the vicinity of their family and livelihood. Up until now, 4 of the 19 have been arrested. Two were immediately and unconditionnally released. Two others, Meir Bertler yesterday and Elad Keller last week, are in jail. We cannot stay quiet! This is an outright persecution of Jews and trampling of people's basic human rights. Complaints hotline for the IDF General who signed the orders separating the 18 families and causing this young man to hunger-strike starting today. Bombard Yair Naveh's phones and faxes: Complaints hotline tel no. is 02-5305333 -- seems to be active 24 hours a day. Complaints faxline fax no. is 02-5305724 The person pushing for the persecution of those loyal Jews is no other than DM Minister Amir Peretz: complain by calling his spokesmen Gur at 03-6975750 or Amit 0544220429 or Ori 0544944809 Peretz office: tel 972-3-6976663. [UPDATE November 5, 2006: Meir Bertler, arrested last week for not obeying the expulsion order from all of Judea & Samaria, is continuing his full hunger strike (not eating nor drinking) protesting his, and his friends', continued persecution by the authorities. Tomorrow, Monday, November 6th, 2006 at 10:30am he will be brought in front of the Shalom court, Jerusalem, where the judge will decide whether to continue his incarceration or not. We are calling upon all who care about the human rights of Jews in the Land of Israel, to come at 10:30 to the Shalom court (next to the Russian Compound) and show support to this loyal Jew who is sitting in jail, not knowing what he is accused of,nor why he has been expelled from his home, his family and all of Judea & Samaria. This past Shabbat, Meir spent Shabbat in the prison of Ariel and then was transferred to the Rehovot police station on Saturday night. Motsaei Shabbat, tens of friends, family members and supporters gathered outside the police station to show Meir support, singing songs. At one point, Meir's parents, worried sick about his physical condition, brought a doctor inside the police station and demanded the doctor check their son. The police refused to allow them to see Meir. All they were allowed to do was to speak to him on the phone for a short period. Meir said he is continuing his hunger strike, not drinking or eating, and feels very weak and dizzy. He needs to see a doctor. Upon hearing that the police were not letting the doctor see Meir, the supporters outside the Rehovot station started protesting loudly. The police dispersed them brutally, arresting three. Today, Sunday, Boaz Albert, another one of the 19 Jews who had received eviction orders, was arrested for the "crime" of being at home. We must protest this insane persecution of Jews in Israel!] Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org |
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WHAT ISRAEL NEEDS
Posted by Samuel Blair, November 2, 2006. |
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The State Of Israel needs badly intelligent and very experienced leaders. Also it needs to show the world who and what she is! The generals should put on the biggest military parade letting the world see the reason Arab nations can't win a war.! and to prevent future wars and to make millions of Jewish people all over the world feel proud. It will also greatly improve aliyah, and cause companies to invest in israel. AND IT WILL CAUSE NATIONS TO RESPECT AND TO FEAR HER. Contact Samuel Blair at SamuelBlair@adelphia.net |
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LIVING FREE
Posted by Kevin Bjornson, November 2, 2006. |
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WHAT VICTORY REQUIRES Civilization needs to be clear about identifying: * the enemy (negative cause) Islam has not been hijacked by extremists. The most rabid ultra-Orthodox Jews or fundamentalist Christians are less threatening than mainstream Muslims. The general thrust of the Koran, and the example of Muhammed's life, are the source of terrorism today. History has shown that Islam has been a continuing threat to civilization (except when they provided translated copies of forgotten western texts). Civilization should oppose Islam. But this should not be a negative cause. The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend (although we should manipulate our enemies to fight each other). Human life on earth is the good. The general upward trend of humanism in history coincides with the rise of civilization. A negative secularism isn't enough. We should embrace human life in all it's aspects, including art, science, commerce, and love. The Jewish religion is more humanistic than most, and this is why Israel has a good cost/benefit ratio. For more information, I recommend contacting the Ayn Rand Institute: www.aynrand.org (I don't speak for them, but I endorse them.) Civilization should defend ground when necessary and possible. However, the best defense is a good offense. The military should be like a shark, always moving forward. This precludes the futile, altruistically-motivated reconstruction/nation-building like in Iraq. The US should have liberated Iraq, and moved on to Iran and Syria (for starters). It's not possible or desirable to wipe out all Muslims or the territory they hold. However, we can deprive them of money. The sharp upswing of Muslim terrorism coincides with the increase in oil revenues to the Middle East, and that's no coincidence. Western companies had invested billions of dollars in oil infrastucture, which by now has been mostly nationalized in Muslim lands. The Saudis have a Faustian bargain with terrorists, to subsidize the ideology of their terrorist-friendly Wahabbist cult in exchange for immunity from attack on their own soil. The Iranians have been less subtle, and threaten a nuclear holocaust. People didn't believe Mein Kampf at first, because it appeared so far out of touch with reality. Don't make the same mistake with Iran. All oil infrastucture controlled by Islamic governments should be seized militarily and returned to rightful owners (minus protection fees). If no rightful owners can be found, oil should be considered like Locke's estate of nature, and privatized. The price of oil should rise to about $100/barrel, to encourage conservation and the development of new alternative energy. The other major source of funding for terrorists is the illegality of drugs. Afghanistan is now producing bumper crops of opium poppy. The Taliban thereby control rural areas, getting their cut in a protection racket. Further attempts to enforce anti-drug laws merely raise the market price, due to inelasticity of demand and the existence of alternative areas of production. Thus, drug laws provide aid and comfort to terrorists. The US and Israel should immediately legalize all drugs, particularly ones from a plant source such as coca, poppy, and marijuana. If the rest of the world is too stupid to follow, we would reap windfall profits, which could be plowed back into the world war in which we are engaged. Tactically, we should make full use of the technological advantages of civilization. This means further development of aerial drones and fighting robots. The IDF should depose the Assad regime, enter Lebanon through Bekka, seize relevant portions of Beirut, and attack Hezbollah from the North. This classic hammer-and-anvil approach would have the element of surprise, and cut off the escape of terrorists into Syria. With IDF on the way, French forces in S. Lebanon would probably tuck tail and run. If they insist on remaining as human shields, at least you'd know where the terrorists would be, hiding behind French skirts. We must defeat Islam, or civilization will collapse into a new dark age. We must affirm the positive values of humanism. The US military and IDF should engage in offensive operations until all oil infrastructure in the middle east is out of the hands of Islamic governments. The drug war should be stopped, and treason trials considered for those who knowingly aid terrorism. New technology must be developed. Living free is better than dying slowly as a dhimmi slave. Contact Kevin Bjornson at kevinsbjornson@yahoo.com |
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THESE ISRAELI JEWS NEED YOUR DONOR DOLLARS
Posted by Helen Freedman, November 2, 2006. |
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Dear Concerned Jews:
I have assembled a list of worthy organizations with which I am personally familiar, that dedicate themselves solely to helping needy Jews in Israel. If that is your interest, please pass this list around to potential donors. I apologize in advance for not including hundreds of other worthy Jewish causes, schools, and organizations. Their omission here is no commentary on their worth. I have tried to focus on the groups that I believe are answering the most immediate needs of desperate Jews in Israel. Thank you for your concern and interest and efforts to turn the tide in the distribution of funds to needy Jews in Israel. JobKatif: Helping people to help themselves is the objective of JobKatif. Your participation will enable us to accomplish this goal. We thank you for your assistance. For U.S. Tax Deductible Contributions
THE CENTRAL FUND OF ISRAEL -- In Israel PO Box 6724 Efrat 90435
Re: JobKatif- Rav Rimon
For Israeli Tax Deductible Contributions
JobKatif
Mishmeret Yesha -- Guardians of Yehuda, Shomron & Aza. Outfit and train rapid response teams in the individual settlements to guard against Arab infiltrators. Played a major role in the Lebanon war.Checks to Central Fund of Israel, as above, earmarked for Mishmeret Yesha "Operation Band-Aid" means immediate help to the people of Gush Katif. A discrete envelope with 500 shekels is given to each family to use as they wish. Tax-deductible contributions to: Central Fund for Israel, as above, earmarked for OPERATION BAND-AID The Lev Echad (One Heart) organization, that previously helped the Gush Katif evacuees during the trauma of their relocation, needs donations for the Jewish residents of the North of Israel. Tax Free Donations in USA made out to: Central Fund of Israel, earmarked for the Lev Echad Fund. Tax ID# 13-299-2985. Friends of Gush Katif
The organization that oversees distribution to all the refugees from the Gush Katif expulsion: www.katifund.org. Presently working to change the Compensation Law so that the thousands of families expelled from Gush Katif can begin to get their promised compensation, and can look forward to being in their permanent homes in the very near future. Honenu Legal Defense Association -- Israel Policy Center. This organization continues to document Israeli government violations of disengagement opponents' civil rights -- and uses every possible legal effort to defend the defenseless victims of an unjust legal system. 67 Hanevi'im Street; Jerusalem 94702, Israel
American Friends of Yad Eliezer Yad Eliezer provides food and social services to over 6,000 families, helping over 50,000 desperately needy individuals. The social service programs include an Emergency Fund (Keren Yisrael Mordechai -- after Sruly Miller A'H'), for families facing a crisis, The Gitty Perkowski Simcha Fund which provides heavily subsidized weddings to those who cannot afford one, the Big Brothers which deals with over 800 at-risk children and the Job-Training Fund that provides grants to heads of impoverished families to receive job training. 1102 East 26th Street
In Israel:
-- Central Office -- Israel
-- Central Office: UNITED STATES
Jerusalem Reclamation Project (JRP) -- 139 Hagai Street, Old City, Jerusalem 91009; Phone: 972-2-628-4101; Fax: 02-627-3668 Reclaiming Jewish land in east Jerusalem Lev U'Neshama is registered in Israel as a non-profit organization. Donations from friends around the world help needy families in Tzfat, Israel. It is only because of your compassion that we are able to send food parcels to over 111 families, offer free eyeglasses, free shoes for children, and some dental help. 1. www.lamedvuvnik.org -- select True Stories, Rena Tzfat. This site updates the stories of Lev U'Neshama's work. Credit card donations can be made securely from this site, or you can mail a check made out to: The Derech Elokim Fund, c/o Louis Berlin, 19651 NE 19th PL Miami, FL 33179. Receipts are issued upon request. Indicate that your donation is for Lev U'Neshama, Tzfat. 2. www.tsal.org also takes credit card as well as mailed in donations and issues receipts. To Save A Life 16405 Equestrian Lane, Rockville, Md. 20855 Indicate that your donation is for Lev U'Neshama, Tzfat. If you don't need a tax receipt, send your check payable to Lev U'Neshama directly to Lev U'Neshama, c/o Smolensky, PO Box 6432, Tzfat 13229 Israel. Checks are exchanged for shekels and put to work immediately. If you want your donation to be used for one of our specific projects, just let us know. All our work is done by volunteers so that every dollar you donate goes to directly to the project you choose. The Hebron Fund -- Contributions made to: The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230; 718-677-6886; www.hebronfund.com; hebronfund@aol.com Friends of Kedumim -- Contributions made to: American Friends of Kedumim, PO Box 55, Union, NJ 07083-0055; www.kedumim.org.il; raphaella@kedumim.org.il Friends of Elon Moreh -- American Friends of Elon Moreh, Box 5435, Passaic Park, NJ 07055; elon-moreh@shechem.org; www.shechem.org/elon-moreh HaMeir L'David -- hameir.org/donate.html -- is a research and publishing organization that produces books and newsletters based on the Authentic Jewish Idea. A network of volunteers distributes the Darka Shel Torah and Ideas in Action newsletters on five continents in four languages, and HaMeir L'David speakers and lecturers go anywhere they are invited to speak and teach about authentic Jewish values. Additionally, HaMeir L'David oversees the Heroes Memorial Education Center and its unique research and development activities. Contributions may be sent to: Hameir L'David, PO Box 960121, 143 Doughty Blvd., Inwood, NY 11096 Kids For Kids -- Headquarters in Jerusalem Over 558 Israeli children have been left ORPHANED; 172 Children Murdered; 2,007 have been physically INJURED; While thousands more are GRIEVING & TRAUMATIZED by bombings, sniper fire, mortar shelling and terrorist ambushes. KIDS FOR KIDS is a platform for Jews around the world to do tangible acts of kindness for Israeli children who have been affected by terrorism. Checks may be written to: American Friends of Kids for Kids, 14114 Sholom Place, San Antonio, Texas 78230; contact -- kidsforkids@kidsforkids.net Helen Freedman is with Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI). Contact her at ghfree@aol.com
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SCENES FROM THE JIHAD
Posted by Bryna Berchuck, November 2, 2006. |
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This is by Jeff Jacoby, who is a columnist for the Boston Globe. It
appeared yesterday in the Globe
So much for the fuzzy feeling so many Europeans have that all we have to do is throw Israel to the dogs and the Muslims will calm down and leave everyone else alone. Yeah, right. |
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Australia: Australia's foremost Muslim cleric triggers an uproar when he likens women who don't wear an Islamic headscarf to "uncovered meat" and blames them for attracting sexual predators. "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or the park ... and the cats come and eat it," says Sheik Taj al-Din Hilali, "whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat? If [the woman] was in her room, in her home, in her headscarf, no problem would have occurred." Afghanistan: The kidnappers of Italian photojournalist Gabriele Torsello threaten to murder him unless Abdul Rahman, an Afghan Christian convert, is returned to Afghanistan and handed over to an Islamic court. Rahman lives in Italy, which granted him asylum earlier this year, when he faced the death penalty under Afghanistan's sharia law for converting from Islam to Christianity. Iran: The president of Iran calls Israel "a group of terrorists" and threatens to harm any country that supports the Jewish state. "This is an ultimatum," warns Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for the elmination of Israel and the United States. "Don't complain tomorrow." Days later, the deputy director of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization confirms another stride forward for the country's illicit nuclear program: With the injection of gas into a second cascade of centrifuges, Iran has doubled its uranium-enrichment capacity. Thailand: Islamist terrorists bomb a column of Buddhist monks as they collect offerings of food in Narathiwat, a city in southern Thailand. One person is killed; 12 are injured. The attack is the latest in a bloody week that has included multiple shootings and another fatal bombing. France: Another Muslim intifadah rages in France. Hundreds of cars are torched nightly and passenger buses set ablaze with Molotov cocktails. One such fire in Marseille leaves a 26-year-old woman in a coma with burns covering 70 percent of her body. "We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists," says police union leader Michel Thoomis. "This is not a question of urban violence any more. It is an intifadah, with stones and firebombs." So far this year, more than 2,500 police have been wounded in clashes with rioters. Britain: In a "true Islamic state," sexually active homosexuals would be executed, says Arshad Misbahi, an imam in Manchester's Central Mosque. According to interviewer John Casson, the imam explains that while executions "might result in the deaths of thousands," they would be worthwhile "if this deterred millions from having sex and spreading disease." Not all the news is bad. NATO forces have recently killed scores of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Czech intelligence agents thwarted an Islamist plan to seize the Central Synagogue in Prague on Rosh Hashanah, hold the Jewish worshipers hostage, and then blow up the building with its occupants. A proposal to let Muslim taxi drivers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport refuse service to passengers carrying alcohol was scrapped in the wake of vehement public opposition. And the world's mightiest fighting force continues to kill Islamofascists in Iraq, currently the key battleground in the global jihad. But there can't be much question that at this point in the war against radical Islam, the radicals are on the march. From Ahmadinejad's swagger to Hezbollah's war on Israel to the plot to blow up jetliners leaving London, our enemies are aggressive, relentless, and unequivocal in their determination to defeat us. Meanwhile, Western Europe is turning into Eurabia before our eyes, as a fading native population with its effete secular culture of pacifism and relativism is superseded by a surging Muslim cohort. Most Muslims are not Islamists or terrorists, of course. However, most of them keep quiet in the face of the radical offensive. That is all the radicals need to keep driving the jihad forward. "If this country lets down its guard, it will be a fatal mistake," President Bush said last week. Yet too many Americans seem unable to recognize the threat, or to believe that they, their liberties, and the lives of innumerable human beings are truly at stake in a deadly global war. But radical Islam is not going away. Like Nazism and c ommunism, it is (in Senator Rick Santorum's words) "an ideology that produces the systemic murder of innocents." Like those earlier totalitarianisms, it will go on murdering until it is crushed. Like them, it is impervious to appeasement and contemptuous of weakness. The longer Americans sleep, the farther the jihad advances. |
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UNIFIL PATROL TAKES NIGHTS OFF, UN ADMITS HIZBULLAH ARMING
Posted by Ezra HaLevi, November 2, 2006. |
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Despite the 20,000 troops deployed in southern Lebanon, the United Nations admits that weapons smuggling from Syria continues unhindered. A German report finds UNIFIL does not patrol after dark. Hizbullah terrorists are free to roam at night without fear of being identified by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), according to a report by the German paper Der Spiegel. Spanish UNIFIL official Richard Ortax admitted to the paper that no patrols are carried out at night "because of the danger involved." UNIFIL commanders said their function is to "observe changes in the behavior of the local population." One junior officer told Der Spiegel he was glad that his battalion had only left its camp once. "It's absurd," he said. "We landed here and set up our tent city, but since then we've only left the camp to drive around and to make sure that we're seen." The report cites a long tradition of UNIFIL inaction, which it says allowed time for a Finnish contingent to construct a giant sauna and an Indian contingent to decorate its base with traditional Indian artwork. The UNIFIL troops and the 14,000 Lebanese soldiers stationed in the region add up to a total of around 20,000 troops in the 18-by 31-mile region of southern Lebanon. Another 6,000 troops are still expected to arrive. The United Nations itself has admitted that Syria was still successfully smuggling arms to the Hizbullah, which neither UNIFIL nor the Lebanese army plan to stop. Israel has maintained overflights in the region in order to monitor and discourage the smuggling, yet UNIFIL officials condemn the continued Israeli maneuvers. The Lebanese army even attempted to shoot down Israeli fighter jets on Tuesday. France and the European Union have been accusing Israel of violating Resolution 1701 with its flights over Lebanon. The current state of affairs has led Israeli officials to speak about "rethinking the implementation of Israel's commitments" made in the context of the UN-brokered cease-fire. The UN Security Council "noted with regret [that] non-Lebanese militias" in the country had not been disbanded or disarmed, an allusion to the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hizbullah. The statement on Tuesday was termed a "presidential statement," which is the weakest of all available Security Council actions. Following the meeting, UN envoy to the region Terje Roed-Larsen explicitly admitted that Syria was actively smuggling weapons into Lebanon. He said that Lebanese government officials "have stated publicly and also in conversations with us that there have been arms coming across the border into Lebanon." Roed-Larsen added that Syria itself does not deny the flow of weapons, claiming only that the arms are not being dispatched by the Syrian government. "The consistent position of the government of Syria has been that, 'Yes, there might be arms smuggling over the border, but this is arms smuggling and the border is porous and very difficult to control,'" Roed-Larsen told reporters. Roed-Larsen ducked UN responsibility for the smuggling, saying UN troops had not been asked by the Lebanese army to monitor the border. Ezra HaLevi writes for Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNationalNews.com). |
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ARE DONORS TO THE JEWISH NATIONAL FUND DECEIVED?
Posted by Ruth Matar, November 2, 2006. |
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Dear Friends, Last week's Letter from Jerusalem, entitled "Are Donors to the Jewish National Fund Deceived?", was written with a heavy heart. Heaven forbid, I do not want you to think that I accuse the current leaders of the Jewish National Fund of lining their own pockets with our contributions! What I do believe is that the present JNF leadership has, unfortunately, been unduly influenced by radical leftist ideology, where no price or human sacrifice is too high to achieve an illusionary peace with the Arab enemy, including the wholesale abandonment of Jewish Biblical Land. My friend, Helen Freedman, wrote a courageous article, entitled "Arabs grabbing JNF land in Jerusalem", which was posted on October 15, 2006, claiming that in Jerusalem important strategic portions of that land ends up in Arab hands. Her article was part of my October 26, 2006, "Letter from Jerusalem" on the same subject. Helen and I are not writing from the top of our heads. Our writing is based on documented information from Arieh King, a passionate Zionist who resides in East Jerusalem and who has literally made it his life's mission to uncover the tragic giveaway of Jewish land to the Arabs. Arieh King deals with documented facts only. Such facts were submitted to Avinoam Binder, Chief Representative for Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael, the Hebrew version of JNF, at his New York office. MR. BINDER HAS CONFIRMED THAT LARGE SCALE GIVEAWAY OF JNF LANDS TO ARABS HAS BEEN OCCURRING THROUGH ISRAELI GOVERNMENT DECISIONS AND THE FAILURE OF JNF TO OPPOSE THESE DECISIONS. The most tragic and harmful failure of JNF in this regard is its failure to rigorously oppose huge tracts of land being left on the "Arab" side of the so-called "security wall," which is again dividing Jerusalem. JNF considers this a decision by the Israeli government, which they refuse to appeal. The sad truth is that the NJF leadershiop has lost its way. At the present time, it does not represent the desires of the majority of its contributors, nor the goals for which it was founded, that is to reclaim Jewish ownership of our biblical inheritance. The CEO of the JNF, Russell F. Robinson, has written a scathing personal attack on my friend Helen Freedman, in the form of an "Open letter" to her. An example from Mr. Robinson's "Open letter" to Helen Freedman: "By attacking the soul of the Jewish people, it puts you in some interesting company. You now join the ranks of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and others who attack us for our work as a Zionist organization. I ask you, Helen Freedman, what safe Israel are you talking about?" WOW! That is a serious accusation! Helen Freedman is part of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign? You sure owe Helen Freedman an apology, Mr Robinson. For his own organization, the JNF, Mr. Robinson has nothing but flowery platitudes, such as the following: "We believe deeply and emotionally in our mission statement -- that we are the caretakers of the land of Israel on behalf of its owners -- Jewish people everywhere." If this were only true! Further on his opinion of Helen Freedman: "In your unfair representation of 'facts' your attack on JNF is an attack on the soil, which is the soul of the Jewish people. You, Helen Freedman, have attacked the soul of the Jewish people." My question for Mr. Robinson: If the SOIL is the SOUL of the Jewish People, why do you abandon our very SOUL to the Arab enemy? We need to work to prevail on the leadership of the JNF to safeguard the principles of their founders to purchase the land solely for Jewish use. They must fight the decisions of a temporary Israeli government, which abandons these principles for an ideology which goes against the intent of the founders of the JNF at the Fifth Zionist Congress at Basel, Switzerland, in 1901: "The JNF shall be the eternal possession of the Jewish People... The JNF protocol specifically prohibits selling land ownership and selling any rights to non-Jews." With Blessings and Love for Israel, Ruth Matar
Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow
(Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their
website address is http://www.womeningreen.org
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RUSSIAN MOSLEM TROOPS INSIDE LEBANON!!!!! NOT UN force either!!!
Posted by Geralyn Hampton, November 2, 2006. |
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This letter comes from a beloved JEWISH friend. WE really need to increase our prayers for Israel!! Church what happens to Israel affects US Christians!! We are told by God Himself to Pray for the Peace of Israel, will you join me in this? shalom,
My friends -- Phillip & Linda Lemkin -- write: |
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Where is the ISRAELI OUTRAGE HERE??? Where is any comment from the U.S. "State Dept" and Condalleza Mashed Potato? (Rice has a nicer meaning than this Replacement Theology woman of double-standards.) I DON'T TRUST HER AFTER THE HIZBALLAH FIASCO and mockery of an U.N. "resolution" Is the U.N. FINISHED?
In case you missed this info: 11th OCTOBER, 2006 -- The Muslim commandoes of the Vostok (East) and Zapad (West) battalions of the Russian Army's Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) (picture) arrived in Beirut this week to guard the 150 Russian military engineers and to restore the roads in Lebanon damaged by Israeli bombing. Apparently, Moscow did not consult Israel before stationing Muslim Chechen troops on its border for the first time. Russian defense minister Sergei Ivanov said openly to Russian media that the deployment of former rebel Chechen troops in Lebanon aimed at "improving Moscow's image in the Arab and Muslim world." The Russian units are operating independently of the largely-European UN peacekeeping force. Intelligence reports that their vehicles fly Russian and Lebanese flags. UNIFIL was also taken by surprise by the Russian move. Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora was informed but declined to notify Washington, Paris, Berlin, Rome or the UN. The Kremlin's rationale for making Russia the first nation to deploy a Muslim contingent in South Lebanon is part of a hard-hitting foreign and domestic policy initiative. The Putin administration wants to demonstrate to Russia's teeming Muslim community its willingness to step into Middle East conflicts -- on behalf of the Muslim-Arab interest. The move also allows for a bond to be forged with Hizballah, with whom the Chechens, with their long record of extremist Muslim terrorist action against the Russian army, have much in common. Such a connection with Hizballah in the parts of Lebanon under its control will pave the way for a Russian Muslim military presence north of Israel which is independent of the UN and not bound by its resolutions. It appears that the Israeli government and IDF high command was as surprised as Washington and the UN by the Russian step. In addition to its other unwelcome implications, UN Security Council resolution 1701 has now opened the door for Russian military intelligence to step in and camp on Israel's border, using former Muslim terrorists involved in organized crime. The Chechen Vostok and Zapad battalions are part of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division that is permanently deployed in Chechnya, in charge of the eastern and western regions. The Zapad battalion is led by Major Said-Magomed Kakiev, the Vostok's commander is the former rebel Sulim Yamadaev. This same Yamadaev, Debka reports, the former Chechen rebel commander who won an amnesty and the Hero of Russia award in 2004, is alleged by the Russian media with leading the robbery of the Samson-K meat-processing plant in St. Petersburg on September 15. He and up to 40 of his armed men stayed in the city's Nevsky Palace Hotel, one of the most opulent in Europe, where he was seen embracing the leader of the local organized crime gang, Vladimir Kumarin. SHALOM and Blessings,
Contact Geralyn Hampton at ghampton123@sbcglobal.net |
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HEBREW UNIVERSITY ALLOWS JIHADNIKI TO USE CAMPUS
Posted by Steven Plaut, November 2, 2006. |
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1. The "Alternative Information Center" is a small propaganda outfit devoted to seeking the destruction of Israel and to promoting Arab terrorism against Jews. It is a collaboration between pro-terror Arabs and Jews interested in seeing Israel destroyed and a second Holocaust perpetrated. Its main activity is to operate this web site: http://www.alternativenews.org/ It seems to be loosely associated with the "Indymedia" network of anarcho-fascist web sites. This week, the academic year began at the Hebrew University. As part of the festivities, the student union at the Hebrew University held a fair in which various outfits, mainly commercial, offered their wares. But a number of Arabs ("leftist activists", in the jargon of Haaretz) from the "Alternative Information Center" showed up and wanted to distribute their anti-Israel propaganda as part of the event. The heads of the student union had the good sense to refuse to allow these pro-terrorists to attend the fair unless each could produce a "certificate of honesty" from the police, effectively a bill of clean legal status. Such certificates are confirmations from the police that the person in question has no criminal record, and they are used in Israel for such things as getting a banking license, issuing stock, etc. They are also used to identify people who have been involved in any way with terrorists. The student union leaders were concerned about the participation of such people in a student union fair because a few years back Arab terrorists had detonated a bomb in a Hebrew University student cafeteria, murdering students, and the union heads did not want to see a repetition. The AIC pro-terrorists ran to the lawyers from "Adala", an Arab NGO, and threatened the Hebrew University with dire consequences if it did not allow the AIC people in. In the end, the Dean of Students, Prof. Esther Shohami, from the school of pharmacy decided to grant the jihadniki a one-time permit to enter and incite, even without the police certificates. If you would like to urge that the AIC people be prevented from
turning the Hebrew University into their own private campus intifada
in the future, please write Shohami at Email: esty@cc.huji.ac.il With copies to The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Naturally, Haaretz and the Caring Left are outraged by the attempt to keep these people from propagandizing against Israel in a time of war on the same Hebrew University campus that is financed by the taxpayers these people want to see murdered. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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THE DUTIES OF THE THINKING CLASSES
Posted by Barry Rubin, November 2, 2006. |
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What is the role of the intellectual in public life? Opinions differ. In those Arabic-speaking countries ruled by dictatorships, the dominant view is that such people should be soldiers in backing the regime and its aims. In Western democratic states, the dominant view is that such people should be soldiers in opposing the current government and its aims. Do you see the pattern here? Let's take Syria as an example of the first type. There, the job of the intellectual, teacher, or journalist is to fight for the common goal as defined by the government rather than pursue truth, professional integrity, or democracy in any independent manner. Anton al-Maqdasi, a Syrian political philosopher, complained in 2003 that the regime's apparent goal was to make citizens as identical as possible in their ideas and views, "as if they were cast in the same mold." That was, of course, precisely the point: they were supposed to echo government views. As Bashar al-Assad put it in an August interview, "The role of the Arab intellectual is not to weep or to cry over the ruins, but rather his role is to present people with the culture and the ideology of the resistance..."; while Syrian Minister of Expatriate Affairs Buthayna Sha'ban explained last August 14 that "culture should be mobilized: literature, art, poetry, for the resistance. We must all work to inculcate these [values] in future generations, so that they will not know the taste of defeat and shame..." Inculcating the need for battle becomes more important than providing skills or knowledge. Thus, the Dean of Education at Damascus University explained in an interview last August that the culture of resistance must permeate every aspect of Syrian life. "We can teach the child the following mathematical problem: 25 tanks entered South Lebanon. The brave men of the resistance confronted them. They burnt down five tanks and damaged seven. How many of these tanks returned defeated back to where they came from?" Clearly, this is more to be prized than teaching mathematical equations about how many votes did each party get in a democratic election. Instead, each citizen is a soldier mobilized against the foreign enemy and his local lackeys. It is his duty to love big brother. As for the intellectuals and the cultural elite, they are richly rewarded for selling out. One of their main privileges is being able to posture as a hero for doing so. There are few things better than winning the right to live in luxury and have one's career advanced for pretending to be a champion of the underdogs. By and large, the thinking classes lap it all up. This veneer of being "left-wing" for praising or repeating the arguments of a repressive Syrian dictatorship also plays well with like-minded intelligentsias elsewhere. A European friend of mine once sat in a conversation with several leading Palestinian intellectuals. You would recognize their names and they are thought to be the most liberal voices in their society. In the course of the discussion, he was asked what he thought to be the proper role of the intellectual. He made three points: -- That the intellectual should preserve and pass on the best ideas and cultural achievements of his own civilization. Everyone nodded. These are the deformations of Arab societies. In every country, there is a courageous minority that rejects the idea that they should function as government propagandists and bureaucrats. Those who do accept their role as privileged, well-paid servants of the dictatorship then blast the dissidents as traitors, foreign agents, and so on. After doing so, the official intellectuals congratulate themselves on their courage in leading the resistance to the forces of imperialism and Zionism in defense of the underdog. In democratic states, however, privileged, well-paid intellectuals have increasingly come to see their main job as the permanent opposition. The late Edward Said, whose great achievement was to make totalitarian thinking popular in the West, called this "speaking truth to power." But the role of intellectuals and cultural figures is not to form a party with a permanent view of anything. Rather, as banal as it might seem, the use of such people is to seek the truth fearlessly wherever it might lead, to do the best job they can of describing the real world as accurately as possible. Not perfectly, mind you, but as best they can possibly do. Their task is not to be either apologists or opponents of their societies but to examine them, apportioning praise or criticism, defense or change as is appropriate in each specific case and issue. I am haunted by a story told to me by an Asian scholar who is an expert on Indonesia. Whenever he goes to interview extremist and even terrorist leaders, there comes a point in the discussion when they go to their bookcases and pull out the works of well-known contemporary Western writers to "prove" the bizarre ideas about the world that they hold. Hate George Bush if you will, complain about U.S. policies if you want, criticize the shortcomings of Western society if you like. But the defamation of democracy, the justifications for dictatorships that systematically oppress your counterparts, and the incitement or justification of terrorist violence are simply going too far. Pretending to be a hero and a benefactor of humanity for doing so is outright disgusting. Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center university. His co-authored book, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, (Oxford University Press) is now available in paperback and in Hebrew. His latest book, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, was published by Wiley in November 2005. Prof. Rubin's columns can be read online at: http://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/column.html. |
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SHOULD ISRAEL COMPEL RELEASE OF SOLDIER? WHAT MOTIVATES RUSSIA? OLMERT FLATTERS RUSSIAN ENEMY
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, November 2, 2006. |
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CONGRESS NO HELP The US has been negotiating with rogue states for years. It got nowhere with them, but they got closer to having nuclear weapons. Members of Congress suggest that the US continue negotiating. Few of them seem to realize that negotiations don't work with the evil axis without a credible threat of force. Our people do not understand the issues, are not united, and wax impatient. WHERE ARE CIVIL LIBERTARIANS WHEN NEEDED? The government of Israel still is beating up non-violent Jewish dissidents (whose views may be in the majority, now), falsely arresting them, keeping them in jail without trials, and suffering no penalty. Civil liberties organizations, which make up false charges about Israeli treatment of Arabs, are silent about Israel's actual mistreatment of Jews. Many Arabs attacked settlers with impunity. INSTIGATING ARAB RIOTS An Arab cameraman for Reuters was convicted and sentenced, on videotaped evidence of his having exhorted fellow villagers of Bil'in to throw rocks at Israeli vehicles servicing the security fence there. The judge made excuses for him (from my associate in Israel). At least he was ALL THESE NAVAL MANEUVERS The US and NATO keep having naval maneuvers with non-member states such as Egypt and now, Israel. The stated exercises usually are to rescue people at sea. But too many ships are involved. If Israel were excluded, I would think these really are practice exercises for war on Israel. I don't know what they are for, but wish they would issue a manual on rescue and save the fuel. DOES RUSSIA DO IT JUST FOR THE MONEY? Russia makes a lot of money selling arms to rogue states. Does it do that just for the money? Why do Russia and China act irresponsibly about Iranian and N. Korean acquisition of nuclear weapons? I suspect it is because they think that Iran and N. Korea would not bomb them and they hope that Iran and N. Korea bomb the US. On the other hand, it could be that Russia and China think the world hasn't changed, and they may play the old game of spheres of influence without grave consequences. SHOULD ISRAEL COMPEL RELEASE OF SOLDIER? If Israel turned off electricity to Gaza, first the Arabs would defy Israel, then they would dislike Hamas, and finally they would return the Israeli soldier (if he still is there and is alive). Would such Israeli action be justified or be a war crime? The world would call it a crime, but the alternative is to send the army in, against resistance, search every house, and catch many terrorists. Would the world prefer that? MUSLIM CABBIES IN MINNESOTA Half the cab drivers in Minneapolis are Muslim. Some of them refused to take as passengers people carrying liquor. Their religion prohibits them from drinking alcohol but not others from carrying it or even drinking it. They were attempting to impose their views on others. They were getting the officials to make refusal a recognized procedure, although to get their license, the drivers had agreed to accept all lawful passengers. Reaction to the proposal was strong. The proposal is contrary to the Constitution. Officials withdrew it. Coincidentally, the new airport regulations prohibiting the carrying of liquids has reduced the incidents, anyway (Daniel Pipes # 716, 10/16). DISCRIMINATORY AUTHORITARIANISM BY ISRAEL The IDF ordered 18 Jews in the Yitzhar area of Samaria to leave the area, and for some, to leave all of Samaria for a year or half a year, beat one, arrested some, and told them where they had to be under house arrest and without being allowed out to buy food. It claimed the reason was so they couldn't harass Arabs during the olive harvest. Arrest before a crime? No trial to prove any assertion. But the harvest lasts for a month. The order was issued without a trial and without offering compensation. It cannot be coincidental that each one is a leading activist in an outpost the government wants to dismantle (IMRA, 10/17). That is sneaky, high-handed, self-hating bias. P.S.: Arab harvesters harass Israelis. ABBAS REFUSES TO STOP HAMAS Abbas said he would not allow a civil war. That means that, although he is thought to be moderate, he would not crack down on Hamas (IMRA, 10/17). He is not moderate, but even if he were, what good would he be, if he won't fight for it? Why does the US arm him, on the theory that he would crack down on Hamas? Does he just say he won't, while he can't, and would, if the US enabled him to? But while the US ships him more arms, Hamas imports more via Sinai. WHAT LANGUAGE THE MUSLIM ARABS UNDERSTAND From the Prime Minister of the P.A., "Isma'il Haniya: The language of blood is my language, and there is nothing but blood. I have shut my mouth to the art of speech, and let the machine gun do the talking. I let Al-Qassam do the talking, to turn the dens of the Jews into hell." (IMRA, 10/17 from MEMRI.) In other words, the Arabs understand only the language of force. PM OLMERT ABOUT RUSSIA "I am again impressed by your abiding friendship for the State of Israel and by your deep commitment to the security of the State of Israel." IMRA noted: "PM Olmert diplomatically declined to mention that ... Russia provided ongoing intelligence to Hezbollah about Israeli operations ... " and helped arm Hizbullah (IMRA, 10/18). POLITICAL CORRECTNESS "The simple fact is that we never won the Cold War as decisively as we should have. Yes, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union collapsed. This removed the military threat to the West, and the most hardcore, economic Marxism suffered a blow as a credible alternative. However, one of the really big mistakes we made after the Cold War ended was to declare that Socialism was now dead, and thus no longer anything to worry about. Here we are, nearly a generation later, discovering that Marxist rhetoric and thinking have penetrated every single stratum of our society, from the Universities to the media. Islamic terrorism is explained as caused by "poverty, oppression and marginalization," a classic, Marxist interpretation. What happened is that while the "hard" Marxism of the Soviet Union may have collapsed, at least for now, the "soft" Marxism of the Western Left has actually grown stronger, in part because we deemed it to be less threatening. The "hard" Marxists had intercontinental nuclear missiles and openly said that they would "bury" us. The soft Marxists talk about tolerance and may seem less threatening, but their goal of overthrowing the evil, capitalist West remains the same. In fact, they are more dangerous precisely because they hide their true goals under different labels. Perhaps we should call it "stealth Socialism" instead of soft Socialism. One of the readers of Fjordman blog once pointed out that we never had a thorough de-Marxification process after the Cold War, similar to the de-Nazification after WW2. He was thinking of the former Soviet Union and the countries in Eastern Europe, but he should probably have included their Marxist fellow travellers, their sympathizers and apologists in the West. We never fully confronted the ideology of Marxism, and demonstrated that the suffering it caused for hundreds of millions of people was a direct result of Marxist ideas. We just assumed that Marxism was dead and moved on, allowing many of its ideals to mutate into new forms and many of its champions to continue their work uninterrupted, sometimes filled with a vengeance and a renewed zeal for another assault on the capitalist West. We are now paying the price for this. Not only has Marxism survived, it is thriving and has in some ways grown stronger. Leftist ideas about Multiculturalism and de-facto open borders have achieved a virtual hegemony in public discourse, their critics vilified and demonized. By hiding their intentions under labels such as "anti-racism" and "tolerance," Leftists have achieved a degree of censorship of public discourse they could never have dreamt of had they openly stated that their intention was to radically transform Western civilization and destroy its foundations." "Multiculturalism is just a different word for "divide and conquer," pitting various ethnic and cultural groups against each other and destroying the coherence of Western society from within. At the very least, the people living in the former Communist countries knew and admitted that they were taking part in a gigantic social experiment, and that the media and the authorities were serving them propaganda to shore up support for this project. Yet in the supposedly free West, we are taking part in a gigantic social experiment of Multiculturalism and Muslim immigration every bit as radical, utopian and potentially dangerous as Communism, seeking to transform our entire society from top to bottom, and still we refuse to even acknowledge that this is going on. In Norway, a tiny Scandinavian nation that was until recently 99% white and Lutheran Christian, native Norwegians will soon be a minority in their own capital city, later in the whole country. And still, Norwegian politicians, journalists and University professors insist that there is nothing to worry about over this. Multiculturalism is nothing new, neither is immigration. In fact, our king a century ago was born in Denmark, so having a capital city dominated by Pakistanis, Kurds, Arabs and Somalis is just business as usual. The most massive transformation of the country in a thousand years, probably in recorded history, is thus treated as if it were the most natural thing in the world. To even hint that there might be something wrong about this has been immediately shouted down as "racism." Anti-racism, usually false these days, is a cover for intimidating opposition to the neo-Communist ideology. " ... more than fifty years after the West left its colonies in the Third World, Leftists are still blaming all the ills of Africa and the Middle East on the former colonial powers, while the same left-wingers only ten years after the fall of Communism blamed Russia's troubles on unrestrained capitalism. "The Left refuses to seek answers elsewhere. At the same time they are, because of Marx, accustomed to look for economic explanations to everything. Consequently, they seek the explanation to Islamic terrorism in the economic situation. But it is a great mystery to me how 200 dead people in Madrid are supposed to help the poor in the Islamic world." "... issue of power exercised by the dominant over the subordinate group." At an academic conference sponsored by the University of Nebraska, "the attendees articulated the view that 'White students desperately need formal "training" in racial and cultural awareness. The moral goal of such training should override white notions of privacy and individualism.'" This can sometimes amount to virtual brainwashing disguised as critical thinking. Fonte mentions that at Columbia University, "new students are encouraged to get rid of 'their own social and personal beliefs that foster inequality.' To accomplish this, the assistant dean for freshmen, Katherine Balmer, insists that 'training' is needed. At the end of freshmen orientation at Bryn Mawr in the early 1990s, according to the school program, students were 'breaking free' of 'the cycle of oppression' and becoming 'change agents.' Syracuse University's multicultural program is designed to teach students that they live 'in a world impacted by various oppression issues, including racism.'" "...the Politically Correct are more intolerant of dissent than traditional liberals or conservatives, since Liberals of earlier times "accepted unorthodoxy as normal. Indeed the right to differ was a datum of classical liberalism. The Politically Correct do not give that right a high priority. It distresses their programmed minds. Those who do not conform should be ignored, silenced or vilified. There is a kind of soft totalitarianism about Political Correctness." "Because the politically correct believe they are not just on the side of right, but of virtue, it follows that those they are opposed to are not just wrong, but malign. In the PC mind, the pursuit of virtue entitles them to curtail the malign views of those they disagree with." "People who transgress politically correct beliefs are seen not just as wrong, to be debated with, but evil, to be condemned, silenced and spurned." "The rise of political correctness represents an assault on both reason and liberal democracy." Browne defines Political Correctness as "an ideology that classifies certain groups of people as victims in need of protection from criticism, and which makes believers feel that no dissent should be tolerated." He also warns that "Good intentions pave the road to hell. The world is not short of good intentions, but it is too often short of good reasoning." "Muslims want to kill Canadians, Canadians smile back, tell them how much they "respect" them and ask what more they can do to please them." "This is what Political Correctness leads to in the end. It's not funny and it's not a joke. Political Correctness kills. It has already killed thousands of Western civilians, and if left unchecked it may soon kill entire nations or, in the case of Europe, entire continents. As I have stated before, Islam is only a secondary infection, one that we could otherwise have had the strength to withstand. Cultural Marxism has weakened the West and made us ripe for a takeover. It is cultural AIDS, eating away at our immune system until it is too weak to resist Islamic infiltration attempts. It must be destroyed, before it destroys us all. The Leftist-Islamic alliance will have profound consequences. Either they will defeat the West, or they will both go down in the fall. We never really won the Cold War as decisively as we should have done. Marxism was allowed to endure, and mount another attack on us by stealth and proxy. However, this flirting with Muslims could potentially prove more devastating to Marxists than the fall of the Berlin Wall." "American political analyst Tony Corn claims that "The recent referenda on the EU Constitution [in 2005] have proven, if anything, how disconnected EU élites have become, not just from world realities, but from their own constituencies. It should now be clear to all that the intra-European gap between élites and public opinion is greater still (and in fact older) than the transatlantic gap between the U.S. and the EU. For Washington, there has never been a better time to do "European Outreach" and drive home the point that the existence of a "Sino-Islamic Connection" calls for closer transatlantic cooperation and a reassertion of the West." Bat Ye'or thinks this is caused by the stealth agenda of the EU élites to create a larger entity of Europe and the Arab world. The promotion of Islamic culture under guise of Multiculturalism is an essential part of this plan. She talks about a conflict between Europeans and Eurabians, with the latter holding sway for now because they dominate the media and the political establishment. However, there are similar conflicts in Canada, Australia and the United States, too." "This Ideology implies that the state has to seize control of, or at least regulate and interfere with, all sectors of society, which leaves little room for individual freedom and thus real democracy. If we notice all the new laws restricting speech and behavior in the Multicultural society, not to mention the massive re-writing of our history and the total change in the very nature of our institutions, we understand that our countries moved rapidly in a totalitarian direction the very second Multiculturalism was adopted as the ethos of the state." (Baron Bodissey, Frontline Magazine, IDF IN GAZA The IDF has been operating in Gaza to eliminate weapons and terrorists making war on Israel. Israeli forces discovered five tunnels for smuggling in weapons, and planned to blow them up (IMRA, 10/18). Israel's abandonment of Gaza enabled terrorism to become more deadly. For that it ruined the lives of 10,000 Jews living in that part of the Jewish homeland. ECONOMICS OR JIHAD? Syria and Jordan are damming the Jordan R. Previously, 92% of the river's flow had been drawn off. The small flow left to the holy river mostly has been for flushing sewage. The dam would reduce the remaining flow by a fourth or desiccate it entirely (IMRA, 10/18). Then why is Jordan participating? For economics or for jihad? The news brief implies that Israel would have less water, too. Is that the dam's real object? What will Israel do about it? It should have bombed Syria for helping Hizbullah, and let a few stray bombs demolish the dam construction. ANTISEMITES' LAMENT On the Lebanon war, Human Rights Watch has had false complaints about Israel and near complacency about Hizbullah, but pretends it is neutral. "What has destroyed Human Rights Watch's credibility is the fact that it has clung to its (feigned) neutrality while Israel has been attacked by an enemy that seeks to destroy human rights, kill the Jews, and impose on America and the world an extreme version of Islamic law." Hizbullah has admitted its wish to commit genocide against Israel. A former head of Human Rights Watch wrote an error-laden defense of the organization in the New York Review of Books. This defense emphasized that "'rational discussion is precluded by charges of anti-Semitism against anyone with the temerity to criticize Israeli policy or practice.' In fact, America is echoing with critics of Israel and has been for years. To propagate a theory of an all-powerful Israel lobby Professors Walt and Mearsheimer are given tenured positions at Harvard and the U. of Chicago, a podium at the National Press Club and Cooper Union, and a book contract at Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Their discussion mightn't be rational, but it's hard to say it has been precluded. " "Few would know this better than the editors of the New York Review of Books, which has published some of the most hysterical criticism of Israel, most notably Tony Judt's call for a bi-national state. His criticism is hostile to the Jewish state, because bi-nationalism means precisely the end of the Jewish state." (NY Sun, 10/19, Ed.) Human Rights Watch should not be neutral in a war of genocide. They should be objective. They are neither, they are anti-Israel. They use the typical, hypocritical antisemitic argument that the Jews are all-powerful and squelch criticism of them. Nor is proposing something that leads to genocide legitimate criticism. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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FREEING MARWAN BARGHOUTI WOULD VIOLATE INTERNATIONAL LAW AND IMPERIL ISRAEL
Posted by Louis Rene Beres, November 1, 2006. |
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U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has reportedly asked Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to free imprisoned terrorist Marwan Barghouti. Her argument, it would appear, is that the Tanzim leader remains very popular among the Palestinians, and that he is the only Fatah representative who could successfully supplant the Hamas-led government. Whether or not she is correct in her assessment of Barghouti's popularity, such a release would violate the most elementary principles of law and justice, and would bring new violent attacks upon Israel. Nullum crimen sine poena. "No crime without a punishment." Codified in multiple sources after the Nuremberg Trials, this principle (called a peremptory norm) is so fundamental in international law that it can never be disregarded. Indeed, apart from formal jurisprudence, decency and common sense dictate that -- in the midst of a far-reaching war on terror -- the United States not demand the release of a major terrorist. And Barghouti is a very dangerous terrorist at that. Let us not forget that the intentional murder of Jewish children in Israel was his particular specialty. When the victorious allied powers established a military tribunal at Nuremberg on August 8, 1945, they reaffirmed an ancient and ongoing principle of law. Criminals, especially those who have committed crimes of war, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity, will be punished. Period. In 1946, this reaffirmation was first incorporated as Principle I of the legally binding Nuremberg Principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment." These Nuremberg Principles, further formulated by the United Nations International Law Commission in 1950, stipulate: "Offenses against the peace and security of mankind...are crimes under international law, for which all responsible individuals shall be punished." Terrorism is a serious offense against the "peace and security of mankind." Marwan Barghouti, leader of Tanzim and the man openly responsible for dozens of suicide bomb attacks on Israeli civilians, was -- until his capture, trial and imprisonment -- one of the world's most wanted criminals. Arrested by Israeli special forces on April 15, 2002, Barghouti is currently serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli jail. The Israeli imprisonment of Barghouti serves far more than that country's particular national interest. It also represents indispensable support for our decentralized system of international law. Even today, when there exists an International Criminal Court, this largely self-help system must still rely upon the ready willingness of individual states to use their own domestic courts for the prosecution of international terrorists. In its trial of Barghouti, therefore, Israel acted correctly and productively on behalf of the entire civilized community of humankind. Barghouti headed the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the Palestinian militia that systematically plans the dismemberment, burning and killing of Jewish men, women and children in schools, buses and restaurants (a group that the U.S. Secretary of State now believes to be relatively "moderate"). By the standards of contemporary international law, these terrorists are known as HOSTES HUMANI GENERIS, "common enemies of humankind." In the fashion of pirates, who were to be hanged by the first proper authorities into whose hands they fell, these contemporary wrongdoers are international outlaws who come fully and incontestably within the scope of "universal jurisdiction." Punishment of violent crime must always lie at the very heart of justice. In our continuing sovereignty-centered system of world law, prosecution by individual states is still often the only available path to punishment. In the absence of Israel's essential and law-enforcing operations against Palestinian terrorism, outlaws like Barghouti would remain forever free to commit further atrocities. Immune to the proper expectations of extradition and prosecution (the Palestinian Authority has never complied with these minimal obligations of international criminal law), Barghouti would have proceeded gleefully with his perverse organization of Palestinian children into explosive cadres of "martyrs." It is essential, therefore, that he remain in an Israeli prison and not be mistaken for a "freedom fighter." Barghouti, of course, thinks of himself as a heroic liberator, not as a terrorist. But even if his objective of Palestinian self-determination could be accepted under authoritative international law, the means chosen in his use of violence were always indisputably unlawful. The Law of Armed Conflict, which applies to insurgents as well as to uniformed armies, makes it clear that the ends can never justify the means. A cause, even if it is presumed legitimate, can never excuse the deliberate use of violence against the innocent. Never. All of Israel's actions in the Barghouti case -- custodial and juridical -- are fully supported by our own American law. For the United States, the Nuremberg obligation to punish terrorists is doubly binding. This obligation represents not only the basic rules under international law, but also the calls of a Higher Law that are deeply embedded in the American system of governance. All international criminal law is part of the law of the United States, an incorporation expressed unambiguously at Article VI of the U.S. Constitution and at associated Supreme Court decisions. On September 12, 2001, when Israeli flags were lowered to half-staff to honor America, Marwan Barghouti openly and enthusiastically celebrated our national misfortune. This Palestinian terrorist leader who Condoleezza Rice now seeks to restore to political authority and power is a sworn enemy of the United States. It should also be recalled that Barghouti is a major criminal who openly aided Saddam Hussein during his 1990-91 rape of Kuwait and who has now become a staunch supporter of Al Qaeda. It is highly improper and imprudent, therefore, that the Secretary of State of the United States now calls for his release for any reason, least of all to breathe life into a long-dead Middle East Peace Process. Louis Rene Beres is the author of many books and articles dealing with international criminal law. He is Strategic and Military Affairs columnist for The Jewish Press. This article was published in the Jewish Press and is archived at http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/19806/ Freeing_Marwan_Barghouti_Would_Violate_International_Law_And_Imperil_Israel.html |
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TACTICS OF HAMAS AND THE PROPHET'S TREATY OF HUDAIBIYYA
Posted by Michael Mgr, November 1, 2006. |
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This was published on the Islam Watch website (www.islam-watch.org) and is archived at http://www.islam-watch.org/MA_Khan/HamasHudaybiya.htm |
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The disastrous attack on Israel in 1967 by the Arab Muslim states in their perennial desire to annihilate the Jewish nation resulted in miserable defeat for the Arabs. Israel occupied a large chunk of Arab lands that included Sinai and Gaza from Egypt, West Bank from Jordan, Golan Heights from Syria. Israel's incredible single-handed defeat of the entire Arab world brought a new realization amongst the Arab nations that their dream of destroying the Jewish state, which they promised on the day of Israel's creation two decades earlier, cannot be materialized anymore (at least, not under the current strategy). Under such reality on the ground, Egypt and later Jordan, who had lost much of the occupied land in 6-day war, slowly extended hands of peace to Israel. As of now, only three Muslims countries out of 57, namely Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, recognize the existence of the Jewish state. Although some moderate Muslim states have extended peace to the Zionist state, other fanatic Islamic nations lead by Iran and Syria have kept the fight for the destruction of Israel alive in various guises. The first was the emergence of Arafat-lead Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorist outfit, which was in a ruminant stage during the 1967 war. After a couple of decades' deadly campaign of terror, PLO also came to the realization that the resilient Zionist state could not be destroyed and abandoned its congenital charter of Israel's destruction and instead succumbed to the idea of recognizing her legitimate existence. With PLO joining the peace camp, new and more deadly terrorist outfits, namely Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Martyrs brigade, emerged to perpetuate the campaign for the destruction of the Jewish state. One day, these apparently incorrigible militant groups might, out of despair, also decide to offer peace to the Jewish state. Most likely, there will emerge new violent Islamist groups to perpetuate the conflict. Although such has been the reality of the Israel-Palestine conflict, yet it has left the world guessing as why this perennial conflict of the modern times cannot be solved and instead, becomes increasing violent and complicated with time. One must investigate the commands of Islam which drives these Islamists groups to grasp the crux of the conflict. It is important to investigate the commands in the Koran and examples of Prophet Muhammad (Sunnah) which determines the bedrock of Islamic ideals and laws for eternal times. I will allude to the Koranic verdicts and historical investigation of Prophet Muhammad's tactics in similar circumstances in order to identify the roots of the tactics of the various Jihadi groups active in this conflict. Regarding the Jews and also the Christians, Allah commands Muslims in the Koran: " Fight the Jews and Christian, until they are subdued to dhimmi status and pay poll-tax (Jiziya) in humiliation" [Q 9:29]. About one of Prophet's last wishes in his dead-bed, Ibn Hisham notes: "Let there remain no faith than Islam in Arabia" [1]. Islamic traditions also record one of Prophet's death-bed wishes was: " Lord! Destroy the Jews and Christians." Thus, the existence of Jewish state in the Arabian region with honor and dignity is not clearly allowed in Islam. The initial actions of the Arab world and of various terrorists groups later are only the extension of this command of Islam. I will now investigate as to how the tactics of Prophet Muhammad are being applied in minute details by the various Islamist groups in Palestine. Within about 6 years of the Prophet Muhammad's emigration (Hijra) from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE, the Muslims had exterminated the various resilient tribes around Medina, mainly the Jews, who did not willingly submit to Islam. The last Jewish tribe of Banu Quraiza was exterminated in 628 CE by means of mass slaughter of their 800-900 adult men, capture of their women and children as slaves and confiscating their lands and assets as spoils of war [Koran 33:26-27; Ibn Hisham, p684ff; Ibn Sa'd p53f]. With no adversary in the vicinity of Medina, the confident Prophet cast his eye on Mecca, his ancestral city, the inhabitant Koreish of which had rejected his new religion. Muhammad urged all the tribes to join an expedition during the lesser pilgrimage (Omra) in 628 and assembled a strong force of 1500 men and advanced towards Mecca seeking to force into the Ka'ba, the most sacred temple for the pagans of Arabian Peninsula, to perform the rituals of Omra. As the news of this advance arrived in Mecca, they assembled their force around the city, determined to resist entry of the Muslim army. It should be noted that the Muslims had attacked Mecca trade caravan passing through routes around Medina starting in 623 CE, which resulted in complete stoppage of Mecca's life-sustaining trades with Syria. In a number of blood-letting attacks, Meccans had lost many of their comrades, too. Also during the early days of his preaching in Mecca, the Prophet had also laid a claim on the sacred temple of Ka'ba being founded by Abraham and his son Ishmael and belonging to his own God, Allah. Learning of the preparation of the Koreish and sensing a definite blood-bath of unknown quantum, the Prophet stopped on the way at a place called Hudaibiyya and sent emissaries to Mecca for a negotiation. Muhammad persisted on his intention to enter the sacred temple of Ka'ba for performing Omra peacefully. Mecca citizens, on the other hand, were both worried and adamant against allowing Muhammad to enter their city and their sacred temple of centuries, which would be a case of extreme embarrassment for them, too. [2] At one point, Prophet's son-in-law, Othman, was sent to the Koreish camp for negotiations. Bargaining with the Koreish was taking a bit long for him to return and rumors started brewing in the Muslim camp that Othman had been murdered. Muhammad quickly assembled all his faithful under an acacia tree bounded them by the pledge to stand by 'Othman to the death'. All had completed the oath one by one, what became known as the famous "Pledge of the Tree" in Islamic annals. Their religious fervor was exited to such a degree that all of them were in a suicidal mood to rush upon the enemy at once. Just about that time, Othman reappeared in the Muslim camp, avoiding a sheer blood-bath. Realizing Muhammad's determination to enter Mecca and sensing that a military confrontation would cause heavy blood-bath on both sides, the Mecca citizens acceded to Muhammad's demand to enter the Ka'ba for the pilgrimage but starting only next year. So, a truce was signed which demanded no hostility for ten years during which the Muslims would be allowed to enter Mecca and perform the annual pilgrimage peacefully. [2] Next year in 629, Muhammad went back to Mecca during the same pilgrimage. The Mecca citizens left the city for three days allowing the Muslims perform the pilgrimage without interference. By the following year (630 CE), Muslim army had grown strong enough to overrun Mecca. Muhammad could not wait until the expiration of the 10-year truce and started preparation to attack Mecca to capture the city and the centuries-old sacred temple of Ka'ba. [3] Hearing the news of build-up of a massive force in Medina, the helpless leader of Mecca, Abu Sufian, the father-in-law of Muhammad, proceeded to Medina to plead with his son-in-law against attacking his people. He had to return Mecca empty-handed after being denied a meeting with Muhammad. With little regard for the treaty, Muhammad launched his expedition to attack Mecca and when Abu Sufian once again set forth to negotiate with advancing Muslim army. His brother Al-Abbas, who had joined the Muslim camp only a few days earlier, presented him with the choice of submission to Islam or death: "See ye not the myriad of candles above the camp? Believe (in Islam); cast thy lot with us; else thy mother and thy house will weep for thee." When Abu Sufian showed some hesitancy, Al-Abbas exclaimed: "Woe is thee! It is not time for hesitancy, this. Believe and Testify forthwith with the creed of Islam, or else, thy neck shall be in danger." Abu Sufian converted forthwith and returned to his people asking them to submit to Islam or else shut themselves in their houses to avoid definite death at the hands of Muhammad army. Thereupon, Muhammad's army entered the city, captured the Ka'ba and destroyed the vestiges of idolatry and established the rule of Islam over the city [3]. The message one must take home from this event is the brilliant tactics Prophet Muhammad had applied by signing the Treaty of Hudaibiyya. It would have been a disaster for Muhammad to engage in a head-on battle at the time when he only 1500 men under his charge, while the Koreish of Mecca could assemble a force of 10,000 men. Yet, Muhammad was ruthlessly intent on overrunning Mecca at an opportune time in order to capture the Ka'ba -- which had become the focus of Islamic creed, the house of Allah. So he insisted on a temporal ceasefire of hostility, in stead of offering the terms of permanent peaceful coexistence. This treaty gave him an opportunity to build up his forces strong enough to overrun Mecca at a later time. Although a 10-year truce was signed, Muhammad broke the agreement and attacked Mecca within two years as his force became strong enough to overrun the coveted city. From the treaty of Hudaibiyya and the subsequent capture of Mecca and Ka'ba two years later, the evident message of the master tactician Prophet of Islam is such: 'When you are weaker against your enemy, do not jump into a suicidal war. In stead, sign a truce of nonaggression for a while during which you could build up the force and ammunition and when you are strong enough to overrun the enemy, dump the truce and launch the attack'. Exactly the same message was resonated in former Malaysia leader Mahathir Muhammad's famous 2003 OIC speech in Kuala Lumpur, which urged the Muslim world to walk in the footsteps of the Prophet. He said: "The Quran tells us that when the enemy sues for peace we must react positively. True the treaty offered is not favorable to us. But we can negotiate. The Prophet did, at Hudaibiyah. And in the end he triumphed." He continued: "1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weakness and our strength, to plan, to strategize and then to counter attack." He further added: "We are enjoined by our religion to prepare for the defense of the Ummah. Unfortunately we stress not defense but the weapons of the time of the Prophet. Those weapons and horses cannot help to defend us any more. We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships for our defense." Whether paying heeds to the entreaty of the Malaysian leader or not, the current strategy of the various Islamist groups, namely Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, fighting for the destruction of Israel clearly demonstrates their adoption of exactly the same strategy Prophet Muhammad had applied in Hudaibiyya at the dawn of Islam. With Israel's insurmountable power at the present, these terrorist groups, intent on destroying the Jewish state as and when the opportunity comes, are insisting on a ceasefire, not the offer of peaceful coexistence. They seek this period of truce to build up the military might in term of recruiting the fighters, acquiring the weapons and if possible nuclear weapons for a decisive blow to the tiny Jewish land. Iran, the mother of these terrorist outfits, is rushing fast to acquire the nuclear weapons in defiance of the world. The hope is that as soon as the definite opportunity to launch a devastating blow arrives, the ceasefire would be thrown in the waste-dump and Israel will be turned into ashes. Effective usages of such a strategy is quite in evidence in Hezbollah's usage of a long-held ceasefire to stock up its weaponry, strengthen its defenses and increase its recruitment such that the Israeli army, known to be invincible in the middle east, had to offer a ceasefire in its recent war against Hezbollah. Hamas was also applying similar tactics over the years as a guerrilla group. However, the new reality after the Palestinians overwhelmingly voted the Jihadist group to power in free and fair democratic election; they are facing a difficult choice unlike the Hezbollah in Lebanon, who does not have the responsibility of governing. After forming the Government, the responsibility of running and financing the state machinery have fallen on the shoulder of Hamas. The government in Palestine is heavily dependent on aid from the Western nations, who stopped giving aid to Hamas government because of its charter for the destruction of a sovereign nation. The humanitarian aid however has continued to flow. This has put the Hamas government in a difficult position. It has failed to pay salaries to civil servants, teachers and doctors resulting in a dire situation in Palestine. Under such hopeless situation, the moderate president Mahmoud Abbas has stepped in to salvage the situation. He was negotiating on the formation of a unity government between his Fatah and Hamas and pleaded with Hamas to recognize the Jewish state as part of the unity Government, hoping that such a government would receive Western aid. There seems to have been some initial agreement on part of Hamas on such an arrangement since President Abbas declared during recent UN general assembly in New York that a coalition Government is going to be formed between Hamas and his Fatah party which will recognize Israel's legitimate existence. After this announcement, Hamas quickly denied such an agreement, which must have been a slap on the face of the Palestine president. However, further intense negotiation followed under mediation of Egypt and Qatar without a breakthrough. President Abbas declared all avenues of negotiation with Hamas have failed. Verily so! Accusing President Abbas of ruining the formation of unity government, Hamas spokesperson said: Hamas has denied talks were at a dead end, but said the latest initiative, presented in Gaza by Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, was unacceptable because it included recognition of Israel. Hamas says it will never recognize Israel and will abide only by peace agreements with the Jewish state that it believes are in the interests of the Palestinian people. [Reuters, October 24th, 2006] By peace agreement, they meant a temporary truce or ceasefire of hostility, not a permanent agreement for peaceful co-existence with Israel. The detailed strategy of the noble Prophet of Islam at Hudaibiyya is in detailed application by Hamas. Howsoever difficult the situation be, they must not offer terms of permanent peace to the enemies of Islam, whom the Prophet had commanded to exterminate from Arabia in his dead-bed. So is the divine command of Allah [Koran 9:23]. Allah and his Prophet must be giving 'bravo' to Hamas sitting in heaven. And Dr Mahathir couldn't probably expect anything better. References: [1] Prophet's biography by Ibn Hisham, p1021
Contact Michael Mgr at michaelmgr@gmail.com |
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STOP ARMING THE FATAH
Posted by Carol and Sol, November 1, 2006. |
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To President Bush Stop, please, stop arming and training the Fatah forces. You know that they are transferring arms to the Al Aqsa Bigade, a terrorist group that is sworn to Israel's destruction. How can my own government arm those who will kill innocent people. Are we so desperate to make ammunition sales that we would sacrifice human beings? Strengthening Fatah will not help them battle Hamas; it will only enbolden Israel's enemies. Stop! Stop arming the Fatah. Contact Carol and Sol at carolsolm@yahoo.com |
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POLICE ADMIT MISTAKE BUT JUDGE SENDS JEWISH DISSIDENT TO JAIL
Posted by Root and Branch Association, November 1, 2006. |
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This article was written by Mrs. Elli Rodan. Contact her at editor@israeljustice.com It appeared on the www.israeljustice.com website. |
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JERUSALEM -- Daniel Pinner can't understand how an Israeli court could sentence him to two years in jail for shooting a Palestinian when the chief police investigator testified that this might have been a mistake. In April, Pinner, a 40-year-old resident of the West Bank Jewish community of Tapuah, was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for shooting a Palestinian man on the Gaza shore weeks before the Israeli eviction of some 10,000 Jewish residents and their supporters. During the trial, police acknowledged that they did not investigate the shooting because they mistakenly thought Pinner had confessed to the crime. "Maybe we made a mistake," Shimon Amar, the head of police investigations, testified. The judge was not impressed and Pinner was convicted. For attorneys and civil rights group, this was no surprise. Many of them reported a trend by the courts to ignore rules of evidence when dealing with Jewish opponents of the government's withdrawal policy from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "What this trial proved more than anything else that there is frighteningly close collaboration between the police, the prosecution and the courts," Pinner said. "I didn't think I would end up in "shabak" [Israel Security Agency] interrogation cellars and a couple of years in prison." Indeed, over the last year, scores of Jews charged with so-called ideological crimes have been kept in jail for months without charge. In some cases, judges kept Jewish dissidents in jail even after police were found to have fabricated evidence against them. "Unfortunately, this is not something new," Prof. David Kretzmer, professor emeritus of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said. "I defended people who were brought to court on the basis of all kinds of statements and unfortunately it seemed to be an endemic problem in the 1970's. It seems to be a recurrent theme among law officials that they either exaggerate or sometimes invent claims that demonstrators were using violence or disturbing the police to justify their own behavior." Pinner, an electrician who sought to oppose the Israeli eviction, was arrested on June 22, 2005 on charges of shooting Nasser Ahmed Wafy in the leg on the Gaza beach during a fracas between Arabs and Jews. Four days earlier, Pinner recalled that he had been walking along a coastal road after helping renovate a Jewish-owned hotel that had been left dilapidated. He was carrying a licensed Uzi submachine gun amid reports of Arab stone-throwing from the neighboring Muwasi neighborhood. Within minutes of leaving the hotel, Pinner saw several Palestinians throwing stones toward Jews along the beach. He recalled seeing Jews being struck by a stone and an Arab injured as well and felt he was in danger as as about 50 Palestinians approached. "I shouted some warnings in Arabic but more Arabs came," Pinner recalled. "Then I shot in the air." The following week, Pinner was arrested at his home in Tapuah, regarded as a hotbed of nationalist opposition to the government of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. At first, police told Pinner that he had shot Wafy, a resident of the Muwasi, in the chest. Later, police said Wafy was shot in the leg. During the trial, the prosecution based its case on the testimony of Wafy, who failed to identify Pinner as the shooter. Police acknowledged that they failed to conduct ballistic or forensic tests to determine whether the bullet wound claimed by Wafy stemmed from Pinner's Uzi. At one point, police testified that Pinner confessed to shooting an Arab and therefore no investigation was conducted. When the video was shown in court, Pinner was shown telling police interrogators that he fired in the air. At that point, Amar admitted that he might have made a mistake. Later, Judge Rachel Barkai of the Beersheba District Court dismissed Amar's admission and determined that Pinner was guilty and sentenced him to two years. "Pinner's actions were nothing more than a show of force against Palestinians in the area, Barkai said in her decision. To Yitzhak Klein, director of the Jerusalem-based Israel Policy Center, the practice by police to charge Jewish dissidents with crimes that would never be investigated was all too familiar. Klein, who has examined the issue, said judges have exhibited their bias against right-wing opponents of the government by accepting fabricated police evidence. "In many cases that have come to our attention there has been a misuse of video evidence as far as misrepresentation to editing and cutting," Klein said. "We suspect that it is endemic. It's hard to second guess every judge. There are cases where judges are wiser than the police, or judges are not aware of the evidence or whatever ... that it is actually some kind of political bias." As a resident of Tapuah, Pinner has been a target of Israel's domestic intelligence service for years. As early as 2003, he said, he rejected pressure by the Israel Security Agency to finger suspects in drive-by shootings against Arabs in the West Bank. "They used a lot of flattery, telling me that I have high intelligence and initiative," Pinner recalled. "'Don't be frightened,' they said. 'We only want to help.' Then they threw down the challenge and offered me money -- firstly 300 shekels [$65] to cover petrol costs and they they upped it to 1,000 shekels [$230]." Pinner, who served in the Israeli military, said security agents peppered him with questions on what he thought of Israel and the government. "You come from England," Pinner quoted an officer as saying. "What do you think of our government system?" "I have nothing to hide." Pinner said. "You are with us or against us," the agent, who called himself Yiftah, said. "Decide and decide now." "I am an electrician, not a spy," Pinner said. In 2004, Pinner was again summoned for interrogation. He refused to show up and this time his apartment was raided by police. Officers found books by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, the leader of the far-right Kach movement, Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and 19th Century English poetry. "They suspected me of being a Kahanist, a Communist and a Nazi," Pinner said. Israeli police did not investigate the Pinner shooting at the Gaza beach. But they unquestioningly accepted evidence from the Palestinian Authority, despite a government determination that this was an enemy government. The PA Health Ministry sent Israeli police a report that Wafy -- who said he was shot by a fat short bespectacled man with long earlocks, which widely contrasts with the clean shaven non-bespectacled Pinner -- was treated for a gunshot wound on June 18, 2005. The report, which showed Wafy pointing to a bandaged thigh, said both the entry and exit points in the leg measured one centimeter in diameter. At the trial, Pinner's attorney, Baruch Ben-Yosef, cited expert evidence that the exit point of a bullet was larger than the entry point. Ben-Yosef cited a police memo that requested that Wafy's trousers be sent to forensics for tests. The memo was ignored. In cross-examination, Amar, the police investigator, was indignant. "You're not telling me how to do my job?" Amar asked. "We didn't need all of this. He [Pinner] admitted it. He [Pinner] reenacted it on film." The judge took a recess to see the videotaped reenactment. In the recording, Pinner said "I shot in the air" rather than what the police claimed he said, "I shot the Arab." At that point, Amar admitted that police were mistaken. During his detention, Pinner recalled that he was denied basic rights. He was held in a 2x2.5 meter cell where he was taken for frequent interrogations. His interrogators wanted to know the names of those living in the hotel he was renovating rather than details of the shooting. Later, his arraignment was held in camera and Pinner was not allowed to meet an attorney. The court even issued a gag order on his arrest. In the end, he spent 10 months in prison by the time he was convicted, long after Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank. "The actions of the defendant [Pinner] are dangerous, regardless of the political background," Judge Sarah Dovrat of the Beer Sheba District Court said on July 14, 2005 in rejecting a petition that Pinner be confined to his home. "A person who carries a weapon and uses it attests to the threat he poses and is not a result of political tension. Under these circumstances, the end of the disengagement does not counteract the defendant's threat." Pinner even tried political methods to win his freedom. During the March 2006 elections, he was placed on a list of Knesset candidates for the Herut Party. The party failed to win a seat. In April 2006, Pinner received a break. Supreme Court Judges Edna Arbel, Elyakim Rubinstein and David Cheshin released Pinner from jail pending his appeal. On Sept. 10, the appeal was rejected. Pinner was scheduled to return to prison any day now to serve the remainder of his sentence. His mother died in England and Pinner was expected to be allowed to attend the funeral in Israel. "The police have authority and use it in a flawed way," Miriam Leedor, director of the information department of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said. "We view this in a very grave way. He [the policeman] is an authority figure and he has the authority to use in it in a possibly deceitful way. This is very serious." The Root and Branch Association is based in Jerusalem. Contact it at rb@rb.org.il |
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WHAT THE WEST IS FACING
Posted by Ramy Dishy, November 1, 2006. |
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Islam expansion, like all empire builder, took place by conquest. The lands absorbed, with their people and culture, enriched the conquerors with wealth of knowledge, that brought Islam to be the leading force in the world in science, math, astronomy, architecture etc, while Europe was in the dark age. That lead comes to an end with Renaissance in Europe, and due to the bloating and division within the Muslim world. The end of Islam expansion took place with the defeat of the Ottoman at the gates of Vienna, in 1683. From that time, the decline of Islam accelerates, while Europe increased it lead in science and technology. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the result of world war one, decimated that Empire benefiting the European victors, dividing artificially the vast land between themselves as colonies or protectorates. After WW2 and the gradual end of colonialism, a new Muslim world arises on the old colonial partitions. These new independent states did not adapt to the new reality of progress, innovation and democracy with the rest of the world. While they can claim sovereignty, they were dependent on the West for their existence. Fouad Ajami's book The Arab predicament, analyzes it in depth, but I will quote a few sentences: "The great imagined past is a mirage; it can supply inspiration in moments of doubt, but it can become a narcotic, a way of avoiding coming to term with the society's troubles, of ignoring its stalemate". Another quote to illustrate, "The Chinese revolutionaries, observes Joseph Levenson, accomplished a revolution "against the world to join the world, against the past to keep it theirs, but past. China's success contrast with the failure of the Arab order". Their vast lands and recourses did not bring their people the standard of living and freedom expected. It became a repeat of the old with new masters. Dictatorship and corruption was the norm across the new-old Muslim world. Wars between themselves were not unheard of. The existence of Israel in their midst become their focus and frustration. Their repeated defeat by tiny and hated Jewish state became their obsession. Their hero Nasser was willing to sacrifice one million Egyptian soldiers to eradicate Israel. But Israel prevailed and prospered. Resentments spread in every Muslim state, and movement for changes was oppressed. One dictator replaces another, but reality for the masses remain the same. Despair and a need for a change-solution, was on everyone's mind. Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini gave the hope and inspiration for a new beginning for Islam. He symbolizes the opposite of the corrupt regimes in the Arab-Muslim world. While the Shia branch of Islam had their Ayatollah, the majority Sunny had their Bin-Laden. Both leaders symbolized the opposite of their oppressing and crooked leaders. Venting the frustration and despair of the masses, was the tool that these leaders used cynically to implement their agenda. It becomes the new hope for liberation, and the end of the suffering of every Muslim. It became the revival of Islam of the old glorious days. For this historic revolution, a new beginning. Many of the more than one billion young Muslim, living with no better future at hand, are willing to fight and become suicide bomber, for the cause. If it will be Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, or any other location, there, will be the Shaheeding [martyrs] determined, ready and willing to reach their promised virgins. Against these elements the West is fighting. While Islam has unlimited source of manpower, the West is counting their precious fallen soldiers. This war has no limit on numbers and dates. Islam looks on history and winning, in term of generations and centuries. And this is the unbalanced equation between the West and Islam. Is the West willing to face the challenge and pay the price? The above dilemma is Israel's as well. Contact Ramy Dishy at clement32@sympatico.ca |
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THE BETRAYAL OF ISRAEL
Posted by John Shook, November 1, 2006. |
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"AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH" 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Dear Mr. President; I'm writing in reference to Israel as I just concluded reading the book Eye to Eye by William Koenig. There was a question asked of you and the answer you gave is quiet upsetting. Yaron Deckel, of Israeli Television Channel 1, asked you the following question on August 11, 2005, in Crawford, Texas. Deckel: As a believer, Mr. President, what do you say to Jewish believers who think that God sent them to settle in the Biblical Israel and they will not obey any decision of elected government? President Bush: Well, you know, there are admonitions in the Bible that do talk about the role of government relative to man. And Israel is a democracy and democracies are able to express the will of the people. The Prime Minister is expressing what He thinks is in the best interest of Israel and the people will decide, ultimately, whether or not that decision makes sense. Therefore, according to your answer you obviously believe that man overrules God. Scripture states: Acts 5:29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men. I believe you in your answer was referring to obeying magistrates and rulers which is correct pertaining to the governing of people UNLESS it goes contrary to God. What you are doing to Israel is in utter contradiction to the word of God. He gave to the Jewish people for an EVERLASTING possession all the land of Canaan from the River of Egypt to the Great River Euphrates. And furthermore God never changes his mind for Scripture says he was the same yesterday, today and forever and changeth not. If you would only turn to God for guidance he would guide you for the sake of our nation. But undoubtly your Dad and the Saudi King are your counselors solely. I believe this idea of dividing the land of Israel for whatever reason is coming straight from Hell and the Devil is the driving force. Mankind has been in opposition to God ever since they tried to run the show at the tower of Babel where the people tried to pool their talents, resources and knowledge to thwart God's purpose but we know that God confused their language and they had to obey him anyway. Now in the twenty first century mankind has almost end run God on that account. We believe by our actions that we know better than God. You political leaders and law makers have formulated laws to make us a secular liberal nation of Godless reprobates similar to Israel's leaders marginalizing Judaism and promoting secularism. You folks passed hate crime laws and then expanded them to include speech thus giving total rule to the government to stifle and ultimately banish the preaching of the truth. Scripture says in Psalms 9: 17 The wicked will be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. Now on a more personal note, it seems by your actions and words alike that all your counselors and you included embrace Replacement Theology which is a lie from Hell itself, for consider this, if God somewhere along the way substituted the church as the chosen instead of the Jews then in reality he finally changed his mind or more precisely finally made a mistake for in essence he lied in his word and therefore really wouldn't be the perfect God but an imposter, WHICH IS NOT TRUE. Please remember this, a lawyer posed a question to Christ in Matt: 22:36-40. Master, which is the great commandment in the law.? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great commandment, And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Now the question arises, If you believe you are born again, how can you reconcile your treatment of the Jews with love when you and you alone are using your power to destroy them? Remember your words pertaining to the nations and peoples in 2001 when you said, you're either with us or against us? Well, God is asking you the same question today, are you with him or against him: Now I don't apologize for being so blunt but I have tried by the Spirit of God to warn you and to tell you the truth which can make you free. May God have mercy on you, our nation and Israel,
Contact John Shook at sivan1040@msn.com |
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THE CROWN OF DAMASCUS
Posted by Steven Plaut, November 1, 2006. |
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This is about The Harriet Tubman Of Syrian Jewry. It appeared in the Jewish Press (www.jewishpress.com/page.do/19793/The_Harriet_Tubman_of_Syrian_Jewry.html). |
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"For the soul was ransomed from the pit of darkness, and life shall see light." -- Job 33:28 It sounds uncannily like the opening scene of "The Maltese Falcon." But it is not a Hollywood fantasy. Its origins are in the medieval Spanish kingdom of Castille, in the early thirteenth century, well before Columbus left for the Americas. It was at some point purchased with coins minted during the reign of Queen Isabella's half-brother, Henry IV. Then Isabella became queen, marrying Ferdinand of Aragon, and they completed the Reconquista and turned their attention to ethnic cleansing. After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, it showed up in Constantinople, where it was purchased with florin coins minted during the reign of Sultan Selim I, father of Suleiman the Magnificent. And from there it somehow got to Damascus, where it remained -- hidden from the eyes of outsiders -- until it was redeemed from the land of Aram, the land from which Abraham departed on his mission. And it's priceless. The Keter or Crown of Damascus is neither as well known nor quite as authoritative as its cousin, the Keter of Aleppo. Each "crown" is actually a hand-written complete biblical codex, containing vowels and cantillation (trop) signs, printed out in book form. The Crown of Aleppo was used by Maimonides and is considered the most precise and oldest surviving such manuscript of the Torah. But fewer than two-thirds of its pages have survived, and some of those are damaged or partly burnt. The Crown of Damascus, by contrast, is in mint condition. Every page has survived intact. Its last page is an incredible calligraphy image of the final chapter of Chronicles in the form of a Kiddush cup. The entire manuscript was written by a single scribe, in dark brown ink text letters and with lighter brown ink for the vowels and cantillation marks. In Damascus it was used for study only on the holiday of Shavuot by the congregation formed by those expelled from Spain. In some ways its recovery was the "crowning" achievement of one Judy Feld Carr. ***** Every schoolchild in North America has heard of Harriet Tubman, who smuggled slaves from the American South to freedom in the North via the "Underground Railroad" before the Civil War. Her smuggling operations rescued some 300 slaves. Ironically, Judy Feld Carr is still largely unknown, even among North American Jews. In large part that is probably because of the secrecy in which she operated, for nearly three decades, as the Harriet Tubman of Syrian Jews. But rescuing the Crown of Damascus is only one dramatic highlight of a heroic career: Judy saved the lives of 3,228 Syrian Jews (of about 4,500 who would eventually escape Syria) and she did so almost single-handedly. While some Syrian Jews were captured or killed in various escape attempts, Carr did not lose a single one in any of the escape operations she organized and managed. Like so many strange things in this world, this story begins with a Plaut. Rabbi Gunther Plaut, a well-known Toronto figure and distant relative of your humble correspondent, was, in the early 1970's, among the first to bring the plight of Syrian Jewry to the attention of the world. While the persecution of Soviet Jews was making headlines, few were aware of the brutal persecutions in Syria. The organized Jewish community preferred to keep the subject under wraps and to pursue quiet, polite -- and ineffective -- lobbying on behalf of Syria's Jews. Rabbi Plaut's calls to action electrified Judy Feld, a musicologist and mother of three, who had grown up in small-town Ontario and later moved to Toronto. Together with her husband, Dr. Ronald Feld, they decided to commit themselves to doing something about the plight of Syrian Jews. ***** The Syrian Jewish community traces its origins back to biblical days. Much of Syria was incorporated into King David's realm and parts were again later ruled by the Hasmoneans. Benjamin of Tudela, the famous traveler and writer, visited Damascus in 1170, reporting on a Jewish community there that numbered about 3,000. The Bartenura, a medieval Italian commentator on the Mishna, visited the community and described the lush gardens and luxurious homes of the Damascus Jews. Before the arrival of the refugees from Spain, most Syrian Jews were musta'arabim, Arabic-speaking Jews, with their own liturgy. They were strongly influenced by the mystics of Safed and produced several leading kabbalists. Syrian Jewry had been reinforced over the centuries by waves of immigrants, including Spanish Jews after the expulsion of 1492 and others from Italy, Sicily and Morocco. The menfolk worked in a variety of trades and engaged in commerce. The women developed a special local cuisine, which included samboosak (half-moon pastry filled with cheese or meat), coconut marmalade (especially for Passover) and sharbat loz, a cold drink made from almond syrup. By the first half of the twentieth century, much of the Syrian Jewish community had emigrated. Many reached Israel, especially after the Syrian pogroms of 1947. Others went to Brazil, Brooklyn, and Deal, New Jersey. For one reason or another, several thousand Jews stayed behind in Syria. By the 1960's they were living under a permanent state of siege, brutalized by the totalitarian Ba'ath regime, under surveillance of the secret police and facing the perpetual threat of violence. Quite literally the host for German war criminals, the Syrian government carried on its own anti-Zionist jihad against its Jewish citizens. Jews had special identity cards stamped, in large red letters, "Mossawi," an Arabic expression for Jew (derived from the name Moses), and were prohibited from walking more than three kilometers from their homes. ***** Judy and her husband committed themselves to helping and redeeming Syria's Jews in any way possible. But they had to begin the battle from scratch, with no idea how to proceed. They commenced with publicity campaigns and meetings with activists, trying to nudge the Jewish organizations of Canada and other countries into taking a stronger position on, and a more vocal interest in, the plight of Syrian Jews. They produced brochures and booklets that circulated throughout the Jewish world. (I can recall distributing them on campus as an undergraduate in Philadelphia.) More important, they began surreptitious activities to rescue as many Syrian Jews as possible. Most of the details of the rescue operations are still secret. While "Mrs. Judy," as Syrian Jews the world over affectionately call her, is reluctant to discuss those details, an indirect acknowledgment of their sophistication and importance came recently from the Israeli intelligence services, which published a cover story about her exploits in their newsletter. Some of the stories of the rescues were revealed in The Ransomed of God, a 1999 book by University of Toronto historian Harold Troper. Evidently, there were two "exit strategies." In many cases Syrian Jews were ransomed, with monies greasing the right palms in Damascus. In other cases, "illegal" escape schemes were hatched, with the exact routes still unknown (my personal guess is through Turkey). Judy's code name for those involved in the operations was always "gin." An elaborate secret language was developed for communication with those inside Syria, based largely on Chinese cooking terminology, sometimes on biblical code citations. When some young Syrian Jews were arrested, a message reached her from Syria, citing Jeremiah on Rachel weeping for her children. The meaning was clear. The personal mission of "Mrs. Judy" becomes all the more incredible when one realizes the circumstances under which she was forced to carry on. Before a single Jew had been successfully rescued, Judy's husband died suddenly in 1973. It was only four months after they'd succeeded in sending in the first box of books to Jews in Syria. Now a young widow with three children, Judy wasted no time on hesitation and doubt. She decided to pursue alone the mission she had shared with her husband, now with even more devotion and energy. A fund, named after her late husband, was set up by their Toronto synagogue, which raised the money needed for the operations. The amounts she collected are still unknown to the public. When her own father died, she was late for the funeral -- she had to spend most of that day raising $50,000 to rescue an entire family in immediate danger. Only when they were safe did she allow herself the "luxury" of beginning the mourning process. The clandestine efforts and operations escalated. "Canada was the perfect place from which to run the activities," she explained to me. "It's a country that's never on the front page, never the center of attention. I could operate without drawing media attention. And no one was mad at Canada, or paying it much mind." The first ransomed Syrian Jew was an elderly rabbi from Aleppo. Early on, one person at a time was brought out; later, whole families. Sometimes parents in Syria were faced with a "Sophie's Choice" type dilemma, having to select a single child to be taken out in any given ransom or escape operation. By that time Judy had married Donald Carr, a successful Toronto attorney and father of three who had lost his wife at a young age. She continued her work with the backing of her new family. The family always knew when she was about to leave for a trip related to her mission -- the warning sign came when she would start cooking up unusually large quantities of food. Outside her family, virtually no one knew what she was doing; even her beneficiaries did not know her name, only rumors about some mysterious woman in Canada managing the operations. If the Syrian secret police heard those same rumors they no doubt dismissed them as disinformation. The first public revelation of her role in the rescues came in 1995, when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin decided to go public. The chief rabbi of Syria had just been allowed to leave the country. Judy would have preferred that Rabin hold his tongue a bit longer to allow the operations to continue in secret. Some months later she was to be presented with a Merit Award for her life's work by my own school, the University of Haifa. Rabin insisted on personally presenting her with the award. But it was not to be. Three days before the ceremony he was assassinated by Yigal Amir. ***** Today a grandmother of thirteen, Judy doesn't seek public accolades for her years of work and rescue, though she has received, in addition to the aforementioned recognition from the University of Haifa, a number of honors -- among them the Order of Canada and the Simon Wiesenthal Award for Tolerance, Justice and Human Rights. "I have always been reluctant to inject myself into the lives of the people I rescued," she explained to me. "I do not need to harvest expressions of thanks. I want them to get on with their lives." Besides human beings, there were many artifacts and books she managed to redeem from their Syrian prison. She herself traveled to pick up a Torah scroll that had just been smuggled out of Syria, carrying it to Canada inside a hockey bag. (One can only imagine the looks on the faces of the airport security people.) The books and artifacts were donated to museums in Israel. President Moshe Katsav invited her to his home to thank her in person on behalf of Israel. The Crown of Damascus was particularly difficult to rescue because the Syrian authorities were aware of its monetary value. When Judy at last had it safely in her possession in Toronto, the first thing she did was to make sure it was genuine. She asked a Tunisian-born scribe to inspect it carefully. After doing so, he burst into sobs. "What's wrong?" she asked. "I have just seen the face of God," he replied. Curiously, now that Syria is effectively judenrein, its leaders have been trying to improve its image (under intense pressure from an American administration that regards their country as part of the axis of evil) by extending "feelers" to Syria's expatriate Jews. The former Syrian ambassador to the United States, Imad Mustapha, initiated meetings with some Syrian Jews in Brooklyn and in 2004 accompanied a small group of them on a visit to Syria. Should a more moderate Syria ever emerge and abandon its devotion to terror and aggression against Israel and the West -- something unlikely to happen as long as the junior Assad and his Ba'ath storm troopers hold power -- then perhaps these Syrian Jews will play an important role. As for the Crown of Damascus, it's in its rightful home at last. When the chief rabbi of Syria was finally permitted to leave that country in 1995, it was officially for the purpose of a "visit" to the U.S. But once he was free, Rabbi Ibrahim Hamra traveled to Canada and then the U.S. before moving permanently to Israel. When he arrived at Ben Gurion Airport he was carrying a plastic shopping bag. It contained the Crown of Damascus, which Judy and he were conveying to the Israel National Library in Jerusalem. And there it has remained. Judy had insisted that Rabbi Hamra (who, like so many of the Jews ransomed from Syria, named one of his own daughters Judy) carry it himself, restoring it from Aram to Zion with his own hands. Today, thanks in great measure to the untiring, heroic work of Judy Feld Carr, only about 30 Jews, most of them elderly, remain in Syria. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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ISRAELI POLICE DISARM THREATENED JEWS; FUTURE WARS; LABOR PARTY UNCHANGED
Posted by Ruchard H. Shulman, November 1, 2006. |
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LEBANON, NOW There have been no incidents in Lebanon, since ceasefire. Hizbullah men do not show their weapons or uniforms. UNIFIL and the Lebanese Army initiate no searches for them. Israel tipped off UNIFIL dozens of times about a Hizbullah bunker or arms cache, some not near the border. UNIFIL troops and then Lebanese Army troops soon arrive at the scene and report finding nothing. Hizbullah, however, gets tipped off, beforehand, Hizbullah leaves nothing behind to be found, and a confrontation is avoided. PALESTINIAN CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS EXPOSES ITS BIAS The Center reported IDF firing of missiles at two cars, one bearing three Hamas men, the other, bearing two Fatah men. It called those "civilian" cars and the attacks "criminal" and (though like others), "escalation" (IMRA, 10/15). Propaganda. WHOM IS N. KOREA TESTING FOR Not only were 11 Iranians on hand to observer the recent missile tests. Specialists here deduced that the tests checked Iran's missile command system (IMRA, 10/15). Now that's proliferation and for an evil axis! ETHNIC TENSIONS IN ACCO Acco, known in English as Acre, has a mixed population. As students from a Yeshiva danced the Torah in the street, Arabs out during Ramadan clashed with them. The Arabs besieged the school. Police had to come to end the confrontation. Other tensions there are the usual Jewish complaint about Muslims broadcasting Muslim chants late at night in residential areas, in violation of the law. First, Acco police stopped this, but then Arabs protested, so police let them broadcast announcements only two minutes a night, about the end of the holiday. That still is in violation of the law (Arutz-7, 10/15). The Muslims do not respect non-Islamic law. In general, two peoples should not be in mixed countries. Jews should not live in most Diaspora countries, because the gentiles are intolerant of them. Muslim Arabs should not live in most non-Muslim countries, because they are intolerant of the others. POLICE DISARM THREATENED JEWS A Jewish shepherd in Judea-Samaria says that Arabs have been stalking several Jewish shepherds, including himself. They already attacked one. When he complained to the police, the police took away his gun. They explained that this would prevent a clash. Their decision was protested, and they relented. The Yesha Civil Rights Organization urges Jews to contest all such arbitrary police decisions (Arutz-7, 10/15). This is the same way that the antisemitic British police treated threatened Jews during the Mandate. Historically, disarming Jews encourages bullies to pursue them. THE DECIDING MILITARY FACTOR The deciding military factor used to be the size of the armed forces, the economy behind them, and the strategy and intelligence directing them. Now the deciding factor is the public impression of them. Totalitarians have learned to use public relations to undermine Western determination to pursue a war to victory. The West has not learned to fight back through propaganda. Nor is the West united. Another advantage the Islamists enjoy is that they act without restraint, breaking all the civilized laws of war, whereas their foes, though stronger, act with restraint, (Daniel Pipes, NY Sun, 10/17, p.6). Brilliant and useful analysis. There should be wholesale Western condemnation of Islamist savagery. Instead, most Western indignation is against the West when it fights back hard and for the occasions when it fights dirty. The critics don't add, "Of course, the Islamists are beyond the Pale." SYRIA STILL SMUGGLING WEAPONS TO HIZBULLAH This is in violation of the UNO Resolution (IMRA, 10/15). The UNO does not enforce decent resolutions. The UNO serves no useful purpose in foreign relations. There often is no penalty for rogue behavior. HAMAS HAS ANTI-AIRCRAFT AND ANTI-TANK WEAPONS Israeli aircraft and tank counter-attacks into the P.A now are dangerous (IMRA, 10/15). How the Israeli government lets foreseeable dangers build up, instead of scotching them! I think that the escalation in armament by terrorists makes them too dangerous to let alone. They won't be allowed to fire at will and then hide behind their civilians. They will induce their opponents to stop trying to spare civilians but use their deadlier firepower. Western states may even resort to wiping out whole enemy populations. It is getting down to doing that or getting beaten, and getting beaten means betting executed. ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE ERROR Israeli intelligence did not anticipate the heavy volume of arms importation by Gaza (IMRA, 10/16). What did it think would happen when Israel stopped patrolling the Gaza-Egypt border and guarding the gates and destroying smugglers' tunnels? Did it not notice the desert warehouses bulging with arms, awaiting the opportunity to be shipped in? Surely it knew that the P.A. had been trying to import heavy weaponry, before? There were those ships that Israel intercepted, bearing heavy arms. JERUSALEM BUILDING PLAN 20,000 housing units may be built in forested areas of Jerusalem. Many Members of Knesset urge sparing the forests. They think there are enough building sites in Jerusalem, and that expanding the city would make it ugly and economically inefficient. They also want to preserve green areas in Judea (Arutz-7, 10/17). LABOR PARTY ON JERUSALEM Two-thirds of P.A. Arabs want war on Israel, even if Israel cedes all of Judea-Samaria (Arutz-7, 10/17). "Land-for-peace" is unattainable. Former intelligence chief, Ami Ayalon, may head the Labor Party. He acknowledges that the settlers are pioneers, but wants to surrender part of Jerusalem and most of Judea-Samaria to the Arabs who have been fighting for it, and turn the holy places over to international control. If the Arabs are not ready for self-rule, he'd work through a trustee. Mr. Ayalon wants to replace Israel's freedom to take unilateral and military action with diplomacy and consensus. He said that the war in Lebanon taught how to make peace and showed that military strength has limits. During that war, some Arabs states excused Israel and criticized Hizbullah, their motive being fear of Iran's arousal of Shiites in Lebanon and Iraq. He thinks that the Arabs now accept Israel in principle (Daniel Freedman, NY Sun, 10/18, p.6). "In principle" I think means that it is legitimate but not yet recognized officially. He couldn't be further mistaken. He inadvertently adds to the justifications for Israel to take over the territories, by citing the Arabs' unfitness and evil. That they would abandon terrorism if they had hope of statehood was disproved by Arafat's use of terrorism in violation of Oslo, which was bringing the Arabs' to a final settlement. Statehood is not a great goal of the Arabs, conquest of Israel by jihad is. Some intelligence chief he must have been, if he doesn't know what motivates the Muslims! His surrender would follow the debacle of previous surrenders, as the war showed. International control over the holy places means that when the Arabs aim terrorism at the international force, the international force would abandon the holy places to the Arabs. To think otherwise is naive and contrary to the fate of internationalized cities. The problem with the war in Lebanon was that the ineffectual Israeli government failed to take much military action and soon gave in to unilateralism. Consensus repeatedly fails, as the US finds out in its attempt to deal with the menace from N. Korea and Iran. Doesn't Ayalon realize that most of the world is anti-Israel? He thinks Arab criticism of Hizbullah means acceptance of Israel. No, it means that S. Arabia is disappointed that Hizbullah attacked prematurely, and so it lost. Islamic doctrine favoring conquest of Israel has not mellowed. It has hardened. Ayalon exemplifies the Israeli military man who leaves military strategy behind, upon entering politics. Politicians make all sorts of assumptions about the enemy based upon their ideology and contrary to the facts. That behavior injures national security. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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YITZCHAK SHAMIR'S SPEECH TO MADRID CONFERENCE 15 YEARS AGO
Posted by Likud-Herut, November 1, 2006. |
| This is Yitzchak Shamir's Speech to Madrid conference 15 years ago. This was reprinted October 31, 2006 in the Jerusalem Post. |
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It is an honor to represent the people of Israel at this historic moment; and a privilege to address this opening of peace talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The people of Israel look to this palace with great anticipation and expectation. We pray that this meeting will mark the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the Middle East; that it will signal the end of hostility, violence, terror and war; that it will bring dialogue, accommodation, coexistence and -- above all -- peace. To appreciate the meaning of peace for the people of Israel, one has to view to day's Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel against the background of our history. Jews have been persecuted through out the ages in almost every continent. Some countries barely tolerated us, others oppressed, tortured, slaughtered, and exiled us. This century saw the Nazi regime set out to exterminate us. The Shoah, the catastrophic genocide of unprecedented proportions which destroyed a third of our people, became possible because no one defended us. Being homeless, we were also defenseless. But it was not the Holocaust which made the world community recognize our rightful claim to the Land of Israel. In fact, the rebirth of the State of Israel so soon after the Holocaust has made the world forget that our claim is immemorial. We are the only people who have lived in the Land of Israel without interruption for nearly 4,000 years; we are the only people, except for a short Crusader kingdom, who have had an independent sovereignty in this land; we are the only people for whom Jerusalem has been a capital; we are the only people whose sacred places are only in the Land of Israel. No nation has expressed its bond with its land with as much intensity and consistency as we have. For millennia our people repeated at every occasion the cry of the Psalmist: "If I forget thee, Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning." For millennia we have encouraged each other with the greeting, "next year in Jerusalem." For millennia our prayers, literature, and folklore have expressed powerful longing to return to our land. Only Eretz-Israel, the Land of Israel, is our true homeland. Any other country, no matter how hospitable, is still a Diaspora, a temporary station on the way home. THE ZIONIST movement gave political expression to our claim to the Land of Israel. And in 1922 the League of Nations recognized the justice of this claim. It understood the compelling historic imperative of establishing a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel. The United Nations Organization reaffirmed this recognition after the Second World War. Regrettably, the Arab leaders, whose friendship we wanted most, opposed a Jewish state in the region. With a few distinguished exceptions, they claimed that the Land of Israel is part of the Arab domain that stretches from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf. In defiance of international will and legality, the Arab regimes attempted to overrun and destroy the Jewish state even before it was born. The Arab spokesman at the UN declared that the establishment of a Jewish state would cause a bloodbath which would make the slaughters of Genghis Khan pale into insignificance. In its Declaration of Independence on May 15, 1948, Israel stretched out its hand in peace to its Arab neighbors, calling for an end to war and bloodshed. In response, seven Arab states invaded Israel. The UN resolution that partitioned the country was thus violated and effectively annulled. The UN did not create Israel. The Jewish State came into being because the tiny Jewish community, in what was Mandatory Palestine, rebelled against foreign imperialist rule. We did not conquer a foreign land. We repulsed the Arab onslaught, prevented Israel's annihilation, declared its independence, and established a viable state and government institutions within a very short time. After their attack on Israel failed, the Arab regimes continued their fight against Israel with boycott, blockade, terrorism, and outright war. Soon after the establishment of Israel, they turned against the Jewish communities in Arab countries. A wave of oppression, expropriation, and expulsion caused a mass exodus of some 800,000 Jews from lands they had inhabited from before the rise of Islam. Most of these Jewish refugees, stripped of their considerable possessions, came to Israel. They were welcomed by the Jewish State. They were given shelter and support, and they were integrated into Israeli society together with half a million survivors of the European Holocaust. The Arab regimes' rejection of Israel's existence in the Middle East, and the continuous war they have waged against it are part of history. There have been attempts to rewrite this history which depict the Arabs as victims and Israel as the aggressor. Like attempts to deny the Holocaust, they will fail. With the demise of totalitarian regimes in most of the world, this perversion of history will disappear. In their war against Israel's existence, the Arab governments took advantage of the Cold War. They enlisted the military, economic, and political support of the Communist world against Israel, and they turned a local, regional conflict into an international powder-keg. This caused the Middle East to be flooded with arms, which fueled wars and turned the area into a dangerous battleground and a testing arena for sophisticated weapons. At the UN, the Arab states mustered the support of other Muslim countries and the Soviet Bloc. Together they had an automatic majority for countless resolutions that perverted history, paraded fiction as fact, and made a travesty of the UN and its Charter. ARAB HOSTILITY to Israel has also brought tragic human suffering to the Arab people. Tens of thousands have been killed and wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs who lived in Mandatory Palestine were encouraged by their own leaders to flee from their homes. Their suffering is a blot on humanity. No decent person, least of all a Jew of this era, can be oblivious to this suffering. Several hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs live in slums known as refugee camps in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. Attempts by Israel to rehabilitate and house them have been defeated by Arab objections. Nor has their fate been any better in Arab states. Unlike the Jewish refugees who came to Israel from Arab countries, most Arab refugees were neither welcomed nor integrated by their hosts. Only the Kingdom of Jordan awarded them citizenship. Their plight has been used as a political weapon against Israel. The Arabs who have chosen to remain in Israel -- Christian, Muslim and Druze -- have become full-fledged citizens enjoying equal rights and representation in the legislature, in the judiciary, and in all walks of life. We, who over the centuries were denied access to our holy places, respect the religion of all faiths in our country. Our law guarantees freedom of worship and protects the holy places of every religion. I STAND before you today in yet another quest for peace, not only on behalf of the State of Israel, but in the name of the entire Jewish people, that has maintained an unbreakable bond with the Land of Israel for almost 4,000 years. Our pursuit of accommodation and peace has been relentless. For us, the ingathering of Jews into their ancient homeland, their integration in our society, and the creation of the necessary infrastructure are at the very top of our national agenda. A nation that faces such a gigantic challenge would most naturally desire peace with all its neighbors. Since the beginning of Zionism, we have formulated innumerable peace proposals and plans. All of them were rejected. The first crack in the wall of hostility occurred in 1977 when the late president Anwar Sadat of Egypt decided to break the taboo and come to Jerusalem. His gesture was reciprocated with enthusiasm by the people and government of Israel, headed by Menachem Begin. This development led to the Camp David Accords and the Treaty of Peace between Egypt and Israel. Four years later, in May 1983, an agreement was signed with the lawful government of Lebanon. Unfortunately, this agreement was not fulfilled, because of outside intervention. But the precedent was set, and we looked forward to courageous steps, similar to those of Anwar Sadat. Regrettably, not one Arab leader has seen fit to come forward and respond to our call for peace. Today's gathering is a result of a sustained American effort, based on our own peace plan of May 1989 which, in turn, was founded on the Camp David Accords. According to the American initiative, the purpose of this meeting is to launch direct peace negotiations between Israel and each of its neighbors, and multi-lateral negotiations on regional issues among all the countries of the region. WE HAVE always believed that only direct, bilateral talks can bring peace. We have agreed to precede such talks with this ceremonial conference, but we hope that Arab consent to direct, bilateral talks indicates an understanding that there is no other way to peace. In the Middle East, this has special meaning, because such talks imply mutual acceptance; and the root cause of the conflict is the Arab refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel. The multilateral talks that would accompany the bilateral negotiations are a vital component in the process. In these talks, the essential ingredients of coexistence and regional cooperation will be discussed. There cannot be genuine peace in our region unless these regional issues are addressed and resolved. We believe the goal of the bilateral negotiations is to sign peace treaties between Israel and its neighbors, and to reach an agreement on interim self-government arrangements with the Palestinian Arabs. But nothing can be achieved without goodwill. I appeal to the Arab leaders, those who are here and those who have not yet joined the process: Show us and the world that you accept Israel's existence. Demonstrate your readiness to accept Israel as a permanent entity in the region. Let the people in our region hear you speak in the language of reconciliation, coexistence, and peace with Israel. In Israel there is an almost total consensus for the need for peace. We only differ on the best ways to achieve it. In most Arab countries the opposite seems to be true: the only differences are over the ways to push Israel into a defenseless position and, ultimately, to destruction. We would like to see in your countries an end to poisonous preachings against Israel. We would like to see an indication of the kind of hunger for peace which characterizes Israeli society. We appeal to you to renounce the jihad against Israel. We appeal to you to denounce the PLO covenant which calls for Israel's destruction. We appeal to you to condemn declarations that call for Israel's annihilation, like the one issued by the rejectionist conference in Teheran last week. We appeal to you to let Jews, who wish to leave your countries, go. AND WE address a call to the Palestinian Arabs: Renounce violence and terrorism; use the universities in the administered territories -- whose existence was made possible only by Israel -- for learning and development, not agitation and violence; stop exposing your children to danger by sending them to throw bombs and stones at soldiers and civilians. Just two days ago, we were reminded that Palestinian terrorism is still rampant, when a mother of seven children and a father of four were slaughtered in cold blood. We cannot remain indifferent and be expected to talk with people involved in such repulsive activities. We appeal to you to shun dictators like Saddam Hussein who aim to destroy Israel; stop the brutal torture and murder of those who do not agree with you; allow us, and the world community, to build decent housing for the people who now live in refugee camps. Above all, we hope you finally realize that you could have been at this table long ago, soon after the Camp David accords were first concluded, had you chosen dialogue instead of violence, co existence instead of terrorism. WE COME to this process with an open heart, sincere intentions, and great expectations. We are committed to negotiating without interruption until an agreement is reached. There will be problems, obstacles, crises, and conflicting claims. But it is better to talk than to shed blood. Wars have not solved anything in our region. They have only caused misery, suffering, bereavement, and hatred. We know our partners to the negotiations will make territorial demands on Israel. But, as an examination of the conflict's long history makes clear, its nature is not territorial. It raged well be fore Israel acquired Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and the Golan in a defensive war. There was no hint of recognition of Israel before the war in 1967, when the territories in question were not under Israeli control. We are a nation of four million. The Arab nations from the Atlantic to the Gulf number 170 million. We control only 28,000 square kilometers. The Arabs possess a land mass of 14 million square kilometers. The issue is not territory but our existence. It will be regrettable if the talks focus primarily and exclusively on territory. It is the quickest way to an impasse. What we need, first and foremost, is the building of confidence, the removal of the danger of confrontation, and the development of relations in as many spheres as possible. The issues are complex, and the negotiations will be lengthy and difficult. We submit that the best venue for the talks is in our region, in close proximity to the decision-makers, not in a foreign land. We invite our partners to this process to come to Israel for the first round of talks. On our part, we are ready to go to Jordan, to Lebanon, and to Syria for the same purpose. There is no better way to make peace than to talk in each other's home. Avoiding such talks is a denial of the purpose of the negotiations. I would welcome a positive answer from the representatives of these states here and now. We must learn to live together. We must learn to live without war, without bloodshed. Judaism has given the world not only the belief in one God, but the idea that all men and women are created in God's image. There is no greater sin than to ravage this image by shedding blood. I am sure that there is no Arab mother who wants her son to die in battle -- just as there is no Jewish mother who wants her son to die in war. I believe every mother wants her children to learn the art of living, not the science of war. For many hundreds of years, wars, deep antagonisms, and terrible suffering cursed this continent on which we meet. The nations of Europe saw the rise of dictators and their defeat after lengthy and painful struggles. Now, they are together -- former bitter enemies -- in a united community. They are discussing the good of the community, cooperating in all matters, acting almost as one unit. I envy them. I would like to see such a community rise in the Middle East. And I believe that, despite all differences between us, we should be able, gradually, to build a united regional community. Today it is a dream - but we have seen, in our own lifetime, some of the most fantastic dreams become reality. Today, the gulf separating the two sides is still too wide; the Arab hostility to Israel too deep; the lack of trust too immense, to permit a dramatic, quick solution. But, we must start on the long road to reconciliation with this first step in the peace process. We are convinced that human nature prefers peace to war and belligerence. We, who have had to fight seven wars and sacrifice many thousands of lives, glorify neither death nor war. The Jewish faith exalts peace even to the extent that it considers it a synonym for the Creator Himself. We yearn for peace. We pray for peace. We believe the blessing of peace can turn the Middle East into a paradise; a center of cultural, scientific, medical and technological creativity. We can foresee a period of great economic progress that would put an end to misery, hunger and illiteracy. It could put the Middle East -- the cradle of civilization -- on the road to a new era. Such a goal merits our devotion and dedication for as long as it is necessary until, in the words of the Prophet Isaiah, we shall be able to turn "swords into plowshares" and bring the blessings of peace to all the peoples of our region. Let me conclude with the words of the same prophet: "Peace, peace, both for far and near, says the Lord." Let us resolve to leave this hall with a united determination that from now on, any differences we may have will be solved only by negotiations, goodwill, and mutual tolerance. Let us declare, here and now, an end to war, to belligerency, and to hostility. Let us march forward together, to reconciliation and peace. Contact Likud-Herut by email at info@likud-herut.org.uk |
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AN APPEAL OF FAITH ON IRAN TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
Posted by Michael Freund, November 1, 2006. |
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Following is perhaps the most important column that I have ever written: it is an appeal to US President George W. Bush from one man of faith to another to take military action against Iran to stop its drive toward obtaining nuclear weapons. I feel it is important to try and spread this message as widely as possible, so if there is anything you can do to help get it out to a wider audience -- please feel free to go ahead and do so. Thanks
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Dear Mr. President, I am writing to you because I am afraid. I have been closely following the rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the past few months, and I want you to know that I am gripped with a sense of fear. I fear for the future of Israel and for that of the entire Jewish people, as the would-be Hitler of Persia readies to do battle against us with the most horrific of weapons. I fear for the future of the West, because outside of Washington, few and far between are the leaders with the common sense and courage to stand up to the Tyrant of Teheran. And I fear for the future of the world, because if Iran's fundamentalists get their hands on a nuclear weapon, it will only be a matter of time before their extremist allies abroad become similarly armed. Hence, I am writing to you because I am convinced that you alone understand and appreciate the gravity of the current situation, and I pray in my heart that you will not let it stand. I appeal to you now, not as a political analyst nor as a newspaper columnist, but as one man of faith to another: please strike Iran hard with military force, and dismantle their nuclear weapons program, before it is too late. I know you believe, as I do, that G-d guides the destiny of men and of nations. And I know you believe, just as I do, that He raised you up to the helms of power precisely at this critical period, to serve as His agent and His instrument in this world. The G-d of history has chosen you, Mr. President, just as He did Churchill, and He has entrusted you with a sacred mandate: to save the world from the designs of a madman. I can tell you that in Israel, a sense of dread has slowly, but surely, begun to sink in. As the Sunday Times of London reported earlier this week, a growing number of my fellow Jews have begun to build underground nuclear shelters adjacent to their homes. "The shelters," says the Times, "are built to withstand radioactive fallout, have fortified walls and doors and generate their own electricity and decontaminated air." Hundreds of such bunkers, reports the paper, have been built in recent months, and "demand is soaring". Mr. President, just the other night, I went out with my family for dinner to a restaurant in Herzliya, the city named after Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl, who foresaw the need to establish a safe haven for the Jewish people. Our waitress was an attractive and cheerful young lady who moved to Israel 16 years ago at the age of four from her native Lithuania, where her family had suffered anti-Semitism and persecution. But when we asked her if she was happy living here in the Jewish state, the smile on her lips quickly faded. Glumly, she answered us with the following words: "That Ahmadinejad of Iran, he scares me. It is a very scary situation." And indeed it is, Mr. President, because my people are in danger once again. It was just six decades ago that the Europeans tossed us into Hitler's ovens and turned six million Jews into ashes. Now, with no shame, they stand by silently as Iran seeks to do the same. The United Nations is a lost cause, and we have no faith in Russia, China or international institutions. The sad fact is that most of the world will not shed a tear if Mr. Ahmadinejad succeeds in achieving his dreadful aims. Here in Israel, our own leadership is tired and weak. They have lost their way, and they are no longer anchored in faith. As we saw this past summer in the Lebanon war, they stumble about as though walking in darkness, oblivious to the danger that stalks us all. There is only one person now, Mr. President, who can stop this terrifying scenario from coming to pass, and I believe that person is you. I think of you often, and when I do, I am guided in faith to the fourth chapter of the Book of Esther in the Bible, where the evil Persian court officer Haman threatened the Jewish people with extinction. After Mordechai the Jew got wind of Haman's plot, he passed along a message of great urgency to Queen Esther: "Who knows, perhaps it was precisely for a moment such as this that you have attained power?" Mr. President, that message was as compelling then as it is today, and I believe it is clearly directed to you too. The decision you face is not an easy one, and I do not mean to suggest otherwise. But there are moments when a leader, like Joshua of old, must "be strong and of good courage" (Joshua chap. 1), and not shy away from doing what must be done. In the case of Iran, there can be no room for retreat or for shrinking back from the task at hand. The stakes are simply too great. Iran can and must be stopped, and the only way to do so is through the use of military force. Diplomacy and resolutions are a smokescreen, and you know as well as I do that they will not slow Iran's steady drive toward obtaining a nuclear arsenal. Only the long and powerful arm of the United States, flexed with all its might, can and will be able to do the job. Sure, the critics and the nay-sayers will try to tear you down, just as they have been doing since you the day you were elected. They will heap scorn on you, call you a warmonger and worse, and denigrate you and your family for many, many years to come. But please don't allow them to deter you or to drive you to despair. Don't let them drown out that still, small voice within, the one that reaches into each of our hearts and calls out every day: "I am the L-rd, and there is none else" (Isaiah chap. 45). Mr. President, you know as well as I do that history's final verdict is not written by academics, nor is it determined by the opinion-mongers at the New York Times. The one and only verdict, the one that really, truly counts, is the one that is penned in Heaven, by He Who gave each of us life. It is to Him, and Him alone, that we will all have to answer. In just over two years you will leave office. In the greater scheme of things, I am convinced that your legacy will depend largely on the decisions that you make in the coming few months about what to do with Iran. I urge you, I plead with you: don't walk out of the White House in January 2009 without having stopped Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Don't leave the fate of Israel and the Jewish people hanging in the balance. Remember the promise that G-d made to Abraham in Genesis chap. 12: "I will bless those that bless you, and those that curse you I shall curse". Note that when it comes to standing by Israel and the Jewish people, there is no middle ground. G-d delineates two categories, and two categories only: those who bless Israel, and those who curse it. You are in a unique position to bless Israel, and through it, all of humanity, by removing the nuclear sword from the hand of the Persian executioner. The same G-d Who spoke, and said, "Let there be light", and there was light, surely expects you to do nothing less. I will be praying for you, as will many others, and I hope that you take this message to heart. Be strong, be strong, Mr. President, and through you, may we all be strengthened. The writer served as an aide in the Prime Minister's Office to former premier Binyamin Netanyahu. He is currently Chairman of Shavei Israel (www.shavei.org), a Jerusalem-based group that reaches out and assists "lost Jews" seeking to return to the Jewish people. |
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THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY'S ETHICS UNDER ATTACK
Posted by Steven Plaut, November 1, 2006. |
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I realize that sometimes the actual news sounds like one of those Plaut spoofs. All the more so when an absurd story comes out close to Halloween. But this is for real. Seems the forces of affirmative action in Israel are aghast. The bleeding hearts and caring Leftists are up in arms. It seems that the number of Arabs being accepted to the Hebrew University medical school is down and the reason for that is that they are failing to pass the ethical awareness requirement. Moreover, the Arab spokesmen say that the Arab students have failed to develop ethical awareness because they do not serve in the Israeli army. Ok, so back up a bit, pilgrim. First, yes, Israeli universities do have affirmative action preferences in favor of Arabs. Since affirmative action is supposed to compensate victims of historic discrimination, Israeli universities have decided to make up for 1300 years of brutal discrimination against Jews and in favor of Arabs in the Middle East by instituting programs that discriminate in favor of Arabs and against Jews. Second, the affirmative action axis of evil inside Israel is not very different from its cousins overseas. It opposes all standards because standards keep out the preferred minorities. That is why the affirmo-philes in the US want all science and math requirements to be junked! Such things prevent blacks and Hispanics from getting into college and also generate a student body with far too many Asians and Jews. A few years back, the Israeli affirmo-bats tried to junk the college board test ("psychometric") altogether in order to boost the number of Arabs in universities, but after a year or two of mediocre admittees it was restored, resulting in a drop in the number of Arab students. To the chagrin of the Left. Third, entrance into Israeli med schools is extremely competitive because every Jewish mother wants her kid to become a REAL doctor, not a phony one like some economists we all know. As part of the restoration of standards and the insistence that not only Jewish students must be qualified, the number of Arab students getting into Hebrew University's med school dropped over the past 3 years. The entrance procedures were altered somewhat this year. They are mainly based on the psychometric exam and school grades. But Haaretz today, citing anti-Israel pro-terror Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi, decided that the main reason for this is that the new evaluation procedures are "culturally biased". The new evaluations involve "character evaluation": they test role playing and responses in interviews, and they include questions about ethical problems and dilemmas. The evaluation procedures used are state of the art and were developed by experts and professionals in the testing profession. The Haaretz piece (Hebrew only) cites Arab students who say it is unfair to ask them about ethical dilemmas because they did not serve in the Israeli army and so never spent time pondering ethical problems. Really. I guess it is so much easier to cheer suicide bombers and chant "Death to the Jews", as so many Arab students in Israeli universities do. Saves time. No need to contemplate ethical matters. Hebrew University people say that is nonsense. The Arabs may be at a disadvantage because of their younger age. After all, most did not serve in the army. Of course, no one is stopping them from volunteering to serve in the army, which would help them develop a sense of ethics and maturity and so would help them get into med school. And nothing stops them from working 3 or 4 years to gain maturity and THEN apply to med school. Tibi, who gives Israel the Ahmed Tibi heebie jeebies, is personally partly responsible for the continuing terror and war that make it necessary for Jewish youths to spend three years in the army gaining maturity and ethical awareness before applying to college. Yet in the Haaretz piece he demands that the entrance requirements be changed so that a quota benefiting Arabs be enforced, and to hell with their qualifications. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Contact him at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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